Wakes, viewings, visitations or whatever

A favorite indoor sport in this part of the country seems to be going to wakes or viewings or whatever one calls them.  It doesn't seem to matter much if you truly knew the deceased but, heck, you never know who you might see at the funeral home.  Everyone signs the guest book and then murmurs condolences to perfect strangers, goes up to the coffin and says, "Doesn't he/she look nice"?  There seems to be no way out of this.  But I want to go on record as finding all of this a bit barbaric.  I don't see how it is the least bit helpful to the bereaved.  There are better places to catch up with friends from high school or cousins you haven't seen since childhood.  I don't want anyone staring down on me in my coffin saying, "Didn't Phillip do a nice job"?  And the flowers - don't get me started on the flowers.  What a waste of money!  So when I die, I want to be quietly cremated.  Send out a little card in a few weeks letting people know if you want.  Then get my ashes, borrow a boat and and scatter my ashes into the Atlantic ocean.

A Good-bye to the Breastfeeding Nazi

Wendy was the breast feeding Nazi of Family Beginnings, although we did not call her this to her face.   When I first started working there she was the lactation consultant and the maker of the work schedule (good to be her friend).  As lactation consultant, she was always admonishing the rest of us not to succumb to the cries of hungry babies and pleas from exhausted moms for more sleep.  If we gave a breast baby even a little water during the night, it could be considered assault.  I never knew her in her younger, more agile days.  By the time I met her, she was already disabled to some extent by severe rheumatoid arthritis.  She had had numerous joint replacements.  Her hands were twisted and gnarled.   But she worked full time and kept her family together.  She had a mischievous sense of humor and a smile for everyone.
The beginning of the end, I think, was surgery on her right hand.  The wound got infected and she spent months with a drain and on antibiotics.  She worked mostly from home, writing with her left hand.  Then there was a fall and another fall.  Every time she seemed to be on the road to recovery, something would happen.  One day, several vertebrae collapsed and she could no longer stand, let alone walk.  Weeks in the hospital were followed by nursing home placement.  She developed a horrible bedsore while in the nursing home and was unable to sit.  Another drain, more antibiotics, weekly trips to the wound care center, lots of pain.  I would visit her from time to time, not often enough.  She never groused or complained.  she never lamented the state she was in.  She was ever hopeful that she would walk again or, at least, be able to stand and pivot so she could go home.  Yesterday she died.  She was 53 years old.

Betty (the cat)

Betty spent most of her first 3 years of life in an apartment in New York City.  She was the runt of a litter of kittens that my daughter fostered.  The other kittens found homes and Jessica kept Betty.  Her head was so much bigger than her body, she earned the name Betty Boop.   Betty apparently had an eating disorder and would eat anything in front of her.  She did not graze; she gobbled.  Soon her body outgrew her head.  Eventually, Jessica moved to NJ to a studio apartment she owned there.  She hoped to fix the place up and sell it.  Betty and all her paraphernalia overwhelmed the place.  So Jessica decided to bring Betty to the mountains of Pennsylvania to live with me.  I only agreed to do this because I was sure Betty wouldn't last long.  She would do what all the other cats do;  find her way to the highway and get hit by a car.  We already had a cat (Maybelle) that had survived such an accident and now stays away from the road.  Both of her sisters managed to get themselves killed.  
When Betty first arrived, Maybelle approached her as though she wanted to be friends but Betty was having none of it.  It was downhill after that as far as friendship goes.  Maybelle was terrified of Betty and would growl and hiss whenever Betty was near.  Betty made herself right at home and took over as alpha cat while Maybelle cowered under tables and chairs.  Betty was a smart cat.  She could open the cupboard doors when she was looking for food.  She could open the door to the linen closet and jump up on a shelf.  When I moved Maybelle's food to a shelf on a bookcase, Betty got up there and ate it.  One morning I got up and found the bag of dry cat food sitting on the kitchen floor, upright.  Betty had managed to open the door and get the bag out without spilling anything.  Betty would sleep on the bed with us and she preferred to be right in the middle of the bed.  Did I mention she was a big cat?  She was a high maintenance cat, always wanting attention.  She didn't sleep like other cats; if I moved an inch, she would be up and awake, looking and hoping for food.  By her second summer with us, she was more comfortable with the outdoors.  As the nights got warm, she started staying out at night.  She would come in to eat but at 9PM, she was ready to go out for the night.  Then in early September, she wasn't at the window at 6 AM meowing loudly for food.  I last saw her the evening before headed towards the woods on the other side of our driveway.  We haven't seen her since.  People have told me about cats that were missing that turned up months later.  But Betty wasn't the kind of cat to wander off for weeks or months at a time.  I doubt if she found a new home  There aren't that many right near us anyway.  Even though she was a PIA cat, I miss her.  I wish I had taken better care of her.

Hosting

I had been asked in the past to host a foreign exchange student and I said "No" because I was working and I have no kids living at home.  I couldn't imagine why I would want a foreign teenager living with me.  This year, since I am retired, I said "yes" to hosting the chaperone for the exchange students.  She is 32 and thus able to legally drink alcoholic beverages.  I had no idea how much fun it was going to be.  Having Sabine around is like having a daughter with no boyfriend, husband or kids - a daughter I can have to myself.  She has gone to the Y with me, we went biking at Ohiopyle together, she helped me with my 4th of July party and she joined the FBBC crowd when we went to dinner and a movie.  I hope she is having as much fun as I am.

Ginger

  The first pet that I really remember was a cat by the name of Ginger. My friend Kathy had found this kitten that had been abandoned by the road. It was too young to have even been weaned. Her mother wouldn’t let her keep it so she brought it to me. My mother only let me keep it because she was sure it would die. I got a medicine dropper from my father and I hand fed that kitten several times a day until she was old enough to eat on her own. I named her Ginger because of her brown and orange coloring. Ginger thrived and we were devoted to each other. When she was about a year old, she had a litter of 3 kittens of her own. One looked like her so we named her Gingerale. The other 2 were black and white and we thought one was a male. Unfortunately, we were wrong about that. In another year, Ginger and her 3 offspring all had kittens the same week. There were 15 new kittens and four adults making a total of 19 cats. That was more than enough for my mother. When they were old enough, we had to give away all of the kittens, plus the other 3 adults. I could keep Ginger but she had to be spayed.

Down by the river

More about the Little River at Cherry Hospital:
I didn't go swimming in the river that often. It was too murky for me. I do remember swimming in it once and some black people came to the river for a baptism. We all got out of the river while the baptism was going on. I never had the nerve to walk across the dam in the summer when the water was low, either. I certainly watched other people do it. I could just see myself falling off onto the rocks below the dam.
The area by the river was a great place to play, explore and build forts. The boys had a rope that they used to swing over the water and drop down into the river, up above the dam. I don't think any girls ever participated in that activity. But I loved to go down by the river and wander around and daydream.  There was also a swinging bridge across the river, for use when the road was flooded out.  It was a rope swing with wooden planks.  One more thing I didn't have the nerve to do was cross that bridge.

Why I am not a dog person

 As a child, we supposedly had a dog named Costello but I don't really remember that dog.  What I do remember is  being bitten by a dog when I was not yet 10.  I lived on the grounds of a state mental hospital.  Our first house was in a row of five houses with a highway at one end and a river at the other.  I could go between the highway and the river, even down to the river, without asking permission.  But I was not allowed to go past the highway without first checking with my mother.  One day my brother, Bobby, was riding his bike with a friend, headed past the boundary.  I hopped on my bike and followed.  A dog belonging to a couple that worked at the hospital came out yapping and nipping.  Bobby started weaving the front wheel of his bike back and forth and he hit the dog with his bike.  The dog bit me.  I couldn't tell my mother because she would kill me for going somewhere without her permission.  (My mother was a fearsome creature).  I knew that the chances of getting rabies were slim, but still I worried.  Some of my father's medical books were in my bedroom, so I got one of them and looked up the symptoms of rabies.  Once the symptoms appear, you are a goner but, still, I thought I would rather take my chances with the rabies than with my mother.  I wore socks until the bite healed.  As luck would have it, I didn't get rabies but I developed a fear of dogs.  This fear was not helped by the paper route I sometimes helped with.  The hospital was rife with dogs, some of them wild and vicious.  I was frequently chased by snarling dogs while delivering papers.  I once took a side trip from my route up to the house at the bottom of the hill before O'Berry.  There was always a dog on the porch but he never bothered me - until that day.  I started to walk over to the fence to get a look at the pony.  That dog came off the porch and 2 more came from around the back of the house, all three intent on my destruction.  I jumped on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could.  That man didn't get another paper for a week.  And then there was the dog, a German shepherd rumored to be trained to kill, owned by the hospital superintendent.  Whenever I went to collect money for the paper, Dr. Vitols would be there straining to hold his killer of a dog.  So, now I have cats.  They never snarl at me.

Travels with Martha

So right now I am in a foreign country - Canada to be exact.  Vancouver, British Columbia to be more exact.  Yes, they do speak English here and drive on the right side of the road so it is not much of an adjustment.  But some things are different.  Take the money.  I went to the bank and gave them $380 and only got $378.23 back.  Or was it $373.83?  My sister assures  me that this is a good rate of exchange so I believe her. The smallest bill is a $5.  Less than that is a coin.  There are Loonies and Toonies and you don't want to mix them up because one is a $1 coin and the other is a quarter (I think).  And all the coins are shiny like they just got made a few minutes ago.  How do they keep the coins so shiny?  I must remember to ask somebody.
Also, in Canada you can get a ticket for going through an intersection when the light is yellow.  In the US, if you stop on yellow, somebody will be in your trunk.  I am trying to change my habits before I get a ticket driving my sister's car.  And of course,  pedestrians rule.  It is easier to turn right on red than right on green because of all the pedestrians crossing the street.
Canadians are polite to a fault, very laid back most of the time.  They love to say "No worries" when an American might be saying @#!*%$.  I might like it here except that everything is so expensive.  Some of the most expensive things are candy and ice cream because you shouldn't be eating those anyway.  I would probably lose weight if I lived here long.  I would be definitely giving those things up and not just for Lent.  There are messages on the TV about what to eat and don't get either paper or plastic but be green and use re-usable sacks.  Everything is re-cycled and use of any paper products is discouraged.  Kleenex, paper towels and toilet paper are wickedly expensive.  I know one could use a handkerchief but what is the substitute for toilet paper???

Perchance to sleep

Last night at 10:30 PM, I decided I had had enough of mindless TV and games on Facebook. It was time for bed.  So I took my night time meds, turned down the thermostat, turned up the electric blanket and crawled into bed with Betty (the cat) sprawled right in the middle of the bed.  Unfortunately, I was having cramps in both feet, something that has not happened in several weeks.  I was also shivering for unknown reasons.  Eventually, I decided I was going to have to get out of bed in an attempt to get rid of the foot cramps.  Betty, disgusted by my tossing and turning, had already abandoned the bed. So I got up at 12:30 AM, walked to the kitchen, ate a couple of chocolate chip cookies that I baked yesterday, turned up the thermostat and turned up the electric blanket and crawled back into bed.  A few hours later, I was awake, burning up, afraid of spontaneously combusting.  Off went the covers and off went the electric blanket.  A cat (unknown name) came back in the bedroom and got on the bed.  I tried to drift off to sleep again only to be disturbed by hissing and growling from the cat on the bed.  Soon that cat jumped off the bed and the hissing turned to howling.  I got up again, pillow in hand, ready to throw it at fighting cats.  I only saw Maybelle heading off somewhere so I got my pillow and went back to bed.  Then I fell asleep and had a dream that I was able to swaddle Maybelle up so she couldn't fight and got her close to Betty.  Betty started licking Maybelle, treating her like she was her kitten.  Before you know it, Betty was cradling Maybelle in her "arms" and all was well in kitty land.  This dream was shattered by more cat fighting and the night was over.

Autism

Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and unusual, repetitive, or severely limited activities and interests. This is the official "definition". But what does that mean for families?
The first time I saw Ryan and Caitlin, they were 2 1/2 months old. I remember thinking to myself that Ryan was autistic because he would not make eye contact. But then I dismissed that thought because, after all, he was only 2 months old. Maybe babies didn't make eye contact at that age (even though his sister did). At one, they were lagging behind developmentally but then, they were premature so maybe that was to be expected. They didn't talk or crawl at that age. By 15 months, they were standing holding on to the furniture and Caitlin was trying to take some steps. My husband and I were babysitting while the parents got away for a few days. The twins didn't seem at all disturbed by the absence of their Mommy and Daddy. And they didn't react at all when they returned. I thought this was strange but didn't know what to attribute this behavior to. I had learned something about autism in nursing school in the 60's but all that info has pretty much been dismissed today. So I really didn't know anything. But by the time they were 2, I was really concerned. I did some research on the internet and it didn't take me long to come up with the diagnosis. And when my daughter finally took the twins in for an evaluation, it didn't take long for her to hear the words -classic autism. Some parents of autistic children struggle for months or years to get a diagnosis but Ryan and Caitlin were obvious. If you think dealing with one autistic child is difficult, try 2 of the same age. The odds of fraternal twins both being autistic is about 3%. The chances of identical twins both being autistic is about 90%. So obviously, genes play a role.
The diagnosis of autism is almost like a death sentence. All the hopes and dreams for your child die. Each day that passes, the hope for a miracle diminishes.
Autistic children look perfectly normal. They are frequently beautiful. My daughter once said she wished they had Down's Syndrome because at least then people would be able to tell by looking at them that something was wrong. As it is, other people just wonder how these children can be so uncontrolled. They know no boundaries. Either one will walk up to a stranger and reach for their drink, camera, cell phone - whatever has caught their eye. It is difficult to take them out in public for such reasons. Caitlin was the first to talk. But she doesn't carry on a conversation like other children. She might repeat something she has heard on TV, i.e. "This program has been brought to you by public broadcasting". And she might say this over and over. If you ask her what she did at school she will probably just stare at you. She will not take a bath before 8 PM. She is good at math. She is a good speller. She can dress herself, but usually puts her clothes on backwards. She does interact with her younger brother. She has a sense of humor (rare in autistic children). She does not play with toys. She cannot pretend to have a tea party. There is no point in buying her dolls. She wouldn't be interested.
Ryan can talk but doesn't, unless forced to. He spends a lot of time alone in his room. He never makes eye contact. His sense of hearing is quite acute and he can be seen holding his hands over his ears when sounds are disturbing to him. He was about 6 before he was toilet trained.
What are the chances that either of these children will ever be able to take care of themselves or live alone? Where will they end up after their parents can no longer care for them?
I have my own theory about the cause of autism. Perhaps I will discuss this in a future blog. Once you are familiar with an autistic child, it is easier to recognize the signs in other children.

Down by the river

 

One of my earliest memories of childhood is of standing with my mother near the river, watching the men from the hospital drag the river for the body of a little girl, five years old just like me.  I was curious to see what a dead person would look like and worried that we were not close enough for a good view.  Eventually, my mother turned to me and told me to go home and change my shoes as I had mud all over them.  I was reluctant to leave, but I would never have argued with my mother.  So I raced home for clean shoes and by the time I got back, the excitement was over.  I guess that she just wanted to protect me from the harsh realities of death, but I always felt cheated.