Happy Birthday to my son

Dear son,
Happy Birthday! Thirty-five years ago my life was forever changed when you arrived, very reluctantly I must say, into this world. I rapidly learned about selfless giving because of you, my first-born, and found that the whole of life was much larger than my narcissistic one-ness. As I gladly embraced the role of motherhood, I enveloped you as an extension of my being, yet I was acutely aware that you were clearly your own independent and unique person.

I am profoundly amazed with you, this richly complex, warm and generous man who is my son. How can it be that my infant-child would become such an incredibly intelligent, creative, good-humored, self-assured, husband and father? How is it that I was chosen to be your mother?

When you were born, my only prayer was for you to become a loving and caring human being. That's all I wanted for you. I didn't care what degrees you would earn, how much money you would make, or whether you would be able to support me in my old age. My only desire was that you be loving and caring, for therein would lie true happiness.

My prayers were answered and your core values of compassion and empathy have informed the direction of your life. You have chosen your paths wisely, and for that I am proud.

Through the years we have both continued to change and grow. We are now in seperate worlds and our daily focus in on the immediacy of our surroundings. But there exists an ever-present mother-son connection between us, one that persists just barely under the surface of consciousness.

My mother-love for you extends beyond the limitations of the English language: Maternal love defies description or comprehension, for it is altogether a physical, spiritual, and psychic bond that will exist throughout all time. Life is a continuum. One day begets the next, one generation spawns another. We are but a small thread in this tapestry of human existence, and as the leaves change so do we continue to grow and evolve. Who knows who or where we will be tomorrow or even how many tomorrows we have?

I need you to know that, no matter what the changing seasons bring and regardless of the unknowns of tomorrow, my never-ending love for you will remain constant and, in the quiet of the night or the laughter and tears of the day, I will always be with you. You will always be my son, a partial replication of myself, my legacy.....

"NORMAL"

My patients often say "I just want to be normal". I tell them to forget it, that there is no such thing as a "normal" person. However, there is hope that an individual can become fairly HEALTHY & FUNCTIONAL. And there's a lot of wiggle room because the definitions of those words are pretty arbitrary.

When I was in undergrad about a thousand years ago, we were taught that our environment is primarily responsible for who we become. In others words, if you were crazy or neurotic, it was your mother's fault. When my son was born I was terrified: I truly believed that he was indeed a "Tabula Rasa" - a blank slate - and if he became an axe murderer it would be all my fault. (Four years later when my daughter was born I had relaxed a bit. Motherhood will do that to a person).



Now we know ("we" being psychologists, researchers, etc. ) that about 50% of who we are is informed by genetics, while the other half of who we become is molded by our environment. Having said that, there are some really strange-looking folks out there. I also know that the most put-together person may actually have more psychopathology (be more unhappy and/or be more likely to require the services of a Shrink) that those who just look goofy.

I like to people-watch. Who doesn't? We went to an outside "Blues & Ribfest" last weekend. Lots of BB Ribs, live Blues (Buddy Guy - the King of Chicago Blues still rocks!). The crowd was fairly eclectic and we had a great vantage point. I noticed that almost everyone was making some kind of statement with their outer wear: "Mean People Suck" (who could argue?), "Welcome back Carter", "Farmers do it in the Field", several caps with "F.... something-or-other".....the usual. Then there was the very large lady (at least 300 #'s) wearing an over-sized low-cut black drape-thing with only one sleeve. And she was wearing a Pirate Hat.... I watched her walk back and forth from the food stands - BBQ ribs, then a load of "Bloomin' Onions", a funnel cake (known back home as Elephant Ears), three pronto pups, and a nutty ice cream bar. All seperate trips.

But the most fascinating and disgusting show was sitting three feet in front of us: She was about 35 yrs. old, dirty blond, and had been run hard & put to bed wet. She wasn't really obese, but her body fat had shifted to her mid-section. She was wearing low-cut capris and when she leaned forward we could see her crack. Not just the top of the crack - we had front-row seats to a view of the entire canyon. And her shirt kept inching up towards her breasts, so that about half of her body was exposed. Not pretty, not pretty at all. Interestingly enough she was with a fairly nondescript 30-something guy, the kind of guy who could disappear easily into the crowd. You wouldn't have been able to identify him as the man who robbed you because he looked like every other middle-age midwestern guy in Iowa holding a can of Bud Lite. I think this couple had started their consumption of mood-altering substances before they arrived, because it seemed that it only took a few beers before things really started going south. They, or course, became quite amorous. And then they stood up to "dance"....the grinding bumping kind of dance. As the gyrations continued, her pants became scrunched almost down to her crotch, and the bottom hem of her blouse threatened to crawl dangerously past her esophagus. .... There were at least 40 other people watching this spectacle, and it was fun to watch the crowd as they tried not to stare, but, like me, they just couldn't NOT watch. It was like coming up on a car wreck, knowing that you shouldn't even want to see the carnage but.... the primal desire to see the unusual and grotesque is so very overpowering! However, when I think about it, perhaps this was "normal" behavior for two obviously tanked individuals.

So if there is a "normal", what is it? About 15 years ago, my mother began telling me about a family with whom she had become aquainted.
Mom: "They're very nice, but they're not normal".
Me: "How aren't they normal Mom?"
Mom: "Well, they're vegetarians. And they eat this disgusting tofu stuff".
Me: "That's not unusual Mom. A lot of folks are vegetarians. It's very healthy".
Mom: "But that's not all. Their daughter left college to hike around Europe for three years. That's just not normal".
Me: "Wow. I think that would be so much fun! I don't see anything abnormal about that!"
Mom: "But their other daughter joined the Peace Corps and married some foreign boy".
Me: "Well, that isn't so odd".
Mom: "And she (the mom) only wears cotton. She wore this Kaftan thing to Church! A woman like her should dress up. She's educated. They both are. They're just not normal"!
And on it went.....

Finally I asked the obvious question. And at once everything fell into place. My whole childhood flashed before my eyes and I suddenly knew. I had that insight I had been searching for my entire adult life. Why was I so.....ME?

Me: "So Mom, who IS "normal".

And without pause nor hesitation Mother answered.
"Well Honey, WE'RE NORMAL!"

FYI:
The blog posted today is a CASE STUDY.
The names & places of this experience have been changed, and overall content is not specific to identifiable patient.

A few days ago I was asked to see a dying veteran in the hospital. It was late in the afternoon on Friday and the day had gotten away from me. As I hurried through the corridors to his unit, I wasn't too concerned about whether I would have enough time to visit with him. After all, he had less than one week to live, and would probably be confused, weak, and unable to tolerate a very long session. As I approached his room, I realized that I was thinking more about whether I would be able to leave work on time than the fact that I was just about to be speaking with a human being about his imminent death. I was a bit chagrined but still looked at my watch. Forty minutes left in the day. Piece of cake.

As I gingerly entered his room, I saw a small emaciated elderly male lying very still, eyes closed, his oxygen tubing positioned awkwardly in his nose. Was he already dead? I greeted him formally as usual ("Mister ____". I never assume familiarity until given permission by the patient). He opened his eyes wide, looked at me, and weakly smiled. "Hello Mr. Jones. I'm Dr. Martin. I'm a psychologist. Your physician asked me to come see you because she thought you were a bit down in the dumps." (I never use the word "depressed", especially with older patients).

"Of course I'm down in the dumps! Who wouldn't be? She told me I only have about four days to live!"

......................

I learned about the starts and stops of life when I was five years old. I watched in horror as my dog Flicker ran out of the underbrush with a baby rabbit in his mouth. I hit him on the nose and screamed until he dropped the rabbit at my feet. The little creature was lying very still but I could see it's chest rapidly moving up and down. I ran into the house with the bunny and Mother got a shoebox, lined it with Kleenex, and gently laid him inside. She said something about needing to feed him milk, but we didn't have anything with which to feed him. So she drove across town to the Sorg's home (They had two daughters with lots of toys and dolls. ) She borrowed an itsy bitsy doll baby bottle, returned home, and together we tried to get the bunny to suck on the bottle. My memory fades at this point: As a five-year old, I probably got distracted and temporarily forgot about the medical crisis playing out in our kitchen. Later that day, Mother infomed me that, in spite of our efforts, the bunny had died. I looked at the lifeless form in the shoebox for some time, but it continued to just lay there. Motionless. I remember well the sobering realization that a living breathing being had ceased to exist. Alive and then not alive. Not sleeping. Dead. Forever. Gone.

I was to become overly familiar with dying and death over the next fifty years or so. This was just the beginning.
...................................

The veteran warmly invited me "pull up a chair" so I could sit close to him. "So what do you think about dying?" I asked him. "What do you think happens when you die?" (Now, I realize this is not the usual opening topic of conversation for most people meeting for the first time, but we both knew why I was there. Why beat around the bush? After all, the clock was ticking.)

"I think that when I die that's it. No Heaven, no Hell. The end. On the other hand, how would we know? No one has ever come back from death to tell us".

"How do you feel about that?" (Okay, pretty standard psychologeze question.)

"Oh, I suppose there might be something after life. But I don't believe in Heaven. Or Hell. Especially Hell." I thought of the old Blood Sweat & Tears lyrics "I don't believe in Heaven but I pray there ain't no Hell".

"I've had a good life". And he launched into a detailed description of how he had lived his 85 years on this earth. He related how he had been married for 43 years, how his wife had died, and how he had lived with multiple women since then ("Only one at a time"). He told me how he had been raised a devout Catholic, and that he had planned to be a priest until he realized how much he "loved the women". He told me about World War II and how he hid in the ditches and trenches in Germany, how he wore the same wool socks for six weeks until they fell apart, and how he would do it "all over again". He told me about his RV and his horse, his life as a long-haul truck driver, and about the time his boat took on water just as he was hauling in a huge Trout in Lake Chehalus (sp?) in Washington State. He told me about how his first wife was his true love.

"Sounds like you've had a very full life. Very meaningful. ........

[THERAPEUTIC SILENCE]

"So you were raised in the Catholic Religion. Do you still believe in God or Someone like That?"

And on we went. Very deep stuff. Did he believe in anything or anyone beyond himself? It was important for him to process this, because many times I have seen patients who when confronted with mortality, begin to wonder if the religious teachings of their early childhood may indeed be true. As a result, the reality of their unavoidable death can, in the last days, become a very terrifying notion. Especially if they believe, way down deep inside somewhere, that Sister MaryAnn was right, and that they may actually be going to the Hell that they've been trying so hard not to believe most of their adult lives.

"I've had a long life. A good life. And I knew this day would come. I don't like it, but that's the way it is. I've been very lucky. And I'm not afraid".

I could see that he was, indeed, at peace. And maybe our "psychotherapy session" had helped him come to grips with the "start and stop" of life. I thanked him for his time, he thanked me for my time, and we agreed to meet again on Monday, both of us knowing full well that he could very well die before then.

I squeezed his hand, and as I left, I said "You know, you may want to think about that Heaven thing. You may be in for a wonderful surprise." .....He smiled, nodded his head, and closed his eyes.

As I exited through the sliding doors of the hospital, I looked at my watch. Took longer than I had expected but still on time.

Back from Austin

My husband & I just returned to Des Moines after 5 days in Austin (TX). High point was eating at the ramshackle restaurant-bar (Chuy's) where the Bush sisters were arrested for underage drinking in 2001. Another meaningful experience was cruising down the Colorado River in 106 degrees while watching 1.5 million Mexico Freetail bats (the largest urban bat colony in the world) fly out from under the Congress Avenue Bridge in downtown Austin at sunset. Of course, the best part of our visit was just being with my son, dtr.-in-law, granddtr & grandson. We sang, swam, danced, played..... Children truly keep us young at heart, and allow permission to revisit the naivity of our own childhood. And while I was there, my son helped me set up this blog. Don't have a clue who will read this, but I will write now & then, hopefully offer something worth reading on occasion.....

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

This is my first blog post

I am trying this thing out. Hello world.