Lee Woodruff's Blog, page 5

When The See Saw Tips

When our dog Tucker died, hit by a car in front of my eyes, I was struck in the days that followed by the way grief, relief and guilt could co-exist in such a cozy fashion.  I cried my eyes out as I carried his broken body back to the house.  But in the aftermath of shock, I felt an uneasy peace that the yippy, ankle biting, stranger- phobic dog that had added so much stress to my already full life was gone.  I'd regretted the decision to get him more than once.  But then I'd fallen in love.  The girls were devastated by his death, and I ached for our eight-pound ball of unconditional love, but I felt a little…freer.  Lighter even.

 

I thought about Tucker when my mother first walked back in her apartment, crossing the threshold into the next compartment of her life after my father entered a memory care residence.  What would she feel as she assumed this mate-less phase like a single swan without her companion?  How many opposing emotions would collide and swirl in ever shifting ratios?  I imagined she, too, would taste the potent cocktail of grief, guilt and relief in the back of her throat. 

Over fifty years of marriage, not all of it a picnic, to be sure.  What marriage is continuous harmony?  It is always a work in progress.  But fifty years of sharing a bed with someone, of knowing how they take their drink and what their sneeze sounds like or how to prepare their favorite meal.  Fifty years of experiences and memories, bad habits and idiosyncrasies, endearing traits and annoyances is admirable by any measure.  They had survived.  And they had loved.  

But genetics is a sneaky thief.  The dementia that had claimed my grandmother and her mother before her began to make its presence known in a long, loopy slow dance with my father that tried to trick us at every corner; a walk through a funhouse mirror.  My mother had watched my father's slide with a complicated grief, the kind that accompanies the creeping, terrible erasure by Alzheimer's, the meanest junkyard dog of un-curable diseases.  For a loved one, it is death by a thousand nicks.

What would it feel like for my mother, I wondered, to know that my father was physically so close?  He was living in a room down a long, corridor adjacent to her independent living facility.  But he was not really present.  He was no longer the strong, robust, affable, alpha male who had supported and provided for her. But now she had reached the end of her physical and emotional abilities to care for him.  That abdication carried with it a self-criticism, some shame and a whiff of failure on her part.  I hated witnessing her sorrow.  But I knew that she would protect us from the depth of her emotions. She is our mother, still, and always.  And proper mothering in that generation required a dignity, the things you do and don't share with your child.  Even in her darkest moments she will instinctively shield us from the harder things. 

My parents had tried to do everything right, select the appropriate facility ahead of time, one with all the safeguards and structures in place.  It has a ribbon of river that flows behind the property and gorgeous purplish-orange sunsets views from their windows.  While still of sound body and mind, they had moved back east near us, although by then the dementia had already begun digging tiny trenches in my father's brain, establishing foxholes and wiring booby traps, weakening the supply lines.   

They had both written DNRs and living wills, had taped instructions for paramedics on their fridge not to be transported to the hospital. They had tried to ensure that no heroic measures would be taken to keep them alive.  My mother wanted quality of life only on her terms.  Dutifully tending to her own mother in a nursing home, she had vowed never to let things wind down that way for her own girls.  She had joined the hemlock society years ago and although she is a Christian woman, she believed that people have the right to determine for themselves when life becomes too much of a struggle.  In those days, as teenaged girls, we rolled our eyes at so much rational talk of death.  She was ahead of her time.  She praised and admired Dr. Kevorkian.

And yet here we were.  After all that careful planning and willful determination about how it would end. What loved one can pronounce when it is time for their spouse to move on and move out?  The unfairness of that is almost unbearable.   But we girls could see the toll.  Her strength and fortitude were failing.  Caring for a man who was both a toddler and a husband was, in the end, almost the end of her. And lacking the ability to cry "Uncle," the decision fell to her three daughters.  And we handled it as best we could.

As my mother walked back in the apartment, blinking in the hushed space, eyes adjusting from the light in the hall, I had to avert my eyes from her face.  Her tiny frame was stooped in a way that wanted to break my heart.  All of a daughter's pain and confusion in this new father-less world order was echoing and reverberating in different ways in my mother.

We are all very much still on this journey.  We are the parents now in so many ways, the executors and the advocates, the decision makers, accountants and the schedulers.   We no longer act like children with our parents.   The seesaw has tipped.  And there are many days we grapple with the enormity of that.  

And what I do know is that my father would never have wanted this.  It was exactly what he didn't want, warehoused with strangers in wheelchairs, drooling and sitting, a vacancy in their eyes reserved mostly for the dead.  My father laughed deep and drove boats and polished his cars.  He loved his kids and his grandkids and his place on the lake.  He wanted to go out with one big bang, a heart attack or in the middle of a glorious dream, asleep in his bed, who doesn't?   But in the absence of extreme physical pain, how do we finally decide when it's time to pull the trigger?  Who can say "this is the moment?"  Isn't it human nature to want one more hug, see one more sunrise, eek out just one more day until the scale imperceptibly tips past the point of enjoyment, whenever that is?  A greed for life is a good, hard-wired thing, until it's not.

I remember, years ago, my mother telling us that a man in our own town had jumped off a bridge after the diagnosis of Alzheimer's.  I had thought him a coward then, someone unable to face reality, cheating his family out of time.  I see that choice differently now and while it may not sit well with everyone, I admire him for making the decision he wanted, so that others wouldn't have to.  The people who suffer after death are the ones left behind.  And we will all be left behind at some point.

I know that my father would have loathed to have borne witness to his current daily life.  This was not ever his definition of living.   It scared the hell out of him visiting his own mother, contemplating her bedridden incarceration in a nursing home.  And while he never discussed it, perhaps it held a mirror up to his potential fate.  I see that mirror too, at times, and it makes me shiver.  

And so now we are here, my sisters, my mother and I, each nursing our own private cocktails of grief, guilt and even a tiny measure of relief.  But none of it, not one drop of it tastes any good.

 

 

EMAIL BANKRUPTCY

Help me.  I'm drowning.  Drowning in emails.  Each day a new tsunami of sometimes meaningful, mostly useless, trivial, occasionally important and often spammy  correspondence washes ashore on my laptop like ocean detritus and it's my job to pick through it.  My friends are even hawking Viagra, although some claim their addresses were "hacked."  Times are tough. 
 

All of this emailing is designed to keep me from real human interaction.   And so I go about my day like I'm playing a Chucky Cheese arcade game of Whack-a-Mole.  Knock one email back and two others pop up. Oprah-Deepak, help!  How can I live in the moment?  How can I even get outside my house?

It's so quaint to think that in college I typed my papers on a manual typewriter.  Liquid paper saved me. Of course I'm the same generation that had a "smoking section" on airplanes.  Let's really think about that, like you were "protected" in row 9 if the smoking section started at 10.  We all walked off those flights smelling like the human ashtrays in "Mad Men."

 

Back yonder when people sent letters, (now quaintly referred to as snail mail) no one could reach you at all times.  Phones were attached to walls and cords had to be dragged into bedrooms for private hushed convos.  The dreaded mental condition of "email anxiety" had not yet been invented.  This is the social media equivalent of constipation, of knowing your emails and texts are backed up.  No wonder we are all walking around like we have an anvil on our backs, plinking at our devices, head down, oblivious to the blue sky and sunshine.   Somehow it's imperative that we answer RIGHT NOW - right at the restaurant, right in the middle of the coffee break, just as we are boarding the train.  Why bother to go out at all? We all live a life continually undone, perpetually waiting for a reply.

 

Increasingly common is the sight of two young people dining out, each muted and bent by "blackberry hunch."  That's just downright sad.  Sadder than two old people chewing quietly with nothing to say at a Denny's buffet.

 


Some of you are asking, why can't you take a day or two or three and just not look at emails?  Lay down your devices, you say.  That's called a wilderness vacation.  But to just do this in the midst of a workweek is a pretty tough thing to accomplish.  And it has serious payback ramifications.  Perhaps you can relate to the feeling of having gone out on a great date with your spouse or partner.  You turn the key in the door, flush with laughter and the escape from routine, the promise of a little nookie to come, and WHAM – all the lights are on, the babysitter hasn't yet put the kids to bed, the place is trashed and the dinner dishes are congealed on the stove.  You're nodding. That's what would happen if I just "let it go."  All the good feelings get erased in a nanosecond.

 


So here is my big idea.

 

I'm filing for email bankruptcy.  This is not a novel idea.  I remember reading an article about it years ago- that was before my emails climbed to unprecedented heights.  I thought the author was a whiner, he was inefficient, clearly he didn't have a balance in his life or his priorities straight.  Now I think he was brilliant—a prophet before his time.

 

About a month ago I left my iPhone in a restaurant. No Good Samaritan emerged from this story – it was New York City for Pete's sake.  But whatever the new owner of my phone did that night, the next morning most of my inbox was mysteriously erased.  After some panicked moments and two hours on the Apple help line, I came to the realization it was gone.  And all at once a light went on.  "So what?" said the light. Big honking deal!  And you know what?  Nothing bad happened.  I didn't miss any deadlines.  The people that wanted me just emailed again.  They hadn't even realized I'd been playing hooky.  They'd probably forgotten whose turn it was to LOL back.  The cheesy chain letters that promise a piano will fall on your head if you don't pass it on, the you tube links, the check-ins and the "tag you're it" emails.  Poof.  See ya. It felt… AMAZING. 

 

Ok, so maybe this freedom didn't last much more than two days.  And maybe it did take half a day to be OK with it, to mourn the loss, to agonize over what really was important in there.  But I got over it.  I got used to it.  I felt lighter, more unencumbered.  I might have even whistled a little.  And I decided that periodically I'm just going to do it.  Just post a response declaring email bankruptcy:  "Everything in my in-basket is gone.  Get back to me if it's really important."  Now that's what I call living. 

 

 




 



 

New Year Brings Exciting News!

I've got two pieces of news to share.  So I'll get right down to it:

MY FIRST NOVEL - comes out in September.  "Those We Love Most" has been a three-year labor of love and I am excited to share the finished product.  I'm scheduling book events, talks and signings for the fall -- so let's talk if you are looking for a speaker for your event!  Libraries, book stores, lunches, charity fundraisers, I'm open.

MY NEW TV GIG -  I'm really excited to be joining CBS "This Morning" (7-9 AM) as a feature contributor. I'll be appearing periodically in the 8-9:00 AM hour.  For all of you morning news junkies who start the day with your usual -- flick the dial over to CBS and take a gander at the brand new show.  Charlie Rose and Gayle King are the cornerstones for a smart, news-oriented, fun and provocative show that I think might surprise, delight and yes— hopefully hook you with its new set, new look and more-news-less tabloid attitude. 

 


I'll be on Tuesday, January 10th  with something to say about the day's topics.

I hope your new year is prosperous, healthy and full of only good things.




Lee 

 

Beauty of Eating-Good food really does cure all

This weeks contribution from my sis Nancy on Clean Eating.....

The biggest change to hit our house since the invention of Tivo is Jodi McGinty, a cross between Heidi Klum and mother nature. She makes her living in other people's kitchens as a "whole and living foods" chef. It started with a non-specific bundle of ailments. One child had splotchy skin, another wanted to lose weight and have more energy. There were auto-immune rashes, allergies, and sleep complaints. Jodi entered our home like the cavalry coming to the rescue. There were no organic foodie brochures, no flute music, no burning of incense. Delicious smells began to replace the medical grousing in the house.

We learned about new groceries like roasted veggies in ghee (clarified butter) and berries with soaked chia seeds. Her specialty is to turn food into great tasting medicine. She has helped to restore the immune systems of the chronically sick or recovering.

Jodi started with herself. As a child, she was plagued by symptoms of undiagnosed auto-immune rashes and pains. Radical surgeries were advised for her at a young age. Turning her back on the invasive medical community, she successfully explored an herbal and naturopathic course as her personal alternative, almost thirty years ago. Her recipes are unique and she has compiled them in a lengthy e-cookbook, which she shares with clients and updates yearly. She is her own best advertisement with shining hair, bright skin, and bursting with energy. She hasn't had so much as a cold since she started this journey. "I haven't been to a doctor in ten years," says the 54 year old, who looks capable of turning a cartwheel on the front lawn. The "Jodi" waiting list can be as long as five years. She is a sucker for a good story. As a writer, I was able to cut the line by telling one. At first, Jodi did much of the grocery and online shopping and cooking. Gradually, I pitted a few dates, stirred a boiling pot, and became more comfortable with what to do. After a "Jodi" day, our fridge is filled with glass Ball jars of delicious soups, green juices, carrot smoothies, carob desserts, dips and her signature roasted French fries.

Our taste buds re-trained and moved away from the twin sirens of white flour and sugar.  We started to taste the food in the food. There were fewer ingredients in the pantry and the fridge was bursting with fresh things.

My youngest son glanced at his friend who joined us on a Jodi night. "I'm sorry, man. None of this is going to taste like anything you were hoping for." This son is a walking diary of food allergies and asthma. Both have calmed down remarkably with the clean food. He has started hitting the gym and has also lost 15 pounds since Jodi tied on her apron. Simple Jodi tips: two apples a day to combat acne, and eat an avocado or guacamole each week and your lips won't chap in winter.

This year, we were ready to see if we could implement the cooking on our own. Although we have "Jodi time" scheduled each month, she has moved on to help the next family in need. With the training wheels off, I recently had a hankering for a Double Whopper with cheese. "What will Jodi think?" my husband asked as the grease was running down my chin. I was disappointed at the flat, cardboard taste of a food that had been a delicacy to me in another life. "She won't have to," I told him. It would be a long time before I waited in another fast food line. Clean eating is like learning to speak a new language. Sometimes you slip back into your native tongue and then realize, you are fluent in both, but the new words are being spoken around you and they sound the most like music to your ears.

Guest Blog by Nancy McLoughlin

Check out ..food for thought for recipes from Jodi McGinty's cookbook.

Holiday Greetings From the Woodruff's

 

Card by www.cathrinewhitephotography.com

KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS?

As the holiday season barrels forward, it's only natural that my thoughts turn toward the Kardashians.   That's right.  The Santa's, the wreaths, the Bing Crosby songs, the season of goodness and giving causes me to think… what are those pesky Kardashians doing this holiday?  They are everywhere.  I simply can't avoid them.

 

The Kardashian clan is like a polyp-filled colon, popping up on magazine covers, on the morning shows and entertainment programs, look-alike contests, photo opps, tweeting and hawking products, waking up with a full face of make up.  There's Khloe's new perfume ad where she purrs next to a giant, oiled-up ripped dude, who flexes isolated lower back muscles (who can do that?).  And now, look, here's Kim's bovine ex-husband of 10 minutes on Good Morning America, stumbling through his lines about his new foundation for childhood obesity..Huh?  Sincerity rolled off him like rain on a tarp.

 










I don't want to keep up with these people.  I don't even want my kids to look at them.  I want them to go away.  I want them to go the way of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and all the others who have ratcheted up the "gimme-sphere" in America or whose scripted reality shows numb our kids out like crack cocaine.

 

What do I really know about the "Kardash-Klan?"  Not much. For a long time they thankfully stayed well below my radar. I'd heard snatches of things about them from my nieces and kids, had eyeballed a supermarket magazine cover or two.  I didn't have much regard for a mother who pimps out her kids' lives and encourages them to pose for Playboy or nods smugly when her little girls sex tape becomes viral. Yes, Virginia, we're a long way from Mrs. Cleaver's suburban Colonial with Beaver's girlie mags stuffed under the bed.

 


Last fall I saw my first episode of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" by accident in a hotel room.  I decided to keep watching, like a slo-mo motorcycle accident, so that I could understand what the hoopla was all about.  In the segment one of the sisters had farted (EEK, EEWWW, OMG, LOL, P-U!) and then there was some serious sister-on sister speculation about whether or not Kim had gotten a butt implant. My manure meter went on high alert.
 







I'm one of three sisters.  And let me tell you that if one of us suddenly went from a size 6 to a size 16 in the seat of her pants; in short, if I could suddenly park a Coors Light on the junk in her trunk, my radar might go up.   I also wondered, how, if Kim had gotten two double D's sewn in her ass cheeks, the family might not notice she was hospitalized and on pain killers, not to mention sitting on a inflatable doughnut for weeks.  Maybe they were all too busy staring in the mirror.  Or counting the loot they've made off we willing voyeurs. 

 

It's way too easy to pick on the Kardashians.  America loves a family like this, beautiful, vulnerable, aspirational when it comes to their "stuff" and access.  Bruce  Jenner's horrifying Skeletor-faced plastic surgery job alone is worth a gander.  This is what made America great, right?  Anyone can be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or … Snookie.  We love to watch greed and we love to watch people overreach and then blow up.  Tabloids are filled with these stories and we inhale the self-immolation.

 





But that isn't the point of this rant.  The point is about gratitude.  It's about navigating kids though places like the world of Kardashian.  The parenting challenge of instilling a sense of giving back is an evergreen one.  But in the era of Kardashian, keeping up with seems to mean acquiring more and giving less.  Our children's faces are pressed against the flat screen of the Kardashian household watching Kendall "earn" her modeling job and the cougar mother's cleavage spill out of her top like a fruit and cheese platter. We drool over the lavish gifts, the bounty for just being Kardashian—for simply being famous.  That's the kind of "show don't tell" learning that is getting harder to counter balance.

 



A few Sunday's ago there was a sobering "60 Minutes" piece on the families and children who are living in cars and trucks in the present economy.  I wonder if the Kardashians ever sit around and ponder people like that.  I made my kids watch and then we talked about what they'd seen afterward.  I was struck by the optimism and resilience of the homeless children who had been interviewed.   One girl hoped to go to law school and help others in her situation.  My two girls had a lot to say, and in an effort at full disclosure, one daughter piped up that there was a shoe company that donated a pair to a homeless person for each pair you purchased.  Ok, I winced, that was a semi-Kardashian answer.  But we were halfway there.   She was at least getting the point. 

 

I applaud that cagey calculating mother Kris for grabbing the brass ring when it was presented to her.  I know what it feels like to wonder, after a tragedy or loss, how you will take care of them all—how you will make sure their little lives don't suffer because of your choices or actions or simple fate and bad luck. And good for her that she's stockpiling enough cash to buy gold plated Depends in the nursing home.   The greatest thing about America is the chance for the janitor to rise to the CEO, despite what they say at Occupy Wall Street rallies; this is still a land where talent, grit and timing can get you to the top.   And I think those Kardashians should make as much money as they can stuff in their bras.  But my advice to Kris and the girls is this --- while you are filling your pockets, don't forget to feed your souls.

 

Giving, truly giving back to the world, whether you are a millionaire or you can only throw a dollar in the Salvation Army bucket, comes from a place that goes beyond the photo opp.  Giving isn't your publicist telling you to show up at St. Jude's Children's Hospital dressed in a spandex elf suit to pass out gifts some PR person hands you.  We model by example, as we do so many other things in life. 

 

I can't tell you I've done a particularly good job of it as a mother.  It's hard work, and it requires constant nagging, vigilance and reminders.  None of us relishes being the taskmaster Mom in the era of "be your child's friend" parenting.   My kid's Christmas lists this year are full of  "me-me-me" with the website links included. None of my children have offered to go to a soup kitchen or to wrap gifts that go under the tree at church.  But learning to give back can be a process, like getting in shape or training a puppy.  I'm working on it in my house. 

 

Looking at the landscape of stardom there are many I admire who have used their celebrity platforms and even their sex appeal to do good – Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Gary SInese, Jerry Lewis, Michael J Fox, Christopher Reeve to name just a few.  Make your own judgments about their politics, causes and commitment, but the list is healthy.  The point is these public figures use their voices to try to advance the human condition.  And they don't always do it with a camera rolling or a hash tag in front.  You don't have to start a 501C3 or visit the Sudan to give back.  Giving takes place in big and small ways—but it all feels the same kind of wonderful when the sentiment is genuine.



 

As parents this is a great time of year to take a moment and course correct with our kids.   We can remind them that keeping up with the Kardashaians isn't real life. Perhaps I'm being too cruel to poor Kim and her family.  Maybe they are quietly peeling off thousands of bucks to charities or mentoring foster kids or supporting our troops in tangible ways.  I'll be the first to admit that there may be honest give-back going on behind the scenes of their reality show.  It's impossible to know what's real and what is scripted.  Do-gooding isn't as sexy or as jaw dropping on camera as farting or booty shots.

 


I want to tell the K-sisters to Google Donna Rice and Monica Lewinsky, OK, OK, they were famous for mistress sex scandals, but we were obsessed with them at the time… and now?  Pushing their grocery carts with pimple cream on like the rest of us schlemiels.  Check out other famous people who were famous for, well, being famous.  What will Kim do when her Kate Gosseling moment is over and she's stuck staring at the framed People Magazine covers making eight PB&Js everyday or scheduling the parent teacher meetings?  What happens when America discovers the next family willing to unzip their sequined jumpsuits and show us their landing strips and tats.

 

If a life is based on sucking oxygen in the spotlight, than that's a tough detox when the klieg shifts.  But if we can give our kids a sense of something more behind the curtain, the foundation of learning how good it feels to give, not just to take, that's probably the biggest gift not just of this season—but for a life well-lived.








 

 

HORSING AROUND IN THE SHOWER

I can still feel his creepy little sausage fingers on my thigh.   Babysitting his kids wasn't my favorite job, but my parents expected all of us to earn spending money.  The father always volunteered to drive me home and I dreaded the discomfort of the short ride, the forced conversation, the way he leaned toward me with boozy breath as I hugged the door.  Front seats in the sedans and station wagons of the 70s stretched into one long make-out sofa.  Great for boyfriends, bad for rides with creepy Dads.

I wanted nothing more than to bolt out of that car and run into my house.  But I 'd been taught to show respect to adults, to be, above all, polite.  He was probably in his 30s or 40s – old -- someone who knew my parents, and a neighbor.  And if I thought much about it at all, I assumed, with a victim's shame, that his veiled sexual advances were connected to something I had done wrong.  Perhaps my braces-filled smile and newly developed body sent an erroneous message that I had yet to decode amidst the confusion of burgeoning adolescence.

A few years before him there had been a family friend who liked to photograph children as a hobby. When I displayed an interest in photography, he offered to "teach" me about developing film in his basement darkroom.  I remember the feeling of my skin prickling, like filings lining up on a magnet, as he moved next to me in the covert blackness and then kissed me, as if I was his for the taking. "Uummmm… that's nice," he said and yet I can't recall anything about how I got out of there, what excuse I muttered as I fumbled at the door.   But I do remember thinking that above all I should be polite.  Good girls didn't make a scene.   Scroll ahead in time to the roguish professor who sat too close on the office couch while reviewing my "work."   I sensed only smarmy low-level alarm bells before he grabbed me and shoved his tongue in my mouth.

 

 

The shame of these incidences still burns.  I've never mentioned this publically until now.  In those days no one was actively teaching girls to stand up and call someone on the carpet.  No parents I knew gave lectures about pedophiles or molestation or Sunday school teachers who took advantage of their charges.  There were only bad boys, boys our own age who could ruin our reputations.  Danger didn't come disguised as grown-ups we knew or authority figures.  That kind of power was unquestioned.

 

Years later I told my mother about the family friend in the dark room.  At the time I had merely mentioned that I wasn't comfortable with him and she had brushed me off, minimized my ambiguous feelings.  I didn't have the words back then or the vocabulary of experience to communicate all the complex and shameful things I felt. My mother's face went slack at the dark room story.  I understood her pain in learning that she hadn't armed her child, or protected me.  In fact, she had muted me and minimized my concerns.

 

"We didn't know about those things back then, dear," she said to me sorrowfully.  "The 60s and 70s were a lot more innocent."  Were they?  Or was it just that in the safety of those suburban neighborhoods, no one wanted to listen for the hissing in the lawns?  But the potential lurked, unnamed, in the Boy Scout leader, the Pop Warner coach, the parish priest and the yearbook advisor, just as surely and pervasively as it lurks today.

 

A friend of mine emailed me the first breaking news on the Penn State abuse scandal.  A few summers ago, a teenaged neighbor molested her son.  My friend's guilt and shame, the anger and the storm that followed had galvanized her family and rocked the other.  But my friend had moved her family forward.

 

Abuse of power is an age-old story.  But those who wield their authority over a child for sexual pleasure are in a whole other category entirely. There is a special circle of hell for the cowardly predatory Coach Sanduskys of the world.  And yet as parents navigating today's landscape it is often perplexing to articulate to our children the precise balance, the nuances between caution and fear, wariness and openness, acceptance and skepticism.  How do you effectively teach a young child to respect their elders, yet be continually alert for transgressions?  There is good touching and bad touching.   Expect the best and look for goodness but be sure to keep your guard up.  These can begin to feel like jumbled, mixed messages.  Yet in the end, the truth is simple.  When it's wrong, you know.  You just know.

 

  

"No one talked about this stuff when I was a kid," I say to my girls, who then look at me like I'm a Neanderthal's fibula at the Museum of Natural History.  The point is to remind them when it smells like a rat they need to stand up and box back, tell a grown-up.   Or get the hell out of there.

 

Trust yourself, I tell my kids, call me at whatever hour, use your judgment and your instincts, don't ever let anyone tell you what you should do if it doesn't feel right.  We drill into their heads how to speak up, to run fast and hard when the man in the car offers them a ride home.  Don't talk to people you don't know, and remember that "no" means "no."  But evil doesn't always come in the form of strangers. Sometimes the people you know can be scarier than the bedroom intruder.  They come cloaked in good intention, they are the familiar faces, the ones you trust with your children, the people society looks up to.
 
I'd like to believe that if I'd known what my kids know now, I would have flung that sweaty sausage hand off my leg and leapt out of the car.   I wish I'd had the temerity at 12 to slap the father in the darkroom and ask what the hell he thought he was doing.  And although I ended the meeting with the leering teacher quickly and subsequently dropped his class, I didn't rise off that couch indignant.  I never stormed out. There was no Norma Rae moment.  He was my teacher, responsible for evaluating my performance.  And in the absence of being comfortable with naming what had happened or understanding its origin, I never said a word to him or anyone else until years later.  I let my old self down.

 

I've watched the Penn State story unfold with the same dark stone in my throat that other parents feel. The fact that is was allowed to go on, that it was pushed under the rug and covered up is beyond inexcusable. But authority figures have faces and voices.  They have credibility and influence.  They can have superpowers.  Finding a voice against that kind of might and celebrity is a big deal.  It requires tremendous strength.
 


Eating over at a friend's house the other night their adolescent daughter was headed out the door to a party, dressed to the nines.  I jokingly teased her father that he would need to purchase a weapon to keep the boys away.   "Windpipe, eyes, groin and then stomp on their instep," he said reflexively. "Huh?" I replied.  "I've taught both girls where the vulnerable points are if they get in a situation." So, naturally, I made him show my girls those moves on the spot.

 

I'm going to hope and pray that if one of my daughters finds herself in a car being driven home by a creepy father she will do better than I did.  I'm going to hope that she and every kid in her generation can find their voice in the moments they need it most.  And not only when they experience abuse, but also when they see it happening around them.  As parents we need to use the stories like Penn State in ways that can educate, not terrify.  It's up to all of us to help.  The alternative is the cost of the shame of silence.

 

 

WHEN REHAB MEDICINE IS CUT – YOU HURT TOO

Gabby Gifford's amazing story and the release of her book and home video have put rehabilitation medicine and its heroic professionals—the doctors, nurses and therapists—temporarily in the public eye. But I have no doubt it will soon fall back in the shadows of public consciousness.

Medical rehabilitation isn't sexy.  There's no rush of the emergency room—no gurneys or defibrillators or physicians yelling orders in an environment of barely-controlled chaos.  There's no discovering cures or fashioning a human heart out of stem cells.  And, while George Clooney would make a handsome rehabilitation physician on TV, the networks aren't lining up to film a pilot involving a rehab hospital.

Rehabilitation does not provide instant results; rather, it is a long, hard road.  It is a near-relentless struggle over the course of weeks, months, and even years to help an individual who has been severely injured get back as close as possible to where they were before their injury.  It can involve countless hours of hard work and determination just to remember the word for an apple, to gain the motor skills to hold a fork, and the ability to dress oneself again.  

It's a journey that most often involves families and friends.  It is a road that my children and I walked with my husband Bob when he was severely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq.  But consider this:  at some point every one of us will need expert rehabilitation care for a loved one or ourselves.  How many of us know someone who has been in a car accident, or had a stroke, or broken a hip?  As I move through my 50s, I'm more keenly aware of my own pressing mortality, the fact that anything can happen to myself, my loved ones and my family members.  It's simply a fact of life.

 

It was impossible not to think of our own journey when I watched the home video of Rep. Gabby Giffords working hard and making such great strides.  Many things are possible on the journey of recovery.  I see them at work every day with Bob.  But none of my husband's achievements and his "getting back to himself" would have been possible without rehab.  

Sadly, the type of quality medical rehabilitation care that Bob and Rep. Gabby Giffords needed—and the type of care that you or your loved ones may need in the future—is at significant risk due to current proposals in Washington proposed as part of deficit reduction.  These cuts will reduce patient access to care and threaten the viability of rehabilitation providers.  Thousands of people in need of medical rehabilitation will no longer receive these services.  Training as well as therapists and medical jobs will be cut – hospitals will have no choice.  

Patients in rehabilitation hospitals are often at their most vulnerable.  It's an emotional and scary time, usually following an injury, sudden event or illness.  Most Americans already face very real limitations on their access to inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation care – their insurance runs out or benefits stop before their treatment needs end.  The average insurance plan for traumatic brain injury covers six weeks of rehab.  That barely begins to scratch the surface of an injury that can take years to heal.  

Patients and their families should not unfairly bear the burden of balancing the federal budget.  Cheaper is not better.  Who would ever choose to see their catastrophically hurt loved one in a nursing home instead of a rehab hospital?  But that will be the result if these cuts are approved.  

Talk with these people, as well as our returning wounded veterans, about how overwhelming the access and financial challenges can be.  At a time when our population is aging and returning veterans are in need of services in their local communities, services will be slashed or eliminated. Rehab is darn hard work—placing challenging policy and additional access obstacles in front of these patients are not in anyone's interest.  

It's easy to put medical rehabilitation at the back-of-the-bus in medicine.  But we need to fight cuts that will eliminate access to high quality care for your spouse, your grandmother, and your child.  Otherwise, society and each of us will pay in many unanticipated ways, including higher costs, reduced quality of life for the disabled, and higher levels of intense stress for families and caregivers.  

Rehab saves lives and families.  It saved mine.  In my lowest moments, it was the energy, motivation, expertise, and commitment of the professionals and caregivers in rehab hospitals that got me through.   I have a very clear memory of walking onto the floor of Bob's inpatient rehab hospital, my spirits at their lowest ebb.  I had run out of gas, and my shoulders were hunched in a C-curve.  A voice piped up from behind the desk.  "Come with me Mrs. Woodruff," the young physical therapist commanded.  She shut the door behind her tiny office, " has anyone asked you how you are today?"  she inquired, as I burst into tears of gratitude and release.  She then proceeded to give me a ten-minute shoulder massage that I will never forget.  Her kindness and compassion humbled me that day.  And it lifted me up.  She had extended her care beyond simply focusing on the patient and offered it to an exhausted caregiver. That's just a tiny slice of the magic that takes place in rehab hospitals.  We can't allow these much needed resources to be vastly diminished. 

With the skills and support of the therapists, nurses, doctors and caregivers in medical rehabilitation hanging in the balance, I want to lend my voice to wake Washington up.  It may not be a sexy, but it's a critical one.

 

 

It's All In The Knife

Our new contributor for Thanksgiving, my sis Nancy!

My brother in law Bob likes to take a perfectly good piece of meat and transform it into something other than what it was meant to be. He hacks it into unappetizing "cave man-esque" slabs. Bob averages about four servings per thirteen pound roast. I watched him deface my main course in this way. It was a weekend fall family dinner and I had driven twenty miles to pick it up.

Forlorn faces fell as the first few members of the buffet line made short work of the platter. They left very little beef behind. The remaining  guests went hungry or turned toward the salad and rolls with a mutinous eye.

The next night, my brother in law Mark, was assigned the carving of the twenty five pound turkey. We needed to feed a substantial number of houseguests, and the pressure was on after the hunger pangs of the evening before. Mark was given strict instructions to "slice thinly" and "make sure of enough turkey to stretch among the assembled family."

The carving audience had grown larger after the indignity of the roast experience. Unwilling to miss out on another night without protein, they pushed into a tight mob. The body language left no room for error.

It wasn't long before the pressure of the assignment began to unhinge Mark. His end result was more of a dissection than a culinary presentation. Rather than take responsibility for the unhappy state of the turkey, he began blaming others.

He groused about how he didn't have a sharp enough knife and how the turkey wasn't cooked correctly. Despite Marks protestations, there was an improvement in the number of folks that unwillingly went without a main course. It was down to three.

My husband took his turn to carve a honey baked ham on the third night. Many of the guests were driving back to their homes after dinner. It was imperative that no one fainted at the wheel from hunger. Correct ham carving would dictate the success of the final meal.

 A burley homicide cops son, my husband had been raised with a deep reverence for both religion and food. There were consequences for missing either one. The family would go to Catholic mass weekly and all attend the family meal that followed. Growing up in his big Irish family, it was considered a special occasion to be eating anything that wasn't a casserole.

The men of his clan were judged by their ability to make the meat stretch to all the hungry mouths that were waiting. There was very little in the family that went to waste, like hand me down clothes, cars and toys. Carving was serious business and reputations were gained and lost on it.

Our holiday ham came out of the oven perfectly shaped like a football. It was glazed and smoked in Cajun spices. The elegant wrapper gave specifics about how to slice it. "Someone in your office sent this to us," I told him as he was rooting around for the super duper electric carving knife he had bought a year ago on e-bay.

"It is all in the knife," my husband announced to the two other brother in laws, who were perched on stools nearby, ready to leap in and heckle him at the slightest sign of incorrect form. He took an open legged stance much like a golfer getting ready to address the ball.

The nine year old twin nieces were silent with rapt attention. " Its a pre-cut spiral ham," said Bob, "this isn't really a fair comparison to a roast." Mark chimed in "How was anyone supposed to know you had that hedge trimmer knife?" He added, "No one offered it to us and I don't really call that carving. It probably takes something out of the flavor and dries it out to have all that rapid back and forth motion."

My husband mumbled something about "nonsense" and "tools of the trade" and then gave a fond family reference to an Indiana Jones movie about "bringing a gun to a knife fight." He was an expert at making the slices look mouthwatering and pristine. I'd been treated to a few family meals at his house. I knew he could use the traditional carving utensils with ease as well as the Indiana Jones version.

Often during my husband's childhood, and especially during holidays (statistics show a spike in crime during holidays), the phone would ring just as the family was sitting down for a meal. Criminals didn't take time off for Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter, or apparently for dinner either.

"Sarge" would listen carefully to the details of each phone interruption, kiss the top of his wife's head, and head out into the night, his lips clamped around a cigar. His six children knew he would be eating cold leftovers when he returned hours later. Sometimes their mother would let them stay up to see the late news and catch a glimpse of their dad if it was a high profile or gruesome case.

On nights when he was called out, the job of carving the meat would  fall to one of the boys, or to my mother in law, who became something of an expert in the void.

A particularly sharp butcher knife was her favorite utensil for the task at hand. Family lore (which has never been confirmed) has it that the knife actually had a tag swinging back and forth from its handle and was once used in a crime. It had come from the attic, where it had been "housed" and forgotten. The kids were sure it was evidence from an old murder trial of Sarges. Margie liked to "borrow" it for particularly tough carving jobs, sending one of the kids up to retrieve it. The knife was likely washed and dried, maybe taking a turn in the family dish drain before it was returned back to the attic. The kids invented scenarios over the years about what criminal history the cutlery had been a part of. It is likely that my father in law placed it in the attic as a prop, to spin a story that would humble the six rambunctious children and help them mind their table manners when he was out.

The true success of a roast, turkey or ham is a combination of cooking skill, artful slicing and the ultimate placement on a welcoming table filled with family, friends and lots of wine.

Cookbooks emphasize the importance of letting the meat "stand" after it is removed from the oven. The timeframe recommended seems to vary from ten to twenty minutes before carving. Slicing is made easier when the turkey or roast is cooked at medium temp. Meat should be carved across the grain for increased tenderness and sliced thinly at a forty five degree angle.

There are a multitude of electric carving knife options on the internet ranging in price from $8.00 to $88.00. The sure way to a "successful carve" is to have the proper tools are at hand for any culinary challenge, and that also means a long pronged fork to help get a good grip on what can be a slippery job. There are so many places to track down a great knife, but if the knife hasn't been sharpened (Charles Department Store in Katonah does my knives each fall), there is no guarantee of the outcome. Never underestimate the importance of having a good knife lying around, or even in the attic.

by Nancy McLoughlin

 

Thanksgiving Gratitude

Thanksgiving always seems to sneak up on us, sandwiched in between Halloween and Christmas it sometimes gets short shrift.  But there was a time, when I was a kid, that holiday songs weren't background music for trick or treating.  Thanksgiving was a stand-alone holiday, a truly secular day to reflect on our country's origins and the peaceful joining of two disparate tribes.  It was also an occasion for the senses.



There were the smells of wonderfully rich things cooking; the pervasive scent of the sizzling turkey, and then the touch of the linen napkins at the table, the cool smoothness of the "twice a year China" and heavy silver settings.  Sounds were of disparate family coming together, laughter spiking in the kitchen, grandparents fussing, cousins roughhousing and aunts catching up and gossiping.  Those sounds would later be dominated by groans of overstretched stomachs and the agony of defeat noises men make around a TV football game.
 

I loved the sight of the Thanksgiving table as we children pushed in the swinging doors to the dining room.  Only a few times each year, every leaf was in place, the white tablecloth demurely covering its curved legs.  Long tapered candles flickered in candlesticks.  The anticipation of the meal was everything.  Thanksgiving was all about patience and the build up.  Until I hosted my own first Thanksgiving dinner as a young wife, I wouldn't understand the hours of shopping, labor and preparation that were consumed in roughly 40 minutes.

But the food.  Oh the food.   Thanksgiving was the one holiday all year that was about taste.   Gravy and rolls, carrots and brussel sprouts with garlic, mashed potatoes dotted with butter, the dark meat of the turkey and the dribbled pie filling squeezing through the lattice crust. 

And there was always a moment, just before we ate, where we all held hands around the table for prayer. There were always the reluctant "touchers," the self- conscious boys and Uncles who finally relaxed into the act, stilled by the feeling of family communing in one unbroken circle.  "Bless this food to our use and us to they service," an economy of words from my grandfather.  My Dad would sometimes add an extra thought, some words and a moment of silence to take stock of our own blessings, the tender mercies in our short lives, and I'd bow my head, squinting my eyes in concentration.  I'd conjure up images of family, pilgrims and Indians, about living in a land where I experienced only plenty of love and food and goodness.  And then my sister would pinch my thigh to break the spell and we'd dig in.  

Back then, as child in the 60s and 70s, the world was much more black and white.  In the Thanksgiving of my youth, the bad guys lived behind walls, the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall, and there were cold wars.   Americans had defined enemies and larger than life heroes.   But none of them were in uniform. Boys in my neighborhood were slinking back from Vietnam sick in heart and spirit.  And some didn't come home at all.  There were no parades in my town, no flags in front yards in that time.  We were ambivalent, opinionated and judgmental; we had watched some of the horrors on TV and in Life magazine.  

 



I didn't think at all about the homecomings of those boys, about what kind of Thanksgiving they were experiencing, transported out of the jungle and jolted back to the low resolution of the suburbs.   My prayers at night included thanks to God that I was not a boy, so that I wouldn't have to be drafted.  I remember that clear as a bell.

Fast forward to this Thanksgiving, to these wars.   Years and experience lend a fuller perspective.  As someone who has survived some of the dings and dents that life can throw—gratitude and service have a whole different meaning around my table now.  This holiday I think about the families of our injured service members gathered in their homes for the holiday meal.  Without a draft , they have self-selected to sign up.  They have raised their hands to go when their country asked.  Having met so many of these families over the years, I can say they are a self-effacing group, humble and inspiring.  They were "just doing their jobs," they'll tell you. 



But while we celebrate the holiday that symbolizes that first harvest season of bounty and gratitude for life in a free land, these families have loved ones halfway around the world who have stood up to protect those freedoms.  And you have to respect that, no matter what your politics or individual views. Someone you've never met is crouched in a tank overseas, or on foot patrol, or skyping home to their wife and baby.  And for that we need to be grateful. 
 

So this Thanksgiving, lets ask ourselves as we gather - Have we reached out in our communities and towns to help the service members and their families reintegrate and recover?  Have we gone beyond merely waving flags at airports and including them in our prayers to really helping and assisting in meaningful ways?  Have we put our thanks-giving into action as a country and as individuals? 

Before we lift our forks this Thursday, we'll all grasp hands and say a prayer around my table.  And we'll remind our children that despite the uncertainty of the world, the wars, the economy, the job market, there is a cornucopia of things to be thankful for.  We are lucky, lucky people.  We are blessed.  And in the moment that our heads collectively lower, my eyes will flick around the table.  I'll experience that silent recognition, no matter how tenuous and short-lived it may be, that the most important things in the world to me are gathered in one place, connected in an unbroken circle.