B.C. Dee's Blog, page 4

–are you very dromedary? —

 

View image | gettyimages.com

one hump or two you ask at the zoo

’tis a silly question they say

do as you please, you can count on your knees

but it changes from day to day

you can ride if you want

in rajastan: au currant

but the hump has a bit of a bite

it may cause a frown

hump goes up, butt goes down

so you must get the rhythm just right

Hiccups

Isn’t it funny that when you have the hiccups, everyone turns into an instant hiccup expert. Strangers will try to scare the hiccups out of you, waitstaff will bring you a cup of water without you asking.

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Thai peppers (note: Variety native to Thailand, but grown in Virginia, USA) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Thailand, I was given a hot pepper by a sympathetic street vendor. In Mexico someone brought cayenne pepper with salt out of a restaurant and into the town square where I was hiccupping. In Kazakhstan one helpful stranger did a good job scaring me, unfortunately the hiccups persisted. Someone else, unbidden, pounded me on the back as if I were choking. I suppose that hiccups are a universal experience that bridges ages and cultures.

When my wife was pregnant with our daughter, I felt her belly bounce more often from hiccups than from kicks. Before she was born, Isabel hiccupped so much that we nicknamed her “pipoca,” which is “popcorn” in Portuguese. That image didn’t fit after she was born–the popcorn was out of the pan. So I started calling her hiccupopotamus.

It turns out that there are two books that are called “hiccupotamus,” but I can’t get my tongue around the syllables in a way that makes me feel like I did something other than mispronounce “hippopotamus.” I could either get “hiccup” or “hippopotamus,” but not both. Hiccupoptamus conjured both images in my mind at once.

Isabel is now three, and she still hiccups a lot, even though she knows at least ten ways to cure them.

Do you have any funny hiccup stories? Please share them in the comments.

 

I Am Thankful

Every night, my wife asks my three-year-old daughter what she is thankful for. Every night, it is something different. Tonight, she was thankful that she “played a lot today, and went to the library.”

I, too, am thankful. I’m thankful that my wife, who is a midwife, got to come home this evening so that she could ask my daughter what she was thankful for. I’m thankful that I could experience the day with my daughter. And I’m thankful that she can always easily find something to be thankful for.

Wow, that is a lot of gratitude. It is something that my family is consciously practicing in order to embrace a wholehearted life. It is something new. It is definitely a practice, sometimes like beginner piano lessons. I had to listen when I was given the same message from three people and a book in the same week. Coincidence? Fate?

It might be that I was finally ready to hear what everybody else had long been talking about.

In I Thought It Was Just Me, by Brene Brown, she presents a daily ritual to go along with gratitude. It is the AEIOU and Y! run down.

A is for abstinence–we all have vices that we turn to instead of dealing with bad feelings. So, did you abstain from those things that distract you from real life? Distracting ourselves is not inherently bad. But as we numb ourselves from bad feelings, we also numb ourselves from the good.
E is for exercise–exercise is good for the body and good for the mind. It is even better when you exercise outside. You get bonus points for being in nature.
I is for I, or me–what did you do to take care of yourself today? You are fabulous and deserve to be pampered. You can’t expect others to take care of you if you don’t first respect your needs by caring for them.
O is for others–what did you do for others that made you feel good? There is a fine line between gratitude and guilt. Being grateful is more than a state of mind; it is a way of life. If you do not express your gratitude, it is hard to feel deserving of the gifts the world has to offer.
U is for unexpressed anger or uncovered feelings–this step asks you to look into yourself and acknowledge all of your feelings. If you swallow anger, it builds, grows heavy, and becomes depression.
Y! Yeah! Wow! Life is great and I’m glad to be a part of it.

 

So that is what I am trying to do, and it is making  a difference.

 

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My Threenager

My daughter is not yet three and a half, but she’s already well on her way to thirteen. I thought I would have more time with the easily understandable baby stage. If she cried it was usually an issue of food, warmth, or clean diapers.

I thought I would have more time with the toddler. I was a confident dad of a two year old. We were lucky. The epoch of “terrific twos” blessed our home. I laughed at the thought of “terrible twos.”

Hubris was my tragic flaw. I am now being paid back in spades.

Now, Isabel challenges me in every step of every thing that we do together. Because I read it in a book, I understand that she is establishing her identity. She is individuating, but I haven’t been. It is only recently that I have put all the clues together. I am not a part of Isabel, and she is not an extension of me.

She has been sending me the memo through her tantrums, but I was slow to realize. Now I can make sense of why if I say “do,” she doesn’t; if I say “go,” she stops; and vice versa; and etcetera. She was such an agreeable toddler that I lulled myself into a fairy-tale vision of the future that was full of only smiles, and laughs, and hugs. Who knows, perhaps I will arrive in fairy land, but my ego is going to have to take some serious raps on the chin.

Since she is not an extension of me, I can only guide her. Moreover, I have to accept when she disregards my suggestions. On top of that, I have to expect that she will do her own thing–that she needs to do her own thing.

Six months ago, I bought a green-yellow-red lighted timer to help with transitions from one activity to another. I patted myself on the back for finding a gentle path to help her with her “poor transition skills.” The timer helped, but not because she was bad at transitions. It helped because it gave her time to make her own game plan. The timer was, essentially, like the turn signal on a car. Since she wasn’t in the same car as me, she rear-ended me every time I turned without signalling.

I saw us as being in the same car–we’re a family, right? I didn’t see that she had been following me closely, as you might if you paid a taxi driver to lead you an address. After three years, she became comfortable navigating by herself.

Sure,  I could physically and psychologically intimidate her into doing everything I want, on my schedule. But that’s not the person nor the dad that I want to be. It’s not the childhood that I want Isabel to have–I’ve vowed to protect her from such things.  It’s not the  self-image of powerlessness that I want to engender in her.

I want to empower her. I want her to understand that she can make choices that I disagree with. She must not ever feel that she is bad. We both get frustrated when we are pulling in different directions. I want her to know that it’s okay to get frustrated and angry. In the end, she is still fabulous, and so am I.

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Without a Net

It is both scary and exciting to be above the crowd without a net, like a tightrope walker who prays that their foot will land true. That’s me, right now as I embark on my career as an author of children’s books. There’s no paycheck to fall back on. There’s no department to share the load with. There’s just me.

By Wiros from Barcelona, Spain [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons

To be fair, I have a muse–a three year old, walkin’, talkin’ spitfire of a daughter. I also have a loving, caring wife, an inspiring brother, and my faithful pooch. What more will I need to succeed in my career choice?

What more will I need? That’s what other paragraphs are for. And I plan to be writing many more of these boxy awkward jumbles of words.

Why author children’s books? I know that part of it is that I have always been a story teller. I love the connection between folks when they are sharing in a story. Also, I have so many  story ideas that they are  trampling my other thoughts. They are in a rush to please, educate, sooth, or distract my daughter. Perhaps if I put them on paper, they will find other brains to illuminate.

Why would other people want to read my stories? My friends and family love them, so they must be good! Reality check: my friends and family love me, and they see me in the stories. That’s why they like the stories.

My other reason that people might want to read my stories is that I love to write. I work hard to craft something interesting, readable, and hopefully beautiful. There are many writers in this new age of zero-cost publishing. But many of these writers don’t know the painful joy of the twelfth rewrite. Others write only to tap into the stream of money that gushes through the internet.  I’m only human. I’m no better than any of those good folks. But, I do understand what it takes to be a professional. Also, I’m willing to put the time in.

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