Southern Girl - aka "SpawnMama"

This is how I am feeling about our house

2009-06-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

"You think you’re waiting for help. For someone to tell you what the right thing to do is. Even though, at the back of your mind, you already know what that is. So all you’re really waiting for, is a time when you’re forced to do it." via - I Wrote This For You

Aging Parents

2009-06-22T13:04:00.001-07:00

As most of you know I live thousands of miles away from my parents. My father is 81 and my mother is 78.

My father for the most part is really healthy. He has some orthopedic issues with his knees. Years of football and having polio as a young adult doesn't help the natural problems an 81 year old would have with his knees. He also has some heart problems, but mostly he is healthy as a horse. His mother died shortly before her 100 birthday. He seems to have gotten her good jeans for health in old age. For this I am eternally thankful.

My mother on the other hand is not so good. She has a long list of health issues. She has a terrible time getting around. Her legs don't work very well, her balance is off, her eye sight is failing. She has diabetes, heart problems, and the very beginnings of dementia which is impairing everything form her judgment to her memory. The list goes on form there. Not good. It doesn't help that she is terribly stubborn, much like my 4.5 year old.

It is hard for me. I miss my father terribly. I am after all what they call a daddies girl. He does not travel so he has only been able to see his grand daughter twice. My mother does travel and has been able to see the spawn at least once a year since her birth. I guess what is hard for me is that I would travel back to Birmingham more often if I was willing to see my mother more often. This is a difficult thing to admit, and judge me if you will, but my mother is a piece of work and the immense boundary issues (among other things) she has prevent me from exposing my impressionable 4.5 year old to her more than once a year. Hell, I don't want to expose this impressionable 43 year old to her more than once a year.

I had a conversation with my brother this morning that included talk of me needing to come there more often if my mothers health demands it. I knew this time would come and I thought I was prepared for it, but truthfully I am not. You see there are a 1000 or so reasons why I live thousands of miles away from my mother. I have absolutely no desire to take care of her in her old age. She has a special kind of insurance for that after all. I am more than willing to help make some hard decisions with her about her living situation, etc. but actually help take care of her, no way! Does this make me a bad daughter? Does this mean I am a selfish, mean, ungrateful woman who should be thankful that I still have a mother to call, and that I should shut up and do what society expects of me? Perhaps. I pose these questions from a different place than I would have 5 years ago before I had my own child. I really hope that when I am old and my batteries are running down that my own daughter isn't writing something similar to this on what ever thing there is then that resembles a blog. Should my worry of my own daughters potential feelings about me guilt me in to taking care of my own mother?

I find myself profoundly sad today. I am missing my father, wishing I had a different kind of mother (a wish I have made millions of times in my life), knowing on a base level that that wish will never be granted and the best way to even get close to it is be a better mother to my child than my mother was to me. I am sad because I certainly don't want my mother to end up like hers did, alone at the end. I am wondering if it possible to overlook profound abuse, neglect and transgressions so much so that I could suck it up and be there for that parent no matter what they did in the past. I am not sure I am that good a person.

I promised my brother today that I would call my mother at least once a week and have a hard conversation with her. Are you eating? Have you gotten dressed today? What day is it? Have you taken your meds? and so on. There will be the other kinds of phone calls also. The ones where the spawn talks to her and I tell funny stories about her antics. But the need for the more frequent hard phone calls has finally arrived.

I am not sure why I am writing this here, in such a public forum. I certainly leave myself open for criticism and judgment. But maybe just maybe someone out there knows what I am talking about, understand this seesaw, and could perhaps offer some words of support and wisdom.

Cutie

2009-05-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

The quintessential Lucy face.

Love the freckles.

Reaching For This

2009-05-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

This quote is from a blog I regularly read. I am not revealing the authors name or a link to their website because quite frankly it would reveal to much of my personal life to some who might read this blog. But I could not resist posting this little snip it of a recent post. Relationships are hard work, really really hard work and this sums up what I am after, what I think we are getting at. That hard work is paying off, big time.

"...we both need to make those tender spots in us stronger. That’s precisely what relationships are for, to me, at their very best: so much goodness in the combination of us both that we run up against our own shortcomings, and we feel empowered enough to change them, to reach, to become better, to grow, to change: nothing short of transformation."

Facebook Reconnect

2009-03-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

So I have to admit Facebook is a mixed blessing for me. I have been able to reconnect with some folks that I long since thought I would never talk to again, and that has been wonderful. But, I have also had to unfriend some folks that were getting in the way of my Facebook enjoyment. Well yesterday I received an email from an old high school boy friend that is one of my reconnects on FB. He had found our junior prom picture, scanned it and sent it to me. He wondered if I had a copy and I do in fact have one somewhere in my photos. I love this picture. My blue eye shadow is priceless. As a side note we are both out gay people. Oh, if we had only known.

Anniverary

2009-03-24T14:42:00.001-07:00

As I approach the third anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis I find myself wondering where the time has gone. Wondering why I seem to waste so much of it and trying to figure out how to make it more full of the less mundane. I was poking around the blogs I regularly read and discovered the poem below here and it resonates with me on so many levels as I try to figure all this out.

“When Death Comes”
by Mary Oliver
from New and Selected Poems

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Proud of Spouse

2009-03-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

Marnie and her c0-CEO's were on the front page of the SF Chron. Business Section yesterday. You can read the entire article here: TechSoup sees upside for nonprofits in downturn That's the spouse closest to you in what I think is a great photo.

Recoverey

2009-03-08T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am recovering from having all 4 of my impacted wisdom teeth removed yesterday. Good drug and lots of rest are involved. I look like a chipmunk and am in a good bit of pain even with the meds. I will say it again, this is more than worth having to go through wondering if I have cancer again. More than worth it.

Chew On This

2009-02-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it". - William James

A Child's Mind

2009-02-23T11:12:00.000-08:00

Last night just before bed Spawn said to Spouse, "My energy went up to the moon to dance and will be back inside me in the morning".

Finally

2009-02-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

The fog has really lifted. I feel like after, I don't know, 4 years the fog in my head and my body is virtually gone. Thanks to the support of Marnie, some amazing friends and some really good psych meds I am feeling like myself again. Actually this might be the first time in my life I really know what myself feels like (does that make sense?). I have been reluctant to say this out loud as I didn't want to jinx anything, but since I have written a lot about my struggles here I thought it only fitting to say when things are good. And they are just that, good, dare I say maybe even great!

None Found

2009-02-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

Today for the second time in my life I heard a doctor say to me "no cancer cells were found". Back in October I had some routine (for me) tests done. Last week I had a biopsy on a lymph node in my neck (not pleasant at all) and today I found out the very very good news.

I will be calling the oral surgeon tomorrow to set up the appointment to have that wisdom tooth taken out that is probably causing all this inflammation. No amount of dental phobia is worth what I have been through in the last week or so waiting to find out if I had cancer again. No amount at all.

I think I just found my themes for this year

2009-01-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

You need to stop being so concerned with collecting beautiful things and start being more concerned with making things beautiful. - via I Wrote This For You

and this one too:

If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never get it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place. -via this is my heart.it is a good heart.

A Statement Full of Sweeping Meaning

2009-01-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." - Barack Obama

Couldn't have said it better myself

2009-01-20T09:20:00.000-08:00

Click through and read this. It is as if he crawled into my brain and wrote my thoughts and feelings exactly. Clearly I am not alone.

History

2009-01-19T19:18:00.000-08:00

I grew up in Birmingham Alabama. I was born in Houston Texas but we moved to Birmingham (really a suburb of it) right around 1968. Well, as history shows us this was not Birmingham's most finest times.

I went to an all white elementary, junior high and high school. We lived in an affluent (although we were not, we were most definitely middle/upper middle class but not affluent) city adjacent to Birmingham that was almost completely white. I mean my schools were so white that if people of color moved into my city they sent their kids to private school. I had no idea when I was a kid what happened "over the mountain" in the city of Birmingham.

After graduating from High School I went to a small liberal arts Methodist College. Where I was a sorority girl who attended the fraternity party called "Old South". The attendees dressed up in confederate uniforms and antebellum dresses. As I look back on it now I am mortified that I ever participated in such an event.

So on the eve of the historic inauguration of our first African American President, I am proud to say I voted for him. I am energized by the possibility of change and hope he inspires in me and millions of others. Every time I hear his voice, every time I listen to someone talk about him, every time I see pictures of him and his family, tears fill my eyes because I see for the first time in a long while the possibility of real change for our country.

My life now and how I choose to live it day in and day out is in such sharp contrast to that of my childhood and young adult life. I really have been racking my brain on how to talk about how all of this relates to my childhood, my family history, the history of where I grew up and I just haven't been able to put words to it. I am just speechless.

I hope as a nation we will be patient with this man. Give him and his people time to figure things out and get us back on course. I hope we pitch in a serve the best way each of us can. I have so much hope.

I'm not sure I agree, but maybe

2009-01-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

"Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss." - Joan Didion

via - this is my heart.it is a good heart.

A couple of quotes

2009-01-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

via this is my heart.it is a good heart.

"Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow." - Mary Anne Radmacher

"All human beings should try and learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." - James Thurber

Twilight

2009-01-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

There are a few moments at the end of each and everyday where the light is magnificent. It's that space right between day and night. I love this time of day, in fact it's my favorite time of day. There is something magical about the way the light is diffused and almost gone.

While living in Alabama I saw it often. My friends and I use to go to Tennessee to a small farm where a friend's sister lived. We would camp, swim, generally laze around for the weekend. I think of all the places I have had the pleasure of seeing this time of day my favorite is there. We went mostly in the summer so you got the added bonus of hearing the crickets start their nightly opera and the fire flies their nightly ballet. The quiet peaceful beauty is staggering.

Since I have lived in California (almost 9 years) I rarely get to experience the light I am talking about. It's just not the same here. Sometimes when I am away form the urban sprawl I catch it. Maybe it's because I am not outside very much at this time of day. Maybe the light is just different here. I am not sure, but I do know that one of my goal this year is to step outside and catch this magical moment more often.

This post was inspired by the song Living In Twilight by The Weepies

My Favorite Spawn Birthday Photo So Far

2009-01-04T09:34:00.001-08:00

The Please Don't Divorce Us Campaign

2009-01-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

Over 18,000 couples and their allies are asking.

4 Years With Spawn

2008-12-27T17:44:00.000-08:00

Four years ago today, right now in fact, I was in labor, pretty heavy labor. In a short time on that rainy night I was about to meet my best girl, Lucinda (Lucy) Beckwith Rickart Webb. It has been a whirlwind of a four years. Happy Birthday my lovely daughter I look forward to many many more. I love you to the moon and back.

Struggle

2008-12-18T19:22:00.000-08:00

I have been struggling with my feeling this holiday season. The thing is I always seem to do this, it's just that this year I am paying attention to them. Amazing what happens when you are not distracted by crazy relatives and your meds have finally been working for months.

I think I really hate this holiday. I try not to be a Grinch. I try to be excited and happy and thankful and on and on, but really I want to crawl in bed, cover my head up and come out just in time for Lucy's birthday on the 27th. I have some ideas why I feel this way, but I have no real concrete go to clues as to what causes this general upset so I feel at a loss as the where to begin to figure it out and fix it. I really want to fix it. Mainly because I want Lucy, mostly, and also Marnie to get to really enjoy the holiday without a cranky gloomy gus walking around ruining things. I don't want Lucy to grow up hating Christmas because that is what her experience tells her to do.

Perhaps I will try to devote a decent amount of time this coming year to figuring out what is behind this and getting past it or at least up next to it so I can manage it a little better.

Another One

2008-12-10T14:33:00.000-08:00

"Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality."
- Jon Stewart

Give List Update

2008-12-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

Marnie's project The Give List is in the NY Times Online here http://tr.im/241y Check it out, click through and contribute.