K. L. Romo

In 1997 when I had my fourth child, I was thrilled to have a girl.  I was ready for bows and dresses, dollies and ponytails, and pink.  And that’s what I got…for about three years. But slowly my little girl changed. She was still a girl on the outside, but was fast becoming a boy on the inside.  She loved cars, and swords, and getting dirty.  She wore boy clothes (even boy cartoon-character undies, although mortified when I gave them to her as a present at her fifth birthday party – ooops!).  She even played on a boys’ baseball team until she was about eight, and cried when her coach told her it was time to switch over to a girls’ team. She dressed in boy’s Halloween costumes (usually with dripping blood included) every year since she’d worn her princess outfit at the age of three.

My little girl barely survived a make-over party that one of her best friends had for her birthday one year. Make-up, and hair-do’s, and fingernail polish made her almost crawl out of her skin. But she went anyway, because she loved being with her friend.  But the girly-stores are still a source of funny jokes for us.

My little girl was rough, and tough as nails. She didn’t mind beating the crap out of a boy. She didn’t cry much. Actually, she was much tougher than my real boy was at her age. She is my tomboy, and even though I missed out on the girly things that I love so much, it’s totally OK.  I want her to be exactly who she is; she doesn’t have to fit into the mold of what others think a girl should be.

My little girl willingly submitted herself to humiliation last year by dressing as a fairy princess for Halloween, complete with rhinestone crown and magic wand, as a dare given to her by her older sister. The payoff  was $30,  if she wore it trick-or-treating, then let herself be photographed (in The Incredible Hulk pose, I might add). Her desire to earn money outweighed the shame of her attire.

My little girl is now not so little any more.  She’ll be thirteen in a few months. Yesterday, we went shopping, which she never much liked to do before.  I let her go to the juniors section, while I shopped in the women’s department. After about twenty minutes, she came to find me, and had a funny grin on her face when I asked her if she’d found anything.

“Mom. I know you’re not going to believe this, but…” she began, with a look of mischief on her face. I had a weird sense that I knew where this was going. “I found a dress. It just caught my eye,” she admitted.

Wow. The only other time a dress ever caught my daughter’s eye was when she was looking through her closet for things that needed to be donated to charity. “I really like it,” she said, “but it might be too expensive,” she added tentatively.

For this girl, I would have paid double. Not only was this the first dress she’d agreed to wear when having to dress up for a special event, there wasn’t even a special occasion this time.  She just loved it and wanted to buy it.  Not pink, but an elegant black. And even more surprising: it has sparkles – glitter and rhinestones.  She loves it, and looks so beautiful in it.

I think this is a hint to her parents that their tomboy is growing up.

So a dress isn’t always just a dress – to me this dress is a milestone in my little girl’s life, and in mine. The continuum has once again shifted.

Attitude… strengthens the woman whose been told she will die within eighteen months from a very aggressive and rare form of cancer. It enables her to laugh when she really feels like crying, to work when she really feels like hiding under the covers, to keep living each day even though her body is tired from the fight.

Attitude…energizes the man who’s had a chronic, debilitating disease since he was fifteen. It gives him the strength to work for his family, even though he feels pain every minute of every day, year in and year out.  Attitude is what forces him out of bed each day to meet the challenges that come, and what keeps him from crying when he thinks of dying young.

Attitude…fortifies a tired spirit, replaces despair with hope, brings light into the darkness.

Attitude…is totally up to you.

There it sat, grand and beautiful and beckoning. A monument to another year come and gone. Pink and yellow flowers, their sugary petals seductively calling.

And there he sat, my three-year-old grandson. On top of the table, next to my birthday cake. He was mesmerized by its loveliness, by the sweetness of its thick buttercream frosting, by the flat white plane where no flowers lay, as if covered by a layer of new-fallen snow.

He loves cake.

There he sat for fifteen minutes, contemplating how his finger could reach those flowers for its obligatory swipe of a sugary glob for his waiting mouth. But the plastic cover was too tight; thick and unyielding.  He tried.  By God, he gave it his best effort. He even toyed with the plastic server that sat waiting to be put to use. He would’ve been more than happy to use it.

The poor boy finally gave up – he was no match for industrial-strength plastic that hadn’t been loosened yet.  At least, not if his deed was to be secretive, as he knew it must be. I’m sure he could’ve figured something out if plastic mutilation were an option. But he smartly decided against that move, and just waited.  Like everyone else.

I didn’t realize when I brought it home one day early that I’d equipped my home with a torture device for a three-year-old cake-frosting junkie.  HE.  LOVES.  FROSTING.

But no worries. Two days later, his little sister’s cake came home in a flimsy cardboard box. (Note: Gourmet cake bakers should know that their creations really need better protection).

Yep, no problem.

When it was removed from the box for the party, there was a finger-hole down the center of it, where part of the word BIRTHDAY should have been.  “Who put their finger in this cake?” my daughter asked, not happy that her little girl’s expensive confection had been mangled.

 A wide, proud grin spread across his face, as he happily yelled “ME!”

The celebration of sweet victory.

 Fighting the Oil Spill – One Bottle At a Time…

My nine-year-old sons charity-driven spirit gets in gear again to make the world a better place.  Yes, I admit, he watches quite a bit of TV – probably too much. But this kids watches with an analytical eye.  He loves learning, and detail, and all things technical.  And he also has a special ear for altruism toward animals.  The Dawn dishwashing detergent commercial caught his eye.

Even nine-year-olds know about the BP oil spill, and how it’s crucifying our southern shores.  He watched intently as the commercial explained how Dawn was being used to clean the oil from water birds.  His ears also pricked up when the commentator said that Procter & Gamble   would donate a dollar to  the  International Bird Rescue Research Center and the Marine Mammal Center for every bottle of Dawn sold.  Cha-ching!!  My boy now knew what he would do to raise money for the cause – he would use his allowance/birthday/report-card money to buy bottles of Dawn.

I also suggested he take it one step further to raise even more money.  He could resell those bottles in our neighborhood, and then donate that money as well.

So at our garage sale yesterday, he made a sign for his fundraising, and he managed to sell all ten bottles of detergent.  So he doubled his donation.

Update: Unfortunately my boy and his mother (yes, that would be me), didn’t go to the Dawn website prior to selling those bottles of Dawn, and didn’t activate the donation by inputting the number from each bottle.  DANG IT!!  Well, at least he raised ten dollars. (But don’t tell him).

Thanks Dawn and P & G for helping fight the oily devastation that’s taken over our beaches, and thank you son, for caring enough and taking the initiative to once again try your best to help animals who can’t help themselves.

My husband and I are attempting to buy a new house. We’re actually planning to sell our  old dream house for a new dream house – bigger, fancier, with more stuff.  Potential buyers are walking through my wonderful house at this very minute, looking at my life, judging my housekeeping, making comments about what they like and what they don’t; what should be changed and what shouldn’t. I feel like I’ve opened my private life up to the world  – vulnerable.  I’ve made my home an object of criticism.

My house has been a wonderful house for us – we’ve raised five kids there in the last thirteen years (with two still to finish raising, and all the grandkids).  It’s a great kid house, with a big yard, and a big circle drive that acts as a raceway for a multitude of bicycles, skateboards, and scooters.   My kids don’t want to leave – they say that house contains their childhood memories.  They love their house.  They don’t even want to put new carpet in for fear it will change their world.

Of course, that’s what my older kids said when we moved there from our first house.  But they soon learned to love it – to leave the old in their memory banks, and make room for the new. As I look into her tear-filled eyes,  I tell my daughter that all things change – nothing can ever stay the same.  Even if we didn’t move , we’d still remodel, and it would look different.  She, and all the kids, will always have their special memories.  The memories aren’t attached to the house – they’re embedded in their brains forever.

So why do I feel like I’m trading a fat, old, ugly relative in for a younger, thinner, prettier one?  Why do I feel like I’m betraying an important part of the family?  I never expected to feel this way.  But I do.  Even in my dreams.

Hopefully, the next family who lives here will appreciate our house as much as we do.  It is, was, and always will be the greatest. 

And hopefully our next house will be just as great.

Hospital Impressions –   Personal Snapshots of Life and Loss                                                                                                      
                              – by K.L.Romo
 

I am a wife.

I am here for you
   I see, and hear, and feel for you.

The IV drip, lights blinking orange and green, silently sends its  
liquid relief in the early morning hours of your suffering.  Dispensing hydromorphone is its flashing declaration in the darkness.

I wipe the stray tears that escape your tired eyes, as you lay

flat and still, trying to trick the throbbing pain into believing it

can’t hurt you anymore. But unsuccessfully.

I gently touch your face, in vain attempts to comfort you.

I am a mother.

I am here for you
   I see, and hear, and feel for you.

Your terrified shrieks in the night still travel through my memory. Nurses poking you with tubes and needles; you wonder why I don’t  protect you.  My adult strength overpowers yours, and you spit at me in your last feeble attempt to make it stop.

Your screams and curses snake their way through the trauma that lives within these ER halls, between these walls that see so much, but keep their secrets to themselves. I beg you to stop fighting it;  the restraints dig deeper into your wrists.  But you don’t listen.

I mourn your suffering, the pain of childbirth but with no child, your anguish a punishment with no reward. A paper autumn leaf hangs from the door, a symbol to all that we are left with the cold and bitter vice of winter, not the warm and joyous touch of spring. Of  life.

I am a nana.

I am here for you
   I see, and hear, and feel for you.

You don’t cry upon entry into this world. There is no sound at all, only a total, hollow absence of joy; a vacuum of grief. It is the most horrible silence you can imagine, as if the world has stopped in respect for your birth. And death.

I’m the first to hold your swaddled form, to look at your face and wish you could look back. Your blanket holds only stillness – there is no breath inside. We hold you until your fragile body can no longer tolerate the warmth of our love for you; our need to hold you close. We gently lay you on the blanket that covers your tiny bed of ice.

Nana will always be here.

I am a mother-in-law.

I am here for you
   I see, and hear, and feel for you.

I hold your hand as you lay unconscious in the ICU, amidst the wires and tubes that are doing the living for you.  I listen to the family at the opposite bed say their goodbyes, and I pray that we won’t suffer the same anguish. I hang a rosary over your pillow.

I pray for miracles; I will not be disappointed.

I am a daughter.

I am here for you
   I see, and hear, and feel for you.

I expect to see you, but you aren’t here. In your place, I find an unfamiliar figure – a ventilator the only thing connecting you to the life you’d known.  Green numbers flicker on your machines but tell us nothing.  We already know.

Your chest rises and falls with each mechanical whoosh, the artificial breath filling your lungs, then leaving them just as quickly. It mimics life; we’re entranced by its mesmerizing sequence.  But we know better.

I hold your hand, the one you’d always said could never even sculpt a ball from clay. It had always been so strong, and now it lies still within my grasp. Mom covers your feet to lovingly protect you from the cold, her act of defiance against the gray winter that we know has come.

You always loved the winter.

We stand by your side. The machines are unplugged, the ventilator stops. It is just the end. No beeps or drawn-out squeals, the noisy pronouncements that your soul has left one world for another.

Only silence.

I am just me.

I am here for you
   I see, and hear, and feel for you.

I hold your hand, as I will, always.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf9mtklklsE&feature=email   (or see the actual video below in comments)

The Middle School cafeteria peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The ultimate humiliation if your lunch money account runs low.

Yes, I admit – I did it.  Even in the computer age when lunch money is virtual, via an account on the school computer, accessed by the student’s account number, and even when the school sends me an email when the lunch money account is low, I can still find a way to be human and put my child through that embarrassment of embarrassments – having to eat the provided sack lunch that the kids who forgot their lunch money have to eat.

When I was in school, the coins for lunch money came from a small basket of change my mom kept on the shelf in the laundry room above the dryer.  I think the only thing we got to eat if we forgot our money was……….nothing?

I simply didn’t see my reminder note on Wednesday.   And only three days after Mother’s Day, I failed in my mission to  protect my child from mortification. (Do I have to give my presents back?)

For a twelve-year-old girl who doesn’t want to stand out from the crowd, and who doesn’t even like PB&J, Wednesday’s lunch was quite the mortification.

But one good thing about it – at least the free school lunch was the significant emotional experience my daughter needed to do her job of remembering she was out of lunch money. She took responsibility and got that lunch money as soon as I got home from work.

Amazing what kids will remember to do to avoid being disgraced in front of their friends.  )

The Problem:  I WAS SCAMMED ON EBAY!!!

Seller:  Arthur (Art) Janvier  Ajanv@aol.com      

        (He lives in Middletown Delaware)

I’ve always wanted to improve my Spanish, so I decided to buy The Rosetta Stone.  Since the retail price was over $300, I looked on eBay, and voila!  I found it for $159. (There was obviously a reason it was so cheap).

What Happened:

I checked the CD’s when they arrived, and they looked authentic and correct – Spanish Units 1 & 2.  However, I did not actually run the CD (I know what you’re thinking - that was stupid.  ALWAYS, ALWAYS try what you buy). Fast-forward two years – I am now finally ready to start my Spanish Lessons.  I put the CD into my computer, and……  ITALIAN lessons fill my screen.   I.T.A.L.I.A.N.  And not even units 1 & 2;  ONLY UNIT 2!     C.R.A.P.!

How I Tried to Fix It: 

 Of course I had my receipt, and the email from the seller, so I contacted him to see what could be done.  His response is below. ( Basically he laughed. )  I had naively hoped that it was a mistake he wasn’t aware of, and might help me because he wanted to do the right thing.  Yeah, right.  (PS – It’s not fun to get laughed at by someone who ripped you off.)

I am also well past my “complaint” period with both eBay and Pay Pal. 

What’s Next – The Only Strategy Left:

The only thing I know about the seller is his name, physical address, and email address.  He needs to know that people aren’t going to sit back and accept being cheated. So…..

And if you’re interested, here’s how he replied to me:

Hello

 

Let’s see, you purchased this item almost 3 years ago and now you seem to have a problem with it? Ummm, Good luck!

 

Ps. Yeah, you’re right. You should contact eBay about this.

Art

I have to admit I’m one of the few people who don’t enjoy watching the Olympics.

I could barely bring myself to watch any of the competitions this year, even though the television was always tuned to them because the rest of my family loves to watch (somehow the coverage seemed to be focused on the curling competition  50% of the time!)  .  I realize that what I am going to say in this article will anger some and will certainly surprise some.  But after watching the last three or so Olympic Games and thinking the same thing, I’m going to publicly state my feelings about them.

The Olympic games seem to  market the belief that perfection is the ultimate goal, and that winning is just about everything.  Go for the gold is the routine mantra – why would anyone want anything else?

Many of the competitors seem as if they’re produced by human robot factories which create super-human beings who are programmed for perfection and the task of winning (many from other countries).  It seems that for many, their entire lives are given to these goals, practicing hours and hours each day. Sacrificing a normal life for the life of an Olympic star athlete. And not only the athlete, but their families as well. Their lives are given up for the cause - to make an international athletic star.  But at what price?

And what about remembering the fact that humans make mistakes; after all, that is part of being human.

When a child starts his training at four-years-old, and this is what his life is focused on, what else is that child missing? As they grow older, they can’t participate in the normal acts of growing up – some don’t even go to school with other kids.  Supporters may say that if this is what makes them happy, then what’s the harm?  But in reply, I say that I’ve never met a very young child who wanted to spend all of his free time concentrating on one thing, constantly focused on improving his skills. Practicing, practicing, practicing.  Have you?

America is probably not as obsessed with the development of Olympic star athletes as some of the other countries.  But some athletes from other parts of the world focus their entire lives on one day winning an Olympic gold medal, and if they don’t, they would be disappointing not only themselves, but their entire country, and would lose the support of their countrymen. To these athletes, not winning the Gold, or at least a medal, is total failure.

How terribly sad is that?

It’s wonderful to have special skills, and it’s great to enjoy using and developing those skills.  But when children are pushed into working hard to win, win, win (yes, I said PUSHED), what is the collateral damage?

So what if they’re not perfect; so what if they don’t win the gold medal?  This has nothing to do with their personality, who they really are.  They are no less a person because they don’t win; if anything, their character might be strengthened.  Are fame and glory and the fact that you’re THE BEST really worth what must surely be given up in return?