Finding the Silver Lining

I haven't blogged about N and baby Ariella in awhile. This is not because nothing has been going on. No. Sadly, far too much has been going on. I just didn't feel ready to talk about it.

On election night, Ariella was rushed to the hospital after a neighbor called 911. N had, once again, left the baby alone in the house while she left to go job-hunting and to use a payphone. A neighbor heard horrible screams coming from the dark apartment, and went in to find the baby lying alone on the couch. And she was purple. It's hard for me to even write that. I will never ever understand why DSS didn't remove the children weeks ago. Ariella wouldn't have had to endure two more weeks of being abandoned. My daughter and I had her on Friday and Saturday, but Sunday N was unreachable, and Monday I had to work a long day. Remember, she does not have a phone, so in order to reach her I actually have to drive over to her apartment (and hope her husband is not there.)

So, while I was celebrating at my house Tuesday night, my friend J came over and informed me about the baby. I called the hospital and reached a really wonderful ER doctor. I explained who I was, and he said, although he wasn't really allowed to give out any info to non-family members, he wanted me to know that the baby would be ok, and that he was taking very good care of her. I left my name and number for the DSS crisis team that would eventually arrive there. And then I locked the door of my room, and cried. I didn't want my daughter to know what had happened, and I certainly didn't want to involve the house full of people that were over for my election night party. I wept hard into my pillow and then pulled myself together and rejoined the party.

Yesterday I was on the phone all day trying to reach DSS and get any info on the baby. No one returned my calls. I tried again today. Same thing. I just want to hear that she is ok. I do know, from J's friend, that Ariella and her 2 year old sister are in DSS custody. I do know that N snuck out of her house last night with all her belongings and that some older woman (her aunt maybe?) picked her up in an old car and drove away under the cover of darkness. I am pretty sure I will never see her again. N was so terrified of being deported, and knew her husband had called immigration, so I think it's fairly likely that she has gone into hiding. There is no way for me to find her.

Before she left, N somehow managed to drop all the things I had bought for the baby on J's front steps. Everything: clothing, port-a-crib, diapers, wipes, bottles, nipples. It is all at J's house. I don't think I will pick it up for awhile. I know it will just feed another rainstorm of tears.

So onto the silver lining: I knew there would be one. I knew that some good could come out of all this heartache. I thought about it, prayed about it, and talked to my daughter about it. Then I called the DSS foster parent hotline today. I told them I was interested in getting certified as a foster parent (for infant care only.) They are having a social worker call me tomorrow. I always knew it was something I wanted to do, but I didn't think Anastasia would deal well with it. But I actually called at her prompting. She asked me yesterday if there were any way we could have a baby in our life again.

"Not kids, mom, I know I'll get too jealous, but a baby. I want to help a baby."

I have watched her interact with Ariella the past few weeks. And I can honestly say I have never seen anyone her age so devoted. She tended to every need with such love. I knew she had cared for (i.e. protected) some of the younger ones in the orphanage. But there were no babies there. She had never experienced spending time with a baby until her cousin Tommy was born. And now, with Ariella. I really think she saw herself in Ariella. She would even reprimand me for not holding her correctly or for other assumed infractions. Even when Ariella was inconsolable and I was ready to tear my hair out, Anastasia gently rocked her and told her, over and over, " It's ok, honey, you are safe. I am here for you. I will take care of you."

These are the exact same words I've said a thousand times to her, in times of great sadness or fear, these past four years. How lucky I am to hear her pass them on...

The Elephant Man of Piccadilly Circus

I can't forget him. His knotted black hair, the oily filth of his clothing, the bulbous tumors hanging from the side of his face. And the stench. The sickening stench that nearly made me vomit while I was cradling him in my arms.


I was in London. It was April 2000. I was with about five of my students and also my best friend Sara who had come along as a chaperone. We had just seen Dame Maggie Smith (my theatrical idol) in Alan Bennett's new play The Lady in the Van. It was a brilliant piece of writing, auto-biographical, about Bennett's dealings with a well-known homeless woman in Camden Town. 


He chronicled his interaction with this woman, and slowly revealed the value of her existence beneath the outward mask of homelessness she wore. This play spoke eloquently about our shared humanity. The worth of each and every human life. Maggie Smith held the audience in stunned silence by the end. I thought, this play is going to change lives. It will open eyes. It is a revelation.


I walked out with my students, rapt in discussion about the value of each human life. We were distracted and blindly followed the chattering crowd as it poured out into the street. We corporately moved past the glass front doors, out unto the narrow walkway that courses through Piccadilly Circus. And then it happened.


There in front of us, on the ground, was this man. He looked more animal than human, curled up awkwardly in a fetal pose and in the throws of a violent  seizure. From his appearance, it was obvious he was a street person. The smell lifting from his small frame nearly knocked us backward. And he was covered in tumors. 


As I pushed, straining forward to help him, I watched in complete and utter incredulity as the very people who had just emerged from the theatre, the very people who had wept at Maggie Smith's performance of such a person, stepped over this man to get to their waiting limousines and taxis.


In a rage, I lurched past the few indifferent gazers on, and I crouched to the pavement and lifted his head onto my lap. He was still seizing, and a kind of foamy spit was bubbling out from his mouth. His head, which had been banging  the pavement in rhythmic throws, now rested in my lap. I yelled for someone to call an ambulance. A few gapers right in my line of vision turned and walked away, but finally one well-dressed younger man pulled his phone out and dialed. 


I called out loud for a coat to cover him (it was cold) and one of my students whisked hers off and gently placed it on his quivering form. I remember waiting for the ambulance to arrive, and watching an endless stream of people exit the theatre, look at this man and me on the ground, and literally climb over us or very awkwardly push their way around us to get to waiting cars.

Time stopped. I just held his head and stroked his hair and tried to say comforting things. I remember his skin was very pock-marked and so pale, and some teeth stuck out of his half-open mouth. It looked like he perhaps had a cleft palate. He stayed there in my lap, writhing, and eyes closed. At some point he stopped seizing and just laid there, still. He was like a baby in my arms. He seemed so frail, so helpless, and his eyes were still closed like he was sleeping.


Suddenly the theatre staff was present beside us. I had just enough time to assume they were there to offer help, when I heard: 'Miss, you have to move him...' 


'He's had a seizure. He needs help! I'm waiting for the ambulance.' I shouted at them.


'He is upsetting our patrons. You need to move him.' The two staff turned and reentered the theatre lobby and watched from inside the glass doors.


Finally, the ambulance arrived.One medic came over and bent down to speak to the man in my lap, and it was then that I realized this man could not even talk. As the medic moved to lay him on the stretcher, I looked down to see that the tumor on his face actually fed into the inside of his mouth. The medic crouched close to his face and tried to engage him in conversation. All that resulted were guttural moans. The medics took over, and I stood up and watched as they tended to him, gently. They were quick and kind. They carefully lifted him onto a stretcher, turned to thank us, and then were gone.


As the ambulance tore away from the curb, I felt bereft. Who was this man? What had happened to him? Who would care for him? What would happen to him now? I burst into tears, and just stood, immobile, watching the ambulance make its way through the choke of traffic down towards the square.


We walked, slowly and silently, towards Leicester Square. No words.


I still replay this experience over an over in my head. I still see all those impeccably dressed theatre-goers stepping over his body. I still see others purposefully looking askance to avoid eye contact when I asked for help.
These were the same people who had sat with me inside the theatre moments ago, moved to tears over Maggie Smith's performance of a dirty, smelly, uncomfortably fragile homeless woman. And not one of them had stopped to help this man. Not one. 


In a theatre of thousands, how could this be?


I think of that man often. I wish I  knew his name. I wish I had thought to get in the ambulance with him.  He feels like a piece of unfinished business in my heart. I had no chance to even look into his eyes.


I have hope that someday I will meet him again, in another, brighter world. Maybe we will look one another in the eye, and we will recognize one another. We'll  embrace, his healed self and mine, and bring one broken circle to a close.

Today's Op-Ed Piece in the New York Times

This piece is too good not to share. It appeared today in the New York Times. Folks, we have truly woken up to a new world.

"Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward: Everything really is possible in America. "

Finishing Our Work
By Thomas L. Friedman
Published: November 4, 2008

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.
A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.
This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.
That is what happened Tuesday night and that is why we awake this morning to a different country. The struggle for equal rights is far from over, but we start afresh now from a whole new baseline. Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward everything really is possible in America.
How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well.
But there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.
Why? Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them. Others intuitively embraced Warren Buffett’s view that if you are rich and successful today, it is first and foremost because you were lucky enough to be born in America at this time — and never forget that. So, we need to get back to fixing our country — we need a president who can unify us for nation-building at home.
And somewhere they also knew that after the abysmal performance of the Bush team, there had to be consequences for the Republican Party. Electing McCain now would have, in some way, meant rewarding incompetence. It would have made a mockery of accountability in government and unleashed a wave of cynicism in America that would have been deeply corrosive.
Obama will always be our first black president. But can he be one of our few great presidents? He is going to have his chance because our greatest presidents are those who assumed the office at some of our darkest hours and at the bottom of some of our deepest holes.
“Taking office at a time of crisis doesn’t guarantee greatness, but it can be an occasion for it,” argued the Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel. “That was certainly the case with Lincoln, F.D.R. and Truman.” Part of F.D.R.’s greatness, though, “was that he gradually wove a new governing political philosophy — the New Deal — out of the rubble and political disarray of the economic depression he inherited.” Obama will need to do the same, but these things take time.
“F.D.R. did not run on the New Deal in 1932,” said Sandel. “He ran on balancing the budget. Like Obama, he did not take office with a clearly articulated governing philosophy. He arrived with a confident, activist spirit and experimented. Not until 1936 did we have a presidential campaign about the New Deal. What Obama’s equivalent will be, even he doesn’t know. It will emerge as he grapples with the economy, energy and America’s role in the world. These challenges are so great that he will only succeed if he is able to articulate a new politics of the common good.”
Bush & Co. did not believe that government could be an instrument of the common good. They neutered their cabinet secretaries and appointed hacks to big jobs. For them, pursuit of the common good was all about pursuit of individual self-interest. Voters rebelled against that. But there was also a rebellion against a traditional Democratic version of the common good — that it is simply the sum of all interest groups clamoring for their share.
“In this election, the American public rejected these narrow notions of the common good,” argued Sandel. “Most people now accept that unfettered markets don’t serve the public good. Markets generate abundance, but they can also breed excessive insecurity and risk. Even before the financial meltdown, we’ve seen a massive shift of risk from corporations to the individual. Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good — to regulate markets, to protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and ill health, to invest in energy independence.”
But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”
None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.

Martin, I Hope You're Watching

~

Oh, how I wish he had lived to see this day, his day. Martin Luther King Junior dug the path that led us here. His dream is now our reality. Each of us, apart from our varying political beliefs, must recognize the significance of this day.

A seemingly insurmountable racial barrier has been not only surmounted, it has been knocked down.

I am so very proud of our country this day, I cannot even put it into words. Our world is forever changed. Forever. This is no overstatement. We have woken up to a new world....

Martin, thank you.

So, now I am proud, honored and humbled to be able to say welcome to our next President:

Barack Hussein Obama.....

Make Martin proud these next four years, Obama. Lead us well...

Obama? McCain? Democrat? Republican?

It doesn't matter to me whom you are voting for, or along what party lines you tend to move. I, for one, am grateful for the differences that exist. But what does matter to me, very much, is that you exercise your right to vote. Please vote.

We are so incredibly lucky to live in this great country. It took many experiences of living abroad and visiting foreign countries (think Russia, for one) to allow me to truly, truly value what we have here. But I will never take it for granted again.

So, exercise one of your many freedoms tomorrow. Leave work early, fore-go lunch, get up at dawn - whatever you have to do, do it. Make it to those polls.

I like to think of my vote as a thank you to the country I call home most of the time. Thank you, America!

And I'll be bringing my daughter with me, so she can witness democracy in action. We'll say thank you together.

So, vote. Please vote. Go vote. Stand up and be counted. Why? Because you count.

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." ~Voltaire

My Daughter the RAD Photographer

It's nice to use RAD in its other context sometimes..lol. 'RAD' meaning cool, awesome, groovy...

So, when I say my daughter is a RAD photographer, I mean that kind of RAD :)

When I first met Anastasia at the orphanage, she would not interact with me at all. No talking. No eye contact. Just a trembling little girl with fearful eyes. That is, until I took out my camera.

" Shto eta?" She asked. (What is it?) She had never seen a digital camera before. I showed her how to use it, and the ice was broken. She interacted with me from behind the lens. Nothing would work to get her to put that camera down.

So, it's no surprise that my daughter has discovered that she likes photography. It gives her a safe way to interact with the world around her. She can be a part of things on her terms. So...
Here are some recent photos she took . She has a great eye, I think. She wants to learn more, too, which is great!

Matilda, her puppy, is her favorite subject, The shoots this poor dog has been subjected to would put Tyra Banks to shame. Here she is posing with glasses.
Here she came in my office at 7am ( hence no make-up & messy hair) and asked me to make "a really funny face."

Here she had walked out of Bertucci's where we had dinner one night. She saw this abandoned doll and HAD to take a photo. She said it made her "feel weird" and she wanted to remember it.

This is her best friend Julia's eye. I think this is the most amazing photo and I wouldn't believe she took it if I hadn't been there to see it myself. I later showed her how to add color to just one spot with picasa. That's her favorite thing to do now with photos...

This is her foot. So artsy. My daughter is artsy!!!

Here is Julia again. I think the angle and blurriness is cool. She's really got an eye for this!

These were random older men outside of Starbucks. They were teasing me about not getting them coffee, so she took their photo. I love the different expressions on their faces (though I want to snatch that cigarette out of his hand and smash it.)

Finally, my favorite. She said " Mom, I want to take a picture of the sun!" I told her, "you can't do that, honey, it won't work." She said, 'Yes it will, mom!"

And she was right.

Caring For The Least Of These

"And the King will answer and say to them, truly I say to you, inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me." Matthew 25:40

Now, those of you reading this who know me personally know that I do not go around spouting Bible verses. Ever. I'm more likely to quote Shakespeare or Gandhi or even Buddha, if I'm honest. I still even squirm a bit when people start sharing Bible verses, but I'm starting to let go of my judgements and read it again without any reservations - just a plain read like I would any other good book. I want to see what I discover about it on my own - without anyone else giving me their spin on it. (And, yes, I've read it before. All the way thru, twice actually.)

I was brought up Roman Catholic. Like any good Irish-American girl, I knew all my prayers by the time I was eight or nine. I attended Mass regularly, went to CCD, all that stuff. But somewhere along the way I became suspect of it all. I let go of all my beliefs and "shopped around" a bit. In my twenties, I somehow ended up at an evangelical college, surrounded by mostly Southern Baptists. Boy, was I considered a black sheep! But it was fun. I liked being the black sheep ( I was used to it in my family sphere..). All told, I have spent time as a wanna-be Buddhist, wanna-be Jew, a Catholic, a Quaker, an agnostic, a near-atheist, a born-again Christian, among many other things. I've attended churches and temples of every kind. I've read:

~The Bible: the Catholic Bible, several Protestant versions, the King James version ( in a class by itself), the Jehovah Witness version (to satisfy my curiosity) the Christian Scientist version, and bits of other versions.
~The Bhagavad Gita
~The Koran
~The Upanishads
~The Tao Te Ching
~The Five Classics of Confucius
~The Tibetan Book of the Dead
~ Parts of the Talmud (not the whole thing)

I have not taken getting to know God lightly. I came at it from all angles. You see, I had my own internal experiences of God that told me that He existed in some form. I had unexplainable miracles that had occurred in my life, I had prophetic dreams, I had a strong sense, even as a child, that there was a loving presence looking out for me, even if I couldn't put a name on it.

I still struggle with what I believe. Some things are fixed in my mind and heart, though. I know I believe in kindness. I know I believe in compassion. I know I believe in "doing unto others..." My sense of what and who God is changes, but not what He stands for. Does that make sense? Sorry, I'm just writing without a filter...as the thoughts come...so it might be a bit convoluted.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to get at is this: In all the holy books I have read, there is an essential unity I discovered. And that is love. Each book had a different way of explaining it, and different paths to it, but it was still the same. Love. Kindness. Compassion. Caring for others. I know that this is the most essential part of God, because it is in every single text that speaks of Him, that is the heart of the message. Some go astray quite a bit. Some don't describe God exactly the way I see Him, but they all talk about Love. Over and over and over.

The part of the Bible that always made sense to me, even when I was courting Atheism, were the words of Christ about "caring for the least of these" and " do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or " Love they neighbor as thyself." The Good Samaritan story was always my favorite. Now that resonated with me. I wish I could meet that guy. He was a kindred spirit, even if he was just a character in one of Christ's stories.

So, even when I am still questioning and searching. Even when I feel alone in the world, or abandoned by God, I know one thing that never fails to help me feel close to the Divine. And that is helping another human being: feeding them, clothing them, loving them - whatever it is that person needs. I have found that no matter how financially strapped I am, I always have just enough to share with someone less fortunate. God provides. Love provides.

So, I'm planning to blog about times I have cared for others when it was anything but easy or convenient, or even safe. I'm hoping anonymous of the previous post will hear and understand. There are some things that are far more important than even our physical lives. I'm not scared of dying, anyway. I never have been, even when facing death right in the eye . (Ok, I was a bit scared that time, but not too much.) For me dying is just moving on, graduating. It'll happen in God's time, so I'm not worried. I wear my seat belt and I do all those other things I should do to keep myself in one piece. But if I have a choice between mortal danger and walking away from someone who needs my help, I'll choose the mortal danger. Sorry. That's just me, and folks, that just ain't gonna change.