the ladder

the ladder

I lived in a neighborhood where no one moved and everyone always lended a helping hand to those in need.

Neighbor Gary (kiddy corner) needed to replace his shingles on his roof. To save money, he planned on doing the work himself…or with the help of others from the hood. The old shingles needed to be ripped off and new plywood replaced in places where squirrels had eaten through. He never had much use for squirrels but honored and respected those who did.

Gary and Gil, who is Gary’s neighbor to the right of him grab their shovels and pitch forks and head up the ladder. Reese sees what they are doing and asks if they need help. “Sure” was their reply, “climb on up”. Reese hangs on tightly to the sides of the ladder and one by one…rung by rung she reaches the top and slowly maneuvers her body onto the roof. Whew! I made it. Reese was so proud of herself. She stands up straight and looks around. Hey, I can see my house from here. Look at how tall that tree is. Hey you, you look like a little ant that I could step on. (lol-ing  of course) Gary hands Reese a shovel and shows her how to get underneath the shingles and lift up to loosen them. Gil carefully looks for a clear spot and makes sure no person is standing below before he shovels the shingles to the ground.

Dusk is starting to settle in and we decide to call it quits for the day. While Gary and Gil are cleaning off the roof, they tell Reese she may start going down, but to be careful. Reese reaches the top of the ladder, hangs on and tries to maneuver her body around the ladder and visions putting her right foot on the top rung and then the left should follow on the next rung and so on until her feet meet the ground. Easy as that. Ha! Not so for Reese. Reese nervously mentions to Gary and Gil that she can’t get her body to turn around onto the ladder. Gil said “just wait a minute and I will show you how it is done”. Gil finishes cleaning off the roof, throws the equipment down and twists and turns his body and starts his way down the ladder. One by one, rung by rung. Reese watches carefully. Ok…I can do that. Hmmm…again not so easy. Gary kiddingly says “Reese, you will just have to sleep up here tonight”. Well, I guess that’s what Reese would have had to do because there is no other way she could get both feet safely on the ground. Reese wished at this time she could grow wings and just float her way to safety. The only other alternative: Gil, get me my saw from the garage. Gil did as he was told and climbed his way so easily back up the ladder one by one, rung by rung and hands it to Gary. Gary carefully cuts a hole through the plywood and says “Ok Reese, climb in”. Reese wriggles her tiny little frame through the tiny little hole, enters the upstairs bedroom and walks down the stairs…safely making her way.

Sharing

I was not a good sharer as a small child. I always felt like I didn't have enough for myself.  I didn't have to share my dad much, I was his little girl and that was all there was to that.  Little sis just didn't have a chance.  I was his constant companion after she was born.  He kept me with him to keep me safer than I would be at home.  She was only two when he died.  She lost a lot, I lost more.  I lost everything, or so I thought.

When Sissy got a new bear brought to her, from grandma and grandpa, a teddy bear,  Dad was furious that they had slighted me.  He took off with me and ran into town and bought me  the only bear he could find  ... a koala bear with the funny nose on it.  I got teased about my ugly bear but I treasured it.

Yeah I can see they thought I was spoiled.  I dunno, I can see both sides of it now.  An imbalanced family dynamic confuses a little girl.

Over the child hood years, I outgrew being greedy and learned to take turns and be mellow and wait for attention.  It got easier the older I got till I became a hippy sort and bought into the hippy ethics of giving all you got and sharing what you have.  I've learned over the years that the more generous a person is, the more good that comes back to them. 

Up to a point.  I don't share everything with everyone.  I guard my secrets and mete out my stories to only a few trusty peeps.  I share my husband a bit, but there is a limit.  I don't lend him out for overnights.  I will share my worldly possessions with anyone who is in want.  Except for my computer.  No one had better touch my laptop.  Don't go over there, just stay back.   lol.  

Of course the big new thing I've been sharing is this wonderful blog.   I love sharing in this blog.  I love writing and being read.  I especially like being understood and accepted  for who I am. I love to share my time with people.  I've got lots and lots of time.  It is free.

And welcome to the safe sharing place, Amy.   May it be a blessing to you.

there is much to gain in sharing..

i like to share, and i am liking it more these days.  it makes me feel warm inside. 

there was a time when i didnt want to share.. anything
in college
and when i lived alone
i clung to things that were mine and didnt like my things touched or moved
i realized that my life was so out of my control, that the only things i had any control over were..
myself and my material things.  this made me feel so insecure.

i gave a bunch of stuff away that year.  stuff i paid good money for.. material stuff i thought was important.  and i forced myself not to internally freak everytime someone touched my stuff.  i wasnt all that successful.. but i tried.

then she moved in.  and what i expected to happen.. didnt happen.
i expected her to try and change my stuff..
to throw out my cherished things.. my holey tshirts.. my old magazines.. gunther (the bass i had caught and had mounted and hung on the living room wall)
instead she just fit right in.
her things next to mine.
soon her things became our things and my things became our things..

and it was the first time i actually enjoyed sharing..

i shared and shared
and the more i shared, the more i wanted to share.
i gave all i had..  and i never felt depleted..  instead i felt full of life and love

and slowly.. after having lost so much..  after having lost so much of what she gave me..
i am trying to share.. 

Neighbors.

We are a family that doesn't like a lot of neighbors.

My grandfather didn't like having neighbors around and they weren't even in view.  He met people coming over to our place with a shotgun in hand.  Don't drop in unannounced when he was in his Davy Crockett moods.  He begrudged people the travel past our farm.  We all stopped what we were doing and stared every car down that came along.

When we married, we had people packed to the rafters  on both sides of our little apartment conclave.   Play saxophone at the top of your lungs at 3 am?  Sure.  why not?

Leave your dog in the front unsupervised so the mailman had to throw the mail from the street for the whole building wrapped in rubber bands.  Be my guest.   (that was our contribution)

Have shouting matches and scream at each other and beat your kids with belt,  just the right tone for a Sunday morning sleep in.

Wonderful potlucks in the back, two buildings full of hippies and families chowing down, making music and sharing a living space a little more friendlier than the cold city streets.

So after a few years of that, we bought a  farm... deep, deep, in no neighbor territory.    If you weren't coming to see us, you were lost.

Oh we had the neighbors that came and milked their cows on the twenty acres cross the road.  Nice Christian people, sweet as could be, minded their own business, was always helpful to us.  We bought them out.   Ah peace at last.

After we sold our farm we moved around so much that neighbors didn't matter.  We didn't get the time to know our neighbors in lots of the places, but sometimes I would make a connection.  In one particular excellent old apartment building I fell in love with the neighbor upstairs.  She was an Polish Jewish Immigrant, an Orthodox or Observant Jew living according to the Torah in her daily life.  We talked and talked and she told me of the old country where her village had been wiped out by the Nazi's.  She told me of going up to Lake Michigan in the summer while her husband worked in the city, she and the children would bathe and relax at their summer cottage.  She taught me how to cook Kosher.  She never once tasted my cooking, but I often got bits and pieces a little  gnoshes from her.  I heard her go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, she heard me exercising like a horse every morning at ten.

to be continued.

the nabes

i got tons of nabe stories.. who doesnt

middle of the summer.  lying in our apartment in r'ville.. our bedroom window facing the bathroom of the nabes.. its friday and i have to work early in the morning.  they are partying hard across the way.  and it gets quiet.  whew.. finally gonna get some sleep. 

HOOOOWAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

i never heard anyone throw up so loud in my life. 
we got a fit of giggles so bad, i think the bed moved a foot out from the wall.  good times.

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i barely remember Hershel.. the old man who lived next door, on the corner.. when i was a kid.  but i remember the huge candy bar we would get every year at Halloween.  and i remember my sister talked and sang to him a lot.  always smiling. 

ma said she left us all out playing in the backyard when we were just maybe 3 or 4.  the yard was fenced in and she was doing dishes and watching us.  she lost track of my brother.  searched high and low.  now frantic, she calls the nabes in on the search.  Hershel found him lying in the private alley out back of the house, face down in the gravel.. butt up.. fast asleep.  how the hell he got there no one knows.

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i got nabes with 3 kids.  2 girls and a boy.  they all talk to me and i tease the hell out of them.  toss water balloons out my bathroom window at them when they arent lookin.  hose wars.  god summers are fun around here.  the oldest girl is shy around me.  her mom told me a couple years ago, the girl has a crush.  she was 7 at the time.  so adorable.  so i asked her mom if i could take her out for ice cream some time.  on a 'date'.  i got the nod of approval.  i call katie up on the phone and ask her out for ice cream. 

complete silence. haha.

her mom says,  just say yes!

whispers.. yes.

she wears her prettiest dress and we walk to dairy queen and i buy her ice cream and we talk about school and stuff. 

i remember what it was like to have siblings.
the next day i took her brother and sister for ice cream too..

really good times.

resilience.

resilience

they told him if he did it, he could be fitted with a prosthetic that was more comfortable and more manageable.  they needed more leg to work with.  he had such a short limb.  i think only 6 inches to work with.  one of the shortest limbs they had ever fitted. 

we were 14, i think, when they took him to the shriner's hospital in lexington, kentucky.  not for the usual checkup and visit.  but to stay. 

i remember him lying in that bed, when we visited.  he was pale and gaunt.  you could see the pain written in his glassy lustrous eyes.  heavy doses of antibiotics and pain pills to get him through it.  pins sticking out of his stump with metal hoops connecting.  they broke the bone on purpose..  and as the bone healed and grew from the inside.. a quarter turn every week.. and crack.. the bone separated again and again until they could grow up to two whole inches of bone.  it was a success.

in the months he was away, he cultivated a decent kantuuucky accent.  we would visit often.  that place was awesome.. they had a basketball court!  and gaming room with pool table and ice hockey and foosball.  that place was decked out.  i wanted to stay. 

he would wheel around like a nut in his wheelchair.  and once again, i was running behind.  i would never have admitted to him how much i admired his choice to go through with the operation.  was incredibly brave.  when he came home, he was changed.  distant.  they asked him a few years later if he wanted to go through with it one more time.  he tried, but he got really sick and they removed the pins and sent him home after recovery. 

he went through so many legs... it was never easy for him. 

Resilience

We trained our son to be resilient in the face of adversity.  We called it many things. 

Rewinding.   Letting it go, trying again and again.  Look for a different path.  Brainstorm.  Ask for hugs. ask for help. Forgiveness, flexibility  being compassionate.

He came to me today, with a lighter, cigarette and spice packet in hand.  He had been using drugs and started using cigarettes.  

He took money for school, re-purposed it for drugs and went up to the food mart to hang out till some @#$%!! bought him some cigs and the harmful spice packets that the children smoke.


I am a compulsive liar, he says.   I need help.  I've been smoking pot again and this stuff. 

He'll have a life long craving for stimulants and high reward behavior.   He'll need to pick himself up and try again.

To parent him we have to be super resilient.  He was sent to bed grounded, but we gave him a hug and sent him to be bed with love in our hearts. 

Our sunken angry shriveled hearts.

We have to parent from a position of strength, and I have shrunk.

That's when I turned to my friends.   Draw with me, I need to vent.  Sure, anytime.

So we draw. I draw a weed smoking teen being doused, deluged with a bucket of water.
My friend draw roses.

I draw a angry fire burning up money.
My friend draws roses with a bee in it.

I draw a tiny baby asleep under a blanket.

The anger leaves me.  

More friends come.  I relax and plan my tomorrow.  There is always a tomorrow to try again.

A new day with new choices
I chose happiness and peace for me and my family.