Sweet Home Ghana

Ghana is a country on the western side of the continent of Africa.
I've never met anyone from that part of the world, though I did go to a prom with some guy from South Africa, but he was kinda jerky and it was a favor for a friend.
Anyway...today I met a lovely lady from Ghana in the physical therapist's waiting room.

Naturally, I spoke with her because, well, the magazines are terrible and I had forgotten my book, which was also pretty terrible, but it was in the other car.

She had a great, different accent...not from the Islands, but unique. I asked her where she was from.
Enough of this, I gotta tell you her story!

She came here in 2002, after the WTC disaster. She left her four kids behind, hoping to bring them all here eventually.
I asked her how old her kids were: she said "44, 42, 39 and 22".

I commented that that was a pretty big distance between the last two, she told me that the youngest is adopted, from her sister's daughter.
Story time.

The young woman found she was pregnant just as she was getting ready to leave for the UK. (Ghana was a British colony until 62 years ago.) She wanted to abort the baby...inconvenient, couldn't take care of it, didn't want it. This lady, her name was something like Josephine but not exactly, said, "Don't abort the baby. I will take it and raise it as my own."  You'd think that was enough of the story, but it isn't.

The niece's mother went to a psychic. The psychic told her that if her daughter had the baby, the young woman would die.

Despite this, the pregnant woman did have the baby, I guess convinced that her aunt would take good care of the child.
A few hours after giving birth, the mother died. She had been given too much anesthesia in the hospital and never woke up.

My heart went out to the dead woman, her mother and Josephine, who has raised this baby, this young person for 22 unselfish years.

All her children are educated and doing well. Only one is currently in the US, probably the youngest one, but she's bringing the other three over soon.

I didn't want to go to the PT with husband today, but if I hadn't, I never would have heard this incredible story.

I wish Josephine the best in this world and all her children, too.
This makes up for all the bad stuff from the past two weeks.

(I warned Josephine not to bring her kids over in winter...they know nothing about cold weather. Yes, it is supposed to snow again this week!!!)

The brain vs. the mind

Is there a difference?

Your brain seems to hold your mind...but what is the mind?  It's the place in the brain where your memories are, where your instincts reside, where your emotions are contained (or not). So, my brain hasn't been working all that well recently, not since menopause topped off with eight rounds of intense chemotherapy.

So...I haven't been trusting my mind or my brain to the extent where I knew I could rely on it to do the right thing, say the right thing, use the right words...find things I've put down somewhere and can no longer find.

 

I used to have a great mind.

 

I thought I'd lost it, or at least most of it after the second illness because things got worse. I used wrong words. Math, never my best subject, got very shaky. People's names, forget it! I started calling people "honey" and "sweetie" to their faces because their names just weren't there until somebody else said them. Then, luckily, the names came back to match the faces. But still. The instant recall was pretty much shot.

 

However. Something strange happened to me today.

 

I had been trying without success to remember a favorite book I'd read when I was about nine years old. It was terrific. I loved it. I think I took it out of the Bound Brook Library a dozen times to read over and over. This was when one did not buy books, one took them out of the library and had two weeks to read them.

I remembered this book because the heroine was chubby. She had a skinny friend. She was often alone because her friend had other stuff to do that did not include her. Boy, that was the story of my nine year old life.

 

But I could not remember the title of the book.

I asked around, I put up a plea on FaceBook for anybody to help me. Several people tried without success.

So I took to Amazon, looking in kids' books. Girls' books from the 50s. Buying books from the 50s. Went through the collections offered. Went through the suggestions from my FB friends. No luck.

 

Back to this mind thing. I have mentioned several times that I get some great ideas in the shower. For my own stories, for friends' stories, for life in general. Good ideas that are sometimes forgotten by the time I am through washing up. This morning...still thinking about this book...nothing. I despaired.

 

I came out of the shower, dripping wet, dried off, thought some more...used the computer again in vain. Went back into my thinking room and a name popped into my head out of nowhere.

 

ROWENA CAREY

 

Dashed out, went back to Amazon, typed that name in and...oh, wow. There she was, in her faded, tattered glory, my Rowena. My friend. My buddy.

 

Whatever happened, how that came to me, I do not know. It's been nearly 60 years since I read that book, but deep in the back part of my mind, she lurked quietly. My friend.

 

Here she is. I did not ever see the paper cover. The book I read was hardcover and dark blue. But she's just the way I pictured her and, Rowena, I never forgot you!

 

 

Seriously

For the record, I lost three babies before successfully having my girls.  They were boy babies that I carried for at least three months. I can never forget how it felt to lose a child, an unborn one that was very much desired and wanted.
We underwent fertility treatments weekly for four years.
My friends had babies.
Everybody in the world had babies.
We didn't.
The longing was intolerable. My sweet husband wanted to give up trying after three surgeries and the loss of one of my ovaries. I blamed God. I blamed myself. I hated my body and internal organs.
I would have done anything to have a baby.
And I did.

Somehow, we got pregnant again. I ate no sugar, no seafood, did very little, lay on the couch most of the time so as not to risk a miscarriage. No excitement. No strangers. Nothing to get me sick. Isolation. Unbearable heat and cold...I kept my incubating body safe and had a big, healthy baby girl a day after our 9th anniversary.
I cherished and still do cherish this kid and the miracle that followed five months later when again we got pregnant.

Now, there's this new TV show being advertised called Rattled. It's about new parents and babies. One clip shows this woman saying, "This baby is going to have to adjust to our life, not we to hers" or something like that. I get so pissed when I see this ad that I'm probably not quoting correctly, but that is the gist of it.
And after I want to swat her, I grind my teeth and then I laugh at her presumption.

One does not force a baby to adjust to one's life. The baby becomes one's life.

Now, I have been somewhat challenged about this...people who took their babies all over the place. Did not disturb their lifestyle one bit. No. Carting all that baby equipment, the portable crib, the diaper bag, the bottles, the creams and lotions, extra clothes for when their baby clothes get spit up on, or pooped on, or just wet...yeah, you can just pick up and go. I'm afraid not. At least, me, a new mother at 38 and again at 39 years old could not do this.

And what happens when the baby cries and you can't figure out what's wrong? Surely, a baby does that once in awhile, unless it is drugged.

AND HERE IS SOMETHING AWFUL TO WRITE ABOUT

When I was in college, Sandy and I met up with some guys from Rutgers who took us to a party at their friends' apartment. It was one room, bunk beds, sheets draped for privacy, soiled clothing heaped on the floor, husband and wife and newborn existing in this little hovel sans souci. They started drinking and talking loud. Sandy and I wanted to leave. The father of the baby says he can stop the baby from crying and pulls out a bottle and a syringe and dopes up the baby. Yes, it did stop crying.
Sandy and I left.

Yes. It was a hippie sort of arrangement these people had and it was a long time ago but I wonder where they got the juice to put the kid to sleep so they could drink and smoke and have loud friends over. That poor kid!
I have had that sordid picture in my mind for a very long time and hate seeing it over and over.

Yes, the baby got quiet. Their good time wasn't ruined.
I wonder whatever happened to that baby.
I bet it died.

So, since I have always carried that picture in my mind and felt the loss of my three boys, my kids were the main focus of my life. I was far from a perfect mother, but my kids didn't cry themselves to sleep. They behaved well. If we didn't think they could tolerate a situation, we didn't put them in it. They made it to adulthood without drugs or alcohol or a crazed mother and father.
Maybe we were lucky, maybe we missed out on stuff. So be it.

But try to picture that scene with the man injecting some drug into an infant's thin leg. Try to imagine losing three babies for no discernible reason. Try to shrug off this idiotic soon to be parent thinking she can force a baby to adjust to her lifestyle.

I dare ya.

Once again

Need I reiterate how very much I hate snow?

I hate snow.

For anyone who missed the past several years of ranting, here it is.
I think I'll make it bigger.

I hate snow.

Some things are worse than dying

A virus creeped into my body, possibly at the same time I was watching the new Star Wars movie. Three days later I feel like crap and have actually lost six pounds.

I leave it up to the reader to figure out why.

 

Wretchedly miserable, I am.

Since Yesterday

Yesterday I got the results from the CT-scan I had a month ago. I had asked the oncologist to wait until January to tell me the results because I didn't want the holiday spoiled. In 2008, I spent New Year's Eve in the hospital cancer ward, getting my first chemo treatment over to the next day as it took 13 hours. I really didn't want to even think about that over Christmas.

 

This Christmas wasn't too cool, either, because the house is a mess, all the living room furniture is in the dining room and stashed in inconvenient places. I have to sleep either on the sofa bed where the springs stick into my body or the futon which is hard as a rock. Needless to say, I don't get much sleep and what I do get is painful.

But it's okay. I can live with that.

 

But this time of year, thinking of the chemo and how awful it was and losing my hair and being unable to get around...not fun. And perhaps some of the reason why I couldn't sleep was because I was remembering how close I was to dying and how utterly inconvenient that would be.

And how it would feel to leave my sweet husband and daughters and my whole family...everybody. To be a nothing.

To be dead.

Not fun.

 

Well, anyway, the results weren't bad at all. No cancer...not at this time. It has been seven years of worrying about it returning and that won't stop, but for a little while, I'll not think about it too hard.

There are other things wrong--the sugar, the lack of sleep, the lack of breathing when I sleep, some kind of emphysema in my lungs, diverticulosis, spinal degeneration, being overweight...and the beloved gallstones. It is enough to make me feel doomed, but not as badly or as desperately as it would be if the diagnosis had been for cancer. Strike three, you're out!

 

It just isn't something you can shake off. Like PTSD...you can't "get over it". Maybe you could actually call it PTSD, as I have fought two battles and come out alive. There are so many people, some little kids, who haven't made it. And I wonder...why me? What have I done to deserve to live when so many others, so many nice people, honest and religious and happy and parents and little kids, perished in such an ugly way?

 

Maybe I have something else to do, something that only I can do to contribute to the greater good.

 

If you believe in fairies, clap your hands and Tinkerbell will live.

The coming year

Monday I will get the results of the CT-scan I had a month ago.

I hope I am not dying any more than usual...you know, the "everybody is dying a little every day" bit.

 

Dying would suck.