Category Archives: daughter

by

innocent

For Blogging from A to Z, the letter I. My theme is Virtues and Views. I am writing about emotions for the second year in a row: last year I for introverted. This year I am think about innocence and feeling innocent.

How often do you feel innocent as an adult? And how often did you as a child?

My memory has painted this picture of my daughter as messier than the actual picture. I give her a chunk of banana for the first time and let her feed herself. She holds the banana and squeezes it through her fist and puts her fist to her mouth and waves her hands with joy! She is only a few months old and not sitting unsupported. The thumb and finger pincer grip develops at around 9 months. Before that, it is a sweeping fist that soon goes to the mouth. And the fists are not terribly well under control at first. But, she manages to get more than half the banana chunk into her mouth bit by sticky bit, and the rest all over her. She is tired in this picture and very satisfied. She is  innocent of feeding herself and decorating herself with banana before this day.

After she fed herself she goes straight to the bath, a tired and happy baby.

 

by

Home

This is not a perfect photograph…. and yet, at the same time, it is for me. My daughter was home last week for spring break. She had a haircut and sent her hair to Locks of Love. The background is cluttered with the cupboard open and counter, but her concentration and quiet is a contrast to that. And anyhow, I am biased, right? We love even terrible photos of those we love.

by

A friend for Mordechai

I drove my daughter back to school in Bellingham on Friday. On the way back I hike at Deception Pass and then stop in Coupeville before going to the ferry. In Coupeville, I found friends for Mordechai, my clinic skeleton. This is a sea lion and there is a whale and a dolphin, all skeletons hanging from the ceiling. I suspect that they are real skeletons and not plastic, as Mordechai is.

My daughter says, “Mordechai was not alive before.”

“I could argue that she was. She is made from plastic, which is made from oil, which is formed over millennia from plants fallen and slowly changing.”

“Ok, you win on that one, mom.”

Doesn’t this sea lion look like she is flying?

 

by

In the warm

In the warm

I am here in the warm.
The thumper.
Sometimes it is fast.

I am in the warm.
The thumper.
The loud swish thing.
I kick it.
Loud place, I kick.
I am running out of room.
I push.

I push.
Thumper wild.
Thumper fast.
I have no room and now it is squeezing!
Stop squeezing! Pushing me! I want room! Room!

Ahhh! Bright!
Noisy! No warm! Cold!
Things touch me! Room! But no warm!

I am warm but not wet.
Bright. Wrapped.
Here is thumper.
I cough. No wet, something else. Air.
I want. Oh, thumper. Oh, mouth on warm, milk.

Here is room.
Thumper and others.
I know others. They are fast.
They are noisy.
That one is the one that held the swish thing. I kick.
Thumper and those are big.
These two are small, I am smaller.
Noisy! I like them.
I am getting used to light and dark.
More room. Milk. Air.

I know names. I have hands like others.
I can chew my hand.
My hands don’t work like theirs.
My noise doesn’t work either.
Not like brothers. Thumper is mom.
Other big is father.
Other bigs come and go.
I want my noise and hands to work!
I keep practicing.

I keep practicing
More!

I took the photograph of my daughter in 1998. This is scanned. I may try with another scanner….

 

by

Who is driving the car?

I am at my parent’s house.

My mother and I and the baby, a toddler, go out to the car which is a huge newish SUV. I open the back door and see a drawing lying on the seat, beside the car seat. It is a drawing of my son, from a photograph. My mother has written on it, her ideas about how she wants to do the painting. I took the photograph and know it: my son has an exuberant joyous toddler expression. I climb in to the SUV. My mother gets in the front and turns the car on. She pulls forward and I start screaming, “STOP! STOP DON’T DRIVE! THE BABY IS NOT IN THE CAR!” My mother is pulling forward and backing, in confusion. She stops.

I leap out and search. Under the car by the back wheel, but not under it, is a kitten. A black kitten, lying on its side. I reach and very gently pick it up, supporting its spine. I am crying. The kitten cries as I pick it up, with pain. I say, “She’s hurt! I am going to die!”

I wake up.

I think about the dream. Even though there is a picture of my son in the car, I am a teen in the dream. The toddler is not my son. The toddler is not my daughter. The toddler is my sister. My parents had old cars, never a new SUV. The house in the dream was my parent’s house in Alexandria, Virginia. We moved there when I started ninth grade and my sister started sixth. My parents sold the house and moved in 1996.

Who is driving the SUV? Is there a responsible adult? Are they taking care of the children? Or are they driving recklessly and leaving the children to try to care for each other? Some adults are not responsible and should not be driving.

 

My son took the photograph of my daughter in 2011 for a school project, recreating a movie poster: True Grit.

by

March for people

My daughter and I marched yesterday.

She decided to come home from college for the weekend, planning to leave Saturday night. I decided not to go to the Seattle Womxn’s march, but do the Port Townsend one and asked her to join me.

We went out to breakfast and then to our small downtown. I no longer have television and look at news sites daily though a bit erratically, so neither of us had a pink hat. I wore my Mad As Hell Doctors t-shirt, my lab coat from working at the National Institutes of Health with the National Cancer Institute Patch, my Rotary name badge and pins gathered from going across the country trying to get medicare for all, single payer health care, from 2009 until now.

to womxn'smarch 089.JPG

Four bus loads went from our county to the Seattle march. We heard that the Bainbridge ferry was FULL. That is, they couldn’t not take any more walk on people. Another thirty people or more flew to the Washington DC march. And in Port Townsend, my guess is that we still had 200-300 people, women, men and children, people in wheelchairs, babies, gay, lesbian, straight, bi, trans, that marched from a small park downtown to the Haller Fountain. Galetea, naked statue at the fountain, sported a pussy hat.

to womxn'smarch 104.JPG

Our local organizer spoke and our House Representative, Derek Kilmer.

to-womxnsmarch-139

Older women spoke about demonstrating over and over in their lives. A friend of mine called me up to help her sing Holly Near’s Singing for Our Lives, making up new verses on the fly. They invited people to speak.

to womxn'smarch 152.JPG

I spoke: “I am one of your local doctors. I want to be able to treat anyone who comes to my clinic. We are one nation: health care for all. No discrimination: medicare for all.”

to womxn'smarch 157.JPG

to womxn'smarch 114.JPG

to womxn'smarch 150.JPG

Home then, and tired. My daughter has decided she wants to learn guitar, to play while people sing. I taught her basic chords and basic strumming. We sang Jamaica Farewell. She picks it up immediately, after all of those years of viola. And she will take one of my father’s guitars back to college.

And this is amazing: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/21/world/womens-march-pictures.html?smid=fb-share

Blessings all around.

Physicians for a National Health Care Program: http://www.pnhp.org/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/successful/