You are a voluntary eyewitness, not an audience

Recently, I posted some pictures on Facebook of David and I riding Bike Biking Across Kansas​ in 2005. People who follow my FB feed assumed it was recently that we did this trek. This, along with recent articles I've read about how people try to paint a particular picture on their FB wall leads to this post.

I know that what I post on FB seems to all be sunshine and roses. I understand that everyone, including myself, struggle with issues ranging from mundane to worst fear material. What people need to know about my feed is that it is maintained for me. I've never posted to it to help others see how great my life is - I've always maintained it as a lifeline for myself. Whenever I let myself focus on the negatives in my life, I can always pull up my FB profile and realize how much I have to be thankful for. If it seems like my life only has positives because that is all I post on FB, it is because that is the way I choose to see my life. I have developed a habit over the years of redirecting negative thoughts to positive ones. All of this is to say I'm sorry if my FB profile looks like someone who is trying to maintain the facade of a perfect life to outsiders. The reality is, my FB profile is the life I have chosen to pursue and that choice pays rewards I never thought I was worthy of, nor believed I could receive.

I won't apologize for my life no longer having the huge weight of poverty and depression the first half of my adult life had. I won't apologize for being able to rejoice in the health of my children, rather than having to fight for every day with them. I will continue to post the sunshine and roses because that is what I see through the lens I have chosen to view life with. From time to time, you will see the darkness and thorns, if I believe there is something I need to remember from that experience.

Along this ride, you have chosen to be an eyewitness to my life.

The case for selfies

The early 21st century will be known for many things, and certainly one of those things is the proliferation of the selfie. Selfie is a term given to pictures that a person takes of themselves. Although selfies were possible with even the earliest cameras, the existence of phone cameras in recent history has caused selfies to become commonplace.

The need to establish ones presence in a place, or with other people, dates to thousands of years ago. Early humans left their mark in caves all over the globe, depicting successful hunts, battles, and even everyday life. The picture here shows a cave in which young teenagers felt a need to record their presence in the form of hand sillouettes.

The human need to say "I was here" is unquestioned. Over the last few years, however, the use of selfies to make that statement has been criticized by many.

My post today is the result of a revelation I had recently regarding the existence of, or lack of, selfies.

A little over a year ago, one of my daughters, who had completed her first year in a sorority, was excited for me to visit on Mom's Day. Leading up to the day, her sorority busily prepared for the activities that moms and daughters would participate in throughout the day. One of the activities was a nice luncheon and the girls decorated their tables with pictures of themselves as babies with their mothers. I sat at a table with my daughter and realized that there were no pictures of us. When I asked her about it, she said she could not find any and I realized that there were none to find. Throughout her young life, I was always the one behind the camera. Nobody had ever taken pictures of us together, and I didn't ever think to take a selfie with my 110 camera.

We took lots of pictures that day and I have made a point to take pictures with all of my children since then, but they will never have proof of my participation in their infancy in the form of a photograph.

I understood the importance of photographs then, but didn't fully realize what a difference the existence of selfies can make until two weeks ago, when I traveled to Kansas to visit my sister, who is in the end stages of liver failure.

As I sat in her hospital room and watched her sleep, I realized how much I wanted a picture of my sister and I together. Not one the way we are today - I have one of those - but rather, I wanted to be able to see a picture of us together when we were young, watching movies, riding bicycles, and laughing. Realizing that there were none from our youth, I decided I would settle for pictures from our two experiences bicycling across the state of Kansas, then realized that she was always behind the camera then and the only pictures I had of those experiences included myself and her husband, or the whole group of us - not her and I. I can look at those pictures and remember, but there is nothing that says "Bev and Elaine were sisters, together."

I have pictures of her at my wedding. Pictures of her with her children. Pictures of her when we were young, but nothing that depicts the joyful existence of our relationship over the years as sisters.

Some would say that I still have my memories of those times, but experience tells me that the existence of photographs helps us to remember events that our brains would otherwise file away as unimportant. Selfies capture moments. Moments that are often a part of the mundane, as well as those events with high meaning. I long to see photos of my sister and I simply being sisters - that majority part of our lives together which did not cause my long-term memory to engage - that which encompasses the day-to-day and is the most authentic part of our lives together.

I understand why people get annoyed with the overabundance of selfies posted on social media. I'm okay with scrolling past them and I hope you will be, too.

The Electric Company

In October, 1971, I was a two-year veteran viewer of Sesame Street. I was also, in my own mind, a veteran student. After all, I had kindergarten in my past and had only just begun my experience in first grade. I can remember secretly rushing home after school to watch my favorite shows - secretly because they were "kid" shows - and I can remember the hype surrounding the newest offshoot of Sesame Street on television, The Electric Company.

When The Electric Company came out, I was really excited. Part of this was because I loved Sesame Street so much and I knew that this new show was supposed to be for grown-ups like my 6-year-old self. But mostly, it was because I lived two houses down from The Electric Company.

My world was not yet disturbed by the reality that I lived in a tiny little piece of a massive universe. I knew that there was a little store at the corner of my block named The Electric Company and I knew this television show was called The Electric Company, therefore I knew that all I had to do was walk a few steps and I would be looking straight into the world I was seeing on my television set.

It was exciting. It felt like my own little secret - that I lived so close to the fantastical characters and situations I watched on my TV.

The picture is of the building that was The Electric Company when I was very young. The building had originally been built as a corner "Mom and Pop" grocery store. While it was The Electric Company, those big windows across the front were filled with lights. Sparkly lights. Very shiny lights. Barely lit lights. Lights that flickered like candles. Before the television show, those lights held my attention. I would stand in front of that window and become mesmerized by the lights that looked like candles. After the show started, I still stood in front of that building, but now I was looking deeper into the darkness behind the lights - searching for Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, and all the other super cool people that I knew were in there. I knew they were in there because this was The Electric Company.

In later years, the store left and this building became a hair salon, Kuttin' Korner. While convenient through my teenage years, the little building never again held my attention the way it did in the early 70s, and also never disappointed me as much as it did when I concluded that the television show was fake, The Electric Company on the corner was real. I would never see my Electric Company on television and I would never see the characters from the television within those windows.

The elevator

Last weekend, I made a very quick (less than 48 hour) trip back home to Kansas. While I was there, I took pictures of many of the places that reside within my memory. It was an interesting trip. I had a friend of mine along for the ride and because of this, I saw my town, my state, and my life from a whole new perspective. I've decided to write a blog post for each of the pictures I took while I was there so that I can remember, and so that my children will have my stories.

The first picture I will share is the first one I took upon arriving in my hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas (affectionately known as "Hutch).

Hutch has a lot of grain elevators. In fact, I'm wishing I had taken a picture of the "city" skyline, which would mainly consist of grain elevators. The one in the picture was the world's largest when it was built at 1/2 mile long. It could hold 46 million bushels. It is now the 2nd largest grain elevator in Kansas and there are larger in the world, but it is still a really large elevator.

The elevator is in a state of neglect right now. Even though it is still in use, it is no longer the pristine white I remember it being when I was young. As long as it held the spot of world's largest, it was painted regularly and was a source of pride for my hometown.

My earliest memory of the elevator is not a complete memory. The only part of the memory I can bring to mind is riding in my dad's pickup truck. He stopped at one end and I can remember somebody getting me out of the truck. My siblings are all present in my memory and the last thing I can remember is running as hard as I could to try to keep up with them.

The full story, as it was retold often by my dad, was that I was still in diapers then. He took us to the elevator so we could see how long it was. Since it was a half mile, he suggested that we run to the end and back and then we would know we had run a mile. I was the youngest of four children. My siblings would have been 12, 9 and 7. I would have been about 2. It is the first memory I have of a very strong desire to be like them. It mattered to me that I was left behind while they ran ahead of me. My father followed along behind, slowly, in his truck so that he could convince me to get back in. I probably only ran about a 5th of the length of the elevator. Dad always said I was crying that I had not been able to keep up and mad that he wouldn't let me keep going.

One of my first memories in life tells a story of a little girl who was striving to keep up with someone else, to achieve someone else's dream. If only she had known how frivolous that endeavor would be.

Memories: A bald boy, a tractor and Pooh

David and I have been doing projects around the house, so far mostly surrounding the garage. We have needed to clean for quite some time and over the holiday break seemed a good time to get started. As we opened boxes, which mostly held the remains of my home in Kansas, we laughed at old memories, pondered how far we have come, and encountered mementos of Nathan's fight with cancer.

There were two of those mementos that have stayed within my mind during the time since we did the cleaning. One, I will save for another post, but the other haunted me on my drive home from work yesterday and I feel compelled to tell a story.

The story begins in a big white hospital in Wichita, Kansas. St. Francis is a complex of big, white buildings, and there is a wing in the main hospital that is very special. It originally was built to be the birthing wing, full of large rooms equipped with televisions and VCRs, rocking chairs, recliners, and enough room to roll a second bed into. When St. Francis built a new, free-standing birthing unit, this wing became pediatric oncology.

I spent a lot of time in that wing. Whenever we would arrive there, if Nathan was feeling up to it, he would walk the halls, looking for "his" fire truck. It was a pedal-powered fire truck, complete with lights and sirens. Often, he would encounter another vehicle on his quest. It was a pedal-powered John Deere tractor. This tractor was most often being driven by a boy just a few months older than Nathan. The boy was from a Mennonite family who lived on a farm and he was drawn to the tractor as a reminder of home.

The first time I saw the boy, he had blonde, curly hair. He was riding the tractor and his mother, in cap, and father, in beard, were walking along beside him. As the months went on, I watched as he became bald, just like Nathan, and rode the halls on his tractor alone, just like Nathan. The ride-ons in this wing are equipped with a pole on which the IV bag can be hung and this means freedom from having to follow youngsters through the hall, pushing a clunky IV pole.

The two of them riding together and laughing down the halls while the parents got a rest from the constant supervision is forever in my mind. I distinctly remember, for some reason, the last time I saw the boy. I was standing in the doorway of Nathan's room, looking for him and I saw the boy at the end of the hall, turning the corner and riding away on his green John Deere.

The last time I saw his mother was six months after Nathan's last chemotherapy treatment. Every three months, we had to return to have Nathan sedated while he went through a new C-scan and bone scan to be sure nothing new was showing up. While I sat in the prep room, watching Nathan receive the IV, the boys mother, whose name I never knew, walked in. She handed me a soft, plush Winnie the Pooh blanket. Without tears, she told me of her son's passing on the 2 year anniversary of his diagnosis, just a few days before he was scheduled to receive a bone marrow transplant. She had purchased the blanket as a present to give to him once they arrived at the strange, new hospital in Houston, and had never had the opportunity to do so. She wanted my son to have the blanket because she remembered him the same way I remembered her son - riding along those halls, celebrating freedom.

She had held on to the blanket for a few months after his death, holding it as she would have held him, and had decided that the Lord would prefer that she let it go so that another boy could get comfort from it as she had intended hers would. She chose Nathan to receive this beautiful gift.

12 years later, we came across that blanket - too small now to cover my boy but lovingly and safely stored away with favored mementos of his childhood. Last night, Nathan sat watching TV with it covering his lap. The gift served its purpose then as a comfort to him as he recovered and it continues to remind us of the beautiful gift of life.

It also ensures that I will never forget the back of that little boy's bald head turning the corner as he rode his tractor out of view, nor will I ever forget his sweet mother's pain and compassion as she processed her own loss.

Hug your children. They are precious gifts for however long we have them.

My new journey

I've decided, once again, to tackle my weight issue. This time, it is totally for me. I know that my family and friends love me no matter what size I am. However, my health, as I get older, is worse than what it should be, and I know it is because of my weight. I want to be healthy again, I want to be happy with myself again, and I want to fit into the closet of clothes I call my "skinny closet".

I decided that all of the "plans" aren't working for me. Although Weight Watchers helped me lose 70 pounds a few years ago, it didn't help me keep it off. I needed to start something that would be more of a life change than a planned diet.

Enter my BFF, Andrea! She asked me if I would be her accountability partner as she tries to lose weight, also. It seemed like a great idea, so I said yes. She texts me every time she eats something and I text her whenever I eat something. Seems simple, but it really makes a difference. We have been doing this for just a few days and I can see my attitude towards food changing - if I am going to have to confess to eating this, is it really worth it? Sometimes it is, and we talk about what to do to counteract the decision, but more often, it isn't.

As we have been doing this, I have also seen that I'm not only saving calories, I'm saving money, as well. I am going to try to post updates on this blog with the choices I'm making, both to remind me later, but also in case my choices might resonate with others.

Yesterday:

Before all of this started, I visited Starbucks at least once a day and often, twice. My morning drink is a Grade soy latte, which costs about $5 and is around 170 calories. To be honest, I almost always get a banana walnut bread, as well, which adds $3 and a whopping 425 calories.

My choice yesterday was to brew my own Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce K-cup in my Keurig. The K-cups are 50 cents (these are only 25 cents because I bought them on a B1G1F special). I also decided I wasn't really hungry for breakfast, so I saved between $4.75 and $7.75 and only took in 5 calories!

Today:

Again, I saved my $4.75 by making my own coffee. This morning, I was hungry for breakfast.

What I wanted: McDonald's Egg McMuffin (300 calories) $3.00 + Grande soy latte (170 calories) $5.00 for a total of 470 calories and $8.00.

What I had:

Thomas Multigrain Lite English Muffin 50 cents 100 calories
1 egg, fried in canola oil with spinach on top 10 cents 92 calories
Cinnamon Dolce K-cup 25 cents, 5 calories

for a total of 197 calories and 85 cents.

Savings: 273 calories and $7.15!

Yesterday -- Now my troubles seem so far away

Yesterday, I was feeling sorry for myself. As my friend, Dawn Davis, said – I didn’t think it fair to have to focus on work when my mind and body needed a rest. Today, I have applied all of the techniques I’ve learned and developed over the years to turn this feeling of desperation into a feeling of anticipation.

Here is what I came up with:

Rested | Tired

Joyful | Sad

Carefree | Burdened

This represents the way I turn my focus. The items on the right are the words that I described myself as - tired, sad, burdened. The items on the right are on what my friend, Tom Whiteman, gave me a name for - the "God Side."

Here is how you would read the words - 

Rested | Tired

Instead of feeling tired because of the state of sleep-deprivation I’m in due to a health issue, I’m choosing to focus on how well-rested I will feel once I’m able to begin using a resource that will enable me to sleep.

Joyful | Sad

Instead of feeling sad because I lost a member of my church family, I am focusing on the joy I feel when I remember the impact he had on my family and on others inside and outside of the congregation.

Carefree | Burdened

Instead of feeling burdened, I’m focusing on the fact that in a few months, I will feel carefree, as I finish my graduate school work and eliminate some of the other outside stresses I have at the moment.

Today, I woke up and went to work – the sun was shining. There was a light breeze blowing against my face. I spent the day with educators who are passionate about doing what is best for our students. I came home to my family, who I love, and who I love to spend time with. Through that whole time, my body worked – I breathed, my eyes blinked, thousands of metabolic processes happened without a hitch, mutations happened and were repaired.

And I enjoyed another day.

It’s all good.