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Things kids say at gravesites

“This is Gigi’s grave,” I told Eli.

“You didn’t know her,” Laila said with an artful blend of pity and victory. “I did, but only when I was a baby.”

We were all standing around the cemetary in my hometown of Michigan, my sister, Laura; my neice and nephew, myself, and Laila and Eli.

I hadn’t been home in two years.

Besides seeing relatives, my mission on this vacation was to pay my respects at my…

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Should we parents pump the breaks on the sick kids as fighters narrative?

It’s cystic fibrosis awareness month.

Thought: Should we as parents pump the breaks on the ‘fighter’ language?

I know I’ve called Eli a fighter many times, throwing the term out there without giving it a second thought.

He uses a vest twice a day when well, takes a whole bunch of pills, and is so consciencious about keeping crud out of his lungs he asked if he should wear a mask while we…

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Hanging out with an old friend gone sober: Refreshing!

K. and I met on my very first day of college. I had a weird, giant, inappropriate Abbercrombie & Fitch poster of a man I was, natch, plastering on my dorm room wall as she walked by.

She said something like, “WHO IS THAT?”

We named him A.J.

Our by-chance living arrangement and shared interest in giant man posters at an all-girls dorm changed the trajectory of my life. In between classes, we…

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8 is Magic

Eight. My baby is 8. Eight. In another eight she’ll be 16, a thought I’d rather not have ever again until it actually happens. What is 8? It’s posing with balloons, arranging Beanie Boo’s just so. It’s shrieking protests over cutting hair that’s a year overdue for a trim. It’s unicorn colors and headbands galor and her own hair brush. It’s brudda Eli photobombing her moment. It’s riding bikes and…

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There is a way to behave at a memorial.

“Here we are. Abe Lincoln, kids. NO RUNNING AT ABE’S MEMORIAL. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? STOP RUNNING. STOP RUNNING. ELI STOP RUNNING. WE RESPECT THE DEAD.”

That’s right. I don’t care how dead and gone Abe is. This shit is sacrosanct.

THIS. IS. ABE.

The government shut down, which, obviously, meant that we should go tour our federal monuments on Saturday.

Mark’s goal, hailing from the Land of Lincoln and all, has been to get to Abe. Here for just under a month, the whole crew finally made it.

Here he is soaking it all in:

Mark absorbs Abe’s glory. Gosh we love that marvelous marbel melancholy man.

Tourist tips: It’s easy to take a Metro line to Union Station and then hop on a city bus, which goes in a circle around all the monuments in the city center, and costs very little.

Also: The marble at Abe is sweaty and slippery. And I didn’t really get that, because it wasn’t raining. But OK.

I took photos in which my children were not thrilled.

Not thrilled 1

Not thrilled 2

After wrangling the kids at Abe we walked to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The first thing my children did there was obliviously photobomb a soldier statue while two people were trying to take a picture of it.

A vaping man gave them a dirty look.

I shot laserbeams at him with my eyes as he walked away. HAHA!

I gave the kids the same speech.

“This is a memorial. MUCH LIKE ABE. NO RUNNING. DO YOU GET ME? SLOW. SACRED GROUNDS. THIS MEMORIAL NEEDS RESPECT THOSE ARE BROTHERS AND DADS AND FRIENDS THERE ON THAT WALL.”

They nodded solemnly because mommy was being REALLY SCARY.

Eli didn’t get the concept of war.

“WHAT’S WAR MOMMY?”

“A. No yell talking. B. You know, it’s like when countries battle to the death over a variety of disagreements. C. Everyone on this wall died in war, or is missing.”

“THEY’RE ALL DEAD MOMMY?”

“Yes, Eli.”

He was really glum after that, contemplating war and the dead, shuffling his feet and frowning.

Children need to behave at memorials, ya dig? (Photo by Mark)

I picked up a photo album leaning against the wall.

Whoopsie. Dead bodies with missing parts here and there. Not so kid friendly.

“Mark, it’s got dead bodies in it. Not appropriate for children,” I called out.

“Yeah, OK.”

Eli and I continued on. Mark paused to contemplate a placard describing a helicopter crash.

Laila seized the oppurtunity. She picked up the photo album with the dead bodies and poured over it with morbidly.

“Laila-put that down!”

Childood’s over, kids!

My dad lost a friend in the war.

I remember this distinctly, because he came back from a business trip in Washington DC with a rubbing of the man’s name.

It was just laying around and I needed a scrap of paper to do watercolors, so I painted over it, not knowing what it was.

I was 8. He was upset.

Sorry, Dad.

I meant to make that up to him today. My damn phone ran out of batteries. I couldn’t call and get the name and make up for the incident of ’88.

One of the few times I’ve ever seen my dad real cut up was over his friend who died in Vietnam.

Not over the watercolors, but much, much later, when he got a letter in the mail from a high school classmate and shared it with me.

He spent his junior and senior year at an American school in Belgium because my grandfather was a chemist who ran some kind of factory out there.

The letter told the story of how their friend and classmate at the American school had died in Vietnam. We’d looked him up in the yearbook after Big Al read me the letter. The dead soldier had been beloved, the class clown. He was one of the names. He died violently, but it was fast.

There is closure in knowing how it ended. Even when the details are awful.

Near the wall a man crouched on the ground and worked out a watercolor painting of a path cutting into woods.

I was curious about the work but I left him alone.

Drawing and painting and writing can get us through trauma.

Anyway, I hoped the man drawing at the wall felt peace near the names of his friends.

Eli was real glum about the wall until he decided to try to get a bird to land on his finger, with no success.

Then we got to the Washington Monument, or rather, a pond just beyond it. Not the Reflecting Pool, an actual pond.

The kids did not stand in awe of this national treasure towering over the pond. The gravel on the path on the other hand? They were enchanted.

Eli stands in awe of tidy taxpayer gravel pathway, pockets it.

Eli pocketed a fistful for his collection, shoving it into the pocket of his blue Puma. Laila threw sprays of it into the pond.

“CUT IT OUT KIDS,” I hollared, peering around for Big Brother. “THAT’S TAXPAYER GRAVEL.”

It was warm but shards of ice left over from a cold snap begged to be stomped on, broken apart, and thrown onto more thawing ice on the water.

“I’m tryin’ to crack it!” Eli said real wild-in-the-eyes like.

We moved on.

No more sanctity. Mommy was tired. So, so tired.

“And here we have George Washington’s penis,” I told Mark. “GO AHEAD KIDS AND HAVE A RUN AROUND NOW!”

The kids sprinted around the yellow grass encircling the monument, playing a game called ‘Evil bus driver,’ inspired by the bus ride to the monuments. Inexplicably. The driver on the city bus was very nice.

Laila shared that, in her opinion, bad characters in stories are more interesting. I told her I had to agree. She leads all sibling dramatic interpretations, and therefore, the bus driver (Eli) would be evil. And she would be just the girl to stop him.

‘ol George is undergoing maintenance “indefinitely,” according to a sign.

The elevators need fixing. I bet. Well, it wasn’t happening that day. Government shutdown!

The bookstore at the base of the monument was open during the shutdown.

The bathrooms?

“Closed due to the shutdown,” so reported the clerk.

OK, government.

You do you.

We headed home.

Eli discovers war, shutdowns There is a way to behave at a memorial. "Here we are. Abe Lincoln, kids. NO RUNNING AT ABE'S MEMORIAL.

This time of year, part deux

It’s Christmastime.

And my mood swing on wheels has arrived.

My family made it from Oklahoma to Maryland.

I don’t think I understood how leaving ahead of them, and being away just shy of eight weeks would thrash at my heart. But it did! And it hurt! And it made me cry under my hood on trains among strangers and listen to podcasts about other peoples’ depression while I wondered if mine had…

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This time of year

It’s that time of year.

Christmastime.

And it’s not for everyone! In fact, I’m writing this for people who don’t love Christmas.

I kinda do. And I kinda don’t.

And this year it’s more like – don’t.

I recently wrote about depression and anxiety. Then, I buttoned it up, information-wise.

Partly, because I got so busy. Partly, because I am afraid my depression and anxiety are back. I haven’t felt…

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Dear little one, on your 5th birthday

Dear little one,

I am your mommy and I’m not prone to gushy outbursts like what will directly follow. No, I hide behind humor and sarcasm, much of the time. But today I’d like to make an exception.

For your birthday.

You are my 5-year-old boy today.

I can’t help but think back to your joyous (pain-free, drug-addled, thank you modern medicine) birth. I can’t help but think back to the chaos that…

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Parents: Cant find LOL Surprise! Big Surprise ? This form letter from Santa is for you!

In the spirit of Christmas, I give you the following form letter for parents whose children want an LOL Surpise! Big Surprise, like my daughter, Laila. As far as I can tell, this toy is sold out everywhere.

But will she be glum come Christmas morning. Of course not. She’s about to receive a note from the North.

Santa’s helpers: No, don’t go on Amazon and pay double from the profiteering a-holes.…

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Kids like Eli lose in the GOP tax and budget bills: MAKE A PHONE CALL TODAY for #givingtuesday

Hello. This giving Tuesday, I am asking for your help on one thing on behalf of my son Eli, who has a fatal disease called cystic fibrosis. It’s not cash. It’s time for a pair of phone calls.

For giving Tuesday, please make a phone call to your senators on behalf of medically complex kids like Eli.

Call your senators TODAY 202-224-3121 and tell them GOP tax and budget bills will hurt children…

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4 ways illness makes you thankful

I am in an airport and I’ve fully turned into my mother. I am wearing pennyloafers. Mine happen to be silver. But still. Penny loafers. Is it 1994? I ate fries for breakfast. And a burger. I’m calling it brunch. Another Gayle move. It happened to be Smashburger and not a kamikaze mission into Mickey D’s. But still. I’m thinking a lot about my mom this week.

She died in 2010 of esophageal cancer.…

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Eli goes to Washington

I’ve arrived in Washinton, DC, and it’s permament.

And now it’s Saturday morning, 20 days after my plane landed.

My family isn’t here yet, technically, physically.

I carry them all around like magic.

Eli is with me right now, sitting on my heart playing choo choos, for instance.

But how did this all happen?

I’ve been thinking a lot about that.

To get here, in a little suburb right outside the…

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Eli, hug magnet

Eli loves school.

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He brings his teacher random presents: zinnia heads (always missing the stem) from the garden. Paper-duct tape-marker sculptures. He brings us stories: About his new best friend Hank, mixing it up on the playground. He comes home on occasion with his school shirt covered in red dirt. He’s not supposed to dig, but manages to evade the playground…

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WTF Just Happened? The week in review

WTF Just Happened? The week in review (a day late).

WTF is happening in the world?

Please do this ASAP do not delay!

Please call your lawmakers ASAP and tell them to oppose the utter shit Graham/Cassidy bill. It does not support people with cystic fibrosis or sick people or the elderly. Sixteen patient and provider groups oppose the bill, including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

It would…

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I started planning our trip to the Grand Canyon with the following Google search:

“How to die at the Grand Canyon.”

Oh. Dear. Me.

There are so many ways to die at the Grand Canyon!

Seven hundred seventy people have died at the Grand Canyon since 1869!

There’s even an incredible interactive map about ways to die at the Grand Canyon. Like you can wear 3D glasses and look at it. And it’s based on a book! Tourists fall off the rim! People are murdered! And a mule even fell on one unlucky soul!

Should I read the book? No I should not.

Thirty six hours and 17 minutes and 3 seconds later I emerged from the interactive map.

Somehow I still wanted to go to the Grand Canyon.

We’ll just have to put Eli on a leash, I thought.

Word spread among the family about where we were headed.

It was February 2016.

We received a letter in the mail from our nephew, Alex.

Alex lives in Milwaukee and along with most of my niece and nephews and family sprinkled all over the Midwest, we don’t get to visit Alex more than once a year, which I feel like shit about, all year long!

Mark opened this delightful little envelope to a hand-written note explaining a real big problem.

Alex had been flattened by a bulletin board. He’d slipped himself into a paper envelope and hoped to go with us on our upcoming trip to the Grand Canyon. Ya know, like the story, Flat Stanley, which his class happened to be reading.

I may not be the greatest auntie, one to remember birthdays and attend ball games — but this, this I could help do.

Alex you are about to get a mothaf*ckin A+. It. Is. Written.

When I get an idea in my head, such as, but not limited to, “Our family should see the Grand Canyon,” we’re going to go see the damn Grand Canyon.

Can I pause for a sec to say travel is so first world it’s not even funny. It’s sick, really. Even “budget” travel. The ambitious trips we go on come in around $2K. But that’s a lot for us. That’s a lot for most Americans. Too much, actually.

I would like to rename travel ‘adventure.’ Because you can have an adventure at the park, and then you don’t have to feel bad that you can’t go traveling.

WTF ever how were we going to pay for this? I’m not going to sit here and pretend that piece was easy to figure out.

I’m also going to throw out here that Eli have cystic fibrosis makes me want to do a lot of stuff fast. See the ocean. Check, by 1.5 he’d been there. Now he’s 3. Grand Canyon.

Easy peasy not easy I needed to sell something.

My soul?

Nah, how about some words. Some dark, terrible, awful words.

I slung some extra and it ruined our lives for all of February, the exception being the people I wrote about, who were motivated to tell the story of how rural sheriff’s deputies shot and killed their son in the midst of his mental health crisis and in the middle of the family living room in front of his girlfriend. That was back a whole year and a half ago when Al Jazeera America existed and paid well for me to go do off-the-radar stories in Native America. For digital, a buck a word is pretty damn good, and I would eventually write 3,500 like a good little reporter paid by the word. I arrived in Duncan, Okla. “Al Jazeera…America?” a local mulled it over. He asked if I was in the Muslim Brotherhood. It jazzes suspicion up to say “Hi, I’m a freelance reporter for Al Jazeera America,” in rural Oklahoma, as it turned out.

But once we established I was not in the Muslim Brotherhood, this source I met, literally, at the random, in a neighborhood where all the private wells were contaminated by Halliburton, one of the most powerful entities in the state and fuggetabout this little town, drove me around and told me everything I needed to know.

Yes, I got in the car with a total stranger.

At one point we pulled up to a home that Halliburton bought because it contaminated the groundwater. A security guy rolled up and parked, and this gent I was with flored it in his Jeep. Rapid shifted us on outta there. OK that was probably unnecessary but it was pretty exciting.

“See, see what I mean?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, thinking the security guard was actually probably just on his phone.

The guy with the Jeep never made the story. But he made the story. And I got out alive in the town that Halliburton owned.

And yes, I got in the car with a stranger who had accused me of being an Islamic extreemist not moments before.

But Goddammit we were going to go to the Grand Canyon. And I needed a local.

I needed a keeper.

Have you watched ‘The Keepers?’ It’s a supersad documentary about awful things that happened to Catholic schoolgirls. The takeaway for my purposes is to tell you when you’re on a story that involves a mystery or a general lack of justice, find the keepers. The keepers will tell you all you need to know.

I wrote.

In came the check and off we went.

We packed a bunch of stuff into the car, including Flat Alex. He played with Laila and Eli for a while before I slipped him into a side pocket of my messenger bag. No problem, buddy. So far Alex proved himself a quiet and agreeable little chap. Laila and Eli – take note.

We loaded up the family truckster and hopped on Interstate 40 in Oklahoma City and headed West. Our overall destination for the first leg of this Grand Canyon-bound sojourn: Santa Fe, New Mexico.

En route, Mark got a grand idea. Thirty years ago, at age 5, he’d been on a road trip with his parents and three sisters. Outside of Amarillo, Texas, at a Route 66 roadside attraction, the family stopped at so-called Cadillac Ranch, a line of half-buried Caddies in the Texas dirt. We decided to do the same thing.

Roughly 32 mood swings (none from Alex) , four hours and 260 miles later, we arrived in Amarillo. West of town, there they were, in a pasture, beyond a barbed wire fence, those half-buried Cadillacs jutting up from the earth that Mark remembered. Lots of people had the same idea we did, to get out of the car on this bright and sunny day and check out this tourist trap/art installation.

As we approached, Mark noticed things had changed in 30 years.

He did remember, at 5, seeing the cars. He didn’t remember so many people. Fifty or 75 milled around. There wasn’t spray paint back then either. A lot of people bought spray paint from a little girl and her dad out of the back of a pickup at the entrance. Word on the street was she was saving for a trip to Six Flags. She sold Diet Cokes and waters too. I noted I should have brought my daughter’s Girl Scout cookies out here and set up shop.

Man, was it dusty out in that field. The combination of wind, dust and aersosol paint did not make for a pleasant experience.

I immediately freaked out about Eli’s lungs.

We shouldn’t be here, in the dust and the fumes. This was ludicrous.

Who were these yahoos who thought it was an awesome idea to spray aerosol paint in the wind? Further polluting the supposed allure of the Cadillac Ranch? These people next threw empty spray cans on the ground.

And guess what Eli wanted to do – Pick up every half empty paint can he could find and see how it worked, of course! When I 86’d that little initiative, he dissed the spray cans for the colored lids, which made convenient shovels with which to mess around with the sticky, red, dusty dirt.

Ughghghghhg.

It was then I discovered Alex had a social conscience:

We snapped a few photos, including one in which I pretended this place was awesome.

Total lie.

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I worried not only about Eli’s lungs but that dear Alex would fall victim to a Texas panhandle wind gust.

Every time we took Flat Alex out, we so worried for his safety. There were toddler hands. There was wind.

We exited and piled back into the car, vowing never to return.

Hey, Laila – did you like it the Cadillac Ranch?

“No, I didn’t like it.”

Eli-how about you?

“No.”

Right.

Next stop: Santa Fe.

In attempt at vacation cost control, we booked a campsite in the middle of Santa Fe at Los Suenos RV Park & Campground. We don’t have an RV – we have a tent. The Trip Advisor reviews seemed solid and staff were super friendly on the phone.

As we rolled along I-40 and into New Mexico, our elevation hit more than 7000 feet compared to just 1200 feet in Oklahoma, which was once the bottom of an ocean. Rolling Texas hills opened up into scrubby plains-mesa, where we saw antelope crossing signs, but no antelopes, jack rabbits and wild turkeys. We drove through a small dust storm.

Then a snow storm hit.

Wait, what? Cuz we were camping and I didn’t pack for snow and cold temps.

Like we really didn’t have enough blankets for a snowstorm. What is this the Oregon Trail?

Oh dear God, night was falling.

What were we going to do?

And would we even survive?

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Grand Canyon, chasm of death, the road trip: ‘No, I’m not in the Muslim Brotherhood,’ followed by apocalypse in Texas panhandle I started planning our trip to the Grand Canyon with the following Google search: "How to die at the Grand Canyon."

#Grand Canyon #spring break

npr

For the first time, scientists have carefully analyzed all the critters in a kitchen sponge. There turns out to be a huge number. Despite recent news reports, there is something you can do about it.

1. Keep the sponge away from raw meat. “If you’re dealing with raw juices from meat or poultry, you should be using paper that can be disposed of,” Jennifer Quinlan, a food microbiologist at Drexel University says.

2. Don’t keep sponges around for too long. “I replace mine every one to two weeks,” she says. “That’s reasonable to me.”

3. Clean the sponge every few days. The USDA recommends putting it in the dishwasher with a heated dry cycle, or wetting the sponge and popping it in the microwave for a minute.

Microwaving the sponge will knock down the bacteria living in it by about a million-fold, scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported back in 2009. Of course, this method will leave many still alive since there are billions in the sponge. But the heat targets the dangerous ones, Quinlan says.

“It doesn’t sterilize the sponge,” she says. “But remember, the bacteria we want to kill are the ones that will make you sick.”

So Your Kitchen Sponge Is A Bacteria Hotbed. Here’s What To Do

Illustration: Joy Ho for NPR

It’s Monday, Sept. 11. Just getting caught up? Here is the news you can use:

WTF is happening in the world

Irma. Lord, Irma.

It’s Sept. 11 again. Here’s a column about that grim morning’s first victim more than a decade and a half ago.

WTF is happening on this blog

I’m still writing about my mental health. It is something I’ve been weighing since I started this blog five days after Eli was born, nearly five years ago, because stuff was happening that I did’t understand, to him, to us.

I hate mom blogs. They’re so predatory. Parents with ill children who blog about their children are probably the worst of the worst.

BTW, look at my adorable click bait!

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My point is, it felt increasingly gross and insincere writing about our lives and especially my son, when I was experiencing an illness also. One I pretended wasn’t there.

Now that I’ve acknowledged my ongoing mental health battles and upkeep, I find myself in the midst of some kind of creative surge. I’m rolling with it. My heart is open to it.

I’m finding inspo here, there and everywhere, from conversations with friends old and new to rather canned places like my ‘inspiration quote of the day’ setting in Google Allo.

Which I kind of take issue with. Because about 90 percent of the quotes are from men.

But one did speak to me.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”-Mahatma Gandhi.

I’d heard it before.

But I thought about it in light of my new openness about mental health here.

I’d like to live in a world where people aren’t ashamed of mental illness.

In that world, individuals wouldn’t turn to alcohol and drugs and addiction over admitting mental illness.

There is a wide spectrum of ruin that results because of shame, up to the destruction of families and suicide. The damage addiction inflicts can last generations.

To change that we – this generation – need to start talking about mental health. A lot. Within our own families and to our own friends and in the world at large. The stigma needs to die, and we need to kill it. Stigma, I cut you.

And while I’m on this bender, I’m going to add that I’d like to live in a world where the lives of the sick aren’t turned to ruin by the rigged system that both saves and destroys them.

We can do better by the sick. They deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, too. Their stories matter. Are real. Are happening. I’m going to try to tell those stories more often.

So there’s that.

I am trying meditation as a way to deal with my new best friend anxiety.

Wow is it hard to find 10 interrupted minutes.

Laila read to Charley the dog, and you couldn’t have punched the smile off of my face.

Eli painted the county lock up. About ten times.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 800-273-TALK (8255).

If you have questions about mental illness, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness help line: 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or [email protected]

The NAMI HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 am–6 pm, ET.

This is now

I finished reading “Little House in the Big Woods” to Laila.

“This is now.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote those lovely, simple words. and I thought them to myself today whilst lazing around on the couch with Laila, Eli and Mark, chatting, watching the tele and having a cozy nap.

“This is now…now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”

WTF Just Happened? The week in review It's Monday, Sept. 11. Just getting caught up? Here is the news you can use: WTF is happening in the world…

#family #inspiration #Mental health #news #news recap #quotes

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