The Road Not Traveled (by the Google Cam vehicle, that is)

When I can't afford the trip to do research, I like "driving around" the neighborhoods I'm writing about on google maps.  However, I don't like it if the road ends just when it's getting interesting... it's like those driving video games that don't let you go off-road, into the field, through caves and caverns, and crash through the walls into an occasional kitchen, funeral parlor, or wedding venue...  



When I came to this roadblock, I couldn't help but wish the google maps driver had defiantly barreled through it, snagging a part of the barricade that would continue to drag and flap in front of the camera for the next 2.5 miles, scooping up the occasional road kill specimen and sending it airborne into the picture, causing viewers to cry out: "UFO's in Cleveland!?! Flying Chupacabra???"

[Virtual] Life (and research) would be so much more interesting if google cam drivers weren't intimidated by warning signs and roadblocks.  I mean, if Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves can do this in a clunky old bus...

...can't a google cam driver in a car that maneuvers more easily at least try???  Don't they realize that they are the modern pioneers,  blazing the only trails our cellular devices will allow us to explore?   

Don't tell me none of you ever think the same thing.  Please, don't tell me.

My Lost Birthday Buddy (with A Dramatic Monologue)

Back when we lived in Wyndmere, North Dakota

I know it's not the same as having a twin, but somehow it adds extra cement to the bond when siblings have birthdays in close proximity to each other.  My boys' birthdays are only 11 days apart--that makes the month of May a special time that they share. Amber & I had birthdays just 12 days apart in July. As a kid, I remember her birthday was always the sign that mine was coming soon (and for kids, that is a pretty big deal.) 

Those who have suffered the loss of a loved one know that there are specific times when the ache is intensified, even after years have passed. Amber's birthday is a tough day for me now, but mine isn't the same without her to celebrate it with, either. It helps to pull out the old pictures and remember the good times together.

I've declared the month of July sister appreciation month (at least for myself). Those of you who still have a sister with you in this world, enjoy her! 

We didn't take as many pictures back when I was growing up as my kids do now, but the pictures in my head are still vivid and plentiful.  I thought I'd jot a few random memories down in memory of Amber and in celebration of sisters:

ON SHARING A ROOM:

Even though sharing a room with a sister was a royal pain at times, I am so thankful that we didn't have a big enough house to have our own rooms.  When we lived in Schuler--before Amber came into the family--our three bedrooms were distributed like so: (1) parents' room, (2) kids' room (shared by myself and two brothers), and (3) my dad's office.  Then, there came a day when my brothers (or at least my older brother) decided that I no longer belonged in their room.  They wanted a Boys' Room, so I had to go.  

My dad graciously moved his office to the basement, and I suddenly found myself with a room of my own.  I wasn't used to sleeping alone in a dark room all by myself, and I think it was around that time that my sleep-walking got kind of out of control.  I remember waking up in my parents' bed many a morning and not remembering how I got there.  I guess I just didn't like being alone.  

It was around that time that I decided I needed a sister.  I vaguely remember my mom trying to explain that it wasn't as easy as just wanting a baby.  I may have been too young to understand the concept of fertility, but I was old enough to understand the Public Service Announcements that Canadian television ran at that time promoting adoption.  The ads made it sound pretty easy, and before long there was a crib set up in my bedroom, awaiting my sister.

The day we went to pick up Amber, I remember taking one of my favorite baby dolls--a homemade "sock" doll--and placing it in Amber's crib. This was finally going to be The Girls' Room--PLURAL--just like The Boys' Room that I had been kicked out of was plural, and The Parents' Room that I would sleep-walk to was plural.  I wasn't going to be alone anymore.  It was so exciting!  I wanted to share my room, and I wanted to share my dolls.

There was a waiting room at the adoption agency.  It was nice that they had some toys in that room because we had to wait a LONG time.  I guess my parents had paperwork to finalize, and social workers to talk to.  At first it was just my brothers and me playing with the toys in the waiting room, but eventually, a little girl with dark curly hair and a kind of funny way of walking came in.  I guess she had just recently had braces removed from her legs, and hadn't yet learned that her knees were capable of bending.  She saw the toy that I was playing with and without hesitation, she hobbled over and took it from me.  That's not fair!  Everyone knows the rules--I had it first and I wasn't going to let this rule-breaker get away with it.  I grabbed the toy back, and the little girl started to cry.  My mom intervened, not defending the fact that I had the toy first, but rather by taking the toy from me and just giving it to the little girl.  She then whispered to me something about letting Amber play with the toy because we needed to play nicely so the people could see that we could get along.  This was important, she said.  That is how I met my sister, and that is when I first had second thoughts about whether I wanted a sister.  As soon as we got home, I rushed to my bedroom and took back the rag doll I had put in Amber's crib.  I had changed my mind.

As the years sped by, sharing a room meant that Amber and I were together a lot.  Sure, we fought, just like all siblings do, but I remember a whole lot more playing together.  Amber was funny.  Since she wasn't used to being able to bend her knees, she had developed and interesting way of sitting down on the floor when she wanted to play:  She would run, do a little jump, spin around in a half-circle, flinging her legs straight out in front of her and landing on her seat with a thump.  We had hard wood floors, not carpeting, so the thud would echo every time.  Once she was out of her diapers and without as much padding, we thought she would get hurt doing this, but she was a tough kid.  She had discovered that people found her antics amusing, and she would laugh as she landed.

We moved to the States not too long after adopting Amber.  That was the third move in my life, and yet another followed just a few years later.  Having a sister provided continuity, when I was constantly being uprooted from my friends (or living in fear of the next move.)  It was nice that Amber was younger than me, too, because that gave me an excuse to play dolls even after most of my peers had decided they were too old for such things--I was just doing it for her (wink, wink).  And because Amber was younger, I had a roommate right up until I left for college (where I also had a roommate)--you could say that she prepared me for the fact that I would have to share for most of the rest of my life.

A rare photo-shoot inspired by the movie, Desperately Seeking Susan

ON LIVING APART:

Since we had summer birthdays, even after I left for college, we were able to spend most of our birthdays together.  The first four summers after my early high school graduation, I had summer jobs in North Dakota, close to where the family was living at the time.  Amber was so excited the first time she got to come and spend her birthday with me at my first apartment in Park River, ND.  I don't think she knew how equally excited I was.  It was such a joy to be able to bake a cake for her in my very own kitchen and decorate it with childlike fancy (and animal crackers and candy.)  It was just the two of us that birthday--it was an exercise in pretending to be grown-up.  We decided we wanted to go out for dinner a little late in the day, and we ended up driving from small town to small town in the forsaken middle-of-nowhere looking for a restaurant that was open.  I don't think we ever found one, but we did have cake, so that part was a success.

By the time Amber was expecting her first child, I was living miles away in California.  I was so thrilled about having a niece that I went to an expensive toy store and picked out the best teddy bear they had.  I think it was wearing yellow corduroy overalls.  I couldn't afford it, but then I couldn't afford not to get it--I'd just have to cut back on other things that month.  I'd find a way.  

And Amber loved flowers.  I remember the first time she sent me flowers for my birthday.  The flowers arrived without a card and I thought they were from my husband, but he didn't take credit--in fact, it seemed he might even have been a bit jealous over these flowers from a mystery admirer.  When I figured out they were from Amber, I was so touched.  That's when I realized she had really grown up.  It may seem like a little thing--ordering flowers--but the fact that she had remembered my birthday and taken the initiative to make the day special for me caused me to see her in a new light.  She was doing what I had done with the animal cracker cake in my little apartment in Park River.  She was asserting her own independent creativity to celebrate this bond we had--without a mommy there to remind her or help her.  She wasn't just another signature on the family card.  And after that first time, came many more bouquets in recognition of birthdays and babies and even an occasional "just because."

ON SAYING "GOOD BYE"

We had a preview of things to come when Amber was eight years old.  She got sick, and the doctors who examined her suspected leukemia.  She would have to come back for more tests.  My parents  immediately put her on our church's prayer chain and a lot of people were praying for her.  When she went back to the doctor, we were told that there must have been some mistake with the earlier tests.  There was no sign of leukemia.  Amber was fine.  She had a ninth birthday, and a tenth--a couple more decades of birthdays.

This painting was made from a school picture of Amber at the age when she exhibited blood platelet symptoms that made the doctors suspect leukemia in Viroqua, WI

After the birth of her first child, there were more blood platelet issues.  Amber was not fine.  She was eventually diagnosed with Fanconi Anemia, a genetic disease that typically leads to bone marrow failure, leukemia, and cancer.  It is tragically common for Fanconi Anemia patients to get leukemia and die of bone marrow failure by the age of eight--the age when the doctors had first suspected leukemia.  Amber lived another 20 years.  I do count those years a miracle, but even with such a blessing, it was almost unbearably hard to say goodbye.  (I've touched on that in a previous blog.) 

I no longer have my birthday buddy.  That's a change that is hard to get used to.  After the passing of Amber's first birthday "away from us," I wrote a monologue that was inspired by this struggle of getting through significant days without the people who made the days significant in the first place.  I'm going to share that monologue for the very first time online here.  I'm probably too close to this to know if it's of any dramatic value, and not just self-indulgent therapy.  Maybe I'll do something more with it one of these days, but for now, it is what it is...

 

“AUGUST 15”

A monologue by Rebekah Score

SARAH

I appreciate you wanting to help, but there’s really nothing you can do, nothing to say. 

Could you, could you just sit there?

And don’t say anything.  Don’t look at me, either. 

      (beat)

It’s August 15. 

Her birthday.  August 15, and I can’t even remember her face.

I called in sick today.  Sick.  No one else knows... why I...

You know what I want? 

I want to rip open my chest and lay on the earth.  I’m so numb there’d be no pain, just my blood pouring into the ground.  I’d stretch and grasp till the dirt and plants became part of me. 

Still I’d be empty. 

I just want to hold her.  I know she’s not in the ground, not in that cold, cold casket. 

Your churchy explanations don’t help.  You don’t know where she is anymore than I do. 

I’ve heard people say... that when some one they loved – passes – after such a long battle with sickness, they look into the face and see peace and they feel relieved.

Relieved. 

I looked.  I looked and you know what I saw?

Nothing.  Nothing at all.  It was like I was standing in that room with a total stranger.  The nurses couldn’t see it.  Maybe that’s why they hadn’t warned me.  She really was... gone. 

Oh, sure, they said, “She’s gone;” but that’s just what they’re supposed to say.  It’s just a line.  When I walked in that room, I still expected to see my little sister.  I said, “This is all a joke, right?  Come on, Heather, sit up!  Open your eyes.  I know you hear me—you have to hear me!  Can’t you give me some sign?”

I didn’t say that to— to her. 

Instead, I focused on the little molecules of dust dancing in the air. 

I hated her—that corpse—nothing but a vicious actress standing in for my sister—

I hurried out into the hall.  Had to find her. 

I had felt a strange sensation when I passed by the children’s ward on the way to her room.  Maybe she had been there, but she wasn’t anymore.

August 15 is the loneliest day – We don’t call each other – the family.  It’s, it’s like no one knows what to say.  I want to say... 

-to say, “It’s August 15, Mom? Dad?  Heather would have been 25 today.”  I want to say that, and have them remind me of all the good times.  Then maybe I’d see her face.

Maybe they don’t remember either.  Maybe that’s why they’d rather just act like it was another day.

August 15^th. 

I feel like I’m standing on the outside of everything that’s real.

BLACKOUT

 

It will take the generous support of many to find a cure for Fanconi Anemia.

FA research will also benefit understanding and treatment of other cancer-related disease, especially those affecting children. 
Please consider donating to the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (which means your donations are tax exempt)
www.fanconi.org
or mail in a donation to
Fanconi Anemia Research Fund
1801 Willamette Street, Suite 200
Eugene, OR 97401

Carmageddon, Water Falling from the Sky, and the Shopping Habits of Stars

For a place with such a laid-back reputation, there sure are a lot of big deals made over small stuff in L.A.  Shouldn’t that be expected, though?  When you concentrate so many drama-majors in such a small area, is it any surprise that drama rules? 

Almost every newbie to L.A. stands frozen, jaw dropped at least momentarily the first time they see the news coverage about a little water falling from the sky and wetting the concrete of the L.A. River -- “STORM WATCH 2011!!!  Quick!  Find!!  Your!!!  Umbrella!!!!  Before it’s TOO LATE!!!!!  You might want to rethink your weekend plans because the roads will be... [duh, duh, duh...] damp.” 

Now we have CARMAGEDDON!!!!!  It’s the end of life as we know it in the Southland, and because WE are the center of everything, the devastation could be far-reaching.  I’ve heard reports on how the economies of the entire world will be upset by this temporary glitch in the traffic grid so close to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport).

Some have compared the hoopla over this weekend’s closure of a small segment of the 405 Freeway to the Y2K scare.  I think it’s even bigger than Y2K--because Y2K belonged to the entire world, but this--this is our own personal disaster--and if it’s all about us, it’s gotta be BIG!!! 

Friends from the Midwest often ask me, “How can you stand it?”  Well, you know what?  I actually find it charming.  It’s like that silly friend in junior high who never quite got the jokes, but was a hoot to have around just for the entertainment value of her clueless gaze and delayed reactions.  (Yep, that was me, and I even fell for that line about how “they’re really not laughing at you, they’re laughing with you.”)  So, LA-LA Land is home, and I finally fit in.  My dramatic exaggerations don’t seem so out of place.  And even if it looks like we’re all taking ourselves way too seriously here, we do get the irony of it all... eventually.


P.S.  Don't tell any of the locals that the traffic isn't really that bad out there... until Sunday night....  The media scare tactics worked, the gullible are boarded up in their apartments, and the streets are wide open for the daring, the brave, the heroic, the [duh, duh, duh...] the unemployed actor who just realized he's out of Pop Tarts and decided to brave the scary streets of L.A. to restock before tonight's Carmageddon Staycation Marathon.  

 

Time Travel & Linear Intent

 

Sometimes the best way to learn something new about yourself is by traveling backward in time to face a truth you refused to face at the time it was current.

My work is all about digging in the past now, as I’ve been hired to write the script for a biographical feature film.  Structure and meaning rise out of the research, out of the excavation--pieces of this amazing man’s past connect to his present and the path he is on makes more sense when it is unified in “the big picture.”   

People understand such indulgence in the past for a project such as this--a grand life is different from an ordinary life--the origins matter.  In my own life, however, I’m met with resistance when I dig.  People want everything to be in a neat, tidy line.  The past is a distant echo, not worth listening to. 

Last year I wrote a blog entitled “Being Lovely” in which I noted the importance of living in the present as opposed to being consumed by yearning for something in the future--something we have yet to become.  That wasn’t such a novel idea--living in the present is a pretty popular notion... presently.  Like so many sound bytes, however, “Living in the present” is not as simple as it may sound. 

“I need to remember that it's not about becoming, but rather about being. It is through being that we become...” I wrote...

but that wasn’t the whole story.  I went on to consider that

“...being comes from clearly seeing ‘whatever is true.’” 

Seeing.  That is important.  Just like listening.  Sometimes that distant echo alerts us to something we need to take a closer look at.

While it is true that “living in the past” can rob us of fullness in the present, ignoring that distant echo can also rob us of fullness when it comes to the big picture--it can rob us of integrity, which I believe is essential to authentic living. 

When most people think of integrity, the primary definition that comes to mind is the idea of high moral standards or professional ethics.  That is only the outer exhibition of the heart of integrity.  Moral and ethical behaviors are meaningless, and likely to falter, if they don’t spring from within.  In my opinion, definition two and definition three of the word integrity are the things we need to strive for:

2. the state of being complete or undivided

3. the state of being sound or undamaged
      (Encarta World English Dictionary)

Our world is so full of fragmentation.  We have our professional lives and our personal lives, our public persona and our private persona, and then we also have the linear segments that we sort into tidy little containers.  My old photos are in albums or boxes according to their place in time.  Digital photos are time-stamped so as to be filed away where they belong.  When this system gets mixed up, it’s a problem to be fixed.  In this mad-dash forward--always forward--we are prone to forget where we come from, but that’s okay, we tell one another.  The past is gone.  Let it be.

Does anyone else ever stop to think that we might have it all wrong?  I posed this question on my facebook a while back:

“Do you think life is intended to be linear?” 

Only four people replied.  I loved my brother’s reply: [which somehow disappeared before I had a chance to answer--he may have decided to delete it, but fortunately, I had multiple tabs open, and was able to find one that still had his reply intact]

“I.e., linear intent + gravity -> parabolic course.  Replace gravity with drama, or confuse the two, as often happens, for hyperbolic results.” 

I won’t even pretend to understand the science behind his obvious humor, but I will say that this comment may have come closer than some of the others to the heart of what I was grappling with when I posted the question.  I’m not nearly as smart as my brother, but I am a dictionary geek.  I love to look up words, even when I think I know what they mean, because I always seem to discover nuances and connections that I might not have otherwise recognized.  (And with the advance of technology, looking up things online presents incredibly enticing bunny-trails much to the satisfaction of the A.D.D. in me.)

Parabolic course.  Parabolic.  Google is like Calgon... Google, take me away....  I meet an educator named “Mr. Ree” and delight in his lesson plan on Parabolic Curves.  I stumble upon an article written by a physicist that references the movie, Source Code.  Oops.  Spoiler alert.  I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t read on until I do so.  It’s not on Netflix Instant View yet, but it is still showing on the big screen at the cheap theatre down the road (and probably not for much longer because it’s down to one 9:25pm showing a day).  I manage to make it to the movie just a couple days before it closes, then head home and read the article. 

It’s all connected.  One of my favorite concepts in science fiction has always been time-travel or time-manipulation.  This journey through research for my work, self-analysis for my psychological well-being, picking friends’ brains with seemingly random questions, searching words that jump out at me.... it’s all connected in a beautiful web that strengthens me and makes me feel more sound, more complete... it may sound like a very strange process, but I find it very healing.

When I think of the third definition of integrity, “being... undamaged,” I am reminded that I have been damaged.  I think we all have at one point or another--life does that.  More word study, more word twisting...  Damaged.  Undamaged.  Are they opposites?  Or are they more like different states of the same thing?  “Un” can mean an opposite state of being--the negative of the root word, but it can also refer to a process--a reversal of an action or a state of being.  One could look at the word “undamaged” and say that you either are or you’re not--undamaged, that is.  But what if we took the word “damage” as a verb instead of a static state of being and applied that prefix in its active capacity... could not “undamaging” be looked at as a process--a reversal (a redemptive act) rather than the state prior to damage? 

So, I saw the movie, Source Code.  I won’t get into the details of the plot, but basically it is about going back (after some damage has already been done), not to undo that damage, but to get information that will help prevent future damage from being done.  The question of whether something can be “undamaged” or whether preventing future damage is the best we can do, is central to the story.  Either way, one must go back to the source--the root of the state of being, the impetus of the current course.  This message resonates with me.  When you’re on a track, speeding along, and braking is not an option, ignoring the past can be deadly.

Long story short, THAT is why I am drawn to examine my past--not so that I can dwell in it, but rather out of concern about averting accidents on the track ahead, and so that I can learn the true meaning of integrity--by being an integrated person.  It seems to me that a complete life encompasses all at once--it's not cut up into autonomous segments, but rather the past is infinitely connected to the present and the future and not just in a brick-upon-brick manner, but more like a web in which you must go back and forth and compare and contrast and connect in order to make sense of it all.  And if one does believe in a God who is outside of time and space, in whose image we are created, that makes the interconnectedness of the entirety of our lives even more necessary to learning to see things more like God does.  

Why is it so much easier to identify patterns in the lives of others than in our own lives?  Could it be because we naturally stand back and look at the big picture when it comes to the life of an other?  Getting such perspective on self requires a level of intent that may feel awkward at first--even self-indulgent, but ultimately, it frees a person to be more truthful, more generous, and to exude integrity.  That's what I want.