July 31, 2013

End of the Month Controversy: Obamacare

I love this man.
Sixteen hours after he proposed to me, M awoke in an ambulance, rushing from his company softball game to the emergency room.

What looked initially like a stroke turned out to be a seizure, caused by several masses in his brain.

Six days later, an exploratory surgery told us that those masses were stage four astrocytoma- an incredibly malignant and aggressive brain cancer.

Three days after that, my fight with M's insurance company began. He was on an HMO, and while he had elected into "emergency" coverage, the company wanted to deny any payment for his surgery or cancer treatment.

Because the surgery wasn't an "emergency." And because, once he had the surgery, the cancer became a pre-existing condition.

We were lucky. I'm absolutely bloody terrifying, and I managed to frighten enough HMO representatives that I actually reached a person who could do something, anything, about the $100,000 bills coming in the mail for the surgery alone. That didn't even begin to cover the week he had to spend in the hospital, recovering. In fact, the only way I was able to secure their coverage was to convince M's primary care physician- a man pre-approved by the HMO- to tell his employer that he had been negligent with M's care.

The radiation guide/shield that kept M's head affixed
in the correct location to irradiate his tumors
The fact he was willing to do that still amazes me. I am grateful every day.

So there we were, newly engaged and spending every minute of every day dealing with doctors, insurance companies, and hospital staff. As I waited in lobbies day after day, I read articles in magazines about how many people were beginning to use bankruptcy to cover their cancer treatments.

They continued their treatment, going deeper and deeper into debt, and if they succeeded in saving their lives they lost their savings, their homes, everything.

But really, that seemed like a small price to pay to be alive.

Only it's not. Last month CNBC covered a study- the findings were that the most common cause for personal bankruptcy in the United States is medical debt. "Medical Bankruptcies," they're called.

But back to 2007, when M was fighting for his life.

He was in chemo and radiation, but he could not quit his job. Without his job, he would lose insurance coverage. And the minute he lost coverage, he could never get it again. And so despite the fatigue, the nausea, the pain... despite the frustrations and humiliations of going to work and suffering through seizures, he kept at it. Not because he was so tenacious (although he was), but because he had no choice.

For eighteen months, he went to work through chemotherapy. We only paid hundreds of dollars a month for his medication. Without insurance, his anti-seizure drugs would have run to the hundreds per day.

Each dose of his chemotherapy had a "street value" of more than $30,000. Each dose. That meant that over eighteen months, M's chemo alone would have cost approximately 17.2 million dollars.

And miraculously, he got better. For a whole year, things were stable, until the economy collapsed and M lost his job.

I was pregnant with DD and SI, and I couldn't walk let alone work. We both needed medical coverage- it wasn't optional. So we paid off the outrageous COBRA bills every month on credit cards, going deeper and deeper into debt. We had no choice, it was debt or death. When I rushed into the hospital in the middle of the night, hemorrhaging through a placental abruption. it was crystal clear. Having insurance was mandatory.

Handsome bald devil.
Through the first year of parenthood, M and I watched each session while Congress battled out whether or not they would extend unemployment benefits. And each time they did, I cried with relief. Even when M got a job, they did everything in their power to avoid paying for insurance. We kept shelling out thousands of dollars a month to keep our medical coverage. We tried to find other insurance, cheaper, private insurance. They would cover me and the kids, but not M. Not with his pre-existing conditions. And later, after my melanoma diagnosis, they wouldn't cover me either.

M will always have a pre-existing condition. I will always have a pre-existing condition.

Until Obamacare went into effect, just being a woman WAS a pre-existing condition.

This past week, the GOP in Congress tried for the fortieth time to get rid of Obamacare. It was an empty gesture, but one that spoke volumes.

"We don't care about you at all," they said.

"We, politicians who have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from insurance company lobbyists- we care more about that than whether you live or die."

"We don't care if you have to lose your home, your savings, everything. It should be WORTH IT just to be alive."

So what are they trying to ban?

Starting on the first of next year, a ban on denial for coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
A healthcare marketplace for people without insurance to find coverage, and subsidies for people like us a few years ago- unemployed and uninsured.
And coverage that must include prevention services- mammograms, prenatal care, the neural pathway test that could have diagnosed M as much as a year earlier.

...so where's the controversy?

The controversy is that everyone wants to make sure that this is paid for. They want to be certain that this isn't going to run the country into the ground. And yes, it is paid for. In fact, it's going to save this country (and individuals) millions to billions of dollars.

But here's the truth- the country is already being run into the ground with medical debt. Not just because of the two million people this year alone who have filed for medical bankruptcy. It's also because people who don't have coverage still get sick, and those sick people flood into publicly funded hospitals, and we as a society are paying for it anyway.

Everyone alive and healthy.
If I didn't have insurance, would I have run into a hospital, 35 weeks pregnant with twins and gushing blood? You're damn right I would have. And the hospital would have treated me, and then had to make up the difference in the $89,000 I wouldn't have been able to pay them.

That's me- one pregnant woman. And five days in the hospital cost me two years of M's gross unemployment. And that is absurd.

The controversy is that the way we buy insurance in this country is ludicrous- we never know what anything costs, what anything is worth. You go to one hospital and they charge you $2,500 for an MRI to find out if cancer is growing in your brain, you go to a different hospital for the same kind of scan in the same month and they charge you $20,000. And there's no way to know until it's happening.

You can't waltz into an ER and say, "I'm shopping for the best deal on emergency care. How much do your ambulance rides run?" or "Does YOUR mammogram come with a complimentary radiologist evaluation, or is that going to be extra?"

It's as far from free-market economy as anything gets.

So now the GOP is going around, trying to scare people away from signing on and getting coverage, now that the Obamacare marketplace is going to open up.

Don't listen.

Instead consider what you have to gain.

Life, AND livelihood.

When cancer, or diabetes, or lupus, or a car accident, or pregnancy strikes- don't tell yourself that it's worth it if you get to stay alive.

You deserve both.



Learn more about the healthcare marketplace here: HealthCare.gov

July 30, 2013

Benevolent Sexism and Guy Kawasaki


As you are undoubtedly aware, I was at BlogHer last weekend. And let me tell you, it was an amazing experience.

One of my favorite events was the Keynote with Guy Kawasaki. Right up until the Q and A.

You see, he was talking about his new book, about self publishing versus traditional publishing, and just sitting down and WRITING. He had me hooked. I kept thinking, "You know what? I'm going to go buy that book." And then it took a turn.

Dani of Martinis and Minivans stepped to the mic first. She introduced herself and her blog, and then went forward with the question. And before he answered her, Guy said this,

"You women writers come up with the best blog names."

I froze in my seat. I looked over at Janelle of Renegade Mothering and asked, "Did he really just say that?"

She nodded.

Here's the thing about whenever you put the word "woman" or "lady" or "chick" in front of a totally unisex description. It's essentially the same as saying, "I don't want to sound sexist, BUT..."

I bundled my feminist angst back into my oversized handbag and managed to tone down my frustration, but it was difficult. The way he was looking at Dani, and then at the next questioner, and then the next...

Oh tumblr, you have a gif for everything.
I gritted my teeth and listened. He was saying useful things, things that applied directly to me. Not as a woman, not as a "woman writer," but as a WRITER.

And then, as he discussed social media, he said this about Pinterest:

"I've got the wrong chromosomes for that."

And I kind of lost it.

After all, I recently had the good fortune to have a conversation about publishing and viral success with Paul Angone, author of "101 Secrets For Your 20s." Which has had so much success almost entirely because of Pinterest. And yeah, he's a dude.

And I know for a fact that he's not the only person with a penis at that massive social networking site.

And as I gritted my teeth and fumed about the Pinterest comment, Guy Kawasaki one-upped himself. He claimed he didn't have much to do with Twitter, but that he had a woman who was in charge of that. He warned the audience not to "steal her," from him, language that implies possession of another human being, and then told us that behind every great man...

You can fill in the rest.

There's a word for this kind of sexism. In fact, there are two. It's called "Benevolent Sexism," or "Pedestal Sexism." Basically, it's when men (and not always men) hold up this idea that women are somehow "better," and therefore not equal to men. It's why some women get bothered when men ostentatiously hold doors for them, imply that they are delicate flowers that need to be protected by men.

I walked out. And yes, I spent the rest of the day (and pretty much every day since) having the occasional irate conversation about the tone of that keynote.

But here's the thing- it wasn't SO bad. It wasn't like Guy Kawasaki walked into an inherently feminist event and told everyone there, including hundreds of cooking, shopping, mothering, and household-tips blogs, that he was glad we knew our place.

He didn't imply that writing and publishing- his domain- was something we shouldn't aim for. He didn't explicitly call women, "honey," or "little lady." He didn't leer at my chest and wolf whistle.

But what he did was illustrate that still, even somewhere as profoundly feminist as a BlogHer conference, the culture of sexism in which we live is inescapable. That it takes a constant self awareness on behalf of men and women both to realize that it's not just what you say, it's how you say it.

"Women writers" don't come up with the best names. "Writers" do. That's why they write.

Pinterest isn't only for people with vaginae. I'm pretty sure I don't have to scan my uterus to log in.

I'm also pretty sure that despite how much work she's doing to jump ahead of comments like mine, Guy Kawasaki's social media person is very much opposed to the idea that he somehow owns her.

These aren't the things he meant to say, but they are the things he said.

And I at least intend to keep calling out this type of subtle, pervasive sexism where I find it.



...I'll also probably still buy Guy's book. Because it sounds great. Even if he is a "man writer."

Finding Home In Pink Fuzzy Slippers

I am so happy to introduce today Kelly Shackelford, who is sharing her incredible story with us. I'm not kidding- INCREDIBLE. What a remarkable woman.


-----


We all know the story of Dorothy and her famous red-ruby slippers that with only one click and a wish could whisk her back home. Well, my slippers were pink and fuzzy, and they too led me on my journey to home. However for me, home was not the place I lived. The place I was beaten. Home was the shattered shards of my soul. Home was the lost girl huddled, hiding in my battered body. Home was a person I could only dream of having the courage to be again.

Yes, I was one of those women. You know, the woman you claim you would never allow yourself to be, until you become her: a battered wife. I prefer the term “functioning hostage” as that was my plight. Sure my chains were not physical. They did not have to be. The mental chains are the ones made out of titanium.

A few years after my father's suicide and after I had birthed my fourth child into a dysfunctional marriage, my only shoes were a pair of cheap flip-flops. Well, as fate, sweet and wonderful as she is would have it, one strap broke. I taped it. Nope. I glued it. Notta. I even drove a bent nail through it. Sorry chicka.

I had no shoes.
So, my abuser purchased a pair of the fuzziest, pink house shoes you can envision. It was his way of ensuring I went very few places. Yet one more link in that chain, and the first notch I would shatter to build my yellow brick road back to home.

Secretly, I had applied to Floyd College in Georgia. I knew education was my ticket out of hell. Where I could learn of Einstein and equations and how to find home. I knew within those walls held home.

A few weeks before classes started, the financial aid office called. I needed to come in that day and clear something up, or my aid would not go through in time. My heart pounded in fear. I had yet to tell him I was going to college. I was prolonging that beating.

After the call, I loaded up my four babies and headed off to the college. Pulling into the parking lot, I saw a group of young, beautiful girls. Dread filled me. On my feet were not fashionable flip-flops or flats or sneakers, but pink, fuzzy house shoes. On my feet were his chains.

Sitting there a minute, I steeled myself before climbing out of my junker with all four kids in tow. As we started through the parking lot, the group of girls turned and sneered at my Raggedy-Ann state. My stomach knotted as I have never been so ashamed. I ran with the kids back to the car and cried until there were no tears.

And then I knew I had a choice: go home and be a victim, or walk that long walk to financial aide and be a survivor. I could not be both. I had to decide. I could begin to pave my own yellow-brick road even if it meant doing so in pink, fuzzy slippers, or I could go home and wait for him to kill me one day.

So, I forced a smile and climbed out of the car. Holding my head high, I trudged on, forging a way. Showing my kids that home was a beautiful, strong, and vibrant woman not a broken soul.
Yes, I was laughed at. I was ridiculed. I was talked about. But in the end, that walk freed me. Each step, each sneer led me on and gave me courage and gumption. It ignited a fire deep within me. A burning desire , a primitive need to find home. Later that night when I told him I was going to college and he beat me, it did not hurt.

After a few years in college I left him and found me. I went on to build a stellar career as the first female project manager in the largest metal building company in the United States, and I have raised four great kids. Now, my closet bears shoes of every shape, size and color, but I treasure one priceless pair above the rest, my pink, fuzzy house shoes. Sometimes I slip them on, not to remind myself how weak I was for allowing a man to beat me, but how strong I was for finding home.


----


Kelly Haas Shackelford spends her days taking care of her ten rescue cats and her nights helping women build stronger relationships as a Romance Enhancement Specialist. You can find more of her writings at her blog, or follow her on facebook.

July 29, 2013

The Coffee Shop Encounter That I Can't Forget

Today I'm delighted to share the second Telling Stories post of this guest series- from JD at Honest Mom. She blogs about depression, parenthood, and life in general. I love JD and I'm always inspired by, well, her honesty. But more than that by her compassion. This is a story that beautifully illustrates both, and reminds me vividly of a recent encounter of my own. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.


------------------


A couple weeks ago I was at a coffee shop, doing some writing while waiting to pick up Annie.

An elderly couple came in and sat the table right next to me. The place was empty and I was wondering why they picked a table a foot away from me. But whatever. I refocused on my work.

Then a quiet, gravely voice said, “So what are you writing about?”

I looked up at the man next to me, whose earnest eyes were looking at me with genuine interest.

I told him I was doing some work. Answering emails, that sort of thing.

I saw the man’s wife, who was getting coffee and food, watching us with a slightly worried look on her face, as the man pressed me for more information.

“But what do you write about?”

I hesitated. “Well, I write about software for technology companies. And I also write about parenting and my kids.”

“Ah,” said the man. “That’s very interesting. Very different topics. Very interesting you can do both,” he said thoughtfully.

“I’m a veterinarian, you know,” he continued. “You might have heard of my practice up on Route 54?”

I shook my head no, saying I had no pets. The man went into some detail about his practice, the farm animals he cared for, and how he and a young partner were opening up a bigger practice in the next town over.

I nodded politely as the man’s wife sat down with their cupcakes and drinks, and he turned his attention back to her.

With that, I went back to my writing. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman suddenly get up and tuck her husband’s scarf into his coat. She let her hand linger on his face as she whispered in his ear, and then held his gaze for a while.

It was a subtle exchange, filled with tenderness and meaning. As she searched his eyes, I felt like I was intruding on a private moment, and quickly averted my own eyes back to my computer.

A few minutes later, the wife got up to go to the ladies’ room. And then I heard the gravely voice again:

“So what are you writing about?”

The man was staring at me again, expectantly. Confused, I said, “Right now?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “What do you write about?”

I opened my mouth to answer and then realized the man had no idea he had already asked me these questions.

He stared at me with eyes that said he’d never seen me before.

I answered softly, “I write about software. And also about parenting and my kids.”

“Ah,” said the man, processing this. “That’s very interesting you can do both. Such different topics,” he nodded. And then he brightened. “Did you know I’m a veterinarian? I have a practice up on Route 54.”

I looked at him, my heart aching. My eyes got watery as I smiled and said, “No. That’s great. What kind of veterinary medicine do you practice?”

As he began to tell me again, his wife came back and smiled apologetically at me. I smiled back, trying to convey that I wasn’t annoyed and that it was perfectly fine.

The woman got her husband to refocus on her, and soon they finished up and gathered their things to leave. The man smiled at me and encouraged me to come visit his practice. I nodded and said I’d certainly try. With a kind smile at me, the wife took her husband’s arm and guided him out of the coffee shop, slowly and carefully. The coffee shop door clanged, and they were gone.

I’ve been thinking about that couple a lot since then. The way the wife searched her husband’s eyes, perhaps wondering when he would no longer recognize her face. The ache she must feel, knowing their time together is limited.

But what’s really stuck with me was that the man and his wife were still together. For better or for worse. In sickness and health. Till death do us part.

And not only were they together. They seemed truly happy, in what could be considered very bleak circumstances.

That is what makes me reflect on that day in the coffee shop with a smile instead of sadness. A couple with not much time left together was quietly enjoying every moment they had, not knowing if that moment would be their last.

But savoring each one as if it could be.





This post is re-published with permission from the author, the original can be viewed here.

July 28, 2013

Sunday Blogaround - 7.28.13

Hello, lovely readers! And welcome to another edition of the Blogaround!



As you've probably noticed, I haven't been around much. Not only have I been hard at work on the manuscript, but YOU DID IT! You got me to BlogHer '13! And let me tell you, it was as exhausting and amazing as I could have imagined.

And yes, I think that means it's more likely I'm publishing this book. And I owe that to you.

Instead of the regular Blogaround, I'm taking today to introduce you generally to some of the amazing bloggers out there who you might now know about yet, but who I had the pleasure of meeting and talking to this weekend.


If you need a break from your day, and you probably do because it's gearing up on naptime, you should check out Science of Parenthood. Each post is quick, funny, and a great break from whatever it is that's stressing you out. Best part? If your kids are little and ask you to read it aloud? It just goes right over their heads. Math jokes are the best. :)


Busy Since Birth - Home of the Having It All Project
This is great. Not only is Cheryl a wonderful writer, this project is the sort of thing I think most moms need in their life. It's a forum for women stuck in the modern confused web of "having it all" can go to relate to each other. Judgement free. Definitely check it out, and consider writing a guest post for the project!


Renegade MotheringRenegade Mothering
I know that I rarely feature Renegade Mothering on the blogaround. In fact, I think I might only have featured her once, and you know what? That is a gigantic slight. But here's the thing about Renegade Mothering... she's honest. She's honest in such a profound, raw way that it kind of feels wrong to interject and comment and say... "Wow, I totally get that." But you do. I think the thing that speaks the most of Renegade Mama is that in her label cloud, the most commonly used description for her posts is this, "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING HERE."


What Now and Why
I discovered this blog when Arnebya guest posted on Things I Can't Say, and it was a pleasure to meet the author this weekend. Her whole blog maintains the tone of her guest piece- honesty. Which, as you know, is the thing that matters most to me in in my favorite bloggers. It's great to read funny stories, or heartwarming stories, but the thing that makes them feel as though they MATTER? That's the truth, the realness of it. So definitely check this lady out.


BWS tips buttonThe Mom Pledge
Sadly, The Mom Pledge had no BlogHer presence this year, but that didn't stop me from evangelizing. And if you're swinging through the Blogaround for the first time after meeting me at BlogHer, THIS IS A MUST. Not just if you're a mom, not just if you're a blogger. For you whole life. Make the commitment to civil discourse. We are better than what the internet makes us out to be.


Crying Out Now
This blogger was one of the keynote VOTY readers, and her piece was beautiful and poignant (and stories about the process of becoming a cancer patient ALWAYS resonate with me), but this isn't what she was reading at BlogHer. This is her other project- a place for women suffering and recovering from addiction can go to share stories, to learn and support each other. If you (or someone you know) feel abandoned on your journey to emotional health, go to this website, and feel much less alone.

July 25, 2013

And Then There Was Three

I am so happy to bring you the first guest post of the Telling Stories series! This is Kathy, of My Dishwasher's Possessed!, sharing the story of the birth of her third child.

Kathy is a mom to three, wife to one and owner of a possessed appliance. She also is the Co-founder of the online magazine, Bonbon Break. She started her blog, My Dishwasher's Possessed, in the fall of 2010 after many doctors, teachers and friends suggested that life with three children with a variety of learning issues, including her daughter with extensive special needs, might be of interest. She posts a weekly essay each Sunday. You can follow her on FacebookTwitter and Google +

----------------


I don’t know whether it’s the fact that I’m well into my forties, or that I have lost all my brain cells to motherhood, but my memory is not what it once was. Not even close. Yet there are some days that I will never forget.

Our third baby was a complete surprise from beginning to end. Even though it has been eight years, I need only to close my eyes and I can go right back to the night he was born.

Lying in bed I feel another contraction. The familiar tightening and release. The same contractions I had for the last four months.

The contractions that have me on modified bed rest, not allowed to drive, and brought me to the hospital two times in just the last few weeks.

I'm hoping this is just another false alarm.

I have my bag packed, my Norah Jones CD ready, and my favorite doctor all scheduled to do my C-section Monday morning.

It's Sunday, 2:00 a.m. I'm to be at the hospital in 28 hours.

I really don't want to call the doctor in the middle of the night. That will ruin the "nice patient" status my favorite doctor gave me.

I can't quite explain the crush I have on Dr. B. except to say that it is perfectly innocent and my husband is well aware of it.

In fact he said that you can always tell whenever Dr. B. is in the office because all the women's voices rise two octaves and get very sweet whenever he walks into the examining rooms.

Dr. B. gained permanent crush status when he called me the day I left the hospital with my daughter three years earlier.

He had to fly to the Bahamas after Lizzy's delivery and called me from there. He even remembered my new baby's name. I was looking forward to my last baby being delivered by him.

Joe played on my crush when months earlier I was shocked to discover that I was pregnant
with baby number three. I was excited for sure, but I was also scared out of my mind.

This baby, though very wanted, was not in the plan. After four miscarriages and two babies born with the help of fertility specialists, it seemed impossible that we could get and stay pregnant the good old fashioned way.

What if I miscarried again? Lizzy had been such a difficult pregnancy and overseen by a high-risk practice. Would I survive a third baby?

I was a wreck that August evening standing with Joe looking down at the positive test result.

"Kathy, just think, you'll get to see Dr. B. again."

I can always depend on that man to make me laugh.

Another contraction.

The clock says 2:05 a.m.

Then I felt a gush of water.

Oh no, this is not a test, this is the real deal.

I attempt the Herculean task of lumbering my extremely pregnant body down the stairs to the play room, where Joe and Tom are camping out, complete with a tent and sleeping bags.

"Joe," I whisper, trying to sound calm in case a six-year-old Tom should wake up.

"Joe... Joe..."

"Yeah," my husband croaks out.

"My water just broke.'

"Oh... did you call the doctor?"

"Not yet."

"Well, you call the doctor and then wake me up."

I consider life as a single parent.

I decide that yelling at my husband is not going to get me to the hospital any faster, and I better start enacting a plan unless I really want a home birth.

I call the special emergency number for the high-risk patients and let them know what is going on. They connect me to the very tired head of the practice. He tells me to come to the hospital and assures me he lives only five minutes from the hospital. If I'm in fact in labor, they will call him, and he will do the C-section then and there.

Of course he's the doctor on call. Though an excellent doctor and the hospital's chief of obstetrics, he doesn't have Dr. B.'s personal touch.

So much for best-laid plans.

No Dr. B, no Norah Jones in the background. This baby had a sense of humor.

I deal with another contraction and then call my parents because someone will have to watch Lizzy and Tom. Thankfully the kids haven't woke up.

It was hard to believe that only hours before, we had had our special dinner out with the kids. Over hamburgers Joe and I went over the game plan for "baby week" with Tom and Lizzy.

We let them know that Sunday we would have chocolate chip pancakes at their favorite diner. Then we would bring them to Grandma and Grandpa's house, where they will stay while mommy is in the hospital with their new baby brother.

I had the "It's a Boy" pencils ready to go for Tom's kindergarten and Lizzy's preschool class. Their "I'm a Big Brother, and "I'm a Big Sister" shirts were all set for them to wear to the hospital and for school. I was prepared.

I saw my reflection in a store window and tried to burn it into my memory. There I was, hugely pregnant, holding hands with my gorgeous boy and girl knowing this was going to be my last pregnancy and one of our last times out as a family of four.

Another contraction comes, and I know I better get moving since they were only getting stronger and we still had a 40 minute drive to the hospital.

I look at the cradle in the corner of my bedroom, no sheet or bumper ready. I thought I still had a whole day to get it prepared. How different from when I was expecting Tom and the cradle was all set up weeks before his arrival.

Dressed, and ready to go, I head down the stairs once again and wake Joe.

He seems surprised to hear me say I'm ready and we have to leave for the hospital. But, he gets up and gets dressed.

I answer the door in the black of the night and see my parents smiling at me.

The contractions are coming pretty regularly now and I'm not in a very smiley mood, but I try.

My parents are very big natural birth proponents, having me and my sisters that way. No drugs. Lamaze breathing. My dad was even in the delivery room when my youngest sister was born in 1970, a time when it was still a very new thing to do.

They both start coaching me in my breathing.

I start to wonder what I did in a previous life to deserve this special kind of hell.

Joe is getting a cup of coffee and once again I contemplate single parenthood.

Finally, we are off to the hospital.

We see the same familiar faces in the admitting department that I have seen on my two previous visits.

"I'm not leaving this time without a baby," I announce.

We all laugh.

It's Sunday, 4:30 a.m.

Now settled in the labor room, it is pronounced that I am, yes, in fact in active labor and will be having this baby now. My doctor is called and they get me ready for my third C-Section.

I'll spare you some of my more colorful language that I used before they could give me my epidural. Suffice it to say that I apologized to all of them between contractions and let them know that the doctors considered me one of their nicest patients.

Sunday, 6:00 a.m. My beautiful baby boy is born.

I look at the sweet, six-pound baby that I was sure was 18 pounds and I'm instantly in love.

Back in the recovery room, Joe and I are smiling our heads off and all thoughts of single parenthood are gone.

We start making the calls: Baby Peter is here, a day early, but perfect.

Our family is complete. Three children, just like we had always wanted. I feel like we just won the lottery.

How is it possible that the baby who was a surprise from beginning to end is now eight years old.? Peter brings humor and joy into our family and I couldn’t imagine our life without him. He is a constant reminder to me that I can plan all I want but sometimes life has something even better in store for me.





This essay was originally published on My dishwasher's possessed! on April 1, 2012. It has been modified from the original.

July 23, 2013

Telling Stories


DD and SI ran up to me yesterday, all dressed up.

"Mommy! I'm Princess Leia!" SI announced. "I'm being chased by a MEAN bunny!"

"I'm a bunny!" DD added, tugging on my skirt. "I have a magic bell I can WING AN WING AN WING!"

"I see..." I lied.

"When I wing my bell, Pwincess Leia needs to wun away!"

She rang the bell, and SI screamed and galloped down the hall.

"Now I have to go catch a pwincess!" DD shouted, delighted with herself, and ran off after her sister.

I returned to my manuscript, snickering.

------

As you might have noticed, I haven't been around much.

I am, as you probably guessed, hard at work on my book.

Therefore, I would like to open the floor to you,

Do you have a story to tell? Do you want me to tell your story?

If either apply, let me know. I'll be hosting a series of stories from you, my lovely readers, and from other writers from around the web.

Maybe we can all find a little bit of inspiration in each other.



You didn't think I would leave you without a picture of my daughters doing
another adorable and imaginative thing, did you?

July 12, 2013

The Persistence of Memory

DD by night
photo by Phil Forsyth
Everyone remembers their first real nightmare.

Not the garden variety bad dream, but the first time they woke up in the weird dawn light, confused and eerily quiet, and they crept out of bed with forbidden footsteps to go searching for the one person who could convince you that everything was okay.

I remember. I was about three years old. I had a dream that my father and I were walking from our house to the Children's Museum. When we got there, the door was locked, daddy couldn't open it. Then, out of nowhere, a GIANT BUMBLEBEE came zooming towards us down the abandoned street. It flew towards my father, and he batted it away. Then it rushed towards me... and I woke up.

I tiptoed down the stairs to my mommy and daddy's room, and told my mom I had a scary dream. She grumbled something about being sorry, and groaned quietly as she looked at her bedside table. Then she murmured something about it being okay, and although the feeling of unease still hovered around me, the very real presence of my very real mother made the rest of the world feel more tangible. My nervous energy from dream began to fade.

Strangely enough, she later told me that her own first nightmare was about a bumblebee as well.

Recently, began to wonder how old most children are when they have that first real nightmare. SI and DD are definitely around the age I was for mine, and their imagination play has developed to a point where a nightmare seemed pretty inevitable.

They like to pretend they have scary dreams, but their descriptions of these dreams are always the same.

"Mommy? I had a nightmare."
"I'm sorry, pumpkin. What happened?"
"There was a mean radish, and it ate up all the other radishes."

In case you're wondering, that is a near perfect description of a scene from one of their favorite movies. (Seriously- check out 4:22.) It is the only "nightmare" they know.

Until last night.

Last night, I was up writing until nearly three am. I crawled into bed and managed to pass out from sheer exhaustion, despite the weirdness of not having M in bed with me. A mere four hours later, I heard my door creak open, and the sound of suppressed crying. I looked up to see DD, bedheaded and red eyed, standing in the door.

"Whassamaddahpunken," I managed to sigh out. Not my most comforting moment, I'm sure.

"Mommy..." she said, and broke into tears. I closed my eyes again threw my arm into the air, gesturing her into a hug, and she dove into the bed. She curled up next to me and cried into my shoulder.

"Sokaysweetie... sokay.." I yawned over her, and kissed patches of forehead between the curls.

I drifted in and out of consciousness while she clutched my shoulder and whispered, "I love you," over and over again. It must have been a doozy.

With a near Herculean effort, I opened my eyes again. The sun had risen over the top of the trees across the lake, the world was full of golden tones and the sounds of birds and crickets and toads.The light glinting like diamonds off the gently rippled surface of the water was excruciating.

"What happened in your dream, honey?" I yawned again.
"Mommy... Mommy... Mommy, I dreamed you and SI went away and you weren't going to live with me anymore." And she burst back into tears.

Now I felt like the biggest jerk in the world. Here I was, totally unable to achieve consciousness enough to comfort my daughter, and her nightmare had been that I didn't love her anymore.

"Oh, sweeite..." I hugged her as tightly as I could, and scooped her under the blanket with me.
"Sweetheart, I love you so much. I won't ever leave you. I'll live with you until you're all grown up, and then for as long as you want to live with me."
"I love you."
"I love you too, pumpkin."
"Me too."
"I love you."
"I miss Daddy."
"Yeah honey, I do too..."

Eventually I managed to get a bit more of the dream out of her. She couldn't cross a road, and I took SI into a river. Something like that.

And the thing is, this is something I know she's going to remember. Forever. She's never going to forget finding her way out of her dark room, sneaking out of the bed she and SI are sharing, waking me up and my useless mumbles. She's never going to forget being scared of whatever was in that dream that frightened her so much. She'll never forget how it felt to wake up and not know if I really had gone.

I hope I managed to make it, overall, a good memory. I hope she'll remember that I rubbed her back and kissed her cheek and told her how much I adored her. I hope she remembers that after a while, SI jumped in the bed with us, and the three of us cuddled and talked about going to get Daddy at Aunt Genocide's house tomorrow, and that there was laughter and smiles and I actually kept my eyes open.

I hope she remembers how small she was, and that I was there to comfort her.

I hope there's always someone there to comfort her.

July 10, 2013

The Stories We Tell

Twin fawns I came upon in the road the other day
Yes, I am still up in the middle of nowhere, writing and editing and revising. But I'll tell you something, it's hard. Not because of the work of putting words together, which while exhausting and invigorating and terrifying and frustrating, is something I have always loved. No, it's the remembering.

I try to spare you, my lovely readers. I do. I don't blog all the biggest downers, the darkest moments. I do that not only for your benefit, but for mine. It's hard to have your friends and family suddenly know the deepest, most personal moments of your life. Their concern can be cloying, their sympathy can be stifling.

And there is not any reason to publicly write about some things as they happen. When you air our your personal laundry, there are consequences.

Let's suffice to say, there is a darkness in this book that I never come close to on the blog. NEVER. And that is a conscious choice. But for the book, it is essential. So day after day, I am digging into my most visceral memories of the worst days of my life.

It is, as you are probably imaging, difficult. It occasionally involves sitting and crying in front of my husband's laptop, typing through the tears.

This is all a preface to tell you somebody else's story, though. You see, I needed a break from this. I needed a break from the constant emotional exhaustion. And so I took our car to the shop.

As I always do, I made small talk. And as one of his mechanics fixed up our car, the manager sat me down and told me his story. I don't know what made him decide to tell me, but I sat and I listened and I did my best to understand what went unsaid. What follows is my interpretation, embellishment, and retelling of the story I heard while my car was repaired, and for the next quarter hour beside.

-----

James* and his twin brother John* were the best of friends. They weren't identical, James was broader shouldered, taller. John was lithe of limb, his hair lighter. But they were brothers, as close as boys could be.

From their earliest days, they were inseparable. Nobody could understand them as well, share as much compassion and empathy. They were two halves of a coin.

But it was a troubled life they shared. Their father, a barber, was strict and demanding. John rebelled by falling into alcoholism, James by joining the army and shipping out to Grenada as a mechanic. When his days in the service came to an end, he moved to northern Florida and bought a small house. He got a job at an auto body shop. On his first visit back home, he and John laughed over their haircuts. Their father had cut their hair the same way their whole lives, the family haircut. But at the first opportunity to control their own heads, both James and John had chosen the exact same style.

James didn't talk with his brother often, visited even less. Their father had long passed away, but John lived in the same small, northern Michigan town. He married a girl they had known in high school. He cleaned up his act, gave up the drink. He always said it was his lovely bride, Elise*, who had saved him. She always smiled and politely refused to contradict him. When people said he reminded them of his father, he would become nostalgic. Old animosity had yielded to love. Forgiveness. Not so for James, who built his new life far away from his past.

One day, John called the home of his vaguely estranged twin brother, and announced that he was dying.

"Pancreatic cancer, Jim," he said. "It's all that drinkin' back in the day. Got a couple of months left."

Six months, to be exact. That was the prognosis.

James hopped the next flight to Detroit. He spent nearly a month living in his sister-in-law's home, watching John's bones slowly work their way to the surface. Watching the laugh lines thicken and deepen, his eyes widen and brighten. He couldn't see it happen, but day by day there was a shadow that lingered behind John's face.

After those weeks ended, James bought John a ticket, and took him back to Florida. They spent their days fishing, sitting on a boat with a lemonade in hand (even the early onset of death couldn't un-save John), sharing the tales of every day that had passed in the fifteen years of their separation. There were so many hours to recount, so many stories. So much laughter lost. So little time.

After another month, John and James went back to Michigan together, and James stayed with his brother and with Elise until he was certain he would lose his job at the northern Florida shop. He went back to Florida, but promised John they would talk every night.

And every night, they did. As the sun set over the gulf, James would laugh and listen across the distance to a faraway house, where the same sun would dawn over Lake Huron, and wake John for another day. Each night, James heard the voice of John as it slowly diluted, thinned, until it sounded like paper etched with the memories of two little boys, plotting the destruction of their mother's kitchen in a language of their own invention.

James was secretly charting them, the six months, counting down day by day. Fourteen, eleven, six, two, zero.

On that day he spoke with John, and went to bed with a weight in his heart made of hope. How could he possibly dare to hope?

Ten hours later, John was laying in his hospice bed, weak and frail in his living room, and he called for Elise.

"Get me the phone, couldja hon?"

Her eyes filled with tears, and choking back a sob of grief and regret and the horrible aftertaste of jealousy, she grabbed it, dialed James without having been asked, and handed the receiver to her husband.

More than twelve hundred miles away, James's phone jingled in his pocket. Before he could check the name on the ID, the tears had come.

He knew. He had known he would know.

James and John talked small talk, as much as there could be such a thing at a time like that. For a few moments, it was just a call.

But as the tears fell in Florida, it became much more.

A confession. An apology. All the words you could ever regret having been left unsaid. All the petty arguments, forgiven. Every empty call to faith, suddenly filled. Desperately filled.

Forty five minutes later, James hung up the phone. The call had ended the only way it could have. John stood still in the middle of the shop, there on the Gulf side of Northern Florida, his face in his hands.

Twelve hundred miles away, there was nothing.

So after six months and a few hours, James packed up his life. He moved back home, where he could be a shoulder for Elise. Where the old timers would see him and tell him how he looked like his dad, and he would feel no animosity. John had looked like his dad, and every reminder of their likeness was a pain, but a tender one. A reminder that James had once had a brother, a confidante, a best friend and the closest of allies...

And now he had the empty spaces to fill as John would have wanted them. With community. With forgiveness.

With love.

-----

As the mechanic sat and told me this story, as the other customers lined up behind me, as the phone rang, and my keys sat on the desk before me, my car fixed, ready to go, I kept asking myself... why is he telling me this?

It wasn't just because I had mentioned the twins. It was more. It was that every person has a story, and I think that as I write my own, I invite more.

I listened to him tell me his tale, and I realized why I'm writing this book. I'm writing it because I'm the same- I also want somebody to know, to listen, to share my pain and my joy. I also believe that some stranger is going to care, to give me their time, in the hope that I might help them understand something deep and true about their own lives.

I also have a story to tell.

...do you?





----
*not their real names



-----

Please consider donating to my BlogHer fund! The link is at the top of the page- and any donation gets you the Becoming SuperMommy ebook. :)

July 8, 2013

Into the Woods

My three bathing beauties- DD, RH, SI
 Lovely readers, I am off the grid.

Not exactly, obviously, as you're seeing this post. But as close as it's possible to get in the continental United States. Of that I'm pretty sure.

I am at Guppy Lake, writing like a fiend well into the dead of night.

You see, lovely readers, as I've mentioned before... I'm working on a book.

Not the ebook that can be yours for any donation to my BlogHer fund (see the button at the top right of the page? Go click it and buy yourself an ebook!) No, I'm writing a bigger, badder, bolder book. One that I'm sure all of you will immediately run out and buy, and then read in one sitting, while spooning apple sauce into the ears of your screaming infants and hiding in bathrooms with small children banging on the door. And then you will buy copies for all your friends, recommend it for your book clubs, and generally make Amazon explode with joy for selling it.

We'll get there. Together.

In the process of writing this book, I have found that I really need time to work. And one does not simply sit down and finish writing a book when one has three children with a total aggregated age of seven years old. No, it takes a village to write a book.

So, as I've previously mentioned, money's a little tight. And that's okay- nobody thinks to themselves that a career as a writer is going to be the money making machine that an MBA might, so pinching pennies isn't the biggest deal in the world.

And that, lovely readers, is why I'm here.

In what might actually be the literal middle of nowhere.

The kids on the dock, last year
This year the water is about two and a half feet higher
I'm here so that my parents can watch my kids all day while I write. M is at home in Chicago, working insane amounts of overtime to compensate for the outrageous amount of take-out we've been eating thanks to my inability to experience hunger while I'm working, and thus remember to... oh... make dinner.

I am in the middle of the woods, sitting in what is probably a hundred year old cabin with a seventy year old bedroom and an unfinished seven year old bathroom complex, overlooking a body of water that only qualifies as a lake because of the outrageous rainfall.

I'm missing out on a ton of fun here, folks. Poppa taking the kids on paddle boat rides, soaks in the Jacuzzi, experiments with a potato cannon... Mostly, I'm sitting in a non-air conditioned room with windows that don't open and a ceiling fan older than I am, holding a scalding hot laptop on... well... my lap.

And I could not be more grateful to the wonderful people who are allowing this to happen.

Fourth of July cookout, chillaxing on Grandmommy and Poppa's deck-
where I can get WiFi and write but also get a million mosquito bites
I miss M like crazy, but only when I come up from the manuscript for air. I feel guilty for not sitting with Grandmommy as she watches DD and SI throw rock after rock after rock into the water to their seemingly unending preschool delight, but only after taking a moment to gloat at another five thousand words that have been hacked and slashed to oblivion. I feel awful that each time RH looks at me she asks, "Dada?" with the most expectant little smile... but I know that back home M would feel much guiltier about working the overtime if he had adorable little ones waiting at home, staying up past bedtime for a glimpse of daddy after the sun has set.

And so, lovely readers, I just want all of you to know that I am grateful for you, grateful to you, and working hard on something you'll love even more than the blog posts that you're currently missing.

And if you're feeling so inclined, PLEASE donate to the BlogHer fund! Help me hobnob with publishers, agents, and the momerati of the blogosphere. Help me not only finish this book, but sell the hell out of it.

Thank you, and a belated Happy Fourth,
Lea
aka Becoming SuperMommy

July 6, 2013

Singing for my Supper

Your truly, tickling RH on the beach, under the Fourth of July fireworks
This is one reason you haven't heard from me much this week...

Hello, lovely readers!

I had wanted this post to be something spectacular. Something amazing.

You see, this is my 500th post on Becoming SuperMommy.

And instead of passing along a nugget of wisdom, a word of encouragement, or even a story about poo... I'm asking you for a favor.

I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row for the BlogHer convention at the end of the month, and it's just kind of falling apart.

Which is to say, there are a lot of other things falling apart. Our car, our air conditioner... I'm sure you get the idea. And suddenly, the $400 to get into the convention is a HUGE draw on our finances, and the source of much marital disharmony.

And so rather than argue with my husband about the relative necessity of me selling my book or replacing our minivan, I am asking you for help.

Please help me get to BlogHer!

Of course, I'm going to do more than just beg for scraps of your affection- I'm offering something in return! Everyone who donates to my BlogHer fund will be getting a copy of a brand spankin' new Becoming SuperMommy ebook.

If you donate more than $30, I'll also draw you a comic of your family, sent to you as a high res jpeg.

If you donate $100, I'll turn it into a painting and mail it to you.

You can find a "donate" button here on the side of the blog. It's at the top, just under the picture of SI catching a frog.

Thank you all for everything. You've made the last 500 posts some of the most wonderful times of my life.

<3 p="">
This post is brought to you by a week of lounging in the wilderness and having a ball with my kids

July 1, 2013

Pride and Prescriptions, or I Haz All the Feels

"Awesome Gay Son" "We Love Our Awesome Gay Son"
Yesterday, Chicago hosted it's 44th annual Gay Pride Parade.

Now, considering that this came just a few short days after the supreme court knocked down DOMA, I'm pretty sure you can guess what kind of turnout there was.

A drag homage to the supreme court
...it was about a million people. And five of them were the SuperMommy family.

I'm a huge supporter of marriage equality. (I hate the phrase, "gay marriage." The only way a "gay marriage" is different from a "straight marriage" is that nobody is whispering behind their backs about premarital sex as they walk down the aisle. So, I'd call it an improvement.) (Yeah, I had one relative call me two months after the wedding to ask if I'd had the baby yet. I wasn't pregnant/planning to get pregnant. Way to make me second guess my wedding dress once it's too late.)




At any rate, I'm not for marriage equality because I'm gay, or because Aunt Green is gay, or because I grew up with a (totally awesome) gay aunt, or because I have gay friends, or because I trust Dan Savage more than I trust Dear Abby.

No, I'm for marriage equality because I'm just plain for equality.


And so, as our attempts to paint rainbow t-shirts for pride was horrifically derailed and then abandoned with mush shouting, many tears, and sudden nap time enforcement, I told the girls that they could just go ahead and wear whatever the hell they wanted to Pride.

"Really." I said. "Anything! You can get your feather boas out of your dress up box, wear tutus..."
"I want to wear my fancy princess dress!"
"Me too!"
"Great! Go put 'em on!"

Now, when the girls say "fancy princess dress," what they really mean is "Flamenco costume brought to us by friends and family in Spain."


My kids were dressed pretty much exactly like a pint sized drag show. It was awesome.

And everybody LOVED IT. As the whole three hours of the parade went by, our Mayor ran by, gave me the sweatiest handshake of my life, and quickly cooed at the flamboyant children. Every drag queen on foot stepped over to compare gowns.





As just about every float in a parade is handing out something, the kids were progessively more and more weighed down in beads, hats, backpacks, lollipops, stickers, buttons, signs, and fliers.

A spunky twink in very little clothing compared suckers with DD.


"What's that?"
"A lollipop!"
"Mine's bigger."

And then ran off again.

A man standing next to us hoisted DD onto the rail of the barricade and held her up to see the entire parade. All three hours of it.


Basically everyone marching with a camera had to come over and take a picture.


Or at least kvell at the sight of them, waving their signs and high fiving people and generally being adorable and not caring in the slightest about anybody's sexual orientation.

This is the look most people had when spotting my kids
We met up for a while with my friend J, who's sort of moving down to Austin (where it seems there is a magical honing beacon for all the wonderful people that we love, dragging them down to live in Texas and away from us). RH latched onto her necklaces and decided pretty much instantly that this whole parade thing was actually going to be okay.


But poor M...

I had absolutely failed in my planning for the day, which left M trying to find parking as I traipsed off with the kids to find a spot along the route to watch the parade. M missed the entire first half, as he drove in a towering fury all the way down to his old alma mater on the south side and then took the train all the way back up again.

He ended up trapped on the other side of the street, watching and waving to us as we all watched the parade go by.

Find M! He's in a Northwestern hat!
Remarkably, the kids were on their best behavior all day.

SI was utterly in shock that this gentleman's underpants showed his bare bottom.
Remarkably, they didn't complain or scream or cry as we hiked around Lincoln Park for a few hours, waiting for the crowds around the train to thin enough for our entire crew to make our way down to the south side again to find our car.

RH slept through that part
And remarkably, DD didn't even mention how horrific the condition of her skin had become.

Unbeknownst to me, DD was having a pretty severe allergic reaction to... something. I had noticed the rash the previous night, but she said it wasn't bothering her. By the time I was giving her a post-Pride bath, it was everywhere, and really nasty. Plus, it looked oddly bruised underneath. I called the doctor to find out whether or not I should be concerned, and immediately found myself putting DD back into her shoes and taking her to the ER.


She thought this was the best part of her day.

Just the two of us, reading books and drawing pictures and showing EVERYBODY the spots on her tummy. She couldn't have been more delighted or cheerful to be in the hospital. Because she is three, and everybody loves her, and as it turns out she's just fine- just having some weird allergic type reaction to something that they can't identify just now. I'm supposed to give her some Benadryl.


I didn't know that, though. When your pediatrician tells you to take her to the ER because this might be the sort of thing that can really awful if it's not evaluated within, like, an hour of finding it... oy vey. I sat on a blue plastic couch as she hugged me and said, "Mama, I love you. I love you so much, I love you so so so much, mama. I love hugging you..." And I thought to myself, "OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU TOO PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T DIE!!"

And so I learned a valuable lesson of parenting yesterday...

If your kid wants to run in circles around the hospital waiting room while dancing and jumping and singing about how awesome she is, she's probably not knocking on death's door.


Despite making it home before midnight, it took me two hours to decompress and sleep.

I was wired and happy from the incredible non-stop bliss-fest that is Chicago's Pride Parade.


I was frustrated from fighting with M over something as stupid as parking.

I was physically exhausted from being on my feet either walking or hoisting children literally all day.


I was emotionally drained from spending several hours waiting to find out if my child had some sort of parasite that was going to burst out of her chest.

And I was sad because M has been working overtime and seven day weeks a week for nearly a month, and even though we had been excitedly talking about having "alone time" since yesterday morning, the first chance we had to actually spend several hours in each other's company was preempted by the need for me to take DD and drive off into the night.

On Wednesday, we'll go to Guppy Lake, and then we'll have plenty of time together. In fact, it will be the first fourth of July weekend we've ever actually spent up there, despite how much of a connection the two things hold for us. Until then, I'll just have to keep looking at the THOUSAND plus pictures I took at Pride, and seeing if I can spot him in the crowd across the street.

Yes, you can catch a glimpse of my husband behind this hotdog wearing a condom.

Happy Pride, everybody!

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