tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32099577279433475352024-03-14T03:12:24.868-04:00dawningsessays on lifeDawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-55811939635798204142014-11-21T13:26:00.000-05:002014-11-21T13:28:25.651-05:00Reflection on Thanksgiving<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YkWEjdYemiY/VG-DRRUzktI/AAAAAAAAGAc/DxI5RarFT_g/s1600/IMG_9284.CR2" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YkWEjdYemiY/VG-DRRUzktI/AAAAAAAAGAc/DxI5RarFT_g/s1600/IMG_9284.CR2" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> dee winter 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">A Thanksgiving Hymn: Pray to God<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of doubt,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of joy,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of darkness,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Pray
to God<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of hope,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of loss,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of understanding,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of despair,<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pray to God<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of love,<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of anger,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of jubilation,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of regret,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pray to God<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of insight,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of fatigue,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of certainty,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of anger,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In times of thanksgiving,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pray to God<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">As the moon rises,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">As the moon sets,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">As the sun rises,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">As the sun sets, Pray to God<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--StartFragment-->
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-69459470001495183992013-07-04T09:52:00.000-04:002014-01-15T16:29:19.253-05:00Gladness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HUL_qWFJFrM/UdV9yx0pLhI/AAAAAAAAEuY/mr8iFWjN5ZA/s1600/IMG_2772.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HUL_qWFJFrM/UdV9yx0pLhI/AAAAAAAAEuY/mr8iFWjN5ZA/s320/IMG_2772.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hold fast, Holy Time,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">who determines all things,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Halt the mighty river of life’s</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">triumphs and stings.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Grant us a moment, a respite, a pause</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Give us reprieve from the pain and the loss.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Pierce us with gladness</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">O Holy Time,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We are nothing without thee, </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We're forever thine.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">dee 7.4.13</span></div>
</div>
DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-34136110755266014592013-04-02T19:33:00.000-04:002013-09-04T18:15:40.367-04:00A PRICE TO PAY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The revision: <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">A PRICE TO PAY</span></b><br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1FR3wPAAZ88/T1k5cO3zoZI/AAAAAAAAA0E/sARPS9Gsu5c/s1600/photo-47.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1FR3wPAAZ88/T1k5cO3zoZI/AAAAAAAAA0E/sARPS9Gsu5c/s200/photo-47.JPG" width="149" /></a>
<br />
<div class="page" title="Page 1">
<div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%);">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT;">When </span><span style="color: #2f5485; font-family: ArialMT;">I first conceived of the Token Theory, it was because I felt like I was giving
too much of myself simply to perform the tasks of daily living; it could be a challenge to get dressed for an evening out or to take a morning walk or to go for a Sunday morning drive with my husband. I found myself done in by the simplest things. Everything felt
like it took a toll on me physically; an inescapable fact of my life seemed to be that there was a significant cost to whatever I did. I imagined what it would be like to use money to buy the freedom to do what I chose. That idea morphed into the thought that I should have a stash of tokens to pay my way forward. The notion of having a tangible way to quantify the costs of participating in life made sense to me. During some long, sleepless, nights I refined the concept. In a surprising way, it gave me more of a sense of control over a process I could not directly manage myself.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #2f5485; font-family: ArialMT;">Some of us have chronic health issues that tax our accumulated wealth of physical energy supplies. We tap into our stores in order to function. Eventually, our reserves run low. At that point, those of us who are physically compromised in some way, become acutely aware that we need to budget our remaining energy and conserve our resources. The breakthrough came when I started to think in concrete terms. It seemed sensible to assign tokens as a way to quantify the cost of functioning when dealing with physical challenges. I pictured an energy bank where I keep my tokens. Sleep, rest, exercise, a healthy diet and stress-coping techniques are all methods I can use to earn new tokens to spend on activities of daily living. I can spend them (be active) or save them (rest). Typically, I keep a supply of tokens on hand. I usually spend my tokens until they run
out. At times, I may even run a negative balance of tokens. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #2f5485; font-family: ArialMT;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #2f5485; font-family: ArialMT;"> In my fantasy world, I can use some of my savings or borrow from the next day's allowance. If I exhaust those resources, I pay for what I do with an increase in pain. I discovered a core truth; <b>E</b></span></span><span style="color: #2f5485; font-family: ArialMT; font-size: large;"><b>verything costs something</b>. This is true for us alI. It just happens to be a whole lot more apparent for me. To tell the truth, I
do not think this is fair, nor do I think this is reasonable. But it happens to be a condition of my life at this time.<b> It is</b>. When I use my tokens, it is an act of deliberate choice. I have come to think of this mindful awareness of each moment as an unexpected gift of living with a disability. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #2f5485; font-family: ArialMT;"> <b>I have had to learn how to maintain a deliberate awareness of how I script each day</b>. I strive to use my
tokens in a way that is both meaningful and satisfying to me. The Token Theory is a powerful way to set intention and keep me present in the moment. <b>With the high price I pay for each thing I do, I feel compelled to make every
moment count.
</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wrapped in a favorite, but badly worn silk robe, I recently seated myself on a small teak bench in
my bathroom. I used my thumb to turn on the blow-dryer with one hand while using a
small -bristled brush in my right. I thought, “Let the dance of the blow-dryer begin.”
Some time ago, I would stand to blow dry my hair. I liked to watch my reflection in the
mirror over the sink, but eventually, I would grow too tired to stand for the fifteen minutes it took to dry my hair. I
did what we humans do, I adapted. Being seated helped the fatigue, but my shoulder became problematic -- it often dislocates if I lift it higher than perpendicular to the floor. It took some creative maneuvers to figure out how
to dry my hair without lifting my right arm, but I prevailed. Using a new, seated-blow-drying technique, I</span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large;"> learned to dry my hair from underneath or upside down. I have come
to think of blow-drying as an Olympic Sport. Then, the unexpected happened. I could no longer hold the blow-drier in my left hand; it was too heavy and I could't push the buttons. We humans survive because we acclimate to change. Now, I allow</span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> my hair to air-dry. Only for special occasions do I engage in the blow-drier-hustle. Continuing with my morning routine, my makeup is next. I smooth on
lotion with SPF30, draw a few lines, puff a brush or two, follow with a stroke of lip
gloss and TADAH , beauty incarnate.....sort of. On difficult days, it is all I can do to get dressed in bra
and panties. My heart starts racing, my hands begin shaking and I am too dizzy to walk. This is called POTS or Positional Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. Basically, one's heart rate increases with changes in position. I lived with it for a good forty years before I knew there was a name for it! Turning away from the mirror, I pulled my robe more tightly over my long, thin frame. I made the bed, gathered
up towels and laundry, started a load of wash, emptied the dishwasher, then, with an
eye on the clock, eased myself back onto the bed. My hands, wrists, right shoulder, hips, spine, knees, ankles throbbed. I was exhausted. I thought, “ Why does it
cost me so much just to get going in the day? “ As I lay there, I played with that idea. This was the moment of inception of the Token Theory. What if I
started the day with a bucket of tokens. <b>Every action or task completed would cost one
or more tokens.</b> I began assigning values to the chores and activities of everyday life.
My token list is mine, and mine alone. What might be an easy-breezy one token for me,
might cost someone else three. The point, the very nugget of this idea was that I had to
learn to mange my tokens better. I was not distributing them in a way that was best for
me. I calculated what it cost me each day to make it to bedtime. The quantity of
tokens I have each day is determined by how well I sleep, whether I have taken good
care of myself the day before, how I have managed stress in my life. I recognized that
these were my tokens and it was up to me what I wanted to do with them. In my mind, I am lithe, nimble and ready-to-leap-tall-buildings in-a-single-bound. My body, however, rebels. Over and over, I am disappointed. </span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I have repeatedly, clearly to the detriment of my health, tried to ignore the tolls I incur when I determinedly set out to do the things I enjoy: weeding, taking an extended ride, going for a mile walk, hanging a painting, typing without a break. There was a time that I was fully convinced that I could cheat --</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">"To hell with the consequences, I will do what I want to." </span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Well, this kind of mind-over-matter-I-believe-I-can-do-it mentality didn’t work out so well for me. </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> I make the critical mistake of believing that I can </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">forge through</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">, practice </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">mind over matter,</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> institute a </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">no pain, no gain</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> attitude.</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> With a reliability as certain as each new sunrise, when I employ these strategies, I pay dearly for trying to beat the system. Inevitably, I am injured or set back in a significant way. ( </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; font-style: oblique;">Why can’t I cut down this tree myself? Why shouldn’t I take a three-hour bus ride?) </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I have the Emergency Room discharge papers to prove this. </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There are people who do not understand these parameters because they do not have to observe such limitations themselves. They want to reject the notion that I am actually impeded in my aspirations. They comment that I look so "normal." The underlying text is that I am lazy or not giving it my all.</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Someone who is not hindered by physical limitations cannot appreciate what it is like to desperately want to resume what was once a "normal" life. Out the door for a quick 5K before breakfast, then a mad rush to get my three kids off to school. At that juncture in my life, I could no more have imagined that I would have to pause to calculate what slip-on shoes I could manage to get on my feet than my friends can understand how my token theory reigns my life today. </span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The bottom line? There is a premium I must pay in order to move forward with
anything in the physical realm. It is exactly for that reason that I have turned so much of my attention to the emotional, psychological and spiritual realms for fulfillment. I have learned to work hard to read, to write and to travel world wide on the web.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 2">
<div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%);">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> </span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Mentally assigning values to the daily activities of life has given me a framework
that helps manage my days. The
idea that there is a cost --in tokens-- to everything I do and that I choose how to spend my
tokens has given me more of a sense of control over my life.</span><br />
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Sometimes, I borrow against tomorrow’s tokens but there is a high price to pay for that luxury. What lies just off-stage is the looming threat that a respiratory infection or a fall or some untoward event will knock my knees out from under me and my bucket will sit upside down for weeks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #262626;">A full bucket of tokens is a profound luxury that goes unappreciated until it is gone. Most people my age start their days with seemingly infinite stamina and possibilities. They make their plans without careful consideration of the ramifications that their activities will have on their well-being budget. I do not waste my time being jealous of them. I only wish they could fully appreciate what an amazing gift that it is to be free from counting tokens. </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Father Time ticks for the disabled at the same rate as for everyone else. The difference is, our health leads us to constantly, consciously, choose how we want to spend our reserves. We keep one eye on the running clock as it races through the minutes and the hours,</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large;">I am not the only one! I read an essay by Christine Misrandino called “The Spoon
Theory.”</span><span style="color: red; font-size: x-small;">1.</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large;"> When Christine’s best friend asked Christine to tell her really, truly, what it was
like to live with a chronic, debilitating illness, Christine read the sincerity in her friend's face as she cast about for the words to
describe it. She and her friend were seated in a diner where they often shared stories
and meals and life (as in </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large; font-style: oblique;">Seinfield </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large;">or </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large; font-style: oblique;">Sex in the City</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: large;">). </span><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="page3image1000" height="0.249073" src="file:///page3image1000" width="197.798308" /></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 3">
<div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%);">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #262626; font-size: large;">Christine gathered up all the spoons she could find from her table and the tables
surrounding her. Christine handed over this bouquet of spoons to her friend and
said, “Here, hold this, you have Lupus.” Christine explained to her
friend that one of the biggest differences between being sick and being healthy is
that when you are healthy, you do not pause to consider the consequences of
every single choice you make. Christine asked her friend to list off the tasks of her
day, including all the “basics.” Her friend started with “getting ready for work.”
Right away, Christine chastised her. </span><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-size: large;">”’No! You don’t just get up. You have to
crack open your eyes, and then realize you are late. You didn’t sleep well the
night before. You have to crawl out of bed, and then you have to make your
self something to eat before you can do anything else, because if you don’t,
you can’t take your medicine, and if you don’t take your medicine you might not be able to function. " Having said that, </span></span><span style="color: #262626; font-size: large;">Christine
took away a spoon.
</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As I read Christine’s account, I compared our versions of our <b>Pay As You Go Lives</b>. What struck me most was that basically, we agreed. In essence, our attitude and self-care dictates what we start
with in the bank, our disability determines what things cost. As individuals, we have to choose how we want to spend our tokens.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-size: large;">In her essay, Christine talked about how challenging it is to slow down and to
make choices about what is most vital. She wanted her friend to understand her
sense of frustration that she can’t do the hundreds of little things that come easily
to most people. Instead, she must constantly weigh how she wants to spend her
spoons. With a pithy courage I could admire and to which I aspire, Christine</span></span><span style="color: #262626; font-size: large;"> disclosed one of her secrets, “I have learned to live life with an extra spoon in my pocket, in reserve. Y</span></span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">ou need to always be prepared.” Unsaid, but understood, is that</span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> the good stuff that life tosses our way might be just around the corner. And it pays to be prepared! Whatever the cost.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="page" title="Page 4">
<div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%);">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="page4image1016" height="0.249073" src="file:///page4image1016" width="197.798308" /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></span>
</span><br />
I had a brainstorm. I thought it might be worthwhile to pull some of my favorite posts from my blog, <b><i>A New Dawn</i></b><b style="font-style: italic;">,</b> and polish them up. Perhaps, in my late night yearnings, I posit, a small bound book of them? It can be embarrassing to open the door to my literary past-life. <b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>I confess; my work is flawed. It is uncomfortable to look back at my earlier work and see mistakes. True, in my diligent drive to produce an essay per day for 365 days, some of the finer points were lost. What a relief that punctuation, grammar, and facts, for the most part, were correct. However, in hindsight, it is ever too easy to find mistakes. Of course, I am the kind of person who enjoys finding mistakes. There is a small clan of people who share my editorial leanings. We are the ones who will while away wasted minutes spent waiting by editing restaurant menus and telephone books. Having embarked on this particular journey, I must set ego aside and bravely, pick up a red pen and edit. One of the first essays I want to revisit appeared in <b><i>A New Dawn</i></b> on March 8, 2012. Even as I wrote <i>The Spoon Theory meets The Token Theory</i>, I sensed that I would want to return to it for an intimate session of revision and editing.<br />
<br />
The original:<br />
<a href="http://dawnings-anewdawn.blogspot.com/2012/03/spoon-theory-meets-token-theory.html#.UVtDQ79NFaE">http://dawnings-anewdawn.blogspot.com/2012/03/spoon-theory-meets-token-theory.html#.UVtDQ79NFa</a>E<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /><span style="color: red;">1.</span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">*</span><span style="color: #000099;">http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-
theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/ </span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="color: #232323; font-family: Helvetica; margin: 0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div>
</div>
DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-78138500405525479112012-12-06T18:47:00.001-05:002012-12-06T18:47:05.152-05:00No Regrets Living<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In her article, <b><i>Regrets of the Dying</i></b>, Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse, reported asking her patients their regrets as they faced their last days. She cited the <b>five regrets</b> that were most commonly expressed. </span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px; min-height: 15px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me </span></b></span></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">2. </span></b></span><b style="font-size: x-large; letter-spacing: 0px;">I wish I didn’t work so hard. </b><span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;">(Every terminal male patient she had nursed expressed this view.)<b> </b></span></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>3.</b> </span><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.</span></b></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">4. </span></b><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. </span></b></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">5. </span></b><b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wish that I had let myself be happier.</span></b></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">This article struck a particular chord with me. When I was seventeen, I started to work with the Visiting Nurse’s of Martha’s Vineyard. They had a new program they were starting and offered me the opportunity to work with them as a nurse’s aid; it was called Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard. We had weekly sessions to discuss Death and Dying. We read Elizabeth Kubler Ross, author of <b><i>On Death and Dying</i></b>. What was most important was that the small group of us were part of a new focus dedicated to caring for the patients and families of those who had been identified as having terminal illnesses. If life has chapters, that chapter of my life was one of the most formative. I spent the summer of 1976 through the Spring of 1980 working with dying people. The first three months were the hardest. I had five patients. I lost five patients. I was the one who stayed by their beds when things got messy, when they were scared, when no one else would feed them or listen to their fears. I was willing to ask, “Are you afraid?” “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?” Sometimes, patients answered with mechanical adjustments like plumping a pillow, bringing a book, baking a cake. However, when they were feeling low or angry, I found that they simply wanted me to be there. I worried about being paid to sit, but one of my early patients, Nettie Allen, told me that she was paying me and I would do what she wanted me to do. Some days, I canned fruit or weeded her garden under her direction. Some days, I sat next to her on a bench and we listened to bird calls. Her feisty spirit waned, but her lessons did not. I learned a lot about dying over those years. I observed that people die as differently as they live. Some fight hard, but go quietly, others seem to have given up, yet linger. Some people talk about the past and their mistakes, others focus of leaving things in order for their families. There is an intimacy borne of death. The questions that may have gone unspoken without the impending sense of leave-taking may be asked openly. The one I asked every patient was, “Would you have done anything differently?” It was that question that prompted me to label the kind of life I hoped to lead as No Regrets Living. The biggest takeaway that those years working for hospice -- first on Martha’s Vineyard, then later, in western Massachusetts -- gave me was a belief that each of us should strive to live in a way that we do not harbor regrets. I asked myself, “What if we lived life large? Took a risk to do exactly what we wanted to do with our lives?” I wondered if regrets could be nothing more than an acknowledgement of our mistakes. Are they an inevitable result of life? After all, part of life is failing. The more important part is getting up again. Did my patients have regrets because they were misinformed, too afraid to choose the path they desired or because they simply did not get back up when they failed? No matter how regrets are defined, these patients were unanimous in their message to try to live as close as I could to a No-Regrets Life. This imperative has been a compass rose for me. Faced with life’s hardest decisions, I still pause to ask myself, “What would I do if I knew tomorrow was my last day? Would I regret this choice?” This strategy has stood the test of time.</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bronnie Ware did a commendable job summarizing the <b>five regrets</b> most often expressed by people who were dying. If only we could heed the message contained there in, we might be better equipped to live a No-Regrets Life. For now, maybe I will just print the <b>five regrets</b> on card stock and hand them out to everyone I meet. If one person, just one, changes the direction of his or her life because of the sage advice of moribund patients, the strategy would be worthwhile. We will all have earned a spot on the stage to sing alongside Frank Sinatra... “Regrets? I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.”</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #2800ac; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="color: #333233; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Bonnie Ware’s essay may be found at </span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> <span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html">http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html</a></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-5408392458625260822012-07-18T09:50:00.003-04:002012-07-18T09:50:21.020-04:00On the Island<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rN9PwPYfGeM/UAa-9FwqikI/AAAAAAAAB7E/Tbv0ARUC6Y8/s1600/IMG_3158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rN9PwPYfGeM/UAa-9FwqikI/AAAAAAAAB7E/Tbv0ARUC6Y8/s320/IMG_3158.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">dee~ July 2012</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On the Island</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On the Island,</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Water holds history</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">haunting lore of pasts</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">hopeful tales of tomorrows,</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">--Please, excuse me, make way,</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">c o m i n g t h r o u g h</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">with urgent scents, sounds and sights of </span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">today.</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Soak in the sun, drink in the rain, breathe in the beauty.</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Island is for all of us,</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">is all for us.</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-59143257651173800032012-07-12T19:16:00.000-04:002012-07-12T19:16:16.115-04:00Chestnut Mountain Viewed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="font: 14.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b> </b></span></div>
<div style="font: 14.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 14.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;">
written 10/2010</div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> </span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y7ODHW4IBu8/T_9ai4a7frI/AAAAAAAAB4c/2ZssF-fplIw/s1600/whirlwind+kennel+254.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y7ODHW4IBu8/T_9ai4a7frI/AAAAAAAAB4c/2ZssF-fplIw/s200/whirlwind+kennel+254.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Years ago, the cover of a newsstand magazine caught my attention. Headlined in the August edition was the 1996 <i>Better Homes and Gardens </i>Home of the Year. Ever since then, I have kept that magazine preserved in a manila envelope covered with large bold words in red ink; SAVE, SAVE, SAVE. The plans in that magazine changed my life.</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Back in August, 1996, my husband, three children, two cats and one bird were pushing out the boundaries of our 2200sq. foot restored farmhouse. We were at a cross-road; we needed to expand our living quarters, build or purchase a new home. The plans in <i>Better Homes and Gardens </i>captivated our attention and claimed out hearts. I mailed a check for the architectural plans and we allowed our dreams to blossom. We searched six months for an appropriate lot that would meet our budget and construction requirements. Our efforts were not fruitful. Reluctantly, we shelved our desire to build the 1996 <i>Better Homes and Gardens</i> Home of the Year. We put our one hundred year old home on stilts, dug a full basement, constructed a solid foundation and added a family room and a library. We loved the property we rebuilt. We had a comfortable home, an in-ground pool and over an acre of land for privacy. And yet…</span></span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>From a box, under our bed, in an envelope labeled SAVE, SAVE, SAVE, our future whispered to us. By tacit, unspoken agreement, we kept a six-year vigil for the hillside property that might accommodate our house. My husband stumbled upon it in a casual conversation with an insurance client. The property on Chestnut Mountain had proven difficult to develop and the client wanted to sell it. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Together, my husband and I hiked up the remnants of a logging road that disappeared into an overgrown tangle of thicket. After climbing 400 feet up Chestnut Mountain, we took to trails left by deer and other fauna of western Massachusetts. My husband gained purchase of the view by shimmying up a tree. I climbed on until I reached a rock-roped ridge with a stream of water trickling down it. My heart beat loud and fast, whether from exhilaration or exertion, I was not concerned. I had a strong, sure sense of coming home. Unfolding below us was the wide, expansive vista of the rolling hills and mountains that lend the geographic identity to this region. The Connecticut River Valley coursed through it, threading its way south toward Springfield, toward the sea. </span></span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The land transaction was readily accomplished. What followed was anything but easy. We endured a two-year legal wrangle with the local Zoning Board who were invested in flexing their muscles on our project. Less committed dreamers may have abandoned their dreams, but we had a secret inspiration. We had a magazine with a full photo-shoot of our dream house as it would rise from the end of a 1200 -foot long mountainous driveway. </span></span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We moved into Chestnut Mountain View in December, 2005. Today, numerous projects are still underway, including: landscaping, constructing the wrap-around deck, finishing the first floor space. Time, energy and resources have been at a premium. These factors in no way diminish our deep sense of gratitude that we live on ten acres in a home that can only be described as a hallowed place: we live perched between earth and sky in a spacious and light-filled home once featured in <i>Better Homes and Gardens.</i></span></span></div>
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-90853417407072612792012-07-12T18:18:00.001-04:002012-07-12T18:18:28.835-04:00Letting Go<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">from October, 2011</span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I stood in a ten by eleven foot room this afternoon wailing. I hadn’t seen it coming. These sobs from deep in my belly rolled up and out. My nose ran and my eyes rained tears. Loss seemed to have multiplied in black body bags. I was surrounded by five contractor size garbage bags of my father’s life. For three hours, I pulled items from his closet, from his desk from one of his four brief cases, from his bookcase, from his stereo cabinet and from boxes stored under his desk. I salvaged more than I intended. Four boxes of records dating back to the late 1800’s. A suit, a shirt, two ties, for the day he might require them. A collection of tape recordings made over the past 25 years. Several touching notes and letters written to my sister and me for such day that I was doing such a heart-breaking task. My father’s relocation to the Holyoke Soldier’s Home will provide him a new start on life. He left behind the detritus for my sister and I to sort out. The visceral pain of touching the pieces of his life that he treasured most were what was most difficult. My great-grandmother’s sepia photograph wrapped in a velvet sack laid alongside money from the mid to late 1800’s. It was hard to ponder what brought these items together. The batteries and pens and stationery and the stamps on letters never mailed were inventoried and sorted. </span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My brother-in-law and I had spent hours and hours over the weekend right here in the exact same spot. We had removed close to a ton of clutter and cast aways from the house already. I tried to steel l myself to it. I tried to apply my very exceptional skill to sort and organize like and unlike items (learned from playing hundreds of games of solitude, I am convinced) without the emotional burden of being present - while I toss an entire refrigerator filled with half-eaten food. It is not easy. Loss always seems to declare itself as I finger a book, turn over a photograph, gather up items for the Thrift Shop. Letting go, no matter who, no matter how, no matter when, is simply never easy.</span></span></div>
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-72520104115497090172012-05-13T15:47:00.000-04:002012-05-13T15:47:16.714-04:00Teaching Principles of Motherhood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="font: 14.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Whatever we teach our children, we teach ourselves.</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 18.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Teaching Principles</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 10.0px 'Helvetica Light'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">molly lemeris and dawn elise evans</span></i></span></div>
<div style="font: 10.0px 'Helvetica Light'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1986</span></i></div>
<div style="font: 10.0px 'Helvetica Light'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i></i></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Acceptance-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children to practice tolerance of others and self-acceptance.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Commitment-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children the importance of self-discipline.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Faith-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children that there is a greater force that guides them and to trust in the unseen.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Freedom-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children that liberty means freedom for all.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Generosity-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children that to give is to receive; that giving comes from the heart.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gentleness-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children to look for, and appreciate life’s many miracles. Use tenderness regularly.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Joy-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children to celebrate life whenever possible.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Light-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children that light is possible because of darkness. Live in light.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Love-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children that love is given unconditionally and that love drives out fear.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Patience-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children to relinquish making demands on others and of life. Focus on intention instead.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Peace</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To reach our children that peace is found first in the heart.</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Truth-</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To teach our children that truth is paramount. “Be still and listen to the truth.”</span></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 10.0px 'Helvetica Light'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>This quote is from </i>A Course in Miracles</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-37078981191159692192012-02-04T12:15:00.000-05:002012-02-04T12:15:03.942-05:00Hope Springs Maternal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Somewhere in my files of abandoned essays is an essay entitled, <b><i>Hope Springs Maternal</i></b>. I started writing the piece about fifteen or twenty years ago when my children were irrepressibly curious and impossibly busy. I was acutely aware of my failings as a mother. I regretted my short, critical words, my lack of patience, the missed moments of connecting with my children. I mourned my ineptitude as a mother and held on to the notion that tomorrow, tomorrow, I would be a better mother. A particular incident still stands in sharp relief in my memory. My four-year old daughter called me into the kitchen. Her three-year old sister was napping and her brother had not been born. I was the harried mother of two. Hannah came into the kitchen with pure joy on her face. She had something else on her face as well. From check to check she had drawn a red slash of lipstick that covered her lips and an 1/2 an inch all around them. <br />
“Oh my, what did you do?” I cried. In her hand was my broken Estee Lauder lipstick. Her look of proud joy and thrilled excitement deflated into misery with my harsh words. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“I wanted to be like you, Mommy!” I felt dreadful for having hurt her. Hannah’s eyes welled with tears that she fought to keep back. Mine did, too. Immediately, I regretted that I had been thoughtless. There were so many ways I might have handled the situation in a positive, teaching manner. Instead, in that moment, I crushed her spirit. Truly, I tried to recover and from there, I think I handled things well. However, as I laid in bed that night, I ruminated. I distinctly remember the feeling of deep regret. I promised myself that <i>tomorrow</i> I would do a better job, <i>tomorrow</i>, I would be a better mother. Remorse is a heavy load. I discovered that remorse and regret smother hope.</span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I pause to reflect on this today, the anniversary of the most difficult year of my life. It is worth noting that against all odds I have survived whole and in tact. Upon hearing the list of hardships my family has endured over the past 365 days, one long-lost friend remarked that Job has nothing on us. The same friend offered to drive me to my next doctor’s appointment as some form of meager recompense for not helping more she said. I grasped her outreached hand. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is these kinds of generous acts of kindness from others that have illuminated my path and given me hope through the darkness. Hope. In the recipe of life, hope shares equal measure with love. They are, to my mind, inexorably tangled. Against all odds, hope has wheedled its way into a life that had been nearly crushed by sorrow, fear and pain. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The descent into despair is not sudden. I imagine the slippery sides of a cavernous hole disappearing into the ground. There are handholds of persistent weeds, small outcroppings of rock, and convenient ledges to grasp as the descent begins. It is a manageable climb with a bright blue sky still stretched above like a taut blanket. There may be voices calling down echoing and not-quite audible in their encouragement. At some point, the plunge no longer seems a good idea, but there is no reversing the motion down, down, down. The walls become slick, wet; there are short, terrifying moments of free-fall until an abrupt and unexpected arrest on no more than a toe hold of rock. Whispered prayer and quiet determination prove no match against gravity for long. A head over heel tumble through black space suspends thought and feeling. It ends in a painful HUMPH as the lungs are forced to release their air. The body lies broken and still while the mind seeks its bearings. No rays of light touch the walls of this dark prison. Perhaps there are some muffled sounds from above, but they are hard to too hard to discern above the lupdup, lupdup of the heart’s relentless urge to beat. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If I were an Edgar Allen Poe aficionado, the story might end here, with a nod to <i>The Tell Tale Heart</i>. Poe wrote, “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” Lying at the bottom of this grave-like pit with only a beating heart for company, one’s thoughts drift hauntingly in dangerous directions. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, a single brilliant ray of light can penetrate the deepest darkness. Emily Dickinson brought us this thought, </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope is the thing with feathers</span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 56.7px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That perches on the soul</span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 56.7px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And sings the tunes without the words</span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 56.7px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And never stops at all. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope is what fills the body with light and lifts the weight of sorrow before it can crush the spirit. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a junior in high school. I read <i>Dantes’s Inferno</i>. So much of its symbolism and meaning escaped me simply because the landscape of my life had not yet been populated with that kind of sorrow and strife. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translated Dante’s work with a colorful and rich prose and descriptive imagery. In the early 1300‘s, Dante succeeded in describing his own view of darkness that was no different than Longfellow’s in the 1800’s or our perspective today: </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He wrote, </span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Midway upon the journey of our life</span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I found myself within a forest dark,</span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For the straightforward pathway had been lost.</span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 15.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 17.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thirty-eight chapters later, Dante reached the end of his journey through the nine circles of hell. He ascended on Easter saying,</span></div>
<div style="font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hence we came forth to rebehold the stars. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">From the fiery gates of hell, a place that represents infinite despair, Dante emerged above ground to witness the shimmering light of distant stars and the promise of hope.. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">William Styron made note of this optimistic message –often lost in the telling of <i>Dante’s Inferno</i> – in his book about depression called <i>Visible Darkness</i>. Stryon’s volume is a small one, easy to hold open in one hand. The generous chairs at Barnes and Noble provided me with a comfortable resting place to read it, cover-to-cover in one sitting. Like any great writer, William Styron changed my view of the world with that book. Not only did I better understand the demons with which he had wrestled for so long, I better understood myself. </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was never diagnosed with depression, but I felt more than a passing acquaintance with the subject of depression as Styron described it. Perhaps, unwittingly, I have been wrestling with some demons of my own. What I did know after reading Styron was that from the time that man has walked upright, he has been seeking light. What I did know was that anything that fosters one’s belief that tomorrow might be better than today is what instills hope among the downhearted.</span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Whether it’s a penlight, a flashlight or the blinding light of day, when light penetrates the cavernous pit in which the forlorn are entombed, a seed of hope is born.</span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 14.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>Hope Springs Maternal</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font: 9.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">by</span></div>
<div style="font: 9.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dawn Elise Evans</span></div>
<div style="font: 9.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope is never a leap. It’s a small series of little movements that hardly qualify as steps. </span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hopes comes unbidden but unceasingly. </span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope is irresistible and seductive. </span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope looks like sunshine or a ray of light, a smile, an hour in the garden. </span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope is a friend’s call and offer to visit. </span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope is shaped and molded by memories of the past. </span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope, like love, when accepted and encouraged, can lift and sustain us.</span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope comes dressed as the promise of a tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hope trumps despair. </span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-47025989646119279182011-10-14T08:50:00.000-04:002011-10-14T08:50:17.012-04:00The Spirit Giveth Life and Other Incredulous Tales of Life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Since last spring, I have optimistically anticipated attending my 35</span><span style="font: 8.0px 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> high school class reunion at the Wheeler School. Wheeler figured too large in my life story not to go back and see the girls, now women, who populate my memories and shaped my life.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The class of ’76 was not untouched by tragedy. In my junior year, I was assigned the role of “Big Sister” to an incoming freshman. I remember her as exceptionally quiet and unexpressive girl. Standing against a wall, she would disappear. She wore a cloak of invisibility. She seemed to disappear among us. Her aunt, Miss Rowe, taught at Wheeler, so I checked in with her to see if I was doing something wrong. She assured me it was not me, her niece was having a hard time adjusting to some big changes in her life. When I came back to school after Thanksgiving break, Miss Rowe took me aside before morning assembly. I listened numbly as she told me my that “little sister” had committed suicide. Rumors were bruited about school later that day, that week, about how she did it. I removed myself from all discussions. I remember feeling stunned, almost shell-shocked. Today, counseling would have been provided for any of us whose lives had intersected with her’s. At that time, we were on our own to figure it out. I found myself asking what I could have done differently. Suicide always leaves the survivors wondering. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Kris Kersch was an eighth grade Wheeler student who did not make it to freshmen year. I did not know her, but I admired the story of her valiant fight against leukemia. Early one September morning, the entire student body assembled in the courtyard to plant a tree in her memory. The song, “I Can See Clearly Now,” which forever has her face attached, was part of the service. Another rather public tragedy was the loss of Jeanie Goulder’s good friend, Billy Boots. It seemed obscene that he was killed by a n automobile while he was jogging. Deaths and grave illnesses touched many of the families of our classmates. We students resolutely carried on. However, these untimely losses delivered an indelible lesson; life is capricious and we are all at risk. There would be times when a group of us would be studying and I would look around the table and wonder which of us might not make it to middle-age. Even now, I am tempted to whisper, I don’t want the powers to be to hear me, I don’t want to tempt fate. To my knowledge, the Class of ’76 has lost three classmates -- Jane Sheridan, Amy Kalberer Sullivan and Lisa Aronson Wyland. Each death leaves a hole in the fabric that binds us. Lately, I find myself flipping to the page of obituaries in the <b>Now and Then at Wheeler Magazine</b> to see if any more of our contingent have joined the departed. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In a state borne of ignorance and youth, I never considered there were fates other than death that can profoundly alter a life. In 1976, I am not sure I even considered disability as a circumstance that had any real bearing on any of us. Neither the literature I read, nor the life I enjoyed, predisposed me to consider that disability could unhinge one of us or alter our paths. Furthermore, I would never have had the imagination to believe it would be me. Nor could I have imagined how often I would come back to the Wheeler principle that “”the Spirit Giveth Life.” When your body does not always cooperate, your must rely on something more. I have derived strength from those words repeatedly over recent years. This summer, I turned in both of my hips for models built of titanium and porcelain hoping to improve pain and functionality. Afterward, I spent six weeks in Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston doing hours of physical therapy and occupational therapy daily. My post-surgical days were part providence, part torture. I learned that the road to better is steeply inclined and the terrain is rugged. However, it is not without surprises.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> At Spaulding Hospital, the fabric curtain walls that separate patient from patient in two-bed rooms afford little privacy. I was listening (despite politely putting on my Bose sound-canceling headphones) to the hospital intake drill as my third roommate in a month was being admitted. Her name was June. Or Judy. A man hovered nearby… a spouse? My new roommate lived outside of Boston. I didn’t hear her birthday, nor did I dare guess her age. A former roommate was 93, but looked not a day over 85. I gleaned that June/Judy had hip surgery after a particularly nasty fall at her summer home in New Hampshire. I was able to block out much of the remainder of the interviews. However, one word, above all others, yanked my attention back to the mysterious, and, as yet, unseen woman on the other side of the curtain. She had uttered the word, “Wheeler.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I confess to clicking the power button on the headphones to “off” for this part of the conversation.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Judy, as I had learned was her name, described having boarded at Wheeler for high school in the sixties. Her mother placed her in an all-girl boarding school after the premature death of her father. This solitary piece of information reshaped my impression of my roommate instantly. Right or wrong, I felt drawn to her immediately; she walked the halls of Wheeler, had dined on Wheeler soups, watched the musicals, been to the Farm and shared a life that I, too, had lived. That piece of knowledge unlocked something. I felt a kinship I had not felt when all we shared was osteoporosis and unhappy hips.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Having Judy for a roommate was like being hospitalized with a close friend. Her wisdom, humor and intelligence were a source of solace to me -- and the stuff on which our friendship blossomed. I could talk to Judy about how hard Madam Erlenmeyer pushed me and she understood. We speculated that when Madam was teaching Judy to conjugate etre, she probably was in her fifties. To think, she had seemed like an elegant old woman. How years can change one’s perspective. Judy and I reflected on the fundamental values that, day-by-day, were inculcated into our thinking. She was there during the heyday of the Women’s Revolution. I was there after Elizabeth Curley Brown had made her mark on our society. Nevertheless, we were branded Wheeler girls. A label we would never freely exchange. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As I recuperated last summer, I had an inordinate amount of time to reflect upon how I define myself. Three years ago, I was diagnosed with a congenital collagen disorder. I have struggled with its symptoms for my entire life. Only recently have we had a label for it. Unfortunately, age accelerates the effect that the syndrome has on me. Slowly, in bite-sized increment, it has disabled me. My diagnosis came about as a result of my daughter receiving a diagnosis. When the geneticist and cardiologist cast about for the gene donor that brought about her disorder, it was a little like spin-the-bottle. The bottle stopped.... pointing at me. A lifetime riddled with illness, injury and miscarriages suddenly snapped into focus, I had Ehler’s-Danlos Syndrome.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ehler’s-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) comes about as a result of a collagen disorder. Collagen is the ‘glue” that holds the body together; it is distributed all through the body. The symptoms may be mild to severe. There are six sub-categories. I was diagnosed with Type III, Hypermobile. In the 1 out of 5000 people with EDS, their collagen is flawed leaving it too flexible and stretchy to work properly. This translates to ligaments that don’t do their work and in muscles that do not sustain mass. Skin may be stretchy, often there are gastrointestinal problems, as well. As a group, we bleed easily, become cold easily, and have a high tolerance for pain. For me, it means my joints are easily unhinged-- my knees dislocated, my spine broke and my vertebrae are deteriorating, my hips wore out and I am hobbled by pain. It affects my heart because the collagen that makes up the aortic root stretches over time. Both my daughter and I have changes in our hearts that are typical in patients with this disorder. Fortunately, I have the class of EDS that generally does not result in sudden, cardiac events. All of which brings me back to my Wheeler days. In my youth, I never considered there would be those among us whose paths would be altered by anything less than death. Imagine my surprise and my lack of grace in accepting the news that I had a disorder that I unwittingly passed on to my child. Imagine my overwhelming sense of gratitude that I would have a child who accepts the cards that life has dealt her and goes about the business of living as fully as possible.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My days spent with Judy at Spaulding helped bring to mind one of the most important pieces of my Wheeler education. When I was younger, I believed Wheeler, as an all-girl school, was responsible for imbuing me with a sense of self-esteem. I have, in ensuing years, discovered Wheeler helped contribute to more than my self-esteem. Some kind of transformation was gradually wrought over my years at Wheeler. It was the resilience of spirit under any condition or circumstance. It was precisely because of the losses we observed at Wheeler that I was christened to life’s hardships. When I was faced with my own trials, I grew stronger. Over a summer when I felt untethered and alone, I found that my Wheeler connections were a lifeline. Thirty-five years after graduating, I had friends from Wheeler willing to help me weather life’s storms. Ellen Pinkos was a regular correspondent, advocate and friend. Jan Fierman Weiner reentered my life as a loyal friend, ever a comedienne. And, of course, the universe delivered up my new Wheeeler friend, Judy. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I will not be at my 35</span><span style="font: 8.0px 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> reunion. At this juncture of time, I can’t travel comfortably. However, Skypping brings me face to face with friends. I spend inordinate hours on my computer traveling unfettered by my body. I write my blog. I write magazine articles, continue to look for an agent for my literary novel (here’s the plug; I accept all leads and track down all suggestions to get me an agent and my book published) and I manage my family life from bed.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am constantly bumping up against what I desire to accomplish with what my body allows me to do. However, my fingers and my Mac give me an open-ended ticket to travel. My spirit remains indomitable. And, as Wheeler taught me, “The Spirit Giveth Life.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My blog may be found at http://dawnings-anewdawn.blogspot.com/</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For more information about Ehler’s-Danlos Syndrome go to <a href="http://www.ednf.org/"><span style="color: #3800ff; letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">www.ednf.org</span></a>.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div></div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-32252961954254225342011-09-04T18:19:00.001-04:002011-09-04T18:24:23.297-04:00Line-Dried <style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Times New Roman";
panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-parent:"";
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"> My dryer broke about four weeks ago. I was standing at the kitchen counter when I heard a tremendous CLUNK sound emanate from the laundry room. No scent of smoke, no horribly abrasive sound ensued. I went on with making dinner. About two hours later, I reached into the dryer expecting to pull out a dry load, and discovered a soggy mass, tightly coiled in on itself. All the wash was bound together by the stretchy amorphous legs of my daughter’ tights.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> I turned to my helpmate, my husband. He is abundantly more talented in understanding the machinations of inanimate items than am I. Half an hour later, he rendered his verdict. Call the repairman.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> It took three phone calls to locate a serviceman who would do repairs on a thirty- year old gas dryer. His name was Bob. Bob was as helpful and friendly as could be. He identified the problem and told me he’d order the part. I explained that I couldn’t go very long without a drier with three children under five – the baby just six months old. He was sympathetic and left. The next day, he called me with a good news, bad news story. He couldn’t get the part, but he had “tinkered” in his shop at home and had managed to get the old one working. He returned to install it. I jokingly asked if there was any risk of fire, explosions or gas-related accidents. He reassured me that there wasn’t by demonstrating how the part was tooled. When the burner started right up, I was wildly enthusiastic about his demonstration. Bob kept cautioning me, “I can’t tell you how long this will work…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"> It worked for three loads. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> The gauntlet flung down, my husband decided to really roll up his sleeves. He puttered and tinkered with staccato commands emitting from the laundry room floor, “Flashlight,” “Screwdriver,” “Turn it on,” “Quick, turn it off!”</div><div class="MsoNormal">The upshot of his ministrations came as a swift whack on the dryer’s side, and the dryer worked. He showed me exactly where, and how hard, my palm must strike. I didn’t have the knack. I tried with my fist, my foot, the palm of first my right, then, my left hand. Nothing worked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> We talked about buying a new drier. We looked at flyers, read reports, all very scientific. The purchase of a new drier would be an unexpected expense, but not a prohibitive one. Surprisingly, there was something else going on. Something undefined caused our reluctance. I was in no hurry to buy a new machine.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> The laundry continued to be generated at an alarming rate -- the natural consequence of a cleanly family of five. Since I happen to do the bulk of that household duty, and because I would have to wait for my husband to be available to give the machine a wallop, I resorted to line-drying. Now I have a friend (who gave us the dryer fifteen years ago) who will only use a dryer under dire circumstances…even when all four of her sons, and mother lived at home with husband and her. I remember shaking my head in disbelief. “But Joanne,” I would lament, “You spend all your time centered around washing, hanging, picking, folding, ironing, and putting away laundry – all while keeping an eye on the weather. How can you manage to fit in your job, the boys’ activities, shopping and meal preparations?” She would never answer me directly, instead, she would smile knowingly. Rather like the initiated might smile at the uninitiated. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> I have since joined the ranks of the initiated. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> At 6:30 in the morning, when I bundle up my son, plop him in the stroller under the clothesline and begin hanging laundry. I enjoy a stillness and expansiveness people pay therapists to achieve. At noon, when I pick that first load, and hang the next, I escape from my desk or my household chores for some mid-day sun. The baby likes to be placed directly under the clothes so he can reach for them as the breeze flutters them just beyond his reach. My young daughters race back and forth in a game of their own imagination. At 5:50 pm, while I go outside to bring in the last load, I escape from the madness of a hungry family who are nipping at my heels for food. I am alone among a colorful population that never resists my ministrations. Later, after dinner, the radio blares the daily news that I completely disregard . However, I can recite verbatim the forecast for the next day’s weather. Just before bed, I enter the laundry room to inhale deeply of that wonderful clean, outdoor scent that was so hard-earned. The fragrance seeps into the fibers of the fabrics of those line-dried sheets and towels. The box of “outdoor fresh” Bounce fabric softeners sheets lays unused on top of the dryer.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> The downsides do exist in this way of life; chapped fingers, unexpected rain showers, stiff, unforgiving blue jeans. But for a while, it’s a nice way to slow down life. I recognize that this step back in time is drawing to a close. I ordered a dryer and it is due to be delivered today. I am hoping to salvage the best from my new dryer – fluffed and tossed convenience as well as an occasional visit to a line-dried way of life. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Reprisal of essay</div><div class="MsoNormal"> May, 1995</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-5004083864894425592011-09-01T11:46:00.001-04:002012-07-12T19:20:38.927-04:00Irreproducible Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Bold Italic';"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l70uHa3tg_g/Tl-oVD6sTII/AAAAAAAAAHw/1ok7fkprJOQ/s1600/SCAN0024.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l70uHa3tg_g/Tl-oVD6sTII/AAAAAAAAAHw/1ok7fkprJOQ/s320/SCAN0024.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
1974 Sally Dawn Chicki </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
Chicki was the first person to love me for who I was rather than due to a genetic imperative. As I grew up, she was an ally and a friend; she helped me weather the battles of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Chicki took me as I was, without forethought or deliberation. She doled out life lessons like the candies on a candy necklace. In later life, distance and circumstance separated us, but I never doubted that she would help me if I needed her. It was kind of like going through life with a parachute. Just knowing Chicki was in the world allowed me to believe that, not matter what life threw at me, I would land on my feet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The origin of Chicki’s name was never explained to me, nor did it matter. She was my mother’s younger sister by twelve years. When I was a child, she was called a “change-of-life baby.” Chicki was born well after her siblings; my grandmother was 39 when she delivered her. Shortly thereafter, my grandfather died. My grandmother had two children in college and one entering grade school. Since my grandmother had to work, she enrolled Chicki in a nearby parochial school. The nuns were regimented and had little patience with Chicki’s antics and imperfection (Chicki had a severe hearing loss in early childhood, due to a high fever). She wore hearing aids that were large, fell out often and would emit ear-splitting squeals that would disrupt class. She was reprimanded for turning them off. When asked why she did this, she said, “It’s easier to daydream.” Perhaps the final straw for the nuns was when they found Chicki, a Protestant in a Catholic school, raiding their third floor living quarters. The secret she whispered to me may now, fifty years later, be divulged. Nuns’ panties and bras are sometimes dressed with frilly lace. My version of that take-away moment was that all women are entitled to secrets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I do not remember a time before Chicki came to live with us; she was simply the reason my sister and I shared a bedroom. Later, I understood there were “problems” between my grandmother and aunt so my parents took her into our family. Chicki’s bright future was briefly dimmed by a man named John to whom she was briefly engaged. All I remember about him is his name and the effect he had on her psyche when their engagement was broken. On Wednesdays, my mother would escort Chicki to see a special doctor that would help her with her mind. Chicki would see the doctor for precisely fifty minutes; I knew this because it was how long I had to read the HIGHLIGHTS magazines that were strewn about in the waiting room. I asked Chicki what she did with that doctor for all that time. She told me they talked. “Sometimes you need someone other than your family and friends to help you understand yourself,” she told me. “It’s okay to ask for help.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Another lesson Chicki taught me was the value of omission. She had borrowed a friend’s new, red mustang. When she offered to take me for a ride in it, I jumped at the chance. We cruised along unfamiliar streets and neighborhoods. Eventually, we drove between rows and rows of army barracks. Chicki declared that it was time to go home. With her foot bearing down on the gas, we raced down the avenue. At the instant she meant to take a right, she misjudged the corner. The car lurched over the curb, with its tail wigwagging behind. The mustang came off the curb with an earsplitting jolt. Chicki’s right arm, a precursor to seatbelts, stretched across my chest to secure me in my seat. When we resumed our ride home, she strictly observed the speed limits and traffic signals. Just before we got home, Chicki stopped the car and turned to me, “Dawn, there are going to be times when it doesn’t make sense to report every detail of an adventure. Please don’t tell your parents about this little mistake.” Thrilled to be taken into her confidence, I willingly agreed. It was the first time I understood that there could be parts of my life to which my parents were not privy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In a move that surprised and delighted all of us, my grandmother and Chicki wanted an adventure together. They found jobs and rented an apartment on Martha’s Vineyard Island for a year. Unknowingly, they opened a door that led us home; the Island, its beauty and its people drew us in. My parents ended up buying a summer cottage there. The Vineyard became central to our life stories. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When Chicki returned to our nest, she worked to save money so she could rent her own nearby apartment. The morning she left, I was twelve. She found me kneeling at the foot of my bed in front of an altar I had assembled; there were the doll Chicki brought me from Amish country, a flickering candle, and my Sunday school bible, open to the 100<sup>th</sup> psalm. Prayed earnestly, I knew that our closely woven friendship was about to change forever. Later, she told me she cried all the way to her apartment because the last thing I asked her was, “How can you leave me this way?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
We entered a new phase of our relationship as marriage and motherhood took more and more of her time and school took mine. Chicki’s life underwent a shift with the birth of her daughter, a divorce, a remarriage, and another new baby. In the midst of all that, she recognized that my home life had grown untenable. She urged me to escape my parents and come live with her. I chose to stay the course for a short time, but then moved to live in solititude in my family’s Island cottage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Life proved to be generous with me. I met a Vineyard man who made me imagine a future brighter and better, simply because I was in it. As our relationship became committed, we exchanged visits with Chicki and her growing family. I loved watching the kindness her girls would show their mother even when there were disputes. They would never yell from another room. They would run back, plant their feet in front of their mother and make sure she could read their lips when they shouted, “No, I WON’T!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Chicki’s husband hailed from Texas. His native family pulled his new family pulled west and into a world apart from us. Chicki and I wrote letters but the phone was always a challenge with her hearing. One day, she called me unexpectedly, shouting with her pitch a bit off, “Dawn, I came out of a building today and I dove for the ground.” “What do you mean?” “I have new hearing aids and a plane flew directly overhead. It was the first time I ever heard a plane!!” My eyes welled up. “That,” I thought, “That is Chicki.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As the years passed, we each became more mired in our lives, children, and jobs. My mother, who now lived on Martha’s Vineyard, became a conduit of news and updates because she and Chicki wrote weekly postcards to each other. When the time came to call hospice for my mother, I called Chicki. I heard her voice and broke. I cried and hiccouped and she couldn’t understand a thing I said. Slowly, slowly, I pulled myself together so she could understand the sad news I was sharing with her. My mother held Chicki closely under her wing right until her death; she sent Chicki the last postcard from the hospital. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eighteen months later, it was Chicki’s daughter, Rachel, contacting me. She and her sister knew I would want to know their mother was in the ICU. The girls –now women, were sweet to send me daily updates. They called me shortly after Chicki died. They were sitting outside the hospital in their car feeling numb and full of disbelief that they were going home without their mother. We managed to laugh through our tears as we talked about their mother. We plotted to commingle Chicki’s ashes with my mother’s on Martha’s Vineyard. We all agreed that there was a symmetry to that closure. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Chicki’s love for me was a gift of immeasurable value; it had its own breadth and width and depth. She filled in the edges of my life, fortifying, teaching and always, always believing in my worth. She lived her life by loving, giving herself to others without condition, and looking for humor wherever she could find it. The peculiar lilt that her speech had as a result of her hearing impediment branded her love for me. Her “I love you’s” , with their unique intonation were unique and irreproducible. As unique and irreproducible as she was to me. </div>
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-89950102018543027822011-07-24T08:15:00.001-04:002012-02-27T15:11:41.906-05:00I Can Not Be Thrown Away<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Times New Roman";
panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-parent:"";
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Courier;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the day before my discharge from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, a clergyman came to call on me. I recalled</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">agreeing to his visit three weeks earlier, when I was first</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">admitted. Now, after a particular arduous stay, it seemed, well, irrelevant. I had found my way without the particular religious salves he might offer: I was fine. However, I did not banish him from my bedside. We chatted about the fine work of the Rabbi who had called upon me when my first hip was replaced and I was rehabilitated at Spaulding. The clergyman explained he was a Baptist, that</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">he and the Rabbi and the priest who served the hospital had a deep appreciation for each others’ work. The message that God is present and moving in our lives, even in our darkest hours, is non-denominational. It was a brief visit, and I felt I had weathered it politely without revealing some of the profound questions that have surfaced in my life recently.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">As he was leaving, I saw how tightly the minister was clutching his clipboard – I thought he was clutching the list of faith-seeking patients he might locate by room number. Instead, he pulled out a sheet from all of the others. As he did so, he said, “I find we have a lot to learn from each others’ religions. The Rabbi came to my church to address my parishioners last year. I would like to leave you with a few words written by a Catholic Cardinal. Please, when you have a moment, read this over and see if they mean something to you.” I folded the page in thirds and placed it on my blanket before shaking his hand goodbye. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> As the minster was leaving the room, he paused to talk to my roommate. The “privacy” curtain was half drawn between our beds; neither of them could see me. Without much thought, I reached for the paper on my bed and unfolded it. My first thought was that the page-long prayer he left me was like an overly-adorned woman. The ornate, ritualistic language typical of Catholicism almost managed to obscure the simple, beautiful and powerful message therein. I had no forewarning of my reaction. When I read Cardinal Newman’s prayer and translated it into a language I use myself in praying to God, something broke inside of me. I wept. I tried to do so silently. I simply couldn’t imagine what was happening. With no Kleenex at hand, I buried my face in my blankets. I tried to restrain the shudders of grief and relief that passed through me. The whole time, I kept my face turned toward the window while I struggled to regain my composure. The message that I am not disposable and that I have a role to play was a powerful one at this time in my life. I know that I must thank John Henry Cardinal Newman for starting this particular conversation with God.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">I am created to reflect God’s glory. The design for me is to serve mankind in a way that is uniquely suited to me and my God-given gifts. This is my life’s work. I am uniquely created to do something or to be someone to serve others. My place in the world is one no one else can serve; whether I am rich or poor, despised, or esteemed by others, God knows my heart. I may not</span> <span style="font-size: 10pt;">understand the role I serve. I listen to the quiet, inner voice that guides me and speak my truth, I can be certain that I am playing my part in God’s world. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between others.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I will trust God. Whatever, wherever I am, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <b><i>I can never be thrown away. </i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">God is with me. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him: in confusion, my confusion may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, confusion, or sorrow may be stopping points on the path toward an end I can not imagine, but is part of God’s plan. God may prolong my life or shorten my life. He may take away my friends, throw me into unfamiliar circumstances, or leave my future clouded and uncertain. I may feel abandoned, desolate and alone. Yet, despite these heart-wrenching trials, I hold fast to my faith in God’s presence in my life. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">No matter my purpose or my work, I will trust in God, who affords all goodness, love, life and light. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">~John Henry Cardinal Newman as paraphrased by </span><span style="font-size: 8pt;">Dawn Elise Evans</span><span style="font-size: 8pt;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .8in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-20410224986358418132011-06-17T12:05:00.000-04:002011-06-17T12:05:56.915-04:00The SecretIf what we read feeds our thoughts, it is pretty clear what I have been thinking lately. I have books strewn about the house. In a whirlwind blast to tidy up the house this morning, I gathered up some of the books I am reading currently. When I saw the stack, I laughed out loud. The pattern that emerged was pretty clear. <br />
<b>One Day My Soul Just Opened Up</b> by Iyanda Vanzant<br />
<b>Mind Power into the 21st Century </b>by John Kehoe<br />
<b>The Healing Power of Mind </b> Simple mediation Exercises for Health Well-Being and Enlightenment<br />
Tulku Thondup<br />
The books have been dropped in the bathtub (where I often fall asleep reading them), highlighted and their pages dog-earred and torn. These book have been well-worn and well-loved. <br />
<br />
In a few days, I am going into the hospital for my second hip replacement in three months. I have been working hard to harness the infinite power of my mind to bring about the best outcome. For that reason, I must have pulled these books off my library shelf at different points of times. These books are instruction manuals for enlightened thought; using different words, describing varied examples, their messages are all the same. <br />
You are GREAT. You can do this!<br />
I encourage anyone who is trying to find their way through a physically, emotionally or spiritually challenging period in their lives to seek out and read any one of these books. I will tell you honestly, however, that it's not about the books you read. What I have discovered is that it is about the willingness to ask the questions. The answers you seek will not be found in a single book nor in a single teacher. If you are determined to find an answer and are willing to ask for help, you will ultimately find the answer within yourself. Just ask Dorothy ~ you don't even need ruby slippers. The answer may not be the answer you want, nor even the one you imagined, but the answer is already within your reach. So, that's <b><i>The</i> Secre<i>t</i></b>. Picture my hand cupped and curled as I lean close to you and quietly whisper, <span style="font-size: x-small;">"Pass it on..."</span>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-69177788557244573382011-05-31T21:57:00.000-04:002011-05-31T21:57:35.153-04:00Living with Grief<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Times New Roman";
panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-parent:"";
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{mso-list-id:746146283;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-556620072 691286608 -1223126024 28765284 962235156 -214269222 -1939188504 -1517749576 339520602 -1443053764;}
@list l0:level1
{mso-level-tab-stop:.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
ol
{margin-bottom:0in;}
ul
{margin-bottom:0in;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;">May was Ehler’s-Danlos Awareness Month </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;">For me, every month is Ehler’s-Danlos Month.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Living with Ehler’s-Danlos Syndrome*, I mourn daily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mourn the future I had envisioned before I had major medical issues. I mourn the freedom to live each day without physical pain. I mourn the many things I can no longer do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mourn the freedom to choose my activities without limitations imposed upon me due to issues of health.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;">I believe that it was 1976 when I met Elizabeth Kübler-Ross at a seminar conducted for the newly- formed hospice agency on Martha’s Vineyard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She introduced us to the idea that there were five stages of grief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Originally, these stages applied to people facing terminal illnesses. However, she realized that grief is laid bare whenever there is a catastrophic personal loss. This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one, divorce and the onset of a disease or chronic illness. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;">From Elizabeth Kubler Ross,The Five Stages of Grief</span></div><ol start="1" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial">Denial</a></b></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"> — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."<br />
Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the personal. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>possessions and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the people that will be left behind. </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anger">Anger</a></b></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"> — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; '"Who is to blame for this happening to me?"<br />
Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy toward others.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bargaining">Bargaining</a></b></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"> — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."<br />
The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay the loss. Usually, the negotiation for an extension is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the individual is saying, "I understand loss in inevitable, but if I could just have more time as it was..."</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_%28mood%29">Depression</a></b></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"> — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die... What's the point?"; "My life, as I knew it is over, so why go on?"<br />
During the fourth stage, the person begins to understand the certainty of loss. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visits from friends and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the person to disconnect from things that offer love and affection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is an important time for grieving; these feelings must be processed.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance">Acceptance</a></b></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"> — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."<br />
In this last stage, the individual begins to come to terms with the impending loss or death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They find peace.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal">Each new day presents me with an opportunity to move closer to Acceptance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The funny thing is that, just when I am confident that I am at peace with my life and my diagnosis, I </div><div class="MsoNormal">rebel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I plant the geraniums, paint the trim, go out to dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next day, I find myself in bed angry at myself and bargaining with the Powers that Be. I resent the price I pay for the simple pleasures of daily living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s all up to me, however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I successfully break this cycle, I know I will be closer to achieving a state of grace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Go to <cite><a href="http://www.ednf.org/"><span style="font-style: normal;">www.ednf.org/</span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or you can watch <a href="http://www.ehlersdanlosnetwork.org/mysterydiagnosis.html"><span style="font-style: normal;">http://www.ehlersdanlosnetwork.org/mysterydiagnosis.html</span></a></cite></div><div class="MsoNormal"><cite>to learn more about Ehler’s-Danlos Syndrome..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></cite></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-13391612741534218582011-05-19T15:07:00.000-04:002011-05-19T15:07:59.520-04:00The Cottage on the Vineyard<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The first time I remember being in the Cottage was 1963.<span> </span>The Johnsruds stayed there and my sister and I stayed with our parents down the street in the pink house behind the Wesley House.<span> </span>That was the summer my Mom cut her foot so badly on the beach.<span> My sister</span> and I were enchanted with the floor grates in our second floor bedroom -- they afforded us the ability to eavesdrop on the adults downstairs. </span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mary K. guarded the Cottage with all of the possessiveness of a mother lion protecting her cubs.<span> </span>The Johnsruds were careful to observe all of her rules and the Campground’s regulations.<span> </span>Of issue was how to enjoy alcohol on the porch.<span> Cousin </span>D and I </span><span style="font-size: medium;">were excited to be allowed an overnight in the room that later became my bedroom.<span> </span>For lighting effects, he draped a cloth over the lampshade and nearly started a fire.<span> </span>That was the summer of “The Cousin’s Photo” – the five of us lined up in Martha’s Vineyard sweatshirts. It is an enduring icon of our family history.</span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">The Cottage became my lynchpin: while our family moved, uprooted and began again, to meet my Dad’s career moves, the Cottage was home.<span> </span>When life in Rhode Island became overridden with conflict at home in April, 1976, I escaped to the Cottage. I was seventeen. It was no coincidence that I married an Islander. Six weeks after our first child, H, was born, I took her to the Cottage to begin to earn her status as a ”sort-of Island girl”.<span> Our daughter, K,was captivated by a place where her creative expression was rewarded; she won first place in the All-Island Art Show in the Children's Division. C, my third baby was tagged our Beach Baby Beach Bum after spending day after day under an umbrella at the Beach Club. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span>As our family contemplates plans for my father's long term medical care, the piece of the equation that is difficult to resolve is the future of </span>The Cottage. It is his asset, it is my heritage. The Cottage and the Island represent family, home and tradition to me. In the days ahead, I will do what I can to preserve it....for my parents, for my children and for their children. <span></span></span>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-27075607725725017802011-04-30T19:53:00.001-04:002011-05-19T13:43:44.616-04:00The Power of Forgiveness <br />
<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">It has taken over fifty years for me to begin to discover the power of forgiveness. A surprising corollary to that understanding has been that, whenever I stop assigning power to the person or event that hurt me, I am a happier person. Every time I find the strength to forgive someone, something good rushes in to fill the space my resentment once occupied. It’s as if condemnation, with its far-reaching and evil tentacles, tries to stifle goodness. It takes persistence, desire and vigilance to achieve forgiveness.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Since Sunday-school teachers drilled it, grade-school teachers recited it, and high-school teachers demanded it, I have tried to live by the Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have the do unto you.” I have done a fair-to-middling job in that practice. Where I have been most deficient is in tearing up the list of misdeeds I have suffered. In self-indulgent moments, I imagine a long-robed judge sitting through my recitation of the wrongs I have endured. Her head nods in silent encouragement as I pour forth with my sorry tales. Finally, she sets forth her judgment, proclaiming as justified and warranted my feelings of anger and resentment. Her legitimization leaves me righteous and satisfied. I am left with a twinge of disappointment when my fabricated Goddess fades from view. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> When we suffer an injustice or hurt by another, we rush to judge them and condemn them for having made us suffer. That anger is pernicious. Before long, it becomes the dye in which our world is colored. Hard-earned experience has taught me that forgiveness is like an invisible contract we have to make between ourselves and the ghost of the person who hurt us. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">To break it down, there are seven steps to practicing forgiveness. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="Heading1A"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Seven Steps to Forgiveness</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Acknowledge your feelings of anger and resentment. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Identify why you have these emotions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Allow yourself time to experience these feelings.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Desire the release that forgiveness offers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Picture how things would be without this negativity in your life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Practice blame-free living in short bursts.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Dig deep and offer light and goodness to the person or people who hurt you. Repeat “I forgive you, I release you, I am letting you go.”</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 4.5pt left .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Repeat Steps 4 and 5 until you feel detached from the person or people that hurt you.</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2"> </div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2"> 7. Accept that forgiveness is a process. Expect to go three steps forward and two steps back. Blame and resentment can resurface without warning. Be prepared to renew your efforts. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Forgiveness is an act that demands that we let go our sense of the injustice we have suffered. When we release our judgments and seek understanding instead, we are giving </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">to others what we would ask for ourselves. We must not forgive once, twice nor even seventeen times. We must forgive until we find only love in our hearts; be assured that love comes back to us and multiplies. Through forgiveness, there is redemption. In forgiveness, we are made whole.</span></div>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-90288484248190303902011-04-24T07:33:00.002-04:002011-04-24T19:46:10.301-04:00Why Easter Means More Than Chocolate Bunnies<div class="MsoNormal"> Easter’s origins are sacred to those whose practice Christianity. The holiday is sacred to me for wholly different reasons. As a young child, Easter promised a litany of traditions that were strictly observed in our family: a new dress, a new slip, white gloves, bobby socks, and shiny new <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">patent-leather shoes. The most cherished addition to the Easter outfit was a “bonnet”; I was often able to choose a pert new hat to set off my dress. There were Easter baskets filled with small gifts and chocolate bunnies that <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">helped the hour or so before church pass quickly. Holding my mother’s hand, I loved stepping into the nave of the church buffeted by the triumphant musical offerings that heralded the Good News. Easter Sundays forced the minister to truncate his sermon in order to make room for the choir director’s choral arrangements. In my Protestant church, timeliness was never violated; the notion of running more than the prescribed hour for a service was anathema to the congregation. Contrary to other Sunday services, I did not doze or scribble or play mindless games such as counting the number of bricks in the ceiling. Instead, on Easters, I nibbled every so slowly on the one, foil-wrapped chocolate bunny I was allowed to tuck into my little purse along side my white hankie bearing the letter “D and a quarter for the offertory plate.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"> When I was twelve, my knees frequently dislocated when I walked. A renowned orthopedic surgeon in New Jersey advised us that I needed to have my knees repaired as soon as possible; beside the painful nature of this problem, I was doing irreparable damage to the cartilage. We would start with the right knee during Easter vacation. In addition, I would miss another week or ten days of school. Three to six months later, he would repair the left knee. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">My surgeon’s schedule dictated I arrive at the hospital the day before the surgery. I underwent lots of blood work and x-rays and a thorough scrubbing before being wheeled down to the operating room at 6a.m. the next morning. The post-surgical week was filled with pain, glimpses of my parents and sister, morphine delirium and friendly bunnies hopping off the walls. By Easter morning, my doctor deemed me fit for a daytime-leave from the hospital. I was to be back in my hospital bed by 6 p.m.. Our traditions for the day were put aside to accommodate my condition. For example, for my Easter outfit, my mother delighted me by making me a pair of flowing palazzo pants in a psychedelic pink fabric that I had admired. The pants fit easily over my thigh to ankle cast. My flip-flops were the only shoes that fit my swollen foot. Our family had dinner in a dark, crowded restaurant. Its wooden dance floor still haunts me as I remember crutching back from the Ladies Room and taking a clumsy spill on the somewhat forgiving surface. Fortunately, I more bounced than fell. I was publicly mortified when my father scooped me up and placed back in my wheelchair. However, those splendid palazzo pants gave me the confidence to be wheeled back to the car under the curious eyes of the other restaurant guests. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"> I turned very quiet on the car ride back to the hospital. I was faced with another painful week of physical therapy. My mind was desperately trying to reconcile the meaning of Easter with the idea of spiritual resurrection and with the daunting tasks ahead. I was faced with having to recuperate from the right knee surgery then return to repeat the entire process on my left knee. I remember the thrill when I had first had a glimmer of an insight; the only way through these challenges was going to be with the help of my family, my friends, and my faith. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Easter was all about the impossible. Easter that year had not included most of our traditional observances. We didn’t attend church or enjoy the familiar music that always lifted my spirits. The flowers, oh the flowers – lily’s and hyacinths and tulips and daffodils – all so integral in proclaiming Easter—were not in sight. There was no Easter egg hunt. However, a cataclysmic shift took place in my understanding of Easter. The resurrection of hope could not be confined to one oft-told tale of of a young man’s sojourn to death and back again. For me, Easter had come to have an enormous significance for anyone who believed in the possibility of new beginnings. Anyone who wished to could lay down the burden of their past and, instead, pick up the promise of the future. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> In the last gasp of pre-teen awareness, I understood that Easter was not about the new hat, the new dress or the chocolate Easter bunny. Easter was about the crocuses pushing their way up through the cool, dark soil to bring a spot of color to a spring day. Easter was about the sunrise when the fingers of first light promised the dawn of a new day. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> In the forty years since that Easter, nothing has diminished my belief that Easter serves to remind us that hope is a certainty; it is among God’s greatest gifts to mankind. Darkened skies and defeated spirits can not withstand the restorative power of hope….Hope, buoyed by love and a positive attitude, always brings with it a better, brighter tomorrow. </span>DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-25927749787359089852011-04-17T18:54:00.001-04:002011-04-17T18:59:24.831-04:00Charles Frank FilmThis is a link to Charles Frank's trailer for a short he is entering in a film contest in Easthampton, MA.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/charlesfrankfilm"></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/charlesfrankfilm">http://www.youtube.com/user/charlesfrankfilm</a><br />
<br />
While there, check out his film called, "Tag." He won a prize for it last year. This is a proud mother.DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-89828569211741444162011-04-08T16:22:00.002-04:002011-04-08T16:22:40.758-04:00Chestnut Mountain View<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Years ago, the cover of a newsstand magazine caught my attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Headlined in the August edition was the 1996 <i>Better Homes and Gardens </i></span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Home of the Year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since then, I have kept that magazine preserved in a manila envelope covered with large bold words in red ink; SAVE, SAVE, SAVE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The plans in that magazine changed my life.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Back in August, 1996, my husband, three children, two cats and one bird were pushing out the boundaries of our 2200sq. foot restored farmhouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were at a cross-road; we needed to expand our living quarters, build or purchase a new home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The plans in <i>Better Homes and Gardens </i></span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">captivated our attention and claimed out hearts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mailed a check for the architectural plans and we allowed our dreams to blossom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We searched six months for an appropriate lot that would meet our budget and construction requirements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our efforts were not fruitful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reluctantly, we shelved our desire to build the 1996 <i>Better Homes and Gardens</i></span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"> Home of the Year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We put our one hundred year old home on stilts, dug a full basement, constructed a solid foundation and added a family room and a library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We loved the property we rebuilt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had a comfortable home, an in-ground pool and over a acre of land for privacy. And yet…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From a box, under our bed, in an envelope labeled SAVE, SAVE, SAVE our future whispered to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By tacit, unspoken agreement, we kept a six-year vigil for the hillside property that might accommodate our house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband stumbled upon it in a casual conversation with an insurance client.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The property had proven difficult to develop and he wanted to sell it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Together, my husband and I hiked up the remnants of a logging road that disappeared into an overgrown tangle of thicket .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After climbing 400 feet up Chestnut Mountain, we took to trails left by deer and other fauna of western Massachusetts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband gained purchase of the view by shimmying up a tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I climbed on until I reached a rock-roped ridge with a stream of water trickling down it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My heart beat loud and fast, whether from exhilaration or exertion, I was not concerned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had a strong, sure sense of coming home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfolding below us was the wide, expansive vista of the rolling hills and mountains that lend the geographic identity to this region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Connecticut River Valley coursed through it, threading its way south toward Springfield, toward the sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The land purchase was readily accomplished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What followed was anything but easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We endured a two-year legal wrangle with the local Zoning Board who were invested in flexing their muscles on our project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less committed dreamers may have abandoned their dreams, but we had a secret inspiration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had a magazine with a full photo-shoot of our dream house as it would rise from the end of a 1200 foot long mountainous driveway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We moved in December, 2005.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Numerous projects are still underway, including:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>landscaping, constructing the wrap-around porch, finishing the first floor space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time, energy and resources have been at a premium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These facts in no way diminish our deep sense of gratitude that we live on ten acres in a home that can only be described as a hallowed place: we live perched between earth and sky in a spacious and light-filled home once featured in <i>Better Homes and Gardens.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"> March 2010<o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-9874776922806455462011-04-08T11:41:00.000-04:002013-11-02T22:09:51.715-04:00An Homage to Emily; When love comes to call.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #d0e0e3;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">When love comes to call, it sends no couriers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">It oft arrives without preamble, forewarning or thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">It becomes incarnate in its hosts for time without measure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Its duration, the eternity stored between the rollicking beats of two<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Loving hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">When love lays its claim,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">It rushes to secure its newly gained ground –<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Its geography and landscape ripe with new promise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">It basks in the rich pleasure of each stolen moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Converting the vanquished to victor anew.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">When love loses luster<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Habit and pattern oft times linger as glue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">The dizzying pulse of new love untethered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">As events, sometimes capricious, pry lovers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Apart. Love’s glossy coat may be worn and tattered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">But steady the metronome of two beating hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">When love, resurrected, endures decades<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Embattled, its old magic echoes in harmonic <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Refrain.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">The half-lift of a brow, the brush of a palm, a ghost</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">Of a smile, a language its own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">When love comes to call, it lingers a lifetime until,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">At last, its labored breath exhales as one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #f3f3f3;">d.evans April 8, 2011</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-59351895576236067542011-03-13T12:28:00.001-04:002011-03-13T12:33:48.763-04:00The Untold StoryThere are three dates of supreme significance in my daughter’s life. Hannah was conceived on 25 July, 1989. She was delivered on 4 May, 1990. We celebrate the role that medical technology and surgical finesse played in her rebirth on 17 March, 2005. When it comes to Hannah, there is much to celebrate. When it comes to Hannah, so much has been joyous, but nothing has been easy.<br />
Hannah did not take that first instinctual gasp of air when she was born. The drama took place in that instant of what didn’t happen. It took the efforts of a pediatrician and several nurses to coax her to breathe. She was a nine-pound baby whose lungs were filled with melconium. By the time Hannah was seven, we knew that something was not altogether right about her breathing. Our active, bright child was petite – she did even make the height and weight percentiles on the growth curves in every pediatrician’s office; her place in the front row, center, of every class picture was assured. Despite her size, she was reading by three, calculating volumes of spheres by the time she was five. Hannah had exceptional strength, coordination and flexibility. She was recruited to compete on an elite gymnastic team when she was seven. But the simple act of breathing challenged Hannah. She struggled with asthma, chronic respiratory infections and recurrent pneumonia. <br />
Summers were the best for her. Winters stopped her in her tracks. She rarely complained about the cancelled plans, abandoned vacations and interrupted efforts on performances and competitions. Over time, Hannah developed allergies to all antibiotics. In order to take an antibiotic, she first has to go through a desensitization process under the care of an immunologist in Boston. Rather than bemoan her circumstances, she channeled her energy into academics and pushed herself to the limit. In high school, we discovered she had needlessly suffered for years due to a misdiagnosis of a congenital lung abnormality. By the time it was detected, her condition had deteriorated into a life-threatening situation. After a radical lung reconstruction and ensuing drug therapy for aspergillus, Hannah reclaimed her life. It took a year for Hannah to fully recover from her surgery and treatment. She did more than simply recover. She pushed beyond the physical limits she had always known. The young woman she has become is filled with grace.<br />
Sometimes a story is told in terms of what we can’t see. In Hannah’s transcripts, we can’t see how self-directed much of her education has been. We can’t see the times she was overlooked and forgotten socially because she was unable to attend school. We can’t see her unique ability to make lemonade out of lemons – in three languages! On my bureau rests an empty picture frame; it is surrounded by photographs of my three children, a favorite quote and a picture of my husband. I keep the small glass frame empty for one reason. It holds all the possibility of a thousand untold stories. Hannah is like that empty frame. She rarely looks back at what might have been. Rather, her eyes are fixed on the future and focused on all the bright magic of the stories she will tell.<br />
<br />
September, 2008<br />
<br />
<br />
I wrote this essay to attach as the parents’ statement on Hannah’s application to Georgetown University. Fast forward three years – Hannah is a junior at Georgetown. I could never have guessed that Hannah would have to take a medical leave of absence in spring of her junior year. Her lungs, once again, have raised havoc with her plans. She intended to spend four months studying in Tokyo. Hannah withdrew less than a week before the recent devastating earthquake hit Japan. My departed mother would have offered her wry wisdom, sotto voce, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1hl8k2MFG-4/TXzjcEGG4WI/AAAAAAAAAEo/7RXq0EftEcQ/s1600/17000900002_19600380002_1060.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1hl8k2MFG-4/TXzjcEGG4WI/AAAAAAAAAEo/7RXq0EftEcQ/s200/17000900002_19600380002_1060.jpg" width="154" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hannah at 7</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
March, 2011DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-44186375539373135882011-03-10T16:07:00.000-05:002011-03-10T16:07:34.673-05:00Prayer WorksI have every reason to believe in prayer. My first prayers were memorized and recited by rote; they were part of the ritual of mealtime, bedtime and church. The prayers were not my own, but I laid claim to them. “Now I lay me down to sleep. The Lord is good, the Lord is great. Our Father who art in heaven.” I recited these words with the confidence that only a child has that God is listening. Prayer continued to be an integral part of my life as I entered middle school. Growing up, my mother’s younger sister lived with us. She was twelve years older than me and twelve years younger than my mother. My aunt tells the story of how she found me, on the day of her departure to her own apartment, kneeling, bible in hand, before a lighted candle. The thing is, I can remember just how I felt. How I was imploring God to look after this person I loved even if she did have to leave me. I wanted to pray that she would stay, but I knew, even then, that such a selfish request would go unheeded. Just about the same time, I changed schools. I met a whole new world of friends. On our walks to school and home again, we would talk about our teachers, school lunches and whether God existed. I listened, with interest, to a boy – a self-declared agnostic – explain his doubts whether God existed. I made the mistake of asking a devout Catholic boy how he had such utter certainty that God was real. I wasn’t intending to challenge him;I really wanted to know. I paid for that question with a fist to my solar plexus. I went down like a rock. I didn’t have theological debates with that crew again. <br />
Over the interceding forty years, life has presented ample opportunities for me to pray. Driven by circumstance, I have turned to prayer over and over again. The numbers are impressive. A serious car accident, five miscarriages, one Alzheimer afflicted father-in-law in-residence, my husband’s resignation from his job on the day my first viable pregnancy was confirmed, a placenta previa, six months on bed-rest while caring for my one-year old baby. There were the many pneumonias and respiratory infections that plagued my first-born. There was the debilitating illness that wracked my second child for a year before her grossly inflamed appendix was removed. I fought the inexplicable degeneration of my joints that led to chronic pain and surgical repairs and my son’s struggle with demons we didn’t always understand. I used prayer through my eldest child’s lung surgery and battle with the fungi aspergillus and, my second child’s struggle with Ehler’s-Danlos Syndrome alongside the discovery that she had inherited this pernicious disorder from me. I prayed as I stood alongside my mother from cancer’s grasp to its defeat of her. Prayer has been a constant through the years of what my parents once tagged as my “many trials of Job.” My prayers were always answered. I simply did not always recognize the answers that were delivered for what they were. <br />
<br />
Each decade has brought with it its own formula for successful prayer; how I pray, the exact mechanics of what prayer is, has changed with time. When I was a child, I would pray to God by calling out his name, then politely making a request. I prayed aloud for understanding and help. It seemed that I was successful using this approach; I began to think that this was a lot like a magic act I’d seen at a church fundraiser. A magician was hired to say the magic words, repeat our heart’s desires and AbracadabraShazaam, a rabbit, peanut butter sandwich or scarf appeared!! It was imperative that we limit our heart’s desires to items displayed directly on the table in front of us. I believed that I should never pray for something I couldn’t imagine. <br />
<br />
High school brought its own set of worries and concerns. I noticed that when I turned to the same God I had prayed to in elementary school, I got similar results….despite the odds, things turned out for the best. . “God, please let the boy in eighth grade math notice me despite my leg braces and crutches.” He called that week. However, it was easy to read on the faces of the cool kids that it wasn’t cool to pray in public and definitely not in school. I decided to go underground with my prayer and call it meditation, instead. In tenth grade, I took some lessons in Transcendental Meditation (TM) and learned how to ohhmmm with the best of them. I went from being geeky to being hippie with little more than a mantra. Meanwhile, despite hardships, goodness - godliness – continued to be spill into my life. <br />
<br />
In my twenties, my prayer methods evolved to asking for the highest good for all involved. I gave up the notion that I could know what would be the best resolution to a problem. I gave up believing I had any idea of what was on the table. I left it up to God to determine the outcome that would best serve everyone involved. I arrived at this acceptance by way of a funeral I attended for a young man who was killed in a car accident. His death left his wife and two young children disconsolate. The priest presiding over the service declared that humans have a restricted view of God’s will. He likened our knowledge of God’s intentions to a view of a parade -- seen through a knothole in a picket fence. Prayer was a way to make the view a little larger and bring us more perspective about our place in that parade.<br />
My thirties brought a profound awareness that the best I could do was to let go and let God take over. It was a relief to know that I was never going to be cast adrift; in moments of despair, panic or loneliness, I could take a break to ask for God’s presence in my life. If I was quiet and still, God found me. <br />
What served as a resort of last measure in my thirties was my go- to strategy as the mother of three children in my forties. I had enough sense to realize that life was too big, too complex, too much for me to tackle on my own. A little divine intervention was necessary. I decided moving meditations might be an adjunct to those long-ago thirty-minute TM sessions. I found myself asleep in five minutes when I tried long, recumbent meditative trances. (I have seen discovered that I can sleep sitting up -- an highly evolved skill, I might add.) I found a new way to pray. My mantra– heard as a buzzing in my ears-- was a short, staccato sound, repeated over and over……..GodGodGodGodGod. Though somewhat frenetic, this method kept me in touch with my greater power and it worked for me.<br />
It was in this decade that I discovered for myself the indisputable power of sharing prayer. My cousin, Alison, always, upon hearing of my challenges would say, “I will pray for you.” I was touched that she would think of me. Finally, I was feeling so overwhelmed and full of despair that I submitted a prayer request and a ten-dollar bill to Unity Village. Within a week or so, the tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders. Cause and effect? I will never know for sure, but I do know that I drew comfort knowing my child’s life was not solely in my hands. As reluctant as I was to draw anyone else into my personal conversations with God, I discovered that when friends, family and well-wishers raised my prayers with their voices, my small, quiet voice was lifted. Whenever more than one person brings their clear intentions to inviting God’s presence in another person’s life, it is prayer. The whisper of thanks, the surrender to God, these are simple prayers of beneficence. Now. when my.sister-in-law says, “ Good-bye, I will pray for you.” I say, “Please do.”<br />
In my fifties, I have, once again, devised a different approach to prayer that combines the magic of childhood, the quiet, stillness of my twenties, the letting go of my thirties and the prayer in motion of my forties. Prayer is more than desire; it is intention. The prayer of my fifties starts with mindfulness. I hold an awareness of that moment, letting it expand into my total consciousness. Gradually, I let thoughts and concerns drift through without latching too hard onto them. They come, they go with each breath. A refrain of GodGodGodGod taps out in a whisper at the edge of my awareness. The last part involves being aware of what follows. Expect and look for good things and they arrive. Ask for help, it comes. Sometimes in a form or in a manner I could never imagined or considered. Most often in a time frame that I find frustrating. However, with patience and time, I see order in all that transpires. I understand I am one small part of a much larger mosaic. Prayer lifts me and brings me joy even when I have lagging faith. I have learned that faith is a rugged weed and not easily exterminated. Even for an experienced gardener.<br />
<br />
October 2010DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-73470381884536284442011-03-08T14:32:00.000-05:002011-03-08T14:32:00.246-05:00One Week in the Pages of a MagazinePossibilities are limitless with imagination as a guide. How else can you explain the thread that links Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown (Harper Collins, 1964), Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts (Warner Books, 1998) and The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs (Simon and Schuster, 2007)? I arrived at this commonality during a convalescence after recent surgery. During long hours of solitude, when reading was still a challenge for me, I let my mind drift through book titles I had read in the past. I did mental calesthenics – I challenged myself to list authors, settings, characters. I grouped them by topic, by publication date, by the date I first read the book. By now, it must be more than evident than I am a literary geek. Let’s simply acknowledge that fact and move on.<br />
I started formulating a thesis that the books we read as children shape our dreams and mold our futures. Some of my favorite childhood books were T.H. White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose, Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, The Borrowers, and E.L.Kinigsburg’s From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I looked for adventure, a world within another world, a strong, moral protagonist and a satisfying conclusion. Every book that claimed my attention successfully drew me into its pages, lifting me out of my seat into its plot. Escape.<br />
One of my earliest chapter books, Flat Stanley, recounts Stanley’s conundrum when a bulletin board lands on his bed, flattening him to a record four feet tall, a foot wide, and half an inch thick. At first, the novelty of his situation offers many distractions and numerous escapades. Stanley even solves an art heist. His condition eventually wears on him. His creative brother uses a bicycle pump to restore Stanley to his former stature. My daydreams allowed me to accompany Stanley on his high-flying adventures as a kite, down a sidewalk grate below the street and into the U.S. postal service. I catalogued and stored those pleasurable thoughts for future reference.<br />
Thirty years later, I was, unconsciously seeking the same kind of thrill. Case in point, the book Where the Heart Is. This novel is almost entirely played out in a Walmart. The main character finds herself pregnant and trapped by circumstance and finances inside this giant big-box store. She shows resourcefulness and ingenuity in creating a comfortable world. Drawing from house wares, electronics, and the grocery section, she creates a comfortable environment to live in after hours. Despite all expectations to the contrary, she develops a real friendship with a man who, ultimately, changes and improves her life. <br />
Another vault of mind and I arrive in the pages of A. J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Biblically. I gleaned what I know about this book from a lengthy New York Times Book Review and a Barnes and Noble research expedition. A comfortable leather chair, a decaf. vanilla latte and a Sunday afternoon spent speed reading the book at Barnes and Noble. The crux of the book is that a less than religious Jewish man undertakes the challenge of observing his faith’s most cited biblical laws for a year. Much like Stanley and __LOOKUP NAME_________, the narrator lives in a world of his own making. He comes out subtly changed, but I will let him tell you about that. Suffice it to say that I was intrigued by the discipline and curiosity that inspired him to follow this path. Would I have the psychological muscle to commit to living so stringently? I completed a one-year Course in Miracles (in sixteen months). Does that serve as a predictor of probable success? <br />
With all this hop-skip-and-jumping, I finally hit upon a thoroughly engaging idea. Last week, I was standing in the checkout aisle of Stop and Shop when it struck me. What would I do if, like Flat Stanley, I found myself compressed and flattened? With the scads of displayed magazines on my right, it was a no-brainer that I would like to enter the pages of a magazine featuring food as its theme. Trapped in an interior world with different rules, how would I do? Would I make friends, adapt, experience an epiphany of sorts? To challenge the notion, I pictured a miniaturized version of “me” hopping through the pages of Cooking Light magazine. For one week, I would eat and serve only recipes wrung from the 78 colorfully displayed recipes displayed therein. Twenty-one meals. On a mission, I visited Forbes Library to pick up a back issue of Cooking Light. I pulled out April, 2007, flipped through its pages, and began to digest my future. <br />
<br />
<br />
MARCH 2008DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209957727943347535.post-27852868002647709392011-03-08T14:27:00.000-05:002011-03-08T14:27:18.460-05:00Life with Charlesneighbors make,” then we were doing our part to be good neighbors. We had made good use of a four-foot, locked, stockade fence around the pool. There was a 40” picket fence with a locking swing gate around the play yard. Finally, there was a split-rail fence dividing our property from our neighbors’. As a mother, I was never willing to completely entrust my children to those fences. After all, even the Great Wall of China had been breached. <br />
Charles never intended to go exploring, cause a commotion or inspire the careful placement of new road signage near our house. He was simply a 3½-year old boy who wanted to go vroooom. It was late morning on a hot May day. Charles’s older sisters <br />
were at school. I was in the kitchen and Charles was in the fenced in play yard off of the kitchen. At the crunch of tires on the pea stone in the driveway, I peeked out the window and saw Dale. He came through the backyard in order to visit with Charles. I deposited a load of laundry on the dining table next to the slider. Dale came inside to grab a sandwich. We caught up on the news of the morning; while he ate, I folded. Charles was busy with his Tonka trucks cutting swaths through sand in the sandbox. After a kiss goodbye, Dale headed back to work. He paused by Charles, his hand rumpling Charles’s hair in a form of loving benediction.<br />
With one quick, backward glance, I moved through the house distributing piles of laundry. I left leaning piles of clean, folded clothes stacked by bureaus and at the foot of the girls’ beds. I was always orbiting around Charles. I went to check on him. My son was not there. I called without response. I went into the yard to more thoroughly search the area. I was flummoxed to find the gate locked, but no sign of Charles. Irritation gave way to concern “Charles?” I called. Cold fingers of dread gripped my innards. My voice rose in volume and pitch, "CHARLES STRPHEN FRANK, answer me this minute. This is not a game!” <br />
My brain sought to calculate statistical probabilities for the dangers he might face in what amounted to no more than four minutes out of sight. I was frozen with terror that he had drowned, been abducted or been hit by a car…all quite reasonable in a span of a minute. I felt crazy, desperate, helpless. Shaking the locked gate one last time, I reassured myself that he couldn’t be in the pool area. Against all reason, I had to see for myself. If he had somehow climbed over the fence, then unlocked the pool fence, he could be lying face down…I couldn’tcomplete the image in my mind. I held my breath as I made my way through both gates until I stood in front of the still, empty pool. I ducked into the small pool house to look for my stowaway among the filter, pumps and chemicals. I noticed the door was slightly ajar, but thought no more about that when I came up empty. <br />
Reasoning that Charles must have slipped by me into the house, I turned back to the house. In an era before cell phones, I placed a distress call to Dale’s office, begging his assistant to have him call me the second he arrived. Like a lifeline, I clipped the cordless phone to my belt.<br />
Seconds later, the phone rang. I summed up the situation in as calm a voice as I could muster. Before I could finish, Dale cut me off and said he would be right home. I searched the interior of our home – under beds, behind draperies, in the drier, under the workbench and in the dishwasher – all previous hiding places for Charles. I was conscious of seconds turning into minutes and I did not know where my child was. The rumble of pea stone announced Dale’s arrival. I raced out the front door. <br />
“Have you found him yet?” he asked.<br />
“No. I’ve been through the house, I don’t think he is inside. It’s been close to fifteen minutes, should I call the police?” <br />
“You go down the street and ask the neighbors, and I will check the property. You checked the pool, right?” <br />
“Not there. What exactly was he doing when you left? Was he still in the sandbox?” <br />
“I took out the Barbie jeep for him to use but told him he had to stay in the fenced in area of the yard.” <br />
It took three neighbors, two police officers, a man from the highway department and us to track Charles through the twenty acres woods and trails abutting our property. He was nearly invisible within 150 feet of the house, sitting in the jeep wedged in a copse of birch trees. Once he got stuck, he was determined to get unstuck. His technique involved going forward, cutting the wheel, backing up and repeating until the battery died. “Like Daddy does on the lawnmower,” he said. He didn’t walk home because I had always told him if you get lost in the woods, pick a tree and stay still. I neglected to instruct him to answer when called. <br />
I feel an odd sense of history when I drive by our old house and see the prominent yellow road signs strategically placed one hundred feet before the house and one hundred feet after the house. The man from the highway department thought it was the least he could do given Charles’s nature. They read, CAUTION: CHILDREN AT PLAY. <br />
<br />
Only once have I been upbraided in public for my lack of parenting skills. It was a harsh indictment, but the loud, chattering censorship of an angry woman seemed justifiable in light of the potential tragedy that day. One of the most important lessons I learned that day was to not underestimate Charles. <br />
When my older children were in elementary school, our family participated in a car pool to and from school. We did not generally use our 1985 Jeep for the trip to school because, due to seat belt configurations, Charles’s car seat had to be placed in front. It was a time when the dangers of the front seat were well-identified, but an era before airbags had become standard. On a very occasional basis, I drove my three children and another child to school in the Jeep. Generally, they rode in our Mercedes station wagon. <br />
One morning, my husband had the wagon, so I was forced to meet our rider using the Jeep. Hannah ( 8 years old), Kay ( 7 years old) and Charles ( 3 years old) sat like ducks in a row in the back seat from our house to the rendez-vous spot. Charles’s head in the rear view mirror was the same height as the girls’ heads because of the elevation of his car seat. When we arrived at our meeting place, a local minimart/ gas station, I parked the car while I transferred and buckled Charles’s seat into the front passenger seat. I left the keys in the ignition so as not to misplace them. When our rider arrived, I wanted to make a quick transfer. I can still recall the satisfying click of the belt buckle engaging after I tugged it down, over Charles’s chest and between his legs. Just as I walked around the car to the driver’s side, our rider’s mother pulled in along side of our car. I pivoted from the front seat of my car to the back seat passenger door of her car so I transfer her son and his schoolbooks. <br />
As I extended my arm to open her car door, my car slowly started to move away from me. Instantly, I perceived that the car was rolling backward toward to (HIGHLY FLAMMABLE) gas pumps. Charles was in the driver’s seat, nearly standing up, peering over the dashboard. His hands were spread side grasping the steering wheel. He was looking out the front window of a car that was rolling in reverse. I heard myself screaming, “HIT THE BRAKES” as I ran after the car. I found my fingers tightly curled around the door handle I was running alongside the slowly moving vehicle. I was afraid to open the door only to have Charles coming tumbling out…perhaps under the wheels of .the moving car. Yet, the imminent danger of an explosion if the car collided with and ignited a gas pump was a threat I could not dismiss. <br />
Abruptly, the car stopped. The car was about twelve feet from the gas pumps. It had negotiated misses with numerous parked cars and several incoming vehicles. Peering out from the driver’s side window were two sets of large, brown eyes. My daughter, Hannah, had jettisoned herself into the front seat and used both hands to pulls up on the emergency brake to stop the car. As I opened the car door, Hannah clambered back to her seat. Charles turned off the car key. The car engine shuttered to a halt. Then he shifted over to his car seat. I was still speechless as I watched him; my mouth was gaping. Charles gazed serenely out the window while he carefully drew the straps of his seat belt over his head and threaded them between his legs. He smiled when he heard the familiar, “Click.” The safety buckle was engaged. <br />
<br />
<br />
I climbed in to move the car from its awkward stalled position. Suddenly, a woman marched out of the store and rapped her knuckles sharply on my window. She was screaming mad. “What kind of mother are you? They could have been killed. Your are irresponsible and do not deserve to have children. Some people should NOT be parents.” She may have said more – she probably said more, but I didn’t hear a word. I was looking at my children, saying a prayer of thanks for their safety. I felt a gratitude that I can still summon today when the other car pool mother continued to entrust me to take her son to school.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the ensuing ten years, Charles has brought us to the edge of terror once or twice, to the verge of disaster occasionally (note: a beebee gun, an aerosol can and open fire may prove highly explosive) and to the precipice of despair intermittently. However, not a day goes by that we forget his humor, his intellect, his curiosity, his persistence and his drive for excellence in whatever endeavor he is pursuing. He is finding his way in the world and taking notes as he goes. He is learning from his sisters how to treat women, from his father how to treat friends and how to run a business. From me, Charles has learned how to make french toast, how to waltz, to have faith, and I hope, how to be kind to others. When we celebrate his birthday in a few weeks, we will have much to celebrate. Mostly, we can rejoice in our belief in the man he is bound to become. To Charles, on his birthday, I will simply say, “Mazeltov.” <br />
<br />
<br />
July 2007DawnEliseEvanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13553564242388403505noreply@blogger.com0