Monthly Archives: March 2024

Here we go again . . . A moment in time: an abecedarian.

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A

An ABECEDARIAN is a beginner. That’s me, to my good fortune and dismay. It seems that there is little certainty in the world and that calls for a beginner’s mind. An ABECEDARIAN is also an acrostic where each letter of a word (or in this case section) begins with a letter in alphabetical order.

B

I can see the BIRDS through my office window. They are eating and spreading the sunflower seeds in the feeders in my back yard. Right now, there are two Gold Finches hanging upside down on a thistle feeder, one Gold Finch on the ground having a meal with a House Sparrow. A Tufted Titmouse watches from a fallen White Pine Branch only a foot away. Five House Sparrows and two House Finches perch in the Crepe Myrtle which isn’t starting to bud yet like the Lilacs. I do not see a Junco, but I saw them yesterday. They are my favorites, and I hope they have not gone for the season already.

C

They (some utility company) are laying CABLE all over town. Blue, orange, and yellow flags dot yards along sidewalks and curbing. Orange cones and “Utility Work Ahead” signs find me around every corner I turn on my daily walk.

D

The DAFFODILS have been blooming for a few days now. But they don’t thrill me like the return of the DANDELIONS. Their bright yellow fluff spread out like small plates in the grass. In my opinion, they are beautiful.

E

I made Momofuku Soy Sauce EGGS two days ago. They are salty and creamy and go with everything–soup, rice, slices of avocado. This morning I ate one on a slice of sour dough bread along with some microgreens I purchased this weekend from New Leaf Microgreens. Stellar breakfast. (If you live in Charleston or Olney, I highly recommend you checking New Leaf Microgreens out)

F

The FORSYTHIA is blooming. A friend whose mother recently died posted on FB recently that when she was little she thought her mother called the yellow beauty For Cynthia. When I read that I cried.

G

Suddenly the world is GREEN again.

H

I emptied the HAMPER again this morning. Does that thing reproduce clothes on its own?

I

For the last couple of years, I have been plagued by INDECISION. What to write about? Should I begin a new blog or use the one you are reading now? Do I have anything interesting to say? Should I write by hand or type my thoughts up? Opinion or story? I don’t mind admitting that I’ve been consumed with (at times completely paralyzed by) the state of politics in our country. Living in a very small town where many of my neighbors live on the other side of the political divide is silencing in a variety of ways. After all, I love some of these people. To confront our differences is daunting.

J

I prefer JAM to JELLY. But mostly I like my toast savory with butter or mashed avocado and sea salt.

K

When I am confused (and that’s not unusual) I like to copy Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem Kindness into my journal. I have copied this poem hundreds of times. I highly recommend the exercise.

L

If you google LONELINESS, you will find that it is an epidemic in the United States. Especially in middle-aged people. When I read that “loneliness is the new social frontier” I remember my favorite poem, Song, by Adrienne Rich. A friend of mine gave me Adrienne Rich’s book, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New when I graduated high school, and that is where I first encountered this poem. I don’t know where he found this remarkable book or how he knew I would love it, but my copy is worn. The pages are falling out and the cover is falling off. The whole world opened up when I opened that book. Here is the first stanza from that poem about LONELINESS:

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

M

My MOM, Mary Jo, makes a family lunch on Tuesdays. This week, she baked potatoes and had steamed broccoli, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, butter, and a little bit of leftover pulled pork for toppings. Along with the baked potatoes, we had hot bread, salad with her homemade dressing, and green grapes. There was a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Nugget next to each plate, and strawberry pie with Cool Whip for dessert. Rumi, my three-year-old granddaughter was the only one who ate her nugget (and she took the uneaten nuggets home).

N

I am rereading Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Burkeman suggests that instead of learning to say “NO” to the things we don’t want to do, the more important task at hand is learning to say “NO” to some of the things we want to do. If our time on this earth is limited (and it is) we can’t do everything we want to do.

O

My pug, ORANGES, is fairly needy in her old age. When I sit at my desk, she stands at my feet and sniffs my legs.

P

I keep forgetting to get PRINTER PAPER. When my son, Carter, printed out brackets for the NCAA tournament, he had to use parchment paper. These brackets will withstand the test of time.

Q

We are not QUIET people. Well, I am not a quiet person. I have always talked rather loudly, and people are not afraid to point it out. I can’t tell you how many times someone has asked me to hush. I often wonder if it’s offensive merely because I am a woman.

R

I can’t really remember what it was like when the phone RANG and I didn’t know who was calling. To find out, I had to answer the phone.

S

My yard is lit up with SPRING beauties. They bloomed before the first day of SPRING–they usually do. This week, it feels like SPRING is “on the fence,” as if she’s not quite sure she is ready to unfold.

T

I mentioned earlier that I am rereading Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Burkeman suggests that knowing I have a finite amount of time (approximately 4000 weeks if I live to be 80) could change my relationship with time. He writes that “the real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem . . . is that we’ve unwittingly inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.” Chew on that for a minute. We spend so much of our “time” trying to fit more in, we may be neglecting what is really important.

U

One of my favorite prayers is simply, “Help me to be USEFUL.”

V

Wild VIOLETS have many names. Common Blue Violet. Dooryard Violet. Hooded Blue Violet. Woolly Blue Violet. Wood Violet. They are pansies, aren’t they. Impervious to the cold nights, to spring “on the fence.”

W

I WONDER when I look out the window, who ate the sunflower seeds? the birds or the squirrels?

X

A mammogram is an X-RAY. For the past two years, I have had a mammogram every six months along with an ultrasound to check an “abnormal” place in my left breast.

Y

The separation between YOU and me is negligible.

Z

My granddaughter, Grace, is six-years-old. She told me the other day that for her birthday (in July), she wants a trip to the ZOO. I am on it.

11 Years and Counting

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11 years is a long time. It’s nearly half Audrey’s life, but she hasn’t realized that milestone yet. Milestone is a funny word–or concept perhaps in this discussion of Type 1 Diabetes. Today marks 11 years since her diagnosis. Is it a milestone? An anniversary?

I’m not sure what to call it.

But when I look at my daughter who is now 25 years old and who has managed a chronic illness for 11 years, I’m proud. I want to mark the day in some way. It’s a testament to her strength, to her grace, to her spirit.

.***.

Each year, I post some version of the story. Here it is:

I smelled it.

Every time I got close to Audrey I smelled fingernail polish remover.

I smelled it for a week, on her breath and on her skin. I sniffed her for a week while she slept—and she was sleeping a lot—while she ate, while she watched TV. Every time she turned around, there I was with my nose in her hair, or trying to get a whiff of her breath.
Something was wrong.

 
There were other symptoms, sure. She was dropping baby fat which could be explained away by her age—14. Maybe she was hormonal. Maybe her body was changing. Maybe things were shifting as she grew taller. She ate strange things like Frosted Flakes and Snickers bars, and she started gluting soda and lots and lots and lots of water. She peed all the time.

Of course, I attributed the peeing to the water drinking and I attributed the water drinking to the weight loss—I thought it was a strategy, one I had used my entire life; drink more water in order to fill up, in order to eat less food.

It wasn’t a strategy.

The night before the diagnosis, the fingernail polish remover smell rippled around Audrey like a gas leak, and so I asked a others to smell Audrey’s breath and still no one smelled it. Normally the lack of accord would have consoled; however, it did not console because I COULD smell it; at this point, I could see it.

That night, I didn’t sleep because I was busy shuffling into Audrey’s room to smell her. Did I really smell it? Each time I leaned in for another sniff, I answered the question. Yes, I still smell it. In the morning before I woke her, I smelled her again, and knew I would have to do something. I woke her, took her to school, and then googled this: “Breath that smells like fingernail polish remover.”

 
And there it was–ketones. The smell of diabetes.

I called the pediatrician, related to the receptionist my Google sleuthing and that I suspected, but wasn’t sure, of course, that Audrey’s blood sugar might be high. “Could she have a glucose test,” I asked. She’d get back to me, she answered.

And then I took a walk. You see, there was a part of me that knew Audrey had diabetes and there was a part of me that refused to believe it. Disbelieving Bridgett went out for a nice walk and saw some things that seemed like omens–a couple of big crows, a sky smudged gray, and a tree full of starlings.

I walked for a bit, and soon my phone jangled and the receptionist encouraged me to retrieve Audrey from her 8th grade classroom and bring her in for a blood test.

At the clinic, a lab tech drew blood, and then Audrey and I went out for lunch before I dropped her off at school. Within ten minutes the doctor called.

 
“Audrey has diabetes,” he said.
“Her blood sugar is over 300,” he said.
“We will need to transfer her to Children’s hospital in St. Louis,” he said.

“Okay,” I answered.

That’s when he paused, “Bridgett,” he said, “go get Audrey right now, take her to the ER, so they can stabilize her for the ambulance ride to St. Louis.”

“Stabilize her.” he said.

I remained calm, but I repeated his words.

I said to my husband who was home for lunch. “Go get finished up at work while I pick Audrey up and take her to the hospital, so they can stabilize her.”

I called my parents, “I’m taking Audrey to the hospital. She has diabetes, and they need to stabilize her.”

I called the principal and told her, “Get Audrey out of class, I’m on my way to get her. We have to go to the hospital, so they can stabilize her.”

Stabilize her scared the shit out of me. Stabilize her is not something you want others to have to do to your daughter.

It took four hours to stabilize Audrey, and when they did, they rolled her into the back of an ambulance, and my husband and I got into our van and drove to St. Louis.

The nice people at children’s hospital told us we were lucky Audrey was diagnosed on a Friday because diabetes education was unavailable on Sundays. We’d have one extra day to learn about taking blood sugars and giving injections and dangerous lows and Diabetic Ketoacidosis. And when we left on Monday afternoon after finishing our education, we didn’t think we were lucky, we didn’t think we knew enough, and we were very worried all the time.

You know, most folks like a good illness narrative where the main characters learn big lessons about life, love, and living. I can’t say it doesn’t happen. In fact, I’m sure it does, but mostly diabetes stole Audrey’s childhood and robbed me of the handy delusion that I could keep her safe.

As delusions go—it was a hard one to lose.