Hunger

I read the "Little House on the Prairie" series when I was in first grade.  I've reread it many times since and one or two things hover in my mind.
In "The Long Winter" Laura goes to a party where she receives an orange as a party favor.  "Imagine," she thinks in awe, "having an entire orange all to yourself."
I found myself thinking about this the other day when the "kids meal" came and included an obscenely large hot dog and more fries than Dave and I could eat together.  It cost nine dollars and we threw almost all of it away.

We think about food a lot in our house.  Nathan has had so many problems with food and weight gain that we know the calories and nutritional breakdown of a stunning number of foods.  Traveling, even going out to eat, brings up the "what-will-we-feed-him?" anxiety.  Dave's dad's recent brush with the reality of heart disease has thrown our eating habits into sharp relief.  Dave and I have both eaten too much crap and exercised too little since our little man came along.  We worry about eating out and finishing leftovers before they go bad.  Everyone has breakfast even if it makes us a little late for work.  I worry about waste - food bought and uneaten because Nathan didn't like it or we worked late too many nights in a row to cook it all.

All small worries compared to that shared by 1 in 5 American children.

Twenty Percent of American children live in homes where, at least once a week, they run out of food and don't have money to buy more.

Twenty Percent.

That means that in a class of 30 children 6 of them may not have had breakfast and may not be expecting to have dinner.  Six children whose grumbling stomachs will distract them from learning to read and write.  Six who may bully someone else out of their lunch or pick a fight or ditch a class or talk back to a teacher because they just feel so bad.
Some of these children don't have food because their parents have spent the money on cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs, but some of these children don't have food because a parent has lost a job and the cost of keeping a roof over their heads and the heat on is much more than their current income.

Feeding our children is possibly the most basic role of parenthood.  God gave women's bodies the ability to nourish the next generation.  It is believed that one of the many causes of the obesity epidemic in America's children is that parents don't like to tell their children "no" when they ask for food.  The reality in our country, however, is that 20% of our children are mildly malnourished because of the unreliability of their food source.

I don't pretend to know what the answer is.  Nutritious school lunches can help the children.  A declining unemployment rate would help whole families.  A single parent household has twice the likelihood of going hungry so decreasing that prevalence would make a real impact.

I also don't have an agenda.  I just think it is horrifying that this country, that overeats and throws food away and spends so much of our GNP trying to solve the problems of others, can't feed our children.  I think a lot of people don't realize how high the numbers are.
If you want to read more check out the Food Research and Action Center.
And please, think about donating some healthy food to your local food bank.  It is the only safety net that many families have.

Bothersome

One of the unfortunate facts about the hospital I work at is that it abuts a very old cemetery.  Through very careful forethought and planning there are no patient rooms that have a view of gravestones.  It is visible, through the trees, from the library.  The PICU family grief room originally had a clear view of marble mausoleums until they installed some stained glass to blur the harsh reality.  Otherwise, it is the physician offices and work-rooms that have the gorgeous views of ancient trees marching through the seasons. 

I don't mean to imply that we should hide the concept or possibility of death.  Our bodies all die eventually.  I just think that there is something unsettling about struggling with the illness or injury of a loved one and, needing a glimpse of the outside world, looking out a window to see a funeral procession.

In the oncology world we wrestle every day with life and death discussions, how to talk to children and their parents.  Some people want cold hard facts with no sugar coating.  Some want vague generalizations.  We're honest with all of them though the language changes.  We work hard to make our clinic a space of hope and to give all the happiness we can to families who spend many of their days worrying about what the last day will be like.  Kids run around the halls chasing a favorite doctor or nurse.  They do crafts while they wait.  The teens hang out playing pool or Guitar Hero.  Santa always comes.  Hope, as it has been said, springs eternal.

We do what we do for the kids.  That includes decorating for every holiday including Halloween.

But we also do it for the parents, and I wonder if any of them find this bothersome as they check in for a blood count and chemotherapy.

While I was gone

How to explain a monthlong abscence from the blog world . . .

Model airplane show with daddy

Playing piano at Rosh Hashana services

Learning to drive

Making, and eating, and enjoying vegan cookies

 Enjoying one of the last days of summer in a fountain in the Baltimore harbor

Hanging out with med school folks at a good friend's wedding


I'll try not to go away for so long again.

Hands

Sometimes, when we walk together, Nathan will hold my hand.
Sometimes he waves his arms around like an indignant octopus in an often successful attempt to escape restraint.
But sometimes he will hold my hand.
There is something about that little hand wrapped firmly around my index finger that just melts my heart.
I look down and see my tousel-haired little boy walking beside me, occasionally looking up at me, eyes shining with excitement at a truck, or, even better, a purple bus.
But just under the skin of that reality is my dark eyed baby, blinking sleepy milk drunk eyes at me, soft fingers curled reflexively around mine.
And behind that? The picture I carry in my heart of my fetus, thumb in mouth, holding onto the umbilical cord for security.  He is anchored no less firmly in my heart now than he was then, but he is less often attached to my side.

Whether it is two spoons at dinner or not holding my hand in a parking lot "Na-Na", as he calls himself, has his own ideas about how things should be done.

It makes me happy. And quite frankly, it makes me sad.  My sometimes baby, sometimes boy will too soon be always boy.

I'm not an activist by any stretch of the imagination.  Not to say I don't care or I don't have opinions, but I've never considered myself to have the discretionary time necessary to do anything big about it.  Still I do believe that many people performing small actions can effect as much change as one big action.  In this vein, I have decided not to buy gas from BP.  It's the closest to our house, the most convenient by far, but certainly not the only choice.  I've been torn between the rationale that they need all the money they can get to fix this mess in the gulf, and the thought that they don't need my money to support their ongoing pursuit of profit.
In the end, I decided to pump my fuel elsewhere.

Until today, that is.  This afternoon, I heard an ad, a plea really, from the owner of our local BP franchise. 
I'll paraphrase:  "I live here in your community.  I employ your friends and neighbors.  It's not my fault that the BP well exploded.  BP is trying to fix it.  Please don't blame us.  Please buy gas from me." 
It was much more eloquent than that but that's how it broke down.

It made me think.  We know that the fishermen in the gulf are suffering.  We know the tourist trade is declining.  We know the effects of the oil in the ocean can be shown on computer models to be catastrophic if it is not stopped.  But what about the BP franchise owners in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Washington?  Nowhere near the water, and definitely not on the news, but being driven out of business, loosing their livelihood and savings nonetheless.  All because people like me want BP to know, in a small, small way that we disapprove.

The excuse for inactivity is so easy to make.  My single gas purchase makes no difference and is not felt one way or another.  It is only the cumulative effect of many that makes an impact.  That's true for BP if I don't buy their gas, and for the local franchise owner if I do.  But I do have to choose.  I do have to decide if I side against the large corporation for their non-malevolent negligence or with the local small business owner and a community that has already been financially bludgeoned with the relocation of the steel industry.

Tonight I'm not sure.  I continue to struggle, and I'd love to know what you think.

Wait, it comes together . . .

When Dave and I hadn't been dating for very long at all, he got me a very special gift.  It was a mini-rose bush.  We sat in front of it as he explained that it was like our love.  Lots of blooms open but lots of buds with promise to come.
A few months later when my "green thumb" had brought the rose bush to its knees, Dave begged me to no longer think of it as representing us.

For our wedding favors we gave small "Tree in a Box" sets for planting a tree in the Jewish tradition.  We planted our own seed and the resultant tree, a flowering catalpa, has made it through 5 years.  Every spring when it sprouts new little shoots and leaves, we always breathe a sigh of relief.  This year, on our fifth anniversary, despite being repotted to a larger pot, fertilized, and even put outside, it has refused to give any green.

**********

We're certainly not plumbers but we have had a few do-it-yourself adventures in our kitchen.

When I was pregnant, we decided to replace the kitchen faucet with a fixture with a pull-out hose/nozzle.  I was sitting on the floor reading the directions and Dave was under the sink doing all the work.  When he turned on the water to check the connection, the hose, with nozzle as yet unattached, went crazy and sprayed water all over the kitchen.  The worst part, though, was that Dave had reversed the connection so he thought he was turning on the cold and instead ended up dousing me with straight-out-of-the-water-heater hot water.  Luckily no permanent damage was done to anyone or anything and we are able to laugh about it.

Today Dave replaced our garbage disposal.  The motor on the old one was dead, so instead of being able to confirm the breaker was off, we just had to turn off the entire first floor and basement.  (Our house is wired strangely enough that turning off the second floor may have made sense as well, but the electrical vagaries of our house make a post for another time.)  It could have been an easy job but there were a few hitches, including a trouble with the wiring that had both Dave and I wrestling with exposed wire.  Finally, it was all together and we were working together to get it up and secured to the sink when my shoulder flipped up the switch.

And the disposal roared to life. (OK, purred through its noise dampener, but it was the thunder of our lives flashing before our eyes to Dave and I.)  Nathan asleep upstairs and his parents blithely playing with exposed wires hooked up to 220 with only a switch between them and certain doom.

When we started breathing again, we could only laugh nervously, and Dave just turned off the whole house.  It seemed the safest even though the wiring was done.

**********

This evening, on our front porch, we noticed that our wedding tree has finally put out two little shoots of green.  Coincidence?

Trouble

- with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bear.


Gummy Bears to be exact.  Gummy Bear Vitamins to be uber precise.
I've scoured the ingredient label, and I can't find crack, but maybe it's hidden in amongst the fancy chemical names for things like vitamin E (alpha-tocopheryl, anyone?).  Nevertheless, Nathan has a powerful need for the gummy bear.  Every morning we come down to the kitchen, and thus begins a frantic pantomine of pointing, signing "more" and "please" and then the addition of vocal choruses of "more-more", "buh-beh" (gummy bear, for those fortunate enough to be uninitiated to this ritual), "peasss-peasss" (surely you recognize please-please - in baby talk).  I think the intensity of his hand motions, pathetic pleading, and unutterable cuteness is almost enough to levitate the bottle off the counter and into his grasping hands.
Almost, but not quite.  He remains dependent of his mother and her mean-spirited, unfair, doctory, ridiculous, one vitamin per day rule.
Two days ago he resorted to rolling around on the kitchen floor in indignation, howling "please more gummy bear", tearing his hair, and beating on the ground.  And when his mother, cold-hearted woman that she is, simply stepped around him as she emptied the dishwasher and asked him to please stop shouting and refused to hear reason, he sat up and with tear-stained face, turned on his 1000-watt smile and said "peass-peass, buh-beh" in the the most pitifully pathetic tone ever given voice.
And I'll admit it.  I almost caved.  Almost went the route of "one extra vitamin couldn't possibly hurt him".  But I didn't.
I gave him dried mango instead.

Yes, I bribed him with sweets, but apparently standing firm on the gummy bear issue was enough because while we continue to have protracted conversations about my refusal to dish out more of the good stuff, there has been no more wailing or rolling (at least about "buh-beh's").