Archive for November, 2010
Rain on the Scarecrow
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Image via Wikipedia
Saturday night we went to the John Mellencamp concert at the Chicago Theater and when he sang, “Rain on the Scarecrow”*, I remember us playing that song after my dad’s funeral in December 1993. When the funeral ended, we drove aimlessly around the Green Bay farmland. The snow barely covered the ground and you could see the fallow dirt. The crops were long gone and what remained looked sad and straggly, drained of moisture and color. It was fitting for that day. During his entire life, my father never once mentioned my accident. He was doggedly supportive of me; never turned down a good idea if I had a plan to go with it. He became ill when I was only 17 , and when that happened the focus shifted to caring for him as his health and mental acuity diminished. I wish now I had the courage to ask him about the accident, to understand his thoughts and feelings. When I heard that song Saturday night, I remembered the aimless farmland drive as well as all the things I hadn’t had time to ask him before he died. I wondered then if he ever wanted to talk to me about it. Many years later, I got my answer by going to a woman who channelled guides. Out of the blue, she told me she had a message from him and I got the answers I had been wanting. It felt like a miracle. When the universe has a plan for you, there is no stopping it. Have you ever felt that?
Rain on the Scarecrow
Scarecrow on a wooden cross, blackbird in the barn
Four hundred empty acres that used to be my farm
I grew up like my daddy did, my grandpa cleared his land
When I was five, I walked a fence while grandpa held my hand
Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the land……….
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Happy Burn-iversary!
5Today is the anniversary of my ill-fated climb up the kitchen stove, according to the best research source I currently have — my blue baby book. Without evidence-based confirmation from a verified medical record, which I may or may not ever find, I rely on my mother’s elegant script in the baby book, where she marks this date in an eerily understated entry, “My oh my. Another big scare with Anne……”. This is the first year in the more than 40 since that I’ve even known the date — the first time I’ve looked in that ole baby book to check it.
Parents Notes- Mom's description of accident
Putting on my detective hat and with the not-so-clever use of the Internet, I see that November 24th way-back-when was a Tuesday just two days before Thanksgiving. I wonder so many things — what were their Thanksgiving plans that week? Who was cooking? Did their plans change when I went into the hospital for a 2 1/2 month stay? Did they visit that day? Was I in surgery on Thanksgiving? Did they cry when it happened?
To date, I’ve interviewed a number of my parents’ friends and relatives and no one remembers that specific week, those specific activities. In the end and in the big picture, I know it doesn’t matter so much but it is still a nagging curiosity even though I feel more like a voyeur to my own story than its main character. Is that how I cope? I’ve always been expert at compartmentalizing and I wonder if this is why.
In all of this, the most important piece is that I’ve found resolution and peace. In the most fortunate of ways, I heard my parents own words many years later. That they wished they had spoken of this earlier. That they loved me. That it changed their lives far more than mine. I’m lucky this way. Many people for many reasons don’t open this door. Have you?
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Defining Moments
2Without question, I believe everyone has defining moments in their life. For me, my burn injury was one of these moments but I never felt it was “the” thing that defined me. After my last post, a couple high school friends independently sent private emails essentially saying the same thing, “When we thought of you, we didn’t think of your injury.” Understanding the accident decades later is not the reason I’m writing the blog. It’s just the starting point for the storyline. When my own kids asked me, “What happened to your leg, Mom?”, there was a story to tell. Since my parents didn’t talk about the accident while they were alive, there were some missing pieces and I wanted to see if the story I thought I knew was the one that actually happened. Added to that was the fact that I thought my parents were sending some signs from beyond for me to explore the past further. And thus I began putting together the pieces of the puzzle.
Have you had a defining moment that became your starting point?
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Cabinets Above Stoves
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Image by Andrew_N via Flickr
In my day I’ve remodeled two kitchens, which is an undertaking in itself if you’ve ever been through a gut rehab. There are myriad details involved and more than a fair share of stress. Through them both, my primary concern was the stove. Not the brand nor where to put it but more importantly, how to position it. Since I burned myself by climbing up a stove to get some crackers in the cabinet above it, I’m uber-sensitive on stove-cabinet placement. That is, no cabinets above stoves. In one kitchen, I went with a cooktop on the island. In the other, a range with a hood above it. I’m not sure anyone noticed then or now since it was one of those odd-yet-still-mildly-compulsive-but-hardly-obsessive things. In fact, I’m not sure if anyone but me thought of what can happen when you put cabinets above stoves (and why would they!) but it was something always in the back of my mind. This may sound batty, but sometimes I find myself looking at my stove and cooktop, nodding approvingly that there are not cabinets above them.
Disfigured Dating Disclosures
5My cousin Tom has become an unofficial advisor to this blog, responding to my request to him about which on topic ideas would be interesting. With characteristic aplomb, he suggested I post on dating. As you might expect for someone in my situation, dating in cold weather months was always my preference if only because my legs were covered.
Seriously, I always felt some mixture of anxiety/trepidation/vulnerability about “disclosing” my potential defect of a leg and probably spent more time than I needed to thinking about the timing of if or when to say something. At a certain point, I had to realize that either my burned leg was controlling me or I was controlling it. Like so many other things in life, secrets are powerful because they can control you. The only way to be free of a burned leg is to essentially admit that it’s there. What I found is that usually after over-analyzing when/where/how to say something about it, when I did mention it, it a non-event. I think most people understand that nothing is perfect. As they say, that’s why pencils have erasers. Or as William Safire put it, “Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.”
If someone thought my burned leg was so god-awfully ugly they weren’t interested in me, it wasn’t mentioned. For those who were interested in me, it was something that came with the package. Telling a potential date about my leg eventually became a routine disclosure as in, “Hey, did I mention that I was in an accident as a kid?” or some variation of that line. No matter how you try to cover up a secret, it won’t won’t stay under wraps a long time. For me, it was better and easier to say something sooner rather than later. As my mother used to say, “You get used to hanging if you hang long enough.” In the same way, I got used to providing my disclosure. I would be interested though to hear from others what they thought when they first knew of my burned leg and how it may have affected them. Thoughts anyone?
When I met my husband many years ago, I will confess I liked the fact that he had a big ole gouge on his head from a surgery. Trust me, it was a conversation starter. To my way of thinking, it made him immediately interesting because I was sure he had a relatable story. And he did. It’s easy to develop a soft spot for physical imperfection in others when it is looming large in yourself.
Over the years, I’ve taken a number of classes from Sonia Choquette (www.soniachoquette.com) and one of the things she’s said that has always stayed with me is this: “The physical is the least interesting part of a person.” This is, of course a belief that develops over a lifetime. I wish I had that thought in my arsenal years ago.
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Burns and Autoimmune Crises
1For the better part of the last week, I’ve been fighting a nasty cold-with-low-grade-fever-type infection funk replete with not one but now two cold sores accompanying me on my lip and nose. To my mind, I’m in an autoimmune crisis right now. I’ve been to the endocrinologist who asked, “Do you think your thyroid levels might be low?” and to which I replied, “Well, I typically do not get this many cold sores when my thyroid levels are in the right range.” As far as autoimmune strength is concerned, I generally fare much better than others with really serious issues like rheumatoid arthritis (which my sister has) or juvenile diabetes (which my brother has). But look at just about any research and you’ll see that those who have suffered serious burns (like me) tend to have compromised immune systems of varying degrees. Growing up, I had what I considered to be more than my fair share of colds, bronchitis, strep throat and of course, mono (I was quarantined for two weeks) and a little psoriasis here and there (mostly on my elbow). Thyroid came later. All of which means that when I’m run down, I tend to get sick and stay sick longer than seems fair. In fairness, I can’t blame only the burn injury however much I would like to. But it’s another area where I wonder what affect those burns actually have had on me.
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Are You as Happy as You Make Your Mind Up to Be?
2I read the following passage the other day and wondered, “Where did the author get this crazy idea?” and “What’s this wacky idea about resigning yourself to your fate? I disagree.” What do you think? Here it is:
Abe Lincoln once remarked that ‘most folks are about as happy as they make their minds to be’. He was right. I saw a vivid illustration of that truth as I was walking up the stairs of the Long Island Railroad station in New York. Directly in front of me thirty or forty crippled boys on canes and crutches were struggling up the stairs. One boy had to be carried up. I was astonished at their laughter and gaiety. I spoke about it to one of the men in charge of the boys. “Oh yes,” he said, “when a boy realizes that he is going to be a cripple for life, he is shocked at first; but after he gets over the shock, he usually resigns himself to his fate and then becomes as happy as normal boys.” I felt like taking my hat off to those boys. They taught me a lesson I hope I shall never forget.” Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, 1936. Reissued in 1964.
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Comaraderie Among the Right-Leg Injured
12A number of years ago, I met Joe. Joe lost his right leg to cancer. When my kids started at their school, we all met John, who lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident. I of course, have my right leg intact though it is charred by burns. Wonder what it is like to realize someone else has a right leg injury? It’s kind of awesome. I became fast friends with both Joe and John, and though others may not always understand, we have 100% rights to joke about our injuries with each other, to share some dark-black humor and deep belly laughs. John regularly tells me, “Your leg is so ugly you should just cut it off.” And I laugh uproariously. Same with Joe. In many ways, I think their injuries are worse than mine. They grew up with their right legs and lost them as adults. For me, the way my leg is, is mostly all I’ve known since age 2.