My new blog is at syrasscribbles.com
All my writing hours have been spent getting Syra's Scribbles III up for publication. I'm so close, and it looks like I'll reach my goal of having it for sale on Amazon by next weekend!
Here's the back of the book: In the third book in the Syra’s Scribbles series, the pressure of the sandwich generation threatens to crush Syra as she gives birth to her fourth child, homeschools the older kids, and takes care of her ailing mother. Watching her children grow becomes a healing experience as she integrates her early childhood memories with her own children’s experiences and learns many lessons along the way. It takes much prayer and perseverance to find a new balance as the family dynamics change again and again. Throughout this book, the everyday stories are relatable on a human level. They will make you laugh and might even make you cry. Be inspired. Be entertained. Here is Syra Divine from 2008 to 2010. Updates
September 2020 It’s Labor Day but I’m up at six thirty as usual. It’s nice to be able to sit at the computer in a quiet house and write. Sophia and Anthony are going to take Basil, Jonah, Xenia, and Justin to Hurricane Harbor, the Six Flags water park, for the day, and Mike and I plan on playing Arkham Horror the Card Game together. I’ve worked hard all weekend to write my chapter one tests and assign homework and make lesson plans for chapter two in all three of my classes. Everything for the next three weeks is entered into the webpage for the headmaster and the kids’ parents to access, which is a week ahead of where the headmaster wants the teachers to be. I can breathe and enjoy the day. My wake up song made me want to watch Rocky again. I failed to interest Basil, but he was willing to watch Rambo, another Silvester Stallone movie. He enjoyed it enough to ask if we could watch the second one, and I was so thrilled to be spending time with him, we made it a marathon. The thunderstorm going on in the backyard through the window behind the sofa we were sitting on in the office gave the movie explosions surround sound. A couple of times I grabbed for my phone to open the ROCU app and fast forward through a scene, but each time Basil put his manly hand over mine to stop me. He said, “Mom just accept it. You can handle this.” He was right. Eighties movies are much easier to watch than today’s films. Sometimes in Rambo First Blood but even more in Rambo First Blood II Basil kept on calling out the lines before people said them. I told him, “Basil you are really good at knowing these movies.” “No mom,” he said and smiled, “They are that predictable.” Sophia and I have also been spending our one-on-one time watching movies together. We are on a Cinderella Story kick. My favorite so far has been Not Cinderella’s Type. I love the way the prince consults his therapist father to get Cinderella the help she needs. I feel so bad for today’s youth who feel like they need to take on the very adult problems of their peers. Jonah and Justin have pulled out my mahjong set and started playing with me again. I slipped a mahjong card into my laptop cover so that I can play online when the chance pops up. It’s great playing with the boys, but I miss the fellowship of the ladies in the neighborhood mahjong group, which was closed down by the pandemic. Jonah is showing signs of puberty starting. He’s our altar boy when we have church in the living room and my child who likes hugs the best. He also alternates between singing soprano and something lower. He’s becoming a sweaty boy with a short fuse and this week he’s been grunting. One morning last week we were running late because a power outage had reset the kids’ alarm clocks. As I left Jonah and Justin’s bedroom, I heard this conversation. “Justin, up!” Justin peeked from under his blankets on the top bunk and said, “I am up!” “Justin, down!” Justin spends much of his afternoons on the phone with his friend Addie. He wanders around the house and yard face timing his second-grader friend and they also play Minecraft together. Xenia is my most middle child these days. I keep trying to find something that she and I can do together but haven’t found much. She is bored with the puzzles we have already put together, and I am over the adult coloring books. She wanders around the house and yard listening to audiobooks. She has been spending the most time with Sophia. I’m glad they are drawing closer before Sophia leaves for college next year. I most often see Xenia in the evenings when she comes downstairs for sympathy and a snack to calm her upset stomach. She loves her teachers though and this is the first year of school that she has enjoyed from the beginning. She feels like her fourth-grade teacher really understands her. I get texts and an occasional phone call from Esther. She and Joshua seem to have settled in and are enjoying college. That’s all my updates. My books are close to publication if I can just watch the videos and relearn how to format them. Maybe now that I’m caught up on schoolwork, I can focus on some of my other interests this week. The kids are awake. Jonah needs a swimming shirt. Xenia needs a water shoe, and Justin says it’s his turn to use the computer. Time to get the rest of the day started. Warning: The bird in this story died.
Bird vs Semi August 2020 Mathew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” NKJV Bible I saw my friend Mary at the kids’ school and knew something was wrong. “Are you okay?” I asked. Her eyes teared up as she explained that her mother had been hit by a car while riding a bike and was at the hospital. There wasn’t much information yet. Chapel started and we both bowed our heads in prayer. I felt exhausted returning home from a long day of teaching and lesson planning broken only by an outing with ladies from the neighborhood who lunch together on occasional Fridays. There’s a thrill from sitting at the cool table with the popular ladies. Other women walk by and wave and perhaps wish that they could join us too. I don’t often find myself so eager to please, but it’s invigorating to get out of my comfort zone and join a new group. My strength of will was zero by the time we pulled into the garage, and my admonitions to the kids to clean out their lunch boxes and put their backpacks away were whispers on the wind. I set my backpack in a corner near the garage door, changed into fuzzy socks and a warm sweater, and settled into one of the music room chairs to read a novel. My friend Christy had plans to come over and make dinner for us. I looked forward to the comfort of a friend who loves me and getting some tender loving care. The kids kept asking when she’d come over, so I called her. She had just gotten off the phone with her husband’s doctor who hadn’t turned in the paperwork to his other out-of-state doctor and his upcoming surgery might have to be rescheduled. She was going to make some more phone calls but would get to my house by six. Then Magdalena called in a panic because when she called her caregiver to remind him that she was running out of clean clothes, he announced that he had decided to follow the Sabbath and wouldn’t do her laundry because it was Friday. She wanted sympathy but she was my third friend whose troubles made me feel helpless. Sympathy no longer felt like enough. I called Christy to ask if she wouldn’t mind if she arrived at my house and I wasn’t home. She loves Magdalena too and encouraged me to take on the mission of mercy, going to Magdalena’s house to pick up a load of laundry. I drove down the middle lane westbound on I-20 consumed with anger. Mary’s mother, Christy’s husband, Magdalena were all in crisis because of human incompetence. Was it asking too much of people to pay attention when driving, fill out paperwork, and do their job! I glared ahead frowning, eyebrows drawn together, shoulders tensed, focused on the unnecessary suffering in this world. I wasn’t angry with God. I wasn’t even thinking of God. Then from the corner of my eye, I saw a small brown bird take flight from a grove of trees to the right. It was huge for a sparrow, but everything is bigger in Texas. It glided over the first car in the right lane and was about a foot above the pickup truck two cars ahead of me. All of a sudden, a speeding semi pulled forward in the fast lane. The bird cycled its wings backwards every feather fluffed out with air in a mad effort to break mid-flight. It was no use. The bird’s momentum and the air currents smashed it against the semi-truck. I watched through my side mirror the mangled pile of feathers hit the asphalt behind us. My anger evaporated in the trauma of seeing the bird fall. Then there came a memory of a scripture about God seeing the sparrows fall and how much more he loves us than the sparrow. I thought about the horror of that bird’s fall. My mental picture of the sparrow falling in the Bible was much nicer than the reality behind me. God had seen that whole sad and terrifying moment play out just as he saw what was happening with all of my friends. I love my friends, but I had a sense of the breadth, and depth of God’s love for them which was so much more than I have the capacity for. I know in part what they are going through but God knows every detail. I was able to let go of my feelings of impotency and pray for my friends which is actually doing something. I prayed, “Lord have mercy.” Show us your love. I picked up a load of laundry and headed home. Christy was showing the kids some fireworks she had saved from the Fourth of July. Sophia’s boyfriend Anthony was as excited as the little children. He took Jonah, Justin, and Xenia outside to light the colored smoke bombs. I was relieved to have one less thing to do and went to the laundry room. Mike and Christy headed for the kitchen to get the water boiling for spaghetti. Anthony’s a great guy but as it turns out not the best babysitter. Though he's four times the size of Justin, when the kids insisted on lighting the fireworks in the drought dried grass, he told them it wasn’t a good idea but failed to stop them. Perhaps they took my, “go out back to set them off” too literally. They ignored Anthony’s suggestion that they go to the driveway that wraps around the side of the house. My kids are strong-willed when they feel like they know what they are doing, which is all the time. Minutes later the kids ran in with a wild, apologetic looks in their eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mom!” “You need to come and look.” “We didn’t mean to do it!” “I’m sorry Mrs. R. I told them not to light three at once.” A large black smear in the grass where the yard had caught on fire. The barefoot crowd was unable to stomp out the fire, but Anthony doused the conflagration with the garden hose. Fear that someone had been in danger. Weighing the risk that was averted. Seeing Mike’s quiet unhappiness as he wondered if the grass would recover. Calm lecture for the kids. Teasing Anthony. Removing the fireworks from their possession. Tears. Weak complaints. Submission. We sent all the kids upstairs, opened a bottle of wine, and changed the conversation. Another friend called me after our company had left and asked for prayers. She had been overcome by months of isolation and her anxiety hadn’t allowed her to sleep for weeks. She was on the way to the hospital to seek mental help. I again felt helpless so many thousands of miles away. There are so many people struggling with mental health issues as a result of pandemic induced isolation. Yet another case where it feels like unnecessary suffering. Society says that isolation is the answer to fighting contagion, but the consequences are also devastating. I posted on Facebook, “I’m feeling so sad for a lot of my friends who are having a hard time right now. I also saw a little bird fly into a semi-truck and die this evening. I thought about the Scripture about how much God loves us and he knows when a sparrow falls. He knew about that little bird and He also loves all my friends. Please send out a prayer for those who are suffering and anxious tonight.” It gave me comfort to be joined in prayer for my friends and for those who are struggling. Saturday morning after our pancake breakfast I sat down and spent an hour working on pre-calculus homework. It brought me deep peace and joy to work on problems that I can solve. Having solutions or at least having confidence that they exist has always been an attraction to mathematics for me. Magdalena called me Friday night to say that her caregiver had done the laundry. Mary’s mother came home from the hospital Saturday afternoon, and Mary was able to hold her hand. My long-distance friend ended up coming home. The hospital was most unhelpful, but she has a plan for working with her primary care physician to get help. Christy’s husband’s surgery will be rescheduled, but she trusts God for the timing to work out. I love being a good friend who can listen and be a support. Usually, it doesn’t overwhelm me, but it looks like I don’t have the hang of turning my troubles over to God and prayer isn’t always my first thought. I’m grateful for the daily reminders to seek God, to be thankful and trusting. I want to be more forgiving of incompetence because my life is filled with thoughtlessness and neglect that others must forgive me for too. As the kids get older, and there is less and less I can do for them, this is an area that will require great growth. I would rather have problems that are solved with band-aids than prayer. I’d rather laundry be the solution. Today’s fires are put out with the garden hose and the grass is growing back with last week’s rainfall. Tomorrow’s broken hearts and painful life lessons might have no easy answers. Please send up prayer for Mary’s mom, Christy’s husband, Magdalena, and my long-distance friend. They are all still in long term distress. Lord have mercy. I woke up with night sweats in the wee hours of the morning and fell in and out of sleep until the alarm rang at six thirty. I kept dreaming of waking up late and the last dream was the most vivid and the worst.
I dreamed that I was living in a huge house and had four bedrooms with huge closets. I ran from bedroom to bedroom looking for a jean skirt and wearing nothing but my socks, underwear and a long-sleeved, blue shirt which matched my headscarf. The kids were all wearing their uniforms and were ready to go and were so frustrated with me. I finally dressed in a mismatching cotton jumper, white with a red pattern, and went to find the kids only to see that they had changed out of their uniforms into play clothes. There’s a lot to unpack in that dream. Feelings of insecurity. Feeling unprepared. Finding myself in a role that doesn’t fit properly. Being out of sync with my children. After my week of teacher in-service days, Xenia told me that most moms don’t go to work until their children are teenagers and reminded me that Justin is only seven. After the first of three days I came home and went straight to bed exhausted. I am getting better at being able to spend more time with the kids after school and try to do lesson planning during school hours or when the kids are sleeping or having fun without me. I love being a part of something bigger than my family world. Being part of the faculty is so much more than teaching. There’s lunch duty and faculty meetings and committees. I thrive in that environment which gives importance to my contributions made and values the time spent on a job well done. It gives me a whole new appreciation for the wonderful teachers my children have in our little private school. It’s also been rewarding to have conversations with the science teacher about the beauty of mathematics and the joys of teaching. I haven’t felt so intelligent in a long time. The next week was one of orientation and no teaching. My first day of corralling the kids I walked with the head of the upper school faculty and asked her, “What should I do today?” “You can do whatever you want to do,” she replied. “I want to go home,” I thought out loud. It was a good week to get to know the children’s names. I knew most of them from their friendships with Esther and Basil and my time substituting in the classroom last year, but there were several new faces in the upper school. The head teacher asked them if anyone wanted to go back to zoom schooling. Everyone hated the end of last year. They were unanimous in being willing to take whatever measures are necessary to keep our people healthy and our school open. We spent the week learning hyper hygiene, mask wearing and social distancing. The kids tended to clump up and needed reminders to keep their distance, but they always obeyed. Their excitement and joy to be together again was contagious. This is my first week of teaching. I’ve enjoyed the time in the classroom with my tiny classes. We have to turn in our lesson plans two weeks in advance which is a lot of planning, but it feels good to know what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks. The computer system we use to enter in all the lesson plans and assignments still feels a bit unwieldy, but I’m learning it. The pre-calculus class is the most fun because I do all the homework problems to refresh myself on what they are doing. The algebra and prealgebra classes are a breeze to teach. It feels good to know that all the training I had has stayed fresh in my mind. All the tutoring I did through the years has helped too. On my first short day when I only taught one class, I ran to the post office, the bank, the pharmacy, Whole Foods, Albertsons, Costco, and the school. Then Sophia and I worked on dinner together and I caught up on the laundry and finished the dishes after everyone had put their plates in the dishwasher. I managed a quick trip through the Starbucks drive through with Jonah who came home from school stressed out and played cards with Justin while listening to an online video for faculty development about TBRI method of classroom management. Then I went to sleep by nine in order to wake up at 6:25 am and exercise, shower, drink my morning protein shake and get the kids and myself ready for another school day. To motivate myself to get up, I played “Gonna Fly Now” from the Rocky movies. Now I’m looking forward to a full day spent at school with lesson planning between classes and lunch duty because it just might be easier than the days off. Mike has been amazing as a stay at home husband. Yesterday he managed the air condition repair guys and the bug guy appointments. Sophia has been a huge help with additional grocery shopping, cooking dinner, and picking the kids up from school. Only a few of her online courses have started and she’ll be spending the first half of her senior year doing school from home. The rest of the children have stepped up by helping with the laundry and clearing the table and have all been assigned chores to contribute. I think it will be good for us as a family to be working together. I thought about buying a new wardrobe for the year but bought a new set of jean skirts and long sleeved shirts. They line both sides of my closet in uniformity, a witness that the wardrobe calamity of my dream is nonsense. The doctor will tell me in a couple of weeks if my cholesterol is better, but I’ve lost some weight, and everyone says I look great! I woke up from that crazy dream thinking that it was telling me that I don’t have a good life work balance. I don’t have it yet, but it’s coming. It will take a couple of weeks to get into a rhythm, but it’s coming. I don’t know if it’s being in my forties or this particular month, but everything I do these days lends itself to a feeling of experience, a deep knowing that this too shall pass, even while living each moment afresh.
Esther and Joshua left for college on Friday. They have stops with family and visits to monasteries to break up the long drive to Thomas Aquinas College in California. We had a family bagel send-off like last year. Because of the pandemic we ate our bagels at home instead of in the restaurant, but it was similar. Everyone ordered the same bagel except me. I’m on a chocolate protein shake kick these days and always drink that for breakfast. Esther and I had worked on her room enough the night before that I knew what clothes were destined for goodwill and which for storage. She has the room that Mom had. Finding again the knick knacks and photo books that celebrate Mom’s life reminded me of cleaning the room after she passed away. Of course, I wasn’t mumbling questions about why she hid a box of cereal behind her lamp on the nightstand or the misplacement of nail polish remover, though Mom did have that secret stash of chocolate in the top drawer of her dresser. It was a continuum of send offs. I know there are more to come, and I’ll miss the day when Esther doesn’t come back from college because she will live somewhere else. How will I manifest my acts of service love language when everyone moves out? Maybe I’ll live from visit to visit from my children and grandchildren. School is starting up for the rest of the kids. Sophia starts her senior year late and online. Her dual-enrollment college courses lend themselves to online study, so I’m not as worried about her education. Zoom classes were hard on my little ones last spring, but Sophia thrived in the absence of high school teen drama and the comfort of being at home. Texas has decided not to close the Christian schools so the other kids will have class as normal, and I’ll be joining them to teach my math classes in person. The buying of lunch boxes and backpacks and pens and paper lacked the thrill of the crush of tax free weekend. I bought early to avoid possible public contamination, but when I drove by Target yesterday, it looked like every spot in the parking lot was filled. The rest of the city is gearing up for a new school year too whether in person or online. Some years we work on the summer reading projects early, and sometimes like this year the posters are finished the day before school starts. These summer projects all blend together in my mind. The half finished posters and the Lego models laying on the kitchen counters are timeless book reports, pictures that could be from any year but belong to this one. It might be one hundred and nine degrees outside, but school supplies and summer projects bring back the memories of the cool crisp September mornings and standing outside to catch the school bus. Book reports and new school clothes have been a part of my end of summer for almost as long as I can remember. My excitement for the kids’ new classes now is added to the excitement of going back to work. Math has always been a passion of mine indulged in with tutoring or studying through all the years since graduate school. Cracking open a pre-calculus book feels natural as does the lesson planning. There is such a joy and a peace for me working through problems that have solutions and seeing order in a world that seems chaotic. I remember the thrill of standing in front of the classroom sharing my love for mathematics with others and long for the days of teaching to begin again. The first couple of weeks of work will be a huge adjustment. I won’t start the part time schedule until after a week of teacher in-service days and a week of upper school orientation. There’s been other weeks in our family life when I was deep into a project and the kids ate pizza for seven days straight. With Sophia’s help dinner will have more variety, but whatever it looks like, these first few weeks shall fly by. The hurry scurry of going back to school will pass and we’ll be off to yet another new normal. School may look different with social distancing and masks but in so many ways it’s the same. Even the sending off of children to college and the reshuffling of the household are a common part of life. We are alive to experience it all and thanks be to God we are all healthy for now. The feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos was yesterday. To me the end of the life of Mary the Mother of God marks the end of the year. The feast of her birth is right around the corner. It’s a good time to start life anew, a time of new beginnings. The Chrismation of the Handmaid of God Veronica
August 2020 My mother-in-law Coryn was chrismated the handmaid Veronica in early August. There is a joy in having anyone enter the Orthodox Church, but when it’s your family and you are the godparent the joy grows exponentially. Each baptism or chrismation is a reliving of each one before it back to the first. Because hers was a chrismation without baptism it most closely resembled my becoming Orthodox. This time of being a godmother I didn’t look over the service, nervous that I’d say something wrong. There was confidence that it would all come back. Because it was a pandemic and we had traveled for the service, we stood apart from one another as well as we could, and I wore my mask. The service was held outside where the Pascha baskets are blessed in the shadow of the church building. The Sandia Mountains loomed before us reminding me of the scripture Psalm 121: 1-2, “I lift mine eyes up to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” We were a small representation of the family, just Mike, Jonah, Justin, and me, but we all participated. The boys acted as altar servers and Mike took pictures. I helped the handmaid of God Veronica get up from kneeling and she squeezed my hand for support during the service, it was a blessed moment of motherhood, daughterhood and sisterhood rolled into one. My favorite part though was spitting on the devil. We moved to the parking lot for this part. At the end of the exorcism, the priest asks three times, “Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his angels, and all his service, and all his pride?” Each time Veronica said, “I do renounce him!” I knew what was coming so I started working my jaws. The priest asked again three times, “Have you renounced Satan?” She replied each time, “I have renounced him!” Oh boy, was I ready! Then the priest said, “Breathe and spit upon him!” She mumbled, “Breathe and spit upon him?” I gathered all the saliva gathered in my mouth and spit the biggest lougee the farthest I have ever spit before. She watched me and spit a good one too! The service continued but as we walked back to the outside altar table the priest said, “You really spit on the devil!” I felt so proud. The pandemic has changed much in our lives, but our faith remains strong. God is still working in people’s hearts even if services have to be done outside or with limited attendance. The world has seen pandemics come and go and the Church and her traditions remain a constant that will last through the ages no matter what happens around us. Quote from Xenia left for me on the whiteboard, “I don’t get the attention that I want, but I don’t get ignored when I want.”
Being the mother of older children is a balancing act. They want attention on their own schedules. Throughout the day they check in with me, and I check in with them. Sometimes we do a puzzle together or watch a television program or read, but most of the time, we are doing our own things. Esther spends most of her day sleeping or running around with Joshua. She has some summer reading to accomplish, and she keeps in touch with her friends from college. When she’s at the store, she texts me to ask if I need anything, and I do the same for her. Sometimes we go out to eat lunch together, but it’s not every week that our stars align between her availability and my childcare needs. She and Joshua are excited to start their road trip back to Thomas Aquinas College. They have reservations with the monasteries they will stay at along the way. Yesterday they received their COVID tests that all returning students will take. Once they return, they will wear masks for a couple of weeks to make sure no one has gotten sick traveling, and then they can go mask free, relatively safe in their campus bubble in the secluded mountain town. Sophia went through the same procedure for the summer camp she attended there a couple of weeks ago. It gave her a good feel for the college and helped her decide to look closer at the Texas universities to reach her current goal of becoming an accountant. She’s a senior this year, so it’s time to start applying. I feel so bad for her that her senior year is starting out at home online. She’s a homebody, and her boyfriend Anthony is over here a lot too. She also babysits for our friends. Basil wakes up in the afternoon like most fourteen-year-old boys. After the younger siblings have had their turn at the home computer, he stays glued to it playing Minecraft and watching Minecraft videos for the rest of the day. Sometimes he goes swimming at the community pool. He’s been working on his summer reading projects now that there are only a few more weeks till school starts. All that rest and relaxation has paid off in growth. He went up two to three sizes in clothes and is now a few inches taller than me. He’s just under Mike’s six-foot height. There’s something satisfying about having a big man child. It’s akin to the feeling of having a baby with chunky legs. I always wanted a roly-poly baby to prove that I was growing them right. School for Basil, Jonah, Xenia, and Justin will be opening mid-August in person. I’m thrilled for them. I love the posts on social media encouraging people to not judge families for their choices. Their private school has small class sizes and will be able to set the desks six feet apart and offer zoom and distance learning options if anyone needs to stay home in quarantine. My younger children have each other, but I believe their mental health will be better for having the social interaction that comes in the classroom. When I was a homeschooling mother we were always on the go to classes and co-ops. That isn’t today’s reality. I’m so thankful for a small, Christian school that is able to open its doors. Jonah is looking forward to school. He spends his days reading, watching television, and playing on the computer. Justin and Xenia complain that he doesn’t like playing their imaginary games anymore, but he sometimes does play with them. He’s just growing up. Since the pandemic quarantine started, we’ve been able to figure out that Jonah has migraines. I used to think that he threw up so often because he was susceptible to viruses, but his headaches make him throw up. Sophia has a lot of experience in this area, so I have turned him over to his big sister for guidance. Xenia is most often found wandering around inside and in the back yard listening to audiobooks. Our audiobook library has exploded in number over the summer. She goes back and forth between begging to go back to school and wishing she could stay home forever. She and I spend some time working on puzzles while watching “Family Ties” but that series has some serious topics. We got tired of my fast-forwarding through them. Xenia said, “ ‘Family Ties’ is heavier than Uncle Zach.” Mike’s brother at six foot five towers two feet over Xenia, and he’s a giant to her. Xenia has been spending a lot of time with her older sisters lately. It will be a sad day for her when she’s the only sister left in the house. Justin is taking the isolation the hardest. He wakes up the earliest and spends half an hour on the computer. Then he makes his rounds of the yard and cul de sac. I have no idea what projects or imaginary games he has going on in his mind, but he comes inside a couple of hours later to check in with me and tells me he is bored. Then it’s playing with his siblings or watching television for the rest of the day. Sometimes Basil will take him swimming, but that’s not an everyday treat. He's gotten formal with me. When he asks for something like my phone to use as an audiobook or a television remote he says, “Mother, may I have your phone.” I always reply, “Yes, my son.” A few nights ago, as we were walking upstairs to tuck him in bed, I said, “I love you, Mister Man.” He said, “You’re not so bad yourself. That’s from the Greatest Showman.” The rest of the kids have resigned themselves to summer being canceled, but Justin keeps trying to find ways around it. Last week he came to me all animated, “Hey Mom! Let’s go to the dinosaur museum!” “We can’t Justin. It’s a pandemic.” He cried and cried. We get out more than we used to, but the little children are still kept at home, and there is no way I’d take Justin to a hands-on exhibit at the children’s museum. I was germophobic about that place before there was something I really didn’t want to catch. We tried to get together with a friend of his but though we planned and counter-planned all day, nothing came of it. Mike and Joshua and I were playing our last scenario in an “Arkham Horror the Card Game” campaign when Justin called down to me, “Mother, would you play ping pong with me?” “I can’t my son, Daddy and Joshua need me here.” “I never get anything fun! Cora can’t come over either.” Esther came walking by him and said, “Don’t be bitter.” He said, “Hey, I’m just telling the truth.” Justin is the biggest supporter of my big news. At the end of the school year, the mathematics teaching position came open. I was initially excited at the possibility of going back to work, but teaching full time was intimidating. Another teacher stepped up to take the geometry class which is the biggest class in the school, leaving pre-algebra, algebra, and pre-calculus. Other applicants than me were considered, but I was chosen for my expertise in mathematics and my willingness to be part-time. I liked feeling like I had a choice, and it was thrilling to have my mathematical skills valued. When I asked the kids how they felt the responses ranged from Basil’s “Do whatever you want,” to Justin’s “Yes! I’ll see you in the hall sometimes!” I’ve brought the books home and started outlining the chapters and working through the homework problems. Classroom management will be so different in this setting with only four students in each class rather than what I went through when I taught high school math before Esther was born in with classes with over twenty students. I was so young I looked the same age as the kids. I can hardly wait to get in front of the white board and start talking about functions. One thing I’ll miss a lot is my escapes over to my friend Magdalena’s house this summer. She had foot surgery recently so sometimes I show up at her place with lunch, and we watch movies on the Hallmark Channel. Catching those cheesy, happy stories is a secret pleasure. Mike is looking forward to all of us being out of the house. He’s still working from home and longs for the peace and quiet of an empty house. I think this will be a good year for all of us. It’s 2020 and there’s a lot wrong in the world, but life is moving on as it often does. All my life I’ve felt that the new year really started in September. It’s a good time to make fresh starts. I miss my mom. After fifteen months, I may not think of Mom every day or fond memories cross my mind and leave a smile, and then a week like this comes when the longing to have her near hurts like a wound reopened and bleeding.
A friend gave me the book, “Aspergirls” by Rudy Simone. People used to think that boys had Asperger’s four times as often as girls. The research is now showing that girls may have it as often as boys, but their ability to camouflage is much better. They may have learning disabilities that hide their intelligence, and their areas of obsessive interest might make them more acceptable than their masculine counterparts. No one thinks it strange if a woman watches musicals and knows everything about Rogers and Hammerstein. No one notices if a woman reads constantly. She may learn to not share her thoughts on her obsession with the Holocaust and when people see the rows of books by Elie Wiesel they might think her empathetic. Her social disabilities may be attributed to shyness and some of the social roles typically applied to women have scripts that are sometimes easier to assimilate. It isn’t uncommon for a woman to stay youthful and if she enjoys playing with children and grandchildren then its praised instead of seeming immature. It’s not uncommon for women to experience fatigue and social fatigue can be explained by her being an introvert. I see Mom in so many of these descriptions and I relate to them myself to a limited degree. Of course, it’s impossible to evaluate someone posthumously, but I think Mom would have loved having a diagnosis that fit her better than all the random descriptions that her psychiatrists tried to paint her with. She would have told me that she loves me the way I am, and I would have told her the very same thing. The beautiful thing about Asperger’s is that the intervention required involves growth and learning and acceptance. Looking back with this new lens, I feel relieved to see that I provided the best possible home for her that she could have. It validates so much for me. I just wish she were here to share that with me. I’ve also been working on releasing Syra’s Scribbles: 2004 to 2006 along with my newest book Syra’s Scribbles: 2008 to 2010. When I get to the part of the book where I am deciding whether or not to have Mom come live with me, I want to shake that younger self and tell her, “There is no choice. You will be so glad you did.” I didn’t appreciate all that I had with Mom when she was alive. The new school year is starting, and I have the opportunity to take a part time job. I’ll share more about it when it’s final. It’s a life that would have been unimaginable while taking care of Mom, but I wish she were here to urge me on to this new stage. I’m thankful for all the encouragers in my life, for Mike and the kids, and all my sisters, but I really miss my mom. As predicted, the doctor told me I have high cholesterol. I tend to do something drastic after these appointments. One time I bought an elliptical exercise machine. I used it every day until we moved, and I got out of the habit. After the appointment in January I became a member of a gym. After two months of never going I canceled just before the pandemic closed the gyms down anyway. I ate better during Lent but started eating chocolate around Mother’s Day and ten pounds later it’s still hard to stop. I always told myself that I would not exercise or watch my diet until I turned forty and now that middle age is here, changing habits is harder than I anticipated.
I called Uncle Jerry, Dad’s youngest brother, to find out if there is any family history of high cholesterol. We first started talking after Dad died and he has been a wealth of information about the side of my family that I grew up without. He said that high blood pressure runs in our family and related the following anecdote which has been passed down through the family. His grandmother, my great grandmother, Zilpha Jane Benham Krewson had high blood pressure and took medication for it. In February of 1955, there was a grand public affair held in Coos Bay, Oregon. Zilpha wanted to look her best, and when she saw the hat of her dreams in a store window, she knew she had to have it. Great grandpa Ernie was a logger and provided a good but modest income which probably had little discretionary money. Zilpha had charge of their finances, and she chose the hat over her blood pressure medicine. From my affluent life sixty-five years later, it’s hard to understand what would motivate the choice of a hat over medication. Maybe she felt so good after years on the medication that she thought she could skip some doses without consequence. Perhaps she had done this kind of trade off before. I don’t believe she had in mind the devastation that her premature death could cause, the way that her children would have to struggle to take care of great grandpa Earnie while dealing with deep grief. Her grandchildren’s desire decades later that they hadn’t been denied the memories of their grandmother that would have been. I may feel a disconnect with a great grandmother who died decades before I was born, but the pain of her premature death echoes through the generations. When I first heard the story, I interpreted it in a more romantic way. In my imagination Zilpha saw the hat and knew that it would make her the most beautiful lady in town, and she was not wrong. Whether or not she was able to wear it to the event, where she would have been the most admired woman in her circle, the joy from buying the hat lasted for the rest of her life. She died a few days later from a stroke February 6, 1955. She was fifty-nine years old. When I told my version of the story to my kids, they all responded, “Bad decision!” Zilpha’s husband and five children would agree. Great grandpa Ernest was devastated. His three daughters and two sons worked together to take care of him for the next thirteen years. Great grandma Zilpha’s story resonates with me. After seeing Mom suffer with chronic illness for so many years and being with her in her last days, I would rather die in any other way than kidney failure. If I knew I would die happy, I too would be tempted to choose the hat. In the Litany of Supplication during the Divine Liturgy every Sunday we pray, “That the end of our lives may be Christian, without pain, blameless, and peaceful, and for a good account before the fearful judgment seat of Christ, let us ask of the Lord.” We pray for a peaceful death, but we don’t get to choose how it will come about. The lack of exercise and poor diet that contributes to high cholesterol that can lead to a heart attack also leads to diabetes and a host of other chronic conditions. Some strokes are quick, but others are debilitating. Mom had diabetes and blood sugar issues run in the family. My blood sugar numbers were in the high normal range, not bad enough for the doctor to mention it but a red flag for me. Not taking care of myself wouldn’t be the blameless end we pray for. I’m taking something herbal for the cholesterol. In three months if nothing has improved, I’ll start taking something stronger. The doctor says that diet and exercise are the most important factors. Somehow, I need to convince myself that I am the kind of person who takes her health seriously. I don’t want the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren to look at my life choices and say, “Bad decision.” |
Syra DivineI am a stay-at-home mother of six. I write about my busy days and whatever comes to mind. Please be nice and if you share my stuff give me credit. Link to this website.
I'm going to keep only the three most recent stories on this page.
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