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Archive for the ‘Children’ Category

Taking Tips

Posted in Children, Health, Men, News, Religion, science, Sex, The USA from the outside in, Women's rights, tagged , on June 7, 2011| 13 Comments »

I’m not much in the mood for blogging this week, but can’t let it be said I don’t rise to an occasion when a topic rears its ugly head. Not that I’m throbbing with any desire to stand at attention, nor to prostrate myself in order to take in the hard issues, but do feel it apt to take it in hand to act as an organ of communication, to attempt to erect some sort of rigid structure from which to dangle a thought or two since I’ve yet to go either soft or squishy when it comes to items in the news, no matter how resistant I may be to swallowing what’s rammed down my throat.

Yes, peeps, it’s Penis on Parade Week, an event designed to illustrate for once (or a whole bunch of times) and for all (within a certain age range) that the brain is actually a superfluous body part undamaged by redirection of blood flow.

I know by now it’s a case of flogging a deceased well-endowed equine, but REALLY! Could anyone have written a tale of a guy named Weiner taking his sausage social? If something like that had come across the desk of someone other than a teacher of twelve-year-olds it would have been tossed straightaway.

As fodder, of course, the story is quite the tempting mouthful, as Andy Borowitz reveals in his usual kinda-like-a-twelve-year-old fashion as he slides in his jabs:

Traffic snarled for miles around the Capitol building as the streets filled with the penis-photo recipients, whom police sources said ranged in age from 21 to 22.

While there was no official count of the marchers, Fox News estimated the size of the crowd at twenty million while MSNBC said the number was closer to fourteen.

But seriously, folks …

I am rubbing up against a hard issue today, too.

It’s this business over taking tips that has me grabbing for the tissues.

Those San Franciscans may not be the only ones voting on whether or not to make circumcision illegal for minors.

The New York Times reports “intactivists” are fighting for a similar ballot issue in Santa Monica, arguing that the procedure is “male genital mutilation.”

“This is the furthest we’ve gotten, and it is a huge step for us,” Matthew Hess, who wrote both bills, tells the newspaper, adding that folks in other cities have been calling for help, as well. “This is a conversation we are long overdue to have in this country. The end goal for us is making cutting boys’ foreskin a federal crime.”

Although I am all in favor of moving past the point where baby boys were all but automatically circumcised … and that was the case in America for many years … this palaver seems misguided, at best, perhaps racist and possibly a dangerous diversion.

Esthetically, it’s neither here nor there to me since flaccid form seems to have no influence over function, but I do know some men long for their lost foreskin … a few with the same passion they carry resentments for stolen toys. I suppose it does give a bit more to play with, and a bit more can make all the difference in the world to some guys and the idea that they should have had some say in the matter does have merit.

From a medical perspective, phimosis must be considered. Although this super-tight foreskin problem can sometimes be stretched away, very often the only solution is surgical.

Given the drastic reduction in rates of HIV transmission circumcision offers, there also seems to be a more general advantage.

Not particularly tolerant of religious dictates, especially those involving a blade, ritual circumcision seems an unnecessary harkening back to ancient times when bathing was unusual and cheesy foreskins invited infection, then passed those along.

Cutting your kid so he looks like you seems another silly reason, and any guy who spent time in the locker room checking out the extra bit at the end the quarterback’s dick and found it unattractive was doing too much peepee peeking and should make the decision on their own sons out of more solid objectives.

The main reason, however, I’m going at it on the topic is that diversion thing I mentioned. Making a big thing out of the business of mohels … and, by the way, I understand they aren’t paid; they only take tips … is a muddying of the waters that run between removal of penile foreskin and the horrors of what is euphemistically known as female circumcision.

No matter how often the “Intactivists” toss around the words “genital mutilation” what is done to boys is NOTHING like what happens to millions of girls around the world.

From WHO:

Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.

Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths.

An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.

It is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15 years.

In Africa an estimated 92 million girls from 10 years of age and above have undergone FGM.

FGM is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

If a bunch of people in Santa Monica want to go all high and mighty over the issue of circumcising boys, so be it, but I won’t respect them in the morning.

By the way, is Weiner with, or without?

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Two Years …

Posted in Children, Family, Loss, tagged on June 2, 2011| 13 Comments »

A fav shot of Jaren and Me

Jaren Eli Combes
February 17, 1971 – June 2, 2009

The world is a poorer place without this son of mine in it. The past two years have seen less kindness, fewer laughs, flashes of brilliance that didn’t happen, music unwritten.

There is a part of me that would like to indulge today, to write out the experience, to talk about the shock of such a loss, the little I recall of the months that followed, the ways I attempt to cope, the erosion of my foundations and many changes, but I can’t.

What I can do, however, is take comfort from the fact that he is well missed by many and share a tribute.

My thanks to Todd Brock for the videos and the site, to Adam Orth, Tim Kirk, Damian Anastasio, Scott Lancaster, Orb Kamm, Liza Welshman, Tink Moss and many others who have let me know just how much impact Jaren had on their lives.

For Jennifer, Sam, Cj and Seb I am more grateful that I can ever express.

If you’d like to spend some time with Jaren, Todd’s memorial website is here.

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Let’s hear it for the girls …

Posted in Children, History, News, Religion, science, Women's rights, tagged , on May 24, 2011| 26 Comments »

You know how some news stories grab attention and make sense on some level, yet grate away for a while leaving enough of a raw spot to require examination?

No, I’m not talking about spending any time pondering what that fuckwit Camping is thinking as he has shifted doomsday to October since he’s clearly hoping to clear a few more million before the world or his credibility finally comes to an end. (And if you happen to know anyone stupid enough to even think about sending him some dosh, have them send it to me instead. I’ll get the word out just fine, thankyouverymuch, and I won’t publicized the idiocy of handing a load of cash over, so no worries about something like this showing up in the media:

“I’ve been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I’ve been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car,” said Hopkins, 52, a former television producer who lives in Great River, New York. “I was doing what I’ve been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I’ve been stymied. It’s like getting slapped in the face.”)

What a moron … but not today’s topic …

The story that got me was this from the BBC: India’s Unwanted Girls.

India’s 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven – activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade.

Horrible. Just horrible. But this is not a story about abortion. It’s not even a story about the illegal practice of prenatal determining of the sex of a fetus with the intention of aborting girls. It’s not about the consequences the imbalance of girls-to-boys when it becomes women-to-men, how few brides there will be, how many guys will be left high and dry and how that will impact future generations.

Nope. This is about the simple fact that in 2011 the female gender is disregarded to the point of being considered in negative value to the point of genocide, or “gendercide” as some choose to call it.

It’s not new, as Gendercide Watch makes very clear:

In many cultures, government permitted, if not encouraged, the killing of handicapped or female infants or otherwise unwanted children. In the Greece of 200 B.C., for example, the murder of female infants was so common that among 6,000 families living in Delphi no more than 1 percent had two daughters. Among 79 families, nearly as many had one child as two. Among all there were only 28 daughters to 118 sons. … But classical Greece was not unusual. In eighty-four societies spanning the Renaissance to our time, “defective” children have been killed in one-third of them. In India, for example, because of Hindu beliefs and the rigid caste system, young girls were murdered as a matter of course. When demographic statistics were first collected in the nineteenth century, it was discovered that in “some villages, no girl babies were found at all; in a total of thirty others, there were 343 boys to 54 girls. … [I]n Bombay, the number of girls alive in 1834 was 603.”

So neither new, nor improved.

The BBC’s take focuses around the availability of ultrasound technology and subsequent abortion and quotes someone who apparently didn’t study up on this history much …

Until 30 years ago, he says, India’s sex ratio was “reasonable”. Then in 1974, Delhi’s prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences came out with a study which said sex-determination tests were a boon for Indian women.

It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control.

A 1994 law outlawed sex-selective abortion, but the government has “been forced to admit its strategy has failed to put an end to female feticide.”

Well, yeah … Since laws against murder did squat to stop female infanticide, why would anyone expect this to work?

As illustrated well in my friend Rihaan Patel’s award-winning short film “The Death of Daughters” girls born does not lead to girl living. (Yeah, that’s a plug. He’s young and just getting started, so I thought I’d give him a mention.)

From Gendercide Watch:

Lakshmi already had one daughter, so when she gave birth to a second girl, she killed her. For the three days of her second child’s short life, Lakshmi admits, she refused to nurse her. To silence the infant’s famished cries, the impoverished village woman squeezed the milky sap from an oleander shrub, mixed it with castor oil, and forced the poisonous potion down the newborn’s throat. The baby bled from the nose, then died soon afterward. Female neighbors buried her in a small hole near Lakshmi’s square thatched hut of sunbaked mud. They sympathized with Lakshmi, and in the same circumstances, some would probably have done what she did. For despite the risk of execution by hanging and about 16 months of a much-ballyhooed government scheme to assist families with daughters, in some hamlets of … Tamil Nadu, murdering girls is still sometimes believed to be a wiser course than raising them. “A daughter is always liabilities. How can I bring up a second?” Lakshmi, 28, answered firmly when asked by a visitor how she could have taken her own child’s life eight years ago. “Instead of her suffering the way I do, I thought it was better to get rid of her.”

Another cultural quirk like female genital mutilation, preventing women from participating in life through bans on voting, owning property, driving, getting an education, leaving the house?

Can there be any doubt over why it’s okay for many to kill baby girls when the world has yet to come to any meaningful consensus on their worth? When the simple possession of a penis bestows esteem … no matter how stupid, useless, debauched, evil, profane or disgusting the bearer … and societies encourage this view, the issue of allowing more girls into the world can seem a silly waste of resources at best, and a dangerous game of numbers to some.

Zero tolerance for such attitudes is the only answer; international courts where offenders, both individuals and offending nations are called to account as well as local jurisdictions with the will and the power to enforce laws demanding equal treatment, equal rights. Poor countries with stone age perspective and well-entrenched customs should be sanctioned out of their socks, taken to task, forced in all possible ways to abandon the old traditions and move the female portions of their populations into the mainstream of everything.

It will happen. Not in my lifetime, for sure, but it will, and maybe even before the rapture … rupture … whatevahhh. If it does take that long, watch out, because God is going to be really pissed off at how her girls have been treated.

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Naked pictures … wish I had some

Posted in Children, Family, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older on May 1, 2011| 13 Comments »

Me at 10, but where's the rest?

There’s no doubt my parents would have been considered criminally kinky had they made a ritual of taking naked photos of me … full fontal and backal … every year of my childhood and beyond, but how I would like to have those now.

Sure, in those days film had to go elsewhere for development and parents toting rolls to Fotomat could have been accused of trafficking in kiddie porn. Plus it was just not done, at least not by anyone in my world, so evidence of my development is limited to either from-the-neck up or fully clothed and often both. Yes, the clothing itself is part of the story … those fashion victim shots that provide much amusement to generations following, right up to the time platform shoes and low-ride jeans came back on the scene, and I am glad I didn’t grow up in a country where the never-changing burqa look wipes out even that progression … but no matter how hard I try I cannot manage to conjure any image of what my body was doing underneath the clothing.

The older I get the more I long to see myself in earlier forms. I know I began the morph into womanhood sometime around the age of twelve, but have little recollection of how that happened, how long it took or what shifted where when. I longed for boobs, but the process of filling from A to D cup and the look and feel of that blooming is lost to me.

I suppose I could have begun an anthology at some point myself, but it would not have occurred to me at any early age to start taking naked shots of me. No, once that naked baby phase is over, unclothed on film only happens in the movies. (One advantage of going into porn, I suppose, but that never occurred to me, either.)

I’m fairly sure my body was lovely in all conventional senses once I hit the mid- teen years, although not what I wanted. I was curvy with big boobs and hips, long legged, tall and flexible, and very un-Twig-like, a fashion trend at the time I could not pull off. What I wouldn’t give now to get a good look at just how good looking I actually was!

A shot of me at 17 would show me in the full glory of my first pregnancy, and although I do remember how my belly looked from the vantage point of looking down upon it, I can’t see anything of myself below my equator and I sure would like to ponder my whole baby-making self.

In my twenties I had all those non-moms to compare myself to, so focused on things like stretch marks and breasts that had gone a bit non-perky, so there was no way I’d have posed for photos of that body. What a shame I was ashamed.

I didn’t begin to find comfort in my own skin until sometime in my 30s and feel I may have looked my best at about 40, although thats a tough call with no evidence. I know I felt good and spent a lot of time unclothed, but that had something to do with that tropical island thing and the fact that Mark and I lived for a while on an almost deserted beach. There are a couple of photos of me from that time, and I’m grateful for those as a study of a firm, smooth body I under-appreciated even then. (Less grateful for the ones taken more recently when Ernesto was here, but I suspect if I live long enough even those will prove interesting and create some longing for the me I am now.)

I can’t help but wonder why it is we ignore and hide the progression of ourselves and our children. While documenting so much of growth and development we leave out something as important as how our bodies change to the point of thinking there is something wrong with capturing images along the way. We mark height, keep track of weights, save every lost tooth, yet allow the drama of our changing form to dissolve into vague notions our aging selves can not grasp.

Think of how helpful it might be if we could show our budding daughters what we looked like as we navigated the rough seas of puberty, jumping ahead a page or two to let them know how it turns out without them having to assume they’ll assume our proportions, whatever those may be, at the time they are holding hopes of not turning into us. See? We were young once, too!

I’m not talking about a coffee table album here, but were I to have a collection of nude photos of myself through the years secreted away somewhere, I would pull it out from time to time and allow myself to remember me and celebrate what I was too embarrassed to flaunt and too shy to notice before fleet of form turned into a fleeting glimpse I can’t quite catch.

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Poetry and Pix

Posted in Children, Expat Living, Family, Friends, Fun, Island life, Poetry, Seychelles on April 12, 2011| 14 Comments »

Treading water while burdened by worry prompts a shutdown. A bit of verse and some photos on offer, though:

Hue Cares?

Not ice, nor powder
no robin’s egg,
no nothing royal
neither slate nor steel,
electric or baby
Cyan’t and indon’tgo …
just BLUE

Thankfully, there are kids!

Cj in her birthday crown

Birthday Strawberries

Beautiful Girls! Cj and Amber ...

Sam waters Alex

Photos by JP and Christine Larose. Thanks!

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Photos and phun …

Posted in Children, Family, Fun, Island life, Seychelles, tagged on April 8, 2011| 5 Comments »

Having way too much fun being lazy with the kids these days to focus on shit in the world, so will now bore the socks off you with photos rather than write …

Cj and Mitzy ...

Cj at the waterfallSam at the same waterfall

Hammock time! Can't touch dis ...

Cj after birthday shopping ... YIKES!

Cj's new dolls meet Sam's toys. Should I be concerned?

Cj’s 6th birthday is day after tomorrow and there’s a beach picnic tomorrow, a gathering on Sunday and much fun to be had! Have a great weekend, all!

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South African “baby bin” …

Posted in Adoption, Children, International Adoption, News, orphans, Women's rights, World politics on March 17, 2011| 24 Comments »

Although I understand the BBC feeling the need to place a few items of “good news” on their website since there’s so much nasty crap going on in this world of hurt, they shot wide of the mark with this story on a “baby bin” in South Africa.

As if the photo alone doesn’t provide quite enough bleak, the copy in the report is gag-invoking on many levels and was very obviously written by someone who has no clue to the sensitivities of the adoption world.

Most people would not give a second glance to the metal hatch on a wall in Hillbrow Street in Johannesburg’s tough Berea suburb.

But the “Door of Hope” is saving the lives of scores of unwanted babies.

Mothers can place their babies, usually newborn, inside and leave them anonymously to be found and cared for.

Awww. How warm and fuzzy, heh?

Well … no.

The reality being that much of Johannesburg is dirt poor, AIDS infected, drug-riddled and that many pregnancies occur outside the realm of ability to care for a child, there are many, many babies born in conditions that offer few options.

Yes, putting a baby in a “bin” that will lead to food and warmth, rather than death, is an option and it does save lives, but the fact that an average of sixteen babies per month are being deposited is not “good news”.

These are the lucky few – they are alive and have someone to care for them.

And if the orphanage has its way, they will soon be adopted by families who can provide for them.

The lucky few … hm …

Sure, when paragraphs like that are juxtaposed against the following, it can warm some cockles …

Child Welfare South Africa (CWSA) – the country’s largest non-governmental organisation – says more than 2,000 children are abandoned in the country every year – a 30% increase in the past three years.

Many of them are found near death in rubbish bins, wrapped in plastic bags, inside toilets, shoe boxes, open fields and parks and often die within hours of birth from dehydration, starvation or hypothermia.

Horrific thought, heh? Sure. An orphanage is certainly a better fate, and those who get the baby bin rather than the rubbish bin can be considered “lucky”-ish, but stories like this miss the point by so wide a margin.

For starters, the issue isn’t one of babies, but the entire shredded fabric of South African society, and a piece here and there about a few babies being “saved” does nothing but provide a tiny diversion from the truth of the matter that is life in Johannesburg.

As adult adoptees will point out through the benefit of their experience, there’s nothing lucky about being stripped of all history, and although I have often taken issue with those who state they’d “rather be dead than adopted”, starting life in a loss as great as abandonment is devastating at a cellular level.

Orphanage care, no matter how compassionate, is still institutional, and orphanages in South Africa are far from well-funded. The more babies they have, the more institutional the care out of necessity.

We then come to specifics on the adoption thing, of which even a mention is ridiculous to the point of cruelty. South Africa is such a bloody mess that potential adoptive families in the country are almost nonexistent. As for adoption by families from other countries … well … here’s how it looks from the USA.

South African law recognizes two kinds of adoptions by foreigners:

1) Local adoptions of children resident in South Africa by foreign residents of South Africa, and

2) Intercountry adoptions of children resident in South Africa by foreign citizens residing abroad.

The first category (“non-Hague adoption”) requires the foreign adoptive parent(s) to be resident for five years in South Africa, and the adoptions are handled by an accredited agency and finalized by the Department of Social Development under laws relating to local adoptions. Note: Under applicable U.S. laws and regulations, children adopted in non-Hague adoptions will only be eligible for immigration to the United States after a waiting period of two years’ residence and two years’ legal custody with the adoptive parent(s).

The second category (“Hague adoption”) is only available to citizens of countries with a working agreement between the prospective adoptive parent’s country of origin and South Africa. As of this writing, there have been no working agreements finalized between South African and U.S. adoption service providers. Please contact the U.S. Consulate Johannesburg Immigrant Visa Unit (contact information below) for the latest information regarding adoption in South Africa.

There have been a number of cases in which American Citizens have been issued “Guardianship Orders” from the South African High Court. These orders do not constitute “irrevocable release for adoption and immigration” as required by United States Immigration Law. As such, they cannot be used for immigration purposes.

In other words … uh … nope.

Bottom line on the BBC’s “feel good” efforts?

Show us something on real efforts tackling AIDS prevention, controlling drug cartels, rights and education for women, stemming violence and alleviating poverty.

Yes, I know. That’s not easy, is it?

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Placing Segments of Rainbows in Some Sort of Order

Posted in Children, Family, Loss, love, Men, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older, Poetry, tagged , , , , , on March 2, 2011| 14 Comments »

Anse Soleil rainbow

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I woke this morning to an odd dream, not unpleasant, set in Victoria Lodge, a fab Five Star B&B in North Devon that belongs to my friend, Jacqueline. It’s a beautiful place in a lovely English village on the Bristol Channel where I passed my days walking Jac’s sweetie of a greyhound through the Valley of the Rocks as I pondered my future.

Jac’s friendship and hospitality were huge gifts, and her house was my bolt-hole, a life-saving haven, a calm harbor in a storm-tossed sea.

I awoke with a smile, although wondering why such strong images of that time and place presented today …

until …

I drifted into full consciousness and realized today’s date: 2 March.

It was on this day in 2008 my husband of 15 years informed me of his betrayal and plans to hit the ejector seat button on our life together. Nope, didn’t see that coming, and the sideswipe almost send me careening off a cliff.

Mark was the man I’d left my life behind for, my trusted partner in building a future from scratch, in parenting two children, the only person I’d ever felt completely safe with.

Shit happens.

Three years have come and gone, and although I can too vividly recall the moment life’s path forked drastically I’m still following my feet. The road’s been rocky and strewn with potholes and no few twists have needed navigating, but it is what it is.

I’m surprised to find this date so deeply burned into my psyche that a dream as profound as this morning’s presents even with no conscious connection, but it’s often my inner awareness that keeps better track than my waking mind. I’m too busy to dwell upon losses and it’s the future I must look to, not the shadows of what might have been.

I’ve taken my lumps and my lessons … and the gifts that came with. I’ve had some amazing moments that could not have happened if the path had not diverted and managed to love and be loved again. There’s been music created and named for me, some magical experiences, joy-filled pauses that required a change in circumstance to occur.

Three years ago, I could no more have predicted a moonlit proposal or a romantic wander through ancient pyramids than a visit to Mars, but those happened and wouldn’t have had the shit not happened, too.

Of course, Sam and Cj are blessings, and they alone provide all the “reason” there would ever need to be for the path to have wandered where it did.

So, there are no regrets … simply memories and the knowledge that what happens, happens, and will keep on happening. There is more life behind me than ahead, but that’s no reason to live in the past. The future won’t play out as long, but I’m still in the game, and although I have no expectation that the rest of my road will be smooth there will be reasons to smile.

Today, as I remember my losses, I look forward to gains with gratitude for the fact that it’s rarely been dull.

The last year alone provided enough not-dull to spawn a raft of words (Check out “It Gets Verse”, a book of poems that spilled out in 2010.), and continues to inspire.

So, on that note, I’ll close with a bit more wisdom gathered, more experience collected, more words strung together as life goes on …

Scoundrel

What is it with a man
who has it in his head
that no matter the hour
and the fact that I’m in bed
can’t stop his hands from dialing
my number every night
with a need to tell me often
how his life is now a fright?

I don’t want to hear his needing
or his fucking endless pleading
for the chance to maybe seeding
a new bed

He has sown those seeds to women
who have no idea he’s givin’
it about around the world from here to there
(And I wish so he’d get out my damned hair)
But me, I learned my lesson
and no longer spend time guessin’
if he’s lying or he’s truthful
cuz there’s no doubt that what’s useful
it’s the only motivation
he can bear

He’s as shallow as a puddle
and although he seems a muddle
he has all his ducks so lined up in a row
that he’s aimed upon his targets
and the women he has marks up
are too clueless in their thoughts
that he’s their beau.

He is yours if you deliver
and he’ll have you all a quiver
just as long as there’s a payoff in the end
For he goes nowhere ‘les it’s paid for
but you’re guaranteed a lay, for
he’s a horny little bugger,
(Ask his “friends”!)

So, Yo! New girls …

Never say I didn’t warn you
Give your heart and see it torn, you
should really pay attention when I say
he’s a lyin’, cheatin’ scoundrel
fewer morals than a hound, you’ll
be knowing this already in a way
But you’re probably ignoring
all the signs that you’re deploring
and pretending that I have gone away

And I have, at least I try to
but he’ll never let it lie, too
much ego in the man to let me be
Plus he loves the life that I live
and he’s hoping I might still give
him what I have, or half,
and all for free
with not even any word of
honesty, that’s just unheard of
in that world of his that’s all about “ME, ME!”

Yes … I live and learn and live some more, catch whatever stardust floats by, grasp at rainbows and ride out … and write out … the rough bits.

It is what it is, intangible and indescribable as a tint of morning.

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“Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future.” ~T.A. Sachs

Posted in Children, Family, Loss, love, Men, My Chinese Checkered Past, tagged , , on February 18, 2011| 18 Comments »

My early blessings ... Jenn and Jaren


Spending time, as I have lately, chasing the past, I can’t help but fall into that familiar spiral of circular thinking that is: “What if?”.

Regrets? Yes, I have a few, and more than I want to mention, partly because there’s not a fucking thing I can do to change much now, and also because My Way never felt anywhere within my power or control. Sure, I took the road seemingly less traveled more than once, but in retrospect I see how often the path was laid at my feet even when I thought I was striking out in untested directions. In truth, I’ve just been along for the ride.

If I had it to do over again, what would I do differently? Hm.

Some of the most significant events in my life were considered doom-and-gloom negatives, but avoiding them was not only not an option at the time but would not be on any list of steer clears in a retrospectively-influenced re-do.

Getting pregnant at seventeen was not looked upon as any sort of gift when it happened; in fact my swelling belly was thought quite the harbinger of the end of things. Birth control was illegal for anyone under 18 even though the Summer of Love had just happened, my parents were outraged, my boyfriend, chagrined, and all my plans that were to lead to successful ease-of-life faded faster than cells reproduced in my womb. Having two kids by age nineteen boded ill for the future, as did being married and divorced by twenty-three.

Would I rearrange any of that now? No way, at least not any of the bits I could influence. Jenn is an amazing woman … smart, funny, successful, loving, talented, the best daughter in the world and a wonderful mother. Jaren was incredible in ways no one else will ever be, and although losing him has been the hardest misery I’ve ever faced, I wouldn’t have missed even that.

Leaving my family behind in the US and moving half way around the world only to be left high and dry some years later sounds like a stupid fucking move, especially when it meant losing all those years with Jenn and Jaren and ending up hardly knowing my fabulous granddaughter, but would I spin the globe in reverse and take all that back?

How could I? Not with Sam and Cj in my life.

I could no more skip the misery of Mark than I can regret the years of him. Shit. I can’t even lament wasting some of the last of my cute on Ernesto … after all, he gave good moment and there’s music left over and I’m not sorry about that … but I do wish we’d been in Mexico that Christmas. I should have gone. (And last night’s phone-in hug from a Mexican jungle for Jaren’s birthday garnered him another ‘good moment point’ since hugs can be eternal in many comforting ways.)

Now that I think about it, most of my regrets involve things I didn’t do rather than anything I actually did. There’s a lesson in there somewhere …

If there had ever been money enough I would have spent more time flying back and forth and bringing Jenn and Addie and Jaren to me often … very often … but there never was. Would I change that? You bet! But those aren’t cards I’ve been dealt, so wasn’t able to play that hand. Would I get on a plane tomorrow and spend time with my mother while there’s still a chance she’ll know me? Yep. But until I sell this place that is not an option.

Life is what it is when it is, though, and for this moment I’m here chasing my past and thinking how to stumble into the future. If I had any advice to share from the bottom of this spiral it would have to be not to don’t do anything you think might be important, and not to think you have endless time for doing it later. Seems to me it’s easier to apologize for … and recover from … stuff you did than to regret what you never got around to doing.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
~Carl Sandburg

Even when it’s ashes of roses …

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Mothers should not outlive their children … that’s just wrong …

Posted in Children, Family, Loss, love, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, tagged , on February 17, 2011| 4 Comments »

Jaren Eli Combes 17 Feb. 1971 - 2 June 2009

February 17, 1971
7:41 am
6 pounds 13 ounces of blue-eyed joy bouncing baby boy
Jaren Eli Combes

He should be 40 today, but he didn’t get enough time … not nearly enough.

Click here for a story about Jaren’s birth … and here for a bit about his death.

The only gift I can still give him I share with you now. The music was a Christmas gift to me a few years ago, a beautiful song I had played at Jaren’s funeral that seemed a fitting background then, and for these images of my beautiful son. It is actually called “Eternal Hug”, although I call it “Maternal Hug”, an apt summation of a mother’s love …

And some of his words that bang a gong loudly …

Out of Mind
© Jaren Eli Combes 2002

What if I cared, felt gravity
or had clever opinions?
What if I was close,
or easily reached?
Kill this separation.
I know you couldn’t know
you’d wake and tear me up
Never let it go — thought
you’d all had enough
And if there was a way
I’d fuck it up somehow
Dropped off all your screens
Don’t have to see me now

Got you to ignore
not worth it for me
seems it was contagious
Don’t try anymore
Best I believe
I got here on purpose
I know you couldn’t know
You’d wake and tear me up
Never let it go
thought you all had enough
If you gave me time to change
You’d have given up by now
And shallow as I am
Somehow I still drown.

And some of his music …

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
~Edna St Vincent Millay

Yes … I miss you like hell, my boy. I miss you like hell …

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