Author: Bev

I’m writing this on the anniversary of my beautiful daughter’s birth, colloquially called her birthday, but also it was the awaited conclusion of my own pregnestation.  I coined this term through ardent study of the birth year, for my master’s degree, all those years ago.  I’m not sure it ever caught on in the literature – of course, I always thought it should.

I’m reminded of the cultural, social, or psychological (I don’t know which discipline explains it best) truism that most moms feel that those first baby gifts (some of the clothes, toys, books & accoutrements) are theirs, not their child’s.  Am I right?  That stuffed lamb, Dior onesie, zoo animal soft-as-butter diaper cover, stuffed lion rattle, miniature huarache shoes, “Who’s Your Daddy?” book, etc.  These are part of mom’s memory arsenal; part of her pregnestation, and of course equally a part of the life of that one whom we celebrate today.  Happy Birthday Eleni Miranda LeVan-Miller.

If anyone ever prepared more for the conception and pregnestation (pregnancy {mine} + gestation {hers}, with NEST in the middle – the experiences of both fetus and mother, combined), of a child and mother, I’d like to hear about her.  I don’t believe it’s a typical process for a mother-to-be, first time, at that, to study the pregnancy and birth year, academically, at the master’s level.  I studied hundreds of articles on midwifery, maternal/infant nutrition, prenatal psychology, & the physiology of pregnancy and birth in journals, books, & official documents related to the birth year and conducted interviews, most important to me, the one with my own mother.

My birth experience a short while after all the academic study, was a struggle between satisfaction with what I knew, and control over what I had no control over; a battle between holding on and letting go.  I’m reminded of the fruit of the Spirit: self control (Galatians 5:23), when I reminisce about our birth process.

I exercised every ounce of the self-control within me, like an Olympian.  I labored at home, and up and down our quiet street for over 24 hours with one or both of our midwives, my husband and sometimes my mother-in-law, with me.  They could testify that I only moaned gently on occasion and stood, swayed, and walked for miles throughout that very long day & rarely stopped to rest.  Even the police officer that happened by while we walked the pre-dawn neighborhood carrying a wine glass with grape juice inside it, to sustain me, fled pretty quickly (lol) with the confidence that I had everything under control.

I held on, fighting the good fight of self-control until it was clear as the light of day that our birth plan had to change and off to the hospital we fled.  With my husband’s help we ambulated to a hospital bed.  Soon I was aware that I had been hooked up to monitors, IVs, and among the beeping and commotion my midwife, Betty whispered to me that I should “let go now“(tear drops hit the paper I’m writing on).

I had been controlling my breathing for more than a day and it was time to stop controlling this process and let it be; to let others take over for me.  Dr. Vanderslice, our friend from the college, and his team had arrived and it was determined, with preeclampsia now evident, that a C-section was in order.

It was no easy task, Herculean in fact, to make the sudden transition from an all natural, physiological, and well-planned birth plan to a spontaneously high-tech birth process.  Nor was it easy to see that the gift of self-control involves the exercise of grace or letting go of one’s will as mightily as it involves the fight to utilize our will to conquer our willy-nilly desires.

Selah, pause and think about that.

Eleni, we did it together; and what an outcome!:)

I’ve made an observation that one can capitalize on encouragement, positive thoughts and forward thinking only AFTER you’ve passed through that moment of discouragement, sadness, negativity or even despair.

Truly and honestly we seem to need that time to feel the pain of whatever it is that has us down.  We maybe even need to feel sorry for ourselves for a minute in order for the upswing to take place.

It might even be a misplaced gesture to attempt to “cheer someone up” when they are IN “that place.”  They don’t want or need frivolity, humor or even contact, but understanding from a distance, and a moment to wallow.

When you see them showing signs of coming out from behind the cloud*, then it’s time to encourage, insert some humor, care for them and lift their spirits with positivity.

But, only “AFTER they’ve had a minute to be in it.”

*SEE THE HOLE IN THE OTHERWISE DARK CLOUDS – That’s your opportunity!

Author’s note:  Please note that my thoughts for this post focus on a brief time (probably circumstance-related & temporary) of sadness, discouragement or the blues, NOT on any protracted pattern of depression.  As friends, we are obligated to guide people we know toward professional help if they are depressed for any length of time beyond a “moment.”

Facebook escapism –

Perfect people are found only on Facebook, that alternate Stepford universe where only happiness, success, and beauty exist.  The whole of reality is hidden from the glow that is Facebook.

In the pate of celebrity suicides in the last couple of weeks (Kate Spade & Anthony Bourdain) as well as returning soldier suicides running rampant, and suicides of young people escalating, one ensconced in a Facebook world wonders why.

Why are these people so overwhelmingly depressed that they would take their own lives when everybody seems so happy, together, and living life to the fullest, on Facebook?

Does the Facebook fantasy, like a virtual Stepford Village in a 24/7 365 day life on a movie set, make our culture think Facebook is the norm and “my” life is useless, ugly, unnecessary, below average, dull, depressing, and wrong, in comparison?

Oh, mon cherie?  We need a cultural and social reality check!

Facebook might as well be a collective, media broadcast, dating site where most people post only their best self images and dressed up moments.  The few who post the “other” stuff, contrary or ugly or real stuff, are routinely unfollowed or at least unliked.  Who wants to be unliked, on purpose?

So, to be liked, we hold back reality to deal with behind closed doors just like we did with sex, drugs/alcohol, and mental illness in the “olden days.”  Are the “olden days” so long ago after all, Facebook?

“How essential it is…to be able to live inside a mind with attractive and interesting pictures on the walls.” – William Lyon Phelps

Home, is not so much a concrete place built of brick and mortar, as a state of mind; a comfortable, safe place; filled with diverse contributions of this thought, that idea, a thing – or a zillion things, and people who’ve deposited bits of matter into the place.

Home is a tapestry that tells a coherent story on the front, but underneath is a rather ratty, gnarly jumble of multi-colored threads that couldn’t possibly produce such a purposeful design, could they?

Home is where you are.  When I taught college-level  Marriage and Family classes, I based all underlying theory of the family on where we are now; not where we were or where we might be, but where we are and where might we go from here. (Random thought – Sex researchers, Masters and Johnson’s theory of human sexuality was based on the responses of prostitutes; how’s that for a biased sample?  I say this because home and one’s state of mind is really about being real, genuine, flawed, and a variation of normal – not some ideal, fake, dating site model of citizenry – and moving on from here.)

Home is where you dwell – a state of mind?  Yes.  Furnishings, stuff, are just reminders, cues, tokens of a life lived; things that assist with memories that remind us of experiences, along with the feelings those experiences stimulated – all of which are the substance of happiness.

Why do we want to stay home, or come home?  Is it because that’s where the things are that define us, that remind us of who we are; and reassure us that all is well?

This might be why there is such a lot of emotion bound up in the buying and selling of homes.  Perhaps home is the seat of memories and the place where we reconcile our past and plan our future, while living in the present.  More than anything, I want there to be “attractive and interesting pictures on the walls” of mine🙂.

Lest you think you have no faith:

When you’re on the cusp of giving up, and that thing resembling courage rises up in you;

When the forecast is unfriendly, and a hole appears in the clouds;

When your cupboard has emptied, and a gift arrives just in time;

When the pain subsides long enough for a fresh breath to surface;

When a friend says the thing you seemingly need to hear all your life;

When that place in your soul, long dormant is ignited and set afire;

When defeat or failure are blinding your way and a tunnel of victory breaks through the fog;

When doubt and indecision threaten to ground you and clarity comes out of nowhere;

When you don’t think you can wait another nanosecond, and hope rises up in your feet, and step after step, you miraculously move on;

When all seems lost, and suddenly you’re pregnant with a new beginning;

When what you’ve been looking for your whole life is revealed to have been outside your front window all the time;

When you’ve sought fame, fortune, acknowledgement and satisfaction out in the world, and contentment, peace, and fulfillment rise from inside you, obliterating all want;

When, after hundreds, even thousands of prayers have been emitted, the unexpected, but fitting answer comes – in a whisper;

When all the doors you’ve pounded on remain closed, but a sliver of light breaks through under a closed window;

When after all the years of hoping, wishing, and begging for this one or that one to change their ways; you happen upon acceptance;

Recognize it’s faith…when…

We’re all surely familiar with the proverb, “good things come to those who wait,” or some version of it.  I don’t really care about its origins, although some attribute it to Lamentations 3:25 in the Bible and others, a much longer & more detailed concept, to Abraham Lincoln.

A Story About a Humidifier –

I lived it this week – really for the last 32 days to be exact.  Once upon a time we bought a new humidifier, to replace the ten year old trooper we had become used to, for our living room, to counter the dry air produced by our fireplace insert.

This humidifier had a one year warranty.  Good thing.

Since we rarely use the humidifier in the summer (humid Pennsylvania summer), having purchased it last February, we used it a few times then it sat for months before we used it late this fall.  One day I noticed the water didn’t last as long as it should have, having run it only a few hours before manually shutting it off.  Upon further inspection, water covered an 18 square inch section of the hardwood below where it sat.

Uh-oh!  I cleaned up the mess, re-filled the tank and tried again another day.  It worked, then it repeated the leak.  We put a towel – a nice one to match the living room (lol) under it just in case; and sure enough, it leaked again.

It was time to call Customer Service – duh, duh, duh – can you hear my musical interlude a la Stephen King?  Oh no, the ominous Customer Service department!

Thus my 32 day trial of waiting began, accompanied by at least four calls and half a dozen emails from no less than five email addresses from personal to business to family.  On call number one I was talked into purchasing a new filter since I hadn’t replaced the original since purchase, and “that should fix it.”  Sucker!

Au contraire mon ami – the new filter did nothing but soak it, and the floor.  I’m not totally dumb, but I don’t get the whole wet filter thing.  Our old humidifier had a filter but it didn’t soak to the gills with nowhere else to release the water – but the floor!!????

At any rate, in call number two, with Colin, I thought I had a replacement humidifier coming our way – happily, a filter-free model, worth a tad more than our old one, once they received my email with our Walmart proof of purchase attached.  I felt okay.

I waited a week after sending the email without any response or acknowledgement of the proof of purchase.  So, I sent the email again from three different email origins.  No response.  You know how, at this point, you start to question yourself?  I’ve been sending emails to all kinds of people, does my email work?  So, I called to confirm the email address to send the receipt – it was confirmed.  What???

Long story, finally short –

I called yesterday with my firm but friendly voice and said, “we need to settle this today.  If you can’t make that happen, I would like to speak to someone who can.  It’s been a month and I’m getting the runaround on a warranty replacement.”

Bingo.  I ended up with – I say this, although technically it won’t be the end until the new unit arrives in 6-8 business days – a UV warm/cold mist humidifier that is worth four times the one I purchased last February at Walmart.

By the way, they were “out of” most of their humidifiers, posing a conundrum in the middle of which she said, “we have crock-pots, but I guess that wouldn’t work when you want a humidifier,” – LOL LOL LOL!!! So, the boss agreed to send me a humidifier from their colleagues, a higher-end brand.

A true-life example of good things come to those who wait; and timing is everything (I think originated with a Greek poet, Hesiod).

The Puritans brought bundling to the American colonies, we’re told.  That was, of course, the historical courting ritual of betrothed couples – there was no such thing as dating.  Couples were attracted, betrothed, then dated, so to speak.

Part of courting in colonial America included, for some, the practice of spending evenings and overnight visits, clothed (uh huh) in the same bed so as to stay warm, as the betrothed tarried (bundled) together to keep company.  Sometimes, a board was placed between the couple; and often parents stayed in the same room.  It was a getting to know you ritual – quite controversial as one might expect.

Today, the practice of bundling has an entirely different context and most contemporaries have no idea of the historical meaning of the word.  But the new connotation of the word has no less controversy.  Or, does everybody love it?

I am an a la carte gal myself.  I prefer to select, on its own merits, exactly and precisely what I want in a product or service.  With bundles, you get some of what you want and a few doodles of what you will never use or could care less about.

Even with food, which is what I first think of when a la carte comes to mind, I usually go to the a la carte menu and ignore the “meals.”  Even back in the day when I ate fast food occasionally, I never got “the meal,” because I don’t drink soda.  My frugal mentors taught me that “they always get you with the drink.”

Bundling is designed to expand profit for the seller, but the crux of it for the buyer – which is what irks me, is we are made to feel we benefit (convenience being purportedly, the main perk) from bundling with “them.”  I usually have an underlying feeling of being “taken,” or ripped off when salespeople try to force me into bundling.

The other day, in my umpteenth conversation about various bundles with the third internet, phone, and television provider, I told the persistent customer service rep that I was happy with my television but wanted to discuss just internet and phone service.  She insisted on pressing it further and I said I really preferred to have separate bills.  She couldn’t believe my archaic attitude and said,”it’s the same amount with the bundle as with the separate bills.”  I said, “precisely.”

Again, we ended in a standstill and we remain semi-bundled.