Parent Activism, or Why I'm Glad I Met Getty Today

I didn't actually meet Getty today. I was going through some BlogHer posts, and on the very last one at The 818 saw an ad for a CD of lullabies, "Sweet Water Child: Lullabies for Getty ~All proceeds go to fight SMA1". Well. I always want to hear new original lullabies. And SMA1 is something I know a tiny bit about from working in Pediatric ICU, and with medically fragile children.

So, I went to listen. It's just lovely. My favorite song is "Sleeptight Dreamkeep", but they're all good. It's available on iTunes for $9.99 or each song for $.99.

Babies are born competent.

That's my single favorite sentence in any nursing textbook I've ever read, bar none.

April 1980, and I'm starting to panic a bit about State Boards. Back in the day there was no NCLEX-RN Exam. Each state gave their own exam, and California's was due soon after graduation in May. Three days in Sacramento, staying over every night, at the long tables in the Sacramento Convention Center during the day with Scantrons and #2 pencils. I've not ever had much trouble with multiple choice tests, but this one wouldn't be offered again until December, and I couldn't afford to fail.

So I'm down in San Francisco with my friend [who's also an RN] at Stacey's Bookstore on Market Street, down in the basement, looking at nursing books, and I find an Outline of Pediatric Nursing. That seems promising, as I don't feel as though I'll have the brain to read a lot of content, but I might be able to use an outline to jog my memory.

Open it to the first page of the actual outline, and there it is. Babies are born competent.

How I love that sentence. My older son was born in 1971, my younger in 1973. T. Berry Brazelton's Neonatal Behavorial Assessment Scale (NBAS) hadn't been published at that point, but I was fortunate to have been guided by a friend to an excellent pediatrician who understood that we are not born useless and helpless but ready to engage anyone willing to listen. Equally fortunate for me was being able to work with a number of different infants in baby daycare [very unusual at that time] which gave me numerous opportunities to notice how each baby tried to get (and succeeded at getting) my attention. I remember every one of them with great fondness and respect, including [but not limited to] my own sons. I learned so much.

I'm not saying I became suddenly enlightened- far from it- but I had had, by the time I found the Outline of Pediatrics, many, many chances to stop being such a *grown-up* and start being a human being. In other words, I didn't have to know everything, to be right, to study for, and pass, State Boards. I just needed to be competent. To remember that people are working on this stuff all the time- nursing, medicine, parenting, education- and none of it's a finished product. It's all work in becoming, and I'm part of that- both the work, and the becoming.

Babies are born competent.

That's each of us. Whether premature, whether injured at birth, whether our DNA incorporates some unfortunate combination of genes that will bring sorrow later- Each of us is born competent, in no hurry to do anything but engage the attention of those more skilled in handling the needs of life than we are.

These are some of my favorite books for becoming a more skilled adult- skilled at listening to, skilled at connecting with, infants and young children. Three are out of print, but it's worth putting the effort in to finding them.

Born Dancing: How Intuitive Parents Understand Their Baby's Unspoken Language and Natural Rhythms

The First Six Months

The Laughing Baby : Songs & Rhymes from Around the World

Fate is kind. . .

Mysterious sometimes, but kind.

Last post I talked about my grandson's adventure in using crowdfunding and social media to back up the old standbys of car-washing and lawn-mowing for earning the money to finance Baseball summer camp in Europe.

Things change. He's decided, based on conversations with his mom, not to go this time. Maybe he'll be invited again next year, maybe not. But I know that whatever decision he's come to he's satisfied with it.

I don't know. It's his 12th birthday during that time. Maybe he needs to be home for that one. There seem to be a lot of reports of problems with planes lately. Maybe it's better to let the airlines do a little maintenance catch-up. Or maybe it's nothing concrete, nothing one can pin down.

What I know is, what's true is he wanted to go, and he took the chance and put himself out there to raise the money. That's more than a lot of us adults do- we over-extend our credit, or beg the relatives, or go without and whine about it. He just said, "Don't question it. Let's make this work," and gave it his best. And when new data came in, he considered it, redid the math, and came to a different decision.

I'm so proud of him. When the song says "Fate is kind: she brings to those who love the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing", it's not saying "Yes! you deserve to have this trip!" or "Yes! you deserve to play in the big leagues!" It's saying, "There are the deep things you long for- the things that aren't in words, or pictures, or even sensations, but are real: caring for others, being present, being honest. I grant you a chance for that in this moment."

Every moment is a moment in which, if we just reach up, we can get hold of the silver rope of Grace. I believe that's what he did, and I'm so proud, I can't stop smiling.

Love Until It Hurts: The Work of Mother Teresa and Her Missionaries of CharityLove Until It Hurts: The Work of Mother Teresa and Her Missionaries of Charity

If your heart is in your dreams no request is too extreme

I consider my life to be very fortunate. There are the odd uncomfortable things, the sad things, that happen in any life to one degree or another. But here I am, alive, and able to feel, and think, and write, and connect, and to me that is wealth beyond compare.

My 11-year-old grandson invited me today to see his wish on www.indiegogo.com. I'm sharing it because I'm so proud of him for keeping on, and for staying light. Here. I'll let him tell you about it.

He's been passionate about sports since he was very small. Soccer, Cycling- but Baseball has really caught him. I'm so proud that he's brave enough to let his passion be public; whether his project finds him backers or not, he's done it, taken the leap and made himself both brave and vulnerable, without being a show-off or greedy.

When he was younger we used to watch movies together. A favorite of his was Disney's Pinocchio, and a favorite song from that is When You Wish Upon a Star. For me it's never been a song about "Let me win this lottery draw" or "Let me make the next hit" but "Let the deepest wish of my heart be heard."


I'll end with some of my favorite sports-related books. In each one there's the moment of Grace, the moment when the wish, sent up to a star, is answered- perhaps not in the way the wisher dreamed, but "Fate is kind: she brings to those who love the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing". It's not what you know you're wishing for that will come, but the secret longing of your heart. To play well. To understand the game. To use to the best your talents. To contribute to the community.


Whether you play or whether you support someone who does, the passion and science and magic of sports opens new worlds, creates new realms of possibility. I'm helping Romeo create his. What are you up to?

Community: It's about how we care for each other

In Kim Kommando's email today I clicked on this link about spotting counterfeit memory cards.

What bothers me the most about this isn't that there exist such things as counterfeit memory cards, but that

. . . [T]hey're even showing up in reputable establishments.

The ones in reputable stores are almost impossible to detect. That's because they come from the manufacturer itself. Well, they come from the manufacturer's employees.

Manufacturers don't use all the flash memory that they make. Some of it doesn't pass quality tests. The flash memory may be too slow. It could be prone to errors. They throw out those parts.

Unscrupulous employees will rescue the defective memory. They'll package it up with legitimate labels and boxes. Then they sell it as genuine for a tidy profit.

How, then, do we protect ourselves? To a large extent I trust the people who do the jobs I don't or can't do to be honest. What happens when they're not?

I work in healthcare. In the early 1990s there was a problem with an entire batch of sutures being incompletely or improperly sterilized. At the hospital I worked in we couldn't figure out why, suddenly, there were so many surgeries that didn't heal properly. Then, finally, the recall happened, and we found out that most likely the sutures used for sewing up these incisions were from that batch.

What if the CDC hadn't collected data on complications of surgery? What if they hadn't been able to trace back to that batch of sutures? What if the company had covered it up? Those thoughts bother me enough.

But what if people who work in medical supply companies are just- cheating? Not doing their jobs properly? I count on them to be sure to do the job correctly. I need those supplies to be sterile, sharp, absorbent, whatever it is that they're supposed to be. Not for me, but for my patients. For their safety.

We're all in this together. The economy, the ecology, the community. In the end, it's not about *I've got mine, and nuts to you*. It's about *I've got enough for now, and how are you doing? Are you doing ok?*

Isn't it? About caring for each other, about each other? It's about care. About Coeur, courage. Heart. Not profit. Not cheating. Care.

LOVE UNTIL IT HURTS By Daphne Rae: biography of Mother Theresa, who, when asked how she did so much, replied, "I don't. I do what's in front of me, and trust to God to do the rest." Mother Theresa struggled all her religious life with the concern that perhaps God wasn't there, wasn't listening- but she behaved as though each thing she did mattered, because it was what was in front of her.

Grand Reopening!

I'm spending the afternoon in my storage, re-organizing my bookshop. I decided some years ago that as much as I love my books and movies, I love travel more, so I've been selling them as an Amazon Associate through EnjoyIt! Book&More, my little "bookshop". Over the years it's at least paid for the storage it's in, and sometimes made enough to help me with travel. And it's provided an avenue for my beloved books to find new homes, which makes me very happy.

In December I put EnjoyIt! on vacation, so that I could re-organize without inconveniencing anyone who wanted to order. I realize I may have lost some sales, but I like to run a professional shop, so the time was necessary. But I'm almost done! Re-shelving books, re-listing titles, and re-doing my shipping area has been well worth every moment put into it. And now it's time to open the doors and welcome people back. I've over a thousand items available: Nursing, Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality, Travel, Geography, Fiction, Children's books, Usborne Homeschool books, DVDs, and CDs. I hope you'll come by and take a look.

In the meantime, here is one of my all-time favorite books, also available from Amazon:

Out in the world

One of the things I'm doing to finance my ABM education is entering contests.

I never used to think of myself as "lucky". I entered the Publisher's Clearing House every time they sent an envelope [dating myself, much?] and won [ta-da!] a "specially minted Bicentennial medal" [only, what? 20,000 made]. I forget now if it was metal or plastic, but it was a lesson to me not to bother with contests.

Until, on my way home from an A's game one day, I took a mail-in survey form from a girl who was handing them out at the Coliseum BART station. My son really liked BART, I was feeling a bit sentimental, and I had nothing else to do on the ride home, so I took the form, filled it in on the ride, dropped it off in the mail on my walk home, and thought no more about it.

Until I got a phone call from the survey's sponsors, saying I'd won a 4-day, 3-night, all expenses paid trip to Cabo San Lucas. I couldn't make the first dates they had [nothing like full-time night-shift nursing to put a crimp in your ability to just pick up and leave] so they worked out a different hotel, different days.

Needless to say, it was wonderful.

And then, as you do, I forgot about it. Not the trip, but that I won it by the grace of seeing someone's smile and smiling back.

Life went on, as it does. I worked, moved, finished university, traveled. Caught up some back bills, made some gifts, saved a bit of money.

And found Anat Baniel's work.

At first I had no idea how I'd finance it. I still have wriggle room in my spending- I can cut back. I've got a little bookshop I run via Amazon; I can pick up a bit of freelance writing or spreadsheet work; I can recycle. But it's not enough.

Then I remembered Cabo San Lucas.

So I started looking for contests.

I began with the sweepstakes and contests section of About.com. I read everything there: how to enter, what to enter. Not to spend time entering contests for things I don't want, don't need. Then I found Twitter contests, and started looking around the world of contests.

Which is the long way round of saying: this is how I found Mommie Blogs.

There was nothing like this when my sons were little. I personally had good friends and an awesome mentor, but in general, there was no place to go if you weren't in church or had a large family who would help out.

I was thrilled to find A Sigh of Relief by Martin I. Green [first published in 1974]. I had two small sons and worked in toddler daycare. CPR was still new, it'd been years since I had First Aid at the Red Cross, and I worried about everything. Martin Green's book saved me from panicking.

Years later I found Trusting Ourselves by Karen Johnson, MD, which helped me sort out what was my innate character and what was situational and could be dealt with with therapy, time, and possibly medication. Again, a book saved me from panicking.

But now there is the internet. There are mommie [and daddie!] blogs. There are personal finance blogs. There are health information blogs, and book recommendation blogs. There are blogs for people who have premature children, who've lost children, whose children are grown, who want children. There are Twitter and Facebook and Orkut. It's amazing to me, the number of possible ways for people to connect.

It all comes down to being neighborly, doesn't it? Which is the point of this winding post. I never thought of myself as lucky. But through entering a some blog contests, I became aware of this rich world of women making community, and I count that as lucky a win as any I could ever have. I know now that no matter what comes, I'll find a way to finance my education, and bring something good into the world. I've been very fortunate to have good friends, and it makes me happy to see women writing, women talking about their lives, and women finding different ways to make community and help each other.

So it's not about the contests, really, though the wins I've had have certainly helped. It's about the connections out in the world. Hello, world. It's lovely to meet you.