“Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth.”
~ Francesca Lia Block~

We are wishers. We love to make wishes and have a thousand ways of making them. Wishes are really just hope and hope is the very thing that keeps us breathing one day to the next. Without hope we would lay down and expire. We would disappear from our own lives and then we would disappear from the lives of others. So we make wishes, in the form of prayer and meditation, in the form of chanting, in the form of blowing on an over ripe dandelion, or the toss of a penny into a fountain, and we hope for those wishes to come true. We hope for more hope.

I am never sure if my wishes really come true or that life simply worked out the way it was supposed to work out. And if my wishes didn’t work out where did  my wishing words they go?  Did they just float off into nowhere and are now stuck in the branches of trees or were they what cause the occasional transformer to blow on the power pole outside my door? And the ones that did come true? Were they granted by a benevolent God, or a kind, much-alive universe that just wants me to spin along with it into eternal happiness? Or could be that my wishes came true simply because while wishing, I visualized a reality that I was then able to create?  I know I have wished on countless stars, made promises to be a better person if, “just this one time”, my wish or prayer would come true. It’s funny, but while I know that many of my wishes must have worked out, I can’t always remember the details of specific wishes or their outcomes. Perhaps a wish journal is needed. A way to visibly track requests and results. If I had some data then maybe I could sort it all out and determine if wishing, hoping, praying, is even worth the time. I could spend my remaining years gathering data, putting it all into columns with calculations based on successes and failures. I could then run it through a computer algorithm and spit out some facts that would tell me if wishing is simply hopeless or incredibly hopeful.

But honestly, I think I already know an answer that no computer would be able to give. And I already mentioned it at the start of this little piece. Wishes ARE HOPE and hope is like the very air we breath. They are as real as the inhaling and exhaling of billions of humans in a beautiful dance of life on a blue planet that is often brutal in nature. We hope for so many things, from a chance to win a lottery, to a chance to find food for our hungry children. And that hope is more often then not disguised as a wish which in turn is more often then not clothed in a prayer or a meditation or a chant or in the blowing upon of an over ripe dandelion. When I blow on a dandelion I love to watch the twirling seeds flutter away, rising and falling on unseen currents, journeying off to places unknown. Those seed will find root again, to grow another chance for another human, or me, to make another wish. But even when there are no dandelions, I know I will find or use all the other ways we humans have to make wishes.
And some will be for me.
But today, I will use my wishes for you.

I was 20 when I had my daughter Leah. I seemed, to me, to be perfectly capable of having a baby but I really was far from that word. But at 20 you want to be grown up and what could possibly be more grown up then having a baby? I was a single parent, did not have much support from family, and had never had an example of what being a good mother looked like. I remember in my last month of pregnancy feeling so scared and wondering how in the world I could possibly do this. I would sit on the floor in a house I was renting in Anacortes, WA and cry my eyes out. I attended some birth classes, had a friend that was my birth coach, and tried to just have some faith that it would all be ok. I think I took pretty good care of myself, not really knowing much about being pregnant. I did smoke! I think a lot of pregnant women smoked back then. I remember the doctor saying it was fine and would keep the baby from being too big!! WHAT? Now when I think about that I cringe. But you can only do better when you know better. I know better now but there is a box we all carry that is filled with the weight of all the things we did wrong in our of ignorance and that box rarely contains self forgiveness.

I rolled past my due date as many first time mothers do. Then came all the suggestions on how to get labor going. The one that worked was chugging a bottle of castor oil. I spent the night sitting on the toilet (no pre-birth enema needed!) and by the morning I knew that the pain in my lower belly was no longer from the castor oil. The contractions became more regular throughout the day and I used the breathing methods taught to me in my birth classes. This was going to be a breeze! No drugs for me, no way, this was going to be a natural birth!

By the time that I was admitted to the hospital in Anacortes I was still chugging along with my breathing methods and feeling pretty confident. But as the hours ticked by the real work of labor began. What an incredible thing this is to try to push a big human being out of your body. But my body wasn’t up for the task and complications set in. First my labor slowed again and they had me get up and walk around. That didn’t help. Then her heart rate started to change so they decided I needed to be in a bigger hospital and shipped me via ambulance to United General in Sedro-Woolley , west of Anacortes. They felt this hospital would be better equipped to handle any further issues and they hoped that the ambulance ride would get things going again.

You lose track of time when you are in hard labor. And the little dreams you have between contractions are bizarre and yet strangely real. I remember the smell of people’s breath bothering me terribly and telling people to get out of my face when talking to me. I remember trying to get through each contraction, still not asking for medications, still wanting to have a ‘natural’ birth. When the urge to push comes along it is the most overpowering feeling. And it is also a huge relief because you are headed to the finish line. You are finally able to go with a contraction versus go through a contraction. I pushed and pushed and pushed until I was exhausted and again her heart rate plummeted. With each contraction it would drop so low and then slowly come back. I began to see the top of her head with each push. And then things totally tanked. She was stuck. They decide to do an emergency c-section. I remember them rushing me down the hall and saying, ‘DON’T PUSH” but that urge is so strong and the compulsion to bear down is primal.
In moments they had given me a spinal block, cut my abdomen open and pried a baby girl out of my body. Her head was pushed down into the birth canal and they had to give her a few good tugs to pull her back out, to pull her in the opposite direction of where she was headed. All I remember is the relief of hearing her cry.

It takes so many miracles to get born. And it actually takes a billion more just to get conceived and carried to term. It takes one sperm out of a million to reach one egg out of thousands and if it doesn’t happen at that precise moment in time YOU are not YOU,  YOU are some other YOU. The universe has been here for billions of years, there is an eternity before you and there is one behind as well. And miracle of miracles, everything had to roll out just right to bring each one of us here. We are the makings of so many uncountable, incalculable miracles. And most of the time we don’t even know it. We just take it for granted.

I remember holding her later that day, just her and me in a big empty birthing room. I was all blubbery and hormonal, buzzing on whatever meds they gave me but mostly just madly in love. Crazy, mad love for this little baby that was a girl, my girl. I swore to always love her and to tell her how beautiful and amazing she is. I swore she wouldn’t ever have to feel what I felt as an abandoned child. I swore to be good to her and kind.
I haven’t always kept those promises.

Except the one, the one to always love her.

Leah just turned 40. We survived the birth and all the years that followed. It wasn’t always easy or nice or lovely or peaceful or stable or any other words you might want to attach to raising a child. It was difficult. I was growing up just like she was growing up and I made big mistakes. But I also made some good choices and it is reflected in her now. She is an incredible mom, a strong woman, a sweet, kindhearted person, headstrong and true.

Happy Birthday baby girl. Your birthday was my ‘birth day’ – we made it through that day together. And we made it through many more together as well. You are my miracle – Miracles look like you . . .

I have been trying to refrain from posting anything that was truly politics based but it is becoming impossible to not say something about THIS ridiculous election cycle.

So, here is my main thought:

Quit freaking out!

Seriously, I see stuff on Facebook and in the media that could have a person thinking that it was the beginning of end times or something. We have some real yahoos running for President this cycle. In fact, there isn’t one of them that is worthy of a vote. But it looks like we will be going ahead with the election anyway. So, what we might want to do is remember a few things so that everyone won’t die of a stroke when their candidate doesn’t get elected and someone they hate does get elected. Frankly I can’t see a good side to any of the candidates unless it’s when they aren’t talking. They all sound so good when they don’t say anything. I love quiet candidates and politicians.

It takes a special kind of special to choose to run for President. Trump said it takes courage to run. I think it just takes a massive ego. And there isn’t one candidate on either side of the ticket that isn’t a bloated windbag of ego. Running for President in this day and age means you have to constantly talk about how amazing you are, how you have done all these civilization-changing things, how you are better than the next person, how you, you, you, you, you, you, are the ONLY reasonable choice there is for a thinking voter to make. It also means promising things that are impossible to actually manifest. But they make a candidate sound like they are a caring and compassionate person that only has the best interest of people in their heart. But they don’t have the interest of the people in their heart, they are on a self-motivated, ego driven path to find their own glory. Even Bernie. Everyone seems to think that Bernie is this meek and mild-mannered man who is altruistic and farts rainbows. He isn’t. He is as driven to force his view of life down everyone’s throat as Trump. He just does it without mentioning his penis.
And Hillary. Oh my. She truly is the most special kind of special in the world. That woman is a shape-shifter and can do it at the drop of a hat. She is not a bit different then any other establishment candidate running except she doesn’t have a penis to brag about but she is definitely married to a willie.

All I am really trying to wind around to saying is: QUIT FREAKING OUT about these yahoos. We have had some seriously crappy Presidents throughout our history and we have survived them all and we will survive this election cycle too. And the reason we will survive this election cycle is because WE THE PEOPLE will still be going about the business of pursuing happiness and also taking pretty good care of each other. But we need to start doing a better job of the taking care of each other part. It’s actually one of the sure fired ways to quiet down this insanely insane political jockeying for votes that rolls around every four years. If we started taking better care of each other then we wouldn’t be looking to the clown college in Washington DC to take care of things for us. All these promises that they make to us to buy our votes are empty and won’t bear fruit. The real change happens right here with you and me and our neighbors and our neighborhoods and our towns and our cities. Our government shouldn’t be this loud. Our politicians shouldn’t be this loud. We let them get like this. This is our fault. But we can change that. Our government and the people who sit in either the Oval Office or Congress have a pretty basic job that they somehow have twisted into something so complex that even they don’t know how it works. Their job is to provide us with protection (military, fire, police, medical) and maintain our infrastructures (roads, bridges, dams, electrical grids, etc.). But somehow they have found a way to keep vacuuming money from our pockets while convincing us that the sucking sound we hear is progress. Now everyone of course will have some response that sounds like, “but what about the poor people, or what about the elderly, or the infirm”? and my response would be, “What have YOU done about the poor, the elderly, the infirm”?

Our government has very successfully convinced us that if we give them enough money they will make everything better FOR us. We won’t have to do a thing, or lift a finger. How’s that working out so far?

What makes things better FOR THE PEOPLE is WE THE PEOPLE. We make things better for us by being present in each others lives and providing hours and money in our own community. I mentioned in a prior blog post about volunteer hours. There are over 300 MILLION people in this country and if just half of us volunteered that would be 159 MILLION volunteers and if those 159 million people just gave 4 hours per week that is 636 MILLION hours of giving in any week. Multiply that by 52 weeks and you end up with over 33 BILLION hours of giving. Those hours could accomplish great things. Great things that we would not have to look to the government or it’s windbags to provide.

All of us that were born here in America won a lottery. A birth-lottery. We were fortunate enough to be born in a free Western society that while not perfect, is still pretty darned good. We are free to invent, innovate, create, and share solutions to big problems everyday. No jack-booted soldiers will come kick in your door and  make you disappear. You can whine, bitch, and moan all you want about how horrible you think everything in this country is and how awful the President is and no one will cart you off to never be seen again or beat you in the public square. But my suggestion is we stop with all the whining, bitching, and moaning and remember that when we all won the birth-lottery it came with a very special addendum, it’s small print, but really important: Have gratitude, display gratitude, act grateful.
And the way to follow that small print is to give back in ways that make a difference in your community, in the lives of the others around you. You actually have an obligation as a birth-lottery winner to share that good fortune. And since there wasn’t a big cash prize with this birth-lottery, you are obligated to share of yourself. And to do it with gratitude and grace.

I for one am having the best time this election cycle. I cannot believe that I actually get to witness all these shenanigans and it’s given me some deep belly laughs. I am not worried about what will happen. I do know that one of these bozos will be elected. And in 4 years we will do it all over again. What I hope happens in those 4 years is that WE THE PEOPLE will get back to taking care of WE THE PEOPLE. I hope that all of us will remember that the real grassroots campaigns are those that don’t involve one single politician. It’s just us doing the right things for each other. PLEASE, find some time in these next 4 years to make a difference in your community. Let’s make our voices heard by what we do and that will help quiet the yelling and yammering that comes from our politicians. If we could start fulfilling promises to each other to take better care of each other we wouldn’t have to listen to candidates and elected officials tell us how they are going to bring us all a pony and tuck us in bed each night. We can have better by being better. We the People.

So QUIT FREAKING OUT about the election.

It’s going to be ok.

WE THE PEOPLE got this!!

Silly title – but not so silly subject behind it.

Election years in the US always seem to bring out the worst in all of us. We are flippant and lack compassion, we are unforgiving and rude. And then there are the candidates! I don’t even want to start on that, so I won’t. This isn’t a post about politics but another reminder during this hyper-charged season that we are actually just amazing creatures!!

We need to remember that we are all much more then what we hear from media, or politicians, or  government. We are filled with possibilities and potential, and creativity and hope. There are people doing prodigious things out in the world every day. We don’t know it though because it isn’t as news worthy as killings and racism, or as head turning as another Kardashian getting a lip wax. I too start to feel our failings as humans after watching the shenanigans of current events.

But then I see something like this:

Wooden, Hand-Cranked Music Machine

Do yourself a favor and watch this. Really, I love you all so much that I am sharing this so that you can actually feel really good about being a human full of creativity and art. We need to remember how incredibly amazing we all are, how creative, beautifully intricate, and masterfully designed (by God or Nature, either way we are awesome) we are. We are so beautifully intricate that one of our fellow human elements was able to create this beautifully intricate machine. Think about the thought it took to just come up with the concept and then think about all the thoughts it took to bring it to fruition. I for one am THRILLED that I am of the same species as this guy. And his devotion to making this happen reminds me how great our humanness is and how important art and creativity is to that human spirit.

We hear so much negativity everyday and forget how much goodness is being created by us, being shared by us, being innovated, and invented by us, us humans. Yes, we are flawed and do LOTS of stupid, thoughtless, unkind things. But we are also kind of marvelous.

How great we art.