My Parents: A Love Story

My Parents:  A Love Story

Throughout my entire life I have seen my parents give of themselves for others. My mom was a teacher and gave to her students above and beyond what she taught in the classroom.  The evidence of the job she did can be seen by the sheer numbers of friends on facebook who happen to be former students…approximately three generations of them!

She challenged her school board’s strict rules many times by telling girls about planned parenthood and we had several students come live with us when they simply didn’t know where to turn during crisis.  Dad coached my brother’s baseball team and I remembered the police coming to our door to talk to him.  They had one of his kids in the car and asked if he could stay with us as he’d been taken out of his home for a violent situation.  They told him he had to go into foster care and he said he’d run away and the only place he’d go is to Coach’s house.  It was the way they were.  They did what needed doing.

My sister and I used to get upset when we saw them get taken advantage of time and again due to their inability to say No to anyone or to being taken in by someone with less than honest intentions.  Even though they might have been used, they would take in the next child or help the next person without a thought of their intentions.  It was their way.

Upon selling our business in Michigan they moved to Arizona full time to be near the rest of the family which had also fallen in love with the Valley of the Sun and slowly all migrated down full time ahead of them.  There always seemed to be something going on in the park and the friends they had made them happy.  Dad seemed to love puttering around his place, fixing things up and adding a plant here and a pot there.  He built new steps and then built a bigger porch.  They helped with Activities and played shuffleboard.  I heard a lot about discontented people fighting over any number of things from Who called Bingo best to who would be in charge of keys to the supply closet.

Management came and went.  My parents helped everyone they could with getting utility programs in place for those on fixed incomes, they provided food and relief when the need was shared. And they have taken people to doctor’s appointments, the airport, the grocery stores and more.  They took on any number of committee jobs that others didn’t want to do the work for including AMHO.  They got daily calls for everything from people upset about questionable activity going on in suspected drug houses to snakes in someone’s yard to dealing with people off their mental health medications. Many times at a cost of not being able to do other things as their time was taken up doing things for the community.

They did so without complaint.  They have done many things that they never took credit for and they have paid a price for it.  Dennis and I became involved helping with Saturday breakfast and saw the amount of work that took each week for just the few who showed up to volunteer. We believed it was a great way to help Mom and Dad out and give back to their great community.  We helped at the cookouts each year and those were a success.   Dad called Bingo.  They got to the point where they were so busy they had NO time for themselves and it got to be too much.  So they decided to give up AMHO and since nobody else would take it over they shut it down and sent the leftover money back to the State Board.

They chilled out for half a minute.  Until they started seeing a lot of things going downhill.  People were upset that the community was becoming infused with drug dealers and unsavory characters.  So Dad organized the crime prevention program and started getting security lights for those who couldn’t afford them. Water was always out, roads had huge potholes… They finally talked with corporate after feeling like they were not getting what they needed from the Park.  The park ownership decided that they would make great liaisons to explain what needed to improve so the Improvement Committee was formed.  Those not asked to be on this committee became upset and had their feelings hurt.

My parents set up and went through training for the PNP.  They wanted to keep their community strong and safe.  They wanted to continue the work they had started with the Crime Prevention program already in place.  Some people must have thought that my parents were trying to get attention and praise.  Those people do not know them very well.  They are not about being recognized nor are they full of themselves.  They are prideful but in a good way.  They are proud of being good stewards of the world.

I am not really sure why the individuals at the park who are mad at them now are upset with them.  I cannot explain how some would come to harm and misrepresent others….but I do know that they have wronged my parents and in doing so they have shown their true selves.  To question and try to negate the good that my parents have done for SO MANY people in this park makes me weary. To practically accuse them of illegal activity is horrendous. The innuendo and outright insinuations are preposterous. I have seen the stress this has caused them and I will NOT forgive NOR forget as they probably will.  I am not naïve.  I have learned caution and distrust just by the nature of watching those who seek to harm good people.

I will be watching for those who wish to do harm.  I will keep a tally and I will not forget.  I am not my parents and I know have my own abilities to help them with this issue.  Do not think they are alone.

What is Love?

I remember just knowing that I was going to have a girl when we found out we were pregnant.  The “knowing” was just there in my mind.  I remember the amazing feeling that came over me the moment that it was confirmed that I was pregnant.  I was thirty five when I found out.  I grew up thinking that I never wanted to GIVE birth.  No way I was going through all that big belly and the pain of child birth.  I was going to adopt!  That thought was still with me at the age of thirty something with one failed marriage behind me and no options in sight.

I made a decision to give myself one last year to find a viable mate with whom to adopt with…….or maybe try to have a baby.  The older I got the more that the idea of giving birth seemed to get better.  Still wanting to adopt as well but perhaps seeing if I could have a child as well.  So I gave myself ONE year to find a partner.  Along came Dennis through an internet search.  We met and things took off from there.  He was the kind of man you could imagine being a dad.  I was hooked.  We were married less than two years after starting to correspond. 

I went off my birth control before we were married.  I knew that with depo it took about a year and a half to get pregnant after stopping.  That was 1998.  By the year 2000 I was getting worried that adopting might be our only option.  No pregnancy yet and news that older women taking depo not being able to conceive being heard.

Then one day in late October of 2000 I was cooking hamburger and was so upset to find out that it smelled bad.  So I threw it out and got another package out.  I started cooking it again.  Dennis got home from work then and I asked him to smell it.  It smelled disgusting to me.  He said not only was that burger fine but so was the stuff in the trash!  I had an odd thought.  I said that my sister always thought meat was bad when she was pregnant.  So Den bought a test the next day on his way home from Toronto and we sat on the edge of the tub waiting for three minutes.  I jumped up at the end and ran to look at the tab:  TWO pink lines!!!!  My hunch had been right!

I called my sister first as we’d been wondering together and then I called Arizona.  Mom answered the phone.  I told her that sorry to say we would need to make some arrangements for the store the following summer because I was going to be doing something that would use up a lot more of my time but it was something that Dennis and I considered important enough to do.  She said, “Well, we will make due no matter what.  We have time to plan.”  I then went on to tell her we would also need to have enough people lined up to cover the entire store during probably the 4^th of July.  Being the busiest holiday, this would not be very easy.

She said “Okay…” at which point I said,  “because I will probably be at the hospital having your next grandchild!”  And I think Mom lost it.  Then I got to turn around and have the same conversation with my Dad who hadn’t heard it.  They were both crying at this point.

I had an amazingly easy pregnancy.  I felt better than I had in a long time…which shocked me. I knew before the ultrasound that I was having a girl and we began the name game! I actually lost over seventy pounds during the whole time and the only glitch I had was finding out I was gestationally diabetic so I ended up giving myself shots for the last two months and being heavily monitored.  I played a lot of diverse music to my tummy and sang and read outloud a lot to the munchkin growing inside me.  I embraced my belly and was extremely happy.

Due to the diabetes, I was induced early, as soon as she was big enough to survive…still at 39 weeks, considered full term.  It was June 27^th so we’d be in the store by the Holiday!  I was induced at 9:30 a.m. and she was born at 6:30 p.m.  All 6 pounds 15 ounces and 21.5 inches of her.  I had an epidural and an amazing painkiller so I was still out of it when she actually arrived.  I remember looking over at her and wondering who the blonde baby belonged to as I had a private birthing room!

After she was checked and wrapped up I assumed that Dennis would bring her to me and I was really ready to meet her.  Instead he whooshed right on by me and out in the hall where all the grandparents were standing, waiting to be introduced.  A few moments later, she was in my arms and I was meeting the child who shared my body for so many months.    The bond was maternal and eternal!  What is love?  This is love!  The magical moment you hold your child in your arms for the first time.  I have never known a fiercer feeling of love than I did at that moment.  It was truly the moment my life changed more than it ever had previously.  Love is the feeling you get when magic appears in your life!  For me that is McKenna Ann Elizabeth!

Trayvon Could Have Been My Brother.....

I have stayed mainly silent during the whole Trayvon Martin case.  Not because I didn't have opinions on it but rather, because I did and speaking those opinions would just bring up a whole set of emotions I wasn't ready to deal with.

See, I am a white woman who lives in a Stand Your Ground State (Arizona).  We were the dead LAST state to recognize Martin Luther King day and sadly, we are known as the state where you can purchase an assault rifle in a WalMart parking lot. 

However, I am from Michigan and I grew up with extremely liberal values.  When I was five and a half a great gift was brought home to me in the form of an adopted baby brother.  His name was Steven Matthew Martin and he was perfect!  He was six weeks old, smelled really good and was the most interesting color of olive/brown I'd ever seen!  He had loose curly black hair and he was a very happy baby!

 I remember the day when Stevie came running out of the bathroom where he'd been looking at himself in the mirror.  I think he was three.   "Mama, I am a different color than you are!"  He stated. And while he knew he had been adopted it was in that moment that he began to understand that he was "different".

 My sister and I became extremely protective of our little brother.  We lived in a very small town at that time and I remember people staring at us and I had no idea why.  I did know that at family gatherings, things seemed to shift.  There was an unease when my aunt and uncle were around.  Eventually, they no longer showed up at gatherings or would just be leaving when we got there.

Mama said it was because Uncle Red was from the South and he just didn't think the same way as us.  I wasn't sure at the time what had changed or how his thinking would change the family but we got used to not seeing that set of cousins anymore.

I remember going to Florida one year, which was normal for spring break and driving through Georgia one morning there was the smell of burning wood.  Finally we saw what the smell was from.  Erected in the middle of a lawn was the remains of a burnt cross.

 My dad had us take Stevie to the back of the motor home and put him on the floor with some books, we then took the pull out bed out over him to hide him.  Dad told him no matter what he heard, not to come out until dad told him to. We then drove straight through Georgia without stopping except maybe for gas.  And we didn't get out for a walk that time because were all too scared.

As Stevie grew up I started learning that there were people who thought little boys with black, curly hair and brown skin and dark brown eyes were somehow bad.  I heard a word that I had never before heard applied to my brother and my Mama had to try to explain that it was just a very uneducated word which some white people used to put black people down.  Hmmm.  I decided I didn't like that word.

Sometimes Stevie would get in fights at school and he said that kids would say things about him and he could handle it but when they started in about the family and how we were bad because we adopted him and called my Mom names he just couldn't stand it and would fight. What is a parent to do in this case?  Tell their son to just turn the other cheek?  But of course my parents did.  They told Stevie that there would always be people who just didn't understand our family.

We ended up moving from the very small town in the winter of 1980.  We moved to East Lansing, Michigan which was home to Michigan State University.  In many ways it was night and day to the small town life we'd previously encountered.  For the first time ever, in the middle of second grade, my brother went to school with other minorities!  I can only imagine how it must have felt for him.

Most of the time living with Stevie was just as normal as any other family getting on with their lives. Then. when you least expected it. we were reminded that we were different.  Steve got a moped for his birthday one year.  I remember the first time he got pulled over by the cops.......who asked if this was his moped and did he have an ID  His white friends never got asked for ID for their rides.  Steve was probably pulled over at least twice a year and asked to prove he owned his moped.  He would even be with white friends on theirs and they wouldn't be questioned. 

I remember Steve being really upset by this and my dad telling him that whether it was fair or not the fact that he was black meant that he had to be twice as good and twice as understanding of things because unfortunately that was the way the world worked.  I can only imagine as a parent who is white trying to explain to your child that just because his skin was different that some of the world viewed him as "LESS THAN."

I could go on through my brother's life pointing out areas where he learned life lessons that were much different than those my sister and I were learning.  We learned a few lessons which most white girls never have to learn due to having Steve as a brother and for that I am humbled.

I never realized what my parents chose to take on back then in 1971 when they adopted Steve.  I don't know if they were fully aware of the impact that decision would make on all of us.  I am grateful that they did it and that I had my brother in my life for so many years.  I know that his journey was much different than mine and that he lived through much more bigotry than we bore witness to.  I can only imagine some of the things he endured while we were not around.

He WAS Trayvon Martin at seventeen.  A good kid who was living his life.  Going to the 7 11 to buy a Big Gulp and some candy.  I guess we are lucky that there wasn't a Zimmerman around then.

Disillusionment of Fascination!

 Peter Frampton.  What wasn’t to love?  Played guitar like Hendrix, possessed beautiful teeth and curly, blonde hair….spoke with an English accent.

He was a rock star!  He had the largest selling Live record for quite a number of years in Frampton Comes Alive!  He had an English accent, oh, did I already say that?  Well, it should count twice!  He was beauty itself.  At least if you were a girl who lived in a small town and was 12.  Words to describe me: Emulated.  Infatuated.  In Love!  Imperfect, awkward, geek.

I don’t remember where I first heard him but I really thought that he sang directly to me.  I don’t even remember the first time I saw him on television but I knew right away that he was the man of my dreams!  I didn’t even care for boys with blonde hair, but on him?  Amazing!

He wore the tightest pants and silk shirts, open to the waist and tied with a big knot.  His hair was shoulder length and silky, wavy and multi-colored.  When he spoke it was like hot caramel oozing from his lips.

No mere boy could compete!  I bought all of his posters and filled my walls with his beauty.  I bought all of his records and played them nonstop.  I knew every lyric, every nuance……..every pause.  I was gone, gone, gone…….

I bought fan magazines with information about him.  I knew all of his favorite foods, colors and the car he drove.  I knew his girlfriends and was seriously upset by their existence…

If I could have attended his concerts I would have but my parents would never allow it.  Rock concerts?  No.  Captain and Tenille?  Sure.   Helen Reddy, Yup.  Peter Frampton?  No way!  The crowd would be full of pot smokers and drunk people! No!

He starred in “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with the BeeGee’s in 1978 and I was there opening weekend.  While I thought the movie was a little odd and didn’t really understand it, I was really excited to see him in it and looked forward to a bigger movie career.

When I heard that Peter had been in a very bad car accident later that year, I was devastated.  He nearly died and I heard that he would probably never play guitar again.  He did recover and continued to record, though at a slower pace and never did achieve the monetary success of the Alive album.

At this time my life changed and I put away my posters and moved my albums to East Lansing, finished High School and started college and my love and emulation of Peter Frampton dimmed but did not die.  I no longer had the fantasy of meeting him and having him fall madly in love with me that I had entertained (but didn’t really figure out given our age difference!) as a middle school girl……but an ember still glowed.

Fast forward to the ‘90’s and I am living in Kalamazoo.  I hear the most amazing news on my way to work!  Peter Frampton is going to play the local venue!  I called work to tell them I’d be late and beelined for the auditorium.  I got tickets and called my sister to tell her she had to come down for that concert.  I was finally going to see Frampton Come Alive!  On stage, in front of me……….I could hardly breath!

The concert was amazing and he played for a long time!  His hair was a bit gray and a bit shorter but he rocked it and was really something!  His guitar playing was stellar and the young shy girl in me was replaced by this very happy adult fan!

I’ve seen him three times over the years and each show is terrific.  Each time he’s been a little slower, hair keeps getting grayer, okay, whiter and shorter but he still plays guitar like a mad man and he puts on quite a show.

The really cool thing about my Peter is he is really awesome and down to earth.  He married and moved to Ohio where he is very politically active in many of the same things I am, he has been clean and sober for a while which really improved his life and his kids are now in the limelight.

He does his own facebook page, which of course I am on, and he answers posts and interacts quite often…so I now have a more grown up admiration for someone who was such a big part of my formative years.  I wrote a post on his page which he thanked me for a few years ago and basically I stated that I was an even bigger fan now that I saw him as an adult….someone with integrity, who believed in the same things that I believe in and who cares for the earth and for people and that I thanked him for being real and interacting with we humble fans.  It’s really nice when you find out your idols are worthy of your respect!  I guess you can say there was no disillusionment in this tale!

Lost in the Circles Goin' Round

I feel like I am stuck in a never ending spiral............Is down up, up down..........right left, left right....nothing left. Spent.  The thoughts spin around until I feel as if this must be what it feels to be mad.  However, I am a person who may have "flights of fancy" but am grounded in reality practically 99.9 percent of the time.  That is why the last year of my life has been so challenging!

I literally feel like I am in uncharted territory.  I look for answers to life's questions in song, prose and movies.  I have reverted to the music of my youth in an attempt to have something familiar and "safe."  At least I am grounded in familiar.  I am unaware if I can find safe again anytime soon.  It's like the song Free Falling by another childhood friend, Mr. Tom Petty.  I was a good girl.  Still am.  Still trying to live a good life.

To Connect..............

She found it easier to crawl inside herself instead of trying to  connect.  

Easier by far than to connect.

Never finding anyone who understood her, she stumbled through life…

Wanting more but not knowing how to get it. 

How do you know what you are looking for when you don’t know what it is?

And so it went.  Decade after decade of wanting something that eluded her.

She thought a few times she had done it.  She thought she had figured out the system!  

 She thought that she had found someone who would get her.

But that had been untrue.  Alone again she wandered.

Kari

Kari

Chestnut, wavy hair flows down to waist.

Heart shaped lips smile wide.

Laughter is present in your eyes.

Flowing, Grace  in motion as your

Effervescent soul twirls round in the sun.

Multi-tiered skirt hits ankle as  bell anklet sounds it’s shrill cadence.

Love is prevalent; Life is LIVED to the fullest!

Energy. Spontaneity, Goddess of light!

This is the Kari that I shall remember!  Before her own judgement of herself lead to the mess that is Kari now.  Kari the Goddess Swirling Diva died the same day Steve did.  Only the shell has “survived” all these years.  Namaste.