Why objectivity is sexy

My Love and I have a business arrangement that is working out fabulously: I provide him with coaching and for his part, he fixes and soothes my back with his osteopathic magic. It is unorthodox, outside the box and breaks most rules of separating personal and professional relationships, especially when it comes to family. I like breaking rules. I always have and likely, will continue to do so well into the future.

When I put on my coach’s hat with my husband, I’m at least 90% a professional. He is, for that hour, my client and my sole purpose is his highest best interest. I follow his agenda. In the freedom of objectivity, I hear what’s important to him, what he’s thinking about, his dreams, struggles, goals, feelings and process of thought. In the back of our minds, we know who is talking with who, but we here, in the space of coaching we are in different roles and a fresh dynamic emerges. It’s one where a feeling of safety, purposefulness and exploration thrive. It is NICE to put aside my personal feelings about internship and the way it inevitably shapes the practical form our our partnership in lopsided fashion, temporarily. He feels the relief of sharing openly, free of worry over my personal feelings about the above situation, which are easily interpreted as lack of support. In coaching there is a term called “Dancing in the moment.” Freed by the gift of suspending ordinary relationship for this interlude of coaching, the two of us dance in the moment, without touching. Everything intimate sits presently in the background while we focus, connect and play professional capacity. I enjoy everyone woman’s dream of a lover who shares intimately; he benefits from every man’s wish for unconditional support  from the woman he loves. We both get to taste each others’ professional talents and benefit from them. It’s a win/win.

Especially when the coaching hour is over, my back is fixed, our professional hats are off and laid aside and the pullout couch lies open.

Life’s Purpose

It’s a great day.

In the morning my Love and I have a few minutes to snuggle. He gets up and makes pancake batter before he heads off for a 24 plus hour call. I lay in bed for ten more minutes. “Have you eaten anything?” I ask, looking at the batter sitting in the bowl for us. The answer, not surprisingly, is no. I surreptitiously fill Avsi’s new dinasuar thermos and fill it with a high-end liquid meal and energy drink combination from this company called Univera. We kiss, wish each other great days and enter into our completely different weekend experiences. His involves admitting patients, presenting cases to his superiors, running around with charts, shuttling information back and forth between specialists, pharmacists and families and writing orders. My day involves learning to be fully present, flexible and engaged with whatever is happening in front of me…which, now that I write it, probably isn’t any different than what his day calls for, actually. It’s just that my immediate tasks involve flipping pancakes while addressing multiple simultaneous requests for things like books to be read, help to be administered in opening something or finding something, or putting on an item of clothing, all the while being invited to participate in an imaginary world involving fairies named Sparkle Splash and Flying Flower and Tom, to mention a few.

Our pancake breakfast is a success, as is our short jaunt to Tanner Springs, with scooters in tow. The kids want to play the “gate” game, which my Love invented. It is based on his experience taking the kids on outings to whole foods and everyone getting a kick out of the automated voice that says, “Please insert Whole Foods validated ticket.” In the game, the parent or parents form a gate and as the kids scoot up to the gate, the parent says, “Please insert Whole Foods validated ticket.” Sometimes a “ticket” is inserted in the form a high five. Other times the kids flaunt their frisky selves, scooting off squealing, “I didn’t insert the Whole Foods Validated ticket!” Which warrants a tickle arrest, or possible a raspberry fart on the belly. After a while, I suggest a lap around the park.  Avsi and have fun jumping off one of the low walls and climbing the little ladder and doing it again. Jumping like that feels like flying for a second. I may be the only mom in town who jumps, but probably not. I just haven’t seen my counterpart yet.

Next, we’re off to the Title Wave Used Bookstore sale, which the kids’ preschool teacher mentioned in an email. Each kids finds one book and walks away happy as peaches. Happiness – who knew it could be bought, at least temporarily for a dollar seventy five. Our next stop is lunch. There is a unanimous request for soup and frozen yogurt at Organic Bleuet Yogurt, on NW 23rd. We enjoy our potato leek soup and each other’s company. We play “I one you, I two you, I three you…I EIGHT you!” We play hangman. It seems like Nika is subtly off her center, yet still overall loving, engaged and flexible when I redirect her to Wait, Include, etc. Once she includes her siblings in our games, it turns out to be so much fun – who knew it could be so wonderful to hang out together on a  lazy Saturday?

One of our usual sitters comes for two hours in the afternoon. Gabe is desperately sad that I’m leaving. He wants more than 14 kisses. I give him 21, plus Kissing Hands, front and back.

I spend the first hour finding my way to a spot between two trees on a trail just inside Forest Park. I sit between the trees, careful not to squish the flowers that are in that space too. I have always felt a soft spot for flowers. I once cried when a flower died and my mother told me that it was unavoidable, that in fact, flowers bloom and die. I sobbed for a very long time. I’m happy to be able to occupy this space between trees, sharing it with these friendly flowers, without harm. I thank them on my way out of the park.

For the second half of my time, I locate a Starbuck’s in North West – NOT  the one where I stole the bathroom key. I finally pin down my Life Purpose Statement.

Here it is:

To facilitate the flourishing of life wherever I am, for whomever I am with, in whatever way is in the highest, for the highest in each One of us.

For the rest of the day, I observe this newly identified — or at least freshly and succinctly articulated Life Purpose Statement informing my life, my way of responding to others and the overall outcome of what happens. For example, Nika continues to be off her center. It’s starting to annoy me deeply, because she is sucking a disproportionate amount of attention away from moments I want to share with my other kids. I can feel the heat head toward boiling, as it often has in the past. I take a different path. I write a litter to one of her imaginary characters, explaining the situation and asking for the character’s advice and insight. Which leads to another letter. Interestingly, in the second letter, the imaginary character suggests I speak directly with Nika. It happens to be splat in the middle of Gabe and Avs’s bedtime. I sit by Nika’s bed, which has recently moved to the floor and explain to her that I want to give her my full presence and that to do so, I will need to put Gabe and Avs to bed and then have 1 or 2 minutes to meditate and center myself. I let her know if she wants to, she is welcome to write out her thoughts and feelings for me to read and for us to talk about to get a head start so we don’t have to use all our girl time on it. She likes the plan.

I read Peter Rabbit, Counting Kisses and Kittycat Lullabye to the little ones. We snuggle in their bed and soon they are asleep. I say a little prayer over them and check my “mail,” where I find a note from Nika that reads:

Dear Mamasua,

I am wanting attention all day because The Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz book has an earthquake in it so I’m like this always happens if somthing bad happens in a book like an earthquake I wondr what if theres an earthquake in Oregon and I die so I want to be verry near Mamasua/Cocoabean.

Love Nikasua

Well, we hug. I mention while probably there isn’t going to be earthquake in Oregon anytime soon, that everybody dies sooner or later, or at least their body does, but that the good news is that her spirit is eternal and cannot be harmed, and that people who love each other find each other in another life, or in the place where God is.  My kid says, “I know everyone dies, I just don’t want to die in something horrible like a storm.”

I explain to her that while I think it’s highly likely that we’ll both live to a very old age and be wrinkly, happy old raisins. I also point out that while most parents would probably just say, ‘Oh well, don’t worry sweetie, I’m sure there won’t be an earthquake here — it’s as tiny a chance as getting blinded by a fly in your eye,’ I want her to to know that EVEN if, on the off, highly UNlikely chance that something horrible like an earthquake did happen, that she would, in her ultimate essence, be fine. “Because when you know that EVEN if the very worst thing that could possible happen happens, you’ll be fine, then you can live a life free of fear.”

I’m holding my little girl like a baby, even though she is almost as big as I am, and I see crocodile tears streaming down her face. “I’m not crying sad tears,” says Nika. “I’m crying happy tears because of your words.”

I stole the Starbuck’s bathroom key – and other adventures

I know you want to hear about how and why I stole the Starbuck’s bathroom key, but we’re not going there YET, because it’s only 9:45am.a full eight hours before the Starbucks incident will occur. I’m staring at my face in the mirror, with a pair of scissors in hand. I’m trying to repair the damage of the second worst haircut I have ever received. The first worst was when my mom gave me side burns in the 3rd grade. David and I have a pretty decent history with cutting each others hair. This time I knew something went wrong when he says, “The back looks good but the front is looking a little…Roman.” My bangs looked like an uneven semi-circle around my face, with blunt edges ending at my ears. I don’t look Roman…I look Romulan,” I think to myself.  I snip, evening things out as best as I can on myself and determine that there is no hiding the boldness of the do. It is what it is and no amount of hair clipping is going to hide it. I have a coffee date with a wonderful woman I met by chance or fate one day a while back. It so happens that in addition to her everyday job, she has her hands in the fashion industry. We are scheduled to meet in less than ten minutes. It is what it is, I tell myself. Wear it proudly. I put a little extra makeup to try to make the bold look intentional and off I go, one block down the street, click click on the wooden sidewalk with me gray heeled boots.

The meeting is fantastic. I like this person. She is grounded in who she is and what she’s about –  gets what’s important in life and celebrates her passion for fashion at the same time. I love working with people I like and admire, so I’m thrilled. The connection seems to be positive in both directions and I’m happy to report the hair things seems not to be an issue, as I haven’t heard anything like, “I think your fabulous, but I can’t work with anyone who has hair that looks like yours.” Come time to end, the two of us express how great it’s been to connect and as we’re in the process of going our separate ways for the day, while I’m trying to hold my beverage in one hand and do the tie on my jacket simultaneously, I watch with helpless horror as the cup tips and out spills the iced chai onto the floor, directly in front of me.  Did I mention that the woman with whom I just finished chatting with a person with a great deal of class, along with a hand in the fashion industry?  She is classy enough to ignore this lil’ situation with the chai. I think she may even want to work with me. Wonder of wonders, life and success is not strictly correlated with conventional hair or cup-holding skills.

On to the next thing. I pick Gabe and Avs up from preschool. It is a lovely day! Gabe runs to the gate with his hugest smile. Avsi comes and hugs my leg before trotting off to get in a few more minutes of play on her “horse,” which is actually an upside down watering can. I get compliments from another mom on my hair. My kids’ teacher calls them Betty Page bangs and she she likes them too. A friend mentions a former employer who insisted that she let him give her “up bangs,” which apparently involves cutting the bangs almost up to the scalp. I told her she ought to sue for some sort of harassment.

At home, Gabe, Avsi and I watch from the window as Nika dismounts from her school bus. “There she is!” we all say excitedly. Just then the phone rings. It’s the new sitter who is coming to watch everyone while I go to a meeting. Gabe, Avsi and I go out to meet the sitter, who is slightly disoriented in our neighborhood. We run straight into Nika in the hall. “Hi sweetie!” I say. “How was your day?” “Pretty good,” she says. I explain that we’re going down to meet the new sitter and inquire if she wants to come or go on into the apartment. “Why are we getting a new sitter? She asks. It’s not quite the, “Oh C’mon Mom, I don’t want to have a sitter” tone. It’s more laced with curiosity and sense of being caught slightly off guard. Our two usual sitters have become quite the institution. They are a part of our every lives, frankly forming the most consistent pattern of our lives, really. One comes every morning except Mondays for an hour or a little longer on the days she takes to school. One comes most evenings for an hour or so. These lovely young women had the 3rd and 4th arm that I needed but couldn’t grow with my own body. In some ways they are also substitute husbands, filling in where even the most domestically inclined, nurturing-type husband wistfully leaves off when he is an intern.

I understand the curiosity, the slight caught off guard tone in my daughter’s voice. I explain that our usual sitters had other commitments during the time frame of this particular meeting. She is very accepting and sweet. “Oh,” she says, coming closer alongside me.

Everything goes fine with the sitter, who is kind and lovely. The kids take well to her. I can tell they like her and include. Check. I’m off.

The meeting is totally weird. Great people working on a project. Great people with oddly incompatible styles. Will we find our synergy in time to come together for this project? I wonder. I hope. It will be interesting at the very least. Interesting is one of those words Nika and I share in our vocabulary of ways to put things honestly, openly and politely, with a whiff of humor.

Once the meeting is through, I find myself with just under an hour before I’m expected home. I head to one of my favorite Starbucks and order a hot chocolate. I’m off coffee, at least for a little while. I dig out a book, a blank pad and a pen. I spend the next 40 minutes wasting at least two thirds of a tree writing down different versions of my Life Purpose Statement. It says in the book I’m using that most people don’t get it right the first time. But how bout the 2oth time? I’m a just too wordsmithy to let well enough alone? I can’t seem to find a way to keep it simple while including everyone important and having it sound fresh and unforgettable. Eventually, I have to pee.

I ask the barista for a key. An middle aged man with a graying ponytail is listening in and points out how nicely I asked. The barista takes the opportunity to share that he doesn’t let everyone use the bathroom. “I say no to people all the time if they look like the kind of people who might use the bathroom for shananigans.” I think him for not suspecting me of being the kind of person who would use the bathroom for shananigans and off I go to use the bathroom for its true purpose. I’m feeling pretty happy about being one of the safe, good, trusted people in this situation. I don’t see anywhere to put the key thought – the sink is wet and the floor is assuredly not the place you’d want to put something that you or someone else is going to touch with hands. I stick the key in my open pocket book. I finish me business and walk out the door into the fresh, cooling air of evening.

My next thought of Starbuck’s occurs the next morning, a full 24 hours later when I look in my pocketbook and What? It’s the Starbuck’s key! Low and behold, I pulled of some shananigan, without ever intending to cause any at all. Who knows how many full bladdered-people were turned away because there was no key, even since this seemingly-innocent, petite little brunette used the facilities and made off with the key as casual as the first spring breeze.

Once the kids are safely at preschool, I launch project Return Stolen Key to Starbucks. Once I get there, I look around to see if anyone recognizes me. It’s hard to tell. I wordlessly place the bathroom key on the counter and walk out.

The On-Call Room

The On-Call room of a hospital is wrapped in images of sleep and sleeplessness and sex – the stuff of which shows like Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy are made. Early on in internship year, I asked my Love if people really had sex in the on-call rooms at his residency program. “Not that I have gotten wind of,”  said my husband. I thought, “well, good – whether its because everyone is too tired to have sex or too committed to their partners, their standards or their faiths, it’s probably a pretty decent sign when a program doesn’t smell of interns and residences hopping into bed with each other like a soap opera.

Stories change with the times, and my love can’t tell that story anymore, if he’s telling the truth.

We’re hanging out, catching up after a call shift and my Love tells me has a funny story to share.  I look forward to funny stories, and this week has been a little light on the lightness. There was the story about the drug addict mom who was told if she used her pick line for IV antibiotics for illegal substances, she will no be eligible to continue treatment, which will likely result in her death. And there was the story about the 40-year-old guy without insurance who kept passing out, yet declined to be admitted into the hospital as recommended. Or there was the story about the other uninsured person who got pissed off at my Love because the hospital pharmacy didn’t fill all of his suggested prescriptions for free. So it’s time for a goofy tale with some levity. Enough stories about paying the piper, I want to hear about someone getting laid. And it’s my lucky day.

“Okay, so I’m standing in the ER with Nichols and I hear him talking on his iphone to his current significant other, Jasmine, who works in triage. I hear him look furtively around and whisper, “So that’s great you get off at 4. Yeah. That sounds good. I’ll meet you outside the on-call room in 5 minutes.’ “

“Oh my gosh,” I say, listening, fully rapt in this gossipy tale.

“Yeah, so then Nichols walks over to me and says, ‘page me if you need me, I’m just gonna go say hi to Jasmine for a little while.’ And off he goes.”

“You shoulda paged him on purpose!” I say, friskily.

“Well, actually I did page him shortly thereafter, but it was legit,” says my Love.

“Oh really? Did he sound weird?” I inquire like a high school girl.

“Actually, he did a little. I guess Nichols must trust me thought to let me know what he was up to, more of less.”

“I guess so,” I say, not sure what to say.

In my mind, the on-call room has lost its innocence. And then I think, did it ever know a time of innocence? Well it must have, because at some point it was a fresh, new room, or a converted patient room, or something. And at one time it had a new spanking bed, untouched. Who was the first couple to deflower the on-call room at the hospital where my Love works? I’ll never now, but I wish I did.

Peeing in a cup

Life is the process of spontaneously, and sometimes intentionally interacting with a series of unexpected situations. Whether those situations involve the unexpected joy of finding a new friend, finding yourself labeled the “outlier” of your class of interns, or discovering that your two-going-on forty daughter-year-old has an imminent need to pee, it’s what we do with these unexpected circumstances that makes life the most interesting 3-D, interactive adventure out there.  Each of the examples I’ve given are actual situations from our family’s actual life. The one about pee is the best to write about, so here goes.

Th two little ones and I are in the Whole Foods garage, in the middle of loading our box of supplements into the trunk.  I’m slightly out of my mind, trying to get over the outrage of the fact that after a purchase of over $700 worth of supplements, I was told that I couldn’t have three small chocolate bars on the house as a “Thank you.” Who says “no free chocolate bars” after you spend $700? I have had people give me free stuff just to for the heck of it, and it being Portland and all, I have to say, I was surprised. Another unexpected situation. I let the guy know I’ll be taking my business online in the future. Online retailers may not give me free chocolate, but they’ll offer deeper discounts and at least they won’t specifically NOT give me free chocolate bars — I don’t think  online vita-retailers even carry them.

Anyhow, the kids are hanging out, pretty chill while I clunk the trunk shut and then I spot it: a pee dance. Think of a cross between an Irish Step dance and a Native American tribal ritual, and then add a concerned facial expression and a little girl’s hand on her crotch. That’s the pee dance.

“Avsi, can you wait til we get inside, or is it an emergency?” I know before she answers, but I’m stalling for time, whatever time I there is to be had, for whatever it’s worth.

“It’s an emergency” she says earnestly. I look in the car with swooping mommy-on-a-mission radar and spy an old paper coffee cup. I pull down Avsi’s pink shorts and place the cup between her legs.

“Okay Sweetie, go ahead.”

“Pshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshssh

“Ah. done,” she says.

I place  the fresh urine sample in the car’s cup holder, connect various buckles to secure the kids in their seats and off we go toward home.

Upon our arrival the parking garage of our apartment building, I help the kids out of their seats and pick up the pee cup to bring inside for disposal. On the way in, I notice a UPS tag on our mailbox, indicating a package. Getting packages, whether from myself or someone else hasn’t lost its charm since college. It is always nice to have something come in the mail especially for you or someone you love and to have the fun of opening it.

In order to pick up the package in this particular case, I need to find somewhere to set the urine down temporarily. It doesn’t seem appropriate to bring it in to the office, surely. So I set it on a metal ledge around the mailbox area and usher the kids into the office with a bright smile. George, one of my favorite people is working today. He’s one of those kindly older gentlmen it’s impossible not to like. Plus, he’s always liked our family too. We even had him over for my Love’s birthday last month, where he told us this great story about how he got through college while parenting six children. Yes, six. “I got this physician friend of mine to prescribe me some uppers so I could stay awake to study at night, you see. Only thing is, I could always fall asleep as soon as I close the books, so I wonder if he didn’t just give me little white sugar pills.” Occasionally physicians feel the need to get a little crafty for the sake of their patients. But where does it cross the line?

Last week, my Love was caring for a terminally ill patient who did not want to be taken off the ventilator. There had been hemming and hawing about whether she did or she didn’t, and at the end of the day, she clearly communicated that she wanted to stay on the vent. One of the attending physicians thought it might be a good idea to alter the settings on the ventilator to make her incoherent, then give her some morphine and take her off the vent. Was that physician thinking of preserving medical resources being a higher priority than respecting a patient’s last rights and wishes? Was that doctor imagining it was merciful to hasten the end of this person’s earthly life? Who knows. My Love hasn’t yet felt ready to ask this person “What were you thinking?!?” But he will, he says. In the meantime, while powers in white coats argued over her case, the patient went ahead and a died on her own terms, without being taken off the vent. Good for her, I say. If I see her in heaven, of in another life, I’ll have to be sure to tell her I said so.

But back to important things, like the outcome of that little cup of pee.

So after chatting with George for a few, I hoist up the package and herd the kids out the door. We tromp upstairs and just as we’re setting down backpacks and beginning to discuss snack options, it occurs to me that the little cup of pee is still sitting on the ledge downstairs by the mailboxes. While Gabe and Avs hold down the fort, I dash down and find, thankfully, that the cup is still sitting pretty and yellow on the ledge. No one apparently had the desperate urge for old lemonade. Like I said, thankfully.

I run upstairs with the cup (I don’t think I spilled any,) and with my two little kids gleefully watching, I pour the pee into the toilet and happily flush it down. Everything ended up where it was always meant to be, albeit through a diverted and clearly more interesting route. That’s how life seems to operate, from what I can tell.

Tomorrow my Love will have to pee in a cup and bring it downstairs, in a funny reverse of today. The life and disability insurance lady is coming and she is severely allergic to cats.  Although we don’t have a cat, we did and that’s enough, apparently, to make her sick for months. So we will be meeting this lady in the lobby.  Since I’m only applying for life insurance, she just wants my blood. My Love is applying for disability insurance (it’s actually far more common to end of disabled than dead,) and for that, you have to give urine.

Old lemonade, anyone?