News From Hawkhill Acres

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Sometimes, it almost would  be possible to sling a slew of links into a post and hit “publish” without commenting at all. This is one of those times. Of course, bloggers rarely do that and I wouldn’t want to start a trend.

I was idly perusing the pages of Craigslist, the other day, looking for writing gigs when I spied a freelance job that looked like it was right up my alley.

Here’s the headline:

Freelance Writher Wanted – Good Grammer and Attention to Details a Plust!

Unfortunately, although I’m wicked good at writhing and can gram with the best of them, I didn’t bookmark the ad, so I can’t apply. Foiled by a lack of attention to details, I guess. One of my many minustes or is that minusti? Or did they just combine “must” and “plus” to conserve words in their headline?  I dunno.

Later this week, I read this press release – albeit not a very positive one for the state of Maine. In it, the  Maine Dept of Fish and Wildlife announced their recommendations for “Safe Eating Guidelines for Fish and Shellfish in Maine” which I blogged further about at Lill’s List. Now, while I have no beef with the state’s stance on a lot of things, their idea of “safe” and mine are somewhat different. They recommend that pregnant and nursing women – or women who plan to become pregnant – consume no more than 2 meals of fresh or saltwater Maine fish per month. Ditto for kiddos under 8.

Can’t you just see Bobby at his 8th birthday party, beaming over a salmon with candles all up and down its back? “Enjoy, Son, you’re over 8 so you don’t have to worry about Dioxin, PCB’s and DDT. They only poison little kids.” I don’t think so.

Then there was the story I read that illustrates just how lousy our species is at trying to control the world. It seems that eagles – once endangered and near extinction – are getting out of hand. Now, they’ve recovered so well that they’re endangering other threatened bird species such as Great Cormorants and loons – and loons are Maine’s favorite water bird. Of course, the reason for this is that the fish that eagles have traditionally relied on are disappearing because of pollution and overfishing by humans.

Sometimes, I just want to bang my head on my keyboard and post whatever that types in, but instead, I turn to an old favorite of mine: Will Cuppy. I recently discovered a book that he wrote footnotes for. It’s called  “Garden Rubbish and Other Country Bumps” by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman and it should be in every gardener’s library.

In a section on how to use worms to improve the soil, Cuppy writes this footnote which has nothing whatsoever to do with that subject, but is very interesting nevertheless.

“It is not generally known that Dr. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of THE Darwin, and author of “The Loves of the Plants” (1789), invented a new kind of carriage, one peculiarity of which was a platform resting partly on very high wheels and partly on the hindquarters of the horse, and further supported by an intricate system of rings, iron bars and sockets fixed to the harness. [Note- Wikipedia mentions that Dr. Darwin designed this to be a  carriage that couldn't tip over] Unfortunately, Dr. Darwin was upset in this contrivance and broke his knee-cap. His horizontal windmill for grinding flints was more of a success; it is used even today by the very few persons who wish to grind flints.

The Wikipedia entry for Erasmus Darwin is even more fascinating but I’ll let you discover for yourself why he REALLY started that school for girls and why we could have been walking on the moon a lot sooner, if we’d listened to him.

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I should know better. After all, I’m the woman who discovered, simultaneously, how funny Will Cuppy’s writing is and how far a person can spray doughnut crumbs, while I was in a coffee shop reading his book, “How To Be A Hermit”. Blame it on the mists of time – or the bossa nova -  that I got myself into hot water recently with another funny book in another public place. This time, though, it was in my doctor’s office – a place I seem to find myself in much too often lately.

If you haven’t read, “Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade”, don’t feel too bad. It was published in 2004 and I just discovered it at my local library. The author, Guy Browning, is a columnist for The Guardian of London, but don’t let that put you off. He’s funny. Damned funny. He’s also insightful, gently but never harshly sarcastic and a welcome contrast to the “if it’s cruel and mean it’s funny” school of humorists we seem to be inflicted with lately.

His columns tell you how to do things. For instance, the one I was reading in the waiting room was called, “How To Do First Aid”. Here’s an excerpt. I caution, however, that you read it at your own risk if you’re not alone. (If you’re eating or drinking, please borrow or buy the book before you read this and turn to  “How To Prevent Choking” on page 43.)

“In the case of bleeding, a well-tied tourniquet is vital. Rip off the hem of your petticoat and tie it tightly around the wound. Remember, most people bleed to death because of the delay in finding someone with a petticoat. Tie the tourniquet on the side of the wound nearest the heart. If you’re not sure which side this is, then tie tourniquets above, below and anywhere else that looks useful. The overall effect should be that the patient looks like they’re about to go morris dancing…

Generally, accident victims should not be moved until an ambulance arrives. However, you may find yourself in an area without good transport links, i.e., Britain. Prepare a basic splint from two sturdy bits of wood, shove the limb in quite forcefully and then lash it up really tight. The whole body can be immobilized in this fashion if required. If things take a turn for the worst, you can then put a lid on the whole lot and dig them in for a convenient burial.”

Go buy Mr. Browning’s books, but remember to buy a True Crime novel or a Barbara Cartland or something for those trips to the doctor’s office or your daughter’s piano recital or whatever.

Yesterday was the third anniversary of my youngest son Mike’s death.  His sister is 11, a few months older than he was when he died. I read about another family who lost a child and what David Cameron, the father,  said after his son’s funeral. He said Ivan’s death had left a hole in the family so big “words can’t describe it.”

That hole is what made my chest hurt for months after my son died. Why I didn’t have a heart attack is a mystery to me, because I’ve never felt anything so painful, not even childbirth. My kids felt the same pain, but I think it was worse for my daughter than it was for my oldest son.

Daughter and Mike were inseparable. She came to us when Mike was 3 and after his doctors had assured us that he would lead a normal life, with a few developmental delays. We didn’t want to take on another child if I’d be spending weeks in the hospital like I had with Mike’s many illnesses for his first 3 years. We should have trusted our own instincts, but I guess we wanted to believe that Mike was finally out of the woods and that his immune system had “kicked in” as the doctors put it.

It hadn’t and there were more hospitalizations, but not as many, and he and Daughter bonded immediately. He fed her, held her, read to her and shared his toys and everything he had with her. He was never jealous. To the contrary, he pushed her forward to make sure that she got her share of  our attention.

We have so many photos of them snuggled together in a rocker, curled up on the couch watching TV, playing with their little dolls and blocks, and sleeping in a heap like puppies or kittens. Even when they were older and they began to develop separate interests, they still leaned on each other, stood with their arms around each other and hugged each other goodnight every night.

I read somewhere that it surprises parents, when their child dies, how much of their grief is yearning for the physical presence of their child.  It surprised me, although it shouldn’t have. Mike needed so much “hands-on” care from me:  nebulizer treatments four times a day and sometimes every two hours for days, help with bathing because of the tubes in his ears and severe asthma that meant that a drop of  water in his lungs developed into pneumonia almost immediately, help with many things that most kids his age could do independently but he couldn’t because of developmental delays. I didn’t realize until after he was gone how many times during the day I smoothed his hair back, held him in my lap for nebulizer treatments or kissed the back of his neck as he snuggled because he was sick and needed comforting.

How much more must his sister have suffered, because she had lost her biggest source of comfort. I had her and her brother and my husband. She had me, but I have to admit that I wasn’t really “there” for a long time after Mike died. I went through the motions. I hugged her and held her and cried with her, but the biggest part of me had gone with Mike.

So many people told me, starting with the chaplain in Mike’s room right after he died, that I’d heal. I got so tired of hearing that, because I knew that it wasn’t true. You heal from broken bones, cuts and diseases, but not from the death of your child. Go on, yes. Of course, I’d go on; I have other children. If  I hadn’t, I would have driven into a pole on the way home, which is what I felt like doing. But heal? Not bloody likely.

I haven’t changed my mind about that. None of us has healed. Our hearts all still have a hole in them. One of my kids said that the problem is that it’s a Mike-shaped hole, so nothing else fits into it. That’s a very wise way of putting it. The only thing that’s happened is that finally, just in the last few months, we’ve started to patch the hole.

Yesterday, instead of keeping to ourselves like we have on March 4th for the last two years, we had friends over. Three kids to throw snowballs for the dog with Daughter, to chase each other around the kitchen and fall into a laughing heap when we tell them not to run in the house.  Kids laughing at a funny movie and finally, another little girl to whisper and giggle in Daughter’s bed and sneak the dog up between them so they can both hug her.

Our hearts will never heal, but they’ll grow stronger where they’re patched. Daughter will never stop missing her brother, but memories of what she’s lost are being overlaid with what she’s gaining every day. I’ll never stop missing my son, but watching my other two children reaching toward happiness and growing toward the light is my heart patch.

We realized after Mike died that he was the glue that held our family together in many ways. Mike was a peacemaker, a bridge between Daughter and Son, who are 8 years apart from each other in age. He was our social guy, the kid who drew the rest of us introverts into contact with other people and new experiences. When he was sick, we all rallied ’round and helped each other and him. When he was well, he was usually lying on the floor playing with his cars, while he leaned against me or his sister.

For months after Mike died, I couldn’t settle to anything. I felt like I needed to be moving, to drive, to go away from home. I didn’t know why for a long while, then it hit me. I was looking for Mike. He wasn’t home, so he must be somewhere out there.  Naturally, we can’t settle to anything when our child is missing. He’s still gone, but I don’t look for him anymore. I know where he is. He’s in our hearts, right under the patch.