26 December 1993 - 4 September 2009

Grayson always howled when I returned from a trip. The longer the trip, the more he howled. “Moooooooooom, you leeeeeeeeeft meeeeeee,” he seemed to say. He prowled and howled in front of the door as soon as I put my keys in the lock. He couldn’t wait for me to sit down when he would butt my hands and my chin so that I would start making up for all the strokes he had missed while I was gone.

Grayson was my cat, so named because he was gray. He was my second pet, the first being a hamster named Maizie who lived a few months with me and my housemates on Chaucer. Grayson was born the day after Christmas 1993 in the closet of a house rented by friends Don & Alex. Ignoring conventional wisdom about handling kittens, Don & Alex brought them out for us to play with when we gathered there for Sunday dinners. Grayson picked me when the little fur ball tumbled over my legs to attack the drawstring on my hoodie. I took him home at 8 weeks old on Valentine’s Day 1994 along with another of the kittens, a black & tan Siamese-marked brother that I named PC. A year later, PC ended up going to a new home, but that’s another story.

Grayson was a co-dependent kitty, following me around the house, waiting for a lap to be available for snuggles, and sleeping curled up next to my stomach at night. He moved with me as I moved from church to church as Methodist pastors do, from Houston to Kountze to Kilgore to Mont Belvieu and back to Houston. On the occasions when I’ve lived with my mother in my adult life, he was a sign of her love for me. Mom doesn’t much care for pets, but she allowed him to move in, too, litter box and all.

He was diagnosed with chronic renal failure about a year ago. He had lost a lot of weight and was more lethargic than usual for an old cat. The vet suggested treating him for the weekend to see if he would bounce back. I said good-bye to him then, not sure if he would last until Monday. Grayson did indeed bounce back, but keeping him that way meant daily subcutaneous fluid treatments. If you’ve seen the episode of The Closer where Deputy Chief Brenda Lee brings her Kitty to work, takes out an IV bag of fluid on a hanger, and treats Kitty with the fluid and a shot – that’s what I’ve done for the last year. It’s actually quite common and only takes about 10 minutes, and I never needed to take the cat to work. It was worth it to me to have another year with him.

I thought a cat would be a good pet for me because they’re low maintenance. If you have to leave for a day or two, you can just leave out the food and the water, and they’ll be fine indoors. Grayson was fine on those occasions, but he definitely didn’t like being left. I was with him in the end, scratching his head as the vet gave him that final injection.

If, when I was gone, Grayson expected at any moment for me to jump up to sit with him on the sofa, to snuggle with him as he went to sleep, to rub my face against his as we worked on the laptop, then I now know how he felt. No wonder he howled.

My prom dress (which I still have) was a size 12. I would love to be a size 12 again, but I’m quite proud that I’ve gone from being a 24W to a 16W at this point.

I started thinking about this because the current path of my weight journey has me reconnecting with people from high school. I’m a member of a Facebook support group focusing on healthy eating/exercise/weight loss started by a high school acquaintance. I also reconnected with a woman I went to elementary, junior high, and high school with when I started the process to get a lap-band. (More on the lap-band later)

I chose my lap-band surgeon after hearing him speak at one of the Methodist Hospital’s free seminars. He was funny & nice & had the Methodist Hospital seal of approval. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just have the surgery and go from there. My insurance company required me to prove that I needed it by undergoing a 6-month doctor-supervised diet. If you get to the point where a lap-band is a viable option under the guidelines of the National Institutes of Health (BMI 40 or over with no comorbidities, 35 or over with 1 comorbidity) then 6 months is not going to make a huge difference.

However, I dutifully went to the doctor’s office to start the 6-month plan. I knew that the surgeon didn’t supervise this stage; there was another doctor in his office that did that. I was surprised when I saw the name on the door: Amy Woehrmann, MD. If I went to high school with you, yep, it was THAT Amy Woehrmann. She’s married to the surgeon.

Since we had been through so many years of schools together, Amy and I got to talking about those days. She told me about a girl who had picked on her and been incredibly mean to her. That same girl had picked on me, and been incredibly mean to me! Now this may not surprise some of you that a mean girl was mean to everyone, but pretty, smart, petite Amy Woerhmann was Miss CCHS! She was a cheerleader. She graduated in the top of the class. She was sweet and nice. I wasn’t surprised that I got picked on because I was the nerdy type, and nerds always get picked on. But, Miss CCHS?

I’ve worked with high school students for most of my career, and I should have known, but this was proof, once again, that high school was hell for almost all of us. My new Facebook friend (hi LGD!) has mentioned being jealous of the smart girls like me. I was always jealous of the pretty drill team and cheerleader types. Seems we spend a lot of time in high school being jealous of others.

We’re grown ups now, though, aren’t we? My therapist says that women come into their own in their 40s and 50s. I know that there’s no way I’d want to do high school again, or even my 20s or 30s, though I enjoyed college.

That high school attitude continues, though, doesn’t it? How much time do we waste wishing we could be something or someone else? I look at pictures of myself in high school and one of my wishes was that I had known how cute I was then! But even today, we spend a lot of time wishing we could look different, thinking that if we looked different, our lives would be great.

My conversation with Amy taught me that even if I had been Miss CCHS, I would still have had hardships back then. There are happy, successful people of all shapes, sizes, and features; and there are miserable failures of all shapes, sizes, and features. I’m not meant to be a size 0. Perhaps I’m not meant to be any single-digit size. If I’m healthy at 150 lbs and my body fat percentage is under 30, then I’ll be happy. Truthfully, I’m pretty happy now at size 16W because I know I’m taking care of the body and the life that I have. Challenges come, no matter who you are or what size you are.  Likewise, happiness & fulfillment come no matter who you are or what size you are.

We wasted enough time in high school being jealous of others.  Let’s use our time these days appreciating who we are and where we are now.

(Thanks to Genealogy Wise for the prompt)

Without the internet and software for managing huge database, genealogy wouldn’t be nearly as addictive as it is. I recently passed 10,000 individuals in my genealogy database, most of whom have some blood or marriage connection. It makes me want to dig deeper, to know their stories beyond what can be found on family trees, and in the census, and in birth and death certificates. There’s an awful lot in those documents alone.

So, 10,000 individuals! How do I keep it all sorted?

For a long time I used a French application called Heredis. It’s a very professional application that easily manages a lot of information, but I chose it for how it published the data to HTML for the web. I like the clean presentation, and I especially like the way it inserts a pedigree chart for each individual.  It easily manages private individuals, allows for witnesses, and multiple links for individuals for whom there is not a blood tie.  I like this feature to provide a link to servants and lodgers that might show up in the tree somewhere else, or that might provide an entry for someone else doing research. Heredis also offered the 3-D family tree long before other Mac apps, though I found it too slow and cumbersome to be of any use.

However, Heredis had some bugs in the app that altered data. Specifically, it would hang up when I was entering locations, and then insert “Mississippi” for birth locations when I restarted the app.  This is unacceptable, no matter how much I like the app.  Heredis isn’t supported well, with few updates and patches.  There used to be a Windows version, but that was discontinued in favor of the Mac OS X version.

I did some research and switched to Reunion 9 for Mac, which is the granddaddy of Mac genealogy apps. Again, publication for the web was the determining factor.  I like how Reunion manages related files, allowing me to publish all of my research, including PDFs of original census images, birth and death certificates, photos and other media for individuals and families. It’s the best filing system I’ve seen, very easy to use with drag and drop insertion on each individual or family card. The presentation is easy to navigate through family cards, showing parents, grandparents and children on the same screen.  I’m looking forward to playing with the web presentation as I learn to edit the CSS. Managing sources is easy, though some coaching on appropriate citation would be helpful. I’m also looking forward to using the iPhone version in a year or so when I finally break down and get one.

While Reunion allows for multiple parent links for an individual, in the case of stepchildren or adoptees, for example, I miss the links to individuals who are not members of the immediate family.  I feel like I could present a better picture of the household with Heredis.

I almost went with Mac Family Tree for the feature that allows you to see migration patterns using mapping software, but it wasn’t that easy to use, and again, I preferred the HTML presentation in Reunion. I’ve watched Mac Family Tree develop since it was first linked to the Mac OS X download site. The software developers add impressive new features with every release.  We’ll see where it goes, but even with .ged files, switching apps is such a pain.

I’m still switching from Heredis because I’ll start to correct links and end up following a line and adding census images and gravestones and photos and anything else I find. Here’s hoping Reunion 10 keeps up with Mac Family Tree.

I had just awakened from a dream in which my former church’s former nursery worker was out of jail, the children in the nursery were playing nicely, and the church was glad to have me back as their pastor.

While I puzzled over what feelings, exactly, I was having about these implausible events, the phone rang. “H’lo?”

“Gasp, wheeze,” said a pair of lungs on the other end of the line.

“Hi, Mom.” My mom and I spent Thanksgiving Day together watching movies with our take-out turkey dinners. She had just gotten over a cold and was having difficulty breathing after exerting herself. I had expressed concern, but she assured me it was just because she had overdone it on the first day she really felt good. Since Mom has a history of only-really-serious-if-they’re-not-attended-to heart problems, I was still concerned.

“Gasp. I’m sorry, wheeze, to wake you, hhhhhoney,” said Mom.

“It’s ok. I was kind of awake anyway. What’s up?” I had no idea what time it was, having slept fitfully due to an unrefilled sleeping prescription, and concern for my dog, rather, what might come out of my dog. I’ll finish with Mom first.

“Gasp, gasp, gasp. I think, wheeze, I need you to, gasp, tt-hhhhake me to the, wheeze, heeemergency room.”

“Do you think maybe I should call the ambulance and meet you at the hospital?” asking, but already knowing the answer.

“N-hhhhhho. I’m downstairs, gasp. I’ve put on cl-hhhhean clothes, wheeze, and I’ll wait hhhhhhere for you.”

Flashback to the previous evening. I arrived home late from our Thanksgiving fete and went to check on my dog, Phoebe. Phoebe had been exiled to our small jungle of a backyard due to an ailment of the diarrhetic variety. Thanks to a well-used litter box, my cat, Grayson, was able to remain in the house while suffering from the same symptoms, if not the same disease. We left the vet last Monday with antibiotics and the advice to feed them yogurt to encourage healthy gut flora.

As I said, I went to the backyard to check on Phoebe and found no happy puppy face, no furiously wagging tail, no pouncing forepaws. The gate was shut, but the yard was empty. I knew she had to be in the yard if the gate was shut. I searched. I called, “Pheeeebeee” trying at one and the same time to reach the dog without waking the neighbors on the other side of the duplex. No Phoebe. Phu—, I mean, to heck with not waking the neighbors. “PHEEEEBEEE!”

I went back to my car to get the flashlight now in my glove compartment after I had attempted in the middle of a central Texas cow pasture to decipher a combination padlock by the glow of my cell phone. Still no Phoebe.

Now that I’ve returned to my dubious state of sanity, I realize that Phoebe was safer wandering around my neighborhood in the middle of the night than I was. While gentrification has reached much of this original Houston community, I live on the edge where graffiti tags still mark gang turf. I didn’t go completely Stanley Kowalski in my hunt for the dog, though my inner Stanley was tearing his tee. “PHEEEEBEEE!”

Obviously, I did manage to find my Phoebe, hence the fitful sleep, waking every hour or so to see if I needed to grab her leash for another midnight potty run.

I arrived to see Mom putting her whole body into her breathing, up and down, up and down. The image of the bellows in Hades’ mythical forge was a little too close for comfort.

We reached the stoplight to the main road. “Whhhheeee, gasp, nhhhheed to go by the Phhhhhhost Hhhhhofffice.”

“Don’t you think we could do that on the way back?”

“Hhhhhit’s on the whhhhhay.”

Fearful of internet spies and viruses, even though she uses a Mac, Mom has never discovered the wonders of online banking. I was concerned that she might need to mail a check to cover a bill and didn’t want to add to her anxiety. I did as she asked. At the Post Office Mom handed me the envelopes from our Netflix marathon the day before. This couldn’t have waited?

“Hhhhhit’s on the whhhhhay,” Mom said again.

The waiting room didn’t seem too full at that hour of the morning, and Mom’s vitals were stable, so we settled in for what we hoped was a short wait. After about an hour and a half, Mom gave the familiar shudder that shows she’s in pain.

“What’s wrong?

“It’s nothing.” Being able to sit up had improved Mom’s breathing. “I’m just feeling a little pain down my left side.”

I teleported to the triage desk. “My mother’s having pain down her left side,” I said to the triage nurse who was helping an elderly man control his bloody nose.

“We’ll get to her in a minute. Please move aside while we get this man’s information.”

Half an hour later. Different triage nurse. “Would you please come see my mother? She’s having pain down her left side that wasn’t present when we got here.”

Mom, as usual, downplayed the pain.

“You need to see the doctor,” said the triage nurse.

“Well, I’m ready,” said Mom.

“Unfortunately, our doctor isn’t ready,” said the nurse.

I’m panicking, and there’s a part of me that’s thinking it would serve him right if he had to pick my not petite mother up off the floor when she coded. “But, what about the pain?”

“Look,” he said, irritated. “Her vitals are stable.” TWO HOURS AGO!!!! “She just has to wait.”

The waiting room filled. No patients were called in. One or two came out. Mom and I began to wonder if there was really a doctor behind the doors at all.

When I returned from hunting down the hospital halls for my friend Chuck, the chaplain, Mom had made it into the treatment area. “When the doctors got here for the 11:00 shift, everything started to go pretty quickly,” she said.

Turns out Mom has a touch of pneumonia and will be in the hospital for a couple of days. Doc said she could go home Sunday if she was feeling like a million dollars. “What if I’m only feeling like $500,000?” she asked.

“Then you’ll have to bribe me,” the doctor laughed.

I have to say it’s pretty much a tossup where I’d rather be on the day after Thanksgiving—the shopping mall or the emergency room. I was looking forward to getting home to tumble into a nap.

That wasn’t to be right away, however. After a full day in the emergency room with my mother, I got home to find–

the cat had puked in my bed.

Parts of the following are a little dark. Don’t try to understand why. Could be because I just listened to a recent This American Life where Julia Sweeney relates her experiences with cancer. Could be because of my various experiences in ministry with death, dying, mental illness and law enforcement. Could be because I had a dad who suggested that amputation was a reasonable treatment for a blister. (Anyone else’s dad do that?) Please know that I love my mother, and humor is my way of coping.

So I got homewith my spiffy, new, not all that butt-ugly shoes that the orthopedic foot specialist had prescribed. (MBTs — they’re really trendy. Got the sandals so they look a little like Tevas). Happy that he said, “Don’t let anyone come near your feet with a knife” — meaning I don’t need foot surgery as a podiatrist had suggested. (Hear that, Dad? Put the sharpener down.) Not terribly happy that he said, “You’re over 40. You’ve entered the second half of your life. Your body is just wearing out.” No one, however, can explain why it’s wearing out so soon or so quickly.

When I walked in the door, Mom was asleep in her recliner. She heard me come in, though, and slowly opened her eyes. “Mmmhhhhsssshhhhrrrrrgggg,” she mumbled. It’s not all that unusual for her speech to be slurred when she first wakes up. I waited. She opened and closed her mouth and blinked her eyes, took a deep breath. “My heart is racing,” she said. This, again, is not a new experience, but it could mean a trip to the hospital. Sigh, there goes my nap.

“What’s it doing?” I asked, the image of cool.

“My pulse was 93 last I checked,” said Mom. I was relieved. Under 100, the folks in the Emergency Room aren’t too alarmed, but I asked anyway, “Do you think you need to go to the Emergency Room?”

“No,” said Mom. “I’m not clammy and nauseous.”

“OK,” I said.

“But my left arm hurts.”

Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap. My mind raced. Outwardly, still calm, “Do you think that’s your arthritis?”

“Probably. I don’t know.”

Very calmly, I said, “You do know that pain in your left arm could be a sign of a heart attack.”

“Yeah.”

Me: “Do you need to go to the Emergency Room? What do you want to do?”

Mom: “I took my medicine later than usual because I slept in. Let’s wait a few minutes and see if it kicks in.”

Me: “OK.” It’s a hard thing knowing when it’s time to make decisions for your parents.

About 15 minutes later, Mom got up to go to the bathroom. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit (not entirely sure until she opened the door that that was what she was doing). Do you know how dangerous the bathroom is for people with heart problems? Sure enough, Mom was pale and clammy when she came out and reached for the blood pressure monitor. Her pulse had gone from 93 to 42.

“I think I need to go to the Emergency Room.”

Sigh of relief. “OK, do you want to go by ambulance?” There’s no waiting in the ER if you go by ambulance and there are trained people with drugs and monitors and defibrillators.

“No, I want you to take me.”

“OK.”

“Will you go upstairs and get me some clothes?”

Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod. My mother could die because I went upstairs to get her a bra!

The hospital is about 10 minutes away, but it took us twice as long as usual because we had to drive through a school zone right as they were letting out from summer school. When we got to the ER, would Mom let me get a wheelchair? No. But right as we were getting to the triage desk she grabbed my arm as if she were going to pass out. (Don’t get excited. Mom has a flair for the dramatic. She starts to limp as we’re getting to the gate at the airport so they’ll let her pre-board. Never mind that she’s 72 and moves so slowly she could pre-board anyway.) I was still worried and told the triage nurse who was checking someone else in that she was in afib. They checked her pulse. Back up to 93.

Because she was stable, we ended up waiting half an hour before they got her back for an EKG. They ended up not needing to give her any medication to stabilize her heart because it went back into a normal rhythm on its own. I figured they’d let her go home, but they decided to keep her overnight for one test that sounds something like Toblerone and takes 6 to 8 hours to do.

So then I had to call my brother, who is an ER physician. Think Anthony Edwards… with hair.

“Hello? (calm dad voice) Kids, get off the counter,” said DB.

I told him I had to take Mom to the ER, and they were keeping her overnight. He wanted to know the scenario. I told him it was the usual afib, except that she hadn’t looked good when I brought her in, but her heart had gone back into rhythm on its own.

“Then why are they keeping her overnight? They didn’t do anything.”

My brother is in another state. I tried to understand his frustration with being so far away.

DB: “There’s no reason to keep her just for observation with her history. Hospitals are dangerous places.”

Me: “Yeah, I know. They have sick people in them.”

DB: (not impressed with my attempt at humor) “Or she could fall. She doesn’t need to be spending the money to stay overnight.” Can you tell he works for an HMO?

Me: “It doesn’t cost her anything. She has Medicare plus her supplement.”

DB: “She still has a co-pay!” It’s so nice of him not to add to my stress.

Me: “No, she doesn’t.” I explained about the arm thing, and the test that takes 8 hours.

DB: “Well, what we’re doing nowadays is…[technical explanation of test that sounds like Toblerone]“

Me: “That’s what they’re doing.”

He finally told me I had done the right thing and that he’d call in the morning.

Mom and I decided that since she was getting a room, and it had been 4 and a half hours since I brought her in, that I could go on home.

About an hour later, my cell phone rang.

“They haven’t given me my night time medication. They say the pharmacy doesn’t have it. I’ve told them I want to see the doctor, and if they don’t have a room for me, I’m going home!”

Me (calmly): “I will bring you your medication. Is there anything else you need?”

Admittedly, my mom had been waiting in that little room in the ER for more than 5 hours. She knows that happens. She knows there are times when all the hospitals around here are on drive by, and she has spent all night in the ER before because they didn’t have a room. She has decided these days, however, that her time left on this earth is limited, and she’s not going to spend it waiting for doctors.

When I arrived, there was a nurse explaining to Mom about why she was having to wait for a room (she knows all that) and that if she went home, she’d be doing it AMA. She said she understood that, but she didn’t see any reason to stay if no one was going to do anything. I sat with her and began to talk to her about the tests that they said they were going to run, including the one that took 6 to 8 hours.

“If they’re just going to keep me for observation, you can observe me,” Mom said.

Me (calmly and firmly): “I am disabled. I am not capable of observing you right now.” (Sometimes I have to remind her why I moved into her house)

Mom (pouty and petulant): “I’ll take care of myself.”

The nurse returned, and Mom asked about what they were going to do. The nurse had a whole list and said, “There was an abnormality on your EKG.” That was the first we heard of that. Mom agreed to stay in the hospital if they were going to do something.

About 10 minutes later another nurse came in and told her they had a room and the room number.

“I squeaked,” Mom said. “And now they’re greasing my wheel.”

OK. At least she was where she needed to be, and I got to come home.

————————————————-

It’s bananas.

Seriously. In the excitement of getting Mom to the Emergency Room, I forgot to ask her, “How long has it been since you’ve eaten a banana?”

Bananas are good sources of potassium. When Mom’s potassium is low, her heart gets wacky. This happens when she overdoes it and doesn’t eat her bananas. This has been the case the last 3 times she’s been to hospital. Since she is better able to keep track of medication than her banana intake, Mom left the hospital with a prescription for a potassium supplement.

I had an MRI of my tailbone Friday. Even if it shows nothing abnormal, we’re going to assume this huge pain in the butt is medical, and I will get a cortisone shot.

From <i>Cloister Walk</i>:<br />
<blockquote>Credentials measure what is quantifiable; they represent results.  A call, on the other hand, is pure process; it cannot be measured, quantified, or controlled by institutions.  People who are called tend to violate the rules in annoying ways.<br />
<br />
[After quoting Walter Brueggeman's Hopeful Imagination "the ideology of our time is that we live 'an uncalled life,' one not referred to any purpose beyond one's self."] I suspect that this idol of the autonomous, uncalled life has a shadow side that demands that we resist the notion that another might be different, might indeed experience a call.  Our idol of the autonomous individual is a sham; the truth is we expect everyone to be the same, and dismiss as elitist  those who are working through a call to any genuine vocation.  It may be that our culture so fears the necessary other that it has grown unable to identify and name real differences without becoming defensive about them.</blockquote><br />
I find these quotes interesting because we pastors live out our calls within the bounds of religious institutions.  Our calls are affirmed and recognized by the institution.  Credentialed by the institution, and supported by the institution.<br />
<br />
But what if Ms. Norris is right and there’s an inherent conflict between a call and an institution?  Add young people’s innate distrust of institutions and we might begin to understand why they’re not being drawn to the ordained ministry.  My favorite quote about that comes from an elderly lady in a church in a small East Texas town.  I was there to fill in as the preacher and was invited to attend the women’s Sunday School class.  The lesson for the day was on Paul’s encouragement to Timothy and suggested that churches do more to recognize and foster young peoples’ calls to ministry.  Discussion ensued and this one lady said, “I think one of the best things we can do to get young people into the ministry is to be nicer to our own pastor.”  As all eyes in the room turned to her, she looked at me and smiled, “Really,” she said, “we can be rather hard on them. I don’t know why anyone would want to go into the ministry given the way we’ve treated some of our pastors.”  Amen, sister.<br />
<br />
The quotes had me reflecting on the process of my own call.  I was ordained 14 years ago without any reservations.  In the eyes of the institution I was clearly talented and clearly called. However, how is the process of owning that call supposed to look over time?  Does owning that call mean becoming more and more establishment and moving up the ladder to bigger churches and higher positions of institutional maintenance?  Does it mean moving up the ladder in order to be in higher positions for institutional transformation?  <br />
<br />
In my eyes, Jesus was an institutional outsider.  I always told my congregation that we weren’t to hear “Pharisees” as “Jews” but rather “religious establishment” of which I was the primary representative.  Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees can be interpreted, I think, as criticism of our religious institutions.  <br />
<br />
That said, a call needs a community that it might be affirmed and nurtured.  What might be the differences between a community with an environment of call (to borrow from a friend) and an institution?