Christmas miracles: the enemy appendix, the almost nativity and the miracle snow

Probably everyone has a holiday horror story whatever "holiday season" holiday you do or don't celebrate. The time Jimmy threw up on the Christmas presents or the time Mordechai knocked Rachel out cold with a flying dreidel or the when the cat caught fire playing with the Kwanzaa candles. But the holidays are about miracles, too--filled Christmas stockings for hungry children, oil lamps that stay burning, celebration amid oppression. No matter how Scroogy we may claim to be, we each carry a holiday miracle in us. Here's mine. 

The only reason I believe that Christmas 1997 actually happened is that we survived to tell the tale. No one could invent so unfortunate a series of events. I call it the "Christmas of the enemy appendix, the almost-nativity and the miracle snow." Here's how it happened. 

December 7, 1997: Pearl Harbor memorial day. On this Sunday dawn our oldest was battling her own axis powers in her tummy. Daddy took the boys to church and I stayed home to care for Molly and her enemy stomach. When dad got home we decided to head to the hospital for troop reinforcements as Molly's tummy ache wasn't letting up. The enemy was identified as a toxic appendix. War was declared and it was removed post haste. 

December 12, 1997: The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Caring for a post-op appendix surgery child with 156 abdominal stitches and two active little boys had left me with little time to Christmas shop. Did I mention I was great with child? My mom warned me against going shopping. But Christmas wasn't waiting for me, I said. I managed to put a good dent in the wish lists. But I arrived. home with more than presents. A torn placenta made itself known at 2 a.m. I awoke in a pool of blood. Husband and mom (who forebore to say "I told you so") rushed me to our local hospital where doctors worked to stave off labor. 

December 14: The bleeding subsided somewhat, but after several contractions, it was agreed that my baby and I were too high risk for a local hospital. I was shipped by ambulance in the middle of the night to a huge inner city hospital an hour away. Ambulances shrieked and nurses prophesied how the full moon was bringing out the crazies. All I saw from my speeding hospital gurney was a carousel of ceiling colors as we entered and exited departments. My husband worked nights and had to be called out from under the machine he was fixing, to sit with his wife and pray their baby would not die. 

December 21. Baby is deemed tentatively safe enough for Mama to return home on strict bed rest. The church organist calls, unaware of the enemy appendix and the almost-nativity at our home. She asks if still-recuperating Molly would like to be Mary in the church pageant. Despite mom's and dad's fears, Molly will not be cheated out of her part. And the show must go on. So, stitches or no, she presided over the Christmas mass creche. Confined as I was, I couldn't attend. We were both crestfallen but pictures were promised. Our 7-year-old son Albie, good little boy that he is, (and not a huge fan of boring church, if he's honest) offered to stay and keep mommy company. 

December 24. Son and mom are feeling a little forlorn and left out. We cheer ourselves making Christmas cookies and listening to "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Suddenly, Albie calls to me: "Mom, look out the window. It's snowing!' In the middle of this Christmas chaos, even the weather had been uncooperative. A brown Christmas had been forecast. Mama and son watch in delight as huge Michigan snowflakes fill the Christmas Eve sky. Everyone arrives home bubbling over at how wonderful Molly Mary was and surprised at the unexpected snow. Albie and I share a secret smile, knowing it came just for us. 

The appendix healed. The baby lived to delight us all, although she did keep the whole family dancing a merry tune right up to her birth. Christmas 1997 was one of those times you say, "You couldn't pay me a million dollars to do it again and I wouldn't have missed it for all the money in the world." 

Mystery Story Starters and Writing Prompts for Halloween and Horror Flash Fiction

"It was a dark and stormy night...' Remember Snoopy's famous one-line opener? It prefaced the Dog Wonder's ever-elusive great mystery story. Perhaps you know how Snoopy feels, perched atop his doghouse, typewriter silent. You've got the bones of a mystery story rattling in your brain like a skeleton in a too-crowded closet.  But where to start. How about here, with these Mystery Story Starters and Writing Prompts for Halloween Flash Fiction

Big Lake Anthology Poem: Sunday at the grampa-grama house

(memories, in verse, from my inner 5-year-old about life at the Grama-Grampa House on the Big Lake (Lake Michigan). Part of my Big Lake Anthology)








Sunday at the grampa-grama house
was boring because Grama and grampa were dutch reformed

they had a dominie instead of a minister
like i had at church

the Dominie, they said,
said they couldn't do anything on Sunday

Grama couldn't cook on Sunday
which was nice for grama

she made Grampa and me
a sandwich for dinner

we couldn't watch tv
which was sad for me

because the only tv i had
was at the grama-grampa house

i wondered why the Dominie
let us watch tv all week but not on sunday

mommy and daddy didn't have a dominie
but they never watched tv

we couldn't watch grampas home movies
on sunday either

on nights that were not sunday
he set up the super 8 movie projector

and showed old movies of us
on the side of the refrigerator

while we ate ice cream
it was fun even if there was no sound

the dog pierre always knew
when we were having ice cream
 
he came home from wherever he was
just in time to have a scoop for himself

i liked ice cream but wished
grama and grampa picked better flavors

spumoni and peppermint stick and butter pecan
are not as good as chocolate marshmallow

the dominie said we could play aggravation
on the porch on summer nights after my bath

and have a fire in the fireplace
downstairs in winter

which were probably better than tv
and just as good as home movies

or walks to the beach
and much better than going to church

Anger Managment and Rage Therapy Through Journal Writing

We all feel angry from time to time. For some people, anger is chronic. For others, it's situational. I have found that writing provides therapy, release, detachment, and healthy coping strategies that have helped my manage anger issues. Too frustrated to put yourself into the discipline of writing? I understand. I felt that way at first, too. But after I discovered how therapeutic writing is for coping with anger, it became easier to use writing as an anger management technique.

Some of us live with angry people who would zap our entire energy reserve if we let them. Their anger is corrosive and debilitating. And not just to them, but also to those around them. I'll say that angry people who make no effort to control their rage, hurt loved ones far more than they hurt themselves. While the angry person vents the poison in his system, the loved ones, especially the spouse, attempts to diffuse and assuage the anger to protect her family from psychological harm. 

The innocent victims suck up the anger and absorb it. They don't get a chance to vent their anger because the angry one is too busy airing his venom. When the dam breaks on their anger, there is so much pent up that it seems ungovernable. And the non-angry sponge people end up feeling sick and guilty because anger is not their normal way of functioning.

So how does writing out your anger help? Several ways. Getting anger out of the body is cleansing. Repressed rage is destructive. Next, writing is a constructive rather than destructive force. Even if the words are angry, they don't wound and scar like angry spoken words and actions. Words can be kept safe and private in a journal. Words can be saved, pondered and discarded if after some time, the writer feels as though his words were too harsh. For those who publish their writing, however, it's advisable to ponder words written in anger before publishing.

Writing is a shared experience; it can build bridges and bonds. When I am angry, I write to others who may be experiencing what I'm feeling. Sometimes I write to give advice and sometimes I just write to access the feelings and neutralize them. I feel better after some emotional purging. I feel better knowing that my shared experience may encourage others to find healthy, creative ways to express their anger. I don't write out my anger to dump on others, but to find solace for myself and others. 'Sorrow shared is sorrow halved'. 

No Flowers for Mama (Tragi-Comic Mother's Day Verse)

A child's perspective on Mother's Day flower gifts, personal property laws and sustainable alternatives. In verse. A poor imitative tribute to Shel Silverstein. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  

 No Flowers for Mama

  

  i wanna by sum flowers for my mama

  

  cuz flowers are pretty and so is she

  

  i asked her what kind she liked and she smiled

  

  "save your pennies, honey and pick some wildflowers for me."

  I wuznt sure 'bout wild flowers.

  

  Maybe they might yell or bite?

  

  Or go potty on our floor?

  

what if they put up a fight? 

  

  Then i spied the neighbors two-lips

  

  growing tall, all pink and red

  

  i spied the neighbor watchin' me

  

  so i kicked a stone instead

  i told dad i liked his roses

  

  fluffy, yellow and open wide

  

  dad sed if i picked his roses

  

  he'd tan my little hide

  my sister got some or-kids

  

  from her boyfriend mike

  

  but if I tried to steal some

  

  she'd back up over my bike

  i went for a walk with grampa

  

  we saw lady slippers and tri-lee-yum

  

  but grampa sed it was 'gainst the law

  

  to pick either of 'em

  well here was me all sad and glum

 

  no bloom could i put my eye on

  

  then I saw a bokay lyin all around

  

  a field of golden Dandy Lion!

  (My poor imitative tribute to Shel Silverstein. His reference to wild strawberries and their arguably untame ways was too good not to expound on. 

Animals Don't Like My Son, Except Armadillos

Do you need to write a funny vignette or narrative type 2? Here's an example I wrote. 

Our oldest son has a bad track record with animals. Or should I say they  have a bad record with him, either way, the son-animal relationship is complicated. 

He was gored by a Vietnamese potbelly pig at a petting zoo when he (son, not pig) was three. Fortunately his tusks had been trimmed (pig's not son's). 

A goat ate his leaf at 5 (age, not time, son, not goat). "His" is dubious, given son had taken said leaf from a tree in said goat's cage in the first place. Boy did he caterwaul (said son, not goat. It just quietly ate said leaf). Monkeys screeched, zebras stampeded. People ducked and covered. We thought something had eaten son's arm off and was working it's way up the torso. Apparently by the sound it hadn't reached his mouth. 

Then son was pursued (with malicious intent) by a flock of geese at Deer Forest's Storybook Lane. He was six, not that it matters.  Anyone who knows fowl, knows hell hath no fury like an enraged goose. Poor sonny-son, we'd not briefed him on goose protocol. We found him eyes glazed, mud-covered and cowering Peter Peter Pumpkin-Eater's big stucco pumpkin. 

But he was able to bond with one species: the armadillo. He was age 26, which might be important. Or it might not be. We encountered them at a nature preserve in St. Martinville, Louisiana. Being Michiganders, we'd never even seen one. Both sons were intrigued. Younger son Jake is animal-y and tried to pet one. We all howled with laughter as he shrieked (literally said eeek!) and ran when the armadillo only turned to look at him. I've read they're timid (armadillos, not sons). 

I guess we're more citfied than we realize. 

Read on.   Son Does Not Get on With Animals, Except Armadillos

Voice--Writing in Your Natural, Personal Style

I've been doing the Freelance Dance for almost nine years. I just found out today that a site I've been written for since 2006 is changing dramatically again. I'll adapt. I can chameleon when I have to. But one thing I will never do is change me. I won't compromise my ideals or my style. Neither should you. When you write, use your own natural genuine voice.   Quit Writing Textbook Copy, Let Your Voice Sing Out

They Put a Black Rose on My Door

I don't talk about this much but today just seemed right to share my motherache. We lost our 5th and 6th children, both girls, to separate in utero trauma. Both little ladies were ironically the same gestational age when they passed away. But their causes of death were different. And we never found out what exactly happened with either. Here's more on that and a poem I wrote for Mary Therese. 

I got an infection, I think Strep B, no one ever said, with my Mary Therese. My water broke. She was alive and kicking right up to the end as my fluid leaked out and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop it. The doctor didn't catch it in time and it was mostly gone when he did. 

I almost voluntarily checked myself out of life that day. I had a loving husband and darling children. But the pain burned so bad I thought it would devour me. Then Our Lady sent St. Teresa of Avila to talk sense into me. 

I know, it sounds insane. But I saw them both, plain as day. Maybe it was the delirium of the fever. Or the pain. It wasn't the drugs because I couldn't keep anything down. They would have let me have it because she was going to die anyway, they said. That could have been more tactfully said but I was past caring. 

And she did pass, but only after patiently keeping her mama company all that long, horrible night. The whole family was there, all night to say goodbye to baby sister. Big Sister Molly stayed awake the entire time and only fell asleep when Mary Therese left us to go to heaven. 

Maybe I just want to believe that heaven cares, that this is not the end, that I will hold my children again. You're darn right I do. Not much point in anything otherwise. 

They put a black rose on my door, in the maternity ward. 

Here's a poem I originally wrote for Associated Content for my little Mar. I wasn't ever going to name a baby after me, but somehow that name just seemed to fit her. Daddy wanted her to take part of Mama to heaven. Mary Therese's birthday and death day were January 5, 2001.

Waterlily Rose Maid

her eyes, green-gray, still waters, do not cry

not mirror nor window of soul-dark spaces

guardians hold prisoner, secrets shy

in soft tranquil deep and twilight traces

her skin, like dogwood blossoms translucent 

rose petal fair and water-lily pale 

heaven-bound as nimbus, storm-cloud spent 

fresh as a lamb, nested quiet in vale

no tears descend this tender, pallid cheek 

no sorrow escapes this unworldly maid 

no companion shares nor solace does seek 

perfect in slumber, unmoving and staid

Silent in her grave, somber and death-cold 

Never to feel pain, nor warmth of mother's arms enfold.

I wrote this a few years ago, in a darker place. Now I know that you will feel our arms, baby. I think in some way you already do. 

Love always, mama.