Carpenters - Rainy Days and Mondays (Australia 1971)

We had both a rainy day and a Monday here in Seattle, but I wasn't down.

I Wish You Enough

I never really thought that I'd spend as much time in airports as I do. I don't know why. I always wanted to be famous and that would mean lots of travel. But I'm not famous, yet I do see more than my share of airports. I love them and I hate them. I love them because of the people I get to watch. But they are also the same reason why I hate airports. It all comes down to "hello" and "goodbye.

I must have mentioned this a few times while writing my stories for you. I have great difficulties with saying goodbye. Even as I write this I am experiencing that pounding sensation in my heart. If I am watching such a scene in a movie I am affected so much that I need to sit up and take a few deep breaths. So when faced with a challenge in my life I have been known to go to our local airport and watch people say goodbye. I figure nothing that is happening to me at the time could be as bad as having to say goodbye.

Watching people cling to each other, crying, and holding each other in that last embrace makes me appreciate what I have even more. Seeing them finally pull apart, extending their arms until the tips of their fingers are the last to let go, is an image that stays forefront in my mind throughout the day.

On one of my recent business trips, when I arrived at the counter to check in, the woman said, "How are you today?" I replied, "I am missing my wife already and I haven't even said goodbye."She then looked at my ticket and began to ask, "How long will you...Oh, my God. You will only be gone three days!" We all laughed. My problem was I still had to say goodbye. But I learn from goodbye moments, too.

Recently I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together. They had announced her departure and standing near the security gate, they hugged and he said, "I love you. I wish you enough." She in turn said, "Daddy, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Daddy."They kissed and she left.

He walked over toward the window where I was seated. Standing there I could see he wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, "Did you ever say goodbye to someone knowing it would be forever?" "Yes, I have," I replied. Saying that brought back memories I had of expressing my love and appreciation for all my Dad had done for me. Recognizing that his days were limited, I took the time to tell him face to face how much he meant to me. So I knew what this man experiencing.

"Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever goodbye?" I asked."I am old and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is, the next trip back would be for my funeral," he said.

"When you were saying goodbye I heard you say, "I wish you enough." May I ask what that means?"He began to smile. "That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone." He paused for a moment and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more. "When we said 'I wish you enough,' we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them," he continued and then turning toward me he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory.

* I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
* I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
* I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
* I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
* I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
* I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
* I wish enough hello's to get you through the final goodbye.

He then began to sob and walked away.

My friends, I wish you enough!

--- Copyright © 2001 Bob Parks

On Thankfulness...

Some days, when I am not viewing the world in a negative or cynical light and when I haven't had to share the road with too many bad drivers, I look around me and take stock in the little things that I am thankful for. This week I have had cause to give thanks to the powers that be for my healthy children. Sure, they get sick every once in a while, but they are not disabled. Their brains and bodies work and I get to experience being a parent of "normal" children. I once heard a poem about the birth of a typical child being compared to taking a trip to Italy and the birth of disabled one being compared to a trip to Holland, not what was expected, but over time parents are generally able to learn and grow in the beauty of each trip no matter how unplanned.

It has been fifteen years that I have worked with children of varying mental and physical disabilities and every so often there is a family that comes through the door to the office that gets me in some way and that happened this week. This family took a trip to Holland, a drastically unplanned one at that, about four years ago and as these problems are genetically related, it is unlikely that this child will have a sibling. The child is beautiful in his own way. I can see where the eyes of the appraising and often judgemental public may miss his beauty and I feel for these parents. Just about everything that could go wrong with a child has gone wrong with this kid.

What I think about though is the grief that parents of only children who are disabled must have to go through. To never be able to see their child change emotionally, socially, and cognitively from a three-year-old to a six-year-old to a ten-year-old onto the teenage years, then college, and independent adulthood. To know that the development will stop somewhere between one-year to three-years of age I think would be very hard for any parent to do. I watch and marvel and the strength, courage, and happiness that so many of these parents have day in and day out, what a gift, what a challenge.

Twenty-First Century Help

I just got through reading "The Help" by Kathyrn Stockett. It is her first novel. This was a book club pick, but I loved the book and had a difficult time putting it down. Now I am done and find myself missing the characters. Ms. Stockett lives in New York City, but she grew up in Mississippi. Her father's family had a full-time maid like many Southerners of that era. Ms. Stockett grew up close to this maid, who died when Ms. Stockett was 16. Ms. Stockett never got to ask her what being a maid felt like. This is why she wrote the book. The focus is on several characters, but mainly a white woman and two black maids and the daring thing that they conspire to do together in Mississippi in the early 1960's.

Granted, by today's standards, this was a long time ago. But, how has "the help" really changed in this century? Many of the women who perform household and childcare services are not American. They don't have to wear a maid's uniform to be admitted to the "whites only" supermarket, but I can't help but think that the discrimination is still there. Maybe it is more subtle, or maybe I just know nice people. At this time I don't actually know anyone who has help that comes everyday. I wonder if this standard still exist for wealthy Southerners and I wonder if the help is still black, or have they moved on to Latino, Filipino, and Vietnamese household helpers? What is the discriminatory nature of "the help" and the women who employ them in the twenty-first century? Have we come very far when it comes to race relations or have we just switched ethnic backgrounds?

One Bad Apple Ruins the Whole Bunch

I will be the first to admit that I haven't read much about the problems that Children's Hospital of Seattle has faced in regards to their much needed expansion. On Friday evening I attended a Symphony Guild fundraiser for Children's Hospital, I listened to a report about this issue on NPR, and I talked to a friend of mine who is a web designer for Children's Hospital at a party last night. These are my sources.

The fact is that Children's Hospital needs to expand. They currently have 250 beds and approximately 247 of them are filled. Children are sometimes not able to be placed in the area of the hospital that would best meet their needs because specialty areas are filled to the brim. Sometimes, children are turned away for services. The Children's Hospital of Seattle is located on a fairly nice piece of property near Lake Washington. In order to expand, they must build up. There are a handful of wealthy, aged, and influential people who have made their homes on the hill above the hospital and are actively thwarting expansion because they don't want their view blocked.

Needless to say, many of the businesses in the vicinity of the hospital are kept going by the employees and visitors at Children's. I am guessing that hundreds of employees live in the area. If the hospital is forced to move, it would be to the east side of the lake. There are two bridges that provide access to the east side from Seattle and they are both hugely congested many times during the day and evening as it is. Adding Children's Hospital traffic (assuming that most people don't want to or are unable to sell and buy in this economy) is going to make a large traffic problem that much worse. I would also like to mention that Harborview is the emergency hospital in Seattle, the one that a helicopter would land at if one were to need such services. Helicopters also land at Children's. Families who have been in accidents can get pediatric and adult care on the same side of the bridge and not be separated by a lake.

But, some people just don't want to lose their view. Is a view really more important than displacing and inconveniencing hundreds of employees and patients, No. I support keeping Seattle Children's Hospital in Seattle and wish the city council and government the best of luck in overriding some seriously self-centered individuals on this important issue.

Needless Death

Today in Seattle a memorial service was held for officer Timothy Brenton of the Seattle Police Force. Now I know that I have sometimes been critical of speed traps in my blog, but my criticisms of police departments in general is limited only to needless speed traps. I do have respect for their position and this was an egregiously needless death. Officer Brenton and his partner, a woman and trainee, were parked on a quiet street reviewing some paperwork on Halloween. The trainee saw, out of the corner of her eye, a car start to pull up and she sensed trouble. She ducked and yelled for officer Brenton to do the same. Unfortunately, he was too late, as the car drove by they let out a spray of bullets into the police cruiser and officer Brenton was killed. It was obvious that the driver had wanted to kill both police officers, but only got one that day. Brenton was a young officer with two small children that are now fatherless because of this senseless act of violence. No one should die this way.



My hope is that they will catch whoever did this. I have another hope as well and that is that the media will not sensationalize the perpetrator. Undoubtedly this is too much to expect, as the media sensationalizes everything. In this case, I really don't want to hear about the suspect's background, race, religion, or history of problems with the police. I would like for him to be caught, tried and found guilty, and put to death as quickly as possible. I frankly don't even want to know his name. There is no excuse for this, no excuse at all.

Act of God

I saw the documentary film, "Act of God" last night. I actually had a difficult time following the sequence of stories in the film. Although there were some pretty spectacular images of lightening, I did not like the music used to narrate the film, it reminded me of fingernails on the blackboard. What brings me to write about this film viewing today is, it got me thinking about the randomness of life. Some may call this randomness "acts of God," others may refer to it simply as "chance." I consider myself to be somewhere in between. Yes, I believe in God, but contrary to the views expressed by some of the people interviewed in the film, I don't think of disaster (natural or otherwise) as a blessing or something to be considered good in any way. I also think it is somewhat dangerous to view a lightening strike that kills people as something considered to be "good," because it keeps the people still alive from going through the grief process. The film focused on stories about lightening strikes in South America, Cuba, France, and the United States. The participants in South America definitely had a more "this is God's will" view of lightening induced family deaths. I think of these lightening strikes more as chance rather than acts of God.

In the South American deaths, the young people who died had climbed to the top of an unsheltered hill knowing a storm was going to strike. In doing so, there was definitely a chance that they would be struck by lightening. In two of the American stories the participants were in areas of the country where thunder and lightening storms are not uncommon and were also outside in fairly unsheltered areas. If we take these examples away from lightening and look at the randomness of life in general, I think much of it leads to chance based on choices (knowing or not) and behavior that affects the outcome. I don't think of God necessarily as a puppeteer controlling our lives minutely from above.

Are these deaths sad, yes, all death by any means I think of as sad. One thing that we have to come to grips with in our humaneness is that we all have a finite time on this earth and this is something we can't change or control. Sometimes death comes early and sometimes late. I guess, overall, that I just didn't really see the "act of God" connection to the stories presented in this film. I would have gotten much more out of it viewing lightening scenes and actions narrated by beautiful music.