One Wee Spark

You know, sometimes it's easy for me to get caught in the negative parts of the past. I am compassionate, so when I read others' stories of where their parents are I am swept back into the disaster that was my childhood home and my mother's nest for so long. But it's important to stop and look at the more recent parts of the journey. Although not for everyone, being chosen and able to be a part of "Hoarders" was a major miracle for me and for my mom. It's been almost one year since my mother was carted to the hospital with life-and-limb threatening sores on her feet, deep in depression, delusional from infection. And when I stop and really think back to this time last summer... I stand amazed and blessed and shocked at the wonder of all that has changed! No, my mother didn't magically become Martha Stewart with neatly organized cubbies throughout her room and "a home for everything and everything in its home". Yes, the idea that form follows ...

As my birthday approaches, and as I'm expecting our last baby, I've been thinking about my own birth, the months leading up to it, and my earliest years. I realize that I know almost nothing about my father (his choice) and more surprisingly almost as little about my mother who raised me. I know that my parents never married. I know that my mother planned to put me up for adoption. But the rest is really vague and blank. I have two very early memories--one from my first birthday and one from about four years old. However, I recently begun to question whether either of these is a "true" memory. I took enough psychology classes to understand episodic memory, how it forms, is recalled and recognized. But I also know that memories from these ages is highly uncommon. And the details which I remember are very minute. And I remembered my mother validating the one memory when I was older, say 14 years old. And then it hit me: Are these my memories, or are these stories that w...

Just when you think you have let go of all expectation, disappointment sets in reminding you that you had not quite achieved ALL or NOTHING. I wonder...can one ever really let go of ALL expectation?