I Had a Dream

I should have written this yesterday on MLK day.  It has nothing to do with him and I'm sure nothing to do with anything anyone would guess.  It's not about all the dreams I had for Ian's life that are dashed or about hopes I  had for myself.

I actually had a dream.  After the worst weekend in a long time, I prayed, hard, that I could dream about Ian still being here and get to spend some time with him, even if it was just in my head.  I woke up yesterday morning  wondering if, in fact, it was a message.

I dreamed about Ian.  Yes, I got what I  prayed for.  He was in an isolation area in an intensive care unit, waiting for a transplant.  We were where we have been incalculable times:  getting short with nurses, sympathizing with other parents and listening to doctors young enough to be our children, who then report back to the ones who actually know what they are doing.  I went up a few floors and could hear helicopters landing and bringing organs to other patients--which I have also actually done in real life.  While Keith sat with Ian, I searched the hospital feeling we weren't in the right place because I couldn't find the carpet with the sun on it--a trademark of the cardiac unit at Boston Children's Hospital where we saw miracles  happen over and over again.

I woke up thinking about how I wouldn't choose that for Ian.  He already  played that  horrible waiting game as a 5 year old.  Why should I have to think about that?  What mother should have to play that game?  Would he be better off here and perhaps suffering?  No perhaps. There was a lot of suffering in his life.  Or is he better being far away from his parents who ache for him.  Everything points to him being in an indescribably happy place, but does he ache for us?

I've said it before in my life, but I mean it  today.  Be careful what you  pray for!

Pea Soup

There's food and then there's food.

I got quite a chuckle the other day while eating pea soup and thought about how food has meaning in our lives and represents so many different things.

The Gleasons have special meals on so many days during the year.  We have corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day;  Grandma Kay's Easter Breakfast making sort of an eggs benedict with the hard-boiled eggs and english muffins;  Grandma Sherry's special breakfast for general conference Sundays--which is eggs, bacon and potatoes o'brien all in a electric frypan.  We have fondue on Christmas Eve.  The cheese.  The hot oil.  The fudge with homemade cream puffs full of ice cream.

One special food we like is pea soup at Pea Soup Andersen's.  Keith and I spent our wedding night there.  Let me clarify.  It's a motel too, not just a restaurant.  It has an old-fashioned windmill and a water wheel.  It's a great place.  They serve the soup with a cheesy bread and fixin's:  croutons, green onions, bacon bits, grated cheese, and ham.  It's all you can eat and it's all you need for a great meal.   That's the only part of my wedding night that will ever appear on a blog or anywhere else.

I wonder how many couples--the ones that are still married--have such a simple, happy memory.  I wonder how many couples wouldn't just turn their nose right up if they were offered pea soup.  We took Lucy and Mikey there recently and just smiled and chuckled over the table as we ate that we have such a unique remembrance of our beginnings.

Normal?

You know those books you read where the first chapter is written from one person's perspective and the next is from another and so on?  You see movies like that too.  You kind of have to suffer through it patiently or impatiently until the two characters meet and start having scenes together.  That's kind of what my life has been like for the past 5 months. 

I'm existing in this time and space and the sun keeps coming up and going down to remind me that the earth hasn't stopped, but I can feel Ian existing right around me and I can't see him.  I'm living some alternative universe sequence that you'd think could only be possible inside some one's imagination.  He's here.  I can see him pausing the TV to interject his comments on things.  I can sense that he would have a giant crush on the new girl at church.  I can feel him listening to me butcher primary songs on the piano.  I know he would've begged for the American flag converse sneakers I picked up at the thrift store yesterday. 

I thought I heard him laugh today as I entered a room and then realized he wasn't here.  I feel like he and I are tied together by a tether I can't see or follow back to him.

Someone asked Keith this week if things were getting back to normal for us.  Ignorance must indeed be bliss.  Things will never be normal again.  Normal would be hearing fighting in the house.  Normal would be actually getting out the right number or plates to set the table.  Normal would be watching Ace of Cakes instead of trying to decide if I can delete the timer on the DVR.  Normal would be never going without conversation in the car.  Normal would be knowing that the Red Sox just got one of the Padres best players.  We will never be normal again.

I don't know how he can feel so close and so far away at the same time.  I see the discomfort on peoples' faces when I bring him up in conversation, but to me he's always there.  How does a mom just cut one of their children out of everyday conversation?  How does she not think of him while walking the aisles of any store or while she prepares anything he ever loved to eat--or didn't love?  How does she not want to photoshop him into every recent photograph? 

She doesn't.

I guess I'll settle for him occupying an alternate universe here with me.  It beats the alternative.

Time

Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it.  The time will pass anyway;  we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.  --Earl Nightingale

I need to apply this in my life.  I have many interesting things in this life of mine to experience and acquire that I'm not reaching for because there doesn't seem to be time.  It's funny though,  I always seem to have time to watch at least one TV show--even if I've already seen it.

Why don't I prioritize?   I get after Keith almost every weekend for not doing at least one thing just because he wants to and  yet I'm the same way.  Only I have a million times as much free time as he does.  I even say to myself occasionally,  "Why would I spend 3 hours on a project that nobody but me would even notice got done?"

The quote mentions fear.  I think fear is an incredible motivator--or anti motivator.  I fear that if I take on a project and do it wrong, I'll be further behind than when I started.   I fear that what I do won't be perfect.  I fear that I'll only get half-finished and then get interrupted and never get back to it.  I fear that if I get really involved with something, I'll neglect the things I need to get done like meals, laundry, paying bills.  I fear that if I get too involved doing something for me, I won't be doing enough with my family.

It's funny, we have as many hours in our days as the people who built the Great Wall of China, or the Parthenon in Athens and we have so much technology to make everything so much easier and yet we still say,  "I don't have time."  I think that's why I get such a kick out of people who tweet and facebook,  (There I go judging again.) because they need reach a bunch of people all at once instead of one by one.  I really should have been born when women churned their own butter.  Then I would have had time to think about all my random things while I was busy, without feeling like I was wasting time doing it.

Stars

Today is the 14th of January.  We went to Hollywood Blvd. and saw the stars on the Walk of Fame and rode the tour bus on the 30th of December.  I can't seem to shake what I learned there.  I hope the tour guide was telling the truth or all this stewing is wasted.  He said the entertainers that are remembered on the sidewalk need to be famous for at least 5 years to be considered.  When they are chosen, they are sent a letter congratulating them and requesting a check for $25,000.  If they don't send the check, they don't get the honor.  What?  Even though I was really excited to walk along and see the stars and see how many of the people I knew, I couldn't get that off my mind all day and I still think about it almost daily.  So for the price of a car--one that we can afford; or the money I'm told it takes to adopt a baby from China; or the amount of money that millions of people, even in this rich country consider an annual income;  you can have a  piece of concrete with your name on it for people to walk on.  Amazing.  How is it even an honor if you purchase it?

Then my mind, as it tends to do, rattles around and starts to wonder:  Do people aspire to be stars so they can be worshipped?  Did the term "star" somehow come from that most famous star that led people to someone being born who should be worshipped?

All the stars have a circle on them under the name that signifies the genre for which they were honored:  TV, movies,  music, and broadcasting.  That makes me wonder too.  If they gave out (not sold, I'd never be rich enough to shell out $25,000) stars for excellence in life, I wonder what symbol would go under my name.  Let's see.  Yeller, complainer, judger.  Those are things I excel at.  And if I did manage to get something good, would anyone travel to see it and have their photo taken with it?

This experience brought me back to the realization that I'm glad I don't worship any "idols" or "stars".  I'm glad I worship the One that won't end up in rehab or abandon His family or get too full of Himself.  Yeah, I'll stick to Christ who God himself gave a special star.

Endure

I hate it when I'm caught between what seems logical and what I know is right.  Life would be so much easier if logical and right were the same thing.  Sometimes they are.  Frankly, sometimes that's how the Holy Ghost will tell me something--He'll make it logical to my head.  Then, other times it's all about the warm heart.  The worst is when it's the pit in my stomach.  I hate that one.

When I get hurt by someone over and over again, isn't it logical to distance myself from that person?  Wouldn't that be the smart thing to do?  Then how come I can't--cause it's not the right thing to do.  For example, there's no way to reconcile distancing myself from family, when I know families are the one eternal unit.  If I can't make a relationship work on earth, how can I hope for it to be eternal?  In the instance of a friend, how can I let go, knowing that I'm the tie between her and the church and if I let go, the contact is broken?

Is this really the time in my life where I have to reach out to others?  To make sure they are okay?  It hardly seems fair.  Why don't they reach out to me?  Is God giving me a project to take my mind off myself?  If so, I probably won't get the blessings that are supposed to come because of my state of mind in doing it.  Maybe this is how I'm supposed to learn the difference between 'endure to the end'  and 'endure it well'.  If all that makes my existence continue is not dying, then there's not much to it, but if I have a bunch of really difficult tasks laid out to accomplish, people to save--people to love, that would be richer I guess.

I think I rambling.  It's just a stubborn thing after all.  What real difference does it make if I'm the one reaching out or they are?  The contact helps me too doesn't it?  It wouldn't hurt if I didn't want the contact.  Maybe today I'll make a phone call or two.

Eye Single to the Glory

There stands to be a certain risk in always having something on your mind--everything that you do or read or come across seems somehow to relate to that thing.

Ian is my thing!

Matthew 6:22   The light of the body is the eye:  if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.


I wonder why that verse refers only to one eye. 

Light emanated from Ian and his single working eye.  I'm beginning to wonder if that's why he was so focused when it came to the gospel.  We have hundreds of photos of him just like this one.  Before cameras and computers could fix red eye, I fixed them with a sharpie.  It's very interesting to me that the blind eye reflects no light back into the camera. 

He really did have no problem with learning the gospel.  It came easier than anything else.  He got it, and even if he couldn't find the scripture in the book, he could tell you what it meant.  Keith and I thought it would be impossible for him to attend early morning seminary with any regularity because of the rest he needed, but we never told him that.  He got up and went everyday--even as the only boy in the class.

When he was first a deacon he passed the sacrament in a wheelchair for 8 or 10 weeks.  He passed the sacrament as  the only young man on countless Sundays, and as a teacher prepared the table alone.  He went to do service projects, when all he had the energy to do was watch, but he went.  Once when the youth went caroling at Christmas he waited until the song was over and everyone was walking back to the car and he went back up to the porch and asked the sister he home taught if she needed anything. 
He had the best judge of character of anyone I've ever known.  A few times I had to explain circumstances he wasn't aware of, but usually he was right on the money.  That eye served him well in gospel purposes.

I've always had the best vision of anyone I knew.  My eye doctor several years ago told me my neighbors should be nervous.  And yet I've always been apprehensive to get right up and meet priesthood leaders.  I've always felt they could see into my soul and know all my flaws.  Could that have something to do with what my eyes reflect about me-- or don't reflect?