9-27-10

Rich has been waiting for an appointment to have a liver scan performed. Unfortunately, that wait time is approaching about 2 months. He keeps nagging me about the wait. I decided I would shut him up by sending an email to the nurse handling his Options case management.he got a call from her within the hour and appointment set up for tomorrow and I finally have him off my back. I'm not one for dropping names to push buttons, but apparently my name is well known enough. At least I was able to fix one problem today!

9-25-10

My kids tease me that I have no friends outside of work. They say that my sister and friend Godo don't count because Kellie is, well, my sister, and Godo is a friend that I met through work, even though we've been close friends for about 12 years. It isn't easy for me to open my heart to people because it seems I always have to say good-bye at some point.

My best friend growing up was Lara. We were pretty much inseparable from about 8 years old to 20 years old, the point when a very close friend of mine died in a car accident and my world sort of fell to pieces. I found myself walking numb in a life I didn't really understand anymore. Everyone around me just wanted to get high and I found myself suffocating in doubt and shattered dreams. My mom and step dad and I weren't really getting along for reasons I can't even recall. My world was dark and lonely. As much as I tried to make sense of it all, my sorrow kept pulling me under. One night, in a moment of weakness and despair, I took about 20 Tylenol PM's hoping to end the pain. Lara called me that night and sensing that something was wrong, but unable to get over to me, called our friend Nate. Nate came over that night and stuck his fingers down my throat and then made me drink coffee all night. In the morning he took me to a place where he worked as a volunteer and introduced me to a shrink who told me I didn't really want to die. He told me that I needed to focus on me and get away from the things that were weighing me down. As much as it hurt to know what I would have to leave behind, mainly Lara, I knew that he was right. I didn't want to be a part of a world that celebrated the memory of a friend by getting high and drinking, but that didn't mean I didn't want to be part of this world. I've never told anyone about that night. Partially because of the shame I feel when I think of the pain I would have inflicted on those that loved me if my attempt to kill my own pain would have succeeded and partially because it hurts too much to remember. Funny thing is that Robbie's death was the tipping point for saving my life. His death changed me and what I thought was important. I walked away from the person I was to become the person I wanted to be.

After phoning my cousin Nick in LA to see if I could come crash on his floor while I worked my way back in to school, I packed my bags and said good-bye to my family and friends in northern California, promising to pave the way so Lara could come join me soon. Lara and I wrote each other every week, each letter closed with a promise to meet up again. With each letter I wrote though, came a realization that bringing Lara to my future life would also mean bringing a past I couldn't bear any more. Guilt weighed heavy on my broken heart. She was literally my other half, and walking away from her because I was afraid of falling back in to a world of pot and beer bongs was the hardest thing I've ever done. I know she would have understood my reasons, but I didn't want to hurt her with my decision.
Slowly, with a chasm of broken promises and unspoken sorrow, we began to drift apart.

It took me a while to make friends in southern California. My cousin was away in Europe for the first month I lived here. Thankfully, I had my sister Kellie, who I idolized growing up. She had come down a few years before me, staying with Nick just as I had. Kellie lived with her boyfriend, Guy, at the time so I spent a lot of time hanging out with them and with my new friend Erin. My parents, who were mad that I packed up and moved away, actually called my cousin Nick while he was in Europe and told him I was having parties and taking his Mercedes out cruising. I didn't understand why they made up those lies, but my life was far from what they described and their accusations drove a wedge between us that just seemed to get deeper as the years have passes. Kellie helped get me a job as a waitress at The Bakery Cafe, where she also worked. I struggled with the new job at first, as it required me to open up to people. There was this crowd of kids about my age who came in twice a week after some meeting. They all drank coffee and chatted a few hours. After a month of waiting on the only people close to my age, I was frustrated that they had never asked me if I wanted to go do something and at last, I worked up the courage to tell them so. One of the guys innocently asked if I had gone out and done anything fun yet. All of that lonely frustration was unleashed on this poor unsuspecting guy. I went off on a tangent about how they were the only ones my age and that they had never once introduced themselves or asked me to go hang out with them.  They apologized and offered to take me out on Friday night for a motorcycle ride to the beach.  I was excited and my sister was pissed.  First for going out with people I barely knew and for riding on the back of a motorcycle that liked to go fast. Kellie made her boyfriend Guy come by the restaurant in his police uniform to make sure the group knew I needed to be brought home in one piece or he would have to shoot them before my sister did. That night was so exhilarating and it made me feel so alive. Alive like I hadn't felt in about 6 months.

Finally, I had some friends who I could hang out with and not worry about peer pressure working it's way in to disrupt my life with gin and tonic promises. These new friends went to meetings 2-3 times a week to share and support each other in their sobriety, which worked out perfectly for me.

Life was really starting to turn around. Spending time with Kellie and Erin was goods. I was on the right track going to school, working at night, working as a hair model in a few shows for free haircuts and styles, and then being a nanny to my boss’s kids while she was at work. The more I got involved in work and school, the freer I became. Still... There was this guilt that bore a hole in my heart.  My letters to and from Lara came less frequently.  I met Cesar as I was coming off a pretty intense relationship with a guy named Darryn.   I loved Darryn but our love wasn't meant to be.  Cesar was what some might call my rebound guy. He spoke no English, so I decided to learn Spanish.  Being young and foolish, we got married after dating for about 8 months in a little chapel in Las Vegas.  Needless to say, I got pregnant just as quickly.  I learned almost immediately after finding out I was pregnant that Cesar had problems dealing with stress and anger.  If our baby, who we named Lauren after my best friend Lara, would cry when he was trying to sleep, he would punch me in the back knocking the wind right out of me.  He was abusive and controlling, insisting that all of the can goods had the labels facing forward, his shoe laces were washed and ironed weekly, and everything was in perfect order... all of the time.  I didn't know this side of Cesar before we married and I was too proud to admit to my family that I had made a mistake and that I needed help getting away from him.  I knew I needed to get out of the hell I was living, but I had to plan my escape so I could take Lauren with me. Not a week would pass by without Cesar telling me that if I made him mad, he would take Lauren across the border and in to Tijuana and I would never see her again.  For an entire year, I walked on eggshells so as not to set him off. I took beating after beating, bearing them alone because I was too ashamed to tell anyone, even though secretly I wished someone would come save us.  There were countless nights when I went to bed and wondered if that would be the night he took my life.

Sometimes the only reason I kept on fighting was because I couldn't stand the thought of Lauren not being raised by me.  A pivotal moment came when Lauren at the age of two witnessed her dad pin me to the ground and try to strangle me.  She jumped on her fathers back and tried pulling him off me with all her might, the whole time yelling to him "no poppy no!”  He pushed Lauren off his back and unwrapped his hands from my throat.   Lauren, at the age of two, became my hero.  That night I vowed to do everything within my power to get us away from him.  I worked two jobs and skimped where ever possible.  If I wanted to make a personal call to my sister, I had to do it from work or from a pay phone because I wasn't "allowed" to answer our phone at home. We had basically become roommates, sleeping in separate rooms but playing by his rules, and his rules alone. Two weeks before I would have had enough money to move out and file for a divorce he came home in a really bad mood and instigated a fight and once again changed the course I was traveling. That night he chased me through out apartment complex, dragging me by my hair.  One of our neighbors called out her window asking if I wanted them to call the police.  I screamed yes just as I was diving away from one of his famous round kicks which missed my hip but landed solid on my right thigh. The police finally came and took Cesar away to jail.  I called my sister Kellie at 3:00 in the morning hysterical as I tried to explain everything that had happened over the past coupe years leading up to Cesar's arrest for spousal abuse. I wanted so badly to have Lara there with me. With her I was always strong, independent and confident. Cesar had broken me down both physically and emotionally. He left me feeling powerless, small, ugly, fat, undeserving of love, and anybody but who I really was.  My family rallied around me and I found the strength to change the direction of my life forever.  Over time, I found the strength and confidence I had as a teenager, but in tenfold.  I learned to forgive Cesar, because I knew I would never heal if I didn't.  I married an amazing man who could kick Cesar's ass in a heartbeat and never had to fear him again :-)

No.  I don't have a ton of friends outside of work, but it is because my best friends are my family.  My sister, my daughters, and my husband.  I'm going to find Lara again one day and when I do, I feel like our connection will still be there, just like when we were growing up.

Enough for now... more later.

Teenagers!

Amanda is one moody teenager today. It must be getting close to the time of the month where she starts craving lemon pepper wings from Wing Stop! Can't wait until she starts seminary on Monday. It should be sooooo much fun having to wake her up early to be at the church by 6:45 am.

A Man Named Jim

I've decided to start blogging more. I miss writing for me. This post is about an incident that made me proud of the person I've become and reminded me of the reason I love my job, the company I work for, and for my understanding of gospel principles. This story is about a man named.

I live in Monrovia, a charming city in the foothills of southern California. To avoid the commute traffic of our overcrowded freeways, I often take side streets to get home. On this particular Friday evening I noticed that traffic was extremely heavy, with cars backed up for about a two miles. As I slowly made my way up the hill to my house, I noticed an elderly man about 70 or so walking with a younger woman. My eyes caught a quick glimpse of a little red plastic object that the gentleman was carrying. Thirty yards up the street was an older model pick up truck with its hazard blinkers on. That's when the realization hit me that this older man had run out of gas and was attempting to walk down the hill to get gas from the chevron station about 2 miles down the road. Possible yes, going downhill wouldn't have been too hard, but the walk back UP the hill would have been difficult for anyone, not to mention someone in his seventies. Without a whole lot of hesitation, I did that thing my parents said I was never to do and whipped around the block to meet this man and lady at the corner and picked up a stranger. How dangerous could they be at there age?

Calling out my passenger window, I asked if they would like a ride to the gas station, to which the lady said, "Yes HE would". Turns out she was just trying to direct him towards a nearby bank. The man got in my car and introduced himself as "Jim". Jim said he needed to find a wells Fargo bank to get some money, so I went around the block, passing his broken down truck for a second time, as he started in to his touching story and the circumstances that led up to that moment. Jim told me he was on his way home from an appointment for a potential opportunity to do some handyman work fell to the wayside when the prospective client blew him out. He stopped at a gas station only to have his ATM card declined. Upon calling the bank, he learned they had put a five-day hold on the six hundred dollar government check he received for his wife's death benefits. Jim knew he had $4.00 in an account at Wells Fargo and was planning to go close out his account to get some gas money. My heart ached for his plight and my mind started calculating how long I would have to wait to have him close his account only to yield $4 bucks. It didn't take me long to figure out the right thing to do was to just buy this guy a tank of gas. 

On the way to the gas station I asked Jim when his wife had passed, to which he explained she died two years prior after loosing a battle with breast cancer which was diagnosed only after having progressed to stage four. After a few minutes of conversation, Jim asked me what I did for a living. I explained that I worked for Kaiser Permanente leading a preventive screening program that ensures our patients get the screenings they need to help prevent and diagnose cancer and other chronic conditions before they become a concern. Jim was quiet for a minute which made me think I had gone to techie with my description, but he broke the silence with a simple yet sincere comment that came out more like a statement than a question. Looking me in the eyes, he said thoughtfully "maybe if we had Kaiser they would have caught my wife's cancer in time." Fighting back the emotion that filled me, I looked at Jim and replied, "I like to believe that we would have.”

By the time we pulled in to the gas station I had made up my mind that I was not going to let this sweet man go with just a gallon of gas. I explained to Jim in a very determined voice that I had a plan. After I dropped him off with his emergency gas I wanted him to follow me back to the gas station so I could put some more gas in his truck because there was NO way his old truck was going to make it very far on a gallon of gas. Jim was stunned, but grateful. "How can I ever repay you?” I looked at him sincerely and said "you don't, you just pay it forward sometime to someone else who needs it". Jim smiled and agreed wholeheartedly. 

After fighting our way back through the traffic I pulled up behind Jim's truck and turned on my hazard signals. Jim poured the gas in his truck, carefully trying not to spill a drop, and then jumped in the truck to start it up. Sadly, nothing happened. Jim took a water bottle out, popped his hood, poured what was left in the bottle into his radiator, and then tried to start it up again.   Still... it wouldn't turn over.  A defeated Jim walked over to my car and said, "I guess we're out of luck.  I think I need to be jump started, but I don't have any jumper cables."  I smiled, thinking of the jumper cables my husband put in an emergency kit in my trunk so I would "always be prepared."  Getting Jim's truck started was no longer an act of charity; it was a MISSION!  We were going to get this truck started if we to stay their all night.   Using my crazy mad woman driving skills, I pulled in to the traffic that was creeping past Jim's truck, ignoring the honking horns coming from frustrated drivers, and flipped a u-turn so I could face Jim's truck and we could hook up the cables.   Hooking up the cables to my new Cadillac proved a chore in itself because every component of the engine is covered so it looks sleek and clean under the hood.   Finally, we found the right panel to move aside and Jim hooked up the cables.   Excited emanated from every pore as we stared at each other over our steering wheels and waited for the sound that was music to our ears.  We were so ecstatic that we were giving each other high fives in the middle of Foothill Blvd!  It was the most amazing rush of joy and satisfaction :-)

Our journey wasn't over yet though, we still had to make it to the gas station.  I lead the way keeping my eyes focused between the road and my rear view mirror, praying his old truck would sputter it's way over to the gas station down the road.  At last, we made it!  Now a whole new struggle began.  Getting Jim to allow me to FILL his tank with gas instead of just putting in the $20 we agreed upon.  It took some gentle, but aggressive persuasion and a story about how I had just had a promotion, which came with a raise, and I wanted to share my blessings.  (Okay, so the promotion and raise part happened about 8 months earlier - but he didn't need to know that)  I had to keep Jim distracted with conversation as the total sale ticker crept up to $70.  He tried to stop me twice, but us short women are also very stubborn.   When we finished filling up his truck, I gave him what we call a "pass along card" that provides information on how to get a hold of missionaries to receive a Bible and a Book of Mormon.   Jim read the card and smiled a beautiful smile and said "You're Mormon?  Now it all makes sense!"  Then he asked if he could give me a hug to which I accepted with open arms. 

Driving home I was so excited over my amazing experience that I wanted to share it with the world.  You see... Jim thinks I was the one who was the giver, but in my eyes, it was me who was receiver.  Jim reminded me of how wonderful it feels to serve others, to give freely without the expectation of reciprocation, to place your trust in someone else to help share your burdens, and to rejoice in the work that I am honored to do because I have the ability to help save lives every day.  I'll never forget that day or the wonderful man named Jim. 

Giving

"If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way." Buddha

"Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think." 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Have I Done Any Good in the World Today?"

I stopped at WalMart on my way home from work tonight for some quick groceries and was approached by a lady with her two children who looked to be about 9 and 13. They were asking for money for food. The son, who seemed about 9 years old, was helping to translate what sounded like Hindu to English for his mother.  The daughter, who was about 13, kept her eyes averted away from me.  Part of me thought "oh man... "another beggar scam asking me to share my hard earned money", while, thankfully, the other side of me said "who am I to judge if this request is honest".

I offered them a box of granola bars that I had just bought, assuming they would just chuck it aside since it wasn't the money for which they asked. To my surprise and self shame, the mother had that box opened before I could pull out of my spot and was divvying up the granola bars for her kids, saving one for herself. The scene almost haunted me as I pulled away, knowing that my own kids would never even miss the box of granola bars.  Before I left the parking lot my heart and conscious brought me to my senses and turned me around to find them once more.  Lowering my car window, I reached out to give this needy family some money.  The mother looked at me as only a mother could, making eye  contact; mother to mother.  Quietly, she said the most sincere "thank you".  It nearly broke my heart.


As I drove home with my milk, bread, and Hostess Ding Dongs, the scene which had unraveled before me slowly started to sync in... the desperate plea of a mother, the gentle inquiry of a young boy, and the averted eyes of teenage girl who seemed to want to hide from life's circumstances.


May we all find room in our hearts to be grateful for all we have and remember to share with others what ever we can without judgment or question.