HomeSpunHealers

(Photo from www.fairfaxcounty.gov)

“I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of
the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I
was for it regardless of the possible outcome.”

Golda Meir
(1898-1978, Prime Minister of Israel, 1969-74)

 I have recently been exposed to a problem that my mother has that I have known about my whole life, but that has gotten really bad over the past few years.  Her problem is that she is a compulsive hoarder.  My father and I used to help her keep it under control when we lived with her.  From about 10 years old, I was the “housekeeper” in my home.  My father worked outside the home, sometimes 7 days a week, so the house cleaning was my mom’s territory.  She was what I would call “messy” then.  She had a problem with clutter accumulating in various areas: her dresser in her bedroom, the hutch in the kitchen, the top of the floor model TV.  And she would wash clothes and then pile the dried clothes in a large chair in the junk room, which she always had an open ironing board in.  I thought everyone had one “junk” room in which things were piled up.  I thought this was normal.  But as I visited others’ homes, I noticed that some were messy, but most were cleaned up and picked up all the time, every single room.  And I longed for a home like that.  So, I became the “housekeeper.”  In fact, although I resented the fact that my mom didn’t do more housework herself, I sort of enjoyed the peace and order and cleanliness that followed my house cleaning chores.  Sometimes, I would venture to clean off my mother and father’s dresser, throwing away a lot of stuff that seemed useless to me.  Invariably, I would get blamed for a missing important piece of paper that had some vital information on it.  So, I only cleaned the dresser a few times in my life.  Eventually, I moved out, and my dad began to help with the onslaught of clutter.  We never talked about it, but I don’t really think he knew how much of a help I was in managing the situation until I went off to college and then moved out for good when I got married.  Occasionally, he and Mother would have a big clean-up and would throw away massive quantities of “junk.”  I truly believe that is how my wedding dress and hat were disposed of and all the many, many pictures that were taken when I was a small child went missing.   I guess they were small sacrifices to make to help dig them out of the heaps of clutter in the house. 

So, even though I know this has been a lifelong problem for her, I only recently found out how bad it had gotten.  My dad died in 1999.  He had been sick for a while before he died, but mainly the clutter had been delegated to the spare bedroom that my grandmother occupied when she lived with them for over six years.  When it was time to receive visitors before the funeral and after, my mom was okay with folks coming in because the house wasn’t embarrassing then.  I visited my mom many times after that, and I noticed each time that the clutter was a little worse.  Eventually, it got bad enough that I insisted on coming over to help her clean up.  She didn’t want me in her bedroom, but I insisted, and I was appalled at how cluttered it had become.  My son and I both worked in there until we could get the floor empty enough to vacuum and clean the carpet.  There were still huge piles of clothing and magazines and other “stuff” that I thought could just be thrown out, but she insisted she would do it, and she basically asked us to leave.  She said she appreciated what we were doing for her, but I could tell that it was really stressful for her.  I never went back for another cleanup session after that one time.  I offered to many times, but she wouldn’t hear of it.  Every time I wanted to see her, we would arrange for me to meet her somewhere, but I wasn’t ever invited into the house.  About two years ago, she had to have minor outpatient surgery, and we arranged ahead of time for me to pick her up and take her for the surgery, and then she would stay with me for a couple of days until she had her followup doctor’s appointment.  When I was taking her home, she didn’t want me to go inside, but I needed to help her get her overnight bag and her cat’s carriet inside.   The clutter was bad, really bad.  I wanted to help her by taking out a few cardboard boxes that nearly made the hallway impassable, but she just wanted me to leave.  I could feel the tension and anxiety about me questioning the clutter, so I just left.  After that, she has not let me inside.  Not until two weeks ago.

She called me and confessed.  It seems she had fallen in her kitchen and couldn’t get up.  She wasn’t near a phone, so she couldn’t call for help.  She sat on the kitchen floor for over 20 hours before her hairdresser called her minister because she didn’t show up for her weekly hair appointment.  My mother never misses her weekly hair appointment.  The situation ended up with the minister and the rescue squad and police officers at her locked door.  The police were able to enter the kitchen where she was, and the EMTs were able to get her on her feet.  She wasn’t hurt physically, but she was devastated emotionally because someone had finally seen the squalor of her home.  One EMT fussed at her, making her cry, but the more sensitive female EMT talked to her about her safety.  They insisted that for her safety, she unblock the windows and the doors so that if something in the future did happen to her, they would be able to get a gurney and life saving equipment in to her.  That made sense to her, and she realized that she had to do something, so she called me.  I think she was afraid that the minister would call me, but he didn’t.  In fact, if she hadn’t told me the whole story, I wouldn’t have known about the incident.  It terrified me to think of her sitting on the floor for over 20 hours.  What if she had broken a hip?  What if she had a heart attack?  What if she needed insulin, and she went into a diabetic coma?  But she wasn’t hurt; and if I hadn’t insisted, she wouldn’t have let me help her with this problem.  In fact, I don’t think she really sees it as a problem.  She’s embarrassed, yes.  She understands the danger of it.  But she can’t do anything about it.  She’s a hoarder.  She can’t stop accumlulating things, and she can’t bear to part with anything.  She’s also weak physically, so she has a really hard time even taking out the trash because it’s a long walk (to her) to the back alley where her trash recepticle is located.

I won’t even try to relate the horror of what I saw when I finally went to her house.  She can’t use her kitchen at all.  The double sink is piled above the window with dirty dishes full of decaying food.  The stove is the same way, piled high with dirty pots and pans full of decaying food.  There is so much stuff piled on the floor that she has a very narrow walkway from the back door to the hallway and back to her bedroom, to the bathroom, and to the laundry room at the back of the house.  Everything else is piled nearly to the ceiling with “stuff.”  Some of the stuff is brand new stuff; some is pure garbage, rotting food, and trash bags that she’s filled and set aside in case she ever did get it out to the back alley.  There are boxes and cans of food that she buys every week, tossed in with bags of old out of date canned food and boxed food that she has meant to throw away.  In between, mixed in well, are bags of sprouting or rotting or almost completely decayed potatoes, onions, apples, and oranges.  There are a multitude of small plastic bags of cat waste that she removes from the cat’s potty pan, bags she has meant to throw away with the other bags of trash.  The stench is almost unbearable.  So, this is where I wanted to start.  She wanted to start at the back of the house in the laundry room.  So, that is where I started.  In one day, about 8 hours of straight work with no breaks except to go to the bathroom twice (and I won’t go into that horror), I managed to get to the floor of the laundry room, the windows cleared so that she could see into the back yard again, and the place cleared enough so that she can now get her washing machine replaced.  She uses her dryer to dry things she washes by hand.  Everything else is just stacked up.  And if she runs out of clean clothes, she buys more.  But that task was an easy one although it was tough physical labor.  That was all trash that she didn’t mind me throwing away.  It felt good to accomplish so much in just one day, but the kitchen was still there, and I wanted to attack it the next trip over to help her.  That was Monday. 

She wanted to concentrate on clearing the doorway to the living room because that was what the EMTs had such a fit over, or so she believes.  What lies on the other side of the kitchen behind that blocked doorway, I’d rather not face right now.  I just wanted to clean the kitchen to the point where she could cook again and wash dishes again and clean out the refrigerator so she could use it again.  She’s not eating well.  She eats fast food and junk like cookies and candy.  She’s diabetic, so she needs to eat healthy.  But I worked all day with her, and we never did get to what I consider the necessities.  In fact, because she wanted to handle all pieces of paper and look in all bags and check all dates on food containers, it was a very slow process.  But I honored her wishes and needs, and I helped as much as I could in the painstaking excavation.  I carried out about 15 bags of pure garbage and about 20 or so boxes.  The real problem is that there are good, usable items all mixed in.  And she wants to keep every single one of them, even the spilled packets of Splenda that were mixed in with filthy trash that needed to be thrown out.  I would have just tossed them all when I swept up the filth, but she insisted on picking up every single packet and throwing them on the top of the pile.  This is why after 8 hours of cleaning, we had made no discernable progress.  But I’m going back today to try again.  I told her that I had nightmares about her not being able to cook or use her refrigerator or wash her dishes.  She doesn’t like me having nightmares, so even though she tried to give me the same excuse she’s been using for years to get me to stay away, the “I can get the rest by myself” excuse, after taking a few days to recuperate with my family in my own clean home, she is allowing me back in to try to help her.

The task seems insurmountable.  If I didn’t love her so much and fear for her health, I would give up and let her live that way.  After all, outside of her house, she seems quite normal.  She’s always amazingly clean and well-dressed.  She keeps her medical appointments and gets pretty good reports from her doctors.  She goes to church Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings and Wednesday evenings.  She has friends from church with whom she does things.  But no one comes in to her house.  And even though the EMTs know the truth, even her minister who was there that afternoon does not know the full horror of it.  He didn’t come inside.  She’s made him promise not to send in a cleanup crew from the church.  She doesn’t trust anyone else but me to come inside and know what it’s like.  And that places a big burden on me, but one that I accept.  She’s my mother, and she needs me.  Maybe at some point, she will allow me to have some help, but for now, she is counting on me and me alone to know about her secret. 

I don’t know what the result of me going there once a week, or even twice a week this week, to work on the clutter will produce.  I doubt I will be able to get her house into shape so that she will be willing to let neighbors in for a cup of coffee.  But I have been able to replace one lightbulb in her hallway so that she doesn’t have to walk through the clutter in darkness at night, and I have been able to put the chain back on her flush valve so that she can flush her toilet.  And if I can figure out a way to get the filthy dishes out of the way (I am thinking there is nothing to be done but to carry them outside) so that she has access to her sink and her stove again, and if I can get the floor cleared in front of the refrigerator so we can get the door open and get that cleaned out so she can put good food inside, then I won’t worry too much about the garbage and other things still piled high over and under and around her table on the other side of the kitchen.  If I can get that done this time, then I can come home and sleep without waking up shaking and remembering the stench.  Then maybe next time, next week, I can start to work on clearing that doorway that she feels she must clear.  And the week after that, maybe we can get her pantry emptied of all the out of date food so that she can put the good food in there and out of the floor.  I’m not sure what to do with all the other stuff that is not kitchen related in there.  Maybe it will just have to stay piled on the kitchen table and on the floor underneath and all around it for a while.  I won’t think of the other rooms.  I’ll take this one visit at at time.  And I’ll try so very hard not to let myself get discouraged if I don’t see any improvement when I leave her.  I’ll measure my success by how much I have piled out in the alleyway in and around the trash receptacle.  And I will remember the chain on the toilet and the light bulb and perhaps even the empty sink and stove and clean refrigerator.  And I will honor her and respect her wishes as much as I can.  This is a severe psychological disorder.  She is delicate, and I am the strong one, and I’ll have to move forward in faith that this will make a positive difference in her life.

“Being rich isn’t about money. Being rich is a state of mind. Some
of us, no matter how much money we have, will never be free enough to take
time to stop and eat the heart of the watermelon. And some of us will be
rich without ever being more than a paycheck ahead of the game.”

Harvey Mackay
(American Businessman, Speaker, Author)

It’s time to pay the bills again.  I must admit that I don’t like paying the bills.  I wish foolishly that I could have all the comforts of life for free.  But that’s not how things work here.  There always has to come a time to pay for what I use.  There have been times in my life when I would absolutely get sick and feel panicky when it was time to pay the bills.  I knew there would not be enough money to go around.  I would feel the weight of the world on me, crushing me down.  I try very hard to never go there again.  It’s not healthy to feel that way. 

But just last month, I was beginning to feel the pressure of two unpaid property taxes looming over me and Christmas on the horizon.  I voiced the fear:  how can we pay the taxes when we will have extra expenses because it is Christmas?  I felt angry.  I felt it wasn’t fair.  And for a few minutes, I let that anxious, crushing feeling come over me.  But then I stopped and chose a different path.  I said to myself: ”You will pay the county taxes as soon Jim gets paid again, around the 8th of the month.  That will be half of the battle right there.  You won’t have much to last until the next pay check, but you will just be frugal, and you will make it okay.  Then, when the next paycheck arrives, two weeks early since it’s Christmas vacation, you will pay the city taxes.  And you will be fine.  You will manage on what’s left.”  So, that’s what I did. 

And today, it’s time to pay the rest of the bills.  I have to do this so I can see how much money we have to operate on until Jim gets paid during the first week of January.  If we have only a little, then we’ll just be careful what we spend.  If we have a little more, then we can be more generous to ourselves, especially with our daughter visiting from South Carolina for the next week.  Whatever we do, we will have enough.

That is a wonderfully powerful knowledge:  that there is always enough.  It’s just that sometimes we have to get real about what is enough.  The more we use, the more we have to pay.  The more we intend to conserve, the less we have to pay.  But there is always enough. 

One of my favorite Christmas stories is the Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”  Most of us know the story:  Old skinflint Scrooge has so much money and is so stingy with it.  His life is cold and bitter when it could be rich and warm.  It isn’t until the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future come to visit him and show him what has been and what could be, that he decides to make a different choice.  He pledges, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”  The Christmas that he speaks of is just a philosophy, an openess of spirit, an attitude of generosity, a feeling of gratitude.  It doesn’t matter whether there is a lot of money or a little.  Richness doesn’t come from a paycheck.  Poverty of spirit is the worst kind of poverty. 

So, on to paying the bills.  I don’t have to like it, but I don’t have to fear it either, and I don’t have to let it ruin Christmas for me.  There is enough.  Enough for us.  Enough to share.  And in the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us everyone.”

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply
important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves
each day to be and to do what really matters most.”

Stephen Covey
(American Speaker, Trainer, Author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”)

I love Christmas!  I love the decorations and the songs and the baking and even the Christmas present wrapping.  I love that Pillsbury sells its gingerbread cookie dough at Christmas.  And the only time you can find egg nog in cartons beside the milk is at Christmas.  My sons are both with me on Christmas Day, which is a rare treat.  My husband and I go to visit his brother and sister and their families.  I get to see how much prettier and how much more grown up my little niece, who was adopted from a Chinese orphanage, has become.   We get to have Jim’s daughter with us for a whole week after Christmas.  And I get to spend a lot of time with JIm and my pugs just hanging out and relaxing.  And Jim loves Christmas as much as I do, so we really get into all the Christmas festivities with joy.  And the best part of all:  I get two whole weeks off from school!  What’s not to love about Christmas? 

Some people hate Christmas.  They see it as a time when they have to spend more money than they have and have to go to parties that they don’t want to attend and have to get all caught up in the hustle and bustle of too much traffic, too many grumpy shoppers, and too much junk food.  Bah! Humbug! 

The way I see it is this:  Christmas is what you make it.  I choose to make it as little of a hassel as I can, so I can enjoy the things I love most about Christmas.  And this Christmas, I’ve downsized a lot, and I think I’m enjoying the season even more.  We usually put up three Christmas trees, but this year we just put up the two main ones, our 9 foot Santa tree for the den and our angel tree for the living room.  I bought a whole lot fewer Christmas presents this year.  I usually overdo it anyway, and so I decided to it wasn’t worth it.  Also, I paid cash for all my Christmas presents this year instead of charging anything.  That made me feel so much “lighter” in spirit.  And most of my shopping was done on the Internet way in advance.  I’ve wrapped presents as they’ve arrived on my doorstep.  I’ve been collecting stocking stuffers for a few months.  I’ll stuff the stockings on Christmas Eve before we go to church.  And this year, I’m going to church with my husband, who is the music director of his church, and he has one of his hardest work days on Christmas Eve.  The last two years I stayed home alone to wrap presents and cook.  It’s going to be so great to go to church and hear the beautiful Christmas music and light the candles and welcome the birth of Christ, the essence of the Christmas spirit.  We’ve planned a simple, but elegant Christmas dinner for Christmas Day, without a lot of time in the kitchen, we’ll be enjoying a prime rib roast, hashbrown casserole, hot fruit casserole, broccoli casserole, 7 layer salad, and dinner rolls.  Everything can be made in advance and cooked in the oven on Christmas morning while I enjoy my family.  The roast is going into my Ron Popeil “Set it and Forget It” rotisserie oven.  I’ll have plenty of Christmas cookies and fudge and pies and cakes to share with everyone who eats dinner with us and everyone who just stops by.  We’ll leave the next morning for our trip to pick up our daughter and make an overnight visit to Jim’s family, and then we’ll be home with the pugs to relax and enjoy the seasonal music and movies and fun.  I won’t even think about going back to work.  But when I do have to start thinking about it, I will be joyous because I love my job, and I look forward to beginning a new semester.

I really feel bad for people who hate Christmas.  But as Stephen Covey says, when we truly know what matters most to us, and we manage ourselves so we can be and do what really matters most, we can end up with a joyful Christmas spent doing and being what matters most to us.  We can create the Christmas we want to have.  It’s in our hands.  And mine is delightful!

Merry Christmas and may you have the most prosperous and blessed New Year!

Deb

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small
stones.”

Chinese Proverb

Sometime between last Friday’s posting and today’s writing, I stored this quotation, so that I could use it this week.  I knew I had done that, but I couldn’t remember what it was.  And I didn’t know how appropriate it would be until today!  I have been steadily, over the past few days, carrying away small stones as I remove a whole mountain of final compositions, so my students can end up with grades at the end of the semester.  And all the while I’m carrying these small stones away, the students are hauling more in and piling more on!  It seems at moments as though they will never end, but then I remember that the final deadline for getting the grades done is 9 a.m. next Thursday morning.  So, this reading and more reading and marking and making comments on compositions will eventually end.  It will be done.  I love that about my job.  Every semester begins anew.  Ah!

I’ve gotten through a lot of things that I thought I couldn’t by taking it one stone at a time, one day at a time, until the mountain is finally conquered.  Never has anything conquered me, and truly, though some mountains are tougher than others, I don’t expect that any mountain will ever really conquer me.  I will always be the victor, and knowing that makes me very serene.  And thank goodness that I don’t have to look back or go back and handle any of those stones that I’ve previously moved anymore.  It’s over.  It’s finished.  Things begin anew.  But I know some people who move old rocks every time they get a chance.  I have no idea how they even get up in the morning.  Sometimes they choose not to get up, and I can see why! 

I remember an old spiritual that is appropriate here:

“Gonna lay down my burdens, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside.  Gonna lay down my burdens, down by the riverside.  I ain’t gonna study war no more.”

Thank the good Lord that we don’t have to keep carrying burdens forever.  Thank goodness we don’t have to wake up “fighting” life every morning.  Thank goodness we can go to sleep knowing that “although weeping may last for the evening, joy cometh in the morning!”

Beginning anew is a blessing.  Everyone should claim it!

“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision
just passes time. Vision with action can change the world. A true leader
must first see an idea as opportunity; then choose to act upon it.”

Joel Barker
(American Businessman, Consultant, Author)

My final exam topic that I’m giving my composition students this semester is CHANGE.  I’ve included several quotations about change from which they must choose one and make their thesis statement responsive to the quotation.  I didn’t include the above quotation, but it would have been a good one to include.  Basically what Mr. Barker is saying to us is if we want to instigate change in our lives, we have to have vision, which means we have to see what the final product of that change is going to look like.  If we don’t have that vision, if we don’t know what it looks like in the end product, we’ll never know if we’ve achieved it or not.  But even if we have that vision of exactly what the change will look like, and we never take any action to reach the goal, then we really haven’t set a goal, we’re just dreaming.  Because a goal has to have steps to act out in order to reach it.  I can say, “I will lose 10 pounds by New Year’s Day.”  That’s a reasonable goal.  But I can sit around saying it or affirming it all day long, 24/7, but if all I do is think about it, without knowing what steps I’ll actually need to take to achieve, I won’t achieve it.  You have to plan the work AND work the plan to get anywhere. 

Likewise, if we don’t have any vision, so we have no idea what the outcome looks like, yet we’re busy, busy, busy doing random things, we still won’t achieve our goal, or even if we make some progress, we won’t know if we’ve achieved anything without that vision.  That’s why when I teach goal-setting, I teach students to make the goal measureable.  How do you know you’ve reached the goal if your goal is something as vague as saying, “I’m going to eat healthier”?  You don’t.  But if you say something very concrete and measureable such as, “I’m going to keep my daily caloric intake below 2,000 calories,” then you know what that looks like.  Your vision is a page in your food diary that totals your daily calorie consumption with a total at the end of the day that is less than 2, 000.  Did you make your goal?  “Yes, I did.  I ate 1875 calories today.”  Or you could say, “No.  I didn’t make it today.  I ended up with 2800 calories today.  I’ll try again to make the goal tomorrow.” 

So, to truly effect change in our lives, we have to have that vision, knowing what the outcome looks like, and we also must take action in specific steps to reach that outcome.  And if we do that, as Mr. Barker says, “Vision with action can change the world.”  Or it can change us, and then collectively, we can change the world.  Sometimes the best I can hope for is to make changes in myself and let the world take care of itself.  Or as Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  But you can’t be any kind of change at all without vision AND action.

Thursday, the three giants of the automotive industry met for a second time with our Congress and presented a proposal upon which they hope to get a lot of government money.  Billions of dollars.  They came before Congress already, and Congress sent them home to develop a plan for success.  After all, if the government is going to give them that much money, we deserve to know what their vision is and we also deserve to know what their plan is for achieving their goals.  They weren’t ready to tell Congress those specifics before.  I don’t know the outcome of the Thursday meeting yet because I haven’t had time to read about it yet.  But I would hope that Congress would deny them the money they seek if they don’t have some very specific goals with some very achievable deadlines.  And personally, I don’t think that economizing by laying off thousands of automotive workers is a good goal. That doesn’t help the economy.  That hurts it.  But that’s just my opinion.

Taking this discussion back to losing weight or being healthier or eating healthier, whatever the goal happens to be, we need to realize that just saying that our goal is to eat healthier is no more appropriate as a goal than the automotive giants saying their goal is to not have to declare bankruptcy or go out of business altogether.  My question to them is how are you going to avoid it?  What is your plan?  Six months from now, where will your company be?  Where will your workers be?  What will you have truly accomplished toward building and selling an automobile that consumers will buy?  And to those who want to be healthier or weigh less or exercise more, we need to know what healthier looks like, what weighing less looks like, what exercising more looks like.  We need to know where we will be a week from now, a month from now, and a year from now.  We have to set measureable goals.  That is, we do if we want to succeed in changing anything.  Just like the automotive industry, we need to get real and put our vision and our actions together to accomplish something.  Otherwise, we’re just spinning our wheels!