My husband and I live on a Live Oak lined, brick paved street where neighbors know one other in no small part because of what George brought to our ‘hood.

There are still conversations about George as neighbor greets neighbor taking in our own recycle bins. “If George were here our bins would have already been back at the side of my houses” we say.   Even a couple years after his passing we are still saying,  “that truck would not be parked there If the Major were around.  Anne wouldn’t have to find someone to collect her mail while she’s gone, and  that cat would have already been fed if George were here.”

We all still miss him and feel his absence. The 90 something year old man form Skenektady,NY who moved to Harwood St. and made himself, kept himself, relevant. Most mornings I would spot George peddling  past our house ridding his three wheeler on his way up to the closest McDonald’s. About a mile and half round trip.  The rest of the day would be dappled with George sightings and sounds that indicated he was around and doing his thing.

Major George’s General Job Description:
Know everyones business
Take in everyone’s recycling bins
Sweep walk ways
rake leaves
take in mail
turn on front porch lights
Bring around trash cans
feed stray animals
Get cars towed
Keep an eye out for everyone!

Once when Matthew was out of town I had walked up to the market for a few items. George, of course saw me as I passed by his house so stepped outside to ask “where you going missy?”
“To the store George, do need anything?” He says he’s fine and I walk on.
He of course knows that my husband is out of town, cause, well, he knows everything. I’m pretty sure that he keeps a closer eye on me than most because of my white cane.

At the market I turn to see a disheveled old man. He doesn’t look at me, just says to himself, “there she is”. I smile at George even though he still has not looked at me. He leaves the store.

I finish my shopping, and of course, right outside I see George. He’s standing by his three wheeler and without a word he grabbing my bags, (looks around in them a little) and then settles them into the basket. “You took the long way” he says to me, “I’ll show you the short cut home” that’s all he says as we head back to Harwood St.

The Major got payed with lots of gratitude, conversation (when HE was in the mood) leftovers and baked goods. He got rides when he needed them. He was thrown an annual bowling parties for his birthday and he was loved.

George made his life relevant!!!

So what do I mean by today’s thought? Let me give you an example to start this conversation out.

I remember hearing a statistic on NPR that 85% of people who are legally blind or blind are unemployed. I thought, of course, no one wants to hire a blindie, I knew it wasn’t MY fault that I was such a lose, I mean…

Then I thought about it more (from a less self deprecating perspective). I got a little ticked actually. I knew plenty of smart people who have sight impairments, me included. WHY then were we having such a hard time finding employment? Where we having a hard time finding employment? We must be.

It has got to be because of accessibility issues right? Like finding transportation to and from the workplace, that must be it. Or no one wants to sit in the cubical next to some talking computer all day, it must be discrimination. Or maybe it’s that blind people are perceived as not being as bright as their sighted applicants, as Gov. Paterson of NY feared an SNL skit reinforces.

Well crap, I may as well get my cup of pencils and go find some corner to stand on.

OR MAYBE the number is so high, 85%, because most people become sight impaired or blind later in life as older adults, as RETIRED ADULTS, adults who are not working any longer. Maybe?

Most the people who are sight impaired or blind that I know, of working age, are in fact, umm…working. Not just as piano tuners either. Not race car driver (yet) but all kinds of career choices based on interests not on sight.

Consider the information you hear on TV, even public radio carefully. More importantly, consider the information you are feeding yourself with equal or greater scrutiny. Your own information may be askew as well. Pay extra special attention to those “facts” that say things like “I can’t, I won’t, I don’t and I’ll never…” They may actually not be telling the whole story of who you really are.

Did you catch last weekends Saturday Night Live’s skit spoofing Gov. David Paterson of New York State? If you didn’t see it, maybe you have been hearing all the noise that has followed in its wake.

My take is that this is good news for people with disabilities. Think about it, a blind guy is Governor of New York State …An”openly blind” guy…Governor of NY! Plus, the guy has enough cache to merit a skit on SNL. Well, we have arrived!

It’s easy to forget the fact that we have already had a disabled person in high office. Then however every effort was made to hide the fact that the President of the United States of America, FDR, could hardly walk. Somehow a disability showed weakness, so it was painstakingly hidden. Today the disability of a public servant is not hidden. We have come so far in fact, that it’s acceptable fodder for a comedy skit. Or, it should be acceptable fodder, but we still have some raw nerves it seems. Too bad.

My only beef with the skit is that it just wasn’t that funny. Funny would have been if the Governor showed up and spoofed himself.

It’s too bad that Paterson jumped right into “outrage” before consider the situation from many angles. The same goes for The Federation for the Blind and other disability advocacy organizations. We had the chance to say, it’s great that we are at a place that it’s alright to poke fun at someone specific who has a disability. His character was not being attacked, his accomplishment as a guy in the public eye was being exploited. Haven’t we been aiming for equal access? He wasn’t selling pencils on street corners in New York City, we was holding a graph on the economy upside down. It wasn’t super funny but it was not degrading.

Take the risk and express your HONEST thoughts on this. I would love to hear what you have to say.

Yesterday she wrote a blog entry that I think is an important expansion to the thoughts I shared in my last post. She picked up where my expertise leaves off. So to both introduce you to Patty (if you don’t know her already) and also share her thoughts about spouses of disabled war vets, I’m reprinting her post. Here it is:

“…If you’re married to someone learning to go after his or her dreams with a body that can’t do some of the things it could do before, it’s going to throw some new obstacles in the path to your dreams, too. People are going to treat your spouse differently now. And it’s going to affect you. Your spouse must handle many things differently now. It’s going to affect how he or she handles your relationship, too.

Expect love. It won’t — it can’t — come in the same packages as before, but it will be there. Find other ways to get the other forms of help and support you need to follow your dreams.

Assume love. Don’t jump to conclusions about the meaning of a harsh or discouraging word or a change in daily rituals. You’ve both got a lot of adjusting to do, and you’re going to overadjust a few times before you get it right.

Look for third alternatives. Honor the dreams. Respect the efforts. Don’t ever think your first idea or two is all you get to choose from. Build the new rituals, the new furniture layouts, the new traditions, the new chore-sharing arrangements that build the new life and move toward the lifelong dreams that make you both whole no matter what.”

Click HERE to visit Patty’s blog

Click HERE to visit her Website

I think this language can, and often does, cause more pain than healing. When I read words like “help veterans get back on track and put the pieces of a very shattered puzzle together again” I think, “Ummm, not likely.” Not likely for that vet who’s got one original limb left after being hammered by roadside projectiles. I say you don’t put the pieces back together; you have to build a whole new kind of puzzle. That vet is going to learn to walk and button his shirts up in a new way; that’s not an old puzzle for him, it’s a new one.

I don’t want to sound like a hardass bitch, I just want to say, what’s gone is gone, and it hurts, it sucks and it deserves to be mourned. But to think it’s going to all fit back together neatly again like it once was, that life is going to be put back on track is doing people a disservice. Not just for the returning solder either but everyone. You and me and everyone. It’s hoping for the imposable and asking someone who’s gone through hell to come home and do the impossible. What a crappy thing to do to someone. And what a crappy thing to look on in disappointment as they try and fail at “putting the pieces together again.”

These are new lives being built. Maybe even better lives, yes better even with shrapnel still lodged in someone‘s gut. You’ve just got to get that no one is going to get back to normal. NORMAL does not exist anyway; “normal” is nothing more than a setting on a washing machine, period.

I read how an event is designed to help “wounded veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan become whole again.” I’m not sure what to say to that. If you are trying to go BACK to anything, anything whatsoever, it is
just not possible. Wholeness is what you make of it in a given moment. To tell the Iraq vet that an event will help him become whole again, might sting a bit. This man is whole and remains whole three limbs down. He is as whole as he is willing to work for being. Just like everyone else. But let‘s not lie to him either. He’s going to be looked at in a new way and even maybe talked to differently. To pretend he’s the same guy he has always been is patronizing. He’s a new him, with a new puzzle to design. I’m not suggesting that he asked for this new construction of his body, I’m not, I’m saying it is what it is. Go forward from there.

The one thing that is the same for every vet that has sustained a physical injury is that they have passions that can not and were not blown away by a roadside bomb. They may think it’s been lost to despair or impossible to disability, but I full heartedly disagree. You cannot amputate a dream, and a passion is only fogged by PTSD, not lost.

The dreams of loved ones of injured vets are also still intact. You, too, might need to design those dreams so they can be expressed given the new conditions for which you will be developing them. You, like the vet, must know that those dreams remain.

Trauma does not take your dreams. Injury does not steal a goal; only thinking it is gone and no longer attainable will rob you of your deepest and best self. I’m not saying it’s going to be a cakewalk getting your dreams expressed. I am saying it is by far the most important thing for you to do.

If you want to help people feel whole, help them express their dreams. Identify and address the new challenges head on, but only as fresh obstacles to accomplishing what always has been and always will be who they really are.

Next Teleconference

THIS SATURDAY!!

Just a reminder, my next teleconference is:

December 6th

3:00 – 4:00 PM ET

If you’re interested in participating, please fill out the form on the contact page. Once I get your email I’ll send you the phone number and access code you’ll need to join in the conversation. After you have done this once, you’ll automatically be informed of all future calls.

There is no charge for the teleconference, except what your long distance carrier charges for a call.

The Call

The conference call is set up in an informal format. I will introduce the topic and then the rest of the call is open to question and answers.

During Saturday’s conversation:

Let me help you help yourself locate and capitalize on the opportunities embedded in your problems.  Or in other words, bring your sh*t to the table and we’ll explore how you might wish to apply the “7 Opportunities for Landing Butter Side Up” to your own life situations.

1: Don’t Prevent the Fall
2: What To Do on the Way Down
3: What To Do upon Landing
4: What to Do When You Don’t Land Right side Up
5: The Five Second Rule
6: How To Get Up
7: Don’t Prevent the Fall

I was in the emergency room last Thanksgiving morning at 3:00 AM. My father flew in later that same day. I hardly remember greeting him because the pain killers had begun to kick in for a pretty serious tooth problem and I had finally, finally, after almost 2 days, fallen SOUND asleep. My sweet husband and father made dinner and at 11:00PM we gave thanks. I think. I was pretty loopy, but very grateful to modern medicine and an understanding family.

I’m going to ask my friend Beth if she would repost her two stories she wrote on the BB… What’s your your best Thanksgiving tale?

Beth is offering a very cool, FREE, keepsake project pdf to do with kids over Thanksgiving http://www.bethlamie.com. It’s a great way to help preserve family memories, go check it out!!!!

What does “landing butter side up mean to you”?

LdyDisney: Landing butter side up means that nothing bad stuck to you right? You fell but no harm done…

wharriman: maybe what looked like a sure disaster didn’t turn out so bad after all…or else you just dropped your bread..

steveofmaine: If you’re falling into a situation as it were, to position yourself as best you can to make the best of it?

incslinger: means you have cheap carpet

(I didn’t fully understand this so I asked for some elaboration…)

Yep, thats what my Mum used to say. If you had expensive carpet it would have landed butter side down - Sod’s law lol

DeenaEsq: To me, I’d have to go with “Yea! 5 second rule applies!” (Don’t tell my kids I said that though…LOL) (just don’t let them read my blog Deena)

NikiSherman: butter side up to me means that whatever happens in my life, something good is made from it

NextInstinct: “Landing butter side up” ? It means 5 second rule is in full effect! Enjoy the toast! {It means fall up

UrbanPanther:landing butter side up to me means that I was lucky because I didn’t end up with a sticky mess.Haven’t heard that in awhile!

rebeccashapiro: The toast flips and luckily lands butter side up avoiding a slippery floor

smlacy: “Oh good! My bread didn’t get cat fur all stuck in the butter! Alriiight. Lucky todayy.”

ReikiMoon: butter up? you can dust off & keep going, butter down, you’re screwed..ain’t no pickin’ dirt outta butter!