Food, Family, Fun!

The sound of children, laughing and playing, can be heard on a beautiful summer's day. The adults sit around a table on the deck, drinking, smoking, and playing cards. Occasionally heard is someone shouting "You're Cheating", or "Bullshit", or maybe even something much more vulgar when they are losing significantly. The smell of the grill permeates the air with the tantalizing aromas of highly anticipated food. This is the scene of a traditional summer cookout at my mother's house, which takes place almost every weekend from mid June through the end of August.

During a summer cookout my family has all of the "traditional" foods. Always up for grabs, in the form of grilled food, will be hot dogs, cheeseburgers, chicken breast, and maybe even some steak. Side items always include potato salad, chips with dip, baked beans, corn on the cob, and deviled eggs. For dessert we have our choice of watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberry shortcake, and ice cream. Once the food is ready everyone grabs what they want to eat and finds a place to sit. There is never enough chairs for everyone so the children get to eat out on the lawn in picnic style. Over dinner we enjoy the time "shooting the shit", just talking, laughing, and enjoying our time together.

Food is always the center of my family's traditional summer get together. As my mom says "If you feed them, they will come." When I think of traditions in my family related to food the summer cookouts come to mind. I don't so much think of thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years, though my family celebrates those too. Our family cookout is what it means to go home. I feel a deep sense of peace during these gatherings. Summer is upon us once again, I will be going home.

The Loving Nursery

The nursery is a community. Long hours spent hoping for the best, sometimes expecting the worst, bind us together. Two rows of warmers are separated by the nurses station in the middle. We continually monitor the vital signs of those in our care. Under the gel pad of each warmer is a card with a picture of Jesus on the front and The Lord's Prayer on the back. When "the black cloud" is coming one of our members sprinkles holy water throughout the nursery in hopes of warding off the evil that is believed to be in our midst. Not everyone in the nursery believes this to be true, but because of the close bond that is formed among us, not a single one of us would say anything against this ritual. We are a community formed by choice of career, salary, benefits, and work hours. We are also a community formed by so much more. The level of devotion, compassion, and caring upheld by each individual tightly bind us together. Looking into the face of an infant that is being held lovingly in their parent's arms after a stay in our care says it all. We love our "job" and this makes us a community.

The nursery extracts a hefty emotional toll. It is impossible to remain emotionally detached to the babies in our care. Sometimes we care for a baby for several months. We feed, change, bathe, and hold the babies for hours every single day. During their stay in the nursery they are our children. We go into this realizing that we will lose our child either by death knocking at their door or by their parents taking them. Both of these outcomes extract a certain level of emotional distress. Chances are that if death comes for them it will be sooner rather than later and we will not have had time to grow emotionally attached to them. Death however is always hard to witness, especially when the person has not even had a chance to live. If their parents get to take them home this is a bittersweet time because we will miss "our baby" but it is our goal to get them healthy enough to go home. All of this emotional turmoil that is ingrained in the nursery is really the only tension that arises. Some members of our community feel "burnout" due to the emotional stress felt. When a person feels burnout they do not perform the job as well. A conflict among members then arises because there is no room for less than 100%. Every baby deserves the best chance we can give them and any member of our group that does not perform their best tends to be seen as an outcast and is looked upon unfavorably.

When an infant comes to the nursery it is because they are sick in some way. They may be born early and have underdeveloped lungs or they may be born with a birth defect that requires surgery before they get to go home. No matter the reason they come to us and we do the best that we can to help them out. I love being able to send a now healthy baby home with the parents. The joy in the faces of those parents and the knowledge that we played a part in the outcome is the reason that I am a part of this community. We do lose some babies, but the ability to keep going in the face of this heart wrenching fact, is the reason that I know that this is a community that I want to be apart of. It is a tough career choice that many people could not stomach, but for those of us that can, it is the most awarding experience in the world.

Wallet Who?

Walking around a well known store just browsing the aisles it is now time to leave. I head to the checkout. I reach into the cart to grab my wallet only to realize it is no longer there! What could have happened? I can only assume that my then 1 year old son decided to drop the wallet out of the cart when the novelty of its pretty red color wore off. Panic immediately starts to set in. I run around the store, up and down the aisles, trying to locate the lost wallet. In a last ditch effort I check in at customer service hoping some good Samaritan happened by the wallet and turned it in. What instant relief I felt when I find out that indeed I was lucky enough to have my wallet returned with all contents intact.
When this person found my wallet did they turn it in immediately or did they rummage through to find who it belonged to? I wonder what impression they would have of me from the contents of my wallet. I am now examining my wallet, trying to see it through the eyes of a stranger. It is a well worn red wallet with a kanji symbol on the front of it. Is this person of Japanese descent? Opening up the wallet it is easy to see that this is not the case. A military dependent ID card is the first item up for inspection. It is a woman's wallet, she is obviously married. Looking at her picture she is a Caucasian woman and judging from her last name she might be married to a Hispanic man. My driver's license would confirm my age to be 26.
The next sleeve contains my Everett Community College tuition waiver card for military veterans. From this they would be able to see that I served in the military myself and that I must be a student. Other items my wallet contains are a Petsmart card, library card, and a video card. She must like movies, pets, and books. The next thing up for inspection would be my debit and credit card. Only one credit card? So maybe she is debt conscious or maybe she has such bad credit that she does not qualify for any other cards. Then there is the CPR and First Aid cards. Okay, then maybe she has something to do with the medical field. The last contents of the wallet would be a series of pictures. The first one a younger picture of the girl in the ID cards standing with a hispanic male, probably her husband. The next picture is the same couple but in wedding attire. So definitely her husband. After this photo is one that contains the same said couple, but with an added child, so now they are parents. The last picture to see is the same couple, with the child again, but older, and now there is another child.
What does my wallet say about me? A stranger would deduce that I am a 26 year old female, married, with two children. They would also see that my husband is in the military, that I used to be, and that I am currently a student. The other things they could assume is that I love books, movies, and animals. All of these are accurate but they do not sum up everything about who I am. Things they would not be able to see about me is that I love video games, camping, fishing, swimming, hiking, sports, painting, and even writing poems from time to time. I am emotional, lovable, funny, and friendly. Looking at the contents of my wallet may give you a general outline of who I am but it does not tell everything about me. Yes, I am my wallet, but I am also so much more.

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