Authenticity, Part II
The other day at church a friend of mine came up to me and put her arm around me and told me that she really liked me. It made my day. But I was a little surprised at myself. I never took myself for one of those people who needed a hug or smile to recall my self-worth. I was sure I had enough security without the reassurance of others. But let’s face it, I am one of those people. I like to know, and especially to hear that someone likes me. Is that such a bad thing though? The more I think about it the more I realize how human that is. How real it is. So now I want to hug everyone and quit pretending that I don’t need their attention. I want to be sincere. I want to be totally genuine and treat people the way my conscience tells me to treat them.

Going back to my last post about authenticity. I’ve broken it down into two thoughts.
1. Making judgement
2. Everything thereafter

So my first task is to train myself to make careful and cautious judgements. Sometimes judgements are necessary. A mother looking for adoptive parents for her unborn child has to make some very important judgements, with what might seem like grossly inadequte time or information. But some judgements are hurtful and result in great loss. My new catch-phrase for judging is a line from a hymn. “In the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can’t see.” I’ve learned this lesson many times and yet still I criticize.

My next task is the “thereafter”. In my relationships with people I want to try to break down the selfish barriers that protect me from vulnerability and prevent me from realness. This is a particular weakness for me. I am so afraid of rejection that I avoid making invitations. I am so worried about being annoying that I don’t make a phone call just to talk. I want to protect someone’s feelings so I am deceptive or dishonest. (I know that sometimes that might be a good thing, but I think I do it to a fault.) I want to “relate” to my co-workers so I join in the gossip-fest. I know truth but fear keeps me from sharing it. Those are my barriers to sincerity. In one of my favorite books “Bonds That Make Us Free” C. Terry Warner sums up what I am trying to say.

“What does it take to achieve emotional intimacy? The fundamental ingredient is an awakening of each individual to others and a willing effort to respond without any personal agenda in exactly the way that seems most right, considerate, and helpful.”

I am so weary of answering questions based on all the wrong things. “What does she want me to say?” “What will make her like me?” “What will impress him?” “What would so-and-so say?” What a burden it is to muddle through all the self-agendas to get to an answer or reponse. It’s a wonder I even want to talk to people. All of my artificial dialogue is weighing me down.
In my good moments when I answer according to what I feel, what my conscience says is good, rather than what I think is the “right” answer I feel completely liberated. It feels honest and real. I usually only have the strength to be my best self when my self-confidence is strong and my heart is full of charity.

So to follow-up from my last post. I believe I can treat people the same. I can treat all people with open-mindedness and kindness, and if they feel my sincerity they might easily forgive any poor assumptions.

It seems fitting to end this pontification with another work experience. Yesterday my 83-year old patient asked me if I had had a hug yet that day. Not two seconds after I answered “No” she wrapped me in the kindest embrace. So real. So awesome. I hope it doesn’t take me 83 years to get there.

And obviously that includes anyone reading these words. Our internet service is up this month and I’m investigating other options. I thought about doing a cute little poll on my blog but I am so illiterate about internet services I didn’t know what to put for the choices. So fellow internet customers, who is happy with their service and who isn’t, and what is your service? Help a sista out!

Okay so maybe that last post was a yawner, a little too philosophical? But don’t breath a sigh of relief too soon because I plan to follow up on those thoughts at a later date.

Meanwhile! Bronco football is the word around here. On Thursday Richard told Cameron that Saturday was “Game Day”. Cameron thought that meant we were going to the “game house” (Boondocks maybe?) and it took a good deal of persuasion and distraction to help him get over that let down.

Well Julie got tickets to the game last night and since Richard and I are both ISU alumni we couldn’t pass it up. Besides, even I can enjoy 3 1/2 hours of football on as pleasant of an evening as last night was. I was a little torn about who to cheer for, because Richard and I jumped on the BSU bandwagon as soon as we moved to Boise. But I have Bengal loyalty too. So I wore orange, how’s that for neutrality? And cheered for both teams. (Although I couldn’t cheer for ISU too loudly because we were sitting in the players’s guest area and I didn’t want to upset the numerous player girlfriends surrounding us.) I was happy to see ISU at least get on the scoreboard.
My two favorite moments from the game were courtesy of the Bronco Marching Band. (I guess I am a bando at heart afterall.) The first was the goosebumps I got during the Star Spangled Banner and the second was the wave of nostalgia that washed over me when the played the ISU fight song. Ahh the memories. They even spelled out ISU on the field. How hospitable! I enjoyed some actual football moments too I guess. 🙂 Oh and the mini donuts? Yum yum.

I had an experience the other day at work that really got me thinking. Then I listened to two podcasts that really set my mind spinning. The first was an episode of “This American Life” called ‘Got You Pegged’ and it was about the judgements and assumptions we make that are often wrong, but sometimes necessary. The other podcast was “On Point” with Tom Ashbrook and it was an interview with Richard Todd who has done a great deal of study and writing about authenticity. But first, here was my “foot in the mouth” experience.

I guess everyone does this, we do it all the time, but at work when my patient walks into my operatory I make immediate assumptions. It is almost sub-conscious, the way I surmise and conclude based on appearance and a couple minutes of small talk. Then I get on with my work; taking radiographs, cleaning teeth, educating the patient, etc. Well at the end of this particular appointment we were chatting while we waited for the dentist to come in for the exam.

Me: Where do you work?
Patient: St. Al’s. (Hospital)
Me: Oh? Are you a nurse? Receptionist?
Patient: No, actually I am a physician.

So most of you are laughing at me and thinking I was out of line to lead the questions in that direction, but hindsight is 20/20 and she did not strike me as the doctoral type. (Obviously.) I apologized and she was very gracious. It was probably quickly forgotten by her, but all of the sudden the last 53 minutes rolled through my mind and I realized I would have done things very differently if I had known she was educated, experienced, and… well… intelligent. For example, part of the appointment involved measuring the depth of the gingival sulcus around the teeth to see if there is a loss of periodontal attachment. Although I could have used those words with her, that isn’t usually the way I explain things to people, I try to simplify. “I’m measuring the gums around your teeth to see if there are any ‘pockets’.” My point is, here was a woman with a far superior knowledge of human anatomy than mine, and I was over-simplifying based on my poor assumptions about the level of her understanding.

What made this so disappointing to me was that I explain oral health in different ways to different people. I suppose I sometimes oversimplify or don’t simplify enough, but this time I had her pegged for someone on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I really dumbed it down. So how did I go so wrong? Am I that bad of a judge? Why do I have to judge in the first place? I guess the bottom line is that I need to ask more questions at the beginning to make a more sound judgement. But boy did I feel foolish. I felt like I need to work on treating everyone the same, but it’s not exactly that simple.

The last couple days have been miserable for Eli. He got a bad cold and we had a rough night followed by a rough day. It seems like you assume that after the newborn weeks pass, sleeping through the night will become a routine again. Are we unique in that that doesn’t seem to be the case around here? But Eli seems to be on the mend now. Here he is before he got sick.
Here he is yesterday, feeling quite lousy.

I always knew that parenting wasn’t going to be straightforward. But every once in awhile one of the boys does something so unexpected that Richard and I just kind of stare blankly at each other, thinking “What do we do about this?” Last night Richard put the boys to bed and a few minutes later Cameron came into our room asking Richard to get the “hills” out of his blanket. Over the next 20 minutes Richard and I were repeatedly called back to his room to get the “hills” out of his blanket. He was very distressed and could not be appeased. Finally, at my wits end I explained to Cameron that blankets just have “hills” and there was nothing else we could do. He seemed to finally surrender and we were all able to go to sleep.

We had another “Unphotographable” moment yesterday. The reason this moment was unphotographable was because if I had taken the time to get my camera the neighbor who witnessed the drama would have thought I was a negligent mother, and she would have been right. So the picture I didn’t take was:
Cameron on his bike, not pedaling, his face frozen in fear. He was yelling desperately for help while powerful gusts of dusty wind blew him down the sidewalk, at a speed much greater than he could ever achieve by pedaling. I raced toward him, blinded myself by wind and dust and rescued him from his bicycle that had been hijacked by mother nature.
Needless to say, a big wind storm had blown in rather suddenly. He was quite traumatized. I brought him inside and held him until he quit sobbing, and after that he just laid on the couch wrapped in his blanket. Of course by the time Richard came home he was as animated as ever, and told a dramatic version of the story to his Dad, proud he had survived.

This is Cama-lama on the dock up at Lucky Peak last weekend. This morning I overheard the following in Cameron’s bath. The rubber duck yells “Hit it!” to the plastic boat. Then the plastic boat goes “vrrooom!” and Cameron yells “Woo hoo!”

Cameron loved watching the “Olymp-kits” as he called them. His favorites were the diving and the racing. He competely changed his stance after he saw the real way runners “take your mark”. Cameron got some tools for Christmas last year and has always had trouble keeping his hard-hat on. So I just used one of my head-bands to help him out.

Okay everyone, go ahead and roll your eyes because I have created another blog. It’s an “idea sharing” blog of sorts… it won’t really interest many of you. But for the craft/homemaker types you can stop by!

http://www.secondratepursuits.blogspot.com/

I call it Second Rate because nothing I do is First Rate. I don’t mean that in a self-derogatory way, I just mean I am a beginner at just about everything.

Oh and also because these pursuits are, ideally, secondary to the more important pursuits in my life.

Warning: This post makes reference to certain female articles of clothing.

I suppose this conversation happens between mothers and sons all the time, but that didn’t make it any less amusing when it was my turn with Cameron.

The scene: I am folding laundry and Cameron comes in the room. He picks up a bra and the following conversation ensues:

Cameron: What’s this?
Me: Oh, that’s mine.
Cameron: What is it called?
Me: It’s called a bra.
Cameron: When I was a girl I had one of these!
Me: Oh? Hmmm.
(I don’t even know where to BEGIN with that statement.)

He proceeds to swing it around and around whacking Eli in the face.

Me: Cameron please don’t play with that.
Cameron: Oh, is it just for little boys to look at?(We often tell Cameron that some things aren’t to touch or play with, just to look at.)
Me: Um, not exactly. (Actually thinking “Heavens No!”)

That was the theme for the fair this year, so play we did! We started off with gyros in honor of Evan. (I’m sure they are not as good as an authentic Greek gyro but we’ll settle.) I wish I could attend the fair in two installments, once with all four of us, and once with just Richard. It’s hard to do what we want to and what the boys want to but it was fun anyway. Cameron loved the horses of course, Eli not so much. Too big I guess. My long-term blog readers will remember pictures like this from last year… couldn’t pass it up.

We had to take a second mortgage on our house to pay for the rides, but it was worth it. Cameron just grinned the whole time. Our agreement was one ride for me and one for Cameron. But a nice family who had had enough gave us some more tickets so Cameron got to ride a few times.
By the time I rode the swings it was dark so the pictures didn’t turn out. I felt a little ridiculous standing in line with a bunch of tweeners and I may have even sprinted with all the other 11 year old screaming girls to get a swing on the outside. But I loved every minute of it! I love the swings.
Eli was much happier around the smaller animals.
We finished off the night with an elephant ear, that I am pretty sure was Eli’s favorite part of the night. Richard was easy to please with a giant strawberry lemonade. It was good times.