Lifeboat

  Ma Ling needed a lifeboat. She understood the concept, but didn't know the Mandarin word for rescue. She knew that at the age of five, and with the added burden of missing fingers and toes, her odds of being adopted were slim to none.

Ma Ling watched the light-skinned, well-dressed people tour the orphanage on Fridays. They were always smiling, always taking photos, but they only had eyes for the baby girls in their arms. They never noticed the older girls, never spoke to them.
  Once a red-haired woman came to visit Ma Ling's room. She handed out lychee candy and smiled a lot. Ma Ling smiled back at her and tried to make her drab Hello Kitty t-shirt look presentable, but she knew not to get her hopes up. Sure enough, no one in Ma Ling's room went home with the lady.
  The orphanage director came to the room the next day and took photos of each of the five year-olds, something she had never done before. Lifeboat, Ma Ling thought. Send me a lifeboat.

  This is our Ma Ling. Our daughter Malani, adopted December 5, 2010 at the age of 8 1/2. We weren't her lifeboat--she was ours.

My First Memory

 

  I was lying in bed, although I was fairly certain it was a crib. It was dark and I remember thinking I should be asleep. I could hear the sounds of the house creaking, settling down for the night. I was afraid of the sounds, but not the darkness.
  I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, and I imagined it was the sound of soldiers marching across the floor, coming to get me. I knew about soldiers because my dad was one. I knew we lived in England because my mom mentioned it often. I knew my brother Scott was asleep in the same room. I wondered if he could hear the soldiers marching.
  I pulled the covers over my head and tried to shut out the noise, but it did little to muffle my runaway imagination.
  I've always had an imagination, coupled with insomnia. I've always heard the house creak at night. It was particularly bothersome years later when we lived in a Victorian white elephant that creaked all the time, day and night. I didn't have a decent night's sleep until I went away to college. The dorm was quieter than the house.
  I have many memories of sleepless nights, my ears perked up to note every creak, snore, or meow. I've written novels in my mind during those sleepless nights, so the time was never wasted.

Pain Expressed Heals, Transcends, Motivates. Pain With a Purpose.

  In the midst of my childbearing decade, I taught natural childbirth classes out of my home. The first-time parents who sought me out were older--knocking on forty in most cases--highly educated, mostly crunchy. The women needed haircuts, the men wore either Birkenstocks or ties. They sat on my living room floor in the lotus position and tried to visualize pain. What it would feel like. How she would accept it and work with it. How he would help her during labor.
  Once in a while, a nervous couple would ask me to be with them during labor and delivery as a doula. I would get a call late at night, drive to the hospital, spend eight to twelve hours coaching the mother to breathe through each contraction and showing the father how to press on her back and give her encouragement. I must have been a decent childbirth instructor because no one ever mentioned postpartum that the pain surprised them or that it was more than they could handle.
  My own childbirth pain was unbelievable, particularly my one induced labor on this day twenty years ago. When the contractions became five minutes long, all reason, all my so-called training, went out the window. I screamed though transition because there was nowhere else for the pain to go. The mothers I coached never screamed. I'm not sure how I could have helped them if they had screamed.
  Does pain have a purpose? Yes, sometimes. Today the pain of delivering my third child is a distant memory, but now I get to experience a different kind of pain: mental, emotional, and spiritual. The physical pain was a breeze, in comparison.
  Here's a photo of my four "pains" in chronological order: C-section, natural childbirth, the induced labor birthday boy, and C-section. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but I thank God I don't have to do it again!

But Is It Art?

  George took up sculpting in retirement. At first Lucy complained about the mess because he chiseled the expensive blocks of granite until they were piles of gravel, and because George swore a lot when his statues turned into gravel. Then he would sulk. Then he would go out the next day and buy another block of granite.
  Lucy lined the flower beds with George's gravel and tried to be out of the house whenever he chipped the nose off his latest project.
  George kept at it, determined to create something beautiful out of the gray, unforgiving boulders. Lucy stopped keeping track of how much George spent on giant rocks and chisels. At least the house was paid for. She got a job at Target to pay the bills, and to stay away from George's potty mouth. She hoped sculpting was a phase, that George would get bored with it. Hadn't he given up golf, gardening, and bicycling after only a few months?
  But George had something to prove this time. He wanted to leave a legacy as an artist. But Rodin he wasn't.
  One afternoon, Lucy came home from work to find George in a good mood. "Come see what I did." She smiled indulgently and followed him out to the garage.
  She admired his work politely, curbing her urge to ask, "What is it?"
  "Doesn't it look like he's sleeping?" George traced the line of the neck and shoulder with a dusty finger.
  Now Lucy could see it. It was a man without a face.  (Artist credit: Herbis Orbis)