September 10: Locusts, Down's Syndrome, Complex Innocence

In 1921 a Russian naturalist named Uvarov solved the mystery.  Locusts are grasshoppers:  they are the same animal.  Swarms of locusts are ordinary grasshoppers gone berserk.

Grasshoppers gone berserk.  Creatures transformed through drought or other natural calamity into something dangerous.  Great hordes of locusts swarming over farmland and field, pillaging and marauding like shoppers on Black Friday, leaving behind shreds and stalks.  Nature can be cruel.  Locusts and tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes.

I have a sister with Down's syndrome.  All my life, she was a loving presence.  Everybody loved her.  When I was in high school, the members of the football team loved her.  I never went to a game, whether it was homecoming or playoffs.  My classmates came to my house, picked up my sister, and brought her to the football games.  Like I said, everybody loved her.

As people with Down's syndrome get older, they can sometimes change.  Alzheimer's disease and dementia are fairly common.  There's a genetic link between Down's and Alzheimer's.  Over the last few years, my sister has become a different person.  She asks the same questions over and over.  Although she's always been stubborn, she was never mean about it.  Now, she will become downright physical if things don't go her way.  She's punched me on more than one occasion.

I'm not sure if that means that my sister is developing Alzheimer's.  She's certainly not the girl who went to high school football games with my friends.  It makes me a little sad.  Sometimes she's the sister I remember from my childhood, but, more and more often, she's belligerent and downright mean. 

People who are not around her on a daily basis don't recognize how different she is.  In small doses, she is still sweet and funny, hugging everybody, saying, "You know, I love you."  To those closest to her, however, she is just not the same.  Of course, I know she's still the sister who I grew up with, but I miss the simple innocence.  Her innocence now is more complex.

I love my sister.  It's tough to see her aging and changing.

Saint Marty prefers the grasshopper.

I just needed a good laugh . . .

May 8: Mother's Day, Poem, Weeping

Mother's Love

It is Mother's Day in the United States.  Aside from Christmas, more people got to church on this day than on any other Sunday in the calendar year.  I guess kids feel obligated to make their moms happy, even if it means having to rise early, dress up, and attend a worship service.  Anything for mom.  I also imagine this day is the biggest for people going to Sunday brunch at restaurants, as well.  One or two days out of the year, we all fulfill our sonly or daughterly obligations.  Tomorrow we can all go back to being our normal, self-centered selves.

At church today, I read my new poem.  I wrote it last night because I wasn't happy with one of my old poems I was going to use.  It didn't seem quite right to me.  So, after Lawrence Welk was over last night, I sat down and wrote the poem at the end of this post.  It took me about an hour-and-a-half.  Of course, I'd been thinking about the poem most of the day.  I had it pretty much all planned out.  That's why it didn't take me too long.

When I read my poem this morning, my one goal was not to cry when I read it.  I practiced it five or six times without getting too emotional.  I thought I was free and clear.  Then the pastor decided to play a video that got the entire congregation and the choir weeping.  I could feel the tears sitting in my throat like a fist afterward.  I knew I was sunk.  I got to the last three lines of the poem, and I choked up, started to cry.  After about 15 or 20 seconds, I was able to finish.  Then I had to sit down and play Schubert's "Ave Maria."  Holy crap, I think every Kleenex box in the place was empty.  My friend who was singing the song lost composure about half-way through.  Everybody was sobbing.

I guess talking, thinking, singing, writing about mothers does this to people.  I think it has something to do with mothers' selfless love.  It's a love that goes on and on, through childhood, through adulthood, and beyond.  It's the kind of love I think God has for each and every one of us.  That's what Mother's Day is really about.

Saint Marty wishes all mothers a blessed, peaceful day.

For Mother's Day at Mitchell U.M.C.

I was 18 the first time I saw
My mother cry.  Arthritis invaded
Her spine, stiffened her vertebrae
Until, on that morning, she couldn't
Cough or lift a coffee cup without
Feeling whipped, scourged.
She'd given birth to nine children,
Her youngest daughter with Down's,
A baby the doctors told her to forget,
Put in an institution, walk away,
Erase, like a hurricane after waters recede.
But Mother brought my sister
Home, began the hard work of mothering.
Feeding,  Diapers.  Teaching.  Colors.
Letters.  Numbers.  Watched my sister
Laugh, walk, speak, do all the things
Doctors said she would never do.
My sister flourished like an orchid
In the hothouse of my mother's love,
Became exotic and beautiful, healthy.
If my mother cried when the doctors
Used the words "mongoloid," "retarded,"
She never said.  If she cried
When my sister took her first impossible
Step, she never said.  If she cried
When my sister first called her "mommy,"
She never said.  The day I saw my mother
Cry, she felt helpless, old, reduced.
Like Mary, she realized she couldn't
Carry every cross for her baby. 
Ave, Mother, Ave.

March 2: Saint Marty at a Loss

Well, I don't have a lot of time left in this work day to write anything deep, reflective, sarcastic, or funny.  I had plans to get a lot more accomplished today, but it just didn't happen.  So, I'm going to just open up my journal and type up whatever I find.

Here goes...

As a young child in Detroit, I went to a private Catholic school, as did my eight siblings.  My sister, Rose, who is two years older than me, has Down's syndrome.  She went to the special education classes.

Every year, the Shriners took a bus-load of kids from the special education classes to the circus, and I always went along with them because my mother was usually a chaperon or helper.  The day of the circus field trip, we would pile into the school bus, and it usually took forever.  Some of the kids were in wheelchairs and had other mobility issues.  So I would sit in the back of the bus as they loaded students, and my friends would see me.  They would laugh, point, shout names at us--"Ricky Retardo," "Circus Freak," "Special Eds."  It was constant, and, for me, it lasted for days afterward.

It got to the point where I hated circus day, even though my sister was always thrilled to have me along with her classmates.

It gave me a taste of what my sister faced every day of her life.

So, it's not very polished,  It's not funny.  But you have something to read.  Something better tomorrow, I hope.

Saint Marty has to get going.