I have spent ten years with the same man.
They have not been good years with him.
Why is it so hard to let go?
When I look back my memories of the good things, they center around my children.
I dont hate this man, I care about him, I love him, but I get phsically ill around him.
When I saw a phychologist for a few month, I was diagnosed with Post Tramatic Stress syndrome, related in large part to my marriage.

Rewind,

I was sick in bed, had been throwing up, he presses his cock against me and starts to let me know he wants sex. He always wants sex, his desire for sex is like a big hungry black hole that is never filled.
"come on Derek" I plead. "I dont feel good"
He continues unabated to grope me in ways that make me feel like nothing more than a peice of meat.
"Your body doesnt belong to you anymore, it mine, remember" Derek, the husband, the pastor, qouting scripture at me.
"you are supposed to submit to me in all things" he reminds me
"So you dont care if I am sick? If I dont want to?" me gauging him, does he give a shit?
"No. You will like it once I get going." he says
"So you just want me to spread my legs and let you do what ever you want? You dont really care how I feel?" seeking for some shread of concern, care, empathy from him.
"Yes. Whats wrong with you, before we were married you were a whore (I wasnt really) and now the sex is holy approved by God and you dont want it. You liked being a whore and you dont like what God has approved, whats wrong with you?" Derek
He does what he wants, gets what he wants.
Is it my will he is after, am I like a cattle a piece of meat to him?
This senerio plays out for nine years, then I say stop. Then he blames me for his forays into porno and an internet relationship with his old girlfriend.

To the world he looks like the nice guy, and he is, in front of them.
At home he is a monster.
But I perpetuated the myth for all those years in the minsitry, believing people would make heaven if they respected my husband and I could turn people away from God if I told the truth.
When I stopped believing that, no one believes me. I have been extolling his virtures for years.
I tape recorded him talking to me recently, and when I feel like I am going crazy I just listen to him berate me, and me sanity returns, my assurance that filing for a divorce was right comes back to me.

I am nice, too.

Pet Peeve #10
Aggressive large dogs who habitually roam the streets.

What are these pet owners thinking?
Do they think?
Maybe they think it might cramp their puppy's style to keep the thing pent up in the house or on a leash.
I have a message for those types of people:
Keep your dog in your yard. If your dog harasess me or any children on the street, you may find one day, your dog accidentally on purpose gets ran over, three times, in rapid succession.

There is a pit bull on our street, the people who live katy-corner to our house own this animal. This dog comes into our yard in the early morning and barks at my husband.
Okay, fine and dandy, my husband is 6ft tall 190 pounds and has a concealed weapons permit. If the dog charges him it will be quite literally dead meat. However, if the dog is fearless enough to come in MY yard and bark and growl at a large unintimidated man, what would happen to little kids out in the yard? For sereral weeks now, I no longer send my little guys out to dump the trash alone.
Today:
All the kids had just gotten off to school and my husband was loading his work stuff into the van. I follow him out to the front yard to finish a conversation we were having and this large, crop-eared, pitbull is in my (MY) yard barking at us.
Derek is totally undaunted because he's packing heat, besides, he hasn't shot a deer or bear for several seasons, an aggressive dog might satiate his desire to shoot some warm blooded, four legged, beast.
I, on the other hand, am purely pissed off. So, I start yelling, with considerable volume in a fake southern accent so the neighbors will hear and maybe think I am a dangerous hick. Maybe I am.
I gues if my light blue, fleece, Christmas, pengiun pajama pants coupled with my biker tank top doesnt set off some warning bells in his head about my mental stability than nothing will.
I say, "I'm thinkin I'll go get me my shot gun and shoot that thing. Or maybe, I'll jist git in my car and run that nasty puppy over."
WEll, well, well... I gues the nieghbor could hear all the commotion after all.
That gets his attention, somehow he missed his dog barking and growling at us, in our yard, but boy did he hear me threaten his animal.
First he tries to call his dog back. The dog does not listen, AT ALL. Instead it casually pees on a rock, then it heads down the street to terrorize another yard.
This dog has about as much respect for his owner as I have for cake without icing.
Then the guy turns to me and says, "she is a really nice dog, she just likes to do that."
What's "that"??
"That" obviousley means: go into other peoples yards and threaten them without backing down.
So I say, "I am really nice too.
I just like to drive my van right over dogs that run around in the street"
That was the end of our exchange.

What have you done for me lately?

I hate math!
Ok, now that I got that off my chest I can post myself a blog before Friday rolls around and I get a disapproving glance from Liza.
Friday is the day my former English class gets together for lunch. I cherish this little event by the way.

So… lately I have been thinking about love. My thought is that if you have to change who someone is or own them to love them…well then you don’t really love them, maybe just maybe you love love, you love being loved or, you simply love being in control.
Recently, after leaving the cult, I started getting in touch with some of my old pre-cult friends. We can not be terribly close, that’s because my friends were mainly male and now I am married.
Propriety rules out, even if the friendships were platonic.

One of these friends, Davin*, came by to visit with Derek and I the other day. While he was there I asked him what happened with the girl he had been engaged to a few years back. He said something I thought was rather insightful, “Sarah* loved the role I played in her life not me.” That was not good enough for Davin*. I have thought about that a lot. It is something I used to ponder (pre-cult) when observing relationships. He went on to say, “anyone that did the things I did for her would be a fine husband for her, it didn’t matter who I was.”
My thoughts on “Role Love”.
Role love, my name for the love you have for any person as long as they fill a certain role, it is plenty good for most people.
But it also has many faults
#1 It is the lowest life form of love, Jesus even said, anyone will do good for those who do good back to them, most will do anything for their kids, and even the worst “sinners” are good to their friends. Think mafia. He said its something special to love someone who doesn’t have anything to offer back (I am heavily paraphrasing).
#2 What happens if you cant fill your role anymore? Say, you get really sick and can no longer perform your former role related responsibilities, those who supposedly loved you will be out lookin for someone else to fill your role quicker than you think. I have seen it happen. I have seen woman, good, good woman, in my own family, who were faithful, good wives for many decades. Then they got cancer or their kidneys failed and guess what?? Romeo (el husbondo) gets a new girlfriend before they are even gone and he is happily remarried before the grass even has a chance to grow over their grave.
#3 The person who “role loves you” loves how you make them feel, what you do for them, it has nothing to do with appreciating your individual soul, this kind of love is based on works. As Janet Jacksons so sagely put it, “what have you done for me lately? Oh, oh, oh, yea!”
The cult I left portrayed God’s love for us this exact way, if you are doing church prescribed good works then God loved you. If you were not doing the works then you better put on you fire suit (like it’ll do any good) because you are on a grease poll heading straight to a devils hell.

Now I will not dispute that if you love someone you will try to fill roles in their life that make them happy but if all you have is roles then it’s not the person that you love, its how they make you feel.
As far as the control issue goes, I think that proverb about the bird and the cage explains the situation well enough.
*changed names to protect identity and so no one will get pissed off at me.

Stupid things people say

People say stupid things.

I have always heard people repeat idiotic slogans that are supposed to make you feel better. Let me give some examples, “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”
What a crock of s**t that one is. I was taught that useless mantra as a child, I suppose some misguided adult thought it would make up for all the jeers and insults hurled at me by other children. Not only does common sense tell you that words have more lasting damage but research is showing the same thing as neuroscientist realize with the aid of the fMRI that rejection does in fact show up as pain in the same area of the brain that registers a broken arm.
Useless fable #2, “time heals all wounds.”
Yet another crock and it’s not the nice kind that comes out of a crock pot and includes slow roasted potatoes.
“Time heals all wounds.”
Tell that to the guy with the bullet lodged in his brain from twenty years ago. Now I am not saying that time doesn’t help. It does. Time helps for certain types of wounds namely those that have been treated properly and this does not include amputations.
I remember one time my 220 pound English Mastiff somehow got a small cut on his leg, I didn’t realize he had even been injured until it turned into a huge puss filled lump with all the skin healed over it. Left untreated it would have eventually at least cost him his leg. I had to take a knife lance the original injury back open and drain all the puss out then disinfect the wound, not once but everyday for about a week before it finally sealed up and healed properly.
Untreated wounds generally get worse as time goes on and have the potential to eventually kill a person.
Try the “time heals all wounds” method the next time you have athletes foot or a tooth infection, I think then you will understand the wisdom of my words.
The same is true for emotional wounds, you have to treat them first and then time can do its work. Covering something up then waiting for it to go away is a fool proof method for a psychological/emotional disaster of sorts.
So the next time some person tries to share this type of sage advice with you, just nod your head politely and then flush it down the proverbial toilet.
BTW since I only have one person who reads this, it is not directed at you but at the world. Though, I know, the world isn’t listening. Darn!

To my favorite english teacher.

Well, you are my only English teacher.
The sentiment is there
and I know that buttering you up WILL NOT affect my grade.
Everyone knows that.


However, in all honesty, you are the only one who has taught me anything about English since about the third grade. No joke.Thank you for all you time and efforts. I know you took this class as a favor for a friend because the other English class was just positively bubbling over with eager students who needed a teacher. Then everyone left. Well... except seven of us. It appears that most of us had a crisis of some sort or another during the course of the last four months. I wonder sometimes if we remind you of those little sea turtles, ya know, the ones that hatch on the beach and then mercilessly get picked off one by one by those nasty birds, then the ones thatmake it to the sea...well you know the rest of the story.

Abraham Lincoln, draft of History final

Abraham Lincoln
An unbiased observer in the early 1800’s would likely have seen little in young Abraham Lincoln to suggest that this poor, backwoods, under educated, sinewy youth would arguably be one of the greatest single forces affecting the course of American history. Only the founding fathers themselves can rightfully be held in the same ranks. This man came at pivotal time in American history, with a force of conviction, a unrelenting will and was catapulted to the position of commander in chief in an era where the nation was dividing of moral issues and threatened to split in two.
The Early Years
Abraham Lincoln’s birth and early years were unexceptional in many ways, lacking the indicators, of the greatness or the force in history this child would grow to be. He was born on the12th of February in 1809 in a small log cabin with dirt floors near Knob Creek, Kentucky. He was the second of the two children that Thomas and Nancy Lincoln had together. He lacked the advantages awarded to a child born into wealth or a good name; both his biological parents were in fact illiterate and all in all Lincoln claimed to have spent a total of one year being formally educated as a youth. About his own childhood Lincoln was quoted as saying, “It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence, you will find in Gray’s Elegy ‘the short and simple annals of the poor.’ That is my life, and that’s all you, or anyone else can make out of it.” (Freedman pg 7)
By the time Lincoln was in his mid twenties, he had suffered through numerous tragedies. The first of them being the death of his mother, a few years later his only sister died in childbirth, and his good friend Ann Rutledge passed away. Lincoln’s step-mother saw something special in Lincoln, instead of favoring her own biological children; she paid him special attention and encouraged him in his studies. She made sure he had sufficient time to study, and even prophesied over the boy Lincoln, saying, “someday Abe will be a great man.” (Jacobs, pg 8) It’s most likely that Abe’s step-mother was the most benevolent force in molding Abraham Lincoln. Later, in reference to his step-mother, Lincoln said, “all that I am, all that I ever hope to be, I owe to my mother.” (Jacobs, pg 8)
He also suffered financial ruin. Lincoln left home at the age of 21 after he had seen to it that his family would be properly cared for, and were settled into their new residence in central Illinois. Shortly after that, he started a joint business in New Salem. It was a mercantile called the Berry-Lincoln store. His partner William Berry however, had a penchant for hitting the whiskey barrel too much, and the business went bankrupt. Berry later died, and Lincoln was left with the entire debt, which amounted to a little over a thousand dollars. At that time, that was an almost insurmountable debt for someone in Lincoln’s financial condition. It took him 15 years to pay off the debt, which he often referred to as “the national debt.” (Jacobs, pg15)
Many factors influenced Abraham Lincoln in his youth. Before his mother died, she gathered all the children together, and said to them, “be good and kind to your father, to one another, and to the world” (Freedman pg 11) Abraham was a thoughtful young man who, no doubt, took these words to heart. At the age of 18, he took a trip to New Orleans. There for the first time, he saw the black men, women, and children, chained, auctioned off, and treated like animals. No doubt, with his reflective nature, and the dying request of his mother, that he, ‘be kind to the world’ no doubt it was a troubled young Abraham, who was later quoted as saying, “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel.” (Freedman pg 45)

Lincoln and Politics
Lincoln’s time in New Salem, was a period where he learned, studied, reflected, debated, and was generally being refined as a man and a politician. In 1832, he ran for state legislature and lost coming in 8th out of 13. But in his own precinct, he won 227, out of 300 votes. By 1834, at the age of 25, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. Lincoln began to study law, and within three years, he had passed the law exams and became a circuit lawyer. When legislature was not in session, he travelled around the circuit taking on all different kinds of cases. He had a great mind for memorizing and understanding the law, as well as being able to take an issue and bring it down to a nut shell that could be clearly understood by a jury. This also gave him an opportunity to practice his public speaking abilities.
It was during his time as a lawyer, that Lincoln met the young Mary Todd. She came from a wealthy and influential family. For the Todd family, Lincoln was good enough to associate with for the purpose of making influential social connections, but not good enough to have as an in-law. Lincoln and Todd began to court. He was moody and thoughtful, while she was outgoing and highly social. They must have seemed ill matched on the surface but despite their differences they apparently fell in love. After various disputes over the courtship within her family and a short break up, they eventually ended up married. Mary Todd, like Lincolns step mother, saw potential greatness in Lincoln and said to a friend,” Some day, he will be famous, maybe even president of the United States” (Jacobs, pg 20)
In Lincoln’s early political life, he was largely publically silent on the issue of slavery though inwardly he had disdain for the institution, going on record as saying that slavery was ‘founded on both injustice and bad policy” (Freedman pg 46). When Lincoln’s term in congress was over, he took a break from politics and spent the next five years practicing law. It wasn’t until around 1855 when the slavery issue was back at the forefront of the political scene that Lincoln decided to jump back into politics with a vengeance. He disagreed strongly with the Kansas –Nebraska Act proposed by Stephen Douglas. The Kansas –Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise which had kept slavery at bay in some of the new territories and once again opened them to slavery. Lincoln went on a mission, giving speeches across Illinois. After Congress made the decision in the Dred Scott case, that slaves had no rights under the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln set about to study and publically refute Congresses’ ruling. In Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln gave a speech arguing against the Dred Scott decision, where he stated that when the Founding Fathers said that all men were entitled to equal rights, “This they said, and this they meant” (Freedman pg 53). In 1858 Lincoln challenged Stephen Douglas to a dual, of words and ideas and convictions, they ended up engaging in seven separate debates. Douglas argued for the spread of slavery and Lincoln against it. Lincoln said, “Slavery is an unqualified evil to the negro, to the white man, to the soil, and to the state.”
By 1860 Lincoln had transferred his allegiance from the dying Whig party to the Republican Party. He became the Republican candidate for president. Lincoln won the presidency even though he was not on the Southern Ballot. Southern leaders called Lincoln a “black Republican” (Freedman pg 65) and soon after, Lincoln was announced as president, the United States was standing on the brink of Southern succession. Lincoln did all within his power to assure the Southern States but they would have none of it and before long, by the hand of the South, the nation had broken out into a civil war.

Lincoln as President
Lincoln was uniquely suited for this fragile time in our countries history. Whether it was his deep thinking, his humility, his compassion or his belief not only in justice towards all men but his deep desire to see this nation remain one nation, it is difficult to imagine anyone else taking up the leadership of this Country with such grace at a time when a strong hand could have blown the whole nation apart.
In the beginning of the civil war, Lincoln had to deal with the problem of impudent Generals. Lincoln was no military man himself, and suffered much public criticism for the battles that were blundered due to poor military leadership. As the war continued Lincoln began to study military strategy and became more actively involved in the war instead of trusting in his Generals, who one after another had largely proven themselves unfit for the task at hand. He rose to this challenge as he had risen to those placed before him previously in life, not with perfection but with persistence and motivation. He even personally planned strategies and directed tactical field maneuvers. (Freedman pg 79)
Amidst the tragedy, turmoil and stress of the war, Lincoln suffered what was probably the greatest personal loss of his life time, the death of his son William. Willie he said, “was too good for this earth…it is hard to have him die.” (Freedman pg 81)
During his presidency, Lincoln engaged in long debates with an outspoken Black abolitionist by the name of Fredrick Douglas. Lincoln began to think more seriously about how to handle the issue of slavery. He tried compromises that proposed a more gradual break with the institution of slavery with states like Kentucky, but they would have none of it. Finally, Lincoln made a bold move. Slavery had started the war, and it would end with the war. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation; it stated that all the slaves in the rebel states would be free by Jan. 1, 1863 if the states did not return to the union (Freedman pg 86). This had the benefit of not only destroying slavery in the U.S., but it also freed blacks who were chomping at the bit to join the union army and fight for their own freedom. Lincoln received public ridicule for this decisive move, but he stood his ground and refused to back down.
One of the major turning points of the war was the appointment of Ulysses S. Grant to the position of General in Chief of all union armies. Finally, in Ulysses Grant, Lincoln found a general that was willing to fight and press the battle to the enemy relentlessly. Together they worked out battle plans that would assault the confederates from every angle. The blood shed increased dramatically with this approach but it eventually proved successful, though at the cost of many lives. On April 9, 1865 the war was finally over, General Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in a face to face meeting at a court house in Virginia.
After the war was over, the president urged the nation to graciously accept the south back into the union. He refused to gloat over the victory, providing an example for Americans every where to unite peaceably as a nation once again. When news of the union victory reached the White House, he requested that the band play “Dixie”, a famous and beloved song in the south, it was a statement to the gathering crowd. Abraham Lincoln endowed with tremendous strength of character, in a time of great national turmoil, and personal anguish, persevered, allowing these qualities to rise to the surface like precious metal in a refiner’s fire, to the unification of this country, freeing us once and for all from the scourge of human slavery.













Works Cited
Freedman, Russell. Lincoln a photobiography. New York, N.Y: Clarion Books, 1987.
Jacobs, William Jay. Lincoln. New York: Scribner's, Collier Macmillan Canada, Maxwell Macmillan International Pub. Group, 1991.

Cult, first draft

Lit Crit draft

Nam-Bok The Unveracious by Jack London
A young man named Nam-Bok grew up on the banks of the Yukon Delta in Alaska among the native Indians who are a fishing people who live along the coast. As a young boy Nam-Bok is out in the sea on his Bidarka (a form of canoe used for fishing) when a strong off shore wind carries Nam-Bok out to sea. A series of calamities then take place Nam –Bok huddles in his canoe for four days and is at the point of death when a schooner filled with a handful of men out hunting for seal skins finds him. They take him on board and nurse him back to health. The schooner meets an unfortunate fate being tossed by the wind into the rocks off the coast of a strange new land. Nam-Bok is skilled as a swimmer and is the soul survivor from the schooner crew. He is curious and bold and sets out to see who the people who inhabit this new land are. He sees many people and modern things, years later as an adult Nam- Bok feels an inner yearning to find his people. A people and a home which Nam-Bok’s has been endeared to and glorified in his mind for many years. He comes home expecting a warm welcome and boasts proudly of the things he has seen and brings gifts to his kin’s people.
From the other side you see his mother stands on the coasts daily always watching and hoping that her son will come hope. Her tribe’s people gently mock her about this as it is there belief that people lost at sea never return alive. One day she sees a figure in the distance paddling clumsily towards the coast. She says it’s Nam-Bok but no one takes notice until he draws nearer. As his similitude becomes undeniable, the people begin to crowd the canoe for a look, but instead of a warm welcome Nam-Bok is viewed with suspicion. The tribe’s leader pronounces him a shadow and treats him as an evil spirit from the other side. After much haranguing Nam-Bok is received ashore, albeit with much apprehension from the tribes’ people, with the exception of his mother. They decide to throw a feast for Nam-Bok’s return and become tentatively eager to hear the stories that he brings with him from the foreign world he has been sojourning in. As Nam-Bok sits around eating with people he becomes disillusioned realizing that that the reality of his people is far removed from the fantasy he has built up around his childhood memories. Nam-Bok begins to tell his people of schooners, steam boats, trains and the many many white people he has seen. The Yukon Delta people have no reference point to even believe that such things could even exist.
Nam-Bok goes to bed that night in his mother’s tent but is very shortly awakened by the village leaders they tell Nam-Bok that he must leave and now. Hey tell him that either he is a shadow or he is a liar. Either way he is not welcomed. The story ends as Nam-Bok is on his Bidarka calling out to his mother to come with him. She will not she says because she is to old. Even the colorful shawl that he has given her is slipped from her shoulders and thrown in the boat because the people believe it will bring evil upon them to hold onto anything belonging to Nam-Bok
Nam-Bok waited a long time in anticipation of seeing the mother and people that he had been estranged from. He looked forward to being reunited with his people and proudly telling them stories of the wonders of this new world he had seen. As he wandered the new world heprobably felt a little anchor in his heart to his home land that gave him some security even in a strange place. He fondly remembered a place called home where he imagined he would always be welcomed back again, he probably envisioned his return and news from afar would be celebrated. Instead he was viewed with suspicion, ultimately viewed as a deceiver, someone from the land of shadows then rejected and cast back out to sea. Only now Nam-Bok was bereft of the delusion of having a home or a people.

argument draft

you said we could post quick writes of our drafts, so this is technically not cheating right?

People die everyday from a host of tragedies, some die of incurable diseases, some from accidents but tragedies that are completely avoidable are the ones that cause not only heartache but total outrage. While some fight for life with every bit of strength they have, thousands have their lives snatched away instantly by a carless drivers every year. When a young life is cut short, or a mother is forever taken from her children by a completely avoidable offence, it is a call to action for the citizens of this county to cry out, loudly and persistently for change. The problem is drunk driving and if you think this issue doesn’t affect you, you are sadly mistaken, according to statistics provided by MADD three in ten people will be involved in an alcohol related car accident and 31.6 % of traffic fatalities are caused by a person with a blood alcohol level of more than .08. That means, chances are, you or one of your family members will be affected at some point in your life by the irresponsible decision of a drunk driver and the fully culpable, apathetic law makers. Every year in the U.S. 13,000 people die as the result of drunk driving. This is simply inexcusable, and it is avoidable. Simple strategies when applied would drastically cut down on the number of people killed but even if the new strategies and stricter laws saved one parent from grieving the loss of their child or one child growing up without a mom or a dad the cost would unquestionably be worth it. The currant laws we have are simply not tough enough and we must change those laws in order to save the lives of the innocent.
Currently in the state of California, on a typical Friday, people go out for a night of drinking and dancing and at around two in the morning the establishments toss them out in the streets in various conditions of intoxication; many get in their own vehicles and drive themselves home. According to statistics, for every person that gets ticked for drunk driving there were 87 previous incidences of drunk driving they committed before getting caught. That means that there are 87 times more drunk drivers roaming our streets in their steel death machines for every one that gets caught. When a bar stops serving alcohol there should be a mandatory one and a half hours wherein the bar is required to stay open and provide food and non-alcoholic beverages. Upon leaving a bar patrons should be required to point out a designated driver to law enforcement and that person should have to pass a breathalyzer test before they are allowed to leave. If no one in a given group can pass the test a cab should be on standby and if the person doesn’t have enough money for the cab they should have the option of being ticketed the cab bill and having to pay it back or spending the night in a drunk-tank. This strategy would cause people to plan ahead when heading out for a night on the town.
Car makers spend thousands of dollars ever year installing airbags, for safety purposes and perks like car stereos and such are common features in any vehicle, the cost to car makers of putting a sensor built into a vehicle that would prevent a car from being driven by a person under the influence of alcohol would save up to 13,000 lives a year. That is thirteen thousand families that would be spared the loss of a loved one. Surely with our technology this is no impossible feat. Law makers need to pursue these types of laws.


Stiffer sentencing on the first offence would also be a detour to those considering a un planned night of partying. Drunk driving should be treated as attempted manslaughter in the court system because that is what it is. The public is so well educated on this issue that there is simply no excuse to cry naïveté about the dangers of drunk driving. Every time someone hits the roads intoxicated they are taking innocent lives into their hands. It is time for our law makers to step u to the plate and treat this with the attention it deserves. It is also high time for a public outcry on the issue of drunk driving. If there was a fully preventable disease killing thirteen thousand men, woman and children in America every year, no cost would be spared to provide treatment and prevention. This issue is no different.

Chriastians?

Christians?
I recently found my bio father and after one conversation weeks ago I sent him the letter featured below. In the mean time one of his sons (Brent) was in the beginnings of embracing me as a sister, something I was over-joyed about. This letter was meant to be between him and I and he forwarded it to all his sons. Below the letter that his son, Brent, the only one who would talk to me, sent to me on behalf of the whole family. This completely broke my heart and I would like to add that the whole family claims to be Christians, with one of his sons even going on missionary trips.

Letter sent from Bio fathers son with all the family names placed at the bottom to show their alliance on this issue:

"I received your disturbing e mail April 21 and have decided that i don't
want to have any more contact with you. Please respect my families and my wishes
by not contacting use by email or telephone anymore.

Mark Johnson - Brent Johnson - Letti Johnson - Alan Johnson - Craig Johnson "

I would challenge every one of these people to take a couple minutes and completly imagine that they happened to be born as me and then see if there responce would be the same. If that has no effect on their behavior or they are incapable of accomplishing this task than they are all the furth evidence that needed to confirm my growing belief, based on many years of personal expierience that "sinners" are by far of a kinder ilk...

Letter to Mark Johnson, Medford Oregon

above is my bio father and his wife, Mark C. Johnson and Letti (Herreras) Johnson from Medford Oregon

Hi Mark,
I would like to build a relationship with you through letter writing, initially, if possible. Let me know what you think. At the risk of burning a bridge I am going to be totally frank with you. I am willing to suffer the loss that may be incurred. I have lived these last 34 years without my biological father and if my candor offends you than I am willing to live however many years that I have left without you. As far as I am concerned whatever is said between us, is between us, I respect your sons and will not distress them by telling them my feelings about certain things.
First I would like to commend you on your sons. I looked at Alan and Brent’s My Spaces the night before Woody called you. It is very unusual to see men, have such clean profiles on the internet. There was not a foul word, nor pictures of women, or anything else that would suggest that they are anything other than good, solid, young men. That is not typical in this time that we live in. When Brent started to write me, in just a few letters he impressed me with qualities like maturity, kindness and in his unpretentious nature. He also showed love, devotion and admiration for all of you. Adult children like this do not come about by accident, especially in a world were the responsible and honorable conduct among young people is lacking. The impression that I have is that you and Letti must be devoted parents.
That being set aside. I want you to know that if you should want a paternity test I am more than happy to comply. When my dad’s bio daughter (Candy) came along a few years ago I thought it was wise and told him so. Of course by then Peggy, her bio mom, was deceased and could not tell her story. They never ended up taking that step but all you have to do is look in Candy’s face and the features undeniably are my dads. My mother is 100% positive that you are my father. Even with all that being said, I would not be offended nor begrudge you if you wanted testing.
For my side of the story, I have been told by both of my parents as far back as my memory goes that a Mark Johnson was my biological father. They would tell me what they remembered of you and say that I looked like you. I always knew my dad adopted me and it was treated as a matter of fact, the sort of thing that none of us made a big deal of. I kind of felt special, in fact, because Woody and I have had a special relationship, he still often tells me that he married my mother in part because he fell in love with me and wanted me as his daughter. It made me feel special that he chose me. For his part he has been a great father, very attentive and involved. After my parents were divorced (maybe 1984 or so) I spent as much time as possible living with him rather than my mother. That wasnt always possible though because she needed a live in baby sitter for her exploits and as the oldest I was it.
As I got older, probably around 12, I would sometimes get angry that I did not know you. I went through feelings of desertion and such. Why didn’t you want me? Why didn’t you care enough to make sure I was taken care of? I understand not marrying my mother but never checking up on your own child, that I don’t understand, especially now that I know you went on to father and care for your other children so well. My mother did not mother me, after my parents divorced, when living with my mom, no one had my back, made sure I got help for my learning disabilities ect. I never was in a sport, went to a prom, or even have a “childhood”. I had to care for my mother, take a back burner while she had her affairs and did her thing. I watched all her children while she attended night school and never got tutoring or help with my education. Why did you never look for me? I always felt like there was some part of me that I could not understand, maybe you could have helped.
When you told me that you were contacting me because Letti told you it was the right thing to do, it was like a stab through my heart. After all these years… waiting, hoping, not kowing if you were dead, you were willing to let me know you BECAUSE YOUR WIFE SAID IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO! I thought maybe YOU would want to know me. I want to know you. No, matter how much love I have gotten from Woody I wanted to know you, my father. My feelings were also hurt because you shared with me that Letti was jealous of me. Although she is certainly entitled to her feelings, some things maybe shouldn’t be said. Also, like it or not I was YOUR daughter and YOUR responsibility before you married her and had a family. Whether I was an unwanted mistake or not. If anyone has a true right to be jealous it is me.
I don’t know if you are aware of this but I have had a highly traumatizing life. I have had so many people I love die. Some in front of my eyes. Other things have happened that I won’t go into. I saw a physiologist recently and was solidly diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I am sorry if this letter traumatizes you but I feel I need to be honest and not white wash the truth.
Nichole

Life

It is good to think somberly about life. One life, one opportunity, to love, to give,


The Bible says, “A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth.” (Ecclesiastes 7:1)

Or

“It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

1992- Grandpa Lloyd dies in a sudden car accident. I loved him but we had an adversarial relationship.
1994- My good friend Kathy dies a slow death. Right before Christmas, after she decorated the house with Christmas decorations, she went to the hospital for an IV because she had gotten dehydrated from the cancer treatment side effects. She never left. One month later they transferred her to hospice and she lingered dying slowly until February 26th at around three in the morning, then her suffering was over.
1996- My high school best friend’s little brother Thomas finally succumbed to cystic fibrosis. We were always pal-ed around with Thomas took him on camping trips and stuff because we never knew which one would be the last. He had an open casket.
1999- Grandpa Burt dies. This one really breaks my heart. I loved this man. My childhood memories are filled with him stooping to my level and playing imaginary games together.
2001- Beverly, my grand mother and the matriarchal glue of my whole family passes away. Once again slow death by cancer. She and I were very similar and shared and understanding that you don’t always get between people. Now the family says I remind them so much of her.
2002- Christine Russell dies. I am still not over this one. She was the only woman who ever hands on MOTHERED me, ever. From the time I dated her son in 1991- 2002 she was my true best friend, though I did not always know it at the time. We even shared an apartment fir a couple years, my two kids she considered her grand kids. One really was. She died of cancer.

I still dream that I am having coffee and talking with these two women on a regular basis.

2005- Jacob Brent Jeffries dies. My son. 8 pounds 6 ounces and five minutes old. I am ready to die now too only I will never kill myself and have all these children to care for.
2006- My Auntie Iva, sister to myGrandma dies rather suddenly. We were close. I spent summers at her house as a kid.
2008- My long time friend Denise Mason dies in a fatal car accident coming down old woman Srings Road across from Chevron.

2008- My Auntie Faye dies also sister to my grandma. Has a fall that unexpectedly leads to her death. This is the woman who was additional my moral compass as a kid. She is also the lady who jumped on beds with me when no one adult was watching.

2008- my husband almost dies of a heart attack.

“Time can bring you down

Time can bend your knee

Time can break your heart

Have you begging please

Begging please”

- Eric Clapton, tears in heaven

I have had my knees bent. Its when you have no more strength to stand.

Time with people is precious and short.

“twenty years from now,

you will be more disappointed

by the things you didn't do

than by the ones you did do”-Mark Twain

Love now,

Try now,

Live and give,

now,

nothing is certain

as children believe

The baby in the meat grinder

Above is a picture of me on my third birthday.
Well Ms.Cheraz, I am sure you have guessed by now that this situation is not as exciting as I thought. Except the part about the little brother Brent, that is still good. But, hey I enjoyed my moment of optimism right? This is where my blogs are going to turn ugly so anyone who doesn’t want a little blood splatter on their clothes should move back a few paces.
This recent turn of events, finding my biological father, has opened the proverbial can of worms or maybe whoop ass, take your pick.
My bio father,
though now I am inclined to label him something along the lines of
malevolent sperm donor,
anyhow, his answer to my mother’s pregnancy was to have me chopped into the equivalent of baby burger, sucked out a bloody vacuum and thrown in a trash can somewhere.Then he proceeds to marry another woman and raise three smart, well adjusted, good boys, who are all well educated and seem grounded. I am feeling like an intrusion into their happy little exclusive family, with the exception of the one brother Brent. Thanks paps!!
So, I talked to him yesterday, oh, he is cordial, friendly, interesting, and smart, you would think that was nice, I suppose.
No!
Actually it made me mad, that someone so reasonable dumped my mom and never saw to it that I was taken care of but rather preferred me dead. Something was glaring in our conversation,
there was no show of emotion, no “I am so happy to hear from you”, no “I am sorry”. He told me that his wife told him I had a right to know him and that it was the right thing to do.
Ahhh... so I get a token.
He is just doing his duty,
guided by the moral compass
of his wife.
I am going to cut the bull shit here and hope none of his kids read this.
I find tokens insulting, I always have. Throw a blow at me, insult me, but don’t give me a cheap token and expect me to cherish your quarter machine ring and proudly wear it around my neck on a gold chain! When I was a waitress I was known to take a cheap tip, chase the offending customer down in the parking lot and tell them, “KEEP your lousy dollar, BECAUSE YOU OBVIOUSLEY NEED IT MORE THAN I DO!”
As a former fetus I object to the premeditation of my murder.
Some men want to go around screwing people and not take responsibility. I think the penalty should be vasectomy after neglected kid #1. No reversals of the vasectomy allowed until you take responsibility for existing children. A day or so ago I had some nice philosophical things to say about all this. I think I wanted everyone to feel better about the situation.
Not happening.
Final note: I am a Christian, unfortunately my experiences with fellow Christians have stunk
maybe they think I stink too,
but I think the lot of them are meaner than hornets and more dangerous.
It was Mahatma Gandhi who said,
"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. ..."

Bio family

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Mrs. Cheraz,Something exciting has happened and I wanted to share it with you. I was adopted by my father when I was two and all I have ever really known about my biological father (Mark)is that he had alot of problems from the vietnam war. Anyways, my dad (Woody) and I have always been super close but even so I always wondered about my bio father and realy wanted to know if I had other brothers or sisters.A couple nights ago I went on the computer to see if I could find Mark and with my mothers help, we narrowed it down to one individual but I was not 100% that it was him so I had to wait untill the next morning and my dad called him for me. Woody and Mark used to be friends long ago and that is another odd side note. Back to the story. It was Him. I have three little brothers and the youngest (21 years) is a sweetie who has been e-mailing me and is very happy to have a sister. I will update more later but this is very exciting for me.

Derek

Thursday, March 19, 2009


Derek (my husband) was raised in the isolated mountains of northern California, about one hour out of a small reservation town called Hoopa. To be exact he lived three miles north of mile marker 2141, he had no real “address.” His mother somehow bought 40 acres of land on the side of a mountain within the Hoopa Indian reservation. How she managed to do that is a long story and one I do not fully understand. Derek grew up without a telephone, sewage, piped in water, electricity or gas. They got their water from an uphill spring on the property, paid a truck to come out with propane, owned a small wood burning stove and owned a generator. He had his own gun at a young age, killed small animals, then cooked and ate them himself, including squirrel. Derek, can tell entertaining stories about his run-ins with the small black bears they shared the mountains with, getting ran over by a truck as a young boy, then getting driven on dirt roads through the mountains over an hour to get to the nearest hospital, hooking his own ear while fishing and getting snowed into their tiny trailer for almost two weeks. Honestly I do not know how he or his sisters survived. His mother gave birth to one other son, but he was still born, she buried him on top of the mountain with a rock for a grave marker. When he was three his Dad took the only car they had then deserted his mother, in the woods, for another woman, then raised the other woman's children. When Derek was 18 he went off to college with high hopes, he had a full scholarship Humboldt State University in Arcada, Ca. his grandparents were proud, they made him a deal that as long as he was in school they would send him money every month to help him out with living expenses. After less than two months, Derek had spent all his money on drugs; he took too many hits of acid and had a really bad trip. After that he quit school, enlisted in the Marine Corps, then went back home to sober up while he waited to be shippe to boot camp.Once he was out of boot camp he got stationed in Twenty-Nine palms California. A place who’s ugliness is a dead tie with Desert Hot Springs, only. He got into a little trouble in the marines and was assigned to mandatory anger management therapy. While he was in Twenty-Nine palms, a kind and elderly Christian man by the name of Ralph Porter befriended Derek, told him about Jesus and took him to chapel on occasion. Unfortunately, it was the young, fellow marine, informal “recruiter” for the church/cult who got his hands on Derek more firmly than Ralph. Within a short time Derek was a fully locked in member of the church, if you want to call it that. He was told to take his marine training, you know, "Semper Fidelis" and apply it to the church along with all his military training in obedience and to apply it unquestioningly to the pastor.To be continued…

Derek's heart attack

Thursday, March 12, 2009

End of October 08

It was a Friday night, my husband (Derek) went out for a late night trip to Del taco after the kids went to bed. The both of us were looking forward to “a date night” watching a movie and eating our taco’s all alone, while all the children were fast asleep. This was big excitement in the Jeffries home. Shortly after eating his tacos Derek complained of chest pain and a queasy feeling. I told him to take some baking soda and water. Derek’s mother had often told me "drink some baking soda! you’ll fart, burp or throw up but something will happen.”
Nothing happened.
Derek moved on to the Alka-Seltzer, still no relief. After that, we cut the movie short and Derek went to bed. We both assumed he was coming down with something or the tacos had made him sick.The next morning Derek headed out to Twenty-Nine Palms to walk a job and give an electrical bid. At the job he started to feel ill again, on the way home to Yucca he called me, “babe, I have a crushing pain in my chest and my arm hurts”“Which arm?” I said, feeling concern creeping up on me.“Umm, my left” Derek replied.“Where are you at?” I said, maintaining a calm voice.“Almost Joshua Tree” he replied. I could hear his voice straining; it sounded like he was getting worse.I instructed him, “Derek, pull into the hospital. Go to the ER and make sure you’re alright. It’s probably nothing but just to make sure, Ok?”
Derek agreed and set to work convincing myself he had a bad case of heartburn or maybe his first panic attack. For goodness sakes, he was only 30 years old, healthy, with good cholesterol, plus, he jogged regularly.At the hospital they took Derek’s blood to test for markers of a heart attack. I stayed at home with our five kids waiting for the results.
I had no babysitter because recently we left a cultic church that practiced shunning of ex-members. We lost ten years of friends, we had believed were our family . We lost our support system, it felt like the rug had suddenly been pulled out from under our feet. The only friend I had left had plans for the day.
The call finally came, Derek’s voice was quivering, “They say... I had a heart attack”The unthinkable had happened.
They were transferring him to the Palm Springs hospital by ambulance immediately.
I started shaking. Then I scrambled to find a sitter for my kids, my remaining friend cancelled her plans to watch my kids.
Derek ended up staying at Desert Hospital for five days, undergoing a battery of tests to determine the cause of the heart attack. They ended up sending him home on heavy duty blood thinners, nitro, beta-blockers, a referral to see a cardiologist at UCLA and no real answers.
The cardiologist at UCLA ultimately gave Derek a “diagnosis of exclusion” meaning every other possibility had been ruled out but one. A small hole was found in Dereks heart, it had gone undetected in regular doctor checkups. The doctor believed that a clot had traveled through the hole and into one of his arteries, temporarily stopping the blood flow to his heart. We waited another 1 and ½ months for the procedure to close the hole in his heart. While waiting for the surgery, Derek was hospitalized for another three days diue to heart problems.
Derek had the procedure about three months ago, he is recovering, but more slowly than we hoped.There are certain things that you assume only happen to other people, I am continually disabused of that illusion and my expectations of this life.Supertramp - The Logical SongP.S. “disabused” is a word I have learned to appreciate thanks to Ms. Cheraz.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

This picture was taken when my husband and I were raising baby chickens. The bird (Jerry)featured in this picture ended up being a rooster, despite all I had read about roosters, I knew he would be different. I could tame him, and he was very sweet for a few months. Then at around six months old he turned on me, viciously! Let us say he met an unsavory end and I felt the sting of failure.The following statements are made by an “expert” in failure. I flunked, kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade then dropped out of high school. As a youth I had extensive school testing, my mother was informed the best placement for me was special Ed.I joined a cult, and then moved to the ranks of pastor's wife. In essence, I was an assistant cult leader. I could list all my failures, but I don’t think a single book could contain them all.I was thinking about a statement made in class last night::“Success is acknowledging that you may fail” (cited source) Ms. L Cheraz
I do think you are onto something, but if I could I would modify your statement:
“Success is embracing failure, learning its lesson, then getting up and moving on.”
Life is about a lot of things, I don’t claim to know them all. However, learning and applying learning are surely among those things. The more intense the pain of failure the deeper the message is driven home (if you let it).Although, at times other times, having an acute awareness of failure is not a good thing.Many people are paralyzed by the fear of failure. Others never step outside of their safety zone or go beyond their range of proficiency because the possibility of failure is so tangible to them and the need to retain the current state of their ego is simply overrides the desire to learn new things.andWhat do we tell our children about success?“You can be anything.”If they say they want to be president or an astronaut, we say “absolutely”We all fail. Failure gets our attention. Teachers know it, you can’t teach anyone unless you can:#1. get their attention.
#2. prove you know something of value that they don’t
or reveal a “blind” spot in understanding the student was previously unaware of.
#3. the student has a healthy respect for the teacher.
Side note: memorizing and learning are, and I say this emphatically, are not the same thing. When you memorize you know the facts, when you learn you make something your own and you are changed.Failure, falling on our faces, accomplishes all three of these things. Tripping and falling flat on our face due to a pot hole, for instance: gets our attention, proves we were not aware of something, and creates a healthy respect. Now you have a learning experience.As for me.I am not done, yet. There is still air in these lungs and..
“ -a living dog is better than a dead lion.” (Ecclesiastes 9:4)

Are we all potential Nazi’s??

Sunday, March 1, 2009


We watched a brief film in psychology class on “Milgram’s study of obedience.” This is a brief summary of his findings and my reaction:Stanley Milgram wanted to test the veracity of claims made by perpetrators of war crimes, that they were “just obeying orders”. He set out to test just how far people would be willing to obey an authority figure. Would people be willing to harm another person if instructed by an authority figure, how far would they go? The test was originally done in 1974 and has been replicated may times with the same results. The study revealed that approximately 65% of people will obey, even when they believed great physical harm was being inflicted on the other person, via electrical shock. People would continue to shock the other person, when prompted by the authority figure, despite cries of anguish and the eventual silence which made it appear that the other participant had died or passed out.
This is exceedingly disturbing to me? Is it to you?
Yes, this brings a partial conclusion to a question that has nagged humanity for years. It explains, but does not excuse the “why” of how otherwise “normal” people went along with Hitler’s genocide, why the disregard for virtue during the New Orleans crisis or the violence of the Rodney King Riots? What about the Salem witch trials or the ritualized sacrifice of humans? Humanities long history if infanticide and the slaughter of innocents over the ages? How could the white American frontiersmen brag about shooting little American Indian infants into pieces? Where was the outrage against these atrocities and how pretentious and audacious are we to think we are different? We fool ourselves into thinking that we are above these types of things? Yet, to over come, we must look in the mirror and stare straight in the face of this ugly truth and confront it, otherwise be overcome by it.If the advancement of a race is based on traits like altruism, then the ants have progressed well beyond humans, and perhaps even dogs have as well.
I am not impressed with our advancements in technology, or our trip to the moon. While we mindlessly live or self centered lives without care for humanity, idolizing those in power as if they were dieties. In the long run, without an operational, internal, moral compass in the hearts of people, the only thing our technology will ultimately accomplish is making us capable of even greater atrocities.Some say religion is the answer. I say religious people have proven to be among the most dangerous. Another may say strong government, will keep people in line, but history has proven that powerful rules are easily coruppted and overly immpressed with their own power. Quite frankly, I am disgusted, with us all.So I say, emphatically, it is not OK, to behave certain way because it is the "status quo", or because your "leader" (boss, teacher, parent) has modeled or endorced a cetain conduct. It is not alright because your friends or your coworkers think it’s alright. It’s not alright because your pastor or your president tells you it is. All of us must learn to put ourselves in the other mans shoes before we commit an act. This means that we must think not just of our own good, but the good of the whole of humanity. Until then, all our tools and technology are nothing more than the equivalent of putting a loaded fire alarm in the hands of an infant.The only people who should have this kind of power in their hand are those who can honestly put the good of the whole above their own self interest and even than we all have a responsibility for what we do and who we obey.
If another Hitler came along on what side of the fence would we sit?

Toby

Sunday, February 8, 2009


My first memories of Toby are when he was about two and we lived in South Dakota. I was the first born and Toby the second, as such he was my constant playmate and side kick. We had tea parties in the closet, with a huge stuffed bear that we named “Big Bear.” We took dolls out in a baby carriage and paraded them around our street. Toby and I were always having fun and coming up with imaginary games.In 1983 our family moved to Orange County, in a house directly behind the South Coast Plaza mall. When we lived there Toby was five years old and I was eight. My mom traded in Toby’s bowl hair cut for a crew cut. I vividly remember Toby with a crew cut, freckles and a pair of “pilgrim” shoes. We called them pilgrim shoes because they were black dress shoes with a big silver buckle across the top and they looked exactly like pilgrim shoes. Toby wore those shoes with everything and in the warm climate of Orange County that often meant he was dressed in shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and pilgrim shoes. The crew cut was my mom’s idea but everything else was Toby’s.Toby had a best friend named Frankie, he lived down the street. Frankie was also five; he was a cute little Asian boy who wore cowboy boots with everything. Frankie had a sister named Betty and it was Betty and Frankie and Toby and Jenny (my little sister) playing together all the time.One day Toby and I thought of creating a haunted house in the garage. The real perk was that this was not only designed to scare the neighborhood kids but it was also a money making scheme. I would be the guide and take people on a tour of the “horrors” in the garage; Toby helped arrange the displays on our Dads pool table and made scary sounds. We recorded, some of the frightening sounds ahead of time on our dad’s miniature tape recorder, to be played at the appropriate time. One of the main attractions was the “real” vampire teeth; they were really just a staples remover. we shut the garage door most of the way so that our patrons would have to slip thru a small opening to get in. the door being closed helped to create the spooky, dark, atmosphere we were after and maybe (we hoped) disguised the true nature of our displays in the shadows. We invited the neiborhood kids, and of course Betty and Frankie, all for a small fee. We had a great time leading the nieborhood kids on a frightening tour of the haunted house which was really a trip around our dad’s pool table that was in the center of the garage, with a bunch of our dad’s office supplies artfully arranged on the table.Another fun memory I had with Toby was after we moved out of that house. We moved around a lot when we were younger. There was a prank that Toby and I played at almost every new house for many years. I would dress Toby in one of Jenny’s dresses and put a scarf over his head to cover his perpetual crew cut. Then Toby would go knock at the door posing as a young girl. It went something like this, Toby would knock at the door and I would tell Jenny, “ You better go answer the door.”When she answered Toby would say “Hi, my name is Sara, can you come out and play.” Jenny would see the resemblance and ask if it was Toby in disguise. Toby and I would then go to work convincing her that he was in fact a little girl by the name of Sara. Eventually Jenny would always decide against her better judgment and play with "Sara" for the better part of the afternoon, then we would tell her the truth. We never ceased to get a good laugh out of it. I don’t remember how old Jenny was when she finally stopped falling for the prank.One thing I will never forget is that Toby would never go down easy in a fight, but I always won. Then one summer when Toby was about 14 we got into a fight, boy was that one a deusy! It all started when I threw a candle stick across the room at my brother, I thought he would take it in good humor. To our mutual shock it hit him square between the eyes. His face slowly turned the most awful shade of crimson, that shade was reserved for his worse temper fits. For the first time I actually got a little concerned, my brother had grown quite a bit over the last summer. Then he charged at me like a bull. We fought something savage for a long time, at last I had him pinned to the floor. I asked him if he would stop hitting me if I let him up, he said no. Finally after sitting on him for a while he finally agreed to stop hitting me. When he got up he came straight back at me charging, I had to pin him down again. We did this several times until we were both worn out. That day I knew that I had had a close shave with defeat but I was not about to let my brother know that.Now Toby is a school teacher and tutors troubled teenagers in the Portland OR area. Recently when I went out to see him we took the kids to the Columbia River Gorge. After walking down to the river and playing around in the sand, we took them to play at the adjoining park. I spotted a tether ball, something I hadn’t seen in ages, and challenged Toby to a dual. He never could back down from a challenge. We sweated, strained, jumped, and hit as hard as we could. Toby won the first game, so I challenged him again, only this time I came out victorious. That’s how I want him to remember me

Jacob Brent Jeffries April 17 2005

Friday, January 30, 2009


Recently, I was listening to wild horse by the rolling stones. I know that song probably evokes romantic feelings and memories for most people but when I listen to that song I think of my children. One thing I have always imagined would kill me, was if one of my children ever died. I don’t necessarily handle the normal pains of life well, but I can keep standing. Ever since I had my first child I knew that the death of one of my children would take me clean off of my feet. It would be merciful for God to let me die with them. It was a situation I hoped I'd never face.
Three years ago, I was holding my 8 pound 6 ounce baby boy in my arms and felt his life slip away. I had made a deal with the physicians, since medically there was nothing they could do to save his life, he would be handed directly to me after he was born. I didn’t want him handled by strangers in the few moments he would have in this life. They warned me, that once born, he would only last a few minutes before he would pass away from lack of oxygen.
My water broke early; I hoped I had peed my pants but my husband took me to the ER in Palm Springs just to be safe. Once there, I was told they were going to do an emergency c-section. I should add; I was pregnant with twins, they were very concerned with preserving the life of the “viable” twin, it was his amniotic sac that broke.
Everything happened so fast. When they handed Jacob to me he was beautiful in every way except his overly extended stomach, the glaring evidence of the disease that had ravaged his little body. I held onto him with all my might, wild horses could not drag me away but he was being taken away, against my will, by a force greater than that. I watched his pink shade slowly turn to blue, from the fingertips up. He opened his eyes one time, squinting, he looked at me, as if to say “I don’t understand.” I told him I loved him, I prayed and I held on with all I had. He started to go limp and I thought the struggle was over, but then he would tremor again, for a while he continued to erratically heave, making attempts to gasp for air. Finally after he had been still for a while, the doctor came over with a stethoscope and pronounced that he was gone. He was born April 17th at 6:00 pm and he died at 6:05 pm.
After a few minutes passed, the nurses took him from me to clean, diaper? and wrap in a blanket. Meanwhile, I was moved to another room. Then they gave his little body back to me in the other room. The nurses said that my husband and I could spend as much time with his body as we wanted and to call them when we were ready to give him up. A good friend came and dressed him for me, in an outfit I had carefully picked out for him ahead of time, because of the spinal block, I could not get up and do this simple motherly task myself. He was handed to me again, only this time I held him for the next six hours or so. I would not let him go except to let my husband hold him. Of the life I had nourished and the soul I had loved for 8 months; this was all I had left, a little broken body. Sometimes in those hours, I would hold him tight and refuse to look at his face so I could imagine he was alive and this nightmare had never happened. Other times I starred straight at his face, I wanted to memorize every feature, he was perfect, but gone. Sometime after midnight I noticed he was getting very stiff and his skin was mottled. I talked to my husband and we decided it was time to let him go, physically that is. I asked the nurse what they were going to do with his body. She said they would take him downstairs to some refrigerated place until we arranged for the mortuary to pick up his body. I thought of my baby being alone in the dark in a refrigerator unit. As a mother I agonized over this, but what choice did I have?
Later, we took him home for good, his ashes, in a little blue urn, with a small teddy bear etched into it. Sometimes I would sleep with the urn at night. I had slept with my other children, why not? I did not tell people I did this; I knew they would think I was crazy. Many times I shook the urn and I would hear rattling in there, I imagined it was small fragments of his bones. Often, I would hold the little blood speckled blanket they wrapped him in and search for some smell of him, but never for long because I didn’t want to replace it with my own smell. Then I would put it back in the airtight plastic container where I keep all his things, his outfit, his blanket, his birth and death certificate, his foot prints, and a tiny lock of his hair.
Life went on, for everyone else but me. I kept my hurt deep inside, it was like a buried treasure that I could take out when I wanted to. The pain was mine and no one could take it away, it was all I had left of him. I would go to the market or see people driving down the road and think "they don’t know what’s happened, their lives are going on" but mine had stopped. How could the world go on like nothing had happened? My son was dead.
Jacob had Polycystic Kidney disease; he wasn’t supposed to have it. It runs in my family but it only kills us as adults. I have the disease, I was told it was impossible for him to have gotten the recessive form that kills infants. The doctors said that Jacob could be a case study because what happened to him was almost unheard off.
Jacob's kidneys stopped working when I was five months pregnant. That meant no amniotic fluid. Without amniotic fluid a babies lungs become like two little pancakes glued together. They did extensive ultrasounds through-out the pregnancy. About two months before he was born the doctors told me that nothing could be done to save his life because his lungs were not only glued together, but the cysts on his kidneys had pushed up on his lungs, not giving them enough room to grow.
When I was pregnant I would rub Jacobs back and talk to him, he responded like all my other children with kicks and such. I dreaded the day of his birth, it would be the day of his death. His umbilical cord, was our connection, his life-line, which kept him alive and supplied with oxygen from my blood stream. Once that cord was cut I knew it signaled the beginning of his death.
This story has no way to be tied up for a neat ending.
I have no profound words for you.
I have no little piece of wisdom I can share with you, the reader.
Writing this doesn't even make me feel better.
I just want the world to know he lived.
In memory of:
Jacob Brent Jeffries
6:00pm-6:00pm
April 17, 2005

My Daughter, a coffee suprise

Tuesday, January 27, 2009


The other morning I was sitting in the living room recliner, drinking my coffee while over seeing the general chaos that is routine to our home every weekday morning. With five kids and four of them heading off to school, I need the coffee just to make it through those first few hours. In the middle of all of this, my oldest, Kaylee (13 years) approaches me with a look of great earnest and says, “Can we talk?... Woman to Woman?” For a moment my whole world stops. "Woman to woman?!" When did this happen? When did we become two women? I braced myself as well as I could for what was about to come, “Sure honey” I said, secretly dreading what she was going to ask. What could a "woman to woman" talk mean anyway? The birds and the bees? Boys? I realize that I am not ready for this but I put on the most composed face I can muster up. She then turns to the side so I can get a better look at her profile and says, “Do these boots go with this shirt?”
"Do these boots go with this shirt?"That’s it.
A wave of relief passes over me. “Sure,” I said “They look good together.” My relief is short lived however because it soon dawns on me that she is growing up and that more serious kinds of talks are going to become more and more inevitable.The next thing I know, though I am sitting in the living room amidst a flurry of activity, in my mind, its ten, twelve years ago. Here is this towheaded, pig tailed, little girl carrying around twin baby dolls. All these memories start coming back. Kaylee: a little baby taking her first steps, a curious toddler smelling the wildflowers. It can’t have been that long ago but it was.She is my first born. I was only nineteen when I was pregnant with her but I wanted her with all my heart. While the other young expectant mothers would make comments like, “I can’t wait to get this kid outta here.” I, on the other hand, felt sadness that soon we would be two separate people instead of the one we had been for almost nine months. Then when she was born all that sadness was crowded out by the joy of this new precious human I was holding in my arms. I couldn’t wait to get to know her. Now she is growing up and I can’t stop that anymore than I can stop anything else. Once her life set in motion it had a momentum all it's own, that I have less and less control over.As a teenager, Kaylee is so different than I was. She is even tempered, well rounded and she gets good grades. She can hold her own. Heck, she can even hold court with her peers. She’s so many things that I am proud of. She exhibits a genuine concern for people but not a sickly codependence. Did I mention that she gets good grades? What’s more than that is that she is beginning to show signs of integrity, insight and maturity that make me wonder at the kind of woman she will turn into.I know that one day she will grow up and leave this house, leave me. That the day of her departure is sure even as the day of her birth was. I really don't feel prepared but I will muddle my way thru this, like I have muddled thru everything else in life. She is not mine really. She never was. I knew that from the day she was born. I have had the privilege of “borrowing” her, of getting to know her. Soon she will belong, not just to herself, but to the rest of this world, to the man she will marry, the children she will have and the lives she will touch. I only hope that some of them will realize, as I do, what a privilege it is to know and to love.

Meet Bill

removed

Freedom

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Freedom

I had been struggling for a subject for my first blog entry ever since the day I stepped foot in Mrs. Cheray’s English class and was informed that a weekly blog entry would be in the best interest of my grade. My struggle to come up with a topic was certainly not due to any lack of turmoil or excitement in my personal life, yet still I remained stumped. Until this morning. I decided to work on reading my English book hoping for some guidance or inspiration. I ran across the story A Boy’s Life and while I found it humorous, what really struck me was one little quote in the story, it was more of a comment really, “Power can be enjoyed only when it is recognized and feared. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.” I thought about why fearlessness towards those in a position of authority is absolutely vital to the preserving of human rights while at other times this fearless quality is dangerous.For example, I am a mother of five children, my children, though greatly loved are still my subjects. Yes, I am aware that some will think I am outdated and archaic for holding this opinion but I like to think of our family as more of a dictatorship than a democracy, albeit a benign dictatorship with a kind and loving King and Queen. Besides, if four young boys had an equal vote, we would be eating cake for dinner every night and be on a continuous schedule of back to back Sponge Bob marathons. To clarify, when I say we are a dictatorship, I am not saying my children don’t have any rights, also being in power never gives me the right to abuse them, it gives me the power to protect them. Also, I have respect for them as humans, people with feelings and needs ect. but without a little fear (certainly not terror) it would be utter pandemonium in our home. There is nothing quite like trying to get compliance from an utterly fearless toddler in a grocery store, near a busy street or with a metal fork about to be inserted into an electrical outlet. It’s outright dangerous for the child to have no fear of authority. Healthy fear of authority, as children keeps us from being run over by a car, as adults it keeps us out of prison. Really, I think when the Bible talks about fearing God, this is the kind of fear it is referring to, not the terror of a sadistic tyrant but the fear that would keep us from self destruction.Then you can look at the atrocities committed against the powerless throughout human history. With out this fierce quality, without fearlessness in the face of tyrants there would be no liberation. People have shuttled slaves through the Underground Railroad, others hid the Jewish people in their own homes during the rein of Hitler, and this they did knowing the penalty could be death. Even our nation’s founders stood against the tyranny of Britain at the possible cost of forfeiting all that they had. Without this tenacity the world would be over run with those who would victimize those they perceive as weaker.On a personal note I have another perspective on the whole idea of being fearless against those in power and it comes from my own experience. I spent almost a decade in a church that taught that obedience and compliance with my leaders was the path to acceptance by God. To not comply, to not submit meant (to them) that I was a rebel. I was taught that rebellion is the sin of idolatry and idolaters are rejected by God and don’t go to heaven. This kept me in perpetual fear of my pastor and the church leaders. Even my thoughts were controlled. We were taught that any doubts or criticism against the practices of the church were brought on by a demonic spirit. So I became afraid even of my own thoughts and reasoning. Fear became a tool to entrap me. It was only when I began to realize that God had not called me to fear men, that He in fact called me to liberty, that I could begin to even grasp the possibility of freedom. Then I assessed the veracity of their threats. What would happen to me if I chose to leave? I found that most of their threats were unfounded. Unfortunately some where, the threat of loosing credibility among people I love was real, the threat of loosing a support system I had come to depend on was real and the threat of rejection even animosity from my peers were both very real. I eventually came to a point that I can not say was truly fearlessness but instead I was willing to face the consequences of rebellion in order to be free. I would like to tell you it’s been easy but it hasn’t. Some times I even feel worse than before I had my “freedom.”People seem to always speak and dream of freedom in glowing terms and I think it is a victorious thing. Freedom, however, often comes with a steep price and a heap of responsibility. For me it was worth it.Nichole Jeffries