January 16, 2009

You Know You're A Mom When . . .


You count the sprinkles on each kid's cupcake to make sure they're equal.


You want to take out a contract on the kid who broke your child's favorite toy and made him/her cry.


You have time to shave only one leg at a time.


You hide in the bathroom to be alone.


You child throws up, and you catch it.


Someone else's kid throws up at a party, and you keep eating.


You consider finger paint to be a controlled substance.


You mastered the art of placing large quanitities of pancakes and eggs on a plate without anything touching.


Your child insists that you read Once Upon a Potty out loud in the lobby of the doctor's office, or, better yet, in the lobby of a Grand Central Station... and you do it.


You hire a sitter because you haven't been out with your husband in ages, then spend half the night talking about and checking on the kids.


You hope ketchup is a vegetable because it's the only one your child eats.


You cling to the high moral ground on toy weapons, while your child chews his toast into the shape of a gun.


You can't bear the thought of your son's first girlfriend.


You hate the thought of his wife even more.


You donate to charities in the hope that your child won't get that disease.


You find yourself cutting your husband's sandwiches into unusual shapes.


You fast-forward through the scene when the hunter shoots Bambi's mother.


You use your own saliva to clean your child's face.


You obsess when your child clings to you upon parting during his first month at school, then obsess when he skips in without looking back the second time.


You can't bear to give away baby clothes--it's so final.


You hear your mother's voice coming out of your mouth when you say, "Not in your good clothes!"


You stop criticizing the way your mother raised you.


You read that the average five-year-old asks 437 questions a day and feel proud that your kid is above average.


You say at least once a day, I'm not cut out for this job, but you know you wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

January 15, 2009

The Crooked Smile

As we rolled five-year-old Mary into the MRI room, I tried to imagine what she must be feeling. She had suffered a stroke that left half of her body paralyzed, had been hospitalized for treatment of a brain tumor, and had recently lost her father, her mother and her home. We all wondered how Mary would react.

She went into the MRI machine without the slightest protest, and we began the exam. At that time, each imaging sequence required the patient to remain perfectly still for about five minutes. This would have been difficult for anyone - and certainly for a five-year-old who had suffered so much. We were taking an image of her head, so any movement of her face, including talking, would result in image distortion.

About two minutes into the first sequence, we noticed on the video monitor that Mary's mouth was moving. We even heard a muted voice over the intercom. We halted the exam and gently reminded Mary not to talk. She was smiling and promised not to talk.

We reset the machine and started over. Once again we saw her facial movement and heard her voice faintly. What she was saying wasn't clear. Everyone was becoming a little impatient, with a busy schedule that had been put on hold to perform an emergency MRI on Mary.

We went back in and slid Mary out of the machine. Once again, she looked at us with her crooked smile and wasn't upset in the least. The technologist, perhaps a bit gruffly, said, "Mary, you were talking again, and that causes blurry pictures."

Mary's smile remained as she replied, "I wasn't talking. I was singing. You said no talking." We looked at each other, feeling a little silly.

"What were you singing?" someone asked.

"Jesus Loves Me," came the barely perceptible reply. "I always sing `Jesus Loves Me' when I'm happy."

Everyone in the room was speechless. "Happy? How could this little girl be happy?" The technologist and I had to leave the room for a moment to regain our composure as tears began to fall.

Many times since that day, when feeling stresses, unhappy or dissatisfied with some part of my life, I have thought of Mary and felt both humbled and inspired. Her example made me see that happiness is a marvelous gift - free to anyone willing to accept it.

By James C. Brown, M.D.

January 12, 2009

Little Things
When I was in college, I shared an American Thanksgiving supper with friends. We spent the day cooking together – turkey, potatoes, green beans, yams and, of course, dinner rolls. I was in charge of the rolls. Looking back, that may have been a mistake.

I love to eat raw dough. Most any kind will do – cookie dough, cake batter, biscuit dough, bread dough – you get the idea. So I rolled out the yeast dough, sliced off a corner and ate it, rolled some more, sliced and ate, rolled, sliced, ate…. I don't know how much of the dough I consumed before the rolls hit the oven, but I remember it as a wonderful afternoon. Until about a half-hour later.

Yeast, it seems, likes a dark, moist, warm environment. In me, it found one and did what yeast does best – it grew. And grew. And grew.

After a while my stomach was distended and I felt like the Pillsbury Dough Boy with a burping disorder.

It was soon time for supper and I felt too full to eat anything. All of that scrumptious food and I couldn't eat.

That day I gained a new respect for the power of yeast; it doesn't take much to make a big difference.