Stamp this on your forehead

Posted on November 25, 2009 by kristinshepherd

Avery is about four years old. She comes into my clinic with her mom.

One of Avery’s favourite things to do is find one of my office stamps – the kind that stamps my clinic address on cards and magazines and envelopes – and stamp it all over herself. She stamps it on her hands and arms and clothes and neck and face.

I’m a bit flabbergasted, watching this. I love her singlemindedness in covering every bit of bare skin. I love watching her mom smile while this goes on, knowing she’ll be ridiculously busy washing it all off tonight. I love the permissiveness of it, remembering how strictly I was raised, and how there’s no way this would have happened when I was a kid.

I get a kind of vicarious thrill from it all.

And it makes me wonder this: if I could design my own stamp, and stamp it on my forehead, what would it say? It wouldn’t be my clinic address, that’s for sure. I can think of a few things.

I am not as uptight as I look today.

I am kinder at heart than I am out loud.

I make heaps of mistakes, but I mean well.

I love it when you make me laugh.

I’ll love you forever if you help me see all of this in a better light.

You are beautiful. I’ll do my best to see this even when you don’t.

I wish you could know my kids.

I want to do a lot more with my life.

Love wins every time.

I’d need a big forehead for all of that, but there you go.

What about your stamp? What would it say?

Thanks to Avery and to you for the conversation,

kristin

Posted in best of blogs, blog | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Gump

Posted on November 5, 2009 by kristinshepherd

So I’m in this play called Marvin’s Room, having been cast about three days ago as Marvin, a man who never actually appears to the audience, and who has no dialogue. Not one line. He makes sounds (he’s had a stroke), but that’s it. He’s behind a scrim, so you might see his silhouette if you’re in the first couple of rows in the theatre.

On paper, the role is a tiny one. But it’s turned out to be huge for me.

Cause the first time I was on that table, making those struggling sounds, the sounds that happen when your language circuits have been fried, I thought, jesus, this is my grandfather. My Gump.

My Gump had a stroke when I was a teenager, and sounded just like Marvin afterward. He’d wave his cane around and whack my grandmother if she was within reach. He didn’t like being mute, and I’m not sure he liked my Gran much at that point. A lot of his softness disappeared with the stroke.

I was an idiot as a teenager, and didn’t think much about what his life might be like, unable to say good morning or show me your headstand (he was in his 60’s when he showed me how to stand on my head) or why the hell is all of this happening to my body.

As an idiot teenager, I just thought, this is what happens when you’re old and irrelevant.

Anyway, he died when I was 21 or so. I was a pallbearer and I remember the coffin being inconceivably light. He was hardly there at all by the end.

So I feel as though I’ve been given a chance to be with him again, and do it more humanely than I did the first time.

Yesterday, I bought Marvin a pair of pyjamas to wear during the play. Never mind that no one will see them. They’re a kind of Wedgewood bue with a white pin stripe, and with blue piping. Light, soft, handsome. Like my Gump.

Here’s to being together even when that happens 25 years later.

Posted in best of blogs, blog | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Gump

Say we’re apples and we want a big, sweet, juicy life

Posted on October 20, 2009 by kristinshepherd
(Or a few thoughts on how to get what we want.)

1. Stop going around saying we’re small and sour.  So what if we are?  We’ll grow into something different, and being sour about being small and sour is a counterproductive drag.
2.  Stop moaning that we’d rather be eggplants.  We’re not this time around.  Somewhere out in the universe, before we got here, we decided to have a go at being an apple.  Make peace with that.
3.  Stop competing with the other apples.  I know we love to be special, but the truth is that If they win, so do we.  We’re all in this together whether or not we get that at this early, sour stage of our life. 
4.  There is absolutely no point in trying to control the leaves, branches, trunk, ground, sunshine, and rain.  Best of luck trying, and thanks for the comedy, but it never works.

So what the hell, you say.  What are we supposed to do?

Let’s try this on:

Why not just spend the day trusting that the universe works, and that we are completely connected to everything that works – to the tree, sure, but even to the sun and the rain.  Trust it even if it’s a stretch.  Just for a day.

Why not relax for one day, dropping our list of wish-i-were-that-instead-of-this’s, have-to-outperform them’s, and management controls, and just see whether or not photosynthesis and growth and sweetness go on without us busting our little apple heads about it?

I have an idea it’ll work. 
Let me know.
Thanks for the conversation,

kristin
Posted in blog | 2 Comments

Even Jerry Springer is Holy

Posted on September 28, 2009 by kristinshepherd

September 28

 

Today it’s raining and I’m feeling a wee bit bleh. I’m hanging out with the dog when I could be installing solar panels or memorizing Dalai Lama quotes. Saving the planet somehow.

 

I’ve just come back from seeing Jerry Springer: The Opera. (What a title!)

I would not have seen it if my son hadn’t been in it. Why? Cause I carry too much condescending, arrogant judgement about Jerry Springer, whose show I have never seen. (How you come to judge something you’ve never seen is a topic for another day.)

It was fantastic. Fabulous, complex music, lovely theatre (Hart House in Toronto), great energy, and very funny writing.

(My favourite phrase was a riff on Talk to the Hand. It came from Jesus, who said, Talk to the stigmata. Isn’t that beautiful?!)

Nothing was safe. Not religion, sex, relationships, not the meaning of life. It was as vulgar as vulgar can be. Great hunks of it coming from my kid’s mouth.

And just when it couldn’t get any lower, it culminated in a line from a song that went like this: Everything human is holy.

Everything human is holy.

It made me think about how often I judge my own behaviour (forget Jerry Springer) to be worthwhile or not, to be productive or not, to be enough or not.

Installing solar panels is holy. Dalai Lama quotes are holy. But so is every mistake I’ve ever made and every mistake I will make in the future. So is every frustrating thing I have not resolved in myself. So is every unpleasing fact of my existence.

So today, just for a lark, i’m making peace with what is. Just glad to be here and be as human as mothers who sleep with their daughters’ best friends, fathers who used to be mothers, or Jesus, who is gay, as it turns out.

Many thanks to Jerry Springer and to Jerry Springer: The Opera.

Life is good.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin

Posted in blog | Tagged | Comments Off on Even Jerry Springer is Holy

Flake

Posted on September 24, 2009 by kristinshepherd
Download now or watch on posterous

Flake.mov (8190 KB)

Posted in blog | Tagged | Comments Off on Flake

Currency of illness

Posted on September 24, 2009 by kristinshepherd
Download now or watch on posterous

unknownname.out (5131 KB)

A few thoughts on the currency of illness, or illness as an identity. Shot in conversation with a great friend.

Posted in blog | Comments Off on Currency of illness

Your cheek is twitching

Posted on September 24, 2009 by kristinshepherd

So what can I say?  Most people who come through my clinic (and any other clinic, I’ll bet) are just busting their faces all day trying to get more done, trying to be more (physically fit, successful, disciplined, put your own word here), and it shows.  You’d have to be a lunatic in health care not to see that this constant pushing for something takes a toll on a body. 

So I say to them, hey, you look a bit stressed, with that cheek twitching and your blood pressure hovering at 350 over 270.

People have different responses.

 

One is, no, no, no, I’m fine.  Never better.  (Who knows what to do with that one?)  (That’s my dad, come to think of it.)

Another is yeah, you’re right, but I have no choice.  I have to do this because of my boss, my wife, my boyfriend, my exams, my Weight Watchers meeting, my taxes, blah, blah, blah. 

We’ve got to change this one, ‘cause if you feel a victim, particularly a chronic victim, of anything or anyone, you’re destined for lousy health (never mind a lousy life).  Powerlessness sucks your life down the drain. 

Do whatever it takes to change a victim perspective (even if you have to fake it till you believe it).  I chose this job, and I’m choosing to do it today because of the food it puts on my table.  I chose this husband.  I choose to be with him today despite several character traits that threaten my mental health when I’m not centered.  Remind yourself that you choose. 


And if you believe in coincidences (I don’t) and a piano happens to fall on your head, and you live through it, you still make choices about whether to turn it an entertaining story or a reason to be afraid of music for the rest of your life. 

The last response is, I’m trying to be more because I want to be more (wealthy, strong, flexible, radiant, insert your word here).

I LOVE this one.  So BEAUTIFUL.  I want to be more. 

So try this on.  How about not having to push for it?  What if struggle and striving and busting your face are unnecessary?

Is it possible, do you think, to fantasize about being successful until you’re irresistibly drawn to do just one, great, inspired thing that might contribute to the dream?  (Jeez, I miss yoga.  Jeez, I’ll bet that guy knows something about movies, or neuroanatomy, or whatever it is for you.) And then waiting till you’re irresistibly drawn to the next thing, and the next?

I wonder if that’d work.  And I wonder your body’d like that. 

Just a thought. 

Thanks for the conversation,

 

kristin

Posted in blog | Comments Off on Your cheek is twitching

Being clever isn’t as satisfying as it used to be.

Posted on September 24, 2009 by kristinshepherd

In fact, to be precise, it was never about just being clever.  The satisfying thing was being more clever than you.  Having the loudest and most entertaining opinion, the best vocabulary, the leading-edge-of-trendy thoughts, the feigned indifference about things that matter to most humans, imperviousness. 

That’s a chilly word, imperviousness. 

It’s like I won by being completely unaffected by what mattered to you.  I won if you left the room having ditched your own beliefs for mine. 

This “you”, by the way, was my friend, my lover, my kid. 

My kid, for god’s sake.

 So today, you win.  And by that I don’t mean I lose.  I mean that I appreciate whatever you’re bringing to me in conversation.  I appreciate that you’re here at all.  And instead of being clever queen of the universe, I’ll have a whirl at listening for the sake of being with you.  Period. 

Just saying that, my body feels better. 

Thanks for the conversation.

kristin

 

 

Posted in blog | Comments Off on Being clever isn’t as satisfying as it used to be.