Day 5: Itai

A most impressive example of the good hearts and goodwill of the people in Japan. I'm in awe.



People who continue to find good, in the midst of catastrophe, are what's right in the world.

Day 4: LIVESTRONG

I wear it everyday but somehow I haven't looked at it in weeks. I mean, really looked at it. It is the yellow LIVESTRONG bracelet wrapped around my wrist. It happens to be my favorite color and it does an incredible job of making me look sportier than I really am but that's not why I wear it. It was a gift.

Bob, a close family friend had just passed away. I remember being in the room with him in his last moments. He was frail. His body had evolved into a life sucking machine that was ripping out pages—chapters— of his autobiography. It didn't make sense. I was fourteen, almost fifteen, and death wasn't something that my teenage mind was equipped to distill.

Bob was business man. He had a smokey office in the back of his billiards hall— McHenry Boulevard Billiards. On the occasional Friday evening, before the rowdy crowd filed in, my brother would take me there to see Bob. My sassy second-grade self would walk back to his office like I owned the place. He would put out his cigarette, I would jump into his lap, and we would start talking business. I would file papers that, hindesight 20/20, I think were on their way to the garbage bin. I'm sure Bob had resurrected them from the trash pile on his desk and let me file them so I could feel like I had helped. It worked. I always felt like I was something else. After my work was done, Bob would reach into the top drawer of his desk and pull out a bag full of quarters. This was good stuff. It was the signal. It was my cue to get my tom-boy tooshie out to the air hockey table. We would play as many rounds as I could beg out of him and he would always bribe me out of another match by striking a deal. He's a business man, remember. If I agreed to relent, I got to sit up at the bar and have a soda with Debbie, his wife. It never took to much convincing.

But he was gone and my these were the memories that my teenage mind clung to in order to cushion myself from the blow of death. It was my first real experience with it and it felt like a whirlwind of bizarre.

A few weeks later, I got a package in the mail. I ripped it open, anxious to see what was inside. Yellow LIVESTRONG bands—one for me and one for my mom—and a letter. It was from my brother. He wrote about the fragility of life and how watching Bob pass was lesson, to him,  in living strong. So, in memorandum, we all wore our LIVESTRONG bands as reminders to do just that.  

Exactly a year of wearing our bracelets had passed when I got the call. "Hi Meggy, 
it's mom. Nick has come down with a really bad flu and I'm headed out to California to take care of him for a few days. I love you," my mom's recorded voice said into my voicemail. I thought nothing of it. I would miss my mom but school, homework, and track workouts would keep me busy. The next message was a little less light-hearted, "Hi Meg, It's mom. Nick's in the hospital. They're doing some blood work but I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. I'll keep you posted. I love you." My heart sank slightly in my chest but my world kept charging forward. Blood work was no big deal. It's standard.

The next school day came and went. Track practice was over, I was exhausted and I was headed home to make some dinner and crawl into bed. The third call came, but this time we finally connected. No voicemail would be necessary. I answered my cell and could hear that someone was on the other end of the line. We were connected but my mom was silent. "Mom? Are you there?" I asked. "I'm here, Meg," she whispered. "What's up, Mom," I hesitated to utter. "Meg," she paused. "Nick has Leukemia." I hit the floor like a ton of bricks. My phone went flying and my world went blurry.  How I got from Utah to California still remains fuzzy in my memory. But I did. Next thing I knew, I was calling Standford Hospital home.

The cancer was progressive and they started chemotherapy immediately. The familiar scene of watching a limp body, sunken into the sheets and sucking life, had returned. But this time it was closer than I could ever imagine. Everyday the nurses would come in dressed like they were transporting nuclear waste and they would inject the chemo—The Death— into my brothers body.  I would sit, like an observer at an execution, as I watched death take my brother by the hand and lead him to bleary horizon where life and cessation meet.  And everyday, like clockwork, death showed up to lead him to that bleary horizon. But everyday, he refused to go. He fought, for what seemed like an eternity, through the chemo, through the radiation, through the bone marrow transplant, and through the myriad of associated illness that followed. But somehow, in the midst of such unrest, my brother had become the epitome of living strong.

Two months ago, marked the five year anniversary of my brother's diagnosis and I'm proud to say that he's still living strong. I got a glimpse of the yellow band around my wrist tonight and thought:

"My brother. My brother still living strong is what's right in the world."

Day 3: He lives in the most fantastic world

A few days ago, I was at work just going through the motions. A work routine usually looks like this: The teacher is at the front of the room trying to teach a new concept—social skills on this particular day. Such a subject is never a crowd pleaser in a classroom of ten teenagers, spanning the ages 12-14, all of whom have a common diagnosis of Autism and many having dual diagnoses. I sit in a chair that is strategically placed between two students that need more assistance than the others and I take notes. I record things like 'how many times H. picks his nose,' or 'how many times S. throws her books off of her desk in a fit of rage,' or my personal favorite 'how many times C. refers to his imaginary world.'

Tangent time: I need to confess something. I'm a fraud. Heres how this note taking business works. At the end of an allotted period of time, I take my recorded notes, graph out behavior patterns, and then create programs for working on these behaviors. These behaviors, according to the teacher, seem to be hindering the students' progress in school. Here's where the fraud part comes in. I don't think that C. living in an imaginary world is hindering his academic performance. It may not be ideal for his social performance, but that's a whole other battle. The poor kiddos I work with constantly have people (usually big bad adults) breathing down their necks telling them to do this, don't do that, you're not doing this right, that's too big, that's too small, oops, try again. So my thinking goes like this: If I had big, bad adults constantly breathing down my neck critiquing my work, I would create an imaginary world, too. And I would escape to it as often as possible.

So, I beef the data regarding how many times C. refers to his imaginary world. If I beef the data so it doesn't look it's a problem that is potentially jeopardizing to his performance, he gets to keep the imaginary world. He gets to, for the tiniest moment, be safe from the nagging adults commenting on all the ways he is doing things wrong. I'm not going to be the one to take that away from him. I'll leave that for the next person that does this job.

Welcome back from that tangent. Let's move on, shall be? So, C. (who just so happens to be my favorite student) was sitting at his desk working on an assignment. It was his birthday and I was extra impressed with how attentive he was, considering such a monumental event. He was 13! He was doing fantastic work but his eyes were fluttering in and out of sleep as he desperately tried to fight off sleep and stay awake. I scooted my chair next to his desk and said "Hey bud, I was noticing that you look pretty tired. Did you get enough sleep last night?" This is the conversation that followed:

C: "Of course I didn't get enough sleep last night, Miss Megan."
M: "Oh no, I'm sorry, my friend. What was keeping you up? Were you excited about your birthday?"
C: " I was just thinking and I couldn't sleep because my thoughts wouldn't let me."
M: "That makes sense. What kinds of thoughts were you thinking about?"
C: "Well, there was really only one thought."
M: "Why don't you tell me about it."
C: "It's just that I was thinking about rats. I was thinking about what the world would be like if rats didn't have hair on their backs but grew all their hair on their bellies."

This, my friends, is where I lost it. I kept my cool long enough to finish the conversation but all the while, I was experiencing a full body reflex that was working in overdrive to keep me from bursting out in laughter. The tears were pooling in my eyes. But alas, I made it. I got myself out of the classroom just moments before the anti-laughter reflex busted at the seams and doubled me over. My dearest student couldn't sleep all night because he was up thinking about rats. RATS! Rats. Rats with no hair on their back, at that.

My students and their dear imaginations are what is right in the world.

Day 2: Spending the day at the park with the pooch.

As soon as I got home this morning, I stepped into some sweats, grabbed Titus, the leash, a bag of tennis balls, the oh-so-loved Chuck-it, and Titus and I were off to the park. We lucked out by being the only ones there, so we played fetch until Titus couldn't take it anymore. He always lets me know when he's pooped out by trotting over to where I'm standing and flopping over onto his side like a wounded soldier who has just taken a bullet to the gut. Despite being exhausted, neither of us were ready to make the walk home and we were both enjoying the the whether that has been giving us some promising sneak-peaks of the quickly approaching Spring. So, I rolled my jacket up into a pillow, Titus plopped down next to me and we curled up to take the most delightful snoozer I've had in a while.

Titus is what's right in the world.

Day 1: Little Tikes

As I was flipping through old photos, I stumbled upon these precious little people. They are some of the many unbelievable kiddos that I was able to spend time with in Thailand. They are what's right in the world.

Concept: Finding that which is right in the world

It's simple. Finding all that is wrong in the world is an easy task—one that we seem to constantly be tripping over. And as we're finding our way back to our feet, all we can see is the wrong that sent us falling. We keep our eyes glued to it. Afraid that if we look away it will strike again. But all the while that our eyes are glued to that which is wrong, we miss all that is right in the world. Our vision is tunneled and we neglect the beauty in our periphery.

The concept of my blog is simple. It is to, for a liberating moment, release my gaze from all that is wrong and focus in—even for the slightest moment—on that which is right. That which is good. That which is kind. To plant the tiniest seed of decency, nurture it with love and goodwill, and have hope that something beautiful will bloom. And when it does, that which is right in the world will become the focus of my gaze, sending that which is wrong to my periphery; a spot where I can see it just well enough that I need not stumble over it.