I'm not sure whether any of you noticed that I haven't been around as much lately. I've tried to get on xanga in spare moments to read and comment, but that's been a little hit or miss, especially if your blog has slipped off the first page of my inbox. I apologize for not being as attentive as I should have been, but I'm not sorry for the reason I've been away so much.

In early March, severe storms swept across the country and caused widespread devastation, including an area of southern Indiana that was pretty much wiped off the map by tornadoes. In the past few years, tornadoes have struck Fort Smith, Arkansas where my sisters live; Yazoo City, Mississippi where my nieces and nephew live; Joplin, Missouri which is where I turn south when I'm driving to Arkansas; rural Oklahoma where @WildWomanOfTheWest lost everything she owned, and now an area of southern Indiana near Louisville, Kentucky where I am planning to attend GeoWoodstock in less than two weeks. Tornadoes have intruded on my placid life in the past two or three years. A small F1 tornado even struck right here, about a mile from my beloved 'Duh. I've seen the damage in some of those places; I've seen the changes in other places where buildings and trees that had stood for more than a century are gone.

For some time now, I've been considering volunteering with the American Red Cross. I would like to go to those places that have been devastated by disaster and bring basic needs; food, water, clean-up kits, hugs and hope to people whose lives have been turned upside down. The tornadoes in southern Indiana were the last straw. I drove to the nearest Red Cross office and offered my services. I was immediately enrolled in several training courses all over the region to learn about the history of the Red Cross, disasters and how the Red Cross responds (Allegan, MI); how to care for people involved in a disaster (Battle Creek, MI); how to perform data entry using the saba software program (online course), the role of various agencies (including the Red Cross) in a radiological emergency (Cassopolis, MI), Basic Food Safety (online course); Defensive Driving (online course); and most recently, the role of the Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV) and how to operate it (Kalamazoo, MI).


I still need to get First Aid and CPR certifications (probably in South Bend, IN) in order to get my ERV driver certification, but I stayed behind after class and took the driving test in the rain on unfamiliar roads and I passed. I'd never driven anything that big before, and I've never had a garage so I'd never had to park a vehicle of any kind in a garage until last Saturday. My very first time to do it, and it was an ambulance-shaped truck with no back window and only about three inches of clearance on each side. Not to mention the instructor was standing behind the ERV giving me hand signals so besides worrying about taking off a side mirror, I was a little concerned about squishing the instructor against the back wall of the garage. But it all worked out in the end. It took me four tries to get the ERV lined up properly, but I did it and no mirrors or instructors were damaged in the process.

I have more training ahead; Shelter Operations, Shelter Simulation, Psychological First Aid, Helping People With Disabilities, First Aid, CPR... I'm also volunteering at the local chapter once a week to answer phones. I make a lot of mistakes, but they appreciate me anyway. In the next few weeks I'll begin doing data entry. Some day, I'll earn my vest and I'll be out there when disaster hits, doing something to help.

Volunteering with the Red Cross has been one of my steps in the No Fear process. I have gone to unfamiliar towns and cities and found the building I needed, introduced myself to new people, learned new things. I've driven a truck bigger than anything I've ever driven, and I backed it into a snug space in a garage. I've pushed myself to learn a very confusing software program, and I'm answering phones in an office where I don't know the answers to most of the questions I'm asked. For a shy person like me, these are huge steps in overcoming deep-seated fears.

Here's my challenge to you: If I can do these things, you can too. Maybe not the exact same things, but you can take steps to overcome your fears. It's a beautiful, empowering feeling to take hold of your fear, shake it out and show it who's boss. I'm in the process of doing that. Don't wait as long as I did. Be bold, be strong, have No Fear.

One of the first lessons you learn on becoming a parent is that you will never again in your life get a decent night’s sleep. Even before the baby is born, the sheer terror of becoming responsible for a human life will keep you tossing and turning all night. Once the bundle of joy arrives, no matter how many stories you’ve heard about newborns and sleepless nights, you will not be prepared for what you are about to experience. You will remember with bitter clarity each and every time you laughed at the zombie-like shuffle and blank stare of a new parent. What most parents never tell you, though, is that sleep deprivation does not end with infancy. You now hold a 24-hour-a-day job that will last you the rest of your life. There are many stages to this job. All of them happen after midnight.


First you will jerk awake at 3 AM to find yourself sitting up in bed holding a bottle in your baby’s ear, where it slipped after she fell asleep, which was sometime after you dozed off. You will naively think that once she’s outgrown the nighttime feedings, she’ll sleep through the night and you will finally get some rest. Then comes the middle of the night potty emergencies, tummy aches, ear aches, nightmares, confessions, climbing out of the crib to play, fear of the closet - or the Lady and the Tramp poster on the wall - or the headboard of her new big girl bed.

There will be nights she spends away from home and you will stay awake worrying that she’ll be scared in a strange bedroom, that she’ll get food poisoning, that she forgot that toy she can’t sleep without, that she’ll need her Mommy and you will be a little bit disappointed to learn she had a great time and slept peacefully all night and her friend’s mom makes the best pizza in the whole entire world. 

As she gets older, she will sometimes go away for a week at a time. Girl Scout trips, youth group trips, band trips, staying with grandparents. This should be a time for you to revel in your freedom, but you will spend it lying awake at night wondering where she is at that exact moment and whether she’s safe and behaving herself. You will worry about her being in a vehicle that you are not driving because nobody else could possibly be a more careful driver than you when your child is in the car. You will obsessively check the weather forecast for wherever she is and sometimes even find local streetcams online and stay up into the wee hours of the morning, hoping against hope for a glimpse of her walking past because you know beyond a doubt you’d recognize her even through the filthy lens of a roof-mounted camera on a street in Edinburgh.

Then comes the worst moment for a parent: dropping her off at college for the first time, squeezing her tightly and keeping your head over her shoulder so she won’t see the tears. Coming home to an empty house and standing in an empty bedroom wondering how she could possibly already be in college when she was just a toddler yesterday. And you lie in bed at night and pray for her harder than you’ve ever done in the past 18 years because she’s passed through awkward adolescence and turned into a beautiful young woman overnight and you know what goes on on college campuses because you were young once and dear God, please don’t let her get up to the same things you once did because you shouldn’t have even survived such stupidity! You never really repent of those youthful sins until the first night of the first year of your first child’s emancipation from parental authority.

There will be a lot of meltdowns over the next few years. Some you'll be able to talk her through over the phone. Others, you will think absolutely nothing of grabbing your keys and driving for an hour - or two - or three, just to hug your daughter and buy her a milkshake and listen to her heartache and cry a little with her. Then you will take her to the mall and buy her a new skirt because you want to see her smile again. You’ll fill up her car with gas and give her money to go out with her friends that night just so you know she’ll be surrounded by a support network, then you’ll jump in the car and rush back home in time to throw together some sloppy joes for your husband because you won’t be able to afford to eat out until next paycheck after a day like this. You’ll call her before you go to bed, but she’s out with her friends, so you lie awake yet again hoping they’re having fun, but not too much fun.

And then, just like that, she’s an adult. She’s out of college and staying at home temporarily while she finishes up her postgrad work or looks for a job. And you think, “I’ve done my job. Now I can rest.” You are so wrong! Now come the attacks of insecurity: Did I get the right degree? Did I choose the right career? What if I don’t meet this deadline? What if I can’t find a job? For some reason these attacks always come at the exact moment you were about to go to bed, but you scoot over in your oversized armchair and pull her down next to you, put your arm around her and talk to her about transitions and all the choices she has in front of her and how each choice leads to a different but equally bright future. You remind her that she is not the only 20-something college graduate living with her parents while figuring out the next step in life. You start the Dad/Mom Speech and she giggles through her tears and says the prelude with you, “You are a beautiful, intelligent, talented woman…” and you don’t have to go any further because she’s heard it hundreds of times since she was three years old and she knows it by heart. And finally, an hour or more after you were about to go to bed, she grabs you into a huge hug and says, “Thank you, Mom. I’m so lucky to have you!” And she goes off to bed leaving you alone in the suddenly too spacious chair thinking, “This motherhood stuff is not so hard. Who needs sleep, anyway?” And you turn the TV back on and watch another hour of NCIS reruns in blissful ignorance that if motherhood were a loaf of bread, you would only be half-baked at this point.

But that’s a post for another day.

If this post seems familiar to you, it's because I originally wrote it a couple of years ago (although not for Mother's Day). While this was written from a mother's perspective, I wanted to take a moment here at the end to speak from a daughter's perspective and thank my mom for all the sacrifices she's made for her children over the years. Mom, I love you so much and I appreciate everything you did for your family, keeping us fed, clothed, and making sure our feet were on the straight and narrow (most of the time). I never once doubted your love for me. You're the best!

I know you don’t hear from me as often as you’d like, but I do think about you daily. Especially lately. Particularly in the past week.

I know that you know everything, but I also know you like to hear it from my lips… or fingers. At least I hope writing it out counts. I’m a parent and I get that whole, “I already know you want/need/did this, but you need to tell/ask/confess to me before I help you.” I know you want me to come to you with my problems. But what if I have a teeny, tiny little problem with you? That sounds disrespectful and I don’t intend that. Thank You that you know what I mean. I figured you’d want me to talk to you about this now while things are relatively calm instead of waiting for chaos and calamity to overtake me before I turn to you.

You know, Lord, that I never ask you for patience. I know better and I learned that lesson the hard way. So you know that when I said my goal and motto for this year is “No Fear,” I didn’t intend for it to be a trial by fire. What I had in mind was more along the lines of not being afraid to meet new people, go new places, try a few new things. And it was going pretty well, too.

But Lord, signing up for a charity run, volunteering to answer phones, taking a few training courses, or committing to an event that will put me smack into a crowd of thousands is a far cry from the “No Fear” testing I’ve gone through this past week. It’s MY goal; MY motto. Nobody else signed on for this ride, it was all supposed to be about ME. So if it’s not too much to ask, please don’t test my resolve this way. I got the message; you can stop now before it goes any further, and no lasting harm done. You don’t have to break me to get my attention.

I’ve been holding onto Isaiah 41:10, but I’m switching to verse 13 now, Lord, and I’m holding you to that promise. I’m asking you for bread and trusting that you will not hand me a rock.

Thank you in advance. I’ll try to do better about keeping in touch with you, but you know me (and I’m grateful that you do).

Love, saintvi