Beginnings and Endings...Izzy Claims her Birthright again...

      A video was on T.V. One of the hundreds of nameless fresh faced teen aged girls that are putting recordings out these days was singing Santa Claus is coming to town.
       T.V: "You better watch out, you better not cry."
       Isobel: "What?"
       T.V: "You better not put, I'm telling you why."
       Isobel: "Why?"
       T.V: "Santa Claus is coming to town."
       Isobel: "LIAR!"
       T.V: "He sees you when you're sleeping."
       Isobel: "I hear you and you're LYING!"
       T.V: "He knows when you're awake."
       Isobel: "I know when you're LYING!"
       Daddy: "You sure about that?"
       Isobel: "Yep."
       Daddy: "Sure enough to risk your whole Christmas if you're wrong?"
       Isobel: "Santa Claus is coming to TOWN!!!"

          I was going to write about something completely different this week but I guess this thing is as much my story as it is the kids. If we are continuing to grow, all of us, the I have had a gigantic growth spurt this past week and I will never be the same...nor would I want to be.
      So I went back to school and felt odd and out of place and yadda, yadda, yadda. Here's the rub, I seem to be doing well. Much better than I ever did in high school. My good god, I am nearly a member of the intelligentsia. Well let's not exaggerate...
      A major part of this course is field placements. Real treatment on real people. I know, right? Needless to say I was crapping myself on Monday morning knowing full well that the following morning I would be in the trenches and really doing what I had signed up for. I have to be honest...I actually thought about turning the car around and going back home. Who was I kidding? Would I want me to care for me?
     Let me put this into perspective though. I am a PSW student. Not a nurse or practical nurse. I am at the bottom of the health care ladder but I spend more time with a resident than any of the other professions. I feed a lot of meals, I change a lot of briefs and I give a lot of showers and baths. If you are no longer able to perform these things for yourself then me, or the many others like me, will help you to do this things or do them for you. Bowels and Baths are what a good portion of my day consists of. I know, right? Would I want me to care for me? With all of this sensitive potentially embarrassing stuff? I jumped in-I didn't figure I had much of a choice and I wasn't alone. All of my class mates were all suffering the same anxiety, I'm almost certain.
      Here's the thing about the elderly, they are for the most part, some of the happiest people I have ever met. They want respect and to be treated with dignity and to feel safe and warm. And we owe it to them...in spades. My first client really set the tone for all of it. If he had been difficult, maybe tings would have been different and I wouldn't be writing this, though in retrospect I doubt it. I helped to change his brief and get him dressed and take him to the dining room. All of the things I was so terrified of doing on Monday morning, I just did on Tuesday. Not flawlessly, not by any stretch. But I did them and I made sure to ask about the things I still had questions about and asked for feedback for the things I felt confident about.
      After lunch, I sat with my client and held his hand. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we just sat in silence. He wandered in and out of lucidity but it didn't matter to either of us. A lady I met briefly, had watched me just sit and talk with this gentleman and at first I thought she might be upset with me. Maybe for spending too much time with him but for good or for ill, I sat with him until I was told to go do something else. Later on that afternoon, I met the staring woman right after she requested me to be her PSW for the duration my time in the facility.
      I got home at the end of the first week and Mrs. Narrator asked me what was my impression of it all. I told her that what I was about to say sounded kind of stupid, even in my head. I can't imagine what it would sound like if I actually said it. But I hadn't held back anything else this week so I figured why start now?
     "This going to sound stupid," I started. "But t feels like I am meant to be doing this. Like maybe this is the kind of thing I should have been doing all along."
      Now that is a gigantic statement to make but hear me out. Do you know when you start doing something new or meet someone and you feel as though it's something you have been doing all your life? Like it was a natural fit? That's what I felt. It was a tiny spark that started about 10:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and was an inferno by Friday afternoon.
      I'm not talking about finding my destiny but maybe in a way I am. I have had many jobs, musician included but never one where I felt 'I'm supposed to be here.' A man with a dream has hope, a man who feels he has a job to do has purpose, a man who has found where he fits is unstoppable. Maybe a tad flowery but I do feel as though I have gone through an epiphany of sorts. Am I glowing? I feel like I'm glowing? So would I want someone like me caring for me?


       I played a show in Rochester a long time ago. The show was over and I was likely hanging off the bar, smoking and drinking and making a general nuisance of myself. When the time came to pack up the gear, waiting for me on stage was a small electric bass with a note that read 'One day you will have little bass players of your own. They should learn on this. A Fan.'
     I gave that bass to The Boy who has begun to pursue another path and lost interest in playing music. Stringed type music anyway, we have bets whether or not he will start writing his own electronic music. Anyway. Izzy saw the bass a while ago ad asked if she could play it. The Boy naturally said no but I reminded him that he hadn't touched in at least a year and a half so he grunted and conceded and Izzy left beaming.
     I though she too had lost all interest in music until this week, as she has begun regaling us with bass concertos and a few bawdy songs to keep us going through these long winter nights. Her biggest hits like; 'I like lunch, Santa doesn't come to my house early, I play bass like a brosup'. Have really been keeping our spirits up.
     Her latest composition is much too good to keep to ourselves and so;
      " I just farted, can you smell it?
        I just farted, can you tell it?
        I have gas bombs
        I have gas bombs
        I have gas bombs
        So where are you?"
       Lennon, McCartney and Zawada-Baker...