Not Squander

I take a dozen or more photos nearly every day. Sometimes a hundred in one ordinary day.  My reasons are often practical ones like programming buttons on Addie's communication device with photos that have meaning for her. Other times I'm more focused on entertaining her as she visits the photo stream folder on her iPad later - she finds it a delightful surprise to both be reminded of daily occurrences, but also to see herself in them from an angle she didn't have the first time.

I suspect the prevailing reason I take so many photos might have to do with a hoarding instinct. I get to have the moment when it happens and then many times over with a picture. But with the photo, I also have the luxury of savoring tiny details I could never have otherwise seen having lived it only once.

I believe it's a hoarding of time, too.  I don't think about it head on much anymore, but I recall the day we understood what Addie's diagnosis was. I read through the symptoms and manifestations in a variety of medical references. So many things rang a bell with our girl we'd known for 2.5 years - the shape of her eyes, the fuzzy swirls of hair on her back, the curved double-wide thumbs, the early trouble nursing and keeping food down, her tiny size and missed milestones. So many things resonated with us it was almost a relief to understand a bit of the "why."

Except for one thing. One nagging short line articulated differently in every journal article and website.

The question of a possible shortened lifespan.

Despite a precarious post-surgery hospital stay in 2008 with everything in the balance, we don't live in this fear daily.  She is a healthy, hearty girl who has proven unpredictable in so many other ways. Still, I have long suspected that my nearly compulsive need to photograph every second may have been built slowly as I consulted each description of Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome and found that vaguely worded doubt of longevity in each. The final reference I found preceded by about 24 hours my decision to quit my job of 12 years. As much as I may have tamped down the impact of that small line, it was a deciding factor in an act that shifted the tides for our family.

And so I have to admit that may be what trips my trigger thumb on my little phonecam with such voracity. I admit it and I leave it there just to be. It sits there while I focus and frame, snap and review.  I don't see it in the photos as they are mostly centered on joy or at least mundane contentment.

In the later evenings after all heads here rest idle on pillows, I spend a little time going through the day's photos, making random decisions about editing, dumping, transferring to Addie's communication device. There are some that I just keep to keep. I'll look at them from time to time, not really with any specific objective to the review in mind. Most days there are no remarkable pictures. Remarkable to me, that is. And other days there is one, or even two, that scream at me to be looked at, enlarged, reduced, looked at again, maybe shared, maybe not. Looking at them is the thing, analyzing every detail - how the sunlight and shadows tell the time of day, how the grass and leaves tell the time of year, how the cut of the sidewalk and patch of brick wall tells the location, how the clothes tell the relative temperature, how the expression tells what happened moments before or what is anticipated to happen moments after, how the angle tells how near or far I was, whether I was integral to the instant or present as an observer.  A nuanced, layered, continuous story in one frame - I can see both history and the future in these rare pictures.

Today I got 3 of them.

The 2 Biggest Reasons

Michael runs for a lot of reasons.  Over the years the reasons have slid up and down on the priority scale.  Except for the top 2 static slots.  For they belong to these girls...

Have a look back at his year's birthday cards I made for them (yep, a rerun):


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Sunday, Sunday, Sunday is the big run.  The run for RTS families everywhere, the run for me and for 2 pair of blue eyes above.

26.2forRTS

In The Time It Takes

Training for a marathon is hard.  Yeah.  I've never done it, true.  But we'll be wrapping up my husband's training this week, with the marathon in 7 days.  Training takes time and focus.  His time, his focus. 

So we get less time, less focus.

That understanding comes from 4 full marathon training seasons and countless halves.  With this 5th full, we finally got smart: family runs.  We pack Addie into her oversized jogging stroller and Cate and I lace up our own shoes on weekday evenings when the mileage on his plan is on the lower side, as opposed to the weekend runs that are in the double digits.  Sometimes the miles he needs to put in on his shorter runs still slightly exceed our comfort, so Cate and I will turn off at our halfway point and finish out while Michael pushes Addie the rest of his distance.  First half family run, second half mother/daughter and father/daughter runs.

This has certainly made the training schedule easier on me, on the girls.  We get more of Michael's time, more of his focus.  I also think that despite having to ratchet his pace down considerably, towing his family with him once or twice a week provides an extra layer of motivation and energy for the marathoner himself.  His stride looks a titch jauntier to me when he's got Addie in front of him and Cate at his side, me grinning at all of it from behind.

The photos above are from last week's partial family run.  Addie was busy and so could not join us.  At our halfway point of Cate's longest run to date, we stopped to take in the fall colors before they are gone. 

Rather, they stopped to enjoy the colors.  I stood back and witnessed with a thin phonecam between us, these extra minutes two people I love had to do something good for themselves, for each other, I watched them look out, each pointing at something wondrous across the river, I saw them lean in and share a laugh, sometimes talking, sometimes not, their hands constantly moving; at times play-punching each other, often one hand hooked in the other's.

Come May or June, well after the aches from the marathon have worn off, Michael will reservedly offer the interesting fact that registration for the 2013 marathon has opened.  He will test the waters a bit as he makes his way around to telling me he's thinking of running it again.  He will expect my usual pause as the thought of all the hours of his absence settle back in.  He will wait for my mild and guaranteed, albeit not wholly heartfelt, encouragement.

And this time I cannot wait to surprise him by skipping the pause and asking with most sincere enthusiasm if he has the training calendar worked out so we can highlight the family run nights.  We will all look forward to these weekly family runs with a purpose for another training season.  There will likely even be a bit more jumping for joy.

Michael's firstgiving page will be live for a few months after the run.  He is again raising funds for families like ours affected and enriched by Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome.  Click here to see how you can help: 26.2forRTS26.2forRTS.

This Pleases the Cockroaches I Live With Greatly

Karen -

Hey.  Got your keen letter yesterday.  I must say that I'm a bit ashamed of the P.M.S. one I sent you.  Ah, well.

I don't think I mentioned this.  The police have decided to spend their time & $ harassing us poor illegal workers for a while.  I know 5 people who've been deported & at least 10 more who've left in fear.  It seems the cops are going into even the smallest schools & plucking people out.  It's really kind of ridiculous.  They need us - people see English as a necessary thing (not a hobby language) and it makes up a substantial chunk of the economy.  Why cause such a whirlwind every couple of months?  All the teachers leave, the schools get fined & pissed at the old lawmakers, parents get angry at everyone...  And then we all spend a couple months building it back up again, right under the very same legislative and executive noses, only to have it pulled apart again.  It is so stupid.  I will not leave in fear. If someone grabs me by the collar in my classroom they'd better be ready for an earful and a handful.  They will, of course, send me home anyway as I could not argue my way out of doing this illegal thing I have knowingly chosen to do (though the law seems to be a seasonal thing here). 

My point was in starting this that I don't think I'd be overly upset if they made me go home now.  Because you see, I would not then have to make a decision, a rotten decision - I'd have no choice at all.  I've been rather homesick lately - familysick, I mean.  Those babies are all growing up without me pinching their cheeks & giving them stuff their parents don't want them to have.  But I got bills to pay & I really don't know how I'd make money at home.  Besides, I really think I'd better take advantage of my position - hemispherically speaking, that is.  Go see stuff, you know.

Thanks for the pictures.  I happened to open your letter at one of my schools.  The children were just floored by Seph's red eyes.  I guess the red from flashes doesn't happen much with Asian eyes because so little of the eye is exposed to it or something.  They died laughing at the picture of John.  They wouldn't believe he was my little brother.  One of the kids had this to say about the picture (almost an exact translation from Mandarin) "He looks like he doesn't smell nice."  Ah!  Tell him when you see him.

'Favorite color?' Green (varied shades).  'Favorite bands?' a bit of a tie - Almost anything traditional Celtic, James Taylor, Santana, Kate Bush, John's old ditty's he sang on the toilet, Whey Yo Kindergarten Chorus doing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (don't tell the other schools that Whey Yo is my favorite.)...  'My position in the world?'  Linebacker, no doubt.

And yourself?

You just ask, that's how.  It may be a personal fault or feature, but I'll answer any question asked, especially by my family.  I trust people when they are honest enough to ask questions... it's other means of info gathering to be leery of...

You asked about the weather here.  It's just one notch below unbearable for me.  Disgustingly damp with an average of 94 degrees.  This pleases the cockroaches I live with greatly - they are thriving and have invited all their relatives...But I just get used to sweating like a pig.  I've a rickety old fan that doesn't do me much good when the electricity goes out three nights out of five.  Someone told me this was due to night road construction, but I still don't get it.  I did tell you how much the mosquitoes (who live in harmony with the cockroaches & I) love my hairy white skin.  It seems like I've been sweating and scratching for 4 months - because I have.  Ugh.  And 2 more months of this shit before the rains come & cool it down.

'Who are the Taiwanese prejudice against?'  Tough to answer.  They are very proud people - add to this is a bitterness over being a Republic, a part of China - kind of  self-orphaned, but with overbearing foster parents.  There is a sort of prejudice against anything or anyone not culturally Chinese, I think.  But they treat Americans like we are all close relatives of Madonna or Kevin Costner.  I guess, though, that I've heard the most rude remarks directed at Filipinos.  But they don't consider these remarks prejudice at all, they are just fact to them - i.e., of course we all know Filipinos are lazy, that's just the way it is (never mind that all things made in Taiwan are made by Filipinos and Indonesians who live and work in the factories here, away from their families and lives at home).  If you asked someone here about prejudice they'd give you the example of black people and white people in the good old U.S. of A.  To them, it's the only place where racism hangs.  Never mind again an apparent disdain here for the Japanese, Detroit-style...

Hey - I'm glad you included Fuji's address.  I am thinking that I shall pass through Japan on my way home for a visit in January.  Actually, if all goes as planned, I'll be taking a month or more to check out Asia and Indonesia. We'll see.  I'd dig seeing Fuji again.  Had I the cash by then I'd grab Susan when she comes & go check it out in October.  But I doubt that's possible.

Oh.  You say your other letters were too mushy or too abstract.  For who, buddy-boy?  You underestimate me if you doubt my grasp of either.  Bring it on.

I feel like I haven't really started this letter yet, but as I look it over I see it's time to end.  Tell everyone hello.  Tell mom to write - ha.

I miss you.  You write a mean letter. More, more.

Love and Peace,
Shin Tai Rae

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Written to my sister 22 years ago  (1990, probably in about May or June) during my 18 months as an undocumented and illegal teacher of English and Spanish in Taiwan, R.O.C.  It arrived in today's mail from Karen.  All this time she saved this little piece of my little story and sent it back to me.  A whole lot more, not written on the pages, comes back to me with it. Thank you, my sistah.