What's In A Name?

Shakespeare asked that question long ago in Romeo and Juliet, and I've been asking it recently since I decided to use Kate as my writing name.

When I was a child, I was known as Kathy. As Kathy, I enjoyed books, school, and friends, but my home life was a nightmare. My dad used my mother and me as his personal punching bags. He used his hands, his feet, and, most devastatingly, his words to harm us. I bear the emotional scars to this day. My mom, unable to think of another way to escape, committed suicide. I feel guilty for not saving my mom, for not getting any of our family members to listen to me because my mom would not stand up for herself. As you might imagine, I associated the name Kathy with a powerless child-victim, so when I moved away after my mother's death, I began to call myself Kathleen.

As Kathleen, I was sure I could become a strong, confident woman in control of my life and my future. And for more than 30 years, it seemed as though I had accomplished this. I became a wife, a mother, and a teacher, and I lived a gloriously happy life. Then, one of my children developed schizophrenia, and my husband developed dementia. My heart was broken, and I discovered that I, as Kathy or Kathleen, could not control my future.

After picking up the pieces of my heart, I decided to write a book about dementia to try to help others who have loved ones with this dreadful disease. I just could not use Kathleen as my writing name because it reminded me of my sorrow and of what our family lost,  so I decided to become Kate. Kate, I felt, shouted survivor and adventurer, so Kate is my author name on my book.

However, Kate doesn't fit perfectly either. I have come to realize that who I really am is a combination of Kathy, Kathleen, and Kate. All that was good when I bore the different variations of my name and all that was bad are part of me. Changing the version of my name does not change who I really am, no matter how much I may want it to do so. I will always have the hurt child, Kathy, who loves her friends and books in me, just as I will always have the strong woman, Kathleen, with happy memories and a broken heart in me. These two entities weave together with the survivor, Kate, and become one woman, me, who answers to Kathy, Kathleen, and Kate because I've finally figured out that it doesn't matter what I'm called, I'm the same person inside.

So, now that I've figured out what's in a name, or at least my name, and now that I've finished writing my book, I need to figure out how to live an adventurous, meaningful rest of my life. Any suggestions?

Take care,

Kate

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A Brief Hiatus

Greetings, dear readers. I am to the point in re-writing my book where I must spend a lot of time concentrating on close scrutiny of the text. It is emotionally exhausting. So, I probably won't have time to write my blog again until after the book is complete. Never fear, I shall be jotting down ideas to expand upon when I return, which I hope will be by the end of March.

Take care,

Kate

No, I Won't Put The Book Down!

"Put that book down, and go outside!" implored my mom on a daily basis.

"No, I won't put the book down!" I firmly, exasperatedly, and adamantly responded each time.

What's the big deal about going outside? Yes, I love nature, and it's fun to create images out of the clouds and play with ladybugs, but, let's be honest here, a book can show you much more about the world than your own two eyes can show you, and more than the real world too--you can share Mandela's cell in South Africa, work on tuberculosis with Koch, solve mysteries with Adam Dalgliesh, ride Aslan in Narnia with Lucy and Susan, and tilt at windmills with Don Quixote.

Since the age of four, I've had a love affair with books. One is always either in my hand or nearby. My bedroom has bookshelves on three walls, so I can fondly remember an adventure in this book or eagerly anticipate an adventure to come in that book. I have a dictionary in every room of my house and in my car, just so that I can get the meaning of a new word when I see it. I can't imagine my life without books, and I am sure, like Borges who said, "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library," that heaven will be a glorious library full of all the books ever written--nothing will go out of print--and everyone I meet will like books as much as I do.

Books are just like friends and lovers. Some books, like some friends and lovers, delight for a lifetime, but many books, like many friends and lovers, are just right for a particular time and place. And, just like I want to keep in touch with all my friends because they form the tapestry of my life and I theirs, I want to keep all the books I've ever read.

Alas,  space constraints often make this impossible. A few years ago, after we moved to a smaller home, my youngest son insisted that I halve my library, which was around 7,000 volumes, and fit every book into one of our 24 bookshelves. This took me a whole summer, with some days finding me lost in re-reading an old nugget that I'd forgotten about, and that I knew had to stay in the library. Now, four years later, my bookshelves are straining under the added weight of new additions.

Where do these new additions come from? Well, I am incapable of passing by a used bookstore without stopping in, and, once in, a new gem or two always attracts my notice. This might be a new poet who tickles my fancy or a new mystery or a new analysis of Shakespeare's plays--it might even be a collection of jokes or, one recent great find, a collection of humorous gravestones--the more eclectic the better is my idea of a good library.

After my first two children were born, the woman who was like a mom to me said, "Honey, you have to quit reading so much. You're a mom now, and your children need your full attention all the time." I was shocked! I remember saying, "If I don't read something every day, I'll be a terrible mom because I'll be cranky and out of sorts, but don't worry, my children always come first. I'll just read after they go to asleep." "But, Honey," mom responded, "that's when you need to get your sleep."

Well, I ignored mom and kept reading every night, AND I read for an hour or more everyday to my children. When my eldest son said at age three or four, "Mommy, I love Beowulf; please read it again," my heart soared with joy. Watching each of my four children learn to read and have favorite stories, characters, and lines is one of my greatest joys because I know that they have so much more of the world in their hearts and minds than they would have if they didn't love reading.

So, go outside to play and enjoy nature, but remember the joys that await you inside of a book too.

Take care,

Kate

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Love Among The Ruins

Ah, love! It makes the world go round, or so the song says, and most of us will go to great lengths to experience the feeling in its myriad forms. We love our pets, our friends, our children, our families, and most us want to find one special person to love. We want to be connected, to find our soul mate, to feel completed and whole, and we believe if we find the "right" one that our world will be perfect, a heaven on earth.

Most of us have experienced times when we know with our heads that we love our families, friends, and spouse, but we don't feel it with our hearts because we may not like them very much at a particular moment. We feel anger or hurt or sometimes even hatred, but we still act in a loving manner towards the individual because we know that's the right way to behave. This is because most of us know, without using the terms, that love is both a noun and a verb, a feeling and an action. We learn over time that if we act lovingly, the feeling of love usually returns to give us that warm glow in our lives.

But what should we do when love unwantedly disappears in our beloved child, friend, or spouse? Well, when the individual is mentally healthy, we will usually try to change the dynamics of the relationship, if that is possible, or we will end the relationship. However, if the individual is mentally ill, and we are responsible for that person, we have to find a way to live with no shared loving feelings, while still acting in a loving manner. Not an easy thing to do.

Why love disappears in a few people with dementia or mental illness is a mystery--an atrophying of part of the brain perhaps or a chemical imbalance, but it is devastating to the loved ones left wondering where love went. It is a cruel, ironic, twisted stab to the heart. A person who once loved us with all his or her heart is no longer capable of feeling anything for us. Feeling, as we understand it, is gone. No empathy, no insight, no connection at all.

Yet, this person was once a beloved child, spouse, parent, sibling, or friend, and this person needs us to care for him; so what is a caregiver to do as his or her own feelings of love begin to wane in the emotional ruins created by dementia or mental illness?

My wise youngest son, who is my co-caregiver for his father, my husband, says we must choose to act in a loving, respectful way because that is who each of us wants to be as an individual. For example, we could choose to give my husband dinner by himself--that would certainly be more pleasant for us, and he wouldn't care one way or the other--but, instead, we choose to fix a full meal each night and dine with him as a family, honoring what we once had.

Being loving to someone in a void, in a vacuum, in an abyss is at times incredibly painful and lonely, sometimes even a nightmare. It goes against all that we think of as love. Songs do not sing about this kind of love. There is no acknowledging glance across a crowded room. It is all one sided. You give, but you don't get. No Hallmark card endings. All you have with this kind of love is your choice, and whatever choice you make about how you love when you love among the ruins, tells you everything about yourself. This is not the love we think of when we bask in the warm glow of our loving relationships, but it is sometimes a love we must experience.

Take care,

Kate

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Destiny Is More Than A Goat

I've always loved goats. For 21 years, while my children were growing up, we lived on 50 acres and had lots of animals. I loved them all, but the goats were the cutest. For years, I looked for a Nubian goat because of its adorable ears. Finally, the year before we had to move off our mountain paradise, I found a Nubian goat at the county fair. The young 4-H goat owner was happy to sell me her Nubian on one condition--I had to take her Alpine goat friend named Destiny. I didn't really want Destiny, but I did want the Nubian, so I brought both home.

Well, that was one of the best thing I ever did. My Nubian goat was dull and uninteresting. She was not friendly at all; in fact, she seemed completely devoid of personality. However, Destiny was the most delightful of companions. She was so excited every time I came to the barn. She would run to the fence and kiss me. She liked to frolic, and she enjoyed nothing more than for me and my youngest son to play with her in the pasture. I cried when I had to sell her because our new home did not have the facilities for a goat. I did, however, have the good fortune to sell her to a gentleman who was getting the goat as a pet for his grandchildren, so I knew Destiny would be well loved.

Having Destiny taught me a lot. She taught me that what I often think I want is not what I really want. I had thought I wanted a Nubian because of her cute ears, when, in fact, I wanted Destiny with her regular Alpine ears. Had the young 4-Her not insisted that I also buy Destiny, I would never have known what I was missing.

What else, I wondered, had I possibly missed out on in life because of a preconceived idea of what I wanted? Some men for sure. Why? Because my immature, romantic notion of the perfect mate was a tall, broad-shouldered man, like John Wayne, which meant that during my dating and mating days, I passed over men near my height. Who knows what gems I never even glanced at or considered?

Destiny also taught me that when my expectations were dashed, something unexpected might present itself. The Nubian goat was a huge disappointment, partly because I had built up how great a Nubian goat would be, and partly because she had a boring personality. But Destiny, for whom I had no expectations, gave me greater pleasure than I could have imagined. This gives me hope for my future.

Why? Well, my plans for my empty nest always revolved around my husband. We were going to have adventures together; we were going to grow old together after a lifetime of shared memories; instead, my husband developed dementia 15 years ago, and my empty nest days are spent caring for a person who has no adventures nor shared memories with me.

But, like my goat Destiny, there have been some delightful surprises. I had the unexpected, completely unplanned, opportunity to teach English at a community college for three years, and my students gave me great joy, joy I had never anticipated. Additionally, some of my colleagues have become friends, and my life would be poorer without them.

There is still much more of my life to live. What will it bring? I do not know, but I do know that because of Destiny, my pet goat, I say yes to many more situations than I had before she taught me what I would have missed out on if I had said no to her. Now, when a preconceived notion rears its ugly head, I remind myself of my goat Destiny, and say yes to something new, heading for a destiny that would not have been possible before Destiny came into my life.

Take care,

Kate

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