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GANE Insight: Kim Jorgensen Gane's Blog

I'm no longer directionally challenged--I have a clear vision to celebrate #MOREin2014 via GANEPossible.com. Preempting my novel in progress, Bluebirds, I'm very close to releasing my first GANE Possible publication (prescriptive "Dr. Mom" nonfiction), Beating the Statistics: A Mother's Quest to Reclaim Fertility, Halt Autism & Help Her Child Grow From Behavior Failure to Behavior Success. I'm also working on completing my memoir, My Grandfather's Table: Learning to Forgive Myself First.

It took a lifetime to get here. This blog documents my quest to self-fulfillment through my writing, and ultimately to shifting my focus to Beating the Statistics & My Grandfather's Table and speaking about them. They are the wellness and the memoir parts of my journey that had to be told, so that Bluebirds can one day be the meaningful, but fictional *story* it aspires to be.

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Bluebirds Bring More Than Happiness; Omen Of My Long-Awaited Son

4/25/2012

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Picture
I can still see their black silhouettes--bats soared overhead against the dark of the night sky.  The yard beyond was illuminated by a big farm light that buzzed on a pole, though it wasn’t much of a farm anymore.  Pieces had been sold off over the years to encroaching industry; plastics companies that left mounds and mounds of synthetic scraps of all shapes and colors.  Bits and pieces my brother and I would collect to play with as money or food or just to inspect and toss at the fence.

We played for endless hours at my grandparent’s house.  We ate small, firm green pears until our bellies ached and we climbed the graceful, swaying willow tree, with the beckoning low branches that met at its base, stretching up like a welcome hug.  Except for the bats, this was the place I felt safest.  It was the place I felt most loved and where all our family came to gather.  Cousins, aunts, uncles and all of us, around big lace-covered tables laden with my grandmother’s delicious, aromatic cooking and colored by the loot from my grandfather’s garden.

Mornings after I slept in the room that had been my mother’s, we woke to the smell of breakfast cooking.  Thin, almost rubbery pancakes were plentiful to roll around fat sausage links and dip into sticky maple syrup that dripped down my chin.  We drank sugary, milky children’s tea from my grandmother’s dainty porcelain cups, dotted with exquisite painted violets.  I remember many summer afternoons when my grandfather and I walked in his garden; his bare, hairless knees peeked out from his shorts as a corduroy-slippered foot pressed a pitchfork into the loamy soil, turning it to reveal clumps of sweet, round new potatoes.  It was my job to fish them from the earth and carry them enfolded in my shirt to my grandmother who scrubbed them and later served them doused in salty, buttery goodness.  My grandfather’s large, firm finger disappeared into the soil alongside a fat carrot that would be left submerged until it matched or exceeded in girth and length.  He handed me round, firm but yielding tomatoes, still warm from the sun.  I bit into them like apples, and their juices dripped down in scarlet rivers off my filthy elbow.   I was covered in dirt, pink cheeked and tow headed and nothing mattered but the bees and the bounty. 

I remember my grandfather’s fondness for birds—budgies—I later learned this was an English thing when I was finally able to visit my maternal grandparents’ homeland, after they both were gone.  He always kept bird feeders among the forsythias in view of the front picture window, and was proud of the many varieties he attracted; cardinals, my favorite, orioles, canaries, his favorite, gold finches and every other kind and color imaginable.  A firm believer in hard work and a daily nap, he would lie back on the sofa, smoke his pipe and watch the birds.  Once all the smoke-rings had wasped away and the scent of the blue-tinned, apple wood tobacco had faded, he would close his eyes in the stillness, only the ticking clock and his snores disturbed the cool silence I treasured. 

Perhaps that’s why bluebirds came to tell me after six long years that my son would finally be; perhaps my grandfather sent them.  Two days in a row, two bluebirds came to the feeder outside my kitchen window.  I knew they were a sign; an omen that everything would be OK.  We had just closed our restaurant and financially our future was very uncertain.  There was the work trip to Britain my husband wouldn’t have been allowed to embark on without me, but otherwise there was only uncertainty:  temperature charting, endless research on endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome, chiropractic visits, drastic dietary adjustments, yoga, chakra balancing, progesterone cream, cleansing and fistfuls of supplements filled my days when our teenage daughters were in school.  Failure and fear filled my thoughts, until I saw those bluebirds and experienced the lush, colorful spring of London.  Suddenly my chronically acidic pH was perfectly in balance, and hope was my friend.  This was April.  And by June, I would have cause to take a pregnancy test again; prayerful that this time would turn out better than the loss we experienced two years before.

The bluebirds weren’t the only sign my grandfather sent.  When I finally gave birth to the boy I’d waited so very long to hold, my grandfather, dead at 100 years of age just the year before, came to me in a deeply vivid, drug-induced dream.  Not the bent over, feeble, occasionally sound minded, but impish and twinkle-eyed nonetheless grandfather, but the Grandpa of my youth.  The one who sported Elvis Costello glasses, a dapper seer-sucker suit and a straw hat; all of his five-foot-four-inch frame with its great, strong farm hands the size of a man’s over six feet tall, with their “educated thumbs” that could crack walnuts and put every man in our family on his knees during the required, humbling handshake greeting.      

Perhaps it was merely a memory of when I was not yet two and my baby brother was born; the hospital halls were lined with backless, vinyl, mustard-toned benches, and the hushed nurses hurried along in their skirts, white hosiery and clunky white shoes, not the scrubs and white Birkenstocks worn by my actual nurses.  Someone else was with him.  Man or woman, I’ll never know, because my husband woke me, thinking I was having a nightmare.  But I wasn’t.  I was deliriously happy to see the Grandpa of my youth, so very proud to show him my baby boy and grateful for the chance to thank him for the bluebirds.

Photo courtesy of:  Sandysphotos2009 (20100415_86  Uploaded by Snowmanradio) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

26 Comments

'Neath Heaven's Gaze

4/24/2012

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I've struggled with April's NaBloPoMo Poetry on BlogHer.com; as I've stated, an on-demand poet, I am not.  But the month is almost over, so here's one I wrote back in 1999 in honor of our little nephew who died just days before his fourth birthday.  For little Casey Edward Harrison, July 13, 1995 - July 11, 1999:


Our little angel sleeps tonight;
'Neath Heaven's gaze, his star shines bright.
His mother's arms held him dear,
His brother whispered in his ear,
His father's strength shed a tear.
Amid a lullaby of humming machines,
His cries are quiet, but not his dreams.

Our little angel sleeps tonight;
'Neath Heaven's gaze, his star shines bright.
Eyes that couldn't can now see rainbows.
Once weak limbs run and jump and catch and throw.
The wind in his hair, the sun on his face,
        he'll relive his first boat ride, last week at the lake;
This time at the bow, arms spread wide, face to the sky, whooping with
        laughter, not the least bit shy.

Our little angel sleeps tonight,
'neath Heaven's gaze, his star shines bright.
A child so fragile, a life so short, can touch so deeply those in his heart.
We who loved him would swear today, we could love him no more,
        were he perfect in every way.
When next you meet a disabled child, look in their eyes and return their smile.
Touch them and do not look through, do not pity and pet and shake your head,
For their priceless smiles light our lives,
        their hard-earned laughter, a precious prize.

--Loving aunt,
Kimberly J. Gane, copyright 1999, all rights reserved.


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I Used To Be A Blogger, Then I Had To Go Back To Being A Mom

4/20/2012

4 Comments

 
A quick look at my site stats tells me that I have drifted off into Blogosphere oblivion because, quite frankly, life has gotten in the way of my blogging.  But here’s the thing; blogging felt pretty damn amazing. 

Being a mom most days means living in a fairly constant state of oblivion.  As long as my son has a lunch to take to school, his favorite clothes are clean, food is on the table and there’s a ready ride to where he needs to be, I can go for days, weeks, years even it seems, pretty much unnoticed.  We schlep and we haul and we pack and we motivate and we advise.  We kiss the boo-boos, bake the cakes, vacuum the cobwebs no one else notices, all while fulfilling our “wifely” duties and trying to look our best.  My husband swears the other day he told me I looked nice when he got home, but he must have said it mumbling and walking away, as he does most things, because I sure never heard it.  I swear there are entire conversations that exist exclusively in that big head of his, especially if they are remotely appreciative, because I rarely ever hear words like that produced out loud.  To my face.  Voluntarily.  And God-forbid I should point out the fact that I got my hair done that day, because then I get the defensive, “I said you looked nice today!”  *grumble, mumble*

During March, however, when I was obsessively blogging and feeling a downright responsibility to do so, little of the above actually got done.  And I LOVED it!  I was using my mind, remembering words I hadn’t played with in ages, feeling appreciated by all of my readers (thanks Anna and Mr. B).  I had things to talk to my husband about that didn’t involve something needing to be fixed or purchased.  It was the least lonely I’ve felt since moving to California, even though most of the time I was very much alone.  I think because of so much time spent in front of a computer, I was more willing to seek out contact with actual, blood-pumping humans.  All of which would be amazing, if only I could figure out a way to seek out contact ($$--ahem) with an actual vacuum-wielding cleaning lady.  HEPA filtered.  Who does windows.  And laundry.  And uses green products. 

Not that blogging is all harp-holding cherubs all the time; there will always be those who disagree with me, judge me and laugh at me for all the wrong reasons.  And forgetting to pick up my son more than once in awhile is likely to get me the wrong kind of notice at school.  And apparently I needed yet another reminder today to COMPOSE IN WORD, because it REALLY blows when you lose internet connection mid-post.  Curse you, again, AT&T!!  April’s NaBloPoMo Poetry on BlogHer was a heroic fail.  Apparently an on-demand or disciplined poet, I am not.  Though I did love the idea—the romance—of it, I have come to understand that writers tend not by nature to be particularly disciplined people.  Huh.  So maybe that’s why I’m that way.  And when you don’t look in a mirror all day, or have anyone sitting in a cubicle next to you to tell you that you’re still wearing your jammies, have spinach in your teeth, or that your skin is flaking off your face, you might usually leave the house looking like a bit of a wreck, or hurriedly pull on shorts only to discover that you haven’t actually taken the time to shave in a week.  And, oh shit, you don’t have any clean pants to wear anyway. 

Wow.  Dry shaving sucks.
4 Comments

Last Night I Stood In The Rain

4/2/2012

2 Comments

 
Last night I stood in the rain;

Hard and wet and stinging my skin;

Collecting at the tips of my lashes;

Waiting to be rain again.


Last night I stood in the rain;

Washing down, smoothing my hair;

Changing the color of my clothes.

Whispering, tapping, screaming & flapping.


I awoke to the puddles

Collected by the house;

Memories of last night’s rain;

Of past years’ pain.


Wavering pools to make me recall

The wet and the sting and the bite of it all.

This morning revealing in puddles appearing

The flight I was feeling as last night’s rain kept me sane.


--Kimberly Jorgensen Gane Original, Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.

April's theme for NaBloPoMo on BlogHer is Poem.  This is one I wrote back when I lived in Michigan, where it rained often.  I dearly miss the cleansing feeling of rain, a good old-fashioned Midwest thunderstorm and the fresh smell of it in the morning.

2 Comments
    Write2TheEnd | 

    Kim Jorgensen Gane

    Author|Award-Winning Essayist|Freelance CommercialWriter|GANE
    Empowered Wellness Advocate, Facilitator, Speaker

    Kim is a freelance writer, living and working on Michigan’s sunset coast with her husband, youngest son, a standard poodle and a gecko. She’s been every-mom, raising two generations of kids over twenty-seven years. Kim writes on a variety of topics including parenting  through midlife crisis, infertility, health and wellness, personal empowerment, politics, and about anything else that interests her, including flash fiction and her novel in progress, Bluebirds.  Oh, and this happened!

    Kim was selected as a BlogHer '13 Voices of the Year Honoree in the Op Ed category for this post, an excerpt of which has been adapted for inclusion in the book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics, to be released late 2014.  Visit her Wordpress About page to see her CV.
    View my profile on LinkedIn
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*GANEPossible.com is an anecdotal website and in no way intends to diagnose, treat, prevent or otherwise influence the medical decisions of its readers. I am not a doctor, I do not recommend going off prescribed medications without the advice and approval of a qualified practitioner, and I do not recommend changing your diet or your exercise routine without first consulting your doctor. These are merely my life experiences, and what has and hasn't worked for me and my family. You must be your own best medical advocate and that of your children, and seek to find the practitioner with whom you have the best rapport and in whose advice and care you can entrust your health and medical decisions.


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I Blog with Integrity, please treat my content with integrity: Copyright © 2020, Kimberly Jorgensen Gane, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License..