Finding Doah

My continuing apologies for not being able to deal with graphics on this old computer--my laptop is STILL in computer repair land on the East Coast, and I am told that those experts have not yet figured out the problem nor made a decision what to do. In the interim, Word does work, and so I am hard at work on my next book, in and around travels and real work. I have completed six of nine chapters, and chapter seven is nearly done. As promised, here is an excerpt. It is a just-finished section of chapter 7, which I will post on all my blogs for which the topic is pertinent.

As a child and through his teenage years, Doah had a habit of slinking off, mainly from curiosity or because he wanted to go somewhere and there was no one to take him at precisely the time he wanted to go. It was not the kind of disappearance that a fully mentally competent child of the same age would make. Rather, it was a matter of marrying “want” with “immediate fulfillment” prompted by naivete and complete trust in the safety and kindness of the surrounding environment associated with the simplicity of mental retardation. Usually, we would find Doah a couple of aisles away in the grocery store, in the backyard on the swings, or at a neighbor’s house. Scarier disappearances, however, did occur, like the time he decided to walk down the middle of Lee Highway, the main thoroughfare in Arlington, Virginiua.

One Sunday morning when Doah was twelve years old but the size of a seven-year-old and with the mental age of a seven year old, I emerged from the shower and could not find him. I checked the entire house. No Doah. I checked the backyard. Empty swings. I checked with the all the neighbors. No visit to their homes that day. Frantic panic set up, and I began walking the streets in our subdivision, calling his name. Neighbors I had never before met told me that they knew Doah. Really? He had been wandering farther afield than I had known. When? I suppose I will never know the answer to that question. At the time, though, I was more interested in how far his wandering might have taken him. I returned home to Donnie empty-handed.

“Why are you losing time by walking all over the neighborhood?” he asked me. “Just think where he is.”

“Thinking” actually referred to what I often knew about my children from unexplainable sources. For example, I occasionally “knew” in advance that one or another would get hurt at school that day, creating a dilemma in that I had no way to tell a teacher to be careful and try to prevent the accident. No teacher would believe me, yet each time the child in question in woulds indeed return home with some minor injury. If I were sitting quietly, thinking about nothing at all, sometimes an image would appear of the child, either where the child was at the moment or what would happen to the child in the immediate future.

“Nothing comes to mind about Doah,” I told Donnie.

“Just calm down and think for a minute,” Donnie advised.

I emptied my mind and, blast!, in came an image of Doah, clothed in white with a blue belt. He was standing, surrounded by white. White everywhere. Well, one can imagine the worst possible scenario from that.

“I think he’s dead,” I told Donnie. “Everything around him is white.”

“What else?” Donnie pressed, knowing that I am one to miss details. “There has to be more. What is he doing? Is he saying anything? Is there anyone else there?”

Ah! I could not see whether or not there was anyone else there, but he was standing and clapping! Clapping? Church!

Although Donnie was agnostic and I atheist, we did allow our children to attend church services if they wished. Doah had taken up recently with a church downtown, about a mile from where we lived. He would get there by bus, or someone would pick him up. If the latter, the van driver would always come to our door, and that had not happened this time. Still, I knew Doah was at the church.

Donnie and I drove to the church apprehensively. What if he were not there? Then what?

I walked in the door and immediately knew I was in the right place. The inside of the church had been painted—all white. I wandered through one of the rooms, heard some singing, and moved in that direction. As I turned the corner, I saw another white-walled room, and there in the front row was Doah, standing and clapping, dressed in white clothes, with his blue money belt around his waist. Thank God!

I do not know how to interpret these out-of-the-ordinary experiences in my past. I find it hard to believe that such “help” would come from something demonic. Yet, clearly most parents do not find their missing children by emptying their minds and allowing an image of the location of their children to enter. In some ways, these images presaged how nowadays I approach contemplative prayer. Perhaps back then they reflected God’s way of dealing with an atheist in the only way she would (or could) accept.

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Excerpted from Believer in Waiting (forthcoming), copyright 2003.

Life in Cyberspace

My sister writes to my Mommy a lot in cyberspace. We all do. One time, however, my sister wanted to send Mommy a package. She did not know where to send it. She could not send it to cyberspace! I think she had a problem sending a package to cyberspace because there was no zip code to use. All real places have zip codes, right? So cyberspace must not be a real place, at least the way I figure.


Mommy lives in cyberspace for a couple of reasons. First, she travels a lot, and that is the way she keeps in touch with us. (I have a place in cyberspace, too. If you ask me, I will tell you my address there.) Second, sometimes Mommy's work requires her to be in cyberspace.

For several years, Mommy worked for an organization that existed primarily in cyberspace. People in a number of cities across America worked from home, and they were linked by e-mail. Mommy did many different things for that organization.

Sometimes she would send out addresses for people helping with specific projects.
Mommy learned the importance of accurate typing (although she probably will never be able to type accurately without those typing lessons I plan to get for her) when she received a number of surprised responses from her message giving the address of Mr. and Mrs. Lord. Mommy had titled the message: "The Lord's E-Mail Address."

Everyone thought that Mommy had some great connections.

Conclusion: Be careful whose e-mail address you share and with whom.

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This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.

Welcome, 2011!

Wishing everyone a happy new year on the remarkable date of 1/1/11. I managed to get back into an older post and copy out the image. (Where there is a will, there is a way.) I have not been able to peck out as much as I would like on the new book in the past week on this computer, so I am awaiting with great expectancy the return of my own laptop, either repaired or replaced, in a few weeks -- a new start to a new year.

One great thing about Face Book is watching the New Year be embraced in country after country as it approaches our California coastline. We are among the last to welcome the new year, but the advantage to that is we get to enjoy a lot of other celebrations, beginning on the morning of December 31 (which I fortunately had off this year).

As the new year enters, we have had a remarkable change happen. Our little Simone, the feral cat we rescued when we moved nearly two years ago, changed from being aloof and afraid to affectionate. For the last few days, she has been following me everywhere, has nestled beside me on the couch, and has wanted to be petted. I always thought she would domesticate -- I am pretty successful at domesticating feral cats, the key to which is being patient. Two years is a long time to wait, but it looks like at least one little Leaver is entering the new year in great style.

So is Nikolina. She got her leg braces on Tuesday. They are pink! When I am able to post in a normal fashion and add new pictures, I will put a copy of Nikolina in her braces on the right sidebar. In the interim, it is great to see how she likes wearing them and knowing that in a while she will be able to stand and walk. The question asked when she was born in April 2009, will she be able to work, has been answered: Yes, she will!

Wishing a brave new world for all of you in 2011 -- and may it be gentle to you, as well!

Thinking Literally

Understanding things literally is something that Mr. Spock on Star Trek does. It is also something that my Mommy does. I do not know if it is because she is a detail-oblivious type or if there is another reason. Anyway, that's probably why she is gullible and why she drove the deuce-and-a-half.

Apparently, she has always taken things literally. At least, that's what my aunts and uncles tell me. I can give you an example of that, too.

When she was a little girl, according to my grown-up relatives, she was very active in a number of youth organizations. One of those was the Junior Grange. The Junior Grange is for kids up to age 16, when they can join the regular Grange. It is mostly found in small towns and rural areas.

When Mommy was ten, she was Master of the Junior Grange. That is the highest office there is. As Master, she had to lead the meetings.

That year, my Mommy's Junior Grange was voted as the best in the state. That meant, that all the officers had to go the state capitol to the New Hampshire State Grange meeting and put on the "degree," a special kind of meeting. Mommy and her friends did that. There were lots of really important people at the New Hampshire State Grange meeting.

At the end of the meeting, the matron—that is the adult person who acts as an advisor to the Junior Grange members—told Mommy that she should now have some of the bigwigs speak. Mommy did not understand what bigwigs were. Mommy had never been out of the Maine-New Hampshire area, but she did a lot of reading, and she knew that there were all kinds of different groups of people in the world. So, instead of thinking that the matron was speaking figuratively, she took her literally, figuring that there might be a special group of people called bigwigs.

"Would any bigwigs in the room like to speak?" asked Mommy. The matron looked very embarrassed, and no one stood up to speak. They said that the year Mommy presided over the degree was the only year that no one spoke at the joint New Hampshire State Grange-Junior Grange meeting.

Conclusion: Sometimes asking is better than thinking.


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This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.

Here Yesterday, Gone Today, Back after Several Tomorrows

Just as I took vacation time to work on my next book, my computer died. This is called Leaver luck; it has happened to us on so many occasions that I was not surprised. You see, Murphy's home is on a cloud right about our house, and whenever we start to feel comfortable with life as it is, he drops some raindrops, hail, blizzard flakes, and the like. The computer repair shop said that the computer was too dead for emergency CPR, so they have to send it to a hospital far away to see if it can be resurrected (perhaps not). That is going to take "weeks," they assured us. How many, they cannot say. Happily, the computer is under extended warranty. I am glad I had the foresight to purchase that. So, if it cannot be resurrected, I will be sent a brand new baby.

In the meanwhile, Donnie has loaned me his very old, but functional Macintosh laptop. I used to know how to use Mac; I am re-learning. The problem is that the computer is so old, it cannot handle even my Word files, and every single document I want to use, Donnie has to convert on his machine. Internet is difficult. I seem to be able to get onto blogger and publish comments, so please feel free to explore and comment on old posts. What is difficult to do is write new ones because I have no access to my graphics, no way to upload graphics, no way to handle large files, etc. I do have two posts that I wrote some time ago that will post automatically, based on earlier scheduling. Imagine! Beyond that, though, I can only promise a period of silence, hoping that it will be shorter than the techs think.

So, it looks like I am out of commission for some weeks. I can get online to read your blogs, and I will continue to do that. Posting on my own blogs, though, is, unfortunately, on hold until my electronic life returns to normal.

I am indeed still working on my next book. Donnie was able to convert the book file, but all my notes are not available. :( Well, I thought of those ideas, they will come back, or God will plant some new thoughts. I actually ended up drastically revising the table of contents while waiting for Donnie to convert the old document on his desktop computer, put it on disk, and pass it along to me in a format that the laptop will recognize. I also changed the title of the book: A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God. I seemed to be getting more inspiration coming my way now that nearly all I can do computer-wise is work on that book. (I am also getting more family and friend time, which is not all that bad, either.)

As for posting anything on my blogs, I am afraid I will have to wait until I am past the computer crisis and my electronic life is back to normal, which looks like nearly the end of January -- right after the book is due. Interesting, how dates and tasks work out that way!

Find the Angel

In nearly every situation, there is an angel who could help. They are often easier to find than one thinks.

Probably the most literal example was at a Christmas party held a number of years ago by a group of Czech immigrants who taught in one of the foreign language education programs I supervised at the time. They invited Doah, who has made a lifetime habit of asking people for help, to attend.

Doah did not know Bohemian traditions, but he quickly figured things out. All the children sat in a circle while Mikolaz (St. Nicholas) read a list of their bad behaviors during the year (prepared, of course, by each parent). The, for each, Mikulaz decided whether the devil, who was dancing up and down in gleeful anticipation near the child in question, could throw him or her into his sack for transport away from this world, or whether the child's behavior had been good enough or contrition deep enough for an angel, also standing nearby, to give a present. Each child quaked. Some cried.

When it was Doah's turn, he must have thought that there was no hope for forgiveness for him. Partway through Mikulaz's reading of Doah's "sins," Doah got out of his child, walked over to the angel, took her hand, and said, "I in trouble. You help me? It your job help people in trouble."

To this day, some people cannot stop laughing at what they perceived as the difference between the "American approach" and the "Czech approach" to a problem. Actually, I don't think Doah's behavior had as much to do with cross-cultural
differences as with his own skill at finding angels. Of course, the angel helped him.

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Excerpted and adapted from a collection of vignettes I published, copyright 2003.
Note: Also posted on Clan of Mahlou and 100th Lamb.

Mommy's Special Weapon

When we lived in Pittsburgh, we had two parts to our house. One part was in a separate apartment, and that is where Daddy had his photography studio and office.

Daddy put an alarm on his office. Although we lived in a nice neighborhood where things were pretty safe, Daddy had lots of expensive photography equipment that he wanted to protect.

There was something strange about that alarm. It was on the same frequency as some other signal, but Daddy could never figure out what that was. So, about once a week, we had to put up with a false alarm. Daddy usually shut the alarm off when that happened.

Our neighbors had to put up with the false alarms, too. They did not like it. Usually by the time the alarm got shut off, lots of our neighbors had stopped by to visit and find out why our house was making all that noise.

One day, though, Mommy was home alone when the alarm went off. Daddy was not there to shut it off, and the neighbors no longer seemed to care about the noise—or were to busy to come visit.

So, Mommy told us to stay in the living room, and she went to check out the apartment. To get there, she went up our stairs, across the attic, and down into the apartment on the other side of the building. Whew! No one was there. Once again, it was a false alarm. She turned off the alarm.

The police were already on the way, unfortunately. They had heard the alarm, too. They walked into the house just as Mommy was walking down the stairs. She stopped to talk to them. Standing on the third stair up, she was the same height as the police officer who had entered our house. (Either Mommy is not very tall, or the police officer was very tall.)

"We heard the alarm, ma'am," the police officer said.

"Oh, there's nothing to worry about," Mommy reassured him. "I just checked, and it is a false alarm."

The police officer looked Mommy up and down. Obviously, he thought that Mommy was not very tall because he asked her, "And just what did a little thing like you think you were going to do if you found someone there?"

Actually, Mommy had not really considered that, but she thought quickly and allowed that she could chew an intruder off at the knees. The police officer did not think that was a very good answer, but I know that Mommy could have done it (especially if she were wearing her combat boots).

Conclusion: Police officers have better weapons than Mommy's teeth, but knees can be vulnerable.


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This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.