How I Got My Native American Name

Since the entire world and its brother has probably seen the movie "Dances with Wolves", I'm sure you'll be familiar with the Hollywood version of how Kevin Costner's character, John Dunbar, got his Sioux name. If we were all named by our witnessed actions or attributes, I can imagine a few people who would behave themselves rather differently.

I mean, it's one thing to be called Blossom on the Wind, if you're really some sort of ethereal beauty, or maybe Stooping Falcon if you're an Olympic class athlete. But nobody wants to be called something lame like Three Legged Dog or Burps Like a Buffalo, do they? Come to think of it, if the option had been at all accepted when I had my two boys, I might have named one Bellowing Bull and the other Bonks His Head Constantly, names for which I would never have been forgiven.

Sons, if you're reading this... Thank your lucky stars...

The incident that stands out most to me as being a "naming moment" in the Dances with Wolves tradition, occurred a few years ago at my home in Parker, Colorado. It was one of those balmy summer evenings that encourages people to sit on the porch, listen to the dusk coyote chorus and eventually watch the stars glimmer into existence in a moonless velvet sky before finally going inside to finish dishes and do all those mundane tasks that we, by this day and age, ought to have domestic robots doing for us.

The boys were in bed and sleeping soundly. My (then) husband was watching something or other on TV in the loft and it was time for my collie, Jess, to have a last run around the back yard before bed time. I opened the sliding glass door for Jess and closed it behind her, but rather than her usual run-sniff-squat action, she stayed right at the door and barked loudly into the night. Now seeing as my Jess was a good, sensible dog, not in the habit of waking the neighbors at all hours, barking at dust motes or creating a havoc over a gust of wind, I went outside to see what the trouble was.

The darned back porch light had burned out again and stepping from the well lit house I couldn't see a thing except Jess, who was fixated on an invisible foe somewhere outside the pale glow from the window. The dog quieted as I held her collar and stared hard in the direction she was looking.

Two little eyes, low to the ground, stared back at me from the darkness. It couldn't be a cat because Jess would have just seen it off in short order. It must be a little dog. Goodness knows there were enough folks with coyote bait pets in the neighborhood. It must have escaped from a yard or a house nearby.

Definitely time for the silly voice, you know that one reserved for cute little animals and babies, the pitchy sing-song way of talking that would embarrass a kindergartener half to death if Mom ever used it in front of their friends.

"Well, Hi there, little doggy. What are you doing in my yard?"

The bright eyes blinked once as the small creature listened and watched me, about six or so feet from me and Jess, not retreating or advancing, just watching. My own eyesight was just beginning to grow accustomed to the blackness and I could just make out the shape as I continued my cutesy-voiced, one-sided conversation.

"What a cute little black doggy..." on I went. It's not that I had any illusions that the little dog would understand what I was saying. But small dogs out alone at night are easy prey for a variety of critters, and if I could get the animal to come closer I might have been able to catch it and find a tag on its collar.

But the little dog seemed content to just listen and watch out of arms reach as I gained my night-vision over the course of five minutes at least.

"Such a gooooood little doggy... " more detail was now visible, "...a nice little black doggy. And what are you wearing? You have a little white harness on? A cute little black doggie in a little white har..."

So, you know that feeling that comes with the sudden recognition of the truly horrific staring you in the face. You know you have to act but first you have to overcome the freezing, numbing shock that paralyses all motor skills for a heartbeat or three? I felt that. Then I acted, launching my dog bodily through the open doorway and diving in behind like I was carrying the pigskin half a yard from the touchdown. I slammed the door behind me and peered nervously out into the night, shading the window with my hand so I could see from safety.

The little critter seemed to give a visible shrug before turning away and waddling confidently out of the yard, not the least bit phased by my actions. It was then that I realized what my name would have been if Wind in his Hair or Kicking Bird had witnessed the exchange.

Talks To Skunks!












Oh well, it could be worse. It could have been "Smells like a Skunk". I guess I'm lucky the skunk found the conversation amusing.

All the Little Things

"Hey, you've got your phone right? Take a picture of me."

"What?? Why?" my friend's horror at the suggestion was evident as I lay propped up on the emergency room bed with an assortment of wires and tubes fanning out from my body and head, connecting me to an array of beeping and blinking machines.

"Because right now I look pretty freaking great for a Borg!"

Humor. My built-in defense against the stuff I really don't want to think too deeply about. Shortly before I'd been trying to catch my breath and pondering the tight squeezing in my chest. Not pain exactly, but intense pressure and a feeling that I'd been revved up to super-light speed. Then the weakness and loss of focus came and I finally realized that lying down for a bit wasn't going to fix this.

I was feeling better because I was on oxygen and had been pumped full of drugs to slow my heart to a speed at which it could actually pump the blood around my body instead of fluttering empty with a pulse too fast to be measurable. Atrial Fibrillation with Rapid Ventricular Response it was, or in technical terms, a bum ticker. Doctor Oh-So-Young flung back the curtain and announced with obvious pride that he knew what was ailing me.

"You're hyperthyroid" It was one of the possible options he'd mentioned earlier as I was prodded and wired and stuck with sharp things and x-rayed. But it was the one I'd thought least likely.

"Well, Hell! Don't fix that!"

As I spoke he blinked blankly at me. Of course he didn't understand. He was young and male and had probably never dieted in his life, or even looked in the mirror without experiencing complete admiration for his reflected self. The first thing I associated with hyperthyroidism is being skinny, something I've never in my life been.

Needless to say, the medical profession insisted on trying to fix it. After three days in a cardiac ward, scans, tests and a trip to the endocrinologist, I was diagnosed with Graves Disease. It's really not so bad. I'm older than most people who develop this disease which must mean certain parts of me are younger than my physical age, right? The medication isn't outlandishly expensive and I have a great excuse to not do the heavy lifting or skip lunch.

My mother, when she heard about my unfortunate incident and diagnosis, was frankly incredulous. Apparently everyone in my family is supposed to have high cholesterol, high blood pressure and adult onset diabetes. It's the natural order of things and I just flew in the face of family convention by having perfect blood sugar levels and positively fantastic cholesterol. I do have high blood pressure but the doctors assure me that it's only because of the thyroid problems and if they can get that under control the blood pressure will go down. This was yet another piece of evidence to suggest that, no matter how much I look like my mother, I'm actually the result of some perverted mating between my father and an evil she-demon, foisted off on my mother to carry to term and look after as if I were almost her own. Um, anyway...

Looking back I realized that for months I'd had plenty of signs that something wasn't quite right. There was some weight loss. People had been telling me how good I was looking, so instead of actually finding out what was causing it, I preferred to believe I was just doing a good job of moderate eating. There was the rapid heart beat and breathlessness, but surely that was because I'd just moved from sea-level to a mile high and hadn't done enough exercise lately. I had, with great amounts of expended will-power, given up caffeine because of it. The weirdest sign was the constant choking on drinks. I was beginning to think that my throat had somehow forgotten how to work properly or intentionally malfunctioned during business meetings when I'd take a sip of water and end up coughing and spluttering with streaming eyes as if I'd tried to inhale the liquid. I had no clue that the insidious gland was ever so slowly crushing my oesophagus.

So there I was, thinking I was basically healthy and strong with just a few very minor, self-diagnosed, insignificant health issues. Nothing to worry about, nothing a good night's rest wouldn't fix. Then the Universe said...

"Well, actually..." WHOMP!!!

See, I forgot that, even when it's my own health, I don't know everything. I took the easy option and agreed with everyone else that losing weight must be a good thing even if I couldn't explain why. Always ask why. I forgot to pay attention to that nagging voice in the back of my mind that was telling me something had gone wrong. I didn't want to add up all those little things and see the big picture.

The specialist asked me why it was that I went to the hospital when I did. I told her that I just felt something really bad, like a heart attack or a stroke, was going to happen if I didn't go right then. She told me I wouldn't have survived if I hadn't gone in when I did. I didn't know I was in the process of actually having a heart attack of sorts.

It's a very strange thing to be told you were on your way out of this life. No, there was no "life flashing before my eyes" and no great revelation of things left to do. But I'll tell you I learned one thing in no uncertain terms...

Pay attention to all the little things!

HAP

So What's This Blog All About Then?

I've never been much of a subscriber to Chaos. I think the Universe is neat and orderly and runs on logical rules. If you really think about it, anything as big and complex as the Universe has to have nice, clearly-defined rules on which to operate or it would have fallen in on itself long ago. So if the Universe runs on well-defined rules, surely it follows that everything within that Universe also follows those same rules, doesn't it?

Our problem is we only know a very few of those rules, and even then our understanding is pretty limited. As my good friend and minister, Richard, would say:

"It's the five blind men and the elephant thing. Each blind man touches a small part of the elephant and comes up with an erroneous idea of what the whole elephant looks like."

I think life is sort of like that. We trundle along thinking we have it all figured out, then WHAM! That big branch from the tree of life whomps us in the face and knocks us on our behinds, letting us know that we got something wrong somewhere along the road. Of course we tend to blame the branch for being there rather than our own lack of knowledge about it.

It's an ego thing or maybe just a human thing. We so desperately want to be right that a gentle prod often wouldn't be enough to change our minds. I'll leave it to you to decide who or what sets the rules and does the whomping for you. That's not what this blog is about and I certainly don't want to convert anyone or be converted in return. It's about life as I know it, the joys, the pitfalls, the excuses, the laughter, the ants in the sugar bowl, the hefty blows, the really uplifting stuff and maybe even the perfect recipe for ploughman's pickle. I'm not ruling anything out entirely yet. But mostly it will be about the things I've learned or have failed to quite understand yet in the bigger scheme of things.

As I'm completely new to the blogosphere, I wanted to post this little intro as much to keep myself more or less on track as to let you know what the blog is about. Hopefully it'll get better as I go along. In the unlikely event that anyone else finds themselves reading my probably fairly verbose posts, I've decided to make a few rules for myself:

I'll add new posts when I feel like it, which will likely not be every day or even close. I will read any comments made but that doesn't mean I'll reply to them all. I'll try to be interesting and informative but not necessarily both at the same time. And if anyone is deeply offended by anything I post, I promise not to take that into account in any way whatsoever.

So here's to my first ever blogging venture...

HAP