Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

We See One Another With Our Hearts

As is always the case this time of year, I am so very heartened by your outpouring of love and compassion towards people you will never meet.  It is the reminder I (and we all) need that the good people outnumber the bad.  The good people just go about their business quietly, not grandstanding, just seeing the world with our hearts.

I realize I just kicked off Yes, Virginia two days ago - and thank you to those who have donated already! - but I am compelled to come here to our close knit group to ask for your help for someone you do know, have known, for a long time.

Jamie has been around since DGMS was wearing diapers.  She has been there in so many ways for everyone.  A cheerleader, an understanding ear, an open heart.  We have watched her daughter Hailey grow into an incredible young woman, a true champion for her mother, especially now as Jamie has recently been diagnosed with MS.

I would like to sidebar here for a moment and tell the pain distribution gods to eff off - her battling breast cancer was enough.  This MS diagnosis is salt in a still healing wound.  I know, I know we cannot pick and choose what befalls us or those we love.  We simply must put one foot in front of the other, as the Christmas song goes.

I am writing tonight with Jamie's permission to ask if we may pool our resources, outside of Yes, Virginia, to help her with something integral to her being able to function.  She desperately needs new glasses.  I will let her take it from here:

You have no idea how much this killed me to write this. I hate asking for help, but would it be too much to be added to the yes Virginia fund? Here is what has transpired for me in the last 6 weeks. Jeffrey had to send in the required documents to the state to make sure that he’s still eligible for his Medicare and Medicaid. He is, so yay. He is also part of a program where I am his paid caregiver. For the last six years my income from taking care of him has never counted against him for any of the programs that he is in. Until now. Got a letter stating that in order for him to stay in the Iris program (the one that I am his paid caregiver) we have to now pay a cost share of 569.96 each month. I called every single person that I could possibly talk to, to see if this is accurate. Unfortunately it is. So I will pay back 1/3 of one paycheck every month. To make matters worse, with Jeffrey being in the hospital, I lost an entire paycheck. I don’t get paid while he’s admitted. The money I now have to pay back was going to go toward a new pair of glasses. The Multiple Sclerosis has affected my vision big time. I cannot drive at night- period, and daytime driving, welp… if I know exactly where I am going or have my gps turned on I am ok, otherwise everything is blurry. I can’t read the signs. I already had shitty vision, but this made my vision go down hill quick. And I have no vision insurance. Being on a tight budget is something that I can generally manage, but his 15 day hospital stay and now the cost share really has my nerves completely shot. So if Santa could help me one more time I would be so grateful.

Eyesight.  Even if you put on glasses in the morning or slap in a pair of contacts, we take for granted that our eyeballs are at the ready to help us navigate our world.  Jamie's eyes are paramount in her being able to care for Jeffrey, herself, and Hailey.  Hailey is a warrior goddess - she shoulders more than her years should require of her.  But without reliable vision and new glasses for her mother, she will have to take on even more than she already does, which will directly impact everything she is trying to achieve in her life.

I would like to make it a goal of $600, again outside of Yes, Virginia funds, to insure her specialist can properly prescribe her vision and to fund the glasses that will open her world back up.

For all the times she has been there for us, I am asking you to open the eyes of your heart, and see Jamie for the amazing, loving, deserving person she is.

All of the usual ways to donate are open - just please specify if your funds are towards the Yes, Virginia pot, or specifically for Jamie's new glasses.  Love you all, Linda

Donation methods:

Paypal > [email protected] > please do it as Send Money, not as a purchase.  If you do it as a "purchase" they withhold a portion of your donation.

Zelle > [email protected]

Venmo - @Linda-Sharp-29 

And if you prefer to send a check, please email or message me for details.

 

The Horror Is The Point

I’m sitting here rocking my granddaughter. After giggles while eating her bottle because I was playing with her feet, she hit air in her sucking and yeeted it away. She then tucked herself into my elbow and is sleeping the sleep of a baby who knows she is loved and safe and cherished.

These rocking chair times are some of my favorites. They have been since she came into this world 11 months ago. Just her, just me. We listen to BTS, I talk to her, she touches my face, and I fall into her eyes every. single. time.

I see her promise. I see my daughter, her mother. I see the reflection of my time with her. I see her tomorrows.

What I cannot see is her gone from my life. That is a heartbreak, a horror I cannot even contemplate. She may be only 11 months old, but I cannot imagine life without her in it. Like my own children, she has become how I breathe, how my heart beats, how I greet each day, how I lay my head to rest each night.

Looking at her I cannot help but think about the pure anguish of the parents who have watched their babies, their toddlers, their children be slaughtered in Israel and Gaza since Saturday.  As a parent, I honestly believe I would wish for death immediately so as to not have to endure another second without them, subjected to the horrific memories of their deaths flashing on repeat in my mind.  As a parent, that would be a fate worse than terroristic death.

I see Marlowe in the eyes, the faces of every picture of children coming out of that area.  And I simply cannot find big enough words to capture the pure evil at play.  The tiniest carried dead from piles of rubble.  The toddlers found massacred in the kibbutz areas.  The ones lucky enough to still be alive, having horrific memories embedded into their psyches.  What they are enduring, should they live, will become the filter through which they will take every breath, parse every speech, gauge every interaction, and will cement how little trust they have in the world around them.

I want you to look at the following pictures.  I am not labeling which side of the line they come from.  Israel, Gaza, it matters not.  These children have no idea.  And their humanity, their value, their reality should not be colored by where they live, or in some of these cases, where they have died.

 That child could be your child.  That anguish on his face?  The same you would experience.  Their love for their children, their nieces, their nephews - NO DIFFERENT.

If you cannot see your child in those children, you are not looking honestly.  They do not deserve the nightmare in which they are living.  They deserve all the tomorrows your child has in store.

She was only six months old.  What did she do to deserve this?  

This child will never forget, never escape this nightmare.  The psychic wounds will never fully heal even if he survives what is still to come.

And then there is this one.  Look at that tiny hand.  And then look at this one...

The difference?  One's life has been stolen from this world.  The other?  My granddaughter's.  Two children, from far sides of the planet.  So loved, so cherished, so wanted.  The child on the other side of the world is no less important, no less possessed of value or humanity or promise than my Marlowe.  The only difference is that life's lottery had one born in a terminal battleground and the other into a suburb of the USA.

What's happening there is horrific.  And no amount of death is going to fix any of it or bring a single child back to life.  

But then, the horror is the point.  This evil must be stopped.

Now you'll have to excuse me.  M is waking up and ready to play again.  And I am ready to love her even harder than an hour ago when she fell asleep.

~~~~~~~~~

 

"The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism," - Hannah Arendt.

 

 

We Need A Little Christmas

Yes, if that title rings a bell, it is because a little over a year ago, that is how I approached the upcoming Yes, Virginia season.  Heavy in heart from a full year of too much personal loss, stress, and juggling of emotions - the promise of coming together to make magic again for so many lifted my heart and the corners of my mouth.

I am needing that again.  We are needing that again.

No, I am not talking about the specter of that orange swamp monster - he will get all that he deserves eventually.  That deck is fully stacked against him right now.  What has grabbed at my heart, filled my eyes with tears, and made already catnap-nights into sleepless ones is what's happening on the other side of the world.

I am well versed in the never ending conflict between Israel and Palestine.  I know that both pieces of land continue to be in strangleholds by players and politicians who have not only self interests, but god-playing at their cores.  Murderous, bloodthirsty, money hungry, power grubbing.  And they have never cared who gets in their way.

But what has taken place since Saturday is - or should be - core shaking, heart breaking for anyone with a heart.  As in every conflict, battle, war that has ever been or will ever be waged, there are PEOPLE who are just simply written off as expendable.  Casualties of war, as it were.  The cost of doing business. In this case, concert goers, families, little babies who have zero concept of bias, racism, hatred, or zealotry - targeted for simply being who they are, where they are.

The children piece of this horror is unspeakable.  What has been done, is being done to children, to BABIES, I just cannot wrap my mind around the venal, soulless, evil players in this.  How?  HOW???  How do you kill 40 babies and ascribe it to your god?  What god condones wiping out entire families, bloodlines, reducing them to blood and ash?

Yes, I know.  Every single one of them when in the hands of zealots who begin to think they speak for, act for their deity.  We are seeing it on our own soil.  And to think it cannot ratchet up here is folly.  I am sickened by the constant targeting of Jewish people, a drumbeat that is getting louder and louder in this country.  This wholesale belief that one group of people is so very different than another, ergo worthy of demise.

As the saying goes, all cats are black in the dark.  We are not different.

We are all sacks of meat.  That's it, that's all.  Strip away the religion we have been raised in, taught.  Take every man written tome and remove it from our gaze.  Blindfold us all.  WE ARE THE SAME.  Same heart, lungs, kidneys, bowels, hemorrhoids, tiny bones in our ear canals, bunions, canker sores, stomachs that get hungry on a regular basis, brains that require sleep to function.  WE ARE THE SAME. 

The baby being born in Arkansas right now is the same as the baby being born in Afghanistan is the same as the baby being born in China is the same as the baby being born in Gaza is the same as the baby being born in Israel.  They are completely interchangeable.  Blank slates.  Take the one in Gaza, swap it with the one in Israel and then raise it with the dogma and daily struggles/conflicts of that side of the line and that baby will grow up to think a certain way, and worse, to potentially hate the people in the land of his/her actual birth.  WE DO THIS TO OUR BABIES.  Again, blank slates. And we write on them with our own biases, beliefs, religions, notions, racism, hatred.  (Look into the eyes of the beautiful child in the following picture - she has no idea what is happening, what HAMAS means.  And her father loves her as you love your child.)

What happens is a new generation of beautiful souls, souls that turn into scribbles that grow up to perpetuate so much strife, hurt, bloodshed.

I am not naïve.  Again, I know all about the history, the fights, the lives constantly being lost there.  I know that HAMAS must be wiped out.  And in doing so, innocent lives are literally being lost as I type.  It is a Rubik's Cube of tears and blood and loss.  And in the end, it still won't be solved. 

But back to the children.  We cannot make what is happening there not happen.  In that we are powerless.  But we can turn our gaze to the littlest among us here, children who are caught in circumstances they did not create, going to bed hungry not because of anything they did, wearing clothes that do not fit, keep them warm enough, and parents who cry into their pillows because of their love for their kids and their inability to provide more than they are.

That is where we once again come in. 

As I wrote last year:  My hopes for another Yes, Virginia season have me thinking about one of my favorite holiday songs, We Need A Little Christmas.

Haul out the holly
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again
Fill up the stocking
I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now

Amazing to say, but as we sit at the middle of October, I am not rushing things at all.  Yes, Virginia takes time.  And the first step is your help in getting out the word, sending those who need our help to my inbox.  

For we need a little Christmas, right this very minute
Candles in the window, carols at the spinet
Yes, we need a little Christmas, right this very minute
Hasn't snowed a single flurry, but Santa dear we're in a hurry

We all need the spiritual lift, the twinkle lights for the soul we always feel as we come together and remind those in need that the good people still outnumber the bad in this world.  

Climb down the chimney
Turn on the brightest string of lights I've ever seen
Slice up the fruit cake
It's time we've hung some tinsel on the evergreen bough

My inbox already has some whose chimneys were ripped asunder by recent storm systems, whose twinkle lights have no evergreen bough to hang upon because of our current uncertain economy.  We can help.  We will help.

For I've grown a little leaner, grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder, grown a little older
And I need a little angel sitting on my shoulder
Need a little Christmas now

OK, the leaner part is a constant work in progress, but the colder, sadder, older?  Well, I daresay I am singing this portion to the choir.  This is our opportunity to come in from the reality cold, gather around the DGMS tree, and, crow's feet be damned, smile at one another as we let those little angels find their home on our shoulders.

For we need a little music, need a little laughter
Need a little singing ringing through the rafter
And we need a little snappy, happy ever after
We need a little Christmas now

The time is now.  Our chance to reach through the ether and effect real change, life real spirits, make some happy ever after for those who need it most.  

I am ready to get going again, regardless of where I am, how many diapers I am changing.  This endeavor is one that goes with me wherever I am.  My laptop is in my Sorento sleigh, and the elfing magic can happen anywhere I am.  Even in a rocking chair with my granddaughter fast asleep on my shoulder.

So, step one - please begin letting me know who in your world needs some help making magic this year.  

And step two - donate if you can.  It's never too early, and the days are going to start flying by.  I am endlessly grateful to the DGMSers who have been donating regularly throughout this past year, providing a cushion from which to begin elfing.

Donation methods:

Paypal > [email protected] > please do it as Send Money, not as a purchase.  If you do it as a "purchase" they withhold a portion of your donation.

Zelle > [email protected]

Venmo - @Linda-Sharp-29 

And if you prefer to send a check, please email or message me for details.

Thank you all for your patience as I have been somewhat AWOL, for your emails and messages checking in, and as always, for being the amazing people you are.  Now, let's make some magic.  Again.