To A Friend Lost

I sit before the screen,
I don't know what to say,
I never imagined
you would hurt me this way~

With out question,
not even checking to see,
you believed others' lies
and abandoned me~

I still cry,
I remember,
I still think of you,
Do you care?
Do you ever
think of me too?

I want you back,
I don't care what they say,
You couldn't have persuaded me
to leave you this way~

"If they don't love you,
Let 'em go!"
The world taunts
only to put on a show~

I don't believe it,
Christians should know
that brotherly love's hard,
But the only way to go~

Have you completely
written me off?
When reconciling is broached
you seem only to scoff~

But I bet there are burdens
I don't know you're bearing,
I bet there are weights
I don't know you're carrying~

If you would only
share them with me,
I bet we'd both
be easier, free~

Let's talk like we need to
about what went wrong,
Then we could forgive, move forward
before very long~

That's the first step,
Communication,
To save our Sister-in-Christ
Relation~

I know it's complex,
But shouldn't we try?
Who knows, we could end up
seeing eye to eye~

My arms are open,
My chest raw with pain,
If only you'll come
be my friend again~

Lessons

We are walking home, a riot of color and giggles and floaty dresses.

Oh! There on the sidewalk, fluttering madly is an injured butterfly.

Clop, clop, clop, the sidewalk is busy, I hold my breath as I watch you take in the scene in but a moment, you, my little clown and sometimes-smasher of bugs. But down you swoop and hold out your hand, your face now solemn, the picture of concerned wonder. The butterfly immediately crawls onto your palm and stills. You can almost feel its relief.

I motion to a potted bush to the right of the sidewalk and you gently let the butterfly down into its leaves where it will be safe.

This is compassion, and this is one of the ways it is honed.

Only a few steps later and we are confronted with another creature, this time a sparrow which has flown into a sign and fallen, dead. All three of you stoop down and gingerly touch its soft brown wing.

A few people walking by give a disapproving look.

It is ok, this is curiosity, learning, and compassion.

I share a short explanation. You understand and we move on, back amid the busy crowd.

But a little wiser, and I suspect -I hope- a little kinder.

Summer Storm

The street is a river,
Thunder claps!
Rain like a blizzard
And the trees fairly flap!

Wind and hail
Making folks scurry,
Down the drenched sidewalks
They race in a hurry.

The air is deliciously
Cool and sweet
As the rain slows its wild,
Windy beat.

Then all of a sudden
Its gone on its way,
The grass stands back up
And the trees stop their sway:
A summer storm came
Into town today~

Copyright Jacquelyn Bytyqi 2014

I hope it isn't yours

Sometimes I wonder how people can read a vaccine insert and not have that alone be enough to convince them not to inject such things into their child. I wonder how they can hear their friends and neighbors horror stories of vaccine adverse reaction and dismiss it. I wonder how graphs which factually show the historical decline of disease prior to the introduction of vaccines (and in some cases, displaying a sharp rise in a given disease immediately following said introduction) mean nothing to some.

Then again, I remember the fear that fueled my early decisions to vaccinate, despite the nagging of the intuition I've thankfully come to trust that there was something very wrong with it all. When you're faced with a white coat and lots of snappy rhetoric combated only by your own wavering uncertainty, well, often you cave.

Maybe you're a doctor/nurse/scientist, etc. and because of this you feel you've done your research. Well I'm a Mother, and I know I've done mine. I've spent hours and years pouring over everything I can read on the subject. Yes, I often use the internet to do so. Does this mean I have a Google degreee? Uh, no. What it means is that I've used this tool to access everything from Mommy blogs with anecdotal evidence to peer reviewed journals to informational videos from doctors and scientists who believe vaccines to be unavoidably unsafe and ineffective to independent studies to research conducted in different countries all over the world. Maybe you don't care, maybe that means nothing to you. Maybe you think its all bunk.
Then let me say this.

I hope it is not your children who are fully vaccinated and up to date on their pertussis vaccine and still get whooping cough, and get it bad.

I hope it isn't yours who burn with such raging fevers that they shake after having multiple vaccines injected into their tiny bodies.

I hope it's not you who find your baby convulsing with seizures following a vaccination session and are confronted with a pediatrician mildly shaking their head at you, dismissing your concerns as "all normal."

I hope it isn't you with a perfect and peaceful newborn, who is eating and sleeping well, but quickly all of that disitegrates into daily fits of screaming that last for hours on end, for weeks and weeks post vaccination (brain inflammation much? If only we'd understood then what we know now.)

I hope it isn't you watching your previously engaging and cheerful baby regress into strange repetitive behaviors that make your heart drop, staring at nothing with a dull, vacant look in their eye immediately following vaccination.

Those were just our experiences before we wised up and discontinued the vaccine madness all together and thankfully, everything I mentioned stopped there too. I don't believe in those kinds of coincidences.

Oh, but I have friends with worse stories. Some of those end in life long debilitation of the brain and/or body. Others in death.

And if that's just in my own small circle, then perhaps vaccine adverse reaction and inefficacy are not as rare as previously thought? Perhaps those things are actually the norm.

Maybe you don't think so. Shrug, that's fine, I guess. But when you stop suggesting that I'm endangering my children with my hard-wrought decisions, I'll stop suggesting you're poisoning yours.

A Birthday Letter to my Wise One

Adelina, what can I say? You turn seven today. Seven! Where did the time go?! This year you lost your first tooth -plus two more! You learned how to snap your fingers and braid hair. You made new friends. You began to like Kosovo foods which you would never touch before, like pita, byrek, and fli (wonder of wonders!)

Every morning now you get up on your own, brush your teeth, wash and brush your hair and get ready for the day. You and Teuta now share a room in our new apartment and you've helped teach her to tidy the room with you in the evenings and make your beds in the morning.

I am so proud of you.

I have to say, my dear, that you may not have a very easy time in life. You will not simply float through, anyway. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for to struggle is to live and to struggle through brings strength. You will always come through one way or another and you will always come out stronger, wiser.

I am here for you when it is easy and when it is hard. Since you usually prefer to do things the hard way it might be hard a lot! But my arms and ears and heart are always here for you, know that!

You are fierce and I love you fiercely.

I love to teach you, I love to watch you, I love spending time with you.

I love the way you hurt to see others hurt. That's called compassion and it is a wonderful quality.

I love that you are authentic and always honest, even when you are brutally honest with me.

I love how you are my mirror, even though you and I are so different.

I love your boldness, your confident, "take-charge' attitude. You may be a great leader one day.

I love your out-of-the-box thinking and your wit.

I love the icy blue of your eyes, the shimmer of your wheat-blonde hair, and the very faintest smattering of freckles under your eyes.

I love playing Uno with you, and going on dates, and playing with every stray puppy we see, and watching you make yourself an omelette, and listening to you sing (you have such a powerful voice!) and hearing all about your dreams for the future... And a thousand other things.

So happy Birthday to you, my dear, happy, happy Birthday.

I am blessed to be yours~

Love, Mommy

Work is our Play! Part 1: A Matter of Perspective

"Remember? Remember when I told you that play is our work?" My six year old says excitedly to her younger sister, "Well, work is also our play! Because this is fun!"

They are shelling beans. I have never seen anyone so excited about shelling beans as my kids were that day.

A mundane task out on the farm where my husband's family reside.

"Daddy, Daddy, come look! This is how we do it! See, we open these up and drop the beans in the basket, see?"

"You're going to tell me how it's done?" My husband jokes, "Honey, I slept in the bean basket growing up."

Ahh, if only all of life's jobs were as exhillirating and enthralling as shelling beans is to my kids. Or shucking corn, when I was a kid (I swear, that's what it's called!) Man we loved to shuck us some corn. My brothers and I would sit out on the back porch with a box of corn and peel away those tightly wrapped leaves. It was most fun when you got to the silk, it was so, well, silky. And hairy. And slimy -or dry, you never knew what you were going to get, maybe that was part of the fun of it.

I think, maybe, it's all in the attitude, though. Shelling beans, for some reason, is not particularly exciting to my husband. It was a task that always had to be done and he did it. Boring, whatever. For some reason my kids think it's really fun, because even though the novelty has worn off, they continue to ask their Grandmother if there are more beans to shell. Every time we go over, which is quite often. And when there are, they happily do it.

Shucking corn is still fun for me, I guess that's something that carried over from childhood. Maybe because it evokes fond memories it is a silly and simple task that I still enjoy. Unlike, say... Doing laundry. Have I mentioned my hatred of laundry? Laundry and dishes, sigh, weary, life-draining responsibilities.

Guess what? In a family of six, there be a lot of laundry and dishes mateys, a never ending train of crusty plates and dirty shorts.

But those things aren't the only ones I may have *cough* sometimes been known to have a deal with. Things like losing stuff. OH my gosh, I HATE losing things. My keys, my phone, the baby wipes, the spatula... It's infuriating to me when something I just had has completely vanished.

So sometimes I'll hear one of my kids playing with a toy and it will o something like this:

Kid making toy (usually a My Little Pony) talk: "OH MY GOSH. WHERE is it, grrrr... I can't find it anywhere, Arg! I'm so mad! Does it have legs? Did it just walk away? Aaaaahhhhh!"

Me: "Uuuhhh, what's up with your pony?"

Kid (laughing): "Oh, my pony just lost something, see? She's really mad (makes toy talk again) Arrrrggg!!!"

Me: "Ah (gulp) I see..."

You see how Me equals Bad Example Extraordinare? It's bad when they're making their toys act like you. It's worse when they themselves actually act like you.

That example goes somehing like this:

Kid (from backseat while sitting at a long light): "Sigh, Mom, when is the flipping light ever going to change?"

Hey. Mini Me. Back off. Frustration with inanimate objects is my turf. Kapish?

It's really all about attitude, isn't it. It is incredibly important that we model good attitudes for our kids. Obviously, there will be times we fail and those are great times to point them to the cross, to model repentance and humility and other words that still sometimes stick in my throat because, homygosh, I am so human! But I do believe that practice makes us better and that just through practicing having a better attitude about things we will actually grow a new perspective of them and that is a great model for our kids as well.

Back to the farm yard.

The sun is dancing down and great ribbons of gold are streaking across the sky. The beans have been shelled and we're all sipping tea in the shup (outdoor kitchen) and it's a little chilly because fall is at hand. The six year old laughs to herself as she helps Gjysha carry the tea tray and says again, "Work is our play!"

May work be your play today.

Beans, all harvested and shelled, drying for winter use.

Play is our Work!

I love it when I see little children acting out "grown-up" things. Practicing for when they are us, copying what they see. I especially love the imaginative and innocent twists they put on every day things, which give us little glimpses into that magic of childhood. I love how exciting they find things like washing the dishes, hanging laundry, standing in line at the airport. (Really? You want to play airport lines? Not airplanes, not travel, but airport lines???Because I think that actually makes my top ten list of worst things ever. Yup, it's right in there under Having One of My Limbs Devoured by a Shark.*) Huh, maybe we could stand to learn from their attitudes... as they are undoubtedly learning from ours...

I will get more into that aspect of it in my next post~ "Work is our Play" A Post on Attitude and Calling~ but for now, I'll just share this sweet story.

This past week we applied for our baby daughter's U.S. passport and documents (which were approved, yay!) Paperwork, for me, is a nightmare. I hate it. It brings me into perilously close contact with the left side of my brain, that hemisphere I usually try to keep in hiding, pretending it doesn't exist because, frankly, it hates me and its extended use is always painful and frequently embarrassing.
But I did that paperwork. And then I did it all over again when we found out we had the outdated forms. And I ran back and forth making sure we had every document and copies of every document, all placed in perfect order in a neat and shiny blue folder. And it paid off, because we'll be getting our baby's passport in the mail very soon. Thank you Lord.

So yesterday I found our oldest daughter engrossed in cutting out and coloring a stack of pretty papers. They looked like rainbow snowflakes. I asked her what she was doing.
"Oh, just getting all my documents ready to get my passport for Adelina Land."
"Ah, Adelina Land."

Some kids have imaginary friends, mine have imaginary lands, complete with their own unique flora, fauna, dress, culture, and apparently, passport application processes.

"Yeah," She went on, "Then I have to take these documents over there to get that other document that I need to take to the Embassy."
She completes this task and shows me the paper filled with blue swirls she has colored, which she 'receives' in exchange for the rainbow ones she has just finished at the imaginary office, which is the living room couch.

I go away to stand at the sink and daydream as I inconspicuously nibble on a cookie, hoping not to get caught wash dishes.

A little while later she bounces into the room, "Mommy, take a picture of me for my trip! I got my passport, I'm ready to go!" She has donned her fanciest shirt, a bandanna, a purse, and has made herself a passport complete with self-portrait which she has hooked onto her shirt with a pipe cleaner."

"Oh my, you sure are!" I snap her picture and she flounces up the stairs. Later I head up to my bedroom for something and find her reclined on my bed, reading a book. Next to her is her purse and a bag full of books, as well as a stuffed rabbit nestled against the pillow beside her. "Oh hey, are you having some alone time? I can come back later." I ask. Her alone time is very important to her. "Nah, this is my hotel room in the country I'm staying in. Tomorrow I fly back to Adelina Land. See? I brought some books to read so I won't be bored and my bunny to sleep with."
"Wow, you thought everything through didn't you? Good planning."
"Yeah." She goes back to reading and I get what I need and go back downstairs. She played this game for a good two hours straight.

And I continued to be amazed by the way she played out her perception of things, there was so much learning and processing that went into this little play session. It reminded me of something she said (*caughyelledcough*) at her very practical younger sister the other day when said sibling confronted her with the (horrendous) idea that they didn't need anymore toys because they have a lot: "Teuta! Play is our work!"

And that right there is a great truth of childhood.

*For all the litteralists out there, I fully realize that having one's limbs torn off by a shark would be way worse than standing in line at the airport. Like, two or even three spots above it.