On the 12th Day of Christmas...

My Universe gave to me...

Sundays with Bianca

Here we are...the final day of Christmas...I've saved my best, most important gift for last. My daughter Bianca. Some of you may have heard our story before but it's Christmas and it bears repeating.

When I was young and running around like an Untouchable, I got pregnant. Back then, my life was so crazy that missed periods were pretty standard. This was before in home pregnancy tests (Jeez) and I'd go to the doctor's office quite often for the "Rabbit Test." I can't recall what the Rabbit Test was exactly...something about peeing on a rabbit and if it turned blue you were pregnant?...the tests were always negative. So, I let my guard down a bit and ignored a few missed periods. And then discovered, this time, I really was pregnant...22 weeks pregnant. Because the baby had been conceived during a time that my husband and I weren't together, I knew there would be drama... and there was.

He wanted me to get an abortion...Thankfully, there were no clinics willing to do it so far into the pregnancy...Imagine if we had still been in L.A....the land of late trimester abortions...but the Universe was on full alert and protected this baby. He gave me a choice... Keep the baby and lose my husband...something I couldn't face. So, reluctantly I turned to thinking about giving the baby up and had started making calls. Then a miracle happened. He came home one night and took me in his arms and said that the baby was a part of me and he would love it as he loved me....so, she was born...but not before there had been several near disastrous accidents. These are stories for another time but, briefly...I took a spill on a motorcycle and also fell down a full flight of stairs in my eighth month. Neither incident fazed Bianca.

I've once in while wondered, had he known that having her would ultimately cause me to leave him, would he have had that change of heart? But no matter, Bianca was meant to be born and everything lined up to make sure that happened. Having her saved my life to be sure. The kind of life I was living doesn't end in a rocking chair on a nice porch somewhere.


So, we were bound together in a cosmic contract. Something wants us both here. And it is this bond, this unspoken contract that has brought us this far. And she continues to save my life...just by existing. It's been frustrating for me during dark times...I who am no stranger to suicidal thoughts. Frankly, I'm not a fan of hanging around "just in case" things turn out alright...the powers that be obviously knew this about me and exercised the Bianca Clause on me.

Now, during this darkest of years, 2009...my Sundays with Bianca have been my lifeline. Oh, we text and email and Facebook and talk on the phone pretty much daily...but she's a gorgeous, bright, lively young woman who should be making her own way and living her own busy life and I work hard to respect that...in exchange for which, I am blessed with Sundays, when she and I hang out...go to the movies...to a little pub...whatever it is, it's like my church...I just realized that...I go to the church of Bianca on Sundays and my spirit is renewed enough to face another week...come what may. I don't know if there will be a great reveal one day...that will show us why our journey is so intertwined and to what purpose. It seems odd to tie two people together and have an airtight fail safe in place to make sure we...meaning I, stay...all I know for sure is that I love her...so I stay.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night.

Hero or Villain?

There's a trend toward dividing us all up into these two categories. But there's a large shadowy middle ground where Heroic Villains hang out. Vin Diesel in Pitch Black was the perfect heroic villain. I believe we all know instinctively what group we fall into. Do you? I am definitely not a straight up hero but also not a died in the wool villain. But who is these days? It's complicated.

Was Hitler a true villain? Most of the world would say yes. But would his mother? Could some steady Jungian therapy have changed his course? If having homosexual tendencies hadn't been so severely frowned upon (while being as rampantly prevalent as it is today) would he have happily come out of the closet and danced around in his mama's dresses like Alexis Arquette and eventually starred in the dinner theater production of "Mein Kampf" which would have been about his struggle with eternal pudginess rather than his bid for world domination? But I digress.

I think we are all born as inherent heroes and our experiences shape some of us into villains. I was apparently an adventurous spirit from the get-go. When I was 3 and the youngest kid on my block in Toronto, I used to take off regularly to "go to school", crossing big streets, stopping at the store to pick up school supplies and inevitably getting picked up by the cops and returned to my parents. So, is it really a surprise that my first husband was a gangster? Or that I've always had a problem with authority figures? Is it any wonder I've always seen situations differently than pretty much everyone I know?

Here's a good quiz to see where you stand on the Hero-meter:


1. Would you help your best friend hide a body?

2. Would you accept an expensive item that you know "fell off a truck?"

3. Would you purger yourself for someone you love?

4. Would you pull the plug on a a loved one to end their suffering? To make things easier?

5. Would you drive drunk?

On first read, you may think it's black & white and that your answers are NO. But if you stop to think about what the circumstances might be and who else is involved...it's complicated right?

John McCain is considered a hero. He fought for his country, he survived POW camp, he never gave up any secrets. On the flip side of that, it turns out his capture and imprisonment is what catapulted him to hero status. He was a terrible pilot - crashed several jets before going down over Veit Nam. It's possible he didn't have any secrets and therefore couldn't give any up. He cheated on his disfigured wife, dumped her and married Cindy a month later. Hmmm. Doesn't sound too heroic to me. He made no secret of his bitterness at being forced to toe the party line and support Bush's reelection bid back in 2004. But he did it, to serve his own end. You don't run for president unless you have a huge ego. And he is obviously willing to do whatever it takes.

Hillary Clinton's design was all over the Vince Foster "suicide." How many dead guys do you know that can roll themselves up in a carpet and drop themselves off at the park? She did what she had to do to protect her legacy.

The Queen of England was more than likely involved in the death of Princess Diana. My mother argues that the Queen would never do such a thing. But that's how the Monarchy has survived for all of these centuries. Diana was a loose canon who was becoming more and more difficult to control. I gotta tell you, if I had been bearing the burden of the Monarchy since I was born and found myself with a problem in- law on my hands....

Well...would you help me hide the body?