Abby's Alley

It comes upon you after an oasis of communion, that blitz of prayer, or rise of spiritual thought. You abided and ate . . . four days ago. But today is now. Now, you have left behind that updraft and glided over the wilderness again upon your own frail wings.   Imperceptibly, you start to sink. And such deviation of ill-fitted inclinations scrapes you against those in formation. A jostle and quiver of wings renders you liable to high winds. And the vortices that spin at this altitude come to raze all flesh to the ground.   They implicate you with such whispers of ideas you think are your own, and if you follow the bait into the whirlwind, it’s down to the mire you go. "Remember what you did. Remember all who saw. They think of it now and grimace Wondering how could you dare. And now you presume to speak? Now you presume to join? You aren't worthy of their company. They're just too polite to say stay at home. Save them the trouble and don't go For

When I buy an electronic toothbrush, I make an unwritten, unspoken commitment: I shall hereafter purchase Sonicare replacement toothbrush heads every four months, or whenever I get around to it, in order to maintain clean teeth and proper hygiene.   There is now in my mind this unwritten contract, this nagging reminder, this ball tossed up that I must now catch in four or so months. And if I entirely forget my commitment, I will soon have the frayed and splayed bristles of my old toothbrush head to remind me every morning and night of what I need to do. It is a tiny mental weight. Just a small one. Then there is the reverse osmosis system under the sink with the filters that ought to be changed every six months or whenever I notice a peculiar taste in my water. Another juggling ball goes up in the air that I must catch. Another tiny weight on the mind. Another nagging reminder. Two tiny weights are not so much, but I have added to them the correspondence on facebook that I

The invitation went out. Disney had invited Granada Heights Friends Church choir to join with other voices in singing "The Circle of Life" at D23, the ultimate Disney fan event. D23 stands for Disney and 1923, which is the year that Walt Disney came to California and founded what ultimately became the Walt Disney Company. The expo is a chance for die-hard Disney fans to get inside information on the Disneyland parks and movies. I am not a die-hard Disney fan, but I do like to sing and have adventures, so with little more than a practice or two, I arrived at 5:30 am at the Pumbaa Parking Lot. Great big signs directed us to where we were to park, where we were to sign in, and where we were to stand in line for the shuttle that took us to the Anaheim Convention Center. They punched our names into their highly organized system on ipads. They checked our names off a list. They collected our consent forms and gave us purple entrance bracelets. From there we followed the fl

There's something different about my boy. And I don't mean he's different from your boy. I mean he's different from me. In the brain. In the womb my boy was bathed in testosterone, which actually altered his brain completely. It made the connections between the two hemispheres of his brain less efficient. That means the locality of speech in the boy's mind is limited, making it far more difficult for his speech to link up to his beliefs and feelings (Dobson, 19-20). So when I pick him up from pre-school and ask what happened in his class, he is silent for a long time or throws his blanket over his head or kicks my car seat or reports on what he ate for snack.  He also has less serotonin in his brain than girls do. Serotonin facilitates good judgement, pacifies and soothes emotions, and controls impulsive behavior ("Serotonin and Judgement" as quoted in Dobson, 25). Take that coupled with a larger amygdala, which fires off irrational and ele