So … here I am still wrapped up in my afghan. I’ve moved slightly. Now I’m in the recliner. This was where I spent a good deal of last night in a vain attempt to sleep. I know I’d be getting better if I could just get a good night’s sleep. But this has been a lifelong battle with me. I can still hear the echos of my mother’s frustration when I was child and my brothers and I were sick. She’d say, of LightBrother1, to LightBrother2 and I, “Look he sleeps and then he gets better in just a day or two. You two, you lie around and you are sick, but you won’t sleep and stay sick for days and days. Why?” We’d look at her in bewilderment. What did she mean by that? How did we know why we couldn’t sleep? It’s not like we liked being sick. She knew that too. As a mother myself, I can empathize with the weariness of knowing what your child needs and them not engaging it. I’m so jealous of people who can sleep.
I’ve become a daytime television watcher. That’s the level of boredom I’m at. The books I’d like to read are too heavy for my mucus-logged brain. Sewing is right out. I tried that the other day and … well … unsewing is just frustrating and unproductive, at best.
I watched ER this morning. I’ve never watched ER on it’s regular night and time (i.e. on NBC). I’ve only ever watched the syndication on TNT and that with no regularity at all. Just often enough to get a certain sense of some of the major players. This morning’s episode was mainly about Dr. Weaver. Dr. Weaver had apparently revealed that she is a lesbian at some point in the past. In this episode, she is reunited with her birthmother who is a conservative Christian. She revealed her sexual orientation to her birthmother during the episode and the mother’s reaction was as one would anticipate and understated at the same time. It wasn’t that she reacted negatively (which she did, but without animosity), but that she attempted to blame herself for giving Dr. Weaver up for adoption. It was very interesting to see the clash of cultures, although that sounds rather more bombastic than what was played out.
I was fascinated by Dr. Weaver’s reaction. She revealed that she had at one time had a flourishing faith. Perhaps she still did, but felt completely rejected by the Church and it’s people who were supposedly her family. The closing scene was particularly poignant. Dr. Weaver asked her birthmother (Helen) if Helen would be able to accept her as she was. Helen responded by saying that of course she would love Kerry always. Dr. Weaver just looked back at her and said, “I don’t want your love without your acceptance.”
That line got me thinking. How do we love others? How do we love people who do things we don’t agree with? Who’s very lives are an affront to some part of us that we hold dear? What is love and how do we express it? Indeed, how can we claim to fully love someone if we don’t accept the very nature of who they are?
