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Big Lessons From A Tiny Person
C
onversations with my grand-
daughter are expanding beyond
burbles and trills to delicious
mispronunciations that will become
the stuff of family lore. Ohdor means
“please open the
door.” UpDown is a
request to read the
Olivia book about
opposites. More than
her darling gymnas-
tics with the English
language, Olivia’s
actions speak potent
lessons. In a single
Debra Darvick
week, this little being
who doesn’t yet weigh
even 20 pounds, has
taught me much.
LESSON 1 —BLISSFUL EXPERIENCES
DESERVE ENDLESS REPETITION.
Olivia and her mom were visiting one
afternoon when Olivia discovered the
little slope of grass abutting our patio.
Down she toddled, gathering speed.
When she reached the bottom, she lay
on her back, threw her arms wide and
grinned up at the sky in utter bliss. If
there had been a cartoon balloon above
her it would have read, “Ain’t life just the
BEST!”
Again and again she toddled up the
slope, ran down and collapsed, look-
ing skyward. She was utterly in the
moment, reveling in the joy of her body,
in the speed her chubby legs could
now take her, perhaps even in the wind
caressing her pink cheeks. She exulted
in the realization that she could experi-
ence this again and again and again.
Delight in your experiences. Repeat
them. And then again.
LESSON 2 — SHARE YOUR LOVE
WITH INSISTENCE.
It was bedtime. Olivia had been
bathed, diapered and PJ’d, read to and
read to again.
“Kiss Aviva good-night,” her mother
said, holding her out to me. Olivia cov-
ered my face with kisses. She planted
sweet love on each cheek, on my chin,
on my forehead. She stopped for a min-
ute and I stepped back to leave. Olivia
squealed her displeasure. I got the mes-
sage loud and clear. “I’m not finished,
thank you very much. I’m not done giv-
ing you my kisses!” I moved within kiss-
ing range and was rewarded with three
more, light as a butterfly’s wing.
The love we give is precious; give it
joyously. If you are fortunate enough to
be on the receiving end of such love, for
Pete’s sake, hang around!
LESSON #3 — LOVE YOURSELF.
I can’t draw; lots of skeletons in my cre-
ative closet. What my eye sees and what
my hand renders do not align. But one
day, determined to silence the ghosts, I
set out to sketch Olivia from one of my
husband’s photos.
I worked on it for the better part of
a morning, studying the fullness of her
cheeks, the little round point of her
chin. What was the proportion of her
forehead to her features? Where do the
ears go? The eyebrows? And those eyes!
They are swirled with brown, green and
blue. Someone called them little earths.
I struggled to show the way each strand
of her hair feathers across her forehead.
When I was done, it wasn’t an exact
likeness; but I had captured something
about her that was familiar.
One afternoon I showed her the
drawing.
“ME!” she shouted touching a tiny
finger to the page. “ME!!” Then she
leaned over and kissed the drawing.
I was stunned. She recognized her-
self ! Even more moving was the imme-
diate kiss she planted on the drawing.
When you look in the mirror, is your
first reaction joy or criticism? When
was the last time you kissed the mirror
when you saw your reflection? I see
the lines in my face, not my smile and
warm brown eyes. I bemoan middle
age spread instead of being grate-
ful for the strong body that takes me
hiking and allows me to crawl on the
floor with Olivia. I pine for what was,
instead of celebrating ME! ME! HERE!
NOW!
Olivia has no reference of what was.
She simply is. She doesn’t know or care
that three months ago she had no hair
and now has just enough to make a
bonsai-sized palm tree atop her head.
She saw a likeness of herself and went
to town exulting, “That’s me! I’m won-
derful! I’m OLIVIA!”
Offer huge smiles and spontaneous
kisses to the person in the looking
glass. She is to be treasured! •
Debra Darvick is the author, most recently, of We
Are Jewish Faces.
guest column
Suicide Is NOT Inevitable
W
hen iconic individuals like
turn the tide.
Kate Spade or Anthony
Family medicine physicians, who
Bourdain end their
prescribe about 80 percent of
own lives, we have to believe
psychiatric medications, under-
there was something so pro-
go less than a day of suicide
foundly unhelpable about their
prevention training. Emergency
situations that they believed
room docs are not required to
suicide was the tragic only
have any. More people die by
option.
suicide than homicide. More
As a clinical social worker
people die by suicide than in
with an expertise in suicide
auto accidents. The national
Gigi Colombini,
suicide rate is 13.9 for 100,000,
prevention, I can assure you,
LMSW
and recent studies show that 54
there is nothing inevitable
percent of those who die by sui-
about suicide. The biggest
problem we face is a lack of
cide did not have a diagnosed
education and understand-
mental illness.
ing, even in the medical community, of
But this is not a story of despair. If
what this 10th leading cause of death in anything, we need to rewrite the story
America is really all about. This leaves
on suicide to one of hope because sui-
almost everyone afraid to step in and
cide is not inevitable.
Fourteen people out of 100,000 die
by suicide; 999,986 find a way to endure
painful struggles.
Somehow, we have come to believe
that if someone is really suicidal, there
is nothing anyone can do about it.
Shame often prevents people from
sharing feelings, from telling someone,
I’m thinking about ending it all. When
we experience a spate of suicides in
close proximity as we did recently, we
feel powerless about the possibility of
preventing these untimely deaths.
The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide
suggests that the likelihood of suicide
increases if three things are present in
someone’s life: feeling as if he is a bur-
den to others, social isolation or not
belonging to a community and an abil-
ity to make it happen (more than half of
continued on page 8
jn
July 12 • 2018
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