COFFEE BREAK
Saturday, May 7, 2016
PARENTS TALK BACK
When
Mother’s
Day hurts
I
t’s impossible to escape Mother’s
Day.
While the intent is to show
some love for the irst person with
whom we are wired to bond, it can
be a painful day for many. It’s an
occasion touched with grief for
anyone who lost a mother too young,
and for women who struggle with
infertility or who have lost a child.
But there’s another group rarely
discussed around the commercial
celebration of
motherhood: those
who were raised by
unloving, abusive or
narcissistic mothers.
Across cultures, a
mother is considered
synonymous with
selless love: a
Aisha
child’s natural
protector. In the
Sultan
Parents talk back
wild, a mama bear
is the ultimate
ierce guardian. For
those who grew up with this kind of
loving, protective mother, it’s hard
to imagine what it’s like being raised
by someone so broken she leaves
lasting scars.
Rayne Wolfe, author of “Toxic
Mom Toolkit: Discovering a Happy
Life Despite Toxic Parenting,” is
familiar with dreading Mother’s
Day. The run-up to the holiday can
be crushing for those who grew up in
an abusive family, she said.
“I was neglected. I was literally
not fed. I was exposed to sexual
abuse and abused by my mother’s
second husband,” she said. Wolfe
remembers trying to wake up her
mother, passed out from drinking, as
a child when she was hungry.
Her mother would ask to see her
hands.
“If my hands weren’t shaking, she
wouldn’t feed me,” she said.
Making things worse, young
victims tend to be ashamed of what
they have experienced, and often
hide their parent’s abuse or neglect.
Mother’s Day isn’t the only
holiday that can be a trigger point for
emotional wreckage — Valentine’s
Day is rough after a breakup, as is
Christmas without a loved one.
But there’s an added terribleness
when even the premise of the
holiday taunts you.
Mother’s Day is a major
commercial event, with total
spending projected to reach $21.4
billion this year — outpacing
Valentine’s Day by nearly a couple
billion. The bombardment in store
displays and advertisements is
matched by the outpouring of social
media tributes. Public adoration
lows through our Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram timelines all weekend.
I enjoy publicly celebrating my
own phenomenal mother, but the
day is fraught for those who had to
seek refuge from a mother, rather
than turn to her for protection and
support.
Wolfe, who said she went through
a lot of therapy to understand what
happened to her as a child, advocates
self-protection: In some cases, it
makes sense to limit, or even end,
contact. Emotional abuse is just as
traumatic as physical abuse.
When her mother was dying,
a social worker from the hospital
called Wolfe and suggested it might
be time for her to “bury the hatchet.”
Wolfe asked the social worker if
she had ever met Wolfe’s mother.
She suggested spending some time
with her, and then calling Wolfe back
if she still believed she needed to be
there.
“I never heard from her again,”
she said.
As an adult, she has nurtured an
online community of those who have
suffered from toxic relationships
with their mothers. She asks them to
start planning, six weeks out, what
they will do on Mother’s Day. She
gives her readers permission to skip
family events that leave them feeling
worthless or sad. She encourages
them to see their parent with adult
eyes.
“It’s disheartening when you
are a good person, and you don’t
have a loving mother igure in your
life,” she said. Those who were not
mothered can feel very isolated.
Fortunately for Wolfe, her father
remarried when she was 16. She
describes her stepmother, whom
Wolfe cared for as she aged, as a
beautiful and lovely person.
“There was a part of me that
could never trust an older woman,”
she said. Her stepmother helped heal
that part.
Proving that it takes a lot more
than biology to be a mother.
■
Aisha Sultan is a St. Louis-based
journalist who studies parenting in
the digital age while trying to keep
up with her tech-savvy children.
Find her on Twitter: @AishaS.
East Oregonian
Page 9C
A CLASSIC LOVE TAIL:
Man rescues dog, dog rescues man
By LEANNE ITALIE
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a
classic love tail: Broken man meets
broken dog and together they make
life good again.
Colin Campbell was a regular
guy living a regular life in 2008.
He had a nice job, a nice house and
a beautiful wife until, as heartache
often happens, he returned from a
business trip to learn his beautiful
wife didn’t want to be married
anymore.
“I really struggled” is Camp-
bell’s short description of what
went down. “I was shocked. There
were no second chances. No
discussion about it.”
Living in Toronto, working
hard as he always had, Campbell’s
friends grew concerned, suggesting
he do something that he had never
done before: get a dog.
Rambling around his house
alone and depressed, he went
online to a pet rescue site and found
about as much dog as any human
might bargain for, the kind-faced
George, a 140-pound Landseer
Newfoundland, though he was a
mere pup, just over a year old, at
the time.
George, too, was in need of
saving. He had been abandoned.
There was evidence of abuse and
neglect. He was wary of men in
particular, including Campbell,
and had trouble with trust.
Together the two healed, and a
move a year later to Los Angeles
worked some magic of its own.
Newfoundlands are water
dogs, though George had never
had the opportunity to experience
the ocean. When Campbell went
suring, George swam right out
and hopped on his board, earning
accolades over the next three years
from the surf crowd at Hermosa
Beach and competing a couple of
times in a doggie surf competition
that raises money for pet rescue.
“I don’t think he had ever swam
before, but he just instinctively
knew how to do it,” Campbell
said. “He had balance and he had
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
In this May 2 photo, George, a once neglected and homeless 140-pound Newfoundland
Landseer, stands with his owner, Colin Campbell, after an interview in New York. Campbell is
on a nationwide promotional tour for his new book, “Free Days with George.”
an afinity for it and he did really
well. So George went from home-
less in Canada to surf champ in
California.”
All of this, it turns out, made
for a great book, “Free Days with
George,” out this month from
Anchor Canada, an imprint of
Penguin Random House. The
title, Campbell said in a recent
interview — with the luffy, white
George at his side — comes from
something Campbell’s grandfather
used to say, having saved from
drowning three Allied comrades
on D-Day as they stormed Juno
Beach at Normandy.
He, Seymour Wylde Howes
III, considered all good days spent
doing something you love, with
people who love you, free days.
“That’s a good day,” he’d say.
“That’s a free day on Earth.”
That’s how it felt for Camp-
bell, suring with George, loving
George, sharing George with all of
his admirers.
“He went out of his way to try
and make things good,” Campbell
said of his gentle giant of a friend.
“As he moved on and got better,
he really taught me how to do the
same. We were both at a really dark
place. When we moved to Cali-
fornia and he swam in the ocean,
it was like a baptism. Like he really
discovered his purpose and all the
DNA for Newfoundlands who
were bred to save people in the
water, he igured it out. He came
out of the water and he goes, I
know what I’m supposed to do. He
had a conidence that he never had
before.”
George continues to be a feel-
good ambassador for all who meet
him. Campbell and George are on
a cross-country bus tour promoting
their book, stopping at animal
shelters along the way to drop off
donated bags of food and help raise
awareness of the need to rescue
homeless pets.
Over six weeks, starting from
New York this week, the two will
visit 26 cities in their tricked-out
luxury bus, the title of the book and
George’s black face and mostly
white luff across each side.
They hope to return to Cali-
fornia for a little suring later
this month. By Newfoundland
standards, George is up in years at
8. Campbell wasn’t sure whether
he’d be quite as enthusiastic about
a surfboard.
Looking back, the 54-year-old
Campbell recalled how helping
George took some time. A mean-
dering bus trip seemed itting.
“It was a rocky start at irst,”
Campbell said. “I had to take him
through obedience and gradually
socialize him. It took about a year
for him to trust and to recognize
that I was somebody who was
helping him.”
The takeaway, for Campbell
and George, is an obvious one.
“I really credit him for saving
my life,” the human said.
As for George, he did what dogs
do, as the two began their media
tour Monday. He licked the face
of one new fan, rolled over for a
tummy rub by another. There was
no surfboard on this visit, but as
Campbell said:
“He’s a little older. I’m a little
older. That’s OK.”
OUT OF THE VAULT
Reporter faces fears to brave bee swarm
B
ees.
Just the word gives a
lot of people the creepy-
crawlies. But for some people
bees are a living. In May of
1967, an intrepid East Oregonian
reporter braved a swarm of bees to
get a story about a local beekeeper
and his business, despite his
natural inclination to scream, swat
and lee.
Reporter Bob Woehler was
on the scene May 3, 1967, when
Riverside-area beekeeper Closson
Scott worked his magic on a
swarm of honeybees that had
taken up residence on the rear
bumper of a car behind Hamley’s
Western Store in downtown
Pendleton. “I’ve never seen so
many swarms of bees so early,”
said Scott. “This is the third
swarm that I’ve picked up in the
back of Hamley’s in less than
two weeks.” He
pointed to the
top loor of the
building with
his homemade
smoker. “They
live up there.”
As Woehler
went in for a
Renee
Struthers photo of Scott, he
Out of the vault was immobilized
by a bee walking
across his hand,
stopping periodically to clean
itself. Beads of sweat appeared
as Woehler waited for the bee to
move on, wishing fervently for a
telephoto lens, or that he’d given
the story to a different reporter.
“They won’t sting you if you
don’t handle them much,” Scott
said, which was helpful until a
couple of bees began to saunter
across the back of Woehler’s neck.
And his subsequent attempts at
getting a photo were obstructed by
bees walking across the camera
lens.
Scott explained that the bees
were just looking for a new
home. When a colony gets too
big, usually the older workers
and the old queen are forced out
to ind new quarters, while the
younger set keeps the original
hive location. When bees swarm
they send out scout bees to look
for a new home and return to the
swarm to report their indings.
“You can probably hear them
buzzing inside the hive I brought.
They are probably telling the
ones on the outside that this is the
place.”
As more bees began buzzing
around Scott and Woehler, the
reporter began to feel a little
panicked. But he checked
himself when Scott mentioned
that waving your arms doesn’t
frighten bees at all. “They won’t
hurt you,” Scott said, clutching
a horde of bees in his hands and
extending them out to Woehler.
“Here, look at this.” Woehler
managed to screw up enough
courage to stretch his neck out
for a peek. Sure enough, the bees
were behaving beautifully, content
to roam instead of sting.
Scott ushered the rest of his
foundlings into the hive, then
packed up his truck. Another
swarm, this time at Helen
McCune Junior High School, was
waiting.
■
Renee Struthers is the
Community Records Editor for the
East Oregonian. See the complete
collection of Out of the Vault
columns at eovault.blogspot.com
ODDS & ENDS
The man asks if he’d throw it
back on the ground. The oficer
refuses.
Police say the oficer had
found the man stumbling along
the road and tried to get him
home safely.
Some commenters suggested
the man has an alcohol problem
and criticized Alliance police for
sharing the video on Facebook.
Capt. James Hilles tells the
Akron Beacon Journal it’s just
a light-hearted example of silly
things people say to oficers.
It takes a village to
corral a loose llama
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — It
took a village and two hours to
corral an uncooperative llama
named Ethel who escaped from
her pasture in rural Colorado
and wandered near some busy
roadways.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s
Ofice tweeted a wanted poster
with a photo of the wayward
animal and the hashtag
#LlamaOnTheLoose. It’s an
amended version of the one made
famous by a pair of Ethel’s elusive
brethren, whose romp through a
Phoenix-area neighborhood stole
the national spotlight last year.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie
Haverield says Ethel’s owner
called Tuesday asking for help
to get the llama home after she
wandered into another pasture.
An animal control oficer and a
deputy tried to wrangle Ethel, but
she proved dificult to capture and
more help had to be called in.
At one point, passers-by formed
a human fence. She was ultimately
herded back into her pasture.
Duck leads ducklings
on annual waddle
through school’s halls
HARTLAND, Mich. (AP) —
A duck has grown attached to a
Michigan elementary school’s
courtyard, returning each year to
Matthew Jonas/Daily Camera via AP
A Boulder County Sheriff’s Deputies works to get a llama named
Ethel out of an alfalfa ield Tuesday near Niwot, Colo. It took two
hours to corral the uncooperative llama, who escaped from her
pasture and wandered near some busy roadways.
lay her eggs before walking the
hallways with her ducklings to
get out.
The Livingston Daily Press &
Argus of Howell reports the duck
named Vanessa has appeared at
Village Elementary School in
Hartland for the past 13 years.
Ruth Darrah, now a retired
teacher, makes sure the duck gets
a helpful welcome each year.
The newspaper reports the
duck lies into the closed-off
courtyard, crawls under a speciic
shrub, digs out her nest and lays
her eggs. After the ducklings
hatch, Darrah and others tape
black construction paper along
the walls, creating a clear path for
the ducks to get to a nearby pond.
This year’s hallway waddle
took place Thursday.
Man charged after cop
helps ind his lost pot
ALLIANCE, Ohio (AP) —
An Ohio man who got a police
oficer’s help to ind a bit of
marijuana lost in his yard has
been charged with misdemeanor
drug abuse.
The patrolman’s body camera
video shows an intoxicated man
admitting he lost the drug. The
Alliance oficer says he doesn’t
want children to ind it and then
locates it in the grass.
19 lab monkeys
escape, all recaptured
YEMASSEE, S.C. (AP) —
Nineteen monkeys made a break
from a compound on the South
Carolina coast, but freedom was
leeting.
Local media outlets report the
monkeys escaped from the Alpha
Genesis center Sunday afternoon
and six hours later all had been
recaptured.
Alpha Genesis operates two
facilities near Beaufort, South
Carolina, where it has 5,000
monkeys, many sold for medical
research.
Yemassee Police Chief
Gregory Alexander says a broken
or a loose cage door led to the
escape. Alexander says it’s not
the irst time it’s happened, but
generally the monkeys return
to the compound because they
know that’s where there’s food.