full exposure

ok- just so you know it's still me, i'll share a few things opposite of bird songs and monkeys in trees :).

today i found out that my eyelids are puffy and itching like crazy because of my new mosquito net.  and today i was acutely reminded that, "oh right! i have a child with special needs."  today i was reminded that my life, where ever i am, is usually lived with my underwear sticking out.  i just can't get away from that, try as i may.

today zoe had her first 'melt down' since we've moved.  today poor zoe got overwhelmed, and our poor new friends had to deal with it, friends who were helping me out so we could buy a kerosene lantern and some fabric, friends who don't really know me yet and who don't know zoe. 

i was standing on the side of the road bargaining for a bamboo shelving unit for the bathroom when the phone rang and zoe was crying.  she'd been playing, she'd gotten a sticky thought, she'd gotten upset, she'd started crying and yelling and yes, even, throwing things.  gulp.  that is bad.  poor zoe.  poor poor friends experiencing this, trying to help this, trying to know what to do with this. trying to wrap their heads around this.

they were generous.  they were gentle.  they helped her get home to her safe place.  but then everyone is left with the pieces.

the pieces of our lives that we do know.  exposed.  that at some point the other shoe always falls.  that when things are good for a while, all that means is that things have been good for a while- nothing else. that moving to a new place, with new people means learning all over again how to package things- how to help other people package things.  and that is hard.  and that is even painful. 

in thinking it over, this is our first move since shoes began falling fo' reals'- or being thrown as the case may be.  four and a half years ago when we moved to atlanta, we moved with people, and to people, friends and family who had known zoe for years.  people who, even if they didn't get her, loved her.  and four and a half years ago, zoe was 7 and life was easier for her, and for us.  she was different but not out of control.  and differences at 7 are much less obvious than differences at 11, expectations at 7 are much less than expectations at 11.  so this move, i knew would be hard.

and we had 4 really good days.  days when i thanked God but then didn't allow myself to think about it because i didn't want to jinx it (all subconsciously of course).  and i fault myself for not being more careful with her.  not being protective, not being precautionary or preventative.  instead i held my breath and jumped.  i acted in a bit of denial, i took advantage of those good days, i trusted them, when i think i should have known better, known that she needed more support and so did our new friends. 


but that is what happens sometimes.  you think for a moment that maybe life can be normal- or kind of normal.  or, you forget what your normal is. 


so after the call from crying zoe, and florence the lovely woman who was caring for her, and after a preparatory text from a friend about the incident, mike and i took the bamboo shelves and came home.  and i began my rounds of checking on zoe and those holding her pieces. 

and that is when i realized that i had moved. 

that i had left my deep rooted supports on the other side of the world, across a giant ocean and several time zones.  that is when it hit me that i have landed, at 40, with my kind of messy life,  in a new place where i need to navigate new supports, and explain my very complicated child.


it's not hard to leave stuff.  it's not hard to leave clean water from your faucets, and reliable electricity.  it's hard to leave people who know you.  who have seen the ugly cry and still like you.  who have helped you collect the pieces after you've fallen to bits.


so i went back to my house, and cried.

which was good. 
and real. 
and mike who knows me, held on to me and we talked, and then we talked with zoe. 
and we talked about the hard stuff- for all of us.  we tried to help her understand other peoples perspectives and feelings.  we tried to help her understand her feelings and to begin to recognize when she's feeling overwhelmed and to know that is when it's time to go, to re-group, to call us, to get some help.  and we told her if she ever threw anything again she would be throttled- ok- not really, but that she would lose an american girl doll.  we also apologized that we'd not been around today to help her navigate her world.


tonight the sun set at 7 as it has, as it will.  tonight i miss the long southern summer nights and i miss old friends. but the electricity is on so thankfully i can write which always helps put the pieces back together.  and i know that my far away friends are still there, that tonight they will look at the same moon i see now.  and i know that these kind, gentle new friends will be ok with the pieces- the exposed bits- the messiness of our life- besides they're stuck with us for a while :).

so i will be still and know.

long may you run

endurance.
living with the life you have.
not asking always 'why?'.
accepting why not.
accepting because.

there are some things about certain groups of people that amaze me- vietnam era veterans are one of those groups.  several of my patients have showed up to their appointments with a woman at their side, and when i ask who she is- they say "my ex."  i've seen it many times- these guys will get sick and out of the woodwork will come their ex-wives.  these women will then stop what there doing and care for their ex-husband who now has stage 4 cancer.  after years and years of no contact.  after years of time together that was often affected by alcohol and drugs and cigarettes and infidelity.  these women come back and care for their man.  a few of them have even remarried.  and there is an attitude of 'why not', or 'it's the right thing to do'.  it always gives me pause. i've often wondered why?  what's going on?  what's the real story?  is it a story of redemption? has there been a righting of wrongs?  apologies and forgiveness? or  is it a story of true love?

on friday i saw one of my patients who i knew was living with his ex.  last friday she came to the appointment too and i got the scoop- i heard the story- finally a window of possible insight.

"30 years! we hadn't seen each other in 30 years! we had a son during the three years we were married and he told me dave was sick- he had cancer and was living in a hotel." she said. "so i says i need to help out.  i had a boyfriend, a marine, i told him that my ex-husband needed help and i was going to take him to his appointments and his treatments at the VA hospital."

i'm thinking- you were only married for 3 years and you haven't seen the guy in 30 years and your stopping your life to take him to and from his chemo and radiation?  and you have a boyfriend who is OK with this?

"you know what my marine said?  he said, no we're going to take him to his appointments together- you don't need to do that alone."

what?

then the amazing thing- dave (name changed) was in the hospital and 'her marine' found out that he would be discharged to a nursing home - he said "no fellow veteran is going to a nursing home when we have an extra bedroom- we can take care of him."

so the three of them live together.  my patient, his ex-wife and her fiance who take care of him.

my patient spoke up- he said- "when you've lived to this age in life- and you've seen what we've seen- you just begin to let go of the things - you see what really is important- you learn to laugh at things that used to drive you crazy and you forgive each other- you move on."

such good wisdom.  i envy that perspective.

if zoe was a race, she'd be a marathon.  if zoe was a piece of candy, she'd be the everlasting gobstopper.  if zoe was a sentence, she'd be written by charles dickens.  if she was a sports event she'd be baseball.  if she were music she'd be beethoven.  if she were weather she'd be sunny, but if she were a natural disaster- she'd be an earthquake- not the warning winds and rain of a hurricane, not the visibility of the tornado on the plains, not calculations of the volcano- just a few tremors then the big one.


she needs to be surrounded with endurance- stamina- patience- like a long run, and wordy paragraph, and extra innings. but she's complexly beautiful like  moonlight sonata - intense and traveling like the notes- moving you- drawing you in- pushing you back, slow and creeping then vibrant and passionate.  she's cheery and sunny and warm like good weather- but she can have the unpredictability of an earthquake- shaking herself to the bones- with little warning.


i'm a sprinter- our 4x110 relay team won the state championships.  if i were candy (and couldn't be chocolate) i'd be poprocks.  if i were a sentence- i would be a fragmented poem line.  if i were a sport i'd probably be ping-pong.  if i were music- i'd be played on the harmonica- not fancy but soulful.  i hope i'm sunny.  if i were a natural disaster, i'd be a hurricane- at least you could get out of the way.


so i don't like the pain of mile 20, i don't like the unpredictability- but i do live it.


today at the zoo- she had a little earthquake moment.  we were with one of our favorite families.  she got overwhelmed in the gorilla house. a lot of people and a lot of noise- and she freaked out a little.  ran out- ears covered.  it took a while for her to calm down- and there were after shocks- she was angry at me in all of it, which i guess is good, i guess it means i'm safe.

but there were two positives in this.  one is that i'm learning to pace myself- i don't burn out after 50 yards- i might be up to 7 emotional miles- and this is good.  and i'm not avoiding the long words in the long sentence- i'm not skimming it- i'm trying to understand it fully.

the other thing i saw was, again the beauty of my friend erin.  that girl gets it.  we were reflecting on the day and she said- 'wow! the kids did really well!"  "except for zoe's meltdown" i said.  "no- every time we're at the zoo, one of my kids is crying about something."  she normalizes it.  no big deal.  no ones injured.  no ones gone missing.  no ones dying.  you accept your life, your path.  and you move on.  she brings me back to where i want to be.

sometimes mike and i forget this.  sometimes we get overwhelmed with her overwhelm. sometimes we fear we've landed our lives on a fault line.  we can blow moments, into forever.  we can turn 'once in a while' into 'always'.  we can worry about what those zoe quakes will look like in a few years, or how the girl who doesn't like change will handle moving to uganda. 


but i want to let it go- to laugh at the things that drive me crazy- to forgive each other and move on.
and it is beginning- slowly-i'm trading speed for endurance.

long may we run.

happy valentines

happy valentines day! 
mine started with strawberry red vomit all over me, my light colored couch and my rug.  it was followed by zoe not doing her work, hiding, then not responding to me calling her multiple times- and me, finding her, snatching her stuffed hello kitty valentines gift out of her hands and bonking her on the head with it.  not good. it's been this way because everything bryn sips he throws up- and i woke up and still had my cold-foggy head, demi moore voice and all, and  a 'vestibular migraine' which means my balance is off and the room is spiny (and the neurologist said not to take the migraine medicine if that happens because i might have a stroke- that's really what he told me). and because i need to work on my talk for tomorrow- my talk for work- my talk about homelessness and palliative care. 

"so today we're going to talk about the intersection of homelessness and palliative care.  and this is really fun for me- because it's the intersection of two of my passions.  when i was a research fellow- i published a paper on housing instability and homelessness, and access to health care......."

back in the days of san francisco- the days when i was a doctor and quite possibly going to be a research oriented academic doctor- back when i was just pregnant with jude- before the knowledge of good and evil- before my life with zoe fell to bits.........back in the days with out a diagnosis, back when she was not-reactionary over everything- when she was flexible- when she wasn't ever mean (really)- when i had my own life- when she was in childcare from 7:30-5:30- in her life- back in the days before we needed medications, before we needed special schools, before we were kicked out of the special school, before i lost myself in her life- in her world- before mine began to fade away.

"and now i do palliative care- end of life care- care for people who's illness doesn't have a cure."

is that what i do? it is - day in and day out.  not just on fridays- because this stuff we deal with at home- this stuff she deals with everyday- it doesn't have a cure (even off gluten and dairy- better, not cured).  it's living with a life threatening disease- depending on how you define 'life'- depending on how you define 'disease' or  'dis- ease'.

"so lets think about what these things are separately- what is homelessness?  who are the homeless?  and what do people need and want at the end of life?  how do we do palliative care?  and then lets think about their interaction- about what might be unique and challenging about delivering palliative care to the homeless- what barriers must we address- what things do we need to think about differently?"

lets think about my life even 6 years ago, five or four years ago- other lifetimes ago it can seem- in those times when i studied people with out homes.  there was still struggle, yes-  there was unknown- but it wasn't like these years. it wasn't foot stomping, tantrum throwing, wailing- because you can't go to your friends house.  and you can't go because your poor little brother is vomiting his guts out- and your mom (who should have been writing her talk) can't leave his little side. those were the days when even if you couldn't empathize with him- you didn't get angry and explosive.

what do people want at the end of a life? how do we provide palliative care?  how do people live with life altering- life damaging- career wrecking change? the end of a life.  a life style. an expectation.  life as we knew it.  to palliate means to cloak- to cover, to protect.  is that what we're doing here? what i'm doing? not today.

it's 2:30- someone is snoring beside me after having the dry-heaves- and someone else is upstairs having lost hello kitty, and all her american girl dolls because of her absurd over reaction to not being able to go to her friends house today. because of her unwillingness to at least try to be sensitive to her  sick brother.  because of her storming upstairs yelling, "i just can't take change!"
oh really??

really?

tough.  because life is what happens when your busy making other plans.  because life is change.  because if you want to talk about having to adapt to change zoe- lets talk.


so he slept and she came down stairs and we talked about change- about the naturalness of it- the constancy of it, whether we like it or not.  we talked about trees and seasons- about what happens to the leaves in fall and winter and spring and summer- about the loss in the change and what you gain in the change- how you can't have one without the other. that plans changing can be disappointing- but there is always another opportunity. when a door is closed- somewhere a window opens.  and then i started listening to what i was saying, and i started believing it, and i stopped feeling so sorry for myself.

she said it was hard.  that she didn't know how to adapt to change.  i told her it's about making a choice- it's about how you look at it- what you focus on.  do you choose the sadness of the lost leaves or anticipate the buds of spring? do you choose to stay in that angry place of not getting to see your friend or do you make new plans for the afternoon?  do you twirl and twirl over what you thought you'd get and didn't or do you embrace the gifts that surround you now- different as they are, changed though they may be?



i'll choose to embrace.
happy valentines day!

how we write the story

i want to trade mine in for a new one.

yes i'm talking about my daughter.

today, i just want a neuro-typical 10 year old. i don't want to have to have to spend a hour and then have mike spend an hour talking out how to not say to some one, "is your dog about to die?" and then deal with all the dis-ease that comes with that. her anger at having to be told what is socially correct, her anger at not knowing, her anger at me for telling her that- for disrupting her perfectly constructed day of good feelings. she hates negative feelings- when they come, she is like someone teetering on the edge- and if pushed over - she'll ride the downward spiral into the dark place, a place of facing the things she likes to not think about, like having a nonverbal learning disorder, and having a hard time understanding the subtleties of language and expression.

she fell hard. and i sat on the bed while she sat in the rocking chair yelling,
"i hate my brain! i want a new one! fix it- you're a doctor! fix my brain- i need a surgeont" it probably wasn't the right time to correct her and say "it's surgeon not surgeont", but i couldn't help it.

and when i told her that she had a good brain- it became, " i hate being ten- ten is a stupid age- why did i ever have to turn ten!" it's always blame- something else is responsible for her feelings. and as i'm listening to her, i'm having a little bit of an out-of-body experience. part of me wants to laugh as the level of drama and part of me was so overly annoyed because i wanted us all to go to the summer festival in our neighborhood, and part of me was annoyed at the same thing she was dealing with. i was so angry at her brain too. so mad that things don't come naturally to her, that i have to teach her what to say, and then deal with the fall out of that.

after my hour of trying - i realized i was done and getting no where fast- so i took the boys to the festival and mike and zoe met us after another hour of her crying through her bad place. at that point, i was hot and bothered- cranky but trying.

at the festival her music school had a stage and her teacher asked if she wanted to play-

"oh dear God" i thought- not today- today we're teetering- today might be disastrous.

her teacher asked what she wanted to play?

silent night

it's june

oh- yankee doodle

and with that, she just hopped up and started to play, in a very flexible way- she made a few mistakes- but roled with it- she even fell getting off stage and landed on the keyboard, making a very dramatic exit, but didn't even care- it was like no big deal.

and this is the mystery of this child. she had a complete meltdown over being told what might not be a good thing to say, in the privacy of her own home. but has no fear or anxiety about getting on a stage, with out any preparation and playing piano- doesn't get phased by error or even care that she fell off the stage. not perfect- but ok with her mistakes. i would never have been able to do that. but the fact is, it could have been reversed- on another day. she could have thrown a fit on stage and pounded the keyboard and cried, and not cared about being corrected in conversation.

from what i remember from psychiatry rotations, stress is significantly exacerbated by unpredictability. humans can deal pretty well, even with really hard and terrible stuff, when we know when it's coming. high stress comes from not knowing when the ball will drop- not knowing when your brain won't be able to do math- or when you can't formulate your idea with words- or when your daughter might loose it.

when we left the festival mike took the boys home, and zoe and i went off so she could buy something with her money. but nothing at the art festival was under 8 dollars. we finally found a little store and after much debate she settled on a set of glitter animal "silly bands".

i tried to convince her to buy the 'fairydust'- but she wasn't interested- rats!

i'm thinking "phew" these are what a "normal" 10 year old girl would buy (maybe 8 year old, but close enough). we managed to escape another tiny stuffed animal or plastic princess crown, or wind up toy. but did zoe want to wear them on her wrist? no - she wanted to play with them, to line them up and count them, to have them have conversations with each other- to compare their features. now we were at the ice cream store, (she had the non-dairy sorbet- delicious) and in front of us are three girls her age. they're wearing armfuls of silly bands. they have shirts written on or signed by their friends, they're just hanging out.

i felt that heart pang. that longing- for normal- that feeling of feeling sorry for us. followed quickly by guilt and then sadness at my short sightedness- my human simplicity- my inability to ride it out- to have her bravery. i want to stand on the stage of my life- and be ok with not-normal, with "different, not less" and believe it.

most days, thankfully, aren't like this. most days i see her for her beautiful, amazing, interesting self- with out a thought of comparison. most days i don't think of "normal or not normal". and in reflection, i'm acutely aware of my disability, my weakness, the parts of my heart that are hard, selfish; much more so than hers.

she's working through the really hard stuff of her life. she's becoming her own. i need to spend more time re-framing it for me and letting her just be.


because really...

she spent the morning, grieving her challenge with appropriate social communication- and her ten year old desire for independence from her parents.
she then pulled it together- had fun and hung out with a friend at the festival, and played her first piano gig- she bought some age-appropriate toys and was very creative in her use of them.


it's all in how we write the story-

face the music

i'm happy. today was good. nothing spectacular happened. it was just a good day.
i found zoe some pink heart pants at a thrift store- old well worn and so, very soft- she wore them- even with one tag still in. we had to rush to get to piano and then math tutor (who is my saving grace- and because zoe and i have been hitting a wall lately- is now doing math several half hours each week instead of the one hour slot). then to drop the boys, then back to get her from math. we ran some errand with minimal obsessing over small items that caught her eye and came home to do school. it took an hour for her to write her list of 10 words and their definitions. this is better than yesterday (1.5 hours). the time is not a measure of her ability- it's her distractability and her stubbornness. she's done the words in 15 minutes very well- but that is rare. and i've decided, right or wrong and i'm still not sure, to make her finish them, no matter what. for the sake of learning to finish a task. that life is not always fun. that when it's hard, you still have to keep going. because that is right. today, she stopped after word 3 and wrote a letter to her dad (about 5 sentences) and tried to get out of the word list because she had written that instead. i actually considered it. it was true that she'd written quite a bit, and that part of why we homeschool is to be flexible (and isn't that what i'm always telling her to do?) and i considered the possibility of a meltdown, and my avoiding a meltdown by giving in. but i held my ground. and she did it- eventually.

a few years ago i heard a talk from a wonderful psychologist who now knows zoe well and has given me hope when i was hopeless- and she said that with "these kids" we (parents, teachers etc) often will avoid situations that we suspect might bring out a meltdown. i was totally guilty of that- and actually had never official acknowledged it. i mean, i'd avoided using the vacuum or blender. i'd started buying pre-ground coffee. i'd not told her where her glasses were, but conveniently moved them to somewhere obvious- knowing she'd want to find them with out help. and i'd answered (OK told a little white lie) that i'd seen the dog we just drove by, when i might not have fully seen it- because it was so hard for her to not have us share an experience.
"but you needed to see that dog- if i saw it, you have to see it too!" i know there is some philosophical thing going on there- some epistemologic dilemma- it can only really exist if i saw it and my mother saw it.

but i've learned that each potential meltdown is a learning opportunity in disguise. and that avoidance is not doing anyone any favors (well, honestly, except for in that moment- which i suppose does count for something :) so i've learned to face them. to be willing to walk with her into those scary threatening places. to show her that i'm not afraid. because if i am, where does that leave her? eventually i'd love for her to walk into an active grinding, blending coffee shop that's being vacuumed, while wearing fully tagged clothes, and not feel like covering her ears, yelling and running away. but how will we get there if we avoid it all the time?

so sometimes i 'let' her vacuum, and with warning, after a lot of self talk and "making peace" with the vacuum- she'll do it- even with "the loud part". she can now laugh at the blender (to help ease the stress). and just say calmly- "i hate the sound of that coffee grinder- don't you?"

so it does work- meltdowns aren't the end of the world- really, together we can face the music and there is progress, sometimes in leaps, sometimes in bits.

it was all the staplers fault

lets just say- i knew we'd be in for it today. mike is in miami. it's raining- it's been raining and it's going to keep raining. and my barometer for how zoe will do today, showed - trouble likely.

these days when i walk the boys around the corner to preschool- she does her writing assignment. this entails copying a list of either spelling words or vocab words with their definitions- today it's the later. P.S. -it's thursday- and we've been copying the same words all week. how she does with this task is a pretty good measure of what kind of day we're in for. as i unlock the door, i whisper a small prayer- please let her be done with her words, and please let her have done a good job, and feel good about it- inside, she's playing and proudly announces she's done - phew! excellent!
"let's go look at your words!"
oh dear God-
she has basically scribbled shaky parkinson's like words all over the page- she's standing next to me smiling- "oops! i guess i was a little cold".
"do you think there is a better way you could have handled being cold?"
"i guess i could have gotten a coat on."
"yup. OK- lets do it again."
then began the half hour of dillydallying - she decides to sharpen her pencil- then every pencil in the box. she wants to apologize again for not doing good work. she wants to ask me some random question about some object on the desk. finally after i threaten to throttle her and tell her she can not get up until she's done, that she may not speak until she's done- she spends 10 minutes max and does very well.

i know it's not eating worms- but this makes me crazy. because she can clearly do the task- yet instead of 10 minutes- it was literally an hour of "work".

but, here is the good news- here is the grace-
6 months ago- this would have disintegrated into a total melt down mess. 6 months ago, she would NEVER have been able to sit down and and regroup and actually do the words- she would have cried and said she was stupid and thrown her pencil down. she would have been unable to pull it back together and move on to the next subject.
this is huge progress!!

how quickly we forget. and each time the words take an hour- its a learning opportunity- for both of us. the irony is we're both working on the same things- she practices getting it together- i practice getting it together. and when i can stop and see the progress- when i can get through my own over annoyance at the task not being completely in a timely fashion :) and when i can see that what's so much more important than writing a list of words, is being proud of yourself, of getting it together, or learning to try again when you fail then i'm so proud of her- because this is where it's at- where it needs to be.


and here's why we quickly forget. i knew it would happen! i knew it.
it just took a few hours.

i pull up in the car to pick zoe up from OT and see her in the hall, doing her "boneless" dance ie: this is my body's way of saying i'm extremely frustrated and i give up.
my response- oh crap- deep breath.
the therapist asks if they can have 5 minutes.
sure- i mean great- if you can work through this with her in 5 minutes-and i get a happy kid- fantastic, and good luck with that.
10 minutes. and out she storms, red-faced, pursed lips and stomping feet. as i suspected. i wonder what happened- kind of- but i kind of don't care- i really don't want to deal- deep breath.
" I WANTED TO FINISH MY PROJECT BUT THE STAPLER BROKE!!"
oh- now i get it, totally great reason to get upset and throw a fit and waste 3 peoples time and make your brothers wait for us as we're late for pick up. that damn stapler! in my calm -annoyed- but calm voice i ask her to get in the car so we can get the boys. and instantly - seriously- as if a blanket of warm goodness has descended on her- she says, "i'm sorry mommy- i just got really upset."

again- there is the grace- there is the progress. only i can't see it because
while i'm calmly talking to her in the way way back, through the rear view mirror, i'm having not-so-calm-images of this being the rest of my life. of her never being able to handle being back at school because if you write like you have parkinsons and you go to bits over a stapler- no one will want you there. and i'm envisioning her trying to have a job, but melting down because the office copier is stuck. and while i'm talking about choices- i'm thinking that zoe really should have been born to the landed gentry in victorian england where manners defined you (she is undyingly polite) and ladies had other people wash their hair, and dress them- so all her OT needs would be bypassed. she could sip tea and wear a shawl and go for strolls in the garden. when they didn't have staplers and copiers.

"mommy i think my head was just too full and it had to come out."

"what do you mean zoe?, help me understand what that means."

"i just don't know. "

"but if we could figure it out- we could fix it."

"maybe it's just part of 'my disorder'- maybe it's just me."

maybe she's right again. maybe it's about accommodation and adjustment, not cure, or fix. it's about the long distance run- not the sprint. rats. deep breath.

as we drove on, we talked about flexibility. we talked about our actions having consequences on other people. we talked about not having control over much of what happens in life- like broken staplers-(or having kids with learning disorders) and we talked about having control over ourselves and our responses to life. we talked about choices.

"mommy next time i'll make a better choice, next time i'll be flexible."

but will i? will i be able to have faith in her- going on and out into the world to accomplish what ever God made her to do- big or small? what if temple grandins mom had not pushed her - different not less. what if annie had given up on helen keller? my mom used to say that raising kids was like putting pennies in the bank- sometimes it feels like with zoe-i'm putting $10 bills into a magic bank that changes each bill into a penny- so much effort and it takes so much more time.

but if i peel off the layer of the stapler scene fear, and really look into my heart- i do see her doing great things- small possibly, but none the less great things, because she already does. and because look at her progress!

"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right"

no really- here comes the sun!!