Microchimerism Fascinates Me !!

I wrote about microchimerism last December in a blog post after discovering the concept in a Christmas sermon written by an Ontario pastor. 

So when I saw this week that The Atlantic had just published a scientific article by Katherine J. Wu about the phenomenon I read it with great interest.

At my wedding I am with my two grandmothers and Dave’s grandmother. On the right is my maternal grandmother and I probably carry some of her cells in my body.

Microchimerism is the term to describe the fact we each carry cells around in our bodies from our mothers and our grandmothers and even great- grandmothers which we received from our mother when we were in her womb.

I have cells in my body from both of my sons

And………. if we are women who have experienced pregnancy we also have received cells from the children we have nurtured in our wombs. These cells remain in our bodies throughout our lives.

With my older son

This means I have cells from both my sons in my body.

I also have cells in my body from the three babies I miscarried because the cell transfer between the mother and the fetus she is carrying begins just four weeks after gestation. It gives me comfort somehow to know that I still carry cells from the three children I never got to meet.

With my siblings who may each carry some of my cells transferred to them through my mother

We may also carry cells in our bodies from children our mothers had before us since some of their cells will have transferred to her and she may have passed them on to us. 

With my mother’s older sister. I may carry some of her cells in my body.

Since I am the oldest child in my family this means my siblings might be carrying around some of my cells too and I may be carrying some of the cells from my mother’s older sister and brother. It is also possible that through my younger sister some of my cells have passed on to her two sons, my nephews.

Microchimerism means we have this cellular connection with a complex web of our family members.

And………in an earlier article in The Atlantic it suggests that the cells women have from the children they have carried during a pregnancy have a positive influence on their health- boosting their body’s ability to find and destroy cancer cells, heal wounds and lowering their risk of Alzheimer’s.

Scientists still have plenty to discover about microchimerism but many experts believe further study of the cells that are transferred between mother and child during pregnancy have much to teach us about our body’s health and about understanding ourselves and who we are. 

Other posts………

Why People Don’t Trust Scientists

Four Things You Can Do To Be More Empathetic

Face to Face With Our Human Ancestors

The Consolation of Water Lilies

As I walked through the garden behind the home of the famous artist Claude Monet in France this summer I saw the signature water lilies he captured so beautifully in his paintings.

The water lilies reminded me of one of my favourite chapters in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s best selling book Braiding Sweetgrass.

Kimmerer is a botany professor with a wise and wonderful way of linking the lives of humans to the lives of plants.

She describes going canoeing right after dropping off her youngest daughter at college, an epoch in her parenting journey. She paddles by some beautiful water lilies.

As a botanist she knows water lilies get their air and light on the surface of the water but she also knows they are anchored below by a rhizome or interconnected root system as thick as your wrist and so strong it is almost impossible to break.

Water lily in a cenote in Mexico

Robin goes on to describe in delicate and lovely language how the old leaves of a water lily and the new ones are inextricably linked and how they help one another survive. 

Robin is wise enough to let her readers come to their own conclusions but her words reminded me so much of my parenting experience.  

Lilies in a pond in the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden in Winnipeg

How we hope when our children leave home we have given them a strong and connected enough root system to anchor them as they seek the things that will bring air and light to their own lives.  

How we hope the bond we have with our children will keep us linked together albeit in constantly new and changing ways and that as our lives move forward we will continue to help one another survive and thrive in this world. 

Other posts………..

Lord You Have Come to the Lakeshore

Dad’s Sacred Trees

Wild Grasses- A Love Story

Why Wouldn’t They Tell Their Parents?

I’ve been following the current controversy around the question of whether parents should be informed if their children share concerns or questions about their sexual orientation, preferred pronouns, or gender identity at school. Does the school have an obligation to share with parents what their child has revealed at school?

Photo by Barcelos_fotos on Pexels.com

What I wonder is why a child wouldn’t talk to their parents about their questions and concerns? It seems to me children who are confident they will always have their family’s unconditional love and support, would talk to their parents before talking to their teachers.

If they don’t talk to their parents it must be because they rightly or wrongly fear their parents won’t love them, won’t understand them, won’t allow them to be themselves, or sadly might even harm or hurt them. What other reason could there be?

Perhaps they have heard their parents talk in a derogatory or critical or disparaging way about trans individuals or members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Perhaps they have heard judgemental things about the transgender or 2SLGBTQIA+ community at their family’s church or in their neighbourhood or in their parents’ friend circle. Of course that would make them hesitant to share their questions and concerns at home.

Photo by Rosemary Ketchum on Pexels.com

If parents find out their child is questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity or preferred pronouns and hasn’t shared those concerns with them, they need to figure out what changes they can make at home to create a more accepting environment where their child feels safe and comfortable about talking with them.

And if parents truly love their child and find out that for some reason their child may have spoken to their teachers before talking to them I would think they would feel nothing but relief and gratitude that their child found a confidential listening ear at school.

Other posts…………

Responding to Changing Understandings of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

George

Gender Neutral Washrooms

Thank You Kind Stranger

I was walking down Portage Avenue on an incredibly cold day last week my head lowered in the strong, fierce wind when a man walking in the other direction stopped in front of me and started talking to me in an animated way.

He clearly couldn’t speak English and was holding forth in a foreign language. He seemed very agitated. I wondered if he needed help or money.

He began to point behind me and I thought he was asking for directions. I said I didn’t understand but he kept talking and pointing so finally I turned around.

My red and white scarf was lying on the sidewalk some meters behind me. I hadn’t tied it and the wind had blown it off my neck. I hadn’t even noticed.

I thanked the man profusely and ran back to get my scarf.

Skating on the river trail at the Forks

If you’ve seen winter photos of me you may have noticed me wearing that red and white scarf. I LOVE that scarf!

It is exceptionally warm and is wide enough and long enough for me to wind around practically my whole face if I need to do that.

Walking in Kildonan Park on New Year’s Day

BUT…… the reason I love that scarf the most is that my mother knit it for me not long after I first started teaching grade school and needed to go outside on recess duty on some pretty cold Manitoba days.

That scarf is over forty years old and every time I wear it I think of my mother’s love and concern for me. Mom died in 2013.

I would have been incredibly sad to lose that scarf.

Of course, the Winnipeg stranger who took time to stop in that bitter weather and make sure I retrieved my scarf had no idea of its sentimental value to me.

He was just being kind and courteous and helpful.

My mother was such a warm-hearted, caring, considerate person and it is good for me to be reminded as I was last week, that the world is full of them.

Other posts………

Out With The Birds In Kildonan Park

Discovering Peanut Park

Winnipeg Walking Adventures

Kindness Therapy

Acts of Kindness and Love

Bliss Point- Something Good?

The Problem We All Live With- by Norman Rockwell- Rockwell shows Ruby Bridges on her way to an all-white school in 1964 accompanied by US deputy marshalls enforcing new desegregation laws

I learned about a ‘bliss point’ this week while listening to an episode of the podcast This American Life called Nice White Parents.  The episode was about school integration in the United States.  The narrator of the podcast said the ‘bliss point’ was the percentage of a population of a school that needed to be white before most white parents would consider sending their children to that school.  

That bliss point is apparently 26% for white parents of middle school youngsters. So if white parents know that about a quarter of their children’s school mates will also be white they are comfortable sending their child to a racially integrated school. In an article I read about school integration the authors say the ‘bliss point’ for white parents of elementary school children is much higher at 60%.

Dave having ice cream on a food tour in Toronto 

As I was looking for more information about  ‘bliss point’ I found out it is also a common term in the food industry. The bliss point is the amount of a certain ingredient in an item of food be it salt or fat or sugar that makes that food optimally delicious sending endorphins to our brains that make us want to continue eating that food. Of course, food manufacturers are eager to find the bliss points of their products because being sure they have one is the best way to increase sales. 

Bliss point is kind of a tricky term.  It sounds like something good. But in actual fact bliss points can slow social progress and make you eat in an unhealthy way. 

Other posts…….

Lagom- Just Right

Double Bubble and Other New Words

Gift From God

Home Safe and Sound?

 My younger son is a professional musician.  He is on the road a lot! He travels in a van all over the United States and Canada pursuing his career.  And I worry.  I think about the dangerous things that could happen as his band travels in all kinds of weather from one performance to another. When I know he’s due to arrive back home in Winnipeg I’ll send him a text Home safe and sound?  I breathe a sigh of relief when he responds with a yes.

 My older son travels the Saskatchewan highways to work each day.  He is a high school teacher in a small community about a forty- minute drive from his home in Saskatoon. He makes that journey five days a week in all kinds of weather. And I worry. He and his family also do lots of traveling.  When I hear they have arrived safely back in Saskatoon after a journey I am always so relieved. 

I remember coming home from my high school graduation celebration in the wee hours of the morning.  Our graduation class had driven to Winnipeg for a river cruise. I was surprised to find my mother had been awake all night cleaning her kitchen cupboards.  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, “till I knew you were home safely.”

One Easter Sunday my young sons and I went out to Winkler to visit my grandparents.  It was very foggy when we headed home and Grandma was worried.  Our phone was ringing when I walked into our house. It was my grandfather.  “Good,” he said when he heard my voice.  “Now that you are home safely Grandma can stop praying and go to bed.”

Worry for your children’s safety spans generations.

Newspaper columnist Michele Landsburg once wrote….“it is at the very moment we give birth, that we first begin to truly understand and fear death.”  

I think the reason so many people have been so deeply affected by the Humboldt Broncos tragedy is because all parents and grandparents understand exactly the kind of fear Michele Landsberg is talking about. It breaks our hearts to know that for sixteen sets of parents and grandparents those fears have been realized.

 

Packing From The Feet Up

I’ve started packing for our trip to Portugal.  Whenever I am preparing for a journey words of advice from my mother come to mind.  During my childhood when Mom was teaching me how to do my own packing for family vacations or school trips she explained the ‘packing from the feet up’ technique.  Mom said I should start at my feet and think of everything I would need for them on my trip- shoes, sandals, runners, socks and perhaps a toenail clipper. She told me to move up my body section by section like that all the way to my head.  Did I have shampoo, conditioner, my brush, my pink foam curlers,bobby pins,hats, combs, bandannas and hair clips? 

I still pack using that ‘start from the feet up’ technique and it works! Thanks Mom!

Other posts…………

Technology Transforms Travel

Am I a Peripatetic?

Globe Trotting Vicariously

Birthdays Past

Recently I went through a stack of family pictures I got from my Dad and found all these photos of my birthday celebrations when I was a little girl.  My Mom was the one who made these occasions memorable, complete with a cake she had baked, gifts, friends, decorations, party games, a new dress she’d made me and birthday meals.  I realize how blessed I was to have a mother who went to so much work to make me feel special and loved.  It is just one more thing that makes me miss her.  Thanks Mom. 

Other posts about birthdays……..

Happy Birthday Dave

My Dad’s Birthday

Sharing His Birthday With Someone Special

I Need To See A Happy Movie

I saw two movies in the last two days and they both made me incredibly sad. 

Calvary is about a priest who knows someone is going to kill him in a week. The priest is a good man but he has been selected to ‘pay the price’ for all those priests who have used their position for evil.  There are lots of characters in this movie with sad, lonely,messed up lives living cynically or hopelessly. The priest does his best to be patient and listen to them.

At one point the priest is praying with a woman who has just lost her husband in a senseless accident involving drunk teenage drivers. The priest remarks that it must be hard for her to accept how unfair life is in the face of her tragedy.  The woman says what happened to her husband isn’t unfair, it was just something that happened. She says that what is really unfair is people who die who aren’t loved, who die without meaningful relationships. She and her husband loved each other so that didn’t happen to him. 

It made me incredibly sad to think about how many isolated, lonely people there are like that in the world. 

Boyhood is a film that was shot over a period of twelve years by the same cast.  You see a boy become a man in a little under three hours.  Viewers get a window on all those small seemingly mundane but meaningful moments in a family’s day-to-day existence, that quickly pile one on top of each other moving life along in a quick blur. I started crying when the mother in the movie is sending her youngest child off to college and can’t believe she has really arrived at this moment.  Where has time gone? Where has her life gone? And really is this all there is to life?  She has invested so much in her children and now they don’t seem to need her anymore. I think probably every mother has had a sad moment like this. The movie reminded me of how quickly our lives move along and end.

Both Calvary and Boyhood are very good movies. They make you think. They trouble you. They make you take stock of your own life. They make you cry. I’m glad I saw them. But the next movie I see definitely needs to be funny, light-hearted and very upbeat!

Other posts about movies………

Higher Ground

Noah A Violent Movie

The Hundred Foot Journey

Jane Austin Overload

 

 

Letter From the Mother Of A Gay Son

My cousin’s wife Laurie Wiens recently wrote a thoughtful, moving and articulate letter to the editor of the national magazine of the Mennonite Church in Canada. 

Here is one paragraph. 

Our oldest son recently was baptized after doing some intense soul-searching about his faith and his commitment to the church. I am proud of him for taking this step and so happy that he is part of the Christian community and part of a loving and supportive church community. My son is also in a serious relationship with someone who loves him. It is a pleasure to see them together and see how close they have become. They are both at a great stage in life—still studying and figuring out what their career paths will be, both committed to the church, both with their whole lives ahead of them and countless opportunities. My son is also gay.

I encourage you to take the time to read the full letter at the link below.

http://www.canadianmennonite.org/articles/letter-mother-gay-son

Other  posts about Mennonites……..

Some Mennonites But Not All of Them

The Constructed Mennonite

The Disappeared