I saw a long-time patient of mine today who is giving birth to her first child on Saturday.  Yay!  She’s been with us from the very start.  You know chiropractic is great for pregnant women too, don’t you?

In my Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills chiropractic clinic I see and treat many pregnant women through their entire term.  I adjusted my wife, Erika, up until her delivery.  Seeing a chiropractor when pregnant is extremely helpful.

Think of it like this: As baby grows, the extra weight carried by mom-to-be is a lot of pressure coming down on the lumbar spine (low back), pelvis and sacrum.  This can lead to a new episode of back pain, even in women who’ve never experienced back pain in the past.

It also can lead to sciatica–a painful and often debilitating condition where the sciatic nerve gets irritated.  The baby coming down in the pelvic basin–especially in the third trimester–can put an enormous pressure on the portion of the sciatic nerve facing inward on the pelvic floor.  As the piriformis muscle gets tighter from the altered biomechanics that follow the weight gain and increased girth of pregnancy, that becomes even more pressure on the sciatic nerve from the outward facing portion.  The piriformis muscle needs to be relieved by a chiropractor to reduce symptoms of sciatica throughout the pregnancy.

That’s what we’ve been doing for my client.  Along with low back or lumbar adjustments, as well as chiropractic adhjustments of the pelvis and sacrum, regular chiropractic care makes for a more relaxed, flexible and strong mama-to-be.

I suspect there is something genetic in humans that wants us to be able to start again. To wipe the slate clean, as it were, and to begin afresh. Archaeologists have found signs indicating that early peoples celebrated the first day of the year on the vernal or autumnal equinox, or the summer or winter solstice. During the Middle Ages many Christians celebrated it on March 25.

            Since the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582, most Westerners have celebrated New Years January 1. (Not without a look at the year behind; the Roman god Janus, for whom January was named, had two heads:  one looking forward, and one looking back.) The Chinese New Year is January 26 in 2009. The Jewish New Year is celebrated on the first day of Toshri, and the Muslim New Year on the first day of Muharram.

            We celebrate beginnings, not endings. Yes, we may look back at the year that has just passed, remembering the good and the bad parts of it, but our focus is on our future, not our history.

            This year, saying good bye to 2008 will be a relief for many of us. It has been a year of economic and political struggles.  No longer can many of us afford the luxury of ignoring what is going on in Washington or on Wall Street, feeling “it doesn’t affect me.” Now we know it does.

            As a country, many more of us said so proudly when we chose to vote in the presidential and local elections in November. Perhaps we believed elections hadn’t mattered in other years. In 2008 we knew they were important. Important for us, and important for our children, and our grandchildren.

Soon we will be seeing a new administration in Washington. 

We will be seeing changes in government, but, no, those changes won’t be easy, and no, they won’t come as swiftly as many of us would like.

But it isn’t just the administration in Washington that will be new. We, too, can be the change that we want to see. We, too, can focus on improving education for our children, and on improving our personal financial situations. We can learn from history – our own personal experiences, and the history of the country. Our country was built on neighbors helping neighbors to achieve common goals.

Perhaps the challenges that face us today will bring us together again, and bring out the best of Americans.

I believe they will.

And, in the meantime, I’m making out my own list of what I might be able to do to help. Writing this blog will be on this list. So – stay tuned!

And have a Happy New Year.              

I spent the morning making Christmas cookies.  I don’t always make cookies;  last year my husband and I were on a diet, and my adult children celebrated out of state, so we were virtuous and I did not bake. But this year my youngest daughter and her fiancé are coming home for “a Maine Christmas.” I can’t guarantee snow, but I know she’ll expect some other basics.

Traditional Wait family Christmas cookies are on her list, and at the top of that list (I asked) are molasses cookies and Scotch shortbread. Both represent parts of our family’s heritage. I know her sisters, already married with children, have incorporated those two traditions into their holidays, no doubt adding cookie recipes from their husband’s families as well. That’s how new family traditions are formed.

And cookies are undeniably a part of Christmas.  

Where did cookies come from?  I hadn’t thought about cookies until I wrote my first historical novel for children (Stopping to Home), set in 1806 Maine. In researching special treats that the two children in the story might crave, I realized that white sugar would have been a rarity at that place and time. Maple sugar and syrup would have been available, and for special occasions, molasses. (Molasses is thick, dark-colored syrup that is the byproduct of refining sugar; in England it is called treacle. In 1806, the rich had sugar – hard, white, cones of it. The poor, if they were lucky, had molasses.)

But in 1806, in Maine, no one made cookies. They DID make small cakes, sometimes adding nuts or seeds or, when they were lucky enough to have some, raisins or dried blueberries or cranberries. And so in Stopping to Home, when four-year-old Seth begs for “wedding cakes”, he is asking for fancy molasses cookies with raisins that might be served at a festive occasion such as a wedding.

But if Seth had lived a bit further south, in sections of New York or Pennsylvania that had been settled by those of Dutch or German descent, then he would have happily asked for cookies. For in those places, American accents had already changed the Dutch word koekje, “little cake,” to cookie. It took until the 1840s for “cookie” to extend throughout the United States.

In England small sweet flat cakes are still called “biscuits,” but here in the United States, where customs from many places have merged and become our own,

“cookies,” made the way my New England and Scottish ancestors made theirs, will be expected this Christmas at our home, and enjoyed by my daughter, who was born in Calcutta, and her intended, who is Irish/African-American/Native American.

            I smiled as I mixed the dough today, and enjoyed the fragrant smells filling the house, thinking of the generations before me who had set the pattern I was following.

            And I looked forward to the Christmas my daughter and her fiancé add their  own version of Christmas cookies to our family traditions.    

Every year about this time most of us become slightly panicked, convinced we will never find the perfect gift for everyone. This year, with most of our budgets cut,

the challenge seems insurmountable.  No, I will not remind you that our country survived the panics of 1819, 1837 and 1873 and the Great Depression.

            Instead, I’ll offer a few gift suggestions.

How about a globe? A real, old-fashioned, globe, but up-to-date, and ready to refer to every time your son or daughter (or you) are not sure where Kenya is, or what state is west of Indiana. Or an atlas? If your family already has one, why not look for an historical atlas? Find out what the United States looked like in 1850. What Europe looked like before World War I. You can find the routes of the explorers in an historical atlas, along with major battles of the world.  Fascinating stuff.  (Helpful for homework assignments, too.)

            Another book that is fun to browse through, is The Timetables of History, by Bernard Grun. It starts in 5000 B.C. and ends with the present day, listing the major events of each 500 years (at the beginning) or each year (for recorded history.)  Who knew that in 1518 Cardinal Wolsey made peace between England, France, Spain and the Pope, Martin Luther refused to recant, Tintoretto died, and spectacles for the shortsighted were invented? You will, if you have this book.

            But perhaps my favorite gifts are DVDs. There are some wonderful ones available today, in which historic events are acted out factually and made so exciting you might just convince the “history is boring” members of your household to reconsider.

            A few of my favorites …Glory, the story of the first black regiment to fight for the North during the Civil War.  The Crossing, General George Washington’s decision to push his weary and ill-clothed troops across the Delaware River Christmas Eve and attack the Hessian troops in Trenton. Miracle, the 1980 United States ice hockey team’s Olympic victory over the Soviet Union’s team. All the President’s Men, two young Washington Post investigative reporters take down President Nixon by uncovering Watergate. A Night to Remember, the original Titanic movie based on Walter Lord’s book; what actually happened that night. Gettysburg, that makes you feel as though you know the soldiers and generals on the battlefield. John Adams, the 2008 mini-series that so brilliantly portrayed John and Abigail Adams.

And my personal favorite (I play it every Fourth of July,) 1776, the musical version of the Continental Congress negotiating what became the Declaration of Independence. Even the lyrics of the songs are based on actual writings of the period.

So – happiest of holidays, whichever ones you celebrate!  May yours go down in history!

            We’re one of the few countries (yes, Australia and Canada have some similarities)  whose citizens (or their ancestors, not too far back) chose to leave their homelands and start fresh in a new land, with new hopes, and new aspirations. They would make this country a better place – for themselves, and for their children. Even Native Americans, who were here long before Europeans, came here either by small boats or over the land bridge from Asia.  The one obvious exception to my first statement were the Africans who were brought here against their will to be slaves.

            But even they fall under my second criterion. Those who decided to come to this new land, and who survived it, were strong, resilient, intelligent, creative, and headstrong.  In many ways, they were the best their homelands had to offer. And they came here, to the United States, and they thrived.

            I was reminded of this recently when I picked up a copy of the November issue of the AARP Bulletin. Inside was an article about one of our country’s top brain surgeons and researchers, Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa. He is in charge of the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, where he works 16 hours a day trying to find a cure for brain cancer. In 20007 Popular Science named him one of the “Brilliant Ten” – one of “the most creative, most groundbreaking, most brilliant young scientists in the country.”

            That’s wonderful.  But why am I writing about Dr. Quinones here? Because when Quinones, was 19, spoke no English, and had no job skills, he climbed a chain link fence from Mexico into the United States. He was caught, and sent back to Mexico. But he was stubborn. Hours later, he climbed that fence again. This time he made it.

He became an illegal immigrant farm laborer in California.  He took English lessons. He went to community college. He went to the University of California, and then to medical school at Harvard. He became a citizen. He is now 40, and he has saved hundreds of lives – and his research may well save thousands more. 

But what made Dr. Quinones a true citizen of the United States? To me, reading his story, it was not that he was a brilliant doctor or researcher.

It was that he climbed that wall at the border a second time. He knew what he wanted. He did not give up.

We are lucky he — and so many others, facing such huge odds over the years – did not.