Dancing through the Minefield

Going Down

2007-02-04T14:29:00.000-05:00

Friends, I'm closing the Minefield. Will be checking in with you all--and maybe set up another site at some point.

You'll know me by my limp.

Peddling

2007-01-26T11:42:00.000-05:00

It's so cold today that the exhaust from the cars doesn't even want to dissipate: all those puffy chains just hang there together in the air. Dazed. Much--the dazed part--like the kids, who succumbed to the thing they hate: an undershirt under a turtleneck under a Norwegian sweater under a winter coat. With a scarf. No arguments from either of them this morning. The new car has heated seats; Liam turned on his knees and rested his cheek against them while the car was warming up. The rest of him was warm from layers. I smiled; the new car makes me feel safe. I don't know how else to say it. The heavy sound the doors make when they close--the color, the curves, the seats--the quiet hum: I feel like I've passed to the next level in a game and reached a checkpoint.

Let go. Breathe. Progress saved.

I imagine disaster scenarios in any moment of extremity. I imagine--when I run out without my jacket to turn the car on--what the progression would be like if I didn't have a warm house to return to. How I would die, and how it would feel. Maybe this mindset is created: too much Man vs Wild on the tube. I keep the whole thing to myself--I don't lecture the kids about survival techniques (except for the one about punching a shark in the nose; what are the chances either of them would ever need to?) But it's also experience: things happen, and once they happen to you you're changed because now you know they can happen. I don't let the kids see how thin the safety net is--everybody's safety net. I don't care who you are. It only takes a few bad turns.

Today I took them to see The Pursuit of Happyness. I thought I knew from the trailers what kind of flick it was: hard times--impossible times--then a big break and happy times. But it's not that at all. It was entirely hard times--entirely the pursuit, with blow after heartbreaking blow, and not until the final three minutes of a 2+ hour movie did the big break come. When it did finally come, it was earned--it was no gift of chance. Not the kind of movie I'd have taken them to see. Not yet.

They've never been more still in a theater. "Will we ever be poor like that?" Liam asked more than once. "No," I said. Though we were, only we had family that had spare beds, and a safe place to reboot, and free schools. "What happens if I'm that poor when I grow up?" Maisie asked. "Then you'll come to me," I said. "What if you're dead?" "You'll go to Liam, or to your own children. And if they ever come to you and you have money, you'll help them without making them ask you." That's the hard part--that last bit.

Hard times are a bit like cancer: you don't want to look at it--not on the corner, not on a movie screen--because there's enough of the arbitrary about it to make you feel vulnerable. I held the car key in my pocket on the way out of the theater. "I love our car," Liam said.

The quest for mobility

2007-01-25T16:29:00.000-05:00

My Dad needs a hip replacement; just called from the doctor's office--a doctor my folks have known forever. He'd have the surgery in March but for the fact that, as it turns out, Dad has some kind of HMO instead of Medicare coverage for this. Dad doesn't know how he ended up with the HMO: he knew only that he had Medicare. I need to investigate how he got the HMO. ("Are you paying for insurance?" I ask him. "No," he says.)

But now all talk of the surgery is suspended, though Dad has been unable to get around well for about a year now because his hip hurts. Goddamn system--goddamn confusing, convoluted system. I was uninsured long enough that I actively consider alternatives: "Did you ask the guy what the surgery would cost for private pay?" And then we calculate: better to pay for it out of pocket to get the surgeon they trust, or get it covered with a surgeon they don't know? You'd think it's simple: go meet a new surgeon. The system devalues relationships: they'll end up with a stranger, and my generation is used to the compromise. But they are of a generation that is deeply shaken by healthcare relationships with strangers; they'd rather skip healthcare if the option is somebody they don't know.

I watched Dad when he was in the hospital last year with his heart trouble--watched him trying to win over all the medical strangers that cycled into his room--telling them little jokes, smiling his sweetest smile, modulating his tone of voice so carefully--he never talks to me so nicely--and holding his pee instead of inconveniencing the nurses: straining with every cell to establish human connection. When I wheeled him out the front door on the way home we passed the cardiologist, who shook Dad's hand, and to this day Dad talks about what a great guy the doctor was--not because Dad lived, see, but because the guy took a minute to shake his hand.

Ultimately, again, Dad will bite the bullet on the hip, and the morning he heads off to the hospital he'll say goodbye to me like he'll never see me again. And me--so sure that he's wrong--so quick with the dismissal, the reassurance.

Would it be so hard, really, to just let people choose their own doctors?

Words

2007-01-13T18:04:00.000-05:00

I'm tossing spelling words at the kids in the car--it passes the time on the Maisie-to-Baltimore drives. Liam hears some of Maisie's more ambitious words, gets annoyed, and says, "I can spell Mississippi, you know."

"Spell it," I say.

"M-r-s-period-i-p-p-y," he says. I smile. Maisie immediately corrects him, and he gets annoyed and barks at her, and she barks back, and it becomes the standard scene. But this time, embedded in the part where they both appeal to me for justice, Maisie tosses at him, "She's my REAL mother!"

Dead silence. I couldn't breathe--couldn't believe she'd say such a thing.

"I'm Liam's real mother, too," I say, "and if I ever hear that come out of your mouth again I really don't know what I'll do."

She recoils; she can't believe she said it either, I can tell. I'm second-guessing: did I make it worse by getting so pissed off? More dead silence. Finally a whispered apology from her. Liam remains silent through all of it.

The fact is, there is a difference in my relationships with the two of them--history, biology and color are easy starters--but after a period of SUCH focus on Liam's biological family--the search, the find, the photos, the letters--the three of us instinctively work very hard now to focus on what makes us a family--not what sets us apart from other families; you can get to a point of displacement very quickly, believe me, if you don't watch the focus. A hard balance for me, being the type to look under every rug and pull apart every dream--the type that believes more harm is done by not looking than by looking and struggling.

Tonight it's just me and Liam. He's cutting snowflakes out of computer paper, and talking to me about my old age. He hums a little tune he heard somewhere, and asks about a complicated story we heard on Ira Glass's program tonight. He asks if he would've had to sit in the back of the bus when Rosa Parks was young, and then says it would've really pissed him off. He negotiates for a new Nintendo game tomorrow instead of church. He chooses crab bisque over Indian food, twists paperclips into a long chain, reads the time off his new analog wristwatch every three minutes (new skill). He seems happy.

"Amee tumakay bhalo pachee," he says, and grins. It's the first time he's said it right--"I love you" in Bengali. I kiss his temple, because I don't know how to say, "Me too" in Bengali, and I don't want to repeat what he said because he'll think I'm correcting his pronounciation, and I want to stay where he is. "Dhonya baad," I say. "Thank you" I know, at least. And he's off to Playstation.

Ugly

2007-01-05T21:32:00.000-05:00

I fired someone today. I've lied through many interviews about being able to fire people--it's a skill companies look for these days. And my sister has fired plenty of people, working in retail back in the day. I've had to break the news to people that our company was shutting down and they'd have to pack their bags. And I've helped people through the process of realizing for themselves that the job they had was not the job they wanted, and I watched them walk away with a mutual nod and sigh. Firing someone seems like the cheap way out of human interaction. Who among us hasn't fucked up? Judging is hard for me. No surprise to anyone here.

Today, at 3, I blindsided a person with, "I'm terminating your position with the company, effective today."

It's not that it was undeserved. It's not that she didn't craft the moment herself with her behavior over years--years--with the company. It was well documented. And then she did one more thing--one more angry, contempt-filled thing--and I had to either ignore it or not. I decided it was time not to ignore.

This morning I was nervous, knowing what was to come. Maisie asked me what was wrong, and I told her that I had to fire somebody. "Why are you nervous?" she asked. I talked to her like I was an old hand at firing, but I was thinking of something I heard a farmer say about the job of slaughtering sheep: "When you do this," I said to her, "you should feel sick to your stomach, and your hands should be cold, because you're changing somebody's life, and it hurts them. It's serious."

The woman threw on the face I've seen her use so often--nodded and smiled through my brief comments. She's a bit brittle; I think that behind that smile there's a howl that would make you grab your ears. She chatters when she's nervous. I had to interrupt her apologies to break the news. In the end she looked at me--this was when she got teary--and told me that she loved this company and really cared about the projects she'd been working on. She told me I could call her if I needed help--if I couldn't find something I needed. I told her that I was sorry--that I wished her only good things--and I resisted the temptation to hug her. Then she was shepherded off to clean out her office.

I'm certain this person needed to leave the department she was in. I'm sure it never could have worked--sure I never could have changed what needed to be changed in her to make it work. But I looked at her beside me today and saw a sad, middle-aged woman who's had a tough emotional life--it's just right there, etched in the face--who's leaving a job she's been in for nine years with no severance and no letter of recommendation. What if she can't find another job quickly? She's alone--no husband, grown daughter. What if she hasn't got savings? Whatever role she had in bringing the moment around, it's my name on the bottom of the letter. My karma.

Prayers for Jane tonight, though I'm not the prayerful sort and she surely doesn't want my prayers if I were. I hope her good news is waiting for her, and that there's not twenty miles of bad road between here and there.

Fame

2006-12-30T21:08:00.000-05:00

My niece, Aunia, now on the AP wire. Cute, huh?

The Change

2006-12-30T08:26:00.000-05:00

An old family friend used to be married to the grandson of a former president. Nice enough guy; the two of them came to family dinners often, and I think he had a thing for my mother. But his last name was, I think, a burden to him, and he never seemed able to get his feet underneath him. Lots of unemployment--lots of "consulting" work that didn't pay. Big laughter--barking laughter. The wife was married to him for 20ish years, until two years ago when he chose his 20-years-junior ghost writer instead. Like nobody saw that coming. Now he's married this other woman, and the two of them have avoided debtors and lawyers by moving to Europe, where they live with their two well-named infants in an apartment owned by her parents. I offer no judgment; I've made my own choices, and I've hurt people.

His former wife tells us last night that her alimony stopped the day the guy boarded the plane for the Alps. She has put her house in Iowa on the market--she can't afford the tiny mortgage--and if it ever sells she will have to move in with her mother in a tiny place on Long Island and live off what cash is left. She sat at the table to worry and rage out loud about it all last night, and her hands were shaking--not just from the rage, I think, but from some affliction--and she mused about making a living from her drawings: she wants me to show her how to sell on eBay. I can't imagine how those hands are going to pull off the delicate pen drawings she used to create. She exhales hopelessness. I'm vaguely surprised she hasn't done herself in.

20 years ago this woman created the most amazing art. She gave us some for Christmas gifts. She illustrated award-winning children's books. But she always dabbled at it--even when her husband was "consulting" and they really needed cash. She could've taken a job--she was offered jobs. She didn't want to work. She said so. Her husband would complain about it here, privately. He resented it.

I sat beside her. I asked about her kids--both of them fuck ups. No solutions there. I looked across the table at another friend whose husband left her for a younger woman a month after they'd adopted their only child--now 12 years ago. She, too: trained social worker who stopped working when her husband got a big banking job. Now she lives in a house she can't afford--the big, old family house. She's tried to build a landscape architecture business, but it couldn't sustain the life she and her husband bought into--the one she's still living. She refinances and sucks the equity out of the house every third year: pays credit card bills with other credit cards: dreads the day her daughter turns 18 and the alimony disappears and the whole scene falls apart. She has no plan. For 12 years she's had no plan. I watched her watching this other woman, and I knew what she was thinking. There it is: there's the cliff, right there.

I don't understand this whole scene--and I don't mean to say that I'm unsympathetic, because I swear I am. But if your partner screws you over, why on earth would you not work? Why would you sit and groan until you psych and age yourself out of the job market and have no means to sustain yourself? Why would you wait for the ex- to make it right financially or emotionally? I understand depression--I know people need to mourn. I swear, I'm supportive of these two. Maybe I'd lock up, too. Who knows? But last night I realized that I'm angry at them, too. Women as the vulnerable ones--women as the victims. Please. They have daughters.

Further in my growing sense that marriage is not a healthy proposition: that it induces unhealthy dependency, and that it's best avoided. Go live in sin; the footing is more equal there.

Death by hanging

2006-12-30T08:05:00.000-05:00

I don't know what good this accomplishes. I can imagine plenty of bad. Holding my breath.

Is, Is

2006-12-28T23:31:00.000-05:00

"The thing is, is that..."

Makes me nuts--like the first "is" is an embedded part of the phrase preceding the second "is." Bush used it today, talking about his new year's resolution: "My resolution is, is to..." Keep the troops safe, he says.

"Alot" makes me nuts, too. I see it. A lot. In resumes submitted by eager applicants, often. Don't people spell check resumes anymore?

One guy sent me a resume today for a publicity spot, and he'd formatted it with stuttering prose headlines. "Once Upon He Studied" heads off his education section, e.g. Another skipped the resume entirely and sent me a one-paragraph letter pitching me one of our lead titles, tying it (appropriately but poorly) to Ford's death, and closing with this: "Just $55,000 and this pitch is yours."

It's dangerous to go the creative route when you're applying for work. I've never seen it work--not once.

I had a college teacher once who wouldn't let us use the phrases "based on" or "deals with"--and though I couldn't really tell you why, beyond his complaint that they are imprecise and often used as crutches in imprecise thinking, to this day I don't use them. I'll stop and struggle for the better phrase, even though the teacher's long dead now.

I opened yet another college savings account for the kids today. My mother thought of college in the purest educational terms: a period of exploration. Anything more focused than liberal arts was, I think, something less than good. She had a certain vision. The vision died a little death when her two oldest kids graduated with big debt and took low-level jobs having nothing at all to do with their majors. But you've got to admire it, anyway; the world needs more than MBAs and doctors. I hear "is,is" or see "alot" or--unfair, but there you have it--hear "based on" or "deals with" and the person in front of me drops a little in my estimation. I'm a snob in the most bizarre ways--a snob over the most ridiculous things: things nobody but me cares about. Standard snob fare--cars, schools, clothing, jobs--those things don't hit me.

Maisie asks me: what should she study? And will she be rich if she studies drama? I tell her the truth: she won't have a lot of money working in drama, but if it's her passion, passion matters more than money. I believe it: I'm a believer. But money's not bad, either. Having no money is a challenge. She rather fancies the idea of a big house, no doubt because we don't live in one; I could see her choosing the money career.

"The thing is, is that I like nice things." That's what she tells me tonight.

I can't get her into an English lit program fast enough.

Away in a manger

2006-12-24T18:48:00.000-05:00

Inger wept.

Signed,

2006-12-19T21:57:00.000-05:00

I've got a thing for Maisie's first grade teacher--her teacher from three years ago. His mother used to be my ballet teacher when I was a kid. He's painfully shy, surprisingly prosaic, loves the kids, has a nice smile. He writes beautifully. He's extremely circumspect. He's shorter than me. He might be gay; there is that impediment to dealing with my thing. Liam is now in first grade, and this teacher has moved up to teaching second grade, and so until Liam is through second grade--look how I have this mapped--I figure all things must be as they are: perfectly friendly, perfectly circumspect--because, well, that's how things are. Could be that's how things are because he's gay; my neighbor thinks he is. Could be I'm just not his type. But what does it cost me to entertain it?

But that's not the story.

Three years ago I sent this guy a family Christmas card. Standard teacher card: "Best wishes for the holidays." And I signed our three names. A week later we got a card back from him. "Merry Christmas to all of you! Love, John."

I honestly didn't know it was from him. I couldn't think of any Johns I knew who'd sign with love, and there was no return address. All the kids' teachers sign their cards with love, but it's different when the teacher is male--and when he signs with his first name. No? Am I wrong? Maisie was startled; she shares my crush, though she doesn't know about mine, and she still has that card propped up on her dresser.

Two years ago: we write our Christmas cards, and send one to him, and this time I sign our names with love, too. Because I guess it's OK. Though I admit I felt a little odd about it--a little, oh, exposed. His card comes back a week later. "Fondly, John."

Hmmph. I laughed, but was embarrassed. Maisie was pissed. "Fondly? FONDLY??" That card was also preserved, right next to the first, though in a fire she'd grab the other.

This year we sent him another card. I was clearly not signing with love, but Maisie and Liam--both old enough to sign now--signed their own names with love. And they write so big that there wasn't a lot of room for me, so it didn't look odd, I thought, when I only signed my name. No love. No fondness. No best wishes.

His card arrives today. "Love John." Of course.

All of which I share, dear friends, because can you FRICKING BELIEVE I'm drawing out this little imaginary flirtation of mine at the pace of once a year--sustained only by Christmas card sign-offs?? Once a year. And training Maisie, too. She closed his card today, grinned, and said, "Next year I'm kissing it with lipstick. He'll faint."

Cookies, nuts, and nails

2006-12-16T07:08:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, our neighbor, Filomena, used to make these anisette cookies with thick, white icing on top and a special kind of sprinkles. She baked them in loaves and cut them on the diagonal into little biscotti look-alikes. I'd sneak handfuls into my pockets and run off to wolf them down: SO delicious. Then we moved, and then she died, and when I mentioned the cookies to her daughter a decade after, she promised to dig up her mother's recipe. But she never got around to it.

Yesterday somebody brought a small box of cookies into the office, and though they were round and the icing was watery and transparent, there was no mistaking them: I flashed right back to Filomena's kitchen. So rare that a childhood taste memory lives up to itself, but these cookies did. Today Liam and I are baking them on our own. And if I could send you a plate of them, I would.

***
We've published a book by a Marine recently back from Fallujah. It's selling quite well, and the author has turned into something of a handful. Yesterday I called him--ostensibly to introduce myself, but also to set the stage to yank him back by the neck if he tries one more time to peel the skin off anyone who works for me. So we're talking, and he begins to complain about the high-ticket PR agency we've hired to make him a star, and recounts to me the threat-packed letter he intends to send them. I mean, he's talking like they're the Republican Guard and he's the great white hope. Explicit talk. And then he laughs, like it's all a joke. Soldier humor. And I realize, in a flash, that he's a total loon. Later on I mention his comments to a group of colleagues, and one rolls her eyes and says, "Well, what do you expect? He's a Marine."

I didn't let it go, though it's exceedingly awkward for me--me!--to take a stand in defense of the military. But I find I am not receptive to swipes at the Marines, because now I know a lot of them, and there's not a more honorable sort to be found anywhere. Which makes this particular loon even more intolerable than the standard-variety loon. Thank God I didn't have to be in on this book from the start. It's almost over. Unless people keep buying it and we release in trade paper...

***
I met an agent last week who had fake nails that extended--easily--a full inch past the ends of her fingers. I know I lack imagination--I know I tend to get caught up in the mundane--but I ask you: how do you wipe anything at all--anywhere--with acrylic-reinforced nails that extend an inch past the ends of your fingers? Without drawing blood, I mean?

There's so much to marvel at.

Advent 2

2006-12-09T08:03:00.000-05:00

My sister is visiting--the one I'm closest to. In the next room Maisie is asking her about the story I tell: that my sister reported once, as a child, seeing a spaceship floating outside her bedroom window. "Is that true?" Maisie asks, in her best serious voice. (Privately she thinks it's a load of bullshit.) "I don't know what else it could have been," Kathy says to her, and she's talking down to Maisie a little--still talking to her as if she were six instead of nine; Kathy doesn't know what a world there is between six and nine. "I was awake--I know I wasn't dreaming," she says. Maisie nods, fingers on her chin. I can tell she's not convinced, but I'm glad she's learned to put the face on. In the kitchen Liam is examining my mother's face. "You know, Granny, if I count all the lines on your face I'll be able to tell how old you are." And so she tells him to count, and he does, and turns out she's 32. These things bring me unspeakable joy--these casual chats between my children and my family. Moments when my safety net becomes visible--when the "if I die" worry that underlies everything gets a little soothing pat on the head. They'd all close ranks. There'd be no air between those arms.

We've stepped up our church attendance; it's that time of year. Maisie joined the church choir today--totally unprompted by me, though I think she has a very pretty voice and the guy who runs the music program is out of sight. Much better than the after-school choir she's in now, run by a moody guy with body odor. "Will I get to wear the outfit?" she asks on the way out to the car, and suddenly her motivation is clear: the robe and the cross: the outfit. But so what? People have turned to faith for less.

I've missed writing, but the weekends are so packed this month, and there's no time for anything during the week. I've got to say, this full-time, out-of-the-house work stuff really screws up a good thing. And Mary Grace talks this morning about gift buying and cooking and card sending like they're bad things: like they miss the whole point, and I can only think that I guess I won't bring her that bottle of wine and plate of krumkakes this year. I love the gifting and cooking and carding: it's the day job I could do without.

You know--if I could paint the world.

Progress

2006-12-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

I bought a car. A Honda--a CRV, with better mileage than I have now but not as good as I'd get in a Prius. It was so strange--so casual: in ten minutes I picked a car and shook the guy's hand and ran off to catch a train to the city, and we just agreed I'd come back at some point to sort out financing. Who does that, except rich people; I bought it from the dealer in Westport, and I was dressed in my nice duds, and I guess he made certain assumptions. Not that it matters, but it was a far cry from the reception I got at Stamford Toyota, where I showed up in jeans with my brown kid and the guy started nagging the cash out of me before I'd even decided on a model. No surprise, I know: we all size up strangers and manage accordingly. But there is something quite pleasant about shopping without the nag factor; there's something quite nice about not being talked down to by some guy who finished his education ten years before I did--some guy who says "aksed" and "ecsetera." I should think more about how I present myself. I really don't--hardly ever; too many other things require thought.

I had such a wonderful day yesterday. I'm working on the launch of a new brand--a series of books for women. The lead title is an extremely powerful book by a woman in her mid-thirties who was diagnosed with a rare cancer a few years ago. (Her story launches in a documentary on TLC later next year. ) I met her for dinner. She's drop-dead gorgeous, for starters, and though she's quite pretty in fact, it's this aura she carries with her that hits you: she looks at you and it's like staring into clear pools: disarmingly direct and honest. She's funny and self-deprecating--she tells a great story, even when it's a story about trying to make sense of dying as a crucial part of living. I can't get her out of my mind; I can't think how her mother has come to terms with their new reality (because an individual death never seems as horrible to me as coping with the individual death must be for the ones left behind.) I love that she embeds her mother in everything: in proofing her sample chapters, in making sense of sickness, in refusing so many of the labels we assign to cancer and cancer survivors. Not to say that cancer could ever be a gift, but in her case it has clearly realigned her life in the most astonishing creative ways. If only we could all do that, minus the cancer part. Dump the shit--seize the dream, speak your own truth, etc. But courage like that--I think it often needs to be jump-started. Such a shame for the rest of us.

"Do you have a butler, and does he pack your lunch with love?" Liam asks me this morning when I'm waking up. I smile but don't answer. It's going to be so much fun watching him grow up.

Things that make me happy

2006-11-30T20:03:00.000-05:00

MadGay, missing for too long, now back. I hope he doesn't mind me spreading the word.

Assembly

2006-11-27T11:24:00.000-05:00

"We don't have any Christmas pictures with Keeneye in them," Liam complains, and brings me my camera and grabs the beast, who waits for just the right moment to GRAB Liam's nose. Claws not extended. No need to; the threat is enough.

Does anyone know how to take decent low-light photos with a flash without totally white-lighting the whole scene? It's all or nothing, in my experience, and nothing's better than all. But not by much. Maybe I just need a better camera.

Trees and cars

2006-11-26T06:59:00.000-05:00

The fake Christmas tree went up last night. Fake--bleuch!--but environmentally sensible, and no more needles in the cracks of the wood floor, and no more brittle, droopy trees by the time Christmas Eve rolls around. There is that.

I noticed this year that the tree had a peculiar smell when I pulled it out of its canvas storage bag. A sort of musty, cat smell. Liam pointed out the irony: that our environmentally sensible kitty litter smells like Christmas trees and our Christmas tree smells like kitty litter.

That's just plain wrong. I'm putting the fake tree outside--we'll see if it's indoor/outdoor, and only the fit will survive--and we're getting the real thing. Enough already.

***
Went to the Toyota dealer to look at their certified used cars. I didn't see anything I liked--not used, not new. (Had the standard shitty encounter with a salesman; as I'm walking out the door he's shouting new deals at me--cutting the price by $750 every time he opens his mouth. Which meant I would not buy from him, because I'd think I was schnookered no matter what price I ultimately paid. Why don't they just price the cars fairly and shut up already?) I'll never buy a Ford again; there's history there, most of it, admittedly, relating to customer service. But, too, I need fuel efficiency. I'm in the odd position to be able to buy pretty much whatever I want, but there's not a make or model on the planet that rings my bells. The BMWs sit well on the road, my sister tells me; she just bought one. But I feel uncomfortable with the brand; I want something a little more anonymous: I don't want to hear the comments--I don't like the volume, the statement.

Which made me think last night: would I be happiest if I just disappeared into a little poof--if I didn't even make a ripple?? Car purchase as existential reflection. Exhausting. Somebody just go buy it for me, OK? Pick whatever. I'll pay you back.

Linda's cup

2006-11-25T07:33:00.000-05:00

I've written about Linda, who died two years ago now from cancer in or around the liver--Linda the Buddhist, lit up from the inside. I'd show you--you could see it in photographs--but the day she died, when I went to look for photos of her, I discovered that every single one I had was gone. Gone, though I never erase photos, and would never have erased Linda. She was the kind of person you'd want to inhale and become.

Once I gave her a big mug for her tea, and I liked it so much that I bought the same one for myself. It reminded me of her: soft leafy patterns brushed on gently in subtle earthy tones. After she died I used only that mug, every day. But lately I've begun to notice that I avoid it: that I've developed a fear of catching her cancer by even thinking about her. The fear isn't unprecedented, for me: I've never really known where to draw the lines in the "thoughts are things" principle, and I tend toward superstition about illness. But I talk myself down with a decided fatalism: you go when you go, and going in itself isn't the worst thing in the world.

Last night I dreamed about her, and this morning I read Melly's beautiful post, here:
***
Unsettled
I have been unsettled since yesterday. Witnessed something that just won't leave me. I have been outgrowing my naivete about the world we live in, but the rawness of it still smacks me in the face now and then. I was sitting with Zizi, at the Women's Center in a local hospital. Most were there for routine tests. Some, not so routine. There was one woman in particular that was extremely anxious and with good reason. She had been called to return for a repeat mammogram. A spot they needed a better view. Repeated mammogram. Now she waited for an ultrasound. We struck up light conversation. I wanted to try to make her relax and eventually work into the conversation that sometimes they are just being very cautious. We talked. She gave me a very compressed summary of how rough her life has been lately. I listened. I tried to encourage her. I even tried to put into the conversation some of my "sick humor" as my girls call it...I just wanted the tension on her face to ease up before they called her back in. They did. She came out crying, really crying...sat down. Immediately they called my Zizi in, who of course reached for my hand and said, mommy come with me.. As I got up to follow Zizi, I had to stop, go to the woman's chair, squat and tell her as calmly and with all the belief my soul has...it's going to be alright! The thing that hurt me so deeply, is that in this room full of women, women dressed down to bathrobes, whose breasts are about to be diagnosed, not one, removed her nose from the magazines they held, or one from her knitting, to put those arms around this woman...this sister...I see pink ribbons everywhere. I see symbols. Just symbols. What good are symbols, if we can not use those that matter most? Our hearts and our arms?
***
They were afraid of catching it, I think--all those women, stripped down to their vulnerable sameness: bodies and bathrobes. And in that moment, no job, no savings, no standing or seniority or confidence means a hill of beans: you get it or you don't, and there's no explaining the outcome either way. And so we bargain, and grow superstitious. Or we don't.

Well done, Melly.

All Summer in a Day

2006-11-23T20:03:00.000-05:00

I watched An Inconvenient Truth last night. What a horror. No new themes, for me, but the scale--the urgency--well, suffice to say this: that I thought of my own childhood, and snow up to my waist, and thought how my kids have seen snow that deep only once, and maybe it's not just that I was really short back then and they're really tall: maybe it's not just that. I didn't recycle more today, though I will. I didn't unplug the unused appliances. I did struggle on cars.com, trying to identify the car I'm about to purchase--the vehicle that satisfies my tastes, principles, and budget--and there's no resolution there yet, though I'll put the principle first, I swear. I did decide that I'm never again calling the kids in out of the snow just because I think they must be getting cold. They can crawl in when the flesh feels like it's going to shake off their thighs. What if there's no snow some day? Like, some day soon? No, seriously.

Do you remember that Ray Bradbury short about the little girl, Margot, who lived on rainy Venus, and was the only one of her classmates who could remember what the sun looked like? And the kids locked her in the classroom closet, so she missed the window--the one hour every howevermany years when the rain stopped and the kids saw the sun? Thought of that today, too.

Al Gore was surprisingly prosaic, I thought. Surprisingly dynamic.

Go see the flick.

Tradition

2006-11-22T11:06:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow will be Mark's first Thanksgiving with his new wife. Tomorrow will be Neil's last with the woman he's been married to for more than twenty years. I don't know why the confluence overwhelms me, but it does, and I feel sad. "Be a good husband," I said to Mark, not knowing what else to say. "Whatever you're going to do, don't drag it out," I said to Neil, having been a player in that unhappy model once. The thing is, I can't imagine Mark being a good husband, and to this hour I think Neil is a great husband. But it's hard to be a good husband if you fall for somebody else. There is that.

I love Thanksgiving. Some have been more good than others--some filled with people I love, and other fairly solitary, as this year's will be. But all good in their way. The meal hasn't changed--not since the day I was five: I still make my mother's stuffing, still smash turnips, peel spuds, prefer jellied cranberry over the relish. It's the Norwegian in me: the ruttedness, or rootedness. Pass the tradition. Tusen tak.

I hope you all have a wonderful day tomorrow. Thank you for your friendship; can't tell you the hours of pleasure you bring me.

Happy Thanksgiving.

"How interesting."

2006-11-12T08:19:00.000-05:00

I pulled all the winter bedclothes out yesterday and took them down to the laundromat; it'd take a week to get them done at home. I don't know how a laundromat survives in these parts; most people have washers. 8-11:30 on a Saturday morning, and I saw 4 other people there--two of them just dropping stuff off to be washed by the old lady who runs the place. Must be a write-off.

There was an older man there. I took him for homeless at first; skinny and bent, wearing those green factory pants held up at the waist with a rope, and an old flannel shirt, and he smelled musty. You don't see a lot of rope belts around here. I'd finished my copy of Harper's and walked over to drop it on the table for anyone else who wanted to read it. "Hooray!" said the guy. "Reading material!" And he grinned and snatched it up. First time I noticed him from the neck up: blue beret, snow-white hair and beard--very clean, very combed--and a pink, unlined face with sharp blue eyes. He looked interesting. Half an hour later he wandered over and started chatting.

Turns out he's an organic farmer. (I didn't know we had farmers living in southwest Connecticut.) He lives the principles, and can (and did) go on for quite some time about herbal and intravenous cleansing processes, the benefits of raw food diets, the location of key practitioners in the natural healing community. My mother would've loved him; she's an expert in her own right. She also--unlike me--loves this kind of chance encounter with the non-typical. (The non-typical notwithstanding, I'm just not very social.) I took her with me on a cross-country drive once, and she spotted a Native American wearing full headdress at a Holiday Inn restaurant across the river from Louisville. She sped right up to him--complimenting him on his jewelry, and then chatting for half an hour. I was put off by the headdress--sorry, but it's true; I much prefer to experience strangers who don't wear an identity position on their t-shirts. Or heads. How is a headdress relevant at a Holiday Inn across the river from Louisville? I walked off and waited for her in the car. In Nevada she did the same thing with the local sheriff, and then made me take a photo of the two of them. As I look at the photo now I notice that she looked positively lit up with this big, authentic grin, and the sheriff's all puff-chested and happy--and if you ask her about it now she can tell you things about the town that she learned talking up the sheriff. Interesting things. All I took away from the moment was annoyance. I don't even remember the town: only the photo.

Tom, the organic farmer, moved on to talk about sustainable living, global warming, the lure of the marketplace, etc. And I drifted off in my mind, and thought of a man I met once who lived on a little family farm way upstate and named his boy Bear (and their last name was Wolf). Baby Bear Wolf. I thought how the Wolfs didn't need to tell me why they lived the way they did: they just lived it, and you could come and visit, and take it or leave it. Whatever, with a smile. Not my kind of life, but definitely my kind of people.

In search of...

2006-11-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

I don't know if it's a biological trick--this metabolic resetting that occurs, perhaps post-pregnancy--but something that used to be easy for me is not anymore. I spent half an hour in the liquor store on Wednesday morning, reading Wine Spectator reviews, staring at labels--trying to divine the flavors within. I finally bought two bottles of red--a chianti classico and a dolcetto d'alba. (Dolcettos have always been dicey for me: either dreamy or rotgut.) Tonight I opened them both: the dolcetto first--except it was so bloody awful that I poured all $20 worth down the drain and uncorked the chianti. I quite like the chianti, but I'll nurse it since my stock of two bottles got dramatically depleted tonight.

Do you have a favorite red for less than $15? I need more better-odds choices.

Two tips for you: Nyers Merlot--pricey but yummy--and La Segreta Planeta (a white, but the only wine I ever liked enough to purchase by the case).

A day late, a dollar short

2006-11-10T08:57:00.000-05:00

JS on Rummy's Farewell.

Grandpa was a warrior

2006-11-10T07:42:00.000-05:00

"Dressed to Kill," by Joseph C. Fornelli, from the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum.

"Any warrior has something happen when he puts on his battle clothes - you feel that it gives you a kind of magical power, makes you invisible or gives you strength inside. So something takes over that as a rational person you know is ridiculous. But if you thought that way in combat you'd be dead. You're so vulnerable... you know, there is a certain strange high, and excitement about somebody shooting at you and you at them. It's hard to breathe and pushes on your shoulders. This heavy air, the heat, the humidity of Vietnam, is something you don't know. It's the kind of air you can feel touching your body and pushing at you."

***

In Liam's school all the kids were given yellow construction-paper stars and asked to write the name of a veteran they know for display on a certain board in the hallway. Yesterday there were 190 stars up. Some of them had full names, rank, and branch info. Some had the names of family members who'd served in other countries. But most of them just had "grandpa" written on them in crayon. It's unusual--these moments when the space and time between disparate identities evaporate, and we're supposed to consider a soldier and a grandpa in one view--knowing what we think we know about soldiers and grandpas. But all we can really see is a smiling old man with a parchment-skin hand resting on the skinny shoulder of his grandchild. So your eyes fill up; sometimes the blurriness helps.

What secrets we keep.

11/8

2006-11-08T10:19:00.000-05:00

I feel hopeful, for the first time in eight years. No need to be a jerk about it, the way the GOP was in '94--sweeping in and telling the Democrats to get lost. No need for that. The Democrats have been handed the keys--perhaps even in both houses--but only as the lesser of two evils. Now they've got to pony up something good, and take a hand in framing the debates for '08. They're not particularly good at framing debates. And "values" trumps "issues" every time. (The "values" card is a little war-torn these days--but it'll get rehabilitated. It always does.)

But whatever the Democracts do, Bush's imperial presidency is over. And that's reason enough to pop open a bottle of chianti tonight and breathe. Tomorrow's another day.