For the last year plus, for the first time in my adult life, I am living the single life due to shared parenting with my ex. I was single for a short time in my early 20s, but I was a single mother to a baby whose father wasn't around (due to him running and hiding from the FBI. God, sex with men is so complicated). More and more, dating men has me wondering where women of a certain age (post-post-post adolescence) sign up for the lesbian sex. I know lots of women who switched teams (I know. I'm an asshole. I won't say it again) midstream, and they seem very happy (seriously. Why do they look so fucking happy? What do lesbians know that they aren't sharing with the straight men of the world?) I have a reputation of having grown up wild, raised by monkeys in the jungles of Iowa (hey. If 1-2 people believe it, it's a reputation). And it's true. But my version of wild was quite gender-traditional and didn't involve any of the lesbian sex I understand young women today get to experience.
My forays into the wild did include a short time as a gang member. This was the 90s, before girls became as crazy and violent as boys. It was still quite common for girls to get "fucked in" to gangs (to be clear, I was neither fucked in nor beaten in. I just showed up at the appointed time and place, one of two white girls in a group of tough black men standing in a circle with their arms crossed for the meeting). At this time, gangs from Chicago were realizing how easy drug sales in Iowa were, and the hand full of big towns close to the Mississippi were flooded with drug dealers in Illinois-plated caddys. The women followed (or led. I don't know) with their children, seeking education and housing options that were much more amenable than those in the big city.
So, my best friend and partner in crime and I were invited to join the newly established branch of the Iowa female gangsters. The Lady Gs (I actually can't remember what they were called, but I'm banking on the fact that none of you know either). Mostly my friend and I were hoping for an in to the parties where the hot guys were-- the "free" (shoplifted) alcohol and endless blunts. Instead, after our first meeting we were given our first "mission." Which was to drive the 16 year old girlfriend of the probably 30 year old gang leader to the Quad Cities (probably a four hour round trip) so she could check on his baby mama and their kids (pre cell phones and social media, this is how people got checked on. It was a different time, children).
If you can't think of a good reason not to join a gang, let this be it. Gangs (at least then) were misogynistic and firm believers in gender roles not from the 1950s, but more from the middle ages. We were seeking mayhem, violence, Banging in Little Rock, and instead we got checking on baby mamas, driving the beaten (disciplined) men to the ER for stitches, and meetings about how to bail the REAL Gs out of jail. Right away we were on our second mission-- how the fuck do we get out of this? We met with the head Lady G and explained our quandary. We wanted the men, the sex, the parties, and the drugs. We didn't so much want the involvement in federal drug trafficking. A mature and benevolent Lady Killah, the head Lady G graciously allowed our exit and still allowed us entrance to the good parties. More likely, she was thinking "these dumb white bitches are going to get someone killed."
Which wasn't totally wrong. For a very short time I dated the head of security for the local branch of the gang, a young man newly arrived from Chicago whose older brother was a big shot leader whose visits to town for meetings accorded hushed voices and good behavior. My security-dude got maybe one kiss out of me before I showed up at a party with a huge group of men from out of town, whom he allowed in because they were with me. In the confusion that followed (which I only heard because the women were quickly rushed upstairs and cordoned into a bedroom. See. Misogynistic.) guns were drawn and the situation became quite tense. Unbeknownst to me, the men were of a rival gang. To which I offer this defense: I didn't know, and they were hot.
The night ended without gunshots exchanged, and the women were eventually let out of the upstairs bedroom. The next time I saw my security-dude his lips were swollen beyond their ability to stretch (his punishment included a vicious beating from his brother and their fellows during which he couldn't defend himself. There was always a defined time or shot limit they knew before the punishment began) and I had to break up with him out of guilt or just maybe because I couldn't be with someone dumb enough to trust me.
My checkered history of sex with men of course includes my oldest daughter's father, Anthony (I change his name because it is my firm belief that someone who sleeps with a drunken, poor, high school dropout living in the projects cannot be expected to believe that that same girl will some day move away, get some degrees, and become a writer. He is as he was, and I am not. Fair's fair.) When we go home to visit and run into people from the old days, they see my daughter and say, "Is that Anthony's daughter? Looking JUST like him! Yo daddy is an OG for REAL, girl!" (OG in this case means Original Gangsta. At 39 and still in the game (not dead or in prison), he is a virtual grandfather of banging). I advise her beforehand to smile and nod and I'll explain later. A super star student, actress, and musician in her own right, she rarely remembers to ask and instead just accepts the praise and fame as her due.
When I first saw Anthony again after 12 years he guided my hand to his head, where the deep impression from a shovel hit during a neighborhood brawl travels from his hairline to his brow. He described the tattoos covering the multiple gunshot wounds he had, the time he almost died from a heart attack. I've been advised by people who have way more confidence in my writing than is warranted to attempt to recreate Anthony's speech in dialogue. I cannot. Having grown up in the language, I can understand (but not speak) about 25% of what he says. Often when I am with him he is on the phone with people from Chicago, discussing negotiations of moving the inter-gang gun violence from one block to the next. I couldn't tell you exactly what's happening, but I can understand the general gist of it. My daughter, who never spoke the language, cannot.
After a half hour phone conversation with her birth father I ask, "What did he say?"
She says, "yeah. No idea. I just said 'bye' when his sentences got shorter."
In school she's learning French. On visitation she's learning Chicago-land Thug-Speak. Thus far this has manifested itself in a popular hip-hop pidgin of phrases like, "You don't choose the thug life. Thug life chose me."
But to get back to the sex. Just in case my daughters stumble across this blog-- the oldest is almost 16-- my time to destroy them body and soul is ticking closed. My checkered past of sex with men leaves very little to recommend it. But how does one actually BECOME a lesbian when one is way too old to wear a t-shirt saying "I want to be a lesbian" to the bar or way too afraid to just go to Craigslist. The problem with being occasionally funny is that people think you're always being funny. But I'm dead serious when I ask my friend who recommends not knocking lesbianism before I try it, "I'm not! Where do I sign up?"
I could google it. "How does one become a lesbian?" but I'm afraid. Maybe I'm too old. I'm set in my dickish ways. I might just try the lady pond (again. I'm an asshole. I won't say it again) and not like it, and then I'm REALLY stuck if men suck AND women suck. So, while my kids spend time with their dad, I sit at home doing laundry and watching Netflix and heading to bed at 9pm, my wild days so far in the past they don't even bubble anymore. And I face the realization that all that I know and ever will know about lesbian sex I learned from Orange is the New Black.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
The Kool-aid of the Academy
My dad once said to me, "Some day you're gonna learn to keep your mouth shut and play the game." I was seven. And he was wrong. When I was in graduate school and working in a semi-professional non-academic environment to supplement my teaching stipend, I listened as my co-workers casually talked in the office and made comments about race, gender, and socio-economics that were wholly offensive and racist and moronic without fear of reprisal or even sanction. I would go to campus the next day and sit in class, listening to the discussions and think, "Dear God, you hallowed halls of higher education, hide me, hide me, hide me away from this awful world."
I couldn't imagine a life outside of academia, where, while abhorrent ideas and conversations exist, they are the minority and quickly intellectualized down. I didn't want to be forced to drink the Kool-aid of corporate America. It wasn't even that I didn't want to. I didn't believe I could. My mother used to say, as a gate against the despair each time I pursued another degree in English, "You know what businesses want? They want GOOD WRITERS!" My mother drank the Kool-aid of Procter and Gamble. Saying she drank the Kool-aid really isn't fair, though. She loved and believed in the goodness of the people of the corporation, and based on their treatment of her when she was dying of cancer, that belief was mostly warranted. P and G took a single mother, working swing shift on the Head and Shoulders line, and allowed her to move to a management position where she could use her creativity, her intelligence, her leadership skills, and travel the world, and they paid her a fair and living wage to do it.
So I saw and smelled the good possibilities of corporate work. It wasn't all bad. But it wasn't THE ACADEMY. And THE ACADEMY was where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in a place where meetings devolved into heated debates over word choice, with historical context and etymology. I wanted to be in a place that served and shaped the lives and minds of young people. Mostly, I wanted people to call me Professor in the hallways while students perched in corners discussing the readings before class.
But the truth of multiple graduate degrees in the Humanities is this: you can stay in the hallowed halls of THE INSTITUTION. But you cannot hide here. Because chances are, no one will be calling you Professor. They'll be calling you, but it will be to change a student's schedule or attend a meeting about how to properly staple-slash-paper clip petitions sent to people who actually make the decisions. The odds are much better that graduate students in the Humanities who choose to stay in higher education will end up as staff members, not faculty or members of the upper echelon (aka ADMINISTRATION).
It's taken me this long to get to the point. Which is that over the weekend I watched Happy Valley, a documentary about the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky tragedy that tried to explore how and why for so many years the crimes of Sandusky were allowed to continue. Part of that exploration includes a conversation about what Penn State Coach Joe Paterno knew and what his responsibilities were. At one point in the film, after the NCAA announces stiff penalties against Penn State for "putting football first" the team holds a rally. And the crowd holds signs and begins to chant, "85 percent! 85 percent!" which was the approximate graduation rate of student athletes under Joe Paterno's reign.
Those Penn State fans, dressed in blue and white, huddled together, cheering on these young men who would play football despite the sanctions, reminded me of how much of higher education is dependent upon the drinking of the Kool-aid in ways both different from and quite the same as, and possibly more insidious than the expectations of corporate America.
The picture that comes to mind for me is of a turtle. A big one. And on that turtle's shell is painted code words like BIG TEN! RESEARCH ONE! 87 PERCENT! FOUR YEARS! TUITION FREEZE! PEDAGOGY! And the faculty and the administration of the university stand on the back of that giant turtle, wearing spectacles and gesticulating as they discuss the important thinks they think, while grad students, maybe perched on the tail of the turtle, kneel with their chins in their hands, waiting to be offered a hand up to the shell where the big thinks happen. And sometimes the faculty and administration stop talking long enough to allow the graduate students to say something-- maybe protest the lack of soy cream cheese for the free bagels in the graduate lounge-- and the faculty nod and smile at their prodigies who will one day be the torch bearers of the big thinks of HIGHER EDUCATION, the ACADEMY, the INSTITUTION.
But the soft underbelly of that giant turtle is the staff of any large university.
I was sitting on a staircase the other day with a group of staff members, waiting to meet with new freshman orienting to the university. I mentioned to one that I had seen and admired a social media post of her the week before. I paraphrase badly and probably more with my own thoughts than hers, because the post was quickly deleted on the "advice" of more senior staff. Essentially, the post suggested that the lack of leadership and valuing of staff input made this person feel a lack of desire to come to work or enjoy her job. And she quickly told me, "I love this university. I love this job. I don't want to lose it."
The Kool-aid at the university tastes different. The flavors are unique.
Lemonade Twist: "We don't talk to the media because they twist what we say."
Cost of Living Cherry:
"We heard our students! Tuition freeze!" without mention that staff in most colleges have gone without even living wage raises for years (in fact, the raises rarely cover the rising cost of parking on campus).
We Serve Students Strawberry:
Wherein major changes to programs, pedagogy, and people's entire lives are modified or implemented wholly on the basis of what higher administration believes students (who may or may not have all the facts or the maturity and life experience to understand) and their parents (the money people) want without regard for staff, their families, or the REAL service of students and their educations.
I don't waste a lot of time in my life criticizing what I do not love. Just ask my children. I spent hours upon hours in graduate school in classes teaching pedagogical theory. I wish some of that time would have been dedicated to the facts, which are that while we're training graduate students for tenured professorship and a life of research and thinking the big thinks, the facts are that students are far more likely to end up in a staff position, adjuncting on the side, the two positions of higher education that make up the soft underbelly of the turtle that, when seen exposed to the sunlight, indicate a serious problem.
I need this job. I love this job. I love my work and my students. I am the sole support for my three children, and this job makes their good health, braces, glasses, and therapy possible. You will notice there are some things I won't talk about. My involvement with athletics. I won't name names. I won't talk specifics. I won't mention actual policies. Because there are rules. There are the stated rules. Thousands of pages of them. The FERPAs and the advisory boards and the faculty rules that I am expected to know, understand, and abide by. But there are also the cultural rules. Those rules that aren't written down anywhere but we learn them and we know them because at chow time we just follow the crowd to the mess hall.
And those are the rules that concern me. Should there be rules regarding what can and cannot be spoken publicly by staff members? Of course. Students should be protected, because while they are legally adults, maturity-wise they are not, and they deserve our protection. But these academy rules that are not written down, that are passed down from administration to each new staff member through off hand comments and behaviors, these rules SHOULD be spoken. They SHOULD be written down. Because otherwise how can we discuss and shape them? We cannot. We are not invited to.
When I see a crowd of Penn State fans chanting "85 percent! 85 percent!" I understand the need to protect the underbelly facts of the academy from its fans, its public, even its students in many ways. But 85% is part of the shell. It's painted on. It's not a fact. It's a "fact." And I want to talk FACTS. I think we owe the academy we love and ourselves that.
I couldn't imagine a life outside of academia, where, while abhorrent ideas and conversations exist, they are the minority and quickly intellectualized down. I didn't want to be forced to drink the Kool-aid of corporate America. It wasn't even that I didn't want to. I didn't believe I could. My mother used to say, as a gate against the despair each time I pursued another degree in English, "You know what businesses want? They want GOOD WRITERS!" My mother drank the Kool-aid of Procter and Gamble. Saying she drank the Kool-aid really isn't fair, though. She loved and believed in the goodness of the people of the corporation, and based on their treatment of her when she was dying of cancer, that belief was mostly warranted. P and G took a single mother, working swing shift on the Head and Shoulders line, and allowed her to move to a management position where she could use her creativity, her intelligence, her leadership skills, and travel the world, and they paid her a fair and living wage to do it.
So I saw and smelled the good possibilities of corporate work. It wasn't all bad. But it wasn't THE ACADEMY. And THE ACADEMY was where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in a place where meetings devolved into heated debates over word choice, with historical context and etymology. I wanted to be in a place that served and shaped the lives and minds of young people. Mostly, I wanted people to call me Professor in the hallways while students perched in corners discussing the readings before class.
But the truth of multiple graduate degrees in the Humanities is this: you can stay in the hallowed halls of THE INSTITUTION. But you cannot hide here. Because chances are, no one will be calling you Professor. They'll be calling you, but it will be to change a student's schedule or attend a meeting about how to properly staple-slash-paper clip petitions sent to people who actually make the decisions. The odds are much better that graduate students in the Humanities who choose to stay in higher education will end up as staff members, not faculty or members of the upper echelon (aka ADMINISTRATION).
It's taken me this long to get to the point. Which is that over the weekend I watched Happy Valley, a documentary about the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky tragedy that tried to explore how and why for so many years the crimes of Sandusky were allowed to continue. Part of that exploration includes a conversation about what Penn State Coach Joe Paterno knew and what his responsibilities were. At one point in the film, after the NCAA announces stiff penalties against Penn State for "putting football first" the team holds a rally. And the crowd holds signs and begins to chant, "85 percent! 85 percent!" which was the approximate graduation rate of student athletes under Joe Paterno's reign.
Those Penn State fans, dressed in blue and white, huddled together, cheering on these young men who would play football despite the sanctions, reminded me of how much of higher education is dependent upon the drinking of the Kool-aid in ways both different from and quite the same as, and possibly more insidious than the expectations of corporate America.
The picture that comes to mind for me is of a turtle. A big one. And on that turtle's shell is painted code words like BIG TEN! RESEARCH ONE! 87 PERCENT! FOUR YEARS! TUITION FREEZE! PEDAGOGY! And the faculty and the administration of the university stand on the back of that giant turtle, wearing spectacles and gesticulating as they discuss the important thinks they think, while grad students, maybe perched on the tail of the turtle, kneel with their chins in their hands, waiting to be offered a hand up to the shell where the big thinks happen. And sometimes the faculty and administration stop talking long enough to allow the graduate students to say something-- maybe protest the lack of soy cream cheese for the free bagels in the graduate lounge-- and the faculty nod and smile at their prodigies who will one day be the torch bearers of the big thinks of HIGHER EDUCATION, the ACADEMY, the INSTITUTION.
But the soft underbelly of that giant turtle is the staff of any large university.
I was sitting on a staircase the other day with a group of staff members, waiting to meet with new freshman orienting to the university. I mentioned to one that I had seen and admired a social media post of her the week before. I paraphrase badly and probably more with my own thoughts than hers, because the post was quickly deleted on the "advice" of more senior staff. Essentially, the post suggested that the lack of leadership and valuing of staff input made this person feel a lack of desire to come to work or enjoy her job. And she quickly told me, "I love this university. I love this job. I don't want to lose it."
The Kool-aid at the university tastes different. The flavors are unique.
Lemonade Twist: "We don't talk to the media because they twist what we say."
Cost of Living Cherry:
"We heard our students! Tuition freeze!" without mention that staff in most colleges have gone without even living wage raises for years (in fact, the raises rarely cover the rising cost of parking on campus).
We Serve Students Strawberry:
Wherein major changes to programs, pedagogy, and people's entire lives are modified or implemented wholly on the basis of what higher administration believes students (who may or may not have all the facts or the maturity and life experience to understand) and their parents (the money people) want without regard for staff, their families, or the REAL service of students and their educations.
I don't waste a lot of time in my life criticizing what I do not love. Just ask my children. I spent hours upon hours in graduate school in classes teaching pedagogical theory. I wish some of that time would have been dedicated to the facts, which are that while we're training graduate students for tenured professorship and a life of research and thinking the big thinks, the facts are that students are far more likely to end up in a staff position, adjuncting on the side, the two positions of higher education that make up the soft underbelly of the turtle that, when seen exposed to the sunlight, indicate a serious problem.
I need this job. I love this job. I love my work and my students. I am the sole support for my three children, and this job makes their good health, braces, glasses, and therapy possible. You will notice there are some things I won't talk about. My involvement with athletics. I won't name names. I won't talk specifics. I won't mention actual policies. Because there are rules. There are the stated rules. Thousands of pages of them. The FERPAs and the advisory boards and the faculty rules that I am expected to know, understand, and abide by. But there are also the cultural rules. Those rules that aren't written down anywhere but we learn them and we know them because at chow time we just follow the crowd to the mess hall.
And those are the rules that concern me. Should there be rules regarding what can and cannot be spoken publicly by staff members? Of course. Students should be protected, because while they are legally adults, maturity-wise they are not, and they deserve our protection. But these academy rules that are not written down, that are passed down from administration to each new staff member through off hand comments and behaviors, these rules SHOULD be spoken. They SHOULD be written down. Because otherwise how can we discuss and shape them? We cannot. We are not invited to.
When I see a crowd of Penn State fans chanting "85 percent! 85 percent!" I understand the need to protect the underbelly facts of the academy from its fans, its public, even its students in many ways. But 85% is part of the shell. It's painted on. It's not a fact. It's a "fact." And I want to talk FACTS. I think we owe the academy we love and ourselves that.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Reawakening the Beast
It has been pointed out to me numerous times lately that I post to Facebook a lot. Like A LOT. At first I was all nobody-puts-baby-in-a-corner pissed off about it, but I have gained at least enough self knowledge to know that any time I get pissed off, it's probably about me, and it's probably (damnably) true.
It's the instant fix. If I weren't so afraid of losing control I'd be a heroin addict. Instead, for years and years I was a compulsive eater. Nothing like insulin shots to the stomach three times a day and still sitting in the ER with blood sugars over 450 and the doctor telling you, "You'll be dead soon" to cure an addiction. Except there was no cure. I lost 100 pounds and became a compulsive shopper.
I didn't care what I bought. For a long time it was compulsive grocery shopping. When I was a teenager my friends and I shoplifted. I have visceral, physical memories of the gang of us leaving the store, turning a corner, then searching ourselves to figure out what we got. It was that quick-- the forgetting. It's not the purple lip gloss. It's the getting, and it's the having. Compulsive shopping feels like that. You buy and you buy, and then you get the reward of opening the bags or boxes and saying OH I bought THAT!
But I was destroying my children's future. So I started making lists on my phone of all the things I HAD to buy. And I add to the list, and I delete things that, when I added them I HAD TO HAVE THEM, but now I can't for the life of me figure out why.
I don't know that Facebook posting has become my replacement addiction. It doesn't feel THAT good. But there is a pleasure in it. It's not the likes. Let's be honest-- anyone with even a minimum amount of technological savvy hid me long ago. I'm the traffic accident without blood and arms flying. I'm a Facebook fender bender. I fuck up traffic, but there's little pay off. It's the spewing of words and the "post" and it's done. No thinking, no shaping, no editing (GOD I hate editing). It's the quick fix. It's my free heroin, bread, Amazon.
Michelle H (if you don't want to face facts AVOID HER. Trust me) said, "At least when you had your blog you were really writing." So here I am. I'm reawakening the blog, not as a new thing, but as a transition back to who I was always supposed to be. I've always been the little girl who was silenced who turned to writing to make her noise in the world. So I return here as a way-station back to who I was before. A writer of more than Facebook posts. A Real (capital R) writer.
It's the instant fix. If I weren't so afraid of losing control I'd be a heroin addict. Instead, for years and years I was a compulsive eater. Nothing like insulin shots to the stomach three times a day and still sitting in the ER with blood sugars over 450 and the doctor telling you, "You'll be dead soon" to cure an addiction. Except there was no cure. I lost 100 pounds and became a compulsive shopper.
I didn't care what I bought. For a long time it was compulsive grocery shopping. When I was a teenager my friends and I shoplifted. I have visceral, physical memories of the gang of us leaving the store, turning a corner, then searching ourselves to figure out what we got. It was that quick-- the forgetting. It's not the purple lip gloss. It's the getting, and it's the having. Compulsive shopping feels like that. You buy and you buy, and then you get the reward of opening the bags or boxes and saying OH I bought THAT!
But I was destroying my children's future. So I started making lists on my phone of all the things I HAD to buy. And I add to the list, and I delete things that, when I added them I HAD TO HAVE THEM, but now I can't for the life of me figure out why.
I don't know that Facebook posting has become my replacement addiction. It doesn't feel THAT good. But there is a pleasure in it. It's not the likes. Let's be honest-- anyone with even a minimum amount of technological savvy hid me long ago. I'm the traffic accident without blood and arms flying. I'm a Facebook fender bender. I fuck up traffic, but there's little pay off. It's the spewing of words and the "post" and it's done. No thinking, no shaping, no editing (GOD I hate editing). It's the quick fix. It's my free heroin, bread, Amazon.
Michelle H (if you don't want to face facts AVOID HER. Trust me) said, "At least when you had your blog you were really writing." So here I am. I'm reawakening the blog, not as a new thing, but as a transition back to who I was always supposed to be. I've always been the little girl who was silenced who turned to writing to make her noise in the world. So I return here as a way-station back to who I was before. A writer of more than Facebook posts. A Real (capital R) writer.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Cancer, You Big Ass Cliche
You know how someone is all, "My mom died _____ years ago, and I still pick up the phone to call her" and you're all "I'm so sorry, really" but deep down inside a little voice says, "Wow, cliche much? I mean, really. 'I still pick up the phone to call her' GOD." Well, I'm here to tell you, I still pick up the phone to call her, and it hurts like a motherfucker.
But therein lies the problem when your dad died of pancreatic cancer when you were 19 and your mom died of lung cancer. Did they smoke? Indeed. Drink? Well, duh. This shit has cliche written all over it. "I'm so very sorry for your loss. But please, PLEASE don't write about it. Parents. Dead. Cancer. I feel like I've read this story before. Was it published in the (name some low level preferably online journal)? No?"
I coach pre-med students on how to strengthen their personal statements for their applications for medical school. Let me tell you, they all have the same story. Did or didn't want to be a doctor as a child. Did or didn't change their mind based on some miraculous high school or college science teacher. Add quick point about tenacity despite grades not showing it, and oh, did I mention I FUCKING LOVE POOR PEOPLE. Done. "Everyone's story is pretty much the same," I tell them. "Where you'll win is in the details. Give them an image, something to remember."
So, I'll give you the images. My mom, no longer recognizable, I mean when the fuck did she get old and check the mirror, did it happen to me too? In the hospital bed we set up in my sister's bedroom, the clot on her leg (not what's killing her, or wait, is it?) giant and black. Bald. Gray. All of her, of course. My daughter, sleeping in a chair next to my mom's bed for three nights, throwing a blanket over her head when my mom wakes up screaming, "I'm dying! Jesus Christ, someone help me, I'm dying!" The time I almost punched those fucking doctors in the hospital. Don't give me your chin up, circle of life bullshit. Maybe you see people die everyday, but I'm telling you, none of them mattered before this one. The time my sister didn't almost bite my other sister days before my mom slipped away in the mid morning, surrounded by the hospice nurse, various family members, but not me. (Here's something you can't ever know-- when they came to tell me to come, that something was wrong with her breathing, I brushed my hair. Quickly. But I brushed it. Because I was in that last days place where I thought, well, I might not get another chance to brush my hair. At the time maybe I thought this was just another step toward the end. Not the end. Not THE END. By the time I got there she was gone.)
Oh, there's more. There's the way she touched my face and said, "You're the best." There's sitting in my sister's bedroom with my ma when she was asleep, holding her hand and being quiet with her. There's her phone call when she told me the cancer had spread and the doctors were saying six months. "We need to make sure we buy the baby some summer clothes!" knowing she would be gone by summer.
But there's also the way that when I tried to joke with her she was mean and said, "Not now, not now, OK?" I want to say, "NO, it's not OK. It's NOT OK AT ALL.You're fucking dying and now you're dead and I can't fucking BELIEVE you did this to me. The LEAST you could do is laugh at me when I joke with you because you are taking everything away from me. So fuck you and your stupid lung cancer and your chemo and your dying. I'm LEAVING."
But I can't, because when you're dying you're always leaving first and you always win the fight. Gah, anger. Denial. Cliche cliche cliche.
But therein lies the problem when your dad died of pancreatic cancer when you were 19 and your mom died of lung cancer. Did they smoke? Indeed. Drink? Well, duh. This shit has cliche written all over it. "I'm so very sorry for your loss. But please, PLEASE don't write about it. Parents. Dead. Cancer. I feel like I've read this story before. Was it published in the (name some low level preferably online journal)? No?"
I coach pre-med students on how to strengthen their personal statements for their applications for medical school. Let me tell you, they all have the same story. Did or didn't want to be a doctor as a child. Did or didn't change their mind based on some miraculous high school or college science teacher. Add quick point about tenacity despite grades not showing it, and oh, did I mention I FUCKING LOVE POOR PEOPLE. Done. "Everyone's story is pretty much the same," I tell them. "Where you'll win is in the details. Give them an image, something to remember."
So, I'll give you the images. My mom, no longer recognizable, I mean when the fuck did she get old and check the mirror, did it happen to me too? In the hospital bed we set up in my sister's bedroom, the clot on her leg (not what's killing her, or wait, is it?) giant and black. Bald. Gray. All of her, of course. My daughter, sleeping in a chair next to my mom's bed for three nights, throwing a blanket over her head when my mom wakes up screaming, "I'm dying! Jesus Christ, someone help me, I'm dying!" The time I almost punched those fucking doctors in the hospital. Don't give me your chin up, circle of life bullshit. Maybe you see people die everyday, but I'm telling you, none of them mattered before this one. The time my sister didn't almost bite my other sister days before my mom slipped away in the mid morning, surrounded by the hospice nurse, various family members, but not me. (Here's something you can't ever know-- when they came to tell me to come, that something was wrong with her breathing, I brushed my hair. Quickly. But I brushed it. Because I was in that last days place where I thought, well, I might not get another chance to brush my hair. At the time maybe I thought this was just another step toward the end. Not the end. Not THE END. By the time I got there she was gone.)
Oh, there's more. There's the way she touched my face and said, "You're the best." There's sitting in my sister's bedroom with my ma when she was asleep, holding her hand and being quiet with her. There's her phone call when she told me the cancer had spread and the doctors were saying six months. "We need to make sure we buy the baby some summer clothes!" knowing she would be gone by summer.
But there's also the way that when I tried to joke with her she was mean and said, "Not now, not now, OK?" I want to say, "NO, it's not OK. It's NOT OK AT ALL.You're fucking dying and now you're dead and I can't fucking BELIEVE you did this to me. The LEAST you could do is laugh at me when I joke with you because you are taking everything away from me. So fuck you and your stupid lung cancer and your chemo and your dying. I'm LEAVING."
But I can't, because when you're dying you're always leaving first and you always win the fight. Gah, anger. Denial. Cliche cliche cliche.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Moving to Paris
There is a reason why I'm no good at downtime. I think too much. We're in the early stages of home buying, which has caused me to deeply question the whole idea of home buying. I heard someone declare ecstatically the other day, "We're in Dublin schools, but with Columbus taxes!" and I died a little in my soul. I think the deal of growing up with nothing is both that it causes you not to be terribly concerned about having nothing, but also to question the whole process of going from nothing to something. I remember my mom working terrible jobs and delivering eight paper routes every morning just to own a beat up Pinto station wagon and rent a run down two bedroom apartment. Why bother? We have three young kids. We should have a house, a stable life, buy into a predictably good school system. Or, you know, move to Paris. Which ever.
When I called Larry to tell him about the Paris plan (which follows quickly on the heels of the Naples, Florida plan), he sounded both terrified and annoyed. "Why Paris now?" he asked. "Just kidding," I said. But I'm not. The only bad part about Paris is I don't speak French. And also that I have no real desire to live in Paris, having never been further outside the US than the Canada side of Niagara Falls. But my oldest daughter wants to go to Paris, has declared an obsession with all things Parisian (or faux-Parisian, as in the "France" section of Disney). Someone has to have the passion, and the twelve year old wins the day.
We'll never be rich. I have way too many degrees, and Larry too few. So, if we can't be rich, why are we playing at all? Better to back out of the whole deal, to my mind. Why buy a house anyway?
"Security," is Larry's answer. "Stability." But I've never had security, so I have no idea what he's talking about. I don't buy it.
I had a weird dream earlier today. I've reached the point in life (too early, I think, in my mid thirties) when all the people who stood before me in line are gone. My parents, my grandparents. The dream I had was me chasing my grandpa through the church he and my grandma attended in Mason City, Iowa. He was walking fast for an old guy, but my grandfather was always powerful. We got to a point in the church (not the real church, the dream church) where my grandfather was standing below me and I had to either jump or go down a slide. But the slide had a line of children, a line so long it seemed endless, so I jumped. And, as with any dream jump, you either wake before you hit the ground, or somehow air transforms and you float gently down. As I did. Then I turned around and saw my middle daughter standing on the platform I had just abandoned, looking down at me, waiting for me to tell her which way to go.
"How did she get down before?" I asked my grandpa.
"She jumped," he answered. But I knew if she jumped the dream rules would stop applying and she would come crashing into me, heavy and damaging. And, following unfair dream rules, just as I decided there was no other choice, she would have to jump, and I would just have to cushion the fall, I woke up.
I woke up with a fierce desire to write for the first time since my mom got sick with lung cancer in summer of 2010. Not write about the dream, but to finish the novel I had started writing right before my mom got sick. Suddenly the problem that had stymied me before was entirely solvable. I just (isn't it always the case), had to kill one the characters quicker. My mom just died. I throw that in in case anyone doubts that my mom just died is the whole point here. This reminds me of something Erin McGraw had once said to me about another story: "Oh, the death absolutely CANNOT be the point of this story. It just can't."
I'm supposed to be a writer. I'm not, of course. And, writing being one of the few professions you cannot claim without actively pursuing, I'm left with the question of the day: Paris or Naples?
When I called Larry to tell him about the Paris plan (which follows quickly on the heels of the Naples, Florida plan), he sounded both terrified and annoyed. "Why Paris now?" he asked. "Just kidding," I said. But I'm not. The only bad part about Paris is I don't speak French. And also that I have no real desire to live in Paris, having never been further outside the US than the Canada side of Niagara Falls. But my oldest daughter wants to go to Paris, has declared an obsession with all things Parisian (or faux-Parisian, as in the "France" section of Disney). Someone has to have the passion, and the twelve year old wins the day.
We'll never be rich. I have way too many degrees, and Larry too few. So, if we can't be rich, why are we playing at all? Better to back out of the whole deal, to my mind. Why buy a house anyway?
"Security," is Larry's answer. "Stability." But I've never had security, so I have no idea what he's talking about. I don't buy it.
I had a weird dream earlier today. I've reached the point in life (too early, I think, in my mid thirties) when all the people who stood before me in line are gone. My parents, my grandparents. The dream I had was me chasing my grandpa through the church he and my grandma attended in Mason City, Iowa. He was walking fast for an old guy, but my grandfather was always powerful. We got to a point in the church (not the real church, the dream church) where my grandfather was standing below me and I had to either jump or go down a slide. But the slide had a line of children, a line so long it seemed endless, so I jumped. And, as with any dream jump, you either wake before you hit the ground, or somehow air transforms and you float gently down. As I did. Then I turned around and saw my middle daughter standing on the platform I had just abandoned, looking down at me, waiting for me to tell her which way to go.
"How did she get down before?" I asked my grandpa.
"She jumped," he answered. But I knew if she jumped the dream rules would stop applying and she would come crashing into me, heavy and damaging. And, following unfair dream rules, just as I decided there was no other choice, she would have to jump, and I would just have to cushion the fall, I woke up.
I woke up with a fierce desire to write for the first time since my mom got sick with lung cancer in summer of 2010. Not write about the dream, but to finish the novel I had started writing right before my mom got sick. Suddenly the problem that had stymied me before was entirely solvable. I just (isn't it always the case), had to kill one the characters quicker. My mom just died. I throw that in in case anyone doubts that my mom just died is the whole point here. This reminds me of something Erin McGraw had once said to me about another story: "Oh, the death absolutely CANNOT be the point of this story. It just can't."
I'm supposed to be a writer. I'm not, of course. And, writing being one of the few professions you cannot claim without actively pursuing, I'm left with the question of the day: Paris or Naples?
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
I Have a Difficult Child
Nearly every time I talk to other mothers about the difficulties (tortures?) of motherhood, someone says, "But your girls are great! You're doing a great job!" Either they are trying to make me feel better, or they actually believe that I am, in fact, doing a great job. "Some days." I always answer. "I don't exactly advertise the bad times." Bad moments like last night, when I was in bed, plotting (gleefully, a little bit, I'll admit it), how I was going to break it to my youngest FIRST THING IN THE MORNING that I was giving her up for adoption because I just could not take her anymore. More on this later.
I have two daughters who are almost exact polar opposites. My oldest came out of the womb with a conciliatory smile on her little fat face. When she was an infant she only cried when she had thrush or just to get my attention if I had forgotten to feed her for too many hours straight. When she was just a year old, I used to take her to the grocery store in the middle of the day, when the elderly people were likely to be there, so she could walk around, holding their hands, talking to them as they shopped. When she was three she made up a batch of "business cards" that were supposed to say, "I'm Delaney and I would like to be your friend. Would you like to have a sleep over at my house?" (they really said squiggle squiggle. Squiggle squiggle.) which she would carry around in her purse and hand out to people in parking lots.
And then there is my current youngest soon to be middle child. Who came out of the womb with the figurative two middle fingers flying. She could care less if the world likes her. In fact, she seems mind boggled by the fact that her sister would continuously waste her time on something so annoying as friends. Shudder. I don't have many memories of my youngest daughter's babyhood. I'm always surprised when other mothers say that, but now I know it's secret code for "I don't want to remember." I remember big moments. Like when we spent $15,000 having her tested at the children's hospital because, as I remember saying, "SOMETHING has to be wrong with her." Not so much. Their big diagnosis was that she knew far more words than she was capable of saying. THAT EXPLAINS IT. I would be seriously pissed, too, if I knew words I couldn't say. Except then she did say them, and yet, well, she remained difficult. (I can't so much qualify difficult without this turning into a book length blog post except to say it was something like this: when she was four I signed her up for soccer camp for three hours a day for a week. That first day I dropped her off I cried on the way home, I was so grateful, grateful, grateful, to be without her for three hours. An hour later the camp called and told me to come get her. She had hit another child (who just so happened to be recovering from brain surgery) in the head with a water bottle. Why the hell would you send your brain surgery kid to SOCCER CAMP? I asked? This, as I will get to later, is part of my second daughter's problem. AKA me).
Next up, I started to do research on the effects of steroids on children. She had been given steroids off and on since her babyhood for severe allergies and skin conditions. My GOD, it was the steroids. What I had on my hands was a toddler with 'roid rage. NO WONDER SHE WAS SO PISSED ALL THE TIME! We were lucky she hadn't killed anyone. Problem solved. Except she's been off the steroids (except for a few extreme cases) for four years. And, yet.
So I did what any mother would do, and I signed her up for a child psychologist. And we spent six months making cookies, playing, and learning to eat goldfish crackers one by one (the doctor was convinced that the choroid plexus cysts my daughter had in her brain in the womb and at birth had likely slowed her development, causing a need for a re-learning of the basic physical tasks of babyhood. In other words, my daughter was pissed because, well, honestly, I still don't really understand the connections between goldfish crackers and rage, but they're real, friends). After six months of therapy I was poorer, my daughter wasn't any "better," and I suddenly realized that only a fucking idiot would eat goldfish crackers one by one, and all the fights and "practice" we'd done at home wasn't going to change that very basic fact. Goldfish crackers are MEANT to be eaten by the fist full, and that therapist was fired.
I decided my daughter was going to be who she was going to be and what was REALLY needed was for ME to go to therapy. Because, if nothing else, this was an entire hour all to myself. And it did help. My therapist reminded me repeatedly that children under five are often best treated simply through treatment of their mothers (yes, it pisses me off, too. I love how dads just have to SHOW UP and they are fucking heroes. Not in my house. There are no heroes in my house.). Therapy really did make things better. For me. I was no longer in despair (yay, antidepressants), and I came to realize that if I had to. If I REALLY REALLY had to, I could live with my daughter the way she was and not kill either one of us. And there I left it for two years. Yes, she often makes me miserable. But if it makes her happy, I shall pierce myself on the sword of miserable, and there we go. Motherhood.
But I know I let her get away with murder. Because I didn't love her enough when she was a baby. Because it's really fucking hard to love someone who won't stop screaming. Turns out that, despite my desire and penchant for toughness, I'm actually a sucker. When her older sister says, "I'll just clean the whole room by myself" I usually give in. The older one is working for a cell phone, plus, I know from my own experience, if I have a choice between cleaning while listening to the screaming wails of my youngest OR letting her play on the computer while I clean, well, I'll just clean by myself thank you very much (that's right-- this is it, the moment when I recognize and tell you that I'm probably, OK definitely, her biggest problem). I will brush her hair, stand in the bathroom while she showers, allow her NOT to brush her hair occasionally, let her get out of chores, homework, basic human cleanliness because IF IT MAKES HER HAPPY BRING ON THE FUCKING SWORD OF MISERABLENESS.
Except. Of course there's an except. When I took her to her most recent check up and mentioned (in very vague terms) that she's still very unreasonable and seems to struggle maintaining friendships (or, in plain words, even really giving a rat's ass), the doctor had a conversation with my daughter. And in that conversation my daughter told the doctor that "Sometimes I want to die. I don't understand, and I don't want to get yelled at, so sometimes I would just rather die." And of course I cried. Because of what she said but also because, OF COURSE SHE'S NOT HAPPY you fucking moron. Throw yourself on the sword just for general amusement. Because of course she's not happy. So, we scheduled for a new therapist, and we wait, hoping this one will have a better plan than one fish two fish.
Which leads me to last night, which of course I now feel horribly guilty about (I've somehow convinced myself over the years that mothers even have to feel guilty about how they feel EVEN IF NO ONE ELSE KNOWS). I was in bed, just asleep. Pregnancy has brought with it atrocious leg cramps that are only cured through sleep. And my youngest had to take a shower. The screamingest, most painful, loud, screechingest shower in shower history (for the world. For her it was normal), and she woke me up. And as I lay there listening to her scream and her dad threaten and her scream and her dad threaten I got angrier and angrier. A few weeks ago I said to my sister, apropos of little else, "you think I don't pray to GOD every day that this baby isn't another one?" (which I don't. OK, I do. But not every day). Last night as I listened to my current youngest scream (about nothing. Sometimes she just likes to scream. There was no soap in her eyes, nor was there a giant spider attacking her. She just doesn't like to wash her hair) and got angrier and angrier, the thought popped into my head: "you are ruining my life." And then I got even ANGRIER and I thought, "that's it. I've had enough. I'M GIVING HER UP FOR ADOPTION. And first thing in the morning I am going to TELL HER I'm giving her up for adoption. TAKE THAT, KID." And then I started to cry because, A. I love her, and I don't really want to give her up for adoption. B. I'm not sure who would take her. She's, let's just say, burned some bridges. The only way I calmed myself down was to do deep breathing and pull a Scarlett O'Hara and vow to think about it in the morning.
And, of course, by morning I had realized you probably shouldn't tell nine and a half, almost ten year olds that they are so bad you are giving them up for adoption. But what I did tell her was this: You cannot act like that. You need to be more reasonable. Being reasonable is not going to be any more difficult, nor is it going to make your life any less fun. And she was reasonable this morning. Mostly, I think, from exhaustion. She had a late night of screaming. I have no illusions any more. We see the new psychiatrist Saturday. I'll bring the goldfish crackers.
And I acknowledge that this blog post is not over. That, in fact, this blog post would only cover it all if it were a book. Or a few weeks under constant surveillance by psychiatric staff who just kept telling me to talk through the pain. And if I were to go on I'd point to this: my older daughter ain't no angel. Let yesterday be evidence, when she spent the three dollars I gave her to pay her library fine on baked goods. "Accidentally." I often worry that her desire to be loved will lead her to very, very bad places. And in those moments I feel relieved because, as many worries as I have about my current youngest, fear that she will be led into anything she doesn't want to do isn't one of them. And I would probably talk about how we're having another one. Not just another human-- another girl. Many years of fears and refusals, and somehow I got to a place where I thought it might, just might, be OK. And maybe it will be. But somehow I doubt it.
I have two daughters who are almost exact polar opposites. My oldest came out of the womb with a conciliatory smile on her little fat face. When she was an infant she only cried when she had thrush or just to get my attention if I had forgotten to feed her for too many hours straight. When she was just a year old, I used to take her to the grocery store in the middle of the day, when the elderly people were likely to be there, so she could walk around, holding their hands, talking to them as they shopped. When she was three she made up a batch of "business cards" that were supposed to say, "I'm Delaney and I would like to be your friend. Would you like to have a sleep over at my house?" (they really said squiggle squiggle. Squiggle squiggle.) which she would carry around in her purse and hand out to people in parking lots.
And then there is my current youngest soon to be middle child. Who came out of the womb with the figurative two middle fingers flying. She could care less if the world likes her. In fact, she seems mind boggled by the fact that her sister would continuously waste her time on something so annoying as friends. Shudder. I don't have many memories of my youngest daughter's babyhood. I'm always surprised when other mothers say that, but now I know it's secret code for "I don't want to remember." I remember big moments. Like when we spent $15,000 having her tested at the children's hospital because, as I remember saying, "SOMETHING has to be wrong with her." Not so much. Their big diagnosis was that she knew far more words than she was capable of saying. THAT EXPLAINS IT. I would be seriously pissed, too, if I knew words I couldn't say. Except then she did say them, and yet, well, she remained difficult. (I can't so much qualify difficult without this turning into a book length blog post except to say it was something like this: when she was four I signed her up for soccer camp for three hours a day for a week. That first day I dropped her off I cried on the way home, I was so grateful, grateful, grateful, to be without her for three hours. An hour later the camp called and told me to come get her. She had hit another child (who just so happened to be recovering from brain surgery) in the head with a water bottle. Why the hell would you send your brain surgery kid to SOCCER CAMP? I asked? This, as I will get to later, is part of my second daughter's problem. AKA me).
Next up, I started to do research on the effects of steroids on children. She had been given steroids off and on since her babyhood for severe allergies and skin conditions. My GOD, it was the steroids. What I had on my hands was a toddler with 'roid rage. NO WONDER SHE WAS SO PISSED ALL THE TIME! We were lucky she hadn't killed anyone. Problem solved. Except she's been off the steroids (except for a few extreme cases) for four years. And, yet.
So I did what any mother would do, and I signed her up for a child psychologist. And we spent six months making cookies, playing, and learning to eat goldfish crackers one by one (the doctor was convinced that the choroid plexus cysts my daughter had in her brain in the womb and at birth had likely slowed her development, causing a need for a re-learning of the basic physical tasks of babyhood. In other words, my daughter was pissed because, well, honestly, I still don't really understand the connections between goldfish crackers and rage, but they're real, friends). After six months of therapy I was poorer, my daughter wasn't any "better," and I suddenly realized that only a fucking idiot would eat goldfish crackers one by one, and all the fights and "practice" we'd done at home wasn't going to change that very basic fact. Goldfish crackers are MEANT to be eaten by the fist full, and that therapist was fired.
I decided my daughter was going to be who she was going to be and what was REALLY needed was for ME to go to therapy. Because, if nothing else, this was an entire hour all to myself. And it did help. My therapist reminded me repeatedly that children under five are often best treated simply through treatment of their mothers (yes, it pisses me off, too. I love how dads just have to SHOW UP and they are fucking heroes. Not in my house. There are no heroes in my house.). Therapy really did make things better. For me. I was no longer in despair (yay, antidepressants), and I came to realize that if I had to. If I REALLY REALLY had to, I could live with my daughter the way she was and not kill either one of us. And there I left it for two years. Yes, she often makes me miserable. But if it makes her happy, I shall pierce myself on the sword of miserable, and there we go. Motherhood.
But I know I let her get away with murder. Because I didn't love her enough when she was a baby. Because it's really fucking hard to love someone who won't stop screaming. Turns out that, despite my desire and penchant for toughness, I'm actually a sucker. When her older sister says, "I'll just clean the whole room by myself" I usually give in. The older one is working for a cell phone, plus, I know from my own experience, if I have a choice between cleaning while listening to the screaming wails of my youngest OR letting her play on the computer while I clean, well, I'll just clean by myself thank you very much (that's right-- this is it, the moment when I recognize and tell you that I'm probably, OK definitely, her biggest problem). I will brush her hair, stand in the bathroom while she showers, allow her NOT to brush her hair occasionally, let her get out of chores, homework, basic human cleanliness because IF IT MAKES HER HAPPY BRING ON THE FUCKING SWORD OF MISERABLENESS.
Except. Of course there's an except. When I took her to her most recent check up and mentioned (in very vague terms) that she's still very unreasonable and seems to struggle maintaining friendships (or, in plain words, even really giving a rat's ass), the doctor had a conversation with my daughter. And in that conversation my daughter told the doctor that "Sometimes I want to die. I don't understand, and I don't want to get yelled at, so sometimes I would just rather die." And of course I cried. Because of what she said but also because, OF COURSE SHE'S NOT HAPPY you fucking moron. Throw yourself on the sword just for general amusement. Because of course she's not happy. So, we scheduled for a new therapist, and we wait, hoping this one will have a better plan than one fish two fish.
Which leads me to last night, which of course I now feel horribly guilty about (I've somehow convinced myself over the years that mothers even have to feel guilty about how they feel EVEN IF NO ONE ELSE KNOWS). I was in bed, just asleep. Pregnancy has brought with it atrocious leg cramps that are only cured through sleep. And my youngest had to take a shower. The screamingest, most painful, loud, screechingest shower in shower history (for the world. For her it was normal), and she woke me up. And as I lay there listening to her scream and her dad threaten and her scream and her dad threaten I got angrier and angrier. A few weeks ago I said to my sister, apropos of little else, "you think I don't pray to GOD every day that this baby isn't another one?" (which I don't. OK, I do. But not every day). Last night as I listened to my current youngest scream (about nothing. Sometimes she just likes to scream. There was no soap in her eyes, nor was there a giant spider attacking her. She just doesn't like to wash her hair) and got angrier and angrier, the thought popped into my head: "you are ruining my life." And then I got even ANGRIER and I thought, "that's it. I've had enough. I'M GIVING HER UP FOR ADOPTION. And first thing in the morning I am going to TELL HER I'm giving her up for adoption. TAKE THAT, KID." And then I started to cry because, A. I love her, and I don't really want to give her up for adoption. B. I'm not sure who would take her. She's, let's just say, burned some bridges. The only way I calmed myself down was to do deep breathing and pull a Scarlett O'Hara and vow to think about it in the morning.
And, of course, by morning I had realized you probably shouldn't tell nine and a half, almost ten year olds that they are so bad you are giving them up for adoption. But what I did tell her was this: You cannot act like that. You need to be more reasonable. Being reasonable is not going to be any more difficult, nor is it going to make your life any less fun. And she was reasonable this morning. Mostly, I think, from exhaustion. She had a late night of screaming. I have no illusions any more. We see the new psychiatrist Saturday. I'll bring the goldfish crackers.
And I acknowledge that this blog post is not over. That, in fact, this blog post would only cover it all if it were a book. Or a few weeks under constant surveillance by psychiatric staff who just kept telling me to talk through the pain. And if I were to go on I'd point to this: my older daughter ain't no angel. Let yesterday be evidence, when she spent the three dollars I gave her to pay her library fine on baked goods. "Accidentally." I often worry that her desire to be loved will lead her to very, very bad places. And in those moments I feel relieved because, as many worries as I have about my current youngest, fear that she will be led into anything she doesn't want to do isn't one of them. And I would probably talk about how we're having another one. Not just another human-- another girl. Many years of fears and refusals, and somehow I got to a place where I thought it might, just might, be OK. And maybe it will be. But somehow I doubt it.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Everything You Need to Know About this Cold
I have entered into the darkness of the worst cold in the history of the world. And, graciously, heroically, I have agreed to send dispatches back until my communication apparatuses fail. I can tell you this: if you are pregnant and cannot take your usual seven Tylenol Cold and Flu tablets, 3 Mucinex, and a quart of Nyquil, Vicks might make you feel slightly better. It's best application, however, is as a talisman, warding off all other people. "Hey, Mar-- what's that smell? Oh, God, are you SICK?"
Unfortunately, with this cold there is a high risk of betrayal by those around you. For instance, the child I have raised and loved for nine years, eight months and fourteen days cruelly turned back onto me the words I used last week to offer her solace during her slight-clearly-totally-different-from-this-cold-cold. "Geez, Mama, it's just a cold. You'll get over it." For her sake, I hope I do.
This cold is powerful. So powerful it will take away the senses of humor of those around you. For instance, if you go to bed at seven and thus wake up at 3am and decide to kill time by moaning and occasionally crying out, "The light! It's so beautiful! I'm coming, Grandma!" your partner may pull the blanket over his head and mumble, "Seriously? What time is it?"
Time doesn't mean much to me anymore. I just know it's close. I'm sneezing again now. Sneezing a lot. Before I go, I want you to know I loved a few of you very much. The rest of you I just tolerated.
Unfortunately, with this cold there is a high risk of betrayal by those around you. For instance, the child I have raised and loved for nine years, eight months and fourteen days cruelly turned back onto me the words I used last week to offer her solace during her slight-clearly-totally-different-from-this-cold-cold. "Geez, Mama, it's just a cold. You'll get over it." For her sake, I hope I do.
This cold is powerful. So powerful it will take away the senses of humor of those around you. For instance, if you go to bed at seven and thus wake up at 3am and decide to kill time by moaning and occasionally crying out, "The light! It's so beautiful! I'm coming, Grandma!" your partner may pull the blanket over his head and mumble, "Seriously? What time is it?"
Time doesn't mean much to me anymore. I just know it's close. I'm sneezing again now. Sneezing a lot. Before I go, I want you to know I loved a few of you very much. The rest of you I just tolerated.
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