Learning to Fly

“The Road Not Taken” ~ Robert Frost, 1915

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Learning to Fly–Tom Petty

All good things must come to an end…

Early last January, I found myself with eight other grad students waiting for Frank X. Walker to introduce himself to his Advanced Poetry class. Within a few minutes, I found myself wondering what the hell I had just gotten myself into.

“This is a graduate-level poetry class. I assume you’re all advanced poets, and I expect nothing short of your best writing.”

Gulp.

Before this semester, I had never written poetry, except for the occasionally dabbling in creative writing I fancied as pseudo-poetry. For our first assignment, Prof. Walker asked us to gather together ten pages of our best poems so he could use them as a before class/after class gauge of our poetry-writing skills.  So I pored over blog entries and equivalated the homework from my creative non-fiction writing.

The next week, eight of us (one apparently dropped the class) presented our poems to our professor, tasked with choosing one to read aloud, along with a reading of our favorite poem. (Mine was a transcription of  Alvin Lau’s Full Moon. “Usually,” Frank said, “people choose poets who are similar to them. You? You broke that mold today.”)

For the next several weeks, we were taught about various poetic forms and charged with writing one of our own (hence the reason this blog has become a temporary home for experimental poetry).  Personification. Mirror/Imitation. Double-Jointed and/or Hinge. Historical. Haiku. Recipe. ‘Where I’m From.”  We also had to choose poetry books from our instructor’s expansive library and review/present them to the class, books that had nothing in common with who we are or what we write.

But the meat of any creative writing class is the workshop aspect of it. You either love it or hate it.  There’s nothing quite like the experience of presenting what you consider to be your very best creative writing, only to have it politely ripped to shreds by your peers. Artists understand constructive critiquing of their craft is a necessary evil and ultimately a Good Thing.  Alternating with wanting to run right out of that class is knowing you will become a better writer for this experience.

And then it happens–it always does–this subtle shift in the air of the classroom experience. You notice, hey, this guy’s not the asshole I thought he was, and, wow, she’s really just trying to be helpful. And everyone around you seems to be noticing the same thing, and out the door goes hurt feelings and rejection, replaced by camaraderie, collegiality and friendship.

And respect.

Knee-deep in revisions, I only have one more poem to write and a final workshop. Our “final” for this class is an essay detailing everything we have learned from reading the aforementioned poetry books. I’ve learned more than enough to fill the requisite six pages, yet my mind wanders more toward what I’ve learned from this professor and this particular group of seven other students.

Because of them, I am a better writer.

I was reminded of the utility of the craft last weekend while watching a skateboard competition on TV with my son. “It looks so easy, but I know it’s not.” And that is the crux of good writing, economy of words on a page carefully crafted with just the right words, expressing just the right sentiment. Only the writer knows how many hours and revisions it takes to find the perfect word combination to express and share thoughts and musings.

This semester is almost behind us. I would love to take another class from Prof. Walker but, alas, that is probably not to be. A rising star, he will find success wherever he lands, but our university will have lost one of its finest writer/teachers, and English students here will miss out on a rare opportunity to learn from one of the best. 

Write on, Frank, and Muhammad and CB and Amber and Tanya and Ryan and Kelley and Mary Anne. I know I will.

An Ounce of Prevention (Salk’s Miracle)

I could have prevented the epidemic.

Now everyone knows someone

or knows someone who knows someone

who knows the loss of limbs or lungs.

I’ve never met those beneath sterile sheets

attended to by white-capped nurses

in beds adjacent to large rooms crowded

with angled missiles that power breath and life.

Parents gather around over-polished Zenith TVs

to watch Walter Cronkite report on crippled

legs and withering arms pushed in wheelchairs

by teens in their loafers and horn-rimmed glasses.

They’ve been awake for hours, waiting to meet me,

these parents who revere the miracle in hushed voices

in lines that wind around this research hospital.

I see it in their faces: worry, a prayer, a hint of relief.

Nurses jam needles into fleshy, upper arms,

releasing me into biceps and axillary arteries,

creating scabs that will fall off and leave wrinkled scars,

flesh-colored tattoos memorializing Dr. Salk and me.

Polio vaccination line

Coffin Nails (10/10/35 – 5/4/04)

(a villanelle)

I step ouside and smoke a cigarette.

Your death’s the final verdict. I’m afraid,

and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 

I’d quit smoking last winter, but fuck it.

Addiction–no match for this bed God made.

I step outside and smoke a cigarette.

 

I thought your stroke punished you enough yet

your basal cells made other plans. I caved,

and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 

No one can save you now. All that is left

are comfort measures from nurses’ aides.

I step outside and smoke a cigarette,

 

trying not to wallow in fear, regret.

You, my mama, will soon begin to fade,

and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 

“See you tomorow.” I find the exit

door–I can’t wait to end this all’s-well charade.

I step outside and smoke a cigarette,

and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Dora Salk’s Lament (NYC, 1916)

[During the summer of 1916, infantile paralysis--or polio--raged through New York, home to Jonas Salk, announcing its arrival in several homes where one morning, for no apparent reason, children awoke paralyzed. Befuddled city health officials blamed the outbreak on their usual suspects, immigrants, whose communities were overcrowded and assumed to be filthy.  The epidemic began in Brooklyn, where 9,000 cases emerged, resulting in 2,343 deaths. Before the summer's end, polio had traveled nationwide, attacking a total of 27,000, mostly children, and killing more than 6,000.]

While Jonas naps, I sweep the sidewalk

and watch for the goyim in fancy black cars

who prowl the boroughs looking for a sick Jew

to ship off to Swinburne Island for confinement.

Anyone here got a fever?

they ask.

I’d like to give them a fever,

God forbid.

Paralysis of the morning, they call it.

We call it the Summer Plague.

You wake up the children for matzo-bry

except today, they can’t get out of bed.

Daniel, I says, take off your shoes

before you come into this house.

Dora, he says, a little bit of shmutz

never hurt anyone.

But how would my husband know that?

No one knows anything, except the fear

that drives sane men to bludgeon stray cats,

then drown them–seventy thousand last week–

and purify city streets with a ceremonial cleansing,

four million gallons of soap and water every day, I hear–

and mothers to fill nasal syringes with saltwater

and jam it up our children’s noses.

In the evening, I feel Jonas’s forehead one last time—

still cool, thank God—

while he sits on my lap, fighting sleep

as we rock to the lullaby my mother sang to me:

Sleep, my child, my comfort, my beauty,
Sleep, my darling one,
Sleep, my life, my only kaddish, lulinke lu-lu

Sleep, my life, my only kaddish, lulinke lu-lu

By your cradle sits your mama,
Sings a song and weeps,
You’ll understand some day perhaps
What is on her mind

then I place him in his crib,

so smart for his age,

and I count off the days left of this lousy summer,

count off the days till the morning frost of October.

And I kiss his little cheek, still cool.

Thank God.

Nigerian Independence Day (a tale of two African postcards)

 

Cast in metal, carved in stone–

fear painted on a cotton cloth–

he seeks comfort in his mother’s arms

amid swords and soldiers, a death on a cross.

 

His eyes find a window where

an Igbo child waves then performs

cartwheels and acrobatics choreographed

to the groove of an udu and an ogene.

 

Mom, he says, mind if I play with him?

Go ahead, she says, you need a break.

But don’t make us have to search for you again.

Then he jumps out of her arms and runs away.

 

 

Tears for Jkay

Candles light again.

Virtual flames burn brightly.

Our Jkay is gone.

 

The puns, the laughter

We will never be the same.

Our Jkay is gone.

 

Go on now and rest.

Kisses for Jack-the-Juggler.

Our Jkay is gone.

 

Hours   minutes   days

you’ll find yourself in our hearts.

Our Jkay is gone.

 

Tonight, toward heaven

I will raise a toast to you.

My friend may be gone…

 

But you will live on.

As long as there are puns, breath.

You’ll live on in love.

 

Love,

Beeb

Baby Book

Married six weeks, then
Aunt Flo forgets to show up.
The Pill’s not child proof.

“Choice” enters my mind
but only for a minute.
I smile. I’m a mom.
 
Out with our date nights.
In with a diaper bag and
a thrift store cradle.
 
We move south, ten miles
away from Cincinnati
to the Bluegrass state.
 
Into a duplex
we unload cats and boxes
dreams and baby things.
 
Empty home, waiting.
Cicada days extended
filled with heat and drought.
 
Induced, labor comes.
No pain meds, thanks anyway.
Bear down. Push. Push…Joy.
 
Eight pounds, eight days late
my blue-eyed wonder, first born.
Eight-eight-eighty-eight.

Sex Ed

Italacized text from Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Cameroon

March 17, 2009

  

…one cannot overcome this problem of AIDS

 

 

only with money–   

though we’ve never known money

in Cameroon

where we once played with dolls

and pledged our virginity

which is important

to Catholics in Central Africa

but if there is

no one left to teach us our worth, our value—

no soul                       

no sisters                                                                                        

no people                         

no mommies—

women

who                                      

may

know how to use it

this mysterious latex,

ribbed-for-our-pleasure

prophylactic,

then

money doesn’t help

–it could never help

 soothe our sorrow or

 slow the spread of our nation’s pox

 but it would give those we love

  medicine

  hope

  time

One cannot overcome the problem with

social ignorance and religious taboos

but

the distribution of condoms

could save us from extinction

 and your holy-holy-holier than thou

 abstinence-only sermons

 from the gospel according to Benedict

preached from the balcony of your papal palace

do nothing to halt the spread of  HIV.

On the contrary, they

only

increase the problem

Photo by James Nachtwey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Ethiopian Madonna

Iconic black-eyed Mama
Your sacred heart soon to be pierced by sorrow
But for now, he runs to safety
In the hollows of your generous arm

Scarlet and Gray

I come from Buckeye Nation
From central Ohio, north of Columbus and the school of Woody Hayes
From Big 2, Little 8 and “three yards and a cloud of dust”
and Archie Griffin, Big Ten championships and disdain for That Team Up North
From Script Ohio, the dotting of the “I” and the Best Damn Band in the Land
and Keith Jackson’s commentary peppered with my brother, Paul’s, profanity–
a television education in field goals, five-yard penalties and touchdowns.
Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on!

I come from Buckeye Nation
From frisbees flying across the Oval under a mid-day sunlit sky
and co-eds contemplating newfound philosophies outside of Derby Hall
From high-beer/low-beer, Drink-n-Drown and moshing to the Clash
and warm gyros slathered in sour cream and onions and wrapped in tinfoil
From Cliffs Notes, all-nighters, IHOP’s bottomless coffee pot
and four girls in pajamas dancing away fatigue and caffeine hangovers.
The shareef don’t like it, rockin the casbah, rockin the casbah.

I come from Buckeye Nation
From June 14th in Ohio Stadium among a couple thousand classmates–
Commencement number two-hundred-and-ninety-two
From the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences and a journalism degree
and a lump in my throat at the band’s rendition of Carmen Ohio
From the number thirty taped on a mortarboard marking the end of a story
and with a flip of a tassel, the end of my youth, Class of 1985.
Time and change will surely show how firm thy friendship … O-HI-O

Carmen Ohio
Fred Cornell

Oh come let’s sing Ohio’s praise
And songs to Alma Mater raise
While our hearts rebounding thrill
With joy which death alone can still
Summer’s heat or winter’s cold
The seasons pass the years will roll
Time and change will surely show
How firm thy friendship … O-HI-O!

These jolly days of priceless worth
By far the gladdest days on earth
Soon will pass and we not know
How dearly we love Ohio
We should strive to keep thy name
Of fair repute and spotless fame
So in college halls well grow
And love thee better … OHIO!

Though age may dim our mem’ry’s store
We’ll think of happy days of yore
True to friend and frank to foe
As sturdy sons of Ohio
If on seas of care we roll
Neath blackened sky or barren shoal
Thoughts of thee bid darkness go
Dear Alma Mater…OHIO!

Raised By Woman

(Mirrored after Kelly Norman Ellis’ “Raised By Women“)

I was raised by
Gravy eating
Potato mashing
Chicken so good you want to lick
Your fingers frying
“Quit picking, fix yourself a plate”
Kind of Woman.

Some curly haired
Audrey Hepburn French-twist styling
“Sissy, hold still
and let me brush your bangs”
Sorta Woman

Some curvy legged
High heeled, pastel purple
Toe tapping
Mink coat wearing
Dangly earrings dangling
Sassy single
Swingin
“I clean up pretty good”
Type of Woman.

Some beer drinking
Black veil wearing
Departed too soon
Widowed
forty years before her time
“Better say your prayers for me”
Kind of woman.

Some fingersnapping
Kitchen dancing
“Hey good lookin’
Whatcha got cookin’
Hank Williams listening
“Come on girls pick up your feet”
Sort of woman.

Some face grabbing
Hands on cheeks
Don’t yell at me
“Pack your attitude
And Get the hell out of my face”
Type of woman.

Some piano playing
Cigarette smoking
Rosary praying
“Kiss my Irish ass”
Man’s-world traveling
“Stand back, I’m fighting”
Kind of woman.

I was raised by
Woman

Miranda’s Recipe for Interrogation

Ingredients:
2 cups of commotion
1 restaurant manager, defrosted
2 third-shift cops, drained
1 detective, unsweetened
1 teaspoon of false accusation
1 small jar of venom
2 tablespoons of indignation
A dash of disbelief

Directions:
Preheat your civil service to 375 degrees and grease your ineptitude with erroneous intuition. In a large bowl, sift the ingredients of your malignant mischaracterizations and toss the evidence. Mix your theory on low speed for 30 seconds, then high speed for two-and-a-half hours until the battered, middle-aged man has exhausted almost all hope for vindication. Bake the possibility of a coerced confession until 3 a.m. Serve hot and top with vacuous threats and a side of iniquity, due process optional.

Thanksgiving: A New Tradition

I’ve been doing this Thanksgiving thing a long time. Nothing extravagant, mind you. Just our tiny brood of four gathering around the dining room table (or couches and chairs in the living room) giving thanks for each other and that freaking beast of a turkey. All the same, it is still a Big Deal.

First, there’s the shopping for the pajamas. When my oldest was five, I decided to surprise her with a new pair of PJs and slippers after a long morning at kindergarten. Why wait till Christmas, I reasoned, when new nightware gets carelessly tossed aside, buried under mounds of wrapping paper and empty toy boxes? Thanksgiving Jammie Day was born fifteen years ago, and since this family stays home, we now stay in our sleepware and slippers and lounge about the house in between feasting and napping.

Then there’s the anticipation of an end-of-November mini-vacation from school and work, and when Ohio State beats Michigan the Saturday before (which they’ve done now for five years straight, a record in the blood bath with That Team Up North. Go Bucks!), the kick-off to the holiday season is even sweeter.

Oh, and we can’t forget the three-hour Macy’s Day Parade, followed by the two-hour AKC dog show, capped with a viewing of “Home Alone.”

And even though it’s Just Us, we simply must have two kinds of stuffing, and sweet potatoes that no one ever eats, mashed white potatoes that are gobbled up, and the disgustingly-edible green bean casserole, all complemented by a too-big piece of pumpkin pie slathered in Cool Whip.

It should be easy, the mega-meal preparation. After all, we cook our dinners in this house pretty much every evening so we’ve had plenty of practice. Still, we’ve had our fair share of holiday screw-ups that lead to cold turkey, dinner at 8 p.m. and too-full bellies from snacking all day while waiting to partake of the annual feast.

But not this year. No, this year, I learned:

Make the pumpkin pies the night before. It’s easy to forget that not only do you have to cook the damn things for an hour, but it takes even longer to cool the dessert to the point where it doesn’t melt the Cool Whip. In fact, make us much as you can the night before. Fry that sausage and make that cornbread for your husband’s stuffing. Thaw those frozen green beans for that nasty-but-surprisingly-delicious casserole. Peel those potatoes and stick them in cold water overnight in the fridge.

Speaking of pumpkin pie…It tastes better when you follow the recipe to the letter.

Wait long enough, and your husband will eventually go in the kitchen, soak the dishes and put all the food away.

Brine that farm-fresh fifteen-pound bird you’ve just spent $35 on. A soaking in salted, spice-and-herb laden water does a lot to make poultry tender and tasty.

Don’t ever, ever, ever buy your kids’ Thanksgiving Jammies without them. There will be hell to pay for years to come.

And the most important new tradition? Leave the beer in the fridge until you’ve finished all the prep. There is nothing worse than even thinking about peeling and mashing potatoes and pan-frying two different kinds of stuffing after you’ve enjoyed a few beers. (And don’t even think about making good gravy with a buzz. Shudder.)

This year, I pulled it off without a hitch with enough time left over to be grateful for an adult daughter who chose to be home, a teen-aged son who enjoyed watching “Homeward Bound” for old time’s sake, a husband who cleaned out the refrigerator on Wednesday, and friends, old and new, who shared my glad tidings and giant hugs.

Happy Turkey Sandwich Day!

Danny,

A week ago yesterday, we learned a stroke had kicked your ass into a coma. Tomorrow, we celebrate your life among friends and colleagues and memories and tears.

I remember liking you the first time we met and loving you the next. As a student, I sought you out and asked you to be my adviser.  I’d meet with you in your office, absorbed in ambiance and small talk, not because I needed your advice but because I needed to surround myself with the aura that was you, and I told you about my mom, and you told me about your mom, and tears filled your eyes, for which you apologized, but don’t be silly, you’re not just a man, you are a son, and you should cry, it’s your mom, here’s a tissue.

Soon came our friendship and the hugging, and I know you shared this gift that was your warm and genuine embrace with all whom you encountered, but you had this way, you see, of making us–making me–feel as if, by God, I mattered to you. And when you think that…feel that…you appreciate it So Much because, well, because sometimes that’s all anyone really needs, and you don’t get to be my age without recognizing that friends and warm feelings of affection come and go, but I always knew…knew…I would feel that way whenever I was around you, that you were constant, that you would never change.

And you didn’t.  You just died.

I respect and admire you, and I appreciate you and your presence, however nominal, in my life, and I just can’t believe you’re dead and that I’ll never be able to tell you these things and how much you mean to me. Before I read the email that announced your death, I had called the hospital, and you were still alive, so I imagined my coming to visit you, and I wouldn’t care if you didn’t know who the hell I was (I’ve seen the ravages of stroke, I know what they do) because maybe I could hug you again, even if you couldn’t hug me back, or maybe later I could help you take a walk down the wing of the hospital or rehab facility, me in my Chucks, you in your socks and sandals.

But then I read that email that told me you had died, and I thought I would vomit, so I pushed it out of my head and went to bed to cry and sleep.  I still can’t believe I’ll never see you again. 

It’s been a long week, Danny.

I miss you.

I thank you.

I love you.

Cheers!

Our European counterparts must be laughing hysterically at a new debate currently being waged in our country.  Recently, a group of university presidents has collectively decided it is time for our country to rethink its current 21-and-over drinking age law.  The Amethyst Initiative says it’s time to take college drinking out of the closet and expose it for what it is–a coming-of-age initiation that, like it or not, is happening in a clandestine off-campus apartment near you.

Back in my day, I could drink legally as soon as I turned 18, and drink I did.  Of course, it was only 3.2 beer, but consume enough of it at the local bar’s “Drink-n-Drown” event, and you soon realized you could get smashed on “low” beer just as easily as you could drinking “high” beer.  And near my Go Bucks! campus, bars lined up and stood proud, hoping for my patronage.

After I graduated from college, I tended bar in Cincinnati around the time the federal government held states hostage with the then-new proposal that would raise the legal drinking age to 21.  As I remember it, Ohio was one of the last states to hold out but finally figured (and rightfully so) that it needed that damn federal money to maintain and create safe roads and thoroughfares.  (Other laws were also being passed that held bartenders liable for drunktards leaving the bars and taverns and killing themselves and/or others while D’ing UI, so I soon kissed bartending goodbye.)

But (as if we were surprised), binge drinking has continued to find its way into the hearts and lives of many fine young women and men.  And now the drinking is done around peers who think puking uncontrollably or passing out cold are, well, normal drinking after-effects.  (You mean I can DIE if I drink too much?  Get. OUT!)

I’ve always had a problem with a country that expects its young citizens to fight in wars they didn’t create but forbids them from popping open a cold one when they’re home on leave.  So yeah, either lower the drinking age or raise the age of majority to 21.  Realistically, though, who cares what I think?

My youngest child is now a junior in high school.  In two years, he is college-bound, and his school of choice is somewhere in BF-Kentucky where, I’m told, a lot of drinking goes on because there’s not a lot of anything else to do.  When he moves there, he will be a few months older than 18.  I’m not saying getting wasted is his destiny.  But what will he do when attending his first forbidden keg party?  Mothers worry, you know.  So I’ve told him more than once, Hey you, if you ever want to experiment with alcohol, do it around me.  I’ve also told him no matter where he is, call home before driving drunk or riding in a car with a drunk, and we’ll come get him, even if he is in BF-Kentucky.

In an ideal world, children would be exposed to alcohol early on, as a celebration of family events and milestones, so by the time they’re able to purchase it for themselves, it just won’t be that big a deal to them.  (Oh wait, there are children being exposed to alcohol early on.  Just not in the US.)  And drunk drivers would lose their licenses forever.  And bars that continually shoo these drunk drivers out onto the streets would be permanently shut down.

But since none of those things will ever happen, then college- and university- presidents who want to see the legal drinking age return to 18 must:

Establish fun-yet-safe drinking establishments (ie, bars) on campus.  (Seems to have worked well at the alma mater of a friend of mine.)

Hire (many) more campus counselors to help students survive and evolve from not only drinking-problem issues but all personal crises.

Set up AA and Al-Anon chapters on campus.

Offer free taxi rides home for those times when students have drunk one too many.

In other words, put up or shut up.

I don’t think raising the legal drinking age to 18 is a bad thing.  In the meantime, I’m stll wondering how in the hell a mother forgets she’s left her baby in the back seat of her car…

And then you know

And you change into a pink hospital top, velcroed slit in the front, and wait for your turn.

And your girls are introduced to a radiographic garlic press, if you will, smiling pretty for the camera.

And you go home, and you wait, one to two business days.

And you’re waiting for a phone call, or better yet, none at all.

And you didn’t check the mail yesterday but someone did.

And there it is, on the table in front of you as you stumble toward the stove for coffee.

And you rip open the envelope, but you know bad news isn’t delivered by the post office.

And you are right.

Smoke

It is late-fall, and I am a junior in high school. Within the sanctuary of our small parochial school–and outside of it as well–Jeanette and I have built a friendship, a solid soul-sister bonding that has benefited from teacher tirades, swoony boy crushes and the lunch ladies’ no-bake cookies. We are constant companions, along with our mutual friend, Margaret, and when we aren’t dancing together in sweaty gymnasiums or singing along to Bay City Rollers’ albums, we are on the phone rehashing the day’s events. We may have even invented karaoke when we were fourteen and she and Margaret played back-up Do-Wop girls to my transvested pseudo-Fonzie character as we lip-synced to “Barbara Ann.” (We were a smashing success at the talent show, and when asked to repeat an encore performance for the entire school the following week, we happily obliged.)

In Catholic schools, kids attend church every other week or so, and all-school masses are held on Holy Days of Obligation. Our school is no exception. Much like I do at football games or pep rallies or in the library, I save Jeanette a seat next to me. Only this time, she extends a fumbling excuse as to why she must decline my offer and sit three rows back with another girl.

Within a matter of a few weeks, I begin noticing a shift in our friendship, one that finds me acting out my familiar role as BFF, while Jeanette continues to abandon us in our familiarity.

What? Have I done something wrong? Said something wrong? What on earth is going on?

It is early winter, and I am waiting for my mother to pick me up from basketball practice when Jeanette enters the foyer with me. She has decided, she tells me, it is time for her to branch out and make new friends. I have no problem with that–I like all the kids in our class and am friends with most of them, too. “So don’t save seats for me anymore,” she says, “because I’ll sit with you sometimes but not all the time.”

“Okay.”

What else can I say? Just like that, or so it seems, my best friend has decided to de-best friend me. No real reason, just because. At first, I don’t know what that means for me, though I soon realize that instead of including other people in our friendship, Jeanette is excluding me, and I quickly learn to spot the difference. I am no longer an active participant in her daily goings-on. I am merely an observer. More hurtful than anything, though, she makes me feel as if i am insignificant. Dispensable.  As if nothing before mattered.

I don’t matter.

For the first time in my life, I have been dumped. At least I still had Margaret.

Jeanette and I occasionally hang out. A few years after graduating from high school, I am even in her wedding. But without the day-to-day teen intimacy we once shared before she chose to bail out of it, things are never quite the same between us, and we eventually drift apart.

It is the summer of 1990, our ten-year class reunion and the last time I see Jeanette. As my husband and I are leaving, she approaches me and apologizes for her teenaged behavior. “It wasn’t my idea,” she says. “It was my mom’s. She thought I needed to branch out and make new friends before we graduated.”

I hope my arm, now resting quietly on hers, assures her. “It’s okay. Really. I haven’t even thought about it till now.”

(Ben Folds and the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra)

BSE

Blood courses cold through your veins while the air around you fills with electrical static, and you’re almost suffocating with the fear that has now captured your full attention.

Three fingers return to that place. They return over and over and a hundred times more. Two, three, four, five hundred times more, maybe. Arm up, arm down by your side, sitting, standing, flexing in front of the bathroom mirror, you press down and firmly, moving soft tissue around, up, down, around. You’re checking for…what? You’re thinking maybe your imagination is overreacting again. You’re hoping maybe you’ve made a mistake, telling yourself, Oh, I’ve felt this before, I’m sure it’s been there all along, it’s fine. Then you’re wondering, How long has this been there? Is this new? You”re lost in your thoughts, not sure what it is you think, and you’re praying you’ve made a judgment-mistake.

And you’re praying that very mistake will not cost you your life, the one you knew but never fully-appreciated before 6 a.m. on Monday.

One full day and a half of the next, you think–no, you know–you will not see your daughter get married or your son graduate high school. You picture them, and your husband, and you worry, if something happens to me, who will take care of them?

Who will take care of me?

You think about how silly you’ve been–no, how absolutely idiotic you’ve been–for allowing irrational worries to keep you from jumping on board the whole preventative medicine train as you pick up the phone to call your gynecologist. You tell the receptionist what you’ve discovered, and now she’s calling you “hon” and finding you an appointment the very next day. And that phone call, that appointment, makes everything even more real, and after you hang up the phone, you collect yourself before opening the closed-door to your office and greeting a prospective client awaiting you in the lobby.

You examine your life from a new-to-you prospective, and you realize that most of your worries are insignificant compared to this. You’re Dead Woman Walking, you just know you are, and you drink beer after beer and remain isolated from your family while you weep until you can’t keep your eyes open, and you sleep, and you awaken throughout the night, your fingers instinctively probing that place, that spot, and you sleep some more.

Now you’re obsessed, now your attention is entirely focused on the worst-case scenario because life long ago taught you to expect the absolute worst, as if worrying yourself sick will, somehow, improve your odds.

You wait all morning for that appointment, and most of the afternoon, too, and you can’t concentrate on anything else, though you try. As your last resort, you find the rosary you’ve forgotten about, and you pray. You pray to the Woman, your Mother, because you know She’ll not only hear you, She’ll understand.

Now you’re at the doctor’s office, where they whisk you into a private room, ask you to change into a gown, and by the time the nurse-practitioner enters the room, you’re resigned to your new life cut tragically short by an insepid, invasive disease. The Big Breast C.

Your heart seems to stop as her expert fingers palpate your breasts in firm, circular motion.  She feels and feels, then finally…finally…

I think I’m okay.

Jubilation.  It’s a brand new day.

Home and taking a nap, I get up to see who’s knocking on my door and find a package.  The CD-soundtracks of classic Rogers/Hammerstein videos I ordered Saturday afternoon have arrived. 

My Huckleberry Friend

“We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.”

Happy Father’s Day.

Forty years

I can’t remember who, but someone had told me my father was dead.

My mother and brother and sister stood next to me while I bent down to kiss his embalmed cheek below eyes that no longer looked at me. His face felt cold and waxy, like lip balm. He didn’t tell me, “I love you.” He could have been sleeping, but probably not in a suit and tie in a shiny-silver bed of sorts, with brass handles on the sides, embraced by several flower arrangements.

So this is what being dead was all about. He’d only been in the hospital a few days, and our babysitter had spilled a whole gallon of milk on the kitchen floor, and I was whisked away to stay with Aunt Pat and her family, and I had to kiss a bunch of aunts at St. Mary’s Church, which is a dreadful thing to ask of a shy kid, and that’s about all I remember.

Daddy sure was dead all right. I never saw him again.

I was five.

A few months later, Mom packed us up and moved us from Columbus to Marion, Ohio, where she was from, into our new, fatherless home. I don’t remember much about that time, but I remember realizing that people die, even parents, and they up and leave you, and even though it’s not because you were bad or they were bad, they’re not sleeping, they are just dead. And Daddy left us behind because, well, because God needed him in Heaven way more than we needed him on earth, and he will look down on us and keep us from harm, sort of like another guardian angel, which is even better than a daddy, and he will be with me all the time now, even when I’m at school.

When you’re five, you don’t question God or His Infinite Wisdom, and you think that thirty-two is pretty old, that it’s a normal age for dying.

In My Mother’s Room: A Memoir (c) 2006

I remember him taking me shopping for saddle shoes and dropping me off at kindergarten.

I remember him snapping his fingers along with Roger Miller, and no one could whistle better than my father, not even Pat Boone, and even though I wasn’t much older than five, I knew the words and the melodies and always have. Still do.

I remember my tiny hand grasping his thumb, and together, we would walk.

And my most vivid memory of him is also my final memory of him, when I leaned over his open casket and kissed him on his lifeless cheek.

Goodbye.

To me, he is a legend. A myth. Larger than life and forever remembered as a 32-year-old man, married ten years, father of three.  A bad-ass Marine and a member of the first class of the Marion, Ohio branch campus of Ohio State University, who commuted for an hour while working full-time, yet still earned his bachelor’s degree in three-and-a-half years.

I am almost forty-six years old, and I still refer to him as “Daddy.”

Forty years have passed since he was suddenly hospitalized with antibiotic-resistant pneumonia. After my mom died, I rediscovered his autopsy report, medical charts and death certificate, and I was able to finally fit together all the pieces. Layered in between the facts–pneumonia, pulmonary edema and cardiac arrest–was my mother’s heartbreaking tale of waiting helplessly outside his hospital room while doctors performed CPR on him for the third time, except this time, his heart had stopped beating for good.

He left behind several brothers and sisters, a mother who never got over his death, and a wife who grieved him until she died in 2004. 

And then there were his three children, all under the age of eight.

As a child, I believed everyone when they told me, “Your dad was a good man, such a good man that God decided He needed him more than you.” I bought it for a long time, despite many adult decisions I think would have been more wisely chosen had I been advised by a very smart, very loving and older man, my father. So in order to relieve myself of bitterness toward a selfish god, I decided years ago that shit happens, and there’s not a whole lot anyone can do about it, including me.

(Okay, maybe I am still a little bitter.)

It has been difficult to love and commemorate my father, and I struggle with shame and guilt even still.  Yet how do you love someone–miss someone–you barely knew and hardly remember?

But we have our pictures of him,  and if each one says a thousand words, I know I was happy there in Marion and Painesville and Columbus and along the shores of Lake Erie. I was cherished as much as I cherish my own children. And I was loved.  Oh, how we children were loved!

Did I happen to mention he played the harmonica?  I remember that, too.

5/13/36 – 5/31/68

I will always remember you.

The Bivouac of the Dead

The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo’
No more on life’s parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few;
On Fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread;
But Glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

Theodore O’Hara, 1847

Emily Gould…exposing us all?

I admit, I had never heard of Emily Gould until yesterday evening. Alone and bored out of my skull, I perused NPR.org for the second time yesterday in case I’d missed something earlier in the day. Then I stumbled upon this story, which led to reading this (rather lengthy but very well-written) essay, which led to browsing through the now-closed “comments” section of said essay, and I have been thinking about blogging ever since. What motivates people to blog? Are blog-writers “narcissistic?”

Am I narcissistic?

Blog = weblog = we blog, and the majority of NY Times readers (unfairly, I think) blasted Ms. Gould and blogging and bloggers in general, lumping all of us together in some immature attention-whore category, which I don’t think is true for me, but this judgmental typecasting stings nonetheless.

So being a narcissist and all, I can’t stop thinking about my blog…this blog…and my motivation for blogging. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1) Today’s technology allows for easy-to-design blogs using cool tools readily offered by WordPress and Blogger and Live Journal and probably countless others I don’t know about. For me, part of the blogging fun is actually designing one. In the last few years, I’ve probably created more than ten blogs, most of which have I’ve deleted, all of which I created under some fake name in order to maintain some semblance of anonymity. I felt free to write whatever I wanted, which was okay, because I was pretty sure no one read those blogs anyway. Still, I worried someone some day might happen upon my more personal musings and figure out who I was–especially after I succumbed to a regretable lapse in good judgment–so I took them off-line, then destroyed them altogether.

2) In February, 2007, I finished writing a memoir about me and my mom, and this narcissist thinks the final product is some of the best writing I’ve ever crafted. But when I naively set about trying to sell it to a publisher, I quickly realized memoirs are a dime a dozen, and no one, it seems, is willing to even look at In My Mother’s Room: A Memoir because it is written by an unknown.  But blogging about the mundane (Barbies, primroses, a stray mutt) has fulfilled one of my main reasons for updating this blog with new posts: My years-long writer’s block is all but a distant, fading memory, and I think I’m a better writer than I was even a year ago. With this practice comes easily-crafted musings that have been accepted in e-zines and entered into writing competitions. It will even pay me $100 sometime this fall after one of my essays is published in a book series.

3) It fills up some of my alone-time, especially on the weekends when my all-but-flown-from-the-nest children are out busy living their lives.

4) Some current events about which I read (Lori Drew, Margaret Jones, the “Bodies” exhibit, Emily Gould) set the right-side of my brain in motion with thoughts and opinions that are easy to write about but require a vessel to channel said opinions. So I blog, a good thing, I think, a positive thing. I am one of the most opinionated people I’ve ever known, but through the years, I’ve learned to harness my opinions. No one likes to be around an overtly-opinionated person. I don’t like to be around an overtly-opinionated person. But expressing my opinions within the confines of a public blog forces me to think them through and word them oh-so carefully so as not to offend or come off as judgmental. And I pride myself in not being judgmental.

5) I am a writer. An apprentice-writer, if you will. This blog is a carefully-written, finely-tuned vehicle for my creative expression. I can’t–won’t–put just anything out there to be read. Not one post in this blog was written on the fly. Not one word went unscrutinized; not one sentence or paragraph made its way to the final version without careful critique and seemingly endless revision. Exposing my writing on the WWW is risky, but if there’s a chance, no matter how minute, my writing will be read by someone, I will present my most polished prose. Without the internet, I may as well just return to the days of paper, pen, and inexpensive notebook paper, journaling random blather that is neither well-thought-out nor necessarily well-written. The internet avails me the motivation to write, re-write, edit, revise and write some more, and become a better writer in the process.

I am not deluded into thinking my writing is close to being the best out there. But like most artists, I want my work to be exposed. I want my writing to be read. I’m sorry, but I do. Does that make me a narcissist? An attention-whore?  Do I “overshare?” This morning, after thinking about my reaction to the comments section of Emily Gould’s piece in the NY Times, I am wondering.

So today, I will re-read my blog from a critical standpoint, and if I find anything remotely too-personal or potentially inflammatory, I will unpublish it. Because when someone “googles” my name, I want to make sure it is not associated with anything that could hurt anyone, including me, and some things, particularly “over-shared” feelings, should never be exposed. 

Bodies…Banned? The saga continues

I first wrote about “Bodies: The Exhibit” a few months ago.  This morning, I am pleased to read this latest development.

Bill would ban ‘Bodies’ imports

The Cincinnati Enquirer

BY MALIA RULON | MRULON@ENQUIRER.COM

WASHINGTON — Protesters and critics of the Bodies exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center aren’t the only ones who think the preserved human remains on display there could be Chinese prisoners – and shouldn’t be displayed.

Some members of Congress think so, too.

Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri has introduced a bill to prohibit the importation of plastinated human remains. He’s concerned that some of the Chinese people in the exhibit didn’t give permission for their bodies to be on display.

“There are ongoing concerns about China’s human rights policies and a lot of evidence of abuses, and this is particularly troublesome, this idea of plastinated bodies,” Akin said. “The bodies that are used for this should come from people who volunteered.”

Ohio Rep. Bob Latta, one of 20 co-sponsors of the bill, agreed.

“There is some speculation that these bodies could have come from executed individuals,” said Latta, a Republican. “That would be a real travesty if that happened, if there is profit being made on people being executed.”

The show in Cincinnati features 20 human bodies and 250 body parts that have been preserved using a process called polymer preservation, or plastination, with the bodies shown in various poses.

It opened Feb. 1 for a seven-month run and already has sold 150,000 tickets priced at $11 to $23. Akin’s bill does not single out any particular Bodies exhibit or company that performs plastination. It wouldn’t affect any current shows.

Museum spokesman Rodger Pille declined to comment on the legislation, but said in a statement that the Museum Center “stands by the strong educational value of this exhibition.”

“The support from the large number of families and school groups who have visited the exhibit and used it as the unique learning tool it is shows the exhibition’s true public benefit,” the statement said.

Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta, the firm that produced the Cincinnati exhibit has said the specimens on display are unclaimed or unidentified bodies obtained legally from the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in China.

But a story aired on ABC’s “20/20″ reported that the bodies did not come from the university but instead from a private for-profit lab about 30 miles away. The show quoted an anonymous former participant in the black market who said bodies were sold for $200 to $300 each.

Premier has disputed the allegations.

Akin and other members of Congress say the questions are too important to ignore. Their bill would levy fines up to $10,000 for violations of the import ban.

“Can you ever guarantee, without doubt, that people won’t just kill people to sell the bodies to plastinate them?” Akin asked.

Under the bill (H.R. 5677), only bodies donated and plastinated domestically would be legal to display. Akin said this would eliminate concerns about human rights abuses in other countries.

Another show featuring plastinated bodies – Body Worlds: The Original Exhibitions of Real Human Bodies – is put on by Gunther von Hagens, the German who invented the plastination process. Hagens says all his bodies are donated and he no longer works with corpses obtained from China.

The bill has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. No hearings have been scheduled.

 

5/6/2004

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is a n object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.”

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me—not in her. And, just at the moment when someone says, “There, she is gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

And that is dying…

—Henry van Dyke

 

 

 

It seems appropriate I spend your last day with you in your nursing home room. You in your bed, me sitting next to you holding your hand, watching you breathe.

You cannot sleep. You’re restless and writhing, turning from side to side, clutching the bed sheet, squeezing my hand, conscious, awake, seeming to long for the sleep to come and deliver you from this sickening time that is your dying.

I turn the chair away from the TV and toward you where I sit, watching you. I play music, softly, CDs that I hope help you return to happier times. Patsy Cline, Patty Paige, The Platters. A 1953 high school graduate, may you be delivered from the present to the past, and sock hops and drive-in movies, X-Ray training, Daddy, and your folks.

I never knew anyone who adored her parents the way you did. Living saints, they were, and you’d beg anyone to differ with you. You were the youngest of eleven children and the daughter of a stoic German mother and a strong Irish father. You grew up on a dairy farm in a family who actually did okay during the Great Depression. You’d run from your hairbrush-wielding mother or older sisters and let your naturally curly hair tangle into knots while you rode on the tractor with your dad. When you were in high school, you cheered for the Fighting Irish of St. Mary’s in cashmere sweaters, rolled-up jeans and saddle shoes. At night, you were happy spending time with your parents, watching TV and eating popcorn and listening to the stereo from speakers you’d hooked up in the kitchen so your mother could listen to your records, too.

Kelley once said she thinks some of the happiest times in your life were spent with your mom and dad. I think she may be right.

The nursing home is a busy place during the weekday hours. The administrator walks past your door, heels clicking on the tile, all business. Does she know you’re dying? Does she care?

The charge nurse hurries past your door, several times actually. She looks in, we make eye contact, and she smiles at me. She knows you’re dying. I think she cares.

A hospice nurse stops by and offers comfort and support. She feels for your feet under layers of blankets and touches them. I know they’re cold, I’ve been touching them, too.

“Do I need to start calling people?” I ask her.

“Not yet,” she says. “I think you’ve got at least another day or two.”

I tell the nurse you can’t sleep but sure act as if you’d like to, so she calls the pharmacy and leaves us to pick up your new meds: dissolvable Adivan to calm your nerves, liquid morphine to help you sleep.

Nurses’ aides come in throughout the day to change and reposition you. I grab cigarettes from my purse and head outside. It is a beautiful, warm May afternoon, and the sun radiates on my head. It comforts me. I think about how I should quit smoking soon, because I don’t want to die from lung cancer. Then I light another cigarette, take a few quick puffs before stubbing it out on my shoe, wash my hands and return to my place at your death vigil.

You’re thirsty. I awkwardly lift your head off of your pillow and offer you a drink, which you choke back up. For a minute, I’m afraid you’ll choke to death. Then I realize how stupid that is and offer you another drink. Cough. Sputter. Choke.

My own nursing training kicks into gear, and I dilute mouthwash with water and swab out your mouth with a tiny pink sponge on a stick. Your face is flushed and hot, so I moisten a washcloth with cool water and gently wipe your face. I apply balm to your lips and return to my chair.

A chaplain stops by and asks us if we’d like to pray. You close your eyes and stop writhing on your bed long enough to listen to his prayer and receive his blessing.

I gather all the pictures in your room and show them to you. Your mother and father sitting on a chair in their living room, old and married. Your husband, my father, preserved in his youth and good looks, smiling big for the camera. Old snapshots of friends and family, some living, some dead. Do they await you on the “other side?” I know you think they do. For your sake and mine, I hope you’re right.

I bought you a gift the weekend before, hoping to find something special to commemorate this time. I passed up the normal angel-themed gifts and came upon a snow globe. Contained within is a lighthouse atop a great cliff made up entirely of rock and surrounded by a cabin and flying seagulls. It reminded me of our summer trips to Geneva-on-the-Lake, and when I wound it and it played its quiet rendition of “Spanish Ladies,” I hoped it would return you to the cottage by Lake Erie, too.

Throughout the day, you rarely stop moving in your bed, and I’m afraid you’re in pain, and I’m pretty sure you’re scared. Sometimes you look at me, sometimes you look through me.

It is time to be honest with you, and I close your door. It’s okay, Mama. When you see the light or whatever the hell you see, you need to go to it. Daddy’s waiting for you, and your mom and dad, too. And Jesus and His Blessed Mother and God. So you just go on, I’ll be okay, we’ll all be okay. You’ve done a great job, Mom, I’m so very glad you’re my mom, and I’m so sorry for hurting you, and I’ll always love you and I’ll never forget you, and I’ll be okay, so it’s okay, you can go.

When I’m finished, I look back at you and notice a single tear streaming down your face.

The hospice nurse returns a few hours later. “You’re doing a good job in here,” she tells me. “How would you like to come work for us?”

I appreciate what she says. I had felt as if I were floundering all day, not sure what to do, messing up this whole death and dying thing.

She evaluates you quickly. “I think you should start calling people now.”

She gives you dissolvable Adivan under your tongue. I think it relaxes you, for you yawn and yawn. Forty-five minutes later, an LPN gives you enough morphine to sleep but not render you comatose. I’m glad for that. I want you to know you’re not dying alone.

Kelley arrives, and you’re sleeping, so I take my leave for a few hours. I plan on coming back soon, but Wes can’t find anyone to work for him, and nobody can watch the kids, and I cannot leave them home alone, not tonight.

“I’ll call you if anything changes,” Kelley tells me.

I’m confident I will return to your bedside in time for your death.

I fall asleep on our couch. Around 12:30 a.m., I’m awakened by a chill in the air, a breeze where there is none. Should I call Kelley? I wasn’t quite sure what was going on if anything, so I convinced myself it wasn’t supernatural in nature and fell back asleep.

I doze off again, and about a half-hour later, a strong, sweet odor fills my nostrils, and I wake up. I search for and sniff every candle in my house, because that’s what it reminds me of, but none is so sweet and strong as what I smell in my house. I pick up the phone, but put it back down.

Several minutes later, my phone rings. “Mom just took a fish-out-of-water breath,” Kelley tells me. “Is Wes home yet? Do you want me to come get you?”

I know there will be no time for a 15-minute round trip, but I don’t tell my sister that. “No, maybe you’d better get the nurse.”

I call Wes home.

And I wait in the kitchen. I pray. I cry. I smoke. I go outside and look up toward the sky. “Don’t worry about me, Mom. Just go. It’s okay. I’ll be okay. Just go.”

Right before Wes pulls in the driveway, Kelley phones me. She doesn’t need to tell me. For a time, we just cry. Then, “Right before she died,” Kelley says, “I picked her up and held her tight, and I know it sounds weird and new age, but I swear, I felt her life force go through my body when she died.”

I am filled with indescribeable joy. When I finally make my way to the nursing home, I find Kelley in the chapel, and together, we walk to your room. I look at your body, and I know what you’re thinking–for the first time in months and months, I know what you’re thinking–and I look up toward the ceiling, and I affirm how stupid it is for me to sit and stare at your body when you’re no longer in there.

I notice a quarter-sized wet spot on your nightgown and ask Kelley what it is. “Oh, I was crying,” she says. “That must be from my tears.”

We all return to my house, drink beer and talk. Wes mentions he, too, smelled something beautiful in the restaurant parking lot as he got into his car to come home from work, and it definitely wasn’t pizza.

And just as suddenly as it filled my soul, the joy I’d been feeling leaves me.

It took me a long time to realize it was okay that I wasn’t with you when you died. At first I was a little angry at a god who denied me the privilege of being with you when you took your last breath. But maybe you didn’t want me there, or maybe you knew I couldn’t be there. As it was, you died in the arms of an angel, my baby sister, Kelley, and she held you tight. That “happy death” you’d always asked us to pray for on your behalf? I don’t think your death could have been any happier, Mom.

Wes once told me he thinks you were finally visiting me in my room after a year and a half of my visiting you in yours. You were being my mom again, caring for your Janemarie.

Whether or not he’s right, I like to think he is. Still, I know for a fact that I felt your love during that early-morning time before you died, that unconditional love that sustained me my whole life.

In the end, that mother-love is all that ever mattered.

In My Mother’s Room:  A Memoir, (c) 2007