tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13208588624392961812023-11-16T06:41:58.776-05:00The Mellowsky SpewUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger284125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-11688028262654934522015-01-06T14:22:00.000-05:002015-01-06T14:28:24.260-05:00New Digs!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/H8OxKx6zKkQ?rel=0&showinfo=0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Much like my real life relocation from New Hampshire to my late parents' home in Rhode Island, I moved this blog without acknowledging to myself or anybody else that it had really happened. New posts can be found at <a href="http://www.lolamellowsky.com/">www.lolamellowsky.com</a>! There's such thing as <a href="http://www.lolamellowsky.com/">www.lolamellowsky.com</a> now! <br />
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Holla!<br />
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<a href="http://www.lolamellowsky.com/">www.lolamellowsky.com</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-6267447994502673702014-11-23T10:10:00.003-05:002014-11-23T10:10:23.914-05:00The Daily Grateful<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-80034913255753934492014-11-14T12:18:00.000-05:002014-11-14T12:24:37.528-05:00Still Halloween around these parts<br />
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<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m confused lately about what year we're in. This is typically a January/February problem, not a November one. Though the struggle is whether it’s 2014 or 2015 so at least I’m rounding to the correct wrong year. I think this says a lot about what I think about 2014 and also probably something about how irrelevant a concept time has become since my mom died. But </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">instead of making it a big, lofty whoop</span><span style="font-size: large;"> and giving myself shit for not being present, I’m going to pretend Halloween is still newsworthy. Two weeks ago is pretty much the present moment anyway.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">If ebola can make a comeback then I can still post about Halloween.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dan and I went all out—entirely for our own benefit. There were three small handfuls of kids who came trick-or-treating before 6pm and then not a one. So basically we, the childless couple on the corner, looked a little fucking nuts and a little fucking sad. It left me feeling strangely disappointed and because I couldn’t recognize that or get in touch with what I was feeling, I picked a fight. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Not my most reasonable moment. But it's in the past.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large; text-align: left;">Look how fun we made it! (There was a flashing light in the window!) </span><span style="font-size: large; text-align: left;">(We really looked crazy!)</span></div>
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</span> <span style="font-size: large;">The problem now is that we don't feel like putting anything away.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">They look so orphaned. (Note the leaf issue...)</span></td></tr>
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</span> <span style="font-size: large;">Plus, Dan is still so impressed with his dummy.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">My dad would be so proud.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have a feeling it will be rocking a Christmas hat soon.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">And prouder still.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I smell a Spew mascot</span>.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-60600834638878156082014-11-12T15:58:00.000-05:002014-11-12T16:28:30.886-05:00Futile Tool<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You guys, I need a leaf blower manufacturer to sponsor my blog. I’ll start every entry with a clip of me saying, “Brought to you by Futile Tools. When you want to make a lot of noise and get nowhere, do it right with Futile Tools.”</div>
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Who are the leading names in leaf blowers anyway? Whoever you are, I love you. I don’t think you have a futile product. I think <i>mine</i>—the leaf blower I currently have—is a futile tool. So maybe you should give me one of yours (preferably one with a vacuum attachment) and if it makes me a happier person than mine does (which I’m sure it will; did I mention mine is a plug-in?), then I will write delightful things about it. And who doesn’t want delightful things written about their shit? I think I just invented advertising. (Or selling out.)</div>
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Also, dear leaf blower manufacture/supplier, I promise I won’t say shit again. Or make any blowjob jokes, though it’s so temping. You’ll note that I haven’t made even one blowjob joke and I’m already multiple sentences into this shit.</div>
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I’ll be a model spokesperson.</div>
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Does John Deer make blowers? One I can ride on? If nobody has invented the ride-on blower, they should either invent that (because oh my gawd, what fun!) or hire me to keep giving them fantastic ideas. It would need to have a vacuum though so it would feel like Pac-Man and not like I’m in a snow globe of blowing leaves that might cut open my eyeball. Do they make ride-on lawnmowers with vacuums that eat the leaves? This is a thing already, isn’t it? I didn’t just invent a Leaf Pac-Man Machine, did I? How sad for me.</div>
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But I think I did highlight why I need corporate leaf blower, lawn mower or home care sponsorship. I don’t even know what tools are out there! I can write about anything with extreme enthusiasm and utter naïveté!</div>
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Sample ad <i>disguised</i> as just anotha post: “Ham-mer. Whoa. Readers, put your rocks on a stick away and get yourself one of these things stat! No more rocking in those fussy screws!”</div>
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It’s like having someone who is dying of thirst discover Poland Spring and then hawk it! "This clear stuff is amazing. It <em>literally</em> saved my life!" (Poland Spring People, let’s talk.)</div>
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I would absolutely fawn over on a functioning leaf blower. FAWN! Because one that doesn’t function—one that blows the leaves the opposite, eye-ball cutting way, because the air bazooka doesn’t work properly—really makes you appreciate the good leaf blowers in life…even when you don’t have one yet.</div>
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There are more leaves every day, you guys. Every day! More! There are leaves covering the driveway, leaves on the lawn, leaves in the gardens, the gutters, on the porch, on the steps to the mailbox. I love raking. (Rake Makers—who <i>makes</i> this shit?—you hear me?) But I just need to know the truth: am I supposed to do nothing but rake for the entire fall? Is this what home owning is actually about? Am I supposed to rake for <i>many, many </i>hours, <i>many, many</i> times a week or else feel guilt for being the one whose leaves are blowing into everyone else’s clean-as-a whistle-and-still-somehow-green lawns? Just be straight with me. Is endless raking just a part of tending to a home that nobody ever talks about because it’s so painful? Like “ripping” during childbirth. (I haven’t had a baby but <i>I know about ripping</i>. Also, I have a friend who described labor to me as being stabbed in the stomach and electrocuted at the same time. She is one of my favorite people. And also the reason I employ 17 forms of birth control when using public toilets.)</div>
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Leaf Blower People, I’m talking to you! (To clarify, I’m talking to potential sponsors. Not you, Leaf Blowing Enthusiasts. We’ll have our day, LBEs, as soon as LBPs hook a sister up.) Leaf Blower People, hook a sister up! If you send it same-day shipping, I’ll tell people! I’ll tell and you’ll seem so nice!</div>
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Plus, you’ll help preserve my self-esteem. I used to love falling leaves and now I look at them as daunting tree petals of failure. And why do I not remember my parents cleaning up all these leaves? Other than my dad doing the driveway before it rained (per my mom’s request; a neuroses I have inherited—gawd forbid those driveway leaves get wet and tracked through the house), I can’t remember much in the way of leaf control. It’s not like my parents were out there all fall blowing and raking and sweeping all these leaves. Or were they? Was I just deaf to the sound of futile tools?</div>
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Is this just another of many awakenings I’ve had and will continue to have as I live in this house that they took care of for all those years? Things were happening all around me—leaves fell, piles were amassed and managed—and I never even noticed.</div>
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Kind of makes me feel like a futile tool.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-80877531851224011572014-09-09T20:07:00.001-04:002014-11-12T16:23:19.031-05:00Dark, no moon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAGmb5VGMdUQQS-wPbIpcI8MMgM1ulHj5UjbFHlGnD_AhOP5KnpX4iUdzsshfwt98Ma4CklTaHSohIOBKq9nSVnnsdiJctgNTGBHdwdCgPouqErunLeDEIUu-RMAlXEfyF6baHWRaQa28W/s1600/IMG_2046.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAGmb5VGMdUQQS-wPbIpcI8MMgM1ulHj5UjbFHlGnD_AhOP5KnpX4iUdzsshfwt98Ma4CklTaHSohIOBKq9nSVnnsdiJctgNTGBHdwdCgPouqErunLeDEIUu-RMAlXEfyF6baHWRaQa28W/s640/IMG_2046.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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I am looking up at the house from the bottom of the yard. It's dark, no moon. The house is bright. My mom was in her room. I was bringing her meds, food, climbing onto the bed next to her and hugging her. She wore her white nightgown. So soft.<br />
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In the casket, in her sweater, her arm still felt like her arm. I remember telling Cherie this, she was afraid. I put my face into the casket, to my mama's arm and I nuzzled her for the last time. Her arm felt like her arm!<br />
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It's dark, no moon.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-9865006370845483892014-02-01T10:15:00.003-05:002014-02-01T10:32:58.077-05:00The good people… (Thanks, Pete Seeger.)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig2WPjs_YYCtnl6EaIBkW2dRB6SyF5RbGr-K7osBtAN4-9hrmxT524cJ0xCMFpilbStfx5OyInqILKS2eqt_4pDpr1EaUA-4SZw9tz51X2Dl0QTD8m5ffs3j2y-2IJcEc-d086L1JjwfvZ/s1600/IMG_2730.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig2WPjs_YYCtnl6EaIBkW2dRB6SyF5RbGr-K7osBtAN4-9hrmxT524cJ0xCMFpilbStfx5OyInqILKS2eqt_4pDpr1EaUA-4SZw9tz51X2Dl0QTD8m5ffs3j2y-2IJcEc-d086L1JjwfvZ/s1600/IMG_2730.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>"Pete Seeger once said, 'I'm not sure my participation in a benefit cause, march, or demonstration has been effective, but I can tell you one thing, being involved in these kinds of issues means that you're involved with the good people with the live hearts, live eyes, and live heads.'" -Harry Chapin </i></span><br />
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Pete Seeger died on Monday. When I read it on my Facebook feed the next morning in bed,
my sunken “Oh…” caused Dan to roll over and ask what happened. My sadness was for him, my
sweet Pete Seeger-loving husband.</div>
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I searched for the gentlest way to say it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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“What?” he asked again, some urgency to his voice now. </div>
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A similar thing happened six months ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gasped and Dan had said, “Pete
Seeger?”</div>
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I’d shaken my head---“No, bud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s Toshi.”</div>
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This time it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i>
Pete Seeger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Dan and I lay in
bed a little longer hugging because of it.</div>
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I didn’t really know my husband until he brought me to Pete
Seeger’s 90<sup>th</sup> birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in
2009.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d been together eight
years by then.</div>
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My husband is a shy man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s not just introverted, although he’s that as
well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I heard a writer say once
that she sits inside all day writing alone, occasionally looking out at her
husband who works their farm all day alone, and understands that they need the
same things in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this way,
they are together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
way, Dan and I are together. </div>
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But when we do venture out to be around others, he is shyer
than I am.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a trait that has
caused me some frustration over the years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More than once I’ve had to wait for him to drink enough wine
in order to dance with me at a wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When a waiter comes to our table, h/she often directs all questions my
way due to Dan’s deference to me (which often takes the form of a lack of eye
contact).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is not rude or
remotely unkind, my husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is
shy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though there have been times
when his shyness has felt to me like withdrawal from the world, cynicism even,
and it troubled me. (I’ll also mention here that he is the funniest person I
know…and almost everyone I know is funny.)</div>
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I remember warning my sisters and friends that they wouldn’t
really have a sense of Dan until the third or fourth time they were around
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Apparently, it took me eight years.</div>
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I knew long before that concert that Dan was not just a fan
of Pete Seeger’s music, but that he had also been moved powerfully by what Pete
Seeger had done with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What Pete
Seeger had used his banjo to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I can’t pretend I got it, especially at first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dan would play “Beans in My Ears” and
“Rye Whiskey” on long car rides and I’d beg him to “Please turn off the
friggin’ Raffi!”</div>
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He’d say, “Do you hear how he’s saying Alby Jay?” and
explain how Seeger was singing about Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) not listening to
anti-war protestors and I was like, “That’s awesome, now can we please listen
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> music?” and then I’d put on Ani
DiFranco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I was 20 (when we started dating) and didn’t know that
because of Pete Seeger there was Ani DiFranco. I’ve never considered myself
sophisticated or even knowledgeable about music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To a desert island I’d bring a Jackson Five best-of and the
soundtrack to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Chorus Line</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite my poor taste, I can listen to
and enjoy almost anything. </div>
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But when Dan first introduced me to Pete Seeger, I didn’t
get it. I didn’t get the sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
wasn’t the case with all folk music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ani’s ferocious striking of her guitar strings had been helping me work through anger since I was a teenager.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The sound of Joni Mitchell's voice had helped me figure out what was below that anger.</div>
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“Good Night, Irene”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nothing. </div>
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But Pete Seeger meant something to Dan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we talked about our funerals, he
told me he wanted “Well May The World Go” played at his.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I tried to understand.</div>
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He told me how
Pete cleaned up the Hudson River.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>How he’d been blacklisted and the FBI kept a file on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How he still stood on street corners in
upstate New York where he lived holding anti-war signs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still preferred listening to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sound of Music </i>soundtrack<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(movie version of course), but I loved
how much Dan loved Pete Seeger.</div>
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I loved how much he loved teaching me about the
music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told me about Lead Belly
and The Weavers and Woody Guthrie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I asked which songs Pete wrote, which ones he sang, trying to get the
facts straight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Dan told me
about<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Turn, Turn, Turn” (“From
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forrest Gump</i> soundtrack?” I
asked) but then explained that it wasn’t just about who wrote what song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That folk singers, Pete Seeger
especially, just wanted the music to be played or sung, ideally in the company
of plenty of others who would leave their mark or verse on a piece of
music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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By then I understood that Pete Seeger was what real heroes
are made of and I loved Dan for having such a worthy one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Christmas I surprised him with a banjo
and Pete Seeger’s instructional book on how to play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the car, Dan would take my hand to his heart after I’d
surprise him by chiming in with an “English is Kuh-ray-zee” or sing about how
“my get up and go has got up and went.”</div>
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I had warmed to it, but I still didn’t understand how Pete
Seeger’s music--how the happy sound of a banjo--had been such a powerful
tool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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That is, until Pete Seeger’s 90<sup>th</sup> birthday
concert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is when I got
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I saw my husband--my shy
Dan, whose hands I’ve had to hold around my waist in order to keep him from
escaping a hug he’d felt I’d held too long in public--not just clapping, not just
dancing, but singing along <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loudly </i>to
the songs performed by Pete Seeger and the 51 other musicians who played that
night. Dan’s eyes were like a child’s when Pete Seeger came out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was in my seat watching the stage when
I turned and saw that my Dan was already up on his feet singing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked around, wanting to say to
someone, “Are you seeing this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
doesn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> this.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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But of course everyone was doing it. These were Pete’s
instructions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That we stand up,
that we sing along, harmonize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That we participate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Dan barely sat during the whole four and a half hour
concert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He pointed everyone out
to me, my education continuing. “That’s Arlo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s Joan Baez.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s Richie Havens---he opened Woodstock.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My angry (well, “Not Angry Anymore”) Ani
DiFranco sang “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” with Kris Kristofferson. And I saw
that the night wasn’t about any one musician’s performance--not even Pete
Seeger’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he</i>--was about the music and the
message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While perhaps not a
sloop, something incredible was built by all the voices that came together
during that concert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I finally
understood Pete Seeger’s power.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Prior to this, I had struggled to reconcile Pete Seeger’s
kind voice and demeanor, the merry sound of his banjo, with the sort of subversive
reputation Dan told me he had earned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But that night I understood that it wasn’t just the lyrics and subjects
of the songs he sang that had gained him that reputation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His music brought people together and
said it was okay—essential--to hope and reach for change and justice. Pete
Seeger was dangerous because he believed in people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strap a banjo around his neck, and this belief spread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw it happen all around me that
night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I saw that my Dan’s shyness was protecting--or maybe
just disguising--his own dangerous, hopeful heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The man singing beside me was no cynic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned that for certain that night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He believes in a kind of hope that many
are too scared to let themselves feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He believes in people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
shy and he’s as brave as they get.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I told Dan about Pete dying, he was stunned, numb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think he thought at first that I was
going to tell him that something had happened to Katie and so the loss of his
hero, which is of course different than the worsening illness of a family member
who lives downstairs, seemed a momentary relief of sorts. And then as Pete Seeger music played
through the house for the rest of the day, the sad reality hit my Dan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He didn’t take the day to be alone
though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead he made an apple
crisp for our family, a turkey sandwich for my niece’s lunchbox.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Throughout much of our relationship, Dan had talked about
wanting to write Pete Seeger a letter--a thank you--but he hadn’t let himself
do it and was worried he would miss his chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For his birthday a couple of years ago I went to a print
shop and had a pad of stationary made up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Around the border ran the words “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces
it Surrender”--the same words that circled Pete Seeger’s banjo. I set the paper
at his desk with a pen and a stamped envelope addressed to a P.O. Box for Pete
Seeger I had found online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dan
sent Pete Seeger his thank you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is mine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have heroes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dan is one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe
he could change the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he
does it every day.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Thank you, Pete Seeger, for showing me that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-46487492196329866952014-01-27T15:03:00.000-05:002014-01-27T15:03:25.523-05:00We finally took our Christmas tree down.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTM11oSa5r81umQPIS-RtyK-FY6Tr1rXPDowgO-agBLm174SsBPCeFDU1GOIAAGJrokzqIbKTPxiH3XBxRTpEnBOFxpuAu7wzeEt5lWsxO3Spz0ZDQKJ4K0op3a3JhbMEWXIAFUvnZICPV/s1600/letter+from+Santa+-+Version+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTM11oSa5r81umQPIS-RtyK-FY6Tr1rXPDowgO-agBLm174SsBPCeFDU1GOIAAGJrokzqIbKTPxiH3XBxRTpEnBOFxpuAu7wzeEt5lWsxO3Spz0ZDQKJ4K0op3a3JhbMEWXIAFUvnZICPV/s400/letter+from+Santa+-+Version+2.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Dan was here.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
When I first started this entry, it began with the admission that the tree was still up, that it might stay up through March or even later because I was passed the point of feeling bad or even embarrassed about it.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I am working hard to figure out what truly deserves priority in life right now, and as a pretty plastic tree loitering in the living room hardly seems threatening, packing it away slid down the list.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">The only reason the job crept back up---and eventually got done---is because I wanted to make room for some of the toys Sav and Eva received for Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">The girls are up there on the priority list.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">So too is not breaking an ankle on the wood handle of a motherfucking toy duck lying in the middle of the room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">So we finally undecorated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">With the tree down and their sheets clean, the house was ready for Katie, Gary and the kiddos, who just spent 10 days up at Bec’s house in NH, to return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">Return <i>home</i>. At first I wrote that the house was ready for them to return <i>home.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">It’s how I feel but I was shy to write it…to impose it on them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">Home is a concept that every one of us living in this house is uncertain of right now. Sometimes I say to Dan, “I want to go home,” and he knows I’m talking about the Exeter, NH apartment where we lived for the last seven years---the first seven years of our marriage, the final seven of my 12 years in NH. He knows when I say it that I am longing for the protection and safety of the smallness of our life there. It was sanctuary and cave. Home is where you hide?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">But of course I am <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">home</i> now in RI. I don’t mean that this where we live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although true, I don’t entirely feel that we actually live here yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I am back in the town where I grew up. In the very house. I am home in that way. In that “you can never go home again” way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .25in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">Though, especially with Katie here, it does sometimes feel like we both somehow did go home again. Like when we let each other know when one of us is going to shower so that neither of us suffers the cold water that results when both the upstairs and downstairs showers are in use. We’re more polite about it now, but as kids we employed a similar system known as, “I call first shower!” (As the youngest of my sisters, it would have only ever been with Katie, arguably the most benevolent of my four overlords, that I would have ever even <i>tried</i> calling first shower with any expectation of it being honored.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">If <i>home is where you heart is</i>, I’m there. Though there have been times when Dan’s three days a week working in NH (the other days he works from here…from <i>home</i>) had me feeling like my home is doing so much driving---and both of us are so tired---that we can’t settle in to each other the way we used to. Fortunately, we’ve found our way home to each other more lately.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">And of course, if <i>home is where your mom is</i>, I’m as there as I’ll ever again get to be. This feels especially so when I’m sitting at her spot at the kitchen table or outside among her flowers where she planted her seeds and hands and self into the earth. This is a far more positive outlook than what “home is where your mom is” used to evoke in me, which was a heavy acceptance that I’d never again be home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I’ll also add that having released my dad’s ashes into the river here, a sense of him--- steady as the current that I imagine lapping him gently back to our shore each day---contributes to an earthly, almost tribal sense of home at this spot on the northwestern bank of the Sakonnet River. Though, as far as I know, there is no proverb that says, Home Is Where Your Release Your Dad’s Biodegradable Ash Package.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(But if my dad were here, he’d put that on a sign for me to hang in the kitchen.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">When we all got back to the house after spending almost a week in Boston during Katie’s surgery and recovery, Gary said it felt good to be home and then asked if I minded him saying that. I didn’t. I’m glad that’s how it feels. It, being the house, I thought then. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">But then Katie called me from NH when Sav, who was having a great time up there, announced out of the blue that she was feeling homesick. Katie said she asked Sav what she was feeling, wondering if she’d mention Ohio or her bedroom here in RI.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wondering what “homesick” means to a four-year-old who has lived quite a few places in her short life with all the travel they’ve had to do during my parents’ illnesses and now her mom’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">“I miss Lola and Dan,” she told Katie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">We were homesick for them too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">(Though, let’s be real, the break was nice. I’m sure Katie and Gary would say the same.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> I woke up the morning they were to return so excited to see them. I wanted Sav to come up to my room and sit on my bed and pepper me with questions until she stumped me. <i>Why can’t little girls be mommies yet? Why are you an auntie and not a mommy? Why does mommy have cancer in her belly?</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I wanted to see Eva shaking her little diapered butt to the <i>Super Why</i> theme song in the morning and (dare I say good morning to her) to then point her finger at me and say “NO!” (I look forward to Eva being old enough for a morning cup of coffee.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I missed them. I loved the break and needed it to recover, but I missed them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">As we put the Christmas decorations away, Dan pushed the little red button on the foot and a half tall singing Bing Crosby doll that we bought years ago and said,“It’s his last song of the season.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I remembered how when we brought it out at the beginning of December, Sav and Eva kept pushing the button until they’d hear the horns start for Bing’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and then dance around him until the song stopped and it was time to push the button again. Then they wanted us to play more Christmas music and Sav said to Dan, “Will you dance with me like we’re married?” As Katie and Gary caught a rare moment alone in another room, we played one of Eva’s favorites songs, a song Katie sings to her at bedtime. And with her little head on my shoulder and Sav’s on Dan’s, the four of us slow danced in the living room by light of the tree to Silent Night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I had almost forgotten that night. I had almost forgotten that the holidays had even happened. The weeks leading up to Katie’s surgery on January 3 were a terrifying blur of trips to the ER, Katie losing her ability to walk, fighting for appointments, and the growing possibility that she might not make it to surgery. Then once it was a go, it was a blur of last-minute scans, blood tests and arranging. Then it was surgery and lack of pain control during recovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually she was walking again and then finally discharged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">As is my style, I waited until the worst of it was over---Katie was through surgery--- and promptly got so sick that I bruised, possibly fractured, my ribs from over two weeks of hard, unrelenting coughing. The cough and rib pain (the latter of which is still with me) coupled with the mess of a post-holidays house had me wondering why we’d even bothered to decorate this year. (It’s true that I hate holiday clean-up and have this thought every year, but this year it was especially bad.) And then Dan pushed Bing’s button and I remembered not just that night of dancing with the girls, but all the other sweet moments and gifts that came with having these guys here over the holidays. Dan had as much fun hiding that Elf on the Shelf as Savvy did finding it. (That little guy hung from ceilings, stared down at Sav from atop the toilet paper roll and at one point found himself trapped inside a lidded glass jar, though only the adults knew that the little sign taped to his hands said, “HELP!”) And there were so many “Why is Eva quiet?” panics that ended with us finding her playing with the straw dolls and little ceramic carolers I’d set up in a wintry scene beneath the tree. While I did discover quite a few headless townspeople---“Something happened in that village,” Dan said, his voice faking a quiver---finding Eva playing there was particularly gratifying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">When I’d first put up the tree, Katie had told me that one of her clearest and favorite holiday memories from childhood was playing with the scene my mom put up each year beneath the tree. She told me how she remembered playing with those straw dolls---some of the same ones I’d just positioned to be sledding or crossing the bridge over the frozen pond---and having an awareness of her own happiness, a sense of the warmth of the house and our family inside it…a sense of home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">That's when I told Gary, after he’d expressed some concern, not to worry about Eva breaking anything.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">"It's meant to be played with," I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">I always wonder how Sav and Eva will remember this time. What images and emotions will be etched on their brains to be pieced together later. I am hopeful that if not the dancing or playing by the light of the tree, that there might be some memory of a sense of home. A home---if not the house, then to Dan’s and my heart---where they will know they can always return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">And should they forget, perhaps I’ll show them the decapitated villagers to trigger their happy memories…</span><br />
<br />
Or make a sign for their kitchen: Home is where they’re headless.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-84557623328414157682013-09-30T10:00:00.000-04:002013-10-01T06:58:16.150-04:00Not much here. What's new with you?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The other night my sister Katie’s little girls watched the moon rise over the river.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Mooooon!” said Eva, who’s two, to four-year-old Savannah.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The two of them stood against the deck railing, their backs and heads of blond curls to the house and all of us, watching the moon together.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Isn’t it such a beautiful night?” Sav asked Eva.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Mooooon!” she said again.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sisters.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Before this, Katie had told me to come and look at the moon too.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Lately, we’ve also been catching sunrises.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Red sky,” Eva will say when she sits with us in those earliest hours before the sun is up.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then, once it pops and and the gold light streaming in is so fierce it makes us squint, we close the curtains so Katie can get some sleep on the couch. She likes sleeping on the couch, just like my mom did. She finds more comfort on her side. Same as my mom. Same couch even, in my parents’ family room. The house didn’t sell and Dan and I are living here now, along with Katie, her husband Gary and her girls.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Katie has cancer.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I should have said that first. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But I didn’t want to say it, the same way I didn’t want to know it. Until the biopsy results told us that it was indeed ovarian cancer, I still half-expected to hear it was a rare parasite that had bedazzled her liver and pelvic cavity. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The cancer is what I’m here to tell you though. That Katie, middle of our five, only blond, the kid who hung with the lizards on family vacations, beautiful absent-minded genius, has cancer. This is the blog entry where I tell you of this absurdity. How after my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer and died nine months later, and then my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died a year after that, now my sister has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, stage IIIC. She missed stage IV because it’s <i>on</i> her liver, not <i>in</i> it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I miss the good ol’ days when just my parents were dead. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When my dad was brain damaged after his surgery, that joke was “the good ol’ days when just mom was dead.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In July, Katie and her family came from Ohio to visit and do some house-hunting between NH and RI. In August, Katie went to the ER because she felt a pain in her liver that was getting worse. Since then it’s been a blur of scans and blood tests and biopsies. It’s been watching my sister get sick, her abdomen swell so much and so suddenly, that the pants that buttoned around her small waist one night, couldn’t even be zipped by morning. It’s been watching her get so tired that her eyes roll shut in a room full of chaos, opening only briefly when Eva, disapproving of mommy’s naps, screams in her face. It’s been seeing her in so much pain that she could only pace the room because sitting offered no comfort. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But there are also those sunrises. The talks we haven’t had time for in years. Magic afternoons where I watched Katie decorate for Halloween with her girls. (We took a minute that day to hug and cry in my mom’s kitchen, both of us knowing that she was decorating early because she might be too weak by Halloween). Plenty of laughs. In the beginning we talked to Katie’s tumors as if they were her pregnant belly. “How are those wittle masses today?” I’m thinking of playing Mozart for them so that they’re musically inclined when they finally come out.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They are coming out, just not as soon as we’d hoped. We don’t do simple, removable “lumps” in this family apparently; it’s on her ovaries, uterus, diaphragm, omentum, <i>on the liver but not in it</i>. Because it’s a fast-growing cancer that’s already spread, the surgeon said he didn’t want to put her through a massive surgery---hysterectomy, any cancered-up organs out---without having the best chance of getting a ton of it out. So the plan is three to four months of chemo (Katie hits the bar every Wednesday) to shrink the cancer followed by the surgery.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“In time for Christmas,” Katie said. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Maybe they’ll play <i>Jingle Bell Rock </i>in the OR.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They call the surgery “debulking.” At the end, Katie’s insides won’t be quite so debulky. They say this particular cancer grows like moss over the outside of the organs, so they’ll remove what they have to and scrape it off where they can. If all goes well with chemo and surgery---which it mother-fucking will---Katie will then have nine more weeks of chemo. Though then it will be injected directly into her abdomen, like they’re spraying weed killer.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There’s nothing to do but make cancer jokes at this point. We call it “the cansa.” My sister Cherie cracks us all up with a bit she does where she pretends she’s an old complaining biddy at the grocery store.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> “Yeah, Katie’s got the cansa now. First my mom, gawd rest her soul. Then my dad with the brain. Now Katie with the cansa too. We can’t get a break. Now can I get that cheese sliced extra thin, sweetie?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We all cry laughing whenever she does it. The bit was born when my mom was sick (little did Cherie know how much material she’d have to work with) and my mom would laugh and laugh until she coughed. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We all feel bad when we have to tell you guys about Katie. It feels like we’re playing a joke on you or something. You (lovely you) ask us how we’re doing---in a particularly gentle way that means “without your dead parents”---and then we have to explain about Katie. (Wouldn’t it be weirder if we didn’t? I tried that and it seemed worse to not say.) Sometimes when I say the words, “Yeah, um, my sister was actually just diagnosed with cancer,” I have to fight back a giggle because I can’t believe I’m saying those words and I’m so uncomfortable with making you uncomfortable. I recognize giggling is the most inappropriate response ever. Please forgive me. I don’t think it’s funny that my sister has ovarian cancer. I just feel like I’m an actor and someone is filming us for candid camera. It just surely can’t be real, this scenario where I’m telling someone, who I probably haven’t seen since my dad’s funeral (and before that, my mom’s) that now my sister has cancer too.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She’s 37 by the way.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ovarian cancer usually occurs in menopausal or post-menopausal women. It’s why when the surgeon first saw Katie (who was less symptomatic at the start) and had only seen an ultrasound (not the MRI, CT or biopsy that followed), he said, “I don’t think it’s cancer. You’re gonna to be fine. You need me to say it again? You’re gonna be fine.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s a line we revisit for laughs. I’ll take Savannah’s alligator hand puppet and chomp its jaws in Katie’s face, “You need me to say it again? You’re gonna be fine.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Which of course she is. Because that’s the way this story ends. As Katie says, there’s no other choice. No other way for this to go. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“My girls need me,” she says.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So there it is. Her mind is made up.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And while the extent of Katie’s pain and fatigue and swelling was terrifying just in how fast it came on, there have been improvements since last week. Much of the swelling has gone down. Her pants fit again. They’ve been able to manage her pain with meds. The steroid they give her with chemo helps her keep an appetite and gives her a couple of days of reprieve from the fatigue that the cancer, chemo and pain meds bring on. She looks and feels better than she did a couple of weeks ago. We’ve decided that it means the chemo is working. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She also had a blood transfusion which seems to have helped the fatigue some and should also alleviate the shortness of breath. Katie goes to a lab for blood work every Monday to make sure she’s healthy enough for chemo. Last week the oncologist’s office called less than an hour after the draw because her hemoglobin levels were dangerously low and they wanted her to get the transfusion as soon as possible. Hemoglobin is a molecule in your blood cells that contains iron and carries oxygen. They think her anemia is something that was going on before the cancer or the chemo, though both make it worse. So last Tuesday they hooked her up to a packet of blood and I picked up margherita pizza with garlic from Fellini’s and we ate good, Providence pizza while a line of red blood ran down the hose and into her vein. Her hemoglobin is still low though, so this week they’ll give her iron through an IV. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s going to be a big week. The iron infusion is Thursday. On Wednesday, I’ll be bringing Katie to the hospital at 5:30am so she can have a port implanted. The port will sit under her skin near her collarbone and connect via a catheter to a vein in her chest. They’ll deliver her chemo this way, which will mean less needle sticks for the six to nine weeks she has left of neoadjuvant (pre-surgery) chemo. After the port procedure Wednesday morning, she’ll head over for her regularly scheduled chemo.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today she’ll do her blood work and we’ll meet with the oncologist. They won’t do any CAT Scans until she’s further into treatment so we can’t know for sure if the chemo is working (it is) or the tumors are shrinking (they are) until then. There is a blood test they can do that might give some insight into whether or not the cancer is getting beaten back, but it’s hard to know if it would be an accurate marker this early into treatment. More important though, Katie doesn’t want to hear the results of this blood test if it’s anything less than great news. She doesn’t want to hear anything that could discourage her or take her from her current mindset that the chemo is working and she is kicking her cancer’s ass.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She told me I can find out but have to keep a poker face about it. I’m not sure I can do it. And I’m not sure I want to know either. It’s one test and it’s only been three weeks of chemo. As much as we all crave certainties and facts and proof during times like this, they are illusions. Illness and life and death are about more than science. If Katie feels like the chemo is working---<i>and she doe</i>s---then it is. If she feels better than she did---<i>and she does</i>---then she is less sick than she was. No matter what a blood test says. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Also, every day is different. We never know what she will be feeling. A blood test for a tumor marker can’t tell us that either.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is so much more to say. So much more that’s happened. But I have to get ready for today’s appointment and want, more than anything, to thank everyone for all the kindness and support you’ve given Katie and all of us this last month (and years). And I know Katie wants to be thanking all of you right now as well. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, thank you for the loving thoughts and emails and texts and prayers you’ve sent. Thank you for the healing crystals and protective necklaces. Thank you for the sunflowers and orchids and dahlias from your gardens. Thank you for the soups and lasagnas and meatballs and calzones and fruit baskets and Edible Arrangements and brownies and sundaes and wine (THANK YOU FOR THE WINE!) you’ve all delivered or sent with my sisters or left out on the porch. Thank you for all the help and all the offers to help with the kiddos. Thank you for bringing them fall clothes and coloring books and crayons and an awesome kitchen stocked with plastic foods for them to play with. Thank you for pulling weeds and cutting down tree branches so the house doesn’t look creepy and haunted. Thank you for picking up the trash bins and putting them back on the wall. Thank you for sending Katie sweet cards and pajamas and meditation CDs and books and candles and lotions. Thank you to all my friends who I haven’t called or written back but love so much for checking in. Thank you for all the love we feel from all of you. We feel it so much. And we’re so grateful. I could just thank and thank and thank you.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And thank you for the sensitivity and understanding so many of you have shown with regard to Katie’s need for rest and why it’s a hard time for us to have visitors. I know Katie feels bad when she knows that someone she loves is wanting to check in on her, but needs a nap or wants to use the energy she has to play with her girls. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and your understanding. And I’m sorry to anyone who’s dropped by who I’ve not been able to spend time with because of the million tasks that need doing. We’re just still finding our way in all of this. Please know we’re so grateful for all the support and love.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I will try to get back here as often as I can because I know everyone is wondering how Katie is doing. I promise I’ll do my best. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Katie’s definitely doing her best. She was always something special, but the cansa has really upped her game. She’s all badass. All grace. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You need me to say it again? She’s gonna be fine.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-39959326887600415222013-05-17T11:53:00.000-04:002013-05-17T11:53:31.538-04:00Tuesday's Gone<br />
I’m supposed to go and pick up our new car today---the first new car I’ve ever had. And I’m in deep, deep despair. <br />
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We’re trading in my Subaru...and I don’t want to leave it. <br />
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It doesn’t help that I’m a little hung over right now. It doesn’t help that the song “Tuesday’s Gone” is playing.<br />
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But the idea of parking it the dealership lot, getting in the new car and then driving away with the Subaru in the rearview...tears, you guys. Seriously. It had me up in the middle of the night. I thought, I can’t drive the Subaru to the farm. I can’t do it. And yet, I must. It has to be me. The difficulty I am having with this task troubles me. It’s a car, not Old fucking Yeller.<br />
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I’ve been driving it for about 10 years. My sister Becky bought it when I started watching Molly because the car I was driving at the time wasn’t the picture of child safety. So for a while it was just the Molly-mobile---Bec’s extra car that I drove solely when schlepping Mol around. Then I moved to NYC and when I came back about a year later, Bec and I worked out an arrangement (since I had gotten rid of my own car before heading to New York) that I’d watch Mol again and she’d pay me a little less for nannying and I could have the car. (No small generosity on Bec’s part.) It’s been a good car. All-wheel drive. A friend. It’s a green wagon with dents and dings all over it now. A massive hailstorm a few years back that devastated the inventory of car dealerships in the area, left about thirty golf ball-sized dimples all over the hood. I loved the character that hail gave the car and never wanted to fix it. <br />
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Dan and I agreed I should drive it around these last couple of days----have a proper goodbye and all. It reminds me of when my mom walked our dog, Charlie, up to the school playground for a visit when I was out for recess in fourth grade. I didn’t know it was the last I’d see of Charlie (who was a bit of a biter and probably shouldn’t have been around a schoolyard full of kids). The Subaru didn’t pass inspection and is emitting a deep muffler-related growl. It shakes too and is probably unsafe for long distances. I wanted to put in the $2500 that it needed to pass inspection. (My real goal was to hit 200,000 miles and become part of the Subaru High-Mileage Club. This is a thing. We’re at 179K.) But it’s a 1999 and Dan is ready for a newer car---specifically one that does not have a tape deck. He also feels like the $2500 repairs are adding up and that it’s just time to put the car down. He’s right. Still, I would have hung on to it... <br />
<br />
This was the car in which I drove my mom to chemo and we listened to 50’s music and sang along. This was the car in which I waited in the school pick-up line for Mol. Once, Dan velcroed bags of chips and packages of Oreos and peanut butter crackers all over the soft fabric of the Subaru's ceiling so that Molly and I could ceremoniously choose our after-school snack each day and then just reach up and pull it down. Another time, I came home to find L-O-L-A in small silver letters stuck to the car’s bumper.<br />
<br />
The guys at the dealership mentioned this when they looked at the car for its trade-in value. We joked that it was the Lola Edition.<br />
<br />
I’d probably hang on to it if we weren’t renting an apartment and had a proper yard to park it in for the next 20 years. That car is Molly as a nugget. When she dropped food in the backseat I told her it was okay because there were all sorts of animals who lived under my seats and they’d eat whatever she dropped. “You’re feeding the animals, Mol.” After that I always found so much food down there. <br />
<br />
That car is my mom. She was in the passenger seat when she got the phone call that a scan showed that the cancer had not spread to her brain. She’d grabbed my shoulder---I was so scared I almost drove off the road---and then wept tears of relief. <br />
<br />
That car is Lola. A twenty-something child of living parents. That car is a relic from another world that no longer exists. <br />
<br />
Even the smallest changes feel that big right now. I know it’s not rational. I know we’re fortunate to be able to get a new car and I know I will be excited once the pain of this goodbye has passed. But I feel particularly brittle as I realize just how sensitive I am right now to losses of any kind. I can’t help but wonder if everything will always feel this hard.<br />
<br />
Off I go now. Our final drive. For the past three years the Subaru has been a tear-catcher. A loyal friend (with a tape player). RIP, Lola.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig7U5mPNVdX9L4pAedxTFFF1DlqXyrBr7i0iQU4erEvKWkXgdnRf9iQIBLrsuXsN7Sr1hJ1WoDfFG3YWBkGdVVK1ks_VlwhjApquuBSVxqzrlISOogWFqO24OT0NdEsLPJnaa76qkWajE0/s1600/IMG_2513.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig7U5mPNVdX9L4pAedxTFFF1DlqXyrBr7i0iQU4erEvKWkXgdnRf9iQIBLrsuXsN7Sr1hJ1WoDfFG3YWBkGdVVK1ks_VlwhjApquuBSVxqzrlISOogWFqO24OT0NdEsLPJnaa76qkWajE0/s576/IMG_2513.jpg" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-8410591263364104282013-03-25T13:17:00.001-04:002013-03-25T13:18:05.244-04:00Fungus fucks<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgnMXr6qyckIJ-YAKpDazrkOiDrlWV9nPB7zh62DrNJqP8T2z6Rj4oysoelRlWxED-bAFDdsL_ed3rk-rd4dhGvEMWBuERLcWjkgeIhE57oI_0hYA57rWT5Ao_Fp_qKYrw8VIRDCmV15G0/s1600/fungus+fuck.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgnMXr6qyckIJ-YAKpDazrkOiDrlWV9nPB7zh62DrNJqP8T2z6Rj4oysoelRlWxED-bAFDdsL_ed3rk-rd4dhGvEMWBuERLcWjkgeIhE57oI_0hYA57rWT5Ao_Fp_qKYrw8VIRDCmV15G0/s576/fungus+fuck.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
You guys, I'm going to lose my shit. Have you heard of these things---fungus gnats? They're similar to fruit flies but seem smaller and more annoying. We don't have an infestation but enough of the little fungus fucks to piss me off. Apparently they feed on house plants. I've put my plants outside for several hours at a time---hoping to freeze the fungus fucks out---to no avail. This weekend Dan poured a dish soap and water solution on them---enough to soak the roots---and we left them outside once again but though there are less of them, the problem has not been entirely eradicated. And I think seeing one or two means that pretty soon they'll get humpin' and there will be more fungus fucks on the way.<br />
<br />
I love my houseplants. I love that I have kept them mostly alive. I felt sad watching them through the window, shivering in the cold breeze outside like scolded puppies. But if they have bugs, I'm willing to let them go. (This, I'm certain, is also how I'd handle a child who came home with lice.) My next step is to repot all the plants with fresh soil but I'll admit that I'm a little hesitant to take on this project until the temps break fifty degrees and I get a sunny day. (Once again, I'm wary that this could be a potential parenting technique---my not tending to my kids' needs until the weather gets warm and I see the sun.) <br />
<br />
The thing that is so, so aggravating about them is that they are attracted to light so they want to get all up on my computer screen (as if I need another reason to shut my laptop). Also, because apparently fungus fucks are the worst creatures of all and are attracted to sources of carbon dioxide, when they show up, they head for my mouth and nose. For my mouth and nose, you guys! My innocently open mouth and helplessly open nose. <br />
<br />
The problem isn't so bad that I'm sitting in a swarm of bugs, the idea of which upsets me to even write. (Mercifully, I've never been swarm-of-bugs depressed. I remember listening to Paula Deen talk about how the lowest point of her depression was when she watched a pile of her pet bird's droppings that had amassed on the floor get carried across the room by a pack of roaches. The image has never left me. I'm sorry to have put it in your head but I heard that story over five years ago and I've really needed to talk about it.) The fungus fucks are not even swarming around one particular plant, which is part of the problem. I can't find "the source," which is what every website tells me I need to locate if I really want to take care of the situation. It's not an infestation (yet), it's just that every twenty minutes or so, one floats in and gets up on my grill and I shake my face and flail my arms and scream, "Get away, fungus fuck!" and then it flies away only to come back and haunt me a few minutes later.<br />
<br />
It's making me just crazy enough to need to vent about it here...and maybe move. <br />
<br />
Anybody know anything about fungus fucks?<br />
<br />
Please pray for my mouth and nose. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-18563900584423180642013-03-23T10:21:00.000-04:002013-03-23T10:25:18.898-04:00Your computers are all broken. I posted this Thursday.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH5loEjUWkhe_GAA29f3-Dpg2SERsiQEerR5ftHDHck9bOEWNCn_OYmX3ljjCTd_ahFtp0jHNwTTXNRliWAii-nQNL6_fsL0g2e69Y04-tIfJElZC1zS0wh1Cwyry82uuTAZLqgf9FEhRW/s1600/IMG_1915.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH5loEjUWkhe_GAA29f3-Dpg2SERsiQEerR5ftHDHck9bOEWNCn_OYmX3ljjCTd_ahFtp0jHNwTTXNRliWAii-nQNL6_fsL0g2e69Y04-tIfJElZC1zS0wh1Cwyry82uuTAZLqgf9FEhRW/s576/IMG_1915.JPG" /></a><br />
<br />
I went to Joyce Maynard’s writing retreat down in Guatemala; did I ever even say that? <br />
<br />
Okay, guys, I have to take the story in chunks. One of the things Joyce worked with us on down in Guate was easing into our too-big stories. Finding the “container”---the manageable inch of time, the symbol, the relationship---with which to reveal the greater/bigger/heavier truth.<br />
<br />
Por exemplo: Some bloggers might find it daunting to explain how ten days of international travel, female/writer camaraderie and $2 margaritas changed their lives. (They might find it particularly daunting to explain this by an arbitrarily chosen day, such as Thursday.) So, instead of taking on THE WHOLE BIG, GIANT STORY, they might opt to parse out a smaller theme or bit story---one night in a hot tub---to demonstrate the larger truth or just get themselves into the writing. (They might also extend the deadline a smidge.)<br />
<br />
Despite spending over a week learning this container lesson over and over, I still felt pretty overwhelmed when it came to writing about the week. So my writer friend <a href="http://www.nothinginmoderation.ca" target="_blank">Aviva</a> put it to me this way: “Maybe don't try to write the whole motherfucker/megillah.” <br />
<br />
(We were fast friends.)<br />
<br />
Her suggestions for potential “containers”:<br />
<br />
<i>a) what I packed <br />
b) travelling business class <br />
c) toilet paper as behaviour modification</i> (She’s Canadian so she spells things prettier than we do. Even when the sentences are about toilet paper. And, don’t worry, we’ll get to the toilet paper.)<br />
<br />
The problem is, I write my way to understanding. So, for instance, I might have a nagging feeling that the toilet paper situation---in Guatemala, where you throw soiled TP into a trash can beside the toilet rather than flushing it---holds emotional/spiritual significance, but I probably won’t understand why this is so unless I fuck around for 10 pages about it. <br />
<br />
It’s not an entirely efficient process for a writer. (And it is an entirely inefficient process for a human who would like to live an actual life rather than intellectualize it, but that’s another story. See? So many stories! And we’re still on the toilet paper!) <br />
<br />
I have to start somewhere (or not write here for another three months) so I shall return to the teachings of my very first governess, Fraulein Maria who used to say, “Lola Dear, let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.”<br />
<br />
<br />
dream-harp-sound-effect<br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">To get myself ready</span> <span style="font-size: large;">for a ten-day writing retreat in Guatemala, I go to see <i>The Hobbit</i>.</span> Twice. It’s a three-hour movie. There’s lots of sword play. The second time, I endure the 3-D version alone in a theater on a Wednesday afternoon wearing the big plastic glasses. I need an epic tale; I go seeking bravery.<br />
<br />
(And with that admission, I hand you my resignation from the Cool Kids’ Table.)<br />
<br />
Really, I just need the ten minutes when Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit, is asked by Gandalf, the great wizard, to join the dwarves on their journey to reclaim their homeland, currently inhabited by a deadly dragon.<br />
<br />
Gandalf says he is looking for someone to go on an adventure and Bilbo refuses saying adventures are “Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner!”<br />
<br />
When Joyce Maynard sends me an e-mail in January asking me if I’m interested in attending her annual February writing retreat in Guatemala, my mind travels through the hassles of flying in the middle of a New England winter and lands on the thought of sleeping on an airport floor for two days.<br />
<br />
Plus, we are a week into January and my Christmas tree is still up. How could I possibly go to Guatemala? <br />
<br />
Gandalf calls Bilbo on his shit: “You've been sitting quietly for far too long. Tell me, when did doilies and your mother's dishes become so important to you?”<br />
<br />
Dan sends me six e-mails. <br />
<br />
<i>Go! Just go!<br />
<br />
Do it, baby! <br />
<br />
Say yes with abandon!<br />
<br />
Do not hesitate!<br />
<br />
Go, go, go! <br />
<br />
(Am I being pushy?)</i> <br />
<br />
His enthusiasm makes me mad at him. <br />
<br />
I haven’t traveled by plane since my dad died in April. I was worried my parents’ house would sell while I was gone and I’d miss the opportunity to say good bye. Joyce Maynard’s house in Guatemala may soon be swallowed by the rising of Lake Atitlán. I’ve read about it an article she wrote for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/t-magazine/paradise-lost-in-guatemala.html?_r=2&" target="_blank">The New York Times Magazine</a>. I’ve also studied the picture of the volcanoes rising out of the lake (and read the Commonly Asked Questions and the near-twenty page info packet) on the workshop website several times in the last years.<br />
<br />
Dan says it’s meant to be. That I need something like this.<br />
<br />
Gandalf says, “I remember a young hobbit who was always running off in search of elves in the woods. He'd stay out late, come home after dark, trailing mud and twigs and fireflies. A young hobbit who would've liked nothing better than to find out what was beyond the borders of the Shire. The world is not in your books and maps. It's out there.”<br />
<br />
This makes me cry underneath my 3D glasses. <br />
<br />
I was such a muddy kid. In high school, a war correspondent came to speak to my journalism class and I listened to him talk while imagining myself ducking fire and tucking behind walls of half-collapsed buildings with my reporter’s notebook. It wasn’t the future I necessarily wanted, but I wasn’t afraid to let myself imagine it. It wasn’t outside possible.<br />
<br />
Guatemala feels outside possible. For the last couple of years, just getting myself through the lobby and to the darkness of a movie theater has been an act of great daring.<br />
<br />
It started before my parents died but has of course gotten worse since then. Two weeks after my mom died, Dan and I went to an indoor farmers’ market. I had to back out of the busyness of the stalls and towering heaps of potatoes and heads of lettuce to the edge of the greenhouse to catch my breath. All the people, all the conversation and exchanging of dollars and bunched carrots---I thought it was going to crush me.<br />
<br />
I write Joyce, thanking her for the invitation and telling her why I’m hesitant---that my biggest fear about going is that I’ll wake up and realize I am in Guatemala and not the comfort of my apartment with the shades drawn. She tells me this isn’t a good enough reason not to go.<br />
<br />
“Money issues would be an understandable reason. Your best friend's wedding would qualify. So would allergy to sun, water, birds and stars.”<br />
<br />
Joyce Maynard knows that both my parents have died. Joyce Maynard <i>knows</i> me. Four years ago I wrote Joyce a letter after reading her memoir to thank her for writing it. I’d never written an author before. I’d never seen such honest writing. I told myself that if I got any kind of response---even a “please don’t send letters to my home”---it would be the universe validating that I was on the right path, that I was supposed to be a writer. She e-mailed a week later and I tacked it to my bulletin board. Two years after that I went to a weeklong writing workshop she hosted on Star Island, off the coast of New Hampshire. I’d been anxious for that too---my mom had been dead nine months and my dad’s tumor had been diagnosed---but I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I missed the opportunity. I was only an hour from my apartment for the entire week but I came home feeling like I’d seen the world.<br />
<br />
Guatemala is not an hour from home and I’ve lost interest in seeing the world. <br />
<br />
I’ve lost interest in seeing the grocery store.<br />
<br />
I’ve lost interest in friends. And writing. And eating. <br />
<br />
Dan highlights lines from Joyce’s note:<br />
<br />
<i>healing place<br />
<br />
I take very, very good care of you<br />
<br />
things happen to people when they come here</i><br />
<br />
Joyce’s mother died from a brain tumor, the same type as my dad’s. Both her parents were dead by the time she turned 35.<br />
<br />
She knows this loss and she thinks I should go. Dan thinks I should go. The therapist, who isn’t supposed to tell me what she thinks, thinks I should go. <br />
<br />
My friend Aviva, who I met at the Star Island workshop, thinks I should go too. She’s trying to convince us both to go to Guatemala.<br />
<br />
“Why do I associate travel with death?” she writes in an e-mail.<br />
<br />
She is afraid of dying on the three-hour van ride along the winding dirt roads to where Joyce lives on the lake. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of being a human in a room with other humans.<br />
<br />
I write, “It’s probably a sign of a good travel companionship, both of us being terrified and all.”<br />
<br />
“Do you think fear + fear might equal bravery?” she asks<br />
<br />
“Fear + fear + meds might equal bravery,” I answer.<br />
<br />
After my mom died I told myself that I never needed to be scared of anything ever again. I’d knelt in front of her face, looking in her scared blue eyes as she panicked for breath. I had turned up her oxygen and calmed her with my voice--- “Through your nose, my Mama. You’re okay.” <br />
<br />
I had already lived through the scariest thing. <br />
<br />
Dan sits beside me on the couch while I book my flight to Guatemala City. <br />
<br />
My stomach heavy, I quote <i>The Hobbit</i>.<br />
<br />
“I’m going on an adventure.” <br />
<br />
<br />
<i>To be continued...probably. (Not by Thursday.)</i><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-63985400466393307782013-03-14T13:10:00.001-04:002013-03-14T13:45:24.543-04:00 Paco told me to write.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Vv8O7zr9lbPilM6TeLr5WrbthRYTnZ9mRRyYMPSK_gaUzGqRxa07ztHl7dI2Kb_uS3UjiyKOntoCw2ODZQx2EkK72_HN7k3lNoOgDPbmsgn0AhuTIOdExrZ5Ev_MrW87Uu7fN8HVi3h7//Lola+-+Guat.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Vv8O7zr9lbPilM6TeLr5WrbthRYTnZ9mRRyYMPSK_gaUzGqRxa07ztHl7dI2Kb_uS3UjiyKOntoCw2ODZQx2EkK72_HN7k3lNoOgDPbmsgn0AhuTIOdExrZ5Ev_MrW87Uu7fN8HVi3h7/s576/Lola+-+Guat.jpg" /></a><br />
<i>And then he tagged this wall. (Photo by <a href="http://nothinginmoderation.ca" target="new">Aviva Rubin</a>.)</i><br />
<br />
<br />
Um, so...hey.<br />
<br />
I like your hair...d’you do something new to it?<br />
<br />
No? Well your skin really glows in this <s><i>January</i></s> <s><i>February</i></s> March gloom.<br />
<br />
Plus that color always works so well on you.<br />
<br />
Very slimming.<br />
<br />
<i>Very</i> slimming.<br />
<br />
If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a tapeworm.<br />
<br />
I meant that as a compliment.<br />
<br />
So, um, <i>how have you been?</i><br />
<br />
Oh yeah, me too. Soooooooo busy.<br />
<br />
Hey, Boo? <br />
<br />
I’m sorry.<br />
<br />
I’m sorry I did that sociopathic break-up thing where I just pretended we weren’t hanging out and getting close these past years and just dropped off.<br />
<br />
I’m sorry I’m here saying sorry again.<br />
<br />
I just couldn’t get myself to post anything. I just didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I hope that doesn’t sound rude. I think we know by now that this is my shit. I just felt sort of <i>meh</i> about connecting. Sort of <i>meh</i> about everything really. It was all a little <i>meh</i> in these parts for a while.<br />
<br />
And did I want to explain that? Did I want to say <i>meh</i> anymore than I already have? <br />
<br />
Nay. <br />
<br />
Nay, nay.<br />
<br />
And if try to embark on an explanation now, then this will just become another entry I never post. I know this because I wrote most of this two months ago and then as I started getting into it----writing about <i>anxiety, depression and meds, oh my!</i>---I got very <i>holy fucking meh</i> about posting it. So I put it away and then tried again two weeks later. Same thing happened. And then I just kept taking it out and putting it away again and again. (If you are reading this, it means a small battle has been won.)<br />
<br />
But I’ve been thinking about you guys this whole time and wishing I could just call and leave you a message (I’ll admit, even in my fantasy I prayed to get your voicemail) so I could say:<br />
<br />
<i>Hey. It’s me. I miss you, Baby. I heard “Groovy Kind of Love” on the radio the other day and it made me think of you. I’ll never forget all that you did for me these last three years. All that you mean to me. I value and appreciate you, Boo. </i><br />
<br />
And then, if I was a little buzzed up, I might sing a little.<br />
<br />
<i>When I’m feeling blue<br />
all I have to do <br />
is take a look at you<br />
then I’m not so blue.<br />
<br />
Really, Phil Collins? Twice you say blue? Twice?</i> <br />
<br />
All of this would have still been on your voicemail. <br />
<br />
Then you would have heard me weep...or fall...or yell at my phone---<i>Turn off! Turn off, Gadget!</i>---and you would have known I love you. <br />
<br />
But, no. <br />
<br />
I stayed away. There was too much to say and I thought I wanted to be alone. I did want to be alone. I know how I sound. I understand if you think me a terrible ingrate right now. I felt that way too. When you guys come here, I am a writer whose work is being read and that’s a fucking privilege I don’t take lightly. More than that though, you guys are smart and safe and have been incredibly supportive through the crotch and when I disappear it makes me feel like I’m cheapening our thang.<br />
<br />
At the same time, I didn’t want to disrespect you by telling you half-truths. Just the rosy. Next month it’ll be a year since my dad’s death and the last year---both parents being gone, the house on the market, the changed backdrop of life---it’s been, <i>I’ve been</i>, all over the place.<br />
<br />
And I didn’t want to put my “all over the place” out there. You’re probably thinking---Oh, The Spew got hacked. All this talk about privacy couldn’t possibly be coming from the same brain of the girl who gave us the play-by-play of her colonoscopy.<br />
<br />
Don’t I know it. Sometimes it feels like there are 17 people in my head (one’s named Paco) and they all have different boundaries. Some of them know I’m a better person when I reach for human interaction. Others of them are all, “Bitch, don’t you walk out that apartment door. You know we like our smoothie at the same time every day.”<br />
<br />
But last month I went to Guatemala. And it was a fantastic adventure and the best reminder of why I have to fight---<i>fight like a mofo</i>---to be well and rebuild and create a bad-ass life. And I am straining every muscle of my hands and chest and heart to keep hold of that knowledge because depression is always trying to strip it from me. So I want to write something here about the trip.<br />
<br />
Let’s give me a week. A little cushion. Today I feel strong. Tomorrow I might not. But I’m walking and trying to get to sleep at the same time every night and doing all that self-care bullshit that makes me feel like I’m eight-years-old, but which I know is always the foundation for any sort of lasting positive change. I should be able to get something post-worthy together by next week. Even if you’re not here---and I really understand and accept that most of you may not be here anymore---I’m going to get something up about my trip by next Thursday. (If nothing else, you'll get <a href="http://lolamellowsky.blogspot.com/2009/11/ill-take-blogs-that-rhyme-with.html" target="new">a poem.</a>)<br />
<br />
But I really want to write about it because:<br />
<br />
It feels pretty wrong that I didn’t even tell you I was going, given that you guys were the first ones I told about <a href="http://lolamellowsky.blogspot.com/2009/12/all-i-want-for-bic-mas-is-this.html" target="new">the dream of taking this trip.</a><br />
<br />
And because:<br />
<br />
I don’t think I want to be alone anymore. Not all the time anyway. <br />
<br />
Smoothie or no.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-58038990876709328262012-12-14T18:58:00.000-05:002012-12-14T18:58:06.208-05:00Silent night.(I'm not cheating on you, but I posted this on Facebook today because I wanted to send love as far as it would reach.)<br />
<br />
Friends and family, I love you. Those I don’t know well enough to love like that (because it’d be weird)---I love you as fellow human beings and as my sisters and brothers on the planet. <br />
<br />
I had a fall to my knees, “Why, God? Why?” moment when I heard the news today---full on Sally Field. I thought of those parents and the mammoth agony tearing through them now and how it will inhabit them always. I thought of the presents they might have in their closets and how much it will hurt to look at them in these next days when they reach for a sweater. How they may beat themselves up for not giving their child some special sled or stuffed animal the moment s/he asked for it, waiting instead for a Christmas morning that never came. I thought of how much sorrow this time of year will bring them from now on. <br />
<br />
My thoughts shifted then to what to do? What to do for those people and also what to do with my own pain. <br />
<br />
And there’s nothing really to be done...except to tell everyone I love them. <br />
<br />
It’s all I can think of. I don’t feel like being angry with anyone this particular moment. I understand the anger---we’re grieving and anger is a part of it. But while I’m sure I will feel angry tomorrow or in 10 minutes or in a few months or <i>for</i> a few months, right now I am not angry, nor do I judge those who are. There is no sense to be made of any of it, so I am closing my eyes and trying to picture a current of love flowing from my own tight chest southwest to Connecticut. I’m picturing my love and prayers meeting yours there and holding those families tonight. I know I sound like a smelly hippie---I know. But maybe prayer does something. Maybe energy helps with healing. And as it’s the only way I can figure to help, I’m putting love out there in the hope that it contributes to some greater collective love that reaches those families and all who are hurting tonight.<br />
<br />
So, all of you---even you, person whose status updates sometimes bug me---I love you. <br />
<br />
I also wanted to share this from Brene Brown's latest book, <i>Daring Greatly.</i><br />
<br />
<i>“When I asked people who had survived tragedy how we can cultivate and show more compassion for people who are suffering, the answer was always the same. Don’t shrink away from the joy of your child because I’ve lost mine. Don’t take what you have for granted – celebrate it. Don’t apologize for what you have. Be grateful for it and share your gratitude with others. Are your parents healthy? Be thrilled. Let them know how much they mean to you. When you honor what you have, you’re honoring what I’ve lost.” </i><br />
<br />
I’m opting for a night of quiet and gratitude tonight. I have a warm home, a pretty tree in the living room, and all the kids I love made it through the day safely today. I am grateful for this and to be alive and for the capacity for gratitude. Love you all...even you FarmVille weirdos. <br />
<br />
Peace to all your hearts.<br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-26633154616711185322012-12-07T13:44:00.004-05:002012-12-07T13:45:48.617-05:00'Cause no matter how far away you roam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXscX18Kd0vbHsBpxPAtBdxG88-Y7yoWl8V8CXns74CMFv3FQK3lpTvP9SL-Q_tvQVTzhISPAB7FQ5vGRF9zVoFHPx9kQnyCMODFfcKlo2NywiexxU9-IMCqjpxudy3fRVFOlvfRXQRA4L/s1600/Mom+and+Dad+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXscX18Kd0vbHsBpxPAtBdxG88-Y7yoWl8V8CXns74CMFv3FQK3lpTvP9SL-Q_tvQVTzhISPAB7FQ5vGRF9zVoFHPx9kQnyCMODFfcKlo2NywiexxU9-IMCqjpxudy3fRVFOlvfRXQRA4L/s400/Mom+and+Dad+001.jpg" /></a></div><i>I'll be thinking of them...</i><br />
<br />
So, the battery story ended like this: It wasn’t the battery that was the problem. <br />
<br />
I didn’t get out to get a new one so Dan brought one home. It’s a good thing because imagine my frustration had I made a mission of it and then realized it wasn’t the battery at all. Goddamn Motherfucking Frustrated, that’s what I would’ve been. GMFed.<br />
<br />
Turns out there is something wrong with the opener’s receiver or something...I don’t know, I lost interest. Dan called our landlord and the situation is pending. (I will miss the magic of the landlord bat phone should ever we buy a house). When I first started writing the Goddamn Motherfucking Battery entry it was titled, “The Psychology of a Monday Morning” because there was more to it than my simply verbally swatting at Dan for being a Goddamned Motherfucking Mosquito buzzing in my ear with his barrage of questions. (Words must be chosen carefully when spoken before I’ve had my coffee. This was in our vows.) Mostly it was the stuff of two people who could’ve used one more day in the weekend. (It was also a little bit the stuff of, <i>Are we still having this conversation? Just write it the fuck down.</i> And also the stuff of, <i>Didn’t I say months ago that we really ought to figure out how to work the code in case we lose the opener?</i> And, if I’m being fair to Dan, it was also the stuff of, <i>My Darling Lola, it must be hard being so right all the time</i>.) <br />
<br />
Bottom line is we’ve been able to get into the garage because my brain somehow retained the four-digit code the woman who had the garage before us assigned it (<i>It is hard, my oft-wrong Danny</i>) and for some reason it's working now. I don’t know why I’m even still talking about the goddamn motherfucking garage opener. Maybe so you’ll finally rest easy tonight knowing that Dan and I are no longer separated from our crap.<br />
<br />
And we're getting our extra day this weekend.<br />
<br />
Remember <a href="http://lolamellowsky.blogspot.com/2011/12/heres-fun-e-mail-to-get-on-friday.html" target="_blank">this little trip </a> from <a href="http://lolamellowsky.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-dont-mean-to-rub-it-in-but-we-even.html" target="_blank">last year </a>?<br />
<br />
Well, Dan really liked the whole Christmas card/shopping getaway so this time we’re heading up to North Conway which is just about two hours north of where we live. My family rented a place up there every February vacation when I was a kid and those trips were a lot of what got me to pick New Hampshire when I decided to move from RI all those years ago. It’s funny though---I went there every year as a kid but have maybe been there three times in the last twelve years of living here. Not sure why. I’m looking forward to the getaway, though I know there will be some sad turns down Memory Lane.<br />
<br />
It’s just how it goes. The first Christmas without both my parents on the planet. The shock surrounding my dad's death is fading, leaving only the throb of loss. I miss my mom every single day, that never fades. It's even more pronounced during this season. I was so the kid who packed all my dirty laundry into the car and blasted “Home for the Holidays” as I set out for my parents’ house every December. Home for the Holidays was my mom. It was her huge greeting---”My Laura is home!”---from the table when I walked into her kitchen. It was my Dad coming in because he heard my mom’s excitement and asking if I wanted him to put on a fire. Home for the Holidays is the saddest thought to me now because there is no such thing anymore. I was lucky to have had it, I know. And I am lucky for Dan, my home now, but Home for the Holidays is another loss in all of this. So I can’t pretend this season doesn’t have a sadness to it now for me. It’s a constant chest ache even during moments of joy.<br />
<br />
So, I know there will be some of that this weekend especially as I see the old spots where my family went cross-country skiing or where I can remember my dad breaking out the video camera and my mom doing head counts of all us kids and our friends. And Dan knows that---I think he wants it for me even. He’s the one who booked the place and then got on me to make an appointment for a massage while we are there. He just gets it---all seven hundred emotions I feel at once. How the good days are ones where I cry because it means there’s release and a break from fighting all of it back.<br />
<br />
He’s my Home For The Holidays now. No Goddamn Motherfucking pressure, Boo.<br />
<br />
(Pretty snow pictures to come if there is pretty snow up there! If not, pictures of dirty side-of-the-road snow to come!)<br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-243819275992215892012-12-03T12:04:00.000-05:002012-12-03T12:14:04.909-05:00What kind of battery was that again?<br />
<br />
We need to replace the battery in our garage door opener. Because the code for the garage keypad has never worked, the remote opener is our only means of access. Fortunately we don’t keep a car in there and it’s only a spot for storage---but still, we need to be able to get in there.<br />
<br />
This morning, as Dan got ready for work and I sat trying to get an early writing start, he said he would pick said battery up at the store today. <br />
<br />
I, unsure if perhaps I would want to get into the garage before his approximate 7pm return home, suggested he write the battery size down for me just in case I wanted to tend to the task myself before then. <br />
<br />
Apparently, “before” is a complicated concept to digest because it seemed to confound Dan. Why, he wondered, would he write the size of the battery down on the off-chance that I make it to the store when he would <i>definitely</i> be making it to the store and purchasing said battery <i>today</i>. <br />
<br />
I had not yet realized the extent of the communication impasse we had reached and didn’t look up from my work---nor elaborate on the concept of before---and suggested he write it down just in case.<br />
<br />
But “just in case” was not enough to squelch the fire of incomprehension that roared inside Dan, who again questioned the necessity of his writing the battery size down.<br />
<br />
“I might want to get in there, so can you just write it down in case I---”<br />
<br />
“But I am telling you <i>I</i> am going to pick it up today, so why would <i>you</i> also pick it up?” <br />
<br />
“CAN YOU JUST WRITE THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SIZE OF THE BATTERY DOWN SO THAT I CAN GET IN THERE BEFORE YOU GET HOME IF I WANT?”<br />
<br />
Seems an entirely appropriate response even now, hours later.<br />
<br />
After he left for work, I found this on the counter:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRcd7F76a-q-2na78hHclPFCHFxkoKpSmJwiRfMq8PCd2e7-6ayGlI4bpeOlID2M1JXE9iKRIdHnnjt92kMjeMyOT17Ub0D2uXtyKV8LyOXOig4Wik3eQ0sucWdeZ_Z0Ms0u6ebvdYfnWn/s1600/IMG_1371.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRcd7F76a-q-2na78hHclPFCHFxkoKpSmJwiRfMq8PCd2e7-6ayGlI4bpeOlID2M1JXE9iKRIdHnnjt92kMjeMyOT17Ub0D2uXtyKV8LyOXOig4Wik3eQ0sucWdeZ_Z0Ms0u6ebvdYfnWn/s400/IMG_1371.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
It is in these moments that I love Dan the very most. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-74429367858295092952012-11-20T18:30:00.000-05:002012-11-20T18:30:28.092-05:00It hurts to write. No, really...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzqO8IK9AOrNWU1GYN8D1WQqX7ungfVT45ihvoYPa6Coo7y0p2ObwJiai37NLP5MmawTyJDaDfV0YHjV2b7v9usGv5OOm2bUV7mCZiS-Bh21FiSjynv00xN2A58_kdzRLWnMgj9K9MonVG/s1600/IMG_1349.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzqO8IK9AOrNWU1GYN8D1WQqX7ungfVT45ihvoYPa6Coo7y0p2ObwJiai37NLP5MmawTyJDaDfV0YHjV2b7v9usGv5OOm2bUV7mCZiS-Bh21FiSjynv00xN2A58_kdzRLWnMgj9K9MonVG/s400/IMG_1349.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Hello, Lovelies Out In The Universe Whom I’ve Been Avoiding But Whom I Miss and Love. That includes you, Friends I Haven’t Called Back. And also you, Adored Ones Whose E-mails I Have Not Returned. Hugs to ya, Everyone I’ve Let Down. <br />
<br />
Apologizing feels a little weak at this point since I’ve done it so many times, but what I’m really just sorry about is that I’m doing the best that I can and sometimes that best falls short of demonstrating how much I care about and am grateful for All Of You. So, I’m not so much sorry for my absence as I am just regretful of the unfortunate circumstances that have limited my capacity for consistency with regard to human interaction. (I should really write greeting cards.) There’s a dearth of consistency on the whole in these parts. Or, to put it less writery and rationalizey----there are good days and bad.<br />
<br />
I’m sitting here going back and forth between explaining what’s been up/ keeping me away or not doing that because it will feel boring to you and blah, blah, blah to me.<br />
<br />
But of course part of my intention in keeping this blog going through my parents’ illnesses and deaths was to share the experience honestly, so trying to edit myself now that they're gone in order to sound less whiny (or sad) sort of defeats the purpose...and also causes two-month posting gaps.<br />
<br />
Since today’s small goal was to simply show up, I’ll keep the explanation of where I've been brief. Really it’s just the stuff of dead parents, depression and anxiety, oh my. Just that. Really, boiled down, it’s just that.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I need to isolate. Sometimes I feel too fragile for the vulnerability required to share my work. Sometimes it’s just too painful to write.<br />
<br />
Emotionally painful, yes, but as of late it’s been physically painful as well. <br />
<br />
About a month ago I made an appointment with the eye doc figuring I just needed stronger glasses because I was increasing the font on my computer to size 87-year-old, and the doc discovered I had a hole in my retina and sent me to see a retinal specialist. (There is such a thing.) Though it had taken me over a month to get an appointment with the eye doc, I got an appointment with the retinal specialist just a week later, something I now recognize to be indicative of an urgency I didn’t pick up on at the time. This was when I learned that not only was there a hole, but my retina was actually partially detached and I needed to have laser treatment...that very day. The idea is to scar the area around the tear so that it can’t rip further. This is done by BURNING MY EYEBALL WITH A FUCKING LASER! It was some crazy shit, guys. I had my face in a machine and there was a flashing green light searing my eyeball and I might have even time traveled for a minute. When the nurse led me out to Dan in the waiting room afterwards---eye patch and all---I declared (with a smidge of whimper), “I was brave!”<br />
<br />
Dan couldn’t be in the room for the procedure because the doctor said something about the indirect laser exposure being a risk to him (although apparently perfectly safe when aimed directly into my retina and right through to my soul). But he was able to be with me before the procedure and watched as I GOT AN INJECTION IN MY EYEBALL! He said the anesthetic created a bubble of fluid on the surface of my eye, though in all my Googling I’ve not been able to find a picture of it so I can only offer Dan’s artistic rendering.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQRErQgtDXc1KuBL6gF5OuKh06I6vlYUmJyUiPtoPNYqkbEm9D9oRldHjPXL4bPASvpP1uXypzYgC6y8I4zFL8mfF-3YXAsA6XJWTGXndoighMOatho_CstSitq4BwWymzZcUX0KMsoqqZ/s1600/IMG_1348.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQRErQgtDXc1KuBL6gF5OuKh06I6vlYUmJyUiPtoPNYqkbEm9D9oRldHjPXL4bPASvpP1uXypzYgC6y8I4zFL8mfF-3YXAsA6XJWTGXndoighMOatho_CstSitq4BwWymzZcUX0KMsoqqZ/s576/IMG_1348.JPG" /></a></div><i>That is exactly what my face looked like. He could probably do courtroom sketches.</i><br />
<br />
The whole procedure made my eyes pretty sensitive in general this last month---reading and light were especially tough----but it worked. My retina is not likely to rip further though I’ll have to have my other eye examined somewhat regularly since I’m predisposed to this kind of thing now. The seriousness of the situation was again made clear when I saw how relieved the retinal specialist was at my follow-up appointment to see that it had gone as planned. He said I was really lucky it was caught when it was---totally a fluke thing since I didn’t have the typical symptoms. If it had detached entirely, I could have had permanent vision loss.<br />
<br />
It’s pretty messed up and there’s no explanation for it. Not aging, not advanced diabetes, not a blow to the face. Everyone kept asking me if there had been trauma or injury and I think it was code for, “Is everything okay at home?” which amused me to no end since of course Dan is Dan and, let’s be honest, the least likely of the two of us to be the abusive spouse.<br />
<br />
He is, however, the most likely to say that were I to lose my vision he would rearrange the furniture and watch me stumble around the apartment. This was his first thought upon hearing that I could have gone blind. <br />
<br />
My first thought: I’ll have to learn how to write dirty words in Braille. <br />
<br />
So you see, I have been thinking of you guys...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOeR1Qczl0Fe-xGyIVak7o-TIBvKAfN0pt3aqdsLCqGe_CziO52u3s1BXciFQlzTpa5n5QBkkvmU5Nyy0wqr3-1iuladcXrNflkenTowZTFB2MrFLif8v1kmiLUPuuCYYjQP58zf8nu4t/s1600/braille+key.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="388" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOeR1Qczl0Fe-xGyIVak7o-TIBvKAfN0pt3aqdsLCqGe_CziO52u3s1BXciFQlzTpa5n5QBkkvmU5Nyy0wqr3-1iuladcXrNflkenTowZTFB2MrFLif8v1kmiLUPuuCYYjQP58zf8nu4t/s400/braille+key.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-1026494457361918032012-09-29T16:02:00.000-04:002012-09-29T16:11:25.673-04:00Just thinkin' <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JNVJGhBqSlQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Tonight Dan and I are going to see Idina Menzel in Boston. She's famous now but the first solo show of hers Dan and I saw was at the Regattabar in Cambridge---a famous, but really intimate jazz club inside the Charles Hotel. I didn't even really know what she looked like then, so when Dan told me as we stepped off the elevator in the hotel that we had just shared the ride with her, I was shocked and then pissed that I missed it. Though I do recall that I was a little drunk---we had just finished a bottle of wine on the back deck of a little Italian restaurant near the hotel--and I'm sure I would have embarrassed myself. Tonight's show is at the Wang Theater...I'm doubtful we'll ever share an elevator again. <br />
<br />
It's been hard to get myself out of the apartment lately---in large part because I'm writing again, so I'm not complaining---but I am making myself go (and made myself buy the tickets) because Idina Menzel's voice is nourishment for me. The thing about music is---there's no thinking, just feeling. As a person who can muck up feelings with layers and layers of thought, music is sometimes a Lola-to-Lola (Lola-to-Laura? Laura-to-Lola? Sybil-to-Sybil?) translator. With music, my brain gets totally bypassed as the processing center and while sometimes the result is the stuff of shedding a mood to dance alone in the car, often the result is sudden, aching weeping. It's why sometimes I dodge musical entirely but also why it's sometimes the only way to get release and relief.<br />
<br />
I'm a little nervous going into the concert tonight though---like I'm bracing to be ripped open. The last time we saw her was the spring of 2010---two months after my mom was diagnosed---and for the encore she sang "Tomorrow" from <i>Annie</i> and my whole body just caved in on itself as the tears roared up in an out-of-nowhere cry. Because just thinkin' about tomorrow all of a sudden felt totally terrifying. I saw that tomorrow and the tomorrow after that and those that would follow would be the tomorrows when my mom would get sicker. Would be the tomorrows that would take me to the tomorrow when she'd be gone. I could take being stuck with this day of gray and lonely forever because my mom was still alive. She sang that tomorrow was only a day away and it felt like a threat. I was overcome with panic that I couldn't stop time. I cried and thought, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I hate you. Stay the fuck away.<br />
<br />
The song doesn't offer any more comfort now, even as I know that the cobwebs and the sorrow of today are exactly what it promises relief from. When I listen to it now it feels like my chest muscles are straining to hold a load beyond their strength---the weight of yearning for yesterday, steeling myself for today, and fighting for the absence of fear and the cultivation of enough optimism to want tomorrow. Time feels like a betrayal now and tomorrow is a day traveled further from my mom and dad and the memories of their smallest details. Tomorrows fade the details, they already have. People look down on visiting your yesterdays, but I never feel worse than when I tell myself I shouldn't look back. That's what now feels like to me. I know I should want tomorrow---I know it's coming (it came) no matter what I want, so it would be helpful to look forward with hope. But this is the stuff of thinking versus feeling that I was talking about. What <i>I know</i> is moot---what <i>I know</i> has no power and soothes me not. <br />
<br />
It will be a barometer of healing, this song. If listening to it ever again reminds my heart (as it used to) that time holds dreams instead of pain, well then I'll know that, wow, I'm in <i>that</i> tomorrow now. I've already felt whole minutes of that tomorrow, just not whole days. And maybe that's what this song will eventually mean to me---that time is no longer concrete. That yesterdays, todays and tomorrows will just always exist on top of each other from now on...come what may and come what already has.<br />
<br />
Even in this post I've gone from feeling to thinking (hence the time-as-abstract-concept meanderings). I'm sure I'll love the concert. It will unlock me from my brain.<br />
<br />
My dad's birthday is next month and I've been shutting my eyes when I think about, like I'm hiding from my own thought. The two-year anniversary of my mom's death will be days later. My body is re-experiencing her dying---the trauma of watching her get sicker, of not being able to protect her from her pain and fear, of knowing she was going---through the cellular memories triggered by the changing season. This used to be my favorite time of year and I am hiding from the leaves she loved---we wheeled her onto the deck to see them---and the memories carried on the changing air: her hand holding mine, our connection still tangible and resting on the lap of her cotton nightgown; hugging my crying father as we stood alone on an early fall morning and said to each other, she's gone.<br />
<br />
And now you're gone too, Dad. And your birthday is coming up.<br />
<br />
My body is telling me in its cute way---insomnia, conjunctivitis and a cold sore---that it's best if I just acknowledge this escalation of sorrow rather than create further sickness with my resistance. It's a time for self care and compassion and I'm trying. I began beating myself up for something yesterday and then I heard myself saying, "You're doing the best you can, you're doing the best you can, you're doing the best you can." I heard it afterwards, as if through a two-second delay and I thought, when did that voice move into the neighborhood? I ought to make her a pie.<br />
<br />
I'm dreading the holidays. Better that I say it out loud than try to pretend I feel otherwise because I think I should or wish I could. In bed the other night I told Dan that I wish I could just wake up in January and it made him sad because he once knew a Lola who lived for this time of year.<br />
<br />
I don't think I'll feel this forever---today just feels sad.<br />
<br />
Tomorrow? I'm not betting my bottom dollar on sun, but I do feel grateful to have one. <br />
<br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-82864242690372122342012-09-21T05:45:00.001-04:002012-09-21T05:45:07.447-04:00Also, the lines on my computer are all wavy.So...hi.<br />
<br />
Hi, guys.<br />
<br />
hi.<br />
<br />
I am trying this now because, well, I miss being a writer and I miss you all and I'm so close to hallucinating, having slept maybe five hours in the last 48, that I figure a blogpost will be proof that this night really happened.<br />
<br />
I CANNOT sleep. CANNOT. cannot. It's been days of this. <br />
<br />
And it's not the productive kind of not sleeping---it's the cracked out kind. It's the a-brain-can-really-only-take-so-much-of-this kind.<br />
<br />
This is going to be a strange reentry to our thing here, isn't it? And I'm just going to try to go with it---no picture, and blob-like as it is---because lowered expectations on the whole are probably a good thing.<br />
<br />
I'm seeing spots. <br />
<br />
Love y'all.<br />
<br />
Something fierce.<br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-83484498358411482672012-07-30T20:11:00.002-04:002012-07-30T20:23:15.980-04:00I've been drinking!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQEufnRYRuv73dTlZBn3-bE7r3hUErLOXJvHmKO1v9OhUNpi-pAcPmCBNg-ZvfrJ73bXi5FBCcEayi83pPwyWwVyI9tusByYdMOHBVTjJ4-TbSuFRwxBL3-X6OL7N9sXzdS6cOc7aKpjW/s1600/sad+patch.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="391" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQEufnRYRuv73dTlZBn3-bE7r3hUErLOXJvHmKO1v9OhUNpi-pAcPmCBNg-ZvfrJ73bXi5FBCcEayi83pPwyWwVyI9tusByYdMOHBVTjJ4-TbSuFRwxBL3-X6OL7N9sXzdS6cOc7aKpjW/s400/sad+patch.jpeg" /></a></div><br />
Dear guys,<br />
<br />
That’s how I just started this post---as a letter. Like I’m writing to my family from prison.<br />
<br />
I’m not in prison, though I do watch MSNBC’s <i>Lockup</i> to help me get to sleep. (Dan has suggested that this is unwise but I think he’s just mad because I ripped a hole in our mattress so I’d have somewhere to store my toothbrush/shank.)<br />
<br />
I’ve been gone because...<br />
<br />
I’m just sad---that’s the title of the memoir at this point.<br />
<br />
I’m just still fucking sad. (And there’s book number two.)<br />
<br />
I’m sad and pissed and just all sorts of unpleasant right now. (A self-help trilogy?)<br />
<br />
It boils down to this: I miss my mom and dad and I wish they hadn’t died and I’d like things to just go back to how they were when I was stalking my next-door neighbor and all was right with the world. (The fact that writing those words makes me feel like a 10-year-old kid does not help.) <br />
<br />
I’m assuming at this point that you understand my longish absences to mean I’m struggling/hiding. Maybe I should change the entry titles while I’m gone to keep you posted on the state of things---a sort of Spew weather channel.<br />
<br />
Monday: Hot Mess. <br />
Tuesday: Miserable Fuck.<br />
Wednesday: Trying to not worry and be happy.<br />
Thursday: Bobby McFerrin is a douche.<br />
Friday: Inexplicably horny.<br />
Saturday: Aha---ovulating. God’s a dick for making everything harder for chicks and inventing centipedes. Also, giving both parents cancer and nabbing them? Not cool, Dude.<br />
Sunday: (Intentionally left blank.) (Despondent.) <br />
<br />
The last few weeks were actually more the stuff of anguish, mania, and a kind of pathetic bewilderment that took the following form:<br />
<br />
I painted the wood paneling in my dad’s office white.<br />
<br />
I watched the entire first season of Showtime’s <i>Episodes</i>. (And also what’s aired of the second season. Solid show.) <br />
<br />
The form it did not take: writing.<br />
<br />
That’s not true, actually. I was writing. I just stopped writing. It’s more cause of the crazy than effect.<br />
<br />
See, I wrote my way into a sad patch---I often can’t see where I’m going---and then I ran. I painted. I Episode-ed. I ran and ran. <br />
<br />
I tried to write an e-mail to a friend and the sad patch showed up there too! The computer ratted me out! So I ran again.<br />
<br />
The sad patch wants to be written and I don’t want to write it. I don’t want to feel it. <br />
<br />
So I’m putting on a third coat of paint in the office.<br />
<br />
I’m thinking of getting into <i>Web Therapy</i>.<br />
<br />
Also, I’ve made a new friend. Her name is white wine and she’s the shit! She’ll hang out any time of day---screw 5pm! She’s pretty much orange juice’s prettier, more sophisticated cousin. <br />
<br />
Sometimes though...sometimes...right now...white wine brings along sad patch and I’m like, “What the fuck, white wine? I thought you were cool!”<br />
<br />
And she’s all, “Really? I’m pretty sure you learned in 10th grade about my depressant properties.”<br />
<br />
And I’m all, “Did you really just say ‘depressant properties’? Cool it with the three-syllable words, Miss Smarty McSmartSmart.”<br />
<br />
And she’s all, “You’re going to have to look at sad patch sometime. You might as well---”<br />
<br />
And with that, I have to run.<br />
<br />
I know I sound like a fucking lunatic. I know.<br />
<br />
But it’s coming on fast and I’m feeling too sad to breathe so I have to go.<br />
<br />
More to come.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
LolaUnknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-42546418976797430142012-07-16T15:41:00.000-04:002012-07-16T15:41:16.592-04:00Hostess Cupcake O'clock<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia4bnAy9Ek9QnVlxrLrVwbi8QfKoFQoEO1pZYqCH-pMq6o-TMaAbvW35NTmNnCzAY4ze_WHzYVEyLqMOJGfWhyZjSNscowu3vIi88-5SRiraNaPeWYG2d5JG-3-EckPIml6m_ku0P8W8fc/s1600/hostess+cupcake+o%2527clock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="344" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia4bnAy9Ek9QnVlxrLrVwbi8QfKoFQoEO1pZYqCH-pMq6o-TMaAbvW35NTmNnCzAY4ze_WHzYVEyLqMOJGfWhyZjSNscowu3vIi88-5SRiraNaPeWYG2d5JG-3-EckPIml6m_ku0P8W8fc/s400/hostess+cupcake+o%2527clock.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Hostess Cupcakes were my mom's favorite treat...mine too when I was a kid (and again now). When I was young, I would walk up to Cumberland Farms and get each of us a package (two per person, the way it should be) and surprise her with them when I got back. Then we'd sit at the kitchen table or out on the deck and eat them together---a cup of coffee complementing hers, a glass of milk with mine. She was always so delighted by our little cupcake parties---our stealing a few minutes of the day for this little bit of fun. <br />
<br />
And I was delighted by the chance to steal her.<br />
<br />
As I spend time at the house now, working on my parents' gardens or writing, I always take a break for what I now call Hostess Cupcake O'clock---a time to just stop whatever I'm doing and sit down by the river and appreciate the beauty of the day or think of my parents. It's much more reverent than a moment of silence.<br />
<br />
Today I'm taking it at my mom's spot at the kitchen table---another most sacred place.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-23787393225738367062012-07-09T18:12:00.000-04:002012-08-03T05:55:37.236-04:00How I spent my summer vacation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQmwnIyoqhj7-eVZXfLGaz7GGLy2o-BhNquUVwpne4R8q0WcJYRBgrhKg09lKRo773mp_blGvl5McPknFvhOHIKtYbBJzKBzrnNLfOfebydqKSOH5DmCAeVFdTFwbBPp1nA6qyvVy4DLx7/s1600/IMG_7636.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQmwnIyoqhj7-eVZXfLGaz7GGLy2o-BhNquUVwpne4R8q0WcJYRBgrhKg09lKRo773mp_blGvl5McPknFvhOHIKtYbBJzKBzrnNLfOfebydqKSOH5DmCAeVFdTFwbBPp1nA6qyvVy4DLx7/s576/IMG_7636.JPG" /></a></div><i>You didn't think I was going to follow through, did you?</i> <i>(Missing from photo---some of my favorite people.)</i><br />
<br />
I didn’t want to feel sadness going into our Chatham vacation but there it sat. In my chest. It’s always in my chest. As I folded each thin cotton dress and set aside each pair of worn flip flops, I thought of her. I thought of how much my mom would love to be joining us on this trip. I thought about how seeking joy, no matter how much I know she would want it for me, feels like I am betraying her. <br />
<br />
And then I danced alone in my bedroom on a Tuesday morning.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lolamellowsky.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-will-be-out-of-office.html" target="_blank">I visited Chatham for the first time </a> two summers ago when Bec and Jeff first invited us to join them at the house they’d rented there. By that time, five months after her diagnosis, my mom had tried two kinds of chemotherapy and a grueling round of radiation and was beginning to feel like and know that she was dying. We all had hoped she would join us in Chatham but she just didn’t feel well enough. I didn’t want to leave her but I was tired. I had been to every appointment since her diagnosis and thought I owed it to myself and especially Dan to take the week for vacation. My guilt and worry were exacerbated when I checked in with my mom each day via text message and learned she was getting worse. She was supposed to have chemo that week---the first treatment I’d be missing---and she skipped it. I read magazines on a towel warmed by the Chatham sand and tried to pretend I didn’t know how poorly she was doing. <br />
<br />
As I packed for this year’s return to that beach, I thought of all of this. Here I was again trying to forget her. I felt constipated in my chest.<br />
<br />
And then a song from the Broadway version of <i>The Lion King</i> came on---out of my shuffled iPod rose <i>Circle of Life</i>. I closed my eyes and listened. My neck started to roll in rhythm with the swelling chorus and as my arms rose above me, I lifted my knees and set each foot back down in gentle stomps. My hands swayed through the air as my body moved. I felt my mom telling me to go down to Chatham and love my sisters up for her. To love up my Aunt Gail who joined us from Miami. To love up my brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews. To let myself be loved up. That it didn’t mean I was forgetting her. That it was our turn for the long beach days that she had enjoyed so many of during her life. <br />
<br />
I did a white girl’s tribal dance and then I finished packing.<br />
<br />
****************************************************************<br />
<br />
I spent our week in Chatham at the intersection of joy, sorrow, love and anxiety---a four-way stop where each emotion took its turn without pattern, unsure who had the right of way. We packed coolers of food and stared at the ocean all day in a semi-circle of beach chairs, family and love. But afterwards, as I hung towels over the railing and thought of my mom doing this chore on summer evenings, sorrow took and squeezed my heart. At night we did puzzles and laughed and talked over big delicious dinners, good coffee, and fresh blueberry and key lime pies. And then I’d go out on the porch alone for a bit with a glass of wine and let myself think of her text messages. <br />
<br />
<i>“I skipped chemo today. I don’t think I’m going to do it anymore.”</i><br />
<br />
It was a great week---a wonderful week in so many ways---but the sad tugging never quite left me. My sisters probably felt the same but we didn’t talk about it as much as you’d think we would have. It’s hard to synchronize our grief. The aching, working, sobbing, writing, child-raising and anguish of our days rarely coincide. Or maybe like so many other families hit by tragedy, we just don’t know how to talk about it. We just try to get through the days.<br />
<br />
But when everyone packed up their damp bathing suits and greasy half-used bottles of suntan lotion to leave Bec and Jeff to enjoy the rest of their vacation without us, the grief came through in the heaviest of good byes. Our sadness was left for the last moments of the trip when our hearts dropped together, contained and disguised by the busyness of getting out the door. We all felt it, some of us cried. We hugged good bye and it was every good bye. The good bye with our mom and dad, the good bye with the house, the good bye to life innocent of this pain. It was the good bye in which we now exist. And it was good bye to a reprieve from the ache of pretending out in our individual worlds, that we are hurting less than we are. <br />
<br />
When one of my sisters started welling up, I locked the door of the bedroom behind us and told her to let it out, to give herself that one minute to cry. She took just the minute. Then she put on her sunglasses---we all put on our sunglasses---and we walked out the door. <br />
<br />
We emerged from our vacuum and felt the sorrow of not being able to keep each other in our pockets.<br />
<br />
<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9ntEhz3hUqc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<i>Photos by Becky Breslin. Also, there is an entire sister/Ohio constituency/family that was missing from this trip and is missing from these photos. Don't you think they should move east?</i><br />
<br />
<div style='text-align:center;font-size:11px;font-family:arial;font-weight:normal;margin:10px;padding:0;line-height:normal'><a href='http://www.dwellable.com/a/286/Cape-Cod/Lower-Cape-Cod/Chatham/Vacation-Rentals' style='border:none'><img src='http://www.dwellable.com/dwellback/286.jpg' style='width:102px;height:20px;border:none;margin:0;padding:0'><br>Chatham on Dwellable</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-43128003167375262862012-07-05T14:30:00.000-04:002012-07-05T14:32:11.389-04:00I'm under that hat and towel.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmNHJHiW9RISQBaxSIXZt7bVUCdQcj_Ed-8W0RRmKuhUQJzREqA2XIYFfRMdE7nW7gA68pK3-TG-K3QZMSbAAohqXQ-ZbyEnEO30B-bhyFdmE0Dq6E0KOAwxkWIWNocfmHBmrVNSytP2m/s1600/IMG_7530.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmNHJHiW9RISQBaxSIXZt7bVUCdQcj_Ed-8W0RRmKuhUQJzREqA2XIYFfRMdE7nW7gA68pK3-TG-K3QZMSbAAohqXQ-ZbyEnEO30B-bhyFdmE0Dq6E0KOAwxkWIWNocfmHBmrVNSytP2m/s576/IMG_7530.JPG" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>...sun-lover that I am. And I'm on my back as you can tell from my ample bosom. See 'em? (Photograph by Becky Breslin)</i><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white;">As they say in England, I was on holiday---which sounds much lovelier and not so socks-and-sandals as vacation.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Dan and I were in Chatham staying with my family at a house that</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Bec and Jeff rented down there and generously opened up to all of us.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Then Dan and I</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">took our time (and an overnight) getting off the Cape before heading down to RI where I am now on this perfect 10---sunny, breezy, glistening river---day.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">I am writing from a rocking chair on my parents’ front porch, if you must know how truly picturesque this scene is. </span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></div>
<br />
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<span class="s1">I should have told you I’d be gone but I really thought I was going to check in during our trip. In fact, I have about five half-written entries from the last two weeks that I just never got to posting. It’s a hard thing for me---that balance between living life and writing about it. I remember thinking that I should have been writing more during my mom’s illness---capturing every conversation, every handhold---and then realizing that I didn’t want to miss a minute that I could be spending with her to be alone writing about it (in any capacity that required my spelling words correctly). It was much the same in Chatham. Should I find a quiet spot to write about how the joy of my family gathering at the beach like we did as kids is tempered by the sadness of knowing how much my mom would love to be here? Or should I head out to the back deck with my sisters and eat blue cheese on rice crackers with a cold glass of chardonnay? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">You see the dilemma?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white;">It’s one I have here at my mom and dad’s house too.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> Like </span><span style="background-color: white;">with my parents, I am aware that these are my last days with the house.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Do I find a quiet spot to shape my feelings on all of this into a topiary?</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Or do I scribble out pages of messy reflections in my journal and then get out in the gardens for a good bye with this home and the sense of my parents that dwells here.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">I will spend my life fighting the urge to stay in my head and analyze and the need to get out of it and live, but this is different---this is death.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Any day now---any day the universe decides upon---these gardens will no longer be mine to tend.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">I would regret missing my chance to prune my dad’s roses and water my mom’s brilliant purple hydrangeas were I to miss it.</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><br />
</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And while vacation doesn’t hold this same weight, my trying to engage with the world and allow moments of joy does---which is why I tried so hard to stay on vacation rather than retreat into writing. But there’s so much joy I get from writing and hanging out with you guys here, so I’m never really sure where I should be. Mother fucking balance---I’ll be trying to find it forever. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">I’m going to try to shape what I wrote while in Chatham into some sort of “How I spent my summer vacation” to post here but I’ve put in eight writing hours already today and the yard is calling me. Maybe today I found a smidge of balance. Maybe I just have to accept that this is a time of imbalance. The truth is---whether it’s in Chatham or New Hampshire, in the gardens or on the porch---I have to consider it a good day when I’m standing at all.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br />
</i></div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-73981194933275316182012-06-23T09:23:00.000-04:002012-06-23T09:55:06.467-04:00<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4ueuR_efYzQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
It might kind of be cheating to post this video here since it already had its Facebook premiere and some of you have seen it---but, c'mon, it needed a Spew showing.<br />
<br />
Plus---who knows?---maybe the next owner of this here MicroMachine (remember, if it doesn't say MicroMachine it's not the real thing) is one of us! (Or one of your friends who was just telling you how as a kid she always wished that she would grow up to drive the Barbie Dream Car.)<br />
<br />
Dan bought the car for himself when I was living in New York. I came up to NH for a visit and we were walking from the train station where he picked me up to what I assumed would be his regular car (a black VW Beetle <i>nonconvertible</i>)----and there it was. Surprise. (It was dark out so it took me a minute to notice...) We've gone on some fun drives in the seven years since then. And nobody loved this car more than GiG. But we inherited my dad's Jeep Liberty so it seemed like time to say good bye to the bug. (Though I am kind of digging being a three-car family...choosing which car to drive each day conjures the childhood joy of picking a cereal for breakfast.)<br />
<br />
Anywho, I'm heading down to RI for an overnight at my parents' house. Dan and I feel a sense of duty to tend to their gardens since it's the first summer that neither of them are here to do it. If any of you guys down there are interested in looking at the car, we'll be down there next week too. (Just shoot me an e-mail with LOLA MELLOWSKY IS A BADASS in the subject line.<br />
<br />
I'm not trying to be Sally Salesperson here, I just figured I would put it out there. Plus, I'm hoping the video is enough fun to pardon the fact that I've just posted my first ad at The Spew. <br />
<br />
Thanks for the "Baby Steps" sugar, y'all. Here's to more of 'em!<br />
<br />
P.S. We've already lowered the price of the car (since making the video) to $6,000. And there may be a SPEW discount...<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-29301132238089571462012-06-21T17:16:00.000-04:002012-06-21T17:46:34.423-04:00Baby Steps to The Spew. Baby steps to The Spew.<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p3JPa2mvSQ4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Hi, guys.<br />
<br />
Can we just start there? <br />
<br />
I’ve missed you fuh real.<br />
<br />
You know when you miss someone and you want to call them and you have so much to say but are just not sure when you will have the time/energy to have the phone (or e-mail) conversation you <i>really</i> want to have with them so you put it off, thinking you’ll wait until you have the time to <i>really</i> talk, but that time doesn’t come and now more and more has happened so the phone call feels even harder and, worse, you feel further away from your friend because so much has happened (for her too, you’re sure) and you don’t know how you’ll possibly jump into the initial conversation you wanted to have with her, let alone cover all the new ground, and it’s all feeling a little overwhelming because this friend is really important to you and it breaks your heart to think that she might be feeling otherwise.<br />
<br />
You know how that sometimes happens?<br />
<br />
Well, you guys---I’m a fuck. Sorry I haven’t called.<br />
<br />
I’ve felt such unease about this and for so many reasons. First of all, I miss you. I miss us. We had this great thing, you and I. <br />
<br />
C’mon, boo, look at me.<br />
<br />
Ain’t nobody got eyes pretty as yours, baby.<br />
<br />
(Cue Boys II Men).<br />
<br />
(99% of my 1994 make-out sessions went down while <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpaIOO13tAY" target="_blank">this song </a> was playing.)<br />
<br />
I'm really not trying to change the subject.<br />
<br />
I have so much I want to tell you<br />
<br />
Except I can’t. Not in one breath. <br />
<br />
This is all feeling very frightening all of a sudden.<br />
<br />
I told myself that I would unpack it in parts. See, there’s this thing that happens when I’m having a hard time--my defenses go down and in walks anxiety like the bitch never stopped owning me. There have been moments---weeks, months even---when I was sure I had her beat, but she smells my weakness and shows up just in time to judge me for crumbling. And she always kicks me square in the writer. The more time and energy I’ve spent with a piece, the harder she kicks me. She shows up right at the end----right after I’ve gotten in all down, right in that moment where the tiniest bit of satisfaction could be---and chastises me for every word I’ve written. Try hitting “publish” after that. The bitch owns me, you see? <br />
<br />
It’s not always like this (or this blog would never have been born), but it's definitely the story of now. So rather than trying to fight through it, I’m going to try to accept my limitations and work with it because I want to hang out with you guys. I’m thinking if I start small rather than trying to say it all at once, well then maybe I can get this written and posted and then be out of the room before anxiety shows up.<br />
<br />
Be straight with me---do I sound a little unstable right now? <br />
<br />
I do, right?<br />
<br />
A smidge?<br />
<br />
No, it’s cool. I <i>am</i> unstable.<br />
<br />
But, c’mon, this is the shit that makes heroin addicts---I can live with unstable.<br />
<br />
What I can’t live with---and what today’s baby step blog entry will be about---is that I pulled such a no-show here. Well, I can’t live with it anymore. I needed a minute and I know you got it, but at some point it became about me putting off that phone call and you were getting further away. But because you guys are wicked awesome, you started checking in and gently nudging me back here. One of you even wrote, “Not for me to say it’s time," which is a statement of such tenderness and compassion and respect---something you all have shown me so much of---that it made so clear to me that it <i>was</i> for you to say it was time and thank gawd you did. And then yesterday I read a wonderful piece written by friend <a href="http://amyoscar.com/" target="_blank">Amy </a> about how <a href="http://amyoscar.com/empowerment/your-blog-is-a-mirror-a-beehive-a-teacher/" target="_blank">“your blog will change your life” </a> and I realized how much it really has. Which is to say, how much all of <i>you</i> have changed my life. You have. Fuh real. (You still are.) Because you guys were there, I wrote my way through my parents’ deaths---it’s a gift you gave me. Your support and love kept me writing and now I have an account of this time. You are all a part of this story. You were in the hospital room with me as I sat at <a href="http://lolamellowsky.blogspot.com/2010/05/in-real-life-even-house-doesnt-have.html" target="_blank">the foot of my mom’s hospital bed while she slept </a>. You were there for <a href="http://lolamellowsky.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html" target="_blank">the last cup of coffee I had with my dad.</a> <br />
<br />
These aren’t small moments and I’m so grateful for you for being there then and being here now. That’s why it was time for me to show up again. I don't know where I'm going or what the timeline will be----and I gotta get outta here before I start overthinking it---but I hope you guys will be there.<br />
<br />
Baby steps to The Spew. Baby steps to the publish button.<br />
<br />
Love all y’all.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1320858862439296181.post-19818603654527050702012-05-05T14:56:00.000-04:002012-05-05T19:30:13.175-04:00Bleeding Heart<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVFgeNQikhT2ImEHWQvILpilPxsBV2uBvb48d_sZjI1BXGHaQVYyyGRmI3CU_SW8ihY3NSD2WI4XC8WAZDYve75f-9LfQ38icgxkMYIhz_j9eudrouiczK1CzakKdI_dNnVWaAc4sGgH57/s1600/bleeding+hearts.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVFgeNQikhT2ImEHWQvILpilPxsBV2uBvb48d_sZjI1BXGHaQVYyyGRmI3CU_SW8ihY3NSD2WI4XC8WAZDYve75f-9LfQ38icgxkMYIhz_j9eudrouiczK1CzakKdI_dNnVWaAc4sGgH57/s576/bleeding+hearts.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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Before my dad died, I told my sisters that even though we now knew death, we would feel something entirely different with his passing---something we couldn't then anticipate or know. I was right. I could not have imagined the pain of this medley of loss before being wrecked by it. The wound of my mom is wide open. My dad’s death is just becoming real. And we are readying to sell my childhood home, the symbol of everything I knew for sure during the first 30 years of my life. <br />
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Now I know nothing for sure. <br />
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People say they will accomplish certain things in their “next life.” It feels now like I am in a tidal wave of death and endings and that in my next life I'll be a person without parents.<br />
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I am writing this on a folding chair on the balcony off my parents' bedroom, looking down the lawn out to the river. The birds are so loud and active---all of them in pairs. Parents everywhere. I never noticed how many different greens there are in this yard as the spring trees bloom.<br />
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When I finish up here, I will return to their bedroom---my area of focus for today’s cleaning. The room where during my mom’s illness, I fell asleep beside her on the bed. The room where I ran her baths and while she soaked, cleaned and organized her closet. Now the closet is empty of her and full only of my father. I am sorting through him. <br />
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I’ve been trying on some of his button down shirts. As a kid, I didn’t dress up in my mom’s fanciest skirts and necklaces. I sifted through their closet and donned my dad’s hats and pants and ties. Now I am hugging his sweaters as I go, wishing I would have released myself into his hugs more when he was alive. I keep having to sit down on the footstool to cry into the sleeves of his red fleece coat.<br />
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There is too much going on to even keep track of, let alone write about. I’ve never wanted to hit pause more than I do right now. Things are moving too quickly for comprehension.<br />
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All I know for certain is that this pain and sadness feel bottomless.<br />
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If I can return here, I will.<br />
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If I can’t, well, I know you’ll understand.<br />
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Thank you all for your kindness and support.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8