And so it goes...

I know I have no reason to apologize for not posting, but I guess I'm doing it anyway. Time is a fast moving train, and some things are more important than blogging. I have written about my friend Michelle on my family blog which you are welcome to read, but please don't leave any foot prints. I need to say more about her, but she's reading WordsonWater. The odds on her survival are about 50/50 as far as I can tell, but I've never put much faith in statistics. Anyway....

It was a Michelle day on Friday, no time to blog, no time to clean, no time to pack for my weekend trip, just Michelle. The topic of the day was the big "C"; the cancer that's lodged in her lymph nodes but seems to be responding to massive doses of chemo. We didn't want to talk about cancer at all. Jason and I just wanted to give her an escape from the gilded cage of her parent's house for a day. The hostess at the busy fan area restaurant told us it would be a 25 minute wait for a table. We stood there like sheep for a few minutes, and then I turned to Michelle and said, "Why don't you go tell them you have cancer and you just can't stand here in line and wait?" General hilarity followed. I suggested she could take off her lovely new wig and show them her naked scalp by way of proof. We spent the rest of our wait speculating on how she could work this diagnosis to her advantage. "That's a really beautiful necklace you have on. Can I have it? I have cancer you know." Or maybe, "I have cancer. I've come to NYC just to see this sold out Broadway show. Can you get me tickets?" She really didn't quite have the nerve to walk up to the hostess, and besides she could never have done it with a straight face with we two morons snickering in the background.

She was still hungry after lunch which means the effect of her week ago chemo is finally being washed out of her body. We headed across the street to the organic grocery where she gets some chicken salad and loads it up with Texas Pete. Back in the car she thinks she might have gotten a bit carried away with the hot sauce. We've got a great running gag now, so she rolls down the car window at the light and yells, "Does anyone have a mint or something? My mouth's on fire and I have CANCER." The conversation becomes sillier as she and Jason go through a complete improvisational Salad Fingers routine about her illness, giving their shared sense of twisted humor full play.

We I kept her busy all day, shopping, chatting, laughing a lot. She tells us the horrors between jokes, in dismissive tones like the brave girl she has become. The hospital was a nightmare for her, then the wait over Christmas for her biopsy. She is not a good patient, something I admire in anyone. People who survive take as much control of their situation as is possible. She let off the "f" bomb (her Mother's words) to the skittish nurse trying to take blood. "After that they sent for the gay guy" she tells us sardonically. "They figured that I lived in San Francisco and had tattoos, plus the mouth, so they sent for their gay guy." She showed me the PICC line entry point by her collarbone, the route for administering the poison that's suppose to save her. She volunteers that it doesn't hurt, but would probably leave a scar. She makes it very clear that this is life altering, but that she will survive, and I try to believe her. She talks about the future she plans with her boyfriend. He emailed her from Prague this week where he is doing an ad campaign for Coke-Cola. He told her he's getting an engagement ring while he's there. " It would be nicer," she quips, "if he had asked in person, and if he had asked before I had, you know, the cancer."

My son is like a brother to her, although I know there was a time when he wished it could be more. They shared a house for a year before she left for the west coast, but the relationship stayed strictly platonic. My son shrugs his shoulders and says, "That's the story of my life". He watched her protectively through several destructive relationships perhaps hoping to be the one she turned to. He tells her she's beautiful bald. We go upstairs and let her try on my blond wig. Of course it looks great on her, and since it looks lousy on me, I insist she take it to wear for fun. Jason tells her she looks really hot as a blond too. They spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the basement talking and drinking several of my best bottles of red wine. The doctor told her to practice moderation, so she's going for the good stuff. She gave up smoking when she started chemo, and she knows she will never be able to drink like she once did. When I check on them later they are talking about the Ramones, Michelle's all time favorite band. I'm not sure she needed to know that Joey died of Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but Jason is making a point that Michelle understands. Joey Ramone never let go of the booze, the ciggs, or any of the rock and roll life style.

That night in the car on the way back to her parent's, she tells me again she wants to go home, and I know she's not talking about her Mom and Dad's lovely house. Her father is frantic for her safety and hovers outside the bathroom door asking about her digestive processes. Her Dad comes in at night to listen for her breathing like he did when she was a baby. She would rather pretend that this is a mere hiccup in her life's plans, and the death watch he is doing is leaving her shaken. The truth is this is not a disease that can be cured, only lived with. Right now things look hopeful. The swelling is down in her lymph nodes, her blood work came back great, and the doctor says can go back to San Francisco in a few weeks and get the remaining 8 chemo treatments locally, resting between sessions in her own apartment. Beyond that the doctors will not promise, but what I know about this disease is that she has acquired a stalker that will follow her from city to city for the rest of her life. "I can't do like I did," Michelle says, "I’m going to take care of myself from now on, and I’m not going to die." She looks so young, so thin and vulnerable, I want to cry, but I have given her a day of laughter and I won't take it back with self indulgent tears. She has an uphill struggle before her, and no matter how much she bargains, or how much we joke, the world is not going to let her move to the head of the line.

Things better left undone

Gulp. I do believe I made a strategic error Sunday night. After a hectic, even frantic week and weekend I finally sit down to blog around 6 PM. I had been to visit my daughter’s friend Michelle this afternoon, the one undergoing chemotherapy. She said she would send me a picture, sans hair, to post on my blog, but I became impatient and went to her my space site to see if she had one posted. Oh, says I, there’s my girl’s site. It felt like snooping in her private things somehow, but one thing led to another and I found myself mesmerized by all her friends, her life, her adventures. The more I read and looked and listened, the older and creakier I felt. I think the final straw was a video of some of her friends basediving from a cliff after a 10 mile climb. Okay, I’ve never been that young, ever, but still I had a yearning to go, even though I know I’d probably poop out before I climbed the ten miles, not to mention someone having to push me off the edge because I wouldn’t have the guts to jump unless the ridgeline was on fire.

I know I’ve said I’m as old as I feel, but sometimes that works against me too. The picture of the life she has with her friends was so concentrated, so Technicolor, so in the moment, I felt like Dorothy when she entered Oz. I had no purchase on the ground of course, instead I found myself still flying through the grey skies in the eye wall of the storm, ass over teakettle, clutching my little dog in a straw basket. Trying to talk myself down I started thinking about the fact that she lives in London where the metro area population is around 14 million, while I live in the bland suburban outskirts of a city of approximately 1 million. Let’s face it; excitement is not going to seek me out here in the hinterlands. I then remember that I leave for work at 7:30 am and don’t usually come home for the day before 6:30, often later. While I am on my job I get more accomplished than 95 % of my associates, most of whom are much younger than myself. See, I’m talking my way out of this ditch.

I was still thinking about the base diving when I got a call from my sister. I told her my dilemma and she reminded me immediately that she is my older sister. She told me that she was sure that I would have the nerve to jump, if only so I wouldn’t have to trudge back down the hill. She asks me what I’ve done this week. I start into the litany of accomplishments, and the more I talked the more I realized how much I actually do every day. In case I didn’t get the point my sister reminds me that skydiving contributes very little to the advancement of the human race. We talk about the little town I grew up in for a few minutes which is a conversation about who’s name showed up in the obituaries and the big jail escape this week. My adopted home suddenly seems more exciting, not quite London, but pretty far from where I came. We say our goodbyes and I sit for a while in front of the computer, still wondering about the tall cliffs and the bright lights. Suddenly my favorite quote from Gary Trudeau comes back to me in a flash. “The world needs grownups Zonker.” Damn, I guess that would be me.

Mother In Law

First I want to thank the two men who inspired this post, Crankster who recently put up a great post on old ladies, and Tony Bitch. Crankster you probably know, but I might need to introduce Tony. I don’t remember his real name anymore, just the AKA he has used for as many years as I have known him. Now before you get the wrong idea about the name, let me say that Tony is about as masculine a man as you’re likely to run across unless you hang out with a lot of kick ass lumberjacks. He describes himself on my space as:

“Alcohol soaked brain damaged punk rock retard. I don't play hard to get I play hard to want. I sang in some shitty punk bands now I have a shitty punk label called RIFF RAFF. Watch for a new BRUTAL KNIGHTS 7" and a CARBONAS 7" in the near future.”

Tony met my daughter when she was in high school and hanging around the Punk scene in Richmond. She was straight edge then I think, but she seems to have gotten over that phase completely. My girl told me he was sweating her big time, but he was not in her game plan, plus he was too old for her. He was not the sort of boy you bring home to meet the parents, and she didn’t, but I ran across him from time to time in town and was introduced. Tony is an equal opportunity offender. It would never occur to him to sensor his language or his remarks in front of God or the President, but he was always strangely respectful around me. I was a bit concerned about her association with such a rogue, but I soon realized instead of him influencing her, she was actually making changes in him. Besides, he is a hell of a lot of fun in small doses. He attracts friends like he’s dipped in chocolate, and leaves a wake of awed whispers behind him when he shows his face anywhere in the punk scene. Oh hell, as irascible as he was and is, I like him too, and I could see he was wild for my girl.

In the course of things my baby headed off for college in Florida, and only kept loose ties with Tony, but when she came back to town they would occasionally see each other at a concert or a party. She hadn’t talked to him in more than a year, but when she started doing wedding invitations she impulsively asked him to come and join in the celebration. Someday I’ll tell the whole story of that remarkable day, and I may just leave my mother in law out of that story entirely, except for her encounter with Tony. To give you an idea of his, uh, unique personality, I will relate a story from early in the evening. Tony is in the buffet line when the beautiful bride comes strolling by in her white dress. Tony yells across the room,

“Hey, Eve, remember that time we almost fucked?” My mother in law was standing there, plus Eve’s new mother in law, and most of her new British family. They all acted like they didn’t hear. Margaret of course didn’t cause she’s near deaf, and the Brits are just polite.

“Tony” says Eve, “you know that never happened.”

Yeah”, he replies, “but I wish it had.”

Eva says to me later, “I don’t know why I forgot about Tony’s mouth. What was I thinking inviting him?” She was however laughing at the time. I immediately told her why she had and why it had been a good idea. To set the scene I should say that my wretched step mother in law was driving me crazy all evening, grabbing my arm and demanding to know what was in each and every dish I had made for the wedding, even though we had clearly labeled everything on the table for the sake of guest who were vegan, vegetarian, wheat allergic, soy allergic, tree nut allergic, peanut allergic, excreta, excreta, excreta. She was also annoying all the kitchen help with special request for food cause she didn’t like any of the more than 50 choices on the table. When she got tired of that she spent her time boring the bejesus out of every one within the sound of her croaking voice and the high pitched screech of her hearing aide. Tony was sampling the wine freely at this point and overheard one of these exchanges. He comes up to the 85 year old witch and says,

“So you must be the bride’s sister, right?” Margaret, who has no earthly comprehension of either humor or irony, explained to him in her best schoolteacher voice that he was incorrect; she was the bride’s grandmother. Tony looks incredulous, shakes his head repeatedly, accuses her of lying, and insists she shouldn’t tease him that way. He lays it on thick as molasses and to my wicked delight so help me God, she bought it! Tony was really on a roll now. He had that sucker on the hook and he was going to play it for a while. She protested again and again, and then Tony says, arm extended in front of his face, “Talk to the hand, don’t you lie to me.” She starts tittering like a 13 year old, and still believes he is actually coming on to her. My sides hurt from holding back the laughter, but I just can’t walk away till this is done. Finally, still giggling, she called him a naughty boy and headed back up the steps, glancing over her shoulder as she retreated. It was the most fun I have ever had with Margaret in the same room. Tony slipped away without saying goodbye that evening, mostly because someone stuffed his drunken comatose body in a car and took him back to the city. I really should send him a nice bottle of booze and a thank you note.

Thank You Mr. Spock

My elder son came into the room one day when I was trying to pour cat food in the bowl. The fat and greedy cat we call Tuxedo nudged the bag with his head and caused it to spill all over the floor. I was annoyed, and since I had someone to listen, I complained. “Every time I try to pour this food that beast hits the bag and dumps it on the floor!”

“Seems like one of you would figure it out” came the logical reply from my son. It gave me a laugh and a lesson, one of many I have learned from my children. If I am the smarter, the stronger, or the wiser, why do I expect the slower, the weaker, or the less enlightened to make good decisions?

At work my boss comes to me time and time again with an assignment that only I can do. He bases this decision on his belief that I am the most patient of teachers. It is good that he cannot hear the conversation going on in my mind when he brings me with these missions of tolerance. Since so many people seem to think the same way about me, I’ve been trying to figure out why.

It may have something to do with the fact that I was reared in a home where a voice was never raised in anger, and I also live in such a home now, the one I created for my family. We are all in the dictionary under passive-aggressive, so don’t think we all go around stoned all the time. Once when my younger son was about ten I was speaking to him about neglected work at school in my usual calm soft tone. My son says,
“Why are you yelling at me?” I replayed the last 5 minutes of our conversation in my mind quickly.
“I’m not yelling son.” I said with surprise.
“Well, it feels like you are” came his response. Evidently sometimes it really is what you say, not how you say it, but perhaps I am fooling some of the people with my demeanor, just not all the people all of the time.

My father often told me that he never asked any man who worked for him to do a job that he would not do himself. He usually proved it by getting right in there beside them with his own brains, muscle, and sweat. He didn’t believe that any job was beneath him or that any honest work was ignoble. I saw my Dad stand before a congregation of 500 people and explain the church budget in his best blue suit, and then clean out the septic system in our front yard in the same week. I was proud of my Father’s work ethic and I took it as my role model. I also expect it from others, which is often the source of my raging but silent annoyance with sloth and ignorance. What my boss probably sees in me is not patience, but persistence. When he asks me how things are going I usually say great, but on rare occasions I have to tell him someone’s not working out well. I won’t give up I tell him, but just want to make him aware that there may be some problems. He says he trusts my judgment and he does, because so far, I’ve not been wrong.

I was not wrong about the really cute girl from his former job, the one he hired personally and was just let go. I trained her about three months ago and told him when I released her that she wouldn’t be here long. It wasn’t a matter of intelligence this time, but of work ethic. She didn’t have one. In the two weeks I spent training her, she was gone more than half the time, usually in his office conferring, but often in the hall using her cell phone, or just chatting up people who were trying to work. He had to know this was an issue, but he’s been a bit of a slacker himself, especially when it comes to the ladies. My next cube mate is also a trainer and has made some disparaging remarks from time to time. I usually stay out of office gossip, but I got drawn in after mentioning that my evaluations hadn’t been done for three months and wondered why. My friend told me I needed to flirt with the boss more. Now you don’t think I’m letting that one pass by, right? I soon discover he’s correct; the girls who flirt with and flatter him have their evaluations each month. I sent an email and set up a meeting for that day. He sounded sincerely apologetic, and told me I exceed expectations in all areas. He says he thought I knew that, so he was negligent about getting around to telling me. He wants me to go to Denver to do training in June. He tells me again that I have a great future with the company. I thank him graciously in my usual sweet calm voice. I don’t sound even faintly annoyed. It only takes about 10 minutes, including the time he stopped to answer a personal phone call. As I leave the office I wonder if he’s right about my patience. I also wonder how he’s going to feel when I have his job.

On Opera and International Relations

I looked up and a dark, attractive man was giving me a very frank stare from the booth across the restaurant. I smiled and looked back down to my glass. A memory I haven’t thought of in years came rushing back so intensely I could smell the exotic spice of the little garret room and that rainy evening, back when the world and I were very young. The empire that we once called Persia was stable and prosperous in those days, and the emerging professional class families sent their sons to Europe and the US for a modern education. Amir had come in that wave of progressive thinking to the heartland of America to study science and technology. Who knew in our lifetime the earth would shift beneath our feet, making our countries enemies? The man I saw before me in that restaurant so long ago was exquisitely handsome, with dark silky hair and skin lighter than my own tanned flesh. When I looked up and saw him staring at me with eyes I could drown in, I returned the stare immodestly for much longer than I should have. There was only one table between us and it was empty. I tried not to look again, but even when I glanced for only a second, his eyes were still devouring me. He was with another man who was not his equal in looks, but had more courage. The friend ventured a question, forcing me to look and respond. I think he asked me if I was at the University, but he could have asked my shoe size for all I knew, because when I looked up I fell back into the deep pool of Amir’s eyes and had to struggle for air.

The friend asked for my phone number and foolishly I gave it to him. I have no idea what his name was now, but when my phone rang later that week, it was Amir. Whatever arrangement they had made I never knew, just that I was grateful not to have to turn down the friend. My first meeting with the beautiful Persian was in the student commons of University of Kentucky. He had no car, could not drive, and refused my offer of transportation. If I had known anything about his country I wouldn’t have suggested driving him. That evening I listened to the history of his country, the pride of his people, his dream and hopes, and I knew this man was thunderstruck by me. I knew equally that I was charmed and intrigued by him, but had heard too much of foreign entanglements. My body was responding to the look and smell of him, but my brain was telling me to run. I listened to my body first and checked in with my brain several months later.

He made no move to kiss me that day, perhaps because I held myself a bit aloof, biding my time, unsure of how to handle the dangerous feelings. It was weeks later that I walked up the three flights of stairs and knocked on his door. He was not expecting me and I had no intentions to seduce him. We had met several times and exchanged a few goodbye kisses, but my sexual experience at that point in time was extremely limited, and I think his may have been equally so. I believed I was only seeking refuge from the storm that night, but I should have known better. The music coming from his record player was unexpected, Italian Opera, with a tenor singing sweet love songs. Amir pulled off my damp coat and tossed it over a chair. I had just finished a shift at the department store where I worked after classes at the University and was in professional black, including hose and heels. He had on a white cotton shirt woven in his country, with delicate embroidery along the collar. I slipped off my shoes because they were wet from the rain and looked around the room. There was no place to sit except on his bed. I didn’t have long to think about what to do now before his arms were around me. His mouth was soft and sweet and he smelled of roses and some spice I could not define.

The books he had been reading were tossed onto the floor and he undressed me before I could think of saying no. He pushed me down to the narrow bed and stood over me while he pulled his shirt over his head, then the trousers fell to the floor. I was suddenly overwhelmed with modesty and tried to cover myself with the sheet, but he pulled it back and put his own wonderful body in its place. His skin was soft as rose petals, whether naturally or from some secret Persian elixir I never knew. I only know I arched my back and rose to meet his hands as they caressed my own softness lovingly, tenderly. The aria rang out gloriously in the background as he moved in me, and our climax seemed to be paced to the music. After we were done he clutched me desperately and said, “You are in my heart Elaine.” It was not “I love you” and required no reply. Was it an impassioned declaration of undying love or the lonely voice of a young man, far from home and family, clinging to me for shelter? I only know the fervor I heard in his voice, the need for procession of my body and soul. I didn't know I would run when I left his room. I didn't know I would let the phone ring for weeks, fearful it might be him and I unable to resist if I saw or touched him again.

Tonight I wonder again what he must have thought of me. Amir said his name meant “king”, but there are no kings in Persia anymore. For years I searched for his face on the news, thinking I might spot him among the angry men with raised fists and guns. I think of his soft hands and his fierce pride, his passion and his loneliness. I wonder if that softness has turned to stone, the pride to bitterness, his passion to war, or even if he is still alive. I remember another girl from my school that married an Iranian and went to live with him in his country. I wonder about her fate in the turmoil of the world and am grateful for the decision I made. Yet tonight, with the dark heavy weight of the eyes across the room pressing through me, I know my fear was not of Amir’s passion, but of my own. I am relieved when my husband returns from watching football in the game room.

and she dances like a diamond shines

I thought I should mention why my girl gets by with so much with everyone. She's not only smart, she's beautiful. But you don't have to take my word for it.

That's My Girl

My daughter emailed me frantically, then called exactly 2 minutes later. She had been trying to write an essay for the Peace Corps for two weeks. The essay had to answer the following questions:

- What risks have you taken by using drugs and/or alcohol in the US?
- How would using drugs and alcohol in a foreign culture create risks different from those in the US?
Why is drug and alcohol behavior pertinent to the role of a Peace Corps Volunteer?

Now the reason the Corps picked on her in this particular manner is because of a little incident that happened the month after she turned 18 involving a car, a deep ditch, and a bit too much liquid courage. She has a very amusing tale about the night it happened when a woman appeared from nowhere and started screaming prayers that woke the neighborhood. She even made the cell in the county jail hysterical on retelling, especially the part about decking the prostitute who was sharing her cell when she tried to mess with my little firebrand. Well, it wasn’t so funny at the time, but looking back, you know.

Now my baby is the scientific logical type, with a brilliant mind and organizational skills second to none, plus a work ethic that even I find remarkable. She does however like to cut loose now and again, as you may already know from my previous posts. She works hard and plays hard and takes the knocks life hands her like the unconquerable woman she has become. If she had been asked to write a essay on say “Recumbent RNA as expressed in Neuromuscular Myocytes”, she would have performed brilliantly, but penitent stories are not her forte. Of course, I wrote the paper. I mean, I paid for the lawyer, the trial, and the fine. Did I mention my problems with enabling?In two hours I had 883 words of perfectly believable BS. One of my favorite words to describe this type of writing is “glamored”. I send the proof copy to her to revise if necessary. An email arrived twenty minutes later in which she tells me the piece had made her cry sitting right there in the internet café. This child did not cry in public when she broke her arm at age 7, at any point during the DUI arrest and trial, or when her fiancée was shot and killed during a robbery in Russia. What she did in private I don’t know, but she is not an overly emotional girl. So I post a reply to remind her that she shouldn’t start believing everything I write. It scares me when I rewrite history and people find it so much more palatable that the truth, especially the ones who are in the story. Fifteen minutes later I got the next email. She needs me to research the time she went for help for her eating disorder when she was 12. There is a form that the doctor she saw needs to fill out and get back in three days. Of course, I say yes, I’ll try to remember the name and get the form done.

After I sent the last email it occurred to me that I have been underestimating my daughter’s abilities at manipulation through the written word. One thing I learned on my father’s knee is there is no easier mark than a good salesman when they are confronted by one of equal merit. A smile of amusement and pride crosses over my face as I dig through the file drawer for her records. My girl will make her way.

My Secret Life

The air smelled almost like spring today, global warming they all said, an unnatural January they all said. The conversation melts in the warm air…

I slid behind the wheel of my car, put the windows down, and turn the volume up. The music you gave me comes round on the player, and I conjure you beside me, doing that strong silent thing you do so well, the one where you tell me everything with your eyes. I’m not talking either, just humming along, thinking of a blanket spread out on the earth, the sky overhead, and you pulling off my clothes and tossing them through the air. They catch in the low branches of trees, and yours join them in bewildering disarray as I unbutton, unbuckle, unzip. We have all the time in the world, nowhere we have to be, and nothing to do but each other. Like a woman struck blind, I memorize you with my mouth, my hands, and you are on me like fire itself, turning me in your arms with a dancer’s grace. We step to the tempo of your music, improvising on the theme, moving our bodies to the rhythm inside your head. The very earth absorbs my gasps of pleasure as I surrender myself to your desire. If there is more delight on earth I have not found it, cannot envision it, do not need it, only your mouth, your body, your hands, and these stolen hours.

All thieves pay a price, and mine is watching you pluck your clothing from the branches, drawing them in reverse striptease onto your perfect body, and giving me one last kiss before you leave. I accept the bargain we have made, and do not ask for more. The taste of you lingers on my tongue for days.

The only way to fail is not to write

I read a literary magazine called The Sun filled with the most amazing, honest, gut wrenching, stories from real people. The editor, Sy Safransky, had an article in December’s mag that filled me with the holy fire to write more. He gave a quote from author Annie Dillard that struck me profoundly.

"Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume your audience consists of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case."

The article also mentions a dissident poet who was imprisoned in the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. She was prohibited from having writing materials, so she would write poems by carving them into a bar of soap with a burned matchstick. After she wrote she would memorize the poem, then wash her hands with the soap. In the three years she was incarcerated she wrote 250 poems this way, remembering them all. The drive to write is strong in me, but I'm not sure it burns that hot. After I read the article I felt like the young man in the Bible who came to Jesus asking what he could do to be saved. Jesus told him to sell all he had and give it to the poor. It was said that the man went away exceedingly sorrowful, because he was very rich. I have no idea how old I was when I first heard that parable, but I was certainly too young to have any grasp of what it meant. Some of life’s lessons are late in coming, but I think I finally understand what is required. Like the rich man, I am not sure I am willing to give up everything for salvation, or for the sake of the story, but I started thinking about what I might be willing to let go. It can’t be like giving up beets for lent because you hate beets anyway, so I won’t consider letting go of cleaning house, shopping, or scooping out the cat liter box. It has to be serious, like letting go of the 50 hour a week job I have become comfortable doing well. It’s not really the money I would miss, but the praise and support I get from what has become an extended family.

My dearest blog friend, Witness, recently let go of his long running blog to write seriously, but also to take on the considerable challenge of fatherhood. It is a role he considers so solemnly he is willing to forgo the pleasure of an audience to stroke his ego. I’m on that path myself, but not nearly ready to let go and take that leap. I cannot possibly explain to anyone what his support meant to me over the months we corresponded, and what it continues to mean as we have moved into another phase of our relationship. My son tells me that people I know on the blog are not like real friends. I thought that over for a while, not contradicting him. I know we are all a bunch of strangers, but we are real, and very often we do become friends. We have monologues at each other, but we also have conversations. Just because we do not touch each other, except in the spiritual sense on occasion, does not mean we are not connected.

The link for Unchained has not worked for some time, but I just didn’t want to let it go. Nothing lasts forever, but the words he gave me will last for my lifetime. The words he and I have created separately may outlast our lifetimes, but that is unimportant. The article from the Sun gives a poem by W.S. Merwin that I think tells how I feel, and I think how Witness feels too:

I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write


I will miss your voice my dear, but only for a while. Your words beg to be heard, and no one will be able to silence them once they are unchained.

Wish I'd Been At That Party

The New Year isn’t looking so shinny this morning. Sheets of rain pour down from a sky the color of the metal file cabinet that I have been meaning to replace because it’s depressing. I have no hangover, so obviously I didn’t have that much fun last night. Everyone at the party was part of the reasonable, respectable, upper middle class, and they didn’t get there by acting stupid at New Year’s Eve bashes. I got a good recommendation for a contractor to work on the drainage in my back yard, a few glasses of an indifferent red wine, and a glass of champagne at midnight, all to the tune of jazz elevator music playing tastefully in the background. Michelle and her man Marc were not in a real party mood, and justifiably so with the big “C” hanging over their relationship. We talked about her apartment in San Francisco she must sublet now, and her classes she must put on hold, in fact, the life she must put on hold until she gets a clean bill of health. She says the cancer is confined to her lymph nodes and spleen, stage III in oncology talk, but the possibility of a few cells having already migrated to other organs is not mentioned. We all know, but it is not a time for total honesty. Not to worry, she won’t be getting that from anyone in the house.

There are two parties in this ultra modern home that is so perfectly designed for entertaining. Michelle, Marc, Jason, Michelle’s sister Jennifer, and three of Jennifer’s beautiful, vacuous friends have gathered around the fireplace in the living room. The college girls talk about shoes, music, and boys with affected valley girl accents. I listen for a while to make sure they aren’t being ironic, but no, they’re really that bad. The other party is in the family room slash kitchen, a vast space artfully divided into comfortable zones, fish tank built into the wall, a sea of glass windows that frame a fabulous view of the lake in the daylight hours. I chat for a while with a transplanted Brit and his American wife, he a big ruddy blond, and she dark haired and petite. We talk books, people, and places, searching for some commonality, and then we move on as is prescribed for these occasions. I pause at the food table and cast an amused glance across the Virginia/Yankee/Baptist/Jewish mix of food; ham biscuits beside the lox with cream cheese, tapanade positioned near the crock pot of cocktail franks in that grape jelly/ketchup sauce. I pick up a strip of yellow pepper and move back to the living room.

Michelle is looking over her Frank Lloyd Wright coloring book Marc gave her for Christmas. We joke about the time she will spend coloring in the tiny detail while they pump more poison into her body next week. The conversation waxes and wanes. I move about the house wasting my time making small talk. I am in the living room when I hear the pop of a champagne cork and the TV being turned on. Everyone comments that Dick Clark hasn’t aged, and someone counts it down, missing the beat and getting to one before the TV announces 2007 has arrived. We all hug like we know each other well, and toast for luck. The content of my glass is some sickeningly sweet substance I do not associate with France, the only place Champagne is made according to my girl. I sit the glass down in the kitchen after we sing Happy Birthday to Michelle. My cell phone rings from my bra where I had it tucked. I move to the front porch so my husband and I can wish each other a Happy New Year. As soon as I replace the phone it rings again, this time my eldest on his way to a party in Seattle. The earth won’t turn the west coast to midnight for three more hours, but in London my girl is hopefully long asleep. Back inside, the party is over after the obligatory milling about for a half hour or so. I give Michelle a gentle hug goodbye, and Jason and I are out the door and into the car, talking over the pounding sound of the late great Jeff Buckley, a welcome relief from the vapid fare of the evening. He says it hasn’t been a good year for him, his sister, the family in general or his friends. He sees the issue with his Dad as negative and difficult, and I do not contradict him. I tell him we have nowhere to go but up, a statement on which we can agree. He asks me if I could pass if we get pulled at a checkpoint and I assure him I’m sober. We’ve both had enough small talk to last a long time, so the rest of the drive is in relative stillness except for the great rock rhythms coming from his IPOD.

My husband is asleep when I get home, so I do a knee jerk check of email, then spend a few hours working on my book. I lose track of time, even though it’s right there for me on the computer screen. The house is quiet but my concentration begins to fade when I find that same demon from the old year speaking inside my head again. A friend of mine said that it’s a drug worse than cocaine, and I know he’s not lying. I start wishing there were some reason to go wake the man I married. Only a few hours into the new year and I’m already feeling sorry for myself. I head for the guest room, away from the sounds of my husband’s snores, and sleep fitfully until 7 in the morning. Two thousand and seven is now 12 hours old and I’ve finished a pot of coffee, done some naval gazing, and accomplished nothing toward my goals for the year. I think I’ll blame the rain