A letter

Dear -,

What do you say to us? The parents of kids who have to deal with this stuff? That you’re sorry? Are you sorry? It’s just your job. Or is it just a job? Do you ever break down with all the tragedy and fall into a moment of despair? How can you let yourselves feel that much? I suppose that’s the answer.

At the end of the day, while we sit in the specialist’s office with our appointment that was made over a month earlier, we aren’t sure what the questions should be and there’s never much time. The clock is ticking just as we notice the medical badges hanging on pulleys and white doctor coats fly past and sit down and it’s all too obvious how quickly this will be over. We’re supposed to ask questions. There’s a limited amount of time to digest the information and then the door closes to the office and all the words you wanted to say appear in front of your eyes like a concisely written script.

Why didn’t I just say that? I think. Why did you forget to ask that? You think. We look at one another with doubts as if we’re in a chess game. Don’t let the doctors notice my ignorance and the weakness lurking in the corners of our eyes. The give away. Did this break you?

I’m thinking of coffee now.

You’re mentally mixing a Grey Goose martini.

A little dirty.

Extra olives.

The sound of the door shuts as you stir your drink and return it to the maple bar top. The happy hour is over. Again.

To My Friend Darby

Congratulations on "The Book of Elizabeth"!
I ordered it from Amazon and the experience was thrilling...and surreal. You're my first friend to have a published novel so now I don't know if I should treat you differently :) Do I have to refer to you as Mr. Harn? Will you require bowls of M&Ms be placed in the spare room during your next visit? Will we need to ship bottled water from the Amazon?
You let me know, you rockstar.  But in the meantime, I know what this means for you and yet I don't at all know what it must feel like.

Yours truly.

"Rise and Shine" - an excerpt

     That was as far as she had gotten with it.  Summers on Lake M went along pretty much the same. Gaye spent a committed amount of time hoping to run into someone to play with and wound up riding her bike to the park with a heavy wooden teeter-totter that gave her splinters. The last time she met a kid to take a side of it he bailed on her the last second while she was up high. Her ass hit the dusty ground with such force that it gave her a headache that started at her lower back. The kid’s name was Michael and as he ran off laughing at his cruel joke, Gaye whispered: “You're an asshole, Michael” and a splinter jammed into her hand as she rolled off her side of the evil playground toy. This park was tucked toward the back of the campground and only had three things: a teeter-totter, tire jungle gym and monkey bars. No swings. Swings are a perfectly good playground toy to enjoy solo but Gaye had no such luck. This playground was an after thought and except for that asshole, Michael, Gaye felt like it was always abandoned. Van Gogh would have painted this playground because it added to his sense of loneliness and solitude. Also, no kids were looking for a park anyway because they were enjoying being on vacation on a lake! A lake where boats zoomed by pulling skiers while others lounged on the pier chatting idly with friends moving happy hour ever closer to noon.

     Seeking distractions from boredom made Gaye take risks. One risk was to take a severe, gravel-lined turn at top speed after a steep hill while hoping to skid out of control and land in the hospital. One time she wiped out and had a leg full of raw skin and puberty. She was hoping for a broken femur that could land her in the emergency room and fill her days with casts and attention. In fact, Gaye seemed oddly indestructible. Good health was boring. Where were the surgeries, speech impediments, concerned looks from counselors? The days passed and then Gaye turned 14 and an end to summers on Lake M.

     Gaye arrived in her freshman year in high school. She’d lost all desire to spend hours driving in a car with her parents, staring at them from across the dinner table, peering into the scratchy black and white 12” TV that almost showed a couple of local stations.  In fact, Gaye was developing a sense of disdain toward their lifestyle…those quirky cottage days that weren’t like everyone else around the area.  She’d watched those families drive up with friends and beer and boats and skis - though Gaye barely knew how to ski. She could float on a raft with her dog.  But the days of Barbies were long gone. She’d rummaged through the leftover MAD magazines and listened to Casey Cason’s top 40 countdown for the last time.  Now she was in to drinking and friends and big hair.  Nothing else seemed to exist.  She stopped going to rehearsals or seeing plays.  Something had changed. Hatred and embarrassment for the strange sort of life she lived was ever growing. The life of church-going people was no longer making sense.  Gaye sought out the one other person in a two-mile radius who was as much of an outsider as she felt. Another summer misfit. She found her.

Job Hunting 101

The letterhead was typical of a university and had a bit of conformity with a flare of the liberal. Rose knew that most rejection letters looked like this. Bad news came in the US Mail. Good news, like a request for an interview, was performed by a HUMAN, namely an Administrative Assistant, who called and asked that you come in to speak about your awesomeness. The form letter, however, was easier for the sender, it was a quick way to ruin someone’s day and not have to be there to clean up the mess. The form letter exists to prove that Company is not crass and aloof, that Company cared that you tried to think you were going to be considered for the job. It was a more civil way to do business and relay that you are not being picked for the team. Don’t take it personally, though, it only means that you have to keep on applying.

Rose wondered if it was her resume. Had she said too much in the cover letter? Not enough? Rose knew that some people lied, should she? Was it time to clean up the resume again? The Resume: that illusive one-sided form that explained your limitations and lack of focus. Question:  why did you party too much in college and not finish magna cum laude? That would have looked good on your resume, Rose thought. And what about the flatness of “B.A., English” as a declared major? Rose wondered if it might have been better to go for the business degree…or the nursing degree in spite of being mathematically challenged. As Rose stared into the University’s crest and wondered about their font, she considered the events that had brought her to this point…of once again not getting The Job. Rose had done…stuff…though apparently none of which translated to her resume.

From the Cradle to Creativity

I came upon childrearing much like lubricant finds its way into your grocery cart. You consciously put it there but pretend otherwise. We got pregnant…no, I got pregnant! I freaked out openly one time while no longer being able to run with my husband because the ‘bump’ was in the way, shall we say. My hubs was privy to my tantrum about my world ending as I knew it and that I never wanted to have a baby and that it was all his friggin’ fault/idea. But that was not true. Having a child was mystifying and terrifying and I had no idea what to expect. Boy, was I in for a shock.

I don’t do nor have ever done a lot of things in my life because that’s what others wanted me to.  I often turned the opposite direction of expectations and tried my own, stubborn version – whether I’d fall on my face or not. Sometimes I’d find myself broke and alone wandering the streets of London with only three minutes left on my phone card to call the States.

Who would I call to save me in three minutes?

Exactly.

No one. But this very character-building sort of experience was the closest thing I had to an event that prepared me for what happens after you leave the hospital with your baby. After countless nights of not sleeping and not being able to be chivalrous about taking it all on by myself, forcing my husband to get up in the middle of the night and try his hand at consoling our son, I tried to convince myself that sleep was overrated. Rumor has it that Clinton only needed five hours and he was President! I thought. I wanted to be angry but at who? Whom? The baby? No, duh. Many people promised me “that mommy thing would just kick in!” I had Pre Parenting Dyslexia instead of post partum…wait, is that what people get after being in Iraq? In a way, yes. PTSD. Everything was mother fucking backwards!

But what was really eating Gilbert Grape? Not my exhaustion but the fear of never writing again… the writer vs. mother issue. Please tell me what a writer who becomes a mother is supposed to do when she finds herself trying to be both?

This entire debate harps back to advice I received, unsolicited, from my writing teacher at Trinity College, Dublin. This was the summer of 2000 and I had survived a divorce two years prior, was sort of employed, had a shitty but working car and applied to a creative writing workshop. I was committed to writing. I was committed to not have sex, smoke or drink beer while in Ireland, too. What?

I digress. Fiona© was a well-published poet who taught half of the program with another Irish writer who was single, male and nervous [1]. As the final days approached and we had bonded as a group of writers, we bonded with the Irish countryside and I bonded with my soul. Fiona the teacher/poet/mom came up to me and said she had one bit of advice for me. “Don’t become a mother,” she lowered her voice. “It will kill your writing life.” As she finished and glanced over her shoulder at her husband and two children sitting at a table I laughed an awkward ‘I hope you’re kidding, I’m waiting for the punch line’ chuckle. Silence followed and my soul was just a little deflated. I’ve never planned on having children, I thought, as a retort but I said nothing and sucked on my cider wondering if I could have her job and get to teach at Trinity, drink beer every day, have bad sex with Irish men.

Ten years later and married (happily) to a writer that I met on that Irish adventure, I am supported as a writer. My writing life is respected, my husband wants me to take time and write and get published on a large scale [2]. Yet I can’t help but feel I have disappointed Fiona from Trinity College.

Have I?

Another anecdote that informs my picture of mothers as writers was inspired by a Slate interview with poet Joan (?).  Joan remembers finally learning that she was pregnant and it was an immense relief because she had had a multitude of miscarriages. When she was well into her third trimester she visited Emily Dickinson’s grave and home in Massachusetts. (What better pilgrimage for a reminder of the awesome power of women wielding a pen). As Joan  approached the grave-stone she rubbed her belly against the stone as if asking for luck. What she asked Emily from beyond this life was if this (baby) was the death of her poetry.

I replayed that interview a few times while my son rocked it with the Wiggles[3] tunes in the background and danced. The irony was that there didn’t seem to be an answer from the ethers. When Joan asked to visit Emily’s writing room her writing desk had been sent on loan to a museum. In its place was a chilling substitution: Emily Dickinson’s baby crib!

So what does that story mean? Women who write fear their writing life could be taken away – as if it is as fleeting as blowing out a candle. It’s a reminder that we’re born and start in a cradle and that our creative life is fragile and needs to be protected or defended. But we make our own destiny, n’est ce pas? Why am I so adamantly set on needing to know if my childrearing wasn’t the death of my creativity? I’m writing now. I’m producing more now than I have in years. But I can’t help but consider what another writer friend/mom told me after the birth of her son: ‘I just want my son to be able to call me a writer.’

My mom is a writer.

There doesn’t seem to be a better sentence in the English language.

---

© Of course the name was changed to protect the identity but really, there aren’t that many options for Irish women…it’s either Mary or Fiona.

[1] The University of Iowa’s writing program in Dublin is fantastic. I recommend everyone doing it at least once in a lifetime! Or if you don’t like writing and drinking awesome beer while surrounded by pristine pastures and hilarious, brilliant Irish people…just go.

[2] LARGE SCALE: such as David Sedaris’ notoriety, apartment in Paris and a gay husband, I want to have a gay husband  decorating our 3eme arrondisement place…my dream, not yours, don’t judge me.

[3] Really? You think this one requires a footnote?

My life as Star Wars characters...

I’m not at all sure what is going to be uncovered in the next few months about my baby boy’s condition. And though we have to remain positive because that’s fair to him and to our oldest son, it’s hard to know how much we can take. I always thought that these awful things only happen to people who can handle them. I’ve learned that that is a false premise put to us by the human desire to wish away reality. There’s no God doling out pain to the populations who can handle it. There’s no limit, either, of what has to be endured. We simply must take what we get. We must take the information, process it as best we can and then we have to change baby's diaper and feed him and answer questions about Star Wars for our four year old. Why is Darth Vader bad? Why does he want to fight Luke Skywalker? Why are there some good clones and some bad ones?

Yes. These questions must be answered. Why does the baby have something maladjusted in his brain? Why would he have seizures when we are healthy and the pregnancy was healthy and we did everything right?

How do you make a lightsaber? Why are there different colored lightsabers and do they hurt when you strike a bad guy?

Darth Vader didn’t mean to turn bad, I say. That’s just in the cards that he was dealt. He tried to fight for what was right, I say. He didn’t know that he’d have a breaking point and lose himself in the sadness and frustration and anger and the challenges that were put in front of him. He didn’t know, I say. He forgot how to love. 

That was the dark side. Forgetting that what makes us human is love. The element that lets us wield blue and green lightsabers and not red ones. Because we all are going to get a chance to decide whether to join the Sith Lords or not.  What are we made of? Some of us might end up being Darth, I say.

But not us, my four year old says. We won’t choose the dark side.

No, I say. I don’t think so.

First post

My writer friend's mother was diagnosed with cancer and she says the following about processing: You asked me how I'm dealing with it and I have to be honest--I have no idea. I swing from feeling hopeful to feeling hopeless, sometimes within seconds of each other. I'm being realistic about the possibilities, but I don't think you can ever truly grasp it all--you feel like you have a good hold on it, gripped tight in your hand, and then it just slips away. Does that make any sense?

Yes. This makes sense to me. Putting feelings into words and documenting them is a struggle. Settling my mind to write feels like the energy it would take to run a marathon. Where do I start? When do I end? What is it that I even have to say? I hate words somewhat. Words were used to say cortical dysplasia and seizures and MRI and spontaneous mutation. Awful words. Negative words that feel the same as if the doctor looked me in the eyes and said: I hate you. Why would she tell me this? Where is the: I love you? Where is the clear test results and going to be fine? Who is this doctor sitting in front of me? She’s Chinese so she is probably making a mistake, she doesn’t understand, this isn’t her culture, her language, or her country. She’s wrong. Go back to your country. You’ve made an error in judgment. You’ve misread the MRI. Maybe that’s not my son’s results. Your radiation specialist saved it wrong and that’s not even his brain I’m looking at, smashed into this back office at the hospital, behind the nurses’ station, where I’m only invited because they all know that we are receiving bad news. Yes. Now I understand why I’m allowed to sit back here in the usually restricted quarters and look at these pictures of my son’s brain. These scans that don’t show what a beautiful person he is; that disregard the healthy boy and my healthy pregnancy. These scans that show nothing about how he smiles at me in the morning when I greet him and nurse him and whisper into his ears “good morning, baby” and “I love you.”  These aren’t the scans that belong to MY son. How do I say this in Chinese? Is it Mandarin? Would you communicate with me if I spoke your language? I don’t know Chinese. Not even a word. Not even Yes. No. I don’t  understand.

I don’t understand is what language teachers and texts always teach first. Yo no say. Je ne sais pas. I don’t know. I don’t understand. You must translate. You’re clearly not speaking ENGLISH. Not MY language. You are a foreigner speaking in tongues but we have been mistakenly thrown together at the wrong time, in the wrong place. This isn’t meant to happen. We’ve come to the wrong hospital and been given wrong information. Yes. That is what happened. We were given mistaken information translated from English to Chinese and back to English so it’s all gotten lost in translation. Yes. This I know for sure.

Why the blog?

Why the blog? Just as artists feel drawn to their craft, I’m sensing a growing urge to reach out, beyond my MacBook, to speak to and with the universe. However few eyes these pages reach is not of concern but it is my hope that if I can send one line, one meaningful word out to the ethers that the universe will know what to do with it from there.