Sometimes, it's just good news.

We just had an appointment with our Pediatric Neurologist and we don't have to schedule an MRI this year. It's great news. Apparently, Cully is doing well on the Keppra so that there isn't enough reason to go probing deeper into his brain.  It feels like something else to be thankful for as Turkey Day approaches. But as Chabon once again so eloquently explains in his article in Bon Appetit, giving thanks isn't always about all the good stuff in a year. Sometimes, it seems like we forget to give thanks to the challenges and failed attempts that give us something...else. It's good to consider that we can give thanks for our saddest moments because, really, they count, too.

Oh, Brother. (Flash Fiction)

He called five times in three days. This prompted me to consider he had something very important to share. Once the lines connected and the baby was quiet in the background, I heard him tell me Mom needed more protein.

“She is carb loading,” my bro stated as if reading directions from a pasta box.

“Are you checking her stools?” I returned. “Why would you know that?”

“She just needs more protein, Aim.”

“What are you really saying? I should cook more salmon when they arrive?” I said as I mentally perused my frozen meat selection in the deep freezer in our garage. The chest freezer that we bought from Sears after I decided to breastfeed our first-born and assumed it was going to pour out like a waterfall. Turned out, the normal freezer attached to the fridge would have been just fine. Something else La Leche Leaguers don’t mention is that, for 80% of the population, breastfeeding is like squeezing liquid from a 2x4.

My brother’s explanation of Mom’s apparent all-bread diet failed to go any deeper and life with our family was much like this. Talking in the margins. We all secretly hated each other but knew it was more complicated to cut off all the relationships completely than to just work around what you had.

In a nervous reaction to incomplete information, I started going off about my current gluten-free diet like a born again Christian. “It’s my new naturopath,” I couldn’t stop. “She wants me gluten and dairy-free for three months and then I can slowly reintroduce these foods and see if there’s any negative reaction.”

Silence.

“So if you’re saying Mom needs more protein then I can accommodate that when they visit next week,” I kept talking because I assumed the other line was now dead. “Because I have to really watch my own protein intake now that cheese and dairy are off the table.”

“Well I just wanted to mention that about Mom before I forgot to tell you,” Brother sighed as if trying to cleanse his ears from the waste I had just spewed his way. His reaction then was much the same as during his own Über Christian Period when he was in either judgment or disgust at everything I said aloud.

The Über Christian Period started once he completed the paperwork to attend Oral Roberts University with a complete straight face. He graduated, three years later, with an MBA and a penchant for silent prayer and speaking in tongues. Though our relationship was always limited to the weather and shared memories of what our other brother did that was funny or entertaining, we had to work hard to speak directly with one another. Something changed in him along the way, though, and he sought a relationship with me that usually included reflection on and a response to what I was actually saying.

“Also, make sure Dad has shade during the hottest points in the day,” Brother offered.

“Okay, because he’s a hot house flower?” I furrowed my brow on purpose just so it could be heard through the delicate satellite frequencies.

“Well he has had a lot of skin cancer,” He flatly stated with an eye roll back at me.

I knew that he was referring to our patio and its lack of any shade except in the square shadows from the pergola. I also knew that he was gently suggesting we DO something to provide appropriate shade from the long hot sunny days that would be encroaching during our parents’ visit. But the fact that he was engineering this from Atlanta and being all first born and responsible gave me a bad feeling. Instead of empathy toward our parents’ aging bodies, I felt something adolescent and rebellious creeping up in me and I didn’t want to be accommodating. Whatever I was about to say was, once again, rebellious.

I could hear his expression while I spoke: Dear God, please don’t let her go to hell.

Tastes Like Chicken (Fiction)

         As excessive quantities of fireworks were being purchased for July fourth celebrations in America, Karen had taken a train to southern England for her own fireworks show. On the train to the Isle of Wight, she revisited childhood memories of laying on her parent’s Oldsmobile staring up at the bursts of light and explosions in the sky while mosquitoes feasted on her ankles where the Off! didn’t make it. Karen was proud of herself for agreeing to this adventure with such little information.  But at 2am at the end of the first night of her weekend adventure, she stood alone on the balcony overlooking the ocean and the waves lapping against the enormous posts that suspended the deck and felt the fragility of her decision. Weird, she thought, how all living things seem to be teetering on something, relying on another thing equally unstable. Mostly, she was thinking how pissed she now was at her own gullible heart. God damnit, Sayed!

Sayed was born in England but his parents were from southern India. Sayed was the co-owner and co-investor of Isle of Wight’s largest nightclub, The Sphynx. After college, Karen had applied to any program that transported her oversees and out of Indiana and it was during a visit to London that they met. Sayed was nine years older but seemed unconcerned by concerns pedestrian. Nothing about their interaction the first night in a London pub seemed overtly romantic but Sayed’s invitation to join him for a weekend in the Isle of Wight was, at the least, unique.

Karen’s summers as a child were spent in a white, Protestant safe house of Barbies, riding bikes and shucking corn at a summer cottage owned by her Uncle Ted. Her mother cleaned and scrubbed the place each June with fervor of a woman on coke[1]. Uncle Ted rarely used the place and when he did he always brought a lady friend who hid, smoking on the back porch smelling of Bain de Soleil oil. Karen daydreamed a lot about a life less ordinary. She snuck into the guest room when Uncle Ted and his latest girlfriend were out and searched through the suitcases for what, even Karen didn’t know. A clue on how to be a grown up woman? A ticket to a glamorous life?  A mix tape? Karen always came up empty-handed except for uncovering cigarette lighters hidden throughout the luggage.

And now, standing on the balcony of the hottest night club on the Isle of Wight, Karen felt abandoned mostly by her own self ignorance. They had had the vegetarian discussion when they first met.

“You will like this,” Sayed said over the calm light from the candle.

“But it’s chicken,” Karen half smiled and took a long drink from her wine glass in preparation.

“Well, I made it for you and it’s not a bad thing to try something new once in awhile,” Sayed quipped from across the dinner table set with a romantic-esque candelabra, wine glasses and some low jazz she tried to ignore in the background.

“True.” Karen wasn’t sure how to respond and the wine limited her ability to rationalize the moment.

“Plus, you look very nice and we are going to a huge party tonight with loads of people to meet. You’ll need the energy,” Sayed said through his wine glass and a slight smile.

Karen interpreted the comment as being flirtatious and didn’t mind Sayed hitting on her. He wasn’t an unattractive man. Brown skin. British accent. You’ll need energy clearly referred to the sex he had planned to have with her that evening and she obliged the invitation by placing her fork, for the first time since high school, into a piece of chicken. As she pretended, the vegetables that accompanied the chicken tasted better than the chicken, but nonetheless, Karen faked her way through the meal and tried not to think too deeply about what she had eaten.

Sayed talked a lot about himself and the nightclub. Karen felt more like an adult on a wild vacation. Her parents didn’t even know why she hadn’t flown back to the States. “It’s time,” Sayed said and cleared the table. Though the club was only four blocks away, Sayed drove the red sports car and parked in his VIP spot.

“One thing you should know, and don’t be mad, but you said you would never eat rabbit, and well…you just did.” As Karen’s brain cells parsed the possibility a very tall, beautiful woman stepped out of the nightclub. Sayed grinned and they embraced. Karen did not listen for her name or say Nice to meet you. Karen felt 12 years old; like she was back at the kid’s table during Thanksgiving dinners, a spectator of the adult world where she so longed to be.

Though Karen wished she would have left or had the money to get a hotel, she drank and danced alone and smoked decidedly more. She was exhausted from the energy it took pretending to have a good time alone and headed out on the balcony. The sea was crashing in on the rocks below and the wind blew cooler against her bare legs. The night was ending and she was proud for appearing as if what Sayed did to her wasn’t weird.  Karen was at a loss for the moral of the moment but it was almost time to go, the balcony was empty and she felt taller standing over the waves. Pure freedom.  It’s going to be okay, she thought…the waves crashed on the rocks and with every break they uttered a little word, a specific life, as brief as the life span of a mosquito. 

---

[1] Coke: cocaine. Just for the record, her mother had never tried any drug though Karen thought her childhood might have been more interesting, however, they wouldn’t have been able to afford it. 

Thing Review!

How are you doing Clock of the Long Now? I don’t even know what punctuation to use when referring to…you…thing…clock contraption. All I know is that I got to Powell’s City of Books early to get good seats to hear Michael Chabon, one of my favorite writers – living. It was four years ago and it was a strangely sunny day in Portland. And you know what Chabon read? An article he had just gotten published about his son’s reaction to your someday existence. There are more than a few moments when I realize that I’m not that educated. I don’t know the Greeks beyond Zeus and Hera and forgot the plots of most of Shakespeare’s plays beyond Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. But, Michael Chabon is an extraordinarily smart man and has cool hair. During the reading at Powell’s I was one degree of separation (okay, two, since I sat in the second row back) from his genius energy power. He read, “The Omega Glory” and I cried at the end for just one second and then ran home to Google what the Clock of the Long Now really was. And it’s true. In Nevada, there’s the 10,000 year clock being manufactured to record the future.

At the end of every one of my creative writing courses that I taught at University of Phoenix, I would hand out copies of “The Omega Glory” and turn the overhead projector on to the Long Now website and I would watch what would happen. Many students would sigh and be frustrated at their lack of comprehending much of Chabon’s vocabulary but others would be able to overcome their limited vocabularies to see to the point of the article. One time, I had an ex military man in my class (strong, burly, outspoken and confident) wipe a few tears from his eyes. The class grew silent for a moment after they had finished reading and complaining and he said, “Amy, I want to thank you.”  And I knew exactly what he meant and had felt the same way after I ran out of Powell’s to get to my computer because the future is well…everything. Our day-to-day ability to feel our impact on the future is so completely buried in the minutiae of grocery lists, failed work projects, crying babies, back pain or lovers that never called. 

Thank YOU, 10,000 year clock. For reminding me to look up. 

A Joke

A crocodile walks into a bar holding a loaf of challah in one hand and a non allergenic labrodoodle in the other. The bartender says, we don’t serve your kind here and the challah yells, “Anti-semite!”


-Created by Mr. Doherty at 7:30pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012.

The Gem in my Hotmail Junkbox

From Hospital,

With Due Respect, I am writing this mail to you with heavy tears in my eyes and great sorrow in my heart. My name is Mrs Karen Wright from Chile; my husband Parker Wright worked with Chile embassy in Malaysia before his death, we were married for 32years without a child and He died after a brief illness that lasted for only few days. I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which my religion is against. When my husband was alive he deposited the sum of $5.5Million USD with one of the bank here.

Recently I have my test report that my liver has been damage due to cancer affection. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to help the orphanages around the world through you the way I am going to instruct here in. I want you to use this fund to help the Orphanages, widows, les-privilege to have there life’s a meaning, and to endeavour that the house of God is maintained. I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not good at all because they are the one that killed my husband in other to have my entire late husband properties and I don't want my husband's efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don't want a situation whereby my husband inheritance will be used in an ungodly way.

Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein.

Hoping to receive your response immediately

Mrs Karen Wright (widow)

****

Poor Mrs Karen Wright! I have so many questions to ask before I help you:

 1. I know you are a grieving widow but did your husband die of a "brief illness" or was He murdered   by his family? There's a big difference here, Mrs. Wright, and the latter involves police, courts and most likely jail time (or whatever sort of justice system you have down there in Chile).

 2. Where were you considering getting a child outside of matrimonial home? The local NICU?

 3. Sorry about your liver but clearly cancer loves it. Truly, cancer is affectionate in that way.

 4. Why would you spend $5.5 million USD to endeavour that the house of God is maintained? 

 5. Do you even know what bank your husband deposited that money? Because that actually seems like the place you should start searching. I don't know what year you were born but there are A LOT of banks now, just FYI (From Your Igloo).

Please assure ME that you will answer accordingly as I STATED hereafter. And please, Mrs Karen Wright (widow), take your meds!!

    

Book Review Alert!

In AA circles (so I have learned), the "next right thing" is whatever you need to do to get through the next part of your day. The "thing" or the action that helps you overcome your addiction. It is also the title of Dan Barden's newest novel and what I suggest you do if you haven't already picked up a copy. Barden's protagonist is Everyman, Randy Chalmers, an ex-cop with a drinking problem and anger issues that he doles out in explosive tantrums like a toddler not getting his way.  But Randy is especially pissed off because his AA sponsor, Terry Elias, has turned up dead in a hotel after ODing on heroine and this is NOT one of the 12 steps to recovery. Randy is on a mission to understand why Terry is dead and all kinds of crazy shit is going down in Laguna Beach.
Whether you've had an addiction, known someone else who is suffering with one, or if you have a heart beat, you should read The Next Right Thing. You'll be entertained and more.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow...

          After we had our first son, T, we moved to Portland when he was 18 months, I was drawn to the weather reports like moths to the light. Was it going to rain all day? Was I going to be sequestered – INSIDE – with a toddler? Weather reports became my daily affirmation or punishment. My destiny waited and the long span of existence trapped with a little person would once again be decided in numbers and images of clouds. Maybe I was a bit depressed or just in shock. Before we moved to Portland, I was a working woman. My life was not about making it to 5:30pm when my husband walked in the door. My life felt more about hosting parties and celebrating life with girlfriends and taking long walks with my significant other. I spent weekends in Chicago shopping and running along Lake Michigan. For 35 years I had been living for myself, trying to learn to grow up and be a good worker and a friend and a partner. Having a child anchored me in a good way, though, and I just had to learn to juggle getting a shower, daycare drop off and finding time to eat. Just as I had not remotely learned to balance any of this, we moved. I quit my job. Suddenly, I was in a new town with a small boy who I had no idea what to “do” with day in and day out. Life felt crazy and stagnant at the same time as if my life had died and was replaced by aliens.

After we had moved to Portland, my new job as a stay-at-home mom included a daily search to seek out other moms. I found an ongoing Tuesday morning group and I’d stare deep into their eyes wondering what their perspectives were of life with children. Was this fun? Was this interesting? Those moms all seemed content to be discussing babies: nursing babies, changing diapers, the best wipes, age appropriate toys, music classes, food prep, allergies. This was not what I wanted to discuss: sleep deprivation, how boring this felt, how frustrated my 18 month old was and how lost I felt in this decision to have a child and not be sleeping or doing things that I enjoyed, living in a new city with no friends. Their lives were the life of this little person and I felt so alienated for feeling differently. I felt like a fraud. I dreamed of getting a hotel room for two nights and just being alone. Left alone to sleep and think and cry and make phone calls and lay there. I was so tired. This little boy never slept well until he was five and had dropped naps by the time he was three.

         Sleep deprivation spread out for hours because T had woken up at some ghastly hour of 5am ready to be grumpy and challenging and make the day even longer. No gatherings start for stay at home moms until at least 10am. I was often done with breakfast for T and I by 6:30am. It was cloudy and cold outside and unsuitable for walks that early. He didn’t watch shows yet, though I stared hard at the Today show while clutching my coffee and wiping tears from my eyes hoping he didn’t notice. He didn’t. 

Mountains vs. Oceans: This Time It's Personal!

 Another beautiful day of sunshine here in Bend? Can’t believe how peaceful it is to live down here. At least once a day, as I'm driving/fiddling with the radio or speed walking with the kid/stroller/dog, I turn a corner and there’s a different angle on a damn mountain. It’s humbling to live among these big ass mountains. I like how it makes me feel: settled and concrete and aware of my surroundings. 

Mountains are permanent. I am not. That notion (that my little world is fleeting) makes me nervous at times. Mountains kick the shit outta my worry.  Whereas, when I’m at the coast, the ocean is fluid like me and therefore I feel more distracted around water. I never grew up anywhere near a large body of water and its novelty, I believe, will never wear off. Getting to stare into the ocean or be close to it takes on an event all its own. Suddenly I can’t read a book because I’m just staring into the sea. Watching how the waves lap and roll back out. Wondering when I should get back in or if I should just sit and continue to stare. (If I'm in Mexico, should I buy another blanket or a bracelet?) 

But mountains are a period. The end to the sentence, a declaration of finality. Oh! Shit! Look at Mt. Bachelor (didn’t see that one coming!) And I’m so small and my kids are even smaller and we are so frail and finite and suddenly “big” problems seem ridiculous in comparison to the size of even one of those mountains in the Cascade Mtn. Range. It’s like a reminder to shut the fuck up and get happy with the now (and finish the task at hand!).

Thanks, Mountains!

A Nod to the Ladies

We choose our friends because they remind us of what we can be and who we are and the choices that we make. They are our idols and our playmates, our heroes and sometime soul mates. For female friendships, the mere presence of another woman that knows you helps to reconfirm. This reconfirmation of our Self provides the strength that women need to move back through their own lives and accommodate the needs of others and the myriad of daily requests that are put on us by our children, husbands, co-workers, and even parents and siblings. As in the practice of yoga, we return to our mats to let go. To practice the art of letting go. We return to the warm embrace of friendship in order to reaffirm our position in the universe. After spending time with good friends I can see more clearly. I can be more patient with my children and show them more compassion, too. Though it could sound dramatic to put so much weight on the power of female friendships, I feel that there is so much involved when women stand together. We can change the world. 

Happy (Daddy) Day

Happy Father’s Day, 2012!

Our almost two year old started to put words together this past month so instead of “milk” it’s “milk, please” (or milt peas). Yesterday, he said “happy day” – loud and clear. To this day, I don’t know if I’ve heard a better sentence spoken in human language. Happy day. It’s so true. It’s so clear and accurate of a description I have to use it myself. I also want to apply it to this upcoming Father’s Day when we get to say thank you to dads but especially my baby daddy.

After all the stress and concern that surrounds the health of our second born, after the long nights in the hospital, prepping him for MRIs, remembering his daily dose of medicine and trying to process the look on the faces of our medical team, I just want to say to my hubby: Happy Day.

This one is for you. Thanks for your constant support and focus on the task at hand, however sleep deprived you were. For taking son #1 to play golf and to the park and out for ice cream and crappy (but fun!) fast food restaurant toys. Thanks for listening and crying with me (if your boss reads this I’ll say it was only a couple of times) and for committing deeply to loving our sons. Our sons. Our lives. The saying no to golf with pals and yes to Legos.

Happy Day, Co.

Ah, life, an evolutionary process.

Greetings from my new blog look. It looks different, I know. It represents the fact that I'm not in such a dark place as I was upon first creation of my place on the WWW. This one is supposed to be entertaining but I hope you comment and provide feedback and I hope I write more...shall we pinky promise?

Thanks for reading. Check back soon...

What's This All About?

As the weeks go by and we move further away from a doctor’s visit or an MRI or from having to discuss complex partial seizures, I get real positive. Positive to the point that I am in some state of denial about our son’s “condition.” Though I’m conscious and aware of giving him anti-seizure medication twice daily, it feels no more threatening then handing the boys gummie bear vitamins. What I secretly think is this: the doctors are wrong. Soon enough, a neurologist will say, to my face, “your son no longer needs these meds because he is fine.”

What they actually say: “We aren’t ruling out TS (a rare genetic disorder) as the reason for the seizures or the mass in his upper right lobe.” So what’s this all about? Why don’t I have more answers? How are we to live in this state of in between? In between is the spot smack dab in the middle of the total truth and total ignorance. A daily ritual of having to constantly struggle between total panic and staying calm. One scenario…we continue to increase the dose as he grows and the side effects start and he’s a monster to live with. Another scenario…we continue to increase the dose as he grows and no side effects appear and he’s a happy, well adjusted boy. Another scenario…the seizures return and meds don’t keep them away, we discuss brain surgery. So which one is it? All of the above or none?

What irks me some days is how to get from breakfast to dinner and not lose my mind.

Darby Harn's Book

An abridged review of Darby Harn's  The Book of Elizabeth:
Those Kuzar bastards!

A quick note to the author:
I'm a fan and need parts two and three. When you get a minute to finish writing them.

For anyone who likes science fiction or beautifully constructed prose:
Pick up a copy of Darby Harn's The Book of Elizabeth.