Somehow, some way all three of my children became atheists. I have always believed in God. I love Jesus. "Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. Come home." It hurts me that my children don't believe in anything. I don't even think they consider themselves agnostic. I don't know how this happened because I believe in everything.
My eldest sister comes to visit me often. She knits with my son Joe. She is from the DC area and never complains about traffic. She takes me to the Costco. I love her for so many things in addition to this. Easter before last, she played my out of tune piano. She played from the many hymn books we own, daughters of ministers that we are. When I apologized for it being out of tune, she said that in Africa there is one piano for miles. My sister has been to Africa several times, recently returning from a mission trip with beautiful photos of ancient grandfathers caring for too many AIDS orphans. In Africa you play the piano you have and you are grateful to hear it.
My middle son complained about the Jesus singing. I loved sharing the hurt feelings with my sister. She said, " Nicholas, even if you don't believe in God, he believes in you." She meant it and kept singing.
Sometimes I thought I had to believe to make things true. My father was a think-positively guru. And I mean guru. He taught classes. He was a hardliner about thinking yourself well. He was also a big joker. When we said we were ill, he'd respond, "What you got? The dread mgumbe disease?" Sometimes, he would also grab our arm and say, "You feel alright to me."
My father said he would live to be 130. Then he died of a massive stroke at 62. My mother died of leukemia at 47. My father was powerless to think her well either. I am the age she was when she was diagnosed with cancer. My life and health feel fragile. I am overweight. I am tired. I hurt.
In August, I had just started working out. I lost ten pounds. I was doing water aerobics. Inspired to live more intentionally after the loss of my brother-in-law in July, I re-joined my choir, found a wonderful church, and began again to live life in a plan - filled way.
One morning I woke up and my arm was in severe pain. It got worse over the next three days. I tried to think it well, per my father. I tried to wait it out. Then, I went to the ER. This is my pattern. Ignore, throw positive thought, panic. I had a herniated disc.
My piano playing sister came to take care of me. She made my boys scrub the cupboard faces. We drank lattes and ate lots of cheese. We watched many movies. I took the drugs. I followed up with physical therapy and chiropractic.
Physical therapists and chiropractic doctors do not believe in one another. As it turns out, they are both still real. They both can still help you, even at the same time. My physical therapist is the bigger non-believer. I told my physical therapist how I believe in everything.
He loves my stories. He can't wait to check back in on my snippets. He said, "What happened with your son? Did he really do that long list of chores?" He said, "How were the hands of your last group of medical students?"
I had told him that you can just tell about healing hands. I teach third year med students how to give pelvic and breast exams. I have been doing this for almost five years. Some of them have excellent palpation skills. Some of them do not.
My teaching assistant partners and I ask them at the end of the session what kind of doctors they will be. Sometimes they don't know. We jokingly tell some of them that they are "cleared for patient care. " We secretly hope the others become radiologists.
Everything works but not by everyone. My physical therapist has great hands. I told him about my trip to Steamboat and my hot springs treatment. In Steamboat you can swim in the city pool in January because it is fed from the hot springs. Mountains of snow can surround you as you bathe in warm water. Cold rain drizzling on our heads, my friend and I took the hot springs cure.
My friend has a cat. He is strikingly beautiful with squinty bright blue eyes. My friend says, "What dessert does Boy remind you of?" I say, "A toasted marshmallow." She corrects me, "A PERFECTLY toasted marshmallow." I nod. Perfectly toasted marshmallow.
While I am in Steamboat, Boy comes to me and places his paws on my chin. He presses lightly. He walks to one side of my neck and presses. He walks to the other side of my neck and presses again. He curls up tight and purrs his little heart out right next to my hurting neck.
I tell my friend that he is a shaman reincarnated. He repeats "the treatment" several times while I am in Steamboat. I ask her if he has nails because I never felt a hint of nails, unlike with my own cats. Boy still has all of his claws. He just is capable of keeping them in his little padded magic feet. I cannot wait to get home to tell my physical therapist. I am hoping I can make him believe, even in Boy and his remarkable abilities.
The weekend after I returned from Steamboat, I went to a Threshold Choir workshop. Threshold choirs are made of women who sing people through changes, hard times, death. I soaked the songs into my neck. I closed my eyes.
A few weeks later I went to the dedication of the Peace House in Columbus. There were interfaith ministers there. There was drumming and our singing. A woman did a guided meditation where she told us to plant ourselves, feet turning to roots, spreading through the floorboards and the ground below. Then she had us grow branches and leaves and glorious foliage. I felt my neck click up with each stretch. I sat taller. I was a tree.
This week my hip hurt badly. I was afraid of the ignore, positive, panic process which was beginning. I went to the chiropractor and felt better almost instantly. I couldn't believe it. I didn't even believe going in. I thought, this hurts too much. It will never work. It worked anyway. Was it because Dr. Jack believed in me like God believes in my children, even when they don't believe in him?
I said, "That feels a lot better." Dr Jack said, " It's magic. No, it's chiropractic." Dr. Jack is silly. And young, so young he is not sure how professional or down to earth and candid he should be. He is usually reserved.
Recently I told him that I pulled the platypus as my spirit guide card. The platypus says, "Quit complaining. Count your blessings." As soon as I pulled the card, I could not stop complaining. It took me weeks of soaking up the platypus medicine to get back to my blessings.
Dr. Jack loved the idea of the platypus card. He said we should make t-shirts. The front says, "Consider the platypus" and the back says, "Count your blessings." He even had colors picked out, yellow and maroon. I want to make these t-shirts, or at least one for Dr. Jack. For Christmas.
Maybe Dr. Jack is not a Christian. The physical therapist is a Christian. I hope this is not why he doesn't believe in chiropractic or much else besides storytelling. Because I am a Christian and I believe in the storytelling, singing, hot springs, guided meditation, physical therapy, chiropractic, family, faith, and everything. Even a blue-eyed four legged shaman reincarnate. It's my intention to notice these blessings and to consider the platypus.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Airports
I could cry a river here at the airport in Denver. Not because I am sad, though I might be. Airports always make me weepy, even now when the speaker is blaring about level orange. The security level interrupts my melancholy, but not too much. I still feel guiltily safe. I am waiting a couple hours for my connecting flight home, neither in Steamboat with my friend since kindergarten or in my tiny house with my three big teenagers. Limbo.
I can’t sit at the gate from which my plane will depart. It’s too early and there is another plane leaving first, a plane to Dulles. I think I’d like to hop on that plane, too. To my sister who recently lost her husband and wants me there, wants all her five little sisters near. Wouldn’t she be surprised if I hopped on that plane instead? What other planes sound good? San Diego? I’ve never been there and with time the way it seems to be accelerating, might never get the chance to go.
The woman next to me on my flight from Steamboat was visiting her youngest daughter who lives in Colorado. Her other two are in Flagstaff and Juneau. She says it is good that the grandbabies are the closest. She lives in Arizona and they are the Flagstaff bunch. I thought about my sister then too, how her only daughter lives in Berlin. Berlin seems so far. Berlin is farther than Juneau, isn’t it? I had asked my seatmate if she came to Steamboat for the Literary Sojourn, like I had. She hadn’t, but knew of the event. She knew of the previous authors and their works. We talked of fiction the last few minutes, waiting for the plane to empty.
The fictitious characters in the authors’ works had minds of their own. All of the authors said so. This made me think I might not be so good at fiction. One author spoke of a character who died and how she didn’t want her to go. But she died anyway. I’d want to keep them alive at all costs. I’d be controlling. I’d feel for the mothers on the pages. I’d not let their children move to Berlin or Juneau. Or, I’d have everyone flying together, big happy families filling whole airplanes. And there wouldn’t be enough tension, too few goodbyes. It wouldn’t be real. It would make for boring fiction, my longing for the constant happy endings.
When I was a little girl, there was no level orange, that we knew of. There were no security gates. We drove to the airports as teenagers and ran around, watching tearful goodbyes and jubilant hellos. There may or may not have been alcohol involved. At my girlhood airport, you could press your face against the glass and strain to see your loved ones in the tiny windows. Squinting and scanning the plane, you wouldn’t be able to find their seat, even if they told you where they were. But you knew they could see you in that big glass. You knew if you jumped and waved your arms furiously, they would see you. They would know you were going to miss them. They would know you would stand riveted to that spot of massive glass until your plane was a speck in the sky.
Now there are only strangers thrown together in all of the airports, the goodbyes and hellos said perfunctorily in baggage claim or carside in the passenger drop off lane. My friend said goodbye to me in the United check-in line. I’m not sure when I will see her next, how tall her little ones will be if an entire year passes. I’m angry at time, really pissed off.
I don’t know how I got to be forty-four, worrying about my own children setting off to Juneau or Berlin. I’m not an author of fiction and they are real. Nothing will stop them from their own journeys. Next year, the two of them who are ostensibly adults could be anywhere but my tiny house. I chuckle at how I might miss the day when I was filled with anxiety about the poker tournaments and broken ceiling fan of their parentless partying.
In Denver, I sit in limbo. I didn’t get on the flight to Dulles and my sister won’t know about my brief Northern Virginia mind travel. My friend calls to make sure I made it to Denver. Quick cell phones check-ins are our alternative to the lingering goodbyes of long ago airports. Still, in my mind, I am pressing my face to the glass and waving my arms like crazy so they can all see me and know how much I miss them, how much I will miss them, my friend in Steamboat, my sister in Virginia, and my teenagers who are too soon to fly away somewhere very far from me.
I can’t sit at the gate from which my plane will depart. It’s too early and there is another plane leaving first, a plane to Dulles. I think I’d like to hop on that plane, too. To my sister who recently lost her husband and wants me there, wants all her five little sisters near. Wouldn’t she be surprised if I hopped on that plane instead? What other planes sound good? San Diego? I’ve never been there and with time the way it seems to be accelerating, might never get the chance to go.
The woman next to me on my flight from Steamboat was visiting her youngest daughter who lives in Colorado. Her other two are in Flagstaff and Juneau. She says it is good that the grandbabies are the closest. She lives in Arizona and they are the Flagstaff bunch. I thought about my sister then too, how her only daughter lives in Berlin. Berlin seems so far. Berlin is farther than Juneau, isn’t it? I had asked my seatmate if she came to Steamboat for the Literary Sojourn, like I had. She hadn’t, but knew of the event. She knew of the previous authors and their works. We talked of fiction the last few minutes, waiting for the plane to empty.
The fictitious characters in the authors’ works had minds of their own. All of the authors said so. This made me think I might not be so good at fiction. One author spoke of a character who died and how she didn’t want her to go. But she died anyway. I’d want to keep them alive at all costs. I’d be controlling. I’d feel for the mothers on the pages. I’d not let their children move to Berlin or Juneau. Or, I’d have everyone flying together, big happy families filling whole airplanes. And there wouldn’t be enough tension, too few goodbyes. It wouldn’t be real. It would make for boring fiction, my longing for the constant happy endings.
When I was a little girl, there was no level orange, that we knew of. There were no security gates. We drove to the airports as teenagers and ran around, watching tearful goodbyes and jubilant hellos. There may or may not have been alcohol involved. At my girlhood airport, you could press your face against the glass and strain to see your loved ones in the tiny windows. Squinting and scanning the plane, you wouldn’t be able to find their seat, even if they told you where they were. But you knew they could see you in that big glass. You knew if you jumped and waved your arms furiously, they would see you. They would know you were going to miss them. They would know you would stand riveted to that spot of massive glass until your plane was a speck in the sky.
Now there are only strangers thrown together in all of the airports, the goodbyes and hellos said perfunctorily in baggage claim or carside in the passenger drop off lane. My friend said goodbye to me in the United check-in line. I’m not sure when I will see her next, how tall her little ones will be if an entire year passes. I’m angry at time, really pissed off.
I don’t know how I got to be forty-four, worrying about my own children setting off to Juneau or Berlin. I’m not an author of fiction and they are real. Nothing will stop them from their own journeys. Next year, the two of them who are ostensibly adults could be anywhere but my tiny house. I chuckle at how I might miss the day when I was filled with anxiety about the poker tournaments and broken ceiling fan of their parentless partying.
In Denver, I sit in limbo. I didn’t get on the flight to Dulles and my sister won’t know about my brief Northern Virginia mind travel. My friend calls to make sure I made it to Denver. Quick cell phones check-ins are our alternative to the lingering goodbyes of long ago airports. Still, in my mind, I am pressing my face to the glass and waving my arms like crazy so they can all see me and know how much I miss them, how much I will miss them, my friend in Steamboat, my sister in Virginia, and my teenagers who are too soon to fly away somewhere very far from me.
Allergies
The seats on the large plane from Columbus to Denver were smaller than the seats on the little plane from Denver to Hayden. And, the seatbelts on the large plane with the small seats were much larger than the seatbelts on the small plane with the larger seats. Are you still reading? On the little plane from Denver to Hayden, Colorado, I was too fat for the seatbelt. The woman next to me noticed how fat I was and was visibly disgusted. This was before I asked for the seatbelt extender.
The flight attendants are taught to very discreetly hand you the extenders, should you ask for them. The seat extenders are rolled up compactly and handed to you silently, palm facing the floor, the way you would hand your needy girlfriend a tampon at the office. Despite the quiet, nearly imperceptible way the flight attendant handed me the extender, the woman who hated my girth was so horrified that she moved her seat.
It was as if she suspected I was “that big”, but the extender confirmed it for her. I was taking up too much space. How dare I? My outer thighs were slightly touching her outer thighs, and it offended her. So she asked a very tall man a few rows back if she could sit next to him. But first, she took several puffs off of her inhaler. Her skin looked wrinkly and pale, like she may have been a smoker. A smoker with asthma?
I heard the voice of my friend, a nurse practitioner, who recently said, “Don’t you know? Fat is the new smoking.” So, my outer thighs and their proximity to this wrinkly, gasping fretting woman is akin to second hand smoke which could give me lung cancer?
I am dying to tell this encounter to my sister. When we were 22 and 18, we lived in downtown Philadelphia in a loft apartment. My sister, a former model, is five feet ten inches tall and has long blond hair. She is stunning at any weight. But, she never thinks she is. She is certain people are thinking she is taking up too much space, her thighs crossing the invisible line into others’ arbitrary and unpredictable personal space constraints.
In Philadelphia, my sister and I went to the Wells Fargo office to pick up wired money from our father. Likely, it was an emergency such as we needed dinner at the Greek restaurant. We walked there and stood in a long line with unsavory characters, one of whom was vocally opposed to fat people. I have been overweight most of my life so I am certain the woman in the Wells Fargo office was talking about me, though my not-obese sister thought it was both of us. I believe the woman was schizophrenic.
She said, “Obesity. Obesity. I’m allergic to obesity. That and leprosy.” For some reason, my sister and I turned this into a song on the way back to our apartment. To the tune of Todd Rundgren’s Ooooohh Baby Baby. “I did you wrong. My heart went out to play. But in the game I lost you. What a price to pay….. I’m cryin’…Ooooooh oohhh. Baby baby.” Baby Baby became “beach ball, beach ball.” The woman may have said that, too. My sister would remember.
So, twenty-two years later, I found a non-schizophrenic woman who was also similarly allergic to obesity. It was hard not to sing as I walked off the plane, especially since I had a lovely flight with so much room to stretch out in after she removed her wheezing self from my personal space.
The flight attendants are taught to very discreetly hand you the extenders, should you ask for them. The seat extenders are rolled up compactly and handed to you silently, palm facing the floor, the way you would hand your needy girlfriend a tampon at the office. Despite the quiet, nearly imperceptible way the flight attendant handed me the extender, the woman who hated my girth was so horrified that she moved her seat.
It was as if she suspected I was “that big”, but the extender confirmed it for her. I was taking up too much space. How dare I? My outer thighs were slightly touching her outer thighs, and it offended her. So she asked a very tall man a few rows back if she could sit next to him. But first, she took several puffs off of her inhaler. Her skin looked wrinkly and pale, like she may have been a smoker. A smoker with asthma?
I heard the voice of my friend, a nurse practitioner, who recently said, “Don’t you know? Fat is the new smoking.” So, my outer thighs and their proximity to this wrinkly, gasping fretting woman is akin to second hand smoke which could give me lung cancer?
I am dying to tell this encounter to my sister. When we were 22 and 18, we lived in downtown Philadelphia in a loft apartment. My sister, a former model, is five feet ten inches tall and has long blond hair. She is stunning at any weight. But, she never thinks she is. She is certain people are thinking she is taking up too much space, her thighs crossing the invisible line into others’ arbitrary and unpredictable personal space constraints.
In Philadelphia, my sister and I went to the Wells Fargo office to pick up wired money from our father. Likely, it was an emergency such as we needed dinner at the Greek restaurant. We walked there and stood in a long line with unsavory characters, one of whom was vocally opposed to fat people. I have been overweight most of my life so I am certain the woman in the Wells Fargo office was talking about me, though my not-obese sister thought it was both of us. I believe the woman was schizophrenic.
She said, “Obesity. Obesity. I’m allergic to obesity. That and leprosy.” For some reason, my sister and I turned this into a song on the way back to our apartment. To the tune of Todd Rundgren’s Ooooohh Baby Baby. “I did you wrong. My heart went out to play. But in the game I lost you. What a price to pay….. I’m cryin’…Ooooooh oohhh. Baby baby.” Baby Baby became “beach ball, beach ball.” The woman may have said that, too. My sister would remember.
So, twenty-two years later, I found a non-schizophrenic woman who was also similarly allergic to obesity. It was hard not to sing as I walked off the plane, especially since I had a lovely flight with so much room to stretch out in after she removed her wheezing self from my personal space.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Pudge at Rest
Things I'm thinking of today:1. Fresh basil is amazing.
2. Middle school counseling is much like being an executive assistant who knows about conduct disorder.
3. If you make no-bake cookies with the Amish oats from the Clintonville Community Market, be prepared to chew.
4. If you are really exhausted and sleep half the day, even if you feel guilty about it, you might feel better the next day.
5. I want to be the existentially oriented therapist (Patricia Clarkson's character) from Lars and the Real Girl.
6. People like my friend Meg who are Ps in the Myers Briggs realm are better cooks because they trust the process and don't pour agitation into the pot.
7. I wish I had a good friend who liked to weed for a hobby and they would come visit me today.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Oh the Folly of Human Feline Engagements
There is a divine Kasey Chambers song (thanks to my ex-husband for being a fan so that I could love her, too) that has the chorus "Open up the sky... all gather round....praise the lord and take a look at what I've found... I got love that's as big as a raging storm...walls coming down that I don't need no more... and a sign on the door that says LONELY DOESN"T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. I found this song and played it over and over in my car. Singing and crying about my lack of a love life and seven, eight (?), nine (?) years of celibacy. Meanwhile, my central love relationships have been with my cats. Non-sexual, yet fulfillingly physical. Especially when my children are repulsed by my nearness. "Don't touch me. " "Get away." I hate that. A lot. My cuddliest cat, Bella, was killed when hit by a car last year. I still miss her every day. Pudge is not as affectionate as Bella but he is very sweet and does like to sleep with me. So, my children very often hear me say, "Pudge! Handsome, handsome. Will you marry me?" Sometimes, I shake it up a bit and say, "Shiny, shiny boyfriend. Will you marry me?" Variations on that theme.
So, when I mistakenly mentioned to my youngest son that I wanted to sing the Kasey Chambers song at my wedding, he replied, "When you marry Pudge?" Having no partner for so many years and no prospects of one in the near future, his response was strangely logical.
Being me and unable to let things lie, drawn to pulling things out to their most preposterous conclusions, I decided to put on Facebook that I was engaged. Little did I know that since Pudge doesn't have a Facebook site yet, my betrothed would be a mystery. I intend on giving him one in the near future since I know many dogs and cats and pseudo dogs and cats who have things to say on Facebook.
Then, everyone will know that I have time to babble endlessly to friends, "friends", and others. But, no time to have a relationship with a suitable human. Because, really, who has that much time?
Friday, June 19, 2009
Lyrics to Jane Siberry's Life is the Red Wagon
you watch the slow train moving through the city late at night adjusting back and forth against the darkness and street lights i know that you're feeling bad but i'm glad you didn't lie easy to get caught up...but you know, you can always you can always you can always walk away the life in the red wagon rolling along the life in the red wagon simple and strong the life in the red...is the red...oh, it's no big deal but when the feet are draggin' you pull me and i pull you you pull me and i pull for you past the teeming marketplace and the blur of faces there past the silent dockyards and the darkness looming there maybe it won't work this time but that's the risk you take(and you want to take it)and just as long as it feels right doesn't matter just as long as...doesn't matter gotta feel good though you don't know why the life is the red wagon rolling along the life is the red wagon keeps the feet upon the ground the life is the red...is the red...oh, it's no big deal but when the feet are draggin'you pull me and i pull for you you pull me and i pull for you the life is the red wagon simple and strong
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Science Lesson and Eric's Graduation Party
This is a picture of four out of five of my sisters discussing the complex dominant gene labelled, "The Dreaded Forehead." I think Angela and I were also demonstrating the effect of this genetic anomaly, as was Heather. Lisa is apparently opposed to sharing this valuable scientific information, while Eva and Rebecca merely look on. Is there additional brain matter behind such ridiculously high foreheads? Depends on who you ask. Just one of the many queries involved in full examination of this fascinating gene.
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