Only the Half of It

Father - repost

2010-06-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

Some days my heart just hurts. I'm not sure it is a bad hurt. It can be a good hurt.

But it hurts.

I took my father to a birthday celebration last spring. The party was in honor of a man I’d interviewed. He was 100 years old.

It was at the Armenian church my father's sister attends and the one his mother once belonged to. Whenever my father goes to this church, which is not often, he sees people from his past, the old neighborhood, someone who knew his brother, someone who takes him back in time.

I'd wanted my father to meet this man since I met him three years ago. This little man, this centenarian, one of the few living survivors of the Armenian Genocide during World War I. He could be my grandfather. He could be my father's father.

I never knew my father's father. He died before I was born. My father does not talk much about him but I’ve seen him choke up at his memories.

I remember one time he was sitting at the kitchen table reading a letter his father wrote to him when he was in medical school. He told my father how proud he was of him. My father began to cry. He cried for his father, this immigrant who lost his entire family to the genocide when he was just a teen, who came to America, who built a successful business, who raised his family and who died too young from a heart attack after collapsing on the floor of his shoe repair business.

My father never assimilated into the Armenian culture, the Orthodox religion, the way his parents and two siblings did. As so many from the old neighborhood did. He did not marry an Armenian. The church has never been a favorite place.

And yet, my father enjoyed himself at this little centenarian’s party. I could tell. Even though — maybe because — being here brings back memories.

His best man at his wedding was one table over in the vast banquet hall. They only see each other at times like this. So rare. But my father lit up as they spoke, however briefly. And he enjoyed chatting with people at our table — people we did not know, but people who share similar family pasts.

We spoke of food, of cooking ethnic dishes like kibbie, pilaf, dolma. My father wanted to know where to find this bread his mother used to buy.

"No, it's hard," he'd tell them when they said it was the soft style lawash in most stores. "That's not the same thing," he kept insisting until they remembered the hard bread, too.

I watched my father as he told the woman to my right how he got his name. How, as a little child, he always wanted to be called by his father's name, which was Onnig, though he went by the American version, John. So when my father, whose given name was Nourhan, enrolled in kindergarten and the teacher asked his name, his mother said: “His name is John.”

I watched as my father’s eyes welled up as told this woman the story. And my heart hurt a little.

After dinner, one after another, people got up to honor this little centenarian, this representative and reminder of so much persecution but also of survival and hope. His daughter. His grandson. Close family friends. Three priests. They called him a patriarch, a role model.

Many spoke in the native language. I watched as my father listened.

I watched as he crossed himself and participated in reciting the Lord's Prayer in this language, a language I never learned and one he rarely speaks.

But here the language is breathed. It's celebrated, this beautiful and sometimes lyrical language that can sound short and staccato and then romantic with soft consonants and rolling r’s.

It's the language of his parents. It reminds him of his childhood, I am sure. Of his mother. Of his father.

I think as a child he was embarrassed at times by the language, as children of immigrants often were.

"Did you understand that?" I'd ask more than once.

"Most of it," he'd say.

I've seen my father cry more times than I've seen my mother cry. Outside, my father is rational, stoic.

But I know better.

I watched my father smile when the choir director sang and again when the centenarian spoke to the crowd. This old man, who lives on his own, slowly ambled up to the podium only taking someone's hand as he stepped up to the platform. He choked up as he recalled his life, his family's struggles, and then he called his daughter, now in her 70s, the one who watches out for him, "my guardian angel." We all choked up. I wondered if my father thought of me.

I'm close to my father but we do not verbalize much tenderness. We've been through a lot in recent years with my mother getting sick, and then getting better. Now my father is struggling with his own health problems. I know he thinks about this.

At one point in the evening, I saw him catch his reflection in a long mirror on the wall. He held the gaze for a moment as he raised his hand to stroke his jaw. And I wondered what he was thinking. My father is not vain. But I know he sees his age.

"Don't look," I wanted to tell him, as if to shield him from reality.

I imagine, in this place, some of his past was washing over him and in an instant maybe he was contemplating his life, his age, how he feels, how he looks, no longer how he sees himself inside.

"Don't look," I wanted to say.

My heart hurt a little.

(I wrote this more than two years ago. Things have changed a bit but it's still how I think of my dad. I love old photos and love this one of my dad. Happy Father's Day.)

Pedestals

2010-01-31T09:53:00.000-08:00

I had a bit of an epiphany the other night.

I was crouched down hooking up lines on my dad’s home hemodialysis machine to make a batch of solution for his next day’s therapy, a nearly four-hour process I have been assisting him with every other day for more than two years.

The thing is, he usually does that particular part himself. I’m usually — or “should be” — home or socializing or doing something “fun.”

I guess.

I mean, isn’t that what most people are doing? Spending their Friday nights dressed up, looking fashionable, or at least relaxing with friends or family.

Whatever.

Not doing this.

So I was feeling a little sorry for myself, because let’s face it, the past two months have been unusually challenging.

My father broke his hip in mid-November, which had me running back and forth between checking on my mom and visiting him during his nearly three weeks in the hospital. When he came home, he couldn’t be alone or take the stairs in their two-story house so I have essentially moved in with him in the condo where he does his dialysis. I’ve helped with everything from pulling on and off these outrageously tight orthopedic socks morning and night to grocery shopping and drug store runs.

Just about the time we felt my dad was okay to be alone overnight, my mother, who’d been staying in their home with the animals, suddenly was feeling sick. On New Year’s Day I took her to the local ER. It wasn’t terribly clear what her problem was, other than signs of infection and a pain that moved around in her abdomen from one day to the next.

A week later my mother had both her gall bladder and appendix removed. For the next two weeks, she had one thing or another — from an incision that wouldn’t heal properly to chest pains that resulted in one test after another to ensure it was due to heartburn and not her heart.

It was nearly three weeks before she was discharged, so weak now she too could not be home alone.

So here we are, three of us, in my dad’s dialysis condo, me pulling socks on and off, helping my mother with her medications while encouraging her to do what’s necessary to regain her strength. Oh, yes, and now running to their home daily to retrieve mail, feed and water three indoor cats plus several she’s given refuge to outdoors. There is the dog, too, now also at the condo so I can let her out morning and night.

Somehow in the midst of this, I actually find time to do my work but not much else.

So there I was on a Friday night, not in the latest fashions or hairstyle but in the same uniform of jeans and a dark shirt, hair in a ponytail. Far from sitting in some trendy restaurant, I was sitting on my heels hooking up surgical tubing.

And then it hit me.

Sure, this kind of sucks. But I am doing something terribly significant. And not saying no to it or avoiding it.

I looked at myself as someone else might and thought, Wow. She’s awesome.

Here I was putting all these people I imagined were doing what I thought I should be doing — living the good life, looking like some image in a magazine — on a kind of pedestal.

Not that my family is living the good life right now. It is what it is. But I’m doing what I need to do, putting that first.

And in that, I realized I’m the one I should be putting on that pedestal. Along with so many others who do what is necessary rather than what is fun.

We just might not look like it at first.

The Adoption

2009-12-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

I adopted out a kitten today. I found him a home. I placed him with someone I’ve never met before and know almost nothing about.

I’ve never done this before. And I find myself feeling tearful, a little depressed, a little empty. And struggling not to doubt myself.

I think he’s got a good home.

Does he have the perfect home? I don’t know. I don’t even know what that means or if it exists.

I know I want him to be loved, to be happy and to be safe and to have a good home for as long as he lives.

I’d hoped to adopt him out with his sister but the woman only wanted one.

We never even named him. He’s a beautiful gray kitten who’ll be five months old at the first of the year. His birth was, like his two sisters and several other kittens we’ve given refuge to this year, unplanned.

I am in the middle of this as I help my mother manage an outdoor cat population. We’ve given refuge to about three litters this year as we try to capture and “fix” the parents who’ve made their home in my mother’s otherwise empty barn.

Since summer, I’ve slowly fallen in love with this kitten or that. I’ve already taken in four, only expecting to take in three. My mother has accepted one to join her house cats but there had to be a cut-off somewhere.

Until today, five have been enjoying a little kitten-ville in her heated breezeway. It’s comfortable enough, but not the home they deserve.

For months, I’ve been looking for homes, posting signs, sharing images and information via email and asking almost everyone I encounter if they might be willing to adopt.

In all these months, the only two kittens we’ve adopted out until now went to a good friend from high school and her husband. That was October 1. I suffered a little separation anxiety when she drove off with them, but I trust them completely. If only they would take a couple more.

It’s agonizing enough to let them go when you become attached. It’s harder when you aren’t sure of the person. When you realize you may never see that animal again, may never be sure they are okay.

I’ve said no to people, too. I mean, we could have probably let go of all these kittens had I not asked questions, didn’t care if they were adopted out in pairs, didn’t really want to know their fate. I told my mother to let me handle it. I wanted to be the gate keeper.

Not that I have the time. But I have the commitment. I do not know another way. I wish I did.

We also could have taken them to a no-kill shelter but why not just foster them ourselves? Maybe we didn’t want to let them go.

I’ve lost some faith in people in the process. Or maybe just got scared of them.

First was the girl at the pet store who told me never to give them away for free. “People sell them for medical research,” she told me. Now that’s always in the back of my mind.

And so I decided to tell people I’d charge them $50 or $100 which I’d refund when they sent proof they had taken the kitten to the vet. I don’t want their money. I want loving homes.

There was the almost perfect home. The woman who saw my sign a few months ago at the hardware store and thought it must be destiny. She told me she’d put it out to the universe, or something like that, that very day to find two needy kittens to adopt when she stumbled upon my flyer. She sounded perfect. She and her husband were recent empty nesters who’d lost their beloved cat not long ago. She was even volunteering with Leader Dogs for the Blind. We arranged for her to see them the next day.

Then she called back. Her husband wanted two girls, specifically sisters. I didn’t have that. I had two girls, not sisters. No deal. Her husband was set on that. I was as annoyed as I was crushed. But in the end they adopted a couple of needy cats from a shelter. And in that way, that was okay. I just kept hoping to find more people like her.

Mostly, I seemed to find the wrong people. Or they’d find me.

There was the man with the two-year-old from the other side of town — too far I thought — who told me they had to “get rid of” the last kitten because it kept scratching their daughter (immediately I pictured her pulling a kitten’s tail). Then he wanted to know “how much?”

As I told him about the refund arrangement, already sure I was not interested in him, I mentioned a woman I knew who was trying to adopt some kittens that already had shots. He’d already called her, he said bluntly. “That didn’t work out.” Apparently he didn’t have the money “that month” to pay her. I think all she wanted was maybe $50.

Didn’t have the money “that month”?

I politely told him I’d let him know and knew I’d never call him back.

Then there was the eager but simple sounding woman who was also from a town too far and not a good part of town at that. I tried not to be judgmental. She saw my sign at the pet store when she went there with a friend. Her heart was in the right place, it seemed. She had two rescue cats and two small dogs already.

As we chatted I learned she was on a fixed income, which didn’t sound too terrible as at least she had a steady source of income. Then I learned she didn’t drive and had bad arthritis. I wondered if she was able to handle that many pets. I’d decided it wasn’t a fit but didn’t want to be rude. So as I lied that my mother was also talking to some people, I asked her name again in case I thought something might work out.

When she told me her last name, I said, “Oh, yes, I saw that on the caller ID but it was a man’s name.” “That’s my fiancé,” she said. I found it interesting she used his last name. Something was just odd about that. Then she offered up: “He’s going to be home by Christmas.”

Now I don’t recall exactly how the rest of what she said came about, but I definitely classify it as: “You can’t make this stuff up.”

“He’s in The Local Jail,” she blurted out.

I was simultaneously shocked and not at all surprised. As I learned the offense involved alcohol, I tried to sound exceedingly normal.

“Oh, was he driving or did he get in a fight?” Somehow I pictured this man I know nothing about in a brawl.

“He got in a fight and pulled a knife on someone in a bar,” she said.

“Oh, he can’t do that,” I said as if talking to a little child. I pictured him threatening her pets to get his hands on her fixed income check each month.

“I know,” she said. “I think he’s learned his lesson.”

Clearly, I was never calling her back. I said a little prayer for her pets and her two new rescue kittens she called the next day to inform me about.

Meanwhile, I’ve been watching as our kittens get bigger. With that I keep hearing my mother’s concern: that people want kittens, not cats. I’ve been losing sleep worrying that we’re not trying hard enough.

So in the last two weeks I printed off a new slew of flyers and posted them half-heartedly around town — grocery stores, the hardware store, the bookstore — hating myself a little each time, as if I’m prostituting the little babies.

Why couldn’t I just keep them? Why couldn’t a trusted friend just take one more?

But the reality is this: You can’t push them on your friends if they are not ready. And we are near our limit with what we’ve taken in and what we may be left with.

And here is the most painful reality: no one has been calling.

Then I got the voice message last night.

A woman, married with two teenage daughters and two cats, just a couple of miles from my mom’s house where the kittens are living, saw my sign at a grocery store.

She wanted a boy, ideally with short hair. But that was it. I hoped she might take two but it didn’t sound likely. At least she had two cats so he wouldn’t be alone.

I was happy at first, but then in the middle of the night and as morning neared, I began to get slight pangs of regret, mostly feelings of loss.

She came by around 1:30 today with her two daughters. They were not fancy people but they seemed like decent, even good people. They seemed devoted to their other cats.

I tried to smile as I showed them our beautiful kitten, gray with an almost elegant face. He's more unusual looking than either of his parents or sisters. I likened his coat to a cashmere sweater and wondered what I was doing. A kitten like this doesn’t come along every day, I felt myself saying inside. But I couldn’t listen.

It’s hard. I’m like my mother. I’m really not cut out for this. Not when it comes to strangers.

She asked if he was affectionate and liked to be held. I told her he’s been spending more time with four other kittens than in the house so she’d need to find that out. But yes, he’s sweet, I said. He’s very social and playful. A great kitten.

I told her if for any reason he did not work out as she hoped, or he did not seem happy, or her cats did not get along with him, I would — and wanted to — take him back. No questions asked.

As they got ready to leave, I petted him and said good bye as I looked at his little body toward the back of carrying case. I imagined what he must be thinking: What’s going on? Who are these people? Where are my friends? Where am I going?

I prayed he was not scared.

I asked the woman if she minded if I called to see how he was doing. She wanted my vet’s name anyway. I went to the window and watched them drive off in a gray minivan.

And then the woman called a little while ago. She wanted to know what food he’s been eating. She didn’t want to disrupt his routine too much. We chatted a while. She told me they have him in the bathroom until he gets adjusted and the other cats can sniff him through the door.

One wants to play with him already, she said. One also likes to bathe her other cat. I liked that. My gray boy is used to that. I hope he gets a nice bath from her cat.

“He’s purring,” she said.

Did I find a perfect home? I don’t even know what that is.

But I hope I found a good home.

Stopped

2009-10-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

In all the years when I probably could have been stopped by a cop for a wee bit more alcohol in my system than should be in anyone behind a two-ton machine, it never happened.

Well once, after a very late night at a bar sometime shortly after I graduated from college, I did pull out in front of a car a bit closer than I should have. It happened to be a cop and I did get stopped. But he let me go after a quick chat. And frankly, I was more tired that intoxicated anyway, something he probably knew.

No, I tend to get pulled over for weaving when I’m perfectly sober. It’s now happened twice.

The first time was years ago when I was driving through Michigan’s upper peninsula with my mother. It was late. We were exhausted. We were coming home from Montana. I was driving my father’s boat-like Mercury Grand Marquis. I knew I was tired but was in the zone where you don’t grasp just how tired until you fly over small hill a bit too fast — like a roller coaster — and find yourself gripping the wheel as the car makes a slight screeching sound rounding a curve. Even my mother perked up to say, “Watch it.”

And then came the cop. Thank god. He surely thought I was DWI until he saw us, me worn out looking in a baseball cap with my mother beside me. “Get some coffee and some sleep,” he urged us before letting us go. And we did.

That episode came back to me in the past few days as I was ruminating about what happened last Thursday night when I was stopped on my way home from a visit to my cousin’s house.

Let’s start with the facts: I had a mild headache, I was quite tired, though not sleepy, and I was, though I admit I should not have been, chatting on my cell phone. There’s more: I was wearing my glasses (which I’m not as used to as I am my contacts) because my eye was healing from an infection. The roads were dark and it seemed I kept coming upon construction zones and orange barrels placed in ways that I found confusing in terms of which way to go around them. Plus, I was driving on a road I’m never on, even though I was by now just a few miles from my home.

Oh, yes, I’d had a couple of beers, but that was early in the evening, at least two to three hours earlier, followed by water and soda pop and about half a can of mixed nuts.

So there I am, sitting at a light, a big bright red left-turn arrow signal. I don’t see those too often so I was especially diligent to heed it. As soon as it turned green, but not too soon, I proceeded through the light to turn left and head south.

Then I saw the lights. “It can’t be me,” I thought as they continued tight behind me.

“You’re kidding,” I said, a little irritated as I pulled to the right of the southbound lane stopping as close the curb as I could. By then I’d realized it could be something as simple as my tail lights not working.

A female officer appeared at my window as I grabbed for my wallet. “Can I see your license and registration and proof of insurance please?”

“Sure,” I said, adding a bit incredulously: “Did I do something wrong?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.”

What’s the big secret? I thought as she walked back to her car, my mind fumbling for what I’d done, thinking it can’t be the alcohol. I’m fine.

She came back to my window. “Where are you coming from?”

I told her the city where my cousin lives, probably 10 to 15 miles away.

“What’s in That City?” she said in what sounded like a mocking sing-song voice.

“My cousin,” I said flatly.

“You were weaving and then when we stopped you you nicked the curb.”

Weaving?? Where? I thought. And hitting the curb? On a dark road, with a cop tight behind me with blinding lights and no shoulder to pull onto. Are you kidding me? I nick curbs all the time, I wanted to say.

I don’t even remember if she asked if I’d been drinking but I knew that’s what she thought.

I felt mild panic as I told her I had two beers much earlier, that I’d had an eye problem and didn’t see as well with my glasses, which I was not used to wearing. Then there was all the construction, unfamiliar streets, the headache, the tiredness. I almost said: Feel free to breathalyze me. Then thought, don’t be stupid. What if…??

“Are you using eye drops?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering what that had to do with anything.

She shined a light in my eyes and asked me to follow it.

Then she asked me to recite the alphabet “without singing it.”

By now I was feeling guilty. My heart was beating a bit faster. I was even nervous about reciting the alphabet.

I think I did okay but all of a sudden after V and before W I sort of wondered if I did something wrong. I think I did okay.

“Without looking at your watch or clock can you tell me what time it is?”

I said I thought it was about 10:30/10:45.

The second she walked away, I looked at my clock: 10:30 on the dot.

She returned for more. This time asking me to step out of the car and walk back right into her bright headlights. By now I saw she was with a male partner, who was letting her run the show.

I was almost finding this comical had it not been so unnerving. Still tired and headachy and not feeling 100 percent, I was putting my energy into being as normal as possible.

“Do you have any weapons on you?”

I nearly laughed as I said, “Of course not,” as she — with the first bit of humanness I’d seen — said as she PATTED ME DOWN: “Sorry but I have to do this to everyone.”

Then she asked if I had good balance.

“Well, I do yoga…”

“Oh, then you have VERY good balance,” she interrupted, again sounding slightly mocking.

“Well, I don’t know if it’s THAT good. I don’t normally do yoga in these shoes,” I said looking at the black wedge sandals on my feet.

“You can take them off if you want.”

“No I’ll try like this first, I’m pretty comfortable in them.” I didn’t want to stand barefoot, which felt naked, on the concrete road.

I did as she told me, hands to my sides, one leg up straight in front of me several inches above the ground while counting until she told me to stop.

I got to about 19 before she said stop. I was still on one foot. Steady. I was pleased.

She wanted more. She told me to walk toe to heel for nine steps before turning around and walking back nine steps in as straight of a line as possible.

Now these things can be a challenge if you have had NOTHING to drink and feel fine, are in the comfort of your own home and have no one judging.

Go ahead. Try it. I’ll wait.

See? It’s not so easy, is it?

So there I am thinking, nothing I do is convincing her. I wished I could have been a fly on the wall to see what I was actually like.

I did the heel to toe. I thought I did fine, especially considering how I felt and now with the added stress of being treated like a criminal, out in the street with blinding lights on me.

I kept waiting for them to let me go. What more did they want? I was not drunk. I knew that. I didn’t know if I had some trace of alcohol in my system. What does .08 feel like anyway? I have no idea. I wish I knew. But I knew it couldn’t possibly be what I had in my system.

It wasn’t over.

She led me up from the curb onto the grass where her partner was standing. She put the light in my eyes again, asking me to track it. I thought I followed it fine.

“How am I doing?” I finally asked.

“We’ll let you know.”

Again, what is the big secret?

Suddenly, her partner is asking me to take a deep breath and blow though this plastic straw.

Finally, I thought. A breathalyzer. Why didn’t we just do this from the beginning? At the same time I hoped those two beers two to three hours earlier weren’t in my system more than I thought.

I finished. He looked at the instrument and said, “You’re free to go.” With that they both turned and hurried to their car.

I was a little stunned. “What was it?” I called to them as they moved away from me.

“Zero,” he called to me.

They barely turned back.

I felt vindicated as I called something to them about being sure to be careful and alert on my drive home, something I’d have expected them to offer to me. I mean, after all, here they went through all this thinking I’m intoxicated, but when I blow a zero, they just take off? Suddenly the “weaving” they saw as enough reason to stop me wasn’t worth a word of caution for any other possible reason?

At least that cop up north cautioned us to get some coffee and sleep and be careful.

I felt used.

It also left me wondering if they really did suspect I was intoxicated. Were they just cracking down on everyone? Practicing their skills?

So many questions.

At least I know one thing. I can handle a couple of drinks as long as I don’t have any more within a couple of hours of hitting the road.

And, it’s not a good idea to be chatting on your cell phone when you’re behind a two-ton machine.

And those are lessons worth knowing,

My Mom: A Guide to Happiness

2009-08-24T08:48:00.001-07:00

I was just reading an interesting article on money and happiness. It talked about how the common wisdom has always been that money cannot buy happiness, but how now, according to a couple of researchers, that in fact, if used correctly, money can indeed buy happiness.

The main difference was this: If people buy “stuff,” from fancy cars and watches to bigger homes, ultimately they are not much if any happier. But those who give money away — to charities or to other people, or spend it on experiences, like vacations or even a bar crawl with friends — they are actually, yes, happier.

This information confirmed something I always thought — that money can contribute to happiness if it buys you experiences like education, travel, time with friends and, more powerfully, freedom, particularly from a lousy job.

It also immediately made me think of my mom.

Just the other day she was sitting on the couch watching the news when she heard that the lottery had reached $200 million. Her face always lights up at the thought of buying a ticket and actually winning.

“I’d love to win the lottery,” she said. “God, wouldn’t that be fantastic? Why don’t you buy a ticket?”

I always turn all grumbly and say, “No way. That’s just throwing your money away.”

And mostly it is a waste, considering the odds of actually winning the thing, or any portion of it. But sometimes she gives in to fantasy (although, yes, there is the minute chance she could win) and contemplates what she’d do with all that money.

“Of course, the government would take half,” she went on, deciding what she’d do with $100 million. At this point, because I’ve heard this before, I get a little annoyed because even though this money does not exist, I know what she’ll say.

“I’d love to give it away. I’d give at least million to each of my nieces and nephews and my sister. And all my charities….”

She relishes the fantasy with such enthusiasm I wonder how I can possibly be related to her. But then I’m glad to see some common sense surface: “I’d keep about $30 million. That’s all I’d need.”

At that point, I realize even $30 million is way more than she’d need, this woman who these days is so down to earth it pains her to even buy a new shirt without at least throwing one away.

But then I realize, she’s not thinking of possessions at all, or hardly. She’d probably make her home and property into a sanctuary for homeless animals, and the money would free her from the worry of food and vet bills. She could even hire workers to tend to the menagerie.

She’d probably spend some on travel and taking friends out to dinner, maybe fix her Jeep’s air conditioning or possibly even buy a new car, but nothing fancy, just something safe and sturdy to get her around if her old Jeep gives out.

I have come to realize that any slight irritation that arises within me when I hear her talk of all this sharing and giving so much away is really an awakening of my own fear of scarcity.

Though I’m far from a materialistic status seeker (thanks to my family), I admit, my first thought is not to give away to others (other than those closest to me, of course) but to hoard. To make sure I’ve always got enough money to be comfortable, to travel, to leave a bad job, to have the freedom to do what I want.

So while I’m thinking I can hold my head up and say, "See? I’m honorable, I don’t want a Gucci watch or Ferrari, a mansion or Chanel bag. I want experiences," I realize I have to take a cue from my mom and think even more of sharing the wealth.

I also realize that's something you can do right now. Not “one day” if you win the lottery. I don’t have a lot of extra money, but I bought lunch for a friend recently and it felt great.

Of course I’m still far from being where my mother is.

I used to tease her when my cousin and his wife and kids would stop by and she would offer them things as they got ready to leave. Nothing fancy, just what she had around.

“Do you want to take some bananas?” she’d say, pointing to a few sitting in a bowl. Or she might pick up a bag of chips and say, “Here, take these.”

At the time I’d think she was silly, knowing full well my cousin could easily afford to buy his own chips. But that was not the point. And now I just think she’s amazing. She just loves to give. And I know, without any doubt, I could count on her to literally give me the shirt off her back whether I needed it or not.

More important, I realize it’s a rare person who is so giving and with such enthusiasm. I’m lucky to have her as a role model.

And I didn’t really need to read that story about how money really can buy happiness. My mother already taught me.

If you want, see the story here:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/23/happiness_a_buyers_guide/?page=full.

On My Mind....

2009-08-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

New post coming... soon. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, this is the kind of stuff that's been on my mind:

The author of the below linked article on the issue of buying kidneys (due to the crisis of too many people waiting for one while on dialysis combined with the shortage available from either deceased donors or living donors like myself) says:

"History suggests that once the rich and powerful figure out a way to exploit the poor in one way, they'll pretty quickly start pushing the envelope in related directions as well."

I say: Not all people who need a kidney are rich and powerful and plenty would do ANYTHING to raise the money to buy one, and it would be money well spent. If only they would allow the system to regulate this. Maybe instead of paying a donor the donor would get lifetime health insurance or another incentive.

My main concern would be that people taking money to donate a kidney get a very good health screening for their sake and the recipient's.

Donating a kidney to save a life is a relatively safe procedure for living donors. You can -- as many, many people do and don't even realize it -- live a full and healthy life with one kidney. The second is really like a spare.

The best solution? Have people OPT-OUT of being donors on the donor card rather than OPT-IN. It's worked wonderfully in other countries and let's face it, you aren't using it anymore at that point anyway. Plus, one person saves two lives (two kidneys).

Really folks, something must be done.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/07/selling-your-kidney

Father’s Day

2009-06-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

I will see my father on Father’s Day.

I wonder what other people are doing to celebrate. Picnics, BBQs, cakes, golf dates, bike rides, opening presents.

We might do some of that — I have a card and a gift and my mom might get a cake.

One thing I do know is how we will spend part of our day:

He and I will gather in the afternoon or early evening for his three-hour in-home dialysis treatment just as we do every other day. Just as we’ve been doing for almost two years.

First we will set up the machine that cleans his blood. It’s about the size of a small refrigerator. We’ll open the door and install a cartridge, then hang a bag of saline. We’ll connect a series of lines, made of surgical tubing, which ultimately get connected to my father. We’ll start the machine to get the saline running through the cartridge and eliminate air bubbles. That takes about 20 minutes.

Then one of us will lay out gauze pads, Bandaids, two fat needles, alcohol and betadine wipes, adhesive tape to secure the needles, syringes to fill with saline, and one syringe we’ll fill with the blood thinner heparin. My father usually heads to the kitchen at this point to make coffee.

The machine will chime, alerting us to a few more things we need to do before he is ready to hook up. Then my father will wash and prep his left arm, the one with the bulging fistula (an artery-vein) that winds its way up between his inner wrist and the crook of his elbow.

He will sit, inserting one needle, then the other. For each, once we see the blood pulsing through the base of the narrow surgical tubing connected to the needle, I’ll secure it with a Bandaid then connect it to the tubing that snakes through the machine.

We will start the machine, ramping up the cycler to our cruising speed of 460. If all goes smoothly — no alarms, no need to remove tape and adjust the needles — I can work on my computer just a few feet away for the next three hours. Sometimes I read or get him something to eat, pour him some coffee or fetch him some paperwork since he’s confined to a chair.

He will take regular blood pressure readings and record that with information from the machine onto a log sheet. He might watch the news or do a crossword puzzle. He might nod off for a bit or work on his laptop. He’s been enjoying discovering Seinfeld through re-runs. I laugh too.

We always talk. Some days more. Some days less.

Last weekend he asked, “What did you do today? It was a nice sunny day.”

“I went for a bike ride,” I said, a little taken aback at his interest, and for a moment I felt a tinge of guilt, a fleeting self-consciousness at my energy and freedom. Not that he would want me to feel that way. Maybe he just wanted to talk about something other than dialysis or the news.

I thought how nice it would be if he had gone for a bike ride, too, with me or not. I don’t know the last time he went for a bike ride.

My father gets around. He shops, keeps in touch with his friends, goes to a weekly conferences related to his profession, though he’s retired. But he's also tired. Dialysis takes up a lot of energy and, especially, time. More for him than for me.

Sometimes I think he feels guilty for taking my time. For relying on me.

He shouldn’t. This is my commitment. I’ve made this part of my life.

And the truth is, though I don’t like that he has to be on dialysis, I like being able to help, being someone he can depend on after so many years of me depending on him. And I even find comfort in my routine of being there every other day. It anchors my weeks.

So, yes, I will see my father on Father’s Day.

It’s not what many people will do this day. But I don’t care.

I will give him a silly card and some fancy coffee that we will share in coming weeks and a book I think he’ll like.

And we will talk. We will talk of sunny days and things other than dialysis.

Morton's F'ing Toe

2009-06-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

Mother F!

I stood in the crowd of people wanting my friend to shut the F up! It’s not that she was saying anything that embarrassed me so much as she was infuriating me because she might be right.

I did not want to hear it. I did not want to hear it. I did not want to hear it.

Worse, as she said it she was standing there in these stupid “sensible” shoes:

“You probably have Morton’s Neuroma. That’s what I have. I can’t wear high heels anymore.”

Shut up. Shut up. Shut the F up.

I’m usually not this bad about denial. But in contemplating my possible future with heels, I’ve taken to telling people lately that I’d rather give up drinking alcohol for the rest of my life rather than give up high heels.

I had a kind of reckoning last New Year’s Eve after my left foot was screaming in such pain it might has well have been throttling me by the neck begging for mercy. I knew then I had a bigger problem than I wanted to admit.

For days afterward my toes, specifically the middle toe and the one next to my baby toe as well as those joints below them, alternated between numbness and pain when I walked even in bare feet.

I swore off heels unless absolutely necessary. (And yes, it is necessary sometimes.)

I tried them again — a pair of boots this time — a month or two later, for just a couple of hours, and sure enough, the pain emerged. It was not so bad because I didn’t wear them too long but I could see this was not something that was going to go away nicely.

I tried again a couple of months later, after finding myself unable to resist a pair of shiny brownish-red boots on sale for like $30 (Christ, they were originally $175!). I wore them, with hopeful caution, to a birthday dinner with friends. I mean, I was in them maybe three or four hours, most of that time sitting.

By the end of the night, the combination of walking and toe squeezing got the best of my foot. Sitting with my legs crossed under the table, I could not believe such an isolated and specific pain in my foot would cause me to want to scream, to be incapable of focusing on anything else, to feel damn near ready to throw up.

Desperate for some relief, I bought some shoe pads at Nordstrom and proceeded wearing heels only as needed, mostly wedges, taking care to notice which shoes I could handle and which I could not.

The night my friend in her “sensible” shoes declared this to me a month or so ago, I was wearing a slightly chunkier heel of maybe three inches, a sort of rounded-toe Mary Jane wingtip-style. I think we got on the topic because she was admiring my heels. I probably brought up my foot pain obsession.

Oh, how I hated that term: Morton’s Neuroma. It sounds like cancer.

Of course, I went home that night thinking, how could she possibly know what my problem is? She probably is so mad she has it she wants everyone else to have it, too. Pick on someone else, I thought.

Then I Googled it.

My god. I could have drawn the picture with the big red blob indicating pain exactly where I felt it. And the description was right on. It’s a nerve issue.

I read that you can treat it by numbing the nerve with cortisone injections.

I later asked my dad, a doctor, if he’d heard of it.

“Morton’s Toe?” he said. Ewwww. An even grosser term, I thought. “Sure,” he said, offering up yet another treatment option. “They cut the nerve.”

I immediately wondered how much that cost.

Don’t look at me like that. I’m only five-foot-three and half.

I suppose they do that if it’s bad enough. I’ve been contemplating seeing an orthopedic surgeon or podiatrist ever since. Though I do fear they’ll look at me with disgust when they realize my reason is so I can wear heels.

What’s interesting is that, as I’ve been sharing my self-diagnosis with some friends, several seem to know what it is. “Morton’s Toe?” they say, proffering up the hated words.

Some of them have since decided they have the exact same thing.

Clearly, this is far more common that I realized.

Regardless, I have a dilemma. I still need a proper diagnosis, then have to determine what I can or can’t afford to do about it.

Now as I look with equal parts nostalgia and fear at my collection of pointy-toe stilettos and heels of four inches or more, I'm thankful for summer with its mostly open-toe wedge-style sandals and espadrilles.

For now, I am doing my best to defy Morton and his stupid Neuroma Toe.

But I’m no dummy. I always have a second pair of "sensible" shoes in my car (they’re actually kinda cute), just in case. Which, let’s face it, is what any sane podiatrist will tell women today anyway:

Wear walking shoes on the street or from the parking structure, then slip the heels on at your desk or destination. Only wear as needed.

And yes, they are needed.

A Death in the Family

2009-05-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

I was on my way to other plans when my mother called me that last Wednesday in April.

“Can you come up here? Mahie’s sick,” she said a little before 2 p.m. I was standing in a store looking at candles.

My mother sounded tired. She was. She’d called the vet, Dr. M, after finding Mahlie that morning thrashing around in her stall. Colic, it seemed. I wasn’t panicked, as we’d been through this before. But I dropped what I was doing to get there as soon as I could.

Mahie, our beautiful black half-Arab half-Welsh pony who was born our property, was standing beside my mother behind the barn. Her reddish-tinged hair was damp and matted while her thick black mane hung in wet clumpy strands. For years too fat, Mahlie has recently been looking trim and healthy. Today she looked thin.

She had blood dripping from her nose. I was alarmed until I realized it was the result of a tube Dr. M inserted there to get warm water and mineral oil into her stomach to encourage some movement through her system. Then he smeared a steroid ointment in her open eyes, which were rimmed with blood from her bashing her head in her stall.

I was also alarmed at how dull she appeared until the vet explained that he’d tranquilized her to do his examination. He filled me in on what he’d told my mother. That her chances of “making it” were about “15 percent.”

He wasn’t sure if it was colic, basically a stomachache, which can be lethal if they roll on the ground to alleviate their pain — which she was certainly doing. That thrashing can cause the stomach to twist, which chokes off the digestive system and requires emergency surgery if they don’t die first. He thought it could be that kind of obstruction or even possibly an obstruction caused by a tumor.

Her heart rate and respirations were double what they should have been, obvious signs of distress. She showed no interest in the fresh green grass or spring hay. She had no gut sounds and was not making any manure. That’s death to a horse.

Her right front leg shook with fatigue and her head hung down almost to the ground. I wanted to hold her up but the vet said to leave her be.

“It’s the tranquilizer,” he reminded. “She has a strong urge to balance herself.”

She looked like she was dying.

As he left my exhausted mother and me alone with her, he gave us instructions for the next “few days” — a sign of hope, I thought — quickly explaining how to administer several doses of an anti-inflammatory medicine, more ointment for her eyes and an electrolyte mix to shoot into her mouth with a large syringe.

“Worst case scenario is she goes back down in the next couple of hours and you call Dr. C,” he said, referring to the vet on call.

* * * *

Mahlie would have been 33 this month.

My mother cared for her every morning and every night for all those years. Few parents care for a child that long.

Times such as these, coping with a suddenly sick animal, disrupt. They grab hold of your carefully laid plans and rip them to pieces. They tear at your heart. They exhaust and confuse.

We’ve lost pets before, so many. But this was different. Mahie was the last in a long line of horses in our family. It was the end of an era.

When our last horse, Tess, had to be put down a few years ago, I watched as Mahlie, clearly agitated, trotted around her body, by then covered by a green plastic tarp. She pawed at the lifeless mound with her hoof and tugged on the tarp with her teeth as if trying to wake her friend.

I wished I could have soothed her. Picked her up and cradled her and said, “It will be okay.”

We worried for Mahlie then. She’d been used to being in the company of horses. As many as eight at one time. And five llamas, too.

But she adapted. And for us, she kept the barnyard alive. And my mother was able to maintain the routine she’s had for so many years. Grain in the morning, with fresh hay and water then turning her out to the pasture. At night, always around dusk or bit after, she’d call Mahlie into a clean stall to enjoy grain with chunks of freshly chopped apples and carrots.

* * * *

By the time Dr. M left, I was still hopeful, thinking I might even keep some of my plans that day. As my mother rested on a camping stool in the middle of the barnyard, I brushed Mahlie’s coat and combed her mane, which seemed to relax her. I cut off any stubborn matted pieces of hair. Her eyes and nose were no longer bloody. She looked good, too, which, I imagined, also helped her feel good. Maybe that's an illusion we need to give ourselves.

As the drug wore off, she perked up and I began to walk her. She even seemed to want to walk me as I pulled back to slow her down. It was going to be a long day, I thought. I didn’t want to tire her. She even bowed her head, we thought to sniff the grass. Maybe it was. Maybe it’s just in her nature. But she would not take a bite. Later we brought her grain and hay. Still no interest.

Still, we were encouraged enough that after a couple of hours I let her off the lead rope to walk on her own. “Let’s see what she does,” my mother said. I went to clean her stall, just out of sight, then heard my mother calling to her. I saw as she got up to follow Mahlie around the back barn. And then I watched Mahlie go down.

I cursed myself for letting her go. Once she was down it was not in our control to make her get up. But even then we told ourselves she might just be tired, maybe she needed to rest, she’d been up all night and walking for hours and not feeling well. She looked exhausted, like she just wanted to sleep, lying her head down on the ground, her eyes looking sleepy.

But then she groaned and began to roll.

We paged Dr. C.

* * * *

Dr. C was the vet who helped rescue Mahlie a little over a year ago when she escaped my parents’ property one night. Mahlie had slipped on a shallow icy pond and couldn’t get up. I thought she wouldn’t make it then. But we pulled her through. (A Super Bowl Tale)

This was also the vet who was there with Dr. M some six or seven years ago when Mahlie had colic for the first time I can ever recall. She was always so hearty.

I was there that time, too, walking her repeatedly and watching her through the night, checking her heart rate and respirations, seeing if she was making any manure or showing any interest in eating and making sure she did not lie down and roll. I even hand-pressed a large bag of fluids into her through an IV line to keep her hydrated.

At that time, I remember deciding in my mind sometime in the wee hours — after hearing no gut sounds with my father’s stethoscope, seeing no interest in food and seeing no manure — that she was not going to make it.

I was sleeping on a sofa downstairs at my parents’ house, mourning her imminent death, when my father came in from outside early the next morning and said she’d passed some manure, proof that she was not obstructed.

You’d have thought it was Christmas. I couldn’t believe it. I felt guilty for giving up on her if only in my mind. Even the vets were surprised and heartened.

* * * *

Shortly after we’d paged Dr. C, for whatever reason, Mahlie surprised us by getting up on her own. Was she feeling better?

We walked again, the same restless kind of walk. Urgent, yet disorganized. I’d stand still and she’d make a tight circle around me, reminding me of the way a dog goes in a circle before lying down. I didn’t want to think that’s all she wanted. If we could just keep her moving…

I compulsively listened to her gut. I know I heard a few gut sounds, a gurgle, a pop. No she was not eating and her heart rate and respiration were still high but it was a hopeful sign.

I began to wish we had not called the vet. Just then, before the vet arrived, Mahlie went down again, rolling on the soft grass before sitting up with her head lifted and legs tucked near her. She almost looked comfortable.

Dr. C told us she could not examine her conclusively if she was not standing so we desperately tried again to get her to stand, calling her name, tugging at her lead rope. Nothing.

Then, like the last time, Mahlie decided on her own to stand. We were relieved because now Dr. C could tell us more. We knew there was a decision to be made. God, please tell us something conclusive so we’ll know what to do.

Like Dr. M, Dr. C was not 100 percent of anything except the “15 percent chance.”

She said Mahlie’s heart rate was even higher than before, which I attributed to her rolling and getting up. She listened to her gut. “I hear nothing,” she said.

I told her I know I heard some sounds. “You probably heard her breathing,” she said. I didn’t think so.

Dr. C talked and talked, offering reasons to put her down but also reasons to wait, maybe buying us time as we decided what to do. She said things like how she knew we liked to try everything in our power before letting go and that this was our last horse so she was willing to give us the night if we wanted, leaving us with pain killers to inject every two hours, but also that this could be a painful experience for Mahlie and she didn’t deserve that after all these years, that older horses were more stoic than the young ones and internalize the pain, maybe one reason she seemed somewhat mellow, and that if we did wait it out Mahlie would have to be much, much improved my morning to have hope, but that it was up to us.

I did ask if it was her horse what she would do. I was surprised when she said she would probably put her down.

* * * *

I don’t think my mother was thinking completely straight. She was exhausted both physically and emotionally. I was confused, too, and didn’t want to make the call. I told my mother I’d do whatever she wanted. I later felt bad putting that on her.

We brought Mahlie into her stall to see what she’d do. At least she relieved her bladder, as she always liked to do inside a perfectly clean stall. She didn’t lie down but for some reason my mother wanted to let her do what she wanted, free from a lead rope, and said if she went down again, we would put her down.

The vet looked at me. I think she knew Mahlie would go down, that this was how my mother needed to rationalize it. I was pretty sure Mahlie would go down and wanted to tell my mother not to make that bet. But in the end, no decision felt right, though I think the vet felt it was right.

We watched as Mahlie walked outside again and then, ever so gently, lowered her body to the ground. The decision was made.

But even then, we were nagged with doubt despite a self-imposed pressure to go on with it as the sky grew dark and the vet got the injection ready. As we went back and forth, our bodies hovering close to Mahlie, I thought my mother might change her mind. I thought I might say something to stop it. Somehow we just proceeded.

I’ll tell you now, I wish I had stopped it, had taken Mahlie through the night, taken all the pain meds the vet could offer us to keep her comfortable until morning, and if she wasn’t better by then, put her down. I think that is the worst part. Not knowing if we did the right thing.

I was crouched down in front of Mahie and I said to my mother to come say goodbye. I held Mahlie’s head and kissed her on the nose. My mother did the same. We stroked and soothed her as the vet injected an overdose of anesthesia into the left side of her neck from behind. Mahlie started for a moment but very gently eased back and went to sleep.

It was over. No more pain. It was now dark, nearly 9 p.m.

* * * *

I could end this here, but there is more.

The guilt always creeps into your psyche. Did you do it too soon? Did you do it too late? Did you need to do it at all?

This time it was worse. I agonized for days afterward over putting her down that night, not seeing it through beyond any doubt. It’s all the more painful because she is the last. We should have held on just a little longer, I tell myself, not fully sure that would be the right thing to do but maye it was.

Regardless of our feelings, we had things to attend to. We covered Mahlie’s body with a couple of tarps, weighing them down with rocks.

I tell people how civilized it is by comparison to bury or cremate a dog or a cat. You can wrap them in a blanket, carry them like a baby. Even a large dog is easy for two people to handle.

A horse is different. You have to call someone with a truck with chains or a tractor strong enough to move her.

My mother decided to have her cremated. She called the same man she’s called many times before. He arrived Friday morning — it rained all day on Thursday — with his large yellow machinery.

I don’t recall what I said to this man as I uncovered her body and got choked up, but he said, as if to comfort me, “She’s not there. Her soul is gone. That’s just a body.” I knew he was right.

He scooped her up with the curved front shovel, being careful to go deep into the dirt and grass beneath her so as not to harm her body. He slowly lifted her high and took her to my parents’ pick up truck, now in the pasture, gently depositing her on the bed.

As I secured the tarp over her body, I kept thinking how I didn’t want anything blowing off and exposing her during the long journey through dirty, busy towns surrounded by traffic as we made our way to the facility where they cremate large animals.

* * * *

As we neared the cremation facility almost an hour later, we called ahead to confirm the directions. We were told just then that the person who does the cremations was out of town until Monday and that Mahlie would be placed on a tarp in a barn and covered with ice if necessary. My mother panicked. Normally they are put in for cremation the day you arrive. We hated thinking of her lying somewhere strange, alone, for days.

I know. She’s dead. Just a body, not a soul.

We pulled into a parking lot and sat for nearly an hour making frantic phone calls to find a place that could take her now. Or sooner. The most logical — and really the only other — place was an hour way. We were already an hour from my mother’s house. This would be two hours away. They would wait for us, they had a cooler, and would do the cremation in the morning.

We decided to stop at the first place to see how we felt, not looking forward to a long drive so far away. They understood our concern. If only we’d known the man was not available until Monday, we’d have made another plan.

Part of us wanted to leave Mahlie there, where we took Tess and other animals. At least it felt familiar. But then we left for the other place. That was better, we told ourselves as we drove away. We second-guessed ourselves within a few miles and nearly turned back. We just wanted it to be over. We just wanted someone to tell us what to do and that it would be okay. We continued on.

By the time we got to this strange place so far from home, we were too tired to beat ourselves up, once again, over whether we’d made the right decision.

* * * *

Two nice young men were waiting for us in a pleasant office where urns and plaques were on display, mostly for dogs and cats. They had close cropped hair and were neatly dressed in uniforms of navy polo shirts and kaki pants. It was somehow reassuring, that they were professional, that they would take care of her.

You have such fear that they will not do what they say. Will she really be in a cooler? Will she really be cremated in the morning? Will we really have Mahlie’s actual ashes?

One guy asked for the truck keys as my mother wrote the check for a private cremation. I didn't want him to leave us here while he drove off with her. "We're okay, we'll drive her," I said.

We parked outside a metal building just across the road. I don’t know that we enjoy watching this process of loading and unloading, but it is part of the process. And maybe in that way we need to see it. See it through.

It’s hard to say goodbye. To know this is the last “look” you’ll have.

We watched as one of the guys maneuvered a hi-low vehicle after they secured chains to her legs above her hooves. They hoisted her up by a long bar that ran between each of the front and each of the rear hooves. I hated seeing her like this, upside down, head hanging.

We saw enough. We said goodbye. I kept looking from the truck to catch the last possible glimpse of her.

At first you cannot get that last image out of our mind. You fear this is how your will see her in your mind every time you think of her. But those last images do fade and give way to better ones.

* * * *

It’s been two weeks since that day we put her down.

Her ashes now sit in an urn at my mother’s house. Three braids we made out of locks from her mane are in a plastic bag. The vet said many people make jewelry from them.

We still grieve and feel guilt and remorse that we didn’t do more. We don’t know if it would have made a difference. But it might have. We know we can’t do anything about that now.

I also grieve for my mother, for whom I know it’s a harder struggle. After nearly 33 years of tending to Mahlie, and others before that, she tells me she keeps catching herself looking for Mahlie in the pasture out of habit. Or she thinks, “I have to go out to feed now.”

Then she remembers.

The barnyard and pastures, once flush with activity, have grown steadily quieter over the years.

Now they are still.

“I thought she’d go on forever,” my mother said the other day.

I did too.

Sign of the Times?

2009-04-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit behind schedule in posting my next blog — I have my theme, just haven't had the time — so for now, let me share this....

I got a voice message the other day. At first I thought a friend had dialed me by mistake while in mid-conversation with someone else and I (or rather my voice mail) was there to eavesdrop — this has happened to you, right? It's an odd feeling knowing you are listening to someone who doesn't know you are listening, not that you did anything to make the situation happen.

But I digress. It was actually a telemarketer, a young unprofessional sounding woman, who did not realize the phone picked up. Clearly a sign of the times regarding the economy:

"His wife comes and goes, 'No no no, you're not ordering that magazine," she says to her co-worker. Then she sighs. "Boom! He goes, 'Oh no, I guess times are tough we're not ordering it.'" Then she laughs.

In other matters, I spend a lot of time with my dad, who does home hemodialysis. I'm his helper so am usually in the same room with him. When we are not having a conversation, he's listening to the radio or watching cable TV news.

Thank god at those time I'm usually working on my laptop.

I say thank god not because I have a problem with cable news.

I have a problem with the constant stream of Viagra, Cialis or other sexually-oriented drug or lubricant commercials.

Were I focused on the TV with him, how would I possibly react to the umteenth one about getting it on? Jesus, some of these make me blush. I've heard ads for products I didn't even know existed, most recently for women. It's like watching a X-rated soap opera for crying out loud.

I can't imagine what parents of teen children do when these ads come on. To think I used to be embarrassed by tampon commercials!

Bring it on Playtex. I'll take you any day.

The Migraine Club

2009-04-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

I’m not much for joining clubs. I never have been.

There is nothing wrong with clubs. I like them and have been in many: my figure skating club as a youth, a sorority in college, my alumni club now (heck, I’m co-president). I’m even on my University’s alumni association board, which is kind of like a club.

So it’s not like I don’t want to do the work. And I find great value in the social aspect of being in a club. Even if I think they can be exclusionary.

Though I do wish I could be excluded from one club — one I did not choose to join. I call it the Migraine Club.

In the past year or so, I was diagnosed with migraine headaches. As I think back, I’ve had these for some time.

Friends and co-workers now tell me they remember me complaining of headaches. One co-worker several years ago scared me into seeing a doctor after I announced that I’d had a headache for about two weeks. At that time, I was not diagnosed with migraines. That would take a few years.

That I finally was diagnosed makes sense. My sister gets them. My mother says her mother got them. Both of them have had it worse than I. My sister sometimes gets so nauseated she throws up. My grandmother used to have to lie down in a dark, quiet room.

Me? I typically get a burning sensation focused right over my left eye. I liken it to looking at a bright, scorching sun, the way it almost burns a hole in you if you don’t look away. That’s how it feels to me. A semi-dull but focused pain that makes me want to close my eyes and not deal with anything too taxing.

Often it goes down into my upper jaw, above my teeth on the same side of my head. I get stuffy and sometimes sneeze, which made me think for years it was a sinus problem causing the headache. Now, my doctor tells me, the migraine causes the stuffiness.

Sometimes the migraine pain takes a trip around my head. A surprise attack, like a pinch, on the right side, or a dull pressure like a band around the front of my head.

The worst of it — before I was diagnosed — was when it would settle in the back of my neck, below the base of my skull. I didn’t know what was going on, only that I felt as if every disk, tendon and ligament was grinding together like gravel with each move.

It was after chatting with my dental hygienist a year ago about her horrors with migraines (almost unbearable, nothing like my experience thankfully) that I realized we spoke the same language.

“I felt like I had rocks in my neck,” she said. I knew immediately what she was talking about. At least I think. Pain is so hard, if not impossible, to communicate to someone.

Which is why I hoped for a while my pain was not migraine. I’ve heard nothing but horror stories of people incapable of functioning with them. As with my sister and grandmother, they can take you down. Mess with your life. Make you miserable. So far I’ve not had it that bad.

But I accept the diagnosis. The clincher? When my doctor gave me some new migraine drug samples and told me: “If they work, then it’s most likely migraine.”

Boy, do they work. Damn it.

I do not accept membership into this club lightly. I’d be happy to be kicked out. I’d love to turn in my membership card and pay a hefty fee to break the contract. But I think I’m going to have to live with it. At least for now.

And so I’m making the best of it.

And you know the best part? The people. Like any club, the people are what it’s all about. I’ve still got to deal with the migraines, about two a month. But I’ve discovered a support network, however loosely defined and occasional the meetings — via an email, a Facebook comment, a conversation or tip at a party. I discover new members all the time. We help each other. We know each other.

Some of the advice I’ve gotten through my new club: Hydrate! Take extra magnesium. Watch your diet (cheese, chocolate, caffeine, alcohol are all typical triggers). Prepare for them around your monthly cycle.

I’ve discovered the drugs that work best for me: Zomig and Maxalt, even though they make my throat feel scorched and my skin feel sunburned. There is also the fatigue that turns your limbs into lead weights.

But those symptoms are better than dealing with the pain. As anyone in my club will tell you.

It’s an equal opportunity club, too. We come in all shapes and sizes, mostly female but some men, too. You’re lucky if you’re not in it, but I bet you have your own club you never chose to join.

I don’t plan to be president, and I’ll be happy if I can leave, but while I’m in it I’ll happily support my fellow members — and I do — and I know they’ll be there to support me.

What more can you ask of a club you never wanted to join?

Stop Making Sense: Spring Cleaning and Shoulder Pads

2009-03-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

I’m a deadline kind of girl. Give me a deadline and I’ll get it done. Be it taxes, a story or paying bills.

The problem is, spring cleaning doesn’t really have a deadline unless it’s self imposed. I’m usually pretty good at those but there are times when I let things slide. I mean, spring cleaning is a nice idea and all but it doesn’t have to be done.

And really, when I refer to spring cleaning, I’m always pretty much talking about spring purging.

Cleaning is easy when you have an absence of clutter. And me? I tend to hang onto things. Way. Too. Long.

Seriously.

I cannot totally blame this on a lack of discipline. The thing is, I get attached to my stuff. I look at it and have trouble letting go, everything from stuffed animals to books to — the worst of it — clothes.

I mean, I still had my high school graduation dress until a couple years ago. Really.

Part of this is a sense of value. Some of the clothes I’m sorting through look like new. Yes, they may be 10, 15 years old but they look good. And most still fit. How wasteful to toss them out, even to donate. I feel I should have really used up these clothes that I put my hard earned money into.

Another part of this is an emotional attachment. In some way, I feel as if my soul inhabits these things. That to give them away is to let go of a piece of my life. And not have a clue where it went or how it’s being treated.

I know. Crazy.

I’ve even gone through these items over the years and, yes, decided it was not time to let them go, hung them back in a closet I never use or in boxes I rarely touch. Either they still had meaning or — foolishly — I imagined I’d wear them again because they were so fabulous once, of course they will come back in style.

Right.

What I don’t do often enough is actually try these clothes on. I’ve found that to be helpful this year.

It’s also helped that I have a deadline: the National Kidney Foundation was in my area and announced a pick-up of just about anything in decent condition, including household “bric-a-brac,” whatever that is. All I had to do was set it out by the curb.

I’d dug through a bunch of stuff just a few months ago for the 2008 tax donation deduction so had already been kind of on a roll.

So I found myself the last several days unloading the upstairs closet — four sets of hanging clothes, jackets, blouses, shirts — and putting them on. As I removed each item from its hanger, I’d relive the times I wore it as if I was in some movie watching that sappy montage sequence of happier times. Oh the great times I had and how terrific I thought I looked.

But that was then.

Then reality.

Gasp! Did I actually wear this with these huge David-Byrne-Stop-Making-Sense shoulder pads?

Or those silky blouses I wore so often a decade ago but now look shapeless? I can see how I liked them at the time because that was in fashion. But now? Everything is so much more… fitted.

I still had an ensemble, which I finally donated this time — with only a slight amount of donator’s remorse — a fabulous pale yellow linen sundress and jacket which for years I could rely on to look smashing in whatever the event, be it a fashion show or wedding.

In fact, a couple of years ago I had to go to an event and thought it would be perfect. Then I saw myself in the mirror. I couldn’t believe the hemline was as short as it was or the shoulders so wide. I simply could not wear it.

It was clear, no matter how wonderful it was, it was time to part. Don’t ask why I still had it. Either I decided to keep it in the last round of purges, hopeful something would change, or I hung it up and forgot about it.

The thing is, while some of these items are a little out of style, someone who needs clothing will be happy to have them. And how many sweatshirts and T-shirts can I possibly have? I can only wear so many, even though some I wore maybe once.

It’s a good lesson: Think twice next time before I buy. Ask: Do I need it? Will I wear it? Don’t I have enough?

There is also the lesson to share the usefulness. They are useless in my closet or in boxes.

I actually began to feel motivated knowing these nice pieces will look just fine on someone else. Maybe they won’t even care how they look. Maybe they just need something. Period.

Meanwhile, that upstairs closet space can be put to better use than warehousing memories.

Although I must confess. As I filled the garbage bags the other night to set out by the curb, I was stung with occasional feelings of remorse — that T-shirt from Bermuda, the sweatshirt from Australia, that oh-so-perfect-shade-of-pink silky blouse that still looks like new — and put them in another bag. By the end of the night, it was a whole damn bag.

I told myself, I can still give it away later. I even thought if the truck didn’t come first thing in the morning, I’d sneak more items out. Alas, the guy came by too early.

Now I have a giant bag of stuff I never wear. Sitting there.

That’s okay. I can still give it away. I’ll decide later.

I just hope it’s not in 10 years.

Elephant in a Tsunami

2009-03-12T15:32:00.000-07:00

"There but for the grace of god go I."

I met an old friend for lunch last week. In the back of my mind this phrase surfaced. She is in a battle with breast cancer. For the third time.

I cannot say I’m overwhelmed with pity for her — partly because we’ve not been in each other’s lives very much over the years. So there is some distance. But she also looks good and has a positive attitude. For what it’s worth, I’m optimistic for her.

Still, I would not want to be in her shoes.

And there but for the grace of god go I, I hear myself say.

The funny thing is, in recent years, I’ve realized people may be saying that about me, or more aptly, my family.

How strange that has been to recognize.

Before that, life seemed pretty charmed. About as charmed as any life can seem from the outside. We all know nobody’s life is perfect. But things were good.

Then in 2001, a convolution of events occurred, a kind of tsunami of health issues, mostly engulfing my mother, but others, too. Suddenly my family was overwhelmed with one thing or another…. It was really rather ridiculous.

I named this blog Only the Half of It for two reasons.

First I wanted a sense of fun. To say: Hey, sometimes things happen that are so ridiculous, you wouldn’t believe half of it.

The second reason for the name was to reflect the madness I felt I — or we as a family — have had to deal with. That it’s been bad, but even worse than you knew and I just didn’t feel like telling it all because I didn’t want to see jaws drop or looks of pity reflected back at me.

Perhaps I wanted to deny a little bit, just enough to keep my spirits up. And that’s not a bad thing.

I read after 9/11 that psychologists discovered something that ran contrary to the popular belief that you have to talk about and purge the horrors you keep deep down inside lest they fester like a cancer and ruin your life. They found that some victims of 9/11 were in fact better off, maybe healthier and better able to cope and get on with their lives, by not talking about what they’d been through. That some denial was healthy.

I thought this myself some months before 9/11. I remember looking in child-like horror into a sterile hospital room as my mother was being dialyzed for the first time, just days after she was diagnosed with sudden, unexpected kidney failure.

She looked like a mummy swathed in layers of thin white hospital blankets, her eyes tightly shut as if she was in pain. Maybe she was, and maybe she was also trying to escape the reality.

And that was this: Her kidneys had shut down. She would die without dialysis. That entailed getting a central line, something more akin to surgical tubing than an IV line, stuck into her chest so they could pump her blood out and back in as the dialysis machine did its job of cleaning her blood. This would happen three times a week, three to four hours each time. For as long as she lived. Unless her kidneys recovered or she got a transplant.

As my mother lay there, eyes tightly shutting it all out, that’s when my mother’s new doctor-by-default, a kidney specialist who did not know her at all personally, told my father and I quite bluntly and with an air of criticism: “She’s in denial.” As if she needs to not deny what is happening to her.

The doctor’s words made me angry. Later I told my dad: “Of course she’s in denial. I don’t blame her.”

I’ve spent so much time in hospitals and dealing with one health issue or another affecting my family that I’ve come up with my own ideas of how to cope because I’ve had to.

It helps to remember things could be worse. It doesn’t always help to look to someone less fortunate, but I do try to remind myself, and my mother, of the bright side. I thought that with my girlfriend over lunch, that thankfully that wasn’t me. So many people deal with so many bad things you can’t even imagine it. And so in some ways we are lucky. Very lucky.

For instance, my parents are reasonably active. My mother has a transplanted kidney (mine), and despite some rejection discovered last year, she is doing okay. We are managing her other health issues. My father, on dialysis himself now, also does well. Better than my mom did. There is more but I won’t go into it. (You wouldn’t believe me anyway, as I like to say.)

So I give thanks. And I mean it.

I also believe a healthy dose of denial comes in handy. Maybe focusing on the positive is a way to deny the negative or, at the very least, get away from it so you can cope. Try not to drown in it. Even try to outrun it. This is where the elephant comes in.

I’d like to be like an elephant in a tsunami.

If you recall, when the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in 2004, elephants in Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Thailand moved to high ground before the storm struck the shores. They knew something was coming and saved themselves. The cool thing, too, is they trumpeted loudly to bring their kin, to keep them from what would have been certain death.

Call it a sixth sense. Call it a heightened awareness. Call it hypervigilance. I call it prevention.

I do not have a sixth sense. But in times of tension and terror, I want to be present. For me that means don’t assume the doctor or someone else has every answer. I’ve learned this firsthand too many times. My friend, with whom I began this story, discovered her cancer herself this third time around — not the doctor.

That’s what I want. To stay ahead of the tsunami. And trumpet as loud as I can.

NOTE: The amazing image above is from a show titled "Ashes and Snow." I saw it in NYC in 2005 before it traveled the world. See it if you ever get the chance.

My Facebook (So-Called) Friends

2009-02-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

I have been on FB since before it exploded among “regular” people. And I must say it’s interesting to see its evolution.

I first registered on the site I when one of my editors realized we needed to reach some students for a story we were working on. For those on FB, you could only contact them through FB if you were a member. Problem was, I was not a student. I had to contact my alumni office for a valid school email address.

I didn’t spend a lot of time stalking students for quotes. But I had a space. I was sort of parked there.

Soon, I was friended by someone I used to work with. They hardly needed an introduction. This person is a friend. One I know well. Then there was another and another and another. The friend requests came like a barrage and I began friending people like mad myself.

Most of my early FB friends were people I used to work with, all highly adept at digital technology and, hence, early adopters of the online social network. And for a good year or so most of my friends were in the digital business, people who are online a lot, use the internet for work or are just young.

I’ve even friended some people I have never met but had a connection with, either through mutual friends or business.

I will say that for every one of those people — those I’ve never met or who do not know me — I have always — repeat, always — sent them a message of introduction or explanation of why I was friending them. That just makes sense to me.

So what I find odd — and I’ll admit, a little annoying — is that I’ve been getting friend requests from more and more people I sort of know, or used to know, or met once, or knew in grade school or college and never ever speak to or have not spoken to for years and barely recognize their name.

And they put no note. Nothing. Not even a: “Hi, did used to go to XYZ school? I recognized your name…” or “Hi, I found you on FB and would love to keep in touch – my name is now XYZ but you remember me as ABC. How are you???”

Nothing.

I find this odd. It annoys me, as I already said. I mean, one childhood friend added me recently, which I guess was her way of saying “Hello.” Maybe I need to just lighten up here but she didn’t put so much as a, “Hi, what are you doing and where do you live?” even after I accepted her friend request and wrote a quick hello on her Wall saying she needs to fill me in on her life. I’ve still never heard from her. That must have been two or three weeks ago.

Odd.

So what do I do with these people? I am not sure I really even care to have them back in my life. I’ve done just fine without them. Not that there is anything wrong with them. Maybe I’m just in a different place.

Maybe I need a reason to re-connect. Maybe we need a kind of FB date. A little back and forth to stimulate my interest beyond the kind of connection you make at a school reunion. When you are happy to see the person, get caught up and then go on about your life and do not see them again until the next reunion. Or ever.

I guess I have only so much energy for my friends, FB included.

I certainly have no time for someone who doesn’t even make a tiny effort to communicate once we are “friends.” Again, I'm referring to people I barely know now. And have no professional connection with. They are simply someone from my past. I expect a little something from someone I once knew relatively well.

I’m not planning to delete these people but I do feel slightly exposed. So what I do is engage my privacy preferences. At least until they show me a little of themselves. I mean, so what if we hung out in grade school. I really have no idea who you are today. You know?

So my attitude is this: If you want to eavesdrop on my life, please, just drop me a line.

Some have. I do not need to talk to them all the time. For them I say: Feel free to hang out. Say or post something interesting, I might pipe in. I appreciate being in on the conversation.

That’s what is nice about FB. Connecting.

Why don’t some people get that?

Duck Duck

2009-02-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

I seem to write a lot about animals. I guess when you have a lot of them in your life, you have a lot of stories.

One story ended yesterday.

My mother was choking back tears when she called to tell my dad and me that the duck was dying. She was home with him all afternoon, cradling him in her lap. I think she just wanted to tell us. To reach out a little.

The duck, who we always called Ducky or Duck Duck, came into my mother’s home about 10 years ago when no one wanted him. Certainly not the woman who handed him over to her one day when my mother was doing surveys for the Department of Agriculture. This woman had gotten some baby ducks for her children and as they grew, it was soon apparent this white duck, with pigeon-toed feet that kept stepping over each other when he tried to walk, was just not fitting in.

“You want him? He’s yours,” she told my mother.

My mother, who's done wildlife rehab over the years, has a kind of open-door policy when it comes to unwanted animals. She didn't hesitate to take him home with her.

He was really quite beautiful. Just handicapped. His home was a large wire cage in a heated breezeway. It was lined it with newspaper and shredded paper. He always had water and duck food from the local pet store.

In the warmer months, we’d fill a tub with water from the hose and he’d swim around like the most normal looking duck you’d ever seen, quacking and paddling away.

Then we’d take him out and set him on a grassy area under a tree where he was within view from a kitchen window. He’d groom himself as he bathed in the sun and when he got hot, he’d waddle as best he could to the shade. He could get around but not well. It was hardly a normal life for a duck. But my mother gave him life anyway.

In the colder months, she’d bring him inside the house and place him in the laundry room tub, which she'd fill with warm water. It was a funny sight to peek into the laundry room, past the washer and dryer, to see this white duck’s head sticking up and paddling around as he quacked.

Often at night, my mother brought him inside to just hang out. She’d cover a few feet square with newspapers and set him down in the expansive kitchen area next to a sofa where she likes to sit. We didn’t pay too much attention to him, we just let him be. I suppose he enjoyed being inside. Life must have been pretty boring for him stuck in a cage and not able to wander around all day.

For that reason, my mother often wondered if she should have found him a home with other ducks. But who knows? Other ducks might have attacked him or simply rejected him, as animals sometimes do to the weak among them.

No, I think he had a pretty good life.

Last night my mother, who always feels guilty when an animal of hers dies, wondered again if she did the right thing, this time about not getting him to vet to be euthanized. She told me she'd been thinking of taking him there after realizing how bad he was — that he’d been acting funny for a day or so but it was clear something was very wrong yesterday. And then he died. He was in her arms.

I told her maybe it was for the best that way. That a trip to the vet might have been even more stressful, even traumatizing.

"It never gets easier,” she said. Her face filled with pain and she looked like she wanted to cry again. “People like me shouldn’t have animals. It’s too hard.”

“No mom,” I said, “For the animals’ sake, people like you should have pets."

I don’t know that Ducky had the best life. But I know he had a good life. And he was loved.

My Mom: The Neo-Luddite

2009-02-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

My mother is a Luddite. A neo-Luddite to be exact.

If they had a club, she’d be a proud card carrying member.

For those unfamiliar with the term, Luddites were a group who opposed technological and scientific innovations during the Industrial Revolution. These early 19th century English workmen went so far as to destroy laborsaving machinery as a protest.

Now it’s not that my mother is really opposed to progress. She’s not. She likes her electric garage door opener and knows how to set the home security system. And while her car has no CD player or cruise control or electric seats, that's more because she’s frugal. She enjoys things like cable channels and even owns a cell phone and uses the microwave oven.

No, I think my mom’s real issue is fear of technology, which translates into her being rather angry about technology.

After all, she is a bright woman — one who holds a master's degree in social work and nearly finished a second master's degree in fine art. She's just not tech smart.

Let me share some examples:

She has learned to use the universal remote on the TV, which is kind of unbelievable as sometimes I can’t even figure it out. But she’s really just learned the process of “always push this then that” without understanding what she’s doing. Hence, if something is awry, she’s clueless. That’s when she calls to my dad:

“I’m just pushing buttons. Just pushing buttons,” she’ll say loudly, the remote in her one hand as the other dramatically taps away at one button after the other until my father comes running in, aghast and frustrated: “What are you doing? Give me that.”

Of course, she’s a smart woman. He does it for her, which is what she wanted in the first place.

But then begins the explanation of the remote. It’s an act of futility. I can literally see her eyes glazing over as my father or I try to get her to understand the way it works.

“See, you have to turn the cable on first. You hit the cable button, then power, then you hit the TV then power, then go back to cable to be in that mode…”

“But I don’t want to watch cable,” she’ll say. In a twisted way, she makes sense. She wants to watch the network news.

“But mom, it’s all cable, the networks come through the cable.”

I can totally tell she’s not getting it. She doesn’t care. She just wants to watch the damn news. Sometimes it’s just easier for us to do it for her.

Oh, there are many examples like this. She pretty much treats the microwave the same way, pushing buttons, rather clueless to how it works but somehow getting things heated. It drives my dad crazy.

Then there is the issue of the computer and email. She gives people my dad’s email address so they can contact her. She has no idea of how to work the computer or access email. So he has to set it up for her and tell her to sit down, showing her each time how to go from one email to another.

And then of course, rather than compose a Letter to the Editor or other correspondence on the computer, she writes things up long hand. I’ll usually end up retyping it for her.

Then there is the mystery of digital photography, which she cannot seem to grasp. She is an artist accustomed to submitting her work for juried exhibitions on slides. Now that more and more shows are requesting CDs with jpeg files, she’s practically considering giving up showing.

“Can you make a jpeg?” she’ll ask me.

“Yes, I have a digital camera. I can take them and send them via email or put them on a disc.”

“Okay, let me know and I’ll pay for the film,” she says. I don’t even know how to begin the explanation that there is no film, but I tell her that anyway.

Now most of the time these instances are not a terrible problem — just sometimes a little frustrating.

But it can be problematic. I mean, I’d laugh if the ramifications were not so serious sometimes. For instance, she was put on a drug called Coumadin, a blood thinner. It can be a dangerous drug. People take it to avoid forming life-threatening clots. If you take too much, you could bleed to death from a fall or have numerous complications from internal bleeding.

Basically, people get a loading dose followed by a smaller daily dose that gets altered weekly depending on how much of the drug is in your system, which is monitored via weekly blood draws. You need to be in a therapeutic range. Not too high, not too low. Too low means you are not protected and there is no sense even being on the drug.

When my mom's cardiologist suggested she go on this drug recently, my dad decided against it, agreeing with a couple of her other doctors that it was not worth the risk. But my mother got concerned and decided to go ahead and get the prescription and take it.

So I asked her the other night: “How much did you take today?”

“I took half a pill. Dad didn’t want me on it so I thought I’d just take half.”

“Mom, what is your prescription? What does the bottle say?”

“One pill a day.”

“Mom, you have to follow the prescription. It doesn’t work like that….”

I tried to explain how it works. I could see her eyes glazing over soon into the explanation. I chose to see it as a challenge and continued a good five to ten minutes, using analogies and making hand gestures to portray a range as if on a chart, thinking: “I can win her over, I just know it.”

A few days later she informed she’d taken half a pill “because dad doesn’t want me on it.”

I guess it’s better than her taking too much. And she’s too smart to do that.

The other big problem is her cell phone. Oh, this makes my father and I crazy. Insane.

She has no idea how to access her voice mail, use her address book, change her ring style or adjust the volume. None of that. It’s all too complicated.

In her defense, there is way more stuff on these phones than most of us need or even use. Even I have to read the book sometimes. But as a regular technology user, I have a basic understanding she doesn’t possess.

So I’ll call her and she’ll pick up, then immediately hang up. This happens so often I’ve asked what she is doing.

“There’s something wrong with this phone,” she insists.

“Mom, nothing is wrong with the phone. You’re doing something.”

“No, there’s something wrong with this phone,” she insists again. "This phone is crazy."

I think I figured it out once in the car with her when she got a call. That she has it set to answer on open, and hang up on close, and when she’s driving and fumbles the phone she hangs up inadvertently. Or something like that.

More maddening, she somehow manages to turn her phone onto silent without realizing it and, thus, has no clue you are trying to reach her. This is a real problem if we don’t know where she is and are worried, or need to reach her for something important.

Other times the volume mysteriously goes down. If I call, she will yell:

"What? I can't hear you."

Then I scream into the phone: "Turn the volume up."

"What?" she'll yell back, even though I can hear her fine.

"Your volume. Turn it up."

Then, just as I feel thankful that I got her to answer her phone, she'll say, "I'm in traffic. I can't hear you. I'll call you back."

Click.

So far, thankfully, nothing horrible has happened through all this. And while I do think my mother would be happy if she easily grasped all of these gadgets and technology, it never was her way of thinking anyway.

And deep down — and this is why I call her a Luddite — I think she likes it this way.

I mean, I feel enslaved by technology sometimes. It would be nice to opt out now and then. Not have to read a manual for everything. Turn off the email and cell phone. Just have a few TV channels. Life might be simpler.

But, mom. Pick up the phone now and then, would you?

Not Quite the End

2009-02-05T09:19:00.000-08:00

It was New Year’s Eve when I realized it might finally be over. You let me down. I burned with pain. But I endured the night with a smile. I wouldn’t let anyone know that I couldn’t take it any more.

I didn’t want it to end. But I needed a break.

For so many years you lifted me up. Literally. You made me feel tall, beautiful, confident. So grown up. So fabulous.

You in all your incarnations through every season, always there to raise me up when I needed it.

But the punishment took its toll.

I spent too many years ignoring this hurt and that. Not wanting to give you up. Not wanting to admit that you were simply not good for me.

I’d see all those other women, so happy. If they could have that, why not me?

So I didn’t want to admit it just might not be working out. I still don’t want to admit it. I don’t want it to be over. I would do anything to keep you in my life.

I remember being too young for you, dreaming of the day I could finally have you. We’ve had many blissful years since. Sure, I've felt pain now and then. But the pain never lasted too long. I always got through it.

Now, though, it’s gotten to be too much. Dare I say — and I don’t want to say it — you scare me. I’m a little afraid of you. And that’s the hardest thing of all to admit.

I just knew if didn’t make a break, something terrible and irreversible might happen.

So there we are. I miss you, terribly. So many reminders of you everywhere only makes it harder.

Quite simply, I can't imagine life without you. I don't think I could take that. I refuse to accept it.

But the break has been good. I'm taking care of myself and the pain has subsided.

I now feel ready to try again, just baby steps, to see if we can make another go of it.

Last night was wonderful. If only for a few hours. Oh I felt a little sting now and then but you were pretty good to me.

I will see you again. I just know it.

Because I cannot imagine life without you.

(Well, maybe I could live without you four-inch heels.)

(By the way: That gorgeous illustration above is available here: https://www.allposters.com/-sp/Highheels-Obsession-Posters_i1665533_.htm)

A Super Bowl Tale

2009-01-29T11:53:00.001-08:00

My mother was in the hospital last week. Now that she is home, I feel better. Not only because she’s out of the hospital but because it occurred to me that exactly a year ago today she was in that same hospital and I didn’t want a repeat of last year.

I remember the day because it was Super Bowl Sunday when our thirty-year-old horse Mahlie escaped from my parents’ property the night before.

Mahlie was not prone to running away but I suspect she felt out of sorts by the change in her feed time or maybe it was the strange voices calling to her. In any case, that Saturday night when my father called to her, she never came. Sure enough he found a broken fence leading from the back pasture to the backyard, and hoof prints heading down the driveway.

I learned of all this when I called to check in around 11 p.m. “Molly’s gone,” is all my father said. I could hear his exhaustion from worrying about my mother. My sister, who was in town and staying there, had gone out to look for her.

Sitting in bed in my pajamas in my own house about 12 miles away, I immediately called the police thinking, naively, they’d offer to help search the area for our geriatric horse (technically half pony). I imagined them arriving with these high intensity flashlights so we could scan the wooded areas around my parents’ property together. The officer must have thought I was nuts.

“We can’t do that. But if we see her or someone calls us, we’ll let you know.”

I couldn’t believe it. No help. We were on our own. And even if someone did see her, I realized she might not come to us. When animals get out, they can get wild.

I was left with this: She was somewhere; she could be anywhere. Where? In a field behind some subdivision. Walking along a two-lane highway In someone’s backyard. Around the corner. Miles away.

I dressed and drove up in the dark cold to help look for her. My sister thought she’d deciphered some hoof marks in the deep snow around the neighbors’ property and along the dirt road. We called to her in the vacant night. My father did get a call from the police. A neighbor wanted to know why someone was prowling around in their backyard after midnight.

We gave up around 1 a.m. and decided to look in the morning. It seemed wrong. How could I sleep? How much longer should we have looked in that thick black silent night? Maybe she was dead. But we weren’t getting anywhere. It seemed all we could do was wait for someone to see her and call the police.

My father called me in the morning.

“Gordy called,” he said. “He said: ‘Your horse is lying on the pond just south of your property.’”

I found it odd that this neighbor, who saw Mahlie on his morning walk, didn’t stop at our house to tell my dad immediately, and instead waited until he got home a tenth of a mile or two away before calling.

And then Gordy offered only this to my dad: “Good luck.”

Good luck? That’s all?

“Is she alive?” I asked my dad.

“I don’t know.”

A self-hate took over me. We’d given up our search when she was virtually visible from the driveway had we looked a little longer, a little harder. I’d assumed she was there all night.

My sister ran out to find she was indeed alive and I raced up to meet them.

As I neared the house, I saw a police car parked. Help! I thought. The cop is going to help and get his buddies to come, too!

I'm sure my face was filled with hope as I saw this cop walking toward his car while my father and sister stood near Mahlie. Then he informed me that he’d merely stopped to see what was going on. “I can’t hang around,” he said, then left. I think he said, “Good luck.”

I felt like crying looking at Mahlie, lying on her side on the shallow frozen pond, more of a swamp with lots of shoots sprouting through the snow-covered surface. The ice around her body had turned into a brownish pool from what must have been frantic attempts to stand up in the time before we found her. She wasn’t moving much now.

I’d called the vet. As we waited for his assistant, I’d asked what we could do. “Keep her warm with blankets,” he said. “But if her body temperature is too low, there’s not much you can do.”

What he meant was this: If she was hypothermic, she was going to die no matter what we did.

We had no way of checking her body temperature so I grabbed lead ropes, blankets, a tarp, anything from the garage and returned to see Mahlie, the only surviving animal in the barn yard after years of company of other horses and llamas, looking helpless. An invalid. I cradled her wet head in my lap to get it off the ice.

First we tried to pull her off the ice with lead straps wrapped around her feet with the aid of runner who offered to help. My father, watching, said under his breath that he didn’t think she’d make it. I began to believe him. But, I told myself, this can’t happen when my mother is in the hospital.

A couple of times we successfully cajoled her, shaking a can of feed and yelling “Get up!” Mahlie would raise her head, grunt and kick her legs out as she struggled to rise. Each time her legs collapsed beneath her.

I wondered how many times she did this when we were sleeping.

Then we stopped a tow truck driver, who happened to be passing by, to see if he could help. This big strapping man with gray hair and a mustache, who owned the towing company, called his best friend, a trim athletic looking off-duty fireman, who brought another off-duty fireman. These three guys, who would probably rather be watching pre-Super Bowl festivities, were now as intent as we were on getting a tarp under Mahlie to pull her off the ice onto a snowy area so she could at least have traction to stand, if she still had the strength.

We pulled her off the ice before the vet arrived. But she still couldn’t stand because her hooves were against a tree, keeping her from getting up even if she wanted to. The men wanted to flip her over from one side to the other over her back but I asked them to wait for the vet. I knew flipping over her that way could twist her gut, practically ensuring she wouldn’t survive.

I wondered if she would survive anyway and wished I could just physically pick her up. It seemed so stupid that her sheer size could be her downfall. She looked tired, exhausted. I didn’t think she had the will. And if she couldn’t stand, there wasn’t much we could do. And again, I thought: Please not while my mother is in the hospital.

The vet arrived, parking her truck on the road and rushing over with supplies. When she checked Mahlie’s vital signs, she was almost stunned to find her temperature was not far from normal. “She couldn’t have been here all night,” she said, at the same time determining that she didn’t seem to have any broken bones. “Maybe she fell this morning trying to get back home.”

I felt an enormous relief, not just that she could very well survive if she got up, but that we didn’t overlook her the night before.

We were also lucky that the weather was not too cold or too warm. If it was warmer, she and we might have broken through the ice. If it was much colder, she might be in worse shape.

The vet had us flip this half-ton horse over her belly and legs, which we’d tucked under her, putting her legs in a space where she could stand up. It worked, but we still had what seemed an endless task of clearing stubborn spouts, logs and tiny trees that were in the way. We pulled, we chopped. We tried getting her up again.

For the first time, real hope filled the snowy thicketed space we’d inhabited the past several hours, a span of time that seemed a quarter of that. And by now these men were determined. If Mahlie didn’t stand up, they talked about hauling her body onto a large truck and warming her frozen limbs in the firehouse. I couldn’t believe it.

We struggled with her to get her to stand. And watched her collapse back down. We let her catch her strength, kept covering her with dry blankets and rubbing her frozen legs to help her circulation. If anyone felt like giving up, no one said so.

We weren’t prepared when this little horse finally stood, uneasy, steam rising from her matted hair, her legs shaking, weak, ready to go back down. We all sort of stood back in awe.

Just then the vet yelled: “Support her! You have to support her!” The men scrambled beside her, two on each side, buttressing her as the vet took the lead strap and slowly walked her to the dirt road and toward the driveway.

I had taken off to the barn, my heart pounding, to make sure the way was clear and her stall was filled with fresh sawdust. Amazingly, she made it.

And you know what? That little horse, who must have been exhausted, didn’t lay down the rest of the day. Best of all, by the time my mother heard the story it had a happy ending.

And those three guys, whom I forced a hug and few choked up thank yous on before they left, I bet they had one of the best Super Bowl Sundays ever.

Head Nurse Head Case

2009-01-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

My mom is in the hospital. She went in five days ago, on Saturday, with symptoms of pneumonia. It’s not been a stay without worries of complications. She’s uncomfortable, stressed out. She wants to go home.

So it came as a little bit of a shock to me when my mother told me what happened late the other night.

My mother, a sweet woman, who isn’t prone to chattering on about other people, got a visit by the head nurse, a tallish blond woman who clearly had an attitude.

“You must have respect for your fellow patients,” she admonished my mother, who was dumbstruck sitting in the bed against he window.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” my mother said.

“Your roommate said you were talking about her and her grandchildren,” said the head nurse, who clearly assumed my mother was in the wrong.

“I didn’t say anything about her or her grandchildren. I don’t know anything about this,” my mother replied.

As my mother told me this two days ago during our stroll through the halls with her IV pole, I was too shocked and even humored by the whole thing to be angry. I mean, what the hell?

“Was the woman in the room when the head nurse came in?” I asked.

“Yes,” my mom said. “But she’s gone now, they moved her in the middle of the night.”

I was dying to get to the bottom of this and kept my eye out for the head nurse as we made another swing past the nursing station.

“She didn’t believe me,” my mom said. “She was rather rude.”

My mother didn’t seem overly upset by this whole thing. Just somewhat stunned.

I figured one of three things.

The patient was paranoid.

The head nurse was delusional.

My mother had a hallucination.

Since I’m quite sure my mother did not hallucinate, and the head nurse is unlikely to be delusional, I put the blame on the patient.

What gets me is why the head nurse would automatically assume my mother was in the wrong and would chastise her like a unruly child.

As if it's not bad enough she’s been in the hospital for almost a week.

It's a good thing we have a sense of humor.

The Kittens are Growing Up

2009-01-12T12:46:00.000-08:00

People keep asking me about “the kittens.”

I’m trying not to write too regularly about “the kittens” because, as I wrote the first time, I do not want to be seen as a crazy cat person.

But since people ask….

The kittens — Cleo and Leo — are getting bigger. And with that, less cute and adorable.

*yawns*

Okay I’m kidding. Sort of.

I should explain: My mother has the kittens at my parents' house. My father, who does dialysis at a condo a couple miles from their home, is where I get to see them because I help my father out three to four days a week.

This is much to my father’s chagrin but he allows it. Although Cleo and Leo will probably never hear their names from my father’s lips. He usually refers to them as “those goddamn cats” and once, famously, “those f---ing things.”

It’s understandable, as they sometimes charge into the one room that they should stay out of, the room where he does dialysis. We don’t wear surgical masks but for the most part you follow antiseptic protocol. Hence, I try to dissuade the kittens from barging in and yet, of course, they love to go where they should not, under the table next to my dad or under his chair.

Mostly, I try to play with them in the living room or encourage them to sleep by me while I work. But what I’m finding is that as they get older they have more energy and are less interested in passing out adorably and, I might add, adoringly, on my lap.

I’m trying not to feel rejected.

They do like to play with the-most-awesome-toy-ever, The String, which is nothing more than a former shoelace. Best part: They need me. I dangle it in front of them or pull it along the carpet and watch them crouch low on their forelegs as they raise and wiggle their backside in preparation to pounce.

I’m fast so I can usually pull The String away before they can grab it.

It’s really quite exciting. Especially when Cleo, the smaller female, goes after The String as I dangle it near the top of a carpet-covered scratching post. The best part is that she does not just lunge up to it. She actually takes a sort of flying leap putting her body mid-air momentarily. This provides me with much amusement.

The problem is, I think I adore them more than they adore me. They seem to want to play with each other more than with me. And I’m feeling left out. I’ll find them sitting together on a kitchen chair when they could be curled on my lap or at me feet.

What’s with that?

Little shits. Okay, not really.

But I will say the honeymoon period is fading. The novelty has passed. And that’s a good thing. I take fewer pictures of them with my cell phone. I am less distracted by them when we are together. They still snuggle with me when they sleep, they just don't sleep as often. Best of all, they are settling in as fixtures of the family which means the angst of finding them a permanent home is over.

Now as members of the family they are as taken for granted as everyone else.

In a good way, of course.

Some Conversations I Hope Not to Repeat in 2009

2009-01-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

Yes, these are excerpts from real conversations I've had. I have a sense of humor about them so don't feel too sorry for me. But still...!

HE: You going to put your face on for the party?
ME: My face is on.

SHE: You have very fine hair, don't you?
ME: Why yes, what makes you say that?

SHE: You know, they make these really nice padded bras. You should try one.
ME: I'm wearing one.

ME: I like your jeans, with the back pocket flaps.
SHE: They're from The Gap. They're good because I have a flat butt...... like you.
ME: *momentary stunned silence because no one has ever said this to me before*
That's funny because sometimes I feel like I almost have a Jo-Lo butt, like in my yoga pants.
SHE: Jo-Lo!? *laughs*

ME (at store): Where are your Curvy jeans?
SHE (looking me up and down): Are you sure? You look pretty straight to me.

ME (same store, different woman, different day): *trying on pants*
SHE: You're small but you have hips.

SHE: I love your blog! I loved the one about that cats. Oh and the one about [something I did not write].
ME: *looks confused* I never wrote about [that].
*discovers that SHE, while reading my blog, mistakenly stumbled upon a post by another blogger thinking it was me.*

HE: Your thigh looks really big from here.
ME: It must be the way I'm sitting.

Cleo and Leo

2008-12-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

So it seems people were quite taken with my recent story of the two kittens, two of many that have invaded my mother’s barn.

What has or will become of them? One friend practically begged to adopt them. She even promised I could visit them whenever I wanted.

E-hem.

I guess I did not make myself clear. Those babies are mine. I’m smitten. I don’t think I could part with them. I get like this. This is why I’m afraid to foster any animal.

That said, I have in the meantime been discussing possible names with my mother. I even got some input from friends…cat people all of them. Here are some ideas we came up with, some mine, some from others:

Cumulous and Nimbus or Stratus
Flora and Fauna
Antony and Cleopatra
Maximus and Persephone
Halle and Barry

My mother and I liked Halle for the tiny female but Barry just didn’t sit right for the male. And a name has to sit right or I’ll never us it.

Actually, I almost never use the name I pick anyway so you could ask, What’s the diff?

You see, my favorite cat (yes, I know you should not say that but it’s true), was originally named Muffin. I rarely called him that. I call him The Doots, a giant-pawed Maine Coon rescued a dozen years ago from a frigidly cold parking lot near a freeway on-ramp. Muffin was an attempt at a “normal” name, which sounded better than Ragamuffin, which is what he looked like at first. But that just seemed wrong, as it conjured images of a dirty little street cat urchin.

But Muffin was just too, too cute. And too common. One day I decided to call him Doots because it reflected the sounds he made when he “talked.” I learned that Maine Coons, which he surely is, like to talk. These are not long mmmeeeeoooooowwwwwwww’s. They are more like purr-meows that are short, staccato repetitive utterances, almost like cat barks. Often he’d do it just walking around as a person might be heard whistling strolling down a street: Doot doot-doot doot-doot doot!

I could have called it a “toot” but I heard it as “doot.” So I dubbed him “The Doots.” It took many years to officially change his name at the vet’s office for the record. They did not laugh. I’m sure they have heard stranger names. But The Doots is another story, one I’ll tell eventually.

Another cat, Mr. Kitty Man (genius, I know), is really “The Bird” or some derivation thereof (Derd, Nerd, Werd, Birdy) because as a youngster he sat looking out the window imitating the birds, practically chirping with them in unison.

But this is not unique. Most animal lovers know how personal a name is. It’s partly about reflecting how you feel about your pet, as well as how you feel saying the name.

While I loved the idea of the clouds (cumulous, nimbus) for the kittens, because they are varying shades of gray, those names weren’t rolling off the tongue so easily.

Then, just as I thought I could live with Cleo (which I first thought of as short for Cleopatra but didn’t like Antony or Cesar) and Leo (which could conjure up Leo the Lion, a big feline), my mother suddenly informed me that the bigger kitten, which she originally thought was a girl, and later decided was a boy, which is how I finally adjusted to thinking of him, was back again to being a girl.

This really upset my sense of him/her and of course the whole name thing. But within a day or so, she was back deciding he was a boy. So we are back to Leo.

Cleo and Leo just seem to fit. The names are short, kind of cute, and while it doesn’t feel natural just yet, that’ll come. Besides, it’s better than “kitty” and “kitty” as they have been known, and together as “The Kitties.”

Meanwhile, Cleo and Leo are growing nicely, sneezing less and getting stronger. Cleo, who is somewhat placid, as if she’s putting up with me when I hold and cuddle her, shows more enthusiasm leaping to the top of this scratching post as I tease her with a string — “The String” being the most excellent toy ever and at a cost of nothing. They also like to run and dive bomb each other. Leo, who is more of a love and cries as he seeks me out to sleep on my lap, has a stronger personality, more facial expressions. I swear.

So Cleo and Leo it is.

I think.

At least for the record.

NOTE: To clarify, Cleo and Leo are living at my mom's house, in a warm breezeway and get run-of-the-house time every evening. I see them several times a week. For now.

Remembering John

2008-12-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

I was about nine. Maybe younger, maybe older. I can’t quite remember. But let’s say I was old enough to know better and young enough to be excused.

His name was John. John loved to skate at the rink where I was training as a competitive figure skater. It was a private club. Some thought it was a little snooty. I didn’t know about that. I did know something was wrong with John.

Wrong. Maybe that’s not a fair word. He was different.

John showed up regularly for the general skate sessions. I skated on those as well as the free skate sessions, which were exclusive to competitors. General skate was for a mish mash, skaters like me along with men and women my parents’ age. And there was John.

He seemed more like a child than the adult he was. He was awkward, off balance both physically and mentally. He was not bad looking but his hair was always greasy and his large glasses always slipping perilously low on his nose. He smelled like chicken soup every time he swooped past. He'd swing one leg back to do a spiral, not quite straight enough, not quite high enough, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Why did it bother us?

We all knew something was not right. Was he developmentally disabled? Was he in an accident? I don’t think I ever knew. But he was always friendly. He’d smile and sometimes try to talk to you.

I didn’t want to be mean but I kept my distance and averted his gaze. Like we all did. Maybe what he had would rub off. Maybe he’d say something we wouldn’t know how to respond to. Maybe we’d be trapped if we spoke back. The truth is, he scared us.

As I said, I was old enough to know he was different but young enough to be excused for being uncomfortable. I think back now and hope I was never mean to him, never ran away or laughed at him in front of his face.

Years later in college one of my girlfriends actually gasped in horror when a guy said something to her at a party. He’d been in an accident. His body and facial expressions were twisted like a surreal painting. His utterances were grunts.

I was taken aback, too, but mostly hated my friend in that moment for her selfish reaction. You see, the guy may have looked as if his brain was as warped as his body but it wasn’t. He saw the world — and her response — just as we did. Full on clarity. I’ve always been haunted by that. How would I feel to see someone look at me in horror?

Over the years, I have met and known many more people with disabilities — mental, emotional and physical. Yes, they can scare us. Usually, I think, we fear being like them more than being near them. What is it? Is it just a lack of understanding and education? We seem to have surmounted that hurtle when it comes to people with Down syndrome. Why can’t it be that way for everyone?

I was reminded of this again by a TV movie the other night about a man who had Tourette syndrome, which causes uncontrollable movements like ticks or sounds like grunts and even swearing. I’ve made jokes about this. But it’s wrong. Sure, sometimes it's okay to laugh or make fun as a way to cope. But not when it's mean, or breeds intolerance. That's as wrong as it would be to openly mock or laugh at a person with Down syndrome or autism.

I have watched people laugh at, yell at and veer away from those with mental illness. I know people with tremors so bad they’ve been mistaken for being drunk.

Maybe rather than trying to fix all these people as if they have the problem — because some cannot be fixed — we need to change our attitude about them.

Because I can think of nothing worse than being born with or suffering from something that makes you different than to be ostracized for it.

If we just adopt a new normal then no one is really different.

I’m glad I knew John. I doubt he had something that could be fixed. And I hope today, if he is still around, that he lives in a more understanding world. I know I’d take the time to talk to him.

I Am Not A Crazy Cat Lady

2008-12-02T10:44:00.001-08:00

Let’s just get one thing straight from the start, okay? I am not a crazy cat lady.

Besides, these are kittens I’m talking about. Homeless kittens. Just two out of a number of felines that have been occupying my mother’s barn in the past year or so. Where once were horses and llamas she now has a steady stream of cats, most of them short-hair grey-striped, some fully grown, some kittens, some so small and helpless they tug at your heart.

You see, my mother has been “invaded,” as she likes to say though not necessarily with a smile. It started with a friendly but cautious cat she called “Grey Boy” several years ago. My mother was coping with illness at the time and I saw how he softened her. How she, despite herself, despite not feeling well or even happy, beamed with compassion and joy and care when he came around. And concern when he didn’t.

My mother charmed Grey Boy enough to get him “fixed” but not before a fluffy female began hanging around, too. Soon there were young cats. They came, they went. There were always just a few.

This past year or so suddenly there were more. Too many. It was like a domino effect. Too many to tame. But she’s tried.

She feeds them and provides litter boxes along with cozy beds and toys amid a few bails of hay in what is a former garage with a concrete floor. Mahlie, our pony, is in one of two stalls attached at the back. The garage part has always been home to hay, horse gear and a tack and feed room. I like to think they all keep each other company.

Each night when my mother feeds Mahlie she fills dishes with cat food and water and does a random head count. Maybe eight cats of various sizes live there now. She’s caught some, mostly females, which she’s had spayed in hopes of controlling the population. But they stay just ahead of her.

Not all the kittens survive. Some have met cruel — but natural — fates. Owls, perhaps coyotes have taken some, she guesses. Older cats have disappeared leaving my mother to wonder: Were they hit by a car? Did they find another home? Were they attacked?

They are feral, but they know this is a place they can call home. Still, my mother tries to tame them in hopes of finding them real homes.

In the past couple of months, she captured six kittens — four striped and two fluffy grey ones — shortly after they were weaned. She put them in a large dog cage in the breezeway and posted notes around town.

People came and fell in love with them. One girl took two, and brought back friends. All found homes except one. He was rather shy and introverted, my mother said. She told the visitors she’d work with him and they could check back later.

Then she discovered more even younger kittens in the garage. She captured one, a female. Now the two are inseparable.

We have not named them but we’ve bonded. They come into my mother’s house each night for a couple hours — she’s hesitant to keep them out of concern for her lone elderly cat — to play and cuddle in her lap. I was sucked in the first time I saw them. Now I visit with them a few times a week.

Let me tell you, they are angels. At least to me. And, remember, I’m not a crazy cat lady. Just compassionate and caring and wanting them to enjoy the life they have. Like any of us.

With three grown cats already, I’m hesitant to adopt them. But I’d like to. Meanwhile, I am watching these two creatures grow and mature with about as much joy as if they were children. I worry when they sneeze and practically melt when they come to me to cuddle up or play.

People don’t always realize the gifts you get from animals. I was raised with a steady stream of them — cats, dogs and bigger “pets.” So I know.

I am amazed when I see these two cuddled up together as if they are they last living creatures on earth. They are not petty. They are not jealous. It’s as if they know how lucky they are and watch out for each other. There is a lesson in this.

I watch as they cling to each other as they drift off to sleep, the bigger one licking and cleaning the baby like a mother tending to her child. And my heart just lifts.

Seriously. Would you call that crazy?

Reserved Parking – Where Is My Space?

2008-10-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

I was running into CVS the other day. Like most people, despite the fact that I run regularly and do yoga (the sweaty kind) a couple days a week on top of that, I always try to get the closest possible spot to the door.

For some reason, I am overcome with a colossal lack of energy when it comes to parking lots.

So there I was, elated as I spied a space at the last minute right next to the blue handicap spot. I did a quick look behind me to make sure no one was on my tail as I hit the brakes and whipped into the spot. Then I saw it.

Parking Reserved for Expectant Mothers.

At first I thought it was one of those spaces reserved for the Employee of the Month.

Now maybe I do not get out enough but I’d never seen this before.

I felt sheepish as I backed out and took a spot not 20 feet away. I probably burned more gas than energy moving the car and walking the extra distance.

But it got me thinking:

How expectant does a mother have to be to use the spot? Would anyone know if I was not expectant? (Not that I’d use the spot.) How many other people (clearly a man could not get away with this) take the spot figuring no one will know, or more cynically: Who cares?

I think they should adapt the sign to women in their final months. I mean, even women nine months pregnant seem to get around pretty well. Plenty of expectant moms jog with their baby bump in view. Why can’t they walk the parking lot?

Besides the usual Visitor and Resident parking signs, along with Handicap, I am now seeing signs for Hybrid Vehicles and Priests Only.

I think they should have more categories, clearly as reasonable as those for pregnant moms:

Reserved for the Obese (who wants a heart attack victim in their parking lot)

Reserved for People with Hangovers (that’d get them to your CVS for some Excedrin)

Reserved for People with Bad Hair Days (the quicker to get in and out and have no one see you)

Reserved for Organ Donors (this would help me out)

Reserved for Beautiful People (helps with store image and would be fascinating to see who thinks they are hot)

Reserved for People Who Are Sore (weekend warriors would appreciate this)

Reserved for People Too Lazy To Walk (again, that’s me!)

Reserved for People Who Think they are Important (this could work as a shaming mechanism so could backfire, but would also provide an interesting social experiment)

Reserved for Women Who Insist on Wearing High Heels Even Though They Kill Their Feet (but they look good so help the store image)

Reserved for People Who are Nice (how would anyone know unless the person visibly stiffed the poor Salvation Army collector by the door?)

What do you suggest?

Baby Showers - Thanks but No Thanks: A Satire, Sort Of

2008-10-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

Who invented baby showers? Don’t answer. I’m sure it’s the same person who invented bridal showers.

They should be shot.

I never liked going to either.

This is how I see them:

You are forced into a room with a bunch of women, no doubt indoors on what is the most beautiful day of the decade. You dress in “feminine” clothes and act all girly and grownup as you nibble on pastel M&Ms and nuts from tiny cups on a table festooned with silk flowers, balloons or both.

You play silly games. Like a fill-in-the-blank on how well you know the bride- or mother-to-be. Or create a wedding gown out of a roll of toilet paper, then vote on which table did the best job.

It's at this point I usually wonder: “Why don’t they have any alcohol?”

Now do not get me wrong. I love my friends and I’ve been to many showers. I don’t particularly look forward to them but I go to be supportive. I actually have fun sometimes. Mostly, I believe these things, these rituals, you simply must do if you can. If this was my shower, as it once was, I’d certainly want my friends to be there. (Thankfully more and more showers have ditched the goofy games and include couples and drinks. But not often enough.)

I can handle dressing up. I can handle being around all that estrogen. I can handle being in a church rec room on the most-gorgeous-day-of-the-decade (think of the sun damage I’m not getting). I can even smile through the games.

What I wish I could bypass is sitting through what seems like hours of gift opening.

I did this last weekend. And I deserve a medal. I had a migraine, one that barely budged after taking a prescription drug that morning. Nevertheless, I arrived in a pretty blouse at my former work mate’s baby shower a half hour late — which let me off the hook from playing some game, I was told. Darn it.

I adore my friend, who is due in November and looks glorious. I wanted to see her and help her celebrate. But she's more like a sister. We do not socialize regularly so we don't have many friends in common.

“Is Colleen or Julie here?” I asked when I first arrived, hoping to at least sneak in some conversation with other former coworkers.

“They couldn’t make it,” she said. “I don’t think you know anyone.”

“Well, then,” I said cheerfully as I affixed my name tag while wondering what hugely important things Colleen and Julie had to do that they could not make it, “It doesn’t matter where I sit.” I grabbed a chair at a table with four women in the front and introduced myself.

“What is your connection to My Friend?” I asked of two aunts on her husband’s side who had not seen her since her wedding 10 years earlier and had no idea what she even did for a living. I filled them in. To my left was a sister-in-law and her daughter, a cute tween who documented every moment with her digital camera.

After lunch — buffet style with chicken breasts, salad, cooked carrots, rolls and white noodles with marinara sauce plus a delicious sheet cake — the gift table was ready for action.

I should insert here that my first move, a mistake really, turned out fabulously well. I ordered her gift online from her registry — I have no idea what it was — and shipped it directly to her. I later realized that during the gift opening ceremony — where we would look like Stepford wives offering occasional “ohhs” and “ahhhs” as she opened every single gift and pulled out every single item for all of us to see in case we missed it — that there would be nothing from me.

When I emailed her that this occurred to me, mainly thinking of her and the fun she was going to have opening gifts, she offered to bring whatever it was that I got her.

“You certainly don’t have to do it for my sake,” I emphasized. She later realized it would be one more gift to schlep back to their home. So she thanked me for all to hear before the gift opening commenced.

Unfortunately, I was the only one who did this.

The room was packed with maybe 40 or 50 women meaning the gift tables were overflowing with pink boxes and bags. Mercifully my friend’s husband was there to expedite — er, help — with the process.

As my friend opened the gifts, her sister, who was keeping notes on who gave her what, managed a kind of raffle after every third gift, using envelopes we’d pre-addressed for the Thank You notes as the raffle tickets. I see this as evidence that they know we need a little bribery to stick around.

My friend would pull a name and the winner got to choose from various Avon products on a table. I kept spying the goods, certain my name would come up. When I realized I didn’t want anything, I imagined myself magnanimously offering my place to the nice tween at my table and how sweet she’d think I was. Unfortunately, my name never came up.

At first the gift ceremony was pleasant enough but soon I was wondering why they can’t open a few representational gifts and say: “Well, you get the idea. Thanks for coming!”

Soon I was struggling to feign interest after the umpteenth pink “onesie” or whatever they were. Even my friend didn’t always know for sure what each one was.

I kept looking at the time and tried to decide what was an appropriate length for a shower. It started at 1. I’d have liked to have left by 3, even factoring in my lateness.

Just as it seemed it was never going to end, my friend unwrapped the final present at precisely 4 o’clock. “Hang out,” she offered as she thanked everyone and encouraged them to have another piece of cake.

I thought about grabbing a piece to go. Instead, I just grabbed my white paper goody bag of sample-size lotion and a scented candle and went up to take advantage a few quality moments with my friend and her husband. We chatted about the baby room, yoga and her due date.

I was actually one of the last to leave.

As I made my way out, I hugged her and told her she did not have to send me a thank you card. That they are costly (cards, stamps) and use up resources (trees). And, according to the etiquette books — “I’ve looked it up,” I said — if you thank someone in person, you do not need to send a card.

They probably thought I was spoiled sport.

She’s sending a Thank You anyway.

Note to anyone reading this who is planning a baby or bridal shower and was thinking of inviting me: You better invite me because I really do want to be there. Just don't mind if I bring something to read.

The Blessed

2008-10-02T17:10:00.001-07:00

Some years ago on a trip to New York, I found myself inside the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. I used to live down the street from this massive granite and limestone Gothic structure, supposedly the largest unfinished cathedral in the world. Every day as I left my apartment I’d glance down the block at the imposing arches that loomed over Amsterdam Avenue.

I’d been inside a couple of times, once for a story. But not until a few years ago would I experience something I will always remember when I think of St. John.

It was the first weekend in October. The event, the Blessing of the Animals. Each year at this time the custom plays out at churches around the world in remembrance of St. Francis of Assisi, who had a great love for all creatures. I’ve read that at Franciscan churches, a friar with a brown robe and white cord typically welcomes each animal with a special prayer.

I couldn’t see the actual blessings as I’d joined a group of friends who had some coveted seats inside, toward the back of the cathedral, though it was arguable that standing outside offered the better view.

We sat snugly together for what felt like a typical church service with a few exceptions. All around us were people with their pets.

One couple brought a pair of cats that I spied to my right in the side aisle. There the plump felines sat, each in separate strollers, positioned as cats rarely are, facing forward with their spines curved against the seat back, just like toddlers. They were strapped in and appeared rather content as far as I could tell. We laughed at the silliness.

Then the processional began. First came little creatures. One by one, people dressed in white robes carried some form of life up the aisle to the altar where they were blessed.

A glass tank with an ant farm in it. A fish bowl. A cage with turtles. Frogs. Hamsters. A rabbit. A Macaw on someone’s shoulder. The animals got bigger as the ceremony went along.

Cats, dogs, a goat. Sheep. A donkey. Llamas. A cow. A camel. Many were festooned with floral garlands.

I can never remember: was there a giraffe, a zebra, an elephant, as I like to remember? Did I imagine that? I’m honestly not sure. It was all so magical, like something out of a storybook, watching these innocent creatures so out of their element in this concrete jungle.

Any silliness quickly gave way to a lump in my throat.

I also realized these animals surely didn’t want to be here in this church. But they obediently marched along. I later learned many were from petting farms, not sub-Saharan Africa or South America. Of course not.

That made me a little sad. Maybe even a little tricked feeling. But they were, I hoped, loved and cared for. I hoped this had not become an event to appease and entertain the masses.

I thought this again the next time I went, this time watching from outside. Some native New Yorkers happened by and asked me what was going on. They seemed intrigued before moving on. I was surprised more people weren’t crowding around. Or that more didn’t stay.

I found it hard to leave. I reveled in watching these animals as they came and went, looking dubious as they maneuvered the slippery stone steps that led to the massive wooden Cathedral doors.

I watched as I quietly prayed for them to keep their footing, quietly wanting to help them down, and all the while quietly blessing them on my own.

* * * *

If you have animals, or just love them, this weekend you might offer the traditional blessing yourself.

The Blessing goes something like this:

“Blessed are you, Lord God, maker of all living creatures. You called forth fish in the sea, birds in the air and animals on the land. You inspired St. Francis to call all of them his brothers and sisters. We ask you to bless this pet. By the power of your love, enable it to live according to your plan. May we always praise you for all your beauty in creation. Blessed are you, Lord our God, in all your creatures! Amen.”

Beau

2008-09-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

The catch in my mother’s voice was audible. She didn’t have to tell me she was getting choked up.

It was Sunday afternoon when she called. She was on her way home from the state fairgrounds where she’d stopped to see some of the fall Saddlebred show.

I know why she was choked up. It’s happened to me when I’ve been there. I could never quite understand it yet it made perfect sense. A mixture of nostalgia and maybe, for me, even guilt.

We always think of Beau, our American Saddlebred, a beautiful chestnut gelding. My mother bought him for me to ride and show when I was a kid. She got him from a fast-talking trainer named Taft.

At the time, Beau was a three-gated horse. His tail had been broken when he was young so that it would shoot straight up in the air, his long tail hairs trailing like a streamer. Typical of Saddlebreds, he had a flashy, high-stepping gait. He’d been trained with heavy shoes to get him to lift his feet high.

But we never got into that. I think my mother felt it was a bit cruel. So Beau was a pleasure horse. He still picked his feet up a high, by now a habit. But I rode him in pleasure classes, where judges focused on him, and equitation classes, where judges focused on me.

Beau was always something of a star at home. We had, at one point, eight horses plus five llamas and a goat, among other pets, which is really what they all were.

The horses ranged from a persnickety and independent Welsh pony and her similarly independent daughter, Mahlie, to a retired hunter jumper named Boca, whom you could ride bareback with a halter and lead rope. There was also Cameo, a dependable, well-disciplined chestnut thoroughbred mare, and Tess, a powerful dark brown Dutch Warmblood, both of which my mother did dressage with. Tess was bigger than Beau and was the only horse Beau looked up to.

But in our minds, Beau was always the special one. He’d whinny in the pasture when you called him. He’d come looking for carrots or apples. Sometimes he was just curious, bounding over with his lanky, elegant gait, his tail high in the air.

Over the years, through early college, I showed him in four shows a year. All but one of the shows were held on the state fairgrounds.

I’d feel sick with nerves before my events. Beau was agitated too. He’d grown accustomed to a leisurely life at home. Here he was bunking with and sharing a riding ring with horses he didn’t know. There was always a thrill as we entered the coliseum, a vacuous space that echoed as the man on the microphone called the riders in. I always held the bridle firmly against Beau’s mouth, restraining him from what felt like a full charge into the ring, a thunder of hooves sounding as the riders all went in together.

There were never many spectators but those there would yell and whoop to get their favorite horse excited. Beau wasn’t used to this. We just had my mother, always standing in a corner on the outside of the ring, offering words to me or to Beau, whom she says always acknowledged her. I was busy focusing on the ride, his gait, making sure to keep space between Beau and the other horses. We were never the most serious of the competitors. We stuck to shows close to home, doing it more for fun.

We’d be told to walk, trot, then canter, go around the ring then change direction. I kept my toes forward, heels down, back straight and hands low while getting Beau to hold his neck arched and nose perpendicular to the ground. At the end, we’d line up in the center of the ring, Beau standing with his front legs close together, his back legs wider apart, with the front set slightly forward and the rear slightly back. The final task when the judge came to me was to back him up straight, which he usually did.

I quit showing Beau in college. I was living away from home and that last year we just did not put in the hours of practice that we needed. I always felt a bit ashamed about that last ride. Beau was not as disciplined, which was really my fault. We were a bit sloppy. We did not finish last but that was not the point. It was our last ride. It was not our best.

After that, Beau was a horse of leisure and had a good life, a great life. It came to an end several years ago after he suffered from a painful but common problem, laminitis, an inflammation inside the hooves that eventually makes standing too painful to tolerate. Horses cannot survive if they cannot stand up.

Thankfully, I’d been between jobs at the time. It was February. It was cold. But I would stand in the unheated barn with him for hours as he looked outside at the other two horses, by now just Tess and Mahlie, across a chain that kept him inside. It was painful to see how much he wanted out, as was his nature.

Soon after, Beau would lie down in his stall and not get up. He wanted to. He was even nibbling at hay. He may not have realized it but he gave up.

My mother called the vet. She looked on from the stall door as the vet told me to kneel on his head to keep him from jerking up as he injected something to sedate him before injecting something to stop his heart. I hated being asked to do this. I did it half-heartedly as I stroked Beau’s neck and nose and talked soothingly to him, which was really talking soothingly to myself, and took my chances that we’d be injured. He didn’t make too much of a fuss.

My mother choked up as she looked on and quietly said goodbye to Beau. I tried to be strong in front of the vet. But something ended when Beau passed on.

We had two horses, Tess and Mahlie, for several years after that. Now there is just Mahlie. And the barnyard and pastures have long since grown silent.

My mother does not get choked up often. Not, at least, that I see.

But when she does, I know why.

Popcorn Is Not a Problem

2008-08-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

It’s not every day you find your food fetish soul mate. I mean, I thought I had a problem.

My addiction? Movie theater popcorn.

Don’t laugh. You know what I’m talking about. And don’t even bother with me if you can — wow — eat a half a bucket yourself.

The other night, one of my best friends confessed that she is like me. I could have been talking to myself in the mirror. The things that came out her mouth, damn near drooling as she waxed poetic about popcorn’s many virtues. Crunch-ability, buttery flavor, just the right of amount of oil that oozes out as your bite into the golden nuggets, the salt that makes the soda taste like nectar of the gods, and of course the serving size. The delectable jumbo-ness of it all. And — be still my beating heart — free refills.

Dear lord. I wonder if there is a 12-step program for this?

When she told me she sometimes passes by the theater on her way home for a night in front of the TV just to buy a bucket of popcorn, I knew I’d met my match. I’ve never done that, though I’ve contemplated it, even wondered if that would mean I’d gone over the edge.

“But what about the refill?” I asked. I mean, you pay like $5 for what is really about 50 cents worth of the crack-like goodness and you miss out on the refill? It’s just wrong!

“You should have a bag with you so you can dump the purchase, then go back and get the refill,” I said, salivating at the idea.

“Good idea!” Her eyes lit up. I think she swooned.

“Have you ever gotten the refill after the movie, when you leave?” I asked.

“No!” she looked like I’d just handed her a winning lottery ticket. “I never thought of that!” She smacked her lips.

Now we both agree on a few rules of popcorn consumption: You never begin eating the popcorn until the movie actually begins. Not when the previews start. It’s a weird quirk, some bizarre ritual I’m sure addicts and other obsessive-compulsive types must recognize in some fashion.

That said, I must confess, she is more disciplined than I. I used to be that way but I succumbed, gobbling through the bucket the moment I’m seated. I actually look forward to being a good halfway through before the movie starts so I can get the refill and not have to miss any action by having to do it later. And no matter whom I am with, I seem to get at least 90 percent of the bucket to myself.

Except one time: I was with a friend — a super smart professor type who’s a bit of a nut — at a special event movie screening. We shared a large refillable bucket. I was aghast at the way she inhaled the stuff, keeping my eye on her with sidelong glances. I could barely focus on the movie. She looked a little … wacky. Out. Of. Control.

My god, I thought. Do I look like this? I was a little horrified. I mean, I’ve been with friends — at which point I usually try to eat more slowly simply because I want to appear somewhat “normal” — and still! I have been teased for my incessant, rapid gulping.

At least I don’t get butter like my friend — my popcorn soul mate. And I’ve never gotten popcorn without at least going to the movie, too. I have fantasized about bringing a large plastic bag into the theater, immediately dumping the bucket and getting the refill then — two buckets, no missing of any action. Nirvana!

But I’ve not done that yet. I mean, I do have some control.

Give me credit for this too: I used to down dinner before a move, then compulsively crunched through most of the large bucket (well, it is more cost-efficient, you know, and there are people starving everywhere) only to feel positively grotesque afterwards, and, mercilessly, bloated the next day.

Solution? Now if I go to an evening movie, I skip dinner. Popcorn is my first, second and third course. It is a vegetable, you know. With lots of fiber. And, at most, I’ve consumed a large bucket and a half on my own.

Why, compared to some friends (god love them), I'm practically a poster child for eating popcorn ravenously but responsibly.

Library Junkie

2008-08-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

Over the years I've loved the library in fits and starts.

In my more amorous stages, I'll think it's the greatest concept ever. But then I get fickle. I become enthralled by the glossier bookstores, where books are fresh and new and shiny and slick and, mostly, untouched. Plus, bookstores let you talk out loud and slurp up lattes.

By comparison, the library is like a friend I’ve lost interest in. A friend who feels a little worn, a little old, a little dull and just a little too quiet. Yawn.

I can get get a little squeamish about where those library books have been, too. I mean, think about it. Like, Was someone reading in the bathroom? Did they wash their hands? Were they — gasp! — picking their nose? What the hell is the greenish thing stuck it the binding?

I can make myself a little insane.

But then I look at all the books I’ve bought, some I love and will always have and some that simply sit, collecting dust. Books I thought at the time I had to read, had to possess but which then, suddenly, lost their luster because, quite simply, I had them. I took them for granted. I could read them any time, I told myself. And some, I just never did, perhaps because there was no due date, no deadline.

Some time back I decided to pull the in reins on clutter. Yes, that included books. Why do I need to possess these? I decided to donate. I have kept many. Many, many, many. But plenty had done their duty and no longer possessed me. It was time to part.

Plus, borrowing clearly made sense financially. I mean, here I was donating books that I probably should have borrowed in the first place. If I loved a book that much, I could always buy it later.

And so began my latest love-in with the library. Two of them actually. I play them off each other. One will usually have a book I want if the other doesn’t. There is practically a science to this, you see.

At the moment, I actually have the same book from both libraries. Initially I put holds at each place to see who’d produce first. When both came through, I figured I’d see who’d want it back first, after my three weeks was up. I’d keep the one with staying power.

This is because — of course — I would hardly have touched either book by that time. Oh, I did peruse the book but I had to focus on others first, others that would soon be due.

You see, I can get a little out of control, like a kid in a candy shop. Plus, I am not a fast reader. Well, actually this may have something to do with the fact that I try to read about six books at once.

Plus, it’s an organizational feat just to keep up with my due dates and manage my returns and renewals. When the three-week limit is up, I have to get online to renew. Some days that means one book. Another day it might mean 13.

That’s right. I admit it. I’ve become a bit of a borrowing junkie. At this very moment I have at least two dozen books checked out.

I can be pretty possessive too. Like when I go to renew a book that, I swear, I’ve been meaning to read or at least start but just haven’t gotten around to it. And there it is:

“Item has HOLDS.”

Who? I want to know. Who wants my book? I am so annoyed I immediately put a hold right back on it as soon as I return it. That that! I say.

Luckily many books I like are not new releases so I can renew with abandon. It’s practically like ownership. Of course at the maximum nine-week, three-time-renewal limit point, you do need to bring the book in, regardless of whether anyone else has placed a hold. This always makes me feel like a borderline criminal, as if I’m holding it hostage and they need proof that it’s still alive and healthy.

At that point, if I still want it, I let them check it in and then, if there are no holds, ask: “Can I please take it out again? I wasn’t finished,” I say, feeling like a binge eater who cannot stop going up to the buffet for more. Usually I get it.

What a high: Nine more weeks!

So that one goes to the bottom of the pile.

After all, I have others coming due soon, especially the more popular ones that some greedy person is surely putting a hold on this very moment so they can get their hands on it.

One thing I’m glad about: They no longer print out your entire list of checked out books every time I pick up a new one. I used to get embarrassed as page after page spilled out, proof that I was out of control, no different than someone who orders three meals “to-go” then gets caught downing all them all in the car in the parking lot.

One day I ‘fessed up, admitting I was slightly embarrassed by how many books I had checked out. I was happy to let them think I was using them for research.

That’s when I learned I’m nowhere near as bad as some of those crazy library junkies. Why they’ve seen people with seven pages of materials. With my three to four pages, I’m nothing.

The main thing is, I’ve clearly reduced my financial outlay for books.

As for the clutter? And the time spent managing this all?

Well, as I look upon a bed strewn with books, a wicker basket filled with still more — none of which I own — all I can say is: I’m working on it.

Not Cute Enough?

2008-08-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

So the Chinese decided that the girl whose voice we all heard at the 2008 Olympics opening ceremonies was not cute enough to perform for all to see.

You see, she had crooked teeth.

This little girl, this little 7-year-old named Yang Peiyi (on the left), was not quite pretty or perfect enough. The Chinese had an image to protect, they said. Or project.

Whatever.

Whatever their reason it is not good enough.

Peiyi has been quoted as saying she didn’t mind being shoved off-stage for Little Miss Adorable, a 9-year-old named Lin Miaoke.

Right. Maybe she has actually convinced herself of that.

But how can anyone feel okay being essentially hidden from view because while her voice is beautiful, she just doesn’t cut it looks-wise?

That girl should be angry. At the very least, I have to believe she’s hurt.

I know I’d be.

And then I have to wonder what message this sends to young girls, even young women everywhere.

Hell, it bothers me. Something like that would haunt me forever.

It actually makes me sick.

But of course this kid can get her teeth fixed. Surely when she’s old enough she will.

Especially after this.

So will others with teeth like hers. Looks like hers. Makeup, plastic surgery, hair extensions, Spanx follow.

Don’t like your looks? Fix it. Not acceptable to others? Fix it.

On some level I understand this celebration of beauty. In the natural world, the better looking, the stronger prevail. They attract the best mates, the best birds and bees. Beauty is their way to flourish. That’s what evolution is all about. Adapt. Survive. Adapt. Survive.

But we are different.

Supposedly.

At least some of the time, we can look into someone’s heart and see beauty that might not win beauty contests. We find something to cherish in someone’s laugh, warmth, intelligence, humor.

But looks. This is still something we struggle with. I thought we were better than this.

I mean: It’s a kid. A 7-year-old kid.

God forbid she be a burn victim or deformed.

But she’s a kid. And a cute kid, too.

Why can’t the Chinese see that?

Can we see that?

Frizz Frame: In Search of Frizzy Heroines

2008-07-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

The message is powerful. As pungent as the odor from a bottle of perm solution.

Frizzy hair means geek, wacko, frazzled, frayed, untamed, uncivilized, unacceptable.

After all, when was the last time you saw a frizzy-maned leading lady walk into the sunset with the sexy hunk? Certainly not in “The Way We Were” or “Princess Diaries.”

Unless of course the leading lady gets a makeover, calms the curls or all out straightens them. This usually comes with other “improvements” like a nicer wardrobe, makeup and plucked eyebrows, ditching the glasses and braces.

The most recent example? “The Women,” a 2008 remake of a 1939 film now starring Meg Ryan — with a mass of cascading curls — who discovers her husband is having an affair with a perfume saleswoman, the smoothly-styled Eva Mendes. Ryan’s curls are not even frizzy. Bo-ho chic, maybe. But if you believe the not-so-subtle subtext, Ryan’s way to victory is through a flat iron. Need more proof? Her BFF, Annette Bening, a Hermes bag-toting high-powered magazine editor. Her style: straight. Stick straight. Another friend, Jada Pinkett Smith, also with straightened locks, is a smart, hip writer. One friend has frizzy hair: Debra Messing. Guess what? She plays the oft-frazzled, endearingly goofy earth mom, pregnant with yet another child. It would be nice to think some of the film’s bad reviews were by curly heads who are not going to take it any more.

The reality is, movies just don’t have a lot of time to build a character. So unless you read the book, you probably don’t know the back story. So they use superficial traits and hints we all agree on to make sure we get it. (You didn’t know you were so judgmental, did you?)

Sure, there are exceptions. The frizzy hair message is not always a total put down. Some women with frizz actually do get the guys. There’s Sarah Jessica Parker, best known for playing loveable fashionista Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City” (most recently made into a movie). She often lets her frizz flag fly.

More common are the heroines like Cher in “Moonstruck” (1987). Her wild mane with streaks of gray didn’t dissuade the already smitten Nicholas Cage, though he wasn’t any major catch. Frankly, Cher’s hair spoke more to her working class roots and lack of sophistication than any kind of style. Even she gets beautified (neater curls and hair color) for a date with Cage at the MET.

There are also plenty of frizz-filled frames in movies made around the 1980s, mainly because they reflect the big-hair, perm-rage of the time.

For the most part, though, frizz is more typical among supporting roles — character pieces or “the unattractive best friend” — certainly not emblematic of the heroine, the leading lady we love for her beauty and success in life.

Here are just a few examples from movie history:

“Bride of Frankenstein” (1935)

Examples don’t get much better than this. This film pretty much set the standard for hair from hell hair (with added streaks of gray as a bonus). The Bride of Frankenstein’s frizzy out-of-control mane unmistakably telegraphed everything you want to avoid in a woman. After all, she was a monster. And not a likable one at that. As movie lore goes, to get the look actress Elsa Lanchester’s frizzy auburn hair was actually brushed over a wired horsehair cage. Nice. I mean, you don’t seriously expect to see the Bride of Frankenstein with Miss America curls or a swingy flapper cut. It had to be wild. It looked electrified. What better style to invoke fear than frizz?

“Little Orphan Annie” (1938), remade as “Annie” (1982)

Well, sure, if she’d had cute hair — nice straight bouncy locks pulled neatly back with a headband — she wouldn’t be an orphan in the first place. Right? But then there would not be a movie. Annie’s hairstyle -- a goofy Harpo Marx mop of red curls with slight degree of frizz -- is one of the worst styles on the silver screen worn by someone not openly mocked by the look. Only a precocious song-belting child could get away with a style like this and still find love. Oh, and you just know as Little Orphan Annie grows up she is so ditching that ‘do.

"The Way We Were" (1973)

This is a glaring example of how changing your hair gets you the guy, Robert Redford no less. We meet Barbra Streisand’s character as a geeky overbearing political activist with short curly hair, a dramatically different look from the neatly coiffed college girls Robert Redford hangs with. Years later, after she’s begun ironing her hair, they hook up and marry. Things don’t work out because she really never changed inside. Big surprise: After they divorce, she goes back to the goofy ‘do: The real her. Sure, she’s remarried (but you know he’s not as hot as Redford). One glimmer of hope during a chance meeting with Redford, now with a pretty, normal-looking wife: He genuinely seems to miss her despite the hair.

“Fatal Attraction” (1987)

This one is a bit tricky because Glenn Close’s wild mass of frizzy blond curls simultaneously signal her freak factor while acting as bait for Michael Douglas, who is easily seduced by her out of the lull of his routine marriage. So in this case, the wild 'do is a turn on. At first. But clearly, Close’s hair gets wilder and frizzier the nuttier she reveals herself to be, culminating in a scene at her home while listening to opera. She looks disturbed and demented as fuzzy tendrils eerily illuminate her crazed expression. Somehow, I don’t think this scene would have worked as well with the character coiffed in a sultry hair-over-one-eye Veronica Lake style.

“Dead Calm” (1989), “Days of Thunder” (1990), “Far and Away” (1992), “Portrait of a Lady” (1996)

These early Nicole Kidman movies showcase the actress’s formerly trademark long red corkscrew curls frizzed out like a giant mass of cotton candy. She plays an unglamorous role in the first, trying to save herself from a killer at sea; in “Days of Thunder” she plays a sexy doctor who gets Tom Cruise all hot under the collar so, okay, score one for the frizzies here, though it was not a leading role. The frizzy locks in “Far and Away” can be attributed to it being a period piece about Irish immigrants who, in the 1890s, barely had time to bathe. Her lead role in “Portrait of a Lady” found Kidman decidedly unglamorous. But director Jane Campion is known for her wrinkles-and-all approach, one that rejects the image of the beautiful heroine. Ergo, frizzy, unkempt mane. She’s not supposed to look beautiful. She’s supposed to look real. Kidman’s star has risen astronomically since then. Her frizz is rarely seen in film roles or tabloids. More often it’s stick straight or at the very least shows off contained curls (beaten into submission by anti-frizz product no doubt). After all, she’s a leading lady.

“Princess Diaries” (2001)

Once again, this time with Anne Hathaway as the geeky, clumsy lead, we see how frizzy hair (along with other unmentionables like shaggy brows and eyeglasses) leave little doubt this chick is living in uncool nerd-dom. She’s certainly not appropriate to take over the throne of a small European monarchy. Or course, after a Pygmalian-esqe makeover from her snooty, dignified grandmother, Julie Andrews, Hathaway gets straight well-behaved locks and, voila, she’s the “it” girl at school, a man magnet and darling of the local media. In her ascent to a more perfect life, she kept some of her klutziness, ostensibly to prove she’s human or at least not perfect. God forbid she kept the frizz.

“Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and “I'm Not There” (both 2007)

When you think of Cate Blanchett, you might think great actress, beautiful woman. Blanchett, however, does at least take risks. In two recent roles she is not at her most attractive and, surprise, sports frizzy locks. First, as Queen Elizabeth I, but here you can excuse the hair simply for being true to the time period when frizzy hair was in style and was even favored by the Queen. In her other role, in “I’m Not There,” she takes an even greater risk by looking decidedly unfeminine, donning Wayfarers and a frizzy mop of hair. And wouldn’t you know it? She’s a man, baby! And not even a cute one at that. She plays Bob Dylan.

“Sweeny Todd” (2007)

So Helena Bonham Carter is cute. Yes, even with the wacked out ‘do. But take note: She is a crazed crazy and hence, she has unkempt curly hair. Oh, and the long lost wife of Johnny Depp’s character? Yeah, she was real pretty and had nice smooth hair when they were young lovers. But — spoiler alert — guess who turns out to be the creepy, wacky, scabby-skinned woman in later scenes? You guessed it. And nothing says: “Man, I seriously need to get to a hairdresser but I’m a street urchin who’s lost her noggin’” like a head of unkempt frizz.

“A Mighty Heart” (2007)

Okay so we actually have sex queen Angelina Jolie trading in her straight locks for a tight-curl frizz look. And she is the heroine in this film. But, a big but, this is a biopic about Marianne Pearl, a beautiful woman in her own right and widow of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl. So the hair here was less about a character statement than about just looking the part. I will say I’ve never seen Jolie look less attractive. (Damn.) Though that was partly due to her having uncharacteristic dark eyes (via contacts) and little makeup. She also wore the hair on top of her hair in a kind of no-style mop and looked tired, as any woman whose husband has been kidnapped by terrorists has a right to look. Still…. Troubling.

So what does all this tell us? I think frizz is indelibly etched in our minds as a problem that needs to be solved. At least in this culture. I wonder if that will ever change? Maybe someone should brainwash us all back to accepting it more. Even finding beauty in it. One can only dream of Cameron Diaz getting a perm for Charlie’s Angels III.

The Worst Kind of Rejection

2008-07-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

"Despair" by my mother

Rejection is tough. Who wants to learn you were passed over for a job because they preferred someone else to you? Or the guy you liked chose another. Or you didn't make the cut for the team or group you wanted to join.

But really, that rejection is easy.

The rejection I’m talking about is worse. Far worse.

More than five years ago, I was finally able to give my mother my kidney. She’d been on dialysis for two years. Two years too many.

It was a long journey. At first we were told I was not able to be a donor. But we got more tests and surmounted that hurdle. Then ten days before the scheduled transplant surgery, we had to hold off. I might no longer be a match, we were told. That was devastating. But we did it. Amazingly.

I think back now on how lucky we were, within, I should say, a pretty unlucky situation: My mother lost her kidney function in her 60s, seven years ago. I was pretty much her only hope since younger people on “the list” (ie, waiting for an organ to become available when, yes, sadly, someone dies) seem favored. Why? Organs are in short supply, especially kidneys in Michigan. It’s a five-year wait, unless you have a living donor.

Thankfully I could do this for her. But as one journey ended another began. My biggest fear waking from surgery? That the organ would be rejected.

These things happen.

But it took. And life, for the most part, resumed somewhat normally. My mother, no longer tethered to a daily dialysis therapy, felt better and became more like her old self.

But in the back of my mind, way back at least — always — was this: Keep working.

You see, rejection is the nemesis of any transplanted organ. That’s not my mother’s kidney in her lower right abdomen. It’s mine. Save for organ donation between identical twins, your body’s nature is to fight that foreigner. Anyone with a transplanted organ is on a steady cocktail of immunosuppressants for the rest of his or her life. Period. No cheating. You cheat on this regime and you cheat yourself.

Still.

Rejection can happen out of the blue. For no known reason. Sure, you can slack on your meds and in that case you can be sure you’ve just condemned that organ to death. Eventually. Once rejection sets in, I’m told, it’s a slow decline. A one-way ticket.

Still.

They say if they catch it early, they can manage it.

Today my mother lies in a hospital bed. Rejection. Moderate.

And it’s scary.

Her doctor says they can treat it and she can, hopefully, have the kidney a few more years. I hope that’s true. I hope it works.

* * * *

In the Hospital

So here my mother lies at a teaching hospital, where we try to digest devastating -- disappointing at the very least -- news. And we have to deal with so many questions: Whenever she’s wheeled around — from the ER to the ultrasound to the floor where she was admitted to for the next several days — everyone from nurses to med students asks her history. What meds is she on, what caused her kidney failure, what brought her here today? Did she smoke? How long? What other symptoms does she have? Do you have any pain here? How about here? Can I listen to your lungs? Do you have an advance medical directive? A living will?

It’s exhausting.

When her nephrologist came to tell us the picture was getting more “complicated” after seeing the results of the kidney biopsy, I started to feel sick. “On a scale of 1 to 3,” he began….

All I wanted to know: Does this mean she’s going back on dialysis?

Yes the news was disappointing but it could have been worse. You always — I mean always — look for the silver lining.

My father, a retired physician, once told me: “Medicine is more art than science.” That's good to know sometimes.

Still, yesterday was rough — being awakened before 6 a.m. to find my parents spent all night in the ER and now had to go to a major medical center and can I help drive in case they need help?

I was at my mother’s side until after 9 p.m. that day asking questions, digesting answers, making sense of terms I don’t know, reliving my mother’s medical history again. And again. And again. It's strangely comforting and depressing to look into kind and compassionate faces as they sympathize, saying how sweet my mother is to have to go through “all this.” It takes its toll.

By 4 p.m. I had to step outside while she had a procedure. I needed air. I longed to go sit on a the bench in a garden patio area where I spent time the day before when she had the kidney biopsy.

It was raining. It seemed a subtle slap in the face. I just wanted some sun after a full day behind windowless concrete walls.

As I stood in the small covered area outside the doors, I mostly just needed to cry. To purge my exhaustion and disappointment. I empathized with my mother, who often says god must hate her for all she’s been through. She’s been through a lot. Too much.

Later, as evening set, my mother settled into her room for the next few days, with new nurses, new faces. What did she have done? What meds does she take? As I told her nurse the story behind this newly-bandaged site on my mother’s abdomen above the kidney — where she now had a catheter placed — I paused as I leaned over my mother’s body, my right hand over the bandage.

“That’s my kidney,” I said suddenly, smiling, then catching myself, almost surprised.

My eyes welled up for an instant. It was a flicker of amazement. A flashback of all we’d gone through. Here was my organ, born from my mother to me, and now back with her.

And now it’s suffering.

That's the worst kind of rejection.

Fifth Anniversary

2008-05-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

May 19, 2008. 11:55 a.m.

Five years ago today, at this moment, I was under. Deep.

A team of surgeons and operating room staff surrounded me as I was cut open, all to get at my left kidney.

My mother, its recipient, surely she was scared. I mean, by now she might have been under, too. All I know is that I was rolled away at around 8 or 9 a.m., a steady steam of some wonderful tranquilizing drug cursing through my veins. I almost didn't need it, though. The anxiety I kept expecting never came.

One last look: At my mother, who had trouble forming a smile even if it would make me feel more relaxed; and my father and husband, who were facing hours — hours — of waiting while two of their family members underwent major surgery. Simultaneously.

My only thoughts before I was completely out were that they put my kidney into the right person. I didn’t want to be a sad story on “60 Minutes.” And, of course, I didn’t want any “complications” from the surgery.

Beyond that, the hope we all have when we donate a piece of ourselves to save another: Let the kidney take. Let it work. Let it fix this situation we’ve lived with — my mother surviving only through dialysis — for more than two years.

I woke up in my hospital room around 4 p.m.

I lived. Thank god. I took nothing for granted in all this. I mean, people die in surgery for strange reasons. Unexpected reason. So for this I was thankful.

My mother? How was she? I was almost scared to ask: Is the kidney working?

My mother was a few hours behind me so was still in post-op. We’d have to wait and see. But she’d survived. A very good thing.

What about me, then? Is my other kidney working? I’d heard the remaining kidney in the donor can be a little shocked when its partner is so abruptly removed. It could go dormant. Hours of chewing ice and staying hydrated via an IV drip later, I appeared to be fine. I was making urine. That’s all we needed.

I was also doped up on enough Morphine that I was in no pain. I couldn’t understand why my mother used to complain about how uncomfortable hospital beds were. Why this was practically like sleeping on a cloud.

I had thick tape wrapped around compresses on my abdomen where I’d discover four incisions, one through my belly button.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. It should have been a bikini cut.

Apparently the surgeons had trouble accessing my kidney through my small rib cage so they decided they needed a closer cut.

“I had my hand in there,” said my surgeon, a handsome Argentinian, with a smile, when the surgical team checked in on me later.

“I did too,” piped up another.

It’s an odd and indescribable feeling to imagine someone sticking their hand up into your viscera from a slit in your belly. I didn’t want to think about it.

As surgeries go, mine was more trying than my mother’s. Nevertheless, I was worried about her. I’d be just fine.

I gave thanks that the surgery went well, that my mother was awake. As for the kidney, they would be watching that for hours.

It needed to make urine. Something my mother was barely able to produce for two years.

Everything was about the bag at the end of the catheter.

And there it was. It flowed. It worked.

We stayed in the hospital for four days each. It was not a miraculous turnaround. My mother did not jump out of bed and start singing. Her face did not immediately flush with color.

In fact, she was strangely down. A little depressed. I think she hoped for that grand turnaround. We’d been told so often that that was how it went.

Reality sunk in. Thank god for reality and not just the happy stories. We were told it takes time to feel better. For many people this was true. This was going to be true for us.

It also took my mom some time to get over the guilt of taking my kidney. She never quite felt good about that. And here she was, making urine, yet stressed out with a rigorous and strong initial drug therapy that left her with new side effects.

She was a little overwhelmed. Maybe this was a mistake, she surely wondered.

But things did get better. They took time, but they got so much better.

Now, five years later, it’s a gift. She has my kidney in the front of her lower right abdomen. I tease her that she needs to take care of it.

And always we celebrate with dinner out.

“Who’s anniversary is it?” asks the waitress when I tell them we are celebrating.

“Ours,” I say, putting my arm around my mother’s shoulder watching as they always look, a little quizzical.

“I gave my mom a kidney.”

I say it proudly. I say it happily. I say it knowing I would do it again in a heartbeat.

She gave me life. I just gave it back.

Father

2008-05-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Freedom from Things

2008-04-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

Things weigh us down.

This I know.

I have boxes of T-shirts and clothes I never wear, dishes I don’t use because they are troublesome to unearth. I have projects from grade school through college and stuffed animals from my childhood. Towers of books collect dust while years of engagement calendars provide some record of my life. Magazines, too many to read, lie in piles. Old computers sit idle. These things are passive. They are quiet. Yet they posses an energy. And every day I feel their weight.

Things. They are just things, I tell myself.

Some of this holding on is guilt or laziness. Guilt in that I bought something I only wore once, or never really used; keeping it tells me I did not make a mistake. Laziness in that I dread dealing with it — hooking up those computers and combing through the files, downloading what I want on some outdated system.

I am my own worst enemy. Ennui overcomes me at the thought of dealing with these things. I find excuses not to do it. Work to do. A friend to meet. A book to read. I push away. I push away.

But it is more than that. I am often overcome with emotion — that of my attachment to these things.

Hanging on to a dream or a version of ourselves is a game we play. My language tapes, art supplies, travel books to destinations I’ve not yet been. My keyboard from when I took piano lessons. Will I play again? Am I turning my back on a hope I once had? If I get rid of it, doesn’t the dream die? Doesn’t a part of me die?

Things. They are just things.

I’ve gotten better about donating books to the library. If I want that information someday, I can find it there. In the mean time, someone else can enjoy it. I give it life. I no longer hold it hostage.

Still, on those computers are documents I am not sure I want to let go of. I have my master’s thesis. Stories I’ve written. Photos I’ve scanned in. Even my T-shirts and clothes, they are imbued with my life. That trip to Sydney. Those jeans from Rome. A gift from my mother. Red cowboy boots I wore as a child. And so I hold on.

But there is a line. I am trying to find it.

Some years ago, I finally got rid of my high school graduation dress, which I loved, and a sweater I wore on a first date with a man it took me a long to time to get over. But there is so much more. I have baby clothes, some my mother made, in a couple of drawers in my old dresser. Just a couple of drawers, I tell myself.

And my stuffed animals. This is hard. It is obscene to me to imagine my beloved first teddy bear in a landfill, his cracked pink plastic nose embedded in decomposing coffee grounds, his body buried beneath a warped pizza box. But who would want him? Most of his stuffing gone, his eyes now simple four-hole buttons, he is a teddy bear only I could love.

Things. They are just things.

Still, these things begin to suffocate us. And their importance is an illusion. I once read of someone who lost everything when their home burned down. Family photos, clothing, personal documents. Gone. But once past the sadness of the loss, they realized a certain freedom.

I like that.

I do not wish to lose my things in a fire that way but I like the ceremony of burning things. It is complete. You watch it burn. You know it’s gone. My mother has carried out this ritual. She, too, gets attached to things. I probably learned this from her.

For these things I’m close to, that I need to part with yet cannot imagine blindly donating or throwing away, fire provides a proper burial.

Not all things should be purged from our lives. Few would argue keeping family photos or other treasured pieces of our lives. There is value and history in such things. But only we can decide what to keep.

In the end, though, our things do not define us. And the old adage, “You can’t take it with you,” reminds me to live in the present. Enjoy what I have. Now. Otherwise, I need to let them go.

They are just things, after all.

And in freeing those things, I free myself.

All Out of Spares

2007-06-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

My left kidney has resided in my mother’s lower right abdomen since May 19, 2003. I gave her this gift about as happily as one can after agreeing to let a surgeon remove a vital organ for no other reason than to give it to someone else.

What I struggle with is that I had to do it at all.

This exchange occurred more than two years after my mother, then 68, went into sudden and unexpected kidney failure. I watched her endure months of life-sucking dialysis, depression, almost constant nausea and more hospitalizations than my father and I could keep track of. One night in the ER too much fluid in her lungs nearly killed her. I felt helpless beside her as an eerie gurgling, crackling sound emanated from her chest.

She was withering away. I cringed when she undressed. “Auschwitz,” I’d whisper in desperation, a plea for her to eat.

My mother — who just months earlier was a healthy, energetic artist who tended to her llamas and horses — was a shard of who she was, mentally, emotionally and physically. Dead in a way.

A transplant was really her only option to regain her life. But Michigan, where we live, has one of the longest organ wait lists in the country. Five years on average before a match, or a compatible kidney, becomes available from someone who died. A lot of people don’t make it five years. (By contrast, Ohio’s wait is about two years because — gruesome as it sounds — they have no helmet laws.)

Among the 200,000 Americans in the U.S. that the National Kidney Foundation says have chronic kidney failure and need dialysis to stay alive, in Michigan there were 2,261 people waiting for transplants in 2006 yet just 571 were performed in 2005, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

For my mother, the outlook was even grimmer. At her age, even if she did match someone, she’d likely be passed over for a younger candidate on the list.

It was a lot of pressure on me. I was her only potential living donor. But what if I didn’t match?

And who would help my father, ironically another victim of kidney disease, someday if not me? A few friends offered to do it but were too old or had health problems. A couple of family members expressed interest but they just didn't work out.

My intensely private mother even allowed my aunt to post a plea for a living donor to her church bulletin while I scoured the internet for altruist donors. Amazingly, I found a Seattle woman who would, ostensibly, be a backup.

But what I really wanted to know as my mother’s drama became my own, was where were all the kidneys from people who died, people who no longer needed them? Why aren’t they donating them to people like my mother? They don’t need them. It seemed so unfair.

I was told once by a doctor in the transplant field that if every viable candidate who died donated their kidneys, there would be no list. That was maddening to hear. I’ve also heard that in some countries organ donation is mandatory, or at least part of the system, unlike the U.S. where you have to opt-in. Those countries have no wait.

But how to get someone to agree to donate their organs after they die? No one wants to think about that. I certainly didn’t before this.

People don’t want to think about death, much less dying too young. And it’s a strange thing to contemplate. “Someone will be cutting out my organs and putting them into someone else?”

And scary. “Maybe the doctor won’t try to save me because he has a favorite patient who needs my kidney?” Scenarios like at rare and mostly myth.

You also hear of people selling their organs to ready buyers. I understand the desperation.

Some think it’s against their religion. It’s almost assuredly not, from Muslim to Buddhism.

For my part as a living donor, I didn’t take it lightly. What happens when you only have one kidney? Fortunately, nothing. I take no medicine or do anything special. Many people are born with one kidney and don’t even know it. We really don’t need two but it’s nice to have a spare. It’s amazing that we can even do this. I still wish it wasn’t necessary.

You see, in 2001, my father told me he had kidney disease, too, inherited from his mother. His brother died from it but my father always thought he’d been spared. He discovered his fate a few years earlier never telling me because, after all, I had a 50 percent chance of having it and there’s nothing you can do.

Of course, I lucked out or could not have donated a kidney to my mother.

But now as I watch my father do dialysis I feel helpless. I know his chance of getting a transplant.

And I’m all out of spares.

Spring Fever

2007-06-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

I don't know what Spring Fever means to most people. I only know I was so overcome with a feeling I could not understand one day as I walked home from school that I decided: This must be it.

I was eight, maybe nine when I found myself in the midst of a moment so perfect it caught my breath.

The sky was impossibly blue, the air gentle and warm. The clouds so perfectly white and soft I could have curled up and slept in them.

And the trees, with their brilliant green buds and flowers so delicate, so sublime — rose, white, pink, lavender — I wanted to leap into the branches. There is something maternal about a tree.

Part of me ached to embed myself in the moment. Maybe forever.

This was visceral. This was intoxicating.

What I felt was profound. Ineffable. Maybe it was even an epiphany. Only I wasn’t sure what exactly I was realizing.

I do know I was strangely conflicted, in awe of such beauty, such perfection, something so ephemeral it hurt.

I wanted to cry.

At once I felt joy. Love. Happiness. Melancholy. Sorrow.

I felt it all.

I was overwhelmed.

This, I decided, is the fever. The ailment. The ache. The Spring Fever.

Maybe I recognized my own impermanence and the inevitable passage of time. That we cannot hold onto things forever but can only recognize them now, in the moment. Or forever miss the opportunity.

I like to think I connected with something deeper than myself. The world. Nature. All the time that ever was and all the time that will ever be.

Hold on. Look. Listen. Smell. Feel.

Take me with you, make me part of you.

I wanted to live in that moment. To possess it. To keep it. But of course, I could not.

Spring, this time of new life, would pass. Yes it promised summer but that too would pass. And on it would go.

We all age, die, move on. Though I wanted to stay, I could only behold this moment.

And in that I ached.

I don’t get so overwhelmed these days. My mind, I imagine, is filled with more thoughts that get in the way.

Today I went running. I passed a church along my route, whose sprawling lawn nurtures broad-branched trees, begging you to linger.

One with delicate white flowers swayed in the breeze like a giant dandelion puff. It captured me.

I did not want to cry. But I did slow down.

I did not want to possess it. But I did behold it.

Hair War

2007-04-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

My earliest memory of hating my hair — or at least feeling let down by it — was when I saw my best friend's big fat ponytail. I knew her from kindergarten through fourth grade, when, thankfully, she moved, putting me out of my misery of constantly comparing my hair to hers.

When she wore her hair in a ponytail, the diameter looked to be at least as big a bratwurst. Mine? I was lucky if my ponytail was thicker than a pretzel rod.

I have always had fine, thin, curly hair. Hers was thick, chunky, straight. She had these perfectly straight bangs that sat neatly above her eyes. That hair would haunt me for years, and those bangs, I finally stopped trying to emulate them. Bangs — straight ones at least — were not my thing. Or rather, not my hair’s thing.

I see pictures of myself now from grade school with wavy wisps you could practically see my forehead through, and wonder, “Why did I bother?” And in that same moment, I want to hug my little self and say, “Sweetheart, why do you feel so inadequate. You are beautiful just as you are.”

I still have to tell myself that.

I have come to accept my hair — better, at least — the older I’ve gotten. But that’s been a challenge. You see, as I’ve gotten older, along with my maturity and self acceptance, my hair has gotten even curlier and, detestably, frizzier. No one likes the frizzies.

No one.

So as I put hope, often fruitlessly, into products and curling irons and just the right round brush, I still resent not being able to wash my hair and just go. Out. With it wet. Oh, what freedom.

I know what you’re thinking. And sure, I could do that now. Go out with it wet. So what if my hair dries curly. Who cares? But I’d be torturously self-conscious. Almost sick-to-my-stomach self-conscious. Because I know you’d look at me funny, find me unkempt, hair askew and disorganized. I know you would.

I know it.

We live in an era where beauty is measured by media images, and perfectly managed ones at that. Apparently most American women pray at the altar of Jennifer Aniston, goddess of the flat-ironed look. I read that somewhere, that she has the most enviable hair in America. And you know what? It’s naturally curly or at least wavy. But how often have you seen it that way? Rarely. She wears it straight.

Virtually every bombshell beauty we celebrate has tame hair — Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Cindy Crawford. Sure, Farrah Fawcett was a goddess — and in her day I adored her — but even her hair was smoothed, tamed.

When was the last time you saw a corkscrew curly, frizzy-haired Nicole Kidman? Even most African American beauties — Halle Barry, Oprah, Tyra Banks — wear their hair smooth or straight. Where are the afros?

So when I see a naturally curly celebrity embracing her true hair, I have hope: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kerri Russell, Julianna Margulies, Virginia Madsen, Minnie Driver. These are my peeps! Take that you stick-straight bobs.

But it’s rare. And there is a message there. No one really wants curly hair. Not like mine.

This is what I’ve come to learn:

People see straight hair as sleek, sophisticated, no nonsense. Audrey Hepburn.

Curly hair — not the big smooth rolling Miss America curls, but really corkscrew frizzy curly — equals unkempt, sloppy, wacky. Throw in some freckles and red hair and you are really in trouble. Little Orphan Annie. Bette Midler. (Even she’s gone blond and straight these days. I can’t blame her.)

It’s so much more… Acceptable?

Look at Chelsea Clinton. She was that awkward child with wild hair. (Snicker.) She had no style. Now’s she coifed. Controlled. Put together.

I’ve read that “bad hair days” for women are a more serious psychological challenge than people would guess. I could have told you that.

I remember waiting at the end our driveway for the school bus, ruing those dewy, foggy mornings as they undid all my hard work smoothing my hair just yards away in my bedroom. Just a slight bend in my bangs, an ill-placed curl, would ruin my self confidence. Why? I’d wail inside as if I’d contracted the plague. I’m better now, thankfully, but only after years of distress. A humid evening when I had a party to attend would fill me with anxiety.

Oh, I know people always give lip service to curly hair. “You’re lucky. Do you know how many people pay for hair like yours?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from hairdressers, some of whom have convinced me to let my hair dry under the sun lamp. No matter how hard I try to explain how curly it is, I usually hear: “Oh, it really is curly.”

Even friends give lip service. “I wish I had curly hair.” Liars. They don’t really want my hair. They want a tamer version of my hair. They want to go swimming and sit on the beach while their hair dries into nice acceptable waves.

I want that too.

I have a friend who, whenever I complain of frizz, likes to pipe out: “Product.” I want to punch this friend.

God I hate that word. As if without “product” I’m worthless. No good. That’s like saying you have to wear makeup to be beautiful. I like makeup, I like product. But I do not want to be dependent on it. And, because I have the unruly combination of very curly and very fine hair, too much “product” weighs it down. Even with product, if I let it go naturally, it’s a fluffy mass that overtakes my head with bangs — really layers I wear off to the sides of my face — that shoot up like Kramer’s from Seinfeld. Gah!

I think I have hair only a mother could love, at least in its natural state. And she’s seen it really curly. I’m amazed how much she loves it.

I think she’s insane.

In fact, outside of my immediate family and my husband, I don’t think anyone has seen my hair totally air-dried. This is how vain and insecure I am. For this I am a little embarrassed.

Even with my husband, it took years before he saw it au natural. I probably allowed it in an effort to challenge his love for me. As if to say: Take a good look because this is me. Go ahead: Laugh. Gasp. It’ll just confirm everything I have felt all my life. I will be humiliated. I will be rejected. I will be laughed at. Openly. I knew it. Damn it. Damn you all.

Instead, he acted nonchalant. It was like I was pointing out an ulcerating boil on my face and all he saw was a tiny red bump. He even said: “It’s cute.”

I still think he’s crazy.

Unconditional love. That’s it. He and my mom. I’ll just never believe it.

And my poor mother. I’m sure she withstood more whining than she cared to hear. For once, just once, I wanted to know what really thick, smooth hair was like. So, somehow, I convinced her to buy me a wig when I was about 10. This was not some toy wig, some kid wig, some Halloween costume wig. This was the real thing. It was auburn, probably human hair, and came down to little below my shoulders. I even kept it on a Styrofoam wig head stand that I drew a face on.

I don’t think it gave me what I was looking for. Somehow I thought this would make me feel better. But once I had it the thrill was gone. I’d put in on, realize I wasn’t going to wear it out, and still have to deal with my hair.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m lucky to have the hair I have. I’ve seen people with far less hair than me and hair that’s far more unruly. Few people would realize how much I fret about my hair. It’s not worth it. I’m slowly understanding that.

I’ve even had my good share of compliments. Genuine compliments. I have good hair days. Even in high school, when I wore my hair blown out with smooth curls, one friend, with super straight, incredibly flat hair, always loved my hair, the body it had. Of course, I told myself, “Yeah, but she doesn’t know I’m a humid rainstorm away from total disaster.”

I do find ways to put it down no matter what. Last year at a friend’s grandmother’s funeral, one of the grandchildren, a pretty and precocious child of about 10, called my hair “pretty. It’s fluffy.” I felt immediately self-conscious, knowing that fluffy is really just-this-side-of-becoming-frizzy.

Actually, some days I do think I have pretty hair. I’ve learned to style it, and use good products. But mostly what’s changed is my attitude. And it’s not simply accepting my hair. It’s more than that. I actually see myself more like my mother probably does. I’m not quite there, not by a long shot, but I’m getting there.

I’ve even seen photos of myself when I know I was agonizing over my hair. And I think, “You look fine.” Sometimes, even: “You’re hair looks pretty.”

And I wonder about all the time I’ve spent crucifying my hair — myself — when I could have been more loving to myself and putting my energy somewhere more productive.

I look back now on how I thought all my problems would be gone when my best friend's hair moved away — how I’d hoped the self-inflicted mockery of my hair, the hair that didn’t measure up, would leave with her, too.

Of course, it didn't. Over the years there were more girls with "better" hair. More than I’d ever have imagined back then.

But of course there would be. Someone always has nicer, longer, straighter, prettier hair.

It took me a long time to figure that out. And to figure out that no matter what, I would forever have this hair. And it was a waste of my precious time to hate it, to wish it was different.

I still have to remind myself of this. But I sure have more self-acceptance.

Interestingly, I’ve been chatting with some elementary school classmates since they contacted me about a reunion. My old best friend's name came up. They think they found her.

Great, I half-thought. I guess I’ll have to see if that old comparison still stacks up.

But I don’t think so. I’ve got a lot more going on now than just my hair.

And the truth is, I always did.

No Need for Rehab

2007-02-03T14:11:00.000-08:00

I'm not a perfect person. Far from it. But I am a good person.

Still, friends are often surprised when I tell them I went though a little phase of shoplifting when I was younger.

The loot I was after was mainly cosmetics. I was coming of age and bedazzled by all the pretty colors and packages and products. I still am.

But back then, I wanted to try them all, possess them all. Of course, that would be expensive.

Now, shoplifting is usually not about fulfilling a real need. I imagine for some, stealing food is about feeding your kids when you have no money. That's about survival. I can almost excuse that.

But for most people, shoplifting is psychological. It fills a void. I've read that shoplifting is often linked to depression. I know I struggled with those feelings as a kid so I'm sure it had to do with that, and maybe even provided some excitement. After all, it's also classified as an impulse disorder, and for me it was a fix.

I'd do it, get a high, then ultimately feel worse. Guilty. Disgusted. I'd often have to rid myself of the objects just to get some relief. I didn't do this that often, but even once was too much.

I'll never forget one time at the local drugstore when I was around 12 or 13. I was out with my mother, who was at another store at the time.

As I eyed the goods, I tightened the cord around my hips on my pink cotton windbreaker, zipping it about half way up so I could use it like a shopping bag. I remember thinking how ingenious this was.

Up and down the aisles I went, amazed at how easy it was to imperceptibly slip in a lipstick here, a mascara there. I was on a roll.

Then I got to the car to meet my mother.

I felt such guilt. I couldn't stand it. "What did I just do?" I thought. I had to confess.

"Mom, I took all this stuff," I wailed as I opened my jacket, revealing probably a couple dozen items. Even I was amazed at how much I had.

"Take it back right now," she told me sternly.

"I can't! I can't! Please don't make me, please don't make me," I cried.

I was mortified and could not imagine walking into that store with all this stuff to tell the manager what I'd done. It was shame more than punishment that held me back.

"Please, please just take it back for me," I begged my mother.

I was intractable.

Now you might disagree with my mother but she did walk that stuff back into that store. I don't know exactly what she told them. And I'm not sure I learned quite the same lesson had I taken it back and faced them myself.

But do know that shoplifting is a serious problem. And thank god I never had a serious problem. I did stop.

Still, I was hanging around with some bad influences for a few years. One friend and her sister practically made a sport of it.

I remember being at the Limited a couple years later with them. We were in the dressing room and they were fully planning to take an item or two. When they encouraged me to do the same, I was staunch. I would not. Could not.

"I can't," I told them. "I promised myself I'd never do it again."

And then the thought occurred to me:

"Now, if you want to take it for me…."

Okay, so I appropriated my shoplifting to them, at least that one time.

But I did get over it. And I'm lucky I never got caught.

I would never do that now. Although these days, some friends might argue I still have a wee bit of a problem. On occasion, I grab extra Sweet & Low packets from coffee shops to use at home. And I do have a thing for those individual peanut butter and cream cheese containers. I can only find them at hotels and cafeterias.

I swear.