pacemaker

My father's heart has suddenly stopped beating normally. Pacemaker installation at the crack of dawn Tuesday. Prayers, positive thoughts, much appreciated. Not ready for him to go anywhere.

stakeout success, part II

For a moment, they just stared at us. Karen and I were eyeballing the older woman, assessing height, weight, age. She looked to be in her late '70s, early '80s, a beautiful woman with snow white hair, smooth complexion, sparkling blue eyes. She was the first to smile, looking at me and saying "I know you, you're Audrey's baby girl."

It was not my mother, this beautiful woman in the cemetary, but it was my mother's stepsister, my aunt, whom I've not seen since the 1960s. The woman with her was my cousin, and the gentleman her husband. They were delighted to see us and we spent over an hour talking and laughing and hugging each other.

It was wonderful to hear them talk about my grandfather and how much they loved him. They were leaving these flowers on my grandmother's grave for Curtis long before he died. It was wonderful to hear them discuss his fierce protectiveness over his five children, how he divorced a woman who mistreated them while he was out on a run. This was comforting, because we've often wondered if he had any idea what my mother suffered at the hands of that bastard in Medicine Lodge. I am certain now that he did not know, that he would never have left her in that house if he'd had any idea.

Curtis told them that May loved purple, so the blossoms were always selected with that thought in mind. They told us how much they adored my mother, spoke of her sweet personality, her kindness, her love for her kids, her sharp wit and intelligence. Of course we talked about her disappearance, and the shock of it, how unexpected, how certain they were that she had to be dead, or she could never have left "those little girls."

They told us they had often thought of us over the years and that, in combination with a few other incidents from this weekend, started me thinking about the depth and persistence of people and their attachments to one another. Karen and I discussed at length how we are oddly unattached, how we seem to be able to leave friendships and acquaintances with little thought after the leaving is done. Was it abandonment that created this ability to simply unplug and disconnect? It's impossible to know, but when I hear of two people I'd not thought of in 40 years telling me they had long wondered how I was doing, it's an eye opener.

The same thing happened with one of my mother's dear friends, a next door neighbor I've written about before. Dot was thrilled to see us out for breakfast Sunday morning, grabbing me and hugging me repeatedly, telling her friend that I was "Audrey's precious little girl." She told me with tears in her eyes that she missed us terribly and thought of us often. I have thought of Dot since May Day of this year, when I wrote a post about leaving flowers on the doors of neighbors. But I can't say I've thought of her in the last 32 years since I moved from home and left Elmwood behind.

At church, my sister was accosted by several people who assured her they had been missing her, she who has not lived in that town since 1972. I find it so strange, almost as if I've been living on the surface of a life that has depths of which I've been unaware. How many people are out there who think of "Audrey's baby girl" and wonder how she's doing these days? I have no friends left from grade school, from high school, college. It feels like I'm leaving a wake of relationships, connections, lost loves, all trailing behind me as I sail through this life. The really strange thing, and Karen agrees, is that we don't feel anything missing. Maybe we are more disconnected than we know, even from ourselves? It doesn't feel that way, it feels self sufficient and independent and appreciative of time spent in solitude. Lots to think about. In solitude. Heh.

But back to the newfound aunt and cousin: we've exchanged addresses and will keep in touch. I made a short film of all of us discussing the events leading to our reunion. I am humbled by the thought of people so caring that they would continue adorning the graves of people related by marriage alone almost 40 years after death. My "new" aunt, Miss Dorothy, is a belle and our belle hearts connected on a different level. I admired her superb French manicure and we discussed how badly our hair was blowing about in the damp wind. I will go visit her, because I would like to spend more time with her, find out about her life and more about my mother.

So it was grand and exciting and we were immensely relieved we didn't have to sit another day. We have new kin and I am not disappointed because I never truly imagined my mother could be alive after all these years. It was an exceptional weekend, an exceptional experience. Perhaps I'll figure out something about myself, about this strange ability to just walk away from people and places. Maybe I'll talk it over with my newfound aunt, a woman who clearly knows much about attachment, when I go see her at home later this summer. Oh, and next year, I'll be at the cemetary placing flowers on the graves of my grandparents, honoring the memory of these good people, reconnecting with a past that was lost to me.

stakeout: progress notes

The stakeout continues, the happy news being that the cemetary is only open from 8 am to 5 pm, thus no need to arrive at dawn and leave after dark. That's assuming, of course, that my 89 year old mother wouldn't leap the fence after dark to leave flowers on the grave, thus eluding capture.

It's been great fun receiving updates throughout the day from my sister. Of course I recognize her cell number on caller ID at the shop, so I'm able to answer the phone with plaintive little whines along the line of "Mom?? MOMMY?? Where have you been, why did you leave us?" I don't know why it makes us laugh so hard, but it does. Somewhere in there is the healing effect of a shared dark humor in the face of tragedy.

stakeout

Thirty seven years after my mother vanished from the face of the earth, my sisters and I will be staking out the cemetary in Blackwell, Oklahoma. It's the place where my grandparents are buried, May and Curtis, and flowers have mysteriously appeared on their graves as long as anyone can remember.

My niece, who is mildly obsessed with my mother's disappearance, the only grandchild born before she vanished, is convinced it is her, Miss Audrey, making her way to the cemetary to remember her parents every year.

According to a cousin, the flowers are always there well before Memorial Day and no one has any idea who puts them there. May has been dead since the influenza epidemic of 1918; her death is the reason why my mother and her siblings were sent to live with the beast who abused them. Curtis had to continue his work as a trainman, which kept him away from home for days at a time. He couldn't know that May's sister's husband was a pedophile of the worst kind, a violent, twisted man. These things weren't news in 1920 and if they were known, they weren't discussed.

So is it my mother appearing at the cemetary, flowers in hand, to honor her parents? Is it even possible that she could still be alive and able at 89? Given her state of mind before she left ~ unmedicated bipolar with almost catatonic depressive episodes ~ it is really inconceivable.

Still, there's that hope forever tugging at my heart, a wish to finally find out what happened, what truly prompted her disappearance beyond our belief that her despair was ultimately too much to bear. Where has she been? How has she been? Did she ever find relief from her tortured past? Ever any comfort for her wounded spirit? I just wish I could tell her that it's okay, that I understand, that I love her still. I would like to let her know that it broke my heart, her disappearance, and that it was hard, of course, but that I survived and thrived and that I love my life.

I'm doing my part for the stakeout on Friday and Saturday. I might possibly drop dead in my tracks if I looked up to see my mother walking among the headstones after a 37 year absence. The news from the crew on stakeout this morning is that the flowers aren't there yet. They're in good spirits and filled with a kind of hope that is precious, no matter the outcome.

jello salad days

Tony at EvilGanome touched me with his post about country people and dinner and jello salads. I miss simpler times, though I love my life today. Since I'm back to avoiding work today (I worked all week last week), I looked up my mother's recipe for Cottage Cheese Salad in the First Lutheran Women's Guild book of Our Favorite Recipes. This is one of those fundraiser cookbooks and it's full of recipes from the good Lutheran women I remember from childhood: Grandma Wolfe, Mrs. Dorothea Gutzman, Mrs. Gonterman, my grandmother, my mother, all of those grand church ladies.

In the front of the book is a dedication: This book is dedicated to the Modern Home. In our home today, as always, life is centered around our kitchens. It is with this thought in mind that we, The Sponsors, have compiled these recipes. Some of them are treasured old family recipes. Some are brand new, but every single one reflects the love of good cooking that is so very strong in this country of ours.

Cottage Cheese Salad from Miss Audrey
2 pkg lime jello + 1 T sugar
2 c. hot water
Mix above ingredients and let cool 15 minutes. Add in order given:
1 carton country style cottage cheese (small curd)
5 marshmallows, cut up
1 c. mayonnaise
1 tall can Pet milk
2 apples, chopped
1 c. chopped nuts
1 c. crushed pineapple

how i learned to love a dog, part I

May 19, 2002, my husband tells me he has a terrible pain in his chest, right side. Feels like a muscle pull, maybe, but he spends the night sleeping upright. It feels better that way. The next day it's worse and the next night he sleeps leaning forward over a pillow so he can breathe.

Mike is really sick, has been for two years, but so much worse since October. His weight has dropped to 124 pounds; he's skeletal. His blood sugar's completely out of control and the pain from chronic pancreatitis is constant. Despite all of this, his gastroenterologist started him on Interferon and Ribavirin for Hepatitis C. It's the Hep C that's killing him, making a ruin of every organ in his belly, working out from the liver so scarred from cirrhosis that it's hard and barely working.

His pancreas is nearly calcified, the veins leading into the liver are enlarged and he has portal hypertension, a dangerous complication of cirrhosis. He's swollen with ascites, fluid building up in his abdomen. The spleen is huge and tender and he has gastric varices that are leaking slowly, keeping him anemic and weak and very tired. His platelets are extremely low, making the treatment for hepatitis a great risk. He sees his doc twice a week and has his blood checked weekly. He gets transfusions regularly, but they never help for long.

I mix his Interferon shots every Tuesday, following the instructions precisely, allowing the medication to settle and all of the bubbles to fade away. The drug makes him feel horrible, but he feels horrible anyway. He sleeps for days after the shot, but he sleeps all the time anyway. He can't eat, he's miserable, he's dying. I'm sure of it, that he's dying. I mix his drug every Tuesday. I give him the Ribavirin every day. I check his blood, give him his insulin. Sometimes I knock him out with Ambien if he's in terrible pain and nothing's working. I put him to sleep, I don't know what to do to help so I put him to sleep.

I try to put him to sleep when this pain won't go away, the one in his chest. It grows worse. He sleeps most of the day Tuesday after a terrible night, but wakes up around 6 pm and he can barely breathe. I want him to go to the hospital, he doesn't want to. He's been there a couple of weeks already this year, but the pain's worse, he can't breathe, and he relents.

I give him the shot first, though. The 12th shot of Interferon in this six month course he has to take for Hepatitis C, the result of a surgery in 1982 or maybe the result of snorting coke through a rolled up $20 passed around the table, who knows and what does it matter in the end? One method of acquiring this nightmare of a disease makes him an innocent victim and thus more worthy of sympathy. The other makes him a participant in his own destruction and makes his disease a shameful thing. Innocent or not innocent, he never signed on for this slow death, who would ever sign up for this, this horror?

We're at the hospital and the pain is excruciating. He has a high tolerance for pain, this man of mine. He's already on meds for chronic pancreatitis, now shots of morphine in the ER but they're not working, the pain just gets worse. X-rays, a CT, and a worried doc telling us there's a big shadowy thing on the right side of his chest. He's admitted by 3 a.m. and we spend the next 10 hours in a room with no information, with him fading in and out, he's out of his head, struggling for breath even on oxygen.

He's whisked away to the pulmonary lab at 2 p.m. and more tests. My childhood friend, now one half of Mike's ace medical team, holds his hand through the procedure of having his chest punctured to draw out the fluid from a pleural effusion. Suddenly he's back, he's coherent, alert. Still in pain, but he's back as the result of finally being able to breathe. He looks at me and I can see him. He sees me and knows me and I feel a rush of relief.

Brad tells me what's going on and says that this should help as long as it's not an empyema. Empyema, what the hell is that? It's a big clotted solid mass of infectious crap accumulating in the chest. Not to worry, though, it's something we rarely see and usually just in street people and folks without medical care. We haven't had one in the hospital in over a year. We'll do a chest tube to drain and he'll be fine, he's already better.

Children in white coats come to his room to puncture his chest and attach a pump to drain his chest of fluid. All is well, everyone's cheerful, his daughter stays for a bit while I run home to feed the cat, shower, change clothes. We have had angels from AA at the hospital all day, just there, praying, letting me know they care. At home I find a cooler with food and cards stuck in the door and flowers. It's a comfort to be loved when I'm scared out of my mind.

I'm back at the hospital in an hour, encouraged, hopeful. Mike's smiling, says the chest tube hurts, but he feels a lot better. There haven't been any nurses come by in hours. He needs a pain pill and is worried about sleeping. No nurse. Where are the nurses?

Another 90 minutes and still no nurse, though plenty of promises. He's seeming more agitated and restless. I give him his regular pain pill from the bottle in my purse and he asks for an Ambien so he can sleep. I go to look for a nurse because he doesn't look good. Nothing's coming out of the chest tube and he's not looking good. When I try to talk to him, he's not making any sense. The nurses promises to come. I go back to the room and wait.

This goes on and on and on. Two techs come and check his vital signs. I am watching him, knowing something's wrong. I ring for the nurse and an aide comes, looks at him, says he's just agitated because of the pain and it's almost time for more pain meds, don't worry. It goes on and on and on. I don't know what to do and I don't know if I am crazy, but he looks wrong, he's mumbling and moving around on the bed, when he opens his eyes he has this crazy unfocused look. I try to get him to hear me, to see me, and he doesn't. Something is wrong. Where is the fucking nurse?

Again I go to the desk, now I am agitated and crazy because no one is listening to me. I find the nurse in a side room bent over a chart. It's 2 a.m. and I finally convince her to come look at him. Just look at him. I run back to his room and stand in the door to be sure she's coming. She's dawdling along, it feels like a fuck you to my concern.

She walks in and I'm telling her again this is wrong, there's something wrong and she lifts his eyelid and whirls around and runs to the nurse's station. She runs back. Runs. This bitch I couldn't get to come to the room for hours is running. She has a pulse oximeter and she snaps it on his finger and it reads 50. Fifty. His blood oxygen level is 50.

She yells something over the intercom and suddenly the room is full of people and someone puts a tube down his throat and someone's squeezing a bag and I hear heartrate 196 and someone's on the phone with the doctor and I am standing in the corner watching all of this and thinking even if he lives I have just lost my baby. He will never be the same because I've sat by his bed thinking something was wrong and not knowing and trying to get help but did I try hard enough? and his blood oxygen has been half of what it should be, half, and I have done nothing, I have let this happen. If he lives this has ruined his brain, it's been hours, he is gone and I love him and he's gone and I let it happen, I watched it happen, I sat right here and watched.

Something clenches up in my chest and I feel as if I can't breathe and they take him away to ICU and I ask one of the nurses if he will be okay and she looks away and says I don't know, there's no way to tell, I'm sorry. The clenched thing in my chest shatters and I can't quit crying now and it will never stop, these tears, because I let this happen. I watched.

More to come in "how i learned to love a dog, part 2."

death on pittsburg

Please note: this post includes a graphic description of child abuse in paragraphs 2-4.

Several years ago when I was still doing child abuse investigations and Mike was trying to die on me, I arrived home late after a particularly difficult day spent watching a tortured baby succumb to her injuries.

She was a tiny, ethereal thing only four months old, an amalgam of palest cream and red and deep purple, the combination of her fair and perfect skin and her hideous injuries. She lay in the pediatric ICU absolutely still, incapable of movement as the result of a fractured skull and a massive intracranial bleed. The unrelenting pressure in her head would have been enough to kill her, but she had a ruptured liver and fractures, a battered doll-sized human being.

She died at 4:30 that Friday afternoon. Her wounds were uncountable and included tiny pearl-like toes nearly bitten in two, contusions and bruises covering almost every inch of her tiny body and, of course, the catastrophic internal injuries. Her mother had been "unable to revive her this time" ~ a direct quote I will never forget, implying as it does that there had been many other times.

It was the boyfriend who killed her "out of boredom" ~ another monstrous statement which I have tried and failed to extricate from my memory. His nightly antics with this fragile infant included throwing her across the room, swinging her around his head by one foot, one arm, biting her feet, toes, fingers, ears, suffocating her and reviving her, over and over and over. The inhuman being who gave birth to this infant had found the baby unconscious several times upon arriving home from work. A cold water bath had previously revived the little girl and for the sake of a twisted love ~ of the man, not the child ~ she remained silent.

This was running around in my head, one of the most revolting episodes of child murder I ever encountered, when I pulled up and parked in my driveway at the end of what was a hideous day. Exiting my car, I noticed a pair of downy woodpeckers at the feeder. They were clearly companions, feeding each other suet and seeds, and I immediately decided they were in love which took my thoughts to my love, Michael, sick in bed and not getting better.

He and I have a history of comparing ourselves to birds: the mourning doves nesting on the windowsill one year, beautiful birds who mate for life, caring for one another with such solicitude, reminding us of ourselves. The swans at the lake across town ~ another pair, mating for life, constant companions, obviously devoted to each other. So these small black and white birds hanging out together, feeding each other, fluttering about and notably enjoying life made me think of us in happier times, when our life seemed enchanted, when happiness was a constant and joy a permanent resident in our home.

The birds took off as I approached the front door and I turned to watch their swooping low flight across Pittsburg Avenue. What a stunning thing, to be able to fly, and these two were graceful and lovely, virtually dancing through the air. One swung especially low and POW was smashed by a passing car. The car sped on and the companion bird fluttered to the street, standing by the still body on the concrete making a soft chirring sound, nudging his felled companion with his head.

Having had a close up of this disaster, I found myself sobbing so hard I could barely breathe. I flew up the walk, the stairs and into the house to tell Mike about the bird, to ask him to go and see if there was any hope for the stricken creature in the street. I could not do it, could not look at that small feathered body, and he could not either, being too sick and weak on that day to even get out of bed.

I wept and prayed and raged at God and demanded to know how shit like this can happen. The birds, that innocent little girl, and foremost in my heart, of course, the two of us. How can two people be so completely happy, so joyously content, doing good work, living a charmed life and POW out nowhere comes the speeding car of devastating illness, laying one low and breaking the heart of the other.

This is the eternal question, I suppose, but the universality of it in no way diminished my own heartbreak nor my own fury over the unfairness of it all. All illness is unfair and I'm not one to whine about it as a rule, but watching the love of my life dying every day was intolerable. It was more than I could bear and I don't know yet how he survived or how I got through it. I don't know how people do these things and I will whack the next person who says "God doesn't give us more than we can handle," because I know that He's confused me with some strong bitch, some backbone-of-steel disciplined rigid unemotional wench who can handle this sort of thing because I can't. I can not.

And yet Mike did survive and he thrives and I survived too. That is a gift and I am entirely grateful for it. At the end of another day spent in a good life with my soul mate, I give only a passing thought to those years of illness which are almost beginning to seem like ancient history. There's laughter in this house again, much love and that extravagant joy that sweeps in out of nowhere and lifts up my heart.

I am standing on the restored floor of a life I once thought was completely solid and unbreakable. It's easy to think that when things are so perfect and there's so much love and passion and kindness and affection. The floor is good and strong again, but it has been broken through and will never be 100% and I will never quite relax into this life and this love as I once did.

I don't think of the future much and I have moments when I think "how many more years do we have?" It's sad and it's life and it's okay. We're not guaranteed anything, I know that. We had a spectacular 10 years of heaven and some folks never get any heaven on earth. But then spring comes and the world feels so fresh and new and I imagine for just a moment that we are back in those first innocent years of our life together and I can actually feel my heart expand, physically feel it. I love this man. I love this life. We have this day, just like everyone else and I am grateful for it.

surgery

My father waits for the surgeon propped on pillows in a hospital bed. He looks frail in that ridiculous cotton gown, but the blue of the thing sets off his silver hair and every nurse who peeks in tells him he looks handsome and he does. He smiles at me and asks over and over if he's in Dodge City at the hospital where his sister died forty years ago. The nurse comes to take him away and I kiss the top of his head, clasp his hand in my own, whisper I love you Daddy.

I look into his eyes and see a ring of blue around them. The golden-flecked chestnut eyes I've looked at all my life, the ones I see in the mirror every day, have changed. They are nearly black, ringed in blue. It's startling, this black and blue, and disconcerting.

Those eyes have seen so much and now they're dark and closed somehow. I think maybe they're turning black and opaque to keep the memories in, like keeping the drapes closed on a winter day to hold the warm inside. A lifetime is stored behind those eyes in a brain that shrinks infinitesimally every day.

Each lost cell takes away another moment. But where do they go, these memories? How can the richness of his extraordinary life just vanish? Do the memories evaporate into the empty space where his frontal lobe used to be? Released from the wrecked cells of his brain, do they fly back out his eyes in the same way they got in? I wonder if these dark drapes covering my father's eyes will keep him with us a little longer. Him. Who he is, my daddy. Not the shell he will become.

I pray for God's will to be done with my father. And while I'm at it, I tell Him that dying with some measure of dignity, some remnant of self would be a generous gift to this precious man, to us. Please and thank you God. Please.

boo hoo hoo

A post at Long Story Longer made me think of the first time I let loose and cried after a 13 year tear hiatus. It was early New Year's Eve, 1982. There was a year-in-review retrospective on television and it caught my eye. I was about three weeks sober and something about the Vietnam Memorial hit me and suddenly my eyes filled and then my cheeks were wet. Within a few seconds I was sobbing with that breathless gut level urgency that bespeaks tremendous pain or an unexpected escape from something dreadful.

LSL wrote ". . . I also cried like a schoolgirl with no lunch money. Actually, I think it would be called sobbing. I had to concentrate to not go into the loud cry." This was the loud cry: uncontrollable, the body's wet and wracking response to hurt that is, at least for the moment, unspeakable.

I quit crying at twelve, about two weeks after my mother vanished. It seemed I had spent those two weeks at the front window, listening, watching, expecting that she would return only to reach a point of certainty that she was never coming back and crying wouldn't make it happen. I gave it up. Tears reminded me of those hopeless two weeks at the window. This loud cry on New Year's Eve was 13 years of stuffed, wrapped, constricted, should-have-long-since-been-let-loose need to cry and it went on and on and on. The post-tears calm was notable in that I felt peaceful and free. Remarkable.

Over the next several years, the tears were like slow leaking springs in a rocky outcropping. I was a hard, hostile, angry young woman with tears in her eyes. My AA card players, those precious old men who "adopted" me when I first got sober, would smile when the tears would come, then one or the other would get up and come around the card table to hug me and rock me and make it okay. They couldn't make the hurt better, but they could make it okay to be a tough, rowdy, foul-tempered, profane child-woman with a tear streaked face.

In my mind, tears were evidence of weakness, of tenderness, of a soft inside that was vulnerable to hurt, and they accomplished nothing beyond letting others see my humanity. Exposing the soft center of me did not appeal. There was a crazy kind of strength ~ and an awful loneliness ~ in pretending to be invulnerable. But absent alcohol, absent excess food, absent all of those things I've used to manage life, there was no way to keep the wet inside. I leaked.

Once the well was emptied, I found a balance and now tears just come and go as I suspect they are supposed to. It's a shame that our society looks down on or makes light of tears expressed by men. Having had the advantage of crying freely for the last 24 years, I am saddened that the men I love have to struggle so with letting go in this way.

It seems that in my younger years my emotional life was constricted to a single point: anger. Rage, actually. As I got better, my range of emotions widened until I was capable of experiencing all of them. In the same way, the painful episodes of crying in my younger years have diminished and I've reached a point of being able to cry for all sorts of reasons.

Tears today come with hurt and sadness, of course, but also as the result of having a sense of peace, of spiritual connectedness, beauty, love and affection, tenderness. I think the best day I can have is one in which I laugh so hard I can hardly breathe, and also have the opportunity to cry just a little. I don't want to live a constricted life. I want a big, rich, full life brimming with every normal human experience and then some. Being the way I am, I want maximum emotion, maximum experience, I want the most there is, all the time, with great intensity. I think it's possible if I just let go.

Daddy

It was his pale complexion, I think, that got to me as I turned to say goodbye. The sight of him put a knot in my throat, made me wonder if this would be the last time I would see him. My father, nearing 90, once 6' and so strong, now looking so pale and tender, bent and very thin. He was on the porch to wave goodbye as I left this afternoon, the others forced inside by the 16-degree temperature. Daddy in his short sleeves, thin slacks, dress shoes.

Even as his mind is failing, he can hold on to the fact that his baby daughter has come to see him and is leaving again. He stands on the porch in the cold with a smile on his face. He waits until I reach the street. He is so pale, his once black hair now white, the deep tan he held my entire life vanished.

We complete a ritual part of my leaving for the last 32 years. I back out of the curving drive and tap the horn, he waves and smiles and even from the street I can see the love in his eyes. His mind is sharp for a few moments and our eyes and smiles and waving hands connect over that short distance, enough for him to know that I love him absolutely. I already know he loves me back, that constant fact of my life.

He will call my sister tonight and tell her that he never hears from me, that it has been weeks since I've called. He will ask her how I am and if my life is good, how's Mike, the little dog, "oh there are two dogs now?" I try not to care, to treasure the moments I'm with him. He can be so sharp in the instant of our conversations, my visits, but has no memory from one moment to the next.

Dementia is stealing my father and there's no one to rage at, to hurt, to strangle with my bare hands and stomp into the ground. I fold up all that fury and sadness and wrap it tight and keep it put away. It sits in a tight little knot in my gut day after day, a constant reminder. I want my daddy back.

So on a happier note

Boot Camp continues successfully. Eating better, drinking more water, getting ready for the beach next week. I picked up a copy of AARP magazine(!) at the gym and found some really great stuff. Can't wait until I'm old enough to subscribe in . . . oh, about another five months. Sigh.

There's an article in the Jan-Feb 2007 issue discussing a book by Daniel Goleman Ph.D., author of 1995's Emotional Intelligence. His new book, out soon, is called Social Intelligence.

Goleman suggests that our brains are interlooped and interconnected and that one brain will take its cues from another. He says "The brain itself is social ~ that's the most exciting finding. One person's inner state affects and drives the other person. We're forming brain-to-brain bridges, a two-way traffic system, all the time. We actually catch each other's emotions like a cold."

He continues by saying "If we're in toxic relationships with people who are constantly putting us down, this has actual physical consequences." By the same token, positive interactions prompt the body to secrete oxytocin, which boosts the immune system and decreases stress hormones generated by negative interactions.

I really like this, maybe because it confirms what I've long suspected (though not in those scientific terms). It is natural to take on a little of the feeling when someone we love is feeling blue. It's natural, too, to pick up on the excitement and joy of those closest to us.

It also explains to me that absolute joyous transcendant experience that sometimes occurs on a crowded dance floor at 3:00 a.m., and it explains how seeing someone crying and in pain can bring me down. Goleman says "It is critical that we stop treating people as objects or as functionaries who are there to give us something. This can range from barking at telephone operators to the sort of old-shoe treatment that long-term partners often use in relationg to each other (talking at, rather than to, each other). We need a richer human connection."

Goleman blames technology for a breakdown in this necessary rich communication, quoting T. S. Eliot on the television: [The television] permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.

Let's all turn off the TV, look at each other and smile. It's infectious, happiness, and despite the existence of folks like that miserable Donnie Davies, there's more good in this world than bad, and more love than hate. My brain's sending out love signals today. Hope yours is too.

All I want for Christmas . . .

Betty is better and all is well in my world. This may be one of the funniest things I've seen this holiday season. Turn your sound up and enjoy.

My Betty is sick

And I am fretting and can't stop. This little girl is my second doggy love, a rescued Westie/Jack Russell mix with a little deafness thrown in and a wide-eyed gaze that is as near human as I've ever seen in a dog. Since we returned from Mazatlan, she's been throwing up.

I know dogs do that and she's an investigative creature, quickly onto all manner of grotesque tidbits when we go for walks, so I figured it would pass. It didn't. Thursday she was bad and Friday worse and I took her to the vet. He gave her a shot, sent her home with pills, she slept in my arms all afternoon.

I was on the verge of taking her back because she was so lethargic when she hopped up and began to play her games, got her leash, engaged Billy in the roughhousing she loves. She's a tomboy dog, a rough and tumble little girl, fearless and intrepid and brave.

So she was healed and I've been thrilled and have continued pushing the nasty pills she hates down her throat per doctor's instructions. Only last night she got up and had the runs. And then up again and again. Had to wash her back feathers at 5 a.m. because she could not calm down and I hadn't realized she'd soiled herself and this little tomboy dog is girlie enough that she can't stand being soiled.

Now she's sleeping on my lap but making these little moaning sounds. My magic magnifying mind has her at death's door the same way the spot on my arm discovered in the shower turns into melanoma and limb amputation and brain cancer before I even run out of hot water.

I remember so well how I felt when it became clear that my husband was very sick. I spent many years protecting myself from the pain of losing a beloved Other, and when the doctor called from surgery to say his liver was a disaster and to ask permission for tests, there was a very clear curtain that came down between Life Before and Life After.

Life Before did not take into account the potential for loss. It was magic, pain-free, innocent, lovely. Life After was terrifying, carried an aching constant pain, a horrifying awareness of helplessness in the face of the capriciousness of disease, and tremendous grief.

It was surely the disappearance of my mother that set into motion this need to protect my heart, the protection which ultimately kept me shut off from Others for a very long time. But faced with the loss of my husband (he is relatively well now and I am so grateful), faced with the possible illness of this small dog I love so madly, I am reminded again that loving the Others hurts. It hurts and when I am caught up in that pain I think "Idiot! You learned this lesson, you fool why did you let go, why?" and I just want to run away and find someplace alone to lick my wounds and protect my heart.

Being open in this life carries great risk. I think it's a little like childbirth (so I'm told): you can experience agony but then a little forgetting sets in. It takes forgetting to be able to forge ahead in love and in life. The unbearable nature of loss was what prevented me from a lasting relationship for so many years. The fear of having no control fueled my transient dalliances with men and ensured that I would dip into their lives and vanish before I faced a separation instigated by the him of the moment.

Once love happens, though, the opportunity to flee disappears. I am stuck loving this little dog, no matter what's wrong with her. I am entrenched in loving this husband who probably will not grow old with me. Every life has its vagaries and uncertainties and living in fear of the future is something I do not choose today. I choose to live in love and joy and happiness and I am there the vast majority of the time and yet this morning I am afraid and sad that a creature I love is in pain. I love this little girl and in that act is the potential for heartbreak.

Over it

Mike came into my office at the warehouse and plopped down, saying "it's going to be a sparse Christmas, honey." These words are something of a misnomer, because he's got gifts stashed in his closet from earlier in the year. But just the sound of these words from my sweetheart gives me such immense joy I find it hard to hold it in. I have been over the collecting urge, over the acquisitional drive, over the wish to spend, accumulate, gather up, have, own, take care of stuff. I am weary of stuff, weary of the feeling of being tethered by things. I have been hoping he'd get over it too.

We used to shower each other with gifts. Shower. It was ridiculous, really, almost obscene, but we'd tell ourselves it's our money, we love it, it's fun, and so on. It was lots of fun at the time, but doesn't even get me excited now. How much stuff can one person have? And what, ultimately, is the point? This winter trip to the sunny beaches has cemented in my mind how much more precious memories and experiences are than the next antique compass or potlid or romance landscape oil.

He continued by saying he really doesn't want or need anything and just wants to travel with me. Hallelujah! This is the best gift I've ever received. I am full of joy this morning and hoping that y'all are as well. Ho ho ho! Off we go.

Off to Florida

But not 'til end of January, alas. Food is great, work is great. Sweet Mike feels so much better after a week away, he's making all sorts of changes in his daily routine. My world stopped spinning momentarily when he spontaneously went to the grocery store and bought healthy food. Who is this man?

As with all of our obsessions, we're heading out Saturday to obtain the proper accessories ~ ultra light weight carry-on bags, non-wrinkling-but-stylish clothes, running-through-the-airport shoes. Gotta get some passports, look for a cruise, find flights and hotels in Nova Scotia, Vancouver, Quebec, Belize, Panama, Chile, Argentina. Perhaps after all of that he'll take me to Paris. We have collected, gardened, auctioned nearly to death. I suspect we're on the verge of launching with single-minded obsession into traveling the world. I don't know how to do something just a little; he doesn't either. Some call it OCD, I like the idea of living with enthusiasm and passions.

The happiest times of my life I've been working toward something. This new pursuit will, I think, be the most exciting.

Laugh's on me

Always happy to get new lessons in life, and the laugh is on me today for having been reluctant to go to Mexico. What a marvelous time! And I have gigantic tooth marks all over my body where the travel bug has seized hold and won't let go.

Did get my "swerve" on, did have a blast, did fall in love with my husband again, as well as the sunset over the Sea of Cortez, the unmatchable emerald of the waves, the pounding of the surf at night as we walked on the beach beneath the moon. I. Love. Mazatlan. This changed my head, my attitude about everything, my life. Wow. What an unexpected delight.

And it snowed a record 16" while we were gone with temps in the single digits ~ unheard of in my small corner of the south. I heard that news standing on the beach with my bare feet dug into the sand while the incoming tide lapped around my ankles.

I am on a pink cloud today. Hope you all are too.

Off to Mexico

Friend of mine says "get outta town, get your swerve on, girl." I tell him "but my husband's going." Sigh. Back early December. Don't want to leave, don't want to stay. Maybe walks on the beach and hikes up to the ruins will revive me. Hope y'all are revived and that you survived the food addict's national holiday in good shape.

Life is so intrusive

How is a girl to get anything done for herself with life always getting in the way? Sometimes I feel like such a baby because I go and go and go and then I start feeling a little weary of it all. Start thinking of that sun-filled upstairs single room in the old Victorian rooming house in some unnamed southern town in the Smokies. Imagine my four hour a day coffee shop waitress job, how divine it would be to work a bit and be done with it, have no one else to deal with or take care of. Just free and quiet and by myself in heaven.

Whaaa whaaaah. Ugh. I am whining because I have to go to Mazatlan in a week. Family members will be arriving all of this week in preparation for Thanksgiving. The boys at the shop are useless without pretty constant direction. I hate to fly. We're behind at work and no real time, as crazy as it sounds, in the next eight days to catch up. And I have not been to the gym because of all this stuff. It's frustrating. Somehow I have to turn all of this around and get grateful.

My gratitude list: personal health, husband's survival and stable health, wonderful family, great business, sweet nest of a home, precious animals, good finances, good friends, the sun is shining, I'm eating healthy even if I can't get to the gym today, I could help a stranger and did. Suggestions, anyone, beyond read and reread?

One perfect day

A glorious day in my hometown yesterday, spent in the company of family in honor of my father's 89th birthday. It was cool and the blue of the sky was so intense it was breathtaking. Ponca City is full of trees and the colors of the leaves against the cerulean sky are sufficient to convince me that the Creator is an incomparable artist.

We went to a Veteran's Day parade! A parade!! I haven't been to one in 30 years or more. Daddy is a veteran of World War II and it was so moving to stand with him while the old planes flew overhead, while the vets passed, waving, in their classic cars, while the Army band played those American classics that will bring tears to the eyes of even the most sophisticated and cynical. I am neither of those things, being far too emotional to hold on to sophistication, and fighting vigorously against cynicism in all its forms. Something in my heart and soul opened up and it almost seemed as if there were a connection, truly, between those who sacrificed so much for our freedom and the intense gratitude I feel for their incomprehensible selflessness. Could they possibly sense that? I hope so.

I have said before and was reminded again that a life of days filled with laughter and love, with moments of being moved to tears by gratitude or affection or sadness, is the best kind of life. I am so easily distracted from these basics, and then when I am standing beside my father, when he turns to me and smiles as ancient planes swoop low, shaking the earth, when the small town crowd cheers and applauds, when the band plays and it all comes together into this crescendo of perfection . . . I get tears in my eyes and I think remember this! remember this moment, this feeling, this time, don't ever forget how this feels, this sweet moment in this glorious life. Remember him. Don't ever forget this day, his loving brown eyes, the look of delight on his face, the feel of his warm hand in my own on this one perfect day.

Tears in my eyes again, writing this. My tears are, for me, the measure of reality, of finding a way past the tougher surface of a life down into what matters. What matters is the love I have for this man. It matters that I could spend a day with him and hug him and love him and let him know it and feel it. It was a good day yesterday ~ he was a little forgetful, but wholly present. That is a treasure, an incalculable and unexpected gift. I am so, so grateful.

Daddy has dementia

It sounds like the title of a comedy, but it's no joke and it's breaking my heart. My brilliant father, 89 years old, one of the single best human beings I've ever known is losing his mind.

I feel honored to have a father like him: a gifted intellect, a talented scientist of world renown, a man with humor, compassion, kindness, a down to earth sensibility that made him always available, always ready with a helping hand, a listening ear. He's the man who held my tiny hands and "flew" me around on his feet, one of my earliest memories; he's the one who snatched me out of bed at 3 a.m., dashing outside to lift me up so I could suck the cool night air into my croupy lungs. This gentle man taught me to fish, to mix concrete, to plant a garden, to appreciate opera and classical and the old hymns of Martin Luther.

He is the one who stole out in pre-dawn hours to gas up my Toyota as a secret gift before I left for Texas, but who then saw fit to wake me and give me a heartfelt winners v. losers lecture related to the flat spare tire in my trunk. (In case you don't know, a winner ~ even a 19-year-old wild child ~ will always check her tire pressure and the pressure of the spare before embarking upon a 600 mile journey.) In those pre-cell-phone days, the thought of his baby daughter on the road without a spare gave this sweet man the shudders.

He called every morning the five years I lived in Texas, the years I was most commitedly on a path of self destruction and the years in which I ran completely wild. The one thing I did every day other than hit the bars was to make myself available for that phone call. I rolled out of countless strange beds, cut short many a night's party to be available for that critical conversation. The single time I missed it ~ in a four day blackout which began on New Year's Eve of 1976 ~ resulted in his insisting that I provide telephone numbers and names of others who might know where I was if I failed to answer the phone. It seemed almost laughable at the time to send him the names and addresses and phone numbers of a bunch of drunks and political radicals, but I did as he requested and thereafter my friends would occasionally report that my father had called looking for me and, as one said, "he seems like such a nice man, how could he be a Republican?"

I think the disappearance of my mother had a huge impact on his need to always be in touch. Was it codependency? craziness? I don't know and don't care: I do know that he came to get me the moment I called for help. He came without judgment, driving overnight to load me up and rescue me from what had become a very dangerous life. That loving response marked the beginning of a new life for me and I am still grateful. Odd that I think of this as his need, when that daily call and the continuing connection with family anchored me in those stormy years.

I miss so much our long and intense, often emotional, political discussions. That was something I shared with him to the exclusion of my two sisters and his personal history ~ living through the depression, World War II vet, working his way through college and the attainment of three degrees ~ played into our lively and sometimes angry discourse. I miss that, terribly. I miss, too, our unified concern for the environment, for the survival of animals everywhere, our joint rage over the absurdity of cutting the last old growth redwoods, of drilling in the Arctic wilderness. We both rooted for the project to bring back wolves in force to the lower 48 and the tallgrass prairie preserve in our state enchanted us equally.

Most of all I miss his gentle and wide-ranging sense of humor. He is a humble man who has never boasted of his many accomplishments, who diminished the excellence of his education, of his brilliance. He was always quick to note and mark the accomplishments of others, however, and I never saw in him a moment's envy or jealousy.

This daddy ~ southern girls always have daddies, until they die ~ is disappearing one moment, one day at a time. It's worsening now. He is sometimes confused by the television remote, punching buttons and unable to distinguish between that and the phone. He calls repeatedly and each time I answer, because he does not know he's already talked to me and I can't stand the thought that he might wonder why I don't answer. In concert with the diminishment of his memory, he is more emotionally sensitive: my oldest sister was testy with him when he called late one night; that is one thing he did not forget, not for days, and it wounded him deeply.

I want to protect him, I want to excise the calcifications, the white matter from his brain. I can't bear that he will lose his dignity, his sense of self. I. Cannot. Stand. It. I can't bear another call in which he tells me about his dog, the one that doesn't exist. I can hardly stand to look at the beautiful card he sent for my birthday: his formerly perfect, miniature penmanship is large and shaky, with numerous cross-outs and two misspellings. From a man whose grammar and spelling have been perfect all of his life, it's too heart-breaking to go back and read the sweet sentiment in that card. I am crying writing this because while my mother was gone in an instant, gone forever, my father is fading and it is worse, much worse, than her disappearance.

I can eat at this. A pint of ice cream and a half cup of chocolate syrup would ease the pain. I haven't wanted a drink in years, but the comfort that comes from consuming sugar eases the sadness for a moment. It's always there, though: when I wake in the night, it's there; when the phone rings at dawn, it's there; when I see someone on the street who reminds me of him, my heart aches again no matter the distraction of the moment. This underlying pain is a constant and so the need for comfort is always there.

I don't know how this will come out except that everyone dies and he will too. I wish, wish, wish he could die with some part of his essential self intact, I wish that more than anything. The day is soon coming when I will walk into the room and my sweet papa will not know me. There is no comfort for that, no amount of sugar, no drug, no quantity of vodka which will ease that agony. It is the height of selfishness to think of my pain at this time and so I will distract myself, but not with food, not today. I don't think I can bear this in the end, but I will bear it for today and do so without turning to a substance for comfort. Just for today.