Throwback.....WTF? It's Friday? I don't care. Throwing us back in time anyway.

Beach walk on the rocky shores of Maine. October 2012.

This post is from January, 2009. My third date with the man who loves me. As I sit at his bedside, the pondering of the past five years is one of my comforts.

"I gave San Francisco to a woman," my ride from the airport says. I like it that he understands what I mean when I tell him I've had trouble being in L.A.  "It's a problem when a freeway exit sign represents a person and the experiences you've had with that person," he says.  He really gets it, I think as the 110 curves through downtown. "There's Mr. Ex's building," I say as the damn thing looms over us in the urban glow like a monolith that maybe has a mind of its own and just might want to tip over right now and crush us.  He looks over at me and nods. This guy isn't a taxi driver.  He's a Match. com guy and the ride from the airport is date #3.  We've been emailing the whole while I've been away--not obsessively--just very few days or so and I like him even better than I did when I left.  But the only thing I know about where our relationship is headed is simply that he's giving me a ride home from the airport.  One date at a time.  It's all I can manage. 

I panicked in the jetway.  What if I didn't recognize him? That last time I saw him, we'd sat in the dark at a dance concert.  What if he didn't recognize me?  Airport fluorescent isn't my best look.  What if he recognized me and pretended he didn't and walked away?  But when the escalator delivered me to the hallway outside of baggage claim he was there at the bottom--pretending to hold up a sign.

I had a fantasy for months after the marriage ended.  Whenever I came back from a trip, I'd imagine Mr. Ex had changed his mind and there he was at the airport waiting for me.  He was holding a sign and it said, Take Me Back or I'm Your Vehicle, Baby, a line from a Chicago song he'd always quote if he gave me a ride somewhere. Mr. Ex never showed up.

But now here I am in a car with a guy that did show up and we're driving through my past in the City of Angels.

Sublingual

This comes from Anne Lamott’s book, Traveling Mercies:

All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.

I am already grieving although the man who loves me is still among us. Today he ate half-dozen bites of watermelon, a strawberry, two or three walnut halves, the tips of fork tines coated with almond butter, and a thimble of latté. Oh, and two bites of chocolate ice cream. He told me a dream, and I tried to hang onto to it, but lost it. Or most of it. He was involved in a project, he said. In the first try at the project he was disconnected from everyone, and then in a different dream (or was it the same dream and just a different project?) everyone was working together......on something. It's hard to focus on words. There's the hum and hiss of the oxygen machine. And the place has its resident screamer. I don't think he hears her. But maybe he does. He and I have other things to talk about. The taste of morphine under the tongue. Sublingual. We talk about his dreams. His drugs. While I hear the  woman screaming down the hall, a woman we don't talk about. But a woman screaming down the hall Is a woman screaming down the hall. I hear the staff interacting with her.They're doing okay. She still screams. My only hope is that she's not in pain.

"You have to buckle up," my mother said to me tonight as I sat on the couch weeping. Buck up, I suppose, is the phrase she was after. A swing and a miss. Like so much of my communication with her these days. I was speaking to the man's sister on the phone. Is there anything I want from his apartment? Everything. Nothing. Him. Us. My mother told me and the man's daughter, who was sitting beside me on the couch, how her husband (my father) died standing up. Just like that he was dead. He only fell to the floor when she tried to move him. It was terrible, she said. It was.

"Are you going to the nursing home tonight?" she asked as she shook the last drops of martini into her glass. A swing and a miss. "Sure," the spiteful horrible grieving me wanted to say, "I'll leave you here stumbling and shuffling and go lie next to him." But I left those words under my tongue where they belong. Sublingual.

A poem by Ellen Bass. For Memorial Day. For Every day. "...in a wheelchair, each revolution of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves..."

Pray for Peace

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshiping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail,
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, twirling pizzas --

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your Visa card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Ellen Bass

And thank you to my friend Elizabeth for reminding me this poem exists.

Hopice:That was Yesterday/This is Today/Tomorrow is Tomorrow/

Yesterday:

We meet with the hospice rep in the hospital room of the man who loves me. Immediately, with a sad-eyed dog look and a honeyed voice, he blurts out a bunch of shit about how the hospice “can be there for us 24/7.” 

"Well, stop right there," I say. "So there could be someone 24/7 at my house if I took D home with me for hospice?” I'd already spent two or three days figuring out that wasn't possible. And that the 24/7 would be necessary since I also care for my mom.

Mr. Hospice Guy, henceforth known as The Tool then tells us nope, well, not really and begins talking about respite care only he keeps saying respice like it was a weak rhyme with hospice. If we need respice care, that’s 24/7, he says.  For maybe 3 or 4 days. Tool. He calls D “young man.” Tool. He keeps saying transition and transitioning. 

"You mean death and dying," I say. He keeps confusing Medicare and Medi-Cal every single fucking time he speaks. Could we please change the names of both of those programs? How about ElderMed and PoverMed so Tools can get it straight. When he leaves, I would chug a glass of poison if I could get my hands on one. Bartender, drinks are on me. A round for everyone at the bar.

Today:

A woman in an exquisite rose-colored polka-dot dress comes to fill out the hospice forms. She manages somehow to be simultaneously all-business and kind. After I get D settled in at the nursing home, the hospice nurse comes. She's wearing a pink smock with the name of the hospice and scrubs with hearts, but she's direct. Full of information about pain meds, and hope for being comfortable without being a zombie. She's asks if the goal is to get D to return home. "I would love to have him at my house," I say, giving her the facts of my seemingly impossible situation.
"It might not be impossible," she says. "Talk to the social worker. They have lots of community resources."

Tomorrow: Who the hell knows? For tonight, the man who loves me is in a nursing home. I'm sitting on my couch. Watching HGTV. I watched endless hours of HGTV after my divorce, never changing the channel. Maybe a couple of weeks from now, he'll be next to me, and the two of us will be staring a TV show where people obsess over granite countertops and his and her closets.

The Pie:

I was gone from 10:00 a.m. until after 6:00 this evening. M and her girlfriend stayed with my mom, bought groceries, reminded her to drink her Ensure,  made her dinner, AND they made a pie. Mixed berry. Gluten-free crust. It was beyond divine. Maybe this is a harbinger of the love and support that awaits us.

Report from Pillville: The Other Side of the Story

While things are going well with my mom (the CT scans did NOT show any cancer or tumors as cause for her weight loss,) things are going less well for the man who loves me. Still in the hospital, he's not really feeling great. However, his appetite might be making a comeback. I will take good news where I find it.

I took an early morning walk on the beach before I went to visit him and photographed from a  different point of view. You've seen dozens of pictures of the water, the waves, the islands on this blog, so how about this for a change?

view of the sand and the sky taken standing in the ocean

Years ago when I was acting, a sage director once told me it was absolutely essential to step out of the character's skin before leaving the theatre, especially when playing someone sick or dying. I frequently wonder what it's like to have the ancient body my mom possesses. My knees are 61. What do almost 90-year-old knees feel like? I wonder what it's like to "pull for breath" as my boyfriend so often says he does. I wonder about so many of the things that he and my mother are going through. I put myself in their shoes, but only for a brief moment. Then I step out again.

Report from Pillville: Life is Sweet

I am seldom out of my mother's sight when she goes to the doctor. I am the translator (interpreting what she "hears" with her nearly deaf ears) and the rememberer of what she forgets (although she remembers plenty.) Today I took her to get a CT scan, searching for the cause of her recent 12-pound weight loss, and a mammogram. When it was her turn, a curly-haired man in blue scrubs came for her with a wheel chair, and told me he could handle everything. He spoke loudly and looked into both her eyes and my eyes, so I gladly let him wheel her away.

"I take care of my mom too," the pretty blonde sitting next to me said. Both her wrists were trussed up in those braces people who have some kind of repetitive motion injury have to wear.  We talked about everything two women can talk about in ten or fifteen minutes. Men. Childbirth. Aged parents. Death. Illness. Injury. Children. Joy. Depression. Self-reliance. Technology. Love. When they called her name, she turned fully towards me and we grabbed one another's arms and held on for a moment. My strength into her. Hers into me.

 In a sappy version of this story, I'd remember the name that was called and go up to the receptionist before I left to see if I might leave a note for her so we could maybe get together again, and the receptionist would tell me they didn't see any patients by that name today. Something mystical for mysterious would happen then, and we'd all find out that she was really an angel or something like that. But she was real.

When one stumbles into encounters like these, there's not much to be done except savor the gratitude.

So my mom endured a long afternoon--mostly of waiting. She sleeps more these days than ever before, but hardly needs a pain pill. She sleeps late and often naps before dinner. Anytime a person comments on her age or asks her how she is, she says she's able to be up and around, or that she takes it one day at a time, or that she's fine except for the aches and pains that come with being old. It was not always thus. When she first moved in, there were a million things she had to have, never quite content. Every day seemed to bring a new errand for me. Now it seems that as long as I have gin, vermouth, half and half, and coffee, and yogurt in the house, all else can be done without.

Today we stopped for fro-yo at one of those places with a dozen serve yourself flavors and the full range of toppings from balsamic vinegar to old fashioned candies; from boba to hot fudge. Last time time she had the butter pecan. This time the sea salt caramel pretzel. She remarks over and over how delicious it is.

Fro-yo every time we're out. That's my new plan.

Tuesday Afternoon Weather Report

The clouds pile up against the mountains until they become mountains themselves. The blue sky comforts me on this May afternoon. But the wind, which today is cold, not hot, I find unforgiving. I foist words onto natural phenomena, practicing anthropormorphism with abandon. Trees scratch at my windows as if they want in. The neighbor's wind chimes call me toward something, but what? I ignore, but they keep calling.

Comfort. Forgiveness. Wanting. These are words for the day you tell your boyfriend you can no longer care for him at your house. You explain that you cannot be the day nurse and the night nurse. That you never wanted to be a nurse at all. That you know nothing of what you need to know. That crisis hovers in the corner by the bed where he sleeps and that you see its hungry eye on him.

You know love. You know fresh green juice. You know the numbers 9-1-1. You know that clouds are not mountains and that sky and the wind care nothing for anyone.

Weekend Recap

In chronological order, beginning with Friday afternoon:

My mother weighed in during her doctor's visit at 99 pounds.

On Saturday Piper, our beloved and ancient cat, died.

Later that evening, the man who loves me was taken by ambulance back to the hospital.

I came home from the E.R. in the wee hours of Sunday morning to find I'd forgotten to take my house keys with me and was locked out, thus having to awaken M, who due to Piper's final hours the night before, had barely slept.

Today I turned off my phone and, after briefly checking in with my mom to say good morning around 8:00 a.m., went back to bed and slept until 3:00.

I might be coming down with a cold. But as I sit here with my cup of tea, I am aware that the figurative cup overflows. Many loving condolences re the cat; daughter C's offer to come to my side; friends who've left messages saying that no distance is too far, if I need them; a friend who proofread the galleys for my book while my brain went out of writer mode and into survival mode, another friend who came today and allowed me to do some hard thinking out loud, helped with chores around my house, and brought us strawberries; my mom, who in her frail state is still more than willing to pitch in and help in any way she can; M doling out love to Piper, me, and my mom and offering to drive me to the hospital.

I sit here in the dark, replaying it all. Re-evaluating, re-grouping, readying myself for tomorrow.

Thank you. All of you.

R.I. P. Piper the Cat/The End of an Era

Piper Emanuel, the last of a long line of Emanuel/Clemen pets, left this earthly paradise May 17 at noon. She was twenty years old, outliving her hardier and more athletic sister Snowflake by a surprising four years.

Both Piper and Snowflake joined the family in the summer of 1994, chosen from litter of kittens born to none other than the cat owned by Miss Drew Barrymore. Emanuel daughters C and M each chose and named a kitten, Piper originally belonging to Colette. After only a brief interval the daughters traded kittens (or the kittens traded girls) with cuddly Piper seeming more suited to cuddly M, while the garrulous Snowflake enjoyed animated conversations with C.

Reclusive in her early days, Piper became more outgoing after her sister's death. Her later years found her channeling her sister's spirit as she practiced promiscuous lap sitting, purring for practically anyone. Some months ago, she was reported to have even sat on the lap of a child.

Piper experienced many changes in her long life. She endured three moves, the break-up of her family due to divorce, and the departures of both C and M as they grew up and left home, as well the comings and goings of numerous houseguests.

Piper was preceded in death by a long line of family pets. In addition to her sister Snowflake, those that went on before her included the cats Big Mac and Little Guy and dogs Lulu, Freckles, Layla and Lola.

Piper did an outstanding job in her role as last family pet. Equally proficient in both receiving and giving love, Piper spent her last night on this earth purring in M's lap. Even her final departure was a generous act. Her heart beat its last just as the vet walked through the door.

Well, this day had a fabulous beginning for someone.

Maybe this person slept in the lifeguard tower and had taken off for a swim to the islands by the time I arrived for my walk. Then again maybe a shark bolted across the sand and devoured him/her. Everything always hangs in the balance, whether we admit it or not.

I walked. Decided it was too hot. Then decided it wasn't and took a second walk. Afterwards, I went to yoga. Set my intention as simply "love."

But first, during the initial walk, I ran into a couple who asked me to take their picture. It was a re-staging of a favorite picture of them from 15 years earlier, they explained. They stood facing the ocean leaning against one another in tree pose. Okay, I said. Now take my picture.

It was hard to balance on the sand. Easier to be two trees, than a single tree.

And now a poem.

copied from the poets.org website  The Fire   Katie Ford

When a human is asked about a particular fire, she comes close: then it is too hot, so she turns her face— and that’s when the forest of her bearable life appears, always on the other side of the fire. The fire she’s been asked to tell the story of, she has to turn from it, so the story you hear is that of pines and twitching leaves and how her body is like neither— all the while there is a fire at her back which she feels in fine detail, as if the flame were a dremel and her back its etching glass. You will not know all about the fire simply because you asked. When she speaks of the forest this is what she is teaching you, you who thought you were her master. There was a quickly knocked down fire last week.   It's impossible not to think of fire in southern California when it's hot and dry and windy like it is today. It's impossible not to think of the phrase trial by fire. Or the word  crucible. Or hell.  Or chemotherapy. Or radiation. Or the image of walking across hot coals as a test of one's fortitude or belief in not being burned.

Anything is Possible.

I accomplished many things today. Things that would not impress anyone, really, but I feel like I have superhuman powers due to said innumerable trivial accomplishments. I could go to sleep or I could stay awake FOREVER. DOING MORE TRIVIAL THINGS.

Perhaps I should mention that I've been sleeping a lot prior to the combustible energy I experienced today.

And perhaps I should mention, that tomorrow, the man who loves me might sit in the chair pictured above--at the makeshift desk in my room. It'll be rather remarkable if he sits anywhere since he has been mostly asleep since Thursday night when I took him to the ER. But he's been infused with blood and antibiotics and fluids, so who knows, anything is possible. Anything.

State of the State of the Margaritaville

It not yet 8:00 p.m. here in Margaritaville, and I am in bed, wearing my warmest pajamas while the wind tosses patio cushions askew and makes my house feel about as airtight as tent fashioned from a fishnet. In bed with me is my heating pad, a sorry substitute for the man who loves me. The man is tucked into a hospital bed (where he's been since Thursday night,) and if the energy level he exhibited when I left him around 4:30 remains the same, I'd say he is fast asleep. Once again he's been laid low with a soaring white cell count, and this time he had a racing heart and a fever to go with it.

"You knock me out," he murmured when I kissed him good-bye. He looked at me the way he looks at me. Go ahead, imagine it--because I don't have the words for it. Maybe it's the way you'd look at a woman made of water if you were dying of thirst. The way you'd look at a woman breathing out sunbeams if you were freezing to death. Yeah, something like that.

I came home from the hospital and made my favorite no-brainer of a dinner. Salmon poached in a little vermouth, sweet potatoes, green beens, and sliced tomatoes and avocados. I loaded the dishwasher and left my 89-year-old mother to wash the pots and pans.

And in other news, before going to the hospital, I drove to 65 miles to a divorce mediation first thing this morning. Long time readers of this blog, those of you might recall its original name, which I am prohibited by order of the court to render into  print here, sit yourselves down. The mediation went well. Yes, indeed, two months short of seven years since the uttering of the sentence with the trifecta of bad news (our marriage is over, I'm marrying someone else, and we want the house so we can raise our new family here,) the mediation went well. 

It's been a mixed day. And while I would not have ever thought it possible seven years ago to imagine   being more sad than happy on a day when the divorce mediation went well, that is how it is here on this particular evening in Margaritaville.

A Story in Pictures

LAST NIGHT'S MIDNIGHT SUPPER

THIS AFTERNOON'S PAJAMA PARTY

THIS EVENING'S VISIT

Then This Happened: Snowy Plover Nest Follow-Up

This is the spot on the beach where I discovered the Snowy Plover nest yesterday. This morning I was thrilled to see that there's fencing around the area, and a sort of cage dropped on top of the actual nest. I'm not sure if it's the Audubon Society or the State Wildlife folks who do this, but it certainly was a timely response. (This cage does not hamper the birds movements--they can walk in and out.)

The next photo shows why it's so crucial to protect the nest.

How would you ever spot eggs that look like rocks if you were driving a truck across the sand?

Based on the birds I saw this morning, I'm pretty sure there are at least a couple more nests out there on the open sand. When I get the fancy birder binoculars I ordered, I'm going to go back out to that spot and have a look.

Am I having fun? Yes, I am. This morning's beach walk also included dramatic divining pelicans, whimbrels, and black-bellied plovers. Paradise. Right here. Right now.

Bird of the Day: Snowy Plover

After a bit of training, I became a docent for the snowy plover a couple of weeks ago. But because the wind has been so fierce here the past week, I've barely been out on the sand at all. Today the wind has scaled back to a stiff breeze. so I went out to take a look at the fencing near the dunes, thinking maybe the cordoned off nesting area might have lost all its ropes and stakes in the wind. Everything was in tact, so I did what I usually do on the beach. Walk, look, think.

As I walked, knowing what I now know thanks to the training, I was a bit more observant than usual. When I saw a snowy plover running madly dragging a wing, I laughed and froze. No, this was not an injured bird--this was a nesting bird trying to lure me away from some eggs. I haven't yet splurged on a pair of bird watcher binoculars, but after staying still, scanning the sand, and observing the bird, this is what I found.

It's a blurry photo--but look to the right of the large center plant--see the 3 eggs?!?

I called in my find, feeling like the Jane Goodall of the bird world or something. Now, since the nest is on the open sand not behind the fencing, I'm hoping some kind of barrier goes up soon.

Red

heron with rocks and bougainvillea to take your mind off this post

8:30 a.m.

I am 61 years old, and I am wearing red pants. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that my red pants and I are in a yoga class. But after this hour of serenity, I will drive to the seedy side of Hollywood, check my boyfriend out of a nursing home, and take him back to my house where he will take a break from the chemo and radiation that have been rendering him weaker and weaker. If chemo and radiation were assigned a color, in my mind, it would be red. So the red pants might be appropriate after all.

I do not like to buy clothes. Visiting the mall always propels me toward anxiety. I feel like a greedy consumer when I buy new things and much prefer a thrift store, but mostly, I don't shop anywhere; I just wear what I already have. I bought the red pants for daughter M to take on her 8th grade class trip. She has a master's degree now. When she abandoned the red pants early in her undergraduate days, I claimed them. They still look new, but usually I wear them only when my other two pairs of yoga pants, sedately hued in brown and gray and more than a decade old, are in the laundry. Today the gray pants were folded neatly in my drawer, but I chose the red pants anyway. I don't know why, but it seems important.

1:30 p.m.

We're home. I make fresh juice. Two kinds of kale, celery, carrots, grapefruit, lemon, blood orange. M and the boyfriend and I agree that it's tasty--though I briefly consider dumping some gin into mine. For the rest of the afternoon, it's managed chaos. There are meds to organize and discharge instructions to digest. We need a glucose meter and test trips, so M goes to Rite-Aid. I discover there's stuff, "an appurtenance," the boyfriend calls it, attached to the chemo port and taped to the outside of his chest. Tubes with dried red blood in them, a white clip and a yellow clip. He thinks a nurse in the hospital put it there on Tuesday. He has no idea if this thing needs maintaining. I make him promise he will not try to uninstall it, and I call the nursing home and then the hospital where he spent some time at last week. I call the chemo center and talk to the doctor on call. No one has anything relevant to say, so I Facebook my ex-sister-in-law who's a nurse, and then  I cook dinner. Rib-eyes on the grill, more greens with radishes and onions. Sweet potatoes.

10:00 p.m.

 I'm on the couch with M watching the watching the Clipper game. The boyfriend is in my bed, asleep. The blood in the tubes needs to be flushed, the sister-in-law nurse writes back. I fill my wine class, watch the Clippers win, all the while thinking of blood. Of red wine. My red pants. I might obsess all night over the blood in the tubes taped to boyfriend's chest. I might sleep, oblivious to all this terror, relieved that after two months away, he is finally lying next to me.

Have you seen me? Where was I?

I nearly bumped into her. Thirties, maybe. Or forties. Tattoos on her arms. She was coming out of a Pilates class; I was headed into yoga. "Didn't I see you last night?" she asked.

"Uh...I don't think so," I said.

"Where were you at 5:30?" She was accusing. Almost teasing.

"Uh...in my kitchen." Her brow furrowed, she tilted her head, smiled.

"Well, you missed a lot of fun," she said. I watched her as she clutched her exercise mat and walked toward the stairs. I unfurled my yoga mat, re-playing yesterday. My kitchen. My mother with her martini. Me, fresh  from a nap because I'd drunk half a bottle of wine with the financial guy at lunch. For dinner I'd popped a frozen pizza into the oven, sliced a tomato. Later that night I'd sat in my living room in the dark sipping on bubbly water, tapping this and that on the iPad.

When I awoke this morning, I had that traveling feeling. Like I'd been somewhere. 

The wind is having its way with us again today. There's been only a few hours of respite this past week. I'm edgy. Nerves jangling like the neighbor's wind chimes. Brain pondering space/time continuums. My hair looking like I might well have slept on someone's floor next to pile of empty beer bottles and forgotten all about it.