Paragraph to a Broken Relationship

We had nothing except each other. Bisquick pancakes or biscuits for dinner, made in an electric fry pan. Minute Rice and Campbell’s soup. But we didn’t go hungry. Let’s get married, you said in the Montgomery Wards parking lot. So we did. Our wedding and the party afterwards cost $85.00. The silver rings we exchanged netted change from a ten-dollar bill. My ring is black now. Tarnished. 

Just yesterday I sold the new ring you bought me for our 29^thanniversary. I think you were already planning your wedding and the new ring was meant to throw me off the trail. A pawnshop wanted the ring. And the pearl and gold earrings you gave me the year our first child was born. Two hundred bucks. I'm glad to have it. But nobody wants the pearls. They’re real, I tell the woman at the jewelry store, the man at the vintage re-sale place, the clerk at the pawn shop. I think they cost six hundred dollars, I say. They smile, sad-eyed. The pawn shop girl takes a pearl between her teeth to test it and shrugs. Pearls aren’t a big seller for us, she says. 

Nobody wants those pearls. 

Report from Pillville: Possums, Pills, Psilocybin, and Other Fine Things

I'm feeling incredibly accomplished.

I have three weeks worth of pills in pillboxes for my mom. I've been doing her pill sorting for several months now, and it only recently occurred to me that I could purchase additional pillboxes instead of refilling one box every week.

And because my mom eats about a quarter cup of jam on her toast every morning, I now have at least a dozen empty jam jars which means that I can pour out a couple weeks worth of martinis instead of doing that every few days.

So the drug and alcohol situation around here is awesome.

If I could just get my hands on some psilocybin, I think my world could quite possibly be transformed. I come so close sometimes to sensing the depth of my situation here as a caregiver. I know in my heart that it's an honor, a privilege, a true act of love, but it's so hard to hold onto that  minute by minute. Sometimes I feel it. A look in her eyes as she looks at me. That thread that pulls tight with something she says. And then it snaps, so frayed that I can't catch hold of it.

There's a possum hidin' in there.

Last night we had a long talk about possums. I wikipediaed the hell out of the subject at the dinner table. She's so curious about the possums in the pot. Just recently she's given up hunting down the booze and now I feel like I have to do possum patrol.

When my girls were little I got them a hamster. We got the furry little beast and the cage and the supplies upstairs to their room. "Do not pick her up or touch her," I said as I dashed downstairs to get some thing or another needed for the project of installing the hamster. You know what comes next. A scream, of course. By the time I ran up the steps, there was a trail of blood from the bedroom to the bathroom. I wonder how many caregivers have gotten the instruction not to let their patient try feeding the possum jam and toast. I'll try not to laugh when I say it to one of our near-palindromic duo (Amy and Mea are their names) arrives. And dear god of small furry things, watch over my mother. And the possum. Because when she's not talking about feeding it, she's considering that maybe it should be drowned in "the river."

Other accomplishments include a recovered chair seat so that it matches the decor. One way to know for sure that I've been body snatched is that I'll stop caring if things match. And I have houseplants. And M sent roses to my mom and to me for Valentine's Day yesterday.

Awesomeness, right? I really hope the next post is not about possums.

Smitten

I ran across this old photograph of my parents a couple of months ago. "1951 in the apartment" is written on the back. My mom doesn't really recognize the place, but it's mostly like their apartment above my dad's grocery store. The picture might have been snapped before or after they eloped. My mother is wearing the suit she was married in, and that seems to be a boutonniere pinned to my father's lapel, so I'd say this is as close to a wedding photo as one can get for a couple who got married secretly and then lived apart for months. I love the way he's looking at her. To be looked at like that is the sweetest of valentines.

A Pen and Poison. But Not a Poison Pen.

1) Overheard on the Gold Line between Mission and Chinatown. Night.

A guy: There's a million dollars in this cup. All you have to do is drink the poison to get to it. Do you know how much a million dollars is? C'mon all you have to do is drink the poison. It's a million dollars!!! Right here in this cup. Just drink the poison and it's yours! You can do it. Just drink the poison and the million dollars is yours.




2) Valentine's Day. San Pedro and 4th, downtown Los Angeles

Guy #1: (stepping out of a beat-up van) M'am, excuse me, do you have a pen I can borrow? Just for a second? I have to write a note.
Me: Let me see. (formerly striding down the sidewalk, but now stopped and rummaging in purse) Here's a pencil. Just keep it. (striding again)
Guy#1: Thank you very much!
Guy #2: (walking a few paces behind me, now catching up and holding out a pen to me) You can have my pen.
Me: That's okay. You might need it. 
Guy #2: I doubt that. You're the one who might need a pen. 
Me: Nope. Keep it. It's Valentine's Day. You might have to write someone a note.
Guy #2: (laughing) That's not gonna happen.
Me: You never know.
Guy #2: Did someone write you a note?
Me: Yes, as a matter of fact, someone did.
Guy #2: I thought so. You seem like a very nice lady.
Me: Thanks! (Guy #2 turns the corner, while I keep heading straight, but he walks backwards for a couple of steps as he blows me a kiss.)

Scenes from the City of Angels...and devils.

Valentine

Dear Cory, Colette and Maddy,

The days of Lego strewn across my family room floor seem a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.  But still, I hand you my heart.

Dear Katie, Sophia, and Jake,

I hand you my heart now and for all time. Be good. Do good.

 Dear  Man Who Loves Me,

You have my heart. Thanks for making my world feel like this.

photo credit for the stop-sign photo: The fabulous and talented Benjamin Le'Rawk Mattson

Life is weird. I know this because I'm a writer and I like to write the weird things down so I remember them. These notes might spark an idea for a story. And the weird things--coincidences, juxtapositions, etc. happen more often than one might think.

I'm living in France for a month and today I began work on a short story called La Voleuse. It's written in English, but set in France and has a French title and a French word employed here and there. I wanted to check the spelling of the word, 'voleuse.' I meant to pick up my French/English dictionary, but I mistakenly picked up my thesaurus instead. An old Valentine's Day card from my husband fell out. Not so weird, but the message on the front of the card was in French. Je t'aime, it said which means, "I love you."

Valentine

"Anti-valentine--(n) a curative measure, most often administered during the month of February; a kind of medicinal tonic, often melancholy, bitter or dark, traditionally made from paper, glue and epistolary materials," so read the party invitation sent our by the visual artists to the whole Vermont Studio Center community.  

Some made anti-valentines.  Some made valentines. The latter, I'm relieved to report, outnumbered the former.

It was fun.  But I'm not going to send it.

Tomorrow, they say, is Lupercalia, an ancient Roman festival of wolves that traditionally involved much drinking, carousing, and a ceremony where young men ran around clad in goatskins lashing people with strips of goat skin for good luck.

I'm feeling like my luck is pretty good, actually.

SAFE SEX

Here's a pre-Valentine's Day thought for those of us who might be afraid to risk an open heart. Risk is.....risky. But I guess I'd rather experience that vision of the pond's edge than close my heart to love altogether.

Safe Sex

by Donald Hall
If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident  they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;  if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire only the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each other as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—  then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread, no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,  no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge