(Via)

My book review can be found here.

~

The first time that one of our children was discharged from this ward, it was on the first day of summer.  Not that that crossed any of our minds at the time.  Even the fact that the school year was over meant little, because he had not been in school since March.  My wife had taken leave from her job to be with him, but things disintegrated anyway.  That was during the worst year of the Iraq War, when bombs exploded in Baghdad frequently and unpredictably, to devastating effect.

I called our house Little Baghdad.

We were nervous when he came back home.  Though he was desperate to be free again, I think he was nervous, too.

He’s a lovely person, a true empath, who was tormented not only by his torments, but also by the effect that his struggles had on others.   He felt like a freak.  We all worked hard to reconfigure our home life, and, though he loathed the process, he worked hardest of all.  I’m proud of the work his mom and I have done, but he is the one who has taken on the task of sculpting his life from difficult and irregular materials.  I anticipate that he will create an unconventional, magnificent man of himself.

One of our decisions that summer that I’m most happy with was a little one.  We let him go to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

He was young — he had turned 14 in the hospital — and Rocky Horror is, well… not typically thought of as a children’s movie.  It is a movie about an innocent heterosexual couple forced by circumstance into spending the night at a rollicking party with transsexual, transvestite aliens.  It is a parable, a morality play, with the ostensible lesson being that we should each indulge our most hedonistic desires.  Not only are many of the people who go to watch this movie pierced and tattooed, they do not tend to cover these piercings and tattoos with modest clothing.  They tend to dress less Gap and more Frederick’s of Hollywood.

And it only plays at midnight.

I admit that sending our troubled, barely 14-year-old son to this movie, late Saturday night after late Saturday night, was not one of the recommendations listed on his discharge summary.  But memories of my own Rocky Horror viewings 25 years earlier, familiarity with the gentle, protective friends he always went with, and a couple of nights spent lurking nearby watching and listening to the crowd before the movie all reassured me.

He loved all of the Rocky Horror traditions.  Watching the movie is an interactive experience, with the audience interjecting and calling out variations of the lines in the songs.  People bring toast.  They throw rice.  It’s a mutual performance, with the figures on the movie screen seeming to wink and laugh with the audience.

And while the movie pretends to celebrate hedonism and sexuality, in fact it is a parable of a different sort.  Rocky Horror tells us to cherish each other in all of our quirkiness, to celebrate each of us as we are, to care, to nurture, to help each other flourish safely no matter how freakish we may feel.  Rocky Horror turns normalcy on its head.  When Brad and Janet, the young couple, arrive at the castle after their car breaks down, they are greeted by weird-looking people who seem to live outrageous lives.  We feel nervous for them.  By the end of the movie, we have become friends with the weird-looking people. We feel relieved that Brad and Janet ran into such a group of swell folks.  We walk out of the theater, grains of rice in our hair, lines from songs spilling from our lips, shivering in the 3AM cold, each of us happy to be our own kind of freak.

I don’t know which of the songs are my son’s favorites.  These are mine.  The first is one of the classics from the movie.  The second is just my quirky preference.  I think most people skip past it.  Fine.  Call me a freak.

I Can Make You A Man

I’m Going Home

I had my very own bad boyfriend once, back in high school.  Maybe that’s a misleading way to describe what he was to me.  We were friends, not lovers.  Both of us craved nothing more intensely than a girlfriend, though neither of us had a clue how to pursue such a thing.

Even so, the descriptor fits.  I was insecure, and he expressed admiration of me.  Sometimes.  I was depressed, and he provided excitement.  But only on his terms.  I had a fragmented sense of self, and he defined clearly for me what I should be.  And what I should not be.  He was vicious in his judgments, tongue tied with his idols, cruel towards those who lacked status.

I will not name him.  My loathing a distant public figure like Matt Dillon does little worse than scuff my soul.  Hating this insecure, conflicted old bad boyfriend of mine would gouge me.  My soul is already pockmarked enough.  Besides which, bad boyfriends cannot exist in isolation.  I chose him, stayed with him.  I was a barnacle,  and he was my passing ship.

I joke sometimes about feeling hungover without having gotten drunk, as a metaphor for uncompensated pain, but knowing him was actually not a purely bad thing in my life.  Mostly I learned useful negative lessons, like don’t decide to like something just because someone else does, and don’t tolerate a bully even when it’s your friend who’s being mean, and don’t base your self worth on anyone else’s opinion.

One positive thing stays with me, though.  My bad boyfriend had excellent musical taste, and an enthusiasm almost magnetic in its ability to draw me in.  I owe him gratitude for introducing me to the whole Bowie/Eno/Talking Heads circle, and Elvis Costello, and many other, more minor, figures.

I saw Rumblefish with this bad boyfriend.  He was the one who noticed the soundtrack, and bought it, then made me listen to it.  It was Stewart Copeland’s masterpiece.  He had been the drummer for The Police, which was disintegrating as a band around that time. This soundtrack featured mostly instrumental music, some of which was fascinating but not so accessible, and some of which was just great, like this:

Our Mother Is Alive

There was one clear best song from this album, though.  One whose lyrics my teenaged sons live everyday, sung by Stan Ridgway (from Wall of Voodoo).  Though I kept myself boxed in with my bad boyfriend even after hearing this, the words and images stuck.  Eventually I jumped out of the goldfish jar and into a brand new skin.  Swam in the ocean, and acquired this piece of chalk that I’m using now.  This will make sense to you if you listen to the song.

Don’t Box Me In

I mean it.  I’m as secular as the next guy (as long as the next guy doesn’t happen to be Christopher Hitchens).  The only reason I call myself an agnostic instead of an atheist is that atheism requires a level of certainly that I can only imagine coming from scripture, or some other divinely revealed source.  Which would perhaps undermine the idea that God does not exist.

My agnosticism is anything but a squishy position.  It is the only framework that fits with MY core belief, which is that I cannot know anything for certain, and must constantly fumble around with successive approximations of the truth.  (Actually, I don’t believe in truth either, or reality, but that would take us on a second order digression.  Which would be undisciplined of me and unfair to you, because you probably want me to get back to being a bad doctor.  Fine.  Let’s just say that life goes more smoothly when I pretend that reality is real.)

One of the countless things that is difficult to know for certain is whether an episode of acute conjunctivitis is caused by a bacterial or a viral infection (or sometimes whether it is an infection at all).  Any primary care provider — particularly those of us who see children — confronts this problem regularly.  When one’s child is sent home from school because her eyes glow a satanic shade of red, it is an understandable response to bring her to the doctor.

Most often the infection is viral — a cold bug gone astray, a runny nose of the eyes.  If both eyes are affected equally, if there is little to no production of eye boogers (sorry, proteinaceous debris), if the child has a concurrent runny nose, if there is not much redness or swelling around the eye(s), then my response is clear.  ”This is a virus,” I say, confidently.  (See!  I CAN pretend that objective reality both exists and is definitively knowable!)  ”Wash your hands constantly, keep her home until X and such a time, and call me if she develops these other symptoms or does not improve within a week.”  Then I wash MY hands compulsively and move on.

Usually this involves a discussion with the parent.  ”Why is my child not being treated?”  Reasonable question.  We have no antibiotics that help with cold viruses.  ”How can you be sure she does not need antibiotics?”  Another reasonable question.  I point out what I see.  Often, we talk about when she can return to school, and the parent stresses about missing time from work.  Sometimes the school has sent a note via the parent saying the child cannot return until treated with antibiotics.  This used to drive me berserk, because sometimes that is just the wrong thing to do.

Often, I prescribe a “backup” prescription for antibiotic drops or ointment.  This is actually a valid approach, because having a viral conjunctivitis puts you at risk for developing a superimposed bacterial infection, which SHOULD be treated.  However, it is also one way to deal with a parent who is convinced that the child needs antibiotics, and who often will continue bringing the child to see other doctors until the child receives “treatment.”

None of which helped me avoid God’s attention.

This past Tuesday*, Luisa brought her daughter Annabella to see me about an eye infection.  Luisa is one of my more frustrating patients.  She always comes with a range of concerns, some of them important to address because they are potentially critical to her health.  She speaks extremely slowly and constantly backtracks and revises, gets lost, then remembers her point just as I am on the verge of despair.   She then often completely rejects the tests I think are crucial for her health, and demands others that are completely uncalled for.

I girded myself when I saw Annabella’s name on my schedule.  Noted the chief complaint of “eye infection.”  Darted in, took control of the conversation immediately and didn’t let go.  Annabella had conjunctivitis.  Fairly classic viral conjunctivitis.  A little worse on the left, a little more boogery and inflamed on that side than you usually see in a viral infection, but the right thing to do would have been to have the conversation with her mother and send her out with at most a backup prescription.

Instead, I thought about my schedule, this visit pinched between double bookings and complicated diagnoses.  I thought about Luisa, and how hard it is to talk to her about important things, let alone this self-limiting infection.  I thought about erythromycin ophthalmic ointment, and how benign it is.

And caved.  To myself.

I walked out of the room, printed a prescription for the ointment, came back in and handed it to Luisa, reviewing the standard precautions and caveats.

“Thank you, doctor,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” I mumbled.  My little seed of shame floated in a warm bath of relief, and I decided that this was an acceptable lapse that would help me avoid burning out before the end of the day.  I turned to walk out of the room.

“Oh, doctor — one more thing,” Luisa said.  (This, in medicine, is called the [hand on the] Doorknob moment, the moment after the visit is over when the patient says, “I have a lump on my breast.  Can you just check it quickly?” or “I forgot to mention my crushing substernal chest pain that started 2 hours ago and is worse when I exert myself.”  It is a dreaded, and fairly regular occurrence.)

I turned.  Braced myself.  Planned to be firm with her.

“I know it’s off the subject,” she said.  I nodded.

She paused.

Her pauses are really long.

“Do you know that we are in end times?” she asked, finally.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“End times,” she said.  ”The end of days.”

This was not the kind of health-related question I had expected.  My mind raced, but I could think of no answer.  If I were to say, “no, I didn’t know that,” then that would be an implied invitation for her to impart more information to me.  By handing her the prescription I had reached my maximum tolerable level of unprofessionalism, so did not feel able to lie and say, “yes, I know that already,” then walk out the door.  On top of this, I rarely discuss nonmedical topics such as this with my patients.  I am there to be their doctor, and religion and politics could only interfere with that.  I have a few pat answers that I pull out when asked if I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, or whether I know that God works through me, for instance.

None of my usual answers fit here, so a conversational hole appeared.  Luisa quickly began to fill it.  ”I mean, you see the volcanoes exploding, and… airplanes can’t fly, and…”  She paused.  I began to recover, but before I could say anything, she went on.  ”We have all these things that the scientists don’t understand, and it means we are living in the end times, that Jesus Christ is coming.  You read about this, I’m sure,” she said, smiling.  ”I just wanted to make sure you were getting ready.  It will be very bad for you if you are not.  You should think about your family, too, and prepare them.”

I must thank God, if He exists, for making His warning about my erythromycin prescription so gentle.  That really was all that she felt she had to say, although she made it clear that she would be happy to continue.  My first response seemed to mollify her.  ”Well, all any of us can do is to be the best person we can be today, isn’t it?  And tomorrow be the best person then, too.  And so on.  That’s what I focus on, myself.”  I tried to ignore the hypocrisy of saying this after having just been distinctly Unbest.

She smiled.  ”You must pray constantly, to Jesus Christ, as well,” she told me, and took Annabella’s hand in hers.

I shook her other hand.  ”Thank you,” I said.  ”Do call if Annabella’s eyes don’t improve.”

“Oh, I will,” she said, and walked out.

After she left, I washed my hands very carefully.

~

*As always, the names and dates have been altered to protect confidentiality.

Great book.  I remember looking at it in the living room while listening to Burl Ives on the record player.  Spent many hours with it.  Drew crude pictures in it with my gray pencil.  I must have felt frustrated at the lack of effect because then I just scribbled in other areas and even tore a couple of the pages.  Eventually I moved on and found other favorite books, other favorite music.  Books with many words.  Beatles music.  Books with few pictures.  Different Beatle music.  Books with so many words that no pictures fit on the pages anymore.  Non-Beatle music.

I grew up.  Made a life of my own, had children of my own.  Even bought new editions of Harold, and read them with my children.

Forty years passed.  Harold books were once again dormant in my house.  Many musical pies had been eaten and shared with my animal friends when, finally, I heard Chris Smither.

Smither is a bluesy acoustic guitarist-singer-songwriter whose career arc is similar to that of Bonnie Raitt, but without the smash success in his second flowering.  What a shame.  He has enough success, I think, to live a life in music, but I wish he were more popular.

He released a couple of albums around 1970, then apparantly sank into a flood of alcohol.  Resurfaced 15 or 20 years later, clean and sober, a mature songwriter now.  His lyrics are deceptively simple, his topics deceptively narrow.  He sings blues, he sings about guilt, he sings about how hard it is to keep promises, he even sings an ode to Harry Truman.  Perfect.  He seems to look for “Small Revelations” (the title song of one of his best albums).  He helps me see that this — Small — is the size of revelation that passes most effectively through my eardrums, that seeps most easily through my brain to penetrate my soul, that can change my way of being more permanently than almost any of the big thunderclap revelations I have experienced.

The way he sings these lyrics is odd.  He slurs, as if he had substituted a novocaine addiction for the alcoholism.  I wonder if he gets a dentist friend to shoot him up before he sings.  This can happen, as we now know from hearing about Michael Jackson’s doctor.  Each time I think he’s about to lapse into babbling saliva, though, he recovers.  And behind the clumsy tongue he has a wonderful, calm, deep voice, so I will give him his little novocaine addiction as long as he keeps making such wonderful music.

The music is wonderful.  He is a masterful, yet always understated, guitarist.  His picking is distinctive, smooth, deft.  He never shows off.  I imagine him as one of those guys who walks around with a guitar surgically attached, for whom playing and breathing are equally important.  There’s no way he could be this good without constant practice.

I imagine him during his lost years, drowning in alcohol, yet still somehow both breathing and picking away at his guitar.  Maybe he has entire years he doesn’t remember, but I imagine in those years that his neighbors would hear his melodies.  I imagine that when the garbage truck stopped for the boxes of empties overflowing his curb, that the garbage men would hear the strum of his guitar.  I imagine his brain thinking slowly, his hands shaking, clutching his guitar as if it were a beloved and loyal pet.

I imagine him eventually using his guitar, like Harold used his purple crayon, to build a boat and sail back to us.  To leave the ocean of alcohol.  To draw up these songs, and fall asleep in wonder at his small revelations.

Cave Man

But back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, this group formed a coherent musical universe.  The sounds they produced carried me through entire months of struggle and searching.  A world that contained them felt complete.

In the midst of this fulfillment, though, for reasons I still don’t understand, I ditched all of these serious and high-minded partners for a brief fling with… The Waitresses.  Uh-huh.  You have probably never heard of them, or else maybe vaguely remember their minor hit “I Know What Boys Like.”  Also, “Christmas Wrapping” seems to have taken on a pale second life, maybe because people need to fill out their Christmas song playlists.  I don’t mean to diss it.  It’s a decent song.  The Waitresses were a quirky, sometimes sour, quite inconsistent group that did create their own unique sound, and who got me all hot and bothered for about a month.

It was Annie Sobieski’s fault.  The older sister of a friend of mine who went to Brown, she let me stay in her dorm room when I visited colleges.  She was sexy, and funny, and smart, and fiercely creative, and I desperately hoped to impress her with my cool.  I had my walkman, and my Serious cassettes (Bowie’s “Andy Warhol,” was the particular obsession of the moment).  Tucked among them was The Waitresses, whom I had just discovered, and who felt like a guilty pleasure.  They were my cigarette break, my grape Bubble Yum, my Mac ‘N Cheese with ketchup mixed in, my Playboy under the mattress.  They brought me comfort, a little electric charge, and not a little shame.

The evening I arrived, Annie poked through my tapes while I changed my shirt.  I had left them out, hoping she would look through them and be impressed.  As I pulled the fresh shirt over my head I heard her say, “The Waitresses?”  I felt like vomiting.  God!  Why did I bring them?

Then she said, “I love The Waitresses!  They’re fun.  Do you mind if I put this on?”

Annie’s approval carried this fling through a few more weeks.  Eventually I caught a show of theirs at some godforsaken club in Van Nuys, and that broke the spell.  By the time I joined Annie at Brown the following year, The Waitresses barely made it into the box of music I brought with me.  I still think of them fondly, though.  Here’s my favorite of their songs.  The lyrics still come to mind sometimes when I deal with some daily hassle I’ve been avoiding.

No Guilt

“No, Mama,” I explained.  ”That’s actually mainstream pop culture.”  The light turned green, we moved away from the record store, and she laughed to show me that she was not THAT gullible.

Under The Bridge

I Wish I Were Here

Sometimes in the middle of the day the sun fades.  Occasionally, BAM!, it’s as if someone hit the light switch.  More often it’s insidious, gradual, as if someone were carefully adjusting the dimmer.

My cherished friends fade with the sun.  This weird half-light distorts them.  They shrink, as if I were viewing them through the wrong end of a telescope.  I don’t know where they go, or what they do during these times.  I am just thankful that they reappear with the sun.

Some of them are persistent buggers.  They call to me, keep shouting though it hurts their throats.  They tell me things, like:

it’s just a solar eclipse, or

high clouds are making the day hazy, or

it’s just fog, it will pass, or

I’m standing in a dark cave, didn’t I notice? or

my glasses are dirty, or

I’ve been hit on the head and should recover soon, or

my favorite

I’m wearing a blindfold, what the fuck do I think happens to the light if I wear a blindfold?

I love my friends.  The shouting at me, the shining of flashlights into my eyes, the slap to the face or the arm around the shoulder all help.  But they are wrong.

The problem is ghosts.

Ghosts leak, sometimes flood, into the world.  Like high clouds or an eclipsing moon, they hover between me and the sun, refracting light and reflecting heat back into space.  Like a dense fog, they muffle sounds and smells.  Like a blow to the head, they slow my thoughts and reactions.

Finally they get my attention.  I look into the mirror, see myself distorted and tiny as if I’m looking again through the wrong end of that telescope, reverse the telescope to magnify the picture, and lo and behold — it’s not a person at all!  Ghosts have stolen the person, have fooled me by stuffing straw into my old clothes and propping me up.  They love this game.  It’s like an Easter egg hunt, only they hide me instead of eggs, and they don’t even dye me any nice colors.

I sigh.  Shake the straw into the trash can.  Step out of the clothes.  Step through the mirror, and look for where they hid me.  This game is really tiresome, although I admit it is still a thrill when I find me.

I hate chasing ghosts.  Sometimes I just stand in front of the mirror, holding my breath, pretending that I like being made of straw.  Or ignoring the tell-tale rustling it makes against my clothes.  Maybe the ghosts will get distracted, I tell myself.  Or bored.  Maybe if I lie down and close my eyes they will return me.

I used to try to out wait them.  Now I’m so sick of waking up still dead that I take the fight to them.

This time, as soon as I find this itchy scarecrow, this blank mannequin, this crash-test dummy, into the trash it goes.  The ghosts have grown complacent.  They still think I will wait in bed, and give them a big head start.  Fuck them, I think, as I climb through the mirror, taking care to avoid the jagged edges.

I jump into the swamp.

Strange setting, a swamp in winter.  Thin snow covers thick ice.  I feel a crunch with each step, hear the squeak of my heel against the snow.  The afternoon is pale, but, ironically, in the land of ghosts sounds are sharp and sights are crisp.  Gray, leafless branches sag from above, and black, leafless sticks sprout in clusters here and there through the ice.  Vegetation normally covers the swamp like dreadlocks, but winter acts like chemotherapy.  It spares only stubble and sparse tufts.

Whether in summer or winter, each type of ghost has its habitat.  The big, scary ghosts dominate the deepest swamp .The edges are less intimidating.

I always land near the the Sock Tree, the only plant here that blooms year-round.  It is festooned with orphaned socks (never mine, alas) that dangle like leaves.

Behind me is the enormous Mound of Foreskins, each undulating in his own rhythm, retracting from the width of a bandaid to that of a thick rubber band, then relaxing again with a faint whispered “oy.”

Ahead is Choir of Virginities, who dress in white 1970s leisure suits, faces like Barbie and Ken dolls, each practically indistinguishable from the others.  They look peaceful.  Once, I spent an afternoon mingling with them, looking for an ancient version of myself.  By then end, I felt like a ghost too.  Nothing touches them, and they touch nothing. Each attempt at a handshake, each inadvertent brush against the clean polyester suits, each attempt at eye contact left me frustrated.  Each of them was surrounded by a sort of static electric force that drove dirt from my clothes and wrinkles from my skin, but eventually bleached my senses and threatened to isolate me forever from reality.

~

You might think that no shelter exists here for the living, but there, at the head of a peninsula of dry land, is 4640 St. Clair Avenue, the North Hollywood house I grew up in.  My parents sold it in 1988 and moved far away, but the house stays just as I remember it.  Mock tudor, white stucco, wood shingled roof, with a single turret, it always felt like a castle to me.

Gravity relaxes on this peninsula — I don’t know why — and with a little concentration I can float.  Lift feet, one by one, gently from the ground.  Not too quickly.  Smooth moves work best.  Tuck them under me like airplane wheels retracting, and silently drift through my open bedroom window.

Drift Away

Many times the ghosts have left me right here.  They can get lazy, and sometimes they drop me like a carcass on this little old bed.  No such luck today.  I linger a moment anyway, savoring my old record player, my black transistor radio, my stamp collection.  I sense the warmth of my old blanket, draw strength from it, and move on.

I float through the bedroom wall, into the narrow kitchen.  I hover above the refrigerator, nestled into the corner of the ceiling, and watch my mother pull a roast from the oven to check it.  She sings, I can hear her, “Drift Away,” by Dobie Gray.  My sister sits at the table, using colored pencils to draw a princess reading a story to a sleepy dragon.  My father wanders in, eyes the roast cheerfully, and offers to set the table.  My child self rarely appears when I am here — if memory serves, he usually is watching TV at the other end of the house.

To this incorporeal family, I must seem like the ghost.  They can’t hear me.  I know because I’ve tried talking to them in the past.  My arms pass through them if I try to touch them or hug them.  I stopped trying to touch the ghosts of people in this world because when I do this it drains them for a moment of color.  They deserve unmolested virtual lives.

I can’t touch them, but I sometimes can hear them.  Every once in a while, if I’m lucky, I catch also  a whiff of frying onions, or of suntan lotion, or the smell of perfume and cigarette smoke clinging to my mother’s clothes when she has just gotten home from a party.

Today, though, I see their ages, and realize that this peaceful dinnertime scene takes place in the late 1970s.  This was when, as if from a broken sewage main, ghosts first flooded our house.  I shudder.  Those were terrible ghosts, and I am not able to battle them today.  The scene wavers and blurs.  I propel myself up through the ceiling then out through the curved windows of my mother’s sewing room.  I glide down to the edge of the swamp.  Distracted, I land clumsily, with squeaks and crunches, and start my search for real.

~

As I pass among the gray trunks and branches, ghosts ooze from invisible nests and sniff at me.  These ghosts are larger and hungrier than the ones at the shore, but still can only hurt me if I let my guard down.

I kick aside a pile of leaves to reveal a clear patch in the ice.  There at the bottom of the swamp, only a couple of feet down this close to shore, are the amputated stumps of my patients’ legs.  That one is definitely Michael’s — I remember how his foot looked before they took his leg off below the knee.  And those two must be Juan’s — one below-the-knee stump nestled into the crook of the above-the-knee stump, like a mother and child trapped in amber.  I’m glad they are together.  My theory is that the stumps sleep nestled in the mud, like hibernating frogs, waiting to rejoin the rest of the body when it, too, becomes a ghost.

Here is an odd one.  A substantial ghost leg attached to an ethereal, almost invisible boy who wears old-fashioned clothes.  I realize this belongs to Frank, my 70 year old patient with a withered left leg from the polio he had at age 12.  It lies pale and shivering in the snow.  No wonder it causes him such pain still in real life.

After finding these limbs, I am not surprised to find a cluster of whole-bodied former patients of mine.  It is a larger group than I thought it would be.  People do drift away, I suppose, move out of town, find other doctors, and then die without announcing it to me.  I anxiously scan the group, worried that this time one of them will look angry at me and tell me it was my fault they died.  It’s a relief to be spared this once again, although I’m sure one day it will happen.  It is sad enough to see these people, each of whom embraces me, each of whom wears a dagger-shaped gilt pendant that stabs me as we draw close.

The most recently dead approach me first.  I’m sorry Hilda, I say,  that I didn’t even know you were in the hospital.  Your niece just told me yesterday about your heart attack.  Hello, Mary.  You know that nothing short of a transplant would have saved you, right?  Oh, Antonio, you are so tiny.  You weighed not much more than a pound when you were born, but what your mother lost when she lost you was worse even than the pound of flesh that Shylock threatened to take.  Here is the ghost of her happiness, holding you.  Cradling you in her arms the way she couldn’t when you were alive and hooked up to those tubes and machines.

The recent arrivals file past me one by one, as if in a receiving line.  Next are some familiar old faces.  Miguel Angel, a beautiful, black-haired, normal-looking 6 hour old baby boy.  He has no dagger pendant; instead he clutches in his tiny perfect fingers the piece of my heart he took with him when he died.  Johnny, who killed himself after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  His dagger is jagged.  Johnny, I say each time, it’s so treatable.  Why did you do that?  I should never have tested you — you would have lived longer if I hadn’t.  Rosa, my first hospice patient.  She has no dagger.  She just takes my hands in hers and pats them.  Thank you, Rosa, I tell her again, for showing me what a peaceful and dignified death looks like.

Eventually, the ghosts become less substantial, and stop wearing gilded daggers.  One group does wrap itself around me, squeezing so that my chest hurts — it is the young men (my age when I knew them) who filled the AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital when I was a medical student, and who died just before effective treatment became available.

~

Now I hit the deeper parts of the swamp, where in warm weather the water is so deep that I must make a raft to travel in it.  I come across an icehouse.  How odd.  It looks like a nice suburban home, with Christmas lights strung along the sides of the roof. I realize this is Rosanne’s house, that this is HER ghost, haunting me, too.   Rosanne has metastatic cancer, and so far has held her own against it through 2-1/2 years and over 50 rounds of chemotherapy.  She may survive for a long time, and she has legions of supporters praying for this, but she knows that planning even one year ahead takes moxie.

She told me this story:  this past Christmas she was feeling sick from her chemotherapy, and her daughter and sister-in-law were cooking Christmas dinner while she rested up in her room.  After a while, she felt better and came downstairs to help.  Dinner, though, was almost ready.  Her boys had set the table.  Her husband was out picking up his aunt.  She wasn’t needed.

In that moment, Rosanne saw her very own ghost of Christmas future.  She saw exactly how her family might gather after she died.  How the work she normally did would be apportioned among her husband and children.  She says that not being needed made her feel like a ghost already.

I was flying into Chicago tonight,

Watching the black lake below reflect back no light.

The sun had long set, left behind by the plane,

the cabin lit only with blue TV glow.

In 22B I was on top of the wing,

Watching Chicago roll towards us like credits on a screen.

~

The earth looked like it was lit from within

like a poorly assembled electrical ball

as we moved off of the water and onto the grid.

The plan of the city was all that I saw.

And all of these people sitting totally still

as the ground raced towards them 5,000 feet down.

~

And I was pretending that I was being

Liz Phair in Stratford-On-Guy.

I clicked rewind and cranked up the sound

the last chords of the flight, to fill up my skull.

Cause I had on my headphones along with those eyes

that you get when your circumstance is… life size.

~

It took a minute, or less I’d say

but once I really listened

the noise

just went away.

My cherished friends fade with the sun.  This weird half-light distorts them.  They shrink, as if I were viewing them through the wrong end of a telescope.  I don’t know where they go, or what they do during these times.  I am just thankful that they reappear with the sun.

Some of them are persistent buggers.  They call to me, keep shouting though it hurts their throats.  They tell me things, like:

it’s just a solar eclipse, or

high clouds are making the day hazy, or

it’s just fog, it will pass, or

I’m standing in a dark cave, didn’t I notice? or

my glasses are dirty, or

I’ve been hit on the head and should recover soon, or

my favorite

I’m wearing a blindfold, what the fuck do I think happens to the light if I wear a blindfold?

I love my friends.  The shouting at me, the shining of flashlights into my eyes, the slap to the face or the arm around the shoulder all help.  But they are wrong.

The problem is ghosts.

Ghosts leak, sometimes flood, into the world.  Like high clouds or an eclipsing moon, they hover between me and the sun, refracting light and reflecting heat back into space.  Like a dense fog, they muffle sound and smells.  Like a blow to the head, they slow my thoughts and reactions.

Finally they get my attention.  I look into the mirror, see myself distorted and tiny as if I’m looking again through the wrong end of that telescope, reverse the telescope to magnify the picture, and lo and behold — it’s not a person at all!  Ghosts have stolen the person, have fooled me by stuffing straw into my old clothes and propping me up.  They love this game.  It’s like an Easter egg hunt, only they hide me instead of eggs, and they don’t even dye me any nice colors.

I sigh.  Shake the straw into the trash can.  Step out of the clothes.  Step through the mirror, and look for where they hid me.  This game is really tiresome, although I admit it is still a thrill when I find me.

Minutes

Staff Meeting

Order of the Multiple Personalities of Nick

February 13, 2010

Attendance

Agenda:

1. Review of last meeting’s minutes
2. Standing items: Late Night/Swamp Thing mediation, parenting issues, finances.
3. Proposal to limit access of funds to nonimpulsive members only.
4. Report from the ad hoc committee on encouraging better attendance from Exercise and Diligent Around The House.
5. Seating arrangements
6. (late addition to agenda) Group leadership:  proposal by Impulsive and (Secret) for immediate elections.

~

1. Review of Minutes:

Calm Functional read last meeting’s minutes.   Noted that the conflict between Late Night and Swamp Thing is now dragging into its 32^nd year, and, though is overall not as acrimonious as it used to be, that we had hoped to take this item off of the standing agenda by the year 1997.  Noted that this goal was not achieved.

Interruptions from group.  “No shit” from Annoyed, “Really?” from Jokey Punny, “I’m sorry” from Insecure, and “I think we need to acknowledge some really good effort” by Empathic.

Calm Functional asked that further comments wait until review of minutes complete.  Sleeping fell off chair, and meeting briefly interrupted while Doctor made sure he was ok.

Calm Functional reported that the general improvement in well being and functionality of Sam, Isaac and Henry noted in the last meeting continues, and that no updates are needed at this time.

Calm Functional asked if other items should be added to the agenda.  Jokey Punny commented that male and female should be perfectly adequate.  Similarity between “agenda” and “gender” noted by Calm Functional, who then requested that only serious items be proposed.  Annoyed asked that “Oh my God I can’t take this crap – can we just get going for once?  For once?  I swear to God my head is going to explode if this meeting runs over again.”  Annoying referred Annoyed to the By-Laws that mandate our meeting format.  Annoyed recommended to Annoying that he go engage in onanistic activity.  Horny Nick excused himself to use the bathroom.

No other agenda items were proposed.

2. Standing Items:

Calm Functional asked Late Night to take off his headphones, stop humming, and report on his efforts to get to bed earlier and to set up the coffee maker for Swamp Thing to use in the morning.  Swamp Thing groaned.  He and Annoyed looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

Late Night held up one finger as if to ask for a moment, closed his eyes, sang loudly and out of tune “And she’s buy-y-ying a stay-er-way, to heh-eaven.”  He whipped off his headphones and said, “GOD, I love that song!  You guys want to hear it?”  A vote was taken, and a nay motion was carried, 11-7, with Discrtacteted, depressed and Sleeping abstaining.  Late Night then said, “You’re crazy.  That’s the BEST song!  I don’t know why I never listen to it anymore!  You remember back at Fred’s house that time…” He stopped after general shouting to stay on topic.  “Fine.  Um.  I think I did get to bed at 9:45 that time last week.”

Doctor pointed out that this was post-call, which has not been a problem for Late Night for many years.  “Doctor Niiick,” said Jokey Punny.  “Hellooo, Evereeebodeee!”  He and Annoying giggled.  Doctor gave him a pained smile, and put his finger to his lips to shush Jokey Punny.

Late Night said, “Oh, fine.  I haven’t been so good lately, but we have this blog and I have all these ideas for it.  I mean, didn’t we decide this was important enough to bend some rules?”

Calm Functional asked about setting up the coffee maker.  Late Night looked embarrassed, and said, “I’m really sorry.  I keep forgetting.  I mean, I don’t need it and I know it’s nice to do for Swampy here, but I don’t need it and these songs are so great and these stories pouring out of me, and… I’ll be better.  I know Swampy isn’t as alive and creative as I am, so I’m sure he needs his drug to get going.”

Swamp Thing asked to be allowed to speak, and Calm Functional nodded.

“I am so…”  He frowned and smacked his lips.  “That’s just SO, I mean… Wait.  God, my head hurts.  He blinked.  Annoying snuck up behind him, clapped loudly and yelled “WHOOP!”  Impulsive giggled at this, but Calm Functional sent Annoying out of the room for his mandatory time-out as described in our by-laws.

Swamp Thing groaned, and then said, “I mean, just the coffee.  The coffee, um…  maker.  The coffee maker, um.  Is.  Wait.”  He shook his head to clear it, and used thumbs and forefingers to open his eyelids wide.  “The, uh, coffee maker is, like, so EASY.  I mean, God, I HATE this.”  Looked at Annoyed, who nodded and whispered encouragement.  Swamp Thing continued.  “It’s not just the coffee and the staying up late.  He also could get the boys to bed on time so they’re not such a chore to wake up in the morning.  YOU,” he shouted at Late Night, who was nodding his head rhythmically, eyes closed, and humming.  Late Night opened his eyes and stopped humming, but kept bobbing his head.  “I’m talking to YOU, happy guy.  You listening?”

Late Night smiled, head still bobbing, and put thumb and forefinger together to signal “OK”.  Late Night said, “It’s ok, big guy.  Just relax and remember life is for living, all right?  I’ll be better with the coffee, I’ll try to get to bed earlier.  Got it covered.”  He made the OK gesture again and winked.

3. Finances:

The standing agenda item was merged with the proposal to limit access of funds to non-impulsive members.  Review of finances showed our typical pattern: generally adequate to pay bills, not enough savings, occasional spurts of irresponsible spending on meals or electronic devices.  Obsessive proposed that impulsive members be cut off altogether, or at least be given only small stipends in order to protect the group.  Calm Functional asked Obsessive to list those members he thought should have restricted access.  Obsessive pulled out a pad of lined paper filled with tiny lettering, and asked to read it to the group.  This motion did not carry, with a vote of 19-1 against (Sleeping abstained).  Calm Functional asked Obsessive for a simple list.  Obsessive required inordinate amount of time to find the simple list among his papers, but did submit it to the chair.  Obsessive listed himself and Sleeping as “Trustworthy” members, and everyone else as “No”.  Sleeping’s name had apparently been erased and rewritten multiple times, in each column.

After discussion by the group, the general idea was deemed worthy of further study (vote 8-3, with 10 abstentions).  A committee was formed (Obsessive and Impulsive co-chairs) to compile a list, and to present options for particular restrictions to be applied.

4. Report from the Ad Hoc Committee on Exercise and Household Diligence:

Doctor (chair of ad hoc committee) presented the committee’s findings that Exercise and Household Diligence continue to be AWOL, and that no progress has been made in locating them.  Jokey Punny said “I thought you just said they were a wall!  Look for the big flat things on the side of the room!  Hahahahaha!”  The group voted 18-2 (Sleeping abstaining) to let Annoyed place duct tape on Jokey Punny’s mouth.  Jokey Punny was noted to make quacking noises as the tape was being applied, then appeared to be imitating the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys.

5.  Seating Arrangements:

Proposal by Annoyed and Swamp Thing to seat Jokey Punny and Annoying at opposite ends of the room was discussed.  Frequent interruptions from Annoying were noted – generally just as someone else was beginning to speak.  Jokey Punny was not allowed to remove his duct tape, per standing rule in our by-laws, but was noted to giggle frequently at Annoying.  He appeared to signal Annoying near the end of the discussion, just before an extremely loud and pungent episode of flatulence occurred.

A vote on the resolution was taken immediately after that, and it passed 18-2, (Sleeping abstained).  Seats at opposite ends of the room were designated, and Annoying and Jokey Punny were moved.

6.  Motion For Snap Elections:

(Secret), joined by Impulsive and an embarrassed-appearing Horny proposed new elections for treasurer.  Obsessive looked startled, and asked why.  (Secret) said “Oh, I – we, yeah we – just thought it would be a good idea.  No, um, no particular reason.  Just, uh…”

Impulsive said, “We want the MONEY!”

(Secret) glared at Impulsive.  “That’s not TRUE, Impy.  You know that’s not true.  Why would you say that?  Sit down!”  Impulsive sat down.

Obsessive asked again why they wanted the switch.  (Secret) shrugged his shoulders.  Obsessive asked why they wanted the switch.  (Secret) shrugged his shoulders.  Obsessive asked if it had anything to do with the Bubble Yum.  (Secret) looked confused.  Obsessive explained that (Secret) had shoplifted a pack of Bubble Yum back in 1975, which Obsessive had discovered after finding an abnormal number of wrappers in the trash can.  General outcry ensued.  (Secret) looked nervous.  Denied ever having shoplifted.  Retracted proposal for snap elections.  Was noted to pull a piece of gum from inside jacket pocket and place in mouth, after others no longer looking at him.  Appeared to be holding it under his tongue, chewing only occasionally while holding Kleenex to his face and pretending to blow his nose.

Summary of Resolutions:

Listen to “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin during meeting:  Yay 7, Nay 11, Abstained 3.  Resolution Failed

Full reading by Obsessive of proposal to limit funds to impulsive members:  Yay 1, Nay 19, Abstained 1.  Resolution Failed

Formation of Ad Hoc Committee On Finances and Self-Control: Yay 8, Nay 3, Abstained 10.  Resolution Passed.  Committee formed, co-chairs Obsessive and Impulsive, other members Calm Functional, Pedantic, Exuberant, Annoying, Romantic, Horny.

Duct Tape Jokey Punny’s mouth: Yay 18, Nay 2, Abstained 1.  Resolution Passed.

Separate Annoying and Jokey Punny by assigning seats on opposite sides of the room: Yay 18, Nay 2, Abstained 1.  Resolution Passed.

Proposal for snap elections for treasurer: Withdrawn.

]]> http://nickolepsy.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-king/ Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:40:24 +0000 nmayper http://nickolepsy.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-king/ It was my fault that Rocco surprised me.  I asked him, “Do you want to go for a walk?”  But, rather than looking at him as I asked, I focused on the scene outside the window.

Providence, RI, is a damp, gray, mysterious city.  It’s sort of a northern colony of New Orleans – history and hidden beauty mixed with decay and outrageous corruption.  It’s filled with treasures, a mossy fountain crusted with coins.  May and September bring a sprinkling of bright days, lilypads on the surface of the water, and this early May morning bloomed spectacular.

I had walked a roundabout route to work that day, past the backstreet nooks that held my favorite quirky old houses, past my favorite enormous copper beech  tree, along the bustling, blossoming length of Blackstone Boulevard.  I had ambled slowly and waved at the sweaty joggers as they passed.

Butler Hospital, the psychiatric hospital where I had worked for the previous year after flaming out of a would-be career as a high school social studies teacher, still maintained its original pastoral façade.  Founded in the 1830s, the hospital was set amidst spacious lawns and woods that once had held fields where the patients could “improve” themselves with light and air and physical labor.  Now, most of the grounds resembled an English country estate, with narrow walkways weaving along trimmed lawns and shrubbery, enroofed by towering trees that dripped in the fog and the misting rain.

Occasionally, while I walked outside with a group of patients who had improved enough for such a privilege, the group would stop, hushed, as we glimpsed a deer in the shell of untended woods that surrounded the hospital grounds.  Birds were plentiful in the spring.  Most reliable, though, were the squirrels.  They were everywhere, darting across the grass singly or in pairs, scampering scritch-scritch up a tree trunk, then looking back at us accusingly.  Some were quite bold.  One might hold his ground, up on two feet, ears like antenna dishes, holding an acorn, as if daring one of us to come fight him for it.

“I’d love to come for a walk, Nick,” Rocco said, pulling me back from my reverie.  I looked at his face for the first time, and now saw him twitch and bite his lip. He stood from the chair where he had seemed to be sunning himself peacefully, hitched up his pants and looked out the window.  “I’d really love to go outside, little buddy.  But those squirrels… those squirrels…”  His voice grew tight.  “They all have those damned transmitters, and I just can’t handle that right now.”

I chuckled.  I didn’t feel intimidated by him as I had at first, and thought he was being light-hearted about this.  Rocco was a big guy – 6’3”, maybe 250 pounds – and had scared me two weeks earlier when he had been admitted at the peak of a full blown psychotic break.  Those first days he had yelled at everyone, threatening to get his Mafia friends to “whack” one or the other of us, begging me one evening in an exaggerated whisper to cut “right here” behind each ear – “right here, where they put the electronics” that controlled his thoughts and that spoke so incessantly at night when he wanted to sleep.  In Rhode Island you never can be sure someone’s Mafia fears are not in fact justified, but Rocco’s constant muttering — phrases about Mafia hits, diatribes against the people who were plotting to invade his home and kill him – undercut his message.

He had never even tried to hit anyone, though.  Given the terrible insults and provocations that the voices in his head screamed at him, I had decided early on that this made him a supremely honorable man.  I had told him as much, a few days into his stay, as the medications were starting to kick in and he had started to be able to hear my words over the cacophony inside of his head.

He had liked that, and had seemed to decide to trust me then.  That was the evening he had asked me to cut him.  When I had refused, he had looked at me sadly, and said, “I understand, Nick.  I’m scared of them, too.  You don’t want any part of this.”  After that, he had decided he would be my protector, and I had became “little buddy.”  He had started confiding in me more.  His battle stories had become more coherent, though still lost in his impossible logic.

I knew that he had been transferred from Rhode Island Hospital with a now nearly healed stab wound to his abdomen, and that he had also been treated for minor burns on his right temple.  I asked him what had happened.

“Well, little buddy, I’ll tell you.  You’ve got to be careful.  Some of these white guys are no good.”  I nodded, a little surprised.  Rocco and I were both as Caucasian as they come.

“There’s a light outside my window, outside my kitchen window, that has been on all the time since I moved to this apartment a couple of years ago.  It’s always on.  That’s why I took the apartment, because I that way I can see if someone’s sneaking up on me.  Anyway, I get up that night – I KNEW something was up, knew it for days – and guess what?  The light is off.  Off.  On constantly for two years, and now suddenly burns out in the middle of the night?  I don’t think so.

“So anyway, I’m sweating I tell you.  Cold sweat.  My heart is pounding.  I should have planned, I think.  You idiot, why didn’t you plan ahead?  You knew this was going to happen.  But there I was.  Had to improvise.  First thing, I grab a steak knife, and CUT,” he mimicked the action with both hands, holding something in one while swiping with the other.  Dramatically looking me in the eye.  “CUT the phone cord.”  He paused.

“Why’d you cut the phone cord, Rocco?” I asked.

He grinned.  “Hah!  You need to know this, little buddy.  They intercept phone calls, especially 911, so you think you’re calling the police, but it’s really THEM who show up, in fake squad cars!  I didn’t want them to listen to what I was doing, so I cut the cord.  Stuck the steak knife in my back pocket.

“So, how do I go about getting the real police to come, I ask myself.  I pick up my TV, and CHUCK it through the kitchen window to distract them.  BANG!  CRASH! It lands on someone’s car in the parking lot.  But my dumbass neighbors — I don’t know WHAT they thought I was doing, but no one does nothing.  Then I realize, hey, I can get the firemen to come!  So I grab lighter fluid and squirt it on the rug in my hallway.  I don’t have a match, but you know what I DO keep next to my bed, little buddy?”  He paused and smiled.  Leaned towards me conspiratorially.

“I don’t know, Rocco.”  I felt a little scared to ask.

“A FLARE gun!” he whispered loudly, then resumed his normal booming tone of voice.  ”Those bastards got their lawyer mob buddies to keep me away from real guns, but I read the order carefully, and it says NOTHING about flare guns!”  He giggled as he said this, a gleeful expression on his face.  “So, anyhow, I use the flare gun to light the rug so someone will call the fire department.” The energy seeped from his voice, and he looked down at the floor.  “I missed.  I missed, or it ricocheted or something.  Hit me right here in the noggin,” he said, pointing to his right temple, where his skin still held a few scabs, and smiling ruefully.

“Anyhow, I come to, the flare is smoldering on the floor, so I put it on the rug and it catches fire.  I go to the window I busted with the TV, and yell FIRE a bunch of times.  I don’t know how long it took – felt like forever – but finally I hear sirens.  Think I’m saved.  But then,” his voice and eyes dropped again.  “I panicked.  Thought maybe THEY were pretending to be the firemen.  Realized that they had had too much time and were closing in on me.  So when the firemen came in I was ready.  I took the steak knife out of my back pocket, put it into my shirt pocket, and as they came in the door – BAM! – I hit the handle and bury it to the hilt.  Hurt like a bastard!  Sorry.  But it did.  Oh, man.  They say I’m lucky it didn’t hit an organ.  But they HAD to take me then.  They HAD to take me to the hospital, otherwise they’d be busted for being fakes.”

Rocco was still looking at the floor.  He smiled and shook his head slowly.  “I need a better plan next time, I tell ya little buddy.  That plan sucked.”

As more time passed, he paced and muttered less.  He began asking about my life.  I answered in only the vaguest of generalities, but he used these to construct a vision of me.  He decided that I must be in want of big muscles, and each day gave me tips on how to buff up.  “Are you sore?  Not doing it right if you’re not sore, huh?” he would say, pinching my arm painfully, jovially.  I played along.  He began reaching out to some of the female staff, although in a horrid way.  A pleasant, earnest, almost pleading smile would follow a comment like, “You’ve got a real nice ass, you know that?  Real nice.”

After a while even this had faded, and Rocco had been granted outdoor privileges by Dr. Cianci, his psychiatrist.  Each morning, he would emerge from his room showered and shaved, thin hair combed back and gelled, lotion applied to his burn, wearing pressed pants with buttoned down shirt and loafers.  Each morning he would complain about not being able to wear a belt.  “Don’t want to look like a goomba,” he would say.  He seemed to be on the launching pad, ready to be discharged home.  But then, just as the violence in his head was subsiding, riots exploded in L.A.

The previous year a videotape of an African American man named Rodney King being beaten by four Los Angeles police officers after a traffic stop had made the national news.  It was so prominent that Rocco’s word salad ravings early in his admission had occasionally included “like Rodney King” and “cops’ll beat you you like that guy in L.A.”  The four officers had been charged with assault, and their acquittal that Wednesday despite the deeply disturbing videotape sparked angry protests that grew and then quickly shattered into anarchy.  The TV switched from endless replays of the beating to constant images of looting, of fresh beatings, of gunfire, and of what seemed like a thousand fires spewing black smoke throughout South Central and downtown L.A.

Rocco was obsessed with it.  “See?  What’d I tell ya little buddy?  Some of these white folks are no good,” as he paced back and forth in front of the unit TV.  “I don’t blame them.  I don’t blame them,” he started repeating, his face contorted and angry.  “Got to start the fire.  Got to call for help.”

He started asking for sleeping meds, which he had not needed for the previous few days.  Started pacing more.  By that Sunday, order had been restored in L.A.  and Rocco had stopped checking the TV so frequently.  I, in reaction against Rocco’s obsession, had blocked out the riots as much as I could.  These things happen.  Nothing to do with my life.  Figured I had my own problems.

All of the staff on the unit that morning when I wanted to take Rocco for a walk were white.  In fact, all of the patients that day, including Rocco, were white.  I don’t think I had seen a non-white person on my way to work.  So I felt doubly surprised when, after I chuckled at Rocco’s squirrel remark, he whipped his head around to glare at me and said, “What’s so funny, WHITE boy?”

I giggled, reflexively.  This was unexpected.

His hands wringing each other, he leaned his face closer to mine.  “I SAID, what’s so FUNNY, white boy?”

“Come on, Rocco,” I said, stepping back a little, but projecting the joviality that he often responded to, as if we were just two guys at the gym horsing around.  Rodney King a couple of days earlier had made a statement to help calm the city, and I reflexively imitated his voice as I said, “Can we all get along?  Can’t we all just get along?”

His face reddened, and I finally started to see that he was in trouble.  He turned away briefly, said, “I mean… I mean… I MEAN…”  He was shouting now, and other staff members started towards us.  He looked towards them, announced to everyone on the unit, “WHITE boy here thinks I’m funny!”  He turned back towards me and raised a fist.  “I think I want WHITE boy to get away from me.”

I backed up quickly, as the circle of mental health workers closed in.  I heard the alarm from the panic button behind us.  I still had not shifted focus, felt stuck in the camaraderie that Rocco and I had developed in the preceding week, and said, “Rocco, it’s ok.  I’m sorry.”

He lunged at me, was caught by my colleagues before he could hit me.  He started screaming, “WHITE boy here thinks he’s so great.  WHITE boy won’t take the gear out of my head.  WHITE boy thinks he’s so buff, thinks he can control me.  He’s not so buff.  I taught him about buff.  WHITE boy’s a pussy, and I’m going to get him whacked.”  He was pinned now on the carpet, one person to each of his arms, one on his legs.  Part of my job was to help with patient restraints, so I knelt and took one leg.  This was standard protocol, to keep both patients and staff safe.

Rocco shifted gears as I touched him, though.  Powerful thrashing, lunging, spitting, bucking.  “Get WHITE boy off of me!” he screamed.  “WHITE boy is killing me!  AAARGH!  Stop it, WHITE boy!  SOMEBODY LIGHT A FIRE!”  He calmed a bit, then thrashed.  Rested, then thrashed again.  The rest of the team arrived, and we carried him to the isolation room where we held him pinned, face down, until the nurse could arrive to inject a sedative.  He was powerful, and he was sweaty, but we held him tight.  His bottom was the only part of his body that was not restrained.  At one point – we all later gave him points for ingenuity – he stopped thrashing, tensed his body for a moment, and unleashed a silent gaseous stench that almost overpowered us.

After a while his yelling became more pleading.  “I’ll be good.  Just get WHITE boy out of here, and I’ll be good.”  We staff members looked at each other, a couple of the guys nodded, and I left.  Rocco kept his word.  One of the nurses went in holding a syringe, injected him, checked the dressing on his belly wound.  Then everyone came bustling out.  The door, with its thin slit of a window, latched shut, and Rocco was left alone with his voices, his button down shirt and rumpled pants, and his slicked back, now-sweaty hair.  We never used physical restraints like straps at Butler, so he was free to bang against the walls and door, which he did every time he saw my face.   I was assigned the duty of peeking in at least every 5 minutes to note and document his physical safety, and each time I did so the door would shudder with his kick and “go away, WHITE BOY” would ring out from inside.

Eventually someone relieved me, and the kicking and yelling stopped.  Rocco started singing after a while.  Gospels, mostly.  Then, after a pause, he chanted, “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”  I rolled my eyes, thinking he had lost all of the gains of the prior two weeks.  That his delusions had completely captured him.

Then he went on, and soon I realized he was making a speech.  He delivered, in perfect imitation of the original cadences, the entire “I Have A Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.  That was the first time I had ever heard it all the way through.  As he reached the red hills of Georgia, and “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”, his voice grew slurred.  He managed to finish, even made it through the litany of “Let Freedom Ring from…” without missing one.  I had to look that up later.  By the time he finished, nestled in a corner, sliding through the final “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last” and falling asleep, the unit was hushed.  We all, patients, staff – even White Boy – had been taken by Rocco from the fierce urgency of his outburst, through the great trials and tribulations of our attack dog/fire hose/LAPD response and his confinement to his narrow jail cell, to the stone of hope that he hewed out of his mountain of despair.

~

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,

and every hill and mountain shall be made low,

the rough places will be made plain,

and the crooked places will be made straight;

and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

~

I finally managed to take a few patients for a walk.  Rocco had been sleeping for an hour or so, and we decided it would be best for me not to be among those who collected him from the isolation room to bring him back to his bed.  We had missed the window of sunshine, but even the drizzle of that spring noontime felt refreshing after the tumult of the morning.  I felt thankful to live in the moist murkiness of Providence and not the arid, smoky anarchy of southern California.  The damp green grass squeaked under our feet, the trees felt majestic and protective, and the squirrels were in full flower, scurrying along the grass, picking up acorns, and swiveling their transmitters as we walked past.

I casually let drop in conversations whenever possible that yeah, I was a housedad, no it’s not a big deal, it’s just part of being a good father, I don’t see why people make a fuss about it.  Which usually elicited the coos and the praise that I craved.  ”You’re such a WONderful father,” I had been told by a thirty-something woman when William was about three months old.  We were in a waiting room, a sweaty William stuffed into a front pack against my chest, when he had started grunting and fussing.  I had grabbed a bottle of formula from the diaper bag, popped the top off, screwed on the nipple, and jiggled it into his mouth.  I was about to go back to reading my magazine when her comment had rung out from the other corner of the room.  She had looked at me adoringly, and her voice carried the same syrupy tone one might bestow upon a slow four-year-old who had managed — for once — to poop in the potty.

This had been my favorite story for a while, a perfect example of the soft bigotry of low expectations, the enabling of fathers everywhere to shirk their duties.  While these protestations had at first been sincere, the praise they fished for had become addictive.  I often felt trapped with William, and resented Ann for her brutal schedule that kept her away so much, and a shell of a person when she was home.  I couldn’t help envying her her perfect excuse to avoid taking care of things like shopping and laundry.  ”Oh, sure,” I would catch myself thinking.  ”You get to go take call tomorrow while I have to stay here and keep our lives going.”  Teaching summer school was easy enough, as I had taught the same class, even had had a few of the same students, during the school year.  It barely covered the cost of William’s day care, but the point was to stay sane.

I wanted to feel like this class was something more than makework, so I dreamed up a whole unit that revolved around space travel.  About 80% of the students were boys, so I thought this could give them a hook to use to tackle the hideous required textbook.  Photos of rocket ships, and astronauts littered our dining room table for a couple of weeks as I struggled to create lesson plans.  Ann had complained — she liked our food-related life to be orderly and predictable, and cooking was the one thing she ever had energy for at home these days — but I had privately relished the chance to show that I could dive into my important work, too.  She talked a good game, even stoutly maintained that teaching is more important than medicine because “our whole future depends upon it,” but I had trouble figuring out where exhaustion ended and lack of interest began for her these days.

We had many such issues.  All of our careful planning for the strains of her residency carried us through most of the first year.  Now we were only halfway through the four year marathon.  Money was tight, negotiations about childcare almost always ended with my tight faced, grudging defeat – er, acquiescence – chores either were left undone or were done while spraying frustration the whole time, and our bed began to look like this:

l l

two vertical lines, raised edges and middle.

Worst of all, we had started to wrestle for William’s attention.  It had started innocently, I suppose, as Ann’s guilt and sincere worries had led her to tap underground reservoirs of energy and connection for him.  She would come home exhausted and burnt, sit in her parked car for a few minutes closing her eyes and summoning her energy, then burst into the house sparkling revelry and motherliness.  William, of course, acted as if the sun had risen and life had now begun.

“Mommeeeeeeee!,” he would squeal as he ran to her.  She would scoop him up and twirl, as if her life had begun too, and she would ask him detailed questions about his day, sit with him on his bed as he told her about dinosaurs, and astronauts, and (prompting a disapproving glance at me) the latest TV episode of Dragonball-Z.  At first I had welcomed the homecoming of my beloved wife along with her distraction of William.  Gradually I discovered that this life renewing ritual required blood sacrifice, and that it each iteration tore another chunk from the heart of our marriage to cast into the fire.  I wanted credit, I wanted to tell her of my day like William got to, and I didn’t want to hear about her anxieties and near misses and especially her complaints about the other residents and who did or didn’t measure up.

Eventually I decided that she was a lost cause, that our marriage was in deep freeze until she finished residency.  At that point, I realized how much I wanted credit for being a dad.  I wanted to be told what a fucking awesome father I was, and if that was not forthcoming I wanted all of William.  His adoration, his excitement and his gratitude.  I wanted him to know that I was the one his life revolved around.

I started picking him up early from day care.  Taking him to the park.  Going to toy stores.  After one night when Ann begged off of our weekly date in order to sleep, I decided that the money we reserved for that was fair game, and used it to buy toys for William.  His favorite was plastic dinosaur egg that came apart to reveal a baby raptor.

One afternoon, an hour after we had gotten home from one of our expeditions, while I was grading midterm exams, William piped up from the floor next to our bed.  I had not noticed what he was doing, except that he had taken his pants off and had started making growling dinosaur noises.

“Hey Dad!” he said, excitedly, his high pitched voice sounding like he had breathed helium.

“Yes, William?” I answered, distracted.

“Do you know what my balls are?”  I looked down at him.  He sat, legs wide open, hunched over, staring at his scrotum and holding one testicle delicately between his thumb and forefinger.

“What, Billy Goat?”  I smiled.

He looked up excitedly.  “EGGS!”  He smiled and waited.

“Eggs?” I said.

“Yeah, EGGS!” he said.  “And you know what they’re gonna hatch?”  His smile widened.

“What, William?”

He paused for effect, exactly the way his mother did, then said in huge whisper, “DINOSAURS!”  His grin stretched impossibly.

That night Ann and I bonded over his crazy revelation.  I cringed at the thought of any animal, let alone a dinosaur, erupting through my scrotum, and this cracked her up.  “I won’t bore you tonight with what wimps you men are,” she said, and moved closer to me.  The double-l of our bed blurred that night.

~

Ann had an easy call month that October, which worked as well as we had planned for the beginning of the school year.  She caught up with sleep, caught up with William, replenished her reservoirs and allowed the heart of our marriage to regenerate some of its missing chunks.  Our bed even regained its healthy blur.

On the last Sunday of her easy month, I was sitting again in bed grading homework.  William again sat on the floor near me.  I think Ann was swimming.  William wore the Viking helmet that was part of the costume he would wear that Halloween.  He loved costumes.  That morning, though, this was the only piece of clothing or costume that he deigned to let touch him.

I loved the look.  Earlier that day, while walking downstairs, I had snapped a photo from behind that I intended to dub Nude With Viking Helmet Descending A Staircase.  He had a tight little completely-non-poopy bottom that I thought was the cutest thing in the whole damn universe.

Anyway, that morning, while tightly holding his penis, he stood up, grinned a huge grin, and asked me, “Hey Dad!  You know what I’m going to be when I grow up?”

“What, Billy Goat?”

He paused his pause.  His voice was conspiratorial.  “A WOMAN astronaut!”

I felt surprised, and let myself show it.  “Really, Billy Goat?”

“Yes,” he said.  “I’ll have NO PENIS!”

I raised my eyebrows, and thought furiously.  Argh.  This was too much.  I couldn’t let my child – a son, especially – believe that a woman was just a man without a penis.  It wasn’t even that Ann would go ballistic.  I could not have this affront to what I believed as well.  If any son on this green earth were going to learn that vaginas are full fledged organs on par with and maybe better than penises, it would be MY son.

“No penis?” I said.  “What WILL you have, then?”

Long pause.  He looked at the floor.  This was not William’s usual pause for effect.  He was clearly stumped.  After a moment, though, his face lit up.  He let go his penis, grabbed his Viking horns, and looked back at me.

“A HELMET!”

My mom, however, helped me see that a line about her father in Lost and Found was both sloppy writing and, more importantly, “a little brutal.”

Spot on, mama.   A troubled man who tried his best deserves more respect from the grandson who never knew him.  The line is now changed.  Your other stylistic suggestions I will use for a later edit.

With or without your permission I’d like to copy the haunting Robert Hayden poem you included in your email:

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

I love you, mama.

In August 1996, a couple of weeks before Henry was born, an ultrasound showed that he had a distended bladder that would not empty. I was on call at the VA Hospital for my sub-internship when Sarah paged me with the news, and we spent the rest of her pregnancy stressing about whether he had a blockage that could potentially damage his kidneys.

Ironically, in order to visualize Henry’s bladder, Sarah’s had to be full. She had drunk a pitcher of water before coming to her appointment, then for two solid hours endured the near-constant squeeze of Henry’s body from inside and the ultrasound probe from outside. In this contest of urinary fortitude, Henry was the clear winner. Sarah finally begged to go relieve herself, while Henry kicked and swam, clearly enjoying the ruckus he had caused. A showoff before he had even been born.

Many anxious medical consults later, we were pretty sure that he was okay – maybe he would need a procedure to open his urethra soon after birth, but either way his kidneys looked fine and he should have a normal life.

Still, earth’s gravity increases for any parent whose child is in danger, and those last weeks were heavy for both of us.

~

We had moved, with our 3-year-old twins Isaac and Sam, into a communal house in Oakland that June with our friends Derek and Ted. Derek and Ted had been together for a couple of years, and were now looking to adopt a child themselves. Derek, in particular, dove into domestic life. That summer he was more involved in supporting Sarah and helping to raise our children than I was. He had taken her to that ultrasound appointment when Henry’s bladder became an issue, and he, Ted and their friend Shuman who stayed with us before returning for his senior year of college ferried the boys around Oakland when Sarah was busy.

Our household presented quite the picture. Sarah is even whiter than I am, with pale skin and bright red hair. Ted is half-Japanese, half-white. At that time Derek had finally convinced him to stop shaving his head, but he still had multiple piercings and wore a leather jacket festooned with metal doodads. Though his face in those days was often set in a scowl, he was actually the most committed of all of us to the constant human give and take involved in communal living. Shuman’s parents are first generation Indian immigrants who were still in full denial about his homosexuality even after he had come out to them the previous year. This summer, then, he had come to California to let himself breathe freely as a gay man. Ted and Derek loved to mock his every effeminate mannerism. Derek was the most visible of all of us. Half Filipino, half African-American, he is a large man who looks vaguely Samoan. With long frizzy hair that he sometimes braids and sometimes gathers behind his head in a ponytailed fro, a huge metal hoop through one eyebrow, often wearing a dashiki, and possessing a smile that makes the recipient feel like they just won a prize, Derek naturally dominates any room he happens to inhabit.

Despite our appearance, though, and our blended household, we felt quite conventional. Sarah and Ted taught at an uptight suburban high school in Silicon Valley, Derek and Ted worked ungodly hours running Quilumbo, the nonprofit educational organization they had cofounded, Shuman was a Princeton undergrad, and I was finishing medical school. Our visits to Costco involved two shopping carts and embarrassingly large packages of toilet paper, as well as one adult assigned to Sam and Isaac at all times as they ran through the hanging plastic slats in front of the freezer section or pleaded to build a fort behind the cereal boxes. The boys were the weirdest members of our household. At that time they were obsessed with gender, and would point at people and say loudly to each other, “Penis!” for man and “Vagina!” for woman. “She’s a vagina,” Isaac would say. “She’s got long hair.”

“Derek has long hair,” Sam would point out. “SHE’s a a vagina,” pointing at someone else. “She has a dress on.”

“No,” said Isaac. “Shuman wears a dress sometimes. And he’s a penis.”

This was all more than I could handle, so I always asked to push the shopping cart, claiming post-call fatigue.

~

One evening in the middle of August when I was on call again at the VA, Sarah began feeling contractions. A burst of domestic energy carried her through cooking dinner for everyone and washing the dishes, but when Sam and Isaac asked her to read them that summer’s favorite illustrated book “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” she begged off. No one had offered to help her with cooking and cleaning, she said to them in front of Ted, Derek and Shuman, and now Ted would read them their story because mom needed to go have a baby. All three adults jumped up, falling over themselves to say yes, go, Derek you take her, ok I’ll take her, can I do anything else, really are these contractions, I’m so sorry, what else can I do?

Isaac and Sam, however, thought this was a terrible idea. They wanted mom to read the story, not to go have a baby. Mom grimaced at a strong contraction, though, said “ow”, and the boys were told to kiss mommy goodnight and come upstairs with Ted. Who would read it two times if they wanted. This worked for them, and they tumbled up the stairs asking “three times? Can we have it three times?”

So, Derek drove Sarah across the Bay Bridge to Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, while Ted read and reread and reread the story of Sir Gawain keeping his promise to return after a year to the Green Knight’s castle to let the Green Knight chop his head off, each time asking the boys, “Is it important to keep a promise?” Each time listening as the boys solemnly swore that they would keep promises, too.

Meanwhile, Shuman paged me at the hospital to tell me that Sarah was in labor, which is far more difficult and painful than just having one’s head chopped off. Though I felt guilty at signing out my work to Jose (my supervising resident) and leaving, this birth represented a promise of mine far more serious even than ritual execution, let alone writing admission orders that could be written by somebody else. Luckily, Jose agreed, and shooed me off the ward.

In a crowded elevator on the way out, one of the other residents learned I was leaving because my wife was having a baby. He asked, “is it your first?”

“Third,” I said, distracted.

“Third?” he said, looking shocked. “What are you? A Mormon?”

~

Meanwhile, Derek brought Sarah to the hospital. Her contractions were becoming more painful as they got there, and the walk up the hill from the parking lot in the freezing foggy wind felt Sisyphean. After they got to the E.R. and were told to go to the Labor and Delivery ward, she had yet more climbing. Up three flights of stairs and down an infinite hallway with no offers of wheelchair or even of help. Derek offered to carry her at one point, and they both burst into laughter at the thought of it.

Finally she arrived and was waiting to be triaged as I rushed in, still wearing my VA scrubs, scared that I had missed the delivery. Derek said goodbye and left to go retrieve Ted and Shuman, clearly anxious to avoid missing the birth as well. We had asked a friend, Inga, to stay with the twins because all of our housemates were dying to be in the hospital for the birth.

The nurse showed Sarah into the delivery room at about 11PM. A distracted resident came in, checked her cervix, and pronounced her to be 3 centimeters dilated, that she was far from delivery, and that she should go home for a couple of hours and then return if the contractions continued. Almost as soon as she left the room, though, Sarah started screaming in pain with each contraction. It was horrible to watch, and I still can’t imagine how she endured it. Henry’s head was facing the wrong way, and once it was low enough in her pelvis each contraction squeezed the back of his head against her tailbone. It’s as if the back of her pelvis were caught in a vise, being bent outwards with just short of the force required to break it.

As a physician, I see people in pain all the time, but rarely have seen anything more intense than the next couple of hours were for Sarah. Changing positions, whimpering, screaming – my WASPy, undemonstrative, socially correct wife actually screaming out loud in public – none of these made her contractions tolerable. Unfortunately, when I left the room to ask for help, it was as if there had been a bomb scare. Just the unit clerk was visible, and she had trouble finding a nurse who could help us. To make matters even worse, there were multiple emergencies happening at that moment – 2 caesarian sections, and God knows what else – and no doctors were able to come reevaluate Sarah for over an hour.

So Sarah labored alone, with me wracking my brain for tidbits from my OB/GYN clerkship the year before that might help her. Preparing myself for, God forbid, the need to deliver our baby on my own if need be. The room felt that isolated, and help that unavailable. She tried the rocking chair, leaned against the wall, and finally (I kicked myself when she found this because only then did I remember that this could help) perched on elbows and knees on the bed, bottom sticking up into the air, rocking back and forth during contractions. This last position was the least intolerable, and when my frantic and eventually angry toing and froing from room to nursing station finally drew a nurse to come in, Sarah refused to change out of that position even to sign papers or change into a hospital gown.

She begged for epidural anesthesia, as the nurse said irritably in her Philippine accent. “Doctor will be in soon. Not so loud. We have to wait for the doctor to evaluate you. You are disturbing the other patients.” Finally, as the nurse was placing Sarah’s I.V. between screaming contractions, “Doctor” did come to evaluate her. It was a different resident this time, which was a good thing because I wanted to throttle the first one for abandoning Sarah. She checked Sarah’s cervix, and announced that Sarah was too far along, and would not be able to get an epidural.

Sarah’s face transformed. “WHAT did you say?” she asked, glaring at the resident. Sarah, who is so afraid of behaving poorly that she once apologized to a man who rear ended her at a stop sign, looked like she would cheerfully throw this resident through the window for even thinking of denying her epidural. The resident shrugged.

“You’re 9-1/2 centimeters dilated. You’re going to have your baby before you could get an epidural.”

So Sarah bowed her head, and screamed her way through the last few contractions before she could start pushing. Pushing made her feel better, and the resident asked her to turn over and lie on her back to deliver the baby. Henry’s head must have spun to face the right direction by this time, because Sarah was able to focus on her pushing, red-faced and concentrating, rather than writhe around screaming in pain. Sarah and I had hoped to have my hands on Henry’s head as he came out, and had prepared a little spiel to justify it, then abandoned that thought when Sarah was in her agonies. Now this hope revived, and I suggested it to the resident, who calmly nodded and asked me to put on sterile gloves.

I had only delivered a couple of babies during my OB/GYN clerkship, which was why I had felt terrified at the thought of delivering Henry on my own, but this worked perfectly. I put my hands on his head as it finally emerged, anxiously focusing on the textbook pictures I had studied about where to press and when to do it, while the resident covered my hands with hers and shielded Henry and Sarah and me from my inexperience. Briefly Sarah’s eyes caught mine between pushes. Through my anxiety, I saw her pride and love, and then focused back on Henry’s emerging head with a twinge of confidence.

Sarah pushed Henry’s head out into our hands. The resident delivered his body. Henry cried, but not before I did.

I brought him up to Sarah as the resident cut the cord. I put him on Sarah’s chest, and the three of us lay together for a moment. Warm. Gentle. A family. I kissed Sarah and told her how amazing she had been. She kissed Henry and said “Hello!”

His hair was red. His skin was pale. No one would need to check I.D. bracelets to be sure that this baby and mother belonged together.

Soon, the pediatric resident grew anxious, and asked to bring Henry to the warmer to evaluate him. I followed them. She did her initial exam, then turned to do paperwork. I remembered his bladder then. Felt that bolt of fear return. Reached down to the warmer to feel his lower belly for the mass that belies a distended bladder. Pressed there.

An arc of urine shot from his penis as I pressed, all over my hair and forehead. I yelped and ducked, too late. I looked at Sarah, who started to shake with laughter. “I think he’s ok,” I said, and laughed too.

~

A little while later, while I was in the bathroom washing Henry’s pee out of my hair and then emptying my own bladder, the unit clerk came in to ask if three men could come in to visit. I had completely forgotten that Ted, Derek and Shuman would be waiting outside. Sarah and I both said, “Yes! Of course!” We found out later that Derek had talked the nurses into letting them in far enough to watch the contraction monitor. They had proudly noted to each other that Sarah had the biggest contractions of any of the laboring women there that night, but had grown agitated when the tracings suddenly stopped. They were worried that something had gone wrong, and had not expected that Sarah would have delivered Henry quite yet.

The clerk paused, with an uncertain look on her face. “You aren’t…” she began. We waited. “Do you belong…? Are you in of some…? Are you members of some sort of group?” she finally asked.

Sarah and I looked at each other. “No,” Sarah said. “Why do you ask?”

The clerk looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, well sometimes we get people… Um. It’s just that you all live together, and we like to be sensitive here. That’s all.” She smiled quickly.

The three men entered the room, Ted with his skull freshly shaved and wearing both a rat skull earring and a huge grin, Derek in beads and braids, wearing an embroidered African tunic, and Shuman looking quite conventional above his plaid kilt.

Sarah looked at the clerk and said, “No. We just promised them that they could be here. It’s important to keep promises.”

When I Was A Caveman

My mother didn’t find the boogers for years.

I had forgotten about them by then, those now fossilized chunks and smears littering the underside of our old green TV couch in the den.  It was as if mama had uncovered the remains of fire and bones in an ancient cave, or pictures of hunters spearing bison.  The struggles of the Mucolithic Era were murky and internal.

~

After 4^th grade, my three best friends transferred to other schools.  Now I walked home alone through the pale, smoggy afternoons of North Hollywood in winter.  To keep myself company, I counted.  16 blocks to home.  From 24 to 78 slabs of sidewalk concrete per block.  1.25 strides per slab.

I sorted U.S. Presidents by first name, by last name, by party.  Twice two is four.  Twice four is eight.  16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512…  Did the Democratic-Republican Presidents like Jefferson and Madison count as Democrats or Republicans?  If a sidewalk slab is cracked all the way across, does it count as two slabs?  No, just one.  Yes, actually, two.  512 times two is 1024.  Times two is 2048.  The eighth President was Jackson – no, Van Buren.  Grover Cleveland was both 22^nd and 24^th?  That’s so stupid.  He’s one guy – 22^nd with a hiccup in the middle.  Now I have to subtract one from all of the later Presidents.

Walking into our house I could put this all away, to finish tomorrow.  Drop the backpack, drop the counting.  Pour the Cheerios, float them with milk, schuss the sugar down the side of the bowl into the cereal swamp.  Then I’d burrow into the couch to read and eat.

When the food was gone, the boogers came out.  Usually by the fourth bowl of cereal it would be time for the Afterschool Special, or a Brady Bunch rerun, and I would flip onto my stomach to watch.  No need to count.  Just mindlessly pull out the biggest booger I could find and admire it for a moment.  Then I’d wipe it on the underside of the couch, a place as hidden and permanent as the underside of the floorboards.

~

My mother called me into the den that Saturday morning, as I was about to drive with Larry to the church parking lot on Mulholland Drive to get stoned.   The shrillness in her voice made me check my pockets to make sure she had not found my stash.

When I walked into the den, she stood by the couch she had tipped on its side to clean.  Frozen boogers littered the bottom like corpses after a battle.

She said, “Do you know how many pieces of snot you left here?”  I couldn’t begin to count them.

For the past 50 years, Lili had been one of the giants of Stowe — a giant whose claim to be five feet tall was a bald-faced lie, and whose frame carried only 90 pounds even before she got sick. She refused to learn how to drive, and she buzzed around town on foot, always talking, always gesticulating with her cigarette, usually exasperated at someone’s incompetence or pigheadedness. Each day she stopped here and there at shops and friends’ houses, carrying news, offering help, exuding bottomless opinions, pollinating the town as if it were a field of lilies and she were its caretaker bee. Its tiny, intimidating, extremely French bee.

Lili grew up in northern France before WWII, and spoke with a thick French accent to the end of her life. This accent, along with her mannerisms, her emphatic opinions and her ridiculously consistent energy were the source of countless hilarious stories told and retold by the mortals whose slow lives she buzzed through.

“How is your son?” someone might ask.

She would roll her eyes, buckle her thick black eyebrows, purse her thin lips, and in a tone suggesting that even Joan of Arc would give up in the face of such a horrid boy, exclaim, “well, you know, Dominique, he ees a SHEET!”  Then she would take a drag off her cigarette and let her face relax.

Her face, in contrast to her body, was long.  Her brown eyes, black eyebrows and close-cropped hair highlighted her pale skin.  Vertical creases highlighted any trace of sadness. When relaxed, her face could have been lifted straight out of a painting by Modigliani. But at this point, the eyelids would crinkle, she would take another quick drag and look up in amusement, shrug her shoulders, and confide that, “alors, maybe I am a sheet sometimes too”.

This transplanted Frenchwoman, along with her Irish husband Chris, raised her four children with European propriety. Both she and Chris had been raised Catholic, and although neither attended regular services Lili made sure her children were baptized and confirmed.  It was no surprise, then, that early this week, as it became clear that the calendar of her life had reached its last page, the clock its last few chimes, that she would send for the unfamiliar young priest to come deliver her last rites.

He came to her hospital room, a pleasant but serious man in his mid-30s, and prepared her for extreme unction. She gathered her tiny, cachectic frame and slid to her knees on the floor beside her deathbed. The priest asked in a pro forma manner if she believed that Jesus Christ was her Lord and Savior. Her face knotted and her eyes began to roll, as if to say “don’t bozzer me with zees sheet,” but then she collected herself and relaxed. She paused. Clearly the proper action was to say yes, but she could not bring herself to lie.

So she opened her eyes wide and faced the priest with a plaintive smile. Lifted her hand, opened it so that it was flat, palm facing the cold floor. Shrugged ever so slightly and wobbled her hand in the universal seesaw motion that means “comme ci, comme ca.”

The priest sighed. He decided this was good enough. He delivered the sacrament. She died peacefully a few hours later, as Veronique held her and stroked her black hair.

Una, my grandmother, was born in Shanghai in 1903, and spent much of her early life shuttling between China and England. Among the young men interested in her in the 1920s was another British expatriot named Noel, who shuttled between China and the U.S. trying various business ventures. On one voyage to England she took with her mother Norah, however, Una met my grandfather, John Newton. John was an American who had just resigned his position as vice-consul to Japan, and was traveling the long way home in order to see more of the world. Norah met young John on the ship and, as was her nature, began flirting with him. She introduced him to her daughter, and he and Una quickly fell in love. By the time the ship reached England, they were engaged to be married.

Many years passed. John and Una settled in Hollywood, where she bore my mother and my uncle. Her mother moved in with them after the war. John died in 1965.

Noel had kept in touch, however. His business ventures never quite took off. He was imprisoned in the Japanese concentration camp with Norah. He later told me stories of life in the camp that must have been watered down, but still astonished my 10 year old mind. After the war, he moved to California, married, divorced. He eventually settled in Jacumba, a small town next to the Mexican border, near where he was convinced that the lost treasure of Montezuma was buried. He spent the last 20 years of his life excavating for this treasure.

He had never gotten over Una. After John died, Noel visited more often, and eventually convinced her to marry him. In 1972 they married, and she and Norah (now almost 90, and dependent on her daughter to care for her) moved to his house in Jacumba. We visited them a couple of times per year, and each time Noel played the part of the bon vivant, the doting husband, loudly singing and playing the piano, taking young Nicholas to see his treasure excavation, telling story after story of his life. He seemed a happy man to me, so animated, with tremendously long, hairy ears, unkempt eyebrows that relayed half the emotion in his stories, balding head, crisp clean shirts. Restless legs. Classic upper class British accent booming across the table or up from the mine shaft.

Una’s death destroyed him. We came down to Jacumba the day after she died, before the furnace of his grief had turned him into slag. He was able to receive us with that quiet, self-deprecating British grace at first. I will never, though, ever forget the moment we sat down for dinner. My sister Diana and I were subdued and attentive, and the grownups looked empty, with sad faces and dried tears on their cheeks. Noel took a ring dish with tomato aspic out of the refrigerator and brought it to the table. As he put it down, it shook visibly in his hands. I looked at his face, which melted as he quietly spoke.

“Una made this yesterday morning”. He managed to speak the whole sentence.

He covered his eyes, turned away, walked to his bedroom and closed the door. The sound of his convulsive sobbing still pulls at me. But I cannot imagine anything more sad than the look on his face as he held that tomato aspic, that living link to his dead love’s hands, that concrete reminder of how time hurtles on.

Noel eventually, in the year or two before he died, lost all trace of British reserve and politeness. In one visit, though, early on, after sobbing openly at the table with us, he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, blew his nose and brightened for a moment. “I wouldn’t trade it, you know,” he said, smiling gamely, his eyebrows raised. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I had five years with Una, and I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

I used to think that he was just trying to buck himself up, look on the bright side and all that. I mean, after losing my grandmother, the guy lost his sanity, lost his entire sense of self, and then he died. He had lost four years to the concentration camp, had never succeeded in business, never found a trace of Montezuma’s treasure. But maybe he was right. Maybe if you had told 25 year-old Noel that he could have 5 truly loving years with Una when they were old and then die of grief, or else just roll the dice and take whatever life he would have — maybe he really would have chosen to take the 5 years. After all, from a dusty little town in the desert, using only his wits and charm, he reached all the way out to Los Angeles and recovered his own lost treasure.

These chapters are mainly for my children, grandchildren,and etc.

But also, for anyone that wants to read and comment on/about this story.

Parts of the story I don’t know, I have used my imagination.

Click on the chapter in the side bar to read that chapter. Let me know if you have any navigation problems.

Hope you enjoy my thoughts on my family.

Rae