Bettie Bookish

Breaking Up, Moving Up, Keeping All the Friends

2006-05-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Blogspot~ Um, it's just not really working out, is it? Sure, you're great. I don't really have a lot of complaints - but I'm just not really satisfied with our relationship. What's that? Is there someone else? No, of course not. No, no, no, NO. Ok, yes. Yes, I've been blogging somewhere else. Oh, it doesn't matter what it's name is. What good would it do to talk about... IT'S TYPEPAD - are you satisfied? Yes, I like Typepad better, and yes, I'm even willing to pay for it. It's more user friendly and I don't have to know anythng about HTML or find someone who does to help me and I get all the pages I want and it's not that expensive... Is that what you wanted to hear? Is it? Oh, come on, stop crying. We both knew this wasn't forever. It's all part of the blogosphere, eh? Don't get too attached? Don't be surprised if you have to change your bookmarks? I should go. But hey, you know where to find me: www.etb.typepad.com/bettiebookish

2006-05-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

Another million dollars I'm just giving away

2006-05-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

The BathTop - a laptop you can bring in the bathtub. It comes in very momblogging-friendly colors and with momblogging-friendly quick keys. It's perfect for the mom who left her demanding 10-hour-a-day corporate job so she could live a life of leisure at home, caring for her 1-3 toddlers, maintaining three blogs - plus a packed flickr account, shopping for the best prices on Nikon lenses, knitting kooky sweaters for all her internet friends' kids, designing T-shirts, searching for a literary agent, courting book deals, landing book deals, starting a home business, growing organic produce, thrifting, getting drunk at rock shows, going to blogger cons, speaking at blogger cons, watching TV, running marathons, getting a master's degree and contemplating getting pregnant again. Bathtime is the only time she has to post to flickr. The BathTop comes with a washcloth that says, "I'm Blogging This." Of course, mere weeks before the BathTop is released to the public, Apple will come out with the iTub, which does all the same things and is only the size of your wedding ring - the one you got, not the one you wanted.

Jack Frost can bite my shivering ass

2006-05-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

It is May 21, if I am not mistaken. And this afternoon, during a birthday barbecue, there fell from the sky something not unlike snow. Granted, it was not totally LIKE snow. It was mostly like little globs of Icee flug from thousands of tiny spoon-ended straws up in the sky, making the driveway and deck slippery and encrusting the woven doormat. I don't mind winter. I don't think I'll mind snow drifts lining the driveway throughout January and February. But ice falling from the sky at the end of May just seems apocalyptic. And it's cold.

Regret

2006-05-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

Oh, I shouldn't have eaten all that food yesterday. What a mistake. Mistake No. 2: Deciding at midnight that a bowl of Reese's Puffs cereal would really hit the spot. I just can't understand why I'm not the lithe little thing I used to me. Just can't understand it.

Hola, amigos - tres?

2006-05-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

If you're the kind of person who likes to enjoy a weekly meal in a good Mexican restaurant, I have one piece of advice for you: Do not move to upstate New York. There is no Mexican food here. Nada. Half an hour away, there is a place called the Rio Grande Tex-Mex Grille, and it is owned and operated by people whiter than I am. And that, my friends, is saying something. We went there one evening, and while the food was technically edible and didn't, for instance, require a visit to either an emergency room or a pharmacy, it wasn't remotely Mexican in any really helpful sense of the word. That is the only Mexican restaurant food I have eaten in three months. Until tonight. Tonight, we drove an hour to go shopping, and since we were already in the neighborhood, went to the only restaurant in a 120-mile radius where your food will be cooked and served by brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people. It was glorious. More than glorious. I may have to find excuses to go to the big city more often. I had the vegetarian combo No. 3, a diet Coke, guacamole, cheese dip (for my daughter, she loves it, what - I'm supposed to deny her?) and a heaping helping of oh HELL yes for dessert. I hurt myself it was so good.

Everything is oh, so far away

2006-05-15T04:45:00.000-07:00

A question up front to all you readers out there who have brilliant ideas and actually follow through with them: What the? Seriously. I mean, do you just plunge right in? Do you do a little research? Once you start your research and find the arena is more (complex, difficult, flooded with talent), how do you plow right in without a satchel full of second guesses and anxiety? I mean, didn't your parents ever TELL you that you sucked at follow-through, and they weren't going to pay for dance lessons because this was just going to be like horseback riding lessons, clarinet lessons and therapy, where you'd quit abruptly the minute things got the least bit difficult? And didn't you ever come to the realization, maybe in your upper-mid-thirties, that instead of being insensitive, maybe your parents were simply insightful and hit your nail square on the head? IN A NEW YORK YARD SALE So this weekend, I did something I've never done before - something pretty out of character. No, I didn't follow through on some creative idea. It wasn't THAT out of character. Friday night I drove with Xerxes and most of the NY cousins to Syracuse, to hours away, where we spent the night at J&B's so we could wake up at the crack of doodle-doo and go yard sale-ing. In Florida, yard sales happen every weekend all year long, and if you are so inclined, you watch the classifieds and show up on someone's lawn at 4 a.m. so you can watch them through night vision binoculars. The moment they stir inside the house - even if they are just turning over in bed - you rush in and offer them 35 cents for the bed they're sleeping in. Up here, things are a little more ogranized, as was the case in Syracuse. Instead of leaving yard sales (tag sales?) to individual choice, the tradition here is to designate a certain weekend for everyone in a given area to trundle their shit onto the lawn and let the haggling begin. We trolled the sales of a large housing development called Radisson, where the houses ranged from '80s condoriffic to Millennial McMansion. The thing about yard sales? they kind of suck. I've never had god luck at them. And I never will, because I do not seize the buying opportunities correctly, I am easily convinced that something really crappy is kinda cool, and I slide right by the attic Rembrandts and sterling grape snips that eventually make their way to the Antiques Roadshow and inspire gasping from all involved. But I did score two old school desks to use as end tables in our renovated schoolhouse house, and a really incredible oak trestle table for our kitchen. I'm especially proud of the table, because it was obviously well loved. YOU ARE BUT DUST This is an all-out plug for a line of cosmetics coming to the market soon. It's called Dust, and it's the brainchild of a young lady I know. A couple months ago, we were at the home of one of our NY cousins and this woman, AZH, was all aflutter with her idea for creating a new cosmetic line in the same vein as bare minerals. She had researched a little online, and had come up with a name and some packaging ideas. I am going to be utterly honest here when I tell you that my reaction was something along the lines of, "Hmmm. I guess that fantasy is a nice way to pass an evening." I didn't think much more about it until Friday night in Syracuse where she gave us all makeovers with her line. Zoinks. (Also, see top of this entry.) So, good for her. And when she gets her Web site up, I'll link it so everyone can order a little bit.

Aappy, Aappy

2006-05-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

Three. Three years ago today you were born, my beautiful daughter. But of course, you were not my beautiful daughter on that day. It was someone else who had the fortune of taking that part of your journey with you. Someone who must be thinking of you today. Someone who must miss you in the same, deep place where you miss her - the place where you will always miss each other. Two years ago today, you woke in your small bed next to your "jie jie," and your nanny fed you breakfast of 1/2 steamed bun and a bottle of formula, or so we were told in medical and progress reports we received not long before we met you. You didn't know it then, but I was already on my way to meet you. With your photograph in a folder that I carried with me everywhere I went, I had already become your mother. We were getting visas and making travel arrangements and ticking off packing lists. We were excited, terrified and utterly in love with the idea of you. And now, here you are, just two years later, serving me a tea party on your tea set with the little blue flowers. You tell me what to eat and just how much. I hate to tell you this, but you are a little bit bossy. This may not always go over so well with others. it doesn't always go over so well with me. Because you had your party a few days early this year, the actual birthday is likely to be an anticlimax. I had to get some work done this morning, so I allowed you to watch television and spread your own jelly on waffles. The uninterrupted writing time was worth every minute I spent de-jellifying the house afterward, while you soaked in a bath. A bath that had bits of strawberry jelly floating on the water's surface. Then we put on clothes and hopped in the car for a trip to the plant store so we could buy you a birthday plant. You love the plant store. You especially love plant stores where you have an opportunity to interact with livestock or the owners' pets. There are cats who live at the local Agway. Earlier this week, you cornered one of those cats while he was face-down in a pot of catmint getting high, and you forced him to receive your stern affection. Today it was an ancient - cryptozoologically ancient - chocolate lab who lumbered into your path with a tennis ball. You played with her, tossing the ball down the rows of creeping phlox and Japanese maple trees, before she would return to you with the soggy, soil-laden ball in her massive, warty head. Then she got tired and moved on to a shady spot where toddlers could not find her. We toured the hoop houses until I couldn't stand the sicksweet hospital smell of too many flowers in too small a space. "What about a birthday lilac?" I asked. "No," you said. "I want a hot dog." "Yes, we're going to get you a hot dog at the restaurant after we leave here. But right now we're finding you a birthday plant for our garden." "Oh. Yes - a bersday lilac! What's a lilac?" We looked at the lilacs and chose a Miss Kim, guaranteed to "impress." You said that would do. With the lilac packed in the car, we headed for the Creamery for lunch. "I want a bersday hot dog and a bersday Sprite and bersday ketchup..." The woman who made your lunch asked how old you were. "I'm two and a ha-- NO, I'm THREE-year's old." We sat at the picnic table outdoors, where it was warm and the sky was dark, dark blue, and you asked me to take your picture with my phone so you could "do (your) brand new smile." You are napping now. Maybe. Tonight we will take you out to a bersday dinner for the whole family. I think you are changing as much now as during those first few months after you became my daughter - those months when you were learning a new language, a new family and new miracles like walking and eating Cheerios. One minute I'm convinced you are 7-years-old, and not possibly one day younger. You are articulate and funny and I want to spend every moment of the day listening to you. You make up jokes like singing the Alphabet, "A, B, C, Cheese, E, F, Cheese, H, I, J, K, Soap..." Fifteen minutes later, you refuse to use more than one word at a time and you are whiny and petulant and cross. You say things that are not true. "Put on your shoes, and you can go outside with me." "They ARE on," you say as you step into the yard. I look at your bare feet and say, "No. they're not." "Yes they are." This is what it is to have a 3-year-old daughter. I haven't done this before. It's hard and it's scary. For both of us. But we get to do it together. And I promise we'll have lots of lunches on picnic tables and lots of trips to the plant store and lots of warty dogs to help us along the way.

An almost comical number of daffodils

2006-04-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

It's like I've never seen spring before. And honestly, maybe I haven't. The spring that visits tropical locales is equal in intensity to the winters and autumns that visit. It's only summer - that sweating beast who doesn't know when it's time to go home already - only summer that we meet full-on. From my windows that face the highway, I look directly onto a lane that intersects with our street a dozen or so yards south of our driveway. That lane meanders around the hills and vales, crosses the creek that gives our hamlet its name, meanders some more, crosses the creek again, and finally intersects with our street a second time about a mile south of our house. Walking that great loop gives one the benefit of three miles of postcard-worthy hillside vistas. And somehow, almost all of it is uphill, no matter which way one walks around it. And it's only a slight detour to the corner general store, where there is organic coffee and chocolate chip muffins the size of my head. Yum. JC and I have been trying to make that walk a part of our daily routine, seeing as how we've been able to squeeze in plenty of time daily for chocolate Easter candy, a glass or two of wine, a little more candy, a stop at one of the many local NY pizzerias, and just a handful or two more of candy before bedtime. Did I mention the ice cream? Because there is ice cream. At any rate, we've been taking those walks, and being astonished at the beauty around every corner. I did not anticipate the changing colors that would occur in springtime. I thought that what was grey and brown would just turn green and that flowers would erupt in the garden and it would be spring. But that is not how it happens. The hills wake up in a slow, subtle mirror-image of fall. The maple trees are topped with a haze of red buds. The forsythia shocks the landscape with sprays of electric yellow. And the green is like nothing else, the way it muscles through the winter mulch. This is not a sweet springtime that dances into view when winter has taken its leave. This is a full-on, balls-to-the-wall, resurrection-style springtime that kicks winter's bony ass and sends it running north.

Are you Sarah Connor?

2006-04-11T20:05:00.000-07:00

I love this place. I am in love with it. I LIKE like the winding highways and leaning barns and suede moccasins on everybody's feet. The clapboard churches, thumb latches, chicken coops, tapped maples, miniature tulips, glassy lakes, seasonal closings, muddy thaw, slate paths and gruff farmers? Swoon. I like this place for more than a friend. I'm going to get my best friend to talk to this place and find out what it thinks about me. I am going to write my name next to the name of this place in the third stall of the girl's bathroom on the 200 hall. NOT A PEEP Perhaps as a result of my rural lovedrunkenness, I fully consented to the purchase of six baby chicks this afternoon. The little birds are currently in a box in our garage under a nice, warm brooding light. We bought them at the local feed store, which I suspect is operated by Celtic witches. In addition to your normal feed/garden store items, you can also buy a broad selection of Irish folk music and books on nature religions, white witchery and Lephrochaun magyck. There are two cats (familiars?) that roam the store (shoplifting surveillance?), and I think I spotted a young Melissa Joan Hart dong her homework by the Wellies and steel-toed work shoes. She was wearing burgundy suede Merrills. But back to my family's apparent descent into madness. JC has wanted these birds, and has been so excited thinking about the coop he'll build, etc., that he has lost sleep. I am famously and loudly terrified of most birds, particularly the domesticated variety, which come chasing after humans for food. Birds, with their lizard feet and cold, one-eye-at-a-time gaze just give me the creeps. I just know that, when they cock their heads and look at me, they're plotting to flutter underfoot, trip me and peck off my face when I fall to the ground. Aren't they? But wait - maybe all that nervous fear is just some vestigial kneejerk, and if I were to inventory the things that still really scare me, maybe chickens wouldn't even register. That's just what I did. I ran a bare hand blindly under the sofa of my terrors, and I did not pull out any chickens. So we all piled in the van today, and went to the farm store and bought six pullets. Mine is named Sarah Connor - not just because Sarah Connor was a badass mom ("Fuck you chickens - peck on this!"), but because when I told JC that I wanted Araucana chickens, he said, "What? Sarah Connor? What the hell is a Sarah Connor chicken?" It's a chicken whose eggs save the world from cyborg domination. Also, they come out in pastel colors. We have four Araucanas and two Rhode Island Reds. No word yet on which of the Araucanas is Sarah Connor. Whichever chick lives to adulthood and looks like she has the hots for Michael Biehn - I guess that's Sarah Connor.

Me, too, sweetie

2006-04-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

In Buttercup's vocabulary, "too much" is one word. Toomuch. She has a habit, for example, of eating half a banana without swallowing even the teeniest bit of it. When she realizes that her life may be in danger, she spits the banana out and annoucnes, "I had toomuch." She understands that toomuch can lead to trouble. If you have to go to the potty because you have toomuch, it's important to heed that call right away. Or at least sometime within the hour. When it comes to gummi worms, toomuch has serious intestinal ramifications. Balance in all things is optimal. She understands this. Therefore, I know that I am in trouble when, during a recent bath, I reached to turn off the water, and she intercepted my hand with calm authority, looked me in the eye and explained, "I WANT toomuch." So do I, my darling. So do I. IN WHICH BUTTERCUP PLAYS WITH HER COUSINS One of Buttercup's favorite things about her "Brand New House," (aside from the bedroom with pink, striped walls) is the opportunity to play with her cousins. There are the twins, handsome young men of 7 who are at once identical and utterly different. And then there is 3-year-old Jehosaphat, who has become Buttercup's partner in toddler crime. Just three days ago, they managed to extort some 20 jellybeans just by asking the right people at the right times. During a spat (jellybean-related) Buttercup scolded her cousin that he was "a bad Jehosaphat." "Unh-uh," he told her in his husky voice that promises to take on Rick Astley proportions once he reaches adulthood. "My mom says I'm a honeybunch." The defense rests. Jehosaphat's mother is expecting another baby. With three boys in her house, she would not be unhappy to have a baby girl, and she seems to have been paying special attention to Buttercup and holding her at every opportunity. I think she is hoping that my daughter's girlishness will somehow inform and influence the baby in her tummy. I hope this doesn't backfire.

We can pretend

2006-04-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

that I haven't gone almost two months without writing anything in this space. More importantly, we can pretend that someone has been checking it every few hours wondering when that next post will appear. Sorry, dude. Update: We're in New York. It's breathtaking. I miss my Florida friends. It's snowing here. I promised myself I would find time to write every day. I haven't. We sold some cars. We bought a Jeep. Buttercup has been shoveling snow. Xerxes has what may be a date. I'm in love with the view out of all my windows. We have room - come visit.

I don't like Monday socks

2006-02-16T05:28:00.000-08:00

Buttercup received for Christmas a pack of Barbie socks with the days of the week knitted into the cuffs. Although she cannot read, or even recognize letters yet, she correctly identified in her drawer the socks intended for Monday, and told me she wanted to wear them to bed. I grabbed them from the drawer, and got ready to slip them onto her feet when she changed her mind. "I don't like Monday socks," she said. "That's a long way to go for a Boomtown Rats referrence," I told her. "Comedy is all about economy." When will she learn? TENTH AVENUE FREAK OUT I haven't posted much in the past couple weeks (I say this like it is an alarming change in my behavior). Every time I sat down to write something, I invariably checked what was up with Moreena and just couldn't bring myself to inflict upon the world my flimsy ramblings. But, as updates are in order, I decided to buckle down this morning. We are now officially the owners of a huge amount of debt that represents a home and 15 acres in upstate New York. I've been interviewing movers and getting estimates and calling utility companies and generally freaking the fuck out because, holy shit, we're MOVING ACROSS THE COUNTRY in just three weeks. And my house? IS NOT REMOTELY READY. MY BRAIN IS WORKING ON ALL CAPS THESE DAYS, AND I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WONDERING IF I'VE FORGOTTEN SOMETHING VITAL, SUCH AS GETTING HOMEOWNER'S INSURANCE OR DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO BRING MY CATS TO NEW YORK. On one hand, they're terrible animals who are not really fit for indoor living. On the other hand. we've been told that mice come into the house in the autumn. No I want mice or cat urine in the house? It's a tough call. If I write the list of things I must accomplish before our departure, your head would explode and all the goopy bits of blood and bone and brain would get stuck in your keyboard. Trust me - I'm going through, like, seven keyboards a week over here. I need adult supervision to get through this.

Feeling Salieri

2006-02-06T06:22:00.000-08:00

There lies in front of me the opportunity to do something really good - something that could be of real benefit to others. It also could be of real benefit to me. Finding this opportunity has meant having one meeting after another with people in good suits. I will confess only to you, dear readers, that on the occasion of each of these meetings, I was wearing a brand new outfit. I am not a compulsive shopper; I just thought it would be more impressive if I didn't wear my Only Good Suit ay every meeting. For the first time in my life, I own dress shoes in more than one color. When I focus on how I could benefit others with this new career move, I am filled with 100 percent confidence juice. The creativity and goodwill just burst forth like fireworks of sunshine and starlight emanating from my chest cavity. Then I start to think about how I could benefit. I start to think about how I have to benefit in terms of making a a living, and that starlight starts to fizzle. I begin to wonder just who the hell I am kidding, pretending to be a grownup over here. I remember suddenly the time my father told me he was not going to pay for dance classes because I never followed through with anything I started. I was 10, and my dad was a prick, yes, but the part of me that believed what he thought of me still exists deep in my head, where she apparently still believes an overthrow is possible. The answer, of course, is to simply approach this vocation from a purely outward-motivated center, rather giving in to the temptation of becoming an anxious, inward-obsessed heap of bubbling failure-in-progress. How do you do that?

Barely even trying

2006-02-05T21:35:00.000-08:00

So much to cover, so few entries. First, I had my annual follow-up with my oncologist, who declared that my lab results are "absolutely boring in their normalcy." I'll take it. A few days later, I found out that I have osteoporosis (on the border between mild and moderate), and will need to start taking a medication that is quite the rage among the over-80 set. I'm gonna rock it Granny-Style, with 8-12 ounces of water once a week, followed by 30 minutes of standing or sitting upright. Jealous much? Included in the osteoporosis informational sheet I received from the imaging center was a list of "fall prevention tips." Fall in this case refers to taking a spill on your brittle hip bones, not the luminous season of the year when the hillsides are ablaze like a box of Crayolas and Woody Allen makes another movie in New York. At the top of the list was: Avoid wearing high-heeled shoes. So I went out and bought these beauties from the Stuart Weitzman orthopedic line: I will not go gentle. No - when I break a hip, I want all the young, strong-boned women who clamor to my rescue to gasp and say, "My God, look at those beautiful shoes!" AHEM, UH, AHEM My speaking career officially begins this month with two engagements - pro bono, because I am using them as practice. What's that, you say? You've been looking for someone to speak to your group about the pain and promise involved in new growth? Or maybe you're an executive looking for the kind of speaker who can entertain, teach and touch - but not in a stripper way - to reconnect the people on your staff to the sense of purpose that initially attracted them to their jobs? I can help. Seriously. And I'm not that pricey. Yet. Get in on the ground floor of this dream machine. My presentations include 50 percent fewer cliches than this here post. Plus, if you're really lucky, I might wear those shoes and break a hip.

Ass blood, but not mine

2006-01-14T07:50:00.000-08:00

Let me begin by cautioning everyone that, if you are a human being, and you experience anything that could even remotely be described as "ass blood," you need to seek immediate medical attention. Yes, it's probably just hemorhoids or something else that will require an embarrassing trip to the pharmacy for a product that is (naturally!) packaged in a bright yellow box that can be identified from all the way across the prairie. But you need to check. If, however, you are a dog, and you start evacuating blood from your two major holes - those being the mouth and the ass - it may not be that big a deal. That was how I started my Tuesday morning, with a dog who, after a day of being sick to her stomach and generally moping, suddenly began crapping and barfing blood. I assumed that this was the end of her life, so as I wrapped her in a towel and gave my son frantic instructions to watch his sister, I started planning how I was going to tell my husband that his little dog had died because I had not taken her to the vet the day before. We're using a new vet right now, so I had never the met doctor who examined our baby, Zuzu. She was extraordinarily thorough, asking about any possibilities that the dog had gotten into rat poison or antifreeze. Antifreeze? What's that? We don't use that here, as far as I know. She looked in her eyes, felt her ears and belly and lifted her furry tail to look at her backside, where the white fur was streaked with blood. Then she smelled my dog's ass. With purpose and concentration, the way a wine connoiseur puts his nose into a glass. She told me her expert senses detected both blood and feces. Ladies and gentlemen, I've had jobs that sucked. I've had jobs that made me want to kill myself or someone else. I've had jobs that made me cry all the way there and back. But I have never had a job that required me to smell a dog's ass and make a diagnosis. The diagnosis was HGE. And although it can be life-threatening because of the sudden onset, rapid dehydration and blood loss, Zuzu's case was not severe. She stayed in the hospital for a couple of days on IV fluids and antibiotics, and that was that. Best of all, I didn't have to tell my husband that my negligence doomed his darling little princess. OTHER HIGHLIGHTS - We gave found renters for our Florida house, and although we are charging them significantly less than what we could probably get, they are friends with a baby on the way, and I won't have to go through any kind of management company or Realtor. And they keep a much cleaner house than I ever could, so the peace of mind is well worth it. - Yoga, baby! I attended a yoga class because, from the memo I got, apparently it is required of every woman between 25 and 75 that, within the first month of the new year, you must engage in at least one humiliating and disspiriting physical activity from which you cannot escape halfway thorugh class. The best part - the VERY BEST PART - is that as I was approaching the stairs that lead to the classroom, I saw two of my son's good friends, a young man and a young woman, who also were in the class. They said Hi, I said Hi, then we waited uncomfortably in the hallway for the kickboxing class to wrap up. Neither of the two options open to me - to stay and make a fool of myself in the class, or to run away like a little bitch - were very appealing. I stayed. There also was the matter of my mat. Doing pilates and other mat-centered exercises in the past, I found that those thin mats tended to hurt my spine and tailbone. More embarrasingly, they caused my feet to sweat during the warrior pose et al, and I spent so much energy trying not to slide around on my mat that I couldn't much focus on breathing at the right times and letting go of all my competitive urges, remembering that what I did yesterday is not what I can do today, and what I can do today is not what I can do tomorrow. So I have a thicker mat - a mat that suddenly seemed like the equivalent of bringing a Brussel's sprout sandwich to the middle school lunchroom. I was so uncool.

Anni's Letter

2006-01-06T11:52:00.000-08:00

One day, Anni, you will be through with all this. It will be a distant memory, like a childhood song whose words and melody come to you only in fragments. You will roll your blue eyes when your mother asks where you're driving, who will be there, call if you go anywhere else. "You're so over-proTECtive," you'll call over your shoulder as you head through the door, a flutter of blonde curls. Because your mother has kept such good notes, you may know the details of your story better than many people who have traveled roads similar to yours. You're lucky for that, and I hope you thank her one day. Your story is her story, too. And your father's and your sister's. The scars you own are their scars, too, and they represent all the worst fears and best cases and burning questions and and lost sleep and lost sleep and lost sleep. One day, you will help your own daughter or son climb the ladder on the small slide at the park, and you will realize that your child is the same age you were when you had your second transplant. You'll take her corduroy jacket off because she's gotten too hot with all her playing. You'll wipe her face and her hair, sweaty and damp around the top of her forehead. You'll wonder how your mother got through it. You'll wonder how you got through it. These years will be fuzzy memories one day, but your scars will stay with you. Maybe you'll hate them for a while, and wish they could just disappear. Maybe you'll forget you have them, and remember only when a new doctor asks. "What? These? Oh yeah..." And maybe you'll look at them one day, and whisper "Thank you," because you have absolute, undeniable proof that you are strong, that you can fight, that you can do anything. I hope the day comes soon, Anni, that all of this is just a memory.

All associates

2005-12-29T08:02:00.000-08:00

All associates are currently assisting other customers. Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold and your call will be answered in the order it was received. This has gone on for, oh, about 45 minutes now as I have waited to speak to someone at my bank. Apparently home equity lines of credit are HUGE just after Christmas. I suppose that's not surprising. The holidays were just fabulous here. Christmas Eve found me serving chalice at our church, where roughly 75 percent of the regular parishioners fled the city for Yuletide. This left our very sweet, very dottering supply priest and me (also dottering, though less sweet) to do midnight service as a two-person show. Little secret: I don't know how to acolyte - which is a big requirement if you're the only other person up there with the priest. But Fr. Dotter is a quick thinker, so he quickly pulled someone from the congregation who has experience with liturgy. Unfortunately, that person was a gentleman with what seems to be some developmental challenges, which include voice immodulation disorder. I AM WHISPERING. He also has some personal frangrance challenges - so much so that half way through the service I started wondering whether the frangrance was actually coming from me, since it seemed to be filling the air around me. Then I realized it had filled the entire sanctuary, rising like incense and prayers through the rafters up to God in heaven. The comedy was truly worthy of a special holiday service. Fr. Dotter and the Conscripted Acolyte - neither of them blessed with good hearing - stage whispered in loud (and since the priest was miked, amplified) voices throughout the liturgy. "GIVE ME THE WATER." "THE WAFERS?" "NO, THE WATER. HANDLE SIDE FIRST." "HANDLE WHAT?" "HANDLE SIDE FIRST" "WHAT PURSE?" My husband told me afterward that the congregation could hear every word. Fr. Dotter also cut short what had been planned as three communion hymns played by a guest musician on acoustic guitar. Halfway through the first song, Fr. Dotter abruptly launched into the post-communion prayer. If he is found strangled with a guitar string, we all know where to look. Now I must be off. My phone took matters into its own hands and disconnected itself from the neverending holding pattern. Tomorrow - Christmas pictures!

We eat the weak and broken

2005-12-21T09:37:00.000-08:00

Dear Mom~ Remember those spritz cookies you used to make every Christmas - by which i mean "every Christmas before the divorce, when our domestic life sort of went to hell'? Do you? Do you remember the silver metal cookie press with the copper ends that you used to pipe wreath and candy cane shapes onto the cookie sheet, and how the candy canes were especially prone to breakage, and our standing rule was that we got to eat all the broken ones? Remember? You do? Well, can you tell me exactly how the fuck you made that dough? Because I have tried this Christmas, and it just didn't work out so well. That's what mothers and daughters do, right? And now that I have a daughter - and one who is so incredibly keen on kitcheny things - I thought it would be a good idea to continue a family tradition. I even bought a fancy electric cookie press that looks like it could have been Julia Childs' vibrator. But the results were just ... eh... First, I didn't have your recipe. I know, I know - there were almost 35 years there in which I had you as a real, living parent and plenty of opportunity to ask for things like that. I dropped the ball, admittedly. The recipe I found formed into the consistency of thousands of tiny, dry dough balls that would never have joined together. So I added more butter, and I got a dough that almost worked. Almost. Of course, by the time I adjusted the recipe and figured out how to detonate, er, assemble the hi-tek cookie press, it was several hours past Buttercup's bedtime, so she was fast asleep and cranking out all those cookies was much more an exercise in endurance (and alcohol resistence) than of celebration. All in all, the cookies are passable. Particularly to anyone who never ate the cookies we made. Although they taste similar, I know they're not the same. Only one of them broke.

What else is new

2005-12-19T21:51:00.000-08:00

I'm tired of this blog sitting here all the time making me feel like a bad person for not updating more often. I have so many other - BETTER - reasons for feeling like a bad person, that I hardly need this one. I also have so much to do, and so little inspiration that this is about all I can manage to get out right now. So in lieu of actual content, I'll give you photos of my beautiful children: Mmmmm, gravy!

Acreage is the new bungalow

2005-12-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

This is our new place. It's the one at the bottom of the photo, outlined in blue. The major portion of the house was a one-room schoolhouse built in the mid-1800s. Other rooms were added in the 1970s (aw yeah, baby, converSATION pit - come on over to Bettie's and we'll play Ice Storm!) and the 1990s. Stretching behind the house, and behind the neighbor's property, are 15 landlocked acres. JC pointed out to me yesterday that we are undeniably hip people. It's true. We have jobs that are the perfect mix of artistry and altruism. We live in a restored 1918 bungalow on a street with sidewalks where parents walk their kids to school and to the half dozen parks that are within a mile radius.We have the Mommyvan and the two dogs and the surfing teenager and the adorable toddler. We've got it going on. And what do we do to take it to the next level? We buy a 19th-century schoolhouse on 15 acres in upstate New York. Acreage is the new bungalow. Just you wait. Here are some other shifts you'll see in the hip paradigm: Out: Coffee drinks prepared by baristas In: Coffee prepared in the fireplace because a blizzard knocked out the power. Out: Stopping by the Whole Foods to pick up a salad. In: Stomping into the garden to pick a salad. Out: Vespas. In: Four-wheelers.

So, what's that near?

2005-12-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

The offer we made on the NY house was accepted, so now we are crossing fingers that everything runs smoothly through closing, which will be on Valentine's Day. I know - that's the most adorable part. We will move in March. Don't spread it around, though. We haven't yet broken the news to my in-laws, who are bound to be disappointed. Maybe not surprised, but definitely disappointed. Meanwhile, we are wringing our every last drop of pleasure from what may be our last Christmas in Florida. Over the weekend, we drove about an hour to attend a country Christmas festival, complete with fake snow. Actually, there were two varieties of fake snow - the space-age polymer snow that blew through the air, and the sno-cone-type ice that was spread on the ground in two different, age-appropriate spots. What. A. Bad. Idea. Children and adults alike gathered on the slippery ice and hurled great chunks of it at each other's spines, eyes and groins. It was a holiday bloodbath. Meanwhile, a guy on a tractor was giving Christmas hayrides around the park while a band in the white, holly-bedecked pavilion played some religious Christmas favorites such as, "Don't Let Foreigners Kill Baby Jesus" and "God Can Only Love Me if He Hates You." Have I mentioned that our new home will be above the Mason-Dixon Line?

Don't jinx anything

2005-12-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

Now, don't get excited. Please. Don't act like anything big has happened. Please. It's just that we have made an offer on a house. We have made an offer on a house in New York. We have made an offer on a house in a New York hamlet. Although we have word that the owner "seems positive," we haven't been accepted yet. He's using the old "my wife is on her way to Sweden" delay tactic. If I had a nickel.... We will probably hear back sometime over the weekend. I have butterflies in my stomach - both the "oooooh, I hope, I hope, I hope.." variety and the "holy crap, what the hell are we doing...." variety. Kind of like having children. In other news, I spent two days this week putting on big girl clothes and attending a two-day conference where I made - get this - actual business contacts. Look at me! Ain't I the stuff? I am hoping that this will lead to greater opportunities to speak to groups about how people in hospitals should be treated really well - above and beyond the basic medical care stuff. Like, you should be nice to them. I know - it's shocking. And I have been invited to speak to two different groups loosely affiliated to churches. People are asking me what I charge. I don't have an answer. Anyone out there do speaking engagements? Anyone out there who can tell me what to charge in the beginning? Anyone out there know when I became the kind of person who is asked to speak? I am so much more comfortable being told to shut up.

And another thing...

2005-11-24T09:47:00.000-08:00

Oooh, I forgot to put barium enemas in the cooker. Barium enemas and, just to be safe, all ass-related medical procedures. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

In the cooker

2005-11-21T17:42:00.000-08:00

Recently while visiting our New York relations, we were watching television when an ad for a personal injury attorney came on. In the ad, a gentleman is standing in his yard in front of a barbecue grill talking about how he was glad he called this lawyer, or maybe about how she SHOULD have called this lawyer... I'm not sure exactly what he said, because Big Joe started railing from the sofa while searching for the Mute button: Ugh! I hate this guy. I HATE this guy. Get him off! I'm gonna put him in that cooker! And so it has become that the ultimate insult, the greatest threat, and the supreme dismissal is to put someone or something In the Cooker. This time of year, before we have to start counting our blessings, I think I need to put some things in the cooker. Clean house, so to speak, so I can be truly grateful. Today's list of things I'm putting in the cooker: - My HP Deskjet 3820. - The nickname TomKat, when used without irony. - Cancer. - bleeding varices - My ex-husband, who hasn't seen my son in 10 years, never made any acknowledgement of birthdays or other holidays, paid approximately $800 child support total over the past 17 years, and suddenly decided to show up yesterday for a fishing trip. - Edy's Slow Churned Rich & Creamy Light French Silk ice cream. Damn you Edy! You're an ice cream witch, that's what you are. - The 4,500 other houses on the market in our city that are apparently more appealing than the one I'm trying to sell. I could go on, but I'll save it for another time. What would you put in the cooker?

A letter to you, dear daughter

2005-11-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

Last night, for the first time since you became our daughter, you spent the night away from both of us. You had a sleep-over with Mima, which allowed your Papa and me to put on decent clothes, leave the house for a supper served later than 6 p.m. and - oh, here is the really lovely part - get just a little bit drunk over our pasta. Drunk with freedom! This may have been your first sleep-over, but it will not be your last. And you had a lovely time, from all reports. You slept easily and well through the night. And this morning when I saw you, I gasped because you grew five inches in the 15 hours you were out of my sight. You have grown right up. You stand in front of my mirror and tell me that, when you get big, you'll use makeups. Wonderful. Your Papa reminds you that when you get big, you'll have a world full of options. You can be a doctor or a legislator or a pilot, he tells you. "I could be a pilot," you say with conviction. "Do you know what a pilot does?" I ask you. You smile and nod. "Arrrrrr!" Oh! you say to everything, as if everything were a wonderful surprise. "Come on - it's time to go to school," I say. "Oh! I don't want to go to school." And then, of course, there is "because." You have discovered the power of bolstering your demands with "because." In particular, you love "because I'm cold." "Mama, I need that candy up there because I'm cold." "I need to play outside because I'm cold." "I need another story because I'm cold." When you do not get what you want, or you get it in some compromised fashion that doesn't suit your specifications - a broken slice of cheese, for example - your heartbreak is unbearable. And it is the loudest thing I have ever encountered. Sometimes, when you are truly inconsolable and sleepy, we walk onto the front sidewalk and look for the moon. We talk about how the moon is peeking down on you in all her silvery light. I tell you that, when you lived in China and I lived here, I used to look up at the moon every night and tell her to bring my love to you, look in on where you were sleeping and kiss your forehead. Now, we talk about how the moon will visit your sister, and tell her we're waiting and we'll be there as soon as we can. You say you want to bake your sister a cake, because it will be her birthday. We straighten up your room, and I say I need to make room for a bookshelf. You say we need to make room for your sister. But that she cannot have your old baby bed. We have to buy her her own. It's a deal, my big girl. My dancer, my clown, my pilot.

Over-extensionated

2005-11-04T06:21:00.000-08:00

When my son was little, I worked at least one job all the time and went to school. He attended a chi-chi day school, where he was always the poorest kid in class with the youngest mother and the crappiest car in the afternoon car line. I would show up for school parties, rushing and breathless from literally running from the car to get there on time, and I would step into the classroom and then remember that I was supposed to have brought napkins or something. Something I hadn't brought, anyway. And there would always be these other mothers who had personalized old cigar boxes for each child or baked minimuffins with each kid's initials on them or brought a pony for every kid in the class. It wasn't just that they were rich. Although they were. They just seemed to manage better all the way around. Their houses and cars were clean all the time. They didn't forget to bring napkins. I thought that, being older and generally more together as a human being this time around, I would be more like those mothers I so envied back then. I'm not. Although I had intended to keep regular letters to my daughter, I haven't. I haven't even compiled her lifebook yet, and now we're on our way to another daughter whose photos and mementoes likely will be stored in a box instead of an album where they could do her some good. I haven't published a book, or even worked on that goal seriously. And my house is never clean, EVER. I mean, it's not health-department dirty or anything. It's not like my mom's house. But everyone in our family seems completely incapable of regular daily maintenance. Am I just missing some DNA fragment that other people take for granted? I know I've had a lot on my plate these last 18 months or so, what with the cancer and the mom dying and the chemotherapy and the traveling to China to adopt my daughter and the hurricane and the home destruction and the other hurricanes and... It's easy to tell myself that falling short of my own expectations (or, more accurately at this point, fantasies) is just a byproduct of some seriously bad and demanding circumstances. But that's just not true. The bad circumstances have just highlighted what a really tentative clutch I had on everything to begin with. Now, I'm going to go wash my hair for the first time in four days.

Halloween

2005-11-01T20:10:00.000-08:00

The dog The daughter dressed as the dog I hope your Halloween was half as much fun as my daughter's. She has found her favorite holiday. Just wait 'til she learns about Christmas.

Where my Jungians at?

2005-10-27T06:03:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night that my husband and I robbed a bank. Twice. It was his idea, and apparently the scheme was foolproof. So foolproof that we accomplished it twice. At the same bank. I love my husband. He's really smart. CAN I CALL IT A NA-NA? Yesterday was big. In the morning, I had another followup appointment with my ladydoctor, who pronounced that everything looks peachy. You know that makes a girl feel proud when someone says her (per husband's request, I am not going to call it a hoo-ha) "looks great, REALLY GREAT - the best I've seen it." He also said that, even with all the reconstruction, it's obviously "functional." Flatterer. Now you're just trying to make me blush. After my appointment, I picked up Buttercup and raced to my mother's house so I could meet the charity truck and make another donation. Just so that you can understand what it has meant to clear my mother's house, let me explain to you the layers of archaeology that I had to accomplish. First, I removed at least 10 bags of trash per room - and these were big, black lawn bags of trash. I had to have thrown out somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-150 bags of trash. And that was just the OBVIOUS trash. The trash that could be ascertiained without any effort. Then I had to sort through every purse Mom had owned since she was 25 - all of them still full of stuff. And no, I couldn't just toss them, because among the gas receipts and napkins and disintegrated latex nurse gloves, I would find things like her baptismal certificate, a wedding ring, an original photo of my grandmother as a child. And I've just discovered that I can't even go further in describing the work, because even putting it in writing is too grueling. I also am struggling against the feeling that my brother could have done more. Or, indeed, anything. I need to let go of that, because it will only get in the way. I just wish I hadn't been the one who had to look at EVERY piece of paper in the house. I wish that, when I watched the man close the truck door on the living room sofas that had been in our house since I was five, I wish I hadn't been alone watching it go.

Wilma and Bettie

2005-10-24T06:06:00.000-07:00

No, we were not in the path of this latest absurd storm. Wilma, indeed. My New York Realtor called me yesterday while I was shopping for materials for Buttercup's Halloween costume. Buttercup wants to dress as one of our dogs. I will post photos. My Realtor wanted to know if we were in harm's way. She has no concept of the geography of Florida. That's OK - I probably couldn't point to her part of New York on an unlabelled map. Yes - we are planning to move to New York. We're looking for acreage. We're going to farm Christmas trees and hope. We're going to freeze our heinders off in the winter and wonder what the hell we were thinking, and we will remind ourselves that we were thinking about spring, summer and autumn, which together last about as long as winter. We are looking at homes in villages. Villages! You have no idea how beautiful that word is to me. You should know that I am married to George Bailey - actually the Bizarro George Bailey. He has spent his life trying to get INTO Bedford Falls. Come March, when the permafrost turns to mud, he and I will pack the younguns in the wagon and strike out for his Bedford Falls. We have fallen in love with a house, and will talk soon to a lender to find out if there is any hope of making an offer on it sooner than our move. (***If you are my New York Realtor and you're reading this, please note that the language I use - "fallen in love" is just literary hyperbole. We could take it or leave it. We're not that excited. Really.***) The one difficulty with this decision has been our son, who will turn 17 in a couple of weeks. He is ambivalent about the prospect of moving. He has threatened to stay behind with friends. I'm not sure how this will shake out. I do know that I'm going to mention the necessity of buying him a 4-wheeler so he can survery the Christmas trees on the back nine.

Dora's a cruel, cruel mistress

2005-10-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do a blog in which every entry is an apology for not updating more regularly. Yes, I know - that' what this blog has become. The catch - and the hilarity - of the other blog will be that I will update it daily, if not hourly. There is a general, boring chaos surrounding me right now that includes: - My boss, friend and favorite priest on the planet retiring from her post at my church. Really crushing news. I am essentially holding my breath to see whether I want to continue to work as the church secretary as the office conditions change. - Another trip to New york, this time complete with househunting. We saw a PERFECT house. We are bothin love with it. It's generally in our price range. The only problem is that we have too much to accomplish here in Florida before we can consider the move. - Trying to accomplish all there is to accomplish. Getting Mom's house emptied is like having a job scraping pet kittens on the highway. It's harder than I want to give it credit for. I want someone else to do it. Any takers out there? - Preparing for a trip tomorrow to visit my aunt and grandmother, who turned 93 last week. Buttercup and I are going together to celebrate. So you see, as usual there is much on my plate. I keep trying to figure out how to let some of it go, but there is nothing that can be eliminated. At least, I can't see anything right now. FUNNY KID STORY Buttercup and I were shopping in the pet food aisle of the grocery store - or the "market" as my daughter has started calling it - and she told me: "I don't eat dog food! I eat Buttercup food!" "Yes, that's right." "I don't eat cat food. I eat Buttercup food." "Right you are." (Moment of pensive silence. "I eat DORA food." "Oh, really? What does Dora eat?" "Boots."

Ooops, that was me.

2005-09-23T06:02:00.000-07:00

I am taking a pilates class, up to the Joonyer College, as they say. And by "they" I mean, "me." Except for compulsory P.E. classes in grade school, I have never participated in anything of this nature, so everything is quaintly new to me. "Our instructor brings a portable CD player and we listen to music the WHOLE TIME!!" That sort of thing. I like the class, and I would probably like it more if I spent more time focusing on making my navel and spine meet and less time thinking about the social dynamic of the room. There are about 12 people in the class, and many of them have taken previous classes with this instructor. There are the requisite Blonde Girls who chat before class while stretching and have long conversations of the variety that I always thought occurred only in yogurt and tampon commercials. There are some 40-something, supertanned, milfs - or more accurately, mYlfs, because I'll take a pass on that action, thank you very much. There's an older lady who farts pretty regularly during some of the moves, and says sweetly in her tiny voice, "Ooops, that was me." I don't sit right next to her. There's another older lady who cannot weigh more than 70 pounds. There are two very well- groomed investment firm gals who talk a lot about work before and after the actual class, and there's another woman who does temp work at the same firm, so she gets in on the conversation sometimes. The Temp Worker, who is probably in her 50s, sat next to me one week and told me she is a retired hairstylist. She also told me that she is "cheating" on her diet all over the place, especially when temping at the investment firm because everyone brings in cookies and cakes and ... whatever. I don't have a lot of patience with that kind of conversation. I have more patience with cupcake anxiety, however, than I do with casual conversation in a pilates class about the offpsring of Abraham and Sarah. Apparently, Temp Worker has been reading her Bible, and found the need to share her revelations (get it?) with a very sweet and quiet college professor who wears a bindi, and is obviously too polite to tell this woman who shut the hell up because pilates class ain't no missionary trip. Given the choice, I would sit next to the Farting Lady. When I mentioned my pilates class a couple days ago to my friend Lolita, who had stopped by to allow me to bask in the glory of her baby daughter's beauty, she said, "You're taking a pilates class? Huh." Last night, over takeout Chinese food at their house, Lolita told us that she had gone home to her husband and said, "Elizabeth's taking a pilates class. We used to smoke and drink together." We also used to work together, have lunch together almost every day, spend whole weekends together and generally behave in a way that had our other colleagues believing that our children would one day appear on a prime-time news magazine program complaining about our sick lifestyle. I miss those times.

And my head didn't explode one bit

2005-09-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

For the past two months, when I have told people that my dad was coming to stay with us for a week, I was unable to weed out of my voice the tone that said "You have no idea how ridiculous this is. "My dad is coming?...To stay with us?...For a week?" "My dad? Just had surgery? To become a woman?" I have been married twice, and my father did not attend either wedding. On my birthday, I may or may not receive a card or gift. He did not see my son until my child was 4-years-old. He does not know how to pronounce my last name. He's not that kind of dad. He's the kind of dad who refers to his newest granddaughter as "(his) daughter's adopted baby from China." He's the kind of dad who neglected to include a Christmas gift to his daughter's adopted baby from China last year when he sent the rest of us gifts. Because my daughter deserves a grandfather who at the very least calls her his granddaughter, I invited himt o come experience our family bliss and do a little bonding with Buttercup. I assumed, of course, that we would be hosting him in our newly repaired home - from which we have been displacwed since April for Hurricane repairs. I certainly never would have extended an invitation for him to stay with us in my mother's house. My mother's house, which used to be my parents' house. The house that they bought together, the house where their fighting so often woke my brother and me, the house from which my mother dragged my brother and me one night at 2 a.m. to flee to her mother's, the house where our parents sat us down in the living room to tell us the (not very) shocking and sad news that they were getting divorced, the house where something told me that spontaneously bursting into cheerful song was the wrong reaction to the divorce news, the house where my mom got lonely(er) and depressed and drank too much and neglected things, the house where all the carpets are stained and the cigarette smell still lingers a year and a half and hundreds of wall washings after her death, the house where we're still stuck because Smoky McGruff and his Crack Team of home improvers have consistently had to perform every job no fewer than three times in order to get the "improvement" part right. My...dad...is...coming...to...stay...with...us...? Actually, he already came and went, and I spent the week going lalalalalalalala, What visit? What dad? What carpet stains? What painful and embarassing family history? Who wants cake? What undoubtably will happen is that, over the next few (months, years, decades) days, as I recall the erstwhile glossed-over points of the visit, I will reel in horror, sigh in relief or explode in unpredictable rage. It should be fun. Meanwhile, we are scheduled to return to our house tomorrow. For real this time. Honest.

Waiting in gas lines on E

2005-09-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

Katrina acted like a tropical storm here in the westernmost part of Florida. The wind was fierce, and there were a few flooded streets. We lost power for a while. This is becoming a bore. -Hey, Elizabeth, what's your blog about? -Weather. Here is something I wrote for the paper, followed by the best bit of mail I've received in a long time. Enjoy it. Meanwhile, please keep Anni and Moreena in your thoughts and prayers. ====== The machine hum of generators and chain saws. The piles, heaps and waves of debris. The vacant, stunned expressions of survivors. Red Crosses and Blue Roofs. This isn’t what I want to write. I don’t want to think about it, and neither do you. Let’s make a deal and not talk about it - not think about it at all. Not think about this horrible - no, UNIMAGINABLE - thing that has happened. Let’s not think about the fact that it could ever happen again. Can we talk about something else? Is there something on television we could watch? Can we go shopping? Maybe we can buy a couple of 35,000-calorie coffee drinks and leaf through fashion and shelter magazines imagining that nail polish and designer sheets were all that need to occupy our breezy thoughts. Uh-oh, I said “breezy.” I’m sorry; it won’t happen again. I know, I know. Shopping and reading magazines and watching TV won’t make this go away. Did it happen to you, too? Did your deep sigh of relief turn into a long, sick heave when you saw what happened? My cousin is there in Gulfport. The day before the storm, I heard through another relative that she decided not to evacuate. She and her husband moved there this summer, and maybe she wanted to stay in her new home. And since she is expecting a baby boy any week now, who can blame her for being reluctant to pack up her household and haul it to higher ground? The day of the storm, my stomach hurt until I heard that she was okay. But then, that was the day of the storm. Big, bad things seem bearable the day they happen. Something holy (or insane, depending on your perspective) stiffens your spine and clears your vision just long enough to get you to a place where it’s safe to fall on all fours, or crawl under the covers or strike whatever is your personal bewilderment pose. My personal favorite the classic Denial Stance. I’m like a mountaintop yogi who has spent her life perfecting this move. Did I tell you I spent the day after Katrina shopping for a new vacuum because company was coming to town? Katrina who? Let me tell you about my new friend, Dyson. Both my husband and my best friend Lolita always fall back on the Burn Down the Forest Position. There is a movie titled “The Edge,” (maybe you have caught it one of the 300,000 times it has aired on cable TV) in which Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin survive a plane crash only to contend with man-eating bears, a harsh Alaskan wilderness and David Mamet’s dialogue. Lolita and my husband agree that the most efficacious solution to the characters’ problem would be to burn down the forest. They’re action-oriented people, and that’s why I love them. But if you can’t deny something, and you can’t burn it down or fix it or make it go away, what do you do? 0Louisiana’s Governor Kathleen Blanco asked people to pray. A lot of us were way ahead of her. Even if you’re not the praying type, I’ll bet you whispered, “Oh, God” when you saw those flooded neighborhoods, rescue helicopters and crowded shelters. Maybe all we can do is pray. But prayer doesn’t have to be on your knees. Prayer can be a check or a pint of blood given with the hope that it finds the person who needs it most. Prayer can be an open door to someone whose doors and windows were blown away. Prayer can be a phone call to your cousin to let her know that it’s okay if she’s not okay today, because things will get better. We’re thinking about you. All of us here are thinking about all of you there. What Katrina did was unimaginable. And from where we’re standing now, recovery seems just as unimaginable. But the human imagination is limited. In “The Prophet,” Khalil Gibran wrote: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” Our spirits been carved deeply by the storms we’ve witnessed. Time will reveal the rich, ornate beauty of what has survived. And when those hollow spaces fill with joy, no wind or wave will be able to touch us. ======== Dear Ms. Trever-Buchinger: Your article in the 9/04/05 "Praying for recovery......" was right on. For the first time in an aeon (a crossword answer variation of the word eon, meaning a LONG time) we didn't have to hear about your cancer, your children and family with weird flower or Mexican/Spanish names, or your personal grief. Bravo!! I have always looked forward to your opines, but for the last aeon they have become loathsome as you repeat, in Roget's invariable ways, the same self-suffering stories again and again. For once in an aeon, you have written an article (and I'm going to use the most detestable cliché borne in the new millennium) "outside the box" - talking about others' strife instead of your own. Keep up the good work! Very truly yours, Evelyn Coville Bradley

What does being German have to do with anything?

2005-08-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

Speaking of spamlines, click on the header to see a Planet Out headline that appeared on Yahoo News. It looks like the kind of thing I usually delete from my mailbox.

A big day for a big girl

2005-08-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

After months of hurrying to the bathroom with the announcement, "Go potty!" or "I need a use a potty, Mama!" Buttercup used the bathroom for the first time IN THE POTTY today. And me? I missed it. She was at her twice-weekly daycare experience, and I was working at the church. And although it is almost tempting to go all Guilty Mom about missing this precious milestone, I'm going to go the other way with it. The ONLY reason Buttercup used the potty is that every other child in her class did it, and she wanted to do it, too. Even R--, the newest student, who has never shown the slightest interest in the bathroom, decided all on his own to give it a shot. After school, we made phone calls to Papa to let him know her news, and also to Mima (grandma). I don't think either of them even considered feeling badly about missing the first potty moment. What's their problem?

IS ROLEX ME!!

2005-08-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

If you check the comments from my previous post, you'll find that my very dear friend margretbw60wztheobold sent me "Hot News From The Automotive Lending Industry!!" Spammers? On my blog?? Surely not. Don't you all have close friends who send you feverish emails demanding that you PLEASE HER TONIGHT or GET QQQUALITY TABLETTS AT BARGAIN PRICES? My good friends all want me to INCREASE (MY) THICKNESS and Re: RONA? It's a burden to be this popular. My very favorite spam subject ever sent to any of my email addresses read: Is Rolex Who?? Is Rolex YOU!!! FINGER LAKES AND LEATHERSTOCKINGS So, yes, I was away from my blog for a bit. First there was the New York vacation, then the storm, then the seemingly unending march of little things that steal your weeks. Mostly, I have been distracted by my deep desire to leave this city. I have been wandering online in search of jobs and real estate. I've been reminding myself that the right things will come at the right time. Meanwhile I have been in training on church management software, and it has been kicking my ever-widening church secretary ass. Thank you, thank you, thank you God, that I have to perform ONLY the membership modules and not deal with the accounting and bookkeeping portion. Amen. All the accounting stuff is interesting, though. It's like learning a language I will never use in real life. Ever.

You know I love you

2005-08-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

Hey baby, it's me. I'm sorry I was away so long. I had to, you know, get some things straightened out in my head. It's a crazy time, you know? Don't look like that. You know I love you. You know I wasn't trying to ignore you. I'm just - things aren't easy. I had a lot of questions about my own mind I had to answer. And then there was the hurricane. And then school started and a bunch of people came to look at the house. And then there was Brad and Angelina. So I've been busy. But I've been thinking about you every day. Yes, I have. I know, I know. There are plenty bloggers out there who update every day and post all kinds of photos and you can always rely on them to talk about movie openings, or funny things their babies said, or kissing girls at rock shows. But they won't ever love you like I do. Ever. And I promise that from now on, I'll be better. I'll post more often and I'll post more photos. I'll talk about Star Wars and babies and girl kissing. Whatever you want, baby. Just take me back. Put me back in your Favorites and check on me from time to time. Don't give up on us, baby.

What it looks like today

2005-07-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

I was talking to an acquaintance, and the very first topic we covered was, "How did you do"? We meant the hurricane. "How did you do? Is there a tree in your living room? Are all your windows intact? Have you lost your mind and taken to rocking in an empty bathtub carying on a secret conversation with Jim Cantore. He and are both Hurricane Ivan refugees, still displaced from our homes because of a storm that happened last September. After Ivan, the most-often-heard points of conversation were Luck and Evacuation. "We were so lucky no one was killed." and "Next time we'll evacuate." This time, after a much less intense storm, the topic of conversation seems to be leaving. For good. My acquaintance M--- says his daughter is going off to college in a couple months, and there is less and less that is holding his wife and him in the area. Then he says casually that his attorney wife is already licensed in Colorado, and that his profession has a reciprocal agreement with that state. Clearly it was more than a fleeting thought. There were professional licenses involved. But, he added, Nirvana looks different every day. "Sometimes it looks like Colorado. Sometimes it looks like Northern California." Nirvana does not look like this place - unless Nirvana is littlered with fallen trees, shattered plastic signs and citizens wandering around with a glazed, what-the-fuck expression. The aftermath of last year's storm is still so prevalent, it's hard to tell what is new storm damage and what is old. One day, everything willb e shiny and new - or at least, that is what I've been telling myself since last year. But it is beginning to look like things will never be fixed. And every June to November there is another hurricane season, and another chance for all your repair work to be destroyed. I know that the nature of life is its temporary-ness, and the better part of the work we do in life is coming to terms with the fleeting quality of our existence. Sands through the hourglass, blah, blah, blah. Another friend tells me there is no point in leaving town because all that hurricane stress will follow you wherever you go. Post-traumatic stress is not localized, she says. If you leave, you won't worry about hurricanes, you'll worry about snowstorms or car accidents or something else. Sure. People who have been through life-threatening events need to heal the wounds caused by their experiences. I'm not sure I can do that here, though, where the entire community is suffering from PTS and so much is broken. I'm not sure I'm up to that. I'd rather aim for something that looks like Nirvana today - someplace where things are whole enough that I can start rebuilding myself.

She lives

2005-07-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

What was intended to be a week in Upstate New York visiting extended fam ily turned into two weeks thanks to two storms - Cindy and Dennis. I watched the second one on CNN wondering whether the wind that as blowing Anderson Cooper off his feet also was blowing my POD off my driveway and scattering all my possessions across the neighborhood. It wasn't. My house is fine. My mother's house is mostly fine, except for the large fallen oak that now fills the backyard. Photos will follow. What isn't fine is my already fragile psyche. The day after we got home, we drove around town and I realized that I couldn't always identify whether damage came from Dennis or from Ivan almost a year ago. Broken signs, uninhabitable houses, pile after pile after pile of debris. It's all too much. With everything else that life hands a gal, I don't know if I can handle hurricanes, too.

Under my alb was a T-shirt that said "I'm Blogging This"

2005-06-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

I had my first adventure in chalice bearing today, and it was blessedly uneventful. For those of you who don't have regular contact with a chalice bearer, they're the people who follow the priest at communion, and after she (or, he, I suppose) gives people bread, the chalice bearer gives people wine. I'm a Mom twice over, and my youngest is two, so I am well acquainted with helping someone drink from a cup. Also, I know how to wrest a cup away from the anxious hands of someone who wants to do everything herself. And I know how to do it without spilling a drop. During our training, we were warned to watch out for elderly alcoholics and curious children - both of whom have a habit of trying to down the whole cup of bad wine. One of our trainers, a clean cut gentleman who is retired from both the military and the corporate world, wore around his head a hat brim made of hot pink poster board to demonstrate the difficulty of serving to women in big hats. My respect goes out to anyone who bore chalice before the 1970s. We also were warned about all the different difficulties we might encounter, from the Roman Catholics who seem to be ignoring you but are really praying, so don't pass them over, to the recovering alcoholics who will kiss the chalice without imbibing. We were told that we WOULD make mistakes. We would spill wine, drop things, break things. And we would recover. Today went smoothly, although I panicked at first, thinking Isat down in the wrong place. I don't think I did, but from the other side of the rail, I might as well have never been in a church in my life for all I could remember. I was lucky to be up there with an acolyte who knew the service inside-out. The best part is that I had only one serious hotflash while I was up there under the lights and in an alb meant for someone a bit larger than I. And it was during a kneeling portion, so I was able to just close my eyes and wait for it to pass. If it had happened while I had the chalice in my hand, I might have poured it over my sizzling head. The cup of salvation.

Cinder meets Darwin

2005-06-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

My mother's cat? The one I was going to euthanize because the neighbors complained about her and called the Animal Cops on us? Yes, that one. The one who had lived in my Mom's garage and driveway for 21 years, stalking mockingbirds, killing lizards, growing increasingly to resemble nothing so much as the undead. She passed yesterday. And it wasn't even my doing. I woke to find my dear husband digging the grave in the backyard (no, he didn't do it either) and warning me to get the dogs and the baby back in the house. It was very cinematic. "Cinder's gone." he said. Hardly a surprise when a 21-year-old cat dies. It's like shaking your fist at God for taking your dearest 268-year-old aunt. "Damn you! She had just begun to LIVE!" Frankly, we did not believe she would ever go. When Mom died last year, my brother and I were at a loss about the cat. We tried to move her to a friend's house, but she was miserable and desperate to leave. She was happy only at Mom's house, where she was the queen of all she surveyed. One time, when I was in high school, I came home from school to find Cinder stretched superlong and sunning herself contentedly on the driveway. A couple of feet away from her, on the lawn, were feathers. I started looking around for bird remains that needed removal, but could find nothing. In the middle of the feathers were two feet. Cinder had devoured the rest. I know - it's awful. That is precisely the reason cats should be kept indoors. That, and of course, to avoid their getting sick and dying prematurely. She and the birds had a longterm relationship. Even up to her death she was stalked regularly by one mockingbird or another. My son and I joked that it had been the SAME bird for the p ast 20 years. Elderly adversaries who hated each other as much as they needed each other. Since we've been staying in the house, Cinder had been coming inside on almost a regular basis. It was almost eerie, considering that for the 20 3/4 years before we came she couldn't stand to be indoors. But she had been coming in, sleeping under the end table and even letting our dogs investigate her. Day before yesterday I seriously began to wonder if we would have to take her home with us when we return to our house because she had been growing increasingly spry. At lunchtime I opened a can of soup and Cinder stalked the soup, then flew onto the countertop, knocking the bowl out of my hand and causing a great deal of squealing from me and Buttercup. We captured it: You'd scream, too, if that were coming toward you. I will miss her. Mostly I will miss all the things that she seemed to embody - namely the part of my past that still literally lived in this house now that my mother is gone. She was a witness to a part of my life whose witnesses are becoming fewer and fewer. Part of me wishes I had taken her to the vet - held her while she passed. I could have done that much for her. ANd if she hadn't been jumping on counters and kicking the dog's ass, I would have done it. Instead, I tried to give her as much company as we could in the time she had left. Goodbye, Cinder. We'll miss you. May we all live to be so old and creepy no one wants to touch us.

Extreme Makeover - Blog Edition!

2005-06-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the amazingly generous help of a certain someone who knows who she is, my blog is now Bee-You-tiful. (Hah! Get it??? Bees!) I will not out the person who helped me, because it might be wise for her to hide her mad skillz from others, like me, who might come begging for help. But check it, my blog looks so good I might have to come up with something decent to write in it now. The awful pressure. To my designer, thank you, thank you, thank you. To the rest of you, don't be fooled by the rocks that I've got.

This is a good way to avoid all of it

2005-06-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

How did I manage to put all my deadlines and obligations in one, neat, impossible-to-achieve, two-day period? First,t here are the three magazine stories I'm supposed to write by, uh, tomorrow. Have I even started? No. And I won't start this morning, since I will be driving an hour away to pick up my son from his trip. And then this evening we will be supping with relatives who are in town. Then there is a regular weekly column that I should be writing today and tomorrow. Then there is the church newsletter, which the vestry decided I should just pull together like, NOW. So I'm supposed to go to work tomorrow and do that. I'm also supposed to get some painting done at the house, so that WE are not holding up the contractors. Let me repeat that - The contractors are worried that WE will delay THEM. Oh, and did I mention that we're supposed to leave a week from tomorrow for a weeklong family vacation, so I really do have to get all this stuff done before I go? For a long time following my Traumathon 2004, I noticed that my habit of incessant leg shaking had disappeared. I think I was shellshocked at first, and then I really had calmed down. But guess what -- it's back. If only centering prayer tasted more like chocolate or starred a sexy, prime-time TV actor, maybe I would be able to find the time for it and I would be all calm, reflective and serene all the time. I'd make only commendable choices and spread happiness around me wherever I went. Let me just add all that to my To Do list.

He is alive and stateside

2005-06-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

Leaving for Italy
Originally uploaded by Casabees.

After not hearing word ONE from my firstborn child for some 12 days while he was on a tour of Italy, he called tonight just as we were preparing to leave for the airport to tell us not to bother.

His group, as well as another travel group, are stranded overnight in an airport in the Northeast.

The trip was amazing, he says. He hasn't slept for a day and a half. He will tell me all about it tomorrow.

And the not calling? Apparently a decision forced by the meager funds with which we sent him on his European holiday.

I can't stop scrubbing. And linking,

2005-06-13T20:04:00.000-07:00

I have a serious crush on this guy. Hands off. A new Italian breakfast cereal. My brother thinks this looks like a glamour shot. I think it looks like she's about to shoot electric nails from her eyes.

And so I spend a day feeling like Kathy - Aaaaaargh!

2005-06-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying how grateful I am for my health. I am well aware of how incredibly lucky I am. Not only did I dodge a great big, cancer-shaped, grapefruit-sized bullet, but I am now stronger, healthier and wiser than I ever was before my surgery. All of that said, I also am 15-20 pounds heavier than I was before. Heavier than I ever have been in my life. And I'm having a little trouble getting used to it. I am 36 years old, five-foot-twoish (maybe 5'3") and ever since I outgrew a teenage self-consciousness about my weight, I've been the kind of gal who doesn't own a scale, doesn't obsess about food and doesn't worry about weight. Of course, I didn't have to worry because I weighed 100-105 pounds. And even though my resting heart rate hummed at around 97 bpm and I couldn't have run two doors down the block if my life depended on it, I felt pretty good about my appearance. Now I could run (if I really had to), I'm happier, I feel great, I DON'T have cancer. But I've also endured a pretty rocky bout of surgical menopause without the aid of tasty, cancer-risk-increasing hormone replacement therapy. I've taken the edge off that menopause with a daily dose of Mama's Happy Medercine. I also went through three months of chemotherapy and steroids less than a year ago. All in all, I'm lucky I haven't gained 100 pounds. A whole extra Elizabeth. The twin sister I've always wanted. So how have I tied to honor my promise to be kind and forgiving and patient with myself as I heal from last year's trauma and navigate this new life of mine? I went shopping for a swimsuit. It's the worst, am I right ladies? (Also, who wishes PMS tasted like chocolate? I know I do! Let's go shoe shopping and forget about it!) I found a swimsuit. But that isn't really the point. I keep thinking that, while it would be nice to have the body I used to have, it would be even nicer - PREFERABLE - to not care so flipping much. Somehow I can manage to make friends with death and come to terms with the inevitability of one day saying goodbye to everyone and everything I love, but I'm going to spend my days worried that my ass is too dimply? Boy the Ego is a funny creature. I hate her. Almost as much as I love her. I think I'll feed her some Pringles and then punish her for wanting them. Also, unless you're trying to shave seconds off your personal best time or raise your price by a couple of cows, swimsuits make no fucking sense. The only time in my life I have gone into a dressing room and found a swimsuit on the first try was last year, just a few weeks after my surgery, when I weighed less than 95 pounds. I didn't just look good, I looked Lindsay Lohan good. I looked SHINDLER'S LIST good! I've got to conquer this shit, because I don't want to pass it on to my daughters. I don't want their opinions of themselves to squeak on the rusty hinge of their waist sizes. The thing is, it's not about the weight. It's about the ways our bodies turn against us. They gain weight. They want Pringles. They get dimply in places you think should be smooth. They look best in suits we all know were designed for women 20 years older. They get cancer. They die. I'm not in control here. And that is a much harder concept to assimilate than mortality.

Because we feel balloon happy sometimes

2005-06-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

Mollie Birthday
Originally uploaded by Casabees.

Here is a photo of our little Buttercup at her 2nd birthday party a couple weeks ago. (Guess who figured out how to post photos to her blog!)

And we also have an announcement to make: We're expecting. ANd by that I mean we are expecting to spend the next couple of months bogged down in paperwork, and then we expect to travel to China again and adopt another baby.

We got the word from our agency yesterday that our application to them has been approved, so we are officially paper-pregnant as it were.

It's headed straight for us

2005-06-10T15:41:00.000-07:00

Not again. Seriously, I'm tired of this. I'm ready to move someplace that is free of natural disasters. Unless that place is too cold or too hot or too expensive. I'm ready to move someplace cheap, temperate and free of natural disasters. Currently, almost all of our possessions are in a portable storage unit in our front yard. I can only hope that those storage units are built to withstand tropical storm-force winds. And speaking of tropical, my son is somewhere in this vicinity. But has he called, even to let us know he got there OK? No. This is where parents just have to assume that no news is good news.

Holy crap, you had CANCER??? When did this happen?

2005-06-07T21:10:00.000-07:00

So. Busy. So. Incredibly. Busy. There has been home renovation. Talking to Realtor about putting my mother's houseon the market. Getting offer on my mother's house before it was even listed. Signing contract to sell my mother's house for a very fair price for both buyer and seller. Preparing son for trip overseas. Beginning planning for event in December for World AIDS Day ecumenical celebration. Preparing for Bishop's Annual visit to the Little Episcopal Church that Could. Speaking to a group for National Cancer Survivors Day... Among other things. For anyone interested, here is a copy of the speechy thing I gave at the Survivors Day event. I am available at reasonable prices to speak to your groups! ==================== My name is Elizabeth Trever Buchinger. I’m 36 years old. I’m a wife and the mother of a teenager and a toddler. I’m a freelance writer. And for the past 15 months, I have been a member of what I very fondly call Cancer Club. And for those of you wondering, yes, this is my real hair. I wouldn't have paid good money for a wig that looked like this. I’d like to thank the misguided people who invited me to speak today. As my family, friends and anyone who has recently had the misfortune to sit next to me on a bus or airplane can tell you, I don’t talk NEARLY enough about my cancer. Actually, I’m like the 90 y/o woman in the joke who tells the priest she’s having an affair with a 25-year-old ski instructor. The priest starts to assign her penance, but she interrupts him. “Oh no, Father. I’m not Catholic,” she says. “Then why are you telling me this?” the priest wants know. “Are you kidding?” she says. “I’m telling everyone.” So am I. I had cancer. And I’m telling everyone. And I’m honored and flattered to be asked to speak on Survivors Day. Survivor. In addition to being an amazingly popular TV series, “Survivor” is an amazingly heavy word. Survivor. I’m not quite comfortable using it when talking about myself. Yes, 15 months ago, I was diagnosed with stage one ovarian cancer. The cancer was removed, along with most everything else in my pelvic cavity. I imagine my surgeons using a giant ice cream scooper to accomplish the task. At least, that’s what it felt like when I woke up. After all the slides were reviewed, the verdict was stage one ovarian cancer. No lymph node involvement. No spreading. With three months of ajuvent chemotherapy and, pardon me guys, a thorough pelvic exam every couple months for the next five years, my prognosis was excellent. I was lucky. I don’t use the word survivor to describe myself because it seems to imply a strength and grace that I did not and do not possess in the face of illness. During the uncertain weeks leading up to my surgery, I was anything but strong and graceful. I was terrified and whimpering. Clutching scraps of hope, faith and a Xanax prescription, I got through only with the support of the people who love me, particularly husband and my mother, who both comforted me through many tears and slept on hard cots and in hospital chairs during the week after my surgery. I’m not a survivor. I’m someone who had a little cancer and, thanks to skillful physicians and dumb luck, I got better. But I did get to join Cancer Club, which is the best worst thing that’s ever happened to me. The initiation is hell, but there are benefits. First, you get a doctor who will take your call at any time of the day or night. it sort of ruins you for ordinary medical care. And suddenly, you have a medicine cabinet that makes Timothy Leary and Elvis Presley look like tea-sipping school marms. And you meet the most amazing people. Every time I tell someone about my cancer - and I’m telling everyone - I get to hear stories of other people who are members of Cancer Club. People who are truly strong and graceful. People who are survivors. I’ve met people who have been fighting their battles for many years. I’ve met people whose diagnoses would have knocked most of us on our keesters, but these folks haven’t skipped a beat. I’ve met people whom I will never forget. We’re all members of the same club. And Cancer Club isn’t populated just by those of us who have had our own diagnoses. If someone you love has tried to put on a brave face while telling you how the doctor visit went, you’re in the club. If you’ve had cup after cup of bad hospital coffee while waiting for someone to get out of surgery, you’re in the club. If you’ve said goodbye and held your breath every time the phone rang, you’re in the club. Even without my own diagnosis, i would have gotten in the club. When I had my surgery and got my diagnosis, my mother was at my side. She was pulling double duty comforting me as Mom, and getting the straight medical scoop as a nurse. After I was released from the hospital, she stayed at our house, running errands for us, keeping the extended family informed and watching daytime TV with me. It was the best time we’d had together since I was a child. And it was over quickly. Ten days after I got out of the hospital, my mother went to the emergency room after supper with chest pains. She coded during a CT scan, which revealed massive, metastatic lung cancer that had spread throughout her body and compromised and artery. She never regained consciousness, and she died at 5 a.m. the next morning with my husband, son, mother-in-law, priest and myself, still in a wheelchair, at her side. If she knew or suspected she was sick, she didn’t share it. Before my surgery, when she and I would talk on the phone or in person several times a day, she told me that if she could go through it for me she would. That she wished she could. And she would have. Instead, she ferried me through, got me safely on the other side and almost back on my feet, and then she was gone. If anyone deserves to be called a survivor, it was her. And my husband, who is here, and will pretend that he hates attention. More than most people I’ve known, he has earned the title Survivor. In the past two years he prayed with his father while his father died of cancer, took my mother to the hospital and kept her from being alone at THE most important moment and supported me through all my own illness, grief and healing. He has stayed by my side through cancer and chemo and hot flashes and surgical menopause. That, my friends, is a man who deserves to be called a survivor. And he also was there the day when I realized I had joined Cancer Club. It was my first visit to my oncologist. We were in the waiting room, and I was trying hard not to look at anyone - or at least not to let anyone catch me looking. I was trying to figure out who had hair and who was wearing a wig. I was wondering how miserable everyone felt. I was looking around the little waiting room full of people, Cancer Clubbers all, and I couldn’t believe I was one of them. When the nurse called me back to get my blood pressure, I broke down and cried. She brought me apple juice and told me I would feel better after talking to my doctor. "Not if he's an oncologist," I thought. In public I call him Dr. Justakoff, which is not his real name. I call him that mostly to avoid lawsuits in case I write something he doesn’t like. In private I call him a saint and a frustrated stand-up comedian. When I complained to him once that even THINKING about my next dose of a particular antibiotic made me want to throw up, he replied evenly, “Well. There goes your contract as their spokesperson.” The nurse was right that day. I did feel better after I talked to Dr. Justakoff. I knew that whatever happened to me, I was in good hands. And then I noticed the sign under the phone on the wall. It read, “Telephone is for internal use only.” Ouch. As if getting all those pelvic exams and losing my hair weren’t indignity enough. See, when I went into that appointment, I had no idea what it looked like to have cancer or to survive it. Mostly, I thought people with cancer looked dead. Bald and dead. Or they looked like Barbara Hershey in “Beaches” - all serene and lovely going into that good night. I know differently now. People with cancer may look brave. They may look scared. They look sick or they look healthy. They look serene and lovely or they look like they just ran a marathon between the bathroom and the sofa. They wear baseball hats that show their soft, bare scalps in the back or they wrap their heads in scarves and look like nuns and fortune tellers. Or they show no sign whatsoever that they have cancer, or they’ve had cancer, or they’re surviving it. That’s why I’m telling everyone, and you should tell everyone too. There are already too many people in our club, and we get new members every day. They need to know that we’re all scared. But none of us are alone. And having cancer can be the b est worst thing that ever happened to you. Tell everyone.

Something to read

2005-05-27T05:20:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy, strange week, and I have gotten a lot done. But none of it has been on this page. One of the things we did this week was park the first anniversary of the moment we first took our daughter in our arms. I wrote a column about it, and here it is: ========= Parts of southeast China in May are hazy, humid and so hot that the air seems to be sucked out of you faster than you can inhale. In other words, it’s a lot like Florida. The first time I saw Jiangxi Province, where my daughter was born, was May 23, 2004. We were in a group of 12 families, all on the verge of meeting our daughters. And, except for one family, none of us had been to China before. We were nervous. We were excited. We all had at least a year and a half of soul searching, paperwork and anticipation behind us. We all had opened our homes, psyches, medical records and financial statements to strangers in order to gain approval as parents from the governments of two different countries. We were sweating on our passports as we rumbled down the highway at over 100 miles per hour from the airport to the city where we would finally see our new daughters. Imagine a maternity ward crossed with boot camp, and you get some idea of how we 12 families felt about each other. As we bounced along the highway, I fixed my eyes on the landscape outside the window - partly to burn it all in my memory, and partly to distract myself from the death-defying road trip - and I marveled at how familiar it looked. In many ways, China is as far away from the U.S. as you can get without leaving the planet. Even the air smells different, and like nothing you can readily identify. Yet between the airport and the city of Nanchang, there is a stretch of road flanked by red clay hills and evergreens that could make you swear you were somewhere in Georgia or South Carolina. The difference is that, in South Carolina, you couldn’t go that fast for that long. Or on that many sides of the road. It was beautiful. And I cannot believe that our trip was a *year* ago. It has been a whole year since we checked into the Gloria Plaza Hotel, where the crisp young desk clerks had badges with names like Danny and Susan. It has been a year and six days since we filed up the stairs of the Nanchang Civil Affairs Bureau Building to the sweltering second floor, where we could hear babies - *our* babies - just beyond sight in one of the rooms. We were a breathless clatter of video cameras and diaper bags, dizzy with the heat and anticipation. I clutched a small Winnie the Pooh bear that squeaks when shaken. I must have been squeaking, too. Finally, our facilitator started calling names. We were the second to be called, and we walked toward him like we were walking up the wedding aisle (except that my groom was holding the video camera). When the woman handed Buttercup to me, it was only the sheer maternal desire not to frighten the baby that kept me from crumpling to the floor in sobs of gratitude I held her close, this sweaty bundle of girl with smart eyes and yellow socks. I did the things new parents do. I counted her fingers. I examined a little scab on her nose where she had scratched herself. I realized that the tiny red birthmark on her left cheek looked very much like a dragon. And her breath - her breath smelled just like the China air. There were sobs, but they weren’t mine. There were 36-plus hours of angry, tearless, screaming sobs from our little Buttercup, who was furious at having been taken from her familiar orphanage and handed to these strangers. Strangers who couldn’t understand her and didn’t even smell like China. That is the same girl, now 2, whom I watch in the rearview mirror at a stoplight as she sits in her car seat, quietly surveying the passing traffic. When she catches my eye, she says “Mama.” It’s not a question, or the beginning of some other thought. It’s a self-contained statement. “Mama.” I cannot believe that it was a whole year ago that I first held her. It seems like yesterday. And yet, I can’t believe she has been with us *only* a year. It seems like a lifetime. That’s the way with the truly holy moments in our lives, I suppose. The births, deaths, weddings. The moments when we fall in love, and the experiences that break our hearts. The events that turn us into families. These are sacred things, and they exist outside of our normal experience of time. They seemed to have happened yesterday, and yet it seems they happened at the beginning of time. Sometimes it seems like they are happening again every day. We share these moments because they tell us something about being human. And we celebrate them because they tell us something about the divine.

Horrible perspective

2005-05-20T05:45:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was grousing about how hot it has gotten. Last night, we argued with Xerxes about whether to give him $15 to go to a music festival, when he doesn't have a job, hasn't been looking very hard, and already will need several hundred dollars to go on the school trip to Italy, which ALREADY cost $2,500, and wasn't exactly a SURPRISE. Last night Xerxes stomped off in a huff because we don't even recognize his good work and good intention - and by "recognize," he means "give him $15." Last night I lamented that Buttercup is going through a seriously whiny phase. And the thing about whining? It works. Yes, yes, yes - whatever you want, just please stop that whining. Last night JC and I argued with each other about parenting styles and frustrations. Last night I shook my head and said that being the parent of a teen-ager isn't the non-stop ribbon-candy-colored tea party I was promised. Last night, another 16-year-old boy - a friend of Xerxes' and a former student of JC's - died in a Gainesville hospital. Last night, Will ended a six month ordeal that began - as I understand it - with a scrape while surfing, which led to Hepatitis, which, within just a couple weeks, necessitated a liver transplant, which was followed recently by a diagnosis of leukemia. Last night, Will's parents endured something unimaginable - something that sucks the heart right out of your chest just to contemplate. While I argued over money, they said goodbye and started a new life that includes their son as a perpetually 16-year-old memory. This morning, all I want to do is drive to the high school and get my son, drive to the middle school and get my husband and hold on to them. But he's still not going to get that $15.

Modern maturity spots

2005-05-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went for my annual ritual of getting nekkid for my dermatologist and letting him cut off whatever he likes. (Usually nothing - and so far nothing serious.) The ritual is made somewhat more awkward by the fact that I know him in a peripherally social manner. He is very close friends with a very close friend of mine, thus we both know a lot about each other. And, oh yeah, he sees me nekkid once a year. I always get the feeling that I am not the kind of patient he prefers, although he is an exceptional physician and has a warm bedside manner. Your dermatologist plays Prince while he's examining your back, right? I go in and point to things that I worry might kill me. I think he prefers the kind of patient who wants to be preserved or restored as she was when she won the Miss Sweet Corn Pageant and the captain of the football team got fresh with her behind the bleachers. Across the hall from the doctors' suite, there is a cosmeceutical shop which purveys $130/bottle moisturizer and the like. The culture shock between my oncologist's office and this office is great. "Do you have a lotion that would make my mediport look more youthful?" Anyhoo, I was pointing to various things, and he was shaking his head, saying, "No, that won't kill you." I pointed to a patch on my arm that is perhaps as big as my pinky fingernail bed that, a couple weeks ago, looked sort of flaky and peeled. I thought it could either have been a little burn from boiling water that splashed on my arm , or fatal skin cancer. Turns out it is a MATURITY SPOT!!!!! On my arm. I am 36 years old. I am not ready for this. Please Dr. Grey, PRESERVE ME. Put me in a giant tub of $130 moisturizer. Hit me with your lasers and lotions. Make me look like I did when I was 5 - I think that was really my prime.

Next stop, Reflectiontown

2005-05-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

It makes sense, I suppose, that a person living in her deceased mother's house might find herself pausing every so often for a moment of reflection. Or she might find herself in a never-ending headlock of reflection. She might be filling up the tank of her Reflectionmobile (seats seven comfortably!), buckling her reflectionbelt and setting out on a road trip for Reflectiontown, where the residents have made her their new mayor and plan to celebrate her inauguration with a big parade down Reflection Street culminating in a huge concert called Reflectionpalooza on the outskirts of the city at Reflection Park. Today would have been my mother's birthday. Her 58th altogether, but the second one she has spent somewhere other than in this mortal coil. (My guess: She's spending the day shopping, looking in on her family, drinking a big cup of chocolate/hazelnut coffee and smoking, because in heaven, cigarettes don't give you lung cancer or turn all your curtains yellow.) Since she died just over a year ago, I've had many dreams about Mom. I know people - intelligent people - who believe quite sincerely that our departed loved ones visit us in our dreams. That could be true. Two days after Mary's funeral last year, I had my first office visit with my oncologist. I woke up at 5 a.m. that morning dreading the visit and heartbroken that Mom wouldn't be accompanying me, as was her eternal duty as both my mother and a nurse. I lay in bed and cried, then fell back to sleep and dreamed that Mom and I were in the doctor's waiting room, and she was helping me fill out the new patient forms. When I woke, I felt better. I was still scared, but a little less so. Was it a visitation from my mother? Maybe. That sounds like the kind of thing she might do. The most frequent dream I have about her is that somehow she has managed to return. She wasn't dead yet. She got better. "Yay," we all exclaim in this dream, "Mom's back!" Oh there are lots of hugs and plenty of questions, to be sur - questions like, "Where have you been for the past year?" It's a grand celebration, and everyone is overflowing with excitement, happiness and love. Everyone except me, that is. I am too busy worrying about how to tell Mom that we've already spent part of her retirement money. "Um, we didn't think you'd be using it?" The most painful dream I have about her is that she is with us, but only briefly, and only because she doesn't realize yet that she has died. In those dreams, I know I have to tell her what has happened, but I put it off as long as I can. Telling her means having to lose her again - having to start over from scratch with my grief. Sometimes in those dreams, I get angry with her for what she's putting me through. *Again.* (That's the selfish part of me talking. The part that spends my mother's retirement money.) But mostly it's sad and unavoidable, like bringing your child to the doctor for shots. I think those dreams are more about me than about my mother. Besides, if Mary wished to visit me, she wouldn't be patient enough to wait until I was asleep. She would break right in on my waking hours. A month ago, on the first anniversary of Mom's death (which also was the first anniversary of our match with our daughter), we were having the kind of day that feels like plowing through pudding. Nothing was as easy as it should have been, and the day's being a tragic anniversary put an extra edge on every irritation. I was trying to focus on happy things - how nice it will be when (not IF, but WHEN) our home repairs are finally finished, how amazing my husband and children are, how nice it might be, just maybe, if Buttercup and Xerxes had little sister. Just a thought. A happy possibility. At the end of the day, exhausted, we decided to stop some place cheap and quick for supper. We walked in and were seated across from a family of two Asian girls of about 8 and 10 and two white parents. One of the girls showed immediate interest in Buttercup, and after the family had finished eating, they approached us. "Is your daughter Korean?" the mother asked. "No," I replied. "She is Chinese." The older daughter, who had been so interested in us, marvelled at the coincidence. "*I* was adopted in China, too!" We quickly found that there were other coincidences, including that the younger girl came from the same province as Buttercup. And it was a significant day for this family, as well. "It's my birthday," the older girl informed us. "Yes," said her mother. "Today is Mary's birthday." If my mother were able - and, really, who knows - she might subtly nudge us, on the anniversary of her death, in the direction of a bubbly little girl with the same name who was celebrating the anniversary of her birth. Yeah. That sounds like something she might do. My favorite Mary dream came a couple weeks after she died. It also was the first dream in which I knew she had died, but she didn’t. We were packing her suitcases. We were talking about ordinary things. Have you tried this brand of coffee? Did you get an invitation to that cousin’s wedding? Did you see the politician make a fool of himself on TV? I was driving her to the airport. I wasn’t going to tell her the news until we got there. I looked at her in the passenger’s seat, expecting her to be nervous about the plane ride. But the sun was shining on her blonde hair and she was laughing. Mom got nervous about a lot of little things, but never about flying. We got to the airport. We opened her bags for security, and repacked them. We rode an escalator, and made jokes about the person in front of us. We giggled all the way up. At the top, it was time to tell her goodbye. Time to let her know her ticket did not allow for a return. I sobbed and choked out the news to her, but she was not alarmed. She hugged me and fixed me in her green eyes and said, “This just means I get to love you BIGGER.” Yes. That sounds exactly like something she might do.

That was yesterday

2005-05-05T06:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, I did find the keys. After JC came home, he was able to open the Mommyvan, which we scoured. Twice. And we found my keys underneath some baby paraphernalia next to the middle row of seats. The really wonderful part about this: Neither JC nor I know which of us were the last to have the keys or how they got where they were. My oncologist, Dr. Justakoff, said he will arrange for me to be evaluated for chemobrain. I asked if that would hurt, and he said no - it just entails talking to a psychologist. Clearly, he doesn't know very much about pain. SCHOOL PICTURES AND EXTORTION The fine people at Teddy Bear Pictures know what time it is with parents of preschoolers. A few weeks ago, they came out and took school photos. The photos came back yesterday. Instead of pre-ordering a certain number of photos for a reasonable price, every parent had to go in and select how many pages they wanted to buy. There were 12 possible sheets, three different poses. The more pages you bought, the fewer each page cost. We showed remarkable restraint by not just laying out the $130 (!!!) to buy all of them. We bought not quite half, and will be giving several away for Mother's Day. Buttercup did not smile. My favorite thing, though, is the promotional tote bag with a copy of one of the photos ironed onto the front. I'm trying to find the perfect slogan to iron on the other side.

Ask and ye shall receive

2005-05-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Things are already looking up.

Where are my car keys, a poem

2005-05-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

This morning, I: got up wrote my column with Buttercup in my lap emailed it to its editor told my mother-in-law I would bring Buttercup to her while I worked at the church got dressed dressed Buttercup brushed my teeth decided that my hair looks like this guy's got frustrated while looking for a checkbook with blank checks cursed under my breath at JC, who dumped our checkbook drawer into a Target bag for the move over here found a good checkbook in a place where I immediately remembered putting it gathered my notebooks anf folders that I needed for work looked for my keys realized that Buttercup was wearing only one shoe asked her where the other shoe was told her to go put on the other shoe called the dogs in from the backyard told Buttercup to come in from the back porch with her shoe and put.it.on! looked for my damn keys discovered my coffee had gotten cold since I poured it put coffee in microwave found Buttercup typing on the computer, helpfully resetting my Internet preferences looked under sofa cushions for my got damn keys raised my voice at Buttercup and took her out of the computer chair told her to stop crying looked in the bathroom for my keys looked in my husband's jeans pockets for my keys found 1/2 brown banana peel under side table looked in garbage can for my keys asked Buttercup if she had seen Mama's keys told her again that she didn't need to cry told her that the computer was not a toy covered my ears because, wow, she was really howling looked in the bedroom for my keys looked again in all the previous places I had looked looked through the window of my car looked again through my purse looked in the most unlikely places, such as Xerxes' room, the freezer and the bathtub picked up Buttercup and placed her into her crib in her room and walked out because if I hadn't gotten away from that sound I would have had a stroke and, yes, that probably makes me a terrible mother, and I promise I will punish myself appropriately for it as soon as I FIND MY FUCKING KEYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! did not find keys gave up called mother-in-law to tell her we would not be coming over hoped secretly that husband accidentally took both sets of keys because it is infinitely better to have a spouse who takes your keys than it is to lose your keys called my oncologist about whether there is any approved treatment for chemotherapy-related stupidity got Buttercup out of bed hugged and kissed her like crazy heated two slices of pizza for our lunch ate lunch with Buttercup, just us girls - Buttercup and her awful mommy sang Buttercup to sleep at naptime learned that husband did not have keys gave up hoped tomorrow would be much better

Darwin meets his match

2005-04-29T05:22:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that Smoky McGruff, our contractor, wears sweatpants? And that sometimes they're cut off at the knees? It's true. He is not one of those contractors who spends his days riding in clean luxury from job site to job site checking on the progress of his denizens, making cell phone calls and counting his money. He's the kind of contractor who gets his hands dirty. Really dirty. His truck: A gold American-made truck with a Harley-Davidson sticker in the rear window and a license plate below the grill that reads, "BITE ME." His cell phone message: "You got my cell phone. Evidently, I couldn't get it or didn't hear it. You can call back or try to leave a message. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." His ponytail: Long. Things are going well with the reconstruction. All of the new ceilings are in and ready to be painted, which JC and I will be doing next weekend. Every ceiling in the house, except for the one in the master bedroom, had to be replaced because of water damage from Hurricane Ivan. Also several walls and floors and the kitchen countertop. It's a lot of fun over there. ANNE MARIE LUKAS IS GOING TO HAUL MY ASS TO JAIL While our house is being repaired, we have moved into my mother's house, which my brother and I still own. We still own it primarily because cleaning it was too great a job to tackle between last April when Mom died and October when the hurricane hit, and we realized that my family was going to need a place to stay. Mom's cat, Cinder, also lives here. She's a long-haired, dark tabby who runs in the direction of every car that pulls into the driveway. She has never lived indoors, and has only been to the vet twice that I'm aware of. Once to get her kitten shots, and once to be spayed. She is 21 years old. And going strong. Yes, she's a little patchy looking, as any 21-year-old cat would be. And she is thin. When you pick her up (DON'T - FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T) she feels like a sock full of chicken bones. She spends her days sleeping on the warm driveway or cooling off in the garage. Mom had a cat door placed in one corner of the garage so Cinder would have run of the place. Now, I know that cats should live indoors and should receive regular medical treatment, etc., etc., etc. My cats do. But this cat - this survival machine - is clearly so well-suited to her environment that, when Mom died, my brother and I were afraid to do anything with the cat but feed her. Besides, we asked each other, she's 20-years-old. She'll probably die soon. She didn't. But she's going to. Because some well meaning person called the Animal Cops on us for animal cruelty. The long and short of it is that we are supposed to get the cat up-to-date tags and contain her on the property. I didn't talk to the Animal Cop, but JC said he seemed to be fairly understanding about the situation. We knew that, if the cat survived long enough, we would have to lead her to that rainbow bridge sooner or later because we couldn't relocate her. We tried that several months ago when one of Mom's friends took the cat for a week, but it didn't work. So it appears that Cinder's time has come. And I will have to be the Angel of Death, driving her to the vet. It just gets better and better.

Zuzu poops outside

2005-04-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

In the excitement of our temporary relocation, our adorable papillon Zuzu took a dainty little crap on the living room floor. She is a small dog, so her deposits are tiny and catlike. Buttercup witnessed the clean-up and was fascinated by the whole ordeal. Yes, Zuzu pooped on the floor. Zuzu is supposed to poop outside. Yes, our other dog Sassy poops outside. Yes, the cat poops outside. No, Mama doesn't poop outside. Yes, Mama poops in the potty. Yes, Papa does, too. And yes, Xerxes does too. And so on. She listed every person she knows and tried to convince us that each person was in the habit of relieving him- or herself outdoors. And despite serious temptation, we corrected her everytime. See, we really are grown-ups. On a related note, I'm trying to teach her that "Oh, Pioneers!" is an expletive. Where my Willa Cather fans at?

Better than non-stop vomiting

2005-04-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

My weekend was amazing - the kind of weekend that makes all the trouble of surviving cancer seem worthwhile. On Friday afternoon I called around and invited all my closest friends for supper and cake on Saturday night. These are the same people who sat around my table a year ago, singing Happy Birthday while I ran to the bathroom every 10 minutes to throw up. What's worse, I was holding them hostage. "We can go if you don't feel well..." "NO! Stay. It makes me feel better to have people around," I said as I ran off once again to throw up, leaving them all to stare at each other in my living room. So I wanted to give them a proper celebration. JC let me know that his mother was going to pick up Buttercup, and Xerxes had plans to "hang out" with his friend K---, so we were going to have a grown-up dinner date. We got dressed, Mima came and picked up Buttercup and we got in the car and drove to the nearby yummy Thai buffet. We walked thorugh the front door, and ..... ....ALL MY FRIENDS WERE THERE! That husband of mine arranged a surprise party for me. I have ALWAYS wanted a surpise party. And I've NEVER had one. It was perfect. Other highlights of the weekend: - Yard sale at which we made a whopping $38. - Meeting Xerxes' new friend K--- at my birthday dinner and realizing that she was using a fake English accent. Sometimes! - Tile shopping at the Enthusiastic Seemingly Incestuous Michiganders Tile Emporium (more at another time). - Narrowly escaping a popcorn-textured ceiling in my 1918 bungalow. - Missing church because JC was going to stay home with Buttercup while I went, but he had a dream that the congregation was filled with "vegetarian vampires" (imagine a link here to Morgan Freeman, a'la Electric Company while I imagine that my G5 is out of the shop). So I stayed home with him because he would have missed me just too much. - Cleaning off Mom's screened porch, which was nigh impassable except my small dogs before we started, and then having supper on that porch in the evening. - JC holding "Baby Ten" (Buttercup's name for the Dickersons' daughter) for the first time. - Buying groceries for the first time in a week. - Watching JC, Xerxes and Buttercup sing "Happy Birthday." And it was a very happy birthday, indeed. -

Because it's my birthday, I'm going to...

2005-04-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Drink Bacardi like it's my birthday. Sleep late - until 7:15 a.m. - like it's my birthday. Wake up and find a gift and card left for me by my husband aand son in a pirate-themed gift bag like it's my birthday. Stay in my pajamas all morning like it's my birthday. Talk to my contractor for 20 minutes debating the relative merits of ripping out a strange soffit in Buttercup's room and replicating the tongue-in-groove ceiling we uncovered, or drywalling over the whole ceiling because he doesn't think the old wooden ceiling will ever be attractive like it's my birthday. Remind him to move the light fixture to the center of the room like it's my birthday. Wonder why (and how) we've lived in my dead mother's house for a week now without doing any real grocery shopping, so if we eat in tonight our supper will be Crunch Berries, salsa, Mesquite Barbecue potato chips and coffee creamer like it's my birthday. Think it's funny that, despite my being white, I received in the mail an AOL direct marketing CD for "AOL BLACKVOICES: An AOL created with (me) in mind" like it's my birthday. Call the computer repairperson and see if my Mac is ready yet so I can stop using this piece of crapo borrowed computer like it's my birthday. Try to scrub 20 years of indoor smoking off my mother's walls like it's my birthday. Box up scores of my mother's and grandmother's books like it's my birthday. Marvel at the number of self-help books my mother had like it's my birthday. Feel creeped out and dirty to find such titles as "How to Make Love to Each Other" and "Sex: If I Didn't Laugh I'd Cry" and "The Intimate Enemy" in Mom's collection like it's my birthday. Give up on work and play with Buttercup until naptime like it's my birthday. Remember that, this time last year, I was running to the bathroom to throw up every 10 minutes because I had just lost most of the organs in my pelvic cavity and my mother within 10-days, and now I'm sitting on the floor singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with my daughter, so I really have no complaints like it's my birthday.

Say it together, naturally

2005-04-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

Picture me in line at Walgreens. In front of me is a woman in nurse's scrubs holding a box of Revlon haircolor, a lipgloss and a Peppermint Patty. (Been there, sister.) Behind me is a woman who is standingtooclose. Honestly, if she had dropped her hands, she'd have goosed me. So close that, if I had turned around to face her, we would have had one of those TV moments in which we either had to kiss or suddenly remember we "had to be someplace." Then she started singing, very softly, with the muzak. Lionel Ritchie. "I had a dream, I had an awesome dream..." It was like she was singing just to me. Uh.... I just remembered I have to be someplace. WE ARE POD PEOPLE The construction? Has not started. Smoky McGruff stopped by yesterday to finalize the contract and get the down payment check. We have one of those PODS ("portable on-demand storage") sitting in front of our house, and this weekend will be spent putting our things into it. Smoky told me that, shoud we need some help moving things out of the house, just let him know and he can send over "some feeble minds and strong backs." I replied, "Just the way I like 'em!" He laughed, and then put too fine a point on it: "Especially in guys, right!" Or in girls. ...There were people in the park, playing games in the dark... I, uh, I have to go. I'll, uh, see you in class.

And what if I WANT to live in a dusty, filthy construction zone?

2005-03-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

The life of a contractor must be one of never-ending adventure. How else to explain that, after a month of telling me his waiting list was so long that he wouldn't be able to get to my house until May, our contractor, Smoky McGruff, called Monday night to tell us that he could get started this week. This week! Another job fell through, apparently, leaving his guys with some free time on their hands. And since pot doesn't buy itself... Which means we have to move. Like NOW. And we are not ready. At all. Not one teensy bit. We have not been living our lives in any way like people who have to move any time in the next decade. Nor have we been living our lives like people who have to remodel a house any time, EVER. We have sort of glanced in the direction of floor tiles and paint colors and wallpapers. But our decisions number ZERO. In fact, as JC pointed out to me over the weekend, the one thing we THOUGHT we had decided is now up in the air. Can you b elieve that two, count 'em, governments evaluated us and decided we were capable of raising a child? I can't.

HOLY WEEK, BATMAN!

2005-03-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

Holy Week was grueling and beautiful. All the things it should be. It also coincided with Spring Break, so JC and I spent plenty of time together, which was nice. We began the week talking about all the things we would accomplish -- cleaning out the closets, choosing wallpapers, making final decisions about home repairs. We did exactly none of those things. Some things we did accomplish: - Finding our new favorite restaurant. - Spending too much money. - Holding Lolita's teensy baby for the first time (my accomplishment; he was chicken). - Staying awake past 11 p.m. (one night only). - Writing what I think was a pretty good column, which I will offer here: ............. EASTER, VOICES FROM BEYOND AND A HAUNTED CHEW TOY The dead always surprise you. I mean, look at Jesus. What could be more surprising than that? Try having your dead mother talk to you through a dog toy. A few years ago, mostly at my urging, my mom got a dog. He’s a little shih-tzu/poodle mix with soft, curly black hair and a face like an ewok. His many virtues in the cuteness department are directly inverse to his virtues in the intelligence department. Also the house training department. Despite the fact that he is a sweet but terribly stupid dog who chews the edges of kitchen cabinets and goes potty indoors, my mother named him Sukha, pronounced SUE-kah, which is a Buddhist word that translates to something like “Joy.” Mom was the kind of person who liked to lift you up by believing in you, even when you didn’t quite deserve it yet. Even if you peed on the kitchen floor. I thought it would be good for Mom to have a dog because she lived alone and needed a project. And, selfishly, I thought that her having a dog on which to lavish her affection might decrease the number of times per day that she called me at work. “Hey,” she would say in no particular rush. “What are you doing?” But because she lived alone, Mom felt guilty about the amount of time she left the dog alone when she was at work or otherwise occupied. So she bought a toy that could keep him company: A red and blue hard plastic ball with a cavity in the center that dispenses treats and a small, motion-sensitive speaker that emits the owner’s recorded voice when the ball moves. The idea is that, while you are away at work, your lonely dog can have so much fun rolling the ball, eating the treats and listening to your voice that he’ll never miss you. Or, because some dogs aren’t so bright, he will believe that you have been trapped in the tiny plastic ball, are calling for him frantically and throwing treats at him in a effort to guide him to your rescue. Sukha was the second sort of dog. He hated the ball and barked anxiously and incessantly at the evil little prison every time he heard his mistress’ voice calling to him from inside its depths. That in itself can be entertaining, but soon you have to take the ball away and put it somewhere a dog can’t stumble across it, such as the top of your refrigerator. That is where the toy was, a month or two after Mom died, when our family friend Penny was at Mom’s house, alone, helping sort through Mom’s things. As she worked in the kitchen, she also was talking to Mom and hoping Mom was in a better place. “Oh, Mary. Just give me a sign that you’re O.K.” “Sukha! Sukha! Good boy! Come here Sukha! Good boy, Sukha, Sukha!” Penny had bumped into the fridge or closed the freezer door hard enough to jostle the ball. And, of course, she nearly peed on the kitchen floor, herself - first from the momentary fright, and then from laughter, because that is EXACTLY the kind of joke my mom would pull from the grave. Exactly. The ball is at my house now. Sometimes I shake it on purpose to hear her voice, or play it for my daughter, who loves it without understanding it. But most often, her voice comes as a surprise. I toss a pair of socks into an open drawer, unaware that the ball is inside, and the socks set it off. I kick the refrigerator door closed because I have apple juice in one hand and a toddler in the other, and there is her voice from somewhere behind the coils. I am tired and overwhelmed and I cannot believe how much life gives and how much it costs and I lean into the desk, and there is her voice. “Sukha! Sukha!” “Joy! Joy!” That’s what grief is like a year into it. You stumble over it in the middle of your day like a child’s sneaker. “Who left that there?” The edges get softer, though. And when you stumble, you’re not as likely to fall. It’s O.K. And it’s O.K. to go after it on purpose. Look through the dresser drawers, behind the refrigerator and under the papers on your desk, and when you find it, take it in both hands, and shake it. Shake it until it says: “Joy! Joy!”

Hello baby!

2005-03-18T05:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon at 4:51 p.m., not quite 12 hours after her parents checked into the hospital, Baby Girl Dickerson made her appearance in this world. She was 21 inches and 8lb, 15oz of love. Mother and baby were both healthy and happy. Mrs. Dickerson looked beautiful and tired. Mr. Dickerson looked a bit dazed. Big Sister Dickerson was not impressed: I thought it would be more exciting, but she just looked like a head in a blanket, she said. We didn't get to see the baby, except through a small opening in the nursery blinds. She was near the window, and we were able to watch the top of her little head and gasp whenever she moved. Buttercup was especially entranced, and knocked on the glass, calling "Baby!" Then she took off down the hallway looking for a door that would give her access to the baby. We toyed with the idea of letter find one, and then crashing the nursery ourselves with a bunch of, "Oh, sorry, the baby got away from us..."

Honk if you love honking

2005-03-17T06:17:00.000-08:00

On my dog walk this morning, I passed by a car (it was parked - I'm not some kind of superfast dog walker) with a bumper sticker that said: Get to the Right for Sirens and Lights. Way to take a stand, there, buddy. OUR ST. PATRICK'S DAY GIRL At this moment in a hospital not far away from where I'm sitting in my pantry writing (no, really), our dearest friends The Dickersons are preparing to see their daughter for the first time. Lolita and Sledge checked in three hours and twenty-one minutes ago, and I have my cell phone attached to my person awaiting the call that we can come up and see her. We're all a-flutter. Anastasia and I are going to have a hotdish-baking marathon tonight so that The Dickersons will have something other than Lucky Charms for meals in the next week or so. And now I must run. It's St. Patrick's Day, and I've got plenty of pinching to do.

Some people don't deserve to have hair

2005-03-16T20:32:00.000-08:00

When my hair started to grow back after chemo ("What?! You had chemo?! But you NEVER talk about it!"), it came back much curlier than it had been. I'm told this is normal. Of course, I was also told that I might "get lucky" and "not have any nausea." So my hair is curly. And not in a cute way. For some reason, I believed that dying it very dark would give me that cool, hipster mom look. I was wrong. Maybe this guy can help me.

Oh, you mean THAT sign...

2005-03-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was driving to church on a truly gorgeous morning - the kind of morning when the sky is infinite and teacup blue, and the day will be warm enough for bare legs and sandals. I was alone in the mommyvan because little Buttercup simply cannot go to church yet, so JC and I tag-team most Sundays. So it was beautiful, I was alone in the mommyvan, I was speeding because I was a teensy bit late and I always envision myself accidentally becoming part of the procession by entering at exactly the wrong time. And I was praying. I was having a serious conversation with the Holy Spirit: "Listen, I'm not very smart. I'm just barely conscious enough to recognize that there IS a call to me. It's buzzing like the 5 a.m. alarm that makes absolutely no sense in my dream state because, as far as I can tell, it's coming out of the mouth of my third grade teacher. Who looks like Wink Martindale. "You've been incredibly good to get me this far, but I need a little more help. I need a clearer sign. I promise to be open to it. No, seriously. I promise. It doesn't have to be today. I can wait. I'll just get back to work and wait for you to get back to me." I entered the church just as the procession was lining up. At a different church, that would be a problem, but at mine, everything is casual enough that the (only) acolyte said, "Hey, I like your scarf!" The sermon was about Lazarus and his new life. My mind wandered to what Lazarus did after Jesus went home. (And I realize that the rest of Lazarus' life may well be common knowledge that I do not, myself, possess.) After all the wonderment and celebration were over, did he go home and look in the mirror and say, "What now?" I mean, he was dead for four days - FOUR DAYS. All that was left of him were memories and a stench. Then, as proof of the power of God's love, he walked out of it unscathed. What the hell are you supposed to do with that? Did he use it? Did things suddenly become more clear to him in a way that allowed him to go on and live a life that made people say, "The best thing that ever happened to Lazarus was dying for four days." Or did he sit around the house, staring at the ceiling with occasional outbursts of "Holy fuck! I was dead for FOUR DAYS and came back. Are you shitting me?" Did it get so bad that, at night after Lazarus had finally fallen asleep, Mary and Martha would sit up having a beer on the porch and confessing to each other that, as miraculous as his rising was, they're getting pretty tired of hearing about it? "Yes, Laz, we know. You were dead for four days. We were there, remember? Now could you give us a hand with these dishes? The world didn't stop when you died. And came back." T+'s sermon did not focus on this aspect of the Lazarus story (which is why she's a priest and I'm not). She honed in on the last line of the reading: The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ (John 11:44) She pointed out that Christ did not unbind Lazarus himself. Christ gave Lazarus new life, then told those around him to unbind him and help him on his way. She suggested that this is our duty to each other - we unbind each other's hands and feet, unwrap each other's faces so we can see each other. It was a good sermon, and although it was written to encourage generous stewardship, it resonated with me for other reasons. (Step off - I signed my pledge card.) After the service I stayed to get coffee and chat with people. Five people (including a RC nun who drives across state lines to attend our services) stopped to tell me how much they've been enjoying my newspaper columns. One of the men told me he sent a recent column to a friend of his who has had a long history of different cancers, and he thought she would appreciate the humor in my writing. He told me about his own fight against bladder and prostate cancer, both of which he has survived for more than five years. Then a woman, LB, who is fairly new to the parish, and who says she came because of something I wrote, called me over to meet a group of visitors, two women who are a couple and the sister of one of the women. LB told me they came because they read my column. After coffee, we've been having catechism, and this week's was all about the Holy Spirit and recognizing the activity of it in one's own life. Immediately, the conversation became all about discerning calls, and it was generally agreed that genuine callings are those that persist no matter how you ignore or diminish or run in the opposite direction of them. Kind of like, this is just hypothetical, if almost every person you've known for the past five years has said, "When are you going to write a book?" and "You should really put these things together in a book." But you keep saying to yourself that you don't know what you'd write, and writing a book is hard and other people have done it much better t han you could, and the publishing industry is soulless and corporate and who wants that, and you wouldn't make any money anyway, and a bunch of stuff you wrote is on an old hard drive and you don't know how to get it, and a thousand other excuses about how the thing that is calling you is too hard. Sooner or later, you might ask for a sign and find that every person who talks to you that day tells you to write, and if you continue to ignore it or ask for ANOTHER calling or insist that there's no point because there are already other writers in the world, well, the results just can't be good. So I guess this means I have to get back to work. "Dear Holy Spirit: Can you send me an agent?"

Water and the God Itch

2005-03-11T06:01:00.000-08:00

Little Buttercup has developed a serious water fixation, or a "Waloo! fixation," as she would say, if she could say "fixation." Not only will she drop almost any endeavor or cease any tantrum at the slightest mention of taking a bap ("Bap? Bap! Bap! Bap!," she says like a crackhead scouring the floorboards of his car for that vial that surely must be there), but now her favorite toy is the kitchen sink. Last week, JC pulled the little step stool up to the sink and let her play with not-Tupperware under a trickle of water from the faucet. Give him a break - the kitchen was filthy and, despite my apparent theory, it wasn't going to clean itself. Letting her play in the water was the only way he could get anything done in there. Since then, playing in the sink is all she wants to do. She won't even finish her breakfast anymore before looking me squarely in the eye and speaking very slowly but insistently (because I am an idiot, you understand) and telling me, "Ollie stool! Ollie waloo! Ollie stool, waloo, cup!" So I take off her shirt, hand her a couple of not-Tupperware containers and open the tap a little. What am I supposed to do? But there is a worse development. We can no longer go to our favorite park in the afternoon because, along with two swingsets, toddler-perfect assortment of teeter-totters and horseys, two amazing play areas with slides and climbing apparati, and one of those merry-go-round child launchers, there is a water fountain. On our last two trips to the park, the water fountain is the only thing she is remotely interested in climbing. So we'll have to find another park. I've had a toddler before, so I know that these phases come and go and shouldn't be given too much thought. My only fear is that this early fascination with water might indicate the beginning of a lifelong path. LONDON, OR POSSIBLY GOD, CALLING Last year, in the midst of all my traumas, I knew that I was being called to something. I also knew that a person doesn't make big decisions like that in the midst of traumas, so I've waited and watched. First, let me say that I know beyond any doubt that I am in EXACTLY the right place for right now. My energy goes into things that feed my soul: My children, my husband, my friends, my church, my writing. At the same time, I feel that this time now is preparation for something later. It has occurred to me that, one day in the future, maybe it will be my lot to attend seminary and seek ordination in some fashion. I have floated this past a couple of people - people who are very close to me and who know the path to and role of clergyhood. In my fantasy, when I brought the idea up, they would say something like, "Of course! That makes perfect sense! We've all known that you'd do that some day." That is not what they said. Basically, they said, "Well, it's good to say it out loud." So I start to wonder, if I were called to ordination, wouldn't it be more obvious to someone other than myself?

My day jobs

2005-03-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

When I'm not being a full-time mom or a part-time fetch-it girl for God, I write a freelance column for this paper. I was employed there for almost 12 years, and have been writing in that space on Sundays for about 11 years. Once upon a time, you could read my work online in a nice, non-fascist, what-a-good-sharer-you-are!, CHRISTIAN, way. Now you have to pay for it, like it was a handjob or extra sour cream at Taco Bell. So, from time to time, I'll post versions of my column on this page. Like now: ... Everyone understands a desert. It doesn’t matter your background, your religion, or whether you’ve ever even seen a desert. Perhaps instinctively, we understand a desert in the same way that we understand a dark woods or a looming mountain. These things are more than features on a map; they are part of our psychic geography. The mountain that must be scaled. The woods that hide unknown terrors. And the desert - the treacherous desert full of dry bones, cruel illusions, isolation and burning winds that sting your skin and roar in your ears so that you can hear nothing but the raspy voice of desperation in your own head. Just a guess. The Christian tradition tips its hat to the power of the desert in the observance of Lent - that season in which we recall Christ’s 40 days in the desert by giving up chocolate and beer. Except on St. Patrick’s Day, which always falls somewhere in Lent. But hey, 40 days is a long time, and since the church doesn’t count Sundays, Lent is really 46 days long. That’s a long time to go without chocolate and beer. In my adult life, the only time I really observed Lent was the year my son Xerxes gave up sodas, and I promised to join him in his little fast. I learned that he has a remarkable will, and that 46 days is too long to lie to your child about whether you’re sneaking sodas at work. As far as I was concerned, Lent and its resolutions were for my grandmother and other little old ladies who thought they would go to H-E-You-Know-Where if they ordered a Big Mac instead of the Filet o’ Fish on Fridays. (Or all season long for the old skoolers - where my Catholics at?) I’ve also never celebrated Mardi Gras. But it was late in the afternoon of Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday last year that I was sitting in a doctor’s office as he read the results of a CT scan that revealed a pelvic mass. After what felt like creeping years of visits to a variety of doctors, blood tests, scopes, biopsies, poking, prodding and generally redefining my notion of personal privacy, my diagnosis was still unclear. It could be something benign, they said. Or it could be ovarian cancer. Or it could be cancer that started somewhere else and had spread. It could be nothing. Or it could be everything. During those weeks of truly indescribable terror with nothing but the burning wind in my ears, my family and friends drew a tight circle around me. My husband and mother were an inexhaustible tag-team of support, ferrying me to appointments and procedures, cheering me on, making me laugh and, when the time came, sleeping in chairs in my hospital room. While I was laughing and being cheered, though, I was also getting friendly with my own mortality. We were calling each other by first names and boring each other with stories we had already told. Thirteen days before Easter, my surgery date finally arrived. It went well. My diagnosis was stage one ovarian cancer; not nothing, but not everything. I was lucky. I healed quickly, and was discharged from the hospital on Palm Sunday. On Maundy Thursday, at 5 a.m., my mother died unexpectedly of complications from cancer she never knew she had, and which had spread throughout her body. My husband was with her, and before she died we were all there, drawing a tight circle around her. By Easter, my house was full of mourners and casseroles brought by friends and church ladies from St. John’s Episcopal. I never asked “Why me?” Instead, I was chilled by knowing that it might as well be me. “Why not me?” This is not a question you can bring to your terrified family, so I brought it to my priest, the Rev. Teresa. She listened as I described my fears, my sadness, my humble gratitude for the people around me and my hopefulness that persisted beyond all reason. “These,” she said, “are desert experiences.” We understand the desert. It terrifies us, but we cross it. We spend 40 days leaning into the stinging wind, blinded and spitting sand. We fall, we give up, we are less brave than we had hoped we would be. We suffer, we cry, we practice dying. But we also laugh and go to movies and drink wine with friends. We help each other cross the shifting sand. And we look for hope that persists beyond all reason.

The open road

2005-03-08T05:58:00.000-08:00

On Sunday morning, my son Xerxes and I loaded up the mommyvan and struck out in the direction of Atlanta. We had tickets to see Elvis Costello Sunday night. Actually, we had three tickets, and JC was supposed to come too. This was my Christmas present and his birthday present rolled into one. But because he teaches children, and becuase those children were scheduled to endure a statewide standardized test on Monday morning, he wasn't allowed to go. No child left behind, and all that. So 16-year-old Xerxes and I went on our own and met with JC's sister K who lives in Atlanta. The show was amazing. EC rocked the Tabernacle for 2.5 hours, proving that some people must be genetically programmed for performance. We got tired just standing up that long. For Xerxes, this was not a chance-of-a-lifetime experience. It was a matter of keeping Mom company on a trip to see the old guy whose music we play too much of. Before the show started, there were several balding, grey-haired ropadies rushing about the stage, and Xerxes pointed to each of them and said, "There he is." Of course, now that he has seen EC in action, he's a straight-up convert. He talked all the way home about how good the show was - how much he liked this or that song, how incredible Steve Nieve is, how funny the self-conscious 30-something crowd was. Did you hear that? He TALKED all the way home. And he talked all the way up there. And he did a lot of talking while we were there. Sure, his conversation was somewhat lubricated by the act of shopping for things of his interest. We went to the Junkman's Daughter and bought him some special soap for washing dreadlocks. (Who knew?) We had such a good time together. We talked about his dream life. We talked about crazy families. We talked about music and his friends and his hilarious wood shop teacher. "You know what I like to see? Boxes and birdhouses." My tip of the day for parents of sometimes-surly teens: Load up the mommyvan and take a road trip. Just one parent at a time. Buy your kid some dreadlock soap, or a new nosering, or whatever it is your sometimes-surly teen values. Let him see you dance like Edie Brickell. Get a slice of pizza in Little 5 Points. Let him talk about a bunch of stuff you ordinarily wouldn't care about - like the way Colin likes to drive Libby crazy by crossing his eyes or the technical nuances of longboarding down certain slopes at the neighborhood park. Get to know the person he is, and forget for a couple days that he's the person who ignores homework, nipped into the Funeral Whiskey and needs four increasingly irate reminders to feed the hamsters he BEGGED for. You won't be sorry.

Check out my paper-folding ministry - jealous?

2005-03-01T05:40:00.000-08:00

After operating without one for some six months, our vestry last week approved hiring a secretary. One one hand, this is good news, since it means that those of us who volunteer will no longer be viewed by the vestry as General Fetch-It Gals. A few weeks ago, I was volunteering on bulletin duty when one vestry member breezed through with comments relating to my doing things that I don't do. No big deal, just an insinuation that it was my duty to fold an extra stack of papers. They weren't mine to fold, I didn't have time to fold them, so I didn't. So the good news is that now the church has a secretary to do things like fold paper. The bad news is that I am that secretary. I'm here to serve. THE FAMILY BUSINESS In the course of looking up family history to find agreeable family names (how can EVERY relative be named Elizabeth, Anne, John and Thomas*), I found a site devoted to research of my paternal grandfather's lineage, and discovered that God is the family business. Of course, I knew that he and one of his brothers were ordained. I didn't know that so were his father, grandfather, and more aunts, uncles, great-grands, etcetera than you can shake a shepherd's crook at. Also, there's a Florence Nightingale in the family, but it's not THE Florence Nightingale. Interesting names I found: Mabel Beatrix, Amada, Medely. Wouldn't Medely be a great name? "Hi, this is Medely..." "Melody?" "No, Medely." "Melanie?" "Medely." "Medley?" "Yeah, sure, Medley, whatever." Other names that have leapt out at me in my research: Miria, Reade, Epperly. *The answer, of course, is that they're not. The Elizabeth-Anne-John-Thomas lines are the best researched. The lines with a bunch of Signes and Axels and Axelinas are not as well documented, and the line with Kuzmans and Zvkas probably never will be known because those records probably went the way of Yugoslavia. And then there are the lines with abrupt dead-ends because no name is known. Ah, family. Oh well, off to my holy origami.

Everyone can smell my arthritis cream

2005-02-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

Blah, blah and blah. That's the kind of day it is. First there is the ear congestion. I am the last person in the family to come down the The Dread Cold, and it has settled in my ears, which feel like they have full bales of cotton in them. Buttercup did not sleep well last night at all, which forced JC into the other room so he could get sleep while Little B and I woke up every 45 minutes or so throughout the night. Sleepy? Yes. The good news is that I'm only one day late and one story short for a freelance assignment I was stupid enough to take. I wrote 6 bad stories in the space of 2 days. I'm bringing mediocrity to a whole new level. Now it's time for the elementary school across the street to release its little inhabitants, so the SAHMs are all traipsing up the sunny sidewalk in their Juicysuits with their total lack of pantylines. Blah on them, with their breathing through the nose. Who needs it. The upside: They inspired my latest Phantom Moneymaking Scheme: SAHMthongs. Underpants for Stay At Home Moms with hilarious sayings on the front such as: "Get in the van" "Volunteer" "I brought snack" and "Get Me Pregnant, Quick"

Blame it on the Chemobrain

2005-02-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Lolita's shower, so today I am cleaning house and generally wondering why the frick I thought it would be a good idea to host a big baby shower in a house that is a.) Damaged by a hurricane to the point that four people are sleeping in two bedrooms b.) Inhabited by a toddler c.) Inhabited by a sometimes-surly, bedreadlocked teenager (who may or may not have nipped into the funeral whiskey, but that is another entry) d.) Kept by ME, possibly the WORST housekeeper of all times, except for my mother. Fortunately, I now have a good excuse for nearly everything I do wrong: Chemobrain. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's a real phenomenon. The other day I Googled "chemotherapy" and "mental impairment" and found that many people suffer from a certain reduction of cognitive skills in the year (or two!) following chemotherapy.* Just another way that God says Ha!, to steal a line from a more famous ovarian cancer survivor and mother of a Chinese daughter. (Darn you, Julia Sweeney!) Did I forget your birthday? Neglect to put the trash at the curb? Buy a Matchbox 20 CD? Blame it on my chemobrain! On one hand, you think, "Geez - how tragic! I mean, I'm glad to be alive and all, but I hate all the times I go to the grocery store and come home with nothing but lightbulbs and twine and wonder why we're all so hungry." On the other hand, this means I have a good year (or two!) of completely forgivable screw-ups and blunders. It's utterly liberating. (As an aside, I think it also means I am just the kind of candidate the boys in Washington would like to tap for a top-level cabinet position. Maybe I could be the architect of our next nation-building, er, I mean, liberation campaign.) *True story: I have meant to ask my oncologist, Dr. Justakoff, about my mental impairment during my last THREE visits, but I kept FORGETTING. And when I decided to Google for answers, the words "mental impairment" did not immediately come to me, so I googled "chemotherapy" and "stoopid." I WAS A STUPID TEEN SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE So last night while I was trying to finish my supper as Buttercup used me as a jungle gym, JC was cleaning the kitchen and loomed into the dining room carrying a 2/3-empty bottle of Knob Creek, the bottle of (allegedly) very good whiskey that our friends bought for us the day Mom died. It was funeral whiskey - meant to carry us through all those What The Fuck?!?!?! moments that come with unexpected funerals. Since we're really not big whiskey drinkers (and I was still on the post-hysterectomy Lortab, anyway) we didn't do much damage to the bottle. Since then, on very bad days, we threaten to hit the funeral whiskey, but we never do. JC did set the bottle out at Christmastime, but we don't remember whether anyone had any. (Because we were so high on Lortab. Just kidding. No I'm not. Yes I am. No.) So finding the bottle 2/3-empty was a surprise. Then again, our son Xerxes is 16. Then again, we've never suspected him of drinking. Then again, maybe we're stupid. (I have chemobrain, what's JC's excuse?) Or maybe, during a sleepover, he and his friends tried it. And maybe they also hit the various flavors of Schnapps in the cabinet as well, because they all look a little low. If he did drink it, my first impulse is to make him suffer horribly and strip him of all human priviliges, including his summer trip to italy (which is already paid for, so I guess I'd have to go in his place). But since we didn't actually witness him drinking it, we can't know for ABSOLUTE CERTAIN that he is the culprit. We can punish him anyway, considering that, if he is innocent, it's punishment for all the things he's gotten away with at other times. What?! Do you hear me?! Punishment? Privileges? Is this me talking? I was younger than Xerxes the first time I got drunk. I was younger than he the second and third times I got drunk, and those experiences were so miserable that they taught me I didn't really like to drink, and therefore I am the kind of person who keeps a bottle of allegedly very good whiskey in my house for almost a year without ever having a sip. So, pretty much, I am at a loss. The only thing I know for certain is that Buttercup and her future sister will have to live at a boarding school when they're 16 because I seriously don't have the strength to go through this two more times.

God, Zilla!

2005-02-16T05:38:00.000-08:00

Maeve. Esme. Ava. Mina. Zilla. Rivka. Maisie. Eaven. Emlyn... Weve been reading the baby name books, in part because we are getting very, very close to the birth of our best friends' daughter, who has not yet been named, an in part because thinking about the possibility of our next daughter is much easier than thinking about the NEAR-TOTAL-DESTRUCTION and UTTER DISRUPTION that will be our home repair, which is the next BIG PROJECT around our house. Luckily, it looks like it might not be as extensive as we had thought. But we will still have to move out during the process. I feel like my life is being written by someone who is plagiarizing one of those "How Stressed Are you" questionnaires. How many f the following have you experienced in the past year? _Loss/change of a job _Birth of a child _Major illness or hospitalization _Death of a close loved one _Natural disaster _Move or relocation _Surgery _Chemotherapy _Learning to knit _Teenage child _Teenage child who now has dreadlocks _Helping teenage child install dreadlocks while trying to find a way to ask if he has become a Rastafarian, a devoted pot smoker, or just a dumb white boy with dreadlocks I know it's all stressful, but I'm faring pretty well. Also, I am the only one who likes "Maeve."

Six of One

2005-02-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

It's the first day of Lent, also the first day of the Chinese New Year, the year of the rooster. (Referred to as year of the cock on many Chinese restaurant paper placemats, although let's be honest -- every year is the year of the cock.) We now celebrate both holidays in our home, and it's fitting this year that they fall on the same day. Penitence and celebration - that's how we roll. As I may have mentioned before, my medical saga of last year coincided almost perfectly with the Lenten season. It was on the afternoon of Shrove Tuesday that I received the news that a CT scan showed a large pelvic mass. I spent nearly 40 days in terror, functioning only with the help of my family - most notably my mother who was the calm voice of reason throughout - and a little help from a Xanax prescription. Ot three. Two weeks before Easter, I had my surgery. I was released from the hospital on Palm Sunday. My mother had the unholy nerve to die unexpectedly on Maundy Thursday. And by Easter my house was full of mourners eating food brought by friends and church ladies. The same day my mother died -- several hours AFTER she died in an Alanis Morrissette-variety "irony" -- we got the phone call that we had been matched with our daughter, and the agency emailed her photo to us. I was still sofa-ridden at that point, and I fell asleep that evening with the printouts of her photo on my chest so I could look at her face every time I jolted awake, still hazy, in pain, in shock. My brother and his wife were there, and I drifted in and out while everyone talked. The next morning, my brother said he could feel Mom watching all of us happily. In the midst of my illness, when I was fretting the most about the future and begging for reassurances from doctors, friends, God, everyone, I had a dream that was like a rope in the water. In the dream, I saw Buttercup, sitting on my sofa in our living room, wearing a red outfit with butterfly clasps on the shirt. Red for luck. Butterflies for transformation. A year later, our lives are almost completely different than they were then, and the transformation was a terrible journey through the desert. A terrible journey that I would not change. Things are mostly better. I miss my mother every day. She is so connected to my daughter - their birthdays just 5 days apart. Her death, our first glimpse of Buttercup. She was our biggest cheerleader in waiting for Buttercup's adoption. We spent the funeral reception showing off pictures of her new granddaughter. On Easter 2003, when we were already a few months into our adoption wait, but Buttercup had not yet been born even, my mother stood in my kitchen and asked, "Do you think we'll have our baby by next Easter?" "No. It will take much longer than that." "Darn!" I'm glad we can't see clearly the path from one year to the next. It would be so much less exciting. Today, in honor of Lent, I am fasting until the evening, when I will happily eat as much as I want in honor of Chinese New Year. I am giving up soda. And I am giving up judgement and criticism, which will be much harder than the soda thing. I will do my best to be an instrument of goodness in other people's lives. These are just as much Lenten observances as New Year's resolutions. I will be talking a lot to my mother, whose presence I feel very strongly. And I know that, especially during this first Lent after THAT Lent, she'll be sticking close to me.

Ollie likes the doctor

2005-02-07T06:51:00.000-08:00

Friday was the day when Buttercup, who calls herself Ollie, uttered her first real sentence. We were driving Xerxes to the doctor, and he was all surly about having to go. He is my son, after all. And I am my mother's and grandmother's progeny. Several years ago, my grandmother broke her arm, and she would not agree to go to the hospital for several days. Of course, we didn't *know* it was broken. We thought she had just bruised it. When she fashioned a sling from her housecoat belt, we got suspicious, but she insisted that if we made her go to the doctor, she would commit ritual suicide in the back seat of the Honda on the way. She only agreed to go on the third day, after her arm turned COMPLETELY BLACK AND PURPLE below her bicep where the fracture was. So, Xerxes comes naturally by his irrational distaste for the doctor. While we were driving there, I pointed out that it was a shame that Xerxes was going to the doctor instead of Buttercup, because he doesn't like to go to the doctor, but she does. "Ollie ike a doctor!" she chirped. Ollie likes the doctor. Since then it has been nonstop. Mama has a purse. OLLIE'S purse. Mama and Ollie go byebye. Mama and Chi Chi (Xerxes). Ollie and Panda go night-night. Papa walk the dogs. But if you run into Buttercup, don't act like this sentence thing is NEW. I suspect she's of the opinion that she has ALWAYS been speaking in sentences, and that speaking one word at a time is sooooo last week. THEY FOUND HER FROTHING AT THE MOUTH, SURROUNDED BY RUBBER STAMPS One of my best friends, Lolita, is great with child, so we are planning a shower. Anastasia Faye and I spent Saturday in the craft store. Half the time was spent picking out shower supplies; the other half was spent pointing to the most hideous items we could find and suggesting the other person BUY IT, RIGHT NOW! Look - this yarn looks like it's woven with HUMAN HAIR. You have to buy it. Ooooh, we need a GIANT METAL ROOSTER! Babies love tin folk art, almost as much as they love broken Christmas ornaments and swimming pools. Oh my God -- look at that awful lamp with the beaded fringe on the shade and the monkey riding an elephant on the base! Hey, I like that. Oh. Anyway, I figured we'd save a few dollars by creating our own, simple invitations. So far, I have spent some $70 to assemble them, which still hasn't been done. I've bought blank cards, printed digital photos, bought ribbon and stamping ink, and a rubber stamp with a curly baby buggy illustration, pastel paper and a custom hole punch. Sure, I could have spent more. Then again, I could have spent less by having the invitations professionally engraved, but then they wouldn't have had that charming, pasted-together-by-a-kindergartener look that these will inevitably have. I've become a pro at throwing baby showers. Lolita's will be the fifth baby for whom I've thrown a shower in the past three years. I've gotten it down to a science: an arch of tulle between the living and dining rooms, a big glass punch bowl with a heart-shaped block of sherbet floating in it, Ella Fitzgerald on the stereo. We're not big on games, because most shower games involve humiliating either the expectant mother or her guests. "Guess her weight! C'mon, she's huge, I'll bet you can't guess how much she has gained!" Instead, we have snacks, watch the mommy-to-be open her presents and generally stare at her. We marvel at the loveliness that comes from creating and nurturing a new life inside your body. And we marvel at the exhaustion it causes, as well. Honestly, looking at Lolita and the tiny feet and elbows that occasionally journey across her stomach, I can't help but think that pregnancy is a remarkably ridiculous way to bring a human being into the world. I mean, maybe if babies were smaller. But this -- this is just cruelty. Showers, on the other hand, make perfect sense. They are a gathering of the village who eagerly awaits a child's arrival, and will surround her with love, prayers and good wishes from the moment she draws her first breath. I want this shower to be perfect (which, naturally, means that it will be a comedy of small disasters). Lolita threw us a perfect shower/bon voyage party before we left for China to meet Buttercup. And she and her family were right there at the airport when we got home. She and her husband are two of Buttercup's godparents. I can't wait for this little girl, this roaming elbow of a girl, to be born, so we can smell her baby head, gasp at the her miniscule fingernails and weep at the beauty of her yawns.

A sky like corrugated steel

2005-02-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

DREARY, DREARY DAYS We are in the midst of a week of cold rain, and I'm feeling it. Last Friday's Game Night -- am event which I organized with great optimism that it would foster togetherness between the people at the church, and also be a way that people could bring friends -- was a TOTAL FLOP. Clearly, I am not called to organize Family Game Nights. I'll check that off the list. SOME GOOD NEWS After taking another gander into my "area," Dr. RipCurl decided that a small area of concern was just a bit of -- yay -- scar tissue. That sounds icky, but the alternative was possible cancer and he had threatened a biopsy. But the biopsy wasn't necessary, and he sent me on my way with instructions to return in four months. Whew! There are some cute Buttercup stories on deck, but they'll have to wait. I'm about to be running late for what promises to be a really lovely day full of more cold rain, some of which is falling into my kitchen through the cracks in the plaster ceiling.

Jesus wants me to learn algebra

2005-01-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

Hey kids, today's lesson is: Stay in College! Even if you get knocked up, get married, get divorced, get married again and start working at the job for which your college education supposedly is training you. Stay in school. Because you never know if, maybe one day 12 years later, you'll realize that, although you are remarkably qualified to do the job you have anywhere in the country, you are not remotely qualified to do ANYTHING ELSE. So stay in school, and don't do drugs. And drink your milk -- seriously, osteoporosis is a terrible scourge. Yesterday I went to talk to an adviser at the University of Second Chances here in town, and he spent the first half hour or so telling me how much he likes my writing, how he's a big fan and everything. He also introduced me to one of the Chinese professors (he IS Chinese; he doesn't teach Chinese), and the two of them promised to arrange an invitation for our family to the local Chinese-American organization's Chinese New year celebration. Score! But back to the business at hand. Looking at my previous academic accomplishments, it seems that if I can just take care of a couple of pesky math courses (my adviser promises that the "math for liberal arts majors" class is as easy as 3.14. HA! MATH HUMOR!), I will be a junior. I will be stuffing those little freshmen in their lockers and hazing my sorority sisters! My plan is to major in Interdisciplinary Humanities. That way, I'll have a bachelor's degree, and STILL not be qualified for anything. But I'll be really annoying at parties. I chose IH because Communication Arts is one of the available disciplines, and I am going to attempt to test out of as many credits as possible using my wealth of corporate experience as my teacher. I'll show them how the University of Gannett taught me to do it. Bitch. That will leave two disciplines, and I will focus on Religious Studies and Philosophy. See what I mean about being annoying at parties? It would be nice if I can manage to graduate at the same time Xerxes graduates from high school in 2007. Otherwise, I'll have to be a senior when he is a freshman, and that'll just be uncomfortable. Plus, I'll have to stuff him in a locker.

On the fence

2005-01-26T07:33:00.000-08:00

So yesterday, I had yet another in what promises to be five years of every-three-month check-ups with Dr. RipCurl, so named because when he's not delivering babies, giving pelvic exams and tying tubes, he's catching some tasty waves. Last March, he totally gave me a comeplete hysterectomy, dude. (warning: The following may cause nausea and/or wincing) I told him that I didn't know whether it was the cancer, the hysterectomy, the surgical "exploration" and "reconstruction" of the sugar bowl (no idea why I put those words in quotes, but not "sugar bowl"), the grieving, the new baby, the chemotherapy, the hurricane stress, or just an underlying frigidity that is now rearing its head, but for SOME REASON I haven't felt, um, *romantic* in, oh, almost a year now. He says (with a straight face, mind you) that it's probably the hysterectomy and the hormonal thing. Furthermore, he says there is a GEL he can give me to help correct the problem. I ask if there are any risks associated with taking this hormone GEL. (Mmm, minty fresh!) He says your face will break out if you take too much of it. "I have one patient, who also had a hysterectomy, who was going through the same thing," he said. "It worked for her, but she was abusing it. She came in telling me about how she was hurting her husband and none of the fence posts in the neighborhood were safe. And she had acne." So there's that. I won't let you know if I decide to use it, nor whether it works. TODDLER NEWS Baby Buttercup is still not speaking in sentences, but gets closer every day. Last night, she was getting out of her bath and chattering away, and then singing as I wrapped her in a towel to fetch diaper and pajamas, and I realized with a start that, totally without prompting, she was singing "Happy Birthday." The tone was pretty good, and the lyrics were: "Aaappy, aaapy, aaapy, aaaapy, do youuuuuuuu." It was a beautiful way to end a day that included my trusted surgeon implanting in my brain the image of a middle-aged (I'm assuming here) woman humping her privacy fence. TEEN NEWS Last night we were going out to supper and we all loaded in to the van, along with Xerxes' friend Arp, when Xerxes said, "I've got two things to tell you." Xerxes never has anything to tell us. He speaks to us as little as humanly possible. I was terrified. "First," he said, "I got an 82 on my geometry test." (This is very big. He is the same child who will have to repeat the first semester of geometry in summer school because he failed it.) I expected the second thing to be something like, "And I've gotten my girlfriend pregnant!." But no, the second thing was about how he was going to get "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" on DVD from a friend. Later in the evening, he also told me all about how his whole ATTITUDE about school has changed, and he's really enjoying it, and getting involved. Clearly he's discovered the pleasure of methamphetamines. Oh well. Aappy, Aappy to you.

Charging myself for therapy

2005-01-24T06:24:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to use the discernment exercise of pretending to give advice to someone who is in my position, or imagining what decisions I think I would be most proud of looking back. - Hey, Elizabeth, can you give me advice? - Sure, I'm great at solving everyone else's problems. What's up? - See, ever since last year when I went through my cancer surgery and treatment, and my Mom died and I travelled halfway around the world to meet my new daughter, well, I've been feeling like I need to devote my life to Something Bigger. That's why I quit my unfulfilling job at the paper. - And do you feel like you're not devoting yourself to Something Bigger now? - No, I am. My family is Something Bigger, although I feel pretty helpless there sometimes because Xerxes is a teenager and Buttercup is a toddler and JC is prone to depression, and things are still not back to normal with me physically. - So, in spite of feeling helpless about the mess of your own family, you think God has called you to sort out other people's problems? - God has done stranger things. - Granted. OK, so your family is Something Bigger, but it is frustrating because the answers aren't clear cut, yes? - Yes. - Maybe this is a chance to really put your nose to that stone and make some lasting changes. - Not a bad idea. - But you still feel the tug of a calling. - Yes. - But it's not clearly defined. - Right. It's like the Holy Spirit is at bat and I'm in the outfield trying to predict where the ball will come down. - You've never played an organized sport in your life. Where did the sports metaphor come from? - I have no freaking idea. - But the point is still there that you're trying to be open to the voice of the Spirit and have your bags packed when it's time to move. - Am i still standing in the field in this metaphor? - No, this time you're more like a child waiting to be picked up for a trip and you want to be ready to go the instant the car pulls up to get you. - Yes. - So you know that, whatever the calling, you're probably going to have to have more credentials and more education. And that's something that takes a while, but you're making the first steps toward it, yes? - Yes. - And you're writing, which is probably your real calling, seeing as how EVERY FREAKING PERSON YOU MEET tells you that your work moves them and you should write a book and the spirit is present in your work. - Um. - Is it remotely possible that you're sofuckingterrified of failing at writing that you're not even trying and you're looking everywhere but right in front of you for a calling? And maybe your time would be best spent in a little meditation about what you could contribute to the world in your own words, and then - rather than just tell all your friends that you're going to write blah, bloah, blah, you could actually sit the fuck down at your desk and endure the labor of the work? - Um. - Hey, it's OK. Don't be so down yourself now. Sometimes the best way to chart a path is by looking at a map and taking a gander at all the roads and think about all the places you could go and see what feels right. What flows, what opportunities come. I think you're in a good place. You have a beautiful, growing family, a place to work where you're needed and appreciated, and a tlent that you can share with the world. have faith in your won response to the calling and remember that your response happens day-by-day, It's an everyday thing. It's a minute-by-minute thing. You're doing just fine.

The right time

2005-01-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

Today we sat in church and listened to the story of Simon Peter et al throwing down their nets and immediately following this drifter Jesus. Honestly, some itinerant preacher comes by and says, "Dude, come with me and I'll make you a fisher of MEN," and they're all like, "We're totally there!" Meanwhile the Rev, Barbara Crafton over at the brilliant GeraniumFarm.org says that the fisherment must have been in discernment for a long time, just waiting for the right words from the right preacher. I admire their ability to recognize when the right time occurred. Today, I came home from church with a couple sheets of information about an upcoming Cursillo weekend, and I was all excited about it, when JC said to me, "Do you think this is the right time?" He does not mean, Is this the right time in your spiritual development for you to take this step? He means, "Who's going to watch the baby for a three-day weekend?" It's a more than fair question. And, well, when you put it that way, no this isn't the right time. What followed was the part of the day that made me feel small and petty and bitter, and I came up with several biting responses to whether this was the right time, and I promised my small, bitter self that the n ext time JC had to work on a Saturday or be away from home for any reason other than being On The Clock, I was going to ask, "Is this the right time?" Then I cried a little. Then Buttercup climbed onto the bed with me and jumped on the matress chanting her unintelligible "Jumping Bean" song to the tune of "Jingle Bells," and she kissed me on the head, and I kissed her on the head and the afternoon was saved.

Buttercup the Contrarian

2005-01-22T06:36:00.000-08:00

We are officially parents of a toddler. The only vestiges of Baby we have in our Buttercup is the fact that she is still speaking one word at a time, rather than in sentences. This week, that one word is No. NonononoNo. It is the answer to every question we ask her. "Buttercup, are you ready for a nap?" "No." "Come to Mama" "No." "Do you want to eat chocolate candy, goldfish crackers and and run around the house with Mama's knitting needles?" "NO, NO NO!" Not only is she contrary, but shes also a little liar.

The origin issue

2005-01-20T06:17:00.000-08:00

I am in what religious types would call "discernment." In other words, I'm trying to figure out my calling, what's next, where should I position myself on the court. A little background: This time last year, I was the entertainment editor and Sunday columnist at my city's only daily paper. The job was soul-sucking, but I made decent money, and my very best friends in the world also worked with me, so we made it through most days together by scratching in Morse code on the walls of our cubicles. My son was a freshman in high school and my husband and I were a year deep into the wait for the phone call that would tell us our new daughter's name and when we could travel to China to adopt her. Then late in the afternoon on Fat Tuesday, Feb. 24, I was sitting in a doctor's office as he (let's call him Dr. Prick -- and not just because he was a urologist) looked at results from a routine CT scan he had ordered "just to be sure." He had wanted to see my kidneys, but what he was looking at was a report that revealed a navel-orange-sized mass in my pelvis. I told my mother first. Then my husband. Then my friends. I also made an appointment with another doctor for the following day. After a month of doctor's visits, an outpatient exploratory surgery, many needle sticks, several scary conversations and a barium enema (all the kids are doing it), I went into surgery knowing that, when I woke up, I would learn one of the following options: a.) I had metastatic cancer that had begun in one area and had spread into several other areas and I needed to get all my paperwork in order, OR b.) That I had plain, old fashioned ovarian cancer, which would be a pain, but I would survive it, OR c.) that I just had an ovarian cyst and everything was fine, lalala, go on home now. On the morning of Monday, March 29, I waited to go into surgery, along with my husband, my mother and my priest, Mother T+. We tried to crack jokes, even though I felt like death already, because of dehydtration from vomiting all the previous night. When I woke up, and over the next few days, I learned that I had ovarian cancer, and possibly another, very rare bladder cancer, but that tissue would have to be reviewed many times over by a team of pathologists. If it was cancer, mine would be only the eighth diagnosed case in the country. Sweet! Doctors would clamor to write papers about it. The top oncologist in the region agreed to take me as a patient. You can bet I was feeling pretty darned special. (Post-script: In the end it turned out to be nothing but boring old, stage 1 ovarian cancer, for which I had to receive 3 months of chemotherapy - but that's ANOTHER HILARIOUS story.) I left the hospital the following Sunday - Palm Sunday. Foremost in my mind was the thought that I hoped I might be able to get around sufficiently well enough to attend Easter Service at my church. I've never been a very churchy person, but after spending Lent in deep, incessant contemplation of your own mortality, saying goodbye to your family in your mind a thousand times over, wondering how we all get through the day with this crushing awareness of our own frailty, well, you might want to celebrate come Easter. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance. Late that Wednesday evening, my mother -- who had been spending every moment with us since the night before my surgery -- had some chest pains, went to the ER with what she, as a nurse, assumed was a little arhythmia caused by, oh I dunno, a little stress maybe. My husband took her, and called my best friend to come stay with me, seeing as how I could scarcely walk to the bathroom by myself. At about 11 or so, I sent my friend home after word from my mother and husband that things weren't all that serious and they were going to admit my mother just to watch her. I fell asleep on the sofa watching TV. At 3 a.m., the phone rang. It was my husband telling me that I needed to get dressed and come to the hospital, and that his mother was on her way to get me. I got up. Woke Xerxes. Put on the dress my mom had bought me the day before to wear to my doctor's appointment that day (Thursday). Even as we were driving to the hospital, it didn't occur to me that my mom's death was already a foregone conclusion. I was half asleep and still loopy from anesthesia and painkillers. I didn't stop to think that the ONLY reason my husband would bring me out of my recovery position on the sofa was to say goodbye. When we got there, she was basically gone. My husband warned me that she looked bad before I went into the curtained area where she was. But I didn't think she looked all that bad. She looked like a woman with a tube down her throat and a machine pumping air into her. I guess that does look bad. But she also looked like my mom. I held her hand, which was amazingly soft, like a little girl's. My mom had been a nurse for 20 years, working most of that time with geriatric patients. She had seen a lot of people die. She knew how she wanted to go, because she had seen all the different ways people can go in a hospital. She had seen families keeping vigil at patients' bedsides, and the dying patient holding on for hours or days, not wanting to leave their loved ones, and then, as soon as the weary wife takes a coffee break or the daughter goes to the cafeteria for a sandwich, the patient slipped away, as though waiting to be alone. I told my mom that it was OK -- that she could go. That I was there and Xerxes and my mother-in-law. That we all loved her so much. I told her not to worry about anything, that my brother Thor and I would take care of all of it. (huge lie -- I had no idea how to take care of anything.) I told her I loved her again. I thanked her for being so wonderful. My mother-in-law called my priest. The nurse asked if I would like the hospital priest to come and pronounce last rites. I knew my grandmother would want that, so I said yes. My own priest came and also anointed my mother with the same oil from her key-ring vial she had used to anoint my head before surgery just a little over a week earlier. Mother Teresa looked at me and said, "There is nothing right about this," and I was so grateful that she didn't try to tell me that, ultimately, I would come to see the goodness of God in this moment. She said that, as soon as I was able, she and I could go into a field and throw shit at God and his lousy timing. They turned off the machines, and she went. I held her hand. I cried. My husband said, "I hope they have credit cards in heaven." "I'm sure they do. And QVC." Mom died at 5 a.m. April 8. At 10 a.m., I had a doctor's appointment to have some stitches removed. My friends brought me to the doctor, and afterward I asked them to please just stay at the house with us. They did. We were on the phone all day. Talking to my brother, my aunt, the organ donation people, Mother Teresa, the hospital. At 3 in the afternoon the phone rang, my husband picked it up and looked at me in shock. "We have our daughter." I screamed. I literally wailed, and would not take the phone. I made him get all the specifics -- her name, her weight and length at last exam, the province where she was and the name of her orphanage. They would email a photo, they told us. What the fuck, God? We wait a year and a half for this joyous moment, imagining it countless times, and it comes just hours after my mother -- our biggest adoption cheerleader and grandma extraordinaire -- has DIED???? Give me something to throw. Now, don't give me any crap about God giving and God taking away. I don't see God as a micromanager. God didn't TAKE my mother. God didn't spare me. God didn't deliver my daughter -- or for that matter take her away from her birth mother in order that she might be given to me the day my mother died. What kind of sick simpleton would that make God? I guess that idea of God moves some people, but it does not move me. What did move me was the amazing outpouring of love we received the moment we were in trouble. People came from everywhere. Neighbors we barely knew sent food. Women from our church -- women whose names I could not have told you -- brought covered dishes labeled with things like, "Corn casserole - vegetarian - not spicy." Mother T+ came by the house and called several times a day. Our best friends, the Dickersons, opened champagne and celebrated our daughter's life and my mother's life. Our friend Z, knowing that my health would prevent me from going to China, offered to go herself. "I've already talked to my boss and gotten clearance, and I start my vaccinations next week," she said. "Let me know when the plane is leaving." The past year has dragged us thorugh the dessert, and also shown us incredible grace. Now, a year later, I have left my well-paying editing job to be Buttercup and Xerxes' full-time mother. A couple days a week I am the volunteer church secretary (a sister in the Holy Order of St. Carol -- a collective of irreverent Episcopal Church secretaries, of which I have met several), and I am, as I said in the beginning of this, in the process of discerning my next move. One day, I may want a paying job again, and I know I don't want one like the last one I had. Until then, I try to do the cliche thing of being thankful for every day I have with my family and our AMAZING new daughter. I try to be a better person, and when I'm not, I try to forgive myself more readily.

So, um, yeah

2005-01-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

When I read other people's blogs, I always go to the first one and see how they began. Some people introduce you to the cast of characters in their lives. Some people tell you what they're doing at that exact moment, such as pretending to look busy at work, blah, blah, blah. Some people just launch right in. I will tell you that I'm sitting in front of my computer while everyone else in the house sleeps. Juan Carlos is sleeping in our room next to Buttercup in her crib. Our son Xerxes is sleeping in the room next to ours. I'm going to join them soon, but first I had to create this little space for contemplation. Today was a good day.