What It Feels Like

 

As you know, I love my New Yorker magazines.  The poetry, however, has always been daunting, to say the least.  They're notorious for not making sense to us regular folks.

But this week's issue has a treasure of a poem written by, Margaret Atwood,  one of the most prodigious, prolific poet/novelist alive today.  (The Handmaid's Tale comes to mind.)

Margaret Atwood and I are approximately the same age.  She has pretty much nailed it for me in describing what this feels like.  

FLATLINE

Things wear out. Also fingers, 

Gnarling sets in,

Your hands crouch in their mittens,

Forget chopsticks, and buttons.

Feet have their own agendas,

They scorn your taste in shoes

and ignore your trails, your maps. 

Ears are superfluous:

What are they for,

Those alien pink flaps?

Skull fungus.

The body, once your accomplice,

is now your trap.

The sunrise makes you wince:

too bright, too flamingo.

After a lifetime of tangling,

of knotted snares and lacework,

of purple headspace tornados' 

with their heartache and rubble,

you crave the end of mazes

and pray for a white shore,

an ocean with its horizon;

not, so much, bliss

but a flat line you steer for. 

No more hiss and slosh'

no reef, no deeps,

no throat rattle of gravel.

It sounds like this:

            - Margaret Atwood

 

                                                                                                                               

  

Childhood Friends

 

Sluggo Malene lived in my neighborhood for a time when I was growing up.  He was my age but he was smaller than me, and that's saying quite a bit because I was a scrawny little kid.  He got his name from a comic strip called "Nancy." Nancy lived with her Aunt Fritzi and Sluggo was Nancy's tough little friend.  My little friend Sluggo was not tough.  He got the name because he was the polar opposite of Nancy's Sluggo.

Just by coincidence, my little brother Paul had the nickname Butchie.  That name also came from the "Nancy" comic strip. In the strip,  Butch would occasionally beat up Sluggo.  In real life Paul was delicate and small for his age and sick much of the time, hence the (opposite) nickname Butchie.

My friend Sluggo lived on the other side of the street in a big old house that had been divided into tiny apartments.  I don't remember his mother but the two of them lived in two of the cordoned off rooms.  People came and went quickly in the house but Sluggo and his mother stayed a while.  Sluggo was always happy and full of fun and ideas.

What I remember most about him was his love of makeup.  One summer when we were very young, he and I spent hours under a big tree in my back yard smearing on foundation, lipstick and mascara that he'd lifted from his mother's makeup box.  He assured me she'd never miss it.  Sluggo told me that even when they didn't have enough to eat his mom bought copious amounts of makeup on a regular basis.  

I was too young and too naive to give any thought about how unusual it was for Sluggo to be heavily into the makeup routine.  And, in my defense, cross dressing had not yet been invented.  

We had a fun couple of years being friends and then he and his mother were gone and I never heard from him again.  

My brother Paul soon outgrew his nickname Butchie and he grew up to be a devoted husband and father and a truly stand up guy in all areas of his life.  I've often wondered about whatever became of Sluggo. 

***

 

Stress Relieving Frog

 I've had an especially stressful last few days - and it's not going to end soon.  But then I don't need to tell you this because we're all in the hot soup right now.  And we're all trying some healthy and not so healthy ways of dealing with our days of stark terror with a little overlay of chronic sadness. 

I was seriously thinking I should seek out some professional help but it would take several hours to explain what all is currently going on in my life.  And in the end, another person can't fix it.  

But, I live in a nifty village of friends and family so, a couple of days ago,  I did share bit of it with my friend Trish.  And Dr. Trish knew just what I needed.  She told me a sweet, funny story and sent me sweet funny photos.  Trish lives in the woods. She's crazy smart and crazy artistic. 

She has a little tractor/pickup she calls "The Frog."  She told me about having visitors and how she'd taught one of the kids to drive the frog - and afterwards rewarded her with a Frog Driver's License.  

So, this morning, when Trish texted me to see how I'm doing, I replied:

I'm hanging in there.  But a VERY stressful week.  Wish I could get in my Frog and drive around the forest but I don't have a frog driver's license. 

So Trish sent me this "Official" driver's license.  It even has the star, enabling me to drive my Frog to Europe. 

I hope you are blessed with powerful friends like Trish. 

***

Celebrating

Life is tough for all of us right now.  I try to intersperse the daily "we're all gonna die" narrative  with pockets of celebration.  Recently my grandson and his wife came by to give me the exciting news that they're expecting.  So we are now, along with all the stuff that daily smacks us in the gut,  anticipating this new tiny new person being formed by God.  This couple has wanted this blessing for a while so we who love them have prayed for this to happen.  The sweetest thing they told me was that both of their dads cried when they got the news.  

On Monday they learned the sex of their budding baby.  I had already warned them about how I did not care for gender reveal parties that sometimes cause major catastrophes so the night before last they came by for my own personal gender reveal party.  

There was a big "Popper" explosion of pink confetti but no firestorms in California were started by this reveal.  Life is good and life continues to move along in good as well as horrific ways in this time of Covid19. 

***

Letting Go

 

Some folks (fortunately not my family) are a bit bossy about what I should be doing.  You need to eat more.  You need to move. You need to take it easy.   It doesn't bother me (much) because I know they care for me and want me to be safe. 

(Except for my neighbors who came by several times to ask me if I was ready to move.  They finally confessed that they wanted my condo!)

I want to be safe - but there are so many more things I want and need to enjoy my life.  We all need meaning and purpose and I'm blessed to still have that and to help others along the way.  

I was going through some old journals recently and ran across something I'd written in 2003.  My husband, Ken had been terminally ill for a few years but, and despite spending every other day hooked up to a dialysis machine, he still had meaning and purpose.  He also had a wife who was constantly trying to get him to eat properly.  When your kidneys shut down the only way toxins leave the body is through dialysis - and this is not a perfect system.  

Finally, after conferring with Ken's doctors I decided to throw in the towel (food nagging wise.)  Following is what I wrote in my journal on May, 13, 2003. 

I've decided to let Ken eat whatever he wants. 

Last night we were sitting at dinner.  Ken had asked for the mac & cheese he'd ordered the day before at Cracker Barrel.  Along with that he had roast beef, fish and mashed potatoes.   I watched him pile tartar sauce on his fish.  Then entertained myself by reading the label "350 msg of sodium per teaspoon."  Ken ate half of the jar.

At 11 am we picked him up from the dialysis center.  He was all shaky and barely able to get himself from the wheelchair to the car .  It's looking like it will take at least two of us going forward to load him in and out.  He has great difficulty breathing. 

But he managed to stagger into the kitchen in med afternoon to eat an entire jar of pickles!

Ken loved to eat.  He loved to overeat.  In his last few weeks he could no longer eat his crazy amount of crazy food but he still loved a special orange cake I used to bake.  It, too, was bad for him but now we were in cahoots.  So I made a big sheet cake every week, cut it into individual squares and put them in the freezer so he could have one whenever he wanted.  This gave both of us pleasure.

So how do I feel about abandoning my job as the food police knowing full well that what Ken was eating could be doing him harm? 

 I feel fine. Wish I'd done it sooner.  

***

Waiting for Delos

 Samual Beckett wrote his wildly acclaimed play Waiting for Godot in 1948. First in French and then later, in the 90s, in English.  The play has been described as a typical example of Theatre of the Absurd.  In 1996 it was voted the most significant English language play in the 20th century.  

What's it about?  Two guys are waiting for Godot to show up.  Who is Godot?  Is it God?  Who knows.  The extensional questions of Who, What, Where and When are asked but not answered. 

When my husband Ken started his health journey we had to, from time to time, visit his vascular surgeon's office.  While the surgeon was excellent, the office wait time was always an agonizing several hours.  It drove me absolutely crazy. 

So to express my frustration with my own little existential angst, I wrote a poem.  And, yes, I did share the poem with the vascular surgeon, Delos Cliff.  

WAITING FOR DELOS

Some were doing laundry,

Some were laying fires,

Some were birthing babies,

Some were changing tires.                                                                                                                            

Waiting for Delos

Some were reading epics,

Some were dreaming dreams,

Most were doing nothing,

But stifling their screams.

Waiting for Delos

But if you have a need spectacular

For anything that's titled vascular

You will surely find yourself

Waiting for Delos.

***

 

Notes From The Past

 

About 20 years ago I attended a writer's workshop and was urged to read the wildly popular book for creatives called  The Artist' Way - A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.  Written by  Julia Cameron, it's a workbook to encourage your creative juices to flow.  

The book is very interactive and is famous for encouraging "Morning Pages."  These are pages we write every morning - whether we want to or not.  

Today I got out one of my notebooks filled with morning pages from about 20 years ago.  It's mostly stream of consciousness and not very interesting.  I have carefully ripped out and shredded every page because they're a personal glimpse into my mind and heart at the time.  

I did save a couple of pages.  They were written in 2002 when I was caregiving my husband, Ken.  He passed away in 2004 after a long, long goodbye.  Serendipitously, as his body and mind wore down he became strangely content - for the first time in his life.  

Last night Ken sat at the dinner table trying to eat our usual Saturday night roasted chicken dinner.  But his hands were flying akimbo.  Getting the fork to his mouth was an adventure.  Lifting his water glass without jerking the contents all over the table was near impossible. 

After dinner he went to the other room and fetched the book he'd been reading, A Patriot's Handbook, with  songs, poems, stories and speeches celebrating America.  Ken sat back down at his place at the table and began reading to me from a portion of the book about "Shakers."  

He read...."The members were known for their trembling produced by their religious intensity - hence the name "Shakers."  Shaker communities gave up their worldly possessions and lived a celibate and austere life concentrated on God."

Then Ken closed the book and said "This certainly describes me."

***