Thanksgiving Toast (Almost)

I went to light the (gas) fireplace this weekend and it ended rather badly. I am really glad I told Missy to go stand on the other side of the room. POOF! Big puff of flame. My eyebrows and eyelashes were singed, plus all the hair on my arms and around my face. I actually asked my 5-year-old, "is my hair on fire?"

I have burns on my hands and wrists that hurt. I put lavender on them. It is helping.

People at my old job used to wonder why I didn't take advantage of the free flying lessons. Well, duh. It's because of stuff like this. I can't even light a stinking match without torching myself. I am sure the flight lessons would go well.

The kids' dad went to St. Louis for a few days. It makes sense… he has no job, no unemployment insurance, and no interviews on the schedule. I'm willing to bet this week's chewing gum money that somehow, there's a hotel room involved, too. That guy loves hotel rooms.

In the meantime, I am looking up recipes for fish. I hate fish but I need to eat it more for the health benefits. I wish I liked salmon. Now that's a fish that gets the job done.

My mother fell again. I can't afford to fly back East, so her attorney is paying for my travel. It does not look good. They said she is speaking gibberish. I am bracing myself.

Thanksgiving. Thoughts of Brenden.

And Then There's Brenden

Gleaning

Found this one filed under, "Water is Wet", crossed-referenced with "Sky is Blue". People obviously need food.

I found the visual helpful, too.

Haldol Hal

I did go back to the personals. Found out what a CD is.

A few of the personals seemed interesting, but I think I need a break. I am just tired of everything being difficult and I am really, really flawed. I am tired of hiding that, too. I don't expect to meet someone flawless, but the general level of disturbia is profound. It takes a lot of energy to protect yourself.

That guy Will was f-ed up. The other guy - the one who was sending me movies of himself - was also f-ed, but in a different way. I suspect they both had plans to cage me in the basement of an abandoned farm house.

Recently, a guy named George wrote a succinct ad and I answered it. He responded and sent me his phone number. Having learned my lesson from Crazy Lee, I did a reverse lookup. Googled his name. Found he is looking for a room mate in his luxury town house. The ad for a room mate references his web site. So I went there.

Uh-oh. The web site is a chaotic word salad of accusations about people broadcasting his thoughts, rants about vitamins, and theories about Barack Obama's geneology.

I quote from the most coherent bit:

"Dumb people try to act rich and snotty, ie police with dumb ass MBAs, country hillbilly wanna-be idiots grow mustaches to become 'salesmen'? Talk like idiots, idiots will believe other idiots and very few are genius like myself...Some people say things and I just listen and do the opposite. Fat girls from the Internet try to talk sweet and sexy on the phone. Other normal-cute-sexy girls just talk normal...At the gym, every month or so, they put up a sign that the steam room does not work. Someone poured water on the thermostat and broke it. It's just a lie...."

This is somewhat alarming, don't you think? And as alarming as this is, I can tell you that normally, I would be insulted by the part about the fat girls on the internet. But that's my insecurity. You see how flawed I am? But I've had therapy, so I remind myself that I haven't talked to him on the phone yet, so he cannot possibly be referring to me. Right? Besides, I am only about 10 lbs. overweight. Who would bother to mention this on a web site? It's not worth the trouble. Twenty pounds, I could see. But not 10. You would barely notice 10.

Do you see how tiring this becomes?

I think George is off his meds. My guess is that he has paranoid schizophrenia. It doesn't go well with low self-estemm. Alcoholism, yes. Insecurity, not so much. If I were the alcoholic that Will imagines I am, I would be a good match for George.

He must take Haldol. But only occasionally, like when he *really, really* needs it.

Angry Will

I was corresponding with a writer named Will for a while. He was ok, until I went grocery shopping one night without checking with him first.

It went like this:

We had arranged to talk on the phone, but we didn't set a specific time. I just said the kids would be with Dad, so I would have some free time to talk. He called me at 6:00, 6:30, and 7:30. I left work at 5:30 and took the kids to play therapy and then to Dad's. Then I did some food shopping. I got home at 8:30. I saw that he had called and I didn't want him to think I was blowing him off, so I called him back as soon as I got in. But I didn't listen to his messages first.

Anyway, he sounded very annoyed. It took a while to talk him down. He said something like that he thought I was playing head games. I assured him that I'd had to pick up some stuff at the grocery store, that it was my first chance to run errands.

He seemed argumentative, even when I agreed with him. He commented that my "thought patterns are kind of unusual" and that it was "a strange experience" talking to me.

I really didn't know what to make of that. Mister, if you think it's strange talking to me on the phone, you should hang out with me on a Saturday night. I'll blow your fucking mind.

He finally asked, "Am I making you uncomfortable or nervous?" I told him he wasn't, but that maybe we'd gotten off on the wrong foot with the misunderstanding about when I'd be in. The truth of it was that I was very uncomfortable and didn't even want to meet him. He sounded like a big whining sissy who wanted to pick a fight. Anyway, I made plans to meet him thinking I would probably break them. I got off the phone with him and listened to the three (count 'em) messages he'd left.

#1 - Hi. You're not there. I guess I am calling too early. Oh well. I will try later. Click.

#2 - Wow. This is weird. You're not there. You said you'd be home. Ok. Wow. I wonder what's going on here? Whatever. Click.

#3 - OK. I'm trying again and you're not home. I guess you're playing head games with me or something. Do you have some kind of drinking problem? Is that what you meant when you said that you had a dark side? I guess you're drunk right now. OK. Well, this is the last time I'm calling. Click.

Yeah.

The email shove-off:

Will,

I just got a chance to listen to your phone messages and I am uncomfortable about getting together on Saturday. I am going to pass on the opportunity to meet you.

Please do not contact me again.

Rhetorical question of the day: Where *are* all the good guys?

Answer:

1. They are young.
2. They are married.
3. They are deceased.

I would really rather be alone, or with a cat.

Lee

I turned off the phone in case crazy Lee calls. His real name is Mike. But he changed it to Lee... I suspect when he got out of the prison psych ward. Anyway, FedEX called this morning. Someone sent me flowers. I refused them. I have no idea who could be sending me flowers, except for Crazy Lee (Mike).

Crazy Lee was actually sending me movies of himself. Not porn or anything; just movies of himself talking to me.

"Hi. This is my car. I'm outside the bookstore waiting for it to open. It's 10 of 9. I'm saying a prayer for you now (crosses himself, closes eyes). Here's the traffic on the highway (turns camera toward highway). Oh, look, there's a Subway across the street. I love meatball sandwiches from Subway! And a jewelry store. Maybe we can visit there some day!"

Whack job.

Crazy Lee told me that he was retired. But he was only 47, which I found strange. I asked him how he managed that. Did he get bored? What did he do with his time? He had plenty of hobbies, he said. He didn't need to work. He had bought Microsoft stock at just the right time.

Ahhhhhh. I see.

He was calling me pretty frequently, so I did a reverse lookup on his phone number. Phone listed in his father's name. OK, so he lives with his father. Did a look up on the address.


BLDG ON LEASED LAND IN GRAND VIEW MOBILE HOME PARK/6213 DECATUR ST SW DESC AS LANDS ALL IN THE SE & SW STR/LB

Ahhhhhh. I see. Microsoft stock.

Sheree told me to say that God spoke to me from a cloud and told me not to date men any more. Goodbye. So I did that.

I'll let you know if he stalks me.

What I Didn't Know

I used to think of racism as a white problem - you know, what I learned in college; that it was up to white people to educate themselves, do the inside dirty work that causes racial hatred, and purge the world of racism. I honestly thought that a lot of white people – not all, but a lot – were beyond the race thing. Americans, I mean. Particularly young people. They seem to have an ease (as opposed to dis-ease) about race that my generation did not have. While that may be true - I don't know any more if it is or it isn't - I have to say that I didn't grasp the level of pain that Black people in this country were living with. It seems to be a sort of cumulative pain. Like stress, you can release small portions of it from time to time, but it never really leaves you. You just live with it. It's a collective experience.

I wanted to say that it's like understanding hunger, even if you've never known it personally. I remember in the 1980's, when Ethiopia was whithering under a catastrophic famine. Night after night, we'd see heartbreaking images on the news of hungry, dying children. It made an impression. After all the fundraising was tallied up from the developed countries in the West, it appeared that the Republic of Ireland had far exceeded the other nations in per capita contributions. In other words, despite the high unemployment, relative poverty, and political strife in Ireland, its people had responded the most generously to the victims of famine in Ethiopia.

Famine and Ireland. You don't hear too much about that these days in America. But talk to anyone in Ireland about what it's like to be hungry, or in want, and the response may surprise you. Irish people fear hunger. Even generations after the famine. It's a collective experience. A collective pain. In the bones, the psyche. A catastrophic trauma, I would imagine.

The pain of Black people in this country didn't come to my attention until Barack Obama was elected; until it actually happened and the celebration began. I had had glimpses of it; I've been around a while, and I can open my soul enough to listen, to let another person's pain register with me. I thought I had done that. But on this particular issue, I was ignorant. Just ignorant.

I expected that Barack Obama would get elected, but something in me didn't want to count the proverbial chickens before they were hatched. It was exciting, but I kept thinking that some weird voter fraud glitch was going to happen, some Rodney King hanging chad ACORN-related meteor was going to strike the bureau for Voter Fairness and the whole election would be invalidated. In lieu of martial law, Oliver North would assume the presidency until the government could resuscitate or clone Ronald Reagan. You know, that one-in-a-million mentality.

When Obama did get elected, I was relieved to finally see it happen. For many reasons. On many different levels. I sighed a huge sigh and went on with my day, relieved that the election madness was over. I wondered in the back of my head how Black people felt, but my experience of voting was a personal one. It had nothing to do with anyone but myself, my choice. Anyway, when the election results were announced, I imagined that Black people in this country had to know for sure that some of us are trying to do the right thing. Barack Obama wasn't elected by accident. People – *a lot* of people – (white ones, I mean) had to think their vote. They had to show up, and they had to cast a ballot. They had to stand behind a curtain - all alone with nobody watching - and actually pull the lever. In private. Again, with nobody looking. And people did it. They did the right thing. Part of me even wants to say, they let love win.

It's a good start.

The post-election euphoria feels kind of strange. It's as if an unspoken dialogue has occurred, a truce of some sort; as if the air has been cleared of something fetid. You know, the vague smell of something going bad in the trash. You don't know exactly what it is – so much has been thrown in the bin over the years. It's just time to take out the trash and start over. None of it is salvageable.

I hadn’t realized that so many people thought they would not live to see the day when a Black man was elected president of the United States. I hadn’t realized that I felt that way myself. For that reason alone, I am grateful that this has happened. I am even more overjoyed to see elderly Black people experience this. They deserve it, least of all for what they have endured.

As always, though, I feel compelled to make the political a personal matter, and I hope you will indulge me. There are freedoms that I enjoy that the previous generation was not fortunate enough to experience. And then there are experiences that the next generation may have that my generation cannot.

Late in the summer, I met a man that I liked a lot. He's Black, in his late 50's. His name was Richard. He had been married to a mean lady for 28 years, so we had quite a bit in common - like involuntary cringing at loud noises. We got along well, and I felt safe with him; appreciated, like a woman is supposed to feel when she is special to a man. We went out several times, and everywhere we went, people were especially gracious to us. It surprised me a little, but I thought maybe they can see that we like each other. People are nice to you if they think you are a cute couple.

We had long talks. His mother was a lot like mine – the kind who would hug you and kiss you and then smack you on the head for getting lost in Sears & Roebuck. He told me a story once about how his mother didn't eat for two days because there was not enough food in the house to feed her and the kids. So the kids ate. She didn't. My mother was like that.

We both liked the same kinds of books and movies. Flea markets. Weird humor. And oddly enough, we both also had a bizarre interest in Sasquatch sightings. How often does that happen?

Invariably, though, every time I talked to him, he would ask me what my ex-husband would think of me seeing a Black man. I told him I didn't know, or care for that matter, but I think that may have been a mistake. I don't think I reassured him enough that I didn't give a rip.

"It's one thing for there to be a new man," he said once. "But it's a completely different thing for there to be a new Black man."

"Really?" I asked. Maybe I was being naive.

"Have you ever dated a Black man before?" he asked. I hadn't.

He also asked several times what my children would think of him. "I don't know," I said. "I haven't introduced them to anyone I've dated. I haven't really dated. I'm trying to protect them. They've had a lot of losses."

We were quiet.

"But they might call you brown instead of Black,” I offered. “They do that sometimes."

I laughed. He didn't.

"What about your friends?" he wanted to know.

What about them? I thought. I told him I thought they'd be fine.

"What about yours?" I asked. "And your family?"

He shrugged. Yeah, they'll get over it.

I didn't see what the big deal was. I just liked him. You see, I'm too old now to care what anybody thinks. I've been unhappy too long.

Soon after that conversation, the phone calls from Richard stopped dead. I thought maybe he’d had a heart attack and died or something. So I called to make sure he was OK. He was fine. He just couldn't handle a relationship with a white woman.

Me. A white woman. Go figure.

It's funny, ever since Barack Obama was elected, I have been half expecting the phone to ring and for it to be Richard. “Hey, ever since we voted for change, I figured it was OK to call.”

But it hasn't.

I am hoping that it is true what I have heard many Black people saying, that everything is different now. You know, life will be BB (Before Barack) and AB (After Barack). I hope it is, for my sake and the sake of the next generation. Everything, and I mean everything, needs to change.

Mom

I need to talk. This is the central point of frustration in my life – I need to talk to someone all the time. I need to check in. I need to connect and tell what I’m thinking and feeling. Not everyone wants to hear it.

Sometimes I’ll get on the phone with Jack, and I am just getting to the point at hand, I’m just getting warmed up and opening my heart and getting on a riff, and he suddenly says, “I have to go.” It stops me. Dead. And I have so much more to say. Nothing reaches its logical conclusion with him. Nothing runs its course, even by phone.

It’s frustrating and painful.

I discovered something today. This is what it is. I had to get a divorce so that I could work with my kids. So that they could be all right. I think I knew that, but today I have empirical proof.

Yesterday, on the therapist's advice, I put the training wheels on the bicycle and let Emily decide that she wanted to ride it. She has been telling me for three years that she doesn't want to learn to ride the bike, and she has refused to get on it. Anyway, she got on it yesterday. She is so big that she bent the training wheels, but bless her heart, she gave it a try.

She was thrilled. At one point, one of the wheels snapped off, but she kept pedaling. After about an hour of wobbling around with one training wheel, she asked to take the other one off. Then she just rode the bike. She talked about it all evening, almost as if to convince herself that she'd really done it. "Mom," she said, "Can you believe I rode my bike?" And again, first thing when she woke up today. She even asked if she could hug me - this from the kid who has been so angry that she's been hitting me.

When she was out learning, she smashed into another little girl, and they both got knocked off their bikes. Emily jumped up yelling, “that was awesome!” I was so proud, I nearly cried. You see, I have known her to pretend to fall down and then sob for hours in order to get my attention. If you could have seen her racing up and down the parking lot, pumping her legs, screaming at the top of her lungs. It was entirely appropriate. What a wonderful way for her to let off her energy. What a gift!

I have been feeling guilty about being divorced, but there is no way that any of this could have happened if I were married to her father. I had to get a divorce to be able to focus on my kids like this, to be able to see how much wreckage was in their lives and mine. Michael sits indoors with the shades drawn, the windows closed, the doors locked. Emily is very similar to him in temperament and how she experiences the world. She gets anxious if the windows are open - and we live on the third floor. I am trying to help her, but she fights me, the same way her father fought me. I couldn't help her with him sucking the life out of me day and night. I couldn’t help her with him undermining me, telling her there was nothing wrong with being glued to the television on a sunny day, the air conditioner blasting, eating cereal out of the box.

The truth of it is that I picked her over him. I had to. He picked his neurosis over us. He was using her – turning her into his own little head case – to make himself important and ok in the world.

Michael fell off his bike once when he was 6 years old. He threw the bike on the ground and said, "fuck this shit". He went back in the house and never tried again to learn how to ride a bike. His father laughed and let him. To this day, he cannot ride a bicyle. Same with mostly everything else in his life.

Today, I wanted to share my joy with someone, but somehow it is just ringing a little hollow with everyone I try to tell. Jack had to go in the middle of the conversation. In the end, I guess it’s a personal thing -- between me and God. All those people at church who cut me off, they thought it was ok to offer up my kid as ransom for my mistakes – they wouldn’t have had to live with themselves knowing that if I stayed with Michael, I’d be doing to Emily what my mother did to me – making my bed and forcing my daughter to lie in it.

God is merciful. I believe He will let me off the hook for this one.

I’m at my desk eating those miniature Hershey bars and it’s just not doing the trick. I want to cry and have Jack hold me and tell me I’m safe now, I did it. I broke the cycle of abuse.

It’s not happening.

It was sad last night listening to my room mate laugh and smile as she told me she was giving up on moving back to the East Coast. She caved in to everything her husband is demanding. Now she is saddled with all the responsibility for the kids, the house, the family income, the childcare, grocery shopping, blah blah blah, because she will move back in with him. I can see that the whole economy thing spooked her. The idea of losing her job or being alone. Or both.

She does this nervous laughing thing that is really pathetic. Her husband is a big baby, as bad as my ex. He plays golf, doesn't want to work. She tells stories about her abusive father walking around naked all the time, posing his private parts directly toward her face. I suppose the husband is a prince compared to the father.

Sometimes I can't stand hearing about it. Last night I went to bed early.

I am interested in what's going to happen with the economy. Do you know the French expression, "ennui"? It's a combination of boredom and anxiety. It's what I have a lot.

And I don't know if I'm going to vote. I keep hearing about someone named Joe Schriner.

The only interesting thing that happened today is that I found out that Paul McCartney has a new girlfriend. Her name is Nancy Shevell. She has dark hair. I don't think I've ever heard of him going out with a woman with dark hair. There is hope for me. But he will likely marry her.

The economy. I just have to ride it out, I suppose. I picture myself in a quiet farmhouse. The bus comes by to get the kids. I stay home all day and write. Exercise. Shoot at trespassers. Start dinner.

It could happen. If I were married to Paul McCartney.

To make matters worse, Marc sends me links to the economist Nouriel Roubini. Roubini is like a slavic Angel of Death, in more ways than one or two. Still, I find him appealing in a morose way. The sense of doom that surrounds him transcends space and time. You could easily picture him as an SS monkey, a medieval executioner, or a Roman centurion. Really. It starts before he even opens his mouth to speak.

http://www.rgemonitor.com/

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~nroubini/

I am going to pay off my credit card. $501.97 - the remainder from the teapot orgy, the aromatherapy experiments, and the weekend in the Flint Hills with my 9-year-old. I really want to know if this is stupid or not stupid... it's a lot of money to me. If the global economy is going down in flames in the very near future, I would prefer to get my hair done decently beforehand.

I overslept today and didn't get a shower. Just ate a bunch of candy. The economy makes me anxious.

This Just In

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

Red and Reds

Back in 1976, on live television, Red Foxx made a comment at Jimmy Carter's inaugural gala that made me burst into laughter. He said, "don't worry too much about having a Black president. If The Bomb goes off, we'll all be Black."

I was 13 years old, and at that moment, I felt as if Red and I were the only two sane people in the world. Funny, not much has changed in 32 years.

I have been following the Russian invasion of Georgia this past week. It's good practice for next week - you know, when we invade Iran (wink, wink). Anyway, I was thinking of how clever the Russian technique is: invade the country, stomp all over everyone, then deny it happened. Because we're too preoccupied to know for sure, all we can do is yell at them and hope for the best.

It's exceedingly clever. My kids do it all the time.
Smaller kid: "Mom, she's messing with me!"
Bigger kid: "I am not."
Smaller kid: "You are too!"
Bigger kid: "No, I'm not."
Smaller kid: "You liar!"
Bigger kid: "No, YOU'RE the liar!"

As a Mom, I have to admit that it is painfully obvious that the big kid is picking on the little kid. But Mom is really busy DRIVING A CAR and TRYING NOT TO CRASH it (do you see the metaphor?). Because Mom is preoccupied, she cannot pull over and smack everyone senseless.

As an American, I can’t help but notice the parallels with the news headlines. Here's the political translation:

Georgia: "Dad (President Bush, EU, NATO!), Russia is invading us!"
Russia: "We are not!"
Georgia: "You are too!"
Russia: "No, we're not!"
Georgia: "You are committing genocide!"
Russia: "No, YOU'RE the one committing genocide!"

As in the previous example, it is obvious that the big bear is picking on the little dumpling. But Dad (President Bush, EU Guys, NATO fellas) is really busy running a country and trying not to crash it, plus he already has two big wars on his hands. Because he is so preoccupied, he cannot pull over and SMACK EVERYONE SENSELESS.

I feel bad. The bear is back. Putin is former KGB and he is not playing. You see the leaders of the Ukraine and Poland standing around with the Georgian president. They know they're on their own now, and they'd better behave. The EU and the NATO are not going to pull over and help them.

Then there's Georgia. Whimpering and mumbling. "You guys said I could have a missile defense system. What about NATO? You said I could join NATO, too!"

On top of everything, it is disheartening to see Russian and Georgian soldiers in uniform. I would like to call your attention to how attractive many of them are. I know, I know, I am a barbarian. It's just a shame that they are shooting at each other; they're going to get all sweaty and smelly and bloody and dead. What a waste.

Telogen Effluvium

I've had trouble waking up the past few mornings. Well, more than trouble. Actually, I've turned off the alarm, so it's more like I've had failure to get up the past few mornings. I am not sure, but maybe as I have been messing with the aromatherapy stuff, it has been messing with me.

Did you ever feel like your body was telling you to do something, but you weren't sure what it was telling you to do? I have been having a lot of that lately. Much of the time, I walk around semi-disconnected, in the physical sense. It's as if my head is connected to an apparatus that is moving around and taking care of business, but there's a whole other part of me that is engaged elsewhere, you might say. Sometimes, I have the sensation that my stomach is floating six inches above me. Odd, I know.

These past few days, ever since I started experimenting with the plant medicinals, I have felt connected to the apparatus. It's a strange feeling. Not always familiar. I noticed it right away, and I felt OK with it. Then I started feeling very quiet, like I just wanted to listen and pay attention to everyone. When I went to bed at night, I slept hard. Heavy, like in water. It was difficult to get up. My body feels different, like when I was doing that cleansing fast. I feel a change every time I put plant oil on my body.

For instance, I get migraines three or four times a week. Yesterday, when I put geranium oil and juniper berry on the back of my neck, they made an oncoming headache go away.

The past two months I have missed my period. I don't know why, unless it is the stress I have had with the kids and the ex. I've also noticed some hair loss. It's called telogen effluvium - stress-related hair loss. I've had it twice before in my life, once when I lived in South Carolina, and another time when my ex-husband was being especially mean to me. This is the third time. I noticed it first in my hairbrush, that I had to clean it more than usual. Then I started seeing stray hairs everywhere – on my clothes, in the sink, on the bathroom counter top. I have long hair, so when it falls on my shoulders or clothes, it ends up tickling me or getting in my face or something annoying like that. Finally, I found myself having to clean a whole bunch of it out of the bathtub after a shower. It's unnerving, but eventually it stops. Or you go bald. One or the other.

Whatever.

I haven't found the essential oil for that one yet.

Play Therapy

I'm in a cycle where I'm trying to take care. Just be purposeful, have direction, for a change. Like in French - faire attention. I was hoping the other day that this was the end of a year of hard changes for me and my kids; this could be the beginning of an easier life. I guess you never know that, though. You just take it a day at a time.

In the past year, the kids had their dad move out, a crazy nanny move in, a crazy nanny move out, and the dog move back to South Carolina. We also sold our house and moved into a two-bedroom apartment with Phyllis, my room mate. This week they start school, my big girl in 4th grade and my little one in kindergarten. My older daughter has been in four schools since we moved to this town, and she is not happy about the changes. She's shy and self-conscious. By contrast, the little one makes friends with people even if there's a complete language barrier – the Mexican neighbors, for example.

Every once in a while, Missy will ask, "why did we have to sell the green house?" I tell her it's because it was too expensive for just the three of us. Emily sometimes asks, "did you like Greta (the dog)?" When I answer yes, that I loved her, she asks accusingly, "then why did you give her away?" Sometimes one or both of them will just start crying – they want to go home. To their old home. To their old rooms. In the green house.

The play therapy is coming along. I am grateful for that. The play therapist gives me a ton of homework to do – reading, charts, exercises. All in all, she says I am very teachable. And I am. I don't want to screw this up.

Emily has wanted to make perfume for a while now, so I went to the health food store to buy plant oils. I picked out a few, and they cost me the whole week's food budget. Plus, I had to buy vodka to make the perfume. Anyway, the lady at the health food store started talking to me about the plant and flower oils – I thought they were just smelly stuff, but it turns out they have medicinal properties, too. So I got a few books from the library. The past few nights we've all gone to bed with lavender on our pillows. I read in the book that it not only helps you sleep, but it can help you when there's been a wound to your soul. I thought, "this is what we've all had – a wound to our souls." My soul, Emily's little girl soul, Missy's baby 5 year old soul. We all need medicine.

We did well going to bed the past few nights. A month ago it was an anger fest, with mom swearing and the kids jumping on the beds. Calm is better. Lavender is better. Play therapy is helping.

Heavy Petting

Preston. I’ve written about him before on this blog. I kind of liked him, but for the wrong reasons. He was funny – but not in a good way. Every time I went out with him, I came home wondering if I'd been on a date. I'd have to sit down on the couch and reason it out.

Evidence for:

• picked me up
• told me I looked great
• opened doors, pulled out my chair
• paid for everything
• walked me to the door

Sounds like a date, right? I have plenty of guy friends, but they draw the line at pulling out my chair and paying for everything. Once in a while they pay for dinner, but only because I'm a single mom. And dates with Preston were expensive – dinner, wine, theatre, cabs. The works.

So it seemed like a date. But every time he dropped me off, I had a consistent, nagging "what the hell was that?" feeling.

Evidence against:

• never came near me. I swear.
• talked on his cell phone constantly while in the car and in restaurants.
• took me to crowded and noisy places. It was impossible to talk or ask questions, such as “is this a date?”.

I started thinking Preston was gay.

Evidence for:

• overly attached to feline friends (see below).
• referred to people he used to date as "this person I was seeing."
• never touched me. I swear.
• recoiled from holding hands like he was Superman and I was Kryptonite.
• liked show tunes.

Evidence against:

• none.

He started talking to me about the cat. She was sick and it seemed serious. He called a lot, sometimes late at night. I think he even sobbed a few times about the cat. He was making me nervous. Now I felt trapped.

I resolved to wait until after cat died to put some distance between us. Once I got the cat funeral pictures, I had to wait even longer - I didn't want him to think I was breaking up with him because he sent me weird dead cat pictures. Even though I was. I totally was. And also the fact that he was semi-gay.

When I told him that the relationship wasn't working for me, he was miffed. He brought up the possibility of a committed friendship. Whatever that is. We exchanged a few emails, but he moved on.


Preston and Sophie


The plot and the burial

Sophie, in happier days



R.I.P.

Last Night

Last night at a local church there was a speaker on sex trafficking and helping women in prostitution and I wanted to attend. I couldn't get a babysitter and I took the kids. Emily complained about going, but Missy didn't. I took them to a café beforehand. Emily misbehaved the whole time, jumping around, provoking Missy, talking smart to me. The last straw was when she went in my purse. I have told her several times that she is not allowed to open my purse. I grabbed her arm and squeezed it, but she pulled away and ended up getting scratched by my fingernails.

The look on her face was like that of a toddler - you know, when they open their mouths to scream and nothing comes out at first. Then total, total hysteria. I hate you, I want Tara's mother to be my mother. I will never speak to you again. I tried to tell her she needs to stay out of my purse, that I didn’t mean to hurt her, that she made me angry.

She kept mouthing off at me, I hate you, you're a bad mother. We left the restaurant in a hurry. We got in the car and she called me a dummy. She kept sticking her tongue out at me and making faces. I ignored her and drove to the church.

We sat down and watched the presentation. We only stayed for about 20 minutes, but I wanted the information because I've always wanted to work with prostitutes. Emily was fascinated. The youngest girls they have rescued are 12 years old. She understood a lot of it, how there are people who hurt little girls, who take them from their parents and hurt them. She asked me some questions. All in all the kids were fidgety, but I got the information I wanted and we left.

We got out in the parking lot. Without prompting, she told me she was sorry and that she loved me. The rest of the night was fine. This morning she woke up and was fine. Just as we were about to leave the house, some sort of Emily switch flipped and she started in on Missy. Missy freaked out. I intervened, saying (therapy talk) "I understand you are angry, but don't call Missy names." She was calling her a retard. Missy ran all the way down the walk and stood by the car. Then Emily started on me. She does this thing with banging stuff. She has a metal bracelet which she flings around on her wrist. It makes a snapping noise. She does it to annoy me, but I usually ignore it for the first 1000 times. Well, this time it hit her in the eye and she grabbed her eye and started to cry. I was driving and I said Oh my God, are you ok? She was ok, but I ended up taking the bracelet away. She flipped out, screaming "give it back." I said, "I have to take it, it’s not safe for you to have it now." Then it was I hate you, I want Tara's mother, I like Daddy better, I never want to see you again. She tried to grab it a few times, but I just said, "don't try it." She kicked the car and stomped and punched the dashboard. I just let her. She did not try to hit me.

She was calm by the time we got to Jennifer's, but she had upset Missy a great deal, first with the picking on her, then with the explosion. Missy started saying, "I love you, Mom." She does that to try to make up for Emily yelling at me. I just say, "I love you, too, and I love Emily, too."

Emily is completely out of control. I was thinking as I left Jennifer's that I am glad I am handling this now with therapy. She is going to be the type of teenager who hits me. She hits me now sometimes, and it breaks my heart to hit her back. But I can just picture her with the car keys, just like with the bracelet, "give it back, give it back." By that time, she won't be afraid of me, either.

I really hate my life. My daughter is 9 years old. I hate my life.

Fun with Email

I was thinking of doing a series of blog entries on my love life. I mean my social love life. You know, eros (emphasis on the “err” not on the “o”). Not agape or philos.

I had thought about doing it a few months ago when I was getting all sorts of weird email from Preston, my gay boyfriend. Pictures of the cat’s funeral and all that. It was just too much, and I felt torn between the need to share the disturbia and my overwhelming compulsion to be nice. Nice won out. But that was in April.

This month I’ve been feeling a little cranky and I thought I’d share some of the nuttier social experiences I’ve had. One thing about writers that you may not know: we are sneaky. That is to say that for the writer, everything and everyone is fair game. For instance, I forward asinine emails. I also keep unusual voice mail, especially if there is any kind of singing or humming involved. That note you passed me in 10th grade algebra? It’s in the back of my sock drawer, right next to a birthday card from my Auntie Gail. I consider them sort of deposits in a creative inspiration bank. When I have nothing to write about, I just yank out a bit of weirdness from my past. Or yours.

So be forewarned, friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, casual acquaintances, captivating strangers, members of the faceless crowd: I am a writer and I’m taking notes. Every twist of the tongue, every nuanced look, every drunken rant is grist for the mill - for my blog, for my novel, for my next volume of poetry.

And, of course, I forward email.

Here is an interesting one from a guy I met at through a mutual acquaintance. He told me he was a budding writer, and that his favorite author was John Grisham. He didn’t have a second favorite author, as I recall. Anyway, I think we got into a discussion about why poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, something wicked deep, and although the reason escapes me now, I gave him my email address. About a month later, I received this literary gem:

Dearest,

You can tell that you have a core of molten lava, burning beneath your surface. How can mere skin and bones contain such a smoldering, passionate soul? I've been looking for that super-heated heart in another. When joined with my own, our auras will be seen from space.

Can you meet me tonight at Margarita's on the Boulevard for two-for-one tacos? Say after work?

My work number is 555-555-5555. My home number is 555-555-555.

David

Naturally, this was too awesome to be true. I immediately forwarded my treasure to Marc. His reply came rather quickly.

Hey,

I did a reverse search on his number. Got his name and address. Then called Margarita's and placed an order for 3 dozen tacos. They deliver. I hope he's home. And likes spice.

Marc

Next entry: Cat Funeral

My Life as a Blob

On Saturday I went to the movies with a guy that I have been corresponding with. He seems really nice. He is recently divorced, like in the past few months. He has two older kids. I told him I didn't want to get into a relationship. But I like him and I want to hang out with him. Maybe in a few months. I don't think it's good to dive in deep with someone who's right out of marriage, plus, now I am going through a "leave me alone" period. Anyway, I had fun and I could tell he found me attractive. This is what I have been doing lately: eating M&Ms and dressing dumpy. No makeup. Sleeping. It's not good for my inner girly girl. She feels like a frump.

Anyway, I had been trying to get fat again, but back I'm back on my diet. And exercise. It will come off. It always does.

Do you know what this is about? I get fat so I can say no. When my body is unattractive, fewer men are interested in me. It drastically narrows the choices I have to make. And then if anyone does get interested, I am so self0-conscious that I have to say no. I have a focus for my self-hatred: FAT.

This is the life of a girl. I'm not going to do it any more.

Tater Tots

I was listening to some commentators on television ("Tater Tots", as I sometimes call them) the other day. I usually don't listen too closely; sometimes I let my mind wander and I end up thinking about what kind of husband the commentator would make. But the last time I did that, it was with Tim Russert and I swear, the very next day, he died. So I've been trying to stay focused. You know, so nobody else kicks the bucket.

Anyway, I was listening to the commentators and they all seemed to be going on and on about the photo ops that Barack Obama was having in his trip to Iraq, the Middle East, and Europe. Someone made the prediction that few Americans would remember anything substantive from his trip; most would just remember a few images.

I was looking at MSNBC today and I found quite a few interesting photos. A few of them made me nervous. Well, no, not a few. Actually, it was just one of them that made me nervous: the one with Obama addressing the large crowd of Germans. Any large crowd of Germans makes me nervous. I'm sorry, I'm just being honest here.

However, it was the text of Obama's trip to Israel that kind of tickled me. MSNBC recounted his closed-door meeting with Shimon Peres with just a few sentences. At the conclusion of the article, the reporter wrote:

After Obama huddled with Peres, a female aide to the president emerged from the room and was overheard gasping, "Eizeh Khatikh" — "What a hunk!"

The other bit that I thoroughly enjoyed was the recap of his visit to the West Bank. One photo, with this caption, pretty much sums it up.


A Palestinian bakery names a bagel after U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama as a thank you for visiting the West Bank.

All in all, I have to say I agree with the Tater Tots. While the American people might be focusing on superficial images, it's good to see that the media is focusing on the important stuff.

Intermezzo No. 1

I think I have to stop drinking coffee. I was ok all weekend. Then I went and had three cups today. I need medication.

I need something, I'll tell you what. I also have a problem with gum. It used to be cigarettes. Now it's coffee and gum. And M&Ms.

There is a guy sitting right behind me. He is a big muscle head. Not sure if it is flab or mucles. Fluscles. He keeps coughing, really hard. One big cough at a time, like a lung explosion. I hate that. Occasionally, he snorts in his mucus. I have bad thoughts.

I don't like loud noises behind me. I need someone to pat my head.

God is French?

I think God might be French.

I know because I bumped my head yesterday. Missy pinched her fingers in the car door and I ran to get her some ice in McDonald's. The manager didn’t want me to have a cup, she kept insisting I needed a bag. She disappeared behind the fryolator and I stood there, waiting, my heart pounding in my chest.

There was an Indian girl on the register and I kept pointing at the cups, "I just need a cup, please!" But the girl kept saying, "oh, she is going to get it, miss."

I must have asked three times, "please, just give me the cup!" I was like Shirley McLaine in Terms of Endearment. "Give her the medicine, give her the medicine!"

I was frantic.

Finally, the manager came back with a plastic bag all tied up nicely, but it took a year and a half and by the time I raced back out to the car, Missy was hysterical. I put the ice bag on her hand and she promptly threw it on the floor.

"I don't want that! I want a cup!" she shouted.

I was drenched in sweat and I didn't know what to do. I thought, “just friggin drive.”

I went to get in the car and nearly knocked myself unconscious when I smacked my head on the roof getting in. I lay flat on my back in the McDonald's parking lot, little birds and stars circling my head.

"Please God,” I said - I think out loud, too - “please don't let anyone use the drive through right now."

“You have ra-ceived a bimp,” God said. “One could get a concussion from such a bimp.”

I didn’t know God was French. He sounded just like Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther.

My head has hurt ever since.

The Times (Squared)

I think readers of New Yorker magazine– pithy, enlightened, intellectual types – are supposed to look at this and get the joke. It's an inside joke. Something along the lines of, “we're so highbrow, we can make fun of people by making fun of how they make fun of Obama.” Such irony – or is it satire? I'm not sure, as I live in the Midwest.

This kind of ignorance bothers me to no end. These so-called intellectuals don’t seem to realize that their candidate doesn't think the same way they do. If he did, he would have been too bitter to accomplish so much in his short life. He is not a divisive man. He's just a man. He's not a panacea for their insecurities about saving the world. He's just a man running for president. If they think the world needs to be saved, they should go out and make it happen themselves.

In a somewhat related train of thought, I would like to mention that I used to like the short stories in the New Yorker. As a matter of fact, I have several rejection letters from their editorial staff. Evidently, these days, they are letting the editorial staff play with crayons.

Night

The other day, I was reading the paper and I came across an article about Elie Wiesel, the author of Night. Wiesel was assaulted a few years ago in an elevator while he was speaking at a peace conference. A strange man pulled him aside, roughed him up, tried to drag him into a hotel room for an "interview" in which the assailant fantasized Wiesel would admit that his Holocaust memoirs were fiction. The assailant was caught shortly after – he had posted some sort of rant on his blog site that described the encounter in so much detail that he essentially indicted himself.

Wiesel is 79. I think he was just 14 when he was interned and moved about between concentration camps in Eastern Europe. So about 65 years have passed since his death camp experiences.

At the trial of his attacker, Wiesel was cross-examined by the defense, asked if he'd had any permanent damage from the encounter. He said he hadn't. But he said something about the attack that struck me.

"Personally, it hurt me," he said. "It aroused a certain fear in me that I thought was gone."

I turned that one over in my mind for a number of days. His words stayed with me, and they both comforted me and made me uneasy for reasons I didn't understand completely.

You see, when I was a kid, my parents were violent. My father beat the hell out of everyone. Fists, belts, the occasional choking episode. My mother had a milder temperament, although not a good one. She slapped, kicked, used the telephone cord from time to time. When I was about 5, my older brother routinely got me alone and took advantage of me. I don't think I need to elaborate on what that means. He was 14.

When I got to graduate school, I took a look back at the earliest part of my life. At 25, I was a chain smoker, I was having nightmares, and I weighed all of 100 lbs. I tried to talk to my younger brother about our family because I actually wondered if I had imagined several episodes. I hadn't. In speaking to my brother, I learned that he was having nightmares as well; my older had brother had gotten him alone, too.

I am nearly 46 now. I've been married and divorced, had two kids, moved cross-country a few times. I've learned that you don't forget that kind of stuff. You can try, but you get to a certain point and it always catches you. The article about Elie Wiesel caught me.

It aroused a certain fear in me that I thought was gone.

Those are powerful words. I lay awake in bed for several nights in a row, just wondering about them. What is it about fear that doesn't die? Awake at 3:00 am, my mind jumped from beating to beating. Sensations ebbed and flowed, from the top of my scalp, to the soles of my feet. Asleep and dreaming, I floated between friends and acquaintances, above people I had never met, and then to people I had only read about. In my sleep, they touched me, stroked my head and shoulders.

I have two children. I've shared lately on this blog how I've had trouble with them hitting me. Their small hands slap me, their little feet kick me. I find myself nauseated and panicked by the sound of flesh striking flesh. I cannot bear it. It has been so bad lately that I recently asked my ex-husband, a man who did all he could to destroy my spirit, to move back in with us and "help" me. I was making yet another deal with the devil, you might say.

I thought of a close friend who served in Viet Nam. For years, he told me, he slept with a knife under his pillow.

I thought of my father, who served in WWII. For as long as I can remember, he never slept through the night. He took catnaps, and catnaps only. There was no waking him from up close; you had to call him from across the room, or risk having his thumbs pressed down across your windpipe.

I thought of still another friend who served in the Civil Rights movement. He told of a Black colleague who kept his hands on the dashboard of his car during routine traffic stops; the friend prefaced every movement with an announcement ("I'm reaching for my wallet. I'm moving my right hand."), so he wouldn't get shot in the face by an officer of the law.

Awake and asleep, I dreamed of others: Minh Khan, the little boy from Cambodia; his sister, who, at 7, had still not learned to speak; Karen Francois, who escaped Haiti in a rubber raft. Her father used to stare out the tenement window and chain smoke unfiltered Camels.

In particular, there was one lady who kept coming to mind, an elderly woman who sat across from me at a party in Boston. She stared at me all evening, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what she was looking at. At the end of the evening, as she tucked her scarf into her collar, she leaned forward and looked in my eyes.

"Don't suffer so much," she whispered in a thick accent. Then she disappeared out the front door.

When I asked the host about her, he just shook his head. She was Spanish. She had spent a lot of time in prison, in Spain, for critisizng General Franco.

In my sleep, they all touched me, stroked my head and shoulders. "Personally, it hurt me," Wiesel said. "It aroused a certain fear in me that I thought was gone."

By the fourth day, I remembered an article I had read in graduate school. I was doing some research on long-term memory and I had run across the term, "phantom pain."

From Wikipedia: "Phantom pain sensations are described as perceptions that an individual experiences relating to a limb or an organ that is not physically part of the body. Limb loss is a result of either removal by amputation or congenital limb deficiency (Glummarra et al, 2007). However, phantom limb sensations can also occur following nerve avulsion or spinal cord injury. Sensations are recorded most frequently following the amputation of an arm or a leg, but may also occur following the removal of a breast or an internal organ. Phantom limb pain is the feeling of pain in an absent limb or a portion of a limb. The pain sensation varies from individual to individual.

Phantom limb sensation is the term given to any sensory phenomenon (except pain) which is felt at an absent limb or a portion of the limb. It has been known that at least 80% of amputees experience phantom sensations at some time of their lives."


In summary, long after the loss of a limb, a person can still feel pain in the appendage. It can be very intense; it is real, and the brain, the body, the viscera of the person experiences it. It is not a psychological pain – it is a real agony, in a body part that is no longer present.

Breathe deeply now.

I have phantom pain. So does Elie Wiesel. So do a lot of people, I would guess. We hurt in parts that we no longer have. We pain for things no long press us.

It makes no sense, but sometimes, when I connect with something like that, with someone like Elie Wiesel, I feel blessed and cursed at the same time. That is, I don't feel so intensely alone any more, but I know that his kind of light is dying in our world. It just is. And sometimes, I think about what it will be like when that happens, when that light finally goes out.

We won't get it back.

Sometimes, I think, I would like nothing more than to stroke his head, to thank him for his humanity. It's a dying thing, humanity. And in me I feel a kinship, I don't know why, with him and everyone like him. When he is gone, I know I will want to lie down and die, too.

Phantom pain. It makes sense to me. It also makes sense that I understand it for what it is; something from the past that I thought was gone. But it's not gone. It never will be gone. It leaves our bodies, flees our psyches and circles the earth, searching for another to afflict. That is, unless it is loved and tamed. But that's another essay.

Be that as it may, I am resolved to live with it. It is fine, I think. I seem to be in good company, after all.

Furthermore, what I possess cannot possess me.

What Year is It?

What year is it?

If you saw this story, you'd think it was 1984 again.

I have been thinking all day about Africa, all the trauma that's been inflicted on that land and its people; I mean trauma to the body, the spirit, the collective psyche. You can't do a Google search on Africa or browse the CNN World section without returning the Official List of Horrors: Darfur, Somalia, AIDS, Mugabe, Bemba, Eritrea, Hutus, Tutsis, apartheid.

Now Ethiopia. Again.

What is wrong with us? Why can't we get this right?

Dammit, look at their faces.

Mrs. Clean

I am on day 612 of this fasting cleanse, the second day of the liquid portion. I am hallucinating, I think. I absolutely hate it, and I am even cheating. I don't know how other people do it. You're supposed to eat just two almonds. Well, I only put two almonds in my mouth at one time. But I eat a lot more than two almonds. More like two dozen.

Some days I just have the stinky drink, an amino acid supplement that sharpens mental focus, supposedly. I want my mental focus to be so sharp that I can slice a tomato with my brain waves. Like Ginzu mental focus. But right now, I just want to lie down. Other days, I have two shakes and eat a green salad with an egg and olive oil. Maybe a few apples. Lots of water.

I have had no caffeine, which is killing me. In my life as a sloth, I drink a lot of coffee, maybe eight cups a day. I like the taste of it, plus I am addicted. I also drink soda, Mountain Dew, Diet Coke, all that stuff that makes you fly around the moon. I like to fly. I also have trouble with candy… when I can’t fly, I buzz.

I expected to feel better by this point, but I don’t. This would be a good day to go lie down somewhere, anywhere. Yesterday I went for a walk at lunch and I wanted to just curl up in the grass by the side of the road. I didn't even care. Funny how chemicals can control you so profoundly. I didn't realize how much I had neglected my health.

I've been sleeping a lot in general. I don't know if I am losing weight, but I suspect that I am. I have a distorted body image. Everyone is commenting about my appearance, my face and eyes. They seem to be "glowing", no makeup. If it doesn’t kill me, I will pay the electric bill with my complexion next month.

Dr. Ruth - Abridged Version

I had had enough of the kids last night and had to go sit on the stoop for a bit. They go to daycare with two boys, ages 12 and 7. My four-year-old is learning new expressions such as, "I got you right in the balls!" and "you hit me in the nuts!"

The nine-year-old joins in, too. It's been going on for about a month, and last night I thought I was going to burst a blood vessel. I kept trying to explain to them why they shouldn’t use expressions like that, but they kept cracking themselves up and the conversation just spiraled out of control. I ended up shouting. I don’t know why I got so upset about it, but it just really irked me that my kids were laughing hysterically about body parts. My parents would have slapped me silly, but here I was, willing to explain the whole reproductive process to them, and the little jerks were laughing.

“First of all,” I bellowed, “they’re called testicles, not balls!” And secondly, girls don’t have testicles! Only boys have testicles!”

That word was a major hit. “Vesticles!” the little one shouted as she jumped on the couch.

“Not vesticles, you dope. Testicles.”

“Besticles,” my four-year-old sang at the top of her lungs. “Besticles, besticles, besticles!”

I'm pretty sure the Indian people next door heard that. I don't know if they knew what we were discussing, but they really couldn't have missed the announcement.

The big one joined her on the bed. “Testy-cules!” she hollered. "All boys have testy-cules!”

I was exasperated. Now it was worse and I didn't know what to do to make them stop.

So I stomped off to the computer and printed drawings from the internet, which they both thoroughly enjoyed. I started with just the male anatomy, but then they had some questions about the female anatomy, too. So I printed that (what the hey, I was already in up to my neck.) I told them the words for everything in the pictures, showed them where the baby comes out and answered all the questions. They were half impressed and half intoxicated with this new information.

“Ba-gyna!” the little one kept saying. She was the more delirious of the two. But I think she actually liked the word.

“No, virginia,” the nine-year-old corrected her.

I am raising lunatics, I thought.

“Enough,” I finally said. “Cut it out. It’s your private body.”

Man, what is it about penises and vaginas and breasts that people think is so hilarious? I get the feeling that God is laughing at me somehow - that I spent too much time pointing a finger at what my mother and father did wrong and what I was going to do differently. And what is God's point, I ask myself? I think it's this: everything I swore I would do differently with my kids is also ridiculously futile. We live in a fallen world. Get over it.

At any rate, I told my daughters that these were not funny words, dirty words, or joking words. They were just words for private things, not to be shared in school or on the play ground or with strangers or members of the opposite sex.

“We won’t, Mom,” they said solemnly.

Finally, I held up drawing of the male. “Now,” I said, "Do you have anything on your body that looks like this?"

They both shook their heads. The little one rolled her eyes, as if I had forgotten what she looked like in the bath tub. The big one snorted and giggled. I folded the papers and put them on the book shelf.

“Right. And neither do I. So stop saying you hit me in the balls. I don't have balls and neither do you. Do you understand?”

They both nodded.

“Any questions?” I asked in my best drill sergeant voice.

They shook their heads again.

“Good. Then off to bed.”

We all marched down the hall. I was wiped out, emotionally, physically, psychologically; as usual, I doubted myself as a mother. I wondered if I’d told them too much, if they’d go to day care the next day and tell the lady I showed them pictures of testicles and vaginas. Wow. I am one crazy ass mother. But what was I supposed to do?

As they crawled under the covers, the little one sat up and squeezed me tight around the neck. I held her close.

“I love you, Mom,” she said. “You’re the best Mom in the world.”

“I love you, too,” I said. “And remember, you can always ask me questions about stuff like that, OK? You don't have to be a silly head.”

She nodded. “I have a question,” she whispered, her little eyebrows arched earnestly.

“Yes, sweetie?” I asked. “What is it?”

A slow smirk spread across her face. “Can I see that boy picture again?”

This Ain't Amtrak

It starts slowly some days and then builds to a screeching crescendo - the deafening howl of a locomotive whizzing through my head, chest, and limbs. I call it the Anxiety Train. All aaaa-booooaaaarrrrrddd! And today is a textbook Anxiety Train day – we’ll be stopping at every outpost, every abandoned platform in my life. Right on schedule.

6:00 am It starts with a connect and then a disconnect. I am a connector. Jack is a disconnector. People pair up that way. It’s a fact of nature.

Don’t worry, I tell myself. Take a bath.

In the bath, I realize that I have difficulty modulating. I am cut off in mid-sentence. I cannot finish a thought or complete a mental transaction with the guy I love.

7:00 – My kids don’t want the muffins I got especially for them. Bran, apple cinnamon, carrot raisin, blueberry. Instead, we make whole wheat toast with pink frosting. They don’t like the toast part so much and just eat the frosting. I am a bad mother. When they are finished eating, they look like two drunk hookers with pink lipstick smeared all over their faces. I eat the bran muffin. Phyllis asks, “Are you going to eat all those?” She takes the carrot raisin.

7:20 – Still at home, I call Jack. No answer.

7:25 – Jack calls back. I have to get the kids to daycare and I have to get to work. He offers to call back. I say never mind.

8:00 - Why do I have such lack of insight? I move to my desk, where life is boring and stressful. I begin to doubt myself. Why did I say never mind? I wanted to talk to him. But I don’t want to be a pest.

But I am.

Get to work, I tell myself.

I can’t.

9:00 - I stop and look around. Where is everyone going? For coffee. Everyone is so productive. Why am I not productive? I am a fake. Whenever I look around, my heart flutters. Why is it like this? What did I do to make it like this? How can I make it stop being like this?

9:05 Ping Jack.

9:13 Call Jack.

9:22 Email Jack.

Note to self: Jack used to soothe me, but the fact is that trying to contact him only aggravates the anxiety. No answer. I feel vulnerable.

Everything is worse now.

After 10 but before 12:00 - I am now canceling several credit cards. I have been meaning to do this for months. I have good credit – like $10,000 on every blasted card, plus cash advances. If anyone wanted to steal my identity, what a field day they would have.

Note to self: If I ever become ill, I vow to apply for several credit cards again. I think when you die, your credit card debt dies with you. Or maybe not. I’ll look into it.

12:21 - I call Jack. He sounds annoyed. I need to leave him alone.

12:35 - I am canceling more credit cards. The credit counselors sound annoyed. "You have no balance," they tell me. "Why cancel?"

My response: Because I want to. So there. Stop asking so many questions.

12:52 - I take a Clonazepam. Wait 20 minutes. It’s not working.

2:00 – Maybe M&Ms will help.

2:15 – I wonder if anyone will notice me going to the vending machine several times within a one-hour span? Well, too bad. They’ll have to get used to it. I’m an anxiety eater. Maybe some of them will find it endearing.

2:44 - There is a medium-sized gorilla behind my rib cage. He is pounding on the inner walls of my chest cavity. He wants to pull the whistle cord on the screeching locomotive. Take the other half of the Clonazepam, dammit. Just take it.

3:30 – This is a little better now. Man, people sure do send me a lot of emails.

3:45 – I am able to focus on work now. I check in with a colleague about material that needs to be included in the draft of a guide I am writing. He is a nice guy. I wonder if I make sense. He doesn’t seem annoyed with me at all.

4:15 – This is much better now. In fact, it is going well. I am zooming right along in my work, pounding out the Frequently Asked Questions. Question #1 – What is the sound of one hand clapping? Question #2 - If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it fall, does it still make a sound? Question #3 - If God and Superman got into a battle, who would win? In a few hours, I will be home under the lavender comforter.

5:10 – There is a young girl pushing a baby carriage across the parking lot in back of my work building. She is heading for the field that abuts the highway. I can tell she is having trouble maneuvering the stroller, but the baby is fast asleep, his head bobbing back and forth as she makes her way across the pockmarked pavement.

I don't like the looks of it.

They are far ahead of me as I turn, so I am not able to get a good peek at them. For a split second, I fear for them, fear for the baby. Is the mother frustrated? Why is she alone in an abandoned parking lot?

I am well past them now, but I brake. Check the rear view mirror. Back up. Back back back back back. Yeah, she needs a ride.

As we fold up the stroller and put her son into my baby’s booster seat, I can see that she is pregnant. She looks to be a teenager, no more than 20 for sure. She is a baby, she has a baby, she’s having a baby. She is visiting the baby’s father. It’s a good three mile walk in 90-degree heat.

Our conversation is superficial, but I am glad I stopped. My problems don’t seem so bad.

6:30 – I swing by Goodwill to look for ice cube trays. My kids like ice cubes. I wander back to the book section and browse the cookbooks. Then the biographies. A nice lady talks to me about home schooling her children. She shows me a list – do I know any of these books? Heinrich Ibsen, Garcia Marquez, Virginia Wolfe. I tell her what I know.

We are women, so we talk. We tell each other everything. Her son takes drugs and she is ashamed. She gave him everything she knew how to give him. I tell her about my kid, the one who steals. She gets goosebumps. We exchange phone numbers. This is good, because I need friends. Can you tell?

8:30 – Goodwill is closing. The haul: two pairs of shorts for my big girl, a Kidz Bop CD for my little girl, a bunch of books and a Democracy for China t-shirt for mom. No ice cube trays.

9:00 - Seems like the anxiety train is pulling into the station for the night, but just in time, Phyllis comes home. She curls up on the couch. Even though I am typing away at the computer, she gives me the weekly recap of couples counseling with her husband.

Sometimes I hide when Phyllis comes home. I can't bear to hear the stories about her husband, what a slug he is, how he sucks the life out her. She doesn't have to tell me - I was married to practically the same guy. Twin sons of different mothers, our husbands are. Oh God, please make her stop talking.

In the distance, I can hear the roar of that train.

Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it.” M.F.K. Fisher in the foreword to The Gastronomical Me.

I've been getting a few questions about the food pantry. Seriously, I didn't know poor people could read.

Here are a few tips:

For grocery shopping, try ALDI www.aldi.com or Super Walmart. ALDI is much cheaper, but you might not have it in your area. You can get no-name kid snacks and milk and produce for reasonable prices. If your kids can't read, they won't know they're not eating real Doritos.

For protein - beef, pork, chicken - try www.angelfoodministries.org. There are no income requirements and you can pay with food stamps. I think it’s food from the government, passed out by churches. Maybe an infamous faith-based initiative? It makes sense – the government pays for the food, the church organizes the volunteers. The food is NOT seconds, there is nothing wrong with it. The meat is frozen and of good quality. Here is the menu: http://www.angelfoodministries.org/menu.asp

Find a food bank in your area. Try http://www.secondharvest.org/zip_code.jsp. When you get there, ask for the names of other food pantries, because you may have to rotate. Ask for food pantries that you can go back to as much as you need to. Ask for a church that gives out bread or day old pastry or (if you are comfortable) a free dinner once or twice a week.

Glean. It goes back to Biblical times. http://www.endhunger.org/gleaning_network.htm

Finally, go to church. Ask God to help you. Start a food pantry or a clothing closet for people looking for jobs. Stay alive. When you get back on your feet, help someone else.

The Unbearable Lightness

Jack’s sister died Friday morning. He was with her, and I was glad of that. She was unconscious and had shallow breathing for a day and a half, but he held her hand and stayed with her and her husband. I am proud of him. He did well.

It was my fear that when I died, my husband would not do that for me. When I was in labor with my first child, he yelled at me. I had a long labor, and he grew frustrated and tired. Then he yelled at me. It caused a huge wound in our marriage, and we still have it, even in our divorced relationship. He couldn't be there for me when our child was being born. For years after she was born, I had this feeling that I had to get away from him, that he would let me down in a big way again, and for good. I just pictured him abandoning me when I needed him most - he'd be out talking to friends, watching a game, taking good, good care of himself at the very moment that I died. And I would die alone. Lonely. Needing.

Before my first daughter was born, I was afraid to die. It was a near-death experience, having her. I made the mistake of birthing with a midwife, and I was in labor for 50 hours. The baby and I nearly died. After that experience, I stopped being afraid to die, but I was filled with dread about dying alone. That dread is gone now. I need to think about where I lost that. I think in the divorce. In losing Jack. Right now, I am in that process.

There are a few other key moments that defined my marriage, but that one is huge. I ruminated on it for years, the hurt was so bad. That's what's different about Jack. He can take me. In all my intensity. The sex intensity, the emotional intensity, the writer intensity.

There's something about death and intimacy. One time in bed, Jack asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I just wanted him to be on top of me and to look in my face. I didn't care about coming, I just wanted to feel him inside me and see him straight on. And we just did that for a long, long time. No talking or shouting, because we had already made love a bunch of times that day, so it wasn't frantic. It was tender. I cried afterwards, because I was happy and at peace. We still talk about that sometimes. I'm crying now as I write about it.

Most people could not take that. It would weird them out. And at that time, Jack and I weren't talking about loving each other or leaving countries or anything like that. He was just my friend, and he did me this huge favor. He opened my heart.

Anyway, it's hard to let go, but it's time. I guess I am doing it in a process. Sort of like dying, or being born, maybe. I'm not sure which.

This Means War

Does anybody remember the War on Poverty? I do. Man, I’m pretty sure we surrendered at some point – maybe in the 80’s. If not, we sure are getting our asses kicked.

Now there’s a War on the Poor. And it’s not the conventional type of war, either. It’s a sneaky war, fought with all sorts of psychological dirty bombs and weapons of mass destruction. We are not equipped to fight it, because we don’t even know we are in it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what being poor means today, what it meant when I was a kid, and about the trouble we are in as individuals and as a nation. When I was a small kid, being poor meant that you didn’t have enough to eat. Maybe you didn’t have lunch at school, or your clothes were shabby. Usually, your family was huge.

As I got older, being poor meant that you got subsidized lunch or free milk at school. You got to see the guidance counselor on a regular basis. It meant you wore hand-me-downs and drank powdered milk at home. Maybe you didn’t have a winter jacket, or you shared one with your sister. Your mother paid for groceries with food stamps, which, ironically, didn’t look like stamps at all.

Nowadays, being poor looks and feels different. There’s a blind rage associated with it that I don’t think anybody anticipated; we don’t know whom to yell at, whom to blame for our condition. A lot of poor people have cable TV. Cell phones. Ipods. We eat at McDonald’s. Sometimes we are fat (because we can’t afford a gym!) and some of us do drugs. We don’t go to church, we don’t watch or watch out for each other’s kids, and we don’t call on our parents and grandparents, either.

The government doesn’t help us anymore, but if we work some, the credit card companies are willing to let us dangle in the wind a bit. The mortgage and car loan people are right there behind them. No money down! No payments for 6 months! I call this nouveau pauvre – you get a chance to make a jackass of yourself with credit cards and car loans until you get put in the Database of Nitwits. Once you’re in there, forget it. You can’t even get a checking account.

And for those of use in denial, those of us with a 401K or pension, even Wall Street has gotten in on the action – everyone is invested, everyone trades. We are all waiting for money to fall from the sky. Pennies from heaven, maybe. Like we deserve it.

I don’t know anymore. When I am feeling really insightful about it all, I get the impression that our poverty is a question of spirit. I was talking recently with my room mate, the one who doesn’t flush the toilet. She grew up on a farm in the Midwest, out in the middle of nowhere. Her family was poor – they ate what they grew, slaughtered animals, pretty much lived hand to mouth. They canned, froze, smoked, and stored everything. They wasted nothing and threw nothing away. It was important to make good use of everything, over and over. You never knew when you’d have to go hungry.

Her dad mistreated her mom, and he would sometimes beat her. As her two brothers grew older, they began to hit the mom. They hit my room mate, too. The dad became paranoid about the mom running away. He started taking some wires out of the pickup truck when he was not around so that no one could leave the farm. Over the course of a few months, the mom figured out which wires were missing and replaced them with spare parts from the junkyard. One day, the mom and my room mate took off with just the clothes they were wearing and their kitty cat - the dad had always threatened to hurt the cat if they ever tried to leave.

My room mate concluded the story with a comment about how, after she and her mother ran, her brothers broke open her piggy bank and stole all the coins. I could tell this was the hardest part of the story for her to share; she got pretty choked up. Her eyes were wide, her face open and vulnerable. She wanted me to understand that betrayal.

Today, she’s a successful engineer in her late 40’s. She has two small children, just like me, but they live 300 miles away with their father who doesn’t like to hold down a job. My room mate and her husband have a bad marriage, but she is willing to bear the financial burden for the family and the emotional burden of being separated from her children.

When she told me all this, I understood better something that had been baffling me for a while; my room mate eats old food. For real. She buys marked down items in the supermarket that are about to turn, or that have expired. Dented cans, old egg salad, taped up boxes. It kind of gave me the willies, but I figured she was just thrifty. A couple of times, she’s gotten really sick from it, too. Food poisoning. But she still does it. She seems to panic when food has been in the refrigerator for too long; she’ll ask, “Are you going to eat that?” And more often than not, I am just about to toss it out.

That’s poverty.

Yesterday, I went to the food pantry. I’ve noticed the line there has been getting longer, and the past few times I have not gotten much food. Still, it’s more than I had before. This time, the director came out and spoke with everyone about donations being down. She said that most of the food is coming from Cisco, and it’s basically odds and ends that we have to make do with. She said that the volunteers had made up bags, and that it was important for people to just take what was given to them without complaining because it would be impossible to give everyone the same things.

Yes, people had been complaining.

It kind of pricked my heart, the bit about complaining. As far as I know, this is the only food pantry that doesn’t hassle people for names, addresses, social security numbers, and all that. They have been so kind to me. But complaining?

That’s poverty.

I have cable TV, and I’ve seen those commercials with the kids eating from the garbage heap in India. Thank God I don’t have to live like that. That is poverty. That is true indigence, and most of the world has to live in those conditions so that we can have cable TV, cell phones, and McDonald’s.

Here in America, the War on Poverty and the War on the Poor continues. But I have seen the enemy. Our poverty is within. We are making ourselves poor.

Back in Black

You know, it's weird being the black sheep of the family. Did you ever see the movie Parenthood? There is that sister who just can't get it together; her husband abandons her, the kids walk all over her, she can't hold a relationship together with spit or glue?

When I went back East for a visit with my family this past weekend, I found myself feeling like her. I also found myself getting a lot of those, "what a damn shame" looks from my relatives. You know, because once upon a time, I had such potential. Then I went and frigged it all up.

I don't know what to say about all that. Except that I pretty much agree with their assessment. Back in the day, I did show a lot of potential. But somewhere along the line, I played Let's Make a Deal. I admit it. I made a few bargains and I settled for less - less than what I wanted, less than what I deserved, and less than what I needed. And now, here I am. Sorting it all out. Payback.

Oh well. I'm not the first woman in my family to sell herself short. I happen to know for a fact that being Irish (with a strong family history of alcoholism, depression, myopia, baldness, and Catholicism, I might add) that I come from a long line of frustrated and angry women. It has to do with bad decisions. All of it. And no forgiveness.

And the Tradition continues. We had quite a marathon of eye-rolling and head shaking this past weekend. The grimacing was unparalleled. I think I even caught my 2-year-old niece wagging her finger at me.

Ok. Whatever. But it ain't over yet.

Lowest Common Denominator

I’ve been sick these past few weeks. I’m pretty sure it’s the Chinese Bird Flu. I know because I’ve been consistently craving poultry. Turkey, chicken, Cornish game hens. It’s driving me around the bend.

I finally went to the doctor and got antibiotics. Something called a z-pack and a spray gel to put up my nose. I don’t care much for the spray. It strikes me as unnatural to put things up my nose. I am too conditioned to expel matter from that part of my body.

Along those lines, it is really starting to get on my nerves that I am the only one of four people in this apartment (two of whom are adults) who knows how to flush. It’s bad enough that I have two children who don’t do it. There is also an adult woman living here who has not yet adopted this tidy habit. It’s maddening. It’s not as if I am some kind of uptight clean freak, either; it’s just something of a traumatic surprise to be confronted by someone else’s forgotten personal effects, if you know what I mean.

What’s even weirder is that I live next door to people who like to cook. They are an Indian couple, and their kitchen abuts my bathroom. I often smell Indian food through the vent in my bathroom. It’s such an unnatural feeling – so contrary to every instinct I’ve ever had in my entire life – to walk into the bathroom and wonder what smells so freaking yummy. And then, voila! Room mate surprise!

Sometimes I hate my life. And sometimes I can laugh at it. I am not sure which it is today.