Pain
helplessly loving my daughter, from too far away. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
I can have the shittiest day, the worst run of things happen to me, the direst disasters befall me, and while I will stumble and bemoan my fate and all that, NONE of it is as bad as when something happens to my kid. Period. And it doesn’t matter how old said kid may be — I have a feeling that if something bad befalls my kid when she’s, oh, 70 years old (and I am 93), it’ll still be the worst thing ever, much worse than if it happened to me.
A string of bad things came into my daughter’s life today, bam bam, two in a row, and I feel kind of inconsolable. I feel every one of the 1,744 miles between us. She is suddenly the little 4-year-old girl in my heart, the one who’d crawl into my lap, the one who would cry into my shoulder, the one whose trouble I could solve, and I wish I could solve the things that came to her today. She’s strong, and kind, and she loves her family, and she always tries her very best. Always.
She’s the one who has made special little treats every day this month and put them in her husband’s lunch, for a 2-week stretch of Valentine’s Day love. Sweet little things, treats that took time and heart. Just because. She is the one who makes sure our family traditions are carried on, because they mean so much to her. She is the one who always makes me laugh with her dry and wry sense of humor. She is the one who wants to be our family’s solid, strong anchor. She is also the one who came to NYC last year (a year ago, yesterday) and brought her brother back into our lives. She is the one who is obstinate, and stubborn. She is amazing, my first child, and I never wanted any bad thing to happen to her, ever. Of course she’s a human in this world and so bad things have happened to her from the beginning, and I’ve hated the guts of every single bad thing.
So in my impotence, I share this terribly alone feeling with you, other parents, who certainly know what I mean.
happy birthday to my dad.
Today my father would’ve turned 75 years old; he died when he was 45, so old[er] age and him don’t go easily together in my mind. I was 23 when he died, so he was almost twice my age, which seemed old to me, then.
I didn’t know him, really; plenty of people don’t know their parents as human beings, as people other than ‘parent.’ I didn’t grow up with him; I didn’t live with him after I was 10, we didn’t see each other at all after I was 14, and I had just met him again when I was 23. I had a few months to get to know him then, but knowing him was not possible, no matter how much I may have wanted it, because he was drunk every waking moment.
When he was a tiny little tow-headed boy, he loved to play behind the couch, quietly, with his little cars. His mother told me that story once; he kept to himself and was quiet as a mouse because his father was a rampaging, furious, out-of-his-mind alcoholic who beat the shit out of him and everyone else in the house. Just as my father would grow up to do, and to be. He was sickly as a child, with what they then called Bright’s Disease – inflammation of his kidneys. The bad thing about this was that it meant he couldn’t eat beans, which were the staple of their diet because they were so terribly poor. When he was a teenager, he and his friends would run through the corn fields, imagining themselves robbing the Sinton, Texas banks on horseback. He longed to escape.
the man on the far right is my step-grandfather, who was a sweet man. my dad on the far left, his mother holding me
And he did escape, but it was from the frying pan and into the fire; he married my mother, who was still a high school student (though not for long…she dropped out and ran off with him). And presto, 9 months later, I was part of the scene. They were too young and too troubled, and too ill-prepared for the real life they found, and the rest of his life was terrible – magnified, I imagine, by how terrible he made the lives of his kids.
the newlyweds, plus me. they'd been married a year -- they both look kind of stunned and dazed. She's 18.
He fancied himself a Tragic Figure – initial caps, important –and he was. He was not much more than the next tragic embodiment of rage in a long line of such men, and he couldn’t escape the generations behind him. But he loved books, and reading, and he was smart. He worked as a draftsman at an architectural firm, where he was valued, even when he was too reliably drunk to keep his job. He had a child’s style of romantic notions; he loved his dogs so much, and bought an old Chevy pickup truck just to drive them around, because he thought they loved riding in the back of an old beat-up truck.
that's me, draped in his hands. he was just barely 22
Although I suffered greatly at his hands, I loved him so much, and thought he was beautiful and elegant, and I was his. He called me Scout after we watched To Kill a Mockingbird (and he probably considered himself as Atticus, which is a mighty funny stretch); he also called me Pete and Dawn Ann. Ours was a nicknaming family, obviously. I don’t remember what I called him when I was a child – daddy, probably – but usually I referred to him as Frank….though not to his face. So now I stumble when I think of him, not knowing what to call him in my thoughts.
he was 25, she was 21 -- that's me on his lap. don't they look older than they were?
I’m not writing to talk about his death, but since he is dead, his life is complete now, start to finish, so it’s part of the story. He didn’t live long, only 45 years, and he didn’t fulfill what he might’ve, and he didn’t leave any kind of positive legacy behind (well, my life does continue, and it has great value). He kind of fulfilled the circumstances of his birth, to a young mean woman who hated him and hated that he’d been born, to a young mean man who hated him as much as he hated himself, to a life of poverty and cotton gins and liquor and misery. His birthday is usually a haunted day for me, but this year it’s not; this year, I just think of who he was, what his life was like, and I wonder who he’d be if he were alive. When I try to think about that part, I get stuck because I have to imagine a very different person than he was. My poor dad.
near the end of his life -- probably 2 months before he killed himself. he's in the dark blue shirt.
No one was ever glad he was born, and it’s kind of complicated to be grateful that he was born, but I am. I’m sorry his life was so sad and hard, and I’m sorry he made mine so sad and hard, but I’m so glad to be here, and I couldn’t be, without him. So on my dad’s birthday, I wish a happy birthday. I wish a happier birthday than he ever had. And I reaffirm my joy and gratitude at being in this world, filled with everything.
Ava Gardner was the most beautiful woman in the world, and it’s wonderful that she didn’t cut up her face. She addressed aging by picking up her chin and receiving the light in a better way. And she looked like a woman. She never tried to look like a girl. ~Sharon Stone
Somewhat unusually, I’m editing an academic paper for a peer-reviewed journal, in a discipline that’s outside my own. This means the jargon sounds very dumb to me. 
And I quickly race to acknowledge that the jargon in my own discipline likely sounds dumb to people in other areas. This one is about cathected objects for Latin American identitarian thinking. I have to keep reading it over and over just to get it. I know you can add -ism to the end of anything, but Latin Americanism just doesn’t make sense to me, no matter how many times I read it.
And so I am here, avoiding work. It’ll bite me in the butt later this week, my procrastination, but whatever. How’s about a couple beautiful women?
beautiful 62-year old Mary Louise Streep
Where even to begin with this gorgeous photograph. The thing about Meryl Streep is her gaze, always, and it’s arresting in this photograph. But what grabs me and keeps me coming back to stare at her face is the softness, the creases, the tissue-ey luxury of her skin. And I love the way her lipstick has bled into the feathery lines around her mouth. I love this photograph, and I love these two things she said recently:
[2009] My daughters had helped me to stop worrying about my appearance over the years. I wasted so many years thinking I wasn’t pretty enough and why didn’t I have Jessica Lange’s body or someone else’s legs? What a waste of time.
[commenting recently on what she'd like people to take away from her newest movie Iron Lady about M. Thatcher] I would like to think that everybody that got on a subway and saw some old lady sitting across from them, that they would imagine that a whole huge life lay behind all those wrinkles, and that seemingly nondescript, forgettable [face]. I mean, there is almost nothing less interesting in our consumerist society than an old lady. Um … dismissed. We don’t make movies for her. We don’t give a damn. You can’t sell her anything, she doesn’t buy anything. But just the idea that everything — the whole panoply of human experience, births, deaths, struggles, joy — everything’s in there. And just to imagine that. That’s what I would hope.
It’s so funny the way our daughters help us grow; my daughter also helped me stop worrying about my appearance. Thank you again for that, Marnie.
And then here’s another true beauty. I confess to a secret about this one; you may be surprised by this (I always am) but I’ve been told my whole life that I look like Diane Keaton. Actually, I think it’s just that we both have big smiles and similar cheekbones, and I think we share a similar Golly, gee! sensibility. And I can’t tell you how similar my husband and I are to Annie Hall and Alvy Singer, but that’s a whole different thing.
gorgeous almost-66-year-old Diane Hall
Look at those gorgeous faces! I know they’re celebrities, with lives very different from mine, but there’s something that feels authentic about them and I love that they both put their beautiful 60+-year-old faces out for close-ups. I love that their faces show their ages, and I love that they both seem to recognize their own beauty.
I’m usually very surprised by the kinds of searches that bring people to my blog (someone in the Bronx always searches me by name, and I’d love to know who you are!). “Crazy Train” is a very common search — I used that in a post about a nutty subway trip — as is “woman with big feet” which takes people to a post I wrote about funny proverbs. And then there are the ones that freak me out a little bit, of a creepy sexual nature. I don’t want to type them here and increase the possibility that someone making that search could land here. Curiously, 95% of those searches originate from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. I counted. Over the last five days, you’ve arrived from these places:
such far-flung visitors! Hi, y'all!
No one from Australia in the last 5 days, and never anyone from Africa.
And finally, coming on the heels of my little corneal abrasion day o’misery: I have a second-degree burn on my left thumb. Sunday night I was in a happy frenzy of assembling all the goodies for a box to send to Austin, filled with Christmas gifts. I was making tomato soup in the kitchen and wasn’t paying close enough attention; I heard it furiously boiling over, so I ran into the kitchen and grabbed it off the stove. I’d placed my giant soup mug in the sink and I grabbed the handle and poured the boiling soup into the mug but somehow missed, and poured it all over my thumb. The whole thumb immediately turned a bright red, and the burn went down onto my hand. All night long I was in a lot of pain, and kept a baggie filled with ice on it. It blistered, and there are blisters underneath the blisters. It’s awful-looking, and it’s probably going to peel and who knows what will happen. At this point, as long as I don’t accidentally scratch it, it actually has no feeling at all. I can lightly stroke the thumb and I just can’t feel anything at all. The worst of it is on the knuckle, which will be nasty when it starts healing after the skin opens up. OY. It made me feel so old, having two painful accidents in three days.
The yarn came for Marnie’s Moby sweater today, and I finished Anna’s socks, so one of these evenings I’ll do the swatches. Not tonight — poetry group. Not tomorrow night — Selected Shorts at Symphony Space. Maybe Thursday.
Have a nice evening, y’all.
take good care of your eyes! SERIOUSLY.
Last night I went to my book club’s holiday party, at a neat little bar down on St. Mark’s Pl. It was so much fun; many of the women brought their husbands/boyfriends/partners, and it was great meeting them. When I got home, all was well and I crashed. No big deal, everything was fine when I went to sleep.
But when I woke up this morning, boy was I in a lot of pain. I have somehow abraded my right cornea. Have you ever done that? IT HURTS, let me tell you. Blinking irritates the cut, and I just want to rub my eye but of course I can’t do that. There are tears constantly flowing out of that eye, and oh, did I mention how much IT HURTS yet?? The eye is rich with nerve endings, but luckily the eye also heals extremely quickly; it’s among the fastest-healing parts of the body, so yay for that. I’m not supposed to read, which I’d assume also means I am not supposed to knit. I guess I’m supposed to just rest my eyes, listen to something.
Signing off, through the tears.
squeezing and smashing and flattening, oh my.
Hey, remember that scene in The Wizard of Oz, when the scarecrow is telling Dorothy how frightened he was when the flying monkeys tore him apart and scattered him around? It was something like, “they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!” Yeah, remember that?
like this, except with older women, colder hands, and fewer clothes
That’s a mammogram. The kind and caring mammogram technician grabs your breast and takes it over there, then pulls the tissue next to your chest and takes it over there, where it all gets squashed as thin as possible.
So yesterday was my annual mammogram, obviously. I arrived early for my noon appointment, and after 45 minutes I was taken back for the exam by my long-time doctor, Julie Mitnick, for a little touching, a little feeling, a little sitting-up-arm-raising, and then it’s back to the equipment room. The technician was this truly kind and warm woman (with cold hands) with a heavy Slavic accent, who kept apologizing for torturing me. She’d lower the flattening thing until I cried, then she’d jump, apologizing, and go activate the scan and release me. The whole time she was apologizing.
The problem for me yesterday was that they had to redo the scans. You know, for each breast there’s the one where they flatten it horizontally and then the one where they flatten it vertically. For the redo, they only had to do one extra view for each side, so at least it wasn’t four more scans, but it was kind of awful. I was bruised-feeling and very sore already, from the first round. I’d been told there’s always a possibility the scans will have to be redone, so don’t worry if I’m called back….so I really wasn’t scared by what it meant, as much as dreading having to be squashed again.
It occurred to me that mammogram technicians must have the best self-images of their bodies, since they see (and handle) real live women every day. They see what real women look like, who are at the ages where they need mammograms. We don’t look like models, that’s for sure, even the healthy among us. We sag, we droop, we have had quite a bit of life happen to our wonderful bodies. Most of us, probably, have given birth, a great many have nursed babies, age and gravity have happened. I imagine that seeing very real women all day must help you accept your own body for what it is. I’d love to more regularly see real women my age (not naked, necessarily!).
The place I go is actually pretty great; after the scans are completed, I wait a very short while and then the doctor speaks to me personally and tells me the results. Two doctors look at the images, and when you’re done, you’re done. You know the news, you don’t have to wait for a phone call. I always walk away with (a) next year’s appointment made, (b) a feeling of unnecessary self-righteousness, (c) a need for ibuprofen, and (d) intense relief. Safe, clean, and clear for another year.
I came home to a package in the mail from Jocelyn, who sent me the yarn she had left over from her welted hat, since I admired it so much. We’re going to be hat twins, and the thought makes me smile. I love blue and orange together (or purple and orange) so it’ll be fun to knit, aside from my connection to sweet Jocelyn.
Bruisedly yours,
Lori
yeah. i broke my rib because someone hugged me too hard. EAT YOUR CALCIUM!
it's the 2nd one from the top (AKA "the most painful one")
Here’s the story about my broken rib. It’s a horror story of epic proportions. Not really. But it is a “what? you’re kidding?” kind of story.
So I had this friend, a ~6’8″ tall dude. He and his charming wife were living in NYC for a month. They live in southern California, but another friend of theirs offered them her apartment for the month of July and they snapped it up. I had breakfast with him and his wife, and a few days after that, breakfast with him alone. He’s writing a book and was eager to talk through the ideas with me, since we’re both social psychologists and since I’m an editor (and was his friend). After breakfast, before parting, he hugged me. I wasn’t quite expecting the hug, so my body was turned at an awkward angle. And since he’s so tall, the angle was further weirded out. The problem was, though, that the hug was extremely hard — I could barely breathe — and it went on for w-a-a-a-a-y too long. I was just about to push him away so I could breathe when I felt the rib break.
Kind of awful, right? What kind of hug was that? Well, I’ll tell you. I think there was some aggression in it. Turned out he had “feelings” for me and he wanted me to meet him secretly in the park at 6am. Also, an important detail: he’s on something like wife #9.
So now he’s my former-friend-with-whom-I-do-not-speak. And I get the long-lasting painful reminder. The more urgent question, of course, is whether my bones are so brittle they can be broken with a hug. Bone density scan in my future…
A half truth is a whole lie. ~Yiddish Proverb
Adrienne Rich said, “Lying is done with words and also with silence.” I almost think the lies that are in silence are worse, because you’re left being unable to trust what’s said and what’s not said. At least when someone lies with words, you’re left only unable to trust their words.
This is one of those funny human things — everyone lies, all the time. Ordinarily they’re little unimportant lies, like saying you have another appointment to get out of something with someone else. Social grease, those lies. So we all lie, and not uncommonly, but when we are lied to, oh the outrage! How could he!
There’s an AA saying that’s something like ‘the louder the no, the louder the yes.’ I’ve probably botched that; I hear these things second-hand and don’t always get the full explanation. But anyway, the point is obviously that when someone is being Quite! Certain! about something, the opposite is likely true. And not just in a “methinks he doth protest too much” kind of way, but in subtler ways, too. When I was first dating, I was pretty loud and certain: Oh no! I’m never getting married again, that’s for sure! Why would I. I’m not having more kids, mine are grown, that’s it for me, never getting married. Ever. Never. For sure. For real. Don’t ask. I’m done. And slightly less than a year later, I was married.
But the less-subtle over-protests are red flags: no! I did not do that, and I’m outraged that you would suggest I did! mmm, yeah. I’ll bet you did.
So I was lied to within the last 24 hours and it sucks and it feels pretty awful and I’m trying to regain my own equilibrium. I’m trying to keep in mind the thing about everyone lies (me too), and all the rest. But it’s just a wrenching thing, isn’t it, learning you’ve been lied to. Especially in silence. hmm.
will i wait a lonely lifetime, if you want me to, i will.
will and katie, 6 years ago
Strictly speaking, of course, that photo is not from this past weekend, but it summarizes my weekend in the best way possible. Katie is my oldest daughter (she lives in Austin), and Will is my only son (he lives here in Manhattan). The story is long and terrible and makes me prone to hours of tears, but Will has been hiding himself away from our family for the past 5 years. He hasn’t spoken to any of us since he appeared at Katie’s wedding, 2.5 years ago. Estrangements are always complicated and this one certainly is, but I promise that you can’t imagine the pain of it, unless your child does such a thing. The only thing worse is death.
Katie came to town Saturday in order to find Will and do a kind of intervention; she had letters to read that we’d all written, and she made a big photo album. She was not going to let him keep doing this without being forced to hear just how much it hurt us. I thought it was a mission doomed to fail…..find him? Here in NYC? Even that seemed impossible.
But find him, she did (she’s a force of nature, that one). And talk to him, she did. And listen, he did. And last night I got to see him, and sit next to him, and touch his face. We cried and laughed and cried, and it was awful and terrible and wonderful. Katie’s here until Wednesday, and they’re spending much of tomorrow together. Will and I will make a date to see each other again. It’s too much to hope without caution; we’ve all been so hurt, we’re all taking care of our hearts, but I’m the mother so I’m in all the way, no matter what happens. O happy happy day….
tell me something good – wackawackawacka
One important area of research in social psychology is attributions — the explanations we come up for everything, from our own behavior to others’ behavior, to the way the world works, to who we believe and why, etc. And social psychologists have identified a bunch of really cool findings…..very cool to me, but I’ll spare you (for now). One way people try to figure out attributions has to do with identifying the cause of things — right? Pretty obvious. But it all depends on where you start, because very few things begin all at once, arising out of nothing (at least not since the Big Bang). The process can quickly deteriorate into a “he said/she said,” “but he started it/no he started” it mess. Just pick any hot spot in the world and listen for a few minutes. Israelis: The Palestinians started it! Palestinians: The Israelis started it! And from each of their perspectives, given the way they chunk the series of events, they feel perfectly justified.
But the thing is, life doesn’t work like that. Time doesn’t work like that. Everything is a continuous stream, every little thing is multiply determined, overdetermined, even. Although we all say it (“it started when….” “and I was just sitting there when….” “everything was fine until…”), none of those stories hold up to close scrutiny. Actions have long, long ripples, and sometimes they undulate through time, through generations, and you might get smacked by something you never saw coming, because it started long ago and far away. That’s just life. We’re meaning-makers, though, so we come up with a story to explain things because we need to. (and oh, here I could tell you one of the coolest research studies ever but I’ll do that another time.)
[just don't anyone say "ooh, the butterfly effect" because for some reason that irritates me. ]
What the hell does this have to do with the price of tea in China?! Well, in the wake of this disastrous pulled muscle in my shneck (shoulder + neck), since I’ve had plenty of time to sit here squinching, thinking about it, I realize that it didn’t come out of the blue. For the last couple of weeks, at least, something has been squirming around in my psyche, something is trying to work itself together, something is trying to crystallize so I can see it, and it hasn’t been even a little bit pleasant. I’ve gone in and out of waves of extremely high anxiety, where I felt like if you flicked me I’d shatter into a million pieces, everything in me was so very, very taut. And always for no reason I knew, for no explanation I could point to. So of course my poor body will have muscles that end up in spasms! They’ve been tense as all hell for a couple of weeks.
It was a too-easy story to say “oh, I slept wrong. That’s it.” Instead, this is a system story, and something is rippling from a cause I can’t see, or recognize it even if I do see it. My mind and body (and dreams) kind of assume I’m an idiot, and communicate with me using Dummy 101 methods. My dreams are as obvious in their symbolism as possible, and if I still don’t get it, I’ll just dream the same dream again, but this time in red! Didn’t get….ok, this time in blue! How about green! COME ON LORI, we can’t make this much simpler for you! How’s about we give you a pain in the neck.
Even though it’s causing me a good deal of physical pain right now, I actually find this among the most fascinating parts of being a human. Once I get it – smacking my forehead, oh! Obvious! – then it’s kind of fascinating just to watch and wait. I’m learning something, I just don’t know what it is yet.
Thank you one and all for the excellent suggestions (but Nancy, I couldn’t find any Blue Goo!). I tried extremely hot baths and showers, a heating pad weighted down with a big bag of rice, a klonopin, and sleeping. By the end of the evening last night, muscles in adjacent areas were going into painful spasms, including my arm muscles and my pectoral muscle on that side. THAT hurt, I’m telling you! Today it’s no longer having spasms (thank heavens, I’ll take that), but the muscles are really painful and I’m cautiously worried that it might go back into spasm. I’ve been sweating with the heating pad, and trying to stretch and relax the muscles, and moving gently, big muscle movements, etc. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be gone.
But the best part is that one of these days all these little unpleasant puzzle pieces will come together and I’ll be able to figure it out. Even if I can just get a corner put together, psyche….c’mon. Tell me something good (wacka wacka wacka….that’s actually playing right now ).
trying – OW! – to get — OUCH! — through the – OH! – day – OW!
I sure hope so — I’m getting tired of hearing my grumpy self. Today would’ve been just fine, even great, perhaps, but I slept wonky (wonkily, I guess) and woke up with a terrible crick in my neck. The muscle is a big knot, right where my neck joins my shoulder, and it’s spasming and I can’t turn my head in any direction. Breathing makes me gasp, you know that kind of deal? I just tried to eat, so I’d have something in my stomach for the aspirin to land on, but I couldn’t lean my head forward which, turns out you need to do a lot, to eat. I must’ve gotten stuck in one position in my sleep last night and goofed up that muscle.
But we had another snowstorm last night – a whopper – and it came with thunder and lightning again. Oh how I love that. We woke up to deep, deep, deep wet snow, the kind that’s great for snowballs and snowmen and sledding. Schools are closed, streets are unplowed, and it’s really beautiful (even though I have now legally and officially had ENOUGH OF THIS). I had to take a subway ride a couple of stops downtown from where I live, and I snapped these shots:
heavy piles of snow blanketing the trees -- it'll come crashing down very soon i'm sure
an urban snowman, with baby beets for buttons, and that's probably an organic carrot. this IS the upper west side, after all.
I think I’ll crab walk my way over to the market and get a bottle of Brooklyn Brown Ale. Since I drink so rarely, a little bit goes a long way; maybe it’ll help relax that poor little knotted-up muscle. I’m sure y’all would be thrilled not to have to listen to me yelping every couple of seconds.
If you have any secret home remedies for spasming muscles that you’d be willing to share, heaven knows I’d love to hear them.
why? why? why? was it hubris? that’s the usual suspect with greek gods…
I have made an executive decision. The goddess of knitting is Ariadne. She’s the one who gave Theseus a ball of yarn so he could find his way out of the minotaur’s labyrinth. Remember her? That girl?
I figured any woman who is clever enough to come up with a use for a skein of yarn AND who is handy and familiar with labyrinthine things must be our patron woman. And I have clearly pissed her off somehow. I’m trying to find a corner clear enough to do a burnt offering, though I have no livestock to give (pa rum-pa-pum-pum). Maybe I’ll put some yarn scraps in a bowl and set fire to them.
Or maybe I’ll just use my Dark & Stormy Cardigan. Yeah, that one. That gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous sweater. That somehow grew — like the Grinch’s heart — 3 sizes. After careful blocking, it became the cardigan for a giant. And I’m no giant, even though I’m pretty dang tall. (ok, it’s not 3 sizes too big, but it’s at least one size too big.)
The yarn I used, madelinetosh vintage, is superwash. I don’t know how much success I’ll have tossing it in the dryer, but I’m ready to give that a try. My hair is already thinning with age, so I don’t want to pull it out. With my family history, I’d better not take up drinking to soothe my spirits. So all I can think of are (1) burnt offerings, and (2) a hot dryer. Which means going to the coin-operated dryer in the basement, paying for a whole hour (the minimum), and hoping no one comes in to do laundry while I’m trying to shrink my sweater.
p.s. and yes, for those who might ask, I knitted a swatch, I washed it, I blocked it, I let it dry, I kind of whipped it around in the air a little to try to stretch it out, and it didn’t grow.
how was your weekend? I mean it! HOW was your weekend?!
Well, I had a Dickensian, best-of-times/worst-of-times, agony/ecstasy weekend so how in the world to capture it in a single post. The solstice concert on Friday night was obviously the best, and the migraine (that’s still lurking!) is the worst. As much as I’d like to focus on the former, my ongoing headache won’t let me so this image best represents my weekend, unfortunately:
ENOUGH ALREADY!! Here’s to a better week.
me have migraine. me hurt.
I’ve had migraines since I was 10. I once had one that lasted 40 days. I used to have them regularly until a hysterectomy at 28; after that, I get them when I’m exposed to volatile organic compounds (i.e., smelly things – perfume, PineSol [the worst!], strong cleaners of any kind). I don’t typically get them when I’m overly excited or stressed, but I got one today and the only thing I can think of is that I was so excited by the delivery of my new Droid X phone. That’s weird, and not like me.
I took two hits of sumatriptan, one wasn’t touching it. Then excedrin and coffee. I have the rebound/medication headache as a result, which is still better than migraine….but not by much. Anyway, out of commission all day. Back tomorrow.
squash! mash! squish!
Well, this is the worst and best day of the year, each year. It’s the annual mammogram day — before the doctor tells me the results, it’s the worst day, as I imagine all the worst possibilities in a crashing crescendo of cancer terror. But once she says it’s all clear, it’s the best day of the year. WAHOO! Clean! Aren’t I self-righteous unnecessarily!
It’s a grim place, the waiting room. I go to the top center in Manhattan, and the waiting room is filled with women my age and older, about half wearing wigs and drawn-on eyebrows. Those of us with our own hair steal terrified glances from under our real eyebrows, glances of fear and worry and compassion and again with the terror. That could be me. One of these days. Today I thought that the waiting room was just a snapshot of time, and that all the apparently-different women in that room were just different versions of one person.
Many of the older women were there with their husbands. Well, let me correct that — many of the women were there with their husbands, older or not. There was an elderly couple, by which I mean I guess they are in their late 70s or early 80s, and they were cracking me up. They were both very bossy with each other, and they didn’t seem to listen to each other. She said, “It was restroom, it doesn’t say LADIES’ ROOM.” She got up to get a magazine for him and handed him a New Yorker; he said that the New Yorker would be enough, it was just fine, and she kept rifling through the magazines to hand him another one. He said to her “Put that down.” Then, when her name was called, at the same moment she said, “Roger, you are not going back with me” and he said “I am not going back with you.” It made me laugh.
But O my sisters. Yikes and ow. After the 4 mashings – one flat on each side and then one sideways flat on each side – I was out in the waiting room, waiting to have the doctor call my name for the all clear. But the technician called me to come back, saying she needed to redo the left one. But this time she had to do it harder. And boy did she do it harder. I cried out, it hurt so much, and it had to be held longer….and I couldn’t move, no matter how much it hurt, or it’d have to be redone. So I had to sit there and wait, and she came back and her eyes said I HAVE TO TORMENT YOU AGAIN BUT THIS TIME WITH GLEE!! But with her mouth she said she was really sorry, but she had to redo it and this time it was going to hurt and I’d probably be bruised, and she was sorry but they really needed to get a better look.
And I thought I was going to faint (if I had fainted, I would’ve just hung there since my breast was being squashed to bits between the plastic plates) and I yelled and got so nauseous I thought I was going to puke. I feel like I came out on the losing end of a big old fist fight.
But hallelujah, another clean set of films. No C for me….not now, and not there anyway. For now, I’m going to make some tea and put the heating pad on my chest, and try to feel a little bit better. Do your monthly exams, sisters, and if you’re close to my age, get that mammogram.
write your high school principal – even if it’s no longer national coming out day – write and ask what they’re doing to make the school safe for the gay kids. please.
Today is National Coming Out Day. After a month of heartbreaking stories of LGBTQ youth committing suicide after cruel bullying, please take a few minutes for collective action. Write your high school principal and ask what he/she is doing to stop bullying of LGBTQ kids. Even if (like me) you graduated from high school a geologic era ago, as long as your school still exists it has a principal who should hear from you.
http://www.writeyourprincipal.com
When I wrote the letter to my old principal, I just cc’ed the blog’s email address (writeyourprincipal@gmail.com). I graduated high school in 1977, in Wichita Falls, TX. Wichita Falls is not (nor was it then) one of the more progressive places in Texas. OK, I imagine you’re thinking ‘well, what place in Texas is progressive anyway?’ which only means you don’t know about Austin. Wichita Falls ain’t Austin, that’s for sure. It’s dominated by Christian churches and a military base, and it’s blue, not red. [note: of course that doesn't mean that there are no open-minded people who live there!]
My daughter Marnie posted about this event on her facebook wall, which is how I learned about it. The organizers are two of her friends from Smith College. Marnie’s letter mentioned her brother – my son – and his experience at a progressive high school in progressive Austin. My beloved son is gay, and she describes his experience so eloquently, I’ll let her words speak since they’re posted on another public site:
Even though my memory of Westlake academically is positive, I am writing you today hoping to hear that administrative support for LGBTQ youth has changed. Two years younger than me, my brother Will entered Westlake as an openly gay young teen. In the face of bullying and teasing by his peers, Will tried to start a Gay-Straight Alliance. He gathered all the signatures he needed, got a faculty sponsor, and—in spite of following all the administrative steps to start a club—his application was denied. This was a huge blow: not only did he face teasing and bullying by his classmates, but he also faced discrimination by high school administration. I see that a GSA is now an active club at Westlake, which is a positive first step that I wish Will had been able to see.
Reading those words took me back and my stomach feels punched and it makes me cry and remember the extraordinary courage my son displayed. High school is pretty awful for most people, I think, and everyone feels like an outsider or different (well, almost everyone….maybe the jocks and cheerleaders don’t, I have no idea). Will’s courage and willingness to so publicly work for what he believed in still touches me and fills me with enormous pride.
Marnie and Will in a photo booth in Northampton, MA
Will came out during junior high — first to me and his sisters. Of course we’d been crazy about him the day before, so we continued to be crazy about him. Who wouldn’t be? He’s handsome, and funny, and charming, and smart as a whip, and he’s my precious boy. But the entire year before he came out, he had been angry, and grumpy, and foul. He was just in a bad mood all the time, and it wasn’t like him. No matter how many times I asked, he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. When he finally came out, during a late-night car ride (FYI, my kids talked most easily during late-night car rides — that dark, and safe, and removed space seemed to help them talk), he said he’d been desperately not wanting it to be true, for all of the previous year. He did NOT want to be gay, he didn’t want it to be true. After all, who would want to be gay, since that’s the word people use with contempt to describe things they disparage? “That’s so gay.” Who wants to be that? Who wants to be something that can get you killed? Or bullied and tortured?
marnie and will in brooklyn, 2005 or 6
Talking to you is probably preaching to the choir – you who read my little blog tend to be mothers, or aunts. You tend to be compassionate, caring people (most knitters are!). I assume you share my views, or at least hold similar views. But even if you already do, don’t forget to teach others, your kids, your nieces and nephews, friends, friends of friends, children of friends. Don’t let anyone speak in your presence in a way that makes it acceptable to make the world any less safe for the gay kids.
always with their heads together - they called themselves looney margaret (marnie) and little cricket (will)
I am so thankful for Will, for exactly who he is, and I’m glad he had the courage to come out. I wish the world wasn’t such that courage was required to simply be who you are, but it is. And don’t ever get all satisfied and think “oh, that’s a problem over there…in the South, in Texas, wherever.” No, that’s a problem where you are too. I promise.
Please write your old principal. It’s easy to find the names and email addresses these days, and the letter needn’t take you a long time. That website gives you some details you can include. Just do it. An overflowing inbox of even short emails will say a lot. Please write.
really? REALLY ME??? i’m THIS goofy and weird because there’s a low pressure system hanging over the east coast? REALLY?????
[insert image of throbbing head here]
If only there were an uncliched image, I’d have inserted it, but they’re all exactly the same. GOOD HEAVENS. It woke me up in the middle of the night, as the terrible weather rolled into town. Are you as strongly affected by low pressure rainy systems as I am?! If so, I am very sorry. I woke up very very early this morning with a terrible sinus-type headache. I drank a little coffee, ate a bowl of cereal so I could take aspirin and sudafed. Stood in a hot shower for a long time, letting it hit me in the middle of the forehead.
Finally, the meds worked and I’m left with just the headache hangover (which, if you don’t know, is something like having an impression that you have a headache but you don’t, exactly). I’m dizzy and dull and weird and off. I feel the way it looks out my window: heavy and extremely still and just hanging there, pregnant and pulsing. Go ahead and rain, just do it, please. Please.
*****
So I frogged my shrug 
but I know how to do it now so I’m looking forward to seeing it work, this time. I also got plenty of yarn, thanks to a couple of ravelers. In fact, I’ll have more than enough to finish the shrug, so I can make something else with the luscious yarn after I finish this project. I think I’ll make the sleeves a little longer than I’d planned, since I don’t have to worry about yarn now. I would go ahead and cast on, but (a) I’ve already cast on for this project a couple of times, and frogged dozens of rows, and since (b) I have this head goofiness, I fear that (c) I’d screw something up and I’m not sure I’d have the courage to rip it out again and start anew.
If you’re on the east coast, I hope the rain isn’t hitting you too hard. If you’re in other places, I hope you’re having a better day than I am!
just call me a turnip – you’ll get no blood out of me!
First, let me be clear: Harrowing is when someone is chasing you, trying to kill you. Harrowing is when you walk away from what could’ve been a fatal car crash. Harrowing is when you lose everything. Those things are harrowing.
Still, I’ve had a small potatoes harrowing day. A quotidian harrowing. I had to go to the doctor to get the vaccinations for our upcoming trip to Laos and Cambodia (yay!), and I needed some bloodwork done. And it was the kind of bloodwork where you can’t eat after midnight. My appointment was at 2pm, which is a l-o-n-g time to wait. No sleep last night, no coffee this morning, and no Cheerios, I wasn’t feeling very good when I got to the physician’s office.
So exam exam exam, talk talk talk, reflexes reflexes reflexes, back to the lab for bloodwork. And here’s where things went horribly wrong. I have (euphemistally) delicate veins. As in, they’re almost not there. They’re certainly not visible. And they roll, which phlebotomists always complain about. It’s not unusual for a blood draw to go from arm to arm, here and there, and even down to the foot, in extreme circumstances. After all that, they usually hit a vein and the vials fill.
Not today. Poke right arm, ooops….twirl the needle around hoping to grab the vein. OK, no good. Poke left arm….oops…twirl the needle. No good. Poke the right hand…twirl twirl twirl, no good. Poke the left hand, same. So she left the room, and the physician came in to give it a try. He repeated the entire journey, including all the twirling at every hole. Once, blood starting coming up the tiny tube, but then it just petered out. I have NO idea what that was about.
the holes in my right inner elbow didn't even BLEED, so no bandaid for them.
So after all that, after the no-caffeine headache, the being really hungry, the pincushion experiences, no blood drawn. I have to go through it again, the fasting, the poking. UGH. Small scale harrowing. You can call me a turnip, because you’ll get no blood out of me.
oh yeah? then how would YOU define it?
I go around thinking I know a thing or two, especially where words are concerned. I was one of those funny little kids who spent all her free time reading the World Book from A to Z, the Child Craft from beginning to end, the dictionary from AA to Zygyzy….read and repeat. Read and repeat. Then embroider a little pillowcase. Then back to the obsessive reading. I still love to read, and love dictionaries and reference books. My graduate research – and my dissertation – were all about the psychological import of the specific words people use. I love words and think about them a lot.
So imagine my surprise to listen to a great little TED Talk, by Alain de Botton, in which he defined the word snob in a way I’d never heard: a snob is someone who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. At first, I kind of jumped back a little and did some sassy back talk to Senor de Botton: IS NOT! That’s too simple, and anyway, that’s the definition of stereotype, so there. Ha. You’re wrong and I’m right.
But he’s right. That’s exactly what a snob is, isn’t it. It’s a topic of conversation on Ravelry, here and there – people self-identify as ‘yarn snobs’ and if someone talks about having used acrylic yarn, the yarn snobs sometimes come out of their dark corners to say unkind things. So those who don’t want to use acrylic yarn have decided that people who do use acrylic yarn are … well, a whole bunch of things. It’s very interesting to think about the word snob in this way, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I listened to the podcast in line at Starbucks 2 hours ago. Here’s the talk – it’s very nice, and is more about success and failure than about snobbery, though snobbery does have its place in the mix:
Today has been a really shitty day, there’s no other way to say it. One of my authors has decided that I personally betrayed him because of the way we had to price his book, and he has spent an awful lot of energy and pixels writing me the same email a dozen ways, emphasizing the personal nature of the betrayal. To soothe myself a little, since I am working at home today, I cast on 15 stitches and knit a few rows of stockinette in this luscious madelinetosh pastoral, colorway terrarium. I have to say, it did make me feel better:
such pleasure
And I’m nearly finished with one sock, will knock out the toe tonight and cast on for the other one, so I can work on it in the subway tomorrow:
at the toe now, sock #1 will be finished tonight
I’ve decided to name this pair of socks “minkeys” – a play on pink monkeys, and also I hear it in my mind in the Inspector Clouseau voice and that just makes me giggle.
I hope you’re having a better day than I am!
in which I hurt my toe. like, real bad.
My daughter Marnie came to town this past weekend, and except for the toe problem and the canceled flight, it was wonderful. She had a bit of trouble with her flight being delayed by an hour or so coming in from Chicago, but she arrived late Friday night tired and happy….and I was deliriously happy to see her. Our primary mission: fit the wedding dress.
Sunday was supposed to be bad weather, so we thought we’d do a bit of downtown prowling Saturday morning, then come home and do the wedding dress business. So off we went to the Village, more or less, planning to wander semi-aimlessly and enjoy each other, and the beautiful day. We got out of the subway and into the sun, and headed a block away, to the Maypole party. This post is photo-heavy, so I’ll put in a jump to save you, if you want to skip the scene. Lots more, after the jump.
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