fears and dreams

.

Monday morning blues. Let them be brief...

--My son turned18 yesterday. He and his girlfriend and their babygirl came over for bagels and chocolate pudding pie. We gave him four new tires, how’s that for symbolic? See ya. Stay safe.
--I have a disappointing resurgence of an irritating and mildly debilitating injury. I have nursed it along, including thrice weekly rehab, since January.
--This past weekend I retreated with other faculty from my family medicine residency program. Our annual event. The group has been stable for over 15 years. We’ve recently lost two to retirement and by next fall will have two new members.
--My mother’s cancer chemical number is rising, ovarian. I just loved every minute (even the hard minutes) that I spent with her on her recent two-week visit here.
--I am heavily involved, hours a day, in writing my final for Memoir Class. I am trying to show how it was to be me during the early reaction phase from an indecent sexual assault that occurred in 2007. Not to tell, mind you, and not to summarize! for god’s sake, but to show my life in reaction, acutely and realistically – so the reader can live it on the page. Again and again, until I get it right.
--I have a card sitting on my kitchen table. It tells me I missed certified mail and need to pick it up. It’s hot. Scary. It is from the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Body Work, NCBTMB. I sent in a formal complaint about the sexual assault in late 2007. They took my statement by conference call six months ago. I’ve been waiting for the determination. It’s here; I just need to take that card to the post office this morning to find out whom they believe in this ongoing He said-She said saga.

Is it any wonder then, that I had a dream last night that I was under dark murky water, alone and scared? Or that once my feet hit bottom it was heaped up with dead bodies? Men mostly, middle aged and bald, or shaved with growing stubble, naked and muscular, buoyant somehow when I had to kick off of them to get back to the surface. I woke up in a start with palpitations and a long and intense hot flash.

I took an antacid and wandered reluctantly back to dreamland as the trees outside swayed noisily in the wind and the rain dripped down my window.

Snow on Daffodils

Snow falls quietly and sits heavy on the daffodils this morning. Must be the anniversary of my sister, Eileen’s, death. It’s been fifteen years now, if I’m doing my math correctly. Although she was from New Jersey, she died here in Pittsburgh. Failed liver transplant. Hepatitis C. The sad part is that I think of her only in post-death terms now. The incredible conch shell I found in a moment of utter hopelessness, on the beach where had spread her ashes years before, sits on my mantle. The unusual butterfly that visited us on that same beach months before found its way into my writing just last week.

Maybe it’s because I’m in medicine, or maybe because my friends are of an age where death appears in their lives more often, but I think about the last day of Eileen's life a lot, the regret I have about giving my consent for her final operation. The stupid monitor and fake pacemaker that they kept running until my sisters, Theresa and Kathy, and I were phoned in the waiting room, told to dress up into space suits, and finagled into the operating room (we had to give my eighteen-month-old niece to the front desk nurse to hold on our way). They had promised we could “be with her when she died.”

It is difficult, in the high tech world of medicine, to define the moment of death. You’ve seen it, on "ER" - the arbitrary decision to “call it” and note the time out loud. I think my sister actually died in the middle of the night, well before the morning we were called into the hospital and asked for permission to try one last, heroic, thing. I wrote a poem about that in my creative writing class last term. I'll print it on my blog. (see last blog "Time of Death" (I'm resisting the urge to add a disclaimer)).

And then I’ll spend today trying to remember her when she was alive and passionate, funny and flawed. Her big fat round bear hugs. Her full-throated laughter. Her obsession with blue. Or the late night phone calls, like one I sleepily received at one o’clock in the morning to ask, “Hey, Jan, do germs crawl?” because my sister, Theresa, had put a cold infused Kleenex down on her bed as they sat there giggling, pajama party style. Or, or… see, I can’t remember all the good stuff.

Today I will try. Today I will remember that on my way to her hospital, quite possibly in the hours between the time her spirit left her body and the time medicine's machines were switched off, I stopped in the garden to say a prayer. Today I will remember what I knew in that moment, and why I knew that finding snow on the daffodils was just perfect for the day she died.

Time of Death

Operate again? I ask. But, isn’t that…
No, they say, it’s not heroics.
It’s just before dawn; I throw off my covers.
Ok then.
What do you wear on the day your sister dies?
I wonder as I hang up the phone.

On my way I notice a light snow lay on the daffodils.
I stop, dip my fingers into it like holy water.
Say a prayer.

It’s not going well, they say, come into the operating room.
We crinkle as we enter the sterile space
in our white paper suits.

Dialysis off
Ventilator next
Finally the
Pacemaker.

Sorry.

Silence hovers.

We cry, say goodbye, we’re sorry.
Sing “Don’t weep after me.”
As four sisters become three
in the still, cold room.
…

Is that when she died?

Or, was it the night before
when a great gust of wind
blew in as we slept?

It opened the French doors of my bedroom
rushed down the steps
and lifted the paper poster,
her ethereal version of afterlife,
right off of the wall…

I wore blue, 'cause I knew.

****

uploader's remorse

I planned to write my blog this morning on regretting with hot faced embarrassment the quality of my most recent piece, "The Hand of Justice" (future blog)... but my memoir classmates did it for me - I've plagiarized the words they used when uploading their own pieces:

enjoy.

roughest draft in the world...
I am "telling" a lot
scenes are coming
pick the best ones
for the piece.
question is
working?
for or against?
Should I
choose one issue,
stick with that?
or should I
tie them
together,
connected?

I’ve bitten off
more then i can chew.
back there again.
an early draft
as yet unfinished
very rough
working on that!

a little overwhelmed
with information
so I feel like
is there?
a lot of telling
not enough showing.
still struggling
what it wants
when it grows up.

two essays here
I'm wondering
what to keep
what to save
another time.

DRAFT.

forgot
add a title,
open this one.
(so far)
never managed
I'm sorry
it's late—
trouble.

Let me know!

“Lying" by Lauren Slater

Instead of an in depth analysis, I’d like to restrict my blog on Lauren Slater’s book “Lying” to my experience of reading it.

Ironically, I had submitted an essay to my memoir class last week that contained a fair amount of fiction, (the title was, in fact, "In His Words - an Honest Piece of Fiction"). In this essay I tried to further my own story, to branch off from another essay called The Breach, using a concocted monologue from a man, a stranger to me, who had betrayed my trust during our brief encounter. I used as much truth as I could – I knew about his personality from his co-workers, and I think I know his personality "type". I also knew about events that happened in his life, and, of course I knew all the parts of my own story that were told (in the essay) from his perspective.

However, I completely made up a personal history for him - one that might explain the psychological make-up of a person who behaves in a way that could hurt other humans, or one where a person may be hurting others but not really 'get it'. My classmates wanted me to be sure to define it, upfront, as fiction, (which I completely agreed with). But some wondered why I'd do it at all in a Nonfiction piece. One suggested,“We should respect the genre.”

Which brings me to Lauren Slater’s book, “Lying.” I found it very frustrating to read. I often wondered, why? Why does she tell us this only to retract it later? It began to be wearisome. Sometimes I felt manipulated and caught in her tangled web and even found myself wanting to prove her wrong. If fact, I called my librarian to request her help in finding the "Case Report" Slater placed in the middle of the book. I was also irritated towards the end when she states that, though she knows, she is not going to clarify the fact/fiction questions for us.

I’ll reserve judgment and save my final comments about the her book for Wednesday, but suffice it to say, my opinion will be effected by the fact that, through my own writing, I’ve been sensitized to the goal of telling the truth through the use of "lies".

Scott Sanders (... and my first rejection)

I just opened my first rejection. How sweet it is to be among the ranks of writers who have experienced this right of passage. The rejection came by email, from Brevity, an online journal. I had submitted “Lessons of the Piecrust,” a version of which can be seen in 2 parts on this blog (January 30th and 31st). But then again, why would you want to go read that now that you know it’s been rejected?

I’m not daunted, though, and this is not the first time I’ve had to move forward, anyway, against the odds. When I applied to Muhlenberg College’s pre-med program their advisor, Mr. Samuels, sat me down to talk me out of it.
“You have five strikes against you,” he said earnestly, “You’re a woman; you’re older then usual - they’ll want to know what you did instead of school; you’re a transfer student; you came from a community college; and you had bad grades in high school - including needing summer school for failing US History in tenth grade. This is not going to be easy.”

And he didn’t know the other strikes. I had done poorly all through grade school, too - always in a bit of trouble, not principal’s office type trouble, well, not until high school anyway. I could count on one hand the number of books I read in high school. And I came from a family with limited education; my mother had only gone to eighth grade and the sister who raised her (their mother died young) only to third grade. My father, the lucky one, finished high school.

Naturally, Mr. Samuels was right. It wasn’t easy. Science was OK because I had built up some skills at the community college, but the language-based courses were much harder for me. I can still remember downing mug after mug of coffee at a tiny dorm room desk with my World History book and the dictionary required to read it fighting for space.

I thought about this as I read The Country of Language by Scott Sanders. He talks fondly about learning to read: “…ink marks on paper setting whole worlds moving inside (of him),” and he describes his drive to write, “the tug of language,” as something he just couldn’t resist. As a latecomer to writing, and reading, for that matter, I don’t recognize this in my life.

But I must say, Scott Sanders does talk about writing in ways I can identify with: he describes his writing career as: “making stories, small gifts in return for the great gift of life.” He talks of “writing (his) way through shadowy tangles,” and his "desire to salvage worthy moments from the river of time.” These quotes help me express why I write – I write to put in order the chaotic string of events and feelings that is my life. I see humans, all of us, as full of frailties and faults, strengths and skills. I want to understand this through a thorough and honest look at my own life, warts and all. And I want to share it with others who might enjoy, or if I do it right, maybe even benefit from it.

So rejection or not, here I come. I will print it and paste it up on my wall as I’ve learned from other writers I should do. For me the best part is that I understand this to mean I am a writer. A writer with more to learn ... a lot more, perhaps. But if there’s one thing I know about myself, it is this: if I am lucky enough to have plenty more mornings, a supply of strong coffee and a good dictionary, I'll do it.

Revising the End

To my memoir class:
Here is a new ending for "The Breach." your feedback suggested that a final wrap-up might be helpful to this piece if i am to submit it as a stand-alone piece. i'm a little worried about shifting the metaphor, or saying too much - you know how i am.

i included the last paragraph to get you in the mood, the the revision starts with "Two years later" -- as always, feedback welcome.

I lean on the railing and take in the horizon - a crisp line separates the cloudless sky from the water. It’s August and we are already in hurricane season. It was a September when Isabel hit the island. Hurricanes begin as simple thunderstorms that drift off of the coast of Africa and then travel for weeks in the warm waters of the tropics. Most simply die out, but others join together, gather strength and move up our coast. They cause untold damage when they make landfall. I gently thump the warm banister with the palm of my hand. The islands of the Outer Banks are really only delicate strips of sand in the sea and any part of it, including this very house, may not be here in the years to come. As I pull open the sliding glass door and head inside to shower and get into my bathing suit, I find myself wondering if there’s a storm out there now - just beginning to brew.


***
Two years later:

An eye of a hurricane can be quite small, sometimes called a pinhole, or it can be fifty miles wide. For slow moving expansive hurricanes, such as Hurricane Isabel, it can take days to pass. The eye is surrounded by what’s called the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms and high winds. It’s risky to leave shelter while the eye is passing, even though it may be calm and even beautiful outside. Rather, one should stay inside and prepare for the opposite eyewall, the unavoidable second punch.

My silence was like the eye of a hurricane, many miles wide, or, in my case, many weeks long, and, naturally, there was no avoiding the second punch. The calm I invented was how I coped, how I made everything seem just fine for my family and myself. But it was temporary and had a high emotional cost. The silence, it turns out, was the hardest part for me to bear.

Ultimately, I turned Justin in to his employer and to the state licensing board for massage therapists. I went on to press charges, but lost in court. Difficult, yes, but for me, along with my writing and the support of my family and friends, doing so turned out to be the very wires and pipes, the stilts and the shingles that I needed to rebuild.