Snow Light

When I allow myself to really listen to life I have found extraordinary peace in seemingly ordinary times. So special I stop and speak to my brain “Remember this always. Don’t ever forget this moment.” The image remains in my library filed under, when needed. I open it when the fog, and the fear, and the weariness threaten to turn off the light.

It was January, cold with a light snow falling. I had been with my mother in the hospital for the last twenty hours, sitting in a metal chair, listening to my mother’s struggled breath. Someone from the family would with be with her during her stay as she required help to even sit up. It had been necessary to repeat over and over to the medical staff. “No, she is not paralyzed, she had polio and her muscles have atrophied. She cannot walk to the bathroom, pick her ass up over the hard plastic pan, or lift her arms to get things from her tray.” It was an honor to help her, but it would leave me exhausted and empty.

My aunt came to sit with her sister so my husband picked me up. We stopped by the city’s make shift ice rink to gather up our children. The boys were sitting on the bench putting on their shoes. Joules was skating. It was dark save for a lone street light illuminating her and the falling white flakes.

This snow globe of life encircled me and all the sad left my heavy spirit, gone, though fat tears still hung on my eyelashes.

I can still see her dancing in the moonlight, flying on her skates of hope.

Just me and My Dad

When I was four or five, my mother sent me to the store with my dad. We didn’t go to the store, but to a most wondrous place. A place I did not even know existed. It was a bowling alley. It was noisy and smelly. There was a thick layer of smoke, but from cigarettes not a wood stove. I sat at a table with my dad and two other men who were smoking, laughing, and drinking big mugs of frothy beer. They patted me on the head and said I was a cute little gal. My dad gave me two packs of gum in green wrapping. I could hear the commercial in my head.
"Double your pleasure, and double your fun. It’s two, two, two mints in one." A lady with big hair brought me a large orange pop with a straw. It was like in a movie. I could feel the happiness down to my toes.

We left an hour or two later with my packs of gums gripped firmly in my hand. My dad didn’t really talk much,but said that he needed to check the crops at the Forty. I was just fine with that. I did not want to share the gum with my brothers. My dad parked our beast of a car in the field. He wandered out looked at the land with a brown paper sack under his arm and said he was tired and was going to take a short nap. He told me to play near him and be good. He tipped the bag to his mouth a few times and then laid it down. He quickly fell asleep under a large Maple Tree. I sat a few feet away in the plowed dirt sifting it through my fingers hoping to find a pretty rock. I don’t know how long we were there. After awhile I moved toward the grass lined hedge row and slept too. Sometime later my dad woke me up and said it was time to go home. I was thirsty and had to pee bad from all that soda. I ran to the car.

I knew my mom was very angry when we walked in the house. Her eyes were dark and she was not smiling. I went in the bathroom. I could hear loud talking through the door. I waited for a silence, maybe my dad went to bed. I scurried out, not looking up and went directly to my bed. I didn’t get a drink or supper and I didn’t care. I put the pillow on my head so I couldn’t hear the yelling. I opened my hand and looked down at my emerald treasure and smiled. We had an adventure, just me and my dad.

Giving Thanks

I try to be thankful everyday, but sometimes I get trapped in my Tilt-A-Whirl brain, going back and forth, around and around, on a useless orbit of self-doubt. The only way to stop the dizzying assault is sleep. Fortunate that my sleep aberration allows me relief from my relentless inquisition.

It is a gift. I must remember when I am disgusted by the sloth-like creature that can not move after 7:00. I am thankful for medications that keep me awake alert and able to function at my job. I am so grateful for work that is challenging, inspiring and fun, a family who accepts and loves me despite everything, the animals who bless my life without judgment, endless forgiveness and a joyful spirit.

There is much to treasure on this big earth. The people I have walked with, even for a few steps on this incredible adventure have shared their life, their time. Some have moved on to another road and those I miss dearly, but there is hope, for new possibilities, frontiers, because forward is the only way this path goes.

The M & M Club

I have two sisters, both younger. Our names all start with M. When we were growing up with our mother, we called ourselves the M & M club. This of course included eating the wonderful colored candy. There was only the plain version, and way too many brown ones. We fought over the greens and reds.

We were always very different. I was dramatic, a reader and a bit of a loner. My middle sister was good, a hard worker and very sensitive. She cried a lot. My youngest sister was fearless, dancing in circles for hours, draped in beads, and a hat. She loved being naked with accessories. We would grow up and follow these paths of personality. I married young, worked in a library and school. The good sister works in law enforcement donating time and money to worthy causes.
The youngest, she is a provider, a modern day working girl, the internet her virtual street corner. Forty seven, without teeth, though she does have an upper plate. Her lower one was stolen by her twenty year old, convict ex-boyfriend. She is a recovering meth-heroin addict, catering to octogenarians, mentally, physically disabled social security recipients, foreign visitors, judges with specific proclivities and other assorted characters.
I learned of her career choice when she called me at 2:00 am crying hysterically that she was in jail and I needed to call Roger to bail her out,” But wait he doesn’t know my real name he knows me as Vicki.”. She then proceeded to give me names and numbers to call without a breath in between, just sobbing. She was so distraught she had relieved herself and not the liquid way on the jail floor. She said the black girls wanted to beat her up for stinking up the place.
I sigh and say I will do what I can. It is very late, even in California where she lives. My husband doesn’t even turn over, so accustomed to crazy calls in the dead of night. She does a stint in County, finds Jesus and vows never to use Craig’s List again. She has learned much from her cellmates.

She embarked on her improved career with some business acumen, peer networking, and confidence. She can now pay her child support. She risked jail for nonpayment and ironically by her method of making payments. The state ignores her failure to file federal taxes. They just want the money, for her five children living with fathers and grandparents after the courts rightfully declared her unable to care for them. With a rap sheet inked with burglary, solicitation, driving under the influence along with other offenses, traditional employment is difficult, a living wage impossible. She is making more money than she has in her life, all conveniently untaxed. She is independent and concurrently dependent on men.
She takes great pleasure in sharing her work experiences in graphic pornographic detail. Here is an edited example.

The Tale of the Lost Toy: It was the night before my sister traveled home for a visit hoping for extra spending money she had a “date” with a patron, who spoke very little English. He had a request involving a battery operated utensil. No problem, she applied ample amounts of petroleum for the procedure, but mid-application she screamed. Oops, during this session was in the same league as a surgeon or a barber’s oops. The still moving object was not visible anymore. After several attempts at ejection the language barrier became more pronounced accompanied by anxiety and impatience. This was supposed to be a relatively quick exchange. She had to pack. He made a frantic phone call to his father asking for advice to dislodge the object, after demonstrative pantomiming from Vickie; he emerged from the restroom, triumphant. She found the forgotten plaything still vibrating in the bathroom sink.

Her life is a sad contradiction, if you choose to see it that way. My sister embraces her career choice sticking it to the man literally and figuratively. She does not apologize or conceal her profession, with legal exception. It is her choice. She is happy to be paid for these acts instead of bartering or taken without consent. She has a semblance of control.

She does not worry about aging or tomorrow, one day at a time.

This I Believe - Losing My Religion

I believe that religion should never be used as a weapon, as an excuse, as a method of dominance, for financial gain, to subjugate another culture, gender, or those deemed by society as inferior.
Phillip Roth recently stated "When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place."
I am reasonably sure he meant all pseudonyms encompassing God, Allah, Mohammad, Buddha, Jesus…. God and religion have continued to mutate beyond recognition. Beyond the presumption of one Supreme Being, there is the shared belief among faiths of treating each other as one wishes to be treated. This has been lost in translation, morphed into a grotesque version of treating others as one's religion dictates or how one interprets the coinciding law book of morals.

I was raised Catholic and much of what I learned was pre-Vatican II. It took years for all the installments of user-friendly Protestantization to inhabit the parochial school teachings. It was the belief that our religion was the correct and only one, but it also included a respect for other beliefs, not to preach, but show by example what being a Catholic meant. Bibles were rarely used for more than a family record. I was taught people were made in the image of God and were to be treated that way, regardless of sexual orientation, race, disabilities, gender, or religion. As an enthusiastic child of God I embraced the kindness toward all philosophy. This of course was not necessarily followed in the male hierarchy of the church, as they were exempt from rule following.

I would lose all the shininess of celestial glory when the years of priests’ molestation crimes were no longer shielded deep in the catacombs of church doctrine. The political, financial, church-sanctioned cover ups of depraved abuse toward children with total disregard for their protection, was not explainable, not excusable, but the antithesis of God.

I have found no comfort in other organized religions. Each with judgments and decrees on what is right, what to believe, who to hate, who to blame, why it is superior, why I must obey. Each designates a copious book of rules and edicts written by chosen males.

There is no need for all this superfluous verbiage.

Treat each other as you would wish to be treated. If the whole world would lose their religion and live by this one simple phrase, how could war, poverty, and hatred exist? When the world practices humanity, kindness, generosity, acceptance, it will be a most wonderful world.

I believe, however one knows God, God would be pleased with this world.

A Brick in the Head

The phone rang late in the afternoon on a Friday; I answered it preoccupied with what my eight year old wanted to blow up. I could hear the shaking semi-hysterical voice of my mother
“You have to help I don’t know what to do. Daddy’s trying to kill himself, No Daddy stop that!"
I will continue to ignore the fact that my parents have always strangely called each other mother and daddy. Odd not to call 911, no, not really, suicide threats and half assed attempts were fairly routine in my family.
There are many ways a person can attempt to kill themselves and my father chose one of the more original and exceedingly more difficult.
“What is he doing?”
“He’s hitting himself in the head with a brick and his head is all bloody and he won’t stop.”

I would have to call my husband; my dad would never listen to an actual blood relative. My husband was leaving for his annual fishing trip. He was not happy, but the method concerned as much as intrigued him.
We rode in silence to my parents, what do I say?
“Sorry your fishing trip is delayed because my Dad is trying to obliterate his brain”.

I outwardly tensed as the car went up the long gravel driveway and my husband saw me
“I did not run over any cats so you can unclench your fists."

The house was in disarray as always. My mother looked beyond sick. We went in the bedroom. My dad was in bed naked, methodically hitting his head with a faded red brick. Blood ran down his face and on the brick. I was too tired to be shocked, too tired to cry, too tired to explain. My husband, in his alien sensible language convinced my dad to go to the hospital.
It was one of many trips to hell I would take, guarding the doors, so he wouldn’t jump. He chanted his desire to see his farm again before he died. I wanted to punch him, but we drove by all the farmland. We bypassed the local hospital as my dad had a bit of a reputation there. He had been fired by his doctor and my dad had good insurance.

The hospital glowed in the midnight hour. When asked by the information desk what was wrong they asked me to repeat it several times. I don’t think suicide by brick was a common occurrence, even in the big city. It was a Friday night and there were many more serious and sadder events than ours. The doctor came in made some rudimentary tests and said he would ask if a social worker was available.
The social worker, a twenty-something male came to see us who was really there to comfort the grieving family of a motorcycle accident victim and solicit the propagation of his organs. He talked to us anyway and became that light shining in the sky, the angel in the background, the music swelling in the finale of all good movies. He had finagled the best facility he could find in the area and if we went there now he could be admitted.
I don’t know why my Dad did it, but he went voluntarily. We were soon driving my father to a psychiatric hospital. It was late when we got there and doors had to open from the inside. He was told to leave his wallet, watch, any pens pencils, shoelaces, all potentially lethal objects behind. I watched him, his bib overalls falling off one shoulder, the wind burned face staring as the entry gate was lifted and immediately swallowed him.
I wanted to cry, knew I should cry, but didn’t cry. They tried all the traditional methods. My father was like a skipping record that couldn’t be fixed. He had designated me his power of attorney in all ways. A few weeks later they called me for permission to authorize shock treatments, a minimum of twelve. He would be monitored because of his heart condition and diabetes, but they had no other recommendation.

This was a man, who was beating his skull with a brick to stop the pain. I signed the paper.

Some Things Cannot be Taken Away

I will always be my mother’s daughter. No one can take that away. She was my mother and I will be forever grateful. She sang while she did the dishes, her colorful bandanna bouncing along. She taught me how to pick up things on the floor with my toes. We would make Rice Krispie treats and watch the Wizard of Oz. We both wanted to go over that rainbow. She loved me when I yelled at her, when I disappointed her, when I was selfish, when I was mean, when I was impossible to love, she loved me.

I loved her when she couldn’t remember my birthday, when she didn’t bake chocolate cake or yodel anymore, when she was scared.
She was my mother and I her daughter. We would protect each other with the blinding love that is born in the womb. Her by not telling me all the pain she felt, me trying desperately to keep the pain away.

We would always laugh and not appropriately, but at life’s sense of humor. My brother and I were with her at the Emergency room as her body grew tired and the muscles spent like frayed rubber bands A doctor was manually assisting her to go the bathroom. We ignored the indignity of the procedure. My brother and I volleyed crude commentaries of the irony, fifty eight years ago she was giving birth to a baby and today giving birth to a very firm turd baby, but it’s a beautiful little turd, in fact it was twins. She laughed till tears came, clutching my hand harder as the doctor continued the delivery. She admonished us for saying turd. She hated that word, about as much as fart. We of course had to use those words as many times as possible in our own twisted George Carlin routine.

This is my life, brief flashes of extraordinary light, tangled with comic pain and the strength of my mother’s fierce heart finding my way. I will always be my mother’s daughter.

I only have a band-aid

So I have regurgitated my sad story, and there it will remain, now written, now real, just like the letter I received from the neurologist. I am sleeping.

My son needed the computer and seeing my blog up, just shook his head, "Who do you think reads that?
" Nobody I guess" as I hurriedly closed the page.

But that isn't true, I read it and when I do, I know I still exist. Not in the sense of a six figure career, a college degree, an adequate parent, a normal wife, but in my own small reality, where feral cats are fed and loved, where students can always have a pencil, a room to hide out during lunch, where pain, real, imagined is at least given a band-aid and the hope it will soon be better.

This world is big and easy to get lost. All I can do is try because I am always lost and cannot give directions. Maybe for a minute, the cats are safe, the band aid stops the bleeding, life is bearable.

Maybe it's time

I have been thinking about my reaction to the words, counseling. I knew if I marked that box while filling out paperwork for my video EEG, everything, would have new meaning, especially if there was no evidence of seizure, but, I had to check the box. I had to tell the truth. I was letting my freak flag fly. I pressed the lead onto the paper forming a black X, forever affirming the question of physical or sexual abuse. I knew. I could not lie, not anymore.


I was eleven that summer and lonely, no neighborhood friends, no vacations on the beach, just the heat, the care of younger siblings and prickly cucumbers. I was so desperate for attention and when it came in the form of a sixteen year old male, I did not run. I felt special, smart, older. He wooed me with games, and compliments. It was a secret played out in the corn crib where my sisters and I would write all the cats name in crayon and then write RIP when we lost them, one by one, in the road, from disease, when they froze.

Slowly the game changed and now it would be played with my peddle pushers around my ankles. It hurt and I didn't feel special just scared, dirty. I didn't know how to leave this game. That is when I learned how proficient I was at disappearing. No sound of farm machines, no tiger lilies snaking there way through the slatted walls, no smell of nervous sweat. I was gone and it was best that way.

The game progressed to a more secure location. I was locked in a room and I kept trying to disappear, but I couldn't. I could feel vomit coming to the surface. I had never seen a penis. I had no knowledge of how they worked, but apparently I was not a very attractive eleven year old because this one was not working. After my many years of Law and Order SVU I now know this was it, the definition of first degree criminal sexual assault.
But in my memory, this is what happened. There was yelling on the other side of the door and then the door was kicked open not by Superman, or heavenly intervention, but my skinny, be-speckled brother who shoved me out and fought with my would be rapist.

We never talked about it, but I hope he knows he saved me. I hope he knows that he was courageous. I hope he knows that I will always remember. Sometimes I worry that in saving me he had to learn how to disappear too.

I forgave the sixteen year old long ago, Things that happen can change the person you might have been and survival is the instinct you are left with. It is the eleven year old that I have not been able to absolve, maybe someday.

Words

"You think that I don't even mean a single word I say. It's only words and words are all I have" I used to sing this schleppy song by the Bee Gees to my boyfriend, now husband when I was seventeen. I didn't understand the accuracy then.

I have finally had a moment of clarity, but only after I have left a crazed path of psychotic emails, dramatic weepy phone calls and a pretty fair wine drinking binge. Words are all my brain can decipher even when people talk, I translate their audible conversation to written word in my head. I may get a joke fifteen minutes later, if it's spoken, but text I can compute. So when the diagnosis I had received concretely on my hospital discharge did not match up with what the follow -up appointment with the neurologist and his conversation with Henry Ford Hospital. I just could not accept this. My mind could not process the incongruity and I stood holding out my paper proof, like Oliver Twist and his empty bowl.

"No, no, it says It was the narcolepsy." Right here, I realize hallucination is misspelled as well as sleep, but it is clearly printed under diagnosis

"She didn't mention that at all, just that there was no seizure activity". He stopped for a minute to put on his concerned doctor face. "Did they talk to you about counseling?"

"No, only the sleep doctor." I could feel the heat on my face and my red neck rash turning purple.
He calmly began searching through my records on line. "Yes, you were diagnosed with Narcolepsy in 2008" He kept reading not talking.

Good God, what does it say in that computer, but I reacted like I had rehearsed. I kept thanking him. I had felt so humbled and awed that he referred me to such a wonderful hospital. It was important to know if I really had a seizure disorder and I was very grateful for the testing. This was how I practiced it even though I could feel tears waiting backstage, never pretty in a fifty-three year old balding woman. I could only whisper thank you and reach out to shake his hand good bye. He didn't offer his hand.
THE RIDE HOME
... my brain did the transcription and every insecurity, every doubt, every bit of self-loathing engulfed my nervous system in a cataclysm of uncensored mania. I began sending out messages on the hospital web page to anywhere that I could in a blind hope someone would read them, take pity on my crazed carcass, and call me with some type of reassurance.
How ludicrous, I was responding just the way a person who was in desperate need of counseling would react. I'm taking a break from the medical world, from the pharmaceutical world, from self-medication, and back to sleeping and dreams of magical red birds welcoming me home.

Superman and the 5th Dimension

So embracing what I cannot change is not exactly going well. Depression, obsession, insecurity, weariness are speaking much louder. My enamel has worn down and every comment pierces me like ice cream on an exposed nerve. Today was “I can’t follow you around cleaning up after you all the time” I guess my perception is skewed as I had thought the opposite. It makes me think of Superman. There was this small imp-like villain named Mr. Mxyzptlk. Superman would have to trick him into saying his name backwards to send him back to the fifth dimension, maybe I belong in the fifth dimension.

The words of a lifetime keep rolling in my head bouncing into each other, joining together in a brutal reality. The protective shell eroded no fluoride, no mother to cover the cracks, no knitted hats of explanation.

It is what it is, stark, ugly, and old. A useless irritating cog that has to be dealt with a burden, responsibility with no positive returns. Trying to appease, to bring something of value, a contribution, a unique gift of validation has become exhausting. This only multiplies the irritation my efforts bring.

When I was stronger I could battle against the verbiage of moron, worthless, unnecessary, clumsy, deaf, retarded, wasteful, ridiculous, dramatic, and always crazy, crazy, crazy…

I think of a daily greeting of my father’s, “Shit, I woke up”
To circumvent a depressive monologue I would cheerfully recount all his accomplishments and what his life means to me.
He would look at me with his rheumy eyes, and say “I see Peckerhead is still on the news. I hate Peckerhead!” ignoring everything I had said.
Pointless to continue expounding on his merits , I hum and clap, out of tune, against the beat, as he sings his Ode to Peckerhead.

Feeling better now, reminiscing about my father's bleakness makes me want to jump out of the slop bucket.

Unworthy stitches

I am getting really tired of just moving along, getting pushed through the world, like so much excrement, just a necessary movement in life's digestive system. I miss hope.
I will keep trying and in between I will remember….
What my toes felt like in a roomful of wheat that I knew I was not supposed to enter, let alone stick my dirty ten year old feet in. The smell of grain, the dust particles sparkling in front of me, my hands buried in the golden mound. I am intoxicated by the sensations. I hear my father coming. I make my escape through the trap door, jumping to the bottom of the barn where the cattle were kept when the farm had livestock. It was dark with the water stalls still intact and an old grain box where litters of kittens were born. We had cats, sometimes twenty or more. They had a fragile existence and the many feline tragedies would be a precursor to my obsessive compulsive cat searching. There I would recreate bizarre orphanages and prisoner of war camps with Liddle Kiddles and Pee Wee dolls, cutting their hair up to the sewn heads. I made my little sister join me and tormented her with cruel stories of her adoption and the gypsies that abandoned her. We would swing from the top of the barn and beat our chest like Tarzan as we tried to land on straw and not farm implements. One day I missed and hit a collection of aluminum siding, cutting my ankle open. Bright red blood gushed forth as screams emitted from my mouth. My father assuredly not happy put me in the blue Chevy station wagon. I wailed and lamented the 10 minute ride to the hospital. They called my doctor and he trudged in with his fishing hat still on and a terse look on his face. My eyes red from crying and too scared to look up I plaintively yelped,
“I don’t want to die, even if I’m poor, please.”
My dad laughed a nervous laugh and apologized for me. The doctor seemed quiet and he assured me I wasn’t going to die, just get stitches.

I am still that little girl, a weed in the garden, the messy kid in catholic school the nuns didn’t like, the stupid one who failed driver’s education, the careless one who let the dog out, the crazy one who wasted everyone’s time. I keep trying to be normal, to understand what people are asking, to not frustrate and make them mad. It just makes me so sad.

Where do I go?

I am tired of myself. How do I change? Do I throw away the piles of junk teetering in every corner, in every space of my life.

I want to visit the young me and shake her violently and tell her to look at her life. Stop complaining. Stop looking for excuses. Stop being so afraid of choices. Don't settle to avoid confrontation; it will only make you a sad night drinking ghost. Obligations are to be met with intelligent responsibility. You are not responsible for everyone and everything. It is NOT always your fault. Don't waste time trying to fix everything. It only breaks you more. Like yourself, even the damaged parts. Take care of your body, your brain, your soul. Say what you mean. Sleep when you are tired. Quit being invisible. Dance, sing, yell, fight, love, mourn with your warrior heart.

Today, I will empty some corners. I need to know what is hiding.

California into the light

It has been thirty years since I have stood on the sands of Imperial Beach looked into the expanse of ocean blue and felt that freedom that only the waves, the light, the open space can give you. It brings the echoes of thousands of days wrapped tightly in a life too structured, too obligated, too small to feel the air.

Seizure no more, I'm only dreaming

Well my holiday is almost over and freedom from seizure drugs and the fear of not taking them is looking very promising. I am not showing abnormal brainwaves, just a very inventive imagination and hypnogogic hallucinations,at least it sounds impressive from the narcolepsy, as are most of my symptoms even the bodily function ones.
Though I felt guilty taking a bed from the real patients, my wonderful doctor just explained that I was here for a diagnostic evaluation and it was a success. I would highly recommend Henry Ford Hospital and the staff to anyone having seizure or neurological problems, very impressive.
I am grateful for health insurance, doctors that listen, nurses that are kind and technology that has given answers. I'm also glad my Shingles are healing and they took the sign off my door about cautionary contact with contaminated patient : )

Wired Melon

As I lay in bed electrodes dancing atop my thinning gray hair I can only blame myself for this voluntary admission into a neurological amusement park. I have relentlessly been seeking an answer to the person, who is me. My brainwaves always jumbled, confused gray matter, in a bruised soul. Invisible broken wires leap out like the phantom springs of a broken watch. A warped main board is setting false alarms with a metastasized frenzy concealing amorphous parasites on the neuron pathway. Verbally incapable to accurately describe the odd physiological responses of my weary body, I stutter incoherent ramblings when questioned by medical staff. Guilt is beginning to envelope me, an anomaly of symptoms and diagnosis, an outsider of questionable status, an interloper in a closed culture.

Stop...gain composure...insight...go beyond narcissism...

I think of my favorite quote by Einstein "There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle" The brain is surely a miracle even mine.

My Father

Life was not easy for my father. He had the heart and soul of a farmer, but life never seemed to cooperate and he worked where he could. My mother contracted polio when she was pregnant with their fourth child. Her subsequent hospitalization and rehabilitation for the next two years would devastate this man with four young sons. His much loved mother had died shortly before his wife's illness and life could not be more difficult. Three of his sons stayed with families the church provided. The infant born on a rocking bed with a critically ill mother, who the church had declared would be the one chosen to live stayed with my mother's sister raised as a twin with her baby daughter. It was the best any could do in a situation. no one could prepare for.
He worked two sometimes three jobs to support them. The closest he came to working the land was picking up the bruised dropped apples on the ground. The local refrigerator factory was his main source of income, a press operator, a hot noisy, thankless job. He would bar tend on the weekends and began a life long battle with the liquid sedative.

He would have four more children and was sentenced to forty-two years in the factory. He would try to farm in the short Michigan summers and plant huge gardens. His hands in the dirt or the sun beating down as he drove his most prized possession a Ford tractor were his moments of joy between the complications of weather, time, and his own psychological darkness.
Through the years my children were able to help with these acreages of garden planting,weeding, picking off potato bugs and tomato worms instead of chemical annihilators and the harvest of rich colored vegetables and rows of sweet flowers. One summer I noticed a peculiar pattern in the bean field bordering the garden. There was large uncultivated circle of dirt and weeds. I asked my father what was wrong with that piece insects, contamination.... He just laughed and said he would show us if we were quiet. I and my two solemn little men followed my dad, clad in bib overalls, his neck and face red with sun, his silver hair glinting in the light. We reached the odd circle in the field when a large bird came squawking toward us screeching and dragging her wing as she danced an overwrought jig.
"It's a killdeer, they do that to protect their nest"
He had disked plowed, planted and all the other necessities in preparation for a successful harvest in an irregular crop line around the small home in the ground.
My father had protected and nurtured this small family just as he had taken care of his own, never the easy way, but the only way he knew how to, with responsibility and respect for all that had been placed in his care.

marriage

I actually took a class called Marriage 101 at MSU. I don't remember what I learned. My cousin’s now ex-husband was in the class and we would go to Baskin's and Robbins’ after class. I always had a single scoop German chocolate cake ice cream cone. It was delicious, especially the bits of pecan and coconut. I married before my final paper was due. I think my grade was a B+.

It has been thirty-five years since that class since we promised our church, our state and each other to honor and respect as long as we both may love. I must have attained some degree of matrimonial skills.

Romantically envisioning a heart beating as one is obliterated as I sit alone in the waiting room of a jail, clutching my child’s antidepressants in a haze of blame-filled tears. In an emergency room begging my sister not to call, not ready to hear the frustrated voice calculating the expense of more normal tests. It is learning a spouse is not everything. We may share, children, possessions, interests, but when I miss my mom I call my sister, when I am depressed I wrap myself around my big dogs, when I am sick I call the doctor and hope it passes quickly. It does not diminish the significance of our union, but grants freedom. Freedom, from the impossibility of being everything to each other and the failure that follows.

Marriage is listening to the same story a hundred times and listening to it again. It's screaming and being screamed at, lost remotes, forgotten bills, barking dogs, dirty dishes, on and on and on through a mundane mountain. The ordinary is comforting.
It is the unexpected, where there is no internal GPS, that is when the illusions of partner collide with reality. Together through the dark rides, a team of two, pushing through, holding the flashlight, keeping guard while one sleeps. Celebrating triumphant, third grade basketball, jobs not lost, the sun shining.

Life is messy,loud, and complicated. To share this adventure of the unknown with someone a precious gift.

Hospital Holiday

I feel my head tilting forward and my eyes blur. Sleep is fighting with me, unconcerned that I sit in this small public restroom, footsteps away from a large contingent of shoppers. I start to dream, leaving is what I call it, as I sit on the porcelain chair. I awaken minutes, seconds, later with subtracted time and the bright dream,forgotten. I smile at the absurdity, still peeing a weak yellow stream. I'm glad I haven't urinated on myself, also glad I keep a complete change of clothes with me if I do. It is the irony of having a mostly invisible disorder. I am not climactic in my episodes, unless you equate bodily functions with drama. Sleeping and clenching my mouth like a self-involved bovine is just uninteresting. I struggle with the thought that I have invented this neurological handbag of symptoms. I imagine the doctors assigned to my neurosis are not amused. Their child-like faces scowling at the wasted resources on middle-age mediocrity.

I hope my self-deprecating personality will placate them as they scribble blandly in a virtual notebook: Diagnosis - Slight neurological irregularities, unknown origin, mild to moderate brain atrophy, probable congenital or birth trauma. More tests needed to assign physiological or psychological manifestations of symptoms.
TOO MUCH STOP!
I can't bear the quiet and my voice charges in."Did I tell you about the bear, red birds, smoking children on a rug?" Did I mention the auditory ghosts, phones ringing, cats yowling, and when I think babies are crying I lactate, but only on one side. I really don't know if I'm sleeping or it is a seizure, seems like sleeping...they stop writing and look up. "I'll refer you."

The beginning of my summer vacation will be a hypochondriac's dream, inpatient at the University of Michigan EEG/Video Monitoring Unit. My biggest fear is nothing will show up, Thankfully,I will still be a narcoleptic. I did great on the sleeping test! What makes me grateful that I have a name for my Rip Van Winkle tendencies, validation? I have had a positive EEG, that sent me on a schizophrenic journey of anti-seizure drugs, but my normal tests are overwhelming, taxing the computer system, contrast brain and occipital lobe MRI's, heart monitors, heart catherization, gastric ultrasounds, colonoscopies, blood work, an entire episode of House recorded in my file.

I am excited for this medical mecca, constrained to a single room with wires attached to my head. My books are piled waiting to be read, multicolor yarn whispering, take me with you, whole seasons of uninterrupted TV to watch, sweet bliss.

Sigh

Just when I think I have successfully organized my brain into calculating the inner workings of income tax, banking, bill paying,and paperwork mazes, I am met again with another costly failure. I want to believe that I can aspire to these tasks, but distraction and the sleepiness that overtakes me negates my good intentions. I know I am somewhere else between the awake and sleeping. I wish it was like drifting away by a field of red poppies, traveling with a singing trio, who find my company fascinating. It is not, no kindly Tin man for me. Frustrating and annoying those around me, who say they wish they could sleep like me.

I must face the reality of my choppy brain. I also must somehow communicate this effectively, beyond the pleading, whining, and obvious errors. I need help with these sequential tasks, not explosive tirades about files and putting things away. Impatience is my enemy, waiting for help, repetitively asking for oversight, closing my ears to the terse responses, compels me to hastily do it myself. Maybe that is why my soul prefers to sleep, dreaming of kind witches, emerald cities and a wizard who will know the answer.

Paper Hoarders

Simplify, organize, de-clutter, recycle, become a minimalist. I do want order and space, no closet doors, or drawers shoved shut like the suitcase I sit on to close. It eludes me as I deny the resolutions, pleas, promises made when viewing disgusting, but compelling hoarding reality shows.

I am sorting through my mother's life, my mother's treasures. It overwhelms me. The floor carpeted in papers,recipes, yellowed scraps about , her lawyer, relatives, classmates, her dentist who won the lotto. Obituaries overflow their metal coffin, the dead box . Pictures tucked into envelopes, books, letters, a scavenger hunt into the belly of the endless bags. Hours escape as I meet this woman, this girl, my mother. She's funny and feisty. She fights with boys and has a secret detective club, where she of course is the president. She has many pictures and letters of boys in military uniforms, who ask her to write and think she's swell. There is her senior writing project with all her dreams and aspirations inked on lined paper in 1945. How I miss my mother and now I miss this other mother, who was gone before I was born.

The Promise

“They’ll take the farm. You’ve got to keep them from taking it all.”
As long as my father, who had been condemned to his own circular prison was alive, I heard his woe-filled voice repeat those words. I knew from an early age I never wanted to be a farmer, marry a farmer or have any association with agriculture. There were too many variables, the weather, the prices, the government, the broken equipment, and the inconsistant laborers. Time was always the most vicious terrorist. My father could only farm part-time. He spent his days with the sounds of the refrigerator factory taunting him, plotting to fulfill his own prophecy of failure. .
Life on the farm was a roller coaster controlled by my father’s emotional state. He left the world with his farm still firmly planted in the souls of his eight children. I did not know if it was a curse or a gift. Before my mother’s death we made the farm a small corporation owned by, his mostly dysfunctional dynasty. I did keep my promise ill- advised or not. And in return I became the reluctant manager.
I walk the fields with my dogs giddy with their leashless freedom. In the summer I pick baskets of black-purple elderberries. My sister and I plant a garden of heirloom tomatoes and neon leaved kale. Whatever grows is because of the rich soil and its steely determination. We did not learn how to garden as children, but how to avoid the servitude of field work. The rows of sunflowers are brilliant, living bird feeders. The bee man leaves his hives. In the heat of summer the intoxicating aroma of sweet, clover honey hangs in the air.
I know I am falling in love, futily resisting my cruel suitor. When spring arrives I am resigned to this unsolicited love. The hunt for morels consumes me, addicted to the search and the exhilaration of the find. The woods are a fluorescent green, carpeted with purple and yellow violets, trilliums shaded by umbrella plants and amongst the fallen trees perhaps a mushroom jewel, its brainy cap, a beacon of gourmet riches.
I raise my head and arms to the sky, standing on the family dirt. I'm king of the world! Thank you dad.

Sunlight and Alice Cooper

                                       Five years ago she flew away I miss her everyday.

Elsie Julia Josephine Michalek Christensen, the sunbeam of light that brightened our way and always took the lead in life’s lesson of being grateful for all we have.
The simple act of loving people, not for what they have or did not have; what they did or did not do; she loved you just the way God made you. There was never time to waste on anger, or regrets. There were papers and pictures to look at, treasures to find, sparkles in the sun.
If you were so fortunate to visit her magical world of acceptance and kindness, you would truly know what the word home meant. She would wrap you in her smile of love and her eyes would memorize your tales of outer world woes, of money, jobs, relationships, and anyone or anything that had dared been mean to you. Her green eyes would flash and she would promise to get her ever elusive red stick out and never, ever would they hurt you again.
She was amazing, a chameleon, as she continually adapted her body as it fought age and the relentless post-polio. She had learned much at Warm Springs and told me as recently as March 17 that this had been one of the happiest times of her life. She told me how she wheeled down the halls greeting people, whether they wanted to be greeted or not. She was happy to see them. She approached her life on these terms: No complaints; No whining; No regrets; Game on…She went forward as life does.
Polio took away her physical dancing shoes at 26, but as Nels Hansen, her dear friend, so aptly put it, she was always dancing in her heart. She just kept smiling down the road of life, whatever bumpy way it took, bumpy is fun. She was grateful for each day. She saw the sky usually out of streaked glass in the kitchen window, but on those outside wondrous days, feeling the sun on her skin and the breeze through her hair, we would sometimes find her tipped over on the ground, laughing in the soft brown dirt. She would be looking for treasures, of bright broken glass, melted green army men, and, maybe just maybe money.
We all have been so blessed to share her sunbeam. So, let’s not waste a minute. There is only forward in this life. It changes in a second. Be creative, plan one is gone. SO WHAT! It’s time for a new adventure. Have fun. Bang those pots and pans. Dance, even if you can’t walk. Regret is a waste of time and time will ultimately be what you wish you had more of. See the good in each day, in each person, each situation, and no matter how difficult life becomes. Find a pretty stone. Listen to the Friday Song. Look for four leaf clovers. Smile. Smile. Smile. Be kind. Say “thank you.”
We will miss her forever, but we will all take a bit of her sparkle in our pocket, when we hear Alice Cooper’s joyful noise School’s Out, when we see that lone dandelion in the sidewalk, a marble in the field, when we are so tired, when life is so hard we just want to give up, we will look out the window and know it is a beautiful day.

Jack Wild, Knitting and Circling

I have become obsessed with knitting unable for my hands to be idle. Multicolored striped hats grow in piles on my bed, surrounded by dust and laundry. My needles can’t stop. Promises are made to my saner self, after I do dishes you can knit, after I pay bills, after I clean, but first I need to finish knitting one more row…
I have had many obsessions in my life. I was enamored with Jack Wild the Artful Dodger from the movie “Oliver” I had a large bulletin board covered with pictures from Tiger Beat. I went to the movie six times sitting through both showings. I read Charles Dickens. I could not sleep at night without playing the soundtrack. My rituals kept increasing. I had to touch each poster on the wall, each picture on the board in the correct order, turning in a complete circle, and stopping the record during the song Where is Love? My sister would throw pillows at me groaning when she heard the intro medley. I could not stop. I was compelled by the certainty of dire consequences, if I even omitted one step. It was taking over an hour to complete my tasks. One day, I read a letter in Ann Landers about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I was reassured to know there were others. I made myself stop, but these oddly comforting compulsions would reappear, morphing into new ceremonial cravings.
The Jack Wilds would evolve, to checking, every burner, lock, and baby’s breaths in a relentless cadence of fear, collecting Fisher Price toys, beanie babies, McDonald kid meal toys in a frenetic glassy-eyed haze. The necessity of running everyday, surpassed my fear of dark and storm. The irrational demon of repetition would imprison my brain in a skipping record of possible scenarios, as I waited for the ring of the phone, the car turning into the driveway, the cat on the step. The relentless conversations clamoring in an overheated brain of mistakes made, words said, not said.
It would be too many years before I betrayed my addictions with an antidote, ingesting small green tablets of chemical calm. They quiet the most ferocious of the echoing beasts, but the subtle acceptable ones gleefully take their place.

Spring

The snow was falling as I shuffled my wire encased running shoes through the unblemished mass. The air was still and the sun was beginning to rise. I could feel liquid falling from my nose and tried to wipe it with my wooly mittens. Smiling I could smell spring. It was flirting with the sky, the sounds, even the white covered ground. The first time since the sadness had covered my being I felt hope and future. The sack of mourning was lifting, guilt at its heels to pull me back into the blackness. I walked faster into the light of the day…

Again with the Fate or Bad Choices

She was always there even when I was not. It was my safety net, my one true thing. When I lost her, I could not ask her if it was all right, if I did what she wanted, if she will forgive me, if I didn’t. I try not to think about it, but the memories are tormenting me. Bad choices or fate, it cannot be separated. I realistically know I could not control the doctor being gone, my son having a medical emergency, the pain my mom felt. Emotionally I am broken , transfixed on what could have, should have been.
There is no looking back. We are not going that way. It is my mantra to move beyond useless conjectures. I need to focus on the light my mother brought to this earth and try to shine a little of my own. I cannot bring her back, but if I give some of her sparkle to life, her spirit lives on.

Before I knew

I have been trying to remember what it was like before. Before I was a grown up, before marriage, before children. Before I knew that life was not television, neat and happy. I was certain my childhood was just an anomaly, and the rest of the world lived in Technicolor contentment.

When I grew up, it would be the Cleavers meet The Waltons with a twist of Partridge Family for coolness sake. There would be hors d'oeuvres on white platters bordered in pink flowers, clean linoleum floors smelling of bleach mingled with pine sol. No one would yell. Gone would be the inebriated scenes that left the smell of urine and beer locked in the air, no more waiting,worrying, cautiously testing.

There was a flaw in my perfect life. I had absolutely no idea how to create this panacea of existence. My only guide was countless hours in front of a black and white box, a lesson in frustration as I applied my video education. Appetizers and short, cotton dresses work in the short term, but with the introduction of our own dynasty, rules had disappeared, planning an afterthought. Real children do not have scripts. They do not become the happy adults you imagined,overcompensated with love and whatever money could be supplied is not enough.

Acceptance of this is near impossible. There must be something to fix. There must be something to buy. There must be something to do with this maternal ache.

Flashback

I don’t know why I have been having flashbacks of that day in March. That day that I held my son’s head in my hands while white foam covered his lips, his chest rattling that sound of eminent death, and then nothing. The breathing stopped. I could only whisper or maybe it was a yell, a feral cry of grief and bewilderment, “We’ve lost him”

I had imagined losing this son, this middle child, this boy of excess, not on the floor of my cluttered computer room, not writhing amongst the papers with a grand mal seizure, not with my sister, the provider trying frantically to dial 911 on our new phones, not with four dogs blocking the door from the EMTs, not when my mother lay dying in the hospital.

We had just returned from visiting my mother. It was a Sunday. She was having a good day and the three of us had walked home together. We were there just a few minutes when my sister came and got me “There is something wrong with Paul”

He was sitting by the desk staring. I thought he was just overwhelmed with everything. He had lost his job, his friend and coworker had died two days before and he knew that his grandma was not going to get better. I put my arm around him to comfort him when he turned his head like Linda Blair in the Exorcist . He was yelping and flopping. He flipped over in the desk chair. He was now wedged among my ridiculous amount of furniture slamming his head on the floor and bookcase. I yelled for my sister to call 911. She could not get the phone to work. I could not tell her how. She dialed from her California cell phone. They asked questions she could not answer and asked if he had epilepsy. I yelled no, but I do. They said they did not care about that. Somewhere in my tangled brain it seemed important for them to know that he could have epilepsy, and not a drug overdose, or withdrawal from alcohol.
I asked or screamed at him “Did you take something?”
Of course, he was not conscious, but he was thrashing so much. He is six foot four inches tall and all I could think was to protect his head so I cradled it in my lap as his body continued to dance electric. When the emergency team came, they would not enter the house with four dogs barking at them. We had my son’s and other sister’s dogs as well as our own two. Everyone was visiting my mom. Melissa could not get them to go out. I refused to let go of Paul’s head. One brave EMT came in and took over so I could get the dogs out and the rest of the medics could come in. When I returned he asked me why I hadn’t told them he had broken his leg. I said I didn’t know. Paul finally stopped seizing, but he was incoherent and swearing. They cut his pants. He was going in and out of consciousness. The ambulance was at our house a long time. I called my husband who was with our other two children. I was standing outdoors watching the ambulance when they came.
He was alive, with a leg broken in two places from a violent seizure that lasted over fifteen minutes. He was alive when the hospital called that he had been in a horrific crash that had lacerated his liver. He was alive after he crashed his car into a tree and it burst into flames. My dear, sweet boy who rides the ghosts of death, not willing to accept he is still alive.

New Year

2010 Hello, Hurray let the show begin. I am ready! That is what I start this year with enthusiasm, excitement, and hope. Hope that I will embrace this year more positively with the strength to continue this path when life doesn’t turn out how I want it to. I have unfettered my brain from its prison of medication and with this decision comes the possibility of unleashing the beast in the temporal lobe. Foolish perhaps, but my life was not my own. My thoughts covered in a thick layer of brain-slowing pharmaceuticals. My spirit buried under the pink and white caplets. No longer suspended in a state of nothingness, I can feel the air again, see the sun, and listen to the joyful noise of the earth.