Dear Crisis Intervention of Houston (Carbon Copy to the White House)

Source: JEZEBEL

Crisis Intervention of Houston is proud to be part of a new effort to help save lives through a partnership with the National Suicide Prevention Line Network (NSPL) and the White House.

In January 2009, the Obama Administration initiated a process for the public to voice concerns directly to the White House via email. This resulted in an outpouring of emails from thousands of individuals whose concerns ranged from financial and food assistance, to medical insurance. Some of the individuals who contacted the White House expressed thoughts or threats of suicide. 

In response to the influx of calls, the White House asked NSPL to provide follow-up calls to individuals identified as potentially suicidal. As the Region 6 Center for the National Suicide Prevention Line, Crisis Intervention of Houston is providing follow- up telephone calls, emails or mail to potentially suicidal individuals identified to be living in Houston or the surrounding area. 

Crisis Intervention of Houston is assisting in this effort by contacting these individuals and conducting a suicide risk assessment which requires some detective work and lots of patience. CIH's work is part of a progress report made by NSPL to the White House every week. 

We are proud to partner with NSPL and the White House as we continue to reach out to people in crisis and provide the kind of support that saves lives.

This may be the most humiliating post I've ever had to write.  But I do have to write it.  It is one of those truth-telling days.  The sun is out.  I conquered my phone phobia and called my Mom.  (Yes, I know, it is more of a Mom-Calling Phobia than an actual fear of the technology.)

I do need to say, in defense of any jerkiness in writing, or thought, that my left leg, hip, and lower back, are all conniving against the composition of this post.  There is screaming -- rhythmic, short bursts, nothing arduously continual -- involved, as the Spaz Attacks laugh in the face of 40 mg of Baclofen, 8 mg of Tizanidine, and a Kroger Diet Ginger Ale.

I am a true fan of President Obama, and of many of his policies.  We could do a rundown, but if you're a Dear and Dedicated Reader of this obscure and odd blog, that would be the height of boredom.

Yes, I am trying to avoid what needs saying.

I write the President, and with excessive frequency.  Possibly with excessive openness, perhaps with insufficient deference.  Weirdo that I am, I consider him a friend, especially in the middle of the night when the pain is winning and all of Marlinspike Hall snores in blissful slumber, from the few country mice in our myriad cellars and crags whistling midst dreams of artisinal cheddar wheels, to the Holy Abbot Truffatore, hiding from the heavy duties of his office at the Cistercian monastery, our closest neighbor, snoring with blessed abandon.  If I listen hard enough, sometimes even the muffled snuffling of the Crack Whore napping alongside the whispering waters of the moat reach my hyper-vigilant ears.

What better time to write the President of the United States?

Maybe it was the letter where I chastised the university system that studiously underemploys its many "adjunct," "visiting," and "assistant/associate" professors, denying them not just the oft-discussed tenure but the rarely referred to basic benefits of employment -- a living wage, access to health care, that kind of piddly stuff.

Yes, I bet it was THAT letter that did it, that put me on The List.  I probably said something like: I have deferred my plans for suicide because my brother Lumpy, the Professor, was diagnosed with an evil cancer, already metastasized, the bastard, dastardly enemy!  He had not had enough funds to purchase insurance prior to President Obama and Friends' pushing through the Affordable Care Act and setting up the MarketPlace.  So, by the time he had affordable health care... no thanks to the university for whom he'd labored like a slave for over 25 years... his first doctor's visit came with the ominous pronouncements of "tumors, masses, MRIs, referrals to oncologists." Just months before, he'd made his first ever visit to an ER, only to be treated as a drug-seeker, and told he probably had a rotator cuff injury.  Right.  Make that Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma.

So, it was probably that letter that set off the "suicide" risk alarm button in the White House Reading Room, where every letter to the President is closely perused.

Though it might have been any of the letters that tried to explain the frustrations of a "rare" or "orphaned" disease like CRPS, and the idiocy those of us with it are forced to confront in an often futile effort to get help.  I might have used the old chesnut of CRPS being known as "The Suicide Disease."

In any event, the dread telephone rang this morning, after the second night of Screaming Ninnies and ineffective 100 mcg Fentanyl patches, Percocets, Baclofen, and ibuprofen.  The ultimate proof of failure, and pain's triumph?  It bust down the gates of music -- It ran through Ben Harper, The Decembrists, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, The Band, Townes Van Zandt, Frank Sinatra, various timeless chorales, even knocking Nina Simone off her intimate stage.  Even the spunky Brett Dennen had his red locks blowing in the wake of the pain's wind. Damien Rice was left standing, but barely -- more of a stagger than a stalwart stance.

So I answered a call from a caller I did not recognize.

It was the Crisis Intervention Of Houston (Inc.) calling "on behalf of the White House."

No coffee in my system, but three cats attached to head, right hip, and square upon my chest, I thought, "Well, of course.  Who else would be calling this fine Sunday morning but some suicide prevention hotline on behalf of my friends in the Barack Obama Administration?"

The very nice person on the other end of the connection wanted to make sure I "had access to all the resources" I need.  Beyond a loaded gun, I assured her resources were to be had aplenty here in Tête de Hergé.

No, I managed to set aside morbid humor and reality just long enough to be completely mortified that my finely tuned letters to the President had set in motion, not the rectification of health care and employment injustices impacting human life, itself, but, rather, a concern that I really meant to perform DIY amputations after consuming scads of methadone washed down with the best of a single malt scotch.

So, a sincere statement of thanks to that wonderful woman who made that cold call, and appreciation to the Obama Letter Reader who put me on the Suicide Watch List.

Suicide is part of the daily routine when you live with this much unrelieved pain and disability for this long, and the only assurance doctors can supply is that the future will be the same, or worse. When you don't sleep nearly enough, especially in consecutive minutes.  When "hope" is a construct, and you spend way too much time comforting those you'd hoped might comfort you.  When your financial resources are destroyed, and your career made a laughing stock of a memory.  When you cannot even hold someone else's hand because it feels like an attack with Sand Paper Set Ablaze.  When you cannot talk about any of these things due to the fatigue of those few still around, trying to help.

And when the person upon whom you have dumped the most, with whom you have shared every detail of the journey turns out to be so damned ill, and so ill-treated?  To someone as weak as I am, lacking the stern moral fiber of my ancestors, suicide seems quite the viable option, and so is considered, daily.

But thank you, Crisis Intervention of Houston, and White House staffers, for caring enough to put me on The List.

Imagine the impact if you bypassed those such as me and called some of the suicidal veterans returned from multiple deployments?  Last I checked, 22 veterans a day kill themselves.  They don't endlessly whine, they don't "blog" it, but maybe they write their Commander-in-Chief now and then.

Like I said, this is the most humiliating post ever, and yet, in the intent of all parties is a desire to "do good," and to stop, or slow, the bad.

Dear President Obama...

© 2015 L. Ryan

For Baba: Made New

i am brimming with new posts, some very funny, some of scien-tific/istic ilk, some so personal as to succeed as universal.  more than a few are essays that would make montaigne sniff a dusty dead man's egotistical sniff.  so long as he does not sneeze, we're okay.

the post below was originally published on 3 december 2013.

i did not know, on 3 december 2013, that my brother grader boob, now better known as "lumpy," was very ill with cancer.  he had only the soupçon of the beginning of a barely nascent suspicion. he was then suddenly a very grumpy lumpy grader boob, and could not seem to get his bearings, seemed perpetually under that pathetic fallacy of the weather.

he pushed me to reconnect with our stepmother.  this man who now will not connect with anyone! he had that frustratingly perfect impulse -- outward.  i did not remember that he was the impetus, that he was the sweating, grunting worker plying the splintering board that leveraged the boulder... that was me (the boulder, if i lost you).

a gift.

i have two brothers, so similar, so different.  they give gifts like maniacal gift givers, crazy-assed coo-coo givers, scented personal shoppers in the virtual world we now share and the vague shadow of a long gone world. we all meet in the lobby in my dreams -- that dream lobby that morphs into a music room of bean bags and comfy mattresses and vinyl, into softball fields, hot sidewalks, the backseats of cars, tiny basketball courts, much like the end of a concrete driveway crowned with a backboard and a hoop.  always, there is music.  gifts.

there are things i remember clearly.  these things may not be true.

i remember the both of them, evil in their older age. i was in [very baggy] diapers.  you know, i have always been remarkably slim in the hips.  anyway, i am crawling, vaguely bothered by the drag factor of these very baggy diapers. i want it clear that they were not messy diapers, just not well fitted to my slim hips. i fear that soon i will renew the experience this unfortunate fitting difficulty, but we're not there yet, oh no, not just yet. yes, right, so... there i am, in ankara, turkey, exercising my cute little tush off.  i presume i am in a dining room because the trajectory of my efforts seem to end under the carved legs of our famous dining table.  the one i inherited and finally destroyed just before fred and i became squatters here at marlinspike hall.  it had, by then, been painted white and the cushions were of a scary yellow plastic -- that was stepmom baba's treatment, to make it match her "breakfast nook" concept.  that table must have seemed an albatross around her thin neck -- highly stylized, obviously "foreign" and not conducive to her admittedly matchy-matchy decorative ways.

oh, that woman could decorate!

ya, so, my two good-for-nothing siblings are egging me on, making great use of that linguistic "come hither" known as intonation ascendante by my later french linguistic professors.

"c'mon, you droopy-drawered excuse for a baby sister, c'mon!" and so they dangled a cup of something in front of my cherubic visage, luring me closer to the little fort made of table legs.

when i finally made it, drooling as only such a diva can drool, the chant became, "c'mon, take a sniff of this!  you're gonna love it!  c'mon, would we lead you astray, hmm?"  reaching the cup, smiling like the innocent baby i was and always would be, i took a dedicated whiff.

it was ammonia.
my first, but hardly last, loss of brain cells.

okay, so there's that in the negative column for those two.  i could add grader boob/lumpy almost taking my head off with a powerful warm-up swing with a solid wood baseball bat... but that was an accident.  so was the time that one of them (no recollection which of 'em did the deed) threw a dart in my arm.  see, there was a wooden fence.  they were on the "inside" -- picture a poor man's courtyard
-- innocently playing darts.  i was on the "outside," oblivious, and made the turn inward, stepping directly in front of the dart board just as a projectile was released.

big whoop -- a tetanus shot. still!  still!

other than that, it's been nothing but gifts, gifts, gifts -- from the both of them.  in return, i've given them terrible gifts, as in, stuff that i think they should want. lumpy/grader boob has also received more than his share of "things that a person very ill with cancer needs." they are, i know, piled high, box upon box, almost reaching heaven, unopened, and possibly tripped over.

i blush to think of the olde english curses that may be heaped upon my head every time lumpy grader boob sees or sidesteps my gift pile. an auditory heap on the head is detectable only to those who attain nirvana. i'm about two-fifths of the way to enlightenment, to having those individual desires and suffering go... away. so for now, he curses into the void, he pisses into the wind.

the gifts left to give may be few, but they're the best, the saddest, the silliest, the happiest, the most meaningless.  there's no suitable box, which is good, as i lack the dexterity to pack.  thank god for teleflora and the saints be praised that godiva chocolate delivers.

there is still music. there will always be music.
and, somehow, harder to explain, animals.
words. rhythms. winds. rivers. oceans.

yeah, so i wanted to make an effort to write something today.  anything.  and seeing this from exactly a year ago, and thinking of baba, the nickname given our stepmother by her baby brother, frankie something-or-other...

...thinking of how this dream of the beach house, and her ending her days there, painted toes dug in the sand, a silly hat keeping off the harmful sun, a book and a drink at hand... or having coffee on a front porch that leads your eye into an infinity of water, of sky...

well, once upon a time, pretty much just as lumpy was having his fears of terrible illness confirmed, baba required emergency surgery. she experienced a mental decline, as old people often do when wrenched from their familiar environments, particularly those that offer infinities of sky, of water. she lost much weight, developed bedsores.  a trial run was made back at the cottage but it was untenable. back she went into that euphemistic hell called "rehab," while her daughter, my stepsister, did the research and the calling, vetting of the scary, sad work of placing your parent in as great a place as you can find and they can afford.

she's a bit of a pushy person, this stepsister, but she will tell you, probably, to kiss her grits if you requested that she cut if the fuck out.  it is, she thinks, the only way to get things done. if a bit of the truth falls by the wayside, if someone else's wussy sensitivities become obstacles instead of whimsical happy hour stories, well, a bass track will start in the background and soon sweet baby james will be screeching something about Well, I'm a steamroller, baby, I'm bound to roll all over you-u-u.

the thing is, she's sweet, too. extremely nice. i'd try to relate to the goings-on of her life but -- jeez, i'm clueless. probably it's punishment for my natural reticence, because hell's bells! if i think something, it's going to be a secret from the entire blessèd world. no way are you going to weasel a thought or scuzzily judgmental opinion out of this tête!

she doesn't trust me. how could she?  she does not know me, nor care to.  do you know what it's like to ask someone several times for their address and not be answered?  that's me:  the bedridden psycho-killer, drooling in droopy diapers, ready to show your zombie-self a little zombie "mercy." and yes, that's me, who doesn't get the message the first two times!  it makes the moment of realization ("oh, this is actually all bullshit!") that much more embarrassing!

until, until, until --  in my effort to force friendship, force relationship, i betrayed lumpy, and hurt, very likely, his polite elder sibling, the unsullied wise one. it involves a letter that NO ONE forced me to write but which fed my desire to control and dictate.

it was about -- bleck! ick!  yuck! -- wills, as in last, as in testaments.
and the stepsister i am trying to make look villainous? she's not. she's careful, and she's smart to be that way. she and i, we will journey on, learning.

i'm sorry, rolling one, o winged pigweed, for sending you a copy of that letter. i cannot say "sorry" to the lumpy one, because there is not enough space there, even for that one word.

the ace i have in the hole? ["ace in the hole": This term comes from the game of stud poker, in which one or more cards are turned face down, or “in the hole,” as bets are placed.] i have the weightless gift of a greeting and good wishes from our elder brother-unit, safely tucked there where i safely tuck things. (hey! what is this? a "tell all"?  i don't THINK so.)  it's a greeting with good wishes and a memory from him to baba.  i've not delivered them yet, dear brother. but the time is now, apparently, because a bunch of well-dressed, colorful, handsome and beautiful strangers holler about "'tis the season" from the blaring idiot box.

i can already tell you that she will be happy, this ancient dancing woman who has almost worked her way back up to a hundred pounds.

we have traversed the seasons and are not where we started.  the orbit is a bit skewed but still an awesome testimony to arcs, gravity, and the-way-of-things. i choose to admire what the universe managed to keep within reach, and to thank it for what i can still see, and everything that i can remember... or imagine remembering.

i want to thank lumpy for taking this picture of our collective beach, from the vantage point of baba's former and forever front yard.  the stepsister-unit would kill me, but i continue to give baba hope that she can get back there.  i use a line that i used on myself when that older, wiser brother-unit, something of a photographer himself, was missing to me -- i have dusted the old line off for dearest baba, made a few verb tense adjustments:

"mom, maybe you'll go home in the spring..." then we talk... about the dangers, about her dog, about her cute hunky man neighbors, about the fears... and then we talk.

to completely ruin the mood, i have to reference the beginning of last year's post.  un-freaking-canny! in all my recent travails -- in case you can't keep track, i'm losing the use of my hands -- i never once remembered fracturing my left hand. not once.  never mentioned it to my new doctors. of course, this time it started in the right hand... oh, never mind!  it's just kinda creepy.

mwa ha ha!

hey, dear readers, especially you dear siblings (and associates -- i know who logs on, for nothing is secret in marlinspike hall) -- thank you for letting me wade far enough into the gentle waves to get my ankles wet.

because -- gasp! -- the days are long gone when lumpy grader boob and i swam far far out, way past the pier, where there was just the sounds of undulating ocean and wind on the water.  we'd float on our backs and play battleship. then just float, saying nothing.  eventually, in big brother fashion, he'd suggest i go back in, that he'd watch to make sure i didn't get eaten by a shark. then i'd sit on the porch with the binoculars, making sure that he made it in, too. he'd stay out there a long time.

be good to one another.

used without permission, this photo was taken by the inimitable grader boob

if you will kindly refer to an earlier post, titled -- with such gentility -- "i flushed the toilet," it will partially explain my latest round of stealing posts from other -- better but still "other" -- sources.  you know that it is never for lack of something to say.

sure, it's usually the same something, but i'm broadening my vocabulary and massaging the play-dough twixt the ears for the malleable fiction of neuroplasticity.  i'm trying.  but when i so famously flushed the toilet, i fractured my left wrist/radius and somehow also developed ulnar nerve palsy. CRPS has a weirdness not often discussed, as one tires of sounding insane, which is its perverse preference for symmetry.  i have developed the same symptoms, minus the palsy, in my right hand, which is completely uninjured.

in some other words, typing is a bitch.  be that as it may, this blog post needs writing.

since my "family," meaning the clan in its traditional form, has begun the unwieldy process of reconstituting its early semantic glory, a sontag metaphor-for of chipped and crackled bits of anachronistic mosaic tile, these full-blood, half-blood, and no-blood relations... are dropping by this blog in decline.

most of you are used to having kin.  i'm out of practice.  let's put it as it is:  i have to consult the dictionary to untie the knots of meaning behind cousin, nephew, niece, and sometimes, even aunt, uncle.  i tend to cling to the memory of loving people, whether it was me they loved, or not, and their anthropological kinship designation fell into the garbage heap of my wayside long ago.

there is an equal and opposite reaction of attraction for and [obliquely] toward the relations who hate me, whom i disturb, a new phenomenon born just within the last few months.  here is a very true truth upon which you can rely:  beware new "friendships" of the familial sort who quickly and with nary a bead of sweat clinging to their upper lips (or eyelids -- since my eye surgeries, my eyelids betray more emotion than your run-of-the-mill rosy cheek, and not by blinking but by their creepy dampness) speak of love, and declare it for you as a lifelong yearning, based on your fledgling, chubby, pigeon-toed stunted five year old self.

do not trust anyone who tosses the love card with the wily acumen of a lifelong gin rummy pro, thanks to many hot, humid, buggy southern summer nights under bare bulbs, cards smartly slapping on real oil table cloths, red checks marred by cigarette burns, the buzz of mosquitoes broken by a smoker's cackle:  "gin!" the good ones, the best, are self-effacing, and languidly caress the discard, take it as their own... and knock. they utter "love" the same way.

yes, so i'm feverish, in severe and unrelenting pain, spasming like a done-for flopping fish, glaring as best a fish can with one eye on a rotting pier, and dealing with keeping home a center for holiday cheer with a broken wrist.  i cooked some overly herbed fish last night.  that's my only clue as to the intrusion of the fish into my tight, linear narrative.

it was an excess of tarragon perfume at fault -- i mixed it with lemon pepper, a pretty strong flavor in itself, and holmes himself wouldn't have deduced its presence, so overdone was the tarragon.

i'm in love with tarragon.

and this one, most recent sample of rosemary.  more perfume.  i like a slight artistic char on my rosemary. it served as counterpoint to wonderfully roasted vegetables -- and those vegetables with sufficient sugar content achieved that perfection of combined char and caramelization.

if i rummaged in the remains of my work ethic, i could eke out clever comparisons about perfumed fish and relatives i cannot recall ever meeting but who have "loved" me since i was but a near microscopic translucent guppy.

okay, for those relatives not in the evil category of easy love, for those who, without forethought, closed our first conversation in over 23 years -- telephonic, of course -- with a natural, casual "love ya," and who began what we decided to designate as "the breaking of the ice" with joyous laughter that cannot be feigned...

for such people, in this instance my step-mother margaret, about whom i thought during every one of the days making up those 23 long years -- when cogent, of course -- i owe more than a little bit of an explanation.

or maybe not.  somehow, it doesn't feel evasive to have picked up the fiendish phone and chatted and laughed for eight minutes without giving a single detail of my life.  we both have followed the other by means both imaginative and wheedling.  well, okay, nothing so very dramatic -- we made discomfiting use of one of my full-blooded brothers, the famed "grader boob."  lately, he's been getting a bit disgruntled serving as middle man, and in a wildly uncivilized move, simultaneously released home phone numbers to all interested parties.  he may have called me a "cowardly girly-girl," and mocked my telephone phobia (it's real!) with a professorial version of "nah-nah nah nah nah": "derr-i-da-da dah dah dah dah."  he should keep well in mind that i serve as his gate-keeper for the nefarious side of our family tree.  these are people with little sense of our cultured culturing of boundaries and who constantly threaten to appear on one's doorstep, unannounced, uninvited.

but in this instance he did well, grader boob.  "pick up the phone, damn it. what are ya, anyway, a freaking emotional misfit"?

well, yes.

margaret said something that made my heart stop, just a quick phrase but that wasn't a throw-away. she hoped i'd come visit her, there at the beach cottage where so much happiness happened, and tragedy, too. it's a touchstone of a place.

i talked over her, i think.  i said the same sentence three times, a pitiful diversion for such a smart old lady who had just extended herself -- the cottage is her sacred place, was the center of her childhood family, a tradition of sand, sun, storm, paperbacks, boiled shrimp, and happy hours.  it is also where she found my father curled up dead on the couch, and into her atlantic ocean did she cast his ashes. and i did not even acknowledge the graciousness of her invitation back into that space.

margaret, i'm basically bedridden, except when i take my breakthrough pain meds and antispasmodics, then i foist myself upon my limited world, and perform with aplomb what now defines me:  my ADLs, my activities of daily living.  basic hygiene, dressing myself, cooking.  i always think of you as i attempt to clean house -- our homes never looked lived in, they were so uncluttered and clean.  your standards became my standards, and when fred looks at me askance as i pry off the knobs to our gas burners so as to soak them clean of non-existent oil splatters and to clean the spotless enamel underneath... i always laugh and say, "but what would my mom say if i didn't do it right?" and to myself i imagine how living at the beach must have both complicated that aesthetic and simplified it, beautifully.

i miss tea and melba toast with you, a wonderful reason to come home from high school. i remember, at the oddest times, the afternoon we went sailing in a thunderstorm.

my standards have fallen.  i am not physically able to do all the things i "ought." it shouldn't plague me, yet it does.

i can walk for very short distances and lately risk falls when i "step out." and i flash on the day in washington, d.c. when you finally explained to my dad that i despised being grabbed by the elbow and told to "step out." i talk to myself -- hey, we all do, to some extent --and sometimes i hear chastisement from my his lips through mine -- "straighten up and fly right," that sort of thing. there are moments of hysteria, too.  i tried to teach fred that "it only costs ten percent more to go first class." fred didn't buy it, and, let's face it, it was one of dad's less successful aphorisms.

i have lupus, which led to something called avascular necrosis [AVN] or osteonecrosis, which led, in turn to adrenal insufficiency (and a few scary instances of adrenal failure).  but what has me beat, mom, is something called CRPS.  a lot of folks still call it RSD.  i'm coming up on my 12th year anniversary with CRPS.  it's made me pretty much unrecognizable and you'd be shocked.  mostly, it's a central nervous system degenerative disease but it shows itself -- when you have it as long and as all over as i do -- by what it does to your arms and legs.  in my case, naturally, it also does a number on my face!  in actuality, despite the skin, blood vessel, and bone damage, the havoc it loosens on the brain in terms of spasticity and neuropathic pain testifies to how monstrous it can be.

the only honest "cure" for AVN is to replace the joints destroyed by the lack of blood supply.  so i'm close to being bionic!  unfortunately, somewhere along that journey, my prosthetic joints picked up bacteria which slowly grew, and being the leftist that you always knew i would be, the little buggers formed communes that secrete a kind of antibiotic-proof material... so i finally declared "uncle" at the end of last year.  it's spreading from one piece of hardware to another, these socialist "biofilm communities."  so that adds to the discomfort of dealing with CRPS, as there are daily fevers and the general nonsense that goes with chronic bone infection -- osteomyelitis.  i ultimately lost my left shoulder, and to be honest?  i'm ready to give up the right one, it hurts that much.

however, mom, i have a great internist who tells me, when i hit the more grating notes of whining about pain:  "this, too, shall pass." i used to curse him under my breath, now i repeat his belief as if it were my guiding light, a mantra.

you've likely had enough.  i know i have.  a few more things, then i'm going to bed.

i don't know that you'd like fred, at first, but he would grow on you.  i've been with him for precisely as long as i have been absent from you.  he's gentle, intelligent, but struggling -- right now with the possibility that his hearing loss is due to an acoutic neuroma.  he's scared.  i need to think of your example, again, and make him my priority.

i'm never going to see you again, i don't think.  won't be for lack of wanting, i can tell you that.  i'm embarrassed and ashamed about so much -- but also secure in who i am, what i became, the life i've lived, getting things right with a gratifying increase in frequency!

you once tried to help me by listing my "accomplishments," and were shocked when i thought you were mocking me.  you were not, of course.  you were trying to build up my sense of worth, my pride.  but i was right, too, because even in that very low moment, i knew that awards, scholarships, and degrees were not important.

but they did allow me to work at what i loved.  everyone always points to dad's mom, to nana, as the source of the "teaching" bug, but let's say that you honed my technique.

when it rained while we vacationed at the cottage, we'd go to what had to be the only pharmacy in town, and get to buy a paperback.  with such nonchalance, you steered a stubborn reader to the fruits of childhood. one year, it was harriet the spy, another, it was jane eyre.  [of course, we still have to discuss the year you took a razor blade to "offensive" passages in one of my christmas wish list books! "too adult," you said,]

my best teaching came when i managed, through sleuthing and careful planning, to allow a struggling student to find the piece of writing, a print of a painting, a translation, a song that would lead them into the "français." they had to find it but i had to learn their need, and supply its want.

it's what you tried to do for me, so faithfully.

thank you. [and good night!  i am going to imagine the sound of the surf...]  stay warm, stay safe.

© 2013 L. Ryan

Burning CDs

I'm not Buddhist today.  Tomorrow?  Who knows!

Sometimes it's really grand, a thigh-thumping grand, that suffering is life, or life suffering, in case, in translation, the equivalency we accord "is" does not hold true in the original declaration.

Did you think I was going to bore you with YouTube music videos forever?  Actually, there was considerable suppression of the more relevant music being blasted around these parts.  Some fool had me listening to Gaelic and I had a brief -- roughly 20 minute -- rough descent into Andrea Bocelli. There was flirtation with Tindersticks, a lot of lip-synching to Nina Simone, and altars built to Jerry Garcia and these Days of the Dead.

Yes, I was burning CDs, an act I'm new to and that is probably already outdated.  If so, don't kill my buzz.

It's ominous, assembling music for someone important.

You have intent, you cannot escape having intent, and yet you wish to appear to have no purpose leap through the chords, scream through the lyrics.

This is how I feel about this song.
But how will he feel about this song?

The only solution is Suppression of Intent -- and in that brief period of relief from one's self, to go with your gut, and never look back.  You pick a song, you burn it, you move on.

After the items are mailed, there's time for second-guessing to kick in.

Like... what was I thinking, leading off with this?  I mean, I used to be a huge John Prine fan until, late one night, sipping on a sloe gin fizz, I got tired of the facile.

Surely you've noticed?  I veer from the facile, abhor that which is easy, and run (toes pointed!) from observations, no matter how astute, that don't show all their work.

But he gives a good concert, and I'm fond of him, and of the days when we all giggled about getting high.

So when my brother "Lumpy" [still a Grader Boob, as he still insists on haunting a classroom, despite an advanced and evil cancer] gets these CDs, I am sure he'll think something like... "I shoulda spent more time with that kid... Meant to pass on the music that my brother passed on to me, but this sister is clearly, sad to say, low brow."

Or maybe he'll laugh, as these songs are meant to pass the driving time as he flies from campus or apartment to chemotherapy or radiation, a 6' 4" man with considerable skeletal pain, folded to fit into the passenger side of a Mini-Cooper.

I let my intent fly free at the end of the process.  I closed with Nico's cover of the great "I'll Keep It With Mine."




In case you can't tell, it's a heartfelt offer on my part -- to those whom I wish I could rock to sleep in my funky spastic arms, murmuring lies, meaning every one of them as a noble truth.

"It's gonna be all right, sweet one, it's gonna be all right."

You will search, babe

At any cost

But how long, babe

Can you search for what’s not lost?

Everybody will help you

Some people are very kind

But if I can save you any time

Come on, give it to me

I’ll keep it with mine

I can’t help it

If you might think I’m odd

If I say I’m not loving you for what you are

But for what you’re not

Everybody will help you

Discover what you set out to find

But if I can save you any time

Come on, give it to me

I’ll keep it with mine

The train leaves

At half past ten

But it’ll be back tomorrow

Same time again

The conductor he’s weary

He’s still stuck on the line

But if I can save you any time

Come on, give it to me

I’ll keep it with mine

-- Bob Dylan

Of course, another pisser in this whole process is the low brow fear of being derivative.  How many times, in how many ways, has Lumpy the Grader Boob sent me our favorite tune, such that I could not now send it back to him?

But, here it is again, for us.

© 2013 L. Ryan

It's important, so do it.

Quick, note the day and time:  I'm having a productive day.  Two loads of laundry, the weekly refilling of the med box, several psychological evaluations of the Feline Triumvirate, orientation of several new Marlinspike Hall Manor Gift Shoppe volunteers, coffee -- perfectly strong and I did not pour boiling water in my lap in its making!

Sure, there were errors, flukes, lots of pills on the floor, and the Gift Shoppe may be in retail peril, but there is an abundance of clean covers, ranging from light and kind to tender skin to heavy and cold repellent. None of the cats aberrant behaviors have improved but we have lowered alert levels to DefCon 2, hoping that we can continue to deescalate tensions and avoid Buddy killing Marmy, or Marmy shifting from clawing defense mode to slashing aggression.  Most of all, we would like Dobby to retain some fur, as when the little guy is stressed, he releases all of his hairy hairs, usually on my clean clothes.  And, if we put all our desires out there, well, we'd like him to shut up, as well. He's the Town Crier of our world and, honest to God, it sounds like a nonstop tirade of a lisped "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!"

Ahem.  Yes, I'm having a day!

My right foot is probably as small as it's ever been in the past 12 years. If you ignore its purple and frigid state, well, hell, it almost looks like a doggone foot!

The claw phenomenon is, indeed, spreading to two fingers on my left hand, but rather than cry over that (we now cry for an hour when the lights go out at day's end), I am forcing that hand to do extra duties.  I suppose someone without CRPS would call the doctor.  I have been taught not to, trained better than a seal.  Oh, how to stave off the urge to balance a beach ball on my nose?

I am daring to see another Kaiser Permanente neurologist next Thursday.  Yesterday, if you had dared to ask, I'd have told you it was a hoop to be leaped through, or thrown through (by the neurologist, or Fred, perhaps... maybe even Lumpy, if he could work up the strength).  Today, I've decided to focus on researching these sudden and completely un-freaking-expected changes in my upper extremities.  Research as only I can.  I have awesome research powers, friends, and they, coupled with unerring insight, rarely lose me in a corn field.

Don't know where that came from, that whole "lose me in a corn field" thing, but I like it. So it stays.

So next Thursday, yes, we slough off the history of Kaiser Permanente's abysmal neurology department (though I hear that EAST of the Lone Alp, they have better staffing) and we politely make the focus saving my hand function.  The OT kept concentrating on the pain of it, not hearing my oft-repeated: "I can handle the pain... what I cannot handle is losing the use of my hands."

It's easier to focus on the amorphous and try to score points for ass-kissing empathy, sympathy, compassion rather than brainstorm with me how I am going to toilet myself, wash, and manipulate forks, knives, knobs, buttons, cats, Fred, paperwork, pens, computers, car doors, seat belts, coffee cups, telephones, and pills, pills, pills!

Much better to wheedle: "It must hurt a lot.  Does it hurt a lot?"

Button my shirt, bitch!
Dice the Holy Trinity of onion, bell pepper, and celery.  Or the required base to a magnificent, fragrant stir fry:  ginger, garlic, and several optional thirds -- onion, chilies... none of that to be confused with the saucing options.  Don't get excited, Therapist, about a perceived ease to the saucing, because the saucing involves mixing, and the opening of many tiny bottles, and the outpouring -- precise outpouring -- of fish sauce and sesame oil and the many variants of soy and chili and sweet/sour viscous liquids.
I had trouble washing my face last night and dropped my toothbrush in the toilet.

But that was last night, and the OT was Tuesday, and won't be seen again until a few hours after the neurologist next week!

I've a firm grip on this day, still.

Part of that vise-like hold has been enabled by merely turning off all the phones and watching a few episodes of what I call a soap opera, but Fred insists is a "drama series." Yay for solutions, because they're solutions!

Clearly, giving my brain, such as it is, and these hands, such as they are, access to a keyboard has not been conducive to what pop stars like Dr. Phil might call "self talk." Dr. Phil is a marketing genius and a professional fraud.  I know the difference between what I type and what I actually feel.

Harrumph.

Time to finish my chores, turn the phones back on, be an encouragement to Fred and the hulking, skulking cats.  The genetically indentured Domestic Staff Executive Committee has requested a meeting with the Haddock Labor Relations Board, and judging by the steely glint in a few eyes, there are more issues than territorial disputes and genetic engineering snafus on the table. I think, I am guessing, I assume... that they want a bump in salary, an expansion of benefits, and some minimization of their essential serfdom.

I could be wrong.

Last night, when I turned off the lamp beside this godawful hospital bed, after I threw the stupid washcloth gripped by my right claw all of three feet (after a full wind-up and high kick), before I picked the 90-minute "sleep" music option (which started with dear Simone's "Go to Hell"), I spent an hour crying.  I didn't time it, the hour is a guess.

All I could see was Lumpy's sweet face, his eyes gone deeper than deep seems possible, and dark, much darker than seems fair.  I don't see the two lumps he says are there -- in his skull, one on the left hairline and the other at the base of his jaw.  Granted the jaw is disfigured and I can actually see it, but I like to pretend that I don't, and that his well-trimmed beard just has an inexplicable scruffy area.

To me, he is beautiful, handsome.  And, damn it, other worldly.

Can I convince you, you who are as mortal as he is, that he does not deserve death, that the world needs him, that nothing will ever be the same when he dies?  That a whole generation of mediocre writers will not have the touchstone of his classroom f-bombs and hilarious illustrations of rhetorical fallacies by the citation of the authority of South Park and The Simpsons?  They won't learn the crucial life lesson, the crucible of working life, that he models when explaining, over and over: "I grade what you put in front of me."

You haven't seen him mime gold medal winning Olympic ski jumpers.  He's a little over 6' 4" and could launch himself off the icy ramp, and extend his upper body, straight as a rail, over his legs until his slightly Roman nose seemed (and therefore, was) mere inches from his skis.

A Normal Hill specialist, his split leg landings, with arms making delicate ballast adjustments, would be the envy of any world class orchestral conductor.  The arms part, not the leg part. Unless we're talking some sort of weirdly energetic orchestra conductor, or perhaps an afflicted one, suffering from neurological tics, Parkinson's, or Tourette Syndrome aggravated by the brass section, probably the tenor trombones.

So tears turned into giggles in the dark.  And each cat came by, politely following their peculiar rules of Buddy first, Marmy second, and -- everpresent, very somber -- little Dobby.  Dobby never leaves me when I cry, though he may position himself so as to be unseen.  On the top edge of the pillow, perched on the corner of the bedside table, alertly upright between my feet.  He didn't learn the "don't stare" lesson in kittenhood, so he stares, and mewls softly.

Like I said, the hour was just a guess.  I also visited with some other beloveds, before relaxing my mind into the recurring memory of me, seated on Lumpy's shoulders as he walked, slowly, from the shallow end of our swimming pool to the deep end.  Yes, that put him under water for about a third of the journey, but never did he hasten the pace, break the rhythm.  Sometimes the tipsy Happy Hour boozers at poolside noticed, sometimes they did not, but it was something to behold.

Well, I just promised Fred, The Castafiore, Sven and his son, Cabana Boy, a healthy dinner of roasted organic vegetables and some sort of fish.

A chance to wield knives and cavort with a very hot oven!  Now, THAT is what I call Occupational Therapy. No co-pay and a delicious pay off at the task's end.

Readers?  Love the ones you're with, and find ways to transmit, send, convey, and give away the love you have for those not within your wily grasp.  It's important, so do it.








© 2013 L. Ryan

Animal Horns and Conch Shells

I'm watching, semi-watching, the semifinal match between the man of my almost dreams, Novak Djokovic, despite his horrid haircut and ultra-slim cut wardrobe, and the tenth-ranked Kei Nishikori, who seems extremely self-possessed, given the situation.  It's fairly early in the first set, I just got here, my attention waylaid by a fine early performance of Detective Goren in one of the first episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

You know back when he's still considered a nut job with nothing to offer.  As opposed to the later episodes where his status as a proven nut job has morphed into a touch-not reputation for pulling the improbable out of his ass.  His invasions of personal space, violations of suspects' DSM oddities ("pushing their buttons"), his empathetic powers that would render your average NYPD dick insane within the length of one long day, they can be sufficient grounds for keeping the television tuned on L & W: CI for a background marathon while I research the various and the sundry, in distress, in pain.  I can eyeball whatever suspect is being Gorenized in the Interrogation Room, and remind myself that things could be worse.  I could be in a room with gray cinderblock walls, a mirrored window, locked door, and Detectives Goren and Eames, his head cricked, all jazzy-handed, her neat, under-made self smiling at me like a hungry anaconda.

Nishikori is pissing me off. After a LUCKY first set win, despite his excellent play, and Novak's plethora of stupid errors, Djokovic handily stepped up and took the second set 6-1, at which point I indulged in a D'Onofrio rêverie of tics and lightening strikes of vulnerability.  Suddenly I discern a tiebreak going on, and in a ridiculous way, in the third set.  It is now set point, and I can't watch.

"Third set to Nishikori."

Bite me.

I know it means something when a person feels feverish but is in no way even close to being so.  I've felt weak and wiped out, working my way up the pain scale as if it were the easiest of climbing walls, with wild, nuclearized, toxic colors, grips of Seussian shapes, all horns and Roman clown noses.  I am broken. My instructions on being discharged Wednesday were to check back in at a local ER to resume intravenous antibiotics if (and we all thought "when") I had a fever of 100.4.

100.4 is nothing for me, or maybe the marker of a damn fine day.

I haven't been above 98.4 since we got home.  Despite chills, the aforementioned claymation approximation of a wild cartoon vertical cliff of pain, a weird appetite, the death of Brayden Martin, the relapse of Kate McRae, deep and abiding concern for my brother GB, weird episodes of suddenly passing out, having an arm not respond to my iron will, deciding that calling a doctor would just make everything incrementally worse.

I was explaining to one of the HMO doctors at their "overnight observation" facility how this all started with what looked like a huge abscess on the top of my foot, that presented itself as a volcano.  I apologize to you, as I guess I should apologize to the doctors for having only the word and image of "volcano" come to mind, as hard as this brain tries to offer another descriptor.  It looked like a freaking volcano, such that I thought, and hoped, that it might burst while I (again hoping) slept.  Instead it melted and turned the top of my whole foot red and painful, swollen and angry.

Her response?

"Do you have a picture of that?"

Did I have a picture of that?  No, I didn't think to capture that painful moment -- LIE.  I would have snapped it if I had two working hands and a camera that had not been dropped in soapy water!  Mostly because it's a weird thing to see a bluish/purple, slightly square-sided volcano sticking out of one's foot.  But over the past 12 years of having CRPS, seeing my legs and arms do weird things became normal.

Djokovic lost.  Rather, Nishikori did a fine job of winning.  Yes, Djokovic played badly, but had every opportunity to raise his game, and proved it.  He was out-played.

Now, to complete my accumulation of bad karma for the day, I am going to root against Roger Federer.  Or really screw myself over and wish him a tiring 5-setter with heat cramps, and an inexplicable case of recurring wedgies requiring the assistance of court side trainers, with Roger carefully hidden behind a wall of towels as he switched from wedgie shorts to wedgie shorts -- and then moves on to the finals only to lose against this very talented Japanese young man, Nishikori, in straight sets.

Yes, you read correctly.  The brave and steroid-bloated baby of an old soul, Brayden Martin, fell to an opportunistic pneumonia after being ravaged in brain and spine by odious cancer. I think he was all of six. I know he was wholly happy and attracted others who were happy, or needed to be.  He was a gifted air guitarist and was a freaking rock star. He needed to die and though I'm sure he'd have loved to stick around to watch the antics of his darlin' mother Maranda, and girl-magnet brother Mason, and nuggle in the arms of his grandma Robin -- he had plans for heaven.  Unfettered tricycling, soon to be a two-wheeler with snazzy training wheels, then, baby-wheels gone, pushed by angels with feathers flying wildly in the ether, finally pulling up alongside his buddy Nolan, lad by lad, finally free, finding the first off road exit from that boring cloud.  Thumbs-up all around, and a Di Fara pizza stand, straight from Brooklyn's Avenue J, perfect foldable plain cheese slices inhaled by these boys as they explore the lay of their new land.

There is a rain delay in Queens. So they are showing Federer and Monfils from... Thursday? The quarters, the round of sixteen?  Ah, Monfils, about whom I have conflicting feelings.  Sometimes, he cracks me the hell up, as he just did, calling for a review of a point he'd just won.  It looks as if the goofy, hot-and-cold Monfils is about to go up two sets to love. Federer had to dig himself out of a ditch, apparently.

I cannot sustain visions of an earthly heaven, not even to honor Brayden.  He's somewhere, and he's fine. His family has to stay here a while and right now their paradigm has been woefully insulted, and hearts, broken.

Kate began having seizures several weeks ago, after what seemed to be an uneasy good time, mostly filled with settling in a new place near L.A., new schools, therapists and doctors, and that weird feeling that something was wrong.  Every time they sought answers, problems were attributed to post-radiation and post-chemotherapy syndromes, sets of symptoms that complicate and depress, but do not threaten life.  But the seizures were different and the MRI was finally moved up, and showed new brain cancer, her third relapse.  Her spinal fluid showed no cancer cells.

These kids.

Ah, the rain delay is over, and Federer meets Cilic in real time.

I fret over sadness, and frustration with hands and legs, burning pain, and spasms, and whether I want to bother with continued treatment, anywhere, by anyone.  I think of the week my brother just had, and how I want to hold him in a way that would be foreign to us both -- but to which I'm sure we'd adapt easily.  I can't hang on to another soul for any meaningful length of time, and lord knows, he'd be darned uncomfortable. Just grant me a hand on his brow, a hand held briefly to hand.  This part of me does not work, whole sections of him are nothing but pain, it could be the weirdest of Twister configurations ever. Fitting!

And I dream every night some version of TW flying here, then having Captain Haddock ferry us from our murky moat, currently home to a sweet pair of beluga whales, to that Sweet Spot that heralds the worm hole entrance that loves to welcome Haddock's sweet pink miniature submarine, taking us there where we need to go.  "Ahoy!  I bring the siblings lost and found together again..." he hums as he pretends to navigate from our unmappable home to Grader Boob's hideout.

I cannot make it happen.
But it could happen.
That an accretion of stupidity and the idiocy of idiots gone before should hinder the reunion of such sweet souls?  I don't understand.

Good news.  My left hand has ceased copying my right, so I've a functional hand again.  I think I hear trumpets -- you know, the long silly ceremonial kind, or natural, chromatic.  Maybe animal horns mixed with conch shells .

Cilic is up 3-1 first set.

© 2013 L. Ryan

Sunday Phone Calls: When Even Death is Funny

It's been a rough week, the kind where the best communication turns out to be reminding the people whom you love that you do, indeed, love them.  It makes for a shorter phone call, a blink-of-an-eye visit, and calls for just a tiny greeting card, though the cost of postage does not change.

Growing up, Sunday was the day for obligatory phone calls to family members living far, far away.  Granted, it was usually my immediate family that bore the responsibility for the distance issue.  We tended to be overseas, or living somewhere inaccessible to even those relatives who enjoyed travel.  Or I could be honest and say that no one really gave a crap, and the Sunday telephone ritual was just another thing to check off the list.

I managed three calls today.

Those Dear Readers who've been with me a while know that my use of the telephone is, itself, miraculous, as I find it the least endearing mode of communication of the many modes we have in this technological age.

For instance, Grader Boob, one of my two beloved Brother-Units, is now so weak that his voice does not carry efficiently to the telephone receiver.  He prefers "Lumpy" now to GB, but that's just trivia.  And a lie. He has no sense of humor discernible any longer, cancer's gift, pain's offering.  As for his voice, part of it is also, I am guessing, change brought about by impingement of various nerves by those nefarious Lumps about which we so want to joke.

He could out grim the Grim Reaper, and will, I hope. Grumpy Lumpy seems to be so intensely in a snit because his life has been destroyed in what must feel like an overnight happening, despite what hindsight now reveals as a vine-like underground creep over a decade, culminating in Kudzu's blazing speed once that first tendril found the sun.

His pain is unimaginable, even to me, the Queen of Pain. His perennial lack of social graces, once endearing, now has the edge of a feudal samurai sword, his made to accommodate one-handed lunges. It's just a matter, really, of a shorter grip.  Maybe a tanto grip with a freaking 4-5 foot ōdachi blade.  I carry a small antique tanto in my obi, as do all my female friends.  Bianca Castafiore, we all know, is never without her 06 F.A.S.T. from Gerber.  She swears by the G-10 handle.  In a nod toward beauty, my dagger handle is a subtle, but distinctive, teal-green silk cord and black samé -- ray skin -- topped with a black iron tsuba bearing a dragonfly motif.

None of us bother with saya, or scabbards. Marlinspike Hall's women are famous for our mastery and obsession with fabrics of incredible tensile strength, and their artistic draping, which most men assume comes from a lurid obsession with shiny, metallic, decorative threading.  Yes, we live for the glint of reinforced brocade on a clear, hot summer day.

"The effect is elegant and rich without becoming fussy. "

Lumpy's issue is the same problem that turned the ōdachi into a ceremonial thing, a spiritual weapon.  The answer, I think, to the obstacle of how to carry his very particular sword, and successfully draw it, lies in providing him with a trusty steed, though that might attract undue attention as he canters about the hallways of higher learning. Better might be an unobtrusive trusty sidekick.  Like a dedicated sister in a wheelchair. I could pass off six feet of sword as a stylized assistive mobility device, no problem.  Who better to have his blessèd back?  Plus, I can help with any grading duties, and be the one to chuck chalk at any undergraduates who dare nap during class.

And here you thought a samurai sword reference was to end in its metaphorical stage! We are a knife-wielding clan, we are.  You should see some of Fred's knives. His nonchalant explanation for seemingly artless features -- a notch here, an odd finish to the metal, a strange blunt affect -- can chill my blood. He and Abbot Truffatore do not so much resemble Boy Scouts comparing five-tooled pocketknives as handy camping tools when they extricate their shiny toys from humble scabbards and lay them on felt-covered table tops as they seem men under the ancient enchantment of war.

So, though weak in body and voice, this Brother-Unit remains obstinately militarized, and determined to try teaching this semester -- two courses in person and one as an internet prof.  I want him to succeed;  I know he won't.  And so pardon my fantasy of squiring him à la Sancho Panza, ready, in the end, to do wheelies and behead the archaic administrators who failed him, impale the students who worked him into weakness, slash the desks and podia that his university maintained instead of providing health care for those who sat and leaned there.

I hate these Sunday calls.

And then there was the dear sister, caring for a waning mother, blindly navigating the end-of-life barriers thrown in their way by that same health care system that has failed the rest of this fucked-up family.  Mom is unaware of the obstacles she dodges, her memory gone, or maybe that stealthy faculty forces her to relive each trouble more than is useful.  The Sister-Unit has become a faithful nurse, tending three bed sores, feeding a weak 81-pound matriarch.  Her partner has leukemia -- that's some punchline, eh?  He is doing well, however, though they are smartly close-mouthed about it.  He's a Prince, a Peach, a Pear, which is the highest accolade of my people.

I did not even consider asking to speak to Mom.  In my mind, likely as confused as hers, I am an abstract construct to her.  The child who caused so much trouble.  The child who said "thanks, but no thanks" some 24 years ago, and by letter, not phone.  I'd had enough, enough doublespeak, enough lies, enough suppression, oppression.  I was careful to express my real gratitude for the raising, for the good times, for the afternoon on the sailboat, for the tea and toast, for the tips on dumping drinks into potted plants at cocktail parties, and the admonitions to stand up straight and be proud of my height.

She taught the art of thank-you notes, of indexing social debts (keeping a tit-for-tat list of Christmas card recipients and a neat list of who attended what party and what outfit she had worn to each). She taught the power of obligation, the complexities of generations.  She was, too, a teacher. Of little ones, but they are the most precious of all.  I did a brief stint as a substitute in a second grade classroom and was more terrified than when I faced a room full of savvy, educated, bright-as-the-moon, inquisitive young men and women.  It was Mom's influence that tainted my university teaching with the same urge to protect and defend that comes so naturally on behalf of six-year-olds.  (Sometimes that was a problem.)

I wished the Sister-Unit good courage and good luck, as she fights for some semblance of coordinated care, hires nurses, and deals with an overfed dog now prone to urinary incontinence.  Oh, and a doctor who opines only the glaringly obvious and does not return her polite phone calls.  It's not his mother, what does he care?  Oh, I take that back.  He's perfectly competent.  There's nothing to do but muddle through.

The other mother, the biological Mother-Unit?  I don't call, or not often, and cannot face it today.  She's likely to make a perfunctory inquiry about her first set of boys, and I cannot spit out the perfunctory lies, not today.  Maybe I should call, but have ready the most non-perfunctory of retorts.  "Lumpy? After winning Wimbledon, he took a brief rest in Monte Carlo -- you know what a gamer he is -- before sporting the yellow jersey on the Tour.  Right now, he's gearing up for a stint as Compositional Inquisitor.  He gets to wear flowing robes and a pouffy hat, Ma.  Isn't that grand?"

Of the other sweet Brother-Unit, I could just wow her with the truth, but her dementia, like her normal state, won't admit too much of the stuff.  So I'd say something like: "He still proudly marches to the beat of his own drum and radiates compassion and equanimity into the wavelengths of the universe, Ma, just like I told you last time."

The third call?  To an evangelical busybody who delights in telling me what to do and then, in undermining my efforts.  This week she taught me a valuable lesson about trust, as in:  Don't do it.  So the third call was harsh but easy. Her proselytizing had brought her no Godly approbation, just the stench of manure spread on burning sulfur. That may be overstating the matter.  I'll let you know.

How am I?  How do you think?  I'm in terrible physical pain, my right hand and foot have seceded from the union, I cannot eat, barely drink, sleep in fits, spasm at the whim of invisible cattle prods, and am returned to the days of fever and sweats, lethargy. Despite that, I take my cue from my siblings, a hardy bunch, smart enough to know that the only way through is through. That there is still music, and that even death is funny.

I cannot bear much more of this, but we all know I will.  My piddling troubles are as nothing. I still recognize beauty and humor -- but they must be either exquisite or of admirable kitsch.




© 2013 L. Ryan

Valerian Root, Lemon Balm, and Hops

It's been a long day here at the Haddock Family ancestral manor, Marlinspike Hall.

I paid the piper for pitching in on ManorFest 2014 preparations yesterday, as well as giving the catacomb guest quarters a much needed spiffing up, unclogging one toilet and two medieval caricatures of a sink.  A few loads of laundry, trimming the hooves of our miniature Clydesdale herd, clipping the ferocious thick talons of Buddy the Maine Coon, and... well, I broke a rib.

That's a lie. I broke the rib last week.  Wednesday night, in fact, at about 10:30 pm.  It was another case of derring-do.  I showered (that's the "derring-do" part) and then reached for a fluffy towel of fetching cerulean blue (that's the "breaking the rib" part).

So my fit of physical exertion yesterday left me languishing abed today, though I always do my allotted morning chores.  Glad today not to have anyone witness me checking off those bits of manor-keeping, once done, I did my best impression of a beached whale.

It's just a rib, for Pete's sake!  Tiny bars of a cage, curvy and insubstantial. But oh, does it hurt when its delicate construction gives way.

We're fragile creatures, aren't we?

And yet, we are resilient, if fortunate enough to have grace in our lives.  Someone to pardon our blurted thoughtlessness, someone to model better behavior without underscoring how very, very stupid we can be. A Fred to offer pillows to splint the battered bones and ease the pain of breathing in, breathing out.

Though I despise the expression, I'll use it.  One of my "kids" earned his wings late yesterday.  Nolan, to use an even more disliked phrasing, fought the good fight.

He needed to die, that child, and his family was as ready as ready can be.

As if you haven't endured enough gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, and ash flying willy-nilly about this blog (worse even than cat hair is sanctified ash), I must also tell you that Brayden Martin has reached a new stage in his journey.  His cancer has returned with a vengeance in his spine, and in his precious, precocious brain.

Maranda has not told Brayden of Nolan's death.  I love Maranda -- she doesn't hide a thing, and she doesn't hide a thing because she's learned it's just a waste of precious time.  She wondered if she would even tell Brayden... but, of course, she has to tell Brayden, for Nolan was his best buddy.  But I love that she permits herself these moments that the rest of us edit out with such assiduity.

She'll worry about what to say, how best to ease Brayden into this knowledge, and she will, of course, find that her son had already begun to grieve.  Her words will be perfect, the curvature of her arms even better.

You've only to look at the two boys together last week to understand that all these difficult conversations have been prefaced by an easy, instantaneous look, a soft kiss, a knowing that precedes experience. We stifle that childhood gift at some point -- adolescence?  When we hit thirty?  As we round the turn at eighty-five?

Brayden and Nolan, May 2014

So Brayden's doctor, a very wise woman, I hear, told Maranda to take her crew and find a large body of water (with nearby swimming pools and Cabana Boys) completed by other kick-ass amenities.  So this is where they're hanging:

Blue Skies Ministries Retreat

In other news, Fred and I are weaning ourselves off of syrupy Colombian coffees and trying the lighter French roasts.  It's hard, but I think we can do it.

This year's ManorFest looks to be more of a community-driven effort than ever before, and ticket sales are booming.  Fred, however, had a severe allergic reaction to the preponderance of artisanal booth entries, and required emergency epinephrine when several local artisans waxed long about their week-old handcrafted products' patinas.  I slipped him some new wine and old cheese -- he bounced right back.

What with the devastation of Grader Boob's news, and the buffeting abuse of children running off to greener pastures, leaving us stodgy adults quite literally in the weeds, I've had a special memory of reedy, whistful singing -- a soft and breezy song used to say goodbye to a sweet friend.   I'd sing it for you but fear that la bonne et belle Bianca Castafiore might inflict great bodily harm at my off-key screeching.  So here's something far better --




I'm off to fetch some lowfat plain yogurt, with 3 packets of fake sugar (the kind dressed in blue), eight frozen strawberries, and some cinnamon.  It's the perfect accompaniment to my current Richard Russo binge, an homage to the always jesting beloved Brother-Units -- yes, both of them!

Another chapter of Straight Man under my belt, and by then, the valerian root, lemon balm, and hops from an hour ago ought to ease me out of this mournful Monday into the waiting wonders of Tuesday.

Be kind to one another.





© 2013 L. Ryan

"generosity. be generous.": A Repost

Originally published Monday, October 19, 2009

OFFICIAL Somewhere over the Rainbow - Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole

does the universe conspire? (no, i think not.)
damn. this is another of my many blog posts that is pure therapy, a poor recalcitrant woman's version of therapy -- following the one terrible rule that -- once writ -- nothing can be taken back.
i just don't *do* "universe" well. there are few who can do it well. martin luther king, jr. did it well.
my favorite? "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." see? see? what did i tell ya? king did a good "universe." he was probably thinking, "heck yeah! you can quote me! who said it? who said it? that's right -- i said it..."
i like to think that maybe he looks around, furtively, then pumps his right arm, and cries: "SHAZAM!"
martin "captain marvel" king!
so, no, the universe does not conspire in serendipity today. rather, the arc of my emotion -- it is fiendishly inclusive. there is nothing, nada, zilch that does not relate, if that's how i want it.
it's as simple, i suppose, as "whose blog is it, anyway?" if you want it simple, you could think that.

at 11 am, i sometimes watch ER reruns. lately, they've been approaching mark greene's death, that beautiful episode in hawaii.

it's a fiction. it's a t.v. show. he gets to die as most of us would like, a dream death. i think that as i lay dying, i'm going to insert myself into that scene. wouldn't that be a gas? i'll probably be alone on some cracked and yellowed linoleum, brain dead, gifted with nary a thought!
also, i am pretty sure i'll be leaking. stinky, maybe with a joint or two having exploded. dare i dream of immolation? i am one of those who *believe* in spontaneous human combustion.

an airy room, sun, wind, ocean. a porch that wraps around. sand, herbs, a little tiny baby. all the natural forces gathered to usher him out. his death has a great soundtrack, too. YouTube is constantly putting out the fire of unauthorized vids -- disabling the audio. it's rough 'n tough, YouTube.
i rushed out and bought israel's cd, with the "somewhere" medley. a friend also gave it to me as a gift the next week. brother-unit grader boob burned me a copy for christmas. it seemed to make me come to mind.

so mark greene gets to leave on the wings of that incredible lullaby.

it's only 11:34 am, in marlinspike hall, deep, deep in the tête de hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs).

yes, the archduke announced yesterday an amendment to the name of the land, this delightful country where i am so blessed to be. from now on, marlinspike hall is nestled in the tête de hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs). it has a good mouth-feel, it rolls in la bouche.

ah, so he has just seized... always a milestone, don't cha think?

elizabeth says; "maahhhk, you need a cat scan and a full workup!" i giggle.

then begin to weep again, as he says, "i don't wanna go back home. it's beautiful here, isn't it?"

yes, mark! stay there. opt for that!

then the anger rises again... i want to opt for that, dammit. and quick.

before my mother dies.

yes, before she exits, stage left. exeunt (because she shouldn't go out alone.).

do you know how much i owe my sister lale? unqualified, my sister. not half-sister. not sister-of-the-next-batch. not sister-who-blurts-out-everything. just sister.

i was thinking on that as i wept my way around the kitchen. cleaning. like a crazed woman. unfortunately, not a crazed cleaning woman... as in, someone who effectively gets the jobs done.

i smear.

rachel just lied to her dad.

"remember when i used to sing you to sleep?"
"no {all sullen-like}."

he doesn't stop, he knows better. she had a dog. there was a balloon. she had a grandmother.

"i don't remember, i don't remember any of that stuff. it's not important. it's useless boring useless crap, a dog named dudley? stop talking to me about it."

so it looks like pancreatic cancer, ain't that a bitch? i think myself so evolved, i think i know it all. i was happy to hear "pancreatitis," happy to think, well, good, now we know, now we can treat it, now she will get well.

i pushed to the back of my brain the thought, "why in the world would she have pancreatitis?"

it is NOT for sure yet. it will be for sure on wednesday. two days left to pretend. to practice saying "mother." "mom." it just sounds foreign.

now, lale. la-le. lollylolly! i can say "lale" all the livelong day!

back to smearing around the grease and dirt in the kitchen (the Medieval Kitchen, my favorite. but have you ever tried to clean a medieval kitchen? the spit alone has inspired centuries of baked on, smokey crud. mr. clean is a useless twit in our kitchens...)-- back to lale, my sister, what a neat, nifty person.

without her? i'd not be in touch with tumbleweed. i'd not even know he was alive.

without her? i'd not know, and perhaps, not care, that mother is [likely] dying.

i'd not entertain the notion of family -- beyond the beloved grader boob. this aunt, that uncle, those nieces and nephews galore.

okay, so there is some suspect parentage going on -- babies without fathers, teenagers of indeterminate mothers. who cares? at least all those people have been busy living.

i applaud them, i applaud you -- if you've been busy living.

"generosity. be generous."

those are the words mark leaves his daughter.

a brilliant legacy. it speaks to me, as i've not been generous but still have been blessed by those who -- effortlessly, it seems -- are. those who are. generous.

mother's late husband, necip -- easily the most generous man i ever met. he'd have been a great dad to have... and it thrills me, sometimes, to think of lale receiving that gift from him. he would smile to know how well she was schooled, how hugely giving is her good heart.
i promised to call again later today, as she said she was struggling "to keep [her] mind straight, in the right place."
i am going to give this sister thing a shot.


*****************************************************************************************
"...comment dire autre chose, autre chose que l'ímpossibilité de dire, comme je fais ici: moi, je signe..."

Billy Long, Rest In Peace

Joyce Ann Long ‏@ann_joyce50

Billy passed away at 10:03am this morning

Castle Bridge, connecting Caldwell and Burke Counties in Western North Carolina

Joyce Ann Long ‏@ann_joyce50

Guest Book for Billy Long – Online Guest Book by Hickory Daily Record and http://Legacy.com . http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/hickoryrecord/guestbook.aspx?n=billy-long&pid=161051046#.UKQ17NnN2DI.twitter …


Billy Bradford Long GRANITE FALLS Billy Bradford Long, 57, of Granite Falls, passed away Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012, at his home. Billy was born Nov. 28, 1954. He was a veteran of the U.S.Army, having served from 1973 to 1980. He is preceded in death by a brother, John Long; and his parents, Dale and Getty Long. Survivors include his wife, Joyce Williams Long; mother-in-law, Olivee Williams; sister-in-law, Jeannie Williams; brother-in-law, Michael Williams; three daughters, Misty Bentley and family friend, Michael Sebert, Christy Casco, and Shawna Williams; and three grandchildren, Brian, Aric, and Christopher; his brothers, Tony Long and wife, Linda, Gary Long and wife, Lisa, and Roger Long and wife, Damaris, of Conover; and Libby Silcox, and daughter, Jessi, of Hickory; and many nieces and nephews. There will be a memorial service held at a later date.