tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51899540530912168352024-03-05T03:52:55.425-05:00When What I Came to Say Is I Have Learned Who We Arethefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.comBlogger323125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-20970749307476417652022-05-14T16:13:00.006-04:002023-08-10T20:38:48.958-04:00Yeau Claire<p><span style="font-size: small;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyA5WxF_SexJQ5V3TDja8PomqYdlOAwTYOV07bc6VAQtHpxh-08BLpvd70oJ7iuUMxhz2xOVlfcLPs-a20ZPRa3VWS56JyhDfT6imPPqwEd6-rEFwotbeMiHA3F1vmk5YIMWg5U45RaHZ9Wl6mngKSilTFE8_QpXcnboLrominew3NzIlRyBjUZvgX/s3088/B9B99465-E050-4DE5-BCD2-E69CA6C79F2D.heic" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3088" data-original-width="2320" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyA5WxF_SexJQ5V3TDja8PomqYdlOAwTYOV07bc6VAQtHpxh-08BLpvd70oJ7iuUMxhz2xOVlfcLPs-a20ZPRa3VWS56JyhDfT6imPPqwEd6-rEFwotbeMiHA3F1vmk5YIMWg5U45RaHZ9Wl6mngKSilTFE8_QpXcnboLrominew3NzIlRyBjUZvgX/w150-h200/B9B99465-E050-4DE5-BCD2-E69CA6C79F2D.heic" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">No sense in quarantining the TP</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;">When I left Lehigh on March 20th, 2020, just before they sealed it up like a giant stone Tupperware, none of us knew how long we’d be gone before things got back to normal. It was my first full-time academic job, as a VAP the year after I’d earned my PhD there. Closing the door on Drown 303 felt like a change, like the end of something, like the beginning of something, like a surreal suspended animation or like I’d walked out into the spring air of an alternate universe—but I didn’t imaging I’d <i>never</i> be back.</span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Leaving my beloved home on the north side for an academic conference the following summer felt much the same. I packed, blithely told my kitties I’d be back soon, printed out the paper I was giving, and headed up in the general direction of the Mass Pike. It was there that I got an unexpected phone call offering me a multi-year position eleven hundred miles away—with a catch. I needed to be there in a month.</span></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Thirty-seven days. That’s how long I had to pull up the roots that had been growing for a decade, find a place to live, fly out for three days to attend in-person training and sign a lease, and transplant myself and everything I owned. But the truth of the matter is, I’d been uprooted several times in the intervening fifteen months, even while mostly locked in my cherished 650 square feet of sunny, pre-war space: unimaginable life changes for my beloved that still weigh on me, a failed contract renewal due to Covid, eight and a half months of increasingly debilitating symptoms that took seven infusions (that nearly damn killed me, thank you very much Affordable Care Act for forcing me to use a drug it turns out I'm deathly allergic to) and a surgery that ended up being not nearly as simple as anyone expected. The loss, again, this time irrevocably so, of a dearest, precious friend with whom I had finally been able to make amends, due to things beyond either of our control. An incredibly hard year of online adjuncting, half of it at a school I still haven’t set foot on the campus of. I’m still not entirely sure where it is beyond the exit sign off 22. Five weeks of filling in for parental leave at Lehigh after the Dean managed to screw me with my pants on one last time.</span></span></span><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">So moving to Wisconsin never felt like a choice. It has always felt, in some ways, like a desperate loss, despite how happy I am here in the larger sense of fulfillment. It still feels like an amputation, a bewildering exodus by night. A flight from something. I still don’t know what. I'm still mourning the old life that I'm just now starting to accept would never have returned even if I had stayed there. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGo3JMl9B1vA11hNXx0VcshCLlAfG_uz4Bk9uCM2HNpAOCA6WXf5hY_b0q28JHQLis5RSyy0Hrmor6rqGOFC95CRUjHioiyhlpo_z2DXi_w8j81ssrWbBbcM6qpnHKc03PVVkmm-_dhb1ryfvcIptmwELlZVc9oTtYh0UPcFSwuXxl7RM8MpzpU2d/s4032/24372429-6F99-4917-AE13-4F353796FA43_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGo3JMl9B1vA11hNXx0VcshCLlAfG_uz4Bk9uCM2HNpAOCA6WXf5hY_b0q28JHQLis5RSyy0Hrmor6rqGOFC95CRUjHioiyhlpo_z2DXi_w8j81ssrWbBbcM6qpnHKc03PVVkmm-_dhb1ryfvcIptmwELlZVc9oTtYh0UPcFSwuXxl7RM8MpzpU2d/s320/24372429-6F99-4917-AE13-4F353796FA43_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /> </a></td><td style="text-align: center;"> </td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I can't believe I get to work here. </span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /> <span style="font-size: small;">But it's full spring here, finally. I haven't been down to the river since my sister came to visit me in October, when I took this picture, but finals start next week and I have many many riverine plans (not to mention a deep-seated call that I now recognize as not just the Chippewa but also </span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span><i>Anishinaabewi-gichigami</i>, Lake Superior), and I'm slowly starting to put down roots here, even if they're mostly just herbs in the window boxes. Part of the joy of my presence here is tempered by the knowledge that I'll be here less than five years. And I think that's part of the problem too. That I forgot that, on top of everything else that's happened in the past two years, my very presence in Doodlehem was always supposed to be impermanent. </span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span>And so I continue in this liminal, limerent space, in this not-quite-reality that I know will end, because everything around me the past two years has pointed towards that in a way that it never has before. And at nearly fifty, I'm not sure how I should feel about that. While Covid cases continue to rise, a recent email from university administration characterized the pandemic as "distracting." Students continue to be exposed but no longer mask. My partner and I continue to be in the holding pattern brought on by both our situations. I plant annuals in the garden, because I know I'll have to dig up anything perennial I want to take with me. I continue to agitate and protest and advocate for BIPOC folks in my community because my students are <i>freaked out</i> and my colleagues and friends are furious, and it matters deeply, and I love them so much--but I also subconsciously know that at some point I'll have to quantify that for my academic future, which is something that feels both totally gross and absolutely necessary. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'd stay if you'd have me, but I know that's not how this works.<br /><br /><br /></span></span></span></p>thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-2481100571627599342020-06-17T15:00:00.002-04:002020-06-17T15:00:47.257-04:00Watch Out for the Key Change at the End of the Second VerseI feel like I'm supposed to be having some sort of socially relevant commentary about 2020, and y'all. I just can't. Life with a chronic illness means I have very little energy for extraneous things like thinking when things are going <i>well</i>, and I feel like I've been in a low-level flare ever since *gestures vaguely at universe* all of this started thirty seconds into what was supposed to be spring break but turned into an extended dance remix of never seeing my beloved students again and mostly being locked in my apartment. Which fortunately I adore. Because <i>gurrl.</i><br />
<br />
<i> </i>It's also made my response time weaker than I'd like about the racial injustice we are (maybe) finally beginning to address as a nation. Tiny Doodlehem has so far had two protests and a community prayer service in front of City Hall, with a third protest planned for next week. Fortunately the Plaza is two easily walkable blocks from my home, so I've been able to participate at the fringes. Which, frankly, is my place right now as a white woman. Both days were also unbearably hot, so putting my white female body on the line for these protestors happened in a different way than most people might imagine, and involved days of rest after both events. Police presence so far has been substantial and visible, but largely benign, relatively speaking. Mostly directing traffic, but definitely <i>there.</i><br />
<br />
There's also been some really difficult conversations taking place at my place of (prior? current? It's hard to say. More on that as it becomes available) employ, led by our actually quite remarkable Chief of Campus Police. The retired City Chief and a former Marine until he was injured, he seems to be having a come to Jesus moment, none too soon. But the university itself has a long way to go to even be benignly un-racist, let alone anti-racist. Meanwhile, they're eager to have students return to campus in the fall, confident that they'll all wash their hands and wear masks and take their temperatures diligently. These are students I can't even convince to stay out of class when they have an upper respiratory infection, no matter how many emails I send them that say pretty much, "Y'all fixna kill me by doing that. Please cease." Most of my department's classrooms are very small, and located in a basement. I do not see this going well for vulnerable populations OH WAIT A MINUTE THAT'S ME.<br />
<br />
And all of this at a place I'm not even sure is going to hire me again in three months, and if they do it will be as an adjunct, which means financial and academic precarity and oh yeah, <i>no health coverage</i>. <br />
<br />
I'm not saying this to bitch. I'm saying this to take a long, hard look at where we are right now as a community, and where I am as a white woman with a (slightly dysfunctional) body, and how all of these things intersect with an eye towards what has to change.thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-77156421722677031642019-05-17T21:45:00.002-04:002023-08-10T20:39:28.796-04:00Into the Great Oh God Now What<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">I've just submitted final grades at the end of another semester, and after I hit submit on my Hamilton class (another post entirely because omg) I realised I'm seriously feeling a little adrift here. This semester was in many ways like every other semester--I didn't give them as much in-class writing time as I wish I could, multmodal "unpapers" alternately knocked the socks off me (I'm looking at you, "Burr Book." You go, Glen Chlo-Chlo) and bored me halfway to tears (how many PowerPoints can one woman take?)--but in many ways it was also way, <i>way</i> different.<br /><br />This semester, I finished my dissertation and I'll be awarded my doctoral degree this weekend. I ran another cycle through the job market--rinse and repeat--and have had some interesting results, which I am not currently at liberty to share (more on that soon).</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">But this has been my life for eight years. It has been everything. When Robin died, when shit went to hell and back with M and my mental health....through all of it, school was my constant. More than that, my dissertation was what I had, even in the moments when I thought I had nothing else. To suddenly not have that—even because I’ve seen it through to completion and am about to move on to something bigger, whatever that turns out to be—it’s a little disorienting, it turns out.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">I mean, it's not going anywhere. I've written what I hope is a hell of a project, and there are next steps to be taken for sure, but just for a minute, sitting here in my gorgeous blue ikat armchair, gazing at my kitties curled into weird shapes on the couch--seriously, dude, who sleeps like that?--I had a moment of panic, that vertigo that comes at the edges of things, when one is deciding to jump to see if they will fly.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">And this time, maybe I will. </span></span></span>thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-67030469839092814182018-12-23T21:26:00.000-05:002019-01-02T21:27:36.741-05:00AdventLearning to manage life with a chronic illness means I have to let go of the housekeeping guilt. I didn't vacuum, but I did the dishes and unloaded the dishwasher. I didn't get to Wegman's, but I got the presents wrapped and my bag packed to head to Alien Boy's and then my folxen. I didn't get to travel to see my aunt in New York, so I could have a chance of making it to midnight mass (not to mention my mother was making noises about the weather, even in my
Subaru). It's a challenge to not feel disappointed at what I didn't do, what I could have done, what I think I should have done. I didn't even muster up the energy to revive the Sarah HB Mostly Annual Christmas Tree Extravaganza for what may well be my last year in Bethlehem.<br />
<br />
But it will be Christmas just the same. The candles will be lit in my parents' windows, the hymns will be sung. The snow may or may not fall; it may be slush. We may burn the first waffle again this year--some traditions always hold. But the Christ child will come: whether you believe in the story or not, a reminder of what really matters.<br />
<br />
And that I have, in abundance.
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-36269344747645666862018-11-26T20:49:00.001-05:002018-11-26T20:51:54.866-05:00Who's the Turkey Now?It was Thanksgiving in Three Feathers a few days ago, which meant not only the usual hilarity about a misplaced grand piano (apparently my mother, my two sisters, and I are the only people on the planet ever to have read <i>Home Sweet Homicide</i>, because this joke makes precisely zero sense to the rest of the populace), it also meant that my mother had bought several boxes of Advent candles. I am forty-five damn years old, and I have never once bought my own Advent candles. The two years I lived in Spokane, my mother <i>actually mailed them to me</i> from 2600 miles away. Because, you know...moms.<br />
<br />
I pointed this out when my dad called the week before Thanksgiving to find out if I had recently acquired any orphans who would be joining us for dinner (don't laugh, it's happened. More often than not, actually. One year the orphan was trapped at work because an NPR party don't stop, so I brought Thanksgiving to him, but that's another story entirely). Before ringing off, he added, "Oh, and Mother has bought you Advent candles."<br />
<br />
What? Of course she has. It would only be news if she <i>hadn't</i>. Between this and <i>Home Sweet Homicide</i>, sometimes I wonder how my dad puts up with us. Then I remember that for five years he and I had a standing date Thursday nights to take out the trash and hold hands on the walk back--our driveway is quite long, so it's enough of a walk to catch up on stuff--and that every time I visit them to this day, I still try to arrange it on a Thursday. When I realised somewhat belatedly that Thanksgiving was a Thursday yet again this year (how does that always happen? And how do I always manage to be surprised by it?) I actually said, "Ooo, it's trash night!"<br />
<br />
So yeah. Maybe he's in with the right crowd.<br />
<br />
That crowd, however, had a bit of a malfunction this year surrounding the Advent candles. When my mom found my set and tucked them into my briefcase, there were four of us in the room, not counting the turkey. Among the four of us there are five master's degrees, one <i>juris doctor</i>, and fully 9/10 of a Ph.D.<br />
<br />
I mention this because it wasn't until two days later than anybody noticed that for the past eight years my Advent wreath gets stored at my parents' house. Which meant it was still in the attic when I left Thursday night, laden with candles and three different kinds of leftover pie.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiQo5VD4boJq40cirTGz9JLJ82t57OnVjtDPS5UHy1N_ezVT-0jVc3-vXb_sWfG2UQBVhtT8gfZKKA8w2Vcz4M0lVsw6344YDKXUCVYemROyQHQm7E_Nj_ELbJWxX_7dt5GchITKo590/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-11-26+at+8.36.00+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1334" data-original-width="1336" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiQo5VD4boJq40cirTGz9JLJ82t57OnVjtDPS5UHy1N_ezVT-0jVc3-vXb_sWfG2UQBVhtT8gfZKKA8w2Vcz4M0lVsw6344YDKXUCVYemROyQHQm7E_Nj_ELbJWxX_7dt5GchITKo590/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-11-26+at+8.36.00+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every year Solstice manages to forget how fire works.<br />
Also, how the dining room table works, which is by not having cats on it.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-55233555828604810202018-11-22T20:57:00.000-05:002018-11-26T21:12:24.911-05:00You're WelcomeAs I take a breather between pie crusts I am thinking about the way Thanksgiving is in my family. We take our Robert Frost and our Dorothy Day very seriously in these parts.<br />
<br />
I think about my senior year in high school when Betsy's family left for Long Island before we got back from marching band, and as we sat down to eat the doorbell rang and there was Betsy holding out a bouquet of flowers she'd stopped at ShopRite for because she didn't want to show up empty handed. "Hi, I'm Betsy. Sara said it
was okay to come over?"<br />
<br />
And I'm reminded of the first Thanksgiving I ever hosted (my second Thanksgiving away from home; Daryl and I went to Brodsky's our first year) and suddenly calling Meg's mom and saying "Jane, how do you actually cook a turkey?" And five minutes before dinner, Kary and Georgia showed up with a Mrs Smith's pumpkin pie and some whipped cream and
said, "We decided we wanted to have Thanksgiving after all, is it okay?"<br />
<br />
And the one and only Thanksgiving I was married, when we had Thanksgiving on a Saturday because that's what you do when you're a chef, and all four of our parents and at least a couple of our siblings and some waitstaff from his restaurant and of course Robin showed up and it was a madhouse but it was our madhouse, and Robin just took over
everything that my husband wasn't doing without asking if it was okay because he was Robin.<br />
<br />
And I think of the night a few years ago when I loaded up my parents' cooler with leftovers to bring to the station for Alien Boy and the desk guard on duty and as I was leaving I heard my dad tell my mom, "I put in the rest of the apple pie to make sure there was enough, was that ok?" and my mom answering, "Good because I was worried
that just the pumpkin wouldn't be enough."
It was okay. It was more than okay.<br />
<br />
It will always be okay. That's what it means, that phrase. It's not a formality when someone says thanks. It's what this house has always stood for, and will always stand for, no matter who occupies it.<br />
<br />
You are welcome.thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-59169080404174005532018-02-22T15:37:00.002-05:002018-02-22T15:38:40.068-05:00It Seemed Worth MentioningI've been pretty open recently about my struggles with depression and self-harm. This afternoon I had to fill out the NCHA survey--and remind me to tell you how funny it is to fill that form out as a 45-year-old. All of the sexual health questions are geared toward people half my age, and don't take into account that my partner is in his fifties. All of the alcohol-related questions are geared toward assessing binge drinking and hazing-type behaviours--and while I greatly appreciate this at a university that saw four students brought to the ER last semester for alcohol poisoning, I can't adequately convey in my answers the part where mostly when I drink, it's with my parents. At the dinner table. Or occasionally to celebrate someone's <i>retirement</i>. We are dealing with a whole different set of relationship issues, here, fellas.<br />
<br />
Anyway, that's not the point. The point is this. I thought some of you might like to know.<br />
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<br />thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-48305899598526563682017-12-06T02:30:00.003-05:002017-12-06T02:30:50.078-05:00Meet Me in STL (a brief interlude)Scene: Lambert St. Louis International Airport.<br />
<br />
I’m finishing up some research on
my layover when a man in his late fifties sits next to me at the charging
station and starts a random chatty conversation. I have never understood why men in their late middle age want to talk to me. Like, can you not see I am nose-deep in Henry David Thoreau?<br />
<br />
Anyway, he peppers me with friendly questions while we charge our iPhones on a power strip of dubious electrical safety. There's a steady patter: am I headed home, was I here on
business, oh wow Nashville, so what was I doing, oh he’s an engineer so he wouldn't know about any of that but his daughter’s favourite class in high school
is English, that’s really neat. I’m not really in the mood, but by this point it's impossible to follow what old Henry is saying (though really, what else is new) so what the hell. Besides which, having just recently finished boneless wings and a pretty decent craft beer, I'm feeling fairly amiable. (Also, this may have some bearing on my critical inability to follow Thoreau's train of thought. You'd think it'd actually help.)<br />
<br />
Talk
turns to his older son, in the Navy. He’s in IT, somehow; I can’t really follow
because I don’t speak IT, but I ask where he’s stationed out of. The man pulls his
baseball cap out of his carry-on and proudly shows me the embroidered USS Iwo Jima
emblazoned on the front. I suppress a grin and tell him that by coincidence my
cousin is also on the Iwo. We marvel a bit, the man and I, at how small the world
sometimes is, and he wonders aloud if his son knows my cousin. By this point I
am laughing. Hard. I tell him yeah, I’m pretty sure he does. The man is not
convinced, because it’s a fairly decent sized ship, and what does my cousin do?<br />
<br />
Well, er, he’s the captain.<br />
<br />
So there’s a pretty good chance your kid has at
least heard of him.
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-55729145010034272142017-11-18T15:17:00.001-05:002018-11-26T21:19:04.510-05:00Unexpectedly Inconvenient Ways In Which My Body Would Like to Remind Me I Am Still In Recovery, Mid-November EditionSome of this I genuinely did not see coming.<br />
<ul>
<li> Grading 40 papers by hand instead of online. Who even knew I moved my shoulder that much when I wrote? It’s a puzzle. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> Pulling up my pants. (And don’t even <i>talk</i> to me about tights.) Down, on the other hand, is no problem whatsoever. Make of that what you will. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> Talking on the phone. Sorry I missed your call, but I only have one arm that reliably goes up past 90 degrees, and I was already using it for something. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Feline affection. Solstice is a head-butter and a climber, and his favourite safe space is draped over my left shoulder. This dates back to kittenhood, when he was cute and wee and could nestle in the crook of my neck. Now that he’s approximately the size (not to mention shape) of a walrus, it’s somewhat less graceful under the best of circumstances.</li>
</ul>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Happier times</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li>Trying to get out of this fucking bra. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Flailing academic gestures, all sorts. If you’ve ever spoken to me in person, this needs no further commentary. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Backing into parking spaces. Backing <i>out </i>of parking spaces. Backwards in general remains somewhat of a mystery in my life. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> Can I carry this full cup of coffee all the way back to Drown without stopping to switch hands? Possibly yes, probably no. (Bonus points for catching that reference.) But I am definitely letting you open that door. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Hair. Anything relating to hair. Combing hair. Washing hair. Styling hair. The fact that hair manages to exist so far away from my current range of motion.
</li>
</ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHlCXNwzgPD8PQeWtHTvMBXjFSLyJsfk94NSO3Efl8FIWLpQWQW5J8pl9p3AKAuL7ptaPBYFlzTpdxwO6IvjXAKrDThPpOmeJDlvUhNNeh7rMyR8nWYYefu_BqnFdyubuPGVjGS5DExnc/s1600/23658660_10154930614351120_1338476393479261143_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHlCXNwzgPD8PQeWtHTvMBXjFSLyJsfk94NSO3Efl8FIWLpQWQW5J8pl9p3AKAuL7ptaPBYFlzTpdxwO6IvjXAKrDThPpOmeJDlvUhNNeh7rMyR8nWYYefu_BqnFdyubuPGVjGS5DExnc/s320/23658660_10154930614351120_1338476393479261143_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seriously. How did that get over there?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li>Pillowcases. Pillowcases are far harder than I imagined. I was prepared for fitted sheets. I was not prepared for pillowcases. And yet, I agreed to this lunacy, so here we are.
</li>
</ul>
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-68331052728876444252017-10-08T14:34:00.000-04:002017-10-08T14:35:36.293-04:00I Can Write This Dissertation With One Hand Tied Behind My BackWhich turns out to be a good thing.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, our fearless (ha! it's called acting chops) heroine has in fact run out of non-surgical options for her dominant shoulder and is looking down the teeny-tiny barrel of arthroscopic surgery in ten days. I made the mistake of googling--seriously, I know this, the first advice I always give to sick or injured people is NEVER GOOGLE--and discovered that per my diagnosis they are removing sections of not one but <i>two</i> bones in the joint.<br />
<br />
Swell.<br />
<br />
So on top of having 40 papers to grade every four weeks, umpteen job applications to submit that all have different requirements for the writing sample, and a partner who has once again been eaten by the Blair Witch (it's ok, we know where she works), I now have to do all of this with one arm. It's going to take me forever to do things like brush my teeth, forget empty the cat box.<br />
<br />
Which reminds me, actually. I'm off to go do just that, then grade some of that pile of papers.<br />
<br />
I cannot convey to you the level of suckitude this week has contained. And that's not even getting into the real troubles, like several hundred maimed people in Las Vegas or the fact that Tom Petty died <i>twice</i> on Monday. <br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Bitey Bird is not pleased.thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-72757504335616222382017-07-07T20:40:00.001-04:002017-07-07T20:50:38.618-04:00Once More for the Guy in the Hot Dog CostumeIf you're friends with me on Facebook (which, let's face it, you probably are, because how else do you know this blog exists?), you'll notice a pair of posts today addressing my ongoing depression. In the most recent one, I told you not to be worried, and I want to reiterate that. I'm not in any danger. Much like my anxiety and exhaustion--which are probably part and parcel of one big happy thing called my brain--it's not anything I haven't been walking around with for the past four years or so, so if you've seen me since, say, that one time Matt Nelson dressed up as a bass-playing hot dog, it's about like that, only the horrific anxiety attacks have mostly stopped.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Like you, I have many questions.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yes, it's for the most part rooted in Robin's death, which I learned later that week had occurred this same night, while I was in Ohio dealing with this bullshit. As a result, I dealt with this bullshit badly, and a whole lot of other things also didn't go as well as they might have if I had had at least a matching set of wits about me. In the last four years, I've lost relationships because of my grief behaviour (and other people's reactions to it), some of them dear friends and comrades of many years' standing whose (additional) loss I'm still grieving.<br />
<br />
In the past four years, I've also learned how to navigate some of my changing limitations. I'm getting okay at saying <i>no</i> and not feeling guilty about it all the time. I'm getting better at asking for help. I'm getting better at opening up about my actual struggle, not just the frantically hilarious theatrics that I sometimes turn it into. I'm getting a lot better at forgiving people. I'm getting a little better at forgiving myself.<br />
<br />
So it's not all loss.<br />
<br />
This afternoon, my dad called to ask how my shoulder was feeling. (Answer: still about 90% terrible, which is what you'd expect when you've just had a corticosteroid injection in it for rotator cuff tendonitis but can't do anything one-handed and you live alone on the second floor and there are things like, you know, <i>groceries</i> and <i>the vacuum cleaner</i> to deal with.) I ignored him because I was in the middle of ignoring an appointment with my therapist.<br />
<br />
Let me back up for a minute. I love my therapist. I mean, I <i>love</i> her. She also happens to be a Buudhist monk, and I genuinely enjoy my time with her and often actively look forward to hanging out spilling my guts all over her office. So when I'm too flattened to get out of bed in time to shower and see her, it's not necessarily the best of signs.<br />
<br />
And this isn't the first time it's happened pretty recently either.<br />
<br />
So anyway, when I called my dad back, I cheerily told him that yes my shoulder still felt like it's being sporked to death, no I haven't been to the DMV yet, and oh by the way I was going to go in to see about getting my antidepressant prescription increased on Monday morning.<br />
<br />
As you can imagine, that went over well.<br />
<br />
It's taken me so long to ask about this (because believe me, Alien Boy has tried to convince me that all of this sleep is depression talking) in part because there are so many damn moving parts to my metabolism right now, between middle age and an endocrine cancer and perimenopause and fucking <i>grad school</i> because did I mention OH MY GOD PEOPLE--anyway, this doesn't feel like the same as any other depression I've ever had, because in the middle of it I'm also content. Much of my life is great. So I figured this couldn't possibly be depression. Because I don't hate everything.<br />
<br />
But.<br />
<br />
Several of you, over on Facebook, have commented that it helps to
talk. And it does. Immensely. It's why I have a therapist I usually
manage to get to. It's how I'm functional the seventy percent of the
time I'm functional (that, and coffee). My dad expressed a similar
worry: "Counseling isn't helping?"<br />
<br />
Yes, dad. Counseling
helps. It helps immensely. But it can't replace whatever
neurotransmitters aren't happening. Sometimes it just doesn't help enough. It
doesn't mean therapy isn't working, or I'm not working my ass off at it,
or anything else other than sometimes it's physically impossible to
spatula myself out of bed for days at a time and nothing else has
worked, so maybe it's time to try this. Kind of like how I tried ignoring my shoulder pain for two months, which went about as well as you can imagine, then tried a cortisone shot and a feeble attempt at rest, and next week I'm going to have to sort out the "what's next" of that as well (more enforced rest? Another injection? An MRI?? I have no idea. That's why they make orthopods). Nobody would dream of blaming me that the injection didn't work, or the NSAIDs. And I don't think people are meaning to blame me for this either, but sometimes helpful advice makes me wonder what planet I've apparently been on<i>, </i>that I now speak such a different language from everyone I love.<br />
<br />
I know exactly what planet it is, though. It's Planet Dead Guy Who Was My Whole Life, and I'm not back yet. It's been four years, and I'm not over it yet. I live here now, so I guess I'd better start unpacking.thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-63184691717346853982017-05-09T01:09:00.004-04:002020-06-17T14:44:53.119-04:00Another Exhaustive List I don't want to come in here and constantly bitch and apologise about the fact that I'm never fucking around. I want to love this as much as I used to. I <i>do</i> love this as much as I used to. But.<br />
<br />
Grief is exhausting. Seriously, I was not prepared for how long it would take all my energy just to exist every day, for how hard it would be not to collapse in a slithering wailing heap of bones <i>Robin is dead</i> in front of everyone. My diss advisor. My writing partner. My students. My friends. The mirror. People at the grocery store. Sometimes out of the blue I will be shopping in the cookie aisle at Shop-Rite (as one does), and the goddamn Pepperidge Farm Chesapeake Farmhouse cookies with the dark chocolate and the pecans will attack me from the side and I'll be crying my eyes out before I know it, because we used to wolf them down by the little white sleeve watching <i>60 Minutes</i> or whatever. Mostly I'm better about this, but everything is still harder than it was.<br />
<br />
Grad school is exhausting. I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain that, but just in case I do: OH MY GOD PEOPLE. This whole semester has pretty much been me hanging on by my fingernails, catching up just enough to keep from losing my shit entirely, and waiting for this week to finally arrive when all I have to do is grade finals and calculate grades--oh, and write an entire syllabus for English 1 for the fall, and a course description for the spring catalog for the lit class I have to finish designing <i>that now has to have seven people in it in order to run,</i> and oh hey yeah, how about that dissertation because you're totally fucking on the job market starting last August? <br />
<br />
Also, it has been medically exhausting to be me for various reasons every since they decided it would be a good idea to take my gallbladder out before it exploded (which it apparently promptly did, all over the little pan they put it in once they took it out of my abdomen, which is equal parts funny and horrifying and also<i> ew</i>), and apparently now harbouring a case of IBS, which is exactly as unpleasant as everybody says it is. And because I'm in my mid-forties--and can we talk about that for a minute, because how did <i>that</i> happen all of a sudden--and have survived an endocrine cancer, every single hormone in my body has recently begun going haywire all at once, the finer details of which I will spare you, but suffice it to say that I have had no fewer than <i>six</i> gynecological appointments since my spontaneous ten-hour trip to the ER in mid-February and am now on a first-name basis with my uterus. (Actually, it's the fibroids that have names. I call them Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Though "pop" is more accurately a description of the hemorrhagic ovarian cyst that got me sent to the ER in the first place. But I digress.)<br />
<br />
It was a long winter. And I'm still trying to get to the bottom of the endless fatigue.<br />
<br />
But this guy.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
This guy. He is everything. He has been through so much, and he is still so alive and fighting so hard to return to the living, and I could not be more amazed and in awe of him. Twenty years later, we are able to open up to each other with trust in a way that I didn't think was possible, and if this is to be my entire life I will clutch it with both hands and bless it, because it contains him.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-21984760285544478002017-03-24T19:07:00.005-04:002017-03-24T19:08:31.269-04:00Face the StrangeHorrifying to see how long it's been since I've posted. Lots has changed, lots hasn't.<br />
<br />
<b>What's changed (since you might not notice all of it)?</b><br />
<br />
My last name has changed. Again. I reverted back to my maiden name effective this past Christmas. Don't tell the DMV yet, I haven't even gotten to the Social Security office.<br />
<br />
My email address is changing for the first time in 18 years, so that's a little freaky and will take some adjusting for everyone. Goodbye, Earthlink, you've been lovely, but you're charging me for a service you can't provide and that's dumb.<br />
<br />
I'm finally ditching Verizon's crappy sub-sub-sub-DSL because my neighbourhood isn't even wired for FiOS, too (related to email change, above).<br />
<br />
My hair has been some very interesting shades of blue the past 18 months, some of which were entirely by accident.<br />
<br />
Alien Boy. Well. That's changing, but it's also still the same. It's complicated. But what in life isn't?<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>What's the same?</b><br />
<br />
My dissertation is still driving me crazy in a very good way. It's also eating all of my time, which is why I haven't posted in forever.<br />
<br />
Robin is still dead. It still sucks just as hard as it ever did, but it doesn't always shock me as much when I realise it.<br />
<br />
Solstice the cat is still the derpiest derp in derpville. He's now my only kitty, the others all having gone to the land where cats go (aka the field out behind my parents' chicken coop, under several inches of dirt and a very large rock to keep from being dug up). We're adjusting okay.<br />
<br />
I'm still behind in my grading. Some things are constant. This is one of them.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-515695564479842442014-12-18T01:09:00.000-05:002014-12-18T01:26:46.774-05:00There Is Only One PathAbout three years ago, I had an otherwise random dream on what I assumed at the time was a random night. Presumably this dream had a plot, inasmuch as dreams ever do (mine are very often Edward Gorey-esque affairs with roast chickens on velvet cushions, cartoon dogs piloting flying handlebar mustaches, or what-have-you) but what I remember from this dream was waking with a very clear image of a tattoo. I've had two tattoos since my mid-twenties. One means a lot to me spiritually and metaphorically; the other is a random lizard on the small of my left hip. I frequently forget I have that one since, you know, I'm so rarely standing behind myself while I'm naked. I remember thinking I wouldn't ever get another one. I didn't want it to become a habit, something that I just did the way I occasionally pierced my ear or my navel<br />
--that last is something, by the way, I'd advise against doing within twenty-four months of cancer surgery and multiple doses of radiation. It helps to have an immune system if you're going to be poking bits of metal into the soft parts of your body. Just a lesson from someone who didn't think that through at the time. As Dooce says, be ye not so stupid.<br />
<br />
Anyway, back to the dream-tattoo. It was just a simple word, in a simple font. In a basic American Typewriter-type font, in black, was the single word:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">love</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
on the inside of my right wrist. In true annoying dream fashion, the "o" had been turned into a red heart. (Because, really? Apparently my dream-self is kitschy? Gag.)<br />
<br />
When I woke up, I thought I had been having a dream about 9/11, which was the next day. Then, on making my morning rounds of teh interwebz, I learned it was World Suicide Prevention Day. Apparently this is a thing on 10 September every year, and I hadn't known it. And I found this out that September tenth via a tweet from the fine folks at <a href="http://twloha.com/" target="_blank">To Write Love on Her Arms</a>, otherwise known as TWLOHA. It's an organisation I've heard of but not really had a whole lot of interaction with, though I hold its founder, Jamie Tworkowski, in high esteem by reputation.<br />
<br />
It's possible my subconscious knew the significance of the date, and it's certain that somewhere in the back of my mind I had the name of the organisation filed away--but that the dream happened when it did has stuck with me since. I've known since putting the pieces together that I was in for one last tattoo. But I wanted to wait until I was certain that the design was what it was supposed to be (since, you know, this is a permanent thing I'm sticking on a much more visible part of my body than my butt or my ankle).
<br />
<br />
Over the years I toyed with some design elements, textual phrases, fonts. Nothing seemed right. I had just about decided on a design--a particular phrase written in a research notebook for me by a beloved friend while I wasn't looking, in his handwriting--when (as <a href="http://www.thefirecat.net/2014/10/silence.html" target="_blank">previously recorded</a>) the, erm, excreta hit the overhead air circulation device with said beloved friend, not to mention said friend's unwitting embroilment in a certain, shall we say, "tattoo snafu" and, long story short, such a design became inadvisable.
<br />
<br />
A few weeks ago, it dawned on me. What better way to write love on my own arms than to use the words and the hand of a man who loved me better than I loved myself in those darkest days? And what better place to mark this love than Nashville, a place that is struggling to teach me so much about love these days, in all its widest and most illogical forms, whenever I'll give in and let it?<br />
<br />
Yesterday, the first night of Hanukkah, a night when I was always guaranteed to talk to Robin even though it was often only a text or email conversation, I scarred myself one final time, with his words in his own handwriting.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5sIvSLBvUyUnsjhuphlCPfwjB1VMmo0pyblMrO8IifcTLwJLYPjQC7T51qPdkwh59Sa8-TZbRnFA0Ymhph_enZWZe2U2MaNrB2i0bBvWGOy465UrB34DCOIua9uMCkE75vB2S6vfrKjA/s1600/IMG_6069.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5sIvSLBvUyUnsjhuphlCPfwjB1VMmo0pyblMrO8IifcTLwJLYPjQC7T51qPdkwh59Sa8-TZbRnFA0Ymhph_enZWZe2U2MaNrB2i0bBvWGOy465UrB34DCOIua9uMCkE75vB2S6vfrKjA/s1600/IMG_6069.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(the tattoo is straight; it's my arm that's crooked here)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-align: left;">Remarkably, without meaning to, the tattoo artist (a friend of my hosts') aligned the design perfectly with the, uh, existing real estate, so that the first downstroke of the "t" emerges directly out of one of the deepest and most traced over scars. Even more remarkably, I'm not ashamed to look down at my arm anymore. The scars from the cutting are still there. In fact, while the tattoo is healing they're even more visible, I think. Maybe they always will be. But for the first time, that's ok. Because for the first time, the love is visible too.</span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Maybe it's always been there. Maybe, as usual, I just needed him to point it out to me so that I could see it.</div>
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-13943207103637560612014-11-15T16:07:00.000-05:002014-11-15T16:07:30.251-05:00Wherein the Levels of My Geekdom Are Finally ExposedThough you may think you do, many of you do not fully understand the depths of my geekery. About 15 years ago, I bought a ten-buck Diplomat fountain pen that rapidly became my favourite writing instrument, replacing the four-buck Shaeffer.<br />
<br />
About four or five years ago it began gumming up hopelessly. No amount of cleaning or injecting or laying on of hands could solve it. No amount of searching could replace it. And I wasn't about to send a ten-dollar pen to the Fountain Pen Hospital in NYC (though I have sent my Waterman there, with good results).<br />
<br />
My writing has suffered. Landfills have suffered (I've been using disposable fountain pens).<br />
<br />
I JUST FOUND A REPLACEMENT ONLINE. It's now a $25 fountain pen. I bought two.<br />
<br />
Through actual, literal tears. That's the geek part.<br />
<br />
<br />thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-16498257753156460722014-11-01T13:36:00.000-04:002014-11-01T13:47:26.923-04:00RR Marine Corps Marathon 2014, Code Name: Embrace the SuckI've known since about mid-August that this race was going to suck. And the way I knew that was by looking at my training schedule. Of course, that would have involved having to actually look at my training schedule, which is something I more or less denied all existence of.<br />
<br />
If you've been playing along at home, you know I've had a very rough year. The roughest. In some ways, it was more difficult than the year I got divorced--possibly because I was trying to do it on my own. Or maybe because I thought I was supposed to be invincible about it, or something. But anyway, this isn't that post. This is a post about how I know better than to ever, ever run a marathon when my training is spotty and my longest run to date has been eleven miles. And how I did it anyway, because I'm an idiot. A stubborn, stubborn idiot.<br />
<br />
My reasons for doing this were manyfold, but mostly they involved pride. That, and a teeny tiny thing called that MCM Runner's Club. Five marathon finishes and you're guaranteed entry for life. With the institution last year of the lottery entry, this is sort of a huge deal to those of us who are preternaturally attached to this race.<br />
<br />
So. Anyway. Back to The Suck.<br />
<br />
Woke up late Friday morning, because, you know, my sleep schedule has been a complete clusterfuck for about the past eighteen months, thank you very much grief and anxiety, and still hadn't packed. And the reason I hadn't packed is because I didn't have any clean underwear. Or socks. I did, in fact, have clean race kit, which was unexpected; I'd thought that was down there in the bottom of the laundry basket, but it wasn't. Which just goes to show how long it had been since I'd run. So I did a load of only the laundry I'd need for the race, ignoring the rest of the mountain of jeans and towels and sheets, ran the dishwasher, cleaned the litter box, and generally made things bearable in the home aspect of life so there wouldn't be a mutiny while I was gone. By that time, it was almost 4:00. Ugh.<br />
<br />
The drive down was mostly uneventful in the traditional sense, but I was pretty emotional, remembering the last time I drove down for this race. Things were very, very different then and I couldn't help but remember the rambling phone conversation that lasted all three and a half hours of my drive in 2012. By the time I hit the exit for BWI, I realised I was more completely and honestly in love than I had been in....well. A long time. So. By the time I got to the hotel, where the festivities--by which I mean beer--had started without me, I needed to detour to my room for a few minutes for a good stormy cry.<br />
<br />
That taken care of, I went downstairs to hang with the running family: Gunz and Nita and Carl and Holly and Moo and the ever-elusive JW. Beer was had, and chips were had, and birthday cake was had (Carl's son turned 22, which I still can't figure out because wasn't he just like 16 last week?) and then ultimately bourbon was had because Nita. Gunz finally showed his punk ass around 11:00, which took the onus off me of being last bitch in (thanks for taking one for the team, dude).<br />
<br />
Saturday we hit the expo first thing, though the line for security was already the snake that ate its own tail. Mostly we were there for packet pickup, though Nita needed a phone armband because she was waiting for a phone call from her daughter in basic (that never came, because of course, because Air Force) and I wanted to hit the Mizuno booth. Which.....wasn't there. Sadness. Lunch. Naps. Dinner was a hoot, as we were joined by Len, Jeremiah, and Flex--BIG FLEXY LOVE--and Flex is always a joy to be around. His enthusiasm and humour are infectious. Big. Flexy. Love. Seriously. That man. That smile. Those dance moves.<br />
<br />
Sunday, turns out, I wasn't the only one who heard the alarm, rolled over, and thought, <i>Do I really want to do this? I could totally stay in bed.</i> We were <i>all</i> on the NTP this summer. Nobody was ready for this. Nita herself hadn't run long except Mega a month ago, and Gunz had taken a bad fall there and pulled himself off course at Mile 20, worried he'd broken his wrist and damaged both knees worse than the Marine Corps had. And Len's training had paralleled mine in distance and regularity, but at least he has the excuse of being my mother's age with a very ill wife and a bum hip. So I had company in The Suck.<br />
<br />
First Len and I couldn't find each other at the start line, because we were staying in different hotels and I was herding cats with the group in the hotel lobby. We hooked up just in time to start with the....um, I think we were with the 4:30 pace group, which is sort of hilarious but also gave us a good cushion to beat the bridge. The first two or three miles were trying to get into a rhythm, visiting European trees, warming up, and talking about Len's underwear. What? We're runners. When you've just veered off into the shrubbery to pee next to each other, the next obvious topic of conversation is the advantages and disadvantages of your particular choice of skivvies in this operation. (The part where usually he's all, "It's a secret passage--to my penis!" and I'm trying not to blurt out, "Wait, you wear underwear?")<br />
<br />
By about Mile 6 I was finally warmed up and feeling sort of ok. The fact that Mile 6 is entirely downhill totally helped. That was sadly short-lived, though. My back has been tight since about January, due to how much sitting on my ass writing a dissertation consists of. Mile 7 brought that tightness to new levels of Suck. Seriously, everything that wasn't my abs was cramping by the time we got down out of Rock Creek Park. Len wasn't doing much better.<br />
<br />
At Mile 11 Len made the painful but ultimately wise choice to pull the rip cord. He promised to meet me again at the bridge. So there I was, on Hains Point, alone, devastated, discouraged, sore, tired, and oh great. Mile 12. The Blue Mile. The Blue Mile is lined with pictures of military members killed in action. Hundreds of them. And friends and family members holding full-sized American flags with black name stripes on them.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgghyphenhyphenRz5ujL2TDgsEJ__Uq8RrP5lAYpzaPxXGwmdDkwAiHIrhP3VQtDr70ePHcCxwxZw7nST0W3-UqZTYyh4FLv_JDWezihnLkvHkH7at4nlAoVnH-gUdQcUv9xIgocrxswVmeADhd27O4/s1600/551457_10152850550261840_765563446332574193_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgghyphenhyphenRz5ujL2TDgsEJ__Uq8RrP5lAYpzaPxXGwmdDkwAiHIrhP3VQtDr70ePHcCxwxZw7nST0W3-UqZTYyh4FLv_JDWezihnLkvHkH7at4nlAoVnH-gUdQcUv9xIgocrxswVmeADhd27O4/s1600/551457_10152850550261840_765563446332574193_n.jpg" height="253" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mile 12 is where I lost my shit.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
At Mile 14 I passed Groundpounder Matt Jaffe and his crew. He was starting to look pretty grim, but still encouraging. Promised him the next mile. Sadly, the next mile brought hamstring cramping badly enough that I was worried about a tear, so I stopped at medical and had them wrap it.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Off Hains Point I ran into Len! He toddled with me a little--I was doing mostly walking at that point--and said he'd see me at the bridge. More walking. Midway through Mile 16 I passed Matt Jaffe again. His team was trying to get him to sit down long enough to massage a trouble point. With the vehemence of a man who's run this marathon 38 years in a row, he barked out the strongest NO! I ever want to hear as I passed. (I found out the day after the race that the pace car had passed him on the bridge and forced him onto the bus. My heart absolutely breaks for him.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Near the Capitol I ran into Amanda Sullivan, crutching her way to awesomeness. I've chatted with her online and her enthusiasm and joy astound me. She's the only person I've ever seen straighten up from puking after Mile 20 with a smile on her face and say, "Man, that bridge isn't playing. Phew!" and then keep on her rhythm with that same smile.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Quick chat with Len on the bridge (which basically consisted of me flopping against his ribcage and groaning, "I hurt like a motherfucker," and him handing me his squashed baby Snickers bars that he'd been saving for hard times such as this.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
More trudging. Six point two miles of it. The only bright spot was when a total stranger handed me an <i>entire</i> can of Coors Light heading into Crystal City. A <i>cold</i> Coors Light. Normally I wouldn't touch the stuff, but in the mood I was in, and the way my lower half felt, it was seriously the best thing I've ever tasted in my life. Glug.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And then I was at Mile 26 and I am good goddamned if I'm gonna hit that hill walking. When you've been on the course roughly seven hours, apparently this makes Marines very happy. I made about 30 new friends charging up that hill. Which is good because I very nearly needed them to peel me off the pavement after I crossed the finish line.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I have a new official PW for any marathon I've ever completed. And I mostly don't care because I knew it was going to be The Suck. I was hoping it would stay in the six hour range but meh. Sometimes you just have to embrace The Suck.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I expect The Suck and I to announce our engagement any day now.<br />
<br /></div>
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-54810915040821074672014-10-21T15:03:00.000-04:002017-05-09T01:11:39.818-04:00Silence<i>I want you to hear me</i><br />
<i>I want you to find me</i><br />
<br />
Over the years, I've talked pretty freely about my depression. But until now I've never talked about anxiety. Because until just a few weeks ago, I wasn't quite able to name it as a component of the way my life apparently functions. I know. You're shocked. Me? Anxious? The woman so high-strung she could solve the fossil fuel crisis if only you could find an extension cord long enough to plug her in? In some ways over the years it's gotten better, although people who know me now in my forties are probably appalled to learn that I've actually unwound a few good turns in the past twenty years.<br />
<br />
So why now? Well, in some ways—possibly because my depression is so much better managed that it doesn't mask everything else I'm also already feeling—it's also gotten worse.<br />
<br />
First. This is not a cry for help. I am not currently in crisis, nor am I in any way suicidal. I promise (you know who you are). Regardless. Several forces have recently converged, leading me to the decision to blog about this. And in true FireCat fashion, I fought it every step of the way. Some of it is my means of processing this. But the hard part of it is the understanding that removing the stigma of mental illness includes removing the judgement I have against myself for being this way. And that maybe, just maybe, it will come to include forgiving myself for being my own worst enemy when I needed love the most, especially my own.<br />
<br />
Folks, I have to name it. So here goes. On and off over the years, in order to try to tame my unruly emotions, I have been a cutter. It's not a daily thing, or even a monthly thing. It's a crisis management thing. And it sucks, and I don't like it. Sometimes I go years without even thinking about it. At the worst of times, over a period of maybe a few weeks or so I will contemplate it as often as I suspect smokers think about their next butt, and spend most of my emotional, and physical, energy trying to talk myself either into or out of it, just to make the urge go away. And it's only recently that I've come to accept that at my very lowest points, I may always have that urge, just the way an addict does, and it's not the urge that defines me but what I do in response to it.<br />
<br />
A few people—the five or six closest to me—already know this about me, because they have lived through it with me. Some of them get fairly banal text updates because they are on my first line of defense, because I love them and trust them enough that I've promised to tell them if I'm even thinking about it. These are also, by and large, the people who will respond to <i>Yeah hi, sorry I couldn't talk, I was in line at the grocery store, I needed cat food, and oh yeah I've been feeling really triggered today. How did class go? </i>with <i>Kitties thank you. Class was boring. I know, </i>because they really do know me well enough (and talk to me often enough) that they usually know that something has triggered me before I am able to name it. Some of them have called me in the middle of the night and stayed with me on speakerphone while I stood at my kitchen counter drinking increasingly tepid tea and cried my heart out with anxiety and self-loathing until I agreed to put away first the bigger knife, then the smaller one, and until finally I left the kitchen altogether.<br />
<br />
And so we have learned. The same man who fifteen years ago screamed at me in anger that even then I knew masked fear before he called 911 and had me admitted was recently able to have a rational and helpful, if somewhat emotionally misspelled, text conversation about whether I'd taken my antidepressant and other potential coping strategies—without either of us losing our shit. It was one of the best conversations I can ever recall having, even though it was painful and frightening for us both.<br />
<br />
The other reason, ironically, that I've realised for a few weeks now that I need to write publicly about this, is that I have finally started to understand—less than a month ago at that kitchen counter in the midst of that anguish I wouldn't wish on anybody, even myself—what lies behind that urge. And what lies behind that urge is silence. There is no way to hurt me more deeply than to tell me my voice does not matter and to try to prevent me from being heard. I've heard the psychology about wanting a physical pain that matches what a cutter is feeling emotionally, a pain that "makes sense." As I wrote several years ago now, that's why my response to getting divorced was to decide to train for a marathon. But it never entirely settled right, that reason for my most personal, most intimate desire for self-harm when the urges came. I didn't even make the connection the night eight years ago I wrote a letter to my husband in my journal and then dropped it into his lap while the blood ran down my arm.<br />
<br />
Oh god. I'm really telling you all this.<br />
<br />
But two and a half weeks ago before my phone rang, I realised that as I made three quick motions across my arm with the blade, I wasn't just crying with voiceless pain. I was speaking out loud. <i>I love you. I am angry. You hurt me.</i> These words were spoken aloud to someone who refused to hear them, someone who did everything he could to keep from hearing them. Who might never hear them. Who probably knows them deep down and feels as awful about them as I do, which is probably why he tried so hard to avoid hearing them from me.
But I'm not saying them here to blame this person. I'm only saying them because there are words I need to learn to speak out loud. With my voice, not my body. Without using them as a weapon against my own sweet self.<br />
<br />
Someday maybe I will learn that the truth doesn't have to cut to the bone.
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-422044226408032212014-08-18T03:40:00.002-04:002017-05-09T01:12:54.603-04:00The Year That My Life ForgotStill here, still making my way through grief. Longest. Year. Ever. As I write this it's almost four in the morning and Missouri is burning. Again. For more than a week now. Sometimes I wonder how much more we, collectively, can take. How much grief can a human heart hold before it bursts?<br />
<br />
There's much I can't say. I am still keeping a secret for someone, one I have known for years I would carry to both our graves. It's the only form of love I have left to give. I know this is cryptic; I'm sorry. I'm not in danger, and I'm not in despair. I'm just exhausted and philosophical. Also, my feet are cold. It's August, and I've got both quilts on the bed and wool socks on. What gives?<br />
<br />
And seriously, the Anne Sexton tweets are killing me. Ugh.thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-43313782083829395462014-07-21T16:11:00.004-04:002017-05-09T01:12:39.194-04:00Fly Away HomeI live in a neighbourhood of Doodlehem that is generally considered pretty safe--especially for something on this side of the river, since it's uphill, technically across the county line and its own municipality--but to get home from campus there's no avoiding the student ghetto (because, really, who doesn't love a college town slumlord?) and some very decidedly working-class residential neighbourhoods. I've been warned by my students, bless their hearts, not to walk down certain streets because "they're not safe"--which, in their insular little sometimes-unwittingly-racist minds, simply means "not white." As someone who's lived many years in and around New York City, their mindset makes me batshit crazy. The city residents I encounter daily on my walking commute to campus are friendlier than the average undergrad. Kids have come up to me and wished me happy mother's day even though I don't have kids, guys with dreadlocks have slowed down a half-block so they could share their umbrella with me, and the caretaker of the Latino church on the corner is always looking out for me to ply me with wilted flowers from the scraggly strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb, as long as there's not too much dog shit there that day.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I really like my neighbourhood.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Today I came across a group of three kids on the sidewalk. Their one Razor scooter lay upturned on the concrete. The girl, who was maybe eleven, and the older boy huddled on their haunches around the younger boy--six at most--who was sitting with his palm upturned and tears threatening to brim over. The focus of all three kids was a small red bead of colour in the younger boy's hand. Thinking he had fallen and cut himself, I stopped short of the stop sign and rolled down my window to enquire if they needed help.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I had stumbled upon a ladybug funeral. They had found this tiny red dot of a bug earlier that morning and had decided to keep her as a pet, but in the sad ladybug way things sometimes go, she had not survived. These three--who were of a race and ethnicity I am continually warned against in this town--were reciting ladybug prayers before burying her under a leaf they'd plucked from a neighbour's tree.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They were kids. They aren't in anyone's gang. They aren't shooting rockets at each other across an arbitrary political border bitterly contested for sixty years. They aren't shooting missiles at passenger planes. On this particular day, they aren't even shooting water pistols at each other, though it might not be a bad day for that sort of thing.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Just kids, trying hard to understand why the world is the way it is, and loving something completely unlike them, so much that it hurts. </div>
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-41924806062385496602014-05-08T03:13:00.001-04:002017-05-09T01:13:34.303-04:00Climbing Out, or Learning to SwimI am doing one or the other. Have patience. I am still here, re-learning how to live, discovering how to navigate since the north star fell from my sky.<br />
<br />
Bear with me. I'll be back soon. It was a hell of a winter, but spring returns.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, say hello to Pip the Cat, Who Lives Upstairs. Pip is doing a pretty good job of expressing non-verbally how it's been going the past couple of months here in Doodlehem.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQRc6kCXsWgjV47hAGyOA0HYu8aoTfwFX8ZIo73GsNAfeivUWVzI9r9sctBS8r5Tb9x4cy7USGtRbfwBe5F8hgJtiRfLWIKKUUeSevMrDcUkchyk3SMQFjuaKjbAcK-saaYonkuw4WdOo/s1600/IMG_3870.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQRc6kCXsWgjV47hAGyOA0HYu8aoTfwFX8ZIo73GsNAfeivUWVzI9r9sctBS8r5Tb9x4cy7USGtRbfwBe5F8hgJtiRfLWIKKUUeSevMrDcUkchyk3SMQFjuaKjbAcK-saaYonkuw4WdOo/s1600/IMG_3870.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-72354439342515082022014-01-11T20:18:00.003-05:002017-05-09T01:12:07.736-04:00The Well of Grief<div align="center">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9oXh1Z2aWxQ6WziRM1kdtUtmS4bnIKxSNGuqenun9gYK6ZQn0ubU_Qt-3d4r8NzgacKv3XDifJxwASR8gV2GZ41HaWJ0l7ZKhLv7iJ4c5O1A9JC8t1NnK0ClWSPnfeVicC0vPUmiVFa8/s1600/Robin+hallway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9oXh1Z2aWxQ6WziRM1kdtUtmS4bnIKxSNGuqenun9gYK6ZQn0ubU_Qt-3d4r8NzgacKv3XDifJxwASR8gV2GZ41HaWJ0l7ZKhLv7iJ4c5O1A9JC8t1NnK0ClWSPnfeVicC0vPUmiVFa8/s1600/Robin+hallway.jpg" width="209" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(c) Romano</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Life is as hard and as easy as they say</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><i>Walking the steps we've chosen on this day</i></i></div>
<i>
</i>
<br />
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<i><i>Some will be outrageous, some have rarely shown</i></i></div>
<i>
</i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><i>Some will walk in couples, some will walk alone</i></i></div>
<i>
</i>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<i>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>As I think about the world I see</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>They stare and smile at me, at me</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>It happens every day at the crossing of the street</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Walking out to see what's new and what is just the same</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>And the only word for love is everybody's name</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>And that will always stay</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>It happens every day</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>And every day will happen without you</i></div>
</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
I've noticed I keep resorting to other people's words. Lyrics. Favourite poems. Anyone who's had the misfortune to stumble across my twitter feed recently must think I'm an angsty teenager. But the truth of the matter is there is a deep dark well of loss where the words used to be. Someone I know recently posited that when we're at a loss for words, it's usually because we don't want to say the words we know are needed.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
That, my friend, is a crock of shit.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In grief this deep, there is only silence.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This isn't going to be a very good blog post. Don't come here looking for language put together with care and beauty. Don't look for the uplift of hope at the end, the lilt of words that suggest I am finding my way out. You won't find it. Even if it's true, and experience and my gut says it is, right now I don't know that this is good for me, this sitting alone in the bottom of the well of grief, letting this all be true. Right now all I know is I am raging against any sort of grace that can exist in a world without him. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Occasionally someone who doesn't know our history will ask who he was to me. And I'm genuinely at a loss for how to answer. Depending on who asks, or what kind of mood I'm in, I will probably say one of the following. He was a mentor to me. He was my best friend. He was my brother. At times, he was also, in ways too complicated and private to explain, my lover--but I probably won't tell you that. That was never anybody's business, and if you knew that about us, you already know more about our relationship than most people. Probably also including us pretty much most of the time.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But none of that explains our relationship. None of those descriptions do it justice. He was so much more than all of those things. It just gives you a box to put it in, to help you understand why I am so inexplicably sad sometimes lately. Why some days I don't get out of bed until mid-afternoon because I've stayed up beyond half the night before reading, staving off the darkness a little longer, when I'll have to close my eyes and face it again. That he's gone, and he's not coming back, no matter how many times I ask him to, no matter how many nights I dream of him. No matter how many times I have my phone in my hand, halfway to texting him something that I realise he probably already knows, and that whoever picks up his phone wherever it is these days isn't going to care, isn't going to say anything back to me that can make it any better. And none of it is going to make me open my front door someday, or walk into a room in a distant city somewhere, and come face to face with him, his hair doing one of the countless ridiculous things it was known to do--for in truth, his hair was never known to do anything <i>but</i> ridiculous things--his face squinched up in mirth and cracked just about in half with a grin just at seeing me, no matter how hard he may have wanted to throttle me five minutes ago (which was probably also true at least half the time, let's face it, and oh baby that feeling was so mutual it made me see plaid sometimes), that this face is never going to peer at me over the lip of this well of grief and ask me point-blank, "Hey dumbass. What are you doing down there? I'm not really gone."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Because he is.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLFtM3_VomfgzIvpIQL7cGQtkulpQRlQEArxZCcyjbMM-DtmMao-7KAeNhbxaiHgqtlYQADLcPIJT8SDkn4mN1CViufwT5VEK-T0aO9W742DpxsxQjaC4niw6lXPpcVKYRhGOn5IrRyko/s1600/Matt's+chair.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLFtM3_VomfgzIvpIQL7cGQtkulpQRlQEArxZCcyjbMM-DtmMao-7KAeNhbxaiHgqtlYQADLcPIJT8SDkn4mN1CViufwT5VEK-T0aO9W742DpxsxQjaC4niw6lXPpcVKYRhGOn5IrRyko/s1600/Matt's+chair.png" width="319" /></a></div>
</div>
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-27753145103797178542013-11-06T23:42:00.000-05:002013-12-14T19:03:22.556-05:00Robin Romano: 1956-2013I remember the November night almost ten years ago when we huddled in quilts and sweaters in front of your fireplace and read our favourite poems back and forth to each other to stave off the pain and the cold and the dark. I hear your voice speaking these words again tonight, asking me to read them back to you after you shared them. I hear your voice in everything. You taught me how to speak. Tonight the loss of you is a silence bigger than any words of my own, so I speak your favourite words back to your spirit tonight, to the part of you that might still listen from wherever you are.<br />
<br />
<b>The Port</b><br />
<b><br /></b>The river is slow<br />
and I knew I was late arriving but had no idea<br />
how late<br />
in the splintery fishing port silence<br />
was waving from the nails<br />
dry long since<br />
the windows though rattling<br />
were fixed in time and space<br />
in a way that I am not nor ever was<br />
and the boats were out of sight<br />
<br />
all but one<br />
by the wharf<br />
full of water<br />
with my rotted sea-clothes lashed to a piling<br />
at its head<br />
and a white note nailed there in a can<br />
with white words<br />
I was too late to read<br />
<br />
when what I came to say is I have learned who we are<br />
<br />
when what I came to say was<br />
consider consider<br />
our voices<br />
through the salt<br />
<br />
they waken in heads<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTJVsfj4oWli_DdyNRWV7_IJFEjKBK3AWqs2csCTy4k3TcYUQpNcExyG5D9Y_WYmGncc1pSZo6blvZ5IKoqoB0gDOsaY0Ivxf1ZLBgWvFue1i2qVT-S4hmlcvICQ1B6yCXMQ4ThYOfY8/s1600/sam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTJVsfj4oWli_DdyNRWV7_IJFEjKBK3AWqs2csCTy4k3TcYUQpNcExyG5D9Y_WYmGncc1pSZo6blvZ5IKoqoB0gDOsaY0Ivxf1ZLBgWvFue1i2qVT-S4hmlcvICQ1B6yCXMQ4ThYOfY8/s320/sam.jpg" width="240" /></a>in the deaths themselves<br />
<br />
that was part of it<br />
<br />
when what I came to say was<br />
it is true that in<br />
our language deaths are to be heard<br />
at any moment through the talk<br />
pacing their wooden rooms jarring<br />
the dried flowers<br />
but they have forgotten who they are<br />
and our voices in their heads waken<br />
childhoods in other tongues<br />
<br />
but the whole town has gone to sea without a word<br />
taking my voice<br />
<br />
-W.S. Merwin<br />
<i>The Carrier of Ladders</i><br />
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-35649043791661272202013-10-29T02:45:00.000-04:002013-10-29T02:47:06.074-04:00On the Banks<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkYHz3oPqD5E0f69gtY6ANLM2padTBQ76Ps4pXtZPk4rF-7jIgT5HOBnPidj35SJAibVBjtXRQAxAUwapJEcCLQzLuTFcdzCy1PjH-4OzVlnrHyRll1FYQj7hCpglMqfcBmvc6NFzKtGE/s1600/IMG_3038.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkYHz3oPqD5E0f69gtY6ANLM2padTBQ76Ps4pXtZPk4rF-7jIgT5HOBnPidj35SJAibVBjtXRQAxAUwapJEcCLQzLuTFcdzCy1PjH-4OzVlnrHyRll1FYQj7hCpglMqfcBmvc6NFzKtGE/s200/IMG_3038.jpg" width="170" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peace and All Goodness.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>I realise this whole post is a bit more New Historicist/Reader Response/narrative theory meta-meta-meta-nerd than I usually get in this blog, but bear with me here. I’m trying to get at something that is not easy for me to express, or even to admit. </i><br />
<br />
Everything in this life is story. Maybe that’s odd coming from someone whose primary lens for viewing the world has always been poetry—especially since I tend to be more of a lyric poet than a narrative poet—but that is one true root that has been given me. We are the stories we tell. To each other, to ourselves, to the rivers and rocks and tree limbs. We are the stories we map in the stars at night, even when those stars are hidden
from view and the hoot of the owl terrifies rather than reassures. The rivers themselves are stories.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The stories we tell ourselves are not always true ones. Honesty is often painful, especially in the dark, alone with ourselves and our worst fears and anxieties and memories. We remember how things should have been but weren’t. We get so caught up in what we think we wanted that we forget to be grateful for what is. We tell ourselves our version of the story so often we get confused between truth and fact. We forget that we can change our story, that maybe all good stories change over time.<br />
<br />
Sometimes the best thing we can do is quietly hear the story out from someone else’s perspective. Just because right now, in this chapter, in this scene, we might be our own narrators, we forget we might be a part of someone else’s story—and it might be about something else entirely. And it might not be as scary as we thought. I was reminded again last night, while in the presence of beloved friends I don't see enough of, how much this becomes instinct over time, this forgetting to hear the stories of others. One of the most powerful things my friend <a href="http://www.danhaseltine.com/" target="_blank">Dan</a> has ever said to me was this:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Stop being so afraid. We do so many awful things out of fear. It seems like most of our moral, ethical, and even religious tensions are bound to a need to control what we are afraid of or do not understand. To know this about ourselves might lead us to a different response, maybe even err on the side of love.</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
I don't think Dan knew just how close to the marrow he came when he said that. I think he was thinking about his own story, how it gets interwoven with the lives of others. I don't think he knew how much it was also my own story. Those aren't the words we use with each other most of the time. And I <i>know</i> he wasn't thinking of an internal picture of our skeletal structure, with a rotten broken heart and no lungs, barely breathing, concerned, confused, feathers launched like arrows through the dark to sprout directly from our fragile chests.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi3Kjii_A1cF9h7er9QZgDxX_gBnDq9fsZB5VX8C8XgeIy5sG9DxXheMlAEzFtz3SQ_zYOaRkZB-MoWfz0WsqppyjDlx0Cu4uG-sYJT8fRnO04wHhDYuwJzgXxy4aJ6X9QmG53BQkd1z0/s1600/IMG_3049.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi3Kjii_A1cF9h7er9QZgDxX_gBnDq9fsZB5VX8C8XgeIy5sG9DxXheMlAEzFtz3SQ_zYOaRkZB-MoWfz0WsqppyjDlx0Cu4uG-sYJT8fRnO04wHhDYuwJzgXxy4aJ6X9QmG53BQkd1z0/s200/IMG_3049.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stunned, but still breathing.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It might turn out that Emily Dickinson was right, that hope is the thing with feathers. It might turn out that what we thought over and over again was the hammering home of loss was actually a story about rebirth. It might be time for the story of us to change. It might even be that the story to which we thought we were doomed was no more than the prologue to the enduring myth of love. It may just be as simple and as inexplicable as that. Maybe our whole lives here are one big tangled love story.<br />
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thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-4909751523597612472013-10-23T15:19:00.000-04:002013-10-23T15:25:12.049-04:00Twenty Thousand HeartsMonday morning, everyone started their week as if it were any other: most people went to work, others dropped their kids off at school, I overslept...so, the usual. I got word of Deb's collapse the way a lot of shitty news seems to spread lately--via Facebook. I've known this family since 1980. Joel and Lauri adopted my favourite of our first batch of kittens--and let's not even discuss how I felt when their mom insisted they change his name from Hot Rod Kanehl (one of my mom's favourite baseball players growing up) to the more innocuous, dare I say even emasculating, Sunshine. We lost touch for a number of years when their parents divorced and their dad married Deb, but Joel and I reconnected when I moved back home after grad school (the first time). Joel was the first person I asked for when I woke up from my cancer surgery, since I'd already been wheeled past my dad who was pacing by the elevator, and that morning when we'd checked in, his dad was already parked in the chair in my hospital room. Remember when I got stranded in Denver (the first time) last winter when Ruby was dying and suddenly had no ride home from the airport at ridiculous o'clock p.m., and somebody's dad saw the Facebook post and drove all the way out to Newark past midnight even though he had to be at work at 5 the next morning? Yeah. That was Bob. They're that family. They always have been.<br />
<br />
I knew they would bring Debby here to Doodlehem because we have the nearest Level One trauma facility and at that point they weren't sure what was happening to her or if she'd hit her head on the way down. I can hit the hospital in six minutes at a dead run; the only reason it took me twelve was because I detoured to Dunkin' Donuts to get Bob a cup of coffee the way I know he takes it: milk, sugar, from Dunkin' whenever possible, and in the largest size possible. The only other person waiting with Bob was the coworker who had performed CPR until the ambulance arrived. Joel was on his way up from Virginia and Bob's siblings hadn't gotten there yet either. I knew I was going in as the anchor, but I still wasn't really prepared to have to be Bob's. He had always been mine. Bob's a former Marine. He served in Vietnam. He also suffered a (non-military) traumatic amputation of his right arm when Joel was about a year old, the divorce from their mom, Deb's treatment for breast cancer the year before my own cancer, and his own bout with lung cancer surgery, and his courage and sense of humour never so much as wavered outwardly in the face of any of that. So I can't imagine the hell he must have been in for him to reach blindly for my hand the first minute we were alone and gasp out, <i>I'm so damn scared.</i><br />
<br />
By the time Joel arrived just after lunchtime they'd discovered that there had been an aneurysm that ruptured, causing a massive brain bleed, and they were trying to stabilize her for long enough between scans to find out if surgery would even be an option. Every update was worse news, and by Tuesday the decision was made to remove all life-sustaining measures and transfer Deb to palliative care. There's never any way to tell, but given the significant damage, no one was expecting her body to keep functioning longer than a few hours at maximum. Despite that, early Wednesday evening they transferred her to hospice care. Deb didn't take any shit from anybody, ever, and this was no exception. She was going to go in her own sweet time, and this wasn't it quite yet. Hospice told me later they hadn't expected her to live through the first night. Clearly they don't know our Debby.<br />
<br />
Thursday, 12th September, was one of the most precious days of my life. Bob couldn't stand to be there anymore, and he had all manner of legal legwork to untangle and plans to start making. I had planned to stop in and sit until they returned, expecting them back any minute. One of Debby's work friends came by round supper time, and talked to her for a good hour--telling her all about Deb's favourite kids and what they'd done that day, and put sweet-smelling lotion on her hands and feet. We got a little bit to eat, but mostly we sat with her, and I listened. I'd never known Debby as well as I know the rest of her family; we probably hugged whenever we saw each other, but I felt uncomfortable touching her or holding her hand. Not because she was dying, but because it felt like an invasion of her privacy. I don't actually <i>know</i> whether she liked being touched, though as someone who worked for 30-something years with preschool-age kids, I can't imagine she wasn't at least comfortable with it. So part of me wondered what I was doing there. But mostly I felt someone needed to be there with her, someone she knew, in case any part of her was still there and needed us. After Marie left, we sat some more. Sometimes I read to her out loud--from <i>Edgar Huntly</i>, because that's what I was in the middle of that day--but increasingly I just sat there as the unexpectedly fierce thunderstorm bent the trees outside nearly double and rain rolled down the French doors in sheets.<br />
<br />
By ten o'clock I was done my book and needing to at least stop home long enough to feed my cats. But also, something was changing. Deb was starting to breathe differently, taking long gasps of breaths followed by shorter, ragged breaths, evening out, then starting again. I knew this was one of the last changes. It wasn't painful for me to hear, so much as worrisome. I knew she was being medicated to alleviate any anxiety she may have been feeling, and I knew her breathing patterns were simply her body trying to regulate oxygen flow to her brain as the pressure from the bleed increased and spread down towards her brain stem. I knew she was trying to let go. But I also knew--don't ask me how, since I really didn't know her this closely--that she was hanging on because I was there. I knew this was something that was between her and the God she loved so fiercely, and she wasn't going to do it with an audience. My being there was only going to prolong this.<br />
<br />
I will not tell you what I said to her as I kissed her forehead goodbye. I will only tell you that two hours later, the spark that made her Debby was gone.thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5189954053091216835.post-11013419767272393172013-10-13T23:24:00.000-04:002013-10-13T23:24:14.026-04:00A Dream DeferredThe end of August brought with it some personal and professional trials that just about knocked me on my ass. I knew I was at my breaking point when marathon training started becoming a cause for anxiety rather than a reliever of it and I found myself avoiding training runs because I was afraid they would go badly.<br />
<br />
What can I say, y'all, I was <i>stressed.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So after a couple of weeks of being very nearly unmoored, occasionally in front of other people (which was almost as upsetting for them as it was for me), I finally realised that something had to give. Since I was loath to part with my sanity, my relationship with Himself, or my academic career, that something ended up being Marine Corps marathon later this month. After talking it over with a couple of folks--the man I consider my running coach, the chiropractor I consider my counselor and spiritual advisor, and the man I consider my dad--and weighing my options, I decided to defer my marathon registration until 2014.<br />
<br />
Stay tuned for other stuff. Not all of it is stuff I want to talk about on the interwebz--in fact, some of it is stuff I don't even really know how to talk about it in what a friend charmingly (and weirdly, since she's vegetarian) calls "meatspace"--but some of it needs to find its way out and home.thefirecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17252139550073127683noreply@blogger.com0