Robin Romano: 1956-2013

I 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.

The Port

The river is slow
and I knew I was late arriving but had no idea
how late
in the splintery fishing port silence
was waving from the nails
dry long since
the windows though rattling
were fixed in time and space
in a way that I am not nor ever was
and the boats were out of sight

all but one
by the wharf
full of water
with my rotted sea-clothes lashed to a piling
at its head
and a white note nailed there in a can
with white words
I was too late to read

when what I came to say is I have learned who we are

when what I came to say was
consider consider
our voices
through the salt

they waken in heads
in the deaths themselves

that was part of it

when what I came to say was
it is true that in
our language deaths are to be heard
at any moment through the talk
pacing their wooden rooms jarring
the dried flowers
but they have forgotten who they are
and our voices in their heads waken
childhoods in other tongues

but the whole town has gone to sea without a word
taking my voice

-W.S. Merwin
The Carrier of Ladders

On the Banks

Peace and All Goodness.

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. 

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.

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.

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 Dan has ever said to me was this:

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 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 know 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.

Stunned, but still breathing.

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.

Twenty Thousand Hearts

Monday 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.

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'm so damn scared.

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.

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 know 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 Edgar Huntly, 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.

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.

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.

A Dream Deferred

The 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.

What can I say, y'all, I was stressed.

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.

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.

Really? Really-really?

Apparently God does not read my blog (see sidebar, right).

It has just been suggested I change into knickers I don't like, just in case.

Come On Home to Me

I've been trying to write this post for six days.

I haven't thought of a single word that can begin to contain everything I mean. There are no words for the unexpected spiral into grief I should have seen coming from ten months out but still managed to hit me like a freight train when church bells woke me that morning. There are no words to convey the soaring relief bestowed on me like a blessing at the foot of the mountain a week later, relief I had prepared myself to never find, but was stubborn enough to go searching for anyway. Instead, every word has no meaning, has two meanings.

And, too, I couldn't help but think of Maura. Like her, I headed north without telling my family. Very few people knew of my plans. Coincidentally, my destination that first night was a friend's house in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Like Maura, my trip was spur of the moment, poorly planned, and more than likely ill-advised. Like Maura, I'd received a series of emotional shocks in the days leading up to my journey that had actually spurred it into action. (Also like Maura, these emotional shocks caused me to drive stupidly and get into a relatively minor accident at one point that weekend.) Some of this is conjecture; we don't know why Maura left or where she was ultimately headed. So early Friday morning as I drove north on I-93 into New Hampshire, rattled and upset to the point of tears, I couldn't help but think, this is the part where it all goes wrong. This is the part where they never see you again. This is the part where you can't come home.

My story ended differently. I will never know why. I will never be able to understand the reasons behind why I was met at the end of my drive with more love and mercy and forgiveness than I knew what to do with. More, certainly, than I deserved. More than I have words to describe, and more than it would be prudent to speak of. It could have been so much worse. Actually, I was expecting it to be much worse, and I don't understand why Maura's path ends where it does--with a blank on the map--and mine continues forward with the people who loved me, who love me still, despite everything that could have gone wrong and every mistake we'd already made. I only know that, even though I didn't deserve it any more than she did, doors and arms were opened to me, and I was allowed to see my home again.

Where your darkness hits the light, in the space where you stand against the tide

You will always be home to me, no matter where our paths take us.

Where I'm Supposed to Be

Back and mostly recovered (physically, anyway) from a sprinter-van northeast tour with the guys. Had some long-overdue conversations, mostly conducted with eyebrow semaphore, shoulder nudges, deep earthy sniffs, chocolate chip cookies, and the occasional tiny rowboat --though I did actually have occasion to use my big girl words at one point, too, which was more difficult than you'd expect coming from me. Looking someone in the eye without getting lost and having to speak coherently to them from a place of authenticity is really hard for me. And by hard I mean terrifying and vulnerable. And the more I care about the person, usually the harder it is. This means it was damn near impossible.

Welcome to my tiny boat.

A flotilla of tiny paper boats.

Late Sunday night I took a crash course in origami off instructions printed on a t-shirt. Partly this was to work off nerves, and partly this was because sometimes my brain gets too cute by half when it gets going. Half the band thought this was the gift until I informed them it was just the wrapper. (Then one of them proceeded to leave it in the van when they returned it to the rental place. I'm looking at you, Stephen Daniel.)

Yes, we resorted to middle names. There was a slightly rotating cast of characters, mostly in the tour staff. At the start there were two Steves (both with ph's) and three Matts. A week later there were two Steves, two Matts, and two Saras. For twelve glorious and very confusing hours on Thursday night, we had the trifecta--three Stephens, three Matts, and two Saras. We were looking for a third Sara, or at least a Sarah, or even a Sally, just to hit bingo. Sadly, the closest we could come was a Rasheeda. Oh well. God knows what we could have accomplished with three of us, considering the shit that just the pair pulled off that first afternoon alone. The Matts even had hand-gestures to go with their names, based on hairstyles (Muppet, mohawk, goatee).

Two Matts, doing the same thing.
(c) Todd Polesiak

In between, there was a lot of driving. No, I mean a lot of driving. While I had the luxury during this sprinter of returning home to my own bed every night, unlike the boys, it also meant approximately a shit-ton of extra driving for me between venues. Also, I had a dissertation meeting on Tuesday morning. Because that was intelligent of me to schedule. Oh, and did I mention it was nearly 100° every day, and my apartment isn't air-conditioned? There was also therefore many a cold shower just to get my body temperature down someplace sleepable.

Sadly, due to the nature of people's private lives and That Thing Called the Interwebz, I have to leave out most of the good stuff, like the Fairy Zombie Attack, the endless rotation of people onto the air mattress on my living room floor, The Macaroni and Cheese That Would Not End, the part where I had to upend myself into every single front-of-house case with my legs a-waggle trying to get stuff out of the bottom, how I ended up with a bar rag from the Birchmere in my laundry today, and the birthday cookies that weren't.

No, really. Ever try to make cut-out cookies when one of the recipients is a vegan? And it's 102° in the kitchen before you preheat the oven? And you're working on something like twelve hours' sleep for the week and it's already Saturday? Yeah. Like that. Fortunately they tasted really good, even though they rather looked like dog biscuits. Let's just say we ended up taking a detour to the vegan bakery in town, and judging by the swipe of icing the guys left me after the show, it was worth it.

Two Saras, doing the same....
well, whatever. Close enough.

During the week, I also had a chance to catch up with some very dear friends not connected with the tour, some of whom I hadn't seen in months, and one of whom I hadn't seen in a few years. Altogether, there was much bolting through various lobbies to launch myself bodily at people, a koala bear hug off the side of a loading dock (which left a very interesting bruise on most of the right half of my body), late night Wal-Mart shenanigans (CDs! Matching jammies! A packing box to get that crap out of my life and back to Ohio as soon as possible!), a constellation of fly bites on my ass from the proximity of Monday's venue to the Atlantic Ocean, two of the world's most well-travelled birthday cards (one of which, yes, made reference to my illustrious career as Snowmeister, having been to Colorado twice during snowstorms), and a choreographed set-up of folding tables that would make Bob Fosse weep. Oh, also leopard-print sticky notes!, brought to me by a  band fan with whom I'd had an hysterical conversation on Twitter regarding the plural of Post-It. Personally, I'm still holding out for Post-Them. Kim disagrees.

Making it rain string beans.

Oh! And I almost forgot the string bean truck! The guys swore we were hallucinating, because who on earth just drives an open truck crammed full of string beans down the I-95 corridor? The guy driving this truck, that's who. Needless to say, I got teased about string beans for the next 36 hours or so. And, really, I was ok with that, all things considered.

And, perhaps best of all, there was a righting of the world where it had been wrong, a resettling of my soul in my bones, a coming home, however brief it turns out to have been. If I had known it was really goodbye, I'd have made you stand up for a proper hug, no matter how tired we were. Like last time, I was caught ill-prepared and you were halfway into somebody else's van before I knew what was happening.

Close Encounters of the Matt kind

I know there are no words for this parting, that even a breath is too much, that my blood would be too little. I know now that every time I see you there will be that door that we walked through once, that remains half-lit, half in shadow, just behind us. I know now that even among the trees that night we could never escape the concrete of the streets that would carry you away after I had fallen to my knees.

Do you remember what the city sounded like?
Do you remember what the city sounded like?