At some point, at least five and as many as 10 years ago, I bought a hat, a rain hat, the one on display on this very blog site. Naturally, it was not a thing of stylish flair or beauty. It kept out the rain. It also kept out the sun, and I can be seen wearing this thing in photos of a warm afternoon in Gloucestershire where Marlou and I had our second wedding reception. In short, it has followed me around, through thick and thin, and refuses to cease following. This week, having seen the hat in action, I decided it had totemic powers.
It was up against a lot. Within a couple of weeks of my return from a very pleasant stay in Britain, I began to feel cross, preoccupied and easily fatigued. I found myself staring at the pictures of Marlou that still face me from her desk and the entrance table by the front door. One particularly haunts me. It is the photo of Marlou taken four months before her death, looking utterly vibrant over dinner in Stockholm with Beth, my cousin's daughter. Missing from the photo is any sign of the courage it must have taken her to make such a trip, to bother to connect with distant family in a distant city, with her energy and time running out. I remember Marlou falling into my arms as she emerged from the airport taxi a week later, frightened and lost. I remember feeling the same way, with an added layer of ineffectiveness. I remember all these things because I need to remember, because nine months is too soon to forget them. And once I tuned back in, replanted my roots in grief, my anger and distraction diminished.
The hat was keeping an eye on me. The San Francisco region's rainy season is short and concentrated and has been making itself felt mightily this January. I resurrected the rain hat as the storms gathered, wound its chin cord around one of the handles of my wheelchair, and kept forgetting about the thing. I emerged from Café Borrone one night on my way to the Menlo Park Chorus rehearsal and saw that the hat, the very one supposedly wound of the back of my chair, had been thoughtfully placed on one of the tables.
Protecting myself from the rain became something of an issue in my early 20s. There was no issue for me, and that was the point. Living in London where light rain or drizzle were almost incessant, it made sense to go about with rain gear. Friends, observers, psychoanalysts, all who noticed me, seemed to gauge my sense of self worth and quality of personal nurturing and care on the basis of what I was doing about the weather. When things were good, I went out well jacketed, hat on head, often with a companion's umbrella...holding an umbrella being too much for available hands numbering one and grasping a crutch.
So losing a rain hat and not even knowing it was missing, then having the thing turn up, seems full of good fortune. Cosmic intervention, if one wants to push it that far, and I do. Especially when the damn thing happens again a few days later. Same scenario. Rainy weather, and I was making the shopping rounds of inner Menlo Park. Heading back from the supermarket, damned if that canvas hat lying in the street did not look a lot like mine. I scooped the thing up and, yes, it was mine, blown off the back of my wheelchair, but still around. A metaphor for protection and caring, as before, but now with a street-hardened indomitability.
As for the garden, everything is healthily postnatal, miniature green seedlings sitting there in the ground, confused, dazed and seeking a purpose. The sun should be purpose enough. And there is more than ever, for the rains and winds sent one giant oak toppling just over the back fence. And Tom my landlord seeing a growing crack in another oak had the tree cutters in to lop off a few more branches. The sun now rises over my garden early in the morning and stays risen, light cascading all day long. Nothing has responded yet, save for the Swiss chard which is practically yodeling with delight in the cold rains. But it won't be long. There's enough garlic planted back there to depopulate Transylvania.
Still, my moods are constant, my grip weak. My computer gathered itself together like an evil spirit last week, kneading its own innards, until it was twisted into a digital lump of coal that would not start. Naturally, I had not backed up the day's work.
I had lost a day. I had lost everything, my incompetence revealed, my stupidity obvious. For the computer had been doing this. I had been calling in computer service guys, available adolescents, anyone who knew more than I did about the digital world, which is to say, anyone. So, I knew the computer had been stopping. I knew better, that is the point. I should have done something. On and on it went, until a friend reminded me that sometimes one needs to not only turn a PC off, but unplug it. Wait a few seconds. Turn it on again. And voilà. I was back in digital action.
But still laden with inaction. I don't know what I'm doing. Everything seems tenuous. The whole enterprise could fail at any moment. At night, coming in alone from chorus rehearsal, I feel like one of those people whose car tumbles off a mountain road and lies injured and unseen for days. What if I get mugged? What if I get hit by a car? What if I lose my keys? Once inside, the perils never stop. What if I fall in the bathroom, the wheelchair blocking the door? I have an answer for this one. A sort of complete scenario worked out in my feverish brain. I would lie on the bathroom floor and, presumably having made several efforts to get up, work on ways to turn on the heater with my foot. Or possibly the leg of the shower chair. In short, there would be heat. Until there was too much heat. Then I would have to turn the heater off. Activities like this would occupy me for the entire night until...who knows? So what if I wasn't answering the phone? That would not mean anyone would come breaking down my door, would it? I could be lying on the bathroom floor for days. With mental content like this, the news from Haiti seems superfluous.
When did I lose Marlou's trust? Did I ever really have it? Did I deserve it? These resonant questions have been plaguing me for the last day. They come like a plague, because I am in a plague-receptive phase. I know the question, the real question is much more mundane. I cannot locate the file, containing Marlou's trust documents. They're just pieces of paper, I know. The lawyer has already promised to send replacements. I need to settle down. I'm trying.
It was up against a lot. Within a couple of weeks of my return from a very pleasant stay in Britain, I began to feel cross, preoccupied and easily fatigued. I found myself staring at the pictures of Marlou that still face me from her desk and the entrance table by the front door. One particularly haunts me. It is the photo of Marlou taken four months before her death, looking utterly vibrant over dinner in Stockholm with Beth, my cousin's daughter. Missing from the photo is any sign of the courage it must have taken her to make such a trip, to bother to connect with distant family in a distant city, with her energy and time running out. I remember Marlou falling into my arms as she emerged from the airport taxi a week later, frightened and lost. I remember feeling the same way, with an added layer of ineffectiveness. I remember all these things because I need to remember, because nine months is too soon to forget them. And once I tuned back in, replanted my roots in grief, my anger and distraction diminished.
The hat was keeping an eye on me. The San Francisco region's rainy season is short and concentrated and has been making itself felt mightily this January. I resurrected the rain hat as the storms gathered, wound its chin cord around one of the handles of my wheelchair, and kept forgetting about the thing. I emerged from Café Borrone one night on my way to the Menlo Park Chorus rehearsal and saw that the hat, the very one supposedly wound of the back of my chair, had been thoughtfully placed on one of the tables.
Protecting myself from the rain became something of an issue in my early 20s. There was no issue for me, and that was the point. Living in London where light rain or drizzle were almost incessant, it made sense to go about with rain gear. Friends, observers, psychoanalysts, all who noticed me, seemed to gauge my sense of self worth and quality of personal nurturing and care on the basis of what I was doing about the weather. When things were good, I went out well jacketed, hat on head, often with a companion's umbrella...holding an umbrella being too much for available hands numbering one and grasping a crutch.
So losing a rain hat and not even knowing it was missing, then having the thing turn up, seems full of good fortune. Cosmic intervention, if one wants to push it that far, and I do. Especially when the damn thing happens again a few days later. Same scenario. Rainy weather, and I was making the shopping rounds of inner Menlo Park. Heading back from the supermarket, damned if that canvas hat lying in the street did not look a lot like mine. I scooped the thing up and, yes, it was mine, blown off the back of my wheelchair, but still around. A metaphor for protection and caring, as before, but now with a street-hardened indomitability.
As for the garden, everything is healthily postnatal, miniature green seedlings sitting there in the ground, confused, dazed and seeking a purpose. The sun should be purpose enough. And there is more than ever, for the rains and winds sent one giant oak toppling just over the back fence. And Tom my landlord seeing a growing crack in another oak had the tree cutters in to lop off a few more branches. The sun now rises over my garden early in the morning and stays risen, light cascading all day long. Nothing has responded yet, save for the Swiss chard which is practically yodeling with delight in the cold rains. But it won't be long. There's enough garlic planted back there to depopulate Transylvania.
Still, my moods are constant, my grip weak. My computer gathered itself together like an evil spirit last week, kneading its own innards, until it was twisted into a digital lump of coal that would not start. Naturally, I had not backed up the day's work.
I had lost a day. I had lost everything, my incompetence revealed, my stupidity obvious. For the computer had been doing this. I had been calling in computer service guys, available adolescents, anyone who knew more than I did about the digital world, which is to say, anyone. So, I knew the computer had been stopping. I knew better, that is the point. I should have done something. On and on it went, until a friend reminded me that sometimes one needs to not only turn a PC off, but unplug it. Wait a few seconds. Turn it on again. And voilà. I was back in digital action.
But still laden with inaction. I don't know what I'm doing. Everything seems tenuous. The whole enterprise could fail at any moment. At night, coming in alone from chorus rehearsal, I feel like one of those people whose car tumbles off a mountain road and lies injured and unseen for days. What if I get mugged? What if I get hit by a car? What if I lose my keys? Once inside, the perils never stop. What if I fall in the bathroom, the wheelchair blocking the door? I have an answer for this one. A sort of complete scenario worked out in my feverish brain. I would lie on the bathroom floor and, presumably having made several efforts to get up, work on ways to turn on the heater with my foot. Or possibly the leg of the shower chair. In short, there would be heat. Until there was too much heat. Then I would have to turn the heater off. Activities like this would occupy me for the entire night until...who knows? So what if I wasn't answering the phone? That would not mean anyone would come breaking down my door, would it? I could be lying on the bathroom floor for days. With mental content like this, the news from Haiti seems superfluous.
When did I lose Marlou's trust? Did I ever really have it? Did I deserve it? These resonant questions have been plaguing me for the last day. They come like a plague, because I am in a plague-receptive phase. I know the question, the real question is much more mundane. I cannot locate the file, containing Marlou's trust documents. They're just pieces of paper, I know. The lawyer has already promised to send replacements. I need to settle down. I'm trying.
