Bracing
A cold morning. Well, hardly cold, but less warm, spring having temporarily retreated which, February being February, is hardly cause for complaint. Complaint, however, is in the air. Complaint is about the air. Complaint is everywhere and directed at everything and ceaseless and compelling. It's better this way.
My mornings begin with apparent order. A good 200 abdomen-strengthening strokes on the rowing machine, 30 minutes of recumbent pedaling, that sort of thing. Which, mind you, is overshadowed by the ever alarming news from the geopolitical front coming at me via iPod. Never mind. It's what happens after that, for these mornings I can't quite settle down to what in retirement I arbitrarily call work. I have to have a coffee. I like Peet's dark roasted slant on things, although on this particular morning there's something else on the air. When it comes to getting caffeinated in Menlo Park, Starbucks asserts itself at least three times, and there are a couple of other places, including one upstairs at a supermarket. So, I'm off, and the air is colder than expected, and my mood is grimmer.
I'm not sleeping. Around 4 or 5 a.m. each morning some vague and turbulent fear prods me awake, and my mind spins until the central heating clicks into life at 6:30, and I give up. This morning unfolded like its recent predecessors, and Marlou and I managed to get into a fight over the day's major practical wrinkle. The handyman is coming. And departing, his pickup truck loaded with apartment junk, old drapes, blinds, curtain rods...redundant matériel in the décor war. As for our war, Marlou's and mine, this morning's battle I can't remember. Tensions are high. Marlou is tired of chemotherapy, I am tired of her being in it, and now I am tired of being tired. Nothing like a little domestic quarrel to get the adrenaline going, the rowing machine flailing, the day moving.
Which includes moving toward the upstairs coffee bar at Draeger's, the neighborhood supermarket. What the hell, a little Illy espresso never hurt. Except that the the coffee bar has been taken over by the cooking school, the masonite tables now covered in white tablecloths and set for some sort of lunch hour banquet. I turn wheel and depart, banging loudly into the elevator door by mistake. I'm making lots of such mistakes these days, knocking into things here, crashing into them there. At Peet's there is an inexplicable queue at 10:30 in the morning, and I feel like making a general announcement that it's nice to get caffeinated but even nicer to get a life, so let's all go home and reconsider things...and if you want to discuss matters, meet me in the park across the street...while I get up to the coffee bar for my latte, small, one raw sugar. Thank you.
The queue is barely moving. A fine Colombian mist usually keeps the baristas flying high and fast, the line for coffee moving smartly, but not this morning. Nothing is happening fast enough. Every table is occupied, including the wheelchair-accessible one bearing the international disabled access label, the table currently occupied by a couple of crutchless and non-wheeling middle-aged men leaning toward each other and deep into morning merriment. Everyone moves about the place purposeful and upwardly mobile. I have my $20 Peets card. I have some "work" at home, maybe. I supposedly don't have much time. The guy at the counter asks if I want to go ceramic or cardboard with the coffee. I'd considered ceramic, having brought a copy of the morning Chronicle. But that would mean dislodging two guys from the disabled table...which means a little polite self-assertion on my part...which, for reasons currently unclear, I can't do. I roll close to the espresso machine, keeping my eye on the counter, ear cocked for my name. The elevator-door-banging energy is still with me, and I'm prepared to knock a customer or two down if they come between me and my latte.
This proves unnecessary. The barista emerges from behind the frenzied counter to offer me my coffee in a cardboard cup, mounted in a cardboard carrier, sugared and plastic capped. I have him place another plastic cap atop the first, sipping holes offset to prevent splashing as I bounce over the homeward pavement. More than happy, he says, snapping another lid into its correct place. All this help, this anything-you-want personal attention, throws me off my angry stride. I keep telling these people that I don't want their sympathy. And maybe I don't even want their coffee. Yet thet keep doing stuff like this.
It's hard to take, people being nice to you. If your expectations point in a different direction, if life experience has prepared you for something else...it's safer to maintain a certain distance, to keep the heart closed. Open hearts are for cardiac surgeons who want to take big risks, pay big malpractice insurance premiums and stare at that vital thing pumping and not pumping. My instinct is to keep that sucker closed.
A professor called me up a couple of weeks ago, a man who taught me in the 1970s. He's got his own problems and is not exactly in the spring of his chickenhood, so I was touched when he asked about Marlou and me...and let's do lunch. I was more than touched when he turned up with a colleague, another professor of mine from the same era, so more than touched that I wanted to turn and flee. What were they doing? What was I supposed to say that would entertain for an entire lunch? Either man was much more accomplished than I. The combination, the two of them ordering sushi and talking to me just like I was a normal person, made me want to get down on the carpet and crawl out the door. I found myself stammering during lunch. I've been sending stuff out to publishers, working hard to get a bit of exposure and wanted them to know this. Can't hurt to spread the word around...my feeble effort at networking, God save us. After lunch, we wandered down the street to a coffee bar. And, yes, both of them sat with me and had coffee. We laughed, I brightened, the sun shone. It only lasted a few minutes, but I hadn't had such minutes in quite a while.
Marlou's illness takes hours out of our lives. It threatens to take the life out of Marlou. And in the way that threats take the wind out of your sails...it threatens to take the life out of our lives. I've spent my life bracing to have things taken away from me, because...well, some things have. But bracing doesn't do any good. It's like standing in a doorway in case there's an earthquake. There will be one -- this is California -- so once you've got some blankets and food in the pantry and batteries in your radio and stuff in your iPod, what can you do but live? Live and enjoy lunch with the professors, the 50 inch plasma version of Netflix and the days or years I have with Marlou, complete with chemo and paralysis and hair loss and wheelchairs. It's been proven that we can get through bodily decline. The November elections? We'll see.
My mornings begin with apparent order. A good 200 abdomen-strengthening strokes on the rowing machine, 30 minutes of recumbent pedaling, that sort of thing. Which, mind you, is overshadowed by the ever alarming news from the geopolitical front coming at me via iPod. Never mind. It's what happens after that, for these mornings I can't quite settle down to what in retirement I arbitrarily call work. I have to have a coffee. I like Peet's dark roasted slant on things, although on this particular morning there's something else on the air. When it comes to getting caffeinated in Menlo Park, Starbucks asserts itself at least three times, and there are a couple of other places, including one upstairs at a supermarket. So, I'm off, and the air is colder than expected, and my mood is grimmer.
I'm not sleeping. Around 4 or 5 a.m. each morning some vague and turbulent fear prods me awake, and my mind spins until the central heating clicks into life at 6:30, and I give up. This morning unfolded like its recent predecessors, and Marlou and I managed to get into a fight over the day's major practical wrinkle. The handyman is coming. And departing, his pickup truck loaded with apartment junk, old drapes, blinds, curtain rods...redundant matériel in the décor war. As for our war, Marlou's and mine, this morning's battle I can't remember. Tensions are high. Marlou is tired of chemotherapy, I am tired of her being in it, and now I am tired of being tired. Nothing like a little domestic quarrel to get the adrenaline going, the rowing machine flailing, the day moving.
Which includes moving toward the upstairs coffee bar at Draeger's, the neighborhood supermarket. What the hell, a little Illy espresso never hurt. Except that the the coffee bar has been taken over by the cooking school, the masonite tables now covered in white tablecloths and set for some sort of lunch hour banquet. I turn wheel and depart, banging loudly into the elevator door by mistake. I'm making lots of such mistakes these days, knocking into things here, crashing into them there. At Peet's there is an inexplicable queue at 10:30 in the morning, and I feel like making a general announcement that it's nice to get caffeinated but even nicer to get a life, so let's all go home and reconsider things...and if you want to discuss matters, meet me in the park across the street...while I get up to the coffee bar for my latte, small, one raw sugar. Thank you.
The queue is barely moving. A fine Colombian mist usually keeps the baristas flying high and fast, the line for coffee moving smartly, but not this morning. Nothing is happening fast enough. Every table is occupied, including the wheelchair-accessible one bearing the international disabled access label, the table currently occupied by a couple of crutchless and non-wheeling middle-aged men leaning toward each other and deep into morning merriment. Everyone moves about the place purposeful and upwardly mobile. I have my $20 Peets card. I have some "work" at home, maybe. I supposedly don't have much time. The guy at the counter asks if I want to go ceramic or cardboard with the coffee. I'd considered ceramic, having brought a copy of the morning Chronicle. But that would mean dislodging two guys from the disabled table...which means a little polite self-assertion on my part...which, for reasons currently unclear, I can't do. I roll close to the espresso machine, keeping my eye on the counter, ear cocked for my name. The elevator-door-banging energy is still with me, and I'm prepared to knock a customer or two down if they come between me and my latte.
This proves unnecessary. The barista emerges from behind the frenzied counter to offer me my coffee in a cardboard cup, mounted in a cardboard carrier, sugared and plastic capped. I have him place another plastic cap atop the first, sipping holes offset to prevent splashing as I bounce over the homeward pavement. More than happy, he says, snapping another lid into its correct place. All this help, this anything-you-want personal attention, throws me off my angry stride. I keep telling these people that I don't want their sympathy. And maybe I don't even want their coffee. Yet thet keep doing stuff like this.
It's hard to take, people being nice to you. If your expectations point in a different direction, if life experience has prepared you for something else...it's safer to maintain a certain distance, to keep the heart closed. Open hearts are for cardiac surgeons who want to take big risks, pay big malpractice insurance premiums and stare at that vital thing pumping and not pumping. My instinct is to keep that sucker closed.
A professor called me up a couple of weeks ago, a man who taught me in the 1970s. He's got his own problems and is not exactly in the spring of his chickenhood, so I was touched when he asked about Marlou and me...and let's do lunch. I was more than touched when he turned up with a colleague, another professor of mine from the same era, so more than touched that I wanted to turn and flee. What were they doing? What was I supposed to say that would entertain for an entire lunch? Either man was much more accomplished than I. The combination, the two of them ordering sushi and talking to me just like I was a normal person, made me want to get down on the carpet and crawl out the door. I found myself stammering during lunch. I've been sending stuff out to publishers, working hard to get a bit of exposure and wanted them to know this. Can't hurt to spread the word around...my feeble effort at networking, God save us. After lunch, we wandered down the street to a coffee bar. And, yes, both of them sat with me and had coffee. We laughed, I brightened, the sun shone. It only lasted a few minutes, but I hadn't had such minutes in quite a while.
Marlou's illness takes hours out of our lives. It threatens to take the life out of Marlou. And in the way that threats take the wind out of your sails...it threatens to take the life out of our lives. I've spent my life bracing to have things taken away from me, because...well, some things have. But bracing doesn't do any good. It's like standing in a doorway in case there's an earthquake. There will be one -- this is California -- so once you've got some blankets and food in the pantry and batteries in your radio and stuff in your iPod, what can you do but live? Live and enjoy lunch with the professors, the 50 inch plasma version of Netflix and the days or years I have with Marlou, complete with chemo and paralysis and hair loss and wheelchairs. It's been proven that we can get through bodily decline. The November elections? We'll see.
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