December 2009 Archives
BBC Radio 4, and it's 'Woman's Hour,' this morning featuring the teenage popstar-goddaughter of singer Amy Winehouse, whose name rings the dimmest of bells, who is much under water due to substance abuse, it seems, and the goddaughter taking up the slack with hit 60s singles in 2009 and speaking the dim pre-language of post-valley-girlese, using 'like' as a verb and a conjunction. The young girl singer doesn't read newspapers because they are full of lies. They are also full of words, and these seem to give her considerable trouble. And I'm tuning into the contemporary world, for once, learning what's going on and am a better man for it. Surely.
Having arrived with Marlou's coat presents problems, with a chill Gloucestershire wind blowing across the fields. The solution is to go out into the mercantile world and take advantage of the sales. The problem is that everyone around Home Farm has turned down their personal speed setting, lying low and bracing for the last festive event of the season, Alexandra's 21st drink up. I am grateful for this. I no longer have perspective, but it seems that things move along quite briskly in my own suburban world in California, so a little slowing down cannot hurt. Furthermore, no one is excited at the prospect of skidding around black ice on the way to Moreton in Marsh or Stratford upon Avon, the nearest shopping towns.
Which leads us over the border. Caroline, Alexandra and I. East toward Darkest Warwickshire and the town of Shipston, four miles distant.
One of the interesting things about Britain is the way in which villages imitate cities and vice versa. Shipston, for example, manages to have very few streets, yet many of the latter are one-way. The village has a parking problem. Caroline pulls into an empty space in front of a dog charity, something along the lines of the Royal SPCA, closed this first Tuesday after Christmas. Our destination is more or less across the street. Alexandra hauls me to my feet, and I survey the situation. I am crutching it, and reconnoitering is essential.
The brick sidewalk, the fan pattern of the flagstones, the stone curbs, all these things are characteristically British pavements. This is one of the realities of crutching, which is how I got about the UK in my 20s, is that one is always looking down. That's where the perils are. I could easily write a book on London Beneath My Feet 1972. The wooden steps of the escalators on the Bakerloo Line rattling like a bag of children's blocks. Walkways of black substance, either extremely hard asphalt or dark concrete, no one can say. And here, in Shipston, all the stone surfaces in excellent upkeep with, as Caroline notes, a wheelchair ramp cut into the curb across the street, but not the curb on our side of the street, providing a way not to cross the road but only to enter it...a moot point, for I am on crutch, not on wheels. I grab Alexandra's arm and head for Spencer's, our shopping destination.
The pavements are wet, the cloudy skies and winter sun make the day surprisingly dark, and with my poor proprioception, the journey of 50 meters seems epic. Furthermore, my bones ache, with diffuse pains accompanying most strenuous activity. I step inside the store that is Spencer's, and I step inside the 1950s. The place is doing a brisk 2009 business, but it has the look and feel of a much older establishment. This is a wealthy part of the countryside, and a shop like Spencer's can pull this off. There is a counter with goods behind it, probably the sort of arrangement that once required a shop assistant to get items for you. But now people can wander behind the counter and get their own stuff, while the staff wonder about the store and get their own customers. It's a funny old world.
And the world remains pretty old inside Spencer's. Assuming you get inside, which I barely did. Caroline spotted some coats just beyond the door, so I tried one on. And then another. Caroline kept telling me I was looking like a country squire. But being oblivious to such things, I don't really know what country squires look like, aside from Squire Western who, like Tom Jones, is 260 years old. And being told that I look that old is not exactly a turn on. So I turned to Alexandra. What did she think? Would she mind having a look around?
I was now rooted to one spot, a location just inside the front door, which required no more walking and included a chair, where I briefly sat down. It has come to this. Don't get around much anymore. Alexandra returned with a different coat, one that included vertically zipping pockets, ideal for a mobile phone, she told me. And this one looked more stylish. Leaving me torn, and torn is difficult for someone whose emotional makeup formed in the company of embattled parents. My first instinct is to please everyone. My second is to take disparate points of view and decide which is more pertinent. I could tell that vertically zipping my mobile phone into a handy pouch in front of the coat would accomplish nothing. But Alexandra's warning that the first coat looked little too big, as well as unfashionable...that gave me pause. On the other hand, I was really buying a coat to stay warm. My arms easily went into the sleeves of the Caroline selection. Which I tried on a second time.
'Ugly,' said Alexandra. 'The stylish one is over there.'
'Wrong,' said her mother. 'This one makes you look like a country gent.'
Harmless Jewish family banter. By contrast, there was no banter and lots of harm in the exchanges between my own parents. So at age 63, it takes a bit of conscious effort to know what I want. At least I know what I don't know. That very morning I had been listening to the Decade in Review on Radio 4. It was only a couple of years ago that someone named Donald Rumsfeld was standing up before the American people, and we always forget, the American people's allies, and saying in all seriousness and with a tone of great authority something along the lines of 'there are things we know that are known knowns and things that we don't know that are unknowns, and some of those known unknowns we really know....' And with such words, leading people into war.
However wavering, I have learned to please myself. And I was quite pleased once I got in the wheelchair on the following day and headed through the damp and freezing fog toward the Farrier's Arms for lunch with a friend. At first, I thought, screw the mittens. That didn't last long. I got the mittens on just before an internal ice jam brought my capillary circulation to a halt. As for the coat, it kept me warm as a roaring fire. Only the icy stings to the face reminded me of where I was: Gloucestershire in winter. I had made the right choice.
This day on the Christian calendar is The Feast of Presumption, a less known holiday in honor of our Lady of the Extroverts, that is to say, my cousin Caroline. It takes a very E personality to whip up a constituency for hausmusik, a German-Jewish style concert at the hearth side (one's own), especially when this includes a home invasion by force estimated at 50, more or less. Astonishingly, there is not only jazzy chamber music in the living room/former 18th-century barn, but dinner in the drawing room/former farmhouse. Provision for the latter has been somewhat intuitive.
I recognize some of my Bendix genes in Caroline's approach. There is a general plan. The details get filled in as one progresses. One of the details is that this is the second day after Christmas, and much of the mercantile world is still reeling throughout Britain, so the shops are open minimally and their shelves stocked occasionally. Tonight's menu has changed several times to accommodate what's available at Budgen's, Moreton in Marsh. Chairs have been borrowed from the local town hall. Actually, they have been borrowed twice. The first time the chairs turned out to be the wrong ones, and Alastair had to drive his van back to the hall and unload them. Those of us of the quadriplegic persuasion only look on fondly, of course. Ours is not to reason why. Let alone get involved. Ours is to comment approvingly and remark upon the visible effort. Even outside my bedroom window, for example, I can see torches which will get lit around 7 PM to lead arriving cars toward their parking spots in the neighboring farmer's field. A country concert.
I make it a practice to avoid the sitting room for at least several hours per day. Partly, I need to do a bit of reading and writing. Partly, I need to do a bit of calorie avoidance. This being a Jewish Christmas and Jewish post-Christmas and Jewish concert day, food is coming at me from all directions. The same can be said for tea, for which I have no one to blame but myself. It just seems like the thing to do.
This is Britain. The world hasn't ended. Tea. Just a teaspoon of sugar, thank you. I decided that because I am currently putting on a stone, 14 pounds, per day, maybe I would try to cool it after my 11 AM late-rising bowl of breakfast cereal. By 12, Alexandra and Jake had rustled up lunch of bubble and squeak (fried potatoes and cabbage) with Gloucestershire sausages. The battle was lost. Merry jingle.
Naturally, an English lunch required another tea, my third of the day. And afterwards, conversing with John, Alistair's cousin, in the drawing room, damned if a little coffee didn't seem to hit the spot. Yes, the spot had been hit forcefully and repeatedly caffeine-wise, but not to worry, for I am soaking up something here, something familial, English, who can say? Late in the day, Caroline asks if I will sell CDs to the assembled music masses. This is, no joke, a home concert, and the local musicians need to make a buck, and the least I can do is help. But I demur, for nothing will slow down product turnover post-concert better than a one-handed salesperson. Not to worry. He also serves who only sits in his room blogging.
An evening of Claude Bolling, performed by professionals in one's own home, is more than enough to keep me occupied. Which it did yesterday. And today, a day later and fully recovered, I am still inside. In fact, I have not been outside for three days. It is reportedly cold. I have decided to stay indoors and put on weight. Why not? The indoor entertainment is not only musical, but highly comic. Jake and Alexandra put on a very good show as sparring siblings. They are such sweet, personable kids that their rude British verbal savagery takes one's breath away. One or both of them have decorated my wheelchair with various shiny Christmas bows and ribbons. I complained to Alexandra that my seat cushion was becoming excessively sparkly. She accused me of farting glitter. Which sent me into spasms of laughter, the post-holiday mood being what it is around Home Farm, Todenham. 'tis the season.
Change is in the air, along with a certain amount of snow, which descends over eastern Gloucestershire nightly. The stuff begins melting around midday, gets replenished in the wee hours, and the white beat goes on. As for the change, that involves me. I am no longer convinced of my imminent death by freezing and reasonably certain that if I do finally skid out of control on the black ice that covers every road in the village of Todenham, well someone would find me. It's not that I am a stranger here. Which is gratifying. Every few months of this year I have dipped my quadriplegic toe in village life and am a better man for it. In fact, I feel positively rural.
As for the change, well watch me slalom down the icy drive that leads from my cousin's front door to the road. I am actually steering for the ice. There's plenty of gravel on either side of it, and if I shoot out of control, the rocks will stop me. Besides, I am descending with Caroline and her daughter Alexandra, and the presence of one doctor and one strapping youth gives me reassurance. I slip right down the middle of the ice sheet and proudly lead us on our village mission.
Caroline is dropping off Christmas cards. It's a personal touch, and I don't even question why she hasn't handed these cards over to Her Majesty's Post. But she hasn't. And, one by one, we approach the front doors, gates, and walkways of the good people of Todenham. My cousin is without doubt the most naturally extroverted person I know. By her own account she has 'no inner world' -- hers is the outer one. And this is certainly part of it, for after less than a decade in this village, she literally knows everyone, or at least, knows about everyone. Providing an endless and utterly fascinating store of anecdotes about locals, which add up to a portrait of rural and enclosed life in 21st-century Britain.
What encloses Todenham involves geography, economics, history and other forces invisible to an American. The place is in a small valley, which naturally conveys a certain coziness. It is just far enough from the market town of Moreton in Marsh to make the town stand on its own. And according to Caroline, one should not be fooled by the absence of businesses. The village's lone retail establishment is a pub, of course. Behind the scenes, and behind the back of the Inland Revenue, there is a brisk bartering of goods, particularly food. This is a farm village, and something is being harvested or planted year-round. One of the locals bakes bread and sells it out of the back of her car. Pushing 80, she lives with her eccentric and unmarried son who spends most of his time driving a tractor. Kneading dough, she says, keeps her fingernails clean. Always good to know, when you're eyeing her wheaty brown loaves.
As for history, to an American it's a powerful unseen force. On the surface, the village has the look of utter authenticity. Things are old, mossy, and occasionally decayed. There is no access to the village church for anyone in a wheelchair, EU regulations be damned. But just under the surface, things are implausibly modern. The IT director for Lufthansa Airlines lives in the village. At the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, some of the homes in Cotswold yellow stone are actually Council, that is to say, public, housing.
Caroline climbs a snowy bank to deposit a Christmas card in the mail slot built into the stone wall of an impressive home. She doesn't like these people and mutters under her breath as we continue on the road. The owner, it seems, is in earshot, standing in his tractor pen. He wears rubber boots and easily passes for a farmer. Which, Caroline assures me, he isn't, having purchased his stone house for £4.5 million, roughly $7.5 million...what you get for being a corporate attorney these days in the City of London...and the man is buying houses for his offspring. All harmless expressions of wealth, it seems to me, but Caroline says he's ostentatious, and her judgment seems much more amusing.
We continue along, my wheelchair tires slipping pleasantly in the black ice at the bottom of the hill. As we start up the slope to the village center, I experiment with slipping backwards, a pleasant enough experience on fairly level terrain, and on a practical note, a chance to test the traction parameters.
A car pulls up and Rupert emerges. He has the look of someone who is internally disheveled. Perhaps he has been brushed on one side of his body, the other half forgotten. Clutching a package, he manages a wan smile. It emerges that Rupert, a towering figure in a winter coat, has had leukemia for three years. He is sloughing off the latest round of chemotherapy, in his account, and feeling better daily. Caroline wishes him well, and we leave him with a Christmas card, another day of life and whatever invisible wins and losses come to any man. Rolling up the hill, it seems to me that everyone has cancer. Todenham is leveling off now, the road widening, a terrace of houses on one side, the village church, manor house and pub on the other.
The Farrier's Arms has been much on my mind, and after sticking cards in a couple of additional mail slots, Caroline is easily persuaded to enter. Her daughter, Alexandra, has caught up with us, arriving in time to help me maneuver my wheelchair up an icy stone ramp and into the pub. Inside, the fire crackles, mulled wine beckons and the menu on the blackboard seems worthy of hours of study. The place is empty. I stare out the window. A horde of kids is approaching. They head right up Todenham's main street, only street, toward the pub.
'Ramblers,' says the barmaid. She opens the door as though for a dog, eyes downcast, and mutters a familiar sounding order that kids must be accompanied by one adult for every five, sit in the back room and wait for their food. Sure enough, the parents follow. Who knows where they have been rambling from or are rambling to, but the whole thing is clearly prearranged. In a country that is no longer wild, walking from village to village provides a marked contrast to crowded city life. I hope the kids have a good lunch. I'm going for the vegetarian cannelloni.
So this is Christmas, and what have you done? The song comes to me late at night. Tomorrow promises to be a wholly secular, Jewish Christmas. All fun, no obligations. I have ordered books, pre-wrapped from Amazon UK.com. No sweat. What is missing? Only that at 63 years of age, I am a visitor at someone else's ritual. Which is fine. But I am an elder now. It is time to preside, and that is the word, at my own rituals. In my own home.
Travel, writes a columnist in The Guardian, is the new opiate of the masses. Surely this is true. And I am quite an opiate consumer. Scurrying about the globe, The Guardian guide points out, undermines community and a sense of place. But both things have been shaken to the core this year. I have needed the travel opiate. And there is nothing drug-like in the time I spend with UK friends and family. Still, I long to return to a stable life in one place. Grounded, as they say. At last coming to a rest in one place where the downward force of life won't obliterate me. Lying down beside death. And ready for action.
'No, not that way.' I am leaning over the armrest of my wheelchair staring at a heavyset, in fact, jowly man who is attempting to reconnect my wheelchair cable. It is the lifeline, the electronic equivalent of an aorta, linking joystick control with wheels and motors. It is everything, all I have, it seems. And this man is fucking with it. I am about to ask if he has ever done this before. For it is clear that he hasn't. It has come to this, life and its long journey, leading me to this moment. For I have seen this sort of thing go desperately awry before. That someone attempts to jam the whisker-fine prongs of my wheelchair cable into their socket, bending them, and putting the entire mechanism of action. It's a $1000 mistake, based on a previous repair bill. And this man is making it.
'You have to align it,' I tell him feebly. For everything is feeble, drained of vigor. Which living in the self-referential world of my psyche, seems much like a cosmic condemnation, a.k.a. curse, or the general downward slope of life, and not what it is, the more or less inevitable consequence of flying eastward for 11 hours in the cramped company of 400 others and arriving out of sorts and out of time zone and out of it. The man spots the white arrows pointing at each other, snaps the leads together, and my wheelchair makes its characteristic ping and comes to life. Minutes later, the man seems surprised, genuinely, when I hand him a £5 note. Tipping has slipped out of favor in France, and is this happening here as well? Here being Britain. I am back for the third time this year.
And now I am back on the train to Central London. The Heathrow Express covers 22 miles in 15 minutes, putting it on a par with the fastest train in North America, the Washington-to-New York Acela. Except that here in the UK, everyone takes this speed for granted. Plenty of trains go this fast or faster. I find this heartening. My country seems to be slipping backwards in so many ways. And yet there is this, an ordinary train going at an ordinary train speed of 100 mph, on this, an ordinary day.
Which it isn't. This is the solstice, 21 December, the longest day of the longest year of my life. This is the fulcrum of 2009, after which the days lengthen, the sun warms, and creation begins waxing. I spend the brief train ride fiddling about with my mobile phone, attempting to send a text message, then voicemail to Jake, my cousin's son. Now the platform at Paddington Station is drifting past, and I am finally aware of the underlying emotion. Fear. Fear and vulnerability. I'm bundled up in an overcoat...button up your overcoat...take good care of yourself. But this song is not for me, the short tempered, curmudgeonly man who makes a fuss about his wheelchair cables. The Victorian railway viaduct leading into the station has small drifts of snow. I can't find Jake, and I'm about to sit on a freezing railway platform, California blood pumping through my rapidly cooling veins. And sit, I do. A 25-ish woman tells me off with my bags. They comprise a tidy pile in the middle of a busy platform, passengers rushing for the adjacent train to Penzance, others heading back to the airport. And me without Jake.
And this is why I travel, at least one of the reasons. It's simply too easy to exist within the quadriplegic comfort zone, which is narrow and routine. Jake is on his way. Mobile phones don't work in the London Underground. We have been through this before, Jake and I. He will surface in a moment. Meanwhile, various employees of RailTrack stop and ask if I am okay. I don't know how to answer. Should I move my bags up the platform? Should I move myself into the heated disabled waiting room? Having been up all night, now dealing with a 1:30 PM that feels more like its 5:30 AM California equivalent, my reserves are scant. Finally, a baggage guy from the RailTrack Disabled Office loads my bags aboard his cart, we head up the platform. And there is Jake.
With Jake in between errands, and me in between beds, I start talking about schedules and departures and ticket purchase. Enough of that, Jake says, and gives me a hug. Putting me back in the moment, and so much for fear. Ticket. Machine or human? I want to go into the ticket office, wait in the twisting queue and interact with a person. I have my reasons. When the time comes to extract my credit card I casually leave my wallet open. This reveals the UK Disabled Rail Card, expired since 2005. Oh, says the clerk, knocking £10 off the ticket price. I am enormously and personally gratified. I cannot say if this derives from my genetic heritage, or my desire to be included in British life. Either way, it was worth the trip to the ticket office. As for the Disabled Travel Office, they hustle us right back to the platform, and within moments I am waving bye to Jake and to London.
There is a surprising amount of snow on the ground around Reading. The railway carriage seems to have no heat. I sit there chattering as the Home Counties speed by. Good thing I brought this blue overcoat.
'Very blue,' I said to a friend who was helping me pack in California, crutch, laptop, bookbag and now overcoat arrayed on the back of my Menlo Park sofa. We agreed that the coat looked abnormally bright blue in the sunlight. Not to worry. I had only worn this blue overcoat, which I thought was navy blue, once or twice, or maybe not at all. The overcoat is a hand-me-down from my cousin Caroline's school kids. Meanwhile, it is keeping me quite warm in the bitter cold of the train. I order a tea from the passing attendant. In fact I order tea steaming in its plastic cup, a tuna sandwich with the required cucumber and a pack of Scottish chocolate biscuits. I am in British railway heaven.
The next day, when I don the coat for a run into Moreton in Marsh, Gloucestershire, Caroline runs her eye over the thing. It's French. And a woman's. It is, I realize, Marlou's. She had a blue overcoat, more bright blue than my blackish navy blue, and this fact has utterly escaped me. But Marlou cannot escape me, of course. And somehow it is fitting that I should turn up miles from home carrying, even wearing, her overcoat. Take good care of yourself...you belong to me. It has been quite a year. Fortunately, Alastair has an overcoat of virtually the same description as my own. This gets me around the town. It even gets me, the following day, more than half way to the Tibetan rug outlet in the middle of the snowy fields to the north of the village of Todenham. But not all the way. Which doesn't matter, because this is a pleasure outing.
And a pleasure, it is, for the snow softens everything to storybook whiteness. The thatched roof cottage across the way from Caroline's front door seems to have been ripped from a calendar page, its contours frosted. The essence of coziness. This is my second sortie into the freezing winter, and my confidence is building. The real test comes at the crest of the hill, as my wheelchair tires begin slipping in black ice. Even Caroline, hardly one for giving up, suggests I head home. What the hell. In this winter wonderland I could easily freeze to death. Which makes the experience all the more real, death being the theme of the year. I turn my wheelchair speed control to moderately fast and zigzag my way home.
It came to me in the
middle of a haircut, seated in my kitchen, in my wheelchair, while Danielle had
a go at my locks. You are quite bundled up, she said. This by way of reference
to my thick woolen sweater, a natural response to what passes as winter in California.
Snip, snip. A couple of gray strands tumbled down the barber's shroud that
surrounded me and my chair, only the batteries and backpack exposed to the hair
rain. Don't you have the heater on? Snip, snip. At which point I became snippy.
The heater isn't on outside, I said. Snip, snip, and Danielle said nothing. I
had said everything that needed to be said. I was in one cranky mood.
"You look like you
want to cry." A friend told me this after returning from a memorial
service. The mother of an old buddy had died. We gathered in his home. A very
moderate and well-planned Reformed service unfolded. Readings from Psalms and modern
poets. From the latter, one in particular hit home. Love doesn't die, the poet
said. Only people do. So love people. Love those around you, giving them what
you would give to the one who has departed. Love doesn't die. All of which led
to me and the friend talking after the service, and just as with Danielle the
other day, I was pissed off.
I will decide whether, and
when, I am going to cry...was my response. And get out of my face, grief-wise,
I wanted to add.
And so, eight months into
bereavement, the one thing I have to show consistently is peevishness. I'm
tired of this. I wish it would all go away. I wish the 'it' were clearer in its
nature, more easy to describe, and the possibility of getting over this 'it'
more certain. There is even the question of appropriateness. I feel like the
person at the office party who can't quite grasp that the celebration is over,
everyone is heading home, and the janitor doesn't want to try on a funny hat.
My buddy with the deceased
mother already feels his grief is a little too much. After all, there was the
service. An entire memorial afternoon. Surely we are moving on to the next
thing. His expectations, not so different from mine, set things in relief. No,
I want to tell him, this is different. And no one knows what 'this' is. For
'grief' loses its punch after a while, and the better word...no one seems to
know what it is. Whatever the term, it's an odd state, beyond sadness or any
other emotion, seemingly physical, and apparently incurable. Perhaps the entire
organism is adjusting to mortality. I don't know.
The experience of a spinal
cord injury may even help. I joke about my crew, the supporting team of rabbis
(at least three), as many social workers, two psychologists, and of course,
friends, who keep me going these days. The joke is that no one knows what
they're doing, what their function really is, and how loss or grief or
bereavement are supposed to improve on their watch. The joke is that the team
is so big. All these folks, none of whom know what's going on, making such a
big deal. Which is much like physical rehabilitation. Physical therapists.
Physical therapy specialists. Physical therapy assistants. Occupational
therapists. Their assistants. Physiatrists.
Rehab nurses. Sometimes you need to be overstaffed.
Overstating helps too.
Overblown, that's what the whole experience has been. Overboard with loss. But
never over. Not until the fat lady sings, and she isn't even warming up her
vocal cords. It's got its own schedule, its own purpose, and I seem to have neither.
What I can be certain of is survival. I have gotten through it, without knowing
what 'it' can possibly be. And there's more of 'it' to go through. But I have a
strange feeling. While 'it' won't go away, and may not get any better, I am
getting better at handling it. It's a long-distance journey with a full load of
freight. You just keep hauling. At night, you park your rig in an enormous
truck stop, engine idling to keep the cargo frozen, surrounded by a vast
parking lot of transient others, everyone humming and rumbling in his own
little metal world. Keep on truckin'.
What would it feel like to
be Igor Stravinsky, premier 'Rite of Spring' -- and find members of the famous
opening night audience unzipping their trousers to pee on the theater floor? A bit
daunting. Definite challenge to the ego. Teaches you to know what you're about.
If you hear the harsh music of the new industrial world, all steam whistles and
screeching brakes, that's what you hear. You can't worry about the audience.
They will either come along, or they won't. Besides, what does it matter?
Outside it's Paris. The loss of a love is not the loss of love, as the poem
says. So go outside stare at the Eiffel Tower. It's there as long as it's
there, and so are you.
Hi. Our realtor stepped out of the shadows. Which is to say, the checkout line, purchase in hand to say hello. Monica. To call her 'our realtor' misstates the case in several ways. For originally I knew her as the wife of a PR account executive. Then I knew her as the wife and local person I would run into on the street. It was only in the final stage of things that her realtor credentials came into play. Marlou, when she moved down to Menlo Park, was determined to buy a house. Why not? I would have had much the same response. And with Marlou, there was no arguing. I could tell she thought I was stubborn or defeatist on the topic of house owning. Yes, things were expensive, but costly was a long way from impossible. So lighten up, she seemed to be saying. I knew there was no stopping her. So I set up an appointment with Monica. We would go over a few listings. See what was what.
Later, my psychologist told me this was a good ploy. Right. The old reality ploy. Gets them every time. Just let your spouse-to-be try on the notion of an $800,000 condominium, two bedrooms, which if you act quickly, you might just nail. Not that the place doesn't need a bit of work. And once that work is done, and you have pooled savings to come up with the better part of $1 million, do note that you will be seven stories up. Garden? Of course not, but you will have your very own balcony.... Thus, Monica.
Actually, it was Monica's husband whom I told about Marlou's cancer. We ran into each other at Peet's, and the encounter was a very brief one. What kind of cancer? Oh. He was gone. And soon, we both knew, Marlou would be gone. But no one could say when, and time passes oddly, the first thing you knew it was December and there I was, seriously tuned into soup, having been seriously turned out of Draegers Café upstairs, my frequent refuge these days.
Oh, hi, said Monica. How is your wife? It was entirely possible that Monica could not remember Marlou's name, having only met her a time or two. But I'm sure her husband had told her about the cancer. An innocent question. And for some reason, this was a moment I had long anticipated. I was fully, or almost fully, prepared. 'How is your wife doing?' would get the only reasonable answer...a lot less these days...you're so unproductive when you're dead. Or even better, 'how is your wife?'...well, thanks for asking, but for her things are kind of dead. 'How's your wife?' Last time I checked....
Of course, I said none of this, just responding dead straight. No pun intended. Monica, being either extremely professional or remarkably stoic, betrayed no reaction at first. Her face showed nothing. She maintained the same welcoming smile, asked when, then finally said she was shocked. She asked what I was doing for the holidays. I told her. She had been to Gloucestershire, knew it reasonably well. And that was that.
Alone again by the soup. I gazed upstairs, at the balcony where the café was now looking empty. But it was still shut. I still had a trip to the bank. And with no lunch, the soup seemed like a wonderful idea. But transporting hot Styrofoam containers did not seem like a good idea just then. Scalding being what it was for the neurologically compromised. So I bought some sushi. Cold. Safe. And ate it upstairs in the closed café. Which led to the next revelation, only fully apparent once I was outside. Soy sauce. One of the kindly supermarket staff had opened the plastic packet for me, and damned if the stuff hadn't spilled on my blue jeans. I eyed the stain angrily, rolled outside into the rainy afternoon and began looking for a good drip. Nothing like rainwater rolling out of a gutter to dilute a little soy sauce. Okay, so my entire thigh got drenched. And I must have cut an odd figure, the guy in the wheelchair deliberately sitting under the gutter's downspout, water splashing across his lap.
But never mind. For Monica's question hadn't disturbed me all that much. Because I had come a long way in the last year. True, I was more eccentric than ever. And a little wet. But dealing with the soy sauce.
The quality of mercy, and everything else, is always strained these days. Strain is everywhere. While I seem to be nowhere.
The days begin with that I-don't-want-to-get-out-of-bed feeling. There is an oppressive hand of sadness pushing me back into the sheets, back into the past. And my patience is strained. Which explains why huge piles of mail are building up on every available surface. The small table by the front door, once a repository for incoming and largely unwanted magazines, now resembles a United States Post Office substation. If I rolled in the door one day and found someone inside sorting letters and offering to sell me stamps, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
When the piles get too high, I have a go at reading the stuff. Naturally, official communiqués get priority. But there is a sneakiness about the post, and if one doesn't stay in shape, keep alert to the wiles and guises of direct-mail marketing, one can fall into any number of snares. United Airlines seems to want me to know that my unused frequent flyer miles may expire. But this proves to be an illusion. Ripping open the envelope, naturally a big mistake, reveals an offer to convert my airline miles into magazine subscriptions. This is positively laughable. I barely read The New Yorker, which I actually enjoy....
Another letter informs me that I will be the proud recipient of a Jewish Family Services Hanukkah basket. I got another basket from the same outfit at Rosh Hashanah. And the whole process was so mutually embarrassing, I would have thought, that long ago my name would have been stricken from the basket list. But no. I am officially one of the basket cases. Doubtless have a basket case worker. And there is no getting off the list. The Hanukkah basket is on its way. Let me point out that the Rosh Hashanah basket contained such New Year's treats as a plastic jar of peanut butter. I cringe at the thought of another delivery to my doorstep. I would even ring up the charity and beg them to stop. But on what grounds? Take me off your list, because.... I am not, what? Impoverished. Unfortunate. Bedridden. Isolated. Except that I can find nothing in the Jewish Family Services letter that suggests I am any of these things. In fact, there were not even be a problem regarding the Hanukkah basket, if it wasn't for the simple fact that I am frequently not at home. A volunteer delivers these things. The volunteer not only delivers them, but comes in for a chat. A visit, in the parlance of Hanukkah basket delivery. And this I dread more than anything. For what could transpire during the Jewish Family Services Hanukkah Basket Delivery Home Visit that would not be excruciating?
Even worse, what if it isn't excruciating? What if some young, vital Silicon Valley professional type bounds to my front door, basket in hand, comes in for a chat and sits on my sofa talking up a condescending storm? 'Have you been getting out?' might be one general topic that could arise. Do you have enough of...peanut butter or any other life-giving substance on hand? Ah, couldn't help noticing that you don't seem to have a hand on hand. Awkward during the holidays, isn't it? Well, we at Jewish Family Services just wanted to drop off a little something. And here it is. A little something. A small sliver of the big everything. Enjoy.
With age comes the general sense that life has passed us by. And with grief? Actually, it's rather the opposite. Life has run over us. Hit and run. Less a sense of being forgotten than being targeted. Marked. Handed the keys to a van full of packages and told to deliver them. Or worse, told to stay home and have them delivered. Either way, too much freight.
It is as though the short days pinch the last year into perspective. Marlou departing bewildered on her final trip. Me waiting bewildered for her final return. Both of us deliberately not knowing the horrifying end.
This time last year, the day after Thanksgiving, Marlou and her sister-in-law Debbie headed for Stockholm. Everything about the trip felt preposterous. Only weeks before, Marlou and I had sat in a windowless examination room in Palo Alto listening to an oncologist pronounce the end of the road. We have to face facts, she said. Why, I wondered? What does not facing facts look like? What does it matter?
The examining room was dotted with photos of the doctor's babies. The irony of new life, the tragedy of a childless couple, all of this bounced about in the background. Our doctor was from India, described occasional scenes from her life on the subcontinent and brought a good dose of humor to her work. None of which mattered now. The pictures, the wall, the clock on it, none of this mattered. And Marlou wanted to go to Sweden.
She valued her ancestry. One of Marlou's great-grandmothers was born near Gothenburg, and this had resonance for her. The woman was independent, her spirit somehow aligned with Marlou's. The great-grandmother had fled drought and bad economic times in Sweden, found work as a domestic near Chicago. And if I recall the details properly, the beautiful ring Marlou always wore had been passed down from her.
These details are so meager, and one would think keeping track of them would be a minor chore. But I'm not a good detail guy. I retain the emotional force of things and often forget what they looked like. But the details matter here, for the story is a simple one and explains, at least on the surface, Marlou's mission in Sweden. She wanted to be there, close to the ancestral action, at this moment in her waning life. The trip seemed so courageous, so bold, I could only applaud it. While realizing this would shorten our remaining time together. Marlou needed to do it. I needed to let her do it. And off she went with Debbie, my brother and I waving goodbye at Seattle Airport.
There's a mystery at the heart of this story, and it has to do with the great-grandmother's ring. Marlou had recurring nightmares. She lost the ring. Someone was trying to break in through our bedroom window to steal the ring. The ring had simply disappeared. Whatever the plot, these dreams often sent Marlou screaming in the night. Often, she leapt out of bed and checked the jewelry case where the ring resided.
Whatever its monetary value, the ring had ancestral worth. It been passed down through several generations of women in Marlou's family. The great-grandmother had not only left her native country on her own, but pioneered in other ways. She got a divorce, for one thing, and long before such moves were socially acceptable. Marlou was aware of the woman's independence. The personal legacy, family tradition, whatever the ring meant, its force was inescapable. The dreams kept coming. These nightmares seemed to speak from Marlou's core. How much did she dare to be herself? What would happen if she and her parents parted company on some vital issue? I always Marlou she was struggling with such matters.
And now such matters no longer matter. Marlou's matter resides in my pantry, awaiting its scattering. This was one conclusion from a recent trip to Iowa, that the 2 April anniversary of her death will be observed in some ecumenical Yahrzeit. We will gather in Monterey, Marlou's nephews and parents and me. We will throw caution to the winds. We will throw Marlou to the winds. We'll go somewhere warm and have a drink. April.
For now, it's still December. In my mind Marlou is in a dark Scandinavian country, a year ago, accompanied by her sister-in-law and going about ancestral research. Somehow, through connections made online, Marlou had turned up a couple of third cousins. They actually had lunch together. Marlou stood in a snowy field where her great-grandmother had lived on a farm. The buildings were gone. But Marlou was there. She touched the earth in some way, if I recall. Perhaps she touched the ring to the earth. Or the earth to the ring. The details are murky.
Even photographs of the trip seem murky. Dinner with my cousin's daughter in Stockholm, the table set with traditional fare. Indoor shots with ample light, yet there is a dimness about them. From the perspective of a year on, everything looks ominous. I can't recall what Marlou said about her feelings at that point. I can't recall my own. But I knew we were standing at the top of a cliff and one of us was going off it. And soon. Debbie, her sister-in-law, told me that in Sweden she found herself awake in the wee hours on several occasions, went into the hotel bathroom and wept. She had no way of knowing that she was weeping for us all.
'Oh, I have been so scared.' The taxi was still idling outside, and Marlou had barely gotten inside. I stood up from my wheelchair to hold her, taken by surprise by the weeping woman in my arms. I was used to Marlou's reserve, her capacity to keep her composure. But all that was falling away now, with the front door still open. And this is what she had brought back from her trip. Fear. Which was what I had been feeling myself for the 10 days she was gone. Looking at this cliff and realizing I would have to stand at the top and watch her fall. To her death.
Which astonishingly came within four months. The distortion of that time still throws me off. Events that occurred a year ago feel like they must taken place two years previously. Or was it a few months? Couldn't we have said more to each other about the fear? The possibility of agony, real agony, hung over everything. What if.... What do you want me to do if.... Is the Scandinavian trip escapist or defiant or neither? What is the best way to live together these final months? How should we repair what's torn between us? Or forge new bonds? Or is all of this unfolding as it should?
And how can it still be unfolding? When does the past become the past?
I have gotten over the shock to the neuromuscular system known as the Coast Starlight. The train, or walking through the train, made quite a dent in my bodily enthusiasms. My lower back ached for days. So as any quadriplegic stud worth his testosterone understands, having attained a new level of athletic competence, there is no return. I have to keep walking. Have to keep the train gain. Which explains why at the ungodly hour of 8:30 AM, I'm asking Lorna to hand me my crutch and turn on the lights throughout the apartment. I stagger to my feet and begin schlepping about the place.
At first, Lorna is confused. She turns the lights off, instead of on. She isn't quite clear why I am not in my wheelchair eating a breakfast she has prepared. And the thing with the lights doesn't make a lot of sense, unless your balance is so poor and unpredictable that a few extra lumens couldn't hurt. I lurch from office to hallway to bedroom. From bedroom I return to office, then seriously consider the front room. No doubt about it, the Marlou Memorial Carpet does its job. The pile is so tight that my paralyzed foot drags as it should, straight ahead, and with a pull from the pelvis, even spasms as it should, lifting then dropping itself right in front of the left foot. This inspired imitation of a normal gait is the creation of my physiotherapist Dan Brady. He deserves full credit, and I would urge him to sign my right foot, if such a thing were possible. It isn't. Don't even think about it.
Besides, I'm thinking much darker thoughts as I head for the front room. What lies beyond the right side of my body is a neurological dead space, and if I totter in that direction, lose my balance, and tilt toward the floor -- that wouldn't be good. So I like to keep strong building materials just to the right of me. The wall of the entranceway will do, and that's what I'm passing right now, thinking that my penchant for brushing against right walls for neurological reassurance, could prove dangerous. For just to my right hang a couple of Hawaiian watercolors painted by Marlou's father. It wouldn't take much of a misstep to knock the pictures to the ground. Which provokes a serious moment of self-examination in which I concede that something in me wants to destroy these and other odjets de Marlou. I have had it with the grieving process, it seems.
At the door to the entranceway closet, I reverse course and head diagonally across the living room to the dining table where Lorna's breakfast languishes. Lorna herself is tidying up the kitchen, and for this I am unusually grateful. I seem to have lost the capacity to wash a fork. Never mind, for I am reaching the apogee, hanging a sharp left and now walking with Marlou's breakfront to my right. Might just break the breakfront, I am thinking. The truth is I had never heard of a breakfront until Marlou broke into my life. Even now, I am not sure what breaks in a breakfront. Except the highly breakable contents, of course.
For this is Marlou's glass menagerie, her collection of porcelain miniatures. Joan, Marlou's mother, long ago suggested that these figurines, miniature teacups and other sub-normal sized display objects should go to people as memorabilia. Which is, and remains, a splendid idea, doubtless a better one than smashing all the contents. This naughty thought drifting through my pre-breakfast mind for reasons that are unclear. And, it turns out, a bowl of high-fiber Cheerios from Trader Joe's sheds no light on the mystery. I am in a smashing mood, and that is that.
As the day wobbles on, my mood will improve. But why dwell on this? Why not just let the mood be whatever it is? I have nothing to produce, no particular deadline to meet and no one to impress. Furthermore, the waning of life's energies is perfectly natural. All right, maybe they are not waning geriatrically so much, at least at this very moment. But there is a downward course, as this year has demonstrated, and there is no particular sense in resisting it. In fact, this morning I am into observing it. At least when you're headed downhill, you can coast.
Paul Krugman isn't giving up. Just a couple of days ago he had a perfectly sensible, eminently just argument to make about job creation. I stared at his New York Times column dumbfounded. Not at him, but at my own narrow bandwidth. I cannot take in polemical arguments these days, no matter how urgent. And this one was. The nation has become a mad dog gnawing on its own limbs. And I can do nothing but watch. No, not even watch. Stare at the carpet as I don't watch, finally grabbing Lorna's arm for the last few steps back to my wheelchair. Why the arm? Because although I have no serious worries about falling, I am just plain tired. Tired of worrying about my balance, tired of staring at the carpet, ready to lean on someone.
Back in the chair, yes, my back does feel better. Walking around the place loosens things up. I should do this more often, but can't say with any certainty that I will. Even leaning on someone takes effort. And serious leaning would take serious effort. It would even spark serious anxiety.
For the people you lean on can lean right out of existence. They can tilt toward a death that is slowed by agony then flips them up and out of your life like an astral pancake. Buckwheat, buttermilk, hold the syrup because this one isn't headed for the pan. The people you lean on can shrink away like something forgotten in the corner of your freezer. Even when you open the plastic bag you cannot be certain what it is, or was. What's certain is that things left are behind, which become places you might crash against on your morning orthopedic stroll. Relics. And increasingly of interest only to experts. You can't get rid of the stuff. You don't want to. You'd like to see it all go away, and you fear it will.
