Child of Mine

I study the pattern in the linoleum floor, my forehead resting on the edge of the mattress. I sit, bent over, in a hard chair beside her hospital bed. My daughter’s hand rest on the back of my neck where my hair is damp and curling from the rain that fell in sheets as I stood panicked and dumb outside the ambulance. I lift my forehead off the edge of the bed and look at her ashen face, so perfect in its paleness.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, tears welling up, chocolate swirls above the white of her cheekbones. Charcoal spittle clings to the corners of her mouth and her teeth are tinged with gray as if she has just finished a licorice slurpee. I wonder where my antidote is.
Sighing, I reach for her hand, close mine around it and marvel at the smallness of it. How can it still be so small? My own tears threaten and I clear my throat to warn them off. Her other hand, connected by plastic tubing to an IV bottle suspended above her bed, reaches out to touch my face and I snap my head up and away, out of her reach. I do not let go of the little hand I am holding though…I clutch it as tightly as I used to when it was time to cross the street.
“I just wanted it to stop,” she says. Simple, no elaboration, just so.
I lower my head back to the bed and digest this. I want it to stop, too. I realize that for the first time in a very long time we are on common ground. She pulls her slender hand away from mine and curls it under her chin. She is tired she says. I am tired too (another thing to share) and my weariness pounds behind my eyelids like a heartbeat.
The doctor comes in and I sit straighter, trying to focus on the words he is saying. Is he speaking to me or to her? She is answering him, a little girl’s voice chirping through black rimmed lips.
“I don’t know how many I took, maybe twenty or twenty-five,” she says. “I was looking for Tylenol, I had a headache, I guess. Then I saw the other pills, and …I didn’t plan it, or anything. I was just standing there with a headache and just so tired of it all, and it came to me…it seemed like the only way. I just wanted to make it stop,” she repeats her plaintive refrain.
I try to listen to the doctor explaining how she was lucky she did not take twenty to twenty-five Tylenol, while I envision my child standing in front of our medicine chest, reaching out for a bottle of muscle relaxants. Her liver would be mush, he says. Mush. I find that odd. Mush. Is that what doctors say? He places his hand on my shoulder as he leaves. “Hold on,” it seems to say, fingers squeezing.
We are alone again and she asks for something to eat. I look into her dark eyes, hungry to see her in them. She is not there.
Food. I am eager to see her eat. I want to watch her mouth open and close, see her throat work the morsels down into her belly. I want to feed her myself, hold the spoon in front of her, my own mouth open to show her how. I regret not having breastfed her.
I raise myself up from the chair and I feel heavy. It is hard work just to stand there. I walk out of the room, past the policeman who sits in a wooden chair like mine just outside the door, past the woman writhing on a gurney in the hall, her hospital gown hitched up, exposing thigh and dimpled buttock. I avert my eyes from hers as she is too much in them. I cannot afford to see her.
The man in the next room is vomiting and yelling obscenities between retches. The nurses ignore him, but I cannot. He is mad. But in his madness, I see beauty, a freedom that beckons me. I could scream and retch and let my ass hang out of my johnny and just let go. I turn from the puking man, stopping up my ears with palms of my hands to drown out his siren’s call.
The nurse tells me the cafeteria is on the third floor. Go right at the end of the hall, take the west elevators up to three; go past the gift shop, to the left. In the elevator, two medical students discuss a patient while I read the hospital’s privacy statement on the wall. I try not to listen, thinking how ashamed I would be to have what has happened talked about. I begin to cry
I weep as if I am alone. Like a child, I heave great gulping sobs that cannot be stifled even though my fist is stuffed into my mouth. The medical students stop talking and look at each other for direction. They are all facts and techniques, with no real sense of what is needed to truly heal someone.
The elevator doors open and I rush out, turning to look at the young man who enters after me. He is carrying a bouquet of roses and a stuffed pink bear with a bib that proclaims, “It’s A Girl!” in festive lettering. The young man’s chin is dark with stubble and he looks happy as he pushes the button for his floor. He has no clue.
The hallway leading away from the elevator is lined with artwork. I notice one abstract painting that reminds me of her because she would get it. Where I see only kindergarten splats of color, she would see conflict, wisdom, resolution.
My sobs subside as I think about the painting of a lighthouse that she did in oil. It hangs in my bedroom and I love the detail of the waves as they crash against the rocks in the foreground. I am always amazed at how she was able to capture the colors of the sea so perfectly; deep green, midnight blue, Caribbean turquoise, pure white. She hates the painting, a classroom project she was forced to complete. She detests any art that is representative, preferring to cull her own meaning from less accessible works.
The cafeteria is deserted. Only the vending machines offer any hope. I agonize over my choices, wanting to fill her up with wholesome goodness. I contemplate running home to stuff and roast a chicken; then laugh out loud at the idea. My laughter echoes in the empty cafeteria and it sounds edgy and lunatic. I watch my dollar bill slip in and out of the vending machine like a mocking tongue.
I return to the elevator empty handed, a failure. I push the button for the fourth floor. She is in the basement, yet I am going up. The elevator carries me higher.
The doors open to another hallway adorned with art, if that is what it can be called. Pudgy new faces peek out of daisies, peonies and lion’s manes. Naked babies rest snug in walnut shells and peapods, as if that is how they got here.
I should not be here, yet I turn down the corridor and walk until I come to the observation window. I watch them, all lined up in rows, wrapped tight in straight-jacket swaddling, their little faces not really like those in the Geddes photographs. These faces are red; some of them are pinched and swollen. Some have tiny starbursts of broken capillaries on the puffs of their little cheeks. It isn’t easy, I think, even now.
I stand in front of the window long enough to see the young man from the elevator enter the room with a young woman in a pale yellow chenille robe with matching slippers. She looks tired, the color of the robe emphasizing the pallor of her skin and the dark bruise-like circles under her blue eyes. It never changes, I think, it is just one long exhaustive labor.
I return to the elevator and descend the four flights to the emergency room. Retracing my steps, I stop to look in on the beautiful madman next door. He has been replaced by an elderly woman, ancient really. She reclines, stiff in the bed, her mouth frozen open in a toothless gape through which she sucks in rasps of dry air. Her eyes scream curses at the obscenity her life has become. I look away, aware of her watching me do so.
I nod to the policeman as I pass. He smiles back; it is a nice smile. A smile that says he has been here a dozen times before and he can assure that this one is going to be just fine. She isn’t like the others he has seen, she isn’t really crazy, or worse, she doesn’t have parents who are as bad off as she is. His simple reassuring smile and assumption that I am a good mother threatens to overwhelm me and I swallow a sob before it can escape.
Next door to the old woman, a young woman, my daughter lies sleeping. Her mouth is open and she is breathing through it noisily. Her face has pinked up a bit beneath its cap of unnatural auburn hair. I notice an empty apple juice container and two half-eaten cups of gelatin, green and orange, her least favorites.
I lower myself back into the wooden chair and rest my cheek against the cool of the metal rail someone has raised in my absence. She is safe here, taken care of, her needs are being met. I look at my watch.
“Why don’t you just leave?” she says. Her eyes look right into mine and I can see that she feels she has just caught me at something. I reach out and brush a wisp of hair away from her eyes. I lower the rail and rest my forehead once more on the bed. I cannot speak to her.
“I am glad I called you,” she says, her tone softer, less accusatory. I raise my head and nod at her. I am glad too. The alternative is unthinkable.
Looking at her now, a full grown person, I remember the first time I ever saw her. She wasn’t breathing. Her eyes were wide open, black chasms of inscrutable depths. Her scrawny red body was stretched out impossibly long between the two gloved hands of the doctor, her head tilted just enough for her to make eye contact with me. She wasn’t breathing. She looked right into my terrified eyes and did not blink. I remember thinking then that she was holding her breath.
As she grew, I never changed my mind. As she had resisted breathing, she resisted all things, withheld herself from me, kept unfathomable secrets that I yearned to know but was too afraid to ask.
Now here we are. She reaches for my face and I pull away. I cling tightly to her hand and she deftly slips it out of my grasp. We dance a painful pas-de-deux of need and regret, neither of us capable of anything more.

WORDS TO LIVE BY...FINALLY, I GET IT

Sometimes enlightenment comes in the most unexpected ways...I was watching a terrible movie this morning. Feeling completely guilty for not writing, not looking for work, not getting dressed...eating too much...and the movie was bad, cheesy and predictable... a love story revolving around revenge and murder. In a scene near the end of the movie, the protagonist who was wronged and seeking retribution, re-discovers the power of love and delivers this line..."Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other guy dies."

Truer words were never spoken...I have spent the past year of my life ingesting poison and waiting for the other guy to die...no more...I am done

What happened happened and the only thing to do now is to move forward...no looking back...ever.

IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN

Sometimes being a man's wife makes you forget you are a woman...you forget that women are the strongest, funniest, smartest, best people in the world.
For sixteen years I was married to a man who found no real joy in anything we did together unless it came with an orgasm (for him) at the end of it. He would be romantic, sexy, funny and sweet and attentive and nurturing and supportive...all in pursuit of his end result.
I remember now that being in a group of good women provides a sense of unconditional support and belonging...with no motivation other than receiving the same in return...Thank you women...you know who you are...its been a tough year, but I feel like I am coming out the other side...
In fairness, I am sure there are men out there who love a woman for who she is and not what she can do for him...I just have not met him...yet.

ITS BECOMING COMICAL

So one day last spring, when I was facing one of the many difficulties that had presented itself to me over the first few months of what will go down in my history as the single most horrendous year of my life, I looked to the heavens and cried "What else? What? Is that all you got?" Oh how I regret that challenge to the universe...because as it turns out, that wasn't all it had...not by a long shot.
But, here I am this morning...actually laughing again in the face of Disaster. I am down...to be sure... but never ever count me out. Its not who I am...it will never be who I am.
I wake this morning to many things to be grateful for...not the least of which is comeback baseball...
I laugh and smile and give thanks for my life, my family, the abundance I have in the midst of adversity....thank you

Grateful Mornings

An old, dear friend reminded me of something last night...it isn't about what you don't have...or what you are missing...its about thanking the universe every day for the many things you do.
For about a six month stretch the year before my husband left, I began each day waking up and thanking God for the wonderful abundant life I was living and the many gifts he had given me in the day to come...that's right, I thanked him in advance..I "acted as if" I had been the recipient of everything I wanted from that day...and do you know what? I was happier than I had been in years. I smiled more, got more accomplished, had less stress, and loved my family more...I won't go into why I stopped...suffice it to say, I allowed negative energy from outside of myself to pollute my positive attitude.
Today, I am reclaiming my grateful nature.
I am so grateful and happy that I live in abundance. I am so grateful and happy that my sadness has been lifted from my heart. I am so grateful and happy to be living the life I was meant to live...
Try it for a week...wake up and smile before your feet hit the ground...give thanks... and have a wonderful day!

Synopsis Shminopsis

I spent the better part of five years writing a genre novel that was carefully and painstakingly edited by Ardath Mayhar, who generously wrote a letter of introduction for me to editors and publishers in NY. She proclaimed my book to be excellent and intriguing and unique. She likened my writing to many successful, famous contemporary fantasy writers, and her praise and belief in my talent made me feel like I had arrived. I was a writer.
I promptly sent her letter along with one of my own out to several big houses in NY...and then sat smugly back on my ego and waited for the requests for my masterpiece to come in...and I waited, and waited and waited.
Almost a year later, a form letter from one of these houses arrived. It apologized for being a form letter and asked for a synopsis, and the first three chapters of my book and directed me to a website to familiarize myself with their submission guidelines.
That was almost 9 months ago...I am still working on the synopsis. In my defense, I did go through a divorce, my sister passed away, I was forced to move out of my home with my teen aged daughter...lots of stuff in a short period of time...but that stuff aside...I simply can't write a ten page synopsis. I honestly think it might be easier to rewrite the entire novel.
How do you capture the quality of your writing, the conflict and motivation of your characters and tell a 400 page story in ten pages or less? How...huh? How?

DON'T DO IT

So I told my youngest daughter about the blog I'd started and she rolled her eyes in that way she does when she wants to let me know she thinks I am running off the rails.
"You're just gonna get a bunch of other angry women who want to male bash with you...they are going to enable your anger...you'll never get past this."
At first, I argued that it would allow me to voice my feelings in a place that she didn't have to be party to...I needed an outlet and I had been wrongly using her as a sounding board when I could not keep my feelings in any more.
But, in retrospect, I think I rather agree with her now...not that anyone has actually posted any comments here. But, if I use this space for looking backward, I'll never move forward. So I am going to use this space for writing and talking about writing.
My future...not my past.

A Death in Paris

Sometimes the only way for me to come to grips with something is to write about it...the cathartic healing process of putting words down on paper and then reading them, is at times the only way I can learn how I really feel....

The smell was the thing. The apartment itself was bright and cheery. The small blue spruce she had no doubt trekked into the woods behind the barn to cut down was artfully decorated with red and green plaid ribbon, pine cones and the last of the delicate glass ornaments that had survived her many moves. Small neat packages wrapped in foil paper and trimmed with bows and candy canes were arranged beneath the tree to camouflage the still full watering tray that held the trunk.
The compact, galley-style kitchen felt used and loved. There were herbs hanging in baskets beside the refrigerator and a baker’s rack filled to overflowing with cookbooks and food magazines, recipe boxes and baking tins. The counter top beside the old cast iron stove was dusted with flour and two loaves of shiny braided egg bread rested on cooling racks.
A small kitchen table with one wooden chair took up what little floor space there was and its surface was strewn with mail, some of it unopened, several packs of nicorette gum, a check book, a small red poinsettia plant, a carton of Parliaments and an empty package of Dramamine.
The “garden room” as she had dubbed it, was over-filled with plants of all kinds. A round wooden pedestal table on which there were succulents of varying size and color, stood in the corner beside the long window that filled the room with sunshine for the better part of the day. Her dining room table, useless here in the tiny second floor flat she rented was covered from end to end with containers of the spring bulbs she had forced into life. The perky paper-whites, yellow and red tulips and grape hyacinth atop their slender green stalks stood in stark contrast to the backdrop of the frozen landscape beyond the window.
The living room was an eclectic mix of favorite furniture from her past and newer pieces she had acquired along the journey here. Every square inch was used to its best potential. An expensive jewel colored Persian rug covered the worn wide-planked pine floor. Her computer sat atop a massive antique desk with heavy brass handles that was positioned at one end of the room in front of a large bow window that overlooked what, come spring, would be the first real incarnation of the English garden that she had toiled on all that past spring and summer. A settee upholstered in soft pale green chenille and garnished with two pomegranate throw pillows took up the entire left wall. The opposing wall was taken up by a large oak entertainment center that held her wide screen television, her Bose stereo, a DVD player and hundreds of music CDs and dozens of framed photographs of her children.
The walls in every room were adorned with framed artwork, from original watercolors of several New England lighthouses to oil reproductions of masterpieces by Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir to framed World War II-era propaganda posters. Her favorite of these was one of “Rosie the Riveter” that bore the slogan “We Can Do It!” under the image of a woman in a bright blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, flexing her biceps. This poster hung over her bed.
The bedroom was large and her modest double bed on a simple metal frame left room for a loveseat in front of another bow window, two night stands and two large chests of drawers and a mirrored dresser. Not one piece matched another in the room. The night stand closest to the bedroom door was littered with cigarette butts and ashes from an overturned glass ashtray. A small tin pot that was no bigger than a coffee mug sat among the debris, its black plastic handle hanging over the edge of the nightstand. A half empty fifth of Vodka, two amber colored plastic prescription bottles missing their white caps, and a well worn copy of Jack Kerouac’s The Town and the City were on the other night stand. The bed had not been stripped. The stain she had left there was visible even from behind the yellow caution tape.

The smell was the thing. Not a sickroom smell, it filled my nose and mouth. It was thick, sweetish and strange. Not like anything I had ever smelled before. For days after that night, I tasted that smell in the back of my throat.

A Little Background

My story is probabaly not too different from many of yours. I have been married for 16 years to a man who, at times, was not all that easy to love. Sound familiar?
We met when we were each ending relationships that had rewarded us with a child. My daughter was 5, his was 3 years old. Soon, we had a daughter of our own.We worked for many of the first years of our marriage to blend our children into one happy family...it was the hardest work I have ever done in my life and often I thought it might not be worth it.
Eventually, when the kids were mostly grown, we seemed to have what we had strived for...our girls were truly sisters, our family was whole and I thought, happy. Did we have trouble? Sure, who doesn't? Money, teenagers, health problems, sex (or a lack thereof), work, and all the hundred million little things that chip away at the foundation of a marriage...unfortunately, we had more than our share of all of these things and it took a drastic toll.
I always believed that we could get through anything together...because we loved each other...I believed that...and sadly, I think I still do. What I didn't count on was my husband losing faith; not only in us as a couple, but in himself, me personally, and life in general.
He made the decision to end our marriage, and no matter what I did or said or who else tried to convince him he was acting irrationally...he left me. But that is nothing uncommon...men leave women all of the time.
My husband left me with an enormous mortgage, a mountain of debt and... his mother...yes...you read that right...he left me with his mother.
Do I have your attention now?

Getting Started

Ok...so I am not the only woman in the world who got left this year...not the only 40 something whose husband decided that she was no longer the woman he loved, or even liked, for that matter. I am certainly not the only woman who was hurt and shocked by all of this...not only emotionally, but financially.
I am sure a thousand thousand women have felt what I feel right now...right this very moment...I am not alone...I know that.
But somehow, alone is exactly how I feel. And despite having three loving, sympathetic and supportive daughters, and a small circle of female friends who let me rant and rave and cry on their shoulders...a mother who shares my indignation and anger and sorrow when called on to do so...I feel completely alone.
In the past year I lost my husband to mid-life crisis, my home to the credit crisis, and my much loved sister to a crisis of spirit. The weight of all of it threatened to crush me many times, but I am just not that weak. Wallow though I may at times, it is not in my nature to drown in self-pity for too long.
This blog will be my way of working through it all...with others I hope...maybe together we can find the resiliant, self-reliant women we have maybe lost along the way, stifled perhaps, or never acknowledged...let's start from scratch...ready?