Wednesday, October 17, 2012

How We Do It, Part XVIII in a series


We're driving back from the physical therapist's office, where Sophie has just been cast for orthotics to help correct or at least ameliorate her increasingly awkward gait that is causing callouses, blisters and stiff ankles. They will cost nearly $1500, and I anticipate the wrangling with the insurance company, the telephone calls and call-backs, the forms to fill, the justifications. Sophie has been drooling excessively the last few days, soaking through more handkerchiefs than we have and also keeps a steady humming droney moan up the entire time we're at the therapist's as well as the drive home. When I crank up the classical music to drown out the sound, it manages to rise above it and wrap itself around my neck, insistent tendrils curling round into my ear, a hand to hand combat with any empathy left standing. I remember to breathe and do so, deeply, despite my own stuffed nose and congested head. I raise my voice perhaps too much and say Sophie, STOP. Please. But it doesn't stop, and we continue down Olympic Boulevard, heading east to pick up The Brothers, baroque instruments, Sophie's steady humming, adagio, piccolo, what would be the Italian musical term -- perhaps acceso (ignited, on fire), agitato (agitated), my own thoughts acciaccatura (broken down, crushed). When the seizure starts, I pull over to the side of the road and park in a red zone, jump out of the car and sit with Sophie in the back seat until it's over. When I climb back into the front, I lay my head back and close my eyes. Sophie isn't humming anymore. A couple of minutes later, I open my eyes and respond to tapping on my window and a voice con forto (with force) shouts,  You're in the red! I say angstlich (agitated, German), My daughter just had a seizure. I will move in a moment. The traffic lady repeated affrettando (hurrying, pressing onwards) Well then, just move! and she whipped out her handheld ticket machine and began to tap into it. I repeated myself, adagissimo (very slowly), My daughter just had a seizure, but I know how these things work so I pulled out of the red and into the street and then circled the block and found an empty spot with a meter. I carefully placed the handicapped placard on the rear-view mirror, opened my door and walked toward the meter maid, Not Lovely Rita, who was busy tapping into her machine. Excuse me, I said, amabile (easy, pleasant). You know, my daughter had an epileptic seizure and I had to pull over to help her. I really don't like the tone you used with me. Not Lovely Rita looked up at me, squinting against the sun. You shouldn't have parked in a red zone, she repeated, dumpf (dull). I repeated that I hoped she would be kinder, the tears running down my cheeks were not contrived. It's not my job, she said, and I cried dolente (sorrowfully, plaintively), Not your job? Not your job to be a human being? and when she turned her back and walked away, I raised my hand and grew a baton that I waved in the air and called on the accompaniments, the sacred and the profane, and I threw my head around, crescendo (growing, progressively louder), the baton slipped from my hand, sailed through the air and right through the stocky back of Not Lovely Rita who slumped to the ground, morendo, dying away.

37 comments:

  1. i shall add my voice to the chorus. These how we do it posts are a book. A stunning, heartbreaking, soaring, beautiful, devastating, Pulitzer prize winning book.

    i am sorry the meter maid was not kinder. i am glad for her sake there was an italian opera thundering in your head.

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  2. I add my voice to your chorus as well, soaring, sweeping, undulating, and heartbreaking. A beautifully written post as always, how do you find the words to paint such a poetic picture?

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  3. And again, I am slammed up against the universe. Girl, you are better than all the poets you adore. Just take my word for that.

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  4. I'm not sorry for the chuckle at the image of a baton in not lovely not Rita's back ...

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  5. You nailed it, with your usual poetry -- not your job to be a human being?

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  6. Not my job ... oh, how maddening. How absolutely, utterly maddening.

    May karma visit Not My Job Not So Lovely Rita soon.

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  7. I feel your pain, I really do.
    I just don't have the energy to write about it.
    Your writing is otherworldly, sometimes.
    xoxoxo

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    1. I might have uttered those exact words, Denise, but I can't be sure. :)

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    2. I hope you did utter those words, because these beautiful ones you wrote for us (broadly speaking) would be wasted on her shriveled soul. What a bitch.

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  9. Your words are beautiful but you're breaking my heart. And Rita can suck it.

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  10. Please send a copy of this moment to the LAPD, or whatever police jurisdiction you were in, we don't need this. I agree with Denise, but I'm not sorry for thinking it.

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Ken, but I can't imagine the LAPD having an interest in Italian operatic descriptions of their no-good loser traffic control folks.

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  11. I just read this again. Still angry as hell at Not Lovely Rita. But I've come to my senses enough to tell you what a fine piece of writing this is. Worth a standing ovation.
    I hope you and Sophie have a restful night--and that the orthotics help.

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  12. My first impulse and response was exactly what Denise first said. Exactly.

    I am sorry my sweet friend. I am sorry my sweet Sophie.

    "Not your job to be a human being?"

    Seems like that is the crux of what's wrong with the world. Just my opinion

    And you reminded me, I need to get my sorry sef and my child to the orthotist. Way over due. Her feet have finally grown. I think at 5 she is just now and infant/toddler 4. Teeny tiny girl that she is.

    Now rest well and just keep breathing.

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  13. Wow. Just wow.

    I'm sure you have to be a hard-ass to be a meter maid, but still.

    Does Sophie's humming intensify prior to a seizure? Is there a relationship between the two?

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    1. Yes, there's a relationship, I think, but I'm not certain. Sometimes the humming is a way for her to cope with stimuli -- and sometimes its intensity is such that we know a seizure is coming. For all I knew, she had a headache, a stomachache -- the list is long, and it's part of the extreme difficult of caring for a non-verbal kid -- and heart-breaking, to tell you the truth.

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  14. I'm glad you confronted her. Insanity. Seriously.

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  15. Gee, no "Do you require medical assistance? Can I help? Do you need me to call someone?" I do think you ought to notify the city where this occurred - they need to know. I'm jaded, so I'm not expecting they would do anything, but still. Or write a letter to the local paper.

    I love the final scene, you felling that heartless excuse for a human being with your baton. That is justice is so many ways.

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  16. The not-lovely-Rita needs to behave more like a Meter Maid and less like a sociopath. Offering you assistance seems like it would have been the more appropriate response. No?

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  17. My initial fantasy was that this is an imagined story and could not have happened in real life as our fears of how horrible people might treat us are usually reserved for those special "spaces" in our brains and in our dreams, but I am certain that this did unfortunately happen to you in real life, somewhere in LA, in the recent past and for that I am completely sorry that this happened to you and Sophie.
    Such beautiful writing....
    Any thoughts about publishing in a university press? My doctor has published a book on therapeutic gardens at Yale University Press.. i could pick his brain as to how it all came together.... I have a couple connections that I need to feel out, but this is where my mind has been going lately.....

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    1. Thanks for your kind words and thoughts, Colleen, and I would of course appreciate any advice on pursuing publication of my writing. The events I described did happen yesterday, actually, exactly as I told them with the exception of the Italian operatic ending.

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  18. oh god and so perfectly written please submit this somewhere I know JAMA takes poetry submissions. send this and call it poetry. that's how it stung me. that's how it made me cry. as poetry.
    love
    Rebecca

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  19. You amaze me, the way you spin gold out of the dross of life. I, too, see a book forming. Keep writing, Dear One. x0 N2

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  20. I really wanted that baton to grow in length and smack that bitch on the top of her head. I really did.

    I cannot imagine what must go on in her life that she closes herself off to humanity. But I know that your humanity encompasses all of hers and your fierce mother-love rings true in every moment.

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  21. Yes, to the spinning gold from life. With clarity, imagination, so much awareness. I think of you and Sophie making your way across a Cormac McCarthy version of Los Angeles. City of Angels, not exactly. xo

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  22. If YOU hadn't written this, I would probably have had trouble believing that it was true. I thank God that He gave you the gift of words with which to release this horror, a sense of irony and a beautiful mind with which to shape those words, and a good community to support you. And I am so, so, so very sorry that this poor woman could not see and feel with her heart, but could only reply with sharp words and her little ticket book. You deserve so much better than that!
    One would think that her boss would not want her to work in this fashion (but I wouldn't bother to find out, if I were you).
    Sending much love to you, dear Elizabeth.

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  23. Your writing is so mesmerizing, so perfect, and I felt myself wanting to whack that nasty woman. So glad you did it for me! Are there no kind people out there anymore?

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  24. Brilliant.
    Stunning.

    You should do a TED talk.

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  25. The soaring of a human spirit is always a beautiful thing. The triumph of a spirit lifts us all. Send this piece to your favorite LA Times columnist. Send it somewhere. This needs to be seen. Balm for a weary world.

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  26. what comes to mind reading the incredible way you made music with your writing is "geniale". how you all do it - i just don't know.
    Tom was invited to an author/writing/book festival a few weeks ago, and said that workshops, talks and book events with other authors and writers were one of the most inspiring experience as a writer. that's the circle of persons you should hook up with, and make something of your talent and writing. Baci.

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  27. i am so fired up right now!! i know this Rita... i have MET this Rita - emotionally lobotomized, completely "not getting it" in the least. These types of people are the worst kind - they don't even know that what they are doing and saying is so... inhuman. There is no empathic compass. If i didn't loathe them so much, I'd feel sorry for them.

    Where I do feel my empathy is for you... having to go through all of this only to have this slap in the face. Im proud of you for going up and speaking with her... though it probably didn't make much of an impact on HER, you would have regretted it forever if you hadn't.

    so sorry... about it all.

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  28. Oh Elizabeth.

    I am so sorry. What a heartless woman.

    I am so sorry Sophie has seizures. I am so sorry for what she goes through and what you and your family go through with her. That woman can't begin to know the love that you live and breathe and are.

    And the exquisiteness of your writing is mind boggling.

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  29. It's difficult sometimes because you write so magnificently about these broken down moments. This piece of writing was truly a feat. But I am so sorry about that awful woman. She is the one who is going to get some interesting karma. I don't know why some people refuse to be human. But as for this piece, Bravo.

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  30. Vesuvius is right, this is magnificent. Every time i read it my heart beats like a war drum allegro and staccato in my chest.

    I wish you could bask in the lot of us cheering Bravo! as we did in our minds upon reading this.

    Hold me back! No, forget that, let me at that fucking meter maid twit. She deserves a knuckle sandwich and a bowl of my-boot-in-her-ass soup.

    Also, that picture is so emotive. It conveys such anguish so perfectly. Sheesh.

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    1. If it's possible to love violence, I love yours.

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