Sophie and I

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Ray Bradbury 

The Requisite Valentine's Day Post

Must I?

Sigh.

I am one of those people who professes to hate Valentine's Day, who rants about how commercial it all is, such bullshit, etc. etc.. But then I get my annual Valentine's gift from my father, and my cold, stone heart melts.

I confess to making special Valentines for Sophie to give her aides and classmates:

The Husband and I went all out and prepared a Valentine's Day feast for our true loves:

Here they are, blurry, and Sophie is not in the picture, but she was there:

So, yeah. While I'm not going to post a love sonnet, we do some serious celebrating around here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

4 am

a print that hangs by my bed

I'm a good sleeper. I go to bed on the late side, after writing and reading for two to three hours, and when I put down my book and turn out the light, I turn to my side and go to sleep. I wake up seven or so hours later when the alarm clock light begins flashing, and I have no trouble turning it off and then lying there doing a short meditation. I know, this is a blessing. This morning, though, I woke up at exactly 4 am in full thought, and it seemed like the thoughts were exactly the same as they had been when I'd fallen asleep. I had gone over the day, an upsetting one, actually, worried for my boy Oliver who is so unhappy at school. As those of you who work the early morning shift know, 4 am is the time when all worries are magnified and seemingly insurmountable. They don't call it the darkest hour before dawn for nothing. It also seems that telling oneself that worrying at 4 am is stupid is useless, and after fifteen minutes or so of rising terror that might have, could have, would have tipped over into despair, I got up and crept into the boys' bedroom and over to Oliver who was sleeping peacefully. I stood beside the bed and touched his exposed hand, curled softly on top of the cover. He rustled a bit but continued to breathe deeply, so I stood there with my hand on his and breathed deeply, my eyes closed. I prayed for peace for him when the sun rose, for strength for me to love and be compassionate. I prayed for ease while he continued to breathe, in and out, his face still the baby's that I'd rocked every night and sung to years ago. When I left the room, light was curling around the blinds, but I climbed back into bed, closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

The white smoke over the Vatican

I can only hope, for the sake of my parents, who loved the church so much, that a miracle of divine grace alters the writing on the wall. If not, the Catholic Church will suffer the fate it deserves.

John Patrick Shanley 

This is really the most kick-ass opinion piece I've read on the resignation of Pope Benedict. Read it here.

The Unwritten Word

I was an ugly cry mess this morning driving home after dropping the boys off at school. I was listening to NPR, to a story about one of the soldiers who spent more than six years as a hostage in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. John Borling was shot down from his plane, captured, tortured and held in a six by seven foot cell with no windows for years, and hearing his old, rough voice explain how the composing of poetry in his head and then the tapping out of that poetry in code on the wall kept him alive just undid me. You know - the irony of a soldier fighting in an unjust war, bombing civilians in what would ultimately become a lost cause was not lost on me. However, I was so moved by the power of what Bowling called the unwritten word, the nearly unbelievable impulse to create and to survive. He said this in his newly published book of poetry, Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton:

The essence of the human condition is the ability to create. Jail me, hurt me, hate me, but the mind and spirit are weapons. No books, no writing materials, nothing—just the mind. Find a way. One of the ways for me was to mentally create poetry. Create poetry and keep it memorized — lots of poetry. It was a way to fight back and provide legacy for my wife and daughter should I not survive. I tapped those poems through the walls and others helped carry that legacy for years.

Here's one poem that describes how he got through the day as a knight, but you really have to listen to him (I dare you not ugly cry), and you can do so here:

The Tourney

The scepter raised and silent challenge made,

Again I mental summon lance and shield,

And somehow last till regal colors fade.

It's now, the victor absent from the field,

Hard pallet draws me, huddled down upon,

A distant tower tolls a muffled chime;

Another muddled day has eddied on

To join the addled streams of tousled time.

Embittered languor blankets captive man;

So armored, sally forth at dawn, consigned

To stand alone, and parry best I can

Until appointed tourney's end, resigned.

For time's an old and boring enemy.

Too cruel to kill forgotten men like me.

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

Wendell Berry

One forgets about parenting -- the on and on-ness of it.

The Dowager Countess, Downton Abbey 

If you love, love the moon

William Blake

I'm not sure how to absorb all the news these days or even attempt to. As I scrolled through it this morning, I couldn't help but lightly press my finger on the touch screen to read more of Pope Benedict's resignation plans. There's something so glamorous about something happening only once in 800 years. The first pope to resign was Marcellinus in 304. He was deposed after complying with a Roman emperor's order to offer sacrifice to pagan gods. Benedict IX sold his papacy in 1045 and resigned. Celestine V was evidently overwhelmed by the job and resigned after five months in 1294, and Gregory XII stepped down in 1415 to help end a church schism. My finger traced the tiny screen of my phone, scrolling down and I wondered idly (with irony) whether yesterday's news of Los Angeles Cardinal Mahoney's diverted cemetery funds was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for the spiritual leader of a billion of the planet's people. I imagined a courier running on the cobblestones of the Vatican, down the ornate hallways, through the room where man's finger touches God's and into the Pope's private quarters with the news. Maybe he just couldn't take it anymore.

Why are there so many phrases that use camels to impart wisdom? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, is a Biblical phrase. Trust in God but tie your camel tight is a Persian proverb, and my favorite might be the Egyptian If you love, love the moon. If you steal, steal a camel. 

I lifted my finger from the screen and closed my eyes. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Guns, Exercise, Feeling Sick and Getting Well

I told a good friend today that the line between feeling really, really crappy because of a virus and feeling better is a thin one, and I feel so much better this evening that I'm practically kicking up my heels. I did loads of laundry today and made a delicious beef and sweet potato stew. I baked a loaf of Parmesan Bread with Beer and Black Pepper. I drove Henry to his lacrosse game waaaaaaaaay out and cheerfully dropped him off. I let Oliver go out with his friends to a shooting range.

OK. Back up you say?

Yes, I let Oliver go to a shooting range. The photos that my friend sent me of my son shooting a gun sort of made me sick to my stomach, and I don't want to post them in fear of any of my gun-loving relatives or friends sticking it to me. Do as I say, not as I do. The Husband and I utterly trust the friends who took him and we made the decision to let him because it's something that he actually really excels at -- his focus and precision are pretty extraordinary, and we're taking the gamble that not forbidding the outing will remove some of the glamour and mystique from guns.

We'll get back to you later on whether we should have said Absolutely, positively NOT!

 A few days ago I felt so badly that I didn't care about anything, maybe not even my children. Yesterday, I felt bad enough that the prospect of never getting well was about to take over. I feel great sympathy for those who suffer from chronic illness or more acute disease -- and despite dealing with a child who has multiple giant seizures every single day, I definitely take my own health for granted, which is just plain stupid. I don't want to go overboard here, but give me a day or two and I think I might even go on a serious exercise regime.

Good lord -- first I let my kid shoot guns and now I'm going to exercise.

Roses and Thorns

So, I'm finally feeling a bit better. I'm either a giant baby or this virus took hold of my central nervous system and turned me into a sniveling, coughing, whimpering, depressed and irritable old woman. I feel now like I'm one of those cut-back roses, all thorns with no sign of flower. I did rest, though; in fact, I watched all thirteen episodes of the new Netflix series' House of Cards. It was awesome although it made me feel like I should get up and take a shower. Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright play just about the most icy, venal couple on the planet. Speaking of planets, it's pretty cold here in Los Angeles at about fifty-five degrees, but it feels like another planet when I see what some of ya'll are dealing with on the east coast. Even though I'm sick, I'm glad I'm not you if you live in Boston or Connecticut or even New York. Call me cruel when I say that snow is pretty, but it's not that pretty. I guess you can get back to me during fire season or when The Big One hits. 

Saturday Night West Coast Re-Post

Me, taken by D in 1986

I can never write too much about my friendships -- those with women and the rare ones with men. There is one man who is, certainly, my dearest male friend, but he's also one of my best friends, ever. I met him before I turned 21, in a restaurant where we both waited tables. At some point, I read him aloud Eudora Welty's short story Why I Live at the P.O., and nearly thirty years later we've made a pact that we'll read the other the same story, whoever is on his or her deathbed first. Or maybe I suggested the idea and forced him to agree. We continue to argue over who's dying first and will probably do so until he takes his last breath, as I read the final paragraphs:

Of course, there's not much mail. My family are naturally the main people in China Grove, and if they prefer to vanish from the face of the earth, for all the mail they get or the mail they write, why, I'm not going to open my mouth. Some of the folks here in town are taking up for me and some turned against me. I know which is which. There are always people who will quit buying stamps just to get on the right side of Papa-Daddy.
But here I am, and here I'll stay. I want the world to know I'm happy.
And if Stella-Rondo should come to me this minute, on bended knees, and attempt  to explain the incidents of her life with Mr. Whitaker, I'd simply put my fingers in both my ears and refuse to listen.

Have you ever written about your friendships? Leave a link in the comments, if you want, and tell us about it. 

Here's mine, to D:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012

Love letters to friends

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious

daring starts from within.

Eudora Welty

We ate shrimp and grits at a small round table, and we drank a lot of wine. We drank so much wine that I drew stick figures on a napkin proving that I wasn't a prude, and you leaned so far back in your chair (you might have been laughing) that it tipped over. We might have been screaming with laughter, as far as I know, the rest of the people in the restaurant receding, their mouths open, silent. Years later, I picked you up from a Greyhound bus station in Nashville, Tennessee, trailing an enormous suitcase. You fixed my air-conditioner and swept out my apartment, and when I came home from my shift, I lay on the bed and you on a sleeping bag beside me and we talked in the darkness, and we talked through the years on the phone and in letters and now over polenta and eggs and no one makes me laugh harder.

Greetings from another planet

my backyard, February 9, 2013, 11:45 AM

The day after the day I rested

I dragged myself out to Pasadena this morning and began the proceedings to formally divest Sophie of her rights as a self-determined individual and become her guardian. I am, evidently, a "self-represented litigant" in this process and had the great fortune to be referred to a wonderful organization that will help me along the way. I filled out the beginning paperwork this morning while coughing discreetly into my upper arm and felt almost grateful for not feeling fully up to snuff. Had I been my usual feisty and iconoclastic self, I might have had reason to see irony in every sign that crossed my path and every box that I checked. Should I check YES or NO as answer to the question Does conservatee wander and get lost? Or how about Is conservatee confused and forgetful? We won't even get into Is conservatee able to make decisions about his or her sexuality? I thought for a split second about the women in North Dakota and Mississippi, and how their rights to reproductive freedom are not just being chipped away but, rather, hacked at the roots, while an hours old embryo is perhaps going to be considered a person there. Way to go Mississippi and North Dakota -- so very advanced of you. Such is the way my mind generally wanders and it might have been for more than a second if I hadn't felt so run-down from this dang virus. In any case, I finished my appointment and then drove back home where I walked around in circles in my house for a few minutes and even attempted to reach Medi-Cal for direction regarding Sophie's Drug Acquirement Troubles. If you can believe it, when your identification number has a LETTER in the string of numbers, instead of just pressing the corresponding number on the phone you have to do this convoluted thing where you press STAR and then the corresponding number and then STAR again and then a number that says which number the LETTER comes on that button. I'm not kidding you. That's what the lovely Medi-Cal voice tells you to do, and you know what? I couldn't figure it out. I started to cry a little and then giggle a little and then I realized that I need to get back into bed and watch some more episodes of House of Cards. So that's what I'm doing.

While I was sick,

Sophie evidently rode to Trader Joe's on a metro bus with her class:

and Henry was inducted into the Junior Honor Society for making good grades last semester:

Oliver continued rehearsing his role in the school musical OLIVER!, but I don't have a photo of that, yet. You know I will when the time comes.

Now, I'm back to the bed, where I've been lying all day. I can't remember the last time I actually did it -- took a sick day -- and I have to admit that I actually feel better having slept off and on for hours, in between drinking tea and water and downing Chinese herbs and Advil. Who'd of thought one could get better by resting?

God Willing and the Creek Don't Rise

What my mother always told me**

I went to see Dr. Jin last night and felt a tiny bit better when I went to bed last night, but I'm still feeling like sh**t this morning. Maybe I'll feel better as the day goes by.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

Oliver might have a good day at school, today.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

Sophie might not have any big seizures this evening while we eat dinner.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

Someone will appear on my doorstep with a quart of chicken noodle soup and say that they're here to take care of everything for me today.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

The gun nut advocates will back down and decide that owning a big ass gun and thousands of rounds of ammunition will not protect them from intruders or having their liberty stolen by the government.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

The state of Mississippi won't close the last clinic where women have some semblance of reproductive freedom.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

**Put on a little lipstick. You'll feel better.

God willing and the creek don't rise.