And then I was back, alone in my car, my fingers holding tight to a bit of aluminum, and so I turned the key and started the engine…

and wondered how many others had made gods of their recycling.

My dear, sick cat keeps barfing all over the bed, so I have to change the sheets every night just before going to sleep.  It’s really been worse than I ever would have thought to be evicted from my bed.  When my head hurts, when my eyes swell up with tears, I’ve got nowhere to go.  I’ve been exiled to my computer chair and its sharp, cold comfort, which just seems to make everything feel worse.

Last night my daughter told me that my husband only gets angry because I don’t love him enough.

(Pause)

As if the grief and regret I feel for my part in this whole mess weren’t bad enough, I found out last night that she blames me for it entirely.  Damn, but I regret letting her ever see Beauty and the Beast – no girl should ever be expected to be good and strong and beautiful enough to tame the merciless beast back into a prince.  But how can I explain this to a child who loves her father?  What do I say?  What can I say?

I’m tired, and sad, and tired of being sad, and today the distractions of life feel pale and distant, but I’m gonna try to throw myself into writing about gender or identity, or maybe finding a picture from my last visit to tease you with for tomorrow’s HNT.  Many, many moments are hard lately, but there are a few that soar – it’s hard to work out which ones to share, what face to show, but I appreciate your indulgence when the worst moments refuse to stay silent.

Especially when I’ve got no clever ending to make it right.

“It’s cancer.”

“What?”

“The biopsy.  It’s cancer.”  She turned pale and we had to hold her up.

“What biopsy?”

“We didn’t want to worry you, we thought it would be routine.  The doctor wants to see us today.”

“Ok,” I said, trying to sound comforting and in control, despite the fact that my mind was reeling.  “Let’s get you home.  We can talk on the way.”

“Ok.”

****

It’s funny the way I think things should happen – I want the five-paragraph essay form of life.  Everything should be introduced clearly, expanded upon and then concluded cleanly.  There should be signposts and explanations.  I don’t want to ever have to fight my way through confusion to get to tragedy – it’s just too hard.  But, frustratingly enough, that’s the way it always seems to go.  No gentle introductions or warnings – life just happens like a windshield going 65.

In my own self-centered way, I kinda figured my life was due a little peace, given everything that’s happened this year.  I mean, I’m just a lazy dog shy of a bad country song, and I thought I was gonna take the week off from writing and focus on family and cleaning that damn garage, but, sitting here, waiting to go join them at the hospital to sit through an 8-hour surgery, it just feels too quiet not to write something.

My dad has early-stage, moderate risk prostate cancer.  By tonight he will hopefully have had all the cancerous tissue removed, and still have all his bits functioning the way they were intended.  He generously chose life over pride, and agreed to get the surgery that carries risks of incontinence or worse because, in this case, the radiation treatments that were guaranteed to preserve his manhood did not look like they would definitively save his life.

The truth is that he only found out he had cancer because he begrudged my mother and went in for a checkup, after skipping them for years.  Blood tests showed an elevated PSA level, which led to more tests and, ultimately, the surgery today.  If he had waited another year, the prognosis might not have been as good, because the cancer could had decided to spread.  He’s only 65, which used to seem really old, but now doesn’t seem nearly old enough.

I hugged him yesterday, and he told me about the netbook he filled with his favorite movies to take to the hospital.  Ever the engineer, he decided to come up with a better way to convalesce.  He told me about all the trips they’ve got planned for this summer, and the new fence that will come in next week…so I’m not gonna think about the risks of anesthesia or surgery or his high blood pressure.  I’m not gonna think about the way the surgeon pushed for the earliest possible date for the surgery, or the way that the risk level kept getting worse as they spoke with each successive specialist.

I’ll just focus on Father’s Day next month.  And the trip to Infineon Raceway to drive an actual race car we got him for his birthday a few weeks ago.  The soccer teams he coached and the field trips he drove.  The time he had to take me to buy a bra and we were both mortified for life, and the way he says very little but manages to express quite a lot.

And about tomorrow, when I’ll be laughing at myself for being so very worried today.

She was friendly and nice, although she has a habit of looking at me without blinking which was somewhat distracting, so I had to take breaks and look away every now and again to avoid getting into a non-blinking war (because you know those only end in heartache and bloodshed.)  She also has a habit of making me finish sentences I don’t want to finish which I suppose is a good thing, but left me struggling a bit yesterday.  Clearly not someone who’s gonna let me wiggle around anything, that much I can say for certain.

I told her everything that I could cram into 50 minutes – a lot of pain and truth and fear – and she listened with an empathy that surprised and disarmed me.  The area and culture I was raised in is very much a “get the prize” kinda place – eat your broccoli first, leave dessert for some vague time in the future, get over yourself and do what needs to be done – complaining just proves you’re not up to the task.  The results of this are clear to see – Stanford University, tech companies, Google, 200 hour work weeks (sure, laugh, but you’d be amazed at how many billable hours lawyers manage to work around here,) ridiculous wealth, flashy possessions and very little concern for “feelings,” as they usually just serve to get in the way.  She, much like Kyle, comes from a different path – one of understanding, nurturing, talking about feelings and letting the prize go if it’s gonna burn your hands.  I am Kung Fu, they are Touched by an Angel, so some of our conversation yesterday boiled down to trying to find common understanding (to be fair, I had a much harder time than she.)

The scary part was telling her that my husband had hit my son, and about everything that had happened before and since.  CPS, police, the court system, anger management classes, anti-anxiety meds for him, counseling for my kids…and me in the middle hating myself for not seeing that it would happen and prevent it.

I had a dream last night – in it *I* was the one who hit my son, and the meaning is pretty clear to me.  Pain fades into flashbacks and personality quirks, but guilt rages on long after it’s any use – condemning and tormenting me, and I punish myself over and over for something I didn’t do, but should have foreseen and prevented.

As I spoke, she didn’t flinch, she didn’t run away – she sat right there and let me talk and then asked me little questions that brought out big answers.  She asked me about my childhood without really asking – just guided us through the boulders of growing up in a bipolar household, past the signposts that were suddenly clear as day.  Of course I’d grow up desperate for a system of rules that were absolute, for a calm port in a sea of ups and downs, a place, like mathematics, where the truth didn’t depend on how someone in power feels.  It was humbling and yet wonderful to see how my odd little life fit into itself perfectly.

Ane, yet, the whole time, she didn’t tell me so much as guided me to tell her, and that was brilliant.  I stumbled onto someone who can challenge me and guide me to figure this out with her, and that is a wonderful gift.  Afterward I was jazzed and excited, but then the adrenaline crash hit me and I’m very thankful that Kyle was there to talk me through it.  It’s a hard thing to lay yourself out for inspection, but the two of them together made it really worthwhile.

So, yeah, next Monday, I’ll be back.  Can’t wait to hear what I’ll say then.

Sometimes when things get rough, you just gotta cry uncle.  I’m gonna be taking a vacation from my online life – maybe a day, maybe a week – to give me some time to get my head screwed on straight (gayly forward.)

Be seeing you…

(* I actually think fishing is barbaric, so it would mostly be throwing vegetarian** fish snacks into the water and enjoying the yummy noises they*** all make.)

(**By which I do NOT mean eggplant, because it’s related to deadly nightshade, and therefore clearly poisonous, nor squash, whose Latin name is lagenaria, which translates as, “warning – do not eat, these are bitter, squishy and gross.  I’m serious.  Don’t eat these.  You’ll regret it.”  Sadly, my mother’s Latin was a bit rusty, and so she served them up frequently, and you can see how I turned out.  Please, for the love of all that is good, stop forcing these so-called foods on your vegetarian friends.  Take your anger out at a shooting range or in a tell-all memoir like other normal people do.  Remember, vegetarians are your friends and chocolate and cheese are both vegetarian, if you use the right sources.  And, no, hiding squash under a lot of cheese isn’t fooling anyone.  If you’re desperate, take that squash out and serve it to your vegan friends – as far as I can tell, they don’t have taste buds anyway.)

(***The fish, not the snacks.)

It falls gracefully, blowing gently this way and that until it comes to rest squarely between my shoulders.

“Dad has cancer.  He didn’t want to worry anyone that he was going in for a biopsy, because we were sure that it was nothing.  The doctor wants to see us today, in person.”  The words came out between sobs, and I held my mom’s shoulders and tried to keep from falling apart.  We were at the flower show, huddled in an alcove so she could hear what he was saying on the phone.  She looked so lost, so completely confused right then…I took her bags from her suddenly-limp arms and her friend and I led her outside to the car.  For half an hour we talked about cancer and doctors and insurance and how they had both assumed it would be a false alarm, and then she dropped me off at home.

And so now I have to ask the universe, “Really?  Cancer?  On top of everything else?  You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”

And I’m angry, finally.  At the universe, at God, at the trees and the rocks and the sun, because, really, there’s no one to blame, and they’ve been very forgiving in the past when I needed a place to scream.

And I have to say – please, if you have a friend going through anything like this…the correct answer is not “well, he’s pretty old, isn’t he?” or “I hear the survival rates are really good,” or “at least you caught it early.”

The only correct answer is, “I’m so sorry” and then “is there anything I can do?” or “do you want to talk?” or “I’m here for you.”  Because, when it’s your dad, of course there’s no age that’s old enough and even 95% isn’t good enough and there’s nothing you’re gonna say to make it better at all, but there’s a whole hell of a lot that you can do to make it worse.

But you can listen.  You can hear.  You can show me that someone gives a shit that this fucking load is one god-damnned feather too heavy and walk alongside me for a while.

Because a god in the clouds can’t help me, but a friend down here on Earth can.  We fragile, emotional mud-babies, we’ve got to stick together.  Ultimately, we’re all we’ve got.

I remember seeing Fried Green Tomatoes for the first time in the early 90s.  I can’t remember if it was at a theater, or on video, but I do remember falling in love.  I had had a crush on Mary Stuart Masterson for just about ever, and she was her strong, beautiful, somewhat sullen self again, and I loved it.  The movie was sad, to be sure, but I can remember thinking it was beautiful, and romantic, and sexy as hell, even though it refused to show any of the scenes I knew were hiding just out of sight.  The first time I saw the movie, it was a happy memory for me – a future wish for love and romance of a flavor I’d never tasted before.

The next time I remember seeing the movie, it was over a decade later.  I had met – and been spurned by – Catherine, and the movie was suddenly poignant in ways I hadn’t seen before.  The movie was thick with the theme of loving and not being loved in return, and I cried.  I cried for Idgie and I cried for myself, and for everyone who loves in vain.

I saw the movie again last night and I cried again.  For Idgie and Ruth, and for everyone who comes close to paradise but can’t get it to stick.  Suddenly the movie wasn’t just about beauty and romance, and it wasn’t just about unrequited love…it was about anyone who’s ever had to face the truth of what they’d never have and still wake up in the morning to live through the rest.  Idgie was so close to her heart’s desire, but dreamed of love…and I have love, but dream of being close.  The people around them worked so hard for a place in the world, only to be denied it.  Everyone in the movie was holding tightly to the hope for something better, just around the corner.  And, it’s true, you know – the wanting makes the getting so much sweeter, even if it’s just for a brief moment here and there.

So here’s to honey-sweet memories and sweat-soaked hopes.  This isn’t a movie I can bear very often, but it’s one I keep tucked away to rediscover again and again, and it makes me wonder – when I pull it out again in a few years…I wonder now what I’ll be able to see then.

Life has never been simple – carpet weasel #1, my daughter, has a whole host of diagnoses that attempt to medically describe a beautiful, bright girl whose intellect is 3-4 years ahead of her age, but whose emotions lag 3-4 years behind, with a quirky IQ which shows her to be extremely advanced, but held back by a processing speed that ranks well below the 25th percentile.  She’s outspoken, unintentionally rude in social settings, deeply loving, frequently frustrated, tormented by violent feelings she can’t control – she’s been a teenager since the day she was born.  At 9, she’s seen more therapists, psychiatrists, doctors and personality tests than most people see in their whole lives.  The rest of us have carved out a life around her outbursts and difficulties, and it’s certainly taken its toll, although it’s also brought us together in many ways, and taught us to appreciate small moments of grace.

But then this year happened, and my view of the world turned on its side.  When a life comes tumbling down it’s so easy to see the flaws that were invisible while you were living it.  I was too trusting, too unsure of myself, too willing to believe everyone, anyone else.  Did I know there were problems?  That’s a hard one – I sensed something was wrong, I knew how I was feeling, but I had long-since learned to believe my reactions were wrong, the product of a broken mind.  I really did believe I was the one who was wrong, and I can remember knowing that was true, even as I can see how inconceivable that is now.  I was bullied and I took it, as I had all my life, and I regret it terribly – all of it.  And there’s the rub, the terrible question – would I undo it all?  Go back and erase history?  The easy answer is no, of course not, but I have my doubts.  I adore my children, but they’ve been through so much, and we, as a family, face climbing Everest to make ourselves whole again…it’s a seductive fantasy, going back decades to change the course of my life and wiping the slate clean, and if I didn’t admit to it, well…I’d be a fraud and a liar.

And so there are psychiatrists for them, the weasels and my husband, and eventually for me, too, although what happened in May has erased every last bit of trust I’ve ever had in people, and it’ll be a long time until I gain it back enough to speak the truth out loud again.  My friends who take pills to ease the highs and lows of life have been encouraging me to give it a try, but I’m a suspicious old teetotaler – I didn’t take drugs in college, and I’m certainly not going to take them now to fix unpleasant, but justified and reasonable, reactions to very real events.  In my mind, those little pills are intended for people whose reactions are out of proportion to the events (real or imagined) that trigger them…but perhaps that’s just the last refuge of a troubled mind.

For now I have to trust myself, because everyone around me is at odds.  The family wants it all tv-show better, in time to go get chips and soda during the commercial break.  The doctors tell me the kids need a stable environment, and my friends all want me to kick him to the curb.  The reality isn’t black and white, or even shades of grey.  There are a million considerations in my head, a game theory table in 3-D where all the entries shimmer like fairy lights as probabilities shift and outcomes change.  I’m thinking, and thinking, and thinking of my children – financial stability, moving, the future, the past, school, doctors, friends, family, love, trust, redemption, education – it’s all about them 23 hours a day – even in my dreams I’m tormented by questions of what to do, what to do.

But in the mornings, when they’re sleeping, and their dreams are still sugar plums and Star Wars, I think of myself.  The love I’ve lost, the terrible feeling of emptiness for a passion I don’t feel anymore.  There’s anger and betrayal, and a longing for a better life where I’m not fighting my partner for what’s right every day.  There’s guilt – terrible, gut-crushing guilt – for wanting to abandon my husband now, and for not doing it sooner.  (I’m just so well-trained at guilt, I can feel it no matter what I choose to do.)  I’ve never lost my gift for self-loathing, and it creeps up on me when the day is still too slow to distract myself.  “Why didn’t I see it sooner?  How could I have been so weak?  Why couldn’t I defend myself?  Why did I hide it?  Why couldn’t I hide it longer?  Why didn’t I do a thousand things differently because, clearly, it was all my fault.”  My brain berates me over a million things that I couldn’t have changed even if I had had the will and the strength to change them, because, for myself, I have no mercy, and that’s ultimately what I need to face – not the abuse by others, but the abuse I inflict, every day, on myself.  No pill will quiet the voice inside – I have to find a way to forgive myself the way I am slowly learning to forgive everyone else.

And accept that the world has already changed.  I’ve worked so hard, for so long, to keep the pretty postcard picture of our family from falling apart, I’m having trouble stopping.  I still catch myself trying to cover up, even as the bag is empty and those cats are long gone.  But it does get easier, and I am getting stronger.  The doubt is slowly being replaced by resolve.  It shows in my eyes most days – the weariness of someone’s who’s had to live harder than she was ready to, who’s seen the ugly underneath – but there are brief flashes of joy:  teaching, playing games with my kids, blowing a kiss through the web cam to Kyle, digging in the dirt.

A friend of mine said something profound to me last summer, after I told her everything over a multi-hour lunch.  I said to her, “I don’t know if I can break up with him,” and she replied, “whether you break up or not, the relationship you had together is already over.”  Of course, she was right – I need to figure out how to forgive myself and let the past rest.  I have to stop trying to change what’s happened so I’ll stand a chance at working out what to do now.

God spoke, “So…er…Benedict was it?”

“Yes, Sir…Your Grace, God, Ma’am,” the man answered nervously.  God shined with such brilliant, beautiful light, it was hard to make out God’s true shape.

“Benedict, my people tell me you claimed to be my messenger down on Earth.  Is this true?”

The man smiled, “Yes, the cardinals agreed that I was graced with perfect knowledge of Your true will.”

“Really?  MY will?”  God looked at the man in amazement.

The smile on the old man’s face faded a little.

“And you admonished them to hate each other MORE, in my name?”

The smile on the old man’s face disappeared completely.  “Well, it was Your will…”

“And they believed that it was MY WILL that they judge and hurt each other for being the magnificent creatures I created them to be?”

Looking down at his feet, the man nodded miserably.

With a pained expression, God placed an arm around the old man, squeezing his shoulder tightly.  Immediately the full weight of the man’s life flashed through his head – all the pain he had caused with his words and deeds, and the suffering around the world he could have easily prevented from his position of power, but had obstinately refused to, in the name of God, no less.  The man collapsed in a heap, screaming, and God mercifully let go.

The man got to his feet, shaking, nearly mad from the visions still echoing in his head.

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you now, don’t you?”  God looked at the man with a kind sadness, but full of infinite hope, and kissed his forehead.

And, in an instant, the old man was a newborn child in a mother’s arms, crying as the last tiny memory of heaven slipped from his head.