Current feels: meh? The mornings are usually ok as long as I follow —
Current regimen: Get up, drink water, eat something and take medicine
Current prescriptions: Doxycycline twice per day, Ondanestron/Zofran once per day in the morning, Gabapentin 100mg up to 3 @ 3x day, 1 Advil with 2 Tylenol twice a day, probiotics one hour after Doxy, Grapefruit Seed Extract, Fiber, Chasteberry & Cat’s Claw
Conclusions: Tick illnesses are whack and you have to pay very close attention to them.
I have been suffering from extreme pain, weakness, and fatigue especially over the last 10 days. I started antibiotics 11 days ago, so I should be feeling better but by two days ago, I realized I was getting worse and not better. I called my wonderful doctor and she talked me into taking Gabapentin (“But Maddrey I don’t want to take a whole bunch of drugs dude!”) and it helps, so much. The pain I am feeling is in my upper back, from my shoulders down to the bottom of my rib cage. It is such a strange and specific pain and very intense, like burning beneath the surface of my skin, all through my tissues. I hate it!!! I had shingles about 13 years ago and the fatigue of this reminds of shingles, but this is not shingles.
I have often said about my self that my brain/mind is strong and good, my heart center is good and loving, I am working on my emotional health and my tendency to copy parental patterns of controlling codependent behavior (what a challenge! But I think it is getting better), but my bod! My bod sure likes to get illnesses and I am hoping we can work on that as well. I am not sure why I am so sensitive to illnesses, but here we are.
The decade of the 40s has been interesting because I have experienced many moments of clear reflection. I like to think of them as plateaus of understanding; it’s as if my mind’s eye is climbing mesa after mesa, seeing clearly out to a horizon that, beforehand, I could not see.
Maine has always been a place where I am an artist, first. In Texas, I was always a teacher, first, and had been for years. I am beginning to appreciate the practicality of that choice of vocation, as i am really struggling here with earning a lot less than what I earned in Texas. But, I digress. As an artist, first, I am embarking on an adventure of making more work, finishing a writing project, and hoping to take over a friend’s longstanding artistic business. It is a time of big leaps, and I am waiting for my confidence to catch up.
The deep well, I think, is a series of experiences that have emboldened an already highly-developed struggle with self-confidence. People tell me this struggle isn’t obvious to others, but to people who know me really well, it is clear. The deep well of circumstances like: teaching under-resourced students for almost twenty years, moving a lot from place to place, being afraid of commitment and how that impacts decision-making, focusing more on achievement over joy and balance and contentment, the death of my dad, the death of one of my best friends, teaching during the pandemic, discovering two half-brothers at the age of 45, and landing again in a place that I love but is very challenging to make a good living, have all resulted in this moment of clarity. Ah ha! Here I am, after all these years.
I find it hard to internalize that we are where we are because of everything that came before. But, to me, standing on tonight’s metaphysical mesa and staring at a new horizon, this explanation is the only one that makes sense. What now must be is a decision as to what to do next. I feel in some ways that I am taking huge risks in waiting and seeing if the jewelry store dream becomes reality; most of these risks are financial and right now, financial risks seem bad. On the other hand, with our country in the throes of the changes it is experiencing, maybe this is the time to grab the dreams by the hands and jump. I don’t know? I know what I want, which is to own or co-own the jewelry store, be able to save money and pay for health insurance without total panic every month, take a month or two off in the winter and go somewhere nice and sunny, to be able to buy the land around us and run a campground for people in the summer, to pay off our house within 15 years; all of these are the dreams.
But the waiting, the realizing, the digging oneself out of a series of experiences to find meaning within them; it is hard and it is drudgery sometimes, and sometimes it is joyful, like tonight.
I am still sick with anaplasmosis and Lyme disease. I think that something about these illnesses forces me to think about a lot of things while I am sick; they are thoughtful illnesses, to be sure. This experience reminds me of when I got sick my senior year of high school and could do little else but be sick and hope I would get better sometime. I spent a lot of time sitting on the back porch, thinking about the meaning of life. I think I have some sort of understanding of the meaning of life, for now anyway, but I am thinking about a lot of other things. I think about the preciousness of life and time, how fast it all goes, what I want the next ten years to look like and be like, and what I can do to make the world a better place, a little at a time. It is an active time, this thinking time.
Last year, one year ago yesterday, the world lost an amazing person in Kate Shuster. She was a mentor and a friend and a shero and an inspiration, and she is very missed. She left behind lots of memories, photos, and writings, but her death impacted me so much and especially reminded me of the precious nature of our time on Earth. She made a mark, a series of them, in fact, and she left Earth very quickly after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. When she died last year, I went and sat on the edge of the ocean and thought about her, and Mary Ann, and Ken, and John, and Meredith; all the friends who I had lost before I wanted them to go. Sometimes I see them or hear them or feel them around the edges of this reality and I wonder what they think or want us to see or understand. I guess we will never know that, and just have to keep on doing the best we can.
As I listen to my surroundings, I hear the song of many birds, the hum of summer traffic on the road, and the wind moving through the thousands, millions, of trees on our land here in Maine. Every year, later than I would like, the leaves come back to the trees after months of absence. One day, they are tiny speckles of lime green, and the next, there are millions, billions of lime green leaves dancing in the air. Just before that, the birdsong comes back with the birds, and the silence of a wind-whipped winter is over. I love sitting outside in the wind, in the sun, in nature, in this tiny sliver of peace and paradise: a small house, green, with a nice porch, and plants all around.
I started feeling really crummy two Tuesdays ago, but couldn’t place the feelings; was it bad hummus? Had I drunk pond water on my Monday swim when it was so hot and clear the only thing to do was to swim? Or perhaps I had done that on my Tuesday swim, when conditions were similar only cloudy? On Tuesday evening I started to feel like there was a rock in my belly, or a beach ball, or something that was taking up all the space that I usually fill with tasty things like roast chicken or tacos or muffins in the mornings. My belly also became swollen out like a little kid’s. Usually my tummy is fairly flat with its fair share of mid-forties curves and wrinkles. I have been exercising alot on my elliptical and feeling proud of being stronger and my tummy flatter. But no longer. On Tuesday evening I tried to eat dinner as normal but barely ate half of it, saying I didn’t feel super well. I thought: tomorrow will be better.
Wednesday came and went and the stomach trouble became worse: it hurt very much and was very uncomfortable, and with it came this weird back pain across the whole top half of my torso. I had a hard time standing or sitting for long periods of time. If I could lean back, I was ok. If I could lie down, that was better. I was annoyed.
On Thursday I thought I caught the chill of a cool day that followed a few hot ones, but as I drove home from the gallery I recognized the familiar feelings of a fever. By the time I made it home, I was shaking, cold, and feeling rotten. So began my days of spiking 101 degree fevers (high for me as my normal temperature is about 97 degrees), breaking fevers into crazy sweaty messes, and the realization that something was wrong with me.
On Friday I managed to get in with a random doctor who told me that she thought I had a stomach bug that was roaming around. I asked her if she would run a tick panel just in case, and she said yes, so we did. I took the rest of the day to chill out, thinking I might be feeling better til the fever started again.
On Monday, I went to my regular doctor and told her I was worried I had a kidney infection and she said she was worried I had Lyme disease. Luckily, the tick panel was already being processed, and on Tuesday, she called and gave me the gross and terrible news that I have anaplasmosis and Lyme disease, together.
Blech.
She also told me I have to take antibiotics for at least 30 days and they are these fun ones that cause you to sunburn so easily you can’t really be out in it. She apologized for ruining my summer (I blame the tick, personally). And since Monday I have been taking two types of antibiotics, twice a day, and probiotics 1 or 2 hours later. I felt better on Thursday, and then yesterday I felt bad again. Today is Saturday, and I am very tired. I wonder if I am now feeling tired from not eating enough, because one of the things with that stomachache from Hell is that my appetite has gone on vacation. Somewhere good, I hope.
One of the strange emotional responses to these illnesses is that I am determined to not sweat the small stuff. That feels good, like I am doing something right in a situation that I cannot control at all. Anaplasmosis is super scary and can kill you in various ways (spooky!) if not treated early, so I am proud of myself for going to the doctor. So in the vein of not sweating the small stuff, I am trying to be a nicer version of myself, more understanding, and quieter. I am trying to spend time thinking about what I think about the state of the country, but not react to it as much as maybe I have been. I am thinking about the importance of creating art in times of dread and sadness, and trying to be participatory in that process.
The energy level is the challenge. Fatigue is real with Lyme and anaplasmosis. I haven’t felt this fatigue in a long time, but I am not unfamiliar with it; legs made of lead or concrete, not strong, dragging through space. I would like to go swimming or maybe just sit in a lake. Today is hot and I hope to fill up our cowboy pool with the cold, cold well water that comes from deep within the earth. I plan to put it on the leechfield, on top of the septic field; I think it’s mostly harmless to that process going on below. Last year when I filled up a giant pot to dip in on the hottest days, the water was so cold it was shocking! (There are photos to prove it!) This year, I will fill up the stock tank and let it sit for a day or two to warm up before I dunk myself in. Over by the leechfield I have planted lots of medicinal herbs and witchy plants, as MOFGA told me I could plant shallow-rooted perennials. Over there we have hops, madder, weld, motherwort, marshmallow, thyme, yarrow, blue vervain.
Ho hum. One of the good things about having peaceful, slow hobbies is that when you are slow yourself, you can still do them. Today I want to work on jewelry, so I am about to head to the studio to do just that. I am working on a series of rings, and I need to order some materials for a custom project I am working on. One of my recovery plans is to wake up early and write in the mornings, as I have much more energy when I wake up than when the afternoons roll around. By then, I feel quite ploddy, like I am going through mud, mentally and physically. These illnesses don’t make me sad, exactly, just tired and a bit disappointed. I like having lots of energy, high vibrations, and excitement. I am sure those will all come back; I just have to let this ride out.
Current projects are:
1.Working on the second edit of the book and finding all the photos that go into it
2. Power rings of various interesting stones and two pendants for a show in August
3. Finishing the third quilt in a series, photographing the three, and sending them to their destinations. The third one has no home, so I wonder who will claim it?
I am drinking coffee now, still listening to those same sounds but the wind is stronger, the sun higher in the sky, the air is warm and dry. My living room is orange and bright with sunlight. We are on new journeys in this life, new career paths, so much exploration! We asked for an adventure and we got one! Who knows what the future holds, but we have managed to pay for everything so far, and I can only hope the blessings continue and continue to grow. Every night I look at the vast spiderweb of stars and ask them to keep helping us, protecting us, guiding us. The Big Dipper right now is just above the driveway and, every night, reminds me that “my cup runneth over” and ain’t that the truth.
I hope you are well, wherever you are, and if you are not, that you can figure out some ways to make it work while you are sick.
A few years ago, ok about 13 years ago, my mother called me on the phone to say that she thought we should become citizens. I said, “why?” She said, “what if something weird happens around immigration?”. I said – “what could happen?” The reality was that I knew that something was already afoot. In 1997 I went to the Cayman Islands and when I tried to come back to the States with my lifetime Greencard, I was asked to come back behind the curtain and asked why I hadn’t become a citizen yet. I said, truthfully, that my understanding was that I had a lifetime Greencard. At that time, they told me that the photo was out of date (probably true) and that the Greencard wasn’t intended to be lifelong (despite everything I knew). Fast forward to a few years later, I think it was 2013 or 2014 when I was coming back from Panama. The guy at immigration said, “you have been a naturalized citizen since 1986?”. I said yes. He said, “why have you not become a citizen yet?” I didn’t answer truthfully then, which was that I knew I could file for all my Social Security tax if I ever left the States and that would probably help me get an apartment in England. I said, “I don’t know”. He said, “you need to do that. These aren’t intended for long term”. Despite their definition.
In 2013 or 2014, my mom decided we needed to become citizens. She paid for it, so I said ok. It took almost two years. We went to Portland, and when I moved back to Texas in 2015, my application transferred to San Antonio. I really only remember a few things. I went to an immigration appointment in San Antonio sometime in 2015 and I met my officer, who had tons of documents about me all over her desk, fanned out, like so many decks of cards. In the pile was the security badge of me that I had gotten at Austin Independent School District the week before. She said when I expressed shock and disbelief that “we have everything about you”. She told me a series of bizarre stories about what was going on with her life, including how she had had to move out of her apartment really quickly due to a bad boyfriend (haven’t we all had those?). A few days later, she called me when I was on a bus on a field trip with students to tell me that my application had been fast tracked and approved. It was at the end of the Obama administration, and it turned out to be dramatic. I was part of all those people who (some of whom) apparently maybe shouldn’t have been fasttracked, but I digress.
In the fall of 2015, I went to San Antonio to a large auditorium somewhere and participated in my citizenship ceremony. There were hundreds of people, all dressed nicely, with their families, as if it was a special church service. They asked us to stand up when they said our country’s name. Mexico by far had the most people. They gave us cheap American flags and took our greencards and gave us instead a Citizenship Document that we later had to take to the Social Security Administration. Everyone was well behaved, and happy. There were a few monks from Tibet who became citizens that day, and all of their monk friends sat in the back in their saffron robes playing on their smartphones and laughing. At one point, I looked back and noticed most of them were sleeping. It was one of the nicest and best days of my life: everyone in that room had done the right thing and wanted to be a part of the United States.
Here we are, 10 years later. It seems that things have changed, but I think the writing was on the wall even then. Immigrants have become progressively less welcome over the last ten years. Let me ask you, though: in all these current immigration raids, how many are happening on farms where people are picking fruit and vegetables? None. They are all happening to people in cities, who can be spotted and singled out, easily, and taken to jail. You know that the government folks don’t want anything happen to their food supply. It is all so dark, so cynical. So gross and terrible.
I have always been conflicted about being a citizen of this country, but I did it because I thought maybe my mom was right. Turns out, she was. There would be little to no chance of us becoming citizens now. But does it justify it all? Right now I want to do something drastic, a la Josephine Baker. I now understand two things: the first, what Mr. Moore, a retired school principal and Baptist minister, used to say to me every time I got upset about the state of things: “What a World!” . And why people left the United States never to return. I understand the sense of dread and disgust, because I feel it today and have for the last little while. Dread, disgust, sadness, anger, resignation, confusion; I feel all of them at the same time.
I sincerely hope that what is happening in LA is not about to happen across our country. What a world.
Recently, I learned that my father lied for my entire life (longer, actually) about being a father of twins who were born in 1967. One of them is coming to visit my brother and I in August, and I literally could not be happier about a thing happening; all I want to do is hug him and look at his face and take a photo with his tall self (during our first chat, I asked them both how tall they are as my brother and I are very tall, too).
Since discovering the existence of my brothers, I have been meditating on lying and why we do it. Why did my dad do it? Why have I done it (not very much, but I have been guilty of hiding myself and parts of my selves). All of the artwork I have done since December has been of eyes; iteration after iteration of eyes. I make them even when I don’t intend to make them. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Paths. Eyes surrounded by paths. The path of the past to the present. Yesterday I was in my amazing quilt class and we had a guest speaker, Zak Foster, and he said the most interesting snippet “There is no history, not really. There is only the present, and many, many presents.”
I loved that and it made me think. Right now I am going through perimenopause which is this insane journey of weird physical symptoms, overwhelming rage, quick tempered emotions that spin out of nowhere, pain, decisions that are hard for me to make, a sense of perspective, a sense of looking backward to look forward, and a sense that there isn’t as much time in front of me as there is behind. It’s a bit of a mindfuck.
Today I was getting an ultrasound to check that the Mirena IUD I had placed last week to provide me with progesterone is in the right place in my uterus. I had it placed last Wednesday and it has been very painful and exhausting: surprisingly so. It has reminded me that I am older now, and it reminded me of my past presents. When I was getting the IUD inserted, my cervix kept “running away” (the words of my midwife as I have no idea what this means but it sounds weird and sad) from her. She finally had to dose me with some extra Lidocaine and hold on to it with forceps. As I lay there waiting for the inevitable, this wonderful nurse Caroline was holding my hand and telling me that I was a wild horse running free on a beach, like the horses of Chincoteague from those old books. I felt my body tensing up over and over. They kept telling me to relax. I kept apologizing. I remembered something.
When I was about 20, I had this seemingly wonderful boyfriend named Ryan, who was so cute with long hair and who liked to go camping. He was from Midland and we went out to west Texas and camped alot on forestry land and cooked rice for dinner in the dark. We went on an ill-fated road trip out west one summer and discovered we didn’t travel well together, but in retrospect, my part of that was that I was/is/always will be desperately afraid of intimacy as I don’t trust it. The model I was shown was irregular and broken and weirdly sad and incomplete. Now I know that at its center was a big lie, which must have contributed, but isn’t the entire explanation. Either way, I discovered that I was pregnant with Ryan’s baby later that year and we both decided we didn’t want to have a baby then (I haven’t investigated how I feel about this just yet but think it is mostly ok with me). Ryan came in with me when I was having the procedure – the doctor must have been very open-minded? – and he told me later that I tensed up and looked like I was in the most pain of anyone he had ever seen. I remembered this vividly in that moment last week when I was getting the IUD. I couldn’t stop tensing up, I was very quiet, and I kept squeezing Caroline’s hand. At one point I asked if I was hurting her, and she said no, to keep squeezing, so I did.
Today I went and got the ultrasound to check its placement and everything looks good according to the tech. She was very nice and her name is Jane and she has been doing ultrasound for 35 years which I find amazing. While she was ultrasounding, she kept asking me if I was ok and I kept telling her that I was, but I was tensing up and was trying to get myself to relax. She took about 30 photos of my uterus from on top of my belly and inside my body, showed me the IUD (it looked good!) and off I went. I apologized to her and told her I had a lot of medical trauma associated with my childbirthing body parts, and she said she was sorry, and I told her it was ok as it wasn’t her fault.
After Ryan and I had the abortion, everything was hard and I think we started fighting about everything everywhere for months and the fights got worse and worse and worse until his neighbors didn’t want us to live at the co-op anymore. He moved into a little house with a friend and we kept trying but it was done, somehow. The fights got worse, and then 9/11 happened and I remember noticing there weren’t any planes in the sky when we sat on his porch. I was supposed to go give a presentation at UT about something and he was threatened and we fought and he pushed me into a wall. Later that day he broke up with me.
Last year, last May, a friend of mine was killed by her partner. He killed her, set fire to the family house she was living in, and then killed himself. He did make sure her horses were safe, which is some blessing in all of this. When she was killed, no one described the incident as domestic violence, only murder-suicide. She worked with my husband, and his boss never spoke about it again. It was as if they weren’t allowed to speak about it, but I don’t think that was what is was. I think he didn’t know how to talk about it, deal with it, wrap his heart around it, and so passively coerced his coworkers to do the same. It was horrible: it festered. Just before her death, Cody’s other coworker lost his father, and his wife thinks that because of the lack of space for discussion, that her husband felt that losing his friend and coworker was more painful, was worse, made more of an impact, than the death of his own father.
This week I went to Willowind, a therapeutic horse farm that teaches people how to ride horses peacefully and provides horse-based therapy to people who need it. A friend who teaches there had saved some horsehair for me, some special ashy blonde hair from a huge dappled draught horse named Abel. His fur looks like stone and he is a giant. I am planning on taking the horsehair and combining it with a design of a horse, making my friend’s mother and sister a necklace each. I want to do something with the loss of this person that is beautiful and special just as she was.
It has been a hard time of loss and of change. Growing older is not for the faint of heart, let me tell you. I have a hormone patch on my tummy that I switch left to right twice a week and it is helping me sleep better. I hope the IUD helps other things. My skin on my face looks better, my boobs are droopier and I want to make a corset for them and be a little radical. When I walk around my garden I am amazed everyday at my plants’ abilities to grow a little bit more. I wonder what it would be like if our only stimuli were light and water?
Circling back to eyes and lies, I have made (almost done with the third anyway) three quilts about it. They are all the same size, baby sized, and have various iterations of eyes and repeated patterns that are a little spiky. One is spooky, one is sweet, one looks like a flag somehow. I wish I could ask my dad why. I wish I could call my brothers ask them over now, but I have to live up to my name. I plan to make a quilt about us, but it is a bit of a dive into a deep well, and I am not sure exactly where to start. Zak told me to talk to my fabric, and that seems like a good idea. He also said to write, so here I am.
One of the things my therapist shared with me is that she thinks I don’t exactly know how to have a real partner, as the example given my brother and I was so fraught. I agree, but it makes me sad as, for the most part, Cody is so great and I wish I was better at being a partner. I am trying very much to integrate with him, to think about him, to not be afraid to share stories with him. It is amazing to me that we have been together for 10 years and there are still stories we haven’t shared with each other. I am lucky to have him and he me but there are lots of things that I have yet to learn to be a whole person and the best version of myself. I have always been so good with kids, but adults scare me quite a bit. The brothers, though, don’t scare me at all. Why is that?
How can so many worlds exist within our minds and our hearts at the same time? How can there be so many both/ands? It is a great mystery this life of ours. Nature gives me some rhythm which is comforting, but I want to be more honest about how I feel and what I am thinking about. I am too scared I think to voice these things out loud, but I think I can write them down. Maybe I can get to a place where they come out in a more formal way, but for now, making stuff and writing stuff will have to do.
I had baby chickens in my studio for a month or two and it got all dusty, so I am off to go and dust it and get it ready to start making things again. I have about 8 power rings and an amazing pendant that are asking to be finished. When will I move on from eyes? Who knows? They are beautiful and it is interesting how many types of eyes there are and how many colors. Right now the world and my place in it feel very mysterious and spinny, but I saw this poster in the hospital today that said “Bloom Where You Are Planted” and I thought I could start there.
I miss my friends who have left the planet before me; I wish I could talk with them. Their loss shows me how precious it all is, how fast it goes by, and how important it is to notice the weird little plants and how they grow in the sunshine and the rain. It is all interconnected, everything. All of my feelings of fear and inadequacy that came from early days somehow connect to the lie my dad told that he kept so well hidden. How different things can be when we are just honest, even if it hurts in the moment. Right?
Camping in Lamoine State Park and being close enough to home to come work on projects
Planting huge amounts of squash plants and expanding the garden
The stars!!!
Time and thinking about things differently in terms of the past and of self
The birds that fly around our house and land all the time and eat all the birdseed
Life is harder than I had expected as a younger person. People are complex and all these things happen to us, and they are almost all unpredictable. It is all about how we respond: that is what matters. It is also really hard sometimes to be my best self. My mom’s neighbor, Mrs. Meryweather, is almost 91 and has taught me so much about all of this. She has taught me to garden and been an open book and a listening ear. She makes me laugh and I honestly want to be alot like her when I am that old, and even before. Her husband was equally wonderful; they are quite a pair to shine this experience of life upon, having done so much good for everyone around them, in small ways. That’s all I have to say tonight. The garden is gorgeous and I am happy to be busy with that and everything else. ❤
It was a second floor, garage apartment in Hyde Park, in Austin. She moved there during COVID, sometime in 2020. She moved out of a house with people who had been friends who had become controlling and strange, into an apartment with a lease facilitated by a friend who was controlling and strange, but that is another story.
It was a second floor, garage apartment and you gained access by walking up a set of wide, wooden outdoor stairs. There was a landing, a tiny deck, at the top. There were a few plant pots with tropical plants, and a neat row of plastic Birkenstock shoes: colorful. There was a screen door and an inner, wooden door that was white with a small window. In it, she lived with her turquoise furniture, bone collection, shadow boxes, chandeliers made of old sets of silver and chains, and her plants. Her kitchen was small but lovely; everything was small and lovely. There were two rooms and a bathroom and a kitchen. One room was her bedroom, bedazzled with plants and specimens and interesting rocks, a chandelier in the corner. The other was a living room with a white leather hideabed, a round vintage plastic table, low to the ground, and two old chairs covered with interesting, faded fabric. In the corner was the preserved carcass of a roseate spoonbill, suspended in flight and hanging from the ceiling. There was also an antique dentist drill, complete with spittoon, which strangely had belonged to my first husband, years ago.
It was Texas in June, summer, hot, even in the morning. I was there in the morning, and we stood out on the small deck with the colorful shoes and tropical plants, and gazed out through the giant bushes that bordered the property, through their leaves, out to live oak trees and a pond in the center of the backyard. She said, “there is something weird in my eye. Like a cloud?” “There is a cloud in your eye? Both eyes? The same?” “No, just one, like a grey cloud at the bottom of my eye”.
Later it was discovered that her cancer had spread to her brain and that was when she had to start radiation and we didn’t get to come to Maine together, which I had been wishing for, but it is ok now that it didn’t happen. Earlier that spring we had gone to Galveston and stayed in an amazing apartment right on the beach, and ate at Gaido’s. Her face was a little swollen then, and she had no hair so she either wore fabulous hats or fabulous dresses with her bald head. It was the last Easter, and we didn’t know that. When she started radiation, they made her this crazy radiation face shield that she said she would bedazzle for Halloween that year. It really would have looked cool.
I will never forget the moment that I realized that she might have brain cancer, after breast cancer, lung cancer, and bone cancer. How exactly did she keep going so long? She is, after all, a miracle. Radiation made her mind muddled and she sort of forgot some things, but the most important things she valued stayed sharp. It was in October, before Halloween and her chance to bedazzle the thermoplastic radiation cap that her doctor told her that chemo had killed her, had destroyed her liver and she would soon die. She said that normal livers were like sponges, allowing substances to pass through them, and hers was like a rock. Quickly, her abdomen filled up with fluid and ammonia, there appeared little white glints, like lenses, in her eyes, and she died a month later. She told me that I had to start working in hospice, and I just finished my training and have my first patient. To be with someone who is dying is a great gift of mercy and trust, going both ways. Today I thought of her and saw her sitting in the corner in a hot pink dress, off the shoulder, bald head, laughing and clapping her hands. What a world. What would she think if she was alive today? I suppose she would be laughing and clapping her hands, about something.
Have you ever had a grand realization, one that knocks your metaphysical socks off and clears the air inside your mind and to which you answer, yes (?). Gus Garcia Middle School, 2007-2009, second and third years of my teaching career. As my friend and I texted about a few weeks ago, Gus Garcia Middle School will always be depressing.
Gus Garcia Middle School is also where and when I started to run, away, toward, maybe both? Like him, I chose to run rather than to face the music. No, I didn’t leave two children behind, but I, so like my dad, chose to run away and toward something else. It all is becoming so much clearer now.
Looking back is hard, as this time period was now almost twenty years ago, and that is hard to believe. I was an adult then, I was married to my first husband, and I owned my first house. I was trying to remember how it all started, but I must go further back.
It all started at Porter Middle School, during the fall of 2006, when I was hired as a long term sub in a science classroom with a wall of windows and deep sinks and a scary science closet that was filled with treasures. It was the beginning of my adulthood, that year. It was the year I bought the first house, for $106,000 from my friend Lyndsy. It had no central air conditioning or heating. The dishwasher didn’t quite fit in the kitchen and always shimmied. One of the counters’ edges was cut at an insanely sharp triangular angle. In the summer, it was hot, and in the winter, it was cold. It was a long house on a long lot, it had a shaded, covered rear porch that was lovely despite having a leaky roof caused by branches poking through the corrugated (cardboard?) material that made it up. The backyard also sharpened to a point in the back. There was Austin city property on one side of it; an easement for power lines that went in between two fences. It had a carport and a nice tree in the yard. It was the house in which I started gardening in earnest, growing all kinds of things in a big veggie patch in the back and native plantings in the front. I made paths of a sort, and a symbolic gate in the front which I modeled after a Torii gate and was very happy when it actually worked and fit together. In later years, when looking at the house on the internet, I found the gate to be gone. That was ok. Most everything else remained.
At Porter Middle School I ended up becoming a real teacher after several grueling months of terrible classes that had little bearing on real life as a teacher. I learned how to be with kids and how to ask them to learn science. They made me laugh a lot and I realized I liked that and this alot. At the end of that year, the school would close and become a new school: Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. I remember watching the staff of the new school walk the halls of the old one and wondering who they were. Little did I know that I would work with and for them many years later. At some point during that year, we were all informed that if we wanted to move to Gus Garcia Middle School, the newest school in Austin ISD, we could. Most of us did, although a few stayed in south Austin or retired. I remember touring that new building when it was a shell: such hopefulness. I remember touring it when it was painted and I wondered about blue, yellow, and orange, but did agree they were bright. The campus looked like a community college. They had pods for each grade level, color coded, with work rooms for the team of teachers in that pod. They all had copiers and computers! These were the days before laptops. They put flat screen TVs in each classroom, but forgot to order chairs for the science classrooms.
This was the beginning, and what follows is important, I think. When I came back to Austin ISD in 2015, the man from HR that I spoke with said, “oh, you were at Garcia.” I said, “I opened Garcia”. He said, “those years were hard.” I said, “yes”.
At night, I walk on my driveway and look up at thousands of stars, and every night I try to find the Big Dipper. When I do, I then look for Orion, the Little Dipper, and some planets. I find it soothing, and so I talk to them, making wishes for their help on this tiny floating blue dot. I know that they are so much bigger than me, and that there might be tiny floating blue dots orbiting them, and probably nobody there (if there is someone) even knows that I exist. Somehow though, every night I see them as this web of lights, connected across space, protecting me on Earth.
Life in the United States right now is very strange. I am convinced that the government is trying to make everyone afraid and divided. I think that the powers that be are using social media to do this, and there are now so many channels that can capture your attention.
I currently use Instagram and Facebook; I just deleted X because I found it mildly horrifying. I think I am about to delete Facebook, though, as I think my brain isn’t big enough for two social media accounts. It is filled with other things like plants, stars, sewing projects, and making jewelry.
Today is April 21st and it was sunny and cool today. The sun shone on the ocean and it twinkled and sparkled. Through a window, it almost looked like if you jumped in, it would be refreshing. Of course, it would actually kill you. Oh, Ocean – you’re a beast. So powerful; in reality, the most powerful thing on Earth. What a mirage of safety that ocean; birthplace of us all, so wildly different in different places. Where I grew up, in Houston, the water is always around 70-80 degrees. Here it is in the 40s right now and would make you hypothermic in minutes. And yet, this water, this cold water, is warming faster than any other body of water on Earth. All the while the climate is growing cooler, losing 1 degree of warmth over the last 11 years.
A bigger picture – a small and short life. I am about to turn 45. I just started hormone replacement therapy and now wear a tiny patch about the size of a dime on my stomach. I put one on twice a week and am hoping it makes me feel better and gives me relief from night sweats and hot flashes, brain fog, and a crazy hip pain that comes and goes. I am sure there are other things, too, but those are the ones I am most aware of. In a few years, my body will have changed again, as I transition into the second half of my short life.
I wonder why people in government would choose to do bad things, knowing how short their lives are, too, and how if they did good, more people would remember them after they’ve died. But then again, some people think they will never die; they are so afraid of its unknown.
I go back to work next week which is exciting; I am looking forward to seeing people and remembering how to do all the little things that make the gallery work. Every day I look outside waiting for leaves; still waiting. It’s ok. They are coming. There is a fox here who is eating my chickens as if she has access to take-out whenever she wants. There is also a porcupine who climbs the white pine trees at night, scratching with its big nails like a giant spiky cat. I wonder what other wild animal will come soon, the third in the series.
Writing has helped me understand that it is time to detach from the world of the internet and attach to the world of real life; plants, animals, sky, trees, making things to reflect those things back at themselves. I have many seedlings ready to put in the ground. I have already planted roses and made new flower beds for this year. The sound of the road at the end of the driveway is loud sometimes, but the land is pretty. We cleared out a streambed yesterday and planted dwarf willow trees at the stream edge. The apple trees are about to bloom, I think. I can’t wait to go swimming.
I have been listening to Radio Paradise a lot lately. It is really great; maybe you will like it too. I am off to go eat a girl dinner and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tomorrow is a new day? I think? I mean, it is. How will it feel tomorrow?
I have been watching a BBC programme (English spelling!) called “Long Lost Family”, and I have been crying alot, watching all the stories about people finding long lost family members; sisters, brothers, children, and parents.
Right now I am feeling super sad about it all, about my dad’s choice to hide his first children, the twins, from everyone except his immediate family, who also chose to hide them. It just feels sad and weird, compounded by how far away we are from our entire family, and that they are probably the reason for that. The information does fill a hole, but maybe the hole is a little bit deeper than I had thought.
I don’t know what to think about this all, today. Sometimes I am so happy about it. I wish so much we could take a train and meet each other and walk around or get dinner or a beer or something. I somehow want to see how tall they are, especially since we match each other in heights – Mark and I at 6 feet and Pat and Carew at 6 foot 4. 14 years and a world apart – and yet, sort of together finally.
I think that lately I have been so mad at a dead person, and also so sad for him and wanting to hug him all at the same time, just to tell him that he didn’t need to do this. I wonder how a parent couldn’t want to see their children and know who they become. The Universe gave me a great gift when I was 34 when I got River as a son after so many years of fraught feelings around having children and being in relationships in general. Cody is my favorite person and I am so lucky to be able to love him and have him in my life, and River is a major bonus, as is his family. I just don’t understand why you would give that up? I am sure that some part of my Dad decided with Carew and I that he wouldn’t give us up, despite being really challenged in the parenting and adulting department.
I don’t know what else to say. It has been grey and rainy here for a couple of days, but I know that spring is around the corner. This winter has been long and full of so much, so many learnings and questions, curiosities. I just can’t get my head around it, this human condition. Sometimes people make these crazy decisions, and what is so crazy is that, in those moments, those are the best decisions of each of these people. They are doing their best, even if their best seems, to us, later, as unnecessary, bad, or hurtful. Blah! I don’t know what to say.
I will say that I am thankful that I have brothers and that knowing them completes a hole in my life that had been there for so long. I didn’t know what or who they were, but I knew that they existed, maybe for my whole life. What a world!
Paciencia, Paciencia 