blood & marriage

Verbatim conversation with a patient today:

Patient: You got a husband?

Me: No.

Patient: A boyfriend?

Me: No.

Patient: Is that blood on your shoes?

Me: Uh. Yeah. Looks like it.

Patient: No wonder you ain't married yet.

highs & lows of the last 14 hours

Doctor: Hey, you're doing great. I had no idea you are new nurse. Keep up the great work.

Patient #1: Get out of my face, you ugly @#%$*. I'm going to get my people and come back and crush you.

Medical Student: Here. I bought you a diet coke to thank you for helping me so much with that patient earlier.

Patient #2: What do you mean you don't know what's wrong with me. Go tell your boss I want someone taking care of me who's not stupid.

Hospital Police Officer: Girl, you're a hustler. I can tell you're a hard worker. I respect that.

Patient #3. You look like a hunchback.
Me: Excuse Me?
Patient: Bend over so I can look at your back.
Me: I'm not going to bend over. I don't have a hunchback.
Patient: You are a very rude young woman. I'm trying to help you.

Man who delivers clean linens: I been watching you lady and if you take care of your husband half as good as you do your patients, he's a lucky man.

Patient #4 just swung at me.

cash cow

I tell my parents that I have a secret account - a place where I squirrel away a little money here and there so that when the time comes, I'll have the cash I need to buy some cattle. They are not particularly impressed by my foresight. My mom asks when I'm planning to do this exactly. My father suggests I go stick my head in the dairy case at the store and take a few deep breaths -- nothing like the smell of stale milk to snap you back to reality. They laugh, but I'm serious. Few things evoke in me such simultaneous longing and contentment -in perfect harmony- as cows, and every version of the future that I imagine for myself includes cattle.

Grahamcracker told me once that my grandfather loved the sight of cattle grazing on a hillside, that he could watch them for hours. I think of my grandfather, a difficult man, and all his characteristics that my father didn't inherit, didn't pass down to me. When I sift through my memories of my grandfather - of his hollering & cussing - and add it to what I know of my father's childhood, I can not see the line from him to me. My father is nothing like his father and I am like my father, so by the transitive property of inequalities, I am nothing like my grandfather, right? Save this genetic bovine blip, right?

Maybe I should get a milk cow, just to practice, until I get my herd. We could have fresh milk and butter! My mom reminds me that I don't live with them, that I live in the city, and that she is not getting up at 4:30 to milk it. My father says that when he was a child he made butter out of the raw milk from their cow and put it on his popcorn and even the thought of it still makes him want to throw up to this day. Fine. I want beef cattle and not dairy cattle, anyway. Just you wait and see.

Driving home from work tonight through the dark city, I think about all the hours I just worked, about my tiny little fund, and all the hours more I'll have to work to be able to buy even a single Red Angus heifer, never mind a bull. For a few more minutes I worry about my non-existent herd dying of starvation (because I miscalculated the amount of alfalfa hay we'd need to get us through the long winter). What if I ruin my imaginary children's lives by making them mend fences after school? My parents created a childhood for my sister, brothers, and me so vastly different than their own and here I am, trying to go back to where my father came from, to the plains states where many of my mother's father's people still live. I flip on the radio to distract myself and when Diane Rehm's voice fills the car, I almost flip it back off immediately. Her guest is talking about his mother, though, so I wait, my hand hovering over the knob. Family. It is so complicated and yet so simple. We are like them except for all the things we do to not be like them. I turn it off. I don't need to hear another thing.

This [place/job/world] will change you, if you let it.

My very first patient in the ER was a 65 year old woman picked up by the cops after she fell down at the bus stop. She was high. She had no shoes or underwear on, just a big t-shirt with Tweety Bird on the front and a pair of black jeans with a hole in the left knee. Her matted hair was full of leaves and bits of twigs. When she came around, spitting invectives one minute and calling me angel the next, she admitted that she'd shot up with dope every day for as long as she could remember, probably since before you was born. No one saw her fall, so the doctor ordered a head CT to make sure that she wasn't bleeding into her brain. When I told her it was time to go get the test done, she looked at me as though I was out of my mind. You want me to go out of this room looking like this? I can't go out of here looking like this. I need to comb my hair. Hand me my pocketbook.

Like a song or a smell that takes you back to a place you can't quite name, something about the way that woman rifled through her purse - handing me her tattered address book, nubby tissues, a tube of lipstick, demanding a clean blouse before going out in public- reminded me of my grandmother so keenly I felt my throat catch. Oh no you don't. We are not playing this game. You can not see yourself and everyone you know in these patients. TOUGHEN UP NOW. GO ON.

So I have, mostly. I didn't give it a second thought when the principal with chest pain comes in, don't blink when I see the constant stream of patients with the same birthday as my friends & loved ones, don't think twice about the girl my age who was raped a few blocks from where I used to live. I ignore connections and shun similarities. These are other people. What do they have to do with me? Watch me shrug my shoulders as I give them their medications and send them on their way.

And then today the paramedics bring in a patient, another woman in her 60's, my lot in life it seems. She collapsed this morning, they tell us, she didn't have heart beat but we threw some epi at her and now she's got a pulse, they practically grin. She is unconscious, with a tube down her throat, and when I cut off her clothes I see that her emaciated body is literally eaten away by cancer. Her hair is cut stylishly and she is wearing earrings, complete with a tiny diamond in a third hole mid-way up her ear, just like Squirrel. There is no family, someone tells me, and after awhile, a woman with grey hair and a brave smile comes back, looking for my lady. I'm not technically family she tells me, but I might as well be. We've been friends for 44 years and we've been through a hell of a lot together. We met when we were 18 and then moved here. She looks over my shoulder, where her friend is lying on the stretcher, a tangle of wires and sheets. Is she in pain? If she were awake she'd say 'Lou, who cares if it's 10 am, we need a scotch.' Oh God, I hope she fed her cats this morning. She starts sobbing uncontrollably.

After the friend calms down and I walk her over to talk to the doctor, another nurse and I begin the task of making my patient look more like a human and less like a power strip. The smell rising off her body is terrible, and as I work, holding my breath, all my unanswered questions about life and death bubble to the surface. She is covered in drainage from her wounds and her own excrement. We work from head to toe and when I wash the excrement off her feet I notice 1) that her soles are mottled, which any nurse will tell you is a sign of imminent death and 2) her toenails have been freshly painted bright red. My 6 week old resolve cracks and I feel my throat catch once more. It is Sunday morning and everyone I love is at church and I am washing excrement off the feet of woman who is alive but dead and this is Squirrel and me in 40 years and I am not tough and really, does being human meaning living with half broken hearts our whole damn lives?

My patient's best friend of 44 years makes it clear in no uncertain terms that she would not want to live this way and produces the necessary papers to back up her claim. Someone comes over and removes the tube from the lady's mouth. I turn all the alarms on the monitor off, and pull up 2 chairs. As best as I can, I explain what all the lines on the screen mean, that no one can say for sure how long she'll hold on, that the medicine going in her arm keeps her from feeling any pain. She asks if her friend can hear us and I tell her that it's very unlikely, but I could be wrong, so we talk to her and tell old stories about their double dates, their trip to Europe. Before she leaves, the friend clutches my hand and says I could not have done this without you and instead of falling apart, my heart fills -- stronger, fuller.

The rest of my shift passed in the typical blur of people, their need, my ineptitude, cold coffee, paperwork, alarms. At 23:15 I clocked out and walked through the empty halls of the hospital to my lonely car, exhausted but oddly hopeful. It is a strange & abundant grace that allows us to see ourselves so clearly in our neighbors; that erases the line between us & them and bids us wash their feet, go on.

Alone, Together

IT is a standard question and we ask every patient: Do you live alone or with others?

My patient is old, really, old -- with lovely smooth skin and cataracts turning her eyes that hazy, gentle blue. She tells me that she lives alone, that she's lived alone for all of the 30-odd years since her husband died. When I tell her I have to start an IV, she sees the dread on my face and tells me to think of her as my grandmother. I tell her this makes it worse, that I would hate to hurt my grandmothers. Oh no baby, she says, your grandmother loves you and is happy to see you, even with that big needle in your hand. She laughs and I laugh, resisting the impulse to lean in and kiss her cheek. I tie the tourniquet around her bird bone arm and ask, as casually as I can, so...do you mind living alone? Are you ever scared? Scared, honey? What do you mean? What do I have to be scared of? Everything comes and goes and everyone dies alone in the end now don't they? Well...yes, but do you have anyone to help you? I am flicking the backs of her hands, trying to coax her veins to stand up for me, trying to focus on the task, trying to do my job. She laughs again. I've got more people to help me than I can shake a stick at and would you believe it, there are still people who need my help? She cackles and shakes her head. No being alone is easy, it's the being with people that takes so much out of me. Are you seeing any good veins? They usually find something right... in.... here. She runs her knobby finger along the back of her hand and I think now here's someone who knows the back of her own hand.

I get the bright red flash, advance the catheter, send the color topped tubes off to the lab. My work here is done, Miss Grandma, I say. I hope I didn't hurt you too bad. Oh no baby, I didn't feel a thing. Well, is there anything else I can get you? Hopefully the doctor will be with you before too, too long. I am sitting on the edge of her bed and she puts her hand on my knee, the sort of reassuring touch that I'm meant to be giving her. No sweetie, I'm just going to sit right here and think of Lawrence, my late husband. Being around him was never hard. Thinking about him keeps me from ever really being alone.

inception

I paid such careful attention all day. To the doctors' orders and the lab results and the endless, endless ringing of monitors. I paid attention because I was scared to death - scared that I might hurt someone, scared that I might kill someone, scared that I might look stupid in front of any of the 50 people within earshot. And because I wanted to tell you in the brightest detail of the 98 year old woman who drove herself to the hospital, the homeless man who used the world punctilious and said Why! I do believe your eyes are the color of adamite. About all the blood, the small kindnesses & relentless chaos. But like a dream, I can not remember the beginning or the end, how I got from 06:45 to 19:45 in one piece, my patients only a little worse for wear. And if I do not go to sleep right this minute, I don't know how I'll wake up in time to go back to that place where crazy is perfectly normal.

The Odyssey: Part I

My grandmother gallivants; she straps on her gold sandals, packs her suitcase with linen skirts and turquoise jewelry--right up to the weight limit-- and sets out. Katie she said Soon as you finish school let’s take us a trip to celebrate. Somewhere warm! So we found a ship, booked our tickets, and counted down the days during the hard months between winter and summer. In between taking practice exams, I bought a pair of gold sandals. Squirrel signed on and the party was complete: 3 single gals on the high seas! And then my grandmother called with the news that her gallbladder was acting up again and that the doctor said it was time to have it out – 2 days before we set sail. So Squirrel and I packed our trunks and met in New York. We boarded at the pier in Brooklyn and stood on the open air deck, waving goodbye to our grandmothers and our great-grand parents as our ship passed Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty—two single gals in gold sandals where there should’ve been three.

***

Bermuda is 26 square miles or so, a chain of rock slabs in the middle of the North Atlantic. The local pilot sails out to meet our ship in the hours before dawn and guides us toward the Royal Navy Shipyard. The night before, we stood along the rail of the promenade deck, looking toward the indistinguishable line of the horizon, where cobalt sky meets obsidian sea. Seafaring has always fascinated me -- the crazy-brave (mostly) men who boarded wooden vessels and used rope, cloth, stars, and wind to navigate unknown lands and unknowable depths. I picture our mammoth ship as a tiny speck in a vast ocean of blue, days away from any firmament, any green. I feel the imaginary pitch and reel of our vessel as the squall bounces us from crest to trough, flooding the deck and hull with brine faster than the bilge can pump it out. Retreating from my imagining, we turn and find refuge in the martini bar where the piano man plays the shanties of our day. We fall asleep in our air conditioned state room that night, and I can’t help but think that perhaps I would not be so intrepid and bold as I’d like to think. Maybe I would’ve stayed in London, in Barcelona or Lisbon, sweeping my narrow patch of ground, tending my lot in life, pushing back thoughts of anything more and bidding God speed to those brave enough to seek their fortune elsewhere. The next morning, though, we stand on our little balcony as the pilot leads us through the rocky channel. Our ship slices through water so aquamarine and sky so turquoise, that I can scarcely take it in. I begin to understand what compelled even ordinary people to leave their homes and loved ones. For all the men who never came back, swallowed up by the sea, it only took one safe return, one first-hand tale to play down the risks, to talk up the possibility. You must see it for yourself to believe it. The blues and the greens. The chance of gold.

Inventory & Assessment

If pressed to list one thing I'm good at, taking tests would be the first thing to come to mind. (If pressed to list things am bad at, would say spatial reasoning, ironing, logic, jigsaw puzzles, reading maps, small talk at parties, spelling, not spilling things.) My whole life I have been the person who can sit in the back of the classroom and daydream, go dancing the night before, show up rumpled and without a pencil, and somehow still ace the exam. Mind you, I'm not boasting. It was well into college before I truly learned the need for concentration, hard work, discipline - how these virtues need flexing and stretching in the classroom to prepare one for (the way in which I, at least, want to live my) real, non-academic, meaningful life.

This week I have to take a big exam. And somehow, though I have taken my aptitude for tests and steeped it in study, preparation, strategy, and a million practice questions, I am a nervous wreck. I'm all itchy and twitchy; sleep escapes me. The knot in the pit of my stomach is bigger than any job interview, first date, or the Monday morning after I'd stranded my boss in Phoenix for the weekend. So desperately do I want it to be over...and yet so thoroughly do I dread the results.

I went home for the weekend, partially to celebrate my great, fine father and partially because being with Little Rat and my mother, unconditional supporters masquerading as the peanut gallery, is the only thing that tempers the nerves. Last night, my father read some statistics about the test and my mother said she had every confidence in me. Little Rat called me Nurse Kathy and then told me he'd pray for me. After we said good night, I laid in bed and tried to recall lab values for alanine transaminase (8-20 u/L) and what to do for pulseless ventricular tachycardia (defibrillate! stat!). My brain physically hurt, though, as if my gray matter was literally bursting at the seams with information. Earlier in the day, my friend and I were talking about the specific heat of water and I was near to distraught that I'd forgotten it. So much useless information, crowding out the necessary things to know. So, in the dark of my parents' spare room, I took deep breaths and said aloud all those things that I'm willing to forget to make room in my brain for this new information: my college boyfriend's mother's sisters' names, the lyrics to every track on Jagged Little Pill, the client/matter numbers for all the clients at my old firm. Goodbye. Gone.

That's as far as I got, though. No matter how useless it may be to me now, I don't want to let go of the list of train stations between Ikebukuro and Kotesashi on the Seibu-Ikebukuro line. I refuse to forget the way the my grandfather would cave to our pleading, put our stuffed animals on the blades of the ceiling fan, and watch us squeal with delight as they flew across the room. Or the way that my other grandfather would call out as we filed out of the house Don't forget. Granddad love you kids. World capitals are a must keep, along with US Presidents, Renaissance painters, Greek mythology, and my first kiss. As tempting as it is, I don't think I should forget all the awkward conversations with the boy who broke my heart, all the mortifying times good people pulled me aside and said hard things for my benefit, the shame of breaking my parents' trust or hurting my sisters' feelings. Without the weight of these anchors, what's to keep me from unlearning my lessons, from reverting to the inadequate, inconsiderate behavior of my youth? Perhaps I'm a memory pack rat, but at least I don't compartmentalize.

Sorting through my mind's content, like items for a garage sale, the significance of this exam began to shrink back into its proper place. If I don't pass this exam, it will mess up my here & now plans a bit. This grown-up life, this start of a career, is all teed up -- and after bouncing around like a pin ball for so many years, an almost physical ache for patch of permanence, a bit of settled, courses through me. I love nursing, I do. In so many ways, it is a perfect fit and I'm excited about the job that I will start in July in the Emergency Department. But it's only a small part of the bigger picture. When I think of the sort of life I want to live, I imagine a pasture full of cows, a house full of kids, shelves full of books, pots full of soup -- days full of taking care of my neighbors, whoever they may be. None of those things hinge on a nursing license. And if I'm pressed to say one thing I'm truly good at, it's getting from here to there by circuitous, surprising route, enjoying the ride all the while.

honesty

Tonight at dinner I did my best to imitate the noise our cows make. Little Rat arched his eyebrows at me. No offense Kathy, but Yes offense as well. You need work as a cow.

Get Out of Jail Free Card

I did not intend to go into pediatric nursing. I generally prefer multi-syllabic words to baby talk, hearing the word"potty" makes my skin crawl, and I don't think all babies are cute and sweet. I've met some down right spiteful ones, actually.

But then half way through nursing school I needed a job and the one that fell in my lap, straight out of the sky, was at a pediatrician's office. So I took it, tried hard as I could to be useful and grateful for a job that didn't involve animal fur, and concentrated on not dropping any babies between the exam table and the scale. The doctor is hilarious, brilliant, and kind, the receptionist is hilarious, efficient, and kind. I just try to be kind. And figure out ways to ask the jumping, clutching kids if they need to use the restroom without saying the p word. I've learned a lot --learned to love it, even. So much so that I'll keep working there a few days a week, even after I start my real job.

This past week has been terrible, though. I got kicked in the eye, caught pink eye and then somehow picked up impetigo, even though I washed my hands 45 times on Wednesday. A seven year old girl came in for bed wetting and when I listened to her heart, she wet her pants, the stream of urine trickling off the bench and dripping down on to my foot while her parents screamed at each other about the terms of their divorce, oblivious. It took three grown ups to hold down the screaming five year old boy long enough to vaccinate him and somehow I still ended up with claw marks on my neck. And now, a week after we admitted the four year old in respiratory distress to the hospital, I have the horrible hacking cough and gravelly man voice you'd expect from a 2 pack a day habit.

I was thinking about how much every muscle in my body ached, not the speed limit, when the cop stepped into traffic and motioned me over to the side of the road. 3 months ago, I dropped my drivers license in the parking lot of the hospital and the security guard sitting at the lost and found desk confessed to me that he'd put it in the pocket of his uniform pants and taken my license home instead of logging it in to the system. For two weeks, I wandered around the grounds of the hospital, searching for him, hoping he'd picked the right pants off his bedroom floor that morning. Instead of clearing time in my life to go wait in line at the DMV, I've driven around like a nervous wreck, five miles under the speed limit and practically parking at stop signs. Until I got sick and just wanted to get home.

As the cop approached my car yesterday, I started coughing so hard that I didn't even have time to think about tears (real or fake) or excuses. The officer asked for my license and registration and, in between hacking fits, I told him that I didn't have a license. Well, I have one, but not with me. Well, actually, I don't really have a license but I'm licensed. As in, once I had a license but I don't have it anymore even though I still have a valid license number. And then I started coughing really, really hard into the upper sleeve of my purple dinosaur scrubs, just like I teach the kids. The officer looked at me for a second and then I saw him look over at my stethoscope on the passenger seat. Are you a nurse ma'am? I nodded, so miserable. Well, you're in luck because I never give nurses tickets. You slow down and take care of yourself so you can take care of those kids.

White Rabbit

The summer I was 21, I lived in a guest cottage adjacent to a large house on the side of a hill overlooking the bay. An acquaintance of an acquaintance asked me to stay there with her old, ailing mother for the summer while she went on a three month trip to collect research for her dissertation on tree frogs. This woman knew nothing about me, but handed me the keys to the house, her car, and the instruction manual for the elevator and the pool in the basement. The old woman was both crotchety and funny and, after spending the spring semester of my junior year at home, I was happy for a little space of my own. In the mornings, the old woman and I would take the elevator down to the basement and I would help her climb into the pool and swim against the perpetual current for 30 minutes before sliding down the hill to sit on the beach and write bad poetry or desperate love letters, depending on the day. At night, we'd sit on the porch and the old woman would tell me stories about her childhood and meeting her husband over dinners of fresh tomato salad, cold boiled parsnips, and red wine. After dinner, I'd helped the old lady into the elevator, up to her bedroom, out of her polyester pant suits, and into bed. That was the summer of LSAT and Hail to the Thief, and after the old lady was in bed, I'd sit on the screened in porch and listen to Radiohead, imagining my future as an attorney while summer lightning split the bay in two and rain hammered the tin roof.

One day I came home from work and found the old lady stuck in the elevator. I could hear her talking and she said she'd only been there a few minutes so I called the repair service and after a kind young man came and pried open the doors, we went on with our evening routine. I knew something like this was going to happen she said. I forgot to say White Rabbit this morning! Jefferson Airplane? Alice in Wonderland? She was too old for both so I had to ask what she meant. On the first day of every month, you must say WHITE RABBIT before you say anything else when you wake up. If you do, your wishes for the month will come true but if you forget, everything will go wrong. I forgot to say it today. It's the first time I've forgotten in years.

The rest of the summer passed uneventfully. On the day I took the LSAT, the old lady told me to make us martinis to celebrate the beginning of my future career. After I helped her into bed, I made myself another, went to the porch, and read T.S. Eliot while lightning bugs pricked the inky sky. At the end of August, I said goodbye to the old lady, promised to write, went to see Radiohead play, and then drove up to Boston the next day to finish my last year of school. I moved into my apartment, met a left-handed boy who could talk about science and art, and forgot all about the old lady until the following summer when her daughter emailed me to say she'd died. I meant to send a card, but I don't think I even replied to the email. I was very young. I thought that my whole life was in front of me. Whatever that means. Or I thought it meant.

It's been years since I thought of the old lady, but this morning I sat bolt up-right in bed and said White Rabbit. I don't know why I said it - or what I wish for this month beyond passing the NCLEX- but I spent today marveling at all the funny, strange ways that life unfolds - whether we say those words on the first of the month or not. I spent that summer focused on getting into law school and caring for a frail, old woman on the side. This summer I'm focused on learning to care for people while my time at the law firm grows stranger and more unimaginable by the day.

Jinx

On evenings when he has late meetings, my father often calls me as he drives home. We talk about politics, literature, crazy people we've encountered, our family, my mom (hi mom!) until he pulls up the gravel hill, past the cows, and into the garage.

Tonight I told him about the thing that has been gnawing on me for days and how I can't see the way past it. He listened and told me he understood, compared it to some times in his own life, quoted a good poet. He doesn't really have an answer, you see, because we are built the same way -- mirror images, or maybe more like those stacking Russian dolls -- and any answer lies in a complete reprogramming of the way that we are both hardwired to respond. More and more our conversations go like this: my problems, his parables, no answer. It has taken me awhile to adjust, to realize that the point of these exchanges is not an answer. This has been the crux of growing up for me - the bittersweet exchange of hard, clear answers for a more reciprocal understanding. I understand. I don't know.

I really wanted an answer tonight, though. Something to make it all clear up and go my way. But I let that go somewhere toward the end of the conversation and just listened to his story instead and realized suddenly how much more important it is to have someone say I understand instead of Now, this is what you need to do.

You have to remember this conversation forever, I thought as I hung up, you have to remember to talk to your daughter this way some day. I don't know how I'll remember the particular things my father said tonight, though; how I will hold them distinct in my heart and mind from a life time's worth of conversations about how to be gracious in a difficult world. Who needs answers when you have examples?



(And here's a poem I wrote about my father ten years ago, when we were fighting because I wanted to drop AP Calculus and AP Physics C.)

I Removed Atticus from the LIST today

Don't worry.
The others are still there
and someday
(probably soon)
he'll rejoin F. Scott and
George Washington
among those honorable
and insightful men
laid out on the list which defines
you

for

me.

But Calculus isn't camelias
and I am neither Jem
nor Scout
(It doesn't work both ways;
it is an unfair game,
I acknowledge)
nor am I able to integrate
Physics C into a novel that
you've always told me to read
a word game
a lesson on the Magyars
(your people).

See how truly I am your daughter.
Even now, my anger cannot last
as your genes in me dictate.

Consider Atticus reinstated.

discrete, related

Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
- Walker Percy

1. The left-handed captain and I went sailing in the middle of the night, because the wind was right and it seemed the thing to do. Even though I see him maybe once a year, usually at a wedding, we both rank the invention of the keel higher than the ipad on the list of man-made wonders, which means that he gets it, that we speak the same language in this incomprehensible babbling world. We unwrapped our bandaged, stinging hearts to the night air. We watched the grace of the wind in the sails. Let's go to the Bahamas he said and pointed the bow toward a new life. For awhile we sailed as close to the wind as you can, between the longitudinal lines of past and future. He turned the boat around, though. A good captain, a willing first mate, fair seas, good wind, gin, limes, and stars clear enough to guide can not change this fact: so much of where we go is determined by who we've left behind, and what waits for us back on land.

2. I had 4 patients the other day, all men with heart failure, all dying alone. The eldest one told me, as I went through all three of his wallets cataloguing his valuables, that he never trusted anyone enough to get married. The youngest man, only ten years older than me, looked old enough to be my father's father. When I went in to his room to change his IV, he grabbed my hand and said The doctor said it's too late for me to change - you don't think it's too late for me to change do you?

I didn't want to say it to a dying man, but aren't we all dying?

It's never too late, but sometimes it's too late.

3. I run it around and around my mind, like worry beads. People choose what they choose. People choose what they choose. In these words there is an answer, in this truth there is rest.

The Little Things

There are so many things to be thankful for in spring, not the least of which are purple grapes, thunderstorms, and Claritin D.

Easter Vigil

All day I have been reading articles about controlling infection in post-cardiac surgery patients. They have titles like Mediastinitis Following Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery: Pathogenesis, Clinical Presentation, Risks, and Management and Bugs are eating my soul: a case study of sternal abscess, osteomyelitis, and mediastinitis complicating a closed sternal fracture. These articles explain the best medicine has to offer when it comes to treating boggy, calcified, or rotten hearts. We use the strongest antibiotics we have, because once you're heart is infected, it's very hard to root out the blight. Necrotic tissue does not just come back to life.

In a few minutes I will leave for church, where we will have the biggest party of the year. We are celebrating because our hard hearts have been softened and He has washed them white as snow.

wabi sabi

The sky is so blue it hurts.

strangers in a strange land

And when he said the sakura are not the right color here I knew exactly what he meant.

How I Make it Through the Night

It is no small thing to ask someone to watch over you all night. Parents know this, sure. But imagine for a minute that it's not your own soft child in your care, but crusty Uncle Frank, the homeless woman outside Dunkin Donuts, or a man who only only screams in Korean. Maybe you've been caring for a houseful of kids, working your other job, going to school all day, but would you please just buck the strong pull of circadian tides and make sure these people don't die in the next 12 hours?

It helps to think back to the days when we would spend the night dancing after working all day. This is a different kind of club; keep moving to the hum of ventilators, the beat of alarms. Find your rhythm. Keep smiling. All these men, competing for my attention, demanding round after round of liquid & lots of charm. What'll it be this time, Joe? Normal Saline or another 1/2 of Lactated Ringer? As dawn breaks through the window, Squirrel will come find me to say, finally, she's had enough and we will take off our shoes and limp to breakfast through the stirring streets.

If I don't feel like dancing, I think of the last scenes of The Sound of Music and how the poor von Trapp children sang their hearts out at the Saltzberg Festival before climbing through the Alps all night to freedom. Keep climbing this dark mountain and ignore the heaviness of your limbs. Be thankful you are not fleeing for your life, carrying Gretl on your back. I hum Edelweiss to myself and move a little faster, looking over my shoulder just to make sure.

Mostly, though, I think of all the long, sleepless flights I've taken around the world and how they share the same surreal quality of the cardiac transplant unit at night. The dim lighting, the incessant call bells, uncomfortable seats. The processed air drys out your contacts as you glance at your watch again, trying to calculate the time on the ground. My mood is pressurized as I walk the hall checking on my patients. We are all passengers tonight, flying through the night, hanging on the silver balance. Hoping to make it home safely to the comfort of our own beds.

Catherine Barkley would've cried too.

It's not that I've been regretting going to nursing school, exactly. More like profound exhaustion mixed with the healthy admission that reading A Farewell to Arms wasn't the most helpful preparation for starting my new career.

And then today, the old man comes out of surgery and his blood pressure is all over the place. Systolic readings of 190 one moment and then down in the 60's the next. This is not good. The nurse doesn't bother taking her finger off the IV pump, so continuously do his vasopressers need titrating. He is overloaded with fluid, his kidneys are tired, his pale, shaved skin is mottled, which is to say, he looks really bad. Troubling, too, his temperature refuses to come up from 95.1 degrees, even after warmed blankets and a sheet of hot air. We do all sorts of things, all the standard protocols, all the old tricks of the trade, but our man refuses to be stable. No one comes up with much of an explanation beyond Well...the heart doesn't like to be messed with. Thank you. I could've come up with that on my own.

It's not convenient, but we let his wife in around 2:30. She has been in the waiting room since 6:00 am but she still thanks us calmly and repeatedly for taking such good care of her husband. Her headband, like her entire outfit, is purple, and sticking out of her bag I see a large print book of crossword puzzles and half-eaten peanut butter sandwich. She tells us that she was a nurse for 25 years but she gave up working almost 20 years ago. You'll understand then, we tell her, that we are concerned that we can't get his blood pressure stable and his temperature up. He's very cold.

She sets her bag on the floor and walks closer to her husband's bed, tucking the edges of the blankets deeper under his still body. Once she's satisfied, she walks to the head of the bed, leans in close, and cups his face with her hands. I'm here my darling and you're doing just fine. But these kind nurses must be confused, because they say that you're very cold. But that just can't be, can it? You can't be cold because you are the one who always keeps me warm at night. All these years you kept me warm. Show them how warm and good you are, my love.

Love, medicine, a lifetime of taking orders from his wife? I don't know. But our man got warm and got stable while I bawled into the pile of unneeded blankets.

military time, remote controls, you.

Things that confound me.

For the Man in Park Today

In eleventh grade my teacher handed out photocopies of a poem by Victor Hugo. I don't remember her name anymore, though I can tell you that she was fairly short, spoke French with the lockjaw accent of Southern Alabama (her birthplace, not mine) and cried at least once a week.

The poem, however -- the poem stayed with me -- one line in particular. I tucked this handful of french nouns and verbs in my pocket and carried them to a new high school in a different country, then on to college on the East Coast, through boyfriends and break ups and the lessons you learn on how to become an adult in the world, how hope has feathers, what it means to be one of 6 billion people in a galaxy with 100 billion stars (give or take). Sometimes I recite it to myself on the bus while riding to my job that pays the bills and makes me laugh but doesn't fill me up with the things I want or take from me the best things I have to offer.

And now I'll give these words to you, because it seems you speak French (or carry around a dictionary, which is equally charming), because you have your eyes open when you walk through the park, and because you look like you miss her and need them more than I do.

Je sais que tu m'attend.

her name means pastoral settings & simple pleasures

She skipped class to drive me to the airport, on the road that snakes its way up to they city where her ex-boy friend lives. Willowy & golden, she practically glows. She is way smarter than your average bear, but moves like a gazelle. She notices, remembers, analyzes, intuits, laughs, does, thinks. Our friendship, forged the first week of classes, gives the real value to our $80,000 program. He dumped her, though, out of the blue and in the worst way imaginable: without a single attempt at an explanation. The Truly Wonderful Girl & the EMOTIONALLY STUNTED COWARD is the name of the forthcoming book.

Even so, driving me into the holiday weekend and through the rush hour traffic, she looks out the window, toward the city where he lives. It's times like this I really miss him, she says. He was always so good at braking in traffic and I just make myself carsick. We laugh for a minute but quickly turn sad. She gets it you see -- that all we really have to work with are little pieces, moments, and things knitted together, forming people and relationships. Our lives.

knowing

This week my friends - my family - in all the non-scientific, and therefore important, ways - went through something terrible. It is times like this that I wish for more careful and precise use of language in our world. When the nightly newscasters announce that the promising young quarterback’s career has ended with injury, they are not really describing a tragedy.

For a long time now, we have known that something was not right. The doctors did a lot of tests and collected a lot of information, but could never say for certain what was wrong or why. In the face of this uncertainty, my friends took the information they had and made the decisions they could. Mostly they prayed and kept walking.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how much living without going crazy or numb depends on our ability to walk the fine thin tension lines that run through our common experiences, marking out for us what it really means to be human. Individuals have infinite inherent worth yet our single lives are a mere drop in the bucket of human history. All the frailty, gravity, fleetingness held up against the body’s drive to survive, the brain’s ability to compensate, hearts that go on. I know my beginning, my undeserved resurrection, the ending. But it is the moments, days, years between that can drive me to distraction. Say it to yourself, Kate: There are things we can know and things we should not hope to know. Now mean it, believe it. Proclaim it.

This is what I know. Their baby was beautiful and loved by so many people. She looked like her dad. She could not have had a better mother. She changed all of our lives and now we are heartbroken & somehow still grateful. The rest? Why? When and if it will ever make sense? I don’t know.

On Monday, I stood in the rain and told a man I’ve known for a long time that we can’t be paralyzed by what don’t know for sure, that we have to move forward and trust that it will all become clear in time. I was trying to convince him of something that I need reminding of on a daily basis. The time for knowing will come. In the meantime, let’s hold hands. We’ll keep walking. It is in our unknowing that we are delivered; our salvation comes from belief.

15

I talked to a friend on the phone the other day for the first time in over a decade. Her husband dialed her up, half way around the world, and hit the speakerphone button, and all of sudden, her voice filled the car - so essentially her - that I could not believe that a single thing has changed. That's not true, though. Everything has changed since we were 15. Well, almost everything. State of Love & Trust is still my favorite Pearl Jam song. I still don't like walnuts in chocolate chip cookies. Even now I'll fall for a boy wearing Adidas Sambas at the drop of a hat.

*

We do a pretty good job of being adults. We file our taxes, buy nutritious food, take care of our babies, get good reviews at work. We get to our doctors' appointments on time, meet our hard deadlines, and take bottles of good wine to dinner parties. We brush & floss and mostly pick up after ourselves. We plan and pay for vacations, packing our own suitcases and carrying them through the lobbies of hotels where we have rooms waiting for us in our own names. We get from here to there without help. We take responsibility for our own actions and don't shy away from hard conversations.

On Monday night I got home from work and found my sweet roommate's sweet parents sitting in the living room. All my tiredness, stress, sadness, anxiety, exhaustion was lessened somehow by simply having real adults -- even someone else's good & wise parents -- under our roof, carrying some of the weight, showing us how its done.

study/studying

THERE are research studies out there that say kids perform better at school when they dress up. This is one of the arguments behind school uniforms, the reason why the whole team wears ties on games days, etc.

It better be true. This morning I made an effort to tame my hair & find a shirt with buttons. I put on red shoes and red lipstick. This passes for "dressed up" in nursing school -- and represents the sum total of my preparation for today's public health exam.

hardships

My sweet roommate is the hospital for the foreseeable future. Tim thinks he has a heart defect. My two best friends have started dating each other. I just got home from the hospital and must be back in 8 hours. I haven't slept in days. Today is my brother's 22nd birthday and I haven't seen him in over 2 years. I miss my parents, Little Rat, the cows. I'm scared to sleep in this house alone. My friend's father died Monday. I have so much school work to do and literally no idea how it's going to get done. My ex boyfriend sent me a sad email. No answers to my questions. No money. No time. A two day headache...

I was doing just fine - holding it together like a true champion - until the Visa commercial with the Chinese Olympic ice skaters came on.

true story

The light turned red. Kate wasn't paying attention and slammed on her breaks just in time, avoiding a collision with the back of the fire truck in front of her by just a few feet. Embarrassed by the near miss, she glanced up to see who had witnessed her almost-accident. To her chagrin, the back door of the fire truck was open, and a tall, handsome man was peering down through the windshield of her small blue station wagon. Kate felt color creep up her neck and spread across her face, turning her alabaster skin a deep, rosy pink. The fire man was dressed in soot covered overalls, and his face was smeared in ash, but his dark blue eyes flashed above his sensitive lips and strong, chiseled jaw line. His eyes locked on Kate's and she felt herself melt as he drew her deeper into his gaze. For once in her life, she hoped that the red light would last forever, that time would stop at the intersection of 14th and Columbia Road. He took a step closer and his lips parted into a shy smile that spoke more than any words ever could. As suddenly as it turned red, though, the light changed to green, and the old fire truck roared ahead. The handsome man's blue eyes filled with panic as he lost his balance and pitched toward the open door of the truck. He grabbed for anything he could find to steady himself, but his hands found nothing and Kate watched as his muscular frame flew closer and closer, almost as though he was moving in slow motion, flying toward the hood of her still stationary car...

Kate lives in reality, though, so it was no surprise that the handsome man's buddy grabbed the back of his coveralls at the last possible second, pulled him into truck, and slammed the door shut. For a moment, Kate glanced at the hood of her car, where her true love had almost lain. She could almost feel the warmth of his skin under her hand, which she would've run along his face to immobilize his c-spine and check for pulses. She thought of how his strong chest would've given beneath her palms as she initiated chest compressions, how his flashing blue eyes would've found her face first as he climbed his way back to consciousness. The car behind honked, waking Kate from her reverie. She shifted into drive and turned toward home, where she sat down and immediately began work on her next romance novel Love's Blazing Fire.

Texting

Little Rat: Whatz up, kathy ^_^

Me: Not much. Just at the hospital. How are you?

Little Rat: [blank text]

Me: ?

Little Rat: sorry about that, i purposely pressed send without anything on it at all.

Me: Do you mean accidentally pushed send?

Little Rat: yes, but i couldn't spell such a word, so i had to use another one, ok?

Ash Wednesday

Most Merciful God, we confess

that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed

Yesterday I met a woman with an serious problem. She sat through my presentation on cholesterol (colesterol es tres mal para tu corazon!) and patiently waited while we screened a roomful of people for hypertension, piecing together their symptoms and complaints with only a handful of common words. I'm not trying to wring sympathy from your heart, but you need to know what we were up against: she has a small daughter playing under the table, no money, can't speak English, can't read at all. She has a mass you can feel through her t-shirt; she is in so much pain she has not eaten since Sunday. Outside, snow covers the ground and she is wearing flip flops.

I want to know. What would you do?

We left.

by what we have done

and by what we have left undone.

Back in the classroom, Tim kicked off the discussion on structural discrimination in health care. A couple weeks ago, I led the seminar on disenfranchised populations & the gaps in health care access and quality. This is the part of the course where it's supposed to become clear why it was the right thing to leave that woman and her daughter there, the part where the shame flips off and the light bulbs flip on in our newly educated & enlightened minds. Believe me, I understand the need for sustainable programs and all the reasons we weren't allowed to drop the woman off at the hospital or give her cab fare from our own pockets. I believe in consequences and fear the law of unintended consequences. Dangerous precedents. Greedy & deceitful people. But we talk and talk and talk, myself right along with the best of them, and forget the Golden Rule. It's not partisan, political, theoretical, hypothetical, cultural, parochial. It's everyone. The failing is everywhere.

We have not loved you with our whole hearts.

We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

After class, I went for a run before going to the Ash Wednesday service. Since college, I've found myself anticipating Lent more than Advent. This season of house keeping - the setting of things to right - both stretches me beyond comfort and comforts me beyond reason. The chance to sacrifice small comforts in celebration of our great, incomprehensible reprieve and the anticipation of redemption to keep us afloat. So I walk into the hushed sanctuary, flushed from the fresh air & the endorphins, glowing with commitment, ready for holiness. The minister speaks and I am so convicted, so hopeful & thankful. Yes! I'm so terrible! Yes! I can love my neighbor as myself. Amen! My house is not 2 miles from the church and before I make it through my front door, I'm seething with murderous thoughts, wishing I could take a hammer to his head or tell her what I really think. And if my own private thoughts aren't bad enough, I'm needlessly rude to my dear friend Tim.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and forgive us;

T. S. Eliot wrote a poem called Ash Wednesday and in it is a line I go back to again and again when I don't know how else to pray. Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still. Only a handful of words and yet they are strong and broad enough to hold all my questions & inadequacies. I need to be taught to care for my neighbor better - how to love that woman, how to love Tim, how to love people who hurt me. How to love like Christ, because of Christ's love for me. I need to stop caring about the things that don't matter, the voices who really won't have a say in the final count. Thank God for these 40 days to learn to sit still, to turn, to listen, to change. Thank God that His grace is not limited by merit, time nor space.

that we may delight in your will,

and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your name.

Amen.

scientific love notes

I dug out my freshman chemistry

book this morning to look up the

answer to a question my pharm

acology text couldn't handle. It

was chock full of Valentines.

Non Polar Covalent Bonds? Hmm?

Most romantic force in the Universe?

Scientific love notes filling the margins

(my 19 year old hand writing, less angled)

and wreathed in pink hearts.

Give me your love and I

will give you a mole of stars.

Melodramatic, mooning, spacy.

I wore my heart on my sleeve

and tripped over my own feet

with all that gazing at those stars.

Tougher, now, I'm happy to say;

less likely to get lost in the sky

and better able -- or is it willing?

to focus on the actual meaning

of the words on the page.

Still. I'll take a telescope over

a diamond any day. I don't ask

for much. Just give me the rings

of Saturn and I'll promise to be yours

until nuclear fission does us part.

love poem

my love for my sister is fierce and irritable.

my love for my parents is the sympathetic nervous system.

my love for squirrel can't keep secrets.

my love for crazy a is an egg timer that always flips over as the last grains filter down.

my love for my grandmother wears gold shoes.

my love for my husband smells like limes and grapefruit.

my love for little rat keeps me awake at night and brings me tea in the morning.

my love for my brother is an inside joke, too smart for everyone else.

my love for charles rides the rails, surviving on biscuits and ham.

my love for my enemy picks fights just to make peace.

my love for my patients is also a paycheck.

my love for my neighbor hides under the bed.

my love for my bus driver is born of necessity.

my love for norman mourns the rain.

my love for myself is supposed to die.

recycled: dreaming of summer

Summers (June 2006)

6: The window frames the sliver of orange candy moon and insects flap their hard shelled bodies against the screen all night. We lay on top of the covers and wait for a breeze that never stirs. The adults play pinochle around the kitchen table and eat coconut cream pie. The underbellies of our pillows are cool and smooth when flipped. Finally we fall asleep.

10: I find an old Reader's Digest under the guestroom bed at Grahamcracker's house and cry my way through the story of a young girl who dies of leukemia. Cataloging the girl's symptoms -- the purple-blue bruises appearing for no reason, the aching joints -- I notice that my own elbows and knees feel as though someone is banging at them with a wooden mallet and convince myself that I'll be dead by August. Is that a bruise on my arm? The secret weight of my imminent death colors the summer a shade more poignant than usual. This might be the last piece of watermelon I eat. Soon I'll be too sick to go to the waterpark. When I'm gone they'll be sorry they sent me to bed. At the end of the summer I'm a good two inches taller and need new pants for the fall.

14: I give in and read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. For months now my dad has suggested it and I have ignored his suggestion in favor of bb gun wars or eating kakigori in the matchi with Philip. Finally, in a cabin on a mountain by the sea, far away from Tokyo, I pick up a ragged old copy and fall into immediate, desperate love with Jem, Atticus and Scout. A new thing starts to grow inside me as I read. Probably this thing would have emerged on its own one day; but lying there on the top bunk, it was shaped profoundly by Mrs. Dubose's camellias and the pale, wispy courage of Boo Radley. It is a baby ache at the sudden, small understanding of it all--the bigness and smallness of humans, and the way that goodness, courage and tragedy sometimes can't be separated into their own neat, little boxes.

18: Dot's older brother Leighton was a prisoner of war to the Japanese. After his ship was torpedoed in the South Pacific, he drifted in the warm briny waters but it was really my mother's prayers that kept him afloat, Dots says. She would iron and pray and sing hymns and that is what kept skin on his bones when there were more rocks than rice in his bowl. She digs out a picture of a thin, handsome man in a uniform who could be anyone's great uncle. You know, she says, I swore that if I wasn't married by 25, it would never happen. I met Vern the day after my 25th birthday. She still has some of the letters he wrote and a picture of the two of them kissing on a velvet sofa, the skirt of her polkadot dress spread around her. At the end of the summer she gives me this picture and I pack it in with all the other things to take to college.

20: The months stretch out ahead, hot, muggy and lonely. I take a job chasing tough kids around a sweaty gym. On trips to the monuments, my co-workers sneak off for cigarettes and the kids steal hot dogs from the street vendors. They boy who broke my heart emails out of the blue. The days drain by in an uneven rhythm. Somehow, I move forward.

24: Is it better to know or not to know--to labor away under your own silly predictions, pieced together from bits and observations, small flashes of insight that might really be the glare of a mirror? You could drown in these thoughts, even as you lay in the hot sun at the cool water's edge. Throw the weight of suspense off your back. Keep walking. Wait and see. It's going to be okay.

heart monitor

I have spent the past weeks reading about the human heart, cramming my brain with facts about this fist-shaped organ tilting slightly forward & left. I can tell you about the way coronary arteries fill in the space between beats, the danger of watery blood. Did you know that laid out end to end, the vasculature of the human body could spin a thin red line so fine & long you could wrap it twice around the Earth before tying it in a bow? Think of that gallon of milk you carried through the snow 2 miles home from the store this morning. Now say a prayer of gratitude for your uncomplaining heart, which will have pumped 2000 gallons of blood through your strong body by the time you lay your head down to rest. So, drink a glass of red wine. Laugh. And for heaven's sake, lay off the salt! Don't worry if the lights go out, for the heart makes its own electricity. And even lonely hearts have four chambers.

Tonight, I will lay in my bed and feel for new pulses in the dark. Behind the knee, the side of the nose, and if my head is positioned just so, I can actually hear the small scratch of my carotid artery against the cool crispness of the pillowcase. So much happens in a single beat, and yet I'll gather 82 per minute as I rest -- yet another way to measure out life in coffee spoons. When I close my eyes I'll see the mountains and valleys of EKG strips. The peaked T waves of hyperkalemia, the jagged teeth of atrial fibrillation -- or my favorite, the disobedient schoolboy Premature Ventricular Contraction, who jumps to the head of the line in his unruly excitement.

All this science & learning and my mind still can not fathom such a rational, dedicated little machine living in my chest. If the handsome cardiothoracic surgeon spread my ribs he would surely find a crude, red, little bucket coursing with longing, overflowing with love.

roommates

My friends moved back from California and invited me to live in their basement. Josh is thoughtful, quirky, enterprising, and effortlessly smart. Amy is sweet, tough, handy, insightful, capable, wise. Together, they are hospitable, fun, funny, concerned, solid -- all those qualities you'll never find in a craigslist roommate.

We are in flux right now, the three of us -- transitioning into new careers, relationships, phases of life. We ease the way by taking care of each other. Amy buys me a fancy cup with the letter K and nurses me through my cold. Josh takes out the trash & brews coffee in the morning. I dry the dishes and put the kettle on for tea.

The house is old, drafty, slanted, crooked, cold. Our home is warm, open, lovely, ours.

Peter

Little Rat turns twenty today. He will probably spend the day, as he spends most of them, behind the deli counter at Safeway. After he gets off work, he will drive his car home, hugging the center line the whole way, and watch cartoons for an hour before getting up to go feed the dogs, unload the dishwasher, and set up the coffee pot for tomorrow morning. Little Rat requested Red Robin for his birthday dinner; so rarely does he expresses a preference for anything that we will gladly drop our busyness to drive an hour for an evening at the mall with him.

When he came to us, Emil was as wild as any feral animal. He'd ball his fists up and shove them deep into his eye sockets, rocking back and forth and drawing so far into himself that I couldn't see how he'd ever find his way out. Thirteen years later, Little Rat won't even hear of letting me do the dishes after I've cooked dinner. It's okay Kathy. I can handle it. You just go relax.

Little Rat loves to call me Kathy and pat me on the back. Do not be fooled by his sweetness -- he is no saint or martyr. His ability to get under my skin rivals even that of my sister (who he calls Frosty the Snow Meg. HA!), who can still make me burst into tears at 28. When it comes to our parents, he gets away with things the rest of us would've walked the plank for saying. He delights in the same worn out jokes time and again simply because they make me crazy. When Little Rat says You can live and Kathy, you're such a Kathy it drives me up the wall. I tell him that I'll pull his hair right out of his head if he says it once more and he looks at me for a second. I'll take that as a remark, Kathy. And then pats me on the back and scampers away to clean the kitchen.

If I write about Little Rat more than anyone else, it is because he is his own fairy tale, a happy ending that has nothing to do with the girl finding her prince. Despite the hope that I profess, I mostly pitch my tent in the realist camp. Over the years, I've found it helpful to keep my expectations low in life, to see the redemption in the single, tiny, bud and be thankful. Virtue is its own reward; we adopted these boys because it was the right thing to do and that would be enough to get us through. But somehow, where a wild, stunted, broken little child came to us, a composed, engaging, gentle, kind person now occupies his seat at the table. My tall, skinny little brother is a blessing beyond anything I could've imagined for my family. The plot is so full of redemption and Little Rat is the most compelling character I know.

See: Litte Rat, Birth to find out how he got his name.

Proposal

I will write all Christmas letters, thank-you notes,

and pick out birthday presents for our parents,

if you iron your own shirts, my skirts

(or at least take them to the cleaners)

and unscrew the lids from jars I can't manage.

Feel free to make more money

and have a hobby suitably removed

from the day to day to day pattern of our life.

I, naturally, will bear the children

and pray they come by your good sense,

my ear for languages, honestly.

Like my mother, I will want to paint

often and buy shoes, a new dress for a party.

Unlike her, I am willing to drive in the

city, at night, and through the dust and nothing

of Texas (when we move to be near your

aging parents). My driving might

make you nervous but it's a standing offer.

I'm willing to cook, but if you'd rather, standing in

front of a sink filled with warm soapy water

suits me, too. Please remind me that clouds

are a shaky foundation, of the danger of

drowning in a pool of my own whimsy. Because

I love you I will remind you to be kind

even when you are tired, to suffer fools gladly.

answer & some sentences

I was born in this small, scrubby town in the part of Washington that is never green. The air is very dry, the river is very wide, the sky is very big, and everything else comes in shades of very brown. The county fair is still a big deal. There are no good restaurants or traffic jams.

I have not lived here for years - and most of my growing up, my formation - took place in other parts of the world and country. Even so, there is something about this place that is coming home.

To: everyone who has ever asked.

This is where I'm from.

&&&

When I was a small child I hated when the bottoms of my feet felt hot, dry, or dusty like the desert. I thought it meant I was sick and going to die, like maybe a rattle snake was about to strike. I still get this feeling when I read books or watch films about the Civil War. It is the reason I can't stand to look at pictures of President Lincoln.

&&&

My grandfather always had parts of the newspaper spread around his easy chair. I feel newsprint and think of his whiskers, his undershirts, and the way he would lick his thumb before flipping through the deck thwap lick thwap lick thwap while playing solitaire. I love Louis L'Amour in his honor.

&&&

My cousins, siblings and I can sum up our entire collective existence using lines from You've Got Mail, The Royal Tenenbaums, White Christmas, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

I think you have a gift for it. That's the perfect blend of poetry & meanness.

We are getting this emblazoned on our family shield; it is the matching tattoo on our hearts and tongues.

&&&

We put on lipstick and met at the back corner table. Over a bottle of wine and calamari we talked about our grown up problems, which are neither earth shattering nor insubstantial. The little things add up: bills, broken hearts, fights, malfunctioning body parts, big choices and little information. The usual. You have a stack, too, I'm sure, staring up at you from your own plate.

Ten years ago we would've killed for a night on the town, some autonomy. We were bursting out of our skin, so eager to grow up, to step into the glamour awaiting our certainty & confidence. We sat on our grandmother's bed, chafing under our parents' restrictions while they played cards in the living room. We yearned for last night.

And then someone hit fast forward and last night showed up at the door. We put on lipstick like movie stars and met at the back corner table. We ordered red wine and ate calamari, and my cousin told me about her grown up problems and I told her mine. It was perfect, exactly what we ordered. And I couldn't wait to go back to my grandmother's house, where she peeled me an apple and sent me to bed.

&&&

I've memorized the signs and symptoms: clubbed fingers, dyspnea on exertion, orthopnea, hypertension. I know what to look for and I don't want to see it. So I close my eyes and listen to her stories instead.

It is too late now on the East Coast, so I resist the urge to call my own mother. Tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next -- ad infinitum -- I'll tell her how much I love her.

&&&

Our fathers come from wild, raucous people on both sides, but our grandmother took them to church and out of the chaos and rebellion, God delivered her a circuit preacher and an itinerant teacher. A generation removed, we kids are respectable now, if not exactly settled. There's no use in denying our stock, though. We still move in bands and ride our figurative horses bareback. The dust doesn't settle beneath our boots.

&&&

Even though I would've been blind and had a smile full of crooked teeth, I'm the sort of girl who would've made it from St. Louis to the Willamette Valley with you. Sitting atop the buckboard seat or walking beside the wagon, I won't complain through the months of snow or the showers of arrows. This may be where I'm from, but I know how to be a family on the move; what it takes to make a home on whatever claim we stake.