i could be wrong

Nothing Changes/On New Year's Day

2012-01-01T21:55:00.002-05:00

My expectations for 2012 are pretty low. I'm open to surprises, though.

thirty

2011-12-18T13:21:00.005-05:00

I cried for the three days beforehand then looked around my life threw away the clutter made peace

once and for all with every moment each decision that led me to this place.

But walking away from you stepping out of the cold wordless morning into an anemic beam of winter light I see how this was really only child's play;

that the next thirty years at least and then probably the thirty after that will be the long hard work

of learning to live peaceably and wisely among other people's choices and the

nothing and everything

they've to do with me.

2011-12-06T22:13:00.003-05:00

Bows in arabesque.

Pristine naked loneliness

And branches like scythes.

Misgivings

2011-11-13T16:01:00.003-05:00

William Matthews

"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses

my love although she's like a great city

to me, or a park that finds new

ways to wear each flounce of light

and investiture of weather.

Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,

but I know what she fears: plans warp,

planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away

by floods. And worse than what we can't

control is what we could: those drab,

scuttled marriages we shed so

gratefully may augur we're on our own

for good reasons. "Hi, honey," chirps Dread

when I come through the door, "you're home."

Experience is a great teacher

of the value of experience,

its claustrophobic prudence,

its gloomy name-the-disasters-

in-advance charisma. Listen,

my wary one, it's far too late

to unlove each other. Instead let's cook

something elaborate and not

invite anyone to share it but eat it

all up very very slowly.

Borrowed Love Poems

2011-10-25T00:24:00.000-04:00

By John Yau

What can I do, I have dreamed of you so much
What can I do, lost as I am in the sky

What can I do, now that all
the doors and windows are open

I will whisper this in your ear
as if it were a rough draft

something I scribbled on a napkin
I have dreamed of you so much

there is no time left to write
no time left on the sundial

for my shadow to fall back to earth
lost as I am in the sky

What can I do, all the years that we talked
and I was afraid to want more

What can I do, now that these hours
belong to neither you nor me

Lost as I am in the sky
What can I do, now that I cannot find

the words I need
when your hair is mine

now that there is no time to sleep
now that your name is not enough

What can I do, if a red meteor wakes the earth
and the color of robbery is in the air

Now that I dream of you so much
my lips are like clouds

drifting above the shadow of one who is asleep
Now that the moon is enthralled with a wall

What can I do, if one of us is lying on the earth
and the other is lost in the sky

What can I do, lost as I am in the wind
and lightning that surrounds you

What can I do, now that my tears
are rising toward the sky

only to fall back
into the sea again

What can I do, now that this page is wet
now that this pen is empty

What can I do, now that the sky
has shut its iron door

and bolted clouds
to the back of the moon

now that the wind
has diverted the ocean's attention

now that a red meteor
has plunged into the lake

now that I am awake
now that you have closed the book

Now that the sky is green
and the air is red with rain

I never stood in
the shadow of pyramids

I never walked from village to village
in search of fragments

that had fallen to earth in another age
What can I do, now that we have collided

on a cloudless night
and sparks rise

from the bottom of a thousand lakes

To some, the winter sky is a blue peach
teeming with worms

and the clouds are growing thick
with sour milk

What can I do, now that the fat black sea
is seething

now that I have refused to return
my borrowed dust to the butterflies

their wings full of yellow flour

What can I do, I never believed happiness
could be premeditated

What can I do, having argued with the obedient world
that language will infiltrate its walls

What can I do, now that I have sent you
a necklace of dead dried bees

and now that I want to
be like the necklace

and turn flowers into red candles
pouring from the sun

What can I do, now that I have spent my life
studying the physics of good-bye

every velocity and particle in all the waves
undulating through the relapse of a moment's fission

now that I must surrender this violin
to the sea's foaming black tongue

now that January is almost here
and I have started celebrating a completely different life

10.

Now that the seven wonders of the night
have been stolen by history

Now that the sky is lost and the stars
have slipped into a book

Now that the moon is boiling
like the blood where it swims

Now that there are no blossoms left
to glue to the sky

What can I do, I who never invented
anything

and who dreamed of you so much
I was amazed to discover

the claw marks of those
who preceded us across this burning floor

prayer

2011-10-18T17:55:00.001-04:00

That I might never be pleased to see people get what they deserve.

Restoration

2011-10-10T21:33:00.003-04:00

From sorry I will wipe clean the smudges left

by careless girls, frail and fearful men,
all the friends and relatives who meant well
right up until they were out of earshot.
Once it sparkles I will fill this word with pure
water and offer you a drink of contentment.

I'd like to strip the lacquer off sex, love, marriage
remove some of the high-gloss, the glare slapped
up there by Hollywood and people who believe
a home can rise from a stack of plywood, playing cards.
It is dirty work, this scrubbing, but look how the strong
and knotty grain of these words can shine.

It might take a crowbar, but if the rotting weight
of bad choices is torn away, the spots
where fear and mold have made you and me
unsure of our worth, the wall of brick beneath,
exposed and lovely in its rest,
will give us a place to hang the truth
we brought in from the rain.

And so, like a Tiffany lamp, a coin from Spain,
the silver candlesticks left by my great aunt,
I will polish up the words now tarnished
and dull from years of mishandle and abuse:
beautiful promise please human help dream
Set around the room, we will look on these words
and-- knowing the price of labor--
see their marvelous worth.

Upon going through old papers, she realizes she peaked at 20

2011-10-03T20:41:00.006-04:00

Perhaps a paraphrase of St. Augustine may be useful in understanding Cummings' purposeful elusiveness. He asked, "What did God do before he made Heaven and Earth? He was preparing Hell for pryers into such mysteries." And though Cummings certainly calls for critical analysis in order to appreciate and fully understand the implications and scope of his work, a certain level of comfort with that which can not be articulated immediately is necessary. One must, like the sisters 'always' and 'sometimes,' be content to sit silently, carrying on with the moment's task, allowing the fullest meaning and impact of love and action to sink in. For as Cummings said in one of his six non-lectures at Harvard: "We can not always spend the day in explanation." Indeed.

- from 'The Happy Family: A critical look at e.e. cummings' ellipitcal narrative" by Kathryn L. Smith, 30 November, 2001.

***

Ben mutters something into the empty air. He's like Woody Allen, thinks Francesca, but without the sense of humor.

- from Happiness is a Mirage No. 43 by Kathryn L. Smith for ENG 381, 26 October, 2001.

Neither Here nor There: Under a tree, on the back of reptile

2011-09-29T15:16:00.005-04:00

I went for a walk today because I am trying to learn to sit still. I walked until the pit in my stomach worked its way up to my heart and then walked faster so my heart pumped the knot into my throat. I arrived at a small park and climbed on the back of the stone turtle just as the lump threatened to dissolve and leak out my eyes. Boo hoo, Kate. You're sitting on giant stone turtle, under a purple crepe myrtle.

And then: HA HA! KATE!

YOU'RE SITTING ON A GIANT STONE TURTLE/

UNDER A PURPLE CREPE MYRTLE!

And in that moment, the purple of the flowers the perfect shade of my shoes, I was reminded once over how much I love rhymes; how gently the rhythm of words can carry you forward and set you down gently in a new place, even while you are learning, especially while you are learning, to sit very still and rest in the shade of a tree.

Antietam & other battles

2011-09-17T22:58:00.004-04:00

The man on the radio starts in this morning, before there is light, listing the significances of the day.

And finally, it's the 149th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam today. Near Sharpsburg, MD, this was the first major battle to be fought on Northern soil.

Somewhere, in between bragging about seeing the Rolling Stones in '72 and rolling up his sleeves so we could all get a better look at his 17 inch pythons, Mr. T pressed into my head that this was, why yes indeed, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

I think about the soldiers, littering the fields, on my way to work. I picture their mangled limbs, the mud and blood. It's not that cold, but I am cold.

The emergency room is strangely still when I arrive. I make beds, fold clothes. I think about soldiers, ether, and muskets, while I work. Wool blankets and whiskey.

A man my ages comes in because he's thrown up a couple times, carrying on as though he might die. When we put an IV in, he cries and threatens to faint.

I say: I know. I know. It's almost over. You're going to be okay.

What I want to say: You're lucky no one has come after you with a bayonet.

A girl my age comes in because her stomach hurts. After the doctor leaves the rooms she tells me that she can't handle being pregnant now, that both she and her husband are starting new jobs.

I say: I know. I know. It's a lot to take in. But you're going to be okay.

What I want to say: You're lucky he's not dead in a field and that you won't hemorrhage to death on a bed of dirty rags when the baby comes.

My friend brings me a cup of tea and says Are you okay? You seem sad today.

I say: I know. I know. I'm a little tired but I'm going to be okay.

What I want to say: What's wrong with the world today? I really don't think I'm fit for modern life.

But I know that what's wrong with people today is the same thing that was wrong with people then, and in the beginning.

And trying to live outside the time you're in is as bad as not knowing what to do with the time you're given.

SOME THINGS CAN NOT BE FIXED

2011-09-12T22:43:00.003-04:00

I said it out loud today and then immediately wanted to un-say it.

This is a truth about being human, but not an absolution.

Neither Here nor There: somewhere between pride & despair

2011-09-11T23:29:00.003-04:00

It has been a terrible week and I'm trying to find my way between pride & despair.

Healing

Wendell Berry

I
The grace that is the health of creatures can only be held in common.

In healing the scattered members come together.

In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

II
The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less.

A creature is not a creator, and cannot be. There is only one Creation, and we are its members.

To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one’s part in it anew.

The most creative works are all strategies of this health.

Works of pride, by self-called creators, with their premium on originality, reduce the Creation to novelty - the faint surprises of minds incapable of wonder.

Pursuing originality, the would be creator works alone. In loneliness one assumes a responsibility for oneself that one cannot fulfill.

Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.

III
There is the bad work of pride. There is also the bad work of despair - done poorly out of the failure of hope or vision.

Despair is the too-little of responsibility, as pride is the too-much.

The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.

For despair there is no forgiveness, and for pride none. Who in loneliness can forgive?

IV
Good work finds the way between pride and despair.

It graces with health. It heals with grace.

It preserves the given so that it remains a gift.

By it, we lose loneliness:

we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us;

we enter the little circle of each other’s arms,

and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance,

and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.

V
And by it we enter solitude, in which we also lose loneliness.

Only discord can come of the attempt to share solitude.

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation.

One’s inner voice becomes audible. One feels the attractions of one’s most intimate sources.

In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.

One returns from solitude laden with the gifts of circumstance.

VI
And there is no escaping that return.

From the order of nature we return to the order - and the disorder - of humanity.

From the larger circle we must go back to the smaller, the smaller within the larger and dependent on it.

One enters the larger circle by willingness to be a creature, the smaller by choosing to be a human.

And having returned from the woods, we remember with regret its restfulness. For all creatures there are in place, hence at rest.

In their most strenuous striving, sleeping and waking, dead and living, they are at rest.

In the circle of the human, we are weary with striving, and are without rest.

VII

Order is the only possibility of rest.

The made order must seek the given order, and find its place in it.

The field must remember the forest, the town must remember the field, so that the wheel of life will turn, and the dying be met by the newborn.

The scattered members must be brought together.

Desire will always outreach the possible. But to fulfill the possible is to enlarge it.

The possible, fulfilled, is timely in the world, eternal in the mind.

Seeing the work that is to be done, who can help wanting to be the one to do it?

But one is afraid that there will be no rest until the work is finished and the house is in order, the farm is in order, the town is in order, and all loved ones are well.

But it is pride that lies awake in the night with its desire and its grief.

To work at this work alone is to fail. There is no help for it. Loneliness is its failure.

It is despair that sees the work failing in one’s own failure.

The despair is the awkwardest pride of all.

VIII
There is finally the pride of thinking oneself without teachers.

The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.

In ignorance is hope. If we had known the difficulty, we would not have learned even so little.

Rely on ignorance. It is ignorance the teachers will come to.

They are waiting, as they always have, beyond the edge of the light.

IX
The teachings of unsuspected teachers belong to the task, and are its hope.

The love and the work of friends and lovers belong to the task, and are its health.

Rest and rejoicing belong to the task, and are its grace.

Let tomorrow come tomorrow. Not by your will is the house carried through the night.

Order is only the possibility of rest.

coffee shop romance

2011-09-08T19:38:00.006-04:00

I gave in and said yes, I'd have coffee with him, because the last time he asked, the zit on my chin was at its reddest, orneriest peak and I'd already been vomited on twice that day. If he could see past that, well, maybe it was worth 45 minutes of further exploration. I pull the curtain behind me, pause, considering coffee. We've spent the past hour trying to irrigate the catheter of a demented old man with prostate cancer. He peels the gloves off his hands and throws them in the red bin by the sink without ever moving his eyes from my face. I feel the zit pulsing, projecting like a laser onto his forehead.

"C'mon. After what we've just gone through together, you're really going to say no? No matter what happens between us, there's no way that it will be more awkward than that back there."

How inaccurately he must see me - a girl who collects awkward moments like notches on bedpost.

His pager goes off. "Tomorrow? I already heard you say you're off. 4:00?"

It's impossible to find what you're looking for, or what you think you're looking for, sitting across a small unstable table, square or round, in a coffee shop. What kind of music do you like? Have you read anything by _________? People think this is the data you need to find and coffee shops play right into this type of shoddy research. How does he carry a shovel, what he does he do with the sweat on his brow? The tenderness with which he kisses his mother. This is the information I'm looking to gather. A first date in the middle of a field. Miles of fences to mend. Ask me once and I'll say yes in heartbeat.

When I called my mother earlier in the week, finally admitting that the last few months of dates with the architect had imploded into nothing, infertile ash, she went silent for a minute.

"What is it?"

"It's just...maybe you would have more success with men if you were less....," she can't finish the sentence. My mother teaches high school geometry. She is impeccably clean.

"Incongruent?"

"Well, that's one way of saying it, yes. "

"Ok. 4:00 tomorrow. I've got to go." I rush off into the room across the hall and start fiddling with the monitor even though it's not beeping and the patient isn't mine.

I get to the coffee shop early, trying to beat the rain and ending up my signature blend of windblown and sweaty. My bike falls over when I try to lock it while simultaneously looking over my shoulder to make sure he's not already sitting, expectantly, at a sidewalk table. He's not. There's a table in the back corner and I debate whether I should sit with my back to the wall or the door. I go with back to the wall and sit down, willing composure to rise up and beat back the incongruity I feel. All around me, people are typing intently into sleek machines, underlining passages, nodding in rapt agreement. It is too easy to be erudite and glib here. There is no room for awkwardness which is where I always find what I need to know.

I'm unabashedly watching the door when a girl about my age comes in, struggling to keep a 24 pack of toilet paper under the crook of her arm. She walks to the counter, dropping the toilet paper twice, and orders a large peppermint tea. She counts out the exact change, blocks the line of customers behind her while she waits, and yells "oh shit" when the light green water splashes over the lip of the cup onto her fingers. With great commotion, she gets herself, the 24 rolls of toilet paper, and a mug, half-full, of peppermint tea to the table next to me and sits down. I inspect her. Everything is a little off, a little over-ripe. Squidgy is the word we coined for girls like this in college.

A few minutes later a man walks in, and stalks through the minefield of tables. We never came up with the male equivalent for squidgy, but here he is. Without saying anything at all, he leans down and kisses the girl. He kisses her deeply. He kisses her faceoff. Then he stands up, stretches, reaching his arms high over his head, and yawns. When he's done stretching and yawning, he turns to the 24 pack of toilet paper on the chair next to the girl he's just kissed. He tears open the thick plastic, takes out a roll, and unwinds a long piece of toilet paper and blows his nose so thoroughly and loudly that everyone (unprotected by earbuds) turns to look. I, myself, stare, enraptured by the whole scene.

"Hey. Sorry I'm late." He's arrived and I hardly recognize him without his white coat and pager. The zit on my chin is gone and I'm feeling strangely hopeful about what can happen in this coffee shop, this afternoon.

He sits down in the chair that places his back to the door and cocks his head toward the couple.

"Wow. Did you see that. Kind of awkward. Hahahaha...," he laughs weakly and it trails off into my silence. Over his shoulder, I see the barista with the sparrow tattoo push play on the stereo and a song I love floods the air. I smile, betraying nothing, waiting for it to harden. He doesn't disappoint.

"Ahh! Great song!" He can not help himself as the seconds gather. "So...," he takes a sip, always looking at my face. "What kind of music do you like?"

wish

2011-09-07T20:03:00.000-04:00

I want a good old typewriter bad.

midnight song

2011-09-07T00:20:00.004-04:00

The cricket in the corner is quiet and steady.

The rain lashes down the drainpipe

and in the rich dark of my room,

I hear the soft tic tic tic

of my own carotid pulse;

hot blood and the cool of the pillow.

My heart keeping time for this midnight song.

Good thing she gave up looking for clues at stoplights a long time ago.

2011-09-06T17:49:00.007-04:00

[KHAOBOI]

Honda Element, Electric Blue, MO

[MRPAIN]

Ford Mustang, Yellow, VA

[LOVEHME]

Toyota Camry, White, MD

[BTRCUP]

Volkswagen Bug, Red, DC

[SLEEPY]

Volkswagen Jetta, Forrest Green, AL

[PEEPTOM]

Audi A4, Black, VA

Neither Here nor There: Part One

2011-08-28T21:25:00.013-04:00

Neither Here nor There

or:

where have you been all my life?

"And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce."

- Soren Kierkegaard.

&&&

The Left Handed Captain, miraculously, comes to town on an Easter Sunday overwhelmed by dying bodies & disordered lives. He brings 18 perfect brown eggs & two bottles of champagne and, while I change out of my scrubs and into a pretty dress, whips up a midnight brunch so sublime, so glorious, I almost cry from disbelief. On the front porch we eat by candlelight, talking about this and that - Flannery O'Connor, giving up the search, lakes in Africa, the queer ability of low-fi audio recordings to pluck at our heart strings like the Holy Spirit. I tell him about my day and he says You are a good woman, Kate. He is handsome & charming, his hollandaise sauce is perfect salt & light. But my faith is so anemic, I tell him. When we talk of the people we've hurt and loved, he says Most days I wonder if I haven't made a huge mistake. We shiver as Easter Sunday fades into the start of another long week, already stacked against us. So incarnate are we -- unable to help ourselves to anything else besides more food - and yet...

(We live in this and yet... This is where we find our home)

...and yet, the early spring dew lands on our heads like a benediction; searching, feasting, together, our communion is blessed.

&&&

I lay awake these nights, deep in the dark, thinking of a man who told me once he loved me, and then told me again, and then again and then, finally, after all was said and done, once more again. In the middle of the night I would wake him, wake him just so he would say Oh Love, it's okay. Go to sleep, Kate, go to sleep. And I would. And just like that, I would.

I lay awake these nights, deep in my own mind, the knowing coursing thru my heart like blood, that love is not enough. Oh Love, it's okay. Oh Love! It's not enough! But love and sleep and passage beyond the bounds of one's own mind - is that enough? A lifetime of sleep, of love. Is that enough? Is okay enough?

&&&

I stop at the corner of 7th Street and Massachusetts Avenue and wait for the light to change. In the basket of my bike I have a bottle of Burgundy, purple grapes, dark chocolate gelato. It is Bastille Day and what I really want to bring with me (Regardez ce que j'ai apporté pour vous, mon amour!) is a gypsy man with an accordion and a wrought iron window basket exploding with red geraniums. But I am 29 now, slightly more practical, slightly less stupid, about these things (Peut-être que ce n'est pas vrai, ma chérie...).

A girl rides up next to me and startles my reverie. She is a little flushed, charmingly disheveled, with short dark hair, pink shoes, a green bike. Am I anywhere near Peregrine coffee shop? she asks and, then, before I can answer, Do I look ok? I'm going to meet a boy! I tell her, truly, that she looks lovely, that she is very close, only a few blocks away. Before she can answer I tell her that I, too, am going to meet someone. Well, you look very pretty, too! Good luck! she says and then pedals off to the place where we left off, il et moi, once upon a time. The light changes and I continue on my way, toward the guillotine, the Hall of Mirrors, an ancient stone wall, a bottle of Burgundy -- qui peut savoir, mon amour?

Zombie Insomniac

2011-08-24T00:47:00.002-04:00

A summer of night shifts has left me strung out & wired, exhausted, lonely, slightly paranoid & delusional, with vague pains around my heart. Or: exactly the kind of person who goes to the hospital in the middle of the night.

blueberries

2011-02-02T05:22:00.004-05:00

There is something particularly demoralizing about heading into work on a Friday evening, when the rest of the city is checking its lipstick and looking over the happy hour menu, laughing blithely over their beers.

I don't really miss that life most days, but I missed the carefree buoyancy of it all that night; wanted desperately to march right in and sit down at the first table of laughing people, to throw my head back with them and laugh like a drain, the most obnoxious girl in the bar. Instead I splashed cold water on my face, found clean scrubs, tempered my espresso with milk. I drove to the grocery store and wandered the bright, clean aisles, looking for something to ease the way through the long, dark hours. Blueberries were on sale so I grabbed a quart and a pack of chewing gum - bright, sweet antidotes for the handful of bitter pills ahead.

It is a long, shivery walk from the parking lot to the Emergency Room and I fell in step with the silent, single file line of nurses, travel mugs in hands. This winter seems colder than last - or maybe I've made an unknowing bargain in my quest for survival: the thinning of my physical skin as my emotional skin has thickened to a rough, tough hide. As the wordless line snaked deeper into the bowels of the hospital, I thought of all the similarities between my job and a miner. The changing of shifts, time clocks, union dues. We may not have the physical heft of bedrock, boulder, and crag upon us but, believe me, the weight of humanity is a physical pressure only waiting for the invention of an instrument sturdy, subtle, sophisticated enough to measure it.

I will spare you all the details between when I clocked in 7:00 pm and sometime around 2:00 am when I found myself squatting on the ground, reaching under the sterile drape to hold my patient's head steady, while the short, no-nonsense woman from the neuro team drilled through his skull with a hand drill. Right before we'd started, the man's girlfriend had rushed into the bay and thrown her weeping self across his chest. Please baby! Can you hear me! You've got to fight, baby! FIGHT for ME! I bit my tongue to keep from telling her that of course he couldn't hear her, my whole job was to make sure that the propofol was dripping steadily enough into his veins to keep him from hearing her, from fighting the ventilator, from doing anything but lying there, motionless. I regretted these thoughts as soon as I thought them. What do I know anyway about what he could or couldn't hear? There wasn't time to dwell on it, though; the bossy woman was waving the drill around and the cycling blood pressure was going up instead of down. It's now or never, she said. So I said, ok, I'm ready. This is your life now, I thought as I squatted there, my whole body aching with the strain of holding that single head still. But as I watched the blood and spinal fluid pour from above like a waterfall, congealing in a rubbery pool by my foot, I saw very clearly that it was also that man's life now, too.

By 3:30 am I'd transferred my patient to the ICU, giving his new nurse the handful of information that I had. I pushed the empty ER stretched through the quiet halls and parked it in the long line of beds waiting to be cleaned and made for tomorrow's patients. I went into the locker room and splashed water on my face, washed my hands until they were red and raw, grabbed my bag, and went and stood in ambulance bay for a few minutes. The air was cold and clear. I took a few deep breaths. Then I began popping blueberries into my mouth as fast as I could, marveling at the way their thin, taut skin holds everything inside.

blood & marriage

2010-10-14T21:42:00.002-04:00

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

2010-09-14T08:18:00.007-04:00

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

2010-09-07T23:28:00.005-04:00

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.

2010-08-29T23:47:00.013-04:00

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

2010-08-19T22:21:00.003-04:00

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

2010-07-26T21:36:00.003-04:00

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

2010-07-06T14:22:00.002-04:00

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

2010-06-21T21:14:00.007-04:00

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

2010-06-15T20:57:00.002-04:00

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

2010-06-09T22:41:00.003-04:00

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

2010-06-01T20:10:00.007-04:00

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

2010-05-11T22:21:00.007-04:00

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

2010-05-05T17:14:00.004-04:00

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.

reprint

2010-04-16T10:50:00.001-04:00

smart girl

I fell asleep reading under a tree on Saturday and when I woke up, the grass had left a mess of lines on the side of my face. The book was good - one I'd read a long time ago and then forgotten about until I found it for a $1 at the used book store - but it wasn't holding my interest. The grass was cool and newly cut and the sky was that shade of boundless blue that makes me feel a little reckless and a little intimidated.

The night before, in an uncharacteristic fit of optimism, I'd gone on a second date with man and was trying to sort the evening out in my head. I'd ignored the fact that on the first date he wore a LiveStrong bracelet and admitted (bragged?) that he hasn't read a novel since sophomore year of highschool. He had a good vocabulary, though, and claimed he boarded two appaloosas about an hour outside the city. I've never been a girl who swoons over horses, but something about the way he said it made me think of Shell Tucker on the high chapparal and my imagination took off. It was neither here nor there though, because after dinner and two glasses of wine at some downtown bar he leaned across the table, ran his thumb across the back of my hand, and said "I'm not gonna lie. I haven't followed half of what you said tonight. I don't usually date smart girls." At home, unkissed, we'd laughed about the whole sorry episode and made fun of things he couldn't help (his horrible last name; the gorilla hair on his arms) but laying in the grass the next morning, it still smarted a bit. I closed my eyes and tried to let the words float away; imagined them disintegrating as they passed through the exosphere into the vaccuum of space.

A spider was inching its way toward my shoulder when I woke up, and like I said, the entire left side of my face was imprinted with blades of grass. The park was filling up with little kids, their birthday parties, and church groups setting out picnic food so it seemed like time to move on. I realized, happily, that no one knew where I was and that, happier still, for the first time in weeks no one was expecting me to be anywhere or do anything all day. I decided to wander down to the museum. In the early spring my boyfriend from college called, leaving one of his signature messages: Hey. It's been awhile. Read in your local rag that Tillmans is throwing some pictures up on a wall near you. Thought you might want to check it out since you were so in to that show in Montreal. Wait...maybe it wasn't Tillmans I'm thinking of. Did we even go to Montreal? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Hope your big important job is all that you want it to be. See ya.

It had been me, with a Tillmans in Montreal and the message rankled, even this far out. Even though I have it on good authority that he hasn't shaved in 2 years, looks like a werewolf and that his new girlfriend smokes a lot of pot and never laughs. I decided that Saturday was the day. Smart girls go to museums.

I counted people and things as I walked along the street. 8 dogs, 4 protestors, 1 dad holding the hands of 2 girls with Downs Syndrome. When I ran out of sidewalk, I stood on the corner and waited for the light to change, even though there was no traffic, simply because I had the time. The man standing next to me was also waiting, but he was reading a book, and it struck me as charming and odd, so I must've stared. Next thing I know, he looked up at me and blinked and then said, "What happened to your face?"
"Pardon me?"
"Your face has lines all over it? What happened?"
"Oh. I fell asleep under a tree." I realize how dumb that sounds as I say it.
"That sounds like a good way to spend a morning."
I couldn't tell if he's making fun of me.
"What are you reading?"
"Anna Karenina. It's pretty good. Have you ever read it?"
"Yes. I liked it a lot. Seems like you're having trouble putting it down."
He smiled then and it was a wide, warm smile.
"I'm pretty hooked. Where are you going?"

I paused and he indicated that we should cross the street. He was a couple steps ahead of me and I tried to scan for the tell-tale signs of sociopath. He was wearing pants so I couldn't see if there were any swastika tattoos on his calves. His hands were empty other than the book (a battered up copy -- not the edition from Oprah's book club). A million people surrounded us in every direction and I figured I could probably outrun him so I told the truth.
"The Hirshhorn."
"Me, too." He smiled a little bit.
"No. Not possible."
"Yes, actually. I am."

And he was. We did. We walked there together, walked up the steps and through entrance and all around the building. He turned out to be normal. And smart. And kind. And pretty funny in all the right ways. I didn't fall half-in-love with him, like I'm prone to do in the produce aisle and airports, but I didn't find some reason to excuse myself and scamper off, either. I think the best way to put it is to say that we spoke the same language. I understood what he said, considered it, allowed myself to be impacted by the words coming out of his mouth and the thoughts behind them in a way I usually don't. It wasn't just smiling and nodding.

The museum was ridiculously cold, as though someone'd cranked the air up in anticipation of throngs of sweaty bodies who never showed. After about an hour my teeth were practically chattering out of my head. He, of course, noticed. So we went outside and sat on the steps, watching the minivans of mid-westerns circle the mall, searching for place to park. He told me about his Masters program for a little while (linguistics) and growing up in Brooklyn and I told him about my lately burgeoning crush on Jonathan Letham (he'd read Motherless Brooklyn and loved it) and how I have a hard time talking about things I love. He said he understood and I believed him.

There was no excuse for lying to him and I don't know why I did. I'm a big girl. I know the difference between not volunteering all the information and actively lying to someone; there were ways enough to say No truthfully without saying other, untrue things along with it. Maybe a more pressing question, now that I'm thinking about it is, why did I say No in the first place, and with the added weight and conviction of a committed (if fictitious) relationship? The only defense I can offer is that looking at him, listening to him talk, I saw something worth hanging on to. And then, a split second later, felt the pang of its loss --winced at the thought of this thing growing and growing until it imploded under the weight of its own worth. Messy. Painful.

I guess in the end, I'll I can say is that it seemed safer to keep walking the streets alone. That's the smart thing to do, right? Right?

The Little Things

2010-04-09T11:03:00.002-04:00

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

2010-04-06T23:18:00.003-04:00

I had a patient this week, a 12 year old boy, whose legal guardian is his great aunt.

The great aunt was polite, neatly dressed, and had no teeth.

The boy had cute freckles across his nose and the beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip.

Growing up, I had two great aunts with whom I had any sort of real relationship. Aunt Hazel, who is a dear sweet woman, and Aunt Jessie, who wanted very much to be a good Christian but whose disappointment with life made her a bit scary and brittle. Even now, Aunt Hazel drives a mini-van stocked with snacks. Aunt Jessie died without ever learning how to drive.

I've been thinking about what it means to be a 12 years old, with nowhere to go but your Great Aunt's. Either this boy has no other family members or, perhaps worse, they are all unfit or unwilling to care for him. Time and a sense of self-preservation keep me from wandering too far down these thought paths, too far into my patients. I don't know. I can't control or change it. I shouldn't assume. Being old and having no teeth does not automatically preclude one from being an able and loving caretaker. Right?

Easter Vigil

2010-04-03T17:19:00.002-04:00

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.

morning picture

2010-04-01T10:36:00.005-04:00

Squirrel arrived last night, hours later than expected, after a day of sitting on a train that could not decide if it should go forward or backward or just stay stuck in its tracks. When she's not traveling by train or by foot, she generally just flies by the seat of her pants - leaving a trail of flour, dirty clothes, old men in her wake.

We have been friends so long that sometimes I forget how different we are. Her ISTP to my ENFJ, her steel trap heart to my open book. Like an old married couple, we've rubbed off on each other over the years, but sometimes I still wonder how it works so well. Once upon a time we won the egg toss contest at the staff appreciation carnival. Standing in a big conference room with expensive art on the walls, we managed to keep throwing those eggs back & forth while the crowd roared. We both know how to juggle - to keep delicate things in the air - amidst the chaos we create for ourselves - and the chaos that comes with taking seriously the roles of daughter, sister, friend, employee, neighbor, human. This is a powerful bond. And rare.

The dining room window is open this morning to the sunlight & birdsong. The table is covered with all the trappings of two girls at work: notebooks, coffee, computers, cell phones, schedules, handouts, chap stick, lists of things to do. Squirrel is on the phone with Brazil again, trying to make herself understood, trying to nail down details for her upcoming business trip. In the corner, her suitcase stands, filled with - what is surely an odd assortment of short skirts and running shoes - enough to see her through the next three weeks on the road. She is stressed and I am anxious and between us, we are juggling enough balls to knock a clown flat on its back. We really should stay here, with our noses to the grindstone, chipping away, I know. But in a minute I will suggest we go for a walk and she will agree without much cajoling. And we will step out into the world together and take on whatever comes our way.

wabi sabi

2010-03-31T18:41:00.001-04:00

The sky is so blue it hurts.

strangers in a strange land

2010-03-29T23:29:00.001-04:00

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

break-up, compliments of the letter H

2010-03-29T10:24:00.001-04:00

Hold it...enough is enough, Harry! You had my heart, you huckster, and you fed it to the hamster and hid the hull under the Hamilton's house. Maybe I was hypnotized by your heavenly hips and healthy hamstrings, but both hell and high tide have hit and I'm not hearing harmony in your hymns from here on out.

I didn't care that you are hirsute and a hick. Or that your hugs were like hand grenades. You helped me hammer homers and healed my hiccups with hyssop. When you held me it was hair-raising and sent my heartbeat helter-skelter. But you're a hustler homie and I'm not haughty enough to hack it with you. Give me humdrum over hurt any day.

Have a heart. Henceforth, don't hanker for my hemline or help homeless hares because you know how that humanizes you and hinders my hiatus. You have the humor of a hippo in heat and you hiss like a hawk. Heaven help me, I honored your histrionics and hitched your horses at the homestead. We read homer and ate hummus. We had haggis at the Hilton in Hanshou. Those hallucinatory, halcyon hours. Hindsight is harmful. Your hanky-panky was hideous.

Don't try to hash this out over hamburgers. It's hopeless. My new honey Hal is hysterical and only a little husky. Homely is hip here so I'm handing in my hardhat and having a heyday with my hottie in his Honda. We play hopscotch and drink Heineken in honkytonks. How do you like that heuristic, handsome?

Hang in there, Harry. Happiness is not hidden...just hard to handle for a hit-man like you.

How I Make it Through the Night

2010-03-27T07:34:00.006-04:00

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.

2010-03-25T19:38:00.005-04:00

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.

2010-03-24T18:34:00.001-04:00

Things that confound me.

For the Man in Park Today

2010-03-23T22:42:00.003-04:00

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.

Who's to Say?

2010-03-21T20:01:00.003-04:00

OR: The game I play when I can't see how we will ever make it out of here alive!

If my father hadn't been dating my mother's roommate, he might not have met my mom and decided that he liked her pierced ears and her brains. And he might not have taken her on that first date to watch Pete's Dragon and get ice cream cones at Dairy Queen.

If my mother wasn't deathly allergic to fish, my parents might have stayed in Alaska and worked at the fishing camps instead of becoming teachers.

If my sister Allison hadn't died, my parents might not have had more kids. There wouldn't be a brilliant, rangy brother or a strong, bright sister.

If we hadn't moved to Japan, we wouldn't know the Chapmans, which means we wouldn't have spent even the hardest times over the past decades laughing and exploring. Little Rat wouldn't be mine, which is too painful a thought to bear. We wouldn't even know that Andy existed, or how badly he needs prayer.

If I hadn't been assigned to the only all girls dorm on campus my freshman year, I wouldn't have met Rebekka all over again, and our long-lost friendship wouldn't have turned into one of the most meaningful and significant relationships of my life.

If Squirrel hasn't been assigned to the only all girls dorm on campus freshman year, we might not have started talking while brushing our teeth late at night and she might not have asked me to work on the newspaper with her.

If I hadn't joined the newspaper staff, I would never have met him. But if I hadn't been hanging out with him still, 4 years later, I would not have gone to that party at the house where a short, spitfire from Georgia invited me in to her life.

If I hadn't switched my major from chemistry to political science, I would never have sat next to Josh in Constitutional Law, never met Amy, never experienced great comfort in coming home & drinking tea.

If I don't start studying right this minute, I will fail my exam tomorrow, fail out of nursing school, disappoint my parents and friends, and my entire life will come crashing around my feet.

her name means pastoral settings & simple pleasures

2010-03-18T22:11:00.006-04:00

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

2010-03-17T14:30:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-10T13:19:00.004-05:00

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.

3/3 through the years

2010-03-03T20:25:00.005-05:00

3 March, 2005

Subject: Someday We’ll Know Why Sampson Loved Delilah.

Oh _____!

I must confess: I bought a car over the weekend...a Volvo...a Swedish car. Please forgive me. I guess my time with the Swedes in Manchester had a deeper impact on me than I might have guessed. Norwegians are still my favorite, though, rest assured.

But yes. I signed papers and took out a loan and now have a car payment. It's so frightening. But good in a way. I kept thinking: I'm 23. I'm not married. I don't have boyfriend. I don't go out. I have a job and I don't pay rent. Why not? So I did.

Have you made any decisions in your life yet? Why don't you apply for law school down here somewhere?

Oh and another question: How on earth does one go about making friends post-college? It seems hopeless actually.

Alright. This is depressing me.

I hope you're having a good day.

Love,

kathryn

3 March, 2006
Subject: Here are some things you could say....
Actually, ______, I have no idea what you should say to him. I really don't. And I think that we need to realize and remember that what you say is not going to determine the outcome of this situation...
So, I guess with that in mind maybe you should just keep it short, sweet, and at arms length.
I don't know. I just don't want you to feel like a deflated balloon. And that's always the danger of these things.
A hope deferred makes the heart sick. Please Lord, don't let us get heart sick.
Here's a good motto: Keep it short so that you don't long for him.
(I should really be a copy writer in advertising...)
I really miss San Diego right now. Why did I move back here again? Third period is going to kill me today, if I don't kill them first.
It's a mad, mad world isn't it?
Talk tonight?
kate

3 March, 2007

Subject: Tall, dark, & erudite

Dearest _____,

Thought of you today when I saw a man on the bus reading Marx & wearing a fedora. Right up your alley. I almost asked him for his number for you, but then remembered that we've give up torturing ourselves & others for lent.

Miss you muchly, as I always do when the rain starts smelling like spring. Will call soon. Burnt my hand to the 2nd degree last week and have been completely out of it. Do we ever grow out of being sprawling, walking messes?

Love love love kate

3 March, 2008

Subject:

Dear ________,

I had weird disjointed dreams last night - at one point the police where knocking at the door of my dream, demanding I let them in so they could arrest you for giving drugs to a small boy. Then in the next moment I found out that I had cancer and the doctor told me the exact moment I was going to die.

It's funny - when I was younger my mom would always talk about being tired, how she didn't sleep at night and I remember thinking and even saying to her "Mom. It's not that hard. If you're so tired then why don't you sleep?" and only now do I understand what she was talking about. This back-burner anxiety keeps to a low boil during the day, but it's as though at night it wells up and boils over and my mind races and I can't sleep - or I have really strange dreams. I don't want to be a kid again, but I'd like to be able to sleep like one. I don't even really have terribly serious things weighing on my mind!

I didn't get to go running at lunch today. On the way out the door _____ grabbed me and asked me to design an invitation to a dinner to kick off his son's bar mitzvah weekend and then ____ asked me to track down "Paul Whatshisname in London" -- which is one of those annoying yet oddly satisfying wild goose chases he sends me on from time to time. I always wanted to be a spy.

It's almost time to go. I'm meeting _____ at Union Station tonight; he is 15, a former student of mine, and one of those smart, cool kids who is keenly aware of the world beyond and, thusly, feels more trapped by high school than most. He's coming into the city to go to the Shakespeare theater with his English class and they have 2 hours to kill in Union Station before the show. So I'll buy him dinner and listen to his woes and try to be one of those cool adults I always admired when I was 15. When did I stop being 15?

yours,

3 March, 2009

Subject: So....??

Any follow up from the guy at the wedding?

School is okay on the balance, both overwhelming & exhilarating. But there are so many ways the program is mismanaged and already there are things that just rub me wrong about how nurses do things. I start maternal/child at the end of May and I can't wait. I ready for some soft skin and joy. I had a patient last week who said "i'm only in pain when you're in my face." Lovely.

My thyroid medication dosage just got quadrupled. Still only in micrograms as the unit, but I'm hoping it makes a difference. I'm tired of feeling like a slug.

As for camping. I am essentially free from May 15 through 22nd and then again Memorial Day weekend. And I will go wherever.

I hope you're well. The world is blooming and I am sneezing but it is well with my soul.

looking forward to seeing you!

love from me to you.

3 March, 2010

Subject: Jabs, Uppercuts.

Hi ________.

Today I gave a bunch of shots, mostly in right arms,& then came home and made spaghetti sauce from scratch. I would've set a place for you at the table but I didn't think you could get here in time.

I'm sure you heard that Charlie Rangel stepped down today. When this sort of thing happens on the Hill I have momentary flashes of longing to be back at the firm in the middle of the action, the intelligent, informed buzz. But then I think of all the long, tangled discussions I've sat through about what policy should be and how it should be implemented and I'm thankful to be able to focus on jabbing people in the arm. A little painful, a lot practical. The antidote to wonky paralyzation.

I usually love March so much, but I'm having trouble getting into the groove this year. There is so much anticipation - of spring, of redemption, of birth - but so far it feels more like wandering in the desert. I tell myself that the end is in sight, but that sort of thinking is showing itself to be a false consolation. Won't there always be something unpleasant to get through, days to count down, stretches of life to just grit your teeth and grin through? I don't want to wish my life or anyone else's away, but June can't announce its arrival a day too soon for my liking.

How are you doing? I'm thinking of you, but what else is new?

love: kls

study/studying

2010-02-26T11:39:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-24T22:03:00.004-05:00

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

2010-02-21T22:33:00.004-05:00

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

2010-02-20T21:04:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-18T16:31:00.007-05:00

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

2010-02-14T22:44:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-10T17:56:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-10T17:49:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-07T23:13:00.003-05:00

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.

immigration & marriage

2010-02-04T20:51:00.002-05:00

Tonight my dad calls and, in a weak moment after a bad day, I confess that I'm growing more and more politically conservative while simultaneously becoming more radical in my belief that all people should have access to food, health care, and the rights of citizenship. We're neck-deep in ineffective government programs and up to our elbows in people who are literally dying for no good reason. My father and I argue a bit. He calls my argument about illegal immigrants specious and suggests that it is based on feelings. I suggest that he go join a militia. In the end, though, we mostly agree that something's got to happen and that Nancy Pelosi is not the gal to get the job done.

And now I've just hung up the phone after talking to my mother, who just spoke to my brother in California. He does not call much, and when he does, he uses his sinister knack to zero right in and stick me where I feel most vulnerable. Tonight, though, my brother called with the happy news that he has been secretly married to a Thai girl for the past three months. She is in the country illegally, which has thwarted his plans to join the Navy (never mind the other barriers he's thrown up for himself over the years) and he wants to know if my parents will sign for her so he can enlist. At first I laugh at the absurdity of his life, then I marvel at his ability, cockroach-like, to survive one catastrophe after another. For a moment I feel something troubling & bizarre, akin to jealously maybe, that he got married before me. Now I'm wondering about Cindy, his wife, the drain on your tax dollars, the frightening statistic, my sister-in-law. I hope that she is healthy; that, somehow, they will be okay.

roommates

2010-02-01T22:26:00.003-05:00

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.

a short political drama

2010-01-13T20:16:00.012-05:00

Scene 1

[A lazy summer day. Jim, early 50s, sits on a floral cushioned rattan chair in a sun room over-looking a field full of cows. He is reading a novel, tapping his foot, and chewing on the end of his glasses. He is an erudite man, not given to displays of public affection. It is a very peaceful scene until the 2 dogs laying at his feet get up and start barking, alerting Jim to the car driving up the long gravel drive. Another middle aged man gets out of the car and looks around at the random machinery, the multiple doors on the front of the house. He seems both confused and resolved as he walks to the door of the sun room. He looks down at a piece of paper in his hand, before knocking on the door.]

Knock on the door. Jim puts his book down and walks across the room to the door, and opens it.

Jim: Hello. [Jim immediately recognizes the man from his professional life but, lost as he was in the novel, is unable to figure out why he is standing in front of him.]

Man: WHY HELLO, Mr. Jones. I didn't know you lived here! (He seems surprised and pleased to see Jim, yet still doesn't offer an explanation for his presence.)

(The two men shake hands)

Jim: Can I help you? (Pleasant but quizzical tone)

Man: Oh yes of course! Is... (he pauses while he scans his list, running his finger down the first page and fumbling a little as he flips it to the next page of names) Little Rat Jones here? I'd like to take a few minutes of his time on this beautiful afternoon.

Jim: (Very puzzled, wondering if he's missing something, but still quite pleasant). I'm afraid he's at work right now. Is there something you need?

Man: Well, you see, I'm running for office and I'm going around introducing myself to all the registered republicans in the area, hoping to earn their vote. Little Rat is on my list and I'd like to talk to him about my campaign and the ideas I have to get things back on the right track around here.

Jim: Like I said, he's not here...but I'll let him know you stopped by.

Man: I'd sure appreciate that! I'll take every vote I can get, but only if I earn 'em! (He chuckles, pushes some campaign materials into Jim's hand, attempts to pet one of the dogs who growls at him, and then turns quickly to get into his car. Jim returns to his seat in the sun room and resumes his reading until his wife summons him to the kitchen. He picks up the campaign leaflet and sticks it in the book to mark his place, where it stays for many months, forgotten.)

Scene 2

[It is winter now and Jim and his family are sitting in a booth at a small Chinese restaurant in their hometown. He is there with his wife, Little Rat, and daughter, and they are talking about their days and laughing at a joke. Across the room, the candidate from scene 1 stands up from dinner with his own family, puts on his jacket, and scans the room. The camera zooms in as his eyes land on Jim and register. He walks towards Jim's table.]

Man: Hello Mr. Jones! How are you? Is this your family?

Jim: Hello. Yes, this is my wife Nadine, my daughter Kathy, and my son Little Rat.

Man: Little Rat! You're just the guy I've been wanting to see! (He reaches across the table to shake Little Rat's hand. Little Rat looks quite perplexed at first and then concerned that this might be a disgruntled customer from the deli.)

(Meanwhile, the man's family joins the man in standing next to Jim's table. The man's wife is holding the hand of her son, Luke, an adult who has genetic condition that causes him to struggle profoundly with social interactions. Luke is happy, though, and greets each member of Jim's family, shaking their hands as best as he can).

Man: Well, I don't want to take up any more of you folks' time, so we'll be going. Enjoy your meal. Little Rat, I hope to talk to you some time and earn your vote.

(Extremely confused, but wanting to be agreeable, Little Rat nods his head and smiles hesitantly.)

Jim: Nice to see you Luke. I hope that you have a good evening with your parents. Stay warm outside.

(Luke's face lights up when Jim speaks to him and he begins to lean in toward Jim for a hug. Jim realizes what is happening and tries to stick out his hand to shake Luke's hand. Jim's wife and daughter, sitting across the table, realize what is about to happen and do their best to stifle their laughter. Luke continues to lean towards Jim and succeeds in wrapping his arms around Jim's neck in a vice-like hug. The man looks at his son and makes a move to pull him back, but before he can, Luke blows a giant raspberry kiss on Jim's cheek. Jim's face registers absolute horror. The man pulls Luke off Jim, apologizing profusely. Jim collects himself and assures the man that it's alright, no harm done. As soon as the man his family are out the door, Jim's wife and daughter collapse in hysterical laughter while Jim sits there, composing himself.)

Little Rat: (Utterly confused and concerned by what he's just witnessed. Shaking his head) How does that man know my name? Is he just watching me? Like from the government?

The End

Director's Note: Little Rat's political affiliation remains an unsolved mystery, grafted, as he was, into, a family of independents and uninteresteds. He has embraced the term Republican as long as he's been aware of politics and joined the party when he got his driver's license and registered for his right to vote and be drafted. He, himself, seems unclear about the party's platform and agenda, however, because, while he proclaimed his intention to vote Republican in his first presidential election, he ended up voting for President Obama in the end. In an interview he explained that "As a Republican, I wanted to vote for all the people who were unable to vote and I think they would've wanted to vote for Obama." Little Rat supports tax credits for families with adopted children, increased funding for bilingual education in Bulgarian, and scientific research into whether his hair can be turned into a green energy source.

Peter

2010-01-11T23:46:00.004-05:00

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

2010-01-09T23:16:00.003-05:00

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.

reprise: message in a bottle

2010-01-08T13:07:00.002-05:00

(in honor of my grandmother, who still wears gold shoes)

My grandmother told me that men like girls who look like girls and use their feminine wiles. This is unsolicited and I don't really know what it means, but I tell her I'll do my best. So, while she tries on gold shoes and green shoes and shoes for wearing to town, I skulk around the perfume counters and try to find some wile in a bottle. Men in books always fall for women who smell good. I think. Yes, that sounds right... 50 years later, after the children she had with another man are grown and married, he still sits there dreaming of the smell of spring rain rising off the back of her neck. His buddy pokes him with a bony finger to get him to take his turn at checkers.

I uncork the first bottle but it doesn't smell like the path to undying love. It smells like the jungle and says I will pounce on you like a tiger; I am ferocious and will subdue you with my scent. You will obey. I skip the second bottle entirely because the girl on the poster is blonde (which I will never be) and lying in the sand (which I rarely do) so why even bother. The next smells a little overdone with all its black&white notes of let's kiss passionately under the Eiffel Tower since it is raining and we are wearing matching trenchcoats. Maybe in 7th grade whenobvious was the lingua franca. A few feet down the smooth white counter, a shopgirl with hot pink eye makeup sprays something on the slender wrist of an elegant old woman. It seems promising until I get closer and realize there are diamonds on the bottle and I AM BEING SEDUCED BY THE SMELL OF $$$!!! I try 2 more bottles because they seem to be giving off a certain savoir faire -- sort of take me to the party at the embassy and I'm an ace at post-communist eastern European politics -- but in the end the nose knows and it's pretty obvious that really it's just a lot of black eyeliner and champagne which I always regret the next morning. The last bottle says Come here so I can feed you sugar cookies and stone you to death with vanilla beans... My grandmother shows up with her arms full of shopping bags and few more helpful suggestions for me to try on. Nothing fits rights, though.

For awhile in college I was a chemistry major and I'm starting to regret switching, although white lab coats and goggles are at the bottom of the of chart of Catalysts for True Love at Room Temperature (solid and liquid states only). Dr. Olmstead liked to listen to the soundtrack for The Last of the Mohicans while going over lab reports in his tiny office. He never remembered my name even though I was his only advisee, butI think he might have taught me how to concoct my very own bottle of wiles. The first whiff would say I'll do my best not to spill coffee on you or talk too much followed by Tell me your stories all night and I'll hold your secrets in my hand like seeds to plant. Chemistry blurs into alchemy so we can stuff everything we need to say in the bottle: I will write you notes on my green typewriter and read our children poems about tall ships. Old people eating alone at McDonalds make me sad so let's never be old or alone.

answer & some sentences

2010-01-07T01:33:00.013-05:00

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.

absit iniuria verbis

2010-01-02T02:19:00.003-05:00

Nursing school has made my hands useful and I am thankful for this. In college, I hopped around between disciplines, trying to find the right balance of poetic & practical, a way to meld an inclination toward language with a compulsion to make a tangible difference. Chemistry was too academic, English too indulgent, so I settled on politics and its implicit room for negotiation. After college, I slowly drifted back towards words, burying myself in paper. I could look beyond my computer screen and see how the sentences might rise off the page, walk up the Hill, and maybe someday change things for someone somewhere. It never seemed immediate enough, though, and left me fidgety and empty handed at the end of the day.

Now, I can walk into a hospital room, right into the very heart of it, up to the rawest parts of people and their problems and do something. Even when it's only adjusting a machine or changing a bandage (which it often is, in these early days), the situation changes and it's usually for the better, if only marginally. I walk in and wash my hands. And then I put them to work.

I have high hopes for this last semester of nursing school. There is still so much too learn about the human body, about the ways to manage illness and tend the sick, how to size up both small and gaping needs and then meet them. Tonight, though, I hang up the phone and then sit still for a long while. My friend -- my lovely, kind, funny friend -- is in terrible pain. And there is nothing for me to do, no words to speak that might make it better.

***

She is allowed to call me Katie because she's known me since I was born and because there are some battles that aren't worth fighting. There are ten of us cousins, like stair steps, a jumble of comings and goings, laughing, eating, fighting and jostling, so it's always you kids or Meggie, Andrea, I mean Katie when she needs just me. I don't mind, even when one of the boy's names gets thrown in: Hannah, Ethan, what's your name...Katie! But today when she hollered for me from her bedroom Sherri, Ellie, Kathy! I almost, but not quite, threw my tightly held respect for elders out the window so I could set my grandmother straight about my name.

***

When you don't know what to say
how to string the words together
and then match them up
with your own roiled thoughts

if too much time has passed, sorry
sticks in your throat, or the nervous
syllables shrink and retreat
back down to the safety of your belly

sometimes it's best, the only
way really, to go with that
tried and true old standby

hello

shopping

2009-12-19T18:50:00.006-05:00

On my way home last night, I stopped at the grocery store where Rat works to find out when he'd be home. My parents are in St. Maybe for the weekend, which means that I am in charge of Little Rat, who is in charge of Max & Henry and keeping the stove burning. This past week he has worked 43 hours -- 43 hours of slicing deli meat and offering samples to customers who don't care so much about his quirky kindness as they do getting their bologna and going home.

Often, I can stand behind the gourmet olive bar and watch him, so intent on packaging a perfect pound of Amish potato salad, for 5 or 10 minutes before he sees me. He is the tallest -- and youngest -- person behind the counter by far. His colleagues are mostly middle age women with so many troubles and children that Peter can't keep track, try as he might. Earlier this fall, his car was in the shop so I sat in the parking lot one night, waiting for him to come out from his closing shift. Well past midnight, I sat there fuming over my own lost sleep (he is a well known dawdler...), preparing a talking to about being considerate and using your cell phone to let people know about changing plans. When he finally walked out his black apron was folded perfectly and hanging over his long, thin arm. Behind him, a dumpy and tired looking woman followed a few yards behind. I rolled down the window, and opened my mouth to let him have it. Kathy, I'm sorry I'm late. The manager made me stay late because 2 people didn't come in tonight. This is my friend from the deli. Can we take her home? Her son stole her car and she doesn't know where he is now. So much salt and light. What could I do but unlock the doors?

Last night, customers were 3 deep across the counter, though, so I walked up to the far end, by the cooler case of hummus and brie and called out his name. I get out of here at 6:00. Do you want to me to buy you dinner? You know I will, Nurse Kathy. It's okay, Rat. I've got stuff to make good food at home. You just come home ok? Ok! See you tonight. Love you! The old man next to me looked first at me and then at Rat, who was holding up a slice of BBQ loaf for the man to approve the thickness. The man nodded his approval and then said "Looks like you're really lucky to have a date tonight with such a pretty young lady." Little Rat pushed the button on the scale, waited for the label to print out, and then handed the meticulously folded bag to the old man with a smile. Kathy's just my sister, sir. I know that there's no one out there for me in the universe, but that's okay. You have a nice weekend and enjoy your holiday, sir.

****

We went in to buy lemons, capers, and raspberry sorbet -- the things one needs for an impromptu dinner party. Randomly we roamed through the aisles, laughing & talking about the past few weeks, paying little attention to the list or the other shoppers. Even so we noticed the couple right away, standing by the pyramid of citrus fruit, their heads close as they peered over the list in her hand. In condiment aisle, we waited patiently for him, his sweater the color of butter, his hair the color of snow, to move his cart aside so we could pass. In the juice aisle, we met again, and I saw that she was both truly ancient and truly beautiful - with lips the color of raspberries and skin like a burnished peach, thick silver hair twisted into a chignon. Finally, at the far end of the cleaning aisle we collided. Squirrel, all jokes and PR savvy, said Uh oh. I guess the secrets out that we've been following you two around the store. Oh no! We love to see beautiful young people enjoying themselves! Reminds of us when we were young, she said. Besides, he said, we don't know where we're going any way! Squirrel laughed and bid them Merry Christmas while I hurried down the detergent aisle. On my own birthday, these beautiful ancient people, the fleetingness of youth, the looming specters of regret & heartbreak filled my throat and eyes a bit and I didn't see the puddle of Tide in the middle of the floor. Thankfully, when I started to slip, Squirrel was right there behind me, ready to steady and then walk through the store some more.

I know this now.

2009-12-14T19:46:00.002-05:00

Real things are not always simple.

Simple things are rarely easy.

Easy things are never real.

Advent #2

2009-12-11T10:57:00.003-05:00

Little Rat loves Christmas.

Last night when I came home, he was sitting at the kitchen counter, listening to the Chipmunk's version of Linkin Park's In the End it Doesn't Really Matter.

Hey Rat, what's going on?

Just trying to get into the spirit of Christmas, Kathy.

growth & devlopment review

2009-12-09T09:15:00.012-05:00

1 - Receive black patent leather purse from grandmother. Own mother is only 22, still freckled & very new herself .

7 - Mother wraps presents in pink paper & makes birthday fudge with no walnuts, invites a house full of little girls over to tea. Understand for first time that not all mothers love their daughters as well mine.

12 - Go with family into big city to spend day choosing Christmas gifts for each other at Seibu & Parco. Amidst neon swirl of decorations and holiday music, feel both cozy and cosmopolitan. That night, dine in fancy restaurant before dashing through downtown streets to find our seats in the big concert Hall. The Russian Men & Boys choir sounds like heaven on earth. Float home on cloud of family, love, and music. Will spend rest of life trying to step back the feeling of that that night.

15 - Mother intercepts me coming out of library with news of Bulgarian judge's approval of adoption petition. Suddenly feel like even older, oldest sister, with twice the number of little ducklings following behind; twice the weight of responsibility to shoulder.

16 - Leave Japan right after birthday. Spend last week wandering through grey streets, hugging trees, and crying on the steps of the old elementary building. Start to fixate on the fleeting seconds, how they slip through fingers, blink & then disappear. Beginning of tortured affair with the passage of time and the grip of nostalgia. Also realize how much better to be leaving than left.

17 - Receive book of poetry, inscribed in father's handwriting: We're so proud of you and it has nothing to do with test scores. Understand keenly the importance of saying things. Even things, especially things, that go without saying.

20 - Spend day in library, sulking & pretending to study. Act like ungrateful wretch when Grace drags out of book piled carrel for "study break" which turns out to be swanky surprise party. John sets up strobe light in the kitchen and long-loved-boy walks me down to the sea and points out planes in their holding patterns overhead. Dance to Otis Redding & DMX in the kitchen and eat spaghetti at 3 AM. Life shimmers with possibility, beautiful friends. Feel very grown up, invincible, like life could possibly go wrong, but wouldn't dare.

22 - Wake up to the news that Saddam Hussein has been pulled from his hole in the ground. Get home from day of cramming in library to learn that John has died by his own hand. In coldest, darkest night, college boyfriend strips down to his underwear and does cartwheels in the snow in attempt to make me smile, to prove that we are still alive and fine.

25 - Kiss long-loved-boy in the back of bar. Squirrel flips her lid and takes 2:00 am Chinatown bus to NYC. Spend next day alone, thinking of danger in getting what you want, the paralyzation that comes of endless choices and no one to tell you the right thing to do.

28 - Psychiatric Nursing Exam. Studying provokes desire to tear hair out and new understanding of old adages that Youth is wasted on the young and If I only knew then what I know now. Even so, experience extreme gratitude for ability to think, feel, remember; the great, fragile gift of a sound heart & mind.

advent #1

2009-12-03T13:01:00.007-05:00

Last night at work, one of my favorite patients came in. He is the smilingest baby, full of cheeky laughter and a cloud of dark curly hair that hovers over his head. I like his mother, too -- a plump, jolly woman who manages to be both kind and clever, even after spending her days corralling middle school students. She brought this baby home 2 days after he was born, 2 days after an unknown girl signed the papers and the court pronounced her mom. There's never been a Dad.

We'll call this woman Cathy and we'll call this baby Joe. Cathy left work and brought a tightly bundled Joe to the doctor's office because his weeks-old coughing had turned into wheezing my untrained ear could hear across the room. Adventitious breath sounds. I listened and made a sympathetic face. The doctor listened and ordered a nebulizer treatment. We set Cathy & Joe up on the machine, noted the time, and moved on to other tasks and patients. Joe screamed before the door closed. He screamed and writhed and screamed through the first treatment and then the second. Cathy tried to smile every time I peaked in the room, but it wasn't hard to tell that she was shaking from trying so hard to hold on. Please, can you help? she shouted over his screaming.

Help? Right. Ha. I mean, Sure!
I re-adjusted the mask, I patted his head and sang.
He screamed louder and held his breath.
Cathy looked desperate and Joe looked blue.
I picked up Dr. Seuss.
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.
Joe took a gulping breath and shuddered quiet.
He took another breath. The tiny particles of medicine rushed into the black hole of his mouth.
Black Fish Blue Fish Old Fish New Fish.
He opened his eyes and looked up at his mom and then me.
Some are Red, Some are Blue, Some are Old, Some are New.
Joe Smiled! Cathy Smiled.
Some are Sad and Some are Glad and Some are very, very Bad.
I smiled, holding my breath.
Why are they Sad and Bad and Glad?
Yes! I thought, I can do this!
I don't know, Go ask your Dad!
And suddenly Cathy was crying louder than Joe.

In the end, Cathy and Joe went to the ER. The doctor couldn't help Joe and I couldn't help Cathy. They set off through the rain to get a "tune up" - a few more quick treatments in the hope that his lugs would right themselves so he could sleep, could breathe, in his own bed. As they left, I took my own deep breath, picked up the chart of the next patient and walked into exam room three with a smile. Hi. What can I do for you today?

In a few weeks we will celebrate. Our Help is about to be born.

2009-11-30T21:39:00.002-05:00

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light riseth up in darkness for the godly. Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what thou wouldst have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and in the light we may see light, and in thy straight path may not stumble.

what i've learned so far

2009-11-07T12:49:00.005-05:00

My patient today was 8 years old, though his mind worked more like a 3 year old's. I can't tell you his name without breaking the law, but it was long and ornate, and fit more for a king than a small boy who has spent more time in a hopsital bed than anywhere else. This boy was born with a condition known as "prune belly" - which means that he has no abdominal walls. If you want to know more about this-- what causes it, the incidence, the mortality rate -- I can tell you, but pathophysiology is not really the point of the story.

This boy has no parents. His insides are so messed up that he can't eat, so he gets his nourishment from a tube placed directly into his stomach. At some point, his colon died, so all his excrement comes out another hole by his belly button and collects in a little pouch. He can't pee on his own, so every six hours someone (yesterday: me) has to stick a plastic tube up his penis, through his ureters, until it reaches his bladder and urine drains out. Since this is a really painful and invasive procedure, he gets urinary tract infections all the time. Right now, bacteria resistant to treatment has taken over his body. The doctors don't know what to do.

Yesterday, the man I worked with believed he was a horse who dances with the circus. When I told my friend about this, she said You mean he whinnies and neighs and prances around on all fours? No, see that would be the behavior of someone pretending to be a horse. This man wasn't pretending, so he didn't need to bother with foolishness like that. He truly thinks he is a horse, everything inside him tells him that he's a horse -- he was agitated and heart-broken that he couldn't make us understand his need to leave the room and rejoin his troupe. This man has been on every antipsychotic known to psychiatry, even the ones with side effects so terrible and noxious that you'll likely die from something else. Still, he believes he's a horse. The label is Persistently Mentally Ill.

But remember this in your narrowing, dark hours, oh remember this: a world full of problems without solutions doesn't let you off the hook. And it doesn't mean you can't still laugh.

Have Patients, Have Patients, Don't be in Such a Hurry!

2008-12-22T16:12:00.002-05:00

Two weeks from today I will start classes for my full-time nursing program. It's been a slow, upward climb these past six months, trekking back and forth between Capitol Hill and an outer-ring suburban community college 4 nights a week, all the while trying to juggle my more than full time job, home work, and staying in some sort of contact with those I hold dear. In six months I have taken 21 credits of lab sciences. I can name every bone of the body for you or do the necessary cultures to find out if the staphylococcus sample is from your skin or your tonsils. I've learned a thing or two. I applied and was admitted to a good program, won myself a scholarship, applied for financial aid, hired and trained my replacement, found a new roommate, ordered my textbooks, and learned CPR. For months, I've lain awake in bed, willing the next the months to go by, ready to move onto the next step, my new life.

All the boxes are checked, my physical and administrative ducks lined up in an orderly row. Now, I'm faced with the much more difficult task of preparing emotionally and mentally to walk into a hospital room and deal with what I find waiting for me, laying in the bed. Whenever Squirrel puked, I made a point of cleaning it up myself to practice taming my gag reflex. Now, I find myself standing in line behind people, waiting to buy a cup of coffee or get on the bus, imaging sticking needles into their neck. The idea of body fluids has never bothered me too much, but I've never even held a needle. More than that, though, I'm trying to prepare myself to step over a divide that separates health care and emergency service workers, clergy, and a few other groups, from most everyone else - a daily interaction with death. The idea of death has never bothered me too much, but I've never even seen a dead body.

Last night I lay awake for a long time, forcing myself for the first time to think of all the people out in the world who will eventually die under my watch, sort of wishing that the minutes would slow down, the days would tarry.

How to see clearly

2008-04-06T20:37:00.005-04:00

Remove the lump from your
throat and put it in your pocket.
Keep it there. Walk a way. Wait.

Ignore the lonely moon for now.
The old man, too, and the spring rain
pasting the street with yellow leaves.
Remember: this is nothing new. Not
the cool air in your strong lungs. Not
the single bird watching from its high
wire. Now is not the time to stop. Not
for verbena, not for dear friends, not
even for the dead or newly dying.

Wait for a Tuesday - a Tuesday in mid-
July. Wait for a plain hour so hot that
it has stripped itself down to skin and
bone, down to planks of wood, down
to those unsurprising elements. 3:oo.

Step away from your life for a minute,
leave the building now and stand on the
street corner until the last young mother
pushes the last new baby out of sight.

Take the lump from your pocket and
watch as it crumbles in your hand.
Left with the fine dry dust, be happy.
When the wind picks up, uncurl
your fingers and let the grit swirl
around you. Open your eyes wide.
Keep them open and walk in the storm.

verbs, transitive

2008-04-05T16:21:00.004-04:00

I do not know if I
am coming or going.
There is a wheezing
woman between the
snoozing man and me,
interrupting my reading ,
her yapping dog, escap-
ing, scampering down
the narrow aisle to the
delight of the squealing
child kicking the seat
of the disapproving,
expiring man gazing
at the covering clouds
layering the horizon,
obscuring New York,
its buildings grasping,
reaching. The dying
man is thinking while
brooding me is realizing
--going or coming--
there is no debating
that hurling above Earth
its axis tilting, its life teeming,
is nothing if not exhilarating.

Poem #3

2008-04-04T22:18:00.001-04:00

Tick tock
goes the clock
and here
I sit
with writers'
block.

Love Haiku

2008-04-03T17:58:00.001-04:00

When he is near me
this heart brims over with rhyme.
Love is that simple

cruelty, poetry, april

2008-04-03T17:40:00.003-04:00

I have not written in so long and now it's April--the cruelest month-- National Poetry Month. So I will try to write a poem a day because, unlike Freddy Mercury, I work best under pressure - with deadlines. And if you like, at the end of the month I'll bind these poems in a book with a cover I made just for you.

April is the cruelest month.

April is National Poetry Month

I have not written in so long.

A limerick fit for an Irishman

2008-03-31T19:07:00.003-04:00

In a castle that had a deep moat
Lived together a toad and a goat.
They wanted to go out
and wander about
If only they could build that boat.

don't have a cow

2008-03-27T15:18:00.002-04:00

Goodbye Norman. You were a fine friend.

these arms of mine

2008-03-22T22:23:00.003-04:00

IN a clean, clear, crystal glass I've put ice and just enough scotch to swirl around with my thoughts. The air itself is clear, early spring cool tonight and the moon is just past its prime, a shade less than full & slightly sad. Inside the house, Otis Redding is singing These Arms of Mine but I am sitting on the steps of the front porch, watching a cat creep out of the alley and listening to the wind run through the bamboo.

There are no stars. A few cars drive the down my street but mostly it is quiet. I think of the people I love in the world -- of my family scattered like seeds across the map; of Squirrel deep in the northern woods; Freddy and Charles asleep in their beds and Crazy A who knows where. The daffodils are up and buds dot every limb and branch though the forecast calls for freezing wind and rain. This is how it is now, I think, and wrap myself tighter in these arms of mine.

2007-11-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

snap/shots

2007-11-11T22:04:00.001-05:00

post card

2007-11-07T05:32:00.000-05:00

Dear World,

I think I've finally found my place on this planet.

More soon & pictures, too.

love:kathryn

kick start your rock & roll heart

2007-10-18T12:43:00.000-04:00

Seth & I were kids together at school in Japan; he played the trombone his cheeks were always ruddy pink. And even though it's been almost a decade since I last saw him, I've followed the swell of his musical talent over the years.

Finally! Tonight! he & his band Anathallo are playing at the Rock & Roll hotel -- mere steps away from where most of you live. Anathallo makes dreamy, beautiful music that sounds a little bit how you might expect a childhood in Japan to sound. A good way to spend a Thursday night for sure.

See you there, perhaps?

Daisies

2007-10-10T13:43:00.000-04:00

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead
oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their - if you don't
mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example - I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.

Mary Oliver

i...i...i...

2007-10-08T23:12:00.000-04:00

I miss Charles, who is meandering around the Middle East, trying to keep tabs on Gramcracker and her boyfriend.

I wonder if he's seen them kissing.

I love cheeseburgers so NO, MR. Vegan hipster I DO NOT think we should see each other again.

I told him I don't like to be be touched when he tried to kiss me.

I lied to him, I guess.

I worked a million hours this past month and I will work a million more in October.

I can't wait to go to Greece in November.

I'm going to be 26 very soon and I'm not ready, not ready at all, to be old, to be grown up.

I need a hobby or a lobotomy.

I'm going to try to sleep now even though I've turned into what I never wanted to be: an insomniac.

I hope I dream of you.

le subjonctif

2007-10-02T22:39:00.000-04:00

If you come over we will sit on the floor. I will be a little shy until you tell me a story about kissing a girl a foot taller at summer camp and how your glasses fell off on Space Mountain in 8th grade and you spent the rest of the day wandering around the Magic Kingdom blind as a bat. Or something like that. You know how to make me laugh, real laughter. When the kettle whistles we settle on mint tea because half way into the process, after I've found two mugs clean & handles intact, you open the fridge and discover the milk that isn't there. So mint it is. And oatmeal cookies soft & with just enough chocolate chips. We will talk for hours, sitting on the floor, maybe stretching out to lay on our stomachs, maybe reading quietly to ourselves, looking up & over from time to time to smile shyly or share a sentence. For awhile Rachmaninoff will play in the background but when I switch over to Beirut's first album you will whisper how much you love accordion music & gypsies. You will understand when I'm able only to nod in agreement, so overcome by the music & by you; how lovely & surprising you are, the longing trumpets carry in their thin high notes.

If you come over we will sit on the floor.

life, homonymically

2007-10-02T22:21:00.000-04:00

WE are paired first by our eyes.

Buy me a pear, say aye.

You say bye and I am pared.

sometimes we learn our lessons

2007-10-02T08:45:00.000-04:00

1st period - Geography

Beirut
Paris
Buenos Aires
Reykjavik
Havanna
Denver

2nd period - Mathematics

1/2 divided by 1/2 = 1

(How can broken parts end up whole?)

3rd period - English

"Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still"
- from "Ash Wednesday" by TS Eliot

4th period - Science

Newton's first law of motion:
An object at rest tends to stay at rest
and an object in motion tends to stay in motion
with the same speed and in the same direction
unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

5th period - History

History repeats itself.
We have been here before. We will come here again.

6th period - P.E.

Keep your eye on the ball. And then, if it helps, pretend the ball is his head.

cry cry cry

2007-09-17T10:41:00.000-04:00

Sure, she cries easily, but not about real life, her life. Never about things that can be helped, the spilt milk at work or her own puddling relationships. It's the imaginary, the assumed and supposed, that sets Ruby off. And who can blame her? What unwieldy parcels humanity seems to carry! Deep love, bitter loss, no money for bread and cells that multiply when they shouldn't. Ruby watches sparrows flap their wings in clouds of dust and her lip quivers. She sees children with bruised knees and fathers walking in their brown ragged coats and the tears well up in her wide eyes. Like left for right, she mistakes beauty for tragedy, pain for beauty, life for pain, tragedy for passing time. Under the unbearably blue spring sky these great themes package themselves into moments for Ruby to stumble and cry over. Just a tear or two for these strangers and neighbors, though. She sleeps well enough at night and her friends? Well, they make her laugh. They are young. And it's spring, after all.

July, though. With July comes a crime spree -- all manslaughter and fraud and rumbles on every corner. The rain falls in thick curtains every afternoon and when clouds part, it is only to make way for grey rainbows and murderous crows. Ruby is waterlogged. She can not see the rain for all the tears. One night as she walks from the park, Ruby sees a girl fighting with a man on the front steps of a house. The girl has hair like Ruby, dark and short, and when the man yells at the girl I can't even stand to look at you Ruby almost believes he is yelling at her through the black air. He slams the door and the girl picks up a flowerpot and hurls it at his absence. The terracotta hits the wall; the girl's face shatters into a million pieces; Ruby feels her own face beginning to crack. So, it's true. I really am made of glass, she thinks even as the girl, the other girl, looks over at Ruby and says Why the hell are you crying?

Why the hell are you crying? This is a question Ruby can not answer. Not when the spokes of her bicycle ask, not when the hinge on the gate wants to know, not when the robins inquire, or when she poses it to herself in the middle of the night. It was not her flowerpot, her heart, her life, her man shutting the solid door in her face. It is never her skinned knee, her bruised heart, her romatic sunset that she cries over. So why then? Why? Ruby hates waste and she can not stand carelessness. So why shed tears that only spillover into a river, already overflowing with sadness, that goes nowhere? Ruby resolves to toughen up.

And she does. She stops looking through the windows of other peoples lives and starts looking over her own shoulder. When a bird flies over head, Ruby no longer thinks of the beauty of its frail, hollow bones. Instead she curses the mess it makes on the windshield of her car. She puts on headphones to block the noise and walks miles with her head down instead of riding the bus. Why cry, she thinks. Don't you dare cry. And since she doesn't have an answer, she doesn't.

It is many months later and the moon is very full on the night that Ruby meets John for the first time. Fall has arrived with usual languorous reds and oranges and Ruby resists being enamored by the changing leaves. They sit, John and Ruby, at a table under the skeletal arms of trees and drink read wine in their scarves. John is smart but his attention annoys Ruby, his attentiveness to details and the way he points out two squirrels chasing each other, weaving their around the trunk of a tree. She starts to fidget first and then chafe against the tenderness, the sentimentality he seems to seep for everything with cells and atoms. Get a grip Ruby shout in her head Live in the real world, buddy. She tries to smile though, and thinks that she is convincing until John stops his story about a boy with a kite in the middle of sentence. He looks at Ruby and then touches her hand, which is twirling her glass of wine around and around by stem. Hey he says and Ruby stops to look up at him for first time. Hey. Ruby. Don't write me off just yet. And that is all it takes. With that, Ruby starts to cry and cry and cry because she realizes that she is still transparent. The only thing that has changed is that she has become a more brittle kind of glass.

clean

2007-09-11T08:28:00.001-04:00

On Saturday I cleaned my room from top to bottom, scoured it. I lined my books up along the shelves, ordering them by genre, theme, color, size, by their place in my heart. I hung up the pink dress I wore on the date with the airline pilot last week and folded the black shirt I've been sleeping in all summer. Bank statements, post cards, love letters, scraps of paper scribbled with phone numbers, directions, ideas - these I read & reread, shredded, filed, pitched. By the end of the day the 3 windows sparkled in their clean sills, the crisp orange sheets on my bed folded into hospital corners.

And now I am wondering if it is possible to do such a thorough cleaning of the rest of my messes -- to rout out these bad habits cluttering my life and stack them in a neat little (big) pile: chewing on my fingers; leaving wet towels on the floor; preferring books to people; my caginess & snobbery; the way I leave good friends & refuse to to let go of the bad ones; losing things; biting people; procrastinating; crying & swearing; my reckless driving.

I will sweep them up and set them on the curb, contained and waiting to be hauled off in a big truck to a place I never have to see. Then I will sit very quiet and still in my clean room with my clean fingernails and my pristine heart, not moving a muscle for fear of making a mess that I can't undo, that won't go away with any amount of scrubbing.

You best not mess with me, pal.

2007-07-23T22:40:00.000-04:00

caesar und jonie: es gibt den Traum von jemand anderes

2007-07-20T08:48:00.000-04:00

a STORY by CHARLES

intro:
"sometimes i feel like i could marry you. did you know that?"
caesar wore a smirk on his face when he said this to jonie.
(i would have flattened him like a pancake had i been there...but i wasn't. lucky effer.)
jonie smiled a tremendous smile. she knew he never would, but she also knew he wasn't evergoing anywhere.

and to start off, that is their relationship in a nutshell.
you know how you meet those people who are always engagedbut never married. well, they aren't that, but really close.

descript:
jonie is a petite little thing, about 5'6 on weekdays and an inch
taller on the weekends. hardly ever can you find her in trousers or jeans. she prefers those elegant numbers, even just for work. scarves and heels and summer dresses and spring dresses, even late into autumn sometimes. only when she is reading can you find her in a pair of spectacles, and often enough, that is walking down a city street, a bag around her shoulders, a book in her left hand, and tea in her right (depending on the weather and her mood, she drinks hot and iced both).
she always laughs at the wrong time, and only sometimes at the right time. she goes out of her way to do things for other people and often those things go unnoticed or are underappreciated, and while it may bother her for a time, she might not remember it a week later. she's sophisticated and foxy,but sometimes almost nerdy. she gets cagey easily, especially sitting in an office all day. on a whim, she'll say something brilliant and pretend like she doesn't realize it, but let me tell you, she knows it.

story:
at one point, the two of them were having a stroll through the park on an autumn evening, in late october, or maybe the beginning of november. caesar, trying to impress jonie, offered a lousy bit of conversation to keep from feeling the awkwardness of no conversation at all,
"you know the german translation of'you're welcome'?"
jonie frowned, trying to look interested andexcited to find out, "no, what is it?"
"well, the two words for 'you're welcome' are 'bitte schön'. so when they are together, they mean 'you're welcome', but if you literallytranslate the two words seperately, it means 'please beautiful'. funny, huh?"

jonie smirked at first, but quickly replaced her smirk with a smile before caesar looked over at her for a response. she nodded and then waited a moment, "yes, that's very interesting."

descript:
caesar. what can i say about caesar? at first, he's the sort of person that might say, "i can't really grasp the idea of marriage."
no, that's not a bad thing, but i think it's a sufficient description. however, i will go on. for the most part, he wears a tweed blazer to work, wool trousers with pleats that rest about an inch above his loafers when he's standing straight, substantially more when he's sitting with his legs crossed. on days when he's feeling confident, he changes his loafers for some old tennis shoes, and his blazer for a sweater. when hush puppies started to become popular again, he went out and bought two pairs, and he still has them. behind his prescription lenses that seemingly never come off, he'll tell you he's read every book and article wendell barry has ever published. he's insecure about the amount of hair on his body, but he wouldn't ever say that to anybody.

story:
last summer, caesar and jonie went to visit jonie's brother, fyodor, who lived a few states west of them. fy had recently become engaged to one certain antonia, and jonie thought it an excellent idea to visit over the weekend to meet her, see them together, and offer congratulations. fy and antonia's romance had been a whirlwind, if there is such a thing, and apparently, fy purchased a ring after having only known antonia for a month. sometimes things happen like that, you know? between you and me, i also know fy has in his possesion business class tickets to australia for their honeymoon.

one thing they had in common from the start was that they both had always wanted to dive the great barrier reef.

while sharing a few laughs (and a few bottles of wine) over dinner one night of their weekend visit, caesar became increasingly chipper and comfortable with himself, his "brilliant" ideas and his somewhat impressive repertoire of english vocabulary. (in spite of this, jonie always said, "i would never be with anyone just because i appreciate the fact that he has a wide range of vocabulary, or a "favorite's list" that is similar to mine. also, i could never be with a man who has a boat." keep in mind, she only started saying the former after having been with caesara few months.)

"antonia! this meal is absolutely fabulous! almost as fabulous as that stunning red dress you're wearing tonight!," caesar rattled off, his cheeks becoming redder with each sip of wine, "your lipstick matches it perfectly! by the way, what year is this cab? it's scrumptious!"
antonia, unaccustomed to receiving compliments from near strangers, but enjoying it nonetheless, glanced awkwardly at fy without moving her head,
"thank-you,caesar darling. i'm not sure the year, do you know honey?" fy was pretty much toast at that point and ignored the question. he laughed out loud at something nobody else seemed to pick up on, then placed his napkin on his head to best resemble a deerstalker cap, looked over at caesar, and in his best sherlock holmes impersonation, piped up, " my dear watson, the company truly is stunning this evening, is it not? absolutely sensational! however, and let me assure you, i am not being contrary just to be contrary, but you must be mad to think that the quality of the wine is anything but infernal! vox populi, vox dei!" antonia chuckled at the moment of sheer genius her fiance had just displayed, while jonie put her face in her hands, thinking of the ridiculous comeback caesar probably already had percolating behind those prescription lenses.

caesar, overly inspired by the moment, reached his hand across the table with butter knife tightly grasped, scooped up a dallop of butter and spread it across the upper part of his top lip. then he ripped the lid of off the pepper and peppered the butter above his top lip to create a 'moustache',
"elementary, my dear sherlock! your tastebuds are as worthless as a corncob in the chicken coop! the wine and the women are of equal quality this evening, and that, my dear friend, is no less than dazzling!"

conclusion:
one time jonie told me that the evening the four of them spent together was the epitome of her and caesar's relationship. she might not confess it if you asked her straight out, but she was probably right. just like the fact that 'sometimes' he felt like he could marry her, but that he couldn't always grasp the conceptof marriage, was the epitome of their relationship. it's not bad, no. it is just a perfect representation of what a relationship is. besides, who on earth has ever found the one person that fills their heart with joy?

found artifact: early college period, typewriter

2007-07-16T16:49:00.000-04:00

We glide easily through the melting light because it's spring and we're young, afterall. The trees are bursting with the miracle of chlorophyll and from time to time I look over at the man walking beside me and he is smiling his crooked cinnamon grin. It's not hard to be alive, I think, and I calculate as best I can on just this day when sun and air intersect at such right angles that even Newton would forget gravitational forces in the sheer joy of each breath of apple blossom from underneath his tree. And I figure that out of the 4 and 1/2 lbs (that's 9.9 kilograms) of sunlight hitting the earth each day, much more than my fair share is landing on the bridge of my nose

(It's not really correct to speak of it in terms of weight, you see. It's more closely related to the force of momentum. But science makes way for poetry graciously enough most of the time.)

And then my phone rings. And it's my mom (mother's donation: one X chromosome and a hatred for entropy)and she's telling me something's wrong even though all she's asking is how my day has been. And I say what's wrong? DID SOMEONE DIE? because her voice is that grave. And she says I can't talk about it right now so I press her on it anyway. At your dad's school she says (father's contribution: a gene for green eyes and an appreciation for George Will&HARPER LEE) and I ask if it's a student or teacher and she says the former and I marvel at her ability to differentiate between former & latter so fast and think how she would've made a good astronaut, floating out there all alone in space and still knowing what's what. DEAD? I ask and she says yes and jumping to conclusions or maybe just being human I wonder how it will affect me. I look over at the man walking next to me and wonder when it's appropriate to cry in front of a stranger, even if he is your friend. MURDER? SUICIDE? I ask. The latter she says. It's going to be bad for your dad for a while she says. And so I tell her I'll do what I can on the home front as though there is a war on and I'm a member of the USO propping up troop morale with my cheery cherry lipstick smile and a patriotic song made popular by Bing Crosby. I can smile in the face of a faceless death.

And then I ask HOW? and she says Freon. And I think FREON: a trademark name for any of the refrigerants belonging to the chlorofluorocarbon family; composed primarily of chlorine and fluorine, group 17 elements, 7 valence electrons. Each atom looking for an 8th electron to lend stability and completion -- a non-polar covalent bond the most romantic attractive force in the universe, I think stupidly...and wish for less poetry and far less science and for a lot more answers floating around the cosmos.

And so I hang up and keep walking because nobody wants to fall over in the middle of a busy street for no apparent reason even though I know that someone has just boiled over with the desperation I always manage to hold at bay. And I don't want to say another thing because there's too much of that going around and no one has patented an antibiotic for HELPLESSNESS. So I'm silent until the wave of emotion splashes over the afternoon's calm shore. And I say something vague about it all being too much and the man walking beside me makes his own sort of sympathetic statement. And then for some inexplicable reason I smile, because I don't know what else to do and it take a damn fine novelist or a very strong microscope to diagnose the undercurrents and overtones of a moment's smile and no one will detect that mine is laced with cyanide, arsenic, and trace elements of hope under the copper sun.

2007-07-13T19:26:00.000-04:00

IT PLEASES me that crepe
myrtle blooms in July when
Spring is done and the way
thunderheads gather & break
in the sky beyond our reach.
And at days end, when the
world's gone still you hold my
hand to your chest and the
beat of your heart pulses in
my fingers, like a river I
can't ford--I like that too.

overheard

2007-07-09T16:26:00.000-04:00

I'm just not sure why he likes me, what he's got to go on at this point besides physical appearance. She shouts this over her shoulder because I am a few steps behind, trying my best not to intrude on the family portrait setting itself up in front of me. Lately we've taken to wandering the streets, walking it off as she likes to say and today we've ended up in front of the White House, stepping into the frame of who knows how many Christmas cards along the way. SEASON'S GREETINGS from OUR FAMILY ( don't mind the suspicious looking girl in the sunglasses) to YOURS! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What do you mean you don't know why he likes you? Why wouldn't he like you? I stop and she keeps going, my words chasing her down because a Japanese man has handed me a camera. He is wearing white shoes and pressed white cotton shorts. His white polo shirt and a white visor are made from the same white terrycloth. His socks are brown though, and his short wife, also dressed toe to top in white, has a red carnation pinned to the (white) band of her straw hat. She looks plucky so I tell her so and when she hears the words in her own language she smiles, looking up into the frozen face of her posed husband, I snap a couple shots. There, I think, finally, a picture with a smile. They bow and I bow and then we all bow again before I'm able to push the camera back into the man's hands, the hair on his knuckles very black and sparse. I picture these same hands holding chopsticks, reading the newspaper on a crowded train, as I dart ahead through the crowds to where my friend stands, talking into the air beside her. I'm not like "oh woe is me, why would anyone ever like me?" because you know I'm not like that. I think I'm pretty great. I have a lot to offer, right?

Right. Of course. So what's the problem? She didn't notice, so I don't break her stride.

Well, I just don't understand. Why does he like me? What's he basing this on? A bus barrels past and her words get whipped up and swirled around in the hot air gushing by us. He doesn't know me. He barely knows me. Her face is red now, from the sun and the hot air, but also from the exertion, the emotion behind the words. It's real confusion. She wants to understand so the color rises in her cheeks.

Why do you like him? Why does anyone like anyone? We are waiting to cross the street. The Japanese couple sidles up to us. You do like him, don't you? Even though they don't speak English, I lower my voice. You kissed him and you weren't even drunk. That means something, right. Doesn't it? I want desperately, irrationally to appear respectable for these people -- to fix myself in the album of their memories as that upstanding young girl who spoke their language a bit, took that great picture in front of the White House. The white mother pours some tea for her son or passes a tray of pastries to her neighbor and tells the story again. She smiles up at her stern husband and he smiles back, remembering the red carnation in her hat.

I do. I do like him. She is forging ahead, through a group of middle-aged Italian men who whistle and stare and gawk. They make comments and gestures but she ignores them. The Japanese people turn left, toward the Mall, so I exhale and settle back into who I am today: someone who is wrung-out and and a bit lost in her own town. The sort of girl who finds consolation wandering the streets. I like him she says, and then turns around, all the way, to look at me straight on for the first time all morning. I like him, right?

Sure you like him. I'm not sure what to say because all my answers have been wrong lately, but I keep talking, like a shark who will die if it stops moving through the murky water. Let's put it this way -- you like something about him. There is something you like that keeps you going back. And he likes something about you and it keeps him coming back. That makes sense, right?

Is that enough? She isn't moving. She's just standing there, waiting for an answer. We are smudged and dripping and almost shouting, surrounded by a mill and flow of people who came here to relax, to spend some time with the family, to experience history first hand or didn't know where else to go.

Do you remember when I fell for Martin? Do you remember what it was that I liked about him? She nods her head and turns, walking again and I'm glad that motion relieves the pressure of the moment. She doesn't say anything though, so I go on. I liked his teeth. He had the deliciousest, most toothy grin in the world and I loved it. I loved it. I fell for it.

She does not look convinced. So you liked his smile. I see a million people a day with nice smiles. What does that mean?

It's a starting place. You take something and you go with it and then you add on to it. I liked his teeth. And then I liked the way his teeth fit in his mouth when he smiled and then I liked how he smiled at me when I talked about killing every plant I've ever had. I'm about to be lost, about to be broadsided by a busload of memories, but I keep going. And then I liked the way he wrote with his left hand in the library and the way his left hand wrote a note like an 8th grade boy asking me to the movies. And then I liked the way that we laughed all through the movie and the way his left hand grabbed my right hand and the way he kissed me by the back door. I am shouting now and a mother in squeaky clean tennis shoes, purchased for this trip, gives her daughter a look -- a God-forbid you should grow up and wander the streets, shouting like a crazy person look -- and again I am overcome with a desire to appear ok, hinged and functional for these people, guests in my city.

I don't know. It's such a big gamble. I mean, look how wrecked you were by Martin in the end. Whatever. It will sort itself out, right? We are in front of a coffee shop and her hand is on the door. Wanna get something to eat? This walking makes me ravenous.

Right, I want to say. Right. It will sort itself out. I repeat it to myself because she is already inside, in line, and because suddenly, standing in the confluence of men, women, their children, of history, commerce, love, country, summer I am the one who needs convincing, not her. We only have words and images, projected and gathered, to go on-- only eyes and ears to take them in. And what can they hold? I want to shout. What can you build out of light and sound? Out of nothing?

today's poem

2007-07-02T12:02:00.000-04:00

e.e. cummings

let it go-the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise-let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go-the
truthful liars
andthe false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers-you must
let them go they
were born
to go

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
so comes love

missing person report

2007-06-28T17:43:00.000-04:00