Hot Cocoa

Freezing rain is coming down. The pebbles on the path are slick and treacherous. I don't drive in this weather, not with my history, so I've been stuck inside all day. I woke up early, sat zazen, had the best intentions of being productive, but Jay had other ideas, so back to bed I went! Age is a massacre, paraphrasing Philip Roth, and erections have been a bit of an issue this year. I finally convinced Jay to go to the doctor. Our primary care physician is very beautiful.

"If someone had ever told me I would pay to have a beautiful woman stick her finger up my ass, this was NOT how I imagined it would go down." He told me that night.

She prescribed Cialis, and advised a statin, which he eschewed, opting for diet changes. So we have been vegetarian all year, and, lo and behold, things are...working again.  Not they were ever NOT working for me. One of the things about being middle-aged is that you abandon your fantasies and rituals about sex and just get down to getting off.  If I love you and you smell reasonable, I can manage to have reasonably satisfying sex with you, and you will probably get something out of it, too, almost no matter what.  His erection is a nice bonus, but not essential.

Of course, one of the contributing factors may be the death of my father, if I'm being honest, because Jay did a good portion of his care.  This involved cleaning and turning and changing him, and staying up all night. Coming face-to-face with mortality either really increases your libido or saps it. Axel Munthe writes about this, when he and the nurse make love at the deathbed of the mother superior, who has just died from cholera. Seido told me that the night his mother died, he had sex with the nurse who cared for her in the hospital parking lot.

I've never really felt that. I'm pretty steady. I'm usually up for it, but not actively seeking. Upsetting patients usually take me out of the sack for awhile. Flesh becomes distasteful.  But then, I guess, the tide comes in.

Sounds tepid? Maybe. It is what it is, I guess. Perhaps that ship has sailed. I have mostly been the object of others' passions.

We went for a walk this afternoon, through the frozen yellow winter grass.  Afterwards, I made hot cocoa.  Good stuff. With cream and dark chocolate.
That's my 1/2 hour.

It's gotten cold. Grief is weird. I'm ok, and then I'm not ok. And when I'm not ok, I'm really not ok. I'm sobbing, these wheezing, keening, gulping squalls. Then they pass. Sometimes, I think, every day is taking me away from him, like a sailboat moving from the shore. Each day takes me farther away from the days when I had a father. What a father. Funny and quirky and handsome. My friends thought he was my brother. "You never told me you had a brother..." they would say. He grew up in Coconut Grove, in a house on Poinciana, built in the 1800's, with dark cypress floors, and deep shadowy galleries, and ceiling fans. He got kicked out of Coral Gables High, and so, after a substantial donation from my grandparents, was accepted to Ransom Everglades (except then, it was just Ransom. Everglades was the girl's school.) He met his best friend then, Fernando, a boarder from Cuba. Blonde. Rich. They would go to Havanna on the weekends. He would be killed in the Bay of Pigs. His family was one of many herded by Fidel into a stadium and slaughtered. There's a photo of my father, dancing on a porch with a smiling, dark-eyed, blonde girl. Fernando's sister? My father wouldn't talk about those pictures or the people in them. That's my half-hour.

Today and only Today

There are 4 inches of ice on the pond. We were hoping this would happen while the kids were here, after the burial. But Lilly went back to NYC on January 2nd, after being bumped from 3 flights New Years Day, and Nick drove back down to New Orleans on Friday afternoon, after stopping by to say goodbye in the cold lobby of the hospital. It's been hard to go back into work this week, walking back into the building is so strange. What is the feeling? But this is a small town, and we can't push things away, avoid pain by maintaining a physical distance from the places saturated with our sorrows. I see the nurses who treated my father in the hall; I see the ICU attending in HyVee; the grave digger is a patient. Maybe that's a good thing. I hope so. What am I going to do? Move? My mother is living in my little house. She complains about it, but she likes it. It's a good house--filled with love and images of the Blessed Virgin. It's a little shabby, but there's always been a jewel box like feel to it. My living room there is the most comfortable, nap inducing, sanctuary I can imagine. People immediately feel it's ok to say what they want, pick up a book, rifle through the music stand--it is a good place, and I know my mother, who never managed to create that in her house, feels it. She's kept the Gypsy on, and that's good. But she wasn't there Saturday, so I spent part of the day over there. We aren't fighting. I'm angry, but I love her. I made myself some canned soup, went into Lilly's old bedroom, and finished my dictations from clinic. I'm slow. No one seems annoying. Everyone seems rumpled, vulnerable, lost. I think about the thousand and one small ways I sin against my fellows--with impatience, selfishness, lack of attention. When I got back to our farm, Jay had made a bonfire on the bank of our little pond (we've had sand carted in to make a sweet little beach), and he had a boombox down on the dock playing Christmas music. We skated out into the dusk. The ice was very clear, and the obsidian pond stretched below my skates, which needed sharpening. I felt that I was suspended between two darknesses, held by this temporary firmament, on these shaky old blades. I used to be a figure skater in my youth, and I can feel the ghost of my younger body, gliding and spinning and jumping--but my physique doesn't follow. This disconnect--I suppose the gap just continues to widen over the years. But we held hands and found our way. Sat by the fire and had malibu rum laced thick hot chocolate with heavy cream. We are in a mirror darkly seen, but then face-to-face.

No Dreams

My father died. The last night was madness. Clinical, fluorescent-light-illuminated hell. On Tuesday night, I left the hospital at 930. Before I left he looked at me, as if he wanted to devour me. I have never been looked at like that. He just looked and looked, and I tried to look back, but the gaze was too much for me, too overwhelming. It was a look that came from beyond ordinary time. Then the nurse came in to perform oral care, and the moment was broken. He just wanted to know me, and to take me in, because I'm his child, and he really, really loved me. He often looked at me like that, this year, but this was more luminous. Heading out, I ran into one of my surgeons in the lobby, who was having a meltdown, but that's another story. I'd been working during this whole thing--going to his bedside during breaks and after work. I planned to head over there after my half-day clinic the next day. At about 11 am, I felt one of the worst physical feelings I've ever known--I can't explain it--like everything good had been drained from my body, like I was about die, like the world was going to end. I thought "Shit. This is it. It's really going to hell now." So, being a good little nurse, I finished my charting--as I was doing so, the pager went off. I proofed and signed my note, then answered the page. One part of me stood aside with her arms folded, shaking her head and saying, "You are one cold bitch, Haley Patton." Dr. Tso picked up. He's one of the fellows in the MICU. Asian, bespectacled, gay, deeply kind. "Haley, I think you'd better come over. His heart rate is at 40 and he's satting 64. We were going to code him, but your mom...reconsidered." Silence after this. Up until this point, my mom had insisted on keeping him a full code--despite being 96 pounds, despite having an ejection fraction of 15%, despite the fact that he can't swallow, ambulate, or control his bowels. "You just want him to die." She told me, when I tried to get palliative care involved. On Tuesday, in addition to gazing at my dad, working a full clinic, and talking my surgeon down from the ledge, I also forced my mom to sit quietly as I described, in the most unemotional way I knew, what an actual code would involve. I said, "I'm not going to argue with you, but I want you to give your full attention to me while I outline this step by step." Then I did it. I didn't embellish. Then I left. So, I guess she listened. He was spared one thing. One final brutality, at least. Christ. That's my half-hour.

Goodbye, Ilse.

It's Advent. I sat zazen at home early yesterday morning, but I haven't been to the zendo in a month, ever since the night I showed up at Seido's door the night of the crash. The night of my dad's admission to the hospital. Mom had sent me on a number of ridiculous errands, which I usually refuse to do, but she was upset, so I was trying to pacify her.Turning left onto the main road home, a car ran the red and totaled the Saab. Let me tell you. Saabs are good cars. The world is poorer for their absence. Jay, retrieving my things from poor crumpled Ilse (my Saab) a day later told me that if you looked only at the interior of the car, you would never have guessed a crash had happened. On the side of the road, standing resolutely under a streetlight, hands in her pockets, was my old friend Sandy. Who had witnessed the crash. She was standing there with another woman. I had been listening to Nightvale when I got hit, and it hadn't turned off, so Cecil was going on about Beautiful Carlos. I hit pause with my shaking fingers. My violin was in the front seat, together with a bottle of elderberry juice and some pre-bottled margaritas, for later, unbroken On the shoulder of the road, I opened my violin case. Dear reader...it was not only undamaged, but in-tune. I heard Sandy's friend say "What is she doing?" and Sandy, whom I haven't seen in 35 years says, without skipping a beat, "Haley plays the violin--her grandfather made that one." "Are you ok?" She asks. "I think so." I say, "but I've got a lot of adrenaline going." "So weird," she says. "I was just thinking about you this morning." I, actually had thought of her that morning as well. Let me give you some background. Sandy is the only person I ever got into trouble with in my youth. She's two years older than me, and when I was fourteen, I spent the night at her house and we got drunk on peppermint schnapps and broke into the house of a cute boy who went to our church. We were caught by his parents, who yelled at us, but never told anyone. That's how things were. Today, we'd both be in Juvie or institutionalized. Or, more likely, shot. "I was thinking about you, too." I said. "Remember when we got drunk on peppermint schnapps and broke into Wayne's house?" Her face closed. "I don't recall that at all. You're thinking of someone else." "Well, " I said lamely. "Good to see you!" I kept trying to call Jay, but kept getting voicemail. The cop took her statement, didn't give me a ticket. Ticketed the other driver. He offered me a ride. I told him my address. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's not in city limits. Do you know anyone closer?" Seido and the zendo were close. I had him drop me off there. The porch light was off. I banged on the door until he answered. "Haley?" He seemed confused. I explained about the crash. I had to explain several times. "Can I have a ride?" ' "No--I'm too sleepy." He said. "I just took a melatonin. Whatever. What an old lady. No wonder his wife left him. Thinking back, he probably had something stronger on board and didn't want to fess up. I Ubered home. Seido was mystified by this. "You mean, you just press on your screen and a car shows up?" "Yes. They're here. I have to go." The Uber driver, Mohammed, tried to hold forth on the difference between men and women, on the ride home. He expressed dismay over the gravel roads. "Crockett county has gravel roads," I told him, shortly. "Let's just listen to the radio, shall we?" The house was dark and Jay was snoring when I got home. Sometimes even short trips take you to very unexpected destinations. And that's my half-hour

Sat zazen early yesterday morning. I haven't been to the zendo. I thought about going to church this morning. The greens will be up, and I love my little church at Christmas. I talked to Lilly thii

Dad's back in the hospital again. Fredericka, his nurse, called me at work. "I think Mark has aspirated his oatmeal." Fredericka is my age. She's from up North--around Macon. She looks like a gypsy. She has dark hair and big eyes. She used to be over 400 pounds, but had a gastric bypass, and now is about 180. She used to work in the clinic,but started taking care of my dad in January. She's not perfect. She lost her job over some petty bit of dishonesty, but she loves my dad. As all women love my dad. She's the only one of the nurses seeing to him 24/7 who will face down my mom. , e He's failed numerous swallow studies, but has repeatedly refused a feeding tube. There has been a lot of drama around food. He desperately needs calories, but my mom feels that feeding him is too intimate and something she should do, but she doesn't. She's like an anorexic by proxy. Endless ritual accompanies the preparation of food, and meals take hours and are hours late. Battling about it, as I have done, gets him so upset he can't eat at all. So he has slowly starved. The question is--is that what he's intending to do? He's smart. Surely he knows he's killing himself. Now he's decided he wants a feeding tube. But he's too debilitated to survive the surgery to get one. So he's in the hospital. And he has aspiration pneumonia. My mom roots around his room like a mad little animal. She has a notebook and keeps a record of everyone who enters the room, and what they do and what they say. Lots of underlinings and exclamation points. She hides the book when you ask her about it. She frequently threatens to call a lawyer. Then she's appeasing and ingratiating. "I like you... you're a good nurse," she'll say. Classic splitting. I find myself filled with this constant dry heat of anger now. It feels like a dry woodstove fire. It's never gone. I can hardly say a word to her, without hearing the tone in my voice--full of contempt and weariness, and I hate myself for it. My husband, though, has proved himself a saint. He stays buoyant and kind, matter-of-fact, deals with this terrible situation. Deals with me. Has spent the night, wiping my father's ass. "We're people who love." He told me last night. He never talks like this, my Catholic school juvenile delinquent. That's my half hour.