Fear

Well, the buddhists started playing together again. School's in session, which means the University Buddhist Association's meeting. I can't tell you how much I starve for this contact with other buddhists. I've talked about this before. It's a relatively new feeling. I used to do this mostly alone, in my little basement room, with my Target buddha, my kitchen timer, my health store incense and my little chime bowl that came from the Barnes & Noble Feng Shui kit my father bought me for Christmas ten years ago. Occasionally, I'd drop by Hokukuan,when the kids were at their dad's. But mostly I did it alone.

Now, though, I'm forty. And most of the people I know and work with in Little Dixie are fundamentalist Christians or Catholics--which is all well and good--but I want to sit around occasionally and not be the resident weirdo at least once a week. So here I am, in the basement of the student union with Seido and the other weirdos, Wednesday afternoons, 4:00 to 5:30. Lilly's shrink changed her appointment time to Wednesdays at 4, making it impossible to go any more, though. And then Lilly decided she wanted to play jazz piano, and the teacher's only slot is at 5. So there you have it. No more sangha for Mom.

But it really bothered me. So I had my father pick up Lilly from her shrink and take her to her piano lesson.

Bless him, he didn't question it.

"What do you need to do?" He asked.

"I have to go to the weekly Buddhist Association meeting." I said, matter-of-factly.

"Oh. Well, draw me a map."

I felt guilty at first on the way to Seido's office. It was cold and sunny, the light beginning to get warm and yellow, the snow on the ground reflecting the colors. I decided to cut across the quandrangle. I thought about something I'd read in Shambhala Sun that Chongyam Trungpa Rinpoche had said--that your senses, rather than being distractions, were your friends, because your senses showed you the infinite. It's so true. The slush, the students, the red brick buildings with their slate roofs. How beautiful. I got happy, like a little kid stamping in puddles.

At his office, I knocked on the door. (shave and a haircut) Seido opened it. "No toon can resist it," I said, shaking my head. He looked at me a little perplexed. I have Who Framed Roger Rabbit almost memorized (it was the only video we had in Miami for years and my children probably watched it a thousand times). I'm pretty sure Seido thinks I'm a total idiot.
"I'm here to help you with the cushions."

"What a nice surprise!" He was in high spirits. He looked better, like he'd been eating. And he'd shaved his beard. "How have you been?"

So I told him. 9 years. I've never told the man anything, I realized. Told him all about Lilly, grad school, etc.

"It's the culture." He said, shaking his head. "You've lost her to the culture." He holds forth on this at some length. In some ways, I agree, but you know, young women have been starving themselves since the middle-ages--so this may just be something young and weird. I think we blame a lot on the culture, when it's just sort of the same old wine in new bottles. I mean look at those Roman bastards. And we haven't changed so much. We're really just a bunch of bastards, and we struggle not to be.

We walk over to the union, set the cushions out. There's a beautiful young woman waiting for us there, with a notepad and a digital voice recorder. She has that sort of seamless cheap panted slick look the J-School girls all have. The smile that's used for a purpose. Reptilian. As Lilly says calmly, "Just because I say someone looks like a lizard, doesn't mean they still aren't pretty."

The other person there is Kevin, a faculty member.

"Do you mind if I observe?" She asks Seido.

"Why don't you sit with us?"

She gamely picks a cushion and breathes with us. Seido breaks it off early. During the meditation, someone comes in, stands at the door and comes in very quietly.
It's strange. Someone trying to move around quietly and slowly is more distracting than someone just coming in loudly and quickly. Bam. Plop. Click. It's over. I become convinced, sitting there, not moving, that this is an angry fundamentalist Christian gunman who is going to shoot us all. I become utterly, terrifyingly, and crazily convinced of this. What should I do? Should I just keep sitting? Will that be the ultimate exhibition of form? Maintaining my mudra while I'm shot? Should I turn and look at him? I fall back into the sort of terrifying thought patterns I did when I was 4 and I thought there was a bad person who lived outside my room who could listen to my thoughts. He wouldn't do anything bad to me as long as I pretended not to know about him. So as long as I kept pretending the gunman wasn't there, he wouldn't shoot us. Right? He just kept standing there, a shadow in the doorway.

Seido ended the session early. I turned and looked cautiously around. It was a photographer. I mean, I thought it probably was, since photographers and reporters usually go arm in arm...but...funny....fear. Fear of illusions. But fear feels, real, doesn't it?

That's my 1/2 hour.

Auditions

A long, long time ago, I went to Tanglewood.

I went accidentally.

My friend, Jennifer, played the flute. All she wanted to do was become a floutist. She practiced all the time. She drove two hours to the city twice a week to take lessons with the principal floutist of the symphony. She was technically perfect, but she could never get the feel of it, the soul. This was to become one of the tragedies of her life. I always marveled at it. How she could be so proficient, yet sound so mechanical, when she obviously loved it so passionately? I thought maybe she was sabotaging herself somehow--holding herself back. She just couldn't send her spirit into it--just couldn't connect. The terrible thing was...she knew it. She knew what was missing.

She wanted to go to Tanglewood. She was originally from the East Coast and knew all about it. But she didn't want to go there alone. So she dragged me along to the auditions.

The auditions were in the city--two hours away. And nobody in our state had heard of Tanglewood except us, so we were the only two people there. They were held in an old high school gym. Jenny went first. Then it was my turn. I wasn't really there to get in, so I didn't put very much effort into my violin playing. After I was done, the guy holding the auditions (who turned out to be the director of the camp, Scott Schillin) winced and asked me, "Do you do anything else?"

"I have the lead in Oklahoma..."I told him.

He smiled and launched in to "Surrey with the Fringe on the Top" singing Curly's part. We went through all the songs--played for about 45 minutes. I got into the vocal program. Not because I could sing particularly well, but because he liked me, I think.

It turned out to be a bit of a mistake on his part. I didn't understand that I'd been let in because of my beaming personality, and refused to act grateful. I thought I should have access to the master classes and protested when we were not all allowed to audition. It was a very difficult summer. It was the summer when I came up very hard against the fact that there were other people who were better than I was. That I had limitations. That there was this whole class of beautiful, rare, gifted artists who, no matter how hard I tried, would always be a cut above. I was used to getting all the attention, and it wasn't going to happen here. A lot happened. And it's probably another story.

But last week, Lilly auditioned for the vocal program at Tanglewood...and Lilly can actually sing.
The auditions were in Chicago. We drove up ahead of the snow. My new years resolution is to be 15 minutes early for everything this year--and we arrived at 5 til three. Her auditions (we thought) were at 310. An old army jail had been converted to a music building--the cells whitewashed and carpeted and turned into practice rooms. The place gave me the creeps. Gas stations and jails can almost never be redone. Unhappiness seeped through the cold walls. Bad vibes.

"We thought you weren't coming," the woman at the desk told us. She was knitting a little pair of blue socks. Baby socks? "We rearranged all the other kids."

"But we're early!" I said.

"It's 5 til 3. Your audition's at 3."

"3:10." I corrected her.

"3. It's all right. She can still audition. What will you be singing?"

"Sebben Crudele." Lilly answers, nonplussed. Both she and I had double-checked the audition time.

"And your second piece?"

"Second piece?" echoed Lilly. "I thought we only needed one."

"It says very clearly you need two pieces."

There's another mother. Her daughter has just gone in. This mother is squat, british, with a kind, seamed face. Through the doors I can hear her daughter trilling an aria from Cosi fan Tutti. She sounds amazing.

"Isn't there something else she knows--from choir or church or something--something she could sing a capella?" She asks us.

"Well...I could sing Samba..." Lilly ventures.

"Jazz is unacceptable." The blue sock knitting woman says. "It'll just have to be one. And is your accompanist here?"

We stare at her.

"You don't have an accompanist." She states. Looks at us like we're idiots. Sighs. "Well, I'll ask Phyllis if she can play this." She takes the sheet music and leaves.

She returns. "Phyllis can play this in her sleep. She's played this hundreds of times."

Great, I think. Not only are we late and unprepared, the one song Lilly will be singing, 240 girls have already auditioned with.

Lilly goes into one of the jail cells to warm up. I try to make small talk. Mistake.

"So," I ask. "Is Scott Schillin still the director?"

"I've never heard of Scott Schillin. Phyllis Hoffman has been the director for years and years and years."

"What about Leonard Atherton. He was the director of the vocal program."

"Are you sure? I've never heard of him, either."

Did I actually go there? I wonder. Did I dream this up.

"Did you go there?" the British lady asks me. "What was it like?"

"Well, apparently it's been about 200 years, but it was magic."

"You went on voice?" Blue sock lady asks me.

"Yes."

"You still sing?"

"No. I wasn't very good." I laugh.

"Well, let's hope your daughter's better."

Geez.

Lilly comes out. "I think I'm ready." She's wearing her snow boots. She's wearing a black cable knit cashmere sweater--one of my old ones. There are moth holes in the sleeve, but she refuses to wear anything else. Black tights. Black short skirt. Her auburn hair swings around her sharp little jaw. She's put on 4 pounds since the anorexia thing started. She's a little softer around the corners, but not by much. She doesn't look like a person anymore. She looks like an anime character. All eyes and legs. Oh, Lilly. Why couldn't we have gotten it right? She's always so dead on it in terms of schedules and details, I didn't even think to double check her. Just drove her up to Chicago. Nick's the one I always have to bird dog. Never Lilly. I feel as if I've been punched in the gut, looking at her.

"Break a leg," I tell her.

"oh--should I wear these?" she asks about her muddy boots. I run and fetch her real shoes.

We stayed in Evanston that night. At the Hilton Garden. Went to see Frost/Nixon. Walked arm and arm in the freezing snowy night, the muffled streets. I took her out to eat at a fancy restaurant to celebrate. Got the rack of lamb. She got the acorn squash. But she picked at the creme brulee on my plate and snatched some of the lamb--with her old greedy bad manners. And that hasn't happened in a very long time. So, all in all, in spite of the fact that we spent about $350 we didn't have driving there, eating, and staying in the hotel for a 5 minute audition we proceeded to bomb--I consider it a success.

That's my 1/2 hour.

Reading Lips

Most of my patients can't talk. Some of them can mouth words. They talk to me and talk to me and I can't understand what they're saying. The worst are the people that die. People often wake up right before they die. They catch your hand, look at you for the first time and say something. Their mouths move, but there's no sound. And they need to say it, whatever it is is probably the most important thing they've ever said (Tell Myra I always loved her, even though I married Nancy. All my gold is buried under the McBain Oak, and it's yours, dear Nurse. Who knows?) and it's so absurd. Luck of the draw. They get me. Who can't read lips.
"What?"
"One word at a time. Let me get the word board! Can you point? Hang on! Oh. Oops. Bye."
What an idiot, they probably think, as they lapse back into darkness. Of all the people to get stuck with. And I'm not even going to get to live to fill out the Press Ganey on that one! Darn. Oh, there's the light!
No, I don't know what they think or say, and it's just awful. We are in such isolation, so dependent on externals. Wiz, of course, can always understand what they're saying. In detail. "No, I don't think Oprah's on right now. It's a Sunday. You've been unconscious for about 2 days. " he'll reply. "Your elbow itches? I'll get that for you. Your cast is twisted."
But yesterday, I was taking care of this woman I'd taken care of several months before. She was in a car wreck, then sent to a rehab facility, then returned to us septic, in terrible condition. Her hair matted and dirty--with mold in it, her trach ties reeking and green, yeast under her breasts, pressure ulcers under her braces, starving. Terrible. We were horrified. We had gotten her in such good shape--what had they done? I felt I'd been punched in the stomach when she came in. I took everything off, drenched it in hydrogen peroxide (hydrogen peroxide can solve almost everything--and it's only 80 cents!) She's doing better now, after a week. Most of her hair has fallen out, but we combed it and cut it and put it in little braids on top of her head. Lavished her with care. Sometimes, putting someone right is so satisfying. She wasn't septic, just neglected and starving. Wiz taught me that. I came in to nursing contemptuous of the little things. I liked things that made me think--I liked out diagnosing the doctors. I still like that, but the other stuff is just as important. Maybe more so. People give Wiz a lot of crap. I remember my preceptor saying, after Wiz had made a comment about our patient's fingernails, still dirty after a week in the unit, that if he liked all that nurse tech stuff, he could just do that--save the hassle of being a clinical supervisor. As if it was beneath us.
So anyways, I'm fussing over my patient. She was having a lot of gas. We'd had one ostomy bag explode, and I was burping her new one. She mouths something, and--it was the strangest feeling--I heard her words in my tummy--silent but there--like my own thoughts, but located in a different place in my body--she says, I don't think I can take this any more. And without thinking, I respond. "This is all part of the process, Gretel. You've been starving. Your gut is waking up."
They were so mean to me there. Will I have to go back?
"No. You don't have to go back."
It was the strangest thing.
I remember when Spanish finally clicked for me. I had really been trying to learn Spanish, since everyone speaks it in Miami, with very little success. I listened to Spanish radio all the time and I was driving home from work, listening to Radio Ritmo! and an advertisement came on. I never understood the ads, but all the sudden, I found myself musing "That's a really good price on pillows! And we need new towels." It was an ad for Bed, Bath & Beyond and I'd understood it without even realizing it. Language is only one part of communication, I think. Listening is getting your ego, your overactive "I'll figure this out!" part of you out the way and being present with where you are. Letting go of your own story.
It's a zen task, I think. You have to give over to the other person to really understand what they're saying.
Life can be full of awakenings, can't it?
That's my 1/2 hour.

How Not to Eat Dinner

I have more than a cold. I have pneumonia.

It finally sort of let up yesterday, but I still have a fever. I've been out of commission for a good six days at least. Amazing. I haven't been this sick in years.

I feel a little better today, but still as if I've been hit by the truck. My breath has this dry raspy feeling, this heaviness. I can't taste anything very well or smell, either. I keep forgetting things.

I've spent the whole week with doctors.

Lilly's doctor on Monday. She lost weight. I argued with the doctor about it. The number she had was different than the number on the scale. I didn't want to get the nurse in trouble, but it had been written down wrong. Still and all, even though the number was wrong, Lilly had still lost weight.

I don't like Lilly's doctor.

In the office, Lilly confessed that she'd been lying to me, and she hadn't been eating what she said she had. I felt stomped. So much for the Gilmore girls.

I feel like these people are trying to drive a wedge between Lilly and me.

"Have you been eating?" They ask her.

"Not always." Lilly tells her, not looking at me.

I'm exhausted. The pneumonia, school, the job, Lilly, the boyfriend, Nick into college. He got into the state university, not a sure thing, given his GPA. He's not really excited about staying in town, but, oh, well!

Lilly and I met with the therapist that afternoon.

"Have you been fighting about food?" She asked us.

We've only had one fight about food, but it was a doozy. "No," Lilly and I start to say, then "well..."

Tell me about it, the therapist says in her gentle voice.

Lilly begins: "Well, I was making myself dinner, because Mom was sick, and I was taking too long, so Mom thought I wasn't doing it and she got mad. But I wasn't trying to keep from eating dinner."

"So your mom misunderstood?"

"Yeah."

"Is that what happened, Mom?" the therapist asks me.

Here's what happened.

At 6 pm, I was flat on the couch. Fever, coughing up a lung, etc. "You need to get yourself dinner," I told Lilly.

The refrigerator is full of food. It was Thanksgiving, after all. We have 1/2 a turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, vegetables, squash soup...dinner is not an issue. Cooked. Ready to heat up and go.

"I don't want any of this,"Lilly declares. "I want to have that egg and tuna salad Amanda makes." She calls Amanda. Amanda isn't there, so she leaves a message.

"Amanda, I'm getting ready to eat dinner and I want to make your egg and tuna salad. Could you call me back with the recipe, please?"

1/2 hour later. The phone rings. It's Amanda. They talk for awhile. Around 7, Lilly calls out, "Mom, do we have relish?" A list of other ingredients follows. Tartar sauce. Mustard powder.
"Look in the fridge," I tell her. I highly doubt we have tartar sauce.
"Mom, are you too sick to go to the grocery store."
Is she kidding? I'm too sick to walk to the bathroom. She asks her brother.
"No," Nick says, not taking his eyes off his video game. "I'm not taking you to the store for relish."
"But the dinner won't be any good without relish."
She decides she can do it without relish. I hear the sound of water being brought to a boil.
She keeps taking to Amanda. An hour goes by.
"Lilly," I shout out hoarsely, "have you made your sandwich?"
I get up and stagger in to the kitchen. "What's this, Lilly? Why is the egg still boiling?"
She puts her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "The other egg wasn't the right consistency. I had to do it again."
"How long has this egg been boiling?" I croak.
"Not long enough. Mom, I'm on the phone."
Another 15 minutes goes by. The egg is still boiling merrily.
"Lilly, you need to make yourself dinner."
"I am, Mom," she snarls.
"Ok. Tone. Off the phone."
"You've got to be kidding."
"Now.'
She rolls her eyes. "Sorry, Amanda. My mom wants me to get off the phone."
2 hours and 37 minutes after I first told Lilly to get herself something to eat, Lilly has finally managed to prepare herself an egg and tuna salad sandwich. Then I have to nag her about the fruit.
"I don't have to eat a piece of fruit at dinner!" she tells me. We've had the same diet for 2 weeks.
Mental illness is so fucking fun.
"You're the mom," the therapist says. "You can tell her when she needs to eat."
"I was going to eat." Lilly says, sulkily.
"I know that." I say.
Duh. 2 and a half hours of Lilly not eating.
Her father is this way, too. "I'm doing it, " he'll maintain--whatever it is you ask him to do. And then he'll delay and delay and delay--creating more and more and more rules about how to do it and when to do it. Preparing to prepare to prepare. It's psychotic. "Well, for organizational purposes, I want all the checks I write for the kids to end in '2', so I couldn't send the orthodontist money until the new checks arrived--and we'd switched banks." That sort of thing. The way to avoid having mentallly ill children is not to marry anyone mentally ill, I've decided. But the mentally ill are usually so charming and good in bed! So what do you do?
Oh, well. Too late now. I guess I'm stuck with her.
That's my 1/2 hour.

Home Sick

Okay.

What gives? I'm still sick.

I got a little better by last Monday, had a pretty good Tuesday, started feeling bad again Wednesday, floated through Thursday, woke up Friday, thought "Oh, no, I'm still sick! I can't call in again." Went to work. Got sent home by Wiz at 1500.

"You're going home at 1500." He tells me.

"I don't need to. My voice sounds a lot worse than I feel. It's just laryngitis."

"The float is coming at 1500. I'll be in MRI. Give report and go."

It is good to have someone who knows you well. I really needed to go home. I felt like hell. But I would never have requested to go home. The only way to get me out of there was to arrange for my replacement and pack me up and out.

I went home. Lilly wanted to go to a movie. I thought, "what's the harm? I'm on call, officially, not sick." So we went to see Happy Go Lucky. Lilly liked it a lot, but I didn't. For some reason, I walked out sad. I thought the driving instructor was way too disturbing. It's funny, because I've had almost the same exchange with someone in my life. Angry, screaming, offended by my good humor. I've had the same strange conversations with street people.

I had so much fun being YOUNG ME, I am always surprised at how much I do not want Lilly to be anything at all like YOUNG ME. "You know," I tell Lilly, "after she saw him stalking her apartment, she should never have gone in the car with him after that."
"I know, Mom."
"And you know, you must never get some place lonely with a homeless person, like she does. Never."
"I know, Mom."
All those walks at 3am on Mary Street in Coconut Grove or on the South Side of Chicago, or under bridges, or through steam tunnels, deserted churches, the lovely mystic wild lonely parts of cities. Singing sea shanties at the top of my lungs.
But maybe, by being this careful, I've starved Lilly, somehow. Maybe she needs to get wild to get a little fatter?
What was great about the movie is that it really reinforced for both of us what we already knew, that we create our own reality. Here's Lilly, starving herself in the midst of plenty--what sort of artificial reality is that? The world is really what you make it. It can be a trap, filled with rules and games, or a playground. I mean, for the average, middle class person living in a country not being plagued by war or famine. I.e. For us.

Here's my secret strange worry. Have you ever read any of the books by Carlos Castaneda? There's this teaching by Don Juan that humans are these egg-shaped energy fields, but that the people who have had children have a hole in the middle. Carlos goes back, reconnects with his daughter, and steals his energy back.

But I always wonder--how could you do that to your kid? And sometimes I wonder if I've accidentally done that to mine. I mean, I look so young and I have so much energy (well, not today) and the music and the writing--maybe I'm not supposed to have this much? Maybe Lilly is starving herself because I've somehow, psychically taken something essential from her?

That's my 1/2 hour

An Exemplary Day

I'm sick. My sinuses are completely full and I have a fever. I was at work til 2130 last night. My head feels like a nasty magic trick, like it's bigger on the inside than outside. I look in the mirror, and the swelling has actually filled in a crease or two, my eyes are all puffy. How can those two little ethmoid sinuses filling up make you feel like nothing will ever be okay again?

On top of that, it's cold. Freezing. And I hate the cold. I had to wear long underwear beneath my scrubs.

My parents are going nuts. They are showing up at the house at early in the morning and late at night, and leaving up to ten messages a day on both phones. Nothing messages, but full of bile. "Did you know that Lilly is going to a party at Diddle's? Did you know that?" My mother says, in one. They both leave long messages that take up the entire message space. If a guy was doing that to you, you'd get a restraining order. The subtext is "your kids suck and so do you." I can't describe to you how unpleasant and really mean spirited my mother is. I try to tell people about it, and they're kind of dismissive. Then they meet her and they understand. She's told Lilly that she's evil and has no heart and will never marry because boys will sense that. She told me the same thing. She once accused me (at 13) of having "something going on" with my father. She takes every experience and emotion you relate to her and coats it with grime. Talking to her is like "eating a dirt sandwich. You want to rinse your mouth and heart out afterwards.

"We never talk," she complains.

That's right!

So, I have a terrible day yesterday. Lilly lies about breakfast and I catch her. So I have to go to her school and make sure she eats her snack, which is humiliating for both of us. I was called off in the morning, but get called in by the rude staffing clerk who has a way of treating nurses as if we're call girls. At work yesterday. I have a patient covered with gorgeous tattoos of skulls and demons and pentacles with a lot of skull fractures and asked the RT, who's just this doofus, to help me bring him up in bed, and he slams his head into the headboard. In front of the family.

The fiance, who's already unfriendly because a pastor walked in unannounced and "why didn't I know about it?" goes screaming to the hospitality people, my manager, the house mom, and my supervisor.

Fortunately, as my manager tells me, when I go in to tell her about the incident, "she thinks your name is Julie."

And it wasn't my fault. It was that horrible RT's fault.

Then I get a trauma, who's just a mess. And takes up all my time and energy for the rest of the afternoon.

"Exemplary day." Wiz says to me at the end of the shift. "You had an exemplary day."

"It didn't feel that way."

"That's just your ego talking. Fucking you. Brain and body. The big fight" He says, nodding cryptically.

On my way out the car, my phone rings. The hospital is under construction, so we have to park far away, about a 20 minute walk. There's a shuttle, but it doesn't run at night and it's always slow. I have to trudge out late, in the dark, past the dead unblinking black eyes of the new half-constructed structures, the chain link fences, the piles of building materials, pipes, bricks, gravel. The phone rings, and pick it up, and it's my mother. Yellling at me about Lillly. "Why didn't you tell us she was going to a party?"
"Because she doesn't need your help getting there or getting home with it."
"Did you know she's going to a movie too? Did you know that?"
I'm climbing up a gravel incline to get to the level of the lot where my car is. Since I'm angry at my mother and not watching where I'm going, I slip and fall, scraping my knees right through my layers and twisting my finger.
"God damn it," I yell into the phone, losing my cool. "Quit calling me. Quit leaving messages over every god damn thing. Quit showing up at 6 am. Just stop it. I'm not talking to you. I don't have to listen to this." I hung up. Reached the saab, all by itself except for an SUV with steamed windows and its motor running about 4 spaces down.

I throw my phone and my coffee cup and purse into the back seat of the car. There's a ticket on the car.

A ticket! In this freezing lot they charge me to park in--a half mile away from the hospital in a construction lot. And the fucking powers that be had the gall to give me a ticket. Some stupid workstudy officious little college student wandering around with his pad. What's happened to all the young people, man? Why have they all turned into such nazis? What have we done wrong?

I kick the car. Then I apologize to it. Not Elka's fault.

A window rolls down on the SUV. Santeria by Sublime, blares out. A young blonde woman sticks her head out.

"Dude." She says, "you look like you are having a bad night. Want to smoke a bowl with us?" Her friend, dark haired, leans over. Both are smiling, pretty long haired girls. Girls like I was. I would have done that, at that age.

I walk over to the car.

"Come one," they urge. "Climb in. It's good shit."

My bad mood disappates. I shake my head. Smile. "No, thanks, though. There's no way I can sit in the parking lot where I work getting baked. With the kind of day I've had, I'll just bring the murphy karma right in on you."

"Yeah, dude," the blonde girl says, nodding her head. "I get you. Well, have a good night! Feel better."

And I don't. But I do, too.

That's my 1/2 hour.

Anorexia Nervosa

In big block letters, on Lilly's lab requisitions, the ones we had to take from the Dr's office to the lab. Dx: ANOREXIA NERVOSA

I mentioned before that Lilly's been losing a lot of weight. We went to the eating disorder specialist yesterday.

There are no magazines in the waiting room. Only that wretched upstart, Paloma Life, which is meant to be a social magazine (about Paloma!) and mostly features the stretched, chicken-skinned faces of doctors wives standing next to each other in pic after pic. There are also stacks and stacks of Neurology Today, incongruously. I have no idea why they have them. I'm a little frustrated by this, until I think, Oh, yeah, it's an eating disorder specialist. Not good to have pics of skinny models and celebs lying around.

They give me a "why you're here" sheet to fill out, which I hand immediately to Lilly. She checks off "Eating disorder/weight loss" without hesitation and hands it back to me. We don't talk. She stares right ahead. Her eyes are so huge. They look like agates.

They take us back. Get a blind weight on Lilly. 111.7 pounds. "And how are you related?" The nurse asks me, "friend? Sister?"

"Mom!" Lilly says.

"You look so young!" The nurse says, then leaves.

"We're so sick," Lilly says, after the door closes. "If we were really psycho, we'd be like, 'yay! Lilly, you've made it! You're finally skinny enough to have to go to the hospital! You go girl! And my mom looks like a teenager! Screw this psychological health shit. We win! We win!"
We start giggling, which confuses the medical student sent to do Lilly's intake.

The student is good. Slight. Indian. Mature and respectful. We like her. The doctor knocks on the door in the middle of the interview. "I'm interrupting. I'm taking over," she says, and sits down.

"She was doing really well," I offer.

"Yes, but this is very serious. I was just reviewing her chart."

Well, duh. That's why we're here.

"So, Lilly," she begins. "Why do you think you're here?"

"Well," Lilly says, and I can tell she's going into her beautiful mature interview mode. "I think I need to establish a better balance between eating and activity."

Lilly should become a campaign manager. She has spin down.

"Do you want me to leave?" I ask.

"Do you want your mom to leave?" The doctor asks.

"No. I won't tell you anything I don't tell my mom."

The interview unfolds. Lilly, for the most part, has a handle on the problem, but it's interesting to see the blind spots. For example, Lilly tells the doctor that she eats all her food. Which she never does. Ever. I interrupt to point this out.

"Yes I do."

"What about last night?"

"I ate all my pasta last night."

"No you didn't, remember? We were going to band practice and you got up to look for a CD, and then we were late, and you only ate a mouthful and threw the rest away."

"I ate it when you weren't looking."

"I don't think so..."

The doctor interrupts. "You need to trust yourself on this one, Mom."

"Ok," Lilly shrugs. "maybe I forgot."

Lilly's heart rate is 55. "she's a runner..." I offer. "I'm a runner, too."The doctor has Lilly lie down. "I'm going to leave the room. Let you rest. If your heart rate after resting a bit is below 50, I'm going to have to admit you."

So Lilly lies down. I sit next to her holding her hand. We talk quietly. Mostly jokes. I look at Lilly, and suddenly see her. I see how terrible she really looks. Skeletal.

"So this is a big deal?" Lilly says..

"Yeah."

The doctor comes back. Heart rate is 50.

"Ok, I'm not hospitalizing you. But if you haven't gained weight by next week, I am. "

We meet with a dietitian then, get labs drawn. Lilly takes the sheet, plans out all her meals for the next 4 days on a grid. Then makes a shopping list.

That's my 1/2 hour.