Thursday, March 1, 2012

Blank: Losing the Sense

I sit here. The gas fire burns, but gives off no heat.

As cold and blank as the palette for my senses.

I shiver, the goosebumps crawl up my skin,

settle in around my neck like a noose.

The jazz music plays, jars with the soft

conversations around me.

A large, harsh cough of a smoker.

The clang of dishes behind the counter

not calming, no, unsettling,

waiting for something to happen.

Hot coffee to warm me,

settling behind, between my teeth,

over my tongue. I taste nothing,

a hot wasteland waiting, and waiting.

Futilely.

The coffee cools, leaves only bitterness;

the aroma I should taste never arrives.

I hold onto the light, dimmed but clear,

not dulled to my eyes.

Only frisson on pleasure

coursing through my head.

I am left only the ripples on my skin,

in my eyes, allowing my soul to be

short of barren.

Much here to overwhelm, but I am betrayed.

Forsaken by the senses I was born with,

toned as a fine-tuned instrument,

yet falling flat on the stage of my mind.

(From the exercise we did at Java, Tea, and Scones Writers' Group. The exercise was to describe where we were--Panera Bread--through the eyes of someone who is hurting or just broke up with his/her girlfriend or someone who is very, very happy or *some* strong feeling--without saying that feeling....

Mine was using my lack of ability to smell...and how it dulls the senses.)

The Diagnosis: Allergic to My Life

One of my friends said, "At least you aren't allergic to writing!"

*sigh*

She's right. I'm not. But I am allergic to everything else in my life.

Horses

Dogs

Cats

Grasses

Trees

Molds

The list goes on and on.

The nurse, the discomfort, confusion and pity crossing her kind face, after finishing the diagnostic test, wasn't sure how to answer the desperation, the fear, and, yes, the heartbreak in my voice. I tried to explain, but the words bubbled in my belly, unable to move.

So she fell back to her rote script. "I am here to educate you." Desperately, “You could do nothing and forget we ever did this test.”

But, as I told her, my voice quiet and shaky, “Once you know, you can’t unlearn it.”

My whole life—changed in a moment.

For others, perhaps not devastating. But she told me, “Everything.”

She didn’t understand that she meant my life.

Only once did she break though her script, and say, "You are an educated person. You'll know what to do."

But this time the education was too painful, ripping my sense of superiority. My stomach clenched, my eyes tried to see through the haze.

Betrayed by my own body.

I've diligently, even fanatically, only used non-carcinogenic household cleaners on my family for last 13 years. My family and I are not going to die from cancers caused by carcinogens. I don’t smoke or do drugs. I don’t drink to excess. I try to eat healthily. I stomp my foot and declared it to myself and all who will listen.

Yet, it's not the carcinogens that hurt my body; it's the natural things, the things that I seek out for solace, for peace.

The sand and with it the sea.

The deep forests and the rocks, the trees of life, the birds.

Cheeses, wines—oh, the flora, the exquisite sensual flavors on my tongue.

Old books full of wisdom from people long dead, the musty smell like old perfume just waiting to bless me one more time.

Antiques to never forget the past, bringing a history to everyday.

The animals who fill and fulfill my life. The dogs who share my lap, my chair and my bed.

The cats, aloof and, yet, loving.

The horses. The majesty, kind and peace that no other of Nature's creatures can give. All that goes with them—grains, the delicious aroma of tender grass,

Burying my nose in it, listening to the musical notes of horses feeding.

The Nature that I, yes, worship, has let me down. No, not only forsaken me but become the Enemy. This allergy to *everything* in my life is not just physical, it's fundamental. The essence of my spirituality stems from a oneness with the Nature that God has created, and my body betrays me.

It seems so melodramatic, I know, and the poor nurse didn't understand--and, for once, the words couldn't come. They were trapped behind the wall of fear and betrayal and anger that I couldn't break through. Only sleep and then writing allowed those words and the answers to draw closer, be coaxed out and then freed.

Where do I go from here? Study, seek out medicines, alternatives, advice from friends who care.

But I can’t forget, and the knowledge has changed the colors of my life. Diminished the pleasures, knowing that my body rejects the very things that give me pleasure.

My friend is right, though. I’m not allergic to writing.

It is within the words themselves that Nature will give back the tranquility that’s been taken away. Perhaps it’s the way to, paradoxically, draw closer within elemental world by overcoming the allergy through the search for contentment within the world around me.

Find the calm, allow the words to flow and retrieve the colors of my world.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Alzheimer's: Wins again

Doug and I have had the same cell phone numbers for close to 15 years. Our home number has been the same since we moved in here 11 years ago. The girls' cell numbers haven't changed either.

Gram has them posted on her fridge.

She tried to call us all day yesterday, she says, because her toilet is stopped up.

I asked her what number she dialed. She tried to combine Doug's cell and our home phone. Ironic, the only day this week I didn't call and/or go see her.

:(

Printing up a list of all our phone numbers to put up beside her phone.

One more thing Alzheimer's is taking away.


Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Windows

We always went there first. With everything open and waiting for us, tradition trumped. We’d run and run to get there, racing across the concrete, and rarely did we have to wait in line. Hearts pounding, we’d laugh. For joy. Familiar whoosh and metal bangs as the giant tube’s doors opened, the narrow aisle pushing us closer than comfortable to the floor to ceiling windows. Stuffy, stale air they tried to keep cool, swarmed over us, even that early in the day.

Interminable waiting. Palms wet, rubbing them on our polyester shorts, smiles a little tense. Pretending calm, I leaned back and put my tennis-shoed feet on the guide bar in front of us. Mom and I always joked that God made us short—the better to keep close to the ground. Still, we yearned to go high, to go up. High above the world, the Great Lake, into the sky.

A bump, a closing whoosh and then the announcements. The murmurings from the other people settled, and we listened to the recordings. Mom and I could nearly recite them, at least the beginning. We listened to the history, the statistics as that giant tube turned slowly, spiraling into the humid sun-soaked air. Soaring high over another new roller coaster calling our names. “Can’t wait to ride that!” Forget that Mom shouldn’t ride because of her many back problems; life was too brief to let it stop her.

Bouncing in the seat, looking through the tall windows, inches from nothing, we pointed, planned. Wished already for a longer day. We could see nothing but amusement and delight in the glare off the waves. We couldn’t see the anger, the hasty words, feel the burning tears. The helplessness, the ache that never goes away. The organ's funereal tones hadn't yet drowned any clear thoughts, and my throat didn’t ache from saying, “Thank you. Yes, it was quick. Thank you for coming.” The future beyond our day at the park lay hushed and murky through the windows.

The descent sped by, then the bump. One final whoosh. Our journey to the sky ended, but the laughter, the smell of the coal from the train, the tang from warm blacktop erupted as we fled the giant tube as fast as we'd entered.

One more day together.

“Have a great day here at Ceeddaaarr Point!”

Monday, January 16, 2012

Land of the Free

I've been thinking a great deal about the Presidential candidates and who I will vote for and why. Although my friends see me, primarily, as a Democrat, I am not really. Just liberal in my thoughts.

You see, I believe in "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Since fifth grade and Mr. Klopfenstein made us memorize the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, my mind and my beliefs have been ingrained with these thoughts.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. "

I don't fuss over the language. "Men" means all men and women the same. All men. Regardless of age, sex, sexual orientation, class, etc. None of it matters. All are equal.

It is truly that simple.

We, as those "men", have the *unalienable right* to believe as we want, to live the life that we want, to worship as we want, to be with the one we love as long ***as it harms no one else.***

And, yet, in the United States, many people believe that THEY have the right to choose what "men" can believe, what life men can live, how men can worship and whether men can be with the one they love.

If I choose to be a lesbian, Wiccan, living in the mountains with my lover and my cat, I should be allowed to. I am not hurting anyone else. (No, I'm not a lesbian or Wiccan, and Doug won't go with me to live in the mountains, so I am not doing that either, but I should have the right.)

What I want in a Presidential candidate is someone who won't tell me I can't have an abortion, that I can be with/have a civil union with my lover and that I can worship as I please. I want a Presidential candidate who won't take my money away to give to people who won't work and expect me to give them my money because I may or may not make more than they do. I want a Presidential candidate who, when he/she goes overseas, we, as citizens of the U.S., can be proud to stand behind him/her and say, "He/She is our President!'

I want a Presidential candidate who won't divide our country for political gain. I want a President who remember what this country was founded upon--The Bill of Rights.


  1. Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Petition
  1. Right to keep and bear arms
  1. Conditions for quarters of soldiers
  1. Right of search and seizure regulated
  1. Provisons concerning prosecution
  1. Right to a speedy trial, witnesses, etc.
  1. Right to a trial by jury
  1. Excessive bail, cruel punishment
  1. Rule of construction of Constitution
  1. Rights of the States under Constitution

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/BillOfRights.html

For me, the most important is, by far, the First Amendment. These, Speech, Press, Religion and Petition, have been slowly eroded...I'm scared they will be gone. People being arrested because they want to hear a candidate speak; articles not printed because they may offend someone, not being able to worship because someone, somewhere thinks the belief system it is evil or wrong because it isn't what society says is moral; making it illegal for people to demonstrate or petition the government.

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/13/whos_afraid_of_the_tempest/

Take these away, and this is no longer the Land of the Free. It is the Land of the Oppressed, the downtrodden, not what the Revolutionary War was fought for. Not what our Founding Fathers wanted. They fought to be free from high, unfair taxes, to be free from ridicule and persecution for their beliefs. Many of the Founding Fathers were Unitarian and/or Universalists. They believe in the right to be free to worship the god or gods of their choice--not to be told by the monarch or the government who/what they could worship. They had suffered under the hands of despots and deranged monarchs for centuries--first Catholics and then Protestants, never knowing when their freedoms would be taken from them.

They came to this country to be Free. They called it the Land of the Free.

And now, in 2012, I want a Presidential candidate who will guarantee that we won't lose the freedoms we have fought so hard for. I don't care if he is a Democrat, a Republican. I don't care if he's Mormon, Catholic or a Pagan. I don't care his sexual orientation. None of those things matter to me. What matters to me is that he upholds the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I want the Freedom to Choose, and my choices are limited. If only someone would stand up for our Freedoms, that is the person I would vote for. I am not ready to give up what the Declaration spoke of--"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And part of that pursuit is to have the freedoms our ancestors fought for.


A detailed discussion of my rant above. Ironically, I started this 1/15. This was posted in The Washington Post on 1/16.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Before It's Too Late

My mom died shortly before I turned 21.  I had already moved out, living with my grandparents for many reasons, but mainly because it was closer to the university where I attended.  Mom was my best friend, my confidante.  We shared an obsession to reading, writing, and the theater.  We loved to shop and visit historical places.  We both loved animals and spending time together.  We also had only each other.  My brother was gone to the military and happily married.  My dad, well, he lived his own life, even though my parents were still married.  Mom was the most important person in my life.

But, you see, Mom and I fought bitterly as well.  Hateful, nasty things flew out of our mouths.  Unforgivable things that, somehow, with the mother/daughter love would be forgiven anyway.  The fights started because she disliked my fiance, and I didn't want to see that she was right about him.  He was--and is--a good person.  He could be kind, generous and loving, but he wasn't for me.  He was too quiet, too self-absorbed and too different from me.  In a phrase, he was too much like my father, and Mom didn't want me to marry a man like that.  She was miserable, and she didn't want me to be.  (But that's a story for another day.)

My head and my heart burned with confusion and a desire to be an adult.  I longed to be independent, but I couldn't live on my own; I didn't have the money.  Mom wanted me to listen to her, but she'd taught me to be a strong, independent thinker.  I struggled to figure out when to make my own decisions and when to listen to someone who knew more than I.  

Unfortunately, I didn't listen to the one person I should have.

I fought against her advice.  I ignored her because I felt I needed to do what my fiance told me to do.  I wanted to be the future-wife he and his parents wanted me to be--even if that was not who/what would give me contentment.  I constantly struggled to appease them.  To change my thoughts, my actions to try to make them accept me.

Mom, I knew, would love me unconditionally forever.  She was, after all, my *mom*.  My biggest cheerleader, my guide and the wise woman in my life.

It was all for naught.

Mom had been in the hospital already, and the doctors said she could go home the next day.  Instead she died on that bitterly cold, early December morning.  The Catholic sister who was the chaplain and I were talking about how God wouldn't take a mother from her child when my grandfather came up the interminably long hallway and said, "Your mother is dead."  I lost the ability to feel.  My mind, my heart, my body were numb.  I couldn't breathe.  I wanted to throw up.  Everything had a white cast to it; color didn't exist in my life.

My mom was dead, with no warning, at age 42.  I would turn 21 in just a couple of months.

God had answered my grandmother's long ago prayer, but given no leeway at all.  When I was born, Mom almost died because her kidneys failed, and she went into a coma.  She had the worst case scenario of toxemia and uremic poisoning.  Gram prayed, pleading that He would let her live to see me grown.

He granted that wish.  But He took Gram at her exact words.

Ignoring that the need for a mother doesn't end when a child is grown.

After the funeral, a couple of weeks later, for Christmas, I went to his parents' house for dinner.  My grandparents had fled to Florida, my dad was somewhere with his friends, and I was in limbo.  Living alone in my grandparents' house filled with memories, and numb to it all.

It was late when I left my fiance's parents' house.  His parents and sisters were kind to me, and, yet, I knew, through no fault of anyone's, I would never fit in their family.  I drove home on autopilot.  The clock turned midnight, and I turned into the cemetery where Mom was buried.  She and Dad had picked a place far away from everyone else, near a row of mature oaks, quiet and peaceful.  I got out of my car, bundled against the slight wind, and followed the path of the moonlight.  The snow crackling, crispy under my feet, broke the silence.

The weather had been too cold to put up her tombstone, but the pungent smell of fresh dirt told the story.  Mom was gone.  It didn't matter to me whether it was Heaven or nowhere.  She was gone.  And I had so much left to say.  So much we'd planned on doing.  My wedding--to someone--my children, graduating from college, picking out curtains for my first home.  Calls to her in the middle of the night because my newborn baby wouldn't stop crying.  Laughing in the kitchen making Easter eggs and Christmas cookies.  Seeing her enfold my children in her arms just as she had tenderly held me.

I stood there, numbed to and by the cold.  The only ghosts in that cemetery were the ones pummeling my mind.  I don't know how long I stood there.  In the 21 years since then, I've only been back 5 or 6 times.  She wasn't there.  Then I didn't know where she was.

A few weeks after Christmas, my fiance and I broke up for the last time.  We continued to go out when we needed some company, but the calls dwindled off, and eight months later, I met Doug.

One day, in June, I was driving on an on-ramp and I thought, "I need to call Mom about..." and the numbness, the shield around my heart dissolved. I doubled over and sobbed until the tears dried.  They were the first, but they wouldn't be the last.

Slowly, after the anger faded away, I eased into the ache, and I allowed my mind to think about what had happened.  What I never had the chance to say.  Mom had asked to borrow a copy of our favorite novel.  I told her I would take it to the hospital for her.  I never did.  I never had the opportunity.  Later, I considered taking it to the cemetery and leaving it on her grave.  But, somehow, that seemed so futile...

Today, when I hear people saying ridiculing or decrying their mothers, I fight down the red I see.  I struggle against the words in my throat, "Don't you realize how lucky you are to have her?  Do you know what I would do to have mine here to fight with?"  Sometimes I can't stop myself, and the words come out.  I also know they don't understand.

I didn't.

As my daughters and I fight now, and we do sometimes, I see the fights from my mom's point of view.  They hurt, they keep me awake at night, wondering what to say to make my daughters understand. As proud of them as I am for being strong, I can't help wishing they would understand me.  But just as my mom never stopped loving me, I won't stop loving them.

You see, Doug and I have raised our daughters to be independent, questioning women just as Mom raised me.

I just hope they listen to the two people they can always count on--their dad and their mom.

Before it's too late.




Thursday, January 12, 2012

Battles

Grandpa watches his grandson
swing from the thick grapevine
Hanging from the old oak.
The boy jumps off the hill
a hundred feet high, taut
muscles support his body
brave like the warrior his grandfather
was. His grandson gets down;
Grandpa in turn, reaches for the vine.
He knows he shouldn't fly:
his body will betray him.
His eyes proclaim
the war within, as real as the one
he fought in Germany and Japan.
Honor, truth, glory to be defended.
Unlike on those far shores, Grandpa hesitates,
strokes the coarse vine once more
--with hands scarred, abused and tender--
a last time, like a lover.
Lines around his eyes
belie the soldier’s youth,
alive in his mind,
torn from his body
after seventy years of conflicts.
His weapons lowered,
Grandpa walks away.

Grandpa sits on the basement steps and cheers
as his daughter and grandson play table tennis.
His loved ones cajole him to play:
Show us how good you are.
Hiding a smile, after all his disclaimers,
he plays to win.
He battles against time; his opponents are youth
-- today, at least,
he wins.

(C) Tori Whitacre Wilfred