Goddamn.
I just deleted several paragraphs of not-funny, not-particularly-well-written updates on my friends. Despite what I'm sure are top-notch prayers and good vibes from you all, things aren't well. One's husband is dating, not quite two months after moving out. The other is having a miscarriage of a longed-for pregnancy. I feel sad and helpless and guiltily lucky, but also like the membrane separating my (currently quite good) life from their (currently quite awful) situations is very thin, indeed.
I don't remember feeling like this before. When I was younger and I'd hear about awful things, I would lock right into catastrophic thinking and have horrible fantasies about it happening to me. But at the same time, I also had this deep-down belief that it wouldn't, couldn't happen to me. It helped that I only heard about these kinds of tragedies on TV or in books or second-hand through a friend. At 25, I'd never been to a funeral other than an elderly grandparent. I'd never been struck in anger by a parent or partner. I was healthy. I was loved. I was white and middle-class, too, which couldn't have hurt in terms of sheltering me from some of life's ills.
While my anxious nature always imagined the worst and could whip me into a panic just by reading an installment of Reader's Digest "Drama in Real Life" (which, really, I should have known better), I never really felt fragile. My uneventful life, full of love and stability (and, to be fair, very few risks on my part), plus what was probably some youth-fueled sense of invincibility, combined to make this wall between me and tragedy. I understood intellectually that I couldn't protect myself from Life, I also had faith in that wall to do so. I guess you could call this innocence. Or naivete. Or stupidity. You know, depending on how mean you wanted to be.
I don't have that anymore. Not long after I turned 25, a lot of things happened. In a 15-month period: two co-workers lost children (one, an infant, died of congenital abnormalities, the other was 11 and hung himself), 9/11 happened, my mom was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, a friend's five-year-old daughter who had been in remission with leukemia relapsed and died, and a 4-year-old in the day care center (for kids who were HIV+) died of AIDS.
Well, Jesus. When I see it written out like that, I guess it's no wonder that that's about the point I remember feeling that wall start to crumble. I haven't even mentioned the panic attacks or the bike accident or when I broke my foot. Of course, good things happened in there, too. I got a dog. I got married. I found a day job that changed my life and steered me toward what would become my career. I don't remember that time in my life as being particularly sad or dark. It's just that I can look at that time as when I stopped feeling like "Eek! What if this Bad Stuff happens?!" and more like, "Yes. This stuff is going to happen." Not in an Eeyore-y, doomed way, but more resigned. Less innocent.
I no longer feel like there is a wall between me and tragedy. I feel like there's a soap-bubble membrane and right now I'm on the good side, the side where I can be a good friend to those on the other side that need me. Where I can count my blessings and remember that I'm lucky to have a loving, supportive, faithful husband (even if he gets weirdly proprietary about his washcloths) and a healthy, smart, laughing dancing walking baby (even if he has decided he can go down to one nap a day, parents' needs be damned). But I know that it wouldn't take much for me to fall through to that other side.
I don't mean to sound depressed or passive and resigned. That's not it. But neither is it some carpe diem, live-life-for-the-moment thing, not for me. It's more about the realization that life is brutal and beautiful and you have to have both. So instead you just accept the risks and go forth anyway. Not always boldly, not even always willingly, but because that's just how the game is played. And you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have....no, wait, that's The Facts of Life theme song. My bad.
I guess for me it's just about being wildly, quietly grateful in these moments and doing what I can for people on the other side, knowing that inevitably we will some day switch places.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
A Hot Dog of a Post (by which I mean full of bits and scraps and offal)
First, if I may start on kind of a downer note, I'm hoping that those of you who do such things will send prayers, good vibes, karma, what have you to a couple of friends of mine going through some awful shit right now. I don't feel right sharing their stories, but I'll trust that any positive energy put forth in the universe will find them. I think it has to do with magnets or something.
*Claps hands briskly*
OK, then! What randomness have I jotted down lately? Oh, well, for one thing, today at work I was in the supply room and a co-worker was talking on her cell phone. Apparently the other person was having a hard time hearing her, so she shouted, "ONE!" I think it is a mark of my own maturity that I refrained from making jazz hands and adding, "Singular sensation!" Although I did sing it under my breath all the way back to my desk.
***
Saturday night I went to a bachelorette party, my very first. Is that odd? I don't know how I've reached the ripe old age of 34 without attending one of these, but there you are. Anyway, this party was held at a karaoke place--but not just any old bar, no sirree. This is a place where you rent private karaoke rooms. Have you all heard of this? Am I just old/unhip? Anyway, picture if you will a small room, only slightly larger than your average handicapped bathroom stall, crammed to the gills with ladies of varying degrees of shrillness. Then add a large TV, two microphones, and a whole lotta adult beverages. You put Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" in there and shit is ON. Also, for future reference, the eight-minute cut of "We Are The World" is amusing at first, but after five minutes, you don't care who does a great Cyndi Lauper imitation, you just want to move on. You'll thank me later.
***
If I can ever figure out how to master the technology, I'll break my anonymity vows to post a video of Tankbaby dancing at one of the weddings. Truth be told, about 30% of the cuteness can be credited to the suit. A friend gave it to us: black velour overalls, white button-down, red plaid necktie (just the knot and hangy-downy part attached to an elastic band), black velour jacket with lapels. We added tiny red Chuck Taylors and Tankbaby added the total lack of rhythm. He looooves music, and couldn't be kept off the dance floor. His coordination is such that he can only move in quadrants: he could nod his head or wave his arms or drop his booty or move his feet, but none of them all at the same time. However, rapid succession was achieved, all with an expectant look on his face as he approached non-dancers with his wild drunken lurching as if to say, "Do you not HEAR this?" Sometimes he supplemented his argument by signing, "Music!" frantically, which, being as how it was his own mutation of ASL in a crowd of non-even-not-mutated-ASL-using folks, didn't sway people the way he clearly expected. My poor mother-in-law laughed until she wept, and I think only a little of that was due to the open bar.
***
Oh, and speaking of the weddings, I promised stories. It's growing late, so only one for tonight. No, just one, and then I have to go to bed. And no, you won't be getting me a drink of water later. OK, fine, one drink, but then no more, or I'll have to go potty in the middle of the night.
Where was I?
Right, wedding #2 was outside. In addition to a dance floor under a pavilion and a large dining area, they'd set up a little outdoor living room space with white leather couches and end tables. And on these tables there were various large odd-shaped receptacles filled with candy. I wholly endorse this practice. Anyway, Tank missed his nap due to timing, and while we were waiting for dinner he began to literally fall over in his high chair. I took him out and went down to the living room area, positioning myself near the GIANT BRANDY SNIFTER OF JELLY BEANS so that I could nurse him a bit and let him sleep. MOTH came down later with a plate of food, carefully cut up into easily-stabbable pieces so that I could eat one-handed. As we sat there, listening to a truly awful drunken maid of honor speech (oh, yes, that story is coming), we noticed a woman milling about near where we sat. She had a nasal cannula (that's a thing, right? The teeny tube hooked up to your face when you're on oxygen?) and her oxygen tank casually dragged along behind her. She approached the couch and table across from us and from the large vase on the table, withdrew a handful of...sparklers. Unlit, of course, but still...seemed an unwise choice given the whole flammable element thing. I mean, what do you do with sparklers unless you light them? But I'm pretty sure she's not supposed to be having any open flames near the oxygen. I think I learned that from Grey's Anatomy. Anyway, MOTH and I snickered a little curiously, stifling ourselves when she then ambled over to where we were sitting. She looked down at Tankbaby and murmured, "Beautiful baby" (clearly nothing wrong with her vision), then proceeded to open her small evening clutch and shovel in seven or eight scoopfuls of jelly beans. All casual-like, as if this was completely normal behavior. She then nodded at us and moved off to the nearby cocktail tables, where she proceeded to empty the small dishes of Swedish fish into her purse.
I don't know what she had planned for when she got home that night, but either her pulmonologist or her dentist is going to be very displeased.
*Claps hands briskly*
OK, then! What randomness have I jotted down lately? Oh, well, for one thing, today at work I was in the supply room and a co-worker was talking on her cell phone. Apparently the other person was having a hard time hearing her, so she shouted, "ONE!" I think it is a mark of my own maturity that I refrained from making jazz hands and adding, "Singular sensation!" Although I did sing it under my breath all the way back to my desk.
***
Saturday night I went to a bachelorette party, my very first. Is that odd? I don't know how I've reached the ripe old age of 34 without attending one of these, but there you are. Anyway, this party was held at a karaoke place--but not just any old bar, no sirree. This is a place where you rent private karaoke rooms. Have you all heard of this? Am I just old/unhip? Anyway, picture if you will a small room, only slightly larger than your average handicapped bathroom stall, crammed to the gills with ladies of varying degrees of shrillness. Then add a large TV, two microphones, and a whole lotta adult beverages. You put Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" in there and shit is ON. Also, for future reference, the eight-minute cut of "We Are The World" is amusing at first, but after five minutes, you don't care who does a great Cyndi Lauper imitation, you just want to move on. You'll thank me later.
***
If I can ever figure out how to master the technology, I'll break my anonymity vows to post a video of Tankbaby dancing at one of the weddings. Truth be told, about 30% of the cuteness can be credited to the suit. A friend gave it to us: black velour overalls, white button-down, red plaid necktie (just the knot and hangy-downy part attached to an elastic band), black velour jacket with lapels. We added tiny red Chuck Taylors and Tankbaby added the total lack of rhythm. He looooves music, and couldn't be kept off the dance floor. His coordination is such that he can only move in quadrants: he could nod his head or wave his arms or drop his booty or move his feet, but none of them all at the same time. However, rapid succession was achieved, all with an expectant look on his face as he approached non-dancers with his wild drunken lurching as if to say, "Do you not HEAR this?" Sometimes he supplemented his argument by signing, "Music!" frantically, which, being as how it was his own mutation of ASL in a crowd of non-even-not-mutated-ASL-using folks, didn't sway people the way he clearly expected. My poor mother-in-law laughed until she wept, and I think only a little of that was due to the open bar.
***
Oh, and speaking of the weddings, I promised stories. It's growing late, so only one for tonight. No, just one, and then I have to go to bed. And no, you won't be getting me a drink of water later. OK, fine, one drink, but then no more, or I'll have to go potty in the middle of the night.
Where was I?
Right, wedding #2 was outside. In addition to a dance floor under a pavilion and a large dining area, they'd set up a little outdoor living room space with white leather couches and end tables. And on these tables there were various large odd-shaped receptacles filled with candy. I wholly endorse this practice. Anyway, Tank missed his nap due to timing, and while we were waiting for dinner he began to literally fall over in his high chair. I took him out and went down to the living room area, positioning myself near the GIANT BRANDY SNIFTER OF JELLY BEANS so that I could nurse him a bit and let him sleep. MOTH came down later with a plate of food, carefully cut up into easily-stabbable pieces so that I could eat one-handed. As we sat there, listening to a truly awful drunken maid of honor speech (oh, yes, that story is coming), we noticed a woman milling about near where we sat. She had a nasal cannula (that's a thing, right? The teeny tube hooked up to your face when you're on oxygen?) and her oxygen tank casually dragged along behind her. She approached the couch and table across from us and from the large vase on the table, withdrew a handful of...sparklers. Unlit, of course, but still...seemed an unwise choice given the whole flammable element thing. I mean, what do you do with sparklers unless you light them? But I'm pretty sure she's not supposed to be having any open flames near the oxygen. I think I learned that from Grey's Anatomy. Anyway, MOTH and I snickered a little curiously, stifling ourselves when she then ambled over to where we were sitting. She looked down at Tankbaby and murmured, "Beautiful baby" (clearly nothing wrong with her vision), then proceeded to open her small evening clutch and shovel in seven or eight scoopfuls of jelly beans. All casual-like, as if this was completely normal behavior. She then nodded at us and moved off to the nearby cocktail tables, where she proceeded to empty the small dishes of Swedish fish into her purse.
I don't know what she had planned for when she got home that night, but either her pulmonologist or her dentist is going to be very displeased.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Suck It, Amazing Race!
I survived over 1200 miles with a 15-month-old. I'll take my merit badge now.
Following the advice of my terribly smart commenters, I made small notes about things I wanted to tell you. The first? Is that if you have to drive 1200 miles with a 15-month-old, try to do it while heavily medicated (unless you're driving...then only a light analgesic haze for you). It actually was not too awful, considering that a) even though we left at night, thinking Tankbaby would sleep through the first several hours of the trip, he actually woke about 1:30 AM, freaked about why he was strapped into a chair and, btw, WHERE IS THE BOOB? and b) the entire state of Idaho is currently under construction. What should have been a 12-hour drive took about 20. Go ahead and read that again, those of you with young children, and let me hear your collective "ech." And then! We left Monday night, got into town Tuesday night, had the wedding on Wednesday, and were back on the road Thursday morning, getting back into town Friday night. Poor Tankers. When we got back, he joyously stumbled around the living room, all, "MY TOYS! And a floor! I thought the rest of my life was a carseat, three books, and that old cell phone!" (Of course, it goes without saying that after twenty minutes of sweet, sweet freedom, we bundled him back into the carseat for a trip across town to see the other side of the family, in town for the wedding that happened on Saturday. About 20 miles away.)
Here's the most important thing I learned about traveling across three states in two days with a toddler: make sure the event you drive to is held at the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, and that you get the roast beef. It is, as the kids say, off the hizzook. (The kids still say that, right?) Totally worth the drive. I considered smuggling some out in my purse for a reward after the return trip.
Oh! You guys! There are more stories to tell about the traveling, the in-laws, and the two very different weddings in general, but those must wait, because the baby's awake and--while a year ago I couldn't imagine this day--he won't nurse for long. But! I gotta tell y'all: THE TROLL STORY LIVES!
We were over at MOTH's aunt and uncle's house the night before the second wedding. It was a full house and I was on Tankbaby Recon Duty, making sure he didn't feed the Weight Watcher bars to the dog or pull all the labels off the canned goods. MOTH approached me excitedly and whispered, "Didja hear it?" Apparently a friend of his uncle's had told everyone about her "friend" and the poor census worker that had come to the door and been mistaken for a, well, you know. Everyone exclaimed appropriately and MOTH nearly chewed off his own chin, trying desperately to catch my eye. He didn't know the woman, so he didn't want to correct her in front of everyone, so he just quietly choked all by his lonesome.
OK, must run. Trying to do this more in manageable, if slightly incomplete chunks. Next time: Attending a Wedding Where the Bride is a 20-Something Fashion Student from SoCal, or How To Feel Old and Frumpy in Ten Short Minutes.
Following the advice of my terribly smart commenters, I made small notes about things I wanted to tell you. The first? Is that if you have to drive 1200 miles with a 15-month-old, try to do it while heavily medicated (unless you're driving...then only a light analgesic haze for you). It actually was not too awful, considering that a) even though we left at night, thinking Tankbaby would sleep through the first several hours of the trip, he actually woke about 1:30 AM, freaked about why he was strapped into a chair and, btw, WHERE IS THE BOOB? and b) the entire state of Idaho is currently under construction. What should have been a 12-hour drive took about 20. Go ahead and read that again, those of you with young children, and let me hear your collective "ech." And then! We left Monday night, got into town Tuesday night, had the wedding on Wednesday, and were back on the road Thursday morning, getting back into town Friday night. Poor Tankers. When we got back, he joyously stumbled around the living room, all, "MY TOYS! And a floor! I thought the rest of my life was a carseat, three books, and that old cell phone!" (Of course, it goes without saying that after twenty minutes of sweet, sweet freedom, we bundled him back into the carseat for a trip across town to see the other side of the family, in town for the wedding that happened on Saturday. About 20 miles away.)
Here's the most important thing I learned about traveling across three states in two days with a toddler: make sure the event you drive to is held at the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, and that you get the roast beef. It is, as the kids say, off the hizzook. (The kids still say that, right?) Totally worth the drive. I considered smuggling some out in my purse for a reward after the return trip.
Oh! You guys! There are more stories to tell about the traveling, the in-laws, and the two very different weddings in general, but those must wait, because the baby's awake and--while a year ago I couldn't imagine this day--he won't nurse for long. But! I gotta tell y'all: THE TROLL STORY LIVES!
We were over at MOTH's aunt and uncle's house the night before the second wedding. It was a full house and I was on Tankbaby Recon Duty, making sure he didn't feed the Weight Watcher bars to the dog or pull all the labels off the canned goods. MOTH approached me excitedly and whispered, "Didja hear it?" Apparently a friend of his uncle's had told everyone about her "friend" and the poor census worker that had come to the door and been mistaken for a, well, you know. Everyone exclaimed appropriately and MOTH nearly chewed off his own chin, trying desperately to catch my eye. He didn't know the woman, so he didn't want to correct her in front of everyone, so he just quietly choked all by his lonesome.
OK, must run. Trying to do this more in manageable, if slightly incomplete chunks. Next time: Attending a Wedding Where the Bride is a 20-Something Fashion Student from SoCal, or How To Feel Old and Frumpy in Ten Short Minutes.
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