Put the car in drive, and bounce over the railroad tracks on the way to the elevated freeway that takes you home, and you have a choice: you can either slip the earpiece over your left ear and choose a name out of your phone's address book and speed-dial the corresponding number, or you can slide in the next in a never-ending parade of CDs and sing yourself home.
In the summers, the sun is my companion home; my time-shifted schedule means I am home and hours into my daily dose of home life before the sun ever thinks of greeting the horizon. In winter, though, they're cozy companions before I emerge from the windowless server room, and I am the latecomer to the party.
Solstice.
The shortening of day brings the lengthening chill of night. It's a chill that brings out the flannel blankets and causes the cats to huddle ever closer. I refer to truly cold nights as "two-cat nights," nights in which I know I'll awaken to Tenzing draped over my knees and Edmund snuggled lengthwise against my legs. My closet is not well-insulated. Stepping from the warmth of a two-cat night to the shivery chill that is part and parcel of picking work clothes is my least favorite part of the morning, and it makes my sleepy brain think longingly of summers past, and summers coming.
We mark our lifetimes by milestones: births, deaths, calendars. Part of me still remembers the ache of unfamiliarity the first time I got onto I-565; I looked around and thought, "For better or worse, this is my home" and wondered if it would ever become familiar. In the years since, it has; I can pass by that same stretch of road now and feel the same sort of rightness and orientation that a magnet must feel as it pulls toward north. In those years I've learned the rhythms of this area: the growth and harvest of cotton, the emergence and shedding of leaves, of days growing shorter and colder then gradually lengthening again.
It's a dance that will outlast me.
Tomorrow: Christmas Eve, and a time to reflect. Don't mind me. I'm starting early.
]]>"Jupiter, Florida?" I said to myself. It looked like a real number, not one of the pseudo-numbers that a telemarketing center might use. Still, since I wasn't sure, I decided to let the answering machine grab -
Oh, crap. We did know someone in Jupiter, Florida: Brandon, one of Jeff's Theta Tau brothers. I put down what I was doing and raced to the bedroom, hearing our old, generic message ("Please. Leave. A. Message. After. The. Tone.") play as I did so.
]]>"Jupiter, Florida?" I said to myself. It looked like a real number, not one of the pseudo-numbers that a telemarketing center might use. Still, since I wasn't sure, I decided to let the answering machine grab -
Oh, crap. We did know someone in Jupiter, Florida: Brandon, one of Jeff's Theta Tau brothers. I put down what I was doing and raced to the bedroom, hearing our old, generic message ("Please. Leave. A. Message. After. The. Tone.") play as I did so.
Don't hang up, I thought. Jeff will be highly disgruntled if I don't at least get a message.
I scooped up the phone. "Hey, Brandon!"
"What are you doing to prepare for the hurricane?"
"Huh?" I couldn't even begin to explain the level of confusion I felt at that moment.
"I said, what are you doing to PREPARE for the HURRICANE?" Brandon said, with a bit of impatience that clearly indicated that my humor was obviously sophomoric and that if I continued in the same vein, he would be forced to beat me severely.
I thought frantically. Hurricane? Hurricane? Huh? Oh, wait, isn't Hurricane Jeanne aiming toward Florida? I said, "Um, nothing, hon; we're three hundred and fifty miles inland."
"Very funny." A pause. "Are you crazy?"
"Um, no. I'm not. Really not. And we're really three hundred and fifty miles inland."
"Wait a second. Who did I call?"
"Jeff and Amy."
"Not Jeff and Trisha?"
"Er, no."
"Well, that makes sense." Laughter. "I can see why people in Huntsville, Alabama wouldn't be preparing for a hurricane that's about to hit near Jupiter, Florida."
"No, not really."
The rest of the phone call wasn't nearly so important, nor nearly so memorable, but it makes me want to ask the rest of you: so what are you doing to prepare for the hurricane? Me, I bought tickets to an outdoor music festival this weekend…
It was nice to hear from Brandon, but I don't think Jeff will let him live this down anytime soon.
]]>The celestial switch has been thrown; we woke up one morning this week instinctively burrowed deeper into the covers, cats snuggled closer, trading body heat like cards. Our bodies always seem to know before our minds realize; without thinking we find outselves reaching into the closet not for t-shirts and shorts, but perhaps for a long-sleeved shirt or light sweater.I sat outside, sweater-girl, sandals forsaken for warmer sneakers and a mixed drink dangling delicately from restless fingers.
Excepting Februaries, months are essentially repetitions on the same seven-hundred-hour theme. Many of those hours are spent in activities ranging from the forgettable to the somnolent. Our choices regarding the remaining hours color our impressions about the length of the month.
September, plus the first breaths of October: eight concerts, six lengthy road trips, and an astonishingly fractured sleep schedule. A quick whiffle of finger-counting tells me that I spent more than a full calendar day in my car during September, a number which both startles and amuses. I could complain - and mind you, this sweater-girl most definitely has this month - but the fullness of September's hours was by choice.
I spent a good chunk of the single-digit hours cross-medicating. Caffeine to get me home, an after-arrival celebratory drink to tamp the caffeinated fidgets, and a long talk with a friend to coast me down through the last of the wakeful hours until a sleep that came near dawn.
On my calendar, the days of October lie quiet and uncircled. Jeff's collegiate homecoming. An as-yet nebulous trip to Atlanta to help a friend with a while-you-were-out house-painting job. Birthdays - both mine, and my spouse's.
("You and Jeff have birthdays that are four days apart? That's just weird." - C. "What's weirder is that we still manage to forget to buy each other birthday gifts.")
I make it a policy to try to spend my birthdays in some new, interesting place. See someplace unusual.
This year, it might just be my living room.
]]>It's very difficult to explain to Fang and his brother, Fang, that chewing should be restricted to clearly-demarcated chewing zones. It is especially difficult to make this clear when Fang and Fang are attempting to soothe your annoyance by both trying to stretch out in your lap at the same time. (The brothers Fang, combined, are very nearly thirty pounds' worth of cat, and it is difficult to work around such…abundance.)
After my nearly three-hour bitchfest with Matthew last week, I left my phone plugged up in the guest bedroom so that it could recharge. It was a few days later before I thought of it again, when I was preparing to run some errands. The phone was fully charged, but the hands-free earpiece was gone.
I dug a bit in the blankets and afghans around the bed, and turned up … most … of the earpiece. The earpiece connected to a wire which, in the normal world, would have ended in a little adapter that plugged into the phone. Mine, however, has been forcibly upgraded to the Fang-Approved™ model, which ends in bitten plastic, severed wire, and a completely missing plug.
Still haven't found the plug.
When I found the earpiece I sat on the bed, laughing, for a moment or two. The guest bed is Fang-the-larger's favorite sleeping spot; despite many, many months of potential training, he seems to be blissfully unaware that if he sleeps there during the day, the midafternoon sunbeams will trap him until sundown.
I showed him the stripped end of the earpiece and said, "Did you eat it, Fang?" Fang purred, gave me a kitty smile, stretched - and was promptly caught by the waiting sunbeam. He was asleep within moments.
As I walked out of the room, Fang-the-smaller rubbed up against my legs, dropping none-too-subtle hints that he would prefer to be fed sooner, rather than later. I showed him the chewed-off wire and received a chirrup and a tail-swish in return.
Fang-the-larger's prior history of chewing, plus his wide cat smile of pure innocence when I brandished the victimized cord, pointed to him as the most likely culprit. Neither Overlord is likely to squeal upon the other. I am fully aware that interFang loyalty comes before loyalty to the large two-legged cats.
It's been more than five minutes since the cord was chewed, so they probably don't remember it anyway. Feline Overlords are blessed with a remarkably short memory: a very, very useful attribute in their lives of petty household crimes. ("But I didn't do that! At least, I think I didn't…I wasn't in here then…was I?")
Guess I need to buy a new earpiece. I'll have to hide this one better. I do not want Mssrs. Fang developing a taste for electronic gadgets. I don't mind replacing a cheap hands-free set, but if the chew tally goes above $30, I suspect I'll have to have another 'chat' with the Overlords.
]]>It's more deliberate than that, really. I didn't call home because I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what Mom had to say.
I decided to wait until last night to call. From the last time I talked with Mom, she'd said that the trips back and forth to take radiation treatments were pretty painful on Dad, and exhausted both of them. The first course of radiation ended on Monday, and I thought waiting until the next day to call might mean she'd had a chance to rest up a bit.
]]>It's more deliberate than that, really. I didn't call home because I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what Mom had to say.
I decided to wait until last night to call. From the last time I talked with Mom, she'd said that the trips back and forth to take radiation treatments were pretty painful on Dad, and exhausted both of them. The first course of radiation ended on Monday, and I thought waiting until the next day to call might mean she'd had a chance to rest up a bit.
How do I explain that I knew when I started talking with Mom that something was wrong? I hate to use pseudopsychological babble phrases like "coping strategies," but it's true. Mom and I cope with the impossible in the same way: with upright spines and brittle smiles. Our crying, our emotional release, only comes when no one is around to see the carnage.
How do I explain that I heard that brittle smile in her voice last night?
Her words came out in such a way that she might have been just offering an offhand suggestion—"You know, next week might be a good time for you to come home. Before your Dad starts his next round of radiation."
But her voice didn't match the words she was saying. Her voice said something else entirely.
In return, I tried to ask her the question whose answer I already knew. I think I just needed to hear confirmation from someone else. "Mom, I need to know something. What is—I mean, how long does, well, Dad … have?" I couldn't force the harsh words out: Death. Die. Loss. Lose.
"Maybe six months."
Now flash the next section through your head, and you will have some approximation of my thoughts before I answered my mother:
I already knew it; why did it hurt so much to hear it from her? I've done my research; I've known what to expect. The pancreas is such a deep-tissue organ that early-stage pancreatic cancer is almost impossible to detect. By the time it is detectable, it is generally in the most advanced stages. In Dad's case, by the time it was diagnosed, he had two tumors in his pancreas, several more nodules in his chest cavity, and metastases in his vertebrae.
Stage IV.
Stage IV is pain management, grief management, consolation, and loss. How does one "spin" this, a disease whose mortality rate hovers around 95-98%? How do you nod, accept, cry, dry your eyes, get up, and march on?
The morphine helps with my father's pain, but does not completely ease it. The pain in his vertebrae is intense; he sleeps (fitfully) in the recliner because he cannot lie flat in the bed. He does not have the strength to dress himself or bathe himself. He cannot be left alone.
It's time.
"Mom, we've got a couple of commitments here. Jess is coming up tomorrow, and we've got a meeting we've got to attend on Saturday. The earliest I can leave out is Monday morning. Let me get a few things wrapped up here and I'll be out there on Monday afternoon or evening."
"I think that would be good, hon."
"Let me make some phone calls and get some things arranged. I'll be there on Monday."
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