All Adither

Escape

As I trudged from my house to the bus stop Friday afternoon, I thought, If you saw a woman walking down a suburban road pulling a suitcase behind her, would you assume the worst? I wasn’t running away, though, so much as taking a two-night break.

Early as usual, I waited for the Metro. Rain pattered the top of my umbrella like static. I could see the Sound from where I stood. I felt silly there, on that patch of grass in the middle of nowhere. But I liked it too. The damp air, fresh and salty. The beginning of a small adventure.

I took the bus to the train to my friend Stacy’s Honda Civic and we roamed Portland. Pork tenderloin, goat cheese, scones, red velvet cake, thick coffee, low, gray skies, more rain, little shops. Soft cats, impossibly supple and comforting. A big, sweet, black dog, drugged, recovering from surgery.

I found my parents, who had come into town for a wedding. Their presence was part of the reason I picked that particular weekend to visit. We met at the Farmer’s Market, sprawling and lovely and misty with flowers and nuts and vegetables. I bought 20 dollars worth of morel mushrooms. I remember hunting them as a kid in Michigan.

I’ve hardly spent time with my mom and dad in the last seven years that didn't involve Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat, that had nothing to do with soothing crying babies, discipline, food prep, and constant entertaining. It was nice. More than nice. It was comfortable and lively. I didn’t want Saturday to end.

And Stacy. Sweet Stacy, who drove me over the bridges a million times without complaint. She’s one of the easiest people I know. With the barest refrigerator. We can talk forever. Just not about cooking. Which I didn’t want to discuss anyway.

On the way home I wrote, wrote, wrote. A man with yellow nails and yellow teeth and a greasy smell sat next to me. He was friendly. But I didn't much want to talk.

Home now. Games of dominoes, which I keep losing. Morels waiting. Squirming happy kids. Splitting a bag of chocolate chip/sea salt cookies with J.

Seattle, even darker and rainier than Portland had been.

Home.

Five dollars

  

One day last week I gave a panhandler five bucks. Something I almost never do. She was standing at an intersection in a Seattle neighborhood called Greenwood. Kitty Cat and I, having just spent $60 on birthday presents at a nearby toy store, drove past her. I couldn't catch all of what her sign said, something about "being honest" and having "two girls". I didn't care, frankly, what she'd written.

It was her face that got me. She might've been an amazingly good actress, possibly overplaying a little, but her face. Her face was crumpled. Her eyes not downcast, but sad and shocked. If it's possible for a person to look nauseated, she did.

One hand on the wheel, my other started digging through my purse. But we were two lanes away and I still wasn't sure. When our red light changed to green and I drove off, I kept looking at the woman in the rearview mirror.

I swerved right and eased us into a driveway.

"Did we take a wrong turn?" Kitty Cat asked, pronouncing it "tu-uhn."

"No," I said apologetically. "I'm going back to give that woman some money?"

"Why?"

"Because she looks like she needs it."

A lot of people look like they need it. But, her face.

When I reached the woman, I pulled up along the sidewalk, my tire hitting the curb. I was tempted to make a joke about it, but felt so ridiculous in my huge, sturdy car that I could not. Instead I held the five-dollar-bill out the window.

She jogged over to me and took it. "God bless you," she said. And, in that moment, my heart sunk. I felt like I'd been duped, though I can't exactly say why. Her husky smoker's voice? The life-hard-lived lines carved deeply into her cheeks (though those could come from misfortune as easily as decades of partying)? Whatever the reason, I drove home, muttering, "I don't know. I don't know if I did the right thing."

But in the end, it's only five dollars. An americano and a muffin. If there's even a possibility those five dollars bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter for two girls and a mom, I'm okay with it.

A girl thing

One of the benefits of being a blogger, even a lesser known blogger, is that you get invited to cool parties. Normally, when someone or some entity invites you to one of their cool parties, they expect, or at least hope, you'll blog about it.

Normally I'm able to skirt the issue by posting an event on Savvy Source, where I put in a handful of hours a week, or by tweeting it, etc. I hate to use this space, this white column between the yellow and green columns on All Adither, for anything remotely commercial. It's all my creative ramblings, my photos, and I want to keep it that way.

But last Monday night, some nifty women from theYellowUmbrella.org, came to Seattle, threw a small bash with food, drinks, cupcakes, musician Christine Baze and eye palette giveaways by Debra Macki (smart, because I don't know any woman, besides maybe my sister, who can resist a cute eye palette). They hoped we would help them spread the word about cervical cancer prevention. I couldn't say no.

I've never had cervical cancer, no one in my family has had cervical cancer. But I do know what it feels like to be told you've had an irregular pap and to have to undergo a cervical biopsy, which HURTS like a mother fucker (and I still say this after having two kids). I can sort of, in my worst nightmares, imagine the crushing panic of being told you do, indeed, have cancer. That's what happened to Baze, at the age of 31. She's a gregarious, cool, stunningly talented singer who isn't afraid to get out there and talk about her chemo, radiation, loss of fertility, and her cervix if it'll convince other women to get regular paps and tests for HPV (which can cause cervical cancer).

So, as a tiny-time blogger, that's my message today. Get tested for HPV. Go to your gyno once a year (without fail, ladies) and convince other women in your life to do the same.

And if you comment on this post by Saturday at 10pm Pacific Daylight Savings Time, I'll choose one of you at random to receive a free Debra Macki eye palette.

That is all.

Charmed

I get to be her mom...

and his too

Lucky, lucky me.  

Scarlet

She's yelling in the night. I stumble from bed, barely conscious. I had so hoped for a healthy stretch of sleep after my long (albeit self-imposedly long) weekend.

When I get to her room, she is sitting, saying that she threw up. I look and there it is, spread across her pillow. I feel terrible for her. I had turned off the monitor earlier in the evening and forgotten to click it on again. She'd been calling, she said, for a long time.

Her cheeks are violently red. She's the most composed little patient. This has always been her way. I change her pillow, get her a bucket, a cup of water. She is fiery hot, but amicable.

I sleep in her room, on a lumpy futon. Several times she wakes and asks for me, not sure if I'm really under the tousled blankets. No more vomit though. Thank God.

When I get up in the morning, not quite rested, J. is already gone. He has a filing due and will be away until midnight or so. Great, I think. I feel like I'm being punished for taking a chunk of the weekend off. 

Kitty Cat and I manage to get Fruit Bat to school.

And then we come back and collapse onto my bed. She watches cartoons while I meet deadlines on the laptop. I find I'm enjoying it. A quiet day fetching food and drinks, taking her temperature, doling out Tylenol. Her cheeks are still crimson. While she naps, I kiss them. She wants me close. I want to be close. We huddle that way until Fruit Bat gets a ride home.

He is delightful. Empathetic. Checking on his sister. He and I actually get a little time alone while she rests. We eat dinner across the table from each other, just he and I.

In the not so distant past, the thought of a day stuck at home with a feverish child while J. worked worked worked would've sent me into paroxysms of anxiety. I would've wrung my hands, ground my teeth. I'm a little nervous about what tonight will hold, afraid to hope for a long stretch of sleep. But now I have perspective, older children, and it is better. Much better than it was.

The morning after

My friend, Georgia, pulled into in Seattle this weekend as part of her No Book Tour. She's a fellow blogger, yes. But comparing her wildly popular spot on the internet, i am bossy, with All Adither is like contrasting a gazelle and a banana slug.

 

Still, she cleared a whole day for me. A day in which I showed her Fremont, Lake Union house boats, Ballard Ave., Pioneer Square (and how sucky it is to be caught in Mariner's traffic). A day in which we gulped coffee, roamed around, stopped for more coffee, bought skirts, ate and talked and talked and talked.

 
At one point we wandered into a second hand shop to browse. We found a basket of black and white photos. Some with ballpoint captions scrawled across the back, many simply naked, unidentifiable. And we both fell somber, sifting half-heartedly through the snapshots. Through moments that had been important enough to capture on film, but that had, ultimately, become vintage kitsch.

Later we saw an old man with grocery bags looped over the handles of his wheeled walker as he tried to board a Metro bus. That sort of trumped the photo basket. But the photos stuck with me nonetheless.

It was a big day. One that gave me a good-conversation-rich-food-fantastic-sludgy-coffee-poignant-moment hangover. And now I am tired. Very, very tired.