All Adither

For my dad, three weeks early

You are my one dad. A person I can spend weeks with and not feel a twinge of annoyance. A man I admire and love purely. You make me laugh like a kookaburra whenever I see you, your jokes so awful and funny at the same time. As a kid, I thought you were the smartest person in the world. I still respect your intellect. Theobromine. You were the only one who knew the answer. 

I remember slipping my little girl hand into yours--big and dry and safe. You made me feel valuable and capable and like I could do things in life.  You were gentle and fair when I was young, as you are with my children. They adore you. Grandpa, Grandpa, Grandpa! You give them tractor rides and play games and let them pick your potatoes and pumpkins.

And then this weekend your heart betrayed you. Even typing those words, I have to wipe my face and blow my nose on scratchy coffee shop napkins. You were gardening and when you stood, you felt pain that was your heart gasping for blood and oxygen it wasn't getting.

You and mom were wise to drive to the hospital right away. That night I went to bed, knowing you'd had chest pains and were there in a room hooked to monitors. I hoped you weren't anxious or lonely.

The next morning, mom called at 7:30, waking me out of a light sleep to tell me your chest pains had, indeed, been a full blown heart attack and that it was likely still happening.

Nervous, I called your room, but you were unconscious by then, your arteries being probed and widened. The nurse had moved you ahead of everyone else in line that day to get a heart catheter, and for that we will always be grateful.

I checked flights. Miraculously, I had enough miles to fly to Michigan. But J. was succumbing to a painful virus he'd rather I not name. It was a bad time for me to leave. When I got you on the phone later that afternoon, you were still a little drugged, but your usual whip-smart, coherent self. I missed you. I missed mom and Carrie. I wanted to be in it with you all. J. encouraged me to go, despite how he felt. But you said there was no need. You joked. You reassured me.

I must've refreshed Delta.com twenty times in the course of Sunday afternoon and evening. Should I go? Would I be extraneous there while J. needs me here? What do I do?

Now you're back home, letting out the dog, resting your stunned heart, looking over your fields of seedlings. And I am in Seattle. Thanking the God I don't believe in that you're alive and well.

A bubble has burst, though. A quivering sphere of safety has popped and now we're all out here, vulnerable to the whims of your arteries. Keep them strong. Will them strong. Be alive and well for another decade or two. Maybe three?

I want to snorkel with you in Hawaii next winter, help you arrange your market flowers--assuming mom lets you continue with that :)--, watch you rumble around your acreage with Max and Claire next to you on the John Deere, and sit on the porch with you this summer drinking beer (can you still?) watching the sun dip below the western trees.

My endometrial ablation

I sign in at the pre-op registration desk, then sit down with a pile of books and magazines. One thing I remember about surgery, even something minor, is that there's a lot of waiting. J. is next to me, furiously emailing on his iPhone. He's working remotely today so I can do this.

Near us, two couples meet and hug. One of the women keeps protectively rubbing a palm over her abdomen and I get the feeling there is an egg exchange about to happen.

The second woman is left alone. The donor? Her face twitches like she might cry. Though I try to look away in time, I know she's caught me watching. She seems okay with it, and keeps almost meeting my eyes as I continue to glance her way and she mine.

When a nurse finally comes to fetch me, I tell J. to wait in the hospital lobby where it will be more comfortable for him to work and also where he'll have cell coverage if the kids' school calls.

I go alone to a recliner, where I change into a gown, pajama pants, matching robe, and fuzzy socks. My blood is taken, and then accidentally dripped all over the tile floor.

They give me a pregnancy test. Though I know I'm not pregnant, I wonder what I would do if the test came back positive. Would I pack up my things and ask J. to drive me home, dumbfounded and horrified? Or would I say, It can't be more than a few cells by now, just continue on. The D&C and burning of my uterine lining will take care of that.

I sit there for more than an hour. No one comes to tell me I'm pregnant. I am asked at least ten times if I had anything to eat or drink that day. It is noon and my stomach grumbles angrily. My throat is parched. I tell the nurses I had nothing. I don't mention that I sneaked a few ice chips.

Finally, I am taken down to the real pre-op room, where I'm given another recliner and, finally, an IV to rehydrate me. It is odd, I think, how after a while my thirst is quenched, my throat moistened, even though I drink nothing. A warm blanket is placed atop my legs (the best part about surgery, apart from the drugs). I've left all my belongings in a paper bag upstairs and I'm bored. I'm one of the only people there with no person with whom to quietly chat. It was my choice to come here alone, I remind myself.

I can only watch the others and try not to think about going under soon. That's the part that scares me. The fear of not waking up.

The woman in the chair next to mine is getting a breast biopsy. I know this because I eavesdrop. Thin curtains give the illusion of privacy, but can't really muffle much. She's emotional. Her husband sits next to her flipping through a Kaui guidebook. Mostly he's attentive and low key. I think I could be friends with both of them.

Two chairs to my right is an Asian man and his wife who require the use of a translator. When his doctor comes to talk to him, he says loudly that's he's going to "CARVE A CHANNEL THROUGH YOUR PROSTATE". I don't know what this means, but the man looks frail already. He lies reposed, old.

I am amused by how each anesthesiologist asks to see everyone's teeth. They are looking for chips or loosening or dentures. My own anesthesiologist explains they do this in case they have to use a breathing tube. They need to cover their asses by proving that they didn't chip or knock out any teeth in surgery.

And then he does something strange, my anesthesiologist. He claims to spot a small chip in one of my top, front teeth. "Huh," I say. "No, I don't think so."

He says, "Touch it with your thumb, right there." I do, but then he also, awkwardly, wedges his own thumb into my mouth. He proceeds to tell me I have beautiful teeth. I feel like something slightly askew has happened. I just hope he's smart and can keep me comfortable and alive.

I am led into the OR, where I lie, fully sober, on a bed and look up at the massive lights hanging down from the ceiling. I want my drugs. Even with more warm blankets draped across me, I shiver. I remember this, how cold operating rooms are kept.

After a moment, the anesthesiologist says, "Here comes your martini."

I stop shivering almost instantly. I stare up at the ceiling as the narcotics take effect. It is nice and floaty and I assume I close my eyes.

When I wake up, I feel terrific, like I've just had a long, refreshing nap. Nothing hurts.

The nurse gets me applesauce, juice, and graham crackers. I am eating as J. comes in. Then the cramps start. Mildly at first. Like a bad period. I ask for percocet. I have learned the hard way that when pain comes, you jump on it quickly without waiting for it to get bad. The percocet takes the edge off. I am extremely woozy, yet grateful that I've been able to get this done.

I try to refuse the wheelchair that will take me to the car, but am instructed to sit down anyway. Smart, I think. It would've been a slow walk.

At home the cramps worsen and J. leaves to get the kids and take them to Max's Little League practice. I have two hours of sweet, sweet quiet, during which I post too much on Facebook and nap and press a heating pad to my stomach. Accidentally, I take more pain pills than I should. Nothing bad comes to pass, though.

I wake the next day with barely a twinge of pain. I put away the percoset--a little regretfully--and resume my normal life. Grocery shopping, blog posting, work, writing, phone calls. And if this is all there has been to it, it will have been so worth it.

Division of labor

I've found that browsing the internet for Paris apartments while sipping a glass of red is a lovely way to spend a spring evening.

I did that last night, after Max and Claire had finally quieted, both buried under sheets and quilts, breathing loudly. J. has an especially hard case right now and, while I stretched out on the couch clicking away, he sat at the table with his big, black, legal binders and laptop, getting ready for court today. I felt only a little guilty drinking wine and fantasizing about our upcoming week in France. Research, I told myself. I'm doing essential research.

Lately I've been feeling much like a single parent. J.'s gone before the kids and I get up in the morning. He usually returns home between 6:30 and 7, not long before Max and Claire's bedtime. Often when he is here, he's mentally elsewhere. I know that I don't get to have him right now, while he gives himself to this other project. It's painful. More than painful, it's damaging. He tries hard to be available to us. So, so hard. But when he's wrapped up in a case, he rarely reaches for me. His eyes fix glumly somewhere in the middle distance instead of alighting on me or the kids. And he's more frequently short-tempered. (I think I've written this exact paragraph in a previous blog post. Forgive me.)

He's come right out and asked me not to forward job openings or encourage him to brush up his resumé. The only way I can think of to help, then, is to spend less money so he can retire sooner. This is hard to do while planning a trip to France.

It will be our 10th anniversary voyage, to celebrate a decade of marriage. This is how much J. loves me: he's already been to Paris and doesn't especially want to go again. He'd prefer something more rustic and exotic. (He's spent a good chunk of time in Africa, and loved it. He likes the idea of Indonesia.) But he knows I've dreamed of France for a long time. When we first met, I was taking a French class, broke and with no real plans to travel there, but a desire to be familiar with the language (How stupid I was not to traverse the globe before having children!)

So, now, in 2011, I plan the trip and he makes the money to send us there. I drink the wine and he attends to the binders and laptop. I take care of the kids and he makes appearances at Little League games and to help put them to bed and do multiplication flashcards. It's our division of labor right now.

*

I'm reading Every Last One by Anna Quindlen. My mom brought it to me when she came last month. I love Anna Quindlen novels. I love her politics. I saw her speak at Elliott Bay Bookstore once and loved her. Recently, a site I used to write for, Momicillin, recruited her to live chat with readers about Every Last One. But that's all beside the point.

I'm reading this novel and it's clipping along at a nice pace: enough tension, slightly rocky family issues, exemplary writing (of course), and then this big horrible tragedy happens and, despite skillful foreshadowing, I didn't see the magnitude of such a disaster coming. It's 11:30 at night (after my pleasant time looking for Paris apartments), and I'm wide awake in the dark, a little reading light illuminating my stricken face. I'm so upset by what I've read, I want to curl into J., but he's asleep and not very receptive when he's immersed in a big case anyway.

And holy shit, everything falls away. The small issues with the kids, my petty grievances about J.'s work, fears about never getting my writing published. It's nothing, I think. Look what can happen.

This fiction is so good, so believable, that I am shaken. And I can't lay the book aside and close my eyes because I need some sort of resolution, some sort of peace to come out of this crazy awful event so I can sleep. So I read and read and read, searching and hoping.

And when Max comes in at 6:50 the next morning and climbs into bed and pats my head, asking me to go get him some food, I'm exhausted but also profoundly grateful. He's here. He's boisterous. Claire is slumbering down the hall surrounded by stuffed animals with the book A Barbie Pet Vet next to her bed. J. is on his way to a courthouse in Tacoma and I have a day of bland errands and work in front of me.

What more could I ask for? I think. This division of labor is doable for now. Completely doable.

Flawed

I spend way too much time thinking about physical appearance. Particularly my own.

I'm not beautiful. I wouldn't even call myself pretty (except in the right light, at the right angle, wearing the right thing). But I walk around like I think I am, trying to fool whoever I might.

In truth, I'm very much too tall, too skinny in many places, too puffy in others. As dentists love to tell me, I have a tiny jaw, and sitting atop my giraffe neck, it creates what I think of as The Gumby Effect.

Despite two rhinoplasties (the second to fix the first), my nose is still crooked and one nostril has collapsed. Wrinkles are deepening, and I'm starting to be able to picture what I'll look like as an old woman.

I love clothes. I'm a fiend for a cute top or kick ass jeans. And I get bored easily, so I'm often refreshing my wardrobe. I hate trying things on, though, and seeing what my torso has become, stretched out by monstrously large babies, time, and Skittles.

My hair is dyed and has been since I was sixteen. For a while it was jet black, auburn, sandy brown (the closest to my natural color). But mostly I stay blonde. Because I think that blonde has a softening effect on facial features. And mine are odd.

Since March of last year I've been working for a website all about plastic surgery. It's not a position I would've seeked out, but they found me and, schedule-wise, it's been a great fit. The work is okay. I enjoy the social media aspect of it. I have to admit, though, that looking at so many photos of tummy tucks, breast lifts, and nose jobs gets tiresome. And for a while, it skewed me.

For some time after starting my job, I would see people on the street and mentally scalpel their faces, rearranging features until they looked like the After pictures I saw day in and day out. Just a little tuck here, a small shave there... and yes! Much Improved! I disgusted myself. I've always been one to notice how something or someone looks, but never before had I so flagrantly judged (and, in my head, tried to fix) people's "flaws". It was becoming a terrible habit and I knew it was in large part because of the work I was doing.

Then, in December, I went to see the Picasso exhibit at SAM. I was alone, which afforded me time to absorb and think without having to discuss and analyze. That exhibit did something wonderful for me. Studying the bizarrely beautiful faces and breasts and bodies that Picasso created, gave me back the sense that we're all odd. And oddity is lovely. We don't have to have a perfect nose or smooth foreheads or dainty feet to be a muse. To be worthy of art and life and finding love.

Daily, I still have to look at Before and After shots of women who've had silicone bags shoved in their breasts, but the perfection that the high, round C cup represents doesn't seem like the most important thing now. Or even necessarily desirable.

We're all freaks. We're all flawed. Me especially.

Up and away

I'm going to buy tickets to Paris tonight if it kills me.

For now

Max cannot eat the spaghetti because the sauce has cheese. We spent $75 to go to this damn dinner benefitting Little League and he won't be able to partake. I can make special concessions: cook spaghetti just for him with safe sauce and bring it. But, shit.

My legs are too long and my feet are too cold and Max can't eat this food or that food and I'm sick of rejection, of J. working until he gets migraines, of my friend's husband's health not improving and of the dirt and the paperwork.

But I'm no victim. I have as much fresh water to drink as I want. A soft bed and an iphone. Health. A blue sky for today.

Intentional tourist

Last week J. turned 50. He's not thrilled about the large-ish number. And, truthfully, it's taking some getting used to for me, as well. It seems as though I've just hit the 40s, but my husband has breached that other decade. The next notch up.

So, to help us adjust, my parents watched Max and Claire for a night (they were here on their annual visit to Seattle) and J. and I roadtripped to Cave B, an awesome winery/Inn in Quincy, Washington. I went berserk and scheduled us for an expensive room, massages, and a fancy dinner (bleu cheese potatoes, you all!). We also wine tasted.

Even though I'm a much bigger wine drinker than J., he knows more about wine than I. Hearing him throw around words that weren't "bitey" and "non-bitey" was no small turn on for This American Life loving, bookish, lushy me.

While there, we were surrounded by severely pruned grape vines, beautiful in a craggy way, and acres upon acres of fragrant wild sage. Our room had a view of the Columbia River, and across it, layers of gorgeous brown and orange rock.

It was good to get out of the city and see such a radically different landscape. Even better that it was only three hours away.

While my mom and dad were in town, we did some touristy stuff, including the Theo Chocolate tour and visiting Skagit Valley Tulips, which seems to be something one does with visiting parents, as the last time we went was with J.'s parents when his dad was alive.

A fun but exhausting week.

I'm ready to spend time inside my head again. Which means more angst for you to read about sooner rather than later.