In the Day

My world has been rocked so severely this summer that I badly want the emotional space to absorb and deal with crises in other people's lives. Things are going on in my extended family's lives that need a certain amount of what's left of my heart, and my heart needs to rebuild by being there for them and by being here for myself.

To whit, this is Day Six of a clean abstinence that pretty much drifted down on me in a meeting. Something about having acquaintances console me and stroke my arms carried that ineffable grace we all need to take whatever the first step toward healing is.

My crisis upon arriving back from Arizona is abating. I know my manuscript will be accepted; Henry has departed for the suburbs and is beyond my clutching grief; my prescription company has finally gotten back in touch with me; there is a modest amount of income coming in from dogs and from coaching writers, a gig I find I really like. I'm a tough and honest judge of writing, but I'm good at it.

My loose ends seem still to cluster around the book, however. When will the legal department vett it so that the second payment can be made? Will the woman who participated in the book sign the necessary waivers? How in the world can we make a January pub date when we're already so behind? Should we move it to June or the following year?

My mother is such a moving target of good, lucid, humorous spells, followed by bratty breakdowns, followed by gasping, gray-faced immobility and incoherence, that I can't say much more except that my parents will be moving back to Montana in September. This, of course, has consequences for me. I'm not looking forward to regular visits to the ghosts of my home town. It's twice the expense of flying to Phoenix. There is one Very Very Important Person in Arizona who I'll know longer see every so often. And all of this has been coming to a head in the last two weeks, with about three or four weeks to go -- a time period in which I must make some money and will be away for eight days in Czech-fucking-Republic. I just accepted a boarding job that will end with a last walk just before I go home and pick up my bags and leave for JFK. Last night, in sorting out the dates, it all became real to me.

So add a dose of extremely useless guilt that I'm not on the spot to help with this move.

I have serene moments and once-a-day or so meltdowns. Today I will write or call a good friend of my parents' who is one of the heads of the "Alternative Catholic Community" in Missoula to ask him to perform Last Rites for Mom. My mom's involvement in forming the ACC is how she got ex-communicated. I call it "Our Lady of Off-Off Broadway". Suddenly I find their inclusiveness ("Our Father and Mother...") not quite as hilarious. I need them. I will be easier in my heart for the Rites and I think Mom will too.

But today is today: surprise! I've got dogs to walk and board out. I have Zoloft to pick up at the drug store. I have finances to take a serious look at. Writing this is heroic but then each action in the day feels heroic -- brush my teeth? Impossible. Do it anyway. OK, if I can do that, maybe I can take my meds. Maybe I can wash the breakfast dishes. Maybe I can pick up a few things at the store. Car on the Hill is so far and beyond those mundane things that I feel like a weight liftress.

I doubt I'll dive into my novel today but I might get to Psychology Today. What I'd really like is a mani/pedicure -- my fingernails are so long they account for half my typos.

In this day, I will try to be fair by my dogs. I will try to keep my needs up to date. I've been eating deliciously. I've begun toasting old fashioned oats in a skillet -- high heat for about five minutes, stirring often -- then adding them to yogurt with vanilla and blueberries. Summer tomatoes are in and deserve better than my usual dressing, so it's been olive oil, salt, lemon juice, cayenne (helps digestion) and black pepper (helps depression). I can really taste the greens and the tomatoes this way. Dinner has been yogurt, late. Comfort food at the dangerous part of the day.

I think I'll look into some electronics I'm interested in today. I think I will gave a giddy little hop for meeting each impossible challenge -- dog gigs, grocery shopping, emails, looking after my body. I was smart enough to start the morning off with half a klonopin: my brain is scrambled eggs and I've been forgetting keys and dog things and words because I'm already onto the next hurdle. Klonopin settles my brain down enough to -- well, write this before I go walk Boomer. Wear life, as an acquaintance says, like a loose sweater.

I'm feeling everything at once today. Fear, grief, shame, loss. Tranquility, acceptance, hope, relief. Anticipation, eagerness, pride, gratitude, love. My hatred is minimal and I have little curiosity -- don't really want to read or write. But then, when one is in the midst of all of that going active on at once, missing one defect and one asset ain't all that bad.

Free Fall

I turned in the revised draft of Angry Fat Girls on Thursday, then a slightly changed version on Friday & swore to my editors that was it, I wouldn't play with it until I heard from them again. We tweaked jacket copy so that it was less sensationalist & also made more literal sense (when did the word "raucous" take on the meaning of hilarious and romping? Its proper definition is loud & hoarse -- oughtn't the marketing department know that? Isn't "raucous" one of their favorite words? If publishing doesn't take this stuff seriously, who will?), & now I'm...empty-handed on a 3-day weekend. Call it post-partum angst, aided by food poisoning, the nervy push to finish, my neighbors 7 1/2 hour party in the garden where the beer keg was 12 inches from my window. I'm in free fall & just have to hunker down to survive myself.

As hard as this book was to write and then go in & revise -- five women's worlds of pain is not a thing one wakes up to eagerly in the morning -- the deadline of it gave me a surge of purpose. Now, intermittently, my purpose has to change.

I don't like change.

There is my novel to work on.

There is my Fourth Step to work on.

My niece & grand-niece are coming four four days in June, so there is planning & housekeeping to do.

It's time that I learned to leave the Bat Cave without a dog &/or a grocery list. My stomach wraps itself in a knot of protest at the thought but this semi-phobia must be attacked.

But sickish and shaky, drained of words and my habitual insanity-loyalty to AFG not yet worn off, I get to be weepy & depressed this weekend, more imprisoned than usual in that I had to shut my windows on a lovely day yesterday while late-twenty-somethings sang pep songs over the air conditioning.

But two really interesting things happened yesterday in between naps.

I got a wedding invitation from my cousin's daughter -- I think this is a cousin once-removed? She's one of the few cousin's kids I know & I'm slightly sad that I won't make it to Beaverton, OR, for her wedding in a couple of weeks. I went to her registries however & ordered a Solid Gift -- a complete set of something essential. It was perhaps twice beyond my realistic means & I'm being very tight-fisted these days as I work at paying off debt.

So why did I do this without a second thought? I wasn't that sickly.

It was because I realized that my mom, on oxygen 24/7, very feeble with arthritis, nearly 88 years old, is in these sorts of matters, no longer the matriarch of our little Kuffel Pod. That baton passed to me & so I acted accordingly.

I find it interesting to think of myself as a matriarch when I'm single & childless. It goes against all those horrid Anne Tyler novels.

Daisy and I ran into the owners of a dog I used to walk. The dog died & they moved to a nearby state. I gawped at seeing them across the street -- it was dusk, I was heavy with tears at being alone, un-feted for turning the book in, lost without the book, sickish, etc. They were in the neighborhood for one night & said they'll come pick Daisy & me up soon to meet their new dog. That was lovely but they went on to urge me to apply for one of two writers' residencies with which they are intimately connected. Daisy, she said, will be allowed. It could be the perfect transition between Brooklyn & Seattle, & had I been less insane yesterday would have given me stuff to think about.

The good news is -- & really, ALL of this is based on good news that's merely depleting news as well -- that I was abstinent. I'm not Speedy Gonzales today. I slept in late. I've done little to promote my life in the directions I want it go. But I feel about 25% better & I could actually be tricked into feeling completely better, which was not possible yesterday.

Things are in a state of change here. Not big change but enough change to scare me. There's a 12-step saying I love (one of the few). If a normal person has a flat tire, they call AAA. If an addict has a flat tire, they call suicide hotline.

That, alas, would be me.

Now if I could make my Microsoft '98 dictionary thingie come back to tool bar, I'd be...happier.