Drinking, Part I

I just knocked a small bottle of pepcid off the medicine cabinet shelf at the exact moment the toilet was in the vigorous part of its flush. Gone, pepcid, gone. More flushing alternated with plungering. No result. I hear the damn thing way down in there.

Who can write after a tragedy like this? You know what's going to happen the first time someone has a #2 in there tomorrow? Did you know this is a one-bathroom house?

Who can write Drinking Part I after a complete apocalyptic disaster like this? This is the kind of shit that derails me. You want to die with my hand in your hand? Fine. I'll write about some June flowers covered in fireflies right afterwards. You want to jam some pepcid in the most essential piece of plumbing in my life?

I'm a well run dry.

Wednesday

This evening I got to a facility late to squeeze in an admission before going home. Tired, hungry, earache. I didn't think I could get an earache anymore. It hurt a surprising amount all day. I go in, review the chart, write a few notes, check in with the nurse. The patient is new there, arrived from the hospital yesterday, a transfer from another nursing home. She was in the hospital just long enough that the other home couldn't keep her bed open. She's 102, and lived at the other place for the past 10 years. Court-appointed guardian signs the DNR and authorizes hospice. So I'm here. Now she's here and an unknown.

Dying. Jaundiced. A double room made a single for her. Busy outside in the hall: dinnertime. No food in here. She hasn't had anything to eat in 2 weeks. No liquids for a couple of days. I see the urine in the catheter bag is tea-colored and scant. Won't be long. Unresponsive. I am so tired. My ear hurts. Her breathing is nice and even, shallow, skin yellowy and smooth, face relaxed. Its very quiet in the room. Window looks out over a field, grey and misty outside, grass is tall, red barn. I crack the window.

She's outlived everyone she knows. One son, predeceased her. Both grandkids too, her siblings, their kids, their grandkids. Everyone. I read the chart, I know. I go bother the nurse for a folding chair, sit next to the bed. Reach under the thin white coverlet and find her hand. Cool. I take a peek: a little bluish I think, hard to see in the fading light and that far under the coverlet. I hold her hand gently layered inbetween both of mine. I look at my watch. If I leave in 8 minutes I'll make it home for O.'s bedtime. I look at her face. So smooth and unblemished and lovely for 102. I close my eyes. I say this, "I know this is not where you are used to, but this is a safe place. Everyone here cares for you and will help you and this is a safe place. My name is Betsy and I'm a friend. I'm holding your hand. Your family loves you. You're safe here. I'm right here with you and its a beautiful evening, cool and misty. Its OK to go when you're ready. I'm so glad to be sitting here with you. I love the feel of your hand in my hand. We're in no hurry, you and me. We can take our time and go when we're ready. Its so peaceful here together. I'm so glad to be here with you." I think for a minute if this is the right thing to say to her. I decide its the truth, and the best I can do.

I mean what I'm saying even though its still true that I am tired, and hungry, and have a crappy earache, and want to go home, and want to make it for O.'s bedtime. Both are true. I close my eyes and put my head, just for a second, against the metal siderails of the bed. It feels good. Then, she dies. I open my eyes, look at my watch, start timing. No respirations. I stand up, still holding her hand, put my ear close to her mouth. No air. I turn my face and look at her. I say this, "Goodbye, ______. Thank you. I wish you love. I wish you peace". I put my hand on her forehead and rest it there for awhile. I go get the nurse and she does the pronouncement. I call and leave a message on the guardian's voicemail at their law office so they know. I leave a message on our report line for the staff. I call and notify the funeral home. It always makes the nursing home staff happy when you do that so they don't have to.

I drive home and can't find anything on the radio that seems right. I try the Decemberists disc focusing on #8 and #14 as recommended by the friend who gave it to me. #8 works, I turn it up loud. #14 I'm still not feeling. I drive too fast on the highway to make up some time. Far left lane the whole way. I wonder if I get pulled over by a cop if they'll cut me some slack because of the hospice badge and lanyard. Would I lie and say I was on the way to an emergency sad situation? I play this out in a few versions the rest of the way home. I get home past bedtime, but O.'s still up. He caught a catnap in the car on an errand with Dad, has a little reserve, I do bedtime and we have a snuggle and its nice. I think about posting on Facebook, BSD is spent, weary and earache, but don't. I tell M. I'm spent, weary and have an earache. He makes me dinner, brings it to me, cleans my plate up. My chest feels full and I can't get it out. We watch a little Cold Mountain, and parts of it are really sad, and I cry a little at the sad parts, and that helps.

I say goodbye, out loud, to her full name as I'm brushing my teeth. I close my eyes for a minute when I say it and stop brushing, water still running. I say it one more time. Goodbye, _____. I feel better. I take ibuprofen and tylenol both for the earache and hope it works, and hope it isn't too terrible for my liver.


Then I do this.


Goodbye, ______.

Untitled

We'll do this and we'll do it together. Peter in third grade: sits in the third row, fourth seat. Has a few dork friends and sits at the lunch table playing D&D with them. Knows if he didn't do that he'd be sitting alone. Has a crush on Carly Pontchartrain, who has long black hair and looks pretty from most angles, until you see her from straight on and realize she isn't. She's a little dumb and a little mean and will always be. You root for her to leave that shit behind, outgrow it, and she won't. He'll want her all through school and she'll torture him and use his pathetic attentions to feed her mean-girl groove. In 15 years they'll meet again at a party in someone's all-white mod college apartment and they'll have sex out in the backseat of her Bronco, which she drives to look tomboy and cool. He'll realize right then looking at her orgasming face in the yellow streetlight that she isn't pretty, and he'll also realize that she is mean and a surprisingly bad lay and wasn't worth any of it. But it will take our guy all the 15 years to get there. Too bad for Peter.

Now we're in eigth grade and we see the beginning of it. Peter figures out he's a little bit funny. He hones the sarcasm and gets in with the cooler kids. He's a survivor. Dorks over there, our guy over here. Gets high B's instead of A's on purpose. Becomes besties with all the girls, hugs them, listens to them, gives them footrubs, attends their sleepovers, never once crosses the line. Totally sluts himself up for them. Professional eunuch. They eat it up. Cool guys use him as a mule to make their contacts with cool girls, now he's got real social capital. Purpose, utility. Does he pay? Yes he does. He falls in love with all those girls, then serves them right up to all these guys who are assholes and makes himself want to puke, and die. Writes bad tortured heartbreak longing poetry that he submits to the school lit magazine under a female pseudonym. See? Still dork.

Still we're not too bad yet. Still garden-variety shit, high school survival shit. Boring shit. College is where we snap to a little more attention. Peter junior year, still doing the same old same old, knows how to help foil in highlights, huge emotional vocabulary, can do empathy in his sleep. Girls still fucking love it. Has gone to fat a little, hygiene a little poor, eunuched all the way. No threat here. Could wear a goddamn maxipad just about. Still funny, girls falling asleep in his lap with him giving headrubs the whole time, hides the boners with baggy I'm-your-brother pants. Total master of the craft.

But uh-oh. There she is. Hi there, Jenny McPhee. She does his whole act, but in reverse. You knew it, right? You've seen this movie. Not a cool girl, not a dork. Kinda pretty, kinda smart, not into the whole stupid thing. They're going to be friends, Jenny and our Peter. He's going to see her and she's going to see him. There's going to be a firestorm of unbelieveable mind-bending authentic interesting powerful energy between them. It is going to be all for real and not one bit stupid, trite, immature, misfired or drippy. She's going to be a little bit ahead of him and after a good year of solid citizen friendship with many ups and a few downs growingly and learningly and strengtheningly resolved he's going to get his chance with Jenny McPhee.

Its not going to be under a big oak tree on a picnic. Its not going to be late at night in her off-campus apartment with the opposite-gender roomies away and bossa nova playing. Its not going to be side-by-side looking at old bootleg Hendrix and Dylan and Guthrie recordings in the independet hard-core record store, and its not going to be on the footbridge having coffees in the chilly air of a completely sparkling golden morning in October after a hard rain the night before.

Its going to be a soft opening. She's going to do and say all the same things except there's going to be a little allowing going on, and he's going to feel it, and know it, and its going to be there inbetween them all the time. Its going to distract the fuck out of both of them. There's our boy, and that's the girl. Not the forever girl, my god, get over that right now. We're not talking about wedding-house-kids, this is not preschool story-time at the local library with Ms. Yvonne. Spit your binkie out and pay attention. This is our Jenny and an allowing and our Peter and if he can do it, if he can unlearn survival and figure out how to put his fucking heart on a stake, how to throw himself completely off the bridge and do the 18 months of rehab to be able to say complicated words like marshmallow again, if he can see that he's going to shed all this who-I-am in a year or two anyway when the larger world fucking schools him and if he can have the presence of mind and shred of courage to do it right fucking now, he's going to make the jump to warp speed and have the first geniune integrated moment of his life, and a fucking great map to follow for the 61 years he's got left to live.

You want to know how it all ends? Of course you do, you whore. He's going to kiss her. He's going to rise mid-way and that's as far as he's going to make it. He's going to bat a dribbling double that is only a double because its takes a hop off the infield and the second base guy can't get his glove up in time. Peter is going to kiss her on the front seat of the car as he's dropping her off and he's going to think that he's thrilling her and that he has time. He has no time. He's going to look a little into her eyes and give one stroke to her hair and announce his intentions: lets do this. He doesn't just do it. Acting on a stage, my friend. Our Jenny is going to feel a profound sadness and sense of loss and is also going to be pissed and let down and angry and hurt and she's going to let it go on for a couple of weeks and then she's going to dump his dumb inauthentic ass and move on completely to the grad student from Prague and have an incredible life. Peter is going to do just fine, but we don't want to read anymore about him either, do we? Girls mature faster than boys, don't you know that?

Oh I'm sorry. Are you disappointed? Want to pick the other ending? Is this not as much fun as you thought it would be? Do you wish you picked something else to read before you turned your light off and went to bed? Its not the best or the worst thing. Why do you always want to root for the poor underdog? Why is it always the evolving, the blooming, the becoming, the fucking personal growth? That's your shit. Your agenda. Go take care of the stink in your own house. Leave our guy alone.

What I Did

I cut
with my kitchen scissors
my neighbor's roses
and peonies
on a cool June night
in the full moon dark. An old
tshirt and no
bra or underwear. Barefoot
stepping carefully
so as not to crunch the
gravel
in the dark. I'm
not caught.

It was only a few. I slept
with them
by my bed and
in the morning I
undressed
unbraided
my hair
and passed by their
long stems so they touched
and brushed
my back
my belly
my hips

I bring them to my
lips and breathe
so heady
so drunk
and loose

was I getting
ready for work
or something I
don't know
or care

my good god.

Process-y Question

or poll, maybe.

I can't predict for sure, but whatever this is I've been digging out for the past year is coming loose. There's a big hole all around it, dirt piled high, and now I'm scooping with my hands around the sides to get in closer and deeper. Past the thick middle part, narrowing now. It starts to give a little in the earth if I give it a good hard shake. I think by the fall I might have it dug out. Maybe.

I have the feeling that I'd like to pull the best parts of the digging thus far together in a small skinny book later this year. How to choose? A vote for the favorites by the readership, all five of you (but treasured five, of course) for a first cut, with final say from me? Make my own initial cut and then put the choices out for comment on inclusion/exclusion to the readership? Go it entirely without input? And since every single thing here is total first and often rough draft, reworking/editing/polishing or leave all as is?

The Boating Party

We leave the shore
in one rowboat and
one canoe

to see the sunset and
take our evening pasttime
something kingly and queenly
Elizabethan
in our outing

we're arrayed in our boats
backs to faces
we come close and then
pass by
a lazy and pretty dance
on this smooth pond
and the sky going to lavenders
and pinks

when from the graying depths
an enormous snapping turtle rises by
our stopped and dripping oar
he considers
what he sees
without breaking surface

his brief pause
allowing us each
a small and variable registration
of his details
of his algae covered back
sharp fanned claws
his long curving neck and
small watchful eye

before his dismissive circling
and then withdrawal
a meted disappearance
to the world below

leaving us with only each other
and a darkening sky
the coming night

and our individual knowings
of what was seen.

Believe It

Make your hands
into a cup around
an invisible
something light and
something round like a
whiffleball its just the
shape we're after here and

now that you have it
just so do what must be done and
rotate
upwards
let the whiffleball go from your mind you
don't need it
from here on out this is
when water starts to pour
through your hands
in just this shape
filling your rounded palms and
streaming through your fingers

your hands
like this and the water
pouring through

this is the shape of love

what's the source and the
vessel of all this water is it
vase or tank or
river without end
you cannot know

but when it pours when it
cascades down your response is
autonomic
your body knows and your
wise hands rise and you
make the shape
to catch it
and the water comes running through

this is why
you so love
my cheek to your cheek with
my breath in your ear and
the soft press of my palms gently and slowly and
the dreaming trace of my fingers
to your face
that I love

I am streaming and
you reach and
make the shape and

I am pouring through.