Things that I'm Wondering About

I'm wondering how my household will survive if I don't. I'm not saying this seriously, in case you're worried. I'm just wondering.

I thought about this as I poured a tiny amount of soap into Sophie's sippee cup thingamajiggy -- the white plug thing that goes into the top so it doesn't spill. Sophie still drinks from a sippy cup because it's the only thing she can balance properly. The little white thing gets so dirty, and no one seems to ever notice it and clean it. Not her aide at school, not my husband, nor any of the helpers I have who have been working with us for at least ten years. I appear to be the only one who looks at the stuff and tries to get it out. As I worked on it today I wondered who would do it if I died.\

And then there's the coffee-maker and who would run a paper towel over the top edge inside, by the filter. That's always filthy.

I wonder who will pull the covers straight on Sophie's bed and adjust her head so that her neck isn't crammed up to the headboard. And who knows, really, how to brush her teeth, particularly the part on the top, under her lip. She hates it.

I wonder about these things and think that my husband will surely be f@#$%$#@@ if I die tomorrow.

And then I think, maybe not. Maybe everything will be just fine. Maybe the fermented juice on the edge of the sippee cup won't kill Sophie or even give her a bacterial infection. Maybe she'll learn to sleep with her head halfway up the headboard and it won't matter. Maybe the boys will let whoever takes care of them know when their shoes are too small. Maybe I'm just a rag, a fishwife, annoyed and embittered at the minutia of life as a mother. Not to mention the incessant mothering that one does for a child/teenager/adult with special needs.

I got this in the mail today, from my little sister.



Perfect, right?

I Remember

Doing a little memory/writing exercise here, tonight. To pluck out from the wizened head something new. Humor me, now.

I remember:

The winding stairs and Sophie's head at the top of your shoulder, her laugh when you "baaaa'd" like a sheep.

Sophie sitting in her swing, home from the hospital, her right arm useless. For the very first time.

Sitting in a rocking chair in the small upstairs room, nursing the baby while it rained outside. The patter on the asphalt balcony, the small window open.

Walking behind the girl in the wheelchair as she was pushed by the doctor, down the long white hallway with closed doors on either side.

Running from the movie theatre where we'd just seen "Diva" and it was raining and we were breathless and steamed up the car.

You went back to Canada but first told me about the older woman you'd been seeing. She seemed astonishingly old at thirty (we were barely twenty) and I felt sick to my stomach.

The letter, typed on white paper and worn thin at the creases. Transparent love.

Standing on the steps of old Wilson library and looking out over the expanse of lawn. You compared yourself to a sabre-toothed cat and claimed that you would eat me up.

The boy with hepatitis C who wore a beautiful suit and wasn't allowed to kiss me.

Walking the three blocks to Lexington at 5:00 in the morning to catch the uptown bus and my job -- the rats at the bottom of the stairs, the smell of chicken bones roasting.

Lying in the coat closet, pregnant and nauseous.

The girl under the umbrellas, lying in the wet, banging her head on the pavement.

The girl in Florence, lying on the pavement, the pool of blood spreading and the Italian police screaming, their mouths ignorant holes. The sound of my shoes on the cobblestones when I ran.

Lucid dreaming -- the house of many rooms and walking through them, looking, looking. Always the bed.

Wednesday Corner View -- a little late

Today's Corner View theme is : Place of Quiet Reflection. I had every intention of taking some photos of the place where I take yoga, but I didn't get a chance to go over there today. Sophie took some kind of power nap -- literally eight or so hours today -- so I stayed here, at home and had a lot of, well, quiet time and reflection.

Right here, in my bedroom.

That's a New York Review of Books lying there and it occurred to me as I devoured it today (the article about the crazy, neurotic James family), that it's a sort of literary Vanity Fair Magazine. And that would absolve me of any snobbery, right?

Then there's this, hanging to the right of my side of the bed:

Something from the days of being up all night with my babies.

I love my bed, my bedroom and I spend a lot of hours reading here and just thinking. But it's a small house and it's not ever really peaceful. Notice what's lying on the bed:


My sons love to walk around with that popgun, just making the obnoxious noise, spoiling my peace and quiet. Then when I yell at them to stop, they drop it on my bed.

Here are a few lines from a favorite poem by the Italian poet Eugenio Montale:
...
The eyes cast round,
the mind seeks harmonizes disunites
in the perfume that expands
when day most languishes.
Silences in which one sees
in each departing human shadow
some dislodged Divinity.
But the illusion wanes and time returns us
to our clamorous cities where the blue
appears
only in patches, high up, among the gables.
Then rain falls wearying the earth,
the winter tedium weighs on the roofs,
the light grows miserly, bitter the soul.
When one day through a half-shut gate,
among the leafage of a court
the yellows of the lemon blaze
and the heart's ice melts
and songs
pour into the breast
from golden trumpets of solarity.

--from The Lemon Trees (I Limoni)

For more Corner Views go to Jane at Spain Daily.

And the Runner Up Is

My giveaway winner, Mary, has kindly given up her copy of the book because she's already got several copies and has read it.

The runner up is Sarah, of Cottage Garden Studios.

Congratulations, Sarah!

I'll be back later for Corner View.

And the Winner Is

Mary, from Finding Joy in Simple Things has won a signed copy of my friend Vicki Forman's fantastic new memoir This Lovely Life. If you didn't win, don't waste any more time-- go buy, borrow or perhaps even steal (just teasing) this book. It's life-changing. Really.

Thank you to all for commenting on my blogaversary and for all your wise words and support each time I post!


On another note, and I feel like I should make this writing very very small, but I felt almost sick to my stomach all day watching and then thinking about the Michael Jackson memorial. Call me an iconoclast, but the amount of hoopla around the death of this man was obscene. The helicopters, the traffic, the non-stop coverage, the tearful speeches, the aggrandizement, the sermonizing -- well, it just made me feel incredibly low and depressed. I am a fan of MJ -- or was, before he died twenty years ago. I saw the Jackson 5 and at least four other solo concerts growing up in Atlanta. I get that he was a talented superstar and also deeply troubled. What bothered me most about today, I think, was the feeling that so many of those who spoke had been a part of the man's demise, the gradual whittling away of soul and personhood that we all witnessed as he cut up his face, changed his skin color, his voice, his hair, his persona. I mean -- what the hell happened to him and who watched and allowed it to? I think it was these same sycophants who stood up on the stage today, in front of his glittering coffin and the sad spectacle of his brothers, ridiculously outfitted with those sequined gloves.

Musings

My good friend S and I had a fantabulous lunch today at Mozza-- the most perfect chopped salad of lettuces and herbs and salami and the thinnest slices and bits of cheese and a sprinkling of herbs and just enough acid, was it lemon or vinegar -- in the dressing. And then we had two little pizzas -- on the most perfect crust, completely devoid of grease -- tiny little clams that tasted in one bite exactly like the sea and on the other thin slivers of artichokes and a bite of lemon taking the edge off some kind of creamy cheese. S had a glass of wine because it was her birthday lunch, and I took a couple of sips from it and it tasted like flowers. And then we had dessert -- spoonfuls of butterscotch pudding with a hidden crunch of Maldon sea salt, so faint that the sharpness was a surprise that disappeared in the puff of thick sauce that came with it and the finish of light, airy whipped cream. We just about ran our fingers in the glass and licked them, it was so good.

On the way out we kept talking, mainly sharing stories of our daughters who both have special needs. I gave her a big bag of clothes that Sophie had grown out of and remarked on the rickety stroller in the back of my car that I need to replace. I need to buy a new one, and the insurance company doesn't cover wheelchair/strollers. The stroller will cost at least $2500 and I just don't have that now or, for that matter, in the near future. And then I remarked that I understand insurance companies cover Viagra, that drug that helps older men maintain erections. S has the same sense of humor as me and she pointed out that I should write about it and call it:

SPECIAL NEEDS MUSINGS

So here's one:

I wonder if I could get a prescription for Viagra, cash it in over time and buy a wheelchair for Sophie?

OR

I wonder if there's a black market for Diastat, the rectal valium that we have to keep on hand for emergencies. Each package has exactly two doses, already in their syringes, and they cost $450 each (without insurance), and I always have to make a case for how much we need them whenever I refill them.

I could perhaps stockpile the Diastat (since the insurance company suspects that's what I'm doing) for real and have a rectal valium party where people pay for their dose.

And then there's another blogger friend, Ms. Moon, who mused on her own personal vanity as she slowly gets ready to be a grandmother. Even though I'm nowhere near being a grandmother, I spend an inordinate amount of time being vain -- about my weight, about my appearance, about the loss of my skinny, young, carefree self -- you'd think I had nothing else to worry about. HA!

Another Musing

I wonder whether Gertrude Stein worried about what she looked like. I like to think not. That she had somehow come to a state of peace and sat, immobile, on her literary throne, waited on hand and foot (and loved) by the even uglier Alice B. Toklas, eating incredible food, entertaining the greatest literary and artistic talents of the day. I want to be like Gertrude Stein.

Why We Love LA -- Or It's All About Plastic

On a startlingly blue-skyed day, we headed over to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) for a wild plastic installation. The boys hung plastic refuse on a fence (I forgot what that meant) and then we walked through the most amazing plastic exhibit ever.









It was wondrous.