Writer to the Stars's Open Salon Blog

Secrets, lies, delusions and every natural wonder...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:04:47 -0400

My husband and I were motoring along Peavy Road at sunset, on the way to a dear friend in the midst and madness of moving. We were delivering some packing boxes and I'd told my friend not to screw with dinner, as she was likely to do. I'd get us a thin crust at Lover's Pizza right off Mockingbird. We'd almost gotten to the Buckner overpass, while I brooded over toppings. Should I just say fuckit and get the Supreme? I wondered, then thought, No, goddamnit, they always put spinach on the Supreme. My hub loathes spinach and there's no talking him into it.

The neighborhood surrounding us was one of solidly high-end 70's architecture, with the full awfulness of that particular era: scrolly ironwork, Roman brickwork, many shades of avocado exterior paint, low squatty walls, and to add more decorative calories, there was often a taste-free something hanging near the front door, like a giant tinwork lizard or a big hand-hammered bronze Star of Texas. Everything was huge, ultra-maintained, and over-watered.

It was a high dollar gulag full of ancient oil execs and quivery old corporate lawyers. I always pictured them clanking around their big hideous homes like Marley's ghost, golden handcuffs hanging from liver-spotted wrists. I'd never seen anyone under 70 tottering outside, but Dallas is morphing into something besides the cranky blue-collar city I first moved to.

As if to illustrate the point, a glance out my side window showed an urban hipster dicking with a cell phone. I noticed that he was paused on the sidewalk with his pig, both of them out for an evening walk. It was a gigantic pig too, wearing a handsome leather harness and leash, and I'd spent too much time in Iowa not to recognize a China White when I saw one. A metrosexual with a huge pig, right here in Viagra Land, I mused.

But I never get enough sleep, so I asked, just to be sure, "Was that really a pig?"

"Yeah. Big one too," my husband answered, and in my mind's eye, I saw the pig's vast head, small intelligent eyes surrounded by long white lashes, and enchanting pig-smile. Not a China White, I decided. Chinas were more pinkly naked-looking. "Think he takes it for a walk over at Dog Shit Park?" my husband was asking.

"Think they'd even let him in at Dog Shit Park?" I said, imagining a near riot at our dog park. "Do you really have to exercise a pig?" I asked my hub. Other than a long stretch in Iowa, I didn't know from pigs, and he has a lot of farm cred.

"You gotta do something with a pig," my husband told me. " 'specially with a hog that size. Why would you get something that huge?"

"Probably cute when it was a baby," I said. 'Think of everyone we know who's been conned by that. Nice thing about kittens, you pretty much know how big they'll get."

Then we were quiet for a while, reflecting upon various deluded friends and neighbors who'd brought home something darling, velvety, button-eyed, and pink-tongued, only to have it boom into the size of a moving van.

Like my friend John, I remembered now, as we drove into a deep red and purpley sunset, with the wide Texas sky tipped towards us like a careless gambler's hand.

John was a civilized French professor I knew from UMass, and he always summered at Martha's Vineyard. A couple years before, he'd adopted a St. Bernard puppy he promptly named Claude, and spoke to only in perfect Parisian French. I never saw Claude during his legendary baby cuteness, but I knew he'd grown up to be enormous, peevish, a huge pain in the ass, and the subject of several lawsuits. I knew it through my own harrowing Faustian bargain, one I'd mistakenly made with John.

I agreed to look after Claude for one weekend, so John could get away for a scholarly conference. In exchange, I'd get John's fabulous Vineyard house for three days and two nights: a house poised on a clear stretch of white sand, facing the bean-green Atlantic and a navy sky. Even in those looser, cheaper, more unafflicted days, a weekend at the Vineyard was a recognized chunk of heaven. And anyway, I was great with animals, so what could happen?

For starters, on the first night Claude gnawed through the monster rope confining him to the backyard: a Navy ship's hauser. Trailing it behind, he'd padded down to the beach, where the sound of panic, screaming, and nine kinds of hell alerted me. Oh, shit, not the clothes! I thought, grabbing a huge bag of Oreo cookies and racing outside. John had already primed me for this one.

"Now if Claude gets loose, which is highly unlikely, what he likes to do is go down to the beach and sit on people's clothes and towels. The way you get him off is with cookies. Remember, he only understands French, so you have to say, "Ici, ici, Claude. Un gateau." He adores Oreos. But it won't happen. I mean, did you look at that rope? They tie up fucking ships with that stuff."

I'd frowned doubtfully. "But what about that neighbor kid?" I asked. "I heard Claude got the kid's whole head in his mouth, and sucked on it for like fifteen minutes."

John looked unhappy and slightly betrayed, "Okay, that was all very sad and very unfortunate, but the boy came by and teased Claude, called him a dummy, and poked sticks at him. Ethan finally got too close, that's all. Anyway, Claude didn't suck on his head all that long, just a few minutes. You ask me, the entire lawsuit is terribly mistaken. But we shall see." He gave me a brave cheerless smile, the smile of a man with a really horrible pet.

Now, with dusk approaching fast, I arrived at the beach watching panicked bathers running in lots of directions, clutching loose bundles of clothes, and made my way through them to the gigantic dark shape that was Claude. He was sitting on a collection of towels, toys, books, magazines, lotions, clothes, hats, and sunglasses. The owners of the beach glop made lame shooing motions, their children sobbed, and Claude growled, showed his considerable teeth and shifted his bulk. I could hear stuff break and crunch beneath him.

"Ici, ici, Claude. Un gateau! Gateaux, Claude! Ici!" I yelled. Hearing me, Claude roused himself, waddled towards me with a kid's plastic shovel stuck to his butt. I tossed an Oreo into his big maw, where it rested on his tongue like an M&M. He ulped it and I chucked in a few double-handfuls of Oreos. "Venez avec moi, Claude! Vous êtes un bon chien! Allé à la maison avec moi!" I coaxed helpfully. But Claude only tossed his big head, grinned at me scornfully, then larruped off in the exact opposite direction, running like a quarter horse. "SHIT!" I screamed.

I worked the Claude problem all weekend, I remembered now, and finally tracked him to a Post Office, where he'd followed a French Canadian Mountie. "Le français parisien, mon âne gros," I said to Claude, while my then-husband and I shoved his big fat ass into a borrowed truck. "Vous comprenez le Canadien aussi, vous le bâtard. I've lost my fucking mind," I told my ex-husband. "Listen to me. I'm saying vous instead of tu. Wrong pronoun."

That night, when I dragged Claude through the door, met by John's relieved cries and flood of perfect French, I said, "I mean, damn, John. Why?" From Claude's thick woolly neck, John raised his tear-splashed face.

"You didn't see him when he was a puppy," John sniffed, "He looked like a perfect stuffed animal. A little toy with button eyes..."

Now, a million years later, roaring down Mockingbird Lane, I said to my husband, "Don't get me wrong. I like pigs..." and then trailed off with the thought. I wouldn't get a pig now, but I didn't blame the hipster. From aeons back, I was remembering a bit of The General Confession. For we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. Devices and desires, I thought. They got me into a lot of hot water back then. Now, not so much.

I sent a quick prayer of thanks to Claude's spirit, wherever he was, and decided to order the medium Supreme thin crust, after all.

Hold the spinach.

Holy hell...

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 07:12:51 -0500

This morning I thought I might have a good shot at the day. Haven't had a clear sight on any target since before Thanksgiving. Maybe longer than that.

"If I ever tell you I didn't get a 'flu shot, would you just kick me in the ass?" I asked my husband today, riding the pocky streets towards The Landry Rehabilitation Center, off in Baylor Land.

"Right in the fucking butt," he agreed grimly as I'd thought he would. When I konk out, he's the one who gets it square on the chin: lousy meals, a dusty house, smelly catboxes, weird shit in the refridgerator, gray laundry, mail piling up like no tomorrow, unanswered doctors' calls, unmade doctor appointments, stroke questions left dangerously mouldering, all this ghastlihood accompanied by a sound track of loud sobs and cursing, because there's no back up here. Just me.

Seems I've had the flu for a while and didn't know it, but then I'm rarely aware I'm sick because I can't get sick. For days now, I'd struggled awake, knowing however raw, stripped, and unlovely the morning routine was going to be, it had to be done, no bullshit. And somehow I was going to have to navigate the outside world for meds and food. Somehow the animals would have to be fed, the plants watered, the mail picked up.

"Call Jessica," my husband instructed like the sensible man he is. Jessica is our serene Kenyan caregiver who floats over for eight hours a week, smelling vibrantly of the rose lotion she uses.

"I gotta call Jessica fucking off," I mumbled, wondering if a raw egg on my forehead really would sizzle. Yeah, no doubt Jessica could take care of the Stephen King special in the kitchen. No doubt she'd mop my gluey floors and carry out the smelly landfill swelling by the back door. But I would have to tell her what to do, form sentences and zing them out to another human being, and that was absolutely beyond me.

Plus, Jessica couldn't change my husband, couldn't deal with the bed and its wet pads and sheets. Somehow, by God's grace and his own considerable grit my husband isn't incontinent any more, except some nights when he can't get awake, can't get to his wheelchair and can't navigate through the dark house to his bathroom. But Jessica wouldn't know how to lay out his meds, wouldn't know how to bathe and dress him, might not do a check of his skin for pressure sores. When she brushed his hair, she might not ask him to smile: that quick check for a stroke in the night. And she might not grill him about his dreams: those fascinating tales of a brain repairing itself.

And then too, there's my unspoken pledge: However you are, however you will be, I will care for you.

Back when all the Horsemen of the Apocolypse first arrived and decided to stay, then late, late, late at night I'd chatter on the phone with the Chairman of the Board over in Las Vegas. He was looking after a high-tech train wreck I consulted on, was funny as shit and a Buddhist to boot. He was exactly the right company for me and my Night Caller conversations.

"Y'know, everyone's acting like won't it be great when this is over, but it's never going to be over," I said one night and heard the Chairman grunt in assent. "I'm in hell right now, and it's going to stay hell. S'all right with me. Lotta Buddhists want to go to hell because there's stuff to do and it's the most interesting place around. You didn't know that? Well, you're one of those Tina Turner Buddhists who chants. Me, I'm just a Soto gal doing farmer Buddhism: put your good where it'll do the most. Obviously I've been drafted for hell duty".

And hell it is. Lots of backbreaking work and plenty of chances to look stupid.

When I can remember to, while frying in in the flames, feeling the heat lick me like a momma lion, I pray.

Let me fly in this fire, God. And keep it hot.

Buddha-butt...

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 23:09:44 -0400

Hadn't seen my neighbor Huey in a bunch of weeks and I'd started wondering what to do, since I'm not Ms. Appropriate Behavior during the best of times, but then this neighborhood isn't Appropriate Acres either. If a man needs to hole up in his house or his car, depending on his fortunes, suck down a lot of meth or booze or stare at his flat screen 24/7, we'll defend his right to do any or all that shit to the death. No one's going to slither up to your front door with a pot of soup and a lot of fakey concern, try to peek behind you and get a looky-look at your sordid digs. Knowing that too, I decided just to let things be.

So when I saw him outside in his yard week before last, I felt better knowing he was out and about and yanked the ancient Benz approximately near the curb, then hollered Hey! I had one immediate project I needed his help with, if it wasn't too fiddly. My husband had a drawing table ready, but the legs were too high and needed to be cut down.

"Girl, you watch out with 'at car, someone's gone run right up your ass," he hollered back at me. Huey was wearing a pair of cut-down jeans, a cut-down Cowboy's t-shirt, and a pink bandana around his head, worn David Foster Wallace/cholo style. The day was already boiling hot, and the two of us were both pale with bad sinus problems.

"Nah. Other drivers. They leave me alone." I told him, getting out, not minding that I was hogging half the road. And then, like a crow spotting a shiny thing, I suddenly noticed that Huey had two goldfish tattoos, one on each arm done Japanese style. "Love those tats," I said, "Really nice".

He held out his forearms and frowned assessingly. "Guy owns Suffer City did 'em after I done some work for him, you know Suffer City ain't doin' tattoos no more."

"Just piercing?" I asked, and when Huey nodded, I said, "Yuck," mostly thinking about some faces I'd seen, faces that looked like tackle boxes.

Huey wiped his forehead and said, "I know. Piercing. S'gross cause guys come in n' they want their hoohahs pierced n' the titty dancers're comin' in wantin' their hoohahs pierced too, I mean right out there inna store, in fronta God an' man. Goddamn, it's hot today. I mean downright evil."

Not wanting to linger on hoohahs, I agreed that today's weather was evil and would be a sight more goddamn evil as the day wore on, and then I launched into a description of my mini-project, the drawing table.

A van drifted past us, holding a six pack of young Mexican men. We nodded at them, they nodded back.

"You got someone to cut down 'at limb?" Huey broke in, pointing towards my yard. I turned around, thinking What limb? And then, Shit! One of my awful trash-trees, specifically a mulberry near the sidewalk, showed a big chunk of unexpected injury. The summer's vicious heat had cracked off one big limb, and it sagged down onto the lawn.

"You got anyone ta take that'n off, likely fall down mebbe conk someone onna head, or you be walkin' under it an' the nex' thing you know, blam you're down n' out." Huey told me.

"Well, figure a price," I told him. "It's gotta come down. Put it in with the drawing table, and give me one number."

"I 'on't chorge you whut I normally do," he told me with a wave towards my house, the house where my stroke-ridden husband lay.

"No, don't do me like that. Fair's fair," I said.

"I know 'at's right. These goddamn Messicans'll mow your yard an' landscape it too for fi' dollars, which I c'n say 'cause I'm a goddamn Messican myself. Lemme go inna house an' get my tool box, I'll stop by your place, see the table and figure how to get my truck in back, just park ever'thing inna drive maybe and get 'er done."

"He's coming in here?" my hub wanted to know, aghast at the idea of Huey's coming in the house before he was properly up and about. "That's an awful idea."

"It's fine," I said, "Just accept it. You know, My dear deciples, seek out your own salvation with diligence. Be a lantern unto yourself."

"Thanks alot, Buddha-butt," my husband said sourly.

So Huey wandered through the house on the way to the drawing table, staring at all our photos and paintings, pausing at some, ignoring others. "You just don't know whut some people are up to behind closed doors," he concluded gnomically, while I wondered if, in Huey's mind, painting pichures was on par with cooking meth: a money-making trade, but kind of suspect at the edges. "Lemme see whut you got out back," he said.

That's how we wound up standing on my cracked driveway, staring over at The New Big Fence and The Entirely Modren House. My overworked neighbor, Ramone, a 3rd grade school bilingual teacher and his really overworked grad-student-plus-teacher wife had saved enough to install The New Big Fence. Now a long, very high stretch of chainlink wound around his yard, looking like a displaced slice of The Border, glittering in the white hot day. It's a huge lot and, without fencing, they'd had to keep their dog Samosa indoors all day, for nearly a year.

Now outdoors and behind The New Big Fence, Samosa faced the two of us, barking loudly and forever, while his dark paranoid stare never wavered. He was a squarely built animal, with thick post-like legs. He looked something like a coffee table, I thought, maybe an extra-heavy coffee table, one with big sharp teeth.

"You b'lieve 'at?" Huey asked, nodding at Samosa, who was now showing a yard of pink tongue and panting heavily with lots of slobber. "Kep' 'at dog inna house all day," he said.

"I'm not sure Samosa's actually a dog," I told him, "I think he's more what you'd call a beast. Anyhow, what else could they do? They walked him early, early in the morning, like 4:30 and 5:00 AM. They did all they could, considering." I remembered Ramone or his wife waving at me while Samosa lurched at his leash, whenever I let my cat out, watching as she crept into the dawn's first lavendar light .

"You're gone haveta put up a buncha them reflector strips back here," Huey told me, taking a sharp Huey-like turn in the conversation, "otherwise you're gone knock that t'other fence flat. Lookit." He pointed out an older badly bashed fence-post and torn chainlink. "See how it's got there? Course atsa garbage truck and them guys on it , jus' backit up an' don't give a shit like like evry other goddamn city worker, when I uz doin' lotsa trees few years back first thing I'd go up ta my sister's cafe up to Casa 'nam, an' see them city fatasses sittin' around with their mouths all fulla bean burrito an' I'd say..."

The outright evil of lardass city workers was always a pleasureable topic for Huey, but I'd already heard it.

"You think that house is really finished?" I interupted, nodding at The Entirely Modren House, just beyond The New Big Fence. It was hard to tell. There were still stacks of nameless grot around and piles of dirt ranged near the walkways and modules.

"Ain't sure if 'at house is ever gonna be finished, but I tell you whut, him and me's had some words,' Huey told me darkly. "He's all about tellin' this person an' that person they gorta touch up this, an' fix that, or they're violatin' city code. City code!" Huey spit angrily at the notion. "So I says to him, S'clear ta me you ain't from this neighborhood an' you don't know how things work around here, we don't go 'round tellin people how this orta be or that's gorta be. Nossir. I says, S'obvious yore here because you cain't afford to live where you're from, n' I'd advise you ta watch whatchure sayin' or you could have a bad accident a some kind. Yessir."

"Neighborhood's changing," I noted. "We've even got a Yard of the Month sign."

Huey snorted, "Yard a the Month, my ass, same goddamn three people just switch at sign around, take turns with it." It was a relief to hear him, after my paranoia over all the ominous signs of hipstery improvement I'd been noticing: the power walkers, the tiny-dog owners, and the twinkle lights installed in curvy beds of jasmine. Huey's scorn for The Entirely Modren House and its owner was a bright signal of a kind, and it signaled that our neighborhood liked itself the goddamned way it was. Yessir.

So that day, the drawing table was sawed and half the limb came down, but the other half stayed put, sagging to the ground, leaves withering, while Huey finished several jobs in another part of town. My yard looked like shit, but everyone's yard looked like shit so I didn't think much about it. I knew Huey would get to it in his own good time. On Saturday, my yard guy, Javier, showed up and I went through my combo of charades and terrible French to communicate what needed to be done.

"Leave the limb right there," I said, "because another hombre (vato?) has the job. Un autre homme a la tâche." And Javier gave a deep sigh.

"Quit speaking French to him," my husband keeps saying. "He doesn't understand it."

"Well, I don't know why in the hell not. They're both romance languages." I always reply and we both get nowhere at all with our idiot quarrel, over my pig-headedness.

"Jore husban', he spick Spanish," Javier noted unhappily.

"Je ne parle pas espagnol et il n'est pas question que mon mari ne. Il n'est pas là." I snapped. Another depressed sigh from Javier and he bent his misguided attention to Huey's tree limb, preparing to saw it up.

What the hell, I thought, if Huey's pissed I'll sort it out with him later. I went in the house and banged around, then wandered outside and saw Javier standing motionless, frozen in place. When I got to him, I saw he was pasty-faced and trembling.

"They take all my money," he told me, "all my money, my billfol', evryt'ing. They point a gun at me, say Gimme your money. "

"Who did?" I asked in a rage. "Who did this to you? Come in the house with me. We're calling the cops." But what I really wanted to know was, Who are these bad motherfuckers, that they needed their giant pistola to jack this gentle man? This gentleman.

"They get my card," he said, wretchedly, "Bank of America. 'An my papers. Evryt'ing."

"We'll fix it," I said, and I marched him into my kitchen where I poured a large Pepsi, one with real cane sugar. "Drink this," I told him, "it'll make you feel better, and breathe deep . Like this." I demonstrated a big heaving breath and Javier copied me. "Okay," I said, "We're gonna call the cops first, the Dallas Police, and then we'll call Bank of America. I dialled 911 and said to the operator, "This is Writer to the Stars and there's just been a hold-up at my house. My yard man was robbed at gun point."

"We'll send someone," the operator told me, and I gave her my address, adding, "We need someone who's bilingual. He speaks mostly Spanish."

"We gotta a bilingual guy right here now. We'll send him on over."

In exactly seven minutes, a young immaculate black cop was at my door, notepad in hand. His Spanish wasn't hot but he was a talented interviewer. He took Javier through the robbery, asking the same question several different ways, and gradually Javier remembered the characters, the narrative, the sequence. He puzzled out what had happened.

Two men, very young in a used dirty blue car, pulled up to the curb while Javier's back was turned. They said, Dame tu cartera!

"Say it like they said it," the cop told Javier, and Javier growled out, loud now, Dame tu cartera! and showed his teeth.

What kind of gun did they have? The cop wanted to know. It was chrome, a big gun with black grips. A revolver. A revolver? The cop and I asked, You sure? Javier was sure. It was old too, a big old gun, and the young guy who held it on him was shaking all over.

Miedo, Javier told us. Scared.

After he'd told his story, Javier sat calmly listening to the cop explain how to get another green card from the consulate, I'd called Bank of America, gotten a Spanish hotline and canceled his card. It was a matter of lists now. Things to be done.

A couple days later, everyone was outside at the house across the way. I saw Huey, Randy, the guy building The Totally Modren House, Ramone was walking Samosa, Gerry's wife was there with Gretch, their adopted German shepard. I pulled to the curb and chatted a little.

"We uz sorry ta hear whut happened to your yard guy," Gerry said gravely. "Jacked in yore front yard. You wanta get outa the car and sit a spell?"

I allowed as how I did and Gerry blew maple leaves off a white plastic chair, "Here," he said.

"You got to sit in a white plastic chair?" my husband asked later, amazed. "In front of the garage?"

"Yeah, I did," I said. "So don't tell me there's no grace in the world."

Buddha-butt!

Gorked!

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:07:16 -0400

Ran into a girlfriend of mine at Albertson's. I'd been staring wrathfully at overpriced leaky-looking watermelon chunks when she hollered a cheery Hey! She and I go back aways and I've always been fond of her for lots of reasons, one being that she speaks fluent Girl, a language I deeply appreciate. I remembered first noticing her in my small anonymous group. Just before a meeting, she remarked that she'd bought a new car. "What kind?" one of the guys asked, with instant guy interest. "Red," she told him happily, and I warmed to her instantly. Red!

I'm known to go to Albertson's more than I go to the bathroom, so there I was and there she was a bunch of years later, with her long ironed hair, a faceful of makeup, and her cute mini-me daughter, and there I was with my long unironed hair, a faceful of makeup, and new sparkly teef. Just a coupla Dallas lipstick lizards, hanging around bright pyramids of produce, enjoying a cool periodic mist blown over from water sprays that crisped the lettuces and shined the peppers.

"Writer To the Stars!" she hollered, "Hey!"

"Hulp!" I gurgled back. I didn't know if she could understand me and didn't want to freak her. I was between fittings and my new pearlies hurt like a bastard. "New teef," I said, "S'ard for me ta tawk." Her daughter stared at me without any expression, while I looked back, admiring her pert school uniform.

" So how you been?" she asked, smiling her usual big smile.

"Well, y'know Mr. WTS had a stroke. A bad one..."

"I heard," she said, hefting a cantaloupe and giving it a good hard sniff. "So's he all gorked out an' in that bad depressed thing...?" Here I should mention that my Dallas girlfriend is an RN. Been a nurse for about thirty years and she's good at it. Very good.

"He's not gorked at all," I said, quite clearly, all the while thinking Gorked! Haven't heard that since I worked at the hospital ' bout 110 years ago. I flashed on that dank Dickensian pile of slag in the heart of New Brunswick, NJ, where I ran the orderly department. Back then I heard gorked! used casually, day to day. It meant lights out, gaga, nobody home.

"Well, that's great," said my girlfriend said grinning, and then I spent some time admiring her daughter, who waited, solemn and smart, enduring my chirps. We both hugged, turned away, walked on, then suddenly turned back at the same time and waved: a combo hello, goodby.

Later that night I remembered that I'd heard Gorked! quite recently and from my own red lips. I'd used it on my husband, trying to light a fire under him, on a day when he felt especially clobbered. You're not a goddamned gork, I told him, you're smart, you're getting strong, your paralysis is lifting. You're ungorking! He'd laughed at the word and I did too, not quite knowing where I'd got it.

When my girlfriend said gorked out at Albertson's, I felt a sudden happy glow creep over me, the kind you get when you realize that, against all odds, you might have done the right thing. I was around stroke victims, I remembered suddenly from forty years past. I saw them in all shapes and sizes. Some were gorks and some weren't gorks at all. Not by a fucking long shot.

Soon it'll be two years since a lightning bolt ran through my husband's brain, leaving him entirely paralysed on his left side, wiping out big chunks of memory, leaving him angry, raving, confused. He wasn't alone in his fury and bewilderment. I was pretty goddamn angry and confused myself and, for sure, I did my share of raving. Unlike him, I felt guilty too.

Day to day, I discovered I was falling short of everything expected of me as his nauseatingly named caregiver. I did not run him through the exhausting morning routine outline in that hefty looseleaf notebook, the one that landed in my lap the day I wheeled him out of Baylor. When he shouted at me, I sobbed or shouted back or cracked a joke but I didn't wheel him into a dim room, as advised, and leave him there. Nor did I force him into a weird contraption that featured a lot of velcro and supposedly prevented his damaged arm from dropping out of its socket. I believed that immobilizing his whole shoulder and arm would make it atrophy but what did I know?

He itched all over, and I told him his body was waking up, but I didn't know if that was true or not. He refused to do his billions of repetitive exercizes because they were boring and I didn't make him. Instead I hauled him in front of the TV and we watched every comedy we could find. I tried to cook the no salt, no sugar, no fat diet he was sternly advised to follow, and watched him eat almost nothing until he was a wraith. When he glanced at himself in a mirror and flinched, I thought, That's enough of that fucking diet. I switched to an all vegetarian diet, used a bit of sea salt, sweet butter, and added dessert. You get dessert, honey, I promised, you'll always get a dessert. And the thin hunched haunted figure he'd been disappeared, not to return.

Not only did I ignore all the instructions I'd been given, ignored the diets, and turned up my nose up at the stroke support groups, I realized I was no caregiver. We'd been married thirty-two years and we'd been through a lot together: the terrible last illnesses and deaths of our parents, joblessness, the deaths of our dearest friends and pets, auto accidents, a mugging, and various catastrophes, and this was just another goddamn thing, I decided, and we'd do it together. I didn't know how, but we'd do it.

I wasn't terrific about any of it. Because we've both tried hard to be as honest as we can together, I was honestly hideous. I went nuts. I mourned our lost life, became drenched in self-pity, screamed at times, shouted, swore, threw stuff, frightened him and scared myself, came un-fucking-glued, got sick, became so depressed I considered The Last Decision, then shrugged it off because how would that help anything?

I prayed a lot, my kind of prayers. God, you're going to have to help me here. I'm a goddamned mess. And God's big ear seemed to hear. Somehow I listened too, to my real Self, the Self who remembered all the experiences I'd put away or discarded: years of teaching disabled kids, and that awful year in New Jersey, the one where I learned how to move patients, clean rooms, confront lunacy, and deal with the dead. I thought about my own family: my sister, stoically staring down cancer one more more time, fighting it through with her own down-played grit.

And I remembered again and again, the life of my great-grandfather, that Texas cowboy, who said, Never was the horse that couldn't be rode, never was the cowboy that couldn't be throwed. I pulled from that tangled mass what I could, and found a few diamonds: some ideas that worked, small actions that helped.

I discovered I wasn't afraid anymore. And somewhere, sometime, in the midst of all my turmoil and floundering, I realized that nothing my husband was or might be could destroy the love I felt for him. It sat between my ribs, that love, solid as a stone. I'm in for it now, I thought happily.

So, nearly two years gone since that terrible day when he seemed to melt before my eyes, I see my husband emerging from his shroud, the stroke that nearly got him. He laughs, he works part time, he can walk, his shoulders are square and hard, he sits easily in regular chairs, much like he used to, his long legs strong and fine.

His remarks, as ever, catch me off guard, make me laugh as hard as I ever did. The two of us were watching our cat, Baby, decimate a door jamb with her needle claws and then wheel and attack our oldest and most put-upon cat. The Baby sank her little fangs into Lola's neck.

"Horror Baby," he said, rightiously aghast, and I cracked up.

Yeah, I thought. Horror Baby. Perfect.

It seems to me now that I've been throwed a lot. Smashed up a lot, tripped, and fallen all over the place. Even so, give me a cup of strong black coffee, a dawn light through my windows, the Horror Baby on my lap, and a chance to write a few words.

Give me all that and I'll ride the day like a pony.

Ketchup...

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:04:33 -0400

Mama Tomato, Daddy Tomato, and Baby Tomato were out for a walk, but the Baby Tomato was a straggler. Finally Daddy Tomato walked back, grabbed the BabyTomato, stomped her flat and roared, Ketchup! (Courtesy of Quentin Tarentino).

And in much the same spirit, I'm here to report on our doin's since the past dark time, back when I got delayed by teeth and time. Time for ketchup.

Spring is crawling in and around our doors, with all its lavish Texas abundance, ready to come on in and throw down. This includes optimistic interlopers like the mega tree roaches who limbo through various cracks and then wheel around the den, being horror movie bugs and making both me and my cats chitter in dreadful excitement. Outside, there are various vines curling on top of other various vines, sending out so many shoots and tendrils that I get nervous about pausing in the yard for even a moment, afraid that something will curl around my leg and yank me into the underbrush.Plus the squirrels this year are about the size and heft of beavers but grumpier by a factor of 12. This afternoon while I picked my way to the garage, one of them chee-ed at me angrily, then hurled all its nut debris on my head, sending me to CVs with acorn shells stuck in my hair.

And while Nature's busy gettin' after it, we lumpy humans feel the electricity too. The woolly brothers next door shivered through March and parts of April with their converted chimenia, which sports a smokestack and a fan for maximum kickass cigarette smoking. However, on certain nights, while dragging out the garbage, I noticed an eye-watering haze of mesquite smoke and heard an unfamiliar semi-girlish laughter from the back yard. I reported the stunning presence of ladies to my husband. He has a clear view of the proceedings from his window so he already knew what was up. "Means it's a party!" he told me knowingly, "they got women and whiskey over there."

Me, I've been a bit behind all our surrounding busyness, following 9 hours of oral and maxillary surgery. Nonetheless, butter, mascara, and massive doses of hydrocodone had to be bought and so I made my mini-runs to Walgreens feeling like Elephant Woman and wearing a respiratory mask, with bruises up to my cheekbones. As the bruising faded, sometimes I didn't bother with the mask and ignored the local assumptions that my guy had popped me one. Even our monolingual Mexican yard guy gave me a knowing if tactful glance. Since he and I have a relationship going, I felt I had some splainin' to do, so I ran through my combo of Spanglish and charades to indicate this was all about teef and not wife beating. He just shrugged. "Jes, but las' night was Friday." Which, of course, signals the start of female smacking in some locales here, tapering off around Sunday afternoon which is reserved for inhaling huge amounts of TV sports and lethal levels of highly salted junk food.

Easter came and went, but all our "He has risen!" crosses stayed firmly put. We love us our plywood "He has risen!" crosses and put them up at the slightest provocation, then let them molder through all-weathers. Eventually they'll be yanked up and we'll next see them on the 4th of July, a beloved if confusing holiday for Texans in general. Meanwhile, having bitterly thumbed through our monthly neighborhood association magazine, I watched our little patch with disquiet. Developers have been flipping houses on San Lorenzo like griddle cakes, while unfamiliarity and weirdness flourishes around us. There was a good sized family that had lived in a huge RV parked in the driveway of a nearby house. Through time, and maybe a generation or two, the RV had become covered with various drips and grot and often you could catch sight of the occupants who were usually in their nighties. It was hideous and low-rent of course, and some of us would bitch about it periodically, but like my bad molars, nothing dislodged it. It is now gone, leaving only a big rectangular stain and many mysteries. On the plus side of things I saw that someone had stolen the loathsome Yard of the Month sign and installed it on a completely dead and dessicated gritty lot, near a small beat up house.

Around Easter, I paused near San Juan, glaring at a guy wearing cargo pants, Birkenstocks and one rubber glove, while his insect-sized dog pause to take a crap. He then selected a vinyl bag and delicately picked up after it, while I wondered if I could just goose my ancient smokey Benz enough to kill his ass. Then I glanced over at one of the open garage hangouts. Usually my sight-line is blocked by plastic chairs, pocked cars, and hairy guys but today I saw that the other side of the driveway sported a large cement pig, a cement chicken, plus another battered but unidentifiable cement animal. Joyfully, I could see they all had pink bunny ears tied to their heads.

We're on the job here, mofos. Careful how you go.