Thread

I work full time at a hard job that is in demand, that I figure counts in life and is satisfying more often than not. I make a living wage, more than many folks in jobs involving manual labor of any kind.

I have worked enough benefits-free, crappy, dead-end, part-time jobs in my life to know the kind of hopeless fatigue that sets into bones. I know the gut drop sensation when the stated wage per hour and the total expected on the check has nothing to do with reality, nor does it come up to the figure of the added up bills. I know about the daily scan of classifieds and fliers for yet another part time or temporary job. Even now, with a decent wage, we live in a tiny apartment that we found out is going condo- and far out of our reach or desire for purchase, when our lease is up next year.

My dear one worries because he is doing grad school full time, and I will not compass him working more than a small job, because this is his later-in-life, last, best chance. Because although making rent and having security matter deeply to us, money, really, when we stop to think about it, does not.


I used to kid him that I had married him for his money. Then quote Casablanca: "(Shrug) I was misinformed." We both came together when we had nothing, and were scrabbling along. We both leapt into the dark of our future, with no idea how we were going to float. We took turns holding each other's heads up, breathing in shifts, until we found our feet. Now that he has found his own course, he is feeling guilty that I am the one holding him up. And I say.

Bunk.

We are not living our lives to make money. We are not living our lives to own a home, or a car, or travel the world. Desirable comforts all, but not the point. We love and are loved. We have friends, and new found cousins, we care deeply for. We are curious and helpful. He is happy researching, and writing and growing his considerable intellect. Happy.

When we first got together, he said his goal in life was to make me happy. Seemed utterly unreasonable to me then, but he did it. Does it every day. So, what could I do but my damnedest to reciprocate? This is our Deal. We each try to live up to the other's opinion of us. And become better people for the effort. Money is a kind of barometer- which we share and save to make sure we are ok. But no more, really, than say chocolate or warm sweaters.

I want him to be happy. To have work that he enjoys, to feel competent and of value in the face of the world. He wants that satisfaction. We want to live in that space between desperation and smugness.

It's taking longer than expected, but we've come further than I would once have imagined.




I really married him for his dimple.

Bruised (Photo)

Life (Photo)

Breathe

Breathing is good. Breathing is wonderful. Breathing after I thought I might not take another breath is a miracle. Today I have bruises on my rib edges, a sore back and shoulders, a raw throat, a tendency to tear up, and a very worried man beside me. I send out my gratitude to the world, the EMTs, Rowley police, various new met cousins of my cousins Elizabeth and Ed, more friends and cousins, and my own dear one who stayed calm and did what was needed.

It was a party. I had a bit of wine, not usual for me, I was enjoying myself, nibbling on appetizers, enjoying the mild air, the good people, being welcomed, watching Ed's joy as the small party became a surprize huge gathering. He was given a very silly hat, which he wore with aplomb. I decided to get a bit more substantial food, a bit of steak tips. They were a bit gristly, and I thought I'd bitten through enough to swallow a small bit, but the larger bit stuck and went down as well. I couldn't cough it up, I mimed to D the Heimlich maneuver, which he immediately started. I figured it would just pop right out, like in the movies, like in the CPR class descriptions. It stayed glued. D got someone else to try, and I heard the new rescuer say "bend over!, bend over!" wondering if that would make a difference. And started to go black. I didn't mind dying for my own sake, but I went out agonized at leaving D, in such a messy, pointless way. How stupid to die at a birthday party, in front of so many people. But I was helpless, my throat blocked, my life collapsing.

Then I was on my side, looking at dirt, and glory, glory, glory, I was breathing. Raspy uncertain breaths, but I was breathing! I never realized how lovely dirt could look. And I could hear a voice saying "She looks much less blue" and "She's pinking up." More phrases that made sense at the time, but I can't remember now. I wanted to reassure them, I said "Breathing is good" and I'm fine, I'm fine, and Hi, wow that was scary. One voice said "She'll feel better if you wipe that dirt off" I said I didn't mind the dirt at all, it was beautiful dirt, as long as I was breathing. I can't say that is what actually was heard, but I think I got a few relieved laughs. A man told me he was giving me a face mask with oxygen, coaxing me into accepting it. Completely unnecessary, I jammed it onto my face and sucked in, my chest easing, delicious oxygen. I found my cousin Fran holding my right arm, and she looked so beautiful and caring. I reached out to my left and felt D's shoe, and we found each other's hands, and I drank in his worried face. I'm fine, I'm fine, breathing is wonderful, this was scary. Said a bright Hi to the woman in the uniform who came and took my vital signs and asked me questions.

I didn't want to get taken to the hospital. We can't afford the expense, I will be fine, but oh, my head is sparkly. I deferred to D, who said go. I complied. My EMT talked to me the whole weird ride in the ambulance, the same kind of litany that I do for my recovery room patients. I cried the whole way, but she believed me when I just said Ignore it, normal stress reaction. By the end of the ride, I'd managed to tell her what I did for a living, and she laughed that I knew everything she'd been telling me. Didn't mind, I'd found it very reassuring. The heavy pain below my zyphoid eased after a belch or two before we got to the hospital. I put out my hand when the gurney moved, and there was D's hand. We grinned.

I was checked, monitored, watched. My oxygen levels were the acceptable over 90%, but not the good over 95%, for a while. My throat hurt, I was wiped of all energy or desire to move. They listened to my lungs, my gut. My head spun, partly from the wine. By 7PM I talked them into letting me go home. Even D didn't object by then. I was given precautions on the potential sequela from the resuscitation effort. They reluctantly discharged me after a few more signatures. Elizabeth took us back. When she drove into the driveway, Ed stood waiting, then gathered me into his arms. I felt like a long lost child, welcomed back from the grave. For so I was, and I was just as glad to see him.

Death had come to the party, so when I came back alive, everyone there had to touch me, to reassure themselves, which also reassured me. I was happy to hug any of these lovely people. I was alive, because of them. There was more humor, the advantage of a party with the addition of red and blue flashing lights- regarding the reputation in the neighborhood. The joy of breathing. Stealing the spotlight from the birthday boy. (So what if it was his 70th.)

Today, I feel very fragile. D is worried and shaken, keeps holding me with a kind of wordless desperation. I have emailed people, because I needed to connect with my life, our life. Moby was very skittish when we got home, and he let me hold him a long time. He was at our feet all night, and as near to me as he could get all day.

I am alive. I breathe. I am deeply grateful.

I feel very loved.

Branch (Photo)

Crisis

I am who you want in a crisis. I stop, listen, see, and act. My anxiety disappears, I do. I will gather the children, I will have my gas mask on, I will run for the Defibrillator, I will run toward the victim, I know. I have. I do not quite remember when I knew this of myself, during my first resuscitation in nursing school? The first car accident I was in? The next day I will fall apart, but in that critical hour, I will stand.

I believe in triage, although trained, it was always very right intuitively to me. Save who you can, do what you can, move on. Brutal choices, no looking back. Simple choices, action. Still, it took me longer than I thought reasonable to automatically prioritize breathing, a common failing. A year working surgery-recovery to thoughtlessly, automatically, pull out the O2, pull up the jaw to clear the airway, check breathing first and always. I think the reason may be deeply ingrained genetic history. That if a person is not breathing, until modern times, they were not salvageable, so the ingrained human reaction is to go on to the next and staunch bleeding- which is survivable under rough conditions.

Two stories from the first week of hurricane suffering: patients in a nursing home abandoned to the flood, and an ICU nurse, for days, manually breathing for a patient on a ventilator. The first is condemned as heartless and selfish, the second as noble and right. To me, in my darkest hours, I know the first is the sadly, selfishly human survival action, and the second foolish and wasteful, if admirable in impulse. The staff (with the culpable owners off elsewhere) could little have saved disabled elderly, had little choice or resources to do else. The second, who could have eased suffering among others, chose to focus on one who would not survive anyway. Survival is not pretty, and those on-the-ground choices are not always how we want to see ourselves. Altruism is the high risk gamble, the ideal we want others to embody.

So, most of us save the young who will be strong and carry us along, and one will save the oldest member whose grandmother told him about getting to the next valley that may not be flooded. The ghosts follow along, for good or ill.

And the criminals? The ones shooting at the rescuers? Some were shot, some slipped through to safety as well. We want to be innocent, but it is not necessarily a survival trait.

We are thousands of years of disaster and war and each other. We panic and kill, rescue and defend. We are the genes of the survivors, mostly the pragmatic and brutal, a scattering of the lucky and altruistic.

No wonder we want a god to forgive us.

Hold

My job as a small girl was to hold the hands of elderly relatives and neighbors. It was what I did. Mrs. G lived across the street, and I would visit with her, listen to her stories, talk to her, hold her hand, pick at her wicker porch furniture. Later, when she was just lying in a hospital bed in her house, her sister caring for her, I would hold her hand quietly, fascinated by the pattern of blue veins and the soft fragility of her skin. She died the week I started kindergarten.

Mr. M. was also on my rounds, and he told me of being a railroad engineer, and promised to take me for a ride one day. I listened, holding his large, once powerful hands, and dreamed with him of driving a locomotive, and coupling freight cars.

Mrs R. was my next door Italian grandma. I'm told she was the only person I always smiled for as a baby, her hugs were all encompassing. I can still hear her singing my name, welcoming and embracing. I could spend hours in her company, leaning on her as she read. I think she missed me when I grew older, and busier with my life. I missed the simple joy of disappearing into her bosom.

My Grandmother was bedridden for most of my life, her daughter caring for her roughly, she only got up once a day, and later not even that. Her right ear eventually became deformed from lying only on that side, the bed being pushed against the wall on the other side. She seemed a very tall woman to my small self, even lying so still in bed. She spoke very little English, I spoke no French, I held her hand kindly, but with very little attachment. I wonder what kind of mother she actually had been. My father and his sister and brothers often said she would not live through the winter, through the summer, through the winter. She lived to be 95. She remains a cypher who never got my name right.

My Granny, now she was a pistol. Busy, cantankerous, bright and active right up to the end at 93. Had her cane taken away from her the week before she died because she was hitting people with it. Infuriated and monopolized my Aunt Evelyn, coddled my Aunt G. played favorites and Euchre with equal aplomb. My memory of her is largely her relationships with her children, not with me. She had wonderful hands, of great age.

I hold hands. In the face of overwhelming disaster and global suffering, I reach out to one hand, and sit quietly, observing the texture of the skin, the color, the map of veins. I am a tiny girl, being warned not to make a pest of myself, holding very still.

Fairygoddaughter(Photo)

Grey

I was at Mayfest at my university, stealing a guilty hour from finals study time to dither and shop the booths. Pottery, tie-dye t-shirts, save the animals and become a libertarian, come to the library, and have your fortune told. I opted for the last one in my ditherment. A young woman asked me what appealed, palm or cards, choosing stones in a bag. Hadn't heard about the stones, and so I closed my eyes, and picked out a half dozen. She read them for me, but mostly was amazed that every one was grey. She dumped out the whole of the bag, full of colorful stones. I was in the last throes of my "marriage" grinding out A's as my life depended on it, and felt very defensive about my choices. What was wrong with grey? The stones all felt pretty interesting. Still, I took it to my heart. I was wearing an oversize grey rayon jumper, large pockets, very comfortable, my daily uniform, rather shabby. I noticed how little color was in my closet. Camouflage.

I had won a soft grey stuffed rabbit at a church Easter party, guessing the number of jellybeans in a huge jar. Ecstatic, I'd never won anything, and for such a lovely critter. Older kids stole it from me while I waited for my mother to pick me up. The church committee found out and later gave me a bright yellow bunny to replace it. I'd loved the real looking one, and the soft grey fur. They thought they had gotten me a better one. I cried later.

In high school, I bought a skirt, pinwale corduroy, dark charcoal grey, long, slim. I felt so stylish in it. Unprecedented. My parents always complained when I wore it, too dark and severe they thought, not allowed when visiting relatives or for church, and I had uniforms for school. So, a few school dances, until my hips took a growth spurt, and it no longer fit. I have a shortish knit soft one now, discovered on sale, and very subtle, makes me feel daring and sensual.

I have had grey coats, and hats, all soft. Grey to me is comforting, or very sophisticated, elegant. Cool, neutral and natural. Grey is what I wear for myself, to feel solid and certain. I like to think angels wear grey, dark heather charcoal grey, gently flowing, walking in our midst.