Sometimes in April, part 47

For so many years, my siblings and I operated as though we were living under a favorable sign, or a protective veil. We really had never experienced anything truly traumatic.

We had watched others and their families stumble through terrible life circumstances.

I am sure we never failed to say, there but for the grace of God...maybe not truly understanding how close we were to the truth.  

What does it mean when the grace of God falters? 

I don't know, but that facade started to fail that day in September when my brother did not wake up.

But we didn't know it.

We trudged forward, still protected by our belief in grace and security and safety.

It was a terrible thing, but we would survive.

It can't get worse? Right?

I still catch myself saying or thinking, "it can't get worse," and then I remember that it can.

Seven months later, a mysterious illness took my strong sister down. First landing her in the hospital and then killing her. It was truly the unthinkable.

"This can't be happening!" I repeated over and over to my other sister on the phone when she called to tell me to get on the plane.

Life, or bad luck, or whatever can definitely get worse.

And it did. It just kept getting worse.

Everyone was grieving, some in disastrous ways, and I was trying to trudge forward. I thought I was making progress. I was making plans, doing work, following through on all the commitments. 

I wasn't crawled up in a little ball on the floor. I wasn't a puddle that needed to be cleaned up.

But, maybe, I should have been... I should have been processing the grief that was tangled up in my body, looking for a release. I was still living in the world of "it can't get worse."

Seven months later, I talked my parents into coming to see me, in hopes it would lift their spirits, distract them from the intense loss, and bring them comfort. But when my mom stepped off the train, she was clearly not herself. It took me a whole day to talk her into going to the hospital. 

She was having little strokes ... and no one had noticed back home.

I think all of that would have been enough to break anyone. 

However, I did not break, I bent towards the need. Not my need, but her need. I moved home to try to get my parents healthy. All I could think was I could not take one more loss -- and that's where we were headed if I did not intervene.

But my parents' grief was not the only need I would find at home. Everyone was falling apart - and needing support. I took it all on. 

Maybe it was easier than dealing with my own grief. I just kept stuffing it down. And it kept coming out, but it didn't look like grief, it looked like anger. Anger is such an easy emotion, it holds it all.

My brother's daughter, already 16, had never been specifically diagnosed but was languishing in a special education class. She had not learned to read or write.

It didn't seem to matter that my entire professional career was in education. I couldn't get through to my brother before he died, and now I had to get my sister-in-law on board. What would become of any of them?

It was not my fight, but it was. No one else was in a position to notice let alone help.

My brother-in-law and nephew on the other side were making it day to day, but just barely.

Again no one had any bandwidth to help except me.

And, if  I am being honest, I didn't either. But if I didn't help, what would happen?

They all made it through. And the grief piled up in me and spilled out as anger. 

No one ever asked me, how are you doing?

I had come home, given up my PhD program (because in their infinite wisdom I didn't have to do this, and was abandoning my own program). I had zero job prospects in my hometown. I was eking out a living on remote jobs. And taking care of everyone. 

My friends said, you need to leave your parents' home, as though distance would erase the very real need I was filling. But for my own sanity, I decamped. 

I was just about to interview for a real job (April 26th), and that very morning, in the wee hours, my friend's only son died in a car crash. The friend, by the way, who had been housing me as I tried desperately to put my life back together.

I had known this child since birth. I was his first baby sitter. I had watched him grow into the young man I called my next governor of California. In a matter of minutes, he was gone. Gone. 24 years old and gone. 

His mother was in freefall and all of her friends were at a loss watching her spiral. She was the rock. She was the one that they came to for help. She was not in a position to help herself. And they were not used to be being of service to others.

I dropped everything. Lost my interview. And handled the situation. I made the funeral arrangements. I am not saying others did not step up and help. But I was orchestrating. I was getting what I could from my friend about what she wanted. Negotiating with the ex-husband and his family about their involvement. And keeping it all together.

This is how my life went for years. Though my brother died in September, April was the month of trauma. April was the month when my sister was stricken and killed. April was the month my friend's son died in a solo car accident.

It took me years to not crumble every April. Years.

And this year, April came for me with a vengeance.

I finally truly moved out of my parents' home in search of a life of my own. I had purposely stayed away for several months. But in April, I made the journey home. Hoping to forge the boundaries I needed to keep myself safe while still supporting my parents, I planned a one week visit. 

On the fourth day of my visit (April 14), my mom fell down bringing in one of the trash cans. 

She ended up with a hematoma that threatened her life. The neurosurgeon told us that 10 minutes more and she would not have made it. We got her to the hospital in time to save her life, just barely. 

Nevermind that my father did not even contemplate calling 911, or that my mother was not wearing the life alert button her health insurance had sent her. I could barely make the numbers work on the keypad of the house line or my cell phone.

April is the cruelest month. There is no disputing that.

My mom survived. She is not the same person. She cannot be alone. My father now understands that he cannot protect and save her from everything as he had once imagined he could.

We three remaining siblings are left to figure out how we go forward. These intervening months have not been kind to us even as my mother gains strength.

Let's just hope next April brings us peace and stability. I'll take peace if nothing else.

what if?

What if I told you that I only feel worthy if I can be of help to someone?

What if nothing anyone could say could make it better?

There are lots of details that I don't want to explain right now. Foul, I know. But there it is.

But what if there was someone who you have always wanted to declare her love for you? And what if at this point, even if she did or could, it would not change how you feel about yourself?

I am trying to help someone I care about to confront and change the agreements that have left her vulnerable to predators. 

It's hard because I am still trying to disentangle myself from similar agreements. And knowing that they exist was a good first step. But what those steps are in between knowing and renegotiating are never fully spelled out. 

So, as I try to pull back the veil for my friend, I deal with the onslaught of my own agreements - and how knowing about them hasn't easily produced the new agreements I need to live a more healthy, happy life.

I don't know where I was headed with this. Honestly, this is the third or fourth post I have started trying to process the latest trauma. 

Trauma piled on trauma - not grieving any of it fully, just makes for serious trauma responses to even the slightest situation. 

But I have had some pretty big issues to deal with lately (again). So, sometimes this has escalated to panic attacks - and sometimes to what feels like relatively insignificant stimuli.

In retrospect, I can say that I have survived all the large and small traumas ... recalling the appropriateness of the ; in our lives.

; take a breath

; feel the feelings

; hold on to see what comes next

I type all this in the full knowledge that for some folks what comes next might be worse than what is now. It might not work for all folks to take a beat. I respect that.

For me, right now, I am remembering the times when taking a breath got me to the next minute. 

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Yesterday, a FB friend posted about this phone number: 707-998-8410.

If you haven't called it, you should do it right now.

It is an elementary school's take on surviving and thriving. It's called PepTOC, a pep talk hotline done by children who are surviving and thriving through all the madness. [You can donate to the effort here if you are inclined. They are crowdsourcing funds to keep the number going.]

This is important and amazing - not only because their pure energy can be felt through the phone line. But also because according to recent studies, children (along with the elderly) have struggled during the pandemic on many fronts, but they are soooo resilient. 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't support them. It's just so wonderful that these teachers realized these kids had so much to give the rest of us. And then they gave it to us. 

As an old high school teacher of mine used to admonish when I was down, "you think you have it rough," read this. [And he was right, and only reminded me when I was on the upswing.] 

This is the opposite sentiment -- we're in this together, here's some pure joy and energy.

The ROI for dialing a number [we do this so infrequently anymore] is ENORMOUS. 

If you want to read/hear more about it, this piece by NPR is lovely. This piece is also lovely. P.S. #5 was my personal fave.

Teaser on YouTube:

If small children are not your jam, try this piece on sound art from the DF. I also found it soothing and lovely to think of city sounds as treasures.

HAPPY WEEKEND! 

Awesome start to Women's History Month

Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah

~Patricia Smith - 1955-

My mother scraped the name Patricia Ann from the ruins
of her discarded Delta, thinking it would offer me shield
and shelter, that leering men would skulk away at the slap
of it. Her hands on the hips of Alabama, she went for flat
and functional, then siphoned each syllable of drama,
repeatedly crushing it with her broad, practical tongue
until it sounded like an instruction to God, not a name.
She wanted a child of pressed head and knocking knees,
a trip-up in the doubledutch swing, a starched pinafore
and peppermint-in-the-sour-pickle kinda child, stiff-laced
and unshakably fixed on salvation. Her Patricia Ann
would never idly throat the Lord’s name or wear one
of those thin, sparkled skirts that flirted with her knees.
She'd be a nurse or a third-grade teacher or a postal drone,
jobs requiring alarm-clock discipline and sensible shoes.
My four downbeats were music enough for a vapid life
of butcher-shop sawdust and fatback as cuisine, for Raid
spritzed into the writhing pockets of a Murphy bed.
No crinkled consonants or muted hiss would summon me.

My daddy detested borders. One look at my mother's
watery belly, and he insisted, as much as he could insist
with her, on the name Jimi Savannah, seeking to bless me
with the blues-bathed moniker of a ball breaker, the name
of a grown gal in a snug red sheath and unlaced All-Stars.
He wanted to shoot muscle through whatever I was called,
arm each syllable with tiny weaponry so no one would
mistake me for anything other than a tricky whisperer
with a switchblade in my shoe. I was bound to be all legs,
a bladed debutante hooked on Lucky Strikes and sugar.
When I sent up prayers, God's boy would giggle and consider.

Daddy didn't want me to be anybody's surefire factory,
nobody's callback or seized rhythm, so he conjured
a name so odd and hot even a boy could claim it. And yes,
he was prepared for the look my mother gave him when
he first mouthed his choice, the look that said, That's it,
you done lost your goddamned mind. She did that thing
she does where she grows two full inches with righteous,
and he decided to just whisper Love you, Jimi Savannah
whenever we were alone, re- and rechristening me the seed
of Otis, conjuring his own religion and naming it me.

From Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah by Patricia Smith. Copyright © 2012 by Patricia Smith. Reprinted with permission of Coffee House Press.

Happy Valentine's Day y'all

If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert

~Natalie Diaz - 1978-

I will swing my lasso of headlights
across your front porch,

let it drop like a rope of knotted light
at your feet.

While I put the car in park,
you will tie and tighten the loop

of light around your waist —
and I will be there with the other end

wrapped three times
around my hips horned with loneliness.

Reel me in across the glow-throbbing sea
of greenthread, bluestem prickly poppy,

the white inflorescence of yucca bells,
up the dust-lit stairs into your arms.

If you say to me, This is not your new house
but I am your new home,

I will enter the door of your throat,
hang my last lariat in the hallway,

build my altar of best books on your bedside table,
turn the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off.

I will lie down in you.
Eat my meals at the red table of your heart.

Each steaming bowl will be, Just right.
I will eat it all up,

break all your chairs to pieces.
If I try running off into the deep-purpling scrub brush,

you will remind me,
There is nowhere to go if you are already here,

and pat your hand on your lap lighted
by the topazion lux of the moon through the window,

say, Here, Love, sit here — when I do,
I will say, And here I still am.

Until then, Where are you? What is your address?
I am hurting. I am riding the night

on a full tank of gas and my headlights
are reaching out for something.

“If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert” originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine (April 1, 2021). Used with permission of the poet.