North and South

There is thin space between North and South

A razor’s edge, the difference

Between freedom

And spilt blood

Mason-Dixon Line.

Inheritance

Maybe the question never was

What kind of woman would I be?

Maybe the question always was

When would I become her?

It’s not just my wide hips that jostle crowds

I am not only loud

I am too loud

“Tone it down”

“Shh, shh”

“We hear you”

But do you?

You hear but

Completely miss the message

And so

I have to keep repeating

Repeating

Repeating

On volume 11

That well-behaved women

Rarely make history

And that I am not merely me

The Susanne you see

Of here and now

That you are shushing

Into the white noise background

I am a woman of two generations before

Who raised 5 children

Only to meet her demise

At the hands of her own ovaries

She didn’t say much.

I’ve already made up for her in pages and pages

Of journals that may never be read but

At least I said it.

More so than her,

I am

Eulalia and Marie

Sweet, mellifluous

Eulalia

Pretty as the tinkling of crystal,

Not half as fragile

Pulled her nieces and nephews

Up through the mud,

Multiplication, and division

Just to keep their brown butts

In school

Smart as the school-teacher whip she cracked.

Made no bones about it

No excuses either

For that cocky way

She wore her Sunday hat

It always said

“You better believe

I’m here

And

Don’t you forget it neither”

The other half of the dynamic duo:

Marie

Sweet-pea Marie

Watch out now

She’ll scrub you

‘till your sins shine

She wielded her power

With bars of Octagon soap

Distilling the best

Out of you

In the tin tub

Full of corn water

From the evening meal

I am her dreams that never were

The granbaby girl

She got but never knew

Before dementia left her

Mind a moth-eaten mess

I am the college degree

Big city girl

With so many hopes

I don’t know where to

Hang my hat

I am volume 11

“Is this thing on?”

Grandfather in the Corner

We wind the clock every Sunday because that’s what we’ve always done; pulling down on the metal chains to raise the heavy brass weights that keep the pendulum in motion for all time. I thought it was called a grandfather clock because of my father’s father. Thought that its dark wood harbored a long, illustrious family history. But it wasn’t so; my own father bought it somewhere  in New Jersey long after he’d left my grandfather in Virginia. He’d  have told me that it was too nice a clock for black people to have owned “back then”. That’s why it came to us after – after Richmond, Virginia and segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. It takes up residence in a corner of the dining room now. I don’t care so much about where it came from as I used to. What matters is that the broad-faced sun and sliver of moon rise and set over the roman numerals the way they’ve been doing all my life. The clock in the corner is nothing but dependable. It keeps memories of time for me now like he once did. I tick off the many moments in my life to its hourly gongs.  It sets the rhythm for the day, just like a heartbeat.

Something Someone Said

The word itself is weighted like an anvil that falls heavily, squarely, and hammers you into the ground in a single, swift stroke.  It is cavernous and dark, stretching on forever like a tunnel, except that there is no light at the end of its long length. It is deafening. It silences the rest of the sentence with a jet-engine roar. It is the moment at which hope is extinguished.

I saw his mouth forming the word cancer before I actually heard it. There is certain predictability in an oncologist’s presence. They do not bring tidings of comfort and joy.

Dad immediately said, as he always said, “Now, don’t go getting all upset.”

Colour

I love color. I love colour – spelled with a “u” everywhere else except the US, it seems.

I love deeply pigmented, saturated colors. I could rather do without pastels and those various other hues that are wishy-washy and can’t seem to make up their mind as to what shade of purple or green or red they will be. Eggplant purples. Emerald greens. Suburst oranges. Midnight sky blues. Colors that you could dive into they are so deep and rich.

Spirit Trail Fibers in "Harvest"

The 2009 Rhinebeck NY Sheep and Wool Show was fantastic, if a bit overwhelming for a newcomer like myself. The whole place was a riotous palette of color from wool, to buttons, to ribbon, to pots of dye. There were richly hued hand-spun wools dyed from natural plant extracts that produced such vivid feasts for the eyes. Even the browns, whites, and greys of the animals were appealing as they rolled about in hay. Of course, one can hardly fail to mention the foliage! It’s hard not to spend a good deal of time craning your neck towards the sky to take in the massive spread of leafy canopies as you drive and drive and drive along the NY interstate. It’s magnificent the way those fiery colors are illuminated against the backdrop of clear blue, cloudless skies. You’d think you’d happened upon some large conflagration of sorts with all of those yellows, reds, and oranges – pure and beautiful and profoundly natural in a world where most beauty is fabricated. Now it won’t be Autumn for me without the anticipation of a trip to Rhinebeck, the explosion of Northeastern Fall foliage, and the smells of wet leaves, wood smoke, and hand-spun wool.

It's just not a fair without the Kettle Corn

A little trim before the judging.

A ram if I ever saw one.

Goats, too!

For the Honeybee Cardigan

Someone's going to need to wind all that yarn...

Socks that Rock

Cormo wool

A drop spindle and roving for yet another hobby

Magic

Adulthood, unlike childhood, holds little magic. Life becomes a steady routine of rules and responsibilities that you rinse and repeat day in and day out. It’s hard to find excitement in the simplicities of the every day the way five  year olds can. When the wind blows away the seeds of a dandelion puff, it seems much less mesmerizing.

Fireworks, though, are one of those things that never cease to amaze me. They are spectacular forms of pyrotechnic genius whose fleeting nature forces you to sit up and pay attention, eyes widening millimeter by millimeter so that you can take in every last ephemeral skyward burst.

Growing Up Is Hard to Do

I had intended to enter a recent essay contest sponsored by Real Simple magazine, but time got away from me and the deadline for entries has passed. The topic for the contest was “When did you first realize you were an adult?”. I’ve got no chance of winning $3,000 now, but I still want to put forth my own thoughts regarding that question.

I used to think that I’d feel like an adult when I left Philadelphia, drove off to New York City with a car full of belongings, and made my new home at Barnard College. I was 18 and, at that time, being an adult really meant one thing to me: being able to do whatever the hell I wanted without needing to solicit my parents’ permission. I pretty much figured that college would provide a plethora of such opportunities. But, like I said, I was 18 and pretty stupid.

In college, I ran into all sorts of obstacles and challenges that had me whipping out my cell phone – sometimes in hysterics, other times in tears – to call home and beg my parents to tell me what I should do. “Should I be pre-med?, What major sounds best? How much vodka constitutes a trip to the ER for stomach pumping?” and so on and so forth.

When being an adult at 18 wasn’t quite working out, I figured that age 21 was the magical number and I’d just bide my time as an adolescent until then. Shortly after turning 21 and consuming a few alcoholic beverages legally, I found myself thousands of miles from Philadelphia and New York City in South Africa. “Now,” I thought “I am truly an adult.” Afterall, what kind of child lives alone in a foreign country where she doesn’t know another soul? Things went swimmingly – I went to classes, learned how to drive a stick-shift on the opposite side of the road, dated a man from Cape Town, and traveled the Garden Route all by myself, all without managing to get myself killed – until I ended up horribly ill for the last 3 months of my stay. Instead of whipping out my cell phone this time, I was trudging down the stairs to my residence hall’s public phone in the wee hours of the South African morning to, yet again, consult my parents on whether or not they thought I had some life-threatening plague. When all was said and done and I was safely returned to the United States, an Infectious Disease specialist diagnosed the tiny parasite that had been causing me – and my parents – months of long distance agony.

By this time, I felt that it was obvious that I was still miles away from being a real, live adult and conceded to wait for college graduation. College graduation was all about entering “the real world”, or so I was told over and over and over again by the long ago graduated, so-called adults I encountered. The short of it is that neither graduating from Barnard, nor entering the “real world” made me feel any more like a capable adult. I felt like a pubescent boy, occupying a body that didn’t really fit. I was all gangly and awkward limbs that I hadn’t yet grown into.

If I still thought that being an adult had anything to do with age, I would say that I was thrown headlong and rather unceremoniously into adulthood at age 24. The exact age I am at this moment – give or take a few minutes, seconds, or whathaveyou – and the age I was when my father died. I realized that I was an adult the exact moment I stepped foot into my father’s hospital room and knew that he was no longer breathing. The initial feeling was like being stranded in a vast ocean only to realize that your life boat has just deflated. I could bail water as furiously as possible, but that still wouldn’t change the fact that I was on my own in a way I had never been before. There was no longer any man in the world who would always put me before himself. It was a slow realization, actually. When I found myself getting through the viewings and the funeral and the burial without breaking into millions of tiny pieces, I began to feel that I had finally grown into my capable, adult self. I was making my own decisions, forging my own life path in school and at work, and being a supportive sister, daughter, and aunt to my family. Despite unimaginable heartbreak, I was still standing on my own two feet and all with my cell phone tucked quietly away in my purse.

Philosophy of Nursing: An Assignment

I wanted to be a doctor until I didn’t. That is to say that I had always planned on becoming a doctor.  It seemed the most natural way for me to emulate my father, whom I have always idolized. That was the plan until, one day, the whole idea seemed completely wrong. When my father was diagnosed with cancer, my view of the health care profession radically shifted as I found myself occupying, or rather coping with, this new caretaker role. I experienced a rather fervent conversion: Nursing is for me. Just like that – no more medical school.

Some say I “settled” for Nursing. Settled! What kind of egregious accusation is that? Do they know how hard this is? I could cry every day for the rest of my life doing this job. I didn’t settle; I stepped up to accept awesome responsibility and privilege – the privilege of being able to lay hands on another human being, to become a participant-observer in their most intimate and excruciating moments, to navigate them, like a wayward ship, through the complexities of illness and wellness. Nursing is not about virtue or piety or maternal instincts or whatever Johnson&Johnson claims in their commercials. These characteristics don’t keep people alive; don’t keep people happy and healthy. Nursing is so continually sentimentalized and trivialized that it has become a veritable Hallmark Card in the health care industry. Somehow, Nursing is about “all the ways you care” and not about highly complex and skilled knowledge work.

Nursing is what results when a highly educated and motivated young woman, like myself, says, “I want to be present in another person’s life. I want to participate collaboratively in that life in order to effect changes. I refuse to merely view another human being as a disease model. I will recognize that people are not just the sum of their parts but complex individuals situated within ever-changing environments. I will take risks for the sake of a greater good, allowing myself to become open to criticism.” I imagine that such a philosophy was most important to my father in his practice of medicine – his primary goal being to relate to a patient human to human, not doctor to patient. So, really, my desire to emulate my father has nothing to do with my becoming a doctor, but it has everything to do with my becoming a good person. Nursing is my opportunity to achieve such a goal. It is social justice.

Present Tense

No one laughs at god in a hospital / no one laughs at god in a war

Regina Spektor is right, especially about the first part.

————————————————————————————————-

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a detail-oriented person. Perhaps obsessively so. I like organization because I am perpetually anxious when I cannot find things. I keep a box of life’s minutiae – postcards, business cards, ticket stubs, photos, pieces of my parents from before I existed, pieces of myself.

I remember birthdays. I send hand-written thank you notes. I remember the story behind that little scar on your chin. I know whether you are a cat or a dog person and the name of your favorite dish at your favorite restaurant.

It’s easy to get lost in the details and forget to take in the forest for the trees. Details are what lay between the lines. You have to read a little more deeply to keep track of them all. They’re what make us more than human.

Dad was a detail man. His details were just different. He didn’t write lengthy personal notes, but usually signed his cards with the ever brieg “Dad” in his cramped hand. His preference for details weren’t necessarily about finding you the perfect birthday present, but a preference for the things that made you feel special in a world where few people take the time to remember how to properly spell your name.

He was really good with names. He knew the moniker of just about any person he ever met. He usually knew their kids’ names and where they went on their last vacation, too. This made everyone feel that they were more than just a fleshy face he passed in the hallway.

I worry about forgetting the details now that he’s gone. I wish I had held his hand more. Especially during those days when he had already moved on to some other place that I couldn’t reach. Dad had perfectly oval nails at the ends of long fingers. No hang nails either. His index finger was the longest and his skin was smooth, soft, and warm. They were good hands for shaking. They were good for holding, too, but I was afraid. More afraid than I’ve ever been. More afraid than watching all those women whom I’d cared for die, more afraid than bungy jumping.

It seems silly, but I don’t want to be the girl whose father died when she was 24. That realization is perhaps the most excruciating thing I have ever felt – more painful the two broken wrists, the 14 stitches, and the tonsillectomy that I’ve had. I don’t think this pain will necessarily characterize who I am from this point forward, but it is always going to be part of the story I tell to those who weren’t already part of my life.

These days, the details are all about verb tense.

In conversation, I catch myself saying “was” instead of “is”.

“My dad was…”

It’s not a conscious thing at all. My brain seems to have been reprogrammed to account for the new vacancy in my life. I always end up correcting myself because the verb tense puts that question mark in people’s eyes – “What does she mean ‘was’?” And I don’t like the answer that comes after that question mark. It’s that answer that gets me labeled “the girl whose dad died when she was 24″. I’d rather be someone else.

T – (minus)

There is a scene in the HBO John Adams mini-series of last summer where the Continental Congress has just decided to declare independence from Great Britain. After all the huzzah’s and much applause, the representatives slowly come to fully realize what this decision means and the camera pans over faces that have fallen from joy into concerned frowns about what the future now holds.

My Nursing program begins in a matter of hours and I feel much the same way. The excitement has boiled down to “what the hell was I thinking!?” Just as you can hardly recall The Declaration of Independence, there is no taking this decision back.