M and Me

Apparently everyone's doing it, though the only ones I've actually read are Bloglily's and Charlotte Otter's. I'm probably way late on the uptake, but what the hell. I don't often write about M, so I'll do it now, by way of this odd little survey.

How long have you been together?

Since January 2006 <-- This is wrong, should read 1996, thanks, Hopie!, during the snow.

How long did you know each other before you began dating?

A couple of months. He'd just quit his job as a newspaper reporter and came to work as a night-time assignment editor at the TV station where I was a news producer.

Who asked whom out?

Hard to say. It was my sister's idea; she came into the newsroom one evening, I introduced her to M, and as she and I were leaving, she whispered to me, "He's cute as shit." Indeed. After that, I think I probably asked him if he wanted to join "us" (the night crew) for a drink after the 11:00 news, and it turned out no one else wanted to go (or maybe I wasn't so expansive with the invitation?), so it was just the two of us, and there was a lot of snow on the ground, so he drove us in his truck, and it turned out it was his 25th birthday, and I bought drinks and afterwards he took me to my house and we stayed up late talking and then he left. That was the beginning.

How old are you?

I'm 47, he's 38.

Whose siblings do you see the most?

Mine, because she and her funny husband live just a few blocks away. We'd see his brother and his wonderful wife and baby if they didn't live 800 miles away, or if we didn't.

Which situation is hardest on you as a couple?

Gosh, this is hard to say, because cancer affects absolutely everything lately. I'd say childrearing is toughest, though we're very much in synch with each other, and with A. What's tough about it is how skewed the balance has become; M has to do pretty much everything, all the day-to-day, all the care. He gets her up, gets her dressed, gets her breakfast, fixes her lunch, gets her to school, brings her home and gets her supper, supervises homework, gets her to bed. On weekends, it's M and A: he takes her to playdates and parties, she goes with him to the grocery store and the butcher and cheese shops, they do laundry together. My role recently is a kind of really lovely combination Jabba the Hutt/Yoda, a blob on the bed and, occasionally, the sofa, who spouts profound truths and allows herself to be served pretend tea. As I've written here somewhere, one of the most difficult aspects of illness is being unable to fully mother (gah - noun/verb) my little girl. Hard on me, hard on her, excruciatingly difficult on M. So, combined with the crushing weight of cancer itself, I'd say the imbalance of everyday duties (and accompanying guilt) exerts the most pressure on us as a couple.

Did you go to the same school?

No, and if we had, we wouldn't have known each other since I'm a thousand years older. We both went to public high schools in different states; we attended different colleges. (I went to Tulane, he to University of Richmond.)

Are you from the same home town?

No. He grew up on Long Island. I grew up in a Quaker village in rural Virginia.

Who is smarter?

He is much quicker on the uptake than I, both intellectually and socially. He has a better memory. (A lizard has a better memory than I.) I'm better than he is at thinking ahead and seeing lots of possibilities (does this account for my outsize ability to worry?); he's more spontaneously creative. We both blow at math.

Who is the most sensitive?

I'm not sure what this question means. We're both humanoid, with all the attendant emotional equipment. It used to be that I "got over" arguments faster, probably because I'm less temperate and usually in the wrong, but lately M has given me, erm, a wider berth. More rope? Anyway, he's extremely patient.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?

Swear to God, I can't recall the last meal out as a couple. When I'm feeling up to it, the three of us go for sushi in a matchbox of a restaurant (with equally minute servers) a few blocks away. Haven't done that since last summer. A puts the chopsticks to seaweed salad and edamame and noodly things while M and I knock back spicy tuna rolls and saki. 

Where is the furthest (farthest?) you've traveled together as a couple?

We're talking earth orbit, I presume. We were engaged in Rome (he bought my ring in Florence - sigh). A few years later, the two of us followed the sun and the curve of the earth to Changsha, Hunan Provence, PRC, and jetted home two weeks later, a family of three. Best. Thing. Ever.

Who has the craziest exes?

I win that race hands-down.

Who has the worst temper?

Hi. Me again.

Who does the most cooking?

The most? How 'bout the only? That would be M. I can make a mean holiday apple pie. And quiche, I can make quiche, if called upon to serve, which is rare.

Who is the most stubborn?

I am, unless M digs in his heels and becomes angry, in which case I know he's serious and I cave. (Isn't everyone stubborn? What is the definition of stubborn? Determined? Tenacious? Resilient? Jury's out on this one.)

Who hogs the most bed?

I think we're both pretty polite. It's never been an issue; we're a tiny people.

Who does the laundry?

M does 95% of the laundry these days. I do it when I feel up to it. I do my skivvies. Yet another imbalance about which I feel unending guilt. On the bright side, we are fortunate to have a whole huge laundry room on the second floor. No more running to the basement, or the laundromat. Seriously, the second floor laundry changed my life. Make this the first major shopping accident you have after the Not So Great Depression ends: move the washer and dryer upstairs.

Who's better with the computer?

He is. He is.

Who drives when you are together?

He does, unless it's a long trip, in which case we split it. I love to drive (except at night, when I don't see so well), so I don't know how we fell into such traditional roles; probably has something to do with that first snowy night in the truck in January 1996...

One other unsolicited item:

M and I had been dating just over a year when I was first diagnosed, in February 1997. In October 1998, we went to Italy, where he asked me to marry him. How many 26-year-old men do you know who'd stick around through all that cancer nonsense, and then willingly sign on for more?

Cheever, school, and teeth

     Have read several articles on and one interview with Cheever (Paris Review) in the last several days, as I turn around in my head the effects of his last, slim novel Oh What A Paradise It Seems. One tenet that consistently arises: keep moving forward, don't look back. He did not, for example, like to give interviews because he didn't like to discuss his work (looking back), and he found reading his own books as distasteful as "listening to a recording of my own conversations" -- he didn't do it. Sharklike; always thinking about the next thing. That's good advice for me to cotton to, considering my awful obsession with submitting (and collecting rejections for) my short fictions. If I could just concentrate on the novel to the exclusion of everything else... Publication is like love in that respect: happens when you least expect it, if it happens at all.

     Speaking of the novel, school starts tomorrow, and novel workshop has moved from Wednesdays to Monday evenings. I'll also be taking a lit class (Magical Realism) that meets twice a week, and thesis hours. The Program of Strengthening and Conditioning has worked well over the last week, and I think I will have enough stamina at least to get my ass to campus tomorrow evening. I have a chemo next Friday, and no class the following Monday (MLK Day), so it'll be a few weeks before I can discern whether treatment is going to impede me. In any case, I haven't driven a car in six weeks. Should work out well, I think.

     The Big Story around here is that A lost not one but TWO teeth (center, bottom) in the last two days. The Tooth Fairy came last night to our house for the first time, and back she'll come tonight. This morning, A pretended to believe with all her heart that a fairy had visited her, but her six-year-old cynicism kicked in this afternoon, and she announced she thought it was probably Mama and Papa who'd swiped the tooth and left the loot. 

     The teeth themselves are impossibly tiny, and I will keep them in a special box forever.

Little victories

     My campaign to regain stamina, now in its third day, progresses apace. It's as though I've broken the seal on Roo's Strengthening Medicine and am enjoying exponential results. Last week this time I had to follow a fifteen minute shower with an hour's nap; yesterday I did four loads of laundry. Urrah!

     I finished the last page of Revolutionary Road, closed the book, switched on the teevee, and saw Leo and Kate in a trailer for the upcoming film. Glad I didn't catch it while in the thick of the novel, 'cause that Hollywood set's not at all what I'd imagined the Wheelers' kitchen to look like. The novel now tops my list of favorites, and gives me all kinds of ideas about how to structure my own novel. I could gush for hours about the writing (really, I could; see "Strengthening Medicine" above) but the upshot is: I want to write like Richard Yates.

     I also want to write like John Cheever, whose last novel, Oh What A Paradise It Seems, I am reading this morning. It's slim, spare, and devastating, and has as much to teach about what to leave out as what to put on the page. Makes me want to take a weed whacker to my work.

     I read Chapter 1 of Ruby the Red Fairy to A last night. It felt great; she snuggled close. It's a Big Girl Chapter Book, you see, so intensely interesting. Tonight we discover if Rachel and her new friend Kirstey find anything cool in that black pot at one end of the rainbow.

     Second day in a row we've awoken to driving rain outside, and a pitch-black house. A is a trooper. It takes her a while to wake up, but once she does, she's laughing. What an agreeable little being. There is nothing I don't love about my child.

     Now: more Cheever, then a bit of fictioneering.

One week to build up strength

     After four weeks spent mostly in bed, I am suddenly feeling better -- feeling like being downstairs, looking forward to going someplace -- anyplace -- other than the hospital. Relieved that the advice the infusion nurse gave me (blame discomfort on the medication, not on the cancer) seems to be apt: the side effects of the last chemo I had, on Dec. 26, apparently are dissipating. It's not the fentanyl that's had me down, or even the tumor. Now that I have causality, I can plan around it and not worry (so much) about it. 

     What's different is hard to quantify. I am still terribly weak, from being in bed and not eating well. (Lost a couple more pounds in the last four weeks, which made Dr. J frown.) But my stomach does not feel knotted up and I can eat two scrambled eggs without a terrible gurgling, full sensation. Yesterday I ate breakfast; took a shower without feeling lightheaded; tidied up the front parlor; got dressed (including earrings and lipstick); hosted my lifelong friend KK and her sweetheart, who stopped through town on their way somewhere else; ate some salmon M had smoked; played with A; ate a normal amount of salad; had ice cream for dessert; watched a movie with M; and didn't go back upstairs until a reasonable adult time (11:00). In other words, if you discount the two-hour nap after breakfast, pretty fucking close to normal. 

     Classes start a week from tomorrow. My goals are to write fiction every day, and to build up my strength enough to get my ass to campus, park, walk, and be in class from 5:15 - 9:40 (two classes back-to-back on Mondays). 

     Me me me. Yawn. M just walked in sans A (who went to lunch at a friend's house) and with the Sunday NYT. There's a nice afternoon unfolding in front of us, and perhaps I'll have something to say about a subject besides my own damn self in the next post. 

     Here's to 2009.

Ten things about my father

My father's name was Gus. Among other things, I remember that he loved:

1. Naked Lady Night in Waterford -- Nude model, artist friends, sketchbooks, and an egg timer. And wine.
2. Ideas -- Politics, astronomy, mathematics, economics
3. His own half-baked theories, presented with conviction -- "I just told you a fact!"
4. Taking a scorching-hot bath in the late afternoon
5. Great American and European cities -- San Francisco, New Orleans, Quebec, London, Copenhagen, Prague, Florence
6. Food and wine -- red wine and red meat prepared "almost bloody" at fine restaurants, or dinner at Eleanor's farm or the Pink House
7. Painting, drawing, playing the piano
8. Silliness -- John Cleese, Martin Short, Jon Stewart
9. Alabama football -- The decal of on the back window of his 1968 Chrysler was Bear Bryant walking on water, with the slogan: "I believe."
10. His family and friends -- His brother Henry, his wife Faye, me and Hopie, Eleanor, Eleanor's granddaughters (who called him Grandfriend), his granddaughter A (who knew him as Grappa), all the Waterford women who cheerfully spoiled him rotten (who knew they were being totally played), Victor, Harry, Chuck, Clayton, Allen, Andy, and M.

Things that help me feel strong

     This week's reminders:

1. A laser-like focus on writing, on structure
2. A fridge stocked with food from sweet friends
3. Writing; making progress with the novel, especially when it comes easily
4. Watching A Room With A View in bed while M carves wine stoppers in the chair beside me
5. Helping other writers work out narrative and structure problems
6. Reading a story or passage or poem that leaves me breathless (Brodsky's "Stone Villages")
7. Not worrying about prepping the guest room for M's brother's visit this weekend
8. Getting dressed and walking to the cafe -- not that I've done that lately, but maybe today
9. Watching A recognize the irony, and the humor, in her own selfish response to that classic motherly lesson about children around the world having little to eat (A, whining: "My tummy hurts because I ate too much." Me: "We're lucky, yadayada." A: "Well, I'm not feeling lucky right now."  --> laughter)
10. M and A

Oil pastels

     After a rocky weekend, I've perked up considerably this afternoon. A and I are hanging out in the front parlor -- there's a beautiful glow from the changing leaves outside, and lamplight against the orange ceiling -- while M bakes bread and makes chicken stock and beef stew. I hear the football game on the TV. Very cozy. A has decided to mount an art show after Thanksgiving, and is inspired by the fall colors. She is using oil pastels to sketch trees. She says she prefers them to crayons, which are "baby," and to regular pastels, which are too chalky and smeary. This is some little artist we have here.

     It felt good to get out a little this afternoon. A was playing with some friends across the river, so M and I got some coffee and walked around the neighborhood while the sun was still out. Now, it's cloudy and cool and just beautiful.

     Busy week ahead; I hope to hang onto this good energy.

Ten more things

     While I don't subscribe to the notion that a sunny attitude will upend cancer, I do believe in making myself feel good. You know, for the hell of it. A periodic inventory of gifts and graces helps me feel strong. This week's list:

1. Listening to A's side of a phone conversation with her new baby cousin and his parents
2. Being on the couch with the Sunday NYT, student poems, and my laptop
3. The smell of chicken stew M is cooking 
4. Utter certainty, confirmed with every news cycle, that we're right; that the nation will do the right thing and choose optimism over cynicism; that the batshit haters are the minority; that people are good
5. Going all day on one hydrocodone
6. Being well prepared for meetings at school tomorrow
7. Hearing all about my child's lovely manners from a friend who hosted A for a playdate
8. Talking with my sister-in-law, who is glowing and clearly over the moon ten weeks after giving birth
9. Writing a poem about illness that is not at all true (or at least is not my experience)
10. M

Still more things that help me feel strong

1. Paying bills; having enough left over to get to Oct. 1
2. The change of light that comes with the Southern fall; whiter, lower, but every bit as intense as the blue of May, the gold of July
3. Collecting seeds from waning morning glories and flowering tobacco
4. Feeling like a rock star after a few days of puny
5. Chalking up the rock star feeling to a vat of caffeinated Starbuck's and a big fuck-you to the directive to knock off the caffeine whilst in the company of Topo Gigio
6. Anticipating A coming home, stepping up to M's camera tripod as though it's a microphone, and "reading" what she's dubbed The Daily News in a loud, disturbingly authoritative voice; "Today, we will count votes. How many voted for Barack Obama, raise your hands, great, Hillary Clinton? Great. Kindergarten is adopting a live fox who lives at the zoo, please give money, that is all of the news."
7. Friends and admired writers who drop by this blog to encourage and compliment; lifts me like helium; thank you
8. Skipping out on poetry workshop but getting a note from my greatly admired poet-instructor declaring she "cannot wait to discuss" my poetry with me; more helium
9. Wearing vintage Nikes and blue jeans and running around campus sans pain meds; no pain; more helium
10. Getting shit done; picking up A's vaccination records from the pediatrician; stopping by the circulation desk to confess I've misplaced a library book; catching a really nice break from the guy at the circulation desk (he renewed the book, so no fines); billing freelance clients; reading manuscripts for novel workshop tomorrow night; getting out of my own head; feeling as though I can do this; I can do this; I can do this

Yet more things that help me feel strong

1. Finishing and turning in the first draft of the first chapter of my first novel to my novel workshop mates. Even if it's caca, it's done. It was an unexpected shitload of work, much more difficult than I'd anticipated.
2. Having a new poem almost complete for poetry workshop tomorrow night. Ahead of the curve. Writing poetry is a shitload of work, too, but I guess I'm not good enough at it to worry it down to a nub the way I did the novel chapter. Poetry: comparatively easy.
3. Staying on top of pain with opiates. Knowing I can control it for now.
4. Reading widely and finding that the number, depth and breadth of credibly reported articles exposing the McCain/Palin lies increases exponentially each day. 
5. Understanding that I have not yet, but must in the near future, read credibly reported articles in conservative venues and hold my nose and delve into the shit-spout that appears credible to people who are predisposed to believe/agree with it -- i.e. Drudge, Fox News, etc. "Reading eclectically" as my father-in-law puts it.
6. Knowing my limits; deliberately dodging, for the time being, the gloom about Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch, Fannie, Freddie. Pulling a Palin and eschewing knowledge!
7. Eating nerve pills. Proceeding as normal.
8. Helping A look for "sparkle babies," also known as "twinklies," above the transoms. (These, I gather, are baby fairies.) Knowing she is this close to being sure it's all make believe, but remains eager to suspend her disbelief.
9. Keeping the potted plants lush and thriving: lavender, basil, clematis, cucumbers, peppers, impatiens, jasmine, begonias, cereus, morning glories, blooming tobacco -- all breathing, all beautiful.
10. Not flinching at three short fiction rejection notices in one day. Deleting the emails. Submitting the stories to other journals. Forgetting about them. (sorta)

Someone else is having a rougher day than I am.

     Just took a deep breath and called Joanne in Dr. J's office to ask her advice: do I need to come in for another talk, or a checkup, or can we all just agree that it's time to start chemo and go ahead and schedule it?

     After telling me that what I was saying was reasonable (God bless her), she said, "Well, you know, it's Wednesday, so he's in surgery right now." (Yes, I know that Wednesdays are surgery days; he's generally not in the office.) "I'll talk with him when he comes out and call you back, and we'll go from there." Great! 

     I hung up, and it hit me: that woman he's doing surgery on today is more scared, more uncomfortable, more freaked out, and possibly in deeper shit than I am. 

     Whatever strength I manage to gather for myself today, I will share with her.

More things that help me feel strong

1. Railing against Rovian Republican fables
2. Playing Connect Four with A; watching the wheels turn as she thinks one, two, three moves ahead; her delighted giggle when she wins; her resolved sportsmanship when she doesn't
3. Running the dishwasher and unloading the dishes; feeling the burn on my neuropathic fingertips from the still-hot plates
4. Listening to the local independent station on M's huge old tube radio
5. The sound of hard rain on the roof after three months of dry; trusting that the new roof will keep the water out
6. Cutting lemon for hot tea
7. Following US Open tennis
8. Donating (more) to Obama/Biden
9. Seeing M's mannerisms in A's gesticulating explanation of why he cannot go first in the next round of Connect Four ("Dada, do you get this? Because it doesn't seem even a teeny little bit to me like you get it.")
10. Being socked in with M and A on a stormy Saturday afternoon

     A is still in the excellent fairy-princess outfit we threw together this morning. She has fairy dust on her cheeks and loose, wild hair. Her fingernails, polished pink, are absolutely filthy.

Doctor, doctor

     One good thing about being a cancer veteran is that I know everyone in my oncologist's office. (And in the infusion center, and in the Women's Special Care unit, and in radiology, and outpatient admitting, and and and.) So when I call at the crack of 8:00 asking if there's time for a quick checkup today, I'm not talking to a switchboard; I'm talking to Paige, who has known me and my family lo these many years. 

     "Hang on just a sec, E," she says, and is back in no time with, "We'll see you as soon as you can be here."

     So off we go, me and M, after depositing A at day school and eating a nerve pill. Everyone in the office -- Paige, Iva, Betty, Joanne, Dr. W (my oncologist's partner) -- everyone comes out and gives us hugs and asks after A and asks for pictures, as though we weren't in less than a month ago; as though they've done nothing in the interim but think about us and wonder how we are doing, daily, hourly. 

     We do the routine, guessing how much I weigh before the scale tells us for sure, and checking blood pressure (waaaaay up there today, brushed aside as "white coat syndrome"), and taking us to the exam room and hanging out with us, making us laugh, distracting us before Dr. J makes his bigger-than-life appearance.

     I love him. We have a great relationship: I trust him, he trusts me. He is not icked out by M being in the room with us while he pokes around, vamping a monologue about throwing pottery and cooking for his son's fraternity house. He throws photos of his new grandbaby all over my stomach, knowing I'll squeal. Then he turns serious, but not too serious when he explains that he's feeling some "knuckle-like things," then reassures us that I've had worse exams. Better, too. 

     He says he thinks we're status quo. I tell him I think the pressure is more persistent. He asks about particulars, I tell him. He says he thinks we should wait. Keep a very close eye. Monthly appointments but come in earlier if you notice anything different. What happens if it gets worse? What will we do? We'll figure it out then. If we try to plan now, it'll just change. But he has more tricks up his sleeve, right? And more sleeves? He is indignant. Of course! Of course I do! 

     That's what I needed to hear. He won't just send us away with no prospects and a prescription for fentanyl. He'll do something. He'll fix it one more time.

     Somehow we'll try something we have never tried before, and it'll work.

     As we leave, he grabs my arm. You gotta show Iva the photo of A with the electric guitar. Iva, come look at this!

     

Ten things that help me feel strong

1. Doing laundry. Changing the bed clothes. Teaching my daughter how to make her bed the old-fashioned way, tucking the pillows under a cheerful vintage chenille bedspread.  Folding sheets.
2. Walking through the neighborhood with my husband, my little girl, and a go-cup, assessing paint jobs and plantings, peering through leaded glass doors, holding A's hand while she "walks up high" on raised brick curbs, carrying her piggyback for two whole blocks before her heft forces me to hand her to M. Feeling sweaty and a little buzzed when we get home, rocking on the front porch as the sun goes down.
3. Starting a blog.
4. Having friends over this afternoon for grown-up cocktails.
5. Drawing fairy dresses with A. Writing a fairy story. Showing her how to write "fairy" in cursive.
6. Buying all the crap on the kindergarten supply list.
7. Cursing in the CVS about the list.
8. Using coupons to save money on the supplies. (I saved more than $17, yay.)
9. Letting A stay up late to watch Laurel & Hardy movies. Cuddling with her in our bed. Inhaling her hair while she tries to keep her eyes open. Hearing her and M laugh over the dumbest slapstick. Watching them both fall asleep; hearing them snore in unison.
10. Picking up A without waking her and depositing her in her bed. Tucking her in. Kissing her sweaty neck. Returning to bed and turning off the TV. Reading. Snoozing. Resting. Sleeping.