and as yesterday passed into today and i drifted off to sleep i knew, despite that she is on a different plane of existence, my sweet momma was holding me close to her. it was bracing to think of the five year mark that has just passed now since she has been gone and the every-day-missing-her that goes along with that. no different with my dad. in a month it will be eight years and i can hear his “hi brat” in my heart. i have no doubt that he is right there, holding on tightly. both of them. forever and ever.
it is a fact. this parenthood thing is mind-bogglingly paramount. ever forward from the day they are born. it is all-consuming. in every good and every daunting way. every most-jubilant and every brutally-difficult way. every securely-confident and every tumultuously-distressing way. every way.
in this pandemic time of chaos we pine for a sense of normal which escapes us. anxiety barges in and replaces our regular routines; peace escapes us. we long to see each other. we feel tired; we feel restless. we sleep more; we cannot sleep. we are astounded by the surrealness of this; we are crushed by how real this is. and we worry. it is hard to be away from those whom we love and knowing that right now we cannot go to them compounds it. my heart needs to hug My Girl and My Boy and see that all is well. we feel anxious. our wishes go unfulfilled.
and yet as today passes into tomorrow and they drift off to sleep i know, despite how busy they may be or where they are in the world, that i am holding them close. that no doubt can exist – i am right there, holding on tightly.
and i hope, like you with your beloved children, that they can feel it. forever and ever.
i unfriended someone today. i was so shocked at his response to the vital importance of continuing to social distance in this global pandemic i found it reprehensible. his crass “everyone will die eventually” was deeply disturbing. he actually used the term ‘survival of the fittest’. i, in browsing for how my family and friends are doing, found no peace in his words, only a shortfall of empathy. i shudder to think of anyone who read or who will read these callous words who has been ill, has had a loved one ill, who has lost a life in their circle of life, who has been deemed unemployed, who has missed paying their rent and who stands in line for food, who is frightened. anyone with a heart.
i’ve unfriended a few people along the way these last few years. this hasn’t been because i merely disagree with them. i am open to disagreeing with you if you are open to discussion. but these have been folks who have been closed. closed to facts, to truth, to research, to conversation. closed. to me, it feels as if their hearts are closed.
for what is the importance of the next morning if what you care most about in the world is copious amounts of money or holdings? my sweet poppo used to say, “you can’t take it with you.” what is the importance of the next morning if you will throw others under the bus to elevate yourself? my sweet momma used to say, “be kind. be kind. be kind.” what is the importance of the next morning if everything is measured by black and white, an excel sheet of differences, all listed and highlighted. my big brother used to play his guitar and sing, “there’s a new world coming…” what is the importance of the next morning if you only measure yourself against others, their net worth, their houses, their jobs, their wardrobe, their vehicles, their exotic trips, their success? in high school i recited these words from desiderata, “if you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”
instead, what about that morning someday? the one that presents you with the challenge of a lifetime, the one you have worked on honing your whole life. the challenge to accept who you are. the challenge to stand up straight in your integrity, to freely and generously love, to do your work, to look out into the world with open eyes. the challenge to not compare yourself, to believe in the betterment of humanity, to be kind, and to know that you can’t take any of it with you. the challenge to surround yourself with goodness and live now. this morning. tomorrow morning. the next morning. heart open.
we took a hike on easter sunday afternoon. it was just warm enough to shed my coat in the woods; spring hiking is better without the shush-shushing sound of a down coat while you walk.
we went to our bristol woods, masks in pockets as we jumped out of big red, eager to get into the trees, onto the paths that have soothed us. there were a few people there; most of them abided by the six-feet-apart rule, although admittedly, there were a few who caused us to roll our eyes in an astonished unspoken question wondering if they lived in a cave somewhere and had no idea that there was a global pandemic.
the familiar paths did their job. we quietly noticed green sprigs springing up between the leaves, a tonal green as you looked off-path from budding underbrush. here and there forest daffodils at the brink of opening to the world; here and there small white flowers nestled between fallen logs.
the soundtrack of the woods was awakening to spring – orioles’ songs, chipmunks scampering, birds we couldn’t see high in the trees singing arias to the sky, the sound of our feet on the trail.
the gunfire in the background was unwelcome in this reverie of renewal, of spring-really-on-its-way, of escape-from-thoughts-of-covid-19. it was an automatic, a gun designed to kill, single shots punctuated by the rapidfire of a clip. it is always unnerving; yesterday it was particularly so. it seemed mindless to me, paying no homage to these very times, these very days.
in the middle of thousands of people who are desperately trying to save over half a million others’ lives in this country alone, thousands of people who are extending helping hands to countless others, thousands of people who are dedicating resources to feed, mask, shelter thousands of others, thousands of people who are reeling from a loss of life, of job, of any security, of any sense of normal, thousands of people who are frightened to their core that they might be the next to succumb to this pervasive illness, the next to struggle to breathe, i couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out any good reason to be shooting an automatic weapon.
“hope…it makes you breathe differently. it makes your heart beat faster. it makes your knees weak and your ability to wait strong. it makes you weep with anticipation and holds you close with others who are also hoping.” (reverse threading, dec. 7, 2018)
i have done time on the kitchen floor. like you, i have been brought to my knees with grief, anxiety, worry, pain, shame, fear, sadness, loneliness, anger, disappointment. when you are on the floor, any movement seems monumental. anxiety is crushingly powerful. it seems unlikely you will rise. and even as you go about your days, doing the things you do in life, it seems you will remain on the virtual kitchen floor.
but then, there is a moment. it appears illusory yet it is luminous. it is a mere butterfly wing, the slightest of silk tendrils, but it is there. elusive and tiny, it asks for absolute focus. like viewing through the eyepiece on binoculars, you slowly steady your gaze. something inside you knows. something tells you to reach for it and hold it gently in your shaking hands. it is hope.
“hope. there aren’t many words like this…describing that which you can actually – viscerally – feel in your body. it makes you breathe differently. it makes your heart beat faster. it makes your knees weak and your ability to wait strong. it makes you weep with anticipation and holds you close with others who are also hoping.” (reverse threading, dec. 7, 2018)
in the last year of my sweet momma’s life, at not quite 94, she would say astonished things like, “i looked in the mirror and i look like an old woman!” we would laugh together when we mentioned her age and that she had earned every last wrinkle, every age spot, every grey hair. never have i seen a more beautiful old woman. in a life that spanned from 1921 to 2015 her hazel eyes saw vast changes, world hurdles, family loss and strife, wild technological advances. and love.
barney was born around the same time as my momma. i wonder about the life he had before he arrived in the basement boiler room. was he a honkytonk piano, a barroom upright, a sunday school accompaniment, the instrument in someone’s drawing room? he was headed to the scrap guy when we met him and we intervened. i suppose as he has lingered in our backyard these last five years he would wonder about the reflection in the mirror, his outer shell, those wrinkles, that peeling laminate, the keys that no longer play. does he realize that chipmunks perch on his brow and snack on acorns? does he realize that birds land, patiently in wait for their respective and restrained turns at the birdfeeder? does he realize that his soul remains rich, his exterior beautiful in its aging?
i laid awake for hours in the middle of the night last night. i looked in the virtual mirror in my mind and saw wooden stages and boom mics, big pianos and blue jeans. i realized, suddenly, that i am older. despite everything that would suggest to me, try to convince me of, the contrary, i have gotten older.
scrolling through social media during this time of distancing it is stunning to see all the ways people are incorporating posting with streaming, youtube, visiting with google hangout, facetime, videoconferencing with zoom, webex, as they try to be there without being there. it’s exhausting.
my 1970s-lingering-self puts on readers and starts to read the directions. the chipmunks are perched on my brow and i resource apps to stay in the loop and do my part to help keep people connected in a time where connection could easily fall away.
i take a deep breath and remember the day that my sweet momma’s iphone facebook status read (from her assisted living facility in tampa) that she was checked in at a miami dolphins game in miami. i quickly and quietly fixed it for her.
and then i giggle and think, ‘heck. if she can do it, i can do it.’
it is the symbiosis of peeling back the layers, honoring the wrinkles, relying on each other’s strengths in the mirror and working together, the virtual birdfeeder our community.
we bought it on our honeymoon. we knew, even by then, that we would need this sign’s lighthearted truth to remind us – some days – of what we even liked about each other. in these days of isolation it’s front and center.
these are profoundly difficult times. without the balance of getting out or having a little space, we are all finding ourselves in close isolation with the others in our home. we two, here, are often together 24/7. we work together in a variety of capacities, so we have gotten a little more accustomed to the dynamics than, say, some of you who have been thrown into the deep end with no feathering of getting-used-to-the-water time. but…that doesn’t mean it’s always pretty. so we are all here, separately together, figuring it out.
we wonder about the future. we worry. we stew. we get excited. we get scared. we get weary.
the stress level is palpable. you can feel the world out-there functioning at a completely different frequency than it had been. it is like that high pitch in your ears, making you teeter on yelling, “make it stop”. we all try to go with the flow, try to make the best of it. we are fortunate to be here together, at home, in a safe place. we seek ways to stay relevant and do meaningful work. we follow stay-at-home orders. we reach out to visit, virtually, with our family and friends. we video-conference with colleagues. we wear leggings and sweatpants on a daily basis. my boy, in a city with ever-exponentially-growing-covid-19-numbers, said that’s a given – sweats, sweats, sweats and the perfunctory button-down shirt. we know what’s visible and what’s not. we desperately hope for the best. we get in each other’s way. we help each other. we brainstorm new ways to cope, new ways to work, some with steep learning curves. we sigh. we take naps, tired and wrung out. all are true.
we wonder about the future. we worry. we stew. we get excited. we get scared. we get weary.
and we try to stay in touch. we desperately miss our children, our family, our friends, the people in our day-to-day life route.
even in times of ‘normal’, if my daughter, whose home is in a covid-19 hotspot and whose work, like too many, has been decimated, texts me with no punctuation and clipped answers, i know i have either a) stepped past the edge of the chatting time limit b) asked too many questions c) said something completely too mom-ish or d) encountered her at a time she needs space for herself. no matter which option, it’s smart (and in my best interest) to back up. she, just like my son, knows she is loved beyond words and i know that, in order for me to stay loved, or, er, tolerated, i need to utter less painintheass words. but i am their mom and it is an intrinsic part of my job.
we wonder about the future. we worry. we stew. we get excited. we get scared. we get weary.
if david, the other artist in my two-artist-household equation, mentions an idea to me, i dig under the idea pile of leaves to find the base of it – to order the details of what the idea means, to parse it out. i can’t start at the top and assume thebigidea will work. i have to see how the ingredients of the idea will work, the steps to get there. if the tiniest piece of the idea doesn’t seem plausible, i argue, how could thebigidea be possible. i don’t mean to be a bigidea killer; i just need to see the practical details. i’m sure he invokes the youareapainintheass eyeroll when i am not looking, but that’s ok. he can’t see me rolling my eyes either.
and so, we wonder about the future. we worry. we stew. we get excited. we get scared. we get weary.
in the biggest way we have seen in decades we have a challenge. to stay healthy. to keep others healthy. what we do affects you and vice-versa. we all have to be responsible. we all have to work together. we are not all favorites of each other. some of us are the biggest pains in the ass to others of us. we are learning, bending, flexing. we are finding out that we are more resilient than we thought, we are capable of negotiating the bumps in the relationship-road. we are gumby in the real world.
and we are all here. separate and together. despite our wildly differing stories, we have a common story. we are here.
and we wonder about the future. we worry. we stew. we get excited. we get scared. we get weary.
i, for one, am grateful for my absolute favorite painintheass even though he is totally a painintheass. for what would i do without him?
waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a yes or no or waiting for their hair to grow. everyone is just waiting. waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their uncle jake or a pot to boil, or a better break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or another chance. everyone is just waiting.
somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. you’ll find the bright places where boom bands are playing. with banner flip-flapping once more you’ll ride high! ready for anything under the sky. ready because you’re that kind of a guy!
oh, the places you’ll go!”
(dr. seuss)
an eighth rest. these two broken wrists are down from a quarter rest to an eighth rest. and waiting.
we are all waiting. for hours, days, weeks to go by. for healing. we are biding time. on hold. on eighth-rest-repeat.
and in that vast biding of time we are maybe finding that some of the things we have busied ourselves with don’t count as much. and some count more. maybe our time of waiting will reveal to us that which is most important. maybe it will be a time of needed rest. a time of slowing down. a time of subitotacet. a time of honoring those who truly help us. a time of quiet conversation, of learning new things, of disassembled notes gathering together from their places in the stars to form a new song.
we wait. and we don’t know when the waiting will stop. but oh, during this waiting, and after the stand-still-pause is over, oh, the places we will go.
my emotional well was full when i woke up today. thinking of us, our children, our families, our dear friends, our community, this world. i desperately want to gather our beloveds in, hold them close, protect them.
i have no words for all of this; i have too many words for all of this. i fear that none of them are helpful, none of them are wise. it’s just me. and, like you, carrying the weight of the world one step at a time, one quiet minute at a time, staring out the window and wondering.
bananas. they were $.49 lb. we picked up a bunch and walked to the register. a moment later, with no question or drama, we paid our $1.17 and left.
the next step in my two-broken-wrists saga is occupational therapy. not because we do everything with our hands. not because we write with them and open doors with them. not because we use them for our personal hygiene or because we cook with them. not because we drive with them or dress with them or shake hands with them. but because using my hands IS what i do. the therapist asked me how long i have played the piano. 53 years. it’s what i DO. so getting my wrists back to pre-snowboard-fall is imperative to me. there are no other options.
before we went to this first appointment i, responsibly, called our healthcare insurance company – the one we pay $29,000 a year to – the one with the slogan ” for the care you need at a price you can afford” – to check in about the coverage of OT. i was told, after much menu-choosing, that i am limited to 20 visits and that the cost will be $50 per visit. with the OT’s recommendation that my getting-these-wrists-back-trajectory would involve appointments twice a week, that would add $400 to the already-$2400/month in healthcare costs. bracing. impossible.
the OT office checked in with me to remind me of my appointment, coincidentally, just after i hung up with the insurance company. i told them what i had just learned and they insisted i was wrong. “no,” i was told, “we have never heard of molina charging ANYthing for a copay.” I asked them to please double-check for me and they assured me they would and that they would apprise me at my appointment.
when i arrived, the receptionist checking me in told me that they had their 23-year-insurance-veteran in the office check and that there would be no copay. i asked them to provide a written document to that effect so that if and when i was billed i would have recourse. they assured me that they would triple-check and to stop back after my appointment.
at the end of my appointment with the therapist, the receptionist told me that “no, you don’t have to pay $50 per visit. it’s actually worse. instead, you have to pay 100% of all fees until your thousands-of-dollars-deductible is met.” what?!!!! now this is the third story i am hearing about the same service with the same provider and the same insurance company. who am i to believe?
i stood there and literally cried in front of the receptionist in the middle of the waiting area. you mean to tell me that our $29,000 a year doesn’t really cover much of anything??? this is blatantly wrong, grossly outrageous.
bernie sanders, if you have listened to him speak, has given a example of the perverted and pathetic healthcare in this country. he speaks about a family who makes $60,000 a year and that this family must pay $12,000 for healthcare. “that’s 20% of their gross income,” he bellows. what i wish he would add is this next example: consider a couple who makes say $65,000 a year (this is the magic healthcare cliff for two people and only $5000 more than the previous example). that couple will pay anywhere between $24,000 and $29,000 for a policy that will still have high deductibles and yet (clearly) not actually have good coverage. i want to jump on the bernie-bellowing-band-wagon and yell, “that’s 45% of that couple’s income!!! what is wrong with that???? EVERYTHING!” how is it that we can live in this country, the richest country in the world, and have the worst healthcare for our populace? how is it right to set the populace up for financial disaster when they have to deal with the eventual health scare, injury, illness?? (on a side note, i won’t even beGIN to start talking about Covid-19, for i have nothing good to say about the administration’s handling, lack of information or truth, and unpreparedness for this pandemic that will truly test the resiliency of our country.)
when i could take a breath at the receptionist’s desk i asked, “what do these appointments cost?” how much is my professionalism worth to me, i am thinking. i earn my living playing the piano, i am thinking. i have fifteen albums of piano music, i am thinking. i am a pianist, i am thinking. i just need care for my wrists so that i can do what i do, i am thinking. at what cost, i am thinking.
but healthcare is not like bananas. i was told, “we can’t answer that. we don’t know.” i beg your pardon??? “billing handles that. and it’s different depending upon insurance plans and whether or not you have appropriate insurance.” i beg your pardon???? “what if i just wanted to pay cash right now?” i ask. “you can’t,” she says. “we don’t know what it costs.”
i wonder if it would be more if i paid cash – after all, i’m not an overstuffed insurance company that has the capacity to deny portions of the billing or disallow costs or base payment on the coding used to describe my treatment, while at the same time accepting ridiculously high premiums from clients with the knowledge that the insurance offered is incomprehensibly lacking.
no. i’m just a person who needs her hands.
we left, went to the store and bought more bananas.
1980. it’s not often i have listened to this song since four decades ago when i recorded it. i was a mere 20. listening to it warbling now, in the way that only old cassettes can warble, has been a mixed bag: this cassette master, with little studio experience, with reel-to-reel recording, with no auto-tune for my young nervous soprano-ish voice, with too-sweet flute lines and picked guitar, measures-too-long-instrumental-interlude; i am catapulted back.
it is shocking to hear the innocence. it is shocking to hear the pain. if my wednesday post this week was too much, i would hasten to add that this will be as well. this is a song about stripping a young woman of choice, of what should be the blissful love of first intimacy, of no justice, of no opportunity to process. it’s the story of sexual assault in the late 1970s. it’s the story of sexual assault any time. it changes everything. every trajectory. it’s my story.
NO BALLOONS is a song of the times. especially for someone who listened to john denver, james taylor, carole king, joni mitchell, bread, loggins and messina, america, england dan & john ford coley, the carpenters – the A-team of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-interlude-chorus. simple melodies, simple instrumentation, simply written, simply sung.
i can’t believe i didn’t write it in the vein of led zeppelin or kiss. it should have been a screaming heavy metal song, full of pointed weapons of anguish, of power-stripped anger. instead, it sounds like a sweet love-gone-bad song, “you take away my hopes, my dreams, you give me no balloons to fly.” only it’s not. it’s about no air. no breath.
“and now with my eyes closed, i no longer see the pain in yours or feel it in mine…” and that was a product of the times as well. i closed my eyes and silenced my voice. i stopped feeling it. or did i? “and i cried as long as the rain lasted and when it stopped i stopped.” was it really that simple?
until this week i really never thought i would share this song again. after all, the song is 40 years old; i’m an alto, perched firmly on the tenor shore. but somehow, between the #MeToo movement and the swirling-around-us-in-the-world-contention and public court battles in recent media and the lack of regard for those who truly need help or healing and my aunt’s texted article and the weeping inside of my younger-self and my silenced-silence, it felt like it was time to be vulnerable and candid and believe that our muddy-boots-narratives might make a difference for someone else.
we each have a story, a timeline, an arc that takes us through this life. things we want to remember in detail, things we desperately want to forget. things we have lived boisterously out loud, things we have lived in despairing silence. the tapestry that holds all these threads together is the soul of our experience, the way we can hear others and truly listen, the empathy we can employ in a world that seems to cite MeFirst instead of UsTogether.
i wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone. i’m pretty sure that every day since those-dark-days-in-the-late-70s i have both been affected and have effected because of them. i have made choices and non-choices, taken action and had reflexive reaction. i have searched for answers.
but i also know that my heart was blown open. i am not standing on a different rung of the ladder, too high up to understand or remember, too discurious to ask, too blinded to see, too discriminating or apathetic to care.
i am next to anyone who needs me to listen, really listen. i am next to anyone who needs me to jump and catch their balloons before they have flown too far to reach.
reverse threading 