The Unexpected

So yesterday afternoon I’m sitting on the window seat writing, channeling how my protagonist Allison would talk with Rebecca in their first real heart-to-heart, when I hear a giant metallic clang in the kitchen.  What in the world?  Long ago we had a foster beagle who would whack her metal food dish with her paw when she decided it was time to eat.  That’s what this sounded like, although my current two Labradors haven’t engaged in this arresting behavior.  To date.  

I went to check.  There was something swimming in their big metal water dish.  Swimming! Having fallen from above?  At first I thought it was a frog, it had the same web like motions with its legs, but then I realized no, it was a baby squirrel.  It was clearly struggling to breathe so I quickly took the bowl to the front porch and dumped it to get it out of the water.  When I could see it more clearly, I realized it was unlikely to bite me.  It hadn’t reached that stage of its life.  It didn’t yet know enemies.  This tiny creature, maybe three inches long, its delicate pink gray skin loose on its body, its puffy heavy-lidded eyes still closed, only knew suckling, only knew warmth.  At least until a few unfortunate moments ago.

How in a kitchen a barely born squirrel falls from the sky into the dog’s water dish is completely implausible unless you have been in my kitchen.  Our house is a rather Rube Goldberg construction, with the initial log cabin, the core of the house, put together by German settlers in the 1700’s.  Added onto ever since by generations of inventive homeowners, the roof lines are a creative mess that has resulted in a lovely warren of perfect places to raise baby squirrels.  Ergo. . .

I did what any foster mother would do under the circumstances:  picked up this creature and cradled in a towel, then found a box for it to live in until the next impossible steps emerged.  It’s tiny body was breathing heavily, its little abdomen pumping. As it instinctively curled up, except for its tiny claws and tail, it looked startlingly like a sonogram image of a human fetus.

One of its arms (?) paws (?) seemed at an odd angle, and it had a scrape on its hip (?) but other than that it seemed to be fine, nuzzling into the soft towel.  I ran to the barn looking for the tall ladder so I could climb up and see where it might have come from.  That wall is exposed logs from the original cabin, so it was clear that somewhere up there squirrels were being produced.  

Well, it wasn’t clear.  There were no other babies, no clear place for a nest.  Meanwhile, I called the vet, and when she told me that her wildlife people said to put the baby in a nest of grass “under the tree” from which it fell and the Mama would come get it, well, I decided not to explain the current circumstances. 

I called my husband and he said he would come home and we would figure this out together.  Meanwhile, I couldn’t help checking on it every few minutes, this tiny, tiny creature, breathing, just breathing.  Every once in a while, it would search with its nose and try to suckle.  Its breathing seemed to be slowing.

By the time John got home, I began to realize the inevitable.  John got on the ladder and he searched too.  No nest, no mother, no other babies.  

When John came back from burying this creature, just arrived, so quickly departed, he said the afternoon storm had left a rainbow.  

Our evening was quieter than usual.  I am still not over the turtle that didn’t make it.  Last week, coming home from fetching milk at a nearby farm, I passed a turtle to my left proudly crossing the last third of its trek across the road.  Head up, legs marching, destination within reach.  I pulled to the right, off the road, as there was a big curve just ahead of me, and I knew no one coming from the other direction would see that turtle, or be able to slow down.  Just then I saw it, a turtle’s worst nightmare:  a big Lowe’s delivery truck.  I waved my arms wildly to get it to slow down, but to no avail.  I could barely look back, but when I did, well. . .you know.  

There was a writing spider in the greenhouse yesterday busy stitching together the rubber plant, the columbine and the pineapple lily with its intricate web.  I was careful watering, so as not to do any more damage than I could help.  It scooted up to the top of the web, out of my way, and I talked to it the whole time. Then I took the beehive frames to the barn, the ones we cleaned out when our bees didn’t make it this year.  

Is there an end to this?  No, I guess not.  

At Artist’s Group on Sunday, a friend told us of two friends of hers, each with cancer. As she talked  about the treatments, with tears in her voice, another of our members nodded knowingly, I assume, recalling her own radiation. I skipped the gym yesterday because of some mysterious stubborn pains in my right foot and leg. I have at least two other friends who share Fred Sanford tendencies with me.  At least once per month, OK, week, it is clear that “this is the big one.”

There was a white feral cat in the driveway, the one that eats the field mice, oh, and the birds I feed so carefully.  And we have wild rabbits that come in the early morning and at dusk to eat the sprouts under those same bird feeders.  These are the rabbits that have, so far, evaded Mr. Hawk.

My 91-year-old mother is happy now, happier than she has been for a long time.  My first cousin brings her little jars of moonshine and apple juice with a cinnamon stick. When she is able to use her walker instead of the wheelchair, the owner of the sports bar where I take her for lunch rewards her with a shot of tequila.  

Why not?  I think, why not?  Life is. . .well, you know.  

From the sidelines

The day dawns so innocently.  The old-fashioned bearded irises continue to bloom; the walnut trees to leaf out, the spinach to bolt.  It all goes on, as if the weather hadn’t royally misbehaved for three days now.  We’ve had not just thunderstorms but strong thunderstorms, with hail and tornadoes threatening and pure indiscriminate destruction across a wide swath of the South. It kept a friend awake all night in Durham, North Carolina , on the lookout.  Entire communities in Alabama and Mississippi were upended.  Here, other than some fast, fierce thunder and lightening, the predictions were the worst part.  And yet this morning, with a slight breeze carrying the scent of newly opened tulip poplars, the morning sun just breaking the treetops, this day has amnesia, no memory, no regrets, no humility.  It just reappears, freshfaced at breakfast, as though we hadn’t been to the police station in the middle of the night.

We have to move on, astonished and grateful.  By the end of the day, we will forget our determination to buy extra batteries, check the generator, dusty and unused in the barn.  Once again, in a long tradition of once agains, what is known as disaster preparedness will start falling down the list.  

Yet anyone with their eyes open knows that climate change, whatever its multiple causes, is real, that these disruptions have just begun, that their intensity will increase.  It has to, because we are not learning. Just as those batteries go unbought, so it is our nature to ignore any disaster that does not call our name.  The drought in California, the rising seas throughout the world, the melting ice at the Poles, all somewhere else for right now.  Yes, my dear friend got no sleep last night, two hours away, but I slept just fine. My irises are still standing on their long vulnerable stalks.

And this blindness, this tendency to cognitive laziness, is not because I haven’t been through it.  When Hurricane Irene came through Raleigh, my neighbor’s roof was blown off.  Giant oaks came down in our yard.  Another neighbor fell from the horizontal trunk of one of them, chainsaw in hand, fell down right next to the cooler.  No power for days. Floods in nearby towns.  Everything stopped.  Everything was altered.  So I cannot claim ignorance. And explain this:  I was in Girl Scouts all the way to Camp Counselor, when it was my turn to spread the Gospel:  Be prepared.

I know that we need to get the generator serviced, that we need to decide where in our house we would go. We need to get all our important documents to the safety deposit box. We need canned food available in the cellar.  I know all this.   

It is just the beginning of tornado season. . .evidently. . .although I forget, and I get it mixed up with hurricane season which is at the other end of the year.  

And then there is my Mama, in the hospital in Greensboro, a week today.  It is Thursday.  She was supposed to go home Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday.  Her surgery for a broken hip last Friday night went well.  Supposedly.  But now. . .well there is the breathing, and the heart rate, and the fluid.  So on we go.  My sister is taking my place today.  It is a day of rest from being on the front lines.  No wonder I think about the battery supply.  And yet don’t want to do anything about it.  

It is just the tiniest bit unAmerican to be vulnerable.  Willingly vulnerable, to sit at my mother’s bedside without an agenda.  Each time I visit, I walk in like a sherpa.  I carry with me my laptop. In the side pocket of the carry case is at least one magazine, sometimes a book.  In my other bag are supplies:  water, kombucha, nuts, granola, my morning and evening meds in case I have to spend the night.  I carry all this up the elevator to the sixth floor and down the long hall.  And then I walk in the door and there is my sweet Mama in the bed.

I enter a different time zone,  a parallel universe, that doesn’t include spaces for reading magazines. Time follows the pace of my mother’s mood, her stories, her need for a bedpan or a sip of water.  Finding the nurse, a chance meeting with a doctor, getting her from bed to chair in that huge contraption so she can sit up and look out the window.  The centrifugal force of the Universe has narrowed to its center:  6N, Room 17 at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, Greensboro, NC.  

Today is a respite.  My dear sister is going instead.  So maybe I will go get those batteries, and go to the bank with the documents, and maybe ask my sweet husband to take care of the generator this weekend.  And maybe Mama will get to go home in the next few days, and our tiny specks of lives will re-enter the swirling mass with fewer exclamation points.  Maybe we will carry a little more awareness with us, a little more presence, a little more gratitude.  Just maybe. . .

But first, this message. . .

So it is one of those days, in which you should feel differently than you do; but you don’t.  And you should be getting things done, but you aren’t.  You should feel differently because the dogwoods and the azaleas are in bloom; because you planted grapevines yesterday and because the first lonely scout asparagus is coming up.  You should feel better than you do because you have talked with both your son and your mother today, and they are doing well, you have fetched precious raw milk for your family and two others and had to drive through those flowering dogwoods and azaleas to get there.

But instead, someone, unknowingly, has reminded you of a poison center in your past and you have spent days working on questions about it, as this person is doing an analysis of the organization where this event took place.  And while you were working on answering the questions about these events some 25 years ago, this week, only a few days ago, a neighbor (your age) was stabbed several times and killed by her nephew. And then you realize that this is the same extended family where a young man took out a contract on his pregnant girlfriend and he is now serving two sentences for two murders.

And you ask yourself, why am I disturbed by composted memories when there is a family next door with two murderers and three murders to deal with? And you wonder, briefly, in the cavernous vacancy of their grief, would a casserole help?

But back to your troubles: while you were searching through 25-year-old memories, both of the queens died in your new beehives, and a beloved grandfather of beloved neighbors also died.  But the dogwoods and azaleas are still blooming.

And it is EasterTime.  Time of renewal and hopefulness.  And still, you feel the way you do.  Because that poison center, as much as you have worked on detoxing it, still bleeds.  And someone has poked it, again, and it still bleeds its toxins.  You have prayed and prayed some more.  You have been to therapy.  You have lit candles and more candles, and had fits and then prayed.

Eventually, you will move on.  You know that.  

You are on a diet so you can’t make yourself feel better like you sometimes do, and you are on a diet because of the number of times you have made yourself feel better that way.

Eventually, you will move on.

Meanwhile, the dogwoods and azaleas bloom. 

And it is time to make a casserole.

That Mama. . .

Right now, right this minute, I am going to pretend that I have been communicating with you all along, since last July, and that there isn't all this inertia to push past.  Because there is a lot to tell, a lot that has backed up, waiting. . .

In all that time, we have cleaned out my mother’s house in Tennessee - bless all whose houses are cleaned out by other people, and all those other people who clean out their relative’s houses - and moved her to Greensboro.  The move was precipitated by a startling discovery - that she wasn’t getting bathed regularly in her assisted living holding tank in Tennessee.  It was only after getting her here that we discovered she was on four times the dosage of Ativan that is recommended, putting her into a constant sleep state.  This while they parked her in the lobby.   

To our shame, we discovered all this, slowly, after moving her to Greensboro to a place that respects their residents, as well as truly cares for them. Greensboro is an hour and change for me and an equal distance for my sister, and now we happily visit with her once a week instead of a reluctant once per several months.  She was surly and difficult and whiney and full of what sounded like conspiracy theories in this other place.  We didn’t know. 

She was throwing food in the dining room, called the staff the police and the director The Commandant.  We didn’t know.

We didn’t know that they had her drugged.  We didn’t know that the staff was yelling at her, and not bathing her even though she was in Depends that she couldn’t change by herself.  That she was sitting in a wheelchair all day, put into bed at 7 p.m. and that they weren’t coming to help her get to the bathroom at night, so she was in a metal hospital bed with a thin rubber mattress and had to stay there until morning.  We didn't believe her when she tried to tell us all this, in a hushed frightened tone. 

“Why is she in a hospital bed?” asked the new young doctor on his first visit to her room in Greensboro.  We hadn’t thought about it.  Suddenly, it was clear she didn’t need to be, so here came a new Sleep Number bed, with beautiful bedding instead of thin worn institutional blankets. Suddenly she wasn’t incontinent since the staff responded to her call button and came to help her.  

“Why is she on all this Ativan?” We didn’t know that either.  Cautiously, he said, with steel undertone, “some institutions do this to keep their patients from being too much trouble.” We didn’t know.

Last week, as I sat across from her in a Sports Bar in Greensboro, trying to keep up with her analysis of the University of Tennessee football season, I was thinking instead of how beautiful she is.  She had her glass of wine and some bar food, while I sipped my tea.  

Pay attention, softly played in my head, pay close attention.