Ah, what a day.

As I mentioned, Rebekah was sick. The vomiting and fever have since given way to explosive diarrhea (more on that later). Of note is the fact that our dryer kicked the bucket exactly one load into three days worth of vomiting. As you might imagine, there's lots of laundry to do with a sick child and having no dryer handy…well. I got a not-altogether-unpleasant flashback to hanging clothes out to dry as a kid. It was nice to reminisce. Only, when I was young, we were doing it in on a line in the backyard, not on a jerry-rigged system strung out across the kitchen and back. But this got us through about nine loads of clothes and Reed thought it was a lot of fun to run around underneath the clothes, towels and assorted linens.

Today, our replacement dryer showed up … with its partner, a new clothes washer. Our last duo had lasted ten years, so we figured we were about due. About five minutes after the delivery guys leave, I realize the new washer keeps cutting off after two minutes. Push start. Two minutes and it cuts off. Repeat. At this point, I'm getting fairly frustrated as the morning has consisted of waiting around to get all the vast quantities of household laundry started, removing all the fittings and associated crap from the old units, etc. Now the new one isn't even working! And I'd just let my still-working washer walk out the door! 

I figured out it was the old supply hoses that were causing a water flow restriction. But given some problems with faucet handles… well, long story short I ended up flooding the laundry room, which then flooded down into the basement. Not huge. Not water standing inches deep. But still a pain in the butt. Soaking wet, I manage to run downstairs and shut of the water main, get the spill cleaned up, pull the carpet up, fans running, new hoses hooked back up, new washer running with the first load and I'm just about to plop my tired ass down on the couch when the baby monitor crackles to life. 

Ah.

So, how do I end this day?

Rebekah has spent the vast majority of dinner out of her chair and sitting smugly in mommy's lap. Then she pops up suddenly, hustles over to me, clambers up into my arms, grabs me in a big hug (really sweet, right?) … and promptly explodes diarrhea out of her diaper. 

Yay!

i almost wish i hadn't read tripp's post before posting tonight, because it really didn't influence me to write. it's the fourth anniversary of the day my mother died, and i always write around this day. i look back and reread the years before, and end of reflecting how things change. how i change. how much also stays the same.

last night i had an absolute jahrzeit-related meltdown. it started brewing after school when i had taken my SCA kids carolling at a home for invalid elderly people. the flashbacks and sights and smells of people nearing the ends of their lives was just too intense. that feeling was practically palpable and i couldn't stop thinking of the way my mom looked four years ago. the noises she made and the drugs that she took and the sounds and their eyes. it was just too much for me yesterday. it is still too much for me today.

after dark i was making my way precariously through the windy, pitch black roads of harrisonburg, bringing home a third grade girl who remained with me well after the 5.45 pickup time after our trip. when i called home three hours after the time she would normally be getting off the bus, her grandmother answered the phone and said, "oh, we had wondered where she was." they wondered where their eight year old was.

when i was this little girl's age the cancer was growing in my mother but we didn't know it yet. i was still happy and i skipped around and life hadn't shown itself to me yet. as we drove those dark roads last night a piece of me wanted to turn the other way and drive away, to take that little girl away from whatever shit-tastic life would be there for her when she walked through their front door, thinking maybe, somehow, i could play holden caulfield and just catch her.

on the way home, i talked to my father. and we both sobbed. december 18 will always be shitty. thinking about it will be shitty. and i will continue to be sad and angry and lonesome for my mother. and things will change, but things will stay the same.

i am helping to raise a child. i just vocalized that notion for the first time a day or two ago and it blew my mind. i am part of what is shaping zane's life. it's different than just being a teacher. and it takes priority. my family within these walls is my life now. i miss posting, miss the seemingly carefree days when i blah-blah-blahed about boys and drinking and complained a lot. several times a day i bet i think about a post, compose something in my head that never comes to fruition at a keyboard. and i lament that. i envy ray for seemingly being able to strike a balance that, for the moment, seems elusive.

but i am still here.

I remember the night my Dad told me John Lennon was dead. I was seven. It was hard to understand that the man I heard on the stereo at night was now gone. Would the records not work anymore? We put on Double Fantasy and listened.

My Dad is, well, guarded in many respects. But the news knifed right through his walls somehow and we sat and cried with each other as the music played on.

These days, music is an a la carte soundtrack to my daily life, but I’m not terrible vested in much of what goes through my ears. True, some things I am fond of, but not vested in. It’s not quite a part of my ritual; our relationship is mostly casual. A little of this. Bored now. Look for something new.

But back then, music was more than zeroes and ones on a hard drive. It was something physical I held in my hands. A tape I threaded through the reel-to-reel or a spiraled disc I ever so carefully laid a diamond needle onto. There was a ritual to it. I would put a cleaning solution onto a velvet-like brush, clean the record as it spun, then use a delicate comb to clean the needle. Then I would lift the arm gently with the pad of my extended index finger, lowering it slowly until I heard the speakers spring to life. I suppose in a way, it was the difference between homemade and store bought. One is easier and makes a lot of sense, but somehow it doesn’t have the same heart. One is for anybody; one is just for you.

We listened to music a lot those days. My parents had broken up and I would bounce between the two over the next few years. But my Dad and I always had that music. Clapton some nights, but more often than not it was The Beatles and John Lennon. Segovia on the reel-to-reel at bedtime, a show he’d taped off the local NPR affiliate. That particular track still resonates today, sending me to a quiet, warm, sleepy spot in my mind. Ah, but that Double Fantasy LP with John and Yoko was something different. It was like a musical way for my Dad to shut out the entire universe of noise and let me know I was loved, that I was his son and that my father loved me. There was such a blissful, childlike surety in those moments, when everything was okay in the world.

So, it was quite the inexplicable interruption upon our musical fortress when one of the strongest walls of our aural retreat lay bleeding on the sidewalk in a New York street. On this night, twenty-seven years ago.

i spoke to my parents several times this weekend. a usual event, but this time around, they (mainly my father) kept asking 'what was going on?'

this is the type of question i hate, though i use it a lot. how many times have i asked you 'what else?' when playing catch-up? too many. it isn't a secret, just hypocritical.

and the truth?

nothing is going on. the funk i was feeling seems to have washed over and away somehow. i don't feel frustration at the moment wondering what my life is supposed to be, what i am supposed to do to make a difference, overwhelmed by the realization that i am one of millions and millions of humans alive right at this moment. and that, for the history of mankind, the odds are against me in terms of doing anything to impact mankinds path.

whew. no wonder i was having trouble with life.

so what am i doing? what am i up to?

i don't know, honestly. i have been doing a lot of hanging out, meeting people, seeing people, talking, drinking. just letting go.

but that's boring. it doesn't make good stories. or blog posts.

i can't make up for it at the moment, but i can give you two pictures to at least give your eyes something to see:

1. me as the caterpillar in my 5th grade 'alice in wonderland' play. i was already an alice junkie beforehand — i remember walking in and saying i wanted to play the caterpillar or bill the lizard. of course, this was the disney version and there was no bill the lizard. i got the part of the caterpillar and, thanks to the costume my mom made, i rocked the house. i was seriously uncool at this point in my life, but this was a little rainbow that shined through.

2. a portrait taken on the train last week. i have a script on my computer to take a picture with the isight every 30 minutes, dumped into a folder. i haven't done anything with them yet, save posting this one. most are bad and unflattering. this one wasn't, so i figured i'd throw up a recent picture of myself.

things that have happened to me recently:

1. i just had a filling. it was a little one, so it wasn't bad. but the right side of my mouth is all wonky now. i can see it being a little sore as the novocaine wears off. such is life.

2. i just read a 'made in 24 hours' comic about crohns disease. it's really good and sums up a lot of the experiences i had prior to surgery. unfortunately, crohns doesn't have the 'cure' colitis does — namely, removing the offending organ (because crohns impacts both the large and the small intestines). the only exception to my experience in this story was the energy fro 'roids. i was so sick by the time they threw me on them that i didn't even notice — in fact, most of them seemed to almost make me feel worse.

the story about food ads on tv is especially true. i don't talk too much about being sick anymore with anyone but rachael really. if you're new to the game, the hospital saga seems to start around this post — but petunia and carter and roxy all posted stuff around then too from their experiences.

here is a morsel: i was hospitalized and my parents flew out to la. they basically lived in my apartment for the 40 days i was stuck in a hospital bed, making a few flights home to hold down the fort. one of the things they did in the mornings and evenings was clean the apartment. they had nothing else to do and no other outlet for the stress my illness was causing them.

and one day, cleaning, they found the list i had made before i got super-sick. it was titled "foods i will eat again when i am well". it was a solid sheet, though written in sharpie, of foods i missed eating. everything from pizza to biscuits n gravy (which i still haven't had — i'm unsure if this is due to my not really wanting it or just sheer laziness). anyway, the list is depressing and it made my parents cry. and i still have it; i found it in a box last week. maybe ill scan it. but it really is depressing.

so yeah, this comic is pretty much what life was like for me for a (short) while. and now it isn't. it's still not ideal but i have less than zero room for complaining or whining.

3. hima wrote me the other day about patrick. we all know i enjoy the 'the world is so small!' stories. well, this time, it turns out that hima has a friend. this friend is dating a boy. the boy is the brother of patrick's wife. so it seems i am connected to both sides of the family.

hima knew a few details i didn't, but we had to agree that nothing seemed to make sense. of course, we have little information and are sitting a continent away, but still.

that too, is what makes this so weird. i was attached through vcu peeps to all of this, because patrick taught there. and because i know meg. but hima, she is all the way out here with virtually no connection back. but yet, there is one. a fairly direct one. and the fact that she an i know each other just makes it all the more odd.

seriously, how many people do i know that are connected to other people i know, independently of me? the world is tiny.

* * *

seriously, i can't be the only one that freaks out over this article: Tests reveal high chemical levels in kids' bodies

But that fascination soon changed to fear, as tests revealed that their children — Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 — had chemical exposure levels up to seven times those of their parents.

and then on npr this morning, i hear someone say that the earth has had 5 major extinctions. and we are about to be number 6.

sigh.
its enough to make me want panic in the streets.

after the death of my mother, i noticed a shift in my way of thinking about death.  at odds against the clammy hand that clutched my heart each time i thought about what happened when you die was the notion that regardless of what happened, i would go where my mother was. this has provided me a childish reassurance. my main source of security for 26 years has taken a path ahead of me, and one day i will follow.

the clammy hand still comes. maybe less than it used to, but i quickly try to meet its grip with this reassurance. for many years i have been so jealous of those who are deeply rooted in their fates, their beliefs so firmly entrenched in reincarnation or christian afterlife that the clammy hand never seizes them, freezes them. this is the closest thing i have to that, naive as it may be.

may god - or whatever entity is calling the shots, whichever version we may or may not believe in - bless you, billie schaefer. i hope my mom was waiting for you to give you a hand and help you along when you got there - wherever there is.

i hope i am not ruining the excitement, but i just got a text message from eric of his baby girl. i don't want to ruin the surprise or anything on his end, so i won't post the picture yet. but i wanted to give a big thumbs up and congrats to him on here.

so congrats!

whoot, one more parent posting on the old mog.