60 Roses
For how could one express in words the emotions of the body?
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
So, I turned sixty years old the other day. I bought myself roses because — why not? They make me happy. Pink, not red. I’ve never liked red roses. Neither did my mother. I haven’t written a post here in over a month, but there’ve been thoughts and things.
Here are thirty-nine thoughts and things:
It’s taken me weeks and weeks to “get over” Covid, and I have to be honest. I still don’t feel right. Long Covid? Who knows. I have a lot of aches and pains not related to my knees. I also still have a tad bit of dizziness, and I’m really tired a lot of the time. I never used to be tired. My thoughts are all over the place when it comes to this.
I miss my mother. A weird thing happened the other night when I was sitting contemplating the universe after a particularly difficult day. I was crying on my couch. Violins were in the air. I looked down at my phone that was resting on my thigh because it lit up, and do you know Dear Reader that it was my mother’s contact page? It said Mom. I swear that I did not touch it and I think that she was with me in some bizarre time-bender.
I hate when people talk about the effects of stress on the body. It’s all so obvious and, frankly, boring at this point. IYKYK.
Sophie’s good health right now is wonderful, and I am grateful for it. She has few to no seizures (thank you, CBDV), has gained weight and is sleeping well.
I’m now pretty adept at suctioning her trach. Who knew that I would be adept at taking extreme care of not just her brain but her breathing and digestive system? Sarcasm is begging to be released here, but I’m too old for that. I suppress it, and in lieu, invite love and patience and resignation and acceptance in.
Here’s a passage from a long-ago blog post. I was looking for something on my old blog and stumbled upon it and was kind of weirded out: I can't do this anymore, is what I said on the phone just now. I am reaching back to the past, to all the times that I couldn't "do this anymore." I leaned my head on the wall. I was sitting in a chair in my bedroom on the far end of the house, the farthest away from the front end of the house where Sophie sat in her chair. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't do it anymore back on the fourth floor of the walk-up on West 73rd Street in 1995 and placed the screaming baby in the middle of the bed, then walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower and crouched on the floor next to the toilet. There is something very primitive about not being able to even feed your child, I said on the phone just now. Soft egg lay all around Sophie's wheelchair and the dog lurked at my feet, trying to edge in. I remember Sophie pacing around her room like a drooling tiger back when she was on the ketogenic diet and I'd come into her room with a tiny ceramic dish of frozen butter and a slice of strawberry on top that was her meal. The brutality of that time. Eighteen years ago. Those two examples suffice.
I’m now 28 years “in.”
The word brutality to describe parts of Sophie’s life is an apt one. The brutality of a hole in your neck and your stomach in order to breathe and eat.
Sophie’s trach has been “capped,” which means she is breathing through her mouth and nose, but we still have access to suction her secretions when she can’t manage them. We’re (supposed to be) grateful that we can do these things.
Sometimes, I really can’t do it anymore.
I think about the present all the time — or I will myself into the present. My thought is that those of us who are long-time, long-term extreme parents and caregivers have this notion of living in the present, one day at a time, etc. — imposed on us. This doesn’t mean we don’t project into the future with terror and trepidation or go back into the past and readily call up trauma, but it does mean we are especially skilled at staying here, now. Where will you be in five years? some ask. I honestly don’t know and don’t care.
Sometimes at the end of the day, I lie next to Sophie in her bed and feel bewildered.
Sometimes, at the end of the day, I lie next to Sophie in her bed and quietly weep but only if she’s asleep.
Sometimes, at the end of the day, I lie next to Sophie in her bed and think of all the years and how peaceful we are together.
I always, always wonder what she’s thinking. It’s like a torment, most of the time, trying to figure it out and never knowing. How does she communicate? people ask, and I can’t answer them in any words that they’d understand, so there you go.
I’ve been practicing yoga nidra, and I’m learning what true relaxation is and how I haven’t felt truly relaxed in about thirty years.
I’ve read a bunch of books over the last few of months. Landings by Arwen Donahue, Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz, The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor, Where Reasons End by Yiyun Lee, August Blue by Deborah Levy, Story of a Poem by Matthew Zapruder, Wool Gathering by Patti Smith, All of This by Rebecca Woolf, Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam, Sonnets by Shakespeare, and the amount of work I have to do to remember what I’ve read is too taxing, so I’ll stop there.
By the way, I read nearly 100 sonnets via a wonderful class taught by April Bernard via Christopher Frizzelle’s website. You should check out his book groups. I’ve joined the Frankenstein one.
I’m a bit impulsive when it comes to signing up for online courses with books as the subject. Or watercolors and writing. I’m also terribly impulsive when it comes to buying books that I read about on the world wide webs.
I think about purging my house of everything except my books and cooking supplies.
I spent far too much time looking for two outfits to wear to the wedding of my nephew. He’s the first in that generation to marry, so it’s very special, but after I’d ordered, tried on and returned approximately 100 dresses, one of my sisters reminded me that no one will care what the old aunties look like.
Nevertheless, I did go to Nordstrom for an ultimately futile attempt at finding something to wear. A very disgruntled sales clerk directed me to a very small dressing room with a kind of shower curtain that slid along a pole. There was a tiny stool on the floor and a large mirror. The overhead light was cold and yellow. I undressed and dressed a few times, once I almost got stuck in a dress as I took it off, my arms raised and fabric over my head, my breath coming in jagged my voice a whimper. It was hot, and I broke out into a sweat. My knees and legs were killing me, so I crouched down and perched on the tiny stool to take a breather. Perhaps I shouldn’t take these things so seriously, but you’re never more alone than in a dressing room of a department store, staring at your reflection and all the empty renditions of the self multiplied behind the one that stares back. I was wearing just a bra and underwear and I mistakenly glanced at myself in the mirror and couldn’t believe what I saw. I mean, I’ve never seen myself at that particular angle, and it was shocking. I felt like crying but maybe more like laughing. It’s weird to be oneself inside but some new creature bodily, and there’s absolutely no noted progression, no pinpointing, that I can recall. I mean, about forty-three years ago, I was wearing a fuzzy purple sweater and a mustard colored skirt and pumps, a big mum pinned to my shoulder, sitting under an umbrella in the rain on the sidelines of a Homecoming football game, my boyfriend playing the dumb game and some other guy squiring me at halftime on the court, the Homecoming Court, and the next thing you know, I’m squatting on the dingy floor of a department store glancing down at the folds and soft undulations of a body that’s a mystery, really, in its progressions and deteriorations.
That was a long thought or reminiscence but perfectly apt for a 60th birthday post, no?
I’m starting a morning practice that the writer Elizabeth Gilbert recommended on Suleika Jaouad’s sublime substack. I will be asking this question of Love: “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?” I’ll be writing a letter, I guess, to myself. Sometimes, these practices recommended by the super famous get on my nerves, but then I realize it’s because I’m squirmy about vulnerability or deflecting in some defensive way and, at the same time, quasi-narcissistic with an insatiable need/desire to know myself.
Politics have finally exhausted me, and I just don’t want to hear about any of it. I’m open to an occasional rant about the idiots in Florida or Georgia, and of course I’d love to see the former Predator in Chief go to jail, but America not only exhausts me, it irritates me.
OK. That is not entirely honest. I’m beyond irritated. I’m enraged and stupefied by dumbness.
I hate American sports, American politics, the American wellness industry, billionaires of any stripe — and that’s ANY STRIPE — festivals of any kind, the sound of a television in the background, humidity except in Hawaii or some far-away tropical place, snow after ten minutes, video games, religious fervor and peas.
I guess I’m a bonafide hater.
I saw the movie “Barbie” and laughed harder than I’ve laughed all year. It just got everything right, was generous and smart and moving and a fucking relief.
How long do you think it will take for me to “get over” Sophie’s near-death, the harrowing hospitalization and the new life we now have at home? Maybe “get over” is a bit ambitious. How about integrate the experience into my one wild and precious life?
I went to the Huntington Museum and Gardens yesterday specifically to see their new acquisition — a David Hockney painting of a tree. It was hung in a corner in the European art galleries, and it looked as if it were wet, fresh. It was so beautiful, the tree itself was so beautiful, and the branches looked like roots both light and heavy holding something and nothing.
Sophie, who has always loved trees, gazed intently at it for many minutes.
Another symptom that I’m having that I think might be related to long Covid is sweating periodically — not so much a hot flash — as an unbearable being overcome by — well — sweat. It must have something to do with the autonomic nervous system. Again — the body.
I watched all nine seasons of the British detective drama “Endeavor.” My influencer, the great Patti Smith, is evidently a fan, so despite my usual reluctance to get involved in a bunch of murders and mutilations, I gave it a whirl and was quickly overcome by Endeavor Morse, by Friday and his wife, Mrs. Friday and their daughter Joan Friday and all the rest. Plus, nine seasons — one a night for weeks and weeks.
I also watched the “Sex and the City” series whose name I can’t recall because it’s so bad. The show is so bad that it’s fantastic, and I enjoyed nearly every moment.
What should I watch now?
By the way, I’m not afraid of death. My own, that is.
I bet you’re thinking that you can’t possibly read any more of this pablum. I’m going to stop here, then, and go finish the Eve Babitz book.
Next up: The Bee Sting.
