How to Get Through the Rest of It

"We come in the age's most uncertain hours"

You might want to listen to something really beautiful while you’re reading this today, maybe Paul Simon’s 1975 “American Tune” or this bilingual version by Abby Moreno and David Garza because I have little to say and everything to say and, ultimately, nothing to say that will make sense of these days, these terrible days. And not but when Simon starts to sing the line and I dreamed I was dying and his voice lifts ever so slightly I dreamed that my soul rose so unexpectedly (glorious) and then dreamed I was flying — I would like to write about that.

In the summer of 1995, I lived in New York City on the top floor of a brownstone with my husband at the time and our new baby Sophie who had been diagnosed with a terrible seizure disorder called infantile spasms, a type of epilepsy whose prognosis was particularly bleak and about which we knew nothing and would later very soon very shortly later realize that they knew nothing no one knew anything, no thing really, and while we pushed the needle of cortisol into her tiny thigh (her mouth an O, surprised every time) and over the days and weeks watched her face balloon and walked up and down the small bedroom up and down pacing with the tiny baby screaming, always screaming (irritable the doctors called it, she might be) the water towers of the city dotted the skyscape on the tar paper roof (we climbed out a tiny window to access this feature ) where we sat, the baby and I screaming and crying and shushing. I would write a sentence, a verse on why, and how but one morning I found myself in a car being driven to see an Orthodox Jewish holy man visiting from Israel who had had a stroke and was recovering in a nursing home in the Bronx. I had the baby in my arms, she was months old, I was 31 years old, she weighed 14 pounds, her face was puffy, her eyes slits, and when she wasn’t crying she was sleeping, drugged now with some kind of horrific narcotic, a benzo that was not FDA-approved that we got on compassionate protocol (the language of medicine rolling new off the tongue), the first of many that we would give her for the next twenty-nine years. The man was a holy man (I’d say supposedly) in his circles, and it was true that he looked imposing from a distance even as he sat slumped in a wheelchair at the far end of a stale-smelling hallway. He was surrounded by men, no women of course, just me and tiny girl baby in my arms. The holy man’s head lay on one of his shoulders and he couldn’t really lift it up but he did lift his eyes to mine and I had to look away. Dazzling. Piercing. This is Sophie’s story to tell and, not but, she can’t. This is my story to tell. The holy man listened to me as I talked what could I have talked about I knew nothing I knew everything and he said something something about an evil eye from my past and he lay his hand on Sophie’s head and said it’s ok it’s ok she will be ok.

What I want to tell you is that she is ok we are ok. This is the way it works — we come in the age’s most uncertain hour and sing an American tune. I have little to say and everything to say and, ultimately, nothing to say that will make sense of these days, these terrible days. And love.

American Tune by Paul Simon

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused

Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees

But it's alright, it's alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly

And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune

Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest