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
Thank you Elizabeth. You are ok. Sophie is ok. And we will be ok, too. But what that will look like, and how it will feel, there's no telling. I suppose being ok means we survive whatever comes. Because that's what we do. We live to fight and love and laugh and hold each other, another day.
I remember when Katrina was poised to hit New Orleans and our friend Lon was here and he said, "New Orleans is not going to be okay."
I think of that often. I guess you could say that hey, look! New Orleans IS okay now, but for the families of the lives lost, for the people who's homes were washed away, who's lives will never be quite okay again, it's not really.
I feel like that time before Katrina hit now. We knew it would be bad. But we had no idea how bad and the levees did not hold and I am not sure that the levees we have erected to withhold our democracy in safely will either.
I wish I were a little more optimistic, at least about the human spirit and will to survive but I'm having a real hard time.