Pickle

I fell in love with Bob Fosse when I was 57 and he was dead.

Death has nothing to do with our love, it is pure. I can learn my body the way Bobby would learn it. I can feel his harsh criticism. I can run my hand down my thigh and watch him watching another girl and know that he is floating toward her there. He can't help it.

He is a sex cloud. He blows where the beauty takes him. He gets flush for talent. He gets all wrapped up in the dance and then he can't stop the dance cause who wants to stop the dance. 

But then at like 3 am after the chorus girls are exhausted, strewn about the bed like old pizza boxes, oily and broken with nothing left to eat, only little bits of hard cheese remnants of hot bliss in the corners.  

That's when Bobby calls me.

Hanging off the side of his bed sideways, feet off one end, over one girl's sleeping shoulder. Elbows against the side of the comforter, on an old fashioned phone, with the cord wrapped over his wrist, staring at the carpet that's lush and secretive.

He blinks slowly. Are you there

Bobby. God.

They're asleep

You're going to catch every kind of disease

So far so good, he says

So far so great, actually. He is surveying the wreckage of a finely tuned torso gently breathing. 

I sigh through the phone cord. Was it lovely

It was lovely, he says. It was tuning out. Athletic. It was Olympic. There were medals.

I find my face smiling

Pickle  he says

hmm.

Pickle

Yes

Will you pick me up

I turn on my back all tangled in the cord. My ceiling is dark blue like the night sky. I am camping in my mind, I paint the stars on one by one with my breath

I'm not actually going to pick you up, I say

But you would

I would go anywhere for you

Do you think it's unfair

I think you should share. A bit more

He sighs. Yeah. 

I mean you had TWO. You coulda called me

I am.

I mean, earlier. When I could be curious and dissolved into.

He nods. 

Do you think life is just how many people you can touch

In so many places, I say

I like all the places, I like how soft the skin is. I like that you forget everything.

You love me, I say

Shhh He nods

Why shhh

God will hear

God is not listening to a sex spent dancer

How do you know

There's famines and things

Oh I guess

We listen to each other breathe. 

I could stop my life for you, he says finally

I don't believe him.

I would step off the bus and let it go zooming on. 

I smile. Because he is lying. Okay then.

Should I

You only say these things after. 

This is the true me

You need to share. Yourself. Not just with others. With 

You?

I nod

That seems dangerous.

You're talking to me now

Come pick me up, he says. I'm scared here. 

You're tired. You ran out of drugs

No really. I'm not any of those things.

Where would we go

Let's just sit in the car. And then find a field. 

And dance?

And put toes in the lake. And be best friends. 

I lean on my elbow. Considering. You aren't real, Robert Louis Fosse

I'm 80 percent real

I'm not sure I need real, but I think it's good to aim for.

That's what all the books say?

I nod.

The future is going to eat me up. On a sidewalk. I'll be a fried egg and I'll never meet you.

You'll have so many girls. One with you when you die. One waiting for you back at your house. One ex wife 20 years ago who never took off her ring. What kind of spell do you cast, mister

I don't know, he squeezes his lip. It's pretty good I guess

It's a good one.

That's what all the books say.

I'm gonna miss you Bobby

He sighs. A girl's foot twitches. They are all so beautiful. In different ways.

You fall into their bodies

He nods. I feel safe and forgetful.

It's good to forget. 

My head gets full otherwise. I want to keep it flowing,

I understand, believe me.

I know Pickle. That's why I called.

The silence across years. 

You hear me?

mmm hmm

You still there.

I am

Company

When you work so hard keeping someone alive it's like you disappear, crawling under their skin, looking out through their sweaty pores.

Not only do I have dementia but now I have pneumonia which is a hard word to spell after 11 pm.

The only good thing about a mom with a double dire sickness is I get to see a parade of people I love. People just stop by. My little niece with the surgery hobbles in. My neighbor Julia who is a preschool alumni mom brings me an orange. My other parents show up with warm bread in the rain. I like these faces. Even for someone who works alone, likes time alone to make sense of things in order to write, it helps to have surprise faces when you are with your dying mother. Dying for 4 years now and trying very hard to not have her die in this dramatic wheezing way right now.

Pneumonia slithers in with a wide innocent face, I'm just a cough. Relaxxxxx. Then it prongs its fingers into lungs and snaps them closed like a zip tie and closes its eyes tight and will not let go. Try and shake me out of here, caring surrounding humans.

So nurses are called. Meds are trucked in. Squirted in. Vapored in. Pillows are back boosters for breath. What am I not thinking of. Why does she sound like that. I don't like that sound. What can make this stop and go away. 

The mom inside of the illness is looking out at us trusting us. She's calm in there, despite the breathing issue. She takes my hand and holds it to her cheek. She says thank you. She smiles at the dog, and the grandson. Her eyes are trusting us.

Of course we do everything. We rush to do everything like a tornado because her bad chest sound is like a terrible clock ticking down.

If she weren't so sick I would be enjoying the getting in bed and watching bad live action disney movies from the 70's where Jodie Foster looks just like my fake nephew Noah. I love time with my mom. Getting to crawl in bed with your mom and have her fall asleep is the most comforting thing ever. Just not with pneumonia. The fluid chokes our good time. It is a boggy river of death. 

Seven days now so I have gone through the shock of what happens if

I have gotten to the okay, it will happen eventually and it might happen with this

I've gotten good at using all the resources, timely meds, tons of liquid, the right position and still the breathing is struggling and the body is unhappy, but she is watching me through her regular eyes

So tonight I put my head on her lap and sang to her, and she quieted to listen, and sing along a little. She patted my hair and squeezed my arm as if to say

I'm sorry this sucks so much. But we've had so many moments we shared where we were on a bed and something was falling apart or some life was ending or the power was out or we were singing or crying or there was sickness or sadness or unfathomable loss. But we had the bed, and us in it, trying to wrangle things out. Eventually we just had the company

because we couldn't always solve it. Mostly

The problems floated off, the hand on my cheek stayed 

that's why we fight

Perverse

Why when it's raining do I think about the people who can't love me or the people I can't love

Why is there even non-loving

Maybe cause I was in a class of special eds today and they weren't as bad as last time. I don't like the room because there can't be anything on the desks like pencils and certainly not scissors, but there can't be any personalization either, it's more a barracks than a room even though the teacher has tried to make it cheerful.

The p.e. teacher came in and bounced around and said she remembered me but I am a whore to schools I don't know which school we saw each other in last, but worse than that I found out I can't dance at all or clap in rhythm everything felt too fast and I felt Bob Fosse crying with shame for me in the corner, like putting his whole fist in his mouth to avoid coming over and punching me

There's nothing like a dead dancing muse choreographer haunting you in a special ed p.e. class

But back to the love issue

I'm good at loving the kids. And pretty much the animals. And I can love a big hilly green field and the Maryland waterways. I can love wearing socks. 

But when I see people I have loved and who continue to not love me, it makes me mad and confused. My friend came from another state to visit and I've known her a long time and from day well not day one, let's say day 28, I realized this person did not get me, would never get me, does not deserve me

But mannnn I just worshipped her. Like as if I picked up someone's grocery list that was in a gutter and I decided I had to get all those things on the list and it wasn't even my LIST but I had to GET THOSE THINGS

These are reasons I should be looking for a cabin in the woods, with plenty of space, and I can keep writing to keep my brain from exploding, and maybe I'll learn to preserve jams, or are jams already preserves also why is perverse almost exactly the same word as something as yummy as blackberry say preserves. 

It's perverse

Yes, thank you reader, I KNOW I will get through it. I know you are lobbying for my freedom of mind and my unclenching of the beach sand gripped in my fists. I know you pat my hair and laugh at my jokes and have all been there for me feeling your own deep feelings of loss or anger or too much mud accumulated in your own lives. I know that's why I still write, to be amongst your thoughts, milling around barefoot there with a martini glass at a party in the 60's in a rainy beachhouse on Long Island where Neil Simon or Truman Capote might be lurking.

I think having these two striking blonde babies graduating in a few months, why-- these old children that still go on easter egg hunts, because they are a non-age, they aren't specific about growing up-- but their education forces us to face the facts that they are getting number high and they are no longer diapered and in my backpack on a trail walk. Even though they are, always, secretly with me. I also did not make that happen, like with my errant friend, it just is.

Loneliness is not the right word but it feels like vast unopened amounts of mail, these feelings all bobbing around in my central park pond. I love my life, dammit, I wish there was more of it.

I'm going to the doctor next week to make sure I'm not dying mostly just to ask vague questions like why does everything hurt? Am I sore or broken? He is such a nice man and he always has on nice shoes, and a gentle voice. Maybe I can go live in his trunk til I feel better. He might tip his head sideways to consider that, but he will write that prescription. He's barely using his trunk, he'll say.

Also I was going to write that he would cock his head but this is not that kind of blog. Just want you to know I'm always protecting you.

The rain stopped for now so I can stop being melancholy, the pressure is easing so I can eat a few carrots. Thanks to all of you for listening, trapped here, looking for solace. 

Blogs are for writing whatever the cock you want, so here's to feelings that surf in and out on rain, and for noticing them and easing them into your heart with a colorful frozen yogurt spoon.

moored

Sometimes I want to pick up tiny Johnny Washer and cradle him in my arms like a favorite doll. Then place him in the bed next to my mom, pull the covers up snug and put both of their thumbs in their mouths.

Then set them adrift on grey blue rocking chair sea. Let their hospital bed rocket ship swirl amidst the waves, and let them be knocked gently about by splashing dolphins and serious whales. 

They would find their own little island and wash ashore, and his blue scrubs would be tattered and turn into native dress, and mom would step out of the bedboat boldly, reduced back to her strong 9 year old self. They'd braid each other's hair and chase each other around the island and all thought of previous life and troubles would be washed away by the escaping mouths of whales and trouble sucking pelicans, they can hold alot of pain in those beaks, like baskets, and fly away with it. They will dump all the troubles somewhere else no one cares about, the ocean is vast after all and there is no need to worry way out there. The water can absorb all our pain like a tiny aspirin and not even feel it.

Mom would be lying under the stars and Johnny W would make the fire with some sticks and the matches he kept in a waterproof bag and they would make a birthday cake out of sand but when they blew out the candles it would turn into a real cake because that's what she wished for and wishes come true, and they would demolish the cake hungrihappily, not caring if their cheeks were smeared because on a desert island no one cares if you're covered in frosting. 

They wouldn't talk much except to exclaim about the abundance of stars and the sudden light of a streaking star from one end of the night sky to the other. Mom would shriek with the happiness of seeing a star zipping swiftly in front of her very own green eyes. 

Her hands would be smooth from youth and comforting and quiet, and she could feel the pulse in her whole body like a remembered song. She was used to herself and she was glad to have herself back after all this time.

Johnny would cover her in warm sand to keep her snug and make a pillow out of coconut shreds and she would spread her hair out all across it in a blonde fan, and the skies would whisper shhh and she would close her eyes but she wouldn't sleep yet because of the silent joy under the lids.

There would never be need for anything because as long as the birthday candles kept appearing there were always wishes and all their wishes would be granted. I could trust Johnny on this island to keep everything lit because he always shows up on time and he always smells like soap, and he never complains, unless it is in spanish, cause I don't understand spanish really.

He is a small, tidy man, and he makes a good pet for my mom on her very first island, her new home for forever. She's never lonely and she's well cared for, so she frolics adventureful freely. 

Her feet spend all days bare in the wet sand, and she builds useless things out of palm leaves, because she doesn't have to build anything necessary, it's just to stretch her imagination. There's so much to build when you're dreaming, and all of it can fall in pieces because all they really need is the boat and it's right over there moored just in case.

There is music everywhere, not just in the green jungle or the mellow beach, but in the quiet veins going up her strong calves when she's climbing wet rocks, and in the little blonde hairs on her belly and arms when she's picking out hidden shells. She's getting a nice tan and she yells I love you sun every day at noon. The sun thinks she is a funny child of the universe.

She never gets tired of this place because there is always a path to run on and there is always a dead log to explore and ants to pick up on sticks. She paints her face with mud and has swordfights with Johnny and declares herself the victor and he is vanquished. She banishes him from her kingdom but he shows back up at dinner because he knows how to cook fish so well, and she is hungry by then.

One night he will ready the shipbed and climb aboard and pull in the rope because little bonnie is sitting on the shore and she says be gone, monkey

I don't need you anymore

She salutes him from her sandy home with her golden fingers, she hails the stars and declares him a very good traveler, and a safe journey. She wishes him well and not to visit often if he can help it. She knows he has other people to wash. He is Johnny Washer

He says goodbye missus

He looks at her knees as he's sailing away. The boat seems quieter and less rocky

She looks at the brightest star in the sky, even visible at noon

I'm just over here, she says

The Rain Was Beautiful

Mud makes me want to throw everyone away.

When the dog comes out at midnight and stands in the mud while I'm mucking horse crap I am looking down at her with no witnesses except the silent dumb horses and I'm saying

I seriously hate you

I hate you

Because now I have to finish mucking and then collar you motherfuckering dog and take you to the pool and put your feet in and then walk you around so you dry and don't get my bed wet and it is MIDNIGHT motherfucker my patience runs out at 10, 10:45

And while I'm mucking around a corner I hear the pony pulling on something

Because he likes to explore every FUCKING thing with his teeth 

at midnight

And I go around the corner which entails sucking muddy boots out of calf deep mud every step for my legs SQUEEERCK SHWEEENCH SUUUUUCKSLUSH it's HEAVY it's like dragging Orson Welles' wet bloated corpse on a fat bulky rope

and there's Meriwether the pony who (because it's wet everywhere and he's standing in the one dry area and he's bored) has discovered the water line that snakes up the wall and isn't attached very strongly, and if he pulls hard enough which he will, the pipe will break and then it will be midnight in mud with a busted spewing water pipe

and the water will have to be shut off all night and I will be even MADDER THAN I ALREADY AM

So I first say to the little white headed motherfucker as I push his face I HATE YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF SHIT IT'S MIDNIGHT AND I WAS TRYING TO GO TO BED EARLY

and then I look at the dog knee deep in mud looking up at me like how can I help

and I think this is where they will find me, all I have to do is trip and fall flat and suffocate in black mud that smells like an ancient egyptian plague

I have to take TEN orson welles steps which feels like four hundred back into the barn doors to get the baby shampoo that I then have to slush back into the pony area to squirt it all over those pipes because he doesn't like to eat baby shampoo

then I finish mucking, return the shampoo, curse all the animals, my nighttime muddy curse I hope you all die

then I get back toward the house where there's no mud, try and take off my boots and hope my pajamas haven't had splashed mud on them, get my regular shoes, grab the fucking dog and police escort her to the pool to rinse her feet, dry her feet, get back to mom's room where I sleep, get my shoes off, get into bed, it's 12:24 I lie there

in the mostly dark 

I hear what I know is not sleep

that baby shampoo isn't going to work

I lie there

cursing my life

what can I do I don't want a broken pipe but I have nothing

I get up. Get back to my boots. The cleanish dog looks at me from the bed

DO NOT GET UP MOTHERFUCKER I tell her I WILL GIVE YOU AWAY TO PEOPLE WHO WILL EAT YOU

I go out to the barn again. I am looking around for cinderblocks

I see half of one which weighs about as much as a waterlogged midget wrestler in full battlegear

I heft it up. I find another

I hear the dog come out of the doggy door

I see her black face that doesn't look labby enough so it irritates me

NO I say

She pauses

I take the cinderblocks through the Grand Canal of Sopping Filth to the water pipe area

I stack up as many heavy cement things as I can to block curious pony lips and teeth. I block it halfway up to about boob height. It seems sort of secure, 69 and a half percent, maybe 73.

I squish iodine and baby shampoo all over it. Thinking now he'll be orange from iodine but hopefully it tastes bad

why do I have these horses 

I curse myself

As I slog my sodden legs back shut the barn and walk back with the dog again, who doesn't know any better and is a service animal doing her job I guess

I don't hate the dogs and horses I remember as I walk in the dark and the tired 

I hate the mud

The mud makes me feel like I'm incapable of regular tasks that I'm good at and that don't bother me

The mud makes extra work. I realize I have a work limit and I am slamming against it, and it's really late

The mom in me smooths my hair down and swats my bottom and says you're clean inside your boots get your clean barefeet out of your gross boots in to bed

you're done for the day

I'm back in bed

No broken pipe. It's really late

I've done all I can I've done more than I could. It might not be enough but I'm tired

The dog has clean enough feet washed again

My mom is asleep the kids are asleep

The mud is temporary and remember? One last thing 

the rain washed everything

The rain was beautiful

Dead Man's Life Coach

(for Ziani, who said hey, I need your words)

I haven't been writing in here because I started talking to dead Bob Fosse. 

It started because I watched a Sam Rockwell show where he played Bob Fosse the dirty yet distinctively funny choreographer fuckaholic chainsmoking Cabaret All That Jazz Damn Yankees awardwinning you know his stuff. But besides the play fame what I liked was this guy was broken and me

No I have never been a dancer I am a runner from dancing, I am the one in the corner holding up my hand going that's okay I'm good here you guys look great

But this Fosse bro, he could get it DONE. So I started reading about him (biography books are like 4 dollars on Ebay) and his book is a FAT one that takes alot of time to read if you only get to it at night for a few minutes each time. Then I had to watch all the movies they were talking about and look up the dances he did and study this guy. Then I suddenly needed to talk to Bob.

Bob is my friend

I understand Bob. It's also easy to understand someone when there's a book with the blueprint and he's not in your house sitting there eating pistachios loudly while you're trying to think. Bob has been like this swirl of color in my mind, and I started thinking I think I better talk to this guy

Which is how all stories get started

Or am I crazy

You decide

So I said to my friend Chris I'm having some impure thoughts about dead Bob Fosse and my friend Chris said dammityeah what are you waiting for talk to dead Bob Fosse

So I started writing. It's easiest to write dialogue since people are talking in my head so I just went down to hell which is where I figured Bobby ended up after all the womanizing, and found him choreographing a number in hell. But he still had time to talk to me and even hit on me, since that was really his full time job, that and smoking, the dancing was just sort of a hobby.

So Bob and I had a funny conversation about the thing we know best about - how to make sure no one falls in love with you or if they do, how to fuck it up the best you can - 

and then the scene was done, I was escorted to the elevator in hell and said goodbye to Bob Fosse leaving him to his afterlife afterjob

But then the next day I got to the couch near my mom, like I normally do, my daily job, and I thought 

where's bob

So I went back in to see what was going on and talked to Bob some more. On tv, Mom and I were watching Biography and Eva Braun was on.

Sidenote -- we may have made many mistakes in life, ladies, I'm sure you feel the same but - at least we didn't marry Hitler

So I had Bob Fosse, and since we were still in hell, of course I found Hitler there. And I started having a conversation with Eva and the choices she made, and the in fact moron that she was. If you watch her biography she basically read fashion magazines and tried on bathing suits, a good way to get through a world war by the way.

Seems like people in hell were having alot to say, and I said to my friend Chris, should I be talking to these people? Also I might be in love with dead Bob Fosse

She said go all the way, Jule. Go deep into Bob, I won't watch. Here, hold this rope. I have the end, you go ahead. I can pull you out

That's how I ended up under the bed in Hell's Elevator with dead Bob Fosse while Eva Braun and Hitler were wrestling around on top of us. 

I've been alot of places in my life.

My time with Bob has been so surprising

So anyway, I kept writing and thinking I was done and the next day Bob is scratching at me so I'd go back and see what he wants and now I have 246 pages of me talking to dead Bob Fosse. We've taken trains, gone to camp, gotten a little cabin in the country, fought dementia as an ensemble dance number, he's helping me figure out What Went Wrong and What's Coming Up Next. Sort of a dead man's life coach

Do people have life coaches this late in life? I'm only 57, so maybe you can only sign up for the inspiring dead ones at this age, which is how I got Bob.

All I know is, you have to watch his dances. They're fucking hilarious. Jim Carrey meets steamyflirty Paul Newman. A solid statement about the comedy and sultriness of our life's core.

I don't know if I learned anything about myself or Bob, or what the 246 pages is for. It might be the length of an extensive therapy session or the thing the kids hold carefully with two fingers as they burn it on top of my grave. I know it is a love letter to myself, loneliness mixed with the need to laugh, and this deep drive to understand why I crave the things I crave. Who better to write a love letter to, you've been with yourself every day so far

Love letters are funny because they don't make much sense, but there are all the elements we need to survive

hope whimsy yearning confusion shame rejoicing gutlaughs perilous situations tension release

and dance, what joy does when it has nowhere to go 

I Just Ate Shit

I wasn't looking forward to this trip. Going on a trip means getting Kurt to watch the horses, my brother to fly 3000 miles to watch my mom, and then having to get off the couch. I am barely doing my regular life and the kids keep wanting to add more FUN. WTF.

We rented a Steve, a big huge van like the one we took cross country, and we all piled in with snow gear. This was the point of the trip, to get Bess a chance to snowboard, trying it out, and Emma a chance to ski for the first time. 

The place was huge, we had to have a huge one to fit all the cousins. The rooms downstairs were like little cells, like an abandoned christian cult leadership house. I took the room with the door to the outside since I had the dogs, and the bed was low like a japanese woman recently redecorated. It was only three nights, how much sleep was I going to get anyway, I never sleep well in new places and I always forget to "borrow" some of mom's sleep aids can we pencil that in for next time. I don't know why I think I need to cowboy out every hard situation without help.

The first day is just getting all the supplies we need to eat for the next three days with 13 people. The grocery store at Big Bear is like there's a hurricane coming and also Macy's is having a firesale. I've never seen so many people. I think going at 5pm is the worst because all the kids just got off the slopes starving and there are only two stores in town and we're at the smaller one. Food and pizza scored, we head back. The crowdedness is confusing, though because after the long winding road up the mountain into this tiny little lakeside mountainy ski resort area, I guess I thought it would be quaint and quiet and empty like it was when I'd come as a kid in the 70s. Instead we wound our way up into a snowy nightclub scene, where everyone seemed mad and hungry.

That night as I lay in bed awake for hours, every time toilet flushed it sounded like the titanic going over niagara falls. Also it was supposed to snow at 6 am, and I knew we'd have to get up because what if that was the only snow and we never get to see snow.

I got to sleep from about 4-6. 6 I was outside because the ground had a thin layer of snow and more snow was falling. It was thin, and could turn into sleet so I got the kids out so they could see in case this was all we would get. 

The next three hours we just stayed awake because the snow came down thick and plentiful. This was the best part, like Maryland, the street isn't a street anymore, it's a wide canal of white and everyone can walk anywhere there's no lines. There are no cars. It's just walking and winter, and you can eat everything that's falling from above. The dogs run first time in the snow, and the kids are rolling huge balls the size of their heads. There's frolic. Sliding on sleds, searching for hills. There's a fire inside when we get in. 

That night we decide to go get our ski gear that we'll need for the next day on the slopes. This journey to the ski store is better than the actual skiing. There are young mountain people helping in the store, everyone's wearing a sweater, the boots fit, the cousins are excited about tomorrow, there's a search for sunglasses instead of goggles. We can't find sunglasses anywhere. Finally 20 dollar sunglasses which is only slightly cheaper than the 40 dollar goggles.

We pack the car, get our stuff ready for the next morning since we have to leave early. I pack some snacks. I haven't skied since Nathan was 4 and Emma was 3. I wasn't very good at it then. Before that I had skied once when I was 17. It took me all day to get good. I realized I ski every 20 years exactly. 17, 37, 57. I can't wait for 77. I'm going to be ready next time. I'm going to practice.

The morning of skiing, we get worried about icy streets, because we have no chains and Nathan doesn't drive in snow ever. We decided to try and drive up the mountain. We almost get to the top and the truck in front of us starts to slide down toward us. When Nathan is scared he doesn't do anything. He said in a very small voice I don't know what to do. I get out of the car and wave other cars around us and tell Nathan to just back up slowly, we'll back all the way down the mountain if we have to. We park in a lot at the bottom and cram on a shuttle with fifty thousand other people and then pick up MORE people and then we drive up the 3 minutes to the mountain and then there we are. Skis, kids, no water, giant snow hill. 

Here's where it gets No Fun for me. 

The kids are all good. They strap everything on. The big kids who know how to snowboard take Bess and a cousin to teach them the first time. I take Emma and the other cousin who haven't skied over to the lift. I felt the same way on my skis as I felt at 17 and 37. Jules should not be putting long metal sticks on her feet to move on ice. My body tells me every time. This is not your sport bro. 

We get on the lift, though, cause we're still excited. I've done it before, how hard can it be.

We go up up up the mountain. At the very top we realized oh we better get our poles ready and our skis ready we have to get off this lift. We open the bar and as our lift goes over the little ice mound for getting off, we all stand up on skis and immediately splatter down the ice like thrown eggs. They stop the ski lift. They shovel us off to the side so life can continue while we untangle ourselves and figure out how to get up. I look down the mountain and realize there is no way I will be able to do this where Fun will be involved at any level. 

Emma and Little Cousin have gotten up and we all try and start off. I say to aim yourself parallel to the mountain and try and go horizontally across which works until you have to turn your skis around to zig zag the other way.

The girls are slow and learning as I am, but I am having a really terrible time and I can't seem to understand why. I like snow. I like challenges. I like the people. But every inch of me does not want the skis to go at any miles per hour on this icywet hazardous downward slope from hell. This other part of me that has taken over has decided that we do not like that I don't control the speed of my skifeet with any control. I am mad that it takes so much energy to stop myself from going and that now the whole point of my donner party trip down the mountain is to move as little as possible and not die. It's like a rigid second by second journey where I just keep stopping myself with poles and using every foot bone muscle and hip joint to keep my body upright and sliding inch by inch safely. I don't care that it isn't fun. I want to understand why it is so hard. Ski schools with 2 years olds pass me by. I try to keep up with them but they are way better than me and I know when I'm beat. I inwardly wave at them with wistful desire to be them. In their tiny fat fueled rosy cheeked skipants bodies. I'm like a boney yet smores fat avalanche (a fatvalanche) waiting to happen with an emergency room at the end. 

The kids are already on the ski lift above me as I'm getting almost to the end 

MOM! You doing ok? They're yelling from above, on their second round, seagulls circling the scene of my accident; the place where my humor has died and I'm skiing over the grave

I yell NO and don't look up so I don't cry. I can only look every inch ahead and try and get to the very bottom.

I am very angry at myself that I can't do everything with them. I always do everything they do. This is something I don't think I can do. 

I get to the bottom and my eyes are full of tears. An older cousin calls me on the phone. Are you ok? Maybe you aren't having a very good time.

I say I'm so disappointed in myself

Oh no she says.

I don't know why I can't do it. I want to be like them. I need to be on the tiny baby slope. I need to be on like a snowy curb, practicing for many many hours til I understand how to move on these sticks.

It's okay not to be good at it, she says. 

I don't want to be old

It's just part of growing up, she says

I can move flat on the skis so I go over to the beginner area and say hey I'm not on your list of 1 and a half year olds you have there learning to ski, but can I practice here

I try to smile like Suzy Chapstick.

no they say. They are all 15 year old instructors direct from Austria. They can ski while writing an essay on their laptops and simultaneously stirring soup. 

I decide I didn't pay a million dollars to sit at the bottom of the slope with the moms with the dyed hair in fat jackets and maniures who keep yelling Tanner! Makayla! 

The flat snow is actually too boring even for me to ski on, so I decide while the kids do their giant slopes, I'll just walk my skis up the bottom of the hill incline to where you get in line for the ski lift, and at the end of that line I'll turn my skis around and try and ski back down that 30 feet. 

This is my own Vietnam. 

So I do this over and over and over and over and over. I can sort of ski down this area where people are sliding down past me getting off the slope, or passing me on the way up to get in the ski lift line. This is a hill I can control myself sort of and learn how to feel my weight and muscles to stay afloat. Every time I turn around at the "top" and aim myself down to try again, I say an urgent prayer and I hold on to my face with my teeth.

It isn't FUN, really, but it isn't EMBARRASSING.

Plus I see everyone who is coming down from the mountain, and everyone who comes past me is saying to their friends 

MANNNN I JUST ATE SHIT

The kids are learning and liking what they're learning. They're hungry and we get out of our skis to get food. I take off my skis and put a boot in the snow and I say joyfully hello foot, regular old foot on the snow. I suddenly know how to use you, you lovely solid motherfucker. We go inside on these impossible boots for walking and get 80 dollar burritos and get back out to the snow. We keep practicing our skills and I don't quit til an hour before quitting time. While they go up one more time I go and get the van in the parking lot and drive back up to get the kids so they don't have to take the packed shuttle. There are raisinettes and soda in the van. The van is my favorite place in the whole wide world for ten minutes. 

I didn't do the mountain I thought I would do but I did do the mountain I could do.

We manage to get back without the car sliding off the mountain on icy streets. I'm happy because we did the hard part and maybe I will sleep over an hour that night. 

I am happy because the dogs are so happy, and there's snow and that night Bess says can we go again tomorrow and Emma says I wish we could go again I was finally getting it

This was the point, my mom brain says, relieved. Remember?

I learned I don't want to live in a touristy mountain village. I would like to have hilly, treesy, open land, seasons okay if I have a truck with chains, and I would like less people. I would like to take my whole family, though. Having a house with the whole family and their noise is good, if your bed is only slightly higher than Japanese level. Also if the heater can be go on less than roasting level which at night it seemed to be trying to fry us out. But you're afraid to turn it down because we're in the SNOW. We don't want to be COLD. 

At least we're finding out what we need for the next ski trip. I'll sign up for the baby slope, or maybe just bring an innertube. Being out in the sun and shiny snow is good, the trees are my friends. The air loves me. The coming home to a lovey housemosphere where some of your smarter non-skiing family made soup and spaghetti and a fire, and the snow can wait outside patiently for your feet. You can be inside with these faces and you can feel good cause there's time for everything and if you listen you can hear the snow waiting.

Mammary lane

They should make reunions with old parts of your life a thing. Like you should get to do a day a week, going to visit someone you pinned your hopes and dreams on who now knows nothing about you. But who WAS you intensely, for a few pictures in your photo album.

I remember once when I was making a resume for a job I was trying to get I was wondering what to do with the huge gaps and I realized I needed to make an Emotional Resume to explain many of the gaps in my workforce eras. Because working is definitely not the only job. You are always chasing some guy or some feeling or getting over some break up or wishing you were dead while eating a bagel which then makes you not want to die anymore. 

I'm going to make a boysiloved photo album. There might be some girls in it. 

My path has been so much fun. I see now why I want to fill it with sheep and needlepoint. Because I am running to keep my body and mind going even though I'm not using much of me, I'm a mom, I am still that girl and I was that girl

and we played

Speaking of old, every year at this time I go and hang lights at my old boss Lou's house. This year I just dawdled, I got there, I dragged out the lights that I labeled in ripped bags, I saw my note from last year at this time, which lights go where. I thought about how I'm not the person I was when I wrote that note 12 months ago, I'm way more tired. I took my time pulling the light strings out so they didn't break. I cursed the bushes that are like safari thick and impossible to get through to staple gun to the roof. I dawdled. The trees had pretty light in them. So I stopped to look at them in the dapply sun. I wandered over to where I could look up and only see trees. I hung a few lights and then I smelled some roses. I noticed that even though Lou has been needing 24 hour care and the cost is so huge, his yard is still Hearst Castle manicured. His house is freshly painted. Everything in his yard is growing abundantly and neatly trimmed. The only mess in his yard is my ripped bags. 

I get back slowly to stringing the lights expecting every staple gun staple to pierce the string and electrocute me. I get carefully on a ladder. I finish the job like I've done every year but this year I feel tugged, like time is pooling around my ankles, I wish there was a ladder that climbed me out of that rushing time river. I feel the gravity of things beckoning. 

But then I go into Lou's and he's in bed under cozy comforters, and my neighbor is his butler right now, getting him breakfast like Mr. French on Family Affair. Lou has no shirt on and maybe actually nothing on, but he is wearing his big Oklahoma hometown grin.

I sit with Lou and we just talk a bunch of shit, and he can't hold onto much after five minutes we sometimes tell the same stories, but it doesn't matter, in each new moment he is funny and vibrant and quotes Hamlet - he is the Oklahoma actordirector king of Burbank. He tells me when he was driving in a convertible with Robert Wagner one day Wagner said this might sound weird but I love you

and Lou said I love you more

and Wagner said ahhh but I love you better

I said was he a good guy and Lou said ah he was the best.

Lou held my hands and we talked about kids and moms being sick and moms dying and how he was with his mom when she died. He said she was the greatest mom. He said she had a plum tree and a squirrel was eating her juicy red plums and so he waited out there as a kid with his six shooter and finally shot the squirrel and he said momma didn't say a thing. She just skinned that squirrel and fried it up. Man, she was the greatest.

He talked about Peter Bogart, an AD we both knew and that I knew briefly a little more sordidly. Lou talked about how Peter wasn't really the greatest guy, advice from Lou back then that I never heeded but understood now. He said his father Paul was a terrific guy, a softer guy, a kind director. He said you gotta love the kind ones. You know the ones. You know the ones you don't always pick. Those ones. Am I right ladies.

Holding Lou's hands though, even if you pick the wrong ones and go down every possible frolicsome wrong path, you get some right ones, sometimes you wash ashore at some christmas lights that you don't wanna do and you end up laughing with an ancient naked director with memory issues who is one of the good ones, and who reminds you that you're one of the good ones too. I like when you can see beauty and worth in yourself. In your ripped bags. In the ability to climb down a ladder to seek out and find rich intense laughter. And belonging.

Anyway, then I came home to where I know my job and I like my job, loving my ailing mom, and when she saw me she (who has only so many words) said, smiling big, oh GOOD

We all give all we have don't we. I see it guys. I see what you're doing out there. It's not lost on me, all your effort and beauty in a sometimes seemingly silent movie world.

I was wheeling Mom out to bed and then this piece of furniture got delivered in a minivan from San Francisco by some people I didn't know. They were friends of my dad's cousin. His cousin had a hat stand that belonged to my dad's grandfather and grandmother, JBA and Hattie Mae. So Nathan, their great great grandson, helped load their ancient wooden hat stand from minivan to golf cart to ferry it to our house. This hat stand bench that they sat on to put on their shoes, and that they passed every day without thinking about, that they maybe saw when they were newly married in Arkansas and thought hey let's get that - let's get that for Nathan, our far off little great great grandson who we'll never even know who is carefully angling all our memories lodged in this hat stand wood, here to listen to our new voices added now. 

I wrote my dad's cousin and said tell me the whole history of the family life lived around this hat stand so I can print it out and put in the bench seat box so the future can know how comforting it is to belong to something, and what it's like to have this tribe. 

this is it

I've spent the last few days making lift a flap posters for my parents' birthdays. I have three parents sharing two birthdays right next to each other. There's alot of celebrating of humans there, some importanttome humans. 

So I play with ideas of what they mean to me and I cut paper and write things while I make the cookies they like and this is a good way to make a life.

I made the really nice ones for my two parents that are functional in the brain, and then I decided hey I wanna make a list of 81 things that make my mom a good mom. So I went outside to write it all down but not on the fancy poster just in a notebook and it ended up being a letter to my mom that I cried the entire time while writing. Because my mom was my whole sled team. Even during bad times, some of which she definitely created. Being raised by humans is no high priced waterslide into a sea of champagne. But who wants that kind of thing anyway, so sticky and the headache after.

I cried because being alive is so lucky. Being born to the weirdo parents I got, at least they feel things. They're creative. They're funny. They're vivacious. All three of them. Vivacity. Top of the scales.  I am forever their young audience, looking up at them.

I took the letter and climbed in bed with my mom. I read her the letter and the eventual list I made of 81 things that make my mom a good mom to my mom. It wasn't her birthday yet, hers was today, and this was still last night. But I had to start early cause I had to sub in 4th grade in the morning today for a few hours and I knew I'd be tired. Had to split up the days. Reading that letter was the best thing I could've done. It made me laugh, it made me cry through the whole thing. Talking to my mom and having her there listening (while watching Flipper with the sound off), getting to share what she brought to my life and all the wonder and mistakes and water views. It was gratifying on a Jules level. It was the guts of me.

The next morning I already felt satisfied so the day was easier. Barry helped by bringing a pizza and some balloons when he picked up Bess. I hefted in Stephen Crane (the lift) that huge heavy metal lift that lifts her up in a sling so I could swing her over into the big cozy chair for her birthday, not the everyday wheelchair. She had a throne, we sang to her, she ate ice cream, apples, pizza. We watched Monty Python eventually, the soundtrack album we would play while lying on the living room floor in the 80's in Maryland, listening over and over and knowing all the humor by heart. At night I put her back in her room, Nathan had to heft her into the chair with his man arms since Stephen Crane had not charged at all weirdly and had quit.

In bed I played Mr Blue Sky, our all time favorite song she would blare in the car with the windows down. I played Kindness by David Wilcox which makes me cry and cry. She played it for me many times when she lived here and the kids were little. It is her. I put on the Commitments. Because of course. I Can't Stand the Rain. 

Then I cried with my head in her lap, by her bedside. I guess that's what bedsides are made for, finally I am using it correctly. When someone is ill. I feel happy to try and do all the things to feel this life in my hands, and not be afraid of the largeness of my heart or my connection to the people I love. Why would we not love like this. This is why work was invented, because if we all felt this way all the time with no other distractions, we would be exhausted. It is essence. Aside from discovering the universe and its further secrets, love seems to be the only other worthy heartwaster.

When I had her all blanketed and relaxed and cried on in her bed, I told her right to her eyes that I loved her, and Happy Birthday.  

Is this it? she said

I fed the horses and sat outside listening to the people in the house talking about basketball, drifting out the window. I sat in a chair by the pool that is flimsy but didn't fold up and kill me. Looked up at the sky with its cloudy beauty. 

This is it

Don't Forget the Substitutes

I had to do a half day in 1st grade up the street. I felt like I could do it, I had alot of creek riding lately, alotta puppy time, still swimming even though it's getting the last sputtering October time coldish, my mom is weird but manageable. 

So I leave my regular life and go to where I have to act normal in front of other people and try and not cuss and do a responsible job.

There's a little quiet girl in this class named Vera. She's a mouse with short hair and big kind of malnourished eyes. She's not malnourished, she's just in the middle of her best years. Takes alot out of you. She shows me her wiggly tooth. I have to bend down like a giant looking at microscopic Jack on the beanstalk. She's the smallest bean. Her tooth is even tinier. I forget what it's like to be amazed by the world. Vera's showing me. Vera is such a weird name. Who looks at a newborn baby's face in the fresh hospital blanket and says yes. Let's call her Vera.

Then there's Luther. I think he was wearing girl's baby leggings. He still talks like he's an embryo. He shows me the meandering fish in their tank, it's blue and flowy. He explains with his big moon face  her doesn't like loud noises. Her likes quiet. Then he tells me her name is Cyan. Like the blue. His name seems like he'd grow up to be a beefy bouncer in a New England seaside rough neighborhood bar. But this Luther is a flower who grows in a monastery courtyard. No monks are even looking at him and he's the best one.

The teacher had to go to a wedding of a male cousin who gained a hundred pounds after his mom left his dad because she decided she might like women. I guess his mom's feelings for women translated into a bunch of quarter pounders with cheese for him. Anyway he was marrying some girl in Diamond Bar which sounds nicer than the traffic it takes to get there, and the teacher was kind of excited to see who his mother was bringing to the wedding. She had gotten married again. But not to a woman. Just a regular guy. So she's a liar. 

So the teacher leaves and the kids are cutting out pinatas and gluing frills on them which they also have to cut out. There are maybe 25 kids in the class and I want to hear every kid who tugs on me to tell me one of their secrets because everything a six year old says is never a waste of time. Even though I feel frail and every time they talk I lose one percent of my overall personal battery power. One kid hands me a book and says This is Shyla's book she got hit in the face with a ball. I have to act like I know what that means but I assume Shyla is at the nurse's office, so I tell another kid to put the book on Shyla's desk since I don't know where it is. There are two boys I would marry without even asking for my parents' blessing, Mauricio and Josecruz. I hope they actually marry each other, they could open a mechanic shop and it would be the cleanest place stocked with kind hard workers. They are eager, gentle and have very concise haircuts and a gentle cheek. I'm sure they have good moms. You can see it through their skin.

A kid I wish would fall into a tractor and die is Isaiah. I wish in fact that he is run over by a combine before he falls into the tractor. He takes the lid off the trashcan and wears it as a hat. He doesn't walk anywhere, he hurls himself. He can't walk a straight line without slamming into someone and then saying he never did it. There is also Lucas who is twice the size of all the other kids in the room, like God was pinching off kids making them like vienna sausage size and then slammed his thumb with a hammer and it swelled up to earth sized and he just shrugged and made that one Lucas. He's not fat, he's just huge and his handwriting is terrible. It's like he's writing with his hands taped together AND in oven mitts.

The deepest sorrow is Simeon, who keeps asking me can you help me cut this when I'm helping another kid with something else and I know I shouldn't be helping him cut, because cutting is what he's learning and also we don't need to make a perfect pinata, we just have to make a pinata by cutting the best you can. He asks me a few times and I tell him he can do it and I see that this isn't going to end well and then yep after a minute he THROWS the scissors and I admonish him and then he THROWS the scissors again almost hitting Amanda in the face which wouldn't be so bad because Amanda is going to be working at her husband's vending machine company eventually. But Simeon COULD NOT HANDLE CUTTING THE PINATA and he starts wailing. I act angry and tell him we can't throw scissors and I usher him to a side table and say put your head down and he cries so long he cries an ocean and I say in my mind

I feel the same way Simeon

We are one

Pinatas are the worst

He cries until ten minutes before the bell rings. I admire his commitment to feeling every inch of anguish. Other kids like Large Lucas who have earphones on while they do their computer on the chromebook at their desk at full volume in their ears, Lucas pulls one earphone off and says it's hard to do this when he's crying so loud and I just look at him like yeah. That's life buddy

Then Charlotte and Athena are so excited because they get to make a one second announcement over the loudspeaker in the office and I forget what that's like, or I miss having the kids little when I felt all the things they felt, when they got to be special and do a fun thing in school where they were in charge of something. Like Eli tells me (he looks like a blonde keebler elf) he explains the named popsicle sticks in the paper pockets on the wall and how when someone is absent from the job chart then the people who are substitutes get to do their job so don't forget the substitutes he says cause we get to do any  job 

I forget what it's like to be 6 so I am glad that Vera and Luther and Mauricio try to nudge me back on the boat. They are throwing me a heavy rope and it's kind of scratchy. It will take the whole class to pull me in and I'm a pretty good swimmer. Plus I've been swimming the other way. Just to stay alive.

I leave with two free apples and a package of tea and a piece of pizza from the teacher's cultural awareness snack lunch. I leave with their faces and their heads coming up to my bellybutton and I go back to my life on the couch with my mom edging away from the earth over there in her chair and all alone. Dementia leaves you stranded while holding on, or is that life, just some days are light and some days are sorrow. Two hours with kids is better if it's just one hour maybe at this point. My saturation level is pretty immediate, 25 energetic faces are a kick in the pants to someone who shares most days with Gunsmoke and dementia. I give all I have. 

You know when you feel like it's just not enough.

So I look at farmhouses in Maine and I go outside to pet the horses and I reassemble myself back into my regular job here at home, and I am thankful for teachers who don't have to go to weddings of fat traumatized cousins very often since I feel full just doing this.  

But I am grateful for Vera and Luther, and their eyes looking up at me.

No Nonsense

I tried talking to my mom. I don't usually, I do all her stuff like I'm her body getting her food and drink and keeping her in the sun or out of it or blanketed or not, but I usually sit over there, juuuuust far enough away where dementia can't get me but I can view it and I can say hey I'm right here every now and then. Cause if you're not in her eyeline I'm not sure she knows I'm there and I don't want her to feel abandoned on a raft like Wilssssssonnnn. In Castaway.

Yesterday I sat in front of her and angled her chair around til I caught her eye and let her talk to me. I'm not a good Alice in Wonderland, it is hard for me to listen to words that are not leading anywhere, words are the chocolate milk of my life, words are bows and arrows slung well aimed. These words were nonsense and out of one of the primary mouths in my life. But I didn't leave, I sat and asked questions. I stopped listening for meaning in the words, I let the words wring out and sit soggy like a soaked washed cloth next to us. Even though I don't like to abandon words, I left them alone landing there like wet money. Instead I looked at her face and her eyes that have known me and loved me all my life. I watched her mannerisms still there, the pauses and the laughs, and the focus on her face when she's making a point even though the words are latelifesicklanguage. Somewhere in her she is still a flowery field and she's sharing all she has. So I have to wade through bent flowers to sit in front of her and listen to her stories. When you sit in front of your ailing mom as the kid, you are shrunken to your bare core child. This is why it is hard to cross the room. You just want her to love you and never leave you, even broken. You want her to say good job. You want her to notice you. 

I'm wondering who's crazy er. Then. My needs expectations which are unfulfillable but still there. And my mom who is still there using words that don't match up.

So we unknowingly build this swirl of unmet needs, confusion mixed with the dance of daily care and it becomes a meaty emotional sundae and that's anger.

But then I read this morning that if you sit long enough with anger you can find its true name. 

Grief.

I am going to poke a stick in grief. Take it on the trail and make friends with it, because I am in there too. I did not walk in there, it washed over me like a Halloween horror maze but I am in there with friends. We are all in there for something.

Today I decided I better sit with grief and stroke its fingers. Because I am in there so it must be a good place. Love got me there.