true love exists and we can be good

Y has a thing about needles. She always has. Over the course of 22 years, she's moved beyond visible freak out in the doctor's office to simply cutting off the circulation in a companion's hand, but still, her needle issue remains. So when she decided to get a tattoo, I knew she had been doing some serious thinking. It turns out that she had -- for a couple of years. She knew the design: one of my dad's painting seals, the vermillion-colored signatures that appear on every traditional Chinese painting. She knew the placement: the inside of her right wrist.

She called early this summer to ask if I would be willing to hold her left hand while she got the tattoo, because she imagined it would smart to get all that needling done.

I heard myself say into the phone, "Maybe I'll get one with you." "Really?" she asked. "Mom's going to get one, too," I heard her tell her sister. "Okay," said T. "I will, too."

It took a lot of planning, working with the seals, photoshopping them into the tidy, tattooable form you see here. We talked and talked, because that's what we do, about which of his many seals to get. Also, Y was worried that T and I hadn't taken years to agonize about it, since she had, so we needed to talk about that.

Because for Y, the tattoo was filled with meaning. For her, she said, the tattoo would be a reminder that true love exists, and that such love was embodied by my parents. Also, she says, the seal is a visible reminder that we are capable of being as good as they were.

For me, it meant a road trip with my daughters and an investment in a fun memory. My tattoo would be a visible reminder that we are capable of fun road trips.

My friend Phuc Tran is a tattoo artist up in Portland, Maine. He is the one who so kindly offered to tattoo nipples for me when mine were lost in the collision with breast cancer. Phuc was the only one we wanted to shepherd us through this experience.

Y was anxious -- had probably been anxious about this for two years, because that's what she does when there is a needle on the horizon, however distant. T volunteered to go first so that Y could see the process from start to finish. Here you can see T lying on the table, having a grand old time getting a tattoo on her ankle.

Seemed like a piece of cake. Y went next, as Phuc suggested it would be good to get hers over with.

The next time I support Y through a painful experience like that, I expect there to be a baby at the end of it. She had a very hard time, with terrible pain.

Poor kid, I thought. Can't take pain. I took another sip of my chai.

Then it was my turn. I hopped cheerfully onto the table and let Phuc shave my hairless ankle.

Well. Hats off to all those people who get more than one tattoo; that's all I can say. It's like, "Tattoo me once, shame on...me. Tattoo me twice, and...you can't tattoo me twice." Isn't that how George Bush put it? First thing he and I agree upon.

But T! What a hero! What a faker! Only when I was getting tattooed did T let on that it had hurt her something fierce. "Really hurts, doesn't it, mom?!" she asked as my eyes bugged out of my head and my jaw unhinged in silent alarm.

T hadn't wanted Y to be any more scared than she already was. She protected her sister by being as calm as possible.

T showed us both that true love exists; that we can be good. And now we have the tattoos to remind us whenever we forget.

it's probably not about the cat

Laura has not been home for two weeks and yesterday I almost got a kitten. Coincidence? My beloved sister Ellen thinks not.

In order to get anything done in life, we've all learned to compartmentalize kittens. It's easy, in general. But if you see one, if it's looking right at you, you have to actively resist the impulse to take it home. Kittens hypnotize you -- you can see them trying. For the vulnerable human, it's like that resisting the impulse to scream thing I wrote about, but more intense.

So when I got an email from someone searching for a home for these abandoned kittens, an impulse began, like a little itchy rash. Which is actually one of the many symptoms I get when I am around cats. But that's beside the point.

The one I'm not going to get, not going to get, Not Going to Get is the one with the white forehead. Yani is thinking of the name Luna, for the moon on her forehead. We would call her Lulu.

Our current Zen Master cat, Juni, could train this new kitten, I'm thinking. Juni would be so happy to have a kitten to take care of! She would take Lulu around the yard, model caution around cars, show her that trees make so much better scratching posts than furniture. Lulu would nestle in the curl of Juni's warm body at night. She would only kill birds under extreme duress. She would be just like Juni, only 14 years younger.

These are the fantasies of the kitten trance I am was in. I did not at any moment in time think it was, in fact, a good idea to get a kitten. But I sent an email saying we were interested in the one that so obviously wants to be our cat. And Yani and I drove off in the general direction of New Britain, where the kitten Sirens were singing.

I said to Yani, "If I could figure out a way of getting the feeling I am looking for, I could resist this kitten impulse." She said, What about a bird? Well, the pet store is right next to the hardware store we were standing in. Let's go see if I have a feeling when I check out the birds. Maybe I am just looking for a feeling.

It was more of a gruesome fantasy than a feeling that came over me as I watched the birds flitter about in their cages: Juni may be a Zen Master, but she can't resist finch tartare. Plus the birds actually seemed to be saying, please don't take me home. Just get me outta here.

We looked at rats, hamsters, mice, gerbils: No way; what's with the tail; hi there, but no; and no thanks, respectively. Yani suggested I might like the hermit crab and tapped on the glass to get its "attention." Har har.

Laura gets home tonight and I'm hoping she can talk me off the Lulu ledge, though in truth talking people into things is more of Laura's thing. She is, after all, the one who followed the sign to "free kittens" and surprised the family with Juni so many years ago.

This morning the kittens' foster dad is down to one kitten: It's Lulu. Could I decide by the end of the day, he asks.

Getting a pet is never just about the pet. I know that. So I'm trying to figure out what it is about, right here, right now. By the end of the day.

Could someone please tie me to the mast?

there's a sweet spot to anonymity, too

As we had long been preparing for, Laura has been staying in New York on weekdays for the past two months or so. We've been doing well with this, all in all. I am holding down the homestead and raising my butternut squash crop. She is out there running a huge school. I am making motor sounds while playing with a balsa wood airplane, and she is running the control tower at JFK. We each have our gifts.

Grocery shopping has been one of the biggest structural changes: I shop for one during the week and for two on the weekends. It takes concentration -- like going from base 10 to the binary system and then back again in arithmetic. Not my strong point. I will say that there has been some overage of romaine and a few emergency banana smoothies.

There are other adjustments: I've taken over the household jobs that once were Laura's, of course. Actually, in some cases I'm foregoing the task altogether. I'm not drinking coffee during the week anymore, since Laura is the one who makes it. When I do have coffee on the weekends (because suddenly there is some), it is like a shot of adrenaline straight up. Coffee is fabulous, wondrous stuff on Saturdays and Sundays.

What is the dog's problem? I wondered early on, before realizing that someone with opposable thumbs maybe should feed him. And I am still trying to figure out if there is a solution to the problem of my side of the sheets being ready for washing when her side is still plenty crisp. I'm not happy with either the over- or the under-laundering solution.

I'm sorry to see Laura drive off on Sunday, but I can get on a chair and stand on my tiptoes and see Friday coming over the horizon, so it's okay. When school started, though, a new feeling took me by surprise. I began to feel like I am missing out on the fun. Cool things happen at school.

One of Laura's advisees, 14-year-old Max, for example, wrote a short piece of music in his music composition course last spring. The teacher asked the Manhattan String Quartet to perform all the students' compositions, and you can hear them by putting sq2012ecfs into your browser. This kind of thing, you've gotta admit, is extremely cool. This is run-of-the-mill cool at Fieldston.

But it's not just happenings and the creative vibe of a school that I am missing. When Laura was at Porter's, my identity was enhanced by being connected to her. Students and faculty would wave to me and greet me because I was the missus of someone well loved in that community. As her tenure there recedes below the opposite horizon of time, I am increasingly anonymous -- just another middle-aged walker passing campus, dragging her starving dog. Students used to greet me with friendly recognition, and now they generally don't see me at all. It's a little bit sad that students no longer care if I see them go behind the AT&T building to smoke. It used to make them nervous, and that was kind of fun.

And since I'm not around Fieldston's campus, I'm anonymous there, too. I don't get the radiant heat that comes with being the principal's spouse. I miss basking in that warmth.

Also there is this: in my profession you make an explicit agreement to keep relationships with clients private. When I run into clients outside the office, I give them a wide berth so they don't need to decide whether to acknowledge me or not. It adds another layer of anonymity.

It's not a problem yet, but I'm tracking this new feeling within me. I think even the hermit up there in the cave kind of liked being known as a hermit. Even the hermit -- who cherished all that alone time -- didn't want to be completely anonymous.

I don't get to be brave very often

That's the thought that entered my mind when I prodded myself to do the tiniest brave thing recently. It took this cognitive nudge to dive into a cold lake after a cold rain: Come on, p. You don't get to be brave very often. 

There are actually lots of opportunities to be brave. More correctly, then: I don't seem to be able to choose to be brave very often. My lack of courage has always troubled me, and I fear that if push were to come to shove, I would freeze when Life most needed me to take courageous action.

I have curiosity in generous amounts, and I possess a fair share of persistence and can-do. These are good qualities to have. I'm not even sure I would trade those two things, if that were the necessary deal, to gain the quality of courage. But I know my flaws, and they haunt me. You want what you lack, and I have always wanted -- above other lacks such as talent and brilliance -- more courage.

While driving in Hartford years ago, I came upon an accident. Someone had apparently just been hit by a car that was perhaps two or three cars ahead of me. I could only see the pedestrian's legs as he lay motionless on the asphalt, and I could see his friend wailing in despair and helplessness. Other pedestrians were gathering. I turned my car around with the reflexes of a pursued animal, reacting only to the need to get away, get away. I wish I had been one of the people who had it in them to rush to cradle either the wounded or the frightened, but that wish was overridden by my flight reflex.

I can think of other frightening occasions where my courage has blown out altogether in the same way. Like when 4-year-old T'ai fell off a very high top bunk in a cabin in the woods. I wailed like a wounded animal as I ran to him in the darkness, likely frightening him more than the fall had. Or that time my dad had a night terror (truly, an aptly named phenomenon) and, deep asleep, thrashed and screamed as if he were being stabbed with a knife. I lay upstairs, all of 30 years old, heart pounding as I listened to his unconscious terror made manifest. But I was frozen to my mattress on the attic floor, and left my poor mom both to comfort him and to peel herself off the ceiling. I have always felt bad about not having the courage to go downstairs to see if she needed help.

Last night we went to see the documentary about the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. It's an amazing story of courage in the face of constant fear. I felt like a fraud as I made a donation to Amnesty International the moment we got home. Though such things matter, I know what I know about myself, and my tiny gesture is a poor disguise for a lack of courage to do so much more.

sometimes its a problem

Ting's partner Dave finds 4-leaf clovers all the time. It's ridiculous. They stick out, he says. They look different, he says. He sees them, without looking for them, while we are walking anywhere.

Recently we were telling some friends about Dave's quirk/talent as we all drove to one of those fabulous farm dinners Connecticut has in late summer. We pulled the car into the makeshift parking lot -- a clover field adjacent to a hill of clover, overlooking another rolling field of clover. Dave hopped out of the minivan and said, "here's one," and plucked a four-leaf clover out of the clovery ground. He can't help it.

I'm like that with typos. They stick out. I can be reading a wonderful book written by a wonderful and knowledgeable nutritionist, say, and then...and then, he or she says "if the body has inadequate nutrients, it will produce odd carvings..." and suddenly everything is in doubt. Oh, I know what they meant. Of course! Of course. But it's like finding a gnat in your soup. You know there's no harm done, but all you can think about is the gnat, and you begin to doubt the whole enterprise of your lunch.

Maybe we all have something like this. For Dave, it's 4-leaf clovers. For Laura, it's the tiniest editing glitch in a movie, like the door was open at a different angle just a moment ago. We have spent many hours rewinding and replaying videos so she can show us that the mug was in fact full a second ago and now it's empty.

For me (and for Ting -- likely a matter of both nature and nurture), it's typos. Seeing them while not looking for them is distracting, and sometimes I wish I didn't notice them. I see gnats.

Tonight I'm trying to find a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, where my mother-in-law might take her friends that are driving through. She's not one to google things herself, but has learned that it is possible. Asking me to google something is like asking a bloodhound to follow the scent on the old shirt. Go find her, girl. Go find Emmy Lou. Awooooo! I'm off.

But it's a tough call. Do I really want to send my mother-in-law to the place with the "chick atmosphere"? Or how about the one that says patrons can "Thrill to memorizing music all night long." That sounds absolutely exhausting to me, no matter how good the music might actually be.

In our town there is a dog grooming place called "Bow's and Bandana's," and I still wince as I drive by. We take 16-year-old Bear there every so often so someone else can shave around his bumpy little body. I knew it might not be the right thing to do to say anything, but when you have an Issue with correctness in language, you think people might want to know, because you would. When I've made a typo in this blog, Ting catches it immediately and I'm always immensely grateful. I would like to know when there is toilet paper stuck to my blog's shoe. But the people at Bow's and Bandana's? Really not an issue for them.

I am torn between admiring that quality and thinking that the sky is falling. Do you know how painful it is for me to leave the title of this post as it is?

actually....

There have been times in the life of this humble blog-ini that I've felt I should take something back. But it's out there, and to make a fuss over something makes it bigger; makes it oni instead of ini.

For example, my first posted version of the last entry ended with "like tossing a salad. A corn salad." Well, I had to get up and out of bed to go change that one. Hair is not like corn salad, however tempting it was to revisit the cornfield at that point. Hair that is like corn salad has worse problems than crop circles.

See, now I've made a fuss.

I try to be impeccable with my word, though, except for the froth of metaphors that my brain generates. (I am picturing a thought brewery, with large metal containers of thought; metaphors form as a frothy by-product of the thoughts and need to be skimmed off every now and then.) (I cannot help it. These pictures form.)

Anyway, when I've apparently been unclear, or if I leave a misconception out there, I feel a need to clear it up. I got several replies and emails, for example, from people who assured me that they haven't seen crop circles on my head. I know that. And now I feel like I was speaking metaphorically, but everyone thought the metaphor was the liquid, when it was actually just froth. I don't actually have crop circles on my head. There are no bald spots; just really thin hair. I am susceptible to hat head, let's say, whether or not I wear a hat. That's all.

So that's cleared up.

Then, too, there is the garden issue. This is less a matter of being unclear as a matter of being flat-out wrong and leading you to believe our mistake.

We were so excited to see the bounty that had sprung forth after the poisoning incident, and it looked like there would be a great variety. Though we were heavy on the large-leafed vines, we were expecting at least cucumber, at least cantaloupe, of course zucchini. I blogged about the wonder of it all.

As it turns out, they are all butternut squash plants. Sure, there are some tomatoes in there, which we are happy for, but the marvel of a volunteer tomato plant doesn't count. Tomatoes are unflagging volunteers; they're like the kid who raises her hand whenever the teacher asks anything.

But a dozen butternut squash plants? Having a dozen butternut squash plants is like owning a dozen ironing boards. It's just...silly.

Come and get one, or two, or three (butternut squash - we only have one ironing board) in a few weeks. Or maybe months. There a lots and lots of them, but they turn out to be the slowest things in the world to mature. They're like humans, for god's sake.

grooming lessons

Most of my life I had crazy thick hair. These two shots, taken over 30 years apart, I submit as evidence.

I would brush out enough to stuff a pillow every other day, and the loss was never visible. But during chemo, all my follicles closed up shop, as you may recall, and I got an answer to that question that comes up when you are brushing your teeth and checking yourself out in the mirror, about what your scalp looks like under that lush mane. Might you have a birthmark up there, maybe in the shape of a heart? Or Block Island. Or, god forbid, Florida.

Turns out there's nothing at all up there, except that little scar from the tin can Kevie threw at me by accident. The suspense about the scalp unveiling was over very quickly, and I was eager for a 6-month shadow to appear.

Some hair came back, staggering across the smoky battleground waving a tattered flag; white of course. But lots of follicles just couldn't handle all that poison, and they up and died on that battleground. My hair is so thin now.

Yesterday Laura and I got caught in the rain while walking our loop. I felt the cool rain on my head, felt it slide down my forehead, then into my eyes. I said, "Close your eyes, La, and just feel the sensation of the rain hitting your scalp." I expected her to be feeling the same kind of gratitude for the heaven-sent coolness on an insanely hot day. But she said, "Um, it hasn't gotten through to my scalp yet, hon." Suddenly the sensation wasn't as soothing.

Ever since chemo, Laura has been my groomer, just like these guys. If she doesn't do a little fluff here and there every few hours, little crop circles have formed and there are vast swaths of corn plowed under. You could for sure see that Florida birthmark if it were there. There just isn't enough hair to cover the whole scalp. It's like twin sheets on a queen-sized bed. What those sheets are doing out in the cornfield, I just can't explain. I guess that's part of the mystery of crop circles.

There is an old saying: "Give a man an ear of corn and he eats for a day. Teach him how to plow a field, and he can eat for life."* Actually, I think it's something about teaching someone how to fish, but I simply cannot and will not bring fish into the queen-sized bed out in the cornfield. Regardless, now that Laura is away so much of the time, she is worried that I am showing up in counseling sessions with crop circles on my head. She has decided I need to learn to cover my baldish spots on my own, and has been teaching me how my hands should move along the back of my scalp in order to hide the thinner spots. Fluff, fluff. I can't see it, but she points out where the crop circles tend to appear. Fluff, fluff. It's a lot like tossing a salad. On the back of my head.

*AND make crop circles