A Blog a Day - Day 1

So today I got the last 6 boxes of dad's stuff from his executor. Odds and ends like his graduation robes, and baby pictures of us, and many, many paperweights and certificates from the University; his yearbook from the year he graduated from med school, a dark brown face above a military uniform. A letter of recommendation from his mentor, co-author and friend, from the early '70's that says "Elson is Black. I am a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, capitalist pig. And yet this never affects our conversations." Eyeball slides. About 30 pictures of various fishing trips he went on where he was always wearing a silly hat. A photo of a party at his house showing ladies in the pool not getting their hair wet and dad wearing his gold medallion and grinning like a wolf.

Great book fodder. But, I'm still in deepest grief because I haven't yet accepted that he died in such ugliness. I hope I'm mature enough to accept that some people are just nuts, but that simple hope that he would get stuff, stop being so abusive, you know, a hazy deathbed scene where he'd apologize to my brother, and declare that he knew we loved him, that he could feel our love and regard--but life and death are messy things and some people are fuckin' nutz and perhaps there wasn't enough oxygen in his brain. For the past 30 or 40 years.

And it's odd, but I don't have the brick wall of his craziness to fight against anymore and it was such a habit, at least internally. It's a relief and quite scary.

And
I'd love to be able to call him up right now and ask him why his head is so pointy in his military photographs. What's up with that, dad?

A song the universe is singing

Sometimes of a Sunday I listen to the service of worship broadcast by local public broadcasting radio from BU's Marsh Chapel.  The minister's sermon's are funny and informative and the choir's singing is a bliss of proper vowels and correct breathing.

Today's sermon was entitled "You are a song that God is singing."  In my not strictly Christian, slightly Buddhist, New Age-y thinking I reclaim it as "We are songs the universe is singing."

I've been in bed for the most part for almost three weeks fighting the demons Lupus and depression, dealing with the anxiety and dejection of being away from those activities and people that fill my life with light, and, the fear, however irrational, that I may never rise from here, that I might never be healthy again. My faith in healing has been sorely tested. My friendships and family relationships and career prospects have suffered over the 17 years since diagnosis. And when I'm this low it's easy to dwell on all the things of which I feel robbed.

But the universe gives me little miracles, even in this recumbent state. And it's my blessing or gift to be aware of them, even in the midst of despair. Last Saturday's enchanting snow storm, fluffy white and perfect. Waking to Dolce's loud purr as he sleeps on the pillow next to me. And hearing, this morning, that I am a song the universe is singing. Even in this sweat soaked monotony, I'm a song, a lilting melody, a funky bass line, a drumbeat cast on African goat skin, a perfect vowel trilling over just the right vibrato, a stomping chant, a raucous purr, a hearty hum, a soulful cello note echoing over the ages.

And so, beloved, are you. I hear your song resonating in my heart.

The blank page

I am a writer, compelled to fill the blank page. Like most writers, the unblemished page is my joy and my enemy. It accuses, attracts, repels, chokes and frees. It is my shame and judgement, my critic, and my best friend. It is a loving bitch, and a grievous delight. As we approach year's end, like most humans I look back over this strange amalgam of days. The year began literally with my father's death and it's color soaks each day in blue, the sadness sinking into my bones. Our societal norm is to handle grief, sadness, even bad news poorly, to feel inadequate in the face of it and I've fought a life long battle with shame over being a very emotional being--the irony is that my father's death frees me from the primary perpetrator and originator of this feeling. There is a joy in the release it provided for him from his misery of a life, and for me in choosing to deal with him despite his compulsions. It's exhausting to assure someone as powerful as he was that you love them, over and over and over. And before the end I stopped trying. I miss him. I miss his dumb jokes, and the times when he was in good spirits. I miss his red cabbage with Frangelico and I'm sorry that he wouldn't get up off the recipe. I grieve that we didn't spend more time bonding over our love of art and music and I miss him teasing me about my love of the Patriots and the Celtics. I miss his humming as he walked around and find myself doing the same with the same melody. I miss him playing "Satin Doll," and "Misty," and his Errol Gardner growl. I miss our never ending conversations about the nature of love and why neither of us had much luck with relationships. I miss him. But I don't regret my relief that he's gone. Our tangled knots made the holidays rather hellish. As most children of divorce will tell you, the tug and pull that begins with the first holidays after separation can continue throughout adulthood especially if one is, like me, emotionally susceptible to it. So I cautiously look forward to these first holidays without him. Will he haunt me, slightly? I'm sure of it. Will I miss his gruff affection hidden under ill humor and bitterness? Probably. When I saw him, I would make sure I was wearing lipstick so I could leave my lip prints on his forehead when I kissed him hello. Seeing them there throughout the day strengthened my resolve to be loving throughout any onslaught of rage or abuse. I tried, in the early days after he died, to hold at bay my urge to write about our complicated relationship, feeling that it would take me over and move other subjects aside. But of course, what you resist persists. So I'll leave some lipstick prints on one of the ornaments on my brother's Christmas tree to remember that brown bald head and honor my feelings of sorrow, with the intention of remembering the gifts dad gave me while acknowledging the great wrecking ball he was. And I'll be the emotional being I was created to be, eventually unfettered.

Quittin' time

I did something this week, something some people advised against, and gave up something one beloved family member could have especially used...I gave up a job. I had two, which sometime seemed to me brutally unfair to those who've been looking for so long. It was doubly difficult because I had to do so because of this damn disease that tries to keep biting off pieces of my life. It would have been easier of the people I worked with had a negative reaction, but they were very understanding and even commended me on how much professionalism it took admit that I couldn't do the job to the level I demand of myself and that they deserved and had the right to expect.

I think it was scarier to realize that I was making so many mistakes because of the brain fog which is just one of the symptoms of this wacky illness than to realize that I needed to quit. I weighed everything--the benefits, the fact that I might get fired for absenteeism if I stayed and took any more sick days, the loss of income, and the loss of society. It was an agony, an agony that many others have been through--when to admit that the disease needs more attention than the job. It's untenable, horrible, and a choice no one should have to make. I don't have the option or the desire to apply for disability again given that they've already dragged me through years of litigation over an erroneous overpayment. And I'm not quite sure what's going to happen. But I did what I had to do and what I think is right for me.

I've already started to look for a less strenuous part time job with benefits, one closer to or at home, one with enough earning potential that I only have to work one job. It might be a long search, and, in the meantime, I'll work my other job where the stakes aren't as high and where there is a long term understanding of my condition. What a blessing. And what a blessing to be able to leave a job that's not working for whatever reason. I just wish I could give it to someone who really needs it. Hopefully, it will go to such a person.

This whole journey, which started back in 1995 when I last worked full-time, has been a re-definition of what work is for me, what purpose it serves, and a realization of how important it is to work in support of art and music and non-profits than to be able to purchase leather pants on a regular basis.

It's hard, it's very scary, it's often fulfilling, and often joyous. It's my story. And the story goes on.

Why I won't read or see "The Help"

I've been thinking about this for a while, letting it germinate. This morning, I got an email from my mom, who saw the film last night with her sorority sisters.

"You can't judge it till you see it," she writes. "I'm surprised you don't want to see it. It's history. It is humorous... White folks need to see how we were treated back in the 60s and so do black folks. A lot of it came back to me. I remember my mother wearing a uniform when she worked for Mrs. Dawson on Franklin Park West..."

And there's the rub and why I feel compelled to write about why I'm not going to read the book or see the film. And it's really not about this particular book or film--it's about a point in time where I'm feeling the confines of the netherworld in which I dwell as a Black (Irish-German) American and as a person who's psyche, outlook, and family history is shaped to this day by the legacy of slavery, and by the subjugation of this particular people. It's a reaction to the fact that there's not more outrage when a white politician calls a sitting president a "tar baby." And I'm not trying to tell anybody how to feel. I'm just speaking my truth.

Several of my wonderful friends have suggested I read "The Help." They know that I love a well-written book, they thought I'd enjoy the humor, the sense of history, and a story about proud Black women getting their due. From the first, I hesitated. I was grieving my father's life, which includes a healthy dose of grieving his mother's life, a hard scrabble existence as a dark Black woman raised in the south, who brought her little boy north to find a better life. She worked in a white home for many years, cooking and raising the scions of the family. I don't know a lot about how she was treated within this family, but I know that she was beloved and that the family helped her send my dad to college. I also know that she inculcated my dad with a volatile mixture of pride, self-hatred, race-hatred, and low self-esteem that resonates in the family today.

There's no blame to assign here; how the hell anyone survived living in a society that screamed on a daily basis that you were less than human, that you deserved to be hungry, and uneducated, and maligned, and that any dignity that you presented would be derided at the least and beaten out of you at the most is more than most humans can bear. And the fact that my grandmother survived this and raised a brilliant son who would go on to be an enormous contributor to his chosen field as well as an example and influence on his many students of many colors, speaks to the fact that she was ahead of her time, and, like many black folks, had faith that a change would come for her boy. That amazing ability to have faith in the face of no evidence is also one that resonates in our family today.

So I wasn't too interested in reading about a bunch of Black maids, no matter how noble or funny or triumphant.

Then there is the other thing, a very hard thing that speaks to the very dichotomy in which I live.

I resent stories that are about how a white person is the catalyst, the great white hope, swooping in to help some black folks at this particular time in history especially. Here's one more white lady, fulfilling her quest to rise above by using these women's experiences. It's a common theme in our popular culture (The Blind Side, being one example), and because it's not countered by actual historical education, or by mass cultural offerings, it diminishes the struggle of those like my grandmother and father. I don't mean to say that any of us would be anywhere without the assistance, and love of all of the other people, regardless of color, who inhabit our lives. I'm just tired of the black narrative not being taught, realized, recognized. We need that soul fulfilling knowledge that a lot of Black South Africans have--that we changed the course of history by largely peaceful means, that we reacted to injustice with faith and intelligence and pure courage. Think how much that would mean to the maligned teen age Black kid, to the black girl in the all white school, to those of us who are biracial. We don't need the stories of conquerors who ruled with force; we don't need the stories of great wars; we need our own narrative--that mighty men of faith, that brave women of dignity and hope, laid their lives on the line, people we know today, our families, rose above the mire and changed their own world and ours.

So I won't be reading a book that even lightly reinforces the idea that we didn't have a large hand in saving ourselves.

Now, to the movie--it's painful to believe that one of the greatest actresses in America has to play a maid to get a major role. Viola Davis has talked about how she agonized over it, but damn, can we have a movie this year with Black folks in it that has nothing to do with them being Black folks, much less an updated version of mammy? It's the same kind of feeling I get when I go to a romantic comedy and the woman who ends up with our hero is the size 0 with an impossibly bountiful bosom--sending the message that only people who look a certain way deserve to be happy. It's not entertaining or edifying, and it doesn't have any value to me.


My racial background means that many times I live in an in-between place. We know that skin color has nothing to do with anything, yet we live in a society where it still makes a major difference in how you are treated, educated, viewed, desired, approached, and interacted with. The fact that I'm black and white, but seen and classified as black is a weirdness that I can't even address with any intelligence. What does it mean? How do you define this identity? And then there's the fact that my parents were the first in our family to shift our economic identify, another marker in American culture that seems to have an even larger and more meaningful affect on identity than race. So I'm a solidly middle-class, biracial, adopted woman. And because of my family, my country, and living at this point in time, I get to create what I want to out of that. I feel a duty to grandma Emma and Melanie, to grandpa John, and much tortured and beloved Daddy Elson to speak my truth because they lived and died so that I could do so.

I'm sorry to miss this opportunity to discuss "The Help" and it's contents with my friends who are truly interested in sharing reactions and thoughts on it as a genuine way for us to discuss this fractious topic and thereby enhance our understanding. And I'm happy to talk about any of this and welcome your comments. I'm learning every day that it's vital that we live from our hearts and speak our own truths. I hope to hear yours, too.

locks

There are too many keys at my second job. They lie heavily against my chest at the end of my id lanyard or stretch the pockets of my maude like sweaters. They open storage closets and cages throughout the hospital, places that still have locks instead of the mysterious key coded plates that open at a magical tap of my hospital id card. There are large keys and small file cabinet keys and classroom keys. One key opens a storage area where my resuscitation manikins reside when not in use--creepy families of limbless infants, children and adults, with thin lips and replaceable lungs and torsos I clean with Goo Gone where thousands of hands have inexpertly practiced CPR, knowing that they are pressing hard enough when they hear the "click" of the plastic compression unit designed for the purpose. Sometimes I change their faces by rolling the rubber down from the forehead and across the jaw until they pop off. I have to wrap them up to put them into the trash so the cleaning crew doesn't freak out.

It takes special people to work in an environment with so many keys, so many rules, such bureaucracy and with such a noble purpose--to serve the children. 11,000 people with great key fobs of their own shuffle to this place each day and night, to see what they see, to do what they do. Other than a commitment to excellence and the necessity of working in a non-profit environment, I don't know that I am one of them. There are, of course, snobby doctors, emotionally unstable nurses, paper pushing goofballs, layers of politics, butt kissing, and 2 1/2 hour commutes when the Red Sox play. And there are wonderful, terrified parents, amazingly resilient children, brilliant bio technicians, smiling custodians and nurses who can predict the sex of an unborn baby and who daily hold children and parents to their bosoms offering wordless comfort.

Just might be too many keys for my weary neck to bear.

Little voices

A couple friends are worried about how I will fair on the first father's day after my father went to that big pathology lab in the sky.

Don't worry, dahlinks. Father's day was definitely a Hallmark holiday with me and dad. I'd send him a card trying to find one that didn't smack of lies, he'd pretend he hadn't gotten it when I called and then suddenly "find" it, grudgingly admitting that it was a nice card and he was grateful. Then I'd tell him I loved him and he'd grunt.

"Ok, then," he'd say as though he was anxious to get back to his worn blue recliner beside which he kept a 5 pound weight with which he did the occasional arm curl. Just one more pretense that we understood each other somehow.

I understand a lot more now that he dwells on top of my fridge in a priority mail box.

My sadness is for a man who died long ago, or who's heart and spirit wore out under a weight of mental illness and drink many years before he got so physically ill. The timing of everything is ironic, too. Just as I was coming to grips with his neglect, I got lupus and had to rely on him. And just as I had worked hard to tell him the truth recently he got sick, enormously vitriolic, and impossible to talk to. Now I find it bittersweet and amusing that I thought things would all work out someday when I should know that life is a big mess and rarely does it come neatly tied up in a bow. He's as neat as he'll ever be, ashes in a box, contained in some sort of cotton wrapping.

I saw some of the old pops on the day he was scheduled for his first heart surgery. His friend, Mike, helped him out of his truck in the early dawn hours as my hotel shuttle dropped me off. Dad shuffled inside the hospital's entrance and waved a hand at me, spitting, "I don't want to hear it, Joellyn!"

"I was just going to say "Good Morning," I replied. We went to sit on a bench in the lobby. We were ridiculously early.

"Only God can help me now," he said, and I almost laughed. God who? I didn't think he believed in God. I kept my silence. Then, as is often the case with abusive people, he tried to apologize in that weak way he had. "That's Dr. Ose," he said, indicating a picture on the wall. "That's my doctor."

"Yeah, I know Ose," I replied. I'd know Ose for years. He and his family came over at holidays and for BBQs. And he knew I knew him.

And in that way that people have that have regained mental health through therapy, I waited until he was anethetized before I kissed him on the forehead and said, "I love you, Daddy. Everything is going to be fine." He grinned at me and grunted.

I bore witness to his suffering. He hated every minute of it except when his grand
kids were there and when his friend Jim came to visit and they talked about dad being a mentor to the kids Jim worked with as a coach. He also loved the Ensure milkshakes he got to drink and the tiny pecan pie that one of his silly ex girlfriends brought him. And I kept my own council. What was there to say?

The day I left to come back to Boston was the day he came home from the hospital. The whole thing was an enormous ordeal for him and he told me not to come that day. I hadn't intended to as I had plans with my sister-in-law and my nieces to go to a rally where President Obama was speaking. More irony--President Obama's path to the presidency was paved by people like dad.

I realize now that my dad didn't want me to see him weak--that it cost him some sort of pride for me to see him in his hospital gown, trying to breathe. That that was what all the vitriol and hatefulness was about--pushing me far away so he didn't have to feel, so that he could concentrate on his own misery. More irony--a variation on a theme, the one we'd been dancing to all of our lives together.

Someday, after I've finished the book I intend to write about my dad's life, there will only be one thing to say. It's the thing that I've been saying since he and mom adopted me as an infant, it's the thing I did all along, it's the thing I said to him even when he was most cruel to me or someone I loved, and it's the thing that I hope he gets now that he's a spirit. I love you, Daddy, and I always will.

Grunt.