light and clouds

Friday was a shit day. (By the way, if you think every blog entry is going to be about spring flowers coming up, stop reading now). It began around 8AM when I went online to check my checking account and discovered that my work check, which goes in by direct deposit on the 20th of the month, wasn’t deposited. In eleven years of working at Mishkan, that has never happened. I took me a few hours of phone calls to figure out what happened. I’ll spare you the details but share that Wachovia sucks as a bank. My check was deposited in someone’s account in South Carolina who works at the Piggly Wiggly (not kidding). Mishkan, as an employer, and specifically Maria, our office manager and Sylvia, our bookkeeper, on the other hand do not suck in the least and because Maria and Sylvia did not want me to worry about a thing, they printed me a paper check and deposited into my account for me. (Friday, I meant to say, was a shit day with lots of blessings in it).
It was Fred’s 44th birthday. I knew that I couldn’t do a lot to help him celebrate. A few weeks ago, I got the idea that I could dedicate a “select-a-set” for him on WXPN. I emailed DJ Michaela Mijoun and wrote her all about our situation and picked out three love songs to dedicate to Fred on XPN for Friday morning March 20th, his birthday. Wednesday morning, my friend Marisol told me that her husband David heard my dedication to Fred—Michaela played it on Wednesday the 18th instead of Friday, the 20th. We missed it. I emailed her (still doped on percoset) about what happened and she explained no, the show wasn’t archived and no, she couldn’t replay on Friday because it was women’s music hour. Shit.
Fred didn’t care. He loved the idea of what I did, even if it was played on the wrong day and we missed it. I didn’t love the idea of it; I wanted it and I was pissed. Or maybe I should say the old me, the me of a month ago before this diagnosis, was pissed, and the new me, who is getting better at noticing my feelings and not being attached to them, noticed how pissed I was. And tried to let it go.
(Maybe I’ll mention now that I am recovering perfectionist and part of what has been very, very hard about this experience is that I don’t have the physical strength at the moment to manage things perfectly. There is a lot of mess in my life right now and I am being forced to just “be” with it).
So I couldn’t fix Fred’s birthday select-a-set and I hadn’t done any of the things I would have normally done to make his birthday special: make homemade cards with the kids, surprise him with a cake for breakfast. No, instead, I spent the morning dealing with Wachovia and then my visiting nurse, Peg. Peg is a kind, large woman who came to check my incision. When she was looking at the tube attached to my lymph node incision holding my draining blood, she accidentally pulled the whole thing out. It was the only time all week I thought I might pass out. But I didn’t. We took some deep breaths and called Dr. Frankle’s office. Of course, he was in surgery. We waited a while to see if he would call back, but he was still in surgery when Peg had to go on to her next appointment. So I sat there, with some gauze covering the incision, waiting for Dr. Frankle’s call.
On Tuesday, when I was waiting to go into surgery, Rabbi Yael was there with Fred and me. She sang my favorite psalms and shared some Torah with us. She talked about how God’s presence accompanied the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert and how it (I’m paraphrasing) sometimes appeared to the people as a light guiding the Mishkan and how sometimes, the light was gone and there was only a cloud around the Mishkan and how both were God, the light and the cloud. And that even when it feels like the clouds are over and around me, that is God, too. This was just before surgery when she shared this teaching and I was as vulnerable as I could be then, weak and dehydrated, with no water, food or coffee for 15 hours, hooked up to the IV, with Dr. Frankle’s initials penned onto my breast with his marker. But I understood Yael’s teaching very clearly and as cloudly as I felt, I knew God was with me.
And sort of the same on Friday. Dr. Frankle called back and said not to come in, just keep the incision clean and covered with gauze. My arm hurt a lot less with the tube and bottle out, so Peg Kessler did me a favor with her overeager reach. Fred brought the kids home from school and went back to work. My friend Ellyn came over to play with them. They were both really happy to be with her, since it had clearly been a long week for all of us and June especially did not appreciate a tired, grouchy mommy.
Fred got home from work and I was trying to feed the kids (Ellyn just left) because Sandra was going to watch them so Fred and I could go out for his birthday dinner. Of course, neither of them liked what was on their dinner plates and were acting whiny and fussy. Fred was looking through the mail while they fussed. I hit my breaking point. I didn’t have any reserve or energy to deal with the dinner situation or to him not being tuned in to the fact that I really needed his help in that moment.
If it had been the “me” of a month ago, I would have thrown the spatula across the room, aiming just a few inches away from Fred’s butt. I would have called him an asshole and angrily pulled something else out of the fridge for the kids. But I didn’t. I noticed what I was feeling. I said to Fred, “ I had a hard fucking day. I have no energy. Please give the kids dinner,” and I went upstairs and lay on our guest bed (well, futon) for fifteen minutes.
I could hear that downstairs everyone liked what Daddy was fixing. I went to the bathroom to attempt to make myself look like a human being since it was my first time really out in public since the surgery. I put on some lipstick and mascara and sat on the toilet and let myself have a long cry (post-mascara application—brilliant!).
I really hadn’t had a cry like that all week. Fred brought the kids upstairs and got them in pajamas and put on Noggin (please don’t ask me how much Noggin June has watched this week). He came into the bathroom. He held me for a long time. I apologized that his birthday was a shit birthday, but he assured me that it wasn’t. He said some things that were very intimate and that are between the two of us, but I will share that I think he likes me better weepy than throwing spatulas.
I like me better, too, and I’m frankly embarrassed that it took me this illness to realize the ridiculousness my pretense of being in control of all things at all times and not seeing all of the blessings in the clouds, but this is the truth of what is happening. I should say, the old me would feel embarrassed by all of this, while the new me is trying to feel compassion for the old spatula-throwing me, because clearly she/I needed/need some compassion and forgiveness…we all do…and I can give it easily to others but it is fucking hard to just be and give it to myself.
Fred and I went to dinner at Brigid’s. It’s a little pub in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philly, where Fred used to live when we first met. In fact, we went there on our first date. It was a little hard to be there and not think back to that night and of the innocence between the two of us and the hope and the attraction and the way I felt like I could tell him anything and he could hold it and I did and it was true.
I got a little weepy a few times during dinner but I knew it was okay and I let myself feel what I was feeling and here, sitting with this man I love ten years later in the pub where we had our first date, I knew that our love and intimacy had reached a new level and that the cloudiness of this hard month was turning to light for me, for us, for our family and future.
And I am so thankful for that.
And PS, Fred has just the kind of waitress he likes, the kind who is just really good at her job and efficient and friendly but not at all chatty and doesn’t stick around too long and notices if your wife is weepy and gives you your space. And for someone in his industry, this was important to make his meal a great one, so thank you, Universe, for that blessing.
And PPS, I gave my brother Jon the songs I had meant to play for Fred on XPN plus 11 more and he got them on itunes and burned them on a disk and sent them priority mail and it came and Fred got it yesterday, the day after his birthday, which was just perfect enough.