Once More Into the Abyss

Rick Santorum has this face he makes in debates. He made it a lot last night in Arizona. I couldn’t find a picture on the Google machine, which is disappointing because I figure someone has to have shot it at some point. It’s a combination of expressions that sort of add up to “You are such an idiot.” It’s kind of his trademark face, and to be fair, he’s not the only one who has a trademark face. Newt Gingrich has his blank “no, it’s really not that hard” face that immediately precedes a superior, one-word answer to a complicated question. Mitt Romney has his wide-eyed eyebrows-up face that means “I’m going to pretend I don’t really, really hate being questioned.” Ron Paul has his similarly wide-eyed face that means “Just stop fighting wars. How many times do I have to say it?” but, on the street, could be misinterpreted to mean “Just take my wallet, here, don’t hurt me.”

But Rick Santorum’s trademark face pisses me off more than the rest of them (Newt is a close second). Because it is the frequent mark of his condescension and belies his diplomatic approach to most (non-social) issues.

Right now, he’s edging Mitt Romney in national polls. Yes, it’s true, at least per Real Clear Politics and the Associated Press-GfK. Santorum got a bump from the birth control debate and might not be hurt by any of his anti-women in combat, semi-anti-women in the workplace rhetoric… probably because the women who support him are like-minded, and those who don’t support him never will.

Mitt Romney: Tree Hugger. So liberal!

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney just keeps struggling. He opened the debate with his introduction and, when he got applause, he quoted George Costanza from Seinfeld. I guess he wants to prove he’s a regular guy, but mostly, he’s just awkward when nobody writes down his words for him. Last week he declared his love for Michigan in part due to the height of its trees. Apparently they are of exactly the correct stature, as compared to, say, Iowa or Utah or Massachusetts or New Hampshire. Immediately after this declaration, Romney professed his bright-eyed love of cars. And then last night he reminded everyone of how he would not have favored the auto industry bailout, preferring instead to let them all go into managed bankruptcy and work their way out. You can agree with him or not – I respect the approach – but you can’t deny that the bailout did save a million jobs that might otherwise have gone the way of the Pontiac, and that isn’t going to help Romney in his native Michigan, where his father was a very popular governor. He’s trailing Santorum there.

He’s also trailing in Pennsylvania, by a lot. Pennsylvania is the state responsible for Rick Santorum. It’s also the state that kicked him out of the Senate in 2006.

The Crazy Train left the station right from jump, after Romney quoted George Costanza and Newt Gingrich told the country he’d get gas back to $2.50 a gallon.  (He also said BMW, Toyota, Honda and Mercedes plants in the US were all doing fine during the auto crisis. Anybody see a political and economic problem with that logic?) Ron Paul pulled no punches and suffered no hesitation when asked why he’s calling Santorum a fake in his campaign ads. “Because he is a fake,” he said, citing a number of instances in which Paul believes Santorum veered dramatically off his allegedly fiscally conservative course. That’s a set of accusations Santorum deflected with his own proof positive. No points for either side.

Romney tried to explain what on earth he was talking about when he claimed last week to have been “severely conservative” as governor of Massachusetts, as though it was some sort of disease (which some people might actually believe is the case). He said “severe” meant strict, that he was without question a conservative governor. That’s a long way from saying you were severely conservative, and nothing he noted in the answer struck me as being particularly right-wing:

 I campaigned for and fought for English immersion in our school, and had that successfully implemented. My policies in Massachusetts were to — were conservative, and in a state, as Rick indicated, a state that was a relatively liberal state, I stood up and said I would stand on the side of life when the legislature passed a bill saying that life would not be defined not at conception but later.

I said no. When there was an effort to put in place embryo farming and cloning, I vetoed that. When the Catholic Church was attacked, saying, look we’re not going to allow you to continue to place children in homes where there’s a preference for a man and a woman being the mom and dad, I worked with the Catholic Church to put legislation in place to protect their right to exercise their religious conscience.

They’re conservative positions, but not “severely” so. A lot of more liberal people would support those efforts, if only because there is a degree of government overreach in forcing private organizations to do something against their beliefs – whether we agree or not. (For the record, I believe the administration’s efforts to force groups like the Catholic Church to pay for birth control was overreach. It might seem like outdated theology to those who don’t adhere to it, but the government can’t force the Church to directly contradict its own belief system. It’s a violation of the separation of Church and State.)

Santorum in the driver's seat. Only makes right turns. (I put the pic on the left just to bug him.)

Santorum’s Achilles heel for the night was earmarks. His voting record does include a lot of bills with earmarks. He’s confessed that he now believes some of them were mistakes. But here’s where his social conservatism is moderated a bit: he has voted to fund Planned Parenthood, which is something that a lot of his more socially conservative supporters might find surprising. It wasn’t recent, since he hasn’t been voting in the House or Senate for years, but it’s still in his record. And his defense was, “Well, they asked for the earmarks.”

That’s stupid.

They’re governors. Governors ask for money. Yes, Romney asked for the earmarks associated with the Olympic Games for which you voted. But you can’t say earmarks are bad and then say your record is all the fault of various governors. The truth is, Santorum doesn’t have a firm stand on earmarks, no matter how much he wants you to believe he does. He has a fairly reasonable approach: some earmarks are bad. Some are good. But on the whole, they contribute to the debt and deficit, so let’s curb them. That’s his real stance, no matter what he says.

A viewer emailed or tweeted or Facebooked or whatevered a question about birth control, and the audience booed it.

The audience booed a viewer’s question.

Audiences. Honestly. Jackals, the lot.

And so began a conversation that included the phrases “legalized infanticide” and “dangers of contraception.” (Two different candidates – you guess who.) In case you’re wondering, the dangers of contraception apparently include the increasing number of children born out of wedlock.

Call me confused… I’m pretty sure that’s a danger of not having contraception.

They also include the number of sexually active teens. I’ll grant that concern.  But I find fault in a logic that says that the problem of “children raising children” out of wedlock in this country is because there’s birth control available. Birth control, by definition, cuts down on the numbers of children raising children. Its availability does not lead kids to have unprotected sex – that doesn’t even make sense. Misuse, miseducation… that might lead to children having children. Contraception’s availability leading to too many babies? Come on.

One thing did come to light, though. Romney said now we know why George Stephanopoulos insisted on the conversation about birth control in a previous debate against which I ranted. Touche’.

Ohhhhhhh. He knew about the thing with the healthcare and the... Ohhhhh.

CNN moderator John King (taking less crap this time) moved the conversation to gas prices, and something strange happened. Mitt Romney punted. Right away, he said that the price of gas is nothing compared to the danger of a nuclear Iran. At first I thought he was saying we have to deal with high prices if we want to keep Iran from going glowing. Strait of Hormuz and all that. But no. Turned out, he was completely diverting onto the president’s way of handling Iran. Clearly, the two items are linked somewhat, but he didn’t make the connection. He just ignored the question about gas prices. This makes me think he has no plan to lower them (which I personally think can’t be done anyway, without a federal subsidy beyond that which is already in place or a calming of all international tensions, not just Iran).  But the discussion went on, about Iran and then Syria, and then Libya and Egypt, without any kind of reference to oil and gas until Newt Gingrich circled it back around (and you knew he’d be the one to do it). It gave him an opportunity to talk about his plan to decrease the country’s reliance on foreign oil and open up the US oil fields. He was the only one who talked about a specific energy plan.

But the point he made that might have landed the best punch was when he said this, almost as an afterthought:  ”This is an administration which, as long as you’re America’s enemy, you’re safe. You know, the only people you’ve got to worry about is if you’re an American ally.”

Santorum nodded broadly. The point: the candidates believe the Obama administration has kowtowed to foreign leaders of dangerous states while alienating those with whom the US historically stands firm. Like Israel.

The conversation turned to education, and Rick Santorum again admitted that his vote in favor of No Child Left Behind was a mistake. His reason: he thought it would do good, but didn’t realize at the time of the vote how much money would be spent to go a relatively short distance. He was booed when he said sometimes you take one for the team. But he schooled the audience by replying, “Politics is a team sport, folks. And sometimes you’ve got to rally together and do something.”

Not wrong.

Mitt Romney talked about Massachusetts’ program for education and charter schools when he was governor, and Newt Gingrich backed up the idea of charter schools and insisted that the problem in education is the teachers’ union. I won’t go into the whole thing here, but it’s worth reading in the transcript. You can search for “education” to find it.

Oh, and Ron Paul flatly stated the Constitution gives the federal government no authority to be involved in education whatsoever. Which I suppose is true, if we’re literal.

One wonders, with everything Paul declares unconstitutional, what he would be president of, exactly.

In the last segment of the debate, John King asked each candidate what he thought was the biggest misconception about him. Ron Paul said it was that he can’t win. Newt Gingrich strayed a bit and talked about what he did as Speaker under Saint Ronald Reagan. Rick Santorum said (albeit long-windedly) it’s that he can’t beat President Obama. Mitt Romney went way off topic and just started reciting his stump speech. When King reminded him of the actual question, he replied:  ”You know, you get to ask the questions want, I get to give the answers I want. Fair enough?”

No, sir. Not fair enough. Exactly the opposite of fair enough. What’s fair enough is to answer the question.

Of course, the audience applauded Romney’s line.

Audiences. Hmph.

Transcript: http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1202/22/se.05.html

Scoped

Announcement: I am awake! And I am woozy! I just coughed and hallucinated a Lucky Charms commercial.  This might be a fun read. At least, I hope so, because if not I’ll be very disappointed in my drugged self, and so will you.

Today was my endoscopy, for fun. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me until yesterday evening that I might not be able to work today. I asked at the desk: “Yeah, no, you can’t drive today.” So I called my boss, who was displeased.

Get over it, pal. I’m high. You want me there high? You want me to plow into a school bus full of nuns holding babies on my way there because my reflexes are compromised? Do you?

Oh, and thanks for asking if everything’s okay. Ass-hat.

It took about 30 minutes to sign my life away (literally, in some cases) and fork over the 10% co-pay for the outpatient procedure. By the way, in case you wonder: an endoscopy costs roughly $1,110. I’m betting most of that is the drugs.

With Jack in the waiting room, I was led back to a restroom and told to provide a urine sample. Um… well… I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in 11 hours and I’ve already, you know, gone today. So…

“Well,” the nurse replied, “we have to have it.”

“Well,” I countered, “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Well,” she said in a slightly warning tone, “if you can’t, we can start you on an IV to get you fluids, but it will delay your procedure.”

I think I heard a whistling noise and a rattlesnake.

Lady, did you just sort of threaten me? I can’t, you know, pee on demand. Why don’t you warn patients that they’ll have to pee on demand so they know not to do it voluntarily before they show up?

I managed to pee. Upshot: I’m not pregnant. Duh. But they never take your word for it. I once had a doctor ask me three times if I was sure. He’s lucky I didn’t tell him exactly why I was so damned sure.

Then they asked me a bunch of questions to confirm that I was probably not going to die on the table with a tube down my throat and delay their lunch breaks, and I lay on a very uncomfortable gurney for about 30 minutes trying not to stare at the cute little old lady directly across from me who clearly had left her dentures at home (which I think is actually advised). I also read the paperwork on advanced directives that they’d given me. Interesting timing. “You’re about to be sedated and scoped. Please take a moment to consider what you’d like us to do if we somehow make you a vegetable. No pressure.” I didn’t have to fill it out right then; it was just a “while we’ve got you, think about this” thing. But coming so soon on the heels of my grandfather’s directive-related death, it was a bit of a kick, and I wondered: If they do make me a vegetable and I haven’t filled this out, what happens then? Because I don’t have time to talk to my health agent. I don’t even know who to pick. Not Sister 1. She’s too emotional. Maybe Sister 2. She’s more like me and will have a better idea of what I’d want in the event of gray area. Of course, Sister 1 would be put out that I chose Sister 2…

But I’m not brain dead (shut up), and the nurses were very nice. I love nurses. It’s always the nurses who make you feel calmer and less worried. If you’re a nurse reading this: thank you for what you do.

With a pulse monitor on my finger and an IV in my arm and a blood pressure cuff on the other arm, they wheeled me down a few halls to the procedure room, which I couldn’t see very well because I hadn’t worn my contacts and my glasses were off, but which I sensed was reasonably medical and clean. The anesthesiologist (everybody’s favorite medical team member) and I had already established a rapport by commiserating over bad discs in necks. He’s had surgery, which didn’t help and nicked a nerve, paralyzing a vocal cord. I asked where.

“Here,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. Then he told me the name of the doctor. “Don’t go see him.”

I like you, Doctor Feelgood.

He hooked me up to all the wires and stuff in the procedure room, while a nurse put a bite block in my mouth and fastened it. Feelgood started the IV sedation. I remembered the achy, burning sensation from when I had my wisdom teeth gouged out of my head 16 years ago. “Is it bad?” he asked.

“Nnnneeehhh, sss ammsss gahh. Jsss cuuh,” I replied around the bite block.

Dr. Feelgood was fidgeting with the leads on my chest. “I can’t get her telemetry,” he said to the gastroenterologist.

Hmmm, I thought. I’m drugged already. That might be an issue.

“Well, uh…” said the gastroenterologist, helpfully.

Dr. Feelgood pushed down on the leads, because, obviously, when something isn’t working, the best thing to do is to push on it. “Still not working,” he mused. “Alright, sometimes these things are dry…” Rrrip. Rrrip. Two leads came off and were replaced. “There we go,” he said to the monitor afterward. “Alright, you’re going to start getting sleepy now.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied, blinking. I wonder how long this will take?

That was exactly how long it took.

Next thing I knew, I was waking up and the gastroenterologist was talking to me. I was a little concerned I might not remember what he was saying, but I listened and responded. Basically (here’s the payoff), everything looks normal, my bloodwork was perfect, he doesn’t have the ultrasound results yet, but the insides are clean. He removed a small polyp from my stomach and it will be biopsied, but he says those are common. He also took a few random biopsies from the duodenum (the beginning section of the intestine after passing through the stomach) to test for various bacterial issues or celiac disease. But everything appeared fine.

Fifteen minutes later (which felt like an hour), I asked the nurse: “I know it was 15 minutes ago, but it feels like it’s been an hour… did he say…” and repeated the above information.

She smiled. “That’s normal. Yep, that’s what he said. And it’s all written down here for you.” She pointed to the papers in her hand, which she gave me.

Excellent.

I read the paperwork, asked her about my apparently questionable villous flattening. Then I got to the pictures. Pictures! Woohoo! I wish I could scan them so I could show you. I find this stuff fascinating, and now I know what my distal esophagus, GE junction, cardia/fundus, gastric body, antrum and duodenum look like.

No, I don’t really know exactly what they are. Some of them I do. And I think “gastric body” = stomach. The rest I’m guessing based on my knowledge of Latin derivatives.

Then I re-read the report.

• Medications:
• Medication was administered per anesthesiologist
• Propofol

Holy crap. I’m Michael Jackson.

Now I get what all those experts said after he died. Propofol-induced unconsciousness is not restful. It’s just… blankness.

Huh.

Hey, where’s that advanced directive again?

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind

I’m leaving soon for Paris. Or London.

Or maybe Fiji.

I’m going to bake a new recipe for a cake from scratch. Besides the one I made this morning.

I’m going to start that book about Nazi Germany, even though I haven’t finished the book I’m currently reading yet.

I’m going to buy a house.

I’m getting a dog. A black lab or a chocolate lab. Or maybe a Rhodesian Ridgeback. I’m naming it Seamus, or Simon, or Cyrus, or Guinness, or Huck. Or Finn.

I’m going to see if a project I’ve been working on can launch me into a new career.

I’m totally going hiking.

I should figure out what kind of car I want next. Just in case this one conks out. It’s doing fine, no problems, but it’s got a lot of miles and I drive a lot, so I should have something in mind.

I’m going to drive to Jack’s house, show up unannounced and just spend relaxing time with him so he can make all the stuff in my head go away.

This is not a bucket list, or even a list of goals. This is a list of impulsive things I’ve wanted to do that I apparently think will take me out of my current mindframe and put me in some sort of delightful alternative universe.

This is what happens when I get stressed out and don’t realize it.

It seems weird, doesn’t it? That you can be stressed out and not even know it? But I’m pretty sure that’s what’s been happening, because otherwise I don’t generally have quite this many fantasies about how to completely upend my (perfectly fine) life.

There’s been a lot going on, sure, but nothing that’s really a pressure-cooker situation. Mostly slow burns. My grandfather died and my aunt is almost definitely going to get crazier now. I’ve had some minor health concerns: my back, and some sort of GI issue that could be reflux, gallbladder, cancer of pick-a-thing, or a small man messing with my internal organs (though I would have thought he’d show up in the ultrasound the other day… maybe he was hiding behind my pancreas). I’ve lost probably too much weight too fast because of it. There’s also this Something’s Stuck In My Throat feeling, which almost always points to reflux but apparently might not this time, and it has me sort of obsessing over my singing voice. I’m working on a project that will require me to talk to a group of politicians next week, so I’m crafting a speech that’s supposed to be three minutes and right now it’s three minutes and fifteen seconds and I’m sort of stuck for how to shorten it. And lately I’ve felt like Jack and I are kind of far away from each other and like he doesn’t seem bothered by it, and I’ve really missed him and want to spend some serious time with him, which we haven’t done since the beginning of January. And he’s about to run another marathon, with a woman I used to work with and he still does, and she looks like Gwyneth Paltrow and I therefore hate her.

I guess that’s a lot, but really, my grandfather’s death seemed like a relief, and I’m seeing doctors about my back and my gut and throat. The back is getting better. The stomach, as of this writing, is completely on fire, which is super-odd since I haven’t had actual heartburn at all except the one weird attack that started this whole thing two months ago, and I’m now on prescription antacids rather than OTC stuff. But I’m two tests into a three-test week and can’t wait to have a tube stuck down my throat while I’m sedated on Monday, so we can see what’s going on. Plus it’s kind of nice to be a weight I haven’t been since approximately seventh grade.

The speech is on a topic that tends to make me anxious, but it’s pretty good, so either it’s just going to be three minutes and fifteen seconds, or Jack is going to come through with some brilliant and workable edits that will help me out. It’s down from five minutes, so I’m claiming victory regardless. And Jack has made a point of both inviting me to come to the marathon and mentioning that he and Gwyneth will need separate rooms. And I’m stupid because hi, he’s not actually my boyfriend. He’s more like my Person. Plus he’s the one who gets to take me for the endoscopy on Monday, and that will be some quality bonding since I’ll be doped up and very possibly belching a lot afterward.

So I don’t really think I’m stressed.

Oh, and also, I’m completely full of crap.

Apparently.

I mean, look. I could be a mother who is constantly worrying about her kids or whether she’s a good enough mom, or I could be losing my job like a bunch of my co-workers, or I could have been out of a job for a year already with no prospects, or I could have to take public transportation to work every day and sit next to a fat guy who breathes heavily and hasn’t showered in a week who finds me no matter how much I try to escape him. Or I could have cancer.

Wait, I could actually (but probably not very likely) have cancer. Hell, everybody could have cancer. Sometimes you don’t feel it.

Anyway.

What I’m saying is that these are really not major things to stress about, and therefore, I do not feel stressed about them. Except that I keep coming up with things to add to my list of Escapist Approaches (oxymoron?), and that makes me think that maaaybe my psyche is a liiiiitttle bit tired.

Ice cream. That’s what I need. Ice cream.

Day Is Done

The funny thing about the days afer a death and before a funeral is that we tend to sort of forget there’s anything happening. I mean, we know what’s happening – why else would I be spending so many days and nights at my parents’ house? But by day three, things started to get a little… odd.

The first day was the day after my grandfather died. I’d said my goodbye to him the Saturday morning before, believing he’d be gone within hours, and I drove the roadtrip back to work. On Wednesday, I’d just gotten to my desk when I got the call. But on Thursday, I’d decided to give my parents some time and space, since they had spent most of the last nine days – and some nights – at the hospital. When I called to let them know my plan, they were at the mall. A 93-year-old needs a new shirt and socks to be buried in.

Shopping for a dead person. Surreal Life Event #107.

The next day, Mom and I ran down to my aunt’s house to drop off some photos for the collage my cousin’s wife was making. My aunt, you’ll know if you read my last post, is just this side of certifiable. She lived with my grandfather and got the house in the will, and there is every chance she will turn full-on hoarder and begin collecting stray animals. Yet, somehow, she was the sanest of the sisters that day. The visit was blessedly brief, but when we got back in the car, my mother began an out-of-nowhere rant against President Obama that lasted 35 minutes. Captive in a moving vehicle, I could not throw myself clear. As we pulled into my parents’ neighborhood, she declared once more her insistent – and apparently persistent – belief that he is a secret Muslim.

I told her that I love her and we would therefore absolutely not be having that conversation, at which point she punted to his un-Americanness as indicated by his refusal to wear a flag lapel pin and the photo of him without his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance in 2008.

That got us into the garage.

There are many layers of madness endemic to families forced together by death.

That night, all my siblings and nephews came to my parents’ house for dinner. Mom liked the idea of having us all there, and since we all potlucked it, she didn’t have to do any work, which was a bonus. As the evening came about, though, two sisters got caught in rush hour traffic and wound up quite late. As it progressed, all three nephews engaged in various levels of meltdown, one of which was inflicted by a Goldfish cracker stuck in the toe of a pair of footie pajamas. By the time Sister 1 was deeply entrenched in a seemingly endless and mostly solo post-meal discussion about high school bullying, I was ready to check out. I was still abstaining from alcohol because of yet-unidentified GI issues, and frankly, I really needed a drink and was beginning to resent all those who were sipping on wine. Wine, I might add, that had come from my wine rack. I was completely socially unlubricated, and it was starting to chafe. It was 8:30pm and I felt like it was an hour that hadn’t yet been invented.

That was when Sister 2 put her head down on the dining room table. Didn’t say a word. Just rolled her eyes back and put her head down in a silent declaration that she was simply depleted of the emotional energy required for a conversation the beginning of which we couldn’t remember and the reason for which we presently could not possibly care less about, anyway.

Sister 1, not always good with the cues, continued the topic, which is a fine topic except it’s too heavy to go with grilled chicken, quinoa, veggies and dead grandfathers. So I got up and left the room to go watch “The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” with the barely-conscious Twin Nephs. Solving color puzzles was about as much mental hurdling as I could summon the will to do at that point.

On day three, Saturday, my father told me that Mom wanted some quiet time to herself, so we were going to vacate the premises. Fine, I get that, and I’m ready to get out, too. We went to the mall to get Dad a tie (the man just retired from upper management, yet he needs a tie?) Then we went to lunch, and then stopped by Target to get Mom a flash drive since her laptop is threatening suicide. When we got back to the house after 2 1/2 hours, Mom hadn’t slept as intended when she went back to bed at 11am, but she was still in her robe. The only thing that got her out of it was Mass.

Mass on Saturday evening meant absolutely nothing to do on Sunday. Sunday was the day before the funeral. I’ve long since decided that the day before a funeral is the most surreal day of all. You know what’s coming, but you’ve sort of pushed the reason for it away from your psyche in the days since the death. It’s a vacuum, a kind of sensory deprivation day on which you realize you feel almost normal, but not quite, and you can’t seem to figure why. It’s a kind of numbness. You’re worn out despite sleep and bored despite company –  company that, at this point, you’d probably just as soon forego. There’s a strange sense of loneliness that settles in, of restlessness, being too long in each other’s space and not enough in your own, that leaves you feeling set apart and out of sorts and longing for the person not in your family who could hold you and comfort you the most and make everything fit in your head again if they were willing.

My proposed solution was to go to a movie. Dad didn’t want to come. As we arrived at the theater, Sister 3 said to Mom, “Do you know what the movie’s about?”

“George Clooney” was my mother’s answer, and I was satisfied with it.

Handy tip: if someone you love has just died after a tense time full of crazy people, endless communication problems, misdiagnoses and incorrect prognoses, questions about exactly what his advanced directive means, parsing of the difference between a DNR 1 and a DNR 2, and how the hell some total stranger’s signature wound up on an order you didn’t want that changed his DNR 2 to a DNR 1… don’t go see “The Descendants.”

***Spoiler alert*** The whole thing, turns out, is about how George Clooney’s wife is dying a slow and peaceful but tedious death in the midst of intractable family drama.

F@^% me.

I was surprised by how absolutely it appeared that this woman was truly dying, never speaking, never moving, never even with her eyes open, lying in a hospital bed connected to tubes and wires and wasting away, sallow and bent. Even the crust around her mouth looked like what had settled around my grandfather’s. Her whole look was stunningly similar to his. I was okay; I mean, I didn’t cry. Instead, I swore repeatedly in my head about the fortune of this particular film choice at this particular time. Sister 3 and my mother, they cried.

Good movie, though.

But then Monday came, and early rising. Showers and oatmeal and don’t forget the hymnal because “In the Garden” isn’t in a Catholic songbook, and it’s my solo after communion. Nylons and lint rollers and the tricky clasp on my grandmother’s bracelet. The viewing was only an hour, but felt like seven in the cold church. The American Legion representative played Taps from the back of the church. The accompanist was ridiculously late and practicing was nixed when she wanted to play over the American Legion veteran’s pre-Mass eulogy. Sister 3 started the first reading from the book of Ecclesiastes and immediately got hung up on “a time to be born and a time to die,” needing several moments before she could go on. Cousins and sisters presented offertory gifts and Bible verse, and a beautiful, delicate, quilt-pieced eulogy sewn from the memories my grandfather’s grandchildren had exchanged in the days before. It made me realize, only now, just how much I had learned from a man who was always so quiet.  It took me back to the childhood I shared with my cousins and let long-latent memories dawn anew.

I sang, and my mother’s cousins told me at the luncheon afterward how much the hymn choice meant to them – a credit that goes to my mother and aunt.  My grandfather was a gardener. He’d grown the food for his family as a teen and a Victory Garden after he’d returned from war, and he kept on growing vegetables and flowers until he couldn’t do the work anymore. It is because of his garden that I love roses and tulips and hydrangeas. And though his Episcopalian roots had long ago been tilled for his conversion to Catholicism, he had always loved the hymn I was honored to sing for him. I had never sung it before, but I haven’t stopped singing it since.

In the icy wind of a clear winter day, alongside the woman he’d missed so desperately for so long, we laid the last man of his generation to rest.

The next day, at work, my friends gave me a planter as a sympathy gift. They had no idea my grandfather was a gardener. I’ve given it his nickname. No gardener myself, I’m hoping he helps me keep it alive.

Almost Dusk

My aunt was grappling with the cord on the plastic horizontal blinds. The string was basically useless. No, that’s not true. It would pull the blinds up. It would not, however, drop them down. Across the room, my uncle squinted with the full glare of the late afternoon sun in his face.

“That’s not working,” came the obvious from my father, near the corner. My aunt laughed and kept gently trying to jiggle the cord into position. As my mother moved to help her, my uncle suddenly bleated. “There! Phyllis! Just–” he made a tiny motion to the left with his hands as my mother formed a partial eclipse across his face. She smiled and scootched that way as my aunt’s nervous giggle sounded next to her again.

“Perfect!” he said, shaded. “Don’t move.”

“What are wingbacked chairs for?” I asked from my perch in one, lolling my head dramatically to one side. “Are they to catch your head if you fall asleep?”

“Yes,” said my mother. “That is what they’re for.”

“Well this one fails,” I said, rubbing my neck where I’d kinked it from my experiment.

“Do you remember how Josh used to fall asleep as a kid?” my cousin Greg asked, and I nodded. Josh was kind of freakishly sleepy, practically a narcoleptic when we were little.

“In his bowl of spaghetti!” Aunt Jane declared as Josh humbly rolled his eyes and nodded, having heard that particular story semi-annually for the last 30 years or so.

“On the floor outside the shower,” I began.

“–While the shower was on,” my mother finished.

“I don’t remember that,” Josh laughed. “Everybody says I did it, but I don’t remember it.” Josh is affable, instantly likable and quick to absorb ribbing, which, as the youngest of my aunt’s children, he had taken plenty.

Dad’s phone rang and he walked out of the room to take the call. Technically he wasn’t supposed to have the phone, but nobody had said anything to him, or any of the rest of us, who had ours too.

“We were going to get married,” I said to no one in particular, gesturing to Josh. “When we were five.” I still have a sepia-toned memory of us holding hands walking down a sidewalk, maybe into – or out of – the little school we went to together where his job was to tie shoes, because he could, and my job was to roll up sleeves for messy crafts. Josh was the youngest of his family and I the oldest of mine, ourselves separated by just seven months, the children of a pair of sisters. He was always a sensitive soul with puppy dog eyes and a sweet, infectious smile, traits which have carried him into his 35th year. Fortunately we fell rather out of love by the time we were seven, at the outside. Plus I had moved away and the distance was a bit of a strain on the relationship, as neither of us had gotten terribly good at writing yet. Also there was the cousin thing – though that had not phased his great-grandparents, a fact which had cursed his father and uncle with what the family referred to as “an imbalance” in the way that folks who still love the Old South refer to the Civil War as “the late unpleasantness.” Fact was, his father and uncle were nutty, sans meds. And sometimes flat-out nasty.

Nutty, too, is Aunt Jane, though not from inbreeding. Countless are the times when Aunt Jane has heard something and from it grown an entirely conjured story full of stuff that was not I mean even a little bit on the mark. Once, ten days after Josh’s wedding, I got a voice message from my aunt, in tears, telling me she had heard only just now about how Josh’s friend Billy had groped me on the dance floor at the reception. My mother’s voice followed hers, saying my aunt had told her, and maybe it was true for all she knew, because I never tell her anything and probably would have handled it myself. It took me a couple of hours to stop angrily muttering to myself about how bats–t my aunt is before I could figure out a way to call her back and tell her, in a manner properly respectful of her elder status, that she was hallucinating. Nothing even close to it had ever happened. Lord, if Josh had heard this confab of fiction before I set it straight, Billy would be dead to this day.

Not surprisingly, that’s a story that never gets told at family gatherings.

Dad walked back into the room just as Greg was telling his girlfriend another infamous family tale: the one in which my father had tied a rope around Greg’s waist when he was a toddler and used it as a leash. Dad was babysitting while Mom and Aunt Jane shopped, and my aunt – very protective of her children – returned home to find her eldest child roped and running as far as the slack would let him go before my father would yank him back into the other room. Greg thought it was great. Thirty-seven years later, Aunt Jane is still touchy about it.

My mother’s brother eats these stories up, laughing his dry, scratchy laugh with blue eyes bright at the pure pleasure of time with family. His shoulders shook listening to the story again, though we’d all heard it many times before. He laughs like my grandmother did. It’s either a chuckle or a full-tilt romp. There is no in-between.

A series of beeps sounded. “Whose phone?” came the question, and for a brief moment there were the lookings left and right of those who can’t quite remember where they’ve put their gizmos. But the direction of the sound became clearer and we all glanced at the monitor over my head, and then at my grandfather lying in the bed in front of me, so much less substantial than he used to be, sleeping the sleep that comes from a steady dose of dilaudid and whatever was happening inside his skull. He is 93. And a half, because I think when you hit 90, the halves count again. I used to tell him he didn’t look a day over 89, and he would laugh. But now he looks every bit of 93, gaunt from two years on a feeding tube. In recent days, he’d lost the ability to speak, and then to see.

We had been told that my grandfather had had a mild heart attack, which caused the fall that left him lying in a heap atop his walker with a shiner, unconscious when my aunt found him. We had been told there was a bleed in his brain, one that would require surgery to repair, which could be a coil through a small hole, or could be a full-blown craniotomy, with no chance of recovering what he’d lost, but with a chance of preventing further damage. We decided against the surgery, which would have required a chopper ride to another hospital. We had been told that he had 24 hours, maybe 48.

He stirred, futzing feebly with a sheet, opening his useless eyes a bit. “Hey!” boomed Greg’s low and distinctive voice as he leaned over our mothers’ father. “Hey, you dreamin’ about pretty women again?” And the left side of my grandfather’s mouth curved up in a lopsided smile.

“It’s like the voice of God,” I said with mock reverence. “Only more smart-ass.”

Later, we would learn that, in fact, the bleed had been on the outside of the brain, the surgery was not even indicated, and that he was not dying. He may regain some motor control of his right side, but with advanced Parkinson’s Disease, that was a crap shoot on a good day. He would not regain the ability to speak, or see. He still could not eat or drink, the result of a paralyzed epiglottis from an undetermined incident two years ago. He could not write, because of the Parkinson’s.

We knew none of this, gathered in his room. Not yet. As my cousin chuckled, my grandfather’s eyes closed and his head rested. The sun still setting, Uncle Alan’s face once more glowed orange, and my dad crossed the room for his turn to wrestle futilely with the blinds.

Mass Confusion

Creatures of habit and ritual do not generally react well to change. Oh, you should be with me when I cantor Sunday mass these days.

For those of you who aren’t Catholic (or are, but haven’t been to church in a length of time not to be judged or even discussed herein): there is a very set ritual of prayers we say during mass. Recently, the Church changed the words to some of those prayers. The whole Church. Every Catholic who goes to mass now has to say different words, no matter what country they’re in (presumably). It’s because Pope John Paul II years ago ordered a re-translation from the original language into all the languages of the world, because things strayed a bit too far from home and now not everyone was really saying the same thing. He spoke seven languages, so I guess he would know. And we’re all supposed to be saying the exact same thing. It’s about unity. One Church.

So anyway. The answer to a priest’s “The Lord be with you” used to be “And also with you.” Now it’s “And with your spirit.” We’ve been saying “And also with you” since 1963 when the Church ixnayed Atin-Lay, but now, holy hell, the words are different. We say “And with your spirit” no fewer than five times during a mass. For the first several weeks of the new translation, we took special care to remind people of this before mass started. It got to a point when sometimes we were practically yelling it.

~”The Lord be with you.”
~”AND WITH YOUR SPIRIT! I got it that time!”

I was incensed (haha, Catholic joke – get it? Incense?) when the most pious of our priests decided to sing a high mass a couple of weeks ago. No, high mass does not refer to too much incense. It’s when a bunch of the prayers are chanted. I actually gave him a dirty look when he started in. People weren’t comfortable with those chants before we changed all the words. Now, there’s absolutely no musical precedent for them. I don’t know what to sing. The people are all, “Uh, hey cantor, what do we do?” and I’m all, “Uhhh, just… wiggle your voice around a little.” I hope you’re happy, Father.

My music director wisely changed some of the prayers we sing to the new translation weeks ahead of time. The idea was that people would be comfortable with them by the time we got to the mandatory switch-over, and they’d sing them confidently.

False.

We’ve been doing the new music for three months now, and I still see all these people with their faces buried in the prayer cheat sheets. Where the music, which they know, is not written.

I don’t know why, but for a Church based entirely on believing what cannot be seen, these people have some serious trust issues.

I’m not even going to start on the Nicene Creed or how everyone panics every week because “maybe they changed the Lord’s Prayer, too.” (They didn’t.)

Catholics are accustomed not only to ritual but also to a certain rhythm. We have a way we say things, you know? A cadence. When they changed the words, the cadence got all screwed up and now nothing is said together. Which is ironic, given the purpose of changing the words. Now everything’s scattered all to hell, and it comes out sounding like, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive my roof under you, but only say the word and I shall heal my own soul or …something. *Cough.* And with your spirit?”

That bit gets said at the most important moment of the mass: the consecration. It’s the moment when the bread and wine is turned into the body and blood of Christ. This is a very holy moment. Which makes it an excellent time for Patrick, the deeply baritone and hard-of-hearing usher/sacristan, to hock up a crapload of phlegm on the other side of the altar wall, very loudly, out of sight, like the Voice of God has been stricken by post-nasal drip. He does it at the exact same time every week.

Priest: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father,–”

Patrick (off): “Aaachhhuugggllll!”

Priest: “–almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord. For he assumed at his first coming the lowliness of human flesh, and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago, and opened for us the way to eternal salvation–”

Patrick (off): “AAAYYYYAACHHHHUUUGGGGLLLLL. Uh-gull-accchhhh.”

Priest: “–that, when he comes again in glory and majesty and all is at last made manifest, we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in which now we dare to hope.”

(I don’t have that memorized. I looked it up. I had the old prayer there memorized. But that’s gone the way of the backward-facing celebrant.)

Sadly, another fairly regular ritual at my church is the Fainting of the Faithful. The vast majority of attendees are seniors. And, God love them, sometimes they don’t have breakfast, or they forget to take a pill, or whatever, and boom. Down goes Mrs. Frazier. It’s happened so frequently that the parish has had to mark off a little connecting road between two parking lots with orange cones so that nobody (read: me) parks along the side of it because, if they do, the ambulance can’t get through.

I almost parked there yesterday, in defiance, because I was late and I really hate having to drive to the lower lot and hoof it up the hill to get to the church, out of breath just in time to sing the entrance hymn. Good thing I didn’t park there, though, because all of a sudden, right at the very beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist (the part leading up to that all-important moment of the consecration)… down went poor old Mr. McKinley.

I made that up, I don’t know his name.

Father saw it happen, and, when he finished the prayer he was on, he discreetly asked for any medical professionals present to attend to this parishioner. Apparently I worship at a very medical church. About six people rushed over. Had the choir been there, three more would have joined them. My church is, for reasons both spiritually and practically obvious, a pretty good place to lose consciousness.

This is always a very awkward thing for the celebrant. He has to continue with the mass. But he kind of doesn’t want to. He feels like he’s plainly ignoring the fact that one of his parishioners may or may not be dying about 20 feet away. Yesterday, because Mr. McKinley’s episode went on for so long, he calmly told the server girls as they prepared the altar for the consecration to go and get the other priest over in the rectory.

I remained prone, remembering I’m supposed to be an example up here in my lay ministry, kneeling as Saint Peter or whomever told us to do, but wondering what was taking the ambulance so long. They’re right across the street. Naturally, half the church was basically staring at the spot where Mr. McKinley had keeled over instead of paying much attention to that most holy of liturgical ceremonies, and I have to say that, as I watched the priest, he was a little distracted, too. It’s good, though, kind of, because it distracted everyone from Patrick’s lung evacuations.  And then, of course, the medics arrived exactly when the bread and wine were elevated for the big moment. (Former Catholics: think “ringing bells.”) You cannot pick a worse time to be disruptive.

(left): “Sir, are you having trouble breathing?”
(from altar): “Through Him, with Him, in Him…”
(off): “Ayyyucchhhhgggllll!”
(left): “Any chest pain?”
(from altar): “In the unity of the Holy Spirit…”
(off): “Bllluuugrrrghhuhgglll…”

Adding to all of this? The words to the hymn we sang at closing. “Let All Things Now Living.” Really? Oh, this is awkward. “Let all things now living (I hope) a song of thanksgiving to God our creator triumphantly raise! Whose passion has made us, protected and stayed us by guiding us on to the end of our days! (Which is hopefully not today)… Til shadows have vanished and darkness is banished as onward we travel from light into light!” (Go toward the light!)

I don’t know what happened to Mr. McKinley. The medics carted him off just before it was time to line up for Communion, with Father Pious High Mass tagging along.

I wonder if the prayers for the Anointing of the Sick changed, too.

To the Moon, Alice!

Well, alright. If it’s going to be like this.

Last night was another debate. This one was in Florida, Land of the Hanging Chad. What did we learn?

We learned that Wolf Blitzer, in addition to having the most awesome non-fake name ever, will not take crap from Newt Gingrich. He asked Gingrich for his thoughts on Romney’s taxes, Gingrich tried to play his The Media Suck and Every Question They Ask That I Don’t Want To Answer Is Stupid Game, and Wolf said, “But, Mr. Speaker, you made an issue of this, this week, when you said that, ‘He lives in a world of Swiss bank and Cayman Island bank accounts.’ I didn’t say that. You did.”

Gingrich’s response:  ”I did. And I’m perfectly happy to say that on an interview on some TV show. But this is a national debate, where you have a chance to get the four of us to talk about a whole range of issues.”

Boo-freakin’-hoo, Mr. Speaker. Wolf told him that, if he’s going to say something like that publicly, he needs to explain it when asked. And that’s when Mitt Romney hit him with the follow-through: “Wouldn’t it be nice if people didn’t make accusations somewhere else that they weren’t willing to defend here?”

There was, yes, a lot of arguing in this debate. Bitter arguing. You know who didn’t do any of it? Ron Paul. He rose above everything and came out unscathed. But we heard in a speech after the South Carolina primary that he never expected to get this far, really. He said his campaign was about promoting an idea, and then when he saw how well he was doing, he realized that getting elected is how you further the ideas. He’s flying by the seat of his pants at this point, doing fine because he pulls in contributions and he really never varies his stance on anything.

-"You're a pompous ass!" -"Well you're a stupid phony!" "Smile, there's a camera."

Gingrich and Romney did the most jabbing, with some flavor thrown in by Santorum, who took Romney to task, and I mean to task, on the Massachusetts health care plan. Santorum effectively made Romney explain it a little better than before. He said 92% of the people already had insurance, and the 8% who did not have insurance had to choose between finding their own insurance or “paying the state for part of the cost of their free healthcare.” Which, by definition, means it’s not free, but I digress. Santorum used the description to point out that, in the plan, Romney required all Massachusetts residents to buy healthcare or pay a fine. He said the fine is lower than a lot of health care plan costs, and therefore more people in Massachusetts have elected to just pay the fine, which he says amounts to taking a free ride.

I think that might have been the most effective deconstruction of this long-hashed out subject to date.

There was also further discussion of the immigration question, and a plan I hadn’t heard of before. It’s called “self-deportation,” and apparently it works by giving legal immigrants cards that verify their legality and allow employers to give them jobs. The illegal immigrants don’t get those cards, so if employers hire them, they lose their jobs and the employers are sanctioned stiffly. As Romney said, “If you do that, people who have come here illegally won’t be able to find work. And over time, those people would tend to leave the country, or self-deport.”

Raise your hand if you believe that.

You’ll note I’m still typing. I am still using both hands.

We learned, perhaps a little surprisingly, that The Newt might be considering Marco

"Gingrich/Rubio. Hmmmm... Let me think about that..."

Rubio as a running mate. We learned this when a woman in the US island of Puerto Rico asked the candidates to name which Hispanics (her word) they might consider for cabinet positions. Gingrich said he’d consider Rubio for something a little more  ”dignified” and “central” then being in the cabinet, “but that’s another conversation.”

Ree-hee-heeeeallly? That’s an interesting play. I don’t see it happening, but it’s an interesting play. Rubio is popular with the Tea Party and Gingrich may have bought himself some Florida caucus votes with that comment. And not a moment too soon: Gingrich’s poll numbers are slipping below Romney’s again.

Santorum decided not to spend any money on TV ads in Florida. I suspect it’s because he wants to go the distance in the race and he really doesn’t have the war chest to fund the whole shebang. It will be interesting to see what happens with him in Florida, then, because if he doesn’t finish at least a strong second, I think his numbers just dwindle from there. He also said in a post-debate interview that he’s not staying in the state the day of the primary, because it’s a wasted day, and he’d rather go campaign in Nevada, where the next primary will be held just days later. Super Tuesday is approaching and with more states dividing up their nomination votes by percentage of primary votes, Santorum is just hoping to stay alive until summer.

One of the best moments of the debate was when Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates why their wives would make the best First Lady. Ron Paul’s answer was sort of superficial: she’s a mom, she’s a grandma, she wrote a cookbook. Okay. My mother could be First Lady based on that. (Not the cookbook part.)

Karen Santorum

Santorum’s answer was something we’ve heard before: mother of seven children, one severely disabled (their youngest child has Trisomy 18, a chromosomal defect so severe that kills the overwhelming majority of those who suffer it before birth, and most of those who make it to term die during birth. The great majority who survive that die within the first year. Bella is 3 1/2 and highly physically and developmentally challenged). In addition, the Santorums lost a child, Gabriel, mid-term. Karen Santorum wrote a book about that experience that Rick Santorum says “saved hundreds of lives” when expectant mothers read it and decided not to terminate their pregnancies.

She also wrote a children’s book about manners. She sounds like fun.

Ann Romney

Mitt Romney explained that his wife has multiple sclerosis and is a breast cancer survivor, two things I’m not sure I was aware of before (and both eerily reminiscent of the conditions Gingrich’s first two wives were suffering when he left them). He said she’d be able to understand and reach out to those who suffer, and that she’s also worked on helping young women make family choices that emphasize marriage before children.

Callista Gingrich

But the part that I was most intrigued by was Newt Gingrich’s wife. Callista seems like a Little People figure. Her hair never moves and she never speaks. She is a slash of severe red lipstick on an all-white head. But apparently, she is also an accomplished musician and singer, and the arts are her passion.

That warmed me up to her a little. I’d love a First Lady who made the arts, and particularly music, more important. However, the supposedly devout Catholic had a six-year affair with Gingrich while he was still married to his second wife, which sort of knocks her down a peg. And I will say it in black and white, plain: I don’t want her husband in the White House.

Perhaps a White House on the moon, where he suggests the US should build a colony by 2020, and perhaps the citizens of said colony could petition for statehood.

The moon. A US state.

Imperialistic much?

Most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life. Explore space? Absolutely, when it’s fiscally feasible. I don’t want to end space discovery – far from it. But claim the moon as American space soil? It’s the moon, for God’s sake. Nobody can own the moon.

Moonpie. (image from infowars.com. Clever folks.)

Here was perhaps the most delightful touch of the evening: Ron Paul was funny. Not just “holy crap, he’s off the reservation again, look at him go” funny, but actually witty. His line about the moon? “Well I don’t think we should go to the moon. I think maybe we should send some politicians up there.” When they were talking about what kind of relations should be maintained, if any, with Cuba, Blitzer asked Paul, “What would you say to Raul Castro if you were talking to him?”

“Well, I’d ask him what was the purpose of his call?”

He was the comic relief for a relatively tense night of debating who the best candidate is for the Republicans. I don’t know if it got anyone closer to a decision, and I think Gingrich’s performance, for all his belligerence, was flat. Romney was a little more commanding and he came off not giving a flying fig about how rich he is – something he’s really struggled with because of the current economic climate of the country. He has a new debate coach. It might have worked.

The transcript: http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1201/26/se.05.html