June 18 (excerpt from "Continent of Judy")

 

June 18 

I called in sick to work today and visited Judy at the hospital instead. Her diagnosis/prognosis, Terminal, was too unbelievable to comprehend at my hospital visit last night; I needed more proof that her life was cut short by a doctor’s verdict 24 hours ago.   Because I was an auditory, kinesthetic, and visual learner I needed to see, hear, and feel and then process that all parts of my world were slipping away, even my beloved friend’s life.

Now, I was in the continent of Judy.

 When I arrived at the hospital, she was alone.  She looked comfortable propped up against white, fluffy pillows and covered with a light, white cotton blanket.  If nothing else, she made sure the nurse delivered her Vicodin for pain every six hours. 

I stood at the entrance to her single occupancy room, but Judy did not notice me. Her attention was focused solely on a park across the four-lane highway and viewed clearly from the large clean windows of her 5^th story room.  

In the morning, the park was empty of people. Only the Ibis, blue jays, roc doves, white herons, vultures, European starlings, crows, boat-tailed grackle, purple gallinule, limpkin, anhinga, northern mockingbirds, and short-tailed hawks looked for food or action amongst the live oaks, cypress, palm trees, hibiscus bushes, robust lakes, and tall grasses (I visited the park on weekends in the early morning hours when my children were still sleeping).  Contrasted with the clinical white and sterility of the hospital floor and room, here was a lush and living canvas of the Everglades of long-ago.

For a moment, I thought of turning around, leaving, and not letting Judy know I was there. I was not good with words of consolation; I did not know how to slow down. I forgot we were friends. I DID NOT KNOW HOW TO TALK ABOUT TERMINAL CANCER. The words got stuck in my throat.  But she did not talk about it either.

When she noticed me, she called me over, placed a kiss on my cheek, and asked me to take a seat. Then she continued staring out the window.  There was no need for formalities or discomfort, silence was calming and comforting, but I hated silence.  My mind scanned the horizon for a topic of conversation, something appropriate to the moment, something about friendship, faith.  God, I was baffled. I started perspiring.  Still, Judy was silent, regal.

Unlike her, I was not experienced with life’s meandering journeys and stops. I did not appreciate the value of silence--the way it embraced us on its ride to her room on the 5^th story cancer ward at Memorial West where the sunlight glowed translucent, lake waters across the street lapped robustly, street cars glided across highways, and yellow roses bloomed as if for the first time, which I would all notice if I only stopped fidgeting.  I did not know that sharing silence with a friend was an honor.

When I settled down, Judy had something important to say.  This moment was her deathbed confession to me, at least the one she shared with me.  I thought it was too soon to share such a thing; yesterday, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My sense of time and time-appropriate actions governed my thoughts. Yet, from the moment she was diagnosed, Judy directed time as she saw fit: pushing it back, speeding it forward, stopping it in the moment.  She had a lifetime of dissection to do from her bed, if she wanted to leave the world on her terms.

Even now, she played at life, hitting the ball, swinging with concentration, making the game exciting and unforgettable, even as she exited its court.  Further proof that Judy was larger-than-life, a grand woman in every sense of the word, bigger than the great 20^th century spy Mata Hari, who faced her death by blowing kisses to the men in her firing squad, but even Mara Hari’s exit was quick and clean.  

She remained silent still while gazing at the park.  I looked around nervously, taking in the clean sanitized room in all its white and off-white walls, bedding, flooring…  

She waited patiently for me to calm down.

I did not know what Judy shared with others, but she knew what she needed to share with me. I had been at other’s death bed confessions (my ex-husband’s grandmother and mother). Maybe, I misunderstood the situation or their confessions:  My former mother- in- law talked about designer purses, but she might have been delirious from the pain medication; and my husband’s grandmother mentioned her famous key lime pie, but someone might have asked her for her recipe.  Maybe, I misjudged these women or the moment, but I know that what Judy told me that day resonated with me until I understood and applied it, many years later.

She began her great confession with a simple question about my date a couple of weekends ago. 

“Did you have a good time last weekend?” she asked, slowly pulling her bewitched gaze from the park across the street.

“Yes, yes,” I said, excitedly, nervously, relieved but surprised about her topic of conversation.

“Why should my love life matter while she was dealing with life and death matters?” I thought to myself.

Still, I rattled on excitedly about the newspaper man I had met on the beach, a tall, thin, bespeckled middle-aged man who seemed to be as interesting as he was intelligent. He was walking along the shore gathering seashells with his son when my children started playing with the young boy.  I struck up a conversation with the father, who invited us to dinner at his condo overlooking the exclusive Brickell Bay.  Like me, he was also going through a difficult divorce. Recently, he moved to Miami after selling his newspaper company in Washington D.C.  

While the children watched television and ate the take-out pizza he had ordered, we shared a bottle of French wine and a passionate kiss on his balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay.  He said he would call me, but two weeks later I had not heard from him. 

Already, I harbored secret hopes he would be my next husband; I was desperate to find another relationship. Only Judy recognized the depths of my desperation, but she would never confront me with that truth because I would not believe her anyway.  Instead, she listened with her clear, blue, piercing eyes and calm expression. No judgement, here.  

Only she knew I was ripe for liberation from a new but similar relationship on the heels of my most recent breakup from a 16 year-marriage. A new relationship, so soon after the end of my marriage, would only mimic personal neuroses, desperations, and untoward passions that instead needed healing, forgiveness, and release. With her soft gaze and softer expression, she communed with me that big heartbreak was a rare invitation to excavation parties beyond the “No Trespassing” signs in my soul with only three requirements for travel: solitude, abstinence, and self-reflection. Something more soulful and compatible would show up if only I took time to heal the end of my marriage. No need for search parties, want ads, desperate hookups.   She had refused the “in-between moments” in relationships at her own peril, but she knowingly and willfully did so.

Maybe it was a sign of her love for me and the simultaneous release of her own demons, but I knew that what she confessed that day was a truth she cut with the proverbial knife; I knew it her more to admit this truth than the cancerous cells that speedily tracked their way out of her gall bladder, up to her breast, and into their final destination in her brain. 

“Barbara, never let a man determine your worth,” Judy said, her gaze gentle and hands, with the perfectly manicured red nails, folded softly on her white cotton blanket.  “I did,” she continued, “even though I knew I was worth more than my men could ever realize.”

She turned and stared out the window, her gaze on the park across the street.

I nodded gently, even though I was miffed by her confession. Many years later, I realized Judy’s confession applied to me as much as it had applied to her.

That night, I wailed into my pillow for fear of waking my children who were asleep in the rooms down the hallway. Wailing was my new norm, a discovery made after hours of basic crying provided no relief from my pain.

 After pushing my head into the pillow, I whimpered, flailed, and kicked the mattress until a maelstrom of violence made me red in the face, sweaty, exhausted, and gasping for air.  Still, I yelped, screamed, and howled like a wild animal until I reached the feeling place at the pit of my stomach, the same location my classical piano teacher advised I play from when performing Beethoven sonatas, Bach fugues, and Chopin waltzes: “the true home of all feeling,” said Clara Vasquez, trained in the best musical conservatory in Havana, Cuban.

I never accessed the pit of my stomach when I played piano as a young girl because I detested the instrument and was never any good at playing it anyway, but now I became expert at finding its doorway and feeling its thundering heartbeat slow down to a tranquil breath.  There, I entered a blue-black sky with twinkling stars where I dropped off my pain and gazed at the view until there was nothing left for me to feel.

That night, I returned to the to the present feeling new, invigorated, ashamed of my strange, spiritual experience, and relieved that it would never happen again, even though that was never the case.  I jumped out of bed, went to computer in the study, logged in online, and signed up for a local dating site.

 

 

 

My Christmas Ghosts

 

The ghost of an old white man is sitting on your chair out here,” my next-door neighbor Saru, a self-proclaimed psychic, said as he exited the front door of my apartment in Northern California. “That’s my father,” I said, cringing at the thought.

Christmas Past

We were having our first-ever Christmas Eve party. My sister and I dared not ask anything about it for fear of shifting our focus from the “out-of-the-ordinary” back to the “numbing ordinary”—hot, sticky Florida weather, tight-fighting small house, and each new day more familiar than the last. A year ago, in New York City, we knew sweeping changes every minute when we lived in a two-story house with a basement and attic.  We had Christmas at radio city Music Hall with high-kicking Rockettes and a nativity scene with real camels;  playtime at the neighborhood park, the site of the World’s Fair of 1962;  Halloween walks around the block to trick or treat and jump into piles of crunchy fallen elm tree leaves;  summers spent swimming in Mrs. Omura’s pop up pool;  daily 7 trains running nonstop past our front door and deeper into Queens; and Anthony, my first love.

On the plane to Miami, I cried so hard my body shook; when my mother reached over to whisper in my ear wise sayings about the importance of change, I shook her off violently.  I was seven years old, and I would not cry as hard until I was thirty-five and learned of my husband cheating.

The week leading up to the party, my father filled rented tables with garlic, onions, sour oranges, bags of rice and black beans, yuca, a loin of fresh pork, and boxes of Sangria, sidra, gin, whiskey, and soda.  Several trips were taken to the grocery store to replace finished bottles of sugar, salt, and herbs.  Cheesecakes with thick spoonful of strawberry jelly on top were purchased at the Cuban bakery.  My Caribbean mother seasoned, marinated, and refrigerated foods for Noche Buena, the mythical “good night” of Christmas Eve with feasting, dancing, and drinking far into Christmas morning I’d only heard adults whisper about the next day.  She swept and mopped speckled concrete floors; washed jalousie windows; and recruited my sister and me to help her push into the main bedroom the sofa, a second-hand store purchase made of thin, fading red and white velvety fabric.  “We can’t afford any of this,” she whined, even while giving into the rush of preparing for the upcoming event.

On Christmas Eve, the guests did not arrive at 9:00 p.m., as promised.  My father had already played his Bene More and Celia Cruz records several times.  He left several unreturned messages at his sons’ hotel. He paced the house several times, checking to see that the string of white lights he stapled on the eves of roof on the side of the backyard still emitted a healthy glow on the muddy dirt, overgrown avocado trees, and dirty lake,  

My mother heated and reheated the food. She checked our ponytails to make sure they were high and tight, and our dresses with the embroidered vests, were perfectly ironed. But it was all for nothing. My father’s seven fair and beautiful sons, all in their mid to late 20’s, with heads of big blonde hair and light eyes, arrived two hours later, and they swept into the house with their girlfriends hanging on their arms as if they had gotten off the wrong stop on the train. They didn’t take food or drink because they had other parties to go to. They dashed around the house in their suits, black ties, and scents of pine as if it was all beneath them.  My father said that it was their house, too. Come and stay whenever you want, he said as he pointed to this and that room in the house.  Thanks, pop. We know, pop. “We’ll give you a call, pop, when we get back, they said as if they couldn’t get out of our house fast enough.... They didn’t even notice my sister and me.  

Already it was too late for my seventy-year- old father with the four ex-wives, to make amends for swearing, cussing, and beating his sons. Already, they were estranged. Already, our hopes were dashed that this night would herald a new beginning and that our wishes would be granted: my father, a return to thrill of new and old relationships like the ones on the streets of New York City where an instant drinking buddy or new lover could be found around the corner; my mother, a stream of money flowing into our lives  like we had when my father worked as a contractor; my sister, was too young to care; and I wanted my anonymity back, like I had in the house New York city where I played on the second and third story floors of the house in Queens while my parents fought and hit each other in on the first-story kitchen, leaving broken glass and body parts in its wake. Now they pulled me into their brawls and accused me of causing them. At first, I thought it was a just an honest mistake; and I blamed the oversight on the small 1970s ranch house, a 500 square foot nightmare with three small rooms and one bathroom, for not providing any space for me to hide.

After the party, my sister and I wandered around listlessly as if checking out the ruins of a burned-down house like the ones in winter on Roosevelt Avenue when our neighbors’ boilers exploded. My mother picked-up and cleaned as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. My teary-eyed father walked towards his room and locked the door behind him, leaving behind an image that broke my heart forever.

 

 

Christmas Present

I am in love with the Danish captain I met online.

He will love me when I’m gone, and he can hold his love for me

against another woman’s love for him. I am in the shadow of his fiery,

red-headed Spanish ex, who set his furniture on fire when he cheated on her

with another stewardess. It is my turn to be with him.

Two weeks before Christmas, we run away from our countries and responsibilities

to be together for a weekend in Amsterdam on freezing nights with a full moon.

We are the new and improved Adam and Eve, strolling confidently around canals,

cafes, red windows, and peep shows.  I am quiet, but he rambles like a boy

who must explain the thrill of each ride to a soul just arrived on the planet.

“The prostitutes must be tested once a month for their health,” he says.  

His blue eyes sparkle.  His love/hate for women and violent temper

remind me of my father.  Unlike my father, he hunts Viking lands in Denmark.

“A good hunt always changes it ways,” he says about his buck,

and implies it about his women. I am not naïve: 

He scouts my deepest and darkest wounded imperfection: the one I cannot see or dig

from out my psyche, the one he will stalk, shoot, butcher, and hang like prized antlers

on the wall of his fallen conquests; the one that will make him proud and justified

for leaving me, like he left the others; the one he will gift me as sign of his deep love

and affection; and the one I will see and heal during the heartbreak of losing him.

I put my arm through his.  Midnight in Amsterdam suddenly feels cold, dark,

and dangerous.  I shiver.

 

Christmas Future

Dear Diary,

I walked on Ft. Lauderdale Beach the morning after Christmas day.  Atlantic Boulevard was busy with the rich White of the Northeast who were in town for the holidays. They strolled out of their high-rise condominiums with ocean views in search of coffee and breakfast, but I no longer resented them or held them responsible for the world’s woes or my woes. My hate was always intended for my White father, but that took years to realize. It was my father, not these other people, who called me racial slurs until the day he died. Racism has always masked itself as a one-size, fits-all band aid. 

The drama of being in love or hate with others had kept me distracted most of my life. Today, I felt as free and natural as the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, crashing gently on the shore, and leaving effervescent bubbles in its wake.  I tipped my suede hat with the gold band to the restaurant hostess who gave me an approving smile.

I was in town to visit my college-age children, but they did not join me on my stroll, even though I had invited them. I've learned to give them space and time to decide whether to love me, as difficult and painful as that has been.  During their childhoods, I treated them like my father treated me in my cold, detached efforts not to be like my bullying and violently explosive father--same difference and consequence. On most days, I work on forgiving God, forgiving my father, forgiving myself, and forgiving my children, all exhausting and unrelenting healing work. So today, I enjoyed the cool breeze and salty smell of the ocean, and I smiled joyfully when I wished a passerby a Merry Christmas.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even During a Pandemic (Epistolary Short Story)

 

Oliver had Covid. First, he said the doctor came to his apartment. Then he was moved to a hospital. Then he was prescribed lung exercises, but his condition did not improve; still, he wrote me a message every so often.

January 5, 2021

Hi, although it is believed that the lungs cannot hurt, the back, the area of the lungs, hurt a lot. Sometimes, I can hardly lie on my back. The temperature is kept around 38. Only paracetamol, a faithful friend, comes to the rescue. The psychological side also joined the physical pain. Every day I learn about friends who have had coronavirus or died from its consequences.

During the night, I woke up several times: it is difficult to breathe. My back hurts, and bad thoughts come to my head.  I don't have the strength to get out of bed and comb my hair. For several days, I have been without an appetite.  I can hardly cram two spoons into myself.  My temperature in the morning is 37.3. But now it's hard to breathe. To get a full chest of air, I need to make the effort.  From time to time, I try to catch my breath. I'm with the doctors all the time. Everything is okay.  I am under supervision.  I just ask you to know that I am with you, and I really miss you!

January 6, 2021

Oliver, I was sarcastic when you first told me you had fever and exhaustion, as if it could never be Covid, just the flu. Why not the flu? The flu’s still around, right?  Don’t people get the flu anymore?

Please forgive me. I was self-protecting: I swallow sadness whole and manage expertly while it detonates inside. We’ve only been chatting on this dating site for one month; it is too soon for you to pull me into your life and death drama. Still, here I am with you.  

Today, I remembered an image from years ago at an intensive care unit in Miami (I was raised in South Florida), where I was visiting someone in the hospital. Strange, I can’t remember who I was there to see. What I remember was the beautiful young woman with the light blue wool suit, white silk blouse, and sand-colored leather heels who walked into the waiting room after her husband, who had suffered a heart attack, was wheeled into the unit.  The waiting room was packed with people waiting for news about their loved ones. 

We tensed up like stick figures when Code Blue blared on the speakers; still, we heard what the doctors said to the beautiful woman: “the next few hours will determine whether your husband lives or dies.” She never flinched at the prognosis: her straight black hair and makeup stayed in place, her posture straight, and her brown eyes unflinching, not even the slightest hint of a gasp, whimper, scream, or cry that goes with getting sudden and unexpected bad news. 

We stared at her in awe: she was our hero; she would teach us how to handle whatever happened with grace.  But she didn’t notice us, neither did she care about our expectations for her calm and composure. We each had our own tragedy to bear, and she wasn’t shy or self-conscious about expressing her feelings either: After the doctors walked away, she sat down in a waiting room chair and gathered herself quickly like a flower that shuts tight its petals when there is no more sunlight: she folded her arms, straightened and bent her upper body forward, focused her gaze on the floor, and swung back and forth as hard and as fast as she could. 

My darling man, every single one of my thoughts is with you….

 

January 10, 2021

Baby, my fever really does not decrease. Now the doctor will come for the procedure. I hope I will be better, and I can come here again today! Today is not really the best day for me. I'm sorry that I'm so little with you today ...I hug you tightly! I hope I will get better. Wait for me, okay? I kiss you, your Oliver.

January 11, 2021

Oliver, what procedure? WHAT PROCEDURE? It’s torture waiting days to hear from you only to get a short, unclear message about what is happening to you. I know you’re very sick; I know you’re doing your best to keep me updated, but my mental health requires that you tell me everything: every symptom, every word jotted down in your medical records, every conversation you have with every doctor and nurse in the hospital, every drug you are prescribed, every meal you are served…  Details, details, my man, will save my sanity.

I need to know the science of YOUR condition. Do you understand me? Science, such a popular word nowadays, is lifesaving. Not that I have a head for it, yet I need scientific words to pull me into brain-numbing hours of internet research/surfing. I need to crash deeply into the rabbit hole of links and clicks about the science of YOUR Covid. I need to be consumed by every bit of information about YOU lying in that hospital bed so that I can find my place beside you in your nightmare.  Please try to understand me, my darling Oliver

January 14, 2021

Darling, I'm back ...It was very painful and long this time. the number of patients just increases every day and there are terrible queues; 2 more men will now be accommodated in my ward.  This situation is becoming more and more serious.  Are you still here? I really wanted to find you here. What were you doing here without me? Were you here? I hope, madam, that you will give me some of your precious time) Kisses, Oliver

January 15, 2021

I’m sorry I missed you.  The time change makes it difficult to be here when you’re here.

Sweetie, don’t they have ventilators in Singapore? Have you run out? Why do doctors let you struggle to breathe? Don’t they know the whole world is on ventilators? On the news and YouTube videos, I watch sick people around the globe breathe on machines so that I know a ventilator can save your life, even though I cringe at the thought of you being hooked up to one. 

Every country, county, street, hospital waits their turn for Covid and ventilators to arrive, as if the apocalypse happens one block, one house, one person, one ventilator at a time. Here in America, it’s too fast and furious to process, bear, or research, so we queue in long lines for toilet paper with the same urgency we wait in lines to be seen by emergency room doctors. 

My beautiful Oliver, are you in a real hospital? Sometimes, it sounds like you are in a Zen center for the holistic treatment of life-threatening Covid symptoms with fucked-up mind-over-matter procedures and breathing exercises, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

My sweet man, I am with you in thought and spirit, all day, every day. Please write even though it is difficult to do, even though your messages break my heart.

 

 

 

 

 

January 19, 2021

Hello dear, I'm sorry I couldn't write back to you sooner. Honestly, I started coughing and they put me on a breathing apparatus. The night was sleepless again, so I am half asleep today. How is your day today? Did Saturday start well?  I hope that today it will not be worse for me, my sweet. Your Oliver

January 25, 2021

I left you. This is not real. Having feelings for a Norwegian living in Singapore who is sick at hospital with Covid, a man I started talking to on an online dating site one month ago, IS NOT REAL.

These last few days while driving up the Northern California coast to Redwood National Park, Trinidad Beach, and the ancient Sumaq Village of the Yurok Natives, I never thought of you.  

I moved to Northern California from the Northeast three months ago; everything here is scary, unknown, and mysterious, especially driving, with its curving roads, high winds, falling rocks, earthquakes, tsunami warnings... All my life, I’ve driven only on expansive 8-lane highways lit up by lights every several feet. Driving here is such a wild experience that new drivers under 18 are not allowed on the roads at night.

At Redwood National Park, I drove through Bald Hills where the lands became rolling and clear of trees, and the elk roamed, grazed, and gazed at me as if I was alien. At the Ancient Sumaq Village, I walked around for hours by myself and peeked in at redwood cabins that once housed the sick, village meetings, steam houses, and families of the Yurok Tribe.  In Trinidad, I marveled at gigantic rock formations jutting up towards the sky from the wild Pacific Ocean, rocks named Marriage Rock, Strawberry Rock…. 

My darling Oliver, I lied to you… while on the road these last few days, I only thought of you, even though I tried not to. YOU ARE REAL. I feel you. I especially feel your terror, stuck in my heart like a piece of ice-cold sheet metal.  I hate that you brought Covid to my world because I thought I had outrun it by leaving my life in the Northeast to seek a new beginning in the West.  Still, I wouldn’t trade worrying about you for nothing in the world.

I left you because I felt adrift on the satellite of another planet waiting for the flashing green light on this site to indicate a new message sent by you.  I just hope you’re not alone, that doctors and staff are meticulous with your care, and that friends and family make you feel safe and loved. My dearest Oliver, keep fighting. You will be fine. I know it. I continue to care deeply for you from afar.

January 26, 2021

Please tell me, I hurt you???? Tell me, tell me please, I hurt you???? I hurt you???? I just want you for myself; for us, happiness. I want you. You are not my fantasy. You are my reality. You are in my head. You are in my life, on a piece of paper, yes, for now. When I write you a letter, for me this is reality, even in this hospital bed. I want something serious. I'm tired, I'm tired of being alone. I'm alone. I found you in the middle of the desert. You are my Oasis. I don't want to part with you.

January 27, 2021

PLEASE, please forgive me. I wait by the computer for your response. Please, Oliver, forgive me…

January 28, 2021

Darling, I understand you, and I forgive you.  Now, eyes close. The guys in the ward are already asleep ...Good night, my queen! The most incredible, I kiss you hard and gently cover you with my love. I wish you a cozy, wonderful, wonderful sleep, and rest. Let the night rush by like a fairy tale, and the morning begin with something joyful and amazing. I adore you, my little star, your Oliver.

January 29, 2021

Oliver, thanks to you I drank all my boxes of black tea and ate all my vegetables. Tomorrow, I’ll start the raw honey and raw cheese. I’m trying to eat better, but stress binge-eating fruits and vegetables is gross.

You sound better.  Are you better? I can tell by your words that you feel better.  Do you know my greatest talent is reading the nuances and subtleties of personality in someone’s writing. My man, I know you are ambitious, passionate, strong, boyish, brooding, manly… 

Years ago, I read about a social anthropologist out of a university in Texas who proved that functions words such as prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, articles… tell a lot about personality, not that I need proof to trust my feelings about you or for you.

For fun, I ran a couple of our emails through his online LSM (Language Style Matching) program.  Babe, we are a match. I copied our results below:

Your LSM Results

The LSM score gives us a sense of how similarly two people are using language. It can indicate how synchronized their use of words is.

Your LSM score is 0.88

Compared to other online chats that we have analyzed, your LSM score is slightly above average.  To give you an idea, most LSM scores for online chats range between .75 and .95, with an average around .84. The more that the two people are paying attention to each other in their interaction, the higher the LSM.

My wonderful Oliver, today you made me very happy. Please tell me how you are feeling. Are you on your way to a full recovery? At least I can only hope you are. Yours…

February 2, 2021

Darling, when I thought it couldn't be worse, when the pain was terrible, and when I was delirious for a day, I returned to my thoughts that I haven’t seen you yet, I haven’t hugged you yet, I haven’t kissed you yet, I haven’t confessed my love to you in real life. I need to run away from this disease, from this delirium because I still have so many wonderful things in life that I must accomplish and experience with you!!!

February 3, 2021

Oliver, yes, yes, we will meet. But… what happened? Did you relapse? I thought you were getting better. Your message terrified me, so I ran out of my place to hike the redwood forest behind my apartment.  There, I prayed. I especially looked for the sunlight that streaks the crown, trunk, roots, and mysterious and tumorous burls that bulge from the redwoods, and I imagined catching streaks of amber rays of light running along the reddish veins of the bark and sending them to you in Singapore.

My darling man, do you know I was terrified of moving out West because I’d never been, and because I’d always heard stories about the slaughter of the buffalo and Native Americans. I can feel the energy of a place, and it’s a blessing and a curse. In the Northeast, I was distracted by skyscrapers, trains, planes, pursuit of higher education, relationships, lots of people and all the drama that came with knowing those people.

I knew the West was mostly land, that only 16 percent of the population lived out that way, and that its history was exposed for all to see and feel.  I thought I might not be able to bear or process living such truths all the time, so I prepared for my trip by watching a documentary by my favorite filmmaker, Ken Burns; it was beautiful, raw, heart-breaking, and it took weeks to watch and process each episode. Still, I dreaded watching the final episode because I couldn’t conceive of how Burns would wrap it all up and give me peace of mind, yet it knew I must do it, even though I kept putting it off.

The night before I left town, I sat in my empty apartment in Portland, Maine, and I watched the last episode of “The West,” my heart beating fast and furious the entire time. And there it was the closing, words from an American historian who gave me the courage to follow through with my move to California:

“The real story of the American West is a story of spirit. The challenge to live and love with a broken heart. If you think about all the various stories of betrayal in the West, it will break your heart. But in the stories of broken hearts there is also a healing - a joy. And that joy and that healing come from the land itself.  And I don’t think we can forget that. That the land literally brings us back to a reverential state of mind where we realize that the health of the land is the health of the people.  It is about the spirit, and in that spirit are the seeds of joy…” 

My dearest Oliver, I send you all the healing and joy I can find in this pained and beautiful land. You will get well. I know it. Yours always…

  

 

February 7, 2021

Oliver, where are you? Why don’t you write? I’m worried sick. I’m also angry at you for not giving me your personal information or communicating with me on your personal email.

Maybe you’re married; I was going to ask you about that the week before you got sick, but then it wasn’t the right time.  I don’t care about that now. Please have someone, anyone, let me know how you are. One word, two words. I don’t care if we never communicate again.

This morning, I looked for airfares to Singapore. It felt right to go to you. Why not? I ran away to New York City at 17, eloped to Biloxi at 19, adopted children in Russia at 23 with my husband at the time.  I am an American rebel with bloodlines tied to a conquering European father (Spanish) and conquered Caribbean Native mother (Taino). All I’ve learned from that mix is to follow my heart, and my heart led me to you But, then I watched YouTube videos of Singapore, and I saw police, empty streets, lockdown, essential travel mandates, warning signs.  Unlike in America, no one there would understand my roaming search in the name of love.

And…who can I tell about my crazy, little secret? No one!  It is just me, you, and Covid.

Please, dearest Oliver, let me know something, anything. You must write back, please…

February 10, 2021

Still, no word… I don’t even know what to say except I dread coming on this site to find news of you--or no news of you.  Sadness feels like a shallow, lifeless pond in the middle of nowhere…yours…

February 12, 2021

            My dear Oliver, today I read and re-read an email you sent me a week after we started chatting. I knew then that love had come for me, and that I must surrender to it--and you--no matter what happened, or I would always regret running away from it.

“My dear woman, let me tell you something that I have not said before: Most of all, I like to wake up early to meet the dawn; it seems that with the rays of the sun, I am the first in line to absorb all my strength.  My great dream is to go to Alaska to swim with whales.  I love to buy groceries in supermarkets; I remember that as a child my parents did not have money, so we bought only the essentials, but now that I have money, I go to the supermarket like a small child, and I buy everything. 

When I cook, I always turn on Queen and sing like a guitarist.  Before getting on planes, I pray. In my wallet, in my little pocket, I have a photo of my mother when she was 20 years old. I can't eat raw fish in sushi. When I meditate and need to imagine a place where I am happy, it is always by the ocean.  Well, my most cherished desire is that everything that happens to me is closely connected in this life with you and only with you !!!!!Your Oliver.”

February 12, 2021

Oliver, you are ordered to come back to me to tell me that your lungs are fine and that you left the hospital. You are ordered to wish me sweet dreams every night. If something happened to you, I would know it. I would feel it, like Lara in Dr. Zhivago: she knew when something happened to him, she walked into the place where he was at even after years of separation. I HATE THIS COMPUTER, this website, because I am stuck in a place where I can’t hold your hand, or sit by your side, or ask minute-by-minute news of your health. It makes me want to SCREAM. But this is not about me, so I am going to stay calm and refuse to cry or pray for you anymore because you are fine, and you are ordered to come back to me NOW, my sweet, sweet Oliver…

February 13, 2021

My darling man, I know you are receiving my messages. I know you are reading them even though you are not able to respond, so I will continue to write until you answer me.

Like I said before, I’ve been living in California for three months; I moved here a year into the pandemic because I got sick of Mainers giving me cold stares while quietly measuring the distance in steps between us, even though the distance between us could never be enough.  During that time, I decided to live harder and faster than I ever did before the pandemic because I wasn’t waiting in my apartment for Covid to come for me.  So, I blew my savings and lived wild and free, even while wearing a mask. Everywhere businesses and shopkeepers took my money because they needed it.

I hiked Sawyer and Bradbury Mountains, and I went on a moose safari and boat trip in the North Woods. I took a bus to Boston to visit my favorite museum, The Isabella Gardner Museum. Then I took a plane to Miami to visit my grown children, and a plane to Eureka, CA, to find a new apartment. On my way to California, I took a road trip out West and visited the museums of gun slingers and bank robbers. The world was empty, but there were quite a few straddlers out there, just like me.

Oliver, sweet dreams, please come back to me soon. Please…...

February, 14, 2021

I wish you a Happy Valentines Day, my darling man. 

Now, more about my trip out West: Everywhere, Covid was experienced differently:  In West Virginia, they put up Christmas decorations in October; and in Missouri, they put up signs on storefront windows that said, “Where a mask if you want to.” In Kansas, the guide at the Dalton Gang Museum showed me the tunneled basement where the gang hid from the police. He told me stories of directing plays on open prairies where dinner was served from a chuck wagon, even though he confessed that his acting troupe wasn’t as good as the one in Dodge City. A cast member had recently caught Covid, and they were proceeding carefully with future plays.  In Platt, Kansas, I saw billions of stars at midnight, and I saluted the conductor of lone cargo train painted in bright red, yellow, and orange that slowly crossed open land as it was traveling through portals of time. In Kentucky, they talked about God, guns, politics, and they played banjo on the radio; and in Indiana, they talked about God, too, but they preferred playing classical music to talk radio.

Thinking only of you, my Darling Oliver

February 15, 2021

Dearest Oliver, In Oklahoma, I saw endless landlocked prairies with windowless farms as if their apocalypse happened long ago; and in New Mexico, I shared a piece of fudge with a shopkeeper at a chocolate shop while listening to eulogies on the radio to those who had lost their lives to Covid the week before. In Taos, I was ashamed of my indifference to the pandemic and its toll, so I left town early even though I intended to stay 3 days.

In Arizona, they hung out in large numbers in Sedona and treated themselves to half-off massage, tarot readings, and guided hikes in the Red Rocks. In California, they said, “Good morning,” “Good night,” and “Have a wonderful day,” while social-distancing and wearing masks. I was home. 

As always, babe, I wait for your response…

March 11, 2021

Dearest Oliver, 

“It must be in you to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”

 

High (Short Story)

 

High

I was high during my sister and her family’s five-week visit.  Before she arrived, I was a nervous wreck about how to handle it. 

Out of desperation, I visited the local marijuana dispensary and asked the clerk for help. The middle-aged woman touted the cranberry-flavored spacey and relaxed Dutch Treat strain of pot with a 1:1 CBD and THC ratio, as the gummy I needed to take.  She said one gummy was equivalent to drinking four glasses of wine. I could hardly handle one glass of wine, and I’d never done pot before, but she convinced me to buy the drug after touting it as her favorite calming medicine. Twenty minutes after I left the dispensary, I was thrilled the sky twinkled in streaks of diamonds after I bit a sliver of the gummy.

I learned later that the Dutch Treat strain had the rare terpene, terpinolene, with sedating, uplifting, creative, and energetic effects. My next-door neighbor, a purist and daily marijuana smoker, who worked in the pot industry in North California, where I lived, said that new studies of terpenes were now focused on strains geared towards healing or alleviating symptoms for different diseases, which shifted the focus of marijuana industry into more niche markets, creating more confusion for consumers who were at a loss as to basic dosage.

Under the influence of drugs, I ran around with my sister, her husband, and her daughter. I lifted my arms and imagined I was a seagull, soaring gracefully off the swirling cold pond waters of the Pacific Ocean during high tide on Clam Beach;  I sang my favorite 70s R&B tunes, which played loudly on the Pandora app on my I-phone while I ran down the rocky ridge hikes of the redwood forest behind my apartment; I roller skated at full speed for three hours at the rink in Blue Lake; and I danced nonstop and with no reserve, at the reggae, folk, and hip-hop summer music festivals we attended.

My eight-year-old niece joined me with new-found respect while unrelentingly competing with my raging inner child.  She wrote bad movie scripts, which we filmed and acted late into the night. She challenged me to sword fights with the plastic swords her parents purchased at the circus, and she dared me to race her down the slopes of our forest hikes. I accepted her invitation to compete and afterwards argued vigorously that she cheated when she had in fact won.  

My niece, with the Cuban and Irish ancestry, large hazel blue eyes, and strawberry wavy blond hair broke into spontaneous Broadway song because she wanted to perform on its stage. she was wilder and more beautiful than I was at her age.  Even though my sister used her as a confidante to her adult problems--the same way my mother had used me, a pattern I warned my sister not to repeat because of its onerous burden on her daughter--Issa had Youtube on her side, an antidote to the confining, debilitating smallness of being a confidant to a misguided and narcissistic parent.   

Her imagination was stirred with audio books, toys, and fashion videos. She wrote scripts for home movies and recorded her own Christmas albums as inspired by others on YouTube.  Because technology had stretched her world beyond the confines of her problems at home, she had more spaciousness and insights than I ever did at her age, so she figured me a mix of beautiful and ugly, rich and poor, fun and serious--a tension of opposites she deduced because I didn’t own a car, but rented one when I needed it; I shared her beautiful features but was older with grey hair and wrinkles; and I laughed and played during the day and locked myself in my room to read, write, and sleep at night. Still, Issa had no clue something was amiss.

No one figured it out, even though I looked disheveled-- hair uncombed, skin tone uneven, and eyes half-shut or dilated from taking a sliver of a bite of the gummy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.   The others occasionally raised their eyebrows at my high-octane enthusiasm. Yet they didn’t notice when I started stuttering my words or replacing them with nonsensical ones: “Can you please pass the tablecloth?” Instead of salt.

My sister was determined to do what she wanted when she wanted, and her endless daily to-do lists included activities from sunup to sundown with a repeat of some of those same activities, like a morning and night visits to the sauna and whirlpool of the Finnish bathhouse in town. Her pace was frenetic, manic, and a compulsory repeat of her daily life in New York City. Not even the roaring power of the Pacific, lofty height of the redwood trees, or shifting daily weather patterns, from fog to rain to sun, could convince her to stop and take it in.  When I commented to her husband that his family was a handful, he snidely remarked, “Well, we don’t have a choice, do we?’ he said.

“You don’t have a choice, but I do,” I said, as I walked away from him, slammed the bedroom door behind me, and bit into another sliver of the gummy I kept hidden in my pant pocket.

My brother-in-law was a detached man with a head of tight auburn curls and squinty and speckled blue eyes he hated to focus on anything.  He preferred silence and spent most of his time after work listening to professional development talks on political correctness needed to be a middle school teacher in the highly diversified New York City public schools; my sister accused him of listening to bureaucratic mumbo jumbo –prejudice veiled as the right thing to say, not do--which played loudly in their home on Staten Island.  Since he was silent most days of the year, he felt compelled to be lively and interactive on his yearly family vacations, but even that got on his nerves, too.

I was determined to claim my boundaries and stake my space in my 350 ft apartment where my sister and her husband slept in sleeping bags in the living room: I shut and locked my bedroom door and insisted they leave for several hours during the morning so that I could get my online teaching work done, now suffering from lapses in memory from taking too many gummies, including forgetting to return student calls, grading papers, and holding weekly chats.

When my sister and brother-in-law argued late into night, both using a whiny, repetitive passive aggressive tone and stance to get their way about next day’s activities, I played background brown noise, a rich soothing, air-blowing sound that lulled me into deep sleep. When she knocked on my door to badmouth her husband, I said loudly that she was married now and needed to figure things out with him, even though I feared the angry look in her eyes.

She was a bully, and I cowered to it.  All my life, I was also bullied by my mother, and father, as if being a victim was my rightful place in the family. To avoid bad words, pushing, spitting, and hitting, I became a weasel--running, hiding, and lying to avoid violence. What I wanted was silence, peace, and solitude, a life on another planet.  But, as life on earth would have it, my whole existence became a loop of victimhood--friends, ex-husband, lovers bullied me, too, and I accepted it as normal because I didn’t know how to acknowledge or defend my hurt feelings. Those feelings had been calcified as trauma deep in my cell memory, further compounded with the political correctness I picked up here and there until my body and spirit were punctured, hunched over, and defeated enough to not look anyone in the eyes for fear they would hurt me some more. 

That is until my mother left me a deathbed message/order about how to handle myself for the rest of my life:

“Don’t do what you’re told. Don’t do what you read. Don’t do what others expect. Don’t worry about being good, bad, indifferent, kind, compassionate… none of it counts if doesn’t come from your heart--and most never figure out what’s in there anyway. Don’t worry about God or the Devil; I’ve dealt with both, and they’ll respect you if you do what you must. Especially, never flinch at the consequences of your heart-fueled actions, whatever they may be.”

She could have been passing the bullying baton onto me, but I took it as a clarion call to erase family programming and live life on my terms.  Not easy! Since my mother’s death a year ago, I practiced speaking my truth, slowly and cumbersomely. I told the cantankerous UPS guy to put packages under the awning so that they wouldn’t get wet in from the rain, and I told the sidewalk activists who asked for my signature on their paperwork that I didn’t believe in their causes.  Some rolled their eyes, mumbled under their breath, or confronted me for what I said.  I blushed, stuttered, and hesitated while my heartbeat raced and beads of sweat formed on my forehead, but I looked them in the eyes and stuttered through my responses.  My goal… to dissect, like a neurosurgeon with a scalpel, the muck from the brain juice that knew only my authentic, true, vulnerable yet brave self in all situations.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for my sister and her family’s visit.  It was too soon, and I hadn’t yet mastered the skill of speaking the truth. I tried to talk her out of coming by telling her it was raining in North California every day, and that there had been earthquakes, lies. I also told her my 350 square foot apartment was too small to comfortably house four people for five weeks, true. Still, she bulldozed me with her plans, insisting that time would fly and that she would be gone before I knew it.

Pot saved the day, but three weeks into her visit, I ran out of steam, so that when she mentioned going back to the bathhouse that morning I refused.

“I’m not going,” I said with no hesitation, while preparing the stove and pan for the omelets I was cooking for breakfast that morning.

“Why not?” she asked, her voice tinged with annoyance.

  “Because I’m tired of going there,” I said, nervously.

“She was quiet, and so was I. As a trial attorney in New York City, she used silence to make the opposing side squirm, as I was now doing.

“You go. I need my space,” I said, stuttering while putting the egg carton on the counter and turning around to face her.

“From me?”

“Yeah,’ from you,

We were in a face-off like we were as teenagers when she charged at me, tore my shirt, and pushed me against the wall; that is before I ran off.

“Bitch, you have some nerve saying that to me in front of my daughter.”

My niece ran out of the apartment to get her father who was packing the rented SUV for that day’s activities.

“And you have the nerve calling me names in my house. YOU have never respected my boundaries or me!” I said, taking an egg from the carton and flinging at her. When it hit the wall, I watched the yolk and sticky stuff splatter and run down the wall and brown carpet in slow motion. “That’s going to stink”, I thought to myself.

Her brown eyes fumed with rage. When she charged at me, she lifted her arms, closed her fists, pressed her lips, lowered her head, and held her breath in order to gain speed and momentum, difficult with her middle-age girth. She looked like my angry father--large forehead, thick brows, dark eyes, and round stomach—a man who beat up the post man, cashier, master of ceremonies at the neighborhood parade…. because he didn’t like the tone of their voice, remark, or God knows what.  I never heard or knew what started the fight. He had always inched up to his victim as if he was going to tell them a secret before he unleashed a horrifying volley of fists, which made me keep a good amount of distance between us for the rest of his life.

My sister came at me in a halo of light, thanks to the extra sliver of gummy I bit off that morning. Rage, anxiety, and adrenaline built up in my system, so I faced her down. She stopped hard and almost tripped in front of me before regaining her footing, pulling back her closed fist, and punching in the upper arm.

“Ow,” I said before I slapped across the face. She put her hand up to her cheek, her stare filled with rage, as was mine. My audacity was unfamiliar even to me. Heat emitted from my skull. My anger was alive and breathing.  I was like a secret agent fighting for an identity lost on such a life-long covert operation all was forgotten. My heartbeat raced and face flushed.  When she pulled my hair, I pulled hers, too. Our necks were stretched, backs tilted. I kicked her on the shin. She let out an “ow.”   She kicked me on the shin. I let out another “ow.”  Our actions were slow and cumbersomely rhythmic. “Come on now, come on. Stop it, stop it,” her husband ran into the apartment, grabbed his wife by her free arm, and pulled her away.  “Just stop it now,” he ordered, giving me the flash of an annoyed look for ruining their vacation.

I turned my back and returned to cooking, my heartbeat fast, body limp, heart smiling. After all these years, I stood my ground, and it felt like a tumorous glacier of correctness started melting, leaving me lightheaded.

“Let’s get our things and go,” she said to her husband and daughter.  When they were in the car, she screamed “crazy bitch,” out the window, so I ran out of my apartment with my carton of eggs and threw them one by one at their car, hitting the back window, trunk, tire. When she got out of the car and made a gesture to run back at me, I threw another egg that whizzed past her head. 

I stood proudly on my balcony, throwing eggs at a world I never thought friendly. Not anymore! The world wasn’t ruffled by my violence; there was enough room on the horizon to throw at it what I wanted.  The sun-soaked sky was a glassy blue, and scattered clouds moved across it like a school of fish. “Just passing by,” they seemed to say as the wind pushed them over the tips of the redwoods and into oblivion. The world wouldn’t contract, lash out, or hold up a disapproving finger like its human counterparts tended to do; it welcomed my violence, bad words, and hurt and angry heart, having waited long to receive them.

Into the distance, where the bay swirled its way to the grumbling Pacific Ocean, I heard in the early morning hours when traffic on Highway 101 was non-existent, I excommunicated all the correctness that kept me rigid from cell to soul, dooming my dried-up emotions to that of a living ghost. I remembered a quote from one of my favorite English actresses, Charlotte Rampling: “The best remedy for any sort of pain is to let it happen to you. Resistance of pain, either physical or psychological, is the most painful.”

My next-door neighbor, a student at the local college, stepped on his balcony and smiled. I smiled back as I took another egg from the carton and threw it hard and fast into the horizon like I did when I pitched softball games in my youth.  I was a divorced mother of two young adults who recently graduated from college; still, that didn’t figure in my ludicrous, age-inappropriate, and glorious actions.  

When my niece turned around to look, I saw the painful expression in her eyes, and I screamed out, “Not, you, Issa,” before blowing her a kiss. Then I took the last egg in the carton and pitched it past my sister’s moving car into a clear, California-blue sky.