Category Archives: People

The Woman in the Waiting Room (50)

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I am not so naive or so bigoted to believe all doctors are assholes or all nurses are saints. I know both groups have their fair share of both. But when my stepfather was in the hospital, it was the doctors who were the challenge and the nurses who helped to get us through. It was the nurses and the other family members of patients on the floor. There is something that happens between strangers sitting together in a room when each of you faces losing a loved one. I remember sitting in the little alcove on the eastern side of the oncology floor in the Newport Beach hospital. And I remember a short blonde-haired woman whose husband was dying. I remember seeing recognition when our eyes would meet across the small space. I think we came to love each other a little bit sitting in that room together.

I was sitting there one afternoon, slouched against the blue fabric chairs, when I heard her voice and looked up. She was standing in the hallway, head tilted up toward the oncologist. “You want to understand?” his voice now, loud against the white tiles. “Then you go back ten years,” he growled at her, “and go to medical school.” I don’t remember what came next, only the way the bottom fell out of me for her in that terrible moment. I knew it had already been almost impossible to remain upright, to keep limbs and torso stitched together, and here she was bludgeoned now by his mean, defensive arrogance. I wanted to scream at him on her behalf. I may very well have gone after him, spoken my mind. I was 24 and had a habit of doing so. But I hope I went to her instead. I hope I offered comfort when she needed it. And I hope my eyes spoke those same volumes to hers whenever we met in the alcove or passed each other in the hallway. Brave, kind stranger—que le vaya bien.

A Jolt from the Universe (47)

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When I am posting the little flyers I’d made for the drop-in writing circle, I send off little hopes and prayers with them. May it be sweet and safe, I ask. When Laurie tells me she felt safe in our first circle, I hear that echo, send my thanks. And before we begin yesterday, the universe gives me a bit of a jolt I am pretty sure is tied to that same prayer, that same hope: sweet and safe. We’d opened the back doors of the hall, moved the big round table in front of them, sun and air beside us. It is just before eleven. I light a candle in the center of the circle. Laurie and Sharon are sitting at the table, and I’m standing beside it. A woman marches across the long hall, plants herself near Laurie’s elbow.

“Are you coming to join us?” I ask her.

“No,” she says. She stands where she is, a soldier at attention.

“Well, did you think you wanted to watch us?” I ask.

“Maybe,” she says.

“Well,” I say, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.” I’d thought about this earlier. We were not looking for an audience.

I haven’t finished my sentence when she does an abrupt about-face and marches back across the hall. She has her arms at her sides, and she is flapping her hands back toward me as she walks, as though she can swat away my words, keep them from following her.

“Um, what is the flapping of the hands?” I ask. And, “Are you really not going to talk to me?” She keeps walking away, keeps flapping her hands in my direction. “I’d be happy to have a conversation with you about this,” I say.

She reaches the door at the other end. “Maybe,” I think I hear her say as she walks out again.

We are all a little stunned. I have to check. “Was I inappropriate in my response?” I ask. They say I wasn’t. I have to shake it out of me then, a kind of invasion I feel in my body. I wave my arms around in the air above the table. “Whoosh whoosh whoosh,” I say. A different flapping of hands, I think now. As best I can figure, this odd jolt is a message. I take it as encouragement and a reason to trust. Maybe it says we can keep our space safe no matter who comes along. And maybe it says, “Certain beings will be led away.”

Our First Circle (46)

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Our first writing circle was sweet sweet sweet. There were four of us, and we did two eleven-minute writing sessions. I loved what everyone wrote. They were vivid and filled with marvelous details. My critic was up, though, and grumbled in my ear when I was writing. It was hard to keep the pen moving, to resist crossing out words as I wrote. I think I never really “dropped down,” wasn’t able to let it come through me with any sense of ease. Was that because even though I said I didn’t want to be a leader here, even though I want to be only a participant, by virtue of instigating it, of bringing the prompts, of explaining the mechanics, I felt like I needed to “perform” at some acceptable level? Or was it the cup of green tea I couldn’t resist drinking before I arrived? Or could it have been only because I haven’t done this in a long time, because I had hopes, had expectations? I wanted to feel the magic that can happen on the page. It makes me sad I wasn’t able to surrender to it. I used to find my way there more often. It used to be easy, like walking through an open doorway, like being invited in to sip tea by the big window overlooking the lake. I told Laurie later how critical I felt about my own writing, how strong and beautiful I found the pieces they each read. “Beginners luck,” she said. She wrote a prose poem I hope she’ll work with more. She told me she’d felt safe there, and that was a boon for me, balm to disconcerted ears. It made me glad and grateful. I helped make that happen.

Sit—Write with Us (45)

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Thursday we’re going to meet at the community center to write. I’m thinking short, timed freewriting, what Natalie Goldberg calls “writing practice.” She’s known for saying, “Shut up and write,” though maybe more to herself than to others. I don’t like the shut up part, but I like the process. I’ll bring my collection of popsicle sticks, mostly Goldberg writing prompts and a smattering of others. I’ll bring my timer. We’ll write for ten minutes, or maybe eleven. Then we’ll read what we’ve written and go for eleven minutes more. I need to make a flyer, but I don’t worry about it. Laurie and I will begin on Thursday with whoever else hears about it and shows up. A drop-in group, I’ll call it when I write something up. I need this. I’m pretty sure I need this almost as much as I need sleep. So I’m glad we’re just going to begin, the hell with planning. I get to sit in a room with other people writing, our pens making scratching sounds as we scribble across the pages before us. I get to read my unedited words out loud, listen to what others have written, performing together the alchemy I may not have words for but believe in with all of me. Change both visceral and ethereal, the magic of spontaneous writing. I thank you in advance.

More Musings from the Kitchen Sink (42)

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Sunday night I made a bold move. I retired my old scrubbie and Trader Joe’s kitchen cloth to a home beneath the sink, relegated now to dirtier tasks. Monday I am washing dishes with the new pristine scrubbie. I feel exuberant with morning energy, new day joy. The perfect aqua kitchen cloth sitting wet at the edge of the sink makes me happy, too. Should I take a picture of this one, like the yellow one? I imagine a series of photographs of kitchen cloths lined up at eye level across a white gallery wall. I don’t know how many have come between this delicious aqua and the famed yellow one. I know the last one was orange, probably the last two since I cut them in half. When I decided to splurge and spring the new ones from the drawer, I actually had to think about it first. The old ones weren’t terrible yet. As I run the new soapy scrubbie inside one of the cats’ dinner bowls I think about how this level of frugality came from having an immigrant mother. I am so white, so middle class, I forget I am the daughter of an immigrant. It shapes you, makes you different. Today my mother probably wouldn’t think twice about switching out her kitchen cloths, but it came to me when she was young, when she was new to this country. I think about how frugality is good, how not being wasteful is important for the environment, too, the right thing. I even picture my old scrubbie and cloth in the landfill. Then I tell myself these are small things. I try to be careful. I’m not dumping a television set. I finish washing the dishes, run a dry cloth along the edge of the counter. I think about how the sight of the aqua cloth beside the sink makes me happy. People will think I’m crazy. There she goes again, that odd, twisty woman and her kitchen cloths. But I’m glad I liberated the new ones. It seems like a small indulgence for all that goofy pleasure. I decide to be reckless and retire this new pair at an even earlier age.

I Dream Robert Redford (36)

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I dream I am ordering a burrito from Robert Redford. He is behind the cutout window of a little makeshift stand inside a large building, maybe a low-rent lobby but more the feeling of a second floor nonprofit, part workspace and part shelter. There is a handmade note attached to the side of the flimsy stand telling what they serve, and there are three different kinds of pork, so he needs to explain them to me. He is completely warm and kind and gives me his undivided attention. There are other people waiting, but he acts like we have all the time in the world. We talk about all kinds of things. The conversation feels flirty and fun. At one point I look at my feet and tell him I have forgotten what I wanted to say. A Mexican woman arrives to tell me the third pork option has something mixed in with the pork. I understand everything she is saying except the Spanish word for what is mixed in. She goes away and returns with this four foot long bundle of branches with dried leaves. I think it is the leaves she is talking about that must be added to the pork mixture, and then I follow the curve of the branches with my eyes and see they are covered with raisins! (After I wake I wonder if they ever do this, leave the grapes after the harvest, let them dry on the vine and then gather them together like this in the pruning process. I look up the word for raisins. Did she say pasas? Uvas secas? I don’t remember now.) At one point in my infatuation, of being so drawn to Redford, I am leaning in toward him while we talk. “Too close,” he says, and then he goes back to whatever he is telling me. There is no judgment of me in his warning, no recoil in him. I am just reminded in his warm, quiet voice to back off a bit. There is such sweetness in it all. I wake up filled with pleasure (and hungry for a pork burrito).

My Boo, My Barometer (26)

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My black cat lying on the bed

My cat Sable has a habit of yelling at me whenever I’m wound too tight. On days when my stress is high, he makes me even crazier. He paces, never settles, emits loud ceaseless meows while he stares at me. “Don’t you dare,” I tell him when it threatens to send me over the edge I’m already skirting. “Not today, Boo.” I shake my head. “I can’t handle it today.” When he doesn’t give up, I often end up screaming at him. “Enough,” I yell. “Enough.” It isn’t something I’m proud of. Last Friday when he started his endless howling, I told him he was just going to have to deal with my anxiety. “I am already too tense,” I say in a hard, brittle voice. “The last thing I need today is you yelling at me.” Of course, he keeps it up. He’s a cat. He stalks from kitchen to front stoop and back again, his cat roars punctuating the winter air, poking me in the eyeballs, the back of my head. It is worse than nails on chalkboard, worse than the old scratchy LP stuck on the turntable, the endless jarring repetitive noise. I want to scream at him, but I sit down instead. “You want kisses?” I ask him. I pat the bed beside me. He leaps up, still howling away, but quiets when I pet him. I’ve always known he’s my barometer, but I finally get how he can guide me. I let everything else fall away for a few moments while I stroke him, his whole soft little self vibrating with his big purrs. Is it really that simple? I wonder. Is it really just a choice for each moment, to drop back down to calm, to stop the frenzied pace and the racing mind and just be, warm black fur beneath my fingers?