I wrote this on my birthday, but didn't publish it until now, because I got hung up on "who" and "whom".
For almost four months.
Today is my birthday! I am 51 and yay me, because when I was 39 I was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. Now it's been at Stage IV for three and a half years, but I am stll here.
My oldest daughter was born on my birthday, 26 years ago. That was neat: she was very overdue, and she was the best birthday present I ever got. Her best friend was also born on our birthday.
A very good friend of mine, whom I met in freshman year of high school (36 years ago!) was born on this day as well. I don't think she's my friend anymore, however, and I'm OK with that. I think the fact that we shared the same date of birth had a lot to do with the fact that we became friends at all.
After my marriage ended, I realized that I had been maintaining my relationships with my friends the way I managed my relationship with my husband: I never asked for anything and I never disagreed with anybody. (Hi, Daddy.) My friend has been married for 26 years to a Muslim man, who, I wish to say again for the record, is one of the loveliest gentlemen I have ever had the pleasure to meet. In June of last year, at the time of whatever happened or didn't happen with the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, my friend and I got into a discussion of politics. She kept asking me, after opining at length about how annoying she found born-again Christians to be, and saying how she always did her best to act as Satanic as possible around them, if I did not agree with her that as Americans, we have an obligation to bend over backwards in order to understand why the hijackers in particular and Muslims in general feel and do as they do. I kept saying, calmly and politely, maintaining low tones--remember the Conehead sketches on SNL? The dad (Beldar) would caution the mom (Prymaat) and the teenage daughter (Connie) to: maintain low tones! maintain low tones!--that while I myself would never disrespect anyone's Koran, Torah, crucifix, Star of David, or Ganesha, I did not believe that the alleged flushing of the Koran was worth the deaths of the 19 Pakistanis who died in anti-American riots as a result, and that I did not feel that the miscreant Marines at Guantanamo, if indeed they did wrong--which still seems unclear--represented me as an American. I said that, just as the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims disavow the actions of the 19 hijackers, so do I disavow and disagree with any mistreatment of anyone anywhere by U.S. troops. I pointed out that Catholic and American symbols are frequent targets of mistreatment by artists and protesters; while I, as a Catholic and an American, might find this personally offensive, I have never felt the need to get out in the street and riot in defense of Jesus or the good old U.S.A. (I think both Jesus and the U.S.A. can take care of themselves) and I neither understood nor felt the need to understand those who riot in defense of the Koran or against cartoons depicting the Prophet.
This was the first time I was ever disagreeable to this friend, and it was only in the sense that I dared to disagree with her rather extreme political opinion. She emailed me soon after this exchange to say that she thought we needed to "take a break from our friendship." I haven't heard from her since, and, again, I'm OK with it.
Another person I know who shares my birthday calls herself Dr. Zack. She married that protegee of Norman Mailer, Jack Abbott, the one who got out of jail and immediately murdered a waiter.
I don't think that marriage worked out too well, either.
I don't know when his birthday was.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Saturday, August 06, 2005
my brothers' birthdays
Today is my brother's birthday. I think of him as my baby brother, but he is 39 years old today. I had just turned 11 when he was born. I remember going to the hospital with my dad--that word, "dad" sounds so friendly, doesn't it? But I was terrified of him--to pick up my mother and my new little brother, Thomas O'Connor Q. I remember smiling for the Polaroid photos my father was taking, but I was so afraid. I was afraid we'd lose the baby, because we had lost the last baby boy my mother had had, two summers before. That day--the fifth of July, 1964--my mother had started to hemhorrage unexpectedly. Badly. Placenta previa. They can see that, now, on ultrasound. Not in 1964, though.
My father screamed for me and my little sister Phyllis to run upstairs, to (a very surprised) Mrs. Collins. I was 9. Phyllis was 5. Noreen, 11, stayed in the apartment with Al, 7. Although I remember seeing my father carrying my mother, limbs floppy, unconscious, in his arms, to the elevator--we were told to run up the stairs, from the 9th floor to the 10th; I think I must have known that something was terribly wrong; I saw the blood on the floor--I didn't pray. Instead, we had mad fun all night with Maureen and Eileen Collins, who were, respectively, the same age as me and my sister. We had so much fun that Mrs. Collins, at whose door we had arrived, and to whom we were told to say: There's an emergency, had to scream at us repeatedly to go to sleep.
I knew it was an emergency, but I said not one decade of the holy rosary.
When my mother came home from the hospital a week later, I asked her, "Where's the baby?" She said, "Oh, Ellie, I'm so sorry. We lost the baby." I remember going away and coming back awhile later and saying, "But how did you lose him? Can we go find him? Maybe at the police station?" (I had been lost myself, once, and then found, at a police station.) My poor mother had to say these words to me, "No. He died. He's dead. Lost is just something people say when a baby dies."
I knew it was my fault. I knew I should have been down on my knees, praying all night, not jumping on the Collins' beds, not sneaking out of bed to greedily eat their sugary cereal, something not ever found in my house.
I know now that it was not my fault. I know now that this is simply the way a child thinks. It was just random bad luck; the same random bad luck that had left my brother Al's legs damaged by cerebral palsy; the same random bad-luck brickbats that've been hitting my family again, lately. Just random bad luck. Either that, or God hates us and wants us to suffer.
I still regret that I didn't pray all night, though.
I should have prayed all night.
I know it's my fault.
Andrew Thomas Q. Perfectly formed, with perfect little legs, and a full head of black hair. Nine pounds. Stillborn.
So two years later, I was afraid. This time, though, the doctors brought my mother in for an induced birth--they didn't wait for her to go into labor. All was calm as she left for the hospital--Westchester Square, where the last baby had died, and where my father's mother was also to die, much later--made up, hair done at the beauty parlor the day before, dressed up, wearing pretty high heels with the support stockings she was only allowed to take off for five minutes every day, because her skinny legs were black with veins. No blood, but this time I spent the day on my knees. I spent that entire summer on my knees.
When we all got home from the hospital, my mother put Tommy on the dining room table to show me how to change his diaper. As she unpinned his wet diaper, I saw erect maleness for the first time. As she stuffed the clean white cloth diaper beneath his bottom, a curve of gold with a rainbow in it cut through the air--an absolute, perfect inverted U of sparkling, iridescent pee; all of which landed neatly in the pure glittering whiteness of an open sugar bowl, at least three feet away.
Happy Birthday, Tommy. Happy Birthday, Andy.
My father screamed for me and my little sister Phyllis to run upstairs, to (a very surprised) Mrs. Collins. I was 9. Phyllis was 5. Noreen, 11, stayed in the apartment with Al, 7. Although I remember seeing my father carrying my mother, limbs floppy, unconscious, in his arms, to the elevator--we were told to run up the stairs, from the 9th floor to the 10th; I think I must have known that something was terribly wrong; I saw the blood on the floor--I didn't pray. Instead, we had mad fun all night with Maureen and Eileen Collins, who were, respectively, the same age as me and my sister. We had so much fun that Mrs. Collins, at whose door we had arrived, and to whom we were told to say: There's an emergency, had to scream at us repeatedly to go to sleep.
I knew it was an emergency, but I said not one decade of the holy rosary.
When my mother came home from the hospital a week later, I asked her, "Where's the baby?" She said, "Oh, Ellie, I'm so sorry. We lost the baby." I remember going away and coming back awhile later and saying, "But how did you lose him? Can we go find him? Maybe at the police station?" (I had been lost myself, once, and then found, at a police station.) My poor mother had to say these words to me, "No. He died. He's dead. Lost is just something people say when a baby dies."
I knew it was my fault. I knew I should have been down on my knees, praying all night, not jumping on the Collins' beds, not sneaking out of bed to greedily eat their sugary cereal, something not ever found in my house.
I know now that it was not my fault. I know now that this is simply the way a child thinks. It was just random bad luck; the same random bad luck that had left my brother Al's legs damaged by cerebral palsy; the same random bad-luck brickbats that've been hitting my family again, lately. Just random bad luck. Either that, or God hates us and wants us to suffer.
I still regret that I didn't pray all night, though.
I should have prayed all night.
I know it's my fault.
Andrew Thomas Q. Perfectly formed, with perfect little legs, and a full head of black hair. Nine pounds. Stillborn.
So two years later, I was afraid. This time, though, the doctors brought my mother in for an induced birth--they didn't wait for her to go into labor. All was calm as she left for the hospital--Westchester Square, where the last baby had died, and where my father's mother was also to die, much later--made up, hair done at the beauty parlor the day before, dressed up, wearing pretty high heels with the support stockings she was only allowed to take off for five minutes every day, because her skinny legs were black with veins. No blood, but this time I spent the day on my knees. I spent that entire summer on my knees.
When we all got home from the hospital, my mother put Tommy on the dining room table to show me how to change his diaper. As she unpinned his wet diaper, I saw erect maleness for the first time. As she stuffed the clean white cloth diaper beneath his bottom, a curve of gold with a rainbow in it cut through the air--an absolute, perfect inverted U of sparkling, iridescent pee; all of which landed neatly in the pure glittering whiteness of an open sugar bowl, at least three feet away.
Happy Birthday, Tommy. Happy Birthday, Andy.
what I wrote to my husband about the tomatoes (I write to him from time to time)
handwritten:
Kindly do not leave your produce by my door. This is what it makes me remember: me and Lala waving to you from the window, or the top of the hill, as you tilled your gargantuan zucchini. How can I have been so happy? But I was, we were…
I can only live at all if I live my life like an amnesia victim. I do very poorly on the days on which I remember anything at all… as on the morning of Lala's birthday.
Stay away from my door. I don’t want to see tomatoes from your garden or cherries in Stew Leonards' bags ever again. Don’t make me remember. It’s why I can’t bear your voice. Your voice makes me remember you.
Be sure to tell Emily how sad your tomatoes made me, so she can get herself off tonight.
It’s a curse to have a memory like mine—I wish I could be like you and remember nothing, feel nothing.
“Why couldn’t I have been made of stone, like them?”
end handwritten note
Her name is Emily.
My name is Eleanor.
Kindly do not leave your produce by my door. This is what it makes me remember: me and Lala waving to you from the window, or the top of the hill, as you tilled your gargantuan zucchini. How can I have been so happy? But I was, we were…
I can only live at all if I live my life like an amnesia victim. I do very poorly on the days on which I remember anything at all… as on the morning of Lala's birthday.
Stay away from my door. I don’t want to see tomatoes from your garden or cherries in Stew Leonards' bags ever again. Don’t make me remember. It’s why I can’t bear your voice. Your voice makes me remember you.
Be sure to tell Emily how sad your tomatoes made me, so she can get herself off tonight.
It’s a curse to have a memory like mine—I wish I could be like you and remember nothing, feel nothing.
“Why couldn’t I have been made of stone, like them?”
end handwritten note
Her name is Emily.
My name is Eleanor.
obsessive-compulsiveness
Now I go on to criticize myself.
The above--or below, rather--is about the shortest thing I have ever written. This is a good thing, because I usually just go on and on and on. I can never just leave something I've written alone; I can never just toss something off. (I changed to "have ever written" from "ever wrote" above. Not sure why. Always checking, changing, going back.) But: It sounds too trying-hard-to-be-literary and, and is therefore pretentious. Phony. Also: I had to spell check "tomatoes".
I used to win every spelling bee in my grammar school. My brain is not what it once was. Wah, wah, wah. (This is my favorite sound bite from the Howard Stern show. Robin will report some hideous, appalling news story; there will be a few seconds of either respectful silence or tch-tching at the horribleness of said story; then, you hear Artie : " Wah Wah Wah. I have no legs", if, for example, the story was about a man losing his legs.)
I have one breast.
Wah, wah, wah.
The above--or below, rather--is about the shortest thing I have ever written. This is a good thing, because I usually just go on and on and on. I can never just leave something I've written alone; I can never just toss something off. (I changed to "have ever written" from "ever wrote" above. Not sure why. Always checking, changing, going back.) But: It sounds too trying-hard-to-be-literary and, and is therefore pretentious. Phony. Also: I had to spell check "tomatoes".
I used to win every spelling bee in my grammar school. My brain is not what it once was. Wah, wah, wah. (This is my favorite sound bite from the Howard Stern show. Robin will report some hideous, appalling news story; there will be a few seconds of either respectful silence or tch-tching at the horribleness of said story; then, you hear Artie : " Wah Wah Wah. I have no legs", if, for example, the story was about a man losing his legs.)
I have one breast.
Wah, wah, wah.
tomatoes, among other things, make me sad
My once and future king--my erstwhile husband--left his home grown tomatoes outside my apartment door. They made me feel very sad, remembering.
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