April 29, 2005
This is one of those days.
-H.
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April 22, 2005
In Paris in 1995, I found a little antique shop on a side street near Notre-Dame. In that shop I bought an old tarnished necklace of the icon of Sainte Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. I wore that necklace every day for the next few years, and sitting here now I wonder where it's got to. I wonder if Sainte Genevieve has left me for another poor and confused young woman, one tainted by life but yearning and believing that there is more for her out there, more life than she can hold in the broken plastic spoons that she holds in trembling fingers. And if indeed she has left me and hangs around the neck of someone that needs her more, then I wish her many days of warming a spot on the throat of someone who just needs to be set free.
In that bookshop I also bought a book of French poetry. It was a ragged old book with a dusty maroon cover. I read it many times in the years to follow, and some things within those pages stay with me still no matter where I go. I think about when I bought it, the day after I met Kim for the first time. The day after he held me and we danced by the Seine on a frozen night in March, the lamplight showing a face looking at me in a way I had never been looked at before.
The poem is called "Le Pont Mirabeau", and here it is in English.
Beneath Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
and our love; Must I remember?
Joy always followed pain
Nights, hours,
Days go by yet I remain.
Love flows away like this running water,
Love abandons me.
How life is slow
And I am violated by Hope.
Nights, hours,
Days go by yet I remain.
The days and weeks go by
Nor time
Nor love returns.
'˜Neath Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
Nights, hours,
Days go by yet I remain.
And when I think of that poem, I think of Kim.
I had that book for many years, until the memory of it was too hot to hold in my hands, to loud to be quietly held in a bookshelf. I couldn't cope anymore, and it met with the business end of the fireplace during the dark winter in Sweden.
But the poems stay inside my head, even if the ashes were conscribed to the sky.
One line of a poem is the deathwatch beetle to a relationship. In the years that followed and in whatever relationships I was in, there was a line of a poem that was, to me, a sign. It would pop into my head unbidden, and when it did, I knew that there was trouble. It was the grim reaper that would slice the relationship in half. So sitting across someone at a table with my feet curled beneath me, if I heard the line, I knew that a break-up was coming. In the hallways that inevitably mark the turning points in my relationships, if it floated in my head, I knew the end was coming.
Even as I'm loving you, I am letting go.
And then it would be over.
But somehow the desolation of the two poems has, over time, become tangled with the beautiful hope that our Gallic neighbors can infuse. The two dark poems that mark painful milestones in my past have been introduced to the new possibility of light that marks the current point in my life. The French poet Lucien Becker has two poems that now swirl around me.
On a very sunny last Saturday Angus and I found ourselves in the bedroom. I found my fingers opening the front zipper of his trousers and sliding them to the floor. I unbuttoned his shirt and spread my fingers across his chest. In the sunlight of the bedroom, he laid me down on the bed, a splash of sunlight across my body, already naked, already waiting. In smooth motions we slide around each other, the windows open, the sunshine hot.
I look out the window and see our neighbor, a helictoper pilot, watering his garden while still in his uniform. A smile on my face, I tell Angus I've been naughty, and he pauses in the sun to hear my sexual confession. I tell him that I invited the pilot over the afternoon before and, on our bed, I had wild and illegal sex with him, making him promise to not tell anyone. With the window open and the possibility of being heard, I tell him all the things the pilot did to me, and it's all too much for both of us and we reach a sensational orgasm together. And at the end, he holds me close and kisses my sweaty forehead as we look out the window at the pilot watering his garden, and he is back to being just a neighbor, not a bed-mate.
I didn't misbehave, I only introduced the idea of him in order to allow our limbs to tangle even more than they had before.
I couldn't misbehave with him, as in my world, there is only Angus.
My hands seek out the part of you
where my stroking makes its silky sound
and our bodies stay standing with the weight
of a whole town's walls against them.
With a single look, with a single kiss,
I am nearer your body than you will ever be
and your mouth alights on mine
a little like the froth on a dark stream.
And even though deep inside of me I am still small and dark and quiet, there is something in me that wonders if the girl that got set free from who she was never really left. Even if I can't remember the feel of that necklace on my skin, even if I can't remember what it felt like to have his hands on the small of my back, it doesn't mean that my life is going to be spent in fear, in pain or in loss, or on the run. Someday maybe I will reconcile who I was with who I am becoming, but until then the tiny person inside of me has to just listen to the props in my head and know there is a reason for them.
Which brings me back to Becker.
I know death can do nothing to me
so long as you stay between it and me,
so long as the glow-worm of pleasure
keeps coming alight in your flesh.
The setting sun eddies on each of your fingernails
before it goes to swell a last mountain of brightness
and I can see by your wrist the steps
your life is taking to reach me.
And then I know that however lost I am inside of myself, as long as he doesn't let me go, I am never alone.
-H.
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April 21, 2005
IBS malfunctions mean I can't decide if I'm coming of going (and not the good, romantic, roll-around-on-the-bed kind of coming).
Desquamation of my skin rampant.
Period started and I have a pimple very prominently on my forehead, proving that you're never too old to suffer the adolescence you never wanted anyway.
Off to deal with the vapid horror that is my job. I'll be standing in a test lab making rocket tests all day long, or at least that's what I'll be doing when I am not in conference calls or dealing with 300 lines of Microsoft Project.
So no blogging from me today as I go forth and try to establish what I want to be when I grow up.
Suggestions welcome.
Or you can tell me what you're going to be when you grow, and maybe I'll just steal your idea instead.
-H.
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April 20, 2005
There are walls, after all. Even if they beckon a trip to Monaco beyond that. Those walls are the ones to look out for.
Maybe I should stop playing Bic Runga's And No More Shall We Part over and over again.
This week started out on high octane. The phone calls trailed off last Friday evening around 8 pm, but the texts continued all weekend. By Monday, I was in front of the PC and doing damage control at 7 am. I carried on until well after 7 pm. Tuesday I saw 7 am to 7 pm come and go.
I am putting in 12 hour days that are sometimes so packed that I have to mute my phone just so I can pee.
Today and Thursday I get to be in Guildford all day. And today sees me demonstrating our Rocket Riding Gerbil to Third in Charge, in preparation for demonstrating the product next week to men who have more titles in their names than I have in my entire book collection in the study.
The stress just keeps building. While it's nice to win a weekend in Monaco with the world's greatest man, I also can't help but regret that now people know who I am. Now the phone calls keep coming in. Now there's someone to point to.
On Tuesday it got so bad that while I would be on one ten minute phone call, I would miss four others. While checking voice mail to listen to those missed calls, I would receive another phone call. Returning those four phone calls resulted in me missing other calls. My email inbox is giving me those "System Administrator Notification: Your inbox is full, you lazy cow" faster than I can delete. I decided for the sake of my sanity I had to-had to-take a lunch break and go to Pilates.
While I was there, I missed more calls and no less than thirty emails.
I join another conference call and am confronted with the types of questions that are appearing more and more everyday:
"Helen, we have a clash of resources. Both issues are urgent. You need to tell me what the priority is now so that I can direct them."
"Helen, this rocket part isn't quite right. We are scrambling to figure out if we want this but need to know if the priority is a second part or just wait for the next rebuild that's coming. You need to decide, and we need the answer within 30 minutes."
"Helen, we need you to approve payment for this bill, which is more money than you will ever see in your life, ever. I know you want a full tally but we agreed with one of your seniors that you would just pay us anyway. Your call."
And no matter how many things I flag up to my seniors, I am still paddling upstream. Without a lifejacket. No paddle. And hell, there's not even any boat.
Then I hear word that the staff are being worked to death. They are exhausted and worn out. They have been giving it their all and my stupid pep talks are not enough anymore.
That is often the case.
I am often not enough anymore.
I enquire about the morale at one of the sites I am going to tomorrow. I am told it's so low that people are on the verge of quitting. In the next breath I am told that the mucho Seniors and I will be treated to breakfast tomorrow morning.
"What about the team?" I ask.
"What about them?" comes the reply.
"Well, aren't they joining for breakfast?" I reply.
"No." comes the bored reply.
"Are you kidding? Why not?" I ask, incredulously.
"Why would we want them around?"
"You just told me how low the morale was! Did it not occur to you that this will further alienate people?" I shout back.
I finally get a chance to go to the grocery store late Tuesday afternoon. I had to buy the fixings to make a sumptuous birthday dinner for my dear boy, and so I raced to Tesco with very little time in between conference calls. I race around the shop picking up the few things I need to make my lovely boy his requested birthday meal of risotto. I pick up 9 bottles on wine, surprised I am able to restrain myself to just the 9. Whizzing through the pastry aisle, I pick up 5 massive bags of doughnuts and a large tray of these revolting things in England called flapjacks.
They're for my team to enjoy, and the senior managers aren't getting any.
A woman holding her young son's hand points to my cart and stares. She is gawking at me. I look at my shopping selection-an overwhelming selection of alcohol and baked goods, camouflaging the few healthy vegetables which are buried underneath.
"I'm a diabetic alcoholic. I'm feeling suicidal." I say to her with a straight face.
Her eyes bulge and she rushes off. I hear her son as he asks in a stage whisper, "Mummy, what's a diabetacolic?"
I race back to the vegetable aisle to grab some leeks and feel my pocket vibrate. I had forgotten my phone was back there. Looking at the screen, I realize that the phone has gone off a number of times in the twenty minutes I had been in there.
And there amongst the tomatoes I burst into tears.
I want to throw my phone across the fruit section and scream: Just! Stop! Fucking! Ringing! I want to watch my phone smash into a thousand pieces. I want to hear the gorgeous sound of plastic splitting into quiet, into absolute silence.
Tears spilling down my face, I just bury my head in my hands. I am so fucking tired it's amazing. I feel the skin beneath my eyes pulling down and dark, and taking with it my sense of being able to keep my head above water. I just want this project to be over now, I want to not be tied to phone calls and emails that have such life and death overtones.
I realize a stock boy is looking at me. I wipe my face and somehow, somewhere, find a little place that hasn't snapped. I look at him.
"It's the carrots. They're out of season. My disappointment is mammoth." I say blankly to him.
I grab my cart, pay, and go home. I call Angus, who somehow manages to be the sunshine through the rain. I grab hold of the sound of his voice on the phone and fold my umbrella up, hoping that his mood can help me to just get through the rest of the day.
In my next conference call, the mood is bleak. I keep hearing "can't do this", "what do we do about this?", "why should we do this?" Halfway through, I just start barking at people.
And I've flipped out. "Problems and issues! Constantly! You know what? I am so fucking tired that I don't want any of you to ring me for at least one week. Seriously. I have been a slave to this job, so much so that I don't even know myself anymore. I read mails I wrote and I don't remember writing them. Did you know that it's Spring? Yeah. It is. Open your window and check it out. Did you know that in the Spring my winter skin sloughs off my body, and in order not to look like a monkey with diaper rash I have to exfoliate and moisturize like a madman? No? You didn't know that? Well I do. And I haven't been able to, so I look like a fucking Sleestack. It's all alligator here. My skin is dry all over the place, even on my nipples. That's right. I have crusty nipples. And I haven't had any quality time with my vibrator in...Christ...I can't even remember when I had any quality time with my vibrator. So please-let's dial down the drama, ok?"
Actually, I don't say any of that.
What I do say is: "Look! I know people are frustrated, and so am I! But let's try to figure out how to fix this instead of complaining! I don't want to hear a single negative comment on the rest of this call, ok? Let's just fix things. I am so utterly sick of feeling like it's so much death and gloom. We're all ok, and we can talk all of this out."
The phone is quiet, then people come in with suggestions.
A productive response, but I am still so depressed and sick of my job that I can barely hold my head up.
By the time Angus gets home, I am in the bathtub with a bottle of chardonnay and donning a face mask from Lush that smells like honey but looks like pigeon vomit. He makes me Thai peanut curry, with soy bits shaped like chicken that-wait for it-tastes like chicken. He talks to me in low soothing tones, the tones you use to calm a wild dog down.
And I love him so much that I can't get my arms wide enough to show him just how much I do.
Happy birthday Angus, the world's greatest 43 year old man.
-H.
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April 19, 2005
One I don't really want.
At all.
It took Angus' reminders to let me know that something needed to be done. Gentle reminders, but reminders which would have me chewing the interior walls of the car each time he said it. It's not that I was angry with him for saying things, it's that I kept trying to push it out of my head, to pretend it wasn't there. I was quite happy with my head stuck in the sand, thank you very much, even if my ears were full of the stuff. My dread of the activity was so great that I had a complete and total mental block, and each time I thought about it my brain would immediately switch gears and all I could think of was Pebbles and Bam-Bam singing "Let the Sun Shine In".
I have to take driving lessons to take the test to get a new license.
Mommy told me something, a little kid should know
Oh god, there it goes.
In Europe, for some unknown reason, an American driving license is good for one year and one year only. I knew this in Sweden but I drove anyway. I drove not only because I am one stubborn cow, but also because in Sweden the pass rate of the driving test was catastrophic. It was such gloom and doom that as I hurtled my way about the Swedish motorways I would laugh and think: NO fucking way am I taking a driving test. For-get-about-it.
After all, I did all that when I was 16 and living in Arlington, Texas. I have already been exposed to nervous driving instructors with their chicken brake and their complete and absolute lack of joy for life. I have already seen the gory videos and spent time scratching my name on the driving school desks. I paid my teenage dues, there's no way in hell that I was going to go through that again.
But it turns out I am wrong.
In order to pass this damn thing, I realized that I am going to have to have a few lessons in order to un-learn the lazy and comfortable driving habits that I have gained in my 15+ years of driving. I am going to have to go in and teach myself that driving with my knees while trying to blow my nose is no longer acceptable. That playing airplane in the wind with one hand while loosely steering with the other is not ok.
This, since insurance won't cover me here if it's more than one year since I moved here and I still haven't gotten a UK license.
So with a gun to my head (only they very sensibly don't allow guns in England, thank God) and a deep and angry sigh, I filled in all the paperwork. I pay an enormous fee and get a plastic ID card back in the mail with a huge angry red letter "L" on the top. The "L" is for "learner". Apparently we're supposed to have big red "L"s on the cars as well, but I will burn down whole rainforests before I will allow that to happen.
So with a very heavy heart, I called a driving school nearby and signed up.
It's all about the devil, and I learned to hate him so.
And I had my first lesson. I had to meet him in the parking lot of the local doctor's office, so I drove there, feeling full of molten recalcitrance. I waited there, wondering if I was in the wrong place, when suddenly a red beat-up piece of shit Peugeot pulls into the lot. It's so ugly it's unbelievable. It's so repugnant I can't understand how it's even allowed on the road, why it is the road hasn't just swallowed it up to save England from the embarrassment of such an eyesore. And it's obviously a diesel as it's rumbling so much I feel that we are registering on the Richter Scale.
And there, on the top of the car, is the world's largest red fuck-off "L" sign, pointing it's way to the heavens and letting everyone know that a learner driver is in the car.
She said he causes trouble when you let him in your room, he'll never ever leave you if your heart is filled with gloom.
I. Hate. My. Life. I walk to the car and get in, remarking on the fugly interior-ropy cushions laying on all the seats, a sun-bleached box of kleenex on the rear seat and a cassette deck that looks like it remembers with fondness the inkiness of the 80's. Actually, it looks like it really misses its former occupant, the 8 Track player.
Then the driving instructor unfolds himself from the seat of the car. From a height perspective, he's a pretty reliable stand-in for Herman Munster and he's wearing those sunglasses that shade themselves based on various degrees of the sun's harmful rays, because quite suddenly his glasses go black.
"Get in!" he calls, and with a heart filled with dread I get into the clown car.
When you are unhappy, the devil wears a grin.
Stan, as it appears his name is, takes my details. "So you're American, are you?" he asks.
"Yup." I reply.
"I couldn't tell by the sight of you." he replies, looking at me.
Damn sorry about that, Stan, but my American flag dress is at the cleaner's and I would have sparklers hanging out of my ass, only last time I tried that routine I got second degree burns.
"Americans don't know a thing about driving," he tuts. "Wrong side of the road, too agressive, sometimes barefoot. Clueless, you people. Clueless."
Oh good, Stan. I see we're going to get on just fine. I wonder if this is the point where I tell him that when I lived in the States I would sometimes drive across country in my automatic Toyota with my left leg tucked underneath me as my right one stayed on the accelerator. I decide it wouldn't bode well.
We buckle up and get into the car. I navigate us out of the parking space when Stan roars right in my ear, "Automatic failure!"
I slam on the brakes and worry that little driblets of urine have just made their bid for freedom between my legs.
But oh he starts to run in when the light comes prowling in.
"What?" I ask.
"You didn't check the mirror." Stan replies calmly. He is seriously strange.
"Yes I did!" I replied hotly. Because I did.
"You didn't make me believe you did. It's all about body language. That's the one good thing you people have given us-the term' body language'. It's true. That's what the test examiner needs to know. I'm only giving you this lesson as they're going to test you."
Shaking, I drive us out of the lot.
And it's hell. I get "Automatic failure!" screamed at me no less than 15 times. I am, apparently, a complete waste of automotive navigation. I am an affront to the car industry. I use one hand to turn the car, I don't slow down before I get to a light that's already green (don't you want to kill those people who do that? Don't you?) and even worse-I don't approach roundabouts at less than 20 miles per hour.
"Less than 20 miles per hour?" I shout over the din of the rumbling diesel. "Can your car manage that, or do I need to go in the front and wind up the turnkey again?"
Halfway through my first hour of lessons, Stan turns to me. "Helen," he says in a grandfatherly way. "It's my goal to make you hate me so much you'll work hard on your driving just to pass your test to get away from me."
"Oh, Stan," I said kindly while smiling sweetly at him. "We passed that milestone half and hour ago."
One part of the test is to park on a street and reverse around a corner. You may think this is easy. You may think you could do it.
But trust me.
You can't.
According to driving regulations, wou have to stop three times while doing this, just to assure your paranoid fears that no car has just suddenly appeared from the back end of a David Blaine magic trick. How'd I learn this? After being told to park on a side street and reverse around a corner, I did just that. I signalled. I checked my mirrors.
And I got yelled at with "Automatic failure!"
"What?" I cried exhausted. I hated Stan. I hated cars. I rued the day the pony and cart went out of style. "What could I possibly have done wrong there?"
He explained the three points when I have to actually stop the car. Three times. I look at him like he's a circus chimp.
"Do you actually drive like that?" I ask.
He nods. "I do, and all safe drivers should."
"Right. Do you actually get anywhere?"
"I do."
"And none of your neighbors have ever threatened you with grievous bodily harm?"
"They haven't."
I'm so fucked on this test.
At the end of the hour, driving back to the parking lot, the icing on the cake occurs. I get stuck behind a double-decker bus hauling teenagers somewhere. They all look at me driving the World's Oldest Car with it's big fuck-me red letter "L" on it, and they all cram into the back windows and laugh and point.
I hate everyone.
Most of all Stan.
Henry Ford's pretty low on the list, too.
So let the sun shine in!
Face it with a grin!
Smilers never lose,
And Frowners never win!
So let the sun shine in!
Face it with a grin!
Open up your heart and let the sun shine in
-H.
PS-very depressed. Just found out the home of my dreams has sold only two days after us finding it and trying to get ahold of the estate agent. It was Georgian (so built late 1700's), in our price range and in Whitney Houston. And almost no homes in Whitney Houston are in our price range. It's...what...1:00 pm? Yeah. I'm going to need to be drinking soon.
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April 18, 2005
It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.
Now, he could afford to be so astute, being Swiss and all. But his idea is something I can subscribe to. I can tell people that I lost a job, that I tried to kill myself, that I am have spent my life on the lam trying to evade that other chick named Helen, the one that won't let me step outside of myself. I can tell people things like that easier than the nut job things that I seem to pull on a daily basis.
Nutty things like the fact that I sometimes look my cat Maggie in the eyes and I can tell she's plotting a massive coup of the empire of Luxembourg. I just know it. She's planning it one piece of cat nibble at a time.
Sitting on the floor of the study Sunday night I turn to Angus. "Do you think Maggie is the Devil's Spawn?" I ask.
He is used to my whims and fantasies. Typing on the PC, and with all the due concentration and gravity that a egomaniacal potential feline dictator in the home deserves, he considers. "Could be, dear." he replies.
I turn to Maggie and look in her eyes. "Are you the dominion of Satan?" I ask her seriously. She looks at me. "My precious darling, are you the dominion of Satan?" She rubs her head against my forehead and I know that she is secretly saying: Yes, and when I rule Luxembourg I have decided I will let you live.
Mumin walks in meowing. Angus turns from the PC at the sound. "Ah. I guess she's the one who is Satan's spawn."
"No," I say sadly, wondering how the gene pool can be so cruel. Curse Darwin and his bloody Galapagos Islands! "Mumin is not clever enough."
I imagine a conversation between Maggie and Mumin.
Maggie: I am close now Mumin. I have the fake passports we need. I have perfected my cliched French Pink Panther accent. It's only a matter of hiring a taxi, sneaking off to the airport, and persuading the guards with the Uzis that we're just ordinary housecats on a spin of the tarmac so we can run alongside a jumbo jet a la Bruce Willis (albeit with more hair) and hitch a ride to the country of my domination! Are you with me?
Mumin: Cheese.
I love that cat anyway.
It's true-sometimes the deep is easier to confess than the shallow. I can tell you that I am willing to work hard and help people out, but I can't tell you that if a person sends me an Outlook task reminding me that I need to do something to help them, I will deliberately not do it since I can't stand being controlled like that. I can talk about my divorce easier than admitting I talk to my cats and pretend they talk back (put the straightjacket down. I know they don't really talk). I can tell you that I was hit in a relationship with less self-consciousness than I can tell you what my pet peeve is.
Wanna' know what it is? OK. Here goes. Despite a lifetime of being an angry impatient chick, despite spending my teens and twenties getting flashed up about fucking everything, I have mellowed substantially. Wait in a long queue? OK. Deal with stupid people? Welcome to my job. Throughout my life, there is only one pet peeve that I have always had.
Repetitive noises.
Seriously, tap your pencil on your notebook and I am likely to rip your throat out using a bamboo back scratcher. Something vibrating in the car? Pull over to fix it or I may be justified in committing random acts of aggressive driving. If I were ever a spy and captured, I think would hold up well (sometimes the ability to step outside of yourself can be a good thing). Torture? Bring it on. After all, I love a good spanking. Rip my fingernails out? That's OK, I don't really like them anyway. Deprive me of sleep? Welcome to my insomniac Kafka life.
But once they started tapping a pen on the table, I would snap. I can see it now. "OK, OK, oh leader of the Luxembourg resistance movement!" I would scream in sick desperation. My eyes would be wild, my hair unkempt, and I'd be covered in cat hair. "The security code to the nuclear bomb storage unit is 1-2-3-4! OK! Satisfied? Now stop tapping the fucking pencil, for the love of God, man! And while we're at it, let's get rid of the Tender Vittle snack cakes on the table, OK? The smell is whipping me."
Yup. I'm embarrassed admitting my pet peeve. So it's true-you can admit to the serious easier than the ridiculous. I can back up Rousseau on that one.
I wonder if I really was a criminal if I could get on the stand and admit I could be behind the world's largest counterfitting operation, but would have to omit the fact that I once tripped over the cord of my sophisticated Xerox machine and that's how I wound up with stitches on my forehead.
Not that that happened, of course.
I'm just saying.
-H.
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April 15, 2005
I have said it before and I have to say it again-I am terrible at making friends. I just can't do it. I have a couple of friends that I've carried in my heart through the years and will always keep, but that was a hard battle. In my childhood the escalator of friends didn't stop, and now when I look at older pictures I can't even remember their names. I can't remember if they always wore their hair scraped back like that. I can't remember if that gap where their front teeth were ever filled in by buck-toothed adult teeth when I knew them.
I was a troubled chick. As a child I was just so fucking desperate to be loved it was unbelievable. I was the epitome of "people-pleaser". I was always chasing after people seeking acceptance, seeking friendship, wondering if somehow the fact that I could be liked meant I was a human being, or if the stepping out of myself would always be a part of who I was.
But all of the moving around, the turbulence, the battles...by the time I became a teenager, I was broken.
I kept to myself. If you were to ask anyone from my high school, they'll tell you they don't remember me. I was the one who occasionally made sarcastic quips, the smart kid. I had no friends.
I didn't want any.
Or at least that's what I told myself.
My adult years were marked by yo-yos. A female friend would stumble into my life, and I would be firends for a while and then wind up rejecting her horribly. I was a terrible person. I would let them in just a little bit, only to pick a fight with them and disappear. I would make sure the argument was so cold and hostile as to make sure they would leave my life. One friend-and this makes me a rotten fucking human being-I picked a fight with her on her birthday. We never spoke again, and that's what I wanted.
Like the angry caged dogs in the shelters, I guess. Smack us one too many times and we will bite you for no reason just to give you a reason to smack us again. We'll push you out of our lives before you get the chance to leave.
But in the past year I have been working to change this. Maybe some part of me feels like, in some way, I deserve to have friends. It's ok to talk to people. And once, when I used to lie about many facets of who I am just to prevent people from getting close to me, I now tell the truth.
Which brings me to two big things that have been happening.
The first is the book club. We are meeting tonight and I am really looking forward to the company of four women that I like a lot. We drink, we laugh, we have things in common, and I learn from them. Not once have I put on an act around them. Not once have I tried to step out of myself to keep them at arms' length.
And you know what? It feels great. Really wonderful to have friends. To email with them and joke with them. To talk about literature, work, men, and babies. Three of the five of us have been/are undergoing IVF and we talk about it comfortable, believe it or not. I find talking about IVF to usually be so hard around women that never needed it.
The other thing that happened was on Tuesday. At the end of the amazing day in which a yellow linen envelope changed my day (week!), we all trooped off to the train station. I was standing by myself on the platform, surrounded by Dream Job employees huddled in clumps aggregated by their departments. The two from my department who had attended the conference had driven there, so I was on my own.
I was tempted to plug my iPod in my ears, like I always do. I pulled the thing out twice but resisted both times. Both times I put it back in my briefcase, and I didn't understand why.
I felt a touch on my shoulder.
"Helen?" asked a woman with extraordinary green eyes. I remembered her from the break-out sessions in the afternoon, where we were awarded with the groan-worthy task of discussing around a table to discuss strategies. (Note to managers: Your employees hate doing stuff like this. Please don't subject us to packs of Post-It Notes and the advice "Let's brainstorm!". It causes mutiny.) My table came up with a strategy and I was asked to present it, which I did, to great laughter (Tuesday was a really, really good day. Really.)
"Yes?" I asked, startled. I wondered if she was going to say that my boho skirt was tucked into the back of my boy shorts, and then walk back to her group giggling about what a tosser I was.
"Want to come join our group and talk to us? We'd love to hear more about Project Rocket Riding Gerbil." she asked, indicating a group of 3 women standing nearby talking.
I felt like the dorky kid being asked by the popular girls to sit on the swings and discuss our slam books.
"Yeah. That'd be great." I reply, startled.
We walk over and talk, and it turns out that the woman who pulled me over, Sallie, and I hit it off well. We've been emailing back and forth. She's very funny and I like her attitude. We're meeting up for coffee soon in London to discuss shoes.
Because you can never have too many friends to talk to about shoes.
And t's time I quit trying to be ready to push them away and run the other direction as fast as I can. So when we have coffee and talk shoes, I will be wearing my strappy sandals, as my running shoes have been put away. I'm not going to go begging and pleading for people to like me, but I'm not going to pick fights to protect myself, either. Maybe the truth is, I've found a life that fits me and that I love so completely that I don't see I will ever be running away from it.
I don't need any outs.
I'm not going anywhere.
-H.
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April 13, 2005
"I thought senior managers were always on time." I joked, pulling my briefcase strap higher on my shoulder.
"We like to make an entrance." he replied deadpan. "I thought project managers always deliver on time."
I grin and look at my watch. "It's bang-on 10:30. I choose to be called efficient."
"I see you didn't elect to read the invite, which said 'No denim'." he says, pointing to my jacket.
He's right. I did elect not to read the invite. "I'm going for punky boho engineering rebellion here." I reply. He grins at me and we sneak into the room.
I am stunned by the sheer enormity and professionalism of the gig. There are camerammen everywhere and a sound board running in the back of the room. Spotlights are strung across the massive ceiling and there are no fewer than 5 massive screens on which scenes from the stage is being projected. Two professional photographers are circling, and there are around 1500-2000 people in the room.
I am impressed.
I take a seat on an empty row all the way in the back to the left, my senior sitting on a line of chairs just beneath the spotlights behind me. I have the entire row to myself, and so I kick off my shoes (as one does) and tuck my feet beneath me (as one also does). I notice my phone has no coverage in the room so I put it in my bag and sit back. Third in Charge is talking on the stage with the spotlight squarely on him.
And it's talk.
Lots of talk.
Right about the time they start slinging around "EBITDA" I realize I am a tiny bit bored. I am not one for the financials. I open my briefcase and dig out the bag of jelly beans I brought. With regret, I realize it is too dark in the room to see the flavors I have in my available spectrum.
On stage: "And our unit's margins this year were..."
Me: Eat jellybean. Be pleased it was berry flavored.
On stage: "Our financial objectives this year are...."
Me: Pretend to put bag away in a display of restraint but know I am only fooling self and so open jelly bean bag again.
On stage: "The percentage of gross margin..."
Me: My boy shorts are riding up my ass. Oh...wait...yes, and up my crotch now, too.
On stage: "Very pleased that spending...."
Me: Gross. A banana-flavored one. Hate banana. Burn down banana plantations.
This goes on for some time.
Then the stage changes. Funky hip-hop music comes on and the lights turn bright orange. Third in Charge now grins and explains that the employees this year who were recognized will now have their names shown on the screen. I grin and, popping a sour pear jelly bean and wishing I could adjust my knickers, I see my name go up the screen, one of about 60 individuals and 8 teams of about 10 people each. I smile inwardly and wonder where the hell my bottle of champagne and £200 worth of vouchers have gone to. I whisk a pen out of my bag and scribble a note to check that on the fleshy part of my hand.
Third in Charge smiles. "And of this group, some special individuals will be the winners of the 'Outstanding Performance of the Year' award from Dream Job. They will be going with the senior management team to a resort European destination"-and here they show an amazing clip complete with beautiful people and sparkling blue water- "with their partners, all expenses paid. This includes flights, transfers, and the luxury hotel! So when I call the name, if you'd please come up and receive your letter of commendation and have your picture taken, please. And let's make sure we give them a big hand for all of their hard work!"
I eat a margarita flavored jelly bean and shrug. Long for a real margarita. Wonder if I will eat all my jelly beans now or if restraint really will kick in at some point in my early 30's.
The music gets funky as people start getting awards. I reach into my jelly bean bag for another one when I hear:
"This next Outstanding Performance of the Year award goes to a hard worker and her-"
My ear twitches. Her?
"-contributions towards the commercial and technical aspects-"
Hang on. Of all of those names the only female who is technical is-
"Miss Helen Adelaide-"
-me.
"-of Project Rocket-Riding Gerbil!"
That's my project.
That's me.
My heart explodes as I realize they called my name. Shaking, I put my shoes on. The lights swing towards me as I numbly walk to the front of the room in front of all those clapping people. Third in Charge grins and extends an envelope to me which I somehow grasp. He kisses my cheek and shakes my hand.
"Well done. We're very proud." he says.
"I swear the rocket will be launched on time." I croak.
He smiles. "I know." We turn towards the photographer and have our photo taken. I am told later that I grinned the entire way up and down the aisle, but I don't remember any of it.
I head back to my seat, stopping to hug my senior in the very last row. With shaking hands, I open the envelope.
And that is how my everyday Tuesday up north ended.
I have a bottle of champagne and £200 worth of vouchers.
I am also going away with Angus on an all-expense paid trip to a stunningly posh hotel in June.
To Monaco.
-H.
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April 11, 2005
One envelope held new nametags for Maggie and Mumin, tags we ordered to allow our babies to go outside into the sunshine, tags which will allow them to be brought back to us should they ever run faster than we can. They'd had a hard weekend-one last follow-up injection to prevent against feline leukemia. Name tags. Flea protection. Nails trimmed and fur combed. To say they were unhappy was an understatement.
A serious birthday card for me comes in from a family member.
One envelope held tax information for Angus. It's tax time here in the UK and he's been invited to submit a tax declaration. As my case is far simpler-get paid, pay taxes, repeat monthly-they will do my taxes for me and simply mail me a statement. We also had our Swedish taxes come in and to my surprise I have received a stunning and unexpected windfall that will get packed into a bank account to prevent my temptations.
Another card comes in from another family member, complete with two pictures that I didn't ask for and don't want. It hardened my heart and my resolve. All three wound up in the garbage can.
The final package was a thick bundle of papers we had requested. I had called the office- a surgery located in London-and talked to the administrator.
Me: Hi, my name is Helen. We've been attending another clinic but we'd like to join yours.
Her: That's no problem at all! May I ask why you're switching?
Me: We thought the doctor was a pompous ass. So if you have a pompous ass there, better tell us now.
Her: No pompous asses here! Do you know what program you want?
Me: Yes, egg donation.
Her: Ooooh. We have a really long waiting list for that I'm afraid. How long are you willing to wait?
Me: Um....I dunno really. A month?
Her (pausing): Right. Our waiting list is two years right now.
I am utterly speechless at this as I hear the sound of my biological clock smashing to bits.
Her: We have a lot of women who need conception help and must wait a long time to receive eggs. Your name will be added to the list, and-
Me: Oh wait! No. I mean I want to DONATE my eggs, I don't actually need anyone else's.
Her: You want to donate? You mean the Egg Share program?
Me: Yes, I understand it helps others and I over-stim anyway.
Her (with a smile in her voice): How soon can you come, Helen?
The package of information, in a shiny blue folder with the picture of a gurgling baby, is from an IVF clinic in London. Angus and I have done a lot of research and found that there is a massive shortage of eggs for women who can't use eggs of their own-either due to pre-menopause, congenital defects, or lack of egg production-to the extent that the waiting lists are long. Most clinics are reaching a two year wait, and as such in England if you qualify (under 35, BMI of less than 32 and other factors) then if you will donate half of your eggs an IVF cycle is more or less free.
When I did my cycle of IVF in Sweden I produced 21 eggs. 21 is considered a high number, and of those 21, 18 were viable. 8 later fertilized. With this program, I will donate half of my eggs straight away to a woman who cannot have her own eggs. To a woman for whom the process isn't as simple as holding the love of her life close to her in bed, to make love and find the color changing on a stick out of sheer mystery and imagination. To a woman who wants to be a mother and have a family with the love of her life so badly.
A woman like me.
So we read all the literature in our shiny blue pack. On any given cycle, provided I produce more than 8 eggs, half will automatically be given to a woman who will be cycling with me, but whom I will never meet. I will never know her name and will never meet her children. I will be told if she conceives using my eggs, and should I not have my own children, maybe that will somehow soften the blow.
It feels so unbelievable to think that my life will forever be entwined with another woman that I will never meet. That our little family will have a connection to another little family as we go about our daily lives on the same small island. It's strange to know that me signing my name to a form means someone else's name jumps off the waiting list and into the world of injections, tears, and prayers.
We fill out the forms and put them in the envelope they came with. On our way back from grocery shopping and neighborhood checking (as we are beginning house shopping), we pull over to a red mailbox. Pulling my fingers out from their curved nook in Angus' hand, I put my fingers on the fine white paper. I easily slide the letter into the slot, feeling excited, feeling scared, feeling hopeful. I watch the envelope tip into the box and slide into the darkness where it will lie in wait for the next fingertips to take them.
The postman will never even realize that he is holding my heart.
The post gave me a gift. And in return, riding on a train somewhere and snuggled into a mailbag, my hopes and dreams are making their way into a London clinic.
In some way and in all modesty, I like to think that someone else's hopes and dreams are being answered now, too.
-H.
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April 08, 2005
Those kind.
The days tend to start the same, regardless of whether I am hot-footing it on a train to London or spending the day in my pajamas glued to my PC and two phones (yes, it's that bad). Unless I have a super-early meet and have my alarm set, Angus' alarm goes off first (both of us only use our mobile phones as our alarms. Truly, deeply sad.) He gets up, dozy and cute, with his hair smashed into a flattened shape in the back and sheet crease marks on his cheek. He shuffles into the bathroom and locks the door and I take a moment to come to. The bed is comfy and wam and there are invariably two little wadded up pieces of kleenex floating around the bed looking like forelorn mice. Because my beloved Angus snores. Loudly. So I keep kleenex under my pillow to tear off sections from to stuff my ears. Said kleenex often wind up getting pushed behind the bed so from time to time I move the bed and remove what looks like a Johnson and Johnson factory from behind it.
Relationships are all about compromise.
I get up and make coffee. We make real coffee in this house. Good stuff. None of that Sanka or Nescafe watery rubbish here, we like the strongest possible coffee that will smack you upside the head and twist your colon in its threatening fingers. We boil water in the electric kettle (I compromised on that front, but we did buy an electric kettle that whistles when the water's boiling, so best of both worlds, really). We grind the coffee beans in the electric grinder and use the Bodum. And-this is key, here-I try to make sure my favorite mug is ready every morning.
My favorite mug is, in my opinion, the world's greatest mug. I bought it at Culloden in Scotland, and the mug is painted in bright colors with an enormous smiling cartoon-like Loch Ness Monster on the front. He is wearing a Scottish tartan hat and the whole mug is curved like the back of a sea monster. Not exactly the tribute the fallen clansmen at Culloden deserve, but I love my wonky mug (except when the satellite guy came to install our satellite. I gave him a cup of tea but the only mug we had clean in the house was this Loch Ness one. Since the satellite guy was Scottish, he was not amused).
After Angus has showered, I go in. Sadly, our rented home not only doesn't have a power shower, it doesn't have a standing shower, so you have to sit down while showering and holding the hand-held shower unit. Seriously. Sympathy gratefully received here. I shower with all my Lush products and with two rubber ducks looking on, and I always have a song in my head. If I am alone and confident the neighbors aren't home, I will sing at the top of my lungs. If I am not alone, I keep it to myself.
This morning's ditty was Grease's Born to Hand-Jive, which is an unfortunate selection if you forget you are holding the shower nozzle in your hand.
Then it's time for Angus' blood pressure check. His follow-up doctor visit is this morning, so we will at least get some answers (and I am arming myself for battle with Angus He swears he will not take medication, and while I am a pushover for love, I have limits. I am also very frightened.) It's been an interesting week armed with a sphegmometer in the house. Angus often doesn't want his blood pressure taken and it's occured more than once that he's sprinted naked from the room in the middle of undressing, so I follow his cutely rounded white butt as he whips around the house trying to avoid me, while dragging the blood pressure monitor and a pen and paper and shouting: "This isn't optional, dude! Get your butt back in here!"
After playing our own home version of doctor, we then get dressed
Him: Why are you wearing socks with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on them?
Me: They were the top pair in my drawer when I just reached in and grabbed them.
Him: That's not on. It's not Christmas.
Me: I'm lazy. And Santa is so watching you.
Angus leaves for work and, if I am working from home, I arm myself with a bottle of water and wearily log in. I post on my blog and then spend the day working. Usually my entire day is taken up with conference calls with my team (which I usually greet as I log in as the chairperson as "Hello my Chickens/Ninjas/Grasshopper/Babies") although sometimes I am on conference calls that just require my attendance in some form of "needing a warm body count", so on those I am free to surf the web. Free to pay bills. Free to draw up lists to places I want to holiday in, with little stars beside the ones I really want to go to but know that Angus doesn't (please can we go to the Maldives? Pretty please?).
When the day is done around 6:30 I whack dinner in the oven and power up Sims2 before Angus gets home somewhere around 8 or 8:30. We eat together and then it's TV time. If it's yoga or Pilates night, I go off to yoga/pilates and then head home. I sometimes dread those classes as I am still the new girl. I hate being the new girl. I would rather just know it all so I could be left alone. My self-confidence is bad enough, I do not need to be in a Gumby position just to hear a resounding "Helen, we must lengthen the body and feel the stretch, we must move into the breathing. Can you raise your ass higher, please?"
We're not that big on TV in our house, but there are some shows we love. Desperate Housewives is a big one here, as was the show Life Begins, which just concluded but that's probably ok as it was getting a bit too melodramatic for me. And since I love me some catastophies so it has to be pretty dire for me to be sick of it. I have just discovered the show Dead Like Me and I absolutely love it, and we are both big Jeeves and Wooster fans. We also watch a show about salvage yards called Reclamation, which we watched last night.
We sipped some wine and he rubbed my back and let me lay on him (men that will let you lay on them are keepers). The show shows you some amazing finds while, at the same time, shows you things way out of our league. I would be happy to buy a 3rd century Roman sarcophagus for £50,000, let me just go rush off and get my checkbook! Or: 14th century stained glass? With my cats and clumsy track record that'll be perfect! Last night they showed a place that had over 30,000 antique shoe lathes. Said lathes were used as the molds for making shoes about 50 years ago, and the chap has two whole walls covered floor to ceiling with them. He takes one off and shows how it is hinged and cracks it open.
With the sound of the hinge, Angus and I follow up with an "Oooooh" sound. We now both want some of those shoe lathes. Badly. So it might not be candlesticks now, it might be lathes that come out of this. What the hell we would do with them, I don't know (learn to juggle? Doorstoppers? Start making shoes and call each other Gepetto?) but we are truly victims of marketing.
Bedtime comes and we fall into bed, allowing wandering fingers and a bit of How's Your Father about 40-50% of the time. I go and drain afterwards and then curl up in the sleepy embrace of my boy, happy and warm, as he drifts off to sleep.
Then I reach for my kleenex under the pillow.
-H.
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April 07, 2005
Throughout my life I have struggled with who I am. Not just the ideas and thoughts that run through my head, but the very fabric of who I am, the breakdown of the component nuclei that run in my veins. These elements are strewn from geography and cultures so different that I simply don't understand how they could have ever met up at all.
My father is Japanese. My mother has Dutch, French, Irish, and Native American descendents, with Dutch being the leader in terms of percentages. My father immigrated to America when he was 16, while most of my mother's ascendents had been hanging out in the Wild West for quite some time. Mash all of this together, and you have a gene pool that's the strangest cocktail I have come across.
My Dutch great-grandparents and grandfather were stoic, calm, and reserved in their expressions of affection. One of my other great-grandmothers, descended from (by all accounts) a bitchy French immigrant and an Irish/Native American man, was into the hoodoo voodoo of palm reading, the Freemasons, and the Gaelic way of thinking. Which leaves me, who is often so confused by the cultures that I was raised with and the cultures I am currently living in that I often don't know if the fabric of who I am is coming or going.
I battle the hardest with my Japanese heritage. Not only do I struggle with it when I look in the mirror and see whiter-than-white skin, hazel eyes and freckles, but I sometimes deal with it when I jam my U.S. size 10 feet into shoes the length of a canal-boat. Sometimes I often think of my grandmother and the shoes she wears, delicate flats that come in children's sizes as they grace feet the size of a stick of butter.
Growing up in a Japanese family was often a battle. Almost every meal came with rice-real rice, Japanese-sticky rice cooked in a steaming rice cooker, none of that Uncle Ben's fluffy white bullshit thank-you-very-much. As a little girl I used to yearn for mashed potatoes or clam chowder, but often was presented with sukiyaki or the dreaded nato instead.
The day I left home I swore off rice, and I didn't touch it for years.
I battled my father, too. I always felt imbued with the stinging disappointment that I was the first-born and was not only a book-worm female, but would in the end turn out to be the whitest of all the children and grandchildren. My father and I were like oil and water, except mix us together and we became an atom bomb instead of a salad dressing. Looking back I realize that the two of us were simply too competitive to find a way through actually talking to each other. He was too impatient, too angry, too caught up in the confines in his world to see that I had confines in mine. And for me, it was a constant battle to be the best, to earn the best grades, to try to get my father to love me despite my two left feet in sports and my complete disinterest in all things Japanese.
And now that we have both grown I find that we have both become people capable of having a relationship. The competition is gone. I don't have to be the best, I can just be me. And he has softened and changed as he ages-he hands out Halloween candy to the neighborhood at Halloween. He cares about people. He goes hiking with friends.
And I now love Japanese sticky rice.
I used to stay in my Japanese grandmother's house a lot when I was a little girl. She always had Japanese scrolls on the walls and she had glass cases as tall as I was with Japanese dolls in Kabuki stances. Those dolls freaked me out no end. I remember at night watching the glass cases, completely convinced the dolls were alive and watching me. I swore they moved-the fan one held flittered just a bit. The dark ebony of the kimono shifting at the knee.
My grandmother was adopted into a supremely wealthy family in Japan that stood something like 8th in line to the throne when she was a baby. She used to tell me stories about her childhood-she was carried to school on a litter, held by four servants, laughing at the children who had to walk. She never once brushed her hair, as she had someone who did it for her.
I wonder if she knew her life would end up as it did-a war bride married to a retired Army man in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, so sheltered and pampered that when I was 8 years old and the self-service pumps were removed I taught her how to pump gas.
I went to Japan some years ago. It was only a short stay, I had a 24 hour layover at Kansai when travelling back from Singapore and Bali. I got out of the airport and, completely knackered and suffering from pneumonia, checked into a nearby hotel and slept. The hotel room was compact. Spotless. Armed with many polite suggestions and reminders. And even then, I both understood the culture and didn't like it.
The Japanese have a mixed result in terms of global conceptions. They are often caricatures of themselves, like in the movie Lost in Translation where they are portrayed as bizarre yet affable creatures into Hello Kitty and karaoke. But switch directions and head into the darkness and one could view them as people responsible for heinous crimes against humanity in POW camps of WWII. They are also viewed as people who bow and apologize a lot, people with a predilection for samurai swords, tatami mats, rock gardens and suicide.
And what's the truth? Are they any stranger than Swedes who eat rotten fermented herring in the summer and slurp down bootleg bathtub gin? Are they any more bizarre than Americans who drive home from the office in their four-wheel drives and head for a neighborhood barbeuce of hamburgers, beer, and children running through sprinklers?
I remember my grandmother hosting parties in her house in Kansas with the other war brides in the neighborhood. They would play a form of Japanese cards late into the night and then turn on the laser disc karaoke. We would eat Japanese radishes and the kim chee would be on the counter, the fermentation of the raw cabbage making it bubble at room temperature. The smells and sounds in my memories of her Japanese home are so strong that they are almost...comforting.
I rejected it all and yet I didn't. The two tattoos I have are both Kanji symbols that my heart carries around with me. The fairy tales I remember most vividly from when I was a child are from the Japanese fairy tale book I got when I bought Tale of the Genji. When Angus and I walk into the Asian food stores we love so much, my tongue tickles when I see the bags of dried cuttlefish (squid) that were the much-revered treats we were given as children.
My fabric is confused.
My fabric is hard to understand.
But all these years later, I am beginning to realize that my fabric is mine, it is unique, and it is finally beginning to stretch enough to fit me.
-H.
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April 05, 2005
The cathedral in Norwich is fantastic, with an open air cloisters driven off of the entrance. The set-up is confusing-the rectory and pulpit are sat square in the middle of the church and there are wings to the sides in which to take a private moment of quiet. The center of the church is rushed with the raised ceiling that reaches up, I suspect, to where the architects dreamt the feet of God would be.
I walk to the wings and jiggle the change in my pocket. I never enter a church without the change. I may not be religious, but my superstition lives on, my need to make a gesture. I find what I am seeking and take the thick and heavy pound coin out of my pocket and slide it into the collection box. My hand reaches forward and in my fingers I grasp four of the cheap and thin utility candles, waxy pencil mouthpieces to thoughts and hopes of the fingertips that touch them.
I take one in my hand and light it from a sputtering candle nearby.
"For you, Grandpa." I say, and plant it in the sand of the candleabra. I take another and shift it to my left hand. "For you, Kim." I say, and plant it next to my Grandfather's. The last two I take in each hand and light simultaneously. "For you, Egg and Bacon," I murmur as I plant them on a higher shelf of the candleabra, as they would want a higher shelf so that they would be able to see more. I imagine them sitting on my grandfather's lap and drooling gleefully.
In my visions of them, they grow older each year, their memory becoming their age. They can walk now. They can recognize and yearn. They would fit squarely and perfectly within the reach of my arms.
I smile at my four candles. "Take care, you guys." I whisper, not needing any more words than that, and as I turn to walk away someone else's candle sputters out and dies and finally whisks their wishes away.
I walk quietly to the center area again, to the carved wooden pews strewn with cushions hand-sewn by trembling fingers. The church is silent, isolated, as people walk in other parts of the cathedral and run their fingers over the marbled walls. Angus is somewhere down one of the wings, and my hands itch to have him close to me. I sit down in one of the pews, easing myself quietly onto the hard wooden surface.
"It's nice that you take notice." comes a voice beside me, and I turn to see the soft complexion of a woman next to me, who smells of violets and reminds me of gently rubbed velveteen. "It's nice that you take a moment to read the final resting places of the dead." Her fingers worry the braiding of her skirt. "We are often forgotten."
"I don't forget." I say softly. "It may not mean I know what to do with the memories, but I don't forget."
"Yes, that's the problem. I mean, it's not so much an issue for us," she says, moving her arm to indicate the entire Cathedral. "Most of us have lost everyone anyway. I passed in 1781, and none of my extended family survived into the 1800's."
"I'm sorry." I tell her. And I am. "I would've grieved for you. I grieve for my loved ones. I grieve for the ones I've lost."
"I noticed." she said, smiling from the side of her mouth. "And yet you seem to have moved on."
I look down at my shoe, noting the shoelace is untied. I am ashamed that I may not seem to be missing them as much as I sometimes do, I am embarassed that I linger on and they don't. I rub the seam of my jeans with the nail of my thumb. "That doesn't mean I don't miss them."
"No no." she agrees, hastily. "I know you do. I think it's good that you've let it out and moved on."
We sit there in silence for a moment as a priest walks past us, his black robes billowing out around his legs. He keeps his head down and I note a shiny bald patch creeping onto the back of his head. I take a deep breath and soak in the scent of violets.
"What happened to you?" I ask quietly.
"I died in childbirth." she said sadly, looking at her hands in her lap. "It was our first. My husband died soon after of smallpox."
"I'm so sorry." I reply, thinking that the loss of a child seems to pervade every inch of space in the world. "Do you get to see your child now?"
Taking a deep sigh she looks up, straight ahead. "No, it doesn't work like that." She doesn't explain and, feeling intrusive, I don't ask.
"I would loan you my two if I could, if it worked like that." I say, thinking of the two slender candles.
"That's kind of you. I would've taken care of them, I promise."
"What is it like here? Staying here, I mean?" I ask her.
"You see a lot of sadness. People come in with their hearts on their sleeves. It's the ravaged ones in the private prayer area that we like to hover around-they don't notice us as they're too soaked in their pain, but we like to think it helps. There are a fair amount of people that come through just to see the Cathedral, folks that travel around the world collecting mental images of Cathedrals. Then there are people like you that didn't really have a purpose and just come in to take a moment to look up. For most people, it's the looking up that's important."
I look up at the vaulted ceiling studded with arches and stained glass images of saints and heroes. I watch the patches of blue light trickle down onto the marble and highlight the burnished brass of an organ hidden in the upper eaves, a spider in a web of pipes. I think that Angus might be looking for me, so I smile at her. "I have to go, I have to find my boyfriend. I have to tell you, I don't find the looking up to be so important. It's looking down to see where we're going. To make sure I'm not walking on anyone."
She smiles at me, and I think she was once so beautiful. "Thank you for taking moments to remember us, to pay attention."
I stand and tuck my hands up inside the sleeves of my sweater. "I am always paying attention. I just don't know that my attention gets me anywhere." I stand and place my hands on the carved ends of the pew.
"They hear you." she said, not turning her head.
"I'm sorry?" I ask, wondering if I mis-heard.
She turns then, and smiles at me. "You wouldn't light candles for them if you didn't think they could hear you."
I smile back at her, wondering if my candles are for them or for me. As I walk through the church I look at the rows and rows of ghosts sitting there calmly, translucent in the sunlight drifting through the stained glass windows. I walk to the entrance to meet Angus, to continue our day in the sunshine and the air.
And as I go I read every single one of the tombstones at my feet.
-H.
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April 04, 2005
That, and a bottle of champagne.
Being a birthday after all.
Halfway up the drive my phone rings. When I answer it, it turns out to be the owner of the place we would be staying, a tiny little bed and breakfast called By Appointment. When I answer, his voice is ecstatic.
"Where are you? I'm so worried about you! Are you lost?" he coos.
I blink a lot. The man could've been an extra in Birdcage. I hadn't heard someone so flamboyantly gay since my theatre days.
"Er, we're running late. The M25 was closed in one section so the drive's been torture."
"Please make sure you get here safely!" Every other words is emphsaized. I'm usually pretty dramatic in the way I talk but he makes me look like the love child of Marlon Brando and a Borg. He gives me directions and I ring off, grinning wildly.
When we get there, we park next to a very old building. We get out and head into the entrance, only to find ourselves in the middle of the kitchen. Standing behind an industrial steel counter is our landlord, one half of a gay couple that owns and runs the bed and breakfast and the restaurant. He throws down his hand towel extravagently.
"There you are! Isn't traffic a nightmare!" He sighs and takes my suitcase and leads us up a tiny staircase that appears to go upstairs at a 90 degree burst. It's almost literally a straight climb up. He takes us through a maze to our bedroom, and when we get there, we are stunned. The room is full of antiques and nice touches-a case full of 1900's hat pins. Collars from the 1940's. A nightgown that probably hadn't seen wearing this side of the 1900's. It was just lovely. He tells us about the building, a former shoemaker's that dates back about 500 years.
I pull out my dress and Angus' tuxedo shirt. "Do you have an iron? We need to iron these."
He looks at my dress. "What fabric is that?"
I smile. "It's hemp." He curls his lip and I see on the nightstand a massive stack of Vogue magazines. Ah. Sorry mate, Versace my dress is not.
He sighs. "Hang them outside and I will iron them. God knows it means I'll have to get up at 5:30 am to get this all done, but I will do it."
I wonder if he's going to raise a hand to his forehead and, crunching a raw potato, swear that as God is his witness he will not go hungry.
We eat dinner in their restaurant, which is packed. It's a Michelin rated restaurant and the food was exquisite. I get the sparkling company of my dear boy, lovely food and fantatsic New Zealand sauvignon blanc, what more can a girl ask for on her birthday? We follow it up in our room with a bottle of champagne and sleep together in the antique bed like two peas in a pod.
The next morning, hangovers aside, we have breakfast (our landlord got up and made us fresh croissant. Fresh. And our clothes were finely ironed outside our room.) and then head out for a walk in Norwich. My back problems had flared up wildly, so Angus and I bought some heat spray which he would apply liberally.
Norwich is actually a lovely and thriving town. It has a castle.
It has a cathedral.
We stop in an antique shop near the catherdral and find a number of amazing finds at, to our southwest England minds are lovely prices, however we restrain ourselves and don't buy all the things we want. Angus buys a handful of turn of the century pennies and we find a fantastic 1920's art deco mirror for only £15, so we snap it up and take it home. We stop and look in the window of an estate agents' and find a number of homes that is exactly what we are looking for, and at half the price. The problem is, we just can't commute this distance to our jobs, so it's expensive areas of housing for us.
After hobbling around it for a while, we went back to the hotel. We chatted to the landlord a bit and then I asked if they couldn't help us call a cab.
The landlord sighed dramatically. "Anything else Madame wishes? Shall I come up and draw you a bath? A back rub?" Ah. Basil Fawlty is alive and well.
Upstairs, Angus very tenderly and lovingly made love to me in the sunshine of the bed, before curling up behind me and we nap. The temperature is perfect and I lay curled up inside of the shape of him, so wildly in love that I wonder if I am floating. When the alarm goes off I ease into a Lush bubble bath before spending some time on my appearance. When it's time to go to the wedding, the landlord gushes over us and helps pull my backless dress over my scary Bridget Jones pants.
And all in all, I think I cleaned up well.
But my boy looked gorgeous.
The wedding was an ok time, actually. The former Rocket Riding Gerbil project manager, a nice Kiwi named Bob, was there with his date, another nice Kiwi who's a plastic surgeon living in England. Angus and I spent the evening laughing and talking with the other Dream Job couples and relaxing. Jeff was in very high spirits and was deliriously happy to be married-I've never seen him smile so hard.
Angus and I crawled into a cab around midnight, after hours of dancing to the best of the 70's (oh my God, I just remembered us all dancing to Abba's "Dancing Queen" and singing the lyrics at the top of our lungs. Oh my God. I'm so embarassed.) We crawled into bed and Angus very kindly nursed my terrible back and severe hangover the next day.
That man is a keeper.
-H.
PS-Random Pensees, who is a sweetie and a great guy to eat hummus with, has asked me some questions based on these rules. Ergo, here is my interview 
more...
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April 01, 2005
I go to the class and roll out my mat, taking my shoes off and sinking comfortably onto its bumpy plastic surface. The instructor comes in and smiles at me. "You were here last week, yes?" she asks.
"Yes." I reply simply.
Buddha says: In yoga, one must practice simplicity.
"Ohmigosh, I am so terribly sorry! I have completely forgotten your name! It's what happens when one grows older. I swear I would forget my head if it wasn't tied onto my neck." Simplicity not needed in instructor-types, apparently.
"Helen." I say, trying to guide her back down the path of supreme spirituality in efficiency of words.
"That's right. Of course. I have a 14 year-old niece named Helen. Durr. This weekend I gave her a chocolate Easter egg and she ate the whole thing in one sitting! I'm trying to convince her to come to yoga but I think she thinks it's uncool." Hmm. Her spiritual sensors must be off, as I was so broadcasting the "simplicity of words" thing.
Buddha says: Some donkeys cannot be led to water. In which case, better to either give up or drug and drown them in nearest stream.
We kick it off and a late arrival comes in, a man with the same name as my dear boy. He had his mat next to me last time and told me a few times how to move my hips, which I usually ask a man buys me a drink before doing. He smiles at me from across the room as if to say: Hello, oh wandering yoga dilettante.
The instructor smiles and tells us she will show us the position we will work towards today. She looks at me. "This isn't something I'd usually recommend for a second-timer, Helen, but I think you're able to give it a go."
Buddha says: Sensei is omnipotent when it comes to identifying Gumby-type people. And she should lay off the cabbage.
She stands up and shows us what position we are working towards, and, stunningly, I recognize it from a movie. Being a complete and utter movie dork, one of my favorite holiday movies is Scrooged ("Oh look! A TOASTER!"). In two scenes, Bill Murray demonstrates a position where he looks like sweet peas going haywire up a trellis, and this is the exact position we are headed for today.
Cooooool.
So we do lots of warming-up bendy type things, always supposedly concentrating on our breathing, to the point where I wonder if I am hyper-ventilating. I feel almost like I can split barn roofs with my hands, which leads me to believe I am suffering from weird hallucinations brought on by too much oxygen. I don't normally breathe that much. And if I do, I certainly don't pay attention to it.
Buddha says: Air much better than alcohol. Easier to carry it in a six-pack, too.
Then we are asked to get in a weird crab-like shape and move our pelvises backwards and forwards on the mat. This strikes me as weird. I don't normally rub my pelvis up and down a mat unless it somehow is related to foreplay, but, ok. If we can do Group Farts, we can do Group Foreplay. The pelvis gets moved and I wonder why everyone looks so serene when I have images of Angus handcuffed to the bed and covered with whipped cream.
Better slow down on the pelvic rubbing.
Buddha says: Abstinence sucks. Trust me.
Then we move into a crow-like position but when we swing forward, the instructor says, we have to roar. Caught halfway between trying to figure out if my legs really are hip-width apart or if I am being really uncharitable to myself, I look up. What? Roar? What?
The instructor smiles. "That's right. We're going to roar as we come up, heads up, shoulders relaxed, on the exhale. It releases the tension in the body and nurtures our inner soul."
She really does say that, and the room, full of conservative English-folk that have probably never roared in their life, look apprehensive. I don't blame them. I have never roared either. I mean, I do a killer screaming chimpanzee shtick, but only when I'm trying to turn on Angus. The instructor demonstrates the move again, lifting her head and-I swear to God-roaring like a demented tiger as she comes up. The rest of the class, looking reserved, gets ready, as do I. But when we come up they roar and I don't.
I am absolutely not roaring.
No fucking way.
Buddha says: The one with pride is-
Fuck off, Buddha. I'm not roaring.
Buddha grumbles and goes to rearrange incense.
When we finally come to the windy sweet pea bit, I am well-loosened, so much so that I wonder if my arms are coming out of their sockets. We start by winding one leg all the way around the other and hooking the foot behind the calf. Angus 2 has a terrible time with it. The instructor tells him that women generally find that position easier than the men.
"Ah yes." Angus 2 says. "It must help with child-bearing hips."
Bite me, zen-boy.
Then we wind up twisting our arms around each other and, while still standing on one leg with the other wrapped around it, arch the elbows up to the ceiling and then lean down. The instructor tells Angus 2 that this is also a position easier for women, and while I wait for a petty comeback, it's nothing doing from his end as he's seriously assed off he can't do the position. I just manage to do the position if I turn around and don't look at anyone else in the room, but it's a ridiculously difficult position and there's all kinds of wobbling. I hear Angus 2 whining and falling all over his mat. He just can't do it.
Buddha says: Child-bearing hips, mate. How about them apples?
By the end of the class I feel great. We have to wind down while sitting cross-legged with our thumb and first finger making that stereotypical "O". She makes us imagine a tree and I start to get restless behind my eyes after 10 minutes of it. I got it. My tree and I are one with the Mother Nature and we're all holding hands and skipping to a garage-funk version of Om Shanti. Now end this or else I am seconds from falling asleep.
I go home and demonstrate my new positions to Angus, who again flatly states that yoga is not for him.
And in the meantime....
Buddha says: Happy Birthday, Helen. And better up the eye wrinkle cream usage, babe.
Have a good weekend.
-H.
PS-Red explains the origins of April Fool's Day. I tried to comment on it but got rejected as a spammer, and I didn't even use "viagra" or "online poker" in the comments! But it's ok. I've been called worse.
PPS- Jim, one of the greatest men in the world of blogging and bovine perversion, bought me a fantastic present. I absolutely adore it. He bought me www.everydaystranger.net. I have my own .net and I just love it.
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