July 29, 2005

A Day At the Ponies

The races, despite the bad weather, were great fun. I managed to win the last four races, and Angus managed to win the second and third. Our table, which seemed to be copiously refilled with bottles of champagne, was sat right next to the finish line.

We were this close to the fantastic horses.


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Great weather, eh?

The sound of their galloping hooves was amazing. Utterly, completely amazing. It put me in a trance, it was something you feel in the back of your throat.

And as far as my hat?


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Only sometimes, it didn't always work out.


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-H.


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July 27, 2005

Actually, Home is Where You Hang Your Big Silly Hat

"I've bought a silly hat." I say proudly into my mobile as I walk through a shopping mall to the train station.

"What?" Angus asks, confused. Someday he will get used to how fast my brain synapses, and he will recognize it by the whooshing sound it makes.

"A silly hat. I've bought a great big fuck-off silly hat. Like Andie McDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral, only with better acting skills. It was only £8, down from £40." I say breathlessly.

"Yes well...that's quite ok then."

It's true. I have bought a hat. It's one of those monstrous English creations that I, an American, have fallen in love with. I bought the silly hat for a silly price as hats are worn for weddings, Christenings, and the horse races. Seeing as Ascot, the biggest race, is now over, the horse races are largely done.

Laregely, but not quite completely.

I've been invited to the Goodwood Races today.. Today, even though it's currently raining and the forecast calls for rain with a further chance of piss-me-off mud and a dose of cats and dogs. Actually, both Angus and I have been invited, and incredibly, we will be the guests enjoying a champagne-soaked day on behalf of our hosts.

Company X.

That's right-the company that laid me off (and to which I am now a customer) and the company that Angus is leaving. They're taking us to the races, and taking us to the posh part as well, the grounds where you have to dress up to the nines and wear a funny badge on your shirt saying you have permission to be there. The grounds where they ridiculously have people actually policing who's allowed to be on the posh part or not (and I'm assuming my Dallas Stars hockey jersey would be frowned on, but since they cancelled the last hockey season I'm not too pleased with them, either). The dress code dictates that no jeans or shorts are allowed, and no one can have "bare tops". I'm not clear on what a bare top is, apart from a bunch of drunk horseracing fans writing letters on their chests, and even then, why bother? Not like the horse can read the fan appreciation or anything. It also dictates that women wear a dress and a hat, although we it says should leave the stilettos at home, so there goes my "I'm Down With S&M" halftime show.

The good news is, I'm banking on there being enough champagne there to get quite drunk.

I am ready for the races. I have a chiffon shawl, a dark ruched shirt of the soft material and a floaty polka-dot skirt. I have a hat pin, something I'd never seen outside of an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, complete with black feathers on the end. I look forward to getting drunk and using it to my own devices. I have high strappy heels (not stiletto) and a tiny handbag. I have my vintage necklace and my Stila lip gloss.

And I have my big silly hat.

I return home from the shops, bags of groceries for the Lebanese meal I would be making, and a gift of a lovely tie for Angus (the men have to wear: "A suit, with a tie, a cravat, or a polo neck". What the fuck? A polo neck? What, is it the 70's again? Is that clothing option with or without heeled platform shoes? Should I expect to see Starsky diving over horses while Hutch comes roaring up the racetrack in that orange car? And a cravat? Hello, Masterpiece Theatre much?). I threw on my pajama bottoms and T-shirt again, which I had discarded in favor of jeans for the shops. And then, wearing said pajamas (and without any foundation garments beneath them, I might add), I proceeded to have a conference call while wearing that great big silly hat.

It was great. I felt like Audrey Hepburn, only I got angry with someone on the phone call and became more like Audrey Hepburn's dementedly demonic twin sister, the one who weighs about 50 pounds more than her and suffering from PMS and ass bleed. It wasn't easy getting angry in that hat, although I have to say-in a hat like that my vocabulary sure did up itself a notch, as though I really was channeling Audrey Hepburn, should she ever have actually lost her temper in real life. I don't know why I enjoy wearing a hat so outrageously outside of my own sphere of dress choice, except for the fact that even though I'm 31, sometimes it's still fun to play dress up. I may not belong at posh events like this one, but that doesn't mean I can't crash it and steal the champagne while making out with the minister's son under the buffet table. And that's part of the appeal I guess-I'm a bit excited about seeing the races today as I know I absolutely don't belong, but some part of me just wants to do the grown-up equivalent of twirling around in a tutu and wearing a pair of fairy wings with the glitter falling off.

And on reflection, isn't it always ok to have a big silly hat? Think of the occasions! Attending a Bake-Off and imitating Martha Stewart-why, what else to do but wear a hat? Herding sheep from one pen to another on a farm? Better put the big silly hat on. Digging for change in the couch cushions? Don't you think that's a big silly hat moment?

I wound up having a great time at Ascot last year, and I enjoyed another race (they call them Meetings here, which makes me laugh) a few months ago. Meetings tend to be huffy stuffy affairs, but the people watching is brilliant. All checking the odds and the stats and such (which, since I was taught how to do that at the last races I attended, I might give that a try. It might bode well for me, as my previous method of choosing the horses with cute names has been a consistently doomed venture.)

Since we have tickets for a posh enclosure and I am a very decidedly not-posh girl, I wonder if they serve the kind of hoity-toity food you see at cricket matches and such when the cricket players have a tea break (you read that right. Sportsmen stop and drink tea. Did I just see a white rabbit run past me?). I am hoping for cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. And even though cucumber sandwiches sound mildly revolting, I am prepared to try one and I am prepared to throw a strop should one of them be proferred that does not have the offending crust cut off. If possible, I would also like my cucumber sandwich cut into the shape of a Mickey Mouse head. I want to shake things up a bit. I will also settle for a sandwich in the shape of a star, since far be it from me to be unreasonable.

So without further ado, today we are at the races. Dressed up. And I am wearing a big silly hat.

Which to tell the you truth, I am in love with.

-H.

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July 26, 2005

Home is Where You Hang Your Yoga Mat

On Sunday the English skies opened, and the rain fell in sheets. As we watched the rain fall, we struggled on old clothes, loaded up the people carrier car, and drove to Brighton to fix the gutters.

You know. As one does when it rains.

Angus' house outside of Brighton, in a little village I like to call Ovaltine, has had a damp problem. After the last tennant moved out it transpired that one of the gutters had fallen off the front of the house. Instead of calling the rental agency or Angus to fix it, the tennant wanker took the gutter and winged it into the bushes. As a result, rain water flooded into the walls and windows and doorframes in the front of Angus' cottage, built in 1776, and caused them to crumble and fill with damp. Angus replaced the gutter, but somehow the damp continued, so we knew that we had to go down there in the rain to see what was happening.

So, in the freezing cold rain, Angus climbed a too-high scary ladder while I held the bottom, praying to ladder gods and fighting off visions of me running screaming into the neighbor's yards, begging for an ambulance and wiping blood from my eyes (I was suffering from Post Dramatic Syndrome). After all, climbing a metal ladder to the top of a 3-story house is exactly what you want to do in a rainstorm. It turns out the gutters were leaking from a joint, and a wire down one window was angled in such a way that it was depositing water very neatly into the wall.

Twenty minutes later, and the water issue was solved. We'll wait for the wall to dry out and paint it again. We have to go there next weekend and rip out the carpets, do up the yard again, and we're going to be sanding floors, re-painting already re-painted walls, and tidying up.

The house has been on the market now for nearly a year. Fortuitously, it entered the market just as the real estate market crashed. It has had the price lowered three times now (and will now be lowered again). It has had one sale fall through. He has sacked one estate agent and hired another. It is a building in which we are literally throwing money away into (while simultaneously paying rent on the house we live in now). We've already done it up once, and now are going to re-fresh it again, including hanging pictures on the walls of what it used to look like with furniture in it, so that people can visualize dimensions.

We always agreed that we wouldn't live there, as not only was it hell and gone from Angus' work place, but the thought is just too unsettling for both of us. For him the place has had too many memories. For me, the thought of living in a house that he lived in with his ex-wife, in the house he described in the paperwork for his tennants as a "very happy home", the house in which he had his daughter and conceived his son....well. I already have too many ghosts, and I worry that one of this size might bring the whole pack of cards tumbling down.

His unsold house in Ovaltine is the single greatest source of depression for Angus.

Walking around the organic food shop in Brighton (Brighton is a crunchy-granola earth-mother tree-hugging vegetarian liberal town, which is perfect for a crunchy-granola earth-mother tree-hugging vegetarian liberal girl), I did some people watching. People are dressed in all kinds and shapes-business suit waiting to buy organic sour cream, girl in tie-dye beatnik skirt perusing the parsnip crisps, bloke with blue hair and a spiked collar clutching a bag of cooled samosas, gay couple holding hands and looking in the window of the shop, college students making out by the avocados. It's all kinds, and everyone has a place here.

I had bought a pair of Indian flip-flops earlier, while looking for yoga mats. There are any number of yoga centers in Brighton, including Bikram and Hasha. Truly of the crunchy-granolaness, which I love (we watched a special last night on doctors, and one of the doctors featured was a "spiritual healer" that waved enormous pointy crystals over her patients checking their "energy spheres". Angus told me that must be my kind of thing, being all vegetaran yoga chick. I took exception to that-it would only be my kind of thing if I was allowed to poke people with those crystals when I got annoyed at them being so stupid as to pay £100 an hour for me to wave a fucking rock around.)

I stand outside with our bags of organic orgasm while Angus dashes into Waitrose to buy the final bits for dinner-he's making me his Thai Green Chicken Curry for dinner, only his will have real chicken and mine will have soy chicken that, indeed, tastes like chicken. I look up at the sky, which has naturally turned blue and sunny now that Angus is off a ladder, and I watch the seagulls do swoops in the air, catching currents and shouting to the world that they can fly and we can't. I stand there and I think...Yes. I could live here.

Which is good news really, since it's on the cards.

Angus and I have been thinking about it, and on Sunday we agreed that if the house doesn't sell very soon (i.e. by Fall) we are moving in. It won't be easy. That house is not where he wants to be, and not where I would want to be. I quite like Brighton, but I am keen that we live in an area where neither of us knows where the best pub is, where the freshest vegetables are, or where we are soaked in memories of other people, bike rides by the sea, or summer days with the doors open and the music playing.

But I am likely being silly. The one thing I have learnt is that home is where you make it. Home to me is where my cats are and where my boy lets me fling myself at him when he comes home. As we look at the walls in the living room, he licks his lips nervously. "If we move here, we need to make this place our own, have our own stamp on the place. Completely different."

Amen, my dearest.

We could re-decorate and freshen it up our own way. I could have the dog I am so desperate for. My cats could explore the fields out the back, Mumin rewarding me with the shrunken blind corpses of the moles that she finds to be so portentious a gift for her squeamish mother. I could become a real homebody (debating things like: Making homemade chutney, fact or fantasty? and: How to get your whites REALLY white). I could provide cupcakes to the village bake-off (they're called fairy cakes here. Isn't that so fucking cute you could vomit out of your eyes?) I could arrange gin and tonic-soaked book club sessions of people I meet in yoga classes.

And the thing is, we can move down there. In fact it will help us out a lot, as our current little house doesn't have enough space. It doesn't have enough space for visitors, and it doesn't have enough space for the stuff we are shipping over from Sweden shortly, the last of our worldly posessions.

It also doesn't have enough space to work from home for two people. We now have absolute freedom to live anywhere in the UK, as long as we can commute to London. No longer are we tied to living near Newbury for Angus to commute. After 20 years, Angus has handed in his notice to Company X, and taken on a sparkly and very serious job. He'll be like me-working from home as often as possible, with frequent commutes to London. I'm exceedingly proud of him, and proud for him. It was an enormous step for him. He's very excited, as he joins a new job, a job which his qualifications make him far and away the most perfect candidate for the job, a job for which management was desperate to have him once he'd sent them his CV.

We will both be working from home sometimes, and so both need offices as you can't have both of us barking on conference calls for 8 hours a day in the same room. His home in Ovaltine offers just that, plus a garden, a large bathroom, a large master bedroom and a guest room.

So it looks like we are moving soon, and when we do I will wave a very sad goodbye to Whitney Houston and love it forever. It will always hold a little candle in my heart as the first place I have ever been so utterly comfortable. And as we slowly resolve to move to Ovaltine, ideas start fluttering in our heads of ways to make it home while we take it off the market for a while, give it a rest from estate agent ads, before putting it back on the market to try to sell again.

We can make it a home. We can. Can't we, dearest?

-H.

PS-I will try to dial down the falafel earth mother talk.

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July 25, 2005

The Tree Hugging Crunchy Granola Chick With a Twist

It has become apparent to me that the older I get, the more of a tree-hugging eco-loving crunchy-granola vegetarian liberal hippie I am becoming.

Pretty soon, I will just masturbate to thoughts of rainforests, long to know the feeling of running an orangutan refuge center in Indonesia and walk around with a tin of hazelnuts while mainlining chai tea in an IV, convinced that they are the perfect foods.

Well, ok....maybe I'll want to add a bit of cheese to that. And some pasta on the side. With a glass of wine.

Since becoming a vegetarian almost 5 years ago, it's fair to say that the idea of eating a bacon sandwich sends shivers of revulsion up my spine. Not only would the guilt be too great for me to handle, but the truth? I've never liked bacon. Or ham. Or pork chops. Or steak, for that matter. Chicken used to be just about ok, although the smell of rotisserie chicken is quite captivating. I think I only miss turkey at Thanksgiving and the occasional crab meal, but all in all, I have not regretted becoming a vegg-o.

Yesterday we went to an Middle Eastern food shop that we both absolutely adore, and while there we found a new shop had opened near it, an organic, largely vegetarian shop. It was like an Earth Mother Muppet Christmas for me, as I winged bottles of organic salsa, lavash breads and spinach-falafels into my cart. They also had my absolute favorite snack there-roasted and salted broad beans, and I made off with no less than 8 bags of the stuff (hey-you just can't find crunchy-granola food like that here in Whitney Houston, and you never know when you're going to need some roasted broad beans. Preparation, people! Preparation!)

This is all a major change for me, really, becoming such a Granola Girl (albeit, one that shaves the body parts and is a big believer in makeup). In my twenties I was a gun-owning meat-eating tae kwon do-practicing DAR candidate. Now I am a European-dwelling anti-gun ownership pacifist to the core. So the heart? She bleeds more as I get older.

Which is why I am not at all surprised that I have fallen in love with yoga, and fallen in a very big way.

And why the classes-despite my love for yoga and respect for the instructors-are beginning to drive me around the bend.

I take two courses-Hatha Yoga (twice a week, if I can make it) and Ashtanga yoga once a week (and it's my goal to get Angus to try yoga just once, even though I think I am on the losing front on that aspect). Hatha Yoga is what is basically known as yoga or the normal ideas of yoga, but the class I take incorporates a lot of what's called Bikram Yoga, which is a type of yoga based around 26 postures, and in which the goal is to have a slinky for a spine and to be able to inspect the back of one's knees. You know. As one does.

Bikram yoga is the one that I want to be good at. It's all kinds of bendy goodness in the 26 poses, many of which I can already do and some of which my creaky back cannot do (hello, number 18!). For pictures that may make you reach for the Ben-Gay and the Extra Strength Bayer straight away, see here. The point is to crank the heat up in the room as high as it can go (this is why it's also called hot yoga) and the ideal temperature to use is 105 degrees. Think Death Valley kind of temperatures, only without the cacti. You go on an empty stomach and spend the two hours getting your body into positions that you had no idea existed outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

All of which sounds extremely fabulous to me. I love forcing my joints to stretch further, harder, and to whip myself into near-painful muscular pulls. I love feeling the swing and throb of my muscles, even if I do hate the meditation at the end. The Bikram idea of Sweatin' to the Oldies while doing it appeals on so many levels-fun, stretchy, hot exercise without the horror of Richard Simmons. What's not to like? And you never know when you may need to be bendy-say if you need to fill in for a magician, impress a professional football team, or escape from a filling water tank a la McGuyver.

I've missed two weeks of yoga due to work constraints and the trip to Wales, but I looked forward to going on Thursday as I hadn't been in a while and my muscles were desperate for a good stretch. That, and that dweedle was due to be away on her "Life Course", and so we would have peace in the classroom for once.

Laughing, full of carefree light and breathing out the negative energy, I positively skipped into the room. I decided I would lay out my yoga mat by the window, but leave enough room to get two more yoga mats for others in front of the windows as well. For once, three people could be by the light. For once, there would be no gawping layers of Reena flesh from between her tiny halter tops, and no sign of the black-rooted peroxided mane, no constant attempts of yoga sucking up. Her, and her constant comparisons to books she's read. Her, and her constant monopolization of the instructors in a room full of women.

But it was not to be.

I bounced into the room and in one fell swoop my heart crashed to the floor as I was met by Reena's twat floating straight up in the air as the practiced Position 8. And as usual, she took up the remaining space in front of the windows, meaning that no one else could have a mat by the light.

And there in the flesh is the reason why my yoga classes are driving me mental.

"I've just returned from St. Kitts!" she said breathlessly, flipping upwards, her face red.

What? I thought she was on some life course in the middle of the forest, communing with elves and pretending that she wasn't bored out of her mind with the no-talking and the segregated sleeping bunks? You can have life courses in the Caribbean? You can have life courses in the Caribbean and not shag and drink drinks with umbrellas? Do human beings behave that way, really?

"I had the. Best. Ahstanga. Teacher. Ever!" she crowed. She looked at the instructor Jocelyn. "He was so much better than you lot." she said earnestly.

The other women and I strapped on our boxing gloves, planning on Reena meeting the business end of our rolled up yoga mats. It'd fit. I'm sure of it.

But Jocelyn smiled kindly and nodded. "I imagine he was!" she agreed nicely. Her humility was impressive. I love Jocelyn, and her yoga teaching. I would've told Reena that if she didn't like it, she could fox trot oscar and do yoga on the hot tarmac. This must be why I am still a young learner Padawan.

Reena nodded. "It was amazing, the poses he could do. He could do them all. He had such huge muscles..." she trailed off, looking away. The other women and I look at each other uncomfortably. Yoga trousers show any kind of wet marks, I wanted to warn Reena. Better keep those fantasies in check.

The class took off, and I found that two weeks away hadn't done any damage-I was pretty bendy and comfortable. I was pleased that I was able to take some of the positions further than I ever had before-sitting cross-legged I found that I was able to get my knees completely flat on the floor, which Jocelyn exclaimed over and which Reena shot me a filthy look over.

Score.

I've become a truly sad individual in that I have yoga and pilates DVDs at home and a practice yoga mat (although not the one I really want, as they won't ship overseas). I look forward to the yoga classes, so much so that I absolutely hate being late, hate missing a second of it. I would like to think that they're helping me emotionally or psychologically, but as the ass bleed continues to the point where I wonder if Lizzie Borden is living in the toilet, I know that the rewards I am getting from it are physical only.

I've done more research and have abandoned Kundalini yoga (it's all about the Spiritual and the Breathing and the Chakras and the Chanting and the Hey-Hey We're the Monkees. I can't be doing with that. I hate meditating, mostly because I hate sitting still. And I can't lie down and meditate, as I tend to fall asleep within seconds. And I won't chant as I feel like a real asshole doing that. So really, meditation and I? We're not friends.) I am really, really interested in exploring Bikram yoga in its more pure form, and to that extent, I think I have found a decent place that has classes.

But it's far away from Whitney Houston.

Which is ok I guess, since for a few very real reasons it looks like we are leaving our beloved Whitney Houston very, very soon.

More on that tomorrow.

-H.

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July 22, 2005

The Cradle of God

When I was in High School I was a typical friendless geek and took a load of AP courses (I am not a big one for Classmates.com. There's no one that I want to talk to from those years in my life). I took extra courses just so I could graduate early, and thus I graduated from that horrid high school at age 17.

While in school, I spent my mornings in a work-placement course that had us on rotations in hospitals, where we'd spend time working and assisting in a hospital. The course consisted of people that had been identified as people that would do well in the medical field (little did they know that while my interest was high, my capacity for chemisty classes was low and would bounce me out of pre-med in university), and as such spent three mornings a week in various surgeries, offices, and hospitals as we tried to identify what focus we wanted in medicine.

In the beginning I was paired with a cantankerous Russian doctor whom none of the other students could tolerate. When the Russian had a few weeks on holiday I was sent to a labor and delivery unit. As I wasn't licensed, I could only do errands the nurses asked of me-fetch warmed blankets, deliver ice chips, ask what I could do to make people comfortable. Mostly, I stood in the back and took furious notes regarding what was happening (the worst? I had to open a fridge full of plastic bowls with a nurse, which she pointed out were full of placentas. That's right. Placentas. And the worst thing? They were destined for a cosmetic company, as she explained that they were used for moisturizers. Yeah. You're going organic Lush products now, aren't you?)

I remember being in the delivery room when an Indian family delivered their first child, a boy. I remember the absolute elation of the family, the tears and the sweat. I also remember that the mother had a bowel movement, which the doctor just swatted away, and I was told this is par for the course, that all mothers do it.

Enter Helen Phobia #1: Poo.

I remember my mother telling me that during the days I was born mothers were given enemas once their water broke to clear them out beforehand. At the time, I thought it sounded horrible-dealing with labor and the purging of the colon didn't appeal. Now, though, I think it does appeal-I'd rather become buddies with my friend Charmin then have my baby in a shower of shit.

I'm just saying.

What amazed me was each time a baby was born, the doctor and nurses got truly excited and happy. They laughed and clapped, and often cried. For each and every baby in a busy hospital that had births every hour or so. And the thing of it is, they really meant it. It wasn't a show. The tears and the smiles and the hugs of congratulation were real, and the joy at delivering healthy babies to sobbing mothers never abated.

I can't imagine being that happy at the singlular moments in my job.

I envy them so much.

Later that week I was sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where babies go that are born ill, born premature, or born in multiples (as multiples generally have shorter gestation periods and have lower birth rates, they often go to NICU just to ensure they're ok).

And once I walked into the halls, I realized...the NICU is the cradle of god.

The halls' overhead lights aren't as bright as the rest of the hospital, as the babies are strongly reactive to stimuli. There were two nurses for every baby. There were only about 30 beds for the infants, ranging in anything from a regular bassinet to an open bed with a heat lamp above, to the plexiglass-looking box with rubber glove inserts for hands. The open air beds often held the sickest babies, as the open bassinets allowed for greater access to the medical staff. Alarms would constantly go off, if the babies weren't breathing deep enough, if a monitor had slid from their tiny bodies, or if something had gone horribly wrong.

There were plush armchair-style rocking chairs next to every bed. Most of the beds had pictures of the parents and any siblings attached to the side, reminders for the babies if they should open their eyes that someone is absolutely desperate to hold them and have them be part of the family. I used to look at those pictures, and wonder if the babies opened their eyes and longed to be a part of it too.

The NICU breaks hearts.

The weight and gestation period of the baby was the greatest factor for survival, but this was 15 years ago, and the survival rate wasn't as good as it is today. Nurses were kind and gentle, while stoic and resolute. Emotions rocked and crashed and collided with each other in the air, the joy and the despair.

A good portion of those babies would never be going home.

There was one baby in an open air bed that caught my attention. He had been born very early, the time escapes me now, but he was so small that his head fit perfectly into the cup of my palm. The diaper he was in swum over his tiny hips, and his arms were as thin as long matches.

His name was listed as "Baby Boy James", and I never knew if he didn't have a first name listed because something had happened to the mother, if his parents hadn't thought of a name, or if they were afraid to say it out loud for fear of loving too much. The beautiful boy had tubes going into his nose, monitors attached to the tiny sunken chest, and an IV that went into the bottom of his foot. The foot was an improvement, I was told. He'd had an IV going into the top of his head previously, as they couldn't find a viable vein.

And for reasons that I will never understand, Baby Boy James commanded my complete attention. I stayed by his side that entire morning, asking questions of the nurses and the doctors. The nurse smiled at me and told me that I could touch him, so washing my hands for two minutes with the vigorous and painful brushes that doctors use, I scrubbed up and reached in.

I touched his tiny head and the alarms next to him immediately went off. The nurse smiled again and flipped the silencer, explaining that babies like him were extremely reactive to any kind of stimuli, so my touch had sent the alarms blaring. But he was ok, it was just a stimuli, and move slowly and calmly and he'd be ok.

A touch is almost too much for them.

It breaks my heart.

I calmly stroked the top of his head, running two fingers down the length of his arm. His skin had that new baby feel to them, that talcum powder meets cheese slice elasticity. The elbows were so small that there were no wrinkles around the skin of them, the elephant look of joints hadn't set in on someone who was so new. He opened his eyes to look at me briefly and I saw his pupils were huge, taking up his eyes, so that he calmly blinked at me with eyes as black and as indiscernible as night. Blink, blink, then the light became too much and the eyes closed.

He looked so wise in those few seconds that he looked at me. He looked so much older and kinder than anyone I had ever known.

The next day I raced to the hospital and hurtled into NICU, talking to the nurses and checking on Baby Boy James. When I got the nod, I scrubbed up again and spent the remainder of the morning with Baby Boy James. His eyes never opened, but I spent time gently touching him, watching his heart monitor to make sure it wasn't too much, too much, and as someone with a condition that is described as being unable to deal with external factors as I am the "emotional equivalent of a third degree burn", I understood that sometimes a touch is indeed too much.

The third day of that week, I again raced into the NICU.

When I got there, I learnt that Baby Boy James had died during the night.

I looked up at the board and saw his name mostly erased on the whiteboard, the line that had his name on it still faintly marked with black marker, but someone in a hurry hadn't finished it, hadn't truly taken him away. I went and stood next to his now sterilized bed, fresh and waiting for a new Baby Boy or Baby Girl, and I didn't move for a while. I couldn't even cry then.

I spent the rest of my course in the NICU, learning as much as I could. NICU was the only job that I can remember that I ever truly wanted, apart from being a writer. It was the only time I have ever felt that I could make a difference. And it was the only place that I was ever surrounded by people that are just a bit too new, a bit too fragile, a bit ill-equipped to deal with the outside world.

And those are emotions that I can relate to.

-H.

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July 21, 2005

I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You

When I first met Kim, it was in a classroom in Texas in the much under-loved and under-supported liberal arts wing. A handful of scattered students sat in the room, awaiting their tickets to go to our trip to France-my first trip out of the US, my first flight for freedom.

I couldn't stay, I had to go to work, so took my tickets and left.

Weeks later, we went to Paris. I remember him being around me, being nearby. I remember his quiet attendance and his presence. I remember the first real comment he made to me, and it was pretty spot-on for someone that had never really talked to me before:

It looks like someone brought a lot of baggage with them to Paris.

When he said it to me, we were standing wrapped in coats at the Metro station, and the baggage he referred to wasn't of the physical Samsonite variety.

A few nights later, we spent the night on the top floor, underneath a skylight. The Paris rain fell and sang on the windows, and we didn't touch, we didn't kiss, we just talked. Talked, and fell asleep a little, and then went to bed with the sound of raindrops and whispered conversations that consisted of nothing in our heads.

To this day, I can't remember a single word of what we talked about that night.

Weeks later back in Texas, we attended Dallas' Shakespeare in the Park. It was Hamlet, and the Noble Prince kept us up on a picnic blanket and throw cushions, strawberries and Ferrero Rocher proffered from his shaking hand. I was dressed in short denim shorts and a top with cornflowers on it, with sleeves that slid off my shoulders when I moved. As the night came on and Kim sat across from me, I looked over at him in the light of the stage and thought: I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

As the friendship deepened to the extent where he would slide notes and presents under my front door, to the point where I eagerly awaited his phone calls (long distance, at the time, from Dallas to Arlington.) I stopped minding his long hair. I stopped noticing that he was always so quiet, and started listening to myself, too. And I thought: I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

Years later it would be a hand taking mine in Bangkok. The rough hand taking mine, the hand that shook (it shook, shook like hands should shake, shook like I remembered hands shaking) taking mine, softly, into the soft creases. A lei around my neck swung to the beat of our footsteps, and my girlish sundress swept around my legs.

It led to a man that paid attention. It led to a man that wanted to know every little detail and every little history. A man that remembered the stories I told him, a man that listened quietly when the stopper came out of me, telling him things I had never told anyone. And I thought: I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

He even listened to the stories I had of Kim, no matter how hard they were to hear. He accepted that I was fucked-up, even if the fucked-up came at a high price, even if the fucked-up is sometimes hard for him to understand and comprehend. He knew that I was broken, and that in being broken, may only be half-mended with some sticky tape and fractured dreams.

When he would look me in the eye and whisper I won't hurt you, I believed him. And one day early on, I looked at him from across the table and thought: I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

I told him everything there was inside, scouring out the locked trunks and busting open duct-taped moving boxes as best I could. I passed some of my boxes to him to store and purged myself of their memory. He paid such attention that I thought he must understand that I was in the scrap heap, and perhaps didn't even care. I was already mad about him. The logistics were such that we couldn't be together, shouldn't be together, and as he turned those blue eyes on me I thought: I hope that you don't fall in love with me.

But he did.

And we did.

I have discovered some online magazines and am thinking of writing a few things for them.

I've also been thinking about the story I have had running in my head for a few months now. It's growing, and growing in ways that make me comfortable. I have a few bits and pieces on paper, and as it evolves and the people become real to me, I am gearing up to sit down and try to write it all out. I'm a big chicken, really. I'm afraid to put them on paper as I want to do them justice, I want to get it right. It sounds stupid, but they're good people. They're good people with some fuck-ups, and even though we all have fuck-ups, I want their fuck-ups to not intrude on how much I care about them.

And the thing is, I see them in my head. She's a lot like me, too much like me, and it makes me love her and hate her. I hear them talking now in my head, the dialog and the relationship unfolding, the story filling out and growing. And as she sits on the bench just there, and as the stands on the bridge and looks out, I see it in her eyes as she looks at him and she thinks: I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

I hope for great things for her, because if there's one thing that I have learned, it's that that saying leads to an exploration the likes of which you just can't resist. It's the way of it, I think-love always happens when you least expect it, aren't looking for it, and when it's most inconvenient. When last call happens, you think you're there with your agenda, but inevitably we had it wrong the whole time we sat at the table.

-H.

PS-Update at 1:30 pm-I am working from home today, and Angus is safe in Newbury. I am tuning into the news now, hoping (thinking) that the news is about nothing.

If it is something, I'm going to seethe.

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July 18, 2005

A Letter to A Younger Helen

Dear Helen,

Hi, it's Me. The older Me, looking back at the younger You. I'm just writing a note to you, to tell you some things that might be useful. You probably don't want to listen. No-scratch that. Knowing you the way I do, I know you won't listen. But on the off-chance you pull a Doc Back to the Future moment and tape up this letter after ripping it up in disgust, I want to lay some things out for you. Here goes.

That photography class you dropped out of? Stay in it. Buy a decent camera. Take many pictures of your life, to look back on, a physical reminder of a leaky memory.

He's not right for you. He's really not. But don't listen to others and dump him-you stay with him until you want to end it. It's your life. There will be a long string of boys that are not the right one, but you need to get to know how to pick them out of a lineup, you need to know what the wrong kind of relationship is like. It will hurt, but you need to be that kind of hurt, you need to know the sharp pointy part of the stick of a break up, that ache that the wrong boy brings. Don't leave someone until you are ready to leave them.

Oh-but there will be one that hits you in the middle of the night and throws you outside naked. Grab your keys and your purse. Drive away and leave his ass and never look back or speak to him again. Don't even think about staying.

Eat your vitamins.

Keep all the things that you love and value and will want forever in a small box. Keep that small box with you. Some things are going to happen, you are going to lose everything and you will lose everything more than once. You will want a few things from your childhood and of your choice (other than the two things that will somehow come out the other side with you. It's a hint. The Doggy Blanket and Pink Baby will be fine).

The perm? Seriously. Walk away from it and don't look back. Perms are good for some but you have a face like a dishplate. You will look like a Brill-o pad, and not in a good way. Just move on and deal with the straight hair-it will become cool in the late 90's, so you don't have too long to wait.

Keep playing the flute.

Learn how to repair cars. Practical skills are sexy. You don't want to have to be the chick that can talk Medieval literature but doesn't know how to turn off the boiler.

Call your grandparents more. Call your mother less.

Take up yoga as soon as you can. That way, I will already be a pro at it and won't be forced to take classes with that kiss-up bitch. I'll thank you for it later, I promise.

Wear more sunscreen. Don't look at me like that. I know you hate it. Don't argue with me, just wear more sunscreen, ok?

People will tell you that you're stupid and ugly. Don't believe them. You aren't stupid. And you're no Miss America, but you're no pug dog either. Stand up straight and know that you don't send people screaming with your looks (psst-unless you got that perm, that is, then all bets are off).

Keep practicing your French and Russian.

Live on your own a bit more. You'll have a period where you are perfectly content with your life and live in a little house with two dogs, where Sundays are lazy and designated with a bagel and the newspaper in bed. Don't feel the need to cast the net out and find someone. Just be alone. You're going to love it, I promise.

Two words: Benefit and Stila. Learn it, be it, love it.

Say "I love you." more. Sometimes, they might not love you, and sometimes they might not love you as much as you love them. That's just life, and who gives a toss about pride anyway. You'll never, ever regret saying it. But you will regret not saying it.

When you say goodbye to him take a video camera with you. Record the last 12 hours you had with him. Your memory, it's not so good. Someday you will want to look back to see what his face looks like, because you will hate yourself if you begin to forget it, and you already hate yourself for enough things you don't need to add this to it, too.

Wear your retainer. Your front teeth and I will thank you someday.

Don't stress so much about the Master's Degree. You won't need it anyway. Take it someday when you want to, when you feel ready.

Everytime you take to your bed, crippled, and think: This is the worst thing ever. I just don't know how to get past this, then know this-it's not the worst thing. Things can-and will-get worse. Things will fall apart in ways you could never anticipate. But the amazing thing is, you will learn that you are a bendy toy inside. You can take it. You can deal with it. Life isn't a pretty party most of the time, but I've seen you with rope and crampons, I've seen you scale mountain walls of failure I never even knew existed. You will have some bloodied elbows, a bruised heart, a fractured soul, but you will be fine. Believe in yourself.

Never in a million years will you guess what's ahead of you. It's better than you think. It's worse than you think. Buckle up. Be tough. Don't take it all and blame yourself all the time, don't internalize it all. Try to smile more.

It's the getting there that wil be the adventure, babe.

I promise.

I love you,
Helen

-H.

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Summertime, Summertime, Sum-Sum Summertime...

The English summer has come, and with it a surprising heat and sunshine that I never suspected England was capable of. It's nice having my second real summer here. Last summer was chilly, rainy, and miserable. There was about one week of truly warm and short and tank-top combo-provoking weather. Summer is truly here, it is truly hot, and I am truly in heaven.

When I was a child, we lived at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), outside of Colorado Springs, for about four years (brought to me courtesy of the military: Thank you, come again!) I remember driving into the base for the first time, and passing a Thunderbird jet permanently afixed by the entrance of the base. We'd pass the landing strip for the gliders and the parachutists. As we wove our way into the area of the base we lived on, the mountains towering above you and the valley of Colorado Spring below, I always tried to spot mountain goats and deer in the thick swathes of the trees above.

I never spotted one.

But, like Santa Clause and maxi pads with wings that really work, just because I didn't see them doesn't mean that they don't exist.

For some reason, when I look back on childhood summers the only ones that I can remember are the ones I had in Colorado. Seriously. It's like the rest of the years I was in hibernation or the memory erasure program is complete, as there's just nothing there.

I remember summers like the movies do. I remember hot summer days, where I would get out of bed, grab the top pair of shorts and tank top in the dresser, throw some Cap'n Crunch down my throat, and then head outside, resistant to coming inside for anything other than a perfunctory nod at the basics of food and indoor plumbing. The day would be spent monkeying myself up and down trees, a paperback book in hand, or tormenting my sister (always a viable option), or riding around on my bicycle, with those clicking beads attached to the spokes that announced my imminent arrival or departure.

I remember the sun out all day and into the night. I remember being packed off to bed while the sun was still around, and grumbling and arguing that as long as it was up then so should I be. I remember knobby brown knees and calves pockmarked with mosquito bites. I remember never putting a pair of shoes on unless instructed by an adult. I remember trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk, only to make an eggy mess that never quite congealed like they did on the TV. I remember faces sticky with the blue and red juicy mess of a Bomb Pop, delivered by the much beloved and beleagured ice cream man. I remember sucking those long Icee pops that you would put into the freezer and then milk the extreme sweet and sicky flavor until the last drop, the tongue curling up from the assault of it.

Good days included the use of the Slip 'N Slide. Mom would hook up the hose to the side of it, and we'd have to wait a bit as the first of the hose water would be of the "scald the dog" variety, and once the cold water was whipping down the slide, then so would we. You had to pick your arms and legs up at the end of the slide, as the slide used to be held down by what looked like two enormous metal staples whose sole design was to rip the skin from the bottom of your forearms and thighs in some sado-masochistic effort to slow children down from shooting off the end of the Slip 'N Slide and onto something gentler like, oh, grass or concrete.

At USAFA, the neighborhoods were divided into two-Douglas Valley (where we lived) and Pine valley (All My Children, anyone?), and amongst the two further divided into little roundabouts of houses called clusters. A cluster would have a total of 9 houses grouped in a ring. In our cluster, we were well equipped with children my sister's age and in the summer they would get on their My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake Big Wheels and try to see who was more daring on the slope of the cluster.

I swear the noise of those damn Big Wheels broke EPA regulations.

Throughout the summer the cluster would get together and have major barbecues. The cars would be parked up next to the houses and the center of the ring would be populated with barbecue grills, picnic tables, and makeshift tables. The kids would dash around doing what kids do best-annoy, question, ask for attention, and pester with irrational questions (Mom, I know you're talking about neighbor Jenny's mother's hip replacement, but can I interrupt for a second to ask you about where the deepest part of the ocean is, and how they know it's so deep? Is it really really deep? Really?). We'd weave around the grills until we got yelled at, then would make ourselves scarce until we thought the annoyance had been forgotten and the next sin could be committed.

When twilight came, so did the fireflies, which of course prompted us to run around with our empty Miracle Whip jars with holes hammered into the top to try to catch them. We padded the bottom with blades of grass and tried to catch as many as we could. We'd watch them in the jar, wondering how a bug's butt could go from orange to fluorescent, and then we'd let them go, tumbling out into the air in the dozy unrushed way that only fireflies can.

The adults would sit in their chairs, those lawn chairs that you no longer see with the meatl frame holding interlocking strips of nylon that would, eventually, break. They would nurse beers and glasses of wine as they talked into the evening. What they talked about I never understood (but I know now what adults talk about in those late evenings-nothing, really, it's just nice to drink alcohol and chat). The kids would pick at the food through the evening, battling over who could have the vanilla and chocolate parts of the Neapolitan ice cream, and then at some point be put into bed by mothers that smellt of barbecue charcoal smoke, cut grass and Heinz ketchup. We'd fall asleep instantly. In the morning the only evidence of the fun the night before would be skeleton tables still in the middle of the cluster, waiting to be taken home, and the dirty blackened feet that you woke up with after running around barefoot all night and forgetting your mother's admonishment to go wash those up before getting into bed.

Summers went on for so long that at the end of it you almost got restless, were almost ready to go back to school. I remember taking the enormous school list and heading into Target to buy them (Number 2 pencils? Check. Erasers that smell like heaven? Check. Box of kleenex? Check. Binder that you will inevitably regret and get tired of? Check.)

I remember those summers like they were yesterday. Before thinking about work, before thinking about laundry that needs doing. Those were the days when the only stress was dealing with a parent's mood and which book to read once you'd finished that one.

Now that I'm a grown-up, my summer evenings are a glass of wine outside. It's petting a cat as they swirl around my calves. It's wearing tank tops and shorts and flip flops with a baseball cap thrown on to protect my face. It's about thinking about work the next day, wondering where the next holiday will be, debate emptying the dishwasher, trying not to stress.

The fireflies, Bomb pops, Slip 'N Slides and dirty feet are gone, but it doesn't mean that I will ever forget them. The Swiss Cheese memory has given me those things to remember and hug tight, to open their jar and sniff them and remember what it was like to have those moments. It's given me those, and I will love them forever.

-H.

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July 15, 2005

Lost in Wales

We only just got back, after enjoying extremely hot and sunny days, no mobile phone coverage, and a quiet little slice of life.

We found, in the middle of nowhere and in the far reachest of west Wales, the world's greatest hotel with the world's greatest cottage, and we didn't want to leave.

And so we stayed an extra day, and now each of us is wishing we'd had another one there.

Helen in Wales.jpg


More from me on Monday.

-H.

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July 11, 2005

A Quiet Normal

The weekend was an ordinary weekend. Hot English summer has arrived, thankfully (as late as Wednesday this week we were walking around wearing sweaters, with the heating turned up high in the house). The heat swizzles around in the house, warming walls, floors, and windowframes that are so used to keeping in the chill. The flowers are exploding along the border of the garden, little pinpricks of color dotting my English landscape.

As I write this, sunshine is flooding over the keyboard, and I have rucked the sleeves of my T-shirt up to expose a length of arm to the light. Jeff is in the bathroom next door, a Lush bath bomb fragrance highlighting the house and the sound of my two rubber duckies apparently going to war in the battlefield known as the Bathtub, led by the Supreme High Commander Jeff, or "Jeff of the Higher Dead", as he likes to call himself.

Angus has gone off to get his daughter Melissa at the airport (I think it's better that he picks them up alone, and has some time with them himself, so I wait at home and dance around until they show up). I love how the day is already. Jeff will dig into a bowl of Cap'n Crunch (he too loves them, Dane my dear) and then the Gamecube gets fired up. Sometimes I play with him as we race around in MarioKart. I beat him everytime, and everytime he gets a cheeky grin and tells me he wasn't actually trying that time.

Mumin weaves in and out of the house, the sunshine warm on her fur. Maggie, the less adventurous, simply guards the door and waits for the flies to come in, which she'll then chase at penalty to anything that might have been laying in her path. They cry for catnip treats and I distribute them, and then they rub against me and saunter around the house, and I wonder how it is I ever lived a life without them.

Our weekend is normal. I do normal things. I go and buy yet another baby gift for yet another baby that yet another colleague has had. I already have the wrapping paper, I am used to baby gifts. Our doctor visits don't commence until September, but already my heart is in it, my dreams are alight.

I sign up and sponsor an older dog at Dogs Trust as although the abandoned older dog will never have another home again, but he will rest comfortably and protected until he dies. I want to volunteer, but the sites are too far away to drive to. I want to adopt one (I want this darling) but we can't have dogs in this house, so I have to wait until we move.

Work mails have picked up again, as we race to the finish line with my rocket. For the record, and as unimportant as it seems now, the Parliament demo went beautifully. No problems. No harassment. Just a strange sigh of bizarre in showing my beautiful rocket to Lords, Ladies, Earls, Baronnesses. I remember looking at the backdrop of the set and wondering how on earth I had gotten here, how on earth I had found my way here, how a little someone like me would find myself staring at 3 meter high sets with a view over Westminster Abbey.

I pre-order the new Harry Potter book. I change the sheets and hang the other ones to dry in the sun once they've finished their many rotations in our washing machine. The wash line barely looks like mine-amongst Angus' T-shirts and my knickers are boy-sized trousers, boy underwear with Spiderman all over them. My wash line looks like a normal family's wash line, and I love the look of it.

We eat curry and I step over children's toys. I walk past Angus and Jeff as they work on an enormous puzzle. I ruffle Jeff's hair, and he grins. Angus takes my hand and squeezes it. There are some dishes to do, filing to do, work to do. None of it matters, and I simply take a book and read it on the couch. This weekend has found us hovering close to home, sleeping a lot and being quiet as we just hide in the inner sanctum that we have here.

My life for the next 9 days will involve children, and with those children, comes a lot of laughter. I love that laughter. And-despite their arguing and the discomfort and bad moods that accompany it-I like these kids.

Armed with my mobile phone and Blackberry, we're taking off to Wales for a few days, to chill out in a country cottage and to splash in the water a bit. I've got a work meeting in Bristol on Thursday, and will be back online Friday.

And I know that as we go, I will have Bird York's song Have No Fear, as sent to me by Loribo, running through my head. The song has picked me up and dusted me off. The song has put a smile on my face and calm in my heart.

The song has helped me return to a quiet normal.

-H.

PS- Sorry Ems

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July 08, 2005

Dear God

This morning I woke up with a hangover and a blue ink message written on the inside of my left hand. It read:

Dear God

Now, this message was definitely in my handwriting, but it was strange for a few reasons:

1) I don't remember writing it.
2) I don't use blue ink (I'm an inkist).
3) I don't believe in God.

All I can think is my subconscious was trying to tell me something.

For most of yesterday we were glued to the news. Glued to the news and busy checking in with loved ones and colleagues, so for the spiteful bitch that sent me hate mail saying that I should've been blogging sooner, the truth of the matter is, blogging was down the list in my mind, after 1) Making sure the men I sit across the table with on a weekly basis are alive and 2) Checking in with friends and family to make sure they are alive. I think those two things were important, but I do apologize if I made anyone worry or stress (and I am not trying to be self-important or feeling full of myself when I say that). As the death toll continues to rise today, I look back and still think my priorities were in the correct order.

My manager called me yesterday, wobbly and shaking, and told me that he also nearly stayed in London after the Parliament demo. If he had done, he would've been taking the train home from Liverpool Street that morning, and he would've been in the second carriage. The second carriage, the carriage he always takes. The carriage that blew up. My manager nearly cried.

England is a wonderful place to live. I love living here, and I love the way of life here. Something I have always both admired and teased about is the idea of English stoicism (stiff upper lip and all that).

But here, it works. The English are not unaccustomed to violence and terrorism-they had the IRA for decades, and to this day there is a grimness about the despair and the very intrusiveness that a single act of terrorism can bring out. The English have also been prepared, to some extinct-if this was an act of Al-Qaeda terrorism, then it was not done without some feeling that England, at least, were next on the list. Emergency services had run so many drills that once the dress rehearsal had ended and the real demo begun, they were ready, and they were brilliant.

That said, this horror is in my backyard. This horror is on tube lines that I take and in stations that I sometimes go through. These are places that I was in as recent as last week, and that alone is what makes me tremble. Almost four years ago I sobbed as I sat on a couch in my living room in Sweden, watching the Twin Towers burn. It was different for me then-I had never been to the WTC. I have never worked in New York. I felt the atrocity of what happened, I felt the agony of being powerless to help, but in some small aspect it was something I couldn't relate to as not only had I never been in a terrorist act, I had never known what color carpeting was on the third floor, I had never been through those revolving doors. I felt anguish that day, but I just couldn't imagine what those people were suffering through on that tragic day.

But now I can. I can imagine it.

I have been to Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Edgeware Road, Aldgate and Russell Square, some of them many times. I work next to them. They are a fact in the equation of my life. I know where the turnstiles are, and I know which carriages to take to help make my journeys faster. This time, I can not only feel the anguish, but I know what the walls look like inside the hell. I know what the inside of the tube looks like, I know what the inside walls of the track look like. I know what color the seating is and I know to mind the gap.

I search around my feelings this morning and find two emotions- horror....leading to strength. I am still in shock, but I have by-passed the anger and gone straight to solidarity. I'm not a vengeful person. I don't want to bring revenge on a nation, on a religion, on geography. I want those directly responsible to be brought to justice. I also want them to know that they will not win, that they will not change the way of life here. In my own form of protest I will continue to go to London, I will continue to ride trains and tubes, and I will refuse to be afraid. They will not win. No one can own me like that. No one.

Which leads me to the writing on my hand.

I guess I have a few things to say, and so I'll go along with it and write to some kind of deity, since maybe someone is listening somewhere.

Dear God,

I have no words to describe how horrible yesterday was. I think about the people that died, and I think about the bodies that are still in the tunnels. I wish their loved ones could be there with them right now holding their hands. The dead are lying on tracks, they're cold and alone. They're labelled a crime scene, exhibit A, evidence B. They're scared and isolated and the one thing I want you to know is that I am thinking of them and hoping that they can soon be reunited with those whose grieving has only just begun. Please take care of them, when they get to whatever rest stop they're headed to, and until they get there, if you could find a blanket to cover them with and if you could sit and hold their hands and talk to them, I'd be grateful. I don't want them cold and alone, God. I don't want them cold and alone.

I can't believe this happened.

One week ago, God, it could've been me.

I don't know what to make of that, and I don't know how to feel.

I want to ask that you make everyone here strong, that you make people stand together, that you don't let us bend to fear. Don't let people be afraid, don't let them break. Help people unite and help us to find the monsters that organized this, that carried this out. I may not have faith in you, but I do have faith in the human desire for justice, to right the wrongs, to erase the idea that they are still out there, that they may strike again. They caused souls to be cold and alone on tube tracks, and for that, there are consequences.

And let there be justice, God. Let there be justice.

Had this event happened on Wednesday you would've taken over half my team from me, men coming into London for my weekly Wednesday meeting. They come through Kings Cross and Liverpool Street. Me and my meeting would've been responsible for their deaths. These are men that I love and that I want to protect, and so God I get down on my knees and thank you that they are ok and alive, that it wasn't Wednesday, that they are all ok.

And I cry, God. I cry.

-H

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July 07, 2005

I nearly stayed over last night in London after the late-ending day with Parliament.

Angus' son Jeff is here, and so I woke up this morning glad that I got to stay home today with them both.

London buses are stopped.

London tubes are closed.

We can't get any information, and all we want is the truth.

The phones are barely working due to the congestion.

Angus' family has all checked in now-his sister-in-law was evacuated from one station only to take the tube straight into Edgeware Road, the station that became hell. She was evacuated again and is ok, stranded in London like so many others, looking for a way to get home, as the most of the trains aren't running and London is for all intents and purposes closed.

Frantic attempts to reach my team one by one all morning-most of them come into London via Kings Cross and Liverpool Street, and the Dream Job office we generally use is indeed located in the heart of the financial district. One of my project managers was two streets away from the Tavistock bombing. He is ok, but in disbelief, and stuck in London. After shaky phone calls husky with disbelief and sadness from a few of my team, it has finally resulted in one message sent from one of my lead project managers: "Your entire team accounted for."

And when I got that message, I buried my head in my hands and cried.

We have suspended all meetings in London for the next few days, and email is quiet as we just cannot believe what is happening.

Angus and I were supposed to be in London this afternoon with Jeff, just as Angus and I are supposed to be there tomorrow. I expect we won't be there for a while now.

One week ago today I was on those exact tubes and trains through a lot of those very stations at the precise time that they were bombed today.

I can't bear to leave the house.

I can't believe our beautiful city has been attacked like this.

We can't stop checking the news.

I just can't....

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July 06, 2005

In Which Life Just Gets More Surreal

OK, so two things have unfolded on the work front that make me want to swing my head around and check and see if there's any water pooling up in the ear canals, or anything like that, since it's just so fucking bizarre.

The first: Sitting in my pajamas yesterday with a cat on my lap and a plate of peanut butter crackers (Dear Queen Elizabeth: Please see what you can do about asking Big Tony to import Reduced Fat Jiffy. Some of us want to make sure our tiaras always fit, ok?), I was reading work emails. The cat, who was having Reiki vigorously applied to her shoulders, was purring contentedly and making biscuits on the tender skin of my wrist, and despite my ass completely falling asleep I wouldn't have moved to save my life. An email popped up on my screen with an attachment. Being an icon of the Pavlovian response, I opened it.

And lo and behold, there in writing, I see that I and my team have won a second award for my rocket riding gerbil. There in writing, I see that I have been given money again and the chance to win a trip next year like the Monaco trip I got this year (I won't win, I know I won't win, but heck, it's nice to be eligible, anyway. I may not get to sit at the bar, but at least I don't have to use fake ID to get there).

And there, in writing, was the word "Thanks".

It made my fucking day.

The second: The Hand Herpes has slowly faded, and just in time for a major event at work. An event so surreal that I can't actually believe it's happening. An event so huge that I am not remotely nervous because it just doesn't feel real.

Hi.

My name is Helen.

I was raised in military housing, housing where you weren't allowed to paint the eggshell white walls and you'd soon be moving on anyway.

I went to an inexpensive university and am co-owner of two pre-loved cars.

I don't even own the house I shag the lovely Angus in on a regular basis.

And I've been asked to do what I know is quite likely the biggest event in my career so far. I have been asked to do a demonstration of my rocket riding gerbil today. I am dressed in a long and professional business suit and that amazing vintage necklace. I am going to try to arm myself with confidence to surround myself with the fact that I just can't believe it's all real and despite the fact that I'm the poster child for low self-esteem. I'm a simple girl in this very un-simple world, and I just can't get my head around this.

I have to demo my rocket today with some of the men that made my life a living hell three weeks ago (and as a side note, my ringtone? Yes, I have a new one. I have downloaded the truetone of the infamous James Brown song It's a Man's Man's Man's World. It's called irony. I will not take this sitting down anymore). But this time, I think they're nervous, too. This time, I hope they let me go about things and give me some space.

I have my demo today.

At Westminster.

To Parliament.

-H.

PS-no, I am not kidding, on drugs, or delusional. But any one of those three might make this seem easier.

PPS-really not kidding. My devouring of Tums can attest to it.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:14 AM | Comments (43) | Add Comment
Post contains 608 words, total size 3 kb.

July 05, 2005

In Which I Learn to Breathe Again

Work depression still at the forefront, a week ago I was in Wales overnight for a team meeting. My team, my boys, the ones with whom I feel like I have been to war to get this project off the ground, the ones that I would go to the mats for should there be a hint that their jobs were in danger. We have become not unlike the cast of Friends-we know where we have each other, we know what works, and we don't take kindly to newcomers trying to come in and upset the flow, even if the newcomer looks like Christina Applegate.

That night we decided to go for a swim in the attached spa. We all got our swimsuits on, and despite my initial concern that people I work with would be seeing me in a swimsuit (a one-piece, since I am concluding that my two-piece days might be over), we all had a great time swimming, sitting in the jaccuzi talking work, and relaxing by the side of the pool scoping our next project.

Even when we are chilling, we are unable to chill.

That night by the bar, a phone call came through. It was another of our project managers, Greg, who was on holiday with his family. He was leaving his family for the evening to join us at the hotel, to drink with us and eat with us and tell stories with us. It didn't make much sense to me why he would bail out of a family holiday, but then I don't lead his life, so I shrugged and went about my evening.

We hired a minibus to take all of us to a curry house, where we watched the spectacular display of lightning outside the enormous windows. I sat in the corner next to Roy, one of the project managers I work the closest with, and Peter, a chap new to the team but one who fits in evenly and well. They talk to me, keep me plied with wine, and we share food off the enormous curry plates. The boys have been handling me with kid gloves lately, not because they're worried I'm going to get them thrown off the project as I did with the vendor that insulted me, but more because that they think I am feeling a bit fragile, a bit sore, a bit damaged. It means a lot to me that they appear to be circling the wagons, and I swear to myself that I will not let them down.

During the meal Roy leans over to me. "Helen, do you know why Greg came along?"

I like butter garlic sauce from my fingers. "No, actually. It seemed very weird that he did come along. Do you know why?"

Roy reaches for a naan and rips a piece off with his fingers. "His Mum's in hospital, unconscious."

I chew and swallow. "Is she ok? Is Greg ok?"

Roy smiles sadly. "They don't know. She tried to kill herself, Helen."

I look to the end of the table, where Greg is sitting with his head thrown back in extreme laughter. "My God, Roy."

Roy nods. "He said he just wanted to be with friends tonight, to try to laugh."

The truth is, suicide has been on my mind, lately-not as in something for me to attempt, but the general concept and what it all meant that snowy winter. I have been on a binge lately of reading dark and painful books, reading stories of people's lives that hurt too much and are too raw. I have been listening to aching and distraught music, perhaps as a result of my own darkened humor and depression.

I read a book recently, James Frey's autobiography A Million Little Pieces. It was fucked up, painful, and beautiful. It had me thinking in streams of consciousness for a week, and when I was done I found that the comma was my best friend. It also had something that rang so true in it that I had the wind knocked out of me.

He said in a dialog with his therapist where he explains his take on suicide and addiction (the therapist has the first line, welcome to stream of consciousness writing):

You think suicide is an act of bravery?
No, I think it's cowardly, just like I think addiction is cowardly. But I do think that they both require a certain kind of pathetic strength.
Strength?
You have to be fairly strong to feel anything as powerful as hatred or self- hatred. Addiction and suicide are not for the weak.
I think that's ridiculous.
Ridiculous things can be true.

I look at Greg and am not sure what this all means, I can't figure out how to compute it all. I've always been on the other side of the open pill bottle, a side that doesn't stop to think about others when we absolutely should. Ridiculous things can be true. I wanted to stand up and run across the table and sit beside him and hug him, I wanted to tell him that it wasn't because of him, and it wasn't in spite of him. It just wasn't him, it wasn't him, it wasn't him. It was her, and it was wrong, and it must be horrible, and it happened but it was outside of him, that it was her.

I do none of this. Suicide is like a fingerprint-they're all different. People don't fall down the same way, and people don't get back up again the same way. This is his pain and nothing I say could possibly help.

Later back at the bar, I make my excuses. I'm not interested in hangovers or dodgy stomachs, I have to run the meeting the next morning and a phone call home has me in a terrible mood, so I throw in the towel when the alcohol levels have reached the easy saturation point.

I go to the bar, where Greg has just ordered another bottle of alcohol to feed to the group sitting in the comfy couches by the plasma TV. "Helen! You leaving us?" he shouts, acting gutted and trying to balance an extra glass in his other hand.

"I'm tired, Greg. I just want to get some sleep!" I say wanly. He grins at me. "Greg?" I ask. "You know, I am always here for you. If something was on your mind, or anything like that. I'm just saying, if you ever needed me to listen, I'm here."

Greg's smile fades, and he sets the bottle on the bar. He drops his head, before turning around and gripping me in a vise-like hug. "Thank you, Helen." he says hoarsely to the side of my head. "I mean it, thank you." He drops me and picks up the glasses off the bar again. He shakes his head and turns to me and the party mask back in place. More than anything, I understand this. I understand masks and lying and being someone else to try to get through a situation, and I clap him on the shoulder and I leave.

Ridiculous things can be true.

When I get home I put all the dark books away and take out the last Harry Potter book. I go and download the one song, All I Want, that never, ever fails to make me happy. I put on my pajamas and put the song on repeat and I dance around the study in the sunlight because the darkness and despair of work is fading. I dance around because I am alive and my questions about that snowy winter may never be answered, but maybe they no longer need to be.

I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:54 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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July 01, 2005

In Which I Sit in the "Other" Pew

My secret for the day: I don't occur to my family, and I don't really know how to fix it. I often think if I was prettier, life would be easier. If I was smarter, more successful, maybe I could count for more. There's something so inately shameful about me that it rubs off on my family, and they are ashamed of me, too.

And the truth is, all I ever wanted to do was belong, and the truth is, the very heart of my secret it, I am now dealing with the fact that I never will, that I am the maverick and I need to learn how to live my life on my own, not trying to get them to love me anymore. I don't have to try to please anyone anymore. I need to just accept that this is how it is.

Sometimes things tumble around in my head for a very long time. Things that seemed innocent or misspoken, but which had barbs that I never knew were around. Things that stick and ache and remind me of the status that I really do have in life.

My cousin Nancy's graduation a few weeks ago was a fraught affair since Angus and I were in a terrible argument on the way there. As we passed the miles, we passed the argument, and by the time we parked the car we were both hungry, tired, and worn out from the challenge. We made peace. He bought a sandwich and I bought a take-away pasta dish, and we walked to the church where the graduation was held.

We greeted my family (my Uncle John, Aunt Carol, my grandmother and Carol's mother Teresa who had flown in to see her granddaughter graduate. My other cousin Mary wasn't there, which is a shame, since I think she's a sweetheart) outside the church in the queue to get in. I scarfed down the pasta to the amusement of my grandmother. She looked at me as I popped a cherry tomato in my mouth. I smile wanly. "I was hungry." I say sheepishly. I don't mention the bag of crisps we have stashed in my purse to consume in the duration of the ceremony.

When we get to the front of the line to get in the church, we find to our amazement that we have to go through a metal detector and be searched. Angus looks at me. I look back at him. Everyone in the line, being from military families, simply holds their arms out for the metal detector wand and opens their bags. I, personally, am infuriated. This is a church. This is a church in a country where we are all guests. To subject people-including some Englishmen and women, like Angus, to a search on their own property was, I felt, frankly insulting and paranoid. But he grimly went on with it and we walked into the church.

A teenager to my right hands me a program, and I look at her and say: "Which side is the bride's side?"

She blinks.

"What?" she asks, confused, American accent in place.

Aha. Joke lost then. Angus and I move in and sit down to the left, in the area reserved for the "Other" crowd. My grandmother sits in front of me, next to Teresa. My grandmother is taking a million pictures, and Angus and I smile at each other.

"Isn't Nancy beautiful?" gushes my grandmother. "She and Mary are the most beautiful granddaughters. So beautiful."

I feel my smile freeze into place.

Teresa looks at me nervously. "All of your granddaughters are beautiful." she says, looking at me. "Helen is a knockout, for instance."

My grandmother nods, distracted. Teresa looks at me in a panic, but I shrug and smile. I am used to this.

I am used to not occurring to people. I am used to not occurring to my family. I know I am not beautiful, I know I am only average, but I could do without being reminded about it by my own grandmother. This is the way it has always been. I have always been in the "Other" category. My cousins talk about the countless visits they get from my grandparents, the acres of gifts and cards and emails. I have dropped off the birthday and Christmas card list, but I continue to send them one, because it's not about scoring the most stash, I'm not interested in that, it's about just letting people know that you remember them, that they occur to you.

Someday I will understand what it is that makes me so utterly undesirable, and when that day comes, the liquor cabinet will be raided in a very big way.

Seeing an altar to my side I slip out of the pew. I drop a pound coin in the offering box and I take four candles, and light them. Grandpa. Kim. Egg and Bacon. I light them and say a quick word to them, before hastening back to my seat.

The graduation goes on and on, and it turns out the students that are entering the military get the most applause from the crowd. This makes sense, as it's a military function, and the families are military. Not many graduates are staying in the UK, but a few are, and it makes me smile. We're taking over.

I look at the candles and see that my Egg and Bacon candles are gone. Gone. I see the families near the altar shuttering away with their cameras and I am livid. They blew out my candles! I rage. They fucking blew out my candles to get better shots of the stage!

The graduation completes and I hurry out of my seat to the altar. I have to light two more candles. I have to. They were for my beautiful babies and we are starting IVF the end of the year and I have to tell them how much I love them and ask for their help. I get to the altar and find...my candles weren't blown out after all. They melted faster than the others on the stand. They burned down and blew themselves out and my wishes flew to Egg and Bacon, my thoughts acknowledged with a puff of smoke. I smile, think of Egg and Bacon, and then leave the church.

It's picture time then. A load of pictures are taken on quite possibly one million cameras, and then we head to a pub for a large meal and a pint.

At the pub, Nancy takes stock of her gifts. She has received a veritable fortune in cash and presents galore. She is also holding a silver phone which I gave her. When the family was last over a month ago, Mary was telling me she didn't have a phone at all. I remembered a silver GSM phone I had just laying in the bottom of my dresser, unused. I gave it to her, and she was in fits of happiness and gratitude. According to my Aunt Carol, the phone is still terribly popular, and I am pleased about that. I found another one at work and gave it to Nancy just before her graduation.

I slide over a pink box to her, smiling at Angus. We had worked hard on this gift. Melissa and I had searched high and low for the right gift, and we settled on a beautiful antique necklace in the local antique shop. It was made in 1930 in London, and it was a gorgeous silver chain with sparkly multi-colored crystals. Melissa and I looked longingly at it and many times debated keeping it for ourselves, but in the end we bought it for Nancy and then spent a while trying to find the right pink box for it to go in to show it off.

Nancy opens the box. "Oh. Another necklace." she says flatly. "Thanks."

I am floored. And gutted. That necklace is amazing, and the look of want in Melissa's eyes makes me think that Angus and I bestowed the necklace on the wrong girl.

Aunt Carol looks at me. "Mary would so love that necklace. She's going to wish it was hers! It's beautiful!"

I smile. It seems I bought the wrong thing. I try to chalk it up to the fact that Nancy has a lot on today and received many gifts, that maybe she's just overwhelmed. I can imagine it's a lot to handle in one day, so I tell myself that's the case.

In the end as we're saying our goodbyes, my Grandma tries to give me money, but I don't want money. She insists, and then when she hugs me I have Angus put it back in her purse. I don't want her money. I would rather that she liked me. I would rather I occurred to her.

There's nothing I can do to try to be pretty or gorgeous or remembered by my father's family. I am the disgraced child, the one from the divorce, the one who fell by the wayside. I am the least Japanese looking of all the children and grandchildren, I am the whitest and the furthest away. I will try to bridge more gaps with my grandmother, and maybe if I do so, I will be remembered.

Yesterday I got the chance to nip to the shops at lunchtime. Christmas is 5 months away now, and I have already started buying things for people (I'm one of those people. You know. The kind that is ready for Christmas by Thanksgiving. The kind people hate right around the 24th of December.) I stepped into the antique store that I love-it was chaos. A poncy London couple had come into our "quaint" village and were buying like maniacs, at the £6000 mark and still debating if the antique silver they were looking at would match the carpet. I walked around and saw, there, in the display case (next to the ring I want so much), was another one of those 1930's crystal necklaces resting quietly on a shelf. This one was more simple than the one we gave Nancy, it had fewer stones and was perhaps more elegant. The shopkeeper told me that a woman had a whole set and was selling them off a piece at a time. The next piece to come into the shop would be a bracelet.

I bought the necklace.

I am keeping it.

And when the bracelet arrives, the woman will call me, as I am buying it for Melissa for Christmas.

This is the necklace.


Necklace.jpg


Isn't it stunning?

And in wearing it, I hope to feel pretty too, if just for a day.

-H.

PS-speaking of families, mine is coming over tomorrow as Angus and I host our Second Annual Independence Day. OK, so we're celebrating on the 2nd of July. It's not like we get Monday off or anything, so Saturday it is. We're having my family over as well as a mass of our neighbors. And we bought serious fuck-off fireworks, since fireworks are legal in the UK.

I just couldn't resist:


Fireworks Fun.jpg


Come on. "The Wrath of the Gods"? Yeah. That promises to be fantastic.


PPS-Yesterday was a day of internet commerce in my house. I bought a Nintendo GameCube package and an extra game to enjoy while Melissa and Jeff are here. I can't wait until it arrives. And I tried to continue to flex my capital expenditure Internet muscle and order this, but when I got to the end of the process it turned out they won't ship overseas, so there goes that idea. Fuckers.

PPPS-Thanks Emily. I just love it. I hope that it gives me more strength to kick some ass, because big things are coming next week, and I'm going to use Rosie as a security blanket. Love you, too.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:45 AM | Comments (28) | Add Comment
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