Shards

Every time I reach into the cabinet for a ramekin, I have to twist my arm around the spiky remains of my Cruzcampo glass. I imagine, vividly, each time, the glass slicing into my wrist and I can almost imagine the warm flushed feeling I'd get when I would start bleeding. I feel dizzy and then think it's time I threw out the shards of the glass. I'm not going to glue it together, it's just garbage. Just throw it out, Katie, I think. But it's still in the cabinet.

It's a remnant from our trip to Spain and France, maybe my favorite thing I brought back with me, and that's saying something considering the pilgrimage I made to E. Dehillerin in Paris. The glass was from a hotel bar, the pool a vanishing edge over the side of the Mediterranean. Partner and I had spent the day on the beach, tucked up next to a rocky edge, swimming in the clear blue sea. No one spoke English. Our friends opted for the pool, and we all met up on the patio before heading toward home. We had a few drinks and as I sat gazing out over the picturesque bay we were on, something at the next table caught my eye: a little beer glass, the word "Cruzcampo" raised on the side and a fat man drinking a beer. Both the words and the man were silhouettes of raised glass. Subtle. And the shape of the glass seemed unduly elegant for just a little lager, and suddenly I wanted this glass. I wanted to drink beer out of this glass at home on hot days, my hair piled on top of my head and my feet bare on warm bricks. This glass needed to be mine. I complained that I didn't get a glass like that one. I tried ordering a Cruzcampo to see if I'd get the glass too. I didn't. Just before we left, Partner reached out and snatched the glass, slipping it into our beach tote. I mollycoddled that glass all the way through Paris and back the United States.

Whenever I was in a slightly bad mood or felt I wanted a simple thing to cheer me up, I'd take out that glass and pour a lager into it. I never ever put the glass in the dishwasher, preferring to wash it by hand. When we moved, I put it in the same box as the ceramic plaque with Cricket's hand and footprints at three months of age. I have no idea why the glass meant so much to me; maybe it symbolized some European aesthetic I long for in my life, or the dream of living there again some day. Who knows, but I didn't drink out of the glass everyday, preferring to save it for times when I felt I needed a treat.

When Partner was gone in Africa, one night after Cricket was in bed, I took out the glass and had a beer. I left the glass at the side of the sink. I worked the next day and when I came home that night, I noticed that super nanny had cleaned up, placing the glass into the dishwasher. I took it out, washed it by hand, and left it on the drainboard to dry. The next day I worked again and the ensuing night was a hectic as usual. I wanted to spend time with Cricket; we bathed, read stories, and I put him to bed. When I came out of his bedroom, I headed to the kitchen, and that's when I noticed the shards of the glass, placed on the counter.

I wanted to call super nanny and ask what happened, but my sensible side said, "What happened? It broke, that's what happened." I didn't want to make SN feel bad about the glass, as I was sure she already did. Why else save the shards? I kept the glass on the counter for a few days, and finally put it up into the cabinet to get it out of the way. And there it sits.

Every few weeks, I do a search on eBay and Google for "Cruzcampo glasses. I sometimes get returns that bring up small goblets, a printed "Cruzcampo" on the side. Although... even if I ever found the same glass again, it wouldn't be the same glass. In some bastardized version of Benjamin's aura, I know that every other glass would be a replica, a poor stand in. As if the glass itself was the work of art, and everything else the mechanical reproduction.

I can name a dozen or so objects that have some almost ritualistic meaning to me. I have found myself looking at certain things in my house over the past few months and wondering about their meaning. Is a meaning unattached to my life or meaning that captures something else? Pictures, invitations, old papers, books. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to write about my Cruzcampo glass. Perhaps writing about it will free me to throw it out. After all, the memory is not attached to the glass. The memory is intact regardless.

Perhaps there's no larger meaning than the meaning of that moment. Maybe there's nothing left to say.

Otay

At six am, I can hear my baby rumbling and finally he calls out, "Mommy! I'm afraid! Come hold me." The mommy, it propels me and I'm there, holding him, stroking his hair and he's folded into me completely. Fifteen minutes later I ask him, "Are you okay now" I'm otay, he says. "Can you go back to sleep for a couple hours?" Yeah, he sits up, put me in my bed.

I won't go back to sleep. Instead I'll return to bed and think about the day laid out before us. Later this afternoon we'll be attending the state fair, slated to be the last one. We'll look at sculptures made out of butter, marvel at animal husbandry, maybe Cricket will milk a cow. We will watch pigs race, and amble along the midway. My father has requested specifically to spend this time with my child. I hope it's not the last year for the state fair. I hope we do this year after year after year.

My windows are open, and soon I can hear the wisps of piano from across the street. My neighbor is up too, but his windows are dark. He's playing passionately, full, and complete with melancholy; minor chords and spinning riffs. I know his wife died this past winter and I imagine him up with all his sorrow, his stocking feet on the pedals, filling his house with emotion. I lie very still in bed to try to catch the chords.

Later this week my dad will be having surgery; I'm almost positive that everything will be fine. Odds are with us, but this is something new in my life. I'm used to seeing my father in a certain manner. I called him last week and asked if he'd be intubated for the surgery. I watch my own patients get intubated. It always seems so violent to me in a practiced way. I picture my dad, lying on an OR table, knocked out and someone manipulating his jaw, applying crich pressure. "I imagine I will be," he says to me. I know it's standard. I was intubated for my surgery, my future sister-in-law just intubated for her surgery, but it still springs instant tears to my eyes. I'm too visual. I think about him lying in a PACU alone. I pray the nurses are good. I think about my dad all night with my own patients and I'm extra gentle, arranging sheets around my people, rubbing their heads before I leave the room. I whisper to my vented patients, tell them they are doing so good. I put their hands in my own and squeeze, remind them through their sedation haze there are people watching them. Me. I'm watching.

I'm just losing a version of my dad, but it's okay. I think about him in the summer at our swim club, on the diving board. Everyone loved when my dad would dive, me especially, my heart I'm sure beaming out of my chest, swelled with pride. He'd step, one, two, three, bounce up, his hands high above his head, so high he'd bounce and then back down, and up again before he was over the water: in pike positions, in somersaults, once, twice, two and half times. Sometimes he'd throw his body backwards and flip around, his hands breaking the water, his feet pointed following in a narrow splash. On the high dive, it was even more impressive. Sometimes he walk to the end of the board, balance on toes, stretching his arms out to his side. The sun always bright. Me either waiting my turn behind him, my arms on the ladder waiting to climb up after him, or sitting on the side of the diving well. My dad, that's my dad that can do that. There's something you need to abandon to dive like that, something I never could do. Not like him.

There is loss sometimes before there is even loss. Maybe this won't be the last year for the state fair after all, maybe some miracle will happen and we'll all be back next year. For now, I'll let the continuum take me; it's the oldest continuously running state fair in the US and I'll be there with my dad and my child. I'll be watching them, whispering again my own hopes about the day: I hope he takes him on rides, holds his hand, points out the blue ribbons. We'll drown out the hint of any melancholy with music from calliope and we'll all be, in the words of my Cricket, otay.

Needed: A Wee Bit of White Light

There's something I'll blog about soon, but for now, many generalized prayers, thoughts of white light, and goodness are needed.

In the meantime, let me give you a poem by Eavan Boland, a beautiful poem, the aesthetic of which inspires me.

This Moment

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

Festival

It was that time of the year again and the girl decided she'd go back to a place she previously found love and peace and understanding, but this year she would go alone. Well, not entirely alone since she would be meeting friends there, but it would be the first time she'd pack up camping equipment, trek into the Land, and pitch a tent alone. She worried how she would find her friends, if she would be lonely. She thought about taking her boy baby, but decided it would be wrong to use him like a teddy bear. She was an adult and didn't need her boy to sleep with her in the bed.

When she left the house, a full moon sat above her head. She was always drawn to the moon and it seemed like it was leading her where she needed to go. The path wavered, but when she made it to the Land, the sun was high over her head. Women called out to her, "Welcome home!" She could smell the grass. Crickets were everywhere. (Cricket!) On the dirt road she had to pass a car that held two women, kissing each other passionately just before the gates, a safe place for them. For her too. But the kissing women made her longing intensify and she thought about turning around. She got out her ticket instead, had the red tie circle her wrist, worried it was too tight.

The shuttle bounced her deep into the Festival, the familiar landscape looked different alone, from the view of an old bus. Usually she hauled all the equipment across woodchipped paths, huffing and puffing with a partner by her side. This time she sat silently, thought about how different, how easy this seemed. The bus let her out, someone took her gear down and placed it next to her. She looked down, lost, and then next time she looked up it was into the eyes of a friend. She wasn't alone. The friend helped her put up the tent, locate other friends, meet new ones. The girl took her first deep breath and felt it stick.

Later that night the first tears came. Usually she camped in the deep woods where she didn't hear much of anything at all, but this time she was in the thick of things. Women sang karoke, from another direction the primal sound of a drum circle, and yet another an open mike and someone belting out Purple Rain. It was all beautiful until there was torch song about someone not being able to make someone else love them, and the then tears, the snotty grovelly tears into an air mattress and the hope that no one could hear her. She turned off her battery powered lantern so she could cry into the dark the night. And then she stopped, turned the light back on. Read her book, fell asleep.

She cried a few more times, under a huge oak tree, the rain falling around her, listening to love songs sang for other women, children running all around her with glow sticks. She watched her feet walk down the path alone. She looked up at drawing clouds and lightening and got into the tent alone, trying to be strong as the rain the came down hard. She laughed loudly with friends, nursed some women's wounds, held her friends closely to her. She was alone. She was connected. She made new friends.

The girl walked through the rain at the Festival, walked through the humidity, danced to a drum orchestra where the leader told the fierce women around her to "work it all out through the dance." She pounded her feet on the ground, raised her arms to the sky. She closed her eyes and felt the tears dance back, and then opened them quickly. She didn't want to cry just then. Later another friend lead her up to the water, to anoint her fears and help to heal her. She knew she'd be back next year.

She will go back there again: Maybe alone again, maybe not. She might take her boy or she might leave him with his other mom. She will know though that land will always be a haven, a place where she will be taken for what she is and the women there will celebrate her flaws and beauties as a part of the whole. These women who know without flaws, there is no beauty.

See you next year....

Here's a secret: Before I started working as a nurse, I was less than proud of being a nurse. "Congratulations" everyone said as my BSN was conferred with honors. "Woopee" everyone said when I passed my boards and became a bona fide RN. "Well done!" were the exclamations I got after securing a job in ICU as my first nursing job, and I smiled a weak smile. Great, I thought, with chagrin, to each accolade handed my way. That is until I started actually doing my job. Now I love taking care of my people, holding their hands, hugging them, being there when they let go of this world, take their families into my heart. I feel my job in my core, and my patients know it and I think they love me for it.

So I went off the farmers market this morning, tired with the night still on me after working 12 hours, but pleasant in the memory of the job I did. And then I ran into a professor I had in my doctoral program, a very very staid British man. Before I started the doctoral program in English, I was working towards an MAT in teaching elementary education. On a whim, I entered a poetry contest through my university sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. And then I won. This professor called me at home to let me know I won the first prize.

"Get OUT!" I yelled into the phone, a la Elaine Benes. He was taken aback, to be sure.

"No, really. You have won the first prize," he said in his very upper crust grape-in-mouth accent. "And now I must know, who are you?"

I had no way to answer that question other than the poems he had splayed on his desk. I went on to write much more in the doctoral program, entering other contests, winning some, placing in others, but this professor remained a staunch fan of mine, so today when I saw him, he was surprised to see me; he thought I was off somewhere teaching writing, doing poetry.

"Oh, yes. I am definitely going to get back to that now that I am settled in my job. I'm working as a nurse in an ICU," I said, chest puffing out a little with pride.

His face fell. "Oh no," he groaned. "Oh, that's terrible. Just terrible. You aren't writing? You should be writing your poetry." And he went on and on as I stood there, wishing I could pull a prize winning poem out of my pocket, cite some publication from last month. Instead the publication I have is from probably two years ago and a dreadfully woefully neglected skein of poems. He assured me that he encouraged me to forward only because he thought I did have the metier to write, and he wouldn't just tell anyone this. I smiled. After all, it was compliment.

I promised him now that I am settled in my job, I'd write more. I told him I have so many poems in me that the problem would be having the patience to get them out right, an anxious muse has landed next to me, and I think I will start writing again.

I think I'll start here again, this old faithful blog, dusty, but still worthy. Watch this space.

Thanks, Professor B. Thank you ever so much,
Katie

P.S. I still am proud about being nurse today. He could only add to my mood, not detract.

"I'm havin' a great time!"

It's been one week precisely since Partner left for Africa. She's back in nine more days. I wish I could say that it's been horrible and awful and I can't do this on my own, but in reality it's been fantastic. It's helped by the fact that our babysitter is incredible. She gets to my house at 5:45 a.m. on the days I have to work. One day she vacuumed. Another she emptied all the trash baskets. The only thing she could possibly do more is empty the cat liter, but seriously? I hate doing it so can't imagine anyone doing it who didn't have to do it.

Cricket and I have been all over town doing stuff too. Today we ventured out to lunch and to the petting farm. He ran all over the place exclaiming, "I'm havin' a great time, Mommy!"

One of the things I have not blogged about is Cricket's clear preference for Partner. He usually wakes up in the morning and calls for her. After nap, he wants her. When I come home from work, he'll cry, "No! Go away-- I want MAMA!" It's been pretty hard for me, as one might imagine. He will actively push me away from him if Partner is around. I think we both worried about what would happen for these 16 days that she was gone. In my heart of hearts, I could not have hoped for as a good an outcome as we've had. I am treasuring this time with him. When I hear him calling "Mommy! Mommy!" in the morning, I nearly fly out of bed. One night I let him sleep with him all night even though that is not a precedent I want to set.

I wonder if it will last when Partner returns from her trip. I hope so.

For now, I think I'll go look at my sleeping child and relish in our enforced time together.

Boring Post

I'm on my first day of solo parenting for 16 days and so far, it's going pretty well. Granted it's only 5 hours into the gig, but we went to airport, breakfast, Lowes, farmer's market, and met some old friends at the local deli for a mid-morning snack. My boy came home and asked to take a nap and is there now, snoozing away. I have laundry spinning and we're going shoe shopping this afternoon and maybe to the mall. If things go really well, I'll mow the lawn.

I am all get and go when I am alone, but a couch potato with Partner here. Hm.

On a different note, my job will change right when I get off orientation, which should be interesting to say the least. The bright side is the rumor that we will be able to get plenty of overtime while our new unit opens up and to start with we'll only have 8 beds. Four to five nurses a shift... I will be starting midnights in July. Maybe sooner. I have to decide how to schedule myself: should I clump all my nights together or spread them out? I sorta think it would be better to get them done together, but I've never worked midnights... I don't really know.

Cricket is like a little boy now. How has this happened? He's even getting text messages from friends on my phone (Hi, Frog!). He loves to tell me "not yet" which I love. He also declares "On y va!" anytime we are going anywhere. I think napping is a good idea and I think I am going to put my head down for a few too.

Nothing poetic or insightful in this post, just general rambling. I'd look forward to any insight about midnight shifts...