Can I Keep It?

Messages

When Evelyn first started on her brief journey with pancreatic cancer last May, my friend Nay Nay in Maryland, contacted me to tell me about the strangest thing that happened to her.  She set her GPS and followed the directions, only to wind up in the parking lot of Johns Hopkins on the other side of town from where she wanted to be.  On the same day that Evelyn started chemo.  She suggested I come up and we could go out on their boat, get pedicures.  Have some fun.  Evie nixed it, saying she had good days and bad.  So I dutifully told Nay about Ev's desire to get through the chemo and do it on the other side.

Several weeks ago, Hud was learning to text.  We were sitting on the couch, sending messages to one another. (Modern life!) All of the sudden, a small robot rabbit, Evelyn had given me for my birthday six years ago while I was in Richmond for a visit, jumped from the bookcase where it has resided all these years.  I picked it up and replaced it.  Fifteen minutes later, it threw itself to the floor again.  No other object (and there are MANY) had moved a silly milimeter.  I looked at Hud.  "Something's wrong with Ev," I said flatly.  I emailed her in the morning with queries of news.  She replied, "No, no news, it must have been a cosmic boom."

*That's her, the robot rabbit, snuggled between the legs of the doll

my Aunt Boo made me when I was born.*

The next day Evie was admitted to Johns Hopkins as an inpatient.  They explained the cancer was advancing at a phenominal rate.  She made the brave decision to stop treatment.  And go home.

Yesterday, I texted our mutual friend, Nancy, to see if she had any news.  I texted Evelyn that I loved her.  I texted Hud about making plans.

At 4:15 in the afternoon, I made mysef a glass of ice water, went to the sink to wash a spoon.  When I turned around, the refrigerator was dark.  No lights, sounds, dead.  I looked at the back of it for some reason.  It had come unplugged.  The cord lay on the floor for no apparent reason.  The refrigerator had not been moved for weeks.  I do not know how it happened.

Hud wasn't feeling well and went to bed at 8:00.  I was in the den, watching some stupid reality TV to make myself sleepy.  At 8:45, the robot bunny starts lighting up and moving its ears.  I tried to shut it off, but by 8:50, it was still talking.  Its cheeks burned bright red.  It said something unintelligible.  Which is odd in and of itself because you used to be able to understand its language.  I tried to shut it off.  Thought I had.  Put it back in the box and placed it on the bookshelf.  8:52: the right cheek lights up.  Then both cheeks.  It chirps.  By 8:54, I was sobbing.  I knew she was gone.  I told her goodbye.  The robot rabbit made a laughing sound.  And then it stopped.  It hasn't moved since. 

At 8:24 that same evening, a mutual friend had emailed to tell me that Evelyn had passed peacefully, surrounded by her family in the afternoon.  I didn't get it until the next day.

*That's the robot rabbit in the middle by the star Ev made me for my high school locker with pictures of her and a letter she wrote me from my scrapbook.*

As a child, I had an imaginary friend named Charlie.  I got my mother in trouble one day when I was two, by telling my father who had asked me about my day, "Charlie was here."  I had the uncanny ability to know when the phone was ringing before it actually made a sound.  Once, I told my mother, "Aren't you goinng to get that?"  She looked quizically at me and said, "But the phone isn't..."  BRRRINNNGGG!  And there is a story about me and a book that made a believer out of my grade school librarian.  But that's for another day.

Sometimes I wonder if Charlie's still out there.  Telling me things I need to know.  About my real friends when they can't tell me.

Evelyn would have been forty-nine in ten days.  I will miss her every day of the rest of my life.

Prat Falls

Why is everybody making such a big deal out of Shania Twain's trip and fall entrance to the CMAs Wednesday?  Is it because she is so lovely?  Talented?  Because she made such a big deal out of it?

 

*This image is an AP photo from The Hollywood Insider*

The "most embarrassing moment of your life"?  Really?  Like finding out your husband is cheating on you with your best friend rated below that?  Hmmmm.

I am a clutz.  Always have been.  You know the DaVinci drawing of the Vitruvian Man?  We were studying it in art school, learning proportions.  The instructor asked us to stand up and put our arms down to our sides.  Our center of balance he explained, should run directly through our wrists.  Hmmmm.  While the other students realized that their ran through their lower abdomens, mine?  Went through my thighs.  I have extremely long limbs and a short torso.  My center of balance was non-exisistant.  So that explains it.

In high school, my art club, decided to go to the University of Richmond to see a comedienne/mime perform.  At some point, she asked for a child to come to stage and all of us pointed to our art teacher who is a very small woman.  Instead, she called six foot tall, sixteen year old me.  As I approached, she made some remark about arresting me for smuggling watermelons.  Hmmmm.  I asked her if she was  ticketed for smuggling walnuts.  Everybody laughed.  She handed me a microphone and gave me a cue to follow at the end of a story she enacted.  It was a tale of a frog and a princess and at the proper point, I croaked into the mic.  One of the Furry Godmother's hidden talents is that she can replicate the exact sound of a croaking bullfrog.  The Mime's jaw dropped.  The crowd roared.  I curtsied.

The stage lights were blinding as I approached the edge.  Did I mention I was wearing brand spanking new Frye boots that I had never worn before?  Step one, I managed.  Step two, I fell promptly on my derierre.  The gasping of the crowd (of cute college boys, dammit) nearly sucked me back up onto my feet.  The comedienne ran to assist me.  "Are you all right?" she exclaimed. 

"Oh, yeah," I sighed, "I'll do anything for a laugh."  And the crowd, thinking by now that I was part of the act, bellowed with laughter.  And gave me a standing ovation as I gave them the queen's wave back to my seat.

Shania, even that wasn't my most embarrassing moment.  Hmmmm.

Mean Girl

I don't know why I was mean to this girl.  I called her ugly.  Agreed with her family that she was stupid.  Didn't find her amusing in the slightest.

 

I threw her at the world, looking for a place for her to stick.  And the world was mean to her as well.  The world broke her arm three times, her foot, her collar bone, all of her fingers and her nose.  It gave her four car accidents, tearing up her face and premanently damaging her drawing arm.  It attracted an abusive man for her to marry when she was young.  It gave her a schizophrenic grandmother who named her, "whore" and beat her every chance she got because of the antics of a soap opera star.  The world bestowed her with an alchoholic grandfather who enabled the grandmother in every way.  Called her names.  Said she was unworthy of any kind of love.

It gave her cancer.

Lately, I've been feeling that the universe dislikes me.  Maybe because of the way I treated her back then.  I've been dealing with random acts of meaness.  A vendor at the TACA show stormed my booth three times, damaging a print and screaming at me.  I don't even know her name or what she does.  The show coordinator apologized.  It was not her fault.  She cannot control the mental stability of her vendors.  But I have to ask, "Why me?"  A commentor on a blog I frequent is consistantly rude to the point of being a bully to me despite the fact that I am saying what several other people are expressing.  I have to ask, "Why me?"  A random stranger in another car gave me the finger and I was not even changing lanes or driving below the speed limit.  And yet again, "Why me?"

When she turned thirty, I started to be kinder to her, but I have never really forgiven myself for what I did to her.   Maybe now is that time. 

For finally loving me.

*This beautiful photograph of my twenty year old self was taken by my dear and talented friend, Vickie Johnson Bradshaw on a trip we took to Panama City.*

Singing in the Rain

The weather forecasters have ominously warned of tornadoes, straight line winds and heavy flooding rains for the past two days.  My anxiety levels have reached Mt. McKinley highs.  But all of the pets?   Look like this:

 To view the rest of this post, please use this link: http://canikeepit.typepad.com/the_/

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

David Sedaris came to Memphis yesterday to tout his latest, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, A Modest Bestiary.  It's a collection of fables, populated by talking animals.  But you would know that already if you knew what a bestiary was. 

Mr. Sedaris did a reading from the book and commented on the work.  He is a marvelous reader, inflection and tone being the key to humor.  My favorite part was the readings he did from his diary. Most were jokes people told him.  Delicious tidbits like how his partner, Hugh, loves to meet new people.  They've recently bought a new home in England and Hugh has made great sport of meeting every person in the entire British countryside.  David said he, however, had been known to close the door if he saw one of his neighbors coming and hide until they left.  How ironic is it that someone who hides from the people next door wants to spend hours chitchatting with complete strangers?

Hud and I waited five and a half hours for our turn at bat.  He did not disappoint.  Giving him a copy for our friend's son, JP, he inscribed, "I am steaming that I didn't get to meet you."  He then retrieved a large bag and fizzled around.  Pulling out a comb from the Ritz Carlton in New York, he penned, "For JP, in case of emergencies.  David Sedaris" 

I was enchanted.  I told him, "I had a grandmother you would have adored.  She was horrible."  We were leaving and Hud asked if I were going to tell him a grandmother Becky story.  I replied that other people were waiting.  David pulled out a Zip Loc bag containing peanuts in the shell, pale yellow yarn and a handwritten note reading, "SQUIRREL".  Extracting a peanut, he reared back in his chair and drawled, "I have a minute..."

I took a deep breath.

When Hud and I had first started dating, my grandfather EW  had to be hospitalized.   Hud drove me down.  It was late when we arrived and my parents insisted that Hud stay the night.  They gave up their room at my grandparents home to him, staying at my mother's family home across town.  I slept in the den. 

In the morning, I awakened and made coffee.  My parents showed up.  My mother started making breakfast.  Becky awoke, proceeded to the bathroom and started a shower.  The house was built like a t-bone.  The kitchen and living room were the center of the home.  My grandparent's room, bath and guest room were perpendicular to them.  The bath was in between the master and guest rooms.    Hud got up and came into the kitchen.  We heard the shower turn off.  My mother asked Hud if it were alright for her to get something out of the bedroom she had left behind.  She opened the door.  I remembered that I had to ask her something, so I followed her.  As my foot hit the hallway, the bathroom door flung open.  There stood my wet, wrinkly grandmother, in her best showgirl pose, arm high in the air singing, "IIIIII"MMMMM NAAAAA-KED!"

Stunned, I squealed, "YES YOU ARE!  AND YOU"RE BALD, TOO!"  I jumped into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me.  "What in the hell was that?"  asked my mother.  "Something I am going to be in therapy a long time for..."  I sighed.

The show wasn't meant for me.  Her intention was to give Hud an eyeful of her, um, exquisite beauty.

Now, you have to understand, that in her day, Rebecca was a handsome woman.  It was something she never quite got over.  Not even when her hair fell out did she doubt her sex appeal.  No man could come near her that she did not completely believe wanted to jump her bones.

To get the full picture, my grandmother was in her late seventies at the time, bald, sagging and droopy as gravity is wont to do to you in time.  She wore a wig to cover the baldness.  The only tweak I would have suggested, had I any empathy for her, would have been to tell her to lighten up on the hairline of her wig.  She pulled it down to her eyebrows like a baseball cap, exposing four inches of bald skull in the back.

And her lipstick.  Oh, her lipstick.  Remember in the forties when it was fashionable to draw in your lip line to resemble a heart shaped mouth?  She did that.  Only the peaks of the heart reached clear up to her nostrils.

"Oh, she sounds delightful," he laughed.

If you get the chance, the charming David Sedaris is extremely generous with his time.  The wait is long, but worth every minute.

Big Red

In the spring of 1973, I was a ten year old girl living in Virginia who, like every other ten year old girl, loved horses.  I drew them for endless hours, alone on the floor of my bedroom while my round orange Panasonic radio blasted out Bobby Sherman tunes.  My hair was so long, that I sat on it to hold it off of the papers.  The only thing I could imagine would have been better would have to been riding itself.

So when this great beast came along that spring, I could not help but fall utterly and completely to his charms:

*The real one*

His name was Secretariat.  Big Red was what the Tweedy stable called him.  I drew this very image a thousand times.  I knew by heart exactly the length and shape of his blaze.  The color of his fiery coat.  All the muscles in his handsome face.  I used him to teach myself anatomy.  I learned proportion by measuring his legs and comparing them to the length of his neck and chest.  There was a swirling uneasiness outside my closed bedroom door, but inside, there was Secretariat.  And he was lifted up by possibilities and hope.

Last night, Hud and I were given tickets by Blogher to preview the new Disney movie, "Secretariat - The Impossible True Story".  I went with great trepidation, afraid that it would not live up to my sacred memories the excitement of the time or of my love for that horse.  He let me dream, kept me company during a rough time, helped me hone my drawing skills.

It did not disappoint.

I knew the outcome.  I remember sitting front of the television in 1973, gasping as Secretariat bounded out of the gate at the Belmont.  And weeping as he rounded the fences and headed for the line.  But the movie had me doing it all over again.

It was nostalgic.  It was hopeful.  It restored a sense of wonder that a ten year old girl had lost over time.

 

*The real Secretariat*

Even more inspirational is that he was owned by a woman, Penny Tweedy.  It was unheard of in those times for a woman to run a horse in the Triple Crown.  She countered the ignorance with dignity, humor and grace.

I remember the both of them, Disney.  Thanks for reminding me.

*Zali gives this film four and a half poops (with litter crunchies!)  Very inspirational.*

Happiest Anniversary

1997 began as the worst of times.  On Christmas eve of 1996, we were forced to have my father committed to a mental health institution because he had threatened to shoot our entire family starting with my three week old nephew.  In January, he petitioned the courts for release and won.  His mother had died.  He disappeared after her funeral.  We believe he was at gun school in Colorado.  Hud's father passed of brain cancer.  My mother's father passed in May.  My father came home, but was raging.  We sadly sold Hud's studio of thirty-three years.  My parents came to see us in July unexpectedly.  My father barely spoke.   He blamed me for being institutionalized.  I was inconsolable that weekend.  My cat, Myshkin, had swallowed a needle and thread as the hammer came down on the end of the studio and my parents pulled up in the drive.  She passed shortly after I raced her to the hospital.

Ten days later, my father committed suicide.

But after,  the year started to turn remarkably better.  One morning, as we were walking to the park, Carmen appeared and adopted us on the spot.  We found Aida at the Humane Society.

And on October 4, 1997, I married the love of my life.

  

It turned my life around.

Happy anniversary, Hud.  I love you more today than I did on that day.  And it was the happiest day I had ever known.  Thank you for making it all better.

Bless-ed

When I was very young, I sat on the back porch at my grandmother's house in Mississippi, sobbing over my recently deceased kitten.  I railed against God.  My great-grandmother asked if I had prayed for it's tiny soul.  "Yeth!" I cried with a lisp, "And God didn't answer my prayers!"  My great-grandmother gathered up my tear soaked face in her calloused palms and sighed, "Yes, He does, Angel...  No is an answer."

 

I've never forgotten that moment.  I was three. 

I have said many prayers over the last year and a half.  Today I got one answered with a "yes".  My breast surgeon gave me a clean bill of health.  My mammogram was unremarkable.  I don't have to go back for another whole year.

One more milestone.  One more release.  One more sigh of relief. 

One more prayer answered.

Don't Give Any to Carmen

Do not give any to Carmen.  It has chicken broth, rice, wheat, barley, duck, turkey, make that anything that flies, corn, oats, blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum.  That dog is allergic to air. 

We've messed with Carmen's diet again and she is suffering greatly from it.  Again.  When will we ever learn?  Wasn't it Einstein who said that, "Insanity is doing the same thing every day and expecting different results" ?  Hud and I are officially insane. 

Carmen agrees with my assessment of our collective mental health.  We went to the pet store and found a specialty food that professed to be free of the extensive list of foods that Carmen must avoid.  Now we can add anything with fins and swims to the list.

I have one peculiar allergy myself. I am deathly allergic to artificial red food coloring.  It happened after a trip to the store where I purchased a cherry Slurpee, red hots, strawberry gum and a cherry blow pop.  No.  My mother was not with me.  My brother was.  His list of goods was even more revolting if less monochromatic.  Time travel several hours into the future and I am languishing in a hospital bed, covered in hives the size of continents, unable to breathe and hooked up to IV Benedryll.  I was seven.  And that was the very last time I ever knowingly ate anything artificially colored red.  I will never know the pleasures of red velvet cake or maraschino cherries in a Manhattan.  Sigh.

One time Hud and I were on an airplane when he grumbled that he was peckish.  I had saved two small bags of peanuts from the first leg of the flight and handed them over to him.  As he begun to rip open the top of the bags, a flight attendant swooped in, put her hand over them and sternly said, "I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the peanuts!"  I was perplexed.  Her face softened and she explained that there was a young child traveling on board who suffered from a severe peanut allergy.  Even opening the bag could send him into anaphylactic shock.  Hud begrudgingly turned over his delicious contraband.  

I'm not unfamiliar with the severity of allergies.  They have plagued me for forty years.  I have witnessed them in others. So as dog as my witness, I will never go changing Carmen's diet again!

Remind me of this when I complain about her inability to eat the new kibble I decided to try on her.  Again.

 

Visions of Sugarplums

Yesterday, I was reading one of my favorite blogs and one of the commenters told a lovely story of buying a gift for his ex because their daughter was upset that her mother had no presents to open for Christmas last year.  She was afraid Santa had forgotten her.  He wanted to keep the magic alive for a few more years and said she would never find out about Santa from him.  It was endearing.

I replied to never tell her.  It reminded me of the tale of my own discovery.  Well, not as much a discovery as a gut wrenching outing of Santa Claus.  

In the first grade, during "Show and Tell", a kid named David approached the front of the class and proceeded to tell us that our parents had been lying to us.  Santa was not real.  I still remember the carnage of the scene -- the small crumpled bodies of the weeping children, the teacher flapping her arms about like a Pelican trying to land -- Oh! The humanity!

Our teacher, an inept substitute, screamed at the class to stop crying.  She might as well have said, "Please be silent for a moment so that you may gather the strength to wail so loudly that the walls of Jerusalem tumble down and at least one of you vomits.  Thank you."  The decibel level reached such ear shattering proportions that all the teachers from the other classrooms and the principal descended on us, sweeping up the shattered dreams of our childhoods.  I did not know what to do.  They arrived just in time to see me bop him square on the snoot, breaking his nose.

He kinda' deserved it.  He broke something of mine.  I broke something of his.  I trust the visions he had as the stars and birdies twirled around his head included a sugar plum or two.

I remember the last Christmas that I still believed in Santa's miracle.  My brother Michael and I were tucked in to bed in the front room of my Grandmother Elois' house.   We were wide awake, too excited to sleep and whispering about what we thought the Jolly Elf might bring us in the next few hours.  

Mike and I always left a small bottle of Coca Cola and a piece of pecan pie for Santa's snack.  In the dark, as we were dreaming of Christmas lists, we heard a fork drop on a plate right outside of our door!  Our eyes widened.  The only sound in the room was the air as it gushed past our lips.  We motioned for each other to go to sleep, convinced we had heard Santa.

We opened our presents the next morning, exchanging knowing glances and smiling at our secret knowledge. 

It's a sweet memory I share with my brother.  He believed for several more years.  I never told him about that horrid day.

Merry Christmas, Believers, Merry Christmas.

* The photographs I will be posting this week are all from the Memphis Zoo's Zoolights.*