I had a strange dream, disturbing. It awakened me. I wish I had taken notes as soon as I awoke. I resolved to but then, as most dreams of mine do, it slipped away. I was in some trying circumstances with a very young infant, perhaps three months old. Maybe a little younger. I deeply loved the baby. I ached, in my dream, as I would ache in real life if I held an unhappy baby, to sooth the pain out of the baby. The baby in my dream was not my actual daughter. it was another baby. For some reason I am not remembering from the dream, the baby was very challenging, problematic and causing me deep unhappiness. The baby fussed and fussed, which I didn't mine. I always have had powerful patience with unhappy babies, it is one of my superpowers. When I say the dream baby was causing me deep unhappiness, it was not crying or demanding attention. I didn't know what it was, only, in the dream, that the baby was making me very unhappy.
I think I actually thrashed around as I still slept, trying to figure out what to do about the baby making me so unhappy.
Then a voice spoke to me in the dream. It said "Kill the baby".
Of course I would not harm an actual baby but dreams can be laden with metaphor and occult meaning. When I heard the voice tell me to kill the baby, I was awash with thoughts such as "oh, this means I should truly let my daughter go, I should never try to connect with her again, I should spare myself all the pain my failed attempts to reconnect cause me."
The idea, in the dream's terms, to kill my baby filled me with hope that I might yet have a happy life beyond my too-long sorrow over losing my daughter. Seventeen years of trapped grief, trapped in one of those 'snow globes' but instead of flakes of snow this metaphorical globe is, glass cinders float around. Glass cinders can be sharp and hurt bigly. And at the bottom of this metaphorical cinder globe is, at times, my tell tale, failed heart* missing beats the way the actual heart in my chest now fails and at other times, it is an image of my Katie as a beautiful baby and as I behold the cinder glass globe baby, I feel such intense love.
The dream did not mean I should actually kill a baby. It means I need to kill my pain over my baby. It's not like I would be denying her anything. Clearly she wants no connection. I have to kill my fantasy, my longing, to have her come back to me.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
kill the baby
Friday, April 27, 2018
very cold, windy and gorgeous, not too shabby
I swam in the special pool at UC that the little people don't usually get to use. There is a water polo meet in my regular pool. How's come they don't use the fancy new pool for a water polo meet? Why is the new pool so elite and exclusive? It is not used most of the time.
I'll tell ya this: the Legends pool is fucking freezing. I know lots of swim teams work out in colder water. I don't know the reasons for this. My 'regular' pool is warmer. It is chilly in Berkeley today and the pool I just swam in was frigid. My body is as cold, maybe even colder, than I might have felt on a deeply frigid Minnesota winter's day. My body is cold all the way through. My toes like icicles. My hands, arms, legs: chilled frozen all the way through.
Truth told, I never got this cold in frigid MN winter because I dressed appropriately. Alwys wool socks, always good and warm boots, always down jackets, always a hat.
As I did my last lap, I decided I would not go up the hill so I could take a shower at UC. Mere ordinary paying folks can't use the showers at the special Legends pool.
I don't really mind that UC just spent a lot of alumni money to build a special pool for some elite swimmers. Divers must definitely be elite because this new pool has a competitive diving capacity. What I mind is the mystery, the air of privilege and entitlement but not knowing why. I ask staff at the pool and sports rec center regularly "what's the deal with Legends?" and no one knows.
It wsan't just very cold water and chilly air. There is a not-common strong wind today.
On the upside, I overheard a couple male swimmers talking about how the Legends pool has a great view. AT that moment, all I saw was the sides of the pool and some windows for the UC building next door. But I paused at the side of the pool where the guys said that and looked all around.
There are some nice views. The Campanile Tower pops up when I look North East from in the pool.And the top hills of the campus and even a bit of the Berkeley hills are visible from one side of the pool. Looking west, not much to see, especially today. The sun was dazzling today, all over town but looking west, of course, the sun was starting to set just beyond the golden gate. I can't see the gate from the Pacific Ocean into SF Bay from the pool but I can see the golden sunlight. It was almost blinding today.
For some reason, I especially love to swim when the sun is quite bright. I love it when I can barely see anything because the light, somewhat paradoxically, is blinding me.
Cold but gorgeous. Not too shabby.
I'll tell ya this: the Legends pool is fucking freezing. I know lots of swim teams work out in colder water. I don't know the reasons for this. My 'regular' pool is warmer. It is chilly in Berkeley today and the pool I just swam in was frigid. My body is as cold, maybe even colder, than I might have felt on a deeply frigid Minnesota winter's day. My body is cold all the way through. My toes like icicles. My hands, arms, legs: chilled frozen all the way through.
Truth told, I never got this cold in frigid MN winter because I dressed appropriately. Alwys wool socks, always good and warm boots, always down jackets, always a hat.
As I did my last lap, I decided I would not go up the hill so I could take a shower at UC. Mere ordinary paying folks can't use the showers at the special Legends pool.
I don't really mind that UC just spent a lot of alumni money to build a special pool for some elite swimmers. Divers must definitely be elite because this new pool has a competitive diving capacity. What I mind is the mystery, the air of privilege and entitlement but not knowing why. I ask staff at the pool and sports rec center regularly "what's the deal with Legends?" and no one knows.
It wsan't just very cold water and chilly air. There is a not-common strong wind today.
On the upside, I overheard a couple male swimmers talking about how the Legends pool has a great view. AT that moment, all I saw was the sides of the pool and some windows for the UC building next door. But I paused at the side of the pool where the guys said that and looked all around.
There are some nice views. The Campanile Tower pops up when I look North East from in the pool.And the top hills of the campus and even a bit of the Berkeley hills are visible from one side of the pool. Looking west, not much to see, especially today. The sun was dazzling today, all over town but looking west, of course, the sun was starting to set just beyond the golden gate. I can't see the gate from the Pacific Ocean into SF Bay from the pool but I can see the golden sunlight. It was almost blinding today.
For some reason, I especially love to swim when the sun is quite bright. I love it when I can barely see anything because the light, somewhat paradoxically, is blinding me.
Cold but gorgeous. Not too shabby.
I bought a grapefruit knife
I've been eating lots of pink grapefruit. They have almost no calories, they are very delicious, they are pink and their few carbs metabolize quickly. So yesterday, going wild with the debit card, I ordered a grapefruit knife like my parents used to cut each piece of our grapefruit. It's easy with the right tool. And my Prime, which I am letting lapse on the 29th (they raised price of Prime!) got the grapefruit knife to me in less than a day.
Not too shabby.
Not too shabby.
if they come in the night
If they come in the night
Long ago on a night of danger and vigil
a friend said, Why are you happy?
He explained (we lay together
on a cold hard floor) what prison
meant because he had done
time, and I talked of the death
of friends. Why are you happy
then, he asked, close to
angry.
I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel I forgot to love anyone
I meant to love, that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through.
Sun and moonshine, starshine,
the muted light off the waters
of the bay at night, the white
light of the fog stealing in,
the first spears of morning
touching a face
I love. We all lose
everything. We lose
ourselves. We are lost.
Only what we manage to do
lasts, what love sculpts from us;
but what I count, my rubies, my
children, are those moments
wide open when I know clearly
who I am, who you are, what we
do, a marigold, an oakleaf, a meteor,
with all my senses hungry and filled
at once like a pitcher with light.
--Marge Piercy
I do feel I have wasted most of my life. My favorite part of my life was being a mom but, although my only child graduated with honors from an Ivy and appears to be having a thriving career, I don't get any credit for mothering her. And losing her wiped me out. Losing her might be what cancer is like: the awareness of its presence in your body grows slowly. I thought she'd come back for awhile. As I began to realize she was gone for good, I fell apart. If I was not a good mother to Katie Joy Kre, I am not a good anything. I'm nothing.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
an amethyst remembered: my daughter
I held a Jewel in my fingers --
And went to sleep --
The day was warm, and winds were prosy --
I said "'Twill keep" --
I woke -- and chid my honest fingers,
The Gem was gone --
And now, an Amethyst remembrance
Is all I own --
~~ Emily Dickinson
Saturday, April 21, 2018
a pop of blue
I think the guy is a work colleague. The woman is my daughter. I have never seen her natural hair color in person because she has shunned me for over 17 years, lacerating me just about daily with the grievous loss. A friend just this afternoon insisted I should go to NYC, go to her workplace and force her to see me. I didn't have the heart to tell her how my daughter threatened to have me arrested just for being in her office building, which someone who worked in the building made possible by inviting me in. I was not trespassing and not making a scene. I didn't go into her suite, did not ask for her but she came out screaming loudly and screaming that I was the crazy one. Project much? She never would have seen me if she hadn't come out to scream and humiliate me. Yeah, it feels humiliating to have the child I gave everything to calling the police, as if the Chicago police would have immediately dispatched a squad car for me when I wasn't doing anything. I was wiating for her to stop talking to me like I was dogshit on her shoe. I was kinda frozen by her emotional abuse. Plus I did want to see if she would actually call the cops on me. I assure you I would not have been arrested if, a couple hours later, if ever, the CPD showed up. It was so cruel and unkind to speak to me and about me as she did. And she never seemed to register that if she had not come out of her office suite, I would have been gone. We were leaving when she came out screaming and ran down the stairs as my bro and I went down the elevator.
I'm not sure why my feelings have become so raw about this painful loss. I think her moving to NYC has stirred me up. Chicago is far from Berkeley, where I have lived about ten years now, but Chicago is my home town and I think I liked having her in a familiar place. I know NYC pretty well but not like a native.
I will be headed to NYC in May. No worries. I will not try to see her.
I am very tired of feeling so much pain over this loss. I don't know what to do to escape my pain.
Update: a friend in politics, and all politics in East Bay relates to housing, eh?, has told me the guy is former HUD secretary under Obama. . . not too shabby. But Katie is the star here, right?
pink grapefruit
I searched up and down my farmers market today for grapefruit. For no good reason, I have not bought any grapefruit this year and now the season is over. Only one vendor had grapefruit, white ones, but I had the urge to ask him if he had any pink ones. He had three, but one, he said, was damaged. I wish, now, that I had suggested he sell that one cheaper.
When I was a kid, sometimes we had grapefruit for breakfast, each kid getting half a one. And, ugh we sprinkled sugar on it, getting the message that the taste of grapefruit was too tart. Nonsense. Esp. pink ones.
So I bought two smallish pink grapefruits and have already enjoyed one. Yum. I peeled the peel and then I spent a lot of time peeling all that white fiber-y stuff that is right on the fruit under the peel. It is a bit of work but the pink, sweet fruit is so tasteful when stripped.
I have missed the whole season. I saw pomelos several weeks and made a note that I would get some but never did. Next year, I'll be all about the grapefruit and pomelos as soon as they arrived.
That being said, I have enjoyed a lot of mandarin oranges this year. One vendor sells several kinds, some for juicing (It never occurred to me to make juice with mandarins, although I never drink any fruit juice -- too much sugar for this diabetic).
I have no longing for oranges, just the sweeter mandarin ones, esp. seedless.
Query: if a mandarin orange is seedless, hasn't that orange been breeded to not have seeds? and does that still count as an organic mandarin orange?
One vendor, just for two weeks in a row, had the easier-to-peel and sweetest perfection mandarins I ever tasted. When those babies appear next year, I will be buying quite a lot of them and store them in the fridge so I can enjoy them for a long time.
I don't remember serving my daughter grapefruits. If I didn't, I regret it. Although, in my defense, she always was very fussy about food, especially breakfast.
When I was a kid, sometimes we had grapefruit for breakfast, each kid getting half a one. And, ugh we sprinkled sugar on it, getting the message that the taste of grapefruit was too tart. Nonsense. Esp. pink ones.
So I bought two smallish pink grapefruits and have already enjoyed one. Yum. I peeled the peel and then I spent a lot of time peeling all that white fiber-y stuff that is right on the fruit under the peel. It is a bit of work but the pink, sweet fruit is so tasteful when stripped.
I have missed the whole season. I saw pomelos several weeks and made a note that I would get some but never did. Next year, I'll be all about the grapefruit and pomelos as soon as they arrived.
That being said, I have enjoyed a lot of mandarin oranges this year. One vendor sells several kinds, some for juicing (It never occurred to me to make juice with mandarins, although I never drink any fruit juice -- too much sugar for this diabetic).
I have no longing for oranges, just the sweeter mandarin ones, esp. seedless.
Query: if a mandarin orange is seedless, hasn't that orange been breeded to not have seeds? and does that still count as an organic mandarin orange?
One vendor, just for two weeks in a row, had the easier-to-peel and sweetest perfection mandarins I ever tasted. When those babies appear next year, I will be buying quite a lot of them and store them in the fridge so I can enjoy them for a long time.
I don't remember serving my daughter grapefruits. If I didn't, I regret it. Although, in my defense, she always was very fussy about food, especially breakfast.
Monday, April 16, 2018
not a life worth living
The goal of my therapy, when I had access to therapy with the world's leading authority on my specific disorder, was to work towards living 'a life worth living'.
I am not living a life worth living. I fall into deep wells of emotional pain that are excrutiating, draining me, depleting my being and everything is very hard to do.
In January and February of this year, I believe I was the most depressed I have ever been, and that is saying a hella lot because depression is my oldest and closest friend/enemy. I think my depression sunk even lower than is typical for me because my health has declined. Something is wrong with my lungs. It is probably COPD. My arthritis gets worse all the time. I hurt physically all the time. Physical movement wipes me out, and that is when I mostly use my electric scooter and hardly move. I keep swimming largely because I don't hurt when I swim, although I do have to stop, while swimming, more and more just to catch my breath or to hack cough awhile. The coughing is also probably related to COPD. We'll see.
Of course physical pain and suffering exacerbates my ongoing depression struggle.
Here is what happened today. I called my county worker, the one who calculates how many hours of in-home help I need. I called to ask her (1) how to get a list of folks looking to do this kind of work because my guy is probably leaving and (2) to ask how I might go about getting my alloted hours increased.
I asked questions. Politely. And the county worker became verbally abusive, yelling at me and then projecting her anger onto me and shouting at me that I was angry and I was shouting.
I know it is okay for me to ask her questions. I don't think it is okay for her to be verbally, loudly, angrily abusive.
So I asked for the name and phone of her supervisor, which she gave me. The supervisor was polite. First she said she had to talk to the angry abuser gal but by the time she and I were finished, she had agreed to assign me to someone else.
In the big scheme of things, that woman's nasty abuse doesn't matter. And I know it doesn't. But it tipped me into one of my black hellholes. I've been crying ever since, wanting to binge on sweets. Luckily, I don't have sweets in my home.
I don't want to be alive. And maybe this influenced me: I went to get an xray of my lungs this morning, which is just past the dollar store on Shattuck. I don't buy any of the very bad food sold at the dollar stores but I buy laundry detergent, cleaning products, scrubbies and other non-edible stuff. I bought a box of Puffs today, that's all I bought. But I decided to go up and down the seasonal aisles. Mother's Day shit was all over.
I remember my first Mother's Day with a living child. May 1983. Katie's dad forgot to make any reservations. Mother's Day is a major brunch Sunday and without reservtions, its just about impossible. Plus I was breastfeeding and when he tried to force me to go driving around looking for a place we could get into, I pointed out that Katie was going to want to breastfeed within the next hour and I would prefer to stay home until she ate. He was furious, shouting, red faced, "You are crazy if you expect me to believe that you know when she is going to want to eat." Crazy to have maternal instincts? Crazy to know my baby very well, to feed her from my own body and to know more or less what was going on with her most of the time? That's being a mother. But he was severely abusive and I was severely cowed so I let him drag me out.
And, sure enough, by the time we found a place to get put on a waiting list and settled into waiting, she wanted to eat. He wouldn't let me feed her in public so she and I sat on a toilet in the ladies room. Mother's Day with no respect for the mother!
And he insisted on buying me a very large microwave. His standard for that microwave was it had to be big enough to cook a turkey in it, even though I didn't (1) want any microwave and (2) I knew I would absolutely never cook a turkey in a microwave. Who would? Plus I felt am appliance was not much of a Mother's DAy gift. How about flowers? Or a new article of clothing? That microwave was something he wanted and it still rankles that he forced an appliance on me and pretended he had given me something great. An appliance for fuck sake.
I did feel some satisfaction when my darling infant cried out to eat just when I had predicted she would. Perhaps she had understood my exchange with her asshole father.
I am not living a life worth living. I fall into deep wells of emotional pain that are excrutiating, draining me, depleting my being and everything is very hard to do.
In January and February of this year, I believe I was the most depressed I have ever been, and that is saying a hella lot because depression is my oldest and closest friend/enemy. I think my depression sunk even lower than is typical for me because my health has declined. Something is wrong with my lungs. It is probably COPD. My arthritis gets worse all the time. I hurt physically all the time. Physical movement wipes me out, and that is when I mostly use my electric scooter and hardly move. I keep swimming largely because I don't hurt when I swim, although I do have to stop, while swimming, more and more just to catch my breath or to hack cough awhile. The coughing is also probably related to COPD. We'll see.
Of course physical pain and suffering exacerbates my ongoing depression struggle.
Here is what happened today. I called my county worker, the one who calculates how many hours of in-home help I need. I called to ask her (1) how to get a list of folks looking to do this kind of work because my guy is probably leaving and (2) to ask how I might go about getting my alloted hours increased.
I asked questions. Politely. And the county worker became verbally abusive, yelling at me and then projecting her anger onto me and shouting at me that I was angry and I was shouting.
I know it is okay for me to ask her questions. I don't think it is okay for her to be verbally, loudly, angrily abusive.
So I asked for the name and phone of her supervisor, which she gave me. The supervisor was polite. First she said she had to talk to the angry abuser gal but by the time she and I were finished, she had agreed to assign me to someone else.
In the big scheme of things, that woman's nasty abuse doesn't matter. And I know it doesn't. But it tipped me into one of my black hellholes. I've been crying ever since, wanting to binge on sweets. Luckily, I don't have sweets in my home.
I don't want to be alive. And maybe this influenced me: I went to get an xray of my lungs this morning, which is just past the dollar store on Shattuck. I don't buy any of the very bad food sold at the dollar stores but I buy laundry detergent, cleaning products, scrubbies and other non-edible stuff. I bought a box of Puffs today, that's all I bought. But I decided to go up and down the seasonal aisles. Mother's Day shit was all over.
I remember my first Mother's Day with a living child. May 1983. Katie's dad forgot to make any reservations. Mother's Day is a major brunch Sunday and without reservtions, its just about impossible. Plus I was breastfeeding and when he tried to force me to go driving around looking for a place we could get into, I pointed out that Katie was going to want to breastfeed within the next hour and I would prefer to stay home until she ate. He was furious, shouting, red faced, "You are crazy if you expect me to believe that you know when she is going to want to eat." Crazy to have maternal instincts? Crazy to know my baby very well, to feed her from my own body and to know more or less what was going on with her most of the time? That's being a mother. But he was severely abusive and I was severely cowed so I let him drag me out.
And, sure enough, by the time we found a place to get put on a waiting list and settled into waiting, she wanted to eat. He wouldn't let me feed her in public so she and I sat on a toilet in the ladies room. Mother's Day with no respect for the mother!
And he insisted on buying me a very large microwave. His standard for that microwave was it had to be big enough to cook a turkey in it, even though I didn't (1) want any microwave and (2) I knew I would absolutely never cook a turkey in a microwave. Who would? Plus I felt am appliance was not much of a Mother's DAy gift. How about flowers? Or a new article of clothing? That microwave was something he wanted and it still rankles that he forced an appliance on me and pretended he had given me something great. An appliance for fuck sake.
I did feel some satisfaction when my darling infant cried out to eat just when I had predicted she would. Perhaps she had understood my exchange with her asshole father.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
what is more quickening than light?
"What is more quickening than light?" "Conversation". This is from Goethe's fairy tale, "The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily". Einstein is often quoted for having talked of nothing being faster than light but thought is. Whoosh.
Sunday, April 01, 2018
her legal threats
In August 2012, in an email I only just discovered and read, for it was sent to an email box I don't really use anymore but I keep it for the old letters, and I note that my birthday is in August, she wrote to tell me she 'loves' me but I have to stop harassing her. She turned 30 that year. I may have sent her six chocolate covered roses that year. I don't send her birthday gifts every year but turning 30 was way up for me. Or maybe I sent her some notes, left her some after hours messages on her work phone for it is the only way I have to communicate, other than mailing her at work.
I don't remember what I did that year to get her to threaten to get a restraining order against me. as if she could get a TRO in IL for someone in CA. IL does not have personal jurisdiction over me. And she also wrote "get a retraining order like I did before" but she never actually got a restraining order because I have never been served.
Fuck the restraining order. How it cut me to read, even six years after the fact, her threat to get a restraining order. Why would she think I'd read her emails when they are so full of unkindness and I am already listing from my grief?
When I saw her in person, and I believe it was her although I actually did not recognize the screaming dervish who threatened to have me arrested for trespassing. She kept saying I was crazy but I remained calm. Someone who works in the building had let me in so it was not a trespass and it would have been negligent, perhaps even a misdemeanor, for her to waste Chicago police time on false allegations that I was doing anything wrong. I was leaving. I just couldn't leave while my only child, and my brother had whispered that it was her -- she looked so thin and sounded so nasty. In my heart and soul, she is a good person with a good sense of humor, a lightness of spirit with which I always 'see' her in my mind's eye. I genuinely could not recognize the angry, screeching dervish. She was all fluttery gestures, angrily unkind threats. She did not even say hello and that was first time she had laid eyes on me since 2002. NB: It finally dawned on me, she sounded just like her aunt the medical doctor cunt bitch, without the thick lisp that her auntie has.
I could have just skulked out the door with her threatening to try to cause me harm, to sic cops on me, even though I knew I was facing zero legal trouble from the Chicago police.
And, on that screaming day of hers, she would not have even laid eyes on me if she had just stayed in her office suite. Another person who worked in that building had let us in because it was fifteen below outside and I was ashamed to tell him my daughter worked there and would not see me so I pretendd I was going to her suite. I would not have said anything on her floor if her receptionist had not called out to me and I am pretty sure the receptionist was talking to Katie, with K out of sight, because the receptionist was talking to someone and in the direction form which Katie eventually and angrily burst out. If she had just stayed in her hole, Dave and I would have been gone in, maybe, sixty seconds. We were waiting for the elevator.
She was a cat on a hot tin roof, a feral cat accustomed to clawing her mother, I guess. I was leaving but it was humiliating to hear her legal threats.
I doubt she understands why it is particularly demeaning to for her make legal threats to me, esp. since I know, since I am a lawyer. She may not realize her legal threats are empty threats. . . . . . I've chewed this cud before, now I am running on. Diarrhea of the mouth, as my dad would once have so ingallantly put it.
It is humiliating for her to come running out from a life I helped her arrive at and hear her unkind legal threats. Maybe she is upset and wielding a weapon to compensate for her feelings, maybe her fear of me.
I am on fire about my daughter these days. I can't shake thoughts of her.
I don't remember what I did that year to get her to threaten to get a restraining order against me. as if she could get a TRO in IL for someone in CA. IL does not have personal jurisdiction over me. And she also wrote "get a retraining order like I did before" but she never actually got a restraining order because I have never been served.
Fuck the restraining order. How it cut me to read, even six years after the fact, her threat to get a restraining order. Why would she think I'd read her emails when they are so full of unkindness and I am already listing from my grief?
When I saw her in person, and I believe it was her although I actually did not recognize the screaming dervish who threatened to have me arrested for trespassing. She kept saying I was crazy but I remained calm. Someone who works in the building had let me in so it was not a trespass and it would have been negligent, perhaps even a misdemeanor, for her to waste Chicago police time on false allegations that I was doing anything wrong. I was leaving. I just couldn't leave while my only child, and my brother had whispered that it was her -- she looked so thin and sounded so nasty. In my heart and soul, she is a good person with a good sense of humor, a lightness of spirit with which I always 'see' her in my mind's eye. I genuinely could not recognize the angry, screeching dervish. She was all fluttery gestures, angrily unkind threats. She did not even say hello and that was first time she had laid eyes on me since 2002. NB: It finally dawned on me, she sounded just like her aunt the medical doctor cunt bitch, without the thick lisp that her auntie has.
I could have just skulked out the door with her threatening to try to cause me harm, to sic cops on me, even though I knew I was facing zero legal trouble from the Chicago police.
And, on that screaming day of hers, she would not have even laid eyes on me if she had just stayed in her office suite. Another person who worked in that building had let us in because it was fifteen below outside and I was ashamed to tell him my daughter worked there and would not see me so I pretendd I was going to her suite. I would not have said anything on her floor if her receptionist had not called out to me and I am pretty sure the receptionist was talking to Katie, with K out of sight, because the receptionist was talking to someone and in the direction form which Katie eventually and angrily burst out. If she had just stayed in her hole, Dave and I would have been gone in, maybe, sixty seconds. We were waiting for the elevator.
She was a cat on a hot tin roof, a feral cat accustomed to clawing her mother, I guess. I was leaving but it was humiliating to hear her legal threats.
I doubt she understands why it is particularly demeaning to for her make legal threats to me, esp. since I know, since I am a lawyer. She may not realize her legal threats are empty threats. . . . . . I've chewed this cud before, now I am running on. Diarrhea of the mouth, as my dad would once have so ingallantly put it.
It is humiliating for her to come running out from a life I helped her arrive at and hear her unkind legal threats. Maybe she is upset and wielding a weapon to compensate for her feelings, maybe her fear of me.
I am on fire about my daughter these days. I can't shake thoughts of her.
ah. . . honey in my heart and soul
I had a great swim workout today. Sat and Sun are my favorite days to swim. The weekend hours for lap swim at my pool are longer than weekdays. The lanes are less crowded. Often, on weekends, one can have a lane to one's self.
Another thing that happens on weekends, I have observed, is 'lookie loos', students who don't swim regularly. It appears that, now and again, a small few students will head to a pool on campus. There are several pools. And they probably misunderstood the swim schedule. It reads 'open rec swim'. These swimmers I am writing about seem to think they can play in the pool. Nope. It is lap swim only.
Today, just as I was getting out, three young, probably undergrad, students came out to the pool. Two girls and a boy. The girls wore bikinis. Lap swimmers rarely wear skimpy bikinis. There is no place to sunbath. There is cement. And once in awhile, someone lays on cement to enjoy the sun bathing, but it is very rare. Yup, today being a huge holiday, the campus is a bit ghosted and the kids back from Spring Break thinking going swimming sounds like fun. And it does. Just not in a lap pool, eh? The lifeguards, all undergrads who never have the vibe of lifeguards I have swum before for the past forty years.
The three kids I am writing about seemed to figure out, while I was doing my last lap, that it was not splash in hot bikini time. One of the girls left her trio and went down the pool to start doing laps.
This is a boring post, isn't it? I am dawdling, avoiding what I really was thinking when I saw the trio of cute kids who seemed to have confused 'open rec swim' with play swim.
When my daughter first left me, when she was 17 and I dropped her off at the Ivy university I helped me possible and she told me she never wanted to see me again (and she never has, except the one time she, well, she treated me shamefully, screaming at me that I was crazy while I remained calm. That's another story. In the early years, I believed that as she became an adult, she would come back into my life, that she would realize all that I had given her and want me in her life. Then, a few years in, esp when I learned her boyfriend at the time invited his grandmother to her college graduation but I had not been invited -- a boyfriend's grandmother ranked above her mother. Ouch, it still hurts when I think of that. Bill Clinton was the speaker. Her then-boyfriend's family got to see her graduate but me, who had managed to send her to private schools, spent more on dance training than private schools, a fortune on Mac makeup and high end beauty care for her while I went to the training beauty school. She went there a few times when young but it wasn't good enough for her. I ponied up for the upscale shit. I sold my house to send her to the rock. Her dad refused to participate in the financial aid process. He did give her lots of cash when she got to the ivy but it was my low income that got her all the money the university gave her. And I had purposely avoided income for just a couple years before she headed to college so she'd get lots of university money. And my plan worked. But she only credits herself and, for all I know, her father.
I remember that day. I watched what I could of the ceremony online, keening. I think that was when I began to consider that she was never coming back. Once she left college, in 2004, I still held out hope that when she got to around age 28, which is the age Steiner indicates humans become fully adult, that she might come back. So I had a waning hope she might return but I also had a wickedly dark depression.
And I could not be around twenty-somethings.
Funny how life works. When I hit the stage, post her graduation from college, of accepting she might not come back into my life, all my new friends were childless by choice, just about all of them.
But I knew people who were parents and, since most the folks I knew were about my age, many were parents. I could not bear listening to such people spaek of their young adult children
I don't know why she shunnned me and hasn't come back into a relationship with her mother but, man, it's been a very painful 18 years since I dropped her off at that ivy.
I hadn't thought of the way I went out of my way to avoid iteracting with twenty somethings when she was twenty something, not in a long time. I saw the splish splash students, maybe 19 or 20, very young, and I did not feel the stabs of pain I used to feel when she was 19, 20, etc. etc. This was a real thing. I would become crippled when around smart twenty somethings, esp smiling twenty somethings.
I had forgotten about that phase. For some reason, perhaps because of her NY change, she is much in my being. I did not slide into the deep pain thinking of her caused me, say, fifteen years ago. I just remembered that phase when I saw these kids at the pool.
It was honey in my heart to observe that I did not feel sick self loathing. I don't have bad feelings for her. Oh no. I blame myself. I am so mean to myself. Or I was. Today, I remembed that deeply painful time in the early eyars of my neverending broken heart but it was gone in a flash. I felt it as I turned at the wall. And it was gone.
The fact that this flicker of a deep, aging wound came and went like sunshine can be dappled in a pool's water was honey in my heart. I felt lighter. My old pain flickered like undulating sunshine in water and then it undulated away. Honey in my heart. It aint much but I'll take it.
I love swimming outdoors. And I love my daughter.
Another thing that happens on weekends, I have observed, is 'lookie loos', students who don't swim regularly. It appears that, now and again, a small few students will head to a pool on campus. There are several pools. And they probably misunderstood the swim schedule. It reads 'open rec swim'. These swimmers I am writing about seem to think they can play in the pool. Nope. It is lap swim only.
Today, just as I was getting out, three young, probably undergrad, students came out to the pool. Two girls and a boy. The girls wore bikinis. Lap swimmers rarely wear skimpy bikinis. There is no place to sunbath. There is cement. And once in awhile, someone lays on cement to enjoy the sun bathing, but it is very rare. Yup, today being a huge holiday, the campus is a bit ghosted and the kids back from Spring Break thinking going swimming sounds like fun. And it does. Just not in a lap pool, eh? The lifeguards, all undergrads who never have the vibe of lifeguards I have swum before for the past forty years.
The three kids I am writing about seemed to figure out, while I was doing my last lap, that it was not splash in hot bikini time. One of the girls left her trio and went down the pool to start doing laps.
This is a boring post, isn't it? I am dawdling, avoiding what I really was thinking when I saw the trio of cute kids who seemed to have confused 'open rec swim' with play swim.
When my daughter first left me, when she was 17 and I dropped her off at the Ivy university I helped me possible and she told me she never wanted to see me again (and she never has, except the one time she, well, she treated me shamefully, screaming at me that I was crazy while I remained calm. That's another story. In the early years, I believed that as she became an adult, she would come back into my life, that she would realize all that I had given her and want me in her life. Then, a few years in, esp when I learned her boyfriend at the time invited his grandmother to her college graduation but I had not been invited -- a boyfriend's grandmother ranked above her mother. Ouch, it still hurts when I think of that. Bill Clinton was the speaker. Her then-boyfriend's family got to see her graduate but me, who had managed to send her to private schools, spent more on dance training than private schools, a fortune on Mac makeup and high end beauty care for her while I went to the training beauty school. She went there a few times when young but it wasn't good enough for her. I ponied up for the upscale shit. I sold my house to send her to the rock. Her dad refused to participate in the financial aid process. He did give her lots of cash when she got to the ivy but it was my low income that got her all the money the university gave her. And I had purposely avoided income for just a couple years before she headed to college so she'd get lots of university money. And my plan worked. But she only credits herself and, for all I know, her father.
I remember that day. I watched what I could of the ceremony online, keening. I think that was when I began to consider that she was never coming back. Once she left college, in 2004, I still held out hope that when she got to around age 28, which is the age Steiner indicates humans become fully adult, that she might come back. So I had a waning hope she might return but I also had a wickedly dark depression.
And I could not be around twenty-somethings.
Funny how life works. When I hit the stage, post her graduation from college, of accepting she might not come back into my life, all my new friends were childless by choice, just about all of them.
But I knew people who were parents and, since most the folks I knew were about my age, many were parents. I could not bear listening to such people spaek of their young adult children
I don't know why she shunnned me and hasn't come back into a relationship with her mother but, man, it's been a very painful 18 years since I dropped her off at that ivy.
I hadn't thought of the way I went out of my way to avoid iteracting with twenty somethings when she was twenty something, not in a long time. I saw the splish splash students, maybe 19 or 20, very young, and I did not feel the stabs of pain I used to feel when she was 19, 20, etc. etc. This was a real thing. I would become crippled when around smart twenty somethings, esp smiling twenty somethings.
I had forgotten about that phase. For some reason, perhaps because of her NY change, she is much in my being. I did not slide into the deep pain thinking of her caused me, say, fifteen years ago. I just remembered that phase when I saw these kids at the pool.
It was honey in my heart to observe that I did not feel sick self loathing. I don't have bad feelings for her. Oh no. I blame myself. I am so mean to myself. Or I was. Today, I remembed that deeply painful time in the early eyars of my neverending broken heart but it was gone in a flash. I felt it as I turned at the wall. And it was gone.
The fact that this flicker of a deep, aging wound came and went like sunshine can be dappled in a pool's water was honey in my heart. I felt lighter. My old pain flickered like undulating sunshine in water and then it undulated away. Honey in my heart. It aint much but I'll take it.
I love swimming outdoors. And I love my daughter.
