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I’m sure you won’t miss my maudlin posts of late, we’re off to Portugal to hear fados sung for us – our catharsis against the summer of our own living fado – a summer that was meant to be about birth and babies and instead has been fraught with sadness and loss.

Eudora Welty said Southerners live their narratives and there is no dearth of material floating around here.

But don’t cry for me Argentina porque asi es la vida y andale – okay I know very little Portuguese, but Spanish – es mi sangre.

T heard this today on NPR:

Patriotism

by Ellie Schoenfeld

My country is this dirt

that gathers under my fingernails

when I am in the garden.

The quiet bacteria and fungi,

all the little insects and bugs

are my compatriots. They are

idealistic, always working together

for the common good.

I kneel on the earth

and pledge my allegiance

to all the dirt of the world,

to all of that soil which grows

flowers and food

for the just and unjust alike.

The soil does not care

what we think about or who we love.

It knows our true substance,

of what we are really made.

I stand my ground on this ground,

this ground which will

ultimately

recruit us all

to its side.

“Patriotism” by Ellie Schoenfeld, from The Dark Honey.

Being raised a Jew I never bought into the turn the other cheek philosophy – I think eye for an eye was at the root of all my conflict resolution until I hit my first divorce and in the separation of property phase, what ensued poisoned my system and I walked away rather than stay and fight. Even though most of what we had was given to us by my father. But I learned then that people fight over things because things become the vocabulary of emotions.

My sister text me today saying she is on her way in and she wants mom’s keys, the code, a list of the doctors, what they specialize in, and she doesn’t want any “ugly comments” out of me. So rather than FUCK YOU, I just didn’t respond. I have the keys and the code in an envelope all ready for her and I’m not engaging.

My horoscope:

August 04, 2009

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   Ouch! Someone’s working their way under your skin and trying to provoke you. Instead of being irritated by what you see as their needless rebellion, take a step back and a deep breath and view things objectively. Maybe they actually have a point? Would changing your mind and your ways on this matter actually benefit you in the long run? These are all very good questions to consider.

A long day’s journey into the night. Finally an update from the doctor that mom is not getting better and not getting worse, but she sees no reason for us not to go on with our plans to leave the country on Thursday. I don’t know whether to say woo hoo or just break down and cry.

The adoption book has been expanded by three times the amount of pages and they are all lined up on the floor of my office. Will this get done by Thursday? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Work – House – Animals – Friends ___ all these other elements that are in abeyance till I resume control of my senses. Will this happen before we leave on Thursday? Dunno.

This much I can tell you – this ain’t living – the constant stress of medical drama, the tedium of putting together a book about yourself that will help sell you to a potential birthmother, the lack of yoga, the letting everyone else down because you can’t be there for anyone, the guilt that lives on the tip of your mind waiting to creep in if you don’t put up a good enough defense – all this combines to erode the daily quality of life.

So you have to look around and count your blessings – I did work calls from the truck outside Office Depot because I needed printer ink and I needed to make these calls.

In Portugal – I may find one place where a singer is singing Fados and I may never walk out again.

This was T’s mother’s favorite greeting in America. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya. This is my horoscope today – how appropriate.

August 03, 2009

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   Here’s another blessed day off from feeling as if you and you alone are responsible for everything that happens in and around your world. This makes two in a row, so you may begin to feel a bit spoiled, but that doesn’t mean that you should let guilt creep into the equation. You’ve earned this, so enjoy it with the companion you’ve chosen to share in the good feelings.

In the midst of trying to decide if we could go on this Portugal trip I told T I’d rather go listen to fados rather than live them. Fado is a form of song from Portugal (or actually Africa as it seems all music must descend from), it literally means fate but the word fado derives from the Portuguese saudade, which has no English translation but most closely resembles pine (pena in Portuguese) – the fado are songs about longing, about being sorry for someone, about pining for what was.

Yesterday, I think I had my 19th nervous breakdown. We had sent family back home, and I had visited my mother late in the afternoon and found her looking frail and not so good. In the meantime, I had learned my sister was on her way here and arriving late Wednesday and so we had decided, selfishly, to go to Portugal on this prepaid trip that we had scheduled back in May.

There is a part of me that is torn – should I stay, knowing that the tedium of bedwatch is expected to last at least another month, and that now it is fraught with possible confrontation from dear ole sis? There’s work that still needs attending to and how can I go away right now? There’s the animals. The fifth iteration of the adoption book hangs in the balance with about 10 new pages that must be created and titled and all the edits and photos that need to be inserted and recopied and resized. There’s me craving alone time and not finding it at any turn. There’s romantic time with my gf that’s been held in abeyance. There’s my yoga I will miss. What to do?

I decided at some point driving back from the hospital that all of it be damned. I’m done trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of me. I need a break. So I came home and poured myself a glass of Licco rose – a beautiful pinot noir rose – and I went through my mother’s purse looking for her insurance card and other things that I want to make sure to pass along to my sister. I came across a silver pocket angel that I had given mom a very long time ago. T was soaking in a hot bath and I took my rose and went out to the front porch – alone at last – the bayou twinkling in the almost full moonlight. A lone star was shining bright.

I just didn’t know what to wish for.

Today we brought T’s mom and 14 year old cousin to the airport and it was a day fraught with many complicated emotions. On one hand, so happy to have our house back after seven weeks of having company, on the other so sad to see particularly T’s mom go since she is getting older and we are acutely aware of time these days and how little of it we have. When I was walking to the security line with her, I said “time has flown by but I stick to the notion that life is short, but it’s wide” = she laughed and said exactly.

In the span of seven weeks she said she learned that I have a good nature and that I’m patient. I told her if she found those qualities in me it means that age has mellowed me. I do know the next time we are with the 14 year old that she will have undergone enormous changes and we will look back and laugh about some of the tenser moments this summer. She left me a dozen miniature pink roses and left my mom a very sweet card.

We are going through something this summer, some transition or rabbit hole and we don’t know what is on the other side. Last night, my brother and his family came over and we had a goodbye dinner, with a few neighbors and friends popping in here and there to say goodbye.

If you look at our faces would you see the sadness overlapping the happiness? Could you tell we are happy for the visit to be over but sad that they are leaving? In this photo, which we will use in our adoption book, do we look like the sort of people you would trust with your child? Will my mother be around to see my child? Will T’s mother know our child? What has happened in the span of seven weeks almost makes me stop breathing, and yet…

Yesterday after visiting mom, I came home and sat on the front porch with our Croatian family and our neighbor. We just sat there enjoying the night and trading stories, a New Orleans tradition. My neighbor regaled us with nursing home stories – her parents escaping with one of the elderly who still has keys to her car and an errant karaoke machine they were trying to get jump started at the lawn mower repair shop. It’s these stories of old age that I want to dwell on because lately getting old has looked more like a sausage factory than fun.

Mom is fully on the vent again, which means she’s more comfortable but also means we’ve got miles to go before we sleep. I went by her house to get her bills and water her plants and came across her will where she has given my sister 35 items to my 12. It gave me pause but almost in a weird sort of way. My mother gave me a sense of myself that has been my greatest inheritance. I spent most of my life in reaction to her and my sister, trying desperately not to look or act like either one. But in a collection of photographs I found just yesterday, a jumble of the last 50 years, sometimes we were hard to tell apart.

In her will she asks us to put aside our grievances and love each other because she loves us both, well maybe she loves my sister three times better if you count the things. Maybe you can only love what you understand, really. It’s hard to say.

I’ve been the dutiful daughter all my life, and my biggest lesson has been to learn that oft times, that doesn’t matter.