Why Me?

"Why Me?"

The fire bell screamed down the hallway, echoing loudly in our ears. The whole class jumped to its feet, giggling, chattering and slowly lining up into a far from suitable line as we quickly filed out in to the crowded hallway. The teachers pushed and shoved us down the stairs while "shushing" us constantly at the same time. The noise of the crowd and the bell was deafening. Finally, the procession was down the stairs and out the door. Our class lined up on the tennis courts, while Mrs. Muller took attendance. After a word from the principal on how we could speed the exit up, we walked back into the school. However, I was grabbed by the arm and pulled away from the crowd.

"Hey Judy!" It was Doreen, the toughest girl in grade nine. She was surrounded by three girls in tight jeans and "feathered back" hair. One of the girls was casually smoking a cigarette. I gulped and my legs started to shake.

"Yes?" I asked nervously.

"We're gonna play hooky!" she whispered. "Wanna come along?"

"Why me?" I questioned.

"Well, you're so perfect and you never do anything bad so, we thought we'd help ya out!"

"Well..."

"Aw, c'mon Judy, no one will notice us in this crowd. It's the perfect time," she grinned.

"Well, I really don't know Doreen. You see, I have this Biology test next period and I'd really like to do well on it."

"Fine," she laughed sarcastically, "I'll deal with you later Miss A+!"

The girl who was smoking took one last drag on her cigarette, dropped it on the ground and stomped it out.  Doreen turned to the girls, "C'mon we better split before this crowd thins out!"

With that they turned and jumped the fence. One jump was all it took them to hop the fence and they were free! My legs were still shaking.

This Biology test was pretty easy, I thought to myself, fifty minutes later, as I skimmed over it once more. I think I'll get about a B+. The bell rang and the papers were collected into a pile before we were allowed to leave. As I walked down the hall to my locker I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't all off my conscience though. Doreen's threat was still heavy on my mind. When I reached my locker, I opened it and began to pack my bag for the weekend. The crowd was soon gone and I had the locker room to myself. Suddenly, my attention turned to some chatter coming up the stairs. It was Doreen!

I froze. Oh my god, I thought. Why me? Doreen came up the stairs with the same three girls trailing behind her like little puppies. She stopped in front of me with a fierce look on her face.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't little Judy packing her bags to study," she mocked with a smirk on her face.

"Yes, I was just finishing up here," I managed to say while locking my locker and zipping up my bag. I began to walk away.

"Not so fast, Judy," she yelled, "I still have to finish you off!" She grabbed me by my sweater and pushed me up against the lockers.

"We're gonna make you smoke!" Doreen stated triumphantly.

I gasped and my legs started to shake again as she produced a shabby, slim cigarette from her pocket. With her other hand she lit it with a lighter after letting me down for a second. She took a drag and then held it up to me.

"Girls!" she commanded and they grabbed my arms and pinned them back so I couldn't wriggle loose. "Now, smoke!"

I had no option but to smoke. My lips reluctantly wrapped around the butt and I sucked in. My whole world started to spin around me and my eyes began to water. I coughed and choked and gasped for air while Doreen stepped on the butt, smothering it completely.

"Well, Judy that's your punishment. Next time you disobey Doreen Fraser we'll make you do something worse!" With that command Doreen spun around and waltzed down the stairs with the three girls following her as obediently as before.

My eyes began to fill with tears as I grabbed my bag and raced for the other stairwell. By the time I was outside, tears were streaming down my face, making everything blurry. I ran home all the way. When I got to our front door I quietly opened it, threw down my bag and silently closed it again. Then I raced up the stairs, threw open my door, flopped onto my bed and sobbed for all I was worth.

Why me?

Henriette Ivanans, Grade 8
Marjorie Pickthall Literary Competition
Bishop Strachan School
Junior Short Story, First Prize

At least I don't have my health. (Canadian Thanksgiving)

I am thankful I feel so lonely today. Loneliness means I miss my 20 year-old marriage that is finally in its honeymoon stage.

I am thankful my husband is not at home today. His absence means he is away singing his heart out and living his dream.

I am thankful I never became a movie star. Failure means I found my way to my true passion. The stringing of words. The telling of story. The heartbreaking, ecstatic, hair-tearing exhilaration of writing a book. 

I am thankful I lost my kidneys at age 13. Chronic illness means I walk around with a piece of my mother and a piece of my husband inside me 24/7, 365 days of the year. And by piece, I mean, kidney.

I am thankful the virus I caught in March has flared up. I am thankful for my itching, burning and prickling skin. I am thankful I catch viruses, colds and infections easily. Discomfort reminds me that I have a suppressed immune system. And I have a suppressed immune system to keep Kevin's kidney inside of me. Which saves my life.

I am thankful for this morning's migraine. Pain reminds me that even I can still take my health for granted—like running water or the sunrise. And when the sun rises again, without a migraine or a virus or dialysis, the day can't get any better.

I am thankful I was once on dialysis. Suffering means I now know what hell on earth is. And that you can survive it.

I am thankful I am an alcoholic. Loss means I now know Daddy did not die because he was bad or weak. He was just sick. That he loved us, but the disease loved him more. Because I get to understand his torment in a way no-one else ever will. And just because he could not find his way back to us, does not mean he ever wanted to lose his way.

I am thankful I am a drug addict. My Death means I have found my way to my god at last.

California Girl (The 4th of July remix)

"I know a place, where the grass is really greener..."

I don't know that California was on my radar as a child. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I spent many summers in Denmark with my beloved Bedstemor and Bedstefar. In the US, I had traveled to Washington, D.C., to Boston, to Buffalo, Myrtle Beach, even to Disneyland, Florida. But I had never laid eyes on The Golden State.

As a teen in the 80's, Van Halen's remake of The Beach Boys' classic, "California Girls" played in heavy rotation on MTV. But I didn't relate to any of those long-legged, bleach-blonde Barbies who strutted in front of the camera. Sure, I was kinda cute, but by age 13, my kidneys had begun to fail, my growth had stunted and my was face swollen with Prednisone. These California Girls had inched up and out in a way I never would, filling bikinis in ways that seemed to defy gravity. Besides, you rarely see a Canadian prancing around in a bikini unless it's a polar bear plunge. And only if on a dare.

I was not your obvious candidate for Miss California.

As my dream of becoming an actress unspooled like the movies I adored, I began to obsess on any and all details about California. Was it really always sunny there? Lemons grew on trees! And I knew, beyond a palm-tree's shadow-of-a-doubt that that was where dreams came true.

I was going to be a Big. Fat. Movie Star.

One day, opportunity knocked. My husband and I held green cards in our hands the way Charlie Bucket held Willy Wonka's last Golden Ticket. First, in reverent awe and then running with it and never fucking looking back. We headed for the hills on our own personal gold rush, ready to strike gold. Or more accurately—The Golden State.

California was everything I thought it would be. We had an apartment with a view of the Hollywood Hills. We ran into Jeff Bridges at Blockbuster. I was fetchingly flirtatious with Jim Carrey. I was hooked up with killer talent agencies. I screen tested with Ron Howard. It was all happening! It just wasn't happening fast enough.

When a dream is like a freshly plucked flower we clutch too hard, it begins wither and fade. Trying to "make things happen" became like forcing a square peg into a round hole—impossible. The more I couldn't make my big movie star career fit, the angrier I got. And then my rage spread uncontained—not unlike the state's wildfires—through an unstoppable chain of events: transplant rejection, addiction, kidney transplant, overdose, rehab, relapse and recovery.

But through it all I fell ever more deeply in love with California. I became Her girl.

After my kidney transplant went into rejection, the warm Santa Ana winds would wrap around me like a lover's masterful embrace. The fear of illness rose up inside of me the way the winds swirled and threatened the hills. Hot tears would roll down my face and Her sensual breath would whisper to me that everything was going to be OK.

From our cabin in the hills, I would sit outside and gaze toward middle earth as the sun melted into a Creamsicle sky—stunning shades of tangerine, apricot and orange—eye candy I would gobble up until it all faded to black.

The race and the pace of Los Angeles would exhaust me, but I could not get enough—the hypodermic needle on the sidewalk, the dogged volunteers at the animal shelter, the controlled chaos of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center would all remind me. All of it, somehow, a comfort. That we are all just doing our best—the junkies, the workers and the healers. Here in the City of Angels.

And the desert—its beauty is quietly assured, subtle hues buried in its sand. It does not need to show off. Its power is found in the stunning resilience of a flowering succulent emerging from a craggy rock in silent victory. Dead silent. Its silence is beyond quiet, beyond death, it is transcendent. Deafening in how much it has to say. There is no voice as loud as the nostalgic song of the desert. It sings with longing, pained that no one will ever hear its message.

I heard it. Answers can only be be found in the silence.

Yes, California has taught me much.

California stayed with me during my marital separation. She would guide me along the freeways towards 12-step meetings and outpatient therapy—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. She'd invigorate my newly sober soul with long, empty stretches of gray, like a cement tongue wagging at me to, yes, go a little bit faster. Or She'd slow me down on asphalt arteries clogged to a near-dead stop, and teach me that patience was a virtue I had not yet mastered. And no, Henriette, honking and waving the middle finger is not how the spiritually fit greet each other.

People come out to California for all kinds of reasons—for fame, fortune and fabulousness. I came here thinking, no, knowing what I was going to be. And here in California, I grew to love what I am.

I am a drug addict.
I am an alcoholic.
I am a two-time kidney transplant receipient.
I am a wife.
I am a writer.
I am love.

In California, I found love. Of myself. And I didn't need a marquee to see it.

I gratefully accept the role of Miss California.

I love Her. I love everything about Her. She is flawed. She is in drought. She is in debt. She is too hot, too busy, too expensive. But, I am still caught up in the magic of California, Her inexplicable charm. She is still showing me tricks that take my breath away.

Because look! Lemons grow on trees!

Homelessness and High Heels at the 7-11

I've never really cared too much about shoes.

It's true. I don't get the whole shoe obsession that most women seem to have. Sure, I can appreciate the architecture, the excessive plumage that decorates a Louboutin or the glorious glittering of a bedazzled Valentino sandal, but in The World According to My Feet they are to be admired, never tried. And being of Danish decent, I default to The Danish National Shoe—the clog.

Kevin and I were recently in Las Vegas celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary. I had found The Dress. You know the one. The one you slip on in those department store change rooms—that despite the lighting-and-mirror combo that pushes you to the brink of suicide—makes you feel like a million bucks. It was gold and black and really, really sparkly. It hugged my body in such a way that my small boobs looked bigger and made my "muscularly-challenged" butt pop. I loved it.

But I did not have any shoes. I barely have anything that qualifies as a shoe outside of a gym shoe and the shoe ubiquitous to all Danes. (That is to say—the clog. It bears repeating.)

So, I tried on a whole lotta shoes. On the hunt, we trudged up and down the harshly-lit florescent Fashion Square Mall on Las Vegas Blvd. (a.k.a The Strip.) We duly dodged the perfume-sprayers and the free-standing stalls with shellacked salesgirls, asking, no insisting that I get extensions. And we strolled though The Shops at the Forum at Caesar's Palace. We met a bright-eyed couple from England inside the Louboutin store. (She was in shock over her recent engagement and he was in shock over her pre-dress purchase of super-sparkly, silver Louboutins.) But, despite traipsing up and down the shoe spectrum from plastic cheapies to Gucci's I could not find a pair. The Pair.

Finally, Kevin did. Through The Steve Madden store window he spotted them. They were not particularly expensive. But they are particularly green. A shade somewhere between lime green and leaf green. They have a slightly closed toe. And the heel is high. The highest I have ever worn. They make me about 5' 7'', which was the height I was supposed to grow to if my kidneys hadn't failed at age 13. I strutted around the store and finally felt the flutter felt by million of women world-wide when they slide a eager foot into a open and willing high heel. My skin tingled. My neck flushed hot. I loved them. I had to have them.

And I did.

On Thursday night, I was honored with The Allegra Johnson Prize in Memoir Writing through UCLA Extension Writers' Program. This blog is not about that evening, but it was thrilling. To be honored with a $5000 prize as a show of faith in my writing talent, as encouragement to complete my in-progress memoir. And it was humbling. I met the parents of Allegra Johnson, in whose honor the prize was established. Allegra was a classmate of mine in my 2013 Introduction to Memoir class and her talent, intelligence and defiance resonated with me. The evening now resides on my Top Ten List of Unforgettable Nights.

Now, I'm a good eater. I don't pick if presented with 5-star dining, but I had been nervous and barely touched my gourmet Italian meal.  As I drove home, well, raced home—my veins surging with adrenaline from the evening and Brandon Flowers' new album blasting inside the car)—I realized I was starving. There is never anything sweet to eat in my house because if I start, I cannot stop.  (Kevin once brought home 20 specialty chocolate bars from Scotland and stuck them in the freezer. And I cried.) So I thought, "Ah, what the heck. A wee treat for myself."

It was about 11:00 pm when I pulled into the parking lot at the 7-11 near my house. We live in a funny little pocket of Los Angeles called Shadow Hills—all horse ranches and acreage. It borders a less affluent area called Sunland, and the 7-11 is right across the street from Sunland Park. In the park, a small government building hosts kindergarten classes and AA meetings that I attend.

I saw her tearing through the garbage can. Digging, digging for her version of gold. Plastic bottles she could recycle for money or a half-eaten sub from the Giamela's next door. She was emaciated, with matted gray hair, or was it just a dirty, dirty-blond? It was hard to tell under the glaring store lights that blew out her face. But I could see eyes like black marbles, wrinkles run wild across her face. I am sure if I had drawn near I would have gagged. She wore a white t-shirt and shorts that hung loosely from her body, ill-fitting, like hand-me-downs most would hand back. The clothes were filthy, stained with dirt and desperation.

I have made it a personal policy to never give money to those who beg. There exists the endless argument as to whether giving money enables the homeless, as so many of them struggle with addiction. I have ever known in my heart if this decision is right or wrong.

I emerged from the car in yet another fabulous dress—a bright aqua color with an angular red-and-black design. And those shoes. The shoes I had to have. I clipped the short distance from my car to the door of the 7-11 and braced for the question I knew she'd fire at me like a targeted missile.

"HEY! Can you help me out with... OH! I LOVE YOUR SHOES!"

"I'm sorry." came my reflexive response as I walked through the door.

The bell on the door rang as it closed behind me. I walked over and grabbed an iced tea from the cooler and a bag of Snap Peas from the shelf. I placed my items on the counter and smiled at the cashier. These things I did on auto-pilot, not thinking. Because all I could think about was her. That I was her. And that she was me. And at one time, not too long ago, my active addiction took me to a place of such desperation that I thought I would die if I did not have drugs. I thought about the people in my life who had helped me. Who had loved me through it all. And I wondered if she had anyone who loved her?

Was it the little bell above the store that triggered this thought process? No, it was The Shoes. In her admiration of my shoes, with those four little words, we became just two women, two chicks really, having a fashion moment. She was humanized. And I was reminded. Of how far I have come. And how easily I could lose it all again.

I thought about the $5000 check lying on the front seat that I had just been honored with for writing my tale of addiction. Addiction she was living, and that I am free from today. I took a $5 bill out of purse and rolled it up. I went outside and turned left, walking over to the garbage can where she was still digging.

"Here you go." I croaked.

When she saw it was a $5 bill, she screamed with joy,

"OH MY GOD! Thank YOU! You have NO IDEA! You just SAVED MY LIFE!"

I sat in my car for a few minutes watching her. She had run towards the park after I'd given her the money. Sunland Park where you can find AA meetings and exchanges of the less spiritual kind—sex, drugs and demoralization. I thought, "Well, she's probably going to score." But suddenly, she turned around and walked into the 7-11. And I watched her talking to the cashier as I pulled away. And I thought, "Maybe she bought some water, or a sandwich. Maybe, maybe I helped."

My skin tingled. My neck flushed hot.

I lowered my Steve Madden high heel onto the gas pedal and drove home.

I don't totally hate Mother's Day.

What do I have to say about Mother's Day?

Hundreds, nay, probably thousands of books and essays have been written about mothers and the mother/daughter dynamic. Who am I to contribute?

I'm just a 46-year old woman who misses her Mummy on Mother's Day.

I don't love days like Mother's Day.

I don't feel quite as strongly as Anne Lamott's reflective essay "I Hate Mother's Day." I mean, you don't HAVE to buy into the hype of this highly commercialized holiday (although it originated with best of intentions when Anna Jarvis crusaded to have President Wilson make it an official holiday in 1914.) But somehow, for those of us with more complicated relationships with our mothers, it creeps under our skin. Maybe it's the way the chocolate-less, flower-less singletons feel on Valentine's Day. The day doesn't really mean anything unless the love lies beneath, but somehow you want to celebrate it in the same way as everyone else—with grand shouts of "Hurrah!" and "You're my Best Friend!" and buy the largest, glitzy-est Hallmark card you can find.

Not all of us have had a Hallmark life. I scroll down my Facebook news-feed in a kind of anesthetized awe. Picture after tribute after link celebrating maternal love. I blink and think, "How nice. How fortunate for you." No truly. This just wasn't our story.

My mother and I haven't lived in the same country for 20 years. In fact, it was just over 20 years ago, that she moved back to Denmark to spend some time with my Bedstemor and Bedstefar, her parents. It is not easy to have a long-distance relationship with anyone. Everything is heightened. Especially across the 5, 590 miles from Los Angeles to Denmark. Miscommunication ebbed and flowed like the waves of the Atlantic Ocean we had to cross to even be in the same room with each other. It is simply not the same when you can't sit for long hours over tea and chat, or feel the softness of their skin inside a hug. Or look into their eyes and say, "I love you, Mum."

Shit happens. Sometimes it just plops there, a big, giant stinkin' turd of a problem. And sometimes it just streams and streams and streams: The death of a husband and father, kidney disease, kidney transplant, mother/daughter separation, chronic kidney rejection, a second kidney transplant, addiction, rehab, relapse, marital separation...

And then, recovery.

I guess it just takes some of us longer than others to figure out how to deal with the mess.

We know when we know.

We all come from a mother. Some people never know their mothers, they are abandoned at birth. Some people are adopted and wander in a kind of wonder. Some people lose their mothers when they are very young. Some mothers are sick, abusive and unkind. And some mothers smother you until you simply can't breathe.

I believe there is a little patch of our hearts reserved just for our mothers. She can rip it out, and she can stitch it back together. She can embroider it with terms of endearment or she can leave it plain. We can find similar love and support and respect in other women, but it's never quite the same. That patch of your heart will always belong to her. To your mother.

At least, that is my experience. Because today, that corner of my heart aches for my Mummy.

What I miss/love about my Mummy:

Her "honeymilk."
How she would make me whatever I wanted to eat when I would come out of the hospital.
How we would crank Boney's M's "Rasputin" to volume 10.
How her hands would brush away strands of hair off my feverish forehead.
How an "umbilicus" was NOT a belly button and a penis was NOT a "wiener."
How she went to Cuba by herself.
Her perfect cheese sauce.
How she wanted to make my wedding dress.
How she made Kevin feel like a member of the family from the day they met.
How she would take car repair classes and vegetarian cooking classes in equal measure.
How she was right. That when I finally took yoga, it did help my headaches.
The way she noticed the dogs' nose marks on my glass door, when the rest of my house was spotless.
The way she can knit a sweater while watching an episode of "Coronation Street." (Well, almost.)
How my heart aches and aches for her whenever I hear the perfect, pop pitch of ABBA.
How she would buy me all my favorite foods when we came to Denmark.
How she gave me her kidney.
How she saved my life.

Does everyone have this memory? The memory that tears out your heart every time you relive it?

It was 10 years ago. Mum and I were at a taping of "Dr. Phil" in Los Angeles. Ah, he was her Bono. Truly. She was all titter-y and I was excited to share this with her. We sat in the holding area. Each guest of The Dr. Phil show was asked to fill out a card listing topics you would like to see on future episodes. I have no idea what I wrote, but I sneaked a peak at her card. In her beautiful penmanship she had scrolled, "How can Dr. Phil help me stay close to my children who are so far away?"

That's the one. That's the memory. The one that floods my eyes and shreds my soul.

How do we stay close to those who are so far away?

By realizing that "we" is not the same as "me." That I can do things differently. And that I want to.

Yes. Shit has happened. But the beauty of it is it can be cleaned up, if you are willing to get a little bit dirty. And I am.

So, no. I don't totally hate Mother's Day. Because I have a mother. And I love her very much.

We are still not close. She now lives 1,735 miles away in Saskatoon, Canada. But across that vast distance I can shout with a full and grateful heart, "I LOVE YOU, MUM!" And work to shrink the distance between us.

I love you, Mum.
Hey xo

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Dear Daddy,

I don't know that I've ever written you a letter. Maybe one of those adorable notes that a child scribbles in a panic, like, "Dear Daddy. Please hide us or Mummy will spank us." Of course, I would have signed your birthday cards, as few as they were. I never wrote you one of those "Forgive your-father-forgive yourself" letters that was suggested in rehab. Besides, amends are the 9th step. Back in rehab, I was still stuck on the 1st step—trying to imagine a life without drugs and alcohol.

Did you ever go to an AA meeting? I've never told you this, but I still have your old address book. It's cover is an olive green leather, and when I open it, it wafts malty, leathery, like the smell that came off you all cozy in your bathrobe. Inside are your crazy scribbles—just like mine—footnotes, asterisks and sections emphatically underlined. It brings me comfort to know we had this in common. As well as, it turns out, something else. In the "A" section you capitalized the word "ALCOHOLISM" next to a phone number. It's only 7 numbers long, in the days before Toronto needed area codes. I have never called it. I wonder if you ever did.

And I never wrote anything I could read by your graveside. Not because I was wrapped up in any thickly woven blanket of resistance to it, but because you don't really have one. You were a doctor to the end, devoted to medical research and the fruits it might bear. Your ashes are buried in a mass grave dedicated to those who donated their bodies to The University of Toronto Medical Science. I think you might get a kick out of the fact that your daughter is the epitome of pure science fiction. Not only did your wife give me a kidney, but later, the son-in-law you never met did too.

So where I visit you is under a tree in High Park.

High Park. Where we used to play soccer. Where you took us tobogganing. Where you planted snap dragons and tomatoes in our allotment garden. Where a tree is now planted to remember you by.

When I am in Toronto, this is where I go to talk to you. A delicate sapling of a linden tree was planted for you, what 20 years ago ? 25? It is now a stunning tree. In the summer, it flourishes thick with bright emerald, kinda-almond-shaped leaves. But I can recognize it in the winter, too, when the branches stretch long and thin, elegantly barren. When it was planted, they also engraved a small brass plaque with your name, "Peter Ivanans. Life is Precious. 1940-1978." But then some kids stole it, so that was the end of that.

I still think about you. Often. Even though it's been 36 years since you died. I think about you when I hear The Beatles. When I see soccer games. When I smell beer. (Notice I didn't say, "When I drink beer." Those days are over for me, too.) But I especially think of you at Christmas time.

You know how they say there are 5 stages of grief—were those even around in 1978?—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Well, I'd like to take this opportunity to add a 6th one. The Christmas Factor. When you died on December 13th, 1978, to this 10 year-old girl, you kinda took Christmas with you. The day after you died I still went to school. It was the Christmas Carol concert at B.S.S. (Bishop Strachan School.) "Mum made you go to school?", you ask. Well, you know Mum, life goes on, and all that jazz.

I remember looking around at all the other girls singing in chapel. Why did they make little girls wear a white cotton veil? I don't think they do that anymore. Was it tradition? To remind us that there is something higher than us? I usually hated wearing that stupid veil, because it always messed up my hair—Mum always did such a fabulous job of color co-coordinating my ribbons with my uniform—but I was grateful for it that day. I used it like a private curtain, one I could hide behind, then peek out from periodically, and watch the other girls singing.

I didn't sing. I faked it. I knew if I tried to sing I would start crying. And I didn't believe I could ever stop. So I mouthed the words. It's what all the pop-stars do nowadays to prerecorded tracks. They get into a lot of trouble for that, but no one noticed me. Instead, I listened to the devotional harmonies soar far past the Technicolored-stained glass windows into rafters, filling the chapel with an unbearably mournful sound. My favorite music suddenly haunting, elegiac, bend-over-clutch-my-stomach painful.

The celebration of Jesus' birth became the soundtrack to your death.

Turns out Mum was right. Life did go on. I remember thinking, "Today I got up. I went to school. Daddy died yesterday. And everyone is just singing. How is that possible?" But it was.

3 years ago today, Daddy, I completed a 60-day stay in rehab. That's right, 33 years to the day after you died from alcoholism, your daughter was discharged into the world a barely sober woman. Is discharge the right word? Should it be graduate? I mean, it's not like I got a diploma or anything.

It used to drive me nuts, I mean, crazy, when those dripping-in-prayer-beads-tangled-up-in-lotus-pose types would nod their head at me knowingly, patronizingly and whisper inaudibly that "Everything happens for a reason." Fuuuck that.

But I can't deny the coincidence. December 13th. So, I call it a beacon, a warning light I can never let burn out. But who, what is guiding this light? And how do I keep it burning?

In the charred, smoking remains of your death, the answers are still hazy, unclear. Will I ever understand why I am getting a chance at a sober life, and you didn't? No. In the same way, that I can't comprehend African arms being sliced off for the blood diamond trade, dogs being tortured for fun, or conning the elderly. Yes, these are the things your little girl wonders about, tries to understand, every December 13th. No wonder I was never up for rockin' around the Christmas tree.

In the haunting echoes of Christmas hymns I hear Mankind's ache to understand, the passionate desperation to believe. But if all of Mankind can't understand God's plan, why would a little girl of 10? Or a woman of 43?

But on December 13th, 2011, I became willing to believe.

You missed so many things, Daddy. You missed my first kidney transplant. Mum gave me a kidney! It lasted 23 years. You missed my wedding day. The ceremony was in the B.S.S.chapel, the same chapel where I stood lip-synching; laid down prohibition on Christmas, less than 24 hours after you died. You would have loved Kevin. He sings, he photographs, he loves dogs. And, oh! He plays the bagpipes. He played "Amazing Grace" at our wedding. Huh. Maybe you were there after all, because the entire time I thought of you.

I have one good memory of us at Christmas time. It plays solid, cinematic, fresh as the day it "once-upon-a-time-d." It was the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, 1975. We had a tradition. You'd whisk us away from an overwhelmed Mum cooking up a Danish storm in the kitchen—the luscious, rich scent of roast pork, red cabbage and caramel potatoes wafting down our apartment hall—and you'd drive us around the neighborhood. We'd oooh and ahhh at all the Christmas lights—glittering rainbow-ed teardrops glinting against icy roofs—comparing, laughing over who liked what arrangement best. Look, a snowman! There's a Santa's Hat! Had we already done that? You and I were standing outside on the little balcony off your master bedroom in our downtown apartment. Strung along the main balcony was our steadfast strand of alternating red and green lights, the one we would point to, how we could recognize home, when we turned the corner off Bloor St, and drove up High Park Blvd. If I stood on tiptoe, I could see the elegant bare arms of the park's frosted trees. Together we huddled against the cold. It was a awesome night, the kind of winter night Canadians find beautiful. I leaned into your slight frame, gazing up into your toothy grin and felt safe. We were looking for Santa. For Rudolph and the other reindeer. "Is that him?" I cried, pointing to the flickering red light of a passing airplane. "No." you explained. "Rudolph's nose shines steady. It does not blink when he's working." And then you cried out, that funny, joyous shout of yours. "There he is! There's Santa!" And I saw it. There it was. I saw the light. A steady stream of red, unblinking, moving silently through the dark winter sky. "Where is he going?" I cried. "Why isn't he coming here?" "He's coming", you assured me. "he's coming. He's just going east to Montreal first."

And I believed. I believed.

You made it so easy to believe. And when you died, I guess, I just couldn't anymore. Believe in love, or possibility. Or the magic of Christmas.

I lied. I have one other Christmas memory. I remember that "Good King Wenceslas" was your favorite hymn. I tell Kevin this every year when we light the real, "Danish" candles on our Christmas tree. I picture the four of us—Mummy, N., you and me—"waltzing" around the resplendent tree, softly aglow in candlelight and the tacky shimmer of tinsel garlands. Sometimes holding hands, sometimes holding our carol books, the candles flickering in the merciful breeze of our dance. I remind my husband of this every year, and he never says, "I know, sweetheart. I know." He just nods quietly and we sing.

And singing is no longer painful.

"Sire the night is darker now

And the wind grows stronger.

Fails my heart, I know not how,

I can go no longer..."

You would have liked him, Daddy. No. You would've loved him.

I believe in him. He made me believe in love. And possibility. And the magic of Christmas.

And now, I am willing to believe in Him.

So for Them, I will try to love Christmas again.

Love,
Forever and Ever,
Your daughter,

Hey

1131 nights (In Praise of The Hospital Bed)

The first time I slept overnight in a hospital bed I was 13 years old.

The walls were coated a hideous shade of pale green, somewhere between pistachio and mint, but without any of the flavor. I sat at a pay phone talking to my mother, who for some reason could not be in two places at once and was at home taking care of my 11-year-old brother. What was up with that? I mean, he’d been a latchkey kid at 9! 

A nurse marched up to me, something suspicious clutched in her hands. I tried to explain to her that despite the hospital gown and raging fever that stained my cheeks a fire-engine truck red, I was otherwise occupied, and could she please come back later? She was having none of me, and with a practiced flick of her wrist, jammed an 8-foot long Q-tip down my throat, despite my gasp of protest. She sealed it in a labeled cylinder and marched away, her arm swinging angrily, my future culturing on the cottony end. I sat in stunned silence; my mother's voice a faraway cry. Shimmering globules dripped off my chin, smearing the end of the receiver with a goopy slime of snot and sadness. Totally worth missing my 8^th Grade Science exam.

             

I returned to the hospital room I shared with three other girls. I curled up in my bed; the day’s scheduled activities had now wound down—the rounds, the procedures, the dispensing of the medications. With the conclusion of visiting hours, the main lights were shut off. An eerie stillness settled in the halls. I dug it. It was a mixture of recess and lockdown. Sure, I was not there of my own free will. I was imprisoned both externally, by those four grody green walls, and internally, by the disease that brought me there—which in my case turned out to be Chronic Kidney Disease. But I was free! Upon my island of blankets and buzzers, I could do whatever I wanted—watch TV, reread the card all my classmates had signed, nibble on Arrowroot cookies and sip warm apple juice—just as long as I didn’t have to sit up. Talk about your teenage wasteland! Tubular!

            

 In the darkness of my overpopulated room, I watched the girl in the bed next to me. She had one of those small, mysterious boxes that played music. She would listen to it most of the night, leaning it against her tented knees. "Have you heard of The Go-Go’s?" I shook my head silently. "They are so cool," she insisted. "We're supposed to be quiet," I whispered back as she climbed into bed with me. Was she a veteran of the hospital bed? She climbed aboard with ease, leaning back against its pillowy bow, deftly showing me the ropes. With the yank of a lever here and the tuck of a blanket there, she capsized all fear; swaddling my sea legs high aboard our terra firma, safely above the linoleum floor. Silently she placed one of the earphones onto my left ear, extending the plastic headband beneath our chins—stretching it wide like a plastic smile—then affixed the other earphone to her right ear.

She played the track, “Our Lips are Sealed”. We lay side-by-side, not touching, together, the glow of my IV machine fluoresced her young face. We remained that way for a while, taking silent heed of The Go-Go’s haunting refrain.

“There’s a weapon/

we must use/

in our defense/

silence”

My patient-in-crime was right. They were cool. And so was she. It didn’t matter to me what she had been admitted for, or even what her name was. Life became really simple. Who needed the stress of my first period, the pressure to get all A’s or the anxiety of returning home to a fatherless life? Not this teenager! Sure, I was attached to an IV drip, but quite frankly, some of those ginormous 80’s accessories were just as hard to pull off.

I’ve learned a lot over 33 years in and out of a hospital bed. It’s pure escape—a personal island over which I prevail. Sure, I usually have to contend with a raging fever [Possible Transplant Rejection], a mysterious undiagnosed malady [E-coli Poisoning, a Ruptured Ovarian Cyst] or face a life-threatening condition [O/D on over 120 Benzodiazepines] in order to qualify for one, but that’s a small price to pay for autonomy. Because once you’re there, you reign supreme, sovereign over the bed and all that surround it. The doctors, the nurses, the chaplains, the administrators, their entire raison d’être is but to serve you. A lifetime commitment to immunosuppressives aside, it’s the greatest gig in town.

My favorite time remains lights-out. God bless the night nurse who can navigate his way around a blood pressure cuff in the pitch black, allowing me to peacefully zone out on a narcotic nightcap of Xanax and Dilaudid, and ignore the world that exists below the metal cradle in which I lie dozing. But just one unmanicured toe upon the linoleum floor will connect me to the reality that lies beyond discharge. Nagging issues like, did I send my kidney transplant into rejection with drug abuse? And, will my husband, who gave it to me, be mad?

Instead, I focus on the fashionably soft mood lighting that glitters throughout the Hills of Beverly or stare glassily at the telegenic images of reality flickering silently from a television set on high. Man, do those Housewives have problems! Where to eat! What to wear! A hospital gown and a TV tray delivered to your door, nay your lap, make life really simple. Just sayin’. And then there’s the fabulousness of the 21^st Century hospital bed. This Canadian girl has arrived! Graduated from the Catholic, socialist bed of pulleys and weights to the glamorous Cedars-Sinai bed of bells and whistles. Your feet can be up while your head is down! Too many positions to count. Who said a girl’s electronic best friend was “The Rabbit?”

I’ve been looking at success all wrong. It’s not about the high-powered career, running 5-miles a day, popping out babies or traveling the world. I’ll take Chronic Illness any day. Don’t underestimate the power, the self-control and the sheer stamina it takes to lie day in and day out in a hospital bed. That’s success! Working at least one, if not two diseases. Btw, alcoholism really works in a pinch. (I know. I know. How’d I get so lucky?) Sure, the violent and ceaseless throws of detox may be uncomfortable (unbearable), but if that’s what it takes to stay the course of self-actualization, I’m in. Stay with me here. Detox is also an untapped form of cardio, depending upon your level of commitment. Pills? Booze? Pills and booze? Pills and booze and anorexia? It’s always a win-win. You are dehydrated from the start, and then finish strongly with a superior set of abs after hurling for hours.

And romance? Forget Valentine’s Day. There’s surprising romance to be found at the end of a hospital bed. Who needs The Little Blue Box when there’s a pink bedpan handy? There is nothing more romantic than your husband of 19 years visually combing through (if you ignore the worried look in his eye), the gobby strands of your bile for undissolved medications. Feel your heart expand, even as your abs contract, and witness true love. Don’t think about the hour-long drive home he has to make, his sleepless night ahead, his burdensome day at work and the return trip to Cedars-Sinai he will make after hastily gobbling down a Subway sandwich in the car. Listen instead to his voice as together with the elderly Filipino nurse, they scour your bedpan, steaming with fresh bile. Listen to his murmured offerings of love, “That’s definitely a Cell-Cept”, “No, that’s too big to be a Cyclosporine”, then turn and lie fetal in your hospital bed, satisfied. You have it made in the shade.

You think your husband giving you a kidney is romantic, just wait until you do everything in your power to destroy it.

He climbs into bed next to you and spoons his body around yours, adjusting the curled ends of the bed to cocoon you both, until you are ready to metamorphose and embrace what lies beneath; a world where illness does not have to conquer all. I was 42 years old when my toe finally touched down. When my unslippered feet finally hit the linoleum floor.

It’s been 1131 nights since I last slept in a hospital bed.

I hope I never sleep in one again.

           

Wahlter White: A parable (L'odeur de la méth)

My basset hound’s paws smell like corn chips.

I bury my nose in between the cracks of Wahlter’s prehistoric-looking paws and go deep. I suppose when you break it down, it’s kinda gross. Those paws have been everywhere. They’ve walked through sand and shit and they’ve been licked with a tongue that’s been places no man can go. But, I jam my nose between his toes and breathe in the scent of nutty, verboten carbs like white pasta, or fresh-bread rising in the oven, the prickles on his puffy, suede-like pads scraping my skin and I’m hooked.

He came with the name Wahlter. The shelter added the “h”, we added the “White.” Officially, his full name is Wahlter White McIntyre. I’m not so much of a feminist that my dog needs to have a hyphenated last name. Please. Then it would be Wahlter White Ivanans-McIntyre. And that’s just not fair.

At VidCon 2014, my husband and I sat with Wahlter in “The Pet Collective” booth—a couple of 40-somethings lost at sea in an ocean of social media exhibits—under the delusion we’d be drawing attention to the rescue organization where we’d adopted him, but quickly realizing he was a cute and fuzzy ploy to draw in the Tween-set to sign up for the “Pet Collective’s” You Tube-type channel. Collect members, acquire sponsors, and you too can film cute videos of kittens and puppies all day long and make a living! Clearly, I’ve been barking up the wrong tree. Does anyone dig ditches anymore? I’m guessing “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad” will not be found on any “Gen Y” iPod Playlist. (Or is the younger generation considered Gen “Z”?).

Wahlter sat in the middle of the booth, ears hanging low, a furry statue of calm, unfazed by the sudden Phil Spector-esque Wall of Sound rolling through the cavernous hall. I recognized that wave of teenage-dream screams! I looked up to see a shock of lavender hair—peaked like the hard, mountainous nipple of a meringue—bob through the crowd. A pulsating throng of Tweens surged after the vibrant bouffant.

“Who was that?” I asked one of the unimpressed “Collectives”.

“Tyler Oakley”, he drawled, bored, all of 25.

“Tyler Who?” I asked, suddenly feeling very old upon learning Oakley has over 3 million Twitter followers. But what does he do? In my day, teen idols played music. Now teen gods are like Ramen noodle packs. Just add Twitter. Kim Kardashian is only famous because her mother promoted her sex tape and now they have a clothing line at Sears. She has nearly 25 million followers on Twitter. Maybe I’d have a line of perfumes or unstylish clothes, too and not be lying on the floor of the Anaheim Convention Center, volunteering with my dog in the middle of the day if I had a parent hyphenate (mother-manager-reality TV star-media whore) like Kris Jenner. But then I would miss this. I dug my face into Wahlter’s belly. Unconcerned with my embarrassingly defective ability to tweet these thoughts into cyber space, Wahlter had rolled over onto his back and splayed his legs, displaying his adorably deflated balls and fuzzy little penis for all the world to see. I raised my head up and called out to The Tweens, “Come and meet Wahlter White!”

The Tweens shuffled over, dwarfed by the enormous plastic conference passes that hung awkwardly around their necks reminding me of the way medical students wear their stethoscopes, ill fitting, as if they have not quite grown into them—which they haven’t.

During the many, many times I’ve been hospitalized, medical students would cluster around the foot of my bed, slyly staring at me like children through museum exhibit glass, aloof, yet intrigued by the bedridden woman with kidney failure. They’d bulldoze me with questions, prompted by their supervising physician and try and diagnose me. I could barely respond. All I wanted to do was vomit into a bedpan. Or onto their shoes. But, oh, the evil flicker of glee I felt when they would misdiagnose this kidney transplant patient feverishly writhing in the throes of detox or acute rejection. “Not so easy playing God, eh?” I would smirk inwardly. Fuck their degrees. I can’t take a doctor seriously until they have at least one line on their face. They would leave and I would wait for the sweet relief of a hypodermic to take me away. Or the close second was when the service dog made its rounds and I could bury my nose into its neck. Clammy, warm. I could feel the blood pulsating beneath its musty fur. Life.

But the Tweens’ were pimply and fresh, flushed pink with hormones and their whipped-cream loaded, Starbucks’ caffeinated sugar rush. Their eyes, already sparking with overstimulation, would roll knowingly when I introduced Wahlter. “His name is Wahlter White?” they would cry, delighted, recognizing the name of the lead character on AMC’s wildly popular series, “Breaking Bad”. Why are today’s youth watching a television series about a chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin? Where are the parents? When I was 12 we were addicted to trading stationery. But the Tweens did not just stare at Wahlter through the proverbial museum glass. They got down on their hands and knees with me to greet the exhibit’s star. They would Facebook/Instagram/Tweet photos together with Wahlter and I watched their faces plump wide with smiles. Teen angst dispelled with the gentle rub and a stroke of my boy’s belly. (OK. And a Smart Phone.) A maternal glow spread inside my chest. All was not lost.

No, I never experienced the joy of childbirth, the rearing of a child. No kids for me, because of the whole kidney-transplant-high-risk-pregnancy thing (She says glibly.). They (Who is “they” anyway?) say God is too big for us to understand, that there’s a reason for everything. I search. I try to find Meaning in it all. I’ve even went to church for a while. I attended the Hollywood Presbyterian service held on Sunday mornings in a warehouse painted black. It throbbed with House music on Saturday night then exalted Christian rock on Sunday mornings, testifying under the purifying light of a disco ball. I would sit in the back row, skeptical, sometimes cringing, not sure what to make of it all. ”God is good,” they would chant. “All. The. Time.” My friend, M., clean off crystal meth, would sit even further back, casually observing from a back wall by the restrooms, which probably served as a shrewd vantage point for hitting on the club’s Unsuspecting Wallflowers or Over Glossing Hotties the night before. I waved my fingers in M.’s face and spookily chanted “crystalll…” I was trying to evoke to the fond memory of the 4 of us—together with my husband and his wife—tearing up the Tennessee countryside searching for the fast food chain “Krystal”. There we could score, satisfying our late-night cravings with an enormous, grease-stained paper bag stuffed with square-cut, American cheese-slathered sliders. M. thought I was reminding him of his junkie past.

He had once told me he missed everything about crystal meth, the chase, the score, the smell. What did meth smell like I wondered? Did it smell like its ingredients? Like the cold medicine (or battery acid, or drain cleaner, or lantern fuel?) they cooked? I didn’t understand his obsession at the time, as I was still successfully performing my tightrope act of pill popping, having not yet fallen into the netted abyss below. M. is now divorced from my friend and lives back in Los Angeles. He is addicted to crack and never sees his two sons, my two godsons.

Dog is God spelled backwards. “They” like to find this significant, like when the Led Zeppelin records were played backwards in the 70’s, and deep satanic meaning was found in the warbled lyrics. I think about this, as I kneel on the floor of the Convention Hall, and gaze up into the blinding fluorescent lights. I bury my nose into Wahlter’s paw and I’m transported. I don’t hear the screams of the Tweens, their inexhaustible chatter streaming through Cyber Space. I don’t crave the candy, the carbs, my children. The tightness in my chest unclenches, a restrictive band that has lost all elasticity. I sniff, therefore I am. I come back for more. And I wonder what meth smells like.

Dear Bono

Dear Bono,

We’ve known each other forever, though we’ve never actually met.

 The closest I ever got to you was when I stalked The Edge and his family for a few minutes on the Santa Monica walking streets, dying to procure an autograph. But my inner groupie choked. I was certain he’d be a wholly justified asshole, dismissing me and my sycophantic grovel with a curt shake of his head and I’d never be able to listen to U2’s music again.

But you would never do that. You’re too good. Well, that’s your name, right? Not Paul Hewson, but “Bonovox”, which is Latin for “good voice”, —which you later shortened to “Bono”, which just means “good”, one extra “O” away from God. I always thought this was way cool. I grew up in the era of one-names—Cher, Madonna, Prince—but my name shortened (“Hen”) does not possess the glamorous mystery of your moniker, which sounds cinematic—like the title of a major motion picture: “Bono: The Light Side of the Force.” Mine is just a female chicken.

In the mornings, I’d jump out of bed, never hitting snooze, and dress my 13-year old, flat-chested frame for our morning sermon—(“Gloria”: “Gloria, in te domine”—Psalms 30). I could never get close enough to you. I would mash my Walkman’s headphones flush to my ears, underneath my chapeau-en-vogue—usually my John-Taylor-from-Duran-Duran fedora. It would act as rebar, securing the headphones to my head, all the better to vibrate with you. Your groan was so intimate, your wail so vulnerable.  Your confessions sustained me on the laborious, claustrophobic hour-long subway ride to high school. I couldn’t hear the plebian mutterings around me as I navigated the bleary-eyed masses; I heard only your testimonies of love—(“Pride”: “One man come he to justify.”—Isaiah 53:11). Your passion was infectious, evangelical. It felt like a religious ecstasy I couldn’t yet possibly understand. I forgot about the pubescent under-the-blouse-over-the-panty fantasies scribbled in my journals; silly stories always climaxing with the words, “And I came.” A sophomoric intellectualization since I had no clue how sex finished off. You were so much more satisfying.

Your call to arms was to follow and I did—(“I Will Follow”: “If you walk away, walk away.” —Ruth 1:16). I was only too happy to become one of your disciples. My glossy, metallic-purple teenage lips had no filter (still don’t), but yours didn’t either. You were always kicking and screaming about Apartheid or Greenpeace or some other 80’s cause au courant. You wore your heart on your sleeve, so I decided to sew mine there too, along with rock band patches like “Rush” and “The Police” and bedazzling, plastic jewels. Who needed religion, when I had your words? You sampled from The Bible, you did all the theologizing for me. So I rejected religion before it could reject me. All I had to do was slip on my headphones and turn the dial to 10.

You were the soundtrack playing in my head, in his room, when glassine thoughts of what we would do to each other hardened into the delicious reality of loving and licking; long, lovely make out sessions after school, before high school sweethearts turned sour. (“With or Without You”: “See the thorn twist in your side.”—2 Corinthians 12:7) You were wailing as we found deep rhythms in your rhyme. You must have heard me wailing too, as I finally realized what the women were talking about in those Nancy Friday books my mother would slide far beneath her bed. And in the flushed silence afterwards, we’d lie entwined, in the giggly, googly-eyed reverent awe first love dares to offer and you would croon of our bliss.

I loved your private performances, but it was in the pit where I could truly worship you, arms swaying, stretched high above my head, palms spread flat to the glory of the enlightened stage—(“The Fly”: “Love we shine like a burning star.”—Luke 10:18). Oh, and thank you, thank you, thank you, for the black leather cat suit. That’s a classic. I keep that image locked deep in the vault, perfect for days when I run a little dry for material. If you know what I mean.

BTW, I’m sorry I couldn’t invite you to my wedding. I’m sorry I had to answer in bold letters on the DJ’s questionnaire: “What kind of music do you NOT want to hear?”—NO U2 or HEAVY METAL or RAP. It’s unseemly to think about another man on your wedding night, right?

Don’t hate me, but I did tune you out for a few years. Your voice thrummed like white noise as the sound of my life overwhelmed me—kidney transplant, marriage, Hollywood. And what was with that video? I didn’t understand why you were all dressed like the Village People. But it was more than your cringe-inducing costumes. In the past, your message of love had anchored me to the clear vision I had for my life; a windshield free of the slimy smear of bad choices that were beginning to collect like dead insects, insects like “The Fly” you personified when you first donned your now iconic shades, never to remove them again. Is that why couldn’t I hear you anymore? Had you become a caricature? Or an iconic seeker?

When I finally made it to Joshua Tree National Park, I was certain it would change my life. You promised. You said it had changed yours when you recorded the seminal album, The Joshua Tree”. But the silence in the desert was terrifying; it was beyond quiet. It hurt. All I could hear was the wild-rapid rush of questions in my head—doubt, expectation, fear. My bones felt burdened by the oppressive heat, unable to hold my head up and see the vulnerable starkness that might inspire. I drove slowly, winding our car through a path of the spiked succulents, their crooked fingers pointing heavenward. And when I couldn’t take the sound of silence anymore, I turned you on—not to hear your voice, but to drown out my own—while praying that my sleeping husband in the back seat wouldn’t wake up.

My life began to spiral. But you knew that. You wrote my theme song—(“Vertigo”: “The jungle is your head”.) Nothing in my life made sense anymore—rejection, disease, death—all of it screeching like feedback, distortion impossible to equalize. So, I followed your mission around the world—distraction by exaltation. I brought friends! Alcohol! Drugs! We were believers! (“Wild Honey”: “You were my shelter and my shade.”—Isaiah 25:4). Through the shantytowns of Mexico City we followed you. We endured the crass, commercial strip of Kalakaua Drive in Honolulu and its cigarette-littered beaches, knowing I’d hear The Word that night. My insides were shrinking at the same rate my addictions were growing—quickly, fervently. With every song, with every swill of every pill I’d ratchet your homily higher.

In my California King bed at home, I lay next to love, true and loyal, willing to follow me anywhere, but I only wanted to follow you. Lost in my life, you were my compass: Self, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll—(“Running to Stand Still”: “Sweet the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth.”—Revelations 10:10).

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

I’ll never forget the first time I saw you. On heavy rotation on MTV, you strode masterfully across the flame-lit stage of Red Rocks, Colorado, fearlessly brandishing a white flag of surrender. You were brave, careless with your passion. And I fell in love—with your magic and your mullet—and joined your crusade.

But, you are no longer the incendiary front man. Your spiritual search no longer ignites, for your faith now smolders constant, burning steady like well-tended coals. Did you have the answers to faith all along? Clutched in your hands, the white flag as avatar of the simplest and most powerful of all life’s tools? Surrender. I surrender and I become empowered? Can it really be that easy? And did you know all along, but just decide to take me on a raunchy, raucous, soul-searching ride? Because I’ve loved every goddamn minute of it.

Your voice still stirs my soul, but gently now, like a soft gust that bounces a frothy bloom on its branch. Your gravelly groan reminds me of a time when I didn’t care that I was lost. But now I care. I’m not breaking up with you, I swear—(“Who’s gonna ride your wild horses?”: “Baby, can we still be friends?”). It’s just, I need to turn you down for a while, so I can listen to the silence I’ve evaded all my life.

And find what I’m looking for.

Are you grateful?

So it's Canadian Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving conjures up images of a long table laden with rich food, surrounded by laughing members of a functional family who actually like each other. We are told to stuff ourselves with a turkey dinner and unironically declare what we are grateful for. It usually goes something like this: "I'm grateful for my health, my family, my home...".

Etc.

I humbly submit to you, my alternative:

1) I am grateful my kidney transplant failed. I would not have known what I can survive.

2) I am grateful my husband is out of town. I would not have known how much I can miss him.

3) I am grateful Daddy died when I was 10. I would not have known you can build a family with friends.

4) I am grateful for the isolation of arctic Canadians winters. I would never have savored the nostalgic longing of the California heat.

5) I am grateful for Facebook. I now understand the definition of "A Colossal Waste of Time." As an aside, I also understand the definition of "hypocrite."

6) I am grateful for our suffocating medical debt. I have learned the meaning of "Money Well Spent."

7) I am grateful I have never tried Botox. #1. As an addict, I wouldn't know when to quit AND #2. Damn. Those people look crazy!

8) I am grateful for the hell of a migraine. It puts me in the moment faster than anything on earth.

9 ) I am grateful Oprah is no longer on the air. Actually, That's a lie. I miss her.

10) I am grateful Nickleback seems to have disappeared. It needed to be said. 

11) I am grateful Prednisone is the single worst taste on Earth. Anything after that morning pill is bliss.

12) I am grateful all of my dogs died. I would not have known how deeply I can love an animal.

13) I am grateful a tarantula (Lois) lives by my back door. She teaches me to walk through my fears every day.

14) I am grateful it's increasingly more difficult for me to get out of bed in the morning. Because once I'm up, I'm golden.

15) I am grateful I didn't succeed as an actress. I would never have discovered how much I love writing.

16) I am grateful Nicki Minai exists. I now realize how underrated silence is.

17) I am grateful my hair is falling out. I have learned the more I focus on beauty, the uglier I feel.

18) I am grateful organic meat is really expensive. I would not have discovered the glory that is tofu, tempeh and all things legume.

19) I am grateful for back fat. Not really. I just don't understand what it is.

and

20) I am grateful I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I would never have found my god.


#areyougrateful

Taylor Swift Rules the World (Shake it Off)

  Was she singing on EVERY radio station?

I jabbed at my car’s dashboard. Preset 1. Preset 2. Preset 3. Taylor Swift was singing on every air wave throughout the Greater Los Angeles area. And we don’t even like Country! I slammed the radio off, shutting her down mid-wail. But really, there is no shutting Taylor Swift down. She is everywhere. I merged onto the 2 freeway, the silence inside my car growing thicker with every passing mile, choking me softly. I like driving to music. There is nothing better than blasting a crank-worthy pop or rock tune, windows down, hair flying as I cruise for home. And tonight I was in need of said salve; music to soothe this middle-aged woman’s aching soul. Anything—classic rock, new pop, even Old Skool R & B, but please, no more Taylor Swift! What was her genre anyway?  Country? Pop? Soft Rock?  Did she need to be queen of all genres? This nearly 46 year-old driver was growing increasingly more resentful towards a certain blonde mega-watt music star for monopolizing all the airwaves. Now I had to listen to the “What-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-my-life?” anxiety whirling through my brain. She’d left me no choice but to drive home in the kind of doomed silence that leads to dangerously introspective thought which leads to cookie-dough binging which leads to the morning-after scale-weighing. And nothing good ever comes of that.

Taylor Swift. It’s all your fault.

A few years ago I watched a 60 minutes segment about Swift, as she prepared to launch her “Speak Now” world tour. Even Veteran TV reporter Lesly Stahl seemed slack-jawed at the way Swift deftly navigated her role as CEO of this undertaking. She’d vacillate adorably, frequently from impressionable 20 year-old, “Look! Sparks!” as technicians rehearsed with pyrotechnics, to an insight decades beyond her age when she spoke of her art and perspective of this life she’d been granted. It was annoying.

Swift rose to superstar status along the typical speed-of-light-trajectory that fame-craving Americans demand. There is an unspoken formula for stardom and it usually goes something like this. Take wunderkind, underage beauty (a la LeAnn Rimes) + undeniable raw talent + someone-willing-to-take-chance-on-you = overnight sensation.  I wanted to ignore her. Ignore her lithe and lovely frame, (Is she naturally that thin? Does she starve herself? Does she take pills?), her gleaming Rapunzel-like tresses so fairy-tale thick, (Are they extensions? Then surely a wig!) And I wanted to ignore every moment of her red carpet dance—never a misstep, never a tumble. Designers probably clamoring to clothe her perfect size-2 frame. (Or is she a size 0? Because that would be even more perfect.) All that without ever opening her mouth.

And when she did open her mouth, she belted out hit after hit after hit, even crossing over onto the pop charts. In 2008, she scored a Grammy nod for “Best New Artist”. By age 24, she was already on her 4^th album. And she writes all the freaking music herself! She storyboards her own videos! (Next up, a perfume! Scratch that. She already has one.) Swift was dating cute singer after hot star after handsome dude. Me? I was sustaining “complications” in my marriage. And the awards! Don’t even get me started. This girl with the perfectly-dewy-skin-that-never-needs-a-rice-paper-blot, masterfully strumming her guitar and crooning about t-shirts and bleachers had nothing to offer me.

Even her name was perfect. Taylor Swift. Her first name—simple, strong, perfectly androgynous—sounded like the title of Giant Corporation (which she was swiftly evolving into. Pun intended.) And her last name was an active verb! My name is a bizarre ethnic jumble. 99% of the population mispronounces my first name, and no one ever bothers to try to pronounce my last name. They just wait for me to explain it to them, annoyed that it isn’t something simple like Smith. Or Swift.

One of these reasons alone—her beauty, her talent, her social life would be reason enough to hate her. But all three? It just wasn’t fair.

Meanwhile, I didn’t understand why I knew so much about her. We have cut off our cable, I once called tweeting twatting, and I scroll Facebook mainly to see transatlantic photos of my second cousins. I am not social media savvy. I had satellite radio, but I never listened to country music. The music is pat, the lyrics mind-numbingly simple. I like music with angst, an intense guitar riff, a complicated lyric; head scratching, “But what does it MEAN?” significance. Give me a crotch-grabbing rock star over Swift and her guitar sitting on a stool like the lead in a high-school production of  “Our Town” any day. By the insidious osmosis of supermarket rags, mini-TVs at the gym and flat screens in waiting areas, we have been programmed to assimilate Taylor Swift. I will reject the Swift as Soma! I will not succumb! I will not become of one of her minions! 

And then the inevitable backlash hit. Singing live at the 2010 Grammys, Swift’s performance was less than stellar. Oh, let’s call a spade a spade. She bombed. And suddenly, she was a falling star, sparking out as fast as she had risen in the celebrity sky. We loved to love her, now we loved to hate her. This is part of the aforementioned recipe for success. We still have an appetite for destruction; we are gladiators at heart, even if we do dress up our dogs in tutus and paint their toenails. This was Part B of the formula for stardom: The Backlash. “She can’t sing. She can’t keep a man. She ain’t Country anymore.” For Swift, the hits just kept on coming.

This was when I began paying attention to Swift, because now she was an underdog. I understand the underdog. I am an underdog. Now, I have never personally bombed at The Grammys, but I understand a little about crawling out from underneath the weighty anvil of Public Opinion. We were suddenly sistahs.

At the next Grammy awards in 2011, she gave a performance of her hit song “Mean”. It was clearly orchestrated as retaliation dedicated to all the meanies and bullies who’d vultured over the previous year’s catastrophe. I remember the way the camera zeroed in on her eyes at the end of her performance. Swift's eyes like lasers seared the camera’s gaze, deeply, defiantly. And I thought, “Holy crap. Taylor Swift just told the whole world to Fuck. Off.”

Taylor Swift. You da bomb.

Now, I wouldn’t say I became a fan. Her music is still not my cup o’ tea, and I’m not a 20-year old male, so I have no reason to troll her videos on You Tube. But Rolling Stone described her "squirmingly intimate and true songs” to be "literally ripped from a suburban girl's diary." And 45 million Twitter followers can’t be all wrong. So I began to listen with open ears.

Once I got past the distracting filter of Auto-Tune on “I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In”, I realized I’d missed the sound of her soul tearing in heartbreak, the meaty drippings of unrequited love left on the recording studio floor. I’d missed that SNL’s parody of her stunned, open-mouthed gape at her Grammy win was only funny because she was so genuinely surprised. And I’d missed that her self-confessional lyrics were non-negotiable because she truly was an artist, one human being trying to connect with another human being. All the rest—her buffed and bedazzled façade—blinds us to the reality that she is brave enough to manifest her inner Plato and examine, write about and volunteer up her life. And innately understand Life’s just not worth living if we don’t. Even if you are worth $200 million dollars.

Can someone that famous, that accomplished, that beautiful have angst, or if she does, surely it doesn’t run as deep as mine? Isn't true angst reserved for those suffering with Ebola or the homeless? But then I wouldn’t qualify for soul-searching either. All you have to do is listen to her heartbroken howl on “Trouble” —“OH! OH! Trouble, trouble, trouble…”—to know her angst is real. And maybe it isn’t mutually exclusive. Maybe you can have angst and be happy. I know I am.

But then, I’ve never been dumped by Jake Gyllenhaal.

And so I turned the radio back on. There she was, no surprise, grinding her way through the bridge, a hyper-sexualized woman-child bringing home her recent smash, "Shake it Off!" with its infectious chorus, “Shake it off! Shake it off! AH! AH! AH! Shake it off! Shake it off!” It reminded me we all have a story. And, mine? Life was good. I was driving home to my love. The one thing she doesn’t have. 

Yet.