Making plans: Nov. 14, 2004

When someone you love is really sick, it's hard to look ahead. You spend most of your time getting through days, even hours, just hoping for the best and waiting for something to change. You talk vaguely about making the kinds of plans that underpin people's everyday lives, but you don't really make them. The details are what's know in the world of Outlook calendars as 'to be determined.'

Back when I wrote about the year my mother spent fighting cancer, all I wanted in the world was to be able to write this column -- a column where we had the optimism to look forward, a column about an ordinary day and the plan for the days ahead.

Life is always changing, but we’re just glad to be‘hair’

  

    My mother is sort of poking at her hair, trying to figure out how to get it to lie down even a little bit.

    "I don’t know whose hair this is," she grumbles, tugging at it. "I don’t know what to do with this hair."

    I tell her I think it’s cute. She does not think it’s cute.

    "It’s so curly," she moans. "It’s so curly."

    It really is curly. My mother has dark ringlets framing her face, corkscrew curls at the nape of her neck. She has bona fide curly hair for the first time in her life.

    I tell her I think it’s cute. I also tell her what we both know but tend not to say.

    "I’m just glad you have hair to hate," I say. "I hope it’s the worst problem you ever have for the rest of your life."

    She shrugs. I’ve derailed her plan to spend the afternoon hating her hair. Not fair of me, I know. But it’s true. I do think her hair is cute, and I’m so glad she’s still here with me that I sometimes can’t breathe.

    All kinds of strange things happen to hair that has been burned away by chemotherapy. Sometimes it grows back dark when it had been light, or curly when it had been straight or gray when it had been brown. Sometimes it doesn’t grow back at all.     

    If you look at the little picture of me that runs with this column, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what my mother’s hair looked like before her cancer treatment. It was dark, wavy, coarse. We tend toward frizz, but neither of us has ever had anything that could be described as a curl. And she was going slowly gray. Nothing dramatic. Just a few shots of it through the dark waves.

    Then cancer. And chemo. Six months of chemo, and her hair was all gone in just a few weeks in. My son was 3 years old when my mother started treatment, and he didn’t notice when his Momo’s hair fell out. It was an absolutely gorgeous phenomenon, how he just didn’t see any difference in her at all.

    She once put her wig on while he watched. He looked perplexed. "Momo," he scolded her. "Take off that hat."

    He doesn’t notice now that her hair is curly, either. He’s glad she has the energy to get on the floor and play with him again, but the rest of it is way below his 4-year-old radar.

    A few weeks ago I spotted a strand of gray sticking out of my own dark hair.

    It’s not the first gray hair I’ve seen on my head, but this one is right in the middle of the front. It tends to stand straight up. It is really an exceptionally obnoxious gray hair. The class clown of gray hairs. The troublemaker.

    I usually pull them out, which I know is dumb, but I do it anyway.

    This time, though, I didn’t. I thought about my mom’s short new ringlets, and I decided to leave this gray hair alone. I thought about the bitter night in January, right after my mother’s surgery, when I slept next to her hospital bed on a pull-out vinyl loveseat. I spent most of that night listening to her breathe, watching her fitful, pained sleep.     

    I thought about my little boy, about the nights I have spent counting his breaths, watching him move as if he’s swimming through his dreams. I thought about the nights my mother spent doing the same for me when I was small.

    My mother’s new hair is curly, mine is going slowly gray, my son is getting tall, and his baby brother will be here in just a couple of months.

    So I’m leaving my troublemaking gray hair alone, mostly to acknowledge that there is nothing I can do to stop any of the changes that make this life both sweet and terrifying.

    And because I don’t know that I’d stop them if I could.

All's fair: Oct. 3, 2004

I am a huge fan of anything fall-related, including the annual county fair. This column is from the year of the fair that almost wasn't. When it looked like the fair was going to be canceled, I was way sadder about the prospect of missing the fair than is probably normal.

Dear donor: Thanks for the $49,000 duck show

  

    My mom was really big on thank-you notes when we were growing up.

    Every time a card came in the mail with a $5 birthday bill tucked inside, we knew we wouldn’t get our hands on that money until a handwritten note was produced thanking the sender and giving explicit, ecstatic descriptions of how we would use the gift.

    "Dear Mrs. Coleman, Thank you so much for the $5. I am very happy that you remembered my birthday. I will use the money to buy a book about horses that I want."

    In fact, what I usually did with the $5 was walk down to Neff’s store and buy candy cigarettes, handfuls of penny bubblegum and bags of Sugar Babies. But even as a pretty small kid I knew that kind of information wasn’t what the thank-you note gods were looking for.

    After years of opening birthday cards and sitting down to draft letters of appreciation, I have a deep-seated thank-you note impulse. My grandmother, who really shouldn’t, still sends me a birthday check every year. My thank-you notes have gotten a little more detailed (and honest) since my days of hanging out at the candy counter watching Mr. Neff dole out sweets. I take a lot of pleasure in giving a handwritten thanks, and I know my grandmother really appreciates it.

    At the moment, however, I find myself in the unprecedented position of needing to write a thank-you note to an anonymous person. No name. No address. No clue. But my mother trained me to write thank-you notes, and I’m going to write one. So here goes.

    Dear anonymous donor, Thank you very much for the $49,000 you gave the county for the fair this year. I would love to say my family got to see and do everything at the fair last weekend, but I was held hostage by my 4-year-old son, who is obsessed with the duck show.

    Have you seen the duck show? It is hilarious. They have rigged up this little pond with a slide in the middle and food at the top. A whole procession of little yellow ducklings climbs up a ramp, grabs a mouthful of food and then tumbles down the slide into the water, little orange feet waving.     

    If you are 4 years old, this is the greatest form of entertainment ever created. My son was helpless with hysterical laughter as he watched the duck show. He could barely stand up. I have never seen anyone have that much fun.

    We spent a lot of time at the duck show.

    "Jack, let’s go see the bunnies."

    "I’m watching the ducks."

    "Jack, let’s ride a pony."

    "Ducks!"

    "Jack, it’s lunch time. Let’s go get something to eat."

    "DUCKS!!"

    Eventually, we had to drag Jack kicking and screaming from the duck show. It was OK, though, because once he ate a hot dog, a bag of potato chips and a chocolate ice cream cone, he was ready to go see the train display.

    Have you seen the train display? It is amazing. Tables and tables of infinitely detailed model trains and model towns and model amusement parks (really) and model mountains with tunnels and little steam engines that blow actual smoke from their smokestacks.

    We spent a lot of time at the train display.

    We also spent a fair amount of time petting sheep, cows and horses, feeding goats and looking at turkeys. These are animals my son never, ever sees except at the fair. He knows a sheep goes "baaa" and a cow goes "moo," but he’d never know what one felt like if we didn’t trek out to Chester Frost Park every September.

    I ate my annual funnel cake under an oak tree that spat acorns on my head, bought a $4 lemonade and tried to think of ways to tell you, anonymous donor, how glad we are you gave us all the chance to do it again this year. You saved the fair when the county couldn’t come up with the cash. You were the bright spot in a depressing series of financial disappointments delivered to us this summer.

    So thanks. We truly appreciate it. And we hope things work out next year so that you can enjoy the fair without shelling out $49,000 for the privilege.

    Best wishes,     

    Mary Fortune and her family     

Blissful ignorance: Aug. 22, 2004

Oh, Ben. We really had no idea what we were getting into with Ben. We wanted a second kid; more than anything, we wanted that second kid. But that second kid absolutely beat our asses. Parenting is the most humbling experience this life offers. Parenting Ben -- who is a tsunami of hot temper and devastating charm and fierce will and irrepressible whimsy and did I mention hot temper? -- has been exhausting on every level.

This is the column I wrote back when I thought I had some inkling of how tough it would be to have another kid. I was, as usual, clueless.

Sometimes I miss the days when I didn’t know any better

    I was not scared the first time I sat in a tiny, two-man raft and watched the Ocoee River churn and swirl.     

    I was 22, and trying to impress a very athletic kayaker guy I had just started dating. When he offered to take me down the Ocoee River in a tiny, two-man raft, I told him I’d love to go.

    At some point on our trip through the rapids, though, I got nervous. I’m not the best swimmer, and I had neglected to mention that to Athletic Kayaker Guy. But I put on a brave face as my grinning date slammed our little craft through the cold waves.

    Then, at a rapid called Diamond Splitter, I tumbled out and ended up flipping around in the water like a lost shoe. Athletic Kayaker Guy managed to haul me back into the raft. I finished the trip determined to conceal my terror.

    "That was great," I crowed as we pulled our little craft from the water. "I loved it."

    Athletic Kayaker Guy immediately began planning our next Ocoee trip.

    "Sounds good," I chirped, fighting the urge to weep.

    A few weeks later I was in the little raft again. I’d had a knot in my stomach for days anticipating this trip. My mouth was dry. My head hurt.     

    "Ready to go?" Athletic Kayaker Guy asked cheerily.

    I nodded. We went. I felt queasy. I fell out again. When the trip was over my date looked at me. "Are you OK?"

    I shrugged. Bravado was beyond me.

    "I wasn’t scared the first time because I didn’t know what to expect," I confessed. "This time I knew what was coming and I was terrified."

    We broke up pretty soon after that. He said I had a "low adventure threshold."

    Speaking of adventure.

    A few months ago I sat on the cool, white edge of my bathtub and watched two pink lines materialize on a home pregnancy test.

    This is the second time I’ve done this.

    The first time I was flat-out delighted. I was going to have a baby! I was going to wear cute maternity clothes and be a lovely, round pregnant woman and lose all that baby weight in three months, and be instantly cured of my lifelong fear of newborns by the arrival of one of my very own. 

    

    Jack is 4 now. He made us a family, and he makes me happier than I knew I could be. He also made me a lot wiser about the realities of motherhood and my own limitations.     

    One jarring lesson my son taught me is that my fear of babies did not go away just because I became a mother. I survived Jack’s early infancy on a moment-to-moment basis, and spent a large amount of it wishing I were at the office, where I almost never have to clean up bodily fluids or walk the floor with a wailing infant at 4 a.m.

    I vividly remember offering my 1-week-old son $1,000 if he would just please, please stop crying for one minute.

    But we survived — we even managed to have a little fun — and now I have an enchanting 4-year-old best friend who is left-handed like his mother and sits cross-legged in my lap while we read "Go, Dog. Go!" and other scintillating classics.     

    And now those pink lines again.

    This time is happy, too. After more than 2 years of hoping, my husband and I thought this wouldn’t happen for us. Sitting on the edge of my bathtub I cried a little, and said a silent thanks to the universe.

    I also started bracing for the stuff I didn’t know about the first time around.

    I am not, it turns out, lovely and round during pregnancy. I am fat and lumpy. Also, once it gets big enough, this baby is going to want out. That part is just no fun AT ALL. 

    They say you forget the pain. They lie.

    I’ll be 33 when this baby gets here, and there’s no telling when I’ll return in earnest to the career I still miss. Our already difficult financial life is about to get impossible.

    And here we go back into the dreaded land of diapers, spit-up and food-as-projectile.     

    But there’s the other stuff, too. There’s that smell they have, little babies, that back-of-the-neck smell that releases all those happiness chemicals in my brain. There are all the firsts: first smile, laugh, word, step. There’s the first time you hold them, that moment when they take irrevocable possession of your heart.

    I’m wiser this time, and I’m happy. But I have to admit I’m scared in a way I wasn’t before. Bravado won’t do me any good.     

    Here we go. Hang on.

I do tend to ramble: July 11, 2004

This was kind of a random-access-Mary column in which my late grandfather makes an appearance and I have a completely internal conversation with an air conditioning repair guy named Ray.

Sometimes I just ain't right.

A column in which the heat gets to me and I speak with the dead

    Ooooh, lookit, the new Pottery Barn catalog is here! Let’s see what I can buy for $865.

    Well, there are those filing cabinets I covet for my home office, white with silver hardware, just $229 each, plus $25 shipping. I could buy three of those. OR I could go frivolous and buy a new chair for the living room, maybe this big, squishy one with the denim cover — just $749, plus $65 shipping. Perfect!

    OR I could take my $865 and hand it to this guy, Ray, who is standing in my living room sweating, telling me I need both a new motor AND a new circuit board for my central air conditioning unit. Ray is showing me the big scorched spot on the circuit board where the motor blew and fried everything. It’s a compelling sight.

    But I’m thinking: Hmmm. I don’t know, Ray. The new Pottery Barn catalog is here. Have you seen this chair? It’s got a denim cover. It’s really cute.

    I suspect Ray would not care. Ray has spent his whole day in the basements of people whose air conditioners are not working. Ray is a patient man, but he would not find my Pottery Barn catalog interesting.

    I call my husband and tell him what Ray said about our air conditioner. He wants to talk to Ray. I give Ray the phone and listen. Ray and my husband talk about circuit boards and motors and the total lack of any air in our house that is under 92 degrees and 89 percent humidity. The $865 comes up. The Pottery Barn catalog does not.

    Ray is done talking to my husband. He hands me the phone. He tells me he has a circuit board, which he’ll install now, but he has to order a motor. "It’ll be a day or two," he says.

    Ray! After all we’ve been through, you can’t do better than a day or two? After I sacrificed my squishy denim chair, my gleaming white file cabinets? All you can say is "a day or two?"

    Ray really wants to get in his van, where the air conditioning works, so he can go order the part, which will be here in a day or two. I’ll bet the Pottery Barn doesn’t even send him their catalogs. I get one in the mail every 47 minutes. It is a torment.

    The $865, which we miraculously happen to have, was not actually intended for Pottery Barn purchases. I saved it up so we could build a deck. We have the French doors installed already, but they open onto a railing my husband put there so our 4-year-old son won’t fall out of the doors that lead to a two-story drop into our back yard.

    The railing has been there a couple of years now, while I’ve been squirreling away money for a deck. I walk people through the house and point to the French doors that open onto a railing.

    "Do you like our deck?" I say. "It’s a little small, but it’s great for intimate gatherings."     

    Ha ha.

    Ray hasn’t seen the deck. Or the Pottery Barn catalog. I write Ray a check. It is physically painful to write Ray the check. But Ray understands. I can just tell. He’s a deep guy. He has spent his day sweating in the basements of people who have to write him big checks just so they can BREATHE in their sweltering houses.

    Ray gets in his van and goes to order the part. I kind of miss him. He was nice. Plus he knows how to fix my air conditioner, which is still broken. That gives him a certain mystique.

    That night, as I wait for a day or two to pass so Ray can return with the part, I think about my grandfather. He lived in Florida his entire adult life and never had air conditioning. He HATED air conditioning. Too cold, he said. Too artificial.

    But my grandfather would have known how to fix my air conditioner. He knew how to fix everything. He could build anything, fix anything, take anything apart and put it back together. Or mostly together.

    Once, when my mother was away at college, she told him she wanted a hair dryer. He made her this thing that weighed like 25 pounds and blew air so hot it disrupted climate patterns. I think he got the motor for it out of a car.

    Man, it’s hot in my house.

    I mentally contact my grandfather, who has been dead for 12 years. I ask him how he stood it, lying in bed, sweating and flopping around trying to breathe with not even the faint hope of Ray’s return with the ordered part. And in Florida, no less.

    My grandfather, whose voice I can still hear with a clarity that suggests there is probably something loose in my head (maybe Ray needs to order a part for that, too) speaks gently to me.

    "Kelly," he says. (He called me Kelly. I’d tell you why, but it would take a long time and I’m running out of room.) "What you need is a good window fan. Maybe I’ll make one for you."