For a variety of reasons, I've moved to a different blogging service. You can find all the posts, images, and comments from this site, plus a brand new post, over here: http://joyhowie.wordpress.com/
I hope the change of venue and blog name doesn't make you want to never read anything by me ever again. Although, if you're that easily dissuaded, it was bound to happen, so it's just as well that it happen before we got TOO serious.
Apparently, a quirky sense of humor is one of the requirements of employment at the hospital where I've been twice in the past 4 days to deal with accidentally stabbing myself with a utility knife on Saturday. First the admitting nurse (see previous post), and yesterday's conversation with the hand specialist/plastic surgeon.
He walked in the examining room, squinted at me, and said, "You look really familiar, have we met before?" I said, joking, "I don't think so, but a WHOLE lot of people look EXACTLY like me, so chances are it was the person you saw before me." He smiled, then pretended to scowl and said, "No, it's not that. Do I owe you money?"
I wish I'd said, "You sure do, pal. I believe you're underwriting my adventures in blogdom to the tune of $100/hour, which is 33% less than I would charge if I were a plumber coming to pump out your basement." But, alas, I didn't. Still, it was funny to me that a doctor whose business card says he specializes in "Plastic, Reconstructive and Hand Surgery" is even pretending to wonder if he owes me money. Maybe operating on plastic just doesn't bring in the Benjamins anymore.
The skinny: my scofflaw of a hand surgeon says there's a 50/50 chance he'll need to "go in there and clean it out" if I still have pain in my fingers and hand by the weekend. Oy. And with that, I offer you this. One of the top 10 concerts of my life was getting to see and hear Ella Fitzgerald in person. The chick, may she rest in a jazzy peace, could get her sing on.
This was among the many questions the ER admitting nurse asked me this afternoon. I just looked at her and laughed and said, “Absolutely, though maybe I shouldn’t, since I was, in fact, at home when I put this nasty gash in my forearm with a utility knife while cutting a plastic downspout extender.” She said, “Let’s take a look at this bad boy.” Upon removing the skanky paper towel I had been using to cover it up, she said, “Oooookay, we won’t be taking your blood pressure on THIS arm!”
Two hours later I have five stitches in my left forearm and a requirement to see a hand specialist as early as possible next week. The scoop: the ER folks don’t think I’ve damaged any tendons, but they want the hand specialist to take a look to be completely sure. For now, I’m on a two week course of antibiotics, I have a brand new tetanus shot that I elected to have in the same arm that I cut, and my left arm is splinted and wrapped from fingertip to elbow.
The ER folks who poked around in the wound in my arm, putting me though all sorts of finger movement tests, kept telling me how lucky I was because I didn’t appear to have done any damage to the tendons. But after spending 2 hours in the emergency room, I had already been feeling pretty lucky. I kept looking around thinking, “Ew, glad I’m not THAT guy.” One could argue that if I were really lucky, I wouldn’t have cut myself. So maybe my primary luck isn’t that great, but my secondary luck is awesome.
But you know what? I’d put even my primary luck up against anyone’s. I’ve spent a significant amount of time this week in four of life’s great levelers: prison (for volunteer work, so it wasn’t nearly as leveling as if I were actually serving time), public transportation, the local motor vehicles office, and, today, the emergency room. I've had more than enough glimpses of how much worse my life would be if I weren’t so lucky.
Do I feel safe at home? Yes, I do and I count my blessings every day for that.
Today we had our first sunny day since the 18th century, I think. The previous three days saw somewhere between 8 and 12 inches of rain dumped on our state, depending on your location. On Monday afternoon, we got a recorded call from the local police department saying that our town had deployed its Emergency Management Office, to help residents and public safety officers cope with flooding, deteriorating roads, sewer problems, and power outages. The title of this post is a direct quote from that phone call. I still haven't gone to the Police Department's Facebook page. And since I tend to use Facebook for witty commentary and general fun-wreaking, they're probably happy I haven't stopped by.
If not for our constantly hungry cats
and ONE constantly hungry cat in particular
who knows when we would have discovered the water in our basement. We heard a guy interviewed on the radio last night who said that he only went to his basement because he didn't have any hot water for his shower. When he went down to check the water heater, he found 2 feet of water in his basement. That could easily have been our situation, too.
But we have these cats who love to eat, just not while standing shoulder deep (for them) in cold water. Pansies. So on Sunday evening, they were doing their Feed Me dance at the top of the stairs, and when SweetP went down the stairs, they didn't follow her. Hmmm. A clue a clue! We know for a fact that Mrs. Bates isn't down there, lounging decrepitudinously in her rocker. So maybe it's...
2" of water! No biggie, except we're already an hour behind on sleep from dang Daylight Savings, plus we're late to a church potluck. So, we threw caution to the winds and headed out across town for the eating of food and drinking of wine. I was privately harboring this idea that our animals, with their ultra absorbent fur, might band together to hatch a scheme that involved taking turns soaking up the water in their fur, then coming up to the bathroom to wring themselves out tidily in the tub, and repeating as necessary.
No dice. We returned home from the potluck around 9 pm to find the water at 4" and rising. We changed into our best versions of hazmat wear, and set about bailing our domestic Titanic with the equivalent of a thimble. We ran this crazy Wet Vac Relay, where I stood in the driveway with the canister end of the Wet Vac, and SweetP stood in the basement with the business end of the Wet Vac. We could get the Wet Vac about half full before it would begin spewing instead of sucking, and then I'd turn it off, pull off the lid, wheel the canister to the end of the driveway and dump the water in the street. Then I'd run back to the basement door with the empty canister, re-assemble the Wet Vac and we'd start again. We did this for about an hour and a half and got the water down to about 2". Oh, and did I mention that this entire time it was pouring sideways-blowing-rain and cussin' cold, with 40 mph gusts of wind?
We went to bed Sunday night with the now all-too-familiar sound of wind and rain whipping the windows. Monday morning, I got to the local big box store before it opened, and was about 20th in line. When they opened the doors, I was too far back to hear the initial exchange with the store employee, but I saw quite a few people ahead of me in line turn away from the store and sprint through the rain back to their cars. Finally someone yelled, "There are NO pumps!"
So I went home and called the plumber. He showed up around 9, pulled a brand new submersible pump out of the box and rigged it to pump the water up the basement stairs and out to the driveway. Apparently, he's tried the Wet Vac relay and found it lacking. Within an hour, the water was almost gone, and in a sudden stroke of genius, I asked him if we could buy the pump from him before he left. He agreed, and the Little Pump That Could is still down there, keeping our basement dry. If I could figure out how to pay myself the $150/hour that the plumber was charging, I wouldn't need the professional outplacement services that I began using today. But that is another story for another day. Now it just might be time to check out the Police Department's Facebook page.
We'll close this episode with a seasonally appropriate tune, which you may preview here. Actually, I recommend you just download the whole album, which is a masterpiece, in my humble opinion.
I have one of those faces. You know the kind I'm talking about. I'm the one who forgets all the self-protective or task-oriented protocols and makes eye contact with you and smiles sweetly in the grocery store, or standing on the sidelines at the soccer game or, yesterday, sitting in the visiting room at an assisted living facility. The next thing you know, you're telling me your life story, or a snapshot of it.
Yesterday, while waiting for my wife to visit a parishioner in said assisted-living facility, I camped out in the visitors' lounge and played Bejeweled on my iPod. I had every intention of minding my own business, not looking up, not talking to anyone (especially strangers!)
Across the room from me were 4 generations of a family. A 94-year-old woman, S, who lives at the facility, her 60ish year old nephew, M, and his wife, their 2 daughters, and the 2 daughters' 3 young sons (ages 6-8, I'm guessing.) S kept trying to figure out who these young boys were. She doesn't see them often and she has it all written down but it's back in her room, or maybe she has it in her purse and is this one Nathan or Jared and which one isn't here? After the fourth or fifth time through this line of questioning, where her various family members were correcting her, I looked up and made eye contact with M and smiled, thus breaking the seal of the gasket of the isolation bubble I had around me.
The next thing I know, they're including me in the conversation, and S is asking me if I can believe how beautiful these boys are. On their way out of the visitors' lounge, M stops and tells me his aunt's life story, the one minute version.
After S's family left, she came back into the lounge and sat down with another family and told them all about the visit, bringing me into the conversation as necessary to verify the details of her story. "What were those boys' names again? Weren't they such beautiful children??"
So this lovely Patty Larkin song is for them, and for anyone else who finds themselves constantly surrounded by people, but still feels alone, in that "Who holds your hand when you're alone?" kind of way. The kicker to this is that some friends of ours took us to the concert where this video was recorded. And, true to form, it was SO much better live. If you ever get a chance to see this woman work her magic on a guitar, take it.
Last week I was in San Francisco briefly, and squeezed in some time with two of the swellest, loveliest people in the world: my niece E and her husband N. E wasn't able to join us for dinner, so N and I met in Berkeley and enjoyed a delicious dinner at a Himalayan restaurant. No, the title of this post is NOT quoting from the yummy noises we made while eating.
After dinner, we went back to their apartment to wait for E to come home, where N did homework while I began performing CPR on my resume (it pulled through and is now making its way across the greater metropolitan area.) It was a timelessly quiet evening, with the sounds of N sketching at his easel, the tippity tap of my fingers on the keyboard, the grinding of the gears in my head, and a steady stream of jazz coming from the stereo. At one point, I asked N what the music was. "Duke Ellington."
I immediately asked if N had ever heard Ellington's version of the The Nutcracker Suite. He had not. I know, this is not seasonally appropriate music, given that we're in the abstemious season of Lent, and not the comparatively lush season of Advent. But sometimes, in service of the greater good, boundaries have to be crossed. N and E, this is for you, with thanks for a delightful evening, and abiding gratitude for the fact of your existence, as individuals and as an embodiment of what love can look like.
I've heard from several people that they were unable to post comments to my blog. I've changed the comments settings to make comments available to anyone. I do this with some trepidation, given the screed that people are willing to say anonymously on this phenomenon called the Internet. If this backfires, I'm reeling it back in and people will just have to figure out how to get their feedback to me by another way, say, the road less traveled or some such. For now, comment your hearts out, if you so desire.
And if you were wondering, there is more stuff about the weekend coming. I'm still sifting and mulling. Plus, I just ate an obscene amount of pancakes and bacon, so my brain is kinda floaty and buzzy. Perfect time to work on my resume!
Isn’t that just so IT? So much of what matters in life, so much of the meaning OF life, flows from the act of showing up. Not necessarily because you think you’ll have a great time, or that you’ll even get anything out of whatever the IT is. Maybe you KNOW you’ll have a terrible time. Maybe you’ll never know how important it was to other people that you showed up. If you’re lucky, you get to know how important it is to other people, and if you’re REALLY lucky, you get to have a sense, maybe only a glimmer, or maybe a huge cascading fireworks of an AHA!, of how important it is to YOU that you were there, wherever IT is, bringing your particular you-ness to an event, a day, a weekend, even to a fleeting moment.
A lot of people showed up this weekend for SweetP’s institution as the 12th rector of her parish – the first woman and the first openly queer person to be chosen for this position by this parish. Some people traveled great distances. Some came with a lot of baggage (of various kinds.) Some brought only themselves and whatever they could fit in their pockets or purses. Some came with babies. Some came with conditions (physical, philosophical, emotional, psychic, etc.) that required them to make enormous, even exhausting, efforts to be there. Some were dressed to the nines. Some wore costumes. Some wore whatever they usually wear. Some sang along. Some didn’t. Many of us wept, some of us sobbed, some of us giggled uncontrollably, some of us were still, solid, and strong, and some of us were the emotional equivalent of a clown car, veering and lurching wildly among all sorts of states. Some of us were dressed as dragons. Yes, Internet, there be dragons, even -- and maybe especially -- in church.
The title of this post is something my sister-in-law said to me after we had processed to the back of the church during the final hymn of “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.” I think she exclaimed this as she hugged me shortly after I had come completely unglued when I hugged my brother. Poor guy, there I was, hugging him, and as I whispered into his ear the words, “Thank you SO much for being here today,” I was completely overcome with body-wracking sobs. I buried my face into his shoulder and, because I wear glasses, it felt a lot like I was smashing my face up against a window. Picture the sobbing guard at the gates of the Emerald City, with tears fire-hosing out of his eyes, but have him pressed up against a pane of glass. That’s the scene. Oh, plus, somewhere in there, I’m pretty sure my brother was holding me up. I bet I outweigh him, but he’s essentially all muscle, so I think it all worked out. I haven’t heard that he’s being treated for a hernia, so I’m assuming he’s okay.
The whole weekend, the day on Sunday, the ceremony itself, they were all like this weird combination of a wedding AND a funeral. All sorts of people doing the miracle of showing up, and lots of SweetP’s favorites: music, readings, flowers.
The church looked like it was decked out for a wedding, with red tulips and gerber daisies and other flowers everywhere. There were huge beeswax candles at the ends of every 3th or 4th pew. The place smelled so intensely of beeswax that I could have sworn that there was incense burning.
Many gifts were exchanged. The night before, at the big family dinner we hosted for 18 of us crammed into the renovation project that we call home, SweetP opened some cards and gifts from the extended family. I had been wracking my brain trying to think of something significant that the girls and I could give her. In a phone conversation earlier in the week with my eldest brother (the same one whose suit suffered water damage from my sobbing episode detailed in the previous paragraph), he was telling me about a book I had first heard about a few weeks ago. He said that the first time he looked at it, he didn’t move for 2 hours as he pored over it. I knew it would be the perfect gift for SweetP for a whole bunch of reasons. So this is what the girls and I gave her:
Now she’ll NEVER get any work done! The Red Book is every bit as stunning as I expected it to be, and every bit as perfect as I hoped it would be.
But I digress. Back to the ceremony on Sunday. The last part of the gift exchange in A Celebration of New Ministry involves the priest giving gifts to her family. Before we went up to receive our gifts, I asked the girls if they’d be willing to huddle up and all put our hands in the center and do a cheer, like a team does before it takes to the court or the field. They nixed that, but they did agree to huddle up after SweetP presented her gifts to us, which was really all I wanted in the first place. I’m sneaky like that.
Several people came up to me afterward to tell me that this was the most intensely moving part of the service for them. Some people sought me out to say that they were especially moved by hearing and seeing the word “wife” used to refer to me. One of the small but mighty gifts of marriage equality is the witness to the power of words that a lot of people take for granted, words like “wife.” Conversely, I know that the opposition to marriage equality reflects an awareness of how powerful these words are, and betrays a deep fear of us queers having access to the power of such language. But THAT, dear Internet, is a topic for another day.
So. This family that I have, that the five of us have made together, quite simply leaves me speechless with awe, wonder, delight, and a deep abiding love that makes the very word “love” seem tiny and utterly insufficient. And this moment right here, when we all circled up, put our heads together, wiggled our toes, and laughed, I officially have no words for it. Still. Days later.
But enough about us. Here’s a hairpin turn for you. Check out the artistry of a young pastry chef who was born and raised in the parish and is now on the young adult leadership team! I had told her that SweetP’s favorite flowers are red tulips, so she created these edible tulips out of some sort of candy wrapped around jellybeans. Some of the cupcakes had the letter P written on them. Also, there were little white P’s created out of some sort of icing that were strewn across the tablecloth like confetti.
At the reception, I was approached by a man I didn’t know, who said something that made me realize that he was James Primosch, the composer who created the amazing setting of e.e. cummings' poem “spiraling ecstatically” that SweetP chose as one of the musical offerings of the service (the EMI chorus sang it beautifully, with a bonus version offered in the morning service, for additional rehearsal purposes.) I’m not usually given to swooning or being rendered speechless by meeting new people, but I’m pretty sure I made a fool of myself when my hands involuntarily flew up to my throat and I gushed something to the effect of “Oh my gosh!!! You’re James Primosch!!! Thank you SO much for your work!!!” I don’t usually speak in exclamatory triplets, but I just couldn’t help it. Then I blurted, “I just know that [SweetP] wants to thank you” and before he could object I grabbed the poor man by the hand and dragged him across the crowded reception as though I were some sort of human cow catcher, pushing several well-wishers aside (no well-wishers were harmed in the making of this introduction.) I planted him in front of SweetP, and announced, “THIS is JAMES PRIMOSCH!!!” I sure as hell hope I didn't also say "Ta Daaaa!!!" I'm pretty sure that stayed in my head, along with the sounds of trumpets announcing the arrival of an important guest to the ball. I was somewhat relieved to see that SweetP had a very similar response to him that I did, nearly sloshing her glass of wine onto all three of us as she struggled to free up her hands to greet him.
Speaking of spiraling ecstatically. Whoa. I need a deep breath.
Even though my reflections on the weekend continue to ripple, and our life in and with an amazing and complex parish is beginning anew, and my old job is ending, and my new job – whatever it is – is somewhere out there, this particular blog post needs to end. This song, "Rise" by Eddie Vedder, seems like a fitting song with which to honor both beginnings and endings:
P.S. Very special thanks to Duane Dale for the exceedingly generous gift of the lovely photos from the ceremony and reception that I've included here.
I live in Massachusetts with my wife, SweetP, our kids Sheerah, Lulu, and GForce, two furniture destroying cats and a smelly dog. I'm a queer pantheistic whyhead, who grew up as a preacher's kid and am married to an Episcopal priest. Chew on THAT for awhile.
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