My Dad

"You're made of love, Dad," I said to my father a week before he died. "And you're going back to love."

He smiled, preferring to bark about the cracks in Medicare's structure through which thieves and charlatans could sneak. “Seriously, Sal. That company charges me $100 per month for the oxygen because I don’t qualify to have Medicare pay for it,” he groused. “They would charge Medicare $300! For the same oxygen! Makes no sense.”

Even in his weakened physical state with dozens of medicines coursing through his veins trying to strike the equilibrium that would keep him alive, he fussed about the business of health. “But Dad, you can’t worry about this now. You should be calm, preparing for that other place.” He smiled as if he understood for a second that I needed to talk about his inevitable journey. “Are you afraid to die?” I pushed him there.

“I...just don’t... want to die... choking,” he coughed out the words that came out in spurts. He could no longer speak a full sentence in one breath. “I’d like... to die... in my sleep.”

My dad attended Catholic Mass in a dutiful way, even served as a trustee of St. Dominic’s Church in Southington, CT. To any stranger, my dad already held his first-class ticket to heaven. But I knew that when I scratched the surface of this ritualistic servant, he was scared. He had already experienced death once and didn’t like it.

His heart had stopped in 1987. Diagnosed dead in the ambulance on the way to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, he recalled hearing the paramedics yell, “We’ve lost him!” After which he slipped into a state of terror where there were no tunnels with light or angels reaching for him. Instead, he fell down what may have been Alice’s rabbit hole spiraling in black and white. Down, down, down. Without light or a sensation of levity, my dad was scared. After coming through the “big one” in 1987, my dad’s life changed. He stopped drinking. He wrote voluminous and apologetic letters to his children about how he regretted the heavy drinking. And we got to experience our soft-hearted Dad for the first time.

I still recall walking into his hospital room on my 22^nd birthday only to find him tied down to the bed gripped with DTs from his alcohol withdrawal. The doctor gave him five years at the most to live. 22 years later, I walked into that same hospital on my 44^th birthday, the day after he was rushed there for shortness of breath, and said, “Dad, you’ve had 22 years of great life. A bonus.” He hadn’t realized that 22 years to the day had passed since he was lying in that bed after having been given a second chance in life, after having traveled down the rabbit hole of terror. I only just realized the coincidence that for half my life, I knew the crusty man who drank a lot and for the other half of my life, got to know a sweet and sober gentle-hearted person.

“What do you do when you get scared, Dad?” I asked.

“I pray.”

“That’s good.”

“It helps.”

“Call me crazy, but I think our relationship will be even better from the other side,” I said. He looked at me mystified. To him, I must have sounded like a loon, but I truly believed that when the strain of physical life was lifted, he would see more clearly. Somehow, we die from this world and move into a space that is clearer, not burdened with the gravity of the material. Our perceptions change. We see more. We understand. I suppose I just wished that from that other place, my dad could know and see me better.

“Never... really thought... of it like that.”

“Well, I believe in that other place and I’ll keep talking to you, even if you don’t talk back.”

I offered those words to my dad about 2 weeks ago.

He died a week later.

Here I sit a week after my dad died in a morphine-induced sleep, after a bout of unexpected choking that my sister helped clear with suction, trying to find a way to talk to my dad. I was so certain that I would feel him and that my relationship would be even better. My dad thought emotions were for sissies, so I dared not tread where his heart bled. I figured I would somehow reach him in a deeper way after he died, share my feelings and thoughts he might have scoffed at here in this elemental world of dust and shadows. In that lighted place, my dad would see better.

I’m learning a different lesson.

For some reason, I cannot feel him as I expected. I don’t converse with him at this time in the way I thought I would and I don’t visit those heart-felt places. Something in my grieving has caused me to crust over. I dare not tread in that vulnerable space. I have a fear of something I can’t put my finger on.

“What do you do when you’re afraid?” I hear my own words to my dad.

I take my own advice and pray.

Perhaps, the lighted path I expected my dad to embark on where he would “see” me better has actually done something I didn’t expect...

Helped me see him better.

"Damn health care!"

Josie & Miley

This was the moment eternalized in Josie's mind.
We don't actually know the person with the head that takes up most of this frame, which is unfortunate.

Miley & Trace

My girls are still in shock, hung over from last night's Miley Cyrus concert in Hartford. You can see their three mesmerized heads in the foreground of the picture. We were so close to the stage that I felt like I was staring at Miley's butt cheeks all night long. If you notice from the photo, she forgot to wear her pants.

I love Miley, but as not as much as my girls who waited with bated breath for Miley to touch them, make eye contact, take their flowers -- whatever celebrity crumb she could throw in their direction. And she did. She smiled at the crowd making each of her fans feel special, as if she would go to bed that night and dream of that one little girl whose heart pounded through her chest each time Miley came within a few feet of her outstretched hands.

You can see from the photo that she had enjoyed stage time with her brother, Trace. He's an interesting guy. I really don't feel like saying much more than that. Let's just leave it at "interesting." Maybe I'm just getting too old for this kind of show, but I tried hard to see through the eyes of my daughters and I got to enjoy the shock value of Trace's full-body tattoos. I think he's going to have to pay a lot of money someday to get rid of them, which was all I could think about as he pranced around the stage with his shirt off. "Oh, dear. I wonder how much it will cost him to get rid of all of those tattoos." This just pounded in my brain, worried for his bank account. All the money the poor man made on his one hit, "Shake It" would go to his tattoo removal some day. Like I said, I really should just leave it at "interesting."

On an upscale note, Josie handed Miley her bouquet of flowers. It was a moment I tried to capture with video and found out later that the video function on my camera went kapoowey (that's not how we spell it, I'm sure). Anyway, I do have a video that looks like it's stuck on fast-forward and when I stop it at just that moment, you can catch Miley taking the flowers and smiling at Josie. Oh, the eternal bliss Josie will feel in her heart for that moment. She'll be walking above ground for days, if not weeks, reliving that moment. Her dream.

There's much more to say, but I've got to run off and take my mom to the urologist to have her kidney stone removed. Life is full of surreal moments.

The Requisite Rewrite

I wrote my first book, which totaled about 90,000 words, in eight weeks.

It showed.

Sure, it had a beginning, middle and end. I even had characters with solid emotions and experiences, but what I didn’t have until more recently was a clean story. A clean story keeps the reader moving along without the distraction of flowery writing or too much back story. I thought my first draft was great. I’d even gotten to plug in the word insouciance (always wanted to use that one) but, after reading it through the eyes of different beta readers, I realized that the first draft, basically, sucked. I had dangling modifiers, overboard metaphors and too many adjectives. I had a character who really could have been somebody, if only I let her. Instead, she read like a caricature. I had so many meanderings away from the real story, I forgot where I was going.

Then there was the issue of too much telling. “You need to show, not tell,” says one of my trusted set of reading eyes. “Rather than say ‘I love you,’ have him show it by placing his hand on her lower back and leaning in to kiss her.” Hmmm, I’d have to think about that one.

Back to the drawing board I went and I did so with a vengeance. Like Edward Scissorhands, I went at the manuscript chopping, cutting and tearing. I shredded the first and last chapters. I even resurrected one of my characters who died in the first draft. Too sad. Yes, an agent had said she had to pass on the book because it was “too sad and serious.” This is not why I resurrected my character, although I didn’t like someone describing the book as sad and serious. I brought her back to life because she turned into such a real person, I could not have her die.

The rewrite of book 1 has been more fun than the writing of book 1. I never knew how much power a writer has to rewrite her story, in whatever way she wants. Oh, it’s downright liberating.

The rewrite is ready for a reread. This may sound masochistic (I think a writer needs to be this), but I look forward to more rewrites. I do. It is like the fire purifying the gold, and I wouldn’t want anything but pure gold getting printed with my name on it.

Bring it on!

Finding Voice

It has taken me 43 years to find my voice. Being the youngest of five children, I stayed mostly silent as a child except for periodic squeaking after ritual teasing by my brothers and sisters. I tried my voice a couple of times, but it too often was met with disapproval or confusion. So, rather than rock the proverbial boat of a traditional home, I just kept most of my thoughts to myself. Mute.

Born and raised in a strict Catholic home, I couldn't help but question Jesus' bodily resurrection. Inquiring minds want to know. My scientific mind could not make sense of it. My faith in Him did not need his rising to be in a physical way. My questioning too often was met with, "If you had faith, you would just accept it." This rationale seemed preposterous, but I accepted that the conversational doors on this issue were closed and so would be my mouth.

"Can we please discuss the fact that Mary was a virgin and pregnant with our Lord? What if I told you I was pregnant and I was a virgin?" I once asked my mother. You can only imagine her response to that question. Seriously, if it happened to Mary, and we're all supposed to believe that it did, is it so far-fetched that it could happen to someone else? I really needed to discuss this. But it was not open for discussion.

I learned to write in my journal. Here I could struggle to host the conversations I needed to have come out of my mouth. The writing was stilted, most of the time, as if the words on paper might manifest themselves into the atmosphere, prompting the predictable disapproval I would get had I spoken them aloud. The voice was not perfect and free, but it was some small way of expressing my soul.

I dreamed of writing like Maya Angelou or Amy Tan. I played with words, tried to make them dance on the page like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, romanticizing the possibility that I could one day write something as beautiful. Even in my journal, the flow of my writing was disrupted by something. As if a big tree had fallen in the river of my natural flow -- the tree was the conflict between how I wished I could write and the silenced voice that was trying to come out. These two were not friends. I wished I was Maya or Amy but what wanted to come out sounded more jaded and sinister. Without this flow, I struggled with simple sentences because I spent most of my time resisting what wanted to come out.

Finally, I wrote my first short story and divulged the unspoken horrors of my heart. I let it pour out of me, hideous monsters living inside of me, scaring me, taunting me. I took a huge risk and put them out on the table. I looked at them. Secrets, thoughts, shame, terror. I let my imagination rip at my fingers and I typed the unthinkable. I read it back and winced. Horrible darkness on paper. Then I read it again. Not so bad. And again. That's actually kinda funny.

What appeared so scary became laughable. Fear transformed into something that could be manipulated into clever prose. By writing the short story, I had coughed up the fur ball that sat in my throat for too many years. I dislodged the tree that had fallen into my river and I let it flow. Ahhh...a free-flowing voice. Finally.

But, after I finally let her roar, I must admit that it came with a mild disappointment. The words came unencumbered and emancipated but not with the intellect of a Maya or Amy or the grace of Fred and Ginger. Instead, the voice I found was simple and used the verb "to be" way too much. But it came, it flowed, it continues to roar and that, really, is all that matters.

Peaks and Valleys OR Ravines

Ah, Tuckerman's Ravine. It feels so good to stand dwarfed in its belly, pausing before your ascent up the massive rocks to the mountain's peak. We all look happy now because the skies were clear and the energies were high. Ignorance is bliss. Ten minutes short of reaching the top of the ravine, the dark clouds floated towards us, bringing instant rain that seeped our dry clothes and enthusiasm. Our visibility went from hundreds of feet to, maybe, 10 feet, where we had to grope for subsequent cairns, piles of rocks to mark the trail, to help us navigate the trail to Lakes of the Clouds Hut. We did eventually get to the hut and the disposable ponchos did spare our change of clothes in the packs but other members of our hiking team were soaked to the bone. You just don't expect to leave the base lodge on a sunny day, temps climbing into the 80s, and hit rain with hurricane winds on the same day. That's Mt. Washington for ya -- the most unpredictable weather in the United States, so they say.

That's life, too, isn't it? Unpredictable like a sunny day turning into something unexpectedly cold and windy? I never thought we'd use those ponchos from Target -- for emergency only, I told the kids -- but we did use them and we were grateful. Be prepared for anything. With life, be prepared for anything.

I liked being tucked in the ravine looking out over the vast range of White Mountains, the markings of a dormant ski area, fast-moving, white, fluffy clouds. When we turned the other way, we could see the trail ahead and moving spots of red and blue, other hikers who had ventured onward up the mountain. Life is that journey where we can take a pause, re-evaluate where we are and where we're headed, but, oftentimes, it is in vain. I didn't expect the rain.

I didn't expect much of what has happened in my life.

Having that poncho tucked into my backpack was like having a little bit of faith tucked into my heart. Faith keeps me moving along the trail when life brings me unexpected rain. I have it to take those fearless next steps forward. I could succumb to the cold and naked lonely fright of trying to be in control, but I prefer to take pause where and when I can -- like in the belly of the ravine -- and move forward in a spirit of learning and adventure with trust in something greater. Life is just more fun not knowing and trusting in something beyond myself.

The rain just made the whole trip more interesting.

That's how I see it.

Our Future: Micromanipulated Food

Scientists everywhere are looking for the next magic pill, that little jolt of something that will turn us from aging and obese couch potatoes to ageless and vibrant gods and goddesses. We've seen the vitamin pill go from obscurity to being essential. We've watched breads and milk get fortified with a number of different vitamins, all lost in the food processing. If we just ate the whole grain of wheat in the first place, without having processed out the bran and germ, we wouldn't have to add all those B-vitamins back into our Wonder Bread! I think you know where I'm going with this.

The idea of extracting the micronutrients from foods and then either putting them back into processed foods or in a pill form feels like a whole lot of trouble for nothing. Food scientists everywhere take the food, dissect it to death in a laboratory, quantify the amazing coincidence that the food contains all kinds of nutrients that are beneficial for our bodies and then hype up their discoveries to the public. When I was pregnant, I was warned that I needed to get enough folic acid in my diet to prevent my babies from getting spina bifida. Fair enough. I took my daily dose in a pill form. A few years later, I watched as the bread companies decided to fortify their foods with folic acid. This would ensure that all mothers would get enough in their diets. We all eat bread, right? Well, some of us eat bread and take supplements, which then prompted a new study suggesting that we were getting too much folic acid. I'm tired just thinking of the time and money wasted on the whole bloody food science system. Just eat the whole food, assume it's got what your body needs and move on.

But no. We're too smart for that. We must dissect and micromanipulate food until it resembles something from a Star Trek movie.

Just this morning, I read that Mr. McClement, a food scientist at UMASS Amherst, is trying to take the naturally occurring (in milk) butyric acid and put it into a fiber-encapsulated pill so it will be better absorbed by the body. Apparently, its anticancer benefits are lost before they reach the colon where its absorption is optimal for the body. The fiber encapsulation will ensure the butyric acid is NOT absorbed until it reaches the colon. I'm tired already.

How long will it take before Mr. McClement is touted as the guru of butyric acid and the doctors of America start telling their patients to buy the butyric acid pills? We've seen it with C0Q10. CoQ10 became the biggest essential pill for heart patients everywhere. The magic pill. The micronutrient du jour. Why not just get the CoQ10 you need from fish or wheat germ? Oh, that's right -- we ripped the germ right off the whole grain to make our breads more shelf stable and lost the C0Q10 in the process. We're deficient? No kidding. Well, we'll just have to start supplementing with a pill.

Apparently, this same mad scientist wants to create "low fat" versions of naturally high fat foods so we can enjoy the high fat taste without the high fat calories. Yummy. Doesn't that sound delicious? I can stuff my face with chocolate cake and not gain an ounce? The problem here is that this concept is appealing to way too many people out there and will probably find its marketing genius that will make food companies richer than ever. But here's the realilty check. Remember Olestra? The WOW chip? I can have my chips and eat them, too? I could eat all I wanted because Olestra was too big a "fat" to be absorbed by the intestine so it passed right through, calorie-free. But, as it passed, it also ripped the intestines clean of the good stuff and people ended up with vitamin deficiencies and, here's a turnoff, anal leakage.

I'd rather just eat a few natural potato chips than suffer from anal leakage, wouldn't you?

(photo lifted from Lempert Report)