And You're the Only One Who Knows

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong . . .

I saw your picture today.
You are beautiful.
As always.

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self-defense

It's been sixty-seven days
since I've heard from you.
That was when you said
I'd ignored you for
the past six months.

I accepted the blame
as is my way.
But later I realized
I had answered all your mail.

I fought with you
that night
twisted up by the wrong medication
and a chemical storm.

And then retreated.

And every time I've held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

You disappeared
taking the child with you.
I think of him as my son, too,
A choice we made together

I have asked everyone
I know to help
me find you.

I have asked everyone
I know to tell
you that I love you.

I have asked everyone
I know to tell
me that you are okay.

So I would choose to have you here
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

It is never simple
or easy
It hasn't been since
the turn.

I have no regrets
other than my own failings.
Certainly none about you
or our son.

And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows

Please come home.
I miss you.

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows.

Cris

Who Holds Your Hand When You're Alone?

After a string of good days, a spectacular crash. I am a porous stone as one drug leeches out and another leeches in, waiting for the rain to wash me clean, fearing it will freeze instead and I will crack and fall to pieces.

I felt fury take me. I can't do this anymore. I am going to fail. Why do we persist using the same tools that have failed us before? I hate this . . . everything!

I am shouting. Again. Then the self-loathing pummels me to the ground. Pounding down the stairs out the door into the night. It's 2 A.M. and I'm standing on the porch.

I am so angry that I can't even move. A sudden gust of wind lifts my hair. Calm swirls around me like a presence, like a cool hand on the top of my head. It is my Christ, come to remind me that I am never alone. My anger is gone. A sudden cloudburst brings a storm of hail so heavy I can no longer see the trees ten feet away.

A single flash of lightning, so bright I feel as though I've been caught unexpectedly in a camera's bright flash. One second . . . two . . . thunder so close it shakes my bones.

Why can't I figure this out? Is the only way to measure days into segments and rush from task to task?

The fury of hail subsides as quickly as it began.

Back inside, I rip my schedule from the pantry door and crumple it into the garbage. Screw it. Color-coded garbage anyway.

Jennifer says she's going to overhaul Max's curriculum. I know the feeling. He can't encode, so how can I teach him how to spell? This is how: You try something new. And you keep trying something new until you find something that works. But you don't stop putting one foot in front of the other. You don't stop pushing back the blankets and getting out of bed. You don't stop walking or singing or playing with your kids. You. Find. Another. Way.

In a few hours, the sun will rise.

Every day a new day.
Every moment another chance.
Take a breath.
Let it out.
Begin.

Some Days, it's All About the Wait.

This morning, when we checked the status of Washington State's Referendum 71, which would "expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage," has passed in King County (where Seattle is located), but the ballots are still being counted in most of the other counties.

I am hopeful.

On Tuesday, November 3, Maine overturned it's gay "marriage" law.

You know, I don't care what it's called. It could be called "The two people living together who may or may not have sex who just want to be able to keep the house and support the kids if their partner dies suddenly" law. It could be called the "My partner is in the hospital and we don't have the same last name and oh, God is she all right and when can I see her?" law. It could be called the "These are my children. This is my family. We're human beings, not 'abominations of nature' so please treat us with respect" law, or even "We have made a lifelong commitment to each other and would like to celebrate this joyous event with a ceremony that has some resemblance to the pictures of the perfect wedding that has been pounded into our heads through TV, music, movies and print media since we were toddlers" law.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't have to be called "marriage." I'd rather not quibble over semantics. If the far right wants to claim the word "marriage," fine. Whatever. I really don't care.

It's not about the word, anyway. It's about the fact that a lot of men and women, for whom having a child is never an "oops," are choosing to have children and raise them in the stability of a family unit. Choosing being the optimum word here. Our kids certainly didn't get here by immaculate conception.

And I honestly fail to understand why it's okay for a fifteen-year-old to un/intentionally get pregnant, have the baby, leave it with a baby sittter or grandparent or parent or whomever and continue on with her life and actually finish high school (!) and not bother to name the father or involve him in his child's life and no one seems to find this a problem--because if it were a problem, there'd be a law against it, right?

But two adult men or women who have created a loving home and who sincerely want to have a child are denied the same legal benefits as a loving and committed heterosexual couple who have children or for that matter any heterosexual couple.

Or for two people, regardless of gender, to make a lifelong commitment to each other, whether they choose children or not.

When our country was founded, only white men could vote. Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person when counting the population to determine how many seats a state got in the House of Representatives. Blacks were given the right to vote after the Civil War, but if you lived in the South, you could only exercise your Constitutional right if you could pay a poll tax and pass an 8th grade literacy test. Native Americans weren't made full citizens until 1925, and women didn't get the right to vote until 1920.

The Civil Rights movement occurred in my lifetime. Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1972.

Americans are known for our relentless pursuit of freedom and justice. I can only hope that enough people in Washington state remembered that at the polls.

Cris

Taking My Place in the Story of Leaves

I kick at the leaves of maples,
reds of seventy different shades, . . .

I walk out this morning on the way to see a new P.A. I'm running late, as usual.

yellow
like old paper, and poplar leaves, fragile and pale
and elm leaves, flags of a doomed race . . .

The sky is a clear autumn blue. The leaves are brilliant in the light. I can hardly keep my eyes on the road the trees are so beautiful. The light, the colors, the day takes me back ten years, maybe fifteen. . . . I am driving to work through colors so luminous they seem lit from within. I am living inside the characters of a book I will begin writing in a month's time. There is nothing I need or want except for this light, the stars that guide me home and the knowledge that my life is about to change.

I kick in the leaves, making a sound I remember
as the leaves swirl upward from my boot,
and flutter, and I remember . . .

Today, in Bremerton, the streets are deserted. It's early afternoon when I park on a side street and smell the ocean as I lock the car. I am thinking about Hanover, New Hampshire. Of a bookstore where I spent countless hours, sitting on the floor in the basement, reading world mythology. Of the ride back when the sky was steel and the sun cut shafts of light and color across the hillsides.

Kicking the leaves, I heard the leaves tell stories,
remembering, . . .

Sara's office is small and square. She is slight, dressed in beige and black. Her eyelashes dark, her hair a blondish silver that keeps drawing my eye as I try to puzzle out its intended color. She is wearing makeup, not to augment, but rather to cover. What does she see when she looks into my eyes? She asks my permission to take notes. Outside, the sun is lustrous. There is a Mexican grocery with yellow and orange walls. For a moment I am walking in Los Angeles, surrounded by Mexicans, beautiful and dark. I smile as we pass on a street full of music, where trash blows into the gutters. And I wonder where I would be now if I had moved to Long Beach or Twenty-nine Palms rather than Concord, New Hampshire in the fall of '92.

buying
a cup of cider at a roadside stand
on a dirt road in New Hampshire, and kicking the leaves, . . .

Sara listens carefully. She talks to me about atypical anti-psychotics, of second generation anti-depressants, of using anti-psychotic drugs to treat depression. Fear is rising slowly inside me. "In the old days . . . up until a few years ago . . . treated with . . . and lithium . . ." These are new and unfamiliar names: Seroquel and Abilify, used to treat Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia. We talk about side effects: Sudden drops in blood pressure on standing up, increase in blood sugar--which may result in Type 2 diabetes--increase in cholesterol . . . "but with a balanced diet and exercise . . . you just can't eat donuts and sit on the couch . . ." Well, that's no my thing anyway.

I think it's the idea of an anti-psychotic that frightens me. I look out the window and think of flying.

Now I fall, now I leap and fall
to feel the leaves crush under my body, to feel my body
buoyant in the oceans of leaves, . . .

It seems that when the initial combination of drugs don't work, or cease to work. . . Zoloft, Prozac, Wellbutrin, Lexapro . . . with an SSRI, P.A.s and doctors found that pairing an SSRI with a low dose of an anti-psychotic drug often works well. I am already taking an SSRI, so the chemical changes won't be as abrupt as they might were we to change everything all at once. So we agree to taper off the Wellbutrin and add BuSpar (buspirone). We agree to check in after ten days. She tells me to make an appointment for four weeks.

breathing the acrid odor of maple . . .

I"m at the pharmacy for an hour. Some confusion. Apologies. I don't care. I'm staring out the window, unfocused, allowing memories to wash over me. The smell of apples, fingers of wind throwing leaves into the air, the rush of sound through the treetops, the night I saw a ten-point stag half in shadow near the house I was renting in the woods. The smell of hickory in the woodstove, the feeling of an axe in my hand, the sound the wood made as it split along the grain, then heavy in my arms up the stairs and into a stack on the floor where it would wait for its turn in the firebox.

Oh, how we flung
leaves into the air! How they tumbled and fluttered around us,
like slowly cascading water . . .

When I am finally finished, the light is already failing. Thin, bluish clouds have blown in from the west. By the time I get home, the shadows are long in the orchard and the chickens have put themselves to bed. Inside there is hot coffee.

Now, in the dark, the clock tells me the day is ending. But not for me. Not yet. I think of the moon, silvering the leaves and the branches in the woods. I think of Orion who led me home to that house in the woods where I first heated with wood and then the years we heated with wood, after our furnace died. The night is sharp and clear; the clouds have moved on. I hear the rabbits, restless, in their atrium. The knowledge that my life is about to change.

Now I watch my children . . .
and I know that I
diminish, not them, as I go first
into the leaves, taking
the way they will follow, Octobers and years from now . .
I smell and taste the leaves again,
and the pleasure, the only long pleasure, of taking a place
in the story of leaves.

Cris

With thanks (and apologies) to Donald Hall. "Kicking the Leaves" from Old and New Poems.

Context

I find myself in a strange position. I have a friend, a woman, who I like very much. She is a new friend, but I enjoy her company and her insights, her sense of humor and her approach to life in general. She is very different from most of my other friends. I think that's part of why I like her. We've worked together and worked together well . I would feel a loss if she were to disappear from my life.

Through a mutual friend, I now know something about her that I would have not have known otherwise. This information did not come to me through gossip, but was disseminated in a public forum. For better or worse. But now it is done and cannot be undone.

This information has to do with an incident that happened some time ago. There is evidence of remorse, which one might interpret as guilt. There is evidence of information omitted. But the omissions are not something I would ever know about her, unless I were her lover. Which I am not.

When a crime is committed, our sympathy lies with the victim. We count ourselves lucky. We decontextualize it, compartmentalize it so that we can understand. Sometimes the crimes are so terrible they are overwhelming. When I hear about crimes that are almost too horrible to be believed, I am always enraged. At first. Then I want the laws to be stricter. I want justice to be swift and as humiliating and shame-inducing as the crime. And then I weep. I weep for the victim/s. I weep because sometimes we are nothing more than animals, no better than the chickens on my farm who will literally peck to death the bird at the bottom of the pecking order, no better than my beloved rabbits who bit the limbs off a new born, who then bled to death in my hands. I wept then too. But for different reasons.

Animals are animals because they lack a certain kind of intelligence. Animals are animals because they don't have impulse control. Nor are they able to think about the consequences of their actions--especially how their actions might literally ruin someone else's life. A child's life. An adolescent's life. A woman's. A man's.

Have we become so apathetic, so tuned into the "playlist of our lives" that all we have left is moral ambiguity that allows us to participate--even if that participation is observation--in crimes like rape, murder, child abuse and more?At what point do we say, ENOUGH! My God, what's wrong with you? What are you doing? Get the f--- away from her! At what point to we put our bodies between the victim and the perpetrators? At what point are we willing to risk our lives to protect someone who is being destroyed physically, emotionally, spiritually or psychically?

As a writer, as an academic, I understand the importance of context. A singular sentence in two different contexts means something completely different.

So. My friend. The information in context means one thing; out of context it means another. I have to infer some of the context, and then there is the benefit of the doubt.

An interesting phrase "the benefit of the doubt." It is, in a way, the cornerstone of our legal system. Forget about innocent until proven guilty. Few people presume innocence once an arrest has been made simply because of the enormous number of facts, pieces of evidence and that all important "probable cause" that goes into making an arrest in the first place. No, our legal system is built on doubt.

Good people do stupid things all the time. Good people sometimes do terrible things. Good people sometimes do terrible things to themselves because the pain of being simply alive is too much. I see too much. I can't bear this. I am being torn apart by these feelings. I am being crushed by the pressure. Oh, dear Lord take this pain. But instead of prayer, they reach for a bottle or a vial or a needle. And then life becomes bearable, if only for a little while.

When it's over and you realize what an incredible mess you've made, you ask for forgiveness. From your friends. From yourself. And if your friends are true, they will remember who you were before and who you are after, who you are now. We are flawed. And that's what makes us human. But we are not animals. And we should not behave like animals.

And when good people stand in the harsh light of their reality, and they promise they will never forget what they have done and they ink this promise into their skin and they get sober and they get straight and they take charge because yes, life is damn hard and that's just too bad and what did you think would happen if you chose that path and you've got one chance so don't blow it . . . something changes. A door shuts on a monster that will bang on the other side as hard as he can for the rest of your freaking life. And you can never never open that door again because if you do, you will be lost forever. You enact a certain strictness. You become exacting. You become demanding. You demand perfection of yourself and you are a shining example to others of what is possible, dammit.

And it is at this point in your life that I meet you. And you blow me away and I really like you and you are so talented . . .

You aren't longer apathetic. You aren't out of control. You have fed and sheltered someone dear to me. You have borne witness to your own darkest moments and been through hell to come out on the other side. How can I judge you?

I wasn't there.

These are my People. This is Where I Come From.

My parents met at Carswell Air Force Base in early 1959. My father was a ROTC officer; my mother a certified nurse. My father pursued my mother with such singular focus that within six months, they were married. In their wedding pictures, my father is in uniform.

My mother had joined the Air Force right out of college. She'd been engaged to a man named Jim. That's all I ever knew about him. While she was taking her nursing boards, Jim went to her father and said he wanted to break it off. Her father, Blaine, told Jim to stay away from his daughter. And when my mother finished her last exam, her father was waiting for her.

Knowing my mother as I did, I'm sure she blamed herself. She wasn't pretty enough, thin enough, contrite enough . . . whatever. But she was pretty enough. And smart. And creative. And she also suffered from chronic depression, though she would never admit it and was never medicated for it. I see so much of myself in her and I wish she was still alive so that I could . . . talk to her, apologize for being such a handful (now that I have a handful of my own), admit that I was wrong, invite her to visit and bring her oil paints. The list is endless.

My parents honeymooned in New Orleans. They were both jazz fans. There is a photograph of them together at a small glass-topped table surrounded by exotic flora, their empty glasses before them. Nine months later, I was born.

We never stayed anywhere more than four years. My paternal grandmother, Margaret, had doted on her only son to the point where he had come to believe that he could do no wrong. His ego is bigger than the Goodyear blimp. His head has trouble fitting through most doors.

We were his trophy family. The attractive wife who knew how to throw a dinner party and serve just enough alcohol to loosen everyone up but to keep the guest from puking in the bathroom. I know she hated those parties. Hated the enormous amount of work it took to prepare, host and then clean up. My father showed up for the party. Then he disappeared again into the basement, which was where his home away from home was located--his home office. We weren't the ones he looked forward to seeing. We were the place where he got fed and picked up clean laundry. We were expendable.

I saw my father on weekends when he mowed the lawn, until I was old enough to push the mower. I saw him on Sunday morning when he'd appear at my bedroom door and tell me to get up for Mass. We were always late. But for some reason, he felt it necessary to sit in one of the pews in the front of the church. Whenever I was with him, I knew humiliation wasn't far away.

He was angry when he didn't get his way. He understood that relationships took time, but we weren't the relationships he was interested in. I grew to hate him. I hated his distance. I hated the way he would take advantage of the enormous emotional turmoil that adolescence brought, waiting until I slipped up in some way, waited to point out just how wrong and stupid I was.

But I never learned not to take the bait. I fought him and I fought hard. When I was a child, he would pin me to the floor with one hand and slap me with the other. When I was older, he threw punches. The day I finally had enough I threw a can of soda at his head. It connected and gave him a black eye. That was the last time he ever hit me. I was seventeen.

My father had an affair with the woman he hired to care for my mother while she was dying of cancer. He converted to Islam. Then he married her. They came to visit when my son Max was eighteen months old. It was absolutely horrendous. His new "wife" was invasive, manipulative, hurtful and did I say manipulative? She was determined to bring the family together. As long as it was on her terms. She gave me a dress. I haven't worn a dress since I was fifteen. And I sure as heck wasn't going to start now because this . . . I'm too polite to say what I actually call her in my head . . . wanted me to.

I wouldn't give up my immoral life--leave my wife and child--because she had a problem with "you know" (Are we really back to calling it "the love that dare not speak it's name? "Oh, please. You're joking right?). He was too much of a pussy to stand up to her (she might withhold . . . s-e-x . . . if he didn't cooperate), so I wrote a long letter to him, with Jennifer's help, drove to his hotel and dropped it off. Then we went home and locked the doors.

The following morning, he pounded so hard on the door that our neighbor the cop came down to see if we were all right. I refused to even yell at him to go away. I was completely silent. That was almost ten years ago. We haven't spoken since.

Why am I telling you all this? So that you will understand how I came to be here--to be this person. There is nature and there is nurture. And both of these aspects shape you. As I assume a fighting stance and prepare to confront the darkness within, my failures and victories won't resonate much without context.

If you're reading this, I assume you want to take this journey with me. I am tired of hiding. I am stunned by how freeing it is to tell the truth.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--

Emily Dickinson

Genetic or a Lifestye?

My daughter has been asking me since the beginning of September what I was going to be for Halloween. Her costume choice changed every day until about a week ago, when she decided she wanted to be a witch.

Her brother, caught up in her enthusiasm, decided he was also going to be a witch. But how to tell them apart? Makeup of course. So, Faith was a blue witch and Max was a red witch. And no one in my family reacted with any surprise at all. Why? Because we've trained them. And trained them well.

A couple of weeks ago, Jennifer and Brianne took Faith to the Goodwill in Bremerton to get some winter clothes for both her and Max. I like to stay home. So does Max. This works out quite well. We have a nice time doing our "parallel play" and are ready for company when everyone gets home.

When they got home, Jennifer showed me what she'd chosen for Max. She brought out a thick, cowl-necked sweater with alternating pink and red horizontal stripes. Perfect, I thought. It's going to be a cold winter and we're going to have to wear layers. Like five or six. Max came into the kitchen and Jenn held up the sweater. "Is that for me?" he exclaimed. "Oh, it's beautiful!"

When we first decided to home school, we got a lot of "what about socialization?" What about it? I'd say. Are we talking about the socialization that allows bullying? That allows kids to be brutalized on the bus, the playground and in the classroom? The socialization that tells girls they have to be thin to be beautiful? My daughter has my build. She's broad and strong as an ox and perfectly proportionate (and within her weight range, just in case you're wondering) but she is not slender. That is not her build. So I should socialize her to hate her body at seven-years-old? Is this the socialization that reduced my son to tears in the dojo when a girl with a chip on her shoulder told him he was stupid and weak? Then Sensei's response: Yell back. Yeah, my son is going to do that. You really don't get him do you? So you can take your idea of socialization and . . . . well, okay then.

This is the same socialization that would have robbed Max of the joy of receiving a sweater that prominently features his favorite color: Pink. What? Pink is for girls you say? According to whom? Did you know that up until the 1950s, the reverse was true? "There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918.

Do you know why the sudden reversal? When the United States entered World War II, many factories, including ones that built the planes needed for the war, were extremely short handed. So women entered the work force. And when the men came home, the women were expected to give up their jobs. Thank you and good bye. According to Color Symbolism and Trends, "Having replaced men in wartime industries, Rosie the Riveter of the '40s returned to being Susie Homemaker in the '50s. Reflecting the 'pink-is-for-girls-mom-in-the-kitchen-father-knows-best' mentality, she was admonished to 'think pink'– to wear pink lipstick, drive a pink car, or buy pink household appliances–all of which was reinforced by an all-pink sequence in the classic Audrey Hepburn Technicolor film, Funny Face. The quintessential icon of femininity, Barbie, was born and much of the time, she wore pink."

In the first part of the twentieth century, pink was for boys, but after WWII, pink is for girls? It's completely arbitrary. But if my son wore his new favorite sweater to public school, what do you think would happen to him? Which is why we didn't even consider public school as an option and why I don't even bother responding anymore when people say, "But what about socialization?" I just raise one eyebrow.

And as for the question of sexuality, I firmly believe that homosexuality is genetic. It appears in all populations in nature and is completely normal. I don't think wearing pink will have any effect at all on whether or not my son is gay. Personally, I don't give a rip. I raise my kids to be kind, gentle, considerate, observant, polite and cooperative. As far as I'm concerned, whether or not they wear pink is simply a "lifestyle choice."

Cris