July 28: Dallied at the Office Party, Making Her Comfortable, Sharon Olds, "His Terror"

So, Ives wold remember, he and Annie had dallied at the office party just long enough for her to wolf down a quick plate of food, to say hello to some of his fellow employees, before heading downtown along Fifth Avenue.  They passed the remainder of the afternoon making their way through crowds and going in and out of department stores, before ending up in Macy's.

It is a few days before Christmas.  Ives and Annie are attending parties, going shopping for presents, visiting old friends.  All the stuff everybody does at the holidays.  They have no idea that, in a few hours, their lives are going to change drastically.  Robert will soon be dead, and, suddenly, the world is going to shift seismically for them.

It's amazing how quickly life can change.  This time last summer, I was looking forward to a week's vacation, worrying about how I was going to afford a few days at a resort downstate.  Money was tight, as always.  By August, we were living paycheck-to-paycheck, hoping no unforeseen catastrophe would strike.

Fast forward twelve months.  Next week is my week's vacation.  I'm taking my family on a small trip that will probably be too expensive.  Money is tight.  Again.  Yet, all of these worries seem . . . insignificant.  Stupid, even.  My sister is not doing well.  Her doctors are not painting pictures of rainbows and recovery.  They are talking about "making her comfortable."

I am reevaluating my life right now.  Every time I start feeling sorry for myself because my house is too small or my job is too mind-numbing, I think of my sister, whose life choices have become, literally, life and death.  And I feel ashamed of myself.

So, tonight, I'm urging everybody who reads this post to think about their lives.  I thought I was going to have pizza tonight with a friend.  I didn't.  I thought I was going to be able to stay out late.  I can't (my wife got called to work).  I thought I was going to spend my summer writing.  I haven't.

And that's all okay.

Saint Marty is not hungry, not sick, not homeless, and not alone.  He's a very lucky guy.

His Terror

by: Sharon Olds

He loves the portable altar the minister
brings to the hospital, its tiny cruets and
phials, its cross that stands up
when the lid opens, like the ballerina who un-
bent, when I opened my jewelry box, she
rose and twirled like the dead.  Then the lid
folded her down, bowing, in the dark,
the way I would wait, under my bed,
for morning.  My father has forgotten that,
he opens his mouth for the porous disc
to be laid on his tongue, he loves to call the minister Father.
And yet, somewhere in his body, is there terror?
The lumps of the cancer are everywhere now,
he can lay his palm where they swell his skin, he can
finger the holes where the surgeon has been in him.
He asks me to touch them.
Maybe his terror is not of dying,
or even of death, but of some cry
he has kept inside him all his life
and there are weeks left.

Be blessed by small blessings

May 10: Center of the Web, Sharon Olds, "His Terror," New Cartoon

She descended to the center of the web and there she began to cut some of her lines.  She worked slowly but steadily while the other creatures drowsed.  None of the others, not even the goose, noticed that she was at work.  Deep in his soft bed, Wilbur snoozed.  Over in their favorite corner, the goslings whistled a night song.

Again, this description of Charlotte at work on her web is a great metaphor for the writing process.  Writing is a very solitary act, done while others go about life's normal rhythms.  While Charlotte weaves, the other creatures drowse, snooze, and whistle night songs.

I am still at work on the poem for my brother's funeral.  I have made little progress.  However, I'm not at the panic stage yet.  That will come tomorrow night.

I'm sort of stuck on Sharon Olds' book The Father at the moment.  Therefore, tonight's poem comes from that collection:

His Terror

He loves the portable altar the minister
brings to the hospital, its tiny cruets and
phials, its cross that stands up
when the lid opens, like the ballerina who un-
bent, when I opened my jewelry box, she
rose and twirled like the dead.  Then the lid
folded her down, bowing, in the dark,
the way I would wait, under my bed,
for morning.  My father has forgotten that,
he opens his mouth for the porous disc
to be laid on his tongue, he loves to call the minister Father.
And yet, somewhere in his body, is there terror?
The lumps of the cancer are everywhere now,
he can lay his palm where they swell his skin, he can
finger the holes where the surgeon has been in him.
He asks me to touch them.
Maybe his terror is not of dying,
or even of death, but of some cry
he has kept inside him all his life
and there are weeks left.

It's a beautiful, terrifying poem.  It's totally Sharon Olds in all its raw honesty.

Saint Marty should be so lucky to write such a poem for his brother.

Confessions of Saint Marty