Home

I haven't posted for a long time. But I'm happy, and busy. I like my job, which is probably about as much as I'm likely to say about it here, since I obviously can't write about my cases and that's most of what would be interesting. And the new apartment is beautiful and the Boy is great and we're happy and settled now. We had friends over for dinner last night and it was really nice--much as I love my family--to have people over who aren't them, to actually be in a city, finally, where I *have* friends. I feel very lucky and very cherished lately, which is a good place to be.

So, I'm fine. I might not blog much for a while, or I might, if I come up with something more interesting to say.

Moved

I moved successfully--I even sold my car, which was almost miraculous--and I'm settling back into Boston. I don't really have a lot to say, so here's a picture of my other project of last week, now completed, on my new apartment's floor:


It could probably use a little blocking, but it's otherwise finally done. No idea when I'll be able to pass it on to my niece, but it's not urgent, since it's a one-year-old size. This is an exciting departure for me from only knitting flat things.

Moving

First of all, my mom is doing well--the new medication seems to be keeping her heart in a normal rhythm almost all the time now, which is wonderful. And my stepfather and baby brother got back from their vacation in Canada Friday night, so she's not alone in the house anymore. And, to be perfectly selfish, I can go ahead and sell my car without worrying that she'll need me again--after my first visit I decided to hold off in case she wanted me to come stay again, which turned out to be wise, since she did.

This is all good, again to be purely selfish, since it's one thing less to worry about. I have been frankly freaking out for a couple of weeks, between the near-constant driving (to my mom's and back, twice, then to Boston and back, also twice) the need to dispose of most of my furniture before I move, the packing, the work for my actual job--it's been both stressful and exhausting. So stressful and exhausting, in fact, that I felt physically exhausted and frequently nauseated. Naturally this convinced me that my new pills were not working and that I had gotten pregnant, which dramatically increased the stress and therefore also the nausea. Finally a friend convinced me to take a test, which was negative, which consequently meant less stress and therefore less nausea.

So while I was in the middle of freaking out over nothing, I was also driving around like crazy, as I mentioned. These were mostly long trips, where I'd be in the car for at least 3 hours, and I found more and more that I was getting extremely sleepy while I was driving. That, coupled with a remark by my stepfather a few weeks ago that my muffler sounded off, convinced me that carbon monoxide was leaking into my car. That conviction was profound, but I ignored it, because 90% of the time that I think these things they turn out to be deeply wrong, much like how I was not in fact pregnant. On some level I usually even know that they're wrong, which is why this was the first time I'd ever actually taken a pregnancy test despite constant worrying about it--at some level, I know that I don't need to and that paying attention to these ideas will only make them take hold more deeply. So, I'd keep driving; sometimes I'd open the window a little or stop for a few minutes if I felt myself nodding off. On Sunday I drove back from Boston for the second time in a week, and on the way I had to stop twice at rest stations for coffee and felt actually dizzy getting out of the car. That night I made my dad listen to my muffler, and he thought it sounded off. I thought it sounded fine--he'd described it as going "putt, putt, putt," which I think of as, "the noise that my car makes, all the time." Nonetheless, I took it to the service station--and this time, I wasn't wrong. A good portion of the exhaust system is shot, and it is, in fact, leaking carbon monoxide into the car. Oh, and it's going to cost me $500 to fix, on a car that I only expected to get about $1500 for as it was.

So I've had a terrific week. And between trying to sell the car (once I get it back with its new muffler and such), packing, giving away my bed, rocking chair, TV, and various sundry items, and, oh, yeah, doing urgent work for my actual job, this one looks to be almost as great. The best thing I can say is that carbon monoxide poisoning is unlikely to feature as largely.

Mom, part III

On Sunday, my mom called me to say that her heartbeat was fast and irregular, she couldn't get it to go back to normal, and she was going to the emergency room. She called me first, then started calling neighbors to give her a ride to the hospital. She thought that she would want someone around once she was able to leave the hospital. I told her I'd come, and then she fussed about whether to lock the house or not. I said to go ahead and lock it--I'd go to the hospital, not directly to her house, and get the key from her if I couldn't take her home then. I threw a few things into a bag, grabbed my laptop and the dress I plan to wear to a wedding this weekend just in case, and took off.

As it turned out, about two hours into my three hour drive she called me back from her home. Her heartbeat had gone back to normal when she got to the ER, and they had sent her home with a heart monitor to wear for 24 hours. She still felt like she needed someone to stay with her, so I kept going. When I arrived we ate dinner, then went to bed on the early side.

I stayed through yesterday morning, pretending to "work from home" from her cabin in the woods--and I did try to work, but there was only so much that I could do without the internet. The truth is, I love my mother, but I hate staying at her house. On this occasion that hatred was magnified by the slight infestation of fleas that her cat had brought in. (This was horrible, but it's understandable why my mom hadn't done much about it--for one thing, she had other things on her mind, for another her distaste for pesticides makes her hesitant to try a lot of potential solutions, for a third the cat gets very sick from most anti-flea powders, and for a fourth she hadn't noticed the fleas until I pointed them out because there weren't very many, and they don't bite her. She is bizarrely unattractive to bugs of all kinds and has not a bite on her at this moment, while I have more than 20 bites the size of dimes covering my body. I will be the sexist thing at the upcoming wedding, for sure.)

But fleas aside--I realized this week that I haven't spent more than 2 days at a stretch at my mom's house since she stopped wanting my brother and I to do our court-ordered visitation with her when I was 18. It's not something I think a lot about, but after 2 days, something goes off in my head that says, Time to go! and I do. This visit, I was anxious when I arrived and became more and more anxious as time went on, for no obvious reason. But thinking about it, I think it's the legacy of the miserable and mandatory visits my brother and I made for all those years. My mom has fixed up the house she and her husband live in a lot. When she first moved over there, it had no running water and there were cracks between the logs where the cold air and the mosquitos entered. In June, we would all sleep under tents of mosquito netting, waking up to see 20 of the little assholes hovering right outside the tent. In January, glasses of water would freeze in the room where I slept, and during the day we would all huddle in a five foot circle of warmth around the stove. Oh--and we hated each other. We would sit in the living room, around the stove, and we would bitch and bitch and bitch our endless hatred. Except for my mom. My mom tried not to be part of the cirlce of hatred formed by myself, my little brother, and my stepfather (the stepfather is really an okay guy--we get along well now--but his maturity in that stage of his relationship with us was deeply questionable). My mom just wanted everyone to get along--but since she had just left our father, to whom we were deeply loyal, for this new man that we hated with a fiery passion, that was not going to happen.

Those were some awful times. It's actually only clear to me now, years later, how awful they actually were for me, and for my mom and my stepfather. Things improved a lot when my baby brother was born, and my brother and I decided that actually, Mom *had* to stay with the stepfather, because we weren't having the little guy go through what we did. The baby gave us all a focus back then, one thing that we all cared about, cared passionately about, in common. And eventually we all we grew up some. Now we do all actually genuinely get along, but my relationship with my mother has not ever been what it was before she left my dad, and it turns out that I get anxious when I have to spend too much time at her house.

What I know now is that we do what we can for each other. She tries not to be disappointed in my various choices, though I know it's bizarre to her that her daughter is a lawyer and chooses to live in a city. And I go to her when she needs me, and stay for as long as it takes.

On Wednesday, Mom called from her work and asked if I would take her to see a cardiologist about an hour and a half away. The heart monitor results had come back, and her doctors had immediately decided that she needed to see a cardiologist to get a prescription for an anticoagulant, because she was having far too much atrial fibrillation, creating a real stroke risk. So, I drove for an hour and a half to take her to a hospital in another town. This was the third long drive that I've made in the last two weeks while terrified that my mother could be about to die; I'm really, really hoping that it's the last. I went in to talk to the cardiologist with Mom, because she wanted a second set of ears there and thought it would help to have someone else ready to ask questions that she forgot. As it turns out, the cardiologist was great and took plenty of time with us, and put her on two new drugs--an anticoagulant and something to try to keep her heart in a regular sinus rhythm. It's still not clear what's causing the problem, but he seemed confident that he could control it medically for the time being, which was encouraging. (Less encouraging is that it's genetic and typically passes from mother to daughter. The doctor actually pointed at me and said, "She'll get it!" like the voice of doom.) We both left feeling better, Mom filled her prescriptions, and we went home and made an awesome blueberry pie and then watched Bad Santa on DVD.

The next day, I went home--it was Mom's day off, and she had plans to visit my brother's girlfriend and the baby in Maine until that evening, so it seemed like a good day to go, especially since I need to be in Boston tonight (Friday). I was tempted to wait and just drive straight from her place to Boston, but I really wanted to go home, take a real shower, sleep in my own (flea-free) bed, clean up my apartment (I left without doing the dishes, which given the current fruit-fly issues I'm having, is not a good thing) start packing a little, relax. Mom seems fine; she encouraged me to go and said she felt much better now that her medications have been straightened out. She has a close friend that lives 30 minutes from her and she promised she would call the friend if she needs anything while I'm away this weekend, and maybe spend the night at her friend's house one night so that she'll have company.

So I'm home. Busy, still, with the upcoming move, and worried, still, about my mom. But I'm back.

Mom, part II

I spent last weekend with my mother. It was nice, actually--we did some light work in her garden, picked a lot of berries, and did some baking. My stepfather and little brother came home to a wild blueberry coffee cake, a wild blueberry pie, and a raspberry clafoutis.

We also talked a lot about death. A friend of my mother's died recently of a heart attack, and she talked about him. She wants to make a will and try to protect their land from development, and we talked about some ways that she might do that. She talked about the hospital, and how afraid she was of dying there. She said that she realized in the night she spent in the ICU that she doesn't want to die in a hospital--she'd like to be outdoors, where she can see the sky, or at home with her family.

Mom felt fine over the weekend, but I talked to her yesterday and she said that her heart had been beating irregularly occasionally this week. It's always stopped quickly and so she hasn't talked to a doctor. She'll be seeing her doctor in a month or so; in the meantime she had an echocardiogram and says that it "looks fine" but didn't want to talk about it.

Also yesterday, I talked to my stepfather. He and my small brother have a planned trip to his family camp in Canada for two weeks. My stepfather has been thinking that maybe they shouldn't go, but my mom insists that they should. I offered to come stay with her for some of the time while they're gone and he was relieved, but when I talked to my mom she would have none of it. I insisted that I would at least call her nightly to check on her and she did agree to that, and I told her that she should let me know if she changes her mind, since I could come later if she wants company, and she promised she would. She still hasn't told my brother what happened, or her mother, or pretty much anyone else in her family. I think the only reason I know is that my stepfather called me to see if I would stay with her. I'm worried now because I can't really tell how she's doing or how worried I should be.

Mom

My mom went to the hospital last night with a heart arrhythmia. My stepfather called me this morning to let me know what's going on, and asked if I would drive to New Hampshire this weekend to be with her. He has to go pick up my small brother from camp in Maine. He'll be gone overnight and doesn't want to leave her alone, especially since she isn't supposed to do too much right now. Obviously I said I would. Before he hung up, he awkwardly said he loves me, which freaked me out because it's a first and entirely out of character for him. I called my mom at the hospital and she said she was fine, just tired because she hadn't been able to sleep there, between the machines and the lights and being checked on every twenty minutes. They're going to have her walk around for another hour or so and then she can go home, though she'll have to go back next week for more tests. She sounds okay. But I'd appreciate it if you could all keep her in your thoughts right now.

Home

I had lunch last week with a woman from my hometown. She called me out of the blue and invited me to lunch, figuring apparently that, hey, we're both originally from the same tiny place and we're both lawyers, so we should have things in common, right? It was a nice thought, and I can see the reasoning. We are both from the same small town, we both left Vermont to go to college and then law school, we both went to Ivy League law schools, we're both working in Burlington now--we're even both feminists, and were both part of similar feminist organizations at our respective law schools. So it should have worked out, but it didn't, and I knew it wouldn't, because I knew how she feels about the tiny place we're both from without even meeting her, and it's not how I feel. And that's enough to pretty well kill any possibility of our being friends.

We're both from a tiny, tiny town--population of about 1500--in Northern Vermont. My family moved there when I was 7, and stayed until I was 14--which at least sort of makes it my hometown, since that's more than twice the years that I spent in any other town growing up. It's a small farming town--very beautiful and very isolated. When my family moved there, we had no friends. After 2 or 3 years, we made friends with one other family, and we're still close to them. After about 5 years, we made friends with other families. For the first few years, we were (perhaps without malice) excluded as outsiders. After a while, my Dad forged relationships that led to friendships--he's an outgoing person and pushed for us to be a part of the community. My mom made some friends, too, through the families he got to know, but retreated more and more and eventually left him. I was miserable in school--more and more as time went along--and in retrospect, that wasn't just because of my own shyness or awkwardness. People actually treated me badly--really badly--and my teachers ignored it. For me and for my family, this town was brutal and the years we spent there were some of the darkest of our lives.

So then you have this woman, with whom I had lunch. She grew up in the town, and her mother has the same last name as many of the rest of its residents. (There are two dominant families; affiliation with one of them was the best way to be popular in my middle school.) She still lives there. She loves it. She went on about how much character it has, how quirky it is, what a great community it's been for her. Then she talked about how this year they had trouble passing the school budget, because of obstructions by some town residents, who she felt had acted in a way that was "not very ______ County." And I wanted to say, oh, ignorant self-righteousness by a resident of *that* town? No, really? Because to me, that's absolutely the *essence* of ______ County. But obviously I didn't, and we had our little lunch and went our separate ways. Then I spent the rest of the day thinking about the insulting things I wanted to say about our town but hadn't.

I've thought about something since then, though, which is that Vermont really isn't my home anymore. It hasn't been for a while. I'm not happy here socially, and much as I still play with the idea of someday living and raising a family here, that's not going to happen. It also clarified for me that the reason that I'm socially unhappy isn't that aren't educated, intelligent people here, because there are. The woman I met last week is proof of that. But she's also in a relatively unique and privileged group in her town, and she's incredibly self-confident in what she thinks--about what defines her town, what should happen with the school budget, what motivates people who think differently--because there aren't a lot of people around her who can really challenge her. She enjoys living where she does, but she also feels superior to the other people who live there. That's not the community that I want.