In the presence of evil

While my husband was in the hospital, I asked my sister in law to email the woman who handles the church bulletins to add him to the long term prayer list. Linda cc'ed me on the mail so I know it was done, but it did not appear in the bulletin two weeks after the request was made ( Now when Pop was alive the bulletin was my job and any parishoner who was ill or having a tough time was an automatic listing no one had to ask.).
After services last Sunday, I approached this woman, and kindly asked her to add his name to the list. Her response was " Stop getting up in my sh&*! Step off before I have to hit you." She began to hurl invectives at me about things I knew that the woman knew nothing about. Her own nature is sarcastic and passive aggressive, not psychotic. I was not talking to someone, but it wasn't her. I think I was in presence of evil and I stood my ground refusing to step off while remaining polite while she ran away from me and out of the church, still yelling about me and my family.

Message in a Bottle

Back in May, I sent a paper hand back into past to retrieve what has been forgotten or misremembered before it was too late. Much of my life has been about too late, and the power of forgiveness as well as the pain of holding a grudge too tight to your heart that it breaks.

Today, my answer came in a plain white envelope with all too familiar handwriting even after close to thirty years of angry silence. Instead of answers, I am left with more questions than answers. I still don't know my father's side of the story as to why he left us other than infidelity and noncommunication were the causes. Since I have heard accusations that my mother cheated on my father with our babysitter, who was our minister's son, and with my father's friend, who later became my stepfather for a while, during the divorce and my mother's claims that she found letters that he cheated on her with his students and the woman who became his second wife afterwards, I have no clue as to what happened. I need details. I feel I have the right to know the truth or at least everyone's version of it.

Their divorce and the aftermath bent and shaped my psyche. I can lay my fear of abandonment at the feet of those who abandoned me first, my parents.

A month from tonight

    During the past two years, I have made  more than friends, but soul sisters  from the women I have been writing and workshopping with at Rowan. A month from tonight, it comes to an end. 

    My regalia including my black gown with batwing sleeves and a brown and gold hood sit in a dresser drawer waiting for their chance to be worn. I will receive my honor cords next week along with my pin as a new member of Alpha Epsilon Lambda, the honor society for graduate and professional students. I am moving from Masters Candidate to having a Master of Arts Degree in Writing.

    I already feel us pulling apart as the time draws nearer. Kellie lives in Cape May and can't get up here as much as she wants. Jaimie and her fiancé are getting ready to move to Mercer County after they graduate. I don't want everything to  change again.

    When I graduated twenty years ago from high school, I felt none of this loss. I hated high school and couldn't wait to leave. I was dating a twenty-one year old at the time which seemed so old to me even though I was barely seventeen. I was spending more time with his friends then my own friends who had deserted me by then. Not because of Chris, but because of my brother. He was dating one of them. When she broke up with him, the group broke up with me so she didn't have to see him again. Going friendless to my senior prom even with a date was lonely. I couldn't wait to leave. I didn't even go down the shore afterward. We went right home.

    I am not going to my high school reunion, because I have nothing left to say. There is only one person I would talk to from that time in my life and she won't be there.

    Leslie was my best friend, but circumstances beyond our control pulled us apart. When I wrote about it as an undergrad to show that the struggle for the civil rights can be reduced to the individual level and that national and institutional efforts have hindered rather than helped. My professor disagreed and gave me a B+ which I rebutted to an A-. The only time I rebutted a  grade, and did so privately.

    Leslie and I have not spoken in seventeen years and there is not a day goes by that I don't think of her. Does she ever think of me?

While I have been gone

    I have spent a great deal of emotional and physical energy on my relationship with my mother. In part, because it is the subtext of my master's thesis. The rest is that I currently facing a life without her.

 

    Hours after celebrating her 68th birthday with us back in January, she woke up unable to breathe. We called 911 and she was rushed to my local emergency room. I was pushed out of her room when she crashed the first time. The doctors and nurses stabilized her and she was admitted to ICU. At the time, they thought she had had a heart attack. They found a blockage and did a heart catheterization which revealed she needed an angioplasty to clear a 90 percent blockage.

    She was transferred to Cooper up in Camden where they did the angioplasty, put in three stents and everything according to them was fine. They released her the next day and in her words- " She lost her mind on 295." She had developed an infection while she was there and they released her anyway. By the time I got home from work, she was running a 104 degree fever. By the time I got her readmitted to my local under her cardiologist's service, she was out of her head and according to the ER docs becoming septic. they pushed heavy duty antibiotics and tried to get a helicopter from Cooper to bring her back. They called my husband  to sit with me after he arranged for close family/friends to watch our son.

    Cooper did send an ambulance, and we drove from Salem to Cooper Hospital in Camden in 15 minutes. They admitted her right to ICU, which must  have been modeled after Bedlam in London for the dark and gloomy chaos that rules that overcrowded space. Once she was out of ICU, John had her sent back to Salem for the rest of her recovery. From there she stepped down to a nursing home, and came back to us.

    Mom and I were supposed to go up to Outcalt to check on her house and get some things when she decided she couldn't wait and asked John to take her.

    They had stopped at the Shop Rite in Spotswood when she started to hemorrhage from where they went in for the angioplasty. John wanted to drive her immediately to Old Bridge Regional's Emergency Room. She wanted to call 911 and get an ambulance. John drove her to the hospital. ER docs there said that if she had waited for an ambulance she would have bled out.

She was there for another week while they got her hemoglobin back up and everybody is trying to tell me everything is fine except she she cannot live two hours away from family anymore.

I tell Mom that she cannot live with me, but she can live near me within walking distance.

    Then all this emotional bilge pours out of her. She falsely accused me of stealing my grandmother's china  and silver. She says nasty and hateful things about my husband, myself and my son. She tell me that she would rather live with my brother in VA.

I called my brother and told him to come get her. My sister in law came up and took her back the end of February. She never even acknowledged my son's fourth birthday.

    From then until yesterday, I have not spoken to my mother. She had not called me nor I her. My husband convinced me that in the spirit of holiday I should call her and wish her a Happy Easter as she would probably be in C-ville with my brother and his in laws.

    Frank answered and told me how my mother was doing so much better since Mom came to live with them. I ended the call politely before I said something spiteful.

    Half hour later my mother called me using her cell phone and told me the truth without telling me the truth. The stats she read off to me tell me that her heart is in fact failing. She is dying of Congestive Heart Failure and there is nothing to be done. She will not see me graduate with honors from Rowan. She will not be at my son's baptism scheduled for June. She is slowly and carefully being edited out of my life entirely.

    I am struggling to maintain homeostasis while I finish my thesis and go through recontracting. And you wonder why I have been quiet.

Works for my birthday too!

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Xmas Stocking

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Tonight

I laid down beside my son as he started to fall asleep on a blanket in front of the Good Night Show. I let my breaths match his and felt his little heart beat as he snuggled close to me. Lub dub. Lub dub. He reaches to pull his blanket to cover me too, as he senses my need  for comfort.

 

A hour away from this tender scene, the man he calls Pop is lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a ventilator while he struggles to recover from bacterial pneumonia. He has been a surrogate father to my husband, father in law to me, and grandfather to my son. His prognosis is not good, but even as I may say where there is life there is hope, I must brace myself for a loss and grief that is already beginning to overtake me even as I type.

 

I add his wife, whom my husband calls Mom, to the prayer list  for the Sunday bulletin for my church, where Pop has been the interim vicar for the past twelve years. I worry for her. She has not been sleeping well as her hopes rise and fall with the waves of good and bad news.

 

They are not my blood, as my students would say, but they are my family. Their pain is my pain.

 

I think this will be a comfort food weekend.

 

Knock, Knock

 

Who's there?

 

Olive

 

Olive who?

 

Olive you, Father.

Well, I have an offer

The interview today was more of that psychological questionnaire with a panel interview. I have no idea how well I did, but they said I would hear by next Thursday by phone if I got the job or I would receive a letter in the mail if I didn't.

 

 One of the schools I interviewed with over two weeks ago called while I was at the interview to tell that a new hire letter was coming for an elementary position, but she didn't know what grade I was being offered.

 

I don't know what the next thing will be from my first choice school that had me back in on Tuesday. The offer is not exactly what I want for my career, but maybe it's fine for now.

Your Birthdate: December 17

You tend to find yourself lucky - both in business and in life. And while being wealthy is nice, you enjoy sharing your abundance with others. You put your luck to good use: you are very ambitious and goal oriented. Often times, you get over excited and take on more than you can manage. Your strength: Your ability to make your own luck Your weakness: Thinking you can do it all Your power color: Bronze Your power symbol: Half Moon Your power month: August

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Right now, I feel like screaming

 Yesterday, I had my third no interview interview for the position I wanted. Turns out what that was this psychological test about my teaching personality. I spent  an hour and a half answering questions about my teaching methods, my personality, and a whole host of blather that to mean nothing. I have no clue as to when I will hear from them as to whether or not they are hiring me.

I have another interview at another school in DE.

Meanwhile, the computer system at school has kicked me out again so my pay this Friday will be HALF of what it should be, and no new time sheets have been issued so I may not get paid next pay day.

 

Mother Issues, Job Issues

My mother was visiting us this week as she was on her way back to Outcalt to check on her house. With all the rain we have had she was worried about it. She was supposed to have surgery last week to re-replace her hip. (The first time the hip was for someone my height not her height. So she is running aroun with one leg two inches longer than the other.)Her blood pressure was in the stroke range, so they couldn't do it. They even gave her Xanax, which knocked her out, but did zip for her BP. She has been recscheduled for the 25th.

She is the kick again about buying a house near me. So, when she comes back this way next week she wants to start looking at houses in my town. She wants to buy here and then sell my grandparent's old summer house in Outcalt- The last piece that ties me to Middlesex County.

C has his surgery tomorrow. We have to report to the clinic at 6:30 AM, and this is for my little night owl, who is grouchybutt at 7:30 AM, no less having to wake up to no breakfast at 5:00.

It's been two weeks yesterday since I had the back to back interviews for teaching positions in Wilmington. The one I wanted called me yesterday to ask me to come in for another interview on Tuesday morning. I was told to bring nothing except my "sunny personality". I know they were looking for a new Head of School, so this may mean they have found one and are seeking his/her approval of me.