Random Thoughts in the Morning

 

Today, I am drinking my coffee alone, my husband went to the hospital because he is still unwell. The treatment he receives and all the medication that comes with it makes him nauseous and hurting all over. A good friend, the best, actually, took him, because he cannot drive in his condition. Before he left, he told me- “You stay at home, it will do you good”. In a sense, it’s true. Each visit to the hospital steals a piece of my soul. So much suffering, it breaks my heart.

So, I told myself I would sit for a while with a cup of coffee and clear my thoughts. Only, my thoughts refuse to be cleared. They ask for my attention, like little kids in a crowd, jumping and shouting:” Take me! Me! Me! I am here! Analyze me! Ponder on me!”

And so, instead of sitting calm and serene and do a little meditation, I hyperventilate while chasing my thoughts, trying to tame them, because now , when they had my attention, they started running away from me.

I won’t tell you everything that goes on in my head, no way. Even I don’t know what is really going on in there most of the times. A huge party of over-excited ideas, like teenagers when they first have alcohol; a funeral of good intentions, lines from the books I am reading, fragments of poems I want to write. And worries, worries like an army of buzzing bees relentlessly chasing me; and here and there the fluttering of butterfly wings – good thoughts, usually drowned by the noise of the other annoying insects...

Usually, all these attempts at clearing my thoughts, of cleansing and cleaning leave me frustrated because even if I manage to solve one problem, while patting myself proudly on the shoulder, other problems appear instantly. Annoying bitey ants.

Well, my cup is empty. Didn’t clear my head at all.

Ready for a new day.

While We're Waiting in Line

 

Since my husband is not mobile at the moment, besides my usual chores I am the one responsible for getting his medication for him. That means periodic trips to the pharmacy.

I hate going to the pharmacy, any pharmacy. In Israel they are an entire world by themselves.

The one I usually go to is small and almost always full of people. Sometimes, if weather permits, after I take a number, I go and wait outside. If not, then I have to go inside. At least in summer there is air conditioning.

Today, an old lady, I think from Georgia, has a prescription for Voltaren, unfortunately uncovered by the health insurance.

Old lady: “Why is it so expensive?”

Pharmacist: “That’s the full price. Do you want it or not?”

Old lady: “Yes”.

Pharmacist: “Big or small?”

Old lady: “What?”

Pharmacist: “The tube of ointment. Voltaren. Big or small?”

Old lady: “Show me both of them”.

She takes both tubes and examines them for, it feels like, long minutes.

Old lady: “I want the small one. Why is so expensive?”

Pharmacist: “I ‘ve told you. It is not covered by the health insurance”.

Old lady: “Why?”

Pharmacist: “I don’t know. It simply isn’t”.

Old lady: “I don’t want it anymore. It is too expensive. I think I have one at home, anyway”.

Gives the tube back to the pharmacist and exits the room. Comes back after a few minutes and inserts herself between the counter and another person that’s already there.

Old lady: “I’ve changed my mind. I want the ointment.”

Pharmacist: “You have to wait until I’ve finished with him”, points at the person that looks baffled at the old lady.

Finally, after much debate that lasted at least ten minutes, concerning the dimensions of the tube, the quantity of the ointment and the number of times it should be applied, the old lady leaves with a small tube of Voltaren.

Oh my, that pharmacist, she had the patience of a saint.

At another counter, another old lady. Small and frail, with a Superman cap on her head.

Pharmacist: “You have to take the medicine with a meal”.

Superman cap lady: “Why?”

Pharmacist: “You shouldn’t take it on an empty stomach; it could hurt it”.

Superman cap lady: “But I always take it on an empty stomach!”

After another long debate about the rights and wrongs of taking medicine with or without food, Superman cap lady is not convinced. But leaves with the medicine anyway.

At another counter, a very old man, crooked like a question mark over his walker, shouts in Russian. I guess he is almost deaf, because the pharmacist shouts back, too. The shouting goes on for several minutes.

Another number is called. A young man, smelling strongly of perspiration, shoves me aside in order to reach the counter.

“Let me pass, lady”, he says angrily. I make myself small to let him pass.

While waiting for my turn (already 50 minutes have passed) I scan the shelves. They have lots of shelves in this tiny room. On one wall and three shelving stands in the middle. As if the room isn’t cramped enough. But it is clearly a marketing strategy, because when I leave the pharmacy, one hour later, beside the medicine for my husband I acquired one shampoo, one tub of toothpaste, some face cream, a hand cream and some vitamins.

Don’t Do It Like I Did It

 

 

Everything went downhill since yesterday afternoon when we returned from my husband’s treatment. He has been feeling poorly since last week and nobody at the hospital was sure why. There were many theories floating around but none of them really helpful.

The last PET scan showed that the lymphoma is almost gone, so everyone was happy. Truth be told, yesterday I saw with my own eyes the differences between the two PET scans my husband had – one at the beginning of the treatment and the other last week. In the first one, I could actually see two dazzling, huge “suns” besides lots of shining stars. That’s how spread and active the disease was. And in the second one, well, almost total blackout, power outage. Here and there, lit candles and that’s it. No spotlights, no glaring supernovas. So, of course the doctors would focus on the positive outcome. And we were really glad, too. But my husband was still feeling unwell. So, they tweaked here and there his medication, added something new and sent us home.

The problem was my husband’s condition went from bad to worse.

He woke me up in the morning telling me he called his friend to drive him to the hospital because he was worse than he was in the evening. He talked to the doctor and he’s waiting for him.

I helped him pack all he needed in case they’d keep him there overnight and after he left, I tried, somehow, to begin my day. Coffee, then clean the house, change the bedsheets, you know, domestic stuff that needed to be done. So far, so good.

What did actually happen?

For once, I kept misplacing my mobile phone. Because I wanted to hear it in case my husband texted me, I took it with me while doing stuff and I kept putting it in all kinds of places.

Luckily, I know how to find it through google, so I did that. Several times.

Because I was so stressed and anxious, I kept dropping stuff. When I opened the fridge food kept falling out of it, stuff I didn’t remember placing inside it. One cup of ready-made coffee fell on the floor and broke, so I grabbed what was closer because the puddle kept getting bigger and bigger. It was a big towel I wanted to throw in the washing machine. After I mopped up the liquid I decided to drop the towel in the shower, to let it soak in some cold water. Of course, I then got tangled in other stuff to do and I realized I forgot the towel in the shower only when the water reached the hall between the rooms, heading to the living room. The drain hole got covered with the towel I threw without looking where, so the water couldn’t drain. I had to deal with the whole situation and after half an hour the water was gone. Bonus – the tiled floor was clean, too.

And I still couldn’t find my phone. Just kept running around like a headless chicken, or, as my Romanian grandma used to say “ ca o goanga fara fir”.

I then proceeded to share my lunch with Klara, our cat, because she is crazy about fish and I was having salmon.

At some point during the day my husband called me from the hospital telling me he decided to come home and I got in a frenzy trying to finish all my chores without doing any damage in the process.

The rest of the day just passed in a blur, trying to convince my husband to eat and drink something, my daughter came home, I went shopping, had dinner, did the dishes and now I am sitting here, in front of the PC, tired and a little dizzy from all the events of the day.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring. I hope I won’t spend the day chasing my phone, flooding the hallway, breaking cups or forgetting towels in the shower. More than that, I hope my husband wakes up feeling a little better.

It seems that some days are really determined to test how many things one person can juggle before everything begins slipping through their fingers.

Today was one of those days.

Tomorrow, please be kinder.

Down Memory Lane, One Golden Fry at a Time

 

Today, for the first time in a while, I fried potatoes on the stove, in a frying pan.  I usually bake them in the oven, it is easier, less mess and healthier, too.

Whenever I fry potatoes, I think of them as “cartofi pai” as we call them in Romanian – “straw potatoes” and I am instantly back in time as a child in communist Romania. Having “cartofi pai” at lunch was really a special occasion. My grandma didn’t approve of them because you had to use a lot of cooking oil and oil was on the ration card. So, whenever my gran wasn’t at home (something that seldom happened) we asked our mother to make us “cartofi pai”.

I can still see all four of us waiting impatiently as the heavenly smell of frying potatoes filled the house. We would grab them the moment they were ready, burning the roofs of our mouths because waiting another minute simply wasn't an option. Then came the real competition: keeping a watchful eye on everyone else's plate, ready to rescue a golden fry from any distracted sibling.

Of course there weren’t enough for everyone – we were four kids, and we had to fight for every morsel, every piece of “straw”. If we were lucky we would also receive one fried egg, ou ochi – “egg eye” in Romanian. And if we were really good, pickled cucumbers, a delicacy only my gran could make. All eaten with copious quantities of bread.

When we were kids we ate a lot of bread with or instead our meals. It was cheaper and there were times when there wasn’t enough food for all of us on the table to eat our fill. Our favorite was “piine cu unsoare” – bread and dripping. With a pinch of salt, some black pepper and paprika. And when times were really bad and money scarce, bread with mustard. I’ve no idea why even during the darkest days of communism, when grocery shops were empty, you could find jars and jars of mustard on the shelves.

So today I am thankful to the humble potato because it took me on a trip down memory lane. Even though I was a child during a difficult period in Romania's history, and my childhood was different from that of many other children, it was also a time of discovery and wonder, of small pleasures and quiet joys that I will never forget.

Nobody Cares

 

 

The world is not a good place for me right now. My husband isn’t feeling well – they say the treatment is working but he is still in a lot of pain and discomfort. It breaks my heart that I cannot to anything to help him. I listen to him, I give advice, but that’s all I do.

My daughter has her own problems; there is a lot of grief and tears and all I can do for her is to listen and give advice when asked.

That’s me, the great listener and giver of advice! Goodness, it destroys me completely, this.

Outside our home, the whole world has gone mad. Literally. The amount of craziness going around is overwhelming. It feels like a conspiration of mad clowns decided to conquer the planet.

We have these neighbors who, from time to time throw this huge parties. When I say parties, I mean they gather on their balcony, all their friends and family and God knows who else and take out their speakers and take turns singing. Well, not exactly singing, more like the sounds dying wild animals would make. Sorry dying animals, no offense intended.

I try to cope with my existential problems, my husband is in pain, my daughter cries herself breathless and outside my window the jungle howls into a microphone.

The world has gone off the rails. The amount of carelessness, callousness, insensitivity, and shamelessness -along with every other synonym the dictionary can provide, is at times, unbearable.

I try to mute the noise, to hide from all the insanity, but they really creep in through my defenses.

What the Hell happened to us?

This question has been haunting me for some time, now. When doctors shrug their shoulders, when passers -by look on the other side and nobody does their job the way they should.

The truth is, nobody cares. Our reality has changed. People had changed, or they were always this way but now it shows more clearly on their behavior. I don’t know. I looked for answers in books, TV programs, words said by clever people. In my opinion, they don’t have a clue either.

But what really hurts the most is not the fact that nobody cares. Because that’s not entirely true. Some people care. They care so much they lose sleep over stranger, family, over stray cats and the state of the world.

The problem is caring doesn’t solve problems or stop pain. It can’t quiet loudspeakers, cure illness or wipe away tears. It simply means that while others walk past, someone stops. Someone listens when nobody else does. Somebody keeps showing up even when the room is empty.

Today, that someone is ME.

I say nobody cares.

But I do.

Hello Anxiety, My Old Friend

 

 

Truth be told, I am an anxious person, a very anxious one. A worrier, too. I suppose the two go hand in hand.

As a new mother and then a second time mother I was always afraid something bad will happen to my kids. With Maya it was so bad it went directly to post-natal depression. For example, once I called the nurse’s help line because Maya had slept through her feeding time and I was afraid she’ll become dehydrated. I kept a journal with her feeding, the quantity of milk she drank, toilet time, burps and such. Along with my thoughts about how bad a mother I was.

During their childhood and teenage years, my anxiety kept me awake at night.

With my son, I was young and naïve. Half the time I had no idea what I was doing. I had to work and study which meant he spent far too much time alone and the guilt ate at me.

With Maya, it was even worse. All my past experiences came crushing down on my head and I became even more anxious - I used to stay awake at night listening to her breathe. And keeping an ear for my son coming home after riding his motorbike to work or friends.

Since my husband got sick, I worry about him all the time. When he got Covid right after his second round of treatment for lymphoma and it was so bad only a miracle treatment saved him after four months of suffering, I eat myself into obesity.

“Luckily” for me, I got prediabetes and because I was afraid it’ll go into full blown diabetes I lost a ton of weight and started eating healthy food (well, most of the time, I’m no saint). Nowadays, when I go to the hospital with him for his treatment, I spend the next week inventing different scenarios about deadly diseases you don’t even want to know about.

When there is a war (and we had plenty here) I worry a bomb will fall on us and kill  us all or, in the best-case scenario, will destroy our home and we’ll be homeless and everything we gathered through the years will be blown to smithereens. I dream about alarms and terrorists and all kind of scenarios run through my head.

When there is an earthquake somewhere in the world, I worry it will happen here, too, because we are sitting on an intercontinental rift and deadly earthquakes happened once a century or so. Also, we live in a very old building that will come apart around out ears at the first tremor.

And even before you’ll ask, I am answering you. Yes, I took pills, and yes, I stopped thinking about apocalyptic scenarios. But they also transformed me into a zombie vegetable kind of being that I hated and so I stopped taking them.

So yes, I worry and I have panic attacks during the night just thinking about stuff and I have to breathe in a paper bag whenever I’m in a closed space with too many people around me. And beside pills, I tried aerobics and relaxation techniques and yoga and tai chi and what not and for a while they helped. And then they didn’t.

And you know what?  Even when I was all shanti and relaxed, bad things happened. My son did a shit-load of bad stuff, my daughter got sick, my husband too, to speak only about the important things. Because karma is karma and it is a bitch, no matter what. People tell anxious people that worrying changes nothing. And they're right. But neither does not worrying. Life still has with its own plans...

And you know what I did? First, I appeased it with books, lots of books, dead-tree and audio, and with many pages and poems written in its honor. Then, I acknowledged it. I acknowledged my anxiety, I recognized it as a part of my soul- the anxious woman, mother and spouse. Because no matter what I do, it will stay part of the way I am made, part of the fabric of me. And it makes me the person I am.

So, if my anxiety insists on walking beside me or taking up residence in my head, so be it. I will carry it alongside my dreams and aspirations (yes, I still have them), my books, my family and my poems. And yes, some days it will win. But some days, I will, too.

The Resurrection

 

On how a manuscript came alive but didn’t eat me

 

It’s three o’clock in the morning when a strange rustling sound wakes me up. After listening attentively for a couple of minutes, I am almost sure I’ve located the source of the noise - under the bed. I sigh…I’m certain it is Pitzi again, playing with the dust bunnies that live there. But no, Pitzi is asleep on the pillow next to mine, his paws in the air, tail twitching.

That noise again! It is definitely getting louder and coming from under the bed. I lower my face to peer into the darkness…I squint, my vision is not that good in the dark…I blink…And I see a corner of a white page emerging slowly from the “Sugar Plum” collection box from Sabon where I kept the manuscript of my book.

What is happening?

Now more pages are materializing from the box, one after the other, dragging themselves across the floor, like a rustling white river of printed words.

I stand on my bed looking down. It seems that my own abandoned creation decided to stage a rebellion.

Pitzi is still sleeping peacefully. I hope he’ll wake up because of the noise and maybe seek vengeance on the attackers.

And out of nowhere, I hear a faint whisper: “Whyyyyyy? Whyyyyyyy did you abandon me, Ramonaaaaaaa?”  The raspy voice is getting louder:” Why did you put me under the bed in that box smelling of cinnamon and burnt sugar, together with the plastic Christmas tree and the artificial flowers?”

“I am sorry”, I reply.

Am I talking to some pages I once called proudly “my book”? Am I still asleep and this is a nightmare?

“I am sorry”, I say again. “But you know how busy I was…”

“No”, it interrupts me. “You bought books, you read them!” it finishes in a higher, indignant note and with a papery huff.

“You know how many problems I had. You know I was sad and depressed and lonely. The books helped”, I press on.

“Well, I could have been your companion and friend”, it replies bitterly.

I don’t know what to say. Of course it was right. I had no excuses to abandon it like that. Yes, I had a million bad things happening to me, my life wore me down to the bone, but still…I felt ashamed. So ashamed.

“I am sorry”, I say again, like a broken record. “I am going to fix it”.

“If you’re still willing”, I whisper.

I get down from the bed, paying attention not to step on any pages. I kneel on the floor and gather them holding them to my chest. The familiar scent of old paper and ink wafts around me. I get up and stride to my desk, putting the pages on it. I then spend some time smoothing them down, putting them in the right order.

And I take a deep breath and I say: “Now, where were we?”

 

Replanting a Garden After Years of Neglect

 

Replanting a Garden After Years of Neglect

On rediscovering creativity after years of neglect and how some seeds survive beneath the weeds

 

Twenty years ago I’ve put a part of myself in cold storage. I tried to revive it some years afterwards, but the experiment failed. And so, a part of my soul remained in stasis. Like in those sci-fi movies when you see bits of people floating in big plastic tubes filled with green liquid. That's how it felt. My alter ego. The creative piece of soul. The writer. The dreamer. The gardener – planter of ideas and reaper of harvest.

In a sense, I was dead. My soul was dead. Until, one day, when suddenly and out of nowhere I decided to defrost myself. To give myself another chance…And I did it. It was a slow process, thawing a part of myself that was frozen for so long…It felt like walking through a barren, deserted place that once was a beautiful and lush garden. Now? Only weeds and some feeble plants here and there…a small sunflower and some withered wild flowers.

How does one replant a derelict garden after years of neglect? What could survive after such a catastrophe?

A few ideas, some words here and there, a forgotten manuscript in a box under the bed.

During all this time while I left myself to wane, to rot, things have changed in the outside world. People I knew disappeared, communities just shriveled and went away. Meanwhile, new ideas, new fellowships formed. And truly? It feels more like a jungle than like a deserted garden. Paths I once knew and followed simply disappeared. New plants have appeared and old trees have died…

The work of replanting a forsaken garden will not be easy. But if I begin with a few seeds and seedlings, if I will tend and care for them, I hope a new garden will appear. Maybe different, definitely smaller because I don’t have that much time anymore, but definitely a place where things will grow.

And do you remember that butterfly with a broken wing that I found near Emmaus and brought home? It will be there, too.

On Tuna and The meaning of Life

 

On Tuna and the Meaning of Life

— A cat, an existential crisis, and the strange ways we stay afloat

 

 

A couple of days ago I was going through an (almost) existential crisis. I have been thinking a lot about my past, my present worries and about broken dreams. And about my desire to burn the book I have been trying to write for such a long time that it began to feel unreal.

I wrote about it and published the essay here, on my blog. After that, inexplicably, I began to cry.  I felt relieved in a sense and also sad. I don’t know, so many feeling and so few words…

And then, a furry, ginger head appeared in my field of vision. It was Pitzi, the cat. “I can see you have a profound existential crisis. Is that the “pop” of a tuna can opening the sound I’m hearing?” his expression was telling me…and I smiled despite my dark mood.

He grounds me, my cat. Grips me when I hover dangerously over the precipice of depression and anxiety.  And brings me back to sanity. And then he looks at me with his orange, demon-like eyes as if asking: “Tuna catnip biscuits?” And it is really difficult for me to spiral into madness and despair when Pitzi is demanding my unwavering attention.

He doesn’t really care that I am going through an existential crisis. While I worry about curses and the universe punishing me for enjoying life, he drinks water from my glass if I leave it unattended.

While I am asking myself if I really wasted my life in a major way, he sleeps on my desk, between the keyboard and the monitor. If I try to move him or even pet him, he bites me.

While I am asking myself where I am going, he makes biscuits on the blanket he somehow dragged from my bed. And then he takes a nap.

What is going on in his head, I often ask myself. He dreams, that I know, because when he sleeps, his legs twitch and sometimes he cries.  

Does he have memories or is he anchored solely in the present?

Does he remember the time he was a baby and my husband found him near the trash bin outside our building, riddled with fleas and worms and sick with cat flu? Does he remember how we took him in, cared for him and loved him? Now, when I look at him sleeping on my lap, curled like a shrimp I wonder if he remembers any of it. I wonder, too, wheter his nightmares come from that forgotten past.

“Ginger cats are tough”, the vet told us back then. “He’ll survive. But they’re also mean bastards so I worry more if you’ll survive”. Well, he did. We, too.

And now, when he runs like a deranged being zooming through the house and scratches the insides of cardboard boxes like crazy, he makes me forget about life’s real or imaginary disasters.

He doesn’t judge me. He doesn’t tell me my poems are lame, that my writing sucks, that I am a bad parent. He doesn’t scold me when I forgot he likes a certain brand of canned tuna.  He just stares at me with his oval, a bit oblique eyes as if he wants to say:” Come on, life is not so bad, what about those chicken-cheese snacks I like?”. And then he goes to fetch me his multicolored ball to throw it for him.

And his silence speaks to my soul more than a thousand words do.

The Day I Didn't Burn the Book

 

A husband with an unexplained fever. An old manuscript. A curse that wasn't. A little girl who finally gets the answer she deserved.
 

Yesterday my husband had a fever. It came out of nowhere, as he was in his fifth day after the treatment and fever without a cause is a reason for concern. It surprised (in a bad way) and scared us. At first, we didn’t know what to do or how to explain it. And so myself, the pessimistic and anxious person I’ve become, came with an explanation.

I am cursed. 

Whenever I do something I love or enjoy, something bad happens. To myself or to the ones I love. Because of course a curse extends its influence over the ones I care about, too. And this time, it was THE BOOK. 

Many, many years ago when Maya was around two, three years old I began writing a book. To ease my longing for my homeland, Romania, I’d decided to put all those sentiments in a book. I was a “new” second time mother - well, with a 20 years difference between my children it felt like a first time. I was a newcomer in a country I had discovered I didn’t fully understand. So of course, I had done what I knew best – I wrote.

The problem was whenever I wrote something, something bad seemed to happen. Most of the times, it was my daughter getting sick. Time after time after time. And in the end, after she was hospitalized and then had to do so many tests, I’d decided simply to put the book aside. In order to protect my daughter, I said to myself.

And I convinced myself I was cursed. So, if I wanted my daughter to stay healthy, no more writing. The truth? Even with me not writing, my daughter still got sick. My husband still got sick. My son still hated me. My life still got ridden with problems. And among all that bad stuff that kept happening, I forgot about the book.

Until now.

Out of the blue, one sunny day, I decided I had to dig up the manuscript, the research I’d done and continue where I had left.

And what do you think happened? My husband had a fever.

I was so, so upset I decided I would burn the book and my soul with it and just be done.

But before that, I sat down and thought about it, really thought.

About this fear of mine to do things I enjoy and love. About this curse. About why it happens or I think it does.

And I went back in time. To my childhood. Back to the days I had spent doing things to please my mother, to convince her to love me. And because she didn’t give a damn about me, I grew up thinking that something must’ve been wrong with me, making me unworthy of my mother’s love. And that if good things happen to me, I have to pay for them, to be punished, because I wasn’t worthy. I was always afraid to enjoy life because I thought that, for sure, some disaster was around the corner, being my doing, of course.

And I came to this conclusion that maybe, maybe, the book was never cursed. And neither was I. Maybe I am still that little girl trying to understand why her mother didn’t love her. And so maybe I didn’t cause my husband’s fever by returning to write my novel.

And maybe I won’t be burning the book after all…    

And whenever that little girl will nudge me , reminding me that I am undeserving, I will tell her that I love her and that nothing was wrong with her, it was her mother who didn’t deserve her love.