In the past few months I’ve been treated for a yeast infection, and had an ultrasound, a mammogram, and a Pap smear. As of today the score is:
I wonder if any part of my plumbing isn’t somehow dysfunctional?
I’ll find out more July 2. Can hardly wait!
Frustrated with being denied a pregnancy, my uterus has struck back by sprouting a fibroid. As if to prove its maternal ability to nourish and cherish, my uterus has not only produced a fibroid, but is growing it as well. I’m told that it has achieved the size of a 16-week pregnancy.
The truth is, I’m not sure what is going on in there. Two years ago, an ultrasound revealed “two fist-sized fibroids and numerous smaller ones.” At the time, I did not know what a fibroid was, let alone that my uterus was one of millions set on developing them.
After poring over many fibroid photos on the Internet, I must say that it’s a good thing fibroids are an internal condition because they have no aesthetic value at all, unless you are looking for something to inspire you with an alien monster design for your next straight-to-DVD bargain bin movie. They look like solid, smooth, shiny, red balls of muscles on steroids. They can be very small, or they can grow to the size of a watermelon or even larger. (Aside to my uterus: That is not a suggestion.) In some cases, they have even shared a womb with the baby for which the organ is designed. (Aside to my uterus: We won’t be attempting that.)
Two years ago, the gynecologist couldn’t be sure I had fibroids without an ultrasound. Today, even I can feel its hardness a little below my navel. It figures that the only hard muscular tissue my entire body sports would be in what should be the softest part of my belly.
So I have a fibroid, or two, or several. What is the next step? I’m supposed to schedule an appointment for another ultrasound, as I have an unfounded suspicion that my uterine rebellion is crowding my bladder and causing some issues. The mostly likely outcome is that I will ignore it; then, at menopause, it will shrink of its own accord if not provided with estrogen therapy. It’s not that big, and despite the bad behavior of my uterus I wish to keep it. We humans are fond of our body parts, even the non- and malfunctioning ones.
Last night, just as I was thinking of walking to the store, a storm began that turned into a frightful experience. At first, there were nearly incessant flashes of sheet and streak lightning, beginning at about 8:15 p.m. This lasted for about an hour unabated. It began to rain, then to rain hard, then to rain so hard that sheets of water hurled themselves at the windows while the lightning continued and thunder sounded. Suddenly there was a terrifying roaring as the wind picked up, tossing the trees back and forth and seeming to cause the building to shudder.
I surprised myself by feeling scared.
At the moment when I was beginning to realize this was the worst storm I’d ever weathered, worse than any of those in western New York that made the trailer seem instantly frail and vulnerable, there was a blinding flash and a simultaneous, deafening thunderclap.
My heart stopped and then raced.
I have been that terrified at an autonomic level only a few times in my life, and even while sensing danger at the door, I felt acutely alive yet disconnected and detached.
This morning presented a scene of minor, yet disturbing devastation. I noticed last night that a half-dead tree in Burnham Park across the street had fallen on the sidewalk. It was not the only tree to succumb. A couple of my favorites, large shade trees, were among the victims, either fallen or snapped off partway up the trunk. Partial trunks and huge branches littered both nearby parks. The landscape was altered, as trees that had been growing 30–40–50 years cracked or crashed in an instant.
The Chicago Park District was at Burnham Park today at 7 a.m. to clear the tree blocking the sidewalk that the police use to enter Burnham Park and Promontory Point. It was a curious operation in which 4–5 men stood around and watched a truck awkwardly scoop up the not-very-large branches and place them in a dump truck. The scooping method was inefficient, and I’m not clear why so many people needed to supervise the operation. From what I could see, it would have made more sense for the 4–5 men standing around simply to pick up the branches and toss them in the truck. It would have taken half the time and would not have wasted the fuel. But we are no longer a society that does anything “by hand” or respects manual labor. We are slaves to the machine.
Tonight, I walked around part of Burnham Park and Promontory Point. So many trees wrenched out of the ground, or split in half, or with limbs torn off and strewn about. I found the two gingko trees I have spent many hours reading under torn in half. They were usually the last to lose their leaves in autumn. It looks like last year was their final fall. They will shelter me no more.
I looked up at the Shoreland from near the underpass. Trees no longer filter most of the lower part of the building. The tree line is broken, open, scarred.
It took decades to create the beauty of mature trees.
And minutes to destroy it.
I’m on my way, I don’t know where I’m goin’,
Paul Simon, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”
I’m on my way, I’m takin’ my time, but I don’t know where.
Since my father passed away in 2001 and since Amtrak eliminated the train from Chicago that stopped in Altoona, I haven’t taken Amtrak very often. Even when I did, the trips had become uneventful. No one spoke to me any more or did anything of note, except for the Amish man who wanted to know where he could charge his mobile phone — that is, until today (7.20.06). Nothing of note happened today, really, unless you count my meeting a couple of characters, the type of people who make me realize how reclusive I am, and why.
I was on my way to Ann Arbor, Michigan, a scheduled 4.5-hour trip. It’s just long enough to read, write, and nap without starting to get antsy.
At Hammond/Whiting, Indiana, a woman in late middle age with a heavily seamed face came and stood next to the empty seat by me and announced loudly that there was nowhere to sit. I moved my straying purse and indicated the empty seat. I don’t know why she couldn’t have pointed out to me that it had encroached onto the seat and that she wanted me to move it. The direct approach is not dramatic enough, I suppose.
Plopping down, she announced, again loudly, in my direction, “I hate to ride backward.” Thank you for sharing that insight into your character with every person in this car and the next.
She seemed itchy — itchy to chat. I appeared to be engrossed in writing, while the girls across the aisles were doing college work. Thwarted, frustrated, and itchy, she pulled out a cell phone and dialed an aunt, with whom she had the world’s most mundane, pointless conversation at approximately the same decibel level found on the typical Rolling Stones one-more-time tour. At any rate, I know she loves her aunt, because she announced it several times to the phone, just before starting to cry. For me, there was no warning and nowhere to hide.
Finally she hung up and soon disappeared. I had a feeling she’d gone to the cafe car — there’s nowhere else to go on a train — but at the same time I really, really wanted coffee. I’d been up since 4:30 a.m., and I really, really wanted coffee. So I risked it. I ended up sitting at the table across from hers; later, she left, then returned and sat with me. I managed to keep up my level of engrossment, so she, still itchy, tried to lure the conductor into the realm of tedious chatter. He answered her questions while deftly fending her off; he seemed more comfortable talking old-time rail talk.
Later, when she and I were both back in our seats, at one of the stops — I think it was Jackson — she said something like, “They stop where they stop, don’t they?” Honestly, I did not know how to respond to this observation, so I smiled weakly and promptly fell asleep.
I hope her return trip is planned for any day but Sunday — the day of mine.
Meanwhile, the visit to the cafe car proved that coffee will be my undoing. There I met the attendant. Before I could make my request, he had shared with me his knowledge and/or opinion of organ harvesting in China, the economy, George W. Bush, and the intelligence of people who pay extra for business class for no real perks or benefits. I admit that this verbal onslaught left me speechless. After I got my order in, I heard commentary on the price of flat-screen TVs; his wife’s boss, who bought one when they were $10,000; and the reputed stinginess of several ethnic groups his wife represents or might as well represent — I think that was the gist of it. And all of this in five minutes or less, with little (no) encouragement from me. It was a verbal flood, unstoppable.
When my garrulous seatmate placed both her orders, I wonder if she managed to get in a word or two.
Or had she met her superior?
After going to bed late, for me, I woke up shortly after dawn to the loud sound of a close thunder crack — a sound that reminded me I had left two or three windows wide open to dispel the heat and stuffiness. The sky had already opened, so I rushed to close them. For a few moments, the rumblings of the thunder, the splatter of the rain, and the whoosh of the breeze masked most of the traffic noise, and for that moment I could have been home again, helping my mother to close the windows when a sudden thunderstorm transformed sky and land alike.
I love storms.
If you’re old enough to recall certain comics and TV shows, you’ll recognize the old style of top-down management, epitomized by cigar-chomping bosses named things like “Mr. Abernathy,” who said such things as, “Crumblebottom [no title], if you don’t finish that report by five o’clock, YOU’RE FIRED!”
We’ve come a long way, baby. At some point, someone discovered that an inclusive, cooperative approach is more effective than an autocratic, coercive one, and that two or more heads are better than one. People work harder and better when they have a stake in the work and the outcome — and it could be an emotional rather than a merely financial one. People who work out of passion or at least commitment do a better job than those who collect paychecks. And people who value others foster a more productive environment than those whose self-interest is their ultimate — and sometimes — sole objective.
It doesn’t take earning a Ph.D. in psychology from Yale or Stanford to understand this.
Yet there are still those who don’t.
The results are not surprising. People work the fewest number of hours they can get away with, while the problematic leaders wonder why they are not putting in extra hours to meet poorly planned deadlines — because they have no stake in doing so. They also have no desire to spend any more time than necessary in an openly hostile environment where their suggestions and opinions are neither required nor requested, where projects are managed through nagging and pressure, and where providing sincere positive feedback is perceived as a waste of time. Bandages have been applied, but the infection continues to seep out from underneath and to poison everyone.
At this point, no one feels motivated, and no one has the time, energy, or will to do good work, let alone their best.
It makes me think of a gangrenous limb. It may have served you well when it was healthy, but now it is killing you. You hate to cut it off, and you may delay the decision as long as possible in the hope that the spread will stop and that some or all of the limb can be salvaged, perhaps with the loss of some functionality. You can’t imagine life without that limb or how it can be replaced.
At some point, though, you have to decide. Amputating the foot may save the leg.
A decision needs to made soon, or there will be nothing left to save.
My mother died 23 years ago on Mother’s Day, which was May 8 in 1983. Last night a friend asked me if I miss her, and it occurred to me that she has been gone for half of my life and for virtually all of my independent adult years.
When I was very young, my parents had friends who, once in a while, would stop by for an hour or two of coffee and conversation at our kitchen table. Some were distant relatives who came from a town or two south of us; some were former neighbors from the trailer park who had moved into houses. Some later passed away while my parents were still alive, including two who were killed in a car accident; others have passed on since one or the other of their deaths; a few are still alive. That period of time, while only a brief part of my early life, made an impression — my mother’s interest in every car that came around our corner, the fuss when it proved to be a familiar one as it was parked in front of or next to the trailer, the coffee brewing and the cookies coming out, and the cacophony of friendly conversation.
There was a time when I used to imagine living near enough to my parents to see them once or twice a week. I would visit them, and they would visit me. We would sit around our respective kitchen tables or watch TV in the living room. We would drink coffee. I would have to make it just the way my dad liked it, or he would complain grumpily, even refuse to come back. We would have to watch his TV programs. If “nothing good” were on, my mother might want to watch a Buffalo Sabres hockey game. She would not admit it, but she liked the drama of the fights.
It did not happen. My mother died a month before I graduated from college, and I did not return to western New York. I did visit my father twice a year when he moved to Pennsylvania in 1987, but he lived independently for only a short time before moving himself to an assisted living facility there. It was not the same as in my daydream.
I never sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee with both my parents as an adult, as an equal, so that would have the opportunity to learn about, know, and appreciate each other.
That is what I miss.
Every day meaningless words in meaningless combinations are ripped from me by the will of another. I worry that there will be — that there are — no words left for me. No thoughts, no emotions, no imagination, and no way to express myself or, worse, nothing to express. I see now how difficult it is to mix the real workaday world with a creative or thoughtful life. How difficult it is to shed or bury or repress all the baggage of daily life, the anxieties, the worries, the pressures, the stresses, the resentments, and to be free to think, to feel, to create. The inner life is both denied and suffocated by the exigencies of reality, by the weight of humanity and its constructs, but mostly by its will and desires that are so different from mine.
My days are a veil that tries to obscure the beauty that lies hidden in this inner world, but at times the sleep of early morning pulls the veil aside to let me see some, just a little, of what is possible. Endless forest and valleys, houses in both town and country, indoor waterways, mythological creatures evil and good, magical waterfalls, oceans that embrace but do not drown, trains unrestricted by tracks, roads that lead to the unimaginable, and my own newfound ability to see forever and to soar forever — and just when I am highest, when I see most clearly, when I have found an inner world that is rich with the unexplained and the inexplicable, the veil falls back into place even as I fight it, and it is another day of anxiety, worry, pressures, stresses, and resentments. Just as I am about to understand, understanding fails. “To sleep, perchance to dream” . . .
I often think and write about changing times. Today, change is rapid and seems to be accelerating. My dad grew up on a family farm with mules for horsepower; in the year of his birth (1913), there were probably still more horses than cars. By the year in which he died (2001), the American family farm was nearly extinct, having been carved up into lots for suburban housing or absorbed into factory farms, where animals are treated like products, not living beings. Even certain breeds of draft horse are endangered or threatened (see the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy). Within my dad’s 88 years, the U.S. was paved over with interstates, malls, shopping centers, and parking lots; men landed on the moon; and radio filled the home entertainment void, then TV, then the Internet, online gaming, and video games. And that’s only the barest glimpse of how much has changed.
It makes me wonder what I will see happen in the next 20–40 years of my life — what new technologies, devices, conveniences, treatments, and cures will arise, as well as the ensuing problems that such changes invariably create.
One change that has occurred in my lifetime is a small social one, but it’s worth mentioning as it is so prevalent. It’s our switch to casual dress in almost any setting.
I thought of this a few days ago when I saw a couple of families entering one of the churches downtown. Adults and children alike wore jeans and tee shirts. They could have been entering McDonald’s, a tavern, or a sports stadium, judging by their dress.
This is quite different from when I was a child, when men and even boys wore suits and ties, and women and girls wore dress or skirts — no slacks or even pantsuits. Jesus may have dressed casually, but you were expected to approach and enter the house of God with respect, and respect meant dressing up. Even when girls stopped wearing dresses to school, they still wore them to church.
The American attitude toward dress has, of course, changed. In the late 1980s, my then Big 8 consulting firm implemented casual Fridays. At first, if I remember correctly, it was in the summers only, then it was extended to every Friday year-round, then to every day. The only exception was if you had meetings with clients or vendors, or similar activities. All but a few sticks in the mud were ecstatic, and even the partners began wearing business casual clothing on the rare days on which they didn’t have meetings.
As for me, I loved it. I had always hated wearing dresses (to school, church, or work), and trying to pull pantyhose up over sweaty, sticky, fat legs in 90ºF, high-humidity weather became an epic challenge and a heroic effort (with many pairs damaged as a result).
My new company also switched to business casual every day, with similar exceptions, at some point after I started. At this point, I don’t even have a dress wardrobe left, even when I need it.
Now, when you walk around downtown Chicago during a weekday, it is the man or woman wearing a conservative business suit who stands out as the exception, the oddity. Except for occasional ethnic attire or trendy costume, the rest of us march in a uniform of casual, virtually indistinguishable, shirts, tops, and bottoms.
Casual attire has evolved in conjunction with the team-oriented workplace, in which work is done, in theory, in collaboration and by consensus, in which “leaders” guide and mentor rather than simply order and decide. Yet, for some reason, a person wearing a suit seems to command unspoken respect, at least more so than someone sporting a golf shirt and slacks. If a vendor comes in and sees three men in business suits and three in casual dress, the odds are good that they will address the bulk of their proposal to the “suits,” whom they will assume are the decision makers.
I suspect that those who wear suits are also treated differently outside the workplace. I can picture security guards, cab drivers, maître d’s, servers, even traffic control officers, showing greater deference to the elite in suits than to the masses in business casual.
I’ve read that business dress is coming back, but I haven’t seen it. I don’t often see anyone voluntarily dressing up for work; the joke has always been that someone who shows up at work in a suit or dress must have a job interview.
As much as I prefer casual dress and the symbolic (not actual) egalitarianism that it implies, I admit that I miss the professionalism and a certain distance that seemed to go along with a more formal attire. Perhaps it is even the sense that clothing separates the different aspects of our lives — that casual wear is for one’s personal life and that dress is for work, that the two are separate spheres. Now, with people working 80-hour weeks, working at home, working on the road, working while on vacation, using cell phones, laptops, BlackBerrys and PDAs, and ubiquitous wireless connections, these separate spheres of home and office, personal and work, are merging — or have merged — into an amorphous blob.
Off to work we go, or to church, to dine, to visit family or friends, to a date, to a baseball game, to home — it’s all the same to us, judging from the way we dress. If “clothes make the man,” what kind of men (and women) are we? What is left that is special enough to dress for, to care about?
On Wednesday, April 19, three more signs of spring appeared at the Flamingo:
And the patch of yellow-green I see in the direction of 53rd Street, which I thought might be the crown of a tree, is really a dense patch of dandelions. Like the leaves, flowers, and grass, they seem to have sprung up overnight. I also saw my first butterfly yesterday, a black one.
I can almost imagine being at home again, with the sun coming up over the trees, the cool air blowing the curtains, my mother in the kitchen, my dad in the garden, the yard and the field covered with the dandelions . . .