I had a title and a job description. I was The Mamma. (See Maternal Coat for backstory.)
This realization goaded my Midwestern work ethic just about the time another doctor entered the room to join the troupe already assembled. I was offering The Oldest Girl the comfort of the breast again when the new M.D. positioned herself directly behind me, so that she could get a better view of the already crowded monitor. Frustration tensed my neck as I finally began to wonder how many cardiologists it takes to read an echo. The night before when doctors lined up with their stethoscopes three and four deep to listen to The Oldest Girl’s breathing, I was impressed by the volume of care she received.  A shift had occurred since then, however, and the same level of attention felt redundant, oppressive and even voyeuristic in this context. The stress of feeling like a goalie in a soccer game was more pressure than my already challenged milk supply could withstand. My doppelganger turned to her and said, “Who are you?”
“Dr. Another One,” she confidently replied.
“Do you have to be here?” my doppelganger asked.
“She’s a member of our team,” the eldest, female consultant intervened authoritatively.
“Is she a vital member of the team?” my otherself surprised me by asking.
“I can leave,” Dr. Another One offered.
“Thank you,” my twin replied signaling her dismissal.
“But…” the elder discouraged as her pledge left the room. Disapproval veiled her face as she muttered something else I couldn’t hear. An awkward pause perpetuated the veneer of her objection before her attention returned to The Oldest Girl and the answers the echocardiogram screen would provide.
Those answers were not as concrete as anyone would have liked. The cardiac team was able to determine that it was probable that The Oldest Girl had a heart defect called coarctation of the aorta.  She did not have palpable femoral pulses, and the pictures suggested an obstruction. One of the cardiologists drew us a diagram as he explained the condition. He used his pen to punctuate points as he made them to educate us about a coarch (“co-arc”); a narrowing of the aorta that restricts or limits the blood flow to the lower extremities. He outlined the surgical repair that would be required if this diagnosis was confirmed. He assured us that the surgery was one that boasted a high survival rate, but it was premature to assume that it would be necessary until an angiogram or heart catheter verified the diagnosis. The prospect of a heart condition and likely surgery eviscerated the remnants of denial I held about the gravity of the situation. He then asked us what questions we had. We asked many. Among them, I asked if we could control the number of people in the room during procedures. Disapproval brushed his face as he asserted that one of the frustrations of being associated with a teaching hospital was putting up with those physicians who were in training. He indirectly judged my dismissal of Dr. Another One as inappropriate. He argued that inconveniences such as having many people in the room were a part of the package that was balanced by the exceptional facility and treatment options. However cordial his language, his message was not subtle, he advised me not to tamper with the status quo.
His dictate to play nice really resonates with me.  My entire upbringing socialized me to be nice. My earliest training reinforced the message my daughter’s cardiologist had just delivered. These memories include lessons about manners, praise for cooperation and practice following the rules. I grew up without outgrowing my eagerness to please my parents and teachers and friends. Marry this conditioning with society’s reverence for doctors, and I felt it was incumbent of me to be good. He had, after all, just reminded me to be a good girl. I felt the pull to be obedient and quiet. Liquid tractability intoxicates. Unfortunately, it does not inform or guarantee quality care. However traumatized I felt by my daughter’s illness, no matter how compelling the temptation to follow orders, I knew it did not feel appropriate to subject myself and my family to more stress than necessary, even if doing so did provide excellent opportunities for the professional development of others. I had just been told my daughter was a candidate for heart surgery and simultaneously counseled to be a good sport. I not only didn’t want to play; I knew that I could not simultaneously participate and do my most important job. My already depleted resources could only be invested into being The Oldest Girl’s mom and advocate even if it didn’t feel comfortable, I wasn’t going to blindly follow guidelines that I did not believe to be in the best interest of her care or my family.
The slippery thing about hospital guidelines was to become educated about which were necessary regulations and which were rules of convenience. Unfortunately, I knew as little about this as I did about heart disease at the time. One benefit of my eager-to-please nature is that I learned how to be a good student. Like an anthropologist, I had to study the foreign culture and mores of this hospital civilization in order to understand our experience and make informed decisions. Like a native tour guide, my first source of information was our floor nurse. Much like the teachers of a high school, nurses run the hospital and offer the best chance for a continuity of care. The doctor administers as little of the day-to-day care to his patients as the typical principal provides daily instruction to students. I discovered there were many familiar parallels between teaching and nursing, a realization that helped me acclimate to my new environment. Our nurse explained the hierarchy of a teaching hospital. One of the most ambiguous aspects of The Oldest Girl’s initial treatment was trying to determine who was who in the myriad of medical players that we encountered. Much like a caste system, she explained the progression from medical students to attendings.
Lions and tigers and bears?
No…
Medical students, interns, and residents, oh my!
And The Mamma better know which is which and who does what!
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
I’ve taken a wee hiatus from the blog thing this week in order to get our family’s Back-to-School legs under us.  Much like motion sickness, we all cycled through our own versions of green under the gills and wobbly knees.
I also carved out some time to read some other blogs.  A Pandora’s Box of an experience, authenticity splatter paints site after site with open process and genuine welcome.  There’s a sacred chord common among them too.  The minor falls aren’t always that minor, but openly and honestly explain. In many cases, I felt as if the blogger was talking directly to me, like we were sharing a bottle of Shiraz, and she really wanted me to understand.  The major lifts mold hope like clay on the wheel.  I read about what broke the hallelujahs of others, and was stirred by the movement of those fierce hearts. They write to understand; they write to keep breathing; they write to help us all make sense of life’s density and experience.
Aunt Becky has such a site. She wasn’t always Aunt Becky, but she will tell you about that when you visit her there. When you go, carry my admiration and my prayers with you like fireflies sparkle the night, with gentle whispers to lift her and to craft her Princess of the Bells a new tiara of light.
Reading about Aunt Becky’s journey brings The Oldest Girl to mind. I now wear a new coat. The Oldest Girl’s illness changed my identity. The story went something like this:
I’m naked and I’m cold. My infant daughter’s emergency heart surgery and subsequent hospital admission has stripped me of my maternal coat. You know the one. That warm, cozy fleece with all the comforts of flannel designed by Denial. The one I curled up with at night to keep me safe so I could sleep secure in the belief that my family was protected. The one I held open to catch my two-year-old son’s running giggle dives. The arms cocooned my pink and wrinkled newborn daughter. Its deep pockets held Kleenex, Goldfish, and Pokemon Band-Aids, all the medicine I thought I’d ever need to heal hurts. The hood shielded me from the evening news like a solemn promise that mine would never be the statistical anomaly whose strange lump turned out to be cancer or who walked in the wrong McDonalds at the wrong time, and fell victim to unspeakable violence. I miss that coat more than the cigarettes, caffeine, vodka, Pop-Tarts, profanity, bad men and other vices women give up to become mothers. It’s cold out here. My world feels bigger and more scary now. I no longer enjoy the luxury of the Denial label. The Oldest Girl is the one who almost died and, I will never be the same. My daughter is the one in 12,000 born with a congenital heart defect.
The term heartdefect has only two words. The first, an adjective, conjures the undeniably positive connotations of love carved into the side of a proud oak, a child’s sloppily pasted Valentine’s Day card, Mother Theresa-like character and the center of debate. It’s the noun that fires the phrase with sinister associations of betrayal, pyromania, Adolph Hitler and dysfunction. The two words together describe a disease I never thought would be used to characterize my daughter’s cardiac condition. I knew The Oldest Girl breathed differently than other babies. She snored, hummed and whistled from birth. My family joked that she snored like an old man after a long poker game and too many cigars. I teased too, as we had the pediatrician’s assurance that periodic breathing was normal in infants, and that some babies simply breathe more loudly than others. We all slowly became accustomed to her respiratory percussion, and I repressed my SIDS fears like a movie trailer, a scary feature I would not pay money to keep me up nights. On the Monday of her one-month well-baby visit, however, neither her pediatrician nor I liked the way she sounded. Three days later, we were in the Emergency Room of the University teaching hospital.
The Husband and I walked our five-week-old daughter into the trauma center with unspoken confidence even though we were at parental DEFCON-4. Though neither of us said so to the other, each of us held the same conviction. This trip was merely a scary formality to confirm The Oldest Girl was completely fine. We knew it was a good hospital. The banner that touted, “Voted A Top-100 Hospital,” on their pedestrian walk-way proudly confirmed our conviction. The Husband, a firm believer in the religion of modern technology, held my hand as I snuggled The Oldest Girl close to my chest. The triage process was simply tedious, not painful. The staff we interacted with seemed as interested in our insurance information as they did our daughter’s condition. Nothing in their manner suggested The Oldest Girl’s condition was critical. The physician who initially examined her seconded our pediatrician’s tentative diagnosis of tracheal malacia. This doctor explained that the strider, or noisy breathing, The Oldest Girl experienced might be caused by an under developed trachea that was more soft or “floppy” than its cartilage should be. We were assured that if this was the case, it was a grow-out, developmental condition. She ordered a chest x-ray and explained that The Oldest Girl would be placed on a monitor and admitted for the night for observation and further evaluation the next day. We accompanied Oldest Girl to radiology with a sense of relief. Experts and the best equipment possible were put in place to help us monitor her breathing. If the worst happened, if she in fact stopped breathing, help would be immediate. Even the doctor’s report that the x-ray showed that she had an enlarged heart, and that a pediatric cardiologist would consult on her case did not daunt our blithe expectation that we would be going home the next day.
The cardiologist who entered our room the next morning seemed to share this expectation. As he wheeled in the machine to administer The Oldest Girl’s echocardiogram, he promised that we could rule out that she had any cardiac issues in ten minutes. Forty anxious minutes later, during which I futilely sang to comfort my daughter in an attempt to quiet her screaming discomfort and outraged frustration, the cardiologist said he had to call in one of his colleagues to consult on The Oldest Girl’s case. I’ve seen too many reruns of ER and Chicago Hope to miss the implications. It was then that I began to split like an ameba during cell division. I was in the middle of at least two experiences. First and foremost, there was the numbing reality of Oldest Girl’s condition. Secondly, there was the distracting interface of being immersed into a hospital culture with which I had little knowledge.
This sense of doubling only increased when the consult entered the room. The next three hours were a blur of my attempts to console Oldest Girl while the pediatric cardiology team assessed her condition. At no one time was there fewer than three doctors in the room. All the while, Oldest Girl screamed and screamed and screamed. She was tired and anxious, in a strange environment, and did not want to lie on her back, her least favorite position, one more minute dammit to hell.  All the while, the doctors surrounded the monitor and spoke their code to each other, “I can’t see.”
“I can’t get it,”
“If she would just,”
“There it is,”
“Coarch?”
“Did you feel femoral pulses?”
“Her color isn’t good, she’s grayish.”
“Look.”
“See?”
“What if her duct just closed yesterday?”
Meanwhile, I serenaded Oldest Girl, I climbed into the crib and curled her into my side, I breast fed her, I held her in almost every conceivable position, including one that was almost upside down and I attempted to sooth her with my mama words and voice. We were told that her response to the test was not a good match with the team needs. In order to get a good reading, Oldest Girl had to be calm and relatively still. Frustration began to wear on everyone in the room, an occupancy that grew to an alarming six-doctor level at one count.
The sheer volume of white coats in the room heightened my anxiety as much as the test itself. The simultaneity of demands for my attention danced in kaleidoscope neon. I was dizzy with their patterns:  The Oldest Girl’s needs, my own foreboding fear, and the mysterious medical vernacular that decoded her prognosis. I was as saturated as a diaper in a kiddy wading pool, but these waters were deep and the undertow menaced. It was a startling moment of maternal epiphany. As inadequate as I felt, as viscerally engaged as I was in my experience of The Oldest Girl’s illness, I was the only mother in the room and Oldest Girl needed me. This infused me with a sense of purpose. I had a title and a job description. I was The Mamma.
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!
Through His recent, gentle command to rise, I am again reminded of one of the most insightful teachers I ever had the privilege with which to study. She owns my respect as this woman excites in me an adrenaline pang of abject fear accompanied by the simultaneous desire to sit at her feet and bathe in her wisdom.  I never know for certain if she will smack me or hug me, and her lessons always stretched me to the tippy-toes of my fledgling understanding of content. A most mighty and majestic oak, she evidences the conviction that a concept cannot be studied if one does not understand the terminology. She is rattlesnake quick to distinguish between a scientist’s operational definition of terms (that tell the reader what a word or phrase means for the purpose of a study) and a word study. She exalts that all connotations, denotations, derivations, and cultural contexts must be sifted before any idea can be fully understood. Her insistence on this process often bring to mind Heinlein’s Valentine Michael Smith, the prophet who calls his brothers to wait in fullness in order to grok. This woman teaches many; she is one diva of groking in fullness, and I am also convinced she’s got a Batphone to the Throne.
By the way, I know she’d slap me if she knew I distilled her most empirical and rigorous Word Study process down to the science fiction term grok, but Baby, truth is what it is, and that teacher, water brother mine, groks, and bids me to do the same.
Recent process here prompts me again to apply her word study model to grok in fullness.
As such, one of my strategies when I attempt to get my head around a new pattern or idea is to study the antonyms of the concept. I actually like to turn my journal upside down when I do this as a visual reminder to consider it from the opposite perspective. I wish I could type upside down, but I don’t even have to ask The Husband to know that that would get the big technology veto. He would also certainly argue that it would make it too hard for you to read, thus building a division between us when what I seek if communion.  If, however, you wanted to pretend I was typing upside down starting now, that would be great.
These inversions pull the brakes on the runaway express of my busy brain.
Earth bound, I have one spiritual quest, to lift my voice in love to Him that made me. With dirt on my feet and salt on my face, the best I can offer from here is a broken Hallelujah.
However, He meets me in my broken spaces right where I am, and stirs my soul with Victory.  He bathes my offering with Grace, and returns to me a
He offers my Hallelujah a new identity and restoration because He not only hears my imperfect Praise with delight, He celebrates me back with perfect Love.
And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!
I recently had one of those spells that boiled me dryer than granny’s oatmeal. On second thought, dry seems an unfair characterization as I was actually on my knees with my face in the carpet weeping. I couldn’t stop crying. OK, I couldn’t stop sobbing. And I don’t mean that I’m-gonna-let-myself-cry-this-out-just-let-it-go-a-bit kind of crying, I mean keening. I was wailing, and every time I tried to pull it back in, I capsized again into a ragged maw of tsunami emotion.
That mouth was hungry too, and dark. I know it wanted to wolf me down like movie popcorn. I could smell the carrion stuck in its teeth, very, “The better to eat you with, my dear,†and smug, gluttonous confidence.
It thought me easy prey, and that was fair, my posture was an alter call parody made for Saturday Night Live. All I needed was a really big, bad blonde wig. My mascara was already running Rorschach tracks down my face. My nose gets really arrogant during a spell too, like it’s got some kind of unspoken competition going with my eyeballs. Who knew they were hysteria rivals. Like if my nose could talk, it would say to my eyes, “Sure, you get all the camera shots and that mirror-of-the-soul press, but I drip snog faster than you can rain tears.† Even my poor nose knows we’ve been socialized to romanticize tears and abhor snots.
This spell, however, was a snotty, moist, noisy and ridiculously cathartic affair. I had hit the wall of my limits again and paid the price with precious human saline.
Sniff.
I think a good spell clears out the psyche like a regular fiber regimen aids digestion. I also believe there is an emotional equivalent to constipation. The daily pace of family machines layers stress, frustration, conflict and anxiety like a crazy Salvador Dali canvas. I can’t exactly tell you why my pocket watch or my heart melted over the ledge of hope that afternoon, but the baffled king composed Hallelujah! The persistence of memory! The mercy of Grace!
The Holy Dove was moving too!
Even on my face, amid process, as my Lord of Song so lovingly does, yesterday, today and tomorrow, I must accept myself as and where I am in order to keep moving.
Face in the carpet, I heard only one mild request, extended in a most gentle, but somewhat amused Spirit.
“Rise up. I know where you are and I know that bugs you. There’s a difference between being broken and having a broken Hallelujah. You’re not broken. You’re my Baby Girl. I love you. I hear you. Rise up.â€
In that moment, standing up was entirely actionable.
Standing up is movement.
Standing up for something… well, now, that’s Revolution.
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.
Since I began to consider, “Hallelujah,†as a monolith of Praise, I have thought a lot about what gives and takes away a Seeker’s sense of Hallelujah. I ask the question, “What breaks Hallelujah?†like a chorus in my head. In perfect harmony, another question sings, “Was my Hallelujah ever wild and free?â€Â Two other curious voices chime in, “Is anyone’s Hallelujah intact?†and “What does a perfect and whole Hallelujah sound like?†round out this metacognitive barber shop quartet.
The landscape of violence against women mutated these more general questions to a series of what-if questions. What if domestic abuse broke a woman’s Hallelujah and what would happen to her if she tried to change her situation.
Those questions are the foundation of this piece.
another woman
The street lay open
before her battered body like a mouth.
The third nail of her left hand
hides within a plastic cocoon
as her engagement ring screams
its exclamation in the early morning sun.
Her stomach squeezed its fist again. “Golamb guts,” she thought sardonically, “my family’s answer to an emotional barometer.” She knew she had to do something, but her cramping stomach reminded her of the paradox that slowly suffocated her like carbon dioxide poisoning. Although she had distance from him, she was not free of him. Although she no longer resided within the beast of her torrid marriage, neither did she dwell outside its hostile territory. She couldn’t stay chained in this limbo forever.
“If I write him a letter and give him enough time to respond, maybe he won’t feel like I ambushed him,†she rationalized to herself for the hundredth time that day. “If I am very careful and make it nice for him, if I don’t say anything mean or provocative then it should be okay,†she hoped while massaging her stomach and walking to the computer desk in her office upstairs.
As she turned on the Macbook, however, she remembered one of the many times that she hadn’t thought she’d done anything evocative and he exploded anyway. During that particular “accident,†she had made the mistake of asking him if he would like anything besides the french fries he had made himself for dinner. She recalled her shame as he screamed at her, “I can eat whatever I want to eat for dinner. Unlike you, I’m not a fucking psycho about my weight, and don’t count every fat gram I consume. I’m not the one obsessed with getting fat! Worry about your own damn weight and let me eat what I want. And no, I would not like a salad or soup to go with my dinner,’†menaced as he charged toward her with the hot baking pan of Ore-Ida Crispers.
“I don’t think you’re fat,†she remembered lying quickly.
“You’re such a fucking hypocrite,†he said punctuating his vengeance with the cookie sheet. “Take ‘em,†he conceded hotly as he pushed the scalding pan into her hands, “Take ‘em and get the fuck out of my sight,†he ordered as he stormed from the kitchen.
He did not look back as he made his exit, nor would he have considered it at all ironic that his double-time march swished as he stormed out the door because his thighs rubbed together rudely enough to make him chafe.
The tears came again and she began to run cold water over her hands even before he cleared the doorway. The blisters mushroomed almost immediately, another vivid visual metaphor for her woodshed of a marriage.
In mid composition of yet another catalogue of the reasons she ever had agreed to be his wife in the first place, she shook her head to break from the dysfunctional track of her memoirs with Simon. She realized as she glanced back to her monitor that she had been bound by their grip for long enough for Word to have booted and the screen saver to have bled across the page. She hit the space bar as she committed herself once again to her task. “You can do this,†she coached to herself, “You can find the right tone in this letter to help him change his mind.â€
With that thought, she began to type without realizing that she was caught in spokes of the wheel once again.
772 Western Avenue
Millpoint, MAÂ 01775
Simon Craig
POÂ Box 39869
Fort Bragg, NCÂ 28307
13 May 2007
Dear Simon,
Every letter I recall penning to you since you reenlisted begins similarly; I hope this finds you and finds you well. This salutation signals my adjustment to the idea that I do not know exactly where you geographically reside when I write. The roads we travel have truly diverged.
“Okay,†she complimented herself, “right from go, you’ve made your position clear. I’m not with you; I don’t want to be with you; I can’t live with you.â€Â “Now,†she encouraged herself, “Get to the point, ask for the divorce and be done with it,†she cautioned herself with her conditioned mantra, “just don’t piss him off.â€
Her hands poised above home row. She began to type deliberately again.
I have thought often about the conversation we shared on April 28. I anticipate that you also have sifted through the issues about which we talked. I regret not having heard from you in regard to that call before now, but I expect that as I was focused in the effort to meet my project deadline, and all its demands, you too were immersed in the challenges of your mission. However, I wanted to write and reiterate my request to finalize our divorce.
She paused to wonder if he had any idea how much she wanted to be free of him, how hard she had worked to heal from the brand he burned into her dignity.
What she did not fully recognize, in spite of all the therapy and prayer, was that her scars published the exact nature of his mission: Recon, assess the enemy’s weakness, take control.
The dawn dew baptizes
her expressionless brow.
Ramps of her raven hair
build tunnels for the ants to investigate.
Mischievous breezes blow
cigarette road blocks in their path
to intersect with the pieces of grit
and gravel that already dust
her usually clean mane.
Once again she pulled herself away from her distracting thoughts. “I hate him for making me ask again,†she dared as she scrutinized the screen before her, “I hate him for making me beg him to cooperate.â€
Beginning to compose once more, she promised herself, “If I can get him to do this, I’ll never have to ask him for anything ever again.â€
As I stated on the phone, I ask you to support this request, Simon. I evince that enough time has transpired since our initial separation that we can choose this together in the most painless and cost effective way. I suggest we proceed with a no-fault filing that was your initial approach when you first pursued legal aid. I foresee no areas in which our interests contradict each other. We divided the marital assets already, and I will be in the position by the end of August to economically manage without the support of your monthly check. I think what we need to decide together is who will file, when the filing will occur, and how this expense will be shared.
I trust you will support this request. If you can secure free or reduced legal services through the Army and want to file there, I am comfortable with that. If you want to contact the lawyer and resubmit your initial petition and work through her Massachusetts office, I am comfortable with that too. I am also willing to contact my attorney to make a similar request that she finalize the proceedings. The only other option that I am familiar with centers around independent filing without the use of a lawyer, but I do not feel like I have the time nor expertise to pursue this option.
“That’s it,†she praised herself, “just the facts Ma’am. Don’t get ensnared in the emotional knots that are strangling your guts, just put your needs out there and make him see that you intend to see them met.â€Â Her momentum stymied, however, when she recalled again with acrid distaste that his perspective was very different from her own.  “Okay,†she surrendered out loud, “I guess there’s no getting around acknowledging his emotional position. Dr. Parker told me it’s okay to accept responsibility for what I am responsible for and admit it to him and myself. The trick demands that I don’t shoulder his responsibility too.â€Â She pulled her bottle of Avalon toward her and drank deeply as she gently stroked the gray tabby that curled in her lab. “No delicate balance,†she explained to her only baby as she returned to her letter.
I understand from our anniversary conversation that you would prefer to attempt to reconcile in lieu of finalizing the divorce. As I indicated, I can not endorse this idea. I worry that because you do not want to make our separation final that you will not support my request nor answer this letter. I respect I am in no position to compel you to do anything with which you feel uncomfortable. I can only entreat you, Simon, to please subscribe to my request. I do not want to become ensnared in another litigious battle of who can slander who better in cross bills. I do not want to extend nor perpetuate pain for either of us. I realize our wants vary on this issue, but implore you to recognize they diverge at such variance that we stand without common ground upon which to meet.
She blinked away the tears that threatened to block her vision. She couldn’t help but quote lines of the cross bills that slandered back and forth between their lawyers’ offices. Where as she strove to be fair, he twisted the truth, betrayed her secrets, and raped with the blunt objects of her own secrets and his blatant fabrications.
“That’s what he did,†she charged with clotted voice, “he violated the sanctity of everything I ever shared with him. He shredded any trust or respect I had left for him in those documents.â€
She shook her head to clear it as she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “No excuses, no time for crying jags,†she chided herself, “just get this infernal nightmare over with. Be the man he can’t be and admit your responsibility.â€
Resolute, she began to type in earnest.
Sorrow and guilt compete for my attention when I recall your appeal that we meet to discuss our situation or that we consider to try again to mediate our differences. I thought time would mitigate your sense of loss, so that you would begin to build your life around goals and dreams that no longer include me. I do not have language to address this disparity. As much as I regret your reticence, I need to move on with these proceedings, Simon. I need the legal closure of our marriage to be able to build my own life. I ask you to give me leave so that I can do so with your support as I extend my own to you in the pursuit of your goals. Please do not ask me again to reconsider. Please do not place me in the position that I have to ask you to finalize our divorce again. It’s too painful for both of us.
“No more,†she thought to herself as she wrote, “I can’t live like this anymore.â€
“My wants weren’t ever what was important to him,†she self-edited as she posted her exit strategy. “I need to make him see that I’m not out to emasculate him.â€Â She remembered too well that the consequences were dire indeed when he felt she was, “busting his balls.â€.
“Enough with the melodramatic daydreaming, girl,†she scolded herself, “get this damn thing written. Almost done…†she vowed.
I pray that you recognize that I have consistently tried to navigate our separation and end our marriage in the kindest, most amiable way that I know. I do not want to usher in a new battle with this letter. I hope instead to close this chapter in our lives as friends. We walked into our life together as friends, Simon. I want to exit  without damage to the only relationship possibility that could continue; friendship.
I also feel the need to apologize for how long this has taken to come to closure. I fully participated in the delay of finalizing our divorce. I appreciate your support during this period and thank you for the generous allotment checks. I realize you chose to provide them independent of any written obligation and I want you to know that I am grateful. As I mentioned before, I understand that these payments will discontinue at the time our divorce becomes final.
“Economic blackmail,†she almost shouted, disturbing the sleeping cat which nestled against her womb. “That’s what those checks were. He used money like a noose. He stole my savings, he forged my checks, he ran up bills and hid the receipts, he destroyed my mail, he ruined my credit, he ran off leaving me stranded with piles of bills and no money. He tried to pocket the allowance the Army paid him for marital support for himself. I would have liked to have seen him explain that to his CO. I even had to drag his lawyer into court to extract the promise he would stop using a credit card he illegally took out in my name. He knows my social security number and my mother’s maiden name,†she spit interrupting herself, “so just don’t get too cocky, little girl,†she demeaned herself in with one of Simon’s catch phrases. “He can still hurt you plenty.â€
I would hope that we could resolve this issue and that the divorce could be final by the end of June. Please write or call me so that I know which way you would prefer to handle the legal proceedings. I reiterate my desire to work together with you on this. If, however, I do not hear from you by April 7, 2007, I will forward this letter to my attorney along with my request that she file for a no-fault divorce. I anticipate the preceding sentence might anger you or feel like an ultimatum. I do not intend either as goad or a mandate. Instead, I attempt to keep the promise that I made to you during our last phone call. I made the commitment to take no legal action without your knowledge. I do not intend to pursue any course of action until we are able to discuss it. However, if you do not choose to dialogue with me about it, I still want you to be informed of my intentions. I can only promise you my intent is one of respect and hope that you will interpret this statement in the context and spirit I extend it.
One bare foot pokes out beneath her drop cloth cape. Both the calluses and the half moon blood blister beneath the nail of her big toe confess her devotion.
Take care of yourself. I hope you have returned to Fort Bragg by now and that your mission has stopped creeping. “Mission creep,â€Â What an odd and funny expression. Sounds like a bad case of jungle rot or foot fungus. Either way, it would seem an antifungal cream should be prescribed. I hope you continue to take satisfaction from your work and the knowledge that you do it well in service of your team and country. I know it’s your watch. I have every confidence you watch well so that others might sleep in safety.
She enchanted her mantra before she closed the letter, “I did my best, it wasn’t much. I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch. I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.
Namaste,
Michelle
She was a runner.
She did not, however, out run him.
In fact, she never had.
Requiem for Michelle
She stands inside faith as
tenacious tides
comb her feet.
She’s walked
this beach before.
She calls the sun as
it bakes her face
and the breeze seasons
her hair with salt.
She’s walked
this beach before.
She summons the undertow
and baits a hunger
that could swallow her whole.
She’s walked
this beach before.
She channels will
to captain herself as
she resets her course.
Without a cry,
without a prayer,
with no betrayal of despair,
with gusting sales of
courage personified,
We began our trip home from the beach on the afternoon of our third day together.  The Boy and Oldest Girl had enjoyed a Renaissance in their affections toward each other that The Husband and I had not recalled being so spontaneously playful since they were in second grade and kindergarten respectively.
Something shifted back, however, in the truck on the highway home.  It seemed every mile we traveled closer to the house, the more irritated Oldest Girl became with The Boy.  In fact, it got to the point that his very respiration clearly inflamed her. She would have happily covered his mouth and nose with her bare hands just to quiet is breath.  His most genuine and dulcet tones were met with pickled rage or worse, complete indifference.  There’s something incendiary about being ignored, and my children are as combustible as the rest of Adam’s brood.  After several honest attempts at accord, The Boy got as pissed as The Oldest Girl, and it was a Cold War as brutal and familiar as bad hair in the 80s in the backseat.
The husband and I discussed this after we got home, unpacked and got the kids to bed.  We agreed I should approach the subject with The Oldest Girl to hear the soundtrack that played in her mind during these encounters with her brother.
I invited The Oldest Girl to help me sort beach laundry to busy our hands as I approached the topic with her the next morning.  Her gestalt admission that she resented her brother was so immediate that I felt like I had been given an unwelcome Heimlich.  Eventually, we sat upon the tiles of the laundry room floor and shared tales of our brothers together. We sniffed, lamented, and shook our fists at the reality that we would always be junior to our only brothers.  After a time, I asked her to press into the first thought or event that made her feel unequal in status or value to her big brother.  I asked her to write a song, prayer, poem, card, or draw a picture or create a piece that helped her to identify what it was that made her feel less than so we could look at it together later and talk again.
Below, verbatim, is her response:
Dear [The Boy],
I’m sorry I’ve been jelouse of you.  It kinda feels like when you got a cell phone a green monster was born inside of me, and its been growing ever since.  The truth is I admire you.  You have 10 fencing medals and everyone in the club knows and likes you, you’re the most popular guy in class and every body wants to be your friend.  Next to that I feel insignificant.  I look up to you and wish that I could be as popular and privileged as you.  I know I shouldn’t and I half-heartedly try not to, but I do.  It seems unfair that you can go on fencing tournaments and have hour long computer turns.  In truth, I keep a score card in my head of what you got first and what you have more of.  I’m sorry that I see it this way and will honestly try to stop. My words mean only so much so with my actions I will show you that I mean it.
Love,
[The Oldest Girl]
Under the category of, “and a little child shall lead them,†this innocent epistle croons to my soul too often clogged with envy like cheese-hardened arteries.  It indicts my every human limit and broken Hallelujah.
Envy’s scorecard is an Hallelujah breaker.
I am a daughter of Eve, as is my daughter.  We were born broken, or at the very least fallen.  I am ever grateful for Grace.  I see blessed Mercy in Oldest Girl’s face as she risks vulnerability with her brother more naked than Cane ever staked with Abel.
As quiet and brave as a recon grunt, she shared her letter with The Boy before dinner that night.  His moist eyes baptized her with new comprehension.
I know they will keep their score cards and fight again,  They did not, however, that day. Yesterday they took a Sabbath from their battles on the new common ground they had charted together.
I’ll stand next to my little children before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!
As a virgin blogger, I know I don’t understand many blogging conventions.
As such, I expect to make many mistakes- in addition to those I have already made.
That said, I am confused about the idea of anonymity.
Take my “The Meanest Hog,” post, for example. The husband says that it is a worthy topic to blog about, but no one cares about the names of our kids.
(I’d tell you his name, but I can”t I imagine you’d find that anymore relevant.)
He says it’s about the characters. And the story,
He tells me that blog convention refers to the kids as The Boy or The Girl or The Baby. The husband is The Husband, and I expect the wife is The Wife.
I admit this seems like a black hole of a contradiction to me as I have already confessed to you that my Hallelujah is broke and I am a recovering anger junkie and pack rat. I post naked process, but shouldn’t I tell you the name of our cat is Toad? It seems rather like using a diaphragm after a positive pregnancy test to me.
I think my blog might need a TMI alert if I ever get any dear readers or comments.
Another irony is That The Husband and I have four kids. It’s more cumbersome to refer to them obliquely. However, as I can’t promise to put any more clothes on my prose, I will in the future refer to the four kids as follows:
The Boy
The Oldest Girl
The Middle Girl
The Baby
I’ll stand naked before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah, anonymously.
“I didn’t come to fool you,†throws down quite the gauntlet. Especially as, “I did my best, it wasn’t much,†is more my daily bread.
Moments like today with my daughter, Ester, for example burn my cornea with enough light to blind.
I had asked my daughters, Ester, Harriet, and Sophie to take the remnants of toenail polish off their toes. I offered them the “big girl,” privilege of going in my bathroom to reduce their resistance to saying goodbye to this last vestige of their summer swim team, lip-sync contest costumes.
I knew the three of them wouldn’t finish before I put their lunch of microwaved, leftovers on the table, so I thought nothing of it when they asked to return to my bathroom after eating to complete the job.
I heard Eli, our son, grow restless upstairs. He stomps with the subtlety of an elephant. A whole day incarcerated in the house with just me and his sisters for company had made him anxious for escape to the pool, or truth be told, anywhere.  His cue was desperate enough to signal me that 30 girly-girl toe-toes notwithstanding, his sisters were a long time in the bathroom.
I went to check on them.
Ester, our oldest girl, visibly shrank to see me. Curious, I asked the girls if they needed any help. Clean-toed Harriet blithely reported that they had run out of nail polish remover. Sophie tangoed atop a polish free pedicure as she reported that Ester did not want to tell me that the bottle was empty.  Harriet reported in her helper voice that Ester had done both of her sisters’ feet first, and by the time she got to her own toes, the bottle had run out. When Harriet asked Ester why she didn’t just come and get me, Ester replied that she could finish the job herself and that they should just let it be.
Her sisters resolutely sat on the bathroom floor as Ester tried to scrub finger nail polish off her own toes with water. Ester was determined to do what I had asked. It wasn’t until I sat down on the floor with them, Harriet’s foot in my lap so I could file her nails, that I understood that more than Midwestern work ethic had motivated Ester.
I didn’t come to fool you.
Ester is an abundantly kind hearted, old soul. She wanted me to think that it was exclusively her desire to please me that kept her from asking me for help, when, in fact, it was fear.
Ester was afraid that I would get mad if she came to tell me that we were out of polish remover.
Ester was afraid of my anger. 
Sadly, this means I’ve gotten angry about petty, unimportant things often enough that Ester anticipated that I would get mad about this too. It made more sense to her to scrub her toes with water and the sheer grit of her will rather than to risk my wrath.
I wish that I could tell you that her conclusion was wholly illogical. Sadly, she has cause to wonder what might set me off next. My face purples and the tendons of my neck bulge when I pitch a noisy, Mamma storm as unwelcome to my children as sudden squalls to sailors. The transformation mutates me into the incredible hulking eggplant, a crimson beast that must certainly frighten the children like a-plant-so-vile-even-vegetarians-loathe-it ate their mamma’s head!
Help!
Good thing the toilet was close; it made me sick enough to want to puke. It was like the bathroom had become a court and I had been found guilty of the worst of imaginable maternal war crimes. I broke my daughter’s trust.
Ester taught me that my anger breaks Hallelujah.
Worse… so much worse… my anger could break her Hallelujah too.
Anger is a maintenance struggle for me. It digs a default hole into which I un/consciously bury more vulnerable emotion.
My anger blazes hot and fast and familiar.
It devours my resources like a hungry forest fire.
And, oh, the triage…
the energy…
the sheer aerobic activity of it!
Such distraction!
Such projection!
Such folly!
Anger keeps me busy, it mimics movement; it camouflages my true work.
Even unarticulated, it festers and simmers like rancid stew inside of me when I feel most afraid, vulnerable or alone.
Anger is a beast I befriended foolishly. I thought its use secured my safety and control.
Instead, it robs me of both in jaundiced disgrace. Anger’s thick, yellow, pancake make-up masks Grace.
Ester humbles me. White, pure and bathed in light, I relish her Hallelujah!
Ester, Baby Girl, Mamma’s sorry.
Mamma’s wrong.
I need to become accountable to my Defender and surrender anger so that it doesn’t become a family Hallelujah breaker.
It has already been a long journey- and I am nowhere near complete- and my pace and course has been uneven.
I have learned some things about my trigger(s) and myself. I was raised with anger. It was well modeled and practiced in my home of origin like mutant manners. Anger feels familiar; I know how to do it.  Anger covers more vulnerable and powerless emotion: fear, anxiety, helplessness, and self-loathing.
I’ve come to realize when I was/am angry that I was/am rarely mad. Usually I was/am hurt or afraid or embarrassed or ashamed underneath the anger drama. I use anger to reposition myself from a perceived position of fear or vulnerability to a pretense of protection or power.
Anger is a thief that robs hope and divides resources.
Anger cannot bear the legacy God promises my children.
I am the adolescent when I misplace my anger on the children. Anger, like dating a bad man, offers lots of thrills and a slick ride on the back of the meanest Hog. The furious wind blows my hair here, there, everywhere. Its sightless heat consumes perspective and melts traffic signs.
God’s a better partner on a finer road.
I pray the abundance of quiet strength God so generously shares will allow me to show Ester peace and more truly vulnerable ways to journey together without anger detours.
Hallelujahs don’t get broken or fixed by one long stint on a cold, bathroom floor.
It was time to get my butt and heart off the bathroom floor and Rise. I drove to Food Lion and got two new bottles of nail polish remover for the girls.
I pledge to turn away from anger every time I can. I offer Him my hand and will walk ahead with God. He will deliver Ester and Harriet and Sophie and Eli, and even me, like Moses.
And when the oceans rage, I don’t have to be afraid because I know that He lives and loves. His bottle of finger nail polish remover is never empty; His well never runs dry.
I did my best,
it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel,
so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth,
I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!
Don’t get me wrong, I am neither a genius, nor especially driven. In fact, if you’re into IQ scores, I am really something of an idiot savant given how disparate are my subtest scores and personality. To be even more honest, I am lazy. There’s a blaze of light in every idea, but my feet lack the desire or speed to chase its development.
What an insecure way to admit to you I am all but pathologically insecure!
I have been blessed with ideas. I sometimes see things more quickly than others and make connections that no one else considered. I can map an intellectual dot-to-dot that excites. If I knew how to leverage what I have been given into resources, I wouldn’t need to worry about how to afford groceries for my four kids, and maybe, just maybe, my husband might not feel noosed by the demand to provide.
Man! I already sound like an asshole!
I do work, and I am not an egotistical or intellectual snob. My pride rehearses how I will never be good enough, not how good I am… and I have had intuitive leaps, big ideas, and dreamed about Oprah’s couch. How pathetic is that?! I feel too small to develop an idea on paper, but waste time wondering if I could “do the Oprah interview without crying.â€Â Maybe I am not an idiot savant, but an actual idiot.
Somewhere along the line, my Hallelujah broke.
I’ve got some pretty solid hypotheses about the whens and wheres of this fracture. If not an idiot, I probably qualify as an obsessive. Quite simply, since then, I have kept moving through the labyrinths of family, degrees, career, marriage, children and church-
(Insecurity Alert! Hard to rank a list like that and not worry about being judged. For the record, I chose a chronological strategy in regard to how the ordered events decanted for me, neither by priority nor primacy. I think I got a triple dip when I was in the Super Ego line…)
Okay, I confess, it’s mundane, but actually, not that simple at all.
What is?
Anyway, since then, whenever it was when my Hallelujah broke, and now, as average as is my monotonous experience, I suffered a series of refractures over space and time like psychic mini strokes. My spiritual muscle and faith atrophied enough to convince me that I was broken.
I did not play a special chord, I did not see the light, and I was tied to a kitchen chair.
I became a teacher.
I became a wife.
I became a mom.
I became a Christian.
Worse than a traitor, I cut my own hair.
I stopped risking dreams and developed others instead.
It got to the point that nothing was on my tongue. The acrid waste triggered my gag reflex in spasms of intense self-loathing.
I risked nothing for security, and broke both my identity and Hallelujah.
As blessed and God-given has been my work and family, they’ve been something of a vacuum too. There’s no enough to fill the resource needs of my children and life. Were I to do nothing else ever, there is not enough of me to do the job completely or well enough to satisfy the call.
So I have stood frozen in the snow, outside Grace, apart from the warm Fire, and done nothing else anyway.  I willingly deferred my own development for the least noble of reasons, the virtuous excuse of raising a family.
You’re smarter than me, and I know you know what happened.
My personal deficits caught up to me. I began to perseverate on my limits and laments. The inertia conditionally drained me with more suction than a vampire.
I confess the stillness has been an eternity of long nights. I tell the truth, I didn’t come to fool you. I still feel the shadow darkness.
It wasn’t until a recent series of events immersed me in the song “Hallelujah,†(see links below) that I realized just how broken and lonely was my Hallelujah.
My spirit had become mute.
As I began to study versions of this song, and the scriptures to which they allude, I had the epiphany that it was not my brokenness, but my cower that kept me from the risks of vulnerability and the authentic praise of being.
I have become convinced that it does not matter if I have anything important to say, simply that I risk saying it. It doesn’t matter if you read this; it matters if I take the time to write it. It’s enough for now to bridge hazard and lift my voice.
And even if it all goes wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of song, with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.