on hold

Spending time on the telephone requires a lot of patience. An email has a crisp feeling to it: you write it, and send. Done. When the person you are trying to reach reads it, that person can answer it at his or her leisure. So perfect. But the telephone is only one step removed from dealing with an actual human being. In fact, you are dealing with a person, or expect to… hope to. Recordings may respond first, but they often direct a call to a real person. Recordings may lead to recordings, but after a while, we find our ways to find the voice… usually. Until then, though, we have to wait. And waiting can be painful.

I am generally a fairly patient person. I have bravely called those necessary governmental bureaucracies that we all have to face at some point in life, and like everyone else, I have spent a good amount of time on hold. I have had a lot of practice. When I was twenty years old, I had my first full-time job. My 1040EZ went off, and I checked the mail daily for my refund. Instead, I got a very official and frightening-looking letter informing me that if I needed to make changes to my taxes I had to file an amended return. Strange. It turned out that back in the days when I got my Social Security number, only a handful of variables were checked for duplication before issuing that number. Another person, with my exact same name, and my exact same birth date, had been issued my exact same number somewhere in Iowa. It apparently made no difference until I filed with the IRS for the first time. She filed her return soon after I had filed mine, also for her first job, and it appeared that we had both earned about the same amount of money. I was the one who had to wait for my refund check. But at least I was not the one who had to change numbers: that was left to my namesake in Iowa, who was issued her number a month to the day after I was. Though it was easy enough to understand with a quick explanation, it seemed that nothing could be resolved until it was approved and understood by nearly every employee of both agencies… or something like that. It took years.

I did not know at the time that this was just the beginning of a lifetime that would have me graduated to a numbing level of advanced bureaucracy, but I have always wondered if that early experience was destiny’s way of preparing me for the challenges I faced later. I did learn, at least on some level, how to navigate difficult systems–both Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service. And I survived. I waited on hold sometimes for hours. My boss realized my predicament, and was understanding as I dialed and redialed, and often simply put the phone on speaker while I went about my day’s work. I was happy if I even got the phone to ring, so I waited.

Back then, I do not believe the IRS or Social Security had added music to the on hold experience. They were so cheap. So many places do this, you know. For example, my kids’ pediatrician has very nice Bach background, which is nice, because if you call a big pediatric practice when your kid is sick, chances are the rest of the city has whatever it is, too. Bach has been on there since at least 2003, interspersed with a calm voice explaining fever facts to nervous new parents, and reminders that the office is happy to help with the confusing world of insurance and referrals. Most customer service lines urge us to remember that our calls are important, and they often add a wide array of fillers to persuade us that this is true, some musical, some promotional. Government agencies, on the other hand, still know that we have no choice. If we have the luck to call when the office is open and calls are being received, we absolutely will not hang up, because calls are taken in the order in which they are received–or so it is stated. So no, I will never hang up when I need the answer to a question, and when www.whatever.com or .org or .us does not have the answer in its FAQ section, and the main site does not have a “contact us” link. No, I will not hang up, and I do not ever expect it to be pleasant. But I can deal with that.

The federal government surprises me now. I had to call IRS. It was not urgent, but I was confused, and needed a human I did not have to pay to explain something to me. I called, pressed the appropriate number, pressed another appropriate number, and amazingly, I did not hit a busy signal. Instead, I had a promise. I stayed, and suddenly, I realized: the IRS now has music for us! Oh, but not just any music. I wondered why, and then, a horrid thought came into my mind. Were they… were they?… No. Were they making fun of me?

Now, normally, I would not think such things, but it had been well over a half hour, and still, they were playing the Nutcracker Suite. It was not just a part of the Nutcracker: it was the whole thing! Here in New England, it was a lovely October day. Birds were still singing, the sky was that dazzling blue, and I was not thinking of Christmas, let alone sugar plums.

Of course, it does not have to be Christmas–in fact, you do not even have to celebrate Christmas–to enjoy the Nutcracker. I do enjoy it. But it did seem an odd selection. I suppose I am warped for years of dealing with these sorts of strange interactions that seem to go nowhere. I long ago gave up the habit of writing long, meandering letters to express my outrage that my experiences were proof that Kafka’s descriptions of “the system” were insightful. I doubt that anyone took them seriously, if indeed anyone ever actually read them. And if anyone did, what could anyone do? In fact, who was anyone? How Kafkaesque. But still, this music seemed such an ironical choice to inflict on people who may owe back taxes, or people who have not received their Economic Stimulus checks and need them to avoid foreclosure or to pay for heat or food. I had been on hold for an awfully long time for an awfully simple question.

I thought about it a little more while I waited. Nah. They weren’t laughing. Someone probably just lined up a selection of relatively inoffensive classical CDs and hit play. I sort of wondered what they would play next. And then, it happened. It was inevitable. I was still waiting, and we were into Act II. When the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” came on, I couldn’t take it anymore. I hung up.

Ah… now I think I know why they added music.

ch-ch-changes

It was supposed to be a lovely night. The weather cooperated, the trees, the soft breeze in the late afternoon. We were headed down to Providence for Waterfire, a lovely, sensual spectacle of aromatic wood crackling fire amidst the dark river water, the city, the night.

Last year, I saw it for the first time with friends, with laughter, joy. Romance would have been nice for the next time. Barring that this year, though, the kids had to see this–and wanted to–and we planned our outing. On the first attempt, it rained. Hard. Water. No fire. The next time, yesterday, only my older son was with me for the weekend, and I planned accordingly.

The trip would include a stop at a record store not too far from Providence, the kind of place that makes me swoon a bit. I spent a good deal of my teens and twenties in record stores, after all, and the faint musty scent of cardboard covering vinyl always sends me to a world that I loved so much, seek still despite the antiseptic jewel cases and online experiences that define music more appropriately today. This particular place grabs the scents of a thousand worlds, middle eastern, dust, heaven. We would do that. Then, we would have dinner downtown–my son’s choice–and walk down to the river. It was a perfect day.

For me.

You see, I had merely informed my son of the outing, not invited him. Because he no longer goes away with his sisters every other weekend, my entire life has been altered. I have not pursued my own life, so that I could attend to his. Not a small boy, but not a man, and with his challenges as I have duly noted in these pages, my son needed me, and I was there, by golly.

If you shudder as you think of what was happening here, you are not the only one. Somehow, images of me, old, living with an adult son who shuttles me around did enter into my mind. Yes, my son has bipolar disorder. Yes, he has challenges. Yes, he deserves his own life. And for that matter, I deserve mine. No, this protective stance, now, this brand of mothering/smothering is just not right.

It is fragile, I see, this line between caring and protecting. At twelve, my son was at his most vulnerable, his most depressed, his most lost. Shades drawn, he lay in bed for days, said he saw no point to life, and tried to hide from it. Wake up! Get well! Just act normal! And for all that, he could not, and I do not know why.

A lot of blame goes around when someone suffers from a mental illness. It seems so intentional, so controllable, that it just must be someone’s fault. For years we have tried to change environments, change food, change ourselves, change the rules. For years, we have struggled and disagreed and suffered and screamed and pointed fingers, and for years we prayed for help. In the end, the only thing we could do is simply to stop, breathe, and let it–this mental illness–be real. So, my son slept for nearly a year, prodded along, examined, and ultimately loved and cared for and eased back into life by people who understand him.

So, last night as I left the record store, drove past the exit for downtown Providence, north, toward home, I was mad. I was sad, self-pitying, and most of all, I was afraid. Things have been so much better, even with struggles. My son wants to be out more, to look nice, to do things. Life is not perfect, but my son wants more of it. This is so much more than he could do a year ago. So, here we were, lovely evening, about to enjoy life, damn it!

“Mom, no one goes out with their mom on a Saturday night!” Hmm… sounds strangely… normal. “Mom, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but I hate old records. I want my own friends.” Yes, it sounds like a teenager. “You can leave me at home. I’m not a baby.” Maybe he is right.

No, my oldest child is not a baby. He is bigger than I am now, and shows me computer games that he creates somehow, magically. I have no clue about gaming, 3D or otherwise, but he does, and I have to admit, I have come to love Mario. He tells me he wants to do this for a living, and sits with books of code, then comes to show me how he makes a car turn more sharply when its speed increases. Clever, and certainly not coming from me.

Somewhere north of Attleboro, I have calmed enough to listen to my son, and he tells me he wants to have a life, an apartment, a job when he grows up, but he worries that he will not be able. Secluded now, he fears the outside world will send him back to the depths he knew a year ago, and that the judgments will be as harsh as ones he has already known. At the same time, though, he is asking me to trust him.

Near Medway, I feel the night air as the sky turns to a purple glory, and my frustration returns. A beautiful night, gone, wasted. So many nights, so many fears, tears, worries, and here I am, here all alone with nothing of my own to show for it. Sniff sniff. I am crying, and my son points out the moon. “Mom, you’re like that sky now, dark and sad, but we kids are like the moon that loves you. Look how beautiful the sky is.”

And with that, I see not a small child who needs me, but a young man who has a lot to give the world.

backroads

Dirt road mazes connect, wind around mostly unmarked through the fields and forests, over hills and alongside creeks, erasing at least one barrier paved between earth and us. Friday afternoons after kindergarten mornings were our times for dirt road exploration. Little ones loaded for naps, sandwiches in the basket and a thermos full of icy milk, we could take any assortment of paths, up the Creek Road, or over the Common and straight down the Wylie Hill Road, on and on, turning at each opportunity for adventure, field of wildflowers, bird, barn selling fresh eggs, getting lost and finding our way back home again. Idyllic, one quest for what we sought from Vermont in the beginning: that is what those back road adventures were.

The other quest, one that perhaps matters more, was for that home, a place of belonging, a community. Oh, it does not pay to be a loner in such a place, where a neighbor plows you out in a snowstorm, or a stranger pulls your car out of the ditch, again. Pies left on a kitchen counter, sharing the berries that we couldn’t finish, noticing the light left on and the door open. Neighbors do these favors anyway, but entering into the exchange, being able to give back is the real reward, and it grows.

It seems so far away, so dreamlike, so obliterating of the real difficulties, so impossible. And maybe it was. For this was a difficult life, not in the lack of cell phone service and high-speed internet, not in the necessity of lighting a fire to warm a house, but in the travel for so far just for the basic necessities, doctors, groceries, settling for what could be done there –not much–when settling was not an option for a child who could not wait. And then, the more obvious difficulty: Vermont was not my land, never had been, beautiful though it was. I could settle, try, but in the end, it did matter. Suburban girl, I left Vermont and surrendered to a familiar life that wasn’t so hard, but not without a wistful, wishful look back to a dirt road and a chilly day. Life changed, after all, and the suburbs, PTOs, book clubs have little room for the divorced mother among the married mothers and those other women’s husbands. Community, believing in our lives, I live now among the disenfranchised, the immigrants, the poor, and it is here I fit in, here, where we need community the most and seem the least capable of achieving it–if only because we feel ourselves as outsiders, not daring to unite, when fear is allowed to flourish.

Perhaps because of that, I look for that old life occasionally, in the Chronicle online, in the news from a neighbor. She is finally a grandmother; her son, who was my own son’s age when I first knew him, is now the new dad. News may tell of a neighbor in the hospital, and another dairy farm may sell off its cows. And still, the same man is always the fire chief; the same woman is still the town clerk. And in a month or so, they will count the ballots by hand in that little village where I lived, full of dirt roads, full of hard work and hope… and sometimes fear.

This particular election has sent me thinking back to those back roads, the deer stands, the land and what it represents. I come from the Midwest, know the Wild West, had my babies in the wild Northeast Kingdom, and know cities here and afar. The ideals, the vision of what my country is and should be, come to me through these glimpses, sometimes good, sometimes bad. In the end, I wonder about the people of all these individual places, and what they want, whom they want, and most of all, who they are. And if we know this, know ourselves, what is it that truly unites all the hodgepodge of people in this nation?

In recent weeks, it seems that this question of representation has been simplified too often to one of superficial common bonds, rather than the heart and character that is the best of who we are. Does representation mean that someone looks like us, walks like us, talks like us? …or do we choose our president by what he inspires us to be? Will that person lead with the integrity that makes us great? What…whom will a president care about, and how will that person act when action is called for? If not as we would, will it be in a way that we can respect? Who will help that president? Who will respect that person, here and abroad?–because God knows our next president will need help, and he needs our trust.

It seems right now that our roads now are mostly not unpaved, but sometimes cracked, in need of repair, rebuilding, or perhaps entirely new ways of finding our way, and uniting our states and people–all of our people–once again.

simplicity

Salt of the earth, it enhances the nuances of flavor, like turning the bass a little higher to feel the rhythm, like cold raindrops on a chilly morning. You, im Voraus, verlorner Geliebter, in my bed.

The night was chilly, not cold, and the oil expensive. A comforter would do then, and you, the luxury of you wrapped around me, then beside me with your hand low on my back, my hair tangled, sheets tangled, legs tangled, then drawn in to roll into a sleepy embrace. Objects appeared one by one: the lamp on the nightstand, the vase on top of the cabinet, books—first shapes, then words themselves—on the shelves, clothes of vague colors on the floor. The light stayed low. Early, too early, we said, and fell back into a sigh and sleep, attempted, never recovered though with senses awakened by that early morning fog, dew, finally yielding to steady rain and a tight pull in my belly as I felt your hot breath soft on my neck.

I long for this, long for the love that holds this warmth, this vulnerable privacy. I long for coffee in bathrobes, company, bathrobes dropped at the shower’s steam promise of hot water shared, hair wet, kisses more urgent as the wanting becomes violent, and that mist again against the dark morning. You, flowing, ebbing, in the rhythm of a quiet day, you rolling in, out, never ceasing, always returning, always departing, but differently. You, your treasures, scents, sweat, traces of you, presented in lingering moments ever nearer. You, treasures purloined, perfume, notes in pockets remaining as your last finger lets go of mine. You run, late, giving in to the day, the door slamming shut behind you. I should, too, but no, not yet. I stay longer, soak in the warmth of a moment. You, whoever you are, wherever you are, wherever you go, whenever you come home again, you, I long for you.