A Farewell To My Father

Yesterday, my dad asked his beloved wife Lee to help him find his passport and then get him to the airport. He had a trip to make. Lee assured him she would. The thing is, she won't. 

My father had a stroke on April 11.

He spends his days in the advanced stages of dementia.

My father is dying.

Those words are not easy to write. When I think of them--which I do, about 247 times a day--I feel guilty. Sad. Powerless. He is my father; during the best parts of our relationship, he was my dad. Now, he is an 81-year-old man who cannot do anything for himself...who survived emergency brain surgery only to barely escape falling victim to heart attack and then was left too ravaged to fight off pneumonia. He has lost 45 pounds in five weeks. He doesn't want to eat. He hardly wakens, and he will never again do those things which brought him happiness--read a book, watch a sporting event on TV, linger over coffee with Lee. He will not survive. He will not. He will. He.

Like the words of my sentence above, Dad is just fading away, moment by moment. He gives us false hope, because every now and then, he says something that allows us to believe he could not possibly have dementia. Although weakened, he continues to try to make jokes with his caregivers. It is clear he resents their presence yet values their assistance. He does not want to be where he is, but he seems to understand that his journey on this earth is nearly complete. And to finish it, he must leave us behind. It is the eternal cycle of every parent-child relationship: Raise your child well, and he will leave you. Eventually, unless the the Universe has an alternate, twisted plan, you will one day have to leave your child. And all the preparation in the world will not make this event less vicious. It will not make you stoic. It will not bring you grace.

This saying goodbye again as I watch my dad disappear before my very eyes forces me to admit that this is all there is and all there ever will be. The good and bad, the highs and lows, the things that might have been and those that never should...these snapshots of my yesteryears fill my waking moments and waken me from those I should spend sleeping. Ours was not an easy relationship. In recent years, he expressed regret at how he chose to parent me and my brother and sister. He admitted to not being as involved as he could have been, to not being strong when strength is what our family needed. He hated his cowardice, how he ran away from us--three times, when all was said and done--and left us in the care of Mom, whose sanity was unstable at best and who, though she loved us fiercely, could not be relied upon to put a child's needs ahead of her own madness.

Dad lived with his demons, and throughout my childhood, he drank to forget them. His abuse of his children was thinly disguised anger and frustration over his own futility in our family dynamic. Such abuse--be it physical or emotional--is a hallmark of living with a person whose power is rooted in maniacal manipulation; how does one reason with insanity? It cannot be done. As children of this dysfunction, my siblings and I needed Dad to be a hero, the proverbial white knight on a fiery steed. What we got instead was a mere mortal who could neither defy or defend, who was wholly incapable of stepping past his own reflection to recognize that his babies were just as fearful and frustrated as he. Dad was not equipped for a life with Mom, and that fact seemed to trump anything we kids could possibly need.

I held it against him for years, this selfish attempt at self- preservation. Yet as I grew older and (hopefully) wiser, I softened in my stance. I spent a few years living alone with Mom. They were the most mentally challenging, frightening years of my young life. I eventually married and had children of my own, and as I traded in the role of child for parent, I couldn't help but see my Dad through new eyes. The upshot of this broader perspective resulted in a deeper disgust at how he put his own desires and needs not only ahead of ours but in place of ours, but also in a more forgiving attitude toward his inability to figure out how to make it all work. Somewhere in my early 40s I came to understand that there was no right response to his (our) predicament. There was wrong and more wrong, and no one is going to come of a situation like that in a favorable light. I chose to believe that Dad did the best he knew how to do with a heinously bankrupt situation. Making this choice allowed me to experience hurt and sadness every time he chose not to reach out to my children--his grandchildren--and build meaningful relationships without letting those emotions consume me.

Because of my ability to accept Dad on his terms and not expect more than I knew he would ever give, we shared a stable relationship over the last decade. I gave up on the idea that he might offer to babysit my kids for a day or night so that I could have some time to myself. I didn't count on him to send his grandchildren birthday cards, or to establish a relationship with them outside the 2-3 times a year he saw them, though we lived just over an hour's drive from each other. I put no pressure on him, asked for nothing, and that seemed to be the ticket.

And so as my dad lay dying, the life literally seeping from him one pound at a time, I choose to remember that it was he who attended my basketball games and tennis matches when Mom insisted that girls had no business playing sports. It was Dad who played games with me, and patiently waited while I added up my own Yahtzee scores so that I got practice with math functions. It was he who played Scrabble with me and challenged me to spell multisyllabic words, even before I was ten years old. He was a brutal opponent and never let me off the hook. It was Dad who valued language, who instilled in me a love of word play and appreciation of the power of words to move people to be better than they were even a moment ago. It was Dad who tucked me in at night and had me believing that my stuffed animals managed to climb and perch themselves all over my bedroom when I was busy during the day.

Because of my father, I know that no one is all good or all bad. In literary terms, there are no flat characters. We are all multi-dimensional, with the ability to both crush and nurture, wound and heal, destroy and inspire. I know Dad wishes he had, along his path, made better choices, thought less of himself and more about the world around him. I know he realizes that regret is forever, even if life is not. And I know he loves me as best he knows how, and that I return that love, hard-earned as it has been.

For now, though, all I can do is wish him safe travels, for he has a trip to make.

So This is Maine

I write this sitting on the sofa in what we call the "main room" while listening to Seals & Crofts. To my left is a fireplace, where a fire is roaring. To my right, on the floor, lies Kya, our beloved pit bull-lab; she is keeping my feet warm with her massive body. The view from where I sit is noteworthy: Rain is coming down in sheets, sometimes sideways, other times, all whirly and swooshy. The leaves on the trees that line our side of the inlet are red and orange, gold and green. The leaves on the other side of the water are still green.Wind keeps the scenery ever-shifting as trees sway and the water current swiftly churns. The tide will come in later today, as it always does, and the water line will be higher than usual.

I love being here.

The kids and I have lived here now for six weeks. We are still transitioning, and probably will be for quite some time. We've already had sleepovers, and we are learning shortcuts to the places we like to go. Tuck has found fellow musicians with whom he plays, and he has his first gig this coming Saturday in Portsmouth, NH. The girls and I have already stormed the public library, which is housed in two old buildings across the street from each other. I laughed when I realized that, instead of moving into one new, bigger building, it just adapted to the space it already had and made do. And you know what? It's exactly as it ought to be. Bella thinks the older building should have a ghost who haunts the top floor, where the young adult books are shelved. I agree; it's just that kind of place.

School has arguably been the most difficult transition for the kids to handle. Tuck went from a high school of 1200 students to one of 280. Within the first week, he knew basically everyone, and boy, did everyone know him. And somehow, before the week was out, kids at the middle school knew Tavia was Tuck's sister, though they don't even share a last name and the schools are not geographically close to one another. Word travels quickly in a small town, and though I had warned the kids that they would be looked upon as minor celebrities (I've been down this road myself, in high school) for at least a while, I don't think they believed me. Now that girls are after Tavia so that they can get to Tuck, I think my kids are getting the picture.

Tavi and Bella go to the same school, grades 4-8, student population of around 350 or so. They're already taking NECAPS (pronounced kneecaps), the Maine equivalent of CSAPs. Why they're taken so early in the school year, I don't know. And I've been asked by Bella's writing teacher to come in and make a presentation to the class about the importance of editing, much like I did at Skyview in Windsor. Looks like I will be teaching a creative writing class, too, for 6-8th graders during what they call CREW time, which is the same as a study hall. Academically, the school is decent. Athletically, not so much. Tavi dropped out of cross country because she felt it wasn't coached very well or effectively. Tried to sign up for soccer then, but it was too late. She's considering trying out for basketball now.

As small as we are here in Kittery Point, the kids have found things to occupy their time. Tuck continues with his music and has begun giving me guitar lessons (woo hoo!). How fortuitous is this: Two houses away from ours lives the owner of the York Harbor Inn, a restaurant and lounge. In his basement is a 16-track recording studio, and he gave Tuck an open invitation to take advantage of it whenever he wants. And the lounge has open mic night every Thursday beginning in November. My boy is heading down to Boston this weekend for his first concert at the House of Blues. Has another one to attend on Tuesday. He'll take the bus there and back. I like that he's broadening his autonomy while learning his way around a new city, doing something he loves to do. Life could be worse than being 15 and having the freedom to explore, maybe get lost, find his way, and return home to the comfort of his own family.

Tavi is enrolled in two dance classes at the dance academy in Portsmouth. She says they're hard-core and that she's learning a lot. She's considering auditioning for the school's honor choir, which joins other regional honor choirs to form one big group, and then they perform all over the place. She has also joined the school's yearbook staff. Come spring, she wants to audition for the regional theater troupe. Tavia? Drama? Really?

We arrived too late for Bella to sign up for the traveling soccer league (there weren't enough participants to have a local rec team), but she plans to sign up in the spring. She will begin violin lessons soon, as next week we make a trip into New Hampshire to fit her with a violin rental. Her interest in writing continues to develop, and she has joined the school's newspaper staff as a reporter.

As for me, I spent the first three weeks meeting just about every repairman in the area. Seriously, there were so many things that needed to be fixed in this house, I felt like Shelly Long in that movie "The Money Pit." I opened the mailbox and the door fell off. Rick flushed the toilet and nothing happened. The steam shower didn't steam, and the fireplace didn't light. To fix one thing sometimes meant damaging something else, so then that something else had to be fixed. It was unceasing. When things finally settled, I had deadlines, so that was two weeks of little else but work, and the last files for a book I'm writing were turned in this week. So here I am. 

There are many things to appreciate about my life here in rural Maine. Living on the ocean suits me well. I love to head down to our dock when the tide is coming in and the sun is shining and just...be. The water, the geese, the gentle sounds of the trees, the tugboats in the harbor, the scent...altogether, it offers a sense of solitude I find at once comforting and exhilarating. I appreciate the warm welcome my family has received--at Open House at the high school, several folks came up to me (admittedly, after staring at me for a while), shook my hand, and introduced themselves by telling me which house they lived in ("I live in the red house," "I'm in the yellow house next door," etc). I love how everyone here on our little hill has dogs, and no one cares if your dog visits them. So Kya and Scout have lots of friends, and it's kind of a canine free-for-all. I dig the weather. When it rains, it really rains. We've even already had flash floods and power outages (but seriously, what is this, compared to a tornado?). And when the sun shines, it reflects off the water with a brilliance that takes my breath away. Gratitude. It fills me with gratitude.

Other things, I'll have to get used to. I know many people well enough to say hello, but I don't have any real friends here (I know: it's been only 6 weeks). I miss my friends in Windsor more than words can express. I miss the connection, the being known and knowing them. It feels like so much work to start a new friendship at this stage of my life. Someone is going to really have to be something special for me to invest in. I'm not as generous with my time as I once was. On a more shallow note, I miss authentic Mexican food and melon margaritas from Guadalajara (the restaurant). I miss the convenience of being five minutes from the grocery store. Sidewalks. There are no continuous sidewalks here, and the roads are so narrow that you could high-five someone in a passing car without having to fully extend your arm. I'm not kidding.

So like all periods of transition and change, this one unravels one moment, one event at a time. The kids and I aren't always alone, as Rick comes in every other weekend, sometimes more often. His visits with us in Colorado were noteworthy because they were sporadic; the dynamic of the family would shift, even if only slightly. Now, though, he just seamlessly fits in...life continues as it does during the week, only now we have one more person to talk to, laugh with, consider. His presence is a great support for me on so many levels. His thoughtful input, his willingness to treat my kids as his own, his easy rapport with them...these are the things I've come to cherish. 

And for myself, this feeling of being truly seen unleashes in me a veritable tidal wave of emotion I didn't know I possessed. It owns me, and I willingly give myself to it. Because in this life, I have developed a strength borne of necessity, of the desire to survive and thrive. It is an unyielding strength, and I have relied upon it for as long as I can remember. But the strength Rick encourages in me is flexible. It builds on a sense of communion, of togetherness, of trust. The glory of it brings me to my knees, and it's just one more thing I add to my ever-growing list of things for which I am grateful.

So. This is Maine.

So I Wrote This Book...

In April of 2009, I was contacted via email by a guy named Travis Thompson. Travis had a story to tell. A BIG story. A loooooong story. A fascinating story, really, about a Mormon kid who made good despite having an extermination order on his head, witnessing his uncle's violent death, surviving the death of his own beloved 5-year-old daughter, and experiencing the inherently risky life of a 19th-century adventurer on the American frontier.

This pioneer's name was Perry A. Burgess, and if you're at all familiar with Steamboat Springs, you've heard of him, or at least his last name. It permeates that town. Maybe you've ridden his ski lift, or attended gatherings in one of his meeting rooms. Perhaps you've visited the Tread of Pioneers museum (which just happens to sit on the site that was once his backyard) or strolled along Burgess Promenade, which enjoys views of Burgess Creek. Seriously. The dude is everywhere.

So Travis asks me if I'd be interested in writing Perry's story. Only a fool would have declined that offer, and come August, Travis and his wife Becky were seated at my kitchen table, along with--literally--a suitcase of research and books and pamphlets and photos and well, stuff.

Initially, Travis tried to write Perry's story himself. He got to page 25 and realized this was not an undertaking for a novice. Travis is a whiz-bang IT guy; he is a technical systems god. Which makes him intelligent. Which allowed him to realize that he needed a professional writer. That he chose me was sheer luck. But when he and Becky arrived at the house, I greeted them believing the information he had shared with me already in an email: He had written those 25 pages and figured he needed another 50 or so.

Yeah, right.

After a couple hours pass and Travis is exuberantly explaining all the tangents of Perry's life story (Travis could not sit; he stood and paced, sat and fidgeted), it dawns on me that this will most definitely not be a 75-page manuscript. And boy, was I spot-on with that prophecy. The final book, published in late October 2010, was 540 pages.

Yes, that's right: 540 pages.

Beyond the Land of Gold: The Life & Times of Perry A. Burgess took more than a year of my life to research and write. Travis would send me outlines of what he thought each chapter might look like. Now, I use the term "outlines" loosely, because in my book, an outline is just that: a vague guideline. Travis's outlines were sometimes 13 typed pages long, single-spaced. I'm not kidding.

Both of us were learning as we went along. I don't think Travis had any idea how this book would take over his life, and I had to learn how to write using a process far different from the one I used to write any of my previously published books. I guess, at the end of the day, Travis and I weren't just developing a book; we were building a relationship.

Creating a book or building a relationship...either is a monumental endeavor. Try doing both simultaneously. Oh, and I should mention that while this was going on, I was extricating myself from a 12-year relationship with my daughters' dad. It was not a smooth ending. Toss into the mix the reappearance of a high school boyfriend who, 28 years later, was even more intriguing and wonderful than he was at age 16, and you can imagine the emotional rollercoaster I was riding. And there's the fact that I watched as my first-born child graduated high school, went off to college, and turned 18 (in that order); it was almost more than I could bear. All the while, my focus was on keeping life as drama-free as possible for my 3 kids who remained at home. It was no easy task. Most days, I felt hugely inadequate in one way or another.

All things considered, 2010 was both one of the worst and the absolute best of my 46 years. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Because I am immensely proud of Beyond the Land of Gold. Just last night, we found out that it is a finalist in the 2011 Colorado Independent Publishers Association Evvy & Technical Awards. They haven't yet announced the finalists for the content/editorial awards in Biography, Memoir, or History (all of which we entered), but the book has made it to the final round in Cover Design, Illustration, and Printing. I am honored, and await word on the finalist selection for the other 3 categories.

Since last fall, I've traveled to Boulder, Steamboat Springs and Craig, where Travis and I made presentations about the book...our audiences were gracious and enthusiastic. We've had book signings in Denver and Cheyenne, and have another planned for May in Longmont. Beyond the Land of Gold is carried by the Tattered Cover bookstore, and believe me, that's not an easy venue to get into for lesser-known writers or publishers. We're hoping to travel this summer--Utah, Montana--to further promote the Mormon and gold rush aspects of the book. In short, the book has allowed me to broaden my horizons as a professional, to visit places I might otherwise never see, meet people I wouldn't otherwise get to know.

But it has also enriched my personal life. I've gotten to know Travis and Becky Thompson, two wonderful people who recognized the value in what they had and have taken great pains to bring Perry's story to light. While it was me who put the pieces together to provide a comprehensive and clear picture, it was the Thompsons' relentless pursuit of information that made the writing possible. They put more than 10 years of their lives into this story. That's impressive. And the resulting book provides a heretofore missing piece of American Frontier history. To have made 2 new friends on the road to publishing a book? Priceless.

I remain vigilant in my dedication to creating a stable and secure home for my children. There have been some bumps in the road, but nothing we haven't been able to steer around or just completely jump over. I'm one of those lucky moms who has kids who know they will be just fine no matter where they land. I do have two teenagers in the house, however, so...well, I am often outwitted and always outnumbered. I am one tough cookie, though, and I will survive.

As for the high school boyfriend, well, let's just say I love being older and wiser. I love that he never let go of the idea of me. And I love him.

So yeah. I wrote a book.

(To learn more about the book or to purchase a copy, please visit www.burgessdiary.com.)

Just How Similar Are We?

Writers write for different reasons. Most of us, if pressed for an answer, will say we can't not write. It's like exhaling; we must do it.

I write to make sense of my world. I've been writing since I was a young girl, when it became clear to me that there wasn't a lot of logic or predictability or even, sometimes, sanity, in my world. I wrote poetry and journal entries. As a tween, I suspected my mom was reading my diary, so I wrote a series of, shall we say, colorful entries regarding boys. Total fabrications, mind you, but it was the only surefire way I could tell if she was indeed invading my privacy. I came home from school one day to have my face slapped, hard. Yep. She was reading my diary.

At any rate, writing helps me think through both the tedious and the monumental. It allows me to cope, escape, confront. As an adult, I've written about my mother's struggle with mental illness, her death and my ensuing grief, the death of my son, the birth of my children, the raising of those children, my experience with divorce and late-in-life discovery of genuine, reciprocated love. I have also written about the more mundane: breastfeeding in public, children's carsickness, Spongebob Squarepants, politics, human nature...there is little I haven't covered.

I just finished reading a book about language and, because it is a cultural convention, we assume it reflects the culture in which we live. But there is a strong argument for the idea that individual languages actually shape the culture in which we live and how experience it. Because language and words are the tools of my trade, this idea fascinates me. It might not do much for you, though, so have no fear--that's not what this column is about. But the idea did get me thinking...

How much of our lives are based on the assumption that our experiences are shared? I don't mean shared in the sense that, say, when we go to a concert, there are a thousand other folks sharing that experience. I'm talking shared in that, what I see, you see. What I understand, you understand. How much of this sort of daily analysis is based on assumption?

For example, I was in my 30s before I realized I experience simple activities such as hearing music and tasting food in a way that is not considered "normal." I live with synesthesia, a condition in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by the perception of another. For example, I "hear" color. Every song has a color. Whether I'm merely listening to music or performing it on the piano or vocally, color accompanies every song. It's the same with food. All food has color to me; I literally "taste" color. Smells, too...each one presents itself to me in color.

Now, having not known that this is abnormal (estimate of synesthetes range from 1 in 200 to 1 in 10,000), and having experienced life in this way since I can remember, I naturally assumed everyone I knew shared this phenomenon. Then I had to research an article I was writing, and I came across this information and thought, "Holy shit! This is ME!" and that thought was immediately followed by absolute shock. So it's not normal to view life through the lens of an acid flashback? Your world is not psychedelic with colors like mine is?

I was left pondering the idea that all along, this world has shown itself to me in a way that is more vivid, more intense, than it is to most people. I got to wondering if this sensory issue was all-encompassing for me. I mean, if someone touches me, do I feel the same sensation as you do when someone touches you? I just always thought I was sensually vigilant. Turns out I am, instead, a scientific anomaly. Supposedly, this sensory crossfire is not supposed to be able to occur in the human brain. Huh.

This idea of assumptions then led me to contemplate our daily life experience. We humans assume so very much of others. How much of our miscommunication and misunderstanding is borne of the assumption that we share an experience and so must share the results of that experience? How many marriages and friendships have ended over the inherent (mis)understanding that the other person's response to any given situation(s) was wrong simply because it was not our understanding? A simple concept, but incredibly far-reaching.

I guess, at the end of the day, it comes down to judgment. When we judge, we analyze and determine the value or worth of any given act according to our own personal template. But wow. Those templates vary so greatly, yet we want--perhaps need--them to be one-size-fits-all.

Thing is, they aren't. And they never will be.