I am immensely sad to say that my good friend, to whom I wrote my fond letter earlier this week, did not have as much time left as I’d hoped.
I don’t believe that she had a chance to read what I wrote, but I hope that she knew those things without me telling her. I am so grateful to have been able to spend time with her this past week. Those hours will always be precious to me.
Dear E,
I don’t know where to begin, because I have so much to say.
You are an amazing person, and I don’t think I’ve told you how much I not only like you, but admire you. You have a strength and wit unmatched in my acquaintance. Even with all that’s going on in your life, you can still make me laugh. You still offer me support.
I’m sure you realize that it’s a testament to you how your family and friends are rallying around you. You strike me as someone who doesn’t like to ask for help, but there are so many who want to help. There are so many who love you.
Ever since I learned you were ill, I have been torn. I have wanted to spend more time with you, but I haven’t wanted to intrude. I don’t want to be a pest.
I can’t believe how long it’s been since our used bookstore romps and binges. Or since we went outlet shopping. Or even how long it’s been since we just went out for a movie or dinner together. I guess that’s one of the ways in which parenthood changes things. But now I find myself wishing we’d found more opportunities. More opportunities to at least hang out and do nothing.
I always like seeing you and your family. Your husband is one of the nicest people I know. (“One of the nicest?” you ask. Well, possibly the nicest. But I haven’t taken a full inventory and measured the niceness of everyone I know. I do know quite a few nice people. But I can’t think of a nicer person just now.) He is smart and funny and likable, just like you.
Your kids are cute and beautiful and impressively bright. I love how much H looks like you, and acts like you. And R is such a force of nature. Even when they are driving you crazy, they are still wonderful. I love to hear you talk about them. Because you are funny and clever, and yet your devotion to them shows.
You guys have been models for us in the parenting department. You’ve given such helpful advice when I’ve asked, though you’re not someone to foist unsolicited advice on others. (If you did, though, I expect it would be good advice.)
I love to talk with you about books and movies and music. You have such a wide range of tastes. You love great literature, but you still enjoy some cheesy sappiness.
I love that you don’t hold back when you don’t like something. You have a talent for cutting through the crap.
Another thing I admire about you is the way you have been happy with your life. While I know you have had hard times and that there are things that don’t go the way you’d like, you have not let those things dominate. I was always impressed to hear about how much you loved your jobs, for example. Not that I thought you had bad jobs, it’s just that so few people I know actually like their jobs. Most people I know are always trying to figure out what else they can do with their careers. Part of me thought that with your talents and intelligence, you could have some sort of higher profile career, or maybe something more directly creative. I could see you as a professor. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn you had Jane Austen-like writing talents.
I’ve wanted to tell you these things.
And then there’s something else. I know you sometimes read my blog. And I feel like the biggest dork in the world bringing this up. I have wanted to write about you, but I haven’t done so out of respect for your privacy. I write all sorts of silly stuff on my blog, as you have seen. I write about all sorts of random crap. Part of me feels like it’s tacky to write such light and silly stuff when people are going through such heavy and serious times. When you are going through such serious times. But I know that you like to be cheered. So I actually often think of you when I am getting silly. I hope you know that my pants have been for you. (Well, I will admit that I have learned to appreciate pants as much as squid. Which is another gift that you’ve given me. So the pants are for me, too. We can share the pants.)
And I have felt like an ass even worrying about what to write in my blog when you are going through some of the worst possible crap life can deal.
But there it is. I want to tell you these things, but I also want to share them. Because you have been in my thoughts so much that it feels like a lie to continue not to talk about you. And because I think you deserve to get some recognition. From me and whoever reads this, of how fabulous a person you are. I want to acknowledge how terrible this is, how grim things are in spite of how hard you’ve been fighting. I’d give you a medal if I could.
I’d say I can’t imagine what things must be like for you. But that’s not exactly true. I have been imagining. And my heart aches.
I’m scared for you. I’m angry that this is happening to you and your family. I want to do something to change things, but of course I can’t. And I’m sad, too, of course.
But I’m also happy that I get to have time with you. I’m so glad to know you.
So, there it is. I’ve said a bunch of stuff I’ve wanted to tell you, but haven’t managed to say in person. I have more things I could say, too. But I’ll stop here.
I hope that you won’t be offended that I’m writing this so publicly. If it bothers you, I will take it down. But in any case, you are required to forgive me. Because I selfishly can’t bear the thought of alienating you.
Much love,
Alejna
I hear, via Magpie, that tomorrow, Octber 3rd, is a grand holiday: The Great Mofo Delurk.
I have to say, I like getting comments. And I like celebrating made-up holidays. (Remind me that I should start making up holidays. I could design a whole line of greeting cards. Maybe I should declare some day to be “Make Up Your Own Holiday Day.”) Anyhow, we were talking about comments, weren’t we. Well, I like them. So do other people. So some folks have decided that people need a little bit of an extra nudge to leave some comments, at least this one day a year.
I plan to celebrate by leaving a few comments around on blogs where I tend to lurk. (Actually, first I plan to celebrate by getting up, engaging in some sorts of personal hygiene rituals, getting dressed, getting Phoebe dressed and off to daycare, doing some work, commuting, having a meeting, doing some more work, commuting again, and maybe having a festive holiday scone. Because I think every holiday needs a tradition of baked goods. And I don’t think scones are taken.) By the end of the day, I hope to work myself up to leaving at least a quick “hello” on a few blogs.
And I’d love it if you’d join me in this celebration. You could start right here, by leaving me a scone. Or a comment, since they are less likely to get crumbs on my laptop.
I know that it can be hard to come up with just the right comment to leave, so I thought I’d offer up a few possibilities for some quick-and-easy, down-and-dirty, alpha-and-numeric comments that are ready-to-wear. It’s easy to convey lots of meaning with just a few keystrokes. Just refer to the handy chart below.
| comment | translation |
| yo | Great post! |
| yoyo | You rock! |
| yoyoyo | You rock. Like someone in a rocking chair. Knitting socks. That don’t match. |
| oy | Your corniness pains me. Please stop. |
| oyo | This is meaningless |
| 3752 | I think you may have miscalculated |
| 555 | That color isn’t the most flattering for you. |
| 12 | I would like to sing you an aria. |
| 9 | This post was one of the most poignantly written, beautifully crafted, impassioned things I have read in many long years. I was moved. I cried. I wept. I did an interpretive dance. |
| pants | alejna, you are cracked |
| squid | this was a disturbing, but strangely compelling post |
| dude | all of the above |
I learned today that John’s friend, the one who was hit by a truck, is doing incredibly, amazingly, almost unbelievably better. Not only is he now out of intensive care, but he is back home. The last I’d heard he was going to be transferred to a rehab hospital, but it turns out that it was only for a few days. He still has much recovery to do, as his injuries were extensive. But, wow. Just wow. I am so relieved, and thrilled for him and his family.
In other much less weighty news, I am also relieved that a party is now behind me. Today was a friend’s bridal shower. A surprise bridal shower. And I was, somewhat unwillingly, one of the instigators. I am one of the bridesmaids, and it was my job to bring the bride to her shower on the pretense of going to a bridesmaid’s dress fitting. And I really don’t do deception well. I can hide things, I’m reasonably good at plotting and planning, and kind of enjoy making stuff up. But I have trouble lying to someone’s face. I’m a terrible poker player, at least when it comes to the poker face part. Then there’s the whole issue of fearing I’ll spoil the surprise. (I did spoil the surprise for a surprise party once, in college. A friend told me that I was invited to a birthday party that a mutual acquaintance was throwing for her girlfriend. He didn’t mention that it was a surprise party, dammit, and when I saw the birthday girl I said I’d see her that weekend, or something. When I realized she didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, I tried to cover it up, but the beans had been spillled. Spilled, I tell you. Damn beans. A word of advice to anyone inviting people to surprise party: specify that it is indeed a surprise party.) Anyhow, I did not blow the surprise this time. I feel that I am now one step closer to being qualified to become a criminal mastermind.
It’s true, you know. Even though I myself am a granola-eating, tree-hugging bleeding-heart liberal.
I like to say this is line as a bit of joke. Some of my best friends are Republican.
It reminds me that much as I try to fight bigotry, I still am susceptible myself. I have my own prejudices. Perhaps I nurture my bigotry against conservatives. But there are other subtle prejudices are more disturbing when I become aware of them, as they are bigotries that I actively fight. Religious intolerance. Racism. Classism. Even sexism. It’s good to remind myself that I am still a work in progress.
I also like to say it because it’s true. Some of my best friends are Republican. And I’m actually proud of this. Much as I disagree with their political views, these friendships are important to me. Both because I care about the individuals, and because I think it is productive to find the middle ground. And while the ground I’d like to reach eventually is far left of the middle, I can’t imagine us jumping right over as a society. I think we’ll get there by persistence and by hard work in lots of arenas. I think that part of the process is to keep the discourse productive, as it makes it easier for us to recognize the common ground.
Extremists on both ends of the spectrum are guilty of distorting the discourse. There is a tendency to over-generalize, throw blame, call names. To call all those on the other side of the fence stupid. Insane. Barbaric. Evil, even. Hell, I know I’m guilty of mucking things up when I get angry. (And there is a lot that I’m angry about.)
One of my closest friends is a conservative Republican. We’ve now been friends for about 20 years, startling as that seems to me. Even early in our friendship, back in high school before either of us was particularly interested in politics, we realized that we landed squarely on opposite sides of the political spectrum. The only times we fought were about political subjects. Education. Welfare. Taxes. Class. The death penalty. So-called family values. We discovered that political topics had to stay off limits if we were going to stay friends.
Over the years, we’ve talked about many things that brush up against the more directly political topics. Likewise with other friends and family members who lean far rightward into the spectrum.
I’ve learned that a person who can hold opposite political views, who would vote so differently from me, can also have many qualities that I value and respect. I’ve noted a high level tolerance and acceptance on a personal level, loyalty, kindness, and a complete lack of malice, even while supporting policies that I consider inhumane.
Being close friends with people with quite different political views has helped me to learn tolerance and a better understanding of those viewpoints. I’ve come to believe that our core values are not always so different, but that sometimes we differ in how we define them. For example, family is important to me. But my definition of family is perhaps only broader and more flexible than the traditional middle class American one.
And perhaps my friendship has also broadened the perspectives of my more conservative friends, and nourished their own tolerance. I know that at the very least they know that it is possible to sit down at the dinner table, share a laugh, and have a friendly conversation with someone whose political views are as unabashedly liberal commie pinko as mine.
I am feeling totally zonked. Wiped out. I had a good day at work today, but it was a long, long day. Yesterday was a long day, full of running around to appointments. Sunday was a fun day, but a long day. And Saturday was a long day, and really no fun at all. I’m feeling the stress of the past week catching up with me this evening.
Last Tuesday night we heard the news that a good friend of John’s was…and it seems hard to even write this…hit by a truck. He’s alive, but in critical condition. It seems his car broke down on the highway last Monday night, and he was hit by a tractor-trailer while standing outside his car. The full details aren’t known, as he hasn’t been conscious since then.
We’ve been thinking about him and his family a lot this past week, and eagerly awaiting updates. There’s been some improvement. But there are still many unknowns about how things will turn out.
To make it all more stressful, his wife is 8 months pregnant. I can hardly imagine what she is going through, to have her life turned upside-down like this while being hugely pregnant and getting ready for a new baby. They also have a 4-year-old. At least she has family close by. I feel like I should help, but they are 2 hours away, and I’m not sure how I could help. I will try to think of a way to help, especially once the baby is born. But tonight I just feel stretched so thin.
We drove down to the hospital Saturday, with Phoebe. John and another close friend were able to see their friend, though officially only immediate family members were allowed into the ICU.
This is the sort of thing that makes you think. I’ve been looking at those big tractor-trailers on the highway, and I find their size to be so threateningly large, their mass to be so very unequivocally solid. I’ve been thinking about how fragile we are, in our little breakable bodies.
And I’ve been thinking about how we need to make plans and provisions for Phoebe, that we still haven’t dealt with. A will. Life insurance. We need to talk about things that are not easy to talk about. Make provisions for things we’d rather not think about.
It’s one of those times when I feel like I can’t possibly be old enough to be a responsible adult.
It is imperative that I produce a pants post, pronto. I’ve had a request from a pants enthusiast for some fresh pants. And I’ve been rummaging through my pants pile, and coming up time and time again without the right pants. I thought I’d hit bottom. What could possibly top the pants I previously posted?
Just in the nick of time, my friend jenny sent me a link to a dramatic pants saga, a tale in which a young woman urgently cries out to the universe:
“Have you seen my pants?”
Read all about it. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll hold your pants close.
As I have quickly risen to the highest echelons of the pants-writing set, it is my responsibility to divulge breakthroughs in my ongoing pants research whenever possible. So I would be remiss if I did not share with you (with her permission) the following excerpt from an email sent by my lovely friend Elizabeth, without whom I could not have reached these great pants heights. (You see, it is Elizabeth who first introduced me to the inherent funniness of the word pants.)
Oh, and this morning I was innocently washing my hair when I noticed that my shampoo bottle had a trivia question on it: Who do people say they talk to the most? And then it said the answer was on the conditioner bottle. I grabbed the conditioner bottle and the answer was….PANTS. I kid you not. As it turns out, I bought the green shampoo and the purple conditioner and even though they’re the same brand, they’re not the same type, so they have different questions and answers. So I’ve spent most of this morning trying to figure out what the answer to the question is (I would guess spouse/partner, Evan thinks it’s themselves) and what the question could possibly be that’s answered by the word pants. It’s all I can do not to drive to CVS and check out the green conditioner and purple shampoo. I think it’s cruel that hair product manufacturers would do this. I mean, don’t most people take showers in the morning, when they’re not at their sharpest mentally?
Anyway, thought you’d appreciate the random appearance of pants in my life.
–Elizabeth
In the interests of pants research, I aks for your help. Please consider some possible questions which might be answered with “pants”, and share them with the greater pants community.
May the pants be with you.
collecting tokens 