Snide Reply

Category: Blogging

  • Like this post if you’re like me

    Every morning, my ankle hurts. Just a little, in a spot that makes it obvious I’ve got arthritis. I’ve got the same thing going on with my wrist. I get up, though, and get moving. By the time I’ve had my second cup of tea, the pain is gone.

    My teeth are a mess, I have hot flashes, my kids are both in double digits and old enough to know when I’m full of shit. In other words, I’m getting old.

    With such abundant evidence in my real world, I don’t need it in my virtual world. But every time I get on Facebook, I see another of those dumb ass memes of some antiquated crap I’m supposed to “like” if I remember what the hell it’s for.

    I remember what they’re for. The ice cube tray made out of aluminum with the lever you pulled that broke the cubes loose, while also breaking half the cubes? I remember that. It was common before we knew that aluminum consumption contributes to Alzheimer’s. I like my ice maker ‘though I’m pretty sure we’ll discover the plastic parts it’s made of cause erectile dysfunction.

    I remember flash cubes, Captain Kangaroo, Mister Ed, and cassette tapes. I know what the relationship is between the cassette tape and a pencil.

    I am not going to “like” any of these things.

    See, I remember them and some of them even fondly. But my brain still works  the way it’s supposed to work. I can still learn new things. I can still challenge myself. I can still be part of the world evolving around me.

    My dad can’t. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say his brain is clogged with knots of protein. His cognitive function is so impaired he makes things up. He’s paranoid. He can’t remember my mother is dead, so he confuses other people with my mom and insists she’s ignoring him. I have had to tell him she’s dead three times in the last month.

    So, I won’t be “liking” anything from my childhood. It’s not that I don’t smile when I remember them, but when I’m 80, I’d like to have someone post a picture of Katy Perry that I can “like.” Maybe I’ll do it when I come in from a run.

  • Head of the Class

    Image: Designtechtonics.biz

    Not too long ago, in my newspaper column, I wrote about my son’s friends being given cars by their parents. I had heard that kids with cars—and I don’t mean Power Wheels—was pretty common here, but didn’t really believe it until one newly minted driver after another was given a car. And we’re not talking old cars in funky colors, like the mustard yellow Pinto that was my first car. Two of my son’s friends were given new Priuses. Or is it Prii?

    I wrote that no kid should be given a car, especially a kid who just learned how to drive. Let that kid buy a car and he’d appreciate it, care for it, drive it with caution, fill it with gas using his own money. Until he could do that, I wrote, my son would be asking to borrow the family car. I mentioned that we can’t afford to buy our son any car, but even if we could, there’s no way in hell that we would.

    I was accused of having class envy. You need to understand where I live to fully appreciate this accusation. Money magazine has named Naperville one of the 10 best places in America to raise children—more than once! There are a lot of reasons to like Naperville: good schools, nice houses, lovely downtown near the historic district. A river even runs through it.

    In Naperville, you could live here.

    With all that good publicity from Money magazine, lots of people moved here in the past 20 years or so. So, you’ve got the old timers who mostly live in the old neighborhoods. Back when I was a kid, houses in those neighborhoods were very affordable for a young family; my own family almost moved there. If you moved here in the good old days, your $25,000 house is probably worth more than $500,000 now. Wealthier people have moved here and built even more expensive houses. And less wealthy people started moving here when builders started turning farmland into subdivisions; I live in one of those. Today, we even have town houses, condos and (gasp) apartments.

    Or you could live here.
    Or here.

    What started as a pretty nice small (white) town has become a city of more than 140,000 people replete with every race, religion and socio-economic grouping. We even have a prostitution ring and a heroin problem.

    In that context, I understand the anxiety that pushed an obviously wealthy long-time resident to think that when I said “ there is no way I’m giving my son 24/7 access to something that is a proven killer, particularly of boys” what I actually meant is “rich people suck.”

    I don’t think rich people suck—well, not all of them. There are rich people that suck and poor people that suck. I’m equal opportunity when it comes to thinking someone sucks. So, me with class envy? Nah.

    I have had several other types of envy. Like kid envy. There are children who make their beds every morning, get their own breakfast and go happily to school. There are children who join in school activities, practice their music lessons, do their homework and help around the house. There are children who respect their parents, walk the dog, get good grades and brush their teeth. These are not my children.

    Frequently, I find myself wishing that my son were more involved in activities at school, such as anything. And I would love for my daughter’s room to not look like Lord Voldemort could hide in it. But, then I wouldn’t have a son who calls me on his cell phone and says, “Hey, Mom. I’m sitting on a couch on the corner of Sanctuary and Lowell.” When I drive to said corner, I do indeed find my son sitting on a discarded sofa, kicking back like a football fan on a Sunday afternoon.

    I have had penis envy, too. When I worked in public relations, I made a fairly decent salary. We bought our first house on it. But, if I had a penis, I would have made $25,000 more. That would have also made us a gay couple, but we’re ok with that. Hell, we adopted our second child and lived in Oak Park for a while.

    Do I even need to mention shoe envy? Massive quantities of shoe envy here. My sister and her daughter have truly gorgeous shoes and they wear the same size, doubling the number of shoes available to each of them. Not fair, right? When my husband finally got his PR business off the ground, I could buy truly gorgeous shoes, too. I paid lots of money for some pairs. I still swoon over the Italian ones made completely of leather. Does that mean I envy myself my shoes? I think it might.

    I certainly envy my daughter’s shoes. She has narrow feet. With a lot of obese children in the US, they make cheap shoes really wide these days. So, the Empress—I mean, my daughter—can only shop at the pricey children’s shoe store in town, or Nordstrom.

    But the envy I’m most likely to suffer is Writer’s Envy. Like most writers, I read a lot. I read all kinds of things, from crappy fantasy to classic literature. And when I find truly good writing, I want to crawl in a hole and never touch my computer keyboard again. I feel like Mike Myers and Dana Carvey meeting Aerosmith in Wayne’s World. “I am not worthy,” I think, “I am not worthy.”

    Being bipolar actually has its benefits in dealing with Writer’s Envy. Reading something truly fabulous will send me into a tailspin. But all I have to do is wait for the next mania train to pull into the station and I’ve got myself convinced I can write a bestseller . . .in a month . . .while still working . . .and raising my kids. You jealous yet?

  • Would you go back, Jack, and do it again?

    If Lincoln hadn’t gone to the theater, he would have been run over by a carriage. Or he would have had a heart attack. Or he might have fallen down the White House staircase and broken his neck. Or something like that.

    My husband, a historian, hates speculative chat about history. What difference does it make what might have happened if Lincoln hadn’t gone to the theater? Lincoln went to the theater; he was assassinated. There are no do-overs. Write it in the book and move on.

    But, I want a do-over. Actually, I want more than one do-over; I want a lot of do-overs. As my daughter might say, even, I want a lot, a lot, a lot of do-overs.

    I’d use a bunch of them this morning. First, I’d do-over my dental situation. I’ve got dental dominoes going on in my mouth. My front crown fell out recently, bringing down with it a whole range of dental woes, from yellowing to molar rot.

    One of the indignities of aging that rarely gets mentioned is teeth. You hear about hot flashes, back pains, creaking joints, heart attacks, weight gain, gray hair, sagging chins, drooping butts. But no one ever told me that I’d be sitting at my computer, flossing while catching up on blog reading, and my tooth would fall out. Just fall out and plink right onto my laptop.

    Certain dental work can be delayed, like repairing molars. Heck, I figured, I’ve got more than one and it’s not like I’m eating caramels every day. Filling the 22 cavities in my 9-year-old daughter’s mouth seemed far more pressing a year ago. So, my molars waited. But a crown. . . now that can’t wait.

    A crown can be a lovely thing and mine served me well. Beneath the crown, though, is a stump that looks like something cooked up by a British Hillbilly dentist on crack. Money be damned, I could not—would not—go around looking like Austin Powers.

    Replacing the crown is going to be far more involved than I suspected. First, the surrounding teeth need to be bleached because I’ve spent years drinking coffee, tea, cola and all the other things that keep me awake for the glory that is my life. Apparently, they don’t make crowns in the yellowish ivory hue my teeth have taken on. So, bleach. Which leads to bleach trays. Which leads to this morning’s appointment.

    Preparing for the dentist required blow-drying my hair. My hair, which I affectionately refer to as “frog fur,” is fine. And flat. So, I bend over and dry it from the roots believing that this will magically make my hair fuller. I bent over, began drying and then screamed with pain as my back fell apart, perhaps in sympathy with my tooth. When the pain subsided, I stood up and decided that a half-head of volume was better than no volume at all.

    With my half-full head and broken back, I hobbled to the hall closet for my purse. No purse. Everywhere in the house? No purse. So much no purse that I decided my purse must have shrunken and was now so small that my dog ate it. Then I decided my children were no longer content to drive me crazy figuratively and had invented a new game: Gaslighting Mommy, which involves hiding things Mommy frequently needs, like glasses, car keys and her wallet. I called around. No purse at Whole Foods. No purse with husband at his office, as if he suddenly decided he needed a lavender and white man-bag. No purse in my son’s or daughter’s rooms, though I was too afraid to move anything for fear something frightening might be under them.

    So, I called the dentist to reschedule my appointment. Then I found the purse. In the garage. I know how it got there; I’m not telling.

    Then the dentist called. They were worried about me. I decided it was nicer to have someone worry about me than to point out that they wouldn’t have been worried if they were checking their messages. We rescheduled.

    Finally, all the drama seeped out of the morning and I got over wanting a do-over. I decided the newly discovered down time would be well spent at the library.

    I wakened the teenager. We drove to the library. On the way, I rear-ended a Jetta.

     

    Have you ever wanted a do-over? What would you use it on?

    PS. I attempted to download a photo of a lovely woman with terrible teeth to accompany this post. My computer crashed three times.

  • Chicago Style? Not Dog!

    My son likes to think that being born in Chicago at Prentice Hospital for Women makes him a city boy. Never mind that he spent fewer than 24 hours outside of my womb in said hospital. He thinks he’s a city boy and really shines the closer he gets to concrete and smog. So, yesterday we escaped our tract house on the prairie and went into Chicago for lunch. Along for the ride were my nephew, visiting from New York, and a friend of my son’s.

    We’re a burger eating bunch and, all pizza aside, Chicago is a great town for a burger. I took a peek at the Chicago Burger Bible website and selected The Lock Down Bar and Grill in Ukrainian Village for our Summer Burger Adventure. I’d never been to Ukrainian Village, though my niece recently moved there. The Lock Down reports showing a different live rock concert video every day and the Burger Bible puts their burgers among the top 10 in the city. It’s a pretty freaking big city, so it’s gotta be a pretty freaking good burger, I thought.

    I was right. The burgers are good and they are big! This is not a restaurant review so I didn’t pay much attention to the names of things. I did take pictures before we decimated our meals. Everyone liked their food, but only one of us finished: the quiet, shy guy from the ‘burbs. It was fun to watch my son and nephew, both guitar players, try to name the music playing inside the bar.

    Dill Pickle Chips…deep-fried slices of pickle, not potato chips that taste like dill pickles. Tasty, but a little goes a long way.
    This is “The Bootleg” burger with bacon, kimchi and a fried egg. Reportedly a little on the salty side.

    The weather was great—beautiful blue sky and not too hot with a cool (lake?) breeze. The location was perfect—far enough off a busy street to be able to chat but not so far we lost the urban vibe. The company was stellar—people I love who I rarely get to just sit and hang with.

    This one’s not on the website menu. Onion rings stacked high over a pile of Gorgonzola. Definitely not edible without a flip-top mouth.
    For the petite appetite. You can get these babies plain if you’re a kid, otherwise they come in a “flavor of the week.”

    My idea of a perfect summer moment. What’s yours?

    A rare glimpse behind the scenes at Snide Reply. That’s me in the middle.  My nephew, a future Oscar-winning animator, is on my left. Click on his link in the first paragraph to see his work, then hire him. The Viking Lord on the right is my son.

  • And a Happy Monday to you, too!

    Sell childhood home? Check! Mother of all meltdowns from daughter?Check! Smash thumb in door? Check! Lose column-writing gig? Check!

    Today, I found out my column is being cut from the Naperville Patch. So, this might be the last.

    http://naperville.patch.com/articles/handling-the-heat-when-it-s-too-hot-to-handle

    Any ideas on what I should publish on Mondays from now on? Parenting tips? Rants? Recipes? Funny things my son says, which would have to be heavily redacted?

    Janice

  • Spare the rod? Spare me!

    Yesterday, I wrote in my newspaper column about spanking and the fact that it, quite literally, can drive your kids crazy. Well, I stirred a little nest, I guess. I’ve been berated for humiliating my children and been informed the spanking can be appropriate. What do you think?

    http://naperville.patch.com/articles/the-bare-truth-about-spanking-it-affects-mental-health

  • C? Si! 100 posts and beyond

    I’m not ordinarily interested in anniversaries, commemorative dates and other forced significancies. I barely remember how long I’ve been married and don’t really think it matters much. Frankly, staying married is really just a matter of not getting divorced when things get bad. Things have always gotten better for us, so being married for 20 years is more luck than hard work.

    I don’t understand why we have to celebrate birthdays, either. I get older every year; so do you. Why do I have to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on April 22? Maybe I’d like to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on June 26 or October 13. I’m considering putting tokens in a jar for all of the events we’re supposed to commemorate. Then, if we feel like doing it up one day, we can just take out a token and celebrate whatever we happen to pull out. So, if I want to, I can celebrate my October wedding anniversary in March.

    Publishing 100 posts on Snide Reply, though, is apparently something to crow about. I’ve actually published 101, but I didn’t write one of them. I recently re-blogged a post from sweetmotherlover, a blogger I follow. Because I’m busier than a suburban mom driving her kids all over town to various summer activites, I decided to break my no-commemorations rule. I am celebrating writing 100 posts by re-blogging the first post I wrote, two years ago. Back then, I had about 35 followers. Last time I checked, I had about 144145147. Not the biggest following, but more than I ever thought I’d reach. I happen to think my first is also one of my funniest posts and hope you think so, too. Enjoy.

    Thanks friends, family and followers! I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep following.

  • It’s All Good

    Brown Sugar Bacon ala katieleehome.comWhen I started blogging, I didn’t read other people’s blogs. I was new; what did I know? Frankly, it never really occurred to me that anyone beyond my immediate family would care what came out of my fingertips, unless it was Dr. Pepper. Quite a few people in my family would be impressed if I could shoot Dr. Pepper out of my fingertips. Or lasers. It’d be pretty cool to shoot lasers out of my fingertips.

    While my list of followers is not that large—I know people who’ve had more guests at their weddings than I have on Snide Reply—it’s far more than my gene pool alone could supply. I learned pretty quickly that you gotta spread the blog love. If you’re writing blogs, then you should be reading them, too. Blogosphere tit-for-tat.

    I discovered that there are certain blog posts that are de rigueur. As I write, I have a headache otherwise I would remember all the different kinds of posts I’m supposed to write. There’s the Search Terms post; that’s the one in which you write about all the crazy search terms people used that brought them to your blog. When I wrote my search terms post, “penis” was in all of the top five terms. Today, I am pleased to report there is not a single “penis” in the top five. Ok, there’s a “dick,” but I’m not counting it. Could be someone is looking for their Uncle Dick, not their uncle’s dick.

    The other kind of post that I can remember is the Goodness Gratefulness Post. I did do a gratitude post some time back; it got Freshly Pressed. But it pretty much thumbed its nose at the idea of being grateful ‘cause, really, must we be grateful all the time? I think not. Still, I’ve been kinda down and thought maybe focusing on what’s good might help. So, here are the things that strike me as good today.

    My son earned a D in American Studies.

    Asian parents abound in our neighborhood; for many of them, the only achievements worth celebrating are As. Then there is my family, whooping it up over our son’s D. We are celebrating the fact that a D is not an F. We are celebrating the fact that our son seems to finally understand that it doesn’t matter if you think your teacher is a douche bag bad teacher nor does it matter if you can get an A on the final without doing the homework.  My husband and I now understand that grounding is far more effective when there is something at stake, like driving around aimlessly with one’s friends.

    There is no wolverine in my garage.

    Garages and basements are the same thing in my mind, except that the garage has immediate access to nature. Creepy, cluttered, spider-ridden, dark and dusty, basements are the stuff of horror shows. Mine would be a blockbuster. But as scary as basements are, they have the advantage of being rather more difficult to infiltrate than, say, a garage. While my garage is no Taj, it would make a commodious abode for any wandering wildlife. So, I always step gingerly into the garage, particularly at night, despite six years of venturing there without incident. I shall remain vigilant. Hell, there’s an opossum living under our deck; why wouldn’t there be a wolverine in the garage?

    Coyote pups are really cute.

    Early in the spring, a coyote crossed my path as I ran through the prairie preserve near my house. Feigning disinterest in devouring me, he stared me down then slunk silently into the reeds ringing the marsh to the north. Feigning nonchalance, I reversed my running course and fled—I mean, jogged calmly away—resisting the urge to run forward while looking back.

    Approximately two months later, a pair of coyote pups crossed my path while running through the same preserve. Looking more like teddy bears than predators, they scurried into the grass at the side of the trail, barely hid their fluffy little faces and watched me jog calmly by. They were gone by the time I had doubled back, headed toward home. Hunting, I supposed. With their dad. Far from me.

    There are lots of baby bunnies this time of year.

    I spied a baby bunny in my yard this morning. He looked so much like the fiend that devoured my roses when we first moved here that I gave an involuntary cringe. I shooed him away, toward the prairie preserve and the darling coyote pups. Hey! Circle of life, people. It’s a bitch.

    There’s bacon in the fridge.

    I have a friend who doesn’t get bacon, as in “Bacon? What’s so special about bacon?” I try to understand her point of view by remembering that she loves beer. Now, I like beer. Lately, I’ve been drinking beer on a semi-regular basis. I even have some in the fridge right now. But I won’t drink just any beer. My dad would drink any beer, especially any cheap beer. My friend and I are far more discriminating. And that’s where the beer and bacon comparison falls apart. There are bad beers. There are spectacularly bad beers. But there is no such thing as bad bacon. There is bacon that is a little too salty, or too fatty or not cooked exactly the way you like it. But it’s all bacon and it’s all good.

  • Battle Hymn of the Pussy Mom

    In my continuing effort to assess the parenting book competition, I recently read “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” Lots and lots of people read the book; lots and lots of people thought the author, Amy Chua, a monster for how she treated her children. I’ll confess that I had an ulterior motive in reading the book, though. As the white European-extracted mother of a Chinese girl, I’ve been conflicted about how to raise her since the day I first bounced her on my hip. Maybe, I thought, I can learn something about raising a Chinese daughter from a Chinese mother.

    Not that conflicted feelings about motherhood are something new. Second Guessing is the dirty little secret of every mother I know, right up there with buying print blouses not because they are pretty but because they can hide a boatload of baby spit up.

    For me, Second Guessing started with giving my son his first bottle of formula. I remember filling the bottle, breast-feeding failure seeping out of me. The stuff smelled vile. How, I thought, could I feed this poisonous brew to my boy? What about his immunities? What about his IQ? Never mind his “failure to thrive,” which was obviously the fault of my faulty boobs, what about my mom cred? The little heathen sucked the stuff down like an alcoholic after a three-week dry out. Now, he’s seldom sick and his IQ is just fine, but I still feel like Bad Mommy every time I see a successful breast-feeder and her chubby offspring.

    Bad Mommy still visits. Hell, I see her more often than I see my husband. She’s particularly active, where my daughter is concerned, around Chinese New Year. My husband and I have managed to cobble together a family life that incorporates his Jewish-ness, my Catholic background and a little sprinkling of Buddhism for flavor. We celebrate Passover using a haggadah we wrote ourselves that mashes together e e cummings, socialism and the traditional Passover stories. We have a Christmas tree that has some Chinese ornaments and Stars of David scattered among the bells, Santas and South Park characters. A statue of Buddha is the first thing you see when you enter our home. Well, that and a pile of shoes and backpacks.

    But Chinese New Year? From an auspicious beginning of a party with like-constructed families, complete with dragon dance, we’ve devolved into dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. Sure, the kids get some money presented in a red envelope and I hang a string of fake firecrackers on the front door for ten days, but I’ll be the first to admit that our Chinese New Year celebration is pretty hollow.

    Maybe, I thought, it’s pointless to try to celebrate holidays that I’m only familiar with through what I read on the Internet. We’ll go to Chinatown. We’ll watch the parade. We’ll go to that big, expensive banquet the Families with Children from China puts on every year. I made all these virtual plans forgetting that Chinese New Year takes place in winter and we have no money. It’s freaking cold in winter in Chicago. We’re broke. Hello, Square One.

    Taking a different tack was easier once we moved to Naperville. One reason I chose this suburb is the concentration of Asians, Chinese in particular, who live here. The only area with more Chinese than Naperville is Chinatown. Since we came here for the schools and our son isn’t Chinese, we decided Naperville was the better option, though it still feels pretty foreign.

    What I immediately learned on moving here is that celebrating Chinese New Year and eating Chinese take out every six months aren’t the essence of growing up Chinese. No, if my daughter was to truly feel Chinese, she’d need some Chinese parenting.

    Chinese parenting, as I learned from my neighbors and Ms. Chua, is as exotic—and distasteful—to American sensibilities as thousand-year-old eggs.

    When she was three years old, my daughter became fast friends with a Chinese girl being raised by Chinese people. My daughter’s friend took piano, dance, gymnastics and pottery classes. All day on Saturday, she attended Chinese school. My daughter took piano.  She practiced about 15 minutes each day, per my mother the piano teacher’s instruction. My daughter’s friend practiced 45 minutes each day; she was four at the time. Chinese Friend’s father, on hearing that I intended to let my daughter enjoy playing the piano and grow into a more ambitious practice schedule, said, “By then it will be too late.” He never explained what it would be too late for, but I left with the distinct feeling that I’d been Chinese parented. Bad Mommy kicked my shameful butt all the way home.

    While Chinese Friend’s parents had nowhere near the ferocity of Tiger Mother Chua, they all had the same approach to parenting. Pushing a child to excel, accepting nothing but perfection and perfect obedience, creates successful adults. Failure is simply not tolerated. In contrast, my own parenting skills were downright destructive, guaranteed to produce complacent slackers and, eventually, the downfall of American society.

    So, I pulled up my Tiger Mother undies and got to work. As it happens, I teach enrichment in math and English to a population of largely Asian children. I enrolled my daughter in the math program. We doubled her gymnastics lessons to twice per week. We grounded our son forever or until he is no longer failing American Studies, whichever comes first.

    The result? My daughter whines about how hard her math enrichment homework is. We blow off the mid-week gymnastics lesson on a semi-regular basis. My son is home all the time, constantly complaining of boredom and boredom-induced hunger.

    I am a failure at Tiger parenting. I am a pussy parent. I let my kids play when they might be practicing an instrument or completing extra credit. They have computers in their bedrooms. They go on sleepovers and have play dates. My son has had two girlfriends.

    I wish I had the Tiger Mother’s selfless ability to let her kids dislike her. I’m going to have to be okay with my pussy parenting, though. My daughter makes straight As without prompting and according to Amy, only the piano and violin are appropriate instruments. My son plays the drums, guitar and can still fiddle around with a cello. So, while Amy’s daughters are studying into the night at Harvard, they’ll be listening to my son, the rock star, on their radios.

     

    I know I have readers from all over the world. Tell me: are you a tiger or a pussy? What’s the prevailing approach where you live?

  • Death Becomes Dad

    It’s the middle of the night. My dad is up from his bed, again. He does this every night, getting out of the bed for any of a number of reasons. Sometimes he just needs to pee. Sometimes something about his bed is bothering him.

    “What’s going on, Dad?” I’ll ask. “Nothing,” he says. “I just have to get away from that bad environment.” I have no idea what it is about his bed that makes it a bad environment. It adjusts to make him as comfortable as possible. He can sleep with his head elevated. He can sleep with his feet elevated. He can sleep with his head and feel elevated so much that he’s almost in a fetal position.

    Tonight, though, is different. Tonight, he’s not getting away from something. Tonight, he’s getting ready to go somewhere. He walks into the bathroom and washes his face then carefully combs his hair, the things he does every morning. But it’s 2 a.m., about four hours before he usually does these things. So, I ask, “What’s going on, Dad?”

    “I’m getting ready,” he says.

    “What are you getting ready for, Dad?”

    “A meeting. I’ve got a big meeting with an architect.”

    “Where are you meeting an architect, Dad?”

    “Downtown,” he says, clearly agitated. Of course, the meeting is downtown. He went downtown to his office everyday for years. I should know this, he seems to be saying as he glowers at me. In his world, I’m the delusional one.

    “There’s a meeting tomorrow, Dad. But it’s with your doctor. It’s Sunday, Dad.”

    “Okay,” he says in a tone that indicates what I’ve said is clearly not ok. He throws his hands up in frustration.

    Fast-forward two months. Dad’s in a nursing home now. His cancer is in remission. The medical kick in the teeth, though, is that he’s dying. Somehow, the chemo, the radiation, the nights my sibs and I spent tending him weren’t enough. He has dementia, pneumonia, urinary retention, leaking heart valves. He might as well have the cancer back.

    I know my dad is dying because someone told me. I couldn’t figure this out on my own. That makes me feel stupid. Dying is huge; how can I have missed this? But I am a rational human. When the palliative care professionals tell us that Dad is not likely to get better than he is right now, I believe them.  At least, I believe them enough to tell them I believe them. Then I go home and do what I always do: I google “dying.”

    Of course, the Kubler Ross stuff came up, but that’s not what I needed to know. Anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. I know where the anger is going: straight to my husband who gets to deal with me railing against whatever I am railing against at the moment. It’s never that my dad is dying. People die. Getting mad about Dad dying seems ridiculous; getting mad because my son did something bone-headed and my husband let him get away with it makes perfect sense.

    I’m down with the denial, too. Dad’s not dying; he’s got pneumonia and he’ll get better. He’s got dementia but at least he thinks I’m my cousin, who has a vague resemblance to me even with that New Jersey accent. His cancer is in remission. It’s a beautiful day. Nobody dies on beautiful spring days, never mind that Mom died on a beautiful summer day.

    Bargaining? Does promising myself to call more often count? Does taking the kids out of school to visit Grandpa count?

    Acceptance? Getting there . . . and part of getting there is getting to know what it is I’m accepting. Before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I would mysteriously become paralyzingly depressed. Then, just as mysteriously, I would feel better. A lot better. Then, out of the blue, I’d be blue. A diagnosis isn’t a cure, but at least I know what I’m dealing with now. I’m not making it up when I can’t get out of bed. I’m not a stress monkey when I can’t get to sleep. The cycles make sense and the medication makes it easier.

    Getting to know death—at least what constitutes dying—has me ticking off the items on the Diagnosis: Death checklist.  Eating less. Check. Sleeping more. Check. Seeing friends and family who aren’t there. Check. Pneumonia. Check. Getting ready to go somewhere important. Check.

    I’ve read that many dying people believe there is something very important they must do. Not like, “Oh, I have to apologize to the neighbor for calling him a son of a bitch for years.” Not that kind of thing. Here is how Ulla Mentzel, of A Good Dying, describes it:

    A man who loves to sail might ask us to get the map. The all important map. Don’t you know? It’s in the drawer over there.

    A soccer player might draw a playing field with an arrow pointing outside the field. Getting ready to leave the playing field.

    A farmer might tell you that she has to take the cows into a different field. The one over the hill. It is very important to take them. Soon.

    I’ve said more than once that I’d rather be shot in the head than live the way my father is now. “If I can’t walk, can’t remember who you are, drool, wet my pants, poop in my pants, forget to put on my pants,” I said, “put me out of my misery.”

    I realize I am a coward and I should have known it. I call myself a Buddhist but I don’t meditate regularly and I am frequently not in the moment. Still, I know that dying is part of living. I place flowers on an altar every week or so. They bloom, they fragrance the house. I leave them in the vase. Their petals droop, then fall until there is nothing on the stem but a flower head. I leave them on the altar. Finally, when they are dry, I take them out of the vase. The cleaning lady admires them when they are fresh, then advocates their removal when they die. But I know, now, that they were dying all along.