Mimi went down to the beach (to play one day)

(on our tenth day of vacation)

when Mimi went down to the beach (to play one day)

she searched the seas for mermen and mermaids

(I think she found a few) and

explored grottos and caves as big as her dreams;

she laughed at soaring things high overhead

and marveled at the water,

as wide and as clear as hope.

So, pray tell:

what would you find

in the sea?

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

-- e.e. cummings

Coming ashore

(on our eighth day of vacation)

We go down to the ocean as the sun tires,

bidding elaborate farewell

to sandcastles,

our day's work.

With dignified acceptance

of the way things must be,

they dissolve into the beckoning tide.

We sing and prance at the edge of the sea

as strangers (in their bridal best)

smile, and kiss, and greet

their tomorrows.

So wrong it's criminal: health.com and alcohol

I have a horse, and it is very high, and I get up on it regularly. But because this is not a very attractive sight, I generally ride my high horse in private.

But sometimes that ol' buckaroo just kicks its stable down. You know?

I first visited Health.com when a headline slid across my feeder: Alcohol May Protect the Brain During an Accident. Wouldn't you click on that, too?

Alcohol plays a role in 40% of fatal car accidents. Fully half of patients admitted to hospitals with brain injuries were drunk at the time they were injured. (These statistics are well known but no less unsettling.) This study notes that among patients admitted to hospitals with traumatic brain injuries, some have alcohol in their systems and some do not, and a smaller percentage of patients in the drinking group die than in the sober group. The article queries experts but does not argue why this might be.

And then there is, honest to God, a paragraph speculating whether or not it could prove beneficial to administer alcohol to patients who have just suffered a traumatic brain injury.

What's the point here? And from a website promoting Healthy Living/ Healthy Eating/ and Diet & Wellness?

Is Alcohol Actually Good for You? What's Right and Wrong with Drinking is no less cringe-inducing. Readers pose alcohol-related questions, such as "Can a glass a day keep the doctor -- and the pounds -- away?" (yes, if you are a 'well behaved' drinker) and "Does having a drink or two take a toll on my energy?" (no, as long as you're not drinking right before, say, rock climbing or running a marathon).

Then:

Will drinking too much make me age faster?
Lisa Concepcion Giassa, 36, of Bogota, N.J., goes out every other night during the week with the girls for a pitcher of margaritas or sangria, and downs two to three drinks per outing. On the weekends she gets a little more crazy. “For me,” she says, “it’s five drinks and three shots, with water in between.” She prides herself on being the one who can put it away and still have her wits about her. Lisa isn’t oblivious to the immediate dangers—like car accidents or simply falling down—but she’s more worried about premature aging and the risks of a disease like breast cancer or osteoporosis.

What the experts say
Alcohol by itself won’t make Lisa look old before her time. However, Rimm says, “Partiers tend to eat miscellaneous things at the bar (like greasy nachos, cheesy potato skins, and chicken wings) that aren’t great for them,” which can lead to that chunky, middle-age look. People who drink this way are also more likely than nondrinkers to smoke and to breathe in secondhand smoke in bars, which contributes to wrinkles and higher risks of heart disease and cancer. (Alcohol may also dehydrate you, and that’s never good for the skin.)

Oh, honey, no. The experts go on to warn Lisa about the dangers of osteoporosis and breast cancer. Seriously? Lisa's in danger of a lot more than that, and a hell of a lot sooner. If you don't want to point that out, health.com, then don't include her question. Have a little talk in private.

Next up? Alcohol Substitute to Deliver Buzz Without Booze. This, at least, gets only a blurb ("A look at what Health.com editors are reading today") and a link to a site telling us that scientists are working on a new (non-addictive, apparently) benzodiazepine that would foster the pleasant effects of alcohol without the nasty side effects and that could be switched off at the end of the night with a sober-up antidote pill. Oh, yes.

I am absolutely not saying that it's the job of the popular press to monitor our drinking behavior but I absolutely am saying that it is the responsibility of any press calling itself expert in health to be cognizant of its messages. Shame on you, health.com.

Right here where we are

Mimi meets the Atlantic, October 2007

We're in Florida, my home state, the place I love best in the world. How blessed we are to be here.

I used to do a number of things to keep track of the places I went, from collecting silly airport magnets to stabbing pins into an old National Geographic map that decorated every home I lived in for over a decade. One of my favorites was to stick my feet into any available water bigger than a puddle and think, "The Indian Ocean is much warmer than the Adriatic" while secretly congratulating myself on totting up one more exotic locale, one more stamp on my very full passport.

Maybe because I am lucky enough to have had those experiences I can appreciate, all the more, the soft sand of the only ocean I knew until I was well into my twenties. Because appreciate it I do.

I love it here. We love it here. I am not naive; no one who grew up in the land of hurricanes and shuttle disasters could be totally naive. Merciless dark clouds fouling the waters, creeping toward Florida's shores; unemployment lines stretching into wicked summer sun; inchoate storms swirling off the coast. We're aware. We're doing what we can.

I am also taking time to live in the moment, to practice what I preach, to sink toes into the still virgin sand, thanking Whomever brought it to me and me to it.

For in moments like these it is not necessary to entertain the Big Questions, the Who and the How and the Why. Moments like these require only my presence.

And I am here. Right here.

A day in your life: July 16, 2010

Greeting the morning with gusto

primping

a favorite used bookstore, upstairs

reading to the bookstore cat (yes, that's Sartre; Bartleby hangs in philosophy)

lunch al fresco

summer evening, whyever not?

"Her early leaf's a flower..."

Mimi cried this morning when she saw the dying amaryllis

and she asked me to

"make it stay little, like me."

If only I could do such things, my love,

if only I could.

Nature's first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-- Robert Frost

A visit from my inner jerk

It was only while talking to my sponsor yesterday that we figured out the real reason, we think, behind my over-cooked freak-out at the neurologist's office last Friday. Yes, he pushed drugs I don't want my daughter to take, pushed kind of hard, and yes, it landed close to home. And absolutely yes, abnormal EEGs make parents nervous and a lack of answers is frustrating. But there is more, as there always is.

I didn't like who I became in his office. It's annoying when someone else acts like an idiot but when it's you? It's mortifying. Especially when you notice it happening, see your inner jerk saddling up and riding out, and you realize that, for whatever reason, this time you cannot stop it. You're stuck watching yourself, perched on your own shoulder, cringing in embarrassment at your own self.

I'd gone in with as much information as I'd been able to gather, hoping to follow what he was saying as he explained the results and our options. After his second word, 'drugs,' my head spun and my vision clouded and I dropped back into the worst version of myself: the pompous professor.

I've done that here and there since I was 10 and thought I could drop a bully by calling him a "pusillanimous pipsqueak" in front of his bully buddies but instead of cringing at my mighty vocabulary, he laughed. And everyone else laughed. And then he knocked my books down.

Over the years I've occasionally heard, seen, and felt myself doing that same puffed-up posturing in response to a threat. It's not once worked well. Then simply stop it, you might say, excellent advice, I would reply, but oh, have I tried and I am about as successful at that as I am at stopping my hair from going gray.

I'm only marginally more successful at running for the door when I feel such a spell coming on. This time I at least managed to leave before I used a word I'd read but never heard and had him correct my pronunciation (yes, this has happened) or asked if there was anyone else in the office I could review the test results with (this, too, which is not necessarily obnoxious in theory but I sure made it so).

I really don't like myself in those moments, those "and you can call me doctor, doctor" moments of mine. (No, I haven't actually said that, but I have thought the thoughts.) It's a personality flaw that long pre-dates my addiction, but they thrive on each other's company. A response to extreme stress, a false bravado, a swagger designed to camouflage how badly my knees are shaking.

Sort of like the antics of a 10-year-old bully, with just about as much self-control.

And I'll say it again: No. Drugs. In. My. Daughter.

If you'd suggested to me before yesterday that I might one day find myself in an office, trying to get my daughter to take her feet off of her chair while volleying the suggestions of two doctors and a nurse that we treat Mimi with sleeping pills and tricyclic antidepressants and benzodiazepines, I would have laughed hysterically.

Then came yesterday.

But first came a day in her pediatrician's office a few months ago, when, following a really bad night, I stomped my foot (true) and said I wasn't leaving the building (also true) until we had some idea of how to go about figuring out her persistent sleep terrors.

Terrors are ultimately benign and look a hell of a lot scarier than they apparently are, but seriously, several times a week, in the middle of the night, your child might be ...

• agitated but cannot be awakened or comforted
• sitting up or running helplessly about, possibly screaming or talking wildly
• appearing to not realize you are there even though his or her eyes are wide open and staring
• mistaking objects or persons in the room for dangers

B.D. Schmidt, MD, Your Child's Health, Bantam Books

I've talked before about Mimi's sleep terrors, or pavor nocturnus, or partial arousals from non-REM sleep, or whatever -- really super scary disturbances. After I pitched a fit in her doctor's office, we saw an allergist, a rheumatologist, a therapist, a pulmonologist, an otolaryngologist, and a neurologist. I think that's everyone.

My sister, whose now-cancer-free teenager has been screened and scanned for everything as part of his cancer treatment, had warned us that when you poke around enough you're bound to find something, and we found a lot of little somethings. Enlarged tonsils. Convex eardrums. Allergies. Mild asthma. PTSD.

But no real answers to the terrors.

I've now lived the lesson so many have shared: when it's your child, the tension between thrusting her at every doctor who just might have an answer and gathering her in my arms and running for the hills is just about unbearable.

The one test result that caught our attention was her EEG, which wasn't quite right. So we took another look, and then a few more. Those kinds of tests are easy to say yes to because they are non-invasive. I take her in her favorite pajamas to the hospital, plug in her lullaby CD, tuck in her doll, she and I cozy up in the bed and she sleeps through the test. Works a charm.

But there is a blip in her EEG, in the lower left part of her brain, recurrent, always there. We've ruled out the big-bads, tumors and such; at least I think we have. It's terribly disturbing for a neurologist to say, "I don't know" and I have to bite back a rude retort: You're supposed to know. How can you not know? You're not allowed to not know. That's not how this works.

But there we have it. Like the far more common seizure disorders, she will likely age out of this. Like the far more common seizure disorders, there are no real answers, just mitigation of symptoms, at least for a young child.

Their recommendation remains firmly behind the medications: tricyclic antidepressants (been there) and benzodiazepines (done the hell out of that).

No.

One of the doctors looked through her chart and said, But you've immunized her. So you don't stand against medicines on principle.

No.

Do you want to think about it? Because we realize these terrors are very disturbing. We can help.

No.

So we left it there: we'll call if we want to pursue this any further. We have an idiopathic blip on an EEG and a manageable case of sleep disturbances. This is, in part, why I'm staying home, after all.

I am still shaking, the kind of bone-deep vibration that comes when I've been rattled to the core. The kind I definitely can't control and that makes my think my fillings are going to shake loose. This is just surreal, that one year post-rehab I'd be facing the very same drugs but this time they are circling the person who means the most to me.

Irony, perhaps; I choose to think of it like this: If I had no experience with these drugs, then I might have given them to her, following medical recommendations. And then what? But I do know, firmly know, the dangers of those drugs and I do say, firmly say, that those drugs are not going in her body. I can stand between her and this danger, and for that, at least, I am grateful.

A day in your life: July 7, 2010

"doing your letters" over breakfast

a quick trip to the mall

(and a reminder why I don't mind that we never go to the mall.)

(what is it with dressing room lighting, anyway?)

but there sure is something about a totally decadent treat,

a warm and chewy storebought pizza

...and once again we remember why it's off limits: decadent deliciousness but zero energy

(good thing you're not the designated driver)

swim lessons at our second home, the Y

painting at sunset (or, repurposing the clothesline for the afternoon)

Letter to my Daughter, June 2010

Dear Mimi,

I'll get the unfun part over first. Your ophthalmologist told us your eyes are just not responding. The effort it takes for you to focus up close, say, on numbers or letters, is the same effort it takes me to cross my eyes and hold them there, and it's just as tiring. You may not learn to read until your eyes get better.

We'll keep doing our very best to ward off surgery, I promise you, although I have to admit that sometimes, when you don't want to wear your patch and you're rubbing your reddened and weary eyes, the quick-fix of surgery begins to seem just perhaps like a good thing. But not for more than a minute; I promise that, too.

We spent a scrumptious Father's Day on the beach with your 2-year-old cousin, your uncle (your dad's brother), and your aunt, 5 months pregnant with twins. We shared a laugh -- four years ago none of this was even a gleam and now kids are popping out everywhere. And what amazing kids you are. You and Sammy are just now discovering each other but I know, and I am grateful for this, that though you are an only child you and your cousins are as close as close can be.

It was one of those bluebird days, when the sun is out but it's not too hot and the food is good and smiles come naturally. A special day by all accounts.

This month you took the stage for the very first time. Your dance recital was such fun. Having been in or around about a million of them, I knew all of the things that could go wrong (and, of course, obsessed on those) but not a one of them happened.

You held your breath as you took your costume out of its bag, and you wore it with great care. You held your head so I could spray your hair stiff. You waited patiently in the green room. You separated easily enough (a few times breaking ranks to "whisper Daddy a secret" before the show started didn't count) and when it came time to perform, you lifted your chin and pointed your toe and gave every dance your very most. Everyone we shared the video with remarked on your amazing focus and concentration and that is true, you were in a zone, but much more importantly you smiled and laughed and clearly enjoyed your time in the spotlight.

This month you got a big-girl swing. It's slowed you down just a little bit, the transition up from the swing with the seatbelt, but you won't stay slowed for long (and when you pump your legs you have perfect form, so your days of insisting you don't know how to are numbered. But I'll always give you a push if you ask me to.)

Your dad put up your first swing as soon as you got home; you took to it immediately and swinging as high and as fast as possible remains your favorite thing to do. When you were buckled into the all-around sturdiness of your old swing, I'd give you a hearty shove and you would howl your distinctive laugh (we call it your whiskey laugh) throwing your head back so your hair caught the best of the breeze.

I always feel in moments like these that I can briefly glimpse you, all grown up, stepping up to a microphone or climbing a mountain or boarding an airplane bound for faraway lands, shoulders square and eyes glistening, straight and tall and ready for whatever adventure lies ahead.

Love,

Mama