I was in a tiny chapel. In a room with Mary and a little two-inch Jesus on a cross, and a fire hydrant on the floor. And I wondered which object was most sacred. They all put out fires in their various capacities. And I said to Jesus, You look silly up there on that cross. And I said to Mary, I like you and all, but you look silly too. And then I looked at the fire hydrant, who looked the least silly of all.  And I thought about how it might be more sensible to carry around one of those than a Mary or a Jesus. And I guess people sometimes do, but they don’t call it religion, even though it protects what is most sacred as far as objects are concerned – themselves. Is this a promotion for fire hydrants? I can’t remember.

I’m waiting for my mother’s nurse to pick up. The hospital recording has been on a loop for 20 minutes. Our hospital is committed to integrity, to the destitute, the sick. Our physicians and nurses have trained at some of the most prestigious colleges in the county. Our patients’ health and comfort is our #1 priority. The woman on the recording sounds so clear and passionate. I can picture her in the recording studio. Maybe she had to audition for the part. Maybe she got paid a lot of money to say these things. Finally a nurse picks up. She sounds exhausted. Would never have gotten the part.

“Has anyone been in to see my mother? She’s hysterical and can’t breathe.”

“Your mother is getting a new nurse.”

“But the nurse I spoke with earlier said she was on her way with meds!”

“Someone will be there within the hour.”

“She’s got to suffer for an hour?” 

“Someone will be there as soon as they can.”

“That’s not what your hospital recording says!”

The nurse takes a deep breath. “Oh god,” she mutters. Then I hear the phone land on a hard surface.

I know from experience what happens when the recording ends. When the recording ends, individuals take over. Recordings are usually neat and tidy. Real individuals are not. There may still be a commitment to life, to kindness, but unscripted commitments are harder to decipher. I think because behind the slogans and edited promises, everyone has to deal with their own relationship between the way we are told things are going to be and the way things are.

My mother for example has a slogan that goes something like: I am a strong as shit individual with impeccable judgment. And she often is. But behind the scenes, in the moments of reality when whatever pain sets in and there’s no one around to slogan to, she cannot handle her anxiety and has a tendency to drink herself nearly to death and wind up in the hospital on life support.

Me, for example, when I’m writing this, I’m pretty grounded in my ideas for about 10 minutes at a time. But in between those moments, when the vastness of everything collides with the tininess of who I think I am, when my insane restlessness causes unbearable pain, I clench, and then go to places like amazon.com to look for things to better organize my pantry.

I think of the nurse, obviously in no mood to hear about slogans. Perhaps she hasn’t slept in days and has been taking care of so many sick and destitute people that she has not been able to take care of herself. Maybe I caught her at one of those moments when she didn't have enough energy to pretend to be a spokesperson for anything. Who knows what people have to deal with behind their job descriptions.

There’s the slogan, and then the fractaling inward to a more intimate reality, to those minutes in secrecy behind all closed doors, where there are are individuals dealing with themselves and other individuals.

My mother's neighbor has visited my mother every day in the hospital. He cares about my mother. And yet, he’s the one who gives her the vodka. He says he figures if she doesn’t get it from him, she’ll get it from someone else. He doesn’t think of himself as being a bad person, he’s just doing what he does based on the equipment and experiences he has. Just like the woman who called from the Special Olympics on the other line who got upset with me because I didn't have time to listen to her slogan. “Thanks a lot,” she told me. “Now I won’t meet my quota.” I laughed to myself thinking I must be attracting every fed up person in the country. And I couldn't wait to dismiss her as horrible, to throw her in that bin in my mind where ridiculously horrible people go. But if I dismissed everyone for being horrible, who would be left? Not even me. And I wouldn’t be able to call anyone to commiserate with, because they’d all be in my trash can.

I think my expectations for people were learned from television. I grew up on television. Life on television always had a beginning, middle and end, applause and credits. People on television were always who they said they were and if they weren’t everyone would band together and help get them back. I remember when the television shows would end, resenting the real people around me for not being recognizable from one day to the next. What I didn’t realize was that the people on television were dependent on a budget, on someone to write their lines, on rehearsals. I didn’t understand that in real life people were dealing with their own thoughts and doing their best to express them in some manner that didn’t get them made fun of, divorced, in jail, or all alone.

In reality, things are messy. In reality, the judgments we make of each other are judgments based on each other’s slogans and worldly circumstances. I think of this wealthy relative of mine who says things like, “I feel so badly for your mother. It’s so sad.” And then I think of my mother who says about this same person, “That poor sap. I am so grateful not to be her. She’s never had to survive any sort of malignancy. She’s just so, so blasé. So benign.”

Sometimes I don’t think we really know each other. At best, I think we know our experiences of each other. Or maybe, just our experiences of ourselves experiencing each other. Perhaps the only way to really and truly be neat and tidy is to admit that we're not. When we are honest about our shortcomings, maybe then we become real. And when we are real, maybe then we can be there for each other in ways that rarely disappoint.

Bounce House Hell

It was inevitable. I crossed paths with one of those bouncy houses. Brautigan took one look at it and nearly fell on his knees begging to go. Since he’s only three, there was no way in hell I was going to let him in by himself which meant it was going to be the two of us. We waited in line behind this six-year-old who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, kept ear-muffing the kid next to him with the palms of his hands.

Finally it was our turn. It was no big deal. We bounced for three minutes and it was over. But then he spotted the bouncy house next door. This huge thing with a giant bouncy slide. Brautigan had to go on. There was no changing his mind. So we waited in line. The guy who was supposed to be in charge was flirting with some teenage girl. I asked, ‘Should we go in now,” and he said, ‘Yeah yeah, it’s fine.’

So we crawled along this maze thing until we arrived at a little foam climbing wall. We climbed up without much trouble and slid down this little slide. Not so bad. Then, we crawled along this other maze and arrived at a big climbing wall, like 8 feet tall, and that’s when I said to myself, ‘What the mother fuck was I thinking?’

Brautigan took one look at it and turned around. I said, ‘Where are you going?’ and he said, ‘I’m not doing that.’ Little kids were coming at us, charging up the climbing wall. And I knew we had no choice but to turn around. There was no way I could heave myself and my child up that climbing wall. So we backtracked till we got to the little slide and I hoisted Brautigan up to the top without much problem but then there was me.

I couldn’t climb up. I kept slipping down. I tried again and again all while holding Brautigan steady at the top so that he wouldn’t be trampled by the scores of oblivious kids siding down. Brautigan looked worried. And that’s when I realized I was in a life/death situation. So I made a growling noise and tried once more with all my might to climb up that slippery germ infested foam wall but I still couldn’t do it. Brautigan’s eyes got wide. ‘Can’t you get up, mama?’ he asked. ‘Of course I’m going to get up, my love.’

As a last resort, I dismantled a piece of the velcro foam that held the slide together and finally, heaved myself up. By this time, I was sweating and shaking but I grabbed Brautigan and finally we escaped into the sea of smiling crazed looking children at which point Brautigan saw the giant Bouncy slide again and said, ‘But Mama, I thought you said we could go down the big slide!” Thankfully at that moment an airplane appeared in the sky so I said, ‘Look! A plane!’ and as he said, ‘Oh, wow!’ I picked him up and ran him to the car.

-JLK

You know what I’m good at? Actually, let me cut the modest crap. You know what I’m a genius at? Getting out of things. I’m not kidding either. Late fees, library fines, parking tickets. Here’s a true story: I’ve had 43 parking tickets dismissed, including four tows to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  I’ve been getting out of things my whole life, really. Appointments, exercise, meditation, you name it. I think it stems from post-traumatic stress, from being addicted to the feeling of sailing away from something I dread. It makes sense. For most of my life, I never liked being where I was, so I became an escape artist to get out of what felt intolerable. But the trouble is— if you get out of everything, you never really find yourself in a world you’ve gotten into. You just swirl in some ethereal circumference, zoning in and out of the past and dreaming up marvelous futures that somehow never arrive. This all changed though when I had a child. A precious baby boy who was handed to me and placed upon my breast like a little sandbag, forcing me for the first time in my life into the present moment. I think I held him the entire first year of his life. Really, I think I was afraid to put him down. That I’d start running again. And I never ever wanted to run away from my baby. To get out of being a mother.

One of the first things I noticed being present is that most of my moments were filled with this unpleasant sensation like something very wrong was happening but I couldn’t remember what. And I’d have this intense urge to get rid of that feeling. To reach for something chocolate. Something bready. The phone. Amazon.com. Facebook. All the things that pried me out of my moment but left me homeless in a manner of speaking, with only places to feel better or worse inside of, yet none to feel cozy in. But with a sleeping baby in my arms, I couldn’t leave so easily, and slowly, I started to surrender. I’d still feel uncomfortable and reach and pry for a way out, but after the 200th time checking my email, and the 200^th time checking that my son was breathing normally, and the wondering if I’d ever make any of my dreams come true or if it was too late, I’d look at my baby’s sweet face and remember: There’s nowhere to go. And I’d climb into the moment with my child and stay there, and enter a richness that was too fulfilling to leave. And in that moment, my heart felt so full, like it did when I was real little, before I’d been hurt by life. When I used to feel excited to wake up in the morning, not because there was something particular going on, but because I enjoyed the feeling of being alive. And it felt so good to have that feeling back and to share it with my precious child. And I’d pray for the moment to never pass, which of course it always did. But I’d meet up with it again when I surrendered on some other occasion to the seemingly cruel truth that there was no place to go.

I’m still not present all the time. I’m hardly present at all, really. The land of right here/right now is still a tropical island that I only vacation to occasionally when I forget that I don’t need time off or any plane ticket to get there. But I pray to visit more often. Because if I can give my presence to my little boy, then maybe he will feel cozy here and never try to get out of it like I did.

Once upon a time there was an anguished cave mother who finally couldn't take it anymore. Every night, she’d arrive back to her cave after hunting and gathering all day long, ready to fall asleep on her cozy boulder, but every night, without fail, her little ones would insist on a story before bed. And back then, without a book to close, a goodnight story could go on and on until almost dawn.  In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for poor prehistoric mothers to miss out on sleep entirely because of little ones begging and pleading for the thousandth time, “Please Mama, tell us what happened next!!! Please, Please, Please!!” But one day, this particular anguished mother just couldn’t think of what happened next.  “But Mama,” the children cried. “You have to think of something more!!!  We need to hear what happens next so that we can fall asleep!”  And so the mother furrowed her bulging brow and tried to imagine what in the world she was going to say, and a moment later, through her lips, a very hoarse voice uttered:  “What happened next, my precious ones???  They all lived Happily. Ever. After.”

After this, she waited, saying nothing more.  She dared not to move even a finger for fear of stirring these blessed creatures.  She just held her breath and waited.  And waited.  And finally, she heard a snore.  Yes. To her utter amazement, the children were asleep. And she tiptoed with delight back to her boulder and also went to sleep.

Of course, in the back of this mother’s prehistoric brain, she knew very well there was no such thing as Happily Ever After.  All of her other stories confirmed that life wasn’t so simple as to be lived Happily Ever After.  Not even grass lived Happily Ever After.  But instead of feeling guilty, she told herself it was just a story, after all.  And it put the kids to sleep for God’s sake.  And everyone needed some rest.  And so she did it again the next night.  And the next night.  And from then on.  And slowly, this mother’s bright-eyed and bushy tail got the attention of other cave mothers in town.  And so she began to share her success.  And pretty soon the entire village began ending their stories the same way. And pretty soon, all the children were going to sleep at a decent hour.

But… there was a minor problem.

All the kids began believing that everyone was going to get their very own happily ever after, too. And the mothers became anguished once again.  Day after day, they cringed, watching their beloved little ones aspiring to such rubbish, talking to each other about what their happily ever afters were going to look like.  And so these mothers decided to get together at a secret town meeting.  “You know what,” one of the well-rested mamas said. “Maybe these little S.O.B’s really will figure out how to live happily ever after—why should we ruin a good thing??”  And before the meeting was through, all of the other mothers nervously agreed.  And so, it was settled.  Happily Ever After lived Happily Ever After.

And from that day forward, generations upon generations of children continued to regurgitate this very flawed concept to their offspring, without ever even imagining it was just a great big lie to get a poor mother some rest.  Little did those ancient mothers know that one day, the whole globe would be paved, often times burying whatever was already there, by people looking, with bleary-eyed hope, for some semblance of that Happily Ever After they really and truly believed in.  Good night.

by Jessica Kane ©2015

There’s this man who comes to the local general store as often as I do. I come to write. And he comes to eat, read the newspaper, and talk to people. At first, I dreaded seeing him. He is old. Wears a Veteran’s hat with pins and stripes all over it. And the way he masticates his liverwurst sandwiches is enough to make me, if I didn’t care so much what others thought of me, hurl something at his elderly liver-spotted head. He always forgets his hearing aid and is always talking about the Decline of America in a voice made for at least 30 people to hear. And he licks his finger to turn the page of his newspaper and then touches things I could potentially touch. But it’s funny. As time has passed, seeing him every day, he has become someone familiar. And the something familiar he’s become has become a source of comfort. I’m ashamed to say I used to sneer at him when I’d hear his phlegm-ridden cough with little bits of animal organs flying out in my midst. Now, I feel a softness about him. I hear his stories. Every time I’m in here, a new one. People sit with him to listen to his stories. He’s had a life. A long life. He’s got great grandkids. A dead wife. A government that never appreciated what he’d really wanted to do for his country. He’s real. He’s more than the liverwurst that could have gotten on me.

The people I get along with best are the people I am polite with. Manners almost always ensure a hospitable relationship. I used to be inclined to imagine that good behavior in general was inauthentic. Mostly because of the fact that you can be polite with someone and still despise them in the privacy of your own thoughts. But these days, I think of manners more like posture. A deliberate necessity to avoid offending others with our various forms of slovenliness. The problem though, is how to be on good behavior with someone you live with and conceivably love? It takes a lot to be on good behavior all day, but then to do it all night? When my 3-year-old finally goes to sleep, sometimes all I want to do is blob out all over the place, stand at the counter and shove whatever I can find down my throat, and give anyone who comes near me the finger, especially that son of a bitch I married.

I think that’s why most relationships end. Because most of us, at least me, rarely practice good manners with our spouses. Well, unless we’re around other people. I can understand how it happens. The whole reason I got involved with my husband in the first place is because I wanted to have at least one person in the world I could be myself with. Someone I could share everything with- all my childhood stories, my secret wisdoms, my fears; someone I could feel relaxed with, vulnerable with, comfortable being naked with in every which way. But as you get deeper with someone, how do you put the brakes on before the other person discovers that secret fierce fucking animal within who will shit in your proverbial boots if you fuck with them? I just don’t think it's possible.

You can’t live with someone for any extended period of time without this animal emerging. It’s just what happens when we take off our designer clothing (or in my case my pajamas). When we are naked, it’s inevitable that we will release unthinkable things from our depths. And it probably won’t take long before those things get flung at each other.

I think resentment in relationships probably begins when one person first bears witness to another’s beast within. We think, ‘How could they treat me like that!? Have they no manners? Everyone else gets to see them at his/her best, and I get this… monster?’

My husband and I both know we should behave with dignity towards each other. We have both attended seminars, read brilliant wisdom-filled books and articles about conscious relationships, but our animal sides could give a fat shit. When my animal within sees my husband at night lying on the bed with his computer like a side of butchered beef instead of taking out the garbage or at least asking if I’d like a massage, I’m not thinking not to take him personally. I'm not thinking, "The light within me bows to the light within you." I’m already saying out loud something like, “You are a fucking slob. I can’t believe I married such a lummox!” And then he’ll look up at me and say, “Me? I’m a slob? Let’s not forget when I first met you, you had fleas in your bed!” And I'll say, “Well, isn’t that funny. I didn’t have fleas in my bed until you started sleeping in it!!”

I think my favorite moments with my husband are the ones where we treat each other as strangers. Not passing strangers. But more like two people who maybe have been stationed at the same refugee camp. We are on the same survival team. We have good ideas for how to get things accomplished. We are resilient. We are busy. And can make each other laugh really hard recounting all the trials and tribulations we overcame at the end of a really hard day. It doesn’t happen often, but these are the moments I’d want more of, if I could figure out how to have them. When we are polite enough to give space for the animals that we are to roam peacefully.

Last night, I fell in love with myself for the first time. I’m convinced that this falling in love with myself had to do with a suffering, near-corpse of road kill that I passed by earlier last night.

It was on the Northway, this large black furry object, with a heartbeat so terrified, that it moved the whole furry thing up and down like someone was pumping air in and out of it like a balloon. And my thought about it was sadness. Because I realized that he didn’t want to die. And as cars were roaring past him, laughing, and throwing their McDonalds out their windows, this single creature on earth, on the side of the road, was struggling to survive, to catch his breath, and his life.

And the surge of this something that I was feeling became embedded deep within me. I’m not sure it was embedded physiologically... but certainly into the meat of my spirit. So that perhaps now, I have, as part of my core, the remaining fire of the black-furry-corpse on Interstate 87.

But anyhow, late last night I was in bed when it hit me, this profound experience of falling in love with myself. And it wasn't one of those conceptual experiences that I’ve had while eating chocolate croissants and drinking coffee. It was one of those profound experiences that shifted my perception and the colors of the room. It began with a realization: Oh my God, I’m not going to get to be with me forever!

Previous to this moment of falling in love with myself, I had spent much of my energies hoping other people would take on this vocation. (And spent hundreds of hours shedding tears when I wasn’t successful in these endeavors.) But last night, when I was alone with me (and perhaps the fiery remains of the soul of the large black furry corpse) I realized I had never tried to get me to fall in love with me before… And I had to chuckle.

And it was at that moment that I became to myself like a wife of a soldier going off to war. I wanted to hug myself and appreciate myself and be there for myself before something horrible happened and I’d never get to ever again. And I exclaimed to myself, I love you! Never have I said such a thing! And don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t out loud so that my husband could hear. But I exclaimed it inwardly and felt myself sink down into myself, till we were resting under what felt like an apple tree on a beautiful breezy spring day. And yes, I loved myself. And generously shared space with myself. And I am still sharing that space with myself. At least I think I am… It may have worn off just a bit at the moment… Perhaps because I’ve always kind of thought that to love oneself is a silly and indulgent thing to go on and on about. Better to talk about loving thy neighbor instead. Perhaps, though, this is because I never really understood the importance of loving thy self. But maybe it’s as simple as this: “Love thyself, because one day thoust won’t have a self to love.”

I’m at Starbucks, where I occasionally find myself when my husband has a day off to play with our son. And everything was normal. The air conditioning was on. It was cold. I was working on a section of my book. Trying to get creative assistance from chocolate and almonds and green tea. Basically, I was one of several people doing what we usually do in our status quo Starbucks moments. When all of a sudden, there was a siren. A loud siren. The fire alarm. Suddenly everyone’s realities were interrupted and we all looked around at each other, smiling in a way we wouldn’t have without this sound of emergency. We had curious eyebrows, wondering if it was a test. But the alarm wasn’t going off. And it was loud. Everyone was covering their ears. And then, we were all asked to leave the café right away. And I wondered if this really was an emergency. Immediately I felt more grounded than usual. I imagined this must be common for people when something very important is about to happen. Not important like an email sent on accident or a business opportunity gone awry or a toddler running like crazy instead of sitting still. But really important, like the difference between living and dying. I thought about the man who’d been in front of me in line while I was waiting to order my green tea. He’d been talking to his woman friend in a really serious tone about how the last time he’d been in another Starbucks, there’d been a woman in front of him who’d asked for a ‘medium’ instead of a ‘grande’ and that the barista said to her, “Are you kidding me?” I wondered who this guy would be in a real emergency. If he’d finally have something more substantial to use his seriousness for. I imagined he’d probably be the one covering the small toddlers with his big belly to save them from falling debris. Now we are all outside. The manager is panicked, trying to explain to new customers who want lattes that the Starbucks is temporarily closed. The crowd is growing. People’s conversations are meandering away from this potential emergency and back to real estate, stubborn husbands, and the weather. And now it’s just been confirmed. There is not an emergency. The manager has just explained that one of the baristas accidentally leaned on the fire button when she was reaching to throw away her leftover chai. And that the fire department should be turning off the alarm any… ahh, now it’s off. He has unlocked the door. Everyone is getting up, ready to return to their seats.

Now I’m back in the air conditioning. And I kind of miss the siren. By all means, I’m not saying I wish it had been an actual emergency. It’s just that sometimes, it’s refreshing to imagine being called forth toward a larger purpose than just having a good attitude amidst all this American status quo.

There is no wrath like a mother discovering mouse poo in her child’s car seat. Living in a rural area, having mice in one’s car is nothing unusual. They can fit into a quarter-sized space and can smell a leftover puff or piece of dropped banana a mile away. We used to have all these wonderful owls on our property and I hadn’t had a mouse in my car since before I got pregnant. But for whatever reason, those owls flew the coop and those pesky mice came back. I was so upset when I found the little black dollops of their presence. I shook my head in disgust and my two-and-a-half year old asked if I was sad and I said, “Yes, I am a little sad, my love, because mice were in our car.” “Mice? What did they do in here, Mama?” “Well, if you really must know, darling, they poo poo-ed.” “Poo poo-ed? They should wear diapers!!” “I agree!” Though I have never been a fan of killing my enemies I would have had no problem setting as many traps as could fit in my car, but after some research, I learned that killing mice rarely solves the problem, because there are always more mice. But I learned there is a way to keep them from your car or home: mice despise the scent of peppermint. So, I bought a bottle of peppermint essential oil, dripped some on some cotton balls, scattered them all over the car. The following day, there were only a few drops of poo, by the floor vent in the passenger side of the front seat. And sure enough, the following day, it was the same thing. And I realized that’s where they were coming in! They must have been entering in their usual way, and upon smelling the peppermint, shit their little britches and about-faced! I can’t count too many things that have given me as much satisfaction. And, since then, all I do is dribble some peppermint oil right on that little floor vent, and we have been mouse-free. So far.

Do you ever have one of those moments when you inadvertently disturb your own child? A man at the park gave my two-and-a-half year old a stuffed animal. It was in our small town so nothing disturbing there. Except when we used it a short time later to dry a wet swing and noticed it was missing an eye. My son got so upset and so I said, “I know he only has one eye, but I think that makes him special!” And my son looked at me with curiosity so I continued, “He’s special because he’s got a story to tell! Don’t you want to know what happened to his other eye?” He nodded, still looking curious so I went on and this is what came out of my mouth: “Who knows what happened… maybe a mouse came and ate it!!!” Poor Brautigan, he immediately dropped the toy, held his own eye and looked horrified beyond belief. I tried to tell a better story to fix the first one but nothing redeeming was coming out and I kept laughing at my own stupidity which I’m sure only made the situation even more confusing to my poor boy, but thankfully, a low flying goose came by and I was able to divert his attention.