Pray For Kate ( Even If You Don't Pray )

This is Kate. Kate is 5 years old. She has just been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor the size of an egg.






















These are Kate's parents.




















This is Kate's family. Please pray for Kate.

Boy Seventeen

All my life I wanted to be in love and what in love meant was safe/obsessed/purified/worshiped/destined and the turning of those as well. Seventeen I fell in love and I was safe/obsessed/purified/worshiped/destined to be in love with this seventeen year old blonde haired long haired blue eyed tight jean wearing metal music loving guitar playing miserable abused reduced shadow boy, because he understood The Thing I Could Not Name and because he grew up with and lived inside The Thing I Could Not Name _ and then because I spent my entire life trying to name it _ we fell apart. Because he would not have it named and he would not hear it named and because I insisted on doing so. Because we were in love at the beginning but too damaged to care for it. Because love turned into sickly need so quickly it left me breathless and gutless. Because I still believed life was possible and he did not. We parted, we reunited, we parted again. We tore each other up and stitched each other back together. This boy was Mr. Curry's best friend. Mr. Curry was my best friend. We slept on each other's backs, curled and sweaty and horny and myself lit with a passionate fire for an intellectual and ethical life that was completely and totally out of my reach but not. out. of my dreams. When I think to myself, or let's say someone asked me - Why Mr. Curry and not Boy Seventeen? I know it is for many reasons and for one reason. The one reason sounds like this: Mr. Curry turning the pages of a book. It looks like this: Mr. Curry's eyes meeting and holding my own ( he is not afraid of this and men are often afraid of this or worse they act like they are not afraid by meeting eyes with a false bravado and false masculinity they translate into aggression ). It tastes like this: secret things. It feels like this: Mr. Curry picking me up off the bathroom floor, blood pooling between my legs, and carrying me to the car so I don't deliver our baby on the floor.

What love is and is not fascinates me. I loved Boy Seventeen and he loved me. Yes. Because we were too sick and too sad and ultimately too different to meet in the broken places where the light comes through, we were not meant to be, and because we had any sense, we let go. Because Mr. Curry and I are sick, sad, and smart and brave and ultimately hopeful, we meet in the places where the light gets through, and this is where we hold on, peering through the fog. Boy Seventeen is now a man in his thirties with a beer belly and just out of a long term relationship with a woman ten years or so older than him whom he never married but lived with. Boy Seventeen lost his mother to suicide or overdose when we were- Seventeen- He lost his dad a few years ago in his late 20's to lymphoma. He was an abused child and he has not made shore. Boy Seventeen once helped Mr. Curry clean my car after we had been married a short time, and Mr. Curry says Boy Seventeen sat in my car, rubbing a towel on the wheel, and stopped for a moment, still, before saying sadly ' This car smells like Maggie's perfume '. And I thought to myself when I heard that, we Loved. It was something easily dismissed because we were teenagers and fucked up and broken and all broken things can be easily dismissed by the rest of the world. I don't dismiss or erase it. He was the only other man I've loved. Mr. Curry loved him too. We hope he makes shore.

Mr. Curry has been my best friend turned into my lover turned into my husband turned into my Love. What I thought love was is so much less than what it is.

things i've invented this week

tee shirt : I'm The Only Slut In This Town*
* inspired by Mr. Curry and my viewing, and ensuing flash of possessive jealousy,
of a hot young lady riding the back of a fast motorcycle with tight jeans, a tramp stamp
and a black g-string made completely visable by the pull of her rear against the denim
as she hunched forward to hold her boyfriend as they weaved between cars

porn film : Highway Sluts On lonely highways, hot women in fast cars crash into each other,
finding in rage a new lesbian lust, tearing off each other's clothing and taking
each other on and in machines
* cars of use should be classic and tough, old Novas and Mustangs etc.
* also inspired by Mr. Curry and ensuing conversation after viewing
a hot young lady riding the back of a fast motorcycle with tight jeans,
a tramp stamp and a black g-string made completely visable by the pull
of her rear against the denim as she hunched forward to hold her boyfriend
as they weaved between cars

creative art for daughter : make cat/kitten toys with various papers, glues, scissors and color
for our 6 ( Mr. Curry, your love knows no bounds ) Harry, Hagrid,
Hermione, Mr. Weasley, Bellatrix and Kagome

tip for not puking while cleaning daughter's prodigious puke from comforter 2am: close eyes*
* probably not invented by author

ways to keep husband happy after 7 years of marriage: love notes in red lipstick on mirror* creative use of new toothbrush and honey, kisses on eyes and cheeks*, jasmine
perfume*, cheerfully watching bad action movie on couch*, silence when husband
does not clean up cat poop in corner even after being the one to see it happen*
* probably not actually invented by author

breast milk storage: create a funnel on both sides of plastic bag for freezing, storing and pouring
breast milk so that those pouring breast milk into bottle for infant* do not spill
other woman's breast milk* on arms clothing or floor
* infant most likely screaming
* while author herself breastfed all her babies for 2 years each and completely
supports breastfeeding, author does not deny the gross factor in spilling another
human being's bodily fluids on her person, being that in our society we are taught
from young age that all human bodily fluids or excrements are disgusting, ie: ear
wax, shit, urine, yeast from infection, snot, saliva, mucus, blood, toe jam, etc.

Two Amazing Blogs

January First

This amazing blog is the story of the life of the parents of January, a 7 year old girl with severe, birth onset schizophrenia. What struck me most about the writing here is how searingly honest the father is about his and his wife's emotions and reactions. Read this, the ending to his introduction, and try not to be both incredibly moved and struck by both the heartbreak and the honesty:

Even then, it did not occur to us that our daughter was mentally ill. Now I wonder who was really delusional. Susan and I held fast to our belief that Jani was just a misunderstood genius. Then Bodhi was born. The violence became so bad that at times Susan and I both lost it and hit Jani as hard as we could. We hit in impotent rage. We got a referral to a psychiatrist. Two months later, Janni was hospitalized for the first of what has since been four times, but in truth will be many more times. Today, Jani is no longer a brat. Today, Jani is schizophrenic.

My grandfather was a paranoid schizophrenic, a man who hallucinated and feared and refused to take his medications in the manner which could have provided him a life more accessible to the heart by those who loved him. My mother's cousin was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager, my grandfather as a man in his twenties, and my father's brother, also in his twenties. This is, for my family, more than a disease: it feels like a curse. Living with someone suffering from this disease is like the most severe LSD trip you can imagine, only much worse, because it's real, it's happening to someone you love, and like Alzheimers, it robs that person of who they are meant to be. I try to imagine the pain these parents feel when they look at their beautiful January- and cannot. Of course I cannot. But I can read his blog. I can connect. And I do. Maybe you want to, as well.



Speak Softly....

This amazing blog is written by the talented and very kind writer and mother, Vicki Forman, who has just had her first book published: This Lovely Life ( which you can find in major bookstores and Amazon.com ) Here, a summary of her memoir:

Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a pound at birth, at twenty-three weeks’ gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to “let her babies go” — she knew all too well that at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if they survived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply disabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube. This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins — the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death. In the end, the long delayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative. Forman’s intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother’s fierce love for her children.

Heartbreakingly, Vicki lost her little boy last year. Evan died of a complication revolving round his physical problems. What is left is the love the family had for him, and his legacy in this memoir. I highly recommend Vicki's graceful memoir, as well as her incredibly soft spoken but simultaneously intelligent and firm style of writing. She reaches me.

marriage, july 2009

what makes this a marriage?
you crack your back, broken in sticks
the sticks lie the wrong way, mental
disease runs in both of our families.
i think we understand each other.
i think we have an agreement here.
your crooked back, my brackish pelvis
our baby born before it could live.
we move in the world apart from each other
you are daydreaming about fucking
me with a girl you saw on Fifth and Seventh,
i am wondering if i can be left all alone
hours after work has ended, and dinner made.
3am nightmares leave hot pavement, sealed hands.
the bulk of your body is an exquisite pleasure.
we move in the world together
i look out at the broken up sky, the soft California trees,
a hawk diving and dipping, chased by sparrows,
and you are looking too, you are seeing this the way i do.
this common line of site an exquisite pleasure.
i would like to find the cracks and smash my red colored toes
inside, i would like to lick the cracks with my tongue
and watch your face while i do it.
you are this same kind of pervert. we push harder
to involve each other and simultaneously create
space. emotional intimacy a pungent, tangible thing
it hangs like Southern air over my body
hardening my nipples, swelling the thighs.
neither of us had an easy life. neither of us are innocent
the way Mormons can be, or evangelical Christians
or children raised two and twenty in a pie.
we are Henry Miller and Anais Nin not
Laura and Rob Petrie.
we love innocent things, we had children.
we protect them, adore them, feather our nest.
but our hearts and our minds were made older than this.
my grandfather was a paranoid skitzophrenic.
he chased me around the Jackson house with his
catching mitt hands raised for my ass. i waited an hour
in the bathroom until my grandmother's voice crept
through the crack between the door and linoleum.
your mother was a paranoid bipolor. you came home
and her attempt to die was later betrayed by a long life.
we love innocent things. we had children.
but our hearts and minds were made older than this.
a contradiction meets a contradiction in a bar.
hey, says the one, would you like to try to make sense?
yes, says the other, i'll spend my whole life.

closer than my own fingers in my mouth,
closer than my mother's hands.

maggie may ethridge
footnote
is not sure if this poem is finished

Little Chances - Endometriosis and Fertility

I wasn't supposed to get pregnant. My last checkup was with Dr. X, the balding Italian with the Magnum P.I. mustache and thick gold necklace lain like a bird's treasure in the thatch of his chest hair on full exposure between the good 7 or 8 un-buttons. My sweet Mr. Curry looked at me out of the corner of his eye as I hoisted my legs into the foot rests, like pocketing them in animal traps set in forest snap snap. Later he told me he was thinking there was no doubt why this guy got into gynacology, and it wasn't for the miracle of childbirth.

When I told the doctor I had 'the endometriosis' which is like ' the cancer ' or ' the AIDS ' but much harder to say, less well known/understood, and not deadly, he raised his crazy eyebrows in surprise. ' So you got pregnant after surgeries? ' Yes, three, the last two with a specialist we flew to see. ' So then you can get pregnant again! ' Well, sure. That's what I want to believe.

Originally, my first surgeon, Dr. Y, told me I had little if any chance of getting pregnant. ' Stage Four Endometriosis, multiple sites of lesions, multiple sites of adhesions, large endometrioma on left ovary ( this is a large cyst, filled with disease ) ' and basically an enormous traffic accident of a pelvis, filled with pain, scars, blood and disease. I imagined my husband's sperm trying to swim through all this, little sperm tail wiggling terrifically, trying to make it up my damaged fallopian tube. I cried. I thought we would adopt. I put the idea of a baby to the side, in a crib, in a locked room, where I couldn't hear him crying. But he was there.

My second surgeon would give no firm opinion, just enough of a sympathetic look to underscore my first doctor's opinion. Little Chance. I had researched for a year straight to find this doctor, an M.D. who specialized in women's pelvic disorders, most intensely in endometriosis and polycycstic ovarian syndrome, both of which commonly result in infertility. Different doctors will try to give you different reasons for infertility springing from these diseases, but the truth is there is no definitive answers, but as with most issues of the body, a cluster of cause/effect that goes on in a body which have various reasons and outcomes, depending on the person. This doctor, whom I'm happy to recommend, believes in the autoimmune cluster, and in addition to being a top-notch surgeon who has created a new way of lessening adhesions (internal scars that cling to organs, binding them, creating pain), he also recognizes the other central forces in this disease, nutritional deficency and lifestyle choices. Without getting too clinical, these choices dramatically alter the hormonal state of your body, creating a snowball effect that can trigger or worsen disease, especially a hormonally based one.

My research led me to find that the newest information coming out is leading towards believing Endometriosis is an auto-immune disease, which often is accompanied by other problems, of which I had many. Chronic and at times debilitating pain, IBS, hypothyroidism, migranes, muscle spasms, fatigue and swelling ebbed and flowed, came and went, dramatically complicated and diminishing my life for my entire 20's- a time when I was also trying as a single mother to raise Dakota. Meanwhile I was sleeping at the wheel during red lights and weeping in pain, locked in the shower. After I had Lola, the pain ratcheted up unbearable degrees, and I was sick and fucking tired of being told it was depression, or ' just life '. Is this YOUR life? I wanted to scream at the doctors. Of course, it wasn't, and it was ultimately up to me to change things.

I believe I was able to get pregnant largely because I did not listen to Doctor One, or Doctor Two, or even absorb the sympathy of Doctor Three. Instead, I went about researching and dedicating myself to healing. I read so many books and internet sites and phamplets I could- and can- spout information about nutritional healing with the best of them. My mother, a long time health fanatic, whole foods eater and the bringer of health during my childhood, gave me many important leads and tips. Over a period of two years, including many crying jags and setbacks and hopeless feelings relayed to Mr. Curry, I changed my diet. Changing what I ate every day was a major emotional upheaval. I felt I deserved to eat what I wanted because damnit, life is hard, and my life, I felt, in particular, had been terrifically hard as a child, and so yes, Mocha Frap. for breakfast, and yes! Fries and Coke for lunch! and yes! the tomato and white lettuce counts as a veggie. I was addicted to carbs and sugar. I had chronic, systemic yeast and vaginal yeast infections. I had IBS. I had painful agonizing periods. I had horrific back pain, unexplained. I had migranes. My feet and hands and face swelled. I had chronic UTI. My vision was worsening. My tongue puckered and hurt. My throat swelled.

Once, I drove through Starbucks Drivethrough, crying. I wanted a Frappacino. I wanted health. I wanted a life. I got the Frappacino, and drank it. But I never gave up. Eventually, with the help of some blood sugar balancing supplements and yeast cleanses, I got my sugar problem under control, and tackled the bread. I did gluten free off and on for long periods. I exercised daily. I did yoga. I meditated. I took a laundry list of supplements.

Laundry List of Supplements For Feminine Healing

Fish Oil
Garlic
Vitex (chasteberry)
Grapeseed Fruit Extract
B Complex
C
D
Bone Health Mix
Green Tea
Rhodiola
Amino Acids
Probiotics

I spent money we didn't have on these things. As it all began to work, a great fog lifted. My depression and anxiety began to ease. My eyesight cleared some. My head stopped hurting. My periods normalized completely. I lost weight. My hands and feet and face stopped being puffy all the time. My energy began to seep back into this body. My jaw stopped hurting. My IBS went away, just poof. The chest pain? Gone. The rapid heartbeats? Gone. The irritability? Mostly gone. As one by one these physical restraints dropped, I took steps back and forth, back and forth, like riding some giant wave. I started seeing an acupunctarist, who we couldn't afford either, who saw me for very, very cheap at her home. My diet was largely fresh fish and chicken, veggies of all and any kinds, fruits the same, nuts (almonds walnuts), peanut butter, goat milk and organic cow milk, water, green tea, hummus, black beans, ( oh avacado!), dark chocolate, coffee, Gluten Free waffles and pancakes and eggs. I cheated a lot, but I ate this enough that it changed my life. I took the supplements daily, daily, daily.

Then I got pregnant.

Years after they said I wouldn't.

And I will Again. You hear me, Universe? I WILL.

ps
anyone interested in endo., i'd be happy to email a list of the books and websites i use in recovery.

Phil Collins, You God Of Wonder

' Do you like Phil Collins? '
' I've got two ears and a heart don't I? '
- Thirty Rock