Re-Centering, Surprisingly

Three weeks ago I uploaded a post about the impending departure of my son for El Paso.  I was worried about the potential for melt-down in his absence.  Well, it's time to report in on that.

I'm fine.

That's it. It's kind of weird.  I expected to be really missing him by this time. But I don't. I think it's the first time ever that he's gone to his dad's and I sincerely have not missed him.  I think about him from time to time. I comment on his Facebook posts, or ponder what he's up to today.  But that's not the same as missing him.

It's a sea change in parenting for me.  That boy has been the very center of my existence for 14 years. Now, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, I find my own self able to creep in there with him. I am edging back into my own center.

I have been truly liberated since the ex moved. I don't know if there's a cause-and-effect thing going on there, or just a matter of their move coinciding with a change in attitude (perhaps a bit of both), but it's like coming out of a dim and frigid interior into the light and warmth of a fine June day. hallelujah!

So what am I doing with my time?  Well, that's sort of pathetic. Nothing, really. I'm subsisting largely on cereal, red wine, radishes, bananas, and avocados (not all at the same time). I go to the gym (my one redeeming activity). I journal. I indulge in graphic novels (truly an indulgence since they're stupid expensive and don't last that long) and binge-watch Netflix series (Sense8 was awesome). I've been listening to music, which I had gotten out of the habit of. I'm indolent. hedonistic. And summer is a good time to be that way.

I remember summer when I was a teenager:  it seemed to go on forever.  I spent hours in the pool, drifting on a raft listening to the cicadas buzz, or hanging out with friends at night, or lazing around my room with a stack of books from the library. I didn't realize then that my experience of summer in that way was destined to be short-lived. It was just the way summer was. It never occurred to me that my parents' experience of summer was quite different.

Lately, however, my experience of summer has been the blast of hot air as I step out of the frigid museum at 5:15. I haven't done any of the things I associate so nostalgically with summer. I haven't been to a lake or river yet this season. I haven't been to a pool. I haven't carried a cooler anywhere for any purpose. I haven't gardened to any significant degree. The cucumbers are feral.  I haven't even hung in my porch swing with a bottle of beer and a book.

So in honor of Fourth of July weekend, I hereby declare it Summer. High Summer.  And I shall observe it in appropriate manner.  This weekend I will swim in the lake, catch fireflies, drink cold beer, listen to summer music, read in my swing, and grill chicken on the patio. If I could I'd even make out on a blanket under the summer stars. I can't be a grown-up all the time.

This evening I'll take Roxy for a walk, and I'll be sure to go out after dark to observe the close passage of Venus and Jupiter, which are supposed to be very bright tonight on the western horizon at dusk. Stargazing is a zen thing. It gives you a sense of scale. Sometimes it's a relief to be small and insignificant: to not have to hold the sky up for now. To just drift and look at the universe.

A Loss

This is a cut-and-paste from Facebook.  I waited a week to be ready to write about Lucky's passing, but I still just don't want to try to put it in words yet.  But it needs to be told:  so this is what I can manage for now. 

Tuesday, June 23

My Lucky boy passed away in the night.

One of the last photos of us. My heart is broken. 

I woke up around 2:30 and he was not in his bed. I found him in the living room. Like most animals, I suppose he did not want to die in his den.

Today was the day we were to take him to the vet hospital. I had so hoped we could save him. But his time just ran out.

I knew he was very fragile, so yesterday I stayed home and sat with him. He liked to have his neck scratched and petted, and he would climb out of his bed and come lean against me, or lie down beside me, just asking for love. I'm so glad I was there for him and we had that time together. He loved his family, and he was loved by so many. No little dog was ever more loved, or will be so missed as this one.

Though he was weak and fragile these last couple of weeks, this little guy fought the good fight all his life. He was sick so frequently with so many things that he might easily have been frail and spiritless. But he took it all in stride and never knew he was sick. Until these last two weeks, we could not keep him from escaping the fence to chase raccoons who were twice his weight. When we took him to Park Springs Park to run, he could keep pace with Roxy, though she was three or four times larger than him and a tireless runner. He never gave up and he never slowed down, and he never for one second believed he was anything but the best damned dog there was.

And he was right.
We'll never forget him.

Circles of Life

This past  Friday my parents' little dog Beau (sometimes called Boby but mostly "Pootie-Poot") went into emergency surgery for his liver shunt.  Yes, the same thing my Lucky has. Beau is Lucky's little brother, 9 months younger.

Sadly, once the doctors got to his liver, they found that he had multiple shunts, both inside and outside. There was no way to fix it.  So they euthanized him right then and there.  My folks and I were heartbroken.

Now, of course,  I'm even more anxious for Lucky.  He has held out longer than Beau did: stayed healthier for longer. But he has the same family background and until we get the tests on the 23rd, there's no way of guessing if his situation will be any better than Beau's.  Just like Beau, he has a lot of fluid in his abdomen, so an ultrasound will likely be inconclusive. But if Lucky can't be saved, I want to take him home and just love him and pamper him for whatever days he has left. I don't want to put him through the surgery if I'm only going to lose him all the earlier for it. I agonize over this, though there's nothing I can do until we get test results and talk with the doctors at OSU. No amount of worrying will change the outcome.

He wouldn't eat yesterday. Just sniffed tiredly at whatever I put in front of him and turned away. Finally, in desperation at the end of the day, I offered him a bowl of Corn Chex, and he ate those, along with a few bites of fresh peach.  Go figure. At least there's food in his little tummy to give him a modicum of energy to keep fighting. I don't know how much longer he can go on that way, though. And every day that passes that he doesn't eat, his condition gets worse and he gets weaker.

There's also the question of the cost, which my folks tell me is likely to be much more than the $3,000 I was quoted, and which I have less than half raised. My folks paid almost $4,000 for Boby's surgery, and lost him anyway.

It's hard knowing that the answer is probably right there:  he's genetically got a definite date with death, or he doesn't. But I can't know yet. Poor Boby was doomed from the start.  I can only hope Lucky is not.

On a less depressing note:  I'm back in the critter care business. Sunday I spent four hours at Wild Heart, doing whatever I could. I helped to give medicines to the herd of little fawns:  17 of them, I think. Then I got to help bottle feed them, though I'm told their appetites are off lately (hence the medication).  I also cleaned up a LOT of deer diarrhea from the little sick fawns. That was less fun.  But toward the end of the day I got to feed a tiny baby bat, no longer than a finger.  You take a teensy 1cc syringe and get a little bead of milk on the tip:  the bat baby then licks up the bead. Adorable.

I tell myself that if some of these wild animals are able to survive the illness, abandonment, or injury they sustain, surely my little Luck dragon is strong enough for this surgery.  Lord, I hope so.

Flying Solo

On Sunday I dropped my son off at the Tulsa airport and hugged him goodbye for the last time until August 9.  This will be the longest amount of time I've ever been separated from him:  this, my "little boy" who once grew inside my body and now towers four inches over me.  The longest I've ever been apart from him before is four weeks. This will be nine.


I was strangely okay with this. I got a little teary as I was saying goodbye, but as I got back into my car I was already thinking ahead toward my summer flying solo.  I was already taking advantage of the new found freedom:  instead of returning straight home from the airport, I took a half-hour detour up to Foyil, Oklahoma, where I spent a few hours volunteering for Wild Heart Ranch, a wildlife rehabilitator. I scrubbed hawk poop out of cages, refilled supplies, folded laundry, squirted food into a dozen wide-open baby bird mouths from a syringe, and, best of all, I got to feed several tiny baby skunks, just big enough to have their eyes open.  I got home sweaty, tired, with my shirt smeared with hawk poop, but happy, at 10 p.m.


I know I will miss my boy. He is, as I mentioned in an earlier post, always a presence in my life and my home. But this summer feels different. This time is mine.

I'm also working furiously on raising money for Lucky. Our GoFundMe campaign is now up to more than $1,000, which is amazing. I've been really touched by the way my friends and co-workers have come out with support, both emotional and financial. I have even received an offer of a free apartment to stay in while I'm in Stillwater for Lucky's surgery!  One colleague baked and decorated beautiful sugar cookies shaped like shamrocks and dog bones and put them in the breakroom with a donation jar.  They garnered $150!  And at the end of the day yesterday, I received an envelope of cash from an "anonymous donor" that put the fund over the $1,000 mark.


Still, that leaves about $2,000 to be raised, so I've listed several items for sale on Craig's List. These are big items, things I've been hauling around for six years now for one reason or another:  the armoire my X and I bought on our honeymoon that weighs a ton; the ginormous coffee table that was scaled perfectly for the large living room we had before, but looks like an ice rink in my current space; a chest of drawers that belonged to my great grandmother and is the last of a bedroom suit that has long since been broken up and sold off piece by piece by various family members.


I've been attached to these items and have argued with myself that I need them, that I love them. But it feels somehow liberating to put them up for sale now. I crave the empty space in my home, and the opportunity to go through my stuff and decide what warrants space in my reduced storage capacity and what has to go.


Perhaps in the same spirit, I've gone back to the gym. I find I am no longer resigned to the 20 pounds I put on over the past two years.  Hormonal changes made me pack on the weight and depression made me feel helpless to do anything about it.  But I feel stronger these days, and I realize I'm not helpless. It's not impossible to regain the body that feels like me, and I want to get my strength and stamina back.


So I'm doing okay with my looming stretch of solitude. I've got shit to do!

The Fight for Lucky

As I write, our little dog Lucky is at the vet, having had X-rays earlier today.  It's been a while since I mentioned Lucky, but his issues have not gone away and in fact have gotten worse.

After conducting a liver bile acids test, our vet is convinced that Lucky has a liver shunt: that means that the blood vessels that carried blood away from his liver to his mother's liver while he was in utero failed to close after he was born, so his blood is not getting to his liver properly to be cleaned. This is causing pretty much all the problems he has been experiencing:  lowered immune function, protein elimination problems, wasting, the seizures, and now abdominal bloating as fluids leak from the liver and possibly intestines because of the protein imbalance.  (That's why he was getting X-rays.)

It's all very complicated.  The upshot is that  he needs surgery to fix the shunt. The surgery could kill him, as it is long and complicated and he is weak.  But he will certainly die without it, as his condition continues to worsen. It has to be done by a specialist and will cost an estimated $2500 to $3000.

Obviously, that's money I don't have.

Yesterday I started a Go Fund Me campaign to try to raise part of the money.  My Facebook friends have been sweet, and so far we've raised $145.  Not bad for one day.  I'm hoping as friends share with friends we can continue to get that up to at least $500.  I'm going to sell a few things around the house to try to get it up to $1000.

The vet is reluctant to give me a firm timeline, but based on the rate at which Lucky's condition is deteriorating, he said in 4 weeks, Lucks could be beyond help, so we need to get him into surgery as soon as possible, if we want to increase his odds. He gets weaker with every passing day, and the more depleted he becomes, the harder it will be for him to withstand the surgery.

Whatever happens, I tell myself, he has been and continues to be loved.  Whatever happens, he's had more life and a healthier life than he would have without us, because me and my family have been willing to pour money into him to keep his little furry head above water all these months.


But we have had him less than a year.  And he's only a year and a half old.  It's not fair.

I don't want him to die.  I don't want to have to hold him and say goodbye, and I don't want to let that little personality go because I failed him.  But I don't know if I can keep that from happening.  There's a sad little part of my heart that fears Lucky was never meant to be long in this world: that he's had a date with death since the beginning, and I've just barely been keeping it at bay.  But he's also been a trooper, and resilient.  I don't think he's giving up yet, and I'm not giving up on him.

The clock is ticking... or is it a time bomb?

Tomorrow is the last day of school for G.  That's the end of junior high for him. In just ten short weeks he'll be a high school student.  

Years ago, when he was still fat and could be patted on the bottom, I tried to imagine myself as the mother of a teenage son.  I pictured myself in the grocery store, trailed by this tall, slouching, demi-man.  I imagined our two-word conversations as he devoured everything in the refrigerator.  I resigned myself to fist-bumps rather than hugs at departures.

Aaaaaand, that's pretty much what I got.

My boy cleared 5'10" last month--officially equaling--perhaps surpassing by now--his father in height. He avoids going to the grocery store with me, or on any errand that doesn't involve the possibility of food or a stop at the book store or game store. And when he is persuaded to accompany me, he doesn't exactly slouch.  What he does do is careen  through the parking lot on the back of the shopping cart on our way to the car, and I can't help but imagine that A) a car is going to pull out suddenly and send him flying, or B) a little old lady is going to step out and get creamed.

Our conversations, though comprising sentences of more than two words, are largely the opposite of what I thought they would be (me talking and him grunting). Example:

G:  So this character in my game is a god, but he's, like, a really weak god, you know?
Me:  Mmmm?
G: But it's because he is just a (insert element) god, he can (insert activity) and he'll transform into a (whatever).
Me:  Mmmmm.
G: So if you meet him in the game, he'll always ask you if you have a (whatever) for him.  Because that's what he needs to do (whatever).  Nobody ever has it, but he asks it every time.
Me.  Hmmm.

This is pretty much what I see every day,
from the time I get home until I go to bed.

The other conversation alternative is that he's wearing earbuds and every time I say anything to him he pauses his computer, pulls out an earbud, and says " what?"  After which I repeat it. He's sort of present and not present at the same time. He's rather like a piece of semi-sapient furniture that periodically bursts out laughing or asks what's for dinner.

And yet he is there.  He is pretty much always there.

And in just a few days, he won't be.  I'll be shipping him off to Texas to be with his dad for nine weeks.  This will be a heroic act on my part because I've never...
EVER...
been separated from him for this amount of time.

Four weeks has been, I believe, my max.  And on Sunday I'll be saying goodbye to him until August. Fucking AUGUST!

Granted, there's a little selfish and weary piece of me that enjoys the idea of a home in which Family Guy is not playing continually... a home with TWO clean bathrooms, and in which I can purchase milk one gallon at a time.  But I figure the novelty will wear off in a few weeks. After that, I'll have to start finding a way to keep from turning into the Crazy Dog Lady.  


Tick tick tick...