Bad day for 21st and Walnut

I walked home from work early today. I was tired from my new job, which so far entails reading and jockeying for position with another employee. I think I will be happy there, but today the effort of continual adjustment sort of wore me out.

By the way, I live in Philadelphia now.

I walked home from work, enjoying the fall colors, cold air (fall! It’s been so long since I’ve seen one!) and deciding if I would stop for a glass of wine or head straight home. I was so lost in my own head that I was almost on top of the disaster in the street before I realized that the crowds of people were not normal for 21st and Walnut.

A crane had fallen. 125 feet, according to the newscasters, who were severely reporting into their cameras. It wasn’t really a crane so much as a huge cherry picker/man lift. Repairs were being made to the spires of a church on the corner. I’d been watching the progress for a few weeks. The machine operator was dead. A woman injured from falling debris. Street signs were lying in the street, the awnings of the local florist shredded. A workers truck sat with a smashed windshield near what remained of the bucket. High above it all, a large hole had been carved out of the roof and wall of the apartment building over the florist shop.

None of this had occurred when I walked by the same corner seven hours earlier.

I watched for a while, called my mom, and then backtracked to reach my street. I walked into my local bar and ordered a glass of wine. I was the only patron and the bartender and I start to talk about the accident. She tells me that when she was a little girl her father worked construction. One day the platform he was working on collapsed and he fell five stories, landing on his feet.

“Was he okay?” I asked.

I know he’s alive, she had mentioned him before. But she tells me that her father was and wasn’t okay.

“He contracted Hepatitis C from the blood transfusions, he was never the same after that. Tired a lot. I didn’t realize how massive the event was at the time. I was only five or six.”

And then she apologized to me for making someone else’s tragedy about herself, which I found completely sincere and endearing.

“But you do think about yourself when you see a situation like that.” I told her.

I certainly had thought about myself back on that corner. When I called my mom from the accident site she answered, but was crabby from working on her taxes.

“It’s right at the bus stop I use every morning mom, the bus stop is a little smushed.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. Well good thing you weren’t there then.”

“MOM! I’m serious.” I tell her.

“Yes, okay well I’m working on my taxes so I’ll read about it later okay?” and with that my mom said good-bye and disconnected.

I was irritated and then embarrassed that I was worrying about me. I wasn’t at the bus stop. It happened in the middle of the day so I wouldn’t have been at the bus stop. Really, I was selfishly thinking about how two weeks into a new town I didn’t know anyone who I could call if I had to go to the emergency room. I was too embarrassed to tell the bartender what had gone through my head when I saw the accident, so I changed the subject and ordered some bread.

We chatted a bit more while we waited for my order and then she turned to help two more customers who had managed to find their way into the bar, despite the street being blocked off. I finished my glass of wine and suddenly felt so tired that I wasn’t sure I would even make it across the street to my apartment without a nap first.

I stumbled up my stairs and then wandered through the maze of packing cardboard that leads to my couch. I was barely able to register when I laid down, shoes still on, pulling the couch throw over my shoulders and up to my ears. I fell into the mental twilight that sometimes lingers before the deep midnight of a big sleep. I wandered through the afternoon again, changing the scenario at the corner several times over.

In the first instance I imagine that I come down Walnut and find a crowd, TV crews, emergency response teams. A crane is down, the building and street damaged. The crane operator is badly hurt and he will require many surgeries. The first surgery is already underway, it will be a tough road but he will likely survive.

Then the same picture but he’s not as badly hurt. He will definitely survive.

Then I see the crane fall only this time a freak miracle accompanies the freak accident. He’s able to jump free of the basket, or maybe he was thrown. But instead of falling all the way to the sidewalk he lands on the roof of the building, hurt, but not too much, a few broken bones.

Then the same picture only this time he lands inside the apartment where the crane makes a hole in the roof. This time he falls right onto a couch under the hole and is a little bruised and has some scratches but no broken bones. “If it weren’t so serious it would be slapstick.” is how the incident is reported on the local news.

Then, right before my conscious completely faded:

I come down Walnut and…nothing. Nothing happened. The crane, it drove over the manhole cover and wobbled, but it held. No one knows about it. Traffic is the same. There are no news crews. No one dies.

My shoes were still on and my new living room was strangely quiet with all of the cars diverted to other streets and finally, I slept.

The cherry picker the week before. Mom happened to take a random picture of it when she was visiting.

Introduction -or- why bother?

My favorite part about having a blog is definitely the "log". I like looking back over my own words and seeing the comments left by my friends and family. It's like having the faint essence of a conversation frozen in time. I think our ancestors had something like it that they called "letters". My first blog was on The Myspace and sadly, when I moved it over to The Blogspot, I lost a lot of the comments that were left on the earlier stories. I also like how the public venue makes me feel like I should work harder to entertain. Having that constraint really helps me boil down my stories to a manageable few pages. More importantly, the desire to entertain allows me to find the humor in situations that otherwise might only be stressful or dreary.

I think my least favorite part of having a blog is the feeling that I occasionally have to deeply censor what I write to protect the privacy of myself and my friends. Because of this I still have never written about a few of the bigger events in my life over the last few years. I also have to be very careful when I talk about "Froggie". There are four stories in this blog (so far) that are wholly or in part about my "Little Sister". It is a sad commentary on the progress of AIDS awareness that in 2008 we are still unable to speak about HIV/AIDS in a more open and accepting format. This lack of progress has had a huge and negative impact on her quality of life. As her one of her caregivers it has also made it difficult for me to find the support that I need to replenish my own stores of strength.

Initially, I started "Days like this since 1974" as a way to express my feelings about being an older graduate student. I have found that very little of that has crept into my stories even though it completely dominates my life. Perhaps I needed a place to feel like a human with value outside of my last experiment. Maybe I'm just deeply in denial. Either way, it's been nice to write some and laugh some and bitch lots (and lots!). I haven't written much in the last month. I have a few good stories to get down. One is about quitting (almost? really?) graduate school. Another one is about driving over my mom's foot and then there was the time I sat in a dirty room full of nerf-covered couches and dust bunnies while doctors tried to decide if I should be committed to the psych ward.

Well, maybe I'll just wait for something more eventful.

Apparently you have a time machine

So I'm sitting at the Bottletree with Meg, Wen, and T. We get angry with the early reporting and send the following snarky e-mail cause we are HILARIOUS. Also, we are PISSED off AND ourah nurves is toe-up!* They are calling the election seconds after the polls have closed in only a handful of states.
__________________

Dear Dedicated Reporters and Staff at Reuters,

It is Tuesday night in Birmingham, Alabama. While we are often accused of being behind the times we have recently recieved a shipment of calendars into our Walmarts. In this way we are able to determine that it is November 4th...which is a ding-dang-dawg Tuesday.
Imagine our surprise when we read (just having learned that too) that you are already calling states for Obama not to mention that these results were collected on Wednesday, November 5th.
We sure hope you send that technology down here soon.
Sincerely,
Olabama Lovahs in Bama

(Seriously, how can you justify calling results so soon? It has only been minutes since the polls closed.)

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(Ha ha, jokes on us...turns out it IS Wednesday in Reutersville which is obviously around the world somewheres.... he he he....blush)

* Yankee translation: Our nerves are some what frayed

Don't forget to breath

I woke up this morning and was already on pins and needles. I cried. Not because of school, or the break up, but because today I wish that my grandfather, and grandmother, and my cousin Mgn, and all of my black relatives who died could be here today. I'm scared. I'm hopeful. I'm scared.

Rr called me this morning and we went down to the Fire Station together. We voted. My friend KD sent me text messages about hope, and history. She told me that he would be the first black president of the USA four years ago. I voted for Hillary in the primary. KD and I had fought about it. She called me a chicken then. She might have been right.

I'm a hopeful chicken right now. I'm also sort of frantic. I miss CNK like crazy. I want to talk to him. I want to know what he's thinking about all of this.

My mom sent me the best e-mail and she gave me permission to paraphrase and then post it here. She's been calling people in Indiana on behalf of Barack Obama. Mostly just leaving messages about where the message recipient can go to vote. Here is her story:


"So I called people in Indiana again today. Didn't get too many -- in
fact got lots of disconnected numbers. Must be dragging the bottom of
the barrel. Of the people who did answer here is the best conversation I had...

Woman on phone in Indiana: Well I voted already

Mom [in her head]: [she sounds so friendly I assume she means for Obama]

Woman: I gotta tell you... I don't go with that Obama

Mom [in her head]: [Oh no! I'm chatting up a McCain voter... my heart is breaking]

Woman : No... I don't usually go with that. And he really doesn't have any
experience.

Mom [ihh]: [Why argue with her... she's already voted.]

Woman: People say that and it's true. But you know what. You aren't born
with experience. No one is born with president tattooed on their
forehead. No, he'll get it. I had to go for him.

Mom [ihh]: [What IS she saying? She DIDN'T go for him, she DID go for him? Put me out of my
misery!]

Woman: I did. I voted for him. Usually I don't go for those kind of people. Well I never have. But you know. We can change. We can learn. NOW I'M STILL NOT FOR MIXING 'EM UP. NO NO NO, I DON'T GO FOR THAT. But I had to vote for him. I had to do it. We're in big trouble here. Well things aren't going to change overnight. But at least he'll get us going in the right direction. And you know what?! My neighbor voted for him too! We all did.
None of us had ever gone for one of them before... but we all voted for him."

My mom told me that is made her cry a little when she got off the phone.

We can change. We can learn.

I'm completely terrified. It's 6:45pm CST and so far McCain is up...I'm hopeful anyway.

We can change. We can learn. Just a few hours now. Don't forget to breath.

Lady Diva

Froggie called me yesterday. She sounded funny, like maybe she was crying, and my heart sank. I was in the middle of an experiment and didn’t want to spend 45 minutes consoling her about what ever her latest problem with her boyfriend was. I’ve been having a hard enough time consoling myself lately.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing! I just wanted to tell you the good news.”

But really she sounded bad and I was not optimistic.

“My doctors just called me and told me that my T cells are up. I have 15 now and last week I only had 9!”

For the last few months Froggie has made an effort to take all of her AIDS meds and go to her weekly doctors visits. At various points in her life, her health has been in real danger from secondary infections and yet it has always been a struggle to get her to comply with her doctors orders, even after weeks in the hospital she would refuse to swallow pills.

It is a source of embarrassment for me that I don’t know more about immunology, given my insistence that I am a biologist. Even worse, I’ve been caring for a child with HIV/AIDS for more than a decade and I still have to think hard about relative value when I hear numbers like “viral load” and “T cell count”. I was pretty sure that 15 was not a high number even for an AIDS diagnosis.

“How many are you supposed to try for?”

“It’s like 500 or something. That would be really good but I didn’t have any and now I have 15. The medicine is working!”

“Honey? Why are you crying?”

She really let loose with the tears and while it was hard to understand, it became clear after a minute that she was saying, “I’m just so happy!”

She went on to thank me. She missed her mom and wanted to be able to show her how well she was doing. She said that my mom and I had never given up on her. That even when she would fight and fight we still made her take her medicine and now she could do it on her own and every thing was going to be alright.

I cringe when she says things like that. I’m afraid that her body, after so many years of “non compliant” medicinal abuse will give up on her even if she really tries to stay healthy. Even a few bad days can send her into a funk that makes it seem worthwhile to her to attempt life without the hassle of trying to stay alive.

“I think that’s great. I’m really extremely proud of you. Just…there are going to be days when your counts don’t go up, or they go down a little and I don’t want you to be too disappointed when that happens. You know, life can be pretty up and down.”

I’m currently nursing my own disappointments and I realized as I said it that maybe I was projecting just a little. Or just a lot.

She smiled and I could hear it in her voice. “I know, but don’t worry okay? I know there is going to be bad things but at least I won’t ever again have the bad thing be swallowing a little pill. I can do that now!”

I catch myself trying to dampen her optimism more times than I like to admit. Here she is telling me that she feels like she made it over a huge hurdle in her life and all I can think is that I have to protect her from any and all other disappointing days to come.

Last year Froggie’s mom died. It was a horrible mixture of crack and alcohol and having exhausted the medical system. In the end her mother couldn’t speak because there was so much yeast and bacteria clogging her throat. Froggie was left alone in the house with her while she died slowly for months, most days unable to leave her bed. We couldn’t get the State to take her out of there, even when she used a razor blade to carve “I hate me” into her arm and underlined it twice. When her mother died Froggie was 17 and could barely read. She now lives on social services and food stamps. She graduated from high school and is learning how to cook, trying to practice her reading, and cleaning up the apartment after her brother. She has a life-long and life-threatening illness. She’s 18.

So there she was, telling me that she was having a great day because she had risen from about 2% to 3% of the T cells she will need to get out of AIDS and back to HIV. And there I was, trying to warn her about hard times because I’m 34 and my boyfriend dumped me.

I thought about what CNK said when I had asked for his impressions of Froggie after we had dropped her off at her apartment on my last visit home.

“It wasn’t what I expected. I mean, maybe it’s different out here…but at home in Alabama I haven’t had that experience with, you know. Like African-American urban culture isn’t usually so demonstrative…they were just so taken with you. I guess I didn’t expect them to be so demonstrative, and so taken with you.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked him.

I was trying to remain open to him so I didn’t say anything about how much the term “African-American” bores me in any context other than academia.

“Who are ‘they’ or ‘them’? Those kids are my family. Of course they are taken with me, I helped raise them!”

Then I spent the next few miles reassuring him that I wasn’t uncomfortable with his comments when all I wanted to do was talk about how great both kids looked and how much better my heart felt seeing them after a long, hard year in Alabama. I should have known that he was headed out the figurative door then. I should have opened it myself before he could tell me that our relationship was mostly ‘fun’ and ‘convenient’ but not ‘sustainable’. My relationship with Froggie and her brother has often been extremely un-‘fun’ and the least ‘convenient’ thing for everyone involved. There have been times when I thought caring about them might literally end my ability to get out of bed, but somehow ‘sustainable’ has always been achieved. I think the difference must be love.

I tuned back into Froggie. She was off on a long story about her biological father and his second family. There is a Tweety Bird jacket she wants for her 19th birthday next week. The jacket says “Lady Diva” on it and she thinks that would be accurate and classy on her. She wants to learn how to make spaghetti because she already knows how to make tacos. Her brother is still working at the job he got last week and now she doesn’t mind cleaning up the kitchen after him because he’s really contributing. She doesn’t want him to buy her something for her birthday because they shouldn’t waste their money but maybe he could take her to the movies or to get something to eat in a restaurant.

“I just want to do something that is spending time with him. I don’t care as much about all that stuff that you buy because you barely remember that stuff anyways. Like when you used to take me for a ride on the ferries and we would have hot chocolate.”
I couldn’t help it; I had to smile because sometimes talking to her for ten minutes makes me feel like I’m co-staring in an Original Inspirational Story presented by Hallmark…but with a lot more drug abuse and real curse words.

Froggie and I ended our phone call with the promise of talking again soon, I-love-youes and hints about Tweety Bird birthday presents, which I rebuffed. I got back to my experiment. I wasn’t all better. I didn’t want to dance around the room yet. But I did stop thinking that I wasn’t going to make it to the end of the day and started thinking about what to have for dinner out with B. I could feel, just a little, my value climb.

She’s totally going to get that jacket.