My Own Private 9-11

I imagine there are few people over a certain age who do not know something about the horrible events of the September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States. The four coordinated suicide attacks on that Tuesday morning were shocking, devastating and resulted in many changes to the routine ways in which some things are conducted in the U.S. and throughout the world. I am not a good enough wordsmith to add anything cogent to the millions of words already written about the horrors. I don't have a photo or film clip to present. I was nowhere near any of the individual events. I was distracted that day. I had to learn much of what I know about 9-11 by reading and discovering long after the fact. For I, too, had been focusing on the 9-11-01 square on the calendar for some time. I had personal business to conduct on that day.

I was downstairs chatting distractedly with Ex, making the coffee, even though I would not be allowed to drink any that morning. That seems odd now - that little snippet. He was perfectly adept in the kitchen, by now acting as menu maker, shopper and cook. Why I, coffee hound, was messing with the makings when it was denied me is unclear. Likely I had insisted. I needed to keep my hands busy while my head spun out of control.  Amber came down the stairs with an odd look on her face. While getting ready for school, she'd seen the first news bulletins on TV. She didn't fully comprehend what was happening (who did?), but she knew she should likely say something. "You know those twin buildings in New York? You guys better turn on the TV." We did so, and I have a sense of us staring like two slack-jaws at the screen, comprehending no part of what we were seeing. At the time we switched on the set, all eyes were on New York. Then the Pentagon was hit.

I knew my mother would be preparing and drinking her coffee in the north county, and I knew there was no chance she'd partake of news delivered by any media. She is a TV-phobe, not very interested in hearing about anything remotely resembling news. She likes floating around in her own world and her own head. She would soon join Ex and me at a hospital, for I was to have surgery that day and we'd all made careful plans to support me and to support Amber so she could have as normal a day as possible. Nevertheless, we felt Mom should be told what was going on. She can't always be allowed to float along in a bubble. "Mom, dust off the TV and turn it on. I think we may be at war." She asked a good question, given the hour: "With whom?" I didn't know. Anxiety was creeping up on me. I already had a good sense of fear and dread going on. I didn't have much fiber left with which to deal with the attacks. "Just turn it on, Mom. We'll both be available on cell phone. Please take yours out of your purse and turn it on. We're going to the hospital as planned."

Amber had seen and heard enough. She'd been offered some options for her day. She'd landed on going to school as usual and walking afterwards to Aunt Becky's. Her dad would pick her up for dinner and they'd come to see me in the hospital after their meal. She'd been made to understand Mom wouldn't be very frisky and they'd only stay a few minutes, just so she could see I'd come through surgery and now was on the other side. The breaking news distressed her - she was 11 - and now she wanted to simply spend the entire day with Aunt Becky. We actually preferred that. We wanted her in one known place rather than two places with a solo walk in between. Oh, yes, it was Lemon Grove. On her walk, she'd pass the homes of a few different relatives in a 6-block walk, but we still favored her being in one location with a person we trusted 100% to make good decisions.

Amber and I had had a Mom-Daughter sleep-together the night before, bunking in her waterbed playing music we both loved, talking as needed. I don't believe our hands ever ungrasped, even through the sleeping hours. We woke from time to time, both crying. We were scared. We were a well-counseled family, the bulk of that bestowed on me, a bit less on Ex and a sanitized version applied to Amber, appropriate to her age and understanding. Even my mother had been let in for a little bit of preparation. For this surgery was going to drastically change me, and - therefore - everyone close to me, everything I did, everywhere I went, everything I thought, felt and emanated. We were in for some change. I was 49 years of age. I was very reliable and predictable. Good old Les. A rock. The one you could count upon to remain steadfast. I wasn't known for changing up anything in any way.

At the hospital, I was ensconced in the corral where pre-surgical patients wait together in their anxiety and misery. The staff members were clearly distracted, patients' families gathering in front of TVs in the various waiting rooms. I heard one woman make a tart comment to her companion: "Hey, I'm having surgery. Can I get a little attention here?" Though my procedure was scheduled for the afternoon, I reported at 7:00 a.m. and was given an IV. This caused me to need the bathroom 2 or 3 times an hour, dragging my little pull-along contraption with me. I remember feeling absolutely frozen, begging warmed blankets which were produced repeatedly with a smile. Between them, Ex and my mother managed to both keep me company and monitor the news. And finally I went from the corral to the chute. "Bye, Mom. Bye, Ex. See you on the other side." In the chute, my hair was covered, I got a light sedative in my IV (odd, because I'd toughed out many hours without sedation and now I was about to go completely under, but sedate me they did). The nurses there were also distracted, chatting among themselves. One commented on a grisly TV scene wherein body parts could be seen on the roof of a New York building. I didn't think much of that in my sedated state, but she apologized to me for being too graphic. And suddenly, "he" was there.

By pure happenstance, one of the world's recognized front runners practiced his specialty at his clinic and at the hospital 5 miles from my home. I was - once again - the chosen one, the lucky child, to be in his care. I was his third surgery of the day. "Do you know what's happening in the world today or have you been too busy to hear it?" He said he knew about the attacks. "Are you distracted in any way?" He said he was good to go. "OK, then I am, too. I have an 11-year-old who is relying on you to be as expert as you are." He promised to do his best. I suffered a few slight indignities in the operating room, such as meeting the crew that would film my surgery. And then I was mercifully removed from consciousness.

I have said many times in writing that I have suffered more than one addiction. My surgery was to help me with but one of those. I walked into Alvarado Hospital that morning weighing 340 pounds. I'd been gaining toward that peak for many, many years. Though I had managed such things as a successful career, a pregnancy and childbirth, international travel and many more of life's most wonderful gifts, I was now beaten down with nowhere else to turn. I'd tried every reasonable remedy but I'd succeeded in nearly destroying myself. My surgery was Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, the hard way. I was not a candidate for the less invasive laparoscopic procedure. It would color everything that came afterward. Not all outcomes have been joyous. Amber calls 9-11-01 the day she lost her mother. That is an enormous and powerful statement she means completely. My truth is that this was the first enormous gift I gave myself in order to find myself. The 10-year journey has been one of tremendous highs and a few deep lows, those not directly related to the surgery or its results. I wouldn't change a thing. The enormity of the impact of all of my changes cannot possibly be expressed in one blog post. I will continue to write about them, though. I have wanted to write of this for a very long time, as it is such a deeply integral part of the me of today. And - there - now I have done so.

A few things I know: there are enough of "us" now that we know 5 years post-surgery, 80% of us have gained back 50% of our excess weight. I am not one of those. Knowing what my skeleton, blood, muscle and other parts should weigh, I was given a number that - if I reached it - I should accept with good grace and call it a day. I weigh 35 pounds less than that number, without ever once taking extraordinary steps to cause more weight loss. I know about infections and torn staples and all the other horror stories. I read the same news reports you do. I just haven't suffered any of them. I know "they" were right to counsel us about the number one side effect: broken relationships of all kinds. Though Ex and I had been together 30 years and scoffed at the notion my surgery would break us apart, the marriage collapsed in 13 months. I know that not everyone is happy for a person who finds her way out of a terrible trap. Mostly people want things to remain the same. For most of us, profound change is too difficult to contemplate.  Good old Les. She changed everything in one fell swoop.

Cartwheels

I cannot turn a cartwheel. Yes, I know any child can execute a beautiful cartwheel, but I could not do it as a child and I cannot do it now. I can perform other acrobatic stunts considered more difficult, including a flip (or at least I could in 1967), but the cartwheel eludes me. I can hula hoop until hell won't have me any more. Funny, because I cartwheel across that imaginary plane of free association so effortlessly. Want to come along? OK, join me.

I just looked it up. The comedienne Rita Rudner is almost precisely one year younger than I. That makes her 57. A Virgo, like me, she would be meticulous, diligent, a perfectionist, if one puts any stock in astrology. I see billboards for her Las Vegas show whenever I take the Desert Inn Road flyover to avoid the traffic at the Strip when bisecting the town east to west or vice-versa. What the hell is Rita thinking with that splits thing at her age? Yeah, I know she is a trained dancer. But those splits! I wonder if she has to be assisted to rise from the floor after the photo shoot. I wonder if her good-looking trousers withstand the strain without giving way and whether the photographer's assistants have to artfully drape the legs of those trousers so she looks more . . . natural. Natural?? I've never seen her show. She is really good looking and when I have heard her interviewed on local radio or TV, she seems like a regular, good citizen who drives her kid to school and worries about some of the same things that bother me. She seems to be an older mom, as I was/am . . . but those splits!
Readers must tire of Las Vegans continually bitching about the wind, and I promise that I sicken myself in that respect, too. However, I'm not sure I recall anything like last weekend, just when we'd been enjoying promises of warm, relatively calm days. Those who are more tightly wound than I in a literal sense may pick this to death, but I read the Severe Weather Alert. We had an airport watch in effect, with winds sustained at 34 knots and gusts to 47 knots. It was damnably windy. On Saturday, my hair was nearly torn from my scalp as I went in to an AA meeting. Coming out of the Wynn casino at 2:30 Sunday morning, I observed, "Well, we've been in there for 10 hours. Maybe the wind . . " With that, the skirt of my dress was tossed over my face and the rest of my comment was garbled. Throughout the day, the screaming blow only amped up, rendering the air a dull brown with flying dust and grit. I have experienced stronger winds, once in the desert, camped in a gale we later learned was likely 75 mph, for a shorter, overnight duration. It scared me. I was not scared this time in the house, listening to things - some of them remarkably heavy - being tossed around and into the pool. But I am driven nearly insane by it. If it were possible to die from allergies, I might just do that, eyes and nose streaming, lips and tongue adhering to my teeth from too many antihistamines. I am reminded of an Anais Nin essay I once read wherein the characters were driven nearly psychotic because of the scirocco. I comprehend that. The essay was not really about the wind, but she depicted it as a vivid character, an important part of her story. And though I am seated in the wrong part of the world for a real scirocco, I deeply felt the sense of madness approaching. The windchimes created a hellish din, and I remembered that a Scirocco is also a Volkswagen . .

An AA acquaintance has been grounded by the courts for a short time and I have been providing rides. AA places great emphasis on the many benefits of alcoholics helping other alcoholics, considering even the simple act of making the coffee for a meeting a "service". From my perspective, giving rides to someone who lives halfway between my home and AA is easy. It is my pleasure to help where I can, and I am grateful that my fat is not in the fire for once, driver's license revoked and possible jail time in the future. We make our way along some of the older, more congested and always-under-more-road-construction thoroughfares of the city, along the Boulder Strip. People get fidgety in the gridlock, and so do I. "You handle it pretty well," observed my companion. "I'd like to just start flipping them all off." My gut clenched, I broke into a sweat and began to babble, "No, no. No. Don't do that, please. No." I drew a pretty strange look as I sat, miserable in the driver's seat, recalling the last time I flipped anyone off except in jest in the privacy of my own home. July, 1976.

My Volkswagen was not a Scirocco, if those even existed at the time. Mine was the ubiquitous Beetle of the proletariat, 1972 model, yellow, with not the tiny or the huge tail lights of the earlier or later models but the mid-sized ones, regular old, beloved stick shift, not that silly Automatic Stick Shift thing Volkswagen offered at the time. That bug and I were well-suited to one another and I'd had many an adventure behind its wheel. Flying - oh, yes, way too fast - around the curve of one of the cloverleaf configurations of the LA freeways, I once came quickly upon an overturned truck that had deposited many dead cows in the roadway. Although quite distressed, I downshifted my little chariot, got onto the brakes and neatly, but narrowly avoided any cow collision. My timing was less fortuitous the time I got behind the semi-truck full of oranges that had spilled onto the Golden State Freeway, but oranges are less deadly than cows in a collision. I squeezed fresh OJ for about 10 minutes and went on my way. The VW had moved Ex and me, four kittens and all our worldly possessions to Las Vegas only a couple of weeks earlier. To my disappointment, it took Ex only about 14 seconds to find people to drink and play pool with. I was on my own in the evenings a lot.

It was monsoon season, something I'd never experienced. Hell for hot and humid enough to make it rain indoors. I drove to the 7-11 nearby and got an obscenely huge cold drink - it would have been the fully sugared stuff in the day, lots of ice. On the way out of the store, a man made a remark to me that I didn't care for. Given that this became such a life-altering event, one would expect me to remember the exact words, but I do not. It had to do with my appearance, in words I instinctively knew he thought were complimentary, but which I did not appreciate. Without giving the notion sufficient forethought, I flipped him off. Oh, it was a gentle flipping off, not truly intended to call the man out. If I'd chosen words instead of gestures, they would not have been the words typically associated with flipping off. The man ignited. He set his jaw and started to walk across the parking lot in a resolute way. Scared, I jumped into my car, started it and went out onto the street. He was on me in a minute, Barney Fife in the patrol car, chasing down a perpetrator. All he lacked was a siren. I knew how to handle my car and exhibited some fancy moves, spurting forward, dashing between other cars. He never missed a beat. I took parking lots at a fast diagonal following sharp, last-minute turn-ins. He was right there with me. Pouring sweat now, I was 23, shaken, didn't know the streets and we'd been at this for 20 minutes or more. There would be no cell phones for decades.

Appearances count for much in Las Vegas. We don't like to scare the tourists away. One of Metro's finest pulled me over on the Strip, probably for driving unbecoming a local or some such infraction. The angry man stopped and waited for me to get my ticket, apparently so that we could take up our chase again afterwards. Mortified, I told the officer my story. He went and had words with the angry man who finally moved on. "Are you new to Las Vegas?" I said I was. "From California?" What, was it stamped on me or something? I already had Nevada plates on the car. "Come on, honey. I'll see you home. I'd advise you not to flip people off in Las Vegas. They don't care for it." I've never done it again. It's the last time I felt kindly toward a traffic cop.

Something that charmed me: My fragile, ancient VHS videotape of "Enchanted April" has played as white noise and flashing gray/black/white/soft color distraction for days on the equally ancient 19" TV retained for the very purpose of playing those old tapes I'm not ready to toss. Enchanted April is . . narrow, I suppose. It doesn't appeal to hordes of people, but it is a firm favorite of mine. Ex tolerated it a few times a week and Amber became as dedicated a fan as I. Once a man who loved me agreed to sit by my side and try to watch it. Within 10 minutes, his book was open on his lap, but he stayed beside, hand occasionally patting my thigh, remaining together despite Enchanted April.

Anyway, the opening scenes take place in an impossible-to-fully-describe sodden, gray morning in London just after World War I. As Lottie rides in the bus, crushed in with disabled veterans and heavy clouds of cigarette smoke, one can feel the damp chill, smell the wet wool uniforms, lunches carried in baskets, shopping items perched on laps, some passengers standing in the aisles. The rain pounds on from a solid gray sky. Lottie sees an advertisement in The Times on the back of the newspaper being read by a man seated across from her. She dreams of "letting" (leasing) the vaunted villa on the Mediterranean just to escape London in April . . . The first 2-3 minutes of the video bring my words to life. Skip through the opening credits, if you must. And, yep, the first strains of the lead-in music are like nails scraping a blackboard. It's still worth that visual of 1916 London in April.

I didn't intend to do an Enchanted April snippet until a quote grabbed me: "It's easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time." [Philip Dunne, 1908-1992, American screenwriter]

And now, I shall cartwheel myself to a hot bath followed by sleep if I am lucky tonight, for tomorrow is to be busy and I need to be on my game. I surely do thank the reader for company during my mini-vacation for which I only had to travel as far as the confines of my own head. Have I mentioned I am pretty easily entertained?

Word Play - Simply For Love of Language

Created by self and other bloggers, thank you so much!

You are the cheese to my macaroni
You are the horizon to my sky
You are the bacon to my eggs
You are the laces to my sneakers
You are the jelly to my peanut butter
You are the Iams to my cat's dish
You are the muriatic acid to my pool
You are the smile to my face
You are the gravy to my mashed potatoes
You are the bubbles to my bath
You are the milk to my cookie
You are the ink to my pen
You are the ketchup to my French fries
You are the water to my ocean
You are the icing on my cupcake
You are the beans to my wiener
You are the comment to my blog post
You are the thread to my needle
You are the donut to my 7-11 case
You are the litter to my cat's box
You are the jewel to my piercing
You are the bookmark to my tome
You are the Garmin to my torturous trek
You are the sense in my sentence
You are the lens to my perception
You are the punchline to my joke
You are the mirror to my reflection
You are the phoenix to my hope
You are the cake to my ice cream
You are the hot fudge to my sundae
You are the sprinkles to my donut
You are the branches to my snowfall
You are the I to my loneliness
You are the island to my I
You are the spaces between the trees of my forest
You are the loveliness to my buttons
You are the underwiring to my bra
You are the canvas to my acrylic
You are the paper to my thought
You are the light to my shining
You are the glasses to my opera
ou're the Budweiser commercial to my Super Bowl
You're the Cinderella's castle to my Disneyland
You're the A-1 sauce to my steak
You're the iambic pentameter to my poem
You are the mouse to my pad
You are the Wite-Out to my typo (ask your grandparents about that one, kids)
You are the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building to my Lee Harvey Oswald
You are the Leo the lion to my Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
You are the George Martin to my Beatles
You are the neuroses to my Woody Allen
You are the bus to my another stranger
You are the shadow to my doubt

You are the sunshine of my life,
that's why I'll always be around

You're the tops
You're the colosseum
You're the top
You're the Louvre museum

What would you add, bloggers?

Created by self and paid $300 to send to relief efforts for Japan. (Below, a very early, primitive attempt at poetry. How's that, Rachel? I TOLD you it was modest and only a fan of me, personally, would pay for it!)
Some of you good ones have already e-mailed to ask what it is about, etc.
Please feel free to contact me in that way.

STEWARD OF THE HEART LAND

No more free right
of ingress and egress for you.
A toll booth was constructed,
your picture taped to the glass,
so you will be recognized
if you attempt to encroach.

You said you loved the landscape
but you plundered
irreplaceable artifacts,
smuggled out in your backpack and pouches.
Sand drifted from a hole in your pocket,
a sinuous trail like the track of a sidewinder.

You took brochures and attended lectures,
learning small things you could do
to help safeguard a precious resource.

The face is like a topo map,
revealing what there is to know.
Brow furrowed in apportioned concern,
yours inspires confidence and
hints at shared passion. You mislead.

You grasped the things that one can do,
for conservation and preservation,
citing by rote the steps you'd never take.
You are glib, though the sincere did not know
that for you to be spurred to
conserve or preserve, the words
must be preceded by "self".

The Other Bicycle Misadventure

At 18, I was keeping body and soul together by living in at a foster home, helping with housework, cooking, shopping, laundry, yard work, the mountains of paperwork involved in fostering minors for Los Angeles County, and general mischief. It was a place with all kinds of dynamics for potential disaster and disgrace. The parents were a regular Joe Iowan displaced to southern California and his extremely unusual French Moroccan wife. They had two young adopted children, although they were in their early 50s. Gary was 5 and Arlette was 3. There was Limes, 18. And 8 adolescent males ranging from 15 to nearly 18. There were more intrigues, attractions, connections and fallings-out than one can imagine. And these "parents" were oblivious. They'd go off for long weekends or mini-vacations, leaving Limes in charge. Come on, it was 1971. What do you think went on when an 18-year-old was left as the "adult"? Ours was known as the party house.

None of the fostered young men owned a car. A couple owned bicycles. On a warm afternoon, I asked if I could use one of the bikes to take Arlette for a ride. She was an adorable child. If one were a doll designer, one would want the face to look like Arlette's. I'm ashamed today to say I thought it was OK to put a 3-year-old on the handlebars of a bicycle and pedal her up and down a blacktop alley. Helmets weren't yet heard of, at least by me. She giggled and we chatted and I took her up and down the alley for probably half an hour.

The German Shepherd showed himself after we'd been at it for awhile. I'm not a big fan of dogs, and particularly not big dogs. It began to lope along just behind us to the right and I didn't care much for that. I said nothing to Arlette, but I was a little concerned because he kept steady pace with us and seemed aggressive. He wasn't going away. At the point in the alley where I was the farthest away from home, two other huge dogs joined the Shepherd and started circling us. They took turns snapping at the back tire. I was having trouble landing on what I should do.

I pedaled hard toward home, thinking I'd holler out for some of the guys to help us. Drew near the House of Mirth where some dozen people lived . . . nobody in the yard! Kept pedaling fast and hard, back and forth, yelling at those miserable dogs as much as they were snarling at us. Arlette didn't seem to notice anything. The dogs were leaping into the air just at the back tire, snapping . . . . pack animals seem to get more excited as the chase progresses. Not that I'm a dog psychologist.

On my umpteenth zoom toward the house, there were suddenly a number of home dudes in the yard. I screamed out my plight and caused a little commotion. Young men scrambled everywhere, whooping like warriors, picking up rocks, a broom, a rake and a chair to shake or throw at the dogs. I hoped no one would hit Arlette or me. But one of the guys seemed to keep his head - this was Ex. I saw him gesture to one of the others, "come with me". They stepped out into the alley and I aimed toward them, slowing the bike. From their perspective we had to look pretty frightening - moving bicycle, frightened child, frightened chick and a maelstrom of mangy curs. Ex executed a pretty nifty yank of Arlette off the handlebars and swiftly handed her to the other young man.

Relief hit me pretty hard as I watched the home dude carry Arlette inside. My feet were on the ground steadying the bike, but my knees were knocking. I saw Ex turn back toward me after handing Arlette off. The noise from the dogs was deafening and I could smell them. The world kind of stopped for a moment and that's when that German Shepherd took a flying leap ~ the animal bit me sufficiently to remove a piece of my 501s and my glutes. Ex executed another pretty swift move, just as the pack of my protectors descended on the pack of dogs. He yanked off his T-shirt and wrapped it around the middle of me so my humiliation could not be seen by the others. He went with me to the emergency room and sat in the hallway while I was stitched up.

I married him 7 years later and had a child with him 19 years later. He was in my life 32 years - by far the longest of anyone I've ever known. Our divorce was ugly, but I have to give him this: he was a good man to have around in a pinch.

In my ears right now: Judy Collins ~ Who Knows Where the Time Goes. I owned that album when the dog bit me.

Something that charmed me today: the picture above that looks like a huge dog is about to devour a child . . . . is actually a beloved family pet trying to get to the bubbles the child is blowing.