Tuesday, May 16, 2006

• Currently Reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Vintage) By Dave Eggers see related

  I resisted reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius because the title turned me off. With a title like that, I figured it would be maudlin and pretentious and awful. Surprise! I love it. So much so, that I don't feel like bothering to finish Anywhere but Here, although I will because I'm uptight like that. It's a memoir, about a family in which the mother and father die within a month of each other, and the twenty-one year old raises his seven year old brother.

  I hate talking in terms of “relating” to a book, because I don't feel the need to see a reflection of myself in everything I read, but the first chapter, really touched a nerve. The mother is dying of cancer. She is about the same age my mom was when she died of cancer. The father has already died, and the kids are tying to cope with their mother's illness: her nosebleeds, the spitting up of green fluid, and the plastic receptacle to catch the green fluid. Obviously, her death is not the same as my mom's, and yet in a way it is. It's weird seeing someone in the last stages of life, because the person is still living, if you get my meaning—they make funny comments and tart remarks, they read and eat, and walk and are still very much a part of this world. And somehow you accommodate dying into your life.

  My mom needed a receptacle too. Not for green fluid, but because her brain tumor put pressure on her brain, causing her to vomit frequently. It became a part of our lives, emptying the receptacle. I remember one day, about two weeks before my mom died. We had guests—I have no idea why—but all I remember is my brother's mother-in-law sitting next to my mom on the couch, green in the face as my mom quietly vomited. I casually took the receptacle and emptied it, all the while marveling at my casualness. Nothing to see here.

  Eggers describes his house: “But the family room..has always been, for better or for worse, the ultimate reflection of our true inclinations. It's always been jumbled, the furniture competing, with clenched teeth and shart elbows, for the honor of the Most Wrong-looking Object,” and it is exactly like the houses of practically everyone I have ever known in my whole life, except my own. I longed to live in one of those cluttered, shabby family houses, where the dogs are allowed on the couch and skis and lacrosse sticks stand in the corners. My house was clean and light, like an empty refrigerator. It smelled like ice cubes, Murphy's Oil Soap, a whiff of gin. It was always cold. After my mother started her chemo, the house took on a new toxic smell. Her chemo regimen was a potent, experimental mix invented by and named after her doctor. The Takita Cocktail, it was called, and it was nasty. “It has an 80% success rate,” Dr. Takita told us. We thought that sounded good, until we learned that “success” meant “shrinkage of tumor” and not “cure.”

  At the end, for about the last week, we had the round-the-clock nurses. There were three of them, one for each eight-hour segment of the day, and there was one we liked better than the others. One of them had an I LOVE JESUS bumper sticker. She was nice, but not our favorite. She saw the crosses, the palms, the living room full of nuns, the priest called in to give last rites, and she came to the conclusion that my mother was a religious person. You can't blame her. One night, my sister called me, agitated. “She's reading Mom the Bible out loud. What do I do?”

  “Tell her we'll read Mary Poppins instead,” I said, and she did. Mary Poppins, by the way, is the ultimate children's comfort book. Written by P.L. Travers, it is nothing like the cloying, exuberant movie.

  Anyway, the plain fact is, my mom had given up believing in God years before, but she'd kept that fact a secret from my father. This is something we often did and still do: kept things secret from my father. “Don't upset your father.” “Don't tell Dad.” One day, when she was in the hospital, my father freaked out over something and started hyperventilating. “Put a bag over his head,” my mom said. She meant that he should breathe into a paper bag, but her slip of the tongue was peculiarly appropriate, as slips of the tongue often are.

  Her official diagnosis was adeno-carcinoma of the lungs, with metastasis to the brain. She said she wanted “I DO NOT SMOKE. THIS IS NOT MY FAULT,” tattooed across her chest. She died, in mid-March of 1997, just three and a half months after diagnosis.

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  Now that I've probably depressed everyone, I feel I should end this entry on a happy note, and what could be happier than the fabulous broccoli salad I made tonight?  Toast two tablespoons of chopped pecans.  Mix 1 tablespoon lemon juice with 3 tablespoons olive oil and one crushed garlic glove.  Steam 1 pound broccoli in microwave for about two minutes.  Toss with dressing and nuts and add some crumbled feta.  I can't stop eating it!
  
  Other happy news:  our addition is complete.  At least the part done by the professionals.  Jon and I must finish the drywall, and that is going to be horrible.  We also have to finish the floor--that fabulous reclaimed antique heart pine floor--and paint inside and out and put up gutters.  We're a long way from moving the furniture in, but it looks like a real room, now that the floor is installed.
  

  
  

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