Inland, Dreaming of Waves

Pity fest

What a hellatious* week it’s been.

On Monday I found out that my sister was in intensive care at Research Hospital in Kansas City. My other sister called from California to give me the heads up. She said that our older sister sounded like she was crying and gasping for breath as she talked on the phone. Despite being a nurse, she let herself get so sick that she had to call Dad to take her to the emergency room. She thought that she had the flu and she was reluctant to call Dad for fear he’d get it and die or something, but she just couldn’t take it any longer.

All this raised the specter of another member of my family dying while I was away, as happened with my maternal grandfather in 1983, my maternal grandmother in 1990, and my mother in 1992. I’ve lived away from my family so long that it seems normal, but during weeks like this one I realize how much I miss them. I’ve never actually lived in the same town as my family while living in a separate dwelling. It’s feast or famine, baby—in their house or in another time zone.

Sometimes I can’t decide which is the feast and which the famine. But lately I’ve come to think that’s my failing, not theirs.

So my sister’s been in ICU all week. They moved her to a private room and then had her in procedures all day because they suspected a heart attack. Turns out her heart was slightly damaged, possibly by a spasm of a coronary artery, but there was no clot or blockage. Also, she has fluid in her pleural sac. They say she’s got a severe infection, but they can’t say if it’s bacterial or viral, and they don’t know where it originated. What good are doctors anyway?

Today Dad said she was looking much better. I was complaining to a friend how much I disliked not being able to just hop in a car and visit her, and my friend said, “Well, it’s not like you have a full-time job at an office. You can go visit her if you want.”

It’s true. I could. It’s just that I get in this mindset in which I think, “Well, I have three freelance jobs due by mid-April. I’m swamped with work.” And I was waiting for my other sister to travel, or for Dad to tell me I’d better get on a plane.

Tuesday night I went to the second night of my short story workshop. It didn’t go very well. The instructor started off discussing a short story by Deborah Eisenberg that most of us had not finished (I had, and one other person had). The discussion limped along, to say the least. Then began the critique of my story, which I have to sit through without commenting. Normally I’d get to comment at the end, but the instructor announced that he had to go to the bathroom, ratcheted out a few more comments, and flew away. I explained to the other people in the room that I was working on a linked collection of stories and wasn’t sure whether I even wanted each story to stand alone. Then we moved to the next story. At one point the instructor said, “Now I’m going to put on my angry face” and proceeded to tell the poor guy how all his characters were undeveloped. I really didn’t agree with him, but I think the instructor’s negative attitude led us all down the same path. (I couldn’t help but think of the last workshop I was in, with a much more positive instructor.) Then the instructor said “angry face off” and chuckled, as if he’s done something funny.

It was like being in graduate school again, with all these guys who wanted to be the next great experimental writer that you’ve never heard of.

It didn’t help that Todd called twice during class to give me the latest on my sister.

It was a good thing that I had schedule some pampering Wednesday. I had a haircut and a makeup lesson, which was really fun. This woman had given me a bikini wax and a pedicure before, and I wasn’t very impressed by either of those (she didn’t get EVERY SINGLE HAIR, and the painting on the nails was crooked!). But her makeup lesson was great. Sometimes it’s fun to be paid attention to that way.

After I got home, though, I started to cry through my four coats of mascara (“It looks so natural,” she said). I didn’t know how my sister was doing, and I couldn’t talk to her because she was in ICU.

Also, I thought maybe I should just give up writing fiction. So far I’ve published a short story in 1991, a short novel in 1998, and a short story in 2006. Every seven or eight years—that’s me. I was wallowing in self-pity until after Krav Maga (always good for a pick-me-up) and complained to a friend that I had lost confidence in my ability to tell when a story was done. After I told her a little bit about the collection, she suggested that I might not be writing stories, but really a kind of novel.

That and talking to Dad helped me feel a lot better.


*My spell check thinks this word should be “hilarious,” “elations,” or “gelatinous.” Any other suggestions?

posted by Price of Silence @ 9:10 PM