It’s been a rough few months. One of my coaches keeps reminding me that I’ll never have to slay that particular dragon again, but if so, why does the dragon still hold so much sway? I’m breathing easier, though, a little better every day, and sleeping just a little better every night. I wish I could say more about this; indeed, I think I should write at length about it, but I can’t here. But suffice to say that I had to do battle with dragon that was at one moment the friendly beast in that terrible movie with Sean Connery and Kurt Russell, and the next a balrog from where the dwarves dug too deep.

Anyhoodle, these last couple of weeks, when I’ve gotten home from work, I’ve taken to going on long walks around my neighborhood. Which means I have to leave work at a reasonable hour, since by 7:30 it is seriously considering being all the way dark. But these walks are just wonderful. It’s one of the few times during a work day that I listen to a lot of music, and there are still roses in bloom just about everywhere, and I live on the outskirts of a beautiful downtown historic district. Indeed, many of the homes boast plaques that tell the reader when it was built (by hand in 1886), by whom (John C. Coombs and John C. Delaney), and how many times it has flooded (too many to count). I can’t get enough. And this afternoon in particular, I swear a memo went out to every single neighborhood cat, because they were out in force, and in full repose. Every column, every stoop, every grand chair was graced by un gato, still as a statue and grand as a Sphinx, except for the lazy blinking of their eyes when I’d look at them. Fat cats, scrawny cats, mutts and Persians and everything in between. It’s almost as if they know the rains will come and they best soak up the day’s heat from the pavement while they have the chance.

So eventually I’m going to come to the point of this blog. I was walking through the neighborhood, unabashedly staring at the houses and the yards still filled with tomatoes and sunflowers and poppies and I was reminded of one of my favorite literary phrases: nodding flowers. I know it’s overused, but it’s just so apt, and I love it. Because I was breezing by and the flowers were nodding at me, agreeing with me that it was a lovely evening. I thought also of “kids sawing away on violins”, another overused phrase, but how perfect! If you’ve ever seen a young youth orchestra, that’s exactly what it looks like: little ones, frowning with determination, Charlie Brown-esque tounges poppped out the sides of their mouths, furiously sawing away at their poor little wooden instruments. I think it’s my sis-in-law Jordana who in band practice always found satisfaction if she got to the end of her music “first”. I just love it.

I know that there are horrid and banal over-used phrases in literature (“his eyes slid down her dress” comes to mind) but sometimes the genius of a phrase, or a turn of music, is undeniable, no matter how often it’s used. American Airlines can do their best to make me forget the magic of “Rhapsody in Blue” but as long as I hear it outside of the context of a commercial, it still moves me, and it always will.

Once upon a time, in a land 3000 miles away, there was a bar wench. This bar wench aspired to being much more than a bar wench, and in time, a prince or two came by and tried to jam a slipper on a foot, or invited her to sleep on a bed stacked with a hundred mattresses, or some other strange thing, but none of it felt right. Then, one day, a cavalry came by and gave her the scepter to rule her very own kingdom. The kingdom was small and fraught with problems, but the former bar wench worked hard and soon there was running water and neighbors helping each other and almost enough for everyone to eat. But the bar wench knew there was still more- that she wanted to be more than master of this little kingdom, that she had other work to do in the world. She also had a terrible habit of taking on far too much work, in an attempt to help every single citizen of her land, whether or not she had the capacity to do so. So she worked far too hard, and far too many hours, to the point where if people showed up at her castle with even humble requests, say, for instance, a request for a special needs art teacher, sometimes she just didn’t have enough space in her heart to really try to help. She was too buried by all of the commitments she’d made to other tradespeople & craftspeople, or by the conflicts she’d chosen to resolve, or by easing tensions between rulers in other lands.

This one day, though, the humble citizen who showed up looking for special needs art teachers was sitting near the bar wench’s throne, looking through some of the printed publications that the bar wench had created to help her citizens. And the bar wench, because she hadn’t another minute to devote to this humble citizen, suggested that she use a passenger pidgeon to relay any further information. And it was at that time that the humble citizen, a grandmother dressed in curious, wicking garb, said, “That would be wonderful, but I am an INTERNATIONAL DISASTER RELIEF WORKER and I’ll be flying to Darfur in two weeks, so anything you could get me beforehand would be great.”

(“scratching of record” noise)

The end of the story has the bar wench not only shamefacedly helping the grandmother find the right art teachers, but also giving her the names and numbers of the rulers of the “health and human services” kingdoms, who the bar wench knows very well, so the grandmother could not only get the arts she needed, but also the support services due to her grandson, who is the one with special needs. The grandmother and the bar wench become fast friends and have tea together the very next day, during which the grandmother gives the bar wench names and numbers of rulers back in her own kingdom of disaster relief. At the end of their tea, the grandmother also extends an open invitation for the bar wench to join the grandmother in a new program she is starting in South America, so the bar wench can “get her feet wet in international relief”.

Moral of the story? The bar wench should NOT WORK SO DAMN HARD OR LONG. And she should be ready to accept with an open heart every last damn person who walks through the door and needs her help, no matter how “buried” she feels. And she should also be extremely grateful that the world is responding to her determination to change.

I just watched part of “60 Minutes” tonight, where Katie Couric was interviewing rescue workers from 9/11 who are now getting sick in staggering numbers. Doctors on the show were saying that they are very concerned that the workers were going to develop cancer, considering the contaminants in their- or I should say our- bodies. I could only watch about fifteen minutes of the show, and I’ve been systematically avoiding all of the other 9/11 shows that have been on all day and will continue through tomorrow. I read that a CBS station was going to play all of their broadcast from 9/11, starting at 8:30 AM tomorrow morning and ending at midnight. I have to wonder who actually has the stomach to watch it. It’s not that I’m not moved by these shows- it’s not that I don’t think they are important or necessary. Nor do I think that we as a society shouldn’t continue to memorialize that day. We need to. But- and I’ve been trying to put this to words all day- I can’t watch. In the words of a song that only come within a stone’s throw to describing how I feel about this, “How am I supposed to remember you when you won’t let me forget?”

I don’t feel all precious about my particular pain surrounding those events. And I know how important it is, particularly for the vast majority of Americans who weren’t there, and even more so for people who lost loved ones on that day, to have organized remembrances and memorials and TV shows. I understand the “We Will Never Forget” banners and t-shirts. But I caught about four minutes of “Flight 93” on the tele by accident and it sent me into a tailspin. Five years and I still just can’t watch. “We Will Never Forget” belabors the obvious.

I know that terrible things happen to people all the time, that mothers and brothers and friends and lovers die in the most awful ways, every single day, all around the world. But what the people on those airplanes and in the WTC and Pentagon went through that day is still too much for me to process. And I wonder, does anyone else feel like I do? Does anyone else dread tomorrow? I’m sure they do, I know they do, but I don’t know how many of us are in northern California, and I feel terribly cut off from my home.

I’m lucky, in a way: my time at Ground Zero was limited. Weeks instead of months, and much of it at a warehouse that was probably far enough away that I wasn’t breathing the most poisonous air for very long. But I am part of the 9/11 health registry and I’m curious how the health of all of us will progress. I don’t have the energy to go on a rant about the lack of adequate government funding for illness treatment for 9/11 rescue workers. But it reminds me that I want to live the crap out of my life, not just because something as horrid as 9/11 could REALLY happen to me, but because sometime down the line, my life might be altered by what is trapped in my lungs.

I just wish that tomorrow I could be in New York, not to do anything special, but just to be there and go to work and work hard and come home to be with my family, both chosen and blood. Maybe one of the reasons I dread tomorrow is that it is a reminder of the time that has passed since I discovered what I wanted my life to look like. I know, in many ways, I’ve been working towards that goal, but it’s a reminder that I’ve got a lot more work to do to make it really happen.

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