transparency

Friday, February 13th, 2004

Re: Mark’s mother appears to be on her way out.

Filed under: illness,Margrit — alison @ 07:48

Updates for the concerned:

Actually, she isn’t. Well she is just like the rest of us, and probably a little faster, but nothing obviously imminent. She had us frightened with that quick series of episodes of whatever, but it turns out that it was a single very ordinary stroke. Apparently it’s completely normal for new symptoms appear days after the episode as the brain copes with whatever happened to it. After many scans and evaluations, the diagnosis is atherosclerosis. The plaques on the insides of her blood vessels can chip off and bits can travel to her brain and get stuck.

Margrit will be going to live in a local rehab centre for six months to learn to work with her new body; after that, we’ll see.

The Dutch do things a little differently. Birth, death and illness are handled privately, in the home, as much as possible. Doctors do housecalls so that people can die of cancer at home with the comfort of morphine. And only they can call an ambulance. If you’re sick and can’t get to a clinic, you call your doctor. Your doctor visits you, evaluates you and will judge if an ambulance is necessary. This part sounds completely weird to me. Your doctor will show up at your home within five minutes of your phone call with a defibrillator if you have a heart attack? Though I suspect that in practice they often evaluate people over the phone and call ambulances right away, without showing up. So that they double as 911 dispatchers. Personally I would rather call a service organised to be available 24 hours than have to look up the number of my doctor’s clinic at 1:00 in the morning, listen to the recorded message, write down the emergency backup number and call that. And I think this system works best for people who do not live alone.

But I can think of lots of situations where housecalls would be nice.

[originally transmitted by e-mail February 13, 2004]

Thursday, January 29th, 2004

Mark’s mother appears to be on her way out.

Filed under: death,illness,Margrit — alison @ 13:35

He’s leaving Friday evening for Holland. Margrit’s had a series of neurological incidents of some sort: they aren’t TIAs exactly (Transient Ischemic Attacks) because she has lasting effects that aren’t transient; they don’t seem to be strokes, because her condition is variable, improving and and worsening from day to day; and it doesn’t seem to be her heart, because they’ve done all the tests. (This is third or fourth hand, of course, and has gone through at least one translation. So I am assuming a certain amount of the broken telephone phenomenon.)

But whatever they are, they are getting worse and more frequent. Up from a yearly fainting spell to attacks of paralysis every other day. Compared to yesterday, today her leg is the same, her arm is worse but her speech is better; last week she was speaking just fine and walking with a cane, and had bought tickets to come visit us in Montreal.

Anyway, Mark is off. Mixed feelings. Not wanting to assume the worst, or to give the impression that he is, or to have his mental image of his mother replaced with a sick person, or to get her so excited she has a heart attack, or to become impatient for her to die and get the suspense over with. But feeling that this is an important time and that he should be there.

Friday, October 3rd, 2003

Movies – breaking the monotony

Filed under: movies,women — alison @ 12:53

I got feedback and help here too, though not as abundantly as for laundry.

My favourite suggestion for breaking the monotony was Irréversible, a movie I actually saw when it came out last year. It’s notorious for its brutal, nine-minute rape/murder scene. Mark had warned me in advance so I kept my eyes closed for that bit, but the soundtrack was pretty gruesome all by itself. Overall what I noticed about the movie was its sophomoric frat-boy obsession with anal sex, and its mysterious (to me) equation of anal sex with sadism. The person who embodied evil was nicknamed La Tenia (tapeworm); he was a gay man who hung out in a gay bath house called Le Rectum; he was a top (sexually dominant in anal sex); which meant, quite naturally in the world of the film, that he was essentially a sadistic rapist; and his essential identity as a sadistic rapist meant that he was a danger to all women everywhere.

Yes, this is a different view of sexual relations than the one shown in Lost in Translation. But, um, not the kind of different I was really looking for.

Other suggestions, more on track:

-The general one to carefully research movies before going to see them. Not really my style. I’m not looking to be protected from bad movie-going experiences, and I like surprises.

Underworld
-Features a woman in the lead, but from what I can tell there aren’t any others.

Bend It Like Beckham
– Features women and girls in all sorts of interesting relationships. Lots of gorgeous shots of girls practicing on the field. Highly recommended: yes, there is an unfortunate love triangle featuring a man, but it doesn’t dominate the film.

Bound
– Two women, unambiguously lovers. Fun to watch, lots of people really like it, but I found it just a teensy bit dull.

Prey for Rock and Roll
– A bisexual rock musician in the lead trying to figure out what life in rock means for her at age forty. A tryst with another woman. Don’t know anyone who’s seen it, but will definitely be giving it a whirl. Thanks for the tip!

White Oleander
– Six women, five of whom stand in parental or quasi-parental relationships to the sixth, so it scores high on the Alison Bechdel rating scale. But the closer the relationship the mothers have with the daughter, the more they fail her. Motherly love is inherently flawed and poisonous and covetous and may not even exist. The three most motherly women are insanely jealous – either sexual jealousy, seeing competition with the man in their lives, or jealousy of other mothers. Our little heroine finally finds herself when her mother lets her go to pursue her future coupled to a safe and bland young man. Gag.

Please keep the tips coming!

[originally transmitted by e-mail October 3, 2003]

Sunday, September 28th, 2003

Re: Married Life

Filed under: consuming,fear,housekeeping,how to — alison @ 21:21

Hmm, this one seems to have hit some sort of sensitive nerve out there. I’ve gotten lots of helpful responses from people who seem to understand the place that properly done laundry has in a satisfying life.

So far:

***
Too much information/oversharing: three votes (including one cast vigourously by Mark).

While over the past years I have recounted amourous and occasionally unorthodox adventures and admitted dark urges to smash my chihuahua’s head open against a wall, these confessions are apparently a normal part of the public sphere or at least entertaining enough that their trespass into the public sphere was tolerated without comment.

The feelings of desolation that follow domestic disagreements with a legally bonded mate apparently enjoy no such license. Either they are too personal and not to be displayed because they are too boring (like nose-picking, tooth-brushing and breast-feeding); too personal and not to be displayed because they are too important (like how much money one makes); or occasion too much uncomfortable echo in the reader; or are simply not funny.

Whatever, I have been advised that by discussing laundry in public I went too far.

***
Separating laundry is an important aspect of clothing care: five votes.

Five friends seized upon the occasion to share their personal approaches to laundry, happy to share hard-won expertise with someone needing their help.

All are strongly in favour of separating, though the importance they attribute to different categories differs. Some separate icky from sweet; others, lint-generating from lint-collecting; sturdy from fragile; light from dark; large from small.

***
This probably doesn’t have much to do with laundry at all: three votes.

***
Laundry is not important enough to get that worked up about: two votes.

***
The bourgeois lifestyle is inherently violent: one intriguing vote.

Actual quote: “The bourgeois life is a violent life, it restructures all of everything into the space of consumerism & then isolates it. I think this re-channeling of desires from open-ended to the very concrete, with its limits but reassurances, is what you are going through. It’s the politics of capitalism in everyday life, not easy for any of us, and always in flux.”

When pressed for clarification, “bourgeois” was defined as middle-class with a separation of public and private spheres. “Yes, absolutely, it is much more convenient to do your laundry in your own machine in your own home. No question! But then you don’t leave the house.”

***
What I’ve settled with:

1) Domestic disputes are much scarier when you’re living together and legally married. Especially as Mark and I took the old-fashioned route of courting first, then marrying, then moving in together. Highly stressful.

2) Front-loaders do in fact require a different approach to laundry than top-loaders. You have to do a full load every time or else the machine gets unbalanced during the spin cycle. For our machine this isn’t fatal: it stops spinning, shakes the clothes around a bit, then tries again. But if the load is too small it will just keep trying forever and never really spin right. So it takes a bit of teeth-gritting to put things together that you wouldn’t have combined in a top-loader. Repeating to oneself that front-loaders are much gentler on clothes than top-loaders helps, as does viewing the washing process through the porthole and watching the machine toss your garments tenderly like an organic baby lettuce salad with raspberry-mustard dressing.

3) I’m still not combining mops and underwear.
Hugs again to all!

[originally transmitted by e-mail September 28, 2003]

Friday, September 26th, 2003

Married Life

Filed under: consuming,fear,housekeeping,how to — alison @ 08:01

Ok, I haven’t been writing my usual e-mails lately and people have been sending somewhat worried queries as to the sympathy of married life.

Hard to say. We were married July 1st and Mark left for the Netherlands July 11th. Then he arrived 15 days ago as a landed immigrant, entitled to live, work, breathe, travel but not vote. Yippee!

So that makes a total of 25 days of connubial bliss to report on. As someone with scientific training I can tell you that’s a very small n. But we have visited family in Ottawa, Mark has taken the dogs to the vet, everything seems kind of normal and couple-like. Except that we’re both terrified and are acting kind of stiff and awkward. (Though Mark stole my heart all over again when he introduced himself to someone as my friend last weekend. Yes!)

Tuesday was particularly stressful as Mark slated three major appliances (washer, dryer, refrigerator) for the St Vincent de Paul society and replaced them with shiny new energy-efficient ones that *work.* Yuppie!

Apparently too stressful for our meagre resources. We had our first married fight last night over the washing machine. It turns out that he’s not going to let me use it unless I wash clothes his way: everything together in one load, no separating, and the hottest water possible. He thinks he’s educating me on the use of superior front-loading machines and raising my consciousness about energy use. I think he’s being weird (I think I should be allowed to wash t-shirts and underpants separately from floor mops, and in cold water).

I am having nasty flashbacks to my ex, who wouldn’t let me use the radio or play music. I suppose I should be delighted to find myself married to someone who won’t let me do laundry, but I don’t take well to being forbidden. And I *like* doing laundry.

Hmm… I am thinking something about suffering and privation being good for creative expression. I think there must be something to that.

Hugs all, and if you don’t hear from me soon, that just means we kissed and made up!

[originally transmitted by e-mail September 26, 2003]

Monday, July 14th, 2003

For Ruth Cummins, 1915 – 2003

Filed under: death,Granny,poetry — alison @ 23:20

Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us – don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892-1950)

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

[originally transmitted by e-mail July 14, 2003]

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