Thailand
Hey guys- greetings from a far off corner of the world.. a place where there are white sand beaches in every direction.. the constant sound of loud tropical bugs and birds, the sun is H.O.T, and we have barely heard english spoken in a full day.
Today is one of those days- one of those days that will stay with you for the rest of your life. The kind of thing that reminds your life is an adventure.
We left Bangkok at 5am. We knew today was Thai new years, but neither of us really comprehended what that would mean. We knew what we had read: With the new year there is a cleansing- a sprinkinling of water over the Buddah... i suppose it started as a sprinkling of water over one another... but it has developed into a nation wide waterfight. Like, supersoakers, buckets, full on drench fest. What we didn't realize it that its a long weekend and every thai and their mother goes out of town. I'm telling you- it was liking flying the day before thanksgiving. I have never seen so many people at one airport at once. It was like a ballet of luggage. A snarl of travelers. but not grumpy... happy and easy. When we saw the mountian of people we were both a bit concerned- but getting to the gate was actually astonishingly simple, and it was such a nice surprise not to have nightmare before 7am...
The flight to the island was short, and by 9:30am we were on a tropical island... We found our way to the counter to buy a ferry ticket, and in 5 minutes we were on the mini bus to the pier.
As we got in I said to tate, You have your wallet and your passport? and he felt in his front pocket and said, yep. I said good, becasue none of this other shit we have with us means shit without our wallet and passport.
The short drive to the pier was our first real glimpse of the water fights, kids sitting on the side of the dirt roads in bathtubs with buckets throwing water at cars and motor bikes driving by... Makeshift roadblocks where all the bikers are stopped and buckets of water is poured over thier head. It might seem awful, but it's totally amazing. First of all, it's hot as balls, so the water is welcome, and the other thing is- you know it's coming so your ready- We have all our electronics in plastic, we brought the waterproof camera especially for this reason, and my cellphone is in a plastic bag... BRING IT.
The van stops and the driver points to the pier across the street. There are a lot of people with buckets, not sure if luggage is out in terms of things allowed to be soaked... we get out of the van/bus and are a bit relieved to see that we are not going to get soaked, at least not for the moment, and we walk the bags down the bumpy dusty road to the pier.
We sit down- we have an hour to kill. It's hilarious to me that they are playing B.O.B. and loud... how does shitty american music travel like a virus across the planet? Tate puts his hand in his pocket and i see him jerk, like when you see a bug- that fear jump. He leaps to his feet.
His wallet is gone. It was just in his pocket. And now, it's not.
He searches his bag, its not there. His pants, he just had them. I just asked him NOT 5 MINUTES AGO, and he had it. He must have left it in the van. It must have slipped out of his poket. No way he got ripped off, no one was even within 10 feet of him since the bus... i KNOW he had it, he paid for the ticket to get on the bus!
OK. Don't freak. Deal. Tate waits at the pier. I talk a guy into giving me a ride back to the airport, maybe i can find the driver. I decide simply, not to panic. He's still got his passport. I scanned and photocopied all the credit cards before we left, i can cancel them. I've still got all mine. So there was a couple hundred bucks, american and thai baht... fuck it. We can do without it.
A nice man who speaks virtually no english takes me back to the airport. His 10 year old daughter rides with us. It's wierd to leave tate with the bags at the pier. There are a series of fairly terrible senerios that run thru my mind. Abduction, death, separation from Tate, speaking with the authorities, "and this man told you you should get in the van with him...?" you get the jist. I decide again not to log onto these thoughts and stick with the task at hand. I cannot believe how awesome i am that i brought a thai phrase book. i had it in my hand at home, almost didn't take it... then figured, oh fuck it, couldn't hurt. I look it up- there it is: "i lost my wallet" amazing.
I am taken to the place where the van drivers chill, none of them speak english either, but the phasebook and a degree in acting kick in- and we figure it out. A call is made, there is a walkie talkie involved and at least two cell phones are engaged... I am taken to an office where another guy who doesn't speak english reads the phrase in my book- I've lost my wallet- this book is so rad... It's black i say pointing to my purse. It's my husbands... its not me. Man, husband. Oh fuck it... doesn't matter.
The driver comes in and says "ok, we go back to pier. Driver meet us there."
Does he have it? I ask. He says a lot of things, none of which are in english. I don't know. I dont think he knows...But i decide to be optimistic. We'll wait for the driver.
We drive back to the pier, the water fight has taken on a whole new level. People are waking up. Thats when i remember it's only 10am. People are just starting their day. It's a holiday.The ferry leaves at 10:30. As it stands now there is very real possibility we will miss that. Ok, well, fuck that too. Nothing is broken here, we can fix all of this.
I see Tate who has clearly been talking himself off a ledge in my absence. I walk up to him. "It's gone" he says. "not yet, the drivers coming lets see what happens."
I ask the driver how long till the other driver comes. "100% coming. 100%." Ok, but how long? does he have the wallet? What does 100% mean i wonder... 100% he has it? 100% he's coming?
The 10:30 ferry arrives. shit. It starts to rain, i mean like huge fantastic tropical 7 minute huge rain. Saddly for those getting off the boat, they will walk the entire length of the pier in the pouring rain. that sucks. they should wait 10 minutes, this isn't going to last.
The rain starts to let up. I see the guy. The original driver. He's walking towards me, in the rain, like a scene out of a movie. With the wallet.
He totally has it. He totally has it, and everything is still it it. I know thai people don't shake hands but i can't help myself. I'm nodding and bowing and saying thank you... I reach into the wallet and grab 200 bhat and shove it into his hand. I can't remember how to say thank you in thai right now- I'm so happy so i say it in english. Tate comes walking over and says WAIT to the guy. He reaches in and shoves even more money into his hands. 40 american... who cares... He had the wallet.
we sit there stunned. I can't believe we got it. I can't believe it. AND we are gonna make this ferry.
And just like that, the clouds part, the sun comes out and we get on the boat.
----
The ride to the island is short. I feel the sun on my back and put sunscreen on. the sun is really really hot down here. It's a different beast. I put my hat on.
We get to the island and meet the pick up truck for our hotel. We check in. The pool sits up next to our room... Like, it comes up to our patio. The pool. On our patio. it's absurd, and delightful.
We walk around the island. We get drenched by cold water. It feels great. The happiest silliest people in the world wipe our faces with flour water mix... people shoot us with water and scream happy new year!!! It's like mardi gras. or vegas or neither. It's like songkran.
We eat.
We have a coconut shake.
We nap. We relax. We sit by the pool. We have dinner.
And we realize. 3 days. 18 to go.
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DINK
DINK
Duel income.
No kids
Yup, that’s us.
Which is why we are planning vacations. And I for one and super duper stoked about it.
FEELING MERRY
Well, for the first time in a very very long time, I am feeling downright merry.
It's been over a year since i wrote, and i doubt my of my once faithful readers ever check back anymore. But damn it i'm happy. Happy enough even to write about it.
I have SO MUCH to be grateful for this year, it's pretty absurd.
Tate and I are so happy and healthy and feeling and looking great, it's so so nice. Tate got sober 7 months ago, and it totally changed our lives, everything is so much easier, and calmer, and happier. No more drunken melodramatic fights... bliss. It's been a lot of work, and emotional upheaval, but what a payoff.
And i worked more this year then i think i ever have, and there is money both in the checking and in the savings... what a gift. I bought a new car last week, and then, with virtually no effort, i sold my car. To the first guy who came to see it. He even paid me cash. Jesus! What an amazing thing.
The present- which i find myself intensely grounded in these days- is just that. A gift. I feel so lucky- to have my health, and to be happy, and to be loved and supported. My cup really is over brimming.
The wedding is next June, and its going to be amazing. We are going to have a wonderful party, and all the pieces are in place. Catering, DJ, Dress, flowers...blah blah blah blah!! And we broke down and decided to just invite a bunch of people, so while it's still small, everyone who needs to, will be there. That is a relief.
And the cats are good, and the apartment is JUST BEAUTIFUL. And we made Tate his own room, we call it the man cave, and i have my own office.
And things just couldn't be better.
So i don't need a pinch, because my eyes are open. And as i look around i see that my life is very very good, and i am very very grateful to be here.
xoxoxoxox
VIEW FROM THIS SIDE
Jesus it’s been seven months since I last wrote??
That’s fucking absurd.
My god, a lot has happened.
Tate and I renovated our apartment- it’s so beautiful, we really took it to the next level. Here are some
before and after pictures.Dad moved to Colorado for the summer. I managed to eek out about 3 1/2 weeks there- it’s such a magical place- and summer really is the best time ever there. I went to Mountain fair, and went swimming in the rivers and I hiked up to six mountain lakes- 4 of which I swam naked in… that really is the only way to hike I discovered. Here are some
pictures from Colorado. Doing some pretty intense therapy- which is good for me. It has helped me a lot- to deal with all these fucking emotions,
Mom will have been dead a year, in 3 weeks. This time last year was such a traumatic time. Watching her die was so brutal, and it’s just kinda nut s to have it all behind me and try to move on, and make her proud, and to still do what I want, and be happy. We kept a calendar on the wall during those 6 months. From her sickness to her death. It was purely out of necessity- to keep track of all the doctor appointments, and the visitors and all the madness. Now it reads like a reminder of the most awful six months of my life. It’s in a closet in my dad’s apartment next door. I happened to go in there yesterday and found my self gazing at it. A year ago today she had 5 appointments. FIVE. It was like having a child with a million summer classes- and we had to take her to all of them.
It was so overwhelming.
A year later and I am having a bridal shower in my beautiful kitchen and backyard that my mother’s death help renovate. I am using her china, and my grandmothers silver- I am using her vases, and her glasses, even her champagne cooler… The furniture and the linens are mine. Ha.
I think about her all the time and I hope she is watching from somewhere- feeling proud, or at least not totally disappointed.
I think she is.
Have a busy fall. Work coming up, then a trip to Mexico for Mimi’s 30th Birthday . Hopefully I will work for most of October so Tate and I can take a deeply overdue trip to Rome. Still yet another trip to Indiana and again to Colorado for the holidays… All this and I am unemployed right now. Good grief!
Things feel good to me right now. Or perhaps more accurately things don’t feel awful. And considering the year I’ve had, shit man I’m just taking it wherever I can get it.
WELCOME FROM HELEN HAYS REHAB HOSPITAL
In what I am now referring to as an astonishing turn of events, I have found myself in yet another hospital. This marks the fifth one in six months. If I count it out, actually I have been to five hospitals for 8 different people in under 6 months. Holy shit. Getting old sucks.
This time is a doosey. I am here in New Jersey visiting my dear, closest cousin TJ. Last December, totally out of the blue, he got a backache, And two days later was sent to the hospital. The next morning they told us he would not make it thru the night. They didn’t’ know why, but his system was shutting down and he was dying.
As it would turn out TJ had contracted a staph infection, and, as luck would have it- it was MRSA, which stands for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. Methicillin is a family of antibiotics. So MRSA means that this particular strand of Staph is non responsive to antibiotics. Charming. His MRSA led to Pneumonia, which led to blood poisoning, which led to Bacterial Spinal Meningitis.
Which, basically means he was totally fucked.
He was put on life support and had machines breathing for him for 6 weeks. He was in a medically induced coma for 5 weeks. Slowly but surely he started to come back- both of his collapsed lungs regained their former glory, his once racing heart found it’s beat once more, and his blood found it’s balance. However, because of the meningitis his spine was damaged so badly, that he cannot walk or use the lower half of his body.
But, by some miracle he has full use of his upper body, he has no paralysis, his arms function normally and his there is no brain damage… it isn’t all “shitted up” (a particularly articulate way to explain brain damage that I heard last night from a fellow spinal cord patient- fantastic).
And so here I am. Flew in for a week to give my Aunt Lois a break. Imagine- she lost her sister and 2 months later, was told her son might die. Jesus.
But TJ is a fucking champ- no Joke. He now can stand, and walk on the parallel bars, and he is in good spirits and is super positive, and we’re making cripple jokes and we all know THAT HE IS GOING TO BE OK. The doctors expect him to recover fully. They are thinking that he will check out in a few weeks- he will have to use a walker for a little while but they do expect a full recovery.
Today he got approved to go in a car so tomorrow we are steeling him out of here to go home for the first time since before Christmas…
And even though this is awful. It’s amazing too. What is most surprising about this place is the sheer undeterred amount of hope that is simply palpable here. And we are dealing with some pretty hardcore shit here. Perched on a hill in West Haverstraw New York, overlooking the Hudson: people who were simply going along when in one split second everything is different. Mike had finally dumped his (and I quote) bitch of a girlfriend- finally bought that motorcycle he wanted. A 90 year old man pulled out in front of him 4 years ago and now he lives life from a wheelchair. Ron was an undercover cop who got rammed in a high speed pursuit, boom. Now in a wheel chair. Cathy was taking a walk with her two kids, she bent over to pick up a pinecone. Her 18 year old neighbor came screaming down the street and here she is, away from her family, all alone in the hospital with only the very littlest use of her limbs. Yesterday she cut a piece of melon with a knife and fork. It was a triumph for us all.
The brutal truth about life is staggering. The world is a harsh brutal place. Things happen that fucking suck. I MEAN SUCK. People get sick, people die, people survive… people shit their pants and have to learn to walk, or eat , or cut their food.
I could look for some reason for why I have had to bear witness to all of this lately- why I have had to push not one, but now two family members in a wheel chair in the last few months- but I don’t think that there’s a reason. And even if I knew that reason it wouldn’t change the fact that I keep having to wipe family members asses….
But hope is a hell of a thing.
And resilience is a motherfucker.
And I’m proud of TJ for surviving and not dying on us. And I’m grateful. And I’m proud to be here and help him and it’s good therapy for me to be in a rehab situation where TJ is going to learn to walk again, and NOT walk to his grave, like mom. He is gonna stand up and do a lot of things, and win more Grammies, and walk down an aisle, and walk on beaches, and foreign soils… and it’s a fucking miracle.
And so when I feel like life is all shitted up, I don’t really dwell, cuz it all feels pretty precious, and inspired, and powerful.
And then I slap myself and tell myself to snap the fuck out of it and not to be such a fucking sap.
HOLY SHIT
Holy shit- that last entry kills me. “Someday I will look back on these days as a blissful steady stream of one good day after another.” Ya think???
I wrote that Mach 31st of this year. Amazing.
On March 12th my mom looked down at a magazine and heard a click click click in her neck.
On April 16th my mom was taken into the ER in Santa Monica because the pain in her neck had gotten so bad.
Later that week she was diagnosed with stage 4 advanced lung cancer. She had a tumor in her lung, on her neck, in her lymph nodes and one on her rib.
On may 29th we got the news that chemo was working- we were gonna be ok..
On July 5th our cat died.
On July 6th we moved.
On August first mom had a severe double stroke that rendered her near incapacitated.
And after two brutal months, on Oct 2nd mom died from complications of advanced lung cancer.
And so Chase, yes, you were right. You do look back on those days before the storm that has been 2007 as “a blissful steady stream of one good day after another.” And I miss that.
I ache for it.
Perhaps one day it will return, but for now it is gone and I am left struggling, muddling, just trying not to drown in sadness.
I was never particularly close emotionally with my mom, but we spent an awful lot of time together, and we have always been a super close family.
The last 6 months of her life however, I never left her side. I quit my job, moved in with her and my father twice- once for a month, another time for a few weeks. The rest of the time I was at her house by 7 am and didn’t leave till 10 or 11 pm. I drove her to the doctor, changed her IV, cooked and cleaned. Packed and organized. Paid the bills. And in the end I bathed her, brushed her teeth and shaved her head. I wiped her butt and got her dressed. Rubbed lotion on her depleted body and flossed her teeth.
It was at once beautiful and deeply deeply painful.
And her death brought me relief: that she was out of pain, and out of that miserable state of affairs her life had become. But now- with some time behind me- I miss that time. I miss it. Because even though she was a mere shadow of herself, at least she was still here.
And man oh man, I miss my mom.
It’s thanksgiving this week. And I can’t remember how to make the yams. I think I know- but I’m just not sure. I mean I made them with her so many times, but I never bothered to write it down. I just wasn’t ready.
It’s also my birthday this week. SO I’m getting a double dose of missing my mom this week.
And it’s brutal.
But you know? You just wake up, and breath in. And out. And you show up, and try to be present. And you do what you can. Try to pay attention and not be too flighty or spacey, I find baking helps.
But man I cry a lot. More than I ever had before- it’s just ridiculous. Without the slightest provocation. And that is exhausting… because I’m not a crier by nature.
But all these tears, they fall so hard and so often and so sincere.
But everyone says that time helps. And I guess it does. I am just doing what I can, and being honest about how I feel, trying to feel it now so it doesn’t come back to haunt me later (anymore than I’m sure it will always haunt me)
And just putting one foot in front of me and thinking that someday, that blissful steady stream of good days will return.
It’s just not today.
Finally some links:
The Team Carter Blog (where you can read about my mom’s illness if your so inclined)
Photos:
My mom’s Colorado memorialMy mom’s LA memorialZoe’s WeddingVicki’s weddingMy trip to IndianaMy trip to New JerseyAnd this: is me and my mom
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HELLO BRENDA
Well it’s been ages since I’ve written. Been better at posting pictures than writing. But Brenda says I have to blog, so here I am. Hello brenda. How are you?
Everything is actually excellent in my little world. Work, time off, great weather, love my man, love my cats, love my apartment. Someday I will look back on these days as a blissful steady stream of one good day after another. And that is a pretty nice thing. Over the years I have often written about how lucky I am, and about luck in general, and now, after all this time I find myself going back to the same subject. Finding myself endlessly blessed, and unable to articulate my gratefulness.
I woke up last night in the middle of the night missing Rome so much I could hardly breath. It doesn’t happen all that often, but I feel like if I don’t go visit soon, even if it’s just for 5 days, it will slip out of my fingers, and I can’t let that happen. I can’t bear the thought of going there without Tate, but given our current situation I think I might just have to… one person alone seems somehow easier than two people going… we’ll just have to see I guess.
I have tons of pictures up
Carter turned 35Tate and I went to NYCMy cousin Shannon got marriedMegan had a birthdayWe had a yard SaleSasha had a partyPretty fun days recently.
And fucking babies everywhere. It is official, Mimi and Santi are having a boy. Brent and Ari are due in 3 weeks, Josh and his baby mama are right around the corner… lots of babies… thank god for birth control is all I have to say… no whammies for me!!
One last thing and then I’m off to shower- Tate bought me an 80 gig ipod for no good reason. “I deserved something nice” is what he said. Can you believe that???
I have the 15 gig (which is so old they don't even make anymore) so basically I put ALL my music on. ALL my pictures on. ALL my contacts, my calendar, everything. And I still have more room remaining that my entire previous ipod. It’s AWESOME.
Love my duty!
