Notes on a Weekend Visit from Dad and S

This post is a little delayed, but last weekend, my father and stepmother were visiting R and me from Dallas. They came in late Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday morning. A quick chronicle of our time together:

Wed: Dad and S arrive at 11:30pm. I emerge from the bedroom just long enough to watch dad drink a beer and S a cup of tea. And so begins a visit of much consumption.

Thurs a.m.: R wakes up and goes downstairs to talk to Dad. R brings me coffee as I do email, informs me we're going to breakfast in 45 minutes. We go to Kiss Cafe, one of my favorite places; we walk there, which Dad and S are not too excited about but they try to be good sports for the 1-mile hike. We return home for a conference call (mine) and then decide to venture downtown to the aquarium.

Thurs p.m.: We pile into Dad's rental car, park, and enter the Land of Children on Field Trips. Quote of the day: They sure got a lot o' fish. I was awed and excited for the first half-hour, intently watching the sting rays, sharks and other creatures gliding through the water. After that half-hour, the thrill wore off and I suddenly felt a little queazy and weirded out rather than awed by all the bizarre beings on display in four stories of glass boxes. And there were a LOT of kids - inconsiderate kids, loud kids, whiny kids, snotty kids, clumbsy kids, kids of all kinds, everywhere. It was overwhelming, the whole thing.

Thurs late lunch: PF Chang's. Good stuff. Bad waiter. Lectured by Dad and S about how if I'm losing weight, I'm losing muscle-mass and I need more protein. Why not cottage cheese with strawberries and almonds in the morning?? And Richard, the conspirator...Then it was off to a little shopping in the harbor and browsing at the bookstore. Dad bought me a coffee from the cafe -- it was horrible, burned, but I took a few sips as I was reading a train-wreck of a memoir that was utterly disturbing but I couldn't stop reading until I almost passed out. Truly. I thought I was going to vomit. Why do I read things that are so disturbing? I couldn't look away. I pull R and Dad away from their inane conversation about Bush and Cheney and the war, and we walk to the parking garage.

Thurs incident in the parking garage: Dad gets mildly cut off by a car, Dad flicks off driver and makes other rude gestures, guy gets out of his BMW, Dad refuses to roll down the window, guy returns to BMW and we go home. Good family fun.

Thurs evening: After a bit of a rest, we decide to rent a movie and order pizza (because by this time we'd only consumed two large late meals, so why not a third?). We eat pizza, watch The Prestige, a fascinating movie that I would recommend to anyone who likes magic or mysteries or good acting or a little (not too much) gore; then we go to bed.

Fri a.m.: R has to go to the office so he leaves at 6:30am. I stay in bed til 8, Dad's ready for breakfast, I stall for an hour and then we drive up to Mt. Vernon for yet another oversized meal. We return home for a conference call (S's) and then take a drive out to Home Depot, Land of Plants that will Die in a Week. We were on a mission to resucitate the "tree" in front of our house, to buy a hanging plant and a couple other potted plants to cover some concrete (there's so much!), and to find a tall-ish indoor plant for the hallway upstairs beneath the skylight. We made our purchases and returned to a fun afternoon of potting, digging, fertilizing and arranging. R came home, we all rested, then decided it was time for lunch (after 4pm can't we just call it dinner?).

Fri p.m.: We drive to Fell's Point and enjoy a meal on the water. We don't have long at home before we have to head up north to meet some friends for duckpin bowling (if you don't know what this is, you are missing out. Not really.). I have come to learn in the past few weeks that I am a positively horrible, miserable, hopeless duckpin bowler. But we met four friends there and it was lovely to be with them, and the parents. After bowling, of course we needed a third meal, so we stopped for burritos on the way home. Can you feel the bloating?

Sat a.m.: Richard and I went jogging. Then of course it was time for breakfast -- back to Kiss Cafe. Then we went back to Home Depot to get a couple more plants and some edging for the tree. Worked in the "yard" a bit and then I had to get ready to go to church.

Sat p.m.: I was singing at church all weekend (one service Saturday evening, 3 on Sunday morning). Dad, R and S came for the music and we left before the sermon to go out for Indian food (what do you know -- only two large meals on Saturday!). R and I almost got into a fight about samosas. Dad and I almost got into a fight about something else, I think I must have been feeling punchy. Last night together. We went home and watched another movie, this one quite odd and not something I'd recommend watching with your parents unless you enjoy feeling uncomfortable. It was called Notes on a Scandal. Great acting, bizarre story. Then, to bed.

Sunday: Richard saw Dad and S off while I was at church.

Overall, a good trip.

Manic Monday

Head is spinning, eyes are drooping, staring, glazing over. It's Monday night. I hate Mondays. I'm thankful it at least isn't Sunday night, when I'm just waiting for the horrible next day to arrive, wondering what irritations await me. Now the day has passed and I'm sitting on my couch, obsessing over a letter Richard and I just received from the IRS saying we owe them a LOT of money from 2005. They're wrong, but the fact that they'd eve THINK it, let alone send us a letter demanding THOUSANDS of our hard-earned dollars, is preposterous. It's disturbing. It's ludicrous. And I don't know which set of parents would be most willing and able to loan us money if for some crazy reason we couldn't get out of paying it (I have no pride...but R does).

In other news...I moved offices today. Moved from a closet-sized office on the third floor with no windows in sight to a decent-sized office on the sixth (top) floor with windows and thus sky visible just across the hall. My team of 3 managers also moved with me. It's lovely. Except I don't particularly feel like anyone on the 6th floor wants us up there. We're outsiders, intruders, squatters. But we're friendly enough and sometimes funny and we bring candy so they can't dislike us for long. No, they can. Some of them can. But I'm going to be my nicest me or I'll just hide in my very end-of-the-hall office and never be seen except darting out to get water or go to the bathroom. I have easy access to a staircase.

I think I might be an introvert. I am. I like people I just don't want them to be able to see me and talk to me whenever they want. People tell me I could be a spy. I'm not sure that's a positive thing to tell a woman.

Thank God tomorrow is Tuesday.

Scatter-brained

I am finding it ridiculously hard to concentrate today. The past couple of weeks have been this way, truth be told. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be able to focus again. What if I'm like this for the rest of my life, sitting at my desk in nonproductivity, responding to random emails while ignoring the important ones, failing to see what I am able to do and only seeing what I cannot do, checking the BBC web site every ten minutes to read about the Virginia Tech shootings (terrible!) and updates from Darfur (terrible!) and Madonna's second visit to Malawi (who cares?), checking the weather, seeing who's on Skype, listening to uninteresting conversations outside my office, drinking too much coffee, chewing too much gum, wasting time, wasting away, wasting energy, wasting space, wasting electricity. I think my brain used to function better than it does now. I could share my story as a warning to teenagers: "This is your brain 10 years after illegal drugs." Or "This is your brain on prozac." Or "This is what happens when you lack a clear purpose, plan and vision in your job." But teenagers don't care about that.

Oh Lord, won't You give me clarity, patience to get through this, wisdom and perseverence to do something worthwhile even when things feel vague and uncertain? I feel stuck.

Moody ramblings

I haven't experienced a lot of significant suffering in my life. I haven't had to go through losing someone very close to me, I haven't lived through a war in my own neighborhood, I've never wondered where my next meal will come from. Strange that I feel like I have suffered so much, just being alive. I have felt so much pain and loss and grief and frustration, most of it self-inflicted or seemingly so. As though I could have avoided it all had I been smarter, more obedient, less willfull, more reasonable. I wonder, though, what suffering I would have felt had I been all those things.

In the past couple of weeks, I've been tracking the blog of a young woman whose husband suffered from pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed just after they got married less than two years ago. Between then and now, they had twins. He died Wednesday night. I can only imagine what that must feel like -- somehow, my heart aches and my eyes well with tears, imagining what she is going through. I suppose that's what compassion is. I wonder at the fact that God gave us this capacity for compassion.

Last night, Richard and I watched the movie, "Blood Diamond." This is a movie about the role the diamond trade played in fuelling civil war in Sierra Leone (among other places) less than a decade ago. I've been to Sierra Leone twice as part of my job (it was actually the first country in Africa I spent any time in); Richard lived there for a time and visits regularly. I love the country -- it is astonishingly beautiful and harsh and inviting and intimidating and maddening all at the same time. The movie, as intended, cut deep into my heart. It captured the senseless killing and unspeakable violence, the tearing apart of families, the loss of innocence of thousands of boys forced to be soldiers and made into instruments of terror. It captured the desperation of a man trapped in chaos, driven to find and protect his child. It captured the power that money and wealth command when hearts are hardened by violence, evil, and the almost complete absence of hope for anything better. It captured the stunning reality of the endless possibility for redemption.

I was sobbing before I went to bed last night and found myself in tears again this morning. A part of me longs to enter into a warzone -- there are so many, they are all around us -- just to suffer with those who are suffering, to give suffering a name or an explanation that is bigger than I am, to be with those who seem to be without hope but are living just a stone's throw from redemption. Another part of me thinks this is ridiculous and insulting and unfairly glamourizing the life of the suffering. A part of me thinks we can enter into suffering wherever we are, or we can choose to turn away from it -- from our own, from another's. We can be a part of the redemption or we can join in the evil, be complacent and self-obsessed and hard-hearted. I fear that without even thinking about it I make the wrong choice more often than not, and I wonder if it would be any different if I lived in another country or another time. I don't know.



(Photo from my last trip to Sierra Leone, taken by Michael J. Fiedler.)

The Walk to Work

I walk to work most days. It's sort of a compulsion. It could be raining or snowing or 101 degrees and I'd still feel inclined to walk to work. It's a fascinating, two-and-a-half mile journey across Patterson Park and about 30 blocks down Baltimore Street into the center of the city. Charm City. The Greatest City in America, according to the bus-stop benches.

Just about two-thirds of the way to work, there is a strip of semi-abandoned buildings across from a sign shop and a homeless men's shelter/drug treatment center. Next to a building that looks like it used to be a small bank or a strange temple is an open grassy area. Each morning, a man is standing on the edge of the field feeding bread to birds. I should say, he is dumping torn-up pieces of loaves of sliced white bread. He has a whole black garbage bag that he reaches into to pull out a new loaf after he's dumped mauled shreds and chunks of white bread to the ground. There are plenty of gulls and pigeons circling around but they are never able to eat as quickly as he tosses the starch to the ground. It covers the grass. It is amazing. This morning, swarms of birds circled overhead, seemingly uncertain which way to go or where to land to find a spot not already claimed by other birds. It felt like an Alfred Hitchcock film without the blonde lady.

I wonder about the man who feeds the birds. He seems to care less about feeding the birds than he seems frantic to get rid of the wealth of bread. And yet, a part of me thinks he must be extraordinarily lonely to give away such a feast every morning, just for the temporary, parasitic company of dirty feathered creatures. These are not majestic or pretty birds. These are city birds. And this man who does not appear to have much in the way of belongings or money is intent upon lavishing the refined carbohydrates upon them, inviting them near. I wonder about this man, what he's thinking, why he does what he does, where he goes when the feeding is over, how he feels. I don't know that I'll ever get up the nerve to ask him, but some day perhaps. For now, I like the mystery.

Lonely

Isn't it a funny thing to feel lonely? Is that the dominant feeling, or is it more like fear, or dread, or sadness, or emptiness, or disbelief, or grief. I find it so strange that I can go through a week surrounded by people, conversation, strangers, friendly faces, silly jokes, come home to warmth and dreams and surreality, someone else's life almost. And then I wind up here, sitting on my couch, weeping, wanting the day to be over, fearing the next day, wanting so much for something but wanting the exact opposite at the exact same time. I do not know what I want. Is that a true statement? I want to want nothing, to mourn for nothing, to long for nothing, to miss nothing, to regret nothing. God the feelings are so strong, like they could shoot out of my stomach or just beneath my heart, like I could project them loudly with my vocal chords, and they would be rich and mournful sounds, wailing, beautiful.

I wonder how they would sound to Richard's ears. Would he fall in love with them or would he find them too disturbing? I think he would like them, he would see beauty in them, he would tell me to record them. At first he'd find them too dark, too melancholy, but he would come around.

I don't know what to do with myself when I get like this. Other than go to sleep and pray for release for tomorrow.