Alligator Man

When Paul peeked in, I was folding a warm wash cloth over the thermostat in my room at the Brattleboro Retreat to staunch the air conditioning which, even in July, caused frost formations on the windows.

This had embarrassing repercussions, when one's bra had been sequestered for reasons of safety, along with one's belt. I had taken to walking around my arms crossed over my chest.

We were encouraged to keep our doors slightly ajar and to occasionally venture out into the day room to engage in social activity with the other patients. There were jigsaw puzzles, lumpy furniture, board games like Monopoly, Yahtzee. The previous evening I had apparently absconded with a bag of someone's M&Ms after having been dosed with a medication that had caused me to fall face first onto the middle of the Parchesi board. I came to giggling in my bed, a telltale empty one pound packet of peanut M&Ms in the wastebasket.


"You owe me candy," Wendy told me at breakfast.


And now here was stocky, white-bearded Paul in a maroon polo shirt. Paul carried a suitcase.


"What are you in for?" I asked him.


Paul explained that he was having body image issues of the negative kind. A recent abdominal surgery had left him with a badly distended belly and subsequent feelings of inadequacy.


"What about you?" he inquired.


"Unresolved grief," I told him. The tears had finally begun after an initial sleepless night battling shadowy behemoths. Turning myself over to the care of others had felt like cowardice.


Paul nodded. It was how we patients said "hello" on Two South. Before we trusted each other enough to relate as suffering human beings in varying states of pain, we presented our diagnoses like name tags: Anorexic, bi-polar, manic, multiple personality disorder, borderline personality, obsessive compulsive. The chemically addicted resided on the floor above.


"So, what's in the suitcase?" I knew it wasn't a bomb, because after check-in, the nurses took away everything that might be considered dangerous. I needed permission to use my hair dryer.

Paul smiled and placed his bag on the floor. He deftly sprung the latches, lifted the lid and revealed a tangle of countless green plastic alligators, vacant-eyed, jaws agape.


"Wow," I said. 

"Here," he said, and handed me one. "My Grandma told me a story once about a swamp. 'Down in the swamp, there be alligators' was the punch line."


I nodded. Here, we were all down in the swamp. Alligators lurked beneath the surface. It was a choice, I realized: swim towards them, fearlessly, or sink down into the reed-choked depths.


"Thanks, Paul," I said. I held the tiny plastic toy in my hand and made a decision. I would swim for the surface.

Departures

As my son, Will, marched out into a muggy, rainy June day, his size 13 sneakered feet protruding from beneath his floor-length green high school graduation robe, tasseled mortar board hat askew, my heart clenched with grief.

I watched him, a good head taller than his Dad and his sisters smoking a cigar, gesticulating, thumping his buddies' backs and knew: he was gone.

He had been leaving - bit by bit - for months, and the encroaching sadness creeping over my shoulders became a cloak of despair. As he whirled in and out of parties, I withdrew deeper into its folds. 

I had first tasted this particular sadness when his sister had graduated from college, but, then, I still had him - or clung to that erroneous illusion that our children belong to us. The heart-wrench of this child's launching could be postponed. His Dad and I had divorced when he was three and there were relationships that didn't work out; another marriage had dissolved. We had moved from a large house on a hilltop that had, by its intrusion into a forested ridge line area, infuriated the neighbors, into a house smaller than our barn had been.

Losses and changes.

Shortly after Will's graduation day, I tearfully summoned him home. I confessed that I couldn't cope, that I needed help, and that I was that day checking myself into the Brattleboro Retreat, a small psychiatric hospital. A small suitcase was by the door.

"Okay, Mom," he said.

A Priestly Encounter

When I approached the priest in Terminal B at George Bush International Airport, he was eating an egg salad sandwich. A spot of mayo lingered in the corner of his mouth. 

I was in distress.

I was feeling vertiginous, adrift in unfamiliar space, as if there were gaps between my very cells. The ground beneath my feet had shifted in a startling way during a meditation retreat in a lush, five-acre garden sanctuary in Patzcuaro, Mexico. One minute I was present, gazing at a species of Tiger Lily during an exercise called "aimless wandering," entranced by stamen and pistil - then I wasn't, in a way that felt entirely unfamiliar. But, where was I? My sense of time and place had slipped. 


"How wonderful," someone said when I voiced my experience to the group. People smiled.


"Is it?" I wasn't feeling wonderful or even enlightened. I felt weak-kneed and rubbery. The feeling stayed with me for the rest of the week. Sometimes I felt anxious, like I had to put my head down and recite a nursery rhyme. At other times I relaxed and floated along, the tips of my fingers tingling, as if I'd just sucked a balloon's worth of helium into my lungs. 


As I waited for my flight to Boston at George Bush International, I leaned my head against the large plate glass window overlooking the docked airplanes and breathed deeply. I was standing in front of a Starbucks, lost in indecision between a skinny vanilla chai and a mocha soy latte when I spied my priest.


Oh, what the hell, I thought.


"Excuse me, Father," I began. "Would you happen to have a minute?"


An Irish brogue had suddenly transformed my voice as if I were Ingrid Bergman addressing the kindly Father Flanagan in Boy's Town.


The priest frowned and stood up.


"Yes?" he said.


"I think I've lost my place," I began. "It may be a question of faith."


"Are you a Catholic?" he asked.


"No," I answered. "I've been an Episcopalian and a Jew, but now I'm more of a Buddhist."

"I see," the priest said. His mouth became a straight line of disapproval.


"I feel a bit off, you see, Father."


The priest glared at me as if he thought I might be slightly more than a bit off.


"I don't really see how I can help," he said with annoyance.


"Would you have some sort of a non-denominational prayer for me, something that might help me right now in my, um, hour of need?"


"A prayer? I don't think so." He backed away.


I grabbed at his black surplice. "You don't have any sort of a prayer? What about the Our Father, Father?"

"You could try it, I suppose. Might work, might not. Maybe you just ought to go to church."

As a child, I had gone to church. I remembered reciting the Our Father with the line expressly directed to all the commuting Dads who worked in New York City: "...and lead us not into Penn Station." Even though some of them, like my dad, found religion on the golf course rather than indoors on countless glorious Sundays.


Then he was gone, vanished behind an adjacent Borders without a single, thoughtful proclamation of hope. No "Don't worry, my child, this too shall pass." Nada. Nix.

I was already laughing when I texted my friend, Kerry, back home in Vermont. 

"So much for the priesthood," she texted in reply. "Go get a latte." 

These days, when I experience that groundless sensation, that subtle shift that nudges me into the not known, a space that can't actually be defined or sought, I go with it.

I welcome it.

Hard Candy

He taught ski nautique at Ecole Champlain, a french speaking girls' summer camp in Ferrisburg, Vermont. His name was Jean-Claude. I was 12.

I was shipped off to Ecole Champlain for the summer of 1965 with a trunk full of azure blue short shorts and sleeveless, azure blue, v-necked canvas tee shirts (white for Sundays). I was consigned to Chalet X, (pronounced eeks,) at the end of a forest path that wound along the shore of Lake Champlain. There were six or eight girls per cabin. Our counselor was Katie. I learned to sweep the floor, make up my bunk bed, and pee behind the cabin at night so as to avoid the moth infested salle de bains. I also discovered that the little circular plastic disc Katie kept on the shelf above her bunk contained birth control pills. Which had to do with something murky, yet vaguely titillating called sex. Whatever that was, she did it with Jacques when she snuck out at night after taps.

 Jacques, the camp director, had a beautiful wife, a blonde, long-legged Joni Mitchell clone called Babe. He roamed abroad with a brace of black leopards on leashes. Apparently, some sort of unspoken droit de seigneur existed. Periodically, one of the lissome female counselors disappeared into Jacques' private office.

We girls in azure blue short shorts cavorted about learning equitation, natation, and sauver la vie all en francais. We joued au tennis, ate gouter (stacks of white bread with vats of peanut butter and raspberry jam), guzzled plastic pitchers of bug juice (pink lemonade with tiny mosquito carcasses floating on top) and speculated endlessly about the sexual lives of the counselors.

The dark-haired Jean-Claude roared into my summer riding a mono-ski behind an outboard motor boat. He carved a dramatic arc of water, threw up his arms to relinquish the tow rope and glided to the dock like the son of Poseidon. He wore red trunks.

I made it my business to stalk the waterfront. I ogled him as he swiped the outboard's engine with a dirty rag. I admired the way those snug red trunks clung to his derriere when he bent over to stack life vests, how the muscles in his biceps flexed as he coiled tow rope. I obsessed over the tiny translucent pearls of sweat on his bronzed back. I watched slack-jawed during French conversation class as he hosed off the boat deck. The gleam from a single Jean-Claude smile as I surfed the wake produced paroxysms of something I couldn't name. Something delicieux.

I inhabited an 8-week delirium that included swiping birth control pills from Katie's circular plastic disc. After spraining my pinky toe attempting a dock start, I rode in the boat blowing kisses as Jean-Claude sprayed spume. I learned to barefoot ski. I repeated je t'aime, je t'aime, Jean- Claude while my cabin mates slept. I French-kissed my pillow.

On the last day of camp, Jean Claude flashed me his dernier Jean-Claude smile, gave me his address, and said he would love to hear from me after I returned home. "Mais oui, ma jeunne fille!" He kissed my cheek. He offered me un bonbon from a tin. He enjoined me to keep the tin. Au revoir!

Once reluctantly en famille, I badgered my mother until she took me to town where I bought a duplicate tin of hard candies. I wrote Jean-Claude a long, amorous letter en francais and after smearing my lips with my mother's Estee Lauder lipstick, I peppered the letter with scarlet kisses and sent it off with les bonbons in an envelope that reeked of Chanel.

Then I waited.

"Are you sure there's nothing for me?" I demanded daily.

"Not a thing. What is it you're looking for exactly?" my mother asked. "Did you order something from the back of one of those comic books again? Seed packets to sell or baseball cards or something?"

"NO!"

One day, I rifled through a tower of mail on her desk and discovered it. Un lettre from Jean-Claude!

"Mom!" I howled. "When did this come?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said carelessly. "Last week? I'm sorry, I guess I forgot to tell you. Is it something important?"

"Merde! I can't believe you!" I shouted.

"You've become extremely rude lately, and I don't like it!" she shouted after me as I raced upstairs to my room. "Ever since you came home from that camp!"

Amie, Ma Cherie,
Merci boucoup pour les bonbons! I hope you enjoy un happy year
in your ecole. I will remember very much the summer camp and you.
I enjoy very much being your instructor of ski nautique.
-Jean-Claude

My lust for Jean-Claude ebbed like a sudden Tsunami on the shores of Lake Champlain. School had begun and things plus essentiels, like which boy's hockey gloves would I be wearing, or whose silver ID bracelet would be dangling from my wrist took precedence over my unrequited summer fantasies. Besides, spin-the-bottle required dexterity and intense concentration. French-kissing with braces was tricky.

Labor Intensive

Whenever I went home to my parent's house for a visit, the first thing I did was rush to my mother's bedside table and leaf through her red leather diary to catch up on all pertinent events. During summer months, it was not unusual to find TAD - "Typical Adirondack Day" - scrawled at the top of the page, followed by tennis match scores with accompanying commentary: "If only Marjorie had come to net when I told her, we would have won that damn second set!" There were endless bridge games, luncheons, cocktail parties and dinner parties, the details of which I skimmed with disinterest. I was looking explicitly for references to ME.

As a teenager, I might find something like this: Just as we're ready to leave for dinner, Amy announced she had to take another shower! I don't think she does anything else but shower. And why does she have to leave it to the last possible second? Or, Amy looked like the wrath of God in some horrible old blue jeans that looked like they'd been dragged behind the car. Why does she insist on covering most of her face with that long hair? 

 If I had been particularly awful, the entry would mention my name only. Then there would be lines of short hand squiggles interspersed with exclamation points and angry black cartoon eyebrows. This was way before emoticons.

When I was home recently to celebrate my daughter's first baby shower, I found myself meandering through the house and ending up in my mother's room, peeking into my mother's diary from the year 1979 - the year my daughter was born.

Thursday February 1, 1979

Beautiful but cold - 20's

  At 9:50 Amy calls - in labor!! Since 5a.m. - now contractions are every 7 minutes - says not going to Albany (phew!) Debates if she should transfer to Glen Cove Hospital to a Dr. Willis that she's just heard of Tuesday night at Lamaze course from nurse giving the course who's head O.B. nurse at Glen Cove. I point out that if she was upset at the idea of having a doctor at North Shore Hospital from the group she'd only met once, she's never even seen Willis! Calls back - going to N. Shore after takes shower - Again, whew!

It's true. It had been our plan to drive to Albany, New York, from Long Island the minute I went into labor. Three hours away. In February. With the distinct possibility of snow, if not a blizzard. The reason being that the doctor in Albany was the not-quite uncle of my husband's first wife and had delivered their child, my step-daughter. 

Huh?

At some point it must have occurred to me to have back up. I found a doctor at North Shore Hospital on Long Island, an adorable Italian named Paulo Mozzarella - well, not Mozzarella, but, that is what I called him. He was funny and caring and during my first exam, he stroked my belly and gazed lovingly into my eyes.

Later on, say a week before my due date, I decided that an additional doctor at a third hospital would be best of all.

After I reminded my friend Jane about this yesterday, she said, "When you told me you had three doctors, I began to wonder if I needed more than one doctor too. I didn't know you that well yet, so I thought you knew what you were doing. I went to Allan and asked him."

"What did he say?" I giggled.

"He said, "No, Jane, one doctor is enough."

What my mother's diary entry doesn't include are the details of my birthing experience. North Shore University Hospital is a teaching hospital, and no sooner was I strapped onto the gurney and hooked up to a fetal monitor, then the door flew open and in coursed a stream of medical students who asked if I didn't mind if they "had a look." These were the days before warm baths and walking around and cups of tea and swanky leather birthing chairs. They strapped you down, hooked you up, and admitted scores of onlookers in white coats.

Nor did my mother's diary entry include the presence of a strange man in a rumpled overcoat who appeared in my labor room carrying a box of donuts. I was wrestling with a nurse who was trying, inanely, to make me breathe into a brown paper bag. 

"Marcia?" he asked. He trailed crumbs.

I reared up like a 3-headed Hydra and snarled like Regan in The Exorcist, "There's no Marcia here!"

"Down the hall on the right, sir," the nurse said hurriedly.

"That's it!" I growled. "I'm done here. I'm going home." I started to swing my legs over the side of the bed. The baby's father, Michael, grabbed my hands and bravely said, "I think it's almost over."

"Fuck you!" I told him sweetly.

But, he was right. They wheeled me into the delivery room, the adorable Dr. Mozzarella appeared, crowing, "Lovely Signorina, you going to have a bee-yoo-tiful bambino!" And there she was: my daughter. Bambina.

My mother's final diary entry for that day reads: Finally, as I pick up phone to dial N. Shore U. Hospital, it's Michael on the other end - it's a girl! Weighs 8 lbs., 6oz...born at 5:49 p.m. Rush over to see the baby after dinner - very bright & alert, alternately yelling & yawning, pursing lips - pink cheeks, darling.

Spot on, Mom.