Monthly Archives: July 2022

Bordetella

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Before our Beachview vacation, Chris and I discussed whether to take Emmet with us or board him. While the delight of watching Emmet running in the water and scattering birds with abandon held a certain appeal, there was the countervailing weight of being responsible for him. There were parity concerns, too. I had handed off our children’s phone calls during the week to my sister, who agreed to handle the regular assortment of their 20-something gripes, frustrations, and woes. If I lacked the emotional bandwidth to be there for my children and all their small things, it hardly seemed fair to bear the day-to-day burden of the dog. We boarded Emmet. He caught Bordetella — kennel cough — despite being vaccinated.

In 26 years of dog ownership, I have never before had a dog with Bordetella. I do not recommend it. The first clue came 19 days ago, on the night we brought him home. He had an intermittent honking cough. This was a precursor to a non-stop honking cough. When he would cough, I would do my best Rodney Dangerfield impression and say, DID SOMEBODY STEP ON A GOOSE?. It was funny the first 80 or so times. After that, which is to say for the last 18 days, it has not been.

The vet first prescribed Prednisone, which transformed Emmet into a 49.2-pound hummingbird, practically vibrating with his heart beating out of his chest. He would wake me at night, snout to nose, the bed shaking. Chris and I could not get him to take the Robitussin that the vet recommended. Artificial raspberry flavor is clearly not a favorite. He spewed the blood-red cough syrup all over our white kitchen cabinets. Our kitchen looked like either a crime scene or a Jasper Johns abstract, your choice. When the Prednisone ended, Emmet nose-dived, likely developed pneumonia, and is now nine days into a 14-day regimen of antibiotics and codeine cough pills. I have become a master at medicating him.

Mostly, though, I have become a master of not sleeping. Emmet kept me up for 16 straight nights with a choking cough. Relying on the institutional memory of sick children from two decades ago, I would trundle downstairs, Emmet at my heels, and I would draw him into my arms on the couch so that I could calm him and Chris could sleep. As it was then, HGTV is my 3 a.m. drug of choice. We had cable in the aughts, but we stream now. So I found myself watching Canadian HGTV programming, since that is all that Hulu carries. If you are looking to buy or renovate in Vancouver, I can offer valuable assistance.

As the rest of the family left for vacation on Sunday, the dog and I stood outside and watched them go. He was too sick to board, and I was too scared to leave him with anyone else. Emmet has finally started sleeping through the night again, enjoying Chris’ absence by nestling against me on the bed. He breathes like an asthmatic octogenarian. In listening to him sleep, I realize a universal truth: Everyone snores.

Since I had already blocked the week off of work, I planned to revolutionize the home and be a whirling dervish of activity who knocked out every single project on my to-do list. With my lackluster efforts, I have discovered a second universal truth: I will always have a to-do list.

Witness:

It is Thursday, and the to-do list from this week is similarly ambitious and unsuccessful. There is the usual combination of actual work-work to be done and the overestimation of my speed and willingness to do things that are necessary but not necessarily fun. (The T-shirt drawer has been weeded out again, but the chain saw has yet to hit the runaway pyracantha.) To my credit, I have been over-productive in the friend arena, taking walks and catching up with people I love. Emmet has even joined us over the last couple of nights, a phlegmy convalescent walking happily in the warm, wet blanket that is late July.

Some of my friends, perhaps fearing that I would invite myself, have asked me to see a Fleetwood Mac tribute band tomorrow night. They do not know that this lyric from “Landslide” almost always makes me cry:

Time makes you bolder/Even children get older/And I’m getting older, too.

Indeed, I am getting older: I celebrated a birthday almost two weeks ago. Aging does not bother me, which is cancer’s great gift. But this was my first birthday without my mother. I would never underestimate the importance of fathers — I love mine dearly — but the act of birth is a partnership between you and your mom. Chris was there when our children were born, looking terrified, getting yelled at by the obstetrician, and happily relaxing when they finally arrived. But me? I could not walk down the hall for a Coca-Cola or visit the cafeteria or step outside to take a phone call. I had a job to do.

And here I was, 54 years later, for the first time without the one true partner at my birth. The woman who ensured that I had a fifth birthday party, complete with other squirming five year-olds and homemade cake, despite the fact that my brother had been born four days earlier. The woman who called me on the day itself at 7:11 a.m., even during college, to sing to me. The woman who often made me crazy and who broke my heart. The woman I loved dearly, even if I could not bear to talk to her for the last few months of her life. The woman I could not save from herself.

My mother.

Chris took this picture of me (along with two strangers and their wine glasses) at my birthday dinner. The cake was delicious, and even without a candle, I made a wish. I wished my mother the satisfaction of knowing that she was right. That was one of her favorite things — being right — and I could give her no better gift on our special day.

And the landslide brought me down.

ALC

The Beachview Peace Accord

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Chris and I began coming to the small wooden house on Beachview Drive ten summers ago. I have since gained a decade and ten pounds, enjoyed a front-row seat in my hair’s changing from red to grey, lost a particularly nasty part of my colon, said goodbye to the ease and generosity of Buddy, and said hello to the charming neuroticism of Emmet. I have discovered painting, learned how to knit, and started making my own clothes. I have helped my children pack to leave the house, shutting our yellow front door behind them with a mixture of profound sadness and some relief.

It has been an eventful decade, almost to the point that my 44 year-old self feels like a stranger. But it was that person who insisted on that first trip to Beachview, just Chris and me, to talk about the unhappiness and sadness that had wormed its way into our marriage and nearly strangled it. The first summer held tears and painful silences and conversations about what a life going forward needed to look like. A house that is barely 500 square feet is a perfect place for difficult talks. You cannot ignore one another. You have to share a bathroom, space, air. You feel like you are in a foxhole, the two of you against the world. That trip ended with the Beachview Peace Accord that continues to inform my view of us.

Every year has gotten better, and this week has become my favorite week of the entire year. There are rules (if you can call them that). Sleep when you want to, even if you last slept only a few hours before. Walk on the beach at least three times a day. Ride bikes whenever possible. Buy Italian ice from the umbrella cart selling it on the beach. Check work email sporadically or not at all, which is what I started doing, or not doing, four years ago. Read. Make art. Indulge in small pleasures. (I bought four magazines, wasabi peas, and bottled Coca-Colas at Publix on our way in yesterday, and it felt positively lawless.) Pack light.

This year’s week came suddenly. It has been a difficult year, and recent weeks have found me working like a dog. The attendant lack of sleep had left me with temporary cognitive lapses, struggling to remember words, forgetting even recent conversations, having difficulty pinpointing exactly where I was in space and time. I finally remembered this week a few weeks ago, only to find myself texting the house’s owner about whether we were to arrive Saturday or Sunday.

(Saturday.)

Chris and I packed yesterday, having ten years of knowing the space we could fill and exactly what we needed. It took us no time to unpack, and an even shorter time before we were walking on the beach. He held my hand, bear-paw style, and the two of us, attired in a way that would make our dermatologist happy, set out. We have to enjoy this time.

This is the last year for Beachview. The current owners live next door. A few years ago they bought the house and saved it from being razed to build a massive condominium. A few months ago they decided to move this house into town, build themselves a new house on this lot, and turn their current, much larger, and older cottage into a rental. As much as I would like to blame them or be angry about their decision, I cannot. I live in a 96 year-old home, meaning that I spend my fair share of time fantasizing about what it would feel like to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter. There’s a lot to be said for charm. There’s even more to be said for comfort, especially as one grows old.

There are no other little houses on the beach, and the expense of renting the larger cottage may be a powerful deterrent. I am not sure that we will be back or what the future holds. Whatever our decision, nothing will be the same.

But everything ends. Take the unhappiness and the discomfort of my decade-ago self. Something felt really wrong then, and something had to change. It was, and it did. Ten years later in a little wooden shack that sits on the Atlantic Ocean, I will finish writing and join Chris and eat half of the watermelon he has before him in a bowl. We will walk again, hands held like bear paws, and I will wonder if there will ever be enough time to do all of the kind things that I want to do for him.

We took this photo last night, two people with the unbelievable good fortune of growing up and growing older together, visiting for the last time a dear, dear place. I am no longer the piece of glowing ripe fruit that I was in that picture in the last story, but I feel more beautiful and loved than that girl could ever imagine.

ALC