Daughtering

I thought I would spend the weekend writing, doing laundry, and preparing a presentation at work. Then came the ring. Don't people always talk about the ring? It's probably nothing, but my dad is in the hospital with chest pains. It's probably nothing, but he's had some heart problems in the past. They put some balloons in there about a year ago, and told him to lose weight. He's very heavy. It's probably nothing, but I remember that documentary that Tim Lehrer did about his heart attack - he described it as a train running over his chest - and the doctors keeping him for observation before the train left the station.

One time, Dad felt chest pains, so he got up out of bed, took a shower, and waited for my mom to wake up. Like, duh! He wanted to be sure he smelled good or something? The doctors said later that a heart attack had been imminent, but the balloons opened up the clogged arteries. I knew then that that would be the first of several future cardiac-type visits. The folks there seemed professional and friendly - occasionally a rural hospital will be comforting rather than eerily backward. They had automatic doors, so they seemed hip to the high-tech thing.

Isn't it odd to be at an age when we consider a parent's death, not as a remote fear, but as a real possibility? It's not that he is in a dire situation at the moment, but the ER visits do give one pause. When my father was thirty years old, his sister died. A year later, his mother died. Dad sometimes said it was a broken heart that killed his mother. My brother died last summer. Both of my parents have been determined to continue to participate in the world, to grasp at what they do have, while they mourn. So I am going to be with them and to kvetch at him (nag) about eating the lousy food and drinking enough water. And I'm sort of hoping that he is not thinking about the irony, or even that he now shares an experience with his mother that he never imagined he would.

For my own mother, I am hoping that she has many years with her companion, a night with some sleep in it, and a little relief from the sadness. The latter two seem 'highly unlikely,' as we say in my family. She likes to 'think positive,' though, so despite my tendencies otherwise, I am going to join her there. This is one situation in which a little denial may be required.

Noprah on Oprah

Please register me as Anti-Oprah. She's a one-woman narcissistic corporate machine of superficial hair and false sentiment. Sure, she gives a lotta crap away. Ever catch the look on her face after all those poor suckers cheer for her? She tosses 'em a penny, and they're all like ooh, a Broadway show, we love you Oprah. Perfectly intelligent and sophisticated females rhapsodize over the phenom that is Oprah. What the fuck? She's showing us the houses she built in Texas for Katrina survivors. Saint Oprah? I don't think so. I remember when she was Ms. Why-Didja-Cheat? When that stopped working, she became someone else. Now she's all Ms. Mother Theresa. It is truly an i.q.-lowering experience to watch her expression as she asks - I had pneumonia, gimme a break - a "tough" question. Ha! How's about her brave turn-around when she condemned plagiarism, only after her followers complained?

I say she's offering herself up as the leader of a new religion. And I'm leery whenever a group of people is devoted to any religion, even if it's mine. Oprah worship is particularly repellent to me, however. What's up with the pseudo-honesty? Why does David Letterman give a shit? Am I supposed to link to all this stuff? Like, why? (I only link if I think it's a good thing to look at!) I'll tell ya right now that Oprah can hold a serious pseudo-soulful expression, while Brooke Shields describes her descent into post-partum depression, for a good 40 minutes. Maybe they inject Botox around the mouth before she takes the stage. Or maybe it's computer-generated animation. She can hawk a book like the best saleswoman around; she can go on about her favorite lady-like things. Such talent.

I don't give a shit. I don't like Oprah. Her show is dull. Her opinions are mundane. Her compassion act is all part of raking in the dough and keeping herself in an admired position of warm and beloved - ironically - mother figure. Or maybe she's going for gal next door. At this point, it could be Princess Diana. But I say she can take all of her crap and her romance-novel style, and get offa my t.v. And I'm not buying a book with her name smacked on the cover, either.

Magical Buttons

Aren't nipples super-duper? First of all, they're round and quite naturally hold onto the breast as a root to a tree; all in one. Not like some other body parts that just kinda hang there - but of course that's the male anatomy, and I've no more to say on that subject. Nipples are multi-purpose: they get bigger when it's puberty-time, they feel good when grabbed, so to speak, and they feed many a lucky infant, instantly transforming from an organ of sexual pleasure to a cream soda dispenser.

Nipples are handy if you have kids - they tranform into little baby-feeders, sprinkling milk like a big pinkish-brownish fountain. It kinda hurts, but it's a relief, too. Ball & Chain useta call me The Dairy Queen. Then later he expected to satisfy his curiosity. Ha! That was one time - or two- in my life when the nipples were off-limits to all sexual interations. They were feeding my baby, for crissake. Even having anyone else near them made me anxious. No blurring of the territory.

One night I had no choice. My breasts were engorged, the baby was fast asleep and wouldn't drink, and nothing was working. I woke up the B&C and ordered him to drink. He was a little groggy, but then he took the order. I was complaining "ouch - shit," "jesus - goddamn" "ouch," and he made little noises, like
"Mmm, this is good. It's kinda warm. It's a little sweet." Finally, when my breasts were back down to a reasonable size, I told him that was enough. He wasn't listening well. "Enough! Enough, already, it's over." He fell back into a contented slumber. I wondered if his lactose intolerance would kick in.

My dispensers always went together. The momma books said that after awhile tit left, Lola, would know that tit right, Rola, was the feeder of the moment. But no. Baby drank from Rola, and Lola spouted like a fountain in France. It wasn't so bad unless I ran outta breast pads, and a young girl came to the door to deliver some special post-natal equipment, and my shirt was soaked because I was exhausted looking after a 4-year-old and an infant, and I didn't give a shit about changing. This girl was maybe twenty, and I am quite sure she went directly from my doorstep to the gynecologist to have her tubes tied with whatever instrument they had handy.

Some of us need the nipple for good sex. Research shows that if you make your tits bigger, just for the helluvit, you may lose sensation in your nipples, among other unpleasantries. Yikes! Now some of us have no choice and this is not about that. This is about why risk it if your tits are perfectly fine, as is? I mean, without the nipple sensation, I might have been the first Jewish nun. My nipples are so sensitive that without them I would be lost in some hinterland of sexual ignorance. No nipple, no high point; no big bang, final release, home run. There would definitely be less interest in having sex with individuals over whom I believed myself to be in love, when really I just needed a little nipple manipulation.

When given the luxury of a healthy small breast that will be your happy companion in sexual endeavors, or a bigger breast that may be as useless as an elbow, why choose elbow? Truly, this is insanity - worse than denying the need for foreplay, even. Willingly removing that sensation is akin to refusing food when it's right in front of you. Aha! It's a sex diet. It's a fucking disorder, as opposed to an eating disorder. And isn't it all the more demented when there are women who truly have to consider this option? Don't give yourself a side effect when you don't have the goddamn disease! My buttons will remain as is, small and potent, lest fate deals me the proverbial lousy hand. Get those fake balloons outta my view - I'm keeping my tits available for all magical manipulations.

Drug Me Into The Blogosphere

I keep trying to write about nipples and somehow my breasts hurt, my conscience hurts, I dunno if I have my facts straight. They're popping up everywhere! First, I have my-daughter's-getting-older-fear, which is utterly moronic since I already have a teenager and I enjoy being with my kids as they grow. I have no nostalgia for babydom. That was then, this is now. It's like remembering my dinner before it was cooked. It looked good, but now it's really something.

Then, and this has nothing to do with nipples, Becca and I were discussing the obsessive nature of blogging while our - yikes - growing daughters ran around a restaurant. (Doesn't it seem absurd that restaurant isn't spelled restaraunt? Really.) Anyway, blogging is obsessive because you read you write you read, and then sometimes you wonder: how the hell did this woman have the time to write 500 pages and include excellent graphics to boot? Meanwhile, I keep going back to my nipples blog.

I was staring at my nipples blog. I was staring at my nipples, too, but that's another piece altogether. I was well-aware that I am depressed, recovering from not-so-new-moan-ya, and I couldn't get to the root of the nipples problem, if you'll pardon the image. They're not really, roots, right, they're lactation paths, or milk ducts. Little rivers that sprout vitamin drink - I think it's Odwalla - to tiny tikes. And the writing had utterly - udderly (how cheap, I cannot help myself) distracted me from my predicament. Which is, truly, that my sleep, my eating, my everything is quite depressed, despite the meds the therapy and the many supportive people around.

It's not the run-of-the-therapy-mill supports, though. It's the he-man psycho-pharm guy, Dr. Rugged. Every time I see him, I am better. He's so knowledgeable about drug interactions and all this type of fancy crap, and his venn diagrams are to die for. He has massive shoulders like he forgot to take his football pads out and I find it strangely comforting: the big man will say multi-syllable words and understand my little Jewish references, an added bonus. So I visualize Dr. Rugged, and instead of the blue or the yellow, I'm thinking the little cube shape. Blogozene! If you're one of the two people reading this, you may be on it. And it's doing the trick. The side-effects are a little OCD-ish, but what the hell. I can actually write on this stuff. I'm hallucinating a little, but it's mostly text, words like "comments," "feminism," and "links." The colors are quite intense, greens and purples for the most part. I've lost my appetite and my fingers are a little numb, but I think it's worth it for the distraction from non-text, non-screen life. I'm almost ready for nipples.