homeland security

i have lost my bearings. this is a selfish thing to say, considering. considering what all everyone else here has lost. cars and homes and trees, for some. people- children, grandparents, whole families, sometimes. photo albums. love letters. wedding dresses. baby shoes. we are at 26th and maiden lane. looking left i can see the shell of the hospital where my sisters were born, where my grandpa survived his first heart attack, where i wandered the halls of four west, filling up styrofoam pitchers with ice and water, where my grandparents used to go for dinner because they liked the food at the cafeteria and could visit so many friends at once. looking right i see flatness but i know it was cunningham park. i know there is an l-shaped pool with a pale blue floor where i learned to swim just beyond the rise in the land. i know over beyond the hospital were our pediatrician's offices, the waiting room divided into a well side and a sick side. the only part of any of that still understandable as something close to what it was is the hospital. the rest of the world spins loosely around it, unmoored, undirected.

time here is marked in terms of before the tornado or since the tornado by everyone, whether they lost anything or not. because everyone lost something. when we first drive into town there are signs everywhere, both handwritten and the sort you see on highways used by the d.o.t. they provide clear and helpful directions for volunteers. because a month and a half later, volunteers are still coming. at the edges of town there are fields piled with wreckage. i try to recall whether they were farm fields but i can't tell. i think about whether it would be feasible to pile all that brokenness into the strip pits at the edges of town. the rubble is sorted and there are specific drop sites for specific items. hazmat. nonhazmat. the trees, skinned and pale, with fat branches split and splintered, seem not to know they should be dying. they are putting on new, dark green and stubby growth at the trunks. they are shameless in their desire to do something. i remember that we spent our first night as married folks in a b&b here filled with f.e.m.a. folks assessing damage from the last tornado, a few weeks before our wedding. they are here again, in larger numbers, trying to figure out how to get money spent.

every truck in town is hauling twisted metal or shattered cinder blocks or withered trees. there is a large sign in front of what was a church on fifteen that encourages folks to come out and worship with the congregation at the holiday inn. every vacant building houses a relief center with offers of food and shelter and help. it is not possible to drive a full block along the scarred path of the tornado without seeing blue tarps and reddened men on roofs in clusters or in the skeletons of houses. we are here in 100+ degree temperatures and still they work all day, every day, fixing, their skin glowing brighter and brighter. they stop to sleep and to eat big breakfasts in groups of four or five. then they work again. they carry gallons and gallons of water in their trucks.

the three burger kings the town boasted were all blown away but the tornado slide in front of the one on rangeline is, shockingly, still standing. the red lobster toward what was the edge of town when i lived here is intact, but the red has been blown right off the lobster sign and the white words below it are empty of neon or glass. my beloved fred 'n reds sits like an angry toad, unscathed in the middle of chaos. taco bell is broken says my sister when the smaller nephew wants to go to his (and my) favorite fast food place. his little face falls as he remembers he already knows this and will likely continue to be reminded for a while. but the suggestion here is that taco bell can, and will, be fixed. that we will return to a world in which taco bell is right where it should be, on the corner of 26th and main. and this is what is everywhere. a promise to stick around, to fix things. and i mean this literally. large chain stores and small stores alike have printed or scrawled notes on banner plastic or cardboard or on slabs of what was once part of something else. we are here. we are not going anywhere. we are here. like those whos on that dust speck. we are here.

it is not the brokenness that is heartbreaking, not the skinned trees or bare concrete slabs or bumpers and other bits of twisted metal still in branches. it is not the words about survivors and insurance spraypainted onto the sides of walls that were once attached to other walls. it is not even seeing my aunt mary's house foundation, house chunks collapsed in on the tiny footprint of a place i knew to be grand and elegant. it is this insistence on reassuring one another. on promising, as a community, something it's difficult enough to get just two folks at a time to do. especially after news crews have gone home. we are here. we are not going anywhere.

the home depot that was destroyed is open under a massive tent, keeping the town supplied in the building materials it is so quickly snapping up. they would be fools to do anything else. there are pharmacies open on former drug store parking lots, little trailers equipped with everything from blood pressure medicine to prozac. walgreen's has its building nearly rebuilt already. displaced doctors have set up in memorial hall. i overhear one man say to another that he used to work at southtown bait. i know he is local because he calls it southtown bait instead of southtown sporting goods, which is what the building's sign has been saying up until the end of may. the store is on 31st and main street and all my life there has been a giant bass leaping out of the pavement at the corner of the parking lot. the fish is maybe twenty feet long and spectacular in its own right, even more beautiful because passing it always meant we were a block from the glory of anderson's ice cream. before the roof fell in, the man adds softly. he pauses. i still work there, he says. yeah, i do.

water

part one of several entries about the big vacation.

the week after school ends we find ourselves in maine. it is just after six thirty a.m. and the sweetie and his brother stand on the dock while i stare dubiously at the blue kayak. i do not know how to operate such a thing, but for months now, since the sweetie's parents sent word that the place we'd all spend a week together would be perched on the side of a hill overlooking a place called loon cove at the end of a long, island-studded lake, i've been drooling over the kayaks they mentioned would be waiting. i know how to paddle a canoe and i know how to row my own fine jon boat back at my own lake, but rowing is not at all like paddling. i am sure of it. i put on a life vest that is not at all like my own at home and i am sure i will die of strangulation before i ever get myself into the kayak.

i have seen fools in whitewater rolling over in these tiny plastic boats and friends have tried to explain what to do when the boat eventually spits me out into the water. because everyone, including me, is sure this is what will happen. eventually. i settle into the kayak and the sweetie hands me the paddle. it is surprisingly familiar. i paddle around the dock a bit and head out into the lake. the dizziness and questionable balance i drag around on land slides off me and the blue boat noses smoothly across the early morning water. there is a little island out a bit into the lake and i head for it, free of the land, free of the board of education of the city of new york, free of 90+ degree weather, free of subways and buses with angry drunks at noon.

but i am not a particularly good judge of distance and my six thirty a.m. self is not awake enough to consider that a first attempt at kayaking probably shouldn't include traveling a great distance across very deep water. i paddle about three quarters of the way over to the island before i am awake enough to think of this. i stop for a minute and look around me. i can no longer see the sweetie or his brother there on the dock. i can see a few houses on the shore but they are not any of them the house i came from. i consider that i might somehow die out here in this little boat because of lightning or whirlpool or deadly lake monster. none of these seems as likely as they usually do. i paddle toward the island. there is nobody there. birds and fish and water lilies, but no people. there is a small cove ringed with massive boulders and i glide in around them, watching the loons and terns watch me.

it occurs to me, more than half a mile from my version of the civilized world, that i have no water or food and there might be breakfast waiting back at that house i can't see. i paddle back in the direction i think i came from and catch sight of a fish hatcheries building i know is a few docks over from the sweetie and his family and breakfast. i am halfway back before i see the dock with tiny versions of the sweetie and his brother. when i paddle up the sweetie is waiting to help me back onto the dock, back onto the world.

there is breakfast and then there is sitting on the screened porch, looking out at the lake and the island. this is the first time in a very long time i have tried something new without being terrified. tried something new by myself, just because it seemed interesting. it is a small, small step in a line of other small steps. it feels good to be moving forward.

sinister, the way of the baby

babies are sinister. there is no question about this although new parents will coo and drool about how close their own babies are to heaven, said babies having come just recently from there, how their hideously terrifying shrieks and howls are the voices of doves and angels. they will tell you with serious faces about the quality and volume and texture of the things they find in their own child's diaper the way prospectors will talk about nuggets of gold they've dug from the ground. because they truly believe this is a topic of great interest to the whole world. why, you ask, would otherwise sensible people do this? i will tell you. because babies use mind control. but they wield their power poorly. because they are babies. it is not so much that i believe we are in danger. it is simply that i like accuracy.

and it is not that i don't like babies. i absolutely love them, especially the ones i know personally. i think they are fantastically awesome little science experiments, creatures with capabilities so far beyond our own we insist on seeing them as helpless to make ourselves feel better. this is very dangerous as it causes us to underestimate the amount of control we have over the lives of these babies and over our own lives, as well. the amount of control we really have is at or about zero.

it seems we'd be better off recognizing the true nature of these creatures and respecting it. this is the sort of thing the c.i.a. ought to be investigating, this mind control. how exactly is it babies get people to wipe their butts for them? wake up seventy five times a night just to be sure they're sleeping? carry their surprisingly heavy little dead-weight bodies everywhere like fat, snot-crusted jewelry?

so when i am nosing through an old barn of a thrift store and happen upon a pile of glass photo negatives, quite a few of them depicting the true and dangerous nature of babies, i grab them all up. you can see the babies here, their eyes empty of anything but the desire to get you to bend to their wills. i will be making these negatives into cards to give to new parents. you know, those congratulations on your little bundle of joy type things. they will be wrapped in old linens handstitched with pretty flowers. they will be tied with wide ribbons or soft yarns. and they will have good tidings of great joy written on them somewhere. tidings like babies can steal your soul. however, they have notoriously poor motor skills so it's pretty easy to get your soul back. when you uncover the truth on a dusty bookshelf next to some defunct polaroid cameras, you have to share it. knowledge is power.

father's day

warning: mildly salty language. because it's father's day.

we head over to the caboose around 9:30 because we wake up too late for 5am fishing and figure we ought to at least eat a good breakfast before floating on the water fishless and in the blatant daylight. there is a porch on the caboose and you can sit out there with some scrambled eggs and enjoy looking over at the mountains or just being next to a caboose. it doesn't hurt that you can eat the best home fries in town right there on that porch, too. generally, folks read the paper or catch up on local gossip. from time to time a big dog settles in under someone's feet. i find a table while the sweetie heads inside to order. i look around for a dog.

two tables over are two gentlemen. we will call one mr. gonna get drunk and we will call the other mr. nascar shirt. now, i would like to say right up front there is nothing at all wrong with nascar or with shirts celebrating the glories and drivers of the nascar world. to be honest, i like the crashes just as much as anyone else, maybe more. but i'm going out on a limb to say that pulling on a nascar shirt three sizes too small so you can go out for breakfast with your daughter on father's day is, well, not trying very hard. bringing her to breakfast with your drinking buddy whose every sentence focuses one way or another around the key phrase gonna get drunk is sorely missing the point of father's day. i see more of mr. nascar shirt's buttcrack than his proctologist. i look over at the mountain. unfortunately, mr. nascar shirt is not the ugliest father on the porch.

a family comes up and sits at a table between us and the table occupied by mr. nascar shirt and mr. gonna get drunk. a woman and man with a boy and girl, both under ten. they are joined a bit later by another couple with a toddler boy and a girl maybe eight. the men talk across the tables about their trucks, laughing at the mileage they get (ranging from nine to slightly more than 14 mpg). the mothers busy themselves with getting the children settled.

let's call father one mr. i hate marriage. let's call father two mr. i hate women. let's call them both the i have no regard for women, including my wife and my daughter club. mr. i hate marriage is wearing a shirt with the restroom symbol type man and woman on it, dressed in bride and groom wear. the bride is beaming and the groom looks miserable. above the couple is the phrase game over. i am sorry mr. i hate marriage is in a miserable marriage to someone he so clearly hates but i am unsure why he has chosen father's day to advertise this fact. mr. gonna get drunk tells mr. i hate marriage how much he likes the shirt. mr. i hate marriage says thanks, then explains the smiley face and frowny face. because he thinks mr. gonna get drunk is even stupider than i do.

his pal mr. i hate women is wearing a shirt even more spectacular. it has the head of a native american chief and under the face is the phrase chief bangerharder. wow. as a person who spends a great deal of time with teenagers, i can tell you that this level of charm and humor generally peaks in seventh grade. i am wondering about when he got dressed this morning. he asks mrs. i hate women how he looks. she says something along the lines of, "wow! honey. you look great. that shirt really tells folks what sex with you is like and that's what i'd like to advertise today, father's day!" he beams, thinking of how proud his children will be when they see him and sound out the words on his shirt that proclaim what he thinks is his skill with their mom.

here's the thing. i can take a joke. sometimes even a joke at my expense. but these jokes seem more like feeble cries for attention. and i'm fine with folks wearing stupid shirts. i understand everyone's right to be an idiot. but i like to think men of a certain lifestyle- for instance those with daughters old enough to read- would be willing to forgo shirts emblazoned with information that says, basically, "i am an asshole and i'm cool with being an asshole in front of my children. because it's my right as an american citizen." at the very least i'd like to think these men could do this the one day a year they get to sit across the tables from their little girls, skinny big-eyed girls, wild-haired and pink-dressed, in celebration of what it is to be a dad. i think of my own dad who wore snap front shirts during much of my childhood. my recollection is that he owned one shirt with writing on it. it said i survived the breakup of at&t. because he was a telephone man and he actually did.

and i know it seems like a small thing, these shirts. but to a little girl who looks up to and respects her dad, the shirts are lessons in how to be. in who to be. his philosophy emblazoned across his chest. so i would like to thank my own dad for knowing that everything you do as a father sends a message to your children. and for knowing what messages to send.

salt

the lovely pill i swallow daily to keep my wild brain content to sit still in my skull is salt based. it is the same chemical used to make the blood red showers of fire in fireworks. i like to think about it that way, me and the fireworks, full of this red sparking salt. i keep the salt happy with plenty of water and protein and chocolate and most of the time the salt does what it should, keeps that brain of mine from stomping right out my mouth or hurling itself from an ear. keeps it soothed and cool and tame.

but today the fire escape thermometer is saying ugly things about the air outside and my whole body begins to brace for what will come next. i have seen it looming and i have prepared. the salt is not happy about the heat. i can feel it seething even on days with numbers like 82 and 85 so i have extra bottles of water, a sandalwood fan and a silk fan for unairconditioned classrooms or buses. i have a cold bottle of rosewater to spray on my melting flesh. but the uglier the thermometer talks, the angrier the salt gets. it does not listen to my promises of more water. we are no longer on speaking terms. the salt is a time released pill so there is nothing i can do to tell it to stop stomping around in my body wrecking everything. it is in there. along with the water i offer raspberries. i offer an avocado blended with milk and honey. a cold bean salad with lots of cilantro. anything to make it happy. but i cannot make the outside weather go away. not while i'm at work. we don't have that sort of fanciness in a new york city public school. instead we have bedbugs.

the salt starts to strangle my brain. i can feel it withering in there, gasping for breath, a ropy slug dissolving in all that salt. the fighting gets ugly enough the world starts to swing in wide arcs toward me and then away. there is no way to tell who is winning at this point but i find it difficult to stand up. i regret my decision to wear challenging shoes to keep myself from accidentally walking home in this heat. i cannot walk at all in these shoes, red like the sparking salt.

i wait at the bus stop. the salt has sucked all traces of moisture from my body and left my brain broiling in my skull but my brain makes one last valiant effort. it rallies the troops, urges them to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. my hands, feet and stomach absorb the cruel salt and swell until i look like mickey mouse. my wedding ring slices into my finger. the evil red shoes cut across my toes. the waistband of my skirt cleaves my stomach like a peach. i double over with cramps. this is my rescue, what my damaged brain has come up with. i wait. i know there's more. ah, there. waves of nausea. my cartoon hands begin to shake. the labored breathing i've been working on while waiting for my afternoon bus slows. i am breathing molasses. i am breathing a dishrag full of warm water. i do not want to die on a bus surrounded by teenagers i don't know and a guy drinking from a plastic bag. i will myself to wait until i get home.

i stand there in all 97 nearly liquid degrees and watch four buses go by without stopping. there are blisters already swelling along the leather edges of both shoes. i have walked two blocks and then stood still twenty minutes. by the time the sweetie gets home i am a beached whale on the couch, guzzling pedialyte and emitting a stench i suspect approximates the vapors that leap out of those lakes that kill whole towns. the sweetie is kind. he rubs my back. my feet. he orders food. i continue to swell and swirl and spin.

i wake this morning still spinning, still cramped, still swollen as a parade float. i lie on the bed. the man on the radio is saying words like scorcher in a voice that does not suggest he really understands the nature of the words he's using. the weather website says heat advisory and air quality alert and even record report. i lie on my back and try to look over my stomach to see my sausage toes, to be sure the hideous pressure hasn't turned them blue or made them fall off. i get up and my stomach lurches. the world swings back and forth. there is too much movement from my insides. i chew some tablets to calm my swirling stomach but the salt just laughs. i can feel the tablets losing to the salt, can feel my insides getting chilly, then hot.

it is already 90 degrees when i manage to get myself upright and stuffed into the loosest clothing and shoes i own. i shamble to the market but the constant fighting between the salt and my brain has worn me out. my entrails work hard with my brain to defeat the salt but they are weak and confused. i put food in my basket but can't imagine putting it into my body. it is difficult to walk home with the bag and all that commotion on my insides. i am knocked every which way by the fight going on in there and struggle to get up the stairs with the bag. i am never good at being sick. i am even less good at being mauled by salt.

i do not know what to do. we have this fight every summer and eventually all my insides adjust but the salt seems particularly angry this year. particularly cruel. i consider the food options. i stare a long while at the chocolate bar i brought home. dark chocolate with sea salt. the four block walk home was enough to melt it to the inside of its foil wrapper. when i try to snap off a square, the whole thing bends. it is smooth and soft and the fat and sugar wrap my brain up in happiness right away. my brain stretches, shakes itself. the grains of sea salt dissolve on my tongue and i can hear my brain hum and the medicine salt hums. they are drunks after a bar fight, arms around each other in the broken glass and spilled beer. they do not remember now why they fought and are surprised to see what a wreck they've made of the rest of my insides. still, they are calm now, chuckling softly from time to time. and i will take what i can get. i sip grape pedialyte. i nibble small squares of dark chocolate with tiny crunches of sea salt. i lie under the air conditioner. the sky outside turns dark and the wind bends the trees of heaven just past the window. the rain falls in fat drops onto the fire escape thermometer. it laughs and says seventy eight.

a note from dad

my dad wrote in to let us know how things are going. i figured i'd drag his note up from the comments section so folks won't miss it.

It's amazing the compassion and help that's coming here from all over the country. It seems the whole world is wanting to help in one way or another, and it's VERY MUCH APPRECIATED. Donations are coming in daily..Food, Water, Clothing, and money...Strangers arriving with chainsaws. People in school & church buses driving down streets through all the rubble asking.."NEED ANY HELP"..."WANT SOMETHING TO EAT...DO YOU NEED ANY WATER?" A simple "THANK YOU" is not enough to say for all the love and help shown to the people of Joplin, but I want you and the people from all over the world to know...WE THANK YOU...

Love. Dad

thanks, dad. and be careful of strangers arriving with chainsaws...

joplin tornado

call 417-624-1995 or 417-623-0400 to make a donation to the independent living center tornado relief account through southwest missouri bank.

or go to www.ilcenter.org to make a paypal donation.

today is my 8th wedding anniversary. yesterday was the sweetie's fortieth birthday. the day before that was the tornado. here is how it started. the seventy year old father calls, chatting about the storm, bragging about the hail battering the yard. i hear something muffled and he puts down the phone. i know he is standing out in the yard, getting the biggest hail to put in the freezer so he can show the grandsons. i am pretty sure this impish disregard for reason was something my own mother interpreted as badboy sassiness when she fell for him but i want to reach through the phone and shake him for going out there. he comes back to the phone, beaned more than once by the hail, then says he ought to go before the weather gets too bad. we are not the sort of people who stay on the phone during a storm. and there's a tornado watch, after all. but there are tornado watches all the time. they are boys crying wolf, making you hide in the basement or the bathtub or in the closet, foolish and stuffy. you come out feeling ripped off. tricked.

i wait. twenty or so minutes later he calls back, saying everything in a voice that tells me he is trying to make sure i don't worry in case he gets the wrong words out first. he says tornado. he tells me the sisters, sane women who live in houses with basements, are okay. he says he and mom are also okay because their windowless bathroom makes a mighty fine tornado shelter. i will tell you right now if a tornado is spinning smack over you nothing above ground makes a mighty fine tornado shelter but there is no telling him anything. he says watch the weather channel.

we watch most of the evening, the sweetie and me. image after image of a place i've never been in my life. i see the hospital where i wandered from room to room in my candy striper dress, filling water pitchers and changing towels. it is broken. it is all alone. there is nothing else. there is nothing anywhere. my lungs feel thick. i worry about strange things- tiny little fred 'n red's all alone there on main street, dogs who might wander over downed electrical wires. but they are all safe, the family. they are fine. dad tells me each time i talk to him like he isn't sure i'm convinced.

the sisters call and send texts. the baby sister's words are, simply, it is horrible here. the middle sister sends photos she's taken. they are exactly like every other photo i've seen of what used to be where i am from. it is awful to think of her there in the middle of so much emptiness. each photo comes with a word or two to help me decipher them. somewhere on 26th. the house alan was helping with. gas station at 20th and duquesne. dead cows in field behind the gas station. aunt mary's neighborhood. but i can't tell them apart. she ends with across the street is mostly untouched.

the family is out in the middle of things. to be sure, it is who they are. but the truth is, everyone in town who can help is out in the middle of things. because that is who they are, too. and i am here looking at photo after photo while my family is sifting through what is left of my aunt mary's house. while my sisters are trying to help the folks at their i.l.c., folks who have met with plenty of challenges already. some are dead or lost but more than forty are without anything but themselves. and i am still here, yelling at bored kids about langston hughes. about martin espada. about how important everything is.

but monday is my birthday (right. of course. memorial day) and i want something other than to share my birthday one more time with the war dead and the barbecues and sales. i want a toothbrush. i want soap. a laundry basket. towels. forks. i want a frame for a family photo. a stupid barbie. generally, i don't like to ask so directly, but this is what i can do and so here i am. folks have temporary shelter and clothing and food. there will be money down the road for rebuilding. but right now today this minute people in my town need shampoo. antacid. maybe a stuffed bear. they need what will make things seem a little closer to normal.

both my bossy sisters thank you. my ridiculous parents who will not listen to reason thank you. my strange little midwestern town thanks you. i thank you. this is the most important present i could ever get.