Barely promoted

Staring through an open barn door at a departing horse

For as long as I've known her Marina has said that her daughter Emma (inconvenient, eh?) will be applying to colleges soon. Usually Marina stresses that Emma would like to go to school in England, but is considering the U.S. as well, which I always hear as snobbery. I think I sent a Peterson's once—it had decent summary information on how the application process works, too.

Emma is actually graduating this year. I found out when uncle Ricky called in a panic a couple of days ago. Some school I'd never heard of ("Saint Hilda's—it's part of the University of North Minnakota," he said) was demanding that Marina wire $3000 to some small bank in some small town in Minnakota IMMEDIATELY, or Emma wouldn't be able to register, and he was worried it was a scam. Emma hadn't even gotten an acceptance letter!

A couple of hours later I talked with Marina directly. Ricky had been batting facts as well as he usually does—St. Hilda's a Catholic school, actually, and not only had they accepted Emma, they'd offered a substantial tuition scholarship—but they were requesting a bunch of money very soon. I said I'd call and see what I could find out. While I was still on the phone I found a web page explaining the deposits required of international students. They want the money before they'll start the visa process, but it's all credited to the fall term bill.

I also found out that Emma had applied to three schools in the U.S. A major historically black university, an academically undistinguished private university in New York, and St. Hilda's. Marina said Emma had chosen these schools as the best places to "do pre-med," and that she'd said she'd go to the first one that accepted her, and St. Hilda's was the first. I couldn't get Marina to say yes or no to the question of whether she'd gotten rejection letters from the other schools. I'm not sure she understood my question.

The next day I called Student Accounts at St. Hilda's. They're nice people (as the residents of Minnakota so often are). They confirmed that their policies are as described on the website, and wished me a nice day. When I called her, Marina said she's send the deposits right out.

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Notice when Ricky and Marina got in touch with me, their relative in the business, about this whole college thing. When there were about to be problems with money. They worry a lot about money. It's what they think they need help with.

But what's the important, the potentially life-determining issue for young Emma? Where she goes to school. That's where my background, my experience in the industry of higher education, could really have been helpful. When she was choosing where to apply. Marina couldn't see that. She's got common sense, but she doesn't know crap about U.S. higher education. And Ricky, despite having been raised in Weatherwood by a professional family, doesn't know crap about anything.

It's really a cultural capital issue, eh? They don't know what they don't know.

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Meanwhile there's an eighteen-year-old in Trinidad who's got the guts to be setting off to frozen St. Hilda's. I thought about raising a stink, especially since there may be some issue of her application to the HBU having been incomplete, and perhaps never completed. And, and—not applying to any public schools in New York City? When money is so much of an issue? (And she did apply to the one school in NY, so avoiding her mother doesn't appear to be a requirement.)

I don't know what her SATs or grades are actually like, and I don't know what peculiar algorithm she used to pick those three schools. But she chose them, by gum. St. Hilda's looks, from its web site, like it's not a bad place to get an education. Not so different from Granolan, aside from the God thing and the lack of reputation. They do make a point of giving grants to international students, and she's got one of the biggest.

What I will do: send a $300 (or perhaps $500) L.L.Bean gift certificate, with hints on what it might get used for. And try to open up direct communication, once she's in the U.S. If she is all that, maybe she can transfer. Or maybe she can be a big fish in a small pond and then go on to great things.

Wallowing in sentimentality

I. The most beautiful thing I've heard in a long time: myself, singing "Happy Birthday" to Miss T. We just had a tiny little celebration at home—a frosted cream puff with a "1" candle played the role of the cake. Beaker was about to go inpatient, and it just wasn't the right time for a party. We took pictures of our little sweetie bathed in the golden glow of the sunset and glazed with chocolate goo.

II. Driving home from the hospital tonight I listened to Prairie Home Companion. The part where Garrison reads out his audience members' wishes for their dearest alternated crazily between the just-married and those past their 90th birthdays, but in the middle there was a couple who'd flown to St. Paul to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. Twentieth, I thought, I want to have a twentieth anniversary. We're more than halfway there, we're years and years past what I'd dared to hope for when we married—and Miss T. would be all of nine then.

III. Beaker gets lung function tests Monday. If he's doing better, then he stays for more treatment. As long as there's improvement from the antibiotics, then they keep on administering them. Plateau equals go home. So I have to hope he stays for a while yet.

IV. So far as I know, no doctor has ever brought up lung transplantation with Beaker. The Times tells me that they've recently redone the way they run the lung waiting list, in ways that make it easier for people with CF to get organs. This must be good news, right? But it simply highlighted the fear behind my hopes, both large and small.

Debts to society

My mother believed, until the very end, that she'd make it out on her own again. She tried to sock away as much as she could of her government benefit checks. Paying the rent at her adult homes ate nearly the entire amount and was painful, every single time. There were a couple of times that the government didn't immediately catch on that she'd gone in-patient, and an extra check was sent. So she'd accumulated a bit of money.

A few months before she died, we convinced her to write me a check for $2500 out of her account, so that she wouldn't lose her benefits. I don't know how much was in the account when she died. The bank wouldn't tell me without proof that I was executrix, and she (of course!) had no will.

Back in November 2004, I tried to file the paperwork for people who die without wills. The county insisted on getting a copy of her divorce decree. I wrote away to a Prothonotary in Pennsylvania, and discovered that she wasn't divorced—hadn't been divorced?—it was his idea, I think—until 1969, when she was pregnant with me. (They hadn't lived together, or even seen each other, for at least 5 years by then.)

In mid-August I flew to Weatherwood with the baby, without Beaker. Rented a car. Miss T. was tense and weepy the whole time. I think she could feel my unhappiness being there. I lay in bed at nights plotting out blog entries about what an IDIOT my uncle is, about how No-Exit-y the entire situation in that apartment is. I spent my days listening to each of the three occupants, one at a time. Marina worried about whether my uncle is not only an idiot, but a dnagerous controlling idiot—he feels threatened by her going for a GED. My grandmother is old and frail and in pain and hates everyone, except occasionally Ricky—he's all right when he feeds her fears. And Ricky himself, always confused about the news but angry nonetheless.

But on my last afternoon I managed to make it back to the county probate department, divorce decree in hand, to be declared executrix. Look, I know it doesn't matter; there can't be more than $1000 in the account. But I didn't want it to get swallowed by the bank, or the state, or whoever gets accounts abandoned by dead people. I figured we could toss whatever scraps are there into Miss T.'s college account, and let that be a gesture from Annajane to the granddaughter she thought we didn't even want.

There was an extra little twist—the estate account had to be at an in-state bank—but I managed to get that opened before we got on the plane.

Flash foward. Back in Ohinidinois, classes starting, outbuildings falling down, Miss T. eating everything in sight and scooting fast enough that we're starting to babyproof, busy ordinary life. And then a giant envelope arrives, registered mail, from the county Social Services department.

It's a bill, to my mother's estate, for some $360,000, addressed to me as executrix. It cost over $9.00 to mail, thanks to the enclosed printouts listing every single Medicaid charge from 1996 on.

The bulk are hospitalization charges—some $280,000. There's medication, there's outpatient care. One can see the physical complaints—all minor, though—accumulating in her last few months.

Oddly (even to me), opening the envelope didn't raise my adrenaline level at all. I understand that Republicans expect the government to try to make this sort of recovery—and that families with more money and accountants and lawyers and shit counter-scheme, to try to keep money for the descendants. I have faith (and even more after talking with my lawyer father-in-law) that they're not actually billing me.

My own debt to various institutions, what with the undergraduate financial aid and the many years of graduate fellowships, and the illegally cross-border high school education too, that (adjusted for inflation) totals in the mid-six-figures.

This new bill just quantifies another portion of what society has given, that's enabled me to enter and remain in the comfortable middle class. First an education, and later the (at least professional, if often impersonal and sometimes unpleasant) care that my mother required. Both were necessary to where I've ended up.

But if the debt ate at me, if I felt honestly guilty all the time, I wouldn't be able to function.

Things I found in my grandmother's desk while searching for the deed to my mother's grave

The deed to my great-grandmother's grave (which is in Ohindinois, but several hours away).

Trimmings from my first haircut (Miss T.'s hair is a bit darker, but not much).

A certificate sent by a neighbor after my grandfather's death, declaring his eternal membership in the Silesian Purgatory Society.

Two credit cards, with activation stickers intact (one of them from the scumsuckers at Capital One).

The big-print lists I'd made for my mother after she first got out of the hospital after the bad '97 crackup, telling her when her all her appointments were and why she needed to go to them.

A six-inch-high stack of those address labels that charities send you.

A gift-wrapped dog coat, never opened, meant for my mother's dog (the one we had to send off to "rescue" in 1997).

Two small plastic vials of holy water, sent by charities.

A candle from my baptism (which happened in Pennsylvania, for complicated reasons, and when I was already about 6 months old).

A thank-you letter from the Heritage Foundation.

Five years of payment coupons for her Medigap insurance, apparently not sent in.

Five small planner calendars, and two full-size ones, sent by charities.

The deed to my mother's dog's grave (the one that died in 1995).

Whatever happened to Emma Jane?

(A quick reassurance: you should think more along the lines of "Whatever happened to Saturday night?" than "Whatever happened to Baby Jane?)

I went to Weatherwood two weeks later. (Dear God, was that January? Yes it was.) Nanna was grumpy as hell and driving both Ricky and Marina stark raving mad: they were spending so much time up at the nursing home that they couldn't eat or sleep. Especially since the bus over there only runs once an hour. Baby performed beautifully, smiled and wiggled for great-grandma, and by the end of the weekend Nanna was eating a bit more, figuring out her wheelchair, and resolving to actually participate in her physical therapy sessions.

She was released home about 10 days later. Marina took out the rug she'd tripped on, and a physical therapist is coming twice a week. She's walking with a walker; next goal is a cane. I've spoken with her, um, twice, maybe? Maybe three times? I suck, and will call tonight.

Classes started. Can I tell you something? Working full-time, and exclusively breastfeeding a baby who still doesn't like bottles much, is really fucking hard. I have some terrific students now, and I'm so tickled that I can still get up in front of the room and talk and then they think and talk back—but all this eating/pumping/running around/not sleeping is wearing me down. If I were to do it over, I'd take the year off.

Oh, and then Dr. Wow got sick of my little Bartleby act and threatened to kick me off the book project if I didn't get some work done. And Miss T. caught an awful awful cold, and cut her first tooth, and I had midterms to administer, all at the same time.

But that week's over now. I'm here with two stacks of exams to grade and a wheezing sleeping baby strapped to my chest, and it'll all be okay.

(Well, as long as I can get, say, three consecutive hours of sleep tonight, then it'll be okay.)

Various frustrations

Eventually, my flight got cancelled. Hint: it's a bad sign when the listing disappears entirely from the TV screens. But no announcement was made for another 20 minutes.

Since there are no nonstops from Rust City to Weatherwood on Saturdays, they wanted to send me on Sunday. They wouldn't let me change my return ticket, which was for Monday. But, if I cancelled out the trip, I got my frequent flyer miles back.

I cancelled, oh boy, and Miss T. and I lounged around the airport for another two hours until Beaker could come pick us up. Called up Nanna at the hospital and heard what she thought of the books I'd gotten her for Christmas. Watched the poor bird abatement truck futilely fighting the sunset starling attack with cap guns. Tried to exercise my legal right to feed Miss T. anywhere I damn please—but it had damn well better please her too, and sometimes she'd rather smile at strangers. Or light fixtures.

Current plan is to go in about 10 days, at the same time as Beaker heads to California for work. Minimize the number of days for which it's just me, just me supporting all baby needs.

Marina reports that they may move Nanna to a nursing home (yes, one of the ones my mother was in, but she was in pretty much every one in that part of the county for a bit during her last year) for rehabilitation as soon as Monday. They had her stand briefly today, and take three or four tiny steps. I'd be amazed, except that I know she did stop whining and work with the physical therapists after she broke something in her shoulder about 10 years ago.

(P.S. Of course we never left my home airport, but for that part of the trip stroller-free was totally the way to go. I love my Ergo. And its new daypack. Oh yeah.)

In other news: Marina told me (as a bitter Ricky shouted from the background) that the hospital wants to investigate their household for elder abuse. Gee: a terribly underweight elderly woman shows up at the emergency room witha broken pelvis, sprained wrist, and badly bruised head, talking about how much she wants to die. Her only apparent relatives are a dumb thuggish taxi driver son and his wife, whom you mistook for a home health care aide 'cause well, she's Caribbean and 'cause she is one. Except she really is the daughter-in-law. Would you investigate?

I would too, but I'm going to call the doctor and the social worker to vouch for them. Geeezus.

Sometime I need to tell the blog about how bad it really was when my mother started cracking up for good. Back in 1997, just before Thanksgiving, the year I was doing my job search. I'd just learned to drive, and I was going back and forth to Weatherwood every other week or so. At one point, Beaker and I took her to urgent care with major head contusions—her dog had pulled her down three days before and no one had even tried to clean the blood out of her eye socket until we got there. She, and we, got asked about abuse. In separate rooms.

And in yet other news: you know in your heart that Moxie's always right, but here's more proof. On the way home from the airport we stopped at Babies'R'Us—which was really a pretty happening scene; when else can couples go to register together, if not on Friday evening?—and got a Nuby. Today Miss T. drank two ounces from it on the first try, and drained three greedily on the second. Messy as hell, but a lot of the milk actually went into her. I hope she still likes it tomorrow... 'cause she hasn't taken more than half an ounce from anything else in weeks, and the clock is ticking down to when we need to go to full-time day care.

We all knew it was coming

Nanna fell. On her way to turn off her alarm clock on Wednesday morning. Her pelvis broke—which, as far as I can tell from Dr. Google, is much less bad than a hip breaking. She also hurt her hand and banged her head. Marina was still at the apartment, so appropriate forces were deployed. At the hospital she started having palpitations, so she's on a cardiac ward. The pain medication is making her nauseated.

It's the same hospital as thought my mother might have Creutzfeld-Jacob, nearly two years ago. I hope the rest of their doctors are better than their psych ward.

Ricky didn't call me until late Wednesday evening; Marina doesn't have my number on her cellphone, and Ricky doesn't have a cell phone. He is, I have to say, remarkably together. I'd really been expecting him to undergo total meltdown, given how he reacted back when mean Emmy was forcing Nanna to go to the doctor, but he's calm and listening to the doctors and not blaming himself any more than he blames everyone else, including me. The rugs in the apartment, see. Nanna didn't want them taken out, and we didn't force the issue.

I'm flying out to Weatherwood this afternoon, just until Monday this time. Of course with Tabby (how can I type that so casually? Her first plane trip! Will the car rental place really provide a seat? Am I strong enough to go stroller-free? Will she be willing to sleep without her—her!—bassinet? Do I really want her to spend hours and hours at a hospital?) Beaker will be going on a business trip later in the month, and I may try to go then as well.

Of course this will wreak havoc on our careful adjusting-to-day-care process, which was going decently until Tabby got her 4-month shots on Tuesday—now she hates the bottle more than ever. More than ever. But she doesn't hate the teachers or the location any more, and is spending about 3 hours there with no more tears than she'd have at home, if someone were trying to stuff a bottle in her mouth.

I talked with Nanna this morning. She sounded remarkably chipper, given the circumstances and her underlying depression. She asked about Miss T. and Beaker's family. Ricky hasn't passed on much from the doctors, but she's looking at a lot of time in the hospital. A lot. And I know they've brought up the attendant risks. She's 90 and underweight. This isn't the first bone she's broken.

I need to go pack. And eat up the remains of all the rolls of Tums I can find. Work? Whaddaya mean, work?

My God, what it all might have been like if Annajane were still alive.

Day 1 did not go well

Yes, a colleague went so far as to unlock the door of my office in order to walk in on me while I was pumping. Female, natch; she wanted to use my microwave, and somehow it hadn't occurred to her that my door might be aggressively closed, instead of open like it's been during my months of absence, for a reason... to be fair, she felt awful.

I'd only just gotten the Isis to suck, but it didn't matter whether I managed to relax enough to let down again, 'cause the center called right then. Tabby was screaming and miserable, wouldn't take the bottle, was the angriest baby in the world, could I come over? So I did.

She nursed for an hour in a corner of the center, and we talked about what to try next. I tried not to cry. Tomorrow, I'll go in and stay with her at the beginning of the day: try to get her used to the space and the noise when she feels safe in my arms. Also try to get her less afraid of the staff. And we'll shorten the numbers of hours we expect her to stay there without me.

[Did I mention that I am trying to start getting some work done? That we have a candidate interviewing tomorrow? That Dr. Wow is getting very restless?]

[Thank god we are doing this in a way that does allow for some weeks of adjustment. If I were teaching, what would we do?]

[I do wish the staff were more upbeat, though. They don't radiate "this baby will love me" confidence; instead they tell horror stories of babies who have had a bad time adjusting.]

Beaker managed a couple of less awful sessions with the bottle at home: no food consumed, but it was a nice toy, one she was perfecty willing to stick in her mouth. It's progress.

Then our washing machine broke. For real. [And yes, we're doing cloth diapers. Tick, tick, tick...]

How Ray, my foster father, is doing

So I hadn't talked with him in nearly a year. Not since I'd invited him to Annajane's funeral, given him detailed directions—complete with train times—and then he hadn't shown up. So of course he didn't know about the pregnancy, or about my having spent last spring out in California, where he's from, where he took me to meet his relatives long ago.

A couple of weeks ago the pressure from Beaker's mother about pictures had become too great to bear, so we'd put together an iPhoto book to send out. I sent one to Ray, too. I called him the evening after it had shown up. We were both embarrassed.

He really didn't want us to come up to his apartment; it was hard to tell why, but we didn't. We had and early dinner with him at a Chinese restaurant, just around the corner from my old elementary school. Tabby was cranky and needed the nurse the whole time; Beaker had a blood sugar crisis; but it was all right, in the end.

His hair is all white now, his face craggier, his walk slower. He worries about his bowels and his bladder, and New York is a cruel city for those worries. He cooed at the baby and made funny faces: everyone does, don't they? (Rumor has it that once upon a time he had a son who drowned at a city pool at the age of three. But I don't even know if that was with his first or second wife; I'm somehow convinced, though, that it was the Carmine Street pool, the one my daycare took me to every day all summer.)

He's stopped smoking and drinking. He says three years ago: I had no idea. He syays it's made him boring. It's true, in a way. He's quiet and a little paranoid. But my mother could only ever stand him drunk (and vice versa) so I only like him sober. He says he stopped both before his youngest brother was diagnosed with lung cancer.

At the end of the meal, we jousted over the check. I lost. It's not like him. But he needed to say that he's doing okay, what with Social Security and a little freelance editing and having lived in the same ratty walkup since 1977. Not about to starve.

From anemia to anomie, via abuse

I. Yesterday I told the midwife I didn't want an IV put in, or a hep lock, until and unless it was necessary. She pulled out my borderline hematocrit from like 24 weeks weeks and said, "Your OB probably didn't tell you, but by midwife standards you're slightly anemic. Have you been taking iron? We're concerned you might need a transfusion if you hemorrage. It's very unlikely, but we'd like you to have the hep lock."

Dr. Pippi-Poisson hadn't said anything about it, although I'd noticed the low number when I read my records. I've just been taking over-the-counter prenatals. We agreed to do another blood workup. Given the engorged pinkness, streaked with blue veins, of most of my body, and my myriad spider angiomas, it's hard to believe my blood is missing anything, but, whatever.

II. Last night, cooking something acidic in a cast-iron pan seemed prudent. I seared a couple of thick pork chops, took 'em out, caramelized onions in the same pan, deglazed with two-buck-Chuck, and threw the chops back in to braise, along with some thyme. Served with rice-cooker quinoa in chicken stock.

This is real Ray food. My grandmother is of the generation that really truly appreciates convenience foods; in her apartment, I learned to love Spaghettios and hate chicken breasts baked under condensed cream of mushroom soup. Ruth Reichl has throroughly covered the risky food that can be produced by bipolar parents; my mother was rarely allowed to cook, and no one ate much when she did.

My foster father Ray, despite his 10-square-foot Manhattan kitchen, cooked. Nothing complicated, and only salads during the summer (I still avoid romaine and feta). But he'd pick me up from day care, and we'd stop at the greengrocer, at the butcher, at the supermarket on the way home. Soups and stews and pasta. Chunks of honest meat with honest vegetables next to them. Chops braised in wine, with rice cooked in stock on the side, and lots of herby pan juices over the rice, appeared at least once a week. Even with the change in grain, yesterday was a madeleine moment.

I haven't spoken with Ray since he didn't come to my mother's funeral. I think about calling him almost every day, but I don't do it.

III. Somehow today is sexual-abuse day in my corner of the blogosphere: Dawn links to a powerfully written and horrifying account, while Tertia's readers offer advice on protecting children.

The paranoia of many of Tertia's commenters upsets me. It seems like a perfect recipe for raising little exurban Republicans who'll drive around in locked SUVs and glare at me 'cause I don't highlight or iron my hair. I am glad that at least one commenter brings up studies showing that not everyone who's been abused is permanently deeply damaged by it. Some are, and we have to respect their experiences.

But it wasn't like that for me, okay? It happened. It stopped after I said something in front of a family friend. (Who later testified at the custody hearing.) I then lied about it repeatedly to my blood relatives, to the social workers, to the judge in the custody trial. It didn't matter; the photographs were plenty evidence enough.

My family let me stay with Ray again the summer after 9th grade—I had a job of sorts in the city. I was worried. But nothing happened. Perhaps I was too old, or too independent, or perhaps he was getting enough jollies from the other little girls whose mothers he had befriended and whom he was photographing. The mothers too—he took stunning pictures of some of them, dancers and artists. I wonder who will get the prints, the negatives, when he dies. He's not doing any photography any more.

It was worth it to me to keep up the relationship, because I knew how much I owed him for getting me away from my blood relatives. Because of how he supported my intellectual growth. Because of how he reassured me I wasn't like them.

IV. One of Ray's real heroes was Stephen Jay Gould. He had me reading the Natural History columns as they came out. I read many of the books when I was way too young to actually understand them. I think nothing would have made Ray happier than my becoming an evolutionary biologist, and I think it would have happened if I'd just had my years with him, then gone back to the suburbs for high school: reasonable SAT scores, focus on a good girly science, maybe a college an awful lot like Granolan.

Instead I made it into the ludicrous high school I actually went to, fell in love with a completely different field, and was driven by peer competition to, well, excel. Top university, yada yada yada, until grad school sapped my soul.

V. Andrew Sullivan today links to a sort of odd piece by Charles Murray, the surviving Bell Curve guy. Covering both gender and race, with an oddly apologetic lead-in and a typically vicious conclusion. Defending Larry Summers, and, in the footnotes, attacking Gould a few times. I don't know enough about factor analysis to say anything coherent about The Mismeasure of Man. I do know enough about the Johns Hopkins talented youth studies to cringe whenever they're taken seriously.

It's a little odd reading about "stereotype threat" in an article that also tells me women don't achieve as much as men do because they're both dumber on average, and, you know, distracted by the whole childreading thing—just as I try to hack out changes on one last subsection of the Dr. Wow project, while wondering if these are real contractions yet or not. I have to assume reading this crap is bad for my work. But I can't make myself stop.