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My mom called me the other day. She calls for reasons that only I understand. I don't think even she knows why she's doing it, but I'm pretty sure that there's a need to control me on her part. I think that there is also so fuzziness in the boundary that is supposed to be between she andI. I mean she called me to say that she'd bought deer whistles for my car, for God's sake. Is there any proof that such an invention even does what it claims? Do deer hear those frequencies? And if so, can they hear it when they are 200 yards ahead of a car doing 60 mph? And, even then, do they run in terror or are they attracted to the noise? I'm 34 years old and the woman's buying me deer whistles. Does that give you a picture? 10/30/97 I want to tell you about a good friend of mine, Jeff Piccles. He's like my brother, really. I have another great friend, too, named Dave. I don't want to forget him because he would be very upset and feel slighted. And since Jeff's like my brother, I have to admit that Dave is in some ways closer to me than that. He's like my alter ego. Really. Jeff and I never argue, but Dave and I can argue over anything. I think that's because with Jeff, we are each separate people. But with Dave it's as if we're one person experiencing ambivalence. It's almost icky. I really do plan on telling you something about both of these guys, but I don't really have the time right now.
11/1/97 My daughter Andie is a treat. That's a word old ladies use, I know, but you've got to meet her if you want to understand. In some religious philosophies, they talk about the immanence of the divine within each person. With Andie, it's that way. There is this innocent energy that is deceptively strong. It's her genius. She doesn't try to be mean. She picks up her toys (usually) when she's asked. And so on. And she's indomitable. I mean her spirit would bulldoze you under if it were an aggressive spirit. But it's not. You'd have to say that her energy asserts itself and leaves you to deal with it on its own terms.
Last summer, in July, she was carrying some chips in a bowl when she fell. She hit her bottom lip on the corner of a coffee table and she just started bleeding. I didn't see her fall, but I looked at the wound and it was terrible to behold. I was glad later that we had friends visiting because I didn't want to be accused of child abuse. Especially when the injury was as bad as this one was.
Somebody had put a white dish towel over her mouth as soon as they saw the blood. I took Andie from her (either Charla or her sister, I don't remember) and pulled the dish towel away and saw something I'd never seen before. Andie's bottom lip had gotten smashed apart, split straight up and down left of the centerline and then two more tears radiating out from that big split with the top- most leaving a big chunk of the red lip skin hanging away from the muscle and skin that make up the lower part of the lip. And, of course, when I pulled the towel away, the blood started to run faster.
I told Charla, "We've got to go. We've got to get to the hospital now." "Are you sure?" "Yes! I'm very sure." "Well, let me take a look, maybe it's not as bad as-," At this point Charla takes in a big gulp of air. "Oh, my God! You've got to get going."
Then Leslee's curiosity is piqued and she needs to know why I'm in such a desperate hurry. "Let me see what's wrong--Oh, no! We've got to get going! Leslee was just sickened at seeing that, you could tell. She's usually less excitable than me, but this incident had her face all scrunched up. And Andie's face was full of fear. And a kid's fear is not like an adult's fear. Adult fears always seem to have an existential base, "Am I doing very well at work? Is my husband having an affair with someone younger? When I'm 52, am I going to die of colon cancer like my grandfather?" Stuff like that that can only be proven or disproven by many days or even years of very nonscientific observation. With a kid who's just turned 3, like Andie had, the fear is more immediate and has no forseeable end. It's a state. I'm sure that it was the worst pain she'd felt since being squeezed through the birth canal and emerging into the freezing air, only to have her connection to her mother cut.
I've always thought that having pain or an injury in your mouth is one of the worst, nonlethal things you can have happen to you. Think about it. How many people fear going to the dentist for even a routine cleaning? Lots. And think about when they inject novocaine into your gums when they're going to do a filling. Even though it would hurt to get jabbed with a needle like that in your butt or your shoulder, it somehow gets more personal and more threatening when that needle is poking into your mouth. I always feel like the goddam thing is going right into the roots of my teeth and ending up against my jawbone.
Andie's pain wasn't just due to that smashed-up lip, either. While Leslee and I were in the car and me driving like a maniac, though a controlled maniac, Leslee was able to look into Andie's mouth and found that her top middle teeth were just hanging there, not really rooted in her gums anymore.
Another place to bleed from. More pain for Andie. It was just heartbreaking to look into that beautiful heart-shaped face and see how afraid she was. And like I said, I think a kid's fears are more immediate, though infinite. Like, Andie was afraid that this pain would never go away and that her parents would never quit acting like two fearful, stressed-out hysterics. We both kept trying to reassure her that everything was going to be O.K. and that we were going to get her to the hospital immediately. I wonder how reassured she was by momma and daddy's tight tone of voice and shallow breathing. She was as good, or better, than Leslee and I at handling all of the stress of that ordeal.
Because of the way her lip had been split the emergency room doctors couldn't fix her lip and we had to wait for a plastic surgeon to come in and fix it. Andie had to be wheeled into the operating room and put under general anaesthesia. Even though she had to go without parents into a strange room with strange people, Andie did not cry or whine a bit. Looking back, I wonder if perhaps there wasn't some physical exhaustion behind all of that bravery. I know I was wired at the time with no real energy behind my racing thoughts.
The immanence of that spirit showed up again a few days later. Andie had to go to a pediatric dentist because her teeth were just hanging by a piece of skin and the dentist also wanted to have an X-ray of her adult set of teeth that were hiding in jaw to see if the fall had pushed the baby teeth into them and chipped the other teeth somehow. You know those blue plastic chips they have you bite on for dental X- rays? The ones with the sharp edges? The dentist tells her, "OK, now, Andie, bite down on the plastic and hold your head still while we take a picture of your teeth."
You know what that Andie kid did? She bit down on those plastic chips and held her head perfectly still and the dentist only had to shoot those X-rays once. Her face got kind of frozen up while she did it and there was a little bit of scaredness in those big eyes of hers. But, dangling teeth, stitched-up lip and all and that little girl didn't cry a bit. I started to cry and had to swallow hard, but that little girl of mine was as uncomplaining as a person could be. It tore my heart out to watch her have to go through all of that, but she had to go through it. There's something missing in a society where an almost-three-year-old girl can bear pain and inconvenience with more bravery than most thirty-year-old men would given the same circumstances.
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