The perfect disease

On Friday I was diagnosed with the perfect ailment: a genetic disorder of the little finger. Called Dupuytren’s disease—and also known as Vikings disease—the condition, as I manifest it, is characterized by the inability to fully straighten my little finger because of cording of the connective tissue. I noticed it only because I couldn’t flatten my hands for downward dogs and handstands. If I weren’t a yogini, I would never have noticed. It’s that minor. In women, the disease is limited to the hands, mostly the little or ring finger, and rarely, the toes. In men, however, it can cause bending of the penis. I wonder, Does Bill Clinton have Dupuytren’s disease?

Cooking by the book

Other has been so overwhelmed with managing his sister's (int)estate that I am finally trying to chip in with the household chores, including the dread food-preparation ones. Because for many years I was the main wage earner, cooking and cleaning fell to Other, but as his work hours have increased, it has become clear that it's not fair for him to be responsible for ALL the drudgery at home. So I am now a (grudging) drudge too.

I don't mind bundling up the garbage, scrubbing down the bathroom, cleaning the windows. Nobody expects those chores to yield anything but cleanliness. But the aura of creativity that surrounds cooking has always seemed to me to be a big lie. If you follow the instructions, the recipe yields the predicted results, and everyone applauds. But how is that different from, say, successfully cheating on an exam, where you take the known answer and copy it and get an A? Of course, in cooking (as in test-taking) the alternative is veering off the tried-and-true path and suffering spectacular and humiliating failure—like my infamous creamed onions (with spontaneously added cheese) that kept Other and me in our apartment with the windows open for three days.

But buckling under to the notion of fair play and practicality, I have been dutifully (slavishly) following recipes for a few weeks now. This has resulted in a larger-than-expected vegetarian-lasagna-rollup project that temporarily festooned the apartment with cooling pasta and spattered the environs with tomato sauce but was otherwise uneventful—and edible—and a curried-cauliflower dinner (I dared to serve it on quinoa instead of rice!) that met with approval, as well as some other less notable meals.

Pleased as I am that I did not have to throw these dishes out, I can't say I gained much satisfaction from making them. Where's the joy? Where's the adventure? Where's the risk? I just don't think I'm cut out for this.

I knew about the third eye, but ...?

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My dad's Sargasso Sea

Over the past couple of years, my father has asked me to order two or three dozen copies of Paul Fussell's The Boys' Crusade for him. He has written a detailed chart comparing his own experiences in World War II with those of the soldiers quoted in Fussell's book. He gives the book and chart as thank-you presents to the people who have helped him out over the past year or so, driving him to and from doctor's appointments and taking him grocery shopping.

It seems an odd enthusiasm for a guy who almost never spoke about his military service when we kids were growing up. I know the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan distress him, as did the Vietnam war. And his frequent visits to the VA for medical treatment probably keep them in the forefront of his mind.

But when I finally asked him, "Why all the books?" he described the war not as an obsession but as a random kind of interest. He said that as he's gotten older, his mind is like the Sargasso Sea, filled with bits of floating garbage. Sometimes the bits wash together and form a mass, a garbage island, and when that happens, occupying more and more space in his mind, he starts to pick through it, and uses his scavengings to form complete thoughts.

I understand completely.

When my fingers do your shopping, you eat a lot of spuds

Since my parents are essentially disabled—my mother's had a stroke, and my dad has dizzy spells after getting hit by a bus a year ago—I do their grocery shopping online at Safeway.com. I put in an order in the evening in New York, and it gets delivered the next day in San Francisco, and the cost of having someone pull hundreds of dollars' worth of groceries off the shelves by size and brand and deliver them to my parents' door is $6.95, no tipping allowed. I've been feeling pretty smug about my stroke of genius in locating and carrying out this service. But I've noticed my parents don't seem as enthusiastic—or as grateful—as I thought they'd be. Then, when I was last in San Francisco, I noticed that there were 11—11!— tubs of potato salad in the fridge. Seems my finger slipped on the keyboard. I asked how often such odd quantities appeared in their order, and they claimed not to be able to recall its ever happening before. Perhaps they're more gracious than I give them credit for. We ate potato salad for every meal while I was there and sent tubs home with visitors. And my mother and father kept saying how fortunate it was that we'd ended up with so much and that it was just the right amount after all.

My day in the country

I dreaded the weekend run on my deceased sister-in-law's house to work with her friends on resolving her (int)estate. I feared ghosts and guilt. But it was fun! And funny! And interesting! And not scary!

Since my SIL and I were similar in height (tall!), her best friend had urged me to go through her closet and take what I wanted. That was all the permission I needed. I admired my SIL's taste and envied her seemingly opulent wardrobe. Much to my surprise, most of her clothes were eerily familiar to me. I had either owned them previously and passed them on to her, or had copies of them in my closet in New York since my SIL and I sometimes hit the CP Shades sale together, and her mother bought us the same things for gift occasions. (In fact, my mother-in-law buys me the same plaid flannel nightie every Christmas that she bought me the previous year. Luckily, I like it.) So I ended up taking ... nothing.

After abandoning closet-shopping, I browsed her books and was startled to see that a large proportion were self-help guides to spirituality, healthy relationships, personal money management, a better body. My SIL was a supremely self-confident woman to whom many—though not I—turned for advice, which she sometimes dispensed unsolicited. Her bookshelves told another story: of a lonely, wistful, even insecure seeker. I wish I had seen more of that side when she was alive.

I also spent a bit of time sweeping up the little red bodies of lady bugs, which invade the Pioneer Valley every spring in impressive quantities: actual drifts of them piling up on floors, crackling underfoot. My sense of smell is pretty well shot from a sinus infection last year, but I'm told that in such quantities they exude a strong, unpleasant odor.

Other and I went shopping for groceries at the local health-food store, and as we exited, Other turned to me and said, "I got rubbed!" Not robbed—rubbed. The guy at the register was a toucher who knew Other's sister and reached out to express his sympathy.

On the drive home, Other pointed out that every single family among his sister's circle was dealing with a disaster. Since Other and I often feel we're laboring under some mighty bad karma what with all the sadness and stress that has piled up on us in recent years (I sense incredulity in my friends and co-workers when I recount the latest episode in my life), this was strangely comforting. One of my SIL's friends has just suffered a series of mini-strokes; another is recovering from a major stroke that paralyzed him on one side; another's son had surgery for a brain tumor that resulted in a seizure disorder that makes him unable to work, so he's living in his car on the streets of New Orleans; another's daughter has been selling herself on the streets; another's son has been in rehab; another's son has severe, disabling ADHD; several have had cancer. And those are the ones who are still alive.

Up in the air

I used to hate flying: fear of death. Now, because I'm often flying to or from a catastrophe, I love it. I don't even mind the middle seat. The whole week I was at my parents' house, I looked forward to that ecstatic few hours when I would be free—free mostly of the fear that something would happen that would keep me there.

What with my sister-in-law's unsettled estate generating unexpected expenses, I get panic attacks about opening envelopes with a Massachusetts postmark. With my parents' failing health, I get panic attacks when I see the area code 415 in my caller i.d. And e-mail can bring bad news from both fronts. In the air, free from e-mail, snail mail and voicemail, I am unreachable.

(Sadly, my freedom was short-lived. I got home from San Francisco on Sunday at midnight. Tuesday my father had a fall, banged his head and generated such a bloodbath that the home-care agency called me at work. Somehow I wrassled my father into going to the VA emergency room, where they kept him till Friday. Somehow I failed to wrassle my mother into submission. I ordered full-time home care for her in my father's absence, and she canceled it. I ordered it again. She rebelled. Ach! How can I get any work done when the 'rents won't obey!)

When I was a child, I loved this poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. And it has a bit of the cut-loose feeling I have about flying now:

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

River and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown--

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!