Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 59

in which an anxious mind chatters to itself

Suddenly I'm frightened. I'm flattened again today, not better, still stabs of pain, no energy, no strength. What if the antibiotic doesn't work and this recurs? I've been making a master list of things to take to hospital next time, if, of course, there is a next time, like eye shade, extra-long phone cord, light, not heavy, reading, and, most importantly, earplugs. (Write if you'd like my list and I'll send it to you.) I'm going to get a bag ready, just like the bag you have ready when you're pregnant. And I do look pregnant, more so today than yesterday.

I'm a worrier, so for sure I should take a deep breath. Heavy duty medication is doing its job, no wonder I'm not perky. I can feel the battle going on inside, the good and the evil, struggling. 

People have been writing to ask why the appendix didn't come out last time, so let me explain. In March I was out of the hospital in two days and recovered quickly and it seemed completely. In my six week phone consultation with the doctor, I asked, "What are the chances of an attack like this recurring?"

"30% within a year, 10% every year after that," he replied.

It was March, still full on Covid in Ontario, hospitals jammed. Why have an operation at a dangerous time with a 70% chance it wouldn't be needed? So I didn't. Very much the wrong decision, as it turned out. So this time, when I'm better, we'll figure out what's next. 

So boring! Skyped with Lynn today and we laughed that when older people get together, all they talk about is their health. She's happy to have younger friends with whom to talk about other things, like me, a whole 13 months her junior, because we talk about many different things. France is wide open; you can dine indoors in restaurants, though there's still an 11 p.m. curfew. Primary and middle schools, incidentally, never closed in France. Thank you, Ontario education minister Stephen Lecce and our idiot premier. No school for our kids.

Time for a nap. I'll be fine. Apologies for whining. Thanks for listening.

PS. Two hours later - just had a very long phone call with my wonderful doctor and am feeling infinitely better. She explained many things that now make sense. On top of everything else with illness, we lay people don't understand what the hell is going on inside our bodies, what the experts are doing, what they know and see. But I understand more now. 

It's six. If only I could have a little glass of wine. Soon.

Cheers, my friends. Enjoy yours.

One lucky woman

It happened again, like last time, a kind of mania when I get home; I sat at the computer for hours, blogging and dealing with some of the over 200 emails waiting. It's like I miss writing so much, I can't stop when I get home. Last night, I actually sat to finish the essay I was working on when I got sick on Friday, and then queried a magazine about it! And then realized they'd already said no, so had to write back and apologize. Mistake. 

Hypergraphia is a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw.

But this morning was reality time, old lady time, old lady with a very big belly who felt like she'd been hit by a bus. I staggered down to have breakfast and got a pot of crabapple jelly out of the fridge from John's wife Sylvie; on the lid it said "Handmade with love." And that was it; I started to cry and have hardly stopped all day. Everything makes me cry. My roses! The garden. Talking to friends. Thinking about the women I left behind in Room 1112, who are still there, waiting for their bodies to heal to they can get the hell out of there. 

I came out to the deck, and what I saw, with all the beauty, was everything that needed to be done. The big outside room had exploded with growth in five days. I wrote to John and asked if he might possibly have time to come help, no rush, anytime or tomorrow. "I'll be over soon," was his reply. I wept. We talked and talked, as we always do, and then he cut the grass, tied back the roses that were falling over, transplanted and pruned. I wept. He's coming back Friday to do more. And now, after a day taking care of my grandsons, Nicole has come to clean, as I have no energy even to wash a dish. Yesterday Jean-Marc came over with soup, took out my recycling bins and brought them back this morning, and soon he's coming back because the wire gate to the veg garden is stuck and I cannot move it. 

Many phone calls and emails from concerned friends.

Blessed. 

I have a team. Without my team, I'd be toast. Cathy brought rosé, though it'll be a long time before I get to it. Ruth came over with chocolate zucchini muffins that I devoured. Nicole brought paintings from the boys - a big sparkly butterfly from Eli. 

Judy and I had an important talk about being strong independent women who find it hard to ask for help. Not today, for damn sure! I did nothing but. But I'm going to learn to do it more often. Because I'm not who I once was. I'm more fragile, and sometimes, I need help. 

Oh yes, and I got an email cheerfully inviting me to book my second A/Z vaccine, appointments available only today and tomorrow. Not quite the right time this end. Hope they try again. 

Tonight, on the Food Channel, a program called "Cheese: A Love Story.

My view yesterday morning:

My view this morning:

Another merry adventure in Sickland

Hello earthlings! I greet you on my return from Planet Take Care of Me I'm Sick. You might have been wondering about the long pause in my incessant blogging. I hope you regarded it as a welcome holiday from Beth. At the time, she was in Mt. Sinai Hospital taking a most unwelcome holiday from her life. 

Yes, it happened again. On Friday I went for a vigorous walk with Ruth and then to my desk where I was happily working on an essay when, about 4 p.m., WHAMMO, excruciating pain. I'd been feeling something but not too serious so ignored it. This was nothing like last time in March, which was a gentle pain for months beforehand. This was killer. I was gasping, nearly on the ground. Robin my dear tenant was distraught. He helped me take two of the Tylenol 3's I had on hand luckily from the last event so I could actually stand, put my charger in my purse, and order an Uber. This time I went to Mt. Sinai Emerg, not St. Mike's. I'm hospital shopping.

By the time they got me through Emerg I was writhing in pain. Lesson: exaggerate your symptoms in Emerg or they'll put you lower on the triage list. When I arrived I was not feeling too bad because of the strong Tylenol, but it wore off quickly. Oh the blessing of finally being wheeled on a stretcher through those big doors and into Receiving, where they figure out the moaning package they've just been delivered and cover you in warm blankets. I was shaking head to foot. Severe pain turns you into another person. All that matters is for it to stop. 

It was another appendix attack, this one far worse than the last, and after a CT scan, the same situation - so much inflammation and scar tissue, too dangerous to operate, they needed to get me back to some semblance of health before operating. So, like last time, antibiotics. Only since they were concerned they might have to operate if I didn't get better and there was an emergency, they forbad me to eat. Only ice chips allowed.

For three days.

So that had me in a good mood! No food plus lack of sleep, a lot of pain, and the joys of hospitals. My first night I was royalty, in a single room with a window, I thought I'd hit the jackpot. But no, next morning they moved me to a four bed ward. Hell is other people, especially when those people have the windows. Windows not only mean light, they have SILLS, valuable real estate in those crowded cubicles. 

One of the first things I had to do was cancel my life - two classes, two doctor's appointments including a colonoscopy which was very hard to get and was intended to stave off this very event, several meetings. Good thing Robin is here to keep things running, and Sam came over to water. There was a heat wave. I think. 

Oh so much to tell you. More anon. Just to say that yesterday morning was one of the worst ever; I'd had no sleep - hospital nights are pure torture -, no food, was in pain, utterly wretched. They came to see me - the gastro-entero team, arrayed in front of the bed surveying the sorry evidence - and concluded that despite appearances, I was improving and could eat. So I had food, no much, but enough, and last night a sleeping pill. This morning, with food and sleep and hope, different story. My Nigerian nurse Chinella said, "Now I see the real you coming out."At least I think that what she said, in her accent through layers of mask and plastic face shield. Yes, I regained my sense of humour and got to know my roommates. I really felt for them, as finally this morning I was disconnected from my tether - the IV - and got into real clothes and began to pack. They'll all be stuck there much longer. 

I knew I was better because this morning I started to jot notes about the experience to share with you. I'd done nothing until then but lie there dozing and scrolling on my phone. 

So though I do not feel lucky that this part of my body is determined to bring me down, I do feel extremely, incredibly lucky to have survived this twice and to be home. My roses are out and beyond beautiful. There are birds. I can walk without rolling a machine stuck into my arm. I know where things are and can eat when and where I want. I just had a shower, oh Jesus, hot, private, clean, a shower! And tonight, my own bed. Beyond delicious.

Once again, as always - thank you Tommy Douglas. I walked out of there without paying a cent. But I worry for our health care system. All of us in my room were older women, I the youngest. It's happening, the boomers collapsing - soon, I said to my friends there, disaster, everyone in the hospitals will be over 70! And, said Roselynn from Jamaica, all the mental hospitals will be filled with young people who are having a really hard time right now.

That's cheery hospital talk.

My belly feels pregnant, swollen with nearly ten pounds of fluid. 

Two lovely moments and I'll end for today - a young doctor appeared at my bed in his scrubs. "Good news," he said, "you can go home." We chatted and I admired the lanyard around his neck, colourful weaving with a Pride flag and another attached. "That's the Indigenous sovereignty flag," he said. "I thought I should display all my credentials. I'm Métis." 

What pleasure to see this young doctor so proud of his ancestry. He was one of the only Canadians on staff I spoke to the entire time; almost all the personnel are immigrants, and thank God for them. And my daughter, and perhaps the young man himself, would dispute whether he is Canadian. But to me, he is. Despite our hideous failings with his people, the country has done something right for him. 

I waited for a porter to come get me; they have to wheel you out. Finally he arrived, a handsome young man with a wheelchair, at least his eyes looked handsome above the mask. "My prince has come," I said. "My chariot awaits." He wheeled me to the door, and within minutes Monique was there to pick me up.

Home. Birds. Roses. Recovery. It rained this morning - sweet hot wet air. The BLOG! The internet was so bad there, I couldn't communicate, it killed me. I want to post a few pictures but my phone must be on some other setting and won't let me. Maybe tomorrow.

Guard your health with your life, my friends.

a big day in the life of Beth

Funny how a day can start normally and then turn into something else. It's beautiful today, hot and bright. This morning I was awake at 5.30 and was worried - I couldn't hear birds. Usually they start at around 4.45, the dawn chorus, much noise and chatter, but this morning, silence. I thought for a moment I must be going deaf and snapped my fingers beside my ear to check. And then, 5.45, there they were. Why the one hour delay? Who knows? Some bird event. I stopped on this morning's walk to listen to a robin on a fence only 4 or 5 feet away, looking me in the eye and telling me a very long musical story. The robins are fearless. 

Taught a fabulous U of T class midday. During our break, I checked my email to find some welcome news. Months ago I entered "Loose Woman" in the Whistler Independent Book Awards. It's a juried award of some prestige, at least in Canadian independent book circles, which is admittedly a SMALL circle. But still. They were announcing the shortlist, and there, to my disbelief, was my name, my book. It's one of six listed for the nonfiction award. 

How much this means. Somebody - several people, I assume - read my book and liked it enough to set it aside and consider it for a prize. It's been a long time, folks. I've won exactly one literary award, the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award, decades ago. I was long listed twice for the CBC nonfiction award, and am proud of winning the Excellence in Teaching Award from U of T. 

But this is an award for my lovely book that almost no one knows about. Winning would help a lot. It might mean more readers, which is what matters. Even being shortlisted helps. It was noticed. It was chosen. Thank you. (Below, from Iguana Books, my publisher, on FB.)

And - might as well announce it all now - my nearly 3000-word essay on Alice Neel will run in The New Quarterly, probably in the fall issue, online and in print. It's about Alice's friendship with Dad, the portrait she painted of him, and my visit to her in 1980. Thrilled that it will appear in TNQ, one of the best of the Canadian literary magazines. Another yes. Music - birdsong - to my ears.

And - by sheer chance, "Loose Woman," with a few others, was featured today on BookLife's Indie Spotlight. 

https://www.digitalpwselect.com/pwselect/booklife_may_31__2021/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1696116&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TXPWSE210601002&utm_content=gtxcel#articleId1696116

So, a big day for moi. It's five, I'm pouring some celebratory rosé. (At the same time, I just got an email, "CBC to cover announcement of the Leacock Awards." I entered the Leacock Awards and did not even make the long list. It's for funny books, and I knew mine was not funny enough. I didn't enter the Jewish Literary Awards because it's not Jewish enough. But it's good enough for something.)

My Crone friends Annie, Terry, and Nancy came for a late lunch on Sunday, an afternoon of reminiscing and laughter; Nancy brought photographs of our shared past nearly fifty years ago. This is me with my dear friend and acting colleague, Peter Blais, now a wonderful visual artist in Nova Scotia. https://www.paintedsaltbox.com/

As you can see, we were very serious people. How could we have known then one of us would grow up to be a successful visual artist and another a SHORTLISTED AUTHOR? 

on not watching the big game

It's dusk; I was just outside checking the garden when I heard neighbours on all sides shrieking and groaning. Ah yes - it's the big game tonight between the Leafs and the Habs. It matters deeply, apparently. I wonder what character flaw has allowed me to escape any interest in any team, except, at one point, the Blue Jays when they were winning the World Series. For some reason it was 1 a.m. when they won; the kids and I were huddled in my bed with the TV, and we cheered and listened to the whole city erupt - honking for hours. It was wonderful. My daughter follows favourite teams and cares, which is a good thing, because her sons do too. My own son, however, does not. 

I do not understand why these sports events matter so much but they do, if not to me. Now, Alice Munro winning the Nobel Prize - there should have been thousands dancing in the streets and a ticker tape parade. 

I guess they don't have ticker tape parades any more. I'm dating myself. Again.

Today was sunny but with a chill undertone - tonight down to 5, tomorrow up to 19. Bizarre, as the weather has been for months. Tomorrow, three of my oldest friends are coming for a get-together. Long ago, Nancy White pointed out that someone - Nietzsche? - once said that women go through 3 stages: virgin, mother, and crone. Since at that point none of us were either virgins or mothers, we must be crones. Thus, Crone Power was born. Tomorrow, three Crones will be here. Nancy I've known since childhood in Nova Scotia, Terry and Annie since the early seventies when we all worked at the Canadian Conference of the Arts. We are all a tiny bit older now, and much much wiser. 

I doubt they're watching the game either, have to say. I'm reading "A swim in a pond in the rain." What a thrilling book. George Saunders for the win. He shoots, he scores!

And it's possible Anna also isn't watching. She is in deep mourning, consumed with grief and rage, with the announcement of the bodies of over 200 children found near a residential school in B.C. It's hard to countenance the extent of the murderous injustice done to Indigenous children in this country. How do we atone?

shopping with gun

If you want a picture of the criminal insanity in the country to the south of us, look no further. 

Okay - it's a picture of a nice blonde woman in a green t-shirt grocery shopping, looking at loaves of bread, with an enormous revolver strapped to her side. Blogger won't allow me to upload it. "Sorry! An unexpected error occurred while processing your selection. Please try again later." I wonder why.

It's chilly! Beautiful in the sun by day, going down to 7 tonight. I've changed the bed covers three times, from a very light one back to winter weight. Not a problem, not complaining, oh no, nothing to complain about. Canada in spring. 

I'm going to a dinner party tonight - so exciting. Mind you, it's next door at Monique's, and it'll be outside, so I'll be bundled up in sweater and jeans. But ... people! Conversation! Food cooked by someone else! Can life be more exciting? 

not dead yet

I read the obits these days; what an old person thing to do. So interesting, what those writing choose to focus on and remember, the life we try to spy through the flowery prose. But today, something else: I found a death certificate with my name on it. 

My aunt Betty - my uncle Edgar's wife - born in Hungary in 1914, was, after marriage, Elizabeth Kaplan, as am I. I have a badge she wore at bridge tournaments: "Elizabeth Kaplan, Press." My husband once was also Edgar; we marvelled there were two married Edgars and Elizabeths. I was pregnant in 1984 when I went to New York to visit Edgar and Betty; when I saw her, we both recoiled in shock. Her swollen belly looked the same as mine, only mine was a baby, and hers was uterine cancer. She was 72 when she died in 1985. 

I am digging into the boxes about my uncle. Much dust. And what is wonderful about the dust on my fingers is that it shows that I'm alive. My fingers are dusty and so I'm not dead yet. Also planting - today planted Swiss chard and spinach, more parsley, and a pumpkin seedling John gave me. I'm looking out now at a forest of green. The garden is life.

And I'm reading George Saunders' "A swim in a pond in the rain," his analysis of the short stories of Russian masters Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol, and from that, a deliberation on writing. Beautiful. 

After getting trimly through the past year, I have recently gained five or six pounds. There's a belly. Perhaps a little too much life.

Victoria Day breezes

More nice words: from Lina, I just finished reading your book. I think it’s the best you’ve ever written. 

From Nicky, an actress: I've enjoyed the book very very much. It was unsettling and engrossing for how similar our paths have been.  

Many thanks to you both, faithful readers!

And two longterm students, Brad and Sam, had pieces published. Sam wrote, I wouldn’t write if it weren’t for your encouragement and feedback, Beth, as well as the inspiration you share in class. 

https://www.thestar.com/life/together/people/2021/05/16/the-mortgage-might-last-forever-but-so-would-the-lure-of-the-lake.html

Glad to celebrate your successes, friends, but I'm happy not to be teaching today. It's Victoria Day - people have the day off to celebrate one of Britain's queens, many fireworks popping until late last night. What a strange country we are. Another lovely day - the oppressive heat has gone and it's fresh and sunny, lilacs wafting in. The birds are noisy and everything's growing like mad. 

Especially my grandson Eli, who just turned nine but wears a size twelve. He's a shrewd planner who holds his cards close to his chest figuratively and literally - one of his birthday events was an evening poker party with his godmother Holly and his Uncle Sam. He won. I'm 70 and have never played poker. Eli has to laboriously teach me card games, even Go Fish, when he visits. 

On Saturday was his other party in the backyard with many of his friends. Anna, as you know from this blog, looks after a lot of children, including some who regularly arrive to spend the night due to parents' work schedules or crises. There is always room for one more. Eli and Ben are growing up in a very big extended family, almost none of whom are blood relatives.

Along with all the parents, Eli's friend and tutor Greg came from next door with his partner John and a cold bottle of rosé. The many children jumped on the trampoline and chased each other with the bows and arrows I'd brought - with a well-padded tip, you'll be relieved to know. There was of course - because Anna - a ton of food and TWO spectacular cakes made by Finn's mother Kat, cake-maker extraordinaire. 

When I left, exhausted, Uncle Sam was in the laneway behind the yard throwing a football to 6 thrilled, grubby little boys who'd scramble to catch and throw it back. He'd been doing this steadily for 20 minutes. And I thought, what many little boys need most is a kind, patient, funny person to throw a ball to them and then throw it back. Endlessly. Sam himself as a boy missed out on that, since his father was in another country and his mother was not, definitely not, that person. Now, reading stories - yes. 

Nothing much planned today beyond some work in the garden - lots to clean up since my helper, Bill, died last year and so it's all up to me. I just counted - it's 66 steps from my kitchen to the end of my yard. That's a lot of clean up. 

Have to say that as a half-Jew who has little to do with her Jewish heritage, still, the events of the past weeks made me sick. Devastating that a country created because of a murderous holocaust should be so utterly without conscience or humanity. As my friend Ruth points out, like in the US, the fanatical religious right has gained far too much power. How did our planet regress so? What kind of world will our beloved young ones grow into?

recovery

It's Friday morning, fresh out still but soon will be hot, far too hot for mid-May, record breaking heat. I brought the plants that winter indoors outside and then was afraid they'd shrivel in the relentless sun and set up umbrellas to protect them, especially the 9 foot tall oleander that's like a big green bushy friend. I'm smelling the lilacs and listening to the birds and gradually recovering from last week. 

Patsy is gone; there's an empty space where she used to be. My friend who had cancer surgery is recovering. The reports on the conference were all raves. I've seen my beloved Annie, had a glass of wine on the deck with Monique, called Ken, Skyped with Lynn, taught three classes. I began to deal with a complicated legal issue I'll tell you about sometime and spent much of Wednesday planting tomatoes, peas, cukes of course, lettuce, spices, and three dahlias that were a gift from my tenant Robin's mother - and really felt it in my grubby body at the end of the day. 

It's gradually draining away, the grief and shock and stress. As the earth moves on from winter and blooms under the sun, we recover too, I guess, and keep going. It is a gift to your friends to die in the spring, when the world as it opens is unbearably beautiful, and as the pandemic at last wanes and we begin to sense some kind of normal life may soon start again.

writing "a magnificent story"

This is our new world - boiling hot in mid-May. It's already muggy and feels like July. Too weird. 

Things are easing off a bit now; it's been an overwhelming week, with Patsy's death overshadowing everything, but also my other friend's cancer surgery, the four-day CNFC conference with my various responsibilities, and then teaching yesterday and the start of the U of T term today. Plus the smoke alarm went off at 5 a.m. Monday morning for no apparent reason - no smoke, no smell, nothing, just the bloody thing beeping and flashing, my downstairs tenant standing outside in his dressing gown, me in my nightgown running around frantically, finally opening the front door and fanning in fresh air, which turned the thing off.

I HATE smoke alarms.

So I've been fried, literally, in the hot sun, and figuratively, with stress.  

Now a few days to get caught up, buy some groceries, catch my breath. Another class Thursday evening, and on Saturday, Eli's ninth birthday party. Luckily his mother has taken care of my gifts to him - a safe bow and arrow set with one for Ben too and very snazzy sneakers coming in from somewhere, and a diary he can lock. Now that I really approve of.

Importantly it's time to get the garden underway - have planted on the deck but not in the veg garden yet. It only started to be over 10 degrees at night on Sunday. Yet 30 during the day! Lunatic.

The conference was superb - beautifully organized and fascinating. Wonderful craft workshops: on archives, on "the rolling now" - situating the narrator in time and then rolling into flashback and flash forward - Carrie Snyder on relaxing into creativity, freeing ourselves - she had us draw a giraffe and ourselves with our eyes closed - the obligatory practical seminar on brand and platform that was terrific even so - and more. On Sunday, the AGM, and then I hosted eight writers reading from their new books, followed by profound discussion. Marvellous. 

But most of all, on Saturday night the keynote was by Harold Johnson, a writer and lawyer from northern Saskatchewan who's Cree with Swedish blood. He's a man of great dignity with two thin braids, and when he began to talk on Zoom, we all felt as if we were sitting at his feet. Someone wrote in the Chat she could smell the campfire smoke. His subject was "The Power of Story." Everything is story, he said - you, me. We used to tell ourselves stories of dragons and unicorns. Now it's 'market forces'. The economy demands human sacrifice. 

You edit your life as you edit your writing, he said. Change the words you use to describe what happened. Tell yourself a new and better story. About the relations between Indigenous people and settlers, he said, "We adopted the Queen's children as our cousins." 

He finished, When you look back on your life at the end, if you can say, Every day was the best day I could make it, you've written a magnificent story. 

He had a bunch of us in tears. I felt especially vulnerable because Patsy had died only a few hours before. What an intense experience it all was. 

So now, I need to sit and smell the lilacs, which have never been more bountiful. 

One more point of tension - there was a fledgling robin on the ground at the back of the garden. I kept everyone away from it; it was terrified but couldn't fly. I gather that baby robins often land on the ground and have to learn to fly. I was worried about the grey cat that invades sometimes, about whether the parents were feeding and guarding the tiny thing. Today I went back to see - and with a mad flapping of wings it flew up to the top of the fence and then off into the trees. 

Very proud of that little creature. May you make a great story of your life, little robin.