Author Archives: Tata

Tried It All But He Never Would

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There’s an old Jewish expression: When you have two Jews, you have three opinions. One reason converting to Judaism was so easy for me was that my being of two minds about a topic was actually a dinnertable-argument asset. It’s no surprise then that this week’s developments in the fight for sensible health care just about sent me round the fuckin’ twist.

Via the Sideshow, a call to action I’ve been waiting for:

Yesterday rumors were flying and some folks are saying they’ve been confirmed. The Senate Finance Committee (SFC), in an effort to make health care into a bi-partisan effort, is considering a restriction on abortion funding with the passage of health care reform. This could mean not allowing a public health insurance plan to cover the cost of abortions for women. It is still unclear under what circumstances this provision would apply, but we want to make sure that you all are aware of what’s going on in the SFC!

The reason I was waiting for this was that I’ve been paying attention for the last thirty years, and I knew there was no way the forced birthers were going to let real women’s health care get into that plan, and that the Democrats would immediately cave, because vaginas have cooties. Also via the Sideshow, a more or less incoherent piece at Buzzflash so filled with Newt Gingrich’s specially conditioned assumption language that the title tells the reader everything she needs to know: Should We Sell Choice To Get Change? As a cantankerous little old lady, I feel obligated to deconstruct that question with a rolling pin. Whack! Individually, some Congresscritters may desire “change” – which is to say a national healthcare plan – but most have accepted bribes – which is to say campaign money and buckets of it – from insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit hospital corporations. Our interests as citizens and the interests of our congressional representatives diverge, a big problem for us, because that brings us to the second assumption packed into the headline: that reproductive rights may not go down the tubes with this plan. They’re going. I’ll be blunt: this is going to sting. A comment from the Buzzflash piece by Jeremyg:

We should all be able to agree that we need to respect the rights of people who believe abortion is murder, and not force them to pay for it with their tax dollars. Isn’t that what a tolerant society is all about? Respecting the rights of those we disagree with. Tolerance is better than any fundamentalism, even pro-choice fundamentalism. Let’s respect everyone’s choices.

That is hay-filled, corn-fed bullshit, right there. I actually don’t give a good goddamn anymore about the opinions of people who think abortion is murder because – once again – I’ve been paying attention for the last thirty years and I know they don’t respect my opinion that another person’s medical procedures are none of their fucking business. Moreover, we as taxpayers do not get to decide how the money is spent. Our one decision: do we or do we not in good conscience pay our taxes as they have been assessed? If the answer is yes, write the check and shut the fuck up about how my tax dollars are spent. You know what, person of faith? I argued vehemently against the war, against privatizing government services, against the death penalty, against the war on drugs, welfare, unemployment, the aged, the disabled, the homeless and hungry, ridiculous and xenophobic border patrols, the national parks, the environment, endangered species, public transportation and fucking common decency, but does that really matter? No. Because while I believe we shouldn’t spend a red cent on the Pentagon, my tender feelings don’t figure into the budget priorities of the United States of America, and neither should yours. Sending kids to die for an imperialist adventure was murder each time we’ve done it, so plainly this money-murder relationship is not the dealbreaker you make it out to be. But that’s not the worst of it. No, the worst is when middle-aged women of faith sell our daughters down the river, as Blue Gal does:

A fellow blogger had a fit last night via email, because that blogger heard a rumor that possibly abortions would not be covered under the Public Option. I. Just. Winced. All. The. Way. To. Bed. We don’t HAVE a public option yet. It’s not a sure thing. We have to wait for the insurance companies to fail before single payer is maybe possibly back on the table, but let’s pour a heaping cup of the most divisive issue of the past fifty years into the pot right now, because it’s so very critical.

It is critical, because abortion is often an economic decision. In real life, sometimes women choose not to bring a pregnancy to term because they can’t afford it. If you think abortion is murder, that probably boggles your mind, which boggling has gummed up government for a handful of decades, especially since our government quit paying for abortions in the seventies. Insurance companies, as Blue Gal reminds us, sometimes pay for abortions. But what happens if we develop a national healthcare plan that doesn’t cover them? Bet your shoes that insurance companies will stop covering anything the national plan doesn’t. Once abortions are off the table, contraception is next, and mental health coverage, and dental, until there’s nothing left in that plan.

The place to draw the line then is at abortion. It must stay in the plan or we return to the time pre-Roe, with even less than we have now. Back-alley abortions and deaths are only the beginning of what awaits us.

The second thing driving me out of my mind is that the administration doesn’t seem to know how to haggle. There are two ways to strike a bargain:

1. You start bargaining from a position beyond your wildest dreams. For instance, if you’re going clean Ted’s gutters and you want $100 for the job and Ted is going to bargain with you, you start by telling Ted you’ll do it for $200. If Ted says, “No, dude, here’s ten bucks and a used bowling ball,” you know that Ted is not serious about wanting his gutters cleaned. Note that Republicans offer Democrats used bowling balls all the time. They are not serious about bargaining. If however you ask $200 and Ted says $45, you may get some back and forth that results in a price close to what you want.

Where healthcare is concerned, Congress fucked this up badly by starting with a stupidly modest plan that will make only the healthcare industry happy, because it will do nothing for the common good. Our representatives should have started with plans well beyond single-payer, knowing how legislation is enacted. That they didn’t tells us that we cannot hope for anything.

2. The Chicago way, as described by Sean Connery in The Untouchables:

Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do?
Ness: Anything within the law.
Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they’re not gonna give up the fight, until one of you is dead.
Ness: I want to get Capone! I don’t know how to do it.
Malone: You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That’s* the *Chicago* way! And that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I’m offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?
Ness: I have sworn to capture this man with all legal powers at my disposal and I will do so.
Malone: Well, the Lord hates a coward.
[jabs Ness with his hand, and Ness shakes it]
Malone: Do you know what a blood oath is, Mr. Ness?
Ness: Yes.
Malone: Good, ’cause you just took one.

Scrap the plan as it exists. Start from a position beyond your wildest dreams and make it politically expensive for opponents of a good plan for the common good.

We won’t see either a decent plan or the survival of reproductive rights as we know them for ordinary American women if the administration doesn’t send a few Republicans to the political career morgue very soon.

Sorry about the fucking bruises.

I Felt So Symbolic Yesterday

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This morning, Neil called to tell me his father died last night, just before midnight. Neil’s timing was perfect: I was getting ready to walk across the river to the hospital. Plans are in the works for a wake in an Irish bar and restaurant in our old hometown, and for a memorial on the grounds of the unnamed university’s gardens. Isabella is going to scatter her husband’s ashes in a public place where someone might attempt to discourage her. I volunteered to create the kind of diversion that might get me arrested while she does what she has to do. You know: because.

Good Is Going To Happen

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Tonight, I didn’t get home from the hospital until 9:45 and I hated leaving. I wanted to be at home, on my couch, cooing at my lovely cats and holding a glass of wine but without leaving Isabella, Neil and Matt. Trout had gone home before I arrived. The new room is wonderfully good: when I arrived, Isabella was taking a shower in the private bathroom without the terror of leaving her husband. When I called earlier, Isabella asked me, “Do you need a drinking partner?” I shifted gears.

Tata: Do you need anything? Are you out of illicit booze?
Isabella: No, come here and be funny.
Tata: As! You! Wish!*

So I showed up in my pajamas, with my laptop full of pictures of adorable Panky and one special thing. When Pete was on his way to pick me up, Isabella finally sat down next to me. Neil said, “Tata brought you something.” I pulled a moist ziptop bag from my belongings. I held each leaf under her nose and let her inhale.

Isabella: What? What is it?
Tata: Ah! Here. I brought you some summer. Smell this!
Isabella: It’s…it’s…tomato?
Tata: It is! It’s a tomato leaf from my garden. This –
Isabella: I don’t recognize that.
Tata: It’s an unusual lettuce. This –
Isabella: Ooh. What’s that?
Tata: This is arugula. This –
Isabella: That’s very pretty.
Tata: This is a different lettuce. My garden is full of it. You’ll recognize this. It’s –
Isabella: Ah, mint!
Tata: This is more lettuce, like before, and this –
Isabella: That’s familiar. What is it?
Tata: Basil!
Isabella: I’d know that better if I –

Isabella tore off a leaf, took a deep whiff and popped the leaf into her mouth. Then she laughed.

Isabella: Basil!
Tata: I grow all kinds of crap in my miniscule backyard.

I put the leaves into a paper cup, added water from the bathroom sink and placed the little bouquet on the only surface I could find where cords, bags, medical debris and bedding would not knock over the bouquet. The doctors had just left. Isabella gave them permission to up the morphine dose.

I’m going to need more than basil.

*The Princess Bride quoted with immunity to iocaine powder and without a giant.

Someday You’ll Have A Beautiful Life

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Our kitchen window, just before sundown.

Tonight, the nurse asked if we would like to move to a private room. Isabella, Trout, Neil, Matt, Matt’s wife, Matt’s ebullient four-year-old daughter, Matt’s mother-in-law Auntie Zee and I quit squawking and looked at each other for one long pregnant moment and started packing. Neil and Matt went down the hall to scout out what number of chairs, what pillows, what stuff we would move and what we’d leave. Neil returned with numbers. I’d already packed food, clothing linens and the bottle of booze we were hiding from the staff. When the cleaning of the new room seemed to take a long time, I scurried down the hall to see it myself. It’s a quarantine room with an outer door and an inner glass wall. It will squelch sound. It will be fabulous. I skipped back and declared it our snow globe.

All I Know Is That To Me

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On Friday morning, I brought fresh strawberries, sour cherries, blueberries and a loaf of garlicky spinach mozzarella bread to the hospital room. Sunday morning, it was grapes and Pepperidge Farm cookies. Last night, I smuggled in a bottle of Bailey’s, paper cups and my laptop full of pictures. I have an adorable grandson, and I know how to use pictures of him. Anyway, when I broke out the bottle, Isabella cheered right up. She took a few drops of it and rubbed it on her husband’s tongue, knowing that would be his wish. We then gave him a few drops of water on the sponge, which he drank even in his morphine drowse.

Isabella poured the Bailey’s with a question not quite reaching her lips.

Tata: We [I pointed around the room at all of us] are the bad kids.
Isabella: Why do you say that?
Tata: I’ve known us a long time.
Isabella: Most people didn’t know that about me where we worked together.
Tata: You held your cards close to your vest.
Isbella: And two aces in my bra and a bottle in the bottom drawer.

Isabella has been my friend for a very long time. Her daughter Trout and I met when she was 17, naked and unabashed; I was 14, terrified and trying to stuff myself into my gym locker. You know: to save time. Later, Trout’s brother Neil was one of my best friends and dance partner in some high school musical. For four people attending a deathbed, we laugh a lot. It’s a little jarring to the doctors when they walk in on us yapping about pictures of my red dining room or time trials on the first day of the Tour de France. Neil’s daughters play soccer at a serious level, so they were thrilled that I’d had physical therapy in the same gym as the players of Sky Blue FC.

Tata: A Brazilian player on the next stationary bike laughed at my jokes, though she didn’t speak English.
Neil: Which player? Rosana?
Tata: I think so. There was also one woman with fantastic tattoos.
Neil: That’s Natasha Kai. She runs onto the field and fouls someone. BLAM! Hi, I’m here!
Tata: I totally wanted to talk with her about the tats but I was always doing something stupid and awkward when she walked by. I couldn’t bring myself to pretend I was cool while ankle weights made me keel over sideways.

Isabella’s youngest son is married to the daughter of the Head of Housekeeping in the hospital. This means special things, like a fan for the patient, which seems to have come from the Payroll Department surreptitiously. We wonder if the hospital’s checks are going out sticky, but there’s nothing to worry about. Auntie takes care of it.

For days now, I’ve been level and bright in the hospital room, and exhausted at home and at work. This morning, I arranged a place for the inevitable memorial, which I worked out with all the patience of a German shepherd gnawing a soup bone. Tonight, Isabella caressed her husband’s arm and said to him, “It’s okay. Go for a long walk into the woods.” For the first time, I averted my eyes and lost my breath.

Over This Land, All Over This

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So here I am again, at the foot of the sickbed, watching the clock run down. Our families are marvels of construction on the fly; when the doctor asked on the first day who I was I said, “I’m the foster child.” Isabella blurted out, “Yes, but not really,” and the doctor smiled. By blood, the unconscious man struggling to breathe is no relation. He has called me “my other daughter” for a couple of decades, but I suppose I am really just a friend. On Thursday and Friday, there was still some hope he might survive the pneumonia, but no more. On Thursday morning, Isabella and I used tiny sponges on sticks to moisten his mouth with scant drops of water. It was a two-person job. I held the oxygen mask away from his face while Isabella sopped up a little liquid, placed the sponge in his mouth and hoped he would drink. Mostly, the morphine put him to sleep and our job was to watch and wait. I have been here before, and I am fine.

In Your Head They’re Still Fighting

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Despite the fact that I am still fuming after yesterday’s episode in which my sister was a controlling bitch, I’m trying to be philosophical today. No matter how much I love someone I can’t work her karma for her – especially when she’s being a controlling bitch. But I digress. I’m philosophical, bitchez!

Good thing we didn’t try carrying this metric buttload of produce.

Our town has a farmer’s market on Fridays, where local farmers, bakers and cheesemakers bring really good stuff to a parking lot on the main street, fucking up traffic that must travel Route 27 and probably doubling our carbon footprint. Today, Pete and I dragged the little red wagon out of the basement and launched a two-person parade to the market. We had an absolute blast walking from stall to stall, choosing bok choi from the tattooed girls, fresh onions from the family chatting up older ladies, and raw milk cheese from the cheese evangelist. His gospel is local and grassfed, and he preaches it loud and proud. Praise be to gouda!

Pesto!

In our vast old age, Pete and I entertain ourselves on a Friday night by making pesto. We stripped leaves from stems on four bunches of basil. Pete washed them three times – this is his ritual. Then he tossed them into the food processor with a mess o’ garlic, grated parmesan and drizzled in olive oil until he was happy with the texture. I tasted it. The tenant wandered by and tasted it. The committee decided the pesto needed a little more cheese and a smidge of salt. We tasted again and decided it needed pepper. When it was a winner, Pete jarred. My job: zip around the kitchen restoring order with a sponge.

Pesto action photo!

We decided weeks ago that we would make a concerted effort to jar something every weekend, whatever’s good and in season. Today, the basil looked brilliantly green and smelled heavenly, so that was a natural choice. The ease with which we processed these jars is promising; we could easily do this again next Friday night. We have jars. We have lids. We have space in our freezer. I almost can’t stand the glamor of planning January’s dinners in July.

I have the ancestral food dehydrator in my basement, though I’ve never used it. It’s a bad weekend to ask questions, but what the hell. Have you tried one?