I wake up calm again this morning. As always, I am alone. I lie still when I hear the rains have turned into a light shower outside. I listen for a few minutes and then open my eyes. The new sunlight filters through my open-slitted blinds and becomes soft finger-strokes on my face. I use my elbows and legs to half-sit up in my peacock-blue flanneled bed, huge pillows at my back and shoulders. I pull my soft sheets and striped Hudson Bay wool blanket up to my chin. I study my backyard through the slats. Single raindrops land and prism on my window glass. Slices of yard are covered in wet grass and dogwood leaves mulched in my mower yesterday. A crow flies past, swoops upward, slows to a glide, and lands on top of the tall Douglas fir out back. The tree bends a bit with the weight and the bird holds on, feet around a thick branch. I close my eyes a moment and look deep inside, searching. The occasional panic of recent months is almost gone this morning, faded further back into my soul where today I can ignore it. I had no night terrors of shotguns, no-contact orders and people trying to rescue me or trying to hurt me as I try to rescue my children. I had no lucid sleeping memories and no dreaming horror-movie fears. This morning, my unseen landscape inside me is wide open, my airy skies cleaned out by last night's rain of fresh tears. Rolling warm breezy feelings bend and lift my spirit with gentleness, and I am filled with hope. My natural confidence is very strong today and I feel like myself again. I decide today is the day to try to tell my father what has happened. I have to tell Daddy that my ex-husband, the now-insane man I chose 31 years ago and escaped from eleven years ago, that sweetheart turned demon, is after me again. "Give me the words. I might as well get it over with," I whisper and open my eyes again. My brothers and I agreed last week that it is time for me to talk to him. I want to monologue at them: “Maybe I won't ever tell Daddy.... It will hurt him so much to hear this.......I couldn't stand to hear his judgement against me if he doesn't understand....I couldn't stand it if one more family member gets mad at me for making them worry.... This is not like me, giving up the fight, but I am so very tired of our family's Irish traditional dance of Worry Then Angrily Blame The One You Are Worried About.... If Daddy gets judgemental in his dementia, it can turn into a permanant,uncharacteristic grudge against me that will stick in his mind forever.... We are learning that about his and Mom's dementia the hard way.... Many things get forgotten, other things get stuck in the folks' minds...” BLEH! I think too much! Here I am in my head, in a fake argument with brothers who are thousands of miles away and say nothing back. I grab a hair stick and snatch my hair off my face and shoulders. I twist and twist my long hair up fast on top of my head and stab it in place. I move the covers around until I find my hidden cellphone and see that the time jumped back last night. I got an extra hour’s sleep and I don’t have to be anywhere this morning. I scroll down until I find "FOLKS." They have had this same phone number for more than forty years. It always belonged to our home on Savoy Drive, even when we were stationed overseas for three years and our house was rented out. But now the number has moved with my parents to an assisted living apartment and everything else in their lives is dramatically changed. I am still. I push Send, hear a few rings, and I hear Daddy's familiar voice, yelling. "HELLO!!!!” Daddy almost never answers the phone. I am surprised and flooded with feelings: love, concern, hesitation, silliness. I look up to my multicolored African canopy that hangs over my bed. I hope my deaf father can hear me from three thousand miles away. I yell back, "HEY, DADDY-O, HOW YA DOING?" "DEPENDS ON WHO'S CALLING!!!!!!!!!" Daddy yells in his accent from The South. "IT'S KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!" I yell back. "WHO!!!!??????" Daddy yells. "YOUR DAUGHTER!!!!!!!" "WHO!!!!??????" "YOUR DAUGHTER!!!!!!! KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I yell again. I think, Wow, I hope we are playing. Or is this his dementia? Or just his deafness? I close my eyes, take a deep breath with my chin propped in my hand, and I reconsider this phone call. I already told Mom about my recent problems. Maybe she forgot to tell Daddy. Or maybe she told him and she forgot she told him. Or maybe he forgot she told him. I get lost if I try to follow their thoughts. Anyway, I need to talk to Daddy myself. I climb out from under my covers and sit on the side of my bed. I hunch over my cellphone, and my toes touch the carpet. Daddy yells to me across the miles, laughing. "HOW AM I!????? WELL, KELLY, I'M STILL NOT PREGNANT YET!!!!!!!!" His old joke relaxes me and we both laugh. This is Daddy. The real Daddy. I sit up straight and look out to see if the crow is still in the fir. "GLAD TO HEAR IT, DADDY!!!!!" I yell back. "WHAT!???????????????? CAN"T HEAR YOU" Daddy yells. "YOUR MOM CAN"T GET TO THE PHONE RIGHT NOW. LET ME GO PUT MY NEW EARRINGS INSIDE MY EARS SO MAYBE I CAN HEAR YOU!!! I laugh some more. I know he can't hear my laugh. I don't know why Daddy always yells to me when he can't hear me. I can hear him just fine. "AND I'LL GET THE BETTER PHONE!! SO, HOLD ON!!!! DON"T GO ANYWHERE, KELLY!!!!!!" As I wait, I lean over to my sidetable and pick up my heavy waterglass. It is cut with heavy squares below its round lip. I sit back up straight with my feet still hanging off the side of my tall bed. I sip old water from last night and I wait. Daddy just turned eighty-eight last week. I am his oldest child, his only daughter, his first child with his red hair. I am in deep, deep trouble and feel like a little kid. I am fifty-three and need Mom and Daddy, even though they each come and go in mental fog. "WELL, I CAN PROBABLY HEAR YOU NOW!!!! YOU STILL THERE, KELLY?" Daddy is back. "Hi, Daddy, can you hear me alright?" I ask in my normal voice. "ALMOST!!" Daddy is still yelling." WHAT'S UP? WHAT'S GOING ON? HOW ARE YOU, KELLY? WHAT’S HAPPENED?" I realize Daddy's hearing aids are working. So is his Dad Radar and he knows something is wrong. I put my free hand over my forehead and cover my eyes. I can see him in my mind's eye. My father is still fit and trim, a man who rode ten miles on his bike daily until his last heart attack when he was seventy-six years old. Daddy is a bald redhead , been bald since he was twenty-two, and he is still the handsome, charming man he has always been. He shaved off his red beard about five years ago when it turned mostly white. He is home in their new assisted living apartment in a high rise of 300 units. I have a hard time seeing my folks living in a high rise. They haven't lived in an apartment building since I was born in Paris. I haven't seen their new place, but have heard how little it is compared to the five-bedroom home they are used to. They could only bring a couple of their huge antique pieces of furniture because most of it wouldn't fit. In my mind, Daddy is sitting in his black leather winged-back chair. Right next to him is his own father's lawbook bookcase with the glass doors that swing up and slide back. I chew my lip and try to figure out how to start. I look down at my toes and say, "I'm hanging in." "How can we help?" Daddy is no longer yelling. I say lightly, "You help me just by being there, Daddy. What's going on out there with you guys? " I decide I can probably weasel around this. I am wrong about that and wrong about Daddy and his favorite chair. Maybe it didn't fit. "I'm just standing here, talking to you on the phone. That's not much. How does that help anything? What's wrong?" I can't avoid this. In spite of his dementia and his deafness, there are times both conditions disappear and my real father shows up. This is one of those windows of time. "Tell me, Kelly," Daddy orders as I take a deep breath. His voice is clear and direct, and he deserves the same from me. I pull my red medicine blanket over my lap, the one gifted to me at the Umatilla Medicine Dance. It is covered in three days and nights of hundreds of prayers, and I can feel them cover me. I lie down sideways on my one of pillows and struggle as I grab my prayer beads from underneath it. I twist my hand to wrap the circle of prayers around it. "My ex-husband has come after me again, after all these years. I had to get a Permanant No Contact Order because he was stalking me. He has sued me for thousands of dollars. And so I will probably lose my own home I finally was able to buy after all these years." I am brief and I am factual as I state this, the way Daddy prefers to hear bad news. I do not tell him my new attorney stated he believes that I am now in life-long, life-threatening danger. " TL.... Sh...! H...r.....F.... SH... HHU....!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I can't hear Daddy and for some reason I am the deaf one now. My ears buzz. "What did you say, Daddy? Could you please repeat that?" I ask. Then I hear my father say something I have never, ever heard him say before: "I SAID: TELL. HIM. TO. SHOVE IT. AND TO. GET. HIS MOUTH. OUT OF THE WAY. WHEN. HE. DOES." Daddy is loud but not yelling the way he did when he couldn't hear me, and I am stunned. He no longer calls to me over the long distances of space, deafness, dementia or the space-time continuum. He is right here with me and he’s livid. Yelling to a deaf woman. Someone must have told him a few months ago about the stalking and the Permanant No Contact Order, and it seems he remembered about all that. So, instead, he asks me, with his brilliant lawyer’s mind, lots of details about the the lawsuit. "Do you have an attorney?" He asks. "Yes." "Do you have a good attorney this time?" "Yes, he worked for the DA for years. And my ex-husband will still probably win again this time. And for the third time in my life, he will probably make me lose everything again. I will be forced to live on minimum wage for the rest of my life and i will never go overseas again since my passport will be restricted permanantly. Any tax refunds I am ever owed will be sent to him instead." I don't pull the blanket over my head the way I want to. I remember to breath. Daddy says, "That's NOT because he is right! That's because of his shyster lawyer! She just wants alot of money for herself. She does not want to do what is right. She's just as bad as her client. What happened?" I remind my father, in a voice that speeds up faster and faster, running uphill where there is no air, "He got the house. I got no alimony even though I was at home all those years, homeschooling and raising the children by myself. I will never get Social Security for those fourteen years. I have no retirement. He kept my belongings. He kept most of my paintings I showed in gallaries. We had been going hungry and yet after the divorce, I had to file bankruptcy on all of his secret debt. And he imprisoned my children in that house that was condemned. I took them with me when i escaped and my lawyer sent them back for a 'visit' that never ended. We couldn't get them out again, and they were too afraid to leave and....and..... and.... " and I can't breath. My old trauma tape unwinds and unwinds as I think of my children who are now grown and safe. I begin to cry and then I can breathe again. My muscles are hard rock. So is my stomach. I am curled up in a sideways ball. I can feel Daddy listen to everything through the phone. His mind is wide awake and focused. Daddy is HERE. I stretch my legs out tight and long under my medicine blanket. I roll onto my back and look up without seeing. I try to make sense and explain, "This new strategy was actually planted in the final divorce decree ten years ago, hidden in Legalese. My old lawyer quit law right afterwards. He apologized to me, said he had nightmares about my children, he quit and now he's a nurse. So he never explained any of the documents to me and I got shocky every time I tried to look at them myself. I thought I understood it all, but I didn't. I never had the way to pay for another attorney or for an appeal. I never saw this coming. I never expected this in the divorce decree. I never understood the legal documents." I stop when I begin to repeat myself. Daddy asks me a whole lot of questions and his lawyer mind is sharp. I answer the best I can. I am as brief as possible. I am testifying in front of one more judge. Suddenly Mom is on the other apartment phone again. I can feel her as if we sit right next to each other. I can almost see her in my mind's eye, short iron-grey hair, her soft and large round body is warm. Her smart mind is now cloudy and her big heart beats with a strong, erratic drumming. Her shirt is inside out. Her voice now is a weak shadow of her anger at me when she is worried about me: "Well, that's because you never let us come out there during the trial and you never mailed us a copy of your damned divorce decree! That was stupid! " Daddy doesn't seem to hear Mom at all. I know she is just reacting out of life-long habit. I am surprised to find I feel compassion instead of hurt. I just roll with her faint attack. I agree, "Yes, I was STUPID." What I don't say is what would not help to say: "I was all alone in the divorce court years ago. I never thought to mail you a copy and you never asked. Daddy always said he didn't practice law in this state and always said only a foolish lawyer practices law for family. You both were suddenly elderly back then, but you helped me - you paid for my kind, naive attorney And- I couldn't take any more anger directed at me." Instead, I repeat, "I was stupid." My father now bellows "WHO SAID YOU ARE STUPID? " and I hear my mother click off the line. "YOU are not stupid! I mean it! Tell me, WHO said you are stupid?" Daddy bellows again. I cry. "Well, everyone. The judge. And all the attorneys I talked to that I couldn't afford to hire. And......" "YOU are not stupid! You had a stupid attorney! Your attorney was the stupid one." Daddy says in the voice he used to use when he was a lawyer after he retired as a Ranger Colonel. His own father was a law school dean and I can hear my Grandpop's voice reverberate deep inside of Daddy's voice. In our family, we children were never allowed to call anyone ‘stupid.’ It was a practice cuss word. I am a little blubbery child now. I flash back to one of the eleven other attorneys I recently consulted, years after my esacape, who told me: 'Either you didn't CARE or you were INCOMPETANT.' I told that lawyer, with cold, shamed anger, ‘Well, I sure DID care, so I must have been incompetant!. That's called TRAUMA.' And I had to write a check using up all of that month's bill money for an hour with him. I come back to the present when I hear Daddy's voice on my cell phone. "YOU. ARE. NOT. THE. STUPID. ONE." Daddy says firmly again and Mom clicks back on her line in the little apartment. Mom says softly, "We love you, Kelly. We will do what we can to help you." “I love you, too.” I say. Daddy says "Do your brothers know? Talk to Jay-bo," my Dad's fond nickname for my youngest brother. "Talk to your brothers. They need to help you." I know my parents can't do much to help me, except maybe a little bit financially. I realize just how awake my father is right now. I suddenly know that he knows he is unable to help me with his mind anymore. My family will try to help the best they can. No one will rescue me but me. And maybe God. I tell them, "Yes, they know and they are helping. ALOT. You should be proud of them, both of them, for how much they are helping me." "Thank God," my mother says. "Thank you, God," I think. "GOOD! They better." Daddy says. "Is there anything we can do to help you?" "Yes, you can do something for me. Let my brothers know how grateful you are that they are helping me. And let them know how much you appreciate them." "GOOD! They better." Daddy repeats in a soft voice, as Mom says ".....yes...." My parents voices begin to fade back into the tired fog they live in. I know I am losing them again. It is time to finish up before they go away, slip away into dementia again. Say all that I need them to hear from me. I sit up and get out of bed. I ignore my shoes and walk fast around my bed and out my bedroom door. I need to be outside when we hang up the phones. "When did the lawsuit begin?" Daddy softly asks me. Very softly. "Hmmmmm." I hear from Mom as she clicks off again. I run lightly through the house across my orange wood floors, and then I slide open the door to the back patio. I step outside onto the wet concrete in my bare feet and stand up straight. I look up at the crow that now circles above me. I say, "Last July. That's the reason I couldn't come out last summer to help you. I am so very sorry. This is why I wasn't there for you. It was my job in the family to help you close up the house and I wasn't able to. So it is still not done." "It isn't your job to clean up our mess. It was mine and your mother's. And we don't need anything there. It can all just go, Kelly. You don't have to worry about us." "Thank you, Daddy. I love you both. I love you, Daddy.” And just before he clicks off, I hear something I almost never, ever hear my father say. In a soft but very clear voice, Daddy says, "I love you, Kelly." It would have been my 25th wedding anniversary in a couple of days. Instead, I was lucky to escape with my life, so far. And today, I was given a gift: My parents heard me. Mom and Daddy were awake enough to be with me the way they used to be. They got to be my real parents again for a short while, the moment I needed them. I know that no matter what happens, I can get through this repeating nightmare again. No matter what happens next. I kneel down on my patio like I am praying and grab a spiderweb of thin weed branches together into a tight circle just like I did my hair.. I twist the handful and circle it around and around, pulling gently until all the roots let go, deep down from the crack in the patio. I smell rich, wet dirt and see round white spider eggs. I walk on my hands and knees off the edge of the patio and pull up more weeds the same way, around and around, one by one, till I have a pile of weeds. I could pull alot more weeds, but I stop. I see four pathway stones, in the dirt just beyond the patio, are now revealed. I sit back on my heels and look up to the sky where the rainclouds are darkening and deepening again. I rub the dirty-scraped heel of my hand where I just pulled a muscle. I worked my hands too hard and too fast with muscles not used since last summer. I wonder if this will be my yard next summer. I see the crow fly away to the west and know it will come back east like it always does. I feel raindrops land on me like prism-filled tears, yet I feel strong, hopeful, and loved, no matter what. "A Break in the Rain, A Break in the Fog " (C) kelly fitzpatrick November, 2010
Beautiful writing! It just flows... I'm so inspired by the way you stay in the moment during this crisis, stay aware of what you need (the medicine blanket when you make the call, being outside when you end it), and the way you notice the raindrops, the weeds, spider eggs. This piece teaches me a lot. He steals your things again and again but he can never take away what he really wants--yourself.
Sending a prayer your way...
Kate