Running Thoughts (2)

'Tis not true that a watched pot will not boil. Watch a pot, though, and take care not to be yourself transformed.

First the bubbles begin to form on the bottom of the pot. You've seen this: it reminds you of carbonation, fizzy water. The bubbles sit on the bottom and colonize. Within a few minutes, all of the underwater surfaces are covered with tiny pockets of air.

And then they start to move. Slowly, almost deliberately, the first one detaches himself from the floor of his world and spirals up to the top of the water, where!—he achieves nirvana, flinging himself out of this existence and becoming one with the ether of your kitchen air.

Inspired, his fellows begin to follow, one at a time, then in groups, then in streams—slow and careful streams. Many cling to the walls of the pot for security, afraid to relinquish a hold on solid matter. But the exodus has begun, and before long, patches of openness where no bubbles remain appear along the fields of gleaming metal. The bubbles, like lemings in straight lines, rush to extinguish their bubble-ness.

They must know something you, the pot watcher, do not. Because in mere seconds, the water begins trembling. Shivering, almost, but not quite shaking—dancing, perhaps—the water wants to follow the bubbles, join them in utter nothingness. From its depths, it turns itself inside out. Holes appear and disappear in a fraction of a second, reappearing larger and more robust. These are not bubbles. They are earthquakes of liquid and they join on another in a cataclysm of being.

You have been watching and yet cannot remember when the gentle bubbles became extinct; and when exactly did the shivering start? before or after the bubbles died? Did, in fact, the bubbles perish, or did they birth the waterquakes? It has happened!—before you saw it coming—it rolls and jumps, spits and pops. The pot is boiling! The watched pot! And you saw it—or did you? When did bubbles become shivering become quaking become boiling?

Perhaps a watched pot never does boil.

I find myself feeling all the stereotypical feelings: I never liked her anyway my head is saying. And that's not true. We were never close, but I didn't dislike her. I disapproved of some of her opinions and actions, but I thought she was good for my dad.

I just don't understand. I feel sorry for my dad, I want to help him but as far as he knows, I don't know. That's another part of my befuddlement.

She told my brother. And she told my brother she didn't tell my dad she was going to say anything, nor would she tell him she'd said anything. She took all the blame, but volunteered the information; she called it the "natural consequences," whatever that means, but she's not going anywhere until the spring. I just don't get it.

I think she's irrational, I think she's lost her mind. I think she's hurting my father who has done nothing but treat her well and love her and do everything she's asked of him, including contemplate having another child when his oldest is over 30.

I feel helpless, hopeless, completely at a loss as to what I am supposed to feel, do, say.

I just found out my father is getting divorced.

I feel like I'm going to vomit. I am completely stunned. I just don't know what to do with myself.

I'm not writing much on this blog anymore, and I don't know if that's a good thing. I'm focusing more on divine angst for one thing. But I tend to censor myself there, since I know the audience is more varied and includes people who know me as well as people who don't—and who I don't want to know me. I'm not as open as I might be, and I am much more topical.

This blog was always a place for my musings. More and more, my musings are less and less. This can't be a good thing, then, that I am suspending writing my running thoughts.

More than anything, though, I am feeling compartmentalized. I'm not sure having a "law school application" blog and a "personal musings" blog is helpful for me. I intended divine angst to be totally topical—I wasn't going to post if it wasn't about law school. It was intended to help me hash out my own feelings about law school, why I wanted to go, what I wanted to do with it, how I felt about it. Instead, it's become a place for my random musings, since my random musings are part of this life I am living that is leading me to law school.

So for the time being, this blog will go dark. I may bring it back someday; I may use it to post longer pieces that I've more carefully thought about and through. I just won't be updating regularly here anymore.

This, too, may bring about a transformation of divine angst. We shall see.

Last night at dinner, my mother asked if there was any way I'd be able to do a combined "Religion and the Law" degree.

Sigh.

Some things never change.

It's odd that, as excited as I am to see my mother (who is in town for a brief visit), I don't really want to see her.

It's not like she doesn't know what's going on in my life—we talk about once a week. But she comes into town and wants to know, "What's new?" Well, Mom, nothing since I talked to you last Thursday.

I don't understand myself. My mom and I are close. We really are. But I think I am at a place where I am preparing to do something with my life that she doesn't really get. She always thought I should go back and get a Ph.D. in religion or theology or religious anthropology...and that's maddening, because I decided a while ago that I didn't want that for myself.

And now I'm going to law school. When I told her, I thought she'd be excited that I was going back to school, getting a graduate degree. I thought she'd be proud of me. But her reaction was...muted. She didn't understand. Why law? Do you really want to be a lawyer? Don't you want to teach??

And I do want to teach. But I don't want to teach religion to undergrads, and I don't want to be a poor academic and I don't want to be in that field. I'd love it if I could take some classes in law school that relate to my religion degree—a Church and State course, for instance, or even courses in another degree program that might transfer over or count as electives.

I know that my mother is, to a certain extent, living semi-vicariously through me. She didn't get her BA until she was in her mid-to-late thirties; she got a Master's a few years later. But for so much of her life, she was an uneducated wife, the pretty arm candy and domestic goddess who felt that because she didn't have that degree, her opinions didn't deserve to be heard. So she's always encouraged me to do what I want to, to get my education, to be a strong, independent woman. But her idea of what I should do to be that strong, independent woman is different from my idea.

For a long time, my mom thought I should be a priest (women priests are allowed in my church). In her mind, I'd be doing everything perfectly—using my religion degree, being a trailblazer (women priests are still sort-of unusual). But I knew by age 19 that I didn't want that for myself.

I can see that she tries to form that future in her mind—the future where I'll be the professor, or the writer, or the public speaker. And sometimes I feel like I'm trying to live up to that—get into the best school possible so I can become a well-known professor, or writer, or public speaker. But then sometimes I think I'd rather just have a job, a good job, a job where I can distinguish myself, without needing all that extra recognition.

Sometimes I worry that I'm still trying to please my mom.

My grandfather is fine after his TIA but he has to have a carotid endarterectomy. One of the results of the surgery is that he won't be able to drive for several weeks while he recovers. I suspect he may never drive again, to be honest.

And that's causing me some pain and worry. My grandfather, honestly, should not be driving. His short-term memory is poor and his motor reflexes are slipping. But driving is one of the last joys he has. It's a sign of his independence, his ability to care for himself and my grandmother, his ability to do his duty as a husband.

I worry, if driving is taken away from him, that he'll sink into that terrible depression so common among older people who lose their mobility and independence. I worry that he won't want to go on, or that he'll stop taking good care of himself, and his health will decline further.

I worry about all of these things, and I worry about my grandmother in all of it. How will she cope? Can she keep him out of the depths? I hope so, but I also know how proud my grandfather is—he may not let her redeem him, as it were.

This is rough time for me. As I plan to move several states away for law school, my beloved grandparents' health is declining, ever more quickly. I wish I could visit more now; I don't know how awful I'll feel next year when we're so far away.

It's begun. The days are getting shorter. The mornings are dark. Soon, we'll turn the clocks back an hour and the evenings will be dark, too.

I like the cold of winter, but I hate the dark. It's depressing to leave the house when the sun is barely over the horizon and return home after dusk. Getting out of bed is harder, motivating myself to be productive in the evenings is harder, everything just gets a little harder.

...or something else that's causing this rash of bad news?

My uncle emailed all of us yesterday to tell us our grandfather had a TIA on Monday evening. He and my grandmother were at a memorial Mass at their church celebrating their 60th anniversary. He became faint (and may have passed out, the email wasn't entirely clear). My grandmother stayed at Mass and went on to the reception in their honor; my aunt and uncle took my grandfather home, where he watched Monday Night Football.

But the next day they went to the doctor and found out that he hadn't simply become faint; he had suffered a mini-stroke. It seems that he's had, at the least, this one TIA, but possibly more, and he could be at risk for further instances or even a more life-threatening stroke.

This is all really frightening to me. My grandfather has always been a hero of a man—big, strapping, brave, gentle, wise, funny—all the things a grandfather should be. In recent years, he's become more and more frail, as the elderly will. More upsetting, his mind has begun to fail. Now I wonder if his loss of short-term memory and lack of attention span might not be the result of prior TIAs.

Not only am I frightened for my grandfather—for his health, his well-being, even his ego—I am also petrified for my grandmother. For all that she is the matriarch of the family, the one with the "master calendar," so to speak, she depends on my grandfather entirely. Not just for transportation (she hasn't driven since her knee replacement and Parkinson's diagnosis); not just for his common-sense ways (the purse strings and all that). She depends on him, I think, for her entire sense of self. I mean, good Lord, they've been married for 60 years! That's close to three-quarters of her entire life! When you spend that much time with someone, everything you do must start to revolve around them and your own identity get wrapped up in theirs.

I worry for my grandmother. She's far more frail physically than my grandfather, though definitely more compos mentis. But because he dotes on her and takes care of her, watches out for her, she is probably likely to live beyond him. The question is whether she'll want to or not; I can't answer that question.

We're supposed to have a big family reunion this weekend—correction, we will have a big family reunion this weekend—and the question is whether they'll make it into town for the event. We have to wait for the brain scans and other tests to come back before my grandfather can travel; my grandmother doesn't go anywhere without him. I am desperate to see them—they live too far away as it is, and I am often too busy to set aside a weekend to visit. I hope they can be here.

I stopped at Schlotzsky's for lunch and got a yummy café sandwich (tomato and mozarella caprese...mmmm) and I got chips, but not the Schlotzsky's brand; instead I got these "Kettle Krisps" that are lightly salted and low fat.

Yeah, lightly salted and low fat and disgusting. They taste like sliced potatoes. RAW sliced potatoes. Every fourth one is vaguely reminiscent of an actual potato chip and the rest are cardboard.

Sigh. I always hope for good-tasting alternatives to the bad-for-you foods I love. And I am always disappointed.