Que Sera Sera or Tippi Hedron's Got Nothing on Me or Love Is for The Birds

Hoh Rainforest in drought, 2017.

Entry 1

I miss the forest, the primordial Pacific Northwest forest. This is the second summer in memory where I haven't been out day hiking, backpacking, or camping in recent memory. I don't see it happening, however nourishing it is for my soul.

 

 

A couple of evenings ago, as I lay in the bath, I saw something extraordinary. Over the course of 30-45 minutes, countless numbers of crows--serial murders if you will--flew by the window, heading in a southeasterly direction. Now, adjacent to my yard stands a large deciduous tree where a couple hundred or more crows make their home for some of each day and much of each evening. But this murderous bunch appeared to be heading toward the Kent Valley. Apart from my awe at the number of these birds passing by, I thought little of the incident. I have read about a place out between Kenmore and Bothell where tens of thousands flock to each night. So, I assumed there must be a place in Kent--I mean what better place to live than Kent for a bunch of bone-picking scavengers, each of whom enjoys its own voice more than listening to the reason of a person saying, "Hey, quit hitting my head you bastard, I'm just walking here!?!" I didn't go outside to double check that these birds had not alighted on the adjacent property.

Green leaves, some now yellowing after a day on the ground, after being ripped from the tree.

When I got up early yesterday morning and went outside to Willow, I noticed green leaves all over the ground at the south end of my property. Looking at the closest tree across the property line, it was evident the top of the tree had been deliberately denuded, as had the one next to it. A couple of sentinal crows, one in each tree, eyed me warily, and as I approached the leaves. They warned me to fuck off unless I wanted to get the same treatment I got back in Montlake.  I didn't need to be told twice, even if I just had been, once by each bird. Now, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together. For whatever  reason, on Saturday night, the crows decided to have a Seafair party in those trees next store. Maybe they got spooked away from Seward Park--I'm sure it was loud at Stan Sayres' Pits as it always is the day before Seafair. Maybe they just enjoy their proximity to me. Anyway, it happened. 

 

Whatever Will Be Will Be

Clearly, based on Facebook musings, this is the day we met with the oncologist for the first time three years ago, and where for the first time he told Jenny that she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer that had metasticized to the liver--they were not hemangioma like the surgeon who had done her first exploratory surgery had surmised at Overlake. The one bit of good news we had is that there was no cancer on her lungs. We had been told there was a spot or spots on her lung. There weren't, thankfully.  I couldn't have imagined anything that could make it worse, but then, my imagination is always less powerful than I like to believe it is. Now, I can surmise she spoke to el pinché and told him she wished so much she could be with him so he could comfort her. At least the charade only lasted a month after diagnosis. Imagine if I'd have found out her duplicity only post-mortem. On the other hand, had I not known, the kids never would have found out, and that would have spared them some modicum of pain, even if the interparental affection was being, at best, pantomimed on one side. 

As I have said numerous times to others and in this journal, I was far from a perfect husband, and our marriage was far from perfect before Jenny was diagnosed with cancer and I discovered the affair. As soon as I found out she was sick, I was Johnny--on-the-motherfuckin'-spot. I had been pulling my family work weight, if not the emotional partner obligations, for years--and more than that when she decided to go and get her third masters. Now, with the diagnosis made, I wanted to make her life perfect. I was so sad we had this imperfect marriage, and I just wanted her to be happy with us together, and to make her life as comfortable as possible. Instead of being thankful for the extra effort I was making to have together time, to take care of her, to fulfill her needs, she told me she was angry I hadn't done it before. "Oh, now that I have cancer you are going backpacking with me?" I had never refused, but the plan had never come together or had really ever been discussed. Still, I get it at some level. However, the failing was not simply mine to own alone. I think she had to blame me for the calliope crashing to the ground, because she had to justify to herself why it was okay to get on another merry-go-round before the music had stopped on the first. 

The affair had gone on for years. I was a fool, literally cuckolded for years. In the hands of Moliere, I suppose it could have been made farcical had the cancer not rudely interposed its character into the plot scheme. 

 

My wife decided I wasn't woke enough (with regard to race)  at some point. Or perhaps, not woke at all. I who learned from and then taught with the founder of Critical Race Theory. I who am mixed. I who was an anti-racist activist and who went after racists as part of my job when the issues arose. 

Jenny always had a decent understanding of race and how it operates in America, after she went to Columbia and worked at the Lorge School in Brooklyn (back when that section of Brooklyn was not called DUMBO, and the streets were as gritty as any noir-film--the mob ran the garbage concession a couple of blocks away--FBI vans parked with their rear doors facing the waste management containers overflowing with trash. She saw there what happened to the largely black and brown children who had been sentenced to hell at Willowbrook. 

She read Jonathan Kozol for school. I gave her all of my old Kozol books, including Death At An Early Age. This also  opened her eyes. When she was working at the prep school on Riverside Drive, while I attended law school, Kozol by happenstance befriended her, and she tutored one of the subjects of a book he wrote. Jenny remained friends with this child of the South Bronx until her death. 

I remember her as the bulwark that prevented, at her school at least, the consignment of young black boys who were perceived by white teachers--largely women--as needing to be consigned to special education. Jenny thwarted this when she viewed it as wrong, every single time. And, she was the best and smartest special education teacher around. Anyone would tell you that, and I know it to be true.

So, I am not saying she wasn't committed. But she was incurious, outside of education, about race, racism and American law. Until, around 2016-2017, when she started showing up at home, first with contemporary biographies and novels about black folk, and then the anti-racist fad books that hit every best seller list, Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nahisi Coates, Carol Anderson, et cetera. 

I am not going to discuss today why none of these authors are particularly interesting to me, let's save that for another time, but instead note, as I have in the past, she didn't inquire or ask about anything I read, anything I taught with regard to critical race theory, Race, Racism and American law, back in the day. Not once. Not even, what are you teaching? I did try to discuss what I was doing with her, and discussed it with others, but she showed zero interest.

So here we are, Jenny reading these books. Then offering them for me to read, and me politely declining them. Every time. I had skimmed Coates, Kendi, DiAngelo and others--read shorter pieces (excerpts even) from this new wave of folks. But, they lacked something for me, and I found it all a bit facile and well, I just didn't find it interesting, insightful or helpful. 

Fast forward to 2020 and George Floyd. My teenager was out raising hell over police violence from the time Charleena Lyles was shot by the SPD. Leiney was legitimately afraid that if she were pulled over she could be shot by the police for no reason at all. She was disgusted by police violence, and she wanted to protest. She did. She walked out of class with her classmates after George Floyd was killed. She protested and protested. 

Jenny, who (apart from the women's march post-Trump) never attended a protest in her life without it being my idea, was suddenly going to protest anti-black racism with Leiney, making her own signs and marching--over and again. This is pre-diagnosis, but post-Covid. I refused to go to these protests because I have asthma and diabetes and could not think of many worse ways to go than being stricken with COVID and hooked up to a vent (which was SOP at the advent of the pandemic). 

I did end up masking up and going to one protest because Leiney askted me to go, but it was the first and last time I did any large groups during the COVID years.

The whole thing was weird. The way she inserted  herself into el pinché's children's lives, which I haven't written much about--if at all--here. She seemed to try and morph herself into someone that would fit into his world, that would serve his needs in a way that she had never done with me. Her identity was radically changed. She was a social justice warrior, and I was a jaded cynic--still am. The whole thing almost completely topsy-turvy.

I miss her today. Even though I believe there was a large part of her who hated me to the core, who resented me for being married to her, for not living up to her expectations. It wasn't just about money--although she hated me most for not making enough money for her needs. It wasn't just about my failure in her eyes to meet the expectation that I fill the traditional gender role of being able to fix anything that breaks around the house. It wasn't simply my disinterest in competing in triathlons or in skiing. It was other bullshit too. I could cook, clean the house, wash, dry and fold the laundry, take care of the kids, tend the dogs, make a garden, mow the lawn, do everything and still, I was not meeting expectations.

The way she would complain to him--the el pinche motherfucker--about me was not simply hurtful, but more cutting than other things she did. She sent him a picture of a half-full dishwasher (before she fell ill but while I was doing all the chores because she was getting her third masters,) complaining I had run it when it wasn't full. I am sure I did run it half-full. Why did she care? It may seem like a trivial thing to get hung up on, but it felt like she hated every single thing about me--every little thing, even when I did all the things and didn't complain because I loved her and wanted her to be happy. I wouldn't have complained because these are the sacrifices we do for one another when we love each other. 

How long, how long will it be 'til your returning?

How long, how long must I keep the candles burning?