kvetching up

I am tired.  No, I am exhausted. I am in coach, a daughter on my left, a daughter on my right. I have the attention span of a gnat, so while they are watching movies. Leiney, on my left, is watching The Santa Claus, while Abby is watching Tony Kushner's Angels in America. I saw both parts of the latter at the Seattle Repertory Theater back in the day, after reading Roy Cohn's biography. I wasn't prepared. I was in my 20s, and Kushner's storytelling overwhelmed me. I thought the Reagan era Republicans were the worst monsters. Given the number of people who they let die without lifting a finger and their continuing to propagate hatred toward gay men and IV drug users, it's hard to argue that they weren't Nazis. How many died during that time? How hard did ACT-UP have to fight to get the government and the people to care? How could we as a country just let people be left to the ravages of the virus? The hysteria--someone should juxtapose the way the culture respond...

Entry 1. May 21, 2022 The days of my children's early youth often would find me behind a camera to capture the fleeting moments of childhood, of life. I stopped really taking pictures around the time Abby was nearing high school. I dunno why. Nevertheless, now that I am digging in, trying to force myself to finish start the slideshow project, there are too many pictures to go through and not enough time. I don't know the correct strategy to find the best pictures, but I will do my best. If there is an artifact of grace in this project, it is it captures the many good times there were. From the joyous moment Abby entered the world, to the bittersweet COVID driven home graduation ceremony for Leiney, there was magic in our lives. There was love and joy. But photograph s can and do lie. For instance, there is at least one photo below that was taken in the midst of the affair. I can't prove when the affair started, but I know it started in 2018, before our month long trip to E...

 Entry 1.    9:22 a.m. After I discovered the affair and stopped sleeping in the marital bed, Jenny would often sleep with a picture of us on her side of the bed. Sometimes, she would go to sleep holding it. It was almost poignant. Still, she wouldn't stop the affair. She was dying. I felt so sad for her. Believing in her sincerity, which had long ago departed, I agonized over her sorrow. I loved her. Despite this, or perhaps because I loved her , I never gave in, never slept in the bed until she turned toward death. But, I was heartbroken and privately questioning if my resolve was cruelty. To find out as she was dying, that these emotions of hers, this sorrow and regret, were some sort of fun house kaleidoscopic mirror, less substantial than shadows of gossamer, made me feel the fool who had no limits to his guilelessness. We want to believe the people who we are with love us. To find that we can at best read tea leaves leaves me with little hope for a future of trust. ...

Why? I can't sleep. Therapy was today, well last night, given that it is now Wednesday morning.  It started out well enough, with the therapist taking our emotional temperature.  It's been two weeks since we met. "Everything is fine, "Jenny told her.  I generally concurred, and then promptly shat in the punchbowl. I reminded Jenny and informed the therapist that Jenny was very angry that I am not in the bed and not willing to give her the affection she wants.  Instead of me needing to go into explanation, the therapist took over.  She explained to Jenny that I have made it clear for months that I am not able to provide that.  I will care for her, but she is having an affair, and I am not okay with that, and have consciously uncoupled so that I could care for Jenny with less pain and hurt.  The therapist, I kid you not, suggested Jenny find two pillows and a wall and push her back against the wall while squeezing the pillows to simulate a hug. I think i...

Sorrow -- Van Gogh 1882 I want to fix her. I want to find a cure, a way to stop the suffering.  The agony is real. Ceaseless. The fear corporeal. Tonight, I started receiving harrowingly sad texts as I sat in Abby's car at YTN.  My heart broke into a million pieces again and again with each message.  I found her at home in the bathtub for the third time today, abdominal cramps from the cancer leaving her ashen and bereft. It took 3 visits the the bathroom to coax her from the now tepid water, which she had been in for over an hour.  I pulled the plug, and got her up, wrapped her towel around her. Dried her off.  The sorrow in her eyes leaving knife wounds wherever they came to rest on me. Mostly, she stared vacantly into space, not resolute, not resigned, not stoic.  Lost.  Even asking to no one in particular, "Is this what it was all for?"  "Can this really be it?" "Why?"  I left her alone in our cramped bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, aft...