Lessons In Swimming And Taxes

On Thursday,
I am going to go meet with a professional
to get help with my taxes.
I’ve never gotten help from anyone before.
For the last fifteen years,
I’ve done my taxes myself.
I’ve done Schedule D,
and Schedule C,
and Long Term Loss Carryover.
Schedule A
and Schedule B
and the dreaded 1040.
I’ve accounted for every receipt and expenditure.
And after doing them for so long now,
I can honestly say
I feel pretty confident about my knowledge.
Still,
given that this year is slightly different from the others,
I think now might be a good time
for a professional check-up,
a fine tuning,
just to make sure
I’m as good as I think I am.
It wasn’t always like this.
I didn’t use to do my taxes.
My mother did them for my sister and me for years.
Then one day,
out of the blue,
she walked in with all the tax forms, threw them at me, and said,
“Here, you can do them now. I’ve had it.”
No explanation.
No sitting down with me and telling me that she thought it was important that I learn to do these things myself,
no guidance as to what to do or how to do it,
just an avalanche of forms coming at me.
Just like that,
she had thrown me into the deep and asked me to start paddling.
I did the same thing to my dog, Trouble, once – threw him into the deep.
A lake.
He’d never swam.
For some reason he thought he didn’t know how.
We were out on this paddleboat in Michigan and we decided it was time he learned
what he already knew.
We picked him up and tossed him in the lake.
The moment he hit water,
he started paddling in a panic.
He was terrified.
He wanted out.
He tried to get back up on the boat,
But couldn’t.
Paws flying.
Crazed look in his eye.
I jumped into the water next to him,
to calm him down,
and his long black nails ripped into my thigh.
“That’s just punishment,” I thought, as I felt my warm blood seep into the water.
When we finally got to shore,
he shook the water off his coat
and just looked at me
as if to say, “How could you have done that to me?”
I felt awful.
I knew immediately what I had done was wrong.
At the time, I didn’t know then where my cruelty had come from.
But I do now.
It was taught.

Still Home

Just when I thought it was getting quiet.
Just when I thought I might finally have peace
of mind,
it’s happening again.
A white paper arrives in my mail box
with the words “notice to vacate”
and once again,
I am back in January,
my mother running naked through the house,
my father at the Kroger.
Police
and sirens,
and doctors,
and needles,
and neighbors,
nosy neighbors,
and ‘For Sale’ signs,
and greedy funeral-home-made-up-looking-realtors,
and money moving,
and disappearing,
and bulldozers,
and dirt being raised,
and my childhood home falling,
and all the unrest,
coming and coming,
and no stillness,
no stillness
now for three years.
Trips to emergency rooms,
hospital stays,
screaming,
and pills,
so many pills.
Doctor visits,
and trips to the dentists,
and surgeries,
and rehab,
so much,
so much,
that I have almost given up
the thought
of ever having stillness again,
of ever feeling calm,
of ever finding
home.

Black Tea

Oh God!
I’m tired.
I’m so tired I just dribbled tea
on my pants.
Thank God, they’re black.
I’m so tired I could barely get through yoga.
Damn downward dog.
Last night I had a headache,
So I took an Excedrin.
And I said to myself, “if you take this now, this late in the day,
you know you won’t sleep.”
But I still took it, and sure enough,
five hours later I’m in bed tossing and turning and wishing I hadn’t done it.
My mind is going about a hundred miles an hour,
And my legs aren’t far behind.
I stare at the chandelier.
It’s so fucking still.
So silent.
I wish I were.
God, not sleeping sucks!
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
It’s like taking acid,
you just have to let it run its’ course.
But the thoughts keep going and going.
I turn on the light.
My feet are freezing.
I put on my wool socks.
Now, my feet are itching.
I scan the room.
My clothes are piled up in the corner.
The pilates machine is against the wall.
The humidifier is spitting out water.
Hiss, hiss, hiss.
The air purifier is doing whatever the Hell it does.
And I just lie there.
The lights flick on from the house across the street.
“What the Hell are they doing up?”, I wonder.
Can’t anybody sleep?
Yes, it’s 1:52 a.m.
And I have yoga in seven hours and eight minutes.
I tell myself I won’t go.
I tell myself I’ll sleep in late.
Damn downward dog.
But when morning comes,
I drag myself to class and tell myself it will help.
I grab a rice cake with almond butter,
throw on my coat and run out the door.
Now, I’m tied and sore.
I drink black tea.
I won’t sleep tonight.

Sweet Silence

They are dropping like flies.
One after the other.
Each one with an excuse:
A lack of time.
a commitment to a business,
a basketball game,
an inability to do the work.
I understand.
It’s scary.
To sit down and be with oneself,
to look inside and stay,
to write from the deep corners
where cobwebs and filth have remained
motionless for years.
Some just don’t want to go there.
That’s fine for them,
I suppose.
But I do.
I want
to purge,
to explore,
to exhume the dead
and see what they have to say.
I want
to wipe clean
my insides
till they are shiny and bright
as newly minted nickels.
I want to know what drives me,
the good and the bad.
I want to take it out and hold it in my hands
to the light of day,
and watch it bend and twist
and ooze.
Only then
will I be able to sit and watch the squirrels play
and not worry about what I should be doing instead.
Dip my hand in the lake and let the water drip
from my fingers,
and not wish for more.
Taste the honey on my tongue
as it falls from my spoon
and bask in its sweetness.

A Tireless Optimist

It is so hard to get them form point A to point B.
An appointment with Access Ride
can end up being a three hour excursion.
Getting them to move is hard enough already,
but when you get public transportation involved,
forget it.
It’s almost as if the universe wants them to slow down,
to slip into the cracks of their sofas
and chairs and just go to sleep,
never to be seen again.
“We don’t do that,” says the woman on the phone.
“Yes, I understand,” I say, but “could you make an exception?”
No.
There is no exception.
There is only an endless list of people who seem to want to make my life more difficult
And drive my parents to their graves sooner.
No followed by No followed by No.
I try to be he voice of sanity in all of this,
the one who says, “it can be done.”
Somehow.
But I keep getting kicked in the face,
told there is nothing,
no one,
only red tape and endless hoops for me to jump through.
No supervision for a man with Alzheimer’s
and a woman
with dementia.
They could be dropped off and left to wander,
or left sitting and waiting for a bus that never comes.
Still, I am on the sidelines cheering
with my pom poms,
refusing to walk away.
A tireless optimist
for everyone
but myself.