A WEEK IN THE HOSPITAL

It may be difficult to be careless on purpose, but try tossing your pill in the general direction of your throat. Just give it a shot. I don’t remember that part clearly, but the little bugger went down my windpipe. Actually, do not do this. It will suck. Next you willc ommence choking, gasping, wheezing. You realize instantly that something is terribly wrong. Call 911. Woodstock EMT’s are there in seconds. Decide whether you are over reacting, remembering your doctor father’s wise words, ”Most things are better by morning,” and wonder if they apply to what’s happening now. You don’t want to be a big baby, but you’ve had enough of this gagging choking shit, and they lift you into the ambulance on a stretcher.

The hospital admits you immediately (foreign object aspirated into lung) which is a relief because there you are now, in good hands. Soon there is a tube attached to your left arm where the needle goes, and a bunch of others stuck to sticky pads on your chest and belly although you don’t know where they end up, plus the little plastic snail horns sticking up your nose seem to be connected to the oxygen pole behind your bed so if you try take a step toward the bathroom, alarms go off. But people are nice about putting you back together, you are an old woman now, obviously mixed up and incapable of learning what not to do. You forgot to alert your nurse that you needed to pee. Traipsing alone across the floor starts a screeching sound.

After your frantic trip to the hospital, time moves slowly. You are no one and nowhere in particular, sometimes gliding a little above or maybe just under the surface, until graham crackers appear on your breakfast tray, graham crackers whose very existence you had forgotten, and you now remember your mother eating them with sweet butter back when you were a kid in Minnesota. You can even remember your old telephone number: Midway 2-8237. You were in the 4^th grade and now you’re 83! Why remember that and forget so much else? You hate graham crackers but you eat every one.

People check your everything all the time. They are concerned about your oxygen levels and your blood pressure which in the two hundreds. In real life your blood pressure is perfect, 120 over 70. Your cough comes from a deeper place now, more to breathe out than you have breathed in, as if it was suddenly dragging a long tail, and it is making the growly sound of something getting ready to eat up the whole world.

You go back where you always go in a crisis, to April of 1959. It’s your freshman at Bryn Mawr and you are pregnant. you tell your father you are pregnant, and you don’t know what to do, he says, “Tell to the Dean. That’s what Deans are for.” But when you tell the dean she kicks you out. Miss Geffcken was her name. Perhaps you didn’t express enough disappointment because she then said, “Of course, you realize your education is over now.” You said, “Oh no, I’ll read.” This exchange is tattooed on your failing memory, funny that it always turns up when another crisis arrives. You never went back to college, but your education was far from over, it had just begun. You married the boy from Haverford (who didn’t get kicked out). Three children, then four, three husbands, then none, twelve grandchildren now, two great-grandchildren. You are as proud as if this was your own accomplishment. It took 48 years, but you became a writer. Good one, too. One of your books is taught in universities. So fuck you, Miss Geffcken and the horse you rode in on.

Lying in bed with all this time on your hands you are trying to determine what an academic essay is because you never had to write one. Your old pal Chuck gave you his copy of Northrop Frye but all you read were Chuck’s notes in the margins..You have an idea about turning a personal essay into an academic one, if you only knew what that was. Two of your grandchildren have to write an academic essay this summer and you have some cockamamie idea about turning a regular essay into an acadmeic one. Your daughter Catherine listens and gets annoyed. “We can talk about this later, “you say, and she replies, before hanging up the phone, “Or not.” Which makes you laugh. You get it. That certain tone your voice gets when you know what you’re talking about, or think you do.. And it’s always about writing because it’s the one thing you know that has value. Still, listening to you warming up annoys the hell out of her although she loves you and loves your writing. You are fond of quoting from Zen Mind Beginners Mind, a book she probably knows you’ve never read .

But you have to think about something so now you wonder about people who just want to just write beautiful sentences, and suddenly writing beautiful sentences feels like trying to squeeze Ping-Pong rules into a Chess game or vice versa! You are discovering a connection between three such different things! Chess and Ping-Pong and Beautiful Sentences! Ideas like this are twice as exciting and make all kinds of sense when you’re stuck on a bed with the rails you can’t climb over and a pill in your lung. A nurse comes to take your blood pressure while you try to corral your thoughts so when you get out of here you can write them down and see where they take you!

A couple more days pass full of blood pressure in the 200’s and oxygen levels and anti-biotics and monitors and nice nurses one of whom you make friends with who has two little girls and is moving deeper into a part of the countryside with a name like Black Dirt Onion Country which sounds so cool you want to drive there, even though you don’t drive anymore except to the market.. Finally they put you to sleep and poke around in your lung with a camera.. When you wake up you are told it is a mess down there because of course the pill is gone by now and the icky brown stuff was coming back up in your IV, but with all the antibiotics and etcetera the doctor says it will keep getting better by itself. Just keep taking what they prescribe for you and you can go home, come back in a week to see your own doctor. Your daughter Catherine picks you up and drives you home. The two of you have the “Or not” conversation which you both already understand but it’s good to lay it out flat.

You walk through the kitchen door feeling like a newborn except you see everything that has to change. Your house is full of things you love but they are crowded everywhere and you can’t tell one thing from another and you need to get organized right away. You have never been organized. You lose things, look for them, then forget what you have lost. But your daughter Sarah is telling you how much better you look and that feels good, she says it over and over. It feels good every time. “You’re even walking better,” she says. And Willie, dancing with happiness to find you home. Pure joy all around. And your grandson Sam, whom you adore, has driven up to be there too. Sometimes you try to think of a word to describe him, and how much you love him, but there is no such word. You call your daughter Jen in Boston who was napping but glad to know you are home and well. She gives you her recipe for crustless quiche. She is the best cook on the planet. “It’s easy,’ she says, “and delicious.” You call your son Ralph but it is Friday and he is at his friend Kate’s for the weekend. He called you at the hospital to see how you were doing a day ago. You leave him the message that you are home now. You sound a bit giddy to yourself.. You call your sisters Eliza and Judy, both of whom are kind and glad you are home. Then you take all the heavy cushions off everything and cover the backs of chairs and sofas with bright shawls and knitted blankets and crocheted throws your friend Lisa’s mother makes. It looks colorful and cheerful. You get dressed in nice clean clothes, smoke a couple of old butts, bad idea, take a look at all the submissions for a new workshop you started last Sunday but having lost the week, realize there is a lot of work to do, start to read one, fail to finish, realize you need coffee and Sarah is making a fresh pot, and you take the two prednisones, a miracle substance prescribed by some blessed doctor for your first full day home. Such a treat! You love that doctor.

Your dogs ignore you. That makes sense. You’ve been gone a lifetime. Olive doesn’t even glance your way,, instead makes herself a place between the pillows on the couch, falls asleep with her back to the room. Daphne finally barks and makes mewling sounds and you lean over and rub her back. You fill your pill box carefully with all the new stuff but it tips over and falls onto the cushion of your chair and you take the cushion off and scrounge around for the pills, looking in the seams, finding bits of what may once have been pistachios and a letter you should have answered a year ago and lots of other unidentifiable stuff that probably used to be socks. You are not tired even though it is almost midnight. You will figure the pills out tomorrow. This is the big armchair where you spend all your time. Trees outside are blowing in wind and where did the day go? You made the quiche with caramelized onions and corn fried up with Mexican spices. It was so good it makes you want to give a party and you never want to give a party. Life is changing!. You are even able to read the book Eliza sent you and it’s been four years since you could focus on fiction.

Finally you crawl into the place you call bed and several minutes later the dogs hop up beside you and fall asleep with Daphne by your feet and Olive lying comfortably top of you and the book over your face. You wake up at five struck with the brilliant idea of making your own dogfood! You sit straight up! What a great idea! Healthier and probably cheaper too! You are home, home, home. Lie back down. Dogs remain asleep.

Now you find yourself thinking about the window of the last hospital room you were in which had a view of the Hudson River and the Catskill mountains and the sky, and how you made a vow to look up more often, to get out of your chair and go outside once in a while, because the sky changes all the time and covers everything and because it is just so very very big.