Salvation Amy

First - thanks so much from everybody so supportive about the smoking quitting.  It is hard, and I backslid over the weekend due to some unanticipated family stress, but I slid back to a half a pack a day, instead of just chucking the whole thing.  My goal is to be totally smoke free by my check up on Tuesday, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it or not.

Still on the patch though, which I think is disrupting my sleep, as I keep waking up at 3:00 a.m. 

And I continue having the weirdest dreams.  My favorite recent one involved Harvey Keitel coming over to my house to fret about the fact that he’d just gotten a really really bad haircut, and he had to go to the Oscars with it, and me coming up with the perfect solution.  Which was that he should go to the ceremony with Tom Hanks and an ambiguously unnamed third guy who would be big and bald (after I woke up I realized that John Goodman would be a good choice if we could get him to shave his head).  Then they should all wear matching tuxedos.  Then tell everyone they were re-making a Three Stooges movie.  Which he did.  Which tells you what the bad haircut looked like.  So, Harvey, if you’re ever having a bad hair day - you know who to call.

My subconscious is seriously weird.

Okay.  So I smoke.  I’ve been smoking a really long time, over 20 years.  I’ve tried, half heartedly, to quit off an on, and have never been particularly successful.

I also have been lying to my mother, off and on, half heartedly about the fact that I smoke, or the success of my attempts to quit.  Also, not particularly successful.  Or, you know, adult.  First one to point out to me that I’m over 40? Gets a black eye.  I KNOW.

So I don’t write about it here, because my mother occasionally reads here, although I’m not really sure that she does, truth be told.  But, whatever.

Recently she let me know that every time I cough she knows I still smoke, in case I think I’m tricking anyone.  I changed the subject.

But, anyway.  A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor for a referral to a headache specialist, because my migraines have been coming fast and furious lately, and, ever the hypochondriac, I’m all worried about having a stroke.

So I met with this little sarcastic baby doctor, who said, "yeah.  Well, if you’re worried about stroke, I’m sure you know smoking is a higher risk factor than migraines."  And then before I left, he said, "So I guess there’s nothing I can really do to help you quit smoking.  It looks like you’ve made several attempts.  And I’m sure you know the risks."

And that was that.  Absolutely nothing for me to rebel against or dismiss him for.  No lecturing.  No talking down to me.  Just sort of, okay, well, you seem intelligent lady.  Figure it out for yourself.

And that stuck with me more than anything any health care professional had ever said to me on the subject.  Just leaving it in my lap like that.

So, a couple of days ago, Sunday, I just grabbed Scott and said "You know, if you ran to the drug store and got me some nicotine patches, I would use them.  But I will probably change my mind in the next 15 minutes."  And he was gone.  Like one of those little cartoon things that takes off and all they leave is a trail of air.

So.  Anyway.  I’ve been using them since Monday.  I have continued to smoke, which I know you aren’t supposed to do.  But the first day I smoked 10 cigarettes, instead of my usual pack and a half.  And I’ve been dropping one a day, since tuesday.  And at the end of the day, when I am done and feel like smoking, I say to Scott "MAN, I really want to smoke right now."  And he says, "This is the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for me."  And then I kick him in the shins.

Yesterday, I realized that I wasn’t really feeling like smoking, that I was just thinking of lighting up because I was doing something that I associate with smoking.  And I thought, you know, you don’t HAVE to smoke, just because you’re doing this.  And that sounds small, but it was huge.

So, we’ll see how it goes, and I’ll keep talking about it here, because I’m thinking about it a lot.  I mean A LOT.

But the really really cool thing, and the inspiration for the title above is this.  Those nicotine patches give you some really vivid and funny dreams.  This morning I was dreaming, and sort of between being awake and being asleep, aware I was dreaming because the window was open and rain was splashing in on my head.  And I had this dream about a cigar box.  In the cigar box were a whole bunch of those container tubes that cigars come in.  And they were all labelled and in alphabetical order.  And each one was the name of one of my dreams, like names of movies.  I wish I could remember them all because they were making me laugh in my sleep at myself.  And just as I woke up, I looked at the last one, and forced myself to remember it as I woke.  It was called "Bobby’s Peanut."  Which, unfortunately, I am afraid is not as funny as the names of the ones that were cracking me up. 

I’ll keep you posted.

Ten years ago I was going through, perhaps, the most cataclysmically low point of my life.  (At least before or since, but I figure I’m only around half way done).  My marriage fell apart in a huge way, and my financial life with it.  It was sort of like a house of cards built on, like maybe quicksand, hit by an earthquake.  (Three tortured metaphors per sentence, please.)

Oh, and I was pregnant.

Ten years ago today was a turning point, when Mr. Charlie came hurtling headfirst from my nether regions, except in a slow, sort of torturous way.

And he just stared at me.  He looked like a bald little old man, who was just sort of taking it all in, trying to get it all figured out before he started in.  Maybe more like a little old wizard, with a pointy little head.  (Which bounced back, if you are worried).

Things sort of started falling into place in that moment, eye to eye with my son.  In that moment my relationship with men began to shift forever.  I named him for both my fathers, and both my grandfathers, and consciously realized that it was time, right then, for me to start to heal my vision in regard to men. 

Now, before it gets too deep around here, I need to clarify for my own sake the fact that this is still, much to my chagrin, an ongoing process.  It’s certainly not as though I’ve gone and completely evolved to perfection, and if I ever try to tell you I have, cry foul immediately.

But it was the beginning of my noticing and accepting that, in some untouchable way, they are actually different than us.  They are not just women with penises.  I think, up to that point, I had gone through a lot of frustration, a lot of self doubt, a lot of sort of what is wrong with you, what is wrong with me what is wrong with the world, based on a belief that men could behave like women if they would just TRY, and that the reason they didn’t try was to drive me batty because I was fundamentally flawed.  That part I don’t believe any more.  And it started with Charlie.

Maybe in those first moments when he stared at me asking his silent little baby questions.  Maybe in his laid back little demeanor and the way that he was pretty mellow about 23 and a half hours out of the day.  I don’t know what it was, and I know that the traits that were his as a baby are not those of all baby boys.  I know that, to some degree, we all come as we are, and Charlie just came more laid back than most.  But in the moments and days and months after his birth, I became aware that on some level he was fundamentally different than me, and that he was perfectly one hundred percent him.

Some of that, of course, slips away over time, that state of being where we are completely integrated in ourselves, although for Charlie I think it has slipped away less than it does for a lot of us. 

And in honor of 10 years of Charlie, I give you ten pieces of him that I never want to forget.

1. When he was a really little baby, he was so completely different in the way that he went to sleep than Caroline that I thought there was something wrong with him and ended up calling my pediatrician.  I would put him in his crib, and the instant (and I am not kidding about this) that his head hit the mattress, his eyes would roll back in his head and he would sleep.

2. He learned to sing before he learned to talk.  At eight months Caroline and I noticed that his baby babble was in tune to the radio.  At a year his attention was caught by a PBS playing of Les Miserables, which he hummed to in harmony.  His first words were sung.  (They were also "won’t you say you love me too," which I hate to admit, because I certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with Barney, the Dinosaur of Doom, but I think he picked it up in daycare).

3. His first spoken sentence was "I need to PLIMB," in response to me telling him to stop climbing the railing on our deck.  He can still climb higher in a tree than anyone I’ve ever seen.  Can’t really walk across the living room without tripping over his shoelaces.  I have no idea what that is about.

4. He used to sneak into Caroline’s room late at night and fall asleep watching Tom and Jerry and I would hear him giggling uncontrollably.  He used to start a lot of sentences "you know the one where that mouse…."

5. Scott once handed him down a pair of roller skates. I took him to the park to use them, and he headed straight for the top of the slide.

6. He will still insist that an old piece of tire I ran over when he was six was a penguin, as in "Mom, remember that time you ran over that penguin?"

7. The day he stopped saying "yours" in response to the question "whose boy are you?" and started saying "mine."

8. When he was really little and I was putting him to bed one night, he said "Tell me about the time I was born."  And I started telling him about how I felt when I woke up that morning, and about my trip to the hospital, and he said "No.  It goes like this.  Once there was a small baby named Charlie."

9. He gets completely freaked out by the concept of infinity.  He used to spontaneously burst into tears because he was thinking about death, and, thinking that I was actually helping, I would say something about the fact that your soul lives on after your body dies, until finally he said "I KNOW.  And that means it goes on forEVER.  Which means it never STOPS.  I don’t even know what COLOR that is.  My brain is too small."  And now he’ll say "Mom, the universe HAS to stop SOMEwhere."  And I say "Okay, but then what’s outside the universe?" and he says "I KNOW.  Isn’t that STUPID?"

10.  Recently he said to me, "I’ve been thinking about some things I’ll need for the trip around the world that I’m going to take.  On foot.  I’ll need a crossbow to get food, and I’ll need a compass so I know where I’m going, and I’ll need a pocket knife to skin my food."

And I notice that I’ve still started this story as though it’s about me. 

Once there was a small baby named Charlie.  Happy birthday, Bug.  You’re getting a pocketknife.

Love, Mom

You are Zooey. You are intelligent, determined,
and have a quick sense of humor. You have
compassion the lost, broken, and forgotten.
Unfortunately, you also judge too quickly and
have a tendency to alienate people. Not that
you care.

Which member of J.D. Salinger’s dysfunctional Glass family are you?
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Today I hate my bar association.  A whole bunch.  Here’s what happened.

Lawyers have this thing called Continuing Legal Education.  Most states make you take a certain number of CLE classes on a yearly or bi-yearly cycle to remain in good standing, two of my three states included. 

So, December 31 was the end of my two year cycle in my main jurisdiction.  You have to take 24 credits every two years, and at least four of those have to be in ethics, on accounta the general public thinks lawyers are all slimy toad eggs, and the bars of the country are trying to respond to that by making its lawyers sit through instruction on ethics, hoping beyond hope that some of it will sink in.

Now, this is really kind of a good idea, not because lawyers are all slimy toad eggs (although I can’t speak for everybody), but because lawyers are human beings, and there are actually very real ethical pitfalls whereever you look.  (No kidding.  When I took ethics in law school, and we studied conflicts of interest, I remember thinking, "yeah, like, what are the chances that this is going to come up."  Then, within my first 6 months of practice I had it come up about 5 times.  Now, part of this is probably because I practice in a small jurisdiction, but part of it is also that the whole world is a lot smaller than I think.)

Since I am new to this, and since I ever so wisely decided to try to figure the whole mess out for myself instead of just asking someone already, and since I was pretty broke from the time I was admitted until, well, today, and these things cost real money, I took my 24 CLEs in the month of December, 2004.  It’s not as hard as it sounded right there.  4 classes, 6 hours per class, 4 days out of my life, albeit a month of my life when I was also working on a big brief that was due 5 days before Christmas, which is why my extended family is still waiting for their Christmas presents.  And I was getting more than my fair share of ethics credits, because each of my four classes had an hour of ethics components in them, and I was pretty sure I only needed two for the two year period instead of two per year, which is what turned out to be true.  (Okay.  Do we all see where this is going now?)

And today I got my transcript and it turns out that one of the classes which I though had one hour of ethics actually had ZERO hours of ethics.  Dammit.  So I am one ethics credit short.  Even though I have all twenty-four hours of the stuff.  And it’s my own damn fault.

So, the nice lady in charge of continuing legal ed tells me I have two choices.  One, I can get the credit in this month, and submit it on my report, and it will be counted as a completed make-up plan.  Or two, I can apply for an extension, which, it sounds like will entail a lot of paper work, so forget that.  So I found a class that is CALLED Blah Blah Blah Ethics Ethics Ethics, AND it has 6 credits, four of which are in ethics.  So take THAT.  (Although, I am a little bit wondering what we do for the other two hours in a class that actually is about Ethics so much that it has Ethics in the name.)

And, because I can’t read, I’m out about 200 bucks that I wouldn’ta been out otherwise.  So there’s some incentive to pay attention.

And when I’m done, I will be the ethicallest lawyer in the state.  Basically because I am an idiot.