The Pluses of On-Demand Publishing

As I said in my previous blog, most writers (myself included) would prefer to have a contract with a publishing house, as that confers a certain degree of respectability and comes with an advance and access to the resources of the company (such as publicity). Having said that, I have come up with a list of positive attributes for the on-demand publishing side of things.

 

1)      Good for the environment. Your book is not mass-produced, so there’s no pre-publishing guess about how many copies will be needed by the public. Each book represents a desired commodity, and no books get remaindered. This is good for our forests. And as Kindle use grows, even fewer trees will meet the axe.

 

2)      The book never goes out of print. Once computer files of the book are uploaded, your book will always be available unless you decide to take it down.

3)      No timetable for publicity. If the book is always available, you can do publicity bursts whenever and however you choose.

 

4)      Corrections can be made quickly and easily.  This point might not seem very important, but if you’ve ever worked in book publishing (as I have), you know the process authors go through to correct typos, etc. By the time changes are incorporated, many thousands of books may have already been produced and purchased.

5)       No second-novel pressure. As a fiction writer, I’m not supposed to talk about this, but many published writers feel some panic about producing a second book. But in this case, if your second title doesn’t sell like the first, you’re the only one to know. In fact, commercial success is moot, though plenty of on-demand publishing authors sell very well (a friend of mine mentioned to me that one of her students had sold more than 10,000 copies).

 

6)      Less ego involvement. We all like our ego stroked, but there’s a delicious sweetness in sending your book out into the world without fanfare. Like a parent, you trust this creation (which is yours and not yours) to go forth and make its way.

7)      No publishing house author hatred. If you’re a writer whose book has traveled the ordinary publishing house route, this might surprise you, but oftentimes there’s some copy editor or production person gnashing their teeth at the mere mention of your name. I remember this well…such comments as, “Will he ever stop making corrections?” “She’s in my office making kissy sounds over the phone with her husband, and I can’t get her to leave.” “He only thinks he knows Spanish.” “She thinks she lives here, and she keeps staring at my breasts.” “Can you believe that advance? Good god, how I hate her.” (By the way, if you are a publishing house author, follow Cristina Garcia’s--Dreaming in Cuban—lead and send gracious notes to everyone who worked on your book. You’d be surprised how few do this, and a simple thank you goes a long way. Your agent and editor are not the only significant people in the development of your book.)

 

 

Self-Publish or Perish

Roughly two years ago, I finished writing a novel called Dream of an Inland Sea. Unfortunately, I have terrible timing, as Lehman Brothers had just gone into bankruptcy, and most of us were simultaneously learning about real estate derivatives and sensing that our economic security had been horribly undermined.

Many years before, I worked in book publishing in New York City (HarperCollins, Alfred A. Knopf), and I knew that this industry was not unlike others; when people become more conservative regarding financial risks, every business is affected. In book publishing, this means agents and editors view all incoming manuscripts with more reserve than they did before—and this was in addition to the reserve they’d already developed due to Americans’ changing reading habits, the growth of the internet, and the availability of e-books.

But, ever hopeful, I began sending my book to agents. After three or four rejections, I almost had one, but someone at the agency with veto power prevailed. At this point, I went through some soul-searching. Is the book flawed? I wondered. Do I need revisions, or am I satisfied with its vision and execution?

I decided I was happy with the book but that I didn’t have the energy to pursue finding an agent. This decision was, no doubt, affected by the journey I’d been on with my twins, both of whom have special needs. Publishing the book was no longer my most important focus, and I was at peace that I had managed to finish the manuscript. I decided to put it away and bide my time. I had children to raise, and maybe the book didn’t need to be in the marketplace.

Then my high school band mate Dean Fetzer and his wife, Debra, came for a visit. They live in England, and Dean is also a writer. He, too, had not found a place within traditional publishing, but with energy and can-do, he’d begun successfully to self-publish his mystery novels online. During his visit, he said, “Why don’t I help you? Can I read the book?”

At first, I was dubious. When I went through the graduate program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, “vanity publishing” (which was how self-publishing was once described) was  considered just that: evidence of the author’s feeling of self-importance, a purple signpost announcing the person’s inability to write or, at the very least, to successfully edit his- or her own work.

But the publishing industry has changed, and I decided that I should, too. I have friends who have been successful with the typical publishing route, and I applaud them, and of course, I still wish to join them, as it would be ever so lovely to have an advance and a publicity machine. But because I was at peace about the book, I thought, Why not? The novel might not sell a lot of copies, but maybe someone will enjoy it. That was an electrifying thought, as no writer honestly writes entirely for the self.

So…my book is now available in paper and ebook form. This novel means a great deal to me, and I would be so honored should any of you decide to read it. Here are the links:

PAPERBACK:

US
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0956158188/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0956158188&linkCode=as2&tag=deafet-20
UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0956158188/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=deafet-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0956158188

KINDLE:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=dream%20of%20an%20inland%20sea

 

 

 

Steal This Business Idea (Please!)

It’s Mother’s Day, 2012, 10 a.m., and I’ve

1)      Performed part of a gastronomy tube feed on one 11-year-old child,

2)      Bathed and changed the clothes (and beds) of both this same child and his twin (they both have autism),
3)      Cleaned the kitchen after a lovely breakfast made by my partner, Lisa,
4)      Set up one child in the master bedroom with a video about the moon,
5)      Set the other up in the living room with a Signing Time video, on a loop, the way he likes it.

A pretty good morning, actually. (Don’t ruin it by telling me I’m a bad mother for “parking” my children in front of the telly; I already know this.)

So if it’s a good morning, why is it I feel that someone should create the Karen Leh Home for the Perpetually Perplexed?

No, this is not the business idea (but come to think of it, you might want to stay tuned on that one). The business idea would actually counteract my perpetual confusion and make such a home unneeded. What I’m thinking of is a nonprofit called Rent-a-Mom. Not a mom for my kids—no. For me!

Before anyone thinks I’m putting down my own mother, I should say this: I adore my mother. We’ve come through a great deal together, but she’s 75 years old, and her health is not that great. Plus, she lives two hours away. And our town home has (count ‘em!)  29 steps—which isn’t even counting the three to our front door or the seven into the lowest part of the basement. In short, it’s a septuagenarian’s nightmare. (And to punctuate this household issue, Lisa has just called me on the land line from our basement. No joke.)

So why would Rent-a-Mom be necessary and what would it entail?

Unfortunately, I have to back way up. Picture yourself with twin babies, then imagine flying halfway across the country, both three-month-old infants in tow, so that one can get open-heart surgery that will then go very wrong. Five months, seven corrected heart defects, one heart valve, one tracheotomy, one gastronomy tube, and a brain bleed later, you are back at home. One child lies on the floor. He has a tube that has been lassoed around his neck and is blowing oxygen and moisture at his trach, the fog of which billows up around him, prompting an overseas friend who sees a picture of this get-up to remark that he “looks like an astronaut.” The other baby seems to be doing okay, is hitting his milestones, but eventually takes to screaming day and night, forgets how to use his eating utensils, loses his vocabulary, stops giving eye contact, and begins incessantly lining up Matchbox cars.

I could go on, but you get the idea. When my children were small, I used to threaten to put a flagpole on my roof where I’d attach a white surrender flag so that someone would come and rescue me—or at the very least, feel like crap for NOT coming to rescue me. I also used to fantasize about getting in the car and driving.

And driving. And driving. Away, anywhere. One of my friends, who also had a critically ill child, told me, “Oh man, if you do that, call me. I want to come.”

Somehow, we all survived, though with what mental defects I do not know. I remember one particularly horrible instance where one of our twins, at about age six, had diarrhea, took off his pants, danced through it, then oh-so-artfully fingerpainted his walls, the curtains, the windows, and everything else. This had happened on many other occasions but never this badly.

“Lisa,” I said, “we’ve had a poop disaster, and I think we’re going to have to tear up the carpet.”

“Oh, it can’t be that bad,” she insisted.

I went back upstairs, and after several minutes, she came to survey the damage. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” she muttered. “We’re going to have to tear up the carpet.”

“Yes,” I said, jaw set.

She left the house to purchase a truckload of cleaning supplies and tools we’d need. I will not describe her mental state or the particular swear words she chose for the occasion, but suffice it to say, she was not happy.

I was, if I remember correctly, shaky. But I was clear-headed enough to call one of the boys’ paraprofessionals from school. “Can you come?” I asked after explaining the situation.

Fortunately, she did. I’d never had anyone help before, but I probably had never sounded like that before either. She was, no doubt, somewhat alarmed. Sherry (the parapro), shepherded the kids, and Lisa and I proceeded to take the room down to the subfloor. I opened the windows, cleaned the walls, threw away bedding, curtains, stuffed animals, books, you name it, moved the one boy into a different room with his brother, then locked the door to the ruined room and left it closed off for something like nine months. Sherry, being the sweetheart that she was and is, entreated Lisa and me to go out for dinner afterward, just the two of us. We sat in a Chile’s in numb, stunned silence for quite a while, as I recall, like people just returned from some unknown circle of hell.

I’ve heard others tell similar tales. One mom I met several years ago told me that after her autistic son pulled a brand-new $2,000 plasma television set down on himself, she promptly packed the whole family off to the ER. Not because anyone was hurt but simply because they “needed monitoring.” But who can afford to do that every time a TV is destroyed or a room is redecorated with feces?

Many of you might think, But Rent-a-Mom already exists—it’s called Therapy. But again, I tell you, too expensive, especially for those of us who are parents of special needs children (for those of you who don’t know, most of these parents 1) have filed for bankruptcy, 2) totter somewhere near the brink of it, and/or 3) have avoided it only by virtue of loving family). Plus, if you’ve come through a room-destroying scenario like the one I described, a 45-minute “therapeutic hour” will never suffice. And, honestly, complaining only goes so far. I’d be happier if someone came and did my laundry or just sat and brushed my hair. The way I picture Rent-a-Mom, it’s a funded service, gratis for the person being served.

Sherry was my hero that day. But what if there was always someone like that that you could call? Even mothers of neurotypical children could use such a service. Hell, even single, childless people could use it once in a while (read my post entitled “Karen’s ‘Helpful Hints’ on Coming Out” if you don’t believe me). Most of us have dear friends and family, but I have to tell you, it’s incredibly hard to ask for help, or to keep asking for help. And sometimes the help you need is just someone to make sure your kids are safe while you do a hard thing. Someone to make you a cup of tea and remind you to breathe. Someone to say, “Go out and eat, go grab a nap, go for a walk—I’ve got it.”

In short, a mom. But a younger, able-bodied, no-emotions-invested-in-this-situation kind of mom. (My own mother knows better and would never do this, but the last thing you want someone to say in a situation like the one I described is, “Why did you leave him alone in his room for twenty minutes?”)

This nonprofit I’m thinking of would offer short-term but essential help. I would start it if only I didn’t still need it so badly (argh!), but maybe this is your calling? Go ahead, I dare you—steal this idea.

To the Madonna of the Healthy Children

Yes, you—the one who came into the coffee shop lugging a car seat and a beautiful baby girl who is still fast asleep and enfolded in gauzy pink blankets while you sip a hot drink on the couch with your friend. I know I’m not supposed to be listening, but my table is inches away, and I can’t help hearing you any more than I can help peeking at your child.

“Typical” children astound me—I look at them as if they’re aliens because neither of my children has full health (they have been given six diagnoses between them, and both are considered autistic). I know in my head that fully functioning children are still the norm, that women’s bodies (by and large) know instinctively what to do to create life and deliver it in perfect packages. (That happens every day, I remind myself, astonished.) I am currently studying to become a nurse, and one thing that surprises me daily is that despite the complexity of the body, most of us are extremely healthy. We also possess an incredible ability to heal when our health goes awry.

I know that my pregnant body, too, did a good job. I have gorgeous children who possess all their fingers and toes and functioning muscles. They can produce words, are capable of affection and emotion as well as humor, and they do learn. But one’s heart folded incorrectly, probably in those first couple weeks in the womb, which set off a whole series of post-birth operations, surgical accidents, and developmental fall-out. His twin mysteriously regressed at about two and lost all the milestones he’d achieved.

Needless to say, I’ve been living in a whole different world. And it’s all right—I really mean that. I think I’m privy to some insight that I wouldn’t have otherwise, which is extremely valuable to me though it’s been costly. I’m not saying these things to call forth your pity or excessive admiration. But my life is very different from yours. So different, in fact, that I sometimes can’t relate to “ordinary” people. They mystify and sometimes downright irritate me. In a week in which the CDC announced another rise in the number of autistic children (1 in 88), I’m no doubt a little more cranky than usual.

But I’m off the point: Listen, you are complaining about the loss of sleep, the two o’clock feedings, the soreness of your breasts, about managing your other two children and your husband’s work schedule, and I want to yell, “Stop! Do you not see the bliss on your newborn’s face, the blush in her cheeks? Could she be any more perfect? Do you realize what a privilege it is to have these so-called problems? So seven-year-old Michael’s not doing as well as his peers with reading, and you have to nag Natasha to practice the piano—but Michael’s only seven, and he’s reading, for godsake, and Natasha—don’t even get me started. She can decipher music and manipulate her fingers across a keyboard well enough to play? That’s simply amazing to me. And here you are at a coffee shop, looking for all the world like someone who’s showered and is wearing clean clothes.”

This may sound a little like “when I was young, I had to walk three miles through the snow to get to school,” but bear with me. Basic daily tasks were tough to manage, if not absolutely impossible, when my children were infants. How, for example, do you take a shower and ensure that your baby is still breathing through his tracheotomy? How do you help your significant other get enough rest to function at work when you both are awakened by a tantrumming toddler who screams from two until five in the morning many nights of the week for years? When does the laundry get washed—okay, maybe it can be wedged in, between occupational therapy at one and speech therapy at three, but who knows?

And now that my kids are eleven, I still have trouble with these tasks. I certainly could never bring them into a coffee shop for more than maybe ten minutes. One child would bother patrons who are studying their computer screens (because he loves computers) or would go behind the counter so as to investigate the cash register or push buttons on the microwave (he blew up the one in our home). The other child will be overwhelmed by the smell of coffee, the large number of strange people, and heaven-only-knows-what-else because his sensory system just can’t cope with the intricacies and—what is to him—the onslaught of our world.

I don’t mean to be persnickety although I’m sure I’m coming across that way. And I don’t mean to imply that I do not ever enjoy my children because I do. I realize, too, that neurotypical children can also be challenging. Besides, difficulties are relative, right? If you’ve no experience other than the reality you’re living, your life can seem quite difficult. I, too, am reminded of this fact when I see people in desperate poverty, in our country or elsewhere. Or when I think of friends who have an autistic child (or children) who are divorced and parenting solo, or those whose children are more severely impacted, having to spend weeks or months in hospitals or lock-down units because they’re so dysregulated that they’re violent or self-abusive. I have a friend whose life was forever changed by her son with special needs, only to have him die at eight and a half, which was beyond unfair. Believe me, I know I have a great deal for which to be thankful. Still, I don’t know if my children will ever be fully independent, or even independent enough to take themselves regularly to a bathroom. This is a whole different level of worry.

So go ahead and complain—sometimes we just need to. I get that. But don’t fooled. Your troubles are not that bad.

I was recently reading a piece about Angelina Jolie because…well, I’m a bit obsessed—she's beautiful, her husband’s beautiful, they have this exotic, beautiful menagerie of children. She and Brad were attending some banquet (I forget which one) where Brad was nominated for an award. The interviewer asked Angelina something to the effect of “Does he get nervous about these things?” And her reply was something like “Oh, a little. But really, if your children are healthy, what is there to be nervous about?” So now she’s my personal hero. How can that come out of the mouth of a starlet when so many day-to-day people don’t even realize such a thing? Talk about a true madonna.

Some people make so much of their children’s “issues” that it feels to me like they’re making things worse. There was a woman in here last week who was hectoring her son relentlessly about his math, really going at him, which made me feel embarrassed and sorry for him (irony of ironies, he had the same name as one of my sons). And a friend recently told me about a hockey practice she went to where a father yelled out at his child, “Try not to be a dumb-ass.” Say what?!

I don’t think you will do that (I certainly hope not). But please recognize that half the things you are worrying about—okay, I’ll just say it—are stupid. Honestly, if no one’s dying, there’s not a problem. (I sat at the bedside of my heart-baby for two weeks and didn’t have a place I could even touch him, he had so many tubes coming out of his jaundiced, swollen body, so you can take my word on this one.)

Breathe. Look around (it’s a stunning day). Listen to your friend—really listen. Enjoy that baby’s sleep. For heaven’s sake, enjoy that baby’s sleep.

Obscure Lessons from Math & Science

Maybe these lessons are not so obscure, but as I’ve been taking prerequisites for a nursing program, they represent another dimension of what I’ve been learning/relearning. (I apologize ahead of time for the uneven tone of what follows: some of these “lessons” engender my humorous side, while other inspire my inner philosopher or social psychologist.)

What’s the status on your permeable membrane?  Not a typical question, I know, and I’m not talking about your skin or the envelope around your cells, from which I drew the example. Most people, I assume, fall into the psychological category of semi-permeable. (If you’re in that category, bully for you. Go on to the next lesson.) The rest of us possess the unfortunate quality of taking in too much or too little.

I’m afraid that since I fall into the first category, I won’t be much help on the second. If you don’t take enough in, all I can really say is this: Be assured that you are this kind of person if you find yourself on an episode of “I Married a Mobster.” (I mean, come on. There were signs.) One should also be alarmed if 1) a significant other carries on a year-plus affair, 2) an accountant or investor steals all of one’s life savings (though those folks can be tricky, it’s true), 3) everyone at the conference table is howling with laughter, but you “just don’t get it.”

Unfortunately, as I intimated, I don’t know how to help. Ask more questions? Develop some healthy paranoia? Ask the heavens to unstick the cobwebby goo from around your senses? (I’m at a loss, so please forgive me. Because I’m at the other end of the spectrum, trying to come up with solutions is like an uber-wealthy politician trying to relate to your joblessness or end-of-the-month inability to pay bills).

For those of us in the overly permeable category, there’s a panoply of options. A very incomplete list would include 1) unremediated schizophrenia or other mental illness, 2) pharmaceuticals!, 3) heavy use of alcohol and/or street drugs!, 4) permanent hermit status, 5) endless years of therapy, 6) endless journaling, or my personal favorites, 7) yoga and meditation, 8) relentless internal “housekeeping,” whereby you toss on the ash heap various useless assumptions, obsessions, feelings, beliefs, and relationships, or  9) some combination of the above. Believe me, I do not place judgment on anyone’s use of any of the above strategies, although homelessness, jail time, and psychosis present obvious drawbacks.

Oversensitivity sucks. However, seeing the underside of nearly everything has its upside. (Did I just say that?) Maybe it’s even a gift—at least, if one manages not to drink oneself into oblivion, adopt an unwavering victim status, or redirect one’s hurt or sickness in an outward direction (in other words, please avoid becoming the next Unibomber or Timothy McVeigh).

There is usually more than one way to solve a problem. This is true even in addition; it’s called the commutative property (2 +1 can also be written 1+2).

The online algebra classes I’ve taken the last two semesters have solidified this point for me. Pearson Learning Solutions produces these fabulous textbooks with an online interface that I cannot stop raving about. After reading a section of text, I then go into something online called My Math Lab to do the homework. Each question may be answered three times incorrectly before I get dinged. But even so, I always have the option to click a button that pulls up a similar problem so I can try again. Another great feature allows me to pull up an application that will walk me through the steps to the solution. The end result: no math anxiety. I can try a problem, then try it again and again. I can go step by step with the online tutorial—multiple times, if need be.

The second advantageous aspect of this system concerns experimentation. The problem appears on the screen, and say I don’t know quite how to approach it. No problem! Sometimes I’ll just give it a go and see what happens. And sometimes I’ll end up solving the problem in a less than typical fashion. Woo-hoo, I’m a genius, I’ll think. I’m not really, but the mind has amazing ways of working toward solutions.

I’ve found this idea of “more than one way to solve a problem” a useful tenet, and it’s essential to call to mind when someone tells you that you simply must do things a certain way. While it may be true that theirs is more expedient, sane, healthier, safer, or more long-lasting, believe me—it doesn’t represent the only way. And if you follow your own path, you might discover a startlingly wonderful new method of arriving at an answer.

We are all one. Yeah, yeah, I know—this is a spiritual truth and not something one is supposed to derive from math and science. Poppycock. In biology, one thing I’ve been learning about involves systems and their interrelationships. An individual organism is part of a larger population of similar organisms, which then participate in a community, which takes part in an ecosystem, which takes its place in the overall biosphere. This trend moves the other direction as well: from individual to organ systems and organs to tissues to cells to organelles and then molecules and atoms. If someone ingests food with an awful microbe (God help you), that person is likely to feel systemic effects. In the same way, if you toss chemicals into a water body, there will be ever-enlarging effects in the greater world. We understand this in a fundamental way, even if we don’t always acknowledge it (it’s certainly not politically expedient to acknowledge it, that’s for sure).

Here’s another example that should make us pause and look at one another. Human beings—according to what has been learned through the Human Genome Project—are 99.99%  genetically similar. What we might observe about our differences can seem extraordinary, and we put a premium on their value, but statistically speaking, those differences are small.

An experience I’ve had since I stopped working for a local hospice speaks to this point as well. Sometimes I’ll be driving around, and I’ll pass the home of someone I took care of during their final days or months, and then I’ll pass by another and one more. I’ll suddenly be struck by the web of death across Boulder County, by how we’re all connected through that experience—not one of us gets out of it. And I’ll think, Well, if we’re all connected by death, why not by life? Why are we not more aware of our interconnectedness? I don’t have an answer for that one, but I figure there’s some kind of payoff in not acknowledging it. After all, if I’m not connected to you, what do I care if you lost your job, or if the nearby plant or pipeline poisoned your water, if my kid called your kid “retarded,” if the state’s roads look like hell and the neighborhood school stinks and you suffer from some disease that requires my tax dollars but I believe the government shouldn’t take any of my money because I need it for a vacation to the Bahamas?    

Just because you’re solving for X and Y, don’t assume you understand the whole alphabet. By this, I’m referring to what I’m learning regarding graphs (and of course, extrapolating from that). I’ll sometimes graph an equation in algebra, and the line represented by it will shoot up indefinitely—or down, depending. But I’m usually solving for one or two variables, not an infinite number of them. Who knows what that would look like—I’m certainly not there mathematically speaking.

I’ve just started working with a graphing calculator, which is kind of fun. Basically, you have to input the minimum and maximum values for X along the horizontal axis; then you input the minimum and maximum values for Y along the vertical axis. If you don’t set up the window correctly, it may appear as if the graph of the line is shooting up or down at an uninterrupted angle; but widen the window, and whoa! Sometimes the line actually hits its full height a little higher up and then changes direction.

And here, because I’m odd, I think of Whitney Houston (may she rest in peace). What a meteoric rise, right? What a fabulous talent. But it’s hard to know what else was going on—why the sharp downfall, the recovery, her eventual death? None of us can account for all the variables that had an impact on her life. None of us could have predicted the dips and recoveries. Sometimes our “window” isn’t wide enough. And people are full of mystery; you can’t put them on a graph because sometimes their influences are unknown to us (possibly even to them), and influences don’t all possess equal pull. The lesson to me: show some humility, girlfriend.

The body possesses an amazing capacity to heal. You cut yourself with a serrated knife, and five days later, the injury appears to be much better. Experiments with stem cells return function to the malfunctioning body part of a lab rat. Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is shot, and months later, though still struggling with her recovery, she is able to speak and understand, to carry out many tasks of her pre-injured life.

This last example highlights a difficult aspect of this truth: unfortunately, we often learn more about the body’s healing capacity from those events where it fails to do so, or fails in part. I think, too, of my twin sons (who, for those of you who don’t know, share about six medical diagnoses between them). I think of that scar down one son’s chest from heart surgeries, which reminds me that eventually he’ll require another operation; of that inch-long scar on the side of his neck, where the heart-lung machine's tubing entered his body the second time he was hooked up, which reminds me of the brain hemorrhage that occurred during that period because of the blood-thinners he had to be on; of those times my other son finds a phrase and then cannot stop repeating it, the synapses of his brain firing in some fashion I cannot fathom; of the wide-eyed, anxious look that sometimes appears on his face because stimuli from the world is impinging upon his nervous system.

But even in offering these personal examples, I still look at my boys and realize that in so many ways, their little bodies developed according to the usual plan. Muscles attached to bones, their hearts beat, their eyes track an object, they try with amazing courage to communicate, they run and jump and laugh. And from the time of their various diagnoses, they have traveled a long, long way toward recovery.

Also, after reading about meiosis—that very intricate process whereby our parents’ DNA is copied, crosses over, divides, and then divides again, with individual gametes later joining to become each of us—I cannot help being awestruck by my children’s individuality and perfection. Mutations, my textbook assures me, happen with great rarity. But people don’t often find a chunk of meteor either, so if my sons’ genes mutated in some way, I can’t help thinking that it’s as if I had not one but two chunks of star-stuff fall into my backyard. The very fact of their being seems so specific to me, so personal, that I simply assume we are bound up in a grand universal plan of some sort. Hokey-sounding? Maybe, but not from my vantage point.

Death Bed

Death Bed

The wife of my patient

is impatient.            

Her mind is a wet newsprint.

She falls because

the earth cannot stop calling her.

His bones are eaten through.

He cannot lift his head.

She says, in a bullying voice,

“You’d better hurry and get well

because I need you for some things—

and I love you.”

I am astonished,

but he says her name

and she hobbles to him.

His hand shakes

as he pulls her down

for a kiss.

I’m a butterfly then,

reading the air with its wings.

******************************

Cold Morning, May

I tipped the waitress well

though she took my order  

after the ladies I preceded.

Generosity needs no reason,

I tell myself, laying down the bills.

This thought should force my heart  

open, but it doesn’t.

Rain alights on the windshield

as I pull onto South Boulder Road.

North on Cherryvale,

Baseline Lake has pulled a shawl of mist

around its shoulders. It  wants

to be left alone.

Two brown horses stand in a wet field.

They might mind the rain, but

they stand there and take it.

A church sign announces,

god’s grace is all you need,

and I think Really?

I am almost home, where

your every cough

feels like a complaint. It’s true:

our life is too hard.

You gave me time away

but I cannot smooth over my exhaustion

              or rage.

You must feel this way each time

you drive home

but I’m not used to it.

I disappoint myself.

The Vaporizer

A blue light comes on

and a triangular wedge of cool mist

appears, its far edge

                    disappearing

                           into the unknown.

One of my twins  

delights in it,

carrying it from plug to plug,

repeatedly ecstatic that its being

is refreshed—

Ah, the mist! Ah, the light!

But no—his joy comes before that,

when he matches the prongs to the holes:

                      resistance

                               then give.

His brother

is circumspect,

avoiding the spangled energy

just behind the walls.

It resonates in his arms 

and makes the stumbling pathways of his brain

go dark.

Though one night,

sensing something,

I awoke.

From down the hall, I saw him,

a small, dark form on his knees,

no movement but his narrow chest’s

careful expansion,

worshipping the blue light

and its attendant breath.