Lisa Geichman Prosek

By 7 a.m. a year ago today I’d already been to two grocery stores buying the perfect turkey and other Thanksgiving fixings and had the turkey in the oven cooking two days early because I was afraid my little toy poodle, Ebie, would die without having his favorite food one last time.

I’ve wanted to write about Ebie in this blog so many times. I’ve sat down with ideas, made notes, chosen pictures. But I’ve always aborted the process because I just haven’t been able to fully face the fear that I wouldn’t have the courage, insight, and sensitivity to make his story as profound as it should be. No doubt I’ll fail today, but I’m writing anyway.

During my lifetime I’ve lost my mother, lost a career, lost my idea of self, and had to rebuild my entire existence. But losing Ebie was the worst of it.

He welcomed me every day—first thing in the morning and whenever throughout the day he hadn’t seen me for two minutes—as though he thought of me as a special gift. Like I knew all the answers and could give him everything. Like I saved him.

The reality is that he saved me. As someone who’s suffered depression for years, I often came home from work crying and had otherwise difficult days. Ebie always met me with his happy little face, showered me with loving kisses, licked the salty tears off my cheeks, and grabbed his gingerbread man to start a romping game to take my mind off my troubles and make it all okay.

Ebie endured serious illnesses for seven years—the entire latter half of his life. Epilepsy. Immune-mediated hemolytic anemia—a horrible condition that shifts a dog’s immune system into overdrive and destroys life-sustaining red blood cells. And then came diabetes. Ebie eventually went blind and lapsed into dementia. Still, never did he let his problems shadow his optimism.

He took his twice-daily medications, including insulin injections, as though they were simply momentary impediments, and then he kept frolicking forward.

Perhaps part of his joy was that he didn’t know how sick he was. He didn’t know that he could be fine upon rising in the morning and dead from an immune problem by noon. He didn’t know that his slowly darkening world would one day envelope him in total blackness, as we knew awaited him.

Yet, even during his last week, though he repeatedly struggled with blood glucose readings low enough to cause seizures and even kill, didn’t have the stomach to eat, had to venture outside for potty in single-digit temperatures when he wanted to stay tucked in a warm bed with me, Ebie didn’t lose his joie de vivre. Or maybe he didn’t want to appear to us that he lost his zest for living. Maybe he went on just because he thought I wanted him to. He knew how much I needed him.

I often think of how difficult it was for Ebie to die. Did he think he was disappointing me?

When he fell into the final deep sleep, he took my heart with him, along with all the hope and brightness I think I’ll ever have.

Now, when I close my eyes and go back to even those sad last days when the long good-bye had started, I can feel his furry little cheek on mine as I hold him close and whisper “Mommy loves Ebie” over and over again. When I open my eyes and realize that furry little cheek is gone forever, it’s like a million knives.

When Ebie ate his last bites of turkey that morning a year ago today, he only had twenty-three more days to live.

This year we’re not making a turkey at home for Thanksgiving. We’ve thought about making barbecued ribs, a pot roast, even coneys. But what seems the best is getting out of the house and escaping the memories. I just can’t stand the thought of not seeing Ebie sitting in front of the oven waiting for the delectable treat cooking inside.

Then again maybe we should stay home and let the memories come, even the most painful ones, because this year even more than any other I feel so grateful for having known and loved Ebie. For all the years of fun and laughter he bestowed upon me. For all the times he sat by me sharing Fritos. For having the exquisite joy of being able to feel his warm little body beside me as I slept. For hearing his happy bark when he heard the garage door and knew I was coming home. For the way he lived. For the way he helped me live.

During the last six months, I’ve been feeling more overwhelmed and unnerved by the blank page than usual. When I have written, I’ve spent much more time thinking about how the work fails than how it succeeds. I’ve found it far easier to totally avoid writing than to do it, even though writing stands as the one thing that makes me feel truly fulfilled, productive, happy.

When my asthma kicks up, tries to suffocate me, and reduces my life to the drudgery of simply trying to breathe through one day at a time, one puff of my inhaler at a time, my doctor prescribes a round of steroids. It doesn’t cure the problem, but the treatment helps to ease the symptoms so I can look ahead and feel like I’m improving until the asthma-causing inflammation burns itself out. Usually, just a few days’ worth of medication gets me going, and I forget the sometimes-excruciating feeling of not being able to breathe.

So, taking a lesson from that, I’ve decided that I need a round of steroids to jumpstart my writing. As no bottleful of prednisone will help with this, I’ve decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo for the first time.

My mission, as it is for others, will be to write a novel of at least 50,000 words. But, maybe unlike others, I don’t want these words to be polished. I want them to be raw, ending in work not finely chiseled.

I usually concentrate on writing memoir and screenplays, not fiction. And, the way I look at it, writing a quick, unpolished novel–new terrain–will provide the opportunity to succeed by granting me room to write material that’s quite imperfect. By writing without strings, without wires, without need of any safeguards, I’ll be learning, having fun, and producing writing that blasts through my creative asphyxiation.

What’s more, I intend to write this novel during my normal waking hours, not while hiding from the Self-Righteous Censors in the wee hours of the morning when I’m so bleary eyed and muddle headed that I can’t hold more than one thought in my mind at once. I’ll write out in the open, with light shining on my page, because I know there’s no possibility of failure as long as I put my fingers on the keyboard and let the characters tell their story.

The idea for the novel came to me last year, and it’s been sitting in a file. It’s not an outline–just a mini-page of random notes, literary wishes instead of ideas. For months, every time I’ve looked at that file on my computer, I’ve thought about NaNoWriMo. Should I? Should I not? Should I spare myself the chance of failure?

But, today I signed up, and the plan’s a go. And today I begin to remember the joy of writing.

On that day ten years ago, I looked up at the breathtakingly beautiful clear azure blue sky before I walked into my office building in Columbus, Ohio, and felt that everything was right. Things had started going well for me at work and with my family. For the first time in a long time, my guard was down.

Not ten minutes later I saw an Internet photo showing a huge hole in the side of one of the towers at the World Trade Center. Soon, I stood before the TV in my office and watched a jetliner ram the other tower.

I knew my world had changed forever. My knees buckled, my hands shook, and I sank into my chair.

My thoughts jolted to my nineteen-year-old daughter, my husband, my parents, my siblings. My two poodles and five cats. I wanted us to be together, holding each other.

Still, a part of me was glad to be alone. I felt so unnerved and vulnerable. Terrified. I don’t like people seeing me like that and needed some time to rebuild my protective walls.

But when the towers fell and I heard the eerie noise of the first responders’ personal alarms screaming for help, it was just too much, and I ventured out of my office to find my colleagues. While I was on my way to the conference room, where the big television sat, my supervisor hugged me. I appreciated it, hugged her back, and meant it. Then we all sat around the table watching news reports and looking for Flight 93. Hoping. Praying. Fearing.

We weren’t always such a great team. We argued over petty points, sometimes undercut each other. But, as we sat around the table, we understood each other and wanted the same things. Security, stability, peace.

As we tried to absorb and believe the unbelievable television coverage from Ground Zero, what struck me most was the terror on the faces of the dust-covered people and how they clung to each other. Strangers intertwined. Nobody wanted to be alone. The trauma was too great.

I left work at noon. On the drive home I heard reports of gas stations jacking up prices to outlandish levels and people waiting in line to pay the prices before anybody else got there to get all the fuel. I started wondering what our lives would be like the next day, the next week, six months later, ten years later. I couldn’t even imagine it.

What did we have to look forward to if one minute the sky was a beautiful clear azure blue and everything was okay and in the next few minutes almost 3,000 people were dead?

I didn’t want to live in that kind of world.

Every day for weeks I woke up at 3 a.m. to sit in front of the television while workers sifted through debris at Ground Zero. Watching was all I could do to help. It was my duty.

Life went on. During the next few weeks and months people were friendly. We all had American flags flying outside our houses. We spoke to each other in stores and made way for each other in the street. We worked together to try to rebuild security, stability, and peace. Or to build something like them.

We have at least made it past the once unimaginable ten-year mark.

Yesterday, my one-year-old grandson and his daddy built a tower out of blocks. They also built a robot to guard it.

The smell of saddle leather thrilled me as Patches, my very own pony, stepped along the gravel road. Her brown and white head slowly bobbed up and down next to Pa’s as he led us around the block on which sat the little green house he shared with Nanny. Short for six years old, I could hardly stretch my legs down far enough to reach the stirrups. Still, I felt as much like a wild cowboy as a little girl in West Portsmouth, Ohio, could.

In my beloved cowboy hat and boots, I nearly lived my dreams during the latter end of several Augusts in the mid 1960s when I punctuated the long luxurious summer breaks from school with week-long stays at my mother’s parents’ home.

One day, as Pa, Patches, and I walked around a corner, I heard a neighbor’s male pony begin to call out. Patches forgot herself and started rearing, which she’d never done before. Pa jerked the reins to regain control, grimaced, and jumped around trying to stay out from under the pony’s hooves while still managing to reach up and readjust his striped engineer’s cap. My little hands clung to the pommel, and my knees squeezed the fenders.

I’d seen enough episodes of Gunsmoke and Bonanza while visiting Pa and Nanny to know that a horse could suddenly go wild and throw its rider, which almost always ended in a painful death, at least in my imagination. So, I did what any cowboy with a will to live would do.

I jumped off while the pony’s front legs were in midair, somehow landed full on my feet, and lit out down the hill towards Pa and Nanny’s house emitting a piercing scream that would put a siren to shame. My running down that steep, slippery, gravel slope at full throttle without skidding on my face for several yards seemed like a miracle to me even then.

When I saw Nanny burst out of the house, her expression told me she thought she’d find me bloodied and Pa dead. In an instant, I found myself gratefully enveloped in Nanny’s arms and knew I’d survive. I never even bothered to look back to see about Pa’s fate, but soon I heard his high-pitched laugh–“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee–as he led Patches back into the yard.

Later that afternoon, while the cicadas sang in the afternoon’s heat, Nan and I perched ourselves in the living room, watched her TV “progrums,” snapped fresh green beans, and chatted. I told Nanny lies about mean things my mother had supposedly done to me, and she feigned sympathy while the smoke from her Salems danced in the light streaming in through the picture window’s once-white sheer curtains. “I’ll have to speak to her about that,” Nanny said in the tone mothers use when they need to discipline their children. She suggested sneaky ways I could get back at my mother, and we giggled while reflecting on the ramifications of such bold actions, knowing full well they’d never come to fruition.

An hour or so later, a hunk of fatback joined the beans in a pot to simmer while Nanny boiled ears of corn, sliced rich red homegrown tomatoes just off the vine, and made corn bread from scratch. Soon, we drank buttermilk with our supper and thought we dined like royalty.

By 9 p.m., we snored in bed, exhausted.

Maybe the next day Pa and I went “downtown” and had a milkshake at Smith’s Drug Store as we waited to pick up Nanny after her shift in the men’s clothing department at Montgomery Wards. Maybe we went to the hardware store, where I begged for a new stick pony and penny-pinching Pa relented. Maybe Nanny encouraged me to run my fingers through her sparkly jewelry and let me wear some of her clip-on earrings. Maybe Pa and I sat on the stoop in front of the little green house as he sliced an apple I picked off the tree, and we munched while I soaked up tales about Billy the Kid’s adventures, which I hoped to emulate someday.

As the glorious days passed, I longed more and more for home and looked forward to the new school year. Still, I left Pa and Nanny’s hiding tears from my parents as we drove home to Dayton.

Though the annual trips to my grandparents’ home lasted only a few more magical years, Pa and Nanny gave me dreams and memories that still buoy me in times of sadness. Only later did I come to understand that my grandparents treasured our visits as much as I did because those golden days offered respites from the vicious inner demons that haunted them, some from as far back as their own brutal childhood years.

Writing is tough. Who would disagree with that?

But, for me, the least of the difficulty occurs when I’m at the keyboard putting one word after another. And that process can be so difficult that my straight hair nearly curls because my brain’s pushing so hard.

What’s even more difficult is getting my butt, brain, and heart in the seat to write.

I spend much of my day thinking about writing. But I don’t make it to the keyboard as often as I should because people important to me depend on my being present in their lives.

I don’t want to disappoint my family, my friends, my students by being negligent. By not helping when called upon, and sometimes even when I’m not. I want to go to bed at night thinking I’ve done my best to be what everyone needs me to be.

And I’m not just addressing the time folks want to share with me and me with them. Even when I’m away from my people I think about them, worry about them, wish them well, try to figure out their problems.

By the time I get to the keyboard my mind is so cloudy that I often haven’t the peace of mind to work.

Why do I allow this to happen? Why do I so often feel that my allegiance to my fellows supersedes my allegiance to myself?

Writing is solitary work. It requires me to spend a good bit of time alone. Not just physically alone, but also mentally and emotionally alone. I like that state of being. It suits me. It feeds and refreshes me.

The secret is that I often like writing better than I like being with those I love. Because when I’ve finally gotten beyond my obligations to others and put my butt in the seat, targeted my brain and my heart, and started tapping the keyboard making text, I’m in the zone, I’m happy. My brain and my heart no longer have to dissect my motivation and make value judgments about what I’m doing and what I should be doing. By then, I’m doing what’s best for me. What I need to do to be happy and fulfilled.

I’ve worked to support others. Now it’s time to train my efforts on my own self. I have to do a better job of stealing a few moments every day to feed myself so I can be a stronger human being.

It’s time for me to put myself first.

By the time I held newborn Carter in my arms, it was all over. He’d won my heart. But getting there was quite a journey.

All I could think about when I saw the photo of my daughter and son-in-law holding a positive pregnancy test was how I was going to look sitting in a rocking chair with my soon-to-be gray hair wadded up in a bun.

I was too young to be a grandmother. I had my whole damn life ahead of me.

I knew my reaction wasn’t textbook. They expected me to cry, jump up, and hug my daughter. Instead, I stayed glued to the couch, painted a smile on my face, and searched silently for the words I was supposed to say. “Congratulations!” finally came out of my face. “When are you due?”

I’d been taking care of people for years, and I wasn’t ready to add to the list.

Okay. I got over that. I started passing by the usually avoided baby section in stores. I started caressing pink little-girl dresses and sparkly ruby slippers as I walked by. I remembered when my own daughter was young. I could handle that again. I could play Barbies with a little girl.

Then I found out she was a boy.

I didn’t know what the heck to do with a boy. I didn’t know what a boy liked to play with or how he’d think. I remembered how my brother managed to get a major injury every week from the time he was six years old until he was grown up. And I’d never done booboos very well.

That’s where I was on the day Carter was born. I feared I’d never connect with a being so unlike me and for whom I was so unsuited.

Then I saw him. He resembled my daughter. Years seemed to disappear. Sometimes the lines between being a mother and a grandmother blurred right before my eyes.

While I was disoriented, I had to learn all over again how to take care of a baby. Hold Carter’s head. Realize that he’d develop in stages. That he wouldn’t be able to recite or even understand The Gettysburg Address right out of the womb and that I would have to find some way to communicate with him.

Instinctively, I did for Carter like I did for my daughter. I held and caressed him. Because my touch was like his mother’s, Carter bonded with me. The more I saw him, the more I wanted to see him.

I helped Carter manipulate his little toys. I played with them differently than others, in atypical combinations. I put the stacking cups upside down on Carter’s workbench. It made him think. He accepted me for what I was and looked forward to what I’d do.

Later I learned that climbing played an integral part in our relationship. I served as Everest to Carter’s Sir Edmund Hillary. I got a hug every now and then. It melted my heart.

I’ve taken care of Carter when he was miserable with teething and a bad cold. I’ve given him lunch when he was joyful, breakfast when he wasn’t. I’ve put him to bed when he was grateful and when he was grumpy. No matter what, I did my best, not always doing the right thing, but always trying. Carter forgave my shortcomings.

It was a year ago today that he came into the world. I’m still not sure I know what being a grandmother is all about, but Carter and I are on our way to finding out.

And I’m looking forward to it.

Sky walks around the office scratching on walls. Then I have to rescue him from the bathroom when he pounds the door closed, gets trapped in the dark, and starts howling. I open the door, and Sky’s bright blue eyes thank me. As soon as I sit down to start working again, Sky paws through a stack of papers that almost falls over.

“Why can’t you be like the other four cats in the house?”

As soon as these words snap out of my mouth, I regret them. I know the answer.

Sky’s deaf.

When he was six weeks old and no bigger than four jumbo-sized cotton balls, Sky explored the house as any kitten would, but he couldn’t hear the houseplant on the living-room end table topple over as he frolicked by and didn’t realize trinkets on my dresser fell to the floor in his wake. This wasn’t so bad during the day, but at night John and I had to jump out of bed to clean up Sky’s messes and put him back in bed with us each time something went awry. We went two full months with almost no sleep.

In the wee hours of one long morning, John encouraged Sky to chase the tiny pinpoint of our laser up and down the hall. The poor little kitty got so tired that he slept between John and me–upside down–until our alarm went off hours later. So, we started running Sky once before bed at 11 and then again at 2 a.m.

Not being able to sleep was bad enough, but what really troubled me was the fear that, because Sky couldn’t hear, we wouldn’t be able to keep him safe. For instance, I worried about how to teach Sky to stay off the hot burners on the stove. I feared he wouldn’t hear our admonitions to stay inside the house, and that he’d get lost.

But Sky was smarter than I.

He modeled his behavior after our two, white toy-poodle boys, Ebie and Romey. Because they were the color of Sky’s mother, he loved them at first sight.

Trying to be one of the pack, Sky ran to the door when we came home. He begged for food. He watched when I chastised the dogs for various household infractions. He observed the dogs come to me, beg forgiveness, and get hugs.

Soon, without realizing it, when I left a room and wanted Sky to follow me, I waved him on with my hand, just like I did when I wanted the poodles to follow. When Sky got up on the stove, I made an angry face and wagged my finger at him, just like I did when the poodles chewed our doorjamb. After I scolded him, Sky ran to me to make up.

Sky even snuggled with the dogs, no matter how pointedly Ebie and Romey expressed their displeasure.

While the dogs took occasional nips at Sky through the years when I wasn’t looking, he never got angry. No matter who elbowed himself into the front of the group ahead of Sky or who stole food from him, Sky never smacked the offender or offered any sign of intimidation.

When Ebie went blind and Romey went deaf, Sky tried even harder to snuggle with the dogs to comfort them. Now that we’ve lost Ebie, Sky’s trying to take Ebie’s place as big brother and support Romey.

As it’s turned out, I couldn’t have been more incorrect when I thought Sky had a disability. He was born with the gift of seeing what others don’t.

On June 29, 2008, at 3:29 p.m., while I strolled through Barnes & Noble, a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD caught my eye. I picked it up and examined it as “Phyllis Geichman” popped up on my phone’s screen.

I sighed. Mom wanted to talk.

I was busy trying to find a gift for a young friend who’d broken her ankle so badly it needed surgery, and I was running out of time. I knew that, once Mom got on a roll, she talked for ages.

I almost didn’t pick up the phone.

Mom always tried to sound upbeat, but on this day she sounded particularly cheerful. “I finally remembered to call before you went to bed,” she proudly proclaimed. Mom was notorious for calling me so late in the evening that I couldn’t even form sentences. I lived on the early part of the day; she lived on the other end of it.

“Uh huh…uh huh…” I said as I meandered about the store looking at potential purchases.

Over the course of fifteen minutes, Mom gave me a refrain of all her worries about the family and the world at large. I was used to Mom’s worrying aloud. Almost immune.

Our relationship had been like this for years. Somehow we ended up talking at each other instead of to each other.

“Mom!” I blurted. “I don’t think you should worry about it. Listen, can I call you back tonight? I’m kind of busy right now.”

“Aw, that’s okay, honey. I guess I’ve said just about all I have to say.”

Relief rushed over me. I simply wanted to get off the phone and get my shopping done.

“Okay, Mom. I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.”

“I love ya, Lis.”

“I love you, too, Mom. Bye.”

I turned off my cell and continued shopping without a second thought.

Four days later Mom suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm, was intubated, and never spoke again. She died three weeks later.

If I had one wish–just one–I’d wish for the chance to relive that moment three years ago today when I gave my mother so little, and I was about to lose so much.

One time when I was a little girl, I asked Dad how fires spread from one tree to another. He described the process during a twenty-minute orientation about physical and chemical properties. Dad’s a chemist, and he knows about these things.

I’d posed the question on our weekly trip to the doctor’s office to get my allergy injection. Every Saturday morning, Dad and I were up and out of the house by 8:30.

I never minded not being able to stay home and lazily watch TV cartoons and munch on sugary cereal as my younger brother and sister and all the other kids I knew did every week. I enjoyed being alone with Dad. He and I were similar: introverted thinkers.

We usually rode in silence on the thirty-minute drive to the doctor’s office, neither of us being exuberant morning people. Then we sat side by side in the waiting room for my turn at the needle, still not engaging in conversation.

After the doctor’s office, we stopped off at the hardware store. By this time in the morning, my questions had started. A steady stream of inquiries about paint and nails and caulk guns. Dad weathered them without irritation.

Next, we often grabbed a snack. We ate toast and sipped milk and coffee while reading the paper and chatting about the stories or about things at home.

We topped off the excursion with a trip through the grocery store, making our first purchase at the deli to get my favorite–chicken gizzards. I chewed between asking Dad questions, which he patiently answered as he tried to shop.

Even then I knew that Dad wasn’t a fan of making big physical overtures. He just wasn’t a huggy-feely kind of Dad. He showed how important we were to him by doing little things. He never said no to the chicken gizzards. He always let my brother, sister, and me have the kind of cookies we liked. He made sure to buy our favorite corned beef and then refereed when we fought over it. He often splurged and brought home shrimp cocktail.

Dad and I continued our Saturday-morning dates even through the summer right before I left home to attend college. Late in August, as we drove home from our weekly jaunt, Dad placed his palm on top of my left hand, which was resting on the seat beside me. He caressed the top of my hand, then turned it over and placed his palm in mine. “Your hand’s soft,” he said.

He held it all the way home.

I hold my ten-month-old grandson, Carter, in my arms as we stand by the door waving good-bye to his parents for the evening. I’m not strong and find Carter so heavy that I can hardly hold him. Still, I manage to let loose with one hand and wave.

I don’t much like doing it. I dropped my daughter when she was just a little older than Carter. She hit her head, and I can still hear that terrible sound.

But I wave happily anyway to ease Carter’s concerns about seeing his parents leave him behind. My husband, John, and I take Carter upstairs to the playroom, and all the negativity disappears.

As soon as I put Carter on the floor, he crawls enthusiastically from one toy to another, only pausing for a moment now and then to look behind to see if I’m following. Otherwise, Carter never misses a beat. He goes full steam ahead.

We first play with the caterpillar that says the ABCs. Next, we grind the handle on the toy that makes the Weebles climb up the conveyor belt and slide down the chute. I watch Carter’s brown eyes as he figures out how to make the toy work.

We read for a while. I reach for books with pictures of animals, but Carter’s interest lies in human faces. He focuses on the eyes in the pictures and then lightly rubs them with his index finger. He rocks back and forth to get me to turn the page so he can see some more.

Soon, he plays with the toy that uses air to pop the balls out of the top. Next, he pulls himself up on a precariously unstable little toy chair.

Whatever Carter does, he doesn’t worry. He doesn’t look back. To him everything’s geared toward the future, toward learning about the world and adjusting while at full stride.

I notice this because I have a really bad habit of going through life with my eyes on the rear-view mirror. I often obsess over the past and examine how I could have done something better. Written more insightfully. Taught my students more effectively. Connected more thoughtfully with a friend. Been a more considerate mother.

It doesn’t get me much but worry and hurt. It doesn’t help me react better in the future. It doesn’t help me learn. Only looking ahead can do that.

When I look into Carter’s eyes as we play, I see the future. I see the good and bad things that can happen, but at least I can see them.