A slow week.

Some thoughts after hernia surgery. And a short poem.

Well, hello there. Let me start by acknowledging the strange political moment we’re in. It’s pretty intense. But, in spite of everything happening, I remain resolutely hopeful. And the opening of this Tuesday post from Jess Craven (whose substack I will continue to shout about on here) was really inspiring. Whatever dread you might be feeling, many others are feeling it too. People are starting to fully understand the stakes. And if we all funnel that anxiety and dread into action—be it postcards, phone-banking, conversations with tired-of-politics friends and family—no matter how small or tiny it might seem, it will be collectively quite powerful. France just surprised the world by beating back fascism. We can too.

My week has also been strange because I got hernia surgery last Friday! Whee! Weirdly enough, this is the first major surgery I’ve had since my last hernia surgery in second grade. Yes. 1989. (Taylor’s Version.) What can I say, hernia runs in my family. So, 35 years later, both before and after I was in the operating room, I found myself flashing back to memories from when I was 8—meanwhile, our younger son is going into second grade himself in the fall. So then I’m thinking about him, like I was THAT young when I had this surgery?

As Katie and I sat in a room at the hospital for two and a half hours, waiting for me to be wheeled away to surgery, various doctors popping in and out, Katie said, “This kind of feels like waiting on set.” Not only was that totally what it felt like—a similar kind of simmering anxiety—but the last time I’d worn a hospital gown was in fact for my guest role as a patient on the NBC hospital show Mercy in 2009. So I suddenly felt like I was reliving that experience too.

I was impressed by the stylish pattern on these gowns.

I should also mention that I couldn’t eat or drink anything starting at midnight the previous day. For surgery that was starting at 1 pm. (But ended up starting at 1:30.) I’m no intermittent faster; when I am without food and drink that long, it generally doesn’t go well. I get anxious. Sad. Weird.

An older woman who reminded me of my (no-longer-alive) grandmother pushed me in a wheelchair to the operating room. As we glided past hospital windows to the outside world, she said, “Hope it doesn’t start raining again. I left the front window open.” I assumed she meant the front window of her car, so I was very confused when she then said, “I got my two cats, you know?” Right before we went into the operating room, I said, “Wait, are your cats in the car?” “What?” she said, in the way you might say it when someone has asked you something very stupid. Later, after the surgery, Katie pointed out that obviously this woman was talking about the front window of her house. That does make much more sense.

Inside the room, various medical people were scattered around. I lay down on a table, and a young resident approached. I saw her ID tag said “Rubin” on it and, for a moment, thought, “Wait, do they wear my name?” But no, I soon realized this was another Rubin, which felt like a comforting sign. Also her first name was Maggie, which is the name of one of the main characters in the YA novel I’m rewriting. So that was doubly comforting. She went to strap my legs into these massage things and the older woman brusquely said, “No, I got a routine.” This was also very reminiscent of my grandmother, Minna Rubin. Maggie Rubin slowly backed away from Minna, who began her leg-strapping routine.

When I woke up three hours later in another room—the disorienting miracle of anesthesia—a nurse told me right away, “They started a little later because they had trouble getting the breathing tube down your throat. You were a difficult intubation.” “Oh,” I said. “Sorry?” I wondered at first if this was because I was so anxious as I went under that my body continued to fight off the surgery, but no—I later learned this is just an anatomical thing with my windpipe. “It’s very anterior,” the doctor told me. Okay then!

Otherwise the surgery went well. Recovery has been pretty smooth. Lots of Motrin, lots of Tylenol, lots of slow walking around the apartment.

But I haven’t even mentioned the other incredibly strange thing about this week: as of Sunday, two days after my surgery, our older son is at sleepaway camp for the first time. It’s truly weird and disorienting—not unlike anesthesia!—to have three of us in our home instead of four. It’s also weird and disorienting to, for the first time since our son was born more than a decade ago, NOT KNOW how he’s doing.

So my physical activity has slowed this week and so has our communication with our son. I mean, it hasn’t slowed; it’s stopped. And it underscores just how accustomed we all are to being in touch all the time. Our son doesn’t have a phone yet, but if he’s with his grandparents or a babysitter, we hear from them. To go four days in a row without communicating with him is absolutely unprecedented.

I don’t know what conclusions to draw from this, really, it’s just kind of profound and interesting to remember that there was a time (known by historians as “Back to the Future Part III”) when this kind of communication was the norm. When everything wasn’t instant. Fast. Convenient. You sent a letter to your son, and you imagined his response when he opened it. You looked forward to when he wrote back, if he had the time and inclination. You woke up the next day, and you wrote another letter.

This morning, the camp sent some photos, so we finally got to check in with our son that way. He seems to be doing all right. And we seem to be doing all right too. Even though we miss our older one immensely, the alone time with our younger son is lovely. Even when he jumps on the counter like a human cat and knocks chocolate milk all over the floor.

Friday night after my surgery, I couldn’t fall asleep. Maybe the three hours I’d been under anesthesia was equivalent to taking a giant nap. Or maybe it was all the Motrin and Tylenol. Whatever it was, I felt oddly energized. And grateful. And creative. So I wrote a poem.

It has nothing to do with my surgery. Not directly, anyway. But I like it. And I liked it even more after Katie read it and told me to cut more than half of it to make it better.

Hope you are having a good Thursday. Here’s to you, and to us, and to embracing the slow uncertainty of life.

---

beyond our selfies 

Something shifted
with the invention of
The selfie

Look at me
Like me 
Look at me

But also something
less obvious
below
the
surface

I don't need your help to do this
all I need
are people
to look at me
to look and like 

And when we talk 
it will be about 
what you looked at or liked about me
or
what I looked at or liked about you

The muscles that can do more than
look and like
are starting to 
atrophy

Maybe
instead
we could
sit
by each other's side
on a buzzy summer night
and not look
but 
see

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