When I Took My Heels On Vacation: A Redux

The current television ad for Pacifico Beer says, “Live life with anchors up.” 

Remember two years ago when I took my heels to Cherry Grove on Fire Island? I had all kinds of plans to just be my fabulous self—“strut, pout, put it out." But when I got there, intimidation cloaked itself around me like a 1950s Balenciaga opera coat. I was filled with anxiety. I couldn’t walk out of my cottage with them on. I was so afraid of being openly mocked or talked about behind my back. I couldn’t (or wouldn’t), and didn’t give any person there a chance to support me. I didn’t even support myself. 

I was so frustrated with my stuck-in-a-rut fear that I didn’t return the next season. I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face myself. I was embarrassed.

So here I am, two years later, headed back to the boardwalks. Before I left my house for Cherry Grove, the two fingernails that I paint (I only paint two. It’s my thing) were perfectly painted hot pink. My eyes were shadowed, lined, and mascara’d. My lips sticked in my favorite Tom Ford pink, a sheer named “Ellie.” I was going to express myself even if the anxiety made me feel as if vomiting would be an easier alternative. But guess what? The anxiety was pretty low grade. My heart was pounding, yes, but from a little bit of anxiety and a whole lot of excitement. 

I knew this trip was going to be different because I was different from the last time I’d made it. I’m normally reserved and a bit shy at first around strangers. But as I waited for the ferry to take me to that Mecca of Freedom where it seems everyone except for me thrives, I decided to get out of my way. I heard the pop of a top on what turned out to be a can of Corona. I needed one. The desire was immediate. A cold beer was the only thing that would do in the moment. I hadn’t ordered a pre-ferry beverage before. Uptight?

While waiting at the bar for my Montauk Summer Ale to arrive, I met Rick and David. Rick immediately fell in love with my hot pink t-shirt emblazoned with the likenesses of Alexis Carrington and Dominique Devereaux from the “It’s burned” scene from Dynasty circa 1984. He took a picture and from there a conversation flowed. It was easy. It should be easy. We’re all human beings. And those of us who frequent Cherry Grove have something in common. We’re either LGBTQ or an LGBTQ ally. Cue George Michael’s “Freedom 90” and play it loud. Lets all love and support each other. How about it? 

I took a deep breath of liberating air and boarded the ferry…beer in hand.

The category is: Fem Queer Living Life

I’m going to narrow this down to the “live” part of the word living. I had to live. No one was stopping me but me. I am an expressive, creative person, and I am fabulous. I’m not an abnormality. I’m as normal as any one else—and we’re all a little fucked up. And you know what? Heels are just shoes. And makeup is just pigment. Neither have power on their own. Only by my making either, or both, a big deal do they have power.  

I thought about putting my heels on the minute I dropped all my belonging off at my cottage. But I hesitated because, honestly, my fuchsia Chuck Taylor’s were too cute and the heels weren’t going to be as cute with that t-shirt. Looking back, I was probably having a relapse of my Fear of Expression and Vulnerability Syndrome. I feel like a femme fatale trapped by his own male insecurity. Move it or lose it girl!

I knew my deeply rooted fears weren’t going to magically vanish when my feet hit the boardwalk. I also knew that I was two years stronger into expressing myself. So, within the first 24 hours in Cherry Grove I wore those heels out and about three times. It was easier each time. No one said anything negative. There was no judgement, except me judging myself. I’m only slightly less exhausting than I was two years ago. But ultimately, I felt ebullient, excited, and dare I say, comfortable.

Then I damaged my right shoe. Can you believe it? On the inside where the Throat meets the Shank (shoe lingo), the shoe started to detach. There I was finally feeling liberated enough to let myself shine, and I damaged the damn shoe. Believe me when I tell you that I contemplated just feeling relieved at no longer having to challenge myself to wear the shoes. Old habits die hard. But, that contemplation was brief. In actuality, I was pissed off. The shoes were broken. I wanted to wear them. That option was taken away. I wasn’t in control. The more I looked at those shoes sitting dormant and unused, the more pissed off I got.

Two days later I had a flash of an image. I had seen black electrical tape in one of the junk drawers in the cottage. Eureka! I knew I would be able to use that tape to repair, if only temporarily, the damaged shoe. 

And temporarily it was. I only got to wear them one more time before the tape gave way to a detachment that was too damaged to repair. It’s ok. They were cheap. But their cork platforms were perfect for a beachy getaway where boardwalks exist instead of roads. And I had finally been excited, and somewhat secure, to be wearing them.

Two things happened that day though that proved to me how unfounded my fears had always been. In the final stroll that broke them, I encountered a man that said, “Nice shoes,” as he passed me, then he went back to his previous conversation because me wearing heels wasn’t a bit weird or unnatural. Hours later as I headed to the beach for a late afternoon sit, I encountered a woman who asked, “Where are your shoes?” I was slightly taken aback but completely confirmed. I told her about the irreparable damage. She suggested glue. I told her about the electrical tape. We had a chuckle. As I walked away she yelled, “You’re still glamorous.” 

The support of others goes a long way toward nurturing your courage. Dare I say the support of strangers can lift you even higher? I wouldn’t let the strangers support me two years ago.

Thinking back to the t-shirt I was wearing on the day I arrived, I realized I was wearing the image of two strong female characters. Alexis Carrington and Dominique Devereaux did not let anything, or anyone, stand in their way.

Why do I continue to limit myself? Why do I let myself be paralyzed by my own fears? I was once told in college to put razor blades on my elbows and run. There has never been a more right time for me personally to put those razor blades on and run. Maybe I need to put them on a pair of heels. Gucci produced a fabulous pair a few seasons ago with spikes. I should pull those back outta the box. Anchors up!

My journey continues...

The Guilt of Departure and the Hypocrite's Prayer

My dad was transferred from Baptist Hospital to the rehabilitation floor at Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky, a week and a few hours after his quadruple bypass. A quadruple bypass which unexpectedly led to a stroke. For all the progress he had made at Baptist, my mom and I were filled with questioning trepidation as we left him on the 8th floor at Lourdes, alone in his bed.

We were so excited that he had been accepted into the rehabilitation program at Lourdes Hospital. We waited, less than patiently, all that day for his discharge and transfer to happen. We knew that the focused therapies they offered—occupational, physical, and speech—were exactly what he needed in order to come home as close to 100% himself as possible. I had seen him trying so hard in the days leading up this moment. He was determined to improve. Although I sometimes wondered if he didn’t quite understand the questions being asked of him, pretending he did anyway, just so that he could move on to the next phase of recovery.

Side note: I wish I could make him understand that no one is going to think he is ignorant, dumb, or stupid for not knowing the answers. But I would need someone to teach me that also. Maybe if I can get him to understand it I can be my own teacher.

We left my dad in a small room with a roommate who had just arrived post leg amputation. The room was small. I’m pretty convinced it was actually smaller than his private room at Baptist Hospital. There was only one chair for a visitor to sit in, and no other place except his bed for my dad to sit. This was disappointing as part of his recovery from the heart surgery involved sitting in a chair for several hours every day. He still had to focus on that recovery even if the stroke had taken precedence. His only chair option turned out to be his wheelchair. 

The nurses seemed less than adequate and didn’t seem to care about the patients. My dad had such impressive care from most of his nurses at Baptist Hospital. But nothing about the care at Lourdes Hospital gave me hope. I felt this way the first day. So did my mom. We later learned he wasn’t being given the correct meds and that his information was entered into the system incorrectly on his first day. (Instead of heart surgery or stroke patient he was entered as a hip fracture patient.) His room often smelled. The floors were dirty. No one seemed to care. We missed Baptist so badly.

My mother couldn’t stop her tears as she leaned down and kissed my father goodbye on that first night. My heart ached for her. On our drive home I tried my best to be the emotional support that she needed all the while telling her she didn’t have to be strong for me. I couldn’t practice what I preached. I was scared and discouraged too. I told her so. Why do we find it necessary to be strong in times of stress and grief? Maybe we should all just show what we’re feeling and commiserate with one another in our tears and sadness, then get stronger together through that vulnerability. I’m not one who can speak with any confidence on vulnerability though as I find it so difficult to be vulnerable. 

A couple of days later I found myself alone in my parents’ house listening to the cast album of Dear Evan Hansen, and my vulnerability reared it ugly tears. It was as if the knot in my stomach had decided to loosen its grip, move up to my heart, and squeeze it until I nearly burst. I broke down. I felt broken. 

I felt guilty.

The day of my departure was quickly approaching. I knew that I shouldn’t feel guilty that I've built my life in New York City so far away from where my parents live. Yet the feeling of guilt persisted. I was getting ready to depart this place of corn fields and homemade ice cream and leave my mom and my sister there to carry the weight of my dad’s recovery…alone.

I looked around the living room in my parents’ house and read the sayings that decorate the walls: “Our family is filled with Love,” “Loved you yesterday, Love you still, Always have, Always will,” “Family is where life begins & Where love never ends.” These words seem to vibrate straight from my mother’s heart. I pondered the words as I focused on the pictures. I saw the framed photographs of my niece and nephew smiling back at me. I prayed to God that their papaw would be healed and returned home to them fully himself. They need him in their lives. I prayed that he would return home to my mom. She’s been his wife since she was 17-years old. They are each other’s world. I prayed for my sister who was in agony  over her fear that our dad might not return home our dad. I walked back to the bedroom my parents still share 47 years later and stood on his side of the bed. I looked up to the ceiling, tears streaming down my cheeks. I begged to be heard. I begged for God to help my dad recover. I begged for God to bring him home to take his place back in that bed again.

I felt like such a hypocrite for praying. But isn’t that what we do? We pray when we’re scared. We pray when we feel the desperation that comes with the shock of events like  heart attacks and strokes. We pray as we grasp for hope.

No matter the distance between our homes, no matter the distance between our hearts, I want to walk into my parents’ house the next time I’m visiting and feel my dad’s arms around me. I want to hear him laugh. I want to hear him say my name. I want to listen to him tell a story that may not really interest me but that I care about merely because he is still here to tell it…and that he can still remember it at all.

We won’t fish together. We won’t hunt…anything. We won’t really watch the Cardinals play baseball. But we can sit on the front porch and enjoy a cup of coffee while birds chirp and passersby honk. Hopefully my mom will join us with a cup of hot chocolate and take on the fly swatting duties.

When My Dad’s Heart Surgery Became The Lesser of Two Trauma’s

It was hard to imagine what my dad was going to look like hooked up to tubes. I’d seen it before with both of my maternal grandparents and my paternal grandfather. But there was no real way to prepare myself to see my dad in this way. He had gone into surgery just after my flight departed New York’s LaGuardia Airport headed for the landing strip that is Paducah, Kentucky. By the time I arrived at the hospital the surgery was over. 

Much like ripping off a bandaid, I walked into his room in ICU. I had to. As much as I wanted to hesitate, there could be no hesitation. There he lay—my normally active-to-the-point-that-I’m-exhausted dad—hooked to monitors, floating in and out of consciousness, and ultimately silenced by a breathing tube.

There were more drips than I’d ever seen hooked to one person. Two IV poles with 6-8 bags on each pole. It was alien. Bag after bag of clear liquid flowed into his body, necessary for healing and pain, but still disturbing and ominous.

He knew we were there. He periodically open his eyes, revealing brown irises so large that they seemed to have overtaken all the white space. He wanted to speak. He tried to speak. The breathing tube, of course, prevented that. He nodded instead—communication restored in a primitive way that brought more relief than one could imagine it bringing.

When my sister called me three days prior to the events that led to this ICU layover I was alarmed yet not completely dismayed. She told me that my father was going to the ER complaining of shortness of breath, chest discomfort, and a bit of numbness in the arm. I wouldn’t really let myself believe that my father might be having a heart attack. That just wasn’t on the agenda. Again, not prepared. Is anyone ever? 

My dad is not the healthiest eater in the world. Never has been. And there have been many occasions of trying to persuade him to take better care of himself. But he is strong-willed and stubborn. He wants to do what he wants to do. Arguing eventually gets old and inevitably one gives up the fight.

Recovery was moving along at a rapid pace. His doctors and nurses were astonished at how well he was doing. Thirty-six hours post surgery he was moved from ICU to his own room on the fourth floor of Baptist Hospital. My family and me, we were thrilled with his progress. So what if he was a little confused? So what if he seemed a bit vacant? He had just been through quadruple bypass with all the anesthesia that goes with it. We didn’t know how long it would take his body to rid itself of the anesthesia. Nor did we know how the pain meds, which my dad rarely takes, might be affecting him. What we did know was that he had a hard time turning to the right and seemed to take longer than necessary to register what was said…or who we were. 

My sister, a nurse herself (and struggling to be daughter instead of nurse), knew something was wrong. She told other nurses. She told respiratory therapists. She was met with reactions of unconcern followed with explanations like, “the anesthesia needs to wear off” and “there’s been so much trauma to the body.” But my sister sees my dad almost daily. She knew something was off. It was actually she who came up with the word “vacant” to describe the look on his face. 

Finally, a physical therapist saw for himself what my sister had been seeing and questioning. And the unthinkable began to run riot in our minds. My dad, the strong, independent, hard-headed man I've known all my life, had had a stroke.

I was angry. I was angry at God. I was angry at the doctor. Human being, party of one. I called my best friend, Neal, and spewed my anger to his listening ear as I paced from corner to corner in a makeshift waiting area.  And much like Jesus did in John 11:35, I wept.

I have never been one to deny my Baptist upbringing. Nor have I denied how it has negatively affected me. But I felt the power of all the prayer that surrounded us. I felt the power in his room. I felt the power in the hallway outside his room. Hands were laid upon my dad. Tears were shed. His name was lifted up to heaven. It took me back to the days of my youth when this act was a part of my everyday life. I felt the power that I struggle so hard to have faith in… to believe in. But it was my family’s faith that gave them comfort even as they dealt with fear and anger of their own. And it was their faith, and the faith of their friends, that comforted me by proximity.

We’re all human beings filled with emotions. It’s natural to be angry, to be scared, to be frustrated, to doubt, to question, to feel bad about laughing in moments of sadness, to feel hope when the situation is dire.

My dad and I have never been particularly close. I’ve struggled with that for most of my life. We have our ups and downs…and silences. But I love him, and I know he loves me. I never anticipated a moment when my dad would struggle to find my name in his memory. My heart ached. I stood before him, staring into his brown eyes, mentally sending the name Michael straight into them. I watched as his mouth tried to form the word. I heard the Um’s as he searched. I saw the frustration on his face. I felt the panic in my heart even as I tried to keep my face blank. Then he said it. My attempt at a blank face still had tension that relaxed. Who knew hearing my name said aloud could be so important? But the double clutch of anxiety and sadness barely released its grip on my heart.

As the days progressed, his quadruple bypass became more and more the secondary trauma. It was almost as if he hadn’t had the heart surgery at all. He wasn’t complaining about pain and rarely took a pain pill. He was getting up from his chair more easily. And walking became less and less difficult. 

The stroke became the focus. 

I could see him fighting to find the words for the pictures he was being asked to identify: glove, keys, feather. I saw him miss the word hammock three days in a row. 

Eventually he began to more easily find his words for speaking, but writing them was a new challenge. I watched as the Speech Pathologist patiently taught him the sound of letters like “f” and “s” much like I remember learning them in elementary school. Every day he was better than the day before. Every day the recognition improved. Every day the conversations were more engaged. Every day he was more like my dad. 

We all know that the heart is our emotional center, and I’ve been told that with heart surgery emotions can run high and spill over without reason. That is true. Dad would often get emotional, cry without warning, stop crying within seconds. Sometimes I couldn't find the reason. Other times it was clear that he was extremely effected as he began to realize he was making progress. He was also very moved by the love he felt from visitors, most of whom had been positively affected by the way he lives his life.

On the morning of the day he was to be moved to the rehabilitation center I walked into room 437 at Baptist Hospital and saw my dad…not just the shell of the man. He was sitting in the reclining chair watching my nephew Dylan play baseball on my sister’s computer. He smiled. He was more himself than he’d been even the day before. I recognized that man. 

“There are bridges you cross you didn't know you crossed until you've crossed.” Stephen Schwartz, Wicked.

As we sat in his room waiting for the doctor to make his final round then sign the discharge/transfer papers, our holding-pattern-of-a-day was broken when dad passed gas. It will probably embarrass him that I even wrote this, but it was the most natural thing in the world. However, what followed was even more so. My brother-in-law said, “Her-ca-lees,” a la Mama Klump in The Nutty Professor. The entire room cracked up, including the best sound I’d heard all week…full-throated laughter from my dad. Natural. Easy.

I think the grip of anxiety finally began to release its hold on my heart. All of dad’s progress in such a short time was nothing short of miraculous. We all knew there was a long road ahead. But I’ll take a long road over a grave any day.