A Normal Sunday

Trudi and I spent this Sunday morning as we had spent our previous Sunday mornings pre-tumor: we went to The Fishhouse, where on weekends they serve New Orleans style beignets and chicory coffee.

This is our first, and so far, favorite local ritual. When I woke this morning and realized through the blinding sunlight (still no real shades) that it was in fact Sunday and that I had someplace I looked forward to going to--I was happy. Excited even.

As I've become older the number of things that stir me to "excitement" dwindles. It's my consequence of aging. Experience loses its sheen. Not necessarily in my experience of it during, or even in my analysis of it after, but mainly in my imagining of it before. Either an event--let's say brunch, for example--becomes familiar enough that I believe I know it well enough that there is little novel reward to expect.

Plus there are always the bad things. When I go to brunch, there are myriad fears lurking--meeting new people if that's part of the agenda, having conversations with those new people which cause me to question the self-delusions I've crafted (those took so long to ferment--such a shame to see them erode away over some over-thought breakfast dish), getting in a life-threatening car accident on the way to such conversations, or even getting lost--which never makes you feel good about your ability to navigate life.

Add to this list the entirety of possibilities which I cannot imagine. Possibilities so remote, so dependent on other possibilities, that trying to imagine them would bring me closer to a paranoid fantasy than a rational thought-line. Still, without going into any details, I factor in the small possibility of these floating, amorphous bad things. (Understood, there is a flip-side, a possibility of unknown and unguessable good things that could happen. I could meet a new friend, find a lotto ticket, things like that. But this is not something that I realistically care about. An unknown fear is something rational to be dealt with, an unknown boost seems a non-consideration.)

All these potential bads, combined with the low-expectation of goods, keep most activities, familiar or not, on the no-thanks-maybe-some-other-time list. (This is a system of thought I often have to manually override. Simply because I know the list is getting too long. If the system had its way, I may, someday sooner than I might expect, be doing nothing at all.)

This whole line of consideration could be placed under the category of "depression and depressive thoughts." But I hate that category, mainly because of how socially contextually driven its existence is. I prefer to leave it out, or only mention it like so.

Which is all to say, maybe I'm feeling a bit "depressed" these days? Which in and of itself is a depressing thought (huh?). I mean, the fact that I can still feel depressed after having this life-frightening event is, well, I don't know. It means things are normal in the good and bad way. It means I'm not dying--yeah! It means I'm not dying, booh!

I still have to deal with the same old same old. Which is partially "depression" and that fact itself feels a bit "depressing."

But this morning, brunch excites me. Sure, I can explain this easily enough by the relatively near-death scare of a brain tumor and brain operation. (I've had brain surgery! Sometimes I still don't really believe it, despite the nine inch laceration that hides behind my new hair line.)

At breakfast: We sat and drank our coffee, while we waited for our beignets and potato cakes to be brought out to us. I cleaned up the coffee that spilled as the table wobbled. I kept looking around us--at each of our sides we were flanked by young families with a single child. The women were fairly attractive, and looked to be about my age. I imagined they still considered themselves sexual beings--as one girl bent over to lift up her son, I could see a full view of her breasts. She looked me in the eyes for a moment, and then back to the kid. She was not unpretty, and while her breasts were remarkable in their fullness, not much more about her stirred me. Still, I thought, women don't put on shirts without knowing how visible their bodies are in them. I imagined her and her husband at parties, drinking, flirting with each other or with other people. Where are the kids when this happens? Does this scene happen at all?

I began scribing a poem to her in my mind: To The Mother In The Blue Dress Barely Containing Your Breasts your face is not so pretty/ your husband has a pony tail/ you want me to fuck you. . . You don't want me/ you want someone you don't know at a brunch house to want to fuck you, because that means you're still doing something right.
I hadn't worked out the line breaks exactly.
"What are you thinking about?" Trudi asked.
"Nothing," I said, in my kid voice.
"Oh, bullshit," she said.
"You're bullshit," I said.
"Why don't you tell me what you're thinking."
"Because I don't know if I want to talk about it. It's nothing, it's just. . I was just noticing how young all these people with kids are."
"They're not really young."
"No, I know, they're not like, especially young or something. I guess they just felt like my age range or so--young like that."
"You're not thinking about having kids are you?"
"Fuck, no, well. . . shit." I said. I stared down into my coffee, and swirled the cup around. "Thanks for ruining it."
"What?"
"Eh, you know, when you're thinking about something but you don't realize you're actually thinking about it. And then when you realize it, it ruins the whole thing."
"Uh. . .not really. But is that what you were thinking about?"
"Well, sort-of, indirectly. I mean, I don't know, but it seems to make sense, I guess, from your perspective--"
"Oh, fuck you," Trudi said, laughing. She put her coffee down. "Me? What, and my ovaries?"
"Oh," I laughed. "That's not what I meant. I just meant, you know, anyone outside of me, how they would see it. But since you react that way, I guess that's something." I smirked, knowing this would burn enough to take the focus off me.

Trudi finished her last gulp of coffee. "I've been thinking about Mandy's kids," she said. "I never realized how much my brother and I learned from our parents. I mean, not so much factual stuff--"
"But how to think about the world." I said.
"Yeah. I guess I thought how we were brought up was how everyone was brought up. But I guess not."
"So you're doing the same thing?"
"What?"
"You're thinking about having kids too?"
"Ah, dammit!" she said.
"See what I mean? Ruins the whole thing."
"Yeah," Trudi said.

I'm seven years older than Trudi. It's something we've both been a little worried about--our difference in age handing us different desires re: children. Of course, there's this tumor thing now, too, which changes stuff. (A brain tumor will change you!)

My primary doc had told me the good news. After he had spoke to me for some long time about brain tumors, he left me alone in his office to go do something or other, I don't remember what. (Me standing there alone in his office feels like the first moment I had a tumor--not when I was told ten or fifteen minutes earlier, and not the first moment I actually had it-because when the hell was that exactly?--but the first moment, after having been told, where I was alone-that was when I first had it.) I stood in his office and looked at his photos. He had one child in the pictures. I thought about two things:

One: I hadn't finished my book. I wasn't angry about this. I didn't feel this was due to any lack of determination or personal integrity or work ethic (as I do right now). I was just busy with other life-things, was how I saw it.
Two: I didn't have a child. I was immediately aware that these two considerations were probably the same--the desire to leave something of myself behind. To feel like I changed the world in a concrete, visible way.

I wondered if I had time to have a kid. I was still completely ignorant of my real situation--I knew nothing of the pineal gland tumors and their treatableness. Unfortunately, neither did my doctor. So while he had tried to make me feel like there were plenty of treatment options, I only heard "brain tumor." Since my next door neighbor and ex-hook-up (same person) had died of a brain tumor and its cancerous origins, it seemed that "brain tumor" = "death." Not immediately, but eventually, after some painful and embarrassing months of "treatment."

But maybe I had a couple of years--who knew? If I did have a few years, I could have Trudi carry my child. I guessed that she would do that for me if I asked. Who could refuse that? I wondered if that would be fair to Trudi, or to this future child. Was this selfish or giving? What would their lives be like after I were gone? I imagined writing him endless letters, or making videos, or audio tapes. (Actually, all this would be digital. Much less fun.) I recalled a movie where a would-be father gets cancer and makes a cache of videos of life-lessons for his child.

The doctor returned. He told me more things about tumors and surgeries. I stopped fantasizing about having a child and started concerning myself with staying alive.

I told Trudi about it later that night at dinner--which, since it still was before I knew I had a better than good chance at living, was my own "last supper."
"I would, you know," she said between bites of thirty-dollar duck. I had hoped the duck was worth it. "If you wanted me to."
I nodded. I was happy to know this. But I didn't want to have a kid. I mean, I wasn't dying or anything.