fierce attachments

a mother-daughter blog about the fierce attachments in our lives… title inspired by Vivian Gornick's wonderful memoir
June 27, 2012

the only thing Jesus Christ and J.R. Ewing have in common

by caitlin meredith

A Northern Californian childhood had some major advantages. There were mountains to hike and ski, the ocean to swim and fish, and the Redwood forest to breathe in and explore. The cultural patrimony was rich as well: hippies.  At least in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s, in Marin County hippies were parked in their VW Buses on every street corner, teaching me about the groovy universe. Hippies like my art teacher Turquoise who introduced my Montessori kindergarten class to Mother Earth and trail mix. Hippies like the parents of my classmates who named their children Meadow Rose and Morning Star and who didn’t allow refined sugar in their households.  And, of course, hippies like my parents who (before I was on the scene) spent weekends talking, then shouting, about their feelings in encounter groups.  Though hippies were long on organic produce (marijuana), psychotherapy and world peace, there were a few crucial American concepts they failed to transmit to those at their knee. Namely, Christianity and contemporary American television programming.

As a direct result of these missing pieces in my intellectual development, I believe I’m one of the only Americans over the age of 25 for whom Jesus Christ and J.R. Ewing occupy roughly the same plane in my cultural landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

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June 24, 2012

god, lies and Romney

by nikki meredith

via nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com

When I was in elementary school, I had a secret: my parents didn’t believe in god.  This was a source of anxiety for me because in the 1950’s everyone went to church. Everyone except my parents and their heathen friends.  I wasn’t totally left out of the religious experience, however.  Though they didn’t believe in god, they wanted me exposed to all sides of all issues, so they enrolled me in an after school bible class. That made things worse. The teacher illustrated stories from the bible on a felt board. The image that made the biggest impression on me was a tableau of a kindly Jesus Christ administering to lepers.  My parents didn’t administer to lepers so I concluded that people who believed in Christ and hence in God were kinder, gentler, in short, of better character. Consequently, I kept my parents’ atheism securely in the closet.

At some point along the way I noticed that my parents, in spite of their godlessness, seemed to be guided by compassion and integrity in  their work and in their personal lives. They didn’t nurse lepers, I don’t think they even knew any, but they were committed to social and economic justice.  I have no doubt that my father’s Jesuit education contributed to these beliefs just as my maternal grandmother’s activism – she was a feminist, an anarchist and a protégé of Emma Goldman’s — informed my mother’s world view.  At a later point, I also realized that a lot of religious people were capable of doing very bad things to other human beings. Read the rest of this entry »

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June 4, 2012

my migraine, my HMO and me

by nikki meredith

As I’ve indicated in a previous post, I’ve had migraines for 34 years. During that time I’ve been treated by internists, family practice physicians, neurologists, chiropractors, homeopaths, acupuncturists, biofeedback therapists, and a multitude of body work practitioners employing a variety of techniques – acupressure, shiatsu, rolfing, etc. I have practiced yoga, Pilates, and an assortment of aerobic exercises promising that the oxygen intake would diminish my pain. I’ve also been injected with Botox, which, as mentioned in my last post, did not work. I’ve ingested feverfew, fish oil capsules and St. Johns Wart and because some migraine sufferers have been helped by anti-depressants, I have been prescribed Prosac, Paxil, Wellbutrin and Nardil (this is a scary one: if you eat aged cheese, pickled herring or drink red wine, your blood pressure can spike to the point of death…but hey, if the drug eliminated my migraines, it would be more than worth that kind of vigilance). I have also been given a series of drugs that are prescribed for people with seizure disorders — Verapamil (a calcium channel blocker), Topamax and Neurontin.  Not only did none of the above eliminate migraines, many of them triggered terrible head pain  – the most severe migraine was produced by Nardil. Read the rest of this entry »

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May 29, 2012

a beginner, forever

by caitlin meredith

Growing up, I took ten years of beginning tennis lessons. Whether it was sleep-away summer camp, a junior high elective or after school enrichment at the public park, I never advanced to intermediate. This wasn’t due to a crippling lack of athleticism – I could scamper around the court and hit the ball well enough – I just preferred the beginners’ classes. The guppy-level teachers were always smilier and cuter than their gruffer, more advanced counterparts. The intermediate coach expected you to remember what to do with your right shoulder when you served; the beginner coach was just thrilled you showed up.

Tennis isn’t the only endeavor I’ve sought out but had low-to-no goals for. Read the rest of this entry »

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May 28, 2012

one woman’s experience with a good pain doctor

by nikki meredith

As I write this, an intense pain is beginning to throb behind my right eye.  I gave myself a shot of Imitrex, a non-narcotic vasoconstrictor two hours ago but the injections only provide me with two hours of relief and the pain is returning. One can only have two injections in a 24-hour period so if the pain returns, and it does three out of four times, I need relief for the 20 remaining hours. I’ve had migraines for 34 years and during that time I have been to countless clinicians — conventional, alternative and combinations of both. I have been prescribed every category of drug that has a record of treating migraines, either in double blind studies or anecdotally, both on-label and off-label and too many herbs, elimination diets, “therapeutic” diets, supplements and non medical therapeutics to recount here. Out of all of the above, only one thing ever worked preventively: the blood pressure pill Inderal.  For three months I was migraine-free. And then they came back, if not with a vengeance, with disappointing regularity.  The doctor tried upping the dose and kept upping it until I was so lethargic I could barely get out of bed in the morning. High doses made no difference.  That was 25 years ago. Since then, years of trial and error, mostly error, have resulted in pain more days than not.

Despite that, life has been fine for the past six years because I’ve been under the care of a pain doctor. Read the rest of this entry »

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May 19, 2012

the challenge of being a writer who doesn’t write

by caitlin meredith

You, like many people, might have some preconceived notions of what writers do. Chief among them, I presume, is that writers write. I would like to correct you. This is not always the case. I, for instance, am a writer who does not write.

You might be thinking this sounds great. I get an official occupation  – “writer” – but don’t actually have to do anything to earn it, leaving me with oodles of time to goof off and really live. But you are also wrong about that. What you don’t know is that being a writer who doesn’t write is very, very time-consuming. It’s actually such a full time job that there isn’t any time left over for writing.

This brings me to the existential question all non-writing writers are routinely forced to confront: Where the fuck did all of the time go? Read the rest of this entry »

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May 15, 2012

Painkiller Paranoia is Over Prescribed

by nikki meredith

At least once a week there’s an article in The New York Times about the dark side of opiate use. Veterans, NFL players, pregnant women, old people — all on painkillers, all at special risk, whatever the study of the week finds.  Oxy, as in Oxycodone, is now ubiquitous in popular culture: we have Nurse Jackie lying, stealing and having sex to score oxy; the The Good Wife defending a doctor accused of prescribing oxycodone to a star high school quarterback who overdosed; and many of the Harlan County reprobates on Justify pop, sell or kill for oxycodone.

All of this attention strikes fear in the heart of those of us living with serious pain. Most pain patients will not die if they can’t get enough medication to dull the pain  (in most cases opiates don’t eliminate pain, they only ease it) but our appetite for living will certainly be diminished and, according to research, the toll unmediated chronic pain takes on our bodies will shorten our lives.  The drumbeat to restrict the prescribing of opiates is getting louder and who knows where this attention will lead. Read the rest of this entry »

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February 22, 2012

the cats of my alley

by caitlin meredith

IMG_3175
From my office window I have a front row view of the backyard wildlife. Mostly, the scene is dominated by squirrels. The way they leap from limb to limb in the canopy of pecan trees makes me feel like I’m at preview night for the Mighty Flying Squirrel Circus. My fists clench as I hope for the successful completion of a particularly daredevil maneuver, sometimes wanting to rise for an ovation in awe of their acrobatics. My fists clench for other reasons too, though. As the tender fruit starts emerging from the branches of the fig tree in the center of the yard in early summer, too young and small for me to yet pick, I watch in horror as the squirrels razor their tiny teeth into one after the other of the bright green pearls. Those days I wish my backyard was a shotgun shooting range, not a circus tent.

Other than the squirrels, blue birds and bright red cardinals flash and flurry from the trees to the grass and I once even saw a possum rooting through my compost heap in the middle of the night. And then, of course, there are the cats.

Read the rest of this entry »

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December 14, 2011

i’m not getting a rescue dog, okay?

by caitlin meredith

Golden Doodle puppy
I’m about to get a puppy and I’m dancing-around-the-kitchen excited about it. All of the necessary components of my life have finally converged to make this possible: I’m not going to do anymore extended projects in Africa or anywhere else abroad, I’m unemployed (plenty of training and bonding time!) and this summer I got a fence in my back yard. I even finally got the three feral cats living underneath the shed fixed and treated for fleas after putting it off for three years. The dog training books are stacked on my bedside table and I’ve warned all my friends that “dog-friendly” will be my new outing criteria. It’s T minus 28 days and I’m rarin’ to go. There’s only one fly in my liver-flavored canine oral cleansing ointment – my growing fixation on coming up with snappy comebacks to the question I anticipate getting daily on the hike and bike trail.  So let me announce it here: I’m NOT getting a rescue dog, and I REFUSE to feel guilty about it.

OK, so I feel a little guilty about it or I wouldn’t have to protest so much. But only a little! And not because of all the dog nuts that will judge me. Read the rest of this entry »

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December 10, 2011

the end of gift giving (as we once knew it)

by nikki meredith

Juleaften The Royal Library, Denmark

According to the New York Times, the recipients of gifts are no longer content with leaving it up to you to decide, they want what they want and they want you to get it for them. We the givers, writes Penelope Green, are being treated like “catalogs or department stores, brandishing lengthy wish lists, demanding gift cards or boldly asking for cash.” Social scientists who study this phenomenon have various explanations (according to one theory: what matters is having the exact right stuff — the clothes we wear, the object d’art we display, the lamps we light — because of what our stuff says about our style and identity) but Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, calls it is “blatant greed” and, in the article, labels it our number one etiquette problem.

You’d think I’d welcome this specificity. On November 20, 2011 I wrote about how difficult it is for me and my husband to get the gift-giving thing right, even after 36 years of marriage. But the mercenary approach horrifies me. I first noticed it when a relative got married a few years ago and along with the invitation came a request that guests contribute to the car she and her future spouse wanted to buy. I figured this was just my crazy family but then the daughter of a friend got married a year later and this kid wanted us to contribute to the purchase of a condominium. Read the rest of this entry »

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