Michael and me

I cried like a baby when I learned Michael Jackson was dead.

I was already teary-eyed when I heard the news. I had just posted this about my father-in-law's illness. I was missing my mother-in-law like crazy, lamenting a blow-up with Graham during which I lost my temper and terrified about how Rob was going to cope with the seemingly never-ending stress.

I had, in fact, taken to wondering when exactly being a grown-up started being so hard - so goddamned hard - when I heard that Peter Pan was dead.

"Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne..."

I worshipped - worshipped! - Michael Jackson during my formative years. I was 13 when Thriller was released and he swiftly became the object of my every puberty-obsessed dream and desire.

I memorized every dance move in Thriller. I fell out with my best friend and cousin over a crush we shared on a boy who styled himself as a Michael Jackson look-alike. (He preferred her.) My first boyfriend in the ninth grade brought me home a Michael Jackson calender from a family vacation and grudgingly sat for hours while another girlfriend and I stylized his face, hair and clothing in an attempt to Michael Jackson-ize him.

I loved Michael Jackson and his music just as passionately when I grew older. I was in my early 20s and driving Canada cross-country when I made an hour-long detour in rural Saskatchewan on a wintry afternoon in order to find a bar where I could watch the North American premier for the Black or White video on the big screen.

I do not know whether Michael was guilty or innocent of the spurious child abuse charges that were ultimately his undoing: nobody does. I suspect he was innocent. I know that he was a victim of abuse and exploitation in his own childhood and later in his adult years when his money and fame seemed a barrier to treatment for what was clearly a heartbreaking descent into mental illness.

I never knew Michael Jackson, personally - obviously - but I feel I understand somewhat the lure that precipitated that descent. I understand - God, do I understand - the desire to keep the responsibilities and the pain of adulthood at bay. I understand the appeal of spending millions of dollars, of going to fantastical lengths, to try and recapture the halcyon days of childhood when laughter and happiness and the world itself was light and simple and gloriously uncomplicated.

I met Rob at the door on the day Michael Jackson died.

Graham had long since screamed himself to sleep and Rob had been out walking in the rain trying to clear his head and rid his stomach of the gnawing pain that plagues him on and off and had returned with a vengeance at the news of his father's illness.

"Michael Jackson is dead," I sobbed, as he took me in his arms. "I can't stop crying. It's like my whole childhood just, just died."

I was crying for the man who never had a childhood of his own, but whose life and music made mine a million times better.

I was crying for the man who never wanted to grow up, and for myself, the girl who couldn't wait to leave childhood behind.

Because he was right and I was wrong and now he was dead and I would give anything to go back to those days when perfecting the moonwalk on my parents' linoleum floor was clearly the simplest way to ensure future success and happiness.

"Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like fantastical stories to share
The dreams I would dare, watch me fly..."

Rest in peace Michael.

Julie and me

We had big dreams, Julie and I.

She was going to be an Oscar-winning actress and I was going to be famous the world over for writing that would make people laugh with joy and weep with empathy.

Instead I today mark the 13th anniversary of her death by trying, in this humble space, to use my words to pay some kind of tribute to her and to our friendship.

Julie and I met nearly 20 years ago in my first year of university. I was in full party mode, enjoying a concert by a band I can’t remember, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and there stood a tiny, doll-like girl with a big, tipsy smile.

“I’m ever so short,” she said. (Really). “I can’t see the band. Help me out?”

She gestured to my shoulder and I burst out laughing at her audacity. When I regained my composure I stooped down and up she hopped. We were pretty much inseparable from that moment on.

I don’t know exactly how tall Julie was. Four feet, ten inches maybe? Four feet eleven? Surely not five feet. She never discussed it so I’m not sure how I came to understand that her growth had been stunted by treatments she endured to successfully fight leukemia as a toddler.

No matter. What Julie lacked in stature she made up for in attitude. She was startling beautiful and she knew it. She turned heads wherever she went. She would insult you in the most outrageous fashion and then charm you a second later with a conspiratorial wink and a flip of her hair.

We had a shtick, Julie and I. She was drool and I was goofy. I told corny jokes and she made cutting observations. We were partners in crime, kindred spirits, two peas in a pod. We got each other.

A few years after graduation Julie moved Los Angeles to pursue her acting career. I took a road trip to visit and fell in love with Arizona on my way through. I moved there not long after and we visited between Scottsdale and Los Angeles regularly.

What a heady time! She acted bit parts and I worked as a freelance writer. Drunk with youth and possibility, we attacked the world the only way we knew how – full tilt. We narrowly avoided a dust-up with a member of Faster Pussycat at Whiskey a Go-Go. We danced on the tables at a sushi restaurant in Venice. We traded jokes and insults behind the microphone at a house party we crashed in West Hollywood.

Superbowl weekend rolled around. Julie had vague plans to visit me in Arizona. I didn’t hear from her, but wasn’t overly concerned. Then her mother called in the early evening.

“I’m in Los Angeles dear,” she said. “With Julie. She’s dying. She’s asking to see you. You better come right away”

I have often tried, during the last 12 years, to recreate how I felt to hear those words. When the picture I carry of her in my head gets blurry or I can’t quite hear her voice, I force myself back into that dark moment, hoping, I guess, that fresh pain will somehow make her seem less distant.

And so I drove, tears streaming down my face, across the desert in the middle of the night. I remember the moonlight on the palm trees and the warm wind and the feeling that surely I must just be playing a part in some cheesy movie of the week – the kind Julie would eviscerate with one pithy blow.

But it wasn’t a movie of course. Julie had visited the doctor just a few weeks earlier about a nagging cough, which was, it turned out, symptomatic of imminent heart and lung failure. Her respiratory system had been compromised by the very treatments that had saved her life all those years ago.

I got to the hospital and went in to see her right away. I remember thinking how glamorous and beautiful she looked laying there, her hair artfully fanned out around her pillow: a tiny, perfect doll.

“Tell me a joke,” she said. And, because she asked me to, I blinked back my tears and did just that. Then I told her I loved her. She smiled like Cleopatra on the Nile. Of course I did.

One after another, the people who loved her filed in to say goodbye. Her parents went last and came out an hour or so later. She was gone, they said.

Julie was gone.

Afterwards I went to a Denny’s on Sunset Blvd and ate pancakes and drank Irish coffee and cried. It seemed fitting somehow and I lingered, knowing Julie would revel in the curious glances I drew with my smeared eyeliner, disheveled hair and tragic demeanor.

Some days I can’t believe that how much the world has changed since Julie was in it. How can it be that Pulp Fiction was the last movie that she saw? That she never got to make fun of Paris Hilton or weigh in on reality television. That September 11th was remarkable to her only because it’s my birthday?

I carried Julie’s lace handkerchief down the aisle with me on my wedding day. And on her birthday every year her parents treat me to dinner at her favorite restaurant. But I feel her loss most keenly at times when her memory sneaks up on me. Like on my 30th birthday when I couldn’t stop crying because it didn’t seem fair that I got to turn 30 and she didn’t.

There are so many, many things that Julie didn’t get to do and even as my life moves happily forward, I am haunted by each and every one of them.

Because we had big dreams, Julie and I.

Sadness, part two

I did something last night and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I hit Graham.

Slapped actually. I would like to say swatted, but in my heart of hearts I know it was more than a swat. It was a slap. A firm one.

Let me set the stage.

Graham napped little yesterday. He had his first meltdown in the car on the way home from his babysitter’s. He was still raging nearly an hour later. I offered him a drink. Some bread and peanut butter. I got his blanket. Put on his favorite music. Attempted to cuddle him and play blocks with him.

He screamed in my ear. Flailed. Threw his toys at me. Slapped me.

I spoke to him in soothing tones. I put him on the naughty step for a time out. Twice.

Eventually the whining became at least intermittent. He started to play. I sat on the floor and arranged my legs as a tunnel (his favorite) and he crawled under them. I felt a shooting pain in my thigh. He bit me. Hard.

Harder than he had ever bitten me before.

I was, I think, remarkably calm. I swiftly got down to his level, held his chin and looked directly into his eyes. “NO BITING.” I carried him firmly, but not roughly, and placed him on the step in the other room.

I walked away and zipped off my corduroy jeans. A throbbing inch-long welt was already turning nasty shades of black and purple. I wiped away a single drop of blood and applied some polysporin.

I took a few minutes. I needed them.

I collected him. He was apprehensive, but otherwise nonplussed. I showed him the welt. “You hurt mommy. No biting. Biting hurts people.”

He smiled angelically at me, unsure. Regretful? Yes, I told myself. Regretful.

I picked him up. Kissed him. Hugged him. “No biting, Graham. No more biting. It hurts mommy.”

I picked up a book and settled with him on my lap. He started to whine. “Come on, Graham. Look, it’s Elmo.”

Smack.

I felt his nail rip through the skin on my cheek. I felt a dark, hot flash of anger.

And I slapped him.

I slapped him pretty hard. On his leg. He was wearing track pants, but there was no doubt he felt a sting. He blinked in surprise. Burst into tears.

I gathered him in my arms, heart racing. I rubbed his back. “No hitting. You can’t hit.” I blinked back tears. What a hypocritical thing to say. “That’s hitting Graham. Hitting hurts. You see, it hurts. That’s why we don’t do it.” Stupid, stupid rationalization.

I have always thought that parents, loving parents who are thoughtful enough to ponder these things in the first place, worry too much about defining their position with regards to spanking. I have always felt entirely comfortable with my own philosophy.

I don’t believe striking children is an acceptable way to discipline them. I don’t think it’s very effective or creative and I absolutely believe parents should avoid it. But I also always figured that Graham would likely receive a few swats throughout his childhood, due to frustration and/ or anger. I was human. He would likely push my buttons. I would likely lose my temper. And I felt okay with that.

I have heard people say that if one is going to spank a child, it should never, ever be in anger and that seems absurd to me. A calm and calculated administration of physical punishment strikes me as far more disturbing than a quick, thoughtless smack delivered out of exasperation and frustration.

I think it can be good for a child to see a normally calm and collected parent lose their temper. Not to freak out and melt down, mind you, but to throw aside their practical, parental reserve and expose some raw emotion.

I remember being about 10 years old and being in a pissy mood with my mom, who is as quiet and non-confrontational as they come. She asked me (probably for the umpteenth time) to put away some books I left around and I responded in typical fashion; bitchy, insolent, thankless. I remember her hurling those books against the wall and shrieking at me in manner I didn’t know she was capable of.

I was struck dumb. The force of her anger punctured my thick, bubble of preteen self-absorption. For the first time ever I saw, really saw, the exhaustion and frustration in her eyes. It moved me and I have never forgotten it.

But then Graham is too young for my temper to provide any kind of a teaching moment, isn’t he? He is too young to be struck by the revelation of his mother as a human being.

He is too young to be struck.

And that’s why I can’t stop thinking about what I did last night.