Paralysis of the Heart

Paralysis of the Heart

May 10, 2012

I WAS driving my 11-year-old son, Joe, to school. It had been one of those mornings. He was singing opera and doing hip-hop moves when I needed him to put on his shoes. 

As we pulled up in front of school just in time, I snapped: “I can’t start our day this way. This kind of stress is going to make me sick.” 

He burst into tears. “Don’t say that!” he yelled. “Promise to never say that again!” He raced out of the car, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. 

On more than a few occasions, he has expressed his fear that something might happen to me. As the child of a single mother, he clearly has been pondering the same questions I do: Who will take care of him if I die? Who will love him as much as I do?

Joe’s fear of my mortality jarred me into reality, and I called my doctor. There actually had been a reason for my harsh statement. My face and arm had been numb for months. I had shrugged it off as stress but then started to get chronic headaches, too.

My doctor agreed to see me right away. After examining me, she said, “If I can’t get you in for an M.R.I. at the imaging center, I’ll need to send you to the hospital in an ambulance.” She explained that stress doesn’t create the symptoms I was having. It could be an aneurysm, a tumor or early signs of multiple sclerosis. 

Someone else might have panicked, but this kind of situation makes me practical. She got me an appointment for an hour later. In that time, I did what any sensible person who has been ordered to get an emergency M.R.I. does: I got the car washed. I wasn’t in denial; there’s just so much time to get stuff done, and worrying wasn’t on my checklist.

Some people are terrified of sickness and death. Not me. I decided to face death head on when I was about 10 and saw a photo spread about AIDS in Life magazine. I declared that one day I was going to help those men. 

And I did. At 20, social-work degree in hand, I applied for a job on the AIDS unit of St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York. When asked if I could handle seeing gaunt men with tubes in their mouths, I said “yes.” When asked if I was afraid of watching people die, I shook my head no. 

I was like the naïve teenager who enlists in the Army without any idea of what war is like. For the next two years, patients of mine died every day. After a while the pain caught up to me. If I were going to befriend death, I needed a different approach. 

So I became a sky diver. Then a motorcyclist. I climbed rocks. Canoed in Class-5 rapids. Bungee jumped. And most harrowing of all, I moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. I hoped all these experiences would give me something I desperately wanted: fearlessness.

I walked into the imaging center. In the waiting room, I got down to business on my cellphone. I made arrangements for my son to be picked up from school and got a friend to take care of our dog. I like things that can be checked off a list. Kid, check. Dog, check. Custodian for my son should I die, check. 

The technician called me in. He was kind and covered me with a blanket. I almost told him I loved him. Some people might dread an M.R.I., but lying down in the middle of the day without anyone asking me to do anything is a single mother’s dream.

The technician asked, “Have you ever had an M.R.I. before?” 

“Yes.” 

I got pregnant in 1999. I was 26. At the beginning of my ninth month something unimaginable happened: I had a mild stroke. A small bleed in the front left lobe of my brain took away my ability to speak and control the right side of my body. They rushed me to the hospital. I didn’t remember reading about sudden paralysis in “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” and I wanted my money back. 

In an instant I got a glimpse into how vulnerable motherhood was going to make me. My usual hubris turned into humility. I did not like it one bit. 

Just before putting me into the machine, the technician handed me a red rubber ball, explaining that if I needed to communicate with him, all I had to do was squeeze it. He reassured me that while I might feel alone in the tube, I wouldn’t be.

I could have used a red rubber ball back when Joe was 10 weeks old. That’s when his father left. Feeling lost, I fled New York and went to Miami to live with a friend. On my back I carried a pack with five weeks of clothing for the two of us. On my chest I strapped my baby in a Bjorn. In my left hand I held his car seat. In my right, his stroller. 

I looked like a soldier. Walking through the airport, I felt more alone than I ever had. No one offered to help, and why would they? From the outside it seemed as if I had it all handled.

My brain and neck scans were done. It took three hours longer than I expected and it was too late to take Joe to the movies, the promised reward for his stellar report card. 

When Joe is testing my patience, it’s difficult to be alone as a parent. But when he does something amazing it’s even worse, because there is no witness but me to mark the milestones. No one else who will know and remember all the funny, lovely things he says and does.

I HAD the M.R.I. because I was numb, but my numbness actually started long before, when Joe was a baby. I needed my eyes and ears to be vigilant if I was to single-handedly care for him. But I didn’t need a heart to feel. It was safer to focus on the details and forget that my baby was more intimidating than caring for dying men and much scarier than hurling my body from a perfectly good aircraft.

With Joe, I wasn’t fearless. Quite the opposite, I was petrified of how much I loved him. Death was something I had grown comfortable with; it was life I wasn’t so sure about. The problem with numbness, though, is that you don’t choose which parts not to feel. You don’t get to block out pain and suffering but keep all the good stuff. You get everything or nothing. That’s the deal.

The night of my M.R.I., I walked into Joe’s room one last time before going to sleep. It had been a long day. Safe and sleeping in his bed, he had one hand on his left cheek and one on his right. It reminded me of when he was a baby and we shared a bed in Miami. He’d wake in the night and find my face with his tiny hands. With one he’d hold my left cheek and with the other he’d hold my right. Only when he’d found both would he fall back to sleep. I was his red rubber ball. 

My eyes welled up. The enormousness of my love swelled bigger than any fear. The terror of potential loss flooded in. But so did the joy of connection. Joe hates to see me cry, but he was sleeping so I figured, why not. 

I thought about the fact that eventually one of us will stand at the other’s funeral. That day will come, and no amount of list making or numbness can keep it away. I didn’t know if the moments between my sitting on his bed and a funeral were few or many. All we can do is make the moments we have matter. 

I put that on my list: savor our time together. Check. 

Like how he still holds my hand. Or hangs out in our front yard in his plaid bathrobe, holding a fake cigar in his mouth. Or how he nicknamed me “cita” for mamacita, and how I always wanted a nickname from someone who’d love me enough to give me one.

Suddenly I saw that his eyes were open. He had caught me loving him. And his eyes had tears in them, too.

“Why are you crying?” I asked.

“Because I’m happy,” he said.

“Me, too.”

And just like that, he fell back to sleep. 

I knew I was happy, because even though my face and arm were numb, my heart wasn’t. In two days I’d get the message that the M.R.I. was normal. But in that moment all that mattered was that Joe was alive, and so was I. And we were happy.

My U-Turn From Isolation to Intimacy

My U-Turn From Isolation to Intimacy

Nov. 4, 2016

There is a moment when your child gets too adolescent to cuddle. For me, that moment arrived when my 14-year-old son, Joe, headed to theater camp for a month. He was so eager to get there, he asked me to drop him off at the entrance. But there are papers that need signing when you entrust your child to strangers. Nonetheless, I was hoping for a goodbye hug.

After depositing his bags onto his bunk like a Nepalese sherpa, I reached to hug him. He ushered me to my car instead, where he bent down and gave me a peck on the head accompanied by a loving, but definite, shooing motion.

As a toddler, Joe was affectionately called a “space invader” for wanting to hug and touch everyone, especially me. As a single mother, I nursed him until he was 2. Then he became a 33-pound growth affixed to my hip, and finally a sleepwalking child who found his way into my room almost every night for years. In between the moments of treasured closeness, I often got pawed when I needed a little space.

Then we traded places, and it was Joe who needed space.

I accepted this as a normal part of his growing up. But it wasn’t just that I no longer got affection from my child; I also hadn’t been touched by a lover in years. Having this month to myself with Joe at camp was the perfect opportunity to remedy that, but there were no contenders. I was tired of futile attempts with online dating, and my free time wasn’t worth risking.

I remembered the advice a friend’s therapist gave her when she found herself in my position: Call an ex. At the time, I thought this was terrible counsel. But in my desperate need to feel connected, I sent a provocative email to one who lived nearby, and he obliged.

Later, however, as I drifted off to sleep by myself, I still felt unseen, untouched. He may have touched my body, but he hadn’t touched me. I recalled an Indian doctor I once had who said: “People in this country get sick because they live alone. They don’t get touched enough.”

I was living in New York then, where at least my legs and arms grazed those of other commuters on the subway. I doubted that doctor would approve of my life in Los Angeles, where we spend so much time alone in our cars, sealed off from everyone. But I didn’t have a choice about that until the day I crashed right into someone.

A few weeks after Joe got home from camp, I was making a U-turn on my way to pick him up when suddenly the driver’s side door of an oncoming vehicle appeared in front of me and I was staring into the eyes of the young blond woman at the wheel.

My adrenaline surged. Luckily, I missed smashing into the door, where I might have crushed her, and hit her car’s front wheel instead.

I got out of my car, leaving it in the middle of the street.

“Are you O.K.?” I asked.

“You just crashed into me,” she said, as if she didn’t quite believe it.

“I didn’t see you,” I answered. And the truth is, I didn’t. Was it the afternoon glare, or was I so disconnected from everyone and everything that I failed to take a second look at oncoming traffic? I didn’t see her; that was all I knew for sure.

Both of us were shaken up, with sore necks. And we seemed uncertain of what to do next. But because it was my fault, I took the reins. We moved our cars to safety. I called my insurance company and told her to call hers. I took photos of both vehicles and made sure we had each other’s information.

My phone chimed. It was a text from Joe, asking why I was late. It hit me how much I missed him. I had been looking forward to our 10-minute drive home all day. I texted back, explaining about the accident and asking him to walk over and meet me. He replied, “I’d rather go home,” followed by a second text, “Please.”

Feeling disappointed, I arranged for a neighbor to get him.

I looked up from my phone to see the woman standing on the curb, crying.

“What do I do now?” she asked, her voice quivering. “I’m not sure I can drive my car.”

There were no words to express how sorry I was, so I hugged her. This moment of intimacy was unexpected and involuntary, just a human reflex, like reaching for your child when he falls. But somehow that simple gesture allowed us to face what was ahead.

I called the local body shop. The owner, a sweet older man I had met before, answered. After asking if everyone was O.K., he agreed to wait for us despite it being closing time.

I locked my car and got into hers, and together we drove to the shop. When we arrived, the owner explained what repairs needed to be done, and a few minutes later, her boyfriend came to pick her up.

He got out of his convertible and wrapped his burly arms around her. I watched her melt in his embrace. When she was tucked safely into the passenger seat, they drove off, leaving me alone in the body shop with the owner.

I put my head down and hurried into the bathroom, where I fell apart. Big, heaving sobs. My job of being strong and efficient had ended, and I was left with myself — my shame, my sadness. How could I be so disconnected? How could I have not seen her?

I walked out, and the owner saw my tears. He had a tentative look on his face. He reached out and hugged me, waiting until he knew it was O.K. When I didn’t pull away, he relaxed and said: “I know, it’s always after everything is over. That’s how it happens.” He held me for a long time.

The collision broke my fender and the wheel of her car, but it also broke down the boundaries we walk around with every day. It pulled us out of our metal boxes and into each other’s lives and arms, where we experienced kindness and community, touching each other in a deep, personal way. And while I wished it hadn’t happened, I was changed because it did.

When I got home, the house was empty. A little while later, I heard the door open, and Joe came in. He glanced at me cautiously, and I saw relief wash over him.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, looking guilty. “I know I should have come, but I was afraid of what it might look like.”

“It’s O.K.,” I said. “I understand.” He reached out for a brief hug before telling me about his day and his opera audition. Then he went into his room and closed the door. Listening to the click, I realized that even though our relationship had changed, our connection remained.

I went into my own room and rubbed ointment on my sore neck and side. I thought about the young woman I had hit and hoped her boyfriend had massaged her back before climbing into bed next to her. I remembered all the nights of longing I had endured, nights when I pathetically calculated that even my friends with partners who complained about having sex only once a month still got it 12 times a year.

Though I want that kind of physical intimacy as much as the next person, it was touch, not sex, I needed most. Touch solidifies something — an introduction, a salutation, a feeling, empathy. The next day, I kept asking myself if there was any way to experience that kind of closeness without crashing into someone.

And there is. Ever since the accident, I’ve noticed myself having many more moments of touch. Sometimes the touch is physical, sometimes it isn’t. It can be a simple smile exchanged with a stranger on my morning run or taking the time to meet the checkout person’s eyes when he bags my groceries. It’s petting our dog. And some days it’s even my own teenage son resting his head on my shoulder after a hard day.

I am not unseen or untouched. In fact, people seem to be noticing me more than ever, or maybe it is I who is looking up more, well aware of the risk of not seeing someone who’s right in front of me.

And while I could never have predicted it, a byproduct of all this has been that my persistent need for a lover has lessened. The kind of connection I have learned to cultivate since the accident is not something to tide me over until the real thing arrives. It is the real thing.