The Accountant In My Heart

In my Wednesday writing group, I read Tony Hoagland’s poem, and then gave the writing prompt: “The Accountant in My Heart.” Here’s the poem and my response to that exercise: 

The Loneliest Job in the World  

by Tony Hoagland

As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?

you are completely screwed, because

the next question is How Much?

and then it is hundreds of hours later,

and you are still hunched over

your flowcharts and abacus,

trying to decide if you have gotten enough.

This is the loneliest job in the world:

to be an accountant of the heart.

It is late at night. You are by yourself,

and all around you, you can hear

the sounds of people moving

in and out of love,

pushing the turnstiles, putting

their coins in the slots,

paying the price which is asked,

which constantly changes.

No one knows why.

"The Loneliest Job in the World" by Tony Hoagland, from Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty. (c) Graywolf Press, 2010.

Here's what I wrote in response:

The accountant in my heart has a very thin face and slender beak nose. He wears exactly the kind of glasses you’d expect, narrow little black half-moons that slide down to the bottom of his nose, where they perch precariously, always askew. He wears white button down shirts stained with sweat in large streaming circles under his arms. His back is bent in a permanent curve since he spends all day and night hovering over a giant thick ledger with mildewed parchment pages. His face is creased with a permanent frown. His watchword is “Never Enough.”

The accountant in my heart has been weighing and measuring since the moment I was born. He was there when I was wrenched away from my twin sister, forced screaming into a world where Loss and my name, Laura, were twinned with the same first letter. What is the cost of a dead baby sister? That was his first actuarial task. What does it cost the survivor to live? What cost the bright lights, the cold hands, the first ragged breath, and all the breaths that follow? He has calculated exactly how many breaths are allotted to me; he knows the final tally, the time of my death, but he will not tell. But he never lets me forget that each breath costs me. I don’t know the price per inhale or the cost per exhale, but each breath I get, that she didn’t have, is running up my tally.

I Don't Remember

The other day, I carved out an oasis in a week that had far too much in it. I made a date with my friend Karen to meet for an hour and a half in the middle of the afternoon. Karen and I have been friends for 30 years. Our friendship has had many incarnations in that time, but one consistent aspect of our relationship has been playing games—Backgammon, canasta, boggle, all kinds of cards, and our mainstay, Scrabble. We’re well matched which makes for a good contest—our combined total is often 700 or more, and depending on the year and the time, who wins flips one way and the other. We share life over the Scrabble board.

In the years since I became a mother, I’ve never gotten enough Scrabble. It takes an hour to play a game and playing one game just whets your appetite and warms your word brain up so you just have to play two. And if you play two, why not be sated with three? And who has three or four spare hours to play Scrabble with a friend when you have kids and a home and a mother in town, a business to run, classes to prepare? I’ve been Scrabble starved for much of the last 17 years.

So I was delighted on our intergenerational family cruise to be introduced to a new word game called “Quiddler.” It’s played with a tall, beautiful deck of cards with gorgeous letters on them; it’s easily learned and it’s fast; the ten rounds that make up a game can be played in 20 minutes. You don’t have to concentrate either. You can talk about life or watch a movie or be interrupted and the game continues easily. It’s brain candy and it stretches all your neural pathways, demanding flexible thinking as you reform the words into different combinations in your hand.

The Wake-Up Call

 Tonight I went to the last formal meeting of my post-treatment cancer support group. Unfortunately in our case, the term “post-treatment” is a misnomer. Two of our seven members have been re-diagnosed during our year together and one woman died. Tonight I learned that a third member of our group just found out that her cancer had returned and is inoperable.

I walked into tonight’s meeting full of my own concerns about failing memory, post-cancer loss of identity, the lack of compelling passion in my life, how sick I am of taking pills and all my health regimens. I came in tonight aware of slipping back into busyness and too many lists. My life running me instead of me enjoying my life. This week, I've been going down old neural pathways I thought I’d left behind.

When I heard the news, I was immediately jolted out of this preoccupation with myself. My laundry list of concerns instantly seemed petty and insignificant. Someone I cared about was sick and scared and facing cancer again. And I knew damn well that with a slightly different roll of the dice, it could have been me. All of us sitting in that room knew it—it could have been us, it could be us tomorrow. I could be thrown back into the underworld, all of us could, just like that.

In the face of that reality, and in response to the news, my energy immediately dropped from my head, where a little man with a whip had been keeping me on task, into my body, my belly and my heart. I sat inside my breath, grateful to be alive, grateful to be cancer-free (for now, as far as I know), grateful for my life and this moment to live it. I sat there in our circle with compassion for my friend who has left the ranks of the healthy. Again. And for all of us who have crossed over before, in our tender vulnerability.

It’s such a thin line we walk, all of us walk, largely oblivious to our fragility. But tonight I am sitting with it. It makes each moment precious.

Where's the Passion?

Last week, I bought the memoir, Over My Head: A Doctor’s Own Story of Head Injury from the Inside Looking Out, by Claudia Obsorne, for a friend who’d suffered a serious head injury. I thought it might be good for her to read about someone who understood what it was like to suffer a TBI (traumatic brain injury), who could describe what it felt like from the inside.

The book arrived in the mail. I figured I’d glance through it before I wrapped it up and gave it to my friend. I read the first two pages and was totally hooked.

Claudia Osborne was a successful young doctor, with interns following her on rounds, waiting for her to dispense wisdom. She had an excellent job and a huge, promising career ahead of her. Then one day, she was out riding her bike when a 20-year-old driver hit her, flipping her over her handlebars. She landed on her head and was rushed to the hospital, eventually waking to a massive head injury.

Osborne’s book charts her first two years post-injury as she goes through an intensive rehabilitation program. Her task is to come to terms with the extent and nature of her injuries, while developing compensatory strategies so she can succeed at the simplest things. She has to repeatedly learn to put her shoes on after her pants, to shop for dinner in a grocery store without leaving her cart behind. Taking a bus (having the right change, knowing her destination, getting off at the right stop) or even leaving her house without locking her keys inside are major undertakings.