My Fiona

She’s here, she’s here, my little niece is here! My rockstar sister brought her into the world on Saturday morning, and she has spent the last five days being perfect. Please, just look at this face.

Fiona

Her name is Fiona Catherine, and I’m allowed to call her Fee, but not Fifi.

So, naturally…

“Come, Fifi,” I say in an important voice, whenever anyone offers to put her on my lap. As if we are off to the country club to meet her friends Binky and Peroxide. As if we are having tea with the Queen.

“Fifi makes her sound like a dog,” my sister complains. But this is not a good argument for me, because my own daughter’s nickname is Scout, and although we were thinking Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, it turns out to be a very doggy kind of name.

The week after Scarlett was born, my grandmother called to tell me that not one, but two sitcoms she had watched that night featured dogs named Scout. She cackled into the phone and hung up. Read More>

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Movie Making

The story starts with Kevin Swan. I had known Kevin for some time when he wrote and suggested that we make a video about my life with ALS for his A Life Story Foundation. He had done other profiles, and different ALS-related videos that I’d seen, and I knew that he was very good. So of course I said yes, even though in the back of my mind I was thinking, I’m pretty sure I will be terrible at this.

My friend Sam is a documentary filmmaker and he’s told me that having a camera aimed at you is not as scary as it sounds and that you get used to it pretty quickly. Still, I assumed that I would be some kind of extra special awkward case, and would just be bright red and fumbly the whole time.

Note: we are rarely as special, particularly in the bad ways, as we think we are.

The plan proceeded, and I was excited. Months went by, and then Kevin said that he found a production crew in San Francisco who was willing to do the work. Suddenly, any nervousness that I had was offset by my intense desire to tell our story, and to spread awareness of ALS, and to have my life–and countless others–dramatically saved in a flurry of fundraising and scientific wizardry. Read More>

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Making Noise

So far, I have not figured out a good way to dictate a blog post while wearing the BiPAP. My voice sounds comical, like a cartoon villain with post-nasal drip. All the Ms become Bs. To the dictation software, manufactured breath sounds like Os and Hs, so the air whooshing out of the mask adds random letters to my words, ghostly forms that were never really there to begin with. The sound of a secret language. The sound of wind.

It’s not like I have to write this way. I could do the blog after the BiPAP, but since I’m just sitting here staring at the computer, it seems like a solid time to get things done. I’ll always be a multi-tasker, even if my arms don’t work, and even if I’m not actually accomplishing anything.

Sparkling water, Sancerre, sweet potatoes. Whenever my thoughts seem like poetry, they usually turn out to be grocery lists.

These stitched-together lists populate my dreams at night. Partly menus, partly schedules, partly just colors that I saw that day. Last night, I had a dream about overwatered orchids. I woke up craving Life cereal, and when Scarlett crawled into bed with me, the gold in her hair seemed like an idea I had put there to save for later. She smelled like the dog, which is unsurprising since she wears him like a sweater.

Clearly I am losing my mind, but only sometimes. Read More>

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