by Lauren Marks
That’s understandable, dear, she said. Before major life changes, a lot of people feel compelled to make peace with their faith.
Make peace. The phrase struck me as interesting. Faith is fragmented, with moments of illumination and moments of murk. It could be like a cracked mirror—one could see oneself in it, but only in shards. I couldn’t imagine anyone making peace with their faith, only pieces.
My mother had been a liberal Catholic my whole life, my father an agnostic, and although I was a somewhat contrary teenager, I loved studying religions. I understood how the dogma, shame, and violence so often associated with religion put many people off. But what intrigued me most was mysticism, specifically the idea of transcendence. Every major religion in the world contains literature about the breaking down of barriers between the self and something larger, and that belief is anti-dogmatic at its very core. So much of religion is about laying down rules of obedience, prescribing the acceptable ways of worship, and outlining the relationship between creator and creation. But in a moment of transcendence, such distinctions dissolve. During a unio mystica, it is impossible to know the difference between self and other, or man and God. To be clear, becoming “one with God” actually borders on heresy in monotheistic traditions because it jeopardizes the very idea of God’s unique oneness. Yet, most of these same religions have saints who reported transcendent experiences and went on to be revered as holy people, as opposed to heretics. I just loved that. That meant their experience both confirmed and contradicted some of the most sacred tenants of their belief systems. God was God, and humans were humans, except when they weren’t. Still, using language to describe transcendence made for a fraught translation; too much was lost between the finite and the infinite.
I hadn’t put my neurological condition into this specific religious context before, but thinking about transcendence again, there were many similarities. It did alter my consciousness, changing my sense of self and my sense of the world. And it certainly showed me the limits of language inside something much more vast.
As much as I was indulging in a theological thought pattern again, it didn’t mean I wasn’t afraid of my upcoming surgery. I was petrified.
So I marshaled a question I had been too nervous to ask the nun initially. Considering the risks at hand, Sister, I said, do you think I should go to confession before the surgery?
Well, she said. It depends on what you want from a confession.
I thought this was a stunning thing for a nun to say. She didn’t say: That is your role as a Catholic or: You should if you fear for your immortal soul, but what I would want from a confession. I was well aware that I had participated in plenty of activities that the Catholic Church would deem necessary to confess, but I was also sure the church and I defined “sin” differently. I told Sister Pat that I had shortcomings, plenty of them. But nothing burdened my conscience. I honestly felt I had nothing to confess.
Sounds like you answered your own question, she said as she patted my back with a strong, wide palm. There is no hard and fast rule about absolution. I can easily get you in contact with a good priest, if you’d like, even if you just want to talk. But remember you’ve landed in the clutch of some radicals, and at this very table, there are nuns who have given communion to non-Catholics. Not naming names, of course! Just take comfort that you are surrounded by people who don’t always color within the lines.
Reverend Meyers, the man with the mustache who brought me into this group, emerged from my neighbors’ kitchen, a dishtowel slung over his shoulder.
Thanks for letting me come, I said. Sorry if I was weird.
Nonsense. The pastor dried his hands. We loved having you and we hope you’ll come back. Anytime.
• • •
As I returned to my own driveway, I had a lot to think about—it wasn’t like everything had fallen completely into place. But what was thrilling, though, was that I felt I could think again.
No one in the group had tried to dispense tired bromides to me like, “It’s all part of God’s grand plan.” I probably would’ve responded very poorly if they had. From imagining my last words, to obsessive and unproductive research about possible complications of the procedure, my inner and outer language had kept me on a hamster wheel of anxiety. But I knew that calculating my own worst case scenarios wouldn’t keep them from happening. And having no faith in myself, no faith in the Quiet, no faith in anything, had only crippled my sense of purpose and meaning. I realized that the most radical thought I could think was this: that everything was exactly as it should be.
And regardless of the outcome of the procedure, at this point fighting or fixating couldn’t serve me as much as trusting. All I could do now was submit.
27
FThe neurosurgeon tells me that I might have to return to speech therapy. Bj says that seems unfair,“dDoes it trouble you.” That fear? Minor, in compare to fe the fear of all fears. What about it? If I have to do it? My memories tell me that I loved the experiences through the language returning, discovering. I say “maybe that it might be like falling in love again.”
The second I contemplate a possible second time. There is thrill, there is attraction, there is excitement of unknown. But the question of singularity. The first time everything feels stuffed with magic and fate, destination. The second time, the mystery is still excitable, but knows that us is not once in a lifetime, It is repeatable groungeable outlineable. And yet, we do. We fall again, and grateful the opportunity to do so.
Though I was slowly coming around to accepting my upcoming surgery, considering the idea that I might have to return to speech therapy after the fact presented more complicated feelings. As much as I had wanted to stay in speech therapy a month ago, starting all over from scratch was a different thing entirely. I had done this work already. Having relearned language after the rupture felt meaningful, even triumphant. But imagining that I might have to do it all again, and so soon after my graduation, felt Sisyphean. It was enough to keep me spinning. So when a moment of panic about the surgery arose, I would consciously try to adjust my internal reaction to keep it from exaggerating itself. This was a technique I called duck thinking because of something I had been exposed to a few months earlier.
• • •
One rainy day, late in the afternoon, I had noticed a black van parked right in front of my parents’ house. I hadn’t seen it arrive, but even in the pouring rain I could see that the driver was still inside. I sat at the desk in my red bedroom, alone in the house, watching the silhouette of the man doing God only knew what.
The van drove away at some point, and it was still raining when I fell asleep. But late in the night, a jarring bump from outside woke me up. I heard a rubbery slosh, like something heavy dragging in the driveway. My imagination sprang into action. Was that the sound a human body would make if it were in a trash bag being hauled through puddles?
My bed was situated between two windows that faced the driveway—a clear enough view to the street, even in the mist. All I needed to do was to get out of bed and raise the shades, but a paralysis kept me exactly where I was. I wanted to go to the window, but I was too afraid of what I might find.
Then, I had an idea. If my mind had suggested a particularly negative scenario, it should be able to imagine an equally positive one, a counterbalance that would relax me. A replacement.
I started to concoct an alternate story that was completely devoid of menace. I told myself that in the high winds a Little Tikes play set had blown in from a neighbor’s yard. The plastic slide accounted for the rubbery aspect. There were bodies in this scenario, too, but they were not people, and they were certainly not dead. They were a family of ducks, and they had co-opted the child’s toy as their own. The dragging sound I had heard transformed into a slipping one. The mother duck was climbing the short, blue ladder to arrive at the orange slide. She was instructing her ducklings how to take the chute, webbed feet up.
This elaborate storytell
ing exercise changed everything. I was emboldened enough to leave the bed. When I arrived at the window, I was unafraid, and was able to discover that the driveway was empty.
• • •
I had forgotten about the ducks for a while, and certainly hadn’t been able to use the technique right after the craniotomy consults. But now, I was happy to invite them back into my life.
It didn’t have to be ducks, of course, but I found them pretty reliable as a touchstone. So whenever I got overwhelmed, I guided my mind to ducks. Cartoon ducks, usually. They wore scuba gear or tutus, they played brass instruments, they smoked cigars, and they were incredibly gassy. Words weren’t welcome in these animated sequences, just bright, silly images. This helped reverse the anxiety cycle for a little while. After those shorts played out in my brain, I still needed to face the issues at hand, but I could do so with a much more relaxed mind.
One of my biggest anxieties was that Dr. Giannotta had warned I might lose my language again. But with a calmer mind, I was able to investigate what made this threat so scary.
Would I be able to commit to my language practice again? Probably. Would I resent everything I had come to enjoy about my former lessons? Possibly, but it seemed unlikely. Would I come to hate language itself for dragging me through its elaborate obstacle course another time? Definitely not. I might have to return to where I came from, but was that so bad? It hadn’t been the worst place to land.
I thought it might be a little like falling in love again.
Your first love feels everlasting, until it’s over. The end of it is shocking because the experience had felt so pure and incorruptible. The second time is different. The concept of permanency is porous because even as you have this magnificent sensation and the variety of sub-sensations that stem from it, you know it all can change. Still, despite the knowledge that this love might end, you let it in again. Pain is possible, you know that now, but you still want to feel the exhilaration and the tenderness regardless. Hope re-emerges in you. Perhaps you tend to this love differently and find new ways of relishing it. You learn by doing, and as long as you keep learning, you pick up different things the second time.
But you still fall. And it’s still love. And nothing will ever be better than that.
28
It was only after I had finalized my surgical plans in mid-March that I remembered Materson’s trip. He had been visiting Laura and BJ in New York, but I hadn’t consulted with him about the dates I’d selected for my surgery. And I realized that his vacation in LA would directly correspond with my operation, which concerned me. I wanted to cultivate a certain amount of solemnity in my immediate area. But my brother was coming, Jonah was coming—making it already a full house—and now with Materson, too, there was a variety of personalities and temperaments that I feared might clash. I just didn’t want too many variables.
Depending on the outcome of the procedure, it could be an awkward period to be a houseguest, so before Materson bought a plane ticket to California, I gently mentioned to him that it might be best if he considered changing his plans a bit.
Why? he innocently asked me. Is the operation super serious?
His comment struck me as endearing because, after all, he knew exactly what serious could mean in this context. He had already observed it firsthand. It was an enjoyable mental exercise, trying to imagine myself from Materson’s perspective. When I observed my own life in its entirety, the events of these brain surgeries couldn’t be any more dramatic. But Materson had hardly known me “before.” These operations were simply part of the character he understood me as. Lauren Marks: brown hair, hazel eyes, red lipstick, prone to neurosurgeries. It didn’t faze him at all. Materson wanted to keep his trip as planned, so I stopped trying to dissuade him.
When I picked him up from the Burbank airport a couple of weeks later, he was in a weathered sweatshirt and a beanie, looking floppy as a Muppet. He exuded this relaxed, lively energy, which made me glad I hadn’t kept him away. My pleasure only increased when Jonah flew in the next day. As soon as I had fixed all of the elements of my procedure in place, he and I had gotten back into sync. Before these visitors arrived, I had assumed that I’d need some monastic quiet, and razor-sharp focus, to prepare myself for the upcoming surgery, but the company was also a welcome distraction. The boys had met briefly in Scotland, so they reconnected with ease, and once my brother arrived from Monterey, he and Materson also became fast friends. Everyone in the house adapted to the best ways to cohabitate.
One afternoon, Materson came across me in the kitchen while I prepared to confront my surgical packet. I sighed at the weight of it.
You’re not getting nervous about the brain surgery, are you? Materson asked. Because you are an old pro!
Though Dr. Giannotta had told me this surgery was as dangerous—or more dangerous—than the first one, it seemed to me that most of the people around me were not experiencing the same uncertainty this time around. As they understood it, my second operation was minor in comparison to the first one since at least this time we were all prepared. In a much more acute way, I realized that I had been completely spared of the terror my loved ones had suffered while I was in Scotland. When I considered the second surgery, my natural fear would creep in sometimes, but it also felt appropriate that I go through this myself. It seemed only fair that it was my turn being scared. My turn to doubt.
• • •
The weeks before the surgery became partially filled by presidential primaries in my household, our TVs blaring information about potential candidates in both parties, all of us taken by the historic overtones of this race. My mother, grandmother, and I all often watched together, and although I was casting my lot with Obama and they were Clinton supporters, we all respected both candidates. But after one debate, when it was becoming clear that Hillary Clinton was losing ground and was not going to be nominated as the candidate for this election, my mother became decidedly less diplomatic in her opinions about this primary process. She made a remark on the blatant misogyny Clinton had been subjected to throughout and as my mom’s face reddened, she announced that she needed to go outside for some air. I proposed joining her for a walk.
This walk didn’t appear to be clearing my mom’s head the way she had intended it to, though. As I tried to keep pace with her, she continued to complain, her face swollen and red, and her comments inched closer to actual rage. I had never seen her like this. She started talking about the double-standards for women, how they hurled themselves at the unbreakable glass ceiling.
Like when I was your age, I’d get groomed for these jobs, my mother said. Executive jobs. But blustery young men, wet behind the ears, would enter the company, and then I’d get passed over for positions that were rightfully mine. The management would give these coveted appointments on silver platters to these guys who had no experience at all. Eventually, the smooth-talking newbies would end up quitting anyway, because they had a cocaine problem, or a marital problem, or they had another job waiting somewhere else. Do you realize I went back to work when you were only two weeks old? TWO weeks for Chrissakes, she said. There I was, out in the bullshit world, my tits still leaking milk, washing out blood from my pantyhose in the bathrooms at work. But I was not going to leave the workplace because I wanted a better life for my family.
I tried to calm my mother down, insisting that she had made that better life. She started her own business, and she was officially my dad’s boss—what could be more feminist than that?
This only seemed to make her angrier. The women of your generation haven’t picked up the baton my generation passed you! she said, a choking snag appearing in her voice. The war isn’t over, goddamnit! I need you to continue to fight!
Then she started to break down in a sob. All of those sacrifices, she said, I would never have made those sacrifices. If I knew I was going to be passed over like that, I would’ve stayed home with my baby because you never know when your baby is going to be sick, and
when your baby is going to need you.
I realized this wasn’t about all womankind anymore—it was about me. My mother had tried to keep me safe since the day I was born, and now she had to hand me over to someone else, to some male surgeon whom she didn’t know, and had never been especially kind to us either. Qualified or not, it was not an easy transfer of power. If she could have done the surgery herself, she would have. My mother wiped the running snot off her face with her sweatshirt and I leaned in close to comfort her.
Mom, I whispered. Mommy. I think it’s going to be okay.
Oh, it is going to be okay, she said, finally calm again. She kissed me and held me close: It will be okay because I say so.
• • •
Jonah told me he planned to treat me to any pre-op activity I wanted, though he was surprised I decided on horseback riding. He didn’t know I liked horses at all, probably because there was never an opportunity to show him back in New York. But when my grandmother still lived in Montana, horseback riding was always the highlight of the trip for me. I knew that my motor skills or eyesight could be compromised as a result of this surgery. Maybe I’d never be able to ride again. It was the perfect gift. As we took a trail through Griffith Park, Jonah was enthusiastic to share a bit of research he learned as he was reading up on craniotomies.
Did you know, Lauren, that surgeries to the gut have much higher mortality rates than brain surgery?
I sighed. Jonah?
Yeah?
That’s not incredibly helpful, trying to guide him to a social cue.
Oh. First he looked defeated, and then mortified. I don’t know what I’m doing really . . . I just thought you might think of it as some encouraging news.