"Mumblety-Peg, If That's Where Your Heart Lies"
We’re not talking famine relief
which, though more people is not what we need,
undoubtedly matters.
We're not talking saving the elephants,
ice caps, Bill of Rights (despite
the ambiguous second amendment).
What, that's not important,
it's okay
to care about.
My stamp collection's universal centrality.
Your stamp collection--too much
time on your hands.
Collect money. Collect art
and antique Italian sports cars.
Do not collect antique
rusted-out Fords.
Invited to go fishing,
my mother said, "If you've
caught one fish, you've caught
them all." My father tapped high C
on her piano. "If you've played
one note, you've played them all."
It's okay to play chess
or chess by mail or
against computers. Solitaire is
too much time on your hands.
The jury's still out on rotisserie
baseball. I get to say
if you have a life.
You can know
every note of the Ring cycle,
the batting average of
everyone ever, but not
the early films of Bernard Hepton.
I decide what gets to count.
My grandmother had rules
from God about the order
in which to eat
the bites of my dinner.
Are you doing anything or
just reading?
If I don't understand--
If I don't care--
I get to decide
if you have a life.
"I need a life," she says, repeatedly.
She is, at the moment, without a lover and
has no life, according to her, writing off us
and everything else. As if one could
not have a life.
No life. No life. Too much time
on your hands.
When her son died my grandmother
grieved with such violence whenever his
name was mentioned the family
stopped mentioning him.
My generation grew up not knowing
we'd had an uncle.
When my grandmother's unsatisfactory
son died, her grieving, my mother
implied, was self-indulgent, insane,
unacceptable. My grandfather's
failure to cope. My uncle--more
than bit of a screw-up. Let's get
the blame straight.
But my uncle--Billy his name was, aged 19
when the radio fell in the bathtub--died
to us all because of my grandmother's
grief. We're clear about that. Her daughters'
distaste for her grief. Don't mention
his name; we're clear about that.
"She killed him," my mother said, "she
killed my brother a second time."
So there are injuries--a sponge left in,
the wrong drug, wrong blood, wrong
amputation, Who is this guy?--
to patients, few of whom sue, few
of whom ever collect. People go into surgery
with I am the gall bladder scrawled on
their bellies. Lawyers who work for patients,
ambulance chasers, in it just for the money.
I am the kidney. Patients who lie and lawyers
in it just for the money. But, if your baby
is damaged by a stone incompetent
doctor, drunk or addicted--The left kidney--
it would be nice to have money enough
to pay for the lifetime of care. Nice
if the facts were published--My left, that is--as
warning. Hospitals carry infections; doctors'
neckties carry infections.
—Susan Rawlins