The news

This week, I read the NY Times. I mean, the front section with actual news, not simply turning to the arts section for the crossword puzzle. I sat down, and sort of reoriented myself to actual current events. Since Lucy died, I just couldn't read about politics or news. Only tragedy and disaster, when it came into my line of vision. Celebrity deaths. I'd become my grandfather, God rest his soul, who would call me to tell me some choice pulls from the local obits.

"Ang, I'm just calling to tell you that W.'s father died."
"Who died, Pop?"
"W.'s dad."
"W.?"
"Yes, your JV basketball coach."
"Oh, right, W. Did you know that he came to a few games?"
"Why the hell do you think I'm telling you? Did you play one too many games without a helmet?"
"Yes. Yes, I did. How old was he?"
"87. Good guy."
"Yeah. Good long life. Are you going to the funeral, Pop?"
"Hell no. I'm too old for that shit. It is too depressing."

I miss my grandfather.

And there was this weird moment, sitting in the cafe, where it occurred to me that Barack Obama was the president of the United States, as though I missed that the last nine months. Sure, if you sat me in an Emergency Room, flashed a small light into my eyes, took my pulse asked me what year we were in, who was president...I am fairly certain I could answer those questions properly. But still, I'd put on hold the news, politics, life around me that didn't immediately have to do with my life and the death of my child. I sunk into my pit of despair. All this life happened around me, and I didn't read one article about it. I watched the inauguration with the constant refrain in my brain, "Lucy died. Lucy died. Lucy died." I admit, though, I do listen to National Public Radio all day, but absorb nothing. I am famous in our house for turning on the radio to hear the traffic and weather, and I have to listen to it four times before I remember the high today will be 65 and we should avoid the Ben Franklin.

But the newspaper is different. I used to love reading the newspaper. In fact, when I held a real job in the corporate world, part of my job was to read newspapers and magazines looking for information on my industry, my competitors, my company, the fed...I read not only our local paper here in Philly, but also the NY Times, WSJ, Washington Post, the trade journals, and then countless blogs about politics, sports, and pop culture. (Desk jobs are good AND bad.) My daughter's death made me singularly focused on my grief.

Did you know that there are a lot of scary things in the newspaper? Like all this swine flu nonsense. At one point in my life, I could read books on viruses. In fact, I loved books on viruses. A single article reads to me like a manual for the perfect storm of family tragedy. Pregnant women and kids beware. Daddies, are you healthy and robust? That is exactly what the flu looooooooves. CNN headlines seem to be fairly dominated by stories of child abuse, kidnapping, murder of innocents...it is not surprising that subconsciously I have avoided this exposure to suffering, and surrounded myself with suffering I understand and grief like my own.

But what does it say that I can actually read the paper now? That I can be mildly interested in politics again, at least interested enough to read a piece or two? That I am beginning to reach out again--one hand stretches out of my narcissistic little hole and feels for some grass. "Grunt, that feels pointy and dry. Back in hole."

It feels like progress on one hand, and on the other, it feels like de-evolution. I have protected myself from the hype, the bad vibes, the sniping anger of politics, the danger around every corner. I am moving forward enough to notice an outside world, but not forward enough to not see it as a constant threat to the little stability my life seems to have nine months since my world fell apart. But fear not, today, I read the headlines, and the beginnings of at least a handful of articles, but I spent the most amount of time looking at J.il San.der's estate in the Fashion section.

I am still shallow. Whew.