One of my closest friends, a person I've confided in for more than ten years, is a woman I've met in person only once, when we grabbed a quick lunch a few years ago when I was on assignment in Michigan. We talked on the phone once, too, but otherwise have gotten to know each other entirely in what used to be known as cyberspace.
I met Pat via Profnet when she became a source for a story I was writing in the mid 1990s about the coming millennium. We have emailed each other since then, though family triumphs and sorrows, diseases, deaths and small joys. Pat writes with extraordinary precision and eloquence.
I just did a search of my e-mails to and from Pat, and the first one that popped up illustrates the type of relationship we have. I wrote it on Sept. 11, 2002 and, at the risk of giving away some of the story line of Our Odyssey, here it is in its entirety.
Thank you, Pat. I'm back to one-second-at-a-time mode. Carrick, after another couple of rehabs, and the OD death of Chaos, her boyfriend, seems to want to kick heroin. She finally has an NA sponsor — a woman who lost her brother in the WTC, then spent three months digging in the rubble and at one point found the Celtic cross she'd given him. She is also seeing a good talk therapist (a Holocaust survivor), and taking her meds (anti-depressant). On the other hand, Deirdre pricked herself on a hypodermic needle today when her hand went under Carrick's sheets. Carrick has always maintained that she has never shared a needle, and has tested negative in the past for HIV and hepatitis, so we're hopeful that it won't go any further than that.
I'm sitting on the book for now. The agent told me I was trying to write two books in one, and of course she was right. I know the one I have to write, but it is still so raw, as you pointed out in different words, that I'm just taking notes.
There are many joyful events, too, of course. About a month ago, my cousin Michael and I had a delightful lunch with our Aunt Patricia. What's so unusual about that, you ask? Well, we didn't know we had an Aunt Patricia. Evidently my grandfather (Thomas H., Sr.), who had five boys, of which my father was the eldest, also had a 12-year affair with Patricia's mom, who was a columnist at one of his papers. She's had an interesting life, and is warm and smart and earthy. It was a joy to get to know her. She lives in Denmark, where her second husband (of three) is from -- he's a renowned industrial designer with works in MOMA. Her three kids are in Denmark, too.
I just got back from the park next to the library where I watched the towers collapse. Landscapers just today seeded the slopes after a renovation project that I, in effect, oversaw as president of the library board. A memorial stone we're having put in a wall that overlooks the Hudson is a couple of weeks late, but it will read:
September 11, 2001
At this vista
We came together
In grief and solidarity
Our perspective forever changed
It's poker night. Got to run. Life's routines must go on. But it was very good hearing from you. I think of you often, and hope all's well.
When Carrick was attending RedCliff Ascent in the winter of 2000-2001 (she was primarily smoking pot back then), I ended a letter to my daughter with some thoughts that Pat had emailed.
Here's part of what Pat wrote to me tonight, in response to my telling her that we believe we've done the right thing but know that you are struggling out there in the wilderness:
“You did what you had to do for Carrick, Thom, so please hold tight to that conviction. Probably the most difficult thing we do as parents is to release control when we desperately want to maintain it. Then, once we let go we find that control was a tissue-thin illusion in the first place. There is every reason for hope, not the least of which is that she's seen her parents break the back of these problems for themselves.”
I also want to quote you the final words she wrote to me before she went into surgery about a month ago, with the understanding that she might not come out at all. I immediately printed these simple words out and taped them to the wall in front of me at work:
"Take Care. Be happy. Love life. It's good."
We love you.
Pat wrote today and asked if things didn't feel a bit anticlimatic around our house.
I replied no, we all really feel that our work is just beginning.