Things I Read in the Inheritance of Loss that Made My Brain Twitch a Little

Let me start this off by saying that The Inheritance of Loss is described as "sumptuously written." I've never heard a book, or anything else for that matter, described as sumptuous, but now I may add that as a criteria on certain lists I keep.

As one of the main characters, a judge, sets off from his native India to pursue higher education and elevate his class:

"The judge was accompanied by his father. At home, his mother was weeping because she had not estimated the imbalance between the finality of good-bye and the briefness of the last moment."

As the judge's granddaughter sits with the family cat, Mustafa:

"Then there was the cat, Mustafa, a sooty hirsute fellow demonstrating a perfection of containment no amount of love or science could penetrate. He was, at this moment, starting up like a lorry on Sai's lap, but his eyes looked blankly right in hers, warning her against mistaking this for intimacy."

As Biju, the judge's cook's son who is trying to make a go at it in America with the hopes of elevating his class, is delivering food on bike for a Chinese restaurant in the dead of winter:

"...he began to weep from the cold, and the weeping unpicked a deeper vein of grief -- such a terrible groan issued from between the whimpers that he was shocked his sadness had such depth."

As Sai, who has been studying under a male tutor named Gyan, confers with an older female ex-pat:

"'Time should move,' Noni had told her. 'Don't go in for a life where time does not pass, the way I did. That is the single biggest bit of advice I can give you.'"

As Biju reflects on the life of his nemesis, Mr. Shah, an Indian who was working toward the American Dream as the Indians at home saw it:

"Photos of the exterior (of the house Shah had bought) had been sent to all the relatives in Gujarat, a white care parked in front. A Lexus, that premier luxury vehicle. On top of it sat his wife looking self-satisfied. She had left India a meek bride, scrolled and spattered with henna, so much gold in her sari she set off every metal detector in the airport -- and now here she was -- white pantsuit, bobbed hair, vanity case, and capable of doing the macarena."

As Sai celebrates Christmas with her older ex-pat friends:

"For the occasion, the sisters had brought out their ornaments from England -- various things that looked as if they tasted of mints..."

As the judge consumates with his wife from an arranged marriage, who he's just caught powdering herself with his treasured American powder and puff:

"Ghoulishly sugared in sweet candy pigment, he clamped down on her, tussled her to the floor, and as more of that perfect rose complexion, blasted into a million motes, came filtering down, in a dense frustration of lust and fury -- penis uncoiling, mottled purple-black as if with rage, blundering, uncovering the chute he had heard rumor of -- he stuffed his way ungracefully into her."

As all the characters are affected by India's fight for liberation from England:

"For crimes that took place in the monstrous dealings between nations, for crimes that took place in those intimate spaces between two people without a witness, for these crimes the guilty would never pay. There was no religion and no government that would relieve the hell."

As Biju calls home to India from an American payphone to check on his father during the revolution, only to have the conversation stifled by a terrible connection:

"He could not talk to his father; there was nothing left between them but emergency sentences, clipped telegram lines shouted out as if in the midst of a war... He stood with his head still in the phone booth studded with bits of stiff chewing gum and the usual FuckShitCockDickPussyLoveWar, swatikas, and hearts shot with arrows mingling in a dense graffiti garden, too sugary too angry too perverse -- the sick sweet rotting mulch of the human heart."

As Sai searches for the object of her affection, Gyan, in his lower class neighborhood after he rejects her for no apparent reason:

"The churches were dark; the missionaries always left in dangerous times to enjoy chocolate chip cookies and increase funds at home, until it was peaceful enough to venture forth again, that they might launch attack, renewed and fortified, against a weakened and desperate populace."

The Cure

Here's what I know.

Betsy was born with hip dysplasia that left her with medical bills so long and impossible to pay that my parents, who had three other kids, just started wrapping her up in them and taking her picture. There she is, in a body cast on the couch, and a bill no less than 12 feet long swirls around her. My dad worked full time, and when he got home my mom went to work until 10 or 11 at night. Sometimes he had two jobs. Sometimes after Betsy's surgeries, my dad couldn't stay at the hospital with my mom because he had to get back to those jobs.

Jennifer was diagnosed with CLL in 2005 after having surgery to have her adenoids removed. Fortunately she was employed at a fabulously supportive accounting firm, one that helped her relocate closer to home to pursue chemotherapy and one that gave her time off during her treatments. It was also one that came with incredible health insurance. And it is exactly that health insurance and the chronic nature of her disease that keeps her in that job. She knows her disease will flair up again at some point, she knows that she will need treatment, and she knows that the only way she can get the treatment she needs is to have health insurance. Which means that even though she wants to try a new career, wants to stay home with her future babies, wants to have the life she chooses rather than the one the health insurance industry forces on her, she can't.

Heather has two sons. The older son has a sensory issue of some kind. He has been to therapy to learn how tricks for how to deal with it. Because of this issue, he was traumatized while trying to pottytrain and had to be admitted to the emergency room. Heather is a stay-at-home mom who has worked as a nurse and an insurance assessor. She told me once that when you put bandaids on a patient in the hospital, the patient is billed for the entire box of bandaids even if they only use two. Same thing for gauze. Some thing for fluids. And the sticker price of these drugstore items are hugely inflated because, hey, it's not the person we're charging, it's the insurance... In trying to get her son the intervention that he needs, she has had to hound insurance companies for thousands of dollars. Normally a financial genius with a safety net that makes me jealous, Heather and her family have gone into debt trying to bridge the gap between paying for the therapy and being reimbursed by the insurance company, which sometimes doesn't happen.

Charles and Shannon were living in England one year and they came home for the holidays. Normally they buy traveler's insurance, but this time they forgot. This was the time that Charles would get appendicitis and spend Christmas Day in the hospital. He came home after one day, back to his old self, except now his old self had a $20,000 bill attached to it. With no way to pay it, they went back to their country, where if I was visiting I could have surgery for free, and hoped for the best.

I have lived without insurance at several points in my life, as has Mack, and fortunately my politics allowed me to take advantage of Planned Parenthood and the services they offer, which come with fees based on your most recent pay stubs, my health allowed me to stay alive, and my luck kept me from drowning in debt. I eat pretty healthily, I exercise at least once a week, I maintain my weight within 10 pounds, I do regular breast exams, I take vitamins, but I am not invincible to disease or illness.

Thanks to the representatives who stepped outside of politics and looked at what Americans need, I may not have to be. The United States may just catch up to other first world countries in providing this basic service to our citizens. We may just be able to stop worrying about how we're going to take care of our parents and how we're going to afford having children. We may just start taking responsibility for our own health, which is something that, like it or not, insurance companies do not let us do.

It's going to be collectively expensive if we get it, one of the biggest barriers to the public health option, but it's no more expensive than paying the overinflated costs we're personally paying now. (Insurance for me and Mack was $400+ per month at my last job... imagine if I donated that money instead to universal health care and it didn't matter how sick I or anyone else got!)

This really isn't about politics. It's about people... Betsy, Jen, Heather, Charles, me, Mack, our parents, the babies we love, you. It's completely doable, it's long overdue, it's anti-American to let people die.

Click here to find out how to nudge your congresspeople to be brave and forward-thinking. And here to educate yourself on what's really at stake.

The Endorsement Series (Part 10 in a lot)

I'm cheap. There, I said it.

My whole life I've been a frugal experimenter... always open to trying the generic brand just to see if it really is the same as the name brand. In some cases, such as those involving shampoo, rising crust pizza, scented candles, tampons and toilet paper, the generic brand can't hold a candle to the name brand. But in many cases, such as those involving jalapenos, aspirin, tortilla chips, sparkling water and canned beans, the generic option is just as good as the fancy and more expensive one.

Yesterday, while Mack and I were driving around with the cosmetic mirrors on the sun visors open, we started an open discussion about how our teeth had become seriously yellow. In my case, the bottoms and the pointy one just to the left of my incisors were particularly shocking. I had started to notice mine looking a little stained a couple weeks ago, so last weekend I asked Leiah what she recommends since she works with dentists. She said Crest White Strips, so I told Mack we should get some when we got to Target.

We walked back to the white strips section and whoa. Do you have any idea how many options there are?

There is the Classic version for $20, which you wear twice a day for 14 days. I don't do anything twice a day for 14 days. Then there is the Premium for $25, and you wear those twice a day for 7 days. Then you've got the Pro Effects for $40, which give you lasting results and give you a noticeably whiter smile in 3 days. I like 3 days... I don't like $40. Finally you've got the Advanced Seal option for $45. This one whitens in 14 days, only doing it once a day, and it lets you drink water while you whiten.

My head was spinning in that white strips section. I wanted to get rid of the yellow, but I didn't want to take two weeks to do it and I didn't want to spend more than $20. Hello, my little generic friends.

Target had an off-brand of the Premium version, one step up from the Classic, for $15. We bought two of those kits, one for each of us, and hurried home to try them out.

I put them on, checked the clock, piddled around on the computer, went to feed the stray kitties up the road, came home, took them off, and HOLY WHITENESS!

Just one use and my yellow spots were mostly gone. It was amazing. I'm doing my second treatment now, and then I think I'll be good on the whiteness. Which means I have 12 more whitening sessions left in my box alone. Which is definitely making me smile about being cheap.