A Little Bit Poisoned

My mother, like most women of her generation, washed and hung fiberglass draperies. The airborne  glass fibers flew everywhere. And I always knew when the window treatments were clean not by the fresh scent, but because my mother scratched her body raw for days afterwards.

In the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink in both my houses in Yonkers and Dobbs Ferry was a can of insecticide. The active ingredient in the spray was Chlordane. For fun and also because I did not care to touch any insect (especially spiders) I would spray insects with the aerosol until a puddle formed.

In that same cabinet was a bottle  of Carbona. It was used liberally to spot clean fabric. The active ingredient in Carbona was carbon tetrachloride.

To demonstrate the fact that a metal in its natural state could be liquid, science teachers everywhere allowed their students to play with mercury. And mercury, in addition to being in every thermometer, was also in mercurochrome and merthiolate – each a tincture which found its way on every cut, scrape and opened wound on every child in America.

Next to the fireplace at my Uncle Victor’s farmhouse, was a pair of asbestos gloves. They allowed you in a more facile way than tongs, to position the logs while the fire burned. We, as children, put the gloves on for fun and then put our hands in and out of the fire just to prove how well they worked.

And sometimes when I was little I was still awake when my mother entered bedroom to see if I was sleeping. I knew to close my eyes and pretend before I heard her footsteps. I knew to do so by the smell of her lit cigarette.

And I wonder sometimes how it is that any of us are still alive. No one used sunscreen or had organically grown produce. Hair dye contained formaldehyde. Nail polish had toluene. Car exhaust spewed lead and carbon monoxide. Coffee was decaffeinated with benzene. Naphthalene kept the moths in our closets away.

And I do not care to ponder how much radiation I was exposed to at the dentist’s office or from multiple fluoroscopes.

I wonder how it could possibly be that with all that exposure to environmental carcinogens we have managed to thrive at all. How could it be that we have all made it this far? Because we should all be dead from lung, liver, blood and kidney disease----not to mention dementia from mercury and lead poisoning.

Which is why every day is a gift. And why we should all be grateful for every moment we have together. Because we all have been, at least little bit, poisoned.