Month: March 2013

A Little Night Music

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I got off work late last night. The dishwasher still needed emptying, and, not feeling like cooking, I decided to order out for all of us and treat myself to a twenty minute get away. It was the worst decision of the day, and it was the best.

When I stepped out into the dark, I could already feel the hand gripping at my chest. It’s been squeezing and releasing it for days now. I’ve been here before. It’s a place at the bottom and I hit it every few years. It’s a place where all hell can be breaking loose, or – like last night – not. It’s a place where I have a family I love and that loves me, where work and lifework are going well, where there are new friends and rekindled friendships. And it’s a place where, inspite of fortune, seemingly, to spite myself, I worry over every word I speak or write, where every noise and voice is like a hammer on my soul, where I start clicking the buttons to withdraw from my world, and where that hand tightens around my chest until a dark winter road is as good a place to say good night as any other.

I’ve been here before. The way out of that place is often the repetition of the litany that people need me to keep it together, that no child should ever think a mother chose to leave him for any reason. Last night it was enough to get me home to where our nightly music had already begun playing and recalling the better way out.

The soundtrack of our evening is dissonant and sometimes silly. It starts with a “Hi Mom!” and a “Thanks for getting dinner!.” The sound climbs on the rhythm of plates being arranged on a table by an unsteady but enthusiastic six-year-old pair of hands. The song swells on a chorus of “Guess what happened to me?” and “Did I eat enough to get desert?” It’s all punctuated by staccato laughter, until it crescendos on a joke gone overboard.

The next movement is a long decrescendo. It’s a tremolo of “Mom, can you wash my jeans for tomorrow?” , “Mommy, can you come snuggle with me?”, and “Mom, where’s the extra shampoo?” The song modulates as I squeeze into the lower bunk for a goodnight kiss and snuggle with Thing2, starting as I lie on a remote and the car it controls sounds its own momentary surprise symphony. The strains of “My Sweet Lord” being played on the Big Guy’s ancient acoustic guitar close out the the soundtrack as a still small pair of arms wraps around me, and the chirping becomes soft snoring and the snoring becomes salvation for another night.

Darkness Crowded

I’m currently working on a book that started as a collection of short stories based on Picking My Battles. One of the things I love about the blog, however, is that each successive post not only provides an opportunity to improve skills and build friendships, it is a chance to think about the projects it’s inspiring.

The working title of my current project is called Fable. My recent decision to be candid about my own lifelong struggle with depression and mania has begun to shape it from a collection of short stories or posts into a longer piece. As I write, however, I’ve also begun to read more about other people’s experiences with these disorders.

Marbles, a graphic memoir by Ellen Forney, prompted my first first piece on the subject. The author is about my age, and many of her experiences with bipolar disorder reflected my own. Last night I continued my exploration with William Styron’s Darkness Visible. A chronicle of a major depressive episode when the author was in his 60s, it held up a different kind of mirror.

Written before the clinical language of depression had permeated our popular culture, Styron’s account of his decline and brush with suicide is unvarnished and sometimes raw. However, it is also informed by a lifetime of extensive reading and personal familiarity with other authors who suffered the same affliction and by his re-examination of his own work post-depression.

Darkness Visible isn’t the first book to look at the debated link between mental illness and creativity, and Styron didn’t restrict his anecdotes only to authors. This book about inner darkness, however, did illuminate for me how fortunate my experience has been.

My first depressive episode happened when I was two, although it was only in retrospect that my parents or I realized that was what was happening. I had another major, nearly fatal episode when I was sixteen. Now, having lived through numerous swings up and down, some with disastrous consequences, I count myself lucky even when I’m rocking at the back of my mental cave. I don’t look forward to the insomnia and anxiety and the constant contemplation of death, but, even at the very depths, there is a part of me that is always reasonably sure it will end.

This is not to say that I don’t struggle and am never tempted to fall asleep and not wake up. But, reading the account of Styron’s first major episode late in his life – the first one of which he was keenly aware – I knew I was lucky to have discovered early in life that the key to survival was the understanding that the darkness does break.

The darkness is long, and you don’t find your way out. You wait for the night to end. And, as terrifying as the beginning of Styron’s book was, with its histories of authors and housewives who had lost their battles, he closed this tiny tome by throwing out the lifeline of his own experience and survival to others who might be struggling.

My night has begun to break in the last few weeks. This one has been different, however. I still have my own lifelines. As the dawn begins to reflect off the mirrors I’ve recently acquired, however, I see a crowd through the darkness, and I’ve begun to think about how, in the light of a day not defined by fear and stigma, I can cast some of those lifelines to others.

Of Birds, Bees, and Bathtime

I was curious about boys when I was twelve.  I was attending an all-girl school, so my preteen theories about dating and boys were purely conjecture.  Even when I moved to a co-ed school, however, my curiosity and my ability to attract the opposite sex were completely out of sync, so my parents seemed comfortable waiting to have ‘The Talk’ until I was well into high school.

My dad was a doctor, so he had no qualms about discussing the science of sex with us, but it was my mother’s less scientific take on the subject one afternoon that has stuck with me.  I had invited a few friends over, including a girl who had left school when she had a baby.  She had brought her baby, and we had all fallen in love with it.  None of us were thinking of the larger issue of teen pregnancy at the time – I was still trying to get someone to take me to a movie – but my mom clearly was that afternoon.  She enjoyed holding the baby too, but when my friends and the baby left, she sat me down for a chat.

“That baby is very cute, and your friend is doing a wonderful job with him,” she said, “but I hope you notice that she’s not going to any dances or parties.”  The Talk that day revolved around, not judging someone’s choices, but making me aware of some of life’s consequences and that, even though I’d always have my parents’ love and support, I would be the one to shoulder them.

I remembered this conversation when I was dating.  I remembered it when the Big Guy and I were DINKS (Double Income No Kids), indulging in carefree travel and dinners out as often as we could afford (or were invited).  And, as I see very socially-aware Facebook posts by kids at my son’s school (and even grade), as well as teenage parents at his and other nearby, I’m remembering it.

My firstborn is a bit of a computer geek.  Unless a girl had a keyboard or a mouse attached to her, he might not give her a second look.  Knowing, however, that he is seeing this conversation played in different forms around him, I realize we will be having The Talk a lot earlier than I did.  I’m a big believer in the facts.  I want him to understand how his body works, what he needs to do to keep it healthy, and how to keep from reproducing before he’s ready for the consequences of that decision. Most of all,  I want him to understand the potentially life-changing magnitude of those consequences.

Thing2 is six years younger than his big brother, and Thing1 has been privy to all the joys and pains of living with a newborn, toddler, and rambunctious grade schooler (he will never admit to having inflicted the pains himself).  He has ridden next to a car-seat loaded with a screaming and sometimes smelly baby.  He has watched us negotiate with nature’s most annoying creature – the fussy eater (his own memory of this phase is conveniently blank).  Most of the time, he takes things in stride.

Sometimes, however, he cracks.

Last night was one of those times.

Thing2’s gift for getting dirty becomes an art form on the weekends, and I had ordered him into the tub.  I hosed him off before letting him indulge in a little splash time.  He relocated all but a few tablespoons of water from the tub to the bathroom floor before I let him know it was time to get out.  The floor is concrete and tolerates ponds, so I ushered him to his bedroom to get him dried and dressed before mopping up.

“What!?!”  An annoyed cry came from the bathroom.  Thing1 came marching into the bedroom.  “Why is the bathroom such a mess?  There’s water everywhere,” he yelled at his brother.  I quickly put the lid on his outburst, reminding him the commode still functioned when wet and this was not a catastrophe.  Thing1 moderated his tone but not his attitude as he turned on his heel and returned to the facilities .  “I swear, I’m not going to have little kids in my house till I’m forty-five,” he muttered.  I wrapped the towel around Thing2, grinning like David who had just awoken Goliath, and gave him a big hug.

Clean and dry, relieved and defused, the boys retired to the couch for a few minutes of TV before bed, friends until David decides to needle Goliath again in the morning.  I know there will be other versions of The Talk.   Watching them teach each other about boundaries and bathrooms I’m appreciating how my mother’s words in a completely different way.  What was a warning when it needed to be, is now a promise fulfilled by patience.  Now, as I think about how to impart the perils without dimming that promise, Thing2’s object lessons make sure that Thing1 is gaining a clear understanding of consequences.  And, while now many of those lessons may only teach Thing1 patience of a different sort, I’m hoping the occasional cease-fires are implanting another, if subtler, kind of understanding of how, with patience and timing (and luck), consequences can also be rewards.

A Day with the Boys

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Once upon a time I would have traded blood and organs for the chance to be a Work At Home Mom (WAHM).  A few years ago, I stumbled onto the right ad on Craigslist and, without making any deals with the devil, joined the growing legions of moms who work from home.  For the most part it’s been a win-win.  I’m home on snow days and sick days.  There’s no dry-cleaning to worry about, and the gas and rubber saved is significant.  It has also, however, taught me a lot about the difference between quality time with my kids, twelve-year-old Thing1 and six-year-old Thing2,  and simply more time.

Our town has school choice, so Thing1 and Thing2 go to different schools in different towns.  The schools are a mile apart, and, while the calendars often overlap, there are somedays when one school is closed and the other is not.  Yesterday was Thing2’s day off, and, enjoying a unprecedented state of organization last week, I remembered to schedule a day off for myself.

The kids are in school full-time now, but summers and holidays mean that I’m often scrambling to entertain them while I work.  More often than I’d like, this results in kids playing on iPads or computers and me snapping at them to stop fighting over this or that toy.  It’s more time together, but it is not quality time.

Ironically, spending more time with my kids has fueled my desire to carve out more special days with one or the both of them.  It’s a tradition that started when Thing1 was still Thing-only.  Mommy-Thing1 days started with a special breakfast and then a visit to a museum or even just a day on the couch watching a movie of his choice.  It’s one-on-one face time, and it’s become a sacred ritual for both kids.

Thing2 and I started the day with breakfast and haircuts.  Money he had earned was burning a hole in his pocked, so we took a quick trip to the toy store and then went to visit a friend who’s recovering from surgery.  By the time we got home, my day with Thing2 was drawing to a close, and a planned evening with Thing1 was about to begin.

The Dorset Theatre was in its final weekend of its production of The Crucible, and, since we don’t have a regular babysitter, the Big Guy and I had decided to take turns attending.  We’ve been dragging Thing1 to plays for a while now (with increasing levels of enthusiasm), and I decided we would go out to dinner before the play.  Thing2’s palate is getting more adventurous so we ended up a Thai place in Manchester, VT.

The restaurant was a little more upscale place than we usually go with either child, but Thing1 warmed to the subdued atmosphere.  Absent distractions, we began to have a different Mommy-Thing1 day.  Thing2 is still at that stage where Mommy and Daddy are at the center of his world, and our special days are basically one big mental cuddle.  But Thing1 is at the border of adolescence, and the independence that accompanies that stage of life means that our special days have changed in content and character.  Last night, as our special day consisted mainly of  very grown-up dinner conversations about technology and society and later about the play and the performance, I began to see for the first time how that change is bringing us closer.

Good Parents Never Retire

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There are a lot of things I love about my parents.  I love that they never pull out a tape recording of all the things I said I’d never do as a parent when I do exactly that.  I love that they are flush with great advice but wait until it’s asked for.  I love that, as I begin to understand their point of view on so many things, they never say, “I told you so.”   And I love, that at the ages of 70 and 72, they’ve never really retired – not from their jobs or from parenting.

My dad knew he wanted to be a doctor pretty early in college.  He’s been in medicine in one way or another for most of his life (not just his adult life – his life).  His career has changed over the years, taking him and us around the country and even the globe.  What never changed was his drive to learn.  My mom started her career as a history professor when my sister and I were a little older, and, while her job didn’t involve as much globetrotting, she had the same insatiable lust for learning as my dad.   

When they got closer to their retirement age, we expected they might slow down and transition into being full-time grandparents.  My dad, however, kept traveling for one lecture or research project, and my mom kept reading and writing and teaching.  They did have tentative plans for after retirement, but they constantly seemed to get pushed further down the road.

My dad announced his retirement first.  I wondered how long it would take this man who was constantly traveling to go stir crazy (or make my mother crazy).  But he already had plans.  He barely seemed to stop for a breath before launching himself into a different incarnation of his love of medicine and learning and service.  He may have left his job, but, even now, years later, he is still a medical man.  It was not just a job or even a career, it was and remains a passion.  

My mom continued this pattern.  Her job ended, but her work continued.  Like my father, her retirement was marked by the end of a paycheck and the beginning of projects.  She joined another history organization, investing almost as much time on research and writing as she had before retiring.  She’s been retired for several years now, but she is still every bit a historian, and, with my dad is still busy teaching me some valuable life lessons as she navigates this phase of her life.

They don’t work as many hours as they did when they were employed, but even when they’re on vacation, they will retire to their office/bedroom for a little research or writing.  Most days I like my job very much (absent a winning lottery ticket or  writing the next Harry Potter, I’ll probably be doing it till I retire).  Only unwillingly, however, do I let it intrude on my family vacations, and it wasn’t until recently that I ‘got’ why my parents invited their ‘work’ into their holidays and their retirement.

What helped me ‘get’ it was finding the Writer’s Project at Hubbard Hall led by author Jon Katz.  I always loved writing, but there had been times when life got too hectic and I let it fall by the wayside.  The Project demanded that everyone who was intent on staying with it needed to write and share regularly through our blogs.  At first, this was as an act of  discipline.  Then it became my regular indulgence in ‘me’ time.  It was not until we went on vacation with my parents, however, that I began to realize that it was giving me a brand new perspective on my parents and on work.

Determined to have a real vacation last year, I only took my iPad and left ‘work’ at home.  But from the moment we left our dirt road for the paved highways, I wrote.  Every place we stopped I wrote.  At night, I wrote after everyone else was in bed.  When the kids were busy with their Tinker Toys or at the beach, I wrote.  And, as I watched my Mom and Dad withdraw each day to their office and invite their lifeworks into their vacations, it struck me that, for the first time in my life, I had done the same thing.  

Finding the Writer’s Project was serendipity, and it would have been worth selling blood and organs to join had it been necessary.  But watching two people living their passions as I rediscover mine has enriched the experience in ways I couldn’t anticipate.  The workshop encourages us all to follow our passions.  My parents are showing me how to thrive on them for the rest of my life.

The Night Owl and the Early Bird

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I have been night owl for as long as I can remember.  Worry and obsession often follow me to bed, and, as they are not anesthetics, I often take flight to escape them.  Over the last few months, I’ve been working to become an early bird, but there are times when the night owl threatens to eviscerate her before she feathers out.

Friday night I had willingly made the mistake of reading a few news items shortly before bed.  Having invited the news of the world into my nighttime consciousness like a vampire over my threshold, I knew the only recourse was to let the night owl take flight.  I needed sleep – even wanted it, but activity is often the only antidote to worry.   So I went to my desk and closed the door, securing my sanity with pencils and paper and paint.

The alarm was set for five – I had intended to write – but by the time the night owl had driven the shadows from my mind, the early bird was trying to rise.  The night owl was keenly aware of this, and, for a moment, seemed prepared to consume her as she began to flutter.  But something – wisdom – perhaps overtook the night owl, and she let the fledgling alone to do her work as the sun rose, warming them both.

Saturday evening I again let myself be seduced by the news of the world.  The previous night’s flight and the morning work, however, had built a wall around my worry.   That wall may crumble –  my walls usually do.  But as the night owl learns to live with the early bird, I’m hoping whatever balance they find will permeate the other parts of my life.

 

Something Wicked

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I am not a theatre critic, but I am a fan of live theatre. I am particularly a fan of community theatre and it’s not just because I’m married to a guy with skin in the game. By its very nature, live theatre is intimate, but something about the smaller venue, the often inventive sets born of small budgets, and the casts comprised of commingled amateur and professional actors, intensifies that intimacy for me. For our family, this has been especially true at Hubbard Hall, a theatre company making its home in a small Victorian opera house in the ‘one-traffic light town’ of Cambridge, New York. This small venue with its eclectic, talented cast was the perfect place to introduce my twelve-year-old son to something truly wicked and wonderful – William Shakespeare’s MacBeth.

My date for the evening was not a willing victim, despite the numerous performances he has attended and enjoyed at Hubbard Hall (another Shakespeare play among them). It wasn’t terribly late for a school night, but he was happily ensconced on the sofa watching TV with his dad and brother. Knowing I couldn’t bring the Big Guy – our midweek babysitter lineup is non-existent, and MacBeth is not six-year-old friendly – I opted for the Because-I-Said-So card (rather than the pricking of his thumbs) and forced him into a clean shirt before ushering him out the door. He was offering to do homework as we got into the car.

He was still quietly protesting the interruption to his studies (me thinks he protested a bit too much) when we sat down.

Then the first of a trio of mischievous witches entered. Knowing the cast at Hubbard Hall also acts as stage crew, we watched as she toiled and troubled over a basket. We soon realized, however, that she and her sisters were setting the mood, and, as they scurried about the minimalist and starkly lit set, I watched them reset my son’s mood. The silent reproach became reluctant attentiveness and then intense focus. His focus would not change for the next hour and a half, and neither would mine.

We have been wowed by most of these actors in other performances, so even on the ‘Pay What You Will’ night, I pay full price, knowing it will be worth the price of admission. Thursday night was no exception. It is no small tribute that this talented, eclectic ensemble was able to communicate not just the gist, but the intensity of this story of betrayal and recrimination to an initially disinterested twelve-year-old.

An extra slot in my schedule senior year combined with my mom’s firm ideas about how school hours should be spent, resulted in my picking up a Shakespeare class for a semester. It had its moments, but for the most part, its main attraction was that it wasn’t a math or science class. And, while I was ultimately glad circumstance had me forced into a working knowledge of the bard’s works, I was hardly an aficionado. It wasn’t until years later when I caught an impromptu performance of As You Like It that I was able to get past the language and into the essence of the story. Remembering that these plays had been written for the benefit of penny-a-cushion illiterates (and philistines like me), I began making it a point to catch performances of Shakespeare’s works whenever I could find the modern equivalent of a penny-priced cushion. In the end, it wasn’t just the play that was the thing – it was the playing of it wherein the imagination became king.

So, I did hesitate a moment before dragging said twelve-year-old out on a snowy school night. And, even though biology and sleep forced us away too early (I will go back for another performance), when the hurly-burly was done, I knew something had been won. The close quarters stage combined with the cast’s intimacy with their parts and the poetry of the play may not have created a full-blown convert, but when my first-born walked out into the snow MacBeth wasn’t just some play written by a dead guy 500 years ago. It was a really cool show about murder and betrayal and guilt. It was the ultimate reality show. It was, as my eldest put it, wicked good.

The semi-biased facts about the show:

MacBeth is playing at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY from March 8-24 (full schedule is on their site). Directed by John Hadden, it is performed by the incredibly entertaining Colleen Lovett, Catherine Seeley Keister, Myka Plunkett, Christine Decker, Renzo Scott Renzoni, Robert Francis Forgett, Doug Ryan, Betsy Holt, Gino Costabile, and Reilly Hadden and (fact) should not be missed.

What This Blog Is

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A few weeks ago, my frustration with a writer’s block born of the down side of my Bipolar life led me to write about it. It was the first time in my life I had ever written about it overtly. Not knowing how it would be received, I purposely picked a post day when I thought no one would be on their computers. I worried about losing readers, but I was desperate to get past depression and back to writing, so I took a chance. The response to my gamble was overwhelming and, for me, completely unexpected.

Even then, however, freed from the fear of letting the world know that somethin’ ain’t exactly right, I was adamant that this would not become a bipolar blog. But a recent email exchange made me realize that, while I didn’t know exactly what this site was, in many ways it has always been a a bipolar blog -even if I couldn’t see it.

When it began last summer, I thought it was a mommy blog (for extremely disorganized mommies). I thought it might also be a rural mommy blog. For a while I thought it was an illustration blog. It was a cartoon platform and a poetry outlet. And, of course, it was a blog about family.

For months it was all of these things because I was. I was flying, and the blog and I were keeping each other aloft in the stratosphere. When my flight ended, however, the crash came, and the blog became part of my lifeline. It, like the other part of my lifeline – my family – needed me to get out of bed each day and nurture it. Like my kids, it needed care and feeding, even on the many days that I wonder if it and they would be better off with someone more competent or stable. And as my self-soothing visits to my fantasy work became more frequent, my blog became a depression blog, interweaving itself with the only other blog theme I could and needed to sustain – my family.

Now as I continue to cling to the “This Too Shall Pass” mantra that helps me manage my stay in Melancholia, I realize that this has always been a blog about mania and depression. It has always been about the simulataneously intoxicating but precarious highs and the sometimes crippling lows. But it is also a blog about how the journey between those places affect the family I chose to join and build – for good or ill – and how they have come to affect it by saving me every day of my life. Even on the days I don’t think I need it.

A Little Christmas

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Mother nature cornered the irony market this morning.  A few weeks before the official start of spring, she decided to send us a blanket a snow.  A March snow in Vermont is expected, but this winter has been marked primarily by grey days and an extended mud season.  That combination has been no help in lifting me out of a persistent funk.

So when I woke up this morning and saw bleak gray sky through the sliver opening in the curtains, I was ready for more of the same. Then I got up and peeked through the curtain and my breath stopped.

It was still snowing.  There wasn’t much of it, but it was already one of the best snows all year.  It was sugar powder perfect, and the wind hadn’t yet stripped the trees of their raiments.  The voice in my head that controls worry started whispering then.  

“The roads will be terrible.  It’ll be a snow day for sure,” she said.  That got me breathing again as I remembered I needed to check school closings.  I was already seeing a morning of work interspersed with refereeing, but when I checked, only the older child’s school was even delayed.  Knowing he had homework to occupy him while I worked, and knowing there would be no fights over remotes or electronica, I decided this really was the best snow of the year.

There was just enough to camouflage the mud.  There was too little to cancel school, and somewhere in the back of my brain, I was pretty sure I could hear another voice humming opening bars of ‘We Need a Little Christmas.’

World, Meet Boy

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I’m leafing through the pages of my sketchbook looking for a blank sheet.  There are mostly hastily penned doodles for blog posts.  But here and there and there again, there are drawings made with a different scrawl.

There’s a picture of a guitar, the heavy lines suggesting an energetic hand behind the pencil. Below the guitar is scratched the name of the artist whose painting inspired the sketch.  The letters are rough and just slightly clumsy.  On the next pages are renderings of places and even faces I recognize.  And, throughout the strong, impulsively laid lead lines, I see my six-year-old son’s spirit.

His art is like him – uninhibited and full of adventure.  And, like his physical presence, his etchings are talismans of joy.  They are hope in an often hopeless world.  They are a promise of his future, and the affirmation is a priceless powerful drug.  

There is little daylight between his youth and his joy right now, but I know that rarely does that carefree exuberance survive adolescence or maturity.  While it thrives, however, I will nurture it.  The day will come when the lines will become studied and serious.  For now, I’ve pressed these souvenirs back into my sketchbook, saving his spring like a dried daisy to be rediscovered on a colder day when it’s needed most.