Great Escape

Painting mode turns everything I see into a painting to be dissected and reassembled on paper. Lately, I’ve been in writing mode, which usually lends itself more to doodles. This time around, however, it’s also been driving a different rebirth.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and before the evolution of digital devices, I was a book addict. When my parents said lights out, I heard the cue to walk to the light switch by the door and read by the light from the hall. Footsteps coming up the stairs sent me and my book under the covers with a flashlight until my parents caught me and let me have it. I’d get scolded in grade school for reading ahead in class because I needed to know what happened next.

Even then I knew that diving into the fantasy on a page was a socially acceptable and effective retreat from signs of depression that had only just begun to make themselves known.

Over the last few months, pictures that often require meditation to be seen have failed to form against the backdrop of the chaos that is life. That same noise has whipped up inner dialogues in a flight of ideas have brought me back to reading for pleasure.

Our kids are growing up watching me read mostly reference materials and magazines, which while vital are inherently functional. They don’t see me reading books as a primary source of entertainment, and, too often, my failed example is reflected back in their lack of interest in reading for its own sake. To be sure, Thing2’s Harry Potter obsession began with the series, but his second grade teacher deserves full credit for sparking it.

As I have resumed reading for reading’s sake, it has not only been the escape but a grounding force. Now, preoccupied with work and necessities, usually sitting near if not completely with the kids, reading wards away life’s frustrations and fears.  I’m not escaping my boys, however. I hope, instead, I’m leading them toward something that may be only entertaining now but, maybe someday when they really need it, so much more.

A Birthday Oddity


I honestly wanted to do nothing more than absolutely nothing yesterday. 

Yesterday, I woke up as a square.  An odd square.  A product of two odd primes. It’s the fourth time I’ve been the square of primes, and, in all probability the last, as I’ll have to be 121 to celebrate the next truly odd birthday.  For this birthday oddity I’d planned a trip to the University of New Hampshire for the last college visit before my first son has to figure out which dotted line he’ll sign. 

But that wasn’t what made it odd — or wonderful.

For the past two weeks Thing1 has been dealing with anemia brought on by his disease. He could not tolerate a drive of any length, so we had postponed the UNH visit already.  The newest drug, however, seemed to hit pause on his symptoms, and his affable nature had re-emerged over the last day or two. We knew this was the last best chance to go.

We got Thing2 to school and then headed down to the hospital. Thing1 needed bloodwork to check trough levels for one of the five drugs trying to control his auto-immune disorder.  It was already 9 by then, and Thing1 was ready for Breakfast Number 2 — a side effect and a sign he was starting to feel more himself. 

Treating the day like a field trip day (if it were run by an really over-indulgent teacher), I took him to our favorite diner in Bennington (my next blog will be titled ‘Diners I have Known’). We’ve been going there since Thing1 was in a car seat carrier, and my eyes started sweating as I watched my gentle giant pick out two entrees for a ‘snack’ (although it could have been tears brought on by the impending dent in my wallet). 

“Mom,” he said in that tone that said other people could see me getting emotional as my baby prepared to leave the nest.  There would be a few more warnings.

After breakfast we headed east toward the other side of Vermont and then to the east side of New Hampshire.  

We stopped for a break during the three and a half hour drive. A girl playing scratch tickets, reminded me of a failed lesson in probability from another road trip a decade ago.  On a whim, I bought a ticket, thinking he’d be my good luck charm again. Ten years ago, I’d told him we’d paid a tax on people who are bad at math and wound up winning on three $50 scratch tickets in a row. I’d chalked it up to some ‘magic’ which had everything to do with being with my seven-year-old and nothing to do with Math.  Yesterday I lost, of course.  Thing1 is too old and skeptical to channel that kind of magic anymore, but we were both laughing as I scraped the silver goo off the losing numbers. He’s still my good luck charm.

It had been a long time since I’ve heard Thing1 really laugh. 

We got UNH and asked our questions before walking around.  Thing1 loved it and was even more undecided about his future. A few more drives around the bucolic campus, we headed back to meet the Big Guy and Thing2 in Vermont for dinner. 

It poured most of the time until we got near the Vermont border.  It rained from Bellows Falls to Londonderry and got foggy as we headed over Bromley mountain to Manchester. 

My body was getting weary from the travel and from the constant travel and worry of the last few months. It was as if a day of not worrying — of seeing Thing1 happy and debating over pleasant aspects of his future —  had let my muscles relax too much for a moment. 

When we got the the restaurant, Thing1 mentioned a worrying symptom that had appeared, and we knew the tension release was temporary.  In reality it’s always temporary, but it is always welcome.  

When we got home, I got my sketchbook, planning to doodle and promptly passed out on the sofa with Thing1 next to me and eleven year old Thing2 draped over the cats that came to sit on my legs.  I woke up long enough to send Thing2 and myself to bed for the dreamless, satisfying sleep that only an exhaustingly perfect day can produce. 

And the oddest thing was that it was the best present I hadn’t even thought to ask for.

And You Still Don’t Need to

I said it to my kids last year, and I’ll say it to them this year. I’ll bet you say it to yours, and I’m pretty sure your mom has said it to you, but no matter how sappy it sounds each time, it’s true.

“You don’t need to get me (insert image of your mom talking here) anything for Mother’s Day (or any other day).”

But just in case you feel like getting your mom a little something, signed copies of A is for All-Nighter can be ordered from Battenkill Books in Cambridge, NY.

What’s Hers

Last week, Princess Calamity Jane (whose name evolves as we learn more of her personality) decided to switch up her routine.

Monday morning I let her and our orange tabby, Gentleman Jim-Bob, along with Katie the wonder dog, out through the sliding door as soon as I got up. As usual, Jane was the first to confirm that no new mice need to be stalked near the house and demanded re-entry two minute after she’d gone out.

I padded back to my studio office and Jane padded behind me.

I settled into my purple easy chair and pulled my tray table close. I’d been illustrating with good old fashion watercolor again — the iPad still isn’t quite as efficient and doesn’t provide the tactile pleasure of putting a brush on paper.

Calamity Jane jumped up on the table as I dipped a brush in my fifty-cent plastic water tumbler. She sniffed my forehead and then gave me a silent meow as she gracefully inspected the tumbler and the pan of paints. Then she bent over the illustration as if she was evaluating it.

Gentleman Jim-Bob had already put his stamp of disapproval on a painting the week before, so I readied my swooping hand to swoop her back to the floor.

I dipped the wet brush in a pool of paint, and she made a high pitched purring sound before wedging her head in the tumbler. She drank and then looked up at me and purred again. She walked around the perimeter of the painting and paint tin, daintily avoiding my work and looking regal as all cats do.

Then she came back to the tumbler and wedged her head for another drink. I finished coloring in a shirt and went to rinse my brush. I tried scratching Jane’s head to distract her from the colored water, but she wrapped her paw around the tumbler and pulled it closer to her.

It was a not-so-subtle reminder of why we added the title ‘Princess’ and that, as with kids and every other cat a human thinks they own, what’s mine is hers.

The Good, The Bad and The Pointlessly Angry

Things to do in the ER, Pen and Ink

<<There’s more blood again,>> Thing1 texted. And suddenly I was trying not to cry at the country store.

 I had left the house about 9 to work because our internet sucks on the weekend. Thing1 had been sleeping, the Big Guy was still in bed on the iPad, and Thing2 had been watching TV when I left.

The country store’s round table had been crowded with a few farmers and the family of one of the store’s teenaged employees discussing frustration with regulations on moving firewood from the NY border 3 miles away to VT and then moved on to haying and who needs new layers this spring taking me out of my troubles for the moment. The others left for chores, and I got online to handle support tickets.

Nothing is working. Not a second, drastic change in diet. Not any of the four pills or the biweekly injection. The four month “acute” flareup that initially responded to in-patient treatment has fully regrouped.

But giving up is not an option, so Sunday after work, we went shopping for food for the doctor’s recommended diet. Thing1 insisted on making the first recipe. As he mixed the gluten and sugar-blueberry muffins, symptoms forced him to take breaks. When the muffins were in the oven he casually told me that he had lost over 10 pounds this weekend, and I could see he wanted to cry — and didn’t want to as well.

Knowing from experience that the ER would only give him IV fluids and a referral and that we had to wait to call the doctor until Monday, I gave him a hug and kiss goodnight as he headed up to his room. His groans of pain echoed down the stairwell as he got into bed, and I felt like kicking something.

“He’s a good guy,” I whispered angrily as I got into bed.

“He is,” The Big Guy murmured.

“Why am I so angry?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Chris answered in a tone that told me he was just as frustrated.

“He’s done everything right,” I said.

He has. He has educated himself and taken responsibility for his diet. He’s taken every prescription as instructed. He’s kept up with his school and work responsibilities and still retained the kind, affable demeanor that defines him for us.

“I don’t even know who to be angry at,” I said as I punched the pillow into a comfortable shape. I set the alarm on my phone and, knowing if I even glanced at a single social media app, I would get even angrier, put it facedown on the nightstand.

I’m not religious at all, so I don’t get angry at a creator or even at the force. As I tried to force sleep to come, however I tried to think who there was I could blame. Had I had too many Diet Cokes before I was pregnant? Had Chris ‘inhaled’ when his sperm was forming?

I got angry at him and then at myself for all the things we could have done to cause this and then stopped. What did it matter?

There’s a part of me that wants to believe that being good creates more good that will ultimately find its way back to you, hopefully in this lifetime. I’m deeply flawed, but Thing1’s only flaws are youth and inexperience, and they haven’t had enough time to send anything out into the universe.

It’s easy to lie in the dark, believing some cosmic force is out there punishing him for my mistakes, but it changes nothing. Every moment spend raging at the fates in the ceiling will only make it harder to stop hitting the snooze button in six hours, and he’ll still be sick in the morning.

So Sunday night I made my choice. I forced my eyes closed and turned over on my side with the blankets high enough to block out sleep-stealing anger and frustration.

Monday morning, I called the doctor. We still don’t have the right answer, but banishing last night’s anger — even if I have to do it again tonight — makes it easier to remember that not having control over the situation doesn’t mean we’re completely helpless to help him unless we start to believe we are.

Giving Voice

Let me start by saying that I am unequivocally not insane. Well, mostly not insane.

See, taking a few courses online in the fall got me woke, and, in the recent absence of an academic goal I’ve been listening to podcasted lectures and language lessons. I had dropped off Thing2, putting his soundtrack of choice out of my misery so I could listening to the teacher from the German immersion course talk about the weather as I drove to my favorite Wednesday diner for breakfast (yes, I have a different diner for different days of the week).

I was listening to the course mainly to hear a normal pace rather than to learn weather terms again and missed a few repetitions. Then,a sentence about the temperature climbing to 18 degrees Celsius for the third time, a voice in my head that sounded a bit like a recently departed and dearly beloved uncle reminded me (in German) that it was Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

Suddenly another, decidedly British voice mentioned how one of the still quaint but somehow multimillion dollar houses along the country road near Manchester looked suspiciously empty and wouldn’t it be nice to have a normal house. Still another voice with an old-timey Vermont accent answered that there couldn’t possibly be any abandoned (affordable) houses in this neck of the woods, and suddenly I’d missed the first two repetitions of the next sentence on snow.

My working theory is that the voices in my head are an occupational hazard of working alone. One of the voices has mentioned that it’s more of a quirk than a hazard. They may even be advantageous, especially since they come up with tons of great ideas for books and paintings (the bad ideas – like buying the smaller dress size to get motivated to lose the weight — I get to keep the credit for).

At some point, I do need to call a meeting of the minds — someplace nice and outside — and ask if we could please, pretty please bring up our suggestions one at a time because some days the flood of ideas is just noise.

Keeping the Creative Faith

Last Wednesday was the first day off in months that didn’t include chauffeur duty to a medical facility for Thing1 or Thing2. Both kids miraculously got off to school on time, and I decided to have real day off.

I kicked off the morning with some cleaning (I know, I’m definitely not right in the head) and an oil change, using the time in the waiting area to write. Then off to the grocery store, using the drive time to listen to a Udemy course for help desk managers before heading to my favorite cafe in Cambridge for a bite and another few moments of writing.

It was the most creative morning I’d had in months.

Once upon a time, creative time was carefully guarded in iron-clad morning or evening hours when the rest of the house was asleep. For the last few months, though, it has been dead last on my list .

The mayhem hasn’t really ceased with spring, but I think we’re getting better at managing it. I know most weeks, at least one of my days off (which fall in the middle of the work week for most people) will involve a drive to one medical facility or another and have started to plan for it. And, just as I’ve trained myself to stop and smell the fart jokes (rose, I mean roses) when they appear, I’m slowly training myself to grab moments of creativity and study whenever they pop up.

Daily patterns change, and our focuses adapt to new challenges. Eventually, the adapting offers the tools to help keep the creative faith. For me, that’s important because where there’s creativity there is growth. There is life, and where there’s life there’s hope.

Not Depressed

The Big Guy has been fasting after lunch each day, so I text him early in the day to see if he wanted to break his fast to go to hibachi for dinner to celebrate two kids with honor roll and a full week of no hospital visits. He texted back ‘Zes’, in the mangled affirmative that had emerged with Thing1’s first words 16 years ago.

It was my last day off during the kids’ spring break (the term Spring is used very loosely in Vermont to describe a mythical concept based on the absence of snow). While the Big Guy got done with work, I played Monopoly with Thing2 so Thing1 could drive himself for the first time since his anemia was diagnosed and treated over a week ago to see SuperGal.

The morning felt normal, but normal doesn’t mean permanent.

I was still recovering from a bad property trade with Thing2 when Thing1 got home. He was pale and weak and complaining of pain that had all the hallmarks of a resurgent flare up. The Big Guy had arrived, and we debated staying home, but Thing1 insisted we carry on with our dinner plans.

“I have to eat,” he said. It was true, but his earlier excitement for a meal of celebration had devolved into determination to not surrender a favorite meal to his condition. The Big Guy and I voiced our concerns about his endurance, but he answered, “I just don’t care anymore.”

I have no doubt that’s true on a lot of recent days, and when he’s too tired to care, we know it’s our job to account for the deficit to get him through. As we packed everyone into the car and headed to the restaurant, however, in the rear-view mirror I could see his eyes close as he rested his head against the top of the door frame.

A worried crease appeared between his eyebrows, and I knew I was seeing a kid that is losing hope. I’ve seen that expression before. Usually I promise him we’ll keep searching until we find the right drug, but last night, as we drove, all I could do is promise him a delicious meal where we would all have fun.

We did have fun, and, for two hours it was a good drug.

When we got home, Thing1 had enough energy to crawl into bed. I went to the bottom of the stairs to his room several times during the night to make sure his breathing was normal, wishing I could give him my healthy organ.

It’s 6am as I write this, and we’ll head down to the hospital shortly for blood draws and more phone calls.

A lot of days I look for the silver lining. Thing1 has grown wise beyond his years. We have all gained empathy for people with long-term illnesses and appreciation for the privilege we enjoy in being able to seek out treatment option. This morning, however, I am focused on the lessons.

I’ve written a number of times about my own issues with mental illness and about the depression that invades life independent of any events, but what I’m feeling — what Thing1 has expressed he is feeling — is not that. There is an ongoing event.

This is not depression. This is understanding the new normal and its impact now and on the future. This is sadness. Last night, even when we were celebrating, it was grief.

There have been many times over the years when the only things keeping me from literally throwing away my life were Thing1 and Thing2. You can convince yourself that the adults in your life would survive and even thrive if you died, but no one can honestly tell themselves that a child would be better off with the knowledge that a mother willingly abandoned them.

So I’ve picked my battles with life, even when I didn’t really want to, and, even when life was awash with depression, it was worth it.

As I’m learning to understand the gulf between sadness and depression, I’m also learning that even if Thing1’s battle has to be fought indefinitely, I will fight it for him for as long he needs us to because he gives my life meaning.

So much is written about happiness these days. There are the happiest countries and the best paths to happiness. Life doesn’t have to be filled with happiness all the time to be worthwhile, however. As I’m slowly learning, filling it with meaning may be more sustaining in the long term.

Touch The Floor

It’s the day after tax day, and we have no power, except for the juice in the batteries that we have dedicated to the fridge and the well pump (we got grid-tied about a year ago).

The wind is in full drama mode, bending the trees to the ground in supplication. I’m sitting by the window wishing I had a journal – paper journal – that accommodated writing and illustration before deciding to make my own and realizing large windows framing Total Drama from the Earth Mama outside is a great show that doesn’t include a cable bill.