To My Brother (L)

Dear John,

I’m sitting in bed, sipping Baileys and thinking about you. I always think of you when I have Baileys and it’s near Christmas. Remember that Christmas? I was in college, I think you might have been in your last year at WPI. We were home on break, sitting on your bed in the House in Warren (aka the Munckin’s house). The house was new to us, it felt like we had rented an old farmhouse for the holidays. You brought home a bottle of Baileys in that special can; I’d never had any. You told me it was the quintessential Christmas drink, taught me how to fill the ice first. We drank from short glasses, sipping with the Christmas lights I’d put up for you illuminating our hands as we raised them. We talked about Christmas memories, memories, dreams. I don’t remember the specifics. If it was a movie scene the conversation would be indistinct, the camera panning our faces lit by the glow of green, red, blue, yellow—more serious than laughing, a quietness around us, zooming out to the snow blanketing the house. If it was a movie, I’d put in a fireplace, the flames softly dancing, warming our feet. My memory has that cozy, peaceful feel to it.

This is possibly my favorite adult Christmas memory and one of my favorites of you. We were drinking not to get drunk, we’d done that plenty, that’s not the job of Baileys. Its job is to mull over the savory sweetness of the season. We were equals, you spoke to me as an adult, no age gap between us. We were equals, the same family, the same bittersweet yearning Christmas ignites within us—to feel, to absorb, to have that spark of life Christmas used to give our family once a year. There was no party after, no friends coming over, no childhood jobs to do, no homework—there was nothing, but you and me and that bottle of Baileys. We’d found a new adult way to celebrate Christmas together; I had your undivided attention, just for that quiet dark night.

The Phoenix (L)

1
When G was three and started to have nightmares, I was confused, distraught. I assumed nightmares only came from a childhood full of waking ones. How could she whose life had thus far been filled with love, calm, sweetness have nightmares? I didn’t want her to be like me, afraid to sleep until she was 12. I screened her television (some “Care Bear” episodes didn’t even make the cut), I hadn’t yelled at her (yet), her father was only quiet and kind to her (then), her little sister (still) sweet and yielding, how could she have nightmares?

When she first exhibited signs of anxiety, I recognized the beast and cursed myself for passing it along. I felt prepared to take on what no one in my childhood had even acknowledged they needed to. When it began to disrupt her life, I took her to therapy. For years, I’d brush her hair from her face, I’d tell her it was normal. I’d hold her and tell her what worked for me. She’d curl into me and say how good it was to talk to someone who understood.

During the first week of this September, when a homeopathic doctor (who had been seeing G) told me G had been secretly, frequently harboring suicidal thoughts (since June), but he thought that with help, she would be okay. I picked my stomach up from the floor and nodded. I asked should I be afraid? He said no, I breathed. I asked should I tell her it’s normal? He said, no. Just listen, say, tell me more. I nodded. She’s 12.

Later that night, I asked her, I listened when she told me more. Hearing the words from her mouth, in her voice, just an octave or two from what it was when she was a laughing little girl with ringlets...I could no longer nod. I could no longer breathe. She showed me how it started, reluctantly, sadly, little scars and scratches hidden on her wrist under her collection of animal shaped elastic bracelets. Once the thought planted itself in her beautiful little mind, it blossomed like a infestation. Like a fear? I asked. No, she paused her eyes large, sweet, young, bursting, like a hope, she confessed. Her face the same expectant pleading as when she told me of her first crush on a boy.

This is what devastation tastes like—three words, the crunch of three short syllables slicing the roof of my soul, shattering my illusions that this is just a cry for attention, this is a phase—like not wanting to do homework, hating your parents, and skinny jeans. Make me a promise, I say. She shakes her head no, I can’t, she whispers. I want to say, promise me you’ll never do it, promise me promise me promise me. Fear is roaring inside me so loud, the flaming lion engulfing me. I say, promise you’ll always talk to me, promise you’ll tell me how you’re feeling. For hours it seems we are like this on my bed, my hands running through her hair, her head on my chest, where she used to nestle as a cooing baby. Me trying to convince her we can get past this place, she trying to convince me that dying is her sweetest salvation. Early on she whispers, I don’t think I could do it. It’s not that I am not grateful for those words, they keep my legs moving through daily functions. But I have only discovered this dark thought on her brain, I am destroyed first by her desire.

She asks me questions, I try to answer honestly, then later urgently saying anything I think will keep her alive, she shakes her head, the things she says, oh the things she says with her sweet voice, with her body, with her eyes. We are both wet with weeping using a bath towel between us to wipe and go on. Time is eclipsed by my lack of being able to breathe, every orifice so swollen with salt. I begin to wonder how we will ever leave this room.

I recall the video of when she was two when both Chris and I said “no” to her at the same time, in normal kind voices, and she burst into tears. I realize of the significance of her needing therapy at only four for anxiety. She's always been so sensitive. I whisper to her, maybe there is something missing in your brain, some chemical. That’s all the medicine would be, a replacement. She shakes her head. No different than when a thyroid isn’t working right, you supplement it. It’s a supplement. She shakes her head. Why don’t you want to take medicine? What are you afraid will happen? You’ll have to force me. To take the medicine? To live. I will. I have.

2

It’s not that she’s thought it, that it flickered across her mind in frustration, anger—trapped in the pre-teen walls of no choice. It’s that she wallowed in it, polished it, harvested her crops of death, cherishing them, yearning for their peace. When I thought she was lying in her bed, mp3 player in her ears dreaming of boys to come, Justin Beiber and Taylor Lautner gazing down to illuminate her dreams. She was secretly entertaining plots I can’t even let slide across my mind.

3

I’m calmer about it now, though the scratches on her wrists grow deeper. It’s become like anything intolerable that you can’t escape from, a task. My new job is trying to help her stay afloat. Phone calls to find psychiatrists (surprisingly hard if you want someone insurance will pay for and the patient is 12, turns out, actually, impossible. So, out of pocket we are), to her therapist, to new therapists, to see about book clubs, teen centers, writing workshops, music lessons, orchestras, friends, new places for her to go, things for her to do. I am getting flashbacks to my mother’s last months. I feel like I am on a hamster wheel, going round and round getting nowhere new—exhausted and distanced from the business of trying to solve this complex riddle of how to help her.

4

I keep waiting to finish writing this—waiting to find the solution, the psychiatrist, the medicine, the writing class, the remedy, the new friend that will help her. After each step we take, she does seem lighter, less burdened, as if shedding those dark secrets has elevated her from depths we never understood were there, holding her down. Though there was that week, when the scratches became deeper, scarring; I felt myself becoming ashes, waiting for the phoenix.

It’s amazing to me how many times in life you can break and mend and move on, the scar thickening, never quite the same, but grown over. I am not the same person I was weeks ago, before I heard those words from her mouth. I’ve shattered, dissolved, reformed as a fragmented part and moved on. I’m regaining strength, but some unbreakable piece in me is broken. It’s like not knowing you had a certain type of bone until you shattered it. I’m on the other side of a dark curtain that not every parent has to stand in front of. I’ve passed through and it’s fallen behind me, sealing me from the world that was before, from those who have no dark curtain. I am alone and blinking in the dim light of a new world. I’d say I hope I don’t falter, or I hope we move beyond, or I hope we find a new path. But I’m beyond hope. I don’t mean that in a negative way, just factual. If I cling to such words as hopes and dreams and the sunlit world I imagined my precious daughter waking to, I won’t be present enough to help her in this reality. I won’t be here. Help even seems a distant word right now. I am. She is. We are. One day at a time has never seemed so genuine.


(Update: It’s better. We found a good, expensive psychiatrist that we can’t afford. He diagnosed her with a “serious” depression, the "illness of depression," possibly stemming from mourning for my mother, possibly just her destiny. He confirmed all my worst fears from that first night when she told me: that this age group up throughout the teens is the most likely to actually attempt and commit suicide, that having had depression once she is more at risk to have it again, that we will have to be vigilant, vigilant in our watch over her. But we have advantage over other parents, we know she's thought it. He said 99.9 % of the time suicide is the end result of the illness of depression. We just got the shock of discovering the illness through a symptom. The medicine started so low it got worse before better, panic attacks, locking, fleeing...as the dose goes up, so do her moods, and for the first time in her life, her anxiety is going down. I’ve seen some beautiful things. I might even feel a wing growing.)

Request: Unless you've walked through the other side of the dark curtain, please don't offer advice. I just wanted to share.

Image: http://www.sapergalleries.com/Garcia.html

What We Sold For Mold (L)

Alessandra, I hate for you to read this, I really do...I know you’ve been surviving jam jar stinky diaper mornings with the beacon of “someday they’ll sleep” blinking as a light at the end of your tunnel...but... (Oh God, this feels like telling the kids about sex all over again. The horror of the truth, bashing the sweet fantasies of the innocent.) I won’t say it, I won’t tell you, “It gets worse.” Because, in truth, I can’t remember the days you are in all that clearly anymore.They exist in the mist of myth, the memory recreated by Memorex. I sit in the present watching my kids in the past play Ring Around the Rosie, with S toddling in hand trying to keep up, lifting his onsie to try and make it twirl like F’s skirt. I inhale the sight of them loopty looing over and over, day after day, in the track circle from kitchen to dining room, hugging each other, laughing, falling.

I watch those sweet glory tapes and think, “We lost our family Mojo when we lost that kitchen. Traded it in for a new sparkling smaller kitchen.” We gave up on the dream. Mold and asthma, man, they conquered the dream. Smashed it into four equal parts arriving by truck to be assembled. S’s almost outgrown his asthma and the only mold found in our new house is on the unwashed shower curtain and forgotten wet towels on the basement floor. But I have to wonder, was it worth it? Maybe S would have outgrown his asthma anyway. Maybe I would have even recovered from the loathing and fear of the house that mold had instilled in me.

Recently, I actually went through a week’s insane dream of wanting a new baby. Thinking, maybe a new baby would fix it all, we could focus on something other than us, raise a baby together. It would be the beautiful bandaid our family so desperately needs right now. It would give S a little brother (I know it’d be a boy.) It’d give F something to nurture and love besides her bunny (and babies don’t have fur, no worries for S’s asthma.) It’d give G the needed boost to get her past the tweeny crisis she is in (either getting her to think outside of her little chaotic sad world or giving her something to actually be miserable about.) My fantasy baby would calm me, tame me, until menopause kicked in. Most of all, it’d bring us all back together again as a family, re-create that unit, get back the Mojo we left in that kitchen long ago. Fortunately, the doctor’s knot we put in C’s testicles 6 years ago holds firm. But I don’t know if I can ever really relinquish the idea of velvet newborn skin snuffling into my neck, seeking my scent above all others.

After I’d shaken off the fog of baby lust, I wondered what had made it so desperately appealing for me? Do I really want to be dealing with teenage depression at the same time as being spit on by a toddler? Of course not. Inescapable misery incurs crazy fantasy solutions. But there’s a certain beauty in knowing how to make someone you love happy. To be able to evoke delight by just lifting a shirt. Unfortunately, lifting my shirt doesn’t bring a light to anyone’s eyes anymore. But this post is about our family’s current struggle to endure the dizzying hormonal assault on our overly intelligent, creative, 12 year old introvert in a small Maine town, not the perils of 40 year old aging.

I am no less determined to make G happy than I was 12 years ago, when I would come home from a walk to find her crying in her bouncy seat on the other side of the room from C. I’d pick her up with a glance of shocked disdain at my husband who would shrug and say, “She wouldn’t stop crying whether she was in my lap or over there.” I would soothe her in my arms feel her trembling and shuddering subside from the smell of me, the sureness of my body that I could quiet her.

Now, I don’t know how to assuage her. I won’t bore you with the details of my methods or attempts. My desire to stop G’s wracking sorrow is perhaps worn down slightly by a decade of having to placate it while succoring two other children. And yes, it’s a bit chipped away by the devastation of hearing the words, “I hate you!” slip from her mouth, cold eyes of hatred attempting to rip me apart foot to soul. Unconditional love does begin to challenge as the years wear on. It is easier to flow soothing mother love over a kicking baby who pulls your chin to her mouth to gum for comfort than a 12 year old who complains of the ugliness of her life and then leaves no less than four water cups in her wake, sighing with exasperation when you ask her to put them away.

So, yes, Alessandra, some things do get better. Our children may still be up at all hours of the night at times, but when they are older we can choose to ignore it. I remember when I would complain about the horrific 3 1/2-5 years and older parents would say sagely and maddeningly, “Wait ‘til they’re teenagers.” It’s a cliche, that phrase, isn’t it? But with a morose 12 year old, I’m starting to get it. It’s not that they are SO monstrous (yet), it’s that you can’t make it all better no matter how much you want to. And when they are bad, they make sure they are ruinous to the entire day, event, household. I’m told the oldest (girl especially) is the worst and they improve after college. I guess that means there is still a beacon of light at the end of the tunnel, however distant. I just have to figure out how to survive the sinking ship without going down with it or letting it drown F, S, and my marriage. Until then, I’m keeping well stocked in red wine. I am not opposed to drowning in that.

Rock-N-Roll Fantasy: Phase One? Complete. (M)

So every kid in America (at least when I was a kid) wanted to be either an Astronaut or a rock star. There were garage bands everywhere, kids taking guitar lessons, beating on trash cans. I had years of piano lessons and my fingers could just never get out of their "classical" mode; I was very much a mimic, and not at all a creative force on the piano. I finally stopped playing all together at around 20. When my husband and I got our own house I moved my childhood piano into it though, in the hopes that one day I'd sit down at it again. It's still sitting there, but at least these days I'm trying to pick out other people's songs on it.

I've always kind of toyed with singing. I never had any formal training as a kid, and my brother and sister were merciless in their hatred of my voice. "Who's that singing on the radio?" "Journey," I'd say. "Then let them SING IT!" That was the mildest of retorts, but it really didn't take long for me to utterly believe that I had the worst singing voice on the planet and I should just keep my trap shut. Still, I had a love for all things harmony and whenever I'd hear new stuff back then (Madonna or Taylor Dayne, for instance) I'd sing the background harmonies loudly when I was alone. Sometimes I'd forget where I was and at least once someone listening said to me "how'd you learn that harmony? Can you teach it to me?" Hmmmmm. Interesting.

Flash forward about 20 years. My darling husband played in bands (as a lead vocalist, no less) through most of his teens and twenties. About 10 years into our relationship we both realized we had let our creative sides be totally repressed by our work and business sides. One trip to Burlington, IA where Marion spent his teen years changed things for me. His friends have four children, and for family night they would gather in the basement and perform to karaoke tracks. I was enjoying hanging out in the back of the room listening, when one of them says "Hey, you should sing something." Well of course I refused: I have the world's worst voice according to my siblings. (Wait, did I just quote my then 11-year-old sister? Sheesh!) I didn't want to use the mic, so I sat in the back and belted out something (no idea what) and for a second my husband and friends were stunned. One, that I actually did it, and two, that it didn't break mirrors like I told them it would. Truth be told, noone was more surprised than I was.

Not long after that trip, I started doing theater again for the first time in 18 years, and he started singing in a band again, for the first time in at least 20 years. Just a couple of years later we left the landlocked city we were in and headed to the coast where each of us has learned to balance our lives a lot more. We started making friends with other creative people, and we met this absolutely amazing female lead guitar player. Another year later, and I'm performing in an acoustic duo. Singing, and coordinating the harmonies for us. Holy shit. Another friend, the most amazing keyboard player I've ever met in person, likes what we do so much that he wants to join us and make it a trio. Are you f'ing kidding me? Are you sure you were listening to the right people?

We have a regular gig on Wednesdays through the summer. We're picking up other stuff as we go. The keyboard player may have to jet for a job as a car salesman, but my duo partner and I think we can pull it off by ourselves. And even as I type these words, I still can't believe it's me. At the age of 40, "fronting" my first band. Rock-N-Roll Fantasy: Phase 1? Complete.

Reply-Wind...(A)

I like that previous piece very much. Often with the kids when I find the pressure mounting I think of the future as the past, i.e., the memories I'm making right now. And surely it is enough to stop me from my petty concerns and frustrations and remember to be more loving and let the little things slide.

Your evocation of childhood summers in Maine is beautiful, I wish i had something equally evocative to share but I think as a kid I lived so much inside my own head in fantasies and books. I didn't have a lot of friends and the ones I did have were also kind of nerdy bookish types and we reveled in writing and passing notes making up jokes and stories. There is a certain sort of nostalgia for summer days, but mostly having to do with hanging out with my Dad doing something car related. It's those bonds with the now dead you're talking about too, the physicality of them finite, the memory of them ephemeral. But, if passed on, the bond is unbroken and it is almost as good as the concrete reality. But there are infinite stretches within that "almost" to be sure. Reality wants to teach you that missing someone you love that is dead is a self-indulgent nostalgia, what else can it be? I'm still trying to figure that out.

It's funny when I have memories the kind that pause you in your tracks, the kind that the wind brings to you through an open window on a summer's day, they're often of the trip I took in Europe by myself. Maybe it was reading all those Sherlock Holmes books that made the U.K. feel more like my childhood memories! (Problem is, Europe and its cultures really have nothing to do with me or my background. Paging adult identity crisis...) Anyway, I suppose we're not responsible for what speaks to us, although it's our choice whether to respond.

I don't find myself yearning for the past at all. But what I know I need to stop doing is this amorphous waiting although it's not done consciously. Living in the present sounds so simple, and I guess it is. But it feels like a struggle most times.

Alessandra-- I just found this bit of writing. I guess the time for writing comments is passed and it will only let me tag on. I think it makes sense that your Europe trip is what you pause for. I think that was your childhood. The time you let yourself be. The time when life that was swirling around you was just a backdrop to whatever you were doing in that moment. If you were a bit bound in books as a child, this was your "doing" childhood--your physical one.  I'd love to read some accounts of that time. As I suggested before, you could copy old journal in or just write a recollection.

What the wind blew in (L)

I'm sitting on my bed in an empty house. The wind has suddenly quieted, building up again for another roll across the tall grass out my window, laying it down in ripples like moving water. The sky is blue, the sun bright, the birds and insects of summer have crawled out to sound their approval. I am following through on my intent to write without editing without regard, to keep our blog alive, and to keep part of me alive, too.

Days like this bring back childhood memories of Maine. They call up ghosts of my grandmother, my aunt, and now my mother. Drawing them back to the sun, back to the wild blueberry fields, freshly mowed lawns by grills, the sloping grass of Walker Park, the dirt road that dusted my grandmother's green grass as we ran paths through it. When C and I first moved back to Maine, I was nearly suffocated by the ache of my yearning for those days. I'd drive to my mother's and aunt's for fresh fuel to keep the fires of my burning nostalgia for those days, for my grandmother. Somehow it seemed if the bittersweet was acute enough, I could somehow conjure up a portal in time to step back to those days of my long brown legs running free beneath a bathing suit, eyes squinting up into a camera.

When I had my children, I'd whisper the stories in their ears, hoping they could continue to chant my spell for resurrection after me. I'm sure I lost some of the moments of their sunny young days as they seemed to pale in comparison to the memories of mine. After all, there is no go greater power of summer memories than summers not spent at home. You can't recreate the magic of parents not being at the table they write bills at all year, next to the phone that can break the spell of a perfect summer moment to jar you back to reality.

There was no sound that could compete with the laughter of my mother and grandmother mingling together over a deck of cards. Though I think some of the power of our summertime happiness was created by the dark lonely shade of the rest of our lives.
In Maine, we had cousins and family and, somehow, money for ice cream. My mother never resisted buying my father as much beer as he could drink. My mother didn't yell, my father didn't snap, I wasn't hit by flying objects meant for one of them. They went fishing together instead. There was peace.

Now, I don't hunger for those days as much. I watch the wind rolling the grass as it used to in the fields out back of my grandmother's house. I feel a twinge, the wisps of an old spell settle in me to write. But nothing like the pining I had before my mother died. Maybe it's because that old pining brought me to my mother for more memories, for salve on my wounded yearning heart. Now it can only bring me to graves. The kids have tired of the drives past all my heart landmarks. They will either remember my songs, or they won't. I feel a lot less yearning these days. I don't know if I'm jaded or wise. But I'm leaving this writing now, posting it without re-reading, so I can go join my kids at our cottage on a sunny day. I feel a renewed charge to give them something more than whispers of memories, to try and give them some of their own days of shining peace.

Brainless

I am determined to write a new post, so I don't have to keep looking at my yearnful "poem." Trouble is, I don't know what to write. When we started this, we agreed it'd be a place to throw thoughts, frequently, with no worry to the quality of the writing. Now, I'm out to prove it. I am going to write a thoughtless bit, full of some of my current thoughts. Hey, ever keep a journal in the past? Maybe we should type in one of those passages, with or without our current reflections on them...

How about I talk about addictions? Recently learned that kids who do alcohol, tobacco, or any drugs before age 16 are more likely to become dependent on them because their frontal lobes are still forming, and they create receptors for the "drug" that wouldn't otherwise be there. Their brain develops around the drug and creates more of those receptors setting them up for needing it.

Is this, perhaps, why I seem to be so addicted to ALL the things I did before I was 16, or shortly thereafter? Boys, kissing, laughing, fun, music, revealing clothes, beer, boys, dancing, late nights, friends, reading, movies, being lazy, boys...? Is this why I don't seem to be officially a grown up? I can't seem to make those good choices of what is "best" for me. Is my 16 year old brain the culprit for why knuckling down, doing hard work, cleaning, and being disciplined are so difficult for me? Because I was never made to do them when my brain was forming? I clearly need to create some new brain receptors.

Days Gone By (For my children)

I found the small princess doll that looked like Belle.
It reminded me of days gone by—of sweet desires—
squeaky toys, stars and moons and skies of clouds.

When hair was twisted, crunched, or in curls, and I knew just how to make you happy. But had no clue how to be myself.
I only knew to drown in moments full of babies’ savory odors, squeals of joy, and salty tears. All of you in a circle around me—corralling my importance.


Sunlit days overflowed with parks green, chilled by oceans, dripping with ice cream—the passenger seat full of Mema or Aunt Edith. Islands loomed ahead, while smooth rocks and shells shaded like the sunset waited for us, below chipped picnic tables on uneven ground.


Autumn leaves fell on dreams of a future where an apple pie would rule majestic from the center of a bare shining table in a cozy clean kitchen. I would stand handing out cookies to my babies as they flowed home from school into my cinnamon fantasy that first found its seed in my grandmother’s sunlit afghan 15 years before.

On brisk days of reality, I pushed strollers and recounted days gone by to tiny ears alongside bow lips that only opened for “Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma” and did not yet know, “Enough.”

Russet snapshots flash—a baby in red on a flat rock in Appleton’s ridge, sweet full cheeks flush in plaid on a blanket covered with leaves at Aunt Edith’s stoop, and a perfect chin beneath a crown of curls that finally dips down in sleep as R.E.M.’s relentless lullaby around the sun works its magic, as the van passes the “Witchy Pumpkin” yet again.


Winter was crisper than autumn, the sharp bite of Northeasters edging out sunny dreams. These days brimmed with Mema in Ames, Walmart, Penny’s—donning her Santa cap as I tried to recreate her magic. It’s so cold here, I do not want to drift back, save for those few balsam weeks.


Spring blooms eternal in southern places, but up here only my dreams of summer could take root in the chilled muddy ground. I chased them impatiently into Aunt Edith’s kitchen for tea as little hands reached in the cookie drawer and we made ready for a drive. Mema’s office would be surprised by a lunchtime visit and little feet would not want to touch the brittle frosted grass of winter’s cold grave.


Those days my best friends were old ladies and my favorite memories were remembering ones older still, all my dreams were merely dreams, and I was trying to be what I had imagined I would be, not what was my share of destiny.

This is where I drift back to now, with a sweet small ache for cocoon days of dim lights by a bedside where tiny feet kicked as I lifted them to change—to days when a trip to the store could bring time with my mother or Aunt, simple favorite foods, and a bright light in small eyes.

I don’t know yet how to reconcile the longing for such company as I’ll never have again—the yearning for a mother, for a family with roots deep in the earth. But I plow on, up hills framed by blueberries with small hands in mine, that grow despite my pleas. I look at the eyes of changing faces and try to keep focused on a path still into them, so that one day we can drive by old places and tell new stories in between, and sweet desires will have safe haven and new dreams will be discovered.