The longest day

All year long I wait for the longest day of the year. I love living in New England, but the price I pay are the dusks that fall at 4:30 p.m. in mid-December. But I feel like I missed it this year. I look back on last week. June 21: a morning appointment to help Marissa with family history research, early afternoon facilitating at DBSA-Boston, my manic-depression and depression support group. Supper with Jim, then a panel of entreprenuers speaking in Jim’s office in the evening. So, as the late dusk fell, I was in a small group, fully absorbed in a fascinating presentation.

Next morning, I was up at 5 a.m. to drive to Worcester and be with Matt for his surgery. Saturday was spent with our daughter and friends. Busy days, that’s wonderful. The last two days have been busy too. And suddenly it’s five days after the longest day and I can feel in my bones the days getting shorter.

Maybe I’m being morbid. Maybe it has to do with listening to The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. In beautiful and insightful prose, she chronicles the year after her husband’s sudden death by massive heart attack. Of course, I thought about David, especially when she mentions, several times, dilated pupils: a physiological sign of death. More on all of that in a later post.

I just looked it up: yes, my imagination is running away with me. The longest day was June 21st, but today was a mere minute shorter. And the latest sunset, at 8:25 p.m., occurs June 24-29 this year. I was out in my garden at dusk tonight, watering my tomatoes and tying back my red raspberries. I’m glad to know I was enjoying one of the latest dusks of the year.

Another Death

The daughter of a friend died last week. I offered to visit and talk to her, experienced bereaved mother to newly one.We had a long, intimate conversation.

This morning came the reaction. Not the gut-wrenching, bend-over-in pain, can’t-catch-my-breath reaction, but a renewed awareness of our loss. I feel guilty: I find I go days not thinking about David. On the wall of my office, a little above my sightline, is a line drawing of him. An artist drew it from our favorite photo, taken on our daughter’s wedding day. He had pronounced himself “extremely presentable”. He never spent much time worrying about fashion. When he was on his mission, he described a haircut a member of the church gave him. It was in the backyard and the amateur barber finished the job with a leaf blower. Writing this, I look up at the grey drawing in its pewter-tone frame. I haven’t looked at it for months. Nearly three years on, it takes longer for the grief to settle in; it’s easier to ignore it and keep it at bay.

My heart goes out to my friend. That’s so cliché, but words are inadequate. Another cliché. The thing about clichés is: they can be true. My daughter objects to people on Facebook responding in reaction to a death: my thoughts and prayers are with you. “What does that even mean? How much time are they spending actually thinking and praying?”

She has a point, but being on the other side, watching a friend be thrown into grief, I don’t know what to say either. The cliché at least gives me something, allows an exchange of words and feelings.

I know I’ve quoted this post before: Annie Lamott speaks to my heart. It’s who I want to be.

Gravity yanks us down…We need a lot of help getting back up. And even with our battered banged up tool boxes and aching backs, we can help others get up, even when for them to do so seems impossible or at least beyond imagining. Or if it can't be done, we can sit with them on the ground, in the abyss, in solidarity.

My friend doesn’t live close, so it’s not practical to visit every day. But maybe I can text. I’m not an avid texter: with my hand tremor (another side effect of psych meds, just like the cognitive limitations) it’s slow and laborious to type out words with one finger. My thumbs are especially affected by the tremor, so the fast typing with two thumbs my friend Cami does, Googling with ease, is something I watch with awe.

Eradicating Poison Ivy (and other weeds)

Today I faced the poison ivy in my yard. As soon as I realized, three weeks ago, that I had a poison ivy rash, I started wondering how to get rid of the plants. I got the rash while weeding garlic mustard from my north yard. Today I learned, from careful observation, that there were three ‘leaves of three’ species in our yard. The one I identified that fateful day was tiny wild blackberry brambles. Another plant I noticed today was small, with serrated leaves. I’m pretty sure it isn’t poison ivy, but I was taking no chances: I pulled every last one. And of course, there was actual poison ivy, which initiated the allergic reaction that sent me to urgent care after a week of toughing it out.

It took me nearly three hours to actually get out and work in the yard. Constructive procrastination, Jim's dad used to call it. I was apprehensive that I’d break out again. As I procrastinated, I improved my strategy. I prepared some poison-ivy herbicide. Even Amy, a suburban homesteader who promotes natural remedies for gardening challenges, recommends chemical herbicides for tough cases of poison ivy. She does recommend leaving the plants where they don't disturb human activity: they protect against erosion, make good boundaries for forests, and produce berries that some birds eat.

Last week, I bought two disposable Tyvek suits, complete with attached booties. The supplied black gloves were as thin and short as exam gloves, and I couldn’t keep my wrists protected, so I added a pair of long purple rubber gloves.

I’m very frugal (ask my kids) and thought of reusing the $10 Tyvek suit and $5 purple gloves.  However, the suit was nearly worn out after six and a half hours of bending, kneeling, pulling weeds and cutting brush. It was fun to peel myself out of the suit, roll it up inside out, and trash it.

After 6 1/2 hours: 4 bags full of weeds

I used my best Red Cross First Aid glove-removal technique.Sweat came streaming out of them. My finger pads were prunes. Cheap spa treatment.

I’m pretty confident that I didn't touch any poison ivy, but I’ll only be certain in three days, if I don’t develop any rash. I’ll keep you posted.

Elbows and Steroids

Two weeks ago, I did some ambitious weeding, eradicating the extremely invasive garlic mustard (such an innocuous name) from my north yard. I worked on it several hours.

I saw some wild raspberry brambles, which produce small, dryish berries, and I pulled them. There must have been some other ‘leaves of three’, but I didn’t notice them.

Two days later, driving to Charleston, South Carolina, for Spoleto Music Festival, I developed a large welt on the inside of my upper arm and a small patch of rash below my elbow. I thought it was an allergic reaction to a spider bite. Over the next six days, more and more tiny red bumps erupted on the inside of my arms, little pin-pricks, smaller than mosquito bites, developing into archipelagos surrounded by seas of hot, angry red skin. By Wednesday, I could barely bend my arms. After our last concert, a sweet usher noticed me leaving. She pointed to my arms and said, “Is that poison ivy? It looks very painful. I've had that. The only thing that works is steroids.”

We found an urgent care office and I got a steroid shot. I'm sure it didn't have an immediate effect, but I felt instantly better: the desperation of the past six days melted away. Oral prednisone promised steady recovery.

My dad, Dr. George G. Hazen, received a patent in 1963 for a process simplifying and speeding the production of steroids (particularly A-anhydrosteroids from ll-hydroxy-steroids). I'm grateful for his careful and creative research.

I hoped our vacation would include time reading and writing. However, the rashes on my arms made it painful and difficult to bend my elbows enough to use the keyboard, hold a book, or even help with a jigsaw puzzle.

I never realized what a blessing elbows are. I spent several days with my arms out straight, careful not to bump them on anything, and several nights sleeping on my back, Ziploc bags full of crushed ice tied to both arms with long black sox.

The concerts were wonderful: the Miami City Ballet, Samuel Barber's Adagio, an Australian circus troupe, Backbone, taking on gravity and other myths. But there were many uncomfortable hours of inactivity.

I understand how useful opposable thumbs are in making and handling tools. But elbows: I hope I never take them for granted again.