Anxiety

Saturday our Relief Society, the women’s organization at church, held a brunch after a morning at the temple. I arrived a bit later than others and as I walked through the parking lot I felt a low-grade anxiety. What if there were no empty seats at the tables? Would I have to sit alone at an empty table? I assured myself that wouldn’t happen, but when I entered the room, sure enough, three tables were full, with an empty fourth table.

Someone saw me approach and waved me over. “Pull up a chair, we’ll move over.” I felt great relief.

It might surprise people that I suffer any social anxiety. I’ve been an active member of this congregation for 27 years and it feels like home: certainly I should feel relaxed and confident in entering a room for a social event.

But it takes me right back to seventh grade: the first year at Thomas Alva Edison Junior High in Westfield, New Jersey. At my very first lunch hour, I arrived at the cafeteria after my friends and found to my horror that all the tables of seventh graders were full. The cafeteria monitors did not allow more than six to a table. I was assigned a table with five ninth-graders. It’s hard to say who was more put out: me or them, but they expressed their disgust openly. They called me Gertrude (in tones that made it clear that only fat and ugly old ladies and former Nazis possessed that name) and made my lunchtime miserable.

Perhaps a more confident girl would take it in stride and win them over, but I was not that girl. My resolution was to keep my head down, literally, eat as fast as I could, and rush out to the school yard to wait for my friends to finish eating.

How do we get over the hurts of years past? When two more women arrived after me, I quickly got up and helped form the fourth table. Be part of the solution.

They're really saying I love you

Saturday Jim and I attended Linda Huppi's memorial service. We knew Linda from our church congregation. She was soft-spoken and unassuming, but a force to be reckoned with musically. For many years she accompanied musicians on the piano and the congregation on the organ, as well as serving in the church organizations for children, youth, and adults. Every year for thirty years she wrote and organized both a Christmas program and a Spring Sing concert. She even wrote her own memorial service, beginning with prelude music by Sounds of Grace Hospice Choir she belonged to, filled with musical offerings, and ending with a trombone solo, “What a Wonderful World”, which became a favorite of mine when we sang it for a Spring Sing several years ago:

I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do,
They're really saying I love you.

Such a sweet thought. And just like Linda. All her quiet service was her way of saying to everyone she met, “I love you.”

Linda was just twelve years older than me. My walking buddy, Susanne, remarked this week, “Our children are going to weddings; we go to funerals.” Just two weeks ago, while I was in California, a friend of mine, just five years older than me, died of a sudden heart attack.

But life isn’t completely dreary. I was able to spend time in sunny California with my sister, her husband, and dear little Eliza while her parents took a vacation in London and Edinburgh. Although spring flowers and green leaves are still many weeks away, daylight savings time makes the days seem suddenly longer and full of light.

There's plenty of sadness, but it is a wonderful world.

SWIM! part two

While scrolling through my blogposts, I noticed Stop Whining! and SWIM! (Stop Whining Instantly, Mary!), which I wrote last April and May. So how am I doing on my campaign? Last Spring, I’d been whining about my inability to read and retain information. Embracing audiobooks has helped me reenter the world of books. It’s still frustrating when I struggle to read, but I have a new avenue for information to enter.

A perennial challenge is my hand tremor. Markedly worse in my left hand (and I’m left-handed), I can’t keep my hand steady without support, can’t handle a spoon or a camera or a needle and thread (this from a woman who made her sister’s elaborate wedding dress.). I don’t have an exact date of onset, but, to the best of my knowledge, it developed after my second psychiatric hospitalization, sixteen years ago, when I was put on a new medication. I’ve asked psychiatrists and neurologists about it and tried various drugs, but nothing has helped. Since the med protects me against mania, and does that very well, I have felt I had no recourse.

I recently consulted a psychiatrist in Boston. He suggested a medication that would probably be effective against mania, could possibly be better for my brain, and might, just might, let my brain heal and diminish the tremor. It wouldn’t be immediate and there are no guarantees, but I’m excited to try. The change will take a few months: gradually taking more of the new medicine then tapering off the old. And then just waiting to see if there is any improvement.

It's scary to change medication. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But this has been broken, for a long time. Wish me luck!

Tending Eliza

I spent all of last week at RootsTech, the largest family history conference in the world. I attended presentations from 8 a.m. into the evening and learned about immigration records, German surnames (my two grandmothers were German), maintaining research logs, and helping others with family history.

I thought I’d write this week, while tending 15-month-old Eliza in southern California. What was I thinking? I’m staying with my sister and her husband, which gives me some breaks now and again, but Eliza's favorite activity is climbing the staircase. She crawls up fine, but hasn't learned the art of gracefully descending and insists on walking down, so I hold her hand. There's no child-gate and it's her go-to area to roam. Since she lives three thousand miles away, it’s precious time to be with her, but I do wish her once-a-day nap was a bit longer. Today I made the mistake of taking a long stroller-walk at 10 a.m. She slept in the stroller and her nap was shortened by an hour. Tomorrow's forecast is for rain. Thursday's game plan? Take my stroller-walk after her noontime nap.