Nelly Elizabeth Fernandez Johnston (1955-2020)

 Nelly Elizabeth Fernandez Johnston died early in the morning on Friday, November 28. Her daughter, Carla, wrote a tender tribute on Facebook:

After a nearly two-year battle with lung cancer my mother, Nelly Fernandez Johnston, passed away early this morning. She was a vibrant, generous woman, always seeking to better not only her life, but the lives of all those she touched. She made so many courageous leaps throughout her life, including immigrating to Venezuela and later the US, joining the LDS Church, and living the fullest life she could with her friends and family these past two years. She peacefully leapt into Heaven, ready to meet her Savior and start her celestial work. I love you Mom.

The news was not unexpected; stage-four lung cancer is always fatal. But the finality still comes as a shock. She was sixty-five years old, the same age as Jim, a year and a half older than me.

    One day, when I was about fourteen, I lay sprawling on the blue-shag carpet in our living room, reading the local Westfield Leader. For some reason, an obituary caught my eye. How old was he? Mom asked. Old, I said, 62. That’s not old, stated Mom.

My mom was a wise woman, so I made a note, “62 is young to die,” although I didn’t believe it or understand her. As I’ve aged, however, ‘old’ has receeded. Now 62 is quite young to die. Not as young as 5, or 13, or 27, but young.

I think of David, of course. It’s been over five years since his death, August 12, 2015. He was buried exactly a month afterwards, since he had donated his body to the University of Massachusetts Medical School. They used his body to test a lung device. The head researcher told us that the team was very reverent and appreciative. Some of them were around David’s age and seeing his body was sobering.

At the cemetery on September 12, 2015, a small flock of wild turkeys ambled through the morning fog. A few of Jim’s business associates stood a little apart from our family and friends, reverently marking the event with us. An Army bugler played taps.

Incongruously, I was grateful for the large American flag covering the wooden coffin. We had picked the cheapest coffin the funeral home offered. It had always seemed a waste of good money and material to bury a fine piece of furniture in the ground. David didn’t care, did he?

But, suddenly I was intensely ashamed of my frugality. I’m sure no one at the service, all of whom loved us, judged us. But there it was, irrational and potent.

Peter and Xiomara and Andrew had driven up from the Bronx, one-month-old Victoria wrapped in a white blanket. I held her, just like my dad had held little four-month-old Andrew at Mom’s funeral two years before. Her warm little body comforted me, as did the basket of purple flowers our friends brought to the gravesite.

After the burial service, we piled into cars and headed for the Belmont Chapel. There we met the Massachusetts General Hospital bloodmobile for our first annual blood drive in David’s memory.

This year the blood drive attendance was the lowest ever. Because of the pandemic, MGH sent two bloodmobiles to maintain physical distancing. Everyone’s body temperature was taken and the standard covid questions were asked. Fortunately, it didn’t rain, so we were able to meet outside and chat with our friends.

Five years ago, Matt gifted us a photo of David, printed directly on glass. We lay it on the registration table. Our friend, Jen, touched it with her fingers and I realized that she was thinking of David, the little boy she watched grow up. Many young families in our ward come for schooling or first jobs and then move away. David hadn’t lived at home for a long time, before he got sick, so few church members knew him. It touched my heart to see Jen’s simple gesture.

Nelly will be sorely missed, by her husband, Jeff, and children, J.F., Carla, and Paul. She was outgoing, fun-loving, and compassionate and had more good friends than I have acquaintances.

She’s the second of our generation to die. My brother Mike, severely intellectually disabled, never married, so Jeff is the first widower. Is it morbid or just realistic to wonder who is next? That could come tomorrow or in twenty years. But it will come. Am I making the most of the time I’ve been given?

Pruning Christmas cacti

 Perhaps in response to the virus restrictions and more time at home, last summer I tackled my Christmas cactus collection. My mother gave me Christmas cactus clippings over the years: they are easy to grow: a single stem in potting soil will soon root, grow, and eventually bloom. I had one beautiful specimen that cascaded pink blossoms every December in a place of honor on our piano. But when we converted the front room to a library, with floor-to-ceiling shelving, the piano, which was hopelessly out of tune, was removed. I recognized that the cascade had become an awkward, overgrown tenant.

The library is five years old now, so it was high time to take all my cacti in hand. One by one I placed them on an overturned wire-mesh wastebasket on the kitchen island so I could objectively consider their cascading stems (cacti don’t have leaves). To produce a balanced and agreeable effect, I had to prune severely.

The cacti sat on our kitchen porch all summer, shaded from the hot summer sun. With winter approaching, I brought them into my office and David’s room, my adjunct conservatory.

The pruning had its effect: a flower on every last stem.

Slowing time down

 I’ve been studying out in my mind the concept of hypomania. That’s the delicious, intoxicating state below (hypo) mania. In my experience, psychosis is terrifying and not in a good way. Horror stories are fun (for some people, not for me) because they are safe. Whatever horrible thing is happening to the characters, we are safe in our living room or movie theater.

But hypomania isn’t terrifying. Food tastes exquisite; thoughts and ideas flow effortlessly; colors are more vibrant. Everything is breathtaking.

I experienced hypomania this past spring. It never got dangerous. It was seductive.

One of the brilliant ideas I had was that I could slow down time. I found the name of the year, twenty-twenty, enchanting. Until age forty, I had better than twenty-twenty vision: I was far-sighted. (I now have to wear trifocals to see my world sharply.) The possibilities in that name (before the virus) seemed endless and exciting. And suddenly I knew, with certainty, that I could slow down time. Not stop time, but take it very slowly, so that I could enjoy and savor the year and accomplish amazing things.

Describing it now, it reminds me of an experience I had one night in high school. I was at a party my parents didn’t know about, smoking something. As I sat in an unfamiliar kitchen, I looked at the white wall clock with black hands. I looked away and about an hour later glanced back at it. To my amazement, only a minute had passed on the clock face. I did it again and again. Time had slowed for me, how cool was that?

Several years later I realized the truth: whatever the speed of time, I had done nothing but sit. What did it matter if time slowed?

March and April were similar. I thought I had learned the secret to lengthening time, but I had nothing to show for it.

Sadly, November rushes by; time has not slowed. I experience what older people used to tell me: the years are flying faster and faster. The illusion of holding time was just that, an illusion. But it was a pretty thought while it lasted.

Veterans Day 2020

11 November 2020

 Since the mid-nineties, when R’el played flute in the Lexington High School band, Jim and I have attended the town Veterans’ Day celebrations: a parade with marching band, Minutemen, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and veterans waving from the front seats of cars. The program always includes a few high school students reading their winning essays about veteran grandfathers and patriotism. Even after Sam graduated, we kept the tradition, walking to the town center and waving to the LHS band director as he marched smartly down Mass. Ave.

I’m still not used to the covid world. This morning I asked Jim if he was going with me to the parade. I don’t think there’ll be one, he said. Right. Yet again I pictured life the way it’s always been.

The high school students read their winning essays online and in the afternoon a motor vehicle parade drove down Mass. Ave from East Lexington.

I walked to St. Brigid’s parking lot, the endpoint of the parade, about ¼ mile from our house, then continued up Mass. Ave to the Battlegreen. There I sat on the grass awaiting the first car. As its veteran passenger came into view, my eyes inexpectedly filled with tears. I hadn’t been thinking of David, but there he was.

David was a veteran for about a month. He was honorably discharged six weeks before he died. He got a lovely 11x14 Certificate of Retirement. Funny, I’ve never actually read it:

CERTIFICATE OF RETIREMENT

FROM THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA

TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING:

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT

SPECIALIST DAVID H. JOHNSTON

HAVING SERVED FAITHFULLY AND HONORABLY

WAS RETIRED FROM THE

UNITED STATES ARMY

                        ON THE 29TH DAY OF JUNE 2015

GENERAL, UNITED STATE ARMY

CHIEF OF STAFF

David also received a Certificate of Appreciation, signed by Barack Obama, Commander in Chief.

I’m happy for all those veterans who have enjoyed lives full of children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Happy to stand on the corner of the Battlegreen and wave as their motorcade passes by on a seventy-degree day in mid-November.

And grateful to have stood at Mass. Ave all those many years, including the four that saw an earnest boy in glasses playing the clarinet while marching in time to the “Armed Forces Medley.”

Happy Veterans’ Day.

Took a tumble

  I walked to the dentist today, first appointment in ten months. As I playfully kicked the crisp orange and yellow leaves covering the wide sidewalk, my left foot uncovered a depression created by erosion next to the concrete, a few inches wide and deep, just as my right foot stepped towards it. My brain didn’t register the danger fast enough to redirect my foot: my ankle turned and gravity started tugging me down. In that familiar slow motion, every second I thought I'd caught myself in time, only to realize anew that my latest effort was failing. At every point of contact: knees, then hands, gravity wasn't finished with me. The twist flipped me over and I felt my left temple strike a granite stone. I hope I don’t pass out! Coming to rest flat on my back, staring up at the yellow tree canopy, I automatically scanned my body. My Red Cross first aid training kicked in: never move the victim except for immediate danger. But I sensed that there were no broken bones and my pride propelled me back up on my feet. I wanted to lie quietly for thirty seconds, but  I started walking quickly, hoping to forestall any Good Samaritan motorist on Bedford St from stopping or worse yet, calling the EMTs.

As I walked, I reviewed my injuries: slight burning on the heel of my left palm: no blood. Scraped knees: no blood seeping through my tan pants. Do I dare touch my temple? Gingerly I raise my hand and discover dry hair. My hearing aid was dislodged but hadn’t fallen to the ground.

It brought me back to a dramatic fall in Sacramento, California four years ago. After Annie’s and Shawn’s wedding in Utah, I took the night train to Seattle. Leaving Salt Lake City around midnight, I travelled west all night and soaked up the Sierra Nevadas the next day. Arriving at Sacramento around 4 p.m., I had to wait until midnight for the northbound train to Seattle. Learning that Old Sacramento was very near the train station, I cut across a parking lot, as directed. Looking straight ahead towards the old city, I tripped over a concrete parking berm. In about three stages I thought I’d averted disaster only to continue in the course gravity insisted on sending me.

I cut my chin and bled quite a bit. I got some napkins at a bar to sop up the blood and walked around Old Sacramento for a few hours with my hand cupped to my chin.  I discovered that the wound would reopen if I moved my mouth, so I didn’t talk to anyone. A kind shop keeper at a hot dog stand gave me two small bandaids. I still have the scar. You can't negotiate with gravity.

Cotton Candy and Hauling Water

Last week we hosted our annual ‘Summer Retreat’. Two of our children, their spouses, and the three grandchildren came for the whole week. We had never gotten our act together to rent a summer house: when the coronavirus hit, procrastination proved to be an excellent strategy. Instead we invested in making our home a ‘grandchild magnet’. The most popular item was the foosball table. Seven-year-old Andrew became an avid player.

About two months ago, five-year-old Victoria asked for a cotton candy machine. Jim scoffed at the idea, but one of my fondest memories of childhood was the magic of a cloud of sweet fluff. I loved how it melted in my mouth. We experimented with coloring our own sugar, but didn’t like the result. Besides, white granulated sugar is much more inexpensive than the commercially-colored sugar: being the classic under-spender that I am, I went with plain white, pristine as clouds in the sky. Jim continues to improve his technique and can spin them as big and fluffy as my childhood memory.

I lived in Northumberland, a sleepy little hamlet nestled on the Susquehanna, until I was nine years old. A regular summer outing was to Rolling Green, a small amusement park with a large swimming pool, Ferris Wheel, roller coaster, other rides, games, and food. I loved watching the cotton candy machine, with its huge steel drum, as the wispy threads magically appeared and the operator deftly twirled them around the white paper cone.

Andrew and Victoria had enjoyed cotton candy in New York, but it was a new experience for two-year-old Eliza. She watched Jim make one for Andrew and then he asked her if she’d like one. She shook her head firmly. I held out a piece for her to try, but she said, “I don’t like hair.” I laughed and said it didn’t taste like hair: it was candy. She didn’t budge. Watching Andrew and Victoria enjoy their treats, she finally relented.

Before Peter’s family left, we did some yard clean up. Xiomara started emptying buckets of wading pool water onto the garden. Completely inefficient and time consuming, but I felt connected to my garden as we carried water, two gallons at a time, to drench our rhubarb, tomatoes, and raspberries. It’s been a very dry summer and the soil is a dusty brown. When Xiomara was a young girl, she and her sisters carried water home from the river in Honduras. I felt the simplicity of that life as we used the leftover pool water to nourish our plants.

Cake with pink frosting

I’ve always pictured addiction to be like water pressure from a fast-moving river on a dam. I thought that the cravings increased in intensity without a break.

But, my recent mindful experience with food cravings is that they ebb and flow. I’ve known that part for years. When I fast for 24 hours, the hunger pangs don’t grow at a steady and inexorable rate. I feel acute hunger, then it subsides. If I get involved in an interesting activity, either intellectual or physical, the hunger goes away. Not just because I’m not focused on it: when I do think of my fasting again, I’m often not hungry.

This week I realized that visual cues are hugely important. I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of putting your temptations in a cupboard. How ineffective, leaving only a cupboard door between myself and the temptation: I still know the sweets are there. What I didn’t realize is that simply seeing the sweets activates the craving.

Case in point. Our granddaughter, Eliza, visited us for a week while Savam drove across country, from L.A. to D.C. (To the East Coast! Huzzah!). We had a delightful but exhausting time. Two important details:
1. Two-and-a-half year-olds don’t stop except for naps and bedtime, and sometimes not then even.
2. Although capable of independent play, Eliza’s grandparent’s attention radar is always on full alert. Within five minutes (I’m not exaggerating) of my focus being on anything besides her (weeding the garden while she played with water toys, cooking or reading my phone while she played), she was on top of me, demanding my full attention. The day she decided not to nap and screamed to be let out nearly outdid me. Her bedtime became my bedtime.

We successfully executed some activities (reading my carefully collected and curated storybooks was a hit), including baking a Betty Crocker cake with homemade buttercream frosting. She particularly enjoyed watching the pink paste food coloring swirl into the white frosting base. (I’ve loved pink frosting since I was a girl.) Cracking eggs was above her paygrade.

Jim was in Chicago, so we didn’t make much of a dent in the cake. Every time I walked by the cake, I felt an urge to cut a piece and eat it. I resisted, sometimes, but it was hard. I finally put it on top of the microwave and under a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen. The cupboard shielded it from my view. When I went to use the microwave and was confronted with the enticing pink frosting inches from my nose, a wave of craving crashed over me. I overcame the urge, but it was powerful. Keeping the cake out of sight, even though I knew where it was, really helped my avoid it.

How do you fight your cravings?

Eliza visiting

Our son Sam and his wife, Savannah, are moving to D.C. this week. Being our youngest has its perks: a backyard trampoline, big screen TV, and Blue-ray player in the past, free child-tending in the present.
Sam and Eliza flew from L.A. to Boston Saturday night. He returned home Sunday and Eliza began her extended stay.
It took me a day to get my ‘sea legs’. For weeks I had fantasized how she would play happily in the yard while I gardened. But when my attention leaves her, she's there to reclaim it in no more than ten minutes. I went to bed disillusioned.
Tuesday morning I was more at peace. It helped that her nap time yesterday had been long and quiet and that after breakfast Jim offered to play with her for an hour or so while I wrote, I jumped at the chance and was much refreshed to start my shift. While she played with our old Fisher Price airport, house, and barn, I was able to clean out the fireplace ash (four months after the last fire of the season). She wanted to play in the filthy bucket water. I was nearly done wiping down the hearth, so I happily rinsed the red plastic bucket, filled it with fresh water, put on her flip-flops and my sandals, and headed out for the shade of the backyard.
After watching her for a while, contentedly filling and emptying plastic nesting cups, I went to the garage, put on knee pads, and started weeding in the garden bed nearest her. In about five minutes she came over, asked what the knee pads were, what I was doing, and then stated that she wanted milk (which was inside the house). That was the end of that project.
       Knowing that milk could segue into lunch and a two-hour nap, I readily acquiesced. I’m finding the balance between catering to her whims and holding the line. Milk and juice are only allowed in the kitchen and dining room. She turns into an angry little dog and growls at me, but I just growl back. She doesn’t know how good her life is. I hope she isn’t disabused any time soon.

Clarity?

For my monthly therapy session on July 10^th, I planned to talk about my relationship to my meds.

Working on my memoir, I had remembered an insightful question Thomas, my therapist since 2003, had asked eight years ago. At the time, I was overwrought when a neurologist had suggested my long-term hand tremor might be Parkinson’s Disease.

“What does that mean for you?” Thomas had asked.

I immediately saw the two interpretations the question invited: what would having Parkinson’s mean to my daily life and what did the diagnosis symbolize for me.

I have been terrified of Parkinson’s for fifty years, and his question helped me to see that my mind was spinning uncontrollably towards an imaginary future instead of sitting in the present moment, where the possible diagnosis impacted nothing tangible. I was living in the terror of a constructed, dismal future.

Arriving at the neurologist's office, I  had believed the tremor was medication-induced and expected it to continue, stable and unchanging. I hoped for a cure, but I had made an uncomfortable peace with it. Suddenly an awful future loomed before me. Can we just go back an hour, my mind pleaded, to when I thought I had a medication-induced hand tremor, not a life-altering, lethal disease?

I’ve struggled with this medication for over a decade, trying multiple times to get completely off , mostly without medical supervision. I’d been trying again (under the supervision of my current psychiatric nurse practitioner (NP) this time) and it hadn’t gone well. No catastrophe, but symptoms that worried me, Jim, and my therapist.

As I talked to Thomas two weeks ago, my question mirrored his earlier one: what meaning does this drug have to me? Why have I struggled so long to remove it from my life? I had promised my NP not to do anything until our next appointment in August and I assured my therapist I wouldn't. But after that, I really wanted to try, again, to taper off it.

Thomas looked thoughtful and said, “I’ve heard from my friends in recovery (a.k.a. Alcoholics Anonymous) that doing the same thing and expecting different results is…”

“Yeah, I know: the definition of insanity.”

That shook me: is my quest insanity? Could it literally lead to that state I've experienced three times in my adult life?  I brought the conversation up in a DBSA-Boston support meeting. I rarely say anything so revealing. Why do I chafe against it, I wondered aloud? Couldn't I just try again, tweak the experiment, get a different answer?

Lucy, a longtime friend, talked about the challenge of getting clarity. After the conversation had moved on to other topics, she circled back to say, with urgency in her voice, that a phrase kept coming into her mind: black-and-white thinking. That’s a cognitive distortion, a warped thinking pattern where one can’t see nuance, options, and different viewpoints and interpretations. Everything in life is simply black or white, on or off, virtuous or evil, Nothing in moderation.

This took me aback: was my thinking irrational? I respect her clarity and added her words to Thomas'. Was my quest to get off the drug dangerous? Couldn’t I just try it one more time? Tweak my procedure a bit and get a different result? Or had I made the definitive trial and found an undeniable need for the drug?

Do I need to SWIM!  (Stop Whining Instantly, Mary!)? I’ve been relatively stable for over ten years. The meds and therapy have kept me out of the hospital. I’ve been able to function, live a full life, even find joy and happiness. What is this impulse to cut back, to take none of this particular medication?

Is it insanity to try to taper down again? Can I find peace and clarity after 25 years of struggle against any and all psych meds?

I haven’t admitted this specific struggle to many. I wouldn’t have brought it up in the group except that I was confident that no one in the group would look to my example and stop taking their meds. I’m 63 years old. I present as a mature adult who has made peace with her circumstances. I’m not a reckless teenager, or am I?

The Longest Day of the Year

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

Matt’s email three days ago quoting The Great Gatsby, informed me that I again missed the longest day, because I was too busy living it. For several Junes since we read Gatsby for our family book group in 2013 Matt has emailed Daisy’s question.

Saturday, the longest day of my year, was spent with two adorable grandchildren, Andrew and Victoria. It was sunny and hot and we played in our wading pool. I had bought two spray nozzles and attached them to garden hoses so they could have water fights while I watered my rhubarb with a third hose.

As Xiomara and I sat in the sun-warmed pool late in the afternoon, she reminisced about her childhood in Honduras. They received just one pair of shoes a year, so they went barefoot most of the time, including to school and on their daily mile-long walk to the river to fetch water. Being the youngest, Xiomara only carried two one-gallon containers home: the older children carried five gallons on their heads. Her resourceful father bought an acre of land outside of town and planted mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and coconuts as well as beans and vegetables. As poor as they were, tropical fruit was cheap and plentiful. It's a stark contrast to the prices in New York.

My dad grew up in a ‘ranch house’ among the wheat fields of Montana with no running water. I remember using the outhouse the summer of 1965 when we flew to Montana for a reunion.

A few days ago, I planted several zinnia seeds in small pots and by Saturday they had sprouted cotyledons. (The embryonic ‘leaves’ that nourish the plant until true leaves can grow and start photosynthesis.) I gave one to Victoria to take home and today, by video, she proudly showed me her thriving plant.

Another botanical project is my Christmas cacti. My mom grew beautiful Christmas cacti (which aren’t technically cacti at all) and enjoyed collecting varieties. She had pink and white and even an orange one. They bloomed at Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter.

My oldest cactus sat for years on our old piano; the brilliant pink blossoms cascaded down one side of the pot. This year I decided to take the old, lopsided plant in hand. I perched it on top of an overturned wastebasket in the kitchen and studied it for several days. I came to see that I could restore balance by pruning it severely. Two younger but also unruly plants needed a deep trimming as well. I filled several small pots and a large, shallow pot with soil and planted about 20 slips. I’d never thought to prune a Christmas cactus. A week after the pruning, all three plants are sending out fresh new leaves. I hope they enjoy their new state.

I got a haircut too, the first in twenty weeks. My hairdresser, Pauline, has rearranged her salon to allow for safe distancing. She's always been meticulous about cleanliness: the main change is the box of disposable face masks on her counter. I left about four inches of grey and white hair on the floor, just in time for the hot weather.

As For Years

The other day my youngest son, Sam, shared memories of working in the garden over his growing-up years. I really appreciated it. A lot of it has faded for me. (Note to the world: keep a journal. You will one day appreciate even a few sentences you write about your life today.)

Then I asked the other kids for memories. Matt sent a detailed email, including many things that I had forgotten. He said the rhubarb in the small triangular bed near the garage was the original plant. I’m not sure if it was the only one, but certainly we started with no more than three. Now we have 21. That’s not as impressive as it sounds. The western edge of our one-acre property is lined with trees and our large garden does not get a full day of sunshine: the western third of the garden is in shade by about 1 p.m. You can measure the length of sunshine by the size of the rhubarb plants. In the center of the garden the plants spread out five feet  wide. As the beds progress west, the plants shrink to 18 inches.

Last Friday I bought 10 bags of composted cow manure (low-odor) at Home Depot. Saturday I spent four hours, dunged each rhubarb plant, and then watered each thoroughly.

I have five friends who help me in the garden this year: Leroy (15), Ruby (13), Lucy (12), Twyla (10), and their mom, Sherie. This morning Ruby, Twyla, and Sherie came. The beets and carrot beds were overwhelmed with broadleaf weeds. I thought the seedlings had all died, but with very careful, gentle weeding we discovered four of each hidden under the weeds, each about an inch tall and incredibly delicate.

Jim had suggested, when I started this project, to have the girls plant flowers. Along with the manure, I bought a tray of marigolds and petunias. We dug trenches, mixed manure, peat moss, and topsoil to a uniform color and texture (I called it the cake mix), and planted each flower in the bed where we sowed sunflower seeds (only one seed sprouted).

 Last week, Twyla had harvested the rhubarb, as I directed, quite heavily. Today new, crinkly leaves are sprouting up from the heart of the plants. We covered the bare soil between plants with black landscape fabric or salt marsh hay, hoping to starve weeds out.

For years I’ve had a glorious fantasy of returning the garden to its 1993 elegance, with clean brick walkways and raised beds. I fretted that if I put the energy into it, it might not last and my efforts would be for naught. But last year I decided to “act upon this land as for years.”

When we moved to a little rented house in Columbus, Indiana, a week after R’el was born, I decided to create a little vegetable plot, mostly for tomatoes, which is what I knew how to grow. We didn’t know how long we would live there, but I went forward with my project, inspired by the counsel given in the LDS book of scriptures called the Doctrine and Covenants (section 51, verse 16):

...let them act upon this land as for years, and this shall turn unto them for their good.

We lived there for three growing seasons and I’ve never regretted the effort I took.

Now that I’ve started actually working on the garden intensively, I accept its potential loss with equanimity. Instead of resisting the project I am embracing it in all its complexity, creativity, experimentation, hard work, and the possibility of failure. I am acting upon it as for years, and it is turning unto me for my good.

Nerd Fitness

Last week, I woke up at 6:49 a.m. and realized that I had time to do my Nerd Fitness workout before Khare’s daily meditation circle. I didn’t feel well-rested, but I did it.

My  workout has changed character recently. I’ve begun to focus on challenging myself. My friend, Kimberly, told me that it’s the last rep, the one I can barely do, that is strengthening the muscle. Instead of marking time, doing the prescribed reps unthinkingly, my mind is actively engaged, tuned into my muscles and joints for every rep.

I imagine I’m one of the older members of Nerd Fitness. Steve Kamb targets young ‘nerds’. I’m not a nerd in that sense. But I did have a body that was under-worked and atrophying.When I started Nerd Fitness Academy last August, they sent a series of twelve weekly emails with systematic challenges. I ignored many of them. But last week I decided to ‘respawn’ (I had to look that up. Nerd is set up like a massive video game.) and receive the emails again, which will take 3 months to get through. The workouts are just one aspect of change, along with healthy eating and a positive mindset. I had stopped consistently logging my food and my scale confirms that I need that discipline. I’m taking the Nerd challenge to log my food every day for a week. It's surprisingly difficult to sustain the effort. I'm 'walking to Mordor' as well: walking at least five minutes a day for a month. Gotta go!

I Love New England! Part Two

Jim has gotten into jigsaw puzzles in a big way this past year. After repeating all the puzzles we own (some twice, yes, two times), he ordered three online. In my Zoom support group two afficianados mentioned Eureka Puzzles in Brookline, a town that borders Boston. I navigated their website and ordered three more with curbside pick-up.

So, Saturday we got in the car and drove the scenic route through Belmont and Watertown. The sky was a brilliant blue with fluffy white cumulus clouds, the trees in full leaf of delicate spring green. The first of the rhododendrons are blooming. I’ve observed that azaleas bloom in a certain order: lavender is always first, then white, red, and then pinks and oranges. Then the rhododendrons start, in that same order.

We parked at Coolidge Corner, called the shop and waited for the clerk to come outside and deposit the shopping bag on a folding table. After he returned into the store, we retrieved the package, and I proudly showed Jim my selections. Then we continued down Beacon Street looking for some take-out food. Lots of hair salons, which opened this week, but few restaurant choices. On a side street we found an authentic Jewish deli. Back on Beacon St. we found a bench and enjoyed my Romanian pastrami on pumpernicle, Jim's steak sandwich, and some toothsome half-sour pickles.

Driving home on Route 9, we searched for ice cream and found a Shake Shack in Chesnut Hill. It’s got an interesting story: it started as a hot dog cart at Madison Square Park in Manhattan and now has over 200 locations. My friend Anna, who works at Harvard, introduced me to it in Harvard Square. It's modeled after an old-fashioned burger stand. I had a cherry blossom milkshake, doesn't that just sound heavenly?

I’m on a milkshake kick since Clayton Christensen died. He once consulted for MacDonalds and developed the idea that  a seller doesn't need to analyze customers as much as discover what job the customer wants done. People buy milkshakes in the morning because they want something tasty, fast, and portable for their commute.

As a child I loved milkshakes, vanilla or strawberry (never chocolate). Milkshakes and 7-Up. Did you know that Bib-label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda was created in 1929 (shortly before the stock market crash) and contained lithium? That's a mood stabilizer I’m intimately familiar with. The lithium was banned in 1948, the name changed to 7 Up, and by the time I was drinking it, it didn't have lithium, but I love that connection. 7 Up has always been soothing to me. It was something I could keep down those first months of pregnancy.

Give me 7 Up and a vanilla shake, rather than Coke and dark chocolate. I’ll eat dark chocolate, but it’s completely wasted on me: I just choke it down.

While driving on 128, we called Annie to chat. Jim described to her what a weird experience we were having. He's hardly been out of the house, except to walk in the neighborhood and one trip to Market Basket. It’s like waking from a dream and finding the world still there.

A Young Mary Johnston

Last August, I hired my friend, Lori, as editor and cheerleader for my memoir.Then, early in the coronavirus lockdown, I experienced hypomania, that elevated state that can be the precursor of psychotic mania (hypo = below). I wasn't sleeping well and Jim and I were concerned.Perhaps writing about mania was triggering an episode, so I stopped writing it. After two months, I'm ready to restart.

In November of 1995, I woke up in a locked psychiatric hospital, shattered, crushed, devastated. I felt I'd returned from the awful decay and corruption of death. A few weeks later, I sat in a church meeting, convinced that I didn't belong, totally worthless and unworthy. I knew no one who had been psychotic, no one who had manic depression. No one.

I want to be the mentor that I didn’t have. The wiser woman who has been there, lived through it, who can assure the confused, frightened young woman that mental illness is just that: an illness. Unique in it’s effect on the mind and spirit, but manageable.

A few months ago, at Lori’s suggestion, I framed a snapshot that my dad’s cousin took in Washington State the summer before my psychotic break. The Mary in the picture grins, right hand on hip, leaning against the tan tent trailer. Annie leans against her with a five-year-old's grin. Skinny David folds his arms, his black wristwatch visible. Peter smiles from beneath a red baseball cap; R’el stands behind him. Matt’s hand rests on little Sam’s arm. Sam’s blue shorts barely peek below his large white T-shirt.

Mary’s smile is jubilant and confident. She’s in her element, fulfilling her dream of many years: driving to each of the 48 states, dipping into Mexico and Canada, and taking the whole summer vacation to do it. She has spent hundreds of hours pouring over a road atlas, counting the tiny mileage numbers to calculate reasonable day’s mileages, reading travel brochures, planning which National Parks to visit, consulting Woodall's to find campgrounds. Now she's doing it.

In three short months she’ll wake up in a hospital, wrenched back to sanity with an injection of a powerful anti-psychotic. She’ll be told she must take medication for the rest of her life. That she can't control her mind, can't be reliable without a daily dose of  pink pills. They will tamp down her enthusiasm, dull her intellect. But what's the alternative?

During those first dreadful days and weeks, she will feel alone and frightened. I want to be with her.

Distraction Tracker

Several month ago, I heard Nir Eyal talk on a podcast about his book, Indistractable. I bought the book.

With his encouragement, I started a ‘distraction tracker.’ After I decide on a schedule, I make a note in the tracker if I schedule one activity but do another. I note the planned activity, the distraction, and what I'm feeling.

My email inbox is often the distraction. Time and time again, I plan to open a word document to write or plan a lesson, but click on my inbox, just for a minute: there might be something urgent. I click on one email, and then a Facebook notification, and then start a competition with myself to see how low can my unread inbox go, while sabotaging my plan.

The inbox is a frequent distraction, but the behavior is driven by anxiety. Fear of failure and the compounding fear that it will take a lot of time before failure is obvious: that I'll work several hours on a project and have nothing to show for it.

This isn't a new topic. Jim wrote about it in one of his "Family Letters" to our kids back in 2009. R'el calls them "Harry Potter Eggs": tasks that are "hanging over her, difficult, forbidding, and important." He identifies nine reasons a task may become an egg. My personal favorite is "Glorious Fantasy": imagining an unattainable perfection, it becomes impossible to start. Or the task may be out of my comfort zone, or I haven't planned enough time for the it. There often is an unresolved conflict: an unavoidable confrontation, trade-off, or unpleasant truth I don't want to face.

I expect I'll deal with Harry Potter Eggs for the rest of my life. I hope I do. The alternative is to never attempt anything of worth. I sure hope I get better at it.

In Eyal's talk at the 2018 Habit Summit, he suggests making time for distractions. Do I have the discipline to schedule and limit my distractions? I don't have any pithy solutions. Just keep on tracking.

Dry Mouth

At 9 p.m. on October 17, 2020, I developed a side effect.  I can pinpoint the time because I was driving home from what used to be my monthly visit to NYC to see R’el and Peter & family.

I noticed a cut at the tip of my tongue and abrasions on the sides of my tongue. I compulsively rubbed my tongue across my teeth. For the next two and a half months it bothered me. At my regular appointment in January, the dentist assured me it was nothing serious. There were no visible cuts or abrasions. The tongue was ‘shiny,’ which indicates irritation. It was dry mouth. He recommended a mouth rinse and a gel. I left the office swimming in placebo effect. Hearing that it wasn’t fatal and was treatable eased my mind. I’d never had a sore for over two months.

I bought a few products and experimented with them. The symptoms waxed and waned. Back in the Bronx, with Jim, for Presidents’ Day, I woke up at 5:28 a.m. Unable to go back to sleep, I googled dry mouth. It’s a usually a defect of the salivary glands. Neck radiation can cause it. Most often, it is medication-induced. Lithium blocks a neurotransmitter that controls the salivary glands, and thus can cause dry mouth.

Although I was on lithium for seven years after I was first diagnosed, and had been back on it for over eight months without a problem, it seems it must be a drug side effect.

Being able to visualize the problem helped deal with it.

I always thought dry mouth was a wimpy complaint. Just drink more water. I mentioned it in my support group and discover another member had dry mouth. Because of her career choice, which involves a lot of public speaking, she had changed medications. I decided to work harder at overcoming it.

It’s not thirst. Drinking water moisturizes my mouth, but as soon as I swallow I'm dry again, even drinking two quarts of water a day. I noticed that my mouth feels good when I first wake up. My saliva is slightly thicker then and it coats my tongue and mouth. The mouth rinse is viscous as well, the gel even more so.

After a Zoom meeting Jim pointed out that I make funny noises and move my mouth in an unbecoming way. It seemed impossible to stop: my mouth is constantly irritated. But, I don’t want to be the weird woman who is always sucking her teeth and pursing her lips. So I went on a campaign. I sipped water constantly. I found a mouth care kit: a mouth rinse, gel, and a small spray bottle. I stopped swiping my tongue against my teeth. After about a week, the cut on my tongue disappeared. There is still one tender spot, on the gum inside my front teeth. I’ve burned it countless times since childhood, usually while biting into a hot, cheesy pizza. I’m sure the tissue is permanently damaged and more susceptible to injury. I compulsively suck it.

I'm using the spray bottle often. Sugarless cough drops occupy my tongue, so I laid in a supply of sugarless cough drops and candies.

It’s a small problem. But it feels good to have some control and fight it.

Another Day, Another Walk

In this morning’s meditation circle, I find myself distracted, focusing for only two or three minutes at a time. I then spend the rest of the morning ‘cleaning up’ my office. It looks better than it did an hour into the project, but it isn’t the fantasy office of last night. But I have made a dent in the disorder.

In the early afternoon I’m ‘tech buddy’ at DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance). The facilitator directs the conversation, while I admit people from the ‘waiting room,’ watch for electronic blue hands (and lower them after the member speaks), and hang out in case there are technical problems, which there aren’t. Chuck, our president, likes to say, “We’re building the plane as we fly it.” That made someone nervous: “How about we’re building the plane in the hangar?” Doesn’t quite do it for me. Then I hear, "We’re flying the plane in the hangar." That’s exciting.

When I’m done with the Zoom group, I step out of my office and the fragrance of baking bread wafts up the stairs. Jim comes over from the coach house and soon we’re buttering fresh slices.

In the early evening, two friends from church start a conference call with me as I walk. Then R’el calls. I planned to walk an hour, but I have no desire to turn around. I walk down the Battle Road, which has become my favorite route. After about 50 minutes, it seems I really should turn around and come home. Five and a half miles. It feels so good to be outdoors and on the move.

I’ve adjusted pretty well to being at home. Being a homemaker, I’ve spent a lot of time at home. But I still haven’t adjusted to the idea that most other people are home all day. When my friends called, I had to remind myself that they’d been home all day: I just picture them at their job sites. This evening our ‘ministering brothers’ from church scheduled a meeting for 8 p.m. I came home and was in my office when Jim called at about 8:05 p.m. They were all on the video call. I was waiting for a knock on the door

A Diagon Alley, of sorts

I just spent 198 minutes (I’m tracking my time, have been for 4 years) ‘moving’ my desk.

It started with a Zoom problem. I’ve been spending a lot of time on Zoom: two weeks ago I realized I’d been on five Zoom calls that day. The last, a 2-hour DBSA-Boston support group for people with manic depression (bipolar), was too much. Thankfully, I wasn’t facilitating, so I gave my apologies and signed off for the night.

I usually join the Zoom meeting in my office, which is in the southwest corner of the second floor of our Queen Anne house. My desk had been sensibly placed facing the southern window, looking out towards a huge maple tree. To my right was the western window, looking out beyond the driveway to our ‘soccer field,’ the back part of the yard where we play soccer, frisbee, croquet, and badminton.

The problem is that the morning light from the southern window washes out my face during my weekday meditation session. The afternoon light from the western window does the same to the side of my face. I love the view of the outside, so I didn’t want to draw the blinds.

So, I moved the desk to be diagonally between the two windows. Yup, it took over three hours. The actual desk moving didn’t take that long. Moving all the stuff surrounding the desk, and ‘rewiring’ the phone, internet router, lamps, computer power supply, etc. did. And the sweeping and dusting and mopping that I can’t help but do when a heavy piece of furniture is dislodged after years of dust settling.

After I finished, and logged my time, I felt elated. (But not TOO elated. That’s a calculus I constantly have to make: am I feeling good (like a neuro-typical woman) or TOO good (like a woman in hypomania)).

And then the questions began: Did I spend too much time doing an optional activity? Will I finish the job and organize all the displaced stuff (which is currently on top of the regular clutter that has been accumulating on the guest bed in my office)? Will I follow FlyLady’s counsel and attack the clutter in 15-minute segments or will I try to clean it up all at once? Will I crash and burn then?

Those questions can wait till tomorrow. For today, I feel light and airy. I love the new view: I can see out both window better than before, with the laptop screen now covering the bare wall in front of me. I can look straight up and see David’s portrait. Maybe I’ll add a few more pictures, now that I’m facing that corner.

Jim once advised a business client to paint his office. The man was stressed with running a start-up company and stuck. By painting his office he could choose to do something within his control. He was being master of his fate.

That’s exactly how I feel.

Gardening after Dusk

It's after 8 p.m. when I go out, so I bring my high-powered headlamp, clippers, and trowel. I remove some more onion grass from among the sprouting irises, then move to the front stone wall and balustrade. I’ve always imagined David’s garden here. But why? To make something new and ambitious. With Jim’s help I realize that dream is self-destructive. It would require a backhoe, literally, to remove the quince roots and introduce gentler plants. I know, we tried several years ago. I hired two teen-aged boys and they dug at the roots for several hours. When their dad came to retrieve them, the hole was about two feet deep and they were standing on a thick snarl of roots. Their dad wisely pointed out, a backhoe would be needed.

This year, I will leave one quince bush, centered nicely in front of the stone wall. Our neighbor commented about it's lovely coral blossoms. I'll trim all the other starts down to the ground. Mulch and be at peace. Why does the simple way, the possible way, seem like defeat?

I’ll focus on this: David’s garden will become a reality this season.

Spring comes slowly to New England. It arrives here sooner than to central New Hampshire or Maine. But slower than to New Jersey, where I grew up. I like it that way. It gives me time to get used to it. It's nearly May, but still too early to plant tomatoes. I'm not behind yet. It’s not too late to prepare my raspberry beds. Plenty of time to improve a flower garden for our beloved son.

David's Perennial Garden

Our one-acre property has several gardens. The front lawn rolls down to the sidewalk from the 1895 Queen Anne. A stone banister leads away from the enclosed front porch towards the driveway; two azalea bushes stand as sentinels at the end of the walkway, glorious now with lavender blooms. With the cool spring weather this year, the early blossoms of azaleas, forsythias, daffodils and hyacinths are lingering.

Between the house and driveway is a large side garden of flowers and shrubs. Early in the spring of our first year, 1994, hundreds of crocuses bloomed, purple and white and yellow. One year I counted them: over 500 blossoms. In recent years, a lone crocus or two is all that appears. One fall some good friends and I planted several hundred bulbs: two plants emerged. Our local rodents, squirrels and chipmunks, had a feast that year.

The coach house stands behind the house. Beyond it is a vegetable garden with a storied past. Designed in the 1980s, its brick and stone walkways divide the ten raised vegetable beds. I had gardening dreams when we bought the house in 1993. But the reality of raising six children(ages 2 to 12 that first year) and running a busy household made large-garden management a low priority.

In 1995, we went on our famous Cross-Country trip: 48 states, three Canadian provinces, and a Mexican state. 15,900 miles. Six kids, a pop-up tent trailer, and me the sole adult for seven of the ten weeks of that summer. By fall, the garden had been taken over by weeds. We continued to garden, but year after year, uncultivated nature took over. After several years of neglect, there was a six-foot sapling with a two-inch diameter trunk in one of the beds and myriad weeds of all shapes and sizes.

All the kids had garden duty. Our David was a faithful, uncomplaining worker. He spent many hours trying to reclaim the brick pathways: their cracks were always filling with weeds.

Yesterday I planned to work in a garden. At 7 p.m., Jim told me to go, before it got dark. I donned my blue coveralls, found my gloves and trowel, and went to the side garden. I had been afraid that pulling weeds out near the sprouting irises would damage them, but it didn't.

As dusk settled, I didn’t want to stop. With the high-powered headlamp I recently bought, I could see in front of me nearly as well as in daylight. Around 9 p.m., I dumped the detritus onto our dead-weed pile, satisfied with the work of my hands.

When David died, nearly five years ago, I planned to create a memorial garden. I wanted it to be new, in front of the stone banister, and just for David. But this morning, as I surveyed the side garden, it felt right to dedicate it, which has been successful for many years, to him. There is space to plant new perennials.and everyone who visits our house will see it. I want David’s garden to bloom this summer.

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit. (If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.) - Cicero 

Cottage Fruit

My phone alarm woke me up from a sound sleep this morning. Groggy and without my glasses, I saw the display: ‘Minuteman’. What? Patriots’ Day is past (and technically the men on Lexington Green in 1775 hadn't formed a minute company; they were militia). When I woke up enough to put on my glasses, I looked again: ‘Meditation’.

Khare had asked us to bring a small snack. Cottage fruit is my name for cottage cheese mixed with fruit cocktail. We had it several times a week while I was growing up. I often mixed it for supper, in a metal mixing bowl with a thumb ring attached. For our 30th wedding anniversary, we bought our own set of bowls. They have a beauty only objects from a childhood possess.

Khare guided us in ‘mindful eating’. Slow down. Look at the food carefully. Notice texture and color. Smell it. Feel it on your lips (hot or cold, rough or smooth). Take a mouthful and savor it. Let it rest on your tongue.

It brought up nourishing memories of childhood. My children did not grow up with this humble delicacy. Cottage cheese was much more expensive than homemade yogurt made with powdered milk. Nowadays I stock it and remember my mom every time I eat it.

I have not been practicing mindful eating. I shovel things in my mouth, desperate for some quick sensory input: a full mouth. To slow down, really taste the first food of the day filled me with delight. I hope to do more mindful eating soon.

Mortified

Some dear friends are leaving our ward. For the third time in two weeks, we participated in a ‘drive-by’. For an hour our friends were outside their house, receiving visitors at six-feet distance. It’s so sad not to be able to hug, shake hands, or show a smile.

They live in Arlington Heights, near the top of the town's highest hill. After our chat, Jim drove home; I walked. We've lived within five miles of Arlington Heights for 27 years, but I still don’t have a handle on it. No one I know has ever lived in the neighborhood I walked through, and I’ve never studied a map.

I stop several times, studying the tiny GPS map, trying to make out the pale lines of streets,  follow the maze, and memorize the combination of turns that will get me to Mass Ave.

I talk to R’el until she arrives home. These days she walks home from Bellevue, which takes over an hour. Running with a face mask on is difficult.

As she arrives home, I see Trader Joe’s roof below me. Could my grandfather from western Nebraska imagine the scene? Houses stacked so that I gaze over the roof of Trader Joe's on Mass Ave from the street above? I’m in a Thomas Hardy novel. I'm Farmer Gabriel Oaks, looking down at the wagon where Bathsheba Everdeen is looking at herself in a mirror, revealing her vanity. Trader Joe is my Bathsheba.

On Mass Ave, my pace quickens. No doubt as to my route, the only navigation in the last three miles is to bear right around Captain Parker’s statue. I could do it with my eyes closed. So I start monitoring my pace electronically. When it rises above 16 min/mile, I speed up. I watch as it dips below 16, and occasionally below 14, when I push and the road is downhill. My first two miles were 18:53; my final half-mile is 15:13. I aspire to a mile at 14:59.

In five and a half miles, I see fewer than a twenty people, plus three bicycles. For the second time in my life, I’ve brought my mask. I tie it on and, when I can see no one, pull down one side below my chin. Whenever I see a person, I secure it over my nose before I get within 20 feet of them. A woman drives by with a mask on. A few people wear masks constantly outdoors.Some people wear no masks, but they considerately walk or run into the empty street to avoid me. Everyone I wave to (smiles are no longer an option) waves back, or smiles if they don’t have a mask on.

When I walked to Concord and back on Saturday (16 ½ miles), I passed within 12 feet (or more) of a woman. She shouted, You should have a mask on. I had one in my pocket, but at that point, 7 or 8 miles into my march, I hadn’t come within 6 feet of anyone. I shouted back (since she wasn’t close enough to whisper to), I’m not within 6 feet. Undeterred, she replied, You should consider other people.

I went on my way, but the conversation stuck with me. I like to please people; I like to be liked. I like to follow the rules, even if they are unnecessary. (I stop at stoplights in the middle of the night with no cars in sight.) I don’t like being told I am inconsiderate.

My son, Matt, tells me  that when he runs, some others runners will disregard the 6 foot rule and even veer toward him.

Yesterday, Jim and I walked to the post office a half mile away. As we passed Stop & Shop, I saw a masked man several yards away. He had moved off the sidewalk into a driveway, obviously waiting for us to pass. I was mortified: I had left my mask at home. The day before was the my first venture into public for 41 days; I had no habit of mask wearing. Here we were, heading to the post office with no masks. I had pictured that we would use the automatic machine and not stand in line, but I realized that there was no guarantee that we could keep 6 feet distance: there might be a line for the machine; the machine might be out of order (a not infrequent occurrence). I decided to turn around and we walked home, then Jim drove there.

It’s a strange time. I can’t imagine how I could be infected. I literally had not been within six feet of anyone but Jim for 41 days. At the grocery store, I stayed a safe distance, wore a mask, and observed that everyone else had masks on. I understand the impulse to have everyone wear masks and I’m willing to do that, to learn a new habit. It’s a show of solidarity. There is no way for a stranger, or even a friend, to know what risk I pose. So I wear a mask. And I can’t smile at my friends as they leave, perhaps forever.

Purple Passion Plant

A few months ago, I moved my purple passion plants to the sunniest window in our house. Peeking over my laptop screen, they make me happy.

Purple has always been my favorite color (In grade school I was known as the Purple Phantom.). I kept a purple passion plant in my dorm room in college. I love the deep purple fur on the dark green leaves. The deep purple intensifies in strong sunlight.

In 2003, I ended up in a locked psychiatric unit. When I returned to sanity, I attended group therapy sessions in a dayroom with a small greenhouse. I came home with cuttings from a purple passion plant and a saintpaulia, a type of African violet, with small downy leaves and lavender flowers.

As I put these little purple houseplants in a sunny window, and watered and pruned them, they reminded me to nurture myself. Keeping them alive symbolized my pledge to do the hard work of healing my mind.

Somewhere along the way, the saintpaulia died. I neglected it a little too long one too many times. The purple passion plant is hardier. Even when the main plant is neglected, I’ve been able to preserve a few tender tips and grow a new plant. Some mistakes in life come with a second chance.

A few months ago, Jim received a bonsai tree. We kept it near a window in our kitchen, but the new leaves came in progressively bigger and paler. I learned that large leaves are a symptom of light starvation. I moved the tiny tree to a sunny window. As it recovered, I gradually trimmed off the larger leaves. New leaves came in, tiny, shiny, and dark green.

My plants and I can survive neglect, but to be vibrant, intense, and truly alive takes care.

Talking to a Stranger

It’s 9:35 p.m. and I am determined to fulfill my pledge and post today. I’m also determined to go to bed before 11:00 p.m. So, this is not going to be deathless prose.

The last time I was in a store was March 11th.

For the past 41 days, I’ve been experimenting with eating from the food storage we’ve maintained for the last 40 years. When the lockdown began, I resolved to delay a grocery trip. Jim decided that seven weeks would be a sufficient test and a few weeks ago he made a date with me to shop on April 21. I persuaded him to get up before 6 a.m. for “Senior Hour” at Market Basket. For the first time, I saw upended grocery carriages festooned with yellow hazard tape to mark the waiting line outside the store. For about 20 minutes, we waited six feet behind a man with a scarf around his face. Jim and I sported the hand-made facemasks our friend Ellen sewed.

125 people were allowed in the store at once. My carefully-crafted grocery list was in store-aisle order. About two aisles into our trip, we noticed that all the aisles had ‘one-way’ signs. Oops! Later I gently told an errant shopper or two, “You didn’t notice, but the aisles are all one-way.” I loved being in the know.

In the checkout line, it was my turn to make a mistake. I obediently stood behind the broad blue-tape line on the floor, six feet away from the conveyor belt. But when the previous order was rung up and the belt empty, I started to place my order, keeping more than six feet away from the other customer. The cashier quickly told me to take my items off the belt: I had to wait until the previous order was completely packed up and the customer moving away before starting to load the belt.

Slightly embarrassed, I explained to the customer, “This is the first time I’ve shopped for over a month; I didn’t know the procedure.”

He smiled and remarked that I must have a lot of food at home.

“Yes, we store food, like rice and beans.”

“That’s a lot of rice and beans.”

We laughed together.

As my order was being bagged, the man behind me started filling the conveyor belt. Again, the cashier warned. I smiled, “Oh, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t know.”

When we got home, Jim loaded the kitchen porch with the paper grocery bags (reusable shopping bags are prohibited in Massachusetts) while I stored the snow shovels and sand buckets in the garage to make room. We stood on the porch, searching the web for safe practices in unpacking groceries. Then we went in, washed our hands, and I wiped down packages and rearranged the fridge. We left the non-perishables on the porch to age overnight.

Such a simple pleasure, to go to a grocery store and talk to a stranger.

Grief and Guilt

I’ll come clean. On the night David died, while he lay dying, I was engrossed in a Humphrey Bogart movie. It was gripping and intense.

At a crucial point in the movie, Matt said something about David. We stopped the movie and went over to his hospital bed. He wasn’t breathing.

Our family room, where the tv and couches are, adjoins the dining room, where David’s hospital bed and medical supplies had taken over. It has 1895-era pocket doors: fine doors of dark wood that slide into the walls and create a large doorway, six feet wide. A friend remarked, when I was admitting my guilty secret, “You were in the room when David died.”

In her March 30, 2020, Dear Therapist column for Atlantic.com, Lori Gottlieb tells of her father’s recent death. He died of complications after years of congestive heart disease, during the covid-19 outbreak. She states, “I was there to kiss his cheeks and massage his forehead, to hold his hand and say goodbye. I was at his bedside when he took his last breath.”. I’m attuned to such statements in all their nuance. She paints a vivid picture. Well, she doesn’t SAY she wasn’t watching Bogart, but at least she was holding her dad’s hand.

But Gottlieb continues her narrative. Five days before he died, she developed a cough and decided to stop visiting. They spoke every day, except Saturday, when she was busy gathering supplies for the lockdown. The next day he could barely talk and just said, “I love you,” before losing consciousness. The next day, he died.

Gottlieb was wracked with guilt. Had she been in denial, even though they had talked about his impending death? Had she failed him?

A few days ago, early in the morning. I read her column.. I lie in bed, scrolling down on my phone, tears streaming down my temples onto the pillow as I squeezed my eyes shut to clear my vision. Jim woke up and I handed him the phone to read. He observed that we all focus on what we regret, what we didn't do. She had spent every day with her dying father and was protecting him from the infection she had, even if it wasn’t covid-19. Had she donned a mask and gown and visited, and he’d gotten sick, she’d feel bad. Perhaps there was no way not to feel bad.

In her book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, she asks, Is it ever enough? No, it’s not. Can we make it enough? I hope so.

I’m tired of keeping this secret. Perhaps someone out there also feels guilty for not orchestrating the perfect death scene. Death isn’t pretty, picturesque, or neat. It’s ugly; it’s brutal; it’s gut-wrenching.

That evening, I took a walk with R’el. Once a week, as she is leaving work (she’s a psychiatrist at Bellevue in Manhattan), she phones and we walk together, 210 miles apart. She remarked that David was a very private person. It might have comforted me to sit by his side and hold his hand as he breathed his last. It would not have pleased him.

Thanks, R’el.

Gratitude for Soles

I am grateful for my soles.

I wish you could hear the sleep meditations I listen to. There are five of them, each fifteen or twenty minutes long. I choose among them every night. They all include variations on the standard meditation fare: mindful breathing, an affirmation or two, visualizations, and a body scan, “I will name a body part. Focus your mind on that body part. You will remain completely still: only your mind will move.”

I wish you could hear her describe the soles of my feet, how they carry me around from place to place and bear up soooo much. She puts such empathy into describing those neglected, unappreciated feet.

I walked sixteen and a half miles yesterday. It was glorious. Around mile ten, I became aware of a rubbing on the pad of my right foot. About a mile later, my left foot developed the same slightly painful sensation. Since it had been snowing that morning when I left home, I had worn my hiking boots, instead of sneakers, and thick synthetic sox. I regretted the sox, but I don’t own woolen ones (yet.). I trudged through the woods for six miles walking more and more gingerly. By the time I made it home, I could barely walk up the exterior stairs to Jim's office.

Upon examination, I discovered that the blisters were not serious and my feet feel much better today. But last night I hobbled around, not able to put any weight on the blisters. Walking up or down my flight of stairs took several minutes. Unfortunately, I had to use the stairs several times last night. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to go to church, since all meetings are video-conferences right now. I couldn’t imagine walking from the parking lot to the chapel.

It’s a little thing, really, soles without blisters. So easy to ignore, take for granted. How often do I think about them?  Rarely. But today I am truly grateful for them. Blisters are a minor inconvenience, even in the not-so-grand scheme of things.

I just want to say, I’m grateful for my soles.

Sixteen-mile March Before Patriots' Day

Early this morning, in a light but steady snowfall, I turned out of my driveway and headed for the Minuteman Bike Path. The lawns were covered with two inches of clean white snow. In the forest (as my Viennese friend calls it) the the brilliant white snow clung to the maple and oak branches spreading out in all directions. The long-needled pines drooped: a gingerbread village scene.

For the first three miles, I passed three people. I nodded and smiled at the first man I met, and said, it’s magical. He smiled warmly and agreed. Blessed solitude. I eschewed my ubiquitous audio-books and walked in silent contentment.

The bike path ends at the old Bedford Depot. A large weatherproof map shows the two trailheads nearby. I thought I knew where the trail to Concord began and walked about a tenth of a mile in the wrong direction. I returned to study the map again and found Railroad Avenue. At Elm Brook Park there was no indication of the identity of the trail. As I struggled to see my GPS, my glasses fogged. I could hardly read the tiny map.

A mile along, I called out to an approaching bicyclist. Is this the Reformatory Branch Trail? I was mortified when he skidded to a stop just past me. What did you say? Aghast, I ask again. He cheerfully affirmed and added helpfully that it goes into Concord Center. I was grateful but embarrassed.

Three tricorn hats and two American flags jogged down the path. Happy Patriots' Day, the father called. It is a strange April. All Patriots Day activities have been cancelled. No breakfast for 200. No muskets firing on the Green. No young man in Bedford scaling a twenty-foot liberty pole to place his red cap on top. No Marathon.

Once in Concord, I glanced to my right and saw the forest give way to a huge expanse of golden grasses, with a large pond in the distance: The Great Meadow National Wildlife Refuge.  Wonder filled me.

At Concord Center I turned towards Lincoln and later onto the Battle Road. Perched on a granite boulder, a perky snow bunny stared at me. My Runkeeper read 13.15 miles: a half marathon.

The going got rougher as my feet developed blisters and my hips stiffened. My first mile was a 16:38 minute-mile. By my last (mile 16) I was barely clocking a 25-minute mile.

Gingerly climbing the exterior stairs to Jim’s coachhouse office, I joined the video-conference call with R’el and Matt. This was our virtual finish line after completing the Conquer covid-19 virtual race. Jim and I tapped the laptop screen with cold diet sodas and we all toasted each other. Then I slowly moved back down the stairs, into the house, and up more stairs to take a soothing hot bath.

Flagpoles and Spines

I apologize for being AWOL (absent without leave) for four months.

Today I read a ‘morning musing’ email from  FlyLady Marla Cilley: "You Might Be a Perfectionist If..." I’ve been a perfectionist about my blog. If I can’t dedicate several hours to it, I don’t post. So, here’s an experiment: I pledge to post here daily, by 9 p.m. through April. I just changed my email signature:

Blog “updated DAILY in April”.

I am a proud member of DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance). When Jim and I started self-isolation on March 13, I felt secret relief that my volunteer commitments, including facilitating at DBSA once or twice a week, would halt and I could re-set. I felt overbooked but unwilling to give anything up. To my dismay, The DBSA Board swung into action. They met in video-conference each day for over two weeks and launched online support groups for people with mood disorders and their family and friends. It was an intense experience for me, in fact, I started going hypomanic for the first time in many years. Now that the online program is in place, the time commitment has lessened (and the hypomania has receded (dang!)).

I’ve discovered, in an unexpected and deep way, that I am part of a community of generous, caring people who understand mental illness because of ‘lived experience.’ Many people have stepped up and given time and effort to maintain our connections with each other during an uncertain time when many people are experiencing anxiety and isolation.

Khare, DBSA-Boston's technical guru, works every day to improve our online experience. For years he has been our meditation specialist, generously guiding a weekly Meditation Circle. Now he offers one every weekday.

How comforting it was to  see familiar friends this morning. Khare suggested an image I've been thinking about all day: a flagpole and flag. The flag is whipped by a strong wind, then ruffled gently, then hangs limp. The experience of life can be as disruptive as strong winds, but I can be the flagpole, not the flag.

I've never bonded with the standard meditation metaphor that my thoughts are clouds to be observed dispassionately, letting them drift by without trying to prevent them or hold them. But this has possibilities. My thoughts can be like wind: coming and going, unbidden and, unpredictable. They can be benign, helpful, practical, distracting, distorted, depressed, or hypomanic. My spine can be my flagpole. My backbone gives my body structure and strength. It supports me, whether I sit, or stand, or lie down. It isn't brittle and in danger of breaking, but strong and supple. With a healthy spine, I can be solidly grounded.

I’ve never stayed with meditation; I'd get restless and bored. But this practice is different. I awoke this morning feeling anxious, fully awake but unrested, and reluctant to get out of bed and face my life. After twenty minutes with my eyes closed, I was ready to start my day afresh. Not energized, exactly, but fortified.