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.

Sad News

Sunday evening, our daughter, Annie, shared some very sad news with us: Jim’s cousin’s youngest son died in a motorcycle accident on Saturday. He was 25.

What else is there to say?

SWIM!

I’ve continued to think about my campaign to end whining in my life. “Stop whining!” developed into “Stop whining, Mary!”, then “Stop whining immediately, Mary!” and finally: “Stop Whining Instantly, Mary!” I love acronyms and I love swimming. “SWIM”. I love the feeling of moving through the water; I want to move through life.

And what have I been whining about? My inability to read and retain information. Last week, I had a break-through. Jim and I were driving his sister, Mary, (the original Mary Johnston) to O’Hare airport in Chicago. They were talking about books. Instead of envying them, unable to join in the conversation, I quietly listened, enjoying their knowledge and appreciation of good writing.

Where did my disability come from? I remember quite clearly, 22 years ago, when I first started taking a psych med, feeling dull and slow-thinking. I could only read comics in the Boston Globe, no articles and certainly not a book. Kay Redfield Jamison, my hero memoir-writer, describes a similar symptom. My ability improved and I don’t have clear recollection of the intervening years. About ten years ago, I told a woman at DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) that I struggled with reading. It was all I could do to read my scriptures. She smiled and said, "I'm glad you can read your spiritual writings." I hadn’t appreciated what I did have. She had just returned from Israel and had brought back small gifts for her friends at DBSA. Even though she hardly knew me, she gave me a small, translucent stone with the word “miracle” etched in it. Perhaps looking at the stone would help make a change in my life.

I appreciated her optimistic attitude and, over time, reading has gotten easier.

I’m at the point in my life (I’m 61), that I can’t say for sure what causes any of the problems I deal with. Back in 1995, when I was 39, I could see clearly that the psych med changed my thinking and abilities. Later I learned that manic depression is a progressive disease. The psych meds keep the symptoms at bay. Is the underlying illness contributing to my symptoms? I have a harder time reading when I’m depressed.

And now, in my sixties, age starts playing a role. If my symptoms worsen, perhaps it’s the age-factor.

Whatever it is, and it must be a combination of factors, whining does nothing but slow me down.

Each time my son Matt suggested audiobooks, I resisted. I won’t be able to remember what I’ve heard; I will get distracted and miss things. But, when I stopped whining and to took his advice, I was excited with the results. Listening to an excellent narrator read with energy and expression, I am able to follow and retain. As the weather improves with the change of season, I look forward to long walks accompanied by great ideas and literature.

Worst-case Scenario

I was first introduced to cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) by David Burns, in his best-seller, Feeling Good, where he identifies10 cognitive distortions. I practice all of them on a regular basis, despite years of 'understanding' their negative effects. Fortune-telling, a subset of Jumping to Conclusions is perhaps my favorite.

Last week I spent a beautiful spring day in New Jersey with my sister Maggie, who lives in southern California. We visited our disabled brother, Mike, at a LTACH (Long Term Acute Care Hospital) in Newark, then drove 22 miles south to our parents’ grave in Perth Amboy, provincial capital of the colony of New Jersey. We planned to meet another brother (we have four), Carl, for supper at Ruthie’s Bar-B-Q and Pizza, in Montclair. Susan had told Maggie that parking was tight. As I drove the 26 miles north on the Garden State Parkway, I struggled to talk myself down. To avoid rush-hour traffic, we planned to arrive at Ruthie’s 2 hours before our date and take a long walk in the lovely township of Montclair. If we parked in their parking lot so early, would someone from the restaurant notice us walking away and call a tow truck? My attempts to quiet my mind failed, so as we got off the parkway, I admitted my fears to Maggie.

“You always go for the worst-case scenario, Mary.”

I was taken aback. I recognize (sometimes) my modus operandi, but I didn’t realize I was so transparent about it.

As it turned out, there is no parking lot at Ruthie's and we parked on the street. Checking my GPS, we found Eagle Rock Reservation and drove to the 9/11 memorial with it's stunning view of the NYC skyline.

Back at Ruthie's, we again parked just across the street and enjoyed a lovely supper with Carl before I headed back up to Lexington.

What's your quirk that is obvious to everyone around you? (or at least to those who love you)?