Uncomfortably Numb

~A. L. Tennyson

I wish they warned me about this in Psychology class. I think there should be at least a whole semester devoted to how depression makes you unfit and unable to handle being a mother. Because that’s how I feel.

I remember watching a video a few years ago about a high school track athlete with Multiple Sclerosis. She was explaining that after intense exertion, the MS causes her to lose all the feeling in her extremities, even while her body keeps going through the motions. Besides feeling completely in awe of her perseverance in spite of her diagnosis, I thought that was such a similar description to what I feel like, parenting with depression. When it takes all the energy and motivation you have to simply get up and get out of bed in the morning, I feel like I spend the rest of my day numb - going through the motions. There is just nothing left for when the day doesn’t go as planned, or the kids are being especially cruel. And they’re kids. For the most part, they shouldn’t be to blame for expressing themselves when they’re frustrated and confused and unsure of how to show it meaningfully. But at the same time, it hurts. It hurts so much when they yell at you and tell you that they think you don’t care about them. Because - unbeknownst to them - the fear that you’re not able to care enough plays on repeat in your own head all day. When all of the daylight hours feel like you’re running a track race completely numb, using every amount of effort you have just to make sure your kids are content, and fed, and washed, and dressed. When you’re foregoing eating, and drinks, and the rest you so desperately crave, just to make sure that you are there, and present, and engaging with them so you don’t lie in bed later agonizing over all the wasted minutes and hours that slipped away when you were so lost and struggling with your own body and mind - just to have them turn around and scream at you that all your best effort isn’t worth it...
Not worth it, and not worthy. Their words repeat what your depression is telling you, every day. When the message echoes around you in stereo, its so hard to tune out the noise. But your one job as a parent is that you must not give up. Sometimes I wonder if the pain is my blessing in life, just so I know that the numbness isn’t all there is.

Bitter Pill

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, "I have failed three times," and what happens when he says, "I am a failure." ~S.I. Hayakawa

As parents, we all have our most challenging child. The one who frustrates us, pushes us, and makes us redefine our limits, our strengths, and ultimately plays on our weaknesses. We may love them all, but it's not easy to love them all the same.

Monkey is my most challenging. My enigma. Always changing and mercurial with her likes and her temperament. At times I think I can catch a glimpse of the little girl I knew and bonded with in the first 7 years, other times I think she's a changeling. But the hardest facet of her personality is that she will rarely ask for help. My Monkey will push ahead blindly, or hide and cry, but hardly ever will she ask for assistance. So most times it falls to me to judge when she has met her limit, and needs someone to step in. This can be met with resignation and acceptance, or it can be met with fierce denial and resentment. One can never tell. Whichever the case, I try to impress upon her that having help is an advantage, not something to be embarrassed about. But now what do I tell her when I can't get her the help she needs?

This school year has been a long and challenging uphill battle. We have tried tutoring, therapy, counseling, bribery, and punishment. Finally, in March, I thought we had scored by the school district agreeing to evaluate Monkey. But now it has all come to naught. Our request for an IEP was denied. Again. Instead of feeling relieved that my daughter will finally be able to get some individualized help in Math, I got a note at the bottom of the evaluation that read “We suggest flash cards or other methods of practice to help her retain basic concepts.” Really? My daughter has a 64 average in a subject, and you don’t think I’ve tried something as simple as flash cards?

I still can’t wrap my head around it. They promoted her to the next grade, but with an F. An F. Failure, flunkie, fan-freaking-tastic. I feel like I get an F for failing too. Because I failed my daughter. I told her all this year that she needs to learn to ask for help, because doing it solo while you’re struggling is not the way to do things. Yet, here I go asking for help, and we’re denied. I am at such a loss as to what to tell her. She already has internalized that her effort doesn’t matter because she “just fails it anyway.” What kind of example do I give her when my efforts fall short as well? What message is she left with?

We will be spending the summer blocking this entire episode out of our minds doing flash cards. And hoping for a miracle regarding her placement come September.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

“Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” ~Author Unknown

Its been six months since the day I cried after meeting with Scootch’s teacher - the day she told me she wanted to hold him back and repeat a year. But I remember having a purpose after I dried my eyes. I knew that her solution wasn’t what was best for Scootch, and I knew what needed to be done to get him in the best place possible. And since school has been underway and going so extremely well for him, I was thinking it would be great to breathe a nice deep sigh of relief and relax for a little while while things went back to what passes for normal around here.

And then the homework drama started. But not with who you would expect.

Monkey came home one day with a blank assignment pad. I asked her if she had any homework, and she said, “Yes. But I forgot to write it down.” Its happened to all of us, so I let it slide. But the next night she forgot to bring home the list of her new spelling words. The night after we had a bout of tears before we would even attempt to do our spelling homework, and the math homework induced a temper tantrum.

I was thinking it was just her being tired. We tried to keep the kids close to their normal schedule over the summer, but seriously, it was still daylight out at 8pm. There was no way those kids were going to lay down and go to sleep with sunshine coming through the window. And the first two weeks back to school are always a harsh adjustment. But the problems persisted. Every night was a different issue. She left the paper in her desk, forgot her assignment pad, didn’t hear her teacher say they had any homework. The excuses were piling up as fast as the laundry, and I was getting annoyed. Plus, she got her first note sent home from the teacher stapled to a stack of assignments. “Homework incomplete. Please have her finish and hand in.” So we sat down to try and have a chat, and that didn’t end well either. It turned into Monkey yelling and crying and fleeing to her room to calm down. (And ultimately, escape into a book.)

But what startled me was a couple days later. I was (as usual) trying to supervise her doing her homework while I was starting dinner when she just laid her head down on the table and started to cry. And when I asked her what was wrong she told me “I’m just too stupid to do math.”

That floored me.

My kids are not stupid. We don’t call them that, we never have, and no one I have ever met has ever used that adjective to describe my children. My first reaction was my gender-equality-feminist-temper bristling at the thought of someone telling my daughter that she was the “s-word.” So when I immediately asked her who told her that, I felt sick when she told me, “No one. I just know I’m too dumb.”

I don’t think there are words for the feeling you get as a parent when your kids stop believing in themselves. Its a special kind of frustration and pain that splits you apart because they don’t see themselves as the beautiful, well-rounded, human being that they are. But furthermore, this was not my child. This sullen, bad tempered, obstinate little girl who was so shrunk into herself, was not the same laughing, imaginative, Monkey I sent to school on the bus four weeks ago. And after spending the entire summer getting Scootch evaluated, reading literature for Attention Deficit Disorder, and answering the same questionnaires and Vanderbuilt assessments in triplicate, of course my first thought was, “Does she need to be evaluated for ADHD, too? Maybe we’ve missed something.”

And I don’t know what to do. My instinct, which was so absolutely right with Scootch, is telling me this is not just growing pains, or the need to give her more time to adjust to third grade. Its telling me something is wrong. But at the same time, I don’t know if maybe this is just backlash from giving her brother so much special attention over the summer. Or stemming from the fact that she was in an inclusion class last year, and this year is her first experience with changing classes for subjects. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions with her needing to go through an evaluation because it is literally just fresh on my brain and I am seeing it everywhere. And at this point, since her grades aren’t slipping yet, I don’t know if she would even qualify for one. We’ve written to her teachers to ask if there is anything else they are noticing that we are missing, and have somewhat agreed to just let it ride as a ‘wait and see’ period. Meanwhile, we had a temper tantrum, missing homework assignments AND Monkey staying up past 9pm to finish her homework last night. So what is the tipping point? Where is the line in the sand that tells us we have spent enough time waiting? As I stand here watching my brightest flower wither and languish while her self esteem drains away, I don’t know how much longer I can endure seeing her suffer. Not when I know how much change you can create by simply standing up and saying “enough.” Scootch is evidence of that. I just need to know whether its the right direction to go with Monkey as well.

It Was Not Death, for I Stood Up

"I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it.  If you don't, you feel even worse.”  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Robin Williams was one of my mother’s favorite actors, and very quickly became mine. I think I was about Little Bear’s age when I first saw him in Popeye (and became acutely terrified of octopi immediately after that). I also think I was the only six year old to watch Good Morning Vietnam, and The World According to Garp - parts of which were blocked by my mother’s hands over my eyes and ears - because I was begging my mom to let me see him again in a movie. Thank goodness we got a copy of Toys a few years later, although I still sometimes yell “Watch out for the under toad!” while running into the surf at the shore. When I heard the news on Monday afternoon of Robin tragically taking his own life, my first thought was one of sorrow, that the world was a little bit darker without his light in it. My second was that my mother would be overjoyed to see him again in “person,” besides the one time she ended up seeking him out to apologize for her son kicking him in the leg in a hotel pool. But as I read the comments on every article and news posting, and have absorbed all the backlash pieces that have popped up, my main feeling is grief. For everyone out there that condemn his death, malign his name, and call him a cheat, a coward, a weakling, and - worst of all - selfish, I applaud your ignorance. And my wish for you is that you keep it your entire life. I would rather you shouted your stupidity at the top of your lungs till the end of your days than to ever have to be afflicted with something as dark and insidious as actual severe depression. I don’t like to talk about my health problems. Especially my depression and my anxiety. I know I’ve mentioned it, I’ve wrote about it, but I don’t like to talk about it. Mostly because of the opportunity for judgement from the blissfully ignorant masses that thankfully have no idea what its like. There are a slim few that I share this darkness with, in some ways to protect them from it, and in other ways to protect myself. Nothing irritates me more than those inspirational photos that say people need to just choose to be happy everyday. As if I chose this disease for myself, and was happy living with it. Might as well tell a cancer patient to choose not to have a tumor when they wake up every morning. Part of the misunderstanding I think lies in the word we use as the label itself. You can feel depressed without having depression. But having depression is nothing like being a little low in spirits that feeling depressed means. Let me just say that again to let it sink in. Having depression is nothing like feeling depressed. I’ve mentioned actual depression is insidious. You might even personify it as a kidnapper, or a jailer, because the first thing it does is isolate you. It isolates you from your family, your friends, the world in general. You start to feel irritable and angry with those around you, then awkward, and alone after you’ve driven them away. You can easily identify that something is different, something is wrong, which almost immediately translates into something being wrong with you. Everyone else seems to be able to laugh, or cry, or sleep at night, or wake up in the morning. Why not you? It also isolates you from the rational parts of yourself. That self esteem that your wonderful parents gave you, the compliments from your friends, the praise and promises from the love of your life that everything will be okay, and they love you anyway….they can’t get through. There is no cell service at this island you find yourself stranded where those encouraging messages could be received. You’ve become the new lead in Cast Away, but instead of having a benign volleyball to talk to, you’ve been left with a deceitful forked tongue serpent that likes to lie to you. You are on this island, trying to communicate with the people in your life, whom you can see, but not really hear or understand. Especially since they are shouting from so far away, and that serpent is right next to you, drowning out their words by speaking directly into your ear. And the longer the serpent is next to you, the more chance it has to wrap itself around you. At first the contact might even feel nice, or comforting - you can actually feel something for once! But ultimately, you realize that the closeness will eventually kill you if you don’t do something about it. So you struggle against its bonds hoping to free yourself. You struggle with those python-like bands around you every day, every moment. Some days its just too exhausting to fight them. The thought of making the effort to even get up out of bed in the morning is so overwhelmingly tiring you just don’t. Trying to smile, and converse, while those bands are squeezing around you, making your bones ache and your lungs pinch from lack of air is sometimes too painful. Every decision you make is weighed against the effort of moving, and carrying this burden wrapped around yourself. No one can reach you past its coils. You long for real contact. An actual true sensation of feeling something touching you besides this insidious serpent. With depression, the most vital decision is when you actually admit to struggling out loud. Sometimes, with the right support, you can get medication, and therapy. But its still a process. The pills don't take the serpent away like aspirin resolves a headache. The psychologist can't pry the lies out of your brain or stop their hissing from sounding in your ears. The bonded sensation still squeezes the breath out of you some days, and then feels like its fleeting the next. Or sometimes, it just doesn't help at all. And when the pain wears you down so much, and the people yelling can’t reach you, or hold you, and you have just been listening to the lies murmured about you for days, months, and years, unending, sometimes - like Robin - you do feel like the only recourse, the only relief, the only escape is to do something. Anything. The only thing you feel you really can do. Something drastic.

I want to tell you something else about depression. It might fly in the face of what you believe in - what every psychotherapist, psychologist, doctor, priest, rabbi, friend, parent, or child may tell you - but ending your life is not a weak, cowardly, thing. It takes someone strong to actually go through with it. To actually decide to act, to choose to go through with something so final and permanent that goes against the basic human instinct of survival, is, thankfully, not something everyone can do. And to be so desperately embattled with a serpent that it seems your only viable option to free yourself, is to end yourself, does not deserve condemnation or criticism. It deserves reflection, and empathy, and at the very least, understanding. In mourning, we all, selfishly, cry for what we have lost. We should also remember to find joy in what Robin has gained by finally being released from his bonds of disease. The cessation of his pain. "Genie, you’re free!"

~ I pray you've found peace and laughter in heaven, Mr. Williams. It was a privilege sharing time with you. My thoughts are with your family and friends. Say hi to my Mom for me. XOXO

6 Years of Wisdom

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about." -A. Schwindt

I can't believe our Scootch is six! He is truly my big boy and my baby all at once. Insistent on doing things on his own, but not too big yet to still want a cuddle or to be held. I think his birthday this year was more bittersweet for me because of all the trials we're trying to weather together with his evaluations for school. As much as its hard as a parent for your child to have to be "labeled," its also heartwarming to know that your instincts are justified, and that other people can see the good qualities and things you love about your child too. 

I think the most amazing thing about our journey together these last 6 years is how much he really has taught me. Being the second child, I went into his pregnancy thinking I had this in the bag, only to be blindsided with so many postpartum issues and complications. Trying to find yourself all over again is doubly difficult when you're doing the balancing act of new motherhood. Throw in the health issues with his feeding and food allergies, and sometimes I feel like I never was able to get off the roller coaster. With these last challenges at school, I am fully seeing what a gift Scootch is to our family, and especially to me. His attitude and happy nature are a constant reality check, especially when I'm stressed or anxious. This little boy reminds me to live life in spite of fear, and to love life despite restrictions. If he can get through his day with all his daily challenges still smiling and upbeat, then really, who am I to be throwing myself a pity party?

Happy birthday to our silly, smiley, lovable, Scootch! I hope you always find a reason to keep smiling, now and forever!

Pants on Fire

Liar, liar, pants on fire, hang them up on telephone wire.

Monkey used to sneak food when she was a toddler. She learned how to open the refrigerator while she was still in her walker, so being fully mobile opened up a whole new avenue of pantry raiding when Scootch was born. Instead of requesting a snack, she just felt it would be easier to liberate the food herself while I was usually otherwise occupied with a feeding or a diaper change. The denial was amusing  when she was three and vehemently denied she stole granola bars while the melted chocolate chips were still smeared all over her mouth. Now that she's the ripe old age of seven and a half with an attitude to match, the denial isn't cute anymore.
Its partially my fault, to be honest. We fight over so many things during the course of the day, taking her to task for the daily petty offences is usually one of the battles I choose to just not engage in. I tell her I think she's lying, she denies it, and I just leave it lie, hoping she'll at least acknowledge to herself she is in the wrong. She's not really adept at hiding the evidence, either. Which is something else I fail to point out to her because, truthfully, I don't want her improving on that particular life skill. My tipping point, however, came while Daddy was away for a few days on business. The second time that week she came downstairs dressed for school wearing my good 14K gold jewelry I pretty much flipped my lid. To which she just insisted she "found it" in her jewelry box. No. Way. In. Hades. my jewelry spontaneously traveled space and time into the little box in her bedroom!
When Daddy came home, I was more than happy to hand off the disciplinary reins to him when it came to refereeing a dinner fiasco. Monkey refused to eat her dinner the entire meal, then when everyone else left the table, she came prancing into the living room two minutes later claiming to have finished every last bite. It didn't take much investigating for Daddy to find her entire meal stuffed into the garbage can. That evening's bedtime routine became one long talk about truth and dishonesty. And in some ways I'm so thankful he's here to get through to her. Monkey listens and opens up to Daddy in so many other ways than we communicate with each other. He can get to the root of her behaviors and actions so much quicker than I ever seem to be able to. On the other hand, its positively maddening to deal with a child who is so righteous and fastidious about preaching right and wrong about other's behavior, but never seems to hold herself to the same measure. Especially when I'm the one at home usually stuck holding the ruler. I'm just hoping we're working through this phase, and she has finally learned a valuable lesson.

Speak To Me

"People see God every day, they just don't recognize him." ~P. Bailey

Albrecht Dürer - Praying Hands. One of my mother's favorite art works.

I had a funny conversation about religion today at a baby shower. And when it comes down to it, I guess my true answer is that I'm a very spiritual person, but probably not an overly religious one. Some of my friends are atheists, my own husband is most likely considered agnostic, and my kids aren't all that interested in church even though I try to drag them there on a regular basis. But be as that may, I cannot dismiss the power faith has in my life - including my daily life.

I have to admit the loss of my mother caused a pretty seismic shift in my childhood. My mother was the driving force of my own religious upbringing. She came from a very devout Catholic family, sent me to parochial school for my elementary education, and taught at one for about 9 years before she passed away. I'll never forget how excited she was to go see the Pope right before she died. Sure she was seeing him from the nosebleed seats in a sports stadium, but she was as giddy as a teenager getting backstage passes to One Direction. However, the event of her death, and the circumstances surrounding the people she worked and taught with, really soured my whole outlook on faith, religion, Catholicism, and for a little while, God himself. Sad to say, I was a typical angry teenager with the mentality of a toddler. I wanted to know "why?" Why, why, why, why, why? Why my mom? Why did this happen to me? Why not take me instead? Between the "why's" and the "what-ifs" my spirit was sucked down an abyss faster than Alice went down the rabbit hole.

It took me a long, long, time to accept what happened. Even longer to accept that it didn't happen to punish me or because I was bad, or unfaithful. And it was an even more lengthy road back to my spirituality. Sure there were the reminders, and the nudges to go back to my faith. I started attending a Youth Group with my girlfriend because I slept over her house on weekends, and that's where she ended up on Sunday mornings. Coincidentally, (or not), it was the same place my husband ended up on Sundays as well. I became a member of the E & C Club, and would only go to church on Easter or Christmas with another family when I went to their house on holidays. And then there were the little happenstances that kept occurring around me that couldn't be discounted or explained away. Things like certain songs coming on the radio when I was having a hard time missing my mother. Seeing people or having someone call me out of the blue when I was feeling frighteningly alone and desperate. Certain photos or papers of my mother's that would mysteriously fall out of books or drawers when I would least expect it. These little signs were like a tide ebbing away at the dried up remains of my faith. The more I got them, the more I could feel that empty little spot inside where my spirituality used to reside. The more I knew that spot was empty, the more I wanted to feel like it was filled up again.

I am now a great believer in "God winks" (to borrow the term from a book I once read). Mostly, I believe I receive them from my mother. But there have been other occurrences that have happened that don't carry her mark on them. These little signs and messages are treasured and cherished by me every time they occur. They're delivered to me through the radio, strangers, books, and my own kids. They remind me that I can still connect a part of myself with the one remaining essence of people who have passed away. That even though I might not be able to see my loved ones, they can still speak to me and be involved in my life. Because as much as I'd like to say I've matured, and learned to keep my faith overflowing, there are still events that cause those little tremors to return. Things that seem senseless, and cruel, and unfair, and revert me back to that demanding toddler mentality of "why? why? why?" But again, I am sent a sign, a message, an answer. 

On today of all days, I struggled with the 8 year "angel-versary" of the death of a friend's son. I have never been able to reason or wrap my head around this loss. Such wonderful parents having such a small window of time with their little boy. And they are such loving, positive, people despite that. The effect they have on others and for others in the name of their child is a beautiful thing to behold. Their courage and strength are amazing to watch, and because of that, it is so easy to slip back into that questioning mentality. Why? Why them? And in the Gospel reading at church today was a section that jumped out at me. My answer, if you will.

John 9:2-3
And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "it was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."

For me, his works have never been displayed better. Faith, humility, dedication, love, and kindness. Thank you for the note.

Blue Christmas

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

I still pick out a Christmas gift for my mother every year, even though I haven’t shared the holiday with her in 16 years. I don’t actually buy it or wrap it, but usually in my shopping travels I see something that she would have liked, or just simply experience something that I know she would enjoy. It makes me wonder about what her preferences and likes would have been in this technologically advanced age. I like to imagine her with a smartphone and a Kindle, tagging me in numerous Pinterest posts and commenting on my progress on Goodreads. Its all very much a fantasy, though.

To be honest, I think she would be disappointed with me this year. Try as I might, the events over the last few days, weeks, and months have weighed me down this season, and I just haven’t been able to muster up much Christmas spirit. The tree and the house lights were put up, the cards were sent, but the other customs and staples of the year; the baking, the nativity figurines, the thrill of giving, were glaringly absent. From the outside looking in, I’m sure it seemed like a happy Christmas, but I’m still lacking that renewal of spirit I associate with celebrating the anniversary of a certain child’s birth. I find myself just unable to find the joy in wrapping gifts when I think about those parents and families in Connecticut who won’t have the joy of watching their kids opening their presents Christmas morning. Or make cookies with my own sons and daughter when theirs will never be able to sneak one again, or just simply enjoy licking the spoons. To watch my six year old Monkey catching snowflakes on her tongue in a magical Christmas Eve snow without remembering 20 five and six year olds that will never experience another snowflake. I can’t savor snuggling into bed at night with my husband when neighbors in my town - in my state - have no beds and no homes to gather into. The disparity of so many people banding together to try and make it a wonderful holiday for some, and others setting out to unleash their evil on the civil servants who selflessly sacrifice to help and protect us make it impossible for me to see the hope and goodness in our country. Maybe even in our world. There is so much arguing and blame going on right now. Everyone wants a solution, but nobody wants to work together to really get to the right answer.

This isn’t the world I had in mind to bring my children into. A country that is more invested in their individual right to bear arms, than in seeking to heal the people as a whole through proper health and mental care is not where I want them to grow up. Legislators who are determined to undermine and cut the pay and benefits of educators - the people who have the job of shaping the people who will lead our future - are not the people I want in power over my kids’ learning opportunities. And thinking about those teachers that died, who did the same things that they award medals to soldiers for when in combat, it seems like the biggest insult that they are not supported more by the public, or by our own government. Finally, I can't get those poor parents out of my mind. How many holidays will they spend like me, seeing gift opportunities for someone they can no longer buy for?

The future just looks bleak and unpromising to me. If ever a child’s birth could deliver us from evil, I believe it would need to be now. Searching for that feeling of Christmas while donning a lead mantle of depression is an exhausting and bitter enterprise. And yet.... and yet, even as I go to bed this Christmas night with a heavy heart I keep digging inside myself. For as in the words of Anne Lamott, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.”

Surely the miracle of the season has planted a seed of hope inside me somewhere. Inside all of us. Somewhere dormant and ready to bloom in the light of the morning.

You Can’t Go Home Again

 When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.  ~Author Unknown

The Sands Beach Club, next door to the venue we held our wedding reception. photo credit: A.Mills

I’ve been trying to write this post for days. Unsuccessfully. Revisiting the task was like revisiting the well of emotion I have reserved for what happened. I could only tiptoe around the edge lest I fall in and drown. But I feel that its somewhat disrespectful if I don’t. A disservice to gloss over it. So many things have been lost, so many families have had their homes, their jobs, their possessions, their LIVES destroyed. All we lost was power for eight days and a 10 foot long section of siding on the house. There is just no comparison.
But it still is hard. The storm is not over. Although the wind and the rains have ceased, the tide of emotions is still rising and falling. Its hard to embrace the comfort of thankfulness when I’m overridden with feelings of guilt and helplessness in the face of those people not 2 miles away, who carted the entire contents of their house to the curb. Hard not to cry every time I click on a link to read another story about how people still don’t have power when its been below freezing temperatures at night, and has been for weeks. Hard to not give into the murderous rage I feel when the news reports come in of people stealing generators from their neighbors, siphoning fuel from the emergency response vehicles, and attacking the out-of-state linemen who are thousands of miles from home trying to restore utilities to all of us who were affected by the storm. And then the good tide rolls in. Election Day brought a brief surge of pride for my neighbors as people lined up in our powerless little voting station, generators humming to supply electricity to the polling booths and floodlights. Residents filling out forms by flashlight, and standing in line to vote with smiles and hellos, even though the none of us had any heat or lights or conveniences at home to speak of. The news covering government officials actually working together for once to aid the people they were elected to lead. And the stories of the donations and relief efforts make my eyes well up with gratitude. Of common men doing uncommon goodness for strangers. And for the mighty coming together in efforts to provide benefit concerts and events to help those devastated by the storm. Yet, there is only so much donating money and food and baby clothing, can do to ease the feelings of impotence.

People in my own town emptying their flooded homes after the storm waters receded. photo credit: M.Sullivan

Before Hurricane Sandy hit my state, I already had that horrible premonition feeling in my stomach. The initial reports of flooding and extraordinary wave size that were rolling in even before the storm made landfall were just confirmation to me. I went to bed on October 29th fearing the morning, not really able to sleep, and occasionally dozing off only to have horrific nightmares. Spending the next morning powerless on my cell phone checking the news and Facebook as people posted photos of the devastation was like still being locked in one of my dreams. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. I still don’t want to believe it. Places that shape entire chunks of my memories, that define rituals of the seasons, that were the landmarks of pivotal moments in my life have been wiped away. 

Dock from the river washed up on the front lawn of a home in the next town.

Home. To me, its that feeling you get. Not always a defined place on a map with a fixed latitude and longitude, but most often, the place where the rhythms and cycles of the flow of life are familiar and resonate within you. I am a creature of nostalgia, most likely because I haven't had much stability with people, and I find that returning to familiar whereabouts gives me the most comfort. These past weeks I find myself adrift and rudderless in the wrecked remains of this expanse, without my familiar touchstones and reassurances. This storm has ravaged the property of my memories. It has destroyed the areas I've celebrated at, ripped apart where relationships began, where friendships were renewed, and where I've sought solace and remembrance. In short, it has demolished my home, my haven, my sense of security. And the sad part is that its that way for everyone who lives here.

The very beach  my husband proposed, missing most of the boardwalk and sand. photo credit: C.LaPlaca

For almost four months of the year, the small strip of sand that marks the threshold to the ocean is adopted by everyone in the state. Even by people from states away. This is a loss that will be felt hardest by its residents, the people who live and work amid the devastation, but it is a loss that is shared by us all. I can’t see how anyone in this great state made it out unscathed. No matter where our permanent homes are, every one of us has a part of ourselves invested in those magical miles by the sea.

Me and Little Bear at our yearly August beach retreat earlier this year. Notice the houses upper left.

The same houses shown in my beach photo from August. photo credit:A.Mills

The same beach we sat on only two months before, viewed from the walkway between the houses. photo credit: A.Mills

Everything in Sandy’s path has been touched and reshaped. Landscapes have been rearranged. Landmarks have been expunged. And most of all, the people have been irrevocably altered. We will recover. We will rebuild. In a year or two, we will look back with pride at what we have overcome. But I don’t think we will ever be able to forget.

As so wonderfully suggested by a NOLA writer, who has lived through this type of devastation amid the aftermath of Katrina and lived to tell about it, are the words from Ulysses;

“Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Stay strong.

These people are doing amazing things for the people needing help along the Jersey Shore. Please think of donating. Project Rebuild Recover and Waves for Water.

Rearview Mirror

The most valuable lesson man has learned from his dog is to kick a few blades of grass over it and move on.  ~Robert Brault

I  have a tendency to hold onto things. I always firmly grip the belief that things can be salvaged or repaired. I sometimes even see objects as what they could be instead of what they are. When its things around the house, I have to make sure I'm not setting us up for the next episode of Hoarders. But when it comes to the more intangible areas of feelings and relationships, its a much harder struggle to justify the decision of giving in or letting go.

I think that sometimes its just a matter of getting to a tipping point. You let things roll off your back, but the feelings tend to not brush away as easily. You think they've washed away when they really are just settling down into the dark crevices of your mind. Lying in wait to rise up again in a swirl when faced with another rush of emotional onslaught. And I try not to make my decisions when immersed in the murky sludge of the moment. I try not to be petty, or vindictive, or locked in the memories of the thousand past little hurts and injustices that came before this new moment. But sometimes, the act of continually offering the other cheek starts to feel a bit like assault and battery. Sometimes, always saying "yes" to someone else is actually saying "no" to yourself. And sometimes it just hurts too much to keep holding on.

Sometimes, you just have to let it go, and leave it behind you. And sometimes, the hardest thing about it, is not looking back as you go.

Eyes front. Let's roll.