SHE IS
…two years behind the
kids she
Graduated high school
with and
While they will finish
college this year
And face—for the first
time—the real world
She has already seen
it.
She has haunted
hospital corridors and
Scrambled eggs for her
younger brother and
Kept the home fires
burning while
One parent kept falling
down and
The other kept picking
him up.
She is not invincible,
and sometimes she cries
Because life is not
fair.
But unlike her peers
who are ensconced being
Ivy-covered walls and
plodding through classics on
Ancient French poetry
and bio-physics
She knows it.
APRIL
23, 2001. 4 PM.
With a few tears and a lot of
prayer, Bonnie and Nicholas have decided to be “just friends.” It was, they
both content, “almost right.” With two such lovely young people, both committed
to God and His plans for their lives, one wonders why it couldn't have worked.
What was it that was missing, keeping them from filling the missing pieces?
“Something,” Bonnie has said early
on in the relationship, “just isn't there.”
They tried to make it work, tried to
fall in love with each other. The best they could do was genuine affection. It
is more, of course, than a lot of people ever manage to have. But for these two
young people, it is just not enough. They deserve head-over-heels,
fly-me-to-the-mood, heart palpitations and sweaty palms love. And someday they
will find it. They are not willing to settle for less than what they know God
has to offer them. They each know that God has designed someone out there especially
for them. They’re willing to wait.
Good for them. Good that they
recognized that all the things that were right with the relationship did not
make up for what was wrong. Good that they think they can still maintain a
friendship. They still laugh together, but it is slightly hollow. However much
they try to put a good face on it, it is still a loss. And our lives seem to be
continually full of losses.
I, too, feel the loss. I am grateful
to Nicholas, who entered our lives with a toolbox in his hands. In the few
months he and Bonnie dated, he installed light fixtures in the basement and the
foyer, rewired the outlets in the house, and installed a new bathroom floor.
Not only have his repairs strengthened my house, but they have strengthened my
daughter as well. The last two years saw her spending far too much time in
hospital rooms and not enough time being young. Nicholas helped her find the
twenty-something inside herself again.
Yet even as my daughter packs
Nicholas into a memory corner of her heart and tries to move on, I sense in
myself a sadness that is out of keeping with such a commonplace occurrence.
Daughters break up with boyfriends all the time. I cannot seem to shake the
notion that my daughter is doomed to seek out the wrong young men, always
believing that she can somehow remake them. Nicholas, for all his gentleness,
had problems with anxiety and hyperactivity. And the boy she dated just before
Nicholas seemed always on the edge of despair.
“Don’t you know any normal boys?” I
ask Bonnie.
“And,” she counters, “how would a
normal boy fit in around here?”
She is right, of course. Our lives
have been off-balance for so long that we wouldn't know normal if it knocked on
our door. I take a long look at my daughter. She is twenty-two and lovely. She
has a tender heart and a love for God. Her smile lights up every freckle on her
face and her blue eyes sparkle with delight. Her gregarious personality
attracts people to her. Some of them seem to be the wrong sort of people. Her
brothers, I tell her, always brought home the Lost Boys. She feels the need to
date them. Somehow, she thinks she can save the world.
She reminds me too much of me.
MAY
2, 2001. 9AM.
I float, a round, white balloon
drifting towards the sky and the sun, slowly breathing in and out. Each breath
is labored as I try to focus on my lungs. I can still feel the congestion in my
chest and hear it in the rasp of my voice. An all engulfing tiredness descends
on me in the middle of the day, tempting me to close my eyes even as I struggle
through the last class of the afternoon. I would love to give in to it,
allowing my limbs to succumb and move no more, my brain to shut down and doze
for a while. Instead, I keep floating in my white balloon existence, struggling
to keep both feet on the ground when what I really want is to be lifted into
the air and carried away on a current, suspended above the green earth.
Pneumonia, the doctor said when I
finally gave into my daughter’s pleading and went. I stayed home for a few
days, melting into my pillows but not really resting. Ron paces the floors. The
few hours he is able to work each day do not really occupy him much and he asks
me constant questions about going to school, setting goals, becoming a “better
person.” I am weary enough without his interference. I return to school, still
in my balloon state, glad to be floating away from Ron.
It is not wholly unpleasant, being a
white balloon. Nothing—no worries or cares or injuries—quite breaks through the
haze. I can fall asleep at the blink of an eyelid, saving precious time usually
spent tossing and turning while I wrestle with the problems of the world.
Floating white balloons have no problems, except sharp points, of course. These
seem easy enough to avoid as I hang in the air.
My thoughts in this white haze are
not always coherent, but they are always gentle. Warm sunshine. Pink roses.
Delicate china teacups. With each rise and fall of my congested lungs comes an
image of rainbows and tulips, dancing just at the edge of my mind.
What am I on, wonders my daughter. Nothing. I stopped taking the antibiotic
days ago because it made me feel out of control. Or maybe it was the fever that
did it. No matter. White balloons have no fevers.
Eventually, I know, I will need to
come down to earth again. Even now, harbingers of disaster lurk on the horizon.
Nicholas has taken to calling every night and continually asks Bonnie if she
likes him. If she says yes, he laughs and tells her she is weird. When I land
again, I will probably find Nicholas’ behavior annoying. I will try to remember
that he is both dyslexic and ADHD. Somewhere in the past few days, my mind
recalls glancing at an article on autism and the human brain and other learning
disabilities. But such deep thoughts are above my capabilities right now. Ron
is experiencing his own anxiety problems. Dennis phoned yesterday to say that
he is getting laid off and will need some help with the rent money. The stress
is just waiting for me, piling up and trying to reach me on my balloon voyage.
Avoid sharp points, I keep telling
myself. Just keep floating.
MAY
23, 2001. 8 AM.
“Eleven days” is now written on my
chalkboard. Am I anxious and eager for the school year to end? I am not fully
recovered from my bout with pneumonia. I still feel jet-lagged and have trouble
breathing. What I need, I tell myself, is a week in the sun, basking on the
beach at Rehoboth and renewing myself in childhood memories. Chances are good
that I will not get it. Something always interferes with my escape attempts.
Dennis needs help filling out his unemployment forms and is worried about
making ends meet. I seem to find it easy to place my oldest son in God’s hands,
but I cannot do it with Bonnie. I continue to feel the loss of Nicholas and
know that I am too wrapped up her life. But I do not know how to extricate
myself.
Bonnie, Allen, and I are the
survivors of the Titanic. We share bonds that no one else does. Dennis, beloved
child, was more peripheral to the events of the last two years. I often think I
have neglected Allen these past few months, focusing on my daughter. He says he
understands. “You've been sick, Mom,” he says. His Mother’s Day card to me was
so sweet! It said that he often though he’d like to be as “smart as you are.
But that’s way too much trouble!” The card ended with, “Good thing I’ll always
have you to help me.”
I need to find time to contact the
family counselor that Margaret recommended. I have waited too long already, but
white floating balloons do not need to see therapists. I feel like we are all
in a state of limbo. I find myself bursting into tears and not being able to
name a cause. Last night a great sadness overwhelmed me and I could not help
but cry. It was all over just as quickly, but I know that I need to find
someone to talk to. I have two weeks left of school and then graduate classes
this summer. I cannot fall apart now.
Is it all just stress and
exhaustion? I get angry at minor things. I seem to always be mad at Ron. I
obsess about Bonnie. I've become resentful of the choices I have needed to make
for my family, choices that may not have been right for me.
I am both confused by and angry at
Ron. He has turned my life upside down for so long! Each day when I drag my
weary self home, he and Allen are plunked down in front of the TV, Why isn't the laundry done or dinner started? Why aren't they at the park or out back
playing basketball? But I feel guilty if I complain and Ron becomes defensive.
He honestly thinks that doing the dishes and the laundry once a week makes him
an exemplary husband! Yesterday I yelled at him for napping on the deck after
sitting on the couch all afternoon.
Lord,
I need help. I recognize this. Send someone, Father, someone who can help me. I
am so used to being in control, but now I cannot control either my emotions or
my thoughts.
What is wrong with me?
Twelve years
ago, my friend Karen spent Sunday afternoon reading 230 pages of Crazy: A
Diary. At that time, it had another title and was still being culled from
my many journals. She called me on Monday evening and said:
It was not
the story I wanted to write. I wanted to write of God’s faithfulness through
our many trials, how His strength had upheld me and kept me from falling, and I
wanted a neat and tidy ending, a “happily ever after.” I wanted to come to the
end of the story.
Last July
(2014), I gave it one more try. I sat on my newly constructed back deck and
read the whole thing. I cried. And I realized that my dream of being a full-time writer was being thwarted by my own inability to accept that I was, indeed,
human. I loved the idea of being a writer, the notion that my words would lodge
themselves into the lives of other human beings and became a part of those
people I might never meet. I carry words in my head, words read in novels years
ago. Phrases and beloved characters, images and descriptions, all are vivid to
me. I live inside my head, continually attempting to achieve a balance between
my outward and inner lives. Even while I am teaching and planning and cleaning
and cooking and sitting in hospital waiting rooms, I am writing the scene in
which my protagonist arrives at a crossroads in her life.
In the last
10 months, Crazy: Diary of the Well Spouse has been edited and trimmed
down and read in bits and pieces over 900 times. (My slightly cynical older son
says perhaps one guy has clicked on it 900 times; I sure hope not! That WOULD
be crazy! ) The title has changed to prevent a lawsuit with the Well Spouse
Association who told me, very politely, they owned the phrase “well spouse.” Two
weeks ago, I had dinner with my friend Karen. I handed her the proof copy of my
book. She took it in her hands as if it were a piece of Waterford crystal and
said, “I’m ready for the book tour.”
