CHAPTER TWENTY: CLOUDS

CLOUDS

Sometimes they

Obscure the light,

Or filter it in streaks of white

But whether dark, or

Weather fair

The sun and stars

Are always there.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

MAY 29, 2001. 11 AM.

            My journal has gone missing. I suspect that I left it at church Sunday morning. Since it has my name scrawled all over it, I will more than likely get it back, but for the moment I feel totally lost without it. In the last two years, my journal has been my safe haven. I have often bled onto its pages, pouring out all the wicked, horrible things I dare not utter to a living soul. It holds my hopes, my dreams, my fears, and my dark, dark secret: I am not always a nice person. In my journal I have chronicled Ron’s accident and illness and my attempt to hold the world together. My journal, unlike a novel, has no neat and happy ending. That is because this is real life—my real life, I sometimes need to remind myself. There is little about it that has turned out as I planned. My life keeps on changing, no matter how much I might want to slam the covers of my journal together and stop it in time. But I am not able to stop writing; it is the only thing that helps me maintain my sanity. For now, then, loose pages of notebook paper will have to do.

            I left a message for a Christian counselor this morning. A long conversation with a friend last night helped me to see that it is really me, not my kids, which need help. The kids are fine. They are fine, my friend contends, because of me. While I was busy saving everyone else, no one was saving me. No one ever has. All the help and counseling we have ever had—and the list is astoundingly long!—has always been for Ron. No wonder I am so frazzled!

            I have been compartmentalizing my life for years, tucking parts of it into neat little containers that seldom seep into one another. I can sit in a graduate class at West Chester with my cell phone set to vibrate, just in case there is an emergency call from one hospital or another. Separate little suitcases are stowed out of sight while I go about my many duties, but now the contents seem to be leaking out and muddying things, making my life a bit of a mess. I seem to always be on the verge of tears. Is this normal? How would I know? What about my life these last few years has resembled “normal”?

            There are moments when I just cannot hold the floodgates closed any longer. Last Friday, I laid my head on my desk during a free period and burst into tears. I could not give a name to the cause—just the same old feelings of stress and anxiety—but my heart felt as if it would break. I cried out to God: Send someone! I need help! Quick!

            God, I believe, heard the agony of my soul. Bonnie—bless her!—walked into my room just at that moment, on her way home from her class at college. She did not ask a single question, just gathered me into her arms and let me cry. I am sure she is worried. It is not often that she sees her invincible mother reduced to tears. She told me that it was “okay to cry. Sometimes it makes you feel better.” What an incredibly sensitive girl I have raised! I do not know why I spend so many days and nights worrying about her. I worry that she will end up with Nick, who is still hovering around the fringes of her life. I worry that she will not end up with Nick. I worry that I have stolen much of her youth away from her with Ron’s illnesses. I worry that the world will take advantage of her and her kind and loving nature. I worry that I might not always be there to protect her, that she spends too much time with me and not enough with people her own age. I can become so consumed with worry that my stomach cramps up and I cannot eat or drink.

            I worry about Ron and his increasing weight, such a problem that he cannot stand for more than a few minutes at a time. I am angry about this, I guess. I put so much energy into getting him well again, yet he has ignored all of Dr. Huffman’s advice and allowed himself to become heavy again. I am tired—so tired!—of dealing with Ron and his issues. I would really like to escape to the beach for a few days after school is out, but I dread dealing with the aftermath. My escape plans are always thwarted, anyway, just as the beginning of the school year always sees Ron is one crisis or another. He has become a gigantic burden and I no longer worry about hurting him with my shrewish tongue. I, too, was injured in the accident. He claims he doesn't know how to be any different than he is, but he will make promises to try. All of his promises are of the Mary Poppins pie-crust variety, “easily made and easily broken.” If I can maintain an attitude of anger towards him, he will get his butt in gear for a week or so, clean the house and do the laundry and start supper. But the energy required to maintain my anger is draining.

            I am eager for the end of school—witness the counting off of days on my chalkboard—but I am sure the summer will offer no respite. Historically, our summers have been difficult these last few years. Last summer we spent dealing with Ron’s recovery issues and the summer before he was at Friends’. So I end the year with no hope. How sad!

            I need help. I am sinking fast. I need to become healthier so I can keep my kids healthy. I am tired of always being so damn strong and positive about life. I just want all this to end.

JUNE 1, 2001. 8PM.

            I went to see the Christian counselor for the first time today. Gary seems to be a good person to talk to. We spoke briefly of Ron’s depression and disabilities, but most of our conversation revolved around me. That has never happened before; everything always comes back to Ron. I feel guilty about spending the money on myself—this is not covered by my insurance—but Ron has had more than his share of counseling and therapy. So I am going to try and not feel guilty about spending the money on me.

            Gary commented that I am a “woman of incredible strength.” This has always been part of the problem, because I think I am strong enough to handle it all. He thinks a lot of what I have been feeling is stress from having so much to deal with for so long. I like his spirituality. He said his goal in counseling is always to have “God increase and self decrease.” Still, it will take me a while to get used to the idea that I am not able to do this for myself.

            I slept well last night until about 4PM, then prayed until I fell back to sleep. I awoke feeling as if I had had a good night’s sleep for once. Bonnie went with two friends to a modeling try-out. None of them expects to get called, but it was fun to see her fussing with her hair and make-up. I am really trying to put her in God’s hands.

            On the way to bed last night, the kids stopped by for a group hug. Ron had already gone up to bed and Bonnie and Allen mentioned that they really do not like being alone with their dad. I am quite certain Ron heard; maybe he needed to. In some way, he seems to think I stole their affection from him due to my consistent care while he was hospitalized. “It cost me,” he says. Of course it did. It cost all of us. But since he has been home, he has done precious little to win them over.

            Gary asked me yesterday where I see myself in ten years. As a published writer, I hope. A reading specialist. Maybe a visiting author. It did not occur to me until this morning that none of my hazy plans include Ron. He is the unknown quantity; his actions have become unpredictable.

            I am feeling better, a little stronger. I am NOT going crazy, and that in itself is reassuring. I have had to make difficult choices and I have done the best that I could.

            Maybe, just maybe, everything will turn out okay. I guess Hope is still inside Pandora’s Box.

JUNE 5, 2001. 3 PM.

            I have gotten my journal back and stapled in the loose-leaf pages. As expected, I had left it at church. I hope that no one read it and now thinks I am one whacked out woman. Still, I am grateful that I keep a journal and that God has given me the ability to write. I can track my progress and see that I am a little further along the road today. I still worry about Bonnie and Nick and their odd relationship but I am no longer suffering physical pangs or feelings of guilt. I keep telling myself this: they are both right where they need to be. They are “sort of friends” but are trying to move on with their lives.

            Bonnie still occupies so much of my thoughts, far more than she ought. I have other children, other concerns in my life. Allen needs my attention, too, my oft-neglected child. He wants to try out for basketball or track next year and he wants me to help him write a science-fiction novel over the summer. He still is not good with new situations. The Sunday School class frightens him and he says he often feels like he is going to cry. Part of this is Allen’s learning disability; he does not handle new things well, but needs to be eased into them. How could I possibly have eased him into the events of the last few years?

            I have thought about this logically, trying to remove my emotions from the equation. I have been trying to save my husband, myself, and my children. Perhaps I cannot save them all. Perhaps I can only save my children and myself.

            I sometimes wonder why I let Ron remain at the house. Do I lack the strength to ask him to leave or am I afraid of what he would do without me? I try and tell myself this: if I could let go of Ron, perhaps Bonnie could let go of Nick and what I think may be her codependency on him. I so want to solve this problem! I have been solving problems for years. Why should this be any different? Aren't I in charge of the world? I blame myself—probably more than I deserve—for the demise of her relationship with Nick. I am so obsessed with my daughter! This cannot be healthy, but I am incapable of stopping it or changing it. I need to keep looking for the sun.

  

CHAPTER NINETEEN: White Balloons

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?