The Ephemerals

Plants known as ephemerals respond readily to spring's early warmth and fade back into the earth during the heat of summer. So I've read anyway. I bought my house in December. The yard, as far as I could tell, was grass bordered by curving beds of gravel. How Zen, I thought. Maybe I'll make hypertufa garden orbs, grow some herbs and vegetables in some big pots and call it a day. It's been a cold spring in here Minnesota, but in the last couple of weeks green things are rocketing out of the ground. There will be no room for garden orbs. I'm trying to make sense of it all, using an app on my phone to ID things and marveling at the fortitude of the plants pushing their way through a thick layer of black garden cloth and gravel. I'm also trying to make sense of the death of my friend Shanna, who left this Earth by her own hand not quite two weeks ago. As another friend put it, depression is a murderer and a liar. Shanna pushed her way through a layer of darkness, and I was in a writing group with her as she blossomed. I never shared a meal with her--or even a drink or a cup of coffee--our common ground was writing and struggle. Her own rough life gave her a nose for the sadness and pain of others.Shanna emailed me more than once when I was at the bottom to tell me to see her therapist. As I remember it she followed up with a phonecall. I went to the therapist. I made it out of the bottomless hole I was in. Shanna made it out too. She wrote a novel,Oh!You Pretty Things a few years ago that got all around fine reviews. She moved. I moved. We weren't ever see each other/talk regularly friends--and time and distance, well,you know how that goes. Things happened that I don't know about. Then Shanna got Covid in November and shared her struggle on Facebook. She was super sick. I posted on her wall like a zillion other friends. I PM-ed her now and then to not clutter up her wall of well-wishes, so numererous were the messages from friends and fellow writers. But she didn't get well and became a long-hauler. And overwhelmed by Covid and god knows what all, she took her life. Muffin and cupcake, she'd call me and the other writers in our group. Sweet cakes and sparkle pie. Shanna was a secret sauce of heart-aching empathy cut with wicked wit and profanity. Honestly, there was no one fucking like her. Not even close. I haven't felt like doing much this past ten days. I pull weeds and put comments from my fellow writers into the appropriate folders for the essays I'm trying to finish. I cut out images for collages, but don't make anything. I look at the Virgina bluebells in my gardern and think the word ephemeral. They'll be gone soon, I guess. But you wouldn't know it to look at them right now. Ephemeral.

Proof that there is a parallel universe after reading "What We're Searching For" in the New York Times

Happy Christmas Warmth from My House to Yours

I kept scrolling back to the top as I read this damn piece, certain that I must be reading the Onion. I Googled the writer's name to see if he wrote comedy or satire. Holy Christmas hell, Seth Stephens Davidowitz, maybe depressed people, particularly people who are depressed while being aurally assaulted by Joy to the World, don't Google "depression." Maybe they Google "anti-depressants." Maybe they Google "Cymbalta" or "Prozac," or "foods that elevate mood," or "happy pill." Maybe they are nearly comatose with the covers pulled up over their heads, or desperately shopping, hoping against hope to finally get the gift-giving thing right this year, or just gone to bed early because it's already been dark for hours by the time they've had dinner.

And do suicidal people actually Google "suicide?" I did not. Of course I didn't actually commit suicide so maybe my Googling habits are irrelevant. Why would anyone Google "suicide" unless they were writing a piece about suicide? I suspect that people who seriously contemplate ending it all by their own hand have a pretty good idea how they're going to do it, and Googling suicide would royally screw up your life insurance benefit if there was an investigation even though you managed to make it look like an accident.I will say  that committing suicide during the holidays would be fairly ungainly with houseguests occupying all the nooks and crannies of the house, and Christmas parades and Santa Fun Runs snarling traffic on the bridges. 

If indeed, there is a post-Christmas surge in Googling "divorce" and if "Christmas allows for some reflection about family life. Searches for “dysfunctional family” reach their highest point every year around Christmas. Searches that include the word “hate” and a family member — “mom,” “dad,” “husband” or “wife,” for example — also rise on and around Christmas," the conclusions drawn earlier in the article don't make a lot of sense to me.

I did feel like I was almost invited to the party though after reading this. "....whether consciously or subconsciously, people delay bad events until after the holidays. Dec. 26 is the date with the highest search rate for “doctor,” following a dip leading up to the holidays. Our bodies even somehow manage to delay trouble: Health researchers previously found a 33 percent increase in heart attacks in the four days after Christmas." Thanksgiving was not mentioned, but I guess that my mother is growing more compliant now that she's 90 since LAST THANKSGIVING was a bit different from THIS THANKSGIVING. This year's Christmas/hospital scenario has yet to reveal itself, but LAST YEAR there was no putting off the trip to the ER until after the stockings had been hung by the chimney with care. And at no time during either of the holiday seasons, this year or last, did my mother Google "falling." 

Anyhow thanks for the heads up re heart attacks in the four days after Christmas. I'm lying on the couch as I type this having green tea and dark chocolate, which I think according to the Internet, is good for cardiac health, but you'd have to Google that to be sure. My mom is an avid newspaper reader, but she prefers the Dubuque Telegraph Herald and the L.A. Times to the New York Times, so I'm hoping she won't see the bit about post-Christmas heart attacks. The house will be stuffed with guests during that time so finding a moment to Google "depression" might be tough if she keels over then.  

Merry Christmas one and all. May your Holidays be filled with Happy Pills--whatever that means to you. And I seriously hope you're one of those folks Googling "condoms" on New Years Eve. I'll let you know what I searched for. xoxoxox

Love,

Denise

Writing and Healing

I imagined two different ways of killing myself after my husband left me for a woman more than twenty years younger. I would hang myself or jump.

I had the sense to know that I needed help. All three of my children were stunned and grieving. I wanted to stay alive for them. And for my mother. Love kept me alive.

I had already written a memoir by the time my husband left me. I'd penned 85,000 words about giving my son up for adoption after a secret pregnancy--and twenty-one years later reuniting with him with the help of a clandestine adoption underground railroad. I started writing this story by accident. I had another story I was burning to tell then. A story involving teen-age girls, lies, Los Angeles gangsters, and a party gone wrong. I put pen to paper on the spur of the moment one morning after I'd pulled my min-van back into the garage--home from the morning school run. A mug of coffee and the L.A. Times were on my kitchen table, and after reading some article about teen-agers, pagers, and drugs, I grabbed one of my husband's yellow legal pads and a pen. I wrote pages and pages over the next week. Then I spotted a flyer in a local coffee house about a writing group. I folded the flyer in half and stuck it to my bulletin board. When I showed up for the first meeting, I was stunned to learn that the workshop was for writing memoir--true stories.

My story about teenagers and the lies they tell was mostly true anyway, but what came out of my pen that first Saturday morning was about my son. An essay, I thought. I had 35 pages of essays about giving up my son by the time I took my first real writing class at UCLA extension a couple of years later. The essays turned into a book. I got an agent, did a lot of revising, and I like to think  that if I hadn't been turned into a blogaholic by my divorce, I might have a book out in the world by now.

I think that memoir will be published eventually, but meanwhile I've had a lot of time to think about the stories that life delivers to us. I know about what it feels like to open a garden shed where two colorful jump ropes hang on a hook; what it feels like to run my hands over them while my eyes survey the children's climbing structure in my back yard. I know what it's like to find the view of the Mississippi River  from the window of a hotel room unbearable and the relief when a friend not only returns my phone call but shows up at the hotel.

I've altered my brain chemistry with two courses of anti-depressants since my marriage fell apart. I'm on my second therapist. I've had light therapy, dropped Bach Flower remedies onto my tongue, taken a  fine selection of herbal concoctions, and anesthetized myself with gin. I've exercised faithfully to up my endorphin production and devoured a boatload of chocolate. And I've  written so many essays about my divorce that I have another book.  

Writing heals. I'm not the only one claiming this.  Check THIS out. And THIS. Google "writing and healing." Read some more.  Then grab a pen or fire up your laptop.