Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: borderline personality disorder, college freshman, eating disorders, high school graduation, resurrection
April 11 One of my lilacs is starting to bloom, my mother’s day gift some years back. The red buds are in their full glory, the jonquils are about done, some of the dogwoods are blooming or just about to bloom. There is no turning back from spring now.
J seems to me to be much better. She is coming back to herself. Happy even. She is playing music again and making music video edits. She is not horrible. She eats spontaneously, makes good meals for herself without being prompted. Still hyper body conscious and obsessed with how she looks. But happier. I am holding my breath, waiting for the blow, but another day goes by and the blow doesn’t come.
She is going to graduate.
We are planning a family graduation party. I find I have to convince myself that it is all really happening. Four months ago this did not seem possible. But it is.
April 20th Whoosh whoosh whoosh. J & I have been to Bowling Green. We spent the day at Western Kentucky’s orientation. All year I’ve felt that I was behind, a day late and a dollar short no matter how hard I’ve worked. I’ve been plagued with uneasiness that I’ve left really important things undone, that I’ve messed up, that I’m about to be called out, sent down to the principal’s office. I went down to Bowling Green worried that we’ve missed some important step that would cost us dearly, worried that I’d be hit with a sudden huge financial obligation I could not meet, or that the tuition bill would be far more than anyone could afford, least of all me. But no. We were treated like queens. I had done all I needed to do, so had J. We were made so welcome there, pulled into a new family. She already has her school ID, her class schedule, has met her advisor. We bought college sweatshirts. The school is so beautiful, so student centered, so safe. I feel in my heart that she will love it. She is a Hilltopper now and she feels proud of herself for the first time in a long time. In a few short months I’ll be dropping her off and driving home alone.
It all goes so very fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: adoption, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, motherhood
The first glimpse I had of my daughter came with the letter informing me that I had been matched with this baby, if I chose to accept her. Two small photographs of Chang Meng Ai at six months of age, a deeply worried baby whose name, given by the orphanage, means ‘dreaming of love’. No baby should look so worried. I’m sure the photographer was even trying to make her smile, after all, these photos were to advertise her as a good candidate for adoption. Smile baby, smile, no one wants a sad baby.
She had that worried look seven months later when the elevator door opened to release into the hotel lobby all the orphaned girls held by their caregivers. They stepped out, names were called, and one at a time we rushed up to receive our girl- which is mine? Is that her? It’s her, my daughter. That very first embrace. I can still smell her sweet fragrance in that blue onesie with the ghost bib. I cried, she cried. I was crying with happiness and overwhelming love. Perhaps she was crying from fear. She was thirteen months old and had passed through many arms. I wanted more than anything to let her know that mine would not let go.
All these years later, I find I am still trying to convince her. Failure is not exactly the word I feel. Daunted. Helpless. Seventeen years of loving her with all my might, putting her first in every consideration, protecting and nurturing and teaching her in every way I can is not enough to stop up that chasm inside her. Fear rises up through it like a sea monster spewing poison- you are not lovable, you don’t fit in, you are different, you are not beautiful, you are fat, your body needs to be thinner, only then will your boyfriend love you, only then will you not be left behind, your life is worthless, your mother would be happier without you. So cruel, those lies. And there are moments, almost whole days, when she knows them to be lies but then the sun goes down, or her boyfriend doesn’t respond or her mother is sick and nothing on earth seems more true to her. Drama, wild swings of happiness and wretchedness, self harm, anger, ugliness, tears.
Borderline Personality Disorder is the new name of the beast she is trying to learn to ride. Her eating disorder is an outgrowth of it, a lovely little perk you get along with it. She begins work with a new doctor soon. Meanwhile it is life on The Scrambler, for her, for me, for anyone who loves her. Dreaming of love, it is the hardest thing to love oneself.
It’s actually been a really rough couple of days. Silly things help. I choose happiness.
Filed under: Art of the Day | Tags: Music, Rachel Grimes, The Louisville Orchestra, The Way Forth
Last week I had a rare treat: a swell dinner with sweet Mommy at Vicenzo’s, a blustery walk to the Kentucky Center for the Arts and then a Louisville Orchestra concert in the Whitney where at last I got to sit in one of those little boxes up on the sides, the ones with red velvet chairs. And the greatest treat was this: it was the world premiere of “The Way Forth” a monumental new folk opera by my old friend Rachel Grimes.
Waiting for it to begin, we could look down on everyone below, and Louisville being Louisville, we could pick out the people we knew, those we knew from long ago, those from just the week before. Look, there are the Foshees, parents of a young woman who was once in the youth group I led at in another lifetime. Over there are people from The Dartmouth where my mother used to live, and right below me is my old high school friend- Kate! I almost shouted down. There was time to look and time to think about Rachel, her long history with our family as a classmate of my little sister. She had always sat at the piano and just played, not knowing how to read music had not stopped her from making music. A decade later she and I reconnected to make theater together a number of times. Besides dancing to her exquisite score for “Egon Schiele”, one of my favorite performing memories is of “Scribblings from a Broad” also by my friend Stephan Mazurek, that we staged as a dialogue between myself and her piano. In brilliant improvisation, she responded to the performed text, the music in turn drove my performance. She was a glorious acting partner.
This evening was part one of the Louisville Orchestra’s American Music Festival. The first part of the evening saw the premiere of new choreography by the Louisville Ballet for Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, music that I love. And it was performed brilliantly- the ballet, dancing in front of the orchestra, built to an inexplicably emotional climax that brought me to tears. Golly humans are miraculous.
But we were there for Rachel, for her music, for her. She has known much grief these last two years with the unexpected death of her dear brother, another gifted musician, followed by the slow decline and death of her mother. This music grew out of her love for them.
What does one do with the accumulation of story, of family history? So much is lost generation to generation, but echoes remain. Stories, photos, letters, mementos saved from forgotten travels, pressed flowers in a family bible. The faces peering out of these photos, maybe we know their names, maybe we don’t, but somehow they are left in our care. Those pressed flowers- no one knows the giver, no one knows the receiver, no one knows the occasion, but to throw them away is more than I can manage. I close the book carefully and put it back on the shelf. I feel responsible for them, all the echoes and shadows of the past. I’ve always felt somehow entrusted with their stories, a duty given to me, and with it, a guilt- what if I’m not up to the task? What shall I do to honor them? Why do I feel such a duty to do it? And what does one do with grief? What does one do with the grief one cannot help but carry?
“The Way Forth” gave voice to the silent dead, resurrected their stories, glimpses of them, uncovered the past and there’s the danger- great pain is often buried with the dead. Our collective history is rife with it. Her music shifts from personal to communal and back again with new awareness that one’s own past is woven into a vast tapestry. The bloody treacherous history of this state has been whitewashed, quite literally, for centuries. The victors erected monuments telling their story of grandeur and heroism and inevitability. But look deeper and the heroes are slave holders, rapists, con men. How should we remember them? Rachel answers through music- she lifts up those whom they oppressed. She lets them sing.
Oh this music! So much beauty, so much pain, layers and layers build- the orchestra, vocalists, actors, the choir, the silent film that ran throughout- building until you can’t take it anymore and you wonder how you will bear it, the burden of the past with its evils and its losses and its impossible sweetness. And then comes- grace. A release that can only be achieved through music, waves that finally toss you onto higher ground. Oh Rachel. Thank you.
Here: http://www.rachelgrimespiano.com
Her music is a gift.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: college acceptance, eating disorders, grace, learning differences
Sometimes it just happens, a grace comes to you after hope has given up the ghost, like a dove with an olive branch or an email saying you’ve been accepted to college. Such was our grace this week, and with it comes room to breathe and space to dream. And today J got a 92 on her college algebra test, the first of many she has to take in order to catch up and graduate, in a class she failed last semester. Math has always been her Waterloo- discalculia coupled with working memory and language processing issues make it seem like a battle not worth fighting sometimes. But then the light comes on, not by grace but by virtue of her own hard work. She did it, she understood it. I’ve not seen her this happy in ages. Western Kentucky University wants her, in spite of those dreadful ACT scores, the school where she wants to study film and broadcast. And she knows that she must be in recovery to go, she must be committed to continuing treatment. Graduation seems possible today, college seems possible today, and those possibilities give her a big push toward recovery. I take a deep breath, and throw bouquets to heaven.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: eating disorders, Great Blue Herons, valentine's Day
God, will you just shut up-you’re so annoying-I don’t care-No one gives a shit about you-just stop talking, God.
Not fifty words into the morning, my tone carefully modulated to kindness, the land mines start detonating. Getting her ready for school. Trying to get breakfast into her. Blam! another one explodes. EDie walked out of the bedroom door but J is in there somewhere and I know she’s scared. It’s her first week back at school and she is standing at the foot of a mountain. At the top is graduation and she has no idea how she’s going to get there in time. Blam! Another mine explodes.
I don’t care-why don’t you just tube me? I want to relapse- When I go to college, I’m going to relapse- Just shut up, I don’t care. I hate you. Why do you care? You don’t have to care-
On the third morning of this I am unable to check what I am feeling and I find I am crying and having trouble breathing, even as I try to pack the lunch. I’ve only had a few anxiety attacks in my life, but I know it’s gathering steam. Ice on the back of my neck and temples, bear breath, I slow it down. “What are you doing?” she asks with all the contempt she can muster, and I believe in that moment that everything I have done up to now has been a failure, I have, in fact, raised the meanest child on earth.
We do not talk in the car. I drop her off at her school, and then I go to mine. I am hollow and her words echo inside me all day as I teach, and later in the evening as I sit through the monthly Worship Ministry meeting. The theme we are discussing is Transformation.
She is going backwards and there is nothing I can do.
Valentine’s Day was once my favorite holiday. I love making cards for those I care about, I love making small, unexpected treats. When I was a girl, I loved the special heart-shaped apple spice cake my mother made for our Valentine’s dinner, and I glowed with the anticipation of giving and receiving valentines. I was expecting that nothing would be celebrated today. I certainly didn’t feel celebratory. Any gift I might give would be blown out of the sky by the disorder that has commandeered my daughter. Breakfast was silent, but she ate it. No bombs. Then she was angry that I was meeting her for lunch, since eating lunch at school on her own had not been successful- who told you? who told you? she barked. Someone who cares about you very much, I told her. Which was true, a friend of hers, a true friend, has been keeping tabs, letting me know.
After dropping her off, I went home to walk the dogs and make her lunch because I was off from school, officially on Winter Break. My heart sank when I saw the Great Blue Heron in the fish pond. It had been chased off a few days ago, but there it was again and I could tell it had been feasting. I started to sit down on the hill and cry. I can’t even keep the goddamned fish safe, I thought. What’s the use of trying. Then came my second thought- maybe there is no use, but I can’t stop being me and who I am is someone who tries to keep them safe, useless or not. I refuse to stop trying, even if I fail. I took all my bamboo peace flags and the wire tomato cages and erected a ridiculous looking defense system over the pond. It would take some balls to try to get in there again, but if any birds have balls, it’s herons.
J was mad about lunch, but she came out to the car anyway and we drove silently through the park while she ate, listening to a radio program about single older adults and “gray dating” before I self-consciously turned it to music. When finished, she exited the car quickly and ran back into school.
On my way to work at the church, I stopped at Sister Dragonfly, a lovely store in my neighborhood, and I soaked up the love given freely by the two store dogs, Star & Milton, who greet everyone. I bought J a pair of soft, funny knee socks depicting a shark attack. Just in case. I worked a little at my second job, only a little because I literally could not bring my mind into focus, my thoughts kept flitting away, I couldn’t grab hold of them. Maybe this is what it’s like inside her head all the time. It’s really hard to get anything done.
Then the miracle happened. My mother called to say that J had texted her and asked if Mom might pick her up from school so J could buy me a Valentine. I hurried home and made her a card too, and wrapped my silly gift. When she came home, J came to me and gave me a box of chocolates and a homemade card. In it was a beautiful letter, apologizing for the hate, expressing her love, expressing her desire to continue fighting the eating disorder. She wanted to keep fighting, she wanted to keep trying. In the letter was everything I needed to hear. Thank you universe, thank you angels, thank you darling girl. A reprieve. We live to fight another day.
February 15. At dawn, the Great Blue Heron returns to the yard, though perhaps he never left. I just couldn’t see him before first light. He stands there, just uphill from the little fish pond, hoping to repeat yesterday’s breakfast of winter fuddled fish. There he goes, walking, stalking, slowly down the hill, though I know he sees me sitting here at the window, his foe. He has one eye on the fish and one eye on me. I am waiting to see if my defenses hold. It is thrilling.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: Art of the Day, cycling, depression, eating disorders, South Pole
It was a difficult week. EDie has been fighting hard to regain strength, like Lord Voldemort living inside poor Professor Quirrell’s head. Ugliness returned to mealtimes- the slow dismemberment of food with knife and fork, the maddening clink clink clink of utensils on porcelain, the pushing it around, making it appear that something has been eaten, attempting to skip eating entirely, and really mean talk. God I hate that talk. Especially that talk about quitting treatment when she turns eighteen. Christ. Eighteen. It has been looming like a threat for months.
She struggled all week at her IOP and at home, young Dr. Jekyll trying to keep control of the transformation. At dinner times she lost and Hyde sat across the table, not caring about J’s future, not caring about her present, her love for life, caring only for control over the plate. And then we’d battle and any victory is pyrrhic. One night, the worst night, I heard her crying in her room, sobbing as she facetimed her friends at McCallum. I heard their comfort and advice to her, it was very good, very wise and very loving. All the advice she can’t hear from me right now.
Friday morning, her birthday, her longed for day of liberation from childhood, I set her card and gift on the dining room table and waited for her to emerge. I wanted it to be special, the day. We had planned nothing. All suggestions about what we could do- party with friends, family, something small, no meal, no cake, an activity, a small journey, had been met with a shrug.
I had been emailed by her doctor that she wanted to see me in the morning with J at her first appointment, because J had spoken in group that she was planning on walking out of therapy . What were my contingency plans if this was to happen, she wanted to know. I had been speaking to J all week about it, when she asked me ‘what would happen if I quit therapy?’ I had been forced to say she would have to drop out of high school because I would no longer fund her private education, I would not pay for college. It would be setting her up for failure and I would not do it. That seemed to get her attention. Thursday night, she told me she was not planning on dropping out, at least not right away, but things change so quickly and she is highly impulsive. And in the morning, her birthday morning, she sat in Dr. Alex’s office, sullen, quiet, withdrawn. What would she do? Dr. Alex reiterated what the consequences would be if she stopped, spinning them even further out- J would have to get a job in order to pay for her phone, gas, insurance, rent to me. That’s what would happen after she left treatment and couldn’t return to school. My stomach burned with fear, bubbling away. After some expert handling by the doctor, J agreed to continue. I left her then in Dr. Alex’s capable hands as she had J sign all new paperwork agreeing to continue treatment. I walked to the car, quite literally weak in my knees. I had always thought that was just a saying, but it isn’t. Many times through the last week I have felt that sudden weakness in my legs as waves of fear passed through. I sat in the car and had trouble collecting my thoughts, figuring out where I had to be. School, back to school to be the teacher part of the parent/teacher conferences. Terrific. Giving advice to parents about their children, feeling like I hadn’t a leg to stand on.
In the early afternoon I picked her up. She was tired and so was I. We went home and she crashed in one of her monster naps. I curled up in an armchair in the sun for twenty minutes and let that light do its job. When J woke, she jumped in the shower, dolled herself up, grabbed the car keys and went to pick up her boyfriend at UofL across town, in the Friday evening rush hour traffic. “Don’t worry Mom, I’m eighteen!” Fingers crossed, I prayed and prayed and vacuumed the house. I will not lie- she is a terrible driver. At least she used to be, of course, now that she is eighteen, everything has magically changed. Her plan was to drive to see two of her friends, ones she hasn’t seen since before she left. She was light and cheerful and confident, all the things I was not, and that made me happy. And happier still that she was reaching out to friends she had pushed away. She and her boyfriend made it back around 8 and I made them dinner. They put a candle in a brownie and he sang to her. I was not invited to the little party, but I was happy to hear the song floating up the stairs.
I knew it was coming, the headache. I cannot release the tension as quickly as it builds, though I try. A synaptic firestorm blazed up in my sleep Friday night, and I carry it still now on Sunday afternoon, though it has diminished. I try to extinguish it with yoga and meditation, art making, working in the yard, the house. Breathing, just breathing.
On the first anniversary of my biological father’s violent death, many years ago now, I set myself the task of riding my bike up Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains. It had been a hard year coming to terms with the manner of his death, his impoverished life’s end at the hands of alcoholism. I was executor, which really only meant that I had to figure out if there was anything to save, anything to share with my brother and sister and how to protect us all from incurring his debts. I struggled with depression that year, a heavy dibilitating sadness. I dreaded the anniversary, and the idea took hold to make that climb on my bike. I thought it would be a good place to cry, a cathartic release. I got about 20 minutes into it and looked ahead at the 5,000+ foot climb in endless switchbacks and realized, shit, I will never make it up there if I am crying. I have to let go of that right now. The only way I am going to make it is if I don’t look back over the past and if I don’t look too far ahead to the summit. I have to look right here and I have to allow myself to enjoy it. My mantra became, I love you, you little piece of pavement, I’m perfectly fine right here, and I’m fine here too on the next little piece of road. I may be in the lowest gear I have, but hey, I’m fine, I’m better than fine, it’s a beautiful day. And I started to look around and truly love, not just pretend to love, the place where I was. By the time I finally did reach the summit, three hours later, and got to look down upon the sweet sweet world, I was light and free, the happiest I had been in a long time.
So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying not to look back over the past. I’m trying not to look too far ahead. One makes me sad, the other terrifies me. I’m just looking to this little piece of road we are on. And we’re doing alright, she and I. One step at a time.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: Art of the Day, great Blue Heron, South Pole
It’s been a day, a few days, a week of days in a weekend as we navigate being home together after a long absence. The weekend was a special challenge because there were no therapy sessions, each meal and snack was at home, oh god the endless parade of meals. Clutching the McCallum bible of portions, measuring each almond, every drop of milk, it’s an odd new world. She has been brave, petulant, grumpy, manipulative, sweet, vulnerable, irritable, above all she has kept trying. I try to remember that as I’m getting the skunk eye. The weekend was full of have to’s: chores, eye exam, shopping, family event and work. Not the weekend she had planned when she thought of being home again from St. Louis, not the weekend she wanted to spend with her boyfriend. And yes there was conflict and drama and feeling rotten and negotiating and trying again. Trying again. And now it’s Sunday night and I’m listening to the latest Ryuichi Sakamoto album, async, on repeat as I make pictures, write and let my lake clear, allowing all the have to’s, all the strife and misfirings to settle down to the bottom. I’m sure they’ll get stirred up again tomorrow.
I was given an extraordinary gift this weekend, from my cousin Marty. Yesterday my nephew Flynn was commissioned into the Air Force, a private ceremony at University of Louisville where he recently graduated from the Nursing School. He is going to be a flight nurse, begins his posting this month. The family gathered along with many friends, we are so very proud of him. There at the ceremony, Marty pulls something out of her purse- “Here, I’ve found this little present for you”. It’s a glass plate photograph of Roald Amundsen in Antartica! The printed description that came with the plate describe him as “the discoverer of the South Pole” (which strikes me as a rather weird thing to say, as everyone knew exactly where the South Pole was, just no one could get there) and claims that the photo was taken a few days after he reached the Pole, so he was on his way back. The name on the plate is The Keystone Viewing Company, found in an antique store among a great many other glass negatives of different subjects. Marty has a keen talent for uncovering treasure, recognizing the value of things that other people would dismiss. I’m not really sure how she knew what a nut I am for South Polar exploration, maybe from other things I have posted, but the truth is that for decades now I have been fascinated by it and, to confess truthfully, mad in love with the Scott Expedition. I hold this small picture in my hand like it is a miracle message from the beyond.
Here’s a love poem I wrote to dear Captain Scott about five years ago:
Because it is a long winter
Captain Scott crawled into bed with me last night
He was so very sorry and so so cold.
It took me a long time to convince him to shed
That ridiculous Burberry,
I had to take that crusty wool jumper
Into the other room.
He only agreed to take off his flannels
If I turned out the light
But even in the dark
I could feel the whiteness of his skin
Trace the sastrugi of his ribs.
My hand disappearing into his crevasse
He slipped the harness from his shoulders
Let fall his pencil
And cried and cried
Glaciers calving into the sea.
At last, Mt. Terror
Lay soft and warm,
And we slept.
1/25/14
I feel that it is time for me to re-read Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s remarkable account of the expedition: The Worst Journey in the World. It’s time to walk alongside my old friends. A hundred and seven years ago on January 17th they found the Norwegian flag planted where they had hoped to plant the Union Jack. They planted their flag a few yards away, took a grim photograph and made their desperate dash home, perishing along the way. Their journey has always been so vivid to me, it hurts my heart. My darling Cherry, his extraordinary book, the responsibility of writing it falling on his young shoulders, all the strength of his youth spent there in Antartica- the crazy ass journey he made with Dr. Wilson and Birdie Bowers in the dead of winter to collect penguin eggs, the depot laying journey, the journey South in support of the Polar party, the heartbreaking journey to find the bodies of their friends the next spring. Oh Cherry. I do indeed want your company this winter.
What a thoughtful gift Marty, I can’t thank you enough. It is a powerful talisman for me, I cannot explain it, but I am so grateful it came to me when it did.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: Art of the Day, eating disorders, home, motherhood is not for sissies, mouse
We are home, today was our first full day, waking up in our own beds in the home we have made. The cold cold weather cancelled all the schools which proved to be a blessing. One less thing to juggle in today’s scramble, the precise breakfast making, lunch preparing, McCallum’s strict portioning guide is the new family bible, getting J to Intensive Outpatient Treatment, meeting the therapists, groceries, running home for the paperwork I forgot, finish making the lunch I couldn’t make without the groceries, bringing the lunch to IOP, forgetting the paperwork again, finishing the grocery shopping for the meals to come this week, going back to meet the nutritionist with the paperwork at last in hand, answering emails from church, school, last minute schedule changes to rehearsals because of the cancellation. You must run as fast as you can Alice, if you want to stay in the same place.
For at least a week now I’ve felt that I’m walking through some misty valley bottom that I can’t see my way through. I feel as if some key part of my brain has gone missing, the executive part that has control of the big picture, that is in control of time. At night I bolt up in bed unable to figure out where I am, a sudden panic that I’ve forgotten something or someone, something urgent, maybe dangerous. I look about me and always seem to see a dark shape just moving out of sight, something I feel I ought to have seen, perhaps it is a menace, perhaps it means me to follow. What is it I’ve forgotten? What have I failed to do? And here is where it is missed- partnership. A hand on the back, a loving voice in the dark that says ‘All is well, you are right where you’re supposed to be, you’ve done all you need to do, it’s time to rest my love.’
J loves her new room, loves the improvements in the bathroom. She is happy to be home, happy to be near her boyfriend. But the happiest I have heard her voice is when she is face timing her pals from McCallum. War Buddies, make no mistake.
The Fox at Dawn 