and then i saw a darkness

I've been longing to write a letter to you, here in this languishing neglected blog, a place where I can be nothing more or less than honest. I am compelled to articulate some part of my recent experience frankly; I fear doing so, too. I don't think I've been ready until today.

I also haven't had a spare moment until this morning. It's gorgeous outside. My two big kids are with my mom at an amusement park for one last blow out before school, Beatrice is at the playground with a babysitter, Mike is feeling better and is thus more independent, and I am sitting outside at a favorite local spot with a laptop and a latte. It's too luxurious; it barely computes.

Something happened to me recently. It only lasted a few days, but I'm going to call it what it was: depression. I didn't exactly meet the diagnostic criteria but for the first time in my life, I was really inside depression. I've seen it from the outside countless times as a clinician and friend and family member, but I'd never known it firsthand. 

You guys. It's really, really bad. Like, crushing. Here's how my stress-induced version unfolded: Mike went inpatient for six days to begin his second round of grueling chemotherapy. During that time I endeavored to move our family out of a friend's house, where we'd been for about five weeks, and into my mom's house. [Quick background for those who don't know: Mike's cancer came back. We found out in July - on my birthday, honestly - and after much deliberation decided to stay in Lancaster while he has more chemotherapy to prepare him for an eventual stem cell transplant.]

That time of countless trips back and forth (with the immense help of friends and family) was overfull with managing my kids' disorientation and anxiety, visiting Mike in the hospital whenever I could, cleaning like a madwoman in the bedroom and bathroom in anticipation of a possibly neutropenic Mike's return. In the midst of so many logistics relevant to moving homes again, I began to notice my head was really, really hurting. After we arrived at my mom's, I kept popping Advil and unpacking boxes and despairingly looking around, trying to figure out where exactly five people's things could fit in her relatively full house. Where to put backpacks? Clothes? Books? I wanted to solve every problem at once. I didn't want Mike to come home to chaos. I stayed up too late doing things like reorganizing books in order to find space on the shelves.

Other things started to go wrong. My contacts on my phone mysteriously disappeared.* Mike went through a terrifying, difficult fourth chemo day in the hospital (which we now know is part of the deal with this regimen) and I wasn't with him and thought I'd break with worry. I went through every box and realized I could not find the file with all my CEUs that I needed to renew my social work license in Maryland anywhere.** My head and whole face hurt so much. More Advil. I hadn't gone running in two weeks. I had started looking for a job and remembered that, oh yeah, job hunting while under duress totally sucks. The children were increasingly upset that mama was crying often and in a foul mood; I seemed to be failing to provide them with emotional steadiness at every turn. I feared I would not be able to coordinate Mike's staging procedures that he needed arranged in New York during a narrow window of time. I tried to register Gabriel for soccer and learned the U10 boys registration was already closed. 

What?? No soccer? We can't even have fall soccer?! How could cancer take that, too?***

I felt shaky and woozy and after Mike came home I finally realized I was really, really sick. I had been for a few days, and but for that raging sinus headache, the whole-body-sickness had been thinly covered over with a layer of adrenaline and urgency. Until my body said enough already. Stop it. 

Kind grandparents helped with the kids and I took to my bed when I could. It was hard to stop working on the move. But when I could actually settle, this is what I did in bed: cry. I wept with a despondency and fear that I could not shake. The specter of hopelessness kept emerging before my eyes and threatening to take away every shred of high functioning and cheerful mojo I had left. I stayed sick; the kind of sick in which climbing a flight of stairs is a real challenge. 

What would happen to us? If I can't continue to carry my family at the level of an Olympic gold medalist, I thought, we will be lost. 

It sounds dramatic. It was. 

I knew that something was really wrong, and that depression was settling like a cloud over my vision, because I wanted to hide away from everyone I love. I wanted a cave in which to disappear. I couldn't bear to have any loving eyes on me; it would amplify the reality of the disaster I found myself in. And also make me cry more. [Did you call/email/text me during that time? I am so sorry. I simply could not make myself respond.] 

I couldn't bear to see anyone from the regular world, in which people casually believe in the dependability of their own futures. Facebook, full of summer vacation pictures and anniversary shout outs and beautiful healthy athletic people, was an instrument of torment (that I finally put aside). 

I've never felt that way before, not in thirty-nine years on this planet. And wow, today I am profoundly grateful for the normally sunny temperament that I just happen to have been born with. When times get tough, it is my wont to reach out. The whole desire to isolate thing was so disorienting. I noticed it, could not recognize myself, and felt worse still. 

But after a couple of days of this, I called my friend and former colleague Kirsten and asked if I could see her and possibly get a prescription for some antibiotics. I couldn't stand to be sick and sad anymore.**** I met her on her front porch after our kids were (mostly) in bed and told her that everything was a mess and that I was really, really sick and not getting better. She listened, offered some gentle advice, sent a prescription to CVS. I made it home, exhausted and relieved.

That was the first turning towards a restored sense of self and hope. Someone else took care of me. Exhale. Then I wrote an email to Edith and told her how bad everything was. I cried while writing it but knew in my heart it was a good thing to do. I was sick for a few more days, but not in my heart. I knew it was getting better; the cloud lifted. I no longer felt the need to hide. 

From start to finish, the slide into whole-being illness and the emergence into recovery was probably about five days. But it was real. As with all traumatic, terrifying experiences, I think one has to speak it. Tell the story. That's the only way I know to tame it, to domesticate it into a regular old memory that can't jump out and scare me. [Related: I know this post has been a very long description with scant poetry or wisdom on offer. Are you still reading? Your loyalty and stamina are admirable!]

I have to keep trying to make sense of it all. So far, I've come up with a few things: 

Last week confirmed my intuitive and clinically-informed sense that our bodies and moods/spirits are entwined in complicated and unknowable ways. To take care of one is to take care of the other. 

Also, chronic stress really messes with one's well-being. Duh, right? But we all need reminders. 

My tedious, near obsessive prioritization of creating time to exercise is, it turns out, good and completely necessary.

Reaching out for help is a profoundly healing act.

And finally: I was afraid to let anyone know how deeply I was struggling. I felt ashamed because in that moment I saw myself as ineffective, weak, helpless. Honestly, I feel a little afraid right now, telling you about it. 

But I think it's a good thing to do. My vulnerability is the raw and powerful real thing that I have to give you. I feel brave today. 

What our family is going through is immensely fucking hard. I know I'm not the only woman out there who has run herself ragged taking care of her family in the midst of mountain-sized challenges. Our numbers are legion. So I say this most especially to all of my sisters-in-heroics out there: taking care of ourselves is always, always worth it.

*I got my contacts back, eventually, in the form of an Excel document. And after three trips to the genius bar and many hours on hold with my carrier, I now have a new shiny phone. Happy ending.

**I'm putting the pressure on the PA State Board of Social Work to send me a photocopy of my file, which contains all my CEUs. They exist! I just need to convince someone there to send them to me. Week two of trying...

***I played the cancer card and they opened up a spot for Gabriel. His first practice is this Tuesday.

****I had a good talk with a big-hearted therapist first thing today. Went for a run yesterday. I'm on it!

in which Beatrice endeared herself to me even more completely, on the day after we learned Mike's cancer is back

It was bedtime. I was standing behind Beatrice at the sink while she stood on a little stool, looking in the mirror and pensively holding her toothbrush aloft.

...I think I want to go to Massachusetts, too. Mama, I want to go with Didi and Gabriel.

(On Saturday my mom is taking the two older children to the house we rented in Massachusetts months ago but can't visit because of Mike's illness.)

Beatrice, I didn't think you would want to be away from us for an entire week. And this way we can have special time together. We can go back to the fountain, and go to the library, and play hopscotch, and go to the market, and watch movies.

...Well, okay. I like those things. Okay, Mama.

We'll have lots of special time, just Beatrice and Mama and Papa.

(A big smile lights up her face in the mirror).

I adore time with just Mama and Papa!

(I grin back at her).

And Papa and I absolutely adore spending time with just Beatrice!

(Beatrice backbends a bit so that she can take an intent, upside-down look into my eyes without the mirror mediating).

Would you say that one more time, please?

Papa and I absolutely adore spending time with just you.

She spun around, almost falling off her stool, and laughed and hugged me, utterly delighted.

the first ending

This morning, before the Last Day of School, I was tying up packages of chocolate chip and apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies that we spent a very long time baking the day before, and hollering up the stairs for Gabriel to brush his teeth, and fighting with Frances about practicing the piano, and noting that Beatrice was not dressed, and worrying about Mike's light-headedness, and realizing that I hadn't made Gabriel's lunch yet nor worse still, egads! - my COFFEE - when a nagging, itchy feeling started to bubble up from the murky depths of my brain. We had seven minutes before it was time to leave. What else in the world was I forgetting?

I turned back to Beatrice. Had she brushed her teeth? No. That wasn't it though. She was leaning over a chair with one dirty foot in the air.

And then I knew. I could not for the life of me remember the last time she'd had a bath. It had been many, many, many days. So many it had fallen out of the nighttime routine. My first thought was: does that constitute neglect? Will her teachers notice and call protective services?

My second thought: don't the painstakingly homemade cookies somehow counterbalance my lackadaisical approach to hygiene? The cookies that I involved Beatrice in baking, even after I watched her fall backwards from her chair at the counter, taking a bowl brimming with a double batch of dry ingredients toppling with her, coating every kitchen surface including our shoes in cinnamon-scented white powder?

(Not even that event prompted a bath).

(To her credit, she spent a long time industriously smearing flour into a gluey film all over the cabinetry with damp paper towels, trying to reverse the damage.)

The fact that I forgot that Beatrice sometimes needs a bath weighed on me as we walked to school. It was a reminder that I'm back in the mode I inhabited last fall, during Mike's initial chemotherapy. The conditions are remarkably similar: we're wading into a big transition full of uncertainty, Mike is really sick with a slew of complications, and the kids need extra support. Multitasking is frying my brain. I'm back to making frequent trips to the CVS, where the kindly pharmacist greets me with "Picking up for Brogan?" and ends the transaction by giving me a sympathetic smile and calling, "See you tomorrow!" as I head towards the door.

The difference is that now it's more familiar, and so while less laden with anxiety, it's also somehow less tolerable because this isn't supposed to be happening. When Mike was recovering earlier this spring, we allowed ourselves to make plans, to nurture expectations about the future. Now, three cycles of cancer treatment later - and anticipating a fourth - we are letting go of one expectation after another. Visits with friends, a birthday fishing trip, an anniversary date - all canceled.

Today was the last day of school. I thought that on the last day of school I'd be back to inviting friends over for dinner, to making plans, to living a life generally colored by more giving and less receiving. I thought we'd be squeezing a lot of fun out of our last weeks in Lancaster. Instead I dropped off the kids and talked through Mike's symptoms with the nurse who called to check in, to see if he improved after IV fluids yesterday.

Throughout the scariness and heartache and tumult of this school year, the children had a safe, peaceful place to go every day, organized by reassuring routines and populated by kind teachers and friends. I have never felt so grateful for a school community. The New School is marked by a culture of courteousness and creativity; it's a place where a seven year old patiently holds the door for the three year old behind him (and her mother) and the art show is the biggest event of the year. We've walked the four long blocks there in all kinds of weather, meeting friends along the way, sighting bunnies and mushrooms and irresistible big sticks, arguing and joking and gossiping.

So can you blame me for crying when Beatrice's teacher Sybil enveloped me in a goodbye hug at pick up time? All the losses of the moment got jumbled up, and in the safety of her arms - and in the sight of her glorious purple hair - I cried.

My kids have been mothered by so many excellent teachers and older children and fellow parents; now as the summer diaspora begins I fear the mothering gig falls back entirely to me. I'm afraid of the responsibility; I'm afraid of the sadness I'm sure they will feel at losing a daily connection with such vibrant networks of care.

This afternoon Gabriel's grandfather came and picked him up for a special solo visit. Frances and I played in the front yard. I made dinner. Mike felt well enough to help clean up. I read nursery rhymes to Bea. Frances and I sat and read her writing from the year that she brought home to share.

Before I sang her bedtime songs, I gave Beatrice a bath. And when she asked, I got in with her. She loves that.

the sweetness of sick

When Beatrice meekly and politely and a little pathetically asked me for a straw for her commuter coffee mug full of water at dinner Thursday night, I told her I didn't think a straw would fit in the lid's opening. She then looked up at me and said, with quiet determination, "I think I can do it. I think ... I think it will work, Mama."

Well, I had to go and get her a very skinny straw, plucked from the plastic dross in the top cabinet (leftovers from Mike's radiation nightmare). I returned to the table and inserted the straw, which indeed fit perfectly. Beatrice beamed at me, triumphant yet generous, inviting me to share in the success of her prediction.

It was a brief victory. She took one bite of dinner, then leaned against my knee in defeat and told the floor, "I don't want to eat any dinner, I just want to drink my water in my coffee cup on your lap."

She climbed into my lap. I observed that sickness brings out the sweetness in children.

Mike agreed, adding that unfortunately it often brings out the bitterness in adults.

I've been living in the House of Sickness for what feels like a long time. There's been Sick, and there's been sick, and neither has brought out my sweetness. First I had the worst cold in memory, and it lasted a solid three weeks. The cough still has a foothold in my fed-up respiratory system. Mike has had a number of complications with his current treatment. Then last week Beatrice developed a fever.

My first thought: no preschool! Egads! Stick a knife in my heart, why don't you, you feverish vindictive little beast, you stealer of my yoga class!

My second thought: I don't feel so hot myself.

So she and I succumbed together, and spent a day drawing and puttering and reading a book about Julia Child fourteen times and watching more episodes of Sophia the First than I feel comfortable sharing publicly. But I will confess that I would have watched twice as many if my conscience allowed, because the feeling of being curled up on the couch together, all hot bare arms and legs, watching the world go by in the bright sunshine, entertained by an auto-tuned miniature singing person with enormous unblinking eyes in a purple dress was simply delicious. Like so, so good.

Illness drains a toddler's willfulness right out of her. It's all funny, sweet absurdities and insights, spoken slowly and quietly, from a face that seems more dominated than usual by saucer-like glassy eyes that are extra shiny and beautiful and tend to stare off into the middle distance. Kind of like, oh, I don't know, Sophia the First's eyes. A child who can't quite drag herself off the couch is so very agreeable. I don't know what it says about me, delighting as I do in those brief moments when my children are defenseless and without a spark of fight in them.

The first time baby Frances got sick, I felt guilty about how much I enjoyed it. She was never a snuggly baby. She always wanted to be facing out, kicking around and engaging with everyone else but me. I felt like my job, most of the time, was to lift her up and support her weight so that she she could attend to the business of absorbing the world around her with her whole being. I was a baby crane. A baby holder. "Mama" was maybe the twenty-eighth word she said. She couldn't really see me because I was an extension of her - the supportive, rooted, reliable part. But then when fever struck, oh ho ho! Guess who wanted to nuzzle into my neck and plaster her hot chubby arms around me? Guess who looked at her mama (who up until that point knew no different), who draped herself around her mama's body and refused to be dislodged? I absolutely loved it. I wanted to sit in the rocking chair with her like that all day.

But I had to go to work. Oh, it was sad.

One of the best things about this year has been the lack of scramble and negotiations every time a kid is sick and can't go to school. I've had to scramble for a lot of other reasons, but usually not that one. So despite the irritation I felt about Beatrice being sick on a morning that I really, really wanted for myself, I also felt grateful for the luxury of a peaceful transition into a day at home, made without frantic calls to babysitters or tense negotiations with my husband about who would sacrifice work. With my third and final baby I am even more gratified by the feel of her soft beloved body taking solace in the spaces my body makes for her.

When she felt a bit more energetic in the afternoon, we walked and collected all kinds of bits and flowers in the seat of her stroller for some "muffins" that she cooked up in the front yard. (Can you see the bit of robin's egg? That was the best ingredient). Then later we (and by we I mean I) made these outrageously green muffins. It took me back to days spent like that with little Gabriel while Frances was at preschool, the luxury of a slow expanse of one-on-one time with a person who is just becoming, a person whose body - and soul - are deeply linked with your own.


p.s. The Julia Child book was a lot of fun, and led Gabriel and Beatrice and me to watch clips of her show on YouTube. And learn what a galantine is. What a gal.