Last week, I read BloggessJenny Lawson’s new book Furiously Happy.
Image from Amazon.com
Furiously Happy deals with Jenny’s mental health issues, how she copes with them, and, importantly how they help make her the person she is. It is truly a gift to folks with anxiety, depression, other mental health issues (and to those who care about them). It shows them that they’re not alone.
The blurb on the flap sums it up pretty well:
This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are – the beautiful and the flawed – and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny’s mom says, “Maybe ‘crazy’ isn’t so bad after all.” Sometimes crazy is just right.
While Furiously Happy is geared towards folks with mental illness, I came away from the book feeling comforted about my physical illness, Crohn’s Disease. Because Furiously Happy reminded me that other people — probably everyone, in fact — struggles through life with something. And that’s why we all — every one of use — need each other.
Because no matter what each of us is facing, we’re not alone.
Plus, the book is hilarious. You will rarely enjoy mental illness quite this much.
Oh, and go read her most recent blog post, which had me laughing for hours last night. It is a compendium of awkward moments sent to the Bloggess via Twitter.
Dad always described it as the most terrifying day of his life. Mom almost never spoke of it.
June 1949.
“We had a toddler — Beth was just beginning to walk. Mom was expecting another baby in December. It should have been time to celebrate. Instead, suddenly, I was rushing my wife to the hospital. I didn’t know what would happen. I feared the worst.”
Dad had every reason to fear the worst. Polio can cause death or total paralysis in a matter of hours.
In the U.S. in 1949, more than 40,000 cases of polio were reported, and nearly 3,000 deaths occurred from the horribly contagious, devastating disease.
My mother spent the end of her first trimester and much of the second in the hospital, encapsulated in an iron lung. An iron lung enables the patient to breathe by using vacuums to force air into and out of the lungs.
Wikipedia Image
Poor mom also received constant electric shock therapy, up and down her body to stimulate the muscles and keep them from atrophy. Thankfully, the treatments worked. Not only did my Mom survive, but the combination of treatments she received enabled her to live a normal life — without the paralysis that impacted so many of the disease’s victims.. In fact, to look at Mom, you couldn’t tell that she was a polio survivor.
It was only in photographs that anything appeared amiss. Mom had always been a beautiful woman — but she was unwilling to have photos taken of her right side — because the camera picked up the remnants of polio’s paralysis.
Mom at my wedding.
You can bet that as soon as the Salk Polio vaccine was available, Mom and Dad lined up the five of us kids, including my brother Bob, who was in that iron lung with Mom, for those shots. Because the old adage is true: An ounce of prevention IS worth a pound of cure.
Saturday, October 24 is World Polio Day. It is a day that celebrates the incredible progress scientists have made against this horrible, debilitating, deadly disease.
In recent years, many folks have forgotten the devastating effects of these diseases. Forgotten just what the costs of these disease are — to the individuals infected with them, and to society.
Vaccines are developed to prevent — TO PREVENT! — devastating diseases. Polio. Rubella. Mumps. Measles. The safety profiles of the vaccines is excellent. Far better in fact, than the safety profiles of the most common OTC meds we all pop at the drop of a hat, or the hint of a headache.
Today, my son Jacob is taking his very first airplane trip alone. So of course I woke up wondering if John and I had told him everything he needed to know before hand.
It was a very early morning flight, so he’d arranged to stay with a friend near the airport and take a cab from there. When I woke up, I immediately checked up on him. Err, in on him.
He was at the airport in plenty of time, and had even found his gate. But I could feel his eyes rolling from across the miles when I suggested he sit at the gate and not move until they called his flight.
Because once I made the mistake of not doing that …
***
It was March 31, 1997, and my mother had died the day before. John, Jacob and I picked up my sister Beth who lived not far away, and they dropped the two of us off at National Airport, to take our flight south to Florida to help Dad with the funeral arrangements. To be there with him. John and Jacob would follow in a few days.
“The Terminal is under construction, so leave yourselves extra time to get to the gate,” John warned us as he said good-bye.
Yes, National Airport’s Terminal A was a complete mess. There were barricades everywhere, dust, dirt, grime. The air was thick with it.
We found the US Airways desk conveniently located just outside of an Au Bon Pain.
Google Image
We got some drinks and sat down at a table. I took a seat facing the US Airways desk, with the information about our flight scrolling across the top.
Like every shy person I’ve ever known when they’re with someone they know, Beth began talking and kept on. She talked about Mom, about being a kid, told stories that I had heard, and ones I hadn’t. It was really wonderful, just sitting there. Neither of us wanted to be going to Florida. Neither of course, wanted to be motherless, either.
I kept looking at my watch, and at the information desk, which kept displaying information about our flight. I was just about to go and check, when the display began giving information about another flight.
“Grab your stuff, Beth,” I said over my shoulder as I headed to the desk to find out what was going on. We hadn’t heard any announcement. Fortunately, Beth was right behind me.
“Ma’m,” I said to one of the two women at the desk, holding out my boarding pass. “What happened to Flight 183 to Ft. Myers?”
“That flight just pulled away from the terminal.”
“NO!!!!!!BRING IT BACK!!!” I shouted, with a voice full of all the pain of my loss, “IT’S FOR MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL!!!!”
I began to sob. Loudly. In the empty airport terminal, my sobs echoed off the ceiling.
“Lease,” Beth said, starting to console me, “It’ll be OK.”
I got what we call the “sup-sups” — where you can’t stop crying, and you can’t quite breathe either. I couldn’t stop.
The clerks looked at one another. One grabbed the phone, the other grabbed my arm and pulled me.
“The gate is down here,” and she ran with me, my sister right behind us.
The gate was, in fact, a long fucking way away. Miles, it seemed. WTF?
We got there just as they had clicked the landing tunnel back into place. They opened the door and we ran down it to the plane.
US Airways had brought the plane back so I could get to my mother’s funeral.
Google
As Beth and I moved down the aisle, I was still trying to catch my breath, still trying to stop crying.
Heads were turning, as the other passengers were trying to figure out just who we were, and why we were important enough to bring the plane back for. (And now doubt that if we were so damn important, why were we in coach.”
But another problem emerged. Someone was in my seat.
There were dozens of seats on the plane. But in my rather frantic state, I wanted my seat.
“There are lots of seats, Lease,” said Beth. “Here, we can sit here. Or here.”
But I made the person move.
Beth sat next to me as I shook and wept the whole trip. “We nearly missed Mom’s funeral,” I said, again and again.
“It’s OK, Lease,” she’d say, shaking her head. “We made it.”
***
I never got the names of the two US Airways desk clerks who helped us. I did write an incredibly nice letter to the company, though, giving times and flight numbers in the hopes that they learned how much their kindness meant to me.
I’ve always been amazed that a big company, which no doubt faces things like this every day, would demonstrate such kindness.
But Beth said they just wanted to shut me up. And you know, she may have been right.
Many years ago, John decided that he and I should buy a Bed & Breakfast somewhere in picturesque New England and leave the Washington DC area behind us.
“No,” I said immediately, the first time he procured an ad for one.
My husband didn’t understand why I wasn’t jumping at the chance.
“Why not? It’s perfect for us!”
“What would your role be at “our” B&B?”
“Well, I’d …”
I stared him down, believe me. Because you see, John doesn’t cook. He doesn’t clean. And he’s an introvert. If you are an old friend or family, John will welcome you graciously. Otherwise, he will say hello, and quickly make his way to another room and go back to his book.
And his lack of handy-man skills is legendary.
I would have to do the cooking, the cleaning, the welcoming, the chatting everybody up. I’d have to work the toilet plunger.
“No,” I repeated. “I do not want to run a B&B.”
But YOU might want to. YOU — You know — the person reading this, scratching his/her/its head.
This morning I learned about a wonderful opportunity. The owner of the Deerfield Valley Inn is retiring, and holding a contest for her replacement B&B-er. Check out the link on the Huffington Post. And do listen to the video in that link and hear all the particulars.
The Deerfield Valley Inn
For $150 and the winning essay, the Deerfield Valley Inn can be yours. The essay? Here’s your prompt; in 250 words or less tell the current owner your story:
“This is my dream: To own and operate a Vermont country inn.”
I’m having trouble getting the link about the contest to load, so here is a Hotels.com video of the Deerfield Inn so you can see it.
There was no reason to panic, just because Dad had disappeared shortly before he was supposed to “walk me down the aisle.”
“Find Beth,” I said to Mom, who was there in the church’s multifunction room that was functioning as the bride’s dressing room.
Beth had been my problem solver for nearly three decades by the time I was getting married. And she’d never let me down. Beth could calm the crazies in me better than anybody I’ve ever known. Just knowing she was around, made everything OK.
And if you had a splinter or a cut or any injury at all? Go to Beth. That was true long before she became a nurse who treated premature babies. If ever there was someone with nursing in their DNA, it was Beth.
Surely Beth could find Dad, who’d gone for a walk, and get the keys to the car from him. Because, while I’d gotten my wedding dress out of the car, everything else I expected to wear, beginning with my underwear, was locked in the trunk. And the keys were in absent Dad’s pocket.
Fast forward to 2009. July 4th was just days away, John, Jacob and I were in Maine, and I was in a panic. My eldest brother, Bob, had just been taken to the hospital.
For a decade approaching holidays had terrified me. I suffered from “heortophobia” — the fear of holidays. Well, myheortophobia had a twist: It wasn’t simply a fear of holidays. Nope. For me, it was a perfectly logical terror of illness at holidays. Someone else’s illness. Because If anybody I cared about had so much as a sniffle, well, they were gonna die.
As you may have heard 4,327 times, my family members have a nasty habit of dying on holidays. They’ve hit the all big ones — In order of occurrence: Thanksgiving. Easter. My birthday. Christmas. Ho ho ho!
So when Bob ended up in the hospital with Independence Day approaching, well, I knew Bob was toast. The odds, and likely the Gods, were against him.
“He’s not that sick, Lease.” Beth said. “You’ve been sicker and survived.” She’d contacted his doctors, figured out what was wrong, and called to reassure me. Beth, a nurse, knew this sort of thing. But as a fake medical expert with then six years’ experience, I was learning more and more –enough to make me fear everything, actually . So naturally, I wasn’t so sure.
“Beth,” I said, through slightly clenched teeth. “It doesn’t matter how serious his illness is. It’s the date. A HOLIDAY IS COMING. He’s going to die!”
As the eldest in the family, Beth had been able to calm me down my whole life long. She didn’t fail this time, either.
“Nobody is going to be able to trump Dad dying on Christmas,” she said, matter-of-factly. “The Holiday Death Sweepstakes is over, Lease. Fourth of July? Pffttt. Independence Day isn’t even a contender!”
“I HATE holidays,” I moaned, panic starting up again.
“Lease, I’m gonna make you two promises.” Beth had always kept her promises. “First, Bob will be fine.”
“Mmmm,” I replied, not believing it for a minute. Still, I started to calm down.
“Second: When I go, it’ll be on an ordinary Tuesday,” Beth laughed. “I cross my heart and hope to die,Lease, I will not die on a holiday. I mean it. I couldn’t do that to you,” she laughed still harder. At me, not with me. Had she been nearby, I might have smacked her for ridiculing me. Hard.
Bob, whose illness wasn’t all that serious, was released before the holiday; his sentence commuted. I breathed a sigh of relief, let me tell you.
Google Image, Natch
But not for long.
On a Sunday, just over a month later, I called Beth. We talked nearly every day. Beth had had a pretty severe stroke two years previously. It affected her kidneys; she had been on dialysis for about two years. Things hadn’t been going well, and she was more and more discouraged, depressed and disheartened. More importantly, he hadn’t been feeling well in the last couple of days.
Still, I was surprised when her phone was answered by one of her sons.
“Mom’s in the hospital,” Chris told me.
It was a Sunday, though. In August. No holidays in sight. So while I worried, there was no need to panic right? Chris promised that he and his brother would keep me informed.
Late Monday morning, Dave, Beth’s eldest son, called me in tears.
“They don’t know if Mom’s gonna make it.”
I rushed home, packed a few things, and got into the car, and headed to Cleveland.
The weather was horrible. Storms raged — the rain so heavy that I could barely see. Traffic rushed by or crept along. Trucks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike flew by at terrifying speeds when traffic moved. But mostly, the highway was at a standstill, the rain not letting up. I couldn’t get to Beth, and I couldn’t see to drive.
How much of my impaired visibility was due to my constant tears, and how much to the pouring rain, well, I didn’t know.
Dave called me again in the early evening to let me know that Beth was in a coma; they thought she would make it for another day or so.
So, exhausted I pulled onto an exit just above Pittsburgh, and into the first motel I found, where I collapsed into bed.
Beth’s doctor called me a few hours later. Beth had taken a turn for the worse. If I wanted to see her, to be with her, I’d better get back on the road.
I made it in time for Beth to personally deliver that second promise. She died on an ordinary Tuesday, August 11, six years ago.
With her passing, Beth brought me an unexpected cure of my heortophobia, and even let me laugh at the bizarre trend she ended.
And on the way back? The weather was clear. The Pennsylvania Turnpike twists and turns through the mountains. With each curve I rounded as I drove home, there was a rainbow. Rainbow after rainbow. I knew, seeing those colors in the sky, behind every turn, that Beth was comforting me still.
I miss you, Beth. Oh, and I was the one who spilled nail polish remover on your new dresser in 1967. Sorry about that.
FiftyFourandAHalf 