Does the world need another blog? I ask myself. Of course not. But I have decided I will eat the peach. Passion is a juicy, sloppy thing, as is my love of words and need for self-expression. Also there's that bit of advice that goes around: do something today that you've never done before. With any luck, I can say something every day, that I've never said before.
Some big surprises this late in life. Who’d have known? The first: my beloved husband has cancer and is in the middle of his second round of chemo treatments. With this particular kind of C, it moves slowly, but there is actually no way to stop it. Needless to say, this is the big one. The other surprises don’t compare. There’s a little sleepwalker dance that people have to learn at some point in their lives. To walk and talk as if certain facts about their lives are way far off in the future. The fact about my husband’s health is the one I am not ready to fully register. Nevertheless, it makes the remaining surprises more pertinent.
The other surprises have to do with money. For sure, there are a lot of surprised people out there working well beyond retirement. Or, heaven forbid, now sleeping in the basements of friends, or in trailers, lining up at soup kitchens. There are millions of sad stories out there. And that’s not even touching on the misery found in violence torn failing states.
The next big ‘0’ in my life will have a ‘7’ in front of it. True, maybe I’ve been the grasshopper fiddling away while the ants were busy storing up for winter. I could say that such is the life of the artists. We fiddle away. If we’re lucky we continue to illuminate lives into future centuries and the circumstances of our deaths will be found in footnotes. Most completed lives rarely make the footnotes…but after all, that’s not why we fiddle. The truth is more like the quote I found in a superlative book, Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell: “One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.”
Last week I had an appointment with a psychiatrist. My family doctor had arranged it for me because she was concerned about my stress level, which twice landed me in emergency with full blown symptoms of a heart attack. So I found myself on the ground floor deep in the bowels of Sunnybrook Hospital in the mental health division.
When I first entered the admittance room, from the corner of my eye I noticed someone flitting about, someone who appeared to be an elf. He stopped to talk to the woman who held a stack of folders. They laughed heartily. The elf floated out the door and the woman glanced at me as if to say she would be with me in a moment. Then he flitted back in, having more to say to the receptionist. He had very large, very dark, very warm eyes, a prominent nose and a small chin which he seemed to press against his chest. Perhaps he looked shorter because he was lightly hunched, but he did not look much taller than five feet. And because he seemed to float rather than to walk, he looked to weigh not more than twenty pounds. Once more he disappeared.
Down the long, grey hall, on one side, there was a row of doors, all of them closed. Facing the doors were several chairs, many of which were occupied by men and women invariably with their noses deep into books or magazines. Some follow you with their eyes, smiling, because we are all kindred spirits down here. I joined them, sitting across from the door that was pointed out to me, and reached for my own book from the bottom of my handbag. From time to time one door opened, everyone looked up but only one person stood up and was welcomed by the person who emerged.
Ten minutes passed, and who should open the door to greet me but the elf himself. No sooner did I sit down across from him than he looked up at me with his fabulous eyes, and apologized for the word ‘geriatric’ in front of the word ‘psychiatrist’. We both snickered, though it’s hard to know why. Was it because of the he absurdity of counting the outer, visible years when the inner ones are so fresh and current? Or because of the uncertainty when facing a shortening future? Or do we snicker because we feel a joke is being played on us?
The elf had a name. Dr. S. is sitting on my shoulder even as I’m writing this. It did not take long before all I was aware of were his sympathetic, questioning eyes. First things first, he needed to know something of my personal history.
Ah, a personal history in a nutshell. By the time you’re into your sixth decade, you’ve stored away quite a few nuts. Did he want the pistachio, the quick, salty, tasty one? Or the hard to crack Brazil nut, oily, meaty, with a full complement of amino acids? That would take a while. Maybe start with the hazel nut, which is esthetically so pleasing in it’s round satiny shell, and in the sound it makes when split into clean geometric shapes. The break-up without the blame, the death without the pain; the blame without the hysterics and the pain without the tears. Once or twice Dr. S did offer a tissue, though my tears did not materialize.
I don’t mean to sound glib. I take therapy seriously. You take out what you put in, and with interest. I’ve taken it twice before. Once when my marriage fell apart and once when my mother died, hard truths came to light, and my reality fell apart. I’ve been lucky. Both times the same person had helped me to find my stability.
You fall in love with your shrink because you think you’ve found your soul mate. I won’t be seeing Dr. S. long enough for this to happen, but I have to say it’s an amazing thing to trip the light fantastic toe with a partner who feels your agility and moves in accordance. Everyone should experience a preliminary interview with a skilled therapist. One word of warning, though: they won’t dance if you won’t.
Well, Dr. S and I both knew I wasn’t there to shed tears. My anxiety levels were perfectly understandable. He needed to know I wasn’t suicidal. It took him no time at all to discover that my anxiety was off the charts when I had to speak of my own skills. I know my lack of confidence has puzzled a lot of people because on the surface I know how to present myself. I know when to pull back, to disappear, to deflect if anyone begins to probe or to compliment.
A light-year ago, a lover used the word ‘diffident’ to describe me. I had to look it up in the dictionary to see whether that was good or bad, whether or not I had been insulted, and to tell you the truth I still don’t know because at the heart of diffidence lies a Latin lack of trust.
What was it I wanted? Dr. S wondered as we approached the end of our time together.
In a nutshell? I told him I wanted to look after my husband.
