This has been a very long week -- perhaps 16 or 17 days, at least.
I have been offered -- and accepted -- my younger sister’s finished basement for the next year and a half. This will be a major cost-saver for me and a big help for her (she has two toddlers and is expecting a baby in August.) So that was a humongous start to the week.
My other sister and her teenaged son have had to make some really hard decisions. She gave me permission to quote her:
“spent yesterday at the hospital with my son. about eleven hours. sitting here writing and rewriting this entry trying to find just the right words. how to explain-- he is not healthy. he is mentally ill. he is not safe at home. none of this really covers it. so here's one image from the day. we walk into the east wing at maine med escorted by security. the very nice guard LOOKS like a skinhead but actually has incredible kindness and compassion for my snarly boy. he tells us gently that he has to check ian for weapons and sharp objects then helps him take off his shoes and waves a wand over him. he gives him some pants and a robe and shows him a room where he can change and tells him exactly how the robe fastens and sends him into the room to change. we wait. for a really long time. the guard finally has to go check on him. when he comes out, he looks as small and skinny as i have ever seen him. the pants are slumped all the way past his feet in a big puddle all over the floor. the robe goes almost to his ankles. he is a mash of patterns and dingy cotton. he swims in this outfit. his messy flyaway dry hair and his eyes (dark, wary, scared, waiting, young) look completely wrong with the garments. they do not go together at all.”
I want to believe in superpowers and magic wands. I want my “cape” to be more than a silly blog prop.
I have been offered -- and accepted -- my younger sister’s finished basement for the next year and a half. This will be a major cost-saver for me and a big help for her (she has two toddlers and is expecting a baby in August.) So that was a humongous start to the week.
My other sister and her teenaged son have had to make some really hard decisions. She gave me permission to quote her:
“spent yesterday at the hospital with my son. about eleven hours. sitting here writing and rewriting this entry trying to find just the right words. how to explain-- he is not healthy. he is mentally ill. he is not safe at home. none of this really covers it. so here's one image from the day. we walk into the east wing at maine med escorted by security. the very nice guard LOOKS like a skinhead but actually has incredible kindness and compassion for my snarly boy. he tells us gently that he has to check ian for weapons and sharp objects then helps him take off his shoes and waves a wand over him. he gives him some pants and a robe and shows him a room where he can change and tells him exactly how the robe fastens and sends him into the room to change. we wait. for a really long time. the guard finally has to go check on him. when he comes out, he looks as small and skinny as i have ever seen him. the pants are slumped all the way past his feet in a big puddle all over the floor. the robe goes almost to his ankles. he is a mash of patterns and dingy cotton. he swims in this outfit. his messy flyaway dry hair and his eyes (dark, wary, scared, waiting, young) look completely wrong with the garments. they do not go together at all.”
I want to believe in superpowers and magic wands. I want my “cape” to be more than a silly blog prop.
Comments
What is going on in that head of yours? I want you to get well asap, and come visit ... or we'll meet at Dunns and and Marsh and I and you will all get proper fishing licenses and go fishing ... and we'll cook and talk about music and play sudoku and scrabble and avoid your brother....
I think of you often. I have no idea what kind of therapy anybody thinks you need, but I do know what is in my heart.
I see you during one of my first visits to Buxton... you wanted to share your guitar playing, but carrying the amp and everything upstairs and hooking it up would have taken all the time we had. I see you out on the lake with your grandfather, determined to catch a fish, never mixing with the other cousins if you could help it. I can see you helping me with the paella. I wish I could have loosened up enough to let you really do some of the cooking that you wanted to do -- we all have control issues :-) But you cleaned the mussels even though you'd never done it before, and you were good company, deliberate, gentle, curious, nervous.
You always seem to want to be and do and dream a little bigger than the canvas in front of you seems to be. You color outside the lines. I don't think this is a bad thing. I know it hurts to keep crashing into the world, and you're not even sure what you want.
I'm talking like I know you, and I don't. But I see your furrowed brow, your argumentative glasses slipping down your nose, the beat in you of a singular drum, all your own, which you have not yet learned to love. We all love it, and you, and are caught in an excruciating middle-ground between wanting to stand back and watch you become the incredible man you will be, and wanting to rush in and hold you tight and tell you everything is going to be okay.
Get well soon.
(Uncle) John