Deep exhale
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: December 14, 2009
I just finished running around, whooping, and doing the happy happy thank-you thank-you dance to type this. I did my Monday prayers to Eshu and my prayer went something like this: “Mafarefun Eshu todos los dias. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU!” I lit my candles for eggun and had a similarly creative prayer: “Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you THANK! YOU! Thank! YOU!”
I was trying to get my son’s school situation squared away today. He’s been going to a small private school in the area with tuition about the same cost as full-time daycare. I’d made the decision to just keep paying that amount for most of his kindergarten, first grade and now second grade school career, but for several reasons decided it’s time for him to start public school.
Not least of all was the financial reason. My unemployment claim encountered a second hitch in November, and through a series of unfortunate and maddening events, my wonderful, glorious, unemployment checks stopped coming. I couldn’t get through to anyone at the unemployment office. I tried all sorts of techniques, jumped through all sorts of hoops, hoping for a human voice.
I was talking to the owner of the daycare center down the street, finding out about their afterschool program, when a phone came in from “Private Number.” Without thinking, I pressed “Ignore” and immediately wanted to kick myself as I realized that it might have been Unemployment!
It was. And the lovely rep left me a voicemail saying she knew that many folks don’t answer calls from “Unknown” and she’d call back in a few minutes.
I was grabbing the mail when she called back, juggling the fountain of junk mail with the phone on my ear, praying I didn’t accidentally hit “End.”
The first thing Ana said was, “I just have to tell you that you’re an amazing writer. When I read your email, I thought, ‘She should be a writer!’ It was like you were right there beside me, telling me your story, as I read it.”
How often does the average person get their prayers answered like that?
Not only did Ana tell me that a check for the week of November 7th was in the mail, she was also sending out the claim forms for the weeks since then, and she detailed for me the process to come. As she explained to me the claim denial step that comes before the claim approval step (long story), I unfolded both the claim denial AND the claim approval forms she was describing as I cradled the phone with my shoulder.
And not only did she make sure I had my money and all the necessary forms and information, she continued to compliment my writing. And she told me how heartwrenching it was to hear people’s stories and how glad she was to bring a bit of happiness to people like me.
I’m once again blown away by the timing. Just this weekend, I spent preparing and presenting my offerings to the Orishas in gratitude for the blessings I’ve received and that were on their way. Little did I know that the next day, today, I would cross off all of my personal to-do list that was stressing me out beyond belief. Son’s school situation: unknown, but on hold til the school re-opens in January. After-school care: options mapped out and a plan solidifying. Unemployment drama: resolved–check in the mail, forms in the mail, and the promise of many more checks to come.
We all bomba
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: December 7, 2009
Notice the prominence of the Sunny D--this is in keeping with the 7-year old photographers level of interest (1. Sunny D, 2. Everything Else)
I was nervous. My first bomba performance, and really, I’m no expert. A few months of trying to get the basics down and the flailing around and calling it piquetes really doesn’t qualify me to perform. Still, I tried to put aside my intense feelings of inadequacy to enjoy the process of sharing bomba with others.
I’m so glad I did.
As we arrived, I quickly discovered countless faces of people I adore. Former writing group members with whom I’ve shared countless hours of cooking, eating, dancing, laughing, and writing (and rewriting). Comadres with whom I share a deep trust and love, who watch out for my kid and who call me when they need someone to talk to. Folks I’ve only spent a few hours with but who embrace openly and who radiate joy.
I was nervous, still, but I felt a warmth in my heart despite the chilly weather.
We performed, and it was fun and nerve wracking and I didn’t fall on my ass in a puff of white skirts.
But the real part? The stuff that makes my heart swell? Was when we opened up the floor for participants. We all gathered in a big ragged circle and point-stepped together and sang a simple coro. We all did simple piquetes with our feet, our shoulders, and our booties. We laughed at ourselves and grinned in the moment and whooped when we saw the power of the movements in each other.
There are moments when spirit seems to bubble up like a pot of water. You can feel the tiny little bubbles squirming up to the surface first. And within moments, it’s roiling and riotous. We clapped and made noise and sang and I shook the maraca til my arm burned. And my movements became more supple, more in tune. Less rigid, less demanding of perfection. How can movement be perfect if it doesn’t come from that riotous, joyful spirit?!
He said that he loved watching my dance, and his eyes revealed the truth of his words. “I loved watching people watch you dance and the looks on their faces. Their smiles.”
It was this that moved me. Sharing something I love so much with people who embrace it, loving it too, if only in that moment.
I am struck again by how bomba requires participation to truly be bomba. It’s all well and fine to “perform” for an audience. It was fun and it was exciting and I enjoyed getting through the choreography without stumbling. But something shifts and changes–deepens when it becomes a conversation between dancer and drum witnessed by all. And when it becomes something we all, all of us, everyone in the room, participate in to whatever extent we feel comfortable.
He washes my dishes
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: December 4, 2009
Last night I made dinner for us. Nothing fancy–pollo, habichuelas guisadas, arroz blanco. I cut up the platanos and forgot to cook them. He had some cancellations. He could spend a few hours with me.
“It’s delicious,” he said. “Food tastes different when it’s cooked with love. You can just tell.”
It’s true, I think. I remembered my soup disaster–how I was trying to cook, even for myself, with no love in it. I hated that soup, choked it down for a few quickie reheated meals before letting it spoil in the fridge untouched. Loathing even the process of pouring the remains in the trash and scrubbing the pot of its remains.
My son was still awake, although it was a bit late. He came and drank hot chocolate with us while we ate. And when I helped him brush his teeth, this lovely man who tastes the love in my food washed my dishes. When I came back into the kitchen, he was there, lovingly soaping up the mugs and bowls and spoons and gazing out my kitchen window.
I recognized the look. And when he told me a story of being in a house full of love with near strangers, washing their dishes, I knew he understands the joy of washing someone else’s dishes. Somehow it never feels as loving when they’re my own, but I tend to insist on washing other people’s dishes. Not out of penance, repayment, for the love I ate. But a gift of love in return.
I’ve stood in my comadres’ kitchens so many times, full belly and heart, and loved their sinks clean.
I never thought I’d be with a man who not only understands that kind of love but participates in it.
I told him a story. Of how once I stayed for a week in the home of a woman I loved briefly but intensely. She had an antique clawfoot tub. From her I learned to take luxurious baths with candles lit, reading in the deep, near-scalding waters until they finally cooled.
She was gone, visiting family for the holidays, and she had offered up her home as a kind of brief sanctuary from the nonstop pace of my full-time employee, full-time student, full-time mama life. It was a gift. A generous and loving gift. And I felt that generosity so deeply. The day before she returned I remembered how she had commented off-hand that scrub as she might with various products, she could never quite get the decades of soap scum from the porcelain.
I, moved with her generosity, sought to repay her kindness. I wanted to give her a gift, a tangible thank-you. I scrubbed her bathtub with baking soda and vinegar… and love. And it began to gleam.
I remember her face when she saw it.
“You cleaned the bathtub,” she said, her tone a complex clash of disbelief, gratitude, and something else that I couldn’t quite name but felt like a punch in the solar plexus.
“Yes,” I said. “You said you couldn’t get it off, and I thought I’d try…” I trailed off, heat rising in my cheeks.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said. And although she said it gently, I felt the weight of her words.
I shouldn’t have.
Because when I did, I gave her a message: I am the kind of girl who will clean your bathtub. And instead of a gift of love it became a message of my lesser worth. Girls who clean bathtubs are the kind of girls who let others do anything they please to them… and keep coming back for more. Girls who clean bathtubs humiliate themselves for the ones they love and revel in their shame. Girls who clean bathtubs will never be powerful, complete without someone else.
I recognized this message immediately, not because it is a message I believe in. But because it is everywhere. The doting housewife who wants nothing more than her husband to finally pay attention to her. The desperate girl who lives for a single glance from the handsome crush she will never find the courage to speak to. The sassy and independent woman who seems so together yet crumbles when her lover doesn’t return her call quickly enough.
That was the last day I saw her. While I loved her for much longer than that day–perhaps because of the own girl who cleans bathtubs hiding inside her–I knew she could not, at least not then, not with me, see the beauty in the kind of gifts I love to give.
His eyes welled up when I told him that story. “I understand,” he said, and held me tight to him. “I would see the love in that gift.”
Every day I spend with him he sees my gifts. The gifts I give freely and joyfully. Of my listening. Of my sharing. Of my compassion and passion. My cooking. My femininity.
And I see the gifts he gives me freely and joyfully. The vulnerability. His presence with me. His listening. His sharing. His passion and compassion. His smile. His words.
Agape, Eros
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: November 27, 2009
I’ve surrendered to the ocean of love. Lying in the morning sunlight beneath white sheets reading the ecstatic poetry of Rumi.
Two days, and I am a different person. Except no, I am more fully me. 
I’ve cried so many times in two days. Not wept, but just sat, moved and awed. Speechless.
The love of friends. The heart breaking beauty of acoustic guitar and Portuguese lyrics for a room of people gathered after a meal. The ecstasy of touching the divine in the face of the Beloved.
Forgive me, I’ve been reading Rumi all morning on the heels of the rapture of new love…
I’m hesitant to speak of it. And even more hesitant to write about it. He is not just a list of “Pros.” His face is love, his chest a warm blanket. Our conversation a deep muscle massage for my spirit.
I asked for this, but I didn’t dare hope for it to actually arrive!
He is open. He is love. We are, together, love. It illuminates every word, every touch.
Incendiary. Contagious. Joyful. Ecstatic.
I make no bold claims, although I am tempted.
…Okay, maybe one: in these two days, for the first time I thanked Olodumare, the Supreme God. I felt It like a sunbeam warming my skin. Joy bubbles up from inside and is obvious even through the phone, it seems! I can’t hide this from the people who love me. I am shy with it.
“This, too, is sacred.”*
The silence and the torrent of words. The stillness and the pressing, the kissing, the exploring. The patience. The sense of awe. The presence of the divine.
*Jacqueline Carey
Myself
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: November 18, 2009
Sometimes I’m not myself. Like when a curtain of silence hangs velvet over my eyes, soul-protective, even as my mouth moves small talk.
Sometimes I’m not myself. Like when I speak up in the classroom, truth shooting from my mouth only to thud like a corpse in the air between, unfelt, curious, maybe even strange to other ears.
I drum myself back into my body with rhythms still new to my muscles. The buleador is my voice, sharp and strong. I cannot sing and play at the same time yet.
The galloping wooden cua seem too loud in my ears when I play, but somehow just right when others play. I sometimes falter at the relentless noise coming from my fingers, blushing as though I spoke out of turn. You cannot play the cua half-heartedly. There is only this: to keep playing, loud as it seems. It’s only when I finally pause–to regain the rhythm or my concentration–that I notice without my galloping cua, the life of the music slithers sadly to the floor.
I used to dance. My body became part of the music, became the music.
Half the time I wasn’t any good, not at ballet anyway. Starting classical dance at 15, with a swayback to boot, is not a recipe for a beautifully-baked professional ballerina. Still I dreamed it. And danced it in my living room.
In ballroom I was okay. Not world champion, but not beginner either. If nothing else, I knew how to hold myself. Fake it. Keep moving my feet, keep smiling or smoldering, whatever the music called for.
When I was finally old enough to get into the salsa clubs, I danced every night I could. And when I started dancing, I didn’t stop until the band had long gone home and the canned music went off as the lights went on. “Wow!” this man or that would say. His eyes hardened in puzzlement, wondering at the white girl who danced as if it were in her blood. I can’t remember now if I told them I was Spanish or Puerto Rican–I was confused for a long while–but I do remember their eyes light up in recognition when they heard it. As if to say, “Ah, that makes sense then.”
I had hoped for an almost magical competence with bomba. That somehow, even though I had never seen it, heard it, or danced it, not really, that my feet would move as if possessed, my body snap into the proper posture, my brain intuit the movements, my heart beat with the rhythms.
Not so much, it turns out.
I am shy with almost a decade of not dancing. Babies, back problems, life…
And never has the music sat in the room with me, relying on my piquetes, my lead, to speak the rhythms into the primo’s drum, challenging, teasing.
I am new, and I am light-skinned. And if I am not good–does that mean Puerto Rican blood doesn’t run through my veins?
I am unsure, and I am a woman too often silenced. If I dance from inside, as if I am sure and experienced, will I be punished somehow?
I am not myself yet when I dance bomba. But it is helping me to become myself. The sounds, the movements, the way we need each other–drums, cuas, maraca, singers, dancers. The way it’s set up for participation, the way the experienced members shoo me to the center for piquetes, encouraging me, even when I mime protest because I see what they can do and see what I can do and come up way short in comparison.
We close each rehearsal with piquetes. First drums and singing, then choreography. Then piquetes. This is the magical part of the evening for me, watching in awe as the dancers draw out the various sounds from the primo. Spinning to a steady deep ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Swishing skirts to summon the BLA! crack of the seco. Footwork crossing, sliding, stomping, the drummer’s eyes intent on their bodies, tensed and ready for the slightest movement. The controversia–the rhythmic dialogue of challenge dealt and met, dealt and met. Then she bows, and it is my turn.
The blush of self-consciousness heats my cheeks as I take my turn with guembe, sicá, yubá. I cannot leave behind the censor of uncertainty to give it my all. And it’s exactly this all that bomba requires.
Then last rehearsal, I heard a new rhythm, one I’d never practiced before. The other dancers shed their skirts, the tap-step of the basic now bouncing with something new I’d never seen before but could trace into a thousand dances from reggaeton to salsa to booty-shaking club dancing.
The music was infectious, and I was tired of my self-censor. When my turn came, I forgot how my belly jiggles when I move too fast, how I don’t know the “proper” movements, how I don’t want to reinjure my hip my shoulder my neck.
And I turned, I stomped, I shook my arms, I conducted the primo in whatever I felt like. Challenging, if not teasing, until my breath came fast and my arms were slick with sweat and my hair loosed itself from its confines. I felt the seis corrido of Loiza inside my belly, even if I looked crazed and awkward. I hold that inside me now, as comfort and encouragement. I have always been myself, even if most spaces I inhabit seem too small to hold me.
Saturday I went to my first tambor. There, too, the drums speak–but these are sacred drums, who speak to each other and to the dancers. There, too, the dancers mark time tap-step. Sometimes I was self-conscious–wondering simultaneously if I were “doing it right” and trying not to care too much.
When Oshun came down, she put her ear to the cowbell. Not enough to hear it, have to feel it. To feel it inside so that She might manifest more strongly. I watched, in awe of her beauty, her abandon. And after She left, I began to dance again. For a few moments, I felt a fuzz of light-headedness and my body swayed with the movement of my feet, supple and strong and very flexible.
I carry that inside me still, a comfort and an encouragement. I have always been myself, even if the spaces I usually inhabit are too small to hold me.
The Kindness of Neighbors
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: November 5, 2009
I ate pumpkin pie for lunch. And my trash and recyclables are taken out.
This may not be headline news, but for me, both of these things are Big Deals.
One week ago yesterday, I was in a particularly delightful therapy session. It’s a strange thing to be in therapy because it’s part of my academic requirements for becoming a Master’s-degreed therapist—not because of a particular concern or problem I need help with. For one, I felt no pressing need to hurry toward trusting her, even though I liked her. But life, as life tends to do, happened. And over the months, I had plenty to talk about. The difficulties of being a parent. The heartache of losing loved ones. The ways I am resilient and creative, hard-working and brave.
Pain was a side note. Something I’d mention in passing or something commented upon when I winced or moved stiffly. Pain, however, had not been a side note in my everyday life. Still, when the pain is chronic and constant, it’s sometimes difficult to tease out its influence.
I only started to do that fully when it began to subside.
I found a remarkable chiropractor, referred by friends who saw how pain–when poured into a life already brimming with responsibilities–was severely hampering my quality of life. These same friends have offered to watch my son for an hour here and there. Brought me pasta or sent me home with leftovers. Sent me text messages asking how I’m feeling.
About a month ago, I had my first visit with the acupuncturist at the clinic. There’s a package deal priced far below the going rate that made it somewhat affordable for me. When I arrived, I saw the desk on the right—for chiropractic care. I signed in on the left as my heart sank: No way I could afford chiropractic care, I thought. Still, hope refused to die, and I made my way over to the right and asked about pricing.
I couldn’t believe it, but the visits were more than “affordably priced.” Bought in a package of four, each visit costs about $18. They worked me into the doctor’s schedule that morning, and I was changed.
Although I experienced soreness and some discomfort, my pain levels went from an average of about 6-8 on a 10-point scale to between 2-3 and within weeks, I was experiencing whole HOURS pain-free.
And so, I found myself last Wednesday talking to my therapist about healing. Marveling how connected our bodies, minds, and spirits are. How healing has always occurred in all regions simultaneously for me.
And as I made my way back west on the I-10, I noticed that my hips—which usually hurt when I am driving—were not hurting.
Unfortunately, I only noticed after I was rear-ended at low-speed, and they immediately began to hurt.
Whiplash. Muscle spasms. A week of grinding my teeth through routine daily tasks, trying desperately to sit behind a computer long enough to read articles and write papers. Insomnia. Prescription-strength Advil 24/7.
It was like those pain-free hours, those entire days of not taking 800 mg of Advil, never happened.
That pumpkin pie I ate was lunch. Yesterday in therapy, I cried, my voice choking on anger and tears, about the cumulative effect of pain, exhaustion, and stress.
Life as a full-time single mama is non-stop. There is no quitting time. No break. No relief shift. No paycheck. Only bills, isolation, and the very real, very important needs of a child who can only count on you. The story of the day before roared out of me like rushing water from a rain-swollen river. Tried to plan ahead. Soup in the crockpot for later. Irritated child because my class makes me home later than usual. No time, no money to eat. Hours of traffic. No parking. The relentless pain reignited from the collision. The food processor so heavy to my pain-wracked muscles. The hot soupy mess seeping out the sides because I was so tired. So tired. The child who wouldn’t get in the bathtub. Pouring in heavy cream, but too much. Soup that tasted all wrong, but my belly so empty. 6’o clock and still two papers to write before the next day…
And really, that was only the most dramatic part of my day. There were plenty of smaller things before that.
Still, my neighbor happened to come upstairs. She helped me mop up the soggy mess. Put away a few dishes cluttering the tiny counter. Helped me take out the scalding hot processor blade.
I tried to push aside thoughts of the dirty floor, cluttered kitchen, overflowing trash.
I wanted to point out why… justify it. I’d mopped just Sunday, but the floor gets dirty so fast—seven-year old crumbs and spills trampled on for two days. I couldn’t reach up to put dishes away without sharp pains traveling from neck to fingertips. I’d run out of garbage bags and needed to go to the store, but there was no time, no time.
I was so busy fighting shame that I don’t think I properly felt, or conveyed, how deeply grateful I was to have company when the tides of pain and exhaustion were threatening to pull me under.
She brought me a slice of pumpkin pie today. And as I filled her in on the aftermath of the accident, she offered, “I can spend 30 minutes cleaning for you…”
“No, no!” I insisted, practically cutting her off. I mentally surveyed the groceries still in bags because it was too much to get through the store, get the groceries upstairs, AND put away anything but the fridge items. The kid-toothpaste clinging to the bathroom sink. The shoes that I wearily kicked off but didn’t put away… Still, that would be far too embarrassing.
She insisted, as good people do, to at least let her do something. So she collected the carnage from a hurried kid-breakfast and a harried mama too rushed to make him clean it up, the uneaten pizza crust from last night’s kid-dinner, and helped me transfer the trash from paper bags to a sturdier garbage bag that would make the trip down the stairs, out the gate, around the corner, to the alley where the dumpster lives. She did it without a hint of judgment. Without a hint of you-owe-me.
And so, I write this to acknowledge not only the intensity of my struggle. But to honor the precious moments of connection and kindness made possible by the kindness of a neighbor.
What I didn’t tell you
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: November 3, 2009
My heart wasn’t in my last post. I wrote it because the story felt unfinished… the last I’d written about my garden was how I thought I’d killed the whole thing. I felt so utterly responsible. Guilty, even. I’d done something stupid and now my whole garden, all that work, all that love, was wasted.
But it turned out that it was something else. Maybe the heat? Maybe the soil condition? Because the problem continued with new growth, as well. Brown, crunchy tips. But the problem seems to have cleared up since the weather’s been cooler.
Typical. I’m prone to think bad things happen because of something I’ve done wrong. Without even trying, I immediately start “problem-solving” to figure out how it was my fault.
It doesn’t take a licensed shrink to figure out that this guilt has roots in feeling powerless that reach up from the dark depths of childhood. And I don’t need to tell you in detail how I felt powerless as a child for you to imagine.
But I will say I grew up in a hard-core Jesus-loving household. My father is still very involved in evangelical churches, although I left long ago. Still, decades of programming spring up under stress.
Back pain? Must be because I’m at fault somehow. And there are plenty of doctors and armchair experts to agree. I sleep wrong. Sit wrong. Don’t exercise too much. Am too hard on my body. Am too stationary. Do the wrong exercises. Have emotional issues.
Take your pick. I tried on all of them, and while I can see the merit in moderate exercise, sleeping in a back-friendly position, and doing work to ensure I’m emotionally healthy… well, ultimately? It comes down to bad things that have happened to my body. It’s outside my control. There’s nothing I could have done to prevent it.
Much like that garden.
It’s easier to type the words than it is for them to seep down deep into the soil of my psyche and travel up into my thoughts and actions. It’s sometimes confusing–when do I have the power/culpability and when is something truly beyond my control?
It’s a blurry, constantly-moving line of distinction, one I often can’t discern until afterward–when it becomes clear that I didn’t kill my garden, but not totally clear as to what did. And what my role in it was.
Blooming Flowers, Thriving Weeds
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: November 2, 2009
My garden’s been through some upheaval since I last wrote. My topsy turvy tomato plant didn’t survive (RIP), although it gave us about three small-ish tomatoes that were quite tasty. I planted a few seeds of Mexican Midget cherry tomato and had a flourishing, sturdy vine about two feet high until the gusty fall winds came and beat it into a weary, broken little thing.
I had a golden fingerling potato sprouting in my vegetable drawer and on a whim, I planted it. Now I have two adorable little stalks, although I have yet to google the reproductive habits of potatoes. Who knows if I’ll get anything edible out of those little sprouts!
Another round of tiny lettuces have sprouted–I never planted more but we’ve been through about 3 rounds where they grow, die, then another wave pops up. The last two we lost to caterpillars. I didn’t realize this–my son/bug expert did. He insisted the black spots were caterpillar poop. I, being a doubting Thomas, didn’t buy it… until he discovered more than a dozen bright green caterpillars on the lettuce babies!
I bought a tomato plant from Trader Joe’s, complete with tons of ripening tomatoes. It continued to put out tomatoes for about a month, even as it browned up and got real crunchy.At the same time, I bought a thriving basil to replace the near-dead one on our patio.
The dill didn’t make it. Nor did the cilantro. But there’s a healthy chive that I hate to cut, since it’s so happy there.
And this mint plant–the fourth one, I believe, is actually doing okay! I’d heard it’s impossible to kill mint–that it’ll take over the whole danged place if you let it. But I couldn’t keep mint alive for anything. But I put it into the same pot as the dying basil, and now they’re both happy. Guess they just needed some plant-cousin company.
And the little guys that looked so happy?
Weeds. 
Yep, weeds. We faithfully watered and cooed those weeds into happy adulthood. They were like spider legs spreading out from a reddish center and on the ends were wispy paintbrush tails.
So we trashed the weeds, finally, and my son planted some wildflower seeds he’d found at the park in a packet that said Earth Day Seeds.
And now in the weed planter zip-tied to the railing, we have a giant sunflower that’s as high as my head. We can see it clearly from the kitchen table when we sit down to eat.
Oya’s Winds
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: October 27, 2009
The wind is brush-tapping the palm tree against my window. Outside, the palm’s graceful branches are at eye-level. Crows, woodpeckers, even hummingbirds come to visit sometimes. Resting, hovering. Not tonight, I mean. Just sometimes. It makes for pleasant computer time to look out and see them.
Today in class, I sat close to the huge glass windows to hear the wind better. I leaned into the glass, wishing I were outside.
“This weather is horrible,” I heard a classmate say into her cell phone.
I smiled at gusts flattening the grass toward the west, like the bouncing of drumsticks as they drum roll brraaaaa-taaa-taaa-taaaaa. The tree branches swishing back and forth, keeping time. Across the wide city street, the iron gates of the cemetery stood resolute and still in contrast.
We watched a clip of a movie to see “a good depiction of what a bippolar manic episode looks like.” In it, a young Richard Gere takes all his money out of his account, sweeps the bank teller off her feet, and stands in the aisle at the symphony, a private smile of rapture on his face.
Much like mine as I stood against the glass while everyone else sat watching.
He hurls down the aisle as the music swells, jumping onto stage and conducting the orchestra, then conducting the conductor. I laughed in glee.
And thought about the notes I’d written on the very helpful lecture outline.
So basically, extreme emotions are pathological. If you express too much, it’s mental illness. If you don’t fit the “normal” range, you’re crazy.
Everybody in the U.S. could probably fit the criteria for mania–impusivity, compulsive spending, feelings of grandiosity and invincibility, delusions about the world. Except the actual diagnosing is reserved mostly for women, queer and trans folks, people of color…
Almost everyone’s depressed, my professor says. Lost of psychologists think it’s because of faulty thoughts–no mention of social ills like poverty, racism, violence, isolation, break down of social connectedness.
I forget where I saw it exactly, but I remembered the chart of symptoms of mental illness in one column and characteristics of women (according to an expert of the time) in the next. They were almost identical.
In the clip, they carry him out of the symphony hall and into a stark hospital room, strapping his arms and legs down as he pleads with them to let him go.
My professor gave him a 4 for “severe with psychosis” mania. I argued that he didn’t do anything except jump on stage at a place where that’s not the accepted thing to do, and he only “escalated” when four dudes were strapping him to a bed against his will.
Once I was part of a planning committee. I wanted to know about the power dynamics–how the chips would fall if the students wanted X and the faculty wanted Y. I never did get answers, but I did get a scolding about my wounded inner child projecting my issues with authority onto the faculty.
“Have you heard of Seligman’s shuttle box?” my professor asked us today. No, I hadn’t. They took dogs, maybe pigs, and shocked them with electricity when they opened the door of the box. The researchers did it many times. When they put them in a box with no shocker and opened the door, the dogs and pigs didn’t move.
Learned helplessness, he said.
Post traumatic stress response, I said.
Too many of us have tried to get out of that box and rewarded by a strong zap of electrical current. Many of us can’t see opened doors without thinking of that horrible zap and think, Oh it’s not so bad in this box, I guess.
I suppose that’s what most of my professors and classmates think therapy is about. Showing the opened door and saying, “See? There’s no zapper now. You can walk out!”
The problem is, the experiment never ended. We never know when they’ll put that zapper back on. We’ve learned the hard way. You can walk out the door sometimes, but not every time. It’s hard to know when it’s safe.
Still, the lucky ones survive. We find a window to stand next to and we smile into the wind to drown out the litany of ways a person can be counted crazy in this society.
Walking to my car, I crunched as many big yellow leaves with my feet as I could. As I walked home, my long, red skirt poof up delightfully. On the drive home, I watched in glee as Oya’s winds whipped crunchy fall leaves and random trash up into the air to twirl lightly back to earth. I admired the fallen branches along the streets. I thought about how miniature these winds of her’s are in contrast to her mightiest.
Oya’s winds are winds of window-rocking (or shattering!) change. Her whirlwinds scoop up nature’s gifts and human garbage alike, and when they float–or crash–back to earth, we find a new landscape before us.
She shakes things up. Literally! Sometimes things are destroyed, and we get angry or feel helpless. But is destruction bad? Can nature be called bad for messing up our human “progress” that strips the earth of its beauty and resources and erects civilization? Can a wagging finger in the face to remember who’s really boss be a reminder? A call to humility? What does it take for folks with grandiose ideas of development to stop amassing, investing, building, and chopping down–and start looking around at fallen branches and saying “Wow“?
I myself could use a little less progress and a bit more standing in humbled awe of nature’s power.
Cat Puke: A Trauma Parable
Posted by: Lucy Marrero on: October 22, 2009
I got home from class late enough for the streets to be pretty quiet but still early enough to score a parking spot only several blocks away. The first thing I noticed upon opening the front door was a small pile of cat puke. I ignored it for the moment, since there was a check to write and light but caring conversation to engage in with the babysitter before she left.
And then I entered my room/the living room to find another pile of cat puke.
You might be wondering what cat puke has to do with God–but just hang on a second. I hope it’ll be worth it. 
My two cats are old and delightfully lazy–somewhere around 13 years old is the estimate. Litter mates, Sully and Lulu are very much bonded. I found them through Craig’s List. A guy was moving in with his girlfriend and she was allergic. Sully and Lulu had been staying with his friend for about a year, and they were very frightened of people. It seems they’d basically had no attention whatsoever except for once a week when he came to change the cat box and refill their food and water. I got the feeling the friend wasn’t too happy they were there and didn’t participate in their care at all.
When they came home with us, Lulu refused to get out from under the bed for over a month. Sully, the more adventurous of the two, would hang out with her for awhile, then come out to explore and get to know us, periodically going to check on his sister and curl up with her under the bed. Over about three years’ time, she began spending more time on the beds instead of under them, although she’s been known to stare blankly at inanimate objects for long periods of time.
And while Lulu was the shy, skittish, and slightly nutty one, Sully was the puker and the toilet-brush eater.
Yes, I know. I couldn’t figure it out either.
He would inhale his food so quickly that most of it came back up again. I was cleaning up puke every day, sometimes several times a day, and honestly it was wearing on me. I once took him to a vet. In addition to telling me that he was too fat and was SURE to get diabetes (!), she suggested giving him only a tablespoon or two of food, waiting 15 minutes, then giving him more.
As a single mama with multiple cats, working full-time, and going to school, I nodded and smiled and tried it for about 4 days before giving up. It didn’t stop the vomiting, anyway.
Over time, I realized that the toilet brush would be pulled from its little holder. It took me awhile to figure out what was happening. The wind? The seven-year old? The root cause of unexpectedly moved objects is hard to ascertain in my household. But eventually I caught Sully in the bathroom, chewing on the bristles.
And over time, a pattern began to emerge. If the food in the bowl was low enough to see the bottom, he panicked. And when he panicked, he scarfed down his food and/or started chewing on the toilet brush.
But before noticing that pattern, both my son and I would find ourselves frustrated by the vomit and the disgusting chewing habit. There seemed to be absolutely no reason why Sully was acting so strangely, and absolutely nothing we could do to stop it. I found myself embarrassed at the piles of cat puke that sometimes greeted visitors before I had a chance to clean it up. I tried not to scold him out of frustration and reminded my son that yelling at him wouldn’t help.
Last night, though, I was only mildly bothered. There was cat puke on the floor. It wasn’t exactly a lovely sight, and I’d rather the babysitter not had to see it. But the image that prevailed was not of the embarrasing pile of puke on the carpet, but the image of a younger Sully, scared, alone, and hungry, and not sure when he’d get his bowl refilled.
After saying goodbye to the babysitter, I turned to my trusty Clorox disinfecting wipes. And then refilled the food bowl. I’d already switched to a toilet brush with no bristles and a closed holder.
Fat Cats
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