Carol Kirkpatrick, possibly the brightest writer I ever met in a writing group (proof positive being her ability to scribble out a pithy, brilliantly crafted story on the spot) had the additional charm of treating me to an oral history of Brooklyn whenever we walked its streets together. Combining warmth, depth, humor, and subtlety well into her 90s, she will always represent perfectly what I’d like to be when I grow up. My hope is to charm you with this sample of her writing:
Observing
I stretched out in the bed. How good it felt to be alone after five months under siege. An unlikely place to savor this solitude…the psychiatric ward of a hospital…but the desperately needed space to be alone with myself was worth it.
Morning highlighted some stark realities. I had a lot to figure out. I don’t belong here, but, as the saying goes, “any port in a storm.”
The craziness started in March. My daughter’s husband threatened her. Realizing he was out of control, she scooped up her about-to-be three year old and came to me. Came to think, talk things out, and plan the next step.
Here is a relatively small apartment. My twenty-four year old son and I, and a small cat, just about stay out of each other’s way with both of us working full time and my son attending college as well.
Add another adult woman and a child not yet clear of the “terrible twos” (both impacted with threats of violence) and you have a recipe for trouble. Add a large dog who chases the cat all day and you can make that a recipe for big trouble.
Being the Mom, I tried to forbear and be helpful. Try that when you have threatening calls coming in from way out west at all hours. Then the threatening husband arrived from way out west and demanded custody of his son. Then my daughter made a hurried trip out there and back.
I managed to steer my daughter through the process of obtaining a Court Order of Protection and other obvious steps to attain relative safety. (Most of these suggest more refuge than they actually deliver.)
My daughter looked for a job. I don’t have to tell you what the employment situation has been in this country recently. Without skills that are in super high demand, her job search went south.
Week after week and month after month of these living arrangements generated short tempers and sharp words.
“I can’t take this anymore,” I exploded one Saturday morning as the not-quite-three-year-old flung his breakfast around the room. Slamming the door, I headed for the community garden a block away and sat down on a bench.
Another member of the garden was busy weeding. Just watching this purposeful activity was calming. Pull and pitch, pull and pitch, imposed a regular cadence on my racing blood pressure and labored breathing.
“It’s too hot for me to stay longer,” she said after a while, passing me a bottle of water. “Are you sure you don’t want to come and get out of the sun?”
“No, I’m fine,” I lied. It was ninety-nine degrees that Saturday (one hundred four degrees Fahrenheit in Central Park) but the solitude was so therapeutic that I was oblivious to heat and humidity.
Hours passed. Blessed hours of peace. No demands. It must have been about six o’clock when my son came running through the garden gate.
“Mother, are you crazy? You’ve been gone almost eight hours! You could get heat stroke! Come back to the house at once!”
Why, oh why, did he have to interrupt my reverie?
“Come on, Mother,” he implored, pulling me up from the bench. Dumbly I half staggered along as he led me firmly by the arm. Back at the house the emotional inferno was going full throttle. My grandson was tantrumming again. Flecks of chocolate pudding decorated my once white walls.
“If this doesn’t stop, I’m going to commit suicide,” I cried in desperation.
“No, you’re not. You’re going to the doctor to get anti-stress medication,” my son and daughter chorused.
“I hate my doctor,” I retorted.
“We’ll get you a new one,” they assured. My daughter pulled out her laptop and began a search.
They actually found a woman doctor who would see me Saturday evening. Surely a woman would understand the pressure I was under.
My daughter took me to see Dr. X while my son stayed home with my grandson. My daughter took over the interview. As she quickly outlined the problem to Dr. X, I listened as though to a soap opera. I more or less became the audience. Dr. X virtually ignored me. We were in and out, complete with a prescription, in less than twenty minutes.
“I don’t want to take pills! They may have bad interactions with my blood pressure medication,” I told my children. “What I need is peace and quiet.”
I need not drag you through the whole “he said, she said” saga, but the next thing I knew we were saying these things in the hospital emergency room. Again, I was being ignored. I was admitted for observation. I am observing very closely.
