Insomnia: A Chance to Analyze My Relatives

Lately, I've been having more trouble than usual sleeping and that's saying something. I've never been a good sleeper and, before you start posting sleep remedies, I've tried them. All of them. What's worked best for me  has been Ambien, though lately that hasn't worked, so I dutifully went to the doctor and we decided to try Ambien CR. The only catch was that it turned out my insurance wouldn't cover it until I'd used up the rest of the last prescription. It didn't matter that the current medicine wasn't working and my doctor wanted me on another. My first reaction to this was an expletive. My second was to remind myself how lucky I am to have insurance at all.

That reaction is what I call the "Grandma Buhler" effect. My mom's mom was incredibly optimistic and grateful for everything she had. Give her a bad situation and she'd find a blessing in it...or two or three. A number of life experiences shaped this. One was when, as a child, she sat too close to a woodstove and caught on fire. At first, she was not expected to live, and then she spent months in a pre-WWII pediatric burn unit, enduring skin grafts and other medical tortures. I figure when you've been in a pre-WWII pediatric burn unit, most things in life seem pretty damn minor. In fact, one of my mantras for when everything seems awful is "at least it's not a pre-WWII pediatric burn unit."

This does not mean she was a Pollyanna. You know, Hayley Mills' character who asks for a doll and gets crutches and gets over her disappointment by being glad she doesn't need them. In that situation, Grandma would have been disappointed, eventually glad she didn't need them, (but still disappointed,) but she also would have realized that somebody didn't get the crutches they needed (which never seemed to occur to Pollyanna) and that would have really bugged her. She probably would have tried to track down the child who had needed the crutches. And she would have lost sleep over it.

My Grandma Roberts, my great-grandmother on the other side of the family, would have reacted differently. She would have been furious about not getting the doll, but she also would have kept the crutches, knowing with the instincts of a great--uh, packrat--that you can never have too many pairs of crutches stashed away. She also might have wanted to make sure that no one on the block had better crutches.

I remember being a small girl and finding a cane in a closet at Grandma Roberts' house. I believe it belonged to Aunt Pearl. What I can't tell you is how Aunt Pearl fit into the family or if she was even anyone's aunt. That family is kind of loose about things like that. People called "aunt" or "uncle" might really be cousins and people called "cousins" might really be nephews. Uh, yeah.

At the time, I thought it was sweet that Grandma Roberts couldn't bear to part with the cane and proof of how much she loved Aunt Pearl. Now I realize it was only part sentimental. Mostly it was the "They don't make good canes like they used to and you never know when you need one so it would be a sin to throw one out" mentality. It was like walking past a penny and not picking it up. Grandma Roberts used to tell my dad that "If you don't see the pennies, you'll never see the dollars."

Then there was my great-aunt Chick. Once, when Mom and I were living in Arizona, someone called and asked for her. I told them she wasn't there and offered to take a message. She said, "Tell her her Aunt Charlette called." (I hope I'm spelling that right...I know it was an unusual spelling. Someone remind me if I  have it wrong.) I took the message and when my mom came home, said "Since when do you have an aunt Charlette?" She said, "Oh, that's Chick. Chick hates being called Chick." I said, "Does the family know that?" and she said, "Yes, but everyone still calls her Chick anyway."

Anyway, it turns out that my great-aunt Chick (Charlette) had decided to write a book about her battle of weight loss, so called her niece the author for pointers. While I don't still have the manuscript and wish I did, it contained several hysterical stories, including one which my mom swore was "All you need to know about Aunt Chick...I mean, Charlette."

It seems one summer she and a friend decided this was it, they were losing the weight. They joined an aerobics class and twice a week they'd drop all their kids off at a babysitters, go to class, pick up the kids and then, "as a reward" go to Snelgrove's (famous Utah ice cream shop) for root beer floats. Chick (Charlette) said to my mom, in all seriousness, "Linda, I didn't miss a class that summer, and I didn't lose a pound, either." Next time I insist chocolate is a health food, remember this story. It's genetic.

Why I remember all these family stories and quirks is beyond me. Maybe part of it is because I come from two families of storytellers who also remembered them and found value in retelling them. Maybe the part of my brain that keeps track of family stories is dominant while the part that regulates sleep clearly isn't.

I can tell you that Ambien or no, I wouldn't have gotten to sleep Christmas night until all my thank you notes were done. In fact, as I crawled into bed that night, I thought, "Susan, I hope you noticed I did all my thank you notes. Ok, some were emails, but I did them all." My aunt Susan had many fine qualities, but absolutely no tolerance for late thank you notes, and she wouldn't mind waking me to get them done.

Of course, first I'd have to go to sleep....

Fragment of a Dream

in the dream, it seemed
that you were back,
trying to reclaim donated clothes and books

as you stomped your feet and shouted,
I haggled with the store owner
and with you

"I tried to warn you," I said,
"We both knew you wouldn't stay away."

"I meant to stay away," you said,
"but now I want my things."

Infinity and Jelly Donuts

In a Magnum PI episode, Magnum is shot. He hovers between life and death, watching events unfold around him, and (mostly) is unable to communicate with those he loves. He is aided by a friend, Mac, who had died a few years before. At one point, Mac, the spirit, is eating a jelly donut, and when Magnum asks him where he got it, Mac replies "Time has little to do with infinity and jelly donuts." 

Time has always been fluid to me. Past and present intermingle. My dad might say "I'm going to Salt Lake tomorrow," and I'll acknowledge it, and then the next day, I call to see where he is. Sometimes it's worse than that. Sometimes it's only two minutes later, when I say "What are your plans for tomorrow?" and he gives me that look and says in a patient and weary tone that I've come to recognize, "I'm going to Salt Lake tomorrow." And I say, "Oh. You told me that, didn't you?"

At this point, it would be convenient to point out that a major symptom of my CFS/ME (chronic fatigue syndrome, which is more properly called myalgic encephalytis) is what's called brain fog. (If you've ever had several days of insomnia, you've experienced brain fog yourself.) And it's notoriously bad for short-term memory. Still, I can't totally blame that as I've just never been an "in the moment" kind of person. Or rather, I'm more often to have my mind on a moment in the past or future as I am in the present. As a kid, I was terrible at sports partly because I couldn't concentrate on what I was doing. Or remember the rules that had just been explained to me. 

I can recall entire conversations from second grade. I have a whole etsy wishlist devoted to gifts for relatives' babies not yet conceived (but who will be). I just can't tell you if I brought in the mail today. Sometimes I'm quite sure I brought in the mail, but then I realize I'm remembering the mail from the day before. And then I go out to get the mail, it's not there, I check three more times, and my dad points out that it's Sunday. And I think, "Oh, right, Sunday," and I'm flooded with a memory of the rustle of my brother's corduroy pants as we walked to church (on a rare occasion we went to church.) I think he declared the experience of noisy pants as mortifying and refused to wear them ever again...but I was quite charmed by the sound. And then I say, "Has anyone brought in the mail today?"

My earliest memory that I can date is when I was just barely two and had pneumonia. The only thing more awful than the interminable wait in the emergency room was the result: an enormous Penicillin shot. I always thought I remembered that bigger than it was, but apparently it was indeed pretty impressive. And I remember a few months later, being a flower girl for my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Brian. In fact I remember (probably after photos) being told my part was done and I could go play, but wasn't really sure I should. What if a flower girl emergency arose? 

Speaking of which, and this shows how my mind goes from one thing to the next, when Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married, my great-grandmother and I thought it was the grandest thing ever. (I was four. My great-grandmother was forty, or at least that's what she would have told you.) While we agreed Diana's dress was lovely, we thought the flower girl dresses--taffeta with sashes--were divine. (Grandma Roberts didn't live to see the royal divorce, which is just as well, as she would have been pissed. She'd have taken Diana's side eventually, but she still would have been pissed.) 

Another problem with keeping track of time is that I talk to the spirit world as much as I do the living one. Recently, when I mentioned a conversation I had with my mother, my therapist asked me if the conversation happened before or after Mom died. She added, "I wouldn't normally ask, but I never can be sure with you." Uh, yeah. No one ever said I was dull. Forgetful, yes.....

History Revisited

During a week of tech hassles, I sought refuge in one of my favorite viewing pleasures, Colonial House. PBS did a variety of these shows: Frontier House, Texas Ranch House, Manor House, 1940s House (though that might have been the BBC.) I like and recommend all of them. (If you loved Upstairs, Downstairs, Manor House is a must see.) I watch Colonial House most often because I own it and because I love watching a Baptist minister and Berkeley theologian try to run the colony together and separately, often with too much input from the Berkeley theologian's wife. I especially adore it because, since my dad has worked in academia most of my life, I just crack up at the theologian. Even if they didn't say he was a Berkeley professor, if you had shown me his picture, I would have said "That guy has tenure somewhere, probably at Berkeley, and will speak slowly and profoundly, often about nothing." Not that all academics are like this, but there's at least one (usually more) in every department. But I digress...

Anyway, the concept of these shows is that 20th-21st century people go back and try to relive history, which makes for great t.v., though you'd never catch me actually signing up for one. (Without fail, the majority of people who sign up seem to have romantic, hazy ideas about the experience and no clue that it's going to be harder work than they'll ever see again and they will spend most of the time miserable. Why they don't realize that is beyond me.)

It also makes me wonder what people from the past would think about it. I imagine a woman on the frontier thinking, "Ok, so these people can go to a store and buy butter, put it in an appliance that keeps it cold, but they'd rather milk the cow and then churn the butter for the experience? Clearly, our descendants are stupid."

It's not that I don't see the allure of the past. In fact, I spent several years in the SCA. (Society for Creative Anachronism...you know, the people in the park dressed up like they're in the Middle Ages.) I thought it was a delightful way to spend an hour or two. And then I'd look at the really dedicated ones, those who were camping out in tents and lining up for port-a-potties, and washing up out of a bucket of water, and I'd say, "It's been really nice being medieval with you, but now I have to go home to my indoor plumbing, cable t.v., air conditioning, and Internet" --which was dial-up back then and as close to the ancient past as I ever hope to be again.

Invariably, these t.v. programs have varying success at authenticity. Manor House replicates life best, I think, which means the servants wind up hating the family they serve while the family thinks the servants adore them. Uh, yeah. They're just lucky it's not set in the French Revolution.

My beloved Colonial House participants don't do so well at becoming history. Some of them do better than others. The servants do best. But the non-servants spend a lot of time fighting over mandatory church attendance and dress codes. It is fun to watch them stake each other out (literally) and i also enjoy the representatives of two Native American tribes. The first tribe, who coordinated with the project, worry that the colonists won't make it through the winter. The second tribe, who stumble upon them, sort of hope they won't.

And I sit in my comfy recliner, eating junk food, laughing and rolling my eyes, and periodically pausing it so I can check Facebook, play Words With Friends, or add to my blog. Hmm. Three hundred years from now, is that what participants of 21st Century House will do? And will they wonder aloud how anyone survived with only a couple of hundred t.v. channels?

A Bit Of Magic

First off, let me say that this blog has not been what I expected it to be. I thought I'd blog about art--which I've done little of, but maybe I will--and thought I'd blog very little about my mom. I certainly didn't expect so many grief blogs and yet that's what I seem to write about most. All I can say is that she heavily influenced my life and still does. I guess that's part of it, too...when I'm not missing her like crazy, I'm caught up in the magic of still feeling connected to her.

A few days ago, I was sorting through books, looking for the next volume in a mystery series. While I kept most of her book collection, Mom would be quick to point out that I have not kept them in good order. She went to a lot of trouble to sort by author and subject. With me, well, books are lucky if they get back on a shelf and not just in a stack on the floor or, worse, under my bed. (I think that's where my copy of Quiet: The Power of Introversion is, though I haven't been brave enough to look for it just yet.)

Anyway, I was looking for the next book in a mystery series, and came across The Grass Dancer by Susan Power. What struck me was how worn it was. Granted, it's a paperback, but to be that worn, she must have read it a dozen times. And actually I remember seeing it on her bed, or in her hand, or on the shelf, but I don't remember us ever discussing it. Maybe we did and maybe she encouraged me to read it, but....I just don't remember it.

So I started reading it and fell in love with this novel set on the Sioux reservation with multiple points of view, including several generations of women in one family, and laced with magic.

I admit it's been bittersweet. I keep wishing I had read it years ago, so I could have discussed it with her. On the other hand, mostly I feel like I've stumbled upon a gift.

October 15th: Then and Now

When I was very little, October was about cool nights, falling leaves, and the countdown to Halloween. The year I was eight, October exploded, and echoed for years to come.

On the morning of October 15 1985, a man named Steve Christensen picked up a package outside his office and a woman named Kathy Sheets picked one up outside her garage. Neither could have expected that they were holding pipe bombs which would kill them instantly.

At the time, my mom was a reporter for the Deseret News in Salt Lake. My dad, a historian, worked at Weber State University in Ogden. Neither knew Steve or Kathy, though they knew people who did.  I'm driving myself crazy trying to piece together that day for them, but....I keep reminding myself not to, just to stay on my part of the story.

The only thing I remember clearly, was the warning--I think from my mom, calling from a loud and chaotic newsroom--that my siblings and I should not pick up or go near any boxes. We heard it again the next day, when another bomb exploded, seriously injuring Mark Hofmann, a dealer in Mormon historical documents.

My memory of the days and weeks later are a blur of news reports, phone calls, and conversations (which sometimes interested me and sometimes didn't) as apparently-normal Mark Hofmann turned out to be the bomber as well as a  forger. An energy--an odd mixture of stress and adrenaline--settled in our house and changed things in big and little ways. My mom left her job at the Deseret News to co-author a book about the case and for years wherever she went it seemed someone wanted to ask her about it of tell her about their connection to it.

In little ways, long after the warning was lifted, I remained hesitant to pick up boxes. I also learned to hate the song "My Favorite Things." (While the bombs were not tied up in strings, they were most definitely brown paper packages.) In fact, I learned to hate--or at least dread--pretty much anything to do with the case. And for decades, I had nightmares about Mark Hofmann, even after I learned to decipher those dreams and saw they had nothing to do with him. He was just the face my unconscious slapped on anything stressful or frightening.

Some years as October 15th rolled around, I was aware of it, and some I wasn't. Sometimes, when a story or conference about the case was announced, I'd roll my eyes and wonder what was left to say. Any time, I heard about a new historical document being found, I'd wonder if it was a Hofmann. And I'd feel anxiety swell in my gut.

My therapist--come on, you had to know there was some therapy here--assured me I could desensitize myself to it. I sort of believed her, but put that off into the future and dealt with more practical things. And somehow doing that, I undid the dark energy I'd carried so long. I didn't even realize it until I found myself watching an episode of "Who The Bleep Did I Marry" (a most excellent show) featuring Hofmann's ex-wife. They went to file footage and there was Hofmann himself. I looked at the boogeyman of my childhood and felt nothing, except mild curiosity.

Nothing is a hundred percent, I guess, because a few days later, I walked down the driveway to get the mail. I stopped and glanced up at the sky and mountains and thought "What a gorgeous day." And as I bent to pick up the package under the mailbox, I shivered, wondering if that had been Steve's or Kathy's last thought.

The Elephant Graveyard

When elephants come across the bones of another elephant, the whole herd stops, reaching out their trunks to smell, then lift each bone, passing them one to another, searching it for identity and memories, rumbling softly. It starts with the matriarch of the herd--for elephants follow the oldest and wisest female--and goes to the youngest calf. Only when each has searched the bones, do they go on.

I do this myself in a way, not with bones, but with memories, fragments of stories, and vibes of loved ones who have died, even if, like tonight/today it's 4 a.m., and I need to sleep, but I'm too busy trying to remember a particular conversation, not just the words, but the inflections of their speech, the expression on their faces, what they said and what went unsaid but heard, and what I might have heard then, but couldn't understand until now.

2010...no, I have to go back to 2009, when a cousin committed suicide, and stunned the family. We reeled into the angry and baffled grief specific to suicide. (One of the lessons I took from Matthew's death was that whole side of the family--myself included-- is way too stoic and stoicism can be deadly. You have to be willing to call out in pain so that the herd can rush to help.) Later in the year, my aunt Susan's cancer went from "we can treat this" to "there's nothing more we can do." At the same time, my mom's illness and chronic pain worsened, leaving us desperate to hold on to her, but wondering how much she would have to endure.

In the last few months of Susan's life, I could barely even process what was happening. I was so focused on caring for my mom, so afraid that this loss would take what strength she had left. My mom and Susan were born fifteen months apart and died less than three months apart. After my mom died, over and over, I'd think "I need to call Susan" and then I remembered I couldn't, and reality hit me so hard that I sank to my knees. Somehow we had lost them both in that short span of time and they took with them so much knowledge and wisdom and history.....the thought of it was unbearable.

In 2012,  I feel like maybe I have my feet under me again, and then I'll have a night when I roll over, waking from one dream and before sliding into another, I find myself back in the elephant graveyard, remembering fragments of a conversation, trying to keep the words in order, straining to recall if something unspoken slipped in among them, like an elephant searching for the wisdom of matriarchs who made this journey before me.