life happens

A soft breeze rolls off my arms as I sit under the maho trees, I am lulled into my lighter self. The one that can withstand the blows, the doubts, the weather of what I can't control. This version of myself is calm on the outside, and inside. She breathes in the hot air coming off of the sand and keeps her cool just by gazing at the turquoise water, only feet in front of her. Her toes are starting to dapple in response to the sun's reliable dance towards the horizon and the seagrape's too-tall branches. She creeps back, away from the water, like a crab seeking its hole in the dark. These moments of glittery stillness are her own sort of homecoming- a weaving back together, a formidable embrace. She knows this steadfastness is fleeting, and yet the lighter self wants nothing more than to bathe in the elements that keep her afloat, even if she is still, technically, on the ground.

Just one more trip, one more overnight in an airport hotel is all, or so I thought. Get Harry to Miami International Airport the night before for his 7:30am flight to Minneapolis and back on a 11:11am plane to St. Thomas. This was last week. Plans change, life happens.

Upon landing at MIA (don't miss the double meaning) with Harry for our quick overnight , Dave called me and shared that my mom was in the hospital. "...tests, MRI normal, EKG normal, BAC high. Foggy. Agitation. Restraints. P/T... it's unclear, but they think it could be withdrawal." One foot in front of the other, that's all I could do with the news. Exit baggage claim, retrieve big gray suitcase, find shuttle to hotel, check in, put things in room, Uber to Target for the items Harry had left in the backpack he'd switched out of at the last minute- headlamp, batteries, Mio, stamps, stationary. Breathe. She's being taken care of.

Walking through the automatic doors into the land of red & white, the land of plenty and everything else, I have my list. Find row E28. As we walk through streams of brightly colored summer dresses towards "Sporting Goods" Harry stops. "Did you see that? Those two guys didn't have ears." No, I didn't see them. My head was in a matrix of abundance and missings and lists and worries and should's. No, I didn't see the men without ears. Find row E28.

We did it, Harry and me. We got his things and we made it back to the hotel. We ate our cold Chipotle and the bag of Twizzlers that screamed at us the loudest from the candy row in our shopping vortex. I made no decisions. I set the alarm. I let my heart be hollow. Harry snored. I fell asleep to a bad movie on my iPhone.

The next morning, Harry boarded the plane first. Unaccompanied Minors have their privileges. 6:48am. My thirteen year old baby boy knew his mom was doing her best to keep it together in the midst of her own mother's situation. He sensed that a Pandora's box had opened for me, but there was nothing going to stop him from his annual escape act for one month of summer. Even though my heart hurt to see him go, I was grateful for where he was going- far away from the decisions that faced me as I waited until his plane left the gate.

While my nephew at age 7 is a great negotiator, I'm a great dissociator at 47. When crisis hits the normal response is to fight, flight, freeze and appease- I float. I lose particles of myself that hover and sink, expand and shrink. The metaphorical bomb goes off and my adrenaline gets fueled by powerlessness and anxiety, just like everyone else's. Before I can figure out how to get from plan A to plan B, pieces of me dissolve and spread around my body, as if a shield to halt the intake of too much information all at once- the one hit , the one swallow, the one wave. I become fractured- millions of little pieces work to re-home into the being of what just was. Me. This was a skill I learned a long time ago, when my safety and security were tested too much for a young, too young, girl. But this learned osmosis to diffusion and back again dance of my own making seems to serve me just the same. While a new reality pours into my psyche, I neither act or react but assimilate within. I gather the confused parts and nurture them back to a steadiness that I can manage, smoothing out their frenetic ripples into a cloak of action.

While the metaphorical explosion had happened 1,300 miles away, choices had to be made, courses set. Gate D16. Do I go back to St. Thomas and get my things? (I had only packed for a night, and poorly at that.) Or do I continue on to Connecticut? My mom was stable, but she was getting itchy. She wanted to go home, ignoring or forgetting the words the doctor had said about the shock to her system having been caused by too much alcohol in her system. Her seizure?, stroke?, confused state?, while untraceable to modern machines, could only be identified as one sip too many. The hospital couldn't keep her for "too much alcohol in her system." I weighed the options and saw the sands falling through the hourglass. I rerouted my ticket to JFK.

"She can't go home," my therapist friend told me forcibly over the phone. While I had studied "Alcoholism and Family Systems" in grad school, when you're intertwined with an alcoholic for all of your adult life, let alone your youth in a darker and scarier way, the protocols for next steps get foggy. While I am not estranged from my mother, I have had to build thick boundaries around my heart, protecting the wounds and my family for obvious reasons. But these four words were the fuel I needed to know what action to take. She can't go home. I shared them with my family- my brother-in-law who was at the hospital communicating with the doctors and the social worker; my mother's husband who had brought her to the hospital after the episode and was communicating with the doctor; my youngest sister who was home with her young kids just out of school for summer vacation and visiting my mom as she could; my middle sister who was traveling with her family and many time zones away; my husband who was working his fireman skills trying to figure out what fire to put out. The magic that happens when a bomb goes off- people come together.

4:30pm. I walk into Greenwich Hospital and find my way to the pulmonary patient wing. She's in room 256-1. She's sitting on the bed, dressed in her white capris, 1.5" inch heals, a black long sleeved shirt and her Hermes belt. Her bag is packed. She sees me walk through the door and maybe, just maybe, understands that the events prior to this point aren't able to be minimized, ignored, put aside. She's a small, frail, cloudy version of herself weathered down by 2 nights in the hospital and no booze in her system. I don't know what she said exactly- those parts are still circling in my own ethos and yet to return- but it was along the lines of "You're here/You came" not quite a question, not quite a statement.

One of the reasons I didn't want to fly up to Greenwich was because I didn't want to be the one who looked like she could get things done, the helper in the chaos. I didn't want the role of director or parent. I'd tried at least 5 interventions with and without my sisters over the last 20 years to get my mom to stop drinking. I'd given up on the thought that she might. All of us had. And there I was. Last chance. Best efforts. Showing up was all I could do. She can't go home.

(Moments after I arrived we got the news that somehow my brother-in-law had convinced the doctor to keep her in the hospital for one more night, one more night to figure out our/her next step.) I gave my mom a hug and told her I had come because I was worried about her, that I cared about her. 6:17pm. Time moved slowly as she ate her ravioli and tried to drink seltzer water. The formidable bed consumed her as she took small bites, all the while Fox News played on the bed's speaker. When she finished I rubbed her feet with moisturizer and helped her put on the hospital's sticky tread socks. She stayed in the bed. She didn't try to leave. At some point when a nurse came in, we said our good night's and I love you's. I left.

After the day I'd just lived, my tired heart worked its pulse to a low enough count so my brain couldn't fire with might or purpose. Slept came and went, but at least it came. I got out of bed at dawn, not quite clear of where or who I was. The borrowed clothes, the queen sized bed, the chirps of robins and cardinals. Bright. Blue. Day. Go time.

We had found a "bed" at a treatment facility in Pennsylvania- the we didn't include my mother or her husband- and I told my brother-in-law that I was worried about driving to PA with both of them. All I could see was my mother either refusing to get out of the car or seeing both she and Skip taking off like little kittens once we arrived at the facility unable to be herded back to the next step. Mike said he was happy to be my wing man.

Where minutes felt like hours, my sister went to my mom's house and packed the items from the packing list and brought it to the hospital. We were still waiting on on the discharge papers when Sabrina came up to the room to meet us for one group huddle. 5 of us. Masks off. Truth and hurt and pain and love. Eyes, noses, mouths, wrinkles- making their case. As if each of us were reaching into my mom's heart with our words to keep it pumping, to keep the life going, firm and yet tender. Ready for the next step we took the next step and, in a flow-state kind of way, we left Greenwich Hospital on the still bright. blue.day and my mom got into the backseat with Skip. A petit, stubborn and powerful passenger with her oldest daughter at the wheel taking her to a place she'd never been, or dreamed of going.

...My mom is still at the facility. It's been 8 days. She hasn't left yet, though she tells us she's not going to stay the recommended 45 days. We can't force her. We've done our work, now it's her time, for the time being.

And, here I am. On this island in the helter swealter of summer and surprises, settling into the dynamic rhythms of what I can handle, and not control. My edges, my boundaries, my heart all tested meet the sometime breezes, the pearly thrasher's morning call, the rare loose rain. I swim with Elsa, I watch Survivor with Hugh, I walk with Dave. I teach and ground with my students, grateful for the purpose and the anchoring to something I love. I text my mother. I call my sisters. And when I get under the bamboo sheets, there are dreams and sweat and letting go's of keeping it all together. Like the water that continues to meet our rocky shore below, I weather the weather. Floating, sinking, swirling, rising.

With love and light,

St. Sunshine