Seven Day Mental Diet: Day Seven-Revisions

Day seven of the Seven Day Mental Diet, and, I’ve learned some things:

I’ve learned that being, and remaining, in a positive frame of mind requires work and attention.

Accordingly, I’ve learned that the course, when darkened, can be corrected with relative ease, when aware of your thoughts.

I’ve remembered that, with effort, there is almost always something positive to be found in any situation, and that there is merit in the search, as there are benefits to everyone involved.

I am reminded of the freedom inherent in experiencing real feelings, and in welcoming the journey, and the lesson.

Over the course of the last week, I have cried a little more often, and I have whistled, gaily. I have looked for opportunities to praise and felt appreciation from those who must have wondered if I would ever notice…

I have remembered not to worry, in a time when there is much to worry about.

And, just as the author promised, on day seven, a positive outlook comes much more naturally to me than before this experiment.

The door opens on a blast of cold air,

and you.

A relative peace, tended by careful attention, endures.

You speak, I listen, as you share your appreciation of the warmth with which I surround myself.

And, this is how it is…today.

Seven Day Mental Diet: Day Four-Surrender

As challenges go, today rates right up there…
Beth Hart wailed me to a good start, and as I exited my car in a driving downpour in order to pump gas, I anticipated the opportunity to “fluff” the raindrops into my hair, accentuating the “bed-head” look I had embraced on hearing the weather forecast.
Rhonda Byrne purred in my ear, between guitar riffs, and time stood still, once again.
The morning went swimmingly. As a controlled chaos persisted in my periphery, I was neither needed, nor involved, and managed to complete a trying Sudoku while ferrying telephone calls.
Curry, for lunch, was the perfect antidote to the dreary landscape outside the office windows. I finished, with fifteen minutes of my self-imposed time limit to spare, and used the time to check in on friends.
And then it began…

As my chair rolled to a stop in front of the telephone, it began to ring, and the noise didn’t let up for the next three hours. As soon as I disconnected my head-set with a promise to fax requested information, the ringing began, again. A yellow legal pad/desk blotter/armrest filled quickly, with the names and demographic information of prospective clients, and, as I struggled to keep all their balls in the air, the “right” side of my brain appreciated the interest, while the “wrong” side wondered when I would have time to satisfy all their demands.
One particularly eager client called five times in less than an hour. I memorized his telephone number, without effort, as it repeatedly paraded across my Caller ID, and, on seeing it, yet again, I squelched the desire to tell him he had absolutely no chance of qualifying; choosing, instead, to press “hold” as I collected my positive wits about me.
As the “big” hand on the clock over my desk creeped towards freedom, I turned my thoughts to the evening, and my son’s basketball game.
“Got a game tonight!”, I called through a co-worker’s open office door. “I’m hoping for another double-digit game!”
“Cool!”, he answered without raising his head. “Good luck!”
Pewter colored clouds, floating overhead, promised more precipitation, as I rolled to a stop, in rush-hour traffic. I remembered the forecast, and hoped the dark clouds would hang around long enough for the temperature to drop, while making a mental note to warn my northernmost friends of the darkness blowing their way. And later, while riding the passenger seat, on the way to the gym, I clutched my jacket about me, while thrilling at the obviously plummeting temperature, and the continuing chance of snow.
Sharing a spot along the gym wall with friends I hadn’t seen since football season ended, I readied my camera. As I positioned it, in anticipation of a “moment”, my friend leaned in to point out how short our players were in comparison to the other team. I smiled, benignly, while setting up the shot.

Play ensued, and our sons’ challenges became quickly apparent. Unfortunately, they had nothing to do with height. The score became lopsided, long before the halftime break, and I cringed at the expression on my son’s sweaty face, while determining to remind him of the importance of positive leadership after the game was over.
As we exited the gym, I drew my jacket closer, and lowered my head against what I hoped were snow-bearing winds. My son and I danced anxiously, outside the SUV, while his father/coach gave a trite-ridden, post-game speech to a supportive mother.
Three car doors slammed with emphasis, obscuring the first few words of my son’s post-game diatribe. A team-mate, touting an as yet unproven pedigree, had loudly announced his intention to quit the team. I listened as the two of them shared their experiences and opinions on the night’s activity.
A jar of peanut butter sat beside a sheaf of buttery crackers on the holiday-themed placemat in front of him. My son’s hand disappeared inside the peanut butter jar as I took a seat at the table beside him, while his father retraced his steps, in search of his jacket. Their conversation continued, as though uninterrupted, as I waited for a pause.

“Found it!” Roger’s call came from an adjacent room.
“You need a defense.”, I ventured.
Shane chewed as his father re-entered the room with purposeful, rubber-soled strides.
“Do you run plays?”, I asked. “I didn’t see plays. Do you have any?”
Roger’s head dropped to one hand as he slid onto a padded wooden chair.
“They won’t do it.”, he answered. “I tried. They won’t do it. Did you hear me calling “three”? That’s a play.”
“It’s a “pick-and-roll”, right?” Shane’s voice begged for confirmation.
“What about half-time?”, I asked, while re-running visions of seven aimless eleven year-olds, heaving the ball at the goal, in a game of “Me, first”.
“You can’t introduce plays at half-time!” The face Roger lifted from his hand was florid. “There’s not enough time! You don’t do that!” He paused to reposition his head inside his hand, while moving, from frustration, to defeat. “I tried.”
“Ok, so it’s only the second game of the season, and you’ve given up trying to teach plays?”, I asked.
“Mom!” This time, Shane spoke through a mouthful of butter-coated crackers. “He stopped after the second practice!”
“They don’t get it.”, Roger finished.
“I’ve seen it done.” My voice was resolute; full of experience, positive, and sure.
“When?” Roger rose up, placing his hands upon the table.
“Mandledove.”, I answered, simply, sedately; invoking the name of a former coach.
Rising to his full-while-seated height, color filled his face, and his voice, and frustration, flowed from his mouth.
“I’m sick of hearing about Mandledove! So, I suck!” He sucked a breath. “I suck at coaching.”

Numbers floated across the surface of my mind as I struggled to decide, at which point in puberty, his maturation had stunted.
“You’re a good coach, Dad.” Shane’s voice, free of buttery debris, remained weak, and indecisively supportive.
And, I watched, as a fifty-year-old man gave up, while an eleven-year-old boy struggled to determine the difference between what was real and what was important; and, I learned.
I learned that a positive outlook must be desired before it can be obtained.
And, with that, I raised my hand, in the universal sign of surrender, before training my eyes upon my son.
“Two minutes until shower time.”

Seven Day Mental Diet: Day Two-Attention

“I stole the outside
Runnin’ into the sun
I ‘m alive
I’m loud, as a golden gun
I killed my pride
So once again I’d see

Live and learn
You’ve fallen, one thousand times
I feel the burn
There’s fire from a crazy sky
I sealed concern
So once again I’d be

[Chorus]
And it lifts you up
Then it puts you down
And it feeds you life
Then it lets you drown
While it holds your heart
Then it slowly tears you apart
And you know – that life is what I mean”

For the last several weeks, these words have jump-started my work-day. As Beth Hart slides into my CD player, “Lifts You Up” draws me in with guitar chords before pulsing, staccato drumbeats drive my hands against the steering wheel. Midway through the song, I’m dancing in the driver’s seat and singing at the top of my lungs. It depends on the day; some days, once is enough, others, like this morning, for instance, it takes three plays.

It was a late night, as are so many; making the sound of the alarm nothing more than a harsh reminder of the cold conditions outside my flannel cocoon. I rise, finally, allowing myself thirty minutes to complete a morning ritual that requires a minimum of forty-five. As I race about the house, my eye strays to an array of clocks in a variety of rooms, until, shrugging on my jacket, one last glance assures me I will be at least fifteen minutes late for work.
Strapped in, I man the wheel with one hand and crank the volume with the other. My toe taps the gas pedal in anticipation of rousing drumbeats, as I muse, again, on the lateness of my departure. The first red-light catches me, and as I sit, and tap, and finger the steering wheel, Rhonda Byrne’s soothing tones flow in underneath Beth’s growl, and I remember.

There is an entire passage in “The Secret” dealing with time, and its relativity to our existence. Quite honestly, when listening to it, this portion of the book is usually scrambled by the white noise that plays in my brain whenever numbers are required to understand a maxim. Fortunately, Ms. Byrne chose to illustrate her point with a life situation I experience on a regular basis, as she suggests an alternative to worrying about time. Following her suggestion, I remind myself, over and over again, to mentally repeat the following mantra, which I still hear in a lovely Australian accent: “I have MORE than enough time.” And, this morning, my one and a quarter hour trip was completed in one hour. This is not the first time this has happened, and, after today, it will not be the last.

I must admit, day two of my The Seven Day Mental Diet did not go as swimmingly as the first. As Joy related her husband’s disappointment in a vacation cancelled by economic forecasts, I found myself leaning forward, eager to share my own war story. As my co-workers sniped about a particularly difficult customer, I threw in my two cents, without a second thought. And on the way home, as I rolled in behind another weary commuter, I eyed the streams of glowing red lights in front of me, and realized rush-hour traffic was compounded by its proximity to a popular shopping mall and Christmas sales.

It was while bemoaning my sad state to an unfortunate caller that I realized how far I had strayed from my original goal, and I immediately slung one leg back over the saddle. Since that time, despite unruly dogs, the realization that my son’s cellphone is, indeed, dead, and math homework, I have maintained a positive outlook. And, I have learned….
I have realized that, for me, maintaining a positive outlook will require fervent attention; that while sneaking a glance at a clock I must remind myself that “I have MORE than enough time”. And, when friends invoke the misery of their days, I can smile knowingly, without comment, before leaving them to their travails. And, when a particularly unhappy customer bends my ear, I can picture them as they are; sad, lonely, in need of an audience.

Knowledge

Judging by the color of them, the ceiling tiles must have been recently replaced. The walls, unevenly covered by some kind of plaster and patched in several places, unsuccessfully blocked noises from surrounding exam rooms. There was a screw missing on a panel near the ceiling that might once have featured a clock. The glass covering an innocuous aluminum-framed print needed washing.

I began to feel the chill of institutionally gray tiles through my thin cotton tee shirt, and realized the danger must have passed. To my right, viewed between assorted steel railings supporting the bed between us, the P.A.’s navy-pinstriped legs moved slightly with her efforts. Her shoes were expensively sensible. I admired her slacks; the hang of them, the color, the fine weave of the fabric from which they’d been fashioned. I wanted to ask where she’d found them, but worried I might not be heard from my vantage point on the floor beside the bed.

I considered getting up, as the floor seemed to grow colder every minute I lay there. I eyed my jacket, draped across the back of the ridiculously uncomfortable chair I’d ridden for the better part of three hours.

“You ok down there?” Her Midwestern accented voice carried no judgment.

“Yeah, I’m good.” I answered, making the decision to stay put for the time being.

The sight of his sweat-pant covered legs, dangling as they did, from a gaping hole in the ceiling, alarmed me. All sorts of maternal recriminations sprouted inside my head, and I kept them there, knowing he would consider me unnecessarily concerned, and motherly. I approached with pursed lips in anticipation of cradling the box of ornaments he would hand down, and was met, instead, with a rain of limbs. He recalls his foot slipping from the ladder he meant to jump upon. I remember a slow-motion, herky-jerky, free-fall during which my mind immediately began to catalogue possible injuries.

As my brain continued its seamless shift into “medical-mode”, I watched the way his feet met the floor and felt sure he’d done no lasting damage. He plopped to a half-sitting/half-crouching position against the wall. Raising up as I bent towards him, he held one arm with the other hand, and below that was something I’d seen only in well-worn textbooks. I immediately bent his arm at the elbow, in an effort to close the gash.

Surreally, images of pioneer women rending their skirts flashed across my brain, before training took over again, and I envisioned the gridwork of veins and arteries snaking through that part of the human arm. I had no skirt to rend. The size of the dressing seemed most important to me as I envisioned wrapping towels of every size around his arm. Discarding each of them as too bulky, I raced through the house in the direction of the rag bag. Grabbing the telephone on my way back, I dropped it twice, before successfully dialing 911.

I raced back and forth around him following, implicitly, the instructions given by the emergency operator.

“Do I have to sit here?”, he asked from his puddle of blood.

“Well…” I hesitated, conjuring something akin to a “scene of the crime” kind of vibe.

He drew his legs up to rise.

“No! Wait!” Seeing he was determined, I helped him up, observing, as taught, for any changes in his gait.

I planted him on a chair in the kitchen.

“Hey? Can you get my cigarettes and coffee?”

Complying, I placed them before him as diffused strobe lights began to play in the next room, and removed them as quickly as I’d lain them down.

“It’s not cool to meet paramedics with your cigarettes and coffee between you.”

After opening the door, I left them to their ministrations, tempered with cheerful holiday banter. They were good at what they did.

The house was quiet again. The lights continued to play while they settled him inside the rig. I took the puppy out to feed him.

An insistent rapping against glass caught my attention and I fixed my expression on my way to meet the curious neighbors I’d been expecting. Robert lives next door.

“Yeah…” The word was jovial, coming from my smile.

“Uh, look, he wants to ask you something.” This was not what I had expected. “You know, I was just coming to make sure you were alright, and he stopped me. He wants some things from the bedside table, and he wants to ask you something.”

“Ok…thanks.”

“Let me know if you need anything…”

They had him strapped onto the gurney under very bright lights. He wore the grin that always means “I need you but you’re not going to like it.”

“Did you know that if I don’t ride, there’s no charge?”

I looked at the paramedic manning the door.

“Really?”

He inclined his head.

“Yep. Joe here’s not even gonna ride in back with him. He’s only a 3 out of 3. I mean if he’d been a 10 out of 10…but he’s only a 3 out of 3.” There was a hint of apology in his voice.

I marveled, silently, at the notion that the fuel required to drive a person to the hospital had more value than medical services rendered on site, before looking again into the jarringly bright light.

The grin had widened.

“Well, sure. I can drive you….sure. Let me get some things…We’ll take your car, you’re not comfortable in mine.” Most of this was thrown over my shoulder as I hurried back inside.

“God! You just seem miserable! You’re making me miserable! Just go home!” As he said it, from his perch on a bed in the middle of a room that, at least gave the look of being sterile, he turned his head away slightly.

“You know? Here’s the thing. It’s a problem of too much knowledge. It’s knowing that while we’re in here for hour upon hour, they are out there talking about what they served for Thanksgiving and flirting with the maintenance man they called to fix a drawer that won’t open, and they don’t care. It’s just a job, you know? I mean, they don’t mean to be disrespectful, but it’s just like you in your office. You visit right? You walk down the hall and talk to Chris or Steve, right? And you think nothing of it. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got reports on your desk that need editing. You’re bored. You walk down the hall. It’s the same here. And most people don’t know it, but I do, and I just want to go out there and say “Hey! I had plans here! My son is away for four days and I had plans tonight! This was supposed to be my night! Can we hurry things up here? Can you flirt with the guy from maintenance tomorrow maybe?”” Spent, I stopped.

Save for the sounds of a lift being pushed on a bed next door, and the beeps from a portable x-ray unit, and the sound of high heels on tile, and a rough-hewn voice that sounded like a maintenance man’s calling playfully, “Hey, come here!”, it was silent inside the room until the P.A. stepped inside.

After introducing herself she set about gathering supplies and began her work; the picture of kind efficiency. Holding a vial containing clear colored liquid over her head, she inserted a needle of some proportion, explaining that the lidocaine would “deaden the area”. I saw his sharp intake of breath as the needle disappeared behind his body and felt expected to do something. Averting my eyes as I approached the bed, I took his other hand.

“Here, squeeze this.”

I stood, and he squeezed for several minutes, before the back of my knees began to tingle. I bent them slightly as taught in chorus so many years ago and focused on an array of buttons set in the opposite wall. The buttons, and even the wall, itself, became cloudy and I attempted to will it away by blinking. When I realized I could no longer hear the cheerfully kind banter of the P.A., I patted his hand, explaining I should sit down. As I struggled with consciousness, I remembered the coolness of a tile floor, and I climbed off my chair, hoping no one would notice.

Rain sheared across the windshield as I struggled to make out faded lines in the road.

“What was that about?” His speech still carried Dilaudid. “You were a nurse!”

“Now, you know.”

“What? What do I know?”

“You know the real reason I didn’t want to come.”

“But you were a nurse! You saw things like that all the time! How did you do it?”

“It’s different…when the outcome affects the picture you carry in your head, of your life.”

We rode in silence for several minutes before he spoke again.

“Did I imagine it, or did you tie a dust-rag around my arm?”

“So from the beginning the fight we were winning…”

We are not, generally speaking, a family of tradition…

Quilts and afghans, created by my great-grandmother, out of a sense of need rather than an expression of creativity, draped the top of a battered box of castaways, labeled for curb-side pick up. Decades-old ceramic dinner plates, depicting a green-hued scene of men in powdered wigs and frock-coats, were discarded as soon as the cardboard box containing geometrically patterned stoneware was opened. My favorite jelly glass, the one depicting Fred Flintstone piloting his ragtop, is gone.

For years, we shared holiday dinners with a family of Chicagoan transplants, who preferred butter over margarine, and felt like pickled peaches were a viable food choice. Until, we didn’t.

Understandably, I was flummoxed, when upon herding my burgeoning family around the massive, dark-stained dining table of my youth, a request was made for a show of gratitude. One-by-one, each anticipatory diner rattled off an item for thanksgiving. A furtive glance told me I was fourth in line. My mind fractured; one side struggled with personal performance, while the other hoped my children wouldn’t embarrass me, or, worse yet, themselves. Blessedly, we all managed to extrapolate an acceptable offering, and I made a mental note to never come unprepared, again.

For several years, we took our seats and racked our brains, as steam wafted off the stuffing. Until, we didn’t.

Today, as I danced about my kitchen to a soundtrack only I could hear, I adjusted my earphones with one hand, stirred a cheese sauce with the other, and found myself wishing someone would ask the question. For once; I am prepared.

This has not been an easy year for me. In March, I lost my best friend. He had red hair, and a goofy smile, and, as far as he was concerned, the sun rose, and set, in my eyes. He died peacefully; but, he died. Hundreds of dollars spent to insure his comfort afforded me little solace as I stood over him, willing that breath not be his last.

Two of my sons lost their jobs, and their home, in one fell swoop. For a mother, it doesn’t get any harder than this. The fact that their change of fate was hastened by a cherished family member only sweetened the blow….

I began work as a hospice volunteer this year. Within two months of my first visit I had lost two patients. Death is not an easy thing to see. “Natural causes” render a person to a most unnatural state.

Personally, I continue to ride a roller coaster I seem to have ridden so long, that the foam-enhanced seats carry a permanent imprint of my ass. And still, I grab the roll bar, finger rusty metal exposed by fidgeting fingers chipping paint, roll my lips back, and meet the rushing wind, helter-skelter.

And..it’s alright….

The roller coaster is mine to ride, or not. No matter how many times I stand on queue to ride it, it always stops. Sooner, or later, it rolls to a stop, laden with fading screams; and, as I dismount, it is my decision whether or not to rejoin the queue.

After two months of ambivalent effort, I took a leave of absence from hospice work. I have only one patient of the original three, and, some days, I am sure she will outlive me. As I stop to focus on other things, I pray she will know me upon my return.

Both of my sons found new careers. One is happy, and one, his mother’s son, works hard at it, every day.

And, tomorrow, Murphy comes to live with me. He won’t be Otis. He couldn’t be. But, he might be my best friend.

Twelve years ago, I was handed a prescription for anti-depressants, which I immediately filled with all the enormity the diminutive, curly-locked doctor imported.

“Bad” days became less bad.

“Good” days, became colorless.

I’ve tried, many times, to handle life on my own terms, only to find her overbearing…until I didn’t.