Sitting in my chair, freshly brewed coffee in my mug, I’m staring out across the trees shrouded in fog. Staring into space is one of my luxuries in that brief time from just a few minutes before dawn until it’s time to rouse out the rest of the family, all belonging to other parents.

‘This is good,’ my internal dialogue goes, ‘this is a simple life.’ I no more think that until my mental eraser comes out. There is nothing simple or straight-forward in rural Tennessee. Certainly not the road that carries us the twenty-two miles from Lee and Dorothy Crabtree’s lovely home to the Morgan-Scott project. Nothing simple in planning meals, or construction projects, when it might well be thirty miles one way to get supplies. Living here, near the top of the ridge on Sawmill Road, is way more complex than my urban life back home.

‘Why don’t you stay home and work on homes in your city, and sleep in your own bed?’ says one of my distant friends. Why, indeed. There’s certainly a need for volunteer work in Lansing. For me, it’s the people. The spirit within our hosts who have graciously given us this basement apartment for a week, the spirit within Ella and Bill, Junior and Crystal, Pastor Tom. Each giving of themselves to care for others, a sense of generosity that flows deeply in all they do.

Almost always we are overwhelmed by the generosity of the homeowner’s whose homes we are working on. Jack and Doris, 91 and 88 respectively, who made lunch-time dinner for five people they have never met, nor likely to see again. We did the very best work we could do on the 4×8 deck, and 4×10 ramp. These wooden parts are put together with care so that Jack and Doris will be able get in and out of their home safely.

The roads in this neck of the woods are twisty-turny, requiring your full attention even when you’re sweaty and tired from working in the hot and humid weather. Google Maps tells me that our commute would take over three hours from our home away from home, to our worksites, and the project. There’s some eight thousand feet of uphill, and over eight thousand feet down. Get out your road atlas and look at I-75 from Kentucky into Tennessee. Most maps show this area that we laughed, cried and sweat from our eyes to our toes as empty space. This is not a simple life, no, far from a simple life. But for a week or two, every year or two, this becomes my life and my home.

 

My readers will remember my surprise weight loss and my anxiety about getting the test results back. I got some of the blood work results, just what was outside of parameters. (I am hopeful to get the full results to how the other things fit together with previous tests over the years) My fasting glucose was was higher than it’s been – 115, so my doctor and I will decide what we can do to lower that. My Vitamin D level was high as well – should be since I’ve been on a large dose every day for nine months. Cutting back on the supplement will solve that issue.

All in all, good news.

But what I am mainly feeling anxious about is going to Tennessee today to work with the Morgan-Scott Project. It’s a little unreasonable to feel anxious, but nevertheless I feel it. I was there with a group from my church, Edgewood United Church. it was hot, as it often is, and we had opted to stay in a house that was loaned to us and had air conditioning. Unfortunately, there was a small roof leak that made a corner of our bedroom wet, and there was mold in the air conditioning ducts. That combined with the previous week’s work in a house where the floor joists had rotted into the ground had set me up. It set me up for a nighttime asthma attack that had me questioning if I was going to be able to breathe another breath.

Anxious is something I do really well. I guess that’s something for me to work on. Cognitively, I know I’m staying in a different place, and I’ve got a rescue inhaler, so there will be no problem in Tennessee.

Same with my health, rationally I know that I am in good health and these are minor bumps compared to what I’ve already faced in life, but still…. and that’s the time for closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. And another. And another.

I know that the anxiety isn’t helpful, and most, sometimes, occasionally, I can let it go. Things usually turn out the way they are going to turn out without my fretting.

Time for another deep breath.

I purchased a copy of Parker Palmer’s new book: ON the BRINK of EVERYTHING. It’s a slow read for me, one, because I’m savoring it, and two, because I’m taking time to feel the words and let them take me to the weeping places.

Palmer is clearly an avid reader, and has selected poems, not of his own, but of others, that say what needs to be said. Jeanne Lohmann writes in her poem, Invocation, words that resonate within me: “Our words are feathers that fly on our breath. Let them go in a holy direction.” Words are feathers. Let that sink in.

Next, Palmer selected the poem, Love by Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. The first two sentences were all I needed today, before I had to set the book down and gaze the far-off stare:

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills.

Whatever else is in the book is still a mystery. I’ll probably finish in two or three more weeks.

Speaking of mysteries, I had a lot of supportive messages after last week’s essay. I greatly appreciate each and every one of them. I’ve only gotten one test result back and it was normal/negative. The other results haven’t been given to me yet, and that’s frustrating. I already made a follow-up appointment with my doctor because there’s something to discuss no matter which way the test results go. It was suggested that my bicycling could explain it. In three months, I have only ridden 250 miles. So even if I didn’t up my calorie intake that only accounts for 12500 calories or under four pounds.

I’m feeling okay, and one thing that I learned years ago: I’ll be okay – no matter what.

 

 

Some eighteen years ago, I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage. It’s the kind of brain hemorrhage that is fatal more often than not. I was fortunate that the aneurysm resolved itself and I didn’t need surgery.

Prior to the hemorrhage, I had plans to engineer a live broadcast of the Detroit. But then, my plans were completely erased. After that, my plans were simple – survival, and then recovery.

Just after I started to feel better some seven months later, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Upside-down Etch A Sketch – plans erased again.

Careful readers will remember that I’ve been been working through a major depressive episode that I was slipping into for several years and have been in treatment for over a year. And I just started to feel good at the beginning of May, and yes, I’ve been making plans for the summer ahead.

Prior to feeling better, I scheduled an annual with my doctor, time to get some blood work done, and get other things checked out.

I was astonished when I stood on the scale and found that I had lost ten pounds in the past three months (not part of my plans) and I’m off more than twenty pounds in less than two years.

So, here again – my Etch A Sketch seems to be turned over (but not yet shaken). With my cancer history, it was prudent to have an ultrasound.

I write this having viewed the doppler imaging of the ultrasound, and to my untrained eye, it appears that I don’t have cancer (it didn’t look like it had before years back). The report will come in due course. The labs aren’t back yet, either. I’m rather hopeful that they point to some explanation, or else there’s going to be more testing as we explore the other reasons for my symptoms. I keep reminding myself of all the other follow-ups over the years, of the mindset I had to adopt, that the test results were merely confirmation of what already was.

My Etch A Sketch turned over, waiting for the news of what already is.

 

We’ve been watching a new-to-us TV mystery: The Doctor Blake Mysteries. Set in post-World War II Australia, it shows a part of the world reeling from the aftermath of the war, the on-going conflict in Korea, and the dirty little secret of UK nuclear tests on Aboriginal lands.

But what has really struck me, made especially more poignant after celebrating with our LGBTQIA friends, was an episode that opened with a man dying in a car crash. Bit by bit, it’s revealed that he was dying from a Asian Pit Viper snake bite before the crash. The snake was put in his car by a jilted former lover. It’s a love triangle of three men, at a time when it was illegal (unnatural acts was the term) to be who these men were. Doctor Blake treats the other two men, as each ends up in police custody, and treats them with great care, and with an interpersonal cost to himself. You can see how gay men (and women) were closeted in those days, having few people they could trust with ‘their secret’.

At the same moment that I’m viewing this, and thinking about how far we have come, I am struck by how some folk want to go back to that time. A time where white male heterosexuals ruled and made the rules. We will not go back there.

I belong to a Christian church that has participated in the Pride parade and rally at the state capitol for twenty years now. My friends are not the ‘Christians’ that can’t bake a cake for a gay couple, or won’t allow them into the stores. Instead, they are the Christians that bakes the cakes, come to the weddings, celebrate, and dance their butts off afterwards. We’re the Christians that care but don’t mind who you are or where you are on life’s journey, how much you believe or how little. The present is rainbow, the future is rainbow.

 

I have been thinking about the end lately. I believe that it comes from the end of the school year at our neighborhood elementary, the friend that is facing the end of his job, and the end of a friendship.

Philosophically, I know that if things have no end, there would be no time or space for something new. That in almost every end, there’s a new beginning.

The end of the school year is the beginning of summer vacation. The end of a job is the start of retirement, or the start of a job search. The end of a friendship is…. I’m not sure. I look back at friendships that I have had that have ended and they have almost always ended by drifting away, a fade-out. (I leave out the ones that have ended by the death of a friend). Deliberately ending a friendship is something with I don’t have a lot of experience, and something that I probably avoid at all costs. In the end, I wrote a letter, and didn’t send it. It turned out, in the end, not to be necessary. It was a kind and true letter, it stated how I felt (always using ‘I’ statements), expressed what was good, and what wasn’t, and why I felt there was nothing good left for me.

True, kind, necessary. A device attributed to the Buddha, to Socrates, and probably others. For myself, what I wrote met all three. The writing provided a clarity for myself alone. For the other person, I’m not certain. What will happen to this friendship will be a further fading out, for me more purposeful. I feel a bit sad that it will end without the clarity of what I wrote. I suppose there’s always a possibility that it’s a break, and not the end. I have no way of knowing.

Second blog post in a row about friends. It tells you something about my friendships, surely.

So, my friend, would you please do something for me? Get out your mobile phone and enter this contact: National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255 Share it with your friends. I hope you don’t need it, just like I hope if you have first aid or CPR training you never need to use it. Ripple that contact out there.

Shalom,
Harold

(oh, and hey fellow ponderers: Why is it that ropes have ends, and never a beginning?)

 

The off-season was challenging. Arcturus went to bed in the fall, it’s mast horizontal, stripped of all the running rigging, standing rigging, spreaders and internal wiring. As winter approached, I took a circular saw to a bulkhead by the mast and cut out a large panel that was partially rotted. Stuff was everywhere. The dining table was stuffed in the V-berth, along with the spinnaker pole and boom.
The deck that the potty sat on was no longer fit for purpose, so it came out. I trimmed a roughly sized piece of half inch plywood to temporarily replace the rotten bulkhead. Sawdust and shavings, dirt, tools and everything else that needed to move somewhere else, the hill seemed too steep to climb, the tasks certainly larger than my ability to cope, I cried. Sitting on the sole in the main cabin, I couldn’t see the end, was uncertain if it could ever come, my spirit was crushed.

Steadily, in the darkest days of winter, lists and checklists were made, materials ordered. Refitting was stymied by cold and colder weather. Sometime in early Spring, I drove out to the boat, removed the temporary bulkhead and jammed a support into place. On a dry day, we went to the lumber yard that stocked the pricey teak veneer plywood. Soon after, I was sawing that expensive plywood to fit. ‘Don’t mess up,’ I thought, ‘this is $175 a sheet.’

Seemingly, everything took longer, cost more, required more work and more energy. The to-do list got longer the more that we worked. It was hard, and not very encouraging. Tiny little gains, and huge disappointments.

And then, Arcturus is in the water, and soon it’s a beautiful sight, making 6.3 knots on the smooth water of Lake Michigan. The payoff.

And, of course, this is a reality, and an analogy.

Three months ago, I started this writing and illustrating project, this blog: Feather in the Wilderness, and it has been wonderfully healing for me. Each week, I’m paying attention to what I’m feeling, keenly observing and distilling it into a few words and a few photos. Nearly four weeks ago, like a switch, I felt good. Like being put into the water that I belong after months – no, years – of being in a parking lot. I’ve been working through this depression that I have had for a long time, making tiny little gains, and having huge disappointments. More than once, there was no end in sight, uncertain that I would ever feel happy again. Depression is more than just feeling sad. It’s this spirit crushing disease that takes away the very will to keep going. Some of you understand this so well, others try to understand, and I thank you for your effort.

It’s a little moment, laying down on the fore deck, seeing the lovely curves of the sails, the blue sky, and the sound of the bow cutting through the water, when my life is restored.

When you know that someone you care about is going through the darkness of depression, won’t you take a moment, be honest if you know or don’t know what they’re going through, and give them that hug or high-five, you made it into another day, and you can do this hard thing. This hard thing of rebuilding your life while you are living it.

Thanks,
Harold

 

I’ve had an exchange of emails with a friend who lives in the UK, and the gist was how difficult it is to form friendships when you’re not on Facebook, not working, not in the bar or pub scene, not connected to a community. I gave that some thought and I think it would be really hard for me to form a friendship as an adult without a common interest like bicycling, sailing or singing.

Of course, me being me – I ruminated and thought about almost all of my friendships. Those I formed in elementary school and junior high, ones that stayed close on into our 30’s and 40’s and have slowly drifted apart. I understand why: living in different towns, children born in our middle and late 20’s grew to have activities of their own, and there just wasn’t time to keep the friendships going strong. I miss them, and I should make a better effort to reconnect.

There was a high school reunion for me last year, and it was really interesting to reconnect, and be Facebook friends after all those years. I’ve seen a couple of them since, so I think that’s good.

There’s the really close friends that we really make the effort to stay close, and the friendships that were only work-related The ones that formed at the Marina, and not being there anymore, they have drifted into reacquaintances. The friendships that crossed boundaries and aren’t able to continue except as awkward and uncomfortable experiences.

I have no idea what it would be like to not have friends. (excuse the double negative). I think it would be quite difficult and rather lonely. I am really grateful to have good friends, and I’m super grateful to be friends with one woman, Marcia, on into our thirty-eighth year together.

And to my UK friend, keep at it. You’ll form friendships soon, and in the meantime, know that I can be a good friend.

This was the question that Kevin Hines so desperately wanted to hear from a passerby on the Golden Gate Bridge before he listened to the voice, ‘Jump Now!’ Over the four foot railing, one second of free fall, and into the chilly waters of the bay.

Kevin Hines, a man who has bi-polar depression, and suicidal thoughts almost every day, was nineteen years old that day on the bridge. He’s the central figure in a new documentary, ‘Suicide: The Ripple Effect’, that Marcia and I viewed in Ann Arbor last week.

The opening scenes takes us out on a boat, under the bridge, with Kevin and the now-retired Coast Guard crew member that had pulled Kevin from the waters and onto the motor lifeboat.

This is the beginning of the ripple effect, the toll carried by the ‘Coastie’ serving at Coast Guard Station Golden Gate, who recovered 57 bodies and rescued one in his tour of duty. Kevin’s father, who is prepared, every time his phone rings, to this day, for the news that Kevin has died by suicide.

It sets off a chain reaction in my mind as I think of my friends: the wife who lost her husband, the son who cleaned up the mess his father left in the living room, the mother who will have perpetual grief from her daughter’s death. And the friend with a plan, but got sick instead. The friend whose anxiety crossing highway bridges, because of the thoughts, became my anxiety: Could I get there in time?
And yes, I think of those times where I…

The ripple effect. One person’s actions leading to another’s. Throughout the documentary, we also see the crisis counselor, the survivor, the parent whose work of helping one more person to stay, ripples outward.

It’s a lot to ask, really, wanting a passerby to ask, ‘Are you okay?’ Too much to ask? But for friends, not that much. And for yourself, ask your self, ‘Am I okay?’ Should the answer be something other than ‘Yes’ – there’s help: 1-800-273-8255 1-800-273-TALK. It’s okay to call anytime.

Every day, as part of my self-care, I ask myself: What am I feeling? Am I okay?

And I’ll ask you: Are you okay?

Sometimes, the rain doesn’t stop

In the middle of last week, I was biking to my periodic therapy session. A most amazing feeling came over me, one that left me both surprised and grateful. ‘I think I’m going to make it’, was my thought.
There were fleeting glimmers of that in the past, the thought quickly submersed by the continuing depression. This time, it was not snuffed out almost immediately. Instead, I sensed it taking root, and I will tend that little shoot of hope as if my life depends on it.

Marcia and I were driving home from way out East a week or so ago. She said, ‘I feel sad sometimes, but I always seem to know it’ll pass soon enough. I don’t think I ‘get’ depression.’ I thought for a bit and said: ‘It’s like when it’s raining, and you know the rain will stop. Depression feels like the rain won’t stop, and the river will rise, and before too long, you’re treading water. And if you can’t keep on treading water, and when you’re too tired to keep going, then all is lost.’

I know, for some, the rain just doesn’t stop. I don’t understand why that’s the case for some, and not for others. I’m not confident (right now) that the rain will always stop for me, and eventually, I’ll be safe, dry and warm. Thus far, the rain has stopped, and I’ve been placed back on the dry ground. Right now, for me, the flood waters are waist deep and the sky is lightening.

It’s Mental Health Awareness month again. You, my dear reader, know at least one person that has depression. Me. And I’m certain you know others, too. Living with depression is hard. Healing from depression is hard work. And there’s a bunch of other mental health issues that come with depression. Learn about them – use the Internet – http://www.nami.org is a start. Depression is not the only mental health issue that people live through, but it is the one that I know best.

Do you want to help someone with depression? Do you want to help me? This is what helps me get one day closer to health: Don’t make me do anything. Instead, invite me to: Go for a walk, or a bike ride. Go to the art museum. Take me out for a meal (preferably where they don’t serve alcohol, because alcohol is a depressant, and it screws with my meds). Go someplace quiet and watch. Sit with me in silence. Play some music. Watch a sunrise, or a sunset.

Don’t be dismayed if I turn you down. Turn you down, over and over. Be persistent, but not nagging. Don’t take it personally. Chances are, I’m doing the best I can. And since for me, this is not my first trip, I really do know what’s best for me. (But try to make sure I’m not doing something harmful.)

Don’t forget that sometimes I need to be by myself. Sometimes, I pull away. Limit the number of friends I’m in contact with, or limit the time spent, and that’s okay for me. Really.

Ask me if I’m sleeping okay. Ask me what I’ve been eating. Ask me what I’ve been listening to. And just listen when I start to speak. Only interrupt when you need to clarify.

These are my things. They work for me. They might work with others, too.

Thanks for reading my blog. The practice of writing and illustrating is helpful for me.