It's a dark and stormy night. A five year old and an eighteen year old stare out the rain streaked window at a suspicious black car, parked across the street. It is suspicious because the girls do not recognize it. This car does NOT belong to any neighbour on Sunnybrae Ave. The older girl clutches a butter knife and mutters, "whose car is that? Why did he just leave the car there?" She pictures a shady character with bad teeth, clad in a dirty trench coat, lurking on the property. She's positive that at this moment, he's strategizing the best way to break into the house. He knows that she's there all alone with her sister. The five year old recognizes the frenzy in her older sister's voice, but she thinks this is exciting and she's happy to stay up late. She pats her sister's hand and says: "It's okay. Maybe, the Retiffs are having a dinner party and the car belongs to their guest."
"The Retiffs are old and anti-social," responds the elder sister. "I'm calling Mom and Dad"
The 18 year old in this story is my sister Diana. I remember the scene just as I described it and it characterizes the way we saw the world then and the way we still see it today.
Diana has always been a bit nervous and cautious. She alarms her doors. She scrutinizes every person she passes on the street. She doesn't trust anybody with bad teeth.
I am more laid back and laissez faire. Often, I forget to lock the door. Once when I was babysitting for Diana's kids, I forgot to CLOSE the door and that is a whole other blog in itself. I am often unaware of my surroundings, and I don't usually notice people's teeth or clothes.
Unless I'm six months postpartum.
When Neal was six months old, I happened upon a TV show about real life "Sixth Sense” kids. It profiled several children who saw ghosts. Suddenly, my world turned upside down. Lying in bed that night, quivering under the covers with a nervous stomach, my husband asked me if I was okay. "No!" I bawled. "What if our kid sees dead people?"
He wasn't ready for that. "Uh, Hon, do you have post-partum depression?"
"Depression?? NO!" I defended myself. In fact, most of the time I felt euphoric. After surviving pregnancy, labour and six months of sleep deprivation, I was surprised at how well I could function under duress. Admittedly, I was feeling a tad silly for sharing this new fear with my husband, but the fear was very real...and it was fear not sadness. Depression = sadness, right?
For about a week, I was stuck in the world of "What if…". The rest of the sentence was never a pleasant idea. "What if, the Mayans had it right and the world is going to end in December 2012?"; "What if the Scientologists have it right and the world was once invaded by Aliens....Are they coming back?" The fears were usually irrational, but any sad or scary stories could team up with my imagination. I decided that I was watching too much daytime television. I turned off the news and most crime shows and made sure there was chocolate and ice cream on hand. My irrational dramatic episodes stopped.
Ella turned six months last week.
Ella was born on a Tuesday. Tuesday's child is full of grace. We needed grace in our lives and that's what we got. Since that day, my husband has suffered and battled through severe depression (I learned that anxiety is part of that disease), our basement flooded, our dog had a cancer scare, our son's eardrum almost burst, and… you get the point...a lot of crap went down. And through all of that our girl was the essence of grace.
Good stuff happened too. Our children gave us joy and purpose, the dog is fine, Ken discovered anti-depressants and Ritalin, and I discovered Glee.
The first time I tried to watch Glee, I thought it was ridiculous. I had heard that it was a show about high school "outsiders" trying to fit in within the confines of high school's social hierarchy. I started to watch and realized that American's just don't get it. Degrassi is a show about real high school kids. The kids in Degrassi are for the most part...ugly. Well, ugly for what we're used to seeing on television. The kids on Glee are gorgeous (even the wheelchair kid and the fat girl) but playing the role of losers? It just didn't make sense to me.
And I wasn't able to get past the cheesy musical numbers. I was in high school choir. We didn't sing and dance nearly as well as those kids but we were FAR from social outcasts.
Sitting on the couch with baby brain, unable to focus for more than a minute on anything, a catchy tune made me lift my eyes to the TV. Glee. I was mesmerized...and hooked. The singing, the dancing, the beautiful, mohawked bad-ass who looked like my husband....Yeah! I could get behind this now. There was no need to concentrate too hard on the plot. There was no scary drama to give me nightmares and, above all, it had Jane Lynch. I recognized her from those funny documentary films: “A Mighty Wind” and “Best in Show”. She cracks me up.
Actually, they all crack me up. Flamboyant Kurt, Ditzy Brittany, The wrestler chick (Zizes) who plays hard to get with Puck (mohawked bad-ass). I can suspend my disbelief for an hour and in return I’m left feeling a little whimsical.
When the show went on hiatus for the summer, I invested in the Season 1 DVDs. I credit them for helping me to survive those LONG sleepless nights. When I finished the DVDs, I looked forward to Tuesday night repeats of Season 2, and when those stopped airing, I turned to books.
When I need a good read, I go to my sources for suggestions. I have a few select friends who have the same tastes as me - teenage-esque fiction with a light sprinkling of smut - and I trust their judgment completely. This is important because there is NOTHING worse than investing money and time in a lousy book. One of said friends is Brigid. We've known each other since Grade 11 and we can pick up where we left off every time we see each other, which isn't very often, given that we have lived in different cities since second year university. This is a test of a true friendship. So when she insisted that I read "Little Bee" I didn't hesitate. I reminded her that I didn't have time or the emotional capacity to deal with scary or sad stories these days. She told me that it was "a little sad" but I still HAD to read it.
The first chapter, well written though it was, was about a woman who had a Batman obsessed son and a clinically depressed husband. In the second chapter, the husband offs himself. WTF? This was hitting way too close to home. Have I mentioned Neal’s Spider-man obsession? I had nightmares.
The next morning as I was flipping through channels, trying to get to Treehouse. I stopped in my tracks. "An amber alert has been issued after a three-year-old Sparwood boy was stolen from his bed”, announced the news anchor. I didn't have nightmares that night. In order to have nightmares you actually have to fall asleep. There was no way I was going to sleep with that much adrenaline and worry coursing through my veins.
For three days, I couldn't eat, sleep, or take my eyes off my children. What was happening to me???
….
Right.
….
Ella has turned 6 months and, with that, I am turning off the TV (until Glee starts up for the new season of course). And I'm going to do some to reading. Starting with my classic "intelligent smut" aka Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon, a guaranteed exciting read with no anxiety so long as that sexy Scott, Jamie Fraser, is sharing my bed…oh and Ken too, of course. I’ll probably seek out more literary advice from my trusted circle but only if they read this blog entry first.
And I'll gorge on ice cream and chocolate until Ella's seven months…just to be safe.
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