No More Stand-Up, Sit-Down Bathroom Dance

The Button

No More Stand Up, Sit Down, Wave My Arms

Thank goodness for the button. I’ve been on a road trip to and from Massachusetts. Heading north was a challenge. A drive that usually takes two days took three. Heading homeward to Florida was a breeze compared to the trip north: It took two days only and we made fun stops at South of the Border and Smith’s Exxon in South Carolina.

Five days on the road meant many visits to gas station and rest stop bathrooms. Adding this trip to the scores I've taken from Massachusetts to Florida and back (with three children in tow), I think I've been in every rest stop bathroom at least once.

A few years ago, I bemoaned the fact that the automatic flush doesn’t always work. I related how I would stand up, sit down, wave my arms, and walk to and from the door—not easy in the space of a stall—to get the light sensor to work. My hilarious experience is noted in an earlier blog post. Thanks to my eldest daughter’s question, of “Why don’t you use the button?” I now know there is a “button.” No more stand up, sit down, wave my arms, dance around the stall. I used that button several times during this last road trip. On reflection, I probably could have used the exercise after all those hours in the car.

  

Cracked Grace: York Peppermint Patties and Depression

Cracked Grace

Fear and Truth

York Peppermint Patties

and Depression

I must become less afraid of alienating people

when I share what’s true for me.

Yesterday was a crappy day. It started out that way and got worse as the hours ticked off. Depression is real. It hurts. Yesterday, I was depressed. My life has changed. My adult daughter and her 18-month-old child have moved in. I love them and want what’s best for them. But my house is not set up for a baby. The cabinet under my kitchen sink is a Superfund Cleanup Site. Glass items beckon throughout the house. Dangerous plants sit waiting to be touched, broken, chewed. I’m adjusting, but it’s taking time.

My work is not satisfying, and it doesn’t pay well. My creative life has been on hold for weeks while I adjust to my real life. Daily rains that cool the heat of Florida summers are a blessing and a trial. Everything grows and it’s too hot to trim, cut, weed.

Chaos reigns. I once thought my house was messy. I was wrong. Set a toddler loose and you relearn messy.

I’m grief-stricken when I see the faces of children in Gaza. I’m grief-stricken when I see the faces of children in Israel. Likewise Iraq, Iran, Syria, Africa, Ukraine, St. Louis. Bombs fall on ISIS and I wonder if it even matters.

The tenant for my house in Massachusetts bought a house and moves in eleven days. Her lease doesn’t expire until January. Surprise!

Basing Too Much on Fear and Money

Social media recently introduced me to a young woman who decided that nothing she did in her life would be based on fear or money. Too many days, I base what I do on fear and money. Yesterday, everything I did was based on fear and money.

Depression is real. It hurts. My throat closed up with the crying lump when I heard that Robin Williams succumbed to depression. It’s real. It hurts. It kills. I spent the last hours of the day yesterday crying off and on, just feeling the pain of the world and feeling the pain of Robin Williams and all those who have depression. Feeling my own pain.

You know it’s been a crappy day when you finally get good news: Poison Control said the jade plant your granddaughter bit into is not toxic.

Depression is real. It hurts. I have it. But I deal with it. I recognize it. I recognized it early on yesterday and I began doing what is necessary to heal it, to soothe the wounds of life and the world. Gentle with myself, I continued through the day and into the evening, knowing that it will pass as it has passed before. Also knowing that if it didn’t pass I would seek assistance. It didn’t come to that.

It was a crappy day and at the end, although still teary-eyed about Robin Williams, ISIS, Gaza, St. Louis, and all the ills of the world, I had hope I would feel better today.

It was a crappy day, and even so, I knew one thing would cheer me. I plopped my sweet granddaughter on my bed. She patted the pillow, beckoning me to sit beside her. She reached toward the afghan at the foot of the bed. I pulled it up and we snuggled beneath it. The best part came next. She pointed to the drawer in my bedside table, and said, “Eat!”

I opened the drawer, got a York Peppermint Patty, opened it, and following our early evening routine, we did indeed, “Eat!”

It was a crappy day, but it ended well. Sometimes that is all we can hope for. Sometimes those bits of grace and York Peppermint Patties are what we need to carry us into the next day and into life.