Resign Yourself

For those of us who live among the deciduous trees, the brevity of life is yearly shoved down our throats in a flash of red, gold, and green (red, gold, and greeeeeeen). Days shorten the more we tilt away from the sun. Darkness creeps in whether we want it to or not; soon we will fantasize about muggy days and moonlit beach fires.

“Live in each season as it passes, breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” These are the words of Thoreau from when he holed himself up in a self-made shack in the woods on Hawthorne’s property. He went there in July and I often think about how he felt as he watched the beech then oak leaves turn, yellow then scarlet brown confetti drifting down. This was the time of year I used to wander the woods behind my house most. Long before I knew of Thoreau’s “experiment, I dreamed of living in those woods in a tiny house with a wood burning stove. Naturally, when I heard of what he did I thought we were kin. I never wanted to enter a rat race of a life, I craved simplicity and peace. Those first cold nights must have been tough for him, winter is so much more inviting when the home that surrounds you feels more like a hug than a pat on the back. He did, come to find out, wander into town quite a bit, always on the grassy sides of paths because he didn’t like the sound of gravelly stones when he walked. “Here comes Henry….” I imagine the good, bustling people would say when he came calling. No doubt he bummed a meal or two from the Hawthornes.

That one quote of his, from the quirky book he wrote during those two years he lived on Walden, is the one I think of all the time and more specifically at times when darkness seemingly triumphs over light. “Live in each season as it passes..” I whisper to myself for any number of reasons, lately as I navigate the unpredictable topography of perimenopausal hot flashes while teaching. Though I have had actual dreams of running off into the woods much like Bella from Twilight after she transitioned to vampire, I have not been able to do that for any length of time though I have tried a few times (hello “Off the Grid Writing Residency” in northern, no cell service Maine). However, unlike Henry, I have responsibilities, mouths to feed, and bodies to care for—including my own so I can do all of that. I found myself saying that quote this week as things have started to crack and break in my life, literally and figuratively. Everything is fine as am I, there’s just.so.much that goes on here and every so often it creeps up and smacks me down. From hospitalizations to forced home renovations, the fumes I have been running on simply ran out and I sputtered to a halt via a brief panic attack on Wednesday morning. Seeking deep pressure in small confined space (aka coat closet), I got to breathing slowly again and pulled myself together enough to continue the day. Must. Keep. Moving? Turns out, stopping was what I needed to do.

The next morning, as I was sitting on the couch drinking coffee, Mom tore open the curtain between her bedroom (the former dining room) and the living room, shocked to see me home. “What are you doing home???” she asked, the sound of the oxygen compressor thumping right alongside her. “I took a mental health day.” I told her bluntly “And I’m probably going to take one tomorrow too.” She looked at me first in disbelief and then, as I started to recite my defense of why, she said “What do I care? Do whatever floats your boat.” Then I continued. “I think that I think and feel too much, I absorb and do a lot, I care a lot about everything and everyone and I just….got overwhelmed.” I explained. You have to understand, these words do not flow from my mouth easily; people of my generation (X) and her generation (the greatest?) do not take mental health days. We’d rather be seen naked in the grocery store than tell someone that. But I kept talking, feeling the lump grow in my throat the more I said. “And I don’t know, maybe the world too is getting me crazy. I mean, we’re ripping people out of cars and carting them away in front of their kids, we’re not feeding people, and I know what it’s like to feel as though you can’t feed your family……” it all came out, the stuff that I hold my tongue from saying every minute of every day. I realized long ago that I am an extreme empath, I don’t just hear about things, I feel and absorb them, oftentimes trying to figure out how I can relate or, my special toxic trait, how I am to blame in some way.

When I told my kids that I was taking a mental health day, the two youngest looked at me like a horse lying down, my oldest just said “I get that.” and nodded his head. He sees me lately, not all the time but most of the time. I’m a struggle bus of a 47-year-old woman that works a full-time job teaching, has 3 kids under 18, cares for a 91-year-old oxygenated mother, and a 54-year-old home. My brain reached full capacity by Halloween, gracing November with my full presence was done through sheer willpower. No, I am not Thoreau. I’m Thoreau 2.0—nature loving and world consuming woman who writes in the eye of a damn hurricane. I do not have the luxury to build a she shed in the woods, I have toilets that need fixing. That makes me….better, really. Sorry, Henry. Being a human these days is just not easy. We run in this rat race, this daily fever pitch catapulting to the next big thing, with all the ways we run ourselves completely ragged because we must.be.perfect. “Stop. Just….stop.” I said to myself on Wednesday and it was the most free I have felt in a while.

Living with a deciduous mother tree of a woman in this aging home, I have learned that no one gives you a medal in the end. She looks around at all the stuff she has accumulated over the years and morosely asks “What’s it all for? You guys are just going to throw it all away.” “That’s not true.” I tell her. “I want the Wedgwood” referring to her light blue china that I love to use “and the Waterford.” “And Jan gets the mass card book.” Yes, Mom has a book in which she has saved every single prayer card that she collects from wakes she goes to. It nearly went out with the recycling this Friday as it was on top of a bag of cans that she had put aside to give to Jan because, you know, Jan brings them to the redemption center. I had to retrieve both the bag of cans and the book from the bin. Tom Fitzgibbons’ Mass card fell out among others. Her acceptance of old age is not at all a graceful embrace, lately she has been unhappy with circumstances as they are and is facing the need to make decisions about what happens next in all of our lives. I vacillate between empathizing and falling down a rabbit hole of despair, this is the other spoke to the wheel that is me. The gravitational pull here is strong, it is difficult to stand upright sometimes. “Don’t get pulled in to the vortex.” was a strange little line that popped into my head when I had barely opened my eyes this Saturday. It was a truly strange feeling, like wisdom whispered from a ghost. Maybe it was. I sat with that line in my head all morning, looking at it objectively and trying to view a drone’s perspective of my life. “We can’t lose sight of ourselves.” my sister told me quite wisely. With all of those words swirling inside my head and the leaves drifting lazily onto our backyard, in 4 fast days I have decided moving forward that I can continue to bear witness but not bear all the weight. As this slice of earth I inhabit gets colder and darker with each passing day, “resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” I told myself, taking a deep breath on this sunny Sunday. Time to prep for Sunday Supper, I plan to make heart attack potatoes alongside something delicious.