Chain Lightning

Lightning in a bottle. That’s what I’m trying to catch this morning, and that’s what writing is on most days, these days — a fleeting flash of inspiration, usually gone before I can get my laptop open, capture the thought, and close it again because some brighter flash with more immediacy occurs in the interim. I’ve lost the ability to multi-task like I used to, at least for now. I used to write, and farm, and edit, and design, and be a wife and sister and daughter and friend. I can still do some of those things at the same time, but all of them, all of the time? Not anymore.

The human body, with it’s twin rudders of brain and heart, sends you subliminal messages all the time. Some of us listen to ours, but most of us cover our ears and la-la-la through life until those messages become big buzzing neon signs that can no longer be ignored, and then change is upon us in the ways we never thought would come. Ways that were inconceivable back in the festival of youth, a party gone quiet for years now, the ashtrays emptied for good, the bong water dumped, the mirrors cleaned, the bar closed.

All those things get replaced by other, healthier things if we’re lucky. But they leave their hidden marks, along with all the sleepless nights and stressful days and physical bumps and bruises in between the then and the now. Sometimes you hear that buzzing neon and you start to wonder if it’s typical or what, and you go to the doctor, and you get some news that isn’t nearly as terrible as it could have been but causes a bit of a freak-out none the less, and it’s also a relief, because now you know. You know why you’re so tired, why you feel like your brain is fogged for so much of the day, why you, the hyperactive pain in the ass to all around you, have suddenly started napping at odd hours and dreaming in grays and taupes and mauves, awaking feeling worse than you did and troubled in a way you can’t explain; your own version of that damned tagline for Game of Thrones — “YourWinter is Coming” — looping through your head in what has to be the most melodramatic manifestation of disrupted brain chemistry, ever.

So there I went, gone from relatively sound mind and body to neither in about twelve weeks. I went from no meds other than Advil or an aspirin to one, then three, then four pills a day, and a diet even more strict than the one I impose on myself anyway. I recite Shakespeare twice a day — “by the pricking of my thumbs (or index finger, or ring finger), something wicked this way comes…”

Except it’s already here; I’m just trying to get better acquainted with it now, so we can negotiate a sustainable truce for the next forty years, or until there’s a way to throw it back in that mythological scuffed and cobwebbed box that stupid bitch Pandora just had to open.

Feeling sorry for myself is a bitter pill to add to the rest, and I’ve been trying like hell to find ways not to have to swallow that one every day along with the others. I have many friends who help me with that, for which I am so grateful there are no words that don’t sound smarmy and overwrought. But I hope they know.

I’m a resilient person for the most part, and that helps, too. I can’t wallow. I hate wallowing, it’s the antithesis of living. So enough of that shit.

And as soon as I said that to myself, one of those just-meant-for-me things happened.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I aspire to damehood. Not the Dame in theatrical arts, although I’d love that also — I’m talking a Roz Russell as Auntie Mame kind of dame, a Betty Bacall dame, a Bette Midler dame, or (and here I reach for the stars) an Emma Thompson superdame. I’ll never get anywhere near them, but it’s a goal. I love men, most of my friends are male. But the women I love are dames one and all in their own ways, and with me for life. My female friends are, naturally, very like-minded, if far smarter and more creative than I.

I find them all inspiring in a whole bunch of ways, none more so than their use of humor and intellect to process the curve balls life throws us all. Women, and I can’t have been the first to notice, are different in crisis. Women of a certain age and life experience are magical beings flying, all too often, under the radar and beyond the sonar of man, until they fold their wings and descend or surface to save their slice of the world. An ill spouse, a financial tangle not of their making, a relationship that needs mediation, a family business that needs saving, a huge career change in their prime; I’ve watched all of my friends go through at least one of these things and come out of it shining like the tempered steel that’s always been at their core.

I was idly reading Vanity Fair’s current issue this morning, and there’s a piece entitled “Lean In, Lead On,” that’s short on text and long on some of the best photographs I could have possibly seen, at this particular moment in my impaired mental and ridiculously emotional and forever-altered physical state. There are seventeen of them; all women who have influenced and inspired generations, and will continue to lift generations of women (and humankind) to come. Hilary Clinton. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Ambassador Samantha Power. Melinda Gates. Justice Sonia Sotomayor.Jane Goodall. Alice Waters.

As I was gazing at the intense warmth and intelligence evident on Justice Sotomayor’s face and in her eyes, I thought of the decisions that must weigh incredibly heavily upon her. I thought of what it must be like to share the bench of the highest court in the land with the blackhearted troll that is Antonin Scalia and the shame-filled but otherwise empty robe that is Clarence Thomas. I thought about this rebellious child from the Bronxdale projects, resenting her mother’s constant harping on education to such a degree that their relationship was nearly nonexistent for decades; I thought of how she graduated from high school as Valedictorian anyway, went to Princeton on a full scholarship, then Yale Law School, all the while fighting assumptions that affirmative action gained her undeserved access to both of those higher institutions of learning due to her hispanic heritage. I thought of her confirmation hearings, and her early judgeship, and her rulings, some of which I don’t agree with but enjoy reading anyway, because they are thoughtful and passionate and uncompromising.

I think of the fact that she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when she was seven, requiring insulin injections and constant testing, long before the advent of modern meters. I think of a tough little “nuyorican” who knew she would be an attorney from the age of ten, against all odds.

And I think Dear Caucasian Girl with a zillion friends and a family who loves you and an affordable mortgage and an interesting job and a decent car and a few new prescriptions: shut the fuck up, open the bottle and let the lightning in.

And I haven’t even started thinking about Hilary Clinton yet.