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Happy Mother’s Day, and Don’t Forget National Mental Health Month

Surprised to see those two together in the same headline? Have you heard about the movie Tully, in which Marlo, a mom with postpartum depression is rescued by nanny named Tully—who turns out to be part of her postpartum psychosis? Motherhood can be crazy making. And so—c’mon, admit it—can mothers. If you are unequivocally thrilled to share brunch and a day having pumpkin facials and mudbaths with your mom, could I please rent out your brain for a day? I would love to know how that feels.

I’m really talking to those who have fraught relationships with Mom. And I was born the day before Mother’s Day to a mom with bipolar disorder, which makes me uniquely qualified to put these two May events in the same essay. (My sister, my grandmother and I also have/had depression.)

But here’s the thing about whatever your mom does that sets your teeth on edge. She’s got a backstory, and another behind that one, and yet another inside a hidden closet in that one, and we’re still not done. You will most likely never know everything that made her who she is. On Mother’s Day, at least, you need to cut her all the slack you possibly can.

I just turned 60, and I’m still figuring out my mother, dead now for six years. We always maintained a reasonably loving relationship, but one thing I wasn’t able to forgive her for was the way she blatantly favored me over my younger sister.

Here’s what I know of my mother’s life, and when I learned things that changed the picture:

She was an only child, gifted pianist, valedictorian of her high school class, married my dad at 27, had me at 28, earned three master’s degrees.

• When I was 12, she was hospitalized with her first manic attack (I believed).
• At 24, I learned she’d had a husband before my dad…and found him in bed with another man. Within two years she divorced him, married my dad, had me.
• At 57, I heard from my sister that Mom blamed herself for the miscarriage she had (a boy, six months) when I was 18 months old. She hadn’t wanted another baby so soon, and became deeply depressed.
• In my 30s, I found out that Mom was really institutionalized for the first time when she was 31—and I was only three. She was first diagnosed as schizophrenic, but when medication for that didn’t work, they treated her for bipolar disorder. But how? This was 1961, and lithium wasn’t in wide use until years later. Electroshock therapy? My dad farmed me out to his cousin’s family while she was in the hospital. Why don’t I have any cognitive memory of this? Was it too traumatic? And how did I react to my mother when she came home?

A brief but important digression: I just watched a Charlottesville Tedx event on how telling a story changes the storyteller. Revise, revise, revise, and eventually you’ll understand that what you thought was the most godawful moment in your life was really the best thing that ever happened to you. Watch it, but first put away any small axes or other sharp axes, or I swear this guy will have you hacking at your kneecaps with them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgeh4xhSA2Q&feature=youtu.be

Just last summer, a guy called from Sedalia, Missouri—my mom’s home town—looking for old photos of her grandparents’ home, which he and his wife had just bought. He—Chuck—had grown up across the street from this house on Broadway Avenue, which according to him was THE street when they built there in the 1930s. My great-grandfather owned a pharmacy, and did a brisk business in medicinal whiskey during prohibition; it was a very nice house, although not a mansion, and had its own tennis courts.

The local daily paper covered the family’s comings and goings: their dinner parties, their three sons’ tennis gatherings, and later, my mother’s piano recitals. She was valedictorian of her high school class, and her grandparents gave her a Steinway grand piano for graduation.

By the time we visited years later, my great-grandmother had moved to a ranch style house, and Broadway Avenue was past its heyday. Mom would point out the house, but I never understood what she was trying to tell me about who she’d been. Not until Chuck called.

So here’s what befell my mother before she gave birth to my sister in 1964: she was brilliant, talented, prominent, privileged; went to a top music school; married and moved to Europe for what looked like an adventurous life. Then boom. It all went to hell. A shameful divorce (her husband was from the same small town; her family kept his secret and told no one her reason for leaving him), a terrible remarriage, a pregnancy lost, her presumption of sanity gone.

(Her grandmother would disinherit her, possibly because she disapproved of divorce.)

Well, no wonder she had a hard time bonding with the baby she had three years later. At that point she probably felt like no child had a chance around her. Optimism? What’s that?

There are a lot of elephants I’m not mentioning, but here’s one I will: pregnancies in 1957, 1959, 1963. Birth control for married women didn’t become legal until 1965. Motherhood is like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded—there’s so much you can’t see coming, much less plan for.

Awhile ago I heard a story on public radio, about two elderly brothers. Their mother had left their father when they were children and taken the eldest with her, leaving the other behind. The younger boy always believed his mom loved the older brother more. After decades, his son got the two of them together; turns out their mother could only support one and thought the older one was in much greater danger from his father.

I told my sister Barbara this and said, “Maybe there’s some other story here about Mom that we just don’t know.”

Happy Mother’s Day, Barbara. Here it is.

I only wish Mom had had the chance to tell her story over, and over, and over again, until it took on another shape. I wish I’d known the right questions, and had the courage to ask them.

 

At my regional SCBWI conference earlier this month, novelist and presenter Leah Henderson kinda—maybe—fingers crossed—gave me hope that a novel I’ve worked on for a long time might not be entirely dead. Her presentation was Their Voices, Their Perspective: Writing Cross-Cultural Stories We All Deserve. Henderson handed out a page full of resources, with an outline of a head on the other side. Wait, what? You mean I am allowed to try to create characters from other cultures? And here the message I’ve been getting was Just. Don’t.

My novel, Mourning Light, takes place at a Minnesota boarding school in both 1862 and the present. Louisa, in 1862, is the half-Dakota daughter of Minnesota’s first governor. She reaches out to Mia through rare, night-after-night appearances of Northern Lights, and Mia searches for physical documentation of the story she’s hearing.

Many of us will not remember 2017 fondly. For Minnesota organic farmer and artist Susan Waughtal, it will stand out as the year she lost LaFonda, her beloved—and inspiring—cow.

When Susan brought LaFonda home to Squash Blossom Farm in 2010, it was a match meant for inspiration. I’ve known Susan since we were 12, and any object that falls under her gaze becomes art. Discarded, weatherbeaten, insignificant, out of style—no matter. Susan sees not what things are, but what they can become. An old scuba tank finds new life as a big bell, painted in her exuberant style. Abandoned sweaters evolve into multi-colored boiled wool mittens and slippers. And when the Hand-Me-Down Fairy is feeling especially generous, Susan deconstructs her haul of knitted and fabric garments and then painstakingly pieces together colors and textures into long, warm gypsy coats.

LaFonda didn’t need to be reconstructed; she was already magnificent, and not just to Susan. Her friend Enid saw right away that the beautiful black-on-white dappled cow was State Fair championship material. Not in the livestock judging, though. Enid’s quilted portrayal of LaFonda won three ribbons, including the sweepstakes award.

Song breaks out when LaFonda’s around. When Susan and daughter Cadence were learning to milk her, they would serenade her with songs from Fiddler on the Roof and their own signature piece, to the tune of Alberta, Let Your Hair Hang Down:

 

LaFonda, you’re my Dairy Queen
LaFonda, you’re my Dairy Queen
Milk, butter, cheese, ice cream
You’re every milkmaid’s dream
LaFonda, you’re my Dairy Queen

LaFonda was more than just a pretty face, though. A drought in 2011 sent hay prices up to more than $8 per bale, versus their normal $3.50. Could Susan afford to keep all her cows? While she was worrying about hay, a local restaurant invited her to exhibit farm-themed paintings.

“During a snowstorm everything was white except for LaFonda’s spots and pink udder, giving me the idea for this painting,” Susan says. “What do you know, LaFonda in the Snow and another large one sold the first day they were on the walls! I decided the cows were earning their keep by being my muses and models.”

Early last April, LaFonda took ill and lowered herself to the ground in her stall. Despite Susan’s hope and unending TLC, LaFonda’s earthly life was over.

“She’s buried at the crest of the pasture where she liked to lounge and chew her cud and watch the world go buy,” says Susan. “I have a cow sculpture planned for her —next spring’s project.”

A quilt, a song, paintings, a sculpture…. But LaFonda hasn’t found her way into a novel. Yet.

 

 

 

 

May is National Mental Health Month

In my first novel, What Would Alice Do?, 13-year-old Lily has to figure out whether her mother is just really happy and energized, or moving towards a manic attack. And what, exactly, should Lily do about it? At the same time she’s trying to make friends in a new school in a small, conservative Midwestern town, very different from the Portland middle school she left behind.

I was 12 when my mom started talking about government conspiracies, flipping light switches on and off because there were bugs in them (something to do with her uncle working for the phone company; I never did understand that connection), and going to meet with imaginary CIA men. I didn’t have to figure out a solution; my dad took her to a hospital in Minneapolis. We lived in northern Minnesota, and it was winter when she left and still winter when she came back – so she could have been there for two weeks in February, or from February to the end of April. My sister and I can’t remember.

I don’t remember worrying about whether she’d get well or come home. I DO remember being terrified that kids at school would find out and I’d lose my on-the-fringe-of-popular status. Being scared to death I’d lose my half a dozen or so really close girlfriends. I’ve wondered since then if I was unusually self-absorbed, or if fretting about my social life was age-appropriate. To let myself off the hook I imagine that the popularity ladder and friendship were worries I could wrap my head around without it exploding. Other fears… not so much.

Years later I found out that one friend’s father was an alcoholic; another’s was a serial philanderer; and a third’s mother had recurrent, profound depression. Lots of secrets. Two had actually known about Mom – and told no one, not even me. I had no idea; they acted like everything was normal. Which was exactly how I wanted – needed – things to be at school, since home was out of control.

Since May is National Mental Health Month, I’m going to give you some statistics. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (www.nami.org):

• one in five adults in any given year suffer from a mental illness, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, and others.
• 20 percent of kids aged aged 13 to 18 live with a mental illness.

That means just about everyone reading this has either been mentally ill or known someone who was (or is). We’re all mad here.

While working on my query letter for What Would Alice Do?, I researched and read all the comparable titles I could get my hands on. I was disappointed – well, no, horrified – by many of them, in which the schizophrenic, bipolar or depressed parents beat and starved their children, tried to bury them alive, held their flesh against a hot stove, and set the house on fire.

Why does this push my buttons? For one thing, it’s not a true picture. I don’t doubt that there are individuals whose mentally ill parents have physically hurt them – but it’s far from the norm, despite what we see above the fold and on CNN. NAMI cites a Johns Hopkins study finding that 40 percent of national media stories on mental illness portray the mentally ill as violent, even though less than five percent of violence is related to mental illness.

I think most kids worry more about their afflicted moms and dads being capricious rather than cruel, humiliating rather than homicidal. Trust me, it’s terrifying enough when your mother talks about CIA men and flips light switches to short circuit bugs. Beyond mortifying when she hangs your dad’s clothes over the porch rail and rants about how their muddy colors block his energy flow – while your classmates parade past on the way to school.

Remember what I wanted most when I was 12? For my friends to stay my friends, to hang out with me as we always had. To go to the basement diner at Rexall Drugs and share a plate of dill pickles with cherry cokes. To spend hours at Bookcraft, choosing among fantasy novels and scented candles. To have sleepovers and séances. I can say with confidence that anybody missing a sane parent absolutely needs friends.

But wait, would you let your daughter spend time with a friend whose mother might bury, burn, starve or beat her children?

We need stories that show kids they’re not the only ones with mental illness in the family – or help them empathize with a friend’s ordeal. But demonizing the sick parent isn’t accurate, and doesn’t help.

I recommend these middle grade and young adult novels that paint a nuanced picture of mental illness in the family and its effects on kids, without depicting the parent as a monster.

Middle Grade

Letters from Rapunzel by Sara Holmes

A girl calling herself “Rapunzel” writes letters to a post office box after she finds a scrap of a letter written from her father to the box number. It says that the unknown recipient is the key to his succeeding as a poet and as a human. Now Rapunzel’s dad has been hospitalized for severe depression, and Rapunzel begins pouring her heart out in the letters, although she never receives a reply.

My Cousin’s Keeper by Simon French

When the new, strange kid at school turns out to be Kieran’s cousin, Kieran will have to choose between fitting in with the other kids and standing up for his cousin against the kids that bully him.

Sure Signs of Crazy by Karen Harrington

Twelve-year-old Sarah writes letters to her hero, To Kill a Mockingbird‘s Atticus Finch, for help understanding her mentally ill mother*, her first real crush, and life in her small Texas town, all in the course of one momentous summer. (*Sarah’s mother committed horrible violence, but far in the past; she’s been in a mental hospital ever since. Sarah struggles with her father’s alcoholic unreliability and her fear of becoming like her mother.)

Young Adult

To be Mona by Kelly Easton

Sage Priestly is seventeen, and she longs to reinvent herself — to strip away the fat, the past, the crazy mom, the unpaid bills. She longs to be her own version of the gorgeous and popular Mona Simms. Bit by bit she transforms herself. The popular jock Roger suddenly notices her. And when they start dating, Sage thinks her life is turning around. So why isn’t she happier?

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

Francesca is at the beginning of her school term in Year Eleven at an all boys’ school that has just started accepting girls.  She still misses her old friends, and, to make things worse, her mother has had a breakdown and can barely move from her bed.

But Francesca had not counted on the fierce loyalty of her new friends, or falling in love, or finding that it’s within her power to bring her family back together.

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

For the past five years, Hayley Kincaid and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in the town where he grew up so Hayley can attend school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relationship with Finn, the hot guy who obviously likes her but is hiding secrets of his own. Will being back home help Andy’s PTSD, or will his terrible memories drag him to the edge of hell, and drugs push him over?

 

 

(or, Mommy, Where do Stories Come From?)

I visited my favorite gravestone today. It’s an obelisk, with birth and death dates for ten people on its four sides. Three generations of the Riddle-Field family, from the 1818 birth of Hannah Riddle (no maiden name given) to grandson James Riddle Field’s death on March 1, 1904.

This obelisk is the oldest gravestone in Mount Salem Cemetery, a few blocks from my house in Wilmington, Delaware. It caught my eye right away the first time I saw the cemetery – first because it’s so tall, and second because it’s so old by Midwestern standards. I moved here from Minnesota and all their dead people are a lot newer than little four-year-old Hannah Riddle, named for her mother, who died in 1844.

Just four years old. I examined the other dates, and tried to piece together this heartbreaking familial puzzle. Hannah lived to be 70, and bore her namesake, twins Leander and Mary, Elizabeth, John, and Jeannie. Only Leander and Jeannie lived past the age of five.

Hannah lived until 1888, long enough to see her daughter Jeannie’s mourn two newborns, but not long enough to watch her grandson James grow up.

Hannah and Jeannie, mother and daughter, haunt me now.

The Hunk of Stone or the Dusty Attic?

Michelangelo said of his creative process, “In every stone I see a statue, as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action.”

The blank page? I only wish. For me, things collect in the dark crevices in my brain – objects or phenomena I love, past events that obsess me, news items that make me think “what if?”, people whose scenarios I want to fix, places that bring me peace or scare me out of my skin.

They accumulate there, gathering dust and cobwebs, until the  moment when a few random items gravitate toward each other and beget a story.

An Italian Deruta ceramic cat, my grandmother’s small embroidered purse, my failure to grow my hair long like my sister’s – a new fairy tale. A friend’s teenaged niece whose mother had ovarian cancer, a thing for the Northern Lights, a boarding school, some shameful Minnesota history – a YA ghost story. A van full of college students skids into the path of a semi on a road coated with ice turns into what if, and then to not a whodunnit, but a howdoIstophimfromdoingitagain?

Pesky Riddles!

Now I can’t stop thinking about the Riddle-Fields. Hannah’s son Leander also lived to adulthood, dying in France at age 40. He was the only son of a wealthy, prominent Wilmington family – so why leave the country? I Google wars – nada. Then I look at the dates on the gravestone again. Leander was 26 when his sister’s first newborn died; 29 when his infant niece passed. This was the Age of Mourning; Prince Albert died in 1861, and Queen Victoria turned bereavement into an art form. Our Civil War lasted from 1861 to ’64, giving Victoria plenty of company. Maybe Leander just couldn’t handle the family’s gloom? Maybe…

Shoo, you Riddles! Find yourselves a nice dusty corner and sit still so the spiders can do their work. I’m not ready to make up answers to all your what ifs.