Sunday, March 11, 2012

March 11: Project Memoir Part 2, End of Prelude, New Cartoon

Sorry it has taken me so long today to post.  It's been one of those times when everything took longer than I anticipated to complete.  Therefore, I'm typing in the next installment of Project Memoir at 9 p.m.  It's going to be a long night.  However, I've finished writing the introduction to the book, and now I can focus on the first chapter.

Haven't gotten a whole lot else accomplished today.  I didn't even get to teach my Sunday School class this morning.  I had to practice with the church's praise band instead.  That is the inspiration for today's cartoon.

Saint Marty now presents the second installment of Project Memoir.

Confessions of Saint Marty

Prelude (continued)

I looked at her, not quite comprehending what she was telling me.  I thought she was doing something with eggs in the kitchen, boiling them for salad or pickling.  Then I looked at her face and understood.

We'd been talking about having another baby for quite a while, but it wasn't simply a matter of taking temperatures, counting days, or propping Beth's ass up on a pillow to allow better passage of sperm up the fallopian tube.  Because of her bipolar disease, getting pregnant was much more complicated.

Four years before, we decided we wanted another child.  Our daughter was three, and we didn't want too much of an age difference between her and a possible sibling.  So we began the long process of weaning my wife from her medications.  It was a delicate balancing act, removing drugs like lithium and Wellbutrin and Geodon, replacing them with fetus-friendly drugs like Buspar.  The possibility of Beth's mental illness getting out of control was real and terrifying.

Four years ago, the results were disastrous.

My wife became quietly manic.  She started spending hours on the computer, in chat rooms, adult dating Websites.  She took nude pictures of herself and posted them to people.  She began meeting men.  At one point, she used our Discover card to fly a guy in from Florida for a night at a local motel.  Eventually, she ended up hospitalized for over a week, and, afterward, we started to put the pieces of our marriage back together.

Two years before, we decided to try to get pregnant again, and the results were even worse.  After six months of meeting guys in motels and parking lots and antique stores and restaurants, Beth sat me down one May night and said, "I'm sorry to do this to you.  I really am."  She almost looked sincere.  "I'm moving out," she said.  "I want a divorce."  I felt myself become a little unhinged as I stared into her stubborn face.  Within a couple months, she was gone.

For almost a full year, I was a single father.  I made butterscotch cookies for birthday parties.  I drove Celeste to ballet class.  I washed and folded loads of laundry at night after my daughter went to bed.  I learned to braid her hair; read her Charlotte's Web and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and painted her bedroom pink and put Disney princess posters on the wall.  I did everything I could to help Celeste forget she had a mother who was mad.

Still, at night, my daughter, as she drifted off to sleep, would sometimes say, "I hope mommy comes back soon."

I was in the same position again this New Year's Eve.  My wife was on the road to recovery.  She was taking her medications and going to therapy.  She was doing well.  So why were we even thinking of trying again?  Even Beth's psychiatrist told her, "I would feel more comfortable if you stuck with one child, considering the chaos of your previous attempts."  It was the closest her doctor ever came to giving Beth advice about anything.  Usually, Dr. Earl assumed a demeanor in sessions akin to Jane Goodall observing a rogue chimp.

I gave Beth a quick hug, felt her sink into my chest.  "Happy New Year's Eve," I said.  We went to the Wal-Mart McDonald's for dinner.

My wife got home from work at 11 p.m. that night.  We shook Celeste awake, and I warmed up the pigs in a blanket I'd made for our little party.  At midnight, we watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV and blew our horns.  Beth had bought our daughter a can of pink Silly String.  We went outside so Celeste could use it.

The night was cloudless and warm for January in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I watched my daughter lace the snow banks with pink.  I kept telling her, "Not by the car, not by the car."  Celeste laughed harder than I'd seen her laugh in a year.  The moon gilded us, the house, the car, the snow, the neighborhood with silver light.

After Celeste passed out in her bed, Beth and I drank hot chocolate  mixed with peppermint schnapps.  Then, we had sex.  We  barely said a word to each other.  I think we were afraid we might talk ourselves out of it.  In the air around us were statistics of birth defects, infant cardiac anomalies.  I could hear her doctor lecturing us about schedule A and B drugs.  But we continued.  In Beth's hair, I smelled the grease and oil of the deli.  On her skin, I tasted the salt of possibility.  We joined in an act that was totally foolish, totally selfish.

As my wife and I fell into each other's bodies, there was also something present that had been in short supply between us for a very long time.

January 1 is the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, a celebration of motherhood.  It was a week after Christmas, the first day of a brand new year.

It was a feast of hope.

Confessions of Saint Marty


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