Snapshots

We were joking around, and at the turn of a word FD remarked, "That might have come out of ________'s mouth." And at the same time we sighed and said. "I miss him." 

It's been a rough summer, still it went by too quickly anyway. A child has surgery, a young man's disease wins the fight. Friends, family, the people we see in our offices all have troubles. We're just here, riding the wave.

Disrupted, Mind Over Mood, SweetBitter

The upside is that I read a few books, almost read others; watched a lot of baseball (Go Cubs Go); lots of lighter side TV, nothing dark or deep, no Thrones. We can talk about books and teev later. Because, you know, it's 9-11.

1.   9-11

The day always gives us pause, or should. We should be taking a moment and reflecting, just a little, on the blue sky that day, the loss, the devastation, the heroes.

The stories are told about heroes, sometimes a fire fighter, sometimes an everyday Joe. We read about these people, or knew them, hear about them on talk radio, young men going up and down stairs, shepherding people to safety, carrying others on their backs, starting over. Not making it outside themselves.

It makes me wonder: Would I have done that? If given the choice, either escape or go back into the flames to help people, what would I have done?

It shames me, even though my rational self fights that feeling, And what makes you think you could lift someone, carry anyone to safety? 

Probably couldn't. Yet is shames me to think that panic would make the choice for me. I'd have stopped breathing, or slowed to a dizzying state. Then recovered just enough, hustled, found my way down, followed the heroes to safety, terrified. Then, finally out of harm's way, the decision to leave would have been regrettable. Totally regrettable.

Fifteen years. It has changed our way of life, probably forever. We take airplanes but stand in long lines, our bags are checked by TSA. This isn't the America some of us loved our whole lives.

Texas Eagle

not clouds

But it is America, and there are choices. FD and I make an annual summer pilgrimage to St. Louis, visit his family and take in a Cubs-Cards game at Busche Stadium.

fields of grain or corn

He's from around there, and I'm from Chicago, so we obviously have very different baseball loyalties. Until last year it's been a slam dunk as to which team had the right to call itself the better team. But now the Cubs are Wonder Boys (I think of them as children, boys), and it is a very good bet that they will win Monday night's game against the Cardinals.

We'll be there. Look for us.

And oh, we took Amtrak. A train.

Two and a half feet of legroom, no crowds. We have two seats each, can spread out. This train has no wifi, but my phone seems to be doing the job and there are electric plugs. (Remember those?)  I can get up and stretch, stand on one foot if I want. The scenery, oh, the fields of gold, the burnt orange baby pumpkins, the tall green corn. Much more here than clouds.

But mainly, no lines, no waiting for the vacation to begin.

2.  Summer Vacation

One of the lessons I learned from my brother's death at a young age:

When you see an opportunity to live, take it. 

On the other hand, it hasn't made me less phobic in certain situations. Like mountain climbing, bungee jumping, or jumping out of airplanes.

So the story goes that we raided the cookie jar and flew south to babysit our southern grandchildren. Their parents deserved a break, needed to get out of town, wanted to attend a wedding and a bar mitzvah in New York. We're in a position to do this, leave the weather Chicagoans wait for all winter, mid-70's, low-80's, to bathe in Atlanta's hot-humid atmospheric conditions, lows-in the- 90's.

And don't forget the rain.

And yet: I'll go back again when it cools off in early November, attend a conference, the Council for Social Work Education's annual meeting. I'd have gone to Costa Rica, Jamaica, the South Pole, anywhere for this conference. But we'll have a do-over to ATL.

What I learned, what made this time so memorable, had to do with one of my fears, acrophobia. 
A fear of heights.

Face Your Fear:

Acrophobia: an extreme and irrational fear of heights, not related to vertigo, an inner ear problem that makes you think you're moving when you are not.

Not the same as aviophobia, by the way, the fear of flying. Don't have that.

But as long as we're talking, the odds of crashing on American, United, Delta, Southwest, etc., are pretty slim:

• 4 fatalities in one million flight hours for airliners,
• 10 fatalities in one million flight hours on commuter airlines,
• 22 fatalities per million flight hours for private aviation (see, private planes are bad).
• On the world's major airlines the odds of dying from a plane crash are most remote, 1 in 4.7 million

The phobias tend to generalize, mush together. An elevator takes us to the top of a building and triggers claustrophobia in one person, acrophobia in another, agoraphobia in another, and all three in someone else. We can treat these disorders with medication and CBT, maybe meditation, thought charts, flooding and desensitization.

It stands to reason that if someone is the type to look up the statistics of death-by-airplane, then for sure she would look up the statistics of death-by-ziplining, before agreeing to take a spouse and 3 small grandchildren across the forest in the Southern Appalachian mountains.

Ziplining, not for the feint of heart

On a zipline.

The fellas working at the State Park assured us that the zipline could hold a school bus, and altogether we didn't weigh anywhere near the weight of a school bus, so being rational people, we assumed this to be an excellent way to face the Buddha, conquer my fear of heights. That and be heroes, in this very small way, to our grandchildren. Mainly, by taking them.

It is, in a word, terrifying. They kept saying, Don't look down, but what is the point of this, being up in the treetops, swinging like Tarzan and Jane, if you don't look down and enjoy the view? And so, we engaged in a desensitization therapy, the kind you don't generally read about in the books.

The only problem with this intervention is that there is really no turning back. Once you're strapped to the line, you don't have anyplace else to go. (Or so they said). It is a do or die thing. And honestly, I loved it.

Turns out that it is good not to have Googled the odds of death, or even injury, by zip-lining before saying yes to the kids. A 2015 study found fatalities on the rise. But these are primarily due to backyard kit set-ups  drinking beer, probably, while doing the installation.

Six deaths in 2015.

The annual injury rate for all zip lines climbed from almost 8 per 1 million U.S. residents in 2009 to nearly 12 per 1 million in 2012. Causes included falls, collisions and slamming into objects at the end of the course. Injuries were most common in children and teens.

So I don't know. I guess I wouldn't encourage this as the best way to get over acrophobia, although it certainly works.

But those glass elevators at the nicer hotels do, too.

3.  TV, Books, the Movies 

New to me, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Rachel Bloom had me at West Covina. Crazy Ex is longer than most sitcoms, might even be a full hour, which made it even better, and actors break into song, ala the musicals of old. Does she suffer mental illness, our new favorite lawyer who leaves partnership at a top firm to move across the country (West Covina, California) to stalk her ex-boyfriend?  I don't know, have only watched a few shows so far. But she's very, very funny.

I caught up with old seasons of Mom, am now ready for Allison Janney to hit bottom again this coming season. Right, have to blog about those 12-Step meetings. Will get to it.

Saw only one movie, Finding Dory, which nobody spoiled for me, so I'll not write about it, will return the favor.

Finding Dory--topical

I don't know where to begin with books, considered writing about Mind Over Mood in this post, but it will take too long. It's going to have to be a whole post. The authors have found a way to put all cognitive behavioral therapy tenets into one little feel-better flow chart and shared it in this work book. So wait for me on that. Or just buy the book.

Meanwhile, we have Disrupted, which for the life of me, when I mention it, always comes out Disturbed.

Disrupted, by Dan Lyons.

At the age of fifty, Dan Lyon lost his job writing for Newsweek, a print magazine. Newsweek is in jeopardy, online news has cripple sales, and the magazine wants to replace older, more expensive writers with younger, cheaper staff. Esteemed in the industry, Dan is hired by a funded tech company, HubSpot, perhaps as a PR stunt.

He is a fish out of water, the oldest employee in the shop, and can't relate to the jargon, the values, and the cult atmosphere. Millennials pledge robotic loyalty to the founders and the company which is not turning an actual profit, and never may.

But here at HubSpot, kids are hired right out of college with the lure of stock options. They drink the Kool Aid that they will become rich one day, and that they are amazing, that the company is amazing, that the industry is amazing, a word used as often as a pronoun in a normal conversation. The minions are herded onto the sales floor as telemarketers. Their product is software, quite probably, second-rate software, if that. It is the type of software that businesses buy to spam the rest of us, garbage email. Open it, there will be follow up spam. Click on the company link, be hounded for life to buy amazing products you don't and never will need, products that aren't even very good.

The incentive for this tedious, demanding sales job? The company is flush with perks, those exercise and yoga classes, a plethora of food and candy, not from vending machines, but in dedicated rooms, walls of candy. Parties that begin early on weeknights, last until the next day, the kinds of parties that overflow with alcohol, employees sneaking off with one another to empty rooms. Make work fun so people love to come to work in the morning, gladly working their you-know-whats off, remaining loyal, until they are fired on a whim, lose their coveted stock options. Bye bye.

Millions, billions of dollars are to be made, we learn, but the money goes into the hands of the very, very few.

Do we hear about it in therapy? You bet we do.

Dan, by the way, is now a writer for the television show Silicon Valley. The disruption probably turned out to be a good thing for him.

therapydoc

Planes, trains, boats and automobiles

I don't like to work you too hard, so just a warning, this is long. But I numbered the snapshots, so read a little, go back to work, and come back later. Okay?



You know I always like to show a little wing.

That’s Atlanta. I am a jet setter.

I had my first airplane ride at 16, a sweet sixteen present from my parents. In lieu of a party, I visited family, traveled on my own, and haven't looked back.

That's not entirely true. Flying scared me for quite awhile back there, after having the kids. Maybe it was some big plane crash or another that threw me. You couldn't get me on an airplane though, not for a couple of years when they were little.

But at some point I wanted to go to Israel, had to go for some reason or another, and had to go it alone. FD packed me some Zanax, but I didn't want to take it. The one time I did take Zanax I didn't sleep for an entire trans-Atlantic flight. The idea of taking it made me anxious.

There at the gate I'm pacing, nervously. But I see a revered teacher from my hood, a female version of a rabbi, obviously taking the same plane to Tel Aviv. She's a well-known speaker, teaches far and near, makes learning a privilege, a delight. My anxiety disappears.

Forever, somehow. Irrational.

I wish all of you the same with your neuroses.

So it's been okay, flying, for years, and I go into this Southern dip in a good mood, a good place. I'm seeing my kids, my parents. It's a big chunk of stimulation in a small chunk of time, and it is exciting.

Except nobody's warned me about certain airplanes, that there are big airplanes, and there are small airplanes, and you want to make sure, when you fly, to get one of the bigger ones.

We won’t obsess or complain, and I think,

Remember, this is meritorious and unbelievable, if you think about it, that one day you’re on the ground, and then. . . in the sky. So it's a small plane. So what?

A few snapshots of my trip.

1. My son picks me up, my granddaughter, all rosy-cheeked and smiles, almost three, is strapped tightly in her car seat behind me. She sings, "Hi Bubbie!"

We talk a minute and wouldn’t you know, my phone rings. “Excuse me, Sweetie.”

The call lasts a couple of minutes, I put away the phone, properly greet my son, the driver, look back and she’s out, sound asleep. Tough day at school.

2. It’s my brother on the phone. He thinks I’m in Miami visiting our parents. I do this every January, visit for my mother’s birthday, usually for a day or so, but to warm up, too.

My brother tells me that when I do get to Miami, for this is the plan, Miami is my next stop on the jet set tour, I’m going to be in for a rough ride. My father’s not doing very well. And we know our father, he's not a complainer, so he probably won't tell me what is wrong. His is a stoic guy from a real man's generation, which is fine.*

I reassure my brother that I'll be there soon and will be in touch with him. He should keep his cell phone handy.

But I have 22 hours, yet, in Atlanta.



3. I pull a multi-colored yoyo from my pocket and my granddaughter is duly impressed. She takes it from me and begins to swing it wildly in the kitchen.

I say, “Let’s take it outside.” She disappears and comes back wearing a shirt that matches the yoyo. Exactly.

We spend the next two hours running around in the front yard. The yards are hilly in Atlanta, so it's fun. At one point we come in because she's not wearing a jacket, which little children don't need, apparently, when the weather is in the fifty degree Fahrenheit range in Atlanta. Not according to her.

I heat her up some warm milk and honey and she and I sit down at the kitchen table and catch up on old times. Then we're back outside until the sun goes down.



4. The baby twins, her new brother and sister, are not speaking to me, but they do give me an occasional grin after they've eaten. They’re mainly into whatever it is that is just over my shoulder. They do appreciate a good jiggle or bounce, and I feel I'm getting exercise rearranging their equilibrium. They fall asleep just when we’re really getting to know one another.

5. The next morning I’m up early, no surprise and tiptoe around to find my computer. I’ve plugged it in somewhere. It’s dark and I don’t want to turn on the lights because to accommodate my visit, several people seem to have played musical beds and there’s a very large man on the sofa near my computer. I tiptoe past him, however. You have to do what you have to do.

6. I fall back asleep and am awakened by a knock on the door.
“Bubbie?! You said we could play!”

7. I get up and throw on a bathrobe, begin the search for coffee. Yesterday my hosts had a party, so there's a cardboard container of Starbucks. I decant some of it and reheat it in a microwave. When I'm finished I heat up the milk and honey for my granddaughter.

It's like the flight attendant tells you in that safety demonstration. First get on your own oxygen mask, then help the child next to you with hers. First make the coffee, then pour the milk and honey.

Milk and honey,

That's the one thing we've got

goes the song.

I tell her the story of a dream I had but never had, the one where the little girl rides a giraffe and her grandmother rides an elephant to the park. You know that one.

8. And in about an hour it’s off to the Marta, the train to the airport, because for me, taking a train to an airport is about as good as it gets.



9. Then on the plane, even better, pretzels. Life does not get any better, and you know this. I compliment the flight attendant for the touch. She asks if I want more water and I think, surely this is heaven. Two cups of water. My daughter-in-law's mother has packed me a bagel with a thick shmear of cream cheese. I quietly praise Judy for the sandwich and down two-thirds of it.



10. That's Fort Lauderdale.

11. But first, let's flash back three weeks. My father has declared that he will pick me up from the airport at Fort Lauderdale. He is 88 but has better vision than I, if not a better heart, and he's still driving. Two cataract surgeries later (they give you contact lenses) he can see.

Logically, I argue, "I'll rent a car for twenty dollars."

He insists, "If you can rent a car for twenty dollars, do it. But you can't."

But I do. I reserve a car for $20 a day. Meanwhile, he's called me to say, "Take a cab. I'm a little tired lately. I'll pay for your taxi."

So I rent the car and find out hat he's right. They say it will be twenty dollars but the fees in Florida more than double that per day.



But it's a cute car, isn't it? Even if it doesn't start every time.

12. My mother meets me in front of the high rise and we go inside to pay for parking. She tells me that my dad is depressed. "I don't know if he'll admit it," she says. "He's proud."

And I'm thinking, he doesn't have to say boo.

But I say, "Great! If that's all it is, we can fix it."

I don't remember if I've told you, but when I worked under the great psychiatrist Domeena Renshaw's supervision** she told us,

"If I have to have something wrong with me, let it be depression. We know we can fix depression 99% of the time. Just give us a chance."

Mom looks a bit doubtful.

We park the car and walk slowly back to the condo, wait at the elevator, cherishing our new moments together. She's been here since Thanksgiving, and although there are people all around, I know she's a little lonely, wants to go home.

13. Inside the apartment my father jumps up to greet me. We hug and I say, "What's up?"

"Well," he says, going right to the heart of the matter, "I think I'm not so good. I just don't feel right."

"Did you get to the cardiologist?"

"Yes, and my pacemaker is fine."

"And the CBC?"

"Fine." (pause) "I think it's depression." He looks up at me as if to say, Do you believe that?!?

"Tell me why you think it's depression."

He tells me his symptoms.

"Well, sounds like you're right; pretty common in your age group. But so not like you. Must feel weird, huh?"

Uh huh.

I suggest we call FD. Maybe it's his heart that's slowing things down, too. He's always a little winded.

"Maybe you're not breathing so well. The brain needs oxygen to feel good." He admits he is not.

He is suffering from something FD calls heart depression.

On the phone FD explains that this can happen, that maybe there's water that's not getting pumped out of my father's lungs so he's slowing down and that slowing thing is virtually depression.

Mom pulls out the long list of medicines and rattles them off to FD who also asks about things like swollen feet. And indeed, my father's feet are too large. They go over all of the medicines, make sure his potassium is protected, and fiddle with the Lasix.

Meanwhile, my father tells me he knows it's depression because it's been coming on awhile and he's reading things about depression in magazines. He's talking about real feelings, and that fog, that weight on the head that I am very familiar with, hear about probably every day of my life.

"Maybe we should call your doctor," I suggest, "see if you should be taking some medication for the depression, just a tiny bit." (I'm thinking my father will never go for this.)

"Sure. I think I need it. This feels bad."

I love it when people surprise me.

"It's all in the brain, depression," he tells me. "But it affects the body."

Did I know that?

We reach his doctor (a miracle) and my father is settled down medically, and Mom has prepared a snack. Then I'm off to take a walk on the beach. We all have our routines.

14.

There's a vehicle I would not take if you paid me. There are sharks out there, and jelly fish.

I take my beach shoes and a sweatshirt in a plastic bag to change from my sneakers to my beach shoes at the beach. It's warm, so rather than wear the sweatshirt, I stuff it together with my sneakers and hide the bag unassumingly under a bench.

An hour later the shoes and the sweatshirt are gone. I get to be like the rabbi in that previous post. "Take my shoes, take my sweatshirt! They're yours!" I shout.



15. Back in the condo my father is humming.

"Did you know," he tells me, "that if you hum for 15 seconds, then count for 15 seconds, that you are alternating sides of the brain and you reset it, balance it out? You feel better."

Hadn't heard that one, I admit.

"It works!" he cries. "It doesn't last, but for awhile, it works! And it takes your mind off of the things you're thinking about."

"Sure. I believe it. It makes sense. I'm all for sensory distraction, Dad."

He looks at me funny, but nods, gets it.

"Do it a lot. And keep talking to Mom about the things that bother you. Negative thoughts are like pregnancy. Better out than in."

And he does, he keeps humming and talking. It's as if he's got a whole new perspective on life. He's a member of this sea of humanity that has suffered from depression, has to work to get out of their chairs, then can't get comfortable and pace, find loud noises unbearable, bad news impossible, even idle chatter screeching, annoying. He gets it, and he doesn't like it, but it's an awakening of sorts.

I'm only there for 48 hours and he seems to have picked up a bit. Out on the balcony, overlooking the ocean, I call my brother. "Please," I tell his voice mail. "You have to come and check up on them soon. I have to get back to work."

He calls me back, tells me he has already booked a short trip for next weekend. He had wanted to say hello, to get out of the cold, anyway. It's not as if visiting parents in Miami is some kind of terrible inconvenience. He's excited about it.

16. The next morning my father asks me what I want to do today. It's my only full day in Miami. No plans, I tell him. Point me in the right direction. Looks like we're all free.

"They say that for depression you should do what feels good. So the boys asked me if I wanted to go out with them. Would you mind? I think if I shop with you and your mother and go out for lunch, it will make me worse. Please don't be offended."

He's never said anything like this before, not in my life.

"Sure!" I say. "I need new shoes and didn't buy Mom a birthday present. We'll shop."

"Have fun."

And we do, we have a wonderful day. We're all pretty wiped out by dinnertime.

17. The next day, as I'm about to leave he says, "Maybe you should stay a little longer. It's awfully cold in Chicago."

"Believe me, I'd love to stay," I say honestly. "But I took off three and a half work days for this trip and I just have to get back. I have people scheduled this afternoon and teach this evening. And I miss FD and he's alone in the cold and these luxury vacations, well, they're expensive."

"Make sure," Dad says, "when you write about this, that you give her credit, that lady, the one who did the research on humming and counting. You could get sued if you claim it as yours."

Lawyers are my friends, I tell him, always always asking for records and depositions and such, but I say, "Sure, sure. I will. I'll give her credit.*** I already ripped the article out of the magazine, like you told me to do."

"You know, all my life I haven't had this, depression."

"Isn't that amazing, when you think about it?"

"It's just not me."

"Well," I say, "You don't want to get too used to it. Let's fight it. I'll call you every day."

"You don't have to do that," he says, brushing away my offer with his hand, as in, ridiculous.

"Then keep humming, counting."

And he does.

He tells me he's feeling better.

therapydoc

*You don't take away the umbrella until it stops raining in my world.

**Domeena founded the Loyola University Sexual Dysfunction Clinic in Maywood, Illinois

***He found the intervention in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, 2/2009, What You Need to Know about Financial Stress, Laura Cohn. Ms. Cohn recommends the following as well:

1.This too will pass.
2. Exercise
3. Don't watch the news
4. Curb your spending
5. Go outside and play