THE SEWING MACHINE

I was unrestrained and did not let anything get in my way, including sleep. In addition to redecorating, I was getting a lot of satisfaction and relief from anxiety through my sewing. I was judging myself by a set of deadlines that I personally generated. It started when I invested $365 in a new Bernina sewing machine. I had heard that these were the best and my Kenmore was always on the fritz. In addition, I needed to be able to fly the fabric through the machine and this kind of motion disabled the average thread tension. I was desperate to make sure that the new sewing machine paid for itself. I kept track of what I spent on fabric, notions, and what I was able to produce and consequently save. It was an irrational time and place but I was somehow able to justify my sewing mania by all the wonderful things I was making. When you are productive, not only did I justify my own mania but also all of my friends and family were constantly giving me great feedback. By the time I stopped sewing in 1987 everyone on our six- house-street had drapes, clothing or both, that I had made. The intensity of my sewing had me up at three am so I could get a solid three hours of uninterrupted work before anyone else was awake. This meant in addition to being a slave to my sewing I was always at least a little tired and often exhausted. Sewing was the perfect avocation for me; it was a creative outlet, I had full control of my production schedule, there was a tangible output every day, I could rationalize that I was saving the family money and I could burn through my incredible level of manic energy. It kept the tiger at bay while at the same time created an atmosphere almost completely lacking in calm and peacefulness. My exhaustion, added to my anxiety made me constantly irritable and impatient. It was and is still very hard for me to relax and do nothing. Then it was impossible. My children lived in a house of tension and love and wanting to do the right thing. I was short with them and their dad a lot. I wonder what this did for Andrew who was averse to over stimulation. I remember one time I was in the basement where I had my sewing room which I had built myself, to wall off my work from toddlers. This way I did not have to clean it up every time I left my sewing; I just shut and sometimes locked the door.

Anyway, I was down stairs sewing away and Andrew and Lou were trying to get me to stop and do something for them—cannot remember just what at this point. I was asking them to give me a few more minutes to finish whatever I was working on. They waited patiently for a few minutes and then very quietly Andrew cut my tape measure in half. It got my attention. I actually laughed. I was aware that they often needed to do something dramatic to get my attention.

The sewing machine obsession eventually ran off the tracks. By 1985, I was losing my ability to get the same level of satisfaction. I was getting bored and sad. I began to cry and for one week, I stopped even getting dressed in the morning, where beforehand I had barely taken time to undress. I cried for this entire week and really got John’s attention. I told him I could not take it anymore and that I had to get out of the house. Self-editing had run its course. I needed something more. After exploring going back to medical school, I ended up going back to work. 

BRIEFLY FOUR

So now, there were briefly four of us. By May, when Lou was less than eight months old, I had her in for a well-baby visit and the doctor said she had lost weight. I was only giving her breast milk and the pediatrician said,  is there any chance you could be pregnant?—I was. Andrew was on the way and Lou was quickly—too quickly, weaned. She never seemed to mind and while she did not like a rubber nipple, she took quickly to trying to feed herself and drink out of a cup. Lou was our go-go baby and could do amazing feats of climbing. Marnie had been very slow to walk and very tentative about the next step as she still is today. Lou charged ahead often at Marnie's direction to climb up to get cookies at great personal risk. As I got more pregnant with Andrew it became harder to keep up with her non-stop activity, but she was always a good sleeper.

I was just really getting into the swing of managing two kids when we found out Andrew was on the way. After his birth, he was such an easy healthy baby. Growing, developing and keeping up with his sisters. His natural athleticism and his above average height made it easy for him to keep up physically. He was easy going and slow to put his two cents in. When Andrew did come into the conversation, it was often with an intuitive observation. I remember once when he was about seven and I was going into to his room early in the morning to kiss him goodbye on my way to New York (more about that later). We had not managed to connect because I was just too busy to slow down long enough for him and me to talk at his pace. I asked him if he was depressed. He looked hard at me and said, "Mom, are you depressed?” That made me reflect and the answer I came up with was maybe an agitated depression

Anniversary

Today is the 5th anniversary of Andrew's death and tomorrow will be the anniversary of when he was found by a very thoughtful and professional Nether Providence policeman , to whom I am eternally grateful. I am very sad.

ANXIETY MANAGEMENT

Now I was home and pregnant and began redecorating our house. While our situation had improved, we still had only a small amount of discretionary funds. That meant doing almost everything myself. I started with the dining room. Since we had been in our house for over a year, I had some sense I of how I wanted to proceed. The processes of planning and shopping for wallpaper, paint, and fabric took all of my energy.

 As for scraping wallpaper. I did somehow find the money to have the dining room professionally done ($40) because my memory of the speed and efficiency of my wallpaper removal efforts in our Baltimore house were so painfully slow that I could not stand the thought of doing that to myself again. However, once I saw the professionals at work I realized it is all in the know-how. They simply brought our garden hose through the dining room window and connected it to a special nozzle that produced a very fine spray. From there they heavily dampened the paper in the room a section at a time and seemed to effortlessly scrape it off in long sheets.

That was for the paper above the chair rail and the ceiling. They asked me if I wanted them to remove the paper below the rail. I was unaware that this area was papered. I said,” how much?” and when they answered five dollars, thinking I heard a real bargain, said “go for it”. I then watched in disbelief as they removed the remaining paper in one sheet taking less than a minute. Turns out there is something called fabric-backed paper that comes off without scraping.

Looks like I have gotten off the topic again. I thought the words were coming a little easier. Having seen these pros in action I was comfortable moving ahead with taking the wallpaper off my three-story staircase and connecting hallways. I also wanted crown molding put up and somehow figured out the angles and with Johns help at sawing and nailing, we got it up. Next, I painted the hallway, all three stories and then hung the new wallpaper in the dining room, and made drapes, which we hung when I was nine months pregnant with Lou. This mania would persist, with little abatement for the next 30 plus years.

Rereading these last couple of paragraphs, I realize now, 31 years after the fact, that getting help with the wallpaper, and learning about new tools and methods was actually a precursor to my very serious interest in trying to better understand anxiety and the tools and knowledge required to master anxiety management. I can remember standing in our sunroom and looking out the window, and saying to myself, there has to be a better way to live, one can simply not be anxious all the time, it is not healthy. 

THE AMBASSADOR

 It is funny, but we seemed to have more resources available to us now. John’s new job was higher paying that his old one had been. My work at Penn had been well paying and we had managed to save some money. This was so different from our first two years in Philadelphia. We were used to being house poor. We had really stretched, read that, no discretionary income, to buy our house. We could not even buy a lawnmower for our new yard and were using a push mower we had from our city home to mow three quarters of an acre, not good. John’s brother finally came to our rescue with his old mower.

As I was saying, there was now a bit of discretionary income and life seemed to smooth out somewhat. I was able to redecorate the living room and dining room. We bought a color TV and a used second- hand car. Our old car had not been registered in Pennsylvania yet, because we had no money to pay the transfer taxes.  And its transmission was slipping. On one particularly low night, I was trying to visit friends and the car was parked nose in. I could not get the car into reverse and ended up having to be towed-our insurance paid for that-- and have the transmission replaced. I also got a whopping $196 dollar ticket for driving with an out of state registration. I was never so glad to see a car go. While it had been a very inexpensive used Ambassador, (kind of like a Mercedes, only different, was how John's friend who sold it to us liked to say), it had served us well for several years. It seemed to me a vehicle of so many long trips back and forth to Baltimore and Washington coupled with memories.

When we go rid of that car, a weight seemed to shift and we moved into another phase of living. We even got a used Volvo, which at the time was the suburban matron's go to vehicle if you wanted to look prosperous. We did but we were not. 

MOTHERHOOD CONTINUED

Almost since my oldest, Marnie, was born, I had been thinking about how many children we should have. I know I wanted more than one and John felt that the decision to have more children was completely in my camp. I must have had a certain timetable built into my anatomy by my mother’s yearly conception and delivery when I was growing up. We were roughly nine siblings born in 11 years. Therefore, while I was questioning the idea of another baby, we were always otherwise engaged; we were moving, changing jobs, looking for jobs, grieving, or our form of grieving, having nervous breakdowns. There just did not seem to be an opportunity for another baby. When John started talking about was having another baby it seemed reasonable.. Looking back on it now it seems a little rash to complicate our delicate foothold on recovery with a new life.

We did it anyway. Just shows you the power of my irrational side. John seemed stronger. I was still an anxious mess, afraid to answer the phone because it might be work wanting to ask me a question. Read that terrorize me. Or, ask me to sign the graduate certificates that participants earned upon completion of the program I had set up.

My replacement, who had been my assistant, wanted me to sign them because she felt I HAD REALLY BEEN THE AUTHOR OF THE PROGRAM. I FELT NO SUCH OWNERSHIP. Somehow, I typed these in upper case without knowing it.  I was incredulous that it had even happened and I felt no ownership. I think the bigger story here is I felt no ownership or awareness of myself. I am not sure that is past tense either. Actually, I felt like a  professional failure. 

When the new director did come to my house, at her insistence, she explained how excited people were with the new program. She said it was worth the wait. The program had been without a director for the first 4 years of the 5-year program grant when I cam on board. I was in disbelief. 

Because I felt so incompetent and all of those bad, I guess, sad feelings seemed like they were somehow related to my job performance. I had no idea that I was mourning the loss of my mother. Looking back it seems hard to believe that I was so disconnected from my feelings of loss and could only experience them as dread of the workplace.

 I believe that all behavior has meaning to our unconscious selves and furthermore all behavior, whether cellular or systemic, has as its goals survival first, and then growth and transformation. Considering all that, it seems like the loss of my mother was truly too big or too painful for me to bear.  To survive this loss I believe I was protecting myself and creating a new life as well, perhaps to replace my loss or at the very least to distract me from it.

Eileen, our Lou, was born October 21, 1979, not quite a year after my mother died. 

Traveling for the Holiday

I will post again when I return home.