Calling Down the Heavens
Summer in the Deep South can be a real beast. We decided that this year we would try to combat the effects of the intense heat. We used blue as the dominant color for the garden. The theory is that if our eyes rested on the cool color, it would feel cooler. As new offerings came into the nurseries, I bought every blue flower that came in. This is a tall order in the Deep South.We can grow huge plants with hot yellow, orange, red, even purple flowers, but plants with blue flowers tend to flag in the heat. Delphiniums bloom in February here and then poop out.
Many of the blue salvias do well though and stokesia will crank out their blue powder puffs for about a month. Hydrangeas are beloved for their blue shades and as long as you give them pelletized lime regularly, they will keep their blues in the acid southern soil. There is a new petunia called “Blue Sky”that really puts out big blue blooms. To intensify pale blues, it’s helpful to accent your plantings with blooming plants with soft golden apricot flowers. If your orange accents get too bright, it can wind up fighting your blue drifts of flowers. Purpley blues can make your truer blues pale out or even make them look dirty. Pure white flowers here and there will add sparkle to your blues.
Lastly, don’t get rid of your air conditioning.
Go to the Doctor4
When people have had their brains “manipulated” as the doctors call it, they have strange dreams. Mostly, they are “sorting” dreams or “collecting” dreams. One lady told me that she dreamt she had to collect balloons in a basket. With me, I would be in the middle of an old fashioned post office, the floor littered with wooden post boxes. All night I had to pick up the boxes and place them back in the right spot. Sometimes, the dreams had me crossing a mine field as I gathered bricks and placed them in a pack on my back. The worst dream was the one where I climbed up a cliff face made of glass. I woke every morning more and more tired.
It doesn’t make any difference how your brain gets hurt. A stroke, a motorcycle accident, a roadside bomb, a tumor. Your dreams will be confusing and chaotic. It gets better. You will make your children lunch for school and make them a sandwich with nothing in it. It gets better. You will laugh at the wrong time in a conversation. It gets better. Your brain has backups and will access them over time. Therapy,medication and time helps.Family helps. My children taught me to use the computer. I started painting again. Listen to your therapist and slug through your exercises. I learned to knit lace patterns because I had to count in my head and stitch the stitches with my hands. I made some of the ugliest pieces of knitted lace on the planet. Not the point. Forcing your mind and body to learn a new task will force your brain to forge new pathways and make new connections. Try learning skills that engage your body and mind at the same time. How well you do them is immaterial. You can get better. It’s 12 years and I’m still knitting patterns. They’re still ugly and my children wear them.
Go to the Doctor 3
” I vacuumed the house.” my husband said. I felt myself grinning.. “She’s back!”, a woman I didn’t know announced triumphantly. I was in the recovery room carefully and tightly wrapped. I couldn’t see properly because my whole head was swollen and my eyes were shut. Later, my children would come for a moment. My mother couldn’t face it.
I can remember a little about the following weeks. I can remember the horrible panic each time I woke and did not know where I was. Sometimes I didn’t know who I was. It always passed and I didn’t tell anyone about my lapses. I had to get better. My sister was staying a few weeks. Later, my sister in law would take over. They put a baby monitor in my room. It was almost unnecessary. They barely left my side.
I had heard that the hamster had escaped from his cage and everyone was on the hunt, but he was fast and smart. Apparently, he could also climb 3 ft in the air because he showed up by my pillow, sitting upright and examining the staples in my head. It was the middle of one night and my sister was taking a well earned sleep when she heard a disembodied voice in the room. “Sssssssssssue. Ssssssssue. He’s here. Sssssssssue. Come.” She bolted upright and realizing the hissing ghost voice was her sister, she raced to the room. the hamster scuttled off to parts unknown at the noise.
Poor woman. “It’s the HAMSTER? I thought you were DYING! It’s 3 am!” She plumped pillows and in the great tradition of all sisters, never let me forget it.
Hey! Sssssssssssssue.
Go to the Doctor 2
To say the next 10 days were a blur is an understatement. I was told that I would improve after the surgery for about a year. After that time period, improvements would be more rare. My husband and I were warned that it was possible that I would behave inappropriately. “How inappropriately?”, I asked. “Well, going to the grocery store without clothes on, for example” he replied. I am not a Victoria”s Secret model. Clothes at the grocery store are always a plus. That was the least inappropriate thing he mentioned. Fan-tastic. The surgery was outlined to me and my husband. “It’s basically the same surgery your father used to perform back in the 40′s. The difference is antibiotics.” They would cut my scalp from ear to ear, fold my face down on itself and start drilling and then saw.
My husband, a cardiologist, looked pleadingly at the neurosurgeon and asked, “Are you sure? Maybe there’s a mistake.”
“Look at her face , Bob. If I passed her on the street, I’d know.”
Go To the Doctor Already
The doctor saw me the next morning. His eyes left my face as he listened to the details of the last weeks. With each statement, his head would sink a little lower. When I stopped, his head was down past his chest. “Okay,” he said firmly,” You need a CT scan with contrast dye. Are you allergic to shellfish?”
The next day, I was getting a scan. I was going alone because the doctor had felt that it was likely that I had a small cerebral head bleed due to the accident with the greenhouse.You don’t do anything for a small cerebral head bleed except rest quietly at home. As I walked to the car, my next door neighbor stopped me and asked me where I was going. “Let me take you,” she said. “Oh no,” I answered. This was a very busy woman. She was the most in-demand event planner in the state. “No, let me take you.” It was 6:45 in the morning.
When we arrived at the lab, the place was deserted. We had to ring to check in. I was hustled back because I was being squeezed in at the beginning of the day and if it took too long, the lab’s schedule would be thrown off. I didn’t know how long it would take. Note to all: If it takes more than 20 minutes and they keep coming in to change your position and shooting more images, you might have a problem. When I returned to the waiting room, it was noon and the waiting room was filled to the brim with all sorts of people and children were scampering about with toys. I was tired and wanted to leave, but the staff wouldn’t let me. This is also a bad sign.
The receptionist called me to the window and told me that the doctor was on the phone wanting to speak to me. I know he said a lot of things, but frankly I didn’t hear anything after “brain tumor..” I hung up the phone, turned to my neighbor and said,” I have a f—ing brain tumor.” Then, shouting,”I have a F—ING BRAIN TUMOR.” I suddenly realized that everyone was staring. The children gaped at me. They were too young to know what a brain tumor was but the F word had stopped them dead in their tracks.
” I am so sorry!” I exclaimed to their mother who was gently scooping up her toddlers.
“That’s okay”, she replied, compassion stamped across her face.
My neighbor and I drove home. She wanted to sit with me, but I was in shock. I sat at home and got quietly drunk.
Not So Hot
About 15 years ago, I started feeling very unwell. My Dad was very sick and my children were young and I had just started the farm. When things started to slip all over the place, I just figured it was stress and overwork. It wasn’t. I started going from one doctor to another. I had problems all over. Some doctors started feeling that it was all in my head. How right they were. It was a brain tumor on both frontal lobes. It was slowly suffocating my brain to death.
I had noticed that my handwriting had changed. My Dad was a neurosurgeon and had told me often that if your handwriting changed after the age of 21, the problem was in your head. You’d had a stroke, or a brain injury, or you had a tumor. The change in my handwriting was pretty drastic, but I was so harassed, that I figured I was being careless. My vision had changed, too. Sometimes, I saw double.
I kept going, though. My children had a Winter Holiday coming up and we had agreed to take to the ski slopes in North Carolina in a place called Sapphire Valley. The roads in Western North Carolina can be treacherous in the winter and as we climbed the twisting 2 lane road, it started to snow. The kids were really pumped. Snow is a rarity in Coastal South Carolina. It had been years since I had driven in the snow and I was gripping that steering wheel real hard. For the next 5 days, we slowly glided down bunny slopes and my more adventurous son goofed off with the snow boards.When we were done, I slowly steered down the mountain until we reached the coastal plain and made it home.
A month later, I was feeling worse than ever. I’d been taking down a green house and smacked my forehead with a 2 X 4. I should have gone to the doctor then, but I’d been to the doctor’s so many times in the last year, I felt uncomfortable going again. Later in the week, I was picking up dry cleaning. The kids were in the back seat and I was waiting to pull out on a very busy street in our town. A beige car was coming up very fast on the left. I knew I would have to wait for the car to pass. Instead, I hit the gas, turning right. The driver of the beige car did the unexpected and saved his life, our lives and quite possibly the lives of the occupants of the two other cars in the far lane. He hit the gas and accelerated around our car. Stunned, I drove home and told the children to go to their rooms, that Mommy needed some quiet time. I went to my room and tried to sign my name for hours. I couldn’t do it.
Lost Dreams
Lost dreams have become all too common in the last few years. People have lost homes, jobs, chances at schools that have stretched the strength of families to the limit. The news has been so bad, it’s hard to imagine that anything good can rise to the surface. As an artist, I can tell you, that the last thing people buy when they have been lowering the thermostat and cutting out groceries, is art. What happens when an artist loses his dreams? Bad work, that’s what happens.
Artists are reputedly different from regular guys. Everyone has cherished dreams, but because the play of dreams is so necessary to the artistic process, the loss of dreams can cripple the process. Or you can paint about it. If the loss is too painful to express in your work, this could take a while. If this is the case, try redoing old work using a new medium. Simpler still, is using a new technique. We all favor a set of brushstrokes. Experimenting with new styles of brushstrokes on a familiar subject can relieve some of the stress of lost dreams. It can return a feeling of control to the artist over a situation you have no control. You are choosing to change your style. You are choosing to expand your abilities. Lost dreams don’t have to have the last say. If you live long enough, you’ll realize later that they rarely do have the last say.
