 |
| Solomons Island as seen from the Thomas Johnson bridge on a February snow day. |
Alison Says:
Moving to all new places requires
all new everything. After questions about exercise habits and alcohol
consumption, my new nurse at my new doctor’s office has the nerve to ask, “Have
you felt sad or hopeless lately?”
Sad or hopeless? Lately? Let me think.
I live on a SAILBOAT just off
the Chesapeake Bay and commute three hours everyday in the dark to a school
with children who have snow days nearly every week and can’t figure out that
school routines don’t disappear just because they haven’t been in a classroom
for nine non-holiday days in a row. Yes, I feel sad and hopeless for all that,
but mostly because it’s February and the cold and dark are never going to end.
Wait. I
shake my head slightly. She wasn’t asking about that. Maybe she wanted to know
if I felt have sad and hopeless lately when, after the third commuting hour of
this one single day, I must stop at the bathhouse to shower. The bathhouse is gently heated with one of those little radiator-looking
heaters. The little heater does the best it can, but the showers are 20 feet
away. And the time of night I get there seems to be most popular, as the hot
water runs out just as my hair is barely washed and conditioned. Thank God for
my hair dryer. My hair dryer keeps me warm. My hair dryer keeps me warm when I
blow it directly on me. My hair doesn’t dry quickly that way, but it brings
back sweet memories of when I was on the high school swim team and had to dry
my hair before walking home in weather just like this. I loved swim team. So
how can I be sad? But I am sad most of those 90 minutes homeward as I
desperately seek an alternative to this moment of frozen. I bargain with my
smelly self and assure me that a shower would go unnoticed by those around me and
I really can make it through tomorrow without one. My BO'd self has yet to win that argument.
Ha! But she
has no idea about all that. She doesn’t need to know. What she’s really asking
about is depression. It’s a real and serious topic and I am in no way making
light of it. I have loved too many people who struggle daily with depression.
She is asking about that kind of sad. She is not asking about my ridiculous adventure with the
love of my life on his 34-foot sailboat on which he has weathered polar vortex
winters while simultaneously breaking up icebergs threatening to crack his keel
and doubling up the lines in gale force winds. Who am I to complain? Who am I
to even compare my sadness and hopelessness to something really hard like
depression or Kurt’s really hard winters? I am a stinking wimp is who I am.
Yes, I did
spend a recent snow day curled up on the starboard settee holding on to the
very scaredy cat as the wind blew directly out of the south hitting the
starboard side of the boat with strength that pushed the boat over far enough
that I could see landforms out the ports. I did keep the cat safe even though I was actually scared and cold. That day was
not for wimps.
No, I
didn’t check the lines on that day like Kurt tried to teach me how to do before
he left for work. It’s my recollection that I made sure he did all that before
he left for his no snow day in Southern Maryland schools day. I know how to
double up the lines, and will probably do it all by myself on a warm spring day. But I had no desire
to test my skill when wind gusts are enough to blow me into the winter water.
So I am still no wimp.
And I do
put on clothes each morning that sit up against a hull that keeps out the
water, but neglects to keep out the cold. So my clothes are really cold on these
mornings. Who knew I would miss my closet inside a heated house? I didn’t even
recognize that my clothes in my suburban homes were heated. When I move back into
a house, I will thank my closet every February morning. But, whatever. My clothes are cold this year and I am not a wimp.
But, young
nurse, I am sad and hopeless and really afraid that February will never end. I
fear that all the heaters Kurt turns on to make me more comfortable will
no longer warm me. I am sad and exhausted just thinking about getting in the
car to drive home after teaching all day and then going to a really great
professional development class. I am sad that this money I am supposed to be
saving keeps arriving in the form of Amazon Prime boxes or clearance sweaters
from REI’s really great end of season sale.
Sweet
nurse, I do feel sad and hopeless, but it’s only because I have put myself in a
position where I feel the effect of my financial choices so very dramatically.
I am too old to be finding the good and funny in this February and that is the
purpose of this blog. I fear I am failing at this whole gig. But I am not that
same sad and hopeless you are screening me for. That would be too much. I am actually
doing fine.
“No, I am not
sad and hopeless. Not outside of it being February.”
