AmyKossBlogThang: Looky-loo

AmyKossBlogThang: Looky-loo: W hen my plants put out new flowers I know it's not with me in mind.  It's like how scantily clad teenage girls are not scantil...

Looky-loo

When my plants put out new flowers I know it's not with me in mind. 

It's like how scantily clad teenage girls are not scantily clad for the rapey pleasure of the strangers and old-farts driving by.

But even though I'm not the species the plants are aiming to woo, I believe I'm entitled to enjoy their blooms -- as long as I don't interfere with them. 

No cutting their heads off, for instance. No dragging them inside to lie in-state in a vase. 

Surely it doesn't offend them if I just take note of their loveliness and admire their perseverance in the face of our awful drought. 

Their success all the more impressive considering my grand-dog's determined dedication to deforestation. 

So, whether or not it is my place to do so, I hereby share the current (quiet) botanical triumphs occurring in my back yard -- for your ogling enjoyment.

xo Amy

AmyKossBlogThang: My Two-Cent-Rant on Depression

AmyKossBlogThang: My Two-Cent-Rant on Depression: Dears, The web is oozing sweet, sad messages about listening to your depressed person, being there, sticking by them... But even though th...

My Two-Cent-Rant on Depression

Dears,

The web is oozing sweet, sad messages about listening to your depressed person, being there, sticking by them... But even though that all sounds good and true, it could make the self-hating depressed person feel even shittier. Now with you glued sympathetically to his side, he's not just a turd on toast, but a pitiful, unworthy, pain-in-the-ass, turd on toast, bringing you down with him.

When I cracked up several years ago, I remember the burden of sympathy made me feel even more guilty and worthless. And I really, really, really didn't want to be beholden on top of everything else. I wanted to be invisible.

Also, knowing how lucky I was made it all more humiliating. There were people out there who were making a brave go of it with a lot less than I had... and yet I was the wimpery, self-pitying asshole curled up in the dark...

Counting one's blessings and knowing people are worried about you can magnify the self loathing and just make you feel crappier.

I'm not saying we should all ignore depressed people, but just as sympathy would not cure a bladder infection, it won't cure mental illness/depression.

It may leave the survivor feeling less guilty, and in hind sight it may make the sufferer grateful that you stood by, and those are good things. Plus we've all got to do whatever makes it easier to live with ourselves and others.

But we can't assume that those who succumb to depression lacked for sympathetic comrades, or a clear accounting of their blessings.

It's not that simple. Depression is an illness and needs a cure.
Better living through better chemistry.

xo amy

AmyKossBlogThang: Regrets

AmyKossBlogThang: Regrets: Aunt Mary 1931 M y uncle Harvey hated cigarette smoke so I chain-smoked him out of the kitchen. Then I asked my Aunt Mary what the ha...

Regrets

Aunt Mary 1931

My uncle Harvey hated cigarette smoke so I chain-smoked him out of the kitchen. Then I asked my Aunt Mary what the happiest time of her life was. Without hesitation she said it was the time when she had a job working in Hudson’s Department store in downtown Detroit and she and another shop girl went out on the Bob-Lo Boat after work.

That’s all she said. 

She didn’t say she’d danced under the stars in the arms of a stranger, or that she and her friend had a drink and got the giggles. She didn’t describe the wind in her hair, the heave of the waves or the sights passing ashore.

I don’t remember if I pressed for details but now it’s too late to check the facts. Aunt Mary has been dead for eighteen years or so, and before that she’d been loopy with dementia for two or three.

But I’d heard her.

I knew that my aunt had spent her youth caring for her siblings and working in the family restaurant. Their restaurant was in a non-Jewish neighborhood and my aunt was not allowed to date non-Jews, so when Jewish Uncle Harvey came in to eat and took a shine to her, she was trapped. 

When he brought a ring to the restaurant and proposed she said no, but he showed the ring to my grand mother and that was that. Aunt Mary was a very obedient daughter.

                                              ***

In the way of children, I was vaguely aware that my aunt took care of my aging Grandmother, and that none of the other kids did, including my own dad. It seemed understood that this was Mary's job as the oldest daughter. 

I knew too, that Harvey was a bully, or at least that I didn’t like him.

But it wasn’t until much later that the things I saw alarmed me. Like when my uncle decided it was time to move out of their house to an apartment that didn’t take dogs. By lucky happenstance, the realtor he was working with fell in love with my aunt’s dog, Sandy, and offered to take her to live on her happy farm with children and room to run.

My aunt couldn’t deny her beloved Sandy a life like that. Sandy was never seen again.

Then Harvey decided they no longer needed a second car. Aunt Mary defended this, saying she was like a fancy lady with a driver! In reality this meant that she couldn’t meet with her Mahjong girls, or go to Pioneer Women luncheons, or anywhere else unless Harvey had no other plans and was in the mood to take her. And it meant she never went out alone again.

Uncle Harvey went to the library every day to read the financial papers so he wouldn’t have to buy them. My aunt would prepare a list of books and tell him he didn’t have to run around the stacks looking for the books, he just had to hand the list to the librarian when he got there and pick up the  books when he was ready to leave. But he didn’t.

A woman in the apartment upstairs lent my aunt romance novels which was better than nothing. By the time I learned this, I was old enough to alert the other relatives to bring my aunt books, and to send her books myself when I thought of it, which was maybe twice.  

Then, when my aunt got too addled and confused to clean the apartment or prepare meals for him, my uncle put her in one of those piss-smelling institutions where they tie the old folks to wheel chairs and park them along the walls. My uncle however, passed his own last days in a much spiffier place.

But Uncle Harvey isn’t the only one to blame. Among my deepest regrets is that I stood by for all those decades of abuse. Why didn’t any of us help her see a way out? How can we live with the fact that the happiest moment for her was that one tiny evening on the Detroit River when she was on her own and free? 

xo Amy