by Sharon Hinck
Don’t go there. Hold it together. Just a few hours. Then you can put Bryan to bed.
While Bryan indulged in afternoon cartoons, I made him a sandwich for supper. My hand shook as I spread the peanut butter, and milk splashed on my hand as I tried to pour it into his favorite cup. At least I had a few homemade cookies to add to the plate. I managed to hold the tray steady as I set it on the coffee table for him.
By bedtime, I was able to slip fully back into the role of a normal mom. I cooed over Bryan, but he held himself stiff in my arms as I read to him.
“Honey, I know this isn’t fair to you. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have been crabby to you.” I stroked his thick bangs over to one side. “Will you forgive me?”
His eyes were flat as he stared at me. “When is Dad getting home?”
“Soon, sweetie.” I hugged him, and my throat tightened. “I’m really sorry.”
“Mrs. Pimple sent you another note. It’s in my jeans.”
“Okay. I’ll find it. Let’s say our prayers, all right?”
With my help, he dutifully recited an evening prayer that Tom had taught him last summer. I had teased Tom that the prayer was too archaic for a seven-year-old, but Tom insisted that his father had taught him that prayer when he was still in kindergarten.
“I thank Thee, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Thy dear Son, that Thou hast graciously kept me this day; and I pray Thee that Thou wouldst forgive me all my sins where I have done wrong, and graciously keep me this night. For into Thy hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Thy holy angel be with me, that the wicked Foe may have no power over me. Amen.”
Tonight the words battered me. The “wicked Foe” seemed to have a lot of power over me these days, and fear continued to twist my stomach. From one perspective, God had kept me safe in the store that day. I was alive. And today, when I’d had another spell, He’d sent Lydia to guide me home. But in spite of that, I found it difficult to commend myself into His hands anymore.
I pulled the quilt up to Bryan’s chin and kissed him one more time. Gathering up scattered clothes, I tiptoed from his room, leaving the door open a perfect six inches. He liked to see the spill of hallway light as he fell asleep.
Our washing machine lurked in an oversized closet off the kitchen. I tossed the clothes into the basket and carefully checked the pockets. Bryan had a habit of forgetting dead beetles or chewed wads of bubble gum for me to discover in the washing machine filter. Today all I found was the note from Mrs. Pimblott.
Dear Mrs. Sullivan,
I had hoped to talk with you about the Thanksgiving play but haven’t been able to reach you. If you aren’t able to participate, please let me know soon, so I can recruit another parent.
I’d also like to arrange an appointment with you. Bryan is a delightful student, but in the past week he’s been distracted and irritable. I know you’ll agree that we should discuss this before problems escalate. You can stop by my classroom after school any day this week, or call me to arrange a meeting. Thank you.
Mrs. Pimblott
I smoothed the letter, pressing out each wrinkle beneath my fingers. Stark against the top of my dryer, the black ink condemned me. Of course Bryan was distracted. His mother spent half her time avoiding him or snapping at him, and the other half trying to make it up to him.
God, you’ve got to fix me faster. For Bryan’s sake.
I groped in the pocket of Tom’s jacket looking for a Kleenex. The card Lydia had given me met my fingers. I pulled it out and studied the italicized phone number. Should I call? Could I?
I padded out to the living room and penciled the words into my notebook. Call the victim center.
Dark fear threaded through me. If I went to a counselor, wasn’t that admitting I was broken? Emotionally disturbed? I’d be starting down the same futile road as Alex.
Oh, Lord, please no.
I erased that entry and wrote Exercise instead. I drew a checkmark next to Explore neighborhood. I’d walked outside, and I’d even talked to God—sort of. At least Lydia had talked to Him on my behalf.
The computer screen beckoned me like a warm companion—the only one available in the middle of a lonely night. With my small yellow notebook at hand, I surfed more sites about panic attacks, the keys clacking beneath my fingers in a desperate tempo. Reading the loops where people wrote about their struggles gave me a glimpse into a wealth of pain. Seeing these stories could cause depression and anxiety.
On the other hand, I felt less alone. And here in this jumble of the world’s knowledge, there had to be an answer. I scrolled and clicked, skimmed and clicked again. The next page could provide me the key. My eyes burned, but I continued to search.
One blogger linked to a Web site with summaries of recent medical research. I scrolled through indecipherable lingo and began to yawn. Then I stilled the mouse. An obscure site reported a study where people with emotional disorders benefited from small volunteer efforts. Helping others created an emotional upsurge that helped the patients improve. Lydia and Barney at the storefront mission came to mind. Her core strength. His playful enthusiasm. They were busy “doing for the least of the brothers” and they seemed happy.
Inspiration tingled under my skin. I turned to the first page of my notebook.
Penny’s Project, it read. Move toward healing. Be Penny again, in time for Tom’s return. I printed an addendum in block letters. Do one kind thing for someone each day.
I studied that goal. I’d be able to do nice things for Bryan all day long, but it wouldn’t help me conquer my anxiety.
Okay. I erased and tried again. Do a kind thing for someone NEW each day.
The words sang to me. This could work. But how would I find people? I wasn’t even going out for groceries anymore.
Well, I could send my friend Sonja a card without leaving home. And I could call my mom and tell her how much I appreciated her. Or maybe I could make cookies and give some to Jim-Bob next time he played in our backyard. And give a bottled water to the grocery delivery gal. I scribbled headings to new pages. Bryan, Tom, family, neighbors, church, school, the nearby mission.
Then I returned to the first page and added the familiar words, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
I hugged my notebook with a surge of new optimism. I’d dabbled in some baby steps, but this was a breakthrough. Progress. Caring about other people would heal my shaken mind and heart.
I hoped.
chapter
7
TWENTY-ONE. GROAN. TWENTY-TWO. GRIMACE. Fifty crunches and a handful of modified push-ups would revitalize me.
Argh. My muscles burned and I flopped back in an non–athletic sprawl. Exercise had seemed like a good next goal from my notebook. The infomercials I’d seen during my recent insomnia-plagued nights had made a convincing argument. “Feeling sluggish? Tired all the time? Not yourself? You need more exercise!” I couldn’t afford the oversize beach balls, ropes and pulleys, and other gizmos, but I could certainly do a few basic exercises. If I were to be honest, it also gave me a way to stall before tackling the new “acts of kindness” challenge I’d set for myself—or even worse, confronting the decision to call the victim center.
I had barely been able to pull myself out of bed this morning, but as soon as Bryan left for school, I hit the floor of the living room and started sit-ups.
Bad idea. Nausea roiled through my gut, and I curled on my side. Was that Bryan’s milk money under the couch? I stared at the dust bunnies, feeling as if my body were a piece of lint on the carpet—grubby and lifeless.
A Navy SEAL would push through the pain, ignore the heavy limbs and constant fatigue. I rolled to my stomach and tried a push-up.
My arms wobbled and gave out, and my chin crashed into the floor. Clearly, I was not a Navy SEAL.
If you fail at these little goals, you’re out of options. You’ll need to call the victim center and ask for help.
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br /> Adrenaline fed my muscles, and I pressed back up to my hands and knees and did enough modified push-ups to break a sweat. Then I cranked up the stereo and marched in place to a Celtic worship CD. The first song was an energetic reel, and my spirits lifted. I could almost infuse some enthusiasm into my minced steps around the room. The next song opened with a plaintive a cappella voice, rich with yearning and passion. The melody was the sort that burrowed past rational layers in my mind and pressed a finger against raw emotions. Buried grief welled up in my spirit. I clamped down on it and quickly switched off the stereo.
I’d heard somewhere that aggressive housework counted as exercise, and I’d let things go in the past few weeks. Maybe folding laundry and dusting would be a smarter idea than calisthenics.
An hour later, the bathroom sparkled, laundry was folded and put away, the mess in Bryan’s room was swept into a pile to one side of his bed, and I was steeping a cup of tea in the kitchen. I pulled out my notebook and wrote Clean house on my list of goals, and then drew a firm check mark alongside. It might be cheating to write something down after I’d done it, just so I could check it off, but I needed the sense of accomplishment. Did cleaning the house count as my daily good deed for someone? No one saw it but Bryan and me. Bryan didn’t care that I’d vanquished the dust bunnies. On the other hand, it would make my mom happy. She often recommended housecleaning as a cure-all. This could count as a sort of gift to her.
Carrying my tea in one hand and a dust cloth in the other, I strolled into the living room and buffed the shelves on the wall of our makeshift office. Our CDs were still a mess from my frantic search, stacked haphazardly with Handel’s Messiah next to a Broadway cast recording of West Side Story. We really needed a system for organizing our music. I tossed aside my dust cloth and set my tea on the coffee table. Now was as good a time as any.
I tried to ignore the precious DVD from Tom, still waiting for me on the top shelf. But as I reorganized our movies and CDs, I found myself glancing up every few minutes.
Finally unable to resist, I popped the blank DVD into the player again. With the channels set up for the movie I’d just finished, I pushed the tray in and hit Play.
Snowy static filled the screen.
I tried rewinding, pausing, forwarding. Nothing helped. I poked the DVD rack in and out and examined the unlabeled disc for scratches. I needed Bryan. I’d learned long ago to get his help with electronic equipment. He knew how to program our VCR to tape his favorite cartoon, how to switch to the correct channel to play video games, and what was wrong when I couldn’t get sound to play. He could operate three remotes at one time.
I’d probably accidentally hit the wrong button. The disc couldn’t be damaged. It just couldn’t. Looking forward to the next message had gotten me through several rough patches during the last few days.
I placed the disc carefully back on the shelf. I’d try again later. My housecleaning energy spent, I drained the lukewarm tea and trudged to the kitchen. I’d been letting voice mail collect any phone calls, but I couldn’t ignore them forever. When I picked up the phone, nervous beeps warned me that I had several new messages.
There is an art to returning phone calls when you’d rather not. With strategic timing, I was able to leave messages instead of facing live conversations. My mom had library guild on Wednesday mornings, and Mrs. Pimblott was teaching. I even lucked out and got ombudsman Mary Jo’s voice mail and assured her, without a quaver in my voice, that I’d be happy to get together sometime. Of course, since we weren’t speaking live, she couldn’t pin me down.
I muddled through the rest of the week. Each day I struggled to think of a good deed that I could do from my living room. I sent a supportive e-mail to Tom. I’d already thanked him for his surprise DVD recordings the morning after I found the disc. I didn’t want to tell him the DVD had stopped working, so I just thanked him again for the first message.
I mailed a donation to World Vision, a nice card to my friend Sonya, and crocheted baby booties for Cindy’s new baby. For those minutes, I felt a bit of hopefulness, a slight connection with the woman I used to be. But I continued to battle sleepless nights and dragged through the hours of each day. And the world outside my door continued to be a dark and nebulous monster.
I rationed each ounce of my energy for when Bryan got home from school. I printed out Tom’s e-mails for him, and each night after supper I typed my son’s responses and helped him send them. I spread out the contents of the craft bin, played endless rounds of Trouble, even designed an in-home obstacle course with couch cushions. But no matter how many activities I planned around the house for him, he remained restless.
“How about the library? Huh, Mom?”
“Daddy said you’d take me to our new park.”
“Know what? The beach would be a good idea.”
“I have an idea. We can go to the arcade and play games. Right, Mom?”
By suppertime on Saturday, he’d grown tired of my vague, “Mommy doesn’t feel good” excuses.
“Well, you should take your vitamins,” he shot back in a lofty impression of my mom. Then he stomped from the table and slammed his room door. His unacceptable behavior got him grounded for the rest of the evening. I sulked in the living room, and he sulked in his bedroom.
At bedtime, when he was freshly showered and in flannel, dinosaur pajamas, he nestled into my lap on the couch with three bedtime books. “Know what? This was not a good day.”
Poor kid. His father was at sea for months—in his mind, practically forever—and his mom a weary stranger. Time to tackle the next specific goal in my notebook. It was a big one, but it might be the breakthrough we both needed. Take Bryan to the beach.
“Tell you what. Tomorrow, we’ll sleep in—”
“What about Sunday school?”
“We’ll skip just this once, and—”
“But we didn’t go last week, either.”
“And then, after lunch, we’ll go to the beach.”
He gasped. “Really?”
I smiled. “Really.”
Chubby arms flung around my neck. “You’re the best mom ever. I didn’t mean it when I told God you were doing a bad job.”
So he had squealed on me, huh? Well, at least he was remembering to pray. Someone in the house needed to.
Sunday afternoon, I kept my promise. I summoned superhuman courage for Bryan’s sake and forced myself into the car to drive the forty minutes with my son to the Virginia Beach shore. Summer visitors had vacated, and we found a deserted section of dunes. I hugged my knees and stared out at the gray-green waves. The sky hung low and overcast giving a dirty tinge to the water. Seagulls performed aerial dogfights with occasional dive-bombs when they spotted a fish. The breeze tugged hair free from my loose ponytail and wrapped strands across my neck.
Bryan jogged a short distance away and dug into the sand. His shovel scraped pleasantly as he built misshapen mounds.
I drew in a deep breath through my nose and savored the briny scent. The glaring sunlight of the past week had depressed me as it spotlighted the world outside my window, so I welcomed today’s clouds and haze. The muted shades of sand, sea, and sky seemed to understand and comfort me. I burrowed my fingers into the sand and lifted a handful. I poured the grains from one palm to another, again and again, letting the wind catch small bits.
A bird glided near and then sailed out over the ocean. “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” Words from my old King James book of Psalms floated through my mind.
Even here? Far from family and friends?
I stared out toward the horizon. The ocean was bigger than this Wisconsin girl had ever pictured. The hugeness of it stretched something inside the muscles of my heart. The roar of waves rose and fell in a calming rhythm. Maybe Tom was leaning against a ship’s rail and watching these same waves. His hazel eyes would catch a hint of sea-green as he squ
inted toward the horizon, jaw squared in noble determination to support the men he’d pledged to serve, no matter the danger. I was so proud of him. And I longed for him to be proud of me. When he got home, I wanted to be the wife he remembered. Whole. Strong.
Tom had prayed for me. Bryan had prayed for me. Even Lydia at the neighborhood mission had prayed for me. But my throat had constricted each time I’d tried to talk to God about my struggles.
I closed my eyes. “Erase the past. Find me and bring me back to myself,” I whispered into the salty breeze. It was my first true prayer about that horrible afternoon.
Peace seeped into me like the moist air that clung to my clothes and pressed against my skin. Bryan romped the shoreline, water murmured in and back, and sand cushioned my limbs. My doubts drifted away, swallowed up in contentment. Laying my needs out before the God who made this vast ocean brought far more comfort than all my to-do lists and self-reliance. My little notebook wasn’t a bad idea. Effort mattered. But so did acknowledging my helplessness. I curled up on my Father’s lap and heard the beat of His heart, more deep and powerful than the rhythmic waves.
“Look, Mom!” Bryan scampered toward me, hands full of scavenged prizes. Sand scattered over my clothes as he slid in beside me. I laughed, and the wind caught the sound and spun it around us both.
On the drive home, I hummed happily until the fuel gauge light flickered. Oops. Almost empty. Tom usually kept the car filled. He’d been gone three weeks, but I’d only driven a few times and hadn’t needed to buy gas yet.