I lingered over one fact I knew for sure, one fact I would return to and savor many times for years to come: If Lyn had not been there for me, I never would have found my way. “What will be, will be,” she used to say. And yet she never accepted what was, but spent her life working to improve the lives of all the people she loved. She pretty much saved mine.
There was a lot that needed saving in my crazy family, but I’m proud of the whole lot. We didn’t know what we were doing much of the time, we made stupid plans if we planned at all, we stumbled into situations we didn’t expect, we blew fortunes we could have made, and we often failed to deliver on the potential we were born with. But we were true to ourselves, mostly because we were simply not able to fake much of anything for very long.
Dad was a champion sailor, racing from age fourteen and winning a slew of trophies at the Wianno Yacht Club. One of his special talents was finding wind where no one else could see it. He would veer off from the others and find the gust that would win him the race. A version of that talent landed in us all. Somehow we found what wind we needed in corners of the bay where no one else looked. We found the wind, we found a course, we navigated in our own fashion, and we helped one another out the best we could.
EPILOGUE
Since this has been a storybook, I thought I could fit in one more story, a quick one.
As I said at the start, no one can tell his entire story. In this account, I’ve left out the writing of my books, and my work with the fascinating condition misleadingly called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which I discovered I had in 1981.
I’ve left out hundreds of stories of patients I’ve worked with, friends I’ve made, and crucial world events and scientific developments that shook me, shaped me, and changed our world.
As I was wrapping up the writing of this book, I was also seeing patients in an office on West Seventy-Second Street in Manhattan. I took breaks between scheduled patients, free hours during which I could put the final touches on this work.
It was April, with the weather changing from cold to chilly to warm enough to go without a jacket. On one of those sunny, warm-enough days, I decided to go out and get a dose of my medication, aka Starbucks.
Walking down Columbus Avenue, white Venti cup in hand, I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk up against a streetlight pole, lovingly stroking a big, black dog, could have been a Lab, more likely a mix. Since I love dogs, I stopped for a moment and watched. From the looks they gave each other, I could plainly see how much the man loved the dog and the dog loved the man. This is life at its best, if you ask me.
Except that the man was down and out. I couldn’t tell if he had two legs, one leg, or none. He was dressed all in black, and the covers he had around him concealed his full anatomy. Looking for money, he had placed his paper cup on a larger piece of cardboard I suppose he’d torn from a box.
After enjoying the warmth of man and his dog for a few seconds, I started walking toward them again. As I got closer I saw he had written in clumsy caps on the cardboard ANYTHING HELPS.
With my coffee in one hand, I couldn’t get my wallet out of my hip pocket and open it to find a bill, so I asked the man to hold the cup for me. He gladly obliged, smiling at me, along with his dog, who also smiled at me, as dogs do.
That always gets me: They’re smiling, I’m hassled, what’s up with me? I took from my wallet a five-dollar bill—Why not a twenty?—put it in his cup, took my coffee back, and walked on. He said after me, “That’s a large amount, thanks so much.”
When he said that, I almost turned around and went back to get the story of his life, find out more about his dog, maybe instead give him the twenty, and do all the other stuff I am so inclined to do in spite of the many good reasons not to. But I didn’t. It didn’t even occur to me at the time that he was, by all rights, where I should have been.
Maybe if I see him there the next time I’m in New York, I will talk it all over with him, find out his story, tell him mine, and make friends with his dog, of course.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank all of the characters who appear in this memoir, some disguised, some without disguise, just as I remember them. These are the people who made my life what it is, so I owe them the world.
I also thank the professionals who helped me so very much, my agent, the brilliant and savvy Jim Levine; my editor, the astute and dedicated Nancy Miller, and her whole team at Bloomsbury who punch far above their weight; my personal assistant, the incomparable Dianne Nargassans, who saves my bacon regularly while also reading Epictetus daily; my media assistant, the adept Christina Veal, who negotiates social media for me; and my partner Darin Engelhardt, who supported this effort all the way.
I also thank the many friends who read bits of the manuscript as it was being written, including Peter Metz and John Ratey, both of whom appear in the memoir, and the many teachers who encouraged me to write and believe that life can turn out well.
Most of all I thank my family, which includes our twelve-year-old Jack Russell, Ziggy; my twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Lucy; my twenty-five-year-old son, Jack; and my twenty-two-year-old son, Tucker.
Which leaves my wife, Sue, whose age I won’t reveal. Sue does it all for all of us. She radiates warmth and gives all she has every day to every person and every project she encounters. She is the kindest person I know. I could never thank her enough.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
EDWARD M. HALLOWELL, MD, is the bestselling author of Driven to Distraction and many other acclaimed books, a leading authority in the field of ADHD, a world-renowned speaker, the host of the Distraction podcast, and the founder of the Hallowell Centers for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Boston MetroWest, New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. www.drhallowell.com
BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
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First published in the United States 2018
Copyright © Edward M. Hallowell, 2018
Names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals portrayed in this book. Patients and stories are composites.
A portion of the author’s proceeds of this book will go to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-63286-858-9; eBook: 978-1-63286-860-2
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Because I Come from a Crazy Family Page 36