Sanibel Scribbles (21 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

EACH DAY BROUGHT A NEW
tub of potatoes. As Howard sat peeling them on a bucket turned upside down in the kitchen, Denver washed dish after dish with the sprayer, and Vicki ran in and out of the kitchen carrying trays with clean dishes, and trays with dirty dishes. They chatted here and there, quickly, as time allowed. Howard would ask about her canvas. Denver would share a vessel statistic, or tell her about a gorgeous submarine located somewhere out in Asia. Vicki would mutter Spanish and ask them how her accent sounded. No one mentioned the night on the dock, or the hidden money. They pretended it had never happened. She knew better than to ask any questions. She knew this story didn’t belong to her.

Each night brought a new adventure or revelation about life, death, and things worth doing. She found herself meeting Ruth on the old houseboat several midnights in a row, and, slowly, practicing yoga became more natural. Others were coming for yoga, too. Some nights Ruth had an entire class. Other nights one or two people showed up.

“The stresses of daily life wreak havoc on the way in which we breathe. Through yoga, we are repairing our natural breath as well as the walls in which we live. Each time you practice, Vicki and Howard, find the slowest breathing pace you can comfortably sustain,” said Ruth, while in what she called the “Bridge Pose.” “Inhale to expand and exhale to contract.”

“Ruth, I still find myself thinking about a million things while doing some of the poses,” said Vicki. “How do I get rid of all my thoughts?”

“Don’t scold your wandering mind. Accept it, then focus on your breath and the pose and the type of palace you’d like to live in. Eventually, you’ll be able to eliminate the chatter from your mind.”

“I’ll try.”

“I’m living proof that you can,” said Ruth, once an off-shore racing boat, thundering across water at over one hundred and seventy miles per hour on its way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, competing against other boats, wind, waves and weather, only to discover that life’s real competition is against yourself. Vicki wanted to enjoy breathing. She wanted to learn how to calm her breath, and in doing so, relax her body at any given moment. Each pose was both a mental discipline and a physical posture, a working together of the mind and body. It was up to her to learn how to take care of herself, but she also accepted that this might take time.

Midnight stood as the border between two worlds, night and day. Night no longer meant time to fall asleep, thus no more futile attempts to drift off or struggles
not
to drift off. She celebrated that she no longer just had until midnight.

When she left the island for her two days off, she felt confident her anxiety was a phase now cured by the night therapy found on the island where she could stop and think. Wrong. Her mind stubbornly controlled her body and wouldn’t let go. On the way home from the marina, she felt dizzy and nervous driving over the Causeway Bridge.

Her car collided with a butterfly, killing it, and it bothered her that death came suddenly, even to a bug. She noticed construction vehicles working on the other side of the median, and they looked like monstrous creatures with long black antennae and silver claws, mechanically moving like predators in a horror flick. Engrossed in fearful thoughts, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and near fainting, she held both hands on the wheel, not trusting herself.

The end of the bridge was in sight, and she slowed her car down, but honking horns behind her pressured her to accelerate. She put her emergency lights on and could see the end of the bridge, but feared she would never make it. She would ram her car into the side and go over.

No, that won’t happen. None of it will happen. I do have a fear—a fear of dying in my sleep. I am not about to let it become a phobia, an intense and persistent fear of a situation, specific object or activity. I am fully aware that my fear is irrational and way out of proportion, yet I also recognize my free-spirited imagination, which becomes dangerous when out of control
.

But despite her psychosomatic diagnosis, still she secretly believed that she too lived with an undetected heart problem. Whatever the cause, her sleepless nights were pushing her to the edge, an edge that was dropping off into a chronic state of sleep deprivation, perhaps leading to insanity.

This latest attack led her directly to the Sanibel Library, where she found a section on grief. By now she had learned that she had a choice. She could either be passively grief-stricken and a victim of grief, or she could actively grieve and move toward healing. She read that the grieving process often included four stages: fear, guilt, rage, and sadness. She felt stuck in fear.

She moved her way to the self-help section and read that the episodes she was experiencing were commonly referred to as “panic attacks” and that millions of Americans at some moment or other have felt such periods of sheer fear. For some, the fear goes away. For others, it takes over their entire lives. It becomes debilitating, making their lives impossible. Fear is expressed in many ways. Some can’t face crowds; others, heights or bridges or water.

As she read that anxiety is the fearful anticipation of impending danger, the source of which is unknown or unrecognized, she felt sharp pains dart through the left side of her chest. She read more, relating to the words on the pages.
The central feature of anxiety is intense mental discomfort, a feeling that one will not be able to master future events
. Yes, in her case, the night. She needed to survive each night so that she could live to see day again.
Physical symptoms include sweaty palms, muscle tension, shortness of breath, feelings of faintness and a pounding heart
.

She left the library and quickly found that days away from Tarpon Key meant a return to the things-to-do world that revolved around a wristwatch as she obediently checked off errand after errand on her to-do list. She got her passport photo taken, registered by mail for classes at the University of Madrid, and shopped for clothes for Spain. While opening a
pile of mail, she discovered she had been awarded an academic scholarship and decided it would be a great reason to give Ruth when it came time to leave her job at the end of summer.

That night, she called Ben, and they drove to Captiva Island for dinner at a place located on the beach. As she sat across from him, she pictured what their children might look like. One would surely have his blue eyes, and the other her brown. Hold on! Come autumn, she’d leave the country, and after that, she’d return to Michigan. Mr. Right wasn’t supposed to show up, not yet.

Ben playfully stepped on her shoes under the table, as always. “So tell me, what’s this island life like? What sort of people go off to live and work on a small island with nothing to do?” He casually folded his cocktail napkin into an airplane.

“It’s intriguing, Ben. I guess they’re people who want to step back from this hectic world for a moment. Those who need to stop, catch their breath. All sorts.” She took several gulps of white zinfandel.

“Then why are
you
out there?” he asked, shooting the paper airplane he had folded directly past her.

“It’s refreshing. I can breathe out there.” She rubbed her eyes, hoping it was just hair spray, but she knew it wasn’t. She knew her anxiety was taking over, blurring her vision. Ben went out of focus, and she felt dizzy. She bent down to pick up his plane once she noticed her shortness of breath. Why, at a calm moment, would this occur? She had many hours left until bedtime, until midnight. Not wanting him to see her struggle to breathe, she knocked her purse to the floor and bent down to gather it up. It seemed that bending down helped to clear her airways. Sometimes she’d tie her shoes or fix the cuff on her pants.

“And you can’t breathe here?”

“Well, sometimes we all need to take time out to live on an island.”

“Hello, Vicki. What do you think Sanibel and Captiva are?”

“Islands.” She wanted to tell him that now, even as she spoke, she was thinking of impending danger, of a heart attack. She wanted to tell him of her psychosomatic illness, her phobia of dying in her sleep, and the panic attacks
that crept up on her during most of their dates and almost all of her nights.

“So why are you out on that island when you can live here on these islands?”

She needed more air, but didn’t want him to see her gasping. How could an attack come at a calm, relaxing moment, one that provided absolutely nothing to justify a panic attack?

“At this particular time in my life, I need even more of an island,” she answered.

“More
of an island?”

“Ben, I want to tell you something. I need to.”

“Yes, I’m listening, my little high-maintenance princess,” he laughed. She stole a few more sips of wine, assuring herself that all was safe and nothing life-threatening was going to happen. She looked around for escape routes like the bathroom. Then she reminded herself that she was an imaginative person, and that her imagination loved to tease her.

“I need more space, more solitude, more time away from things,” she said.

“We have spent so much time together, and there is much I know about you and much I don’t,” he said, taking her hands into his and massaging them. “I want to understand why a woman living on an island feels a need to leave for an even farther island. I’d love to know what a woman gains from time spent on a remote piece of land in the middle of nowhere, with no shops, hardly any phones, no roads, no cars, no link to the mainland, no desirable men. Women thrive on all of these things and can’t survive without them.”

“A woman can survive without those things, Ben.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, and a woman craves time alone, time to do absolutely nothing.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said, and then thought of tulips and how they need four to six months of cold dormancy to flower.

“I knew women crave things like chocolate and shopping but didn’t know they crave being alone and doing nothing.”

“Do you know anything about tulips?” she asked.

“Not a thing,” he said.” Why?”

“Well, coming from Holland, Michigan, I know a lot about tulips. Too much, in fact. A tulip needs morning sun to open,” she said. “And as much as that tulip needs morning sun, a woman needs time alone. She discovers immense power from within, power she never knew she had, once she spends a moment with herself.”

She arrived at the condo and climbed into bed by one o’clock in the morning, not ready to sleep.
How could death be so cruel? How unfair to take Rebecca in her sleep, and Grandma too! Who next?
Her pillow felt damp, as if someone on the beach had stood over it, shaking their wet, salty body. She longed to have coffee with Rebecca, or paste together seashell mirrors with her grandmother.

She couldn’t help but think about Grandma, who came unglued after her husband died. Grandma’s mourning had turned into depression, and she started to live most of her days in the past, in their home. She had raised her family in that home, in that neighborhood, in that comfort zone. After Grandpa died, she crossed a bridge back to her glory days and never fully returned to the present.

She sat up to stop the stabbing but didn’t have the patience to counsel her breathing. She let it go untamed, and the battle took its course.

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. When she opened her eyes, she glanced down and saw the pile of mail she had neglected to open. She opened a yellow envelope postmarked from Holland. Reading just the first line was like reading an affidavit. It validated, in writing, what she had refused to believe after all this time. She stopped after the first sentence because her hands began to shake, so for a moment, she held it and kissed it, then continued to read.

Dear Vicki
,

Doctors say Rebecca had a heart condition that we never knew she had. She suffered several minor heart attacks in the months leading up to her death
.
I haven’t been sleeping or eating or smiling or doing anything pleasant at all. Why couldn’t it have happened to me instead? A mother only wants the best for her children. Why am I stuck here in this world filled with holidays, parties, and parades, in a world that pressures us to celebrate, smile, and socialize? Since Rebecca’s death I have been trying hard to create a world for myself in which I don’t have to do any of these things. I’ve been sitting at her graveside for hours at a time. I bring flowers, but their colors clash with the ugly brown ground. Suddenly, one day, as I brought a bouquet of yellow roses, I could almost hear Rebecca telling me to leave her grave site and take the flowers with me. It confused me, so I stood there a moment with my eyes shut. I swear I heard her telling me she didn’t want me sitting there on the ground any longer. She’d rather see her mother bringing flowers to a party, smiling, socializing with others. She told me a daughter also wants the best for her mother and that it would bring her much peace to see me happy again. I whispered that I didn’t feel that I had any reason to socialize or smile, or party for that matter, and she told me I was wrong. She told me I had great reason to celebrate. She told me to continue buying flowers, but instead of dropping them here on the ground, to keep them, or give them to Dad or her sisters, and to party every day. Now that sounded strange, and I had to laugh. Then she told me, “Mom, go and celebrate your life. It won’t last forever. Your time will come as well, so make sure you live the life you have been given.”

Vicki, let’s celebrate life. It’s not going to happen immediately. But let’s try
.

Love
,
Rebecca’s Mom