Author Archives: shrinkrapped

Buying Time

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Golden-Gate-Bridge-from-Chrissy-Field-March-1-2014.jpg

One day several years ago, a 14-year-old boy got off the bus and walked to the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some things were troubling him, and he put his leg up over the railing, preparing to jump. Then he took his leg down, caught the bus home, and told his mother, who sought help immediately. He’s fine now.

Without that pause to reconsider, this boy’s life may have ended in a tragedy that has claimed the lives of more than 1,600 people known to have jumped to their deaths from the iconic but deadly landmark.

There’s long been talk of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. At last there is action: Earlier this summer, the bridge district directors committed the final $76 million needed for safety nets to deter jumpers. The barrier will be operational in three years.

It’s been a long time coming. The most potent opposition has rested on a widespread misconception: many wrongly believe that people stopped from jumping will just go on to find another way to kill themselves.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Although some who are intent on suicide will find a way to die no matter what, fewer than 10 percent of those pulled from the bridge later take their own lives.

Ninety percent go on living—that’s a phenomenal success rate.

The most lethal means of suicide—death by firearms and jumping—are often chosen not by those who have carefully planned their own demise, but by those acting impulsively in a moment of upset. Young people are particularly susceptible to impulsivity; teens account for more than 10 percent of those who make the fatal plunge.

It only takes a moment—to go over the edge of the alluringly low railing, or to pull back from it. A moment that means life or death.

Buying time is the essence of suicide prevention. Time allows impulses to pass, moods to shift, circumstances to improve. Would-be jumpers who are thwarted by a barrier gain precious time to change their mind.

That’s time those who go over the railing probably wish they had. Kevin Hines is one of the very few who made the leap and lived to tell about it. Here’s what he said in an interview with a New York Times reporter: “I’ll tell you what I can’t get out of my head. It’s watching my hands come off that railing and thinking to myself, My God, what have I just done? Because I know that almost everyone else who’s gone off that bridge, they had that exact same thought at that moment. All of a sudden, they didn’t want to die, but it was too late.”

As the saying goes, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. With the Golden Gate Bridge barrier in place, we will have a much better permanent solution to the temporary problem of suicidal impulses.

It’s about time.

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For further information:

“The Urge to End it All,” by Scott Anderson. New York Times Magazine, July 6, 2008.

The Final Leap, by John Bateson (publication date 2015).

Myths about Suicide, by Thomas Joiner (2011).

Bridge Rail Foundation: http://www.bridgerail.org/

24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Lightweight

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lightweight backpacking equipmentJudging from my saga of preparing for camping, then actually going camping, you might think that “Lightweight” refers to me! But it’s actually an homage to my long-suffering husband, Jonathan, written when he was really in the thick of his lightweight backpacking craze a few years back:

  • 24-ounce mega-cans of Heineken beer
  • Snack-sized Starkist tuna lunch kits

This could be the shopping list of a frat boy who cares about  Omega-3 fatty acids but not about mercury. Instead the list is my husband’s, and he’s not even a drinker. Jonathan intends to pour the beer down the drain, give the cat a treat, and fashion a portable stove from the cans.

Jonathan is obsessed with lightweight backpacking. He spends hours online chatting with like-minded fanatics about the newest miracle fabric that repels water, retains heat, and is lighter than air.  They swap recipes for freeze-dried concoctions requiring less space than a teabag. Each gram shaved from the overall weight of the pack is cause for celebration; it means he can go faster and farther on his solo trips into the wilderness.

Jonathan spends all day experimenting, drilling holes into the beer can, creating a miniature windscreen. Our teenaged daughter catches him trying to boil water in his makeshift tuna-can stove. Rolling her eyes, she declares, “This mid-life crisis has gone too far!”

I know I should be grateful. Other men troll online for extramarital flings or buy expensive sports cars to stave off the onslaught of age. My husband is both frugal and true.

Yet I can’t help but wonder about his preoccupation with traveling light. How much does he long to unburden himself of home and family, of a life heavy with obligation?  The mortgage, my hot flashes, college tuition, endless household chores–they all add to his load.

No wonder Jonathan wants to set off unencumbered at a swift pace. Come to think of it, I’d like to join him. If I promise to travel light, maybe he’ll boil enough water for two.

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What encumbrances would you like to shed?

 

Return from the Wild

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Long Lake, Eastern SierraReaders of Shrinkrapped’s last post may be wondering how I, or at least my marriage, fared on our recent trip to the Eastern Sierra. To recap, I am not a fan of camping. Or discomfort. My husband, Jonathan, on the other hand, has bookmarked “Lightweight Backpacking” on his desktop.

Since it was 105 degrees in Bishop, we lucked out with balmy nights 4,000 feet higher up. So I was able to use my sleeping bag as a quilt after all. I was so grateful, I barely minded the cheek-to-flocked-vinyl sleeping experience afforded by Jonathan’s ban on sheets (which, after all, add a couple of extra ounces to the weight of the two-ton car).

True, hot weather meant hot hiking, but since the Sierra Club trip leaders, like time and tide, wait for no man (or woman), we were on the trails before 8:00 a.m. every day. It was good to beat the heat, since all the hikes were 12+ miles long with 2,300+ feet of elevation gain. With a group of 24 hyper-competitive hikers, it was a bit like the running of the bulls in Pamplona: Stopping for a sip of water meant being trampled to death.

But did I mention how beautiful it was? There’s a drought on, but the wildflowers were still good, if a month earlier and not as profuse as they would be in wet years. Shooting Star, Eastern Sierra The mosquitoes, however, seemed to think there was sufficient moisture.

So a good time was had by all, especially the mosquitoes. Also, important research was conducted:

  1. What is the amount of heat lost with every millimeter’s worth of air mattress deflation?
  2. Does DEET from that bottle of Jungle Juice you bought from REI thirty years ago retain its efficacy?
  3. Have DEET-impervious mosquitoes evolved over the last three decades?
  4. Are hiking poles worth the trouble?
  5. If the check engine light comes on during Day 3 of a 7-day trip, when should you call your mechanic?
  6. How many days will a marriage last without showers?

Bonus question: Before or after our return to showers?

 

 

Gearing Up for Camping

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Camping gear

My husband, Jonathan, and I are about to embark for a week in the eastern Sierra. The first three nights involve camping with a group of fanatical hikers who think nothing of day after day of 13+ mile hikes with 3,000+ foot elevation gains. But despite our aging knees, it’s not the hiking that gives me pause. It’s the camping.

I loved backpacking in my youth, but I was never that keen on camping. With backpacking you know you’ve abandoned all comfort at the trailhead, so you quickly stop dreaming about high thread count sheets. With camping, though, it’s always in the back of your mind that you could just jump in the car and drive to a motel for a good night’s sleep.  We had a lot of fun when our kids were younger camping with the Girl Scouts. But that’s because we stood around “watching the kids” while our friends did all the work. Basically, I’m like my friend Roberta, whose idea of acceptable camping is a hotel without room service.

But it seemed like a good idea at the time when Jonathan asked if I’d like to try camping again. Now that we’re going, we’re getting our gear ready. Trouble has set in even before we’ve gotten to where the oxygen is thin.

Like in our living room, as we try to remember how to set up our tent. As the scent of mildew permeates the house and we nearly knock over the lamp with the fully extended aluminum poles, we argue about whether or not we’ll need the fly.

“It might be cold,” I point out, as Jonathan frowns.

Then it’s time to see if the air mattress has a slow leak. At least we are persuaded it doesn’t have a fast leak, so we are happy. Until I propose getting a sheet to cover it.

“We don’t need a sheet,” Jonathan says. “I am not bringing a bunch of blankets and sheets. You’ll be in a sleeping bag.”

Did I mention how much I HATE being confined in a sleeping bag, and like to spread one out under me, one on top, my legs akimbo in a sensible sprawl?

“This is not lightweight backpacking,” I counter. “Can’t we go for comfort?”

Apparently not. Meanwhile, Jonathan starts to talk about how nice it would be just to slip into his bivvy sack and sleep under the stars. He looks longingly at his one-person tent.

Our last decision involves water shoes. You can guess who is pro and who is con, and who is welcome to bring them as long as she is willing to carry them.

Luckily, the last three nights of our trip will involve sleeping inside on mattresses, so I think our marriage will survive.

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Camping trials and joys? How compatible are you and your sweetie’s vacation and/or packing preferences?

Cleaning Up Our Act

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SolesIt’s time. Past time, actually. Emma is 26 and has been living in Brooklyn for the last 18 months. She’s graduated not just from college, but to full independent living, not counting the occasional Trader Joe’s gift cards I send her. I do this when I become too anxious that trying to make it on $12 an hour in the Big Apple may force Emma into dumpster diving. (Possibly it is not the threat of starvation that might drive her to this, as you will see.) Also, Emma’s still on our Verizon family plan. I am convinced that when the stages of human development are revised for the current era, getting your own phone account will replace marriage, mortgages, and having children as the signposts of adulthood.  Still, aside from these minor caveats, Emma’s grown up. Gone.

Her stuff isn’t gone, though. True, she did a major purge to mark her graduation from college. But I might have been a tad too optimistic when I chronicled the demise of Emma’s hoarding days. She really just scratched the surface. One thing unearthed during that earlier excavation was that I am a hoarder by proxy, and I didn’t demand that Emma dig deeper. I believe that closets and basements were invented for hanging onto things until we are ready to let go.

Apparently, I haven’t been ready. Although I’ve professed a desire for a guestroom for years, Emma’s partially denuded bedroom has retained its status as part shrine, part dumping ground. The one thing we did get rid of after she left is her loft bed, so now even nimble guests (or returning daughters) have no place to sleep.

My husband and I finally got a new mattress, which provided the impetus to move the old one into Emma’s room and turn fantasy into reality. It is not quite the guestroom of my dreams. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to a dumping ground with a bed in the middle of it, surrounded by junk. Emma’s junk.

I wish I were the kind of mother who could just start tossing, confident that the appropriation of kids’ former space no longer induces trauma once they are old enough to fall off your health insurance under Obamacare. But I can’t. I’m an enabler.

It would probably be better, I think as I riffle through high school term papers and ugly glass figurines, to adopt a version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Don’t tell Emma about that mysteriously disappeared fake hand we got for Halloween one year, and she won’t ask. Or care. Or even know! But perhaps I have never gotten over the box of stuffed animals my mother tossed. More pragmatically, I regret that the baseball Jackie Robinson autographed for my husband when he was a boy did not survive a major move by his unsentimental (and financially unsavvy) parents.

I don’t want to make such mistakes, or make Emma’s decisions for her.So I hit upon the brilliant idea of taking iPhone pictures of stuff, then sending them to her so she can decide. Plus, if I succeed in the time-honored trick of substituting photos of stuff for the stuff itself, we’ll already have the photos! Cyberspace is such a vast new wasteland to clutter up, our humble collection will barely make a dent.

Hopeful, I arrange scarves, trinkets, purses on the bed, and send off my first batch with the subject line “Keep or Give Away?” I am careful to avoid the word “discard,” which sounds so dismissive and final. Maybe “give away”  might stimulate some deeply buried philanthropic urge.

“Save!” Emma emails in response, the act of hoarding itself apparently a rescue operation. This is not working. But then, a different response to one of the four pictures arrives: I am allowed to get rid of—sorry, give away–two hats.

So I send another photo, this one containing a pair of shoes and a pair of cowboy boots with holes that the Marlboro Man could ride his horse through. I’ve appended a message: “HUGE holes! Be brave!”

Emma writes back, “I really like the strange compositions of these photos you have been taking! But unfortunately I will have to ask you to retain this pile (it took me so long to find cowboy boots—I will get them resoled).”

And I will need to get re-souled into a different kind of mother, if I ever hope to have a guestroom.

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Where are you on the spectrum from minimalist to hoarder? How do you deal with your grown kids’ stuff? How did your parents deal with yours?

Nest

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Picture of nestThere are signs of new life in the empty nest. For one thing, Ally has blown back in for the summer from a year teaching abroad in Spain . We don’t see much of her, but we can follow the debris trail all around the house to know that she’s alive and well.

The mess is even more apparent on our back deck. Dead grass, strands of shredded bark, an overturned container of old clippings. I can’t blame Ally, since this particular untidiness preceded her arrival.  Has it really been so long since I’ve taken a broom to the redwood planks? Perhaps there’s been a localized wind storm. Or the neighbor’s cats, not content to merely pee on the plants and dig in the mulch, are upping their antisocial game.

My husband solves the mystery when he tries to spend some time in the hammock with a good book. After just a few minutes, he’s back inside, squawks of distress audible through the sliding glass door.

“I don’t want to give these poor birds a heart attack,” Jonathan says, pointing up. “Look!”

There, atop the drainpipe just under the wide eaves, inches from our kitchen door, sits a nest. It’s rather free-form and sloppy, but in a charming way–much like Ally’s bedroom. If we very quietly peek from the kitchen, we can spy the roosting bird’s beady eyes. If we’re careless, and go out this door to water the plants, cacophony ensues as the parents defend their territory. I’m not sure these birds have made the smartest choice, given the cats and their unconscientious landlords. But they do have a good view of the garden, which counts for a lot when contemplating a long confinement tending to children.

The birds may not have assessed the cat thing correctly, but I suspect they chose to squat on our deck because they are wise to our non-BBQing ways. Perhaps they scoped out the antiquated model of our charcoal grill (Weber circa 1986), the thickness of the cobwebs covering it. They probably even lined the nest with some of the gauzy strands.

I guess we won’t be barbecuing for awhile. I’m happy for the excuse in the same way that I appreciate droughts for making our failure to wash our cars look noble instead of derelict. I’m less happy about not using our deck or opening the door from the kitchen, but my mother-in-law assures me that it’s only for a few weeks. At least it saves me the trouble of putting out new yellow jacket traps.

The garden we put in last year has survived hard freezes, drought, deer, and my ineptitude as a novice gardener. Now it will have to survive neglect so the nursery can thrive.

But these things, like Ally’s unwashed dishes, are small nuisances. What a pleasure it is to welcome new occupants to the nest!

 

 

 

Trigger Alert

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(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)My daughter Ally’s been living in Spain following her graduation from UC Santa Barbara last year. Occasionally, I send her articles about her alma mater, including one about a recent UCSB student Senate resolution calling for mandatory trigger alerts–warnings about potentially upsetting lecture or reading material, such as rape, childhood abuse, or racism, that might inadvertently traumatize students.

Now it is Ally sending me urgent messages from Spain about UCSB. But it’s not words on campus that have upset her.

“Did u hear about what happened in Isla Vista????” read her text.

Of course I had heard—who hadn’t, as Isla Vista joined the long string of names where innocents were slaughtered by an angry and alienated young man with a gun. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook, street corners every day in our cities. And now again, on the streets where my daughter has spent the last several years riding her Cruiser to class, partying on Del Playa, buying snacks at the IV Deli whose plate glass windows are now riddled with bullet holes.

Skype is inadequate for the arms-around-soothing these incidents require, though I tried my best. At least Ally was safe in Spain, where the rate of firearm homicide is less than 1/10th  of this country’s. Toward the end of our conversation, Ally, who has traveled alone extensively abroad, said, “I’m afraid to come home to the United States.”

This breaks my heart. And makes me furious.

The real trigger alerts are the ones we apparently dare not issue—those having anything to do with curtailing the availability and lethality of guns. Almost twice as many gun laws have been loosened than have been tightened since 20 six-year-olds were massacred at Sandy Hook. There have been at least 74 school shootings since Newtown.

Open Carry aficionados wear their weaponry loud and proud. One such demonstration in Texas inspired a mild protest from an NRA member who wrote on an official site that such tactics, which he called “weird” and “scary,” could hurt the gun rights cause. Since his statement caused undue upset, perhaps it should have come with its own trigger alert. So outraged were the highly sensitive (though strangely insensitive) members of Texas Open Carry that the NRA apologized and distanced itself from the offending member by expunging his post.

We do not need protection from words. We need protection from guns, and from those who cherish them above all else.

Binge

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Haagen Dazs

My husband, Jonathan, was out of town last week, and although I knew I would miss him, I also looked forward to getting lots of things done with more time to myself: Write, read novels, get going on turning my 26-year-old daughter’s long-vacated bedroom into a guestroom from its former incarnations as shrine and dumping ground. I also planned to eat salad for dinner every night and lose a little weight as a buffer against upcoming indulgent occasions. Instead I gained two pounds. I did eat a lot of salad, but I might have been ambushed by some late-night Haagen Dazs.

The real binge, however, was throwing myself headlong not into a pint of chocolate-chocolate chip, but into Season 4 of Parenthood.

Jonathan and I had tried a couple of episodes when the show first aired, but he didn’t like it, and I kept forgetting to watch it by myself in the rare free moments of a busy life. Then, in the fall of 2012, I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands while recovering from surgery and six rounds of chemo for uterine cancer. I needed something that would absorb me without requiring concentration, or risk pushing me over the brink of existential despair.

I devoured Parks and Recreation and Modern Family, but Parenthood was my favorite. What’s not to like about a cast partially drawn from Six Feet Under and Friday Night Lights, set in Berkeley, no less? I was hooked.

By the time my cancer rolled around, we no longer had TV, so I could not watch Parenthood in real time once I’d made it through the first three seasons. I knew about Kristina’s cancer, though, from the way friends would say, “Do you know what’s happening now? Kristina has–” Then they’d stop themselves, either wanting to protect me from revealing the plot or from mentioning cancer in case they labored under the illusion that it wasn’t constantly on my mind.

Before long, treatment was over, I got better, and my busy life resumed. Plus, Season 4 was not yet available on DVD.

Finally, though, it was. Just before Jonathan went on his trip, I got the notice from the library that I had made it off the long waiting list. I had three nights of Jonathan’s absence to watch 15 episodes if I wanted to avoid late fees.

I decided to forget about converting my daughter’s room, and pretty much everything else besides work. Season 4, after all, centered on Kristina’s cancer. Calling it “research,” since I write about cancer now and then, I put Disc 1 in the DVD and sat back–taken back to long days watching episode after episode to distract myself from feeling scared and unsteady.

Here’s what other memories Season 4 brought back:

  • Telling our daughters I had cancer, particularly Emma via Skype, since she was working in Russia at the time. I remember watching the grainy screen as all the oxygen got sucked out of her. “I feel like I’m on another planet,” Emma said. Like Haddie in Parenthood, she couldn’t bear to be away either, and came back for an unexpected visit.
  • Wanting our daughters to carry on with their lives as before; downplaying our fears and bad days to reassure them as much as possible.
  • Being mad at my husband for saying I looked fine without my hair.
  • The relentless and unhelpful demand for positive thinking from people who don’t know shit.
  • Eating ice cream in defiance of the food police. (Do you sense an organizing principle in my life?)
  • Getting a fever and going to the ER on a holiday weekend. In my case it was the day before President’s Day, not Christmas Eve. I went right away, unlike Kristina, who ignores her deteriorating condition and almost dies of sepsis. There were no family reunions and presents around my ER gurney. All my scare did was cancel a dinner party and delay chemo by a week so I could finish a short course of just-in-case high-powered antibiotics.
  • Having a lot of helpful and caring people around, although with better coordinated food delivery so we never had a surplus of roast chickens left to rot in the fridge.

What didn’t ring true was looking like a deliberately bald haute couture runway model, or being perfectly made up all the time. In fact, my daughters dubbed me Gollem in my baldness. Oh, well, I’m in real life,not a TV series. Though I guess I could have had a shot at Lord of the Rings!

I’m looking forward to binging on Season 5 when it becomes available on DVD.

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What’s your favorite comfort food or DVD series to binge on?

 

Recovery Garden

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The Jewel Box, One Year Later

The Jewel Box, One Year Later

This week I’m celebrating the one-year anniversary of our garden with a post-chemo post I wrote last year:

I’ve long dreamed of an English country garden–roses spilling over trellises, beds layered with delphinium and hollyhocks, velvety lawns sweeping down to the pond. But we live in California, not in a BBC period drama, and our budget is not as outsized as my fantasy. Even if it were, there is no way our deer-infested slope of chert that gets 34 inches of rain in a good year could ever resemble the Emerald Isle.

So I’ve had to adjust my sights some. For years I’ve looked out on a weedy, parched patch of dirt off our back deck, adjacent to a slope of scraggly rosemary and oleander that the neighbors’ dogs use as a toilet. I’ve been meaning to call in the professionals for years to prepare the soil and install proper irrigation. But somehow the time is never right, and I’ve kept putting it off.

One good thing about cancer is finally absorbing that there really is no time like the present. And speaking of presents, my friend Mary, knowing of the garden dreams I’ve long harbored, gave me a wonderful one soon after I began treatment: Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates of the San Francisco Bay Region.

These authors know about deer and chert, and that we have neither the climate nor the staff of Downton Abbey. I drooled over every garden-porn page, and, in between chemo sessions, set about turning my fantasy into reality by visiting my favorite nurseries for landscaper recommendations.

Most of the people I called seemed like they’d rather be waterboarded than bother with our site and budget. But not the lovely Ashley, who said she enjoys a challenge. I was sold when she remarked about our patch of weeds off the deck, “This will be the jewel box of the garden.”

After years of waiting, we were ready to go. Fortunately, the list of plants compatible with deer, drought, poor soil, hot sun, and neglectful homeowners is not that long, so the design phase was quick. Every morning on my way home from my walk and latte, I hauled rocks from a nearby field for mini retaining walls in the jewel box. Ashley and her crew arrived and transformed the entire site in less than a day just by cleaning up 20 years of scraggle. They finished the entire installation, from irrigation to microbark, in another two. Ashley left me equipped with deer repellent and instructions for running the irrigation system.

She also left me with a beautiful garden and that deep happiness you get when you finally let yourself go for what you want. True, the garden doesn’t look as good as Downton Abbey or the photos in my book. The adjacent trees rain down eucalyptus litter constantly. The deer have messed up the shredded bark and sampled the verbena. Still, what a pleasure it is to switch my focus from scary things growing inside of me to the vibrant life springing forth in my recovery garden.

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What dreams do you keep putting off? Which have you finally made a reality?