Spring Review 2023

I've kept a hexagon fish tank off Craigslist since about 2012. I called our group of Tetras we were given by a friend "the cartel", and the aquatic creatures were unkillable and prolific enough over the years that annually I had to give away the extra fish, plants, and snails that propagated. Then something changed during the pandemic, and the fish quit breeding. I tried everything in 2021 and 2022 for them - blood worms, fry hides, pH checks, a new filter and pump.

By the time we moved into the rental townhouse, we were down to just three tetras, and I was resigned to providing a quality hospice aquarium for the remainders. Then in early March I saw the first baby tetra in three years. Now there are two babies. I don't know what changed. Maybe everything.

In a few months, my first peer reviewed article in ten years will be published. It's my first professional publication in six years. The piece on how digital licensing counts affect library funding will be in an obscure journal, and my two co-authors are at a different workplace than mine. I kept trying to give away the lead author spot, as I have done with other group articles in the past. The co-authors kept giving it back. The article went through a couple of different professional publication reviews before finding a home. Not sure exactly what changed to make the work publishable, except persistence on the side of the co-authors to find the study a place in print.

Next weekend, I'll start working with a local parade Krewe to build my first lantern in six years. This will be my first big lantern build in eight years. The oldest daughter is building a lantern as well, her first in the same amount of time. We always meant to do this again, but there were all the things over the last six years that stopped us.

I don't know why the fish are making babies once more. I don't know what makes one publication take an article over another. I don't know why it took me so long to push myself forward on parade krewe work. I only know good things are happening.

I'm typing this as I listen to a high school choir perform "Call of the Flowers", which is lovely. In the row of seats before me, my youngest daughter sits, waiting for her turn to take the stage. All around me are the children I’ve watched grow at a distance the same time as mine. I don't feel like I know as many of the kids as I should. In a few years they'll all be in very different places, because everything will have changed again. It's their Spring concert, and I'm in a completely different seasonal cycle, sweating through the end of my own personal heat wave.

I feel like my long season of summer storms is almost done. I started a counter on my phone before Christmas to my 50th birthday, and I check it every few weeks, watching the numbers roll inexorably toward the third quarter of my life, the autumn. I can't wait for the end of the high temperatures, the next big real Change, not disaster, but something I know is coming but can't feel the shape of or name of yet.

I know everything will be different in three years, and not just because all the children around me will have graduated. These kids will have become the same kind of seeds on the wind I was when I started blogging in my own Spring. I'll have found my own new adventure by that time as well.

My youngest daughter and all the other performers are now wrapping up the show with Sunday by Sondheim. The seniors on stage have roses. One of the parents behind me is crying. We are all on the edge of marvelous changes, all the time. The aquarium that I thought was on life support was just on pause. I suppose I was, too.

All the other versions of me

It's April 20th, and I'm sitting on a picnic blanket in the Piedmont Park field nearest 10th and Monroe. The weather is gorgeous, with a bright blue cloudless sky over the green field with a slight wind. There are lots of other people here, but it isn't crowded because it's a Thursday. A few hours ago I took my first commercial capsule of a mushroom blend from a state on the west coast where it is legal to sell such things to people like me, people who were on FDA approved SSRIs for a long time before those drugs stopped working.

I suppose the point of the "micro" in microdosing is that I can't really tell that I took anything. I can only hope that the blend of Lion's Mane and other dried fungi, when taken on the daily in tiny measured capsules, will help with the crying, which is still daily as it has been for months, and the overwhelming weight of things, which has been with me since I was first diagnosed with depression around age ten. I've turned to the capsules imported from another US state after realizing I'll never feel OK spending the 3k for the three legal-in-Georgia ketamine therapy sessions I was prescribed over the winter. My insurance won't cover the legal ketamine therapy. My pocket money can cover the capsules from the west coast. I could, of course, obtain illegal ketamine or illegal mushrooms anywhere for a fraction of the cost of trying the legal stuff. I'm too scared to do any of that though, so here we are. As with everything else in life, I get to be the version of me that I can afford.

I had today off not to start taking the microdose capsules, but to have the routine colonoscopy scheduled for middle aged women. To prepare for the procedure, I was prescribed tablets that, when taken with nearly 2 gallons of water, would clear my system for the scope. Unfortunately, my insurance wouldn't cover the tablets, and the pharmacy asked for $300 for the prep, or I could have an older liquid prep for free.

I took the liquid prep. When I started exorcist vomiting the night before, it was too late to do anything about the fact that my system was emptying the wrong way. So when I showed up at 6:30am after a horrible night to the surgical center asking what could be done, the answer was nothing. Now I have to pay for a canceled procedure, and I'll still have to pay $300 for the prescribed tablets anyway when we reschedule.

There's a version of me that paid the $300 for the right prescription two days ago and had her colonoscopy like doctors wanted. That person isn't worried about debt. Maybe that person also got another credit card and paid for the 3k in ketamine therapy, and is happier on the daily even though they can't make rent. I envy this version of me in some ways, because the anxiety of debt doesn't bother them as much. I thought I could muscle through the liquid prep because my insurance said I could. I also I don't think I need to pay 3k for ketamine therapy, because my insurance also insists that prescription is a luxury as well. Insurance thinks everything is a luxury, and that wanting what the doctors want is weak as fuck, and I should toughen up or pay out.

There's a version of me that walked away from the colonoscopy recommendation entirely based on the price tag. That person probably bought ketamine or mushrooms on the down low and found a sketchy trip sitter. Maybe that person is happier too, even though they might get really sick or brain damaged. Insurance will be relieved when this version of me dies younger, because being old is expensive and painful, and insurance doesn't understand why I would want that anyway.

I've chosen to be the version of me that tries to do medicine the reccomended and legal way, at least, as much as I can. It's not easy for most people to be the version of themselves they can afford. At least sitting outside in the sunshine is still free, and I am surrounded by hundreds of other versions of people who have all decided that we'll at least try to be happy in nice weather at the park. That's the best any of us can do.

The Cat Came Back

The orange cat returned himself to us the Thursday evening before Easter, two and a half weeks after he went missing. We had the windows and back deck door open all that day as the air conditioner was broken, and maybe the smell of our sweat and the sound of our voices led the cat home. Or perhaps it was just that he was suddenly free from whatever garage or crawl space he had been trapped inside, as Walnut came back to us two and a half pounds lighter than he left, dehydrated and dirty, but without a single flea or injury. We all were so happy to have him back, even if he did cry all night the first two nights he was home. The orange tom still fought when I and the oldest daughter shoved him into a carrier for a vet visit the next day - it had been this type of visit that had prompted his disappearance, after all - but the doctor only drew some blood and had a vet tech help me shove a deworming pill down his throat. Because the cat’s system had been so stressed, the vet decided to wait on vaccines until he gains at least a pound back and his labs came back clean. So Walnut’s attempt to avoid the vet by running away in March has only netted him double vet visits in April.

Because of the sudden vet expense, for the first time ever I had to borrow some money from the oldest child to fix the AC, a point of shame for me. I was able to pay her back in just a few days, at least. The money to cover everything eventually came from a state tax refund, our first in years as the husband is no longer self-employed. Our financial problems that started during COVID and culminated with losing the Lake Claire house are slowly abating, but like my grief are doing so in waves, a tide that is rolling away from us even as the water pushes back and forth on our fiscal shores. I hope I never have to ask the kids to cover anything, even for just a few days, ever again.

I missed writing last week again after one of those emotional waves crashed over my head from the shame of short funds. The weight of memories and anger and financial depression worked against the progress I felt like I’ve made recently. I want to write about all the practical skills I picked up during COVID, how I taught myself basic masonry and expanded my foraging abilities and refined red clay right out of the ground and more, and attempt to write about these things in a positive way, but I don’t have the right words or framing yet to do so. Trying to force the thoughts and memories into type doesn’t work yet no matter how many times I want to approach the positive stories I could tell about the last three years. I don’t know how long it will be until I’m really ready to write about our COVID years. Everyone sane says you can’t will yourself into emotional recovery from loss, but of course I’m irritated that I’m not the exception, that I’m not some sort of grief prodigy. I always think I’m supposed to be better at everything, and of course that’s part of the problem.

So I’m going to try to continue to write about the good things, even if I have to reach back in time to do so, but this week I don’t have to go backwards too far at all. The youngest started her orthodontia this week and I’ve had to feed her soup and scrambled eggs and soft things as the pain of positive movement began in her mouth. I helped the oldest child with a problem in her workplace, and felt good about that, proud of her completion of her first year of employment and her modest savings account. I had my first new prescription for lenses in nearly four years come to me this week as well, and I made the jump into bifocals for the first time in oversize frames.

My new glasses are the kind of frames the grungy 1990’s teen me would have been appalled by, real Pokerface 1979 throwbacks in style. The frames are rose gold in color, a dramatic departure from anything I’ve ever had before. I normally stay away from both gold and pink, and this style shift in my daily wear wasn’t planned, but I was determined to push out of my normal habits and try something new. Friends have complimented me and it’s a big swing, fashion wise. I have to believe that if I don’t like the frames in six months or a year I will be able to buy another pair. I have confidence in my own ability to keep changing. I know that even though the waves keep hitting me, the tide of grief is going out. Eventually I will be able to clearly see what the destruction of the high water has left on my shoreline and handle the clean bones.

There are beaches full of beautiful sea glass, smooth fragments of green and blue and brown worn down and now used for beads and decorations. People forget sometimes that all that reflective beauty is there because once we dumped all our trash in the water, and that the sea glass was once broken beer bottles. You couldn’t walk on some of those beaches when I was a kid barefoot, because you’d cut yourself on the sharp refuse and get bad infections. Now older women collect the smoothed out pieces. I look like an older woman in my new giant glasses. I am an older woman, but not old enough yet that the recently broken things in my memories don’t still cut me when I try to handle them.

I’ll get to the place where I can talk about the last few years without hurting. It’s just going to take more time.