Tim Tebow and Me*

By now, unless you’ve been locked in a vault the last few months, you’ve heard of Tim Tebow, the Denver Broncos’s quarterback—that guy whose last name has become a verb, whose person has become synonymous with overt displays of piety. Maybe you admire or idolize him, in which case, I don’t need to convince you to keep reading. But maybe you’re sick of hearing about him. If so, I beg you to indulge me.

I once was a little like Tebow, so I now find myself in the odd and distinctly uncomfortable position of both defending and criticizing him. The main thing I’d like to say to everyone on both “sides” is: calm down. He is neither some fantastic miracle man nor an unbelievably obnoxious religious person. He’s just a young man with passionate convictions.

I emphasize “young” for a reason. I don’t know about you, but I remember being young. It wasn’t so long ago (okay, twenty years, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long). And when I was in my twenties, I thought I knew a great deal. I was ready to change the world and was idealistic enough to think that I could do it.

At the time, I was attending a Presbyterian-affiliated college in the Pacific Northwest called Whitworth College—now Whitworth University—in Spokane, Washington. Our campus population was heavily populated with P.K.’s (preachers’ kids) and was very influenced by the evangelical movement (which is not the same as the fundamentalist movement, though people often conflate the two). Many of the students who were believers, including myself, were very passionate about their faith but not literal in their biblical interpretation.

How did this translate, you might wonder? Well, almost everyone bowed their heads over meals in the student cafeteria. There was some social activism—a protest against Apartheid, for example; cafeteria-supported fasts, where the proceeds went to this or that cause or charity, etc. I would say that the majority of students regularly attended church. In addition to having resident assistants in the dorms, we had resident chaplains, who counseled peers and ran weekly Bible studies. Our infirmary didn’t prescribe or give out contraceptives, and alcohol was banned on campus. Of course, you could still go to an off-campus doctor for the former, and if you didn’t live in a dorm, you could drink all you wanted. There were obvious and not-so-obvious pluses and minuses about this set-up.

How all of that translated for me was this: my best friend and I, when there was no Ash Wednesday service at the chapel one year, performed our own private rite with ashes she’d gathered from a dorm fireplace (one of my favorite memories); I begged my father to allow me to go on a mission trip to Pakistan, and he (wisely) refused; I dated a couple of guys with whom I had pretty chaste relationships; I became a resident chaplain; at one point, I lay in bed for a full twenty-four hours, paralyzed with the fear that I was lesbian (much later confirmed). I also got a great education.

At the time, I thought I was going on to seminary, and for two summers I worked at a nondenominational evangelical church in Richland, Washington, home of the former Hanford Site, a facility instrumental in producing plutonium for the first nuclear bombs and, reputedly, now one of the most contaminated. My little anti-nuke self hadn’t realized this before I went there, and I wonder if knowing would have changed my mind. In any case, I went.

The first summer, I lived with the minister and his family, so I wasn’t confronted much by the politics of the situation. I did, however, sit through an interesting presentation by a lay person in the church about the ethics of nuclear energy. His discussion was fascinating and pretty compelling, I admit. Even if I wasn’t thoroughly convinced, I had a much better understanding of how someone who believed differently from me was thinking about this topic. I essentially figured out that good people can hold very different views from me, which was a great thing to learn.
 
The second summer, I lived with a middle-aged couple from the church. The first night in their house, at dinner, the husband told me that he was at work on the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as the “Star Wars” Plan. My jaw must have dropped because he then began defending the program, telling me how their research had taught them many useful things, even if none of it was ever used in the way that had been proposed. I was not fully reassured, and I had that uneasy feeling you get when you know you’re about to be taught a lesson.

The wife was an amazing cook, but I learned to stay out of the house while she worked in the kitchen. Not because the scents were overpowering and hunger-inducing (they were) but because she listened to a talk radio station that left me silently spluttering if I happened to be in an adjoining room. This was the summer of the Oliver North trial, and the station she listened to was adamantly pro-Ollie. In absenting myself, I managed to postpone the reckoning I faced weeks later when this couple and their friends sat in front of the TV one evening cheering on Oliver North. I will tell you: I was upstairs and apoplectic. I realized what I’d gotten myself into and wondered how I could accept the church’s money when I finished work in August (I was so in denial and naïve that it was just sinking in that that “scholarship” was mostly nuclear-facility-generated). I knew the people I’d lived and worked with were good people; they were doing what they felt was right. But I also knew I had compromised myself. I’d like to say I turned the money down, but I didn’t. I knew I’d made a mistake, but I was young, and I vowed to do better next time.

No matter what your politics may be, please understand that that is not the point. I tell this story to illustrate what one might do when one is young, how one can unwittingly stumble onto a stage one is not fully prepared for, armed with faith and conviction.

Obviously, Tim Tebow has a more visible stage than I had or ever hope to have. But I understand his from the perspective described. I say this not so much in regard to his kneeling thing but about something more serious, to my mind. Remember when Tebow was still a Florida Gators quarterback, and he met up with James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family? As a result of their joining forces, Tim and his mother produced a Super Bowl commercial, the end of which referred viewers to Dobson’s site and an anti-abortion message.  No matter what you might think of that, I believe the ensuing firestorm had an impact: when he was recently encouraged to endorse a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential contest, Tebow refused. (Score one for carefully monitoring one’s influence?)

I’m not saying that anyone should not or cannot be held responsible for their choices. But maybe we need to cut Tebow some slack. He is undeniably trying hard to do good in the world, whether you agree with his actions or not. When he talks about his faith, he quite literally shines. And he has inspired his teammates to pull off some amazing comebacks. He’s forced some of us to talk about what we believe and how best to express it. He’s sparked some backlash and discussions about what prayers the Divine cares about (football? Well, personally, I hope the Divine cares a little about football because I’m a fan but also because I’ve prayed about such “trivial” things as tests, dates, that child that won't go to sleep, etc.).

If Tim Tebow were my son, I’d be plenty proud of him—what mother wouldn’t love a big, healthy, handsome, talented boy? I’d probably have some quiet conversations with him about his P.D.A (public displays of adoration), but he might not listen to me, which would be fine. Even though I still refer to myself as a Christian, I doubt I fit anyone else’s idea of one. But I’m just stubborn enough to refuse to let other people define it for me. Why should I? People have struggled for centuries to clarify what Christianity means and will clearly continue to do so. I place a premium on personal growth and change. I figure that if I don’t question orthodoxy, my faith risks becoming a fetish, so I’m always in a process of tearing my beliefs apart and putting them back together. I guess you could say I’m a tinkerer.

So it’s as a tinkerer that I worry about Tim. He likes to kneel and testify—so be it. I’d defend him in just the same way I’d defend someone’s wearing a yarmulke, a head scarf, an abaya, or for that matter, a Gingrich-slogan T-shirt, a pink-triangle, or Black Power colors. But what if Tim Tebow decides not to kneel, not to testify every time he has a microphone? Will the very public nature of his faith become a litmus test for him? What about for other Christians? What if other aspects of Tim's belief system change? Will we allow him to transform? Will he allow himself? I pray that it is so.

*I know the grammar of the title sucks, but I chose the vernacular on purpose.

Karen's "Helpful Hints" on Coming Out

     1)    When you’re four or five, paging through the “Christmas Wishes” catalogue, and you find yourself flipping back and forth from the women’s to the men’s underwear section, and the same-sex pages make you “feel funny,” just know that you are in for a helluva ride. Even if you think, Wow, I’m backward, your second thought, but I guess that’s okay, is good. Your third thought, Maybe it will change, is tragic and not true, but when you live in a town of ten thousand in the middle of nowhere, circa 1969, and your family-of-origin has issues enough, that’s the thought that will protect you. That, and your fourth thought—I’m not going to tell anyone—which is really for the best. You won’t remember having the infamous catalogue experience, or any of the accompanying thoughts, until many years in the future (thank God for denial). Get good and comfortable with vague confusion.

2)    Keep your head down in the locker room (why are there so damn many locker rooms in childhood?). About the young woman who, in your teenage years, sits on the bench and watches you undress: she does not hate you and is not trying to intimidate you. Quite the opposite. Again, you will not realize this until many years have passed, but oh, well.

3)    If you find that you just want to be with your best friend, and you feel anxiety, raging jealousy, and self-hatred when she does anything with anyone else: you are what people call “in love.” Get used to it. It’s not comfortable, but it might eventually be fun.

4)    The boys and men who will like you, even love you—there’s nothing at all wrong with them. Someday, in the future, you will want to reassure them of this, but there will be no adequate way, so just wish them well in your heart. What else can you do?

5)    If you go to New York City dance clubs with your boyfriend, and you check out women together, there is a major problem.

6)    When you go to your first Gay Pride parade in NYC, but you’re not out (even to yourself), expect to be surprised. While your very liberal church hands out water to the marchers, your best gay male buddy will keep cocking his head to one side and saying, “Something’s happening with you.” And he’s right. A co-worker may call to you from within the ranks of the parade, and you will run out and hug her, and when you return to the sidewalk, the whole world will appear radically fresh and recalibrated, but you still won’t “get it.” And it won’t help matters when that tall, slim, attractive woman from Dykes on Bikes slyly asks you where there’s a bathroom at the end of the parade. She’s really asking something else, but you won’t understand. You will have an empty feeling when the festivities are over and will, no doubt, wonder where everyone went and why you feel so lonely and weird.

7)    On your way home from said parade, you will probably appear somewhat transfigured to other people [insert heavenly chimes]. A young man may suddenly appear and offer to carry your groceries home for you—something that never happens. You will surely go to bed thinking everything will be “normal” the next day.

8)    You will realize that the day after the Gay Pride parade really should be its own holiday. I say this because gay people are then usually a) hung over, b) happily exhausted, or c) freaking out. If you went to sleep thinking everything would return to usual, you are in for quite a shock. At work, you might walk around the production floor of a large publishing house and—like Saul of Tarsus in the Christian Bible—have scales fall from your eyes. Good God, you’ll think, half the people in this company are gay!! How did I not notice that? How is it that I know now? At this point, you will want to go to your office, shut the door, and hold your head in your hands. You will feel emotionally naked and frightened. That’s completely appropriate.

9)    Thus begins a very trying period where a) you don’t sleep well, if at all, b) you can’t concentrate, c) you wish someone would give you a Xanax, d) you realize that health insurance should have a “coming out” clause, whereby you could hole up in your apartment with your cat because you just can’t deal with anything. A note: even your cat will get sick of you. Your stress may actually cause his skin to flake.  

10)  It’s perfectly acceptable to sit in your badly furnished, off-the-slope Park Slope, Brooklyn, apartment and pet your cat for a year (or more). You’ll have to force yourself out the door and onto a crowded subway to work at a job so that you can eat. But go back home as soon as you can. Don’t think you have to go anywhere special to figure things out. Ruminating is fine. After a couple decades with your head in the sand, it’s absolutely acceptable.

11)  You may lose your nerve when you first find the secret address with the normal-looking door buzzer. Allow for that. Just know that the people upstairs understand your predicament. They’re all in the same boat (you might even run into a co-worker here!). But you’re probably not ready to talk about this. (See number 9.)

12)  Your vegetarian blond artist friend with the face of an angel is not a lesbian or even bi unless she uses those terms about herself. Even if she admits she likes to look at women more than men. Even if she’s willing to accompany you to a dance at the LGBT center. If she’s dating men and isn’t into you, you need to accept where she’s at and who she is. (Return to number 9.)

13)  The cute, athletic brunette you met at the secret address might be interested in you, but she is really meant for someone else—probably someone with a better figure and less emotional baggage. Don’t write her stupid letters, whatever you do. And if you make that mistake, return to number 9.

14)  Don’t be surprised if two ex-boyfriends arrive to help you move out of your apartment when you’re ready to go to graduate school. They are such good fellows, even if one accidentally lets the air-conditioning unit drop from the window. No one will be hurt, and “Do you want to throw any other small appliances out my window?” will forever be a great laugh-line. Years later, you will wonder what happened to that guy and hope that he’s extraordinarily happy somewhere.

15)  When the Mississippi floods, you really should not drive alone toward and across it with a U-Haul. This may sound like a cool idea. You may feel too neurotic in your half-“out” state to be trapped in a truck with your crated cat and someone else, but you’ll probably regret not having company. Midwestern towns look like hell during floods, it’s difficult to find an apartment when you’re driving around in a U-Haul, and your new landlord is bound to price-gouge you when he learns you’ve just come from New York.

16)  Choosing to attend a graduate program while still in the process of coming out is usually not a good idea, because a) you still can’t sleep, b) you still can’t concentrate, and c) you still wish someone would give you a Xanax. Creative writing programs, especially, present formidable challenges. Some of your peers have so much talent, you will wonder if they need to be here at all. You, though fairly well read, will be a good distance behind and an emotional train wreck to boot. Spottily attend your seminars. Expect some out-of-body experiences; there will be plenty. Spend oodles of time in that apartment petting and feeding your cat or walking around Iowa City. When you feel extremely perplexed or angry, walk to a bowling alley several miles away and bowl your heart out even though you stink at the sport. Save your glass recyclables so you can take them to the special drop-off site, then throw them as hard as you can into the receptacles just to hear them crash (very cathartic). Sit in coffee shops (there are so many!). When you inquire about coming out groups at the women’s center, you will probably be told that you need to be “of the experience” (sorry, you do look that straight). The neighborhood gay bar is friendly, but you’re a long way from New York and slinking around trying to be anonymous won’t work; when people express interest in you (when were you ever this popular?), just tell them you aren’t ready. Some of the best conversations you will have here will be with gay men, one of whom you’ll even end up protecting (yes! Little you). Riding on the back of motorcycles with leather-jacketed women is recommended. Occasionally, one or another totally stoned-out friend will land on your couch; they are too shy to tell you they like you and are waiting for you to make a move. Expect that your bright, intelligent, straight-women classmates appear attractive because they are. A maybe-twenty-year-old blond lesbian is too young and may try to break into your apartment with a credit card. On the other hand, it’s best not to send a note to the visiting poetry professor who is a good fifteen to twenty years your senior, even though she’s extremely smart and practically makes you pass out whenever you spot her (send her a nice email in the future, when your life’s calmed down, and that will make you both feel good). Stay at home, let the cat wander out the window onto the rooftop, drop fish flakes into your new tank and admire their silent, underwater world with its electric hum. You and the fish are one.

17)  Very important: DO NOT GO to NYC during the huge Stonewall anniversary and try yet again to entice the cute, athletic brunette you first encountered at the secret address. She’s still in love with the woman with the better figure and less emotional baggage and probably always will be even if they’re broken up right now. Despite your both being single and lonely, it’s good to forego sleeping with your best gay male buddy—you can congratulate yourself later that you didn’t make a bad situation worse (whew!). Instead, go to Long Island and allow the ex-boyfriend you kept in touch with and who helped you pack the U-Haul for graduate school to do simple things to nurse you back to health. He has such kindness and class.

18)  Do not, I repeat, do not come out to your parents or anyone significant within six months of Thanksgiving or Christmas. That’s just asking for trouble.

19)  Do not come out to anyone who has a history of psychotic breaks, at least not until you can handle the consequences. They may try to reassure you and then not be able to string together a coherent sentence.

20)  If you made the mistake of coming out to your parents too close to the holidays, be prepared for a fiasco, even if you do not go home. If they’ve been told not to talk about it with your siblings, they will take that literally and will tell all the other relatives at the Thanksgiving gathering as well as various people in your home town. You, meanwhile, thousands of miles away, might find that on this holiday you cannot seem to stop drinking. When your gay male classmate (who doesn’t yet know he’s gay) comes to pick you up for the Thanksgiving meal, you’ll be charming but half out of your mind. Your very able future mate will have fixed the turkey for all the attending members of your graduate program, but both of you will be completely distracted (and you, too drunk) to be aware of each other. When you are dropped off at a lesbian couple’s house later, you’ll be fairly well soused and will play the part of buffoon for this second turkey dinner. Do not lie down at home when you return later and do not smoke a cigarette because if you do, you will end up on your knees vomiting two perfectly well-cooked Thanksgiving meals, laughing maniacally, and proclaiming yourself “a mess.”

21)  Do not go to the local gay bar drunk and stoned. Naturally, the one stable woman you’ve met outside school will be there. When she learns that you’ve recently come out to your parents, do not act macho, as if you’ve got everything under control. She’s bound to see through this, and though she’s interested in you, she’ll return to her ex, who is sure to be more grounded and honest.

22)  Eventually, your future mate—the cute, funny, extremely smart and well-read woman with the shining brown eyes—will sit down next to you in a class. A mutual friend will ask you both to dinner. You might get asked out on a real date by your future partner afterward and not realize it. You’ll be a bit confounded. Go anyway, dammit! When she arrives and says something like, “You live across the street from the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration—how appropriate!” you will know she’s a keeper. It’s okay to hem and haw over the ensuing weeks while having heart-to-heart conversations with her (who knew you could come clean?). She will not care about your baggage. She will live through your wondering if you “didn’t try hard enough” with men. She will fight her way through all your stupidity and stubbornness, your obsessions and weaknesses. She will put the cat you fed too much on a diet. She’ll move halfway across the country with you. She will talk you through a panic attack on a pay phone. She’ll take the baby out of your arms and send you back to bed. She’ll eat cheeseburgers with you after the children receive horrible diagnoses and then work incredibly hard to provide for all of you. She will struggle to write beautiful lines, and these will inspire you, and you’ll never be bored with her (frightened, yes; bored, no). She will call you “my angel,” “my beloved,” “my sail and my compass.” That, my friend, is how you will know you are home.

I'll Take a Shaman with My Ramen

Early in 2011, when I was still a hospice CNA, I decided I’d like to go back to school to become a nurse.

“Really?!” my partner, Lisa, asked when I told her. “You want to do that?”

“I do,” I said.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was surprised. First of all, I already had two degrees. But also, after one of our twins suffered a brain bleed and subsequent brain damage following open-heart surgery and both boys were diagnosed autistic, I had gone on an off-trail adventure in regard to Western medicine. None of the medical professionals had had much to offer, to tell the truth. Your sons have autism—there’s no cure—good luck! was about the extent of it. And then as we were walking out the door, completely devastated: You can try speech and occupational therapy, but we’re not sure how much good they’ll do. Oh, and you might try ABA (applied behavioral analysis). Some people swear by that, but most insurance policies won’t cover the thousands and thousands of dollars it will cost.

We arranged the speech and occupational therapies right away, and we saw some improvements in the boys’ language, behavior, and fine-motor abilities. We also arranged for them to get what ABA we could afford, and that, too, has been incredibly helpful. But our life was still completely unmanageable. At three and a half, the kids were not showing any interest in potty-training, not talking, not making eye contact, not responding to their names, eating dirt and paint flakes, fussing over the texture of socks and pants and necklines, screaming in any store we visited, screaming for hours in the middle of the night, screaming, screaming, screaming. We were emotionally threadbare, physically exhausted, and financially drained.

We considered the DAN protocol (Defeat Autism Now), which showed some promising results. But there were only a couple of practitioners in Colorado at the time, and the one we were pointed toward had an eons’-long waiting list and lived two hours away. Besides, the expense would have been astronomical. I would have had to get pregnant again and sell that child—that is, if he was healthy, and my track record was not so hot.

A friend of mine suggested a different method of healing, which combined energy work, diet, and lifestyle change. I could see that this tack was going to take a lot of work, but my friend’s child was much improved because of it, and the program seemed doable and relatively affordable. A gluten-casein-free diet made sense to my partner—there was some scientific basis for it—but she was adamantly opposed to the rest.

A reasonable point of view. I mean, restricting your child from eating whole eggs, milk, soy, corn, gluten, nuts, pork, citrus fruits, and a whole host of other items seemed extreme and counter-intuitive. How would the children grow? How would their brains develop?

But I felt that we should give it a try. We could always reverse course if we saw a problem. Double-blind studies—while giving more solid scientific feedback on the usefulness of various treatments—take many years to conduct. But children’s brains and bodies don’t wait—they continue to grow and develop, so while you’re waiting for the most effective treatment options, you are also losing time impacting that growth and development. We didn’t want to do anything stupid or harmful, but we did want to try to positively affect change. I said to Lisa, “We essentially have to conduct our own experiments.”

So I tried the more extreme diet, and here’s what happened: Aidan’s eczema cleared; Luca made eye contact; both boys’ digestion improved, as did their physical growth; they both became happier; their concentration and cognition improved; they transitioned better; they began to relate better and so forth. As a result, we chose to remain strict on their oral intake and continued to see progress. When we cheated on the dietary protocol, we observed a reversal of progress or a return of various symptoms or behaviors, so we’d go back to our strict accounting.

I also made other changes. For instance, I got rid of every industrial chemical in the house. This effort was very difficult (who knew we had so many?!), and while I was doing it, I was not absolutely sure that it would help, but it did. Luca’s asthma all but disappeared, as did a certain wrist-flicking behavior. He was still kneeling every time he entered his bathroom, though—that is until I removed all his asthma medications from under the sink and stored them in a plastic lockdown container in a far-removed area of the house. Poof! Bathroom genuflection gone.

Other changes included: buying as many organic fruits and vegetables as possible and using only natural fabrics, only outgassed plastic toys, no plastic food containers, and no petroleum-based products. We switched cleaning products to fragrance-free Seventh Generation, and we got rid of everything else with fragrance. We reduced the number of electronics in our house (actually, Aidan helped us with this last goal by single-handedly destroying several computers and blowing up our stainless steel microwave). In essence, we became Amish. I expected that soon I would be sewing their clothes out of linsey-woolsey and churning my own butter.

Heaven knows, I did enough other weird things, like clearing almost all the spices out of our house. I convinced Lisa to buy an outdoor grill, and whenever we wanted to make a spicy dish, I’d cook it outdoors, even in the winter, or else Luca would suddenly become asthmatic. (This was to be avoided, as asthma issues required medication that then caused behavioral issues.) Poor Lisa is from New Orleans, and she loves spices, so this did not go over well. I didn’t completely get this. I figured, Hey, but we can still use our indoor plumbing!

I periodically put the boys in special clay baths and sea salt baths. I had to hide the Vanity Fair magazines from Aidan because the perfumed pages made his skin break out. Well, I had to hide the Vanity Fair from him anyway, because, brain damage aside, the boy has a knack for finding the picture of the most scantily clad woman and then leaving the magazine open to that page. I like the female form, but I have to say, I’m a bit startled to come upon a half-naked Scarlett Johanssen before my morning coffee.

Luca reacted badly for a long time to any toys with magnets, so the refrigerator letters were relegated to the garage. I performed regular energy work on the children; it was time-consuming, and I felt as if I had an unpaid part-time job. I went to a local Catholic church and brought home bottles of holy water that I’d give to the kids to drink when they were fussy. My non-practicing Catholic partner was not amused.

“Ew,” she said.

“It’s not out of the finger-dipping containers,” I told her. “They have a special canister with a spigot.”

“Oh, well, that makes me feel so much better,” she said, rolling her eyes.

But goofy as all this sounds, these changes helped—who knows exactly why. Even if it was just that in so doing, we engulfed them in love and care, so be it. They responded. They’re better. They still have autism, but they’re better.

I also considered alternative healing modalities for the boys that I myself had found useful, such as chiropractic work, shiatsu, and acupuncture. But neither child would ever have tolerated these practices due to the cracking sounds or pressure or needles. I did, however, find a cranial-sacral therapist, and she began working on the children and me, to great effect.

Meanwhile, Lisa, who was not seeing results from all of her own medical practitioners, started exploring alternative medicine. She, too, tried chiropractic, acupuncture, and cranial-sacral therapy as an adjunct to her regular medical care.

Then, one night when the boys were about ten, she saw the movie The Horse Boy. “You have to see it, Karen,” she told me. “I’m not taking everyone to Mongolia, but maybe we should take the guys to a shaman.”

I couldn’t believe what a great distance she’d traveled from those early days. “Okay,” I said.

She then looked at me as if to say, Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?

I saw the movie, which I found very intriguing, and we looked for a shaman. Because we’re in Boulder—the hippie capital of Colorado, where alternative therapies and other strangeness abounds—this task did not pose a challenge. There are a few here. We set up an appointment with a woman and her protégé, packed up the kids, and nervously went to her house.

This particular traditional healer has a special cottage she uses in back of her home. It’s small but very comfortable, decorated with objects she finds useful and inspiring, and many, many pillows. Luca immediately began stroking the reindeer hide that lay covering a massage table. Aidan examined various rattles and drums.

I wouldn’t know exactly how to describe what the shamans did, but it wasn’t as far out as you might think (talk therapy meets percussion jam?). They talked with us about why we’d come, then began singing and playing their drums. What’s funny is that we’d come with the object of helping the boys, but the boys were absolutely fine. Aidan played happily by himself throughout the entire session. Luca picked up an instrument and joined the shamans.

Lisa and I, on the other hand, both shut our eyes and became very relaxed. My head felt extremely heavy after a while. Eventually, we both found a place to lie down on the floor with the throw pillows. Luca and one of the shamans brushed us with various fragrant plants while the drumming continued. At one point, each shaman kneeled beside one of us, cupped their hands against a shoulder, and blew (a “soul retrieval,” and I thought to myself when this was happening, Where had it been?). Then more drumming, and when they stopped and I opened my eyes, I felt as if I had had a very sweet, relaxing pseudo-nap.

Driving home, we decided that the session had been helpful. We felt refreshed, and we had a new and profound respect for our children. In fact, we kept glancing at them—grinning happily in the back seat—and wondering, Who are you?!

I’ve always been interested in spiritual questions and spiritual quests, so for anyone who’s known me a long time, my off-trail adventures from Western medicine are no great surprise (I was accepted at Princeton Theological Seminary many years ago but did not attend). But because of my children, I’ve also been thrust into the scientific world, and I’ve been wrestling within these two very different spheres ever since.

I should say that I still believe in the scientific method. I still think a person should carefully, thoughtfully research how to approach a symptom, an illness, a syndrome. But I’m glad our family tried other avenues. None of us is as simple as a collection of cells. Scientists still can’t really tell us what consciousness is or where it’s located. There is a great deal we don’t understand. Maybe science will, over time, be able to prove why what we did worked. Or maybe not.

My son Aidan had less than a one percent chance of even surviving after his two rounds on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation)—so what does one do with that? Some might call it a Miracle. A good friend’s father called it Love (he implied that Lisa and my love saved the baby, but I have some doubts about that). The doctors, I can tell you, were floored and didn’t know what to say or what to call it.

So, for the purposes of this essay, I’ve picked a neutral word: Mystery. Maybe we can all hold on to that.   

On Suicide

When my mother was fifteen, she tried to kill herself. This happened in the 1950s. My grandparents, who lived on Long Island, took her to a residential treatment center, where she was eventually diagnosed as bipolar, though they called it manic-depression back then. What came through most clearly to me in her telling was the profound shame and disappointment of her father. His mother, Lucia, had sailed from Sicily to New York as a teenager. She’d never finished her education, but she and my great-grandfather managed to put three sons and a daughter through Brown University.

“No child of mine is going to Hofstra College,” my grandfather (one of those sons) told my mother. But that was where she went, unable to return to Brown after another manic episode early in her freshman year.

I first heard this story as a teenager, living in the small town of Sterling, Colorado, where my father grew up with his stoic but loving Swiss-Scots-Irish relatives and where he took my mother when he completed Yale Law School. (They had met at Yale, where my mother earned her Master of Arts in Teaching degree.) Even though I knew intimately of the vagaries of my mother’s disease—all-night escapades emptying every drawer and closet in the house, marathon record-playing sessions where she seemed to assume the identity of a Broadway star, a hair-trigger temper that left my brothers and me wild-eyed and trembling—I was still shocked.

She was incredibly ill throughout my childhood. Psychotic episodes, long hospital stays, paralyzing depressions, medicine and therapists and, when nothing else worked, electroconvulsive shock treatments. As little kids, my older brother, Christopher, my younger brother, Stephen, and I were farmed out to various families, usually without one another. The adults around us behaved as if nothing was wrong, and it felt as if I went for long stretches without seeing my parents. Add to this the oftentimes bleak, windswept landscape of Colorado’s eastern plains and my own too sensitive nature. And like many girls who in adulthood find themselves attracted to other women, I was also accompanied through those chaotic years by a ghost self, a kindly spirit whose task was to shepherd my inchoate longings.

As a teenager, I often listened to my mother talk about her difficulties. I didn’t know how to deal with her grief, so I ingested it whole, the way some organisms grow pitted, the walls of that dimpled area simply engulfing their food to digest over time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdR9ctxzab4).

Which made me a pretty sorry twenty-something. I remember that in my junior year at Whitworth University, in Spokane, Washington, I wrote a paper explicating Milton’s poem “On His Blindness” (http://www.poetry-archive.com/m/on_his_blindness.html). The poem is quietly devastating, the poet struggling with his own despair. Even that last line, which is meant on some level to comfort, is existentially awful (how does one feel good about God—or life—not really needing us?). My professor gave me high marks and stopped my best friend, who was one of his brightest students, in the hallway of the English department building. “He wants to know if you’re considering a graduate program,” she told me. I smiled, but in all honesty, I felt like a fraud. This is not literary brilliance, sir, I wanted to tell him. This is, quite simply, dark knowledge from the center of my life.

I never followed my mother’s path, but suicide was something with which I lived.  When I awoke in the morning, the very air was thick with it. I looked over my shoulder and waited, wondering when her disease would overtake me. In graduate school at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I remember sharing a portion of the novel I was writing, and one of my fellow students complained about the narrator’s endless cataloguing of detail. But the director of the program, Frank Conroy, was ecstatic. “I think we’ll learn that this narrator has a reason for doing that.” When pushed to explain, he said, “It’s like she’s schizophrenic.” I had not wholly intended this effect and went home stunned. Great, I thought, now I not only have to worry about becoming bipolar but also schizophrenic. But the truth was simpler than that: careful watching for one’s own madness induces a kind of non-madness madness. If you live that way, you might not technically be sick, but you won’t be well either.

However, I was not overtaken by mother’s illness, and eventually, the heavy air of suicide lifted. At least, for me. My mother tried again to end her life when I was in my thirties. I don’t know the details—I don’t really want to—but I remember standing in my kitchen, holding on to the wall when my brother Chris told me. I knew I wasn’t ready to lose her, but fortunately, she was okay. And continues to be.

I don’t write about this to be melodramatic, to elicit pity, or to be overly self-disclosing but to provide background for an experience I had many years later when I worked as a certified nursing aide for a Boulder, Colorado, hospice. During the year I spent there, I worked two twelve-hour night shifts per week, sometimes at our residential care clinic and sometimes in nursing homes or people’s houses. The job allowed me to be at home in the afternoons with my twins, both of whom have special needs. The younger of the two, named Aidan, I’d sat beside for weeks as he fought valiantly against death following open-heart surgery. He’d been put on a heart-lung machine called ECMO—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation—not once but twice, back to back, which no one in the medical literature at the time had ever survived. He emerged with some brain damage from an intercranial bleed as well as mild cerebral palsy in his upper body, and was later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. But for the brain hemorrhage, Aidan might have been a typically developing child—a deep grief for my partner and me, but our love for him has no bounds. Luca, his much-cherished twin, also has autism. I originally got my CNA license so as to provide some of their special care.

When the boys’ issues were less consuming, I took the part-time job at hospice. During my year there, I cared for no fewer than four failed suicides, one woman and three men. But the experience I mentioned had to do with one in particular. He was in his late twenties or early thirties, and I stayed overnight with him at a nearby nursing home where he’d lived since not long after his failed suicide attempt. I had heard about this man—I’ll call him Dylan, though that wasn’t his real name—on my first day at hospice. A young CNA had told me that he was paralyzed and nonverbal as a result of his attempt, but he was responsive and able to breathe without the help of a ventilator. I could tell from how she described him that he emanated a great sweetness.

The nurses at our hospice who perform twelve-hour continuous-care shifts send out mid-afternoon reports, which is how I learned that Dylan was failing. It wasn’t my night to work, but I remember wishing it was. For some reason, I wanted to meet him. Then, late in the afternoon, I got a Blackberry message from work asking if I was free. I felt as if I had called out for Dylan and the universe had answered.

When I arrived at the nursing home, around nine that night, his room was packed with family members and friends, all eating and talking and laughing. These were people who had grieved his death-in-life for many years, so laughter was good (besides, no one can grieve every moment of every day).

Dylan was tall and soft-looking. He appeared to be asleep, propped a bit to one side with pillows. Nursing home staff came in and out, dosing him with scheduled medications, and around midnight the room emptied. Before they left, I assured his parents, who were amicably divorced, that I would call them if I thought their son’s death was imminent. When they had gone, I sat down at Dylan’s bedside and took his doughy hand.

“I know you can’t speak, but you can hear me. If there’s something you need—if you’re in pain or discomfort—you signal me, and I’ll do my best to help.”

He had been unresponsive the entire evening, but suddenly his eyelids began to flutter. He looked at me for several seconds, very much aware—not that unseeing, animal-in-pain kind of stare you sometimes see with the critically ill and dying. Then he shut his eyes and opened them again. I could see that this took great effort.

“It’s okay,” I told him, squeezing his hand. “I’ll be here all night.” I retrieved my computer and sat at the bedside to chart, and when I wasn’t writing, I watched Dylan breathe and checked for mottling on his skin. As I sat there hour after hour, a curious thing happened. The room began to expand, and a part of me arose and looked down on us—two individuals in a nursing home surrounded by a world of sleeping people. As if from a distance, a wall clock ticked away the seconds. Dylan became more apneic. I felt a deep, heavy feeling in my throat when I looked at him. I had a sense that he would die before my shift ended.

I am not of the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” ilk. Not that it can’t. Often, what doesn’t kill you makes you mean, bitter, and small-minded. I’ve seen plenty of that. Still, as I sat there, I thought about my mother, my children, and everything I’d lived through, and the thought came to me that maybe I had gone through the experiences I had so that I could be here this one night. What surprised me more was that I was okay with that. I moved through the following hours with that same heightened awareness, adjusted Dylan’s position gently when necessary, took his pulse, monitored his breathing, sang.

A staff nurse who came in around four thought our patient was very close to death and that we should call his parents. I didn’t think it was time yet—I’d become proficient at watching for certain signs—but my job required a fair amount of acquiescence, especially under the circumstances (I was both of lower rank medically speaking and not in my own company’s facility). So I called. The father and his wife arrived within the hour, then Dylan’s mother and grandmother. We waited and watched for a couple of hours while Dylan’s limbs cooled and his skin slowly collapsed into the bones of his face. Eventually, Dylan began taking agonal, or “fish out of water,” breaths. His family looked at me after the final, shuddering exhalation, and I nodded to indicate Yes, he’s gone.

I made the necessary calls and reassured the family about what would follow. I wanted to do the postmortem care for Dylan, but I had to respect others’ wishes. Most people outside hospice cannot fathom why anyone would want to do postmortem care, but personally, I love it. Removing subcutaneous lines and the foley catheter—all that necessary but invasive medical nonsense—washing the body then redressing and repositioning it in a comfortable-looking position. I especially like washing the person—to me, that’s very sacred. And it’s a wonderful way to say goodbye.

For reasons I will not go into, I did not get to participate in this ritual, though I was allowed to add some clove-scented water to the tub his caretakers used. I comforted myself that, in the end, he had eight or nine nurses and CNAs around his bed to do the honors. He was much loved, and the tasks were done with great solemnity and care. I wondered to myself what it was about Dylan that made us all feel drawn to him? How was it that he managed to make us feel special? That’s a mystery I’ve yet to understand. Even in his death—how amazing!—there was enough of Dylan to go around.

When the staff  was finished dressing him and the room had mostly cleared, I packed my things and went to stand at his side. “Thank you for letting me be here,” I told him. I kissed my fingertips and touched them to his forehead.

What I didn’t say aloud was: I understand now. You finished healing me.