Pneumonia and the Safest Place

Betweet 2000 and the end of 2001, my friend who is like a sister to me, and who had two very small children, was struck with kidney failure several times and fought to keep her life. I lived half the time at my house and half at hers. My sister and I had decided to hang onto our home in case G died, which she nearly did six times in a year and a half. We knew we might be raising two children because, by his own admission, C was no kind of a father to raise kids alone. Then my minister, a friend who had helped me through my husband's desertion and daughter's death, whose wife was a dear friend, hanged himself. And my brother was diagnosed with terminal liver disease one month before his older son hanged himself. Then Jack died. Then my voice teacher and choir director and friend of ten years died.

It was not a good eighteen months.

And at the end of that time (G is STILL with us), my women had an inkling that I would fail if I did not get the hell out of Dodge for a bit. So Nancy, who was going to take a professional photography course in Santa Fe, consulted with my sister about sending me with her. They colluded, this bunch. And for Christmas of 2001, I had a ticket to Santa Fe and a hotel to stay in and ten days to call my own!

Perfect. And it was. Only on the plane ride home, I contracted an odd strain of bacterial pneumonia. Four days after I was home, my fever spiked and I was terribly, terribly ill. I saw the doctor and he gave me two choices. "The hospital today, or you do absolutely NOTHING for the next three days, let other people take care of you, do your breathing treatments religiously and find some way to keep your breathing deep and even. I will see you then, and if you are better, you may continue that way. 2/10ths of a degree higher temperature, you are in the hospital. And do NOT lie down to sleep at night."

Painting My Way Home
I painted. I remembered, in my counseling, yes, I DID do visualizing when the flashbacks started to come. I learned to keep them from coming by a strong, strong visualization of the safest, most serene spot I could imagine. I had two. One was at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. I gave that painting away. The other, my fifth painting ever, is this. I am sorry about the reflection. I gave it to my sister when she was having a particularly rough time two years later. I worked on this every day, played Handel's Watermusik in the background and focused on breathing. It is just watercolor. I surrounded myself with New Hampshire pictures. Water. Granite. Pine. Mountains. The Flume. The Basin. Roadside rushing water. The Lake. You name it. At the other end of the room I did the same with pictures from my Runaways to Red Bank. Nothing but Sandy Hook, West Long Branch, the ocean, rocks. sand. I would move back and forth between paintings, then the couch, paintings, the couch, for about eight or ten hours. I had a gallon of ice water there as well, and a cooler with more ice.

By Still Waters, Peace

From this painting everything else has sprung. I am a woman of granite and water. Mad rushing water has smoothed my edges. Pools of calm reflect the colors of ages. I am a woman of pine and birch, of seasons and extremes, of dark and light. (Well, and I'm just plain nuts to boot, lest you think I've gone all mythical mystic goddess on you.) Northern writers have just as many layers as the southern writers do. It took me until I was about forty-five to know that for sure.

I guess I'm blogging more than I thought I would. Oh, well. Here is the mother painting for me. Again, apologies for the reflection's muted color and lines, but perhaps you can get the feel of it. Oh. I finished both in nine days. On the tenth I rested! No hospital. I was very close to well.

And whenever I look at this painting I seem to automatically breathe more deeply, and I disappear there to rest.