Winter vacation, depression and an unexpected visitor

Saturday, we finished packing up Christmas. Santa’s Marching Band stowed in its box. All the holiday cards unclipped from the shiny, red garland they were strung on. The garland rolled up. The cards sorted and stacked. The multicolored stars we’d hung in all the doorways came falling down. And of course all the ornaments on the tree– from the star on top to the unbreakable trinkets Annie would yank off the lowest branches and carry around the house– all those things were taken off and wrapped in tissue and boxed up for next year.

Not that I’m in any sort of rush for next year. The only people saddened by our tree being flung curbside were Lily and Jovie, who said goodbye to “Holly” with a made-up song to the tune of … some holiday song or another. To be honest I was trying not to listen to their mournful little diddy. I’m over Christmas. I’m over “Last Christmas” and “All I Want For Christmas” and “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” (answer: Yes. Yes, they do know it’s Christmas. Because starting sometime in late August, Christmas is shoved down our throats with such merciless fervor that by January we’re all pooping peppermint scented jingle bells.)

I just can’t with the whole business anymore. Not that it was awful or anything. Sure, I did get some bug or another on Christmas Eve that left me tired, achy and sore throated for a few days, but other than that our two-week winter vacation was fine. We enjoyed visits with grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and in-laws. We took advantage of the mild weather and went on some bike rides as a family. We slept in. Got more or less caught up on the latest edition of “Star Wars” movies. We played games together, decorated cookies together and read stories together.

But despite all the togetherness, I had this ongoing feeling of detachment. In the room, but not present. Participating in all the annual rituals and conversations, but also, somehow, watching myself go through the motions like some dour doppelgänger. It’s so strange experiencing these two versions of self simultaneously. The wife/mother/daughter/sister/aunt/cousin doing all the things she typically does and then that other entity- the non-nameable self drifting along side craving the mental version of flannel pajamas and fleece-lined slippers and a comfortable bed and a good book.

I didn’t really want to do anything that required any extra imagination, thought or creativity. I had time to write and felt void of anything to say. I craved quiet and solitude. Or, if not solitude, then easy people with low expectations.

Annie was ideal for this. I sat on her bedroom floor and she brought me the frayed copy of her beloved book, “Road Builders” and then backed up into my lap and flipped through the pages before she tossed it away for a “Spot” book or the Easter book with the pictures of ducks in it. I listened to her say the word “duck” over and over, with extra emphasis on the “ck” as the week wore on. “Duh.” “Duh-KUH.” She pointed at the ducks and we counted them. Then back to “Road Builders.” Then the ducks again. Annie warming my lap, her soft hair tickling my nose.

I cleaned up the same messes she made dozens of times. The plastic storage containers in the kitchen. The magnetic blocks and the “Sesame Street” characters covering the floor in the living room. The board books from the shelf in her bedroom. Multiple times a day returning items to the spots she’d pulled them from. Bending down, picking up, bending down, picking up, bending down, picking up. Like a robot on an assembly line.

When she wasn’t making endless messes, paging through books or pleading for snacks, she demanded “Elm.” “Elm. Elm. ELM! ELM!” she shouted with greater frequency and volume until I’d pull her on my lap and turn on an episode of “Sesame Street.”

The older girls were more or less self-sufficient. They built Lego-y things, read stacks of books or watched and re-watched “Wild Kratts” and “High School Musical” occasionally checking in with me about whether they could have a treat (Sure, go have a cookie. Go eat 10 cookies, who cares, it’s winter break.) Sometimes I’d remind them to take a shower or to fold their laundry.

All of this was fine. Except for the nagging feeling that it wasn’t fine. That I had time off from school and time with the family and the potential for precious time to myself and I wasn’t in it. And I wasn’t enjoying it. I was just sort of existing in it.

I’m probably not making myself clear.

Right now, I’m reading the “His Dark Materials” series by Philip Pullman. I’m part-way through “The Amber Spyglass” where the protagonists have started their journey to the world of the dead. En route, they observe the scenery of the countryside they were walking through changing before their eyes.

“The color was slowly seeping out of the world. A dim green gray for the bright green of the trees and the grass, a dim sand gray for the vivid yellow of a field of corn, a dim blood gray for the red bricks of a neat farmhouse… ‘It’s not like going blind, even,’ said Lyra, frightened, ‘because it’s not that we can’t see things, it’s like the things themselves are fading.'”

A page later, the characters observe large groups of people moving toward a settlement, only the people aren’t people, but the ghosts of people who had recently died that are heading toward a way station of sorts before they moved on to the world of the dead.

“[The ghosts] seemed to have settled into a dull trance, and Lyra wanted to shake them, to urge them to struggle and wake up and look around for a way out.”

That’s the feeling I mean. The dull trance.

What does it say about my mindset that I related to the indifferent ghosts in their paling world?

See, here’s the trouble: When you’re someone who’s lived with depression before, there’s always an uneasy sort of peace when, somehow inexplicably, you’re no longer living with it. Uneasiness because of the likelihood that it could return and uneasiness because I’ve never known exactly how to to make it go away. There’s never been a definitive cure. Never a moment when I woke up from flat, dreariness of depression, the sun streaming through my window and thought, “ah yes, that is behind me now.” It’s not like with a cold when you can finally stop blowing your nose. Or when a cut finally heals and the scab can be flicked off revealing the tender new skin underneath. There’s no declaration of being fixed. No revelation of being cured. Just that life starts reshaping itself. Colors saturate. Smiles are easier to find. Tempers easier to quell. The day-to-day rhythms of being alive stop feeling punitive and start feeling more purposeful.

So when I find myself in stretches of time when my life starts to feel like just rote existence- like seeking out repetitive, mindless activity, or burying myself in books or retreating from people or avoiding doing anything creative or generative- I start to worry about it.

Like, am I just burnt out or is it depression?

Am I just overtired or is it depression?

Do I just need a couple hours of “me” time or is it depression?

Am I the only one who’s generally relieved when I realize my tearfulness and mood swings are probably just PMS, not depression? I love PMS. I can totally handle PMS. It comes with an explanation and an expiration.

Depression? Such a drag by comparison.

Recently, I’ve been feeling around the edges of my mental health, like testing the ripeness of an avocado. Trying to suss out what’s going on inside my head. Is this flat, introspective affect just the result of an exhausting, overhyped holiday season or is it something else? How long have I been feeling this way? When did it start? Why? Do I need to take any action?

And I came to a conclusion that, admittedly, is not particularly upbeat or optimistic, but at least makes sense to me. I don’t think it’s a classic case of depression, I just think it’s a difficult time to be a human being right now.

OK, so I know it’s always hard to be human. But right now, at this current juncture in human history, it’s pretty damn exhausting. And I’m speaking as a human whose needs are met- I don’t worry about housing or food or personal safety. I have three healthy children a supportive husband and a job I don’t dread going to. Both my parents are still alive. I have steady friends.

I know I’m comfortably positioned on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

And yet I’m walking through my days with these nagging feelings of dread that feel as if they’re morphing into this dangerous sort of apathy and disaffectedness. And I don’t think I’m alone.

This weekend I visited a friend who had a baby a couple months ago. Her maternity leave is winding down and I asked how she was feeling about returning to her job covering congress for a large midwestern newspaper. She sighed and looked pained. She was not looking forward to going back to work during this particular election cycle. Not looking forward to leaving behind the coziness and sweetness of days spent with her baby to rejoin the disheartening marathon that reporting on The Hill has become. My friend has always been a passionate, dedicated and talented journalist and she believes, as I do, that local journalism is so critical right now. I’ve always admired her drive and been grateful for her devotion and doggedness as a reporter. It was hard seeing her so disheartened.

The same for her husband who reports on religion for a national news organization. He, too, is dreading the election. No doubt, writing about organized religion has always come with challenges in our country, but in the current climate he said it’s been especially difficult. Both of their faces showed weariness– and not the weariness of new parents either. I know that weariness, it’s a sort of glowing exhaustion. This was something else.

It was that feeling I had while looking at the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post. The stories were about the escalating tension with Iran, Australia’s devastating bush fires and a bodega in D.C. that has seen two murders in the past seven months. Each of those stories on their own are difficult to read and process, but then I flipped inside and read a brief about a woman in Portland, Ore. accused of trying to choke a Muslim student with her headscarf before she stripped down and “rubbed the student’s hijab over her own breasts and genitals while disparaging Muslims” and I found myself visualizing the last little bits of dignity and humanity we had left as a country just slipping through the cracks of my finger like grains of sand.

Like that feeling of being shocked and also not shocked and also sort of shocked about how not shocked you are. And that feeling of being defeated and defenseless and ineffective as a human being against all the things.

Monday, I returned to middle school where the students were buzzing in different classes about the possibility of World War III. The terrifying possibility of such a thing not feeling like hyperbole anymore.

It also doesn’t help matters that so many of my close relatives are facing massive, painful upheavals in their lives right now and I’m at a loss for how to help each of them get through it.

There are these fires everywhere and small, insignificant me only armed with a squirt bottle.

That’s why I find myself poking and prodding at my brain- asking whether it’s depression or just a bad week or something else entirely. And I’m kind of feeling like that “something else entirely” is just the impending sense of dread we, as a collective, are feeling about the world right now.

Race, gender, religion, income level, age and politics aside, at least we have that in common.

But before we go too far down the rabbit hole of despair and futility, I have to share about this strange, silly thing that happened.

See, in the midst of writing this post and mulling over all the mull-ables, an unexpected visitor showed up at my doorstep.

I arrived home from school Monday and Annie and I found this strange, wooden doll (which I later figured out is actually a strange wooden puppet) patiently waiting for us. No note, no explanation of any sort.

To be honest, it was a little unsettling. The puppet looked a bit careworn and maybe a little menacing. And its facial expressions (It’s actually a two-faced wooden puppet of unknown origins; kind of like Professor Quirrell minus the turban) are, at first glance, a bit demonic. The red eyes aren’t doing it any favors.

I paused at the front door for a minute or two puzzling over the puppet/doll and how it ended up at my house and what supernatural forces might be inhabiting it. Annie, however, was delighted by our new friend and immediately reached for his nose and exclaimed, “Dat!” in the same joyful tone she reserves for dogs and ducks.

Because I think children are good judges of character and and because I didn’t want to risk offending any trapped souls and because we already have one potentially haunted doll in the family, Annie and I welcomed Dat into our house.

Thanks to Facebook and hunches, I’ve learned that Dat is an Indonesian stick puppet, also called Wayang Golek, who was found curbside (destined for the landfill) by a couple of neighbors (only one who has been identified). Said neighbors determined that the puppet was not, in fact, trash and belonged in my household as a possible friend for my turn-of-the-century, preschooler-sized antique doll, Rosalinda, who, I’d liked to point out, has lived with me for almost 20 years and has yet to try to murder me in my sleep.

Naturally, I spent a few minutes reading up about Indonesian puppetry and came across an article from the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco that talks about the puppets in relation to Indonesia’s history. In it, I learned that Indonesia is a country comprised of 17,000 islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and that its home to 300 ethnic groups and 500 spoken languages and dialects. While today, 87 percent of the country is Muslim, it has a rich history of Hinduism and Buddhism as well as beliefs in animism and ancestral spirits and other spiritual practices of indigenous cultures. Not to mention Western influences from 350 years of colonization by the Dutch.

What caught my eye was that the traditional stories told through Indonesian puppet theaters, tie together all these seemingly disparate ideas and beliefs, sharing narratives that try to get at the core of what it means to be human.

“Although aspects of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim faiths may appear to be in conflict with one another, the way these religions coexist with indigenous Indonesian beliefs may be viewed as a natural expression of its people’s spirituality. Some Indonesians believe that these religions hold common teachings of morality and virtue. This is reflected in the theater tradition of shadow puppet theater (wayang kulit) and three-dimensional rod puppet theater (wayang golek), in which a Muslim puppet master (dalang) entertains and educates the people using puppets to reenact indig- enous versions not only of Islamic legends but also of the Hindu epics and Javanese traditional tales. In a wayang performance the spirit world and the earthly world converge and the inner struggles of human existence—love, passion, hate, fear, and pain—are played out, revealing the history, spirit, and values of the people.”

I found this really beautiful. That a country that embodies so many diverse values, ideas and points of view can come together through these shared stories orchestrated by a puppet master using handmade wooden puppets.

“The dalang is a master musician, an epic storyteller, a dancer of dolls, a comic wonder, a deep philosopher, and a political pundit all rolled into one,” the article says. “In essence a conduit of the knowledge embedded in the traditional epics of wayang, the dalang connects the community with its cultural history and with the spirit world. 

I find myself wanting my a dalang to to put on a puppet show that translated all the tumult in front of me right now- all the personal heartaches and the existential fears– to help find the context of our current events and make sense of it.

In history class Tuesday, we asked the seventh graders to recall everything they could about the units we’ve covered since the beginning of the year- reconstruction, westward expansion, industrialization and progressivism. Then we had them place some of the major people, events, inventions and ideas on a timeline. The timeline stretched from one side of the classroom to the other, spanning from 1865 to 1938. On it was everything from Jim Crow Laws and the start of the KKK to the invention of the steel plow and the telephone to the Battle of Wounded Knee and passing of the Snyder Act that gave Native Americans citizenship to Susan B. Anthony and the launch of the woman’s suffrage movement to the passing of the 19th amendment that gave women the right to vote in 1920.

Looking at the timeline, Mrs. B. observed that when it came to history, nothing happened in isolation and often its influence and consequence extended far beyond the date it happened. Jim Crow Laws that went into affect in the 1860s and 1870s weren’t repealed until the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement. And, of course, we are still addressing the aftermath of those laws today.

Mrs. B. then addressed the class about current events. She mentioned that she’d heard several students talking about World War III and that while neither she nor I could make predictions or share opinions about what is happening in the world right now, we could share the facts and talk about what has happened in the past so that they could understand the background of where we are today.

So here I am today. Thinking about the context of our current times, the long arch of human history, my new wooden puppet, my joyful little girls, my endless worries.

We’re left to live in the rubble and the revelry of all of these things, right? I still don’t know if I’m depressed. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Writing about all of it over the past few days has helped me feel more like my regular (longwinded) self.

I do know that Dat is now proudly displayed in my living room and that I giggle when Jovie uses him for performances of Katy Parry’s “Fight Song.”

I know that Facebook speculations on his origins and threat levels have offered a welcome diversion from all the other news of the day. I know that neighborhood shenanigans offer much-needed levity to the immensity of national and international crises.

I know that when I’m ready to digest the news of the day, a history teacher can help me make sense of it. She reminds me that our ancestors have walked similar paths to the ones we walk today. She reminds me that our growth as a civilization is both ugly and inspiring. She reminds me of individuals like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Madam C.J. Walker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Chief Joseph, Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis- people who chased a vision of the future better than the present in which they lived.

She reminds me that in the midst of all this history we study were all the regular little people living their regular little lives. Reading stories to their little ones. Tidying their homes. Sledding with friends. Picking cat hair off their pants.

And that’s a comfort in these uncomfortable times.

*While I was working on this post Monday night, Brad tried to guess what I was writing about. He predicted I was going to find some sort of spiritual connection between my new wooden puppet, the book I’m reading and my reflections on the holidays (which is what I originally told him this post was about). So Brad, challenge accepted.