Mental Breakdown

AFTER THE RAIN: THE BEAUTIFUL WEATHER, PART ONE

Sagres, Portugal, is the setting for this beautiful rainbow. Bob and I went to Portugal for my 60th birthday. I had broken my foot earlier, but refused to cancel the trip. After pushing my wheelchair over cobblestones in the rain, my husband was glad to relax and snap a series of gorgeous sky shots.

AFTER THE RAIN: THE BEAUTIFUL WEATHER, PART ONE

So much of my early life had turmoil. It was a blessing to find the “rainbow of my life,” Bob Haine. Or maybe he found me. Either way, after the first week of school, we met at a T.G.I.F. party sponsored by the local teachers’ union.

It was probably not a meeting to go into the history books, but the details carved a place in my heart. First he impressed me by knowing my correct shoe size. During an economically lean time he had supplemented his substitute teaching income by selling shoes at Bullocks. It was not his favorite job. He probably never dreamed it would lead to a fateful pickup line.

Bob had been fired from his first teaching job, as fifth grade teacher in a catholic school. His crime was passing gas after eating lentil soup, and then explaining to the students  that “farting” was a natural body function. The head nun did not appreciate him using an “F” word. This firing led to being  hired by the Chaffey High School District. I was hired that same year. This is another example of how a setback can lead to a positive outcome.

Our first date was not without difficulties, but they were fun ones. Bob was having the passenger seat in his Toyota reupholstered, so I sat on a pillow on the floor. After dinner we went on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Will Rogers State Beach, near Santa Monica. We were having a great conversation when he pulled into a gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway.

I got out to use the restroom. When I came back outside I saw his car driving away, my purse inside, and me not sure if this was going to be a very long night. He did come back and picked me up. It was his first, but not his last, attempt to get me to see the lighter side of life.

In a few months, Bob asked me to marry him while at our special spot, lifeguard station 14. That was over thirty seven years ago. He always jokes about the musical reason he married me: I was the first woman he’d met who could harmonize with him, in more ways than one.

We have been harmonizing together ever since that first date, singing Beatle songs at two in the morning. Now we perform as the married duet of bobandkathi. Seven music videos and three CDs later, he is still the melody singer and lead guitarist. I am the harmony and the background mandolinist, as well as the songwriter.

The music of my married life has not been without dissonance. I was diagnosed as bipolar in 1985, some months after the loss of my first pregnancy. It was a difficult time for both of us. Losing the next two pregnancies was not much easier.

It was fortunate I married a “rock,” because the breakdowns led to very rocky times. I am reminded of a line I wrote in a song for a wedding: “You will be the rock and I will be the flower that blooms through the stone.” And I did bloom, although I think of myself as a late bloomer. It took awhile to ground myself. It took awhile to pull out the two hundred songs I had written, the almost forty years of journals and poetry I’d saved, and realize I might have something worthwhile to say.

My breakdowns were breakthroughs as well. But I didn’t see that until much later when I had a grander vista of life. I reread and reviewed my life from a different perspective. I could see that the good weather had come from the storms. No rain: no rainbow.

My photographer-singer husband (a former French teacher) has always liked the optimistic phrase, “Après la pluie, le beau temps.” The translation: “After the rain, the beautiful weather.” Our weather has gotten progressively better, but we have passed through more rainy seasons as well. Some have even been life threatening.

 

SUNRISE OR SUNSET: IT’S ALL IN YOUR POINT OF VIEW, PART TWO

Above is another Morro Bay scene with a solo fishing boat and a sunset by the rock. It sets the tone for Part Two and parting from my father, who loved to fish. His ashes may even have made their way to this beach where I stood to reminisce of sunrises and sunsets gone by.

SUNRISE OR SUNSET: IT’S ALL IN YOUR POINT OF VIEW, PART TWO

The best part of the day, as far as I am concerned is the sunrise. Since I am not always awake for that, I will settle for an equally beautiful sunset. Sunrises and sunsets, however, seem to be the most fleeting times of day. That does not diminish their beauty. The shortness of time makes the moment more precious, and the light becomes ever so much more special. Such was the relatively short time I had with my father on this Earth.

We did not talk much about the past concerning why he and my mother had separated. (Neither of my parents ever said anything bad about each other.) He did like to tell stories about his adventures in Bolivia, some appropriate (and not-so-appropriate) memories of France in World War Two, and some tales of his side of the family, including details about my sisters. The stories about my grandmother shooting at rattlesnakes from a stagecoach may have been embellished, but I laughed anyway.

He had sad stories, too, about being homeless for a while after his second marriage did not end happily. Perhaps it was some of his less than happy memories that made us connect at a deeper level. He was philosophical after the loss of my first pregnancy and the subsequent nervous breakdown. He was just as comforting after the next two losses and other breakdowns. He would pat my head as if to impart some kind of secret knowledge into it. Perhaps he knew at some level that he would be the one to raise my family when he went to Heaven a few years later.

It was not a total surprise when my father got lung cancer. He had smoked for years. I would come up to Palo Alto and take him for the radiation treatments. We would have bouillabaisse at my motel. He had trouble eating but could still talk about poetry and politics. Sometimes, he would strum his old guitar, the one I now have in my bedroom, and he would sing French ballads. He got better, but he did not quit smoking. Perhaps that was the greatest lesson he inadvertently taught me: if you keep doing the same things, expect the same results.

I think I was the only one who understood why he did not want to go through chemo and radiation for the brain cancer. True to form, he read all about it and knew what was coming. I had wanted to take care of him, but was too ill myself. His sister kindly took him in. The hospice care was not long, just long enough for my sisters and me to say goodbye. One day, I leaned over and gave him permission to die on my upcoming birthday. I would be forty. As if to honor me, he died the night before.

We read parts of The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, at his simple service. I was playing the part of the fox, saying goodbye. He had to go Home to take care of “my three roses,” which I know that he did. It was a sunset for me that I will never forget. It was a sunrise for my children. Either way, the sun is still shining.