A Week in Paradise

Life goes on. And on. We all must figure out how to go on within it.

To that end, we took a week just to be. To be together. To be alone. To be happy.

I'm not ready for this week to end (though I am still working--this would be much more relaxing if my work didn't keep enticing me back to the computer screen. I should be grateful, and I am, but if I am truthful, I'm also a bit spiteful.) There is a garden to be harvested, bursting with tomatoes, pumpkin, squash, raspberries, potatoes. There are grapes begging to be plucked off the vines. Juice and jellies to be made, pies to be eaten. Leaves to gather and woods to be hiked through, sheep to be watched and dogs to chase balls. A certain tot's grandparents to take care of us all.

Real life is waiting for us at home, but for now, we're relishing the fall; the beauty, the primal work, the bounty and the colors.

It feels good.

Sofia is beaming. At first her molars (damn the molars! ) caused her to wake hourly at night, and she could sense all the upheaval that had been our life. Now, she's walking everywhere, completely given up crawling. The Grandpa she'd been suspicious of since birth is now her best buddy. She loves watching the sheep and has figured out how to throw a ball for the dog. She's eating raspberries direct from the garden and discovered that she adores cherry tomatoes.

Life is good. [pictures to follow]

Hiding in Plain Sight

Know how life bumbles along and bumbles along, and things like politics and clean laundry and a dog-hair-free floor seem to matter until all of a sudden something cataclysmic happens and the world just stops and the only thing that matters is that the person you love keeps breathing?  Yeah, it has been that kind of week.

For the most part, I haven't talked about it.  But then, that is the problem, isn't it?  There is this hidden illness that nobody talks about but so many confront every day.  This disease that kills and maims and reduces life to misery and is very, very real.  It's been a part of my life since I met my husband, much as he and I both tried to sweep it under the rug.  And it became very, very real to us both a week ago last Thursday.

Depression.  For so long, I just didn't understand.  Perhaps I still don't.   But until people open up and talk about it like they do any other disease (diabetes, cancer, heart failure) wonderful people like my husband will go without help, not understanding themselves, and not understood by those who love them most. 

We tried.  For years, we tried.  I asked Julio to get help.  I begged him to talk to someone other than me.  "Choose happiness", I'd say.  "Home is where you are", I'd blabber.

But I completely missed the point. 

He could no more choose happiness than a patient with leukemia can just tell all those blasts where to go.

After a few years, he finally relented and sought help.  Only, the help he got wasn't enough.  The meds were working, but none of us; not his doctors, not me, not even himself took it seriously enough.  We didn't talk about it outside our family.  We kept it hidden, attempted to deal with its ramifications all by ourselves. 

Until we couldn't.  

We can't not talk about it anymore.  We can't keep it between us, and take the medications as prescribed.  They aren't enough.  We're fighting, but the disease is fighting back.  

September 19th at 10:30 pm, I thought it had won.  It tried to take his life, and so very nearly succeeded.  

But we prevailed.  Life and love and luck and medicine came through.  His life was saved thanks to the ICU and ventilators.  And now, we're talking about it.  Too many people suffer, too many families hide in shame, pretending everything is okay, that no disease clouds their lives.  It is time to bring this very real disease, with its very real life-threatening complications out of hiding so that it can be vanquished and controlled.  

Julio wants to live.  He wants to get better.  He does not want this disease to permeate our lives, tear us apart, isolate us from those we love.  He's fighting back, and I'm alongside of him.  We're not doing it alone.  We can't.

Happy Birthday, Honey

Mi corazon,

It has been seven years since we first celebrated your birthday together over a pitcher of beer in MacWen's. That feels like a life-time ago, yet only yesterday.

You had fewer gray hairs, then, though you've always been distinguished. I was barely a woman, and definitely not the same person as I am today. Had we known then where we'd be now, would we have looked at each other differently that night? I remember the feel of your hand in mine; so new and still trembling. I remember feeling so, so lucky to be allowed to hug you, to be the girl to kiss the birthday boy.

Remember that first camping trip we took for your birthday that weekend? The botched tent, the cold night, the tuna and crackers? I've never been so grateful for duct tape, I'll tell you that. The laguna and las cascadas and the paramo, all so perfect.

We've grown and changed as individuals. We've grown and changed as a couple, learning about real love, deep sadness, true happiness.

Seven years later, I'm so incredibly blessed to be the wife that hugs you, the woman to kiss the birthday man.

Happy Birthday, mi vida. I'm ready to celebrate one more year with a bottle of wine and a lot of love,

For always,
tu indiecita