December 3, 2005
Prayer Spinning.
Victoria is going through a personal crisis.
There is nothing quite as piercing as your child suffering or struggling. No matter how old, they somehow remain indelibly inked in your mind as the small, delicate life that needs you for food, shelter, protection against danger, reassurance, the things that are most scary at night and as a compass. To be there to pick them up when they fall and skin their knees.
How do I describe the impact on my daughter from the changes over this last year? Probably, the best description of the impact was given to me by my son-in-law, Rick. He described the current scenario of our collective “family unit” as a large snow globe that has been vigorously shaken: Valerie and me being separated/selling the house/reconfiguring my career/Valerie standing up and claiming “her time,” her value/John and his partner, Schbvonne (pronounced SHIVON), having an unplanned child/John not having a clear job path/John and family moving to San Diego from San Francisco to live with Schbvonne’s mother/John’s double hernia and related surgery/Maggie (Victoria’s mother-in-law and Valerie’s best friend of 30 years) losing her job/Maggie buying a home in Ashland, Oregon, selling her home in California, moving to Ashland with no job to remodel the new home, living with and supporting Rick & Victoria who are doing the remodeling, her letting go of years dealing with her daughter’s addictions and self-destructive emotional behavior and all the time dealing with her own scars of loneliness/ and finally interacting with Rick and Victoria through all this…who I am currently visiting here in Ashland.
Here’s a shot at what’s going on in their corner of the snow globe: being married just over a year/ moving to Ashland from SF to remodel Maggie’s new home/deciding to live in a yurt (for those of you, like me, who have never heard of a yurt this is a modern “tent-like” version of a Mongolian hut that is 24 feet in diameter and is built out in the “open spaces” in partnership with deer, bears, raccoons, cougars…you get the picture)/Rick playing the role in his family as the mature male while seemingly carrying everyone’s burden acting as the mirror, guide, fixer, solver, confidante, etc. for everyone/ dealing with the real reason for me writing this segment; Victoria’s struggling with a month-plus of dizziness and vertigo. The net-net of all this is that she has been experiencing heightened anxiety & fear. “It’s in the genes of our family,” I told her. “None of us likes being out of control. So, the idea of losing balance, both physically and emotionally, is a challenge at best.” Victoria tells me that everyone has been offering the answer to what’s going on and what’s causing the problem. Needless to say, she was not exactly eager to hear my, “Well, here’s the correct diagnosis” explanation. And on top of all this an alternative medicine doctor in Ashland, where she lives, believes it is an inner ear infection that might take 6 weeks to clear up (it has been 4+ weeks as of this writing). The first time her spins happened was immediately after she stepped off the plane on her first trip back to Nashville since the start of our separation in July. She had come back home to visit Valerie for her birthday. If stress and anxiety add to the malady, then my “wild ass guess” is that coming for a visit…seeing your mother and father living in two separate places…seeing the furniture from your home divided between two locations…having to explain to your dad that you’ve come to town to see and stay with your mother and wanted to make sure this didn’t mean I wasn’t loved or however that might be interpreted by Dad…having to arrange a “date” with your dad so you could spend a few hours together…trying to put on the strong and positive face of “everything’s fine”…. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy, but something informs my pea-sized brain that this might qualify as adequate stress-inducing stimuli. She had done an effective exterior job in covering up the problem so we wouldn’t notice. Right! As an aside, where is it written and taught that we are supposed to never let people see us when some of the real pains of life are searing through our soul like a hot knife through butter?
The next time the symptoms occurred was during Rick and Victoria’s “dream trip” back to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where we held their wedding a year earlier. “It was so bad, Dad, that there were times that the room was spinning so much that I had to stretch and twist my neck back and forth; whatever I could do to release the tension all over my body. It just wouldn’t stop. It was so horrible. The only time when it felt tolerable was when I was sleeping or lying perfectly still.” Some dream vacation! And this is the manner in which it has continued for the last four weeks.
One of the greatest challenges we face as parents, is when attempting to interact with their child to understand and effectively utilize the proper terms of engagement when offering some of the parental wisdom we have gathered through the years [possible wisdom indicators: gray hair, slight limp, large therapy expenses, official AARP card, large collection of self-help books (some read), periodic stuttering, intermittent hair loss, dental bill from gnashing induced damage]. Knowing that my wrong approach would shut her down completely to anything I might have to offer, and knowing that Victoria is a bit stubborn (runs rampant in our family), is very perceptive and takes in everything you say… I took the courageous, direct approach. I initiated the conversation in a public restaurant while having lunch with her and Rick; she was savoring her cheese won tons. OK…I admit that I was a bit of a weenie about this. Go ahead smart ass, you try it! And now that I have diverged from the core message, let me ask an additional question: so, what the heck is Asian Fusion? New dance from the orient? Al Gore’s other invention? Genetically engineered egg rolls? The other, other white meat?
“Victoria, I want to share a few things as a friend first, and as someone who only wants to offer information you may or may not be aware of that could be a part of what you are experiencing.” Having to relive the following would not be easy, but this is not about me, right? Thanks a lot, Rick Warren.
“About a year and a half ago I experienced about 6 months of tremendous dizziness. It would happen no matter where I was, no matter the time of day, no matter how I prepared to stand up and the like. When I would stand up I would have to brace myself and concentrate with all my might not to black out from the spinning sensation. It would last for about 10 seconds. It really scared me.”
Victoria listened intently, only the slightest hint of the “Here we go again with another prognosis” facial expression.
“This was at the time when my business was falling apart, we had exhausted all of our money & savings to keep our family and house operating and I knew we needed to sell the house. I knew the house thing would devastate your mother. I was looking for a job to get out of my solo consulting grind, mom was really getting involved with a women’s ministry that had ignited her faith, and all that with it the discovery of a new best friend…well, it felt like she was pulling away. All this, and more, felt like a horrible vortex of emotions. And as I look back upon it now, I had kept it all bottled up neatly inside me. At least that’s what I thought.”
I paused, visualizing the vivid “trailers” of the highlights from the previous memories.
“They gave me all kinds of medical tests. They strapped me to a table with all sorts of heart monitors, swiveled me upside down, then spun me back upright to try and reproduce the sensation. I had a brain MRI. I had every blood test imaginable. They prodded, poked and probed. And then… they found nothing. ‘Mr. Kagan, you have above average health for your age. We cannot find anything wrong with you, physically.’ They didn’t have to say it; depression.”
I now had her full attention. “About 6 months before all this started happening I had stopped taking Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant I had been taking for 10 years when I was diagnosed with ADD. As you know, I have struggled emotionally through the relationship with my dad. I have always been fearful of ending up like him and his self-image as a failure – failed life, failed fatherhood, failed finances, major depression, “loser” mentality, lots of medications. I felt that by getting off the pills it would convince me I could do it alone. Not turn out like him.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep a demeanor of strength. “Truth is…I do have depression. And as a result of stopping my meds, it got worse than ever. Anxiety. Fear. Anger. I went back to my psychiatrist, shared my struggles and he prescribed a new anti-depressant to help me maintain my balance. The dizziness has gone. I am able to work on my other issues. I am not my father. I am not a failure.”
It’s hard and painful to try and capture what those real moments were like Victoria in that restaurant. It felt like I was telling my child straight out that I had given her a life sentence of struggling and adjustment. That she is flawed, handicapped with something she had absolutely nothing to do with, except being a part of this one particular strand of DNA. While I am writing this, Victoria and Rick are sleeping upstairs. I am sitting by the warmth of the black potbelly wood stove. The amber flames lick at the glass. Their cat, Mika, is sitting on the ledge above the stove watching me, pondering my actions. She goes back to licking the herself, probably to remove the soot from her silken fur.
Ambiguity: as powerful as these feelings might be, the fact is that they are merely words, images, thoughts and interpretations put on paper. No one is here to see the tears rolling down my cheeks. No one feels the cold steel of guilt twisting diligently in the pit of my stomach. No one can hear the sound of my heart fracturing. You see, I must leave today.
I hear some stirring above me. I look up to my left to see Victoria descending the black spiral staircase. She floats into the arms of the room. Her ember glows in the morning light. I am so blessed to be here. I am so blessed to have these feelings. I am so blessed to know that God will not leave her side through these spinning moments. Or mine.
The demons leave the room, skulking away amidst the black smoke escaping through the flew of the wood-burning stove. And all that remains is the morning blanket of Oregon fog peeling away from the mountains, yawing its green and amber stain.
“Good morning, Victoria.”
“What are you doing, Dad.”
“Praying.”
Amen.
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