How it really is

Somebody who knows a bit about our lives said recently on Instagram: You are so calm.

But real life is not for Instagram. On Instagram life is perfect.

It has been wet. Very wet. And if we sit outside in the evenings we are well sprayed against the striped invasive mosquitoes. August is their voracious peak. The garden is lush and wild. Katydids, cicadas, and the first crickets accompany dinner.

Inbetween time-consuming apartment hunting (we have not found the right one yet, and yes, I am nervous), book-related event-planning (book party on August 21st), and plain old work, I pot up in-ground plants for this plant adoption party I have dreamed up.

But don't ask me when that will be.

In fact, don't ask me anything. I wake every morning with dread in the pit of my stomach. News from home is bad, my brothers are on the warpath, Vince and I have no idea where we are going to live. I am not a self pitying person, but 2018 seems to have birthed a wave of the worst of human behaviour, in terms of our personal lives. Malice, resentment, an absolute lack of ethical integrity. A black depression grips my heels and pulls me back. I say it out loud because I now feel it's better to say it than pretend it is not happening. There are days when I am felled.

In many ways, we lead privileged lives. As my father would say. This year far worse things have happened to friends. Cancer diagnoses. Death by home invasion. Death too young. Real suffering.

And for me there are points of light. The Frenchman, who is an incredible human being, with a backbone of solid integrity. Perhaps that is all that matters. There is my new book. I like it. I know that must sound strange, but you never know. There is my publishing team at Chelsea Green - very good, supportive people. There are the early, generous reviews, written by authors and editors who have very busy and successful lives, but who took the time to be kind. Time is the one thing none of us have, anymore. There is our wonderful little car, who (of course we have anthropomorphised her) has given us wings. There is Vince's wing - after years on the ground, he is taking to the paragliding skies, once more. There is humor. We can be very silly, and we laugh.

There are books, as essential to me as air. I have been reading my way through Michael Ondaatje's work, sequentially, beginning about three weeks before his Golden Man Booker Prize was announced for The English Patient, a book I have read several times. I began backwards with his new Warlight, and then started at the beginning. On a back page in each book I track in pencil his patterns. Dogs (almost always funny dogs), bird song, war, tunnels and holes and caves, the female voice, the creation of a person's character. Books have removed me from or returned me to myself at every stage of my life, and in times of crisis they are a lifeline. Half an hour before bed, I read, and mute the demons who threaten sleep, and who have stolen peace of mind.

There are friends, to whom I do not reach out - or give - often enough. They are all better and smarter than I am.

Which reminds me of my father's neurologist, a few years ago. I went to see him with my mom. He said rhetorically, with a smirk, "Your father likes to be the smartest person in the room, doesn't he?" Any respect I was prepared to have for this man, this brain doctor, dried up on the spot. One, that he would find it necessary to say this. It revealed far more about him than it did about my father. Two, that he was wrong. And so bad at reading a personality. This neurologist. Who never had the guts to say to my father's face: You have dementia. Because even then, my father was an intimidating man. So my father, who scorned computers and consequently Google, had no time - no reason - to plan for catastrophe. And now the sharks are circling. He had rejected a first, honest, diagnosis from another neurologist, and Dr. Second Opinion lacked the cojones to tell him the unambiguous truth. "To spare him the shock," he said. Sure. Wuss. Same guy laughed out loud when I asked him if he could recommend any local support groups for my mom. He thought that was very funny.

My father hated being the smartest person in the room. Because it was boring. He spoke with such admiration - almost a sense of wonder - of the marvelous brains of a handful of good friends. He loved a good brain. And he liked to listen.

So home - here and abroad - feels lost to me. My sense of identity is in crisis. And the toxic guy who lives upstairs, does not work, and sleeps till 3pm to smoke weed, is pounding music as I type. (Upside: Maybe when we move we can retire the noise canceling headphones and three (yep) white and pink - yes, it's a thing - noise machines.)

And none of this belongs on a blog. But if I do not wave, I might drown.

We will return to regular programming. Sometime.