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Depression I: Graces

My husband, Dave, is diagnosed with depression.

I, however, am not.

This difference, exacerbated by my self-starting oldest-child syndrome, makes Dave's depression nigh inscrutable to me.

But we are married, so we have to - we must - figure out how to talk about it.  It's been a rugged road, unpaved and pitted with mistakes and upsets.  But it is getting better, and it has been good for us.  And in the shmita we have come so far.

But it is still hard.  Heartbreaking.  Some moments are still right to the edge of screaming unbearable.

But we are fortunate, because those moments are the exception.  So much of what we have is summer night scooter rides, and eating dinner together on pine tray tables in the living room, and sharing Youtube videos of cats: bright torches staving off the night.

But when the darkness does come with all its weight, it is the tiny graces, pinprick stars on a sable sky, that revive me.

In relation to the depression, there are two things that continually surprise me: the type of graces that comfort and cheer me most, and the times that Dave and I are closest and clearest in the darkness.

I will save the latter for later; for now, I'll speak of the unexpected graces.

Two weeks ago, it was a friend surprising me at work with her extra double-shot latte.  On Monday, it was sitting on the east bank of the Scioto River, watching kayaks cut across the brown waves and silver sunlight. On Thursday, it was a birthday dinner and the heat in my kneecaps after my first Tom Collins.

On Sunday, it was gardening.

The Sunday before, as a birthday present, my mother had bought me plants, soil, and a pair of window boxes. It was a gift meant to bring life and scent and purple to the privacy-fenced square of back patio asphalt.

Their silken purple faces and ghost-green tendrils cluttered our table for a week until I finally had the time and the sun to hang the vines and daisies and petunias.  Under a hot May sun, one bag of soil led to two, and two window boxes led to four planters and a host of seedling starters.  I had music playing, and I could feel the light beginning to burn my neck and shoulders, and I was streaked with dirt and caked to the elbows in damp soil.  And I was throbbing with happiness.

I can't say what exactly it was, or if maybe it was everything all together, but in the soil and seed packets and dehydration, I found joy.  And there is a strength that comes from joy.

Later that night - after I had filled the back with bald pots of dirt, after the petunias peeked down at me from the top of the fence, after I had rinsed off the worst of the sweat and dirt - I was sitting in the living room with Dave.  He stretched across the loveseat and rubbed his palms back over the crown of his head.  He talked about worries, and I could hear the darkness in his voice.

And I was able to be soft and cheerful, loving and unpunctured.  On another night, I might've crumpled, deflated, whispered.  On another night, I might've been weak and made everything worse.  But that night, after cupping sugar snap seeds in the palm of my left hand, I was strong and bouyant. Because there is a strength that comes from joy. 

Instead of the weight pulling me down, I was strong enough to stand up under it because of the joy and the graces, a rigid tent pole holding up the heavy velvet ceiling.  Instead of us both being smothered, I was able to give him a small respite to breathe.  And that respite is a grace in itself.

And it is the little graces like these that revive me and strengthen me, that clasp our hands together; pinpricks of starlight, a bright torch staving off the night.

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