Footloose and Fancy Free

At THIS time of the year????

Years and years and years ago, when I was a desk clerk in a psychiatric hospital at age 24, I discovered this is the time of the year when such institutions get their greatest influx of patients.  Just before Thanksgiving till sometime after Christmas.  The average stay on our open, ambulatory ward was 23 days.

Bill and I lived in a university town (from whence we both graduated) that first year of our marriage, and Mrs. Professor’s Wife, I soon discovered, was privy to this “influx” ritual every year.  She’d come in a total whack-job and, within hours, if not minutes, would prance around like she walked on streets of gold.

We all giggled, of course, because her rambunctious spirit lightened up the place.  I ‘spect some of the older staff were a bit envious of her, truth be told.  They watched the weight of the whole wide world slide off her shoulders during the holiday season.  How convenient!

But what I will never forget was how she’d abandon her shoes in the middle of the hallway at early morning’s whim.  I had a direct bee-line visual on them from my front desk.  She’d be nowhere in sight but it didn’t matter.  We all knew she was on an adventure somewhere, cheering up the other patients.

She gave a whole new meaning to footloose and fancy free!

And she taught me До свидания/do svidaniya (Russian for good-bye) as well as a word/phrase whose language I don’t know (Russian?  Hungarian?) and can only spell phonetically:  daw-pa-PAH-chin-yah.  With a twinkle in her eye, she said it meant “till we kiss again.”  She was old enough to be my grandma and it was I who wanted to take off my shoes.  It felt like holy ground.

These 44 years later, the light-hearted spirit of that lady remains as fresh and invigorating as though it were yesterday when she entered my life.  Her Hungarian heritage intrigued me because Bill’s distant line came from bakers there.  In fact, the traditional Christmas meal I still cook to this day is a Hungarian poor-man’s chicken paprikash (with homemade dumplings) my kids and grandson would die for right now, passed on to me by both Bill’s mom and aunt those many years ago.

Why she had to “commit” herself year after year, I’ll never know.  Was she expected to make more than chicken paprikash at home?  Did her professor husband hate seeing her shoes in the middle of the room?  Was he relieved when she was gone?  Did she have children who cared?

It doesn’t matter now, of course.  Nor do most of us have the luxury to get away from it all, for whatever reason, at this time of the year.  Maybe by now most of us don’t need to?  Maybe we’ve learned to cope and be and do and go.  All of it.  We’re the Wonder Women, of course.  Amazon Warrior Women taking charge of Life, no matter what.

Okay, then, maybe not.  But if all we do by now is kick off our shoes, at this certain age, and walk footloose and fancy free, I dare say we’ll make it through to the very end.  Right?

At this time of the year.  Yes!  

My Heart, My Castle, My Home

A month ago Astrid and I had the good fortune to drive across Holland's eastern border into Germany's Münsterland, region of over 100 castles.  This one happens to be Burg Hülshoff, one of the finest and where we spent most of our time.

That got me thinking about castles and how we say "my home is my castle."  What exactly does that mean?  Typically a castle is a fortified residence for a powerful or affluent person.  It's usually private, not public, and is used to protect the owner. In some cases the castle is fortified, designed to defend a city or town, often in the middle of it.

Hold that thought.

A few days later, with visions of castles still in my head, I came to the day before the American Thanksgiving holiday and suddenly felt woefully depressed.  It was like a bombshell.  No other day in my first year in Holland had hit me that hard.  I wanted to be home with my family.  It was going to be my first Thanksgiving ever, in 65 years, away from family.  And especially because Holland doesn't celebrate the holiday, I felt so lost.

Then I remembered the psychiatric hospital where I worked in 1969 the year Bill and I got married.  I was the desk clerk on the ward for short-termers, average stay of 26 days.  I soon discovered that the highest influx of new patients was always at this time of the year midst the hectic holiday season. When one lady in particular arrived, crazier than a loon, skipping through the halls in her stocking feet, giggling and having a good ol' time, the nurses laughed and said, "Oh, that's Professor So-and-So's wife.  She comes here every year at this time until the holidays are over."

And that was 40 years ago!

Truth be told, I'm guessing many of us have or remember such frantic, depressive moments when the pressures of the season become more than we can handle.  Most people see me as a very strong, stable, immovable, stalwart queen in my castle, my home.  But in fact, that day I was nothing of the sort.  Astrid was the only one who saw my depression before Thanksgiving and who, in the listening, eased my private pain.  Within minutes, I was as good as new...and when Thanksgiving arrived the next day, I was as happy a camper as ever, not for one minute second-guessing where I was for the holidays.

Maybe that's the point of a castle.  It's meant to shield us from the outside AND inside stresses of raging, emotional wars.  It's meant to be the private place where we can unearth the weaknesses of our unarmored souls.  It's meant to be a safe haven for everything we hold dear and important.  It's meant to be our home where we can open our hearts wide and not fear the consequence.

Regrettably, not all homes are castles.  That's the truth of it.  But my wish for all of us this season is that we can find or start to build the castles around our homes to protect, fortify and defend all we hold sacrosanct.  Maybe we can even help someone else build theirs?  Our homes are worth it.  So are our hearts.