Crowds

I went to U Village this afternoon to run some errands. 

It was crazy.

I went to the Apple store to pick up some stuff and there were TONS of people there. I had ordered what I needed over the phone and it was waiting for me in the store when I got there. Earlier in the day, I had spent an hour on the phone with the sales rep, Chris from Texas, who was very sweet. We talked about seasonal allergies and he told me about his Navage nasal irrigation system. (Who knew such a thing existed?) I was kind of annoyed that Apple directed me to a phone rep instead of encouraging me to walk around the Apple store and see the stuff in person, play around with it and all. I wanted to play with the feel of the keyboards and see the screens and stuff. Sure, they have picture of the stuff online, but I wanted to touch it before I bought it.

When I got to the store, I was grateful I had bought the stuff I needed over the phone instead of waiting for a rep at the store. On the phone, I had Chris' undivided attention. The store, on the other hand, was chaos, packed with people. Except for the masks, you wouldn't know there was a pandemic. 

Since the pandemic, I've been to restaurants, movies, and the ballet. I've flown a dozen times. It is not like I've been living like a perfect hermit. Yet, this was the first time I was in the middle of a crowd.

I had been to the Apple store sometime in the pandemic (September 2020 maybe?) after I dropped my phone and it smashed to bits. I had to have an appointment to get in. Outside, there were security people letting a few people in at a time. When I finally got in, the place was empty except for a few workers in the front of the store at desks behind plexiglass taking orders. They wanted me in and out there as soon as possible. No browsing or asking questions. They assumed I knew what I wanted when I walked in.

This experience was different. Anyone could walk in. Everyone was wearing masks but there was no social distancing or limit to the number of people inside. People were poking around, hanging out. There was no five minute limit.

I was a little freaked out and overwhelmed at the experience, not because I was afraid of getting covid, but because I hadn't seen a crowd like that in a store since before the pandemic. It was weird being around so many people like that at once and I wasn't used to it. It was like I had agoraphobia, but I didn't have it flying or at the ballet. I think the difference was the Apple store felt busy in a hectic or unorganized way, unlike the ballet or airports. 

This was the first place I had been that seemed fully back to pre-pandemic normal, and it was odd.

Jekyll and Hyde, not Jekyll or Hyde

I was reading a review of the new documentary, "We Need to Talk about Cosby," about the ground-breaking Black comedian who also had a second life where he drugged and raped women. This world class talent was also a world class predator. How do we reconcile the two? Can we?

I haven't seen the documentary yet, but I hope to. Nevertheless, the last lines of the New York Times review read: 

But as Bell’s wise documentary also makes clear, there wasn’t really one Bill Cosby and another secret one. There isn’t a good Cosby and a bad Cosby, whom we can store in different mental compartments. There is just Bill Cosby, about whom we didn’t know enough and now know dreadfully more. In the end, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are always the same guy.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same guy.

I think about this line and my brother, and millions of other people with and without mental health issues. After Eleanor Owen's death, I am thinking more about my brother Michael. Eleanor gave me a very safe and sacred place to talk about my brother and his demons. My mom would always compartmentalize my brother into the sane Michael and the insane Michael. Even people with schizophrenia have moments of clarity. When my brother had flashes of rationality grounded in reality, my mom wondered by my brother couldn't be like that all of the time.

It is just dawning on me now: she saw him as two people. One she loved, one she struggled to love. She wanted the "bad" Michael to go away and let the good and responsible Michael run the show. 

I don't intend to comment on Cosby here, but the article is making me think of how we view troublesome people, people we love with difficult personalities or mental health defects. Which one of these people do we really love? In some cases, people love the weak version of a person, the person who needs to be taken care of because the caretaker might equate being needed with being loved. Once the caretaker is no longer needed, then they may no longer feel worthy of love. This can happen in romantic relationships, but it is also a death trap for parents who don't want their children to grow up and lead independent lives. Some parents want to be needed. All. The. Time.

I think of brother. He is the most bat-shit crazy person I know, by far. And I still love him. Part of loving him is fully acknowledging all of the horrible and horrific things he has done. If I didn't see the bad things, then I am not fully seeing him. While I still love my brother, that love comes with a truck load of boundaries. I can "detach from him with love" which means I can love him from a distance. I can send him cards in the mail, I can talk to him briefly on the phone, but I don't need to engage in all of the irrationality. 

Unlike Bill Cosby, my brother was never considered "America's Dad." Far from it. My brother was dude who was frequently homeless and lived out of his car for a year. Maybe the problem we have in society isn't that we put people on pedestals and are shocked when they aren't perfect. Maybe the problem is the pedestal in the first place. Who among us is pure enough to be placed so high as to have no faults? Yet, as soon as we put someone on that pedestal, we fail to see their flaws. We are blinded so we can't see the truth, even when people tell us. We want to believe the myths. We do, and our desired to believe keeps us from seeing what is really happening.

Eleanor DeVito Owen

My dear friend Eleanor Owen died today. She was 101. Two years younger than my late grandfather, Eleanor was born as the 1918 pandemic was concluding, and she died as the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end.

I met Eleanor in a memoir class at the University of Washington in 2008. She was tiny but lion of a woman who freaked me out the first time I met her. For the first week of class, I submitted a very intense piece about my brother's battle with mental illness. The ten page story was going to be workshopped by the entire class the following week. As I arrive for the second week of class, this little old lady who looked and sounded like she vacationed in Kennebunkport with the Bush family came up to me. 

"Are you Lauren McGuire?"

No, I thought. No I am not. She was the very last person I wanted to talk to in the class about my schizophrenic brother and his tragic and chaotic life. Should I lie? Should I pretend I am someone else? I was terrified and wanted to escape. It took a tremendous amount of guts for me to write about my brother, and now this woman wants to talk to me about it. No. No no no no. No.

But I couldn't lie, no matter how much I wanted to. 

"Yes," I said.

She smiled, and paused. "I am Eleanor Owen, founder of the National Alliance on Mental Health. Local, state and national."

That was not what I expected. 

She kept talking but I don't remember anything else she said after that. It was like meeting someone and falling in love at first sight, except this wasn't romantic love. It was like finding an extra grandmother and fairy godmother rolled into one.

I later learned about Eleanor's bipolar father and schizophrenic son. She had other family members, too, with MI (mental illness), but Jody and her father had the most impact on her life. Eleanor was an eagle: strong and brave and courageous. I felt like a sparrow next to her, under her powerful wings. I felt protected and safe as I continued to tell the story of my brother. She took me in.

The after the class finished in June, and Eleanor and I would meet for lunch several times a year. She lived in a three story old house in the Roanoke Park neighborhood of Seattle. I would bring a loaf of Macrina rosemary bread and she would make lentil soup. Every time the soup was different and every time it was delicious. Everyday, she drank a small glass of wine with lunch, stopping right before the pandemic because of her age. Nothing fancy. She was a fan of Two Buck Chuck.

During lunch, I would talk about the drama in my life, and then we would talk writing. A week before the lunch, I would send her a draft of a chapter from my book, and she would me a chapter of hers. In 2017, we took a writing class together at North Seattle Community College. She was in her late nineties and still drove. She was pick me up on the way to class in her ancient Oldsmobile with the WAMI vanity license plate, sitting on a stack of pillows so she could see the road.

The last time I saw Eleaor was weeks before the pandemic. Before Eleanor became a full-time advocate for mental health, she was a drama teacher. I had scored season tickets to the University of Washington drama department's student presentations. We went to a few shows, but missed the rest of the season because of covid. She loved to give me advice about everything. Her last words to me were of thanks. She thanked me for sharing all of my problems with her. She was sincere. I thought I was an annoying Debbie Downer, complaining, but she saw it differently. She liked being involved. She liked that I confided in her. She liked that I listened to her advice and wisdom.

I knew Eleanor in the later years of her life when she was a writer. I read and re-read her memoir of growing up in an Italian family in New York during the Depression. Her once wealthy family lost much of their property, and moved to the family's summer home in upstate New York where the story starts. It is a beautiful tale of a mother, daughter, survival and forgiveness. It is the story of Eleanor's mother told from the eyes of a child. When I read her work, I compared Eleanor's mother to Atticus Finch and Eleanor to Scout.

I didn't see Eleanor during the pandemic, mainly because I would not have been able to live with myself if I was the one who gave her corona. I did talk to her a few times.

"If I get corona, it will be three weeks and then 'Bye-bye Eleanor,'" she said. 

I have no idea what she died of or how. I texted Eleanor on her 101st birthday a few weeks ago, but no reply. I wonder if she was ill. Before that, she had never been sick a day in her life. As long as I knew her, she lived independently. 

Today, I was reading her Wikipedia page (yes, she has one) and discovered her memoir was published last month. I can't wait to read the final version, to see how she decided to pull it together. What I had read over the years was a beautiful tale beautifully told. I hope is widely read and loved.

I never post pictures of myself on my blog because I hate getting my picture taken. 

Today, I make an exception. 

Eleanor hosting an event for my school board campaign in 2015.