by Ginny Gilder
The human body is sensitized to detect and process the slightest shift in the external world to keep itself safe. When you step on a stick of just the right slender proportions during a walk in the woods, your body will register the possibility that it’s a poisonous snake before your thinking brain can reassure you that, no, it’s really just a twig. In that unthinking instant, your body is off to the races. Your heart rate increases, heat flashes up your spine, your palms get sweaty. Blood rushes to your critical organs, causing that feeling of butterflies in your gut. Your respiration rate amps up, your blood pressure rises, and a wildly effective combination of hormones shoots into your bloodstream to prepare you to fight, flee, or freeze.
External sensory information flows simultaneously along two neural highways in your brain, transmitting both to your amygdala and your cerebral cortex for processing. The route to your amygdala is short and sweet, upping the odds of your physical survival, as that’s the part of your brain that jumpstarts your body’s physiological response to the external stimuli. The same information travels a more leisurely route to your cerebral cortex—all of a millisecond longer—to give your cognitive processes a shot to interpret the same stimuli, engaging your critical thinking faculties. Just as in sports, when it comes to survival, speed—not cognition—matters. A flicker of an instant can be the margin between winning and losing, champion and chump, alive and dead.
Thank goodness for fear. Without its control-freak mechanisms and autocratic interference, we would have been dead as a species tens of thousands of years ago.
When fear loses its perspective, when fear is wrong, it’s no big deal. You gear up for a snake and then realize it’s a stick: breathe deeply, wait for your galloping heart to slow to its normal crawl, and revel in the relief that you were mistaken. But when your fear mechanism gets hair-trigger sensitive and you find yourself reacting to much of life as if it’s a snake, then you’re in trouble. By the time you figure that out, you’re too far down the road to reverse direction. You’ve done irretrievable damage. Your life has changed course.
And you may not even realize you’ve been hijacked by fear. That recognition requires cognitive thinking, which is permanently condemned to lag behind fear. Thinking always bats cleanup, and that sequence becomes a problem when there is way too much to clean up; by then, fear is ahead, and you have all sorts of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol coursing through your bloodstream. Those hormones don’t care if you behave rationally; they want you to survive. Run, fight, eliminate the threat. Short-term results at the expense of long-term consequences. Live to fight another day.
This entire business is just a mess. No wonder when fear takes over, bad shit happens. I’m not talking now about mistaking twigs for snakes: I can live with those errors. I’m talking about the wild conclusions that get lodged in our brains following a frightening experience, the fear-spawned ideas that we never voice out loud to another person, that operate under the deep cover of our unconscious darkness. We don’t question them. We don’t offer them up for scrutiny to others, who might give us a more rational perspective. We accept them as the pristine, absolute truth.
Especially when we’re young: it takes over twenty-five years for the average human brain to finish growing, and the area that controls critical thinking is the last to fully develop. Without critical thinking, fear disposes us to blind acceptance of any whacked-out idea that might seem convincing at the time.
When an actual trauma occurs, it is as if part of the brain takes a picture of that experience and freezes it with the kind of blindingly bright flash bulb that makes you see stars and nothing else for a while. Maybe the brain science hasn’t been sorted out yet, but here’s the bottom line: when your brain interprets incoming external stimuli in a way that reminds you of a past trauma, everything goes haywire, and you are screwed. When you’re a terrified preadolescent in the midst of watching her entire world melt down, for example.
Or when your captain gets mad at you, blames you for losing the race, and you think the world is going to end. Somehow, you associate her with your mother, both blondes, both female, both prone to emotional outbursts. Honestly, the similarity ends there, at least to a thinking person, but you’re not thinking particularly well because your captain is yelling at you, and your body has decided it’s in some kind of danger, reminiscent of your mother’s upsets. You remember what happens when your mother is feeling particularly devastated, at least what happened that one time. The world, seriously, did just about end back then.
PART II
Drive
6
Rowing has a way of hijacking what is normal to suit its purposes, words as well as expectations. The “drive” is another average word appropriated and rejiggered into a tidbit of technical terminology. It’s another multitasker—a noun, a verb, an occasional adjective—but not as complicated as “catch.” Drive a car. Drive a stake into the ground or into her heart. Do you possess the drive to become a champion? Or will you wilt under the pressure, yield to the weak and wild thoughts running through your head, driving you crazy, driving you away from that which you crave most?
The drive starts at the end of the catch. The oar has entered the water and grabbed a blade full. With arms fully extended—loose like cables, not tight like sticks—the rower grasps the oar, fingers cupped around the wooden handle, which is cross-hatched to aid the grip. All the efforts of the large muscle groups—legs, back, and arms—have to channel through those narrow digits. Strong fingers don’t white-knuckle the oar; they conduct the body’s transfer of energy to the blade without a strangled grip. Better be loose enough to function as a transmitter; too much tension will staunch the flow. No holding on for dear life. Gotta keep it cool.
During the drive, you pull on the oar mightily and courageously. Your tightly compressed body is positioned at the catch, legs tucked up close to your chest, body angled forward to help your arms extend to their fullest reach. With your lats you feel the oar connect with the water.
The war begins. You against yourself. Body versus mind. Passion versus intellect. Dream versus reality. Your legs launch the effort, pushing your feet against the foot-stretchers, rolling the seat back toward the bow, shoving your knees into a prone position. Meanwhile, your back remains at its initial acute angle, leaning forward, and together with the still-straight arms, follows the legs into the bow. As your hands pass over your knees, your body angle starts to change. Supported by a cast of opposing abdominal muscles, your back moves from its closed, 45-degree angle to an open one of 135 degrees.
Your legs and back reach their full extensions simultaneously, their energy spent. Your seat has slid as far back as it will go. All that’s left is to finish the stroke. Without changing your body angle, shrugging your shoulders, cocking your wrist, or jerking your oar, you pull your arms to your body in one continuous motion. As you pull your hands into your midsection, you maintain a loose grip on the oar to prepare for the next transition.
That’s what your body is doing. What about the rest of you? Your eyes should be focused directly ahead, transmitting information to help you mimic the body motion of the person in front of you. But you can’t help yourself. You sneak a peek at your oar; is it in sync with everyone else’s? You check out the crew in the next lane; who’s ahead?
You’d better not be talking: it interrupts your breathing, takes too much energy, and distracts your teammates. The only person allowed to speak is the coxswain; talking to you is a key component of her job. She reports on your progress and your competitor’s position, corrects egregious technique, calls the racing strategy as determined in advance, and keeps you pulling your hardest by whatever means necessary, including cheering, cajoling, commanding, demanding, demeaning, threatening, begging, and bribing.
But your internal dialogue is constant. Is winning worth this excruciating pain? YES! My legs feel like wet noodles. This sucks. SHUT UP! Is that the power twenty for the halfway mark? Are we ahead yet? LET’S TAKE ’EM! Am
I skying again? I can’t keep doing this. DON’T STOP! This hurts. I DON’T CARE! PULL!
All rowers are multitaskers, especially during the drive. We track our movements with the rest of the crew to maintain our synchronicity and rhythm. We need to be at the same place all throughout the drive, not just starting and finishing together.
We pull our guts out while we argue internally about whether to keep going; we keep going as long as our drive is strong. Drive comes from the heart, birthed by desire, fueled by passion, toughened by pain, fired by loss and grief. It keeps us going past the point of reasonable, and that’s when we discover our greatness.
Drive was not a familiar concept in my eleven-year-old universe, given its grounding in experiences I had yet to discover. Loss and grief are expert educators, however, and I proved an adept learner.
Mom didn’t ever try to kill herself so overtly again, but she never returned to her old self. She was ambulatory, but barely. Her trademark, matter-of-fact approach to life and her businesslike grip on order vanished, replaced by a plodding vacancy. We didn’t starve or get evicted, as Dad continued to pay the bills. But the heart of our family beat more faintly without Mom’s take-charge energy to fuel all of us.
Dad didn’t ask how things were, and we knew not to offer any information. He was a big believer in the power of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” so news flowed from the Park Avenue penthouse to his hotel home in a trickle. After several months of apparent calm, he decided the nurses weren’t needed and let them go. I had grown close to Anne, Mom’s day nurse, who took the time to ask questions and listen to my answers, and who understood my ache for my lost mom without trying to talk me out of how badly I felt. Watching her go, I felt abandoned again, as another grown-up I could count on slipped out of the picture and left me to fend for myself, with only my big sister to rely on.
Without an adult presence to steady Mom, we were all fully exposed to the vagaries of her moods, and our house grew more somber. Peggy and I picked up the slack when Mom couldn’t go shopping, make dinner, or clean up. Yvonne, our house cleaner, continued her weekly appearances to vacuum and dust our house into a modicum of cleanliness. But despite her best efforts, a once-weekly thorough cleaning could not keep our kitchen pristine. Mom’s decline was impossible to ignore once cockroaches discovered our kitchen, moved in, and started having babies. Seeing those creepy crawlers race for the dark corners, trundling their rectangular egg sacs behind them like suitcases on wheels, disgusted me so much that I stopped going into the kitchen without heavy shoes on. I made it my business to stomp as many as I could, but I never grew accustomed to the shivery shock of opening a cabinet and having one scurry away.
Loneliness descended as I adjusted to the loss of my mother. She was alive before me, yet she was gone. As for Dad, he kept a stiff upper lip, determinedly cheerful. He had escaped Mom; he could ignore her problems and pretend everything was fine. I couldn’t help but hate him a little. He had left me, all of us, to fend for ourselves. He didn’t ask how we were doing, and I came to equate his not asking to his not caring.
Nonetheless, I didn’t believe Mom’s accusation of his infidelity. I knew my father was not having an affair. He was not that guy. He never mentioned a girlfriend, never said BG’s name. Mom was wrong. I never fully disputed her position, but my refusal to join in when she ranted about him told her all, and she resented my loyalty.
On a sunny Saturday morning in April, seven months into my parents’ separation, I waited on the corner of 81st and Park for Dad to pick me up. He had moved into an apartment by then, four blocks away, on 84th Street, just off Madison, and was taking me to the Belmont race track, just the two of us, to figure the odds and bet on the horses. I recognized him walking up the avenue, but he wasn’t alone. Confused, I focused on the person beside him. Her height and carriage seemed familiar. Suddenly the details organized themselves into an agony of cognition.
Eyes burning, fury choking my airways, disappointment ripping my faith apart, I turned around and raced back to the apartment, up the elevator, and into my room. I slammed onto my bed and buried my head under my pillow. I wouldn’t answer the house phone when the doorman called to announce my father’s arrival.
My mother didn’t know I’d left or returned. She called down the long hall, “Ginny, your father’s here.”
“I’m not going.”
“What?”
“She’s with him.”
I heard her voice on the phone, a spray of indignation splashing in my direction, as she lectured my father. I knew she was secretly happy; he had proven her right.
“Ginny, come talk to your father.” I got up and trudged down the hall. I was unpracticed at defiance. I grabbed the receiver from my mother.
“Ginny, where are you? Come on down.”
“I’m not coming.”
“What? Why not? You’ve been looking forward to this. I know you have.”
“No, I’m not going with her!”
“With whom? Oh … Why not? Come on, Ginny, try to be a grown-up.”
“You said it was just you and me going. It’s not fair.”
“Ginny, it will be fun, I promise.”
“No, I’m not going. I don’t want to be with her.”
“You’re being selfish. I’m disappointed in you, Ginny.”
The thud of his disapproval landed hard inside, smacking down much of my fury. Still, I could not shake my sense of being wronged, nor could I excuse his refusal to acknowledge the messy truth. That day, my father lost the benefit of my doubt.
As our family’s ship lurched onto its side, I scrambled to hold onto something, anything, to stop from sliding into the cold murk. I caved into the external pressure to go with the program that everything was okay. In the process, I buried the truth to save myself from drowning in dysfunction and so missed a key lesson: secrets are not buoys, but flimsy plastic rings that leak air from the moment we inflate them.
My friends helped. I didn’t have to lie to them about what was happening. I didn’t even have to talk. All they had to do was visit our apartment two or three times after school. Mom’s disheveled appearance, slurred words, and unpredictable moodiness told the story, along with my embarrassed apologies for her behavior. They stuck around anyway. They didn’t pry or tease. Spending time with them was like reaching an oasis where the truth found just enough water to survive.
But still our family continued to dissolve. No one ever mentioned alcoholism or whispered mental illness. My father married BG less than sixteen months after Mom’s suicide attempt, solidifying his role as a stranger to our daily lives. He never asked for details and never heard the truth about the unfolding drama in the Park Avenue apartment he had fled without looking back. Peggy and I were left alone to share our observations with each other, interpret Mom’s actions, speculate about the causes of her breakdown, and justify her erratic behavior.
Peggy and Mom fought all the time. Peggy often ended up walloped by hand, smacked with a hair brush, or grabbed by the hair. One night she slathered her body with Vaseline to keep Mom from grabbing her. A glob fell on the hall rug as Mom chased Peggy in the dim light; Mom stepped in the grease and slid across the rug, skinned her knee, and opened up a raw circle on her elbow. As she lay on the floor howling with rage and frustration, I wondered if our home had become a monster’s den.
Mom transformed into one of the wealthiest bag ladies around. She took no care of herself. She seemed only to want to sleep. The same scenario repeated day in, day out. Every morning, I peeked around the corner of her bedroom’s open doorway to see the lump huddled under the covers. Lights still off, curtains closed.
“Mom, it’s time to get up.” No response.
Every morning I picked up the coffee mug in permanent residence on her bedside table and checked its contents. I always found a thick smudge of nasty dark stuff partially dried on the bottom. Leaning over her, I’d catch a whiff of old pee and long-unwashed body stink. I’d inevitably gag, then swallow
hard and constrict my throat, and force myself to reach down and shake what I thought was her arm.
“Mom, you really have to get up. The Littles need to go to school.” A hand would snake out of the covers, imperiously wave me away. A sound often followed it, a cross between a snarl and a groan. I would grab her empty cup and leave without waiting for another non-answer. “I’ll get you some coffee, okay?”
In the kitchen, the electric coffee maker was dry but dirty, its bottom caked with scum, with coffee grounds scattered on the counter. More coffee stains decorated the counter top, artsy blobs comingling with ragged circles, marking the extent of my mother’s bitter habit. Always black, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. Fresh and steaming, sludgy and decaying, no matter: she drank it however it came.
Back in her bedroom with a fresh offering. No chipped mug for her morning ablutions. I always brought her a clean cup, sunshine yellow with a matching saucer, a snippet of elegance to give a shot of prim and proper to the day. Maybe she’d take the hint. I knew better than to hope, but I couldn’t help myself.
I stood above her inert body, holding the coffee. As gently as possible, as if my tone or choice of phrase or anything else I did mattered, I said, “Mom, come on. I made you some coffee. It’s right here.”
Most mornings, she eventually shed the covers and sat up. I looked at her, hair askew, mouth turned downward in a sour greeting, the thin strap of her sleeveless nightgown slipping off her shoulder. I held out the cup, balancing it easily with an experienced hand. She took it wordlessly, sipped her first hit, and closed her eyes.
She appeared downstairs a half hour later with the Littles in tow, shuffling out of the elevator and past the precisely attired doorman, his dark gray overcoat decorated with epaulets and shiny brass buttons marching down his front. A long winter coat buttoned up over the disarray of her flimsy nightgown, shoes without stockings, her hair uncombed, yesterday’s makeup in all the wrong places, unwashed and smelling of decay, muttering under her breath, she grasped Muff’s and Dixie’s hands and stepped into the chill to walk them up to the Brick Church elementary school five blocks away.
