Tag: Colleen Scheid

Happiness Needs to be Fed and Watered

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

(Sixth in a series on fighting depression. Click here for the first post.)

So far in this series on fighting depression, we’ve covered:

  • The need to affirm yourself, to speak kindly to yourself.
  • The habit of staying in the moment, using your senses to focus on now.
  • The need to process and heal past trauma.
  • Choosing connection instead of isolation.
  • Addressing anxiety by working against avoidance, since that feeds depression.

Foods that Help Depression

While we’re on the topic of what feeds depression, let’s talk about actual food. This is my least favorite of these posts, since I’m super fond of desserts, breads, sweets and chocolate in any form. I don’t want to face that what I put in my mouth can bring down my mood, but it does.

Ironically, when we’re down, that’s when we have least energy to prepare good food. We tend to grab what’s easy and gives us a little comfort.So here’s the dare: journal what you eat and drink for three days. Face up to it (no avoiding, right?) Note what you eat, and also write how you feel in the hours after until you eat again.

Nutrition blogs abound, so I won’t go over how to eat, but here are some tips I’ve made into habits that help give my body and brain what it needs to function and have a fighting chance at happiness:

Food Habits that Fight and Heal Depression

  1. Don’t skip breakfast. Include something with protein like eggs, meats, nuts or seeds, so your energy doesn’t dip mid-morning. That helps focus and get me into the day’s work. (And we generally feel better after we’ve gotten some work done.)
  2. Don’t pig out on lunch, or skip it. Both options are bound to lead to a long afternoon nap, at least for me. Work some fruit or vegetables into your meal. If you can’t do without the fries that go with a burger, add a small salad and eat it first. Put some lettuce and a tomato slice on a ham or turkey sandwich. Finish with a few strawberrries. You get the idea.
  3. Make yourself a decent dinner. Frozen meals heated in a microwave every day are a sure recipe for depression in my book. If you’re a meat eater, focus on fish and chicken instead of beef and pork. Fill half your plate with veggies.
  4. Buy stuff that’s easy to prep, especially snacks. If I have a choice between a salad with five ingeredients that all need preparing, and a nice little peel-top container of pudding, guess what I’ll go with! It helps me to buy individual yogurts, protein bars with natural ingredients, and nuts that go in little bags or an easy cannister. Baby carrots and celery sticks can be pre-washed and stored in jars, and most fruits can be washed and ready to eat.

Dehydration is Such a Downer

I think the single biggest difference I can make to my mood and energy levels is to drink enough water. Buy yourself a boujee water bottle, and make it your best friend. (Wash it well every night, you don’t want a stomach ache from bacteria in your water on top of depression!)

Changing how you eat and drink can’t all happen at once. If you don’t get close to eight glasses of water a day, start with that. Get used to one extra before you add a second, and so on. And remember the first post, speak kindly to yourself. “I’ll feel better if I go drink some water now,” is much more effective, and feels a lot better, than, “I’m such a moron. I can’t even remember to drink water.”

Homework

Pick one food or water habit to start working on. If you don’t get close to eight cups of water a day, start with that. Start small and add a cup every day or two. If you get down or stressed and forget all about it, start again.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below, after you click on the title.

The Seesaw of Depression and Anxiety

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 3 Comments

(Fifth in a series on taking steps away from depression.)

I used to think of depression and anxiety as two unrelated problems.

But I realized, at some point, that depression often followed a time of anxiety. Then I made the connection that anxiety often set in as I was emerging from a time of depression.

Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out whether they just take turns, depending on what’s going on in your life, or if they actually trigger one another.

There is a Connection

I’m convinced, at least in my own case, that anxiety wears me down to depression. When many tasks of life are seen as a big hurdle, triggering shortness of breath, a sense of dread, a feeling of incompetence, a fear of rejection, trouble focusing – that drains me to a point where I feel so down I want to quit stuff.

One study described in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders states that anxiety and depression are often highly correlated with each other, and that depression can follow anxiety years later. People with lifetime anxiety had lifetime depression 73 per cent of the time, and people with both had worse illness and functioning than those with only one.

This article also pointed out that past depression predicts future avoidance, and avoidance predicts anxiety. A huge study of over 6000 adolescents over 14 years demonstrated that avoidance behaviors occurred in between times of anxiety and depression a significant percentage of the time.

Avoiding Makes it Worse

We kind of know that intuitively, don’t we? If my 13-year-old self chickened out and skipped a party because of social anxiety, I had to deal with a residue of shame, a sense of failure, loneliness and hopelessness that soon added up to depression.

On the other hand, if I went to the party, chances are I would have some positive experiences there in addition to all the awkwardness, and I would feel prouder of myself afterwards.

I would probably also learn a few things, whether or not I was aware of it, that would make me a little more hip to how I should behave at a party, which would make the next experience less scary.

Conquer a Little at a Time

So it goes. If we can gradually expose ourselves to what makes us anxious, our window of fear gets smaller.

I used to be terrified of getting onstage and saying or doing any little thing. Now I’m only scared if I’m performing at a big convention with video screens. The setting is usually a lot smaller than that, so having succeeded at the convention, I no longer dread a crowd of 200.

That’s how we anxious types need to march through life. The worse thing that happens is that we aim too high and we fail at something. So we learn, and we take our challenges in smaller chunks.

And when depression starts to take us down, we don’t avoid that reality either. We take care of ourselves and get as much help as we need, so the downward spiral changes direction.

It seems that often our greatest anxieties are attached to our giftedness. It’s so frustrating to see a marvellous athlete quit just because she failed in one competition. Or a wonderful musician stop playing because his performance anxiety wore him down to exhaustion.

Don’t Give Up!

Please don’t give up on yourself. Don’t let yourself get too busy, or make yourself a slave to others’ expectations, but don’t quit either.

Then you can get off the anxiety/depression seesaw and just focus on one thing at a time.

It’s so rewarding to get to a place where you can function in your strengths, and even get a handle on a few weaknesses, only to discover that they no longer stress you out.

For the previous post, press here.

You Can’t Let Go of What You Don’t Remember

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 8 Comments

(Fourth in a Series on Overcoming Depression. For the third post, press here.)

When I read or hear instructions to ‘let go of the past’, I get irritated. As if the past is like some heavy bag of groceries that you can just set on the table. Like you’re making some sort of conscious choice to carry it around to make yourself miserable.

This post is fourth in a series on depression, and gives some suggestions for how to deal with the past in healthy ways.

There’s a whole lot to unpack in that phrase, ‘Let go of the past.” There are some reasons why we don’t want to be in too much hurry to dismiss the past as irrelevant to now.

The Problem with Memory Gaps

Here’s the thing – our brains are wired for meaning and for wholeness. When bad things happen to us, we might forget them as a way to cope, but part of us will keep looking for the missing piece till we find it. Our mind needs to discover what happened in any memory gaps, to make sense of our own story. In that sense, we can’t let go of our pasts till we’ve got a finished picture.

A good current example of this takes place in the Neflix limited series, Maid.All through earlier episodes, we see the lead character, Alex, having a cold and fearful reaction to one of the other characters, who seems to be a fairly nice person. Not until a cleaning job in a creepy house triggers a very early suppressed memory do we find out what happened to plant that fear in Alex’s mind. Once she remembers, she has energy for a confrontation that brings her more peace. She’s released from having the emotions of a terrified victim without knowing why.

Getting to the Truth

Another reason we need to take a second look at our pasts through adult eyes is because bad experiences can warp our thinking. There’s no way out of that but coming to understand how we’ve been damaged, what lies we believe from those experiences, and what truth we want to replace the lies with. (See what I wrote in the first post about how we talk to ourselves.)

For instance, when a parent leaves a child, the child tends to blame himself for that. A child might think, “Dad left because I wasn’t nice enough.” He makes a vow to become the nicest person in the world. He may not even be conscious of the vow, but it becomes like a vice, holding him to niceness even when it keeps him from defending himself.

That’s a hard way to live. Not until the adult realizes how his compulsive niceness was shaped will he see that it’s been a trap based on a lie. At that point, he’s free to change his belief to something true, like, “I’m nice, but I can also be tough when I need to be.”

Making Choices That Heal

Another other benefit of looking back at the past and reprocessing it is that you can choose some new experiences for yourself that will help you heal and grow stronger. Take the super nice person above – maybe he’ll decide to enroll in a martial arts class to rewire his brain to be able to fight when he needs to.

Maybe he’ll decide that he’s got a friend who’s taking advantage of his kindness, and he’ll work with his therapist to set some new boundaries. Maybe he’ll start praying for wisdom to know when his compulsive niceness is serving him more than anyone else. Once we’re clear on what the problem is, we can address it.

It’s not self indulgent to take some time to look back and see how we may still be reacting to past trauma that we’re not fully aware of. It’s only after we’ve done that that we’re truly free to let go of our pasts and be ready for what’s next.

Stay in the Present – it’s Less Depressing

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 5 Comments

(Second in a series on taking steps that lead away from depression. For the first post, press here.)

Living in the present is the only thing that really works.

I’m particularly bad at it. But sometimes the people who struggle with something are the best teachers; they’ve had to figure it out the hard way and can make it easier for you.

Here’s what I mean by living in the present: You focus your eyes, ears, smell, taste and touch on the present moment. This causes your thinking to recede or disappear, giving you a mental break. It shuts out regrets about the past and worry about the future.

So often, we try to think ourselves out of our negative thinking, but that can lead us in mental circles. Try switching to right now. For example, thoughts about tomorrow creep into my head, and with them, a slight anxiety. Will it snow and cancel a program I’m in charge of? How’s my mother in the nursing home – did they find her missing blanket? Is there anything I should be doing right now that I’ve forgotten? You know the drill.

The thing is, I’ve already scheduled the day, and addressed those issues within it. So there’s no point thinking about them again. It’s a waste of energy. I can’t do what I’m doing now and do anything about those thoughts. Instead, I can take some deep breaths, look around and focus on what I see, listen and pay attention to what I hear.

Just stop thinking and be alive right here and now. After that moment of mental reboot, it’s easier to focus on the task at hand with a clear head.

But, you say, what if my life right now completely sucks? When we’re thinking that, we’re remembering the past and anticipating the future. If we’re in pain right now, then let’s focus on how to manage that pain right now. Don’t pile on top of it with the past or the future also sucking. I hope that makes sense. I don’t want any of us to suffer more than we have to.

This all sounds elementary, but many of us can’t control our thoughts. Our thoughts utterly control us and we feel helpless against them. But we’re not. We’re the boss of our thoughts. We can stop them, correct them, redirect them.

If we absolutely cannot do this, that’s when we know we need to get some help. Some of us have anxiety, depression, rage, obsession, compulsion or delusions that we really can’t control. If that’s the case, this is the best time in history to find the mental health professionals and medications we need to regain the power of choice. There’s no shame in this. It’s just like going to the doctor for the flu, or an asthma flare-up. More on that in another post.

Back to right now. Now is all we have, right? It’s the only time in which we have freedom to make choices and do stuff. Revisiting past pain is useless, unless we’re doing it in a healing setting. Past pain isn’t us. It’s just something that happened to us. We’re bigger than our past pain and we’re bigger than our future fears.

Homework. Close your eyes. Breathe in and think, “I’m the boss of my thoughts.” Think it again as you breathe out. (If you have trouble with images intruding, see the words written in your imagination.) Do that three or more times. Then open your eyes and without thinking about past or future, focus on what you see, hear, smell, taste and feel. Do that till you have to do something else, or want to do something else.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below.

10 Steps Away from Depression

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 8 Comments

(I call this series “10 Steps Away from Depression” because no step is a fix in itself. There is no quick fix for depression, but we can take steps, whenever we have the strength, and enough of those steps put together add up to a good journey – joyful even.)

Years ago, decades maybe, I saw this Al Franken movie about a guy who used affirmations to help him recover from all the trauma and developmental snags that came from growing up in an alcoholic family.

He’d been on Saturday Night Live, a child-like, nerdy character reciting, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me,” as he addressed his image in a mirror.

The sketches were so ridiculous I assumed the movie he starred in would be the same.

But the film actually worked on two levels – as comedy, but also as an authentic account of someone trying to salvage their sanity and work a recovery program that would break them out of crippling generational patterns. I even found it inspiring.

I’ve given all those sappy affirmations on coffee mugs and driftwood a little more respect ever since. As someone who’s had a lifelong struggle with depression, I now consider affirming myself to be a survival tactic.

I even do the talking-into-the-mirror thing. Apparently the chemicals in our brains can’t dintinguish cool from uncool behavior, because I always feel a little better after I do it. I say things like:

“You don’t have to be model thin; you look nice.”

“Congratulations, you finished the article ahead of deadline.”

“You helped four people today. Good job.”

When I’m too cynical to take it seriously, I repeat, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”

On days I feel pretty useless, I can at least say, “God loves you and won’t give up on you.”

Affirming good things about ourselves can become the lifeline that draws us out of our stuck places. We gain the energy to do fun things that help us feel happier, and challenging things that help us succeed and build confidence.

One of life’s most wicked truths is that you can’t love anyone else better than you love yourself. If we dislike and neglect ourselves, our motives will always be tainted with subconscious need, and we’ll live on the edge of burn-out.

So, one path away from of that yucky emotional weight inside us called depression is to start saying nice things to ourselves. And to stop ourselves, just as we would a little kid, when we find ourselves insulting ourselves.

Homework: write down 5 compliments to yourself, then (check that you’re alone!) say one of them to yourself out loud as you look at yourself in a mirror. Then smile. You don’t have to feel better right away for this to be helpful. Just keep doing it once a day. We’re working on becoming more aware of the messages we give ourselves.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below.

Bringing Christmas Home

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

Second in a series on why I wrote, “Christmas on Pleasant Hill”

It seems like Christmas stories are usually set in other times or places than where we live.

I wanted to write a book where the magic was in my front yard, among my neighbors, at my church.

“Christmas on Pleasant Hill” is a book of 12 family Christmas stories set in a Cincinnati neighborhood. Some of them happened. The rest of them could have happened. A few of them may even have happened to my own family!

More than any other gift, we all need to feel the nearness and goodness of God. Everything we pour our time into in December – buying gifts, decorating, cooking, performing in concerts and plays, reading the old stories to our children – it’s all in the effort to give each other love and delight, to affirm that life is worth living and there is a good Creator in the midst of it.

We, as much as the characters in these stories, need to be reminded of these truths. Some are worn down from the exhaustion of trying to build a life out of poverty. Some are overwhelmed with the hard work of parenting. Some are broken by addiction, disability or someone else’s cruelty. All of them are ready for God to show up.

And God does show up, in many unexpected ways, right in the middle of everyday life. “Christmas on Pleasant Hill” shines a light on those moments, right where we live.

“Christmas on Pleasant Hill” is available from Amazon.

Why I Wrote “Christmas on Pleasant Hill”

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

1. A Fairytale Setting

(First in a series about my book of Christmas short stories.)

Sometimes a setting just calls out to an author. “There are books and books here,” it says, “In the gingerbread houses, in the quiet woods, in the old stone churches and the grimy, crumbling apartments.”

The neighborhood of College Hill, about six miles north of downtown Cincinnati, used to be called “Pleasant Hill,” back in the 1800s, before the Farmers’ College sprawled over the hilltop with its fields and parklands and the Ladies’ College sat prettily on the main access road.

Back then it was a pleasant, country town where people of means could escape the grime and coal pollution of the city; hence all the lovely Victorians lining Belmont and Glenview.

Much of its beauty remains: the grand houses, the towering trees, the nature trails winding through La Boiteaux and Tanglewood Preserves. But – the other stark reality is that now, many of its people live in poverty. When great beauty lives alongside great need, there is a fairytale in the making. Happy ending or not, depends on the choices people make.

“Christmas on Pleasant Hill” is a book of Christmas short stories in which dreams come true and wrongs are righted. A little boy escapes his gated mansion to help a neighbor who needs Christmas presents. The shattered life of an addict pulls together when she inherits a mansion. A young music minister overcomes political, financial and talent hurdles to pull off the best Christmas concert ever.

Setting doesn’t make a book, but it’s much more fun to write it when your setting is a familiar, well-loved place.

“Christmas on Pleasant Hill” is available on Amazon. Reviews greatly appreciated!

Christmas Short Story

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 1 Comment

This is the second installment of one of twelve short stories from “Christmas on Pleasant Hill”, available from Amazon.  Half of all the profits from this book are donated to 3Cs Nursery School. To read the story from the beginning, click here, then come back to this post to continue….

The last time Charise had seen her cousin, Tanya had been running barefoot through Grandma’s garden into the night, none too steady on her feet. Charise had been in college, Tanya was a junior in high school and Charise had taken her to a party in Clifton.

Charise, in a calculation she would never have made sober, had decided to bring Tanya back to Grandma’s, where she had been living since her parents kicked her out. She wanted to introduce Tanya to cocaine in a safe place, and had figured that Grandma and Grandpa would be asleep on the second floor, too far away to hear anything. They had tiptoed giggling through the house, more loudly than they realized, and gone through the French doors in the dining room onto the back patio. On a glass table under the porch light, Charise made two wobbly lines of powder.

They were poised over it with straws in hand when a shadow fell across them. Grandma stood there in the doorway in a white robe and turban, silent and flint-eyed as the angel of death.

Finally, with no visible movement, she hissed at Charise. “How dare you bring that filth into my house! How dare you drag this girl into the same evil you’ve fallen into!” Her voice rose to a shriek and her trembling became visible – “How dare you!”

Tanya leapt out of her chair, grabbed her stiletto heels and took off barefoot through the yard, apparently preferring to risk the wrath at home rather than stay for Grandma’s. Grandma, still screaming, “How dare you!” swiped the table with her arm and the cocaine disappeared into terrycloth and thin air. She finished the swipe with a shove that nearly knocked Charise over. She was too stunned to react. Grandma had never even given her a mild spanking.

While Charise was still in shock, Grandma grabbed her purse and took off through the dining room. Charise sprang after her like a tiger – there was $200 and more cocaine in the purse.

“No more!” Grandma was crying, as she wove around the dining room table – “No more. This ends tonight.”

She picked up a phone and dialed three numbers. Charise grabbed at the purse. Grandma dropped the phone to hang onto the purse, and the two of them struggled there by the kitchen door. The women picking cotton smiled down on them, until Charise, wrenching the bag away from her grandmother, scraped the purse’s buckle right into the picture, dragging it across the face of one woman and the upper body of another, piercing through a smile and a heart and a bag of fluffy cotton. Grandma sank to the ground, sobbing. Charise ran up to her room, grabbed her stash of weed, a bigger bag, threw in some clothes and shoes and ran out of the house, beating Grandpa, who was now running toward her from the dining room, to the front door. She ran south all the way downtown to the bus station, and took a bus to Nashville just after dawn.

The whole scene played again, as she stared at Tanya’s note, and the guilt washed over her in waves that made her clench her teeth. She had never seen Grandpa again – he had died two months later. She had been so wasted at the funeral she could barely remember it. Damon had driven her up, steered her through it and driven her back to Nashville all in the same day.

How had she let another year go by with no contact with her Grandma? Grandma had written and invited her to Easter and to Thanksgiving and to Christmas, but she had been too ashamed and afraid to go home. Now it was too late.

She wanted a drink. Screw recovery. She looked in every cabinet but there was nothing on the property. She grabbed her keys and headed north toward the Kroger. On her way, just before the intersection where Grandma’s church was, she saw a lit-up old house at the front of a hospital property. She could see people through the window. She remembered hearing it was used for twelve step meetings.

She passed it, but when she got to Grandma’s church she pulled into the parking lot. She sat in the empty lot, breathing heavily. Then she looked at the church entrance and saw Grandma, in a ray of light, walking through one of the doors, wearing a hat, like she used to at Easter. Grandma looked over her shoulder at Charise and lifted her eyebrows. “OK,” said Charise, to no one but the dark night. “I’ll go back to the meeting.”

***

The meeting had, as they say, restored her to sanity. The next day was Sunday. She went to church. It was the closest she could come to being with her grandma. She was not, however, ready to face up to Grandma’s friends, so she sat in the back row and planned to slip out during the final song.

She was surprised when an older man who had been sitting near her came out after her, and called to her. “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you but I thought I might have recognized you from a picture and I wondered if you might be a relative of Olivia Anderson.”

That got her attention. She watched him approach, hoping he wasn’t a pastor. He might be. He was an older white man, kind and well spoken, with friendly blue eyes and a smile.

“I’m sorry. My name is Bill Grant, and I’m a friend of Olivia’s.” He offered his hand. “I’m Charise Anderson, her granddaughter.” “Ah! I’m so glad to meet you. I was out of town the day of the funeral so I haven’t had a chance to meet her family. I’m so sorry for your loss. She was such a good person. I would even say a great person.”

“Yes.” She wondered how well he knew Grandma. Well enough to know what a screw up her grandaughter was?

“I don’t want to intrude,” he said, more tentative in her silence. “But here’s the thing – I knew your grandma from the Historical Society as well as church here, and I helped her find out as much as possible about her house. I thought that whoever lived here next – maybe they would like to hear what I know, and I could show you some files I gave her…”

“That’s very kind of you,” she mustered, relaxing a little. “I would like that.”

He smiled. “That house is a treasure. It was built in the 1850s by a Quaker named Zachary Strang. He was an abolitionist. But I’m sure you know the house was a stop on the Underground Railroad?”

Her eyes widened. “I had no idea.”

“Oh yes. I thought your Grandma would have told you. It has quite a heritage. Strang used to pick up runaway slaves in a wagon that had a false bottom. He’d hide them in the wagon and put crops on top and bring them up the road to the house. Then after they’d eaten and rested, he’d smuggle them up to the next safe house. You may be wondering why they were still running in a free state, but the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it legal for owners to pursue people into free states and recapture them, so they couldn’t really be free till they got to Canada…”

He talked on, swept up in his own narrative. Charise already knew about the Fugitive Slave Act. She’d written a paper on it before she’d dropped out of college. But she had no idea the house had been an actual hiding place. Grandma must have only found out recently…

“ …I guess you don’t know about the little room they found, then?”

“What?”

“Yes – a few months ago. We’re pretty sure it was one of the places people hid when strangers were seen coming up Hamilton Pike. You see, there was a warning system. Homeowners further down the road, and students from the Ladies’ College and the Farmers’ College, would keep a lookout and send messages to the safe houses. Then they’d hide slaves in basements or attics or sheds when the owners came looking. Your Granma was sorting things in the attic and she uncovered a false wall that could be slid sideways in the attic, and there was a little room back there with blankets and books…it was so exciting!” His enthusiasm was hard to resist. Charise asked, “You wouldn’t have time to show me now, would you?
***

Mr Grant shifted the wall panel, enough for them to squeeze into the dormer space. There was an ancient curtain on the window, its small flowers almost faded out. Covered in plastic, there were old brown wool blankets, a Bible, a book of fairy tales and two history volumes. Grandma, always orderly, had laminated a page of writing and placed it on top of the blankets.

It read, “These things were discovered in September of 2014 by Olivia Anderson, along with Mr Bill Grant, a fellow member of the Pleasant Hill Historical Society. He has heard a second hand account of a letter written during the Civil War. The writer said that Pleasant Hill had become too well known to be a safe stop for runaways, so the little room in the Strang attic had been retired. We have not been able to find the letter. But we have found these blankets, this Bible dated 1846, and these other old books. It is my prayer that this house will always be a refuge for those in need of safety, comfort and beauty.”

Charise read the note over and over, unmoving. Mr. Grant shifted awkwardly.

Finally he said, “She asked me, the last time I saw her, to make sure her grandchildren kept all our files, everything we gathered about the house. Can I ask you on her behalf to keep these things, and all the papers downstairs? They were very important to her.”

“I can promise that much.”
***

After he left, she sat on the small back stairs of the house, the ones servants used to use. It was where she went to be alone as a child. Now, her mind was pierced with images of those runaways, hurriedly being smuggled up these stairs – ragged, wide-eyed people smelling of sweat and fear. She followed the images up the stairs, back to the little room. She sat on the floor facing the dormer window, which looked down on the garden. She re-read Grandma’s note.

“A refuge,” she whispered. Then louder, to the empty space, to the whole precious house and garden and all the people who had sheltered there, she admitted, “I need a refuge. I’ve been a slave and I need a refuge.”
***

This story will be continued in the next post…

Christmas Short Story

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

This is the beginning of one  of twelve short stories from my book, “Christmas on Pleasant Hill”, available from Amazon.  Half of all the profits from this book are donated to 3Cs Nursery School. It’s set in College Hill, a Cincinnati neighborhood, so it has an added appeal to locals. This redemptive story, “The Refuge” draws on our neighborhood’s fascinating history as a stop on the Underground Railroad: 

     No one had told Charise that her grandmother had died. The funeral was over by the time she heard. A lawyer had sent her a letter requesting that she contact him concerning the estate of the deceased Olivia Anderson. She had stared at the paper until her hand began to shake. Then she drank a bottle of her boyfriend’s Red Stag and slept
hard.

final cover That had been a relapse; she had actually been sober for over two months when the letter arrived. When she emerged from her stupor, it was to her boyfriend, Damon,
grinning down at her. He picked up the almost empty whiskey bottle, took the last swig and said, “I knew pretty soon you’d be giving up on that sobriety crap.”

Two days later, Charise stood in the front yard of her grandmother’s Cincinnati property, shivering in her leather jacket, wishing she had brought up a winter coat from Nashville. She had packed in a hurry, while Damon was out so he could not talk her into taking him with her.

She had wanted to be alone, but now she wondered. Standing in front of the glorious old house in the quiet and the cold, she wondered if the loneliness might do her in. It was a grand Victorian frame house, built in the 1850s, recently painted a bright yellow with white trim and green shutters.

That had been Grandpa’s last big job before his stroke. He had painted first floor trim while the grandkids got on tall ladders to paint the rest. Why, Charise wondered, why hadn’t they inherited the house instead of her – those cousins who were always there, always helping?

She was reluctant to call her family until she met with the lawyer. She would just have to wait, for three days. That was the earliest the lawyer could schedule her to go over the will. She hoped anxiously that there might be a note for her, something personal from her grandmother. In the meantime, she would go through the house, plan what to do with its contents and find a realtor to put up the place for sale.

She zipped her jacket, cold but reluctant to go into the house. She had bare feet in high-heeled sandals, skin tight crop pants, a silk shirt and the inadequate jacket. Her bracelets and necklaces were like ice on her skin. She never thought of being comfortable any more, only of looking hot. It was the uniform of the life she had chosen. Damon liked a good looking woman. That was the first thing he’d told her. He walked into the club where she was sitting with some friends, surveyed the room, saw her, walked straight to her and said, “You are by far the best looking woman in this place. You might be the best looking woman I’ve ever seen, and I keep my eyes open.”

He’d bought drinks for her and her large group of friends and took them all back to his place, dazzling them with his black swimming pool, his collection of African art and his limitless supply of Cinderella weed. A week later she’d moved in with him.

She walked a winding path to the center of the garden. Even in December it was beautiful, with the pond and the statue of a little girl holding a basket, smiling bravely into the wind. Dead leaves whisked across the path in front of her, stirring up memories. She saw Grandpa on the porch, rocking back and forth in the white chair, staring into the woods as he sucked on the pipe his wife would not let him smoke in the house. She saw her cousin leaning on a carved porch pillar, wiping his face on his shirt, drinking a pop after mowing. She saw Grandma on the other side of the pond, gathering an armload of lavender to dry and make into sachets for the drawers.

A strange little cry escaped her throat. It was out before she knew it was coming – despair at how memory brought the past alive, then left you bereft. This empty yard was what seemed surreal. Grandma and Grandpa both gone, and Charise estranged from the whole family…. This was a bad idea, coming up here early and alone. How did she think she could stay in this place, alone?

She thought about the bar down the street that had live music on the weekends. She would go down there, just for dinner. Just for company. Tears spilled over her cheeks, running mascara. When Grandma was done in the garden, she used to call Charise and say, “Come in with me, baby. Keep me company in the kitchen.” Charise could see her on the steps right now, scooping a loose, strong arm toward her. “Now Baby. It’s time.”
I’ve done too many drugs, Charise thought. Her brain had floated in and out of delusion too many times, so now memories turned into ghosts that seemed real. With a great effort of will, tears still flowing, she got her suitcase out of her car and went into the house. Once inside she expected more hauntings that would tear her heart with remorse. She deserved that. But being back in the entry, seeing the hallstand draped with familiar hats, and the grand curving staircase, she felt welcomed, she felt home. Her courage rose. She would not go to the bar. She would get groceries, come back here and face the music, let all the memories whack her in undulled sobriety.

She put down the suitcase and ran her fingers over the floral picture carved into the newel post of the stair railing; she had etched it on paper as a little girl, rubbing with the side of a brown crayon. She looked into the first room on the right, the office where Grandma did her paperwork and needlework. She had liked to look out the front window on her garden as she worked.

Charise looked into the work basket, remembering knitting lessons. There was a half- finished scarf still on two needles. It was not like Grandma to stop in the middle of a row. Maybe she was knitting when she had the heart attack… Charise dug her fingers into the scarf, tears now running down her neck. She found a tissue, blew her nose, and walked into the dining room. She stood in the big room, always light-filled, looking at the rich scarlet walls hung with quilts, local art and historical scenes of Pleasant Hill. What a legacy. The thought crept up on her – this is mine. She said it out loud, low, to the empty table and chairs, ‘This is mine.’ She smiled at the sweet fantasy of it – of keeping this heavenly house.

But not for long. Damon had crunched the numbers. She had no income. Even though the house was paid for, it was still far too much for her to keep up with taxes, utility bills and maintenance costs. She knew that even with a good job it was too much for one person.

“It’s a money pit, babe,” Damon had said, emphatically. “Don’t you be letting family talk you into trying to hang on. You call me if you start to feel the squeeze. I’ll straighten them out…”

Charise shuddered. Something had kept her from even giving him the address. She forced her eyes to the largest painting in the room, the one Grandpa said would never let them forget where they came from. It was a romanticized picture of black people working in a cotton field. Women in bright dresses and turbans smiled as they bent over the plants, a few in the foreground laughed as they balanced full baskets on their heads. Grandpa had said to Charise, “They might look happy, but those baskets are heavy and that sun burns. You do not want to spend your days doing that kind of work. That’s why our families came up here.”

Now she looked at the bottom right of the picture, expecting a gash, or at least an ugly line. It looked fine. She had to squint from inches away to see the slightest line showing that the canvas had been repaired. She realized that she had been holding her breath, and released it in a big relieved sigh. She went into the adjoining kitchen. If the heart of her childhood could be located in one place, this would be it, right here helping Grandma chop food, reading her recipes, listening to her stories. Charise had lived in an apartment nearby with her mom and dad, but here with Grandma and Grandpa was where she always wanted to be.

Back then, Grandma had been the cook for the house’s owner, a remarkably kind woman who welcomed Olivia’s grandchildren any time. Grandpa had worked first shift at a factory, then done a few chores at the house in the evenings and all day Saturday. The owner had no children, and when she had died, she had preferred to leave the house to this faithful couple who had lived with her for years, than to some distant relative. Charise’s grandparents had been stunned. Their parents had been poor farmers in Alabama, and suddenly they found themselves owning a mansion on six acres, along with all its contents.Even years after it happened, Grandma would pause at her work of chopping or mixing or scrubbing, look around and say, “I still can’t believe it’s ours. It’s like I got to go to heaven early.”

Charise noticed a note on the counter. It was in her cousin Tanya’s round, loopy hand. “Welcome back to Cincinnati. Your mom said you were coming up sometime this week. I left you some soup in the freezer and cornbread like Grandma used to make.” Charise shook her head, astounded at this kindness. After how she had treated the family, she was afraid that no one would want to speak to her, let alone Tanya.

This story will be continued in the next post…