Grace

“Then, when it seems we will never smile again life comes back.”  - a greeting card  
      I have a tendency towards depression and all of this heat has really been getting me down. I have no tolerance for it. Even as a child in the drier, cooler summers of my dad’s Eastern Colorado wheat farm, I wilted and became cranky and sad when the sun got high. And, as much as I like my life in Georgia, after 21 years I am still completely surprised and demoralized by what humidity does to the temperatures here.
        Like me, Winston Churchill had a tendency towards bleakness (his may or may not have been climate-based) and he called his depression the “Black Dog.” I have always liked that notion of these sad feelings that come and go. Thinking of them as a black dog gives them a familiarity that takes some of their ominous potential away.
      For years my Black Dog has visited in the dark cold months of the New Year – January, February, sometimes staying on into March. This winter he didn’t show up and, while I briefly wondered why, I was glad to have dodged his particular brand of bullet for once. And, so I moved quickly on to simply enjoying the time without him on into early summer. Then the heat hit – robbing us of those lush mornings in the garden and lovely, leisurely evenings in the yard. It got so hot, so quick that we’ve not even opened some of the citronella buckets I bought in anticipation of all that wonderful time outside.
      Then, who should show up at my door, all hot and thirsty, clearly ready to settle in for a nice long stay in my air conditioning? My Black Dog. We’re in about our sixth week together and I’m getting tired of his company. The thing about a black dog is that it can blend in and make itself scarce, so you almost forget it’s there until you stumble on it in the night or trip over it as you get out of a chair. And, if the black dog in question is The Black Dog, every time you bump into him, there you are, all down in the dumps again. Like a real black dog, my Black Dog follows me everywhere, padding along softly at my heels, making it hard to remember all the good things in my life.
      Fortunately I work part time in an emergency room as social worker and that gives me a perspective that helps keep my Black Dog in line. For example, yesterday a woman about my age was brought in unresponsive. Her worried and tearful boyfriend found her that way in the morning when he tried to wake her up.
      It turned out she had a bad brain bleed, the result of untreated high blood pressure. She had been out in her garden yesterday evening, the boyfriend said, and when she came in she “looked real hot.” He said she went right to bed and sometime in the night, a vessel in her head popped and there she was on a breathing machine - her prognosis very poor.
      One of my jobs in the ER is to call families when something bad happens. So, I called that woman’s family and one by one they trickled in, surprised, upset, sad, angry, calling on the Lord to fix what had just happened. It’s a difficult thing to watch – people processing a terrible event. But, it feels good to help them in a small way, water, a cold cloth, a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, a small box of Kleenex, another explanation of what the doctor said.
      During this I hear a lot about the patient and his or her family. Some of it is good; some of it isn’t so good; some of it’s downright appalling but it seems to help people to talk about it all. This particular woman was estranged from her family because they didn’t like her boyfriend and some of the habits he shared with her. Initially there was a lot of tension between the family and the boyfriend – so much that they couldn’t be in the same room. It took awhile, but by the time I walked them all up to ICU, they had decided to be okay with each other so that they could all pray for her.
      They had moved from focusing on the bad things to remembering the good – something that most families end up doing by the time it’s time to go up to ICU or call the funeral home. And, that’s when it hits me – every time I deal with one of these families – how precious life is and how suddenly and unexpectedly it can be snatched from us. One evening I’m working in my garden; the next day I’m in ICU surrounded by doctors and nurses shaking their heads.
      It’s the bad times that really bring out what people are made of and a surprising number are really strong, with the ability to be positive and true. In a way, my Black Dog is like those bad times; he shows me how dark everything is and then follows me into the light, leaving me alone to enjoy it for awhile while he takes a nap under a shade tree. 
      Anne Lamott said, “I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” It’s the same thing with that ole’ Black Dog – maybe I should start calling him Grace.  

“After 20 years of marriage, I’m finally starting to scratch the surface of what women want. I think the answer likes somewhere between conversation and chocolate.” – Mel Gibson


They say money can’t buy happiness, but in some cases it can. One such case is the recent purchase of my new Dyson DC 14 – All Floors vacuum cleaner. As I have mentioned before, our house is in a bit of a shambles as the result of years of neglect and too many pets. It doesn’t help that the house is old and leaky and the heat and air system has some loose tubes and broken vents. It also doesn’t help that neither Mr. Clark nor I are very big on cleaning; there’s always a lot of other things we’d rather be doing and we usually do them.


For years I’ve burned through inexpensive vacuums at the pace of about one a year. Our environment is just too tough; they can’t survive it. Due to Mr. Clark’s period of unemployment, the vacuum I just retired was three years old and more than worn out. I swear it actually added dust and pet hair to the floor, rather than sucking it up. I could create the illusion of having cleaned by using my old vacuum to blow the dust balls up under the furniture and into the corners nobody sees. But I was definitely not making any real head-way.


Recently I started sweeping rather than using the old vacuum; that was pretty much of a bust, too. All I was doing was rearranging the dust bunnies in hopes that would help in some way. It didn’t; things were getting pretty grim, especially in the rooms with upholstered furniture and area rugs.


My daughter got a Dyson for Christmas from her in-laws and boy, did I envy that gift – especially after I heard about the miracle it worked in her pet-filled, much littler but just as old house. My sister also got a Dyson for Christmas - same deal, lots of pet hair in her life (she’s a professional pet-sitter with wall to wall carpet) and that gift generated nothing but rave reviews…I wanted a Dyson and I wanted one bad.


If you’ve suffered from vacuum cleaner envy or lust, you know that a Dyson is not cheap. They come in several models ranging in price from $200 to over $500. That’s a lot to pay for a vacuum; but, the continued chatter – not only from family, but once I brought the topic up, from people at work - about how a Dyson will change your life had me on board. The only issue was how to afford one?


Shopping the sale papers on Sundays for great Dyson deals became a pastime of mine, as did perusing Craig’s List and the want-ads. Apparently once you get a Dyson, you never get rid of it because there are no used ones for sale, and the sale paper prices just weren’t dipping down into my price range.


After attempting to do a thorough cleaning of our kitchen last week, I announced to Mr. Clark that I was going to start buying one lottery ticket a week in the hopes of “winning” myself a Dyson. His response was to tell me not to spend more than $1 per ticket; when he added that he thought our old vacuum worked just fine, I promptly went out and bought a $5 lottery ticket, then set our old vacuum on the curb, hoping it would find a new home with some clever (and obviously desperate) vacuum repair person.


“There, take that!” I thought, “Now I have to get a new vacuum because the old one’s gone!” Too bad that $5 ticket was a loser…


Maybe he got tired of listening to me read Dyson sale prices aloud on Sunday mornings or because he really is a very nice guy who genuinely wants me to be happy, this past Sunday Mr. Clark came up with a plan that got me my Dyson.


“Why don’t we use the money we’re charging the Estonians (see prior columns) for rent this summer (a whopping $10 per week), plus my Best Buy gift certificate (the one our daughter gave him for his birthday), kick in some extra and get you a Dyson?” he asked.


It just so happened he had beat me to the sale papers that day and found the Dyson of my dreams, deeply discounted “while supplies last,” in the Best Buy flier. And, before mentioning it to me, he’d checked on-line and found one available at the Mall of GA. There it was - my Dyson dream come true! And, Mr. Clark had put it all in place – now that’s true love.


I’ve been cleaning all week and the thrill of my Dyson has not worn off. It seems our house was in even worse shape than I knew, but my Dyson is up to the task and the two of us are having a really good time together. I have joined the legions who can honestly proclaim, “My Dyson has changed my life!” Thank heavens for Mr. Clark, who even after 30 years, continues to understand exactly what I need and do his best to get it for me – even if what that is, is a really nice vacuum cleaner.