Yesterday was March 11 (again)

Today is March 12, and once again I can say, Yesterday was March 11. Yesterday was, like today is, a gorgeous sunny late winter day, with the promise of spring in it, a happy day.

When we came in last night, there was a message on the phone. It started, as JE’s messages so often do, with his gentle and thoughtful voice saying, Hi guys. He went on to tell us that he would be out later and that he phoned because it was his “Champagne Anniversary”. I didn’t immediately figure out the champagne reference, but then I remembered champagne birthdays (mine happened when I was two and I doubt that I noticed it). It wasn’t that I hadn’t been thinking about it often throughout the day, since March 11 is as important a day in our lives as September 11 is in some other people’s; it is, after all, the anniversary of the day we took JE, our second son, to the Emergency Department to try to get some help. We drove past the Abbie Lane yesterday, looked up at the windows on the sixth floor, and remembered. It is the day when he said, eleven years ago, “March 11. It is raining.” And it is the day he was admitted to 6 Lane Long Stay for diagnosis and treatment of something that roughly matched the list of symptoms for bipolar disorder.

Yesterday it wasn’t raining, the sun was bright, and the chickadees had begun to sing their spring song. The song sparrows were also around, also singing. The jays were busy at the feeder and suet cage. A hairy woodpecker stopped by for its feed. And the bright and agile crows were calling some message from the tops of our maples.

JE, who also notices birds and would have happily noticed if he were here, called yesterday on his champagne anniversary. I was sorry we missed the call because there was much we could have talked about: the peregrine falcon that landed on his fence a couple of days ago, what the inimitable M has been doing and saying as her world and the words she uses to describe it continue to expand exponentially, how the balance of the semester is shaping up for S, and how he himself is doing and what he is thinking eleven years after the fact.

We will talk about those things when we connect, but that last one is one that we already know something of the answer to; his March posts give some indication, and our recent visit tells even more. Our son, who has struggled with mental illness and the side effects of medications and who has had to make himself and his condition known to a number of different psychiatrists over the years and then to try to forge a good working relationship with each, has managed through self-discipline, self-reflection, and continued vigilance to establish a life and a way of being that is creative, productive, and filled with love. As our friend Brian, himself a psychiatrist, told us, JE's life is like a miracle.

It may be that, and it is a champagne anniversary, a celebration of a difficult struggle, strengthened by adversity, a day to celebrate.

March 11. The sun is shining.