I pictured the uniformed sanity enforcement officers knocking at my door, stethoscopes slung around their necks, clipboards by their sides. I had worked for years to earn a pathetic HMO card and copay, and was ready to put them to use in a serene setting whereby I’d learn guided imagery and hear a voice in a monotone chanting, “Rest, relax, release. Be mindful of every muscle in your body going to sleep.”
It would occur on a day from hell at the office, following a morning from hell at home when no one would get to school on time or have combed hair or brushed teeth. Lunch money would have been forgotten and one of the kids would have said the F word and the other worn a tragically unwashed and mismatched outfit that would have me worried about an imminent visit from the Child Welfare Department. On this particular day from the depths of misery, when the morning sun had forgotten to rise on my side of the bed and everything went downhill from there, I would decide now or never for my nervous breakdown.
“It’s time,” I’d mumble semicoherently at work as I slid under a colleague’s desk. “Call Peace Release at St. Merciful Medical Center. We’re on their plan. I checked an hour ago.” As the sweet coworker dialed the hospital, I would point out the urgent need to run home and get supper on the stove. “My in-laws are coming for dinner and if I wind up in the hopper, they’ll think I just didn’t want to cook. I’ll have the chuck roast and green beans ready and warm for them. The only thing missing will be me and they won’t mind that a bit.
“Tell the sanity patrol to meet me there. I’m already packed. Been packed for three years,” I’d say, crawling to my feet, grabbing my purse and stumbling out the door.
A few hours later they’d turn their white passenger van into the driveway and two men and a woman would hop out, wearing those pinched smiles of concern and carrying papers as if bouquets.
“Mrs. Reinhardt?”
“Yes.”
“We’re here to take you away.”
“Bless your hearts. The pot roast is on, the beans are tender, and I’ve been waiting for this moment for three years.”
“We know how you feel. It’s been crazy the last few days, no pun intended. It’s just that all the moms are suddenly checking in. We got a backlog of working mothers and they can’t do anything at this stage but stutter and drool so you may have to share a room for a while.”
“I’m sure these stutters all mean the same thing, poor dears,” I’d say in all earnestness. “No one at work appreciates them, then they go home and their children hate them and dinner never satisfies anyone. Their husbands are always wanting sex at midnight and yet none of them has said, ‘You’re beautiful’ in five years. You know how it is.”
The woman sanity enforcement officer would nod and I could honestly tell she’d been through several of life’s more cruel wringers. Somebody had long ago forgotten to dry her on the delicate cycle.
“OK. I’m ready,” I’d say, breathing the last gulps of air from my home in the burbs. I’d caught up on enough laundry to find time to work this breakdown into the schedule. I finally clipped everyone’s fingernails and toenails, trimmed and washed their hair, got prescriptions renewed, their dental cleanings in order, and made enough frozen meals to last a month. My husband wouldn’t have to do a thing but sit upright and blink.
Once he discovered eBay he forgot I even lived in the house. And the kids? That’s all taken care of, too. They don’t start back to school for thirty-four more days, so I’d have time for my breakdown with a few days to spare for back-to-school shopping.
This little fantasy was beginning to sound perfect. Just think, three squares a day, no dishes to scrub, scrape, or load. No job to report to. No husband wondering what’s for supper, when is he ever going to get laid again, where’s the remote, and why does his wife wear ratty pajamas when she used to shop at Victoria’s Secret?
I’ll tell everyone good-bye from the unit phone at Peace Release and promise to see them in a few weeks when I come home a brand-new rested, relaxed, and released version of the old self, a woman who promises not to wake up every morning shouting, “Brush your socks! Put on your teeth! Eat your shoes!”
“Ma’am?” the sanity patrol officers will say as they watch me slipping into a stand-up coma, that condition of mothers who zonk but still manage to open jars of Prego.
“Ma’am, where are your children?”
“They’re at Nana’s. I can’t break out of my domestic chains with them staring at me with those big sad eyes and crocodile tears.” Oh, the thought of it would tear me up, a knot clogging my throat as I clutched my chest and felt pain rip my gut like a fist. Oh, my babies. Oh, my wonderful, precious, mean, fighting, mother-hating, messy, loud, obnoxious, brilliant, charming, troublemaking, loudmouthed, adorable, and delightful babies. They were calling to me from Nana’s; I could hear the phone ringing in my heart.
“Uh. Wait,” I’d said to the sanity patrol. “I…um…Let me check the calendar once more.”
Vacation Bible school. Basketball camp. Piano lessons. Beach trip. Allergy shots. Eight special projects due at work plus a mandatory defensive driving school and ethics and diversity training.
I’d bite my thumbnail, knowing that having a nervous breakdown was something I’d have to postpone, at least until I could get my children old enough to babysit themselves. As of now, they require me like teaspoon-size kangaroolets need a mother’s pouch. I’m their cook, shrink, social director, entertainer, doctor, nurse, teacher, preacher—you name it.
“I’m so sorry,” I’d have to say to the men and the lone woman in white. “Could we schedule this thing in ten to twelve years?”
Until then, I’ve come up with a short solution to midlife meltdowns, something my mother taught me years ago every time she cruised the aisles of Kroger and tossed stalks of celery, tomato juice, Tabasco, and Worcestershire into the cart: the mixings for Bloody Mary bridge night.
I learned from those nights about the medicine found in a circle of women, a soothing release of emotion that bandages hurts and rinses the soul. And while I never learned to play bridge, I do read and I joined a book club a couple of years ago. A dear friend who’d lost her precious daughter and her way in life started the group, and the therapy these nights bring is immeasurable.
There are eight to ten of us who meet the first Monday of each month to eat, drink, and discuss everything but the book we were supposed to have read, a book some of us never even open. We call ourselves the “Not Quite Write” book club or the “Read It or Not, Here We Come” crew, and we pass the time as Mama did on bridge nights, talking our way out of stresses and into laughter. We bring delicious hors d’oeuvres and the hostess turns on the charm and her blender.
Humor and friendships heal the strain of our busy lives. The husbands are in charge of the kids, just like the daddies of my mama’s day. They give them too much sugar, too much TV, forget the baths, the teeth, and the thirty minutes of reading before bed.
Sometimes, as the night wears on and we get carried away longer than we anticipated, I’ll see tiny heads peeping around corners. I’ll hear fits of giggles and spot spying little ears listening to things they’ll play back in their minds for a lifetime, lessons learned from a mother’s book club. They’ll see us as real people and not the PTA presidents and room moms. Not the women who yell for them to pick up their clothes and finish their homework.
They will, on those nights, see the
