When Warren and Joyce met in San Diego on Christmas Day, 1994, both were struck by Colpo di fulmine. The Thunderbolt. The air during their first exchange was so electrified, poetry seemed appropriate, right from the first thing he said.

“Is your skin made of chocolate?”

“Only the very best, from France and Madagascar,” Joyce said, instantly inside a perfect dome of belief in his romance.

“You are sweet, then, and might melt.”

“You think you can melt me?”

“Yes.”

They quickly cancelled everything, disappeared into the La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla, and loved for the entire last week of the year. Right from the start, both sex and pillow talk contained deep entrancement, in which time stops so souls may bond. Thus, they did not age in it. Each possessed but a few months remaining in the nineteenth year of life. Young love.

“We couldn’t help it,” they sang on New Year’s Day during the drive back to Los Angeles. “It’s bigger than us.”

By summer, they were married with plans. Warren finished his junior year at UCLA a month before the wedding, Joyce her sophomore at Mount Holyoke. That was planned, for both to finish college. Warren was destined for an advanced degree in electrical engineering, that was the longer plan.

 Two years later, in 1996, the desire for each other flared stronger than ever. Not just a thunderbolt – a typhoon. What started as a nostalgia trip to San Diego blew up into a two-day gale in their bedroom suite at La Valencia, and into a blinding impulse, while driving farther south, to ditch all plans and sail away through the squalls, to Bali or Buenos Aires or Capri, never to return.

The climax, on day four, while swimming naked in their villa-suite’s private pool in a resort on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, would be remembered on happy days thereafter as an ecstatic ten minutes of deep loving with eyes, words and souls, ending with a decision to walk hand in hand into their bathroom to empty Joyce’s birth control pills into the sink.

Thirteen months later, Shawn Robert Crandall came into the world.

A vibrant, accomplished, twenty-two-year-old new mother with a degree from Mount Holyoke in Fine Arts, a father pursuing an advanced degree at Cal State L.A while working full time in the day, the economy of the United States flush from the late-90s dividend of technology productivity – a packed, exuberant life.

Joyce had a baby, but also choices. Three-quarters of their undergrad student loans had already been paid back, Warren’s employer covered his current tuition, and they paid only token rent for their tiny bungalow house, owned by Joyce’s parents. Therefore, amazingly, Joyce did not need to earn house money. She was at choice.

As a fine routine settled into the nursery, Joyce returned to the easel. Unfortunately, the noise of school, commuting, newly-wedding, pregnancy, and finances, had left little impulse to go deep in recent years. Now, she found quiet and space. She painted her happiness.

In the summer of 1999, with 20-month-old Shawn in the care of a grandparent, Joyce and Warren experienced another joyous deluge of passion at their favorite resort, and another mutual decision, made in that same pool.

The spectacular reward: Teressa Ann Crandall, born April 22, 2000.

 

Depression: does stress, anxiety, and spiritual or emotional conflict cause the chemical imbalance which results in depression, or do you feel stress and conflict because of depression caused by your brain chemistry being out of balance?

It is important to humanity to know. But not really – not really – to those afflicted, such as Joyce Crandall.

One plus one is significantly greater than two, regarding children. Joyce could only throw glances of longing into her studio corner while juggling the needs of two tiny ones who stubbornly resisted slipping into synchronous schedules. The cooking, clothes washing, and dishes piled up to her waist every day, seemingly. Warren’s demanding job and tough path to a Masters of Electrical Engineering blocked domestic participation in the household. Both perceived that he deserved to find peace and orderliness when home and studying. Both believed Joyce deserved more than the title of ‘she who keeps the thing nice.’ They had consciously chosen this unbalanced plan. However, it resembled a teeter-totter with massive weights at each end. Every day, the original plan suffered, that which supposedly would to lead to success, family, mutual ambition of talents, and love in the bedroom.

 

Lodged in their marriage, a knot of contradiction lay ready to cause grief. They were young and ambitious, equals in ability and dreams. Strong self-agents. Self-actualizing agents. This clashed with the speed of family/home building, and the demands of nurturing of new beings with excellence, something they would not slight.

Their love seemed so powerful. Infinite. It made them overlook the logical impossibility of having this quick, beautiful family, while each dreamt large for themselves.

Worse, within this problem lay another: her right brain versus his left. An artist’s explanation of why the house is a mess only satisfies one of the two. The other thinks his pressure for her to put orderliness and duties before painting is logically correct. She agreed to that, after all.

Then, the style of fighting. She charged forward emoting the reality of her inside fire and its exigency, he would list the bullet points of agreement and common sense.

As he spent more and more time with engineers, Warren sank deeper into the systematic rightness of his analysis. Joyce’s flights  of longing and emotion, like vivid colors of the sky on canvas, accelerated. As the children became four and two, then six and four, then eight and six, the contradiction wore on Joyce. Her art did not cower when pressed down under diapers and lunch boxes. It revolted.

Does an artist deserve an erotic, permanent love with a mate? Does she deserve children? A fine home? Friends, entertainment, travel, rest and sleep? She might deserve them, but the drive to create art can eradicate the prosaic willpower required to earn them. This is why artists are aloof from the bourgeoisie, even if they appreciate them from a distance.

So it was, for Joyce. She deserved the soul-style of an artist, yet the contradictions marred her. Depression.

 

From Sara …

 

My mom tried to understand Tessa’s mom. This was important, because Joyce requested after-school stay-overs. She wanted Tessa to come home from school with me Tuesday through Thursday, all the way to dinnertime.

I overheard one of their conversations when I was six years old.

“I can’t get any momentum,” Joyce said.

“What do you mean?” asked Elena.

“You can’t make art in little hidey-holes on the side of a mountain. You have to own the hill. I mean, you need long stretches of time, with quiet walls, uninterrupted, just to stir the juices. To blaze up in conflagration.” (I remember her using that word.) “So, for three days in a row, I can start the minute Shawn and Tessa leave for school and go straight through to dinner time. I am not on fire with the paint in the evening, so that fits with returning to mommy-dom at night. Shawn will stay away those afternoons. I’ve given him extra allowance for use at Boys Club, and he has activities at school. Round ball. He’s good.”

“So, if Tessa comes here with Sara after school, you can keep it up at home. Painting, right?”

“Yes. I know it’s asking a lot, since you have a new baby. I wouldn’t ask, except it looks like they really like each other.”

“Well,” said Elena, “it might actually make things easier for me, too. They put their heads together and talk for hours.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too. Righteous! Elena, this has to be a win for you, or it won’t work. Get the two of them to be mother’s helper for part of the time. Hell, they’re six, almost seven, now. I never had a mother’s helper, more’s the pity.”

“That’s already happening here. Sara really enjoys helping with Maria.”

That conversation was the first insight I had into the ways of things for artists. It scared me, but opened me, too. I could be on fire, right? Without going crazy, right? Meanwhile, time with Tess was so much fun, no darkness fell on the situation in my childhood mentality. And we liked being mother’s helpers. Mostly.

So, for five years, we ran around like sisters. It was great. We don’t know which one of us was smarter, or more athletic, or a better dancer. We only knew we loved each other, and never ran out of things to say or do.

 This does not mean I didn’t catch Tessa crying, sometimes. I would wait, stay silent and near, and then she would tell me the pain.

That’s all I can say right now. I am so sad.

 

When does the flight of joy versus world-sadness spiral down? When does the failed contests of the interior woman become a clinical condition?

Joyce got her arrangement. She painted. Sometimes she sold paintings, at galleries here and there in the L.A. basin. Inevitably, she interacted with other wild souls in the wild. She fell into self-medication, which was considered recreational by her friends. “Whatever it takes, to make art.” Flights into this world alternated with periods of longing for a “normal” life, amazingly. She would follow a doctor’s orders for a while – she was clinically diagnosed – and edged away from bad influences. But not for long.

Tessa’s eleventh birthday, on April 22, 2011, was a disaster. Broken promises. A mom not mentally present. Crying jags. Joyce faded to zero during the birthday dinner, walked into the living room and passed out immediately on the sofa. Tess hadn’t even opened one gift. No one had any joy over the cake, a hasty store-bought thing with the wrong icing.

 

After the April birthday party, Elena Tillinghast decided to engage Joyce Crandall woman to woman. Seriously engage. Almost immediately, she discovered that all Joyce could think about was getting divorced and moving away. Elena put the hammer down.

“This is going to be straight talk.”

“Go ahead, Elena, hit me. Warren’s already knocked me around with every possible thing, so I’m ready. Hit me.”

“He never physically hit you, right?”

“No. Never.”

“That was interesting phrasing, then.”

“I feel abused.”

“Joyce, tell me right now, honestly, otherwise it’s not fair to Warren. Did he ever, in any way, abuse you?”

“I feel abused.”

Elena waited.

“No.”

“Okay, then. Here goes. How can you abandon your children, Joyce?”

“I’m not doing them any good. I can’t put on the happy face anymore, and they are staring at a depressed mother all the time. Just a miserable, exhausted babysitter. Sometimes I have so much rage I’m worried I’ll strike them.”

“I thought you were depressed. What’s this rage?”

“Depression is a cover for rage. My therapist agrees with that.”

“Well, walk out into the desert and rage it out. Then be mom.”

“I tried it. Under the rage is frustration with your situation. If you can’t change that, the rage just builds up again. The doctor says I also have whacked-out brain chemistry, which exaggerates everything. Ups and downs, both.”

“Your family hasn’t stopped loving you. You’ll break Tessa’s heart if you leave. And what kind of example will she see?”

“I’ll break her heart if I stay, just more slowly. That’s worse.”

“She’s eleven, and Shawn is fourteen. You could stay at least until they graduate high school.”

“I’ve already put this off for five years, Elena, that would be seven more. You’re trying to talk logic, like Warren does. Everything in my insides is screaming to go away and not let them see me.”

“You still love Warren.”

“Where? Where do I?” She put her hand on her chest. “I don’t feel a thing. What happened? My God, how can a person turn to stone?”

Elena considered stopping. She let Joyce rotate through an emotional cycle. It would be horrible if Joyce felt nothing, but that is not the case. She was feeling pain.

 “I remember we were so in love,” Joyce said. “But it’s not a living memory. Just a note on a piece of paper. ‘Note to self: once you loved the love of your life.’ I can’t feel it anymore.”

“I still say you could find a way to manage until both children leave the nest.”

“I already put it off years. And teens? Time for them to lean on Dad.”

“You chose this, Joyce Crandall, you should stick to your promise,” said Elena. “Honor.”

Joyce went silent, looked away, then returned her eyes to her friend’s. “The person who made that promise is dead.”

“We have a little casita in back. You know it. Go back into therapy, back on medication, and come live with us for a while until this blackness goes into remission. Like a retreat. We’ll fix it up together. You can paint there. You could do that.”

“I’ve been on meds.”

“Try again. Your family wants you to. My family, too. We love you.”

“I want to go away.”

“That’s selfish, Joyce. You haven’t done everything you could to rekindle love.”

“This is the torment for an artist. To follow the passion, at any cost. My passion is to be free, be out of the heat of the desert, and to paint. To be with other artists. To fly to the sky. The power of this can’t be explained to ordinary people.”

Elena withheld her anger at that, even though it deserved a thrashing.

“Get stable, ease into normal life, before you know it, Tessa and Shawn will be gone. You’ll have room to be an artist. I know your heart will feel love for Warren again.”

They took a break, with that last sentence hanging in the air. Elena didn’t serve any alcohol, but did lay out a fine lunch. Afterwards, she noticed a softening in Joyce. An hour later, they made an agreement for steps Joyce would take and confirmation of them for Elena to witness. The casita idea took root.

“I wish I could cry,” Joyce said just before leaving.

“Plenty of time for that.”

By the end of April, Joyce had failed on all her promises for steps forward, although she seemed to not fall back into darker ways. It was a sullen cease-fire. But when a blazing summer sun asserted itself in the valley, she sank.

In July 2011, Joyce served divorce papers on Warren and moved to San Francisco.



Copyright John Caedan, 2016-2017
All Rights Reserved

Visit SaraIRL.com
Comments: john@SaraIRL.com

Joyce and Warren Crandall

When Warren and Joyce met in San Diego on Christmas Day, 1994, both were struck by Colpo di fulmine. The Thunderbolt. The air during their first exchange was so electrified, poetry seemed appropriate, right from the first thing he said.

“Is your skin made of chocolate?”

“Only the very best, from France and Madagascar,” Joyce said, instantly inside a perfect dome of belief in his romance.

“You are sweet, then, and might melt.”

“You think you can melt me?”

“Yes.”

They quickly cancelled everything, disappeared into the La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla, and loved for the entire last week of the year. Right from the start, both sex and pillow talk contained deep entrancement, in which time stops so souls may bond. Thus, they did not age in it. Each possessed but a few months remaining in the nineteenth year of life. Young love.

“We couldn’t help it,” they sang on New Year’s Day during the drive back to Los Angeles. “It’s bigger than us.”

By summer, they were married with plans. Warren finished his junior year at UCLA a month before the wedding, Joyce her sophomore at Mount Holyoke. That was planned, for both to finish college. Warren was destined for an advanced degree in electrical engineering, that was the longer plan.

 Two years later, in 1996, the desire for each other flared stronger than ever. Not just a thunderbolt – a typhoon. What started as a nostalgia trip to San Diego blew up into a two-day gale in their bedroom suite at La Valencia, and into a blinding impulse, while driving farther south, to ditch all plans and sail away through the squalls, to Bali or Buenos Aires or Capri, never to return.

The climax, on day four, while swimming naked in their villa-suite’s private pool in a resort on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, would be remembered on happy days thereafter as an ecstatic ten minutes of deep loving with eyes, words and souls, ending with a decision to walk hand in hand into their bathroom to empty Joyce’s birth control pills into the sink.

Thirteen months later, Shawn Robert Crandall came into the world.

A vibrant, accomplished, twenty-two-year-old new mother with a degree from Mount Holyoke in Fine Arts, a father pursuing an advanced degree at Cal State L.A while working full time in the day, the economy of the United States flush from the late-90s dividend of technology productivity – a packed, exuberant life.

Joyce had a baby, but also choices. Three-quarters of their undergrad student loans had already been paid back, Warren’s employer covered his current tuition, and they paid only token rent for their tiny bungalow house, owned by Joyce’s parents. Therefore, amazingly, Joyce did not need to earn house money. She was at choice.

As a fine routine settled into the nursery, Joyce returned to the easel. Unfortunately, the noise of school, commuting, newly-wedding, pregnancy, and finances, had left little impulse to go deep in recent years. Now, she found quiet and space. She painted her happiness.

In the summer of 1999, with 20-month-old Shawn in the care of a grandparent, Joyce and Warren experienced another joyous deluge of passion at their favorite resort, and another mutual decision, made in that same pool.

The spectacular reward: Teressa Ann Crandall, born April 22, 2000.

 

Depression: does stress, anxiety, and spiritual or emotional conflict cause the chemical imbalance which results in depression, or do you feel stress and conflict because of depression caused by your brain chemistry being out of balance?

It is important to humanity to know. But not really – not really – to those afflicted, such as Joyce Crandall.

One plus one is significantly greater than two, regarding children. Joyce could only throw glances of longing into her studio corner while juggling the needs of two tiny ones who stubbornly resisted slipping into synchronous schedules. The cooking, clothes washing, and dishes piled up to her waist every day, seemingly. Warren’s demanding job and tough path to a Masters of Electrical Engineering blocked domestic participation in the household. Both perceived that he deserved to find peace and orderliness when home and studying. Both believed Joyce deserved more than the title of ‘she who keeps the thing nice.’ They had consciously chosen this unbalanced plan. However, it resembled a teeter-totter with massive weights at each end. Every day, the original plan suffered, that which supposedly would to lead to success, family, mutual ambition of talents, and love in the bedroom.

 

Lodged in their marriage, a knot of contradiction lay ready to cause grief. They were young and ambitious, equals in ability and dreams. Strong self-agents. Self-actualizing agents. This clashed with the speed of family/home building, and the demands of nurturing of new beings with excellence, something they would not slight.

Their love seemed so powerful. Infinite. It made them overlook the logical impossibility of having this quick, beautiful family, while each dreamt large for themselves.

Worse, within this problem lay another: her right brain versus his left. An artist’s explanation of why the house is a mess only satisfies one of the two. The other thinks his pressure for her to put orderliness and duties before painting is logically correct. She agreed to that, after all.

Then, the style of fighting. She charged forward emoting the reality of her inside fire and its exigency, he would list the bullet points of agreement and common sense.

As he spent more and more time with engineers, Warren sank deeper into the systematic rightness of his analysis. Joyce’s flights  of longing and emotion, like vivid colors of the sky on canvas, accelerated. As the children became four and two, then six and four, then eight and six, the contradiction wore on Joyce. Her art did not cower when pressed down under diapers and lunch boxes. It revolted.

Does an artist deserve an erotic, permanent love with a mate? Does she deserve children? A fine home? Friends, entertainment, travel, rest and sleep? She might deserve them, but the drive to create art can eradicate the prosaic willpower required to earn them. This is why artists are aloof from the bourgeoisie, even if they appreciate them from a distance.

So it was, for Joyce. She deserved the soul-style of an artist, yet the contradictions marred her. Depression.

 

From Sara …

 

My mom tried to understand Tessa’s mom. This was important, because Joyce requested after-school stay-overs. She wanted Tessa to come home from school with me Tuesday through Thursday, all the way to dinnertime.

I overheard one of their conversations when I was six years old.

“I can’t get any momentum,” Joyce said.

“What do you mean?” asked Elena.

“You can’t make art in little hidey-holes on the side of a mountain. You have to own the hill. I mean, you need long stretches of time, with quiet walls, uninterrupted, just to stir the juices. To blaze up in conflagration.” (I remember her using that word.) “So, for three days in a row, I can start the minute Shawn and Tessa leave for school and go straight through to dinner time. I am not on fire with the paint in the evening, so that fits with returning to mommy-dom at night. Shawn will stay away those afternoons. I’ve given him extra allowance for use at Boys Club, and he has activities at school. Round ball. He’s good.”

“So, if Tessa comes here with Sara after school, you can keep it up at home. Painting, right?”

“Yes. I know it’s asking a lot, since you have a new baby. I wouldn’t ask, except it looks like they really like each other.”

“Well,” said Elena, “it might actually make things easier for me, too. They put their heads together and talk for hours.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too. Righteous! Elena, this has to be a win for you, or it won’t work. Get the two of them to be mother’s helper for part of the time. Hell, they’re six, almost seven, now. I never had a mother’s helper, more’s the pity.”

“That’s already happening here. Sara really enjoys helping with Maria.”

That conversation was the first insight I had into the ways of things for artists. It scared me, but opened me, too. I could be on fire, right? Without going crazy, right? Meanwhile, time with Tess was so much fun, no darkness fell on the situation in my childhood mentality. And we liked being mother’s helpers. Mostly.

So, for five years, we ran around like sisters. It was great. We don’t know which one of us was smarter, or more athletic, or a better dancer. We only knew we loved each other, and never ran out of things to say or do.

 This does not mean I didn’t catch Tessa crying, sometimes. I would wait, stay silent and near, and then she would tell me the pain.

That’s all I can say right now. I am so sad.

 

When does the flight of joy versus world-sadness spiral down? When does the failed contests of the interior woman become a clinical condition?

Joyce got her arrangement. She painted. Sometimes she sold paintings, at galleries here and there in the L.A. basin. Inevitably, she interacted with other wild souls in the wild. She fell into self-medication, which was considered recreational by her friends. “Whatever it takes, to make art.” Flights into this world alternated with periods of longing for a “normal” life, amazingly. She would follow a doctor’s orders for a while – she was clinically diagnosed – and edged away from bad influences. But not for long.

Tessa’s eleventh birthday, on April 22, 2011, was a disaster. Broken promises. A mom not mentally present. Crying jags. Joyce faded to zero during the birthday dinner, walked into the living room and passed out immediately on the sofa. Tess hadn’t even opened one gift. No one had any joy over the cake, a hasty store-bought thing with the wrong icing.

 

After the April birthday party, Elena Tillinghast decided to engage Joyce Crandall woman to woman. Seriously engage. Almost immediately, she discovered that all Joyce could think about was getting divorced and moving away. Elena put the hammer down.

“This is going to be straight talk.”

“Go ahead, Elena, hit me. Warren’s already knocked me around with every possible thing, so I’m ready. Hit me.”

“He never physically hit you, right?”

“No. Never.”

“That was interesting phrasing, then.”

“I feel abused.”

“Joyce, tell me right now, honestly, otherwise it’s not fair to Warren. Did he ever, in any way, abuse you?”

“I feel abused.”

Elena waited.

“No.”

“Okay, then. Here goes. How can you abandon your children, Joyce?”

“I’m not doing them any good. I can’t put on the happy face anymore, and they are staring at a depressed mother all the time. Just a miserable, exhausted babysitter. Sometimes I have so much rage I’m worried I’ll strike them.”

“I thought you were depressed. What’s this rage?”

“Depression is a cover for rage. My therapist agrees with that.”

“Well, walk out into the desert and rage it out. Then be mom.”

“I tried it. Under the rage is frustration with your situation. If you can’t change that, the rage just builds up again. The doctor says I also have whacked-out brain chemistry, which exaggerates everything. Ups and downs, both.”

“Your family hasn’t stopped loving you. You’ll break Tessa’s heart if you leave. And what kind of example will she see?”

“I’ll break her heart if I stay, just more slowly. That’s worse.”

“She’s eleven, and Shawn is fourteen. You could stay at least until they graduate high school.”

“I’ve already put this off for five years, Elena, that would be seven more. You’re trying to talk logic, like Warren does. Everything in my insides is screaming to go away and not let them see me.”

“You still love Warren.”

“Where? Where do I?” She put her hand on her chest. “I don’t feel a thing. What happened? My God, how can a person turn to stone?”

Elena considered stopping. She let Joyce rotate through an emotional cycle. It would be horrible if Joyce felt nothing, but that is not the case. She was feeling pain.

 “I remember we were so in love,” Joyce said. “But it’s not a living memory. Just a note on a piece of paper. ‘Note to self: once you loved the love of your life.’ I can’t feel it anymore.”

“I still say you could find a way to manage until both children leave the nest.”

“I already put it off years. And teens? Time for them to lean on Dad.”

“You chose this, Joyce Crandall, you should stick to your promise,” said Elena. “Honor.”

Joyce went silent, looked away, then returned her eyes to her friend’s. “The person who made that promise is dead.”

“We have a little casita in back. You know it. Go back into therapy, back on medication, and come live with us for a while until this blackness goes into remission. Like a retreat. We’ll fix it up together. You can paint there. You could do that.”

“I’ve been on meds.”

“Try again. Your family wants you to. My family, too. We love you.”

“I want to go away.”

“That’s selfish, Joyce. You haven’t done everything you could to rekindle love.”

“This is the torment for an artist. To follow the passion, at any cost. My passion is to be free, be out of the heat of the desert, and to paint. To be with other artists. To fly to the sky. The power of this can’t be explained to ordinary people.”

Elena withheld her anger at that, even though it deserved a thrashing.

“Get stable, ease into normal life, before you know it, Tessa and Shawn will be gone. You’ll have room to be an artist. I know your heart will feel love for Warren again.”

They took a break, with that last sentence hanging in the air. Elena didn’t serve any alcohol, but did lay out a fine lunch. Afterwards, she noticed a softening in Joyce. An hour later, they made an agreement for steps Joyce would take and confirmation of them for Elena to witness. The casita idea took root.

“I wish I could cry,” Joyce said just before leaving.

“Plenty of time for that.”

By the end of April, Joyce had failed on all her promises for steps forward, although she seemed to not fall back into darker ways. It was a sullen cease-fire. But when a blazing summer sun asserted itself in the valley, she sank.

In July 2011, Joyce served divorce papers on Warren and moved to San Francisco.



Copyright John Caedan, 2016-2017
All Rights Reserved

Visit SaraIRL.com
Comments: john@SaraIRL.com