Love and Madness
by Patricia Obletz

PART I: RUNNING INTO MANIA

CHAPTER ONE

Monday morning, June 21, 1981, my parents said "See you soon" and faded into
the fluorescent light streaming by above me. Sounds separated and magnified as the gurney beneath me swiftly rolled through the halls. What was that shot the nurse gave me?
A quick, sickening swerve through a doorway, smack into dazzling hot watts.
Orange, blue, black and white circles exploded, vibrating and breaking up, forging new colors within their intersections, losing intensity then blinding me again, until masked faces towered above me, blocking untenable brilliance.
Somewhere in that gleaming chamber, a voice rasped: 100, 99. . . . Soft cozy clouds, getting whiter.
Voices intruded, indecipherable whispers strumming soft harmonies.
"It's over. The operation is over. You're all right." New harmony evaporated in
my cushioned blank space.
"Over . . . All right." The meaning of these words began to penetrate my
consciousness as I began to shed the layers of anesthesia. I sensed a presence
beside me, on both sides of me. My parents slowly emerged in the fog; I grew aware of my hands in the warmth of their hands and my sense of well-being solidified. They never failed to appear when I underwent surgery. I was their only unmarried child, the second of three, and the only one to require a lot of body work from infancy on. Too bad we couldn't send me back to the dealer to translate my lemons into standard issue reactions to the environment.
My parents wouldn't be with me right now had I not needed surgery.
I seemed to be floating on a cozy lazy stream.
"All right." The surgery was over! It wouldn't be long before I could launch my
six-week vacation from supervising the copy department of a manufacturer of beauty products. Time was about to be mine again for longer than two weeks for the first time in a decade. How fast ten years flew. And dragged. But soon I'd be free to wake up and paint, and paint last thing at night before sleep. More than enough time for my muse to return. How on earth could I think that a few hours of painting here and there could compete with deadlines at work. And now there would be more time with Jake, flirting and tanning and drinking at the pool across the street at the foot of my block.
Last year, just after 1980 arrived, friends introduced me to Jake. Unlike the men I'd been meeting, he never bored or annoyed me, nor did he ever express undue anger. Equally important was the allergy to marriage that we had in common. Jake was one of the few men who brought out the best in me. He listened, understood, teased, appreciated, advised, and he also, unlike the others save for my father, brother, and the first man with whom I could envision sharing the future, took responsibility for his words and deeds, always operating with the warmth of his positive, practical, and silly dear
humor, wide knowledge and quick wit.
Jake buried the raw wounds of loss that engulfed me whenever I remembered
that every painting I'd attempted in 1978 had turned into muddied lifeless colors and limp shapes. It was likely that having only a few hours a week to paint had undermined the artist in me. And further reduced my spiritual life. However, the beauty of my current surgical experience was the time it would give me to prove that, in the very near future, my fear of failure was right, or wrong. But first I had to get out of jail.
My parents were staying in my home and tonight they returned to it about forty
minutes ago. My limbs were heavy and my eyes burned until I closed them. Pain was a distant fire beyond my narcotic blanket. I remembered little of yesterday after the lights went out and the surgeon took my womb, although my sweet Daddy-O said that I'd surfaced from sleep every few hours to yell for another painkiller. I guess I was lucky I couldn't recall Monday because, this morning, I awoke to what felt like a bed of nails slamming into my inner walls from the inside. Shots dulled that shocking pain, and that afternoon, not only did I win my first card game of Hearts in decades, I shot the moon and won. Handing my father the Queen of Spades had made me giddy with delight. I remembered watching the backs of my parents as they crossed the threshold of my
hospital room, arm in arm. on their way out. Mother, my Mither, my Mithe, was leaning into my father's shoulder as if she needed support. A sudden chill raised bumps on my arms.
Waking up Wednesday must have taken me out of a dream because I thought I
was in my own bed. I stretched out my arms and legs and the core of me burned, pain sharp and raw returned me to my current post-op status. I repositioned myself and when the nurse appeared with a shot on a tray, I said that all I needed was aspirin. A bonafide miracle, given past major surgeries that had kept me on painkillers for at least two weeks.
It was amazing to discover that, just two days after the knife, I was filled with excited energy that forced me out of bed. I slid into my slippers and robe and was still tying my belt as I headed out to find my doctor, who, as if by my command, appeared on the other side of the nurse's station. Propelled by my exuberance, I trotted over and danced a jig around him, pleading, please, please, please let me go home. Maybe Saturday, he said.
I felt trapped and edgy. Short of knockout drops, I couldn't shut up, I couldn't relax. I had no idea how my parents could put up with me. I couldn't stand myself. I could, however, almost hear again the best advice that half a dozen psychologists had been able to give me, which was to keep taking Valium and having my doctor prescribe it for the pain of residual whiplash.
That injury from a car accident had been ten years ago. Back in 1971, I was
stuck in the hospital for ten days, tied to a bed with my head in a noose that had weights attached to it. Two months flat on my back was a fair price to pay for using the rest of that six-month medical leave to take life drawing and painting classes at the Art Students League. My leave this summer was considerably shorter, but I was in much better physical shape. I'd have no trouble taking full advantage of my new freedom.
The idea of painting again didn't arouse anxiety, which was a positive sign. And my dear Jake never laid grounds for anxiety.
But, just last week, at the office, my anxious drive had roared again when the
product managers locked horns with the creative team, in particular, with one of my writers. Anger was much easier to tolerate than anxiety, yet anger also wound me up, shorting my sleep of three or more hours. At least I was consistent, given that my age apparently had no bearing on the gears of my motor: overdrive and park. While home was with my parents, at least once during every dinner my crossed legs rapidly swung back and forth, kicking the tablecloth under the table, until my father inevitably would say, "Now Patchy, can't you turn your engine off?"
"Slow down, relax, stop thinking so much. You're too sensitive. Too thin.
Moderation is the key to health and happiness." I heard that mantra a lot when I lived with my parents. I still heard it, albeit less frequently, after moving to New York to study fashion illustration at Parsons School of Design. The kicker in that unexpected switch was the emergence of a wall, which I couldn't get around. I could not paint on command without my work turning into dead colors and wooden shapes whenever I tried to complete assignments. I solved that problem simply by switching from Parsons to the Art Students League, where passion and instruction conspired to bring out the best in me, my play with colors educated, but ruled by the instinct and impulse that my
spirit planted in a stream of my consciousness — which was why I never knew how my art evolved, and why I couldn't let strangers have them. For that reason, as well as my need to be surrounded by the best acts of my creativ acts of my heart and spirit.
When life got in the way thirteen years later, the only way I could avoid failure was to simply stop painting. For the last three years, the only tangible evidence of my spiritual nature was relegated to my journal entries, outlets for my thoughts about the things that sped through my mind, which kept me awake without the help of a little blue Valium ten milligram pill. I rarely resorted to Valium in the years I could paint.
I must have fallen in love with colors the moment I was able to discern them; joy filled me, consumed me once I began to play with them, no doubt. This is what I lost when I stowed my art supplies. I started taking art lessons when I was five, and riding lessons at six, and I found peace if not always joy every time I freed my passionate being in self-expression, winning my heart's desires in different ways. My partnerships with brave horses flying over fences filled me with electrified excitement.
My parents met my first two fervent desires when I was four and twelve,
respectively. Mother delivered my baby brother, Michael, and he put an end to my unceasing need to visit all the new young mothers in the neighborhood, ringing their bells, begging to see their babies. My second spell of all-consuming passion occurred when I was twelve and my parents broke beneath the pressure that Maggie and I applied: they bought us a horse. The love for horses that my sister and I shared had forged the only consistently positive alliance between Maggie and me. I'd joined her center of attention when she was fifteen months old and I suspected that she never forgave me for that. In fact, in an old black and white photograph, we were each sitting on the lap of a parent; Maggie's features were scrunched in a snarl; I must have been around
nine months old.
Maggie and I were fighting so hard and so frequently that, by the time we were
five and six, we went to a child psychiatrist. According to him, our battles were "at the extreme edge of normal. Separate them as much as possible," he'd advised. We moved to a new suburb and Maggie and I had our own rooms again. The bathroom between us was Switzerland and there we would plot new ways to persuade our parents to grant us permission to ride in horse shows out of town. Clearing barriers with a horse of my own had been more exciting than anything I'd been able to imagine when I was young. But then, I'd lived in a state of excited curiosity throughout most of my carefree years in the heart of unconditional love and financial freedom, eighteen years during which I rarely had an occasion to worry.
In fact, my latest worry had become past tense in record time, I realized happily.
Thursday morning's rude awakening at the hands of a harried nurse increased my
desire to go home and sleep until my body woke up. I couldn't wait until Saturday to escape from thermometers before dawn was a glimmer, and from needles and agonized cries in the night. Before I could get too riled up, my parents appeared.
I hugged them both, put on my robe, and began to pace the halls. My dad
tagged along by my side while my mother, my little Mither, my Mithe, who was three inches shorter than I, stayed in the room, curled up under a blanket on the other bed. I feared that she napped more than she read. Cancer, chemotherapy and congestive heart failure had stripped her of curves and the beauty of her face was marred by fatigue. I shuddered and as I reached out to take my father's arm, he strode ahead of me in the hall to make way for a gurney. When we were side by side again, I secured his hand and said, "Are you sure Mithe's cancer is gone? Is she really okay? She's really getting better?" I clung to his reassurances alone in the dark that night.
Saturday did arrive at last and my parents cabbed it to my condo with me, letting the meter run while we hugged and kissed goodby.
My good friend, the lovely and talented Miss Jess Olsen, greeted us at the
wrought iron gate and carried their luggage out to the taxi. My parents threw me a last wave before returning to Chicago's O'Hare airport and their flight home to Florida.
Jess patted my shoulder and said, "Now, now, we'll have none of that, your
parents both look great, they're healthy and happy, and you'll be painting again in no time. So off to bed with you and I'll be in there with some soup from Sammy's, and tea I actually brewed myself."
I must have nodded off because Jess jolted me back to current events when she
brought in the tray of steaming liquids. We chatted a little, and suddenly my body felt too heavy to move. "It's dreamland for me now, " I said as I nestled down under the covers while Jess pulled down the window shade.
It was about five-thirty when I woke up again and saw my fellow free spirit
entering my room. "Oh good, you're awake. Need any help?" she asked, then opened the curtains and lifted the shade. Not long after that, Jess and I ate dinner at opposite ends of my bed.
"Jessie, there must be something about you and trays that puts me to sleep," I
said. It wasn't quite nine when she drew the curtains at the window again before turning out my light and closing my door behind her.
It was great of Jess to stay with me during the two weeks the doc forbade me to
navigate stairs or lift anything heavier than a paperback book. We never ran out of subjects to explore, we learned from each other, and we inspired each other's sense of humor, rare features to find in close-quarter companions, in any companion anywhere.
It still wasn't yet nine this Saturday night when I glanced at the clock for the last time and slept until one o'clock the following day.
Friends stopped by around three, but by five, something within me growled and I
retreated to my bed.
The next day, that unpleasant something upgraded to heated sharp pain. When
I called, the doctor said I had gas and prescribed over-the-counter remedies. I was relieved by his prescription, but Jess was furious with him for treating me by phone — nothing less than malpractice, she fumed.
By Wednesday, my insides were on fire. Jess said, "Buddy, at the moment,
you're not looking your best. Let's just see what this thermometer says." One hundred and three, she exclaimed, worry darkening the blue of her eyes.
Jess phoned my doctor and told his answering service to have him call back
immediately. Forty odd minutes later, he rang and said he'd order antibiotics for me, what was the closest pharmacy, be sure to take this medicine as directed, continue with the o-t-c drugs.
Thursday night, five days after my triumphal return, sharp, wrenching hot pain
woke up my fear of death. I dragged myself into a sitting position, swung my legs over the side of the bed. I'd barely gotten my toes to the floor when pain stabbed and I fell back into my pillows.
I called, yelled, then screamed Jessie's name. She was a few feet down the hall, but oblivious to my frantic need. No doubt the sound of my air conditioner and her fan were all either of us could hear.
I fished in my night table drawer for my bottle of Valium, once again reaping a
side benefit of my old whiplash injury. While I waited for the pill to work, I thought about painting again. Nothing surpassed the pursuit and achievement of ultimate freedom when passion carried my creative spirit to canvas. Paper and canvas were the only truly safe places for unbridled passion. Not true. My passion now was safe with Jake.
Twenty minutes had passed since I took that ten-milligram Valium, but it hadn't
taken me beyond the fire inside me. I took another little blue.
I drifted into a doze until the inferno within woke me up. I took another Valium and dozed off again.
I lost count of how many times I'd surfaced and how many blues I'd swallowed,
but it was ten after four this time and I didn't dare take any more. I yelled for Jess again, but didn't keep it up. I felt too weak to fight fear alone, but I also knew that I didn't have any energy to squander on futility.
Childhood had been the most protected share of my existence, and sometimes,
my excitement then rivaled anything that was to happen to me again and again in so many different ways as the years marked my passage through life. I cupped my hands around my hurting belly and went back in memory to 1959, the year I conquered the biggest hurdle of my first sixteen years. In a Sunday horse show "high jump" class, my beautiful Irish thoroughbred Shelagh soared over a five-foot nine pile of poles stacked above a chicken coop. I'd been no help. I'd simply grabbed mane and given her her head as we'd sped toward the tower looming ever taller the closer we came. And then we sailed over it.
One other horse and rider went clear, which meant another jump-off.
The crew added another pair of gates to the "wings" of the jump, reminding me of the chutes that fed bulls and broncos into rodeo rings. This last pole took the wall up to six feet. Fear chilled me, but I wasn't about to chicken out, not with our trainer Sloan standing at the in-gate. When the ringmaster gave me the nod, my heart beat faster. I gathered my reins, signaled Shelagh to canter; we circled, warming up for the run to our next Mt. Everest.
Shelagh's ears strained forward, her stride lengthened, the rhythmic thunder of
her hooves sure as we sped down the chute. The least I could do was hang on, but I couldn't throw my heart over that jump — my heart was stuck in my throat. Was that a voice yelling STOP! wishful thinking? But then, yes, someone was yelling; it was my mother: "STOP her! Don't you dare let her go over that fence!" She seemed to be moving in slow motion, her heels sinking into the tanbark, which dusted the hem of her skirt. Shelagh responded so quickly to my signal to halt that I almost fell off.
My dear sweet mother, my little Mithe, was still easing my way when she came to
Chicago for my operation a week ago. Even though Jessie slept a few feet away, she might as well have gone to Florida with my parents.
The hell with it. I'd been "reasonable" long enough. I called my doctor and told his service that I was sure I was dying. It was close to five when I hung up the phone. I must have fallen asleep with my hand still on it because I hit my ear with it when its ring startled me awake again. Luckily, it also woke up Jess. With amazing rapidity, I went from immobility to clinging to the shoulders of the neighbors Jess enlisted to carry me in a chair downstairs and out to her car at the curb. Moments later, Jess and I were racing up Lake Shore Drive, everything a blur until I was in one of the hospital's large corner rooms overlooking Lincoln Park and a thin slice of Lake Michigan.
Jess read my medical chart. "You've got peritonitis," she said. Slamming a fist
into the tray table by my bed, she swore and said I should sue the doctor. After she unpacked my few things, she said she hated to run, but her Mr. Right, Stan, was on the steps of the Art Institute, "as we speak." She grinned before she disappeared through the doorway.
Alone in a forest of IV stands, tubes and machines, I conjured up past
Independence Days. Those velvet-sky nights had been the perfect background for
seats on a balcony, roof, beach or the deck of a ketch, sails stretched, looking up into shooting, arcing, brilliant lights cascading to earth, colorful, spectacular, ever-changing umbrellas —
Something just flashed through the picture window that faced the lake, lighting
the sky with this year's display of neon pinks, blues, whites and greens. Thudding booms and pops, or what sounded like them, pounded out the unmistakable rhythm of red glare and rockets bursting in air.
Ten days later, I was back home, this time with my tail between my legs. I still needed to sleep most of the time. Soon however, I'd be back on my feet with time enough for the artist in me to return, and energy enough to keep up with that passionate being. Solo communion with my heart and spirit, the best of me, sailing in spirituality.
It hurt that I hadn't known this peace in three years. I would, though. And soon. When I was a kid, my father played his favorite classical composers on his Steinway grand piano and I painted in my room while the rest of our family was involved with religion.
Visual and performing expressions and impressions of the human condition at the heart of creation: Art. Art was our religion, my Aunt Helen's, my father's youngest sibling, my father's, and mine. Drawing and painting life on paper and canvas took me out of my mind, my awareness consumed by passion that sated my heart and spirit. I couldn't wait for the return of this unbelievable thrill that electrified me with joy every time inspiration dropped me and I stepped back to meet my latest child, fathered in a different stream of my consciousness, freedom for the essence of me. The artist in me would be back soon.
Peritonitis also extended my free time through the end of Labor Day Weekend.


Critically Aclaimed Expressionist Art by Patricia Obletz (414) 444-4579