Perspective

My son is back on his meds. It’s been about a week and I can tell the difference. He can talk again. He printed out the NFL pre-season schedule. He is keeping track of the scores. He told me about the Las Vegas Rams game. News to me. I didn’t know they left Cali. Football means absolutely nothing to me, but he likes it. He used to watch the Broncos with his grandma. She’d fill him up with taquitos and homemade lasagna. Today he even went to a restaurant with me and ordered his own food like a person. He is clean and shaved and you wouldn’t know him as the skinny wild eyed man on a missing person’s flyer from a week ago. I know the voices haven’t disappeared, but the meds make them less obnoxious. It’s not like things are perfect, but I’m choosing to look at the bright shit.

I spent a lot of time at the levee this weekend. I got the fish done. Mostly. There are a few things I still need to do to it. The eye is too small. Up close it looks great, but this is a piece of art that no one really sees up close, so everything needs to be exaggerated and bold. I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. I was going to do the fly next, but realized that maybe I should do the sky first. So I’ll probably do the sky. I’d love to work in the morning before school, but I just don’t see how to get to the site, paint, and get back to school before the kids walk in the door. The evenings are too hot. The heat collects on that concrete all day. The two times I tried to paint in the afternoon, the waves of heat made me queasy and shaky. I can’t hang on a rope feeling like I’m going to pass out. What would happen if I passed out? Would the ropes hold me in place till I came to? I definitely don’t want to find out, so I stay off the wall in the heat.

Every time I finish painting for the day, I ride my bike across the river and take a picture. It’s such a different perspective from a distance, so today, I took my camera down on the wall and took some up close shots. It makes me nervous to take my phone down on the wall. I don’t want to drop it in the river, although, losing my keys in the river would definitely be worse. They fell in the paint bucket today. Of course they did, because I never can do anything without having a key issue. You should see me open the gate to the levee. The chain weighs like fifty pounds and I have to use my whole body to keep the tension off to turn the combo numbers. I hope to God there is no video camera recording my struggles with that gate. I don’t mind writing about my issues, but filming them is an entirely different thing.

School started this week and my brother and his family went back to Bahrain for another year. To be honest, I’m going through the motions of doing what I’m supposed to do. I greet kids, high five them, put out their supplies, clean up the paints, try to be upbeat and cheerful. That’s the perspective I’m going for–freaking fantastic. Honestly, I feel a little shell shocked. I guess it’s not that different than watching Shayne start the meds again–a facade I’d so like to believe is real. Except, my faith in that reality is so shattered, that I don’t know if repair is possible.

I guess I might be good at perspective with a paint brush, but I’m still working on figuring out how it works in life.