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I finished the painting this weekend. I thought I was done on Saturday, but then realized that I hadn’t signed my name. And somebody told me the trout needed spots. I thought it over and went to the levee one more time.

When I got there, there was a woman struggling with the lock. I got out of my truck and showed her the trick to lifting the weight off the chain. It sort of made me laugh to myself because the first time I had to deal with the lock, I was near tears. It turned out that she was starting to prime the square right next to mine. Her first day and my last day. I was super glad to be on the other end of the job, than where she was.

I repainted the fisherman because he had a few different shades on him from the purple rain fiasco; I touched up some of the outline around the fish, and I added some spots. I tried to add the number of spots in my dad’s name, my three uncles who were (or are) fisherman, my cousin, and my grandpa, but I don’t think I got the right number because it didn’t look right to me, so I had to add a few more spots, but the spots are for them. Then I put on my fishing vest with the zippers, zipped in my cell phone and repelled to the bottom of the mural and signed my initials and then took a few photos.

When I rode my bike around to take pictures, I went the long way so I could see the mile of murals. There are about twenty paintings now, a lot more than when Maria and I first came upon them in June. I got to mine and took a couple of photos and then rode across the footbridge and up to my truck. Then I didn’t know what to do. Usually, I leave then. But it felt wrong to me. I finished this great big project and what? Just drive away? So I sat at the top and enjoyed being done.

I’ve been trying to figure out what comes next in my life. Not like next in what project I’m going to do, but next in my life. Like act two. I’ve been doing some reflecting on the “why.” I always thought writing was my jam, but I’m wondering about that more and more. Writing is like my soul, my breath. Art is like my playground, my renewal. This mural was one of the hardest things I have ever done, mostly because of the physical aspect of it, but also because of the size. It made me realize that my art is still growing and I’m still learning and changing and I have no idea where that will take me.

In some ways, getting up in the dark and driving to the levee, putting on my gear, and descending a concrete wall has given me confidence and purpose in ways that I didn’t have before. Does that mean I want to do it again? I don’t know. For now I am going to celebrate that it’s finished and trust that I’m on the path to the next leg of the journey.

Today when I went to the levee, I felt like it had been weeks since I’d last been there, even though it was only four days ago. My work week was so stressful that it felt like a month instead of three days and I’ve been kinda sick and have come home with a headache everyday. I’ve barely slept because I can’t stop thinking about stupid shit that I can’t really do anything about. I really, really hoped that painting would work its magic and bring me some peace. So early this morning, I got up in the dark and got my stuff ready to go to the river. I saw the sun rise in a spectacular orange pink glow and sat for a moment just taking in the cool morning air.

The painting drops twenty-four feet from the top of the levee. I’m working on painting on the lower half of the mural. I’m a lot closer to the river and I’ve become accustomed to the sounds of the water. Fish rise and splash. Geese are silent accept when they take off in flight or come in to land. Ducks quack as they swim. The flyfishermen talk to each other and sometimes to me. I’ve met Greg and Anthony and Joe. They catch fish across from me and say the mural is an inspiration. Today though, I was alone. Sometimes I hear shouting and I look up and it’s always some guy crossing Fourth Street Bridge on foot ranting to himself. I can’t tell from where I am his age or his appearance, but it makes me think of my son and I wonder if Shayne yells and talks to himself when he goes on his walks and runs. Things are better with him, but also worse in ways I hate even thinking about.

I was nervous about painting the river. To be honest, I’ve been regretting the blue. The river in reality looks more green. I realize that water is largely a reflection of what is around it and in it. But I started off with blue and if I change it now, I’d have to redo everything. And there is no way that’s happening. There is a woman painting a fantasy landscape close to my mural. I have watched her change her scene seven or eight times. I keep thinking, “Oh my gosh, how is she affording to waste so much paint.” I also watched her drop a bucket of spray paint into the river. She chased after the bucket and recovered some of the cans, but it made me realize how ultra careful I have been, both with my supplies and my decisions.

Last weekend when I was working on the splash up from the fish, I walked across the footbridge to the other side of the river to make sure it looked right. The first two times I walked across, I didn’t remove my harness and it rubbed on my thigh, leaving a rope burn. When I started out on the third time, I realized my leg was bleeding, so I took off the harness and realized that I needed to stop painting for the day. Rope burns on the levee. Is that badass or crazy?

I wanted to get most of the river done today, but it just got too hot. I was wrapping up my last strokes when I heard someone yell, “That’s the best one yet!” I didn’t turn around because I didn’t register that it was directed at me, until I heard “Hey, painter woman!” I stood up and looked across the river. A guy on a bike said, “You’re doing a great job!” I don’t know if it’s the best mural. There are some seriously cool paintings, but I’m liking how it’s turning out. I like the darkness of the river, and I love how it is setting off the fish.

People keep asking me if I’m done, or when I’ll be done, or if there is a time I will just have to call it done and walk away. I don’t know the answer. I started with a grid, but that’s not my usual process. I usually just eyeball everything, and if I mess up, I redo it. I started with the fisherguy and I made a paper stencil using my grid system and taped it on the wall and traced around it. I eyeballed everything else. The levee looks flat, but the cement actually has grooves and bulges and you can feel the curves under your hands and feet, it changes the dimensions of the painting just enough, that a grid is helpful, but not perfect. I think my guy is too small and jenky and I am going to redo him. And I need to lighten the sky on the left, so it matches the sky on the right. And I haven’t done the fly or the fishing line yet. However, I’m close to finished. I have enough paint and as long as nothing tragic happens and I don’t drop my supplies in the river, I’ll be in good shape.

Here’s the thing though. This mural helped me get through Shayne’s last mental health crises, my cousin’s death, and my sadness at my family returning to the Middle East. Even if my work week is stressful and challenging, I know the levee is waiting and everything will look better after a few hours of painting. I guess this mural is feeding my soul. Not sure when I got to be so “woo woo,” but I almost don’t want to be done. For some reason, I keep thinking about driving in the truck places with my father as a child. He always listened to “Radio Mexicana.” I loved watching my aunts and uncles dancing at weddings and parties and going to watch the dancers at Fiesta Day at the fair. I have this vision of Folklorico dancers under an adobe archway, something with rich, warm sun colors. Or maybe a harvest scene with chili or peaches. Something new that I’ve never painted before, but something that honors my heritage, my family, and my community.

But I am not going to get too ahead of myself. I’ll finish this and then see what comes next.

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.

My son first told me about the voices in 2013. We were sitting in a Starbucks in Santa Barbara. I was trying to understand why he dropped out of college and why he was living on the street. When he mentioned hearing voices, everything just fell away. We left the coffee shop and started walking down one of those streets that have all the fun t-shirt shops and high end mall stores and yummy bistros and interesting bars and on the corner was a man screaming and screaming and beating his head against the sidewalk. There were police and an ambulance and they were trying to get him to stop hurting himself. It took a bunch of big, burly guys to pull the man up and get him sitting in the back of the patrol car. His face was bleeding everywhere and everyone on the sidewalk was watching like it was an attraction at the zoo. I wondered where his family was. And I had this uneasy feeling that was how my son was going to end up. I vowed that would never happen if I could help it.

Flash forward eight years. I no longer doubt the voices. I don’t hear them, but I know them. I know ER’s and psych wards, and trauma centers. I know delusions and paranoia, and conspiracies and mind control. I know all the first generation psychotropic drugs. I know the second generation drugs too. I know about EST; serotonin, dopamine and what the brain looks like with schizophrenia. I know the names of the drugs and their side effects; I know all the drugs that my son has rejected and why. I know the signs of impending truama. I know when the paranoia takes over and all of a sudden crazy shit starts to happen. Stephen King wants to meet him in Taco Bell. Trump is coming to dinner. The neighbor’s dog is threatening to kill him. I am an imposter looking to steal his soul. On and on. Finally, he flees. Outside is safe. He can run. He can hide. He can be “safe.” Except every damn time he flees without money, without ID, without anything. Each time is a little more horrific than the last. Each time seems more extreme, more dangerous. Each time the build up is quicker and the explosion is bigger.

This time he called 911 and reported that he was being raped. I guess I was raping him. I was the only one at home. Then he took off in his car. He dumped his cell phone in a remote wilderness area and I started imagining the worst. I felt like I was caught between two guns. Maybe I would never know what happened to him. I tried to imagine what it would be like to go the rest of my life like that. It didn’t even make sense. Or I’d find him and bring him back and we’d go through all the steps to make him healthy again. For what? So we can do this dance again in three days, or three months, or three years? What kind of life is that? For him and for me.

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of nights with my cousin, Jackie. She had this poster in her room that read–“If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” I kept thinking about that, even though I posted a flyer and called the sheriff when my brother thought he found a cell phone signal. I went out to the levee and painted and started emotionally preparing myself to say goodbye to my son.

Turns out that after Shayne dumped his phone, he drove south to Saguache and ran out of gas. I’m not sure how long he was there, but a lady that worked at the gas station saw him and called the number on the flyer. He stole a sandwich and a drink and she had him on the surveillance camera. I was so mad. I thought he was dead and he was stealing sandwiches. I didn’t really want to go get him, but a girlfriend who was checking on me said that I needed to. She drove.

He was in Saguache. Sitting in his car at the park, all skinny and dirty. I knocked on his window and he opened the door and said, “How mad are you?” Then he said, “How did you find me? I thought you forgot about me.” Then he said, “I kinda hoped you would forget about me and live a happy life.”

I feel like I have been in the X Games of Emotions. And honestly, I’m pretty traumatized and not sure I am ok. I don’t know what to think, feel, say, or do. I’d love to believe that things will be different. He is back on his medicine. He is back to counseling. He is back to talking a good game about fixing everything. I guess I’m not mad anymore, but I don’t have any hope either. There will be a next time. That’s how this dance goes. But next time, there will be no flyer, no search party, no more bringing him home. Even if it kills me, I will say–Vaya con Dios, baby boy. And mean it.

I spent the day on the levee. I am out of red paint. But at least that’s a problem I can fix.

I lost Shayne once at the grocery store. He was seven. I remember pushing the cart through produce, then reaching the meat section and he had vanished. I stopped and looked behind me, peered around the next aisle, then immediately went hot and cold and sick. Did someone grab him? Would I ever see him again? I left my cart and sprinted to the front of the store and he was bent over working on tying his shoe. He didn’t know he was “lost.” I remember picking him up and squeezing him, even though he was way to “cool” to be manhandled like that in public.

Schizophrenia is a perceptual disorder; it’s like turning off the filter in your brain for sensory input. Like right now typing this, I’m aware of the feel of the keyboard under my fingers, the sound of the swamp cooler (which by the way, I think is not working correctly), and I can taste the mint of the toothpaste I used before going to bed last night. I’m aware of the letters and words before they appear on the page; I know a semicolon is an appropriate punctuation mark in this sentence, but I could have also made two sentences. I am sure there is other input my brain is registering, like the feel of the sheets and a cricket chirping, but some of those signals are filtered out as non important because they aren’t needed to complete the task at hand. Shayne’s brain can’t turn off the signals coming at him. All sensory details are equally important. And his inside running dialogue, isn’t his conscience, it’s like commands from someone or many people all at the same time. I explained it once to a little kid and she said, “It’s like his inside voice doesn’t have manners.” Yeah, that. In addition, my son’s memory is eroding. Not long ago I asked him make me a quesadilla. A little while later he emerged from the kitchen eating a quesadilla. I said, “Oh, you made one for yourself first.” He rolled his eyes at himself and said, “I couldn’t figure out why I was making this, I’m not hungry.”

So even though he is twenty-eight, this week has been like living that moment in the grocery store, only a million times magnified. I knew which direction he went in. I knew about how much gas he had. I knew about how much money he had. I knew the voices were probably getting louder and meaner. I knew that he was probably terrified of police or anyone in a uniform. I knew he would seek a place where there was no one. I knew he wasn’t going to ask for help. I knew that getting lost was a scenario that would kill him.

I was hesitant to put a flyer up; historically, they haven’t been all that helpful. Everyone in the world starts reporting sightings. And in this case, I was also afraid that the flyer would make my terror that something had happened to him more real. I could barely look at the pictures of him on my phone, let alone come up with the words to put on the page. I had my own little sensory overload. A friend helped me out though and after a conversation with the police, I realized that if I was going to find my son, I needed my village. It’s not that police are uncooperative; they took down the information that my son was missing. But they weren’t looking for him. He is twenty-eight and left home of his freewill and I’m being overreactive. They didn’t fully appreciate how acutely ill my son is.

The flyer quickly spread over social media. The flood of support is overwhelming. Even more kind and generous and full love of love than I have come to expect from my family and friends. But my brother is the one that probably picked up the most solid clue on a lead. He came over and sat down with Shayne’s computer and somehow was able to search for his phone through the apple id. He came up with a map of deep green and single pulsating red dot. He explained to me how the dot wasn’t Shayne, but a cell tower and Shayne could be anywhere within range of that tower. The tower is in the middle of the forest at edge of three counties, a place with rugged mountains, sparse roads and no amenities. A search was launched.

I have only received one update. His car hasn’t been found. But the beacon of the light on the map was like turning on the light switch to hope for me. There is water in the area. And maybe the trees have sheltered him from the heat. I know he could still be hurt, or maybe not even alive, but maybe he is okay. And as much as I want to get in my old, battered Toyota and tear up there, I am hoping that the people who search and save lives know their job and will find him.

I am so very grateful for the love and support of my family and friends. I am especially grateful to my brother. I am sorry that I made him eat dog food when he was a kid. I still don’t know how this will end, but I am hoping for peace.

I didn’t paint on Thursday. I got out to the levee and realized that I had left the locking carabiner in my garage. I had another carabiner, but it didn’t lock and there is no way I was stepping an inch on that incline without all the safety equipment. And in a way, I knew I really should be at home because my son was falling apart.

In the early years of Shayne’s illness, I thought if we just found the right medicine, he could be functional. At some point my thinking shifted to, if he would just take the medicine, he could be better. I have spent a lot of time trying to get to get Shayne to take his meds consistently. While I haven’t given up or lost hope, for the sake of my own mental health, at some point I quit fighting, cajoling, reminding, or debating over the meds. In other words, I stopped being a mom about the medicine and let him make the choice. His choice is to barely take it at all.

I have a high tolerance for crazy. I couldn’t have survived all these years as a teacher if I didn’t. Shayne’s behavior doesn’t bother me that much. He mostly keeps to himself, writes crazy stuff in his journal, watches Batman, eats Taco Bell and sleeps a lot. But his crazy is like watching a slo mo video of a glass of grape juice falling. Suddenly somehow it’s not a video and the juice is splashing you in the face. I feel like a weather magician sometimes. I can see the patterns in his crazy, but riffles and shifts in the wind can change the direction. Sometimes I can even stop the storm, by getting him back on his meds, but this time Shayne crossed the line from crazy to out of control. And I didn’t get in front of it in time and I couldn’t pull it back.

Every single time Shayne has a psychotic break, I think, it can’t get worse than this. But then it is. This time his words and actions are things I wouldn’t dream of putting on paper, but it culminated with him making a 911 call and reporting that he was being raped at our address. Then he got in his car and drove away. I dealt with the police. We made our report. Then I fell asleep. I know that’s a weird reaction, but sometimes the only way to cope with the madness is for my brain to take a little break. When I woke up, it was dark and I had no word from Shayne, the police, the hospital. Somehow not knowing is the worse than anything else.

I got up Friday morning and drove out to the levee before it was light. Watching the sun come up on the prairie is miraculous. It’s not orange, or pink, or red, but all those colors at once. I mixed up my color for fisherman and climbed down the wall. I just painted my fisherman and his long reedy pole. It looks so tiny, but in perspective, he is just in the background. Then I went out to a paint recycle center and met a guy even more covered with paint than I was. He showed me around and we couldn’t find any gold or neon green, I guess people aren’t using those colors in abundance, so I was forced to buy a gallon of new paint from a paint store. I did get a discount though and the salesgirl was super nice. Then I went home. Shayne hadn’t been there.

I sat on the porch until late in the evening wondering where he was sleeping. Wondering if he’d eaten anything. His birthday is today. I half expected he’d be in his bed when I got up this morning. I’ve been holding out hope that he will come home for cake and we can work on getting him some help. But he isn’t, so I guess I’ll go out to the levee and start painting the biggest trout on record. Right now, I am so grateful for my mural. It’s really the only thing getting me through.

The levee is beautiful at dawn; the sky is pink and river is picking up shadows of light and the water birds are making their calls. There is a big nest of osprey crowded with chicks learning to fish. They hang so still in the air before plummeting to the water and scooping out a trout. Now that I am not terrified of falling to my death, I am soaking in the surroundings.

I finished the primer today. Because the numbers fascinate me, I will share them. I painted thirty-six feet across and twenty-four feet down on six twelve by twelve slabs of concrete using three gallons of baby bow blue tinted primer. It was supposed to be sky blue, but the sky is darker. But it matches the shade of blue right next to the mountains. Or maybe the blue on a cloudy day. Over all it looks good, ready for art to happen.

I have been really thinking the next steps through. I don’t want to waste money by making mistakes and starting over. I don’t want to drop brushes in the river. I typically work with a lot of colors at once and how the hell do I do that now? Should I get a tool belt to put the paint in the pockets? Do I sketch in the design first? Do I make stencils? How much paint will I need? I would have some of the questions anyway, but painting on ropes changes how I paint. Everything has to be more deliberate and thought out. I am definitely not super awesome at being a planning kind of person, but I am getting there. On Monday, I was pretty sure that I was going to fall down the wall and die. Tomorrow I am ready to paint my mural. Thanks for the boatloads of support and courage. Let’s get the party started!!!!!