Tomorrow I am going to Dog Island with my husband. Jessie and Vergil are there now, having been there since last Saturday. Jessie has called me several times to ask a few questions such as:
1. Where is Oyster Radio on the dial, and
2. How do you make barbecued shrimp?
I wasn't sure about Oyster Radio but I pointed her in the direction of the recipe for barbecued shrimp which I wrote out one night and put on the side of the refrigerator. That shrimp is so good that the recipe had to be written down. It is the sort of dish that makes your chin shiny with butter and oil, and your eyes shiny with delight and satisfaction.
Ah. Dog Island.
For those of you who do not know, Dog Island is a small barrier island off the coast here on the Gulf and there is no bridge to it so you can access it only by boat or small plane or, I suppose, by swimming if you don't mind the 2 1/2 miles of distance. I don't know anyone who ever swum it but I suppose it could be done.
There is nothing on the island but a few houses, a trash depot, a marina and lots of trees and beaches and swamp and nature as Florida has created it. Birds and raccoons, no squirrels. Gators. I hear there was a bear there last year and I suppose he did swim. There is just no other way he could have gotten there because I seriously doubt that a bear could stowaway without someone knowing it. There are snakes and frogs and mosquitoes and every sort of biting fly including the famous no-seeum which is a winged set of teeth, almost microscopic, which comes out at sunset.
And oh, the sunsets.
We have a small house there that we share with a friend and it is funky and plain and has everything you'd need but of course you have to bring water to drink and food and alcohol and books and laundry detergent and light bulbs and all the things which sustain you which you might be able to buy at a store but of course there is no store on Dog Island or restaurant or gas station so you bring whatever you need. It's generally a huge hassle to get ready to go which is one of the reasons I don't go there very often but the main reason is the breakdown I had there three years ago almost and it was so bad that I think I have PTSD and I'm not kidding.
Oh. It's a long story. I won't tell the whole thing here. But in defiance of all common sense I decided that the best cure for the strange and frightening symptoms of depression and panic I was suffering would best be treated by a week at the island by myself. I suppose I thought that walking and doing yoga and breathing and sleeping and eating and resting would get rid of those nasty feelings but oh, my babies, I was SO wrong.
It was SO bad.
Mr. Moon had to come and save me. And then I had to go get serious medication.
Well.
Anyway, I have not been back to the island but a few times since then and that's a waste and a sorrow, especially to my husband. But the older I get, the more I know I can only do what I can do and yes, it is good to stretch myself and not be a total pussy ass wimp but...
And but, Jessie and Vergil are there and Jessie wants her mama and her daddy to come out and spend time with them there, that place she has loved since she was a wee tot and so, I am going. We are going to have to borrow a boat because our boat engine is blown, no recovery there. And I need to go grocery shopping and do all the things that need to be done before one goes to Dog Island and I am, to say the least, apprehensive.
Yes. I am on serious medication now but it doesn't make everything better all the time. I still struggle and dammit, I hate that.
But here's another thing- I am going to this nurse practitioner you know, and she has prescribed bio-identical hormones for me, a personal mixture which must be made up by specially trained pharmacists and I'm going to go pick those up today and I wonder if they'll help. I have resisted taking any sort of hormones in the past, believing as I do that Mother Nature will work most things out in the end, especially such naturally occurring passages as menopause and I told the NP this.
She told me that yes, sometimes, but that really, Mother Nature doesn't give a shit about post-menopausal women. (She didn't use that exact phrase but you know what I mean.) That once we women have had our babies, we can go to crazy-hell for all Mother Nature cares. And I have often noted the point that if I had lived even a hundred years ago, I would have died in childbirth with my tenth baby and never had to worry about menopause.
I was discussing this with a friend and she gave me a term I'd never heard before.
It was this:
Match, hatch, dispatch.
Perfect.
I have matched and I have hatched and eventually I will dispatch and there you go. My job here, as outlined by Mother Nature, is essentially done and I accept that. But I am not dispatching quite yet. As far as I know.
So, in order to make this last part of my life the best it can be, I am going to try these yam and soy hormones and I am also taking herbs to support my adrenals and as cynical as I am about all of this stuff, I have been to the land of I-cannot-live-here and if I can take a drug called Lexapro, why shouldn't I try something called a bio-identical?
Who knows? Perhaps these herbs and plant thingees can make me feel good enough that I won't need the Lexapro? One never knows.
And so this morning I am sitting here simmering in a soup of doubt and slight panic at the idea of going to the island where I sat three years ago and contemplated the razor blades in their clever paper packages and I have so much to do and I will not have internet on the island and that in and of itself stresses me the fuck out.
I have magazines and books and oh yes, vodka, though. And we'll play cards and take walks and although it's too early in the year to swim we will be able to look at the water and perhaps see dolphins and we'll make delicious foods to eat and who knows? Maybe we shall dance. There has definitely been dancing at Dog Island before.
The ospreys will be nesting and we shall hear the whistles of the males as they hunt and the tiny peeps of the small terns as they run back and forth in the tide and the chip-chip-chips of the cardinals as they come into the feeder and the bird bath and Mother Nature may not give a shit about me but she dances pretty fancy on Dog Island and at night we'll be able to hear the crashing of the waves on the Gulf if there are waves and the moon shall rise, a sharp silver smile over the bay and the stars, if it is clear, will poke holes in the dark velvet sky and hopefully, I will be at some sort of peace, knowing that I have indeed matched and hatched and that my match is still here with me to hold me and one of my hatchlings will be there to make me laugh and feelings are only feelings and will not dispatch me.
All right. Enough. Things to do. Places to go. Bio-identicals to pick-up. Lists to make. People to see. A journey to be undertaken. A short one, in some regards, but a journey nonetheless.
And when I get back, the dogwoods will be in full bloom, I will get Owen again and perhaps the bamboo will be ready to kick and oh, the fun we will have doing that!
I cannot possibly dispatch quite yet as I have this grandson who needs me. So- take that, Mother Nature! You get most things right but Lord, you have been unkind to the grandmother in some ways and yet, you have given me the greatest gifts of my life, too, so I can't be that angry at you.
Work with me here. As I always think when I contemplate the rosary, "Mother Nature, Love me, for I have not sinned."
Not really. I have done my job and will continue to do so and to that end, I will try these melt-under-your-tongue hormones, these herbs, and make the crossing over the bay to the little house where a poltergeist lives and teases, where my daughter and her boyfriend are waiting, where the sun sets in glory, where I have known both great peace and great fear and where I will try it again and this time, perhaps, get it right.
