Finding Dad’s True Personality

Gina’s reflections on her dad remind me of Thanksgiving.

Finding Dad’s True Personality

Thinking about my dad brings up a range of emotions. In the latter years before my dad passed away, I saw a very gentle side to him. I think it was a function of his getting up in age but also because of the medication he was on. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disease rather late in life, well after my siblings and I had graduated from college and moved away. In my case, I was living in Kenya at the time completing my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I was on an overseas call with my mom whenI learned of his breakdown that included her having to flee from the house in the middle of the night on more than one occasion, only returning after she believed he had fallen asleep. Things deteriorated to the point where she was afraid to return to the house and was advised by family and friends to not return, as my dad had been saying delusional and threatening things about her to them. I don’t know the particulars but eventually they managed to talk my dad into signing himself into a hospital for evaluation. I believe that was also when he began treatment, which included medication and psychotherapy.

My Favorite Brother

Introducing Jako Borren.  This essay speaks powerfully to Jako’s struggle with understanding and acceptance of his brother who is mildly mentally challenged, while also suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder.  What I particularly love about this essay is that it poignantly and honestly depicts how the process of sharing has the power to heal, renew and stretch our relationships.

My Favorite Brother

My brother, Bor Jan, is my favorite brother — easy to say, since he is my only brother, but there is another reason why he is so wonderful. Not the fact that  he is mildly mentally challenged. True, it made him who he is, but it is not all who he is. And if you first meet him, you could not even tell that he is mildly mentally challenged. It is difficult to describe. Perhaps it’s simply a lower IQ, but that does not do him justice, since he is so talented in many ways.  Topography for example — a subject that most of us struggle with.   Ask my brother the capital of Timbuktu and he will know. Astronomy is another topic that he is very familiar with. Besides that, he does great at work, people like him a lot, and he has many friends. What makes him really such an amazing person, is the fact that he is one of the most authentic, open, and honest people I know. That’s why I am so fond him and proud that he is my brother.

From Another World, I Understood

I’m pleased to share our second submission – a poem written by K. Michelle Sellers.

 From Another World, I Understood

It must be lonely in there
You say green
I say blue
Pick up the pieces of the fragmented mind
Can’t decode to unscramble

We speak, you speak of little words as they say
a lot—
wishing to be understood
wishing to be loved

Bee’s Nest

Starting today, Familiar Minds will feature weekly a submission from the Call for Abstracts.  Some writers have chosen to remain anonymous or by first name while others have chosen to share their identity.  In her planned essay, Bethany plans to explore the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship in the face of mental illness, and the healing she continues to find in the resilience, humor and love of her extended southern family.  Here’s a preview.

Bee’s Nest

Someone asked me recently what year my mother died and I said I didn’t remember.  I felt embarrassed.  Most people, especially in the South,  remember important anniversary dates like birth and death.  “I know exactly when Aunt Mabel died,” they say.  “It was January two, nineteen fifty,  at four-thirty in the afternoon, right after Oklahoma beat the crap out of LSU  in the Sugar Bowl.  Yes ma’am, I remember it clear as moonshine.  Damn near the saddest day of my life.” They suck their teeth and gaze at the horizon as if watching a train disappear to the north, and you might not be sure whether losing Aunt Mabel or losing the game was the heartbreaking thing.