The Faint Sound of Oars

It was a Monday morning, one buffeted by high winds and cold temperatures. Before breakfast, I opened my laptop with an audible Ugh. Although I have become accustomed to vetting the headlines before subjecting myself to yet another troubling news story, I don’t always follow this practice—especially when I come across pieces that tackle discouraging issues about the mental health of Americans across our homeland.

 Since closing my clinical psychology practice nearly four years ago, my concern about, and commitment to, important mental health initiatives has remained strong, particularly suicide prevention and the treatment of PTSD (post-traumatic stress). Now, however, even a quick scan of the article I’d called up on my screen demonstrated that one expression of distress wasn’t enough. Without a doubt, this day had been spoiled before it had even begun: there, in bold type, was an urgent warning by a coalition of experts in pediatric health. Nevertheless, and despite my desire to shut my computer down, I continued to read the report.

 The authors of the article included leaders from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and other respected organizations, all of which provide health services to children. They  declared a mental health crisis so dire that it had reached the status of a national emergency.

 Their message did not surprise me, but chilled me nevertheless. Countless times in the last decade––long before I’d retired––my colleagues and I had expressed our concern as we participated on panels, or during consultations, over the increasing number of stressed kids we were seeing: children and teens presenting with more and more clinical depression and serious anxiety disorders. How could it be even remotely possible for these conditions to have improved since the pandemic had marched up our streets?

The coalition’s declaration, directed at government policymakers and advocates for children and adolescents, was clearly meant as a call to action, but in that moment, I couldn’t rally. Too many are suffering and no one seems to care. I sighed. And too few providers, most of whom are overwhelmed, especially those clinicians trained to work with children. I pressed the power button and my computer screen went black. 

An hour or so later, after showering, I clomped up the stairs into my attic to search for an important document I’d misplaced a long time ago. I was irritable, still in a funk, unable to imagine any viable solution to the mental health services disaster. A quiet voice in my head challenged me: And what exactly are you doing to help? Indeed, there I stood in the dusty space, staring at the biggest problem I would face all day: a tower of storage boxes that might hold an insurance policy which, if unearthed and promptly submitted to the appropriate entity, meant I would receive a chunk of money I hadn’t even remembered was owed me.

Finally, just as I was about to declare my treasure hunt fruitless, I came across a yellowed sheet of typescript, and my perspective shifted once more. What I’d discovered was not the document for which I’d been rummaging, but a copy of a provocative poem that had been given to me by my former therapist; she was a wise and compassionate woman who had guided me through a long, very black stretch that had begun after my own teen–––who had already been working with another very fine psychotherapist for quite some time––became actively suicidal.

My relationship with my girl had always been complex. The natural process every mother and daughter undergo as they cut the cords of an intimacy that exists from birth was complicated by my own early history. My own childhood had been fraught with tension and anxiety and I’d never had a model for a healthy bond between a Mom and her emerging adult. Along with my post-traumatic stress, there had been a lot to figure out, including whether in my fear of losing my daughter, I had lost sight of where the boundaries between us belonged. Or worse: if I had only fooled myself into believing that I’d ever gotten this matter of boundaries right.  

The poem was “A Brief for the Defense,” one that first appeared in Jack Gilbert’s Refusing Heaven, a collection he’d published in 2005. As I angled the page closer to the lightbulb hanging from a rafter, I smiled: this poem had touched me on a very deep level when I first encountered it following my daughter’s breakdown during those years. What were the chances of rediscovering this gem on the very day that I was fretting about the dearth of good therapists and the national mental health nightmare?

Gilbert’s verse was an entreaty to push beyond the world’s sorrows and injustices and pull close to its wonders and joys, to risk delight even in a world dominated by darkness. I leaned against a metal shelving unit stuffed with luggage and read it again, being moved swiftly back to another time in my life:

“Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well.

The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future…

smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world…  

We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.”

An image of my former therapist, sitting quietly in her consultation room chair and observing me as I read, now surfaced in my mind. At that time, after I had perused the poem slowly once and then again, I’d looked over at her and recognized the softness in her expression.

 So are you willing to risk it? she asked quietly. I recalled answering initially that I didn’t know, while crying without stopping—as intuition underscored the part of the poem she was underlining for me on that troubled day: could I take the risk of loving when loss was so near?

Whether I eventually said yes that afternoon escapes me, although I suspect I did not. Consolidation of new ideas and the concomitant revision in our thinking takes time, after all. Sometimes many years pass before an insight is fully absorbed––as my swing of emotions on this particular Monday in autumn demonstrated.

 I know now, with clarity, that my therapist was asking me to come to grips with the way Gilbert’s words prompt each of us to consider how we must hold room for joy in the midst of sadness and grief, even if it is risky to do so. It had been risky to hope that my daughter would not sink once again into a depression so deep that she would want to end her life, and to trust her again; it had been risky to find joy in life itself, after all that had transpired.  

 And so I then suspended my mission: the financial document important only moments before no longer mattered. Reaching for the cord that spilled light into the room, I tucked the poem into the pocket of my jeans and offered a prayer for all those children and teens impacted by our current mental health crisis.

It is likely that I will need to keep this poem close, closer than my pocket––as a reminder to push past my sorrow and anger and to find delight in each day. To do so without losing compassion for those both near and far who are suffering. And, I hope, to find additional ways to help those who are deprived.

During this difficult time, when it is so easy to slip into hopelessness, I remind myself that all risks are not equal. How can I create a solution for myself that warrants the hazards? How can any of us? We must take on the risks and make them count—for ourselves as well as for others.

Today, I am vowing to redouble my efforts to support mental health initiatives: through continued charitable contributions and my involvement in community projects aimed at providing education and resources for families and their kids. I know that taking on that risk will bring me peace.

I hear the faint sound of oars in the silence, as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back. And believe it is worth the years of sorrow to come.