Van Gogh had it worse

Sophie reads, ignoring me. If I try to leave, she gets mad. So I lie beside her, trying not to get tangled in her glow-in-the-dark pink butterfly canopy (read: mosquito netting).

I clear my throat. Perhaps this is A Good Time. One never knows.

She continues to ignore me.

“So,” I try again. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, still reading. But she could be listening. She is sneaky like that.

“You’re going to hear—well, you’ve BEEN hearing a lot about Mommy’s medicines,” I continue. “I want to tell you about that because I know you always want me to tell you what’s going on. I know you like to know things.”

“I do,” she says, nose still planted in book. But she is listening now.

“So…remember when I went to the hospital? I have a brain thing, an illness—”

She drops the book. “AN ILLNESS??? ARE YOU GOING TO DIE?” she shrieks.

Oops. Backtrack. Fast backtrack. “NO no no! No! It’s something to take seriously, but it’s not like that. I would tell you.”

“You would tell me.”

“Yes. Don’t I always tell you about the hard stuff?”

She thinks. She nods. She does not pick up the book again. She is watching me.

“So…this thing I have…it’s called bipolar illness.”

“Like polar bears? Like you belong in the Arctic?”

She cracks herself up. She cracks me up. I DO desperately want to go to Iceland.

“Bipolar bears. Hm, that would be way better. No, this is about how fast my brain goes.”

She studies me. “What’s it like?”

Huh.

“Well…okay…did you ever feel like something you drew or wrote was the best thing ever and you couldn’t wait to stay up three days in a row to make more incredibly genius things?”

She wrinkles her nose. “I never felt like that.”

“Okay, well, good! Because my brain sometimes goes too fast, and it decides to take over, and tells me things that aren’t quite true.”

“I did a really good cat drawing,” she says.

“Okay, well,” I say, “imagine that feeling, and times it by 100, and imagine you feel like you can’t sleep again until, you know, you do whatever it takes to get your cat drawing in a museum. And your brain won’t slow down, and you start freaking out. Because it’s spinning like this—”

I zip my finger in rapid revolutions in front of her.

“Did you think that?” she asks. “About a drawing?”

“Um, well, not exactly. But I sort of, well, one time my brain told me that if I put together a sculpture of family secrets, it would totally go to the Louvre.”

“The Looov?”

“The Louvre. Yeah, it’s a very, very, very famous museum in Paris, and, like, almost NOBODY gets their work in the Louvre.”

She considers all of this and starts laughing. “That’s funny. That you thought that. That your work could go in the LOOV.”

“It’s kind of funny, considering, you know, I have no idea how to make sculpture. But it’s not funny exactly, because there’s another side to it. BIPOLAR means two ends. So there’s the high wild fast-spinning end, and then there’s a crash. Boom. Suddenly, you’re down at the other end.”

“Then what happens?”

“You know how I’ve been crying a lot? And I couldn’t stop?”

She nods.

“That’s why I had to go to the hospital. So they could fix my medicine, because my brain was stuck on the other end, and who wants to be crying on the floor next to the washing machine, right? My brain is a little different than some people’s, because my brain needs help to keep it from spinning too fast and too slow.”

“I didn’t know that’s why you had to go to the hospital.” She looks worried for a moment.

“Well, I figured it was time to get things straightened out, right? Because you and your sister don’t need a mom crying on the bathroom floor every day of your life.”

She brightens. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess that would make it pretty boring to tell MY kids about. ‘Oh, gosh, well, my childhood? Well, MY MOM CRIED ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR EVERY SINGLE DAY.’”

She slays me. She slays herself.

“Exactly,” I say. “The interesting thing about my brain is that a lot of creative people—writers, artists—have this illness.”

She sits bolt upright. “YOU MEAN YOU HAVE WHAT VINCENT VAN GOGH HAD??”

“UH—”

Crap. What did he have?

“I don’t know. I hope not. I think he had schizophrenia. He saw swirls. That’s why he painted like that. He cut his ear off, did Ms. E tell you?”

“WHAT?????”

“Oops. They didn’t mention that…at school?”

“NOooooo.”

“Well, I’m okay, see? Two ears. No problem. Poor Vincent Van Gogh didn’t have a lot of help. But I have good docs, medicine,” I reassure her. “I just want you to know it’s okay. A lot of grownups we know already know. You can tell whoever you want. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, I can answer any questions—”

She grabs a piece of paper and a pen. “Do you know his body-part drawing? Van Gogh. It’s famous.”

She draws, scribbles. She draws me the body-part drawing, her rendition. “It’s got body parts. Three of each. Floating around here and here and here.”

I ask if she’s sure it’s not Michelangelo or DaVinci.

“No. It’s Van Gogh. You’ve really never seen the body part painting?”

I study it closely.

“Uh, no.”

“Seriously?”

“No.”

Sophie shakes her head and puts the drawing down. “That’s weird. It’s FAMOUS.”

I say, “I’m weird. And NOT famous.”

“Yeah. The LOOOV. That’s so funny.”

“And you know, kid, I can be happy, I can be funny, I can be silly. That’s all me. And I can cry and get frustrated and angry. And that’s me too. It’s just when the highs get too high and fast and the lows get too low and stuck that I need some help.”

“The LOOV.” She is still chuckling. She picks up her book.

Ah. We Are Through for the night. I snuggle down beside her and close my eyes while she reads.