There but for the grace of God ...

“How’s your day going?”
 

“Um fine ha, it’s school so it sucks. You?”
 

“Ok, except work sucks. Let’s run away.”

An unremarkable text exchange between my daughter and me Monday morning, except that it came right after I read a news bulletin from the local newspaper that a 17-year-old girl had jumped to her death from a downtown building.

I presume I’m not the only parent who reached out to his or her child in that moment, just for a connection, however tenuous, or even felt, as I admit I did, a moment’s gnawing “my God, could it be” fear. Even after that passed, I ran to the men’s room at work because I felt like I was going to throw up. 

(Parenthood is great, but there’s a darkness to it: It teaches one what Fear really is.)

See, I have a 17-year-old daughter who suffers from depression and anxiety. She’s doing ... well, like she said, “um fine” now, but I am under no illusions, and neither is she, that she is cured or that her struggle is over. She’s managing it well now, but she has thought of suicide before and even attempted it once. 

I am a writer, so I always presumed I would write about this someday, and this just felt like the day. I got my daughter’s permission to do so and let her read it before posting. She did not change a word.

I did not know Trinity McDonald, but I look at her pictures and a video or two posted online and she strikes me as a spectacularly charming and lovely girl, the sort of person that others gather around just to bask in her presence. A video showing her playing ukulele and singing, utterly unselfconsciously, made me laugh and cry simultaneously. How could such a girl be so depressed that she would even think of, let alone carry out, suicide?

As I’ve learned from my wife, who also suffers from depression, this is one of its most insidious aspects: Things are fine, I have a great life, why am I so depressed? That guilt feeds the depression, and vice versa.

Trinity could be my daughter, also a spectacularly charming and lovely girl. My daughter tells long, involved, entertaining stories, often with multiple sidebars, about various adventures at school and with her friends (Her oldest brother, at the end of one of these, once said, “Sarah, maybe you should think about the point of what you’re saying before you say it,” and she looked at him like he was an alien being.)

God forbid you interrupt one of her stories, or you’ll get a glare and she’ll say, “OK, I’m done. You don’t get to hear the rest of the story now.” Sometimes I get impatient in the middle of these tales, but I also marvel at her energy, her verve and her appreciation for life’s absurdities.

My daughter laughs easily, gets most of my jokes, is a keen commentator on my many foibles, makes me watch “Wife Swap” with her so we can make fun of it together and is fiercely loyal to those she loves.

The sarcasm gene runs deep in my daughter, but so does the kindness and empathy. 

And so does the depression. At its darkest, almost three years ago, we weren’t sure she was going to make it and her parents weren’t sure we would either. We gained enormous respect and admiration for the doctors, nurses and staff at our hospital’s adolescent psych unit, where they perform emergency triage on broken souls, where they tolerate no bullshit from patients or parents because they’ve seen and heard it all before.

I am an absolute believer in therapy and carefully monitored medication. 

And I am a believer in random texts every now and then just to connect.

 “How’s your day going? Band?,” I texted to my daughter this morning.

“Oh I have a lot to say,” she answered.

I can’t wait to hear it.

Transgenders, all in the family

The Nebraska Family Council and Family First have merged into the Nebraska Family Alliance. (Slogan: “Just One Group Now But Still All the Paranoia, Bible-thumping and Demagoguery You’ve Come to Expect from Two”). And its first target? Yes, you guessed it, right there on the website, it asks:  “Transgender sports coming to your school?” Visitors are encouraged to write the Nebraska School Activities Association.

Well, sure, clearly it’s important to take aim at young, vulnerable, already outcast people as your organization’s first target because they so threaten the very fabric of family life.

Look, I don’t understand the whole transgender thing, how some people feel trapped inside with the wrong physical parts. Honestly, it all sounds pretty freaky to me, but then I’m a 50something square, white, middle class, straight guy from Nebraska. If I start hating all the things I don’t understand, I’m gonna be awfully busy hating. Hell, I might even have to form my own group with the word “family” in it just to keep up. Instead, I’ve decided to make room in my consciousness for things I don’t understand and to believe we should find ways to accommodate them as long as they don’t threaten me.

(Actually, when I first heard the word “transgender,” I thought it was like a transformer, only people with the power to change genders at the flip of a switch which, honestly, sounds kinda cool.)

Anyway, the kerfuffle over the transgenders among us, wherever the discussion comes up, always seems to come down to bathroom use. Not to get all Freudian, but one might even suspect the Nebraska Family Alliance and its ilk are stuck at the anal stage of psychosexual development, what with their fixation on toilet habits.

See, I really don’t care who uses the men’s room. Men, women, women becoming men, men becoming women, women who used to be men, men who used to be women. Let’s just all have a big pee party, as Jerry Seinfeld once said. 

I do remember when I was a lad, some buddies and I snuck into a women’s restroom just to see if it offered some clues into what the hell girls were all about. The vending machines on the wall frankly hinted at way more than we were prepared at that age to know, and we skedaddled out quickly and never spoke of it again.

To this day, I cannot speak for the behavioral standards for women’s restrooms, but I can for men’s. In the interests of perhaps salving some of the fears, herewith are some urinal rules that all should follow, whatever their original gender, hoped-for gender or new gender:

-- Eyes straight ahead.

-    -- Don’t choose a urinal immediately next to one occupied unless you have to, and if it’s a three-urinal men’s room and all are unoccupied when you enter, choose one of the end ones, lest you leave the next arrival with no choice but to stand next to you.

     -- Do not put foreign objects in a urinal, but if one already is there – a cigarette butt, gum, a bug -- you are duty bound to aim at it.

In any case, I don’t imagine transgender sports are coming to many schools in Nebraska, so perhaps we should keep our powder dry on a statewide war over them. Where the issue does come up, let us deal with it with sensitivity, compassion and understanding.

You know, the sort of qualities you might expect an organization with the word “family” in it to practice.

 In reference to the Omaha World-Herald's Ask a Sad Hipster advice column. (http://www.omaha.com/article/20131001/GO/130909567/1707#ask-a-sad-hipster-a-new-advice-column)

How about: Ask a Sad Newspaper?

Dear Sad Newspaper:

Why should I read a newspaper when I can get my news from so many other places, and in a much more timely, succinct fashion, as well as targeted to my specific interests?

Sincerely, More of a Steve Guttenberg Guy Than a Johannes Gutenberg Guy

Dear More of a Steve Guttenberg Guy Than a Johannes Gutenberg Guy:

I think you'll find we have many relevant features suitable for a wide range of audiences, many suggested by our crack marketing department, that show we are on the cutting edge of a variety of lifestyles today. For example, see our new Ask a Sad Hipster advice column, which features what someone, who will remain cleverly anonymous because that makes it hipper, believes to be the voice of a currently untapped portion of our potential reading audience. Please enjoy this amusing slice of life and stay tuned for similar features as: Grilling, Goth Style; Big Red Today for Emos; and the Walking Dread section for Rastafarians.

We can deliver this product to you every morning, occasionally even before you go to work.

Hopefully, Sad Newspaper