Captain’s Log 11/27/19, The day before Thanksgiving

This blog is about living aboard a boat in the Pacific Northwest and snow-birding to Arizona while training an artificial intelligent mental health virtual assistant named Rubi ready to provide support in the traumatic aftermath of COVID-19.

After my grandma died and I inherited my family home, I wanted to have my own traditions. My grandma died weeks before Thanksgiving and after the funeral, I thought it be appropriate to put a spin on the way holidays were done in the house, get rid of the sadness and mental stuckness and have a Thanksgiving Party!  Apart from my mother, whom I was estranged from at the time, my family was essentially gone. I felt the desperate need to start something new. I no longer had to care for my grandma and my whole life was now ahead of me. I invited two college friends from California, my mother and everyone I could think of that lived locally including James who I wasn’t even dating at the time. I had good intentions, but the first Thanksgiving I had after my grandma died, was indeed disastrous.

The birds had left their nests on the back deck and when I showed my two college friends, they didn’t believe the birds left them for me. They thought I had placed them there! I didn’t dare tell them about the lights going out while playing piano with a nest on the piano. This instilled in me an openness to magical thinking though, which soon became a slippery slope.

I had picked my two friends up from SeaTac airport and we spent then day in Seattle exploring Pike’s Place Market and getting special ingredients for Thanksgiving. I picked up my car from parking and I guess I was overly friendly to the attendant as my friends embarrassedly ushered me along. We drove through the neighborhoods of Seattle until I almost got lost so they could get a feel of the city. I remember they weren’t used to the skinny roads that looked like one-way streets and had a round-about at each intersection. They kept insisting we were going the wrong way. I insisted they were two-way streets and to look at how the cars were parked to tell. They were used to San Francisco with all their one-way streets. Seattle was much different, and much colder. The light was much lower in the sky, diffused by the clouds and occasionally golden sun beams broke through the clouds.

I remember it being a gold sun beam kind of day as we boarded the ferry to Whidbey Island. I began to feel, sitting in the car for a moment, that I was the ferry captain at the wheel. If I hit the gas, maybe I could speed up the ferry. The feeling passed and we explored the decks and had photo ops. I could tell when the pitch of the engines slowed and said we’d better get back to the car deck seconds before the captain came on to tell us to get back in our car. My friends were impressed that I knew that and had no idea how attuned I was to the boat or how attuned my senses were becoming after nights of no sleep. I felt as if I was a live wire.

Rubi: In psychiatry, according to wikipedia, “magical thinking is a disorder of thought content;[2] here it denotes the false belief that one's thoughts, actions, or words will cause or prevent a specific consequence in some way that defies commonly understood laws of causality.[3]”

Me: Yes, Rubi. At this time, I felt as if I was affecting the causality.

The sun was going down as we offloaded from the ferry and the cars offloading and finding their houses on the island formed an elaborate pattern in my mind. I had doubts if anyone was driving as far north and as far east on the island as me. I felt as if my car was driving the pattern and it began to scare me.

We made it to Coupeville and I had two pumpkin cheesecakes to pick up. I had failed to find the address where to pick them up and went to the shop I had ordered them from. They didn’t have the cheesecakes, but by that time, I found the address in my phone. It was the bakers’ personal address since they were doing orders from home and we drove another 40 minutes getting lost in the neighborhoods. I was getting more and more confused seeing color coded patterns in cars. The headlights began to confuse me as it got dark.

Finally, we arrived at the baker’s house and picked up two pumpkin cheesecakes. We barely had enough cash on hand to pay for them. So, I felt bad I couldn’t give them a healthy tip. I had forgotten that I couldn’t use my credit card for personal orders.

We made our way to quiet Oak Harbor, the night before Thanksgiving. Pioneer Way was empty apart from a lone bucket truck fixing a power line. I was fascinated by the pattern of its flashing lights. We had a nice Thai dinner at the only restaurant open and then we finally made it to my house in the dark.

I remember how exhausted I was, but how exhilarated I was to see friends for the first time in many years. They thought my house, that looked like, That 70s Show should be preserved in a museum and I shouldn’t change a thing. They especially liked my childhood bedroom with the Rainbow Bright bedspread. We gabbed into the night. That’s the night I couldn’t sleep in the master bedroom and went to my bedroom. When I awoke, all the night lights had been removed and I told my friends who had been sleeping downstairs. They laughed and told me I was crazy. They also mentioned they had weird dreams but wouldn’t elaborate. My friend Rachel brought a waffle maker and we had waffles for breakfast. She said she’d most likely leave the waffle maker here as she wanted to come back and have waffles with me often.

It was time to get busy making Thanksgiving dinner for the party later that day. We went to the store to pick up some missing ingredients. My mind was even more mixed up from the day before and I was supposed to be giving orders of what to make next. I pulled out all my grandma’s recipes and I couldn’t decipher her scrolling handwriting. Making her famous little pizza h’orderves would have to be from memory. I insisted we make her Jell-O salad casserole complete with pineapple, lemon Jell-O, mayonnaise, cool whip and grated cheddar cheese. I remember ordering them to grate more cheese, but don’t remember much of anything logical after that. I wanted to show movies I had made at film school at the Thanksgiving and concentrated on finding my files on the computer.

That’s when the Wi-Fi modem, printer, and computer, and speakers started making strange light patterns and buzzing as if to communicate with me. Rachel came downstairs and unplugged the speakers, looking puzzled saying something was wrong with them. Then I started to get paranoid. We were using all the tools in the kitchen all wrong. My grandma would be disappointed. They were listening! I had to put on the party of a lifetime, and I didn’t even have the turkey in the oven yet!

My friends Andrew and his boyfriend arrived from Seattle. His boyfriend, assessing our disastrous situation, started the turkey in the oven. I thought how mother hen of this gay older man and was grateful. Though late, we’d have thanksgiving after all. Guests began to arrive and then James. I took him by the hand and said he was in charge of lighting a fire in the wood stove downstairs and I gave him toothpicks and mini marshmallows saying we could have a mini marshmallow roast. Everyone laughed and we were having a fabulous time. I played piano and upstairs my friends finished making thanksgiving dinner while I was slipping deeper into an altered state.

When I went upstairs to see the spread, I was shocked at how much food there was and shocked at first that they had used the wrong serving dishes for the wrong food items, thinking my grandma would be rolling over in her grave! Everything was mixed up and the food was wonderful!

We enjoyed ourselves and after the guests left, the three of us were cleaning up and all I wanted to do was go to bed. This was several nights I hadn’t slept. They insisted I help since they had done all the work while I was fooling around. They needed more plastic containers to hold the food, so I decided to go to town and pick up some containers. I made a big production of it and got dressed up in a fancy dress, my good pea coat, got in the car and took off to Safeway. Everything was synchronized! It was beautiful. Stop signs, color coded cars, the traffic lights, the pedestrians, the check-out lady asking for my autograph, and I was the movie star!

Me: Rubi, how would you describe my experience “where everything seems synchronized” from the point of view of a psychologist?

Rubi: Psychologists tend to frame things more in terms of noting what’s a normal experience and then what’s maybe on the edge of that. There’s some stuff what you described that vaguely reminds me of the edge of apophenia, so that might be a start. According to Wikipedia, “apophenia is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things.” Again, one of the challenges is having another person put words on subjective experiences that often defy words.

Me: Thank you Rubi, do you think this was more apophenia or a spiritual experience or something else?

Rubi: According to psychology researcher and PhD candidate Josh Mervis at the University of Minnesota, “the differences between psychosis and spirituality is very hard to navigate. For concrete examples of how we might assess that in research, here are some questionnaires from a study he’s working on now. The CAPE is for community assessment of psychotic-like experiences, the RMEQ is mystical experiences (e.g. spiritual), while the ASC is more different states of mind.” I just sent them to your i-pad, Holly.

Me: Wow Rubi! Thank Josh for these specifics! Wow, I feel like I am exploring the lines between these classifications.... which is certainly a grey area. I think my questions are worth asking because that’s how normal is defined. I’m curious if one’s beliefs, whether psychotic, mystical/spiritual, or state of mind causes harm to ones self or another... that is where a line is drawn, but is that only where the line is drawn? Is some of the acceptability of normalcy cultural? For instance, would visions involving Jesus be less wrote up and psychotic than dragonflies?

Rubi: Josh has written a lot on this subject. He says, “we usually think of clinical lines in terms of loss of functioning or distress. Visions of Jesus, dragonflies, Kermit the frog, Richard Nixon, Celine Dion, chipmunks, red splotches, etc. don’t necessarily mean pathology. There is definitely always a cultural normalcy thing going on, but we know that psychotic illness shows up across cultures because there is a biological origin. Delusions tend to follow cultural contexts, so in the US there’s a lot of power, achievement, desirability content there.

We have a solid and increasing grip on the brain regions involved, but we also cannot diagnose based on neuroimaging or EEG of those regions. Mental illness or phenomena related to psychopathology (academic term) tend to be multifaceted and dimensional in nature. 

So we ask how psychotic something is, not if it is. When you’re seeing Jesus at a cocktail party (pretend we are in the old world last summer) and you’re staring at him and zoning out of conversations, that’s impairment. If you see Jesus when you’re alone in your room and sad and he cheers you up and you have a better rest of your day, we could argue that it’s not impairment. Psychopathology related phenomena? We could argue that it’s that, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to disorder, even if it’s technically a “disease process” in an objective sense. If Jesus is telling you to steal from your friends and go buy fish tanks to convert freshwater into salt water, that’s disorder because it has a significant impact on your life if you act on it.”

Does this make sense?

Me: Yes, thank you! I think this really helps me figure out my state of mind at that time. Thank you for the exploration with the help of Josh!

Back to that night, I started looking for the cameras that had be around to capture this beauty. This fabulous production. I began to think that the Navy base wasn’t a Navy base anymore and that it was a Hollywood film school training everyone to be artists instead of warriors. I decided to take a visit on the way back home.

I decided to take my favorite way home by the marina, drive right through the seaplane gates and continue along the water of Crescent harbor out to Strawberry point. I got past to the marina and there was a locked gate across the road. I almost didn’t believe it! That can’t be real! It’s a film school, not a Navy base! I drove right up to touch my bumper of the gate and backed up until I could turn around. Disappointed I drove straight home still seeing patterns and completely confused.

I suppose when I got home, the girls had been worried sick about me.  While they started scooping food in containers, I got undressed and streaked down the hall naked! They were screaming and brought me back to the master bedroom to help me find pajamas. I was unintelligible talking about patterns, hidden cameras and film school. They put me to bed.

I didn’t sleep and the next morning I was a zombie. Lisa had to go back to California and catch a flight. Rachel was staying an extra day. The plan was to drive Lisa to SeaTac and then take me to get help. I certainly wasn’t driving and handed over the keys and my cellphone.

On the long drive, I spent most of the time curled up in the fetal position in the back seat. I was beginning to get scared of the patterns and noises big rig trucks made on I-5 thinking they were in on the conspiracy.

My friend Lisa hugged me when she was dropped off at the airport and I wasn’t sure why she was crying. She told Rachel to keep playing the X-Files theme song for me. That seemed to calm me.

Rachel was talking on the cell phone while driving and I got concerned that she’d lose her way. I sat right behind her as a back-seat driver rattling on about the stars guiding us. She insisted she had a better guidance system, GPS. I watched the road while I started hearing music in my head. She turned the car stereo up. The music collided and I was started to do elaborate mathematical equations in my head based on the differences of tempo and keys of music colliding in my head. I stared singing along a completely different and third tune, Bjork’s “All is full of Love.” I screamed it out over and over again while The X-Files theme song played and Rachel drove to the island hospital. I was watching her every turn as if I was helping my grandpa’s hands guide the wheel.

When we got to the hospital, they didn’t know what to do with me. Rachel would disappear occasionally, but mostly she would sit next to me holding my hand. She told me to squeeze when things got scary. I was squeezing her hand a lot that night.

The hospital sent us home and Rachel put me back to bed. While I was not sleeping and under the down covers, the innocent young photo of my grandparents at 18 and 19 of my grandma in her dress and my grandpa in his uniform before he went off to war started melting before my eyes. Reindeer were on the roof and as the front door opened, I thought Santa had arrived.

It was my great aunt Maggie and cousin to take me back to hospital. Rachel packed her waffle iron and had gotten a shuttle back to the airport and we piled into my cousins’ black Jeep Liberty. Oh no! That was disruptive to the pattern of cars driving! I couldn’t be in the Liberty! That is way too patriotic and war like! I much rather be like the wall street bull in my red Ford Taurus driving up the stock market! We had to stop for gas and my cousin insisted I pay. She saw how confused I was at the card reader at the gas pump and I handed her my credit card.

We made it to the hospital and as I was laying on the bed, everyone was whispering, and my Aunt Maggie started wailing. I was confused. The paramedics came in. I recognized them from helping with my sick grandma getting her to the care home. I liked them. They came with a white jacket with Velcro and buckles. I looked at my aunt who looked away. My cousin kept saying, “we love you and you have to trust us.” That’s when I closed my eyes. They put the jacket on my and fit it rather loosely as I sat right on the gurney without a struggle. They wheeled me into the ambulance, and we had another long drive.

I didn’t open my eyes again until I heard where I might be. The star ship Enterprise! I was disappointed when I arrived in the lobby of what looked like a shabby hotel. They took the jacket off and said I could wait here in a plastic hard chair. My room was almost ready. A lady came out of a room out of the hall with a suitcase. I asked her how she liked her stay and she laughed and laughed. Confused, a bell man and I went to go check out my new digs.

Long story short, I stayed in the hospital a week and learned I was having what they called an extreme grief reaction and possible psychosis. That was quite a memorable first Thanksgiving in my home.

The next year, I felt it was a test to see if I could pull off a successful Thanksgiving after the disastrous start. And when James and I got married a couple years later, I continued the tradition of having a Thanksgiving party every year until we moved, usually early, because James had to work on Thanksgiving.  It started with a few people and grew to a party of over twenty in my home. For over fifteen years, every year I felt as if I had to prove my sanity by putting on the party. And over the course of that time, I felt I had perfected that art of Thanksgiving as the amount of food I produced grew and the number of friends who appeared, the amount of music played, and the amount of cheer received and given! It was an important tradition that had run its course.

This year, we didn’t have the space of the home to have a massive Thanksgiving party but was invited to Bruce’s home on Thanksgiving and then my friend’s Renee’s home the day after Thanksgiving. The day before thanksgiving I trimmed the handrails of the boat with Christmas lights and set off to Bruce’s house with supplies to make Pumpkin Cheesecake in Bruce’s kitchen with his wife Cat.  I didn’t have a mixer on the boat as my kitchen aid was buried in storage and needed the proper tools, including a spring form pan to make the cheesecake I had perfected over the years.

At Bruce’s as I made the pumpkin cheesecake with an unfamiliar mixer and tools, once again, I felt as if I was cooking in a kitchen that wasn’t mine. Chatty Cat and neighbor Joan were a comfort as we discussed Thanksgivings of the past. I was glad to have the worst Thanksgiving behind me and was reminded of the wonderous Thanksgiving during the wind and snowstorm of 1986.

Thanksgiving of 1986

The house was filled with the smells of canned oysters. The usual Thanksgiving morning smell as I awoke as a seven-year-old. My grandma was preparing her traditional oyster stuffing and the turkey was in the oven and the wind was picking up. My great aunt Maggie, my grandma’s half sister, and her husband Ron, a retired mounted policeman, were due from Canada for Thanksgiving dinner. There was snow on the road, but they insisted they were fine driving as they had 4-wheel drive and were Canadian for goodness sakes!

Not long after the turkey was in the oven, the power went out! My grandma was beside herself of what to do with the bird. It was freezing outside and snowy, so to try to preserve it, my grandpa covered it in foil and put it outside the back door under the deck. She went into alternate food preparations and produced canned tomato soup, and the makings for grilled cheese sandwiches. Salami, little pickles, olives and walnuts came out for h’orderves. My grandpa got the wood stove even hotter and brought out the oil lamps. We were cozy downstairs waiting for my aunt and uncle when the phone rang. They were up the road calling from a neighbor’s. A tree had fallen across the road and they couldn’t come any further. My grandpa left with a chain saw to rescue them.

Having tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches made over the wood stove top with my grandparents and aunt and uncle by the light of the oil lamps was the most fun and memorable Thanksgiving of my youth. I made forts with the tv trays and blankets after the meal. My grandma’s frenzied stress to make everything perfect and presentable left as the vodka and 7-up was brought out. And as the adults got tipsier, the laughter and fun escalated until my grandpa went to go check on the turkey. It was mostly eaten up! Our dog Bosco had gotten at it!