How to be normal, Part 1 - Root for the Yankees

OK, this one is for the actual bipolar/MS or some version of both gang.  You may get the feeling that even on your best days, the world seems a little off.  Do you?  I mean do you see families together at a restaurant or mall, or some place, laughing and having a good time, and then you are sitting with the people you've been told you are related to, and they do not or will not acknowledge that anything is wrong, or let you know its is your own fault (Cheer Up! What? Another nap?) you are "that way", if they even acknowledge it at all.  Or maybe they just whisper about it later, and if you think they might be, well, you're paranoid.

This is assuming they associate with you at all, of course.  Now many families are nurturing and helpful and are fully there for any member of their clan who has challenges. They truly do want to help, but we all can't go live with Glen Close.  She just hasn't got enough rooms.

Thanks for what you do, Glen, and I know you suffer as well.  Glen is a Mets fan, and boy, do we know suffering.  But we can walk away and root for another team, but we also can't.  Normal is rooting for the Yankees, living vicariously through their triumphs, even when not totally successful, always there near the top, entertaining their fan base and giving thrills galore.  You pass that down to your kids and even when the team goes into minor troughs, you know they will bounce back.  Someone will come and do it.

Mets fans are happy finishing third.  Oh, its not like we haven't had our moments, wonderful moments of manic play, great performances and championships.  We just know there's a lot more deep, deep lows.  We came from ineptitude in 1962, losers dismissed for season upon season.  Then suddenly came a miracle in 1969, the same thing as when a bipolar person wins a Pulitzer or some other big reward.  Yes, there's something more going on than the odd behavior.  We can succeed and do very well.  Maybe not for long, and we will hide our problems in drugs, alcohol, and poor performing bullpens.  We will let wonderful people leave our lives because we think, or letting the somebody who is doing the thinking for us say, it will be helpful.  Please see the departure of Hall of Famer Tom Seaver (twice) and the recent departure of 2012 Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey.  It leads to longer times or holding things together before depressingly empty stadium, old and new. Right?

Mets fans will now say, well what about the 1986 team? That team won the World Series. Yes, and fun it was, but that team, despite its talent, and the work behind the scenes that built up to one crazy victory that barely squeaked by two talented teams.  If it wasn't for some bad pitching in the bottom of the tenth inning in Game 6 of the World Series (not so much Buckner), the Red Sox would have gotten their Curse of the Bambino thing out of the way 18 years sooner.  The late 80's Mets then floundered through the next five years and fell back into terrible.  A team that should have dominated fell short due its own excesses. Like drugs, and the manic thought of its greatness.

Then the Mets tried again around 2000.  A good group held together by a manager whose number one fan was himself played better than they should have to get into the playoffs, and then into the World Series, against of all teams, the Yankees, the one team I was praying for them not to play.  As figured, it was a quick one.  The Normals overwhelmed the Bipolars in five games.  Another slide, and recognition that help was needed stabilized the team in the mid-decade, but self doubt brought it crashing down once again to now, even with a change of scenery at a new stadium, nothing has worked since. We blamed Carlos Beltran for striking out to end the Championship game (I blamed Carlos Beltran). He stood there and watched strike three go by.  His fault.  Back to depression. He did this.  Dump the doctors again. Try something else.

The new doctor in charge of the team, Sandy Alderson, is building from the bottom up, hoping long term treatment will  better than shock therapy.  The Mets remain moribund, looking out the window and waiting for something to happen, something no doubt terrible.  Now the Normals, that is, the Yankees have not spent as they used to, and look like they may be making changes, with confidence in a farm system that will fill their needs as superstars Jeter, A-Rod, and company age out.  Still some great players there.  So life goes on in the Bronx. A hiccup here and there, and the Normals take it in stride.

The Mets don't really have an outfield yet.  I mean you need three people in the outfield, and we've got maybe two, or two and a half.  Might mean a lot of doubles for the other team.

So there it is.  The Mets are the team of the bipolar.  At least Glen Close and me.

So if you want to be Normal, like "those people", pull for teams and organizations that just keep rolling along - the Yankees, Microsoft, anybody with the last name Kardashian, Alec Baldwin, and the Department of Defense. 

So this summer, I'll be sitting in half empty Citifield, rooting for the guys in Orange and Blue, whoever they are.  Come sit next to me and I will tell you stories of a place that's only a shadow now, and of the men who played on that field, and what, now and then, can happen to make your life feel amazing.  Makes it all Amazin'.

Bipolar Stadium.  That's where we play.  Spring training begins in two weeks. Hang in there.



Happy Birthday to Me for the 55th consecutive year!

Hi.  I'm sitting in the Saratoga Barnes and Noble treating myself to lunch and a mocha before heading down for water therapy.  The sandwhich is quite good.  Had a chance to walk around and check out some new releases (books, not sandwiches). I see J K Rowling's new novel is out.  What? No Harry? No Hermoine? No thanks.  Bill O'Reilly's Killing Kennedy is on the shelves, and I'll save you the money, it follows various possibilities for that tragedy in Dallas, but then defaults to the Warren Commission. I might recommend that we work toward the better world JFK envisioned than just rehash the tawdry events that lead up to Dealey Plaza.  The other books are by TV stars I do not know, monster book writers (books about monsters of all types, and monster sized books) and diet books that always end up selling in the dollar store bins

I walk among the printed words and knick knacks that B and N holds and wonder if the novels I'm working on will ever appear here. Probably not, but I don't care, I am really enjoying the creative process.  Like this. And thanks to a large amount of drugs in my system I can go on and on.  Lucky for you I know when to shut up.

Such is life at age 56.  I was born on October 9 1956 in Troy New York.  Here is the story of my birth.  For those of you not familiar with the Albany Troy Schenectady area, you may still find this interesting if  just for the sitcom value. 

First, the cast of characters:  Marge Martin (mom), Lou Martin (dad [and a tip of the cap to Lou on his 92nd birthday]), Teresa and Jimmy Norton (neighbors), a nurse, and a Freihofer's Bread Company delivery truck, like this one...

 

It may have been red in color, but the size and shape was like that.  Oh, one more person. Me.

 

It starts late on October eighth.  My sister and brother are in bed and my mother is resting with my father before he begins the morning shift at the Freihofer plant, getting his orders for bread, cookies, cakes and placing them on his truck and making deliveries to homes.  Yes, that actually did happen, Gen X and Millenials.  Lou goes to work, taking the only car in the house, leaving my mother and kids alone.  On the first floor rest the Norton's, friends of Marge and Lou, and we are grateful for that.

  

My mother wakes up around two o'clock in the morning.  My father is gone, and she knows the baby (me) is on its way.  Her mother (Grandma Frances) is working at Samaritan hospital back when nurses lived at the hospital. She's not available.  Marge gets out of bed, checks on my soon to be brother and sister, and then creeps downstairs to knock on the door of the Norton's.  The Nortons, alerted earlier they may be needed, are ready.  There's only one problem.  They don't have a car.

 

"But I do thave the truck!," Mr. Norton said as he grabbed his hat.  He indicated the vehicle to my  mother.  A Freihofer's truck (like the one in the picture).  It has one seat for the driver/delivery guy and places to stand and hold on as it hit bumps and swung the curves of old roads for anyone else who was riding.

 

Like my nine month pregnant Mom.  She looked at Mrs. Norton. 

 

"Margie, it'll be fine.  I'll go up with your kids.  Mine are snoring like logs."

 

Mrs. Norton scooted up the stairs, and my mother, for lack of options (no money for a cab), follows along and tries as delicately as possible to find to squeeze in the truck door and then find a spot to sit amongst the coffee cakes, cookies, breads and pies. 

 

"Make yourself ta home," said Mr. Norton as he got the truck started.  Marge chose a spot near the oatmeal raisin boxes and squatted there, holding on to a shelf for balance.  The truck, which never went much more than 30 mph, chugged along to Samaritan hospital up the hill (known to folks in my neck of the woods as Oil Mill Hill) and staggering along the road, a road my father now up in the boondocks for early deliveries, passed hours ago.  He would not know anything until he came home. No phones in vehicles then.

 

So Lou didn't know about the following conversation between my mother, Mr. Norton, and the night nurse as paperwork was completed at Samaritan.

 

 

Nurse: Name?

 

Mom: Marge Martin

 

Nurse: This is Mr. Martin?



 

Mom: No, we're not married.

 

Nurse:Really?

 

Mr. Norton: No, we're married but not to each other.

 

Nurse: I see.

 

Mom: Look, he's just a neighbor.

 

Nurse: So where is your husband?

 

Mom shrugged.  "I don't know.  Brusnwick maybe"

 

Mr. Norton: Yeah.  Brunswick is about right.

 

The nurse put her pen down.

 

Nurse: "Where is the father of the child?"

 

Mom and Mr. Norton: "Brunswick."

 

Fortunately, around this time my grandmother arrived to sort things out and get my mother ready to deliver.  I swear this where I picked up my comic timing.  And I also think the first smell I ever smelled was not the sterility of the delivery room, but oatmeal raisin cookies.

 

Years later, at my father in law's funeral at the veteran's cemetery in Saratoga, my mother was walking among the graves and noticed a familiar name.  She called me over, and pointed to Jimmy Norton's grave. 

 

"They lived downstairs from us." my mother said.  My mother in law came over and said "I know his wife."  It seemed that when our families moved from our original house, the Martin's stayed in Lansingburgh and the Norton's moved to Clifton Park where my wife grew up.  Mrs. Norton met my wife's mom and they became friends.  And so it was that some 45 years after the original event my mom and Mrs. Norton were reunited and relived that amazing day with lots of laughter.

 

I'm the only survivor of that day 56 years ago, so I get to tell the story.  They have been amazing years inbetween with highs and lows, and now the battles are raging within my body.  But I came in with a good story, and I hope I go out with a lot of better ones shared.

 

By the way, the sports fans in the readership may have seen that had I been born on 10/8/56, I would have been born on the day of Don Larsen's perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers.  But I held out for the ninth, the day the Dodgers won 13-0.  I've been a National League fan ever since. Imagine if I'd been in a rush? Born on a Yankee day? Wow, things might have been very different. But I know somewhere in a box in the garage is a Yankee cap.  Residual effect. That and oatmeal cookies.

 

More soon.  Thanks for reading.