A Sharpie marker changes a New Hampshire town...plus: good pie, and suicide

As of this afternoon around 3pm, the parking sign on Summer Street in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which had been missing the apostrophe indicating a contraction, had been corrected.


It embarrassed my brother, me pulling the Sharpie marker out of my pocket and striding up to the sign. Ours was a family who operated without boldness, and acts which drew attention were frowned upon: looking at a map to find out where you were, or laughing out loud. And it would only get worse for him, as I planned on openly admiring the beautiful architectural details of the buildings on nearby Grove Street after we finished what was turned out to be a delicious lunch of country ham with mashed potatoes followed by apple pie kissed with the perfect amount of cinnamon.


I like flying over New Hampshire. The countryside looks pockmarked with wetness courtesy of glacial action (or so I posit to myself, ever the romantic). Peterborough's small river was no different than the others flowing through any other tiny New England downtown. The river today was just one more spot on the growing list of places soon marked, in my head, as another place where my brother might jump to his death. Like our great-grandmother, my brother was pulled to places where he might jump and end his life...powerlessly drawn like a bee to a succulent honeysuckle flower. Our great-grannie threw herself out the large front window of her farmhouse's third story—I imagine her sprawled, thin-limbed on the dewy grass of the large front lawn and surrounded by the somber, more-grave-than normal faces I've seen in my grandmother's old photos.


With suicide a theme in my family—a gift seemingly intent to keep on giving—is it any wonder I end up with a suicidal mentee? Is this the type of person I should rightly be charged with saving? Time will tell if the answer is unequivocally yes, or unequivocally no.

Christmas gifts for schizophrenics

I stare at her—rudely, I'm sure—but can't look away from her mad, mad blinking. I don't know enough about the host of mental illnesses from which she suffers to know if this is a symptom of one or more, but that fits. It's not normal blinking: She's a robot girl with a glitch—her eyelids move so quickly it's clearly uncontrollable, and I sense they might fly off her face with just a bit more effort.


My mentee—the girl I mentor—has mental illnesses. Quite a few. And though I've known her for awhile, I don't know much about her diseases: Depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia seem to be The Big Three, though she's talked quite a bit about dissociative disorder, which sounds uncomfortable and possibly dangerous, and a few others. Oh, there's mania—that one I've actually gotten quite good at IDing. It's pretty clear when Stephanie is in a manic state...my mind inevitably wanders to what Lindsay Lohan must be like when she gets high, but Steph doesn't use (nothing without a prescription, anyway).


I'm quite sure my inability to know more, after seven years as this girl's mentor, about her mental illnesses makes me a very bad mentor. I clearly don't listen, and one could certainly argue I don't care enough, since I've done little research about what's affecting her, how I could help, what behaviors I should be watching for, and so on.


And now, yay, Christmas approaches, and I get to think about what to buy a girl who's on and off her meds, thinks she's a great artist but is actually quite terrible, comes from a dirt-poor family, shaves her head, and listens to country music while claiming to be a Goth.


It really is just easier to think about things like that instead of what her life will be like in the coming months and years.