Read Online Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rebecca Lee
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I returned, one split second later, I hugged my parents, one after the other, with a spontaneity that a depressed person could never muster.
IN THE TWENTY YEARS that passed between my first visit to Professor Pine and my second, from 1967 to 1987, I remained in the same city. I graduated from Massey and then from LeBoldus High and then from the University of Saskatchewan, with a degree in biology. As an adult, I worked as a soil consultant, traveling around the province to small satellite towns in a flatbed truck that I could sleep in, if necessary, on warm nights.
Bouts of the depression did return, but they never overwhelmed me. Perhaps my life was not the most rigorous testing ground for Professor Pine’s technique, because my life was relatively free of tragedy. Most of my depression erupted out of nowhere. I’d be in the fields in the midst of a bright day, and a dreariness would mysteriously descend. I’d sink into it for a few minutes, but the lift would always come. I would take a step up, or two or three, and recognize how good life in fact was. From above, my job appeared to me excellent and strange. There I was, under a blazing sun, kneeling in a yellow expanse, weighing samples of earth. And later, with instruments as tiny and beautiful as jewelry, testing the dirt for traces of nitrogen and phosphorus, the gleam of potash.
ONE NIGHT, IN THE middle of the year 1985, I made the mistake of describing this technique to my fiancé, Rezvan Balescu, the Romanian liar. We had known each other for only two months at this point, but we were already engaged. We were standing on a small balcony outside our apartment. He was smoking, wearing pajamas under a down-filled jacket, and he was in the midst of one of his tirades on North America, which he loved and hated. “This place is so strange to me, so childish. You have so many problems that are not real, and you are so careful and serious about them. People discuss their feelings as if they were great works of art or literature that need to be analyzed and examined and passed on and on. In my country people love or they hate. They know that a human being is mysterious, and they live with that. The problems they have are real problems. If you do not eat, that’s a problem. If you have no leg, that’s a problem. If you are unhappy, that is not a problem to talk about.”
“I think it is,” I said.
“Exactly. That is because you are an American. For you, big things are small, and small things are big.” Rezvan was always making these large declarations about North Americans in a loud voice from our balcony.
“I bet you one million in money,” Rezvan said as he blew out smoke, “that the number of hours Americans spend per week in these—what do you call them?—therapy offices is exactly the same number of hours Romanians spend in line for bread. And for what? Nothing. To make their problems bigger. They talk about them all day so at night they are even bigger.”
“I don’t agree. The reason why people talk about their problems is to get over them, get rid of them. I went to a therapist once and he was very helpful.”
“You?” He lifted an eyebrow, took a drag.
“Yes, when I was eleven.”
“Eleven? What could be the problem at eleven?”
“I was just sad. My parents were getting divorced, and I guess I could tell that my dad was about to leave.”
“But isn’t that the correct emotion—sadness—when a father leaves? Can a therapist do anything to bring your father home?”
“No, but he gave me a way to deal with it.”
“And what is that way? I would like to know.”
“Well, just a way to separate from the situation.”
“How do you separate from your own life?”
“Well, you rise above it. You gain some objectivity and perspective.”
“But is this proper? If you have a real problem, should you rise above it? When a father leaves a child, the child feels sad. This seems right to me. This rising above, that is the problem. In
IN THE TWENTY YEARS that passed between my first visit to Professor Pine and my second, from 1967 to 1987, I remained in the same city. I graduated from Massey and then from LeBoldus High and then from the University of Saskatchewan, with a degree in biology. As an adult, I worked as a soil consultant, traveling around the province to small satellite towns in a flatbed truck that I could sleep in, if necessary, on warm nights.
Bouts of the depression did return, but they never overwhelmed me. Perhaps my life was not the most rigorous testing ground for Professor Pine’s technique, because my life was relatively free of tragedy. Most of my depression erupted out of nowhere. I’d be in the fields in the midst of a bright day, and a dreariness would mysteriously descend. I’d sink into it for a few minutes, but the lift would always come. I would take a step up, or two or three, and recognize how good life in fact was. From above, my job appeared to me excellent and strange. There I was, under a blazing sun, kneeling in a yellow expanse, weighing samples of earth. And later, with instruments as tiny and beautiful as jewelry, testing the dirt for traces of nitrogen and phosphorus, the gleam of potash.
ONE NIGHT, IN THE middle of the year 1985, I made the mistake of describing this technique to my fiancé, Rezvan Balescu, the Romanian liar. We had known each other for only two months at this point, but we were already engaged. We were standing on a small balcony outside our apartment. He was smoking, wearing pajamas under a down-filled jacket, and he was in the midst of one of his tirades on North America, which he loved and hated. “This place is so strange to me, so childish. You have so many problems that are not real, and you are so careful and serious about them. People discuss their feelings as if they were great works of art or literature that need to be analyzed and examined and passed on and on. In my country people love or they hate. They know that a human being is mysterious, and they live with that. The problems they have are real problems. If you do not eat, that’s a problem. If you have no leg, that’s a problem. If you are unhappy, that is not a problem to talk about.”
“I think it is,” I said.
“Exactly. That is because you are an American. For you, big things are small, and small things are big.” Rezvan was always making these large declarations about North Americans in a loud voice from our balcony.
“I bet you one million in money,” Rezvan said as he blew out smoke, “that the number of hours Americans spend per week in these—what do you call them?—therapy offices is exactly the same number of hours Romanians spend in line for bread. And for what? Nothing. To make their problems bigger. They talk about them all day so at night they are even bigger.”
“I don’t agree. The reason why people talk about their problems is to get over them, get rid of them. I went to a therapist once and he was very helpful.”
“You?” He lifted an eyebrow, took a drag.
“Yes, when I was eleven.”
“Eleven? What could be the problem at eleven?”
“I was just sad. My parents were getting divorced, and I guess I could tell that my dad was about to leave.”
“But isn’t that the correct emotion—sadness—when a father leaves? Can a therapist do anything to bring your father home?”
“No, but he gave me a way to deal with it.”
“And what is that way? I would like to know.”
“Well, just a way to separate from the situation.”
“How do you separate from your own life?”
“Well, you rise above it. You gain some objectivity and perspective.”
“But is this proper? If you have a real problem, should you rise above it? When a father leaves a child, the child feels sad. This seems right to me. This rising above, that is the problem. In
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