Dear Vincent, You are not the only person I write letters to.

Dear Vincent,

You are not the only person I write letters to. Everything I buy comes wrapped in plastic, and sometimes at night, I hide spoons and forks and knives inside my freezer so I do not have to wash them.

Love, Erica.

Dear My Cool Friend Fern,

I am sitting in a bathtub without water and brushing my teeth without water and now without hands, and I am remembering when you used to have your office on top of the washing machine in the upstairs bathroom in Saint Henri. A couple months ago, I started to make homemade clay toothpaste because a right bottom molar hurt and I can only afford the dentist in India. The toothpaste is in a jar and looks like a pile of dark brown shit, and an excess of baking soda causes my tongue to burn. This morning I cannot cope with the burning and the brown specks that end up everywhere, and so I am using the last of my Arm and Hammer, and the bristles in my toothbrush go every which way and the pink plastic on the back of the head is coming off since I often stick my toothbrush in my mouth and bite down on it, hard. This morning the crisis centre counsellor said to try and relax and think more positively and maybe try some activities to make me feel good and that she had to hang up, but she wished me a good day. My right knee is kind of swollen which makes it uncomfortable to kneel, and my bathtub is not embarrassing but it could be more immaculate considering that I am becoming an almost famous cleaning lady.

Love, Erica.

Fern wrote back with the suggestion that I set an alarm on my phone five times a day to remind me that nobody is coming to save me. On Thursday, July 26, 2018, five times per day, my phone emphatically reminded me that,

There is no prize.

You don’t need saving.

Fuck most of it.

There is no prize.

The next day was Friday, July 27, 2018, some kind of full moon and lunar eclipse, and I walked five km with a swollen knee all the way to the second floor of the Greyhound Bus Station to see my doctor. On my i-phone, I’d prepared a less emphatic list about my swollen knee, my borderline personality disorder, my lifelong toenail fungus, the occasional hemorrhoid, and the inflamed mole just above my sacrum which could have cancer but is more likely just inflamed due to rolling around on my floor and rubbing coconut oil into it too aggressively.

“Dr. Hamel n’est pas ici aujourd’hui,” said the receptionist.

Turns out I was an entire month too early.  Dr. Hamel was on vacation, like pretty much everyone else in the city, and once again my life proved itself to be one futile endeavour to another. I melted down hard as I hid behind the curtain in the photo booth in the bus station lobby downstairs. Sobbing, I wacked my face over and over again, where last week’s black eye was only just starting to fade.  I did not pay five dollars to take four tiny photos of my tragic and swollen and vaguely bruised face. The photos are digital and in colour, and thus not as charming as they used to be.

Fuck all of it, I thought. Someone can fucking come and save me. I don’t need the Instagram points, or any of the points. 

And I wandered south of the bus station where people and police frolicked in les Jardins Gamelins, and I scanned the scene for some dead beat who might have opioids.

“Où est le fentanyl?” I imagined calling out deliriously. Where the fuck are all the drugs?

Back at the bus station, I stood in front of the Enterprise rent-a-car booth where all the employees also seemed to be on vacation. In fact, I am not an excellent driver. In fact, I am terrible.

"What happened?" asked some middle-aged man, broad and balding and perplexed. "Why a woman so beautiful so sad?"

As though when I am slightly older, and slightly uglier, I will have every reason to be miserable.

My phone rang, and my friend with a regal name and a relatively sane balance between beautiful dreams and wise pragmatism called and invited me over to her semi-fancy loft in the Old Port. Travelling farmers from Airbnb were coming to rent for the weekend. With noticeable vigour, I scrubbed my friend’s dishes and stove top, plus the ledge where all the spice bottles vomit paprika and curry dust. Then my friend with a regal name and a relatively sane balance between beautiful dreams and wise pragmatism took me out for sushi, and she drove me all the way home, and she fucking saved my life.

Dear Sorrowful Simon, (not to be confused with Simon the Hermit who jumped off Le Tadoussac to his death on January 4, 2015)

Last Saturday, after some plans fell through, I walked all the way to Verdun without my phone. My goal was to swim, though I had zero opposition to  dying at any point along the journey. But the more people I passed, couples in particular, the more I didn’t need my lives to be theirs, or my life to be over. I was not suddenly fueled with the will to live, but I had the vague sense that my life was just as dull and just as pleasant as everyone else’s. When I got to Verdun, I swam up the weak rapids and coasted back down three times. Some old couple stood in the middle of the river and yelled back and forth to each other, even though their faces were less than a foot apart.

“Il y a une autre nageuse,” the man exclaimed excitedly.

Out of the water, I walked along the shoreline in my red polyester two-pieced speedo. The bathing suit chafed my inner thighs since despite extensive exercise and frequently flakey lunches, I do not have a thigh gap. Oh well, what the hell. And I climbed up the riverbank, and came upon some strangers’ wedding party where everyone looked hot and overdressed, anxious to get the pictures over with, and possibly also envious of my shoelessness and red bathing suit.  And as I felt the grass beneath my feet, it seemed perfectly valid to take the metro home, and eat a cheeseburger while reading a novel about rich families in New England.

Love, Erica.

And the same red bathing suit crashes a wedding in India.
Arombol Beach, Goa

Dear Vincent,

On my way to see you on Monday, July 30, 2018, a man rushed by me on Beaubien Street, and the man was carrying a sandwich in a plastic triangular box, and it’s possible the sandwich was made with a croissant, but it didn’t not look particularly delicious. To drink, the man had some Gingerale, and as he charged around me on the sidewalk he said,

“Ready to buy a lake house and get out of here.

Work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

I have everything except sanctity.”

Everything except sanctity and a lake house.

Wishing you and all of us, sanctity and a lake house.

Love, Erica.

Dear Tim Ferris,

When I imagine going on your podcast due to some brilliant Oprah Project I finally pulled off, and you ask me, “If you could put anything on a billboard and have millions or even billions of people see it, what would it say?” in fact, I have two answers. In fact, I cannot decide.

The first billboard says,

“Your life is of supreme importance. May you be free of your pain.”

And another one says,

“This is your strange and beautiful life. You can do all sorts of interesting shit. But you don’t have to. Your life does not need to be a spectacular TED talk.”

Sometimes your podcasts make me very tired, but I’d love to see you optimize menstruation.

Love, Erica.

This is your strange and beautiful life.

Dear Vincent,

Last November, soon after my 32nd birthday, I was considering my life goals and potential Oprah Projects, and I wrote this sentence:

Two things I really believe in are

Deep Cleans and Mondays without Vincent.

I always remember this sentence.

Love, Erica.

Interlude from the Self-Mutilating Parrot Family:

The Self-Mutilating Parrot family has guests. Grandmother, Aunt, and the Aunt's daughter, the Blonde Cousin from Australia. Soon it will be the Blonde Cousin’s fifth birthday. Over a breakfast of toast and butter and jam, her mother remarked, wow, that went so fast, and the two of them played a game in the hammock where the Blonde Cousin wrapped herself in the fabric and then emerged out of the crack, as though the hammock were a vagina, or a caesarean incision, and as though the Blonde Cousin were a baby being born. “Mama,” the Blonde Cousin said as she emerged, and her mother said, “You wouldn’t just come out and say that. It took you two years to say Mama. Before that it was always, Dada, Dada, Dada, and I felt so inadequate.”

In case you missed the very old news, the Self-Mutilating Parrot is spending its last days at Oka, and I wish the bird deep sanctity.

Dear Vincent,

What a thrill to run into you on Rue Beaubien, somewhere between St André and St Hubert. You were carrying a paper bag from Jean Coutu, and what a coincidence, I was headed there to, all set to buy deodorant and cinnamon gum so I could carcinogenically freshen up for Butt Club. (For those who wonder, Butt Club equals  a Democratic and sometimes Diplomatic Butt Exercise class in the park, and as fate would have it, it is the most famous poorly attended event I have ever invented, and truly the joy of my life.) Also, I needed to buy rubber gloves for the newest cleaner of my Deep Cleans empire. “Oh,” I said, when I saw you. “I am going there too.” Afterwards, I was rather proud of my very reasonable composure. Kindly, you smiled kindly.  I hope you liked my shirt.

Love, Erica.

It is approximately the one-year anniversary of Mondays without Vincent on the Internet. This is one of my most favourite un-famous things I have ever come up with. Send your emails to Vincent or Erica at the secret address ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. Your life is of supreme importance. May you be free of your pain. Love, Erica. 

Two things I really believe in are, Deep Cleans and Mondays without Vincent.

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Dear Vincent, Thank you for responding to my hysterical phone call.

Dear Vincent, Now you have three pen pals.

Dear Vincent, Long title about Oprah and her decadent plushy green chairs in the Oprah forest.

"A broken body is not a broken spirit"

Ever since I knew they existed I have been terrified of spinal cord injuries.  Having been active my entire life, I cannot imagine ever not being able to move or feel any part of my body.  One of the most traumatizing events that ever happened to me was someone else’s spinal cord injury.   I was 21.  It happened towards the end of my second year living and working at a l’Arche home, where people with and without intellectual disabilities shared their lives together.  At L'Arche, there was only one woman who had a physical disability as well as an intellectual disability.  Her name was Isabelle, and I’ve written about her a few times before.  Isabelle didn’t have a spinal cord injury, but she was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that comes in all sorts of manifestations.  For Isabelle, it meant that she was mostly paralyzed and needed help eating and changing her clothes and brushing her teeth.  She always sat in her wheelchair or lay on her bed with her hands held out to the side, her fists clenched and her  forearms forming 45 degree angles with the sides of her body.  Sometimes she said, “aaaa-aaa-aaa,” and often she laughed and smiled looked up with her eyes.  Looking up with her eyes meant “Yes.”  Looking down to the right-hand corner of her eyes meant, “No.”  She hardly ever said no.  Most of the time she was smiling and laughing and looking up. 

Isabelle at the river

It was easy to make Isabelle laugh and smile and look up more.  I knew all of her favourite songs.  I think everyone thought they did, though we were always singing different songs to her. Her very favourite was the ABC’s but she also liked Puff the Magic Dragon, Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” James Taylor, the Beatles, Christmas carols all year round, and anything about Jesus.  Isabelle also liked it when you talked about her friends.

 Her favourite friend’s name was a like magic word.  If you talked about Elizabeth*, Isabelle would squeal and laugh, squeeze her hands close to her sides and look up with her eyes, over and over again.  "Yes, Yes Yes."  Elizabeth was a teacher at the Montreal School for the Blind where Isabelle went to school.  For around thirty years, she’d taught children like Isabelle, taking them swimming, singing them songs, reading to them, and helping them to communicate and gain as much independence as possible.  Though Isabelle had been in her class a number of years back, Elizabeth made the effort to keep in touch, stopping by Isabelle’s classroom regularly and organizing visits to Isabelle’s home.  During her visits, she’d drink tea and eat cake, take Isabelle for walks and read her poems. Elizabeth also recorded Isabelle tapes of her reading stories and poems.   She had a soft voice and lovely British accent.

“Hi Isabelle,” the tapes would begin.  “It’s Elizabeth.  I’m going to read you some poems.”  Isabelle loved Elizabeth's voice and she loved everything that rhymed.  One of her favourite Elizabeth tapes had Elizabeth reading William Blake’s songs of innocence and experience.  At the lines, “Tyger Tyger Burning Bright, in the forests of the night,” Isabelle would crack into joyful hysterics. 

Back when I used to live in the home, Isabelle cried about once a year, when all her friends went home from her birthday party.  All we needed to do to make her feel better was put on the Elizabeth tape. 

One Wednesday evening in the spring, I biked back to the home in pouring rain at the end of my day off.  Nathalie, my Francophone house leader was washing the dishes in the kitchen. “Quick,”  she said. “ Read the letter on the fridge.  I don’t know what it means.  It’s about Elizabeth.”  In my soaking wet clothes, I ran to the fridge. Over five years later, I have the letter memorized. 
 
On Saturday afternoon Elizabeth Freeman went for a bike ride and somehow crashed.  She endured several jaw fractures, but more important, was injured to the spine.  She has already had several operations and although it is too soon to make a prognosis, she may have done permanent damage.

For weeks, this letter was all that I thought about.  Why would this happen to someone who had devoted her life to empowering children who use wheelchairs?  Why would she have to be in a wheelchair too?  It was too absurd, too ironic.  I was devastated for Elizabeth, but also terrified for the fate of my own spine.  I rode my bike every day. It was just a matter of time before I would become injured to the spine too. 

 A month or so later, Isabelle was graduating from her school, since all the students graduated the year of their 22^nd birthday.  We’d prepared cake and a thank you song for all of the teachers.  It rhymed and was to the tune of "Puff the magic dragon."  The teachers were touched and delighted.  Isabelle had been a big star at the school.

Still at the rehabilitation hospital, Elizabeth hadn’t been able to make it.  But she made Isabelle a tape for Isabelle to listen to at her party.  I have the words of the tape memorized too.

 “Hi Isabelle,” she said.  You could still hear her British accent, but her voice was a bit muffled.  As soon as she heard her voice, Isabelle started smiling and looking up.  “If I sound a little funny, it’s because my jaw is stuck together with wires and an elastic band.  As you know a little while ago, I had a bad, bad bicycle accident.  I was riding long and my bicycle hit a bump.  I went flying over the handlebars and landed on my back.”  Matter of factly, she went on to say that she couldn’t feel or move her legs.

“So like you Isabelle, I have a wheelchair.  And the people here use a lift to get me out of my bed and into my wheelchair.  It was scary at first, but I’ll get used to it.” She said that her arms got tired from pushing herself in her wheelchair, but that too she’d get used to.  Then Elizabeth said that she was sorry she couldn’t make it to Isabelle’s good-bye party, and that they’d have to get together sometime soon.  Isabelle laughed and looked up.

“Yes, Isabelle,” Elizabeth said. “Some day when it’s really nice outside we’ll get together and we’ll go for a walk.  I don’t know how, but we’ll manage some way.” 

Since that party, Isabelle and I have had several visits with Elizabeth.  She’s truly a delightful woman. At one point there was hope that the swelling in her spine would go down and allow for more movement and sensation, but that window of possibility has probably passed. 

“Of course, I would love to walk,” she said to me.  “But I know that people can have valuable and enjoyable lives in a wheelchair.”  Then she looked over at Isabelle.  “Right Isabelle.”  And Isabelle laughed and said yes with her eyes. 

A couple of times, Isabelle, Elizabeth and I went swimming.  Elizabeth was lowered into the water on the chair lift first.   Isabelle went next and I waited to catch her in the water.  Before her accident, Elizabeth had taken children like Isabelle swimming so many times.  She would have loved to help Isabelle swim again.  But how could she if she couldn’t make her feet touch the bottom? Elizabeth didn’t complain, but I just thought of all the other people in the world who would never think of taking Isabelle swimming.  It wasn’t fair. To this day, I might be less accepting of the whole ordeal than Elizabeth is.

After I moved out of the house for people with disabilities, I started to practice Ashtanga yoga every day.  Although having the opportunity to practice was a total grace, I remember feeling immensely conflicted about it.  Headstands, backbends, all this was meant to take me deeper into myself.  But how could they be that important when other people couldn’t walk?  How could these postures relieve my suffering when wonderful, giving people like Elizabeth were stuck in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives?  What will happen when I fall off my bike and everything goes to shit? 

Over five years after beginning a daily yoga practice, I try to be grateful for my life and my body as it is right now.  Despite this, I often feel frustrated by my body’s trivial limitations, and terrified that all of its abilities will be taken away.  And I feel guilty for feeling all this, because it seems shallow and not very spiritual. 

Yesterday, I came across this beautiful TED talk by Janine Shepherd, an Olympic hopeful who was severely injured during a training bike ride.  

 
I highly recommend that you watch Janine’s magnificent story.  Her talk is called, “A broken body is not a broken spirit.”  It's a really good reminder.
 
The End.

*Name has been changed for privacy.  If you meet Isabelle and would like to know the real magic word, let me know and I'll tell you.

Isabelle looking angelic.
A broken body is not a broken spirit. And what does broken mean anyways.
 
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