Playing the Genetic Lottery
A Novel
By Terri Morgan
excerpts
from Prologue and Chapter 1
Prologue
Every
morning when I first wake up I wonder and I worry. Before getting out of bed,
before registering my full, aching bladder, before remembering what day it is
and what responsibilities await -- I assess myself for signs of the disease. I
roll my eyes around the room, looking for phantoms that may have appeared while
I was sleeping. For odd, moving sights, like my dresser transformed into a
rolling automobile or roaring lion. To make sure that the clock radio on my
nightstand or the framed photos on the bookshelves haven't cloned themselves
overnight and morphed into twins or even triplets.
Then I listen carefully. I hear Jason snoring lightly beside me. I
hear the ticking of the living room clock. I hear the jangle of Rosco's tags as
he rolls over on his bed in the corner of our room. I hold my breath and listen
for mysterious voices or alien noises. Then, once I'm sure I'm not hearing any
unusual, strange sounds, I ask myself---silently so not to wake my sleeping
husband----a series of questions.
Who am I? What's my address? Where
do I work? How old are my children? What's my husband's name? Who's the
president? Only after the correct responses to the first five pop into my mind,
and I chuckle to myself after answering "Calvin Coolidge" to the
sixth question because I know good and well that Barack Obama currently resides
in the White House, do I know I'm safe for another day. If I still have my
sense of humor, and apparently my faculties, I've still escaped it.
Escaped the mental illness that afflicted and consumed my mother, my
father and my brother. Escaped the schizophrenia that robbed them of their
minds and me of a childhood.
I know that at 32 my chances of
developing schizophrenia are miniscule and keep shrinking with every passing
month. Despite that, I'm still obsessively terrified of developing the
devastating mental illness that was an ever-present part of my formative years.
It's shaped who I’ve become, and I've worked for more than half my life to
recover from its impact. My father, mother and brother all lost the genetic
lottery, and their misfortune continues to ripple through my life even today.
My name, at least the name I go by
now, is Caitlin. That's the name I chose for myself 18 years ago when I fled my
childhood home of horrors. I cast off the name on my birth certificate for the
new one in hopes of casting off the madness that was my family.
Chapter 1
There are a lot of popular
misconceptions swirling around about schizophrenia. Some people, especially
those who are fortunate enough not to have had first-hand experience with this
devastating, disabling mental illness, think schizophrenics suffer from a
split, or two vastly different personalities. I imagine they picture someone
like a benevolent, beloved school teacher who bakes cookies for the neighbors
in her spare time turning into a vicious profanity-spewing crone who butchers
small cuddly animals with her bare hands during episodes. Others, who are
steeped in popular culture, believe all schizophrenics are geniuses, like the
Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash. These kinds of misconceptions are
annoying, but not surprising, considering there are so many mysteries about
schizophrenia that have yet to be solved.
Despite billions of dollars worth of research, scientists have not yet
pinpointed the causes of schizophrenia, although they believe a combination of
genetics, brain chemistry and brain abnormality are involved. They do know that
there is a hereditary basis for the susceptibility of the disease, meaning that
schizophrenia often runs in families. Unfortunately,
it runs in mine.
My father, Keith, was 16 or 17 when
he began changing from an outgoing, straight-A student and angelic-voiced
singer who performed each Sunday in the church choir into a foul mouthed
chain-smoking punk who was afraid to leave his room for days on end except to
steal cigarettes or use the bathroom because "they" were out to get
him. My mother, Lisa, was diagnosed with
schizophrenia when I was 2, although I suspect she was afflicted long before
that. After all, she named my brother, who was born 3 years before I was,
Jondalar, after one of her favorite characters in Jean Auel's “The Children of
the Earth” book series. Although she was young, just 21 when she had my
brother, and impulsive like many young adults, saddling your newborn with a
moniker that would ensure he'd be the subject of relentless teasing throughout
his school years isn't what I consider to be the actions of someone fully
steeped in reality. Our father would sheepishly shrug his shoulders whenever my
brother demanded to know why he didn't stop Mom from putting Jondalar on his
birth certificate. Jon found Dad's lack of action especially troubling,
considering Dad had grown up being called "the Wart," because his
last name is Swarthout. On the upside, the name Jondalar was such an
irresistible taunting target that Jon was largely spared the indignity of being
dubbed a Wart like I was throughout my elementary school days.
Dad
also failed to stop Mom from naming me Ayla after the main protagonist in
Auel's novels, character I suspect Mom sometimes wished she was. Fortunately
for me, my brother promptly nicknamed me Ava, as his young tongue struggled
unsuccessfully to pronounce my given name. I returned the favor when I began
speaking, shortening Jondalar to Jon. While my nickname stuck, Mom refused to
fully accept Jon's. When she was well, she would tolerate it grudgingly, and
even use it herself occasionally, but when she wasn't well she insisted on
correcting---and berating--- anyone who dared use the diminutive version of his
name within her hearing.
I don't remember the onset of Mom's
illness, so I have to rely on family stories; mostly the memories and tales of
my brother, grandmother, uncle and granddad. I've heard Dad's version too. But
since his illness has grown steadily worse throughout the years, I've given up
on trying to separate what's real and what's fantasy when it comes to his
memories. What I do know is that Dad was stable and working at his father's
hardware store when Mom got sick and was diagnosed. Mom was working as a
waitress at an old-fashioned all-night diner that specialized in serving
cholesterol-laden meals to overweight patrons.
She worked in the evenings, while my dad worked days, so my parents
could avoid paying childcare costs. My folks were struggling to make ends meet,
and Mom had to wash the gravy stains out of her uniform every night after she
got home so it would be dry and ready to iron before her next shift.
When Mom wasn't working, or busy
taking care of Jon and me, she was painting. Like her mother, my Nana, Mom
loved to paint. Both were very talented artists who enjoyed moderate success
and renown while I was growing up. Their works were displayed and sold in
several local galleries. My earliest memories are of the reek of turpentine,
oil paints and cigarette smoke, and the sight of my mother at her easel in the
living room. She'd lean partially finished paintings against the walls and
furniture, creating a colorful, ever-changing maze for us to negotiate to reach
the couch, the TV, or the phone. She'd work sporadically; at times with an
energy and passion that led her to forget who she was, that she had children to
feed until we started crying, or Dad came home from the hardware store and
startled her with his arrival. Throughout my childhood, these periods of
artistic frenzy were usually followed by painting droughts. When they occurred, Mom would stand for hours
with a brush in her right hand and a cigarette smoldering in her left staring
bleakly at a blank canvas.
The painters' block periods, as Jon
and I called them, were followed by long stretches where Mom would retreat to
her bedroom stay curled up in her bed, leaving Jon and me to fend for
ourselves. When Mom would re-emerge goofy phrases and nonsensical words would
often come out of her mouth, which confused and frightened us kids. The longer
those spells lasted, the less coherent she became. Dad would ignore the fact
that Mom was progressively getting sicker until some crisis occurred, and
authorities stepped in.
The first crisis occurred when Jon
was five and I was still in diapers. Apparently after weeks of strange
behavior, Mom came into the bedroom Jon and I shared and started ranting about
Satan. I started crying, Jon recalls, which set Mom off. She began yelling that
I was full of evil, and ordered Jon to cast me out of the house. Jon grabbed my
hand, pulled me out of the room and together we fled out the front door
screaming in terror. A neighbor overheard the ruckus and called the police
after leading us into her home and locking the door.
Jon claims I cried the entire six
weeks that Mom was in the hospital being diagnosed and treated for the onset of
schizophrenia. Nana, who took care of us while Dad was at work, never disputed
his account, but would spare my feelings by diplomatically adding, whenever Jon
brought the subject up, that "both you poor kids were pretty upset.”
Family lore has it that I was a
difficult child. I suffered from colic, apparently, and cried almost constantly
during my first six months of life. The colic and the crying stopped suddenly
one day, Nana remembers, only to be replaced a few months later, when I began
to begin to talk, with a bad case of the "nos."
"You were a pretty stubborn
kid," Nana told me when I was complaining to her that Kayla, my
first-born, had a mind of her own. "She takes after you. Your terrible
twos began when you were about 16 months old and didn't stop until you were in
Kindergarten.”
Fortunately for the rest of the
family, Jon, who'd been pestering my parents for a brother or a sister since he
began talking, adored me. In one of the first pictures taken after my birth, my
eyes are closed while Jon's are focused on me like I'm the new toy fire truck
he'd been begging our parents to buy him for weeks. His fascination with
"my baby" as he called me continued even while the colic-induced
crying put everyone's nerves on edge. Delighted to have a future playmate, Jon
apparently never displayed any of the anguish and anger at being upstaged by a
new baby that Kayla did when her sister Taylor was born. Relatives said Jon
loved to play with me, making faces and singing to me when I wasn't sleeping,
eating or crying. And when I was crying, which was apparently quite a bit of
the time even after the colic cleared up, to hear my mother tell it, Jon would
interpret my needs, telling my parents "diaper," "hungry"
or "ti-ti" when there was a physical reason for my howls. And when
there wasn't an obvious reason for my unhappiness, Jon would entertain me until
the tears stopped or his favorite cartoons came on.
"Thank God for your
brother," Mom would say throughout my childhood whenever she was healthy,
coherent and annoyed. "If I had had you first, you'd be an only child.”
Whenever my sense of guilt gets so
strong that I can't help but bring it up, Jason insists I wasn't responsible
for my mother's illness. So do all the therapists I've seen over the years. But
I know that stress can, and often does, play a role in triggering any latent
disease. And after I became a parent for the first time, exhausted from the
middle of the night feedings, and frustrated when Kayla would cry for what
appeared to be no apparent reason, I found it harder to accept their
reassurances.
Would you like to read more? The book is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.com.uk £3.19 on Kindle.
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