Last time I went to Abilene, I cried. This was an accomplishment. Middle aged me can rarely cry.
This time, I had a panic attack over a grilled cheese sandwich. Ha!
In the Eisenhower chapel, the famous couple is buried along with their child who died long before they did. I sat and read about how anti-war Dwight was. Anti-war because he had been to war. Anti-war becuase he was a serious person. The kind of anti-war a person could only be if he had thoroughly explored recently liberated concentration camps.
I didn’t get to see the Eisenhower museum on my first visit because I arrived too late in the day. My second visit, I was there by noon.
I was bringing my dad along, as he is an American history maniac, and a military history guy, too. I have the summer off, my dad has been dealing with some chronic illness stuff that is awful. We were going to have a time.
We did have a time! Did you know Eisenhower’s youngest brother resigned from the War Relocation Authority after he realized how wrong it was to inter Americans of Japanese ancestry? Did you know he was president of Kansas State University? Milton Eisenhower went to college because the editor of his local newspaper paid for it.
The problem was, I ordered grilled cheese. I know what you’re saying: Liz, that’s an amateur mistake. No one, but no one, can eat grilled cheese.” I’m a vegetarian! Abilene is a small town!
I had successfully driven us to Abilene (driving calms me), and when I went into the restroom at the restaurant, my whole insides fell out, and I knew, out of absolutely nowhere, that I was not okay.
Ike said of his brother Edgar, “You were always vastly my superior. You could run faster, hit better, field better, tote the football better…. I was just the tail to your kite.” This man was the president of the United States. I have to read these things, process them, to remember that some people who have been in leadership are not… like the leadership we currently have.
No, I was okay.
No, I was not. It’s time to take the emergency pill.
Fun fact: the Eisenhower family were religious seekers, being a part of a group called the River Brethren (Mennonite-ish) and then learning about “19th century mysticism” and a group that ultimately became the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Ike himself never identified with a particular denomination.
Shit, okay, let’s take another half of the emergency pill. Let’s have a cocktail.
Mamie liked a bad boy. She described Ike as totally different from the usual society guys, he was not like those “lounge lizards with patent-leather hair.” She grew up wealthy, and met Ike in San Antonio, a place I kind of assumed barely existed before my uncle moved there in 1985. Ike was in the military, and Mamie was “wintering” there. It must be nice.
The grilled cheese problem: in the last year, I met my dad and stepmom for dinner, and ordered… you know what. I proceeded to have a crushing panic episode, involving multiple bathroom trips to do my breathing, and being 100% unable to take a bite of my dinner, barely able to focus on what they were saying to me, and then giving in: “I don’t feel good. I have to go.”
And then missing going to the theater with my dad, something I was definitely going to enjoy.
So was it the grilled cheese, or was it going to an outdoor theater? I had been a complete basket case when I last saw a show outdoors. Like if you said, I’ll punch you in the face, and you’ll feel better, I would have said, yes, please.
Ike and Mamie moved around a ton, as Ike pursued a military career, building his knowledge of all kinds of terrain, cultures, and politics. They lived in several “tropical” places, which were hard on Mamie’s health. However, she was able to endure living in the Panama Canal Zone, where they frequently found bats and tarantulas inside their home.
Other fun Mamie facts: she sometimes had her own cigarettes made, rolled in “Mamie pink” papers, with her intials stamped on them.
I kept chatting with my dad, who would later be slightly alarmed to realize I had freaked out. While you were driving me, he said? Oh, no, I said. While sitting at lunch peacefully. You helped me by just talking to me while the chemistry shifted.
Ike is said to have consumed up to 24 cups of coffee a day when he was stressed.
The chemistry did shift. Zoloft, buspar, hydroxyzine, ativan, and part of a fruity summer cocktail, and I thought I was okay. I was okay. My dad and I both enjoy reading every word of a history museum’s texts, and making connections and asking questions. You know, nerd heaven.
If you don’t have panic attacks, all that sedation I described doesn’t mean I am suddenly soft, goofy, or sleepy. It means I am back to a normal nervous system.
Under our current leadership, it is mind-boggling to read Ike’s speech written for the failure of D-Day. (Obviously he didn’t have to use it.)
My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
We toured the Eisenhower home. It felt a lot like the Lincoln home I visited last spring. The Eisenhowers moved in about 35 years after Lincoln left his Springfield home, but the vibes of a house that was right away protected and preserved as historically important, in a town that would use that home as its tourist draw for decades to come… that was similar. Eisenhower’s home has many more original furnishings. Lincoln is obviously a more famous president. Both of them had a humility, though, and an internalness, that speaks to me.
The best of President Eisenhower is his insistence at seeing the concentration camps, documenting what was there, and inviting a continuous stream of politicians and reporters to see the horrors with their own eyes. He predicted that people would doubt such things had happened, could happen, and we know today he was right. Today we have the Nazi’s descendents taking the subway into DC on the 4th of July, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a huge monument stands as tribute to people who fought Nazis and won.
I talked to my psychiatrist. “Do you have some trauma we haven’t talked about?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, the usual stuff, but….”
“Maybe you should see about trauma therapy.”
I took this to mean two things: you’re not responding to meds the way most people do, and I’m not sure what to do with you.
Awesome.
I chug along working on my shadow side, journaling right here, meditation, exercise. Getting extra sweaty at July ballet class.
Tonight I’m going to a concert at the same place that I didn’t go to with my dad. That is, the show I didn’t see with him, at that same venue, I have tickets to see a show with my mom.
“It’s so stupid, I think it was the grilled cheese,” I told my psychiatrist.
“I know, the grilled cheese triggered you. But it isn’t dumb. It’s just not logical.”
Just because you know your reaction is insane doesn’t mean you can stop it.
I think it’s dumb.
I had a good meditation this morning about letting go of control. I am practicing the mental steps of tonight, and building this mental pathway: it’s okay if I can’t do it, everyone else will be okay. Just because I’m not okay doesn’t mean everyone else’s time is ruined.
Since my panic stuff lately seems to be a lot about thinking that if I freak out and have to leave, other people will be worried and sad.
I don’t know. It’s a theory.
My dad and I got to the part of the exhibit where Eisenhower is recruited by both Democrats and Republicans to run for president.
“I mean, maybe he thought, hey, there have been many years of Democratic power, and it’d be good to change it up,” I said.
“Elizabeth, he was a Republican,” my Republican Dad said.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Fine.” We went on.
Going On 