When I was a kid, everyone I knew, loved and respected suffered from panic attacks. My mother got them, both of my sisters got them, and Thela, my aunt, had them almost 24 hours a day during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. On July 21, 1969, when Neil Armstrong took his small powdery step from the LEM to the pristine surface of the moon, she was absolutely inconsolable. Secretly, I think my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Thompson, got them too, although, to be honest, I think hers were fake -- brought on by too much hair dye that had soaked through her skull and into the brain. Periodically, she would talk in a southern accent (she was from Connecticut) and lift her skirt over her head, skipping around the classroom and calling herself Mary Lou (her first name was Viola). She would then come to a complete stop, look us squarely in the eyes like she was trying to hypnotize us and say, as seriously as possible, that "the college bound student should take as much 'rah-ting' and 'lit-a-ture' as possible." As you might imagine, the result of this behavior was that all of us paid rapt attention to her for fear we would miss something. Every single student in Mrs. Thompson's class that year got an A -- even Dwayne Waterger who used to eat glue and was as stupid as dirt; he got an A- even though he had never managed anything higher than a C- in any class, gym included. Mrs. Thompson's panic attacks helped all of us learn absolutely everything that a 4th grader should know --teaching us concentration, memorization and focus. We were afraid to pass notes or daydream because we could miss the next show. Bottom line -- I don't know if Mrs. Thompson's hysterical antics were actually panic attacks or something more sinister like menopause, but I do think her teaching methods prove she was a genius. There's nothing like the sight and first hand knowledge of a middle aged woman's foundation garments to make a 10 year old learn and remember things like the theories of planetary evolution.
Wikipedia, from which all useful knowledge is gleaned, defines panic attacks as "episodes of intense fear or apprehension that are of sudden onset and of relatively brief duration." This is scientific code for "you go frigging nuts and often crap on yourself." Seriously, my panic attacks were awful. I never crapped on myself but I often vomited. I thought I couldn't breathe. I thought I was losing control of myself. I thought I was dying. I couldn't catch my breath -- there was something I call the "trigger." If I could just get a deep enough breath past a place in my throat near the epiglottis -- this is the place I think of as the trigger -- I would be fine. But, during a full blown panic attack, I am hyperventilating so badly that deep breaths, even shallow breaths, are almost impossible; I can not achieve the trigger that signals my life will continue. So, for me, the inability to achieve the trigger breath signals that the end is near. My mind races. I run around, trying to take my mind off the problem. I swallow and try to burp repeatedly. My forehead beads with sweat.
Usually, when feeling the beginnings of a panic attack, I would ask my mom to take me to Minerva's, our cousin's, house. Minerva was funny and thought provoking and I defy anybody to have a panic attack in her presence. She had her own car and actually had a drivers license. She had such a powerful presence that the simple act of getting into the car to go over to Minerva's house would often bring me down. She also had the coolest kitchen in the world with matching cabinets and burners that were built into the countertop. No big white old fashioned stove for Minerva -- this built-in cooktop thingie was a relatively new-fangled development in 1969 and it was fascinating to me. Anyway, suffice it to say that going to Minerva's was always therapeutic. I can estimate that, when I was in the 4th grade, my mom and I were at Minerva's house more often than we were at church which is saying something because we were Greek and never missed a Sunday and often went during the week at holiday times. Minerva was a life saver.
I know the cause of my panic attacks. My yiayia died in 1968 and that started a series of events that left me shaking, breathless and close to following her to the grave. Nothing bad had happened in our family until then. Life was great. But, when yiayia died, things changed. OMG, Mary, I saw my father cry for the first time. Ever. At yiayia's funeral, I saw Mrs. Demitrulias grab my yiayia's hand -- in the coffin -- and hold it in her own. Mrs. Demitrulias was rubbing yiayia's hand, crying and lamenting her loss. But she was also talking directly to yiayia like they were having coffee and gossipping about Lillian Bitsoff. "Oh, Cherry-mou" (my "Cherry"), she said. Yiayia's American name was Cherry for some unfortunate reason -- Kerasho in Greek. "You better take a sweater, it's going to be cold where you're going." That freaked me out. Yiayia was dead for God's sake. Sweater? Cold? Wasn't she going into the ground??? And, why was she talking to her -- she can't answer. She can't even open her eyes or make baklava anymore. What was this adult doing?
That got me going. Where was Yiayia now? Where was she going? What happened to the life that was in her body? Why were her boobies so big? And why couldn't she speak English? But, really, what did death mean? What did the universe mean? Was I going to die? Were my parents going to die? Was Walter Cronkite going to die? For some reason, all of this sent me into a tailspin for the next several years. Bottom line -- panic attacks.
Let's explore the first panic attack I ever had. We were all sitting around the back room. To most families, this would have been called the family room but we weren't rich enough. To me, "family room" brought up images of color television sets, dark wood paneling covered with posed family pictures, artfully prepared plastic flower arrangements on cool modern side tables and fireplaces. Our back room was covered in linoleum (black with pink and aqua flecks), had one brick wall that used to be the outside of our house and it had a real window between it and the kitchen with a concrete sill and an aluminum frame still in it! Our side tables were tall, multi-layered, scrolled and carved pieces of antique wood -- they embarrassed me. The real reason we called it the back room, though, was quite simple -- it was at the back of the house. Anyway, we were sitting in the back room watching TV. I of course was secretly having the beginnings of this bad-ass panic attack. I was fighting it but losting the battle. My breath was short. There was no damn trigger breath. I was sweating. I was nauseous. My belly was swollen. I had gas. My mind was racing, my heart was pounding in my chest. I could not breath. I thought, in short, that I was dying. At first, I tried to keep this to myself but it was an impossibility. After awhile, I lost control -- plus wouldn't my parents want to know if I was dying? I told my parents that I felt sick. They rejected that. I told them I did not feel good, that I had something stuck in my throat, that I had cramps and at any moment would lose consciousness. I was shaking, bouncing and spinning my head back and forth and up and down. First my father tried the stern "watch TV and forget about it." But I kept pacing in front of his view. He finally told me to sit on the couch and be quiet. I tried but was still shaking and twitching like a crazy person on a crowded bus -- my head in a constant search for help from someone, anyone, a doctor would be good. I was babbling a mile a minute. Just when I thought I could no longer stand it, death being imminent and the panic attack at its zenith, I screamed like a little girl, jumped up from the couch from a full seated position and hit my head on the light fixture that was on the ceiling -- serioiusly, flush on the weird fuzzy fabric-covered ceiling tiles (honestly, never in my life have I ever seen ceiling tiles like this -- they must have been extras from one of the restaurants my father owned. "Waste not, want not" he liked to say). Where I got this energy and strength --no -- where I got that sort of superhuman ability -- I will never know -- I am not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. So, I jumped from a seated position, hit my head on the light fixture and vomited on the floor.
My father ran over. Even my sister ran over. My mother? Well, she was in the kitchen. Laughing. I couldn't believe it. Laughing? Not huge, mouth open guffawing but more quiet laughing that only an all powerful and blessed mother can have during a crisis. Laughing that meant "I know what you're going through, I know you think it's awful but it's really okay now get over it." She was, however, laughing enough -- and, at the same time, leaning over into the bottom kitchen cabinet drawer -- that she had to put her hands on the countertop to steady herself. Here, her only son was lying on the floor, a puddled mess of sweat and vomit, gasping for breath and probably dying -- and she had 2 hands on the counter to steady herself while she was laughing. In my mind's eye, the laughing went on for a long time, hours even. She was laughing, the sweet gentle laughter I still can hear in my mind -- laughter that sounded like the tinkling of a crystal chandelier pushed by someone's hand. She herself was out of breath. And then it happened, she had laughed for so long while she was reaching into the bottom drawer for a piece of bread for a sandwich for me (food will solve all problems even a panic attack), that she wet herself a little bit.
And in the one moment, where she laughed and peed and made me a sandwich, my panic attack was over. Gone in a flash because of Mom. I will never know whether she did that on purpose to take my mind off my panic attack but she was the sole solution to the problem because: (1) she was a sufferer herself and would of course know how to end a full-blown panic attack; and (2) she automatically triaged the situation and sprang into action, resolving the emergency in the best way she knew as a Greek mother -- food preparation. Looking back, she had begun making a sandwich for me even before I was unable to achieve the trigger and before all of my symptoms were clear to the rest of the family. Before my father told me to get out of the way so he could see the TV, she was already in the kitchen. While I was jumping, hitting my head on the ceiling light fixture, landing and puking, she was getting the roast beef, mayo and cheese out of the old Kenmore in the kitchen. She knew and she did what she had to do, with a calmness I have rarely witnessed.
She, the most loving force of nature I have ever known, had laughed at me and willed herself to pee on command to save the life of her only son and youngest child. She recognized my lack of the trigger because she herself had experienced every kind of panic attack known to modern man. To me, the laughing was not the act of a callous or abusive parent -- furthest from the truth. She loved me more than life itself. This I knew for a fact and my sisters will attest to her love of me. On the day of my mom's funeral, one of her best friends, Christina Pagos -- as she was leaving our house -- said to me amidst her own tears -- that I was always my mom's favorite. Christina was right of course. My mom had lost 2 boys before me to some unknown, unspeakable and never diagnosed problem. I was the one she got to keep. She loved me so much that she performed a miracle that day in the back room -- she healed me and saved my life all in one fell swoop -- using a roast beef sandwich, the sound of tinkling crystals and the tinkling of her own falling waters as the tools of her saintly trade. And if that is not a miracle, nothing is and nothing ever will be.
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