So it's Thursday night, a beautiful beautiful spring night, clear and cool and I'm driving to an Ishtar, my first Ishtar, a celebration of community and Islam, to which I have been generously invited by Bushra Amiwala, a former Niles North student, a dear brilliant girl who has grown into an accomplished shining star of a young woman.
The dress code suggested formal and modest so a burgundy turtleneck covers the neckline of my floor length flowy sienna-patterned dress with long sleeves.
When Bushra sees my goldenrod scarf over the back of my hair, she will coo "Oh, look at you!" and I will blush with being appreciated for trying.
I also tried to fast, as recommended, but couldn't forgo water.
Skipping food all day was easy peasy lemon squeeze, but the occasional spot of thirst frightened me with its intensity. Like I was choking, like panic might come soon if I didn't have a swallow of water at hand.
So at the Ishtar, when the gracious hostess, or was it the hilarious comedian emcee Zaid Fouzi?, asked those who had fasted to stand, I stayed in my seat, ever the rule-follower, which now connects to that other new discovery about myself which I am learning more and more of every day.
(Bushra, it turns out, like so many other brilliant and powerful and charismatic women, also has opened up about her neurodivergence. When our new social studies director invited her to speak to the student tutors at North, Bushra urged us to embrace our differences. She was singing my life with her words with her mic up in front of the student tutors in the Point, our tutoring center, and then when her Powerpoint flipped to her Formula for Success and the expected components of "hard work" and "passion" were multipled by "IMPULSE"(!), I had to jump a bit in my seat, and turn, and give a huge happy smile and thumbs up to the aforementioned new director who had been in A Meeting with me already to year to talk about that very quality of mine.)
(LOLOLOL)
(Laugh break, but now back to our story which is really about something else besides how wonderful the Muslim community dinner was, and how welcoming and beautiful everyone was, and how many former students and parents I ran into, but rather about what happened on the way...)
So BEFORE the Ishtar in Skokie, and AFTER I dropped off in the metal after-hour bins in front of the Skokie Food Pantry the leftover baked goods from EvaDeans the new breakfast/lunch restaurant and bakery in Wilmette run by the son of the guy who runs Bennison's...
But wait, I have to tell you about meeting that very father and son duo at EvaDeans when I went to pick up their day olds (like we used to do in New Orleans, but that was at a factory and we just dumped the trays into shopping bags, while Kristina, the lovely woman behind the counter at EvaDeans loaded up their nice white boxes with the goodies -- probably eight or so full heavy boxes at the end).
The father and son were sitting at the coffee bar towards the back in the peace and quiet of post-closing time and when Kristina told me who they were, I had to go over to thank them and do a little gushing.
"Do you have the bakery that's won all those French awards?" I asked and he demurred something like "yes," although I was grossly oversimplifying the accomplishment, and I launched into a little enthusiastic stanning about how much I selfishly appreciated the new restaurant for Wilmette and how I doubly appreciated the donation of leftovers for the food pantry that would be going into the homes of my students.
When I finished my long sentence, I started backing away to give them back their conversation, but bumped into a chair stacked upside down on the table for floor mopping and didn't even feel embarrassed as I righted it before it fell because the awkwardness was so stock Fan Girl and suited my little cosplay.
(I'll write later about the cosplaying aspect of neurodivergence. Oceana on TikTok alludes to this when she talks about High Masking Girls dressing up and wearing makeup both for ourselves and for the roles we play.)
So there I was, AFTER the bakery and food pantry (I'll be doing this run every Thursday from here on out) and BEFORE the big party in the hotel ballroom, driving in the gorgeous spring light and I had the radio on and I heard an NPR story about Ibogaine.
Have you heard about this drug?
The addiction-destroying results of the trip sound almost too juicy to be true but they're true, they're true!
Like something out of a novel by Ann Patchett, Westerners have adopted the hallucinogenic from an African root and been carrying out therapeutic trials, first in the 1960's along with psilocybin, and lately, (get this delicious detail), trials are underway in Mexico and in BOATS off the coast of Florida because the treatment has not yet been approved by the FDA.
The ameliorating effects astound me; eliminating life-threatening cravings for cocaine and crack and alcohol with a single dose.
But it's the hallucinatory trip one must first got through that held my attention -- because as it was described, the visions are hellish, with past traumas and fears and agonies revisited and some, previously out of reach to the unmedicated brain, remembered.
So on this Easter afternoon, post brunch with my handsome husband, safe and content in the knowledge that our two beautiful daughters spent their first Easter away from us, but together at Knox in Mia's cute dorm room, I can think about what first dawned on me upon hearing of this miracle.
I would take that drug.
I would take it, not to beat an addiction, but for the trip to hell itself.
I would take the pill, feel the pain, go through my worst agonies in person all over again, if it would give me one more moment with Nancy again.
I want to see Christopher once more, even if he is in pain, as a witness to the crash told me.
If all I got from the trip was feeling fresh and raw all over again that my mother and father were gone forever and never coming back, I would swallow that capsule with relish.
Who would say no to the offer of a time machine?
Who chooses the Blue Pill to return back to the status quo instead of the Red, which give you one more chance?
