The family needs a reading list for this situation and I have proactively started it with an Amazon order. So far:

I was very excited for No Exit/Huis Clos. I read it in high school French and barely, barely understood it. My only memories are that the characters could not shut their eyes, and the misapprehension that the word exit in French was either huis or clos. Wrong! Exit is sortie, and huis clos means behind closed or locked doors, meaning jail. Calvin was incredibly irritated when I asked him why there were no signs saying huis or clos in France.

Just a tip: Don’t ask him that question.

I do feel we need a book about mental illness. I don’t want a book about how hard it is for someone with mental illness. I want a book about how hard it is to deal with someone who is mentally ill and very mean. Calvin has suggested One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with the Nurse Ratchett character being the Maggie surrogate, but still that seems too much about how the mental illness system abuses people. We feel abused by the lack of a functional mental health system.

I did recently read Bob Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road, about a family in Colorado Springs with twelve kids, six of whom had either schizophrenia or are bipolar. I read it just before Maggie came after us, and I don’t think I could have read it through had I started after Maggie got going. Bob’s book might be great for Maggie’s family, but we’re not on the kind of terms where I can recommend books to them. Mostly I want to throttle them for not handling her better.

I tend to find books that fill a need I didn’t know I have. For example, when Daisy was very little and Calvin and I didn’t understand how to communicate with her, I read book after book about women who discover their husband was a terrible cheater and often criminally dishonest. It wasn’t until a few years after we figured out Daisy that I realized I was reading books about women living with a big secret right under their noses, just like I was.

Sure, in my case it wasn’t an unfaithful, duplicitous husband, but a child who needed extra help in understanding the world. Once Daisy’s situation was laid out for us, Calvin and I tried all sorts of communication methods. For about a year, I drew cartoons of things we were going to do and then Daisy and I would act them out.

Buying her new shoes, for instance, was so much easier when I drew a little cartoon of Wendy and Daisy going into a shoe store. Then we set up some shoes in our living room to try on. So when we got to the real store, Daisy was fine and knew the drill.

I do regret that the problem-solving part of my brain hyper focused on the secret I didn’t know and entirely missed my daughter’s situation. But once we did understand the problem, we found ways to solve it.

I have not found a book to go with our current situation. Huis Clos arrived and after reading it, my opinion formed in high school has not changed. They can’t close their eyes. Daisy already finished The Trial and didn’t have much to say about it. I’ll read The Plague when we get home. My mother suggested Death in Venice, which I thought was totally off target but Calvin thought might work.