Mental Health Days: Helen Chappell

Mental Health Days

by Helen Chappell

The March winds will blow, And we will have snow And in the barn The robin will tuck his head Under his wing, poor thing.

T.S. Eliot may have pronounced April the cruelest month, but maybe he was too busy working at the bank to note the relentless awfulness of March. The month is like an older sibling that dangles a shiny object, like the sun, in front of you, then snatches it away, leaving you with three feet of icy snow on a day when you absolutely have to be somewhere.

Oh, sure, you think winter is finally over and at long last you’re going to get your vaccination, but noooooo. Arctic chill rips through your hopeful daffodils, and before the salt trucks come, you realize you’re out of coffee. That’s March.

If I were Queen of the World, which I am most assuredly not, I would make it my royal command that everyone would get a mental health day at least once or twice a year, especially in March.

A day where you could skip work, stay home all bundled up with a cup of hot chocolate and hours worth of binge-watching or reading or crocheting or whatever. You could slip on a disguise and take a shopping trip, or slip into an afternoon matinee.

You may want to kayak up a gut, work in your shop, take a hike, go to the Farm and Tractor Store, whatever. Whatever you need. A high tide floats all boats.

Whatever you want and need to do to escape, for a while, the loathsomeness of the daily grind so you can empty your brain and restore and refill it, because mental health day.

In Scandinavia, they call it hygge (pronounced hoo-ga) and it means a feeling of coziness, warmth and well-being. And they take it pretty seriously. It’s a counter to the long, sunless, bleak days of the north. You build a fire, you put on warm socks, you eat chocolate, read a book and socialize with your friends. It helps pass the endless winter. It’s a mental health day, and it’s high time we adapted this custom to our region.

When I worked in publishing in New York, every once in a while, some overworked editor or proofreader would whisper to the other lowly drones that they wouldn’t be

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Mental Health Days ideas, the diva fits of managing editors and high-strung authors. at the endless sales meeting next (The lesser the talent, the more deWednesday because they were tak- manding the writer.) ing a mental health day. We used to If someone had actually opened call this taking a trip to the Fuzzy an adult day care for very, very Bunny Rest Home, an imaginary overworked office drones, they sanctuary from the obnoxious could have made billions. Espesales department’s harebrained cially if they screened pre-released movies and had a bar. I learned to take mental health days early in my high school career. It’s no secret that I hated high school. It was about as challenging as working in a factory, and believe me, like any good artist, I have worked in factories. It was easy enough to forge a note from my mother, hop in the Corvair (did my parents want to

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kill me?) and head for the nearest city that was showing whatever Truffaut or Hitchcock film was running. I could hit as many as three matinees in a day.

Of course, eventually I got caught, but not before I was the most expert on nouvelle vague cinema in five counties.

Of course, you can choose your own mental health activity. A trip to the beach is always wonderful, no matter the season. In fact, it’s better in winter when it’s desolate and stark and beautiful and all those damn tourists are home in Glen Burnie, but I’m just mean. The beach is lovely in the summer when it’s hot and the waves just crash over you.

My point is that everyone, even the most conscientious and hardworking, needs to play hooky once in a while. You need a day without work, without responsibility, without those people you work with in order to deal with work, responsibility and the people you work with, and they probably need a vacation from you, too.

Besides, couldn’t you use a vacation from yourself?

So, it’s March. We’ve been through a long, terrible winter full of politics and pandemics, and somehow you’ve managed to keep your sanity and behave yourself for months.

You can use a mental health day. The Shore is coming to life now. Don’t you want to be part of it? Don’t you want to be part of it?

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam and Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead. Under her pen names, Rebecca Baldwin and Caroline Brooks, she has published a number of historical novels.