Parenting

Strange Territory

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The other Friday night, Thing2 had a school dance.  Thing1 went over to SuperGal’s house for a quiet pre-prom night hang out.  The Big Guy went to play music with his traditional music band at the Wayside Country Store. For a few minutes, work was finished, school was out and I was somehow alone.

Then at 6, Thing1 texted he was starting home early, so he and I went to a new food truck discovery in Cambridge, NY. We got back just before the Big Guy finished up his gig. Thing1 went to bed early as he has been these days with his hair-trigger colon still sapping his endurance.  The Big Guy and I suddenly had the giant sectional all to ourselves. I had to keep reminding myself that Thing2 was going a sleep over after the dance since, even with the TV turned up to 50, the silence blared, heralding a new era.

When I started this blog about 6 years ago, Thing1 was just starting to pull at the fraying edges of my apron strings.  This year, despite the needs created by an acute episode of his illness, he’s been shredding the one on his side. What I hadn’t expected — but should have — was that Thing2 would start chewing at his share of the strings at the same time.

I’m wearing my UMass Mom t-shirt as I write this. It’s my new apron. There are no strings on it. Like that apron, it’ll get a few tears on it over the next few years, and, hopefully it will have a companion when Thing2 flies the asylum in a few years.

The geography of our new lifestyle is similar to when we were double-income-no-kids (DINKS) even if the absence of money reminds us that no matter where our kids are, there it is. Still, penniless or not, it feels like we’re entering new territory.

A Birthday Oddity

/ Picking My Battles


I honestly wanted to do nothing more than absolutely nothing yesterday. 

Yesterday, I woke up as a square.  An odd square.  A product of two odd primes. It’s the fourth time I’ve been the square of primes, and, in all probability the last, as I’ll have to be 121 to celebrate the next truly odd birthday.  For this birthday oddity I’d planned a trip to the University of New Hampshire for the last college visit before my first son has to figure out which dotted line he’ll sign. 

But that wasn’t what made it odd — or wonderful.

For the past two weeks Thing1 has been dealing with anemia brought on by his disease. He could not tolerate a drive of any length, so we had postponed the UNH visit already.  The newest drug, however, seemed to hit pause on his symptoms, and his affable nature had re-emerged over the last day or two. We knew this was the last best chance to go.

We got Thing2 to school and then headed down to the hospital. Thing1 needed bloodwork to check trough levels for one of the five drugs trying to control his auto-immune disorder.  It was already 9 by then, and Thing1 was ready for Breakfast Number 2 — a side effect and a sign he was starting to feel more himself. 

Treating the day like a field trip day (if it were run by an really over-indulgent teacher), I took him to our favorite diner in Bennington (my next blog will be titled ‘Diners I have Known’). We’ve been going there since Thing1 was in a car seat carrier, and my eyes started sweating as I watched my gentle giant pick out two entrees for a ‘snack’ (although it could have been tears brought on by the impending dent in my wallet). 

“Mom,” he said in that tone that said other people could see me getting emotional as my baby prepared to leave the nest.  There would be a few more warnings.

After breakfast we headed east toward the other side of Vermont and then to the east side of New Hampshire.  

We stopped for a break during the three and a half hour drive. A girl playing scratch tickets, reminded me of a failed lesson in probability from another road trip a decade ago.  On a whim, I bought a ticket, thinking he’d be my good luck charm again. Ten years ago, I’d told him we’d paid a tax on people who are bad at math and wound up winning on three $50 scratch tickets in a row. I’d chalked it up to some ‘magic’ which had everything to do with being with my seven-year-old and nothing to do with Math.  Yesterday I lost, of course.  Thing1 is too old and skeptical to channel that kind of magic anymore, but we were both laughing as I scraped the silver goo off the losing numbers. He’s still my good luck charm.

It had been a long time since I’ve heard Thing1 really laugh. 

We got UNH and asked our questions before walking around.  Thing1 loved it and was even more undecided about his future. A few more drives around the bucolic campus, we headed back to meet the Big Guy and Thing2 in Vermont for dinner. 

It poured most of the time until we got near the Vermont border.  It rained from Bellows Falls to Londonderry and got foggy as we headed over Bromley mountain to Manchester. 

My body was getting weary from the travel and from the constant travel and worry of the last few months. It was as if a day of not worrying — of seeing Thing1 happy and debating over pleasant aspects of his future —  had let my muscles relax too much for a moment. 

When we got the the restaurant, Thing1 mentioned a worrying symptom that had appeared, and we knew the tension release was temporary.  In reality it’s always temporary, but it is always welcome.  

When we got home, I got my sketchbook, planning to doodle and promptly passed out on the sofa with Thing1 next to me and eleven year old Thing2 draped over the cats that came to sit on my legs.  I woke up long enough to send Thing2 and myself to bed for the dreamless, satisfying sleep that only an exhaustingly perfect day can produce. 

And the oddest thing was that it was the best present I hadn’t even thought to ask for.

Authentically Unconflicted

/ Picking My Battles

You’re It, Watercolor, 9×12 – SOLD

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

I started this blog about 6 years ago as an assignment for a writing workshop. It started as a way to share writing and drawings and evolved into a search for an authentic life that still continues.

I spend the majority of my time working at home. Most days, the only people I see are the Big Guy and 17-year-old Thing1 and 11-year-old Thing2. Our family conversations are hardly devoid of any meaning, but tend to focus on “what’s for dinner?“ and “can you pick up the kids?“

The only other regular conversation I have is with my blog. It has helped me deal honestly with bipolar disorder and embrace the dinner table stories that I once pooh-poohed. Over the years, however, that conversation has also led me to question if I was living in my truth and how to get to a place where I could.

One of the truths I discovered over the last few years is that I need to write and draw. When my life gets too congested to allow for a regular time for art, I have resented it.

Last fall, I reorganized my life to carve out time for creativity while building a new career that served the greater good. I started working weekends so I could go back to school, temporarily bowing out of a weekend writing class that had helped keep the spark lit for several years.

Murphy’s Law, however, is still in effect. My precise work schedule surrendered to the chaos of the holiday shopping season. And the bottom dropped out for Thing1.

Thing1 was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder a year earlier. Despite promising early results with medication and severe diet changes, Thing1’s body began shutting down a few days after Christmas. It was barely a week into winter when, knowing which battle mattered most, I withdrew from classes.

Thing1 was hospitalized near the end of January for assessment and treatment. As he lay in recovery after a procedure, I struggled not to cry as his doctor told us that his illness was quite severe and laid out his options. Some required injections or infusions. All of them carried a risk of lymphoma, one of them fatal, especially in young men.

When we got him home, we focused on getting him back to ‘normal’ but quickly realized ‘normal’, like much in life, is an ever-moving goal post. We worked with the school to make sure he stayed on track. We worked with doctors to get him through flu season, keeping them on speed dial through nervous nights.

And, when time permitted and sanity demanded, I blogged.

I still get weepy at night in bed when everyone’s asleep or in the car when no one’s around, even though I know we’re incredibly lucky. Every time I pick up a prescription with an $800 copay that’s been covered by my insurance from work, I know we could also be sitting at our round kitchen table trying to find things to sell to pay for each drug or worrying about bankruptcy.

Long before this blog reignited my creative spark, Thing1 was teaching me patience and determination as I had never understood them before. The self-doubting, self-hating person I had once been before his birth was dissolved in the breast milk and tossed out with a meconium-filled diaper, leaving only Thing1’s mom who had happily reorganized her entire life around his needs.

So when my college sent out spring registration notifications, I knew I would not be signing up. I also knew I will be carving out creative time around my current career until I’m sure Thing1 can fully stand on his own and obtain his own sufficient insurance,

And that’s okay because there are two truths in my life. And, as Darth Vader once said to his offspring, “There is no conflict”. Not for me.

My truth is that creativity matters to me. My bigger truth and the key to living an authentic life for me is that without being true to Thing1 (and now Thing2), I don’t know that anything could keep that creative spark lit.

These Kids are All Right 

/ Picking My Battles

“Is he OK?” she texted.

“The fever’s down a bit,” I texted back. T1’s temperature had peaked at 107 for about an hour in the middle the night, and we had spent the rest of it calling his doctor and forcing fluids and more Tylenol. Super Gal and T1 had texted each other a few times in the wee hours of the morning until T1, out of the danger zone, fell into a deep sleep and forgot about texts.

I knew she’d been feeling under the weather—no one has escaped this winters ravages – and it made me smile little to see them reaching out to each other, even if, between illnesses and normal senior year time pressures mean they can’t be together much right now.

They’ve been seeing each other for a couple of years now. They’re planning their third prom together which, in high school terms, is practically a golden anniversary. Neither of them knows where they’re going next year or if they’ll end up in the same place or what they will do with their lives beyond that.

I know statistically that most people don’t often end up with their high school sweetheart, but everything about the way they have supported each other over the last few months tells me that there’s a deep friendship there that can survive a lot and be a source of comfort and strength for each of them.  And right now it’s nice to have a small reassurance that, in the long run, these kids will be all right.

The Scattered States of Thing2

/ Picking My Battles

Thing2 at the ER

Thing1  was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder almost 2 years ago now. We knew the diagnosis would come with big changes to his life, and this winter we really got to understand what it means to live with and care for someone with a chronic illness.

We were still somewhat prepared for it.

What we weren’t prepared for was going through very similar routine with Thing2. After several months of ER visits and tests and flu‘s, we now find ourselves between a number of diagnoses, including a possible tickborne illness.

 Thing2 has found himself and completely unfamiliar territory. My superhero whose used to jumping over tall rock piles in a single bound it’s only found himself with barely enough energy to walk from chair to bedroom.

Except during the worst of the pain, however, he still my superhero. I still see his enigmatic little smile, and he still finds ways to experiment, even if it’s only with making movies with special on the iPad (full disclosure: I could not do it) or testing theories about how your atoms are not really touching your brother that he heard on Cosmos (science hurts sometimes).

I would donate an organ if I could make him better tomorrow, by doing so, but, as Thing1 has Learned over last year, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t just make you stronger, it also makes you smarter.

A Sensitive Subject

/ Picking My Battles

For some reason I can’t quite remember, I found an hour or two to myself on Christmas Eve of all days. Presents were wrapped, someone else was responsible for Christmas Eve dinner, the table was set, and the Sunday New York Times was sitting on the end table waiting to be read. it turned out, that that Sunday Times contained a little lump of coal in the form of an article about the advent of sensitivity readers at publishing houses. I shouldn’t be surprised that there are 1 million ways to offend potential readers or that publishers might want to keep one or two of those readers, but I was suddenly very grateful for all the classic works of literature that, having survived government censors, had the good sense to be written before sensitivity readers existed. 

Then I thought about my own kids’ book (and future book ideas) and all the ways it might possibly offend people. 

The pictures are black-and-white and red all over, so some people might get offended by the predominance of red or the fact that the starring role in the book is played by kid with really bad hair. Or some sensitivity reader might worry that I’m insinuating that mom is with bad hair can’t get their kids to clean their rooms. 

 But as I thought about the ending of my little book about a kid who has his own idea about the definition of a clean room, I realized the people with whom I’m really gonna be in dutch are the millions of moms who are also trying to get their kids to clean their rooms. OK, so maybe I’ll only be in dutch with the moms who still have kids under 12. And I can whittle down that number to the number of moms who read my blog who haven’t figured out the magic formula for getting their kids under the age of 12 to clean their room. So that’s like, five or ten moms at least.

I don’t want to scare you because the book does have a happy ending, if you’re the kid with the messy room, and I do want to go on record that I am not endorsing the non-cleaning of rooms. I do find myself in the controversial situation of being willing to support a flexible definition of the term “clean room“.

This last week, was winter break and, after ordering Thing2 to clean his room two days in a row before he was allowed to invite friends over for “get together’s“ (formerly known as “play-dates” which, out of sensitivity to our resident tween, has been dropped from the approved household lexicon), I realize I’ve been a bit insensitive to him on this sensitive and highly controversial subject. 

Thing2, now getting better at making the room look clean (at least to the casual observer), will stuff a few things end of the bed where they were less likely to show and spend the rest of his energy putting away all the shards of paper from his last homemade light saber, organizing his props for his next special effects project, and finding a place for all the disassembled electronics he rescues from the trash.

When he’s done, the room still looks like hazardous waste site, but in all fairness, the madness is the result of a creative but methodical and investigative spirit. What looks like a shambles to me is for him a laboratory of life.

I’m a huge believer in encouraging the creative spark in everyone, especially in my offspring. That laboratory is why he comes to me at the end of the day to show me the special effects space movie he’s just made or the book he’s just “published”. So even though even a domestic anti-goddesses such as myself sometimes has to draw a line between the dirty socks on the floor to establish benchmarks for distinguishing the a laboratory from a trashcan with a bunkbed in it, the laboratory is part of what makes Thing2 grow.  

It’s also why, at the end of a book about a little boy who has his own idea about how to clean room, I decided to let that idea win out.

Scars

/ Picking My Battles

The picture on the 27” screen had just switched to views of the Oregon area as Kindergarten Cop went from a loud, violent sequence to a more lighthearted part of the movie. The room was dark and shots of green hills and blue sky made the console TV look like a window to better places in the world than this house where I knew I should not be. I was thinking about grabbing the purse I had just bought at the Indian artifacts store in the mall and leaving when the front door banged open.

Afternoon sun poured into the hallway next to the front room making the mustard and gold shag carpet look clean for just a moment before two stark shadows darkened it purple. The shadows moved barely 2 steps before morphing into two very young men pointing guns at the seven people in the room. To this day, I don’t know the types, but I can remember black cylinders pointed at us as we were told to give them our valuables.

I tried not to look at one of the thieves as I handed him my purse strap. He took a wallet from the man sitting next to me next. Another girl at the gathering asked if she could get something out of her purse first, and, I knew we were all going to die.

Only an hour before this nightmare began, she had pulled from it a handgun to boast of the recent gift from a boyfriend. I knew I should’ve walked out of the party immediately. Now I stared down at the beer-stained shag carpet, realizing it might be the last thing I saw because i’d lacked the fortitude to do the right thing at the right time.

The boys/men unwittingly spared all of us shouting “No” and grabbed her bag. It took less than two minutes for them to collect our valuables, and then they told us to lie down on the floor. There had been other robberies in the area in the last few weeks that had ended with fatalities, and I wondered if it would be better to be shot in the head and die instantly or in the back and be paralyzed.

The boys apparently having chosen their target because they knew the house’s tenant was also engaged in criminal activity (the full extent of which I later discovered) and would not be calling the police, left without firing a shot.

Two hours later locksmith had made a new key for our cars. Knowing our assailants had my license and apartment keys, I drove to a friends house, and hid in their basement TV room for a month. For years I told no one I loved what had happened since I knew I was to blame for having stayed in the wrong place with the wrong people.

That was over 25 years ago, but those two minutes changed the trajectory of my life. They changed forever the way I dealt with people, with crowds, even with jobs. I stopped trusting anyone, especially myself. For years, every decision was made out of fear that sometimes metastasized into hate for the world. The Big Guy and the arrival of Thing moved me in a more positive direction, but I lost a lot of years and productivity to fear and hate.

I think about that impact every time word of another school or church shooting comes across the news. The people on the receiving end of this horrific violence have all been in the right place. They’ve been at school opening their minds or in their places of worship opening their hearts when some hate-filled person decides to take revenge on the world around him. And, as we have seen on the news, everyone in the presence of that violence is touched by it. It doesn’t matter if the bullets actually hit them, they will be scarred by them.

Some survivors, such as Emily Gonzalez, an eloquent and passionate advocate for the right of her contemporaries to go to school in peace, take of their post-ordeal trajectories in ways that become beacons of hope. My guess, however, is that even those with the strength to channel their pain into something productive will carry the wounds on their psyches for the rest of their lives.

Some scars may fade into tiny lines, blending in with those normal lines we all acquire. The psychic wounds inflicted on the children in this country may be increasingly common, but they are not normal. There are kids in war-torn and impoverished parts of the world who are acquiring far worse and more frequent wounds to body and mind, but that should not be the benchmark.

As I write, I’m watching 11-year-old Thing2 take apart an electronic toy to build a lightsaber. He’s at the beginning of his Age of Discovery. I know this is when his spark will be fanned into a flame. I also know he will acquire a few mental and physical scars over the next few years. That’s part of growing up. But, every day now I think about all the ways to protect Thing1 and Thing2 from the scars that should not be part of any childhood.

I know I’m in good company as more than one conversation with other parents over the last few years has evinced a common fear that any morning school drop off could be the last. We laughed nervously at what statistics tell us is our paranoia. Then a day after Parkland we heard news of a narrowly averted but similar shooting at a school two towns away. The conversations have since turned in earnest to school security, regulating certain guns and would-be owners, and even leaving the schools for homeschooling.

As I’ve entertained homeschooling for T2 and online college for T2 I realized my experience is still exercising its impact, trying to straitjacket their potential. That the fear isn’t irrational doesn’t make it less damaging to their futures, but I genuinely don’t know how to keep them from experiencing that fear while our country seems willing to normalize schools, churches, malls and theaters as war zones.

My personal feeling is that this issue won’t be resolved with a single magic pill. I don’t believe better school security or improved mental health support or better background checks alone will fix this, I think the answer will involve a combination of many solutions, but none of them will happen until we decide that all our children’s futures are worth working together.

Creative Blocks and Rocks

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5 8Dweezil

Back in April, just about the time I was trying to untie my creativity from a paralysis of over-analysis and get the last few pages of The Truth about Trolls laid out, Thing2 was exploring his and putting my resolve not to limit it to the test. 

His spring time creative effort led to a rock pile in the middle of his room, the fruits of a “quarry” he and a couple friends had started near the kids’ Lord of the Flies training ground in the woods behind our house.

That was three weeks ago. The rock pile is still there.

He’s cleaned his room. I have cleaned his room-a bit. Laundry has been done. Baths have been had. But that rock pile is still there.

At first thing to wanted to hang onto it. Then he was afraid he wouldn’t clean it up the right way. 

It was a story writing itself (Élly has been very understanding, as long as her pages keep developing). 

Thing2, aware that the rock pile and the absurdities of our undeclared battle are serving as inspiration, is more determined than ever that it should stay. To his credit, however, he has moved it out of the center of the room so the rest of us can get from point a to point B without breaking or next.

I’ve decided to exercise my mom authority and remove the “inspiration” as soon as he goes to camp or I finish his story, whichever comes first.

 

In It Together

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My sons are the center of my life.  They are the center of my husband’s life. 

Today, Congress began changing the future drastically for my eldest son by endangering his ability to obtain insurance when he is an adult. 

Today Congress rolled back Obamacare, and with it, protection for millions of people with pre-existing conditions (replaced with high risk pools).  My son is one of those people. He was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder (a lifetime diagnosis) that requires medications that would be unattainable for us without insurance. 

He’ll be a man soon, and, again – through no fault of his own –  he may find it more difficult to get coverage or possibly even job, since he will have to evaluate the laws in each state and not every employer will want to cover hires in his situation. It will  Even so, he’s lucky compared to the millions of Americans who will lose insurance outright. He’s still on our insurance plan, and we’ll keep him there as long as the law allows.

Jimmy Kimmel hinted at some of this the other night in his emotional monologue. He briefly touched on the fact that, prior to the ACA, a child like his would have reached his lifetime insurance cap before he left the NICU. If that child had appendicitis, or a broken bone, or cancer, that cap would have left many parents bankrupt at best or burying their child at worst — even if they had insurance.  

I have thought a lot about those other parents in the months since our son was diagnosed. When we get our meds, I silently thank our company for making it possible and then shake my head that anyone in a country as rich as ours might have to watch their child suffer or even die.  I shake it when I wonder how many people die prematurely because they don’t have access to the same healthcare we do, and I wonder how we benefit as a society from treating children and poor people like disposable objects. 

I call my representatives. I donate. And I shake my head. But today I’m done shaking my head.  I’ve thought about moving our family back to a country with stronger healthcare, but I’d still be shaking my head at the drugstore, wondering how people back home were managing without access.  

So now I’m still calling my representatives and donating, but I’m also looking for new ways to show solidarity with my son and with all the other people who are being pushed out in the cold. Because, as Jimmy Kimmel so beautifully stated, “We need to take care of each other.”  

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Yours, Mine, Ours

/ Picking My Battles

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For some reason I had a lot of gay friends in high school. It wasn’t something I planned or even thought about until senior year, when a number of friends started coming out.

Homosexuality was not an issue prior to that, and my friends were my friends. Who they loved would never became an issue for me.  They were wonderful people before they were out, and they were (and are) wonderful people after they were out.

Those relationships stayed close beyond high school and brought new friendships with them.  It never occurred to me that there was anything unusual about having a lot of gay friends because that was what I knew.

Most of my close friends had relatively supportive families when they came out, but over time I heard horror stories of people being shunned and even threatened with violence by their own flesh and blood.  I knew of at least one friend who was beaten up simply for ‘acting’ gay even before he himself had seriously contemplated who he was.

It wasn’t until I started dating more that I realized that some people really did have a problem with homosexuality. Some of the objections were religious, but more frequently, there seemed to be an unfounded fear of unwanted sexual advances (ironically often in men who themselves were aggressive with me).

I ended relationships when it became clear that the man I was seeing would never accept my friends.  For a long time, I believed my own intractable position was founded on the fact that my friends were a non-negotiable part of my life, but as I’ve married and we’ve gone our own ways geographically, my feeling is stronger.

It wasn’t until I had a son who defied convention with his tutus and fairy wings that I understood why it had mattered to me so much back then that any companion be accepting of my gay friends.  But when my unconventional son began asking to wear his rainbow wig to the diner, the empathy and love I had felt for those people crystalized.

It wasn’t just acceptance of my friends, I had wanted. It was the assurance that if any child of mine was different, a future husband would respond the way the Big Guy does — by asking if our different child wants to wear his superhero cape with his wig.

It hit again Sunday when the news came in from Orlando, and I read of a mother reading the last texts from her son, knowing he might be dying and that his last moments were filled with terror.

It hit because as a mother I knew that the last thing she probably cared about at that moment was who her son loved.  The only thing that mattered was that she wanted him to be safe so that he could love.

I knew that could have just as easily been my kid who had wanted acceptance and freedom from fear.  It could be your kid that was refused housing or service or even medical care. It could be any of ours that was in that night club in Orlando, murdered for the crime of loving someone.

I don’t know what the future holds for my unconventional son, and it is not our job to project an orientation on to him. It is our job to make sure he knows that our love doesn’t come with conditions and to work for a world where everyone’s kid can be honest about whom they love without fear.

Color it Clean… or maybe just Sane

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This is Johnny’s room. Color the walls Horrified-Yellow. Color dirty clothes ‘Condemned-Green’. and alternate between ‘Black-Hole Blue-Black’ and ‘Wine Red’* for the rest of the space. *Removing “Whine Red’ color from crayon box strongly recommended prior to contemplating room.

So my post about turning brother against brother to get a room clean, generated a few comments and a bunch of emails, mostly from or about other moms recounting tales of terror inspired by room-cleaning events.  There were stories of discovering new life-forms that had evolved from 3-month-old left overs, of dirty socks that could only be moved to the washer while wearing protective gear, and more than one person admitted to blocking out their kids’ rooms from memory until they flew nest.

The disgusting kids room is the 800 pound load of laundry overflowing the mental-health hamper. So in the furtherance of parental peace and sanity, I created a coloring page in honor of anyone who’s been tempted to do a Joan Crawford on their kid’s room.

Download and Enjoy!