goodbyes and such

I notice on my google reader that I am not the only writer I know who is posting less frequently. One dear friend has said good-bye to her blog & others have not said so, but it is clear the posts are just not being pumped out at the same rate by most of us.

It may be that facebook or twitter are changing things – there are easier formats for the quick updates, the sharing of photos. It may be the branding & marketing of blogs has thinned the crowds. Maybe those of us with older kids have run out of time to share as much about them as we used to. Isaac, for example, is 11. He is lovely, but just not as constantly hysterical as he once was. This is for the best. People should not continue to misspeak in hilarious ways unless they plan to make a living at it. Perhaps, like many others I know, I’m starting to feel the need to transfer the ownership of his stories over to him.

I’ve made some changes myself. I have a work site & plan to consolidate all the birth blogging over there in the coming months. I will always have a link here for you, but everything feeds through reader, or Facebook, or Twitter, so I am often left with the feeling that people might be getting the notification 3 or 4 times for one post.

School’s out for summer. The kids are all mine. They are addicted to routine and schedules and plans & I plan to break the habit. They need poetry and homemade play houses, surprises and spontaneity mixed in with their little ingrained habit of bedtimes and reading times, snack times and planned stay home days. I’m not saying good-bye to this space, just acknowledging that it can’t be all it once was, when I was a stay-at-mother to very small children who swallowed marbles and painted my walls with diaper cream.

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When the clouds roll in

More than anything else my children enjoy water play in the summer time. It is hands on, creative, messy and fun. The only source of stress to visit us on those hot summer days was under the spigot. The water source was a precious commodity. The boys vied for control over it, even while I insisted that I was the only person actually in charge of the spigot. I developed a little system to minimize water usage and yard flooding. I placed an extra large bucket under the flow and emphasized to them that as it filled up, we would turn off the spigot & use the water in the bucket to create our mud pies, sandcastles & lakes, as well as to water the flowers, vegetable and mosquito farm. I had not problem whatsoever with turning the spigot back on if they used the water in the bucket, I just didn’t want it flowing needlessly.

LP, with his need for control and order, had a hard time with the bucket rule. He seemed to misunderstand, or perhaps just had his own issue with the overflow. As the water neared the top, he would begin to wale, to shriek with fear that it would spill. If we turned off the water too soon, there was “not enough.” If I waited too long there was “too, too much.” He had the same issue with the kiddie pool. There was some perfect level for the water at which he felt the pool was full, but not overflowing. The simple sloshing of water over the side unraveled him & he was without the words to explain why it troubled him so much.

This past week LP’s little issue is resonating deep in my heart & soul. I’ve had my fill of losses, disappointments, frustrations & insecurities. The bucket is just too damn full this week. Part of me wants to just tip it over & let it run all over the place, but I’m left with the feeling that the overflow is going to cause some catastrophe that will hide the daylight for a long time to come.

This isn’t my first date with depression or medication. It’s not my first time sitting in the dark & feeling afraid to move. It is the first time my intuition has broken though. My intuition, I’m realizing, is the part of me that I most recognize as me – the part of me that connects my brain and spirit to my body, that keeps me moving one foot in front of the other in times of great joy & times of great pain. Without it, I’m adrift in a boat, tossed by whatever waves push me over. I see no shores & the fog is everywhere.

When I am alone, I sense almost no connection to the people around me. Nothing but their words or their physical presence assures me that I am not in fact, alone in a boat, adrift at sea with little hope of rescue. I cling to them to become anchored, but I am afraid to reach out, afraid by desperate need will drown them, that the overflow of this emotion will leave me that much more alone.

I read the daily office. I say the prayers out loud to bring truth into my body, that I am loved and cared for, that there is some ground under me. I ask for my people to lay their hands on me, to give me their energy and faith freely, so that I won’t need to steal it. I sit on the floor and breath upward the feeling of solidly sitting with the earth & hope the feeling lasts when I get behind the wheel. The vertigo of psychic disorientation overwhelms me. When I awake in the night & early in the morning, the surprise of it, the shock, is still there. I’m never prepared to greet life in this way. I’ve always felt the spiritual presence of those around me. I’ve also had some internal sense that gives meaning, hope and purpose to what is happening in my life at the present moment. Right now, I can’t see past 5 minutes ahead of me. Doing more, trying more brings a panic, a tightness in my chest. The bucket overflows.

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Transitions

Not entirely sure where I am going, but clearly, I am not alone
& I am moving along at quite a clip.

(photo credit to Thinker, thanks.)

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!!!

Insert here my loud joyous noises about LP’s planning and placement team meeting. I can’t make any myself because this week, I caught croup from my children. And grown-up croup doesn’t sound like a grown-up barking seal, it sounds like laryngitis, ’cause it is.

And, I can’t tell you – or really, I can only tell you – how very dreadful it is to be the mother of three boys and not be able to raise my voice, or even come up with something that doesn’t sound like a croaking. The impact of a whispered, “don’t hit your brother,” is very minimal.

Ironically, I’m feeling much better than earlier in the week when my throat was sore but I had a voice. At one point the fiery burning sensation sent me running to the Minute Clinic for a rapid strep test. It rapidly told the nurse practitioner that I probably did not have strep. She recommend a DNA probe strep test to send to a lab if I didn’t improve by today – that, it seems to me, could only mean the DNA of whatever horrible bug is living in my throat, because it seems like my own DNA would be irrelevant in this situation. I find it disturbing to think about this.

So, I’m just left wondering, am I better? I feel better, but sound worse, or not at all, depending on when you catch me. Happily, yesterday I felt a little worse and sounded a little better when we were at our PPT – where to my relief, it was decided that our little one is (IS!) eligible for special education serviced here in our town.

Let me back up a moment to mention all the dire warnings I had received about eligibility -it was bad and hard to discount – and even some of them came from the staff themselves. I tried to hold it all at bay- it wasn’t easy and sometimes I lost hope. It is discouraging to hear stories from families that have been disappointed. But today, at least, our story is different.

Until now, I never quite understood that phrase from the Old Testament “God granted him favor in the eyes of ____” This kind of thing always seemed to be happening to one or another of our bumbling Old Testament heroes, getting into a potential scrape and being baled out one way or another, often by God granting him favor in the eyes of some unlikely person, like Pharaoh’s jailer. These past few months all the testing and all the specialists felt like that – like luck, but better planned than luck. (not to compare them to dictator’s jailers because that wouldn’t be nice and these people are nice – and they don’t know I have a blog, so I’m not, you know…)

Everyday that LP had an evaluation or school visit, it was his most charming, lovey self who came out to play. Each specialist in turn developed a little crush on him and his sweet ways. They enjoyed him and enjoyed talking to one another about him, dreaming up ways to help him and one-upping each other on the very best Individual Education Plan they could concoct – putting me in mind of New Testament phrase that I use to encourage healthy competition in my house: And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

And did they ever. He is getting in school speech therapy from the public school therapist who will go to his private preschool – she will drive there twice a month and work with him in his class. I am getting in home consultations with the occupational therapist – who just this week went to an all day conference on sensory processing issues – and she will also consult at school for his teacher and me so we know what accommodations we might make and also start the desensitizing process….. Plus, I am getting one free hour of therapy a month from the school psychologist (remember, I mentioned needing help!) So, yes, my town is paying for my therapy.

Thank you, town, in return for this therapy you will find me cheerfully at the local Starbucks, playground and library time. I promise not to be the crazy lady muttering under my breath about sensory processing and receptive language skills. Instead, I’ll smile, wave and always head home before the all important naptime hits my charming, but easily overloaded kid.

A little charm on the part of a three year old boy cut through lots of red tape this week/ God granted him favor in the eyes of the specialists and we are warming in the glow it in right.

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blip

7 years

It’s not that I don’t know, but I do keep that knowledge at bay when I can. When I want. An abnormally warm and green fall held my memories hostage. The cool smell of rain on wet leaves released them to the air. Pumpkins on porches and fall festivals, all these incidentals to recall. At one time they brought forth tears each year. At one time, but now no longer at all times.

Nevertheless it is my body that remembers this date most honestly. My uterus contracts and bleeds. It has been 7 years, this month the moon is just waxing crescent – 13% full. An apt picture of a pregnancy that did not ripen to fullness. And blood is the most true memory of the day that ended in panic and tears – her life lost and mine saved.

And still, lost is not the word I want to use about Jordan. I didn’t misplace her, nor do I have her. Saying she is dead is really the truth but does bring confusion into the conversation. It is difficult to acknowledge – culturally difficult – the death of someone who was not born.
Yet, I labored. That miscarriage was more painful than both of my natural labors – though does match somewhat my experience of my pitocin induced labor – and I pushed. There was no one who could help me. I surrendered to my body’s demands and pushed. It stopped the pain and the thinking. I pushed out a life that was clearly over while fearing the coming weeks with the one corner of my brain that stayed verbal enough to know this could do me in, but if it doesn’t what follows may.

I’m here to say it didn’t. And to practice the art of gratitude. Against all odds – and some pretty bad medical care – my life was saved. I don’t often enough say thank you when I start bleeding on this day. It is one part of this story that perhaps has yet to be told in full, but it will play out in years ahead.

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Places I love

There are places we love because of their familiarity. For me going back to my home town means going back to Manhattan, that ever changing busy island. Its changes don’t trouble my heart, Central Park feels the same today as when I roller bladed with my friends in high school. All New York pizza tastes really good, hot, greasy, dripping, the smell of oregano wafting out into the avenues. Some personal monuments disappear: Cafe 112 is no longer there on 112th street. When they closed, I didn’t know. A friend called with the announcement months later; we shed one rather pathetic tear to acknowledge all the dates we’d ever had there and moved on. Larger less personal monuments shall be along for a good long time to come – at some time I may yet try to describe my personal experience of watching a piece of my home town fall into dust and rubble, but not today. Today, it shall be the sculpture garden at the Metropolitan Museum: scene of many English classes, many excursions to sit quietly and sulk, write, meet up with people and then run outside to find fun in the park and leave our young cares behind – it smells the same, the light is the same, it holds the same coolness near the marbles and intense warmth as you sit in the sunned windows of the cafe ordering an Orangina and a muffin.

Other places seem to never change, they stand still in time and memory and small changes make an impression, but only fleetingly as so very much is the same. I’ve not been to Martha’s Vineyard in many years, but I can navigate its few roads easily on the strength of 10 years repeated visiting. The vast differences are now in my experience of being in that place. As a child, I had no concept of it except as a place we went to to take a boat to arrive at the beach. As a teenager I began to explore its ins and outs, remaining dependent on adults to figure out anything difficult, annoying or didn’t involve ice cream. As an adult & parent I had to find a way to function, feed my family, fill the car with gas, pick up a prescription and figure out which beaches we could safely go to and which had undertow or were private pass only.
There are so many place that I love. I love my mother’s house because, though I never lived there, I know my children feel so very at home and loved there. They’ve never been to Disney World, but they’d probably rate them about the same at this point. I love Rockport Massachusetts, another place of my childhood that I’ve learned to navigate as an adult. Ice cream places come and go, and so do artist’s galleries, but Woodman’s Lobster in the Rough is forever. I love New Haven; I’m not sure why, it’s just a very fun place to walk around and grab a bite to eat and maybe see some art. Part of me thinks that I will live there one day; and that may be true. These are all places that I return to again and again. They are places that each visit is special and unique, much because it is familiar, reassuring and becomes easier than the last.

But there are other streets I’ve walked on; other places that I love; places I know I may not make it back to. Monks and civilians are marching in the flooded streets of Yangon. When I walked those streets they were dusty, hot and dry. Protesters were hiding in homes, in store fronts, doing their very best to feed their families and stay alive. Everyone seemed to want to talk to us; we were Americans, they wanted people to know:

I’m not really a driver, I’m a doctor, but the government…
We’re trying to get our son out of the military. He’s so young. He didn’t know what he was doing. It going to cost a lot of money, who knows what will happen…
if only I could go to University in Europe or the United States…

So many whispers in such a short time – and even more stirring than whispers were the secret looks and pleading hearts, the people of Burma willing us all to understand. Pictures hung on the wall at the National League for Democracy – just miles from the Shwedagon where the monks began their marches – whispers of a hope that these are more than just a memorial, that there may be a future for these once elected men and women who have sat in jails or homes or in the back entrance of store fronts for over 20 years. I could think of no help to offer anyone, but my good will, prayers for their strength as they fight the evil that is oppressing them. I had little hope that an external force would intervene, or that in doing so that would be truly helpful. Their help must come from other quarters, but from whom?
Now from within their own strength, momentum has built and protests are coming from a new and powerful source. The Buddhists monks of Yangon have taken to the streets. They’ve just publicly aligned themselves with Aung San Suu Kyi, presumably in order to force the governments hand to decide what to do about these protests that it has been “allowing” over the past month. Will they now send uniformed police to beat them as they have civilians so often in the intervening years? Even just months after I left, there were marches, beatings, jailings, disappearances. With no way to track people I had met just once or twice, I was left wondering. Now I wonder, will this place I love change?
And, in this case, I am hoping so. My heart will break if acts of violence are committed upon these people, but my heart swells to know they are taking their destiny into their own hands. Their hopes matter, and they hope for change. Amen.

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The week taken to bits, part the first

Monday – neurologist to assess if he may be having seizures – we probably won’t really find out, we’ll just talk about how we could find out and if we need to, etc. In other words the nice doctor will decide if I’m just a nervous mother, if he just likes to day dream or if we are doing an EEG.

Mission Accomplished: Nice doctor, nervous mother; we really don’t know, we really are doing an EEG. The very nice doctor tried to induce an absence seizure by having him puff, puff, puff on a tissue, but failed, as a three year’s old attention span for this not great. The very nice doctor tested his fine motor skills by playing catch with tennis ball in the hallway. All looks good. It all looks very good – and even if he is having seizures it all looks good in the big picture. Even so, we don’t really know anything more. Other than he likes to play catch with doctors more than he likes having his ears checked. I could have guessed that. Matt thinks he can guess that the EEG will be negative. I hope so to.

But it hardly matters today, because more than on most days I know he is fine. So very fine – yet needing something, something I’m trying to put my finger on. It feels like all the pieces are just about to fall in place, like we are so close that I can’t help but tell you his real name, you know just in case you think to lift him up in your hearts this week, by faith, will or just pure strength. He is Henry. Sometimes I get the very distinct feeling that there is a part of Henry way inside himself that is waiting for me to get it or to come get him– kid, I’m coming for ya.

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September

Today, in our new district, is the first day of school. My level of excitement is not unmatched by the impact this will have on me. In our family of 5, only one of us got on a school bus today, a tall third grader we call Thinker around here. On his back, a sized up backpack, the one from Kindergarten deemed “too small” – probably it will land itself a trip to preschool the week after Labor Day –

What I want: I want him to like it, to love it, to learn to lead, to change, to nurture others, to be himself, to expect acceptance, to offer encouragement and to come home tired, but not too tired.
What I bought: a 8 box of number 2 pencils, markers (fat and thin), colored pencils, at least three erasers, a highlighter, a red pen for correcting, a 1/2 inch binder, a folder, 2 100pg black and white composition notebooks, a calculator, a pair of scissors and two glue sticks and lunch bag (all labeled with his name, please) plus two boxes of tissue because or last name starts with A-C and A-C families bring tissues in September.

It is not yet September, but that’s a technicality. It is chilly in the mornings and in the late, late afternoons. Two yellow leaves floated to earth in the yard yesterday as the children played. There is yet, three more weeks of warm weather, days that will require sunscreen, days good enough for the beach, hot enough for the sprinkler, but we’ll not be waking up to heat again anytime soon. It’s a rather timeless feeling, this time of year, until I noticed that it is now dark at 8pm. We need our reading lamps in the late afternoon, the sun’s rays are not strong enough to reach inside our home and light our storybook pages. In such a situation, one might confuse Henry with Percy, and that would not do.

Still, my days will be largely the same as before. This shift is almost too big to be noticed in minutes and moments. It will be observed in hours, hours since Thinker left for school, hours until he comes home. There will be under this roof, one less child to manage from 7:30 to 3. The younger two will miss him dreadfully and also not at all once they adjust to the new rhythm. Soon I will be helping a third grader with his homework, trying to find a quiet time and place for such serious business, trying to keep the precious colored pencils reserved for homework away from Little Puppy who will want “to homework too” no doubt.

For my dessert/just desserts: nap time. For the first 2/3 of nap time there shall be no one else here. This is the huge impact school has on me. Delicious time alone while children sleep. The Thinker’s dessert shall be that the last 1/3 of nap time starts the moment he gets off the bus. He shall have three quarters of an hour of time with his own toys, his own mom, his own thoughts to pour out the days jokes, news, trials and joys. We will see what three o’clock brings today.

Posted for Julie Pippert’s Hump Day mmm, a post about school.

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