Barnmaven

Awash in the wreckage

Four children are busying themselves as I type this.  Two are helping each other make a remote-controlled Dodge Charger leave marks in my sideboards and other people's shins.  One is diligently drawing.  One is outside making fairy wands out of sticks and leaves and string.  Its remarkably quiet -- FOR NOW.

Did you know that any sound about 85 decibels can cause hearing loss?  85 decibels is the equivalent of heavy city traffic.  A lawnmower or snow-blower is about 90 decibels.  A dog barking is about 75.  Three bipolar children failing to modulate their tone of voice while arguing over whose turn it is on the trampoline?  I'm gonna guess about 105. 

This week SG's folks are out of town and they usually babysit his younger sisters' kids during the week.  He was tagged with sitter duty.  We've had my two here all day yesterday and today as well.  Its gone remarkably smoothly, considering.  One of the girls also has multiple diagnoses, in fact she is just moving on to middle school from the Extended Resource classroom my son will enter in the fall.  She's a very bright girl and quite engaging.  She's much like my son in that during conversations with her you frequently get the feeling you're talking to a very small adult. 

A few years ago, having four children with this level of energy and dysfunction would have been unimaginable.  I guess my skills for managing the chaos have improved, as has my ability to choose when to intervene and when to let things take their natural course.  I've gained a much better sense of what really constitutes a disaster and what things I can simply smile quietly at while they work themselves out.

What I've noticed most about the three bipolars (one of them aspie) is how very BOSSY they all are.   The one kid in the middle who is neurotypical is fortunately a very low key kid, and doesn't get her feathers ruffled by the non-typicals.  Here is a kid who is growing compassion and empathy every single day.  Here is a kid who has little control over the impact her sibling is having and yet who is handling with a remarkable steadiness and calm.  It can't be easy - in fact I suspect it is harder when one child has issues and the other does not, if only because as much as these kids of mine fight, they GET each other.  Even so, this girl seems to have a unique understanding and empathy for her sibling and for my children as well.  She gravitates from one brouhaha to the next, distracting a crying child or engaging a yelling child to come play a game with her.  She has a remarkable skill for someone so very young.

When I grow up I want to be just like her, navigating the spilled lego boxes and the tantrums with equanimity and grace.

In other news, did you know how fast you go through a loaf of bread making lunches for four children?  Holy crap.

Family drama

I've seen two kinds of "dear birthmother" letters -- those written by hopeful couples wanting to adopt, and those written by hopeful adoptees to a possible found birthparent. 

I wanted to write a completely different "dear birthmother" letter today.  I actually did write it, but then I deleted it. 

Instead, I have chosen to write about forgiveness.  Or at the very least, a "dear birthmother" letter masked as an essay on forgiveness.

I've posted my sister Vicki's story in bits and pieces here on this blog and elsewhere.  I'm not sure the parts of it that she and I have written together even begin to cover the depth of what happened to her as a child. 

I've seen different responses in families to abuse.  Sometimes the victims draw closer to their victimizers, in some attempt to finally receive approval and love from the people who have hurt them so badly.  I've seen victims lapse into hatred, drug and alcohol problems, and sometimes perpetuate the abuse cycle. 

There's another thing that happens, rarely:  The abuser admitted their wrongs, made amends, and their victim forgave them and they were able to reconcile their relationship.

Its possible to forgive someone, even if they never acknowledge the nature of their wrongs.  That kind of forgiveness doesn't actually require you to let the person know you've forgiven them.  You make a choice to let go of the past in order to save your own soul, and you move on.  It doesn't make things right and it doesn't absolve the person of guilt, it is simply a way to stop being poisoned by what was done to you.  Very often, especially when the person who has hurt us is in denial over what they have done, this is the only way for the person who was harmed to remove the toxic bitterness from their lives and find healing.

But in order to offer the kind of forgiveness that leads to reconciliation, the offender needs to accept responsibility and makes amends for what it is they did to cause harm to the other. 

I have held my sister while she sobbed uncontrollably, wracked with the  remembrance of yet another incidence of abuse from her mother or her stepfather or from one of the friends my birthmother traded her to for a weekend for a rack of BEER.

I'm not sure how one begins to forgive that kind of thing, or how one might make amends for such horrible abuse, but I do know this:  Forgiveness itself may not require amends, but I'm pretty sure that reconciliation does.

And that's all I have to say about that.

 

 

 

And thank God for pools

 

Summer stomped in on big old size 13's this week.  Two days straight in the 90's, and everywhere you look there are sprinklers going and kids in bathing suits and goggles leaping through them.  My girl is taking swimming lessons these two weeks, level 2 this time around with the hope of making it to level 3 lessons before summer has passed us by.

At the place where the kids stay while I'm working, there is a big kiddie pool, maybe two feet deep and about 8 feet in diameter.  Like most kids, both of mine want to be IN the water when there is water (they've been begging to swim in the river since the first sunny day of spring, despite the runoff water being about eleventy degrees below zero and that water is moving fast, dammit) and they would rather turn into icecubes or raisins than to ever get OUT of the water once they are in it.

Water, as it turns out, is a great motivator for getting things to go my way in the mornings.

Don't want to take your medication?  Guess what.  No meds?  No pool.  Simple. 

I've posted before about how, normally, getting medication into my kids can be the quantitative equivalent of trying to shove a watermelon up a pig's ass, so you just have to know, right at this minute, how much I am reveling in having the Power of the Pool.  Rolling in it like a dog in a pile of cow poop - deliberately and with much delight.  Yes, I know this is a temporary superpower, and I know that it disappears on rainy and cold days. 

I.  Don't. Care.

Because every day this week since the pool showed up in the babysitter's yard, medication has been TAKEN VOLUNTARILY. 

That is serious grounds for celebration, folks.

 

In regards to my last post, I want to share something that happened at work.  Have I mentioned I work with a lot of really terrific people?  I do.  There's a coworker that I have who, though we differ on doctrinal issues (remember that whole liberal heathen Christian thing I've got going for me), she is my sister in Christ and never have I ever gotten anything from her but love, love, love.  She's been a lifter of spirits since the first day we connected and I trust her with my deepest thoughts.

I was delivering some paperwork near to her office and she called out a "hello" as I was walking by.  I stuck my head in her office, we chit-chatted back and forth a little bit.  I remarked to her how anxious and out of sorts I was feeling, and as always, she had something for me.

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

    Matthew 11:28-29

I'm not a big quoter of scripture, and in my opinion, too many Christians use scripture as a weapon rather than a balm, but that day?  It was just what I needed to hear, to remind me that I don't have to carry this all by myself.  Even when there is no other person who can lift my burden, there is One who cares, One who hears, and One who will walk with me through the darkest depths of my fears.  I don't know how I forgot that, but many thanks to my friend for reminding me. 

Lost in the spin

In case you can't tell from my last couple of blog posts, I'm having a hard time right now emotionally.  This is stressful, this digging into the final death throes of a marriage that's been dying for a long time.  The worry over what will or won't happen, the not knowing how things will shake out in the final dispensation of our lives together, it gives me over to the brittle, acid edge of panic.  And of course life doesn't stop just so I can have anxiety, so it wraps its tendrils around everything - work, parenting, tending animals and working horses - until all things seem fraught with emotion I'm not dealing with well. 

Thanks to my particular versions of "stuff that's wrong with me," anxiety is a long-term companion.  If anxiety were a person we'd have had a common-law marriage years ago.  As it is, you would think that I would be used to the physical and emotional repercussions of our partnership, but somehow I never am.  I'll start to obsess about one thing, anxiety sets in, and as the dark stain of adrenaline spreads, I'll start applying the fear to things that don't even belong to it.

Maybe someone will cross the line on my way to work today and I'll die in a fiery wreck.

Something will happen to one of the kids, something horrible.

My house will burn down.

Something will happen to one of the cats or one of the dogs, and God knows Juliet's already gone through two of her nine lives what with the whatever thing that bit her and she almost bled to death and the stuff that looks like she got rolled by a car...or one of the horses will get sick or one of the chickens will get eaten.

SG will figure out how really super fucked up I am and run for the hills

I'll lose my job

My car will break down

And so on.

Its like dancing handcuffed to someone who won't let you sit down and breathe.  And I keep dancing because if I don't, if the wheel stops, if I take a minute to breathe, I'll fall apart.  So I move forward and sideways and around in circles and I keep going because the anxiety, there's no victory over her, just coping and getting through it.  The only way through it is, frankly, through.   Medicating is not an option, the kind of medication I'd need to cut through this thick skein of feelings would drop a horse, and I just can't do that, not what with the 45-mile commute and the parenting and the things needing doing.  Can't.  So I cope.

The light at the tunnel is that this prom date with my evil muse is only temporary.  Once the material things that are whipping her into a frenzy are done with, she'll sulk off for greener, albeit temporary, pastures, and I"ll enjoy a much needed vacation from her attentions.

Much.  Needed.

On being right

Who doesn't like being right?  Raise your hand.  Right now.  I want to know if there is anyone out there who doesn't like to be right. 

Right.

Because we all want to be right.  It starts young.  My children already have fights to the death over the most inane topics, all because one of them wants to be right and thereby prove that ergo,the other one is WRONG.  Sadly, the one-upmanship very often persists long past its usefulness. 

I know people who are perfectly OK being wrong about some things, but with most people, if you try hard enough you'll find at least ONE subject where they will doggedly persist in the correctness of their position even in the odds of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Its a fascinating concept, this battle over who's right and who's wrong.  There are a billion things that are matters of fact and record, which makes it easy to identify the winner in many of these wrestling matches of certitude.  But when it comes to people and emotions and situations, when perception is the only player in the game, all concrete wisdom flies straight out the window.  Absent of the ability to actually read another person's thoughts, we must rely on a different set of tools. 

I've noticed that the more time passes, the more I am willing to suspend judgment of intent.  But I'll own right up to the fact that this is not always the case.  Its a crazy-making thing, isn't it?   Someone does something that has a negative impact or connotation to you.   They forget to invite you to a meeting or a social event.  They acquire something that you intended to buy or apply for the promotion you were trying to get.   You make a pact or agreement with them and it turns out they can't (or won't) hold up their end of it. 

What's your first assumption going to be?

They did it on purpose. 

She KNEW I wanted that promotion and the only reason she applied for it was to spite me.  He lied to me on purpose.  They only got that expensive thing-a-ma-jig so they could make their friends feel jealous.

But we all know its not that simple.

Have you ever been cheated on in a relationship?  I have.  It sucks, doesn't it?  I mean really, down to the bone, hurts like a someone's taken a motherfucking buzzsaw to your heart.  And when you first find out, after your heart stops trying to jump out of your chest and you very carefully put down the baseball bat you found yourself carrying as you were marching up the sidewalk, the first thought in your mind is "How could s/he DO THIS TO ME?"  As if the indiscretion actually had anything to do with you at all in the first place.  Well, maybe it did, and maybe it didn't.  In my experience, infidelity seems linked more to a problem with the perpetrator.  Unless its a revenge thing, most people who cheat seem driven to do so by reasons they don't even understand.  They're not thinking about you.  In fact, they're working so hard to maintain denial about the moral slippery slope they're falling down, they try very hard not to think of you AT ALL.  Infidelity is a selfish and self-serving act, and has little to do with whether someone really loves you or not. 

Divorce is a situation where pain is unavoidable.  Its simply not possible to take any step of any sort without causing pain to your former spouse.  Intention to hurt may or may not exist -- but hurt is done, and the more hurt there is, the more bitter and angry people become.  I'm in the middle of it now, and there's so much I'd like to say and can't, but I can promise you that it is painful, that it is bitter, that it is angry.  It is a wandering line of suck that at times is unbearable and at other times thins to the point of being barely tolerable.    I hurt him, he hurts me.  I do something, he believes I'm only doing it to hurt him, he does something, I believe he's only doing it to hurt me.  Maybe I am and maybe I'm not.  Maybe he is and maybe he isn't.  There's really no way to know who's right.  I can judge by past history and the knowledge of a person that years together bring me, but I can't read his mind, nor can he mine.

All I can do is my best to be authentic and to do the right thing and not get sucked into bitter and angry.  All I can do is try to remind myself that it might seem as though things are said or done with ill intent, maybe they're not.  And all I can do is protect myself and my family and remember that even though things are bad, they could be so much worse.  Remember that there is a history here, that even though I feel like I'm experiencing death by a thousand paper cuts, that it won't last forever.  That I can swallow my bitterness and pain and focus on the things in life that are good and real and positive -- my kids tumbling up the sidewalk, coming home from time with dad to now spend a week with me; dinner and wine on a warm evening with good friends; strong arms of love that hold and support me when I need them; the love and support of family and friends; a bevy of wagging tails and horrid doggy breath waiting at the door for me; a long ride on a beautiful horse with a good friend. 

You may think I do this or that simply to hurt you, but if you really believe that, you'd be wrong.

Myth

If Shakespeare was right, and we are all just acting in the stage version of our own lives, then shouldn't we at least have executive rights to choosing which production we're in?  Because right now I feel like I'm starring in some stupid drama of "Fatal Attraction" and what I was hoping for something more like "Notting Hill." Oh, don't misunderstand, things are beyond fine with SG and me, I'm happier than I could have imagined.  My negative attitude has more to do with the past than the present, but its also about how the past, which to date has been somewhat unresolved, is rubbing bellies with the present.  Its about recognizing how bitterness and anger can twist things into ugliness and how thin the line is between love and hate. 

Its about someone reading something into your blog that wasn't actually ever said there.

Its about someone trying to control things that aren't theirs to control, even if what they think they're trying to control is only in their imagination.

Its about how, whether we intend to (and sometimes we do) or not (sometimes we really don't), we injure people in our lives.  Its about wanting to retaliate in some fashion even though you know that would be wrong, and realizing that you already are, unintentionally, simply by being happy.

Today, tomorrow, maybe for a long while, its about trying to rise above it.

 

Steady, now

I try not to worry.

I know life is going to bring yet more lumps and bumps and complications our way.  It always has, always will.  I try not to worry about it, though, because by now I guess I've figured out that I can make it through damn near anything. 

Whenever things are going really well, I have learned to accept that this will not always be how it is.

Whenever things are going horribly and violently askew, I know that it won't be this way forever.

Mostly, though, life is an amazing watercolor composition of dark tones and bright, together on the canvas in equal measure.  For every brilliant thing there is a lumpy thing, for every painful jerk on the leash there is a soft touch and a loving voice.  We move forward and back at the same time in the most amazing dance there ever was:  life itself.

Life was here before I arrived and it will be here long after I am gone and all will still be well in this world because -- well, because.  It will be well.  If I go through any single day that doesn't contain both a smile and a tear then I won't believe that day was complete.  I would relive every pain if that's what it cost me to also relive every sweet, berry-luscious moment of joy.  I would once again hold my raging child just to be able to once again hold her still-slick body, cord pulsing with shared life, against my naked breast and meet her eyes for the first time.  I would cradle the body of my beloved dog and throw lumps of dirt on her once again while the tears flowed if it would buy me five more minutes of kneeling on the floor next to her generous body and putting my arms around her while she licked my face.  I would go through every single broken heart and every lonely, tearstained night if it meant that I could experience the piercing, jolting, amazing realization of how incredible it is to be together with you.

The moments stream across my conscious mind in kaleidoscope fractals of ruby and gold and lapis, and as I remember every joy and every sorrow, I am comforted in the knowledge that life as we know it can be counted on to bring us both, though not always in equal measure.

So much in life is good.  So much in life is pain.  I need them both, without them I don't know how to breathe.

Extended Resource Room

The IEP team met today to plan for next year.  It was a full house today.  C's dad came, and aside from his teacher, the school psychologist and the resource room teacher, we also had a teacher and psychologist from another elementary school, the vice-principal, the occupational therapist and two representatives from the district who had observed my son in the course of the year.

We all discussed our observations of how he has been doing, and not one person in the room disagreed that a general education classroom would be appropriate for him next fall.  The next question, then, was where should he be?

Our district has a group at a different elementary school called the Extended Resource Room.  The kids in this group, all 11 or so of them, are mostly kids with Asperger's, sensory issues, or if not formally diagnosed, still clearly on the spectrum.  All of the kids in the group are extremely bright, but their reactions to their environment and their social behavior seriously interferes with their learning. 

C will join this group in the fall, and as often happens in my life, random strings of connectedness bring me to the knowing that this is the right path.  I already know two children in this group, but from entirely different areas of my life.  A woman who was on my team at the last orienteering ride has a grandson in this program.  And, as it turns out, so is SG's niece.  Go figure.

There is one teacher and two para educators for this group of kids.  They use daily task charts and a reward system to assist them with structure and expectations, and as they improve their behavior and become ready for academics, they will either receive academic instruction within the small class, or if they are ready behaviorally, they will join the general class for periods of time during the day.  He will have transportation, and he will be in an environment where the adults know how to cope with him when the inevitable setback occurs.

This scenario is exactly what I was hoping for and I couldn't be happier that the district and the school are working so diligently to meet my son's needs. 

Today is a good day.

Empathy

One of the bloggers in my daily reader blogged about a rough day in public with her son, who has autism.  While I hate to read about another mother's struggle, I simultaneously crave reading about those difficult days if only because it helps me feel less alone, it helps me feel less panicked and less anxious about the bad days that my kids have.  Sometimes I wish my arms were long enough to reach around the world and just hold onto all the moms of children with disabilities and differences.  They are My People, my kith and my kin. 

Whenever I'm in a public place and I hear a toddler making that peculiar grunting scream of the bipolar child, or I see a mom struggling to hold it together while her child melts down for the umpteenth time,  I just want to run over to her and put my forehead against hers, share through osmosis all of my empathy, my own experience, what I know of other moms just like her and what I know about her simply because I have been her, too.  I suppose it goes beyond special needs, because God knows that parenting is hard sometimes, even when your kids aren't struggling with issues.  But for those parents whose kids have disabilities, visible or invisible, every tough day is especially grueling.  We know that it is not the last day we will have like this and we hope we don't have another one like it very soon.  And when it does happen soon, we are stretched thin as paper with the tiredness of doing this one more time.  And when it doesn't happen for a while, we get cocky and we assume things are better, until the next bad day slams shut on our fingers and says to us "Oh, no, you're not getting out of it THAT easy."  And then we panic some more because if things are indeed not getting better as we had hoped, where then are they getting?  Is there worse?  Can we handle worse?  Is there something different, something new and unexpected?  And how will we cope with it?  And cope with it we do, because we have learned that there is nothing other to do BUT cope.  Some days we cope exceptionally well and other days we seem to have lost the limited coping ability we were counting on to get us through; nonetheless, we cope.

We get to the point where days that to another parent might seem fearfully chaotic and difficult are actually quite good days for us, because nobody got hurt and the tears were relatively mild in comparison to the bad days.  The tantrums were fewer, there were no calls from school.  There is always a reminder that the illness is there, even when symptoms are quiet.  Daily medication is a daily reminder of just why it is needed and how important it is that it is ingested in order to ensure that school does not erupt in flames and that sibling interactions will be somewhat less bloody than they would otherwise be.

There are days when I want the moms who have raised children like mine to adulthood to come and place their forehead ever so gently on mine and pass along to me all the wisdom of their years, to show me how they have continued to place one foot in front of the other, continued to gently love their difficult children, continued to smile and hug and enjoy - and cope.  To prop me up with their empathy and their understanding and the energy to do this.

There are days when I wake up my children and the first thing I get is an arm wrapped around my neck and a cheek nuzzled up next to my own, with a morning-breath whisper of "I love you mommy."  There are days when I go in expecting to wake up children and instead finding that I am trying to rouse Honey Badgers from their dens.  There are days where just like Varda, I leave a big chunk of my heart lying on the floor of the playfield or the grocery store or the church, because as I have maneuvered my melted-down child off into the car, I have died a small death from being stared and and in some cases thought poorly of by people who think they're looking at an undisciplined child instead of one who is ill.   Oh, I relate to that. 

The good days, the bad days, they come and go and we keep getting by.  I hope all the other special needs moms in my life, the real-life ones, the bloggers, the Mama's forum ones, I hope and pray you all know just how much I love you and how much I depend on you being there to share your triumphs and tragedies with me.  I hope you know how much I love your special kids, how much I enjoy reading about how much YOU love them and how special and unique and precious each of them is. 

Come here, and press my forehead against your own.   See? 

Slice and Dice

"Mommy, when do we get to come to your house?"

"Just a few more days baby."

"I don't want to stay here.  I want to come to your house NOW."

"I know, baby."

A week later (possibly less):

"Mommy, when do I get to stay with Daddy?"

"A few more days, baby."

"I want to stay with Daddy NOW!"

"I know, baby."

Divorce is hard.

Divorce sucks.

Feeling like you've made every bad decision in the book multiplied by ten thousand gazillion...

And they know it.  They feel your weakness.  Some days, they are really crying for the other parent.  Its not that they don't love you, its that they love him too, and they want to love you both at the same time in the same place.   Some days they are crying for you.  Some days they are crying for him.  And others?  They sense your latent guilt and they reach into your chest with needle-sharp claws and clutch the strings of it and pull and pull.  They pull on it until you feel like you can't take another second of how much it freaking hurts that your failure as a human being and as a wife and as a partner has undone everything.

It gets easier, right? 

PLEASE TELL ME THIS GETS EASIER.