Barnmaven

Limping down the aisle

So.

There's been a lot going on around here.  The stuff in my life and the stuff in my head have resisted my best attempts to write about them, and its frustrating.  Hopefully this post breaks the dam and I can wax eloquent more frequently about things that I often think really mean little to anyone but me - but you keep showing up to read, so what do I know?  I'm just an old broad.

Before SG hit the road in September we talked about our future together and the obvious answer was some planning towards wedding bells the following summer.  Then his start/end/start/end dates for the jobs he was going to do changed - more than once - and planning something became rather problematic.  Then he suggesting meeting in Vegas over the winter, which frankly when you're my age and haven't been qualified to wear a white wedding dress in quite some time seemed like a perfectly reasonable option.  Then the discussion of how to include loved ones came up, and then we started talking about a quick affair in between the September and November jobs.  That's where we were when he left, and I was keeping myself occupied in his absence by thinking of wedding plans, then calling him to see what he thought of this idea or that.

At some point in October, I honestly can't remember when, things got a little haywire.  Distance, weariness, job stress and myriad other things put downward pressure on us.  Someone might have gotten grumpy and uncommunicative.  Of course, that someone might not also have been feeling his best, working 12 hour days and living off restaurant and microwave food.  Seasonal depression, which is a guaranteed annual event, had its way with both of us.  Trying to plan became a chore, a point of contention, an added stress.  We wobbled.   Wedding plans were put on hold - not cancelled, but definitely not on the plate for this year -  we agreed to just table the discussion until he was home.  

We spent the rest of our daily conversations being loving and supportive and counting the days until we could be in the same zip code.

He got back last Tuesday.  We spent two days remembering the thousand things that are so amazing about being together - the ease of things, the chemistry, the deep discussions and the delight of companionship.  We cooked and ate and held hands and smelled each other's skin.  We touched and hugged and crawled under the covers, emerging for water and air now and again.  Thursday we took the lid off the marriage discussion.  We talked and talked about where we are and where we want to go and what we might want to do about that.  And then we drove down to the courthouse and got ourselves a marriage license. 

It will be a small, casual affair with a few family members and friends.  But even so, its amazing all the things that need to be done if you are doing more than eloping over the border to the Chapel of Love in Couer d'Alene.  Most of that is my mother at work, insisting there be flowers and hors d'ouvres and proper champagne glasses.  Hell, I just wanted to find a dress I liked.  I did, too -- and when the final choice fell between "bridal" and "hot" - trust me, I chose HOT.  When you're 45 years old and you find a dress that makes you look hot, you buy it. 

So I'm all set with a beautiful blue dress and a kickass pair of low black pumps.  But you know, me being me, things just can't go that smoothly.

With someone warming the other side of the bed, getting up to run has felt like less and less a priority the last week.  I managed to run on Wednesday and meant to do it on Friday and then on Sunday, but it just didn't happen.  So this morning, I doggedly set the alarm for black-as-night-thirty and dutifully put on my running shoes and vest and threw a leash on T-Bone when it blasted me out of a lovely dream.

We hadn't gone very far when I realized my selected route was much darker than I had anticipated.  I thought there were more street lights along that way, but clearly I have questionable accuracy when it comes to memory.  And about a half mile in as I was considering the need to turn around and find a more well-lit path, it happened.  I tripped over the concrete edge of a square manhole cover and fell, wrenching the holy living crap out of my left ankle in the process.  I managed to crawl up onto the curb and suppress my moans so as not to wake people in nearby houses.  T-Bone, bless his heart, sat as close to me as he could, then curled up on the ground, watching every car that passed with a concerned glare.  When I could talk without sobbing I called SG (always, always always take a phone with you when you run) and asked him to come get me.  Then I passed the time until he got there mentally beating myself up for being so damn stupid and possibly ruining my ability to even walk on our wedding day, much less finish my C25K training plans.

Fortunately its just a bad sprain.  My plan is to keep it elevated and iced until about 2:45PM on Wednesday so I can put a flesh-colored elastic brace on it under an opaque pair of panty hose and actually wear my new black pumps and walk on the damn thing.  I have every confidence that this plan will work and I will not hear a word to the contrary. 

We can have the sidebar discussion on just how much crutches suck later.  If I have to talk about it now I may just weep, and that's not in the cards today.  I refuse to be down about this.  It hurts and it looks like hell, but its a small radar blip in what is otherwise a joyous and bliss-filled week. 

So if you have positive thoughts, prayers or energy to send our way, we'll take all of them you can spare. 

Blocks

 

I can't find it.  Can't find whatever-it-is that works inside my brain that forces me to my keyboard or to my journal or to the recorder I have in my car so that I can free the words that are rolling up and over and out of my brain.  Nothing meaningful is tapping on the back of my eyelids, begging me over and over again to write it out, put it to words, string words to sentences, organize sentences into paragraphs. 

Nothing.

I suspect - no, that's not right - I know there are things to be said.  Right now I feel walled off from them, tiptoeing around the edges of them and wondering when and how I'll be able to give voice to them.  Half-formed sentences well up in my throat but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.

When I run I think, I hold conversations in my head with myself, with other people, with God.  I work things out and I draw conclusions.  I think about what I think until I know for sure what I think. And I ran this morning and I came back not one whit more sure of what I think than I had been when I was sleepily tying on my shoes at 5:30 am. 

I don't know what's wrong with me.  Where are my words?

Vanpool, ho!

Or Vanpool Ho, whichever you find most fitting.  

Apropos of nothing,  I love what happens when you dick around with commas.  Like this:

At the beginning of the kindergarten year for C I had to give up being a member of my vanpool.

This was a Really Big Deal to me, because A) I have a 45 mile commute EACH WAY to work and B) I'm always broke.  I drive a moderately small SUV that on its best day gets 25 miles to the gallon.  I end up filling it about three times a week.  And I did the math on that and I about choked on my coffee and then I started to cry because apparently I spend about $7,000 on gas a year.

That's one hell of a chunk of change.  No choice in the matter, though, becaseu my son was not coping in kindergarten, and for the entire first semester I was being asked to come get him from school at least twice a week.  This was before his IEP team was in place, and he had a teacher who had zero experience with children like mine.  It was frustrating, to say the least, and for not the first time in my short parenting career I blazed with resentment because my ex NEVER leaves work to get the kids when they're having a problem.  Because HIS job doesn't let you leave (WTF kind of employer doesn't "let" you leave work if your child is having an emergency? ) and you know, HIS job is WAY more important than MINE.  WHATEVER.  So I had to give up my car pool to the tune of seven THOUSAND dollars a year because my ex, who WORKS IN TOWN can't pick up his own kids from school. 

Not that I'm complaining or anything.  Because it hasn't been one of the more financially painful things I've had to deal with since this divorce, no, NOT AT ALL.  (This is one of the days where the sarcasm font would come in handy)

Things have long since settled down at school, and I could have been in the van pool - but I gave up my seat, and someone else filled it, and the attrition rate around here is something like frozen molasses creeping uphill at midnight in January.  Nobody gives up vanpool seats.  They are as rare and valuable as William Shakespeare's signature.

But yesterday the clouds dissipated, the stars and planets aligned, and angels sang.  One of my former commuters is going to move to the other side of the state.  Her husband is getting a promotion at work that will take them over to the place where there are big green trees, lots and lots of water (most of it falling from the sky) and moss grows on the north side of everyone including the people.   And her seat in the vanpool is up for grabs.

MINE.  MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE.

All mine.

More comma fun:

Image:  http://greaterthanlapsed.tumblr.com/post/10340315471/aundressa-weexist-weresist-ejob

 

 

We owe them

The first time I had to have a dog euthanized (no, I don't pretty it up, that's what it is) my daughter was just starting to walk and the pit mix we'd had since we moved in together started being food aggressive.  Because she was already completely animal-aggressive, we made the tough decision to have her humanely euthanized.  We loved our dog, and we knew if she went to the shelter, her breed would ensure she would very likely not be adoptable, and we didn't feel comfortable placing the responsibility for keeping her and others safe on anyone else's shoulders.

The vet asked me if I wanted to stay in the room with her.

Did I want to?  Absolutely not.  I wanted to be as far away from that place as humanly possible.  No, I did not want to watch my dog die. 

But I owed it to her to be there.

I was the person who took responsibility for her when I signed the adoption paperwork at the shelter.  I was the person who had made the decision to end her life.  Yes, the reasons for doing it were the right reasons, the safety of people always comes first, but it was still my decision and I needed to own that.  And being faced with the choice of being there for my dog or abandoning her to the care of strangers for the final moments of her life cemented in me a belief that I still hold to firmly.  Our household pets rely on us for affection, attention, leadership and companionship.  In the final moments of their lives, when those moments have been scheduled by us, we owe them nothing less than our full presence. 

I've been present for dogs who didn't belong to me because their owners couldn't or wouldn't give them that final gift, and I mourned their passing as much as I mourn the passing of my own.

I believe to my bones that Hercules had a good death.  He was so very sick.  His heart was grossly enlarged, and the drugs that the vet gave me to try to ease his discomfort were doing nothing at all to help him.  All he could do was stand and try to breathe.  He couldn't lie down, it put too much pressure on his lungs and chest and he would panic and start to choke.  He stood there yesterday, looking at me with eyes that were frightened and confused, eyes that begged me to make things better.   Because there was absolutely nothing I could do to ease his condition, I did the only thing I could - I chose to end his suffering.

Before the children left to go to their dads they each got to hug him and tell him they loved him, and when my ex came to pick them up he spent some time with him as well.  And when the time came, when he died, he was in his own home, on his favorite blanket, with his head in my arms.  I stroked his soft ears and kissed his crusty old nose and petted his head and told him over and over again what a good boy he was, how much he was loved, and that I was sorry he was so sick.  I told him that we would see each other again someday, that he had been the best dog, the smartest dog, the sweetest dog that ever lived.  He never flinched, never felt the drugs that finally let him have peace. 

It was earlier this fall that I did the math in my head and realized that the Hercapotamus was almost twelve.  He had already lived the top range of life expectancy for his breed.  I knew then that I would be lucky to have him very much longer.  Just weeks ago he was still himself, bouncy and exuberant.  When he started to walk into the house after being outside rather than run, I sort of knew what was coming.  But I waited for him to tell me it was time to go.  And so he did.

Dogs teach us what it means to love fully and without reservation.  Because their time with us is so brief, they allow us to experience the full circle of life, from childhood to death, and from that cycle we learn how to cope with enormous loss.  The love they give is a treasure, something precious and meaningful.  Each dog is unique and special in his or her own way.  No one will ever love you the way your dog loves you.  Your children will grow up, and while they will love you, they won't always need you.  Your partner or your spouse, they are fully actualized adults and while they love you, while they want to be with you, they don't need you.   Your dog, on the other hand, needs you for as long as he lives.  You are the center of his universe.  When he needs comfort it is your hand she seeks, when he is thirsty or hungry or cold, it is you to whom he comes with his need.

Take responsibility for his comfort, his safety.  And when it is his time to leave this world, you owe it to him to usher him on his way with all of the love and presence of mind you can muster.  Don't let his last touch be that of a stranger.  Make sure yours is the last voice he hears as he crosses over, because you are the most important person in the world to him.

 

A Life Well Lived

He entered our lives on one of those frightfully humid days that only New Jersey in August can offer.  He'd been living with a family who couldn't cope with his separation anxiety and so they surrendered him to a local boxer rescue.

We were technically just going to foster him.

But he belonged.

Herc "talked."  Constantly.

He was wise and he was gentle, loyal and trustworthy.  He loved all children.  He was the temperament tester for all of the foster dogs that followed him.

As he got older, his face started to show more gray, but he still had bounce. 

At least, until the last few weeks.  I noticed he didn't come running into the house after being in the yard, he started to walk instead.  He'd still wiggle his nub when people came over, but he wasn't quite as exuberant as he had once been.

A few days ago, he started wheezing and coughing and having trouble breathing.  I figured he had a virus and made an appointment with my vet to have him looked at next week.  We didn't quite make it that long.

 

 

Hercules passed away this afternoon, peacefully in my arms.  His big heart finally gave out on him.

 

Somewhere there is a place where every dog has a house and every house has a dog

There is always a warm patch of sunlight to snooze in

There are always cookies

And the water bowl fills itself.

Nobody says things like "Down!"  "Stay!"  "Out!"  "No!"  "Bad Dog!"

In fact, nobody's even allowed to say "Bad Dog!"

Only dogs get to be on the couch

And the bed

And no one gets mad at you if you lift the last piece of pizza

Right out of the box

You always get your ears scratched

And they get in line for the privilege of rubbing your belly

Naps are sacred

Cats aren't allowed

All the food tastes like hambone

And there aren't any pills you have to swallow.

Your joints don't hurt anymore and you can run and jump and play

Just like you did when you were a pup.

That's where I'm going, at least for now. 

Someday, when you're on your way somewhere else, you'll pass by

And I'll wait for you by the gate.

Then we will finish our last journey together.

And there will be cookies.

 

Rest easy, big man.  Mama loves you.  See you at the Bridge.

Whither thou goest

Sometimes even people who are deeply in love with one another get out of sync.  I need something he can't give, we don't connect, we misunderstand, we slither into our respective holes and peer out through the water dripping from the eaves in search of some semblance of nonexistent sunlight.  If its just one of us crawling in the muck and the other is content to make space for it, that's well and fine, but if we're both mired in it at the same time, its a perfect storm of misery and misunderstanding.  When those days are upon us, its not much fun.  When those days are upon us and there are several states and miles between us, pull up your beanbag chair and pop up some popcorn.   Fireworks start at dusk.

I think maybe the purpose of past relationships is to act out the stuff that didn't work and mold it into new shapes and try it again on someone completely different.  Sometimes we expect the outcomes to be the same, like when I do something totally selfish and self-centered and I think "God, he's going to hate me/yell at me/pout for a week for this" and I get a quizzical look and a kiss instead. 

Or when he crawls around in the throes of his ongoing midlife crisis and thinks nothing can ever work out between us in the long run because he hasn't yet accomplished his true calling in life and there's no way anyone could accept him taking time to pursue that calling.

So I ask him, what is it you want to do?  Move to Honduras and start dealing small arms on the black market?   Rob banks for a living?  Deal heroin?  Kill puppies?  I mean, if you're planning on digging a hole in the backyard and then boarding over the top and disguising it with roll-on grass in order to kidnap neighborhood children and harvest their organs for the black market, you can bet your bippy I'm NOT ON BOARD WITH THAT.

Men are dumb  People in relationships can find it easy to misjudge their partner's depth of acceptance sometimes, particularly when experiences from their past obscure their vision of the present. 

Relationships should be what free you to seek out your goals and dreams.  The person who loves you is the one to cheer you on, either at your side or from the sidelines, as you accomplish the things that make you who you are.  Relationships don't define who we are, they give voice to our reality.   Relationships aren't anchors that drag us underwater until we can't breathe, and if yours does?  That may not be the right person to be in a relationship with.  It is a fairy tale world we live in if people think they can't be with someone and still have the freedom and compassion and love and support to become their potential.

 It is wrong to raise our children to believe that love means giving up your dreams or discouraging someone else from chasing theirs just because you can't stand for them to like doing anything that doesn't involve you.  A couple of decades ago the people that like to sell us stuff by convincing us that no matter what we're doing right now we're using the wrong product, we're too fat, we don't wear the right brand of clothes/makeup/jewelry/deodorant, etcetera to the ad nauseum, created this vision of relationships where the little woman stays home and the other spouse has to go do the 60-hour work week thing so that the little woman can raise the babies and put steak and potatoes on the table each night and mix her man a martini.    The 1950's portrayal of the "nuclear family" simply created a society which glorified and embraced a codependent model of existence.  Women need their men to survive, to be happy.  Men can't be happy unless their wives are busy being beautiful and perfect.  If I'm not happy it must be because my laundry detergent isn't getting his shirts white enough.  If I'm unhappy its because my wife doesn't cook the perfect pot roast and she won't wear high heels while she's mixing my martini.

BULL. 

SHIT.

So now that we've got all that straightened out?

I don't require constant attention from a man in order to feel real.  I am - we all are - self-actualized.  I can pursue my goals and dreams and be supportive of my partner pursuing his own, even if sometimes those pursuits might mean we are sacrificing some time together for a few weeks or months.  This isn't even about compromising, because I am not compromising my deepest beliefs and needs in order to support my partner.  I'm EXPRESSING THEM by being loving, compassionate and supportive while simultaneously being capable, happy and caring for my self. 

Whenever I've spent the time and money to go pursue the things that make me happy, you've never been anything but pleased for me, doing what you could to make sure I got the time and space to do the things that are important to me.  Why would I do anything less for you?

Spread your wings and fly, babe.  I'll take care of ground support. 

 

 

She can run

Was it last winter I started the Couch to 5K?  Or the winter before that?  I can't remember.  This is what happens  to you when you have children, get old, and have ADD.  Things just fall out of your head, timeframes mean little to nothing.  For crying out loud, I gave my ex a "Happy 40th" birthday card on his 41st birthday because somehow a whole year had slipped my memory banks. 

So anyway, what was I saying?

Couch to 5K.  Started it one winter.  I printed out a training plan, and of course if you're starting from point of not running at all, you build up your stamina incrementally.  To do this, you don't just hit the pavement and start running.  You start with walk/run intervals, gradually increasing the time of the running and decreasing the time of the walking.  So the first week you're doing 8 short intervals, the next week you're doing 6 and so forth. 

I bought a runner's watch that had a function to set intervals, and honestly, it was that whole part of it (well, that and my crappy shoes) that borked it for me.  If I didn't remember to reset to all the new intervals for the following week, I would be getting up at 4:30 to go run and by the time I'd spent a half hour figuring out how to set my new intervals, I'd be pretty much out of time to actually engage in the run.  Plus, the times I did run with it, I was also listening to my MP3 player, and it was hard to hear the beeping, and unless I wore my glasses, I couldn't actually see the watch.  Usually I wear my glasses when I'm running, but not if its raining, and if I wanted to listen to music and check the watch face at the same time on a rainy day, forget it.  I could wear rain-spotted glasses and half-assed see my watch, or wear no glasses at all and be completely unable to see it.   And it was winter and it was dark and my knees started hurting (probalby because of the horribad shoes) and oh, there are all kinds of reasons.  So I quit, quietly and really truly without a tremendous amount of guilt. It was too much work just to do a simple run.

I continued to still work out regularly, doing Bikram once a week, Vinyasa a couple of other days and a cardio thrown in here and there.  But even though I'm not a great runner, there is a part of me that enjoys running.  I want to do it, and I want to be able to run for long enough for it to be considered an actual workout (since its been kindly pointed out to me that running after the dog who is trying to eat the chicken is not actual exercise).  But I know the only way to really make it work is to plan it and expand my stamina gradually, and every time I've thought about starting up again, I've balked as soon as I hit the planning segment and thought about programming that damn watch.

This summer, when SG was picking up a pair of special order shoes, he was sweet enough to get me to get fitted for a decent pair of running shoes.  And then a few weeks ago while trying to figure out which of the forty-odd workout DVD's I wanted to torture myself with, I remembered those new running shoes, and I got them out of the closet.  And then I looked at that runner's watch sitting on my dresser with a fine layer of dust, and I thought to myself, "There has to be a better way."

As it turns out, there is. 

There's an app for that!  Several of them, actually, but I found one that works perfectly for me.  All I have to do is tap on the Start My Run icon and then select which day of which week it is (I finished Week 2 Day 3 yesterday).  It lets me play music from my phone while I'm running, and when the nice lady interjects to tell me to change from walking to running or to inform me of my current pace and distance covered, she very politely mutes the music so that I can hear her.  And because I know how far I'm going and how fast I'm going, I'm more motivated than before because the desire to improve makes me try harder. 

I've gone every other day for two weeks.  Over two weeks I've seen improvement every run.  And no, I'm not going to tell you how far I'm running because HELLO, SLOW.  But I have my average pace under a 9 minute mile for the parts I'm running, and I'm feeling really energetic and motivated and committed to keeping this up.  

I doubt I'll ever run a marathon or even a half marathon, and I'll never "look" like a runner.  And perhaps what I do is less running and more like jogging sort of fast, but so what?  It feels good, I feel healthy for doing it, and that's what matters.

The End. Period.

It may surprise some of you (especially those of you who are friends on Facebook) to know that technically I am not yet divorced.  My ex moved out well over two years ago, but we didn't actually begin divorce proceedings until August of this year.  I don't know why we waited so long, but when I look back at the patterns in my life I note a definite tendency to postpone the inevitable, so I guess I'm just being true to form.   I will rip off a bandaid, jump into cold water, endure the artist's needle, but I will not lend myself readily to painful emotional change. 

The not-quite-yet-divorced status should, if all goes as expected, change tomorrow.  The final paperwork has been signed by my ex, his attorney, my attorney, and myself.  The hearing is scheduled for 8:30 AM (which really means all the lawyers will be in court at 8:30 AM, there will be check-ins for those doing status conferences and eventually the lawyers who have motions to be signed will line up for their turn, then the status conferences will take place and THEN motions that need to be heard will be considered and hopefully they get done sometime before armageddon.  I suspect this is why attorneys charge so much money, its recompense for the stab-yourself-in-the-eye boredom they go through in court every week). 

The final death throes of the marriage took place over a number of years for a number of reasons.  Tomorrow will be the final, gasping breath of the brontosaurus shuddering on the carpet of the rainforest floor.

 

I don't know if I ever really believed that marriage was forever.  I know that I hoped it was.  I don't think there are many people that enter into a relationship commitment planning for its eventual demise, though we all have to realize that its a possibility. 

I am looking forward to settling into a different phase of my relationship with my ex.  I think that now  that we are no longer debating over exactly how to split hairs and then assign ownerhip to halves of hairs that the bulk of the discomfort will be over.  Worrying about what would happen and who would get what if we didn't agree was a soul-consuming experience.  As much as I am trying to learn to lean back and worry more about the ride than the destination, I'm still human and still reacting to my fear more than I would like.  I've struggled with anger and hurt and jealousy.  I've had to learn how to walk away without voicing upsets or concerns that aren't capable of being resolved.  I've learned to let my feelings be felt with the explicit understanding that there isn't a happy-ever-after, there's no reward or prize or mountain summit, just a continuation of life that will undoubtedly serve up fresh suffering after some time passes. 

Falling in love and beginning a new relationship didn't really alleviate those feelings.  It just allowed me to ignore them for longer periods of time.  Ultimately, though, I've got to acknowledge them and allow them to work their way through.  If I don't, they'll just keep causing me pain and there's no reason at all to let that linger longer than it needs to. 

After tomorrow, my ex and I will no longer be husband and wife.  We'll be coparents.  We'll be once-lovers.  People who walked a path together, side by side for a time, and who will continue to parallel one another to a small extent because of our mutual ties to our progeny. 

As our children become adults, I hope that they will be able to comprehend that relationships are complicated and fragile.  I hope that they can understand - and more importantly believe  - that a divorce was never something we envisioned for our family until we actually reached the point where it happened. 

I hope they will learn that when you're an adult living in a world you are coping with your past and your present in ways that often do not make sense.  That unless you give your relationship the time and energy - and compassion - that it requires, it will not thrive.   That once you stop communicating you begin sliding down a hill that only grows steeper the farther down it you travel.

I hope that they will be able to recognize that in the end we both made some hard choices in order to preserve our sanity, healthy, and dignity, and more than anything, I hope that they will forgive us for the impact those choices had on them.

I hope very much that they will be able to see their parent's divorce not as an altogether negative experience.    Divorce is painful, but at the same time, my failed marriage gave me a gift.  Through it I found impetus for growth and change, seeking new ways of interacting with others, with myself, with the world I inhabit.   

The impermanence of things in life offer us gifts.  Tomorrow marks the end of one thing, but offers a new threshold to cross.  

 

Earplugs. Or something.

Honestly, I don't know why we don't see more stories in the newspaper about parents with oppositional children driving their cars straight into brick walls or off of the sides of overpasses.   And I confess to having a burning curiosity as to how so many oppositional children manage to survive to adulthood.  And even as I write this I have to kind of laugh, because after this long, my coping skills have developed to levels I never imagined were possible.

My son, God bless him, is simultaneously one of the most charming and one of the most maddening people I know.  He has been at his new school for just over a month now.  He knows the name of everyone in the school.  I pick him up and no matter which crossing guard is waving us across the pavement to safety, he knows her name.  He smiles at her, waves at her, enthusiastically shouting, "Hi Mrs. So-and-So!"  And they all smile right back at him.  "Hi Mr. Race Car Man!"  They love him.  And he IS lovable.  So charming.  About two days after his birthday party he came up to me in the kitchen and wrapped his arms around me. 

 "Mommy, when is your birthday?" 

"Just after Christmas.  Why?"

"Because you made such a special birthday for me. I want to make you the bestest car in the world for your birthday."

Melting.  I'm melting.  He is so adorable when he does this.

He remembers people's names, he remembers the smallest details about everything.  His brain is fascinating to me, and I know I've only scratched the surface of what he's capable of understanding and doing.  As a kindergartner, he rarely participated in learning activities in his classroom.  He was mostly curled up in a ball on the floor, not coping.  Yet he passed the end of year testing with perfect scores.  Of course, they only test them to their grade level, so that's not so amazing.  What was amazing was that his aftercare provider, on days when he'd been naughty, made him sit in her office and do math and reading books during recess.  "Just for fun" (or so she says), she gave him the first and second grade math tests.  He scored perfectly on first grade math and about 80% on second grade math.  As a kindergartner with little to no math instruction whatsoever.   I tell people that this is the child who will eventually be building nuclear bombs in the basement if his abilities are not channeled very carefully.   SG wanted to get him a chemistry set for his birthday.  My response was "Please, no, I like my house without the burn marks on the walls and carpet."

 And then there are the days (or the segments of a day) when things just get borked. 

Now that my daughter is doing "real" homework, I've become weary of being her walking thesaurus.  We went to the bookstore yesterday afternoon and she is now the proud owner of a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a children's encyclopedia.  I showed her how to look up words in the index of the thesaurus to find what pages to look on, and she was off and running.  But bookstores - places I used to love, places I used to be able to hang out in for hours - are my nemesis anymore.  If only they would just carry BOOKS.  But no, they've got toys now, almost as many toys as they have books, it seems.  Brilliant marketing tool, people.  Oh, and BITE ME.   While I searched for materials for his sister, the little man played at the train table in the kids section and then with the muppet puppets in the puppet theatre (it sells for just $89.99, folks, and if you buy it they throw in a free puppet.  Neato Frito. )  But when it was time to check out, he was standing there holding a box of train pieces. 

"Mommy, can I have this?"

"Not today buddy.  We're not here to pick out toys."

And let the screaming begin.

Would it hurt to buy my kids a toy sometimes?  Maybe not.  But unfortunately we did that a few years ago and somehow it took hold in their minds that they should get a new toy everytime they go to the store.

"But I was GOOD!"  he shouts at me.

"Yes, you were good.  That doesn't mean I'm buying you a toy."

I finish paying, I ask the kids to get in the car.

"NO!!!! I want this train!!!"

I'm not going to let him stand there disrupting anyone else's day one second longer than I have to.

"OK, here's the deal.  You have to three to put the box down and walk to the car.  If you don't, if I have to take the box from you and carry you to the car, you will lose the chance to watch television after homework.  No Mighty Machines."

"NO!!!!!"  he screams.

I count.  He does not comply. 

I very calmly take the box from him, calmly pick up his taut, struggling body, and carry him to the car, put him in his booster, buckle him in.  He is screaming at the top of his lungs.

I get in the car, put on my seatbelt, turn on the CD player.  "Daydreamer" by Adele.  Though I can barely hear the song through his shrieking, I focus very intently on the words so that I will think about something other than his piercing yells.

He kicks my seat and screams almost all the way home.  I manage not to drive off the overpass, slam into a concrete divider or drive us off a cliff.  I manage not to scream back at him.  But finally I cannot take anymore of the screaming.  I don't want to engage and I don't want to be upset, I am working so very hard at maintaining my composure.

"Buddy, you need to stop the screaming.  If you can't stop screaming you're going to have to stay in your room when we get home."

He yells at me for a few minutes more, but then finally his shrieks turn to quiet sobs.  Eventually he stops.  He picks up the encyclopedia I bought for his sister and starts to read it.

Some might classify this as a colossal failure.  I think it was a screaming success. 

Sorry for the pun.  I couldn't help myself.

My son lost his cool, but I didn't lose mine.  Where in the past he might have screamed for an hour or longer, he screamed for about twenty minutes.  See, in special-needs-land, we measure success incrementally. 

Even so, there are still times when driving off the overpass seems like a reasonable alternative.

 

A light so bright it hurts my eyes

In the noise and chaos of dealing with too many balls in the air, I'm not overburdened with opportunities to think.  Between the kids, work and animals, usually any chance that I might slow down and string two coherent thoughts together about how I feel and where am I going in life are interrupted because a ball or two is about to go SPLAT!  Quick, catch the ball!  What was I thinking about?  I forgot. 

Suddenly Sunday night arrives and the kids are off to their dad's.  I'll see them after school four out of the next five days, which helps, but its evening, and then its morning, and holy crap, its dark out.  Fall arrived and I was so busy avoiding thinking about it that it I almost didn't notice it happening.  Lets just say now would not be a good time to run out of Wellbutrin. 

I have reason to believe that this winter will be better than last winter, which was better than the winter before.  That two-year-old winter, just post-separation, was fucking brutal.  The kids were fighting our family's circumstances with every fiber of their beings, I was facing nights where my kids were not with me and I had not yet done the work I needed to do to accept that pain as a part of my life.  It was dark, I was alone, and even though I was finally free of living within an angry and shattered marriage, I was not used to being alone.  I made it through, by the skin of my teeth it seemed sometimes, and by the time the next winter came around, I was doing better.  I was making progess in my personal psychological and spiritual practice.  I was finally comfortable with being alone, with periods of quiet contemplation.  I had things to do and friends to enjoy when I needed some time around other people.  I met SG, and for the most part, the rest of the winter seemed effortless.  I was happy, mostly.  The depression was there, of course, it always is, but it crouched inside its little mouse-hole, barely poking its nose out to sniff the air.  Occasionally it would skitter across the floor, only to be vaporized into black smoke by the shining bright light of my happiness.

This year things are somewhat different.  I'm with someone, and yet I'm alone.  It's hard, its a struggle, and let me tell you that every minor relationship issue feels greatly exacerbated when you can't see the other person's face when you're hashing things out.  So its both OK and not OK at the same time - and right there I am reminded of the twofold nature that I try so hard to embrace.  Life includes both joy and pain, and so this is just a natural part of being human. 

The other thing that changed is that my ex and I changed our parenting schedule.  We went to every other week, a situation I wasn't entirely happy with but agreed to because it was pitched so reasonably.  I have a friend that's a judge.  He says most parenting plans are like this and they don't like complicated parenting plans when you go to court.  And really, it makes more sense to limit that number of transitions they have to deal with, especially with our mixed bag of mental health issues.  It took a while, though, before I realized the real reason for it.  (When I figured out that our parenting schedule matches his girlfriend's parenting schedule and they are both surprise! kid-free on the same weeks, I had to draw a little +1 in his column in the imaginary scorecard I keep in my head.  Touche.  Nicely played.  Asshole.)  So before, the last the longest my kids slept somewhere other than my house was two nights in a row.  Its not all that bad, considering.  On the weeks they are with their dad I still pick them up after school until he gets off work.  I still get to be involved in dinner and homework and all the chaos and noise four evenings on the off week.  It helps tremendously.

Sunday afternoons are special.  I savor those last few hours with them, even if we're doing mundane things.  Yesterday we went up to Michelle's and spent horse time.  The drive is a little over a half hour. 

As we drove home, the light was beginning to thin.  My daughter laid her head on my shoulder, and grabbed my free arm to wrap it around my shoulders.  I hugged her, ruffled her hair, touched her soft cheek with my fingers. 

There are moments in time when loving my kids is both the sweetest and most painful thing imaginable.  I am awestruck once again by how incredibly fortunate I am to have these mysterious and quicksilver beings in my life.  I love them completely and without limit, and I know that our time is precious because it will too soon be less available.  They are with me for but a brief span of their lives, and they will drift further and further away from me as they learn how to be independent people.  They will still be mine, in my heart of hearts, but more than that, they are their own.  So I hold my daughter's hand in the car for as long as she will let me, squeezing it gently, savoring the sensation of her fingers entwined and our palms - hers soft and warm, mine calloused and hard - pressing together.

These are the moments I pull from my memory banks to hang on to when the night is dark.  They are the bright light that chases away the shadow. 

This winter will be better.