Barnmaven

I don't even know how to write this the right way

This is NOT humblebragging.  Not, not not.

It is a genuine outpouring of distress over the state of parenting in this world that anyone - ANYONE - would tell me, "Oh my gosh, you're such a hero!" because they found out I have a kid with autism.  Yet this weekend, while transacting some business with a local vendor, that's exactly what happened.  Its not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last, but its damn awkward.  I have found that constantly saying "Oh, not, that's not true," just results in more fervent assertions regarding my possible elevation to sainthood, so as a general rule now I just redirect the conversation.  "Say, did you hear about the kid in Kyrgyzstan that got bubonic plague?"

Here's a little newsflash for you, folks:  Parenting a kid with autism doesn't make me a hero to anyone except perhaps my kid -- but only in the way that every parent is a hero to their kids.  My ex is their hero.  My husband is their hero.  We are the adults they look up to and depend on.  But that's really as far as the hero title goes. 

In the grand scheme of Things We May Have to Deal With in Life, Race Car Man's fairly-high-functioning autism falls way down there with ingrown toenails, years when I have to send a check in with my 1040 instead of checking the IRS site daily for my refund status and the inconvenience of needing to pick up after three dogs everytime we want to play in the yard.  It isn't what I planned, but it isn't really all that bad.  

What was really under my skin about the incident that prompted this post is that the person who was dishing all the praise was doing so because we were talking about school and I described the program my son attends and mentioned communicating with his teacher daily via a notebook that comes home.  He thought it was just amazing that I was actually engaged with my son's teacher.  

Amazing?

Hardly.  Its what parents DO - or at least, its one of the commonly accepted responsibilities of parenting.

And this is really why I am upset, and where I become really judgemental.

There are parents who do not care how their child is doing in school.  There are parents who do not attend parent-teacher conferences or back-to-school nights.  There are parents of children with special needs that drop their kids off at school in the morning and feel that everything that happens beyond that point is the school's job & problem.  

When my daughter started kindergarten she had already been evaluated for an IEP and thus was placed in a special program in our district - an intervention classroom, for kids who have behavioral issues.  Open house night arrives and my ex and I arrive fifteen minutes early, with bells on, excited to see where our precious girl is going to be attending school for the first time, eager to meet her teacher and classroom assistants, eager to be a part of the education of our child.

We walked into the door of the portable to find the teacher and her aide staring at us with shocked expressions.  "PARENTS!  We have PARENTS!" the teacher exclaimed.  

"You mean...we're first?"

"No, you're the first parents I can remember having in a long time."

Pause a moment and let that sink in.

A classroom for children with special needs.  And no parent interested enough in the well-being of their son or daughter to bother meeting the teacher, seeing the classroom, hearing about curriculum and what methods will be used to address behavioral issues.  

Not one.

Our being there didn't make us good parents.  It made us ordinary parents, with ordinary care and concern about our baby girl.  The parents who were not there, they are NOT, I hope, ordinary.   I hope they are the smallest percentage of a minute fringe...and I fear they are not.

When people speak of "heroic" parenting, my thoughts go to parents who have it far more difficult than I.  Parents of children who will never be able to care for themselves.  Parents who have lived through devastating illnesses, terrible losses.  Parents who have dealt with extremes I cannot imagine.  And I suspect that most of those parents would very firmly deny any sense of their own lives as being heroic.  

The thought that I inhabit a world where the simple act of caring for my children and placing importance on their needs constitutes anything other than the expected acts of a loving parent is more than disturbing.  It is heartbreaking.

 

 

Into reality

My brain is an escape artist.

It takes advantage of books and movies, mostly, though daydreams will do in a pinch. If the story is good enough for me to suspend disbelief, my consciousness will gladly take a break from the here and now and spend time in that imagined world.  

Once the movie ends or whenever its time to put the book down for a bit, there is a small period of adjustment as my cerebral hemisphere attempts to transition between the imaginary and the ordinary.  Occasionally I'll have a small moment of panic as it seems that awareness of the passage of time is one of those functions that takes a short vacation.  I was reading at the nail place this weekend during my pedicure and when I was driving away I looked up the street and saw my bank.  My adrenaline surged briefly as I tried to remember if I'd actually paid bills on our last payday.  Of course I had; but that reality hadn't yet returned.

I had a similar experience during the weeks that followed my brother's death, but instead of escaping to an imaginary reality, my brain took refuge in the minutiae of planning, sorting, figuring out what needed to be done.  When all was said and done and I headed back home to real life, my brain was reluctant to follow me back.  The period of dislocation was extended and profound; no surprise, my conscious brain was in no hurry to take residence in a reality where my loved one was no longer going to be present - ever.  

Interestingly enough, I have periodic moments of panic when I forget that he is gone and realize I've let an important date or event slip by without calling or inviting him.  Or I've fallen into a daydream of childhood and adult memories, conversations we've had, youthful escapades, various episodes that became the stuff of family legend.  Then I remember and that little zip of adrenaline sinks into something I can't name but feels like hollow pressure inside the center of my sternum and a lurching sensation in my stomach.

And people probaby wonder "when is she going to stop talking about her dead brother?" but its less that than an acknowledgment to friends who have also suffered losses who are remember birthdays, holidays and events and living through them without their own loved ones.  

I don't believe there is a finite point where one must no longer make public references to someone they've lost.  We can be past that period of heavy, active grief and still be filled with memories and thoughts of the person we miss so deeply.  Wishing them a happy birthday or remarking how much they had been here to join us for a reunion, event or holidy - its not morbid, its not escaping reality, its not attention-seeking.  We honor those we love even though they are gone because they made a mark on our lives that can never be erased.  Steph remembers her dad's birthday even if none of her other family members are talking about it on Facebook.  Vicki writes to Jack how much she loves and misses him on the fifth anniversary since he died.  Varda finds more pictures of her mother and father and posts them on her blog.  Our memories are engaged and for a period of time we do not wish to take that step out of the theatre door into the afternoon sunlight.

Woudl that it were that easy.

No more news please

No one wants to talk about anything anymore unless its controversial.

You know its true.

Ever since the rise of the 24-hour news channel in those months post 9/11 we have steadily turned into a culture continually on the hunt for the most shocking, the most funny, the most outrageous headline.  Remember when we got news once a day on the TV?  Now we have countless news channels pumping out content every second of every hour, and the world just isn’t full enough of actual news to fill up the vacuum.  I can’t see this as an ‘evolution’ in any true sense of the world.  This headline buffet has changed us, and not for the better.

The only way bloggers can get pageviews anymore, unless they already belong to the big cliques, is to linkbait, exaggerate or outright lie.  Its almost enough to make me feel sorry for bloggers who are out there giving their all to try make a living off blogging.  It just isn't possible for all those people to make enough money to live on trying to throw words at the Universe. Unless you can post something controversial enough to get picked up by HuffPo, you might as well stand in your underwear and talk to yourself in the mirror.  You’ll get more reaction.

Hell, the most pageviews this blog ever got was when I wrote a post about my kid punching another kid in the nuts.  Of all the things I've written of which I'm proud, that was the story that got picked up by a major news outlet, for crying out loud.

As a blogger what I find particularly sad about this Headline Culture is that that not only are there important bits of news out there we should probably know about but are getting buried under EXTREME!HEADLINES!, but there are bloggers and writers out there who are truly at the top of their craft who aren’t getting nearly the appreciation they deserve.  I don’t think I’m talking about myself, because although I wish I was a great enough writer to be included in the ranks of those I consider to be real writers (like Vardra, Adrienne, Veronica or Michelle, to name a few), I don’t think that I am.  (I’m OK with that.  I’m not a big deal on the internet, maybe, but I’m a Really Big Deal to my kids and my folks and my husband and the people who pay me to get stuff done.)

All this nonsense being passed off as “news” really distracts us from paying attention to important pieces of information.  Things like the controversy over fluoridation in our water systems and the negative health effects that can be associated with high levels of fluoride; things like PRISM and our government's defense of the indefensible; like the dozens of cases of police brutality or misconduct that occur in communities just like yours and mine on a daily basis.  “The Trayvon Martin case has been a headline forever, but there are black kids killed by cops every damn day and either no one reports it or no one pays attention to it if it does happen to make the paper.  No one raises an eyebrow over rape anymore unless it is committed by or against a celebrity. 

Face it guys, the internet is both amazing and a shithole.

Am I the only one who's exasperated by this crap?

 

These old walls

This weekend will mark my 6th year in this house.

One more year and I will have lived here as long as I have ever lived in any house, and one more year after that it will be the longest I have lived in any home.

The first house we lived in when I was a kid was a little brick rental on the 125th block of Fremont Avenue.  The houses across the street from us backed up to the power lines which backed up to a large cemetery, where I learned how to fall off my bike while riding downhill.  On my birthday.  I also got a Chrissy doll that birthday, the doll with the hair that "grew" by pulling it out of the top of her head.  I remember sitting at the kitchen table holding my new doll between my knees, pulling her hair out and pressing the button to wind it back inside the hole on the top of her head with one hand and holding a washcloth full of ice against the road rash on my lips and chin with the other.

We had a mix of families with school-age children and older couples in the neighborhood.  My brother Ken hung out with Chris and Jay and I played with Kirsten and Jay's little brother Rich until Kirsten moved away.  Rich and I still played together although sometimes he got tired of me and hung out with the big boys.  I would try to catch up to them when this happened but they were mostly successful in their evasion efforts.  

Right next to us lived the Lawlers, who tended to drink a little too much and got into extremely loud screaming matches with one another.  Often Mr. Lawler would be dispatched to the detached garage where he would sleep in his car. 

One night they were having a particularly contentious argument.  On his way out to the garage Mr. Lawler decided to stand in the back yard and get a few more words in edgewise.  He woke up my Dad, who got up and made his way into our back yard. Mr. Lawler apparently took offense to my father's request for him to shut the hell up and go to sleep.  He started yelling at my Dad, which pissed my Dad off to the point where he finally just hauled off and punched Mr. Lawler.  It was spot-on to the chin and Mr. Lawler dropped like a bag of rocks.  Dad crawled back into bed afraid he'd accidentally committed a homicide.  He whispered to my mom, "If anyone asks, I never left the bed tonight."  

Mr. Lawler did survive the incident, although one summer afternoon while drinking with a buddy of his on his back deck he was overheard saying "...and then the sonofabitch just up and cold-cocked me!"  I guess he wasn't drunk enough to forget.

Not long after that my parents had the chance to buy a much bigger house for not very much money.  It had been standing vacant for several years after the owner died, and her son was eager to unload it.  Vagrants had been using it as a flop, so there was not only a lot of renovation to do but some pretty horrible messes to clean up.  

My Dad did most of the work on his own in his spare time.  At the time it was one of the biggest houses on the street, and it was very old.  It still had a coal bin next to the oil furnace that had replaced its coal-burning predecessor, and a full basement with workshop.  It had a detached garage and another outbuilding that must have been used by a gardener.  It had both a formal living room AND dining room. My brother and I had bedrooms upstairs, both with enormous walk-in closets.  My bedroom had built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.  Those shelves were filled with books and I read almost all of them.

My ceiling was angled with the pitch of the roof and in the back of my closet there was a square piece cut into the wall that you could pull out.  Behind it was empty space, a small corner of the roof and ceiling below that was between my closet and the bathroom wall.  On more than one occasion the thought of that empty void gave me the heebie jeebies.  I remember sitting on my bed and listening to a recording of Dicken's Christmas Carol on my record player.  Right about the time Marley's Ghost was talking to Scrooge and jangling his chains, my Dad called me for dinner and turned all the hallways lights off as a little joke.  It nearly scared the piss out of me.

The property also included a vacant lot next door and behind that a small two-bedroom house which we rented out for a while to a lady and her daughter.  The daughter had been in a car accident and broken her back.  She was in one of those halo contraptions that included four screws into her skull to hold everything stable and had to sleep in a specially designed bed they kept in the living room.  I would go visit from time to time and the sight of those screws going through her skin made my knees feel funny.  

After my Grandpa died my Grandma moved into that house for a little while.  Our dog Queenie stayed with her, and as Grandma was one of those women who showed love through food, Queenie got quite fat.  Even after we left the city and she became a country dog she never was able to retain her former figure.

I've lived in many houses since then, some for even longer than we lived in that big old house, but for some reason it is the home that figures most prominently in my dreams.  Countless times I've dreamed that I lived in it again, or visited it or it appeared in passing in a dream about something entirely different.  Since moving back to Washington I've driven by it a few times but have never managed to find anyone home.  I'd love to see what it looks like now that I'm grown up.  Childhood memories tend to add a size distortion to spaces.   Nothing is nearly as big as I remember.  

My children now have vague recollections of our house in New Jersey.  I wonder sometimes how long we'll stay in our house now, and what their favorite memories will be of it when they are all grown up.

I think this is why I love old houses.  New houses can be anything you want to make of them; old houses retain the memories of all who have lived there before.  Even renovated, the bones of the house still remain.  When we bought this house the doorjamb in the kitchen still had all the marks where the previous owners recorded their son's growth.  I left them as they are and my kids' own growth record is on the opposite side of the same door jamb.  I'm sure someday someone will paint that mess over, but it won't be me.