Alternate Realities

This is what could have happened last night:

Eiledon has a band concert. My in-laws have come into town and the plan is to drop Gavin at a friend’s house (he can’t do band concerts), pile everyone into my car, and head downtown. After pizza, I run Gavin to Ethan’s and circle back to pick up the other four passengers.

Traffic is horrible—a real drawback to having a child in school downtown with a concert scheduled for right after the evening rush hour. Can’t be helped. We sit and then crawl, sit and then crawl, sit and then crawl. I start to get nervous that Eiledon will be late and wonder if I shouldn’t sneak off and take back roads. Dan discourages it. It won’t be any faster. I know he’s right, so I stay the course.

We finally make it to 394 where inbound traffic is much looser. Then somewhere past Highway 100, thick, white steam begins pouring from the hood of my car and the distinct odor of coolant fills the cabin. My temperature gauge starts heading north and the car is now vibrating in an uncomfortable fashion.

I swear out loud. Right in front of my eleven-year-old and my in-laws. Eyes darting frantically from mirrors to dashboard, I duck over three lanes of traffic and pray silently that I’ll make Penn Avenue before a total meltdown. Dan and his parents are firing off questions. Eiledon escalates to hysteria, babbling about the car and the freeway and her concert and—I snarl at her to shut up.

Easing the car onto the shoulder at the top of the exit, I throw it into park and kill the engine. It’s now 6:10 and Eiledon is due at school at 6:15. Pulling out my Triple A card, I’m pretty certain that the concert isn’t going to happen.

Wes suggests calling a cab, which arrives before the tow truck and I send the four of them off, hoping they’ll make it in time. I get to ride the tow truck back to Bloomington and miss my daughter’s final performance of the year. The garage says they’ll call when they know what’s wrong and gives me a courtesy lift home.

Ethan’s mom is nice enough to drive Gavin home and the other four show up around 9:15pm having made it to the concert, which, apparently, was wonderful. Frustrated, disappointed and worried sick about money, I make my apologies and take my sorry self to bed.

The next morning after getting everyone out the door, I see that the mechanic has left a message on my cell phone. The car radiator has gone kablooey and it’s going to be $400 to repair it. I dread having to call Dan and have the conversation we’ve had half a dozen times before when our 14- and 16-year-old cars have had an inevitable mechanical issue. Do we fork over? Or try to find some way to fit a car payment into our budget (HAH!)

MAN, life SUCKS sometimes!

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This is what actually happened last night:

Eiledon had a band concert. My in-laws had come into town and the plan was to drop Gavin at a friend’s house, pile everyone into my car, and head downtown.

Dan came barreling into the house at 5:30 and I realized the impracticality of the plan. Instead, I decided to take Eiledon in myself, since she had to be there early, and let Dan drop Gavin off and follow later with his parents, since they didn’t need to be there until 7:00pm.

Traffic was horrible—that part was true. So I ducked off on Highway 7 and wound my way to 394 at Louisiana. I can’t prove it was any faster. We got downtown at exactly 6:14 and as I crossed 10th Street on Hennepin Avenue, thick, white steam began pouring from the hood of my car and the distinct odor of coolant… you get the idea.

Honestly? I wasn’t even ruffled. I just ducked into the alley behind the FAIR school and sent Eiledon running in, then zipped back out to round the block to the parking garage under the building. As I went, the temperature gauge started heading toward the red and I just hoped I could make it into the lot.

Once safely parked, I called Triple A. They would be there within 45 minutes. I might miss the first part of the show, but Eiledon’s band performed last, so no worries. Dan and his folks arrived just as I got the call that the tow truck was there. They grabbed the seats I’d been saving and I dashed outside to meet the very nice guy from Bobby & Steve’s Auto World. Within five minutes the car was gone. I didn’t even have to pay for parking.

The concert was wonderful. I got to see Eiledon sing two pieces with a choir, sit with her during the Beginning Band portion, and then hear her excellent 5th and 6th Grade Band play some pretty complex and exciting music. Car? What car?

Dan’s Volvo fit the five of us nicely and we made it home by 8:45, at which point Dan and his dad went off to pick up Gavin. I made coffee and cut brownies, chatting easily with the ladies. When the men arrived home, we sat and talked and laughed and ate and drank and really enjoyed each other’s company.

Bobby & Steve’s called my cell phone at about 9:30 with the news about the radiator and the $400 estimate. Even then I wasn’t really upset. We’d find some way to work it out. I slipped back into the dining room looking a little chagrined and Dan asked, “What did they say?” So I told him.

Dan’s Dad said, “We can take care of that.” Dan immediately declined, not wanting to put his folks on the spot. “Yes we can,” his Dad insisted. “Nate (Dan’s brother) is flying out to Washington, D.C. for a conference and we just bought him a plane ticket for $400. We were going to cut you a check for that amount anyway, to keep it equal.”

Um.

MAN, life is AMAZING sometimes!

This One's for the Schools

Often when I hear about parents’ experiences navigating the special education maze on behalf of their children there is a distinct ‘us vs. them’ sentiment. It seems, in these accounts, that the schools are either too quick to label a child or too slow to initiate the complicated process of accommodating special needs. In either case, the relationship created is adversarial, rather than mutually supportive. While I have had one frustrating experience along these lines, I am grateful that, in general, this hasn’t been the norm for me.

In fact, this past Monday I left a meeting with the special ed team at my daughter’s school wanting to sing. Honestly! We spent more than half an hour discussing her evaluation results and planning her IEP and several things were abundantly clear. One, these people were professionals. They knew what they were talking about not just from a theoretical standpoint, but from direct experience with children. Two, these people cared. My daughter was not a series of labels or diagnoses to them, but a complete person with great potential. Three, these people had taken the time to really get to know my daughter. They all had anecdotes about her, observations of her humor and her intelligence. They like her. They truly want her to be successful.

The one thing that struck me as odd was the reaction when I said that reading the evaluation had been “hard.” I mean, there were no surprises whatsoever in the testing results, but it’s still a little sad to read in black and white that your child is having difficulties; is not, in fact “neurotypical.” The school psychologist looked… could it have been… worried? He rushed to ask me whether there had been enough positive information in the report. Had I felt my daughter had been accurately represented? Did I see indications of where they had pointed to her strengths?

“Oh, of course!” I quickly reassured him. “The report was full of positives! It wasn’t that at all. I was just having a ‘mom moment.’”

There was palpable relief in the room. “Of course,” someone said. “You’re allowed to have those.” Nervous laughter.

I thought: these poor people! Could it be they were so used to being confronted by parents, criticized for the system’s inefficiencies, even blamed for children’s poor outcomes, that they felt they had to treat me with such kid gloves? What a pain in the butt for them! Who has time for that crap?

That’s when I decided to write this blog entry. Yes, my job is to advocate for my children’s best interests and I will go to any length to do so. But this is a team effort, and these professionals, whose expertise and services are being offered to me at no cost, by the way, are critical parts of my kids’ long-term educational success! Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but at both FAIR Downtown, where my daughter is a student, and Eden Lake Elementary, where my son is a student, I have felt supported and affirmed by the special ed department, teachers and administrators. And I firmly believe that they have my kids’ backs every bit as much as I do.

So for those public school professionals who so completely rock: I salute you!

That Mom

I know what it feels like to be that mom
The one with the bad kids
enduring glances, always sidelong, fleeting
from acquaintances and strangers

To be told—never directly—
it's all my fault
that I don’t discipline
that I should have stayed home

To have tried everything
weary
of sticker charts and point systems and coupons
that work for a while and then don’t

To be criticized for overdiagnosing
a string of acronyms
conditions
disorders
as if I want to give my children drugs
and spend hours at appointments
as if it gives me justification
Exoneration

And still to have a sixth grade girl
punch me repeatedly
in a crowded, well-lit room
and have to pull her out of an event
that three-year-olds
are successfully enjoying

To have a fourth grader run
away from teachers
paraprofessionals
principals
out of the building
or into the bathroom, feet up, angry

I’m not looking for special privileges
or pity
or even understanding
A little acceptance, maybe—
I guess I'm human, after all.


I know what it feels like to be that mom
The one who laughs until sides ache and tears roll
hugs away disappointments and fears
hears time and again “I love you”

To be awed by a daughter’s wild creativity
exuberance
vivid expression

To be humbled by a son’s enormous heart
compassion
compelling earnestness


I know what it feels like to be that mom
The one who is doing her best
whose best is not perfect
whose best is enough

Mercurial Me

mercurial, adj (muhr-KYUHR-ee-uhl): characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood

On Sunday morning I was full of positive energy, unflappable even in the face of spring-fever-crazed Sunday School kids. Monday morning saw me sobbing for a good bit. By Tuesday afternoon, I felt even-keeled and motivated. Wednesday I was joyful to near manic. Then on Thursday I was dogged by anxiety and directionlessness, resentful at my own inaction. I don’t even know what to plan for today. Kind of like the weather this week.

Maybe it’s my own spring fever. The school year is winding down at a pace I can only describe as frantic, with IEP meetings and picnics and final projects and band concerts, trying to figure out summer plans and even fall ones, and all this on top of the usual slate of appointments and obligations that thickly populate my iCalendar. I’m probably not alone in the mad dash mentality.

But it’s possible my up-and-down nature is just part of living life on life’s terms. When I’m fully engaged in life, rather than trying to stay numb through compulsive eating and similar behaviors, there’s no artificial buffer between me and my feelings. Being suddenly confronted by a challenge over which I have no control brings me face to face with naked reality. Whatever my immediate reaction, be it calm decorum (appropriate) or wounded rage (not so much), I still have to feel what I feel.

Often my own, imperfect response to a situation exacerbates the feelings. On Sunday afternoon when my daughter’s hypoglycemic meltdown in the middle of Orchestra Hall infuriated me, my response was to make sure she knew just how angry I was and just how awful a human being she was. The incident itself was unpleasant, to be certain. No one wants to have her pre-adolescent daughter dissolve into a temper tantrum in a public place. But upon reflection, I could see there were a whole lot of things I could have done better as a parent before, during and after the debacle, which would have minimized or even prevented the problem. So now I had to deal not only with the feelings that come from the challenges of raising high-needs children, but also with my own sense of failure for the way I handled it. Hence Monday morning’s sobbing.

The good news is that allowing myself to truly experience my feelings means that just as quickly as I can slump into a funk, I can also bounce back. When I’m wallowing in self-pity, it honestly feels as if there is absolutely nothing right in the world; that I’ll never recover from whatever is painful at the moment. Yet, as I frequently tell my daughter, when it comes to this kind of thing, the quickest way out is through. It’s not easy and it’s not comfortable, but it’s not permanent either. And once I’m on the other side of it, it really is gone. The resentment seldom lingers and I’m free to skip back into life with my preferred buoyancy.

I guess instead of trying to plan for what today might bring, I’ll just accept things as they are in the moment and go with it. No matter what might smack me upside the head, I can call a friend, write in my journal, and pray, and I know it’ll be fine, even though I might feel otherwise for a while. I’d rather be fully alive, even when it hurts, than spend my time and energy wishing the world would just go away.