Month: October 2009

I used to be the person who had her Halloween costume planned months in advance. This was true even after I was an adult and even after I became a parent. We have portraits hanging on our wall of the year our family went medieval. Howard and I smile in our garb while holding an adorable pair of dragons. There were cyberpunk years and more eclectic years as well. It was a tradition, part of who we were.

I look at the pictures and I am not that person anymore. I do not have the time and creative energy to spare for elaborate costuming. I sometimes miss being that person. I particularly miss it today when I sit to watch the school Halloween parade wearing my mundane clothes. I feel boring, uncreative. I miss it when Patch turns to me with his wide eyes and asks “Mom? What are you going to be for Halloween?” and I realize that he can’t imagine why anyone would choose not to dress up. It is hard to explain to a six year old that I barely found enough energy to help four kids scrape together costumes, finding further effort to create a costume for myself does not feel worth it.

I don’t regret the person that I am. I don’t hit October with ideas burning to be created because I’ve been using my creativity all year long. The enthusiasm that used to be spent on costume creation is instead spent on writing; and on book layout; and on figuring out where my kids needs and wants diverge; and on meeting all the needs and some of the wants. My creativity has been particularly tapped out this Fall. I feel like I spend all week flailing around trying to keep everything afloat. I look ahead to the weekend like a swimmer striving to reach a log where she can rest. Only when I grasp the log, it often twists in my grip and I am as likely to end up underneath it as on top of it.

So I will participate in Halloween to the extent necessary to make sure that I don’t spoil the enjoyment of my children. They need to have the fun holiday to which they have been looking forward. Some other year I will fully embrace the joy of Halloween again. I will make a glorious costume. I will have someplace exciting to wear it. I will find happiness in having energy to spare on the creation of a holiday that is all about imagination and possibilities. This year, I will wave at the parade and hand out candy.

Dear Universe,

This note is to excuse Sandra from today’s task list. She has been feeling under the weather and also very burdened by the unrelenting list of things to do. She noted that while the things on today’s list really do need to get done, none of them are either urgent or critical. She’ll work extra hard tomorrow to catch up.

Thanks.

I had my house to myself for three whole hours today. Two of them I spent asleep. The other was in pieces before and after the sleeping. It was so marvelous to have the house quiet. No one needed anything from me. No one called. The doorbell did not ring. Days like today I understand the attraction of the hermit life. I could use another three hours just like it.

I don’t get another three hours of quiet today. I have to pick up the kids from school and resume answering their needs. But I don’t mind too much, because the quiet hours today reminded me that quiet hours exist. I will get to have them again. I may even get to have them tomorrow.

I don’t have an infinite capacity for the absorption of silence. If I had uninterrupted days of silence, I would soon be longing for interruption. I would be longing to be necessary and needed. I just crave silence right now because the needs have been abundant and the silence has been scarce. I think a better balance is in my future, possibly before New Years. With the turn of the year, the kids will settle more. They will not need so much intervention. So I may have a peaceful month in January before business tasks fill up the available space as we gear up for a Schlock shipping.

Until then, I will treasure the small spaces of silence I can find and protect them from random small tasks.

I’ve not had any emotional energy to spare since last Friday. At first I was attributing this to how much intervention my kids have needed over the past few days. But the fact that I crashed on the couch and slept for most of the afternoon may indicate that something else is contributing as well. I don’t feel at all sick. I just feel like I stayed up too late. But feel that way despite the fact that I got a full night’s sleep in addition to the hours I slept on the couch. It is possible that the fatigue is due to extreme emotional drain, but it is more probable that I’m fighting off some viral bug. (I hope not. I particularly hope not since I went out to lunch with a couple of good friends and I would feel bad if I had anything communicable. That would be a poor way to repay the lovely time I had visiting with them.)

The sleep was punctuated with waking up to negotiate squabbles between kids. I can’t say I managed the negotiations at peak efficiency, but I didn’t lose my cool either. Of course cool is easier to maintain when you’re too tired to attain a mental state more energetic than “groggy.”

Of late Link and Kiki have been absorbing all of my focused parenting energy. Today I focused a little more on Gleek. Mostly I tried to just notice her and figure out what she needs so that she’ll stop deliberately provoking her brothers in the middle of a previously peaceful game. I think I’ve figured out the shape of her needs, but I need to talk to her teacher to make sure my picture is complete.

I need to talk to Link’s teacher too. I need to talk to these teachers even though I dread learning about further needs that I have to address. Also I’m feeling a bit burned out on the whole communication with teachers thing since I had meetings with four of Kiki’s teachers just last week. (3 very happy meetings, 1 not at all happy meeting with final determination still pending.)

Talking with teachers is exhausting. Usually the result is happy or at least cooperative towards a happy end. But I can’t know ahead of time exactly how the conversation will go. Interactions have the potential to go wrong and it is important for me to build cooperation not damage it.

Also pending are Halloween costumes and pumpkin carving. I need to find the energy for those in the next two days.

Howard rescued the evening. He made dinner. This allowed me to organize the homework load. I played divide and conquer. I tackled each child separately rather than attempting to administer a communal homework time. I was so grateful to Gleek who cheerfully did all of her work the very first time I asked. The other three needed cajoling.

Now they are all in bed. Next I will sleep and hope for a more energetic tomorrow.

The sound of waves on the beach is very soothing. The sound waves of childhood crisis…not so much. Today has been one wave after another ever since the kids got home.

First Link did his daily stomping before settling down to finish his writing assignment. This was accompanied by requests for food from Gleek and Patch while Link loudly insisted that everyone had to be quiet so he could write.

Next came Kiki with whom I needed to sit down and do an extensive post mortem about an ongoing difficult situation. She also had ancillary stresses which needed dissection.

During the lengthy discussion with Kiki, Patch needed food and I had to explain/remind Gleek and her friend that due to Saturday’s territorial infringement’ the bedroom which Gleek and Kiki share is off limits to friends for the rest of the week.

Somewhere in the middle there was about 30 minutes of non-crisis where I went outside with a shovel and dug up a thorny weed.

Then came the crying disaster that Link got to go with his scout master to work on a swimming merit badge while Gleek did not get to go swim.

Following that there were the dropped mini, arguments over dinner, the wanton destruction of the domino constructions created by others, children claiming themselves to be stupid and/or mean while hoping that others will make them feel better, and other random emotional conflicts.

Around 7 pm Howard called me into his office.
“You look like you need help.” I think it was the thousand yard stare that clued him in. So he went out for donuts and then there was bedtime.

Some days “bare minimum” is harder than others.

I have been stable this Fall. There are no major crises in my life. I don’t have trials I am trying to manage. I don’t have emotional things that I am trying to sort through. This should mean that my life is peaceful and calm. But I keep being thrown into turmoil by the crises of others.

There is a level of detachment when the crisis does not truly belong to me. I can sympathize when Kiki has a stressed meltdown over school and homework. I certainly feel sad that she is struggling. I may even wrack my brains trying to find ways to help, but the crisis is not really mine. I am not swamped by it the way that she is. I can walk away and still have the rest of the day be good.

Sometimes it is tempting to do just that, to walk away from the drama. A crisis is exhausting. But I don’t walk away because I love the people involved. So I sit next to Gleek and help her work through her feelings of guilt so that she can apologize and make amends to someone she has wronged. I listen when Link tries to articulate that he feels angry all the time and doesn’t know why. I drop what I’m doing and drive over to the school to bring a child emergency pants. I spend time talking with teachers to clarify communication. I weep with a friend who mourns. I brainstorm with a friend who is problem solving. I do all these things because I love the people, because I am glad to help. I am glad that I can be available.

And I do make a difference. I can tell that I am soothing the crisis, that I am helping to calm the storm or at least to sail safely through it. I am tired and wrung out when the crisis abates. It is a happy tired, because I have done a good work. The hard part is that crises have been hitting hard and fast of late. I often don’t have recovery time in between. Most of the crises are child-sized and manageable, but even small waves can make me tired if I am chest deep in them. And so sometimes I am tempted to step out of the water, away from all the crisis.

And then I discover that someone I know and love has just been smacked with a rogue wave of crisis. It is one of those extra large waves that spring up out of nowhere, threatening to swamp everything. It makes me think of this photo taken by Jean Guichard.

I see the wave, the crisis, and it is not mine. It would be so easy for me to turn and walk away so that it does not touch my life. It would also be easy for me to dive in to the middle and be swept up into the crashing chaos. Instead I have to find some middle ground. A place where I can stand and help without being drown.

The challenge with kid-size crises is to remember that what feels small to me is huge to them. I have to be patient and stable so that they can grow and learn. I have to remember that I may see a small-survivable wave, but the child feels like the man in the picture. It feels like they are doomed and there is no escape. The man in the photograph was not washed away by the wave. Both he and the lighthouse were still there when the wave was gone. They were wet, but still standing.

Similarly, I need to remember that I will not always be yanked about by the crises of others. Several kids are going through a rough time right now, but the waves will pass. We will have calm sailing again.

Link dashed off to his scout troop meeting cradling his backpack in his arms. Except the “dash” was more of a plod because the backpack was full of books, Legend of Zelda manga books to be specific. I suggested that he could wear the pack on his back, but shook his head and insisted that he did not want his books damaged. So off he went to learn about collections and to work on a collections merit badge.

Link returned happy and handed over the unfinished packet to me. I glanced down to see what work was left to do. Quite a lot. I flipped through the pages and was startled to see how adult-centric the questions were.
Discuss with your counselor how investing and speculation would apply to your collection.
What would you look for in purchasing other collections similar to yours?
What would you expect in return value if you decided to sell all or part of the collection?
Half the questions carried the implication that the value of a collection must be measurable in dollars. Link doesn’t care about the monetary value of his manga books. He collects them because he loves to read them. He keeps them safe and sorts them because he loves the stories inside.

This money-centric view of collections is common. I’m afraid I’ve fallen prey to it myself from time to time, particularly when I discover that one of my kids has decided to collect pea-sized dried mud balls which are disintegrating into dirt on the light colored carpet. (I confess to throwing out the mud-ball collection without worrying too much how precious it was to the child who made it and then forgot it.) Some of life’s most personally valuable collections are simply not salable. One year Gleek and Link collected a water bottle full of little air-soft BBs by scouring the gutters on their way home from school. Link has a box full of little twisted bits of metal he discovered the same way. Patch has piles of tiny paper notes he cut out himself and collected into a box. Kiki has porcelain dollar store statues that she still loves. I have pressed flowers. Howard has a stack of sour-patch kids cards lingering in a box in the garage. These things represent something that mattered to us at the time. Each item in the collection has a story, a memory attached. Even when the collection itself is long gone, the value of collecting remains. I still remember fondly the drawer full of snails that my friend and I carefully collected. I was so angry when his sister let them all go.

I don’t collect in the same way that I used to. I place far less value on physical things. But collections of things still come into my life, are organized and used for awhile, and then are passed on. I loved our collection of Sandra Boynton board books. We had them all and read them to our kids repeatedly. Over the years the books themselves were eaten, smashed, ripped, or otherwise destroyed. The few we had left were outgrown and given away. But the memory of that collection remains precious to me. I remember standing in the book store with Howard and deciding to splurge and just buy them all. While we had them, I enjoyed lining them up in a neat little row where the toddlers could pull them out. That collection added joy to our lives without having any resale value whatsoever. I still have those books collected in my memory. (Literally. I can probably still recite most of them.)

I think of Link’s box of twisted bits of things. Then I think of Shel Silverstein’s poem Hector The Collector. As a kid I read that poem and thought how silly Hector was to collect such pointless things. Now I read the poem and want to cry because I have my own little Hectors who all bring home treasures that others consider worthless. I have to be careful not to squelch their enthusiasm for discovery while also suggesting that perhaps we should let the roly poly bug collection go.

The letting go is important. We can not keep everything and yet somehow we try. I have sitting in my closet a pair of old Star Trek book and record sets circa 1975. They were given to me by a dealer at the first science fiction convention I ever attended. I have no use for them. I haven’t lived in a house with a record player for two decades. But I continue to hold onto these books, partly for sentimental reasons, (I remember listening to Star Trek books on record as a kid), but really I hold on the books because they are old and they might have value. They might matter to someone else. If I just give them away, then a piece of history may be discarded or destroyed. It is so easy to fall into this trap, to cart around things that take up space in our lives not because they make our lives better but because of an ephemeral “what if.” The thing is that everything is a piece of history and we can’t keep it all. We have to choose what we’ll allow to take up space in our lives. There is no point in maintaining a collection if it does not provide some sort of joy or satisfaction. I need to look around my house and figure out what else is taking up space.

Fortunately for us, Link’s scout leaders are good, sympathetic men. They did not devalue Link’s collection of books in his eyes. I will be similarly careful as we finish the packet. It will give Link and I an opportunity to discuss how some people view collections and collecting as a form of investment. How for some collections the monetary value is part of the point. This too is a valid reason for collecting things. I’ll just make sure that Link understands that it is not the only one. After that we can move on to discussing how even though we love the things we collect, sometimes we have to stop collecting. We only have so much space in our lives and in our houses and collections can over flow the bounds to take over. It will be a good discussion and I look forward to having it.

The phone rang while I was napping. This is the reason that we keep a telephone plugged in next to the bed. I grabbed the receiver and answered.
“Hello?”
“Mom. The field trip is today and we won’t be getting back until the end of second lunch. Can you pack a quick lunch and bring it to the school? It needs to be here in the next hour.”

I recognized Kiki’s voice, but both my brain and body were feeling extremely lethargic. About the last thing I wanted to do was jump out of bed to fix a lunch and drive it over to the school. I’d earned the nap. Several nights in a row of caring for a sick, sleepless child had burned me out on the whole self-sacrifice angle of motherhood. I was ready to nap selfishly until I was done being a tired zombie. Add to that the fact that Kiki frequently calls me with requests during the school day. It isn’t every week, but she easily has me running things over to her at school three times as often as the other kids combined. I was a little tired of rescuing her from her lack of organization, even though I’d volunteered for some of the rescues without prompting. I could tell that the lunch was important to her. I didn’t want her to go hungry. But I also did not want to get up.

“I’ll see what I can do.” I answered. It was an evasion. But it got her off the phone. I think I considered getting up, but it is all kind of vague because I was slurped back into unconsciousness.

I did not get to nap until I was done. Gleek was in the house with me, which gave her the capability to poke me until I got up to feed her. Her need for food was more critical anyway since she hadn’t eaten much for three days and her appetite was just returning. Also I’m not yet ready for her to learn to use the stove and she wanted grits. So I was out of bed when the phone rang again an hour later.

“Did you bring my lunch?” It was loud in the back ground, like all the kids in school were standing next to Kiki and talking. Which was close to the case since she was getting ready to board the field trip bus.
No evasions were possible this time. “No. I just didn’t get it done.”
A small exasperated sigh came from the other end of the phone. There wasn’t time for explanations or apologies, she had to go.

Usually I feel guilty for something like this. I feel like a failure for not answering the needs of a child. But apparently the guilt engine had been disconnected. I know the self-sacrifice engine was still out of steam. I stumbled onward through the day, until the third phone call came. This time Kiki’s plan was for me to drive 30 minutes to the bowling alley where they were having the field trip. I could bring her money so that she could buy a lunch. I’ll grant her the fact that she intended to use her own money, but this was the third time she’d tried to rearrange my day. I told her “no” again. She often forgets to eat lunch on the days she is at home, so I knew that it would not hurt her to miss lunch. Plus she’d had a really good breakfast.

I did make sure to have food ready and waiting when she walked in the door after school. Which she didn’t eat, because they’d returned from the field trip in time for her to have lunch. Also she’d had some change in her purse which she had used to buy french fries at the bowling alley. I wasn’t upset, just glad that I hadn’t gone out of my way to provide an unnecessary solution.

I am generally very available and helpful to my kids. On the whole this is a good thing, but sometimes it leads them to simply ask me to solve a problem rather than doing it themselves. I can’t count the number of times I’m called in from another room to fetch things for children who could have gotten the thing themselves. Sometimes I remember to stand back and make them do it. Other times I am ambushed by my own habits. I’m so used to doing all these things for the kids (when they were little they couldn’t do it themselves) that I do it out of habit now. Sometimes neither I nor the child stop to think if the request makes any sense.

This is something I need to work on. It is an important step in helping my kids transition into capable, independent people. And perhaps it will help me conserve my energy so that I have more to give when the giving is truly necessary. I’ll get right on it, once I’m done sleeping.

As I expected, I’ve discovered myself in a biorythmic lull where it is hard to motivate myself to do anything on my To Do list. The lull is exacerbated by the lack of sleep occasioned by Gleek spiking a fever again and filling the night with disruptions, including the need for a pot by the bedside. I took her to the doctor this morning. He agreed that the rash looked like roseola, but that the same sorts of rashes can be caused by various flu viruses. So the new, exciting diagnosis is “Non-Specific Viral Flu With Rash.” Whee. She’ll be fine as long as we keep her hydrated.

So my day was spent, somehow… it has gone a bit fuzzy to tell the truth. I played some Plants vs. Zombies. I read. I made soup. I tended my sick girl. I took a nap. I was not particularly coherent for any of it.

Then the day was gone and the other kids came home from school. This was the part for which I was conserving energy. I had to require Link to do his writing homework before playing. Then I had to run over to Kiki’s school to meet with some of her teachers. She had another overwhelmed breakdown last night, during which she sobbed about failing everything and how much stuff she has to do. So I needed to get a more accurate picture of what is required. She has good teachers. We now have a plan, which Kiki will not like, but which she agrees is necessary. I now have two kids who will be required to do their homework before playing. Honestly, if Kiki puts in an hour per day, she’ll have no trouble keeping up.

Ahead of me are the evening hours. There must be a dinner. (I’m thinking frozen chicken nuggets.) More homework must be done. Dishes need to be washed. I need to keep bed time on schedule. Then, hopefully, there will be a good night’s sleep for everyone. At least I have 30 more minutes before I have to start all of that.

I ran my hand softly over my daughter’s stomach. The raised pink spots felt rougher than the rest of her skin.

“Is it chicken pox?” Gleek asked with wide, worried eyes.

“No honey. Chicken pox looks like little blisters. Besides, you were vaccinated for chicken pox. This is something else.”

“Oh.”

I can’t tell whether she is relieved or disappointed to not have chicken pox. I passed my hand over the rash again. We’d come up to change clothes because Gleek’s fever had broken with the usual accompaniment of sweat as her body attempted to restore normal temperatures quickly. I’m always glad when a feverish child begins to sweat. It means the fever is breaking. I was particularly glad this time because the fever had been high and lasted two days. Clean clothes were called for, but then we both saw the rash.

I’ve seen this before. The knowledge came to me calmly, as if a sudden whole-body rash was nothing to fear. I ran my hand gently over the bumps again and studied the pattern, trying to remember. It did not come to me then, so I helped Gleek dress and resorted to the internet.

There are many alarming pictures of rashes on the internet. Any time I google about rashes I feel very grateful for vaccinations. In this case I was able to make a quick visual and diagnostic comparison. It was a Roseola rash. Her illness was classic for the disease as well. Most people catch and recover from this illness before the age of three. Gleek is 8.

“Gleek come here.” I called to her.

“What?” She came bouncing down the stairs into my office.

“Let me see your rash again.” She held up her shirt so I could compare to the picture on the screen. I carefully took a finger and compressed one of the pink spots.

“What are you doing?” Gleek asked.

“Checking to see of the spots turn white when I push on them. They do. See?” I pushed again.

Gleek stared for a moment then pushed on one with her own finger. She looked up at me with a grin. “That’s cool!” She happily turned spots white for a minute more before lowering her shirt.

When the other kids came home from school she happily demonstrated her new trick for them. The Amazing Gleek and her color-changing spot show. She has also carefully learned how to say Roseola and all the details of the illness. Now that she feels better, she feels cool to have this disease when she is old enough to remember it. I hope she still feels cool when I have to keep her home from school until after the rash is gone. I can’t allow the spot show to go on tour where it can alarm school staff and parents.