Family

Complicated Kindnesses

By / November 29, 2021

The first kindness arrives on my doorstep wearing a Christmas hat and smiling, standing a pandemically-correct six feet away from the door. She was my child’s primary teacher fifteen years ago and wants to reconnect with us now that she has moved back into the neighborhood. The person she remembers no longer exists. My child has changed their name to Lad and embraced a nonbinary gender identity, including the use of they/them pronouns. I want to give her the connection she needs, but I have to decide whether to disrupt her memory of my child, and possibly her binary worldview. The words “they go by Lad now” are easy to say, but saying the words opens a conversation far larger than a porch treat exchange.

I stand in the doorway between her and the inhabitants of my house, including Lad, now adult, but still living at home. I’ve held space for Lad before. Teenagers seek identity, to discover who they are. This important developmental task becomes exponentially harder when your body does not match your internal experience of yourself. It was years before any of us, including Lad, understood how gender dysphoria was complicating Lad’s ability to live, miring them in suicidal thoughts and depression. When Lad opted out of church, it was almost a relief that none of the youth leaders came to ask why. At the time I didn’t even know what the explanation was, just that my child needed space. So I defended their space. I sorted the people in Lad’s life into allies or obstacles; people who understood and adjusted to needs we couldn’t always define, or people incapable of comprehending gender or mental health issues no matter how much explanation I poured into their ears. Not knowing which the woman on my doorstep would be, I decide I am too tired to be an educator today. I thank her for the treat and remembrance. She waves a cheerful goodbye and leaves.

The next kindness comes in small packages left on our doorstep, holiday gifts from church leadership. I stand there looking at a card with the wrong name on it, printed from a database by a person who does not know our story. This gift is meant to make us feel part of the community. For me, that community is a refuge. For Lad… it is an alienation rather than a connection. Alienation was not always Lad’s experience with church. There were loving adults and friends, moments of joy. But once a person turns twelve, church participation becomes binary gendered. Lad traveled the expected track with an increasing sense that this was not their place, that the binary did not fit. Their choice was to press themselves into a false shape in order to stay, or to leave.  Even after leaving, it took Lad years to find their name, their voice, themself and to be ready for that name to be known. When they finally were ready to tell people, we were in the middle of the first year of pandemic. Opportunities for sharing the name change were few. It is not the fault of church leaders that they do not know about Lad’s name switch. I quietly re-gift the offering, waiting for a less mass-produced opportunity to let people know Lad as they are.

The third kindness is my friend who texts me a passage in the updated handbook saying transgender members can update their membership record to their preferred name. This friend knows about Lad’s name switch and since her husband is ward clerk, he can update the record. In moments Lad’s name is in LDS Tools. The gender options are still binary, and we have to squeeze “they them pronouns” into a suffix field, but it is a start. With this small change my ward and neighborhood can begin to engage with the person Lad is now. The old name served well, but it is done. Becoming who we’re meant to be by acquiring a new name should be understandable for church members, a pathway to comprehension. Most of my neighbors only need an instructive map for how to welcome people who don’t fit their expectations. The updated handbook begins to teach how to be more welcoming, how to change expectations to have room for more people. Listing Lad’s name lets people come to me and ask for information when they are ready to know. At the very least it means the next automatically generated label for a gift will have the right name on it.

Lad is not likely to come back to church. Not unless church culture and doctrine changes more dramatically than is usual for a single person’s lifetime. I sometimes grieve that my cultural home was not a place my child could stay, but I must find peace with things as they are rather than holding happiness in wait for changes that may never come. God has told me that He loves Lad exactly as they are, because of who they are, and they will be welcomed in eternity. I don’t try to match the edges of this knowledge to doctrinal structures, instead I exercise faith in the goodness and fairness of God. Lad has other paths to connect with the divine and I am to stay with my people and my church. This is where I serve. This space in between. Sometimes that service is standing in the doorway to protect Lad from people who will judge and not understand. Other times I am a bridge, extending love and explanation to beloved community members who want to connect but don’t have the information to do so.

 Kindness is sometimes packaged clumsily, but the intent is love, and love is the construction material of connection. With that love I work teach my people how to make room, so that some future child has a space where they can both be themselves and stay.  This is the kindness I can offer in return for all the kindnesses that have been extended to me.

Note: The first reader for this essay was Lad, they gave edit notes and had veto power over the entire essay.

Touchstones in My Parenting

By / May 4, 2021

Mother’s Day is drawing nearer and I’m watching it approach with some trepidation because I’m never quite sure what emotions will hit me on that day. As I was trying to figure out how to feel, I went spelunking for a twitter thread I wrote a few years back that I thought would be a good reminder to put in front of people. (This one) Yet during that dive, I found some things I did not expect, like this post on The Endgame of Motherhood, written by me eight years ago. In that post I was facing my oldest leaving for college and the grief I carried around that life shift. By itself, this post would have been a moment of nostalgia, but the next thing I found was Walking the Spiral, a post written two years later. Those years had been transformational and painful in ways that I hadn’t even imagined when I wrote Endgame of Motherhood. To quote from Walking the Spiral:

2012 was before. It was before all the transitions that our family made stepping all the kids up, one to college, one into high school, one into junior high. It was before my younger daughter had panic attacks. It was before my older son began his long slide into depression. It was before we recovered from that. It was before I discovered that our recovery was a limited one. It was before my younger son also had panic attacks. It was before all the appointments, therapists, doctors, medicine, and meetings. It was before something in me broke, or gave up, or grew too tired. The person who visited the spiral in 2012 could honestly look her depressed son in the eyes and promise him it would get better. The person I was when I returned wondered if that was true. I wondered if I had been lying to him. I knew I had to keep going, taking the right steps, but somehow I’d lost touch with the belief that we could pull out of the emotional mire which kept reclaiming us. We’d seem to be out, but then the troubles would come again. My feet stood at the opening to the spiral. The last time I’d been here was before. I didn’t know why I needed to come again, nor why I wanted to cry at being there. I stepped forward and began to walk…

…Finding and walking the spiral seemed such a silly thing. I still don’t understand how so much meaning got attached to it. Yet in that step out from the open end of the spiral I felt like I’d left some grief behind and took something hope-like with me in its place. The spiral helped me remember that there was a before, and the existence of a before heavily implies that somewhere ahead of me there is an after. I just need to keep wending my way along the path until I get there.

I realized that I have now, eight years after the first post and six years after the second, arrived at the after which I posited must exist if I could just keep moving forward. After took a lot longer to arrive than I would have hoped for, and if anyone had told that me who walked the spiral that she had six years of struggle ahead, it would not have felt like good or hopeful news. And it wouldn’t have been. Even with all I’d been through, the hardest bits were still ahead of that younger me who sought out a spiral without knowing why. Yet here I am, with all four kids still alive and beginning to thrive. And I can see all the ways that progress needed to be slow and steady. The ways that we had try and fail and try again. (and fail again and try again and…) Now I read these words from my eight years ago self who was facing one grief without knowing a multitude was coming for her.

I don’t miss the baby and toddler years, though I enjoyed them while I was in them. Right now is what I will miss. I’m going to miss four at home, two teens two kids, all of them running in different directions, squabbling over the cat, and the incessant sound of video games. This is my heart’s home and just now it feels like I will spend the rest of my life missing home.

I would not trade positions with her for anything. Yes that all-the-kids-at-home time is a treasured memory, but now I get to have all-my-kids-are-adults-and-their-lives-aren’t-my-job-anymore. I loved that stage and I love this stage. There were a lot of things between there and here which were heart wrenchingly difficult, but I wouldn’t trade those away either because most of the best things have happened as a direct result of the hardest things. I have a new heart’s home now, and it is a good place. More than that, I can feel that future heart’s homes exist out there for me. This one is good. The next will be too.

Right now my primary task in relation to motherhood is to make peace with myself about all the things I did and did not do, to find kindness in my heart for the choices made in difficult circumstances. I still have mothering work ahead of me, a role to play in the lives of my adult children. Depending on the long-term needs of my young adults, I may never be an empty nester. Also, they are not the only ones I will nurture, I’ve turned some of my (joyously surplus) mothering energy toward helping other creative people grow. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but it is far less intensive than what I’ve been through, for which I am glad.

I still don’t know how I’m going to feel on Sunday, but whatever feeling shows up, I’ll give it a space to exist for a time. Then I’ll move onward.

Weirdsgiving

By / November 27, 2020 / 2 Comments

I saw a friend say “Happy Weirdsgiving!” on twitter, and I have now adopted the word to describe the holiday just past. Hopefully it will be a singular celebration and next year we can be back to Thanksgiving. I’m pretty burned out today. I had piles of anxiety and depression on the days leading up to the holiday. Most of it tied to grief over the holiday that couldn’t be. For example, I really, really missed being able to be unreservedly happy about other people’s plans without having to worry that their plans would contribute to pandemic spread. I missed being able to make my own plans without worrying I would also add to that spread. I felt reasonably settled about not seeing extended family, but I still haven’t uncoupled my brain from 24 years of being in charge of making sure my now-married daughter felt loved, included, taken care of during the holiday, and I kept crashing into the conflicting need to provide those while simultaneously not mixing households. Logically, we’re all adults and it should be fine. My anxiety brain was sure relationships were destined to be permanently damaged. Social anxiety is vicious. It prevents me from having exactly the conversations which would alleviate the concern, and then prevents me from believing the information I’m given by other people which logically should make everything fine. I ended up needing a rescue dose of anti-anxiety medicine on Wednesday night.

So Weirdsgiving part 1 was me repressing feelings of anxiety and depression by focusing on cooking ridiculously decorative foods. I didn’t even need the foods to turn out well. It was the making of them and then sharing results, good or bad. In fact failures would almost be better because I could invite everyone to laugh with me at how badly things went wrong. Part 1 lasted Monday through Wednesday

Weirdsgiving part 2 was day-of preparations. The elaborate Kitchen Timing Dance where Howard starts mashed potatoes while I start on roll dough. Then I work on finalizing pies and making rolls while Howard mashes potatos. Then I have my son smashing gram crackers while I twist roll dough into fancier-than-necessary knots. Then another kids shows up and becomes my secondary hands for gram cracker crusts, washing decorative serving dishes, putting out the turkey shaped butter, and dozens of rapid-fire, getting-ready tasks while I smash filling into croissants for chicken rolls, and start pasta for an alfredo bake. (We’re not turkey people.) I loved that chaotic stepping-around-each-other while everyone is focused on preparing food for everyone to share. It had a happy all-in-this-together energy. It culminated it the un-molding of the fancy jellos. They worked! I have photos!

Weirdsgving part 3 was dropping off a food box for my daughter and son-in-law. Sneaking a masked hug I probably shouldn’t have, even though I held my breath, but I haven’t seen her in two months. She lived in my house this time last year the proximity of the holiday makes her being moved out more real for a time. Everything is weird and hard, and hugs are how we make things better for each other, only this time they’re exactly what we shouldn’t. Telling them the Zoom meeting was already open and I’d see them on the computer, then driving away ten minutes to my own house. So close and yet not.

Weirdsgiving part 4 was supposed to be everyone at the table with the computer at the end, and talking and visiting and eating. And it was all of that. Three households connected via internet (Daughter’s former roommate gets to come to Thanksgiving as an adoptive family member.) The best bit being when I told them to examine the pie I put in the delivered food box, which told them clearly in pie crust letters “No Spiders in Here.” Daughter immediately scowled at us through the camera and said “Dad!” having correctly identified the party guilty of coming up with that idea.

However Weirdsgiving part 4 also included the moment when I called my son to come to the table and he said “why is the house so cold?” while shivering. So suddenly we had to quarantine a family member away from the table to be alone in his basement room where he had a panic attack that his fever and body aches were Covid. Which maybe they were? We couldn’t know, only quarantine. I bounced between taking care of suddenly-sick-quarrantined-and-scared, and trying to participate in the family joyful visiting of Zoomsgiving. I got to hear about a third of the exchanged stories. He calmed and got food. I got to participate in some of the laughing. Mostly it was joyful and good.

Weirdsgiving part 5 had fewer group games than anticipated. Leftovers were monched through, but quarantine tamped down the merriment once the Zoomsgiving call ended. Helpings of leftovers and mission-accomplished lassitude alternated with maybe-we-now-have-Covid-in-our-house anxiety. The major group activity was talking each other through anxiety attacks and contingency plans, which I guess is still family togetherness. Oh, and a brief Zoom call with extended family. It was nice to see faces.

Weirdsgiving was not supposed to have a part 6, but I’m including today’s outing for Covid tests into the whole bundle. The fever and body aches went away within a couple of hours. Sniffles, fatigue, and gastro symptoms lingered. So we’re solidly living with Schrodingers Covid for two days while we wait on results. It probably isn’t. We’re probably over reacting. But we’re still keeping quarantine just in case. Meanwhile we’re eating leftovers and I’m somewhat schlumped with all of my organizational circuits burned out. But all the positive responses to my food photo posts are making me happy. I love having added happy energy to social media and I’m really clinging to the energy that comes back to me. Without further ado: Photos from my Weirdsgiving

No Longer the Conductor

By / March 26, 2020

On Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram I see pictures and posts from my friends who are parents of young children. They are all scrambling to adapt their families to life in various states of quarantine. I see the photos of crafts and outings. I read about frustration and being overwhelmed. Occasionally I have words of support to offer. I have to admit that along with the sympathy I feel, one of the emotions in my head as I read these posts is jealousy. These families are struggling to contain young ones who want to be busting out into the world. They are building new structures and patterns. In my family the strictures of quarantine are requiring everyone to sit in old, depressive patterns that we were trying to escape from. Last night my 19yo had a bit of a cry saying “It is silly. I’m at home all the time anyway, this shouldn’t feel any different.” But it does, because there is a world of difference between choosing to stay home because of depression and being required to stay home because of mandate. Yes we were already sitting in a pit with depression, but now pandemic has slapped a lid on top of the pit trapping them in the hole with the depression. All of our solutions were aimed at getting them out of the pit, now we have to learn how to conquer mental health while being cooped up with it.

When my kids were younger, this quarantine would have been exactly the sort of challenge that excites me and spurs my creativity. I would have been researching optimal schedules, planning crafts, feeling overwhelmed, feeling guilty for letting them watch too many movies, making them help clean the house. I would have lamented difficulties and found moments of joy. All of which is exactly what I see in my friend’s posts. Through all of that, I would have given myself a structure because “the kids need it.” I tried to do some of that last week. I declared that each day would have a Mom Project in the middle of it. It would be the fixed point in all of our days that would give us structure. They could then plan their other things around it. Day one my attempts caused a meltdown, which wasn’t surprising since any expectation often leads to meltdown around here. The following days went better, but by day four I had a conversation with my 17yo where it became clear that my young adults neither wanted nor needed the structure of a daily Mom Project. I was the one who desperately needed some control lever on our new life patterns. As soon as I realized the Mom Projects were more for me than for the kids, they stopped happening.

I am no longer the creator of my family culture, not in the ways that I used to be. We all create it for each other. We used to be a musical ensemble with me as the conductor. Now we’re a quintet that really needs me to step off to podium and pick up an instrument instead of pretending to be in charge. I miss being the conductor. It was my role for so long and was a comfortable space for me. I got to choose and manage and plan. My current job is much harder. I have far less illusion of control. I care deeply about the happiness of my children and their futures, but I have to step back and let them make choices. Sometimes I can see where the choices they are making don’t lead them in the direction they say they want to go. Then I have to decide whether to allow them to experience natural consequences or whether to place myself as an obstacle trying to redirect their course.

We were just finding a balance for my 17yo attending school, going to therapy, and managing household chores. Then pandemic, and suddenly teachers are emailing me and expecting me to step back into a schoolwork supervisory role that I had carefully and deliberately stepped out of. Every time they email it pokes me right in the hurting guilty place where I’m not at all certain I’m making the best choices for my child, who is almost not a child anymore, and who definitely would like me to back off. Wanting Mom to back off is an important and age appropriate stage of emotional development. He is claiming his own identity and becoming responsible for his own life. It is difficult to try to honor his need for me to back off while being barraged with emails asking me to step in. So strange to have to withstand the barrage and hold space to allow my son to choose to fail so that he can (hopefully, eventually) learn from that failure in ways that motivate him to build a future he wants.

So among the other griefs that pandemic has dished out to me, I’m also managing the ongoing grief of figuring out parenting. I need to acknowledge this. Then I need to spend some time in the rest of today consciously noticing the gifts that being trapped in quarantine is giving my family, and the things I love about my kids being young adults and not small anymore. There are joys here and I need to focus on them.

Changing the Parenting Framework

By / February 25, 2020 / 1 Comment

My youngest child turns 17 this week. I only have one more year of legal responsibility over a human I helped make. Three of my children are legal adults and until a month ago when the oldest got married, they were all living in my house and financially dependent on me. I’ve spent a significant amount of anxious time wondering whether their continuing dependence is just the natural result of their neuroatypicalities creating a non-standard timeline for development, or if I failed at parenting in some fundamental way. This set of thoughts was churned up once again by reading an article about lawn mower parenting and recognizing myself in it.

I want to pause right here and state that I know beating myself up over past decisions is neither emotionally healthy nor useful. Looking back, I honestly made the best decisions I could based on the knowledge I had at the time and the resources/energy that were available to me. Especially considering that I had four kids who fell outside the norm in ways that even school personnel (who are highly attuned to helicopter and lawnmower parenting) recognized as needing extra attention. This post isn’t about regret over failure. It is me analyzing the ways that my anxiety played into my parenting. It is me being fascinated by how parental faults can have a cascade effect on children lasting for years into adulthood. Put more succinctly: we all screw up our children in one way or another because we’re human. Part of the work of young adulthood is learning to form an identity separate from the framework our parents made and, in stepping out of that framework, to grow in the directions that the framework previously prevented. I want to see clearly how the structures I built both enabled and inhibited growth because many of those structures now need to be dismantled for my children to step free into independent adulthood.

A couple of weeks ago I had a confrontation with my 17yo. Confrontation does not quite feel the right word, because it was more a venting of pent up emotions rather than an argument. We were all upset, but no one was angry. In the after discussions, it became clear to me that I have some habits to change. I have to stop protecting him from my emotions, putting how I feel on hold because there is a crisis to manage. He is old enough to know I must be feeling something, and absent emotional information from me, his anxiety fills in disappointment and anger. I also have to stop speaking for him, labeling his emotions, and positing reasons for why his anxiety is acting the way that it is. We’ve reached the point where me explaining his reactions is far less useful than him struggling with his reactions and figuring them out for himself. All of these behaviors from me were healthily adaptive for the challenges we faced when this kid was younger and less self-aware. Now they are scaffolding that needs to be removed so he can develop strength to stand on his own.

Several times in the past few weeks I’ve run across a quote that feels very pertinent:

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” — Maya Angelou

I love the self forgiveness that is inherent in this quote. None of us are perfect. Even at this moment when I’m consciously trying to adapt my parenting to the new set of needs, I’m probably causing some new problem which I’ll be able to see clearly in the future. That’s okay. Once I see clearly, I can do better. For now, I’ll do the best I can.

Day Before the Wedding

By / January 14, 2020

“Do you need any help?” They all ask, eager to be of assistance.
I answer them honestly “No.”
The wedding is tomorrow, and I feel some anxiety about how all the events will unfold, but it is the normal amount of anxiety that I feel before any social event. I have no feeling of doom. As long as the ceremony takes place, then all the rest can turn into a rolling disaster and I would just roll with it. And laugh. I’ve had a lot of practice laughing at unexpected disasters in the past eight months.

I don’t have a long list of last minute things for friends and relations to help with. That is by design. Months ago I decided to pay professionals to take care of the major pieces of the celebration specifically so I would not have to scramble and do things myself. My major task for today is to spend the day quietly. Me and mine need to introvert today because tomorrow will be full of social.

I don’t know if the lack of last-minute tasks is the result of my decades-long experience with event planning. After running a Gen Con booth and booths at Comic Cons, hiring some vendors to help me throw a party is pretty simple. It could also be the result of ditching some of the usual traditions. We’re skipping rehearsal dinners, speeches, bridesmaids/groomsmen matching attire, requiring anyone to wear a specific color, flowers, and probably a half dozen other things that are traditional. Instead we’re telling people to wear what makes them happy, making sure the music is friendly to sound sensitive people, using a side room for a board game/ puzzle area, providing food, and telling everyone that they’re allowed to opt in or out of any portion of the celebration that they want. My house is full of neuroatypicality, so the celebration is designed to be as flexible as possible for individuals. I think it is going to be a fun celebration.

The other question people ask me is how I’m feeling. There is this set of emotions that people expect a mother of a daughter getting married to have. Maybe I will have them, but my emotions tend to be out of sync with events. I either feel things far in advance or the emotions show up later. I felt a lot of things about my daughter and her wedding in early December. Right now I feel calm and happy, because she is happy. I can see the ways that her new life suits her well and I can finally trust that anxiety won’t make her Nope out of the whole thing. As for how I’ll feel tomorrow, I’ve no idea. Odds are good that I won’t know how I felt until I have time to sit down and sort afterward.

For now, I’ve got a few items of clothing to steam iron then we’re good to go.

Wedding Shopping

By / November 4, 2019

On Saturday I accompanied my daughter and her fiance as they went shopping for a wedding dress. From the moment we walked in we felt the weight of expectation. We were greeted at the door and assigned an appointment with a stylist who could be with us in just a few minutes. The store was full of women prepared to pamper and flatter because surely every woman wants to feel like a princess when buying a wedding dress. We were surrounded with racks of sparkling, flowing white. And somehow they all had a sameness to them which seemed completely unappealing. After a few minutes we were convinced that we weren’t going to find anything and we were making contingency plans involving going to a vintage clothing store, ordering off the internet, or perhaps even sewing.

Then the stylist showed up and listened to my daughter’s concerns. To the fact that she didn’t want anything sparkly or scratchy. She knew that having dress that rustled as she moved would grate on her nerves. She needed something that she could wear comfortably for hours at a time while having to mix and mingle with crowds of well wishers. A dress that was lovely, but designed for wearing not for flashy display. The stylist listened and helped her pick three dresses to try on. We were then led to an area with dozens of mirrors, dressing rooms on a raised platform, and a ring of chairs surrounding it. It was an area designed to put the bride on display. Fortunately we’d walked in during a quiet time, so we didn’t have to deal with other brides and their entourages. It was just us and a stylist asking “So does this dress make you feel like a bride?” while my daughter stared at her in disbelief and said “I have no idea what that feels like.”

Several other stylists stopped by since they didn’t have clients at the moment. They all kept asking “do you think this is The Dress?” and you could hear the capital letters on The Dress. As if we were on a quest to find the one true dress. Which seems like a lot of emotional weight to put on some clothing. We even spotted a sign which was obviously designed for women to hold up while taking Instagram photos.

And yet despite all the interest and expectation, the stylist was very good at her job. Once she realized that my daughter was more interested in a dress she could wear while running from a zombie apocalypse should there happen to be one mid-wedding than a dress which made her feel like a princess, the stylist changed which questions she was asking. (The moment of complete bafflement on the stylists faces as we were making running-from-zombie-apocalypse jokes was sort of priceless.) We were fortunate and surprised when the second dress turned out to fit all my daughter’s needs while simultaneously being lovely. The last act of the stylist was to have my daughter ring a bell to indicate that she’d found The Dress. I think the tradition is to ring the bell loudly so that everyone in the store could cheer. Fortunately the store was pretty much empty and the bell can be rung quietly too.

We were handed off to a seamstress to talk about alterations, she was much more practically focused and she was also geeky enough to laugh at zombie apocalypse jokes. My daughter has another fitting in three weeks and we’ll pick up the completed dress a comfortable month before the wedding day. So we have another task complete and we can move on to the next one.

A Day of Many Things

By / October 10, 2019

I have notes for a blog post on parenting depression with a focus on teenage and newly adult depressed people. Meant to write it up today, instead my dishwasher flooded through the floor into the basement. This required every towel in the house and six buckets to contain the water. Now I have dehumidifiers and fans running in two rooms. Again.

On the up side, we had four functioning adults in the house to rapid manage the flood. Even though my daughter’s fiance was actually supposed to be convalescing on the couch with a head cold. We made him lay back down as soon as the crisis was over.

Also my parents were in town for a visit and we ended up having lunch in my house (instead of meeting at a restaurant) while I talked with the plumber whose error caused the flood (and who will pay for the damage to be repaired) and also the disaster recovery company guy who brought me the fans and will do the repairs. Visiting was squeezed in around signing of contracts and contingency planning. Fortunately my parents already planned to stay at a different house because not only do I not have guest space, I have one of my kids who will have to sleep on the couch for the next five days.

Also I fielded phone calls from my kid who is considering moving back home and shifting his trajectory for the next six months. He needed help possibly applying for a new job and considering his options. My plan had been to invite him to stay home over the weekend and do a test run of living at home, only now his bed has buckets on it catching dripping water. So if he wants to come home, he’ll join his brother in sleeping on a couch.

Also I took my one of my college freshman to find out how to do a medical withdrawal from courses because they haven’t been able to make themselves go to class for about three weeks now. Depression, anxiety, and OCD can be serious hurdles for getting to class. Grades are no longer salvageable and it is time for us to regroup and figure out what comes next. (The answer is likely: take a gap year while they get a handle on self care and basic adulting.)

Tomorrow I have to get up, put on professional clothes and spend the day at a conference giving a presentation. Fortunately it is a presentation I’ve given many times before, so I can use my existing notes.

So that is how I spent my Mental Health Awareness day.

On Breakfast Outings, Pokemon, and Writing

By / June 13, 2019 / 1 Comment

The morning began with a quest. I’d only been up for a few minutes when Howard wandered into the room and said “you want to go get crepes for breakfast?” The crepe place is down in the Riverwoods shopping area, which is full of Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms. This fact is relevant since our entire family has taken up Pokemon Go in the past month. So we gathered everyone who felt like questing and off we went.

The weather was lovely, the food was good, and most of the stores didn’t open for another hour or two. We wandered along the paths collecting Pokemon and spinning stops. Almost everything about Pokemon Go is designed to get people to leave their houses and walk to different locations. It has certainly worked that way for our family. We now have people randomly deciding to go for short walks, even though we’re walking the same paths over and over, it feels new because we never know what surprises the game will throw our way. Going outside to stare at our phones and play a game is healthier for us than staying at home to sit in a chair and play a game.

I posted the above picture on twitter, and multiple people commented on the snow-capped mountain in the corner of the frame. It is so easy for me to forget that not everyone has vertical landscape looming over them at all times. I so often fail to notice how beautiful Utah is. I need to pause and admire the mountains more.

On the return home, I still had almost a full day ahead of me. For once, the most pressing deadline was on a writing task. I have a short story due at the end of the month and it isn’t fully drafted yet. I’d so enjoyed being outdoors in the pleasant weather, that I decided to sit on my back porch in my red bistro chairs to find the right words to tell the story I had outlined. Milo saw me outside and was so forlorn that I put on his harness and brought him outside with me.

Writing is a strange process. After forming a scene in my head and then writing sentences to convey that scene, I hit a point where I don’t know what sentence comes next. That’s when I pause and open up twitter or do a quick stretch. I have to pull my brain away from the task at hand so that I can circle back around to it with renewed vigor. It is rather like getting a muscle cramp in my hand and taking a moment to shake it out and stretch.

During one of my twitter breaks, I had a series of thoughts about writing, happiness, and goals:

A thing I’m trying to make a habit: instead of focusing on the thing I want and can’t reach yet, focus on the thing I get to do today which may eventually help me to that goal.

My writing career may never make significant money nor have much audience, even though I’d like it to have both. But neither of those goals will ever happen unless I put in the work.

And doing the work is much easier when I learn to love the work for itself rather than treating it like a chore to get me someplace else.

Today I get to sit on my porch with green things all around (and a cat) while I write a short story. That is a beautiful thing to get to do, even if the story never sells and is never read.

I wish I could always cultivate that mindset instead of getting tangled up in grief and worry. Of course the realities of money and bills mean that many days I have to set aside my personal writing in order to do the tasks which actually earn money. Some day those two things may come into more alignment, which would be nice, but I’m also aware that it would change my relationship to the words and the process of making them. Having a dream job often means turning something you enjoy into work, and it isn’t always the best way to balance life. But all of that is in the future. For today I sneak time to do writing which I love and which pays for nothing. And I try to pause and recognize when I get to have a beautiful day full of breakfast quests, pokemon, and writing. No matter what comes next, it can’t take away that lovely day I had.

Thing After Thing

By / April 18, 2019

Life has been busy and I haven’t had a lot of time free for thinking. I’ve been spending time assisting one of my kids through college orientation and registration along with the cloud of related adulting tasks. Another child acquired a boyfriend, which is a first for any of my kids and so it has sparked a lot of conversations while we all adjust. (We all like the boyfriend, so that is good.) A third child made a course shift in his life plan for the future (equivalent to changing majors), a good one, but needed help processing the decision. The fourth kid once again needs help rescuing classes from failure, and larger help figuring out why he shuts down so completely that he ends up not doing simple tasks that would keep him on track. I acquired a writing support group that looks like it will be amazing for me, but it means new friendships to build foundations for, and that takes thought. Also, because of the new group, I’ve been diving back into work on my middle grade novel, which takes lots of brain time. Several friends had need of support, so I put time and emotion into that. And I was knocked flat by flu for several days.

The vast majority of Things Going On have been good things, but it has me falling behind on business tasks and blogging. Here are the things I haven’t blogged yet, but mean to:

Our bus day. During spring break I declared a Bus Day. I’ve got a kid who intends to live at home while attending college, but doesn’t have a driver’s license. They need a way to transport themselves to school. So we did a family outing where the whole point was to ride the public transit system. I picked a destination in the next town over. (The Good Move Cafe in downtown Provo, which was a delight.) Then we walked ourselves to the nearest bus stop and rode until we got there. It was a fun adventure during which we all learned that local public transit is safe, clean, and more convenient than we expected. We’ll likely have multiple more bus riding adventures to acclimate college-bound kid to the whole system long before the first day of classes in August. This is how we break down the barriers into tiny little steps so that anxiety doesn’t make college crash and burn.

Long Slow Remodel weeks 5 and 6. The cupboards are on the wall. They have been for nearly two weeks now. We love them. There are still finishing touches to put up, but the remodel is beginning to shift into it’s next phase. I want to write it all up with pictures.

Between me and focused blogging are:
a dentist appointment to get some teeth filled, one of which has developed a sharp pain at food temperature differentials.
The very last bit of shipping for the Kickstarter on Schlock Books 14 & 15. Thirty-six packages and it is done.
A day trip (using public transit) up to Salt Lake City for FanX. I’m on one panel Friday afternoon and I’m taking college-bound kid with me for public transit experience and for cosplay squee.
Relatives in town and staying at my house for a family event.
Attending the family event.
A pile of smaller To Do items, appointments to keep, appointments to make, etc.

Once again, the list is full of good things. Life is mostly good. The harder bits seem spaced further apart and don’t seem to sink quite as deep as they used to.

And now that I’ve written all of that down, perhaps I’ve emptied my brain enough that I can go back to sleep. Being awake thinking about all the things is not my favorite activity for 2:30 am.