Family

There is a formula for gift giving. It is not mathematical and requires quite a bit of attention or intuition, but it is very real. The formula is Effort times Interest divided by Expectedness. In other words the perfect gift is one which fits the interests of the recipient, demonstrates effort on the part of the giver, and is unexpected. Unfortunately the expectedness variable is the one that trips people up on holidays and birthdays. The more someone hopes for a gift the less likely they are to be pleased with what they receive.

I was thinking about this today as it was my oldest child’s 16th birthday. Some birthdays weigh more heavily in the psyche than others and I felt some pressure to try to give my daughter a solidly good day. On the other hand, I have never felt like Bigger and Flashier is the same as Better. So I needed to facilitate her having a good day in ways that fit her and our family without making a big production out of it. I made a special before-school trip to the store to buy cheescake for her to take to school and share. She’s been wanting to take cheescake for months, but kept asking last minute when running to get it was a huge inconvenience to me. I handed over the box to her and she knew that even though I won’t always rearrange my days for her convenience, sometimes I will. She loved it and all was well.

A package of strawberries with only two berries left. (It was full when I lay down.)

A leaf.

A bowl full of orange liquid and two Popsicle sticks. Under it a note states: “Gleek’s Popsicle!”

Two additional orange stained popsicle sticks (I haven’t purchased popsicles for months.)

Two bags of open potato chips.

An eraser collection.

A note stating: “Dear Hakaber, Good. Now deliver the girls as fast as you can, the people in mervill are geting bored with the old princesses.”

I almost don’t want to know what the game was.

“Can we go to the park today?” I’d been hearing the same question for over a week, but schedules and weather conspired against the plan until this afternoon. They ran and played. I sat and read. It was a lovely two hours. We came home tired, but happy.

Many parents of young children dread the thought of having teenagers. I never did. Now that I’m here, I find that I continue to like it. I enjoy having adult conversations with my kids and they are just cool people to be around. That said, I’ve definitely noticed some developmental quirks. Sometimes these quirks catch me unawares and I realize that though they are adult sized and often speak like adults, they still have growing up to do.

Link is 13, so are most of his friends. This has given me the chance to observe groups of boys en masse. They all clomp. They clomp into my house, they flop on the sofa. Everywhere they go they are noisy without ever meaning to be. I suspect this is part of adapting to their rapidly changing body size. Some of it may simply be physiological loosening of joints to adjust for growth. They aren’t clumsy, they just sound like they are.

The other big thing I’ve noticed about 13 year old boys is that they have no tact whatsoever. It is as if the tact circuit has been disconnected. They say the most appallingly mean things to each other without ever intending to be mean. Link grumps at his younger siblings and then is surprised when he is scolded. One time Link hurt his younger brother’s feelings while trying not to. I explained three times why Link should have used different words, he still didn’t get it. The thing is, I know that Link and his friends are good people. They used to be much more socially adept than this. It is a stage and they’ll grow out of it. In the meantime I just pull Link aside for frequent whispered instructions.

Kiki is almost 16. In the past year she has quite frequently dissolved into overwhelmed tears. I remember 15 as an awful year for me, so it makes sense. Unfortunately weathering these storms of emotion is quite draining for me. I have to sort through her wild statements to figure out which ones are of actual concern and which are hyperbole. I have to figure out when to trust that good sense will rule the emotion and when I need to reign her in because she lost touch with rationality. I have to try to stand back because helping too much only ensures we get to have this same meltdown again a few weeks later after I’ve stopped helping.

So I weather the chaos and mutter to myself about teenage girls. Then I go to Howard…and half the things which come out of my mouth sound exactly like my daughter. I knew someday I would be concerned about sounding like my mother. I did not expect to be embarrassed to discover myself parroting a 15 year old girl. In the end I have to admit that the emotionalism may be a human thing rather than a teenage thing. We all have our turn to say “This is too much. I can’t do it.” I just hope my daughter can find the strength to stand up and try again the next day even when I’m not there to haul her to her feet. When I’m feeling calm, I know that she will. When I’m feeling stressed, I can’t see how she’ll ever learn it.

Even as I ponder the implications of developmental stages upon my teenage children, I have to acknowledge that I am also in a developmental stage. I’m not sure which one, they’re hard to identify from the middle. At 38 I suppose I could be due for a mid-life crisis. That would make sense with the emotional arcs I’ve been identifying lately. Whatever the stages and how they affect who we are, my kids and I will continue onward helping each other and muddling through.

I am not trained in psychology or the techniques of therapy. These things are interesting to me and I have done a significant amount of reading on the topics, but I can not claim true expertise. And yet I play the part of therapist on an almost daily basis. I talk Kiki through a resarch paper, not only the work itself, but also the behaviors and feelings she exhibits as she tries to deflect and avoid. Kiki is champion at fomenting arguments between us when she has work she does not want to do. Yet at 15 she is able to see herself doing it and often stops herself. This self awareness is a skill she has developed over years of self-analytic conversations with both Howard and me.

I nudge and prod Link into awareness about the social consequences of choices he makes. We talk about friends and frustrations. I watch Gleek run fast and frantic, quick to anger. Then I find a quiet time when we can talk through the buried fears and sadnesses which drive her forward. Gleek likes talking about feelings, she’ll stay up for hours rehashing the same things over and over. Then I need to disengage and let her sleep. (It is almost always at bedtime.) Some of the emotions will still be there in the morning, most will not.

And then there is Patch. In the past couple of years he has gotten less focused attention from me because most of his emotional needs fit so smoothly into our standard operating procedures. It was easy to know when he needed time to talk, he’d start crawling into bed with us at night. He’s older now and things are different. He doesn’t react in the same ways that he used to do. He’s started feeling sick at school and calling to come home, except he’s not sick. I believe that he is being honest in his description of symptoms, but there is no infection involved. The truth is that he has buried feelings which need to be sorted. Having an upset stomach at school may be the new form of crawl into bed with mom and dad. I need to find a quiet time when we can dig into his thoughts to figure out what is unsettling him. I’ve already got a laundry list of probable causes. His best friend is moving. He’s going to switch schools next year. The school work is boring and he’s figured out how to skate by on it. The culture at the school is not ideal for him. And he’s just turned 8 which coincides with certain brain developments. All of my 8 year old kids ended up sitting in my lap and talking through fear of growing up/death. A good therapist knows where to dig.

Then of course there are Howard and I. Between us we have a boat load of fun anxieties and neruoses which can provide hours of fun self analysis. I spend a significant amount of time watching my own brain processes and trying to figure out what is going on in there.

I once had a friend pose the question “If you didn’t have the job you do now, what do you think you would be?” Therapist is on my list of possible answers.

Kiki is having her first close encounter with an MLA formatted research paper. In traditional student fashion she read piles of interesting sources and kept track of none of them. Then she discovered upon writing the paper that half of her research was not applicable and needed to be replaced by completely different research which branched off of the applicable research. Unfortunately she was out of time, so instead of making a beautiful and well-supported paper, she had to cobble together what she could from the pieces she had. All of this went with a sound track of “This is hard, and boring, and I don’t like it.” Yes honey. I know. Get it done anyway.

On one level it was highly amusing to watch Kiki wrestle with the strict structures of an academic research paper. I remember those struggles so well. I made the same mistakes. Unfortunately when I tried to help Kiki jump ahead to the cobble-together stage of essay production she kept getting frustrated with me. She was angry and frustrated with the format because she did not understand it or the reasons for it. I look at her assignment and the shape of it is so clear, so simple. I can comprehend it whole. For Kiki the assignment is all muddled and confusing. Not surprising really. I was near the end of college before I really comprehended how to research and why research papers mattered.

A part of me looks at Kiki’s assignment and thinks what an amazing research paper I could write now. I would draft early, go back to my research, draft again, and dig far down for primary sources. The beauty of the form and the importance of correct citations seem clear to me now. I’m unlikely ever to do it. I do not need more projects. Also I suspect I would discover that at their heart most research papers have far more muddle-through and cobble-together than academic researchers would wish.

In the end Kiki learned valuable lessons about research format. She learned that when she goes off the beaten path for a topic, she makes more work for herself as she tries to figure out how to make that topic fit the assignment. She learned that sometimes getting things done takes precedence over making them perfect. Most of all she learned how to get the thing done even though much of the work is tedious. And she has begun learning all of these things at a much younger age than I did. I call that a win.

Howard stood in the kitchen holding his phone. He’d had a hard week, not because of external events, but because the work load he had assigned to himself was crushing. Through a super human feat of will and endurance, he’d gotten the work done. Yet the next week still had huge quantities of work to do. In that tired evening amid all that work, Howard wanted a hamburger. It wasn’t just about food, he also wanted company and I could not go. He made several calls, but others were busy. He scrolled through his list of contacts and said with a sigh “My phone is full of awesome people with whom I’d love to go out for burgers, but most of them live too far away.” This is the shape of Howard’s life, full of work and friends.

***

Kiki’s pencil moved across the paper as the words of the speaker filled the chapel. She was creating a comic labeled balance which featured a burning candle. I could not see much else from where I sat, but I suspect that she was trying to capture on paper the experiences she’s had lately with finding direction and purpose in her life. I watched her hands move surely, directing the pencil and eraser with precision. In mere weeks she would be 16, old enough to date according to long-standing family rule. This birthday marker would arrive after prom was over. “I’m kind of glad.” She confessed to me quietly “I didn’t want to deal with all that yet.” I was glad too, for many of the same reasons. Dating was coming along with driving, a first job, and countless other grown up things. I watched her confidence with the pencil and knew she would find the same sureness in other areas of her life as well.

***

Link was taller than me. It happened several months before, but still startled me every time he stood close. Somewhere in my mind he was still the toddler running across the lawn to hand a broken-stemmed blue flower to me. Back then I could scoop him into my arms and carry him. Before too much longer he would be able to carry me if he chose. Link’s new size and strength regularly startled him as well. He kept bumping into things, accidentally damaging his surroundings and sometimes the feelings of those nearby. “I’m not good at words” he said as part of an apology. It was an apology he made grudgingly, not quite understanding why his earlier words were wrong. Words would come to him, as will grace and confidence in his body. He had already begun learning the things he needed.

***

Gleek looked up at me. Howard happened to be in my field of vision and looking in my direction as well. For a moment I could see that they had the same eyes. Gleeks are more brown and smaller, but the shape was the same. They also shared the same impatient spark that drives them toward excellence and the pursuit of new things. Gleek looked away and the moment passed, but I tucked it into my memory.

***

I scooped Patch into my arms, he wriggled uncomfortably and I realized that he’d grown too big to be scooped that way. I put him down and we walked up to bed together. Patch was quite calm about being bigger. It fit his plan. He could picture himself getting bigger than me because his older brother had already done so. In the fall Patch would be headed for a new school. At first the thought of it has sent him into a crying panic. I told him he did not have to go. Then we visited the school and talked about what it was like there. It allowed Patch to picture how things would be. He decided that going was something he wanted to do. There would be tears in the process of adapting. I knew that, but I also knew how to help my son plan. Planning helps him feel happy.

***

Writing a word sketch of myself is tricky. I can only see myself in mirrors, reflected by my surroundings. I know that I often ask too much of myself. I am frequently stressed and anxious and I struggle not to spill these things onto anyone else. However I am also blessed with a clear sense of purpose. This has not always been the case in my life, but it is true right now. I am glad of it all.