Family

I will assuage my guilt at postponing my son’s birthday party by chanting “Infectious diseases do not make good party prizes.”

Current sick count:
1 case of pneumonia (Howard)
2 flu cases with chills, fever, and body aches (Kiki and Me)
1 sore throat (Gleek)
1 unsettled stomach (Link)

That’s 5 out of 6 people. Hopefully quarantine will prevent us from being Typoid Taylers. Also hopefully everyone will play nicely all day. I’m in the head cold with body aches category.

Edited to Add: Over night the sore throat manifested as stomach flu with attendant middle-of-the-night clean up. The unsettled stomach is now feeling fine.

“There’s a funny thing about X-rays.” The doctor said as he leaned close to his computer screen. I leaned forward as well and we examined the image of Howard’s lungs together. “X-rays run a day behind because of tissue penetration. So we’re really looking at what Howard’s lungs looked like yesterday.” The doctor lifted his pen and traced over a faint spidery white spot.

Howard lifted his head from his place on the examining table. His hoodie was pulled down over his eyes because the light was too bright. “So what you’re saying is that X-rays time travel.”
The doctor smiled. He was quite familiar with Howard’s jokes, as he is our neighbor as well as Howard’s doctor. Howard continued to crack jokes until I made him stop so the doctor could concentrate on filling out the battery of prescriptions that we’d use to help fight the pneumonia which was not quite showing up on the X-rays yet. Howard felt fine yesterday. This thing slammed into him during the middle of the night.

We used a wheelchair to get Howard to the car. His walk had become a breathless shamble and he shivered constantly from the fever that had taken hold during the two hours we sat in various waiting rooms at the clinic. At home we fed him industrial strength antibiotics and I put the flannel sheets onto the bed for extra warmth. The doctor says he might be able to function again in a couple of days, but that it will be a week or two before he feels well again. Howard has spent the majority of this winter being sick. This new manifestation does not thrill us at all.

Some days things which are normally easy, seem impossible. Some days commonplace things drive me crazy. It is part of being human. The hard part for me is when I am having one of those days and a child is also having one of those days. I hear the rants and moans about schoolwork and my first instinct is to do damage control. Then I stop myself and spin in the little circle where I get frustrated that I have to care about their work. And I worry about co-dependent behaviors. All of this is especially frustrating when things have been fine for awhile. Before we achieved “doing pretty good” things were “relatively awful” and the back of my brain gibbers in terror that we’ll slide back down into the pit.

I need to chant my new mantra “I’m sorry this is hard for you.” and then practice letting them struggle and sort it out themselves. Much easier said than done. I just have to remember that while sometimes rescues are really necessary, if I always come to the rescue I rob my children of their chances to triumph. I just wish it was easier to tell when to rescue and when to say “I’m sorry this is hard for you” while letting them struggle.

Posted with Kiki’s permission:
I first became aware of The Boy sometime last Fall. When Kiki talked about her high school friends, The Boy’s name occurred with increasing frequency and always in positive terms. I first met The Boy when we changed Kiki’s post-school pick-up location. He was standing there with her, talking and laughing. He and I did no more than wave at each other, but it was nice to put a face to the name I’d begun hearing. Kiki spent the whole ride home telling me about funny things The Boy had said and about how nice it was to have friends who were boys.

Every day for months The Boy stood with Kiki, talking to her while she waited for me to arrive. He brightened her day and always had a cheery greeting for me. I liked him. He seemed nice. Upon my assurance that she was welcome to invite friends home even if they are boys, Kiki invited The Boy over to our house. On several different afternoons they spent gleeful hours shouting over games of Halo, Brawl, and Castle Crashers. Kiki growled fiercely at her siblings if they dared to do anything which she deemed even remotely embarrassing.

So it continued, and I watched. Kiki is fifteen. The Boy is a few months older, he is in the same grade. They stand together on the lawn, talking. Or sometimes they sit close together (but not quite touching) when Kiki has had a bad day. He listens to her, and I think he is sometimes bewildered by her tears. The fact that he listens makes Kiki feel better.

Today, on Valentine’s Day, I pulled up to see Kiki holding a little stuffed dog. The dog was tucked self-consciously, protectively in the curve of Kiki’s right arm. She saw me and began to gather her things. The Boy walked her to the car as he always does. I smiled, waved, and commented on his hair which he bleached over the weekend. He smiled and waved back. Kiki closed the door and turned to me.
“So did The Boy give you the dog?”
“Yes.” Kiki’s grin was near to splitting her face. “It was waiting for me in 2nd period, on my desk. I was late, so everyone looked at me come in. Then I had to ask, in the middle of class, was it for me?” Kiki’s hands rubbed the dog’s soft paws. “I’ve carried it all day. And I keep fiddling with it. The paws are so soft. All my friends keep telling me The Boy likes me. I guess he does.”
The dog was brown and white. It carried a little stuffed heart with the word “love” on it.
“Yeah.” I said. “I’m pretty sure he likes you.”
“His mom made him get the dog for me. She drove him to the store and told him to pick out something. He wasn’t sure what to get, so she said a bear. He decided on the dog and a Hershey bar.”
Apparently I’m not the only parent observing from a respectful distance as these two sweet, geeky kids hang out together.
Kiki rubbed the paws again, then realized she was doing it. She gave an embarrassed wiggle “I’ve been holding the dog all day and my friends laughed at me, but I liked holding the dog. It’s all so complicated.”

Yes it is, and Kiki has only begun to scratch the surface of how complicated relationships can be. I’m just glad for Kiki and The Boy that neither feels inclined to rush. They both have lots of growing and learning left to do.

Upon our arrival home, Kiki proudly showed her stuffed dog to her siblings. They wanted to know what she intended to name the dog. She answered that she did not know. Once they left, she told me she probably wouldn’t name the dog. “That would feel weird.” she said to me quietly. Now the dog sits on her shelf where she can see him easily, and maybe reach up to touch a soft paw when she wants to.

At 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a sunny winter day, my front room is full of light. The low angle of the sun in the sky allows it to sneak under the rim of the porch and shine directly through the arched window. This is where I hung the solar powered rainbow maker that I got for my birthday. The sun falls directly on the couch and refracted rainbows dance around the room as the crystals spin.

By noon the day felt like a wasteland of things not done. I’d crashed back to sleep after getting the kids off to school instead of doing the pre-tax accounting which was supposed to be my first priority for the day. Three hours later I dragged myself out of bed to discover the day half gone and myself lacking any sort of motivational energy. I puttered away the last two hours until time to retrieve the kids from school, then washed up on the couch to sit in the sunshine and watch rainbows slide across my walls.

The rainbows moved in rhythmic patterns on the walls. One comet shaped rainbow raced across the ceiling then slowed and paused. A second comet raced up to join it then both reversed course to vanish across the room. I watched them appear and disappear, also marking the patterns of a dozen other rainbows across the ceiling, floor, and walls. It was soothing and contemplative. My fretfulness about lack of productivity faded and my mind drifted.

Patch wandered into the room, saw me, and settled on the couch beside me. We talked a little about school and friends. He expressed his sadness about a friend who moved out of our cul de sac this week. She’s been in his life as long as he can remember and he’ll miss her. We talked together until we saw another friend through the front window and he ran off to play. Gleek dashed through the room several times on various errands pertinent to playing out doors in the winter sunshine. Her bright colored knee socks flashed cheerfully as she went past. Once she stopped to talk to me for a minute about school and the game she was playing outdoors. Kiki wandered into the room and sat down next to me, snuggled on my shoulder. We sat in silence, absorbing sunshine and watching rainbows together until her math tutor arrived.

The sun moved onward until the sunlight no longer shone directly on the couch. The crystals fell into shadow making the rainbows vanish. by that time, I was gone too. The need to supply dinner had drawn me from my repose. Strange that an afternoon of sitting and drifting can change a day from wasted to lovely. I’m glad it worked. I’m glad, not only for the rainbows, but for the little flashes of my children’s lives that I was able to observe by sitting still and quiet.

“I’m scared.” said Gleek. This was not news to me. I’d witnessed her last-minute frantic scramble to find a specific small stuffed animal to tuck in her pocket.
“Sometimes it helps if you list out exactly what you are scared about.”
“I’m scared about going to a new school. I’m scared I won’t make friends. I don’t want to miss 5th and 6th grade at my school. I don’t think I will like a different school. I’m worried that Bestfriend will leave me behind. What if I fail?”
We were in the car on the way for Gleek to take a test which could qualify her for the A.L.L. program.

A.L.L. stands for Accelerated Learning Lab. It is a gifted program where smart kids are pulled from several schools and put together in a single class. That class is then able to focus on high level learning. It used to only be available for 5th and 6th grade. Now kids can test into it for 3rd and 4th grade as well. Patch was going to test too, but he got sick.

“That’s a lot of things to be scared about.” I said in answer to Gleek’s list. “Why don’t we talk them through?”
“Okay.” Gleek answered fiddling with the strap of her bag. The bag contained three books, five snacks, and a water bottle. Her stuffed cat was in her pocket.
“Most of those fears are about switching schools. We don’t have to switch schools if you don’t want to. We’re just taking the test so that you have a choice.”
Gleek nodded.
“The other ones, about failing and Bestfriend leaving you, those are about the test. Lets think about the worst it could get and then lets list what you can do to prevent the worst.”
Gleek nodded again and we started to talk.

I have mixed feelings about the A.L.L. program. Kiki went through it and those two years were an emotional wringer for both of us. In hindsight, I think those two years were hard because of things that were inherent to Kiki and I. It probably is not fair to blame the A.L.L. program, but I still contemplate it with some aversion. Gleek has been having a good year, but three out of four years prior were varying degrees of hard. We want more options. Having her take the test might give us an option.

“We’re going to be late.” Gleek said looking at the clock. “It’s okay if we’re too late and I don’t get to test. I’ll just play with Bestfriend after school. We’ll make a schedule and I’ll be sure to let her pick more of the games.”
I looked at the clock too. The trip had taken longer than anticipated because I was driving in unfamiliar territory. Also, we’d spent precious minutes searching for a stuffed animal.
“Sounds like you’re convinced that Bestfriend will pass the test.”
“Yes.”
We pulled up to the school and dozens of people were still walking into the building. We got inside and joined the crowd of people. Gleek stood close to me and pulled out the new book I’d bought for her. It shielded her from her own nervousness.
Time came for her to walk away from me and her chin quivered just a little bit. I wondered why I was putting us through this. It was a thought I revisited during the three hours I spent in a teacher’s lounge with motion sensitive lights that turned off every 10 minutes unless I waved my arms or walked around the room. I got some writing done, also some worrying.

They had the parents line up along the walls so the kids could easily find them as they exited classrooms. Forty or fifty kids filed past me in clumps of various sizes. The crowd in the hallway began to thin out. I caught my first sight of Gleek, she was chattering away to another little girl. In three hours of testing and break times the two had become fast friends.
“Was that really three hours?” Gleek asked me, then kept talking without waiting for an answer. “It was easy. I thought it would be hard, but it was just like regular work. I want to go to L School. That’s where NewFriend is going and then we could be in the same class. I didn’t like the timed test. I could have gotten the last problem if they only gave me 30 more seconds.”
The stream of chatter continued all the way to the car and for half of the drive home. Gleek was happy. I had not subjected her to a traumatic experience, so I was happy too.

I don’t know what the results of this test will be. I don’t much care. Whether or not she gets into the program, this test represents a triumph. Gleek faced something she was scared to do and she conquered it. Next week I get to do it again for Patch at a different testing site. Gleek’s excited chatter has him convinced that he does not want to miss out.