A summer tragedy
Now that our sons are older and more independent, one of my true summer joys is a day lounging at our favorite local pool, the small one with the reclining loungers, the water slide, and the vigilant lifeguards who shout “no running” at my kids so I don’t have to. Last week, the gods bestowed upon us an arguably perfect pool day. No menacing thunderheads hovered in the sky, the temperature was a pleasant and steady 83 degrees, and there was the lightest perceptible breeze, the kind that gently reminds you that sometimes all is right in your world. When mornings like that arrive, my day is set. Errands, appointments, laundry, and responsibility be damned. We’re pool bound. There is no other choice. Our fate is sealed.
After wolfing down the sub sandwiches we picked up from Jimmy John’s on the way over, we began our idyllic summer sabbatical. My goal: complete summer surrender. From under my mirrored sunglasses, I lazily watched our sons take ridiculous leaps (meant to be impressive but in the end only exhibiting typical teenage goofiness) off the diving board while the playlist of LCD Soundsystem in my earbuds kept my feet moving just enough to burn a few calories while I let the sun work its magic. Nothing could be better, I mused to myself, swept away in the glee of a few hours’ worth of unadulterated leisure in the middle of the work week.
That was when he stepped in front of me and everything changed. He must have been about seven, maybe eight, with sandy blonde hair. He stood out because, unlike the other children who had arrived in the same daycare group, he was alone in wearing street clothes and Crocs in place of brightly colored swim trunks and bare feet. A bold orange cast with blue tape, a nod to the Denver Broncos, held his broken arm firmly in place while he stood on the side of the pool watching other kids take acrobatic turns off the diving board. As I looked at him with a mother’s eyes, I found myself wishing there were casts that mended broken hearts as well as broken arms.
We are less than two weeks away from the start of the 2015-2016 school year here in Denver. All over the city parents are snapping up school supplies while siblings wage frustrated battles with each other in the waning days of summer break. My favorite season is slipping away, and each day closer to school is a heartless reminder of life out of the pool lounger and in the carpool lane. Today, though, I am thinking of that darling little boy with a cast who is probably looking forward to school this year for the first time ever, thinking about friends and structure and the chance to feel again like he belongs.
Our singular experiences comprise our personal tale, but in the end it’s our shared struggles that make our stories worth recounting.
Can you spoy my beach-crazy son?I am sitting on Carmel Beach watching my almost 14-year-old son play at the water’s edge. His tic, a nervous hand flapping that is tied to his ADHD, is on high speed. When he was younger, I spent inordinate amounts of time trying to break him of it, chiding him to “stop flapping,” but he can’t voluntarily cease doing what he doesn’t realize he’s doing. Now I see the flapping for what it is…an honest, outward display of his inner enthusiasm and excitement. For a landlocked, Colorado boy, there must be no greater joy than feeling the surf nibble at your toes.
Although there are a dozen places in Carmel I would prefer to be right now (like, say, a quaint shop or a charming bakery), I am resting on a beach wearing jeans and a full rain coat. I have my feet covered in the sand and am struggling to keep warm this breezy, 57-degree, final afternoon in May. This is not my ideal beach day. We’re about twenty-degrees of separation from my ideal.
But we’re here, present, accounted for, and undeniably alive. He’s about a hundred yards away from me. Every few minutes he looks for me and waves. It could be my favorite Mom thing ever. We’re separate but together and sharing our day. We’re going on two hours here now. My iPhone battery is dying while I write this, and Joe’s flapping hands conduct a symphony of oceanic waves. It’s not my ideal day, but it’s close.
Life is beautiful and perfect in its imperfections. People say grace happens, but grace is. If you sit still long enough, it finds you.
In a world of his ownI caught our son Joe out behind our house the other evening and snapped this photo when he wasn’t looking. As much as he loves hanging out with friends, sometimes his deep thinking mind needs space. When that happens, he heads outside by himself for a while. This night he was out near the open space on the dirt path with a small, metal plane that his brother bought from the school store. Sometimes, when he can’t find his favorite plane, he uses a stand in…a Lego creation, a rubbery toy shark, a game console remote. I’ve even seen him use a pen taken from a hotel room as his imaginary ship. I’ve often wondered what he’s thinking about when he’s out there. For as much as he talks about Pokémon, I assume that he retreats into that world. But, he’s also a kid who reads atlases for fun, so there’s that. And he recently mentioned, out of the blue, a documentary he watched about a year ago on Netflix about transgender individuals and their struggles. Though he is honest and straight-forward about so many things, his mind is a lockbox. Try though I might to understand him, he remains a mystery to me.
Tonight, out of sheer curiosity after looking again at the photo I took on my iPhone, I asked him what he’s thinking about when he’s out there flying whatever it is he is flying. He told me he is making up stories, and the planes, game remotes, Lego ships, and even the pens are the impetus for the stories. They are the aircraft in his make-believe world.
“So…when I saw you out there with the rubber shark earlier today, was that an airplane too?” I asked. This made perfect sense to me because every other item he’s used has been a plane.
“No. It’s a shark. That would be ridiculous,” he replied.
“Of course,” I answered. “How silly of me.”
Sometimes I forget who I am talking to. Joe is creative, but he is also a bona fide intellectual working on becoming more so each day. When he was 5, he was talking to me about God and shared this bit of hopeful wisdom. “I’m not all knowing yet. But I am knowing.” And that he is.
He’ll be 14 in less than a month, and I turn into a weepy mess whenever that thought enters my head. In five years, I will be throwing a graduation party for him. I’m not sure where the time has gone, but damn if that kid hasn’t taught me more about volcanoes, reptiles, prehistory, geography, sharks, and love than I ever thought I could know. The part about sharks not flying, though? That part I knew on my own years ago, before he even mentioned it.
A couple days ago, I wrote about a note that my son had found dropped into his locker at school. Oh…the days of passing notes at school, especially notes that were dropped surreptitiously into lockers. Remember those days? When one folded piece of paper could set in motion a new romance? When a handwritten note could change your fate? The note Luke found was not a declaration but an inquiry, an inquiry which required him to check this box. He had an entire long weekend to ponder his answers. We discussed his options. Early on Monday morning, he reached for the note, took it over to the table, and privately recorded his responses. I watched him fold up the note and put it into his backpack. When we reached school, he made the bold pronouncement that later that day he would probably have a girlfriend. His older brother reiterated that the whole situation was depressing. And I drove off feeling a little bit vicariously giddy about it all.
Well, Luke got into the car yesterday with no news. Wanting to keep the whole affair a secret, he had tossed the note back into her locker rather than handing it to her in class. Now he would have to wait one more night to find out what effect his response had. He was playing it cool and maybe he was actually relaxed about it, but the suspense was killing me.
Today as Luke ran out to the car, there was an extra, nearly-imperceptible-to-anyone-but-a-mother bounce in his step. I could tell he had the news he wanted in his hands. He climbed into the car.
“So…do you have a girlfriend?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered with the sweetest little grin.
He handed me the note. I hadn’t seen it since he had taken it off the counter, so I wasn’t quite sure what he was showing me. As far as I knew, he had simply answered her questions by adding checkmarks. I wondered what she had added. Turns out it wasn’t what she added that made the note interesting. It was what he added. Luke had answered her question about having a girlfriend with a check-marked no, and then added yes/no check boxes of his own under these three words: Or do I? She had checked yes.
I have to hand it to my son. He’d found a way to get the answer he wanted without any help from his parents. His question to her was both flirtatious and charming. What 5th grade girl wouldn’t love that question after having received all the right answers to her own questions? And by making her respond on that same note, he’d worked it out so he could keep it forever as proof. He told me he’d wanted to be sure he’d end up with the note for posterity. The kid is a genius. I wondered if the poor girl had a clue what she was getting herself into.
On the drive home, I asked Luke what it means to be boyfriend/girlfriend in 5th grade. I had no experience with such things when I was that age, so my curiosity was piqued.
“So, do you kiss?” I asked.
“NOOOOOOO!” Luke replied in his most appalled voice. “We’re in 5th grade! We’re too young for that.”
This was good news. I was not ready for kissing.
“So, what do you do then?”
“You hang out. You talk on the phone. You just get to know each other better,” Luke explained.
“Do you go on dates? Am I going to have to drive you to the movies?”
“Yes,” he said, “but you’ll come in. You can sit in the theater with us but not in the same row.”
“Gotcha,” I replied, feeling a whole lot better about Luke and his new girlfriend.
For the rest of the ride home, we talked about what would be the best way to keep their new relationship status on the down low from the rest of the class. They haven’t had a chance to talk much since their declaration of like, so we discussed how he could ask if it might be all right to call her on the phone so they could talk in private. You know in Despicable Me how Agnes says, “He’s so fluffy I’m going to die?” Well, that adequately sums up how cute I find Luke’s new interest in romance.
When we decided to have children, I never gave much thought to this part of parenting. I pictured changing foul diapers and spoon feeding infants. I imagined taking them to the zoo and being the Tooth Fairy. But I didn’t imagine that someday I might be dispensing relationship advice. Maybe it’s because that was so far into the future? Maybe it’s because I never sought dating advice from my own parents? I’m happy that Luke is willing to talk to me. It means he feels I’m approachable. I know he’s only 12 and his openness might wain as he inches further into adulthood, but I feel we’re off to a good start. I’m excited for what the future holds for Luke. And I sure hope I like his new girlfriend. I imagine I will. After all, she has phenomenal taste.
A couple weekends ago, I noticed our dog was staring a little too zealously at the dwarf blue spruce tree near our back patio. Ruby counts that tree as her personal property. Since the first night that she arrived at our home, a tiny border collie puppy accustomed to life outdoors, she’s claimed ownership for that tree and used it as a protected spot for sleeping. She guards her tree like an old man sitting on his porch and waiting for the next interloper to happen by so he can angrily shout, “Get off my lawn!” But in the spring, nearly every year for the past 11 years, a few renegade birds have chosen to brave the threat of dog, and employ the dense, weighty branches of that tree, branches that barely sway in the wind and provide excellent coverage from rain, as their prime nesting spot. In years past, many nests have been built, many eggs have been hatched. One year, our dog Buddy made a meal of two sparrows from one of those nests and broke my heart. I didn’t care if he was a bird dog. That was bad form. The sight of Ruby staring with a bit too much interest into the middle branches of the spruce gave me PTSD. There were more birds there. Birds Ruby was interested in ingesting.
I shooed her away and started poking around to determine the source of her interest. About midway through the tree on the back side, I found her draw. There among the clustered branches was a Eurasian collared dove sitting on a nest. It eyed me cautiously. I began to move some branches to see if I could catch a glimpse into the nest, and with that the bird flew to a nearby tree to watch me. I used one hand to hold the branches down and my other hand to position my phone for a photo. My suspicions were confirmed. Two small, white eggs sat cradled in the center of a nest made from fallen, Austrian-pine needles. I grabbed Ruby and headed back indoors, curiosity satisfied. I waited about fifteen minutes then snuck back within viewing range of the tree to make sure the nesting bird had returned. The bird was there.
The eggs that gave way to birds.
Over the next couple weeks, I watched the nest waiting to see if the eggs had hatched. We had a cold, rainy and snowy spell in Denver, and I was anxious about my little yard guests. When the sun finally returned today after a nearly 6-day hiatus to dry our drenched yard, I went out to check the nest. There was a bird on it again. My presence shooed it away, and I peered in and found the two eggs replaced by two dark-colored birds with sparse and pale-yellow feathers. I had to do a double take because the birds, at least I thought they were birds, looked more like threadbare tennis balls with the fuzz nearly rubbed off. With the snow melting from the weekend, the temperature was hovering around 45 degrees so I hurried inside, not wanting those babies to be left in the cold for a second longer than necessary. When I checked on the nest shortly thereafter, the father bird (it is the male birds, I read, that nest during the day while the female remains on the nest at night) was in place on top of the babies. All was right with the world. Good papa.
I’m going to be keeping my eye on Ruby over the next few weeks as the baby birds head toward their fledgling state. I’m not up for once again finding out my dog opted for take out rather than nightly kibble. I’d like to know that I helped keep these babies in my yard safe. After all, their parents chose our sturdy, protective spruce tree within close proximity of our perpetually stocked sunflower-seed feeder to raise their brood. Clearly, this shows they have wisdom, not to mention inimitable taste.
Tonight, a friend shared a news story about a toddler boy who was beaten to death in Utah, the apparent victim of anger related to his not toilet training quickly enough. I tried to read the article, but never made it past the title and the first line. I just couldn’t stomach it. When I think back to when my precious sons were three and pooping behind the couch and using their spray hose to put out pretend fires on our heavily textured bathroom walls, certainly there were times when I was frustrated. It happens to the best of us. Luckily, most of us are able to cope. Yet, we humans are animals sometimes. While we have the capacity for great good, we also have the capacity for murder. When events like this hit the news, I think about the birds that have nested in my tree. I appreciate the work they are putting into their parenting gig. Even if it is only instinct, it’s a beautiful ritual that plays out every spring, nature setting an example of patience, dedication, and duty in parenting. Maybe that’s why I am drawn to the doves in our tree. They’re a reminder of the good in the world when we’re focusing on the bad can crush the soul.
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He doesn’t know the world at all Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out. He doesn’t know what birds know best Nor what I want to sing about, That the world is full of loveliness.
When dewdrops sparkle in the grass And earth’s aflood with morning light, A blackbird sings upon a bush To greet the dawning after night. Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open up your heart To beauty; go to the woods someday And weave a wreath of memory there. Then if the tears obscure your way You’ll know how wonderful it is To be alive.
–Anonymous child in Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, 1941
Spring is in the air. The songbirds have returned to my bird-feeder welfare state. Tulips are in blooming underneath our spring snow. The flowering trees have kicked my allergies into overdrive. We’re solidly entrenched in the season of new beginnings and hope, which is why I was not at all surprised when the other day my youngest climbed into my car after school smiling quite sheepishly, holding in his hand a folded paper note with a smiley face painted on the outside.
He was whispering rather excitedly to his brother and his brother, in turn, was whispering back. Their hushed conversation was both animated and intense. I had a good idea what was going on based on conversations we’d been having for weeks, but I waited to be included. Finally, Joe’s excitement spilled over.
“Luke got a note from Maddy,” he gushed. Then he added, “It’s depressing.”
“How is it depressing exactly?”
“It just highlights my many failed attempts with girls,” Joe said.
“How many attempts?” I asked. This was all news to me.
“Eight,” he replied instantly with complete assurity.
“Okay. Can we talk about that in a minute? This isn’t about you. It’s about Luke. Let him tell his own story,” I chided. “What’s going on, Luke?”
“Well, after school I found this note in my locker,” he replied, handing me the piece of paper.
It was your garden variety, grade-school note. With carefully chosen words, the author was attempting to ascertain Luke’s level of interest in her. The innocence of the note made me smile. Any note with a “check this box” format wins my heart every time, and this note had two different questions with corresponding boxes. Add to it the charming spelling irregularities of dyslexia and you’ve got about the sweetest correspondence ever. I handed it back to Luke.
“So, how are you going to respond?” I asked
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“I thought you like Maddy,” I replied.
“I do. I’m just nervous. What if I tell her I like her and she doesn’t like me?”
“She wouldn’t have bothered to write the note if she didn’t like you,” I told him. “Girls generally don’t bother with guys they don’t like. We try to avoid them. Trust me.”
“Well, then, I think I will answer yes to the liking her question. But I don’t know what to say about the question of if I have a girlfriend,” he said.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I inquired knowing full well the answer.
“No, but…,” he paused.
“You are afraid to put yourself out there?” I asked.
“Kind of,” he said.
“I can tell you this. If you like her, you shouldn’t play games. Be honest.”
“Okay. I will tell her I don’t have a girlfriend then.”
“Or…or you could make a third box to check that says Not Yet. That would let her know you’re hoping she will be your girlfriend,” I suggested, digging way back into my memories of flirting protocol. “That puts the ball back in her court,” I said, “but still keeps you safe because it’s not a definitive answer.”
“Yes. I like that,” he replied with clear relief that there was a way to respond that didn’t leave him completely vulnerable.
He folded up the note, put it away, and Joe used the opportunity to begin his lamentation about his 12-year-old brother’s third success in dating while he still only had one success, way back in kindergarten, and he’s almost fourteen. It’s hard to be Joe.
I’m grateful that my sons are willing to talk to me about girls, at least thus far. The world of interpersonal relationships is a minefield. I hope to keep the lines of communication open with them as they negotiate their way through it. They know I am an old lady, but they also know I dated plenty before I married their dad. I have shared some of my stories of heartbreak, embarrassment, rejection, and shame so they know I have been there and can commiserate. It will be difficult to stand by during the tragedy of their first broken heart but, for now, I’m enjoying the check-this-box phase of newly sprung love or, in this case, like.
Yesterday was dental appointment day for my sons. I approach my sons’ dental appointments with a terror roughly equal to water board torture. They have a long, sordid history of horrific dental appointments that has nothing to do with cavities or tooth decay of any kind. Despite their natural, boyish tendency to eat too much junk and skip brushing and flossing, neither of my sons have ever had a cavity. (Why, yes. I am currently knocking on wood.) Still…their dental appointments are tantamount to a Wes Craven film. That I have continued to set up and show up with my sons for two dental appointments per year should be a testament to what a devoted mother I am. What I discovered yesterday, however, is that my patting myself on the back may have been premature. Apparently, I not only write, direct, and produce these dental horror films for my sons, I star in them too.
Our son with ADHD has traditionally fidgeted, flopped, and inadvertently smacked dental hygienist after dental hygienist with his flailing hands. At past appointments, I have been told to hold both his hands for fear he will whack the dentist while he’s holding sharp implements in my son’s mouth. This behavior has decreased over time with the addition of ADHD medication and the increasing maturity of my son. My youngest has a completely different issue. He has an insanely sensitive gag reflex, which is partly physical and partly mental. The kid can look at something he finds unappealing and vomit. This has made eating out at buffet restaurants verboten. Before he was six, Luke had vomited on a hygienist twice. We were told he would grow out of it, but continual gagging with both the hygienist and dentist meant he didn’t have his first real dental cleaning until he was 10. And we sedated him with nitrous to get him through that appointment. He is nearly 12 and he has not been able to have a bite-wing x-ray taken. All these repeated, negative experiences have made him a nervous patient and me an anxiety case.
Because of this, we usually get the dental hygienist with the most experience. While she has the most experience, after repeated episodes with our son she no longer has the most patience with him. To that end, she didn’t see him at all last year, a fact I imagine was fine with her. I sat with Luke for a while as she explained what she was going to be doing. She put the weighted blanket on him to help calm his nervous system and got to work. A minute or two into the process, I decided to go check on Joe in the next room. When I returned five minutes later, she wasn’t quite done with the cleaning. I heard her telling him to relax. Then she told me to get some paper towels. As I was reaching for the paper towels, he began throwing up. He puked on himself, the weighted blanket, and his dental bib. My heart sank. We’d gone two years since his last episode and I had hoped those crappy days were behind us. They weren’t. She finished up the appointment, the dentist came in and checked his mouth, and she summarily dismissed us.
As I was at the counter paying $275 for the torture we’d just endured and feeling disheartened and frustrated, the hygienist reappeared and asked if she could speak with me. She led me to another room for a private conversation. My dread grew.
“I talked with the doctor,” she started, “and he and I think it would be in Luke’s best interest if you sit in the waiting room for his future appointments. When you’re not there, we have more authority and he tends to do better.”
This made perfect sense to me. For years I would have been more than happy to sit in the waiting room playing Words With Friends on my iPhone while they dealt with my sons privately. Sadly, they have always asked me to come back with them because of their issues.
“I agree,” I told her, feeling some relief. “I think that’s a good idea. We can definitely do that next time.”
Now, if she’d left the conversation there, I would have been fine. But she continued.
“You know, when you left the room, he relaxed. I was able to get through most of the cleaning without any issue. I got through all his teeth except one. He was doing great until you came back in the room. When you came back in the room, he threw up. We think you are causing him to stress out and throw up. Every time he throws up, it’s a setback for us in trying to break his cycle of negative dental experiences. We’ll be starting all over next time.”
An arrow pierced my heart. My stomach knotted up. I clenched my jaw as I noticed the tears welling up. I turned away from her. I swallowed hard. I knew there was truth in what she was saying, but it hurt. All the times I’d sat with him thinking I was calming him, all the times I held his hands and stroked his hair, and here I was…the stress-neutralizing equivalent of Attila the Hun. I felt judged. I felt insulted. But most of all, I felt sad. Not only had I not been helping all these years, I’d been making things worse. Now I wanted to vomit.
I choked my way through the rest of the conversation, acknowledged that I would not be present going forward, and stumbled back to the check out counter. The poor receptionist there started talking to me about sealant costs for my oldest son’s teeth.
“I’m 90% certain that we won’t be doing sealants on my son’s teeth,” I told her aggressively. “He’s had no cavities and we’re not spending $650 on the off-chance that he starts getting them now.”
“Well…insurance should cover some of the cost,” she offered, still trying to sell me when I was struggling to hold back tears and was dying to escape. “I’ll call insurance and see what they might cover.”
“Go ahead if you want to, but I don’t think we’ll be changing our minds,” I spat back. I knew I was taking out my anger, hurt, and frustration on her, but it felt good and I needed to release some of my negative energy before I exploded. I took my paperwork, scheduled the next miserable appointment, and skulked out.
The kids were waiting for me outside. Luke told me he was sorry for barfing on the hygienist. I told him he didn’t need to apologize. It was my fault. I barely made it into the car before the tears began flowing. I quietly cried for the 15-minute drive home, reflecting on what I’ve put my son through while thinking I was being helpful. I’d increased his anxiety to the point where my presence had made him sick. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less as a parent than to make my son afraid and uncomfortable. Growing up, I often felt anxious with others, especially people in authority, because I knew what was expected of me and I knew I was supposed to be a good girl. Here I had thought I was breaking the cycle of fear, yet all the while I was repeating it. I suddenly understood the penitentes of New Mexico who self-flagellate.
I’ve been working all day today to forgive myself. I understand that my anxiety level in the dental appointments was precipitated by real events that I have witnessed over the years, events that I had not caused. Originally, Luke’s vomiting on the hygienist was gag-reflex induced. But every time that happened, every time I ended up with my son’s lunch in my hands after trying to save the hygienist from that same fate, my apprehension grew. It accumulated like flood water at the back of a dam. Eventually, it was bound to spill over onto my son, and it did. I apologized to Luke last night for making him feel stressed out when he was only ever being himself. I told him that I understood how hard he has been working to hold it together so he would not embarrass or disappoint me and how wrong it was of me to expect him to live with my anxiety. I reassured him that things would be better going forward.
If there’s an upside to all of this, during their next appointment while their father is with them at the dentist, I will be sitting on the couch at home drinking a glass of wine and watching Netflix. If the hygienist is correct, we should all be better off for it. If she’s not correct, at least I’ll be sitting on our couch drinking a glass of wine and watching Netflix when the blame comes down.
As my husband and I have gone along together over the past twenty years, one thing has become increasingly apparent to us: we spend too much money on things that don’t matter and not enough money on things that would truly increase our life satisfaction. We try not to dwell too much on money we’ve thrown away on pointless items because…well, it’s depressing. (I mean, seriously. A panini machine? Like we were going to be whipping up Cuban sandwiches on a daily basis? What the hell were we thinking?) We both agree, however, that the best money we’ve ever spent was for traveling or taking classes or participating in events. This is a very real phenomenon. Scientific research has proven that our satisfaction in life is tied more to experiences than possessions. A new possession might make us feel good in the beginning but, as soon as we adapt to it, the thrill is gone and that item becomes just another thing to take care of. As many couples our age are settling into bigger, nicer homes, we have spent long hours discussing our desire to downsize, to reduce the collection of crap we use once a year, to unload our baggage, and to make room in our budget for the things in life that stretch our minds and not our square footage.
Now, I say all this as if it’s going to be an easy transition for us. The truth is the exact opposite. We are long-time early adapters. When the new iPhone comes out, we’ve got it. Our thirteen year old son has already begun asking for the iWatch. We realize that as parents we’ve set a bad precedent, and we’ve got a long road ahead of us if we want to teach our children to be happy with what they have and to value life experience more than shiny, new toys. But we’re heading that direction, and we’re committed to proving to our children that it’s the best way to live.
Everything is awesome at Legoland!
To that end, my husband jetted off with our youngest to California this past weekend for a three-day, father-son trip made possible by a small bump in our income tax refund and my decision not to use it for a selfish, solo beach vacation. Luke had been telling us (for about six years) that he wanted to visit Legoland and, as he approached his 12th birthday next month, I realized he might just outgrow it before we managed to get him there. Deciding I could not let that happen, I booked a surprise trip for them. Last Friday, Steve and Luke headed to the airport bright and early to board a cheap, Spirit airlines flight to San Diego for Luke’s first trip to California. Over the three days, father and son visited the San Diego Zoo, Legoland, and the beaches in La Jolla and Carlsbad. Luke took his turn piloting the USS Midway. They enjoyed a harbor cruise. They walked on the beach and nearly stepped on sea lions that were resting in the sand. They skipped chain restaurants and sampled local cafes and coffee shops. As they went about their days, I received texts and photos. Each time a photo arrived, my heart smiled. Even though I wasn’t there with them, I couldn’t help but feel gratitude for their opportunity to experience new things together. And while the Lego set Luke procured at Legoland will eventually be broken apart and end in pieces in a large, plastic, storage bin in the basement, this trip will remain with him throughout his lifetime and will hopefully inspire him to reach continually for new experiences and to voyage to different places.
“Please except this doggy pen.” Best thank you note ever penned by Luke.
When I awoke on Monday morning after their late-night return, I found a small treat they had purchased for me in California, a $5 token of their gratitude for my unilateral decision to send them on a trip they hadn’t planned on. The note, written by my thoughtful, dyslexic son, read: “Dear Mom, I love you and I am so greatful [sic] that you spent your trip money for me and dad to go to San Diego and please except [sic] this Doggy pen.” If I’d needed any proof that our decision to move from possessions toward experiences was the right choice, this was it.
Our sons are growing up so quickly. We’re inches away from the day when it will be woefully uncool to hang out with Mom and Dad, so we’re focusing now on using our time with our sons wisely. At the end of May, I will be taking our oldest son on a mother-son adventure to celebrate our birthdays. We too will be heading to California for three days so we can experience the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a place Joe has talked about for years. We have no plans other than to visit the aquarium and to drive along the coast to enjoy the ocean we are sorely lacking in Colorado. I’m looking forward to living in the moment with my teenage son as we both make discoveries on our own adventure. Hopefully, when the trip is over and only a memory, we will be able to see our lives with a new perspective, one that will remind us that it is not he who has the most toys in the end that wins.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~ T.S. Eliot
Some fine table manners right there, I tell you. Come get him, girls.
Dinnertime is frustrating for every mom. I think that’s just a universal reality. If you’re lucky enough to belong to a family where your children sit at the dining table and eat all the food you cook (or microwave or pick up at the drive-thru window) without complaining or begging to watch television or texting or playing video games or burping the alphabet, if you belong to a family where mealtime each evening is a pleasant affair where your family calmly and politely discusses the events of their day over the mutual breaking of bread, well, then throw yourself a frigging fish. You’ve got yourself and your family trained better than circus seals.
I spent the first eight years of our sons’ lives desperately trying to make dinnertime a good experience for all. Nearly every evening, somewhere between Luke’s penchant for puking at the sight of any food of which he does not immediately approve (which narrows the family menu down to chicken nuggets, steak, or pizza) and Joe’s ADHD-driven inability to sit for more than three minutes, our dinner routine would downward spiral its way into cajoling, shouting, bribing, and eventually crying, most of the time on my part. Around the time the boys turned seven and nine, I decided that I’d had enough. I’m a slow learner, but I eventually catch on. I gave up trying to make our boys well-rounded eaters who used manners and ate everything on their plates without argument. I figured their wives could figure out how to do that someday. I had less frustrating things to focus on, like teaching them math facts and educating my husband about proper shoe storage. If I take the time to teach my boys everything polite society would have them know, when would I have time to drink wine?
Eventually, the boys did learn to eat more foods just as I suspected they would. And I figured out some meals that I could prepare that all four of us could ingest without anyone puking or swearing or even crying. It has taken me many, many years, but I’ve finally gotten dinnertime running nearly as smoothly and reliably as a 10-year-old Honda. Tonight, for example, I served grilled chicken (courtesy of my husband), pasta for the boys, quinoa salad for hubby and I, steamed broccoli, and fresh strawberries. We had a brief flirtation with polite conversation before Joe spilled his entire glass of ice water all over his brother. Somehow, once that was mopped up, we still managed to have 10 minutes of cordial mealtime. Because the boys are growing and sucking down food with the unbridled ferocity of our Dyson vacuum, our table time is minimal, but I don’t care. When it’s over, if all the food is gone and we managed more than few grunts in between scarfing bites, my goal has been successfully achieved. The kitchen gets cleaned, the table wiped down, and I slink upstairs to our bedroom where I hope to become like the Cheshire Cat and fade into the bed so that I won’t be noticed for the rest of the night. My work is finished.
Or is it? Every night between 8:45-9:30, Joe decides he’s ready for “second dinner.” Now, I never planned to condone the notion of second dinner. Dinner is served just once. That’s how it was in the house where I grew up, and that is how I planned for it to be in our home. Life, however, laughed at my plans. Joe takes medication for ADHD, and that medication is a stimulant that deeply reduces his appetite while it’s on board. Because he doesn’t eat much at lunch, consuming approximately the daily caloric intake of a waif-like, chain-smoking, Diet-Coke-swilling runway model, he is famished by dinner. That hunger is merely pacified by the full meal I prepare at our usual dinnertime, which leads us to second dinner. Second dinner, it was long ago decided, is his problem. By the time second dinner rolls around, the cook has gone home for the night.
Tonight I went down to refill my water bottle and found Joe staring longingly into the stainless, silver box in our kitchen, both doors wide open in an effort to cool the room, apparently.
“I think I am going to make this salmon,” he announced, hastily grabbing a frozen fish steak from the lowest tray in the freezer.
“Ummmm….no,” I replied. “You’re not flash-thawing salmon and then cooking it. That will take about 45 minutes. What other ideas do you have?”
He dropped his head, begrudgingly returned the salmon steak to its home, and closed the freezer door. He then inched his way closer to the open refrigerator side and peered in.
“You could make me some sautéed kale,” he suggested.
“Ha. Good one,” I replied. “I’m not cooking anything. The kitchen is clean and it’s closed.”
“I could do it myself,” he said.
“You’re going to wash and chop kale and sauté it on the stove and then eat it?” I said with a bit too much incredulity.
“I could,” he replied.
“You could if the kitchen wasn’t closed,” I reminded.
I was getting annoyed by this process. Why couldn’t the kid eat a bowl of cereal like his father would be doing in an hour? Why does everything have to be a production? He should just plan to head to Broadway after high school. I’m sure he would fit right in there.
“You know, Joe? Eat some baby carrots. Eat an apple. No cooking.” He stared me down with his steely teenage glare. He’s practicing his intimidation, but he’s not quite tall enough yet for that to be working for him with me. I continued, “Dude, if you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry. Period.”
He shrugged, picked his iPad off the counter, and headed up the stairs. Game. Set. Match.
I was pretty proud of my brain for coming up with that appropriate little nugget of wisdom, discovered just this week courtesy of a Facebook meme, and perfectly echoed in this clutch situation. Sometimes, Mom, you’ve still got it, I told myself. Now, if I could convince myself to live by that phrase, perhaps I could be swimsuit-ready by the time pool season gets underway.
The day my 8 year old decided to cut his own hair and record the event. Not his best decision-making moment, but it has made for some good laughs.
It’s laundry day. Well…actually, every day is laundry day, but today I finally decided to toss a couple loads into the washer. As I collected the boys’ hamper, I noticed that Joe had thrown a couple of his jackets in. I hate it when he does that. Sometimes the hamper is replete with clean clothes he tried on but decided not to wear. While I’m grateful that he’s finally learned to put his clothes into a hamper after thirteen years, he now puts everything in there. He often puts his shoes in there. His shoes. It’s much easier to toss everything into the bin than to put it away, right? It keeps the floor clean and then he doesn’t have to listen to me complain about that too. It’s genius, actually. A simple, expedient filing system that gets me off his back, at least for the present moment. And Joe is 100% in the present moment all the time.
Frustrated by the discovery of the jackets, I confronted him.
“Joe…why are these coats in here?”
“I wore them,” he said with typical teenage attitude, eyeing me like I am a moron for not realizing that dirty clothes go in the hamper.
“You can wear a jacket more than once before it needs to be washed. Unless it’s got a stain or it stinks, you should just hang it up to wear again,” I informed him.
He appeared uninterested.
“Every time you do this, it’s more work for me. I know we’ve talked about this before,” I said with the usual tone of parental disappointment that is meant to encourage enough self-reflection and remorse to induce self-awakening and, hopefully, an apology. If you’re wondering if it ever works, the answer is no.
“I know,” he admitted.
“Well, then, why do you keep doing it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t mean to do it. It just happens on accident all the time.”
And, there it is. A succinct description of exactly what ADHD is. Joe’s ADHD includes impulsivity, inattention to detail, and inability to focus. So many times when he was younger I would repeatedly scold him for the same behaviors. Once, before we’d diagnosed his ADHD, I asked him why he kept chewing on his shirts even though we had discussed ad nauseam that he needed to stop doing it. He said he didn’t know why he did it. He knew it was wrong, but he simply couldn’t help it. That explanation was mind numbing. Here was a kid who was obviously intelligent, who could repeat minutiae about different dinosaurs from different epochs, remembering the dates they existed and statistics about their size and weight, but there he stood telling me he didn’t know why he kept gnawing his clothing like he was a goat. As a parent, it frustrated the living hell out of me. How could he be so smart yet so unaware at the same time?
When we had Joe evaluated for ADHD, the psychiatrists at Children’s Hospital explained to me that the frontal lobe of Joe’s brain simply doesn’t work the way mine does, ultimately leading to his greater difficulty in choosing between good and bad actions. As a child, if I was punished for something one time, the frontal lobe of my brain would remind me of that event and help me make better choices the next time I encountered a similar situation. Joe’s frontal lobe, however, simply isn’t as active as mine. The doctors explained that it is as if there is a little man in there whose job is to help him make good choices but that little man continually falls asleep on the job. It wasn’t until much later, when Joe better understood himself and his brain, that he was able to admit that his inability to stop negative behaviors when he knew they were wrong frustrated the living hell out of him too. We’ve spent the years since his diagnosis working to understand how we can help Joe and what we simply need to accept is part of his make up. It’s a work in progress.
I’m laughing now thinking about the question I posed to Joe earlier. I know how he works. I just needed to remind him again and move on. He will eventually stop putting clean clothes in the hamper, just like he eventually started putting dirty ones in there. It’s merely going to take a lot of patience and a lot of repetition. Six years into my understanding of this ADHD world, I am still making silly parenting mistakes with Joe.
You’ve got to wonder when the little man in my frontal lobe started taking so many naps.
Live Now and Zen 