Tag: perspective

How To Find Your Zen

One of my happy places

For the past two nights, I’ve barely won a battle with myself regarding my attendance at yoga class. Both nights, I wanted to stay home and curl up in bed and just forget it. Both nights, my husband and kids told me I should go. I’m not sure if their wanting me to go relates directly to the apparently witchy behavior Facebook keeps accusing me of or if they’re simply acknowledging my stress level and hoping I will find some peace. If I had to guess, though, I’d say it’s probably 90/10 in favor of the first option. When I’m overwhelmed, I’m not the easiest person to be around.

I love yoga. I don’t love it enough to want to become an instructor or anything, but I do love that for an entire hour I can turn off the incessant monkey chatter that goes on inside my skull and focus on just one thing…tying myself into a pretzel. I try to practice during the day when my boys are at school because I like to spend the evenings with them, but this week has been crazy busy and I haven’t been able to get there. Getting to class at night is difficult for me, but I’ve made it and I’m grateful to myself for doing the hard work to get there.

Yoga is not simply about exercise for me. It’s a transformational event. It’s about giving myself the space to be exactly who I am in this moment rather than who I want to be or, worse, who I think I should be. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. While I try to schedule numerous appointments for my boys with psychologists for testing and evaluation and while I continue to receive and fill out packet after packet of information, I’ve been feeling myself slip away. Sometimes it seems there aren’t enough hours in the day to carve out time to be the person I am rather than the person I need to be for someone else. Yoga offers me that space.

Last night, our beautiful instructor, Sybil, asked us to reflect on how often we think too much about the future or reflect too long on the past. Indeed, I am guilty of such sins. Then, she gently reminded us that the only thing that matters is now. What can I fix about this moment became the mantra for class. I’ve been turning that thought over and over in my head since last night. Yes. I have a lot to do to figure out how to help out our boys. I have stacks of paperwork to fill out, bunches of phone calls to make, and a 400-page book on dyslexia that I need to read judging me from its spot on my nightstand. I may get through it all. I may not. I don’t know. But, if I take my head out of what might happen for us in the future (how will the testing go, will we need to put the boys in a special school, will we need to move, what is the best place for them), the present seems a lot less complicated.

I do it to myself, I know. I think too much about things I cannot control, things I might not even be given the chance to live through. All I have is this moment and all I can do is my best right now. So, I’m going to relax a bit, set a list of priorities, and knock them down one at a time in the moment until the decision about what is right for our boys and our family becomes apparent.

Tonight I’m grateful for the reminder that the only thing I need to concern myself with is this moment. I can take care of all the other stuff when the next moment arrives. No need to rush from the now. The future will be the present soon enough.

 

Posted on by Me 4

My Boys: Like The X-Men Only Not

I asked them to create their own X-Men/superhero character. This is what I got. Monkey-cat man and a pants-less king/robber dude. I’m at a loss. 

After school today, I had to stop to talk to Luke’s teacher about some accommodations we need to get in place for him for his schoolwork while we begin his tutoring for dyslexia. On the way home after my conversation, the boys and I were talking about how much they dislike having people know that they’re struggling. They don’t want to feel different than their classmates and they don’t want their classmates looking at them differently. Luke hadn’t even wanted me to talk to his teacher, but I convinced him that she needed to understand his difficulties so she could help him. Even at that, he was insistent that we find a way to help him in which no one in his class need ever find out about his dyslexia. Since I just last night wrote about the boys and how grateful I am that their struggles are occurring earlier in their lives rather than later, I thought I would take the opportunity to reinforce my thoughts on the subject by talking to them about it.

“You need to step back and look at the bigger picture on this, Luke. You’re having some difficulties on the front end, but these things you’re going through will just make you stronger in the long run.”

“I just don’t want any of my classmates to know I’m different,” he replied.

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m afraid they’ll think I’m weird,” he said.

“They already think you’re weird,” I added.

“I don’t want this to make me unpopular,” Luke continued, unabated in his concern for his reputation as class clown.

Unpopular? Seriously? The kid is 9 years old. Is he already planning on being Homecoming King?

“Seriously, Luke?” Joe asked. “Everyone loves you because you’re so cute and funny. I don’t think they’ll stop liking you because you can’t read. I told my classmates about my ADHD and they don’t even get what it is. I don’t think your classmates will care.”

“I don’t want them to know,” Luke insisted.

“Luke, sweetie, you’re looking at this all wrong,” I tried again. “All these struggles you’re having now are going to help you later in life. You’re going to be able to face anything because you’ve had to be so brave and dedicated through all this. Dyslexia is not a problem. It’s a gift.”

“It’s not a gift,” he whined. “It’s a curse.”

It got quiet while I tried to figure out how to convince Luke that his embarrassment now at not being able to read as well as the other kids is actually a good thing for him. Then, out of nowhere, Joe piped up.

“Luke…it’s like the X-Men. They have powers and abilities that other people don’t have. They want to keep them a secret because they feel like freaks. Some of them think their powers are a curse. But, they’re not. Their powers make them special. They’re different and it’s not bad. They can use their special abilities to do all kinds of things.”

“Exactly,” I replied. “What Joe said.”

Okay. Okay. So, my boys aren’t exactly the X-Men. I mean, they’re not telepathic, they can’t shoot people with a high-powered optic lasers, and they’re not exactly conjuring up storms to smash their enemies. On the flip side, though, they are special in their own right. They may wish now that they were just “normal” like other people. But, I hold out hope that someday they’ll see that the challenges of being different have been a gift and not a curse. Maybe someday they’ll be proud of their own accomplishments and maybe they’ll even think they’re cool, even if they don’t have retractable, razor-sharp claws like Wolverine.

 

 

Posted on by Me 4

What To Expect Is The Unexpected

My most unexpected expected things

A week ago tonight, my husband and I were not in a good place. We were grappling with the knowledge that our youngest son (our easy one) might be severely dyslexic and in need of a lot of help. We couldn’t decide which news was worse…the fact that he was dyslexic and would struggle with language, writing, spelling, and reading his entire life or that perhaps the best thing we could do to help him in the long run was to move him to a “special” school that caters to children with learning disabilities. The whole thing stunk worse than a dead mouse in a car’s heating duct.

When you find out you’re pregnant, you run out and get a copy of What To Expect When You’re Expecting because you want to know what you’re in for. You’re excited about what the future has in store. Last Monday night, after we’d received the less than positive news from the dyslexia specialist, we took the boys out to fulfill a promise we’d made a couple days earlier. We went to Target to buy more Skylanders because, well, why not? While browsing around in Target, I saw a copy of that ubiquitous pregnancy bible. I suddenly hated that book. I stared at it with contempt.

“That book is worthless,” I told Steve.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because it doesn’t matter what happens when you’re pregnant. When you’re pregnant, you believe everything is going to be perfect. You’re going to have the delivery of your dreams where everything will go exactly as planned. Your child is going to be born healthy. He’s going to be strong and flawless enough that he can do all the things you hope he will do. He will speak two languages by age 5. He will make the winning catch in the baseball game. He’ll take calculus in 10th grade because he’s just that smart. He’ll get accepted to five, Ivy League colleges and give the commencement address to his high school class as valedictorian. When you’re pregnant, you can see no other outcome. What they need is a book called What To Expect Is The Unexpected,” I said quite bitterly. I was in a very bad place.

The past week of my life was far longer than I wanted it to be. Last Wednesday night I remember looking at Steve and asking him how it could ONLY be Wednesday. Hadn’t we lived a lifetime since Monday? I wasn’t sure how I would make it to the weekend. But, I did. And with each passing day and with each little bit of additional information about dyslexia, we began to feel better. What had looked so bleak was beginning to look palatable. On Saturday after we saw the James Redford film, The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia, we understood that dyslexia is no longer the brick wall that it once was. There are programs that can help a dyslexics greatly. And, we’re in the position to help our son. No matter what he needs, we’ll be able to make it work. They say knowledge is power and they are right. The more we learn, the more we recognize that this diagnosis does not equal doom. Luke’s already on the road to getting the help he needs. With some hard work and a little perseverance, Luke will still be able to do a keg stand at college someday. And, unlike most parents, we’ll be proud because he worked hard and made it there on his own.

When my boys struggle, and they do it a lot, I remind them that every single hardship they are enduring while they’re young will only make them stronger and more resilient as they get older. I tell them that the kids that have it easy now one day won’t have it so easy and, for those kids who’ve never had to fight to overcome an obstacle, life will seem suddenly, incredibly, and insurmountably difficult. For my boys, though, and for all kids who have to put in longer hours, life’s hardships will just be another day at work. My boys may have it rough on the front end but once they get through these challenges, they will know they can tackle anything. And, although it does not seem like it to them now, that experience is a gift.

Twelve years ago I was expecting my first child. I had the book. I thought I was ready to go. What I realize now is that even with the book, I had no clue. What I thought I wanted for my sons was the wrong thing. The universe corrected me and, as hard as I took it sometimes, it was absolutely the right thing. Life is not for sissies. And if there’s one thing I know now about my boys for certain it’s that they’re not sissies.

Posted on by Me

Just Another Walk In The Park

An alternate view of myself

We’ve had a couple rough days here in our house as we begin to accept the reality that Luke has dyslexia.  Luke has been dealing with his differences for a while, working very diligently to disguise his struggles and fit in despite them, but we haven’t had to face them until now. I spent my morning reading a great deal online. I looked into support groups, testing options, literature, schools, and summer camps. It was mentally exhausting. Around 11:30, my brain had absorbed all it could sponge up. I was spent.

The sky was clear and sunny. Despite the November date on the calendar, the temperatures outside hovered in the mid 60s. I didn’t see how I could, in good conscience, get myself into a yoga studio on a gorgeous day like this. So, I leashed up the dog and headed into the open space park behind our house to do my usual four-mile hike. As Ruby pulled me toward our standard clockwise route on this loop hike, I stopped. She stopped. I just needed to pause, to be in the moment. I had to stop thinking and simply be.

Sometimes, things don’t go the way we would like. I had just gotten to a place of comfort with Joe’s situation when this new obstacle presented itself. So much is going to have to alter in our lives going forward. We will probably have to change Luke’s diet. We may need to change his school. We’ll shift our expectations and our strategy as parents. It’s time to look at things in our lives with fresh eyes. With that in mind, Ruby and I took our walk today against our usual grain. We proceeded in a counter clockwise direction with an eye to something different. The changes this family is facing don’t necessarily make our lives more difficult. They merely make them different. Today I walked the same path I’ve been walking but I did it a little differently. I looked at it with a new lens. The only thing that changed was my perspective. As soon as I started walking north instead of south, it stopped feeling unfamiliar. It simply felt like walking and the particulars weren’t important. I realize now that is how we’re going to get through this new challenge. Step by step we will move forward until it no longer seems new and challenging, until it’s just another walk in the park.

Posted on by Me 4

I Hate It When The Talking Heads Are Right

Luke back when life was all do-rags and cream puffs.

A little less than two weeks ago, I wrote about a terrible nightmare I had about my boys. That nightmare, similar to another one I had a couple years ago, highlighted some underlying guilt I have about not having devoted as much time and attention to my youngest son as I have to my oldest. My oldest son, diagnosed as ADHD three years ago, required a lot of extra time and effort from me. I felt incredibly grateful that Luke was an easy child who was plugging along in school and appeared to be relatively average. That was until the bottom dropped out.

Luke had a delay with his reading skills, but he was holding his own. While not reading at the same level as his classmates, his teachers had seen some progress. We had too. His school grades were decent. All was fine as far as we could tell. Then, with the start of this school year, I noticed that my son who had gotten mostly A and B grades in spelling was suddenly unable to pass his spelling tests. Something seemed off, so we paid a school psychologist to test him for possible learning difficulties. After reviewing his school work and spending six hours testing and observing him she told us that she suspects he is dyslexic and most likely ADHD like his brother. She suggested we immediately get him into intensive tutoring with a dyslexia specialist.

Today, Luke started that tutoring. Mrs. B spent an hour with Luke in our kitchen. I could hear bits and pieces of the session, but I stayed away so as not to be a distraction to my son who is already somewhat easily distracted. When the session was over, Luke ran upstairs and I went down to speak with the tutor. When she asked me to sit down, I should have known I was in for it. She told me that not only was she sure he’s dyslexic but she believes he has “severe” dyslexia and dysgraphia. In other words, not only does he struggle with reading but his writing is also a problem. She spent about a half an hour with me, scrawling information on a lined piece of notebook paper about holistic treatments, dietary changes, dyslexia support groups, books I should read, a summer camp Luke should attend, and specialized schools we should look at getting Luke into as soon as humanly possible. I was dumbfounded. I did not see this coming at all. She put her hand on mine and told me (as a fellow parent of a dyslexic child) to “have a glass of wine and a good cry.” Seriously? Thanks, lady.

I took her advice, though, and was crying as I locked the door behind her. My first stop was the basement where through clouded eyes I spied a shiraz, pulled it from its storage space, and cradled it lovingly as I ascended the stairs. I was uncorking the wine when hubby came through the door and I was able to share the news with him. I’m an introvert. I need time to process things. I don’t think quickly on my feet. As the tutor was being straight with me (something I am grateful for even though what she said sucked harder than my Dyson), my brain shut off. It took me a good hour to get my bearings again, to stop feeling sorry for myself, and come back to the place where I usually live, where I know that my sons are gifted in their own way and will be just fine.

Still, I can’t help but think back to those dreams…the ones where I have so much guilt for not being there for Luke. Someone or something in the universe heard my complaints and my concerns. I’m being afforded the opportunity to make up for what I’ve been lax about. Luke gets to be my focus for a while. I get to spend some time making sure he is getting the help he needs to be successful. I will get to learn an entirely new vocabulary to help me deal with his learning differences. I will start using phrases like IEP and 504. I will get to spend hours at the Children’s Hospital of Colorado again, devoting my energy to Luke. Luke will no longer be neglected. This is the universe’s way of correcting the slight I noticed. I sincerely hope this means those horrific nightmares will become a thing of the past. There had better be some payout from this, right?

As I sit here tonight, a catchy Talking Heads song keeps playing in my brain…”Watch out, you might get what you’re after.”

Posted on by Me 4

Nobody Puts Joe In A Corner

Who stands in a corner voluntarily? Joe does.

I swear, I’d really like to believe my boys are exceptionally bright but sometimes they make me think I should set my expectations a wee bit lower. This evening I was sitting on the sofa helping Joe practice his words for his spelling test tomorrow. Spelling has never been an easy subject for Joe, but even as the words have increased in difficulty during his fifth grade year, he has been doing a bit better with spelling this year than he did last year. (Yes. I was, in fact, simultaneously knocking on wood and typing just then.) I’ve begun to see a light at the end of the tunnel, as if his hard work is paying off and things are finally starting to take root in his brain. He didn’t struggle at all with hemisphere and he breezed right through isthmus. He was even able to give me the correct spelling and a word-for-word definition for archipelago. Then, just when I was starting to get a bit cocky thinking that all the time and effort I’ve put into being a stay-at-home caregiver was at long last yielding measurable results, he said something that really confused me.

“Okay, Joe. Spell tributary.”

“Mom…wait. Wait. I have to tell you something first,” he pleaded.

All too familiar with his stall tactics, I pressed on.

“Spell tributary and then you can tell me,” I replied.

“T-r-i-b-u-t-a-r-y,” he spit out. Then, as quick as lightning without a pause for breath in between his words he spewed forth, “Mom-today-I-stuck-my-nose-in-the-corner-of-the-dining-room-by-the-magnetic-board.”

He said it so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to catch half the words. Still, he was looking at me expectantly as if he’d just divulged the magic fix-it solution for the holes in the ozone layer.

“What?” was all I could muster. Well…that and a quizzical scrunching of my eyebrows.

“I-stuck-my-nose-in-the-corner-of-the-dining-room-by-the-magnetic-board,” he said again, slightly more slowly but still in a barely intelligible way.

“Okay,” I said with brows still furrowed, “that time I got corner and magnetic board. What corner?”

“UGH!” he was getting frustrated with my slow-uptake skills. “The corner in the dining room by the magnetic board.”

“Yeah? What about it?” I asked.

“Today, I stuck my nose in the corner of the dining room over by the magnetic board,” he repeated, trying very hard to be kind to his old and clearly mentally impaired mother.

“What? When did you do this?”

“When I was working on my math homework,” he replied.

Okay. This was starting to make some sense. It’s not unusual for any child to seek a break from his math homework. It’s even less surprising when your ADHD child becomes distracted from the process of long division.

“The next question, I guess, is WHY?” I asked, drawing out the end of that interrogative word hoping it would help him to understand how truly bizarre what he had just disclosed was.

“Because I’ve never done that before. I’ve never seen the house from that angle,” he replied with a tone that told me he was making perfect sense and I was an idiot not to understand it without explanation.

“Wow, Joe,” I said, trying my best not to look concerned about his mental faculties. “That’s an interesting reason to subject yourself to voluntary time in the corner.”

“I was curious,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. Then, as quickly as the conversation started it was over. “What’s the next word?” he asked.

Later, I was retelling the story to hubby who had been out with his parents this evening. After laughing about it for a bit, we started thinking about how differently Joe views the world. We’ve never been able to enter into how his ADHD mind works. We continue to try, but without firsthand knowledge and experience, we’re befuddled. We began to wonder if perhaps Joe knows something we don’t about the world. Maybe there’s something we’re missing? Simultaneously, we went and stood in separate corners in the dining room to see for a moment the world through Joe’s filter.

“I’ve never done this before,” Steve said.

“Me either. Ten years in this house and I’ve never once had my nose in a corner,” I replied.

“Does your nose touch the actual corner of the wall?” Steve inquired from the other corner of the dining room.

“Well, the magnetic board is blocking me at my height, but if I scrunch down a bit let’s see. Yep. Yes it does. It fits right into the corner,” I told him.

“Huh,” he said.

“Why? Does yours?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Who knew?”

Now, you could think we’re a little nutty for sticking our noses into the corner the way our son did, but after 11 years of grasping at straws trying to find a passage into Joe’s ADHD brain we will try anything. We desperately want to understand him better. Any hints at all would be welcome. The funny thing is that I started out thinking my son was crazy for choosing to stick his nose into the corner of the dining room, but the more I thought about it the better I felt about it. While most people take things for granted, Joe investigates. He theorizes. He experiments. He doesn’t accept things at face value. He is deeply curious, and there are far worse things you can be in this world. So, I take it back. I am totally okay if my son, by conventional standards, doesn’t appear to be exceptionally bright. If some people choose to think he’s exceptionally weird, that’s okay by me too. The bottom line is that he’s exceptional, and that’s pretty freaking fantastic.

 

 

Posted on by Me 6

Doing The Oblivious Backfloat While Swimming In Denial

You know how you know something is happening, but you don’t really see it until you have photographic proof? This happens to me a lot with weight gain. I feel okay about putting on that extra ten pounds until someone catches a shot of me at the dinner table at Christmas and suddenly I’m thinking, “Whoa…wait a minute. What happened here?” as if I am shocked and hadn’t actually noticed that my pants haven’t been fitting lately. Well, today, my sister took a family photo for us at the corn maze we were at with our boys. As I was going over the photos again just a few minutes ago, I was shocked to find that my oldest son is now tall enough that the top of his head reaches my shoulders. I looked at the photo a few times to verify this. Then I called for a second opinion.

“Steve…I think Joe has grown. He’s almost up to my shoulders,” I told him.

“Yep. He sure is,” was all he said. I’m sure he was thinking I was a complete numbskull for not having noticed this before.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“It’s been happening,” he said. “You haven’t noticed?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I knew he was getting bigger but I guess I hadn’t realized how much bigger. Someday he might actually be taller than me,” I said.

“Let’s hope so,” he replied.

“Do you think he’ll get facial hair too,” I asked.

“If he’s lucky, he’ll even get more of it than me,” he quipped.

“You know…when I said I was okay that they were growing up, I wasn’t really focusing on this part of the actual growth process. I’m not prepared for them to go through puberty, start shaving, and lock themselves in their bedroom for private time. I don’t want their cute little voices to change. How will I know they’re still my babies when that happens?”

My darling husband looked at me as if I’m a loon which, let’s face it, I am.

“Let me see the photo,” he said. Then he peered at my laptop. “Huh. I don’t think I’m that much taller than you either,” he continued, clearly thinking something was amiss with the photo.

“You’re six inches taller than me,” I informed him. How can he not know this stuff?

“Are you sure you’re not standing in a hole?” he asked.

“What kind of crater-like hole I would I be standing in while in a flat corn maze? Maybe it wasn’t me at all? Maybe you were standing on a hill?” I shot back.

“I’m just saying that maybe he’s not really quite as tall as he looks in the photo,” he continued while ignoring my snarky attitude.

Me and the boys in 2009

Joe’s in bed right now, and he’s actually sleeping and not just watching My Little Pony on his iPad. (Oops. Wasn’t supposed to mention that my 11 year old son is currently enjoying watching that show on Netflix because that tidbit might embarrass him. Oh, paybacks. How I love thee.) It would be counter-productive to wake him up and ask him to stand next to me so we could measure his height. At his last physical, though, he was measured at just over 54″ tall. I like to say I’m 65″ tall, but I fudge that number by at least half an inch, maybe more. All of this means that it’s completely possible that he is shoulder height to me. When did this happen? Just three years ago, he was teeny.

It’s funny how sometimes it takes photographic evidence to convince us that time is marching on and our children are growing up despite our best wishes. We go from day to day in such a dizzying rush, trapped in the now of running here and there, and we truly can’t see the forest for the trees. My boys are growing up. And, although I know that as they inch higher and higher in grade school, it’s not the same as seeing them standing up to my shoulder in a photo. It’s not real until I try to pick up Joe and find it to be an incredible struggle now that he’s finally 70 pounds. I guess it’s easier to float along as a parent, just swimming in denial. Damn you, George Eastmann for pioneering celluloid film and the Brownie camera that led us down this slippery slope into a world where our images are continually being captured. It’s a lot more difficult to live in oblivion when you’re staring at the proof.

Posted on by Me 2

There Are Worse Things

I have this little game I play with myself when things aren’t going as I had hoped. I force perspective on myself. I try to take myself out of my sadness, disappointment, and frustration by imagining something worse than what I am going through. For example, say I’ve got a bad cold and I’m feeling particularly whiny about it. I will take a minute to think about how much worse things could be. I could be stricken with a life threatening illness or dying of starvation somewhere. But, I’m not. It’s just a cold. I will be fine. Somehow, thinking of the worst makes the actual seem not so bad by comparison.

For the past three weeks, we’ve had our youngest son spending his Saturday mornings with a school psychologist doing some testing for a possible learning disability. Luke’s reading and spelling have gone downhill in the past year. Things we swore he knew are suddenly missing from his brain. Having gone through similar issues with our other son, we were quick to jump on it this time around. After six hours of testing and several question and answer sessions with the psychologist, we received some news this afternoon. She noticed that Luke has gaps in his early reading skills. She suggested he needs intensive tutoring to fill in these gaps. If the tutoring doesn’t work, he may be dyslexic. She also thinks he might have ADHD like his brother. She can’t make that diagnosis, but it will be mentioned in her report.

It’s not what I hoped, but it’s not the worst I could have found out. For weeks I’ve been anxious about what she would tell us. I tried to prepare myself for whatever she could say. I have to admit that when Luke started struggling in school like Joe did, I cried a bit. I imagined going through with him what I already go through with Joe. I thought that there was no way I would be able to deal with another child with learning issues. I already work so hard to help the one. How would I find the time, the patience, the energy, and the strength to do it with another child? The thought stressed me out. Luke was supposed to be my easy child. I didn’t want this. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. Then, I thought about all the worse things that could be. I thought that they could have been born with greater defects than learning issues. They could be ill. Worse yet, they could not be here with us at all.

It won’t be easy helping two of them through whatever they face, but no one said parenting would be easy. So tonight, instead of being depressed about the outcome of the tests, I’m just grateful that I have such wonderful boys. They’re bright, funny, sensitive, and sweet. They’re going to struggle in school. So what? We’ll do our best to help them through it. They may never make honor roll or become class valedictorian. It doesn’t matter. We’ll just stick together and do our best. The rest will work itself out with time.

Posted on by Me 4

You’ve Got To Leave If You Want To Be Missed

Our cute sons

Last week was a whirlwind for me. Flew to Boston on Friday. Spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in New England hitting five states in three days as was my goal. Arrived home late on Monday night. Put in my usual mom day on Tuesday beginning at 6:30 a.m. Whipped my way through laundry, grocery shopping, and packing so I could get up at 5 a.m. on Wednesday to head to the airport with my own mom to head to Vegas to celebrate her birthday there. Was in Vegas from 9 a.m. Wednesday until 8 p.m. yesterday. During our time in Vegas, my 70 year old mom and I did a ton of walking. I wish I’d been wearing a pedometer to measure it. (I mean, when do you go to Vegas and eat out for every meal and come home to discover you’ve actually lost weight on your vacation?) Today, a full week after my travel commenced, I collapsed. I love travel more than most things, but it was such a gift to be home today that I did nothing. Literally. No-thing. Not one thing. From 6:45 a.m. when I heard my boys wake up and head into the computer room to play Minecraft until 3 p.m., I sat in my bed. It was a stick-a-fork-in-me kind of day. I was done. Done physically. Done mentally. Done emotionally. I needed a day to recover from my vacations. Go figure.

Tonight, we went to spaghetti dinner at my dad’s church. Riding over in the car, it occurred to me that I hadn’t spent much time at all with my boys in over 7 days. While I was gone, I was too busy to miss them. Every moment of my travel had been filled with things to do. When they woke me up at 6:45 a.m., I wasn’t annoyed. I popped into their computer room and sat on the floor hugging them for a few minutes. Even though we were all home today, they spent most of their day playing outside with friends while I convalesced in my room. So tonight at dinner they had to keep telling me to stop hugging on them, staring at them, and telling them how handsome they are. I was embarrassing them with all the attention. I couldn’t help it, though. It wasn’t until tonight that I noticed how much I had missed them without even realizing it.

This evening I was reminded of why we need time away from our children. We need to step back a while so when we return we can savor them. How often do we get caught up in the day-to-day routine and fail to appreciate our kids for their creativity, their fourth-grade humor, and their dirty faces? The things about them that really get on my nerves when I’m faced with it day to day, like the way Joe likes to wipe his greasy, buttered hands on his nice shirts or the way Luke goes straight to whining mode when we mention it’s time to read, made me smile tonight. I had more patience for their antics. When we were finished with dinner, we drove them to a nearby playground and sat and watched them play for 15 minutes. Watched them play. I never take the time to do that, to simply be still and enjoy witnessing their childhoods. Today was a good reminder of why we leave our kids. If you can get beyond their sad faces when you’re leaving, beyond the forty text messages you receive from them daily when you’re gone, and the immediate question “what did you bring me” when you walk back in the door, you will discover that you actually missed the little buggers. You might just find out that they missed you too. But, you’ll have to leave first.

Posted on by Me

10,000 Ways That Won’t Work

Joe on Mt. Sherman

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~Thomas Alva Edison

Had yet another rough day. Seems like there have been too many of those recently. So, I came here to write with a brain spinning with frustration and, therefore, too spun out to be creative. In these instances, one thing that often gives me a jumping off point for my writing is finding a quote I can relate to. I flipped through one of my books and found this one by Thomas Edison. It’s a quote about perspective and perseverance, and it perfectly fits what I feel I’ve been going through lately with my boys. I have been researching, reading, investigating, and conjecturing about every possible way I can help improve their lives as they struggle with learning disabilities. Yet, for all my effort, the results have been seemingly inconsequential.

Then I saw this quote. It made me laugh. Maybe I’m just approaching this all from the wrong angle? Yes. I’ve tried a whole heap of things to help them. I’ve felt worthless because nothing has worked out. But, just because I haven’t found the answer yet doesn’t mean I’ve failed. Like he said, I’ve simply found 10,000 ways that won’t work. That’s not negative progress. That’s 100% progress in the right direction. That’s 10,000 steps closer to my goal of finding a solution. I simply haven’t found it yet. But, I’m narrowing the field down and, sooner or later, I will hit upon what I’ve been searching for. I’ve eliminated enough variables that the solution must be getting close.

I need to stop being so damn hard on myself. I’m doing the best I can. I need to tell the little boss inside my head to shut up. I’m busy working.

 

Posted on by Me 3