26 November 2006

Butterflies

A Thanksgiving dinner conversation between Amelia, 4; cousin Sydney, 11; and Uncle Tom:

Uncle Tom: Both of you have really blue eyes.
Sydney: My brother has blue eyes, too. It must be in our genes.
Amelia: Yeah. Or in the butterflies on my tights.

15 November 2006

In a Name

The parent-teacher conference sign-up sheet hangs above the cubbies outside my 4-year-old’s classroom.

If I learned anything from her first year of preschool it’s this: telling your 3-year-old’s teacher you already know she is ADHD earns instant LUNATIC status. Big red L on the forhead. I’m just mom, the person who knows this being better than anyone on the planet, the one who can anticipate every move, action and reaction. How would I know?

“Keep opinions and armchair evaluations tucked between your ears,” I tell myself, printing A-M-E-L-I-A into the 12:30 timeslot. “Any sharing is over sharing. Don’t be the 'crazy women.'” This is my silent pep talk.

“She’s well within the range of typical behavior for her age,” the teachers say.

They didn’t spend three June days chasing this child – then 15-months-old - up and down, up and down, up and down the steep bowl of an amphitheater, passing family after happy little family relaxing on blankets with their content toddlers.

“Lots of kids have trouble sitting in circle at this age.”

“Yes, I know.” I say, and before I can stop the flow of words: “But this is different.”

(of course it is, you freaking nutball)

It's her birthright.

Mom, ADHD. Dad, probably ADD/ODD (but can't deternime that without some evaluation, introspection and, God forbid, a little work toward self realization - and, that's another post). Aunts, ADD. Cousins, three for four. Grandparents, check and check. Nobody questions the generational genetic path processing disorders travel. Nobody refutes that the likelihood of two impacted parents having an ADHD child is near 75 percent.

And, nobody ever says: “Wow, Amelia is such an easy child.”

She’s called spirited, strong-willed, smart, active, outgoing, self-directed, opinionated, persistent, and free spirited. She is a free spirit.

Beautiful words. Doubly so when they’re describing my girls. Positive, positive, positive. Add them together and you get the classic ADHD child, and it can still be positive. I’m not saying there’s anything easy about it, but who says easy equals good?

This ‘flawed’ thinking style – freethinking – as opposed to the other kind – linear thinking, it’s an asset. Or, it can be with the right nutrients - love, patience, understanding and humor. Love. (so true, Carrie, LOVE.)

Whoever my kids are, however they think, they come by it honestly.

But, oh, does our culture love and hate labels. ADHD and processing disorder diagnosises are prolific. Sure the explosion is partly driven by the poisons we eat and drink and breathe, but it's more than that.

We’re slowly starting to GET the brain. So we classify. And we label.

Why, why, why must there be a negative connotation?

I say: “Amelia is probably ADHD with a some processing glitch.”

Teachers hear, “When can I start medicating this child into submission?” They hear me saying something is wrong with my daughter, something needs fixing. They missunderstand.

If she’s evaluated, diagnosed and labeled, so what? Maybe meds will one day help her, maybe she’ll never need them. Maybe diet changes will harness her intrepid mind, this brain that comes with a lifetime guarantee of special chaos - a gift and an Albatross all in one.

Let the labels provide a measure for knowing the can’ts from the won’ts. Nothing positive, nothing negative, nothing more.

If they open her vision and lead to higher ground, a place from which she sees, seeks and finds tools to thrive, bring ‘em on. I parent better by recognizing the point where threatening with consequences becomes moot, understanding the exact expression that says she is physiologically incapable of “making better choices” to attain or avoid something. No matter how badly she wants to.

I see it. I get it. I change the approach.

Better she grow-up understanding why finishing a simple task is sometimes about as simple as climbing Mt. Everest barefoot in a blizzard, than believing the charges of indifference, laziness and lagging motivation – the chorus of “if she just applied herself. She just isn’t motivated. She just doesn't care.”

Labels are just words. A name, and what’s in a name, right?

If the label fits, go ahead, tag my kids, but don’t ever call them lazy. Don’t ever accuse them of not caring, not trying or not working hard enough.

Call me crazy for calling it right now as I plainly see it.

Meanwhile, I'll just keep my mouth closed and one hand tight around Amelia's, the other holding Josie's, while I guide them across the slick spots to the wide open space of their strengths.

four hours and thrity-nine minutes into Wednesday (might as well just stay up now)

12 November 2006

Linking

I have links. I have links! I am so f'ing proud of my technology-challenged-bad-self. I added them all by myself. Looked at the example in the template, picked up the phone to call for help, shut the phone and forced myself to figure it out. Yea for me!

Kept hearing Jerri tell the story of her transformation from "couldn't even change a light bulb" to home repair diva! Thanks Jerri, you're a huge inspiration.

I'm taking on the DVD player next. The stereo. The wi-fi connection. I'm taking over the whole electronic world.

Fifteen hours and twenty minutes into Sunday (my first daylight post)

09 November 2006

restless ramble midnight hour song

cant get enough water
soak it in and wash it out
steaming darkness
can't get enough air
big sky breathing lightly
walking, walking
can't get enough time
girls here and gone
twisted moments
can't get enough words
out of my head fast
enough for calm
can't get food
down my throat and into my belly
chew and swallow, chew and swallow
can't get enough rhythm
words and water, words and walking
breathe
breathe it all in
in it all is
enough

three minutes into thursday

06 November 2006

The Zone Taketh

Obviously, the Universe has an urgent message to deliver through my purse.

I have a Zone - a special break in the 4th dimension, a wormhole trailing a half step behind me - that nabs my things. Dangling purse strings, loose ATM cards, notebooks, wallets, mail, cheek books, phone numbers, hair brushes, one of every pair of earrings, money. Anything not bolted down. The Zone is undiscriminating, though it's partial to cash. The last few months, oh does it have a thing for my purse.

It's August. Thursday, August 2. One day after I look from the therapist, to my husband, to the sketch of two faces that must have been drawn by one of her kids, and tell him that I want to separate. Two days before I'm to stand before his family and marry his baby brother and fiancée in a ceremony they want me to write. *

The list is groceries and haircuts and cleaning before the in-laws arrive tomorrow, before work this afternoon. Then it grows by one, pick up a shoulder x-ray for the husband in Clackamas before noon, please, for his doctor appointment. All day, wherever I am, I am somewhere else. I am on the phone in the basement numb, sobbing, while the girls watch Clifford upstairs. "I told him. I said it exactly how I practiced with it you before the session: 'neither of us is getting what we need in this relationship, neither of is happy and we haven't been for a long time. I need to try something different. I want to separate.'" I am on the phone in the kitchen rehashing while I scramble the eggs and my girls watch Arthur. I am on the phone in the car driving, speaking in code, while my girls have free range with the bagels and cream cheese in their car seats. This is where I am when the cars stops outside Kuts 4 Kids.

I am on Hawthorne, on the phone, late for the appointment, outside of Kuts, and my purse is not. Cut the engine; turn the key, reach to the passenger seat for my bag. No bag. No bag, no X-ray, only an empty seat sticking its tongue out at me and the snapshot vision of the envelope and purse on the driver's side roof. Me getting the girls settled in with their bagels, buckling in and pulling out onto Sunnyside Road, then immediately onto 205. It's a small purse, not much inside. There’s wad of old receipts, travel toothpaste, work ID, wallet, checkbook, passport for ID because the driver’s license left weeks ago.

All of it off the roof and into The Zone.

The thing about The Zone is this: The Zone taketh, and The Zone usually giveth back. I circle 205 from Sunnyside to Johnson Creek four times, go back to the urgent care center for another copy of the film, pull into hotel next door overlooking the onramp. This day started hours ago and we have spent most of it in the car, on the same stretch of 205. The girls sleep and wake in the back. Amelia reaches over, takes Josie's small hand in hers, and bites. Screams. Heat. Ninety? Ninety-five? Hot. Just plain fucking hot.

The envelope is lying in a crosswalk, crises-crossed in tire tracks. The small purse, a flat rectangle of soft stripes, is gone. Then it is not. A woman calls me at the paper.

"I saw it there by the freeway entrance and it's just such a pretty little bag that I knew it must be really special to someone so I drove down to Johnson Creek circled back around to Sunnyside and got it. I just kept hoping, putting it out there, the whole time, that no one would take it. I can just tell how loved it is. It was run over a few times and the toothpaste got squished, so I took everything out and cleaned it. And, I washed the purse for you."

It's two weeks later. Mid-August. We leave the therapist’s office agreeing to continue our separation conversation over sushi. He leaves on the bike. I sit on the gnarled roots of a giant Oak, back against the trunk, smoking an American Spirit beside the car. I am not a smoker. Not a consistent smoker anyway. I'm not a consistent anything, but when it comes to smoking just add stress. Cigarettes, weight and Neil Young, the trifecta, my emitional health barrometer. I'm smoking a pack every few days and I'm two-sizes smaller than I started the summer, but I've replaced "Helpless" with "Never Too Late" and Michael Franti tells me in a continuos loop: "Don't fear the water, you can swim inside you with in your skin ... Don't fear the long road, on the long road you've got a long time to simple song ... Don't fear your teachers, if you listen you can hear your music in the school bell..."

Just keep moving.

When I get to the sushi train the purse is strapped across my chest: passport, checkbook, old receipts, work ID, Adderall. No wallet. It's not in the therapist’s office, not by the big Oak, not in the street. The Zone taketh.

A woman calls me at the paper. Her son saw my wallet lying on the curb at the corner of SW 11th and Morrison downtown, and grabbed it because he's always losing things and wants to make sure I get this back. There's no ID in the wallet so she uses an appointment card to track my work number and calls me there. And, The Zone giveth back.

I call it The Zone,you call it ADHD. I'm okay with labels. Semantics. They help reveal my brain to me and give me context for why I need the same lessons repeatedly screamed into my ears before I'm willing to hear. They help me understand me, have compassion for me, have compassion for others who's wires don't all connect - everyone. Celebrate the weirdness of being. On a good day, anyway.

It's November. Thursday, November 2. The heat is gone. The sun is gone. The therapist is gone. The house is gone. The rain is singing to me. The list is birthday present at Ross and get Amelia from school and hand the parenting baton over to their dad during a Birthday Party in Burger King play land. Josie refuses to take off her slippers - three days of Cookie. I'm raw and impatient, flustered as I double-check the kids have everything they need for the next four sleeps. This is where I am when the car stops outside of Burger King.

I am on Southwest Barbur, late for the party, outside of Burger King and my purse is not. Cut the engine; turn the key, reach to the passenger seat for my bag. No bag. Empty seat sticking its tongue out at me and the snapshot vision of the purse in the bottom of a blue shopping kart. It's a small purse, not much inside. There’s wad of old receipts, travel toothpaste, work ID, wallet, checkbook, passport for ID because the drivers license still has not been replaced.

Call Ross from the paper. A woman answers the phone. "Is there anything in it you can identify?"

"Yes. My work ID is clipped to the inside. It has my picture on it."

"And your passport?"

"Yes. My passport is in there, too."

"You shouldn't carry your passport. You could lose it." Pause. "You can get the purse at customer service." And, The Zone giveth again.

Three times in three moths. If The Zone takes this purse once more, I will never see it again. Never.

What's the lesson? Mindfulness? Replace license and stash passport? Whatever it is, it should be obvious now, this urgent message the Universe is sending via my purse.

Once. Just this once, can I PLEASE have the Cliff Notes?

Two hours and nine minutes into Tuesday.

****
*The wedding (the lament)
X and O,
I am honored to be an instrument in helping you voice your love and commitment to each other as friends and partners and voyagers in this epic life before you.

Marriage is so many things that slowly reveal themselves both subtly and starkly along the way. Above all, it is a love that I hope allows you to be for each other always with joy, peace and kindness. That pushes you to grow, to challenge yourselves and each other to become more together than you could have become alone. That lends you the courage to communicate openly, honestly, fiercely. To laugh and cry together without restraint so you may hold each other through your triumphs and your nightmares both, in a way that tightens your embrace on every step of this journey. So you may rest in the love that supports you. This love, the boat on which you will ride the ebb and flow of your lives together.

"The soul knows for sure only that it is hungry."

Maybe its true. If so, life is for sure only a journey to find things that nourish our quirky souls. In this quest to discover little things, evolving and elusive and happening all around, you have found each other to feed your phenomenal selves with one another.

Continue to find that richness as you do in green spaces where life is insatiable, unstoppable, and also where it sprouts from impossible circumstances, like trees punching through the rocks and crags. Wrap it tight around your entangled souls, a flowered vine that binds you.
These are the things I believe you HAVE found, that you know X and O, because here you are in this place surrounded by your families' love.

These are the things your two souls can express to each other in words that are yours alone.

May you find the joy and comfort in each other always that you speak today....

Vows ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bride's mom later in the afternoon: "I didn't realize you wrote that. That was just beautiful. You have such insight into marriage. How long have you been married?"

Me, twisting the ring, smiling weakly: "Ten years, next month."

Bride's mom: "Sigh. You must have an amazing marriage because that was just beautiful."

Me, three steps back: "Thanks. Um, would you excuse me for a moment please. I need to check on my kids."

02 November 2006

a swing and a slide

Thursday, November 02, 2006
Wind At My Back

It's the last of the sunshine-on-falling-leaves days, swirling color against the bright blue sky. We've been borrowing time for at least a month now and it's not just the weatherman that tells me this is the day to get out and do something about it. I know. I just know. Nov. 1, - it should have, could have been dumping on us all last month. Get out now or nurse those regrets to the rhythm of winter raining down for months.

Today is not a school day. It's special, because I don't get whole days to play and waste with my girls. There are school days and there are his days. Weekends are not mine. Weekends are work time. Weekends are late nights at the paper, then slipping, sipping, typing into my favorite hours - when quiet sanctuary lures whispered secrets into being. So much safer to tell a story when no one is awake to hear, isn't it? This day is rare. A diamond. No work. No school. Just me and my young travelers on our own with two buckets of Halloween booty and unscripted hours sprawling clear to dinnertime.

Amelia wants to go to the coast.

"It's morning," she announces, wrapped in pink footy pajamas, her footsteps rattling the apartment.

Morning. That's subjective. It's getting light outside, yes, but morning? Hardly. The thing about living in the living room is there is no place to send her. "Do you want to see what's on PBS kids?" Not an option. Not unless I want to watch Curious George, too.

At four-and-a-half Amelia is the size of a six-year-old and strong enough to take down a 10-year-old boy. My body braces for her hugs, a billion tiny strings pulled taught inside, just in case.

"Good morning, morning bright new day," a reflexive response, just like steeling myself for the hug. "Hurts aren't hugs, sunshine girl."

"Can I snuggle?" The bed shakes.

"Climb in, Sweetie." Her body softens until she feels like a four-year-old again, lying with me. Soft and perfect. "You know, it's not really morning yet. The clock is all mixed up right now." I'm stretching for kindness, but morning has never been my time.

And, Amelia has never been her age. "Has anyone ever told this child she's a baby?" people used to ask.

The moment they placed her on my belly, eyes wide and clear and blue, I saw a teacher. At less than 10 months she walked. At 15-months she spoke 5-word sentences, lamenting in the back of the car while our best friends were on vacation "I miss Laura, Jesse too." At 18-months she denounced diapers. At 20 months, during the first cold war, the first go at marriage counseling, she cut the breakfast table silence with the tiny plea. "Mommy loves Daddy. Daddy loves Mommy. Mommy hug Daddy."

She wants to go to the coast. The ocean has been pulling, pulling at me, too. Not today though, this is not the time. I can't reconcile my vision of staring at the water until I'm lost in the waves with the reality of chasing my children along the tide line until they are wet and whining, shivering and sandblasted. Can't let go of what I want it to be, but can have the grace to not attempt forcing it into being.

Anyway, the Subaru's alignment is off and a trip through the Coastal Range will push it past what I can afford to fix.

We'll go to the Gorge.

"Don't go to the Gorge," my best friend warns. "Do you know how windy it will be out there? Go to Forest Park or Tryon Creek."

"Yeah, you're right," I agree. "I just want to get out into the woods anyway. I just need to feel the earth under my feet."

But it's not right. I don't just want the woods. I want, I NEED, wide-open space and big water. I need the ocean and if I can't have that, then the gorge. Let the wind blow. The harder the better.

And the road, too. I need the road. These roads are as much my home as anyplace I have ever made a bed. All four directions converging on one point, carrying every possibility, all of it connected. My song is louder to the rhythm of the road. My mind turns faster with the rotation of the tires. My spirit is freer knowing with the turn of this wheel I am anywhere. I am following the harvest moon north along the Pacific to morning and breakfast in Arcata. I am racing the boar tide out of Anchorage along Turnagin Arm. I am churning through the Sierra Madre Del Sur, swift turns and unforgiving drops marked with peeling white crosses. I am chasing Spring north from Quintana Roo up the Gulf Coast to North Carolina, to rest and a month at the beach. Following the water, following the moon, following the flow always.

Pual Thoreaux said "Travel is flight and pursuit, both in equal parts," It echoes between my ears in ways that make me squirm.

Amelia and Josie are wrestling sleep when the big Columbia opens the sky above us. Clear blue to the Cascades, Mt. Hood piercing the sky and a million white lines chopping along the water. The baby's feet are nestled in Cookie Monster slippers that she refuses to trade for boots. I steer off the freeway to my favorite type of road - two lanes, no shoulder - passing waterfall after waterfall.

"Can we get out here?" Amelia asks at each. "When do we get to hike?" Nothing feels right. We keep going, going until I have looped down to I-5, dropped to the river.

Finally we are back to Rooster Rock, high basalt cliffs stretching above to the Crown Point. "How about here Mommy? How about the beach with the playground?" Yes. Here.

Amelia has never felt wind driving like this. "See all those white squiggles on the river," I point. "It's all the wind. The wind is pushing so hard along the water that it's making waves."

"Too cold, mommy. Too cold." Josie pleads to the open door. We make our picnic in the car, girls in the front and me squeezed between the booster and the car seat in the back. The baby at the helm. I've let them navigate and they chose to eat looking out to the playground (and freeway entrance), river behind us, because really there is no greater beauty than a swing and a slide. Wind pushes against the side of the car, nearly rocking it, and works the trees into a joyous dance.

"Playground?" I ask.

"Playground," they echo. We won't last long, but no way are we coming all the way out here and not playing.

The wind rips.

Josie shutters, drops to the ground balling herself into a tight blue heap with furry white borders.

Amelia runs, testing the wind. It pushes against her back and she leaps, laughing as it lifts her.

I spread my arms wide from my body, back to the wind, and let go. Let myself go, trusting in the wind. And the wind holds me.

***

Two hours and eleven minutes into Fiday.