Barnmaven

There is no "new" year

We make resolutions and rarely keep them.  We party like its 1999.  But really, is New Year's Eve that much different than any other midwinter night when we need to inject a little life into the dark of winter?

Its another day.  A Tuesday, this year.  And I am getting to the point in my life where I truly question the point of it.  Its almost as bad as birthdays;  47?  Its just like 37 but with more arthritis.   My reaction to NYE 2012?  "Where the FUCK did 2011 go?  Or 2010 for that matter?"  We get older and time picks up speed and one day we were thirty and woke up the next and we were fifty and trying to pay for college for the kids who were just five last week.

I don't get the point of New Year's resolutions.  Can't I just decide to do things at any old point in the year?  Does it make them less important if I didn't make them New Year's Eve?  The day I listened to "Landslide" while watching my baby girl in her high chair and decided I needed another baby, wasn't that a bigger day than NYE?  The day SG and I held hands in front of our parents and friends and told everyone we were a "THANG" - wasn't that a bigger day? 

The turn of the century, sure, that was a biggie.  I'd moved to New Jersey then, my ex and I were in our apartment, a year away from buying our first house and then immediately getting "in the family way" with Amazon Girl.  We must have listened to Prince tell us how he was partying like it was 1999 a thousand times the week prior.  I don't even remember now what we did... everyone was waiting for Y2K to make the world stop turning, and like every other apocalypse that hasn't materialized (Big shout-out to the Mayans!), it ends up being somewhat forgettable.   Except for my friends who moved to an island somewhere and built a house off the grid because, you know, pending apocalypse.  And when it didn't happen, he, who was certain this was IT, went a little cuckoo, and she said goodbye to a chapter in her life and went forth to kick some ass.

And let's talk about the folly of going out for NYE if you're neither (a) single or (b) childless.  Seriously, its just not feasible.  You either have to have the party at YOUR house and hope your kids get at least a few minutes of sleep while the adults get their freak on, or you have to pay a highly-in-demand babysitter three times what she normally gets to watch your kids, which leaves you about two drinks worth of cash in your pocket, then you get to fend off the drunken drivers all the way home and hope you don't, in your sober and self-protective state, do something stupid while driving by an officer which then necessitates you proving just how boring you are because you are the only sober person exiting a party or bar on NYE.

It really just better to stay home, order pizza, and try to stay awake long enough to bitch about the horrid lack of talent on TV and how dumb all those people are to stand in the freezing air in Time Square just to watch a well-lit orb do a shabby pole dance.

The important days, they don't need a calendar reference or a national holiday to matter.  They are the days when your son asks your friend for riding lessons - all by himself and of his own volition.  They are the days when you watch your incredibly proud husband stand on stage to put his son's officer's eupalets on his Navy uniform.  They are the days when you have the perfect ride on your horse, the perfect day at work, the best...nevermind....with your spouse or partner, the day you had an epiphany you didn't even see coming, the day your daughter needs her first bra and the many many nights you tuck your kids in bed and they hug you 'round the neck and sleepily declare their love.    The days you get to spend enjoying your parents and laughing with them over memories of the past and the follies of the present.  They are the days you feel the presence of God, the days you feel the smallness of the scale of your life against the wide width of the clamoring world, the days you drink in the sunlight and are grateful for one more moment of a life so sweet it hurts.

NYE.  Fun, to be sure.  A chance to kick up our heels and shake off the past, or to try to catch up on some much-needed sleep while rude neighbors shoot off lawn cannons.  A chance to kiss your date while fireworks burst in a dazzling array and a chance to pretend you can really change overnight into someone who eschews ice cream and goes to the gym five days a week. 

To me?  Its just another Tuesday. 

Every single day of the year is a chance to start over.  We need not limit ourselves to one day in January to try to become the better angels of our nature.

Its supposed to go better than this

We were already set up for a followup IEP meeting yesterday for Race Car Man.  As it turned out, even if there hadn't been one on the calendar we would have had it anway.  Tuesday...

...He had a good morning.  He was medication-compliant.  He got dressed when he was asked.  He rode the bus, stayed in his seat, kept his hands and his voice to himself, and earned a reward:  iPad time when he got to class.

Except when 10 minutes of iPad time was up, he was not ready to be done.  He melted down, all the way to the core.  It was bad, not only bad enough that he had to be picked up but also bad enough that he said some things he really should not have and got himself suspended for a day.  In the wake of events across the country, everyone is on edge and things they might have shrugged off last week aren't getting a free pass this week.

Later that afternoon, the new dog, who had been doing wonderfully well, was unpardonably aggressive.  We are responsible dog owners.  We knew what had to be done.  We checked out some alternatives but none of them were workable.

Tuesday night was kind of a blur of sadness, frustration and fear.  Its Christmas, dammit.  This is not how I hope for the holidays to commence -- with another tough IEP meeting where I get the distinct impression my son's teacher wants him in a different placement, followed by a tough decision about the fate of a much-loved pet who cannot be rehomed and who is a danger to people.

Fortunately at our IEP meeting, I had support from the district counselor whose opinion and mine were the same:  A change in placement doesn't solve the problems.  The problems will still exist and we can't ignore the danger of disrupting a child who is already struggling.  If the accepted model of behavioral therapy is applied, we see that we are trying interventions that aren't working.  Either we are mis-reading the antecedent behavior or the responses we are implementing are not working and we need to figure out new approaches.

We ended the meeting with some plans in place -- my ex will be spending time in Race Car Man's classroom on his weekday off.  The district counselor will work with the teacher, the aides, the school counselor and school psychologist to implement some different positive interventions.  We have an appointment with a new behavioral therapist and a plan to access some skills classes for both my son and for us as parents.  Clearly we all need some more tools for our toolboxes, and although the timing is unfortunate, we've got to move forward with intention and resolve.

I left that meeting to attend another work-related meeting that lasted the rest of the day.  I welcomed the chance to concentrate and engage with a cross-functional team of adults on everything BUT autism and dog problems. 

When I got home last night I spent some time engaging Race Car Man about what happened on Tuesday.  I'm always struck by how honest he is.  He admits his behaviors.  He doesn't try to deny what happened, but tells me he can't control himself when he gets that upset.  And he's right, he can't.  He doesn't have those skills yet.  So we talk about what are things it is OK to say when we are mad and things that will get you in big trouble, and I know we will have to spend some time helping him to practice using different words when he is angry and upset so that the next time it happens he has more tools to reach for. 

I suppose I should be feeling worse than I am, but despite the heavy baggage of the last couple of days, I have a sense of relief.  We have a plan and we have a good team to help my son.  I know that a lot of his issues are temporary -- he will either grow out of these behaviors or he will receive enough therapy to help him improve them.  Naturally, these problems will simply be replaced by other problems, but that's true for every person who ever lived, autism be damned.  I am terribly sad about our dog, but its spilled milk;  I can't undo what happened and I can't take chances with my family or with other people's families.  I salve the wound by offering to foster again after the grandpuppy goes home with her dad, who is spending Christmas with the Washington State family next week.  We are all very excited about seeing him.

And finally, with all that has happened the last few weeks, we've gotten a break in an area where we really needed one:  SG interviewed for and has been offered a job HERE.  ALL THE TIME HERE.  Knowing that I will not be dealing with the upcoming months of February and March without my husband at my side makes a lot of things a lot more bearable.  Its not that his presence solves all the problems, no one can do that.  But his presence means I have someone here who's got my back, who loves my kids, who fills an empty space in my house I didn't even know was there until I met him.  

Happiness tempered by sadness tempered by excitement tempered by fear.  That's life.  That's OK.

Into a brilliant white light

 

Like many, I write about the events at Sandy Hook Elementary last Friday with great trepidation.  The grief and pain of those who lost a child or a loved one is not mine to borrow.  Yet I think we all, in our own way, share in the horror and pain of such a senseless tragedy.  The heart cannot comprehend the depth of sorrow felt as families honor and bury their loved ones this week in far too many funerals for one small community to have to hold.

Like Jeremiah, we ask why our pain is perpetual and our wounds incurable.  (Jeremiah 15:18). WHY? and there is no answer.  Its another tear-stained question written in heavy strokes on the list I carry, the list I will someday bring to God when it is my time.  Until then, as Paul instructed in his epistle to the Romans, I will weep with those who weep. (Romans 12:15). 

We are having a national conversation now.  We are talking about guns – and we should.  We are talking about mental health and the holes in our systems for treating and healing those who suffer.  We are talking about how to protect our children.  We don’t have a collective agreement on the solutions to those problems, but with any provenance we might find ways to make inroads, so long as we don’t let the politicians and the power brokers usurp the conversation to their own ends.

We cannot beat our tender wings to tatters against the hard, hot lantern of violence and hatred.  We must instead smash it to smithereens and let those flames sputter out.  We must replace them with the brilliant shining light of love, because love is the only answer there is and will ever be to the tyranny of evil and hate.  Love, immeasurable and immutable, to conquer hatred and indifference.  Mercy, infinite and timeless, to conquer violence and suffering.

Love is the only way.  It is what we are called to do and to be.

As we hug our own loved ones tight, grateful and entirely too aware of our own good fortune, let us surround our brothers and sisters in Newtown and all around the world with the pure light of our love.  Then let us send that love into the world at large

Click here to donate to the United Way Connecticut Sandy Hook relief fund to help offset the expense of funerals and help those families afford time for healing.

This link will take you to the Sandy Hook Victim’s relief fund, set up by a former student to raise money for the Sandy Hook PTA.

Funds for individual victims: 

(If you know of more, email me the links)

Support Family of Noah Pozner

Emilie Parker Memorial Fund

 Friends of Engel Family Fund (Olivia Engel)

It was bad but its getting better

Since my optimistic post about med changes for Race Car Man a lot of things have happened.  Things I couldn't write about while they were happening not because they needed to be private but because I was too mental to be able to talk about them.  All is better now, but I needed a few days of perspective in order to move beyond being completely inchoate and albe to construct full sentences.

Race Car Man had to be escorted home on the bus for a seoncd time,  had to be picked up before the end of the day twice, got suspended for a day and had to have his meds tweaked.  We had one emergency IEP meeting and one bitch-autism-mom discussion with the school district's transportation office. (Parents, know your rights and what's in your IEP.  Bus drivers are NOT allowed to independently suspend services specified in the plan.)

Probably the worst day was the day the kids missed the bus because it was early, the bus driver told SG when he dropped them off at school that she wouldn't transport my kid, then the school called me to tell me he had to go home and couldn't come back without a full IEP team meeting and behavioral plan, and when I called SG to go get him kind of lost my temper when I found out somebody (not mentioning any names but it wasn't me) forgot to give him his meds and then we kind of had some ugly words and by the time I got off the phone with him I was on the phone to my EAP for a behavior therapist referral AND a marriage therapist referral.  The following day of the new dosages, my ex gave all but one medication in the morning and asked me when I was dropping off the meds at school to give it to him then.  Except a change in routine was too much for Race Car Man with everything else that was going on, and I had words with his teacher when she insisted I continue standing there and trying to get him to take the medicine even though I'd been trying for a half an hour and I could tell that we weren't going to be successful and he was starting to get really upset which was not the best way to start his day.  Not to mention I was already two hours late for work.

Not a good week.  No. 

By Friday, though, he managed to make it through a full day successfully and ride the bus home and get all his rewards.  That was followed by a decent weekend for all of us.  SG and I made up, the kids mostly didn't kill one another and we even made it to church AND over to my parents for an afternoon to make Gingerbread houses. 

This week he has done pretty well -- not spectacular, but pretty well.  Work was insanely busy with our annual inventory and so many meetings that I haven't had time to be worried about waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I guaran-damn-tee you that by next Tuesday I'll be all settled in, convinced that this time we've hit the right combination for sure and Mr. Race Car Man will never have another bad day at school ever.  Except of course at some point, he will and once again I will tumble down the slope into a pit of abject despair.

I am astounded by how often I am caught flat-footed when life throws a monkey wrench into the engine that I feel I have finally gotten to run smoothly.  Its a constant thing, why does it always seem to upend me so?  I should be used to it by now. 

Tonight is the company Christmas party, and SG and I are going to go eat some good food, drink some great wine, dance our asses off and enjoy adult conversation with our friends.    I will gratefully put the past two weeks behind me for a few hours and I can predict with modest assurance that tomorrow's breakfast will require at least two mimosas before my head feels right again.

 

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Home

Then

We were gods when we were young. 

We were bulletproof, invincible.  We rode our horses like fearless warriors, going over, around or through everything in our path.  We weren't afraid to fall. 

When we drove at night, moonlit and headlamps off, we didn't believe in the laws of momentum and motion.  We just believed that we could fly.

We believed that love conquers all, that if we wanted something bad enough all we had to do was keep trying and we could make it happen. We believed in the American Dream, in the power of prayer, that friendships would last and love was forever.  We chalked up every failure to experience and plowed forward, knowing that success was just around the bend.

It is a subtle erosion, to wake up one day and find the superhero's cloak has drifted from our shoulders, trampled in the muck by the onslaught.

Somehow we find ourselves in a place where gravity and dissipation are more true than faith or hope or love.  The downhill slope has turned into a tiresome trudge up a hill covered in loose shale.  Without our noticing, it seems, we changed.  One day the scales fall from our sunken eyes and we find that nothing we knew about ourselves, about our world, about our lives was true.

Then was an illusion.  This is the reality.  Now it is time to grow up.