Let's start right here.

Hi, friend.

I thought you'd written me off. Eight months ago I even wrote about it here; I realize now you may have read those words, which ironically means I could have instigated or exacerbated the very abandonment I railed against without even knowing it at the time (though I've suspected it, and knew there was a slight chance when I wrote those words in pain and self protection). I have no way to contact you directly other than in writing, and I thought since I might have inadvertendly begun this lonely phase of our relationship here, I should come here to end it, and (hopefully) start a new phase.

I dreamt about you several weeks ago. I was driving in my neighborhood and saw your son run across a yard - it made no sense because you're hundreds of miles away. My heart stopped, the car stopped, and I ran to him, asking where you were. He pointed you out, in the shadows of your open garage. You weren't yourself. You'd been sick, you said. Your body had grown dependent on things that would eventually kill it, but you weren't ready to change that. I tried to relate to you and I tried to compare my situation to yours, but you weren't really there. I saw a flicker, but then you sat back and your eyes glazed over in complacency, for now, for then. It was too much for you to deal with - that was the implication. This relationship was just one more thing you couldn't juggle. I told you how close I lived, and that I hoped you would visit me, or would welcome my visits, and I left. I wasn't angry or hurt anymore; I felt sad and hopeful for you at the same time. And then I went back to my own rather insane juggling.

John and I were recently talking about Dylan, and the fact that he has essentially removed himself from our family. He won't return phone calls (when he has a working phone), and even locating him is difficult and only possible through mutual contacts (which grow fewer by the day). I asked him if he was going to call the one remaining friend of Dylan's whose contact information we still have, but John just shook his head. "It won't do any good. When Dylan works out whatever he needs to work out, he will contact us." This felt like giving up to me; it felt like accepting the unacceptable. But I recognize now that what he was saying was that you can't force someone else to love you, or to communicate with you, or to be with you. It isn't right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable: it just is.

I've started to think in the past few years that I'm some kind of weird category of friend. It felt over time that people befriended me out of convenience. I was able to fill some need - usually therapeutic or philosophical or professional in nature - and then once that need was filled, I was kind of a guilty pain to keep around. My friendships with other people seemed to be perceived as high-maintenance and burdensome to all involved besides me - the one left alone looking like a deer in the headlights when everyone else had gone on their merry way. This felt grossly unfair given the amount of effort and energy I thought I'd put into the friendships - and that train of thought lead me to believe I was some horrifying Saturday Night Live, Mary Katherine Gallagher version of myself - just clinging to people in annoyingly breathless, desperate attempts to have someone like me, to force someone to be my friend - the thought of it was enough to make me vomit and then bury my head in the sand, in shame, and in hiding (a la Kramer's Look away, I'm hideous!).

Given all this, imagine my shock and wonder when I saw your name pop up in my inbox. The sadness, defensiveness, guilt, and shame all came rushing back, and then I remembered the dream I'd had about you and everything fell away except concern for you. I don't know how much you've read from this site, and I'm sure you know that even it doesn't contain all significant details, but it sounds like our lives have run similar courses over the past year. (That would be consistent for us, wouldn't it?) I wish you had contacted me to let me know. If nothing else, I could have reminded you that you weren't alone, despite how I know you probably felt. I've missed you, friend. I'm sorry you were hurting, and that you didn't tell me, and that you thought I'd moved on in anger and had closed the door. The door is always open, no matter how much the surroundings may change over time.

Strife, Interrupted

Lately every time I try to leave a comment on a blogspot blog, Blogger forces me to sign in again, and then brings me to my dashboard and FORCES me at gunpoint to post something here. So here I am. I was trying to leave a comment for GCQ, but now she may never know. (GCQ, love your tree. That's what I was going to say. Unfortunately Blogger is holding me hostage. Sorry.)

It's funny that this is happening, because lately it seems like everything I set out to do gets hijacked out of nowhere and against my will by some completely random activity. The other night I innocently went to hang up a new suit I bought for work, but that five-second act turned into a four-hour project. Why, instead of wrapping all of the presents piling up in our pathetic excuse for a "walk-in" closet, I thought a better way to free up some space in there would be to examine / try on / categorize / re-organize every piece of clothing I own. Strangely, there is still no space to "walk" in the closet (it might be all those unwrapped presents on the floor), but there is a lot more space for the dozens of empty hangers on the rack now. And that's great, because the crowded clothing rack was really taking a lot away from my kids' holiday season, but those still unwrapped gifts, the ones they keep eagerly looking for under the tree? Obviously a lower a priority than the closet organization.

I was telling John a story the other day about how a friend I hadn't seen in a few months had told me I looked great during a conversation about diet and exercise, and that I'd responded with some or other complaint about body fat storage and what I need to work on, and John said, "You don't know how to accept a compliment." He's right, but I think it's less about not accepting compliments and more about how I tend to focus on Fixing What's Wrong. I've said before that it's not that I don't see and appreciate the positive, and that's true. But I might not always communicate that I see it, because what I do communicate is whatever I'm trying to work out in my mind at that time - whether it's how I need to increase my protein and stop drinking margaritas if I ever expect to see the changes I want to see in my body, or how I need to do a better job of addressing the kids' behaviors and not letting them pull a big reaction out of me, or how our entire household needs more structure and less chaos and it must be on my shoulders to identify exactly what that will look like.

I got an e-mail yesterday from a very nice reader that made me realize - or remember, since I'm sure I already knew this - that none of you can read my mind. You don't know about the recurring good, sweet, hilarious things that go on around here unless I actually mention them, which, many times, I don't. This is completely consistent with who I am. I focus intently on whatever difficulties I'm trying to overcome. It's why I don't want to give Hannah a pat on the back just for getting out of bed in the morning. It's why I don't tend to say "good job" to someone unless what they've done seems above and beyond what I would consider to be every day general life expectations (whether my expectations match others' or not). It's why what I talk about tends to be either serious and difficult or sarcastic and self-deprecating. The positive is there, but it's on the back burner for me, it's something I don't have to focus on so intently, it's something I don't have to overcome - and therefore I tend not to communicate about it. What results is a perception that all of my experiences are negative or difficult or extreme, that my kids are disrespectful of me 100% of the time, that I teeter on the edge of a breakdown every waking moment.

So, amidst my stream of intended horror stories, my attempts to mentally work through and thus solve every single large or small problem in my life and the life of my family, I'm interrupting myself to say something. It seems like a very basic experience to me (maybe even one most would consider "expected"), but it represents all of the good on the back burner: Every night after I pull into the driveway after work and struggle through the door with my handfuls of gym bag and purse and keys, those kids - the ones to whom I give hyperbolic nicknames like "demon" and "dark lord" when I'm in my "work it out mentally" phases - stop what they're doing, whatever it is, and run to me, smiling, calling my name, telling me they missed me and they need - NEED - a hug and a kiss. Last night after his bath, Quinn was watching a Christmas special on TV and I walked in prepared to argue with him about bedtime, but I said only, "Quinn, it's time to read a story and go to bed, buddy." He stood up in his chair to be eye-level with me, put his arms out for me to hold him, and said, "with YOU, mommy?" as if to say he was fine with bedtime, he was fine with anything, really, as long as I would hold him. As I carried him upstairs his head rested against my shoulder and his legs dangled around my waist; he sighed and closed his eyes and made the soft smack-smack-smack sleepy sound with his mouth, perfectly at peace, content, quiet, still. Trust me when I tell you that the miracle of that is not lost on me.

Between Hypocrisy and Survival

Did you like how I said, in a mild Soup Nazi fashion, "no banners for you!" right before I slapped up a new one on our site? That seems cold. Sorry about that. Without belaboring the issue or providing you with the boring details of our Friday nights, I'll just say that it takes about 25 minutes with a glass of wine and the inability to focus on reading or doing any other business function to create a banner and change the colors on our own site. I wouldn't feel right about charging someone for me to slap something together in under half an hour while drinking, though, and that's about all I'm capable of when it comes to banners (or really anything blog-related) right now. So, there's my excuse. You can leave your written complaint in the box over there - it's that really huge cardboard one stuffed to overflowing, sitting on the floor littered with the ones that couldn't squeeze into the slot - those are mostly Bryce's, because Quinn prefers to scream his directly into my ear.

Oh, hey! Speaking of screaming, or, to use Bryce's rendition of that phrase, "speakin' about screaming" or alternatively, "talkin' about screaming," there is a story I should tell, but it isn't funny - at least not the screaming part - and I have been working on how to make it funny, not because I wanted to write it in a funny way, even though I do, but because if I can make it funny in my mind, looking back, then I can somehow let it go and not see myself as the genetic reason for my kids' tendencies to jab me with scepters of evil every chance they get. The details are boring and identical to almost every other story I've told about going out in public with my ever-plotting sons: Blah blah, we were at the grocery store. Blah blah, Quinn ran away with the cart and Bryce exploded with laughter. Blah blah, my blood started boiling. Blah blah, the other grocery store patrons grinned and made comments about how "cute and giggly" the kids were and looked at me like I was an evil hag when I said, "Yeah, I can't take them out in public together." Blah blah, this particular patron defended the kids and said they were being "good" and repeated the word "giggly" which wasn't exactly an accurate statement, as the word "giggle" implies a soft, quiet laughter, and what the kids were doing in the store, IN MY EAR, was not soft or quiet or anything resembling a giggle at all, and so I replied to said patron as politely as possible, while attempting not to injure her with the laser beams of hatred from my eyes, "Yes, well. It progresses from here," thus sealing my own stupid fate. Blah blah, by the time we got to the cash register, even though I had strapped Quinn into the cart, my attention was diverted to the grocery purchase and accompanying logistics of purse-digging, bank card-grabbing, payment, loading, and re-loading when the cashier destroyed the wooden cart that the clementines were packed in, and this presented the perfect opportunity for Bryce to turn into a complete raging psychotic, echoing Quinn's bellowing chorus of POOPY POOPY POOPY HAHAHAHA, waving his hands in the air, writhing around on the floor of the cash register lane, keeping the people behind us from being able to move up, going limp when I tried to move him - good times. Blah blah, I almost exploded. Blah blah, we walked to the car and the kids kept laughing and screaming, ecstatic in their disrespect. Blah blah, I morphed into Satan and burned the kids alive with my shrieks. When they laughed at that, I morphed into Satan's Pure, Unfiltered Rage and at that point I blacked out and awoke moments later with a throat raw from screaming, the car parked in the driveway, Bryce silently, calmly hopping out and running inside for his blanket, and Quinn still sitting in his seat, watching me and wondering at what point I would use my inside voice to communicate my "disgust" with their "horrible, unacceptable behavior in the store."

Hmm, I was right. That just simply isn't funny. Morphing into Satan's Rage is bad, right? Doing exactly what I tell my kids NOT to do while criticizing that same behavior is definitely going to fall under the category of "horrible" and "unacceptable." The thing is, what I want to say is that the 20-minute horror of completely losing control has now overshadowed every other positive experience I had with or provided for my kids this weekend. I can't decide if that's because I'm letting my own self-centered guilt blow it out of proportion (I don't think so) or if it's because that 20 minutes was just the culmination of two non-stop days of deep breaths and time outs and starting over and counting to ten, and it seems a little ridiculous, or sad, or mind-numbingly discouraging to me that two solid days with my own children should be such an effort, such an exhaustive exercise in anger management. The phone rang within minutes of walking in the door from the grocery store / car ride experience, and it was my mother-in-law, who is not exactly on my list of people I would normally (read: EVER) confide to. But she asked how things were going and Bryce was on the couch with his blanket for time out, and Quinn was upstairs in his room for time out, and I was surrounded by groceries and an open refrigerator and general physical and emotional chaos, so I bawled into the phone, I don't understand why it's this way. I try to prepare myself, to prepare them. I read. I think. I work really hard at this, but it's like I've never done anything at all. People say it's just "kid stuff" but it's not. It's NOT. This is beyond that. And now it's time for their lunch, and so I better start ramping up for the fight that will be nap time. "No," she said. "You don't need to 'ramp up' for anything. You just deal with the hour you're in right now. It's just survival." And I thought of my last session with the trainer at the gym, where he asked me to hold my body up, facing down, by my toes and forearms, and alternately lift one leg with the opposite arm, so I'd be balancing first on my right leg (my right set of toes, actually, holy crap that's hard) and left arm, then on my left leg and right arm. I have done this move before, but never with my toes elevated on a ball, which they were this time. I was struggling the same way I struggled with the jump rope at my first session; I was bewildered, frustrated, even a little angry. "It's a very small point of balance," he said. "You have to practice; sometimes it takes a while to find it." We switched to a move where I only had to lift one arm at a time, and I accomplished it, but it was sloppy and more challenging than I could have imagined; I thought I was strong enough for that move, but apparently, not yet. "You don't seem like yourself today," he said. Normally when I finish one exercise, I hop up and we move to the next one, but this time when I dropped my arm for the last time, my entire body slumped to the floor, my face flat against the mat, my head shaking back and forth in disbelief and disappointment. I forced myself up and he asked if I was okay. "Yeah, it's just really disappointing; I don't understand why I couldn't do that." "Well," he said, "you can't be 100% every day."

Sometimes there are no answers, I think. Just survival and some sloppy, shaky, awkward attempt at balance. At least that's what I'm telling my kids so they don't disown me or have me locked up.

Wake

A co-worker showed up with his wife and eight-week-old baby at the office today. The cube-dwelling crowd immediately gathered around to ooh and aah, and it took me several minutes to realize that I was the only one there with kids whose kids weren't babies. Everyone else was in the category of Pre-Kid Pregnant, Pre-Kid Single and Uninterested, or Post-Kid For Less Than Six Months. My co-worker's wife was doing a lot of smiling and nervous juggling of the squirmy, squeaky, sleeping mass of baby from one arm / stomach section / hip / shoulder to the other, making a lot of the statements you make as a brand new parent, statements that really have no substance but comfortably fill the time when everyone is standing around awkwardly staring while you uncomfortably bounce your kid from one side of your body to the other and wish the spotlight would stop making you sweat already, the post-natal hormones provide enough heat, really, we don't need that spotlight, GET IT OFF! STOP STARING AT ME! "He's such a serious baby. Oof. There you go, are you going to open your eyes now? Yyeeesss. Oh, don't get upset now. No. We're here to see everyone at daddy's office. Yeah. Mmm-hmm. See?"

I started to tell a story about Bryce's babyhood, "My first kid was really serious as a baby too! Even when he was older and started smiling, he would only smile at select people; you had to be in his CIRCLE. His chosen circle. He was very particular. Hahaha." It felt strange, though. They all looked at me, expecting more. Surely I would have some sweeping comment to make - about personalities, childhood, humanity. After all, I no longer had babies. I was the mom of kids now. I had nothing to add to the baby conversation; I should leave that to the ones most qualified, the ones who knew the most recently updated AAP recommendations regarding infant sleeping and eating, the ones with the still pristine strollers and the vehicles sans goldfish cemeteries littering every visible floor board.

When I made my comment about Bryce while I watched that soft, squirmy infant rooting around while he wondered with irritation where the warm sling was and why it had been so rudely and abruptly removed, I got a flash of my kids -- but not as babies -- as they are now. Surprisingly, that flash didn't feel achy or regretful; I didn't find myself longing for the baby days and wringing my hands about how unfair it all is and how tragically fast it went by. It did, of course, go by at the tragic speed of lightning - but it didn't feel painful or sad to acknowledge that in full. Rather, I told my story and realized these people really didn't want to hear about my kids' histories - they were here to experience the newness and squirminess of the gorgeous newborn present, not the blurrily similar past of someone unknown, someone now in a classroom, learning to read and write and play the piano and paint a picture. I walked away from the group picturing my kids with their long, lanky legs, their full heads of kid hair, their scuffed tennis shoes; hearing their articulate voices expressing sentiments and original thoughts like Quinn's mischievous and yet still creative twist on a school letter game, "puh-puh-puh-puh Poopy. The letter is P!" or Bryce's latest exclamation whenever anything is unexpected or slightly frustrating (his own self-created masterpiece, one that rings in my ears all day long now), "Great craps!"; feeling their purposeful, chosen embraces, their warm, soft, small arms grabbing me as I get up to leave them in their beds at night - their act of simultaneous objection ("you can't go!") and desire ("I want you with me!"), acts they think through, acts they've learned, acts we've danced around now between three and a half and five years. We've put our time in. We've gained a lot of ground. We're not squirming or nervously juggling or avoiding spotlights anymore; we've entered a new realm, together.

My babies are gone. But my kids -- yes, the same ones who drive me insane and make me question my value as a parent and human being with their shenanigans -- are here with bold, independent ferocity, mirthful sincerity, and a brilliance that brings me to my knees. Enjoy this time, new parents; it is miraculous. But when it goes, wave goodbye and smile at what greets you, at what is left in the wake of what you think you want to hold forever.

Still Going

We didn't travel with the kids when Bryce was three, but at the time, I thought this was a smart decision because Quinn was 18 months old. I now realize it was a smart decision because travel with a three year old and another child of any age is just a recipe for disaster. Bryce is five now, and if we were traveling with him alone, I'd probably be writing something mild and pleasant, like, "we're all a little tired, but we've had no problems at all" instead of what I'm here to write, the more depressing and asylum-worthy, "we're all still alive, but I don't know for how much longer," because Quinn - he is not five, he is three and a half.

After the first two days of travel where Quinn reminded us, his stupid, forgetful, trusting parents, that he is totally and comletely rabid-dog insane and will go darting out into streets or possibly force armed guards away from their posts to retrieve him from places he's not authorized to be madly, gleefully darting about, we finally started following through on our hand-holding mandate any time we took the child out in public. This works for a short period of time only when combined with the latest bribe - a pack of Smarties, his latest flash cards of choice, the chance to watch a movie - AND when he is the sole focus of one of us, and Bryce has no access to him to attempt meeting his undying goal of corrupting whatever delicate balance we're trying to maintain with Quinn.

There was a gas station stop today, the details of which I don't even know if I can bear to recount. I was alone with both kids, there was a crowded, tiny convenience store restroom, an accessible light switch, urine-soaked pants to change, a few screams (on the kids' part), some hisses (on mine), a LOT of threats, mostly empty (on all our parts). And after it was over, it wasn't over. I couldn't let it go, these several days of culminating disrespect and limit-pushing behaviors; it's all starting to feel like true, catastrophic failures on our part to teach any basic social rule to the kids, and after the gas station humiliation, I fell into a state of numb, silent resentment in the car. I could simultaneously be aware of my immature response to the kids and still have the audacity to carry it out. It was surreal, disappointing, and yet also somehow satisfying, even relaxing, just to sit there while they tried so hard to push the predictable buttons: Let's scream and see if she reacts. Hmm. What about kicking her seat? Odd. She's still just sitting there. Let's scream again. No, wait. Combine screaming and kicking. How about throwing? Wow.

After a few hours of that, we got to our halfway point and got out to walk around with the kids. It was another clear day with a light breeze, and as we waited to cross a street I looked down at Quinn, still so short and small, his light, wispy hair so easily tossed about by the smallest breath of wind, taking in the sights and sounds of a new city with what I have to believe is some form of remaining innocence, despite whatever colossal failures we've made, despite whatever mixed messages I give both of them (act the right way! but now that you didn't, neither will I! I will give you the silent treatment and metaphorically stick my tongue out at you!). I stood there looking at him and had to be the adult, the parent, to shake off my cloak of pissy, grudge-holding disappointment. I took another breath, gave his still baby-pudgy hand a squeeze when the light turned green, tried in a split second to burn the image of his small profile into my permanent memory files and said, "Okay, buddy. Now we can cross."

Thanksgiving, Ritual, Mystery: Family

The following is the first ever guest post, written by my dad. We roped him in and then tortured him with Blogger's penchant for losing hours and hours of effort and energy poured out onto the computer screen. We all seem to thrive on the extra pressure of NaBloPoMo, because even after days of complying with my kids' incessant demands, and now this "great idea of doing a guest post" for us, he hasn't kicked us out yet. Give him a round of applause, or offer him sainthood. One of the two, definitely.
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Sometimes, seemingly unrelated stories actually have significant relationships to one another. Recently, my experience has attested to this truism again.

This Thanksgiving, my daughter, son-in-law, and two youngest grandchildren visited us for the first time in our new home since my spouse and I moved almost eight-hundred miles away from them three and a half years ago. I currently supervise a chaplaincy program at a small Christian college. A couple of years ago, in order to allow a group of pagan students to have an opportunity to meet officially on campus, and therefore to exist as a group at all on a purportedly religiously-inclusive campus, and because no other member of the staff or faculty had the courage to assume this role, I agreed to serve as the faculty advisor for this group. As one might expect, though, many of the conservative and fundamentalist Christians on campus (students, staff, and faculty) genuinely opposed, and even now continue to challenge, my action—often questioning whether or not I am Christian at all. Despite the difficulties that I have experienced for that decision, I possess and have communicated solid theological and institutional rationales to support my position and justify my actions in this regard.

Other members of our staff, however, recently invited my wife and I to a costume party at Halloween. We decided to attend the party: my wife dressed as a beautiful witch and I dressed as Edgar Allen Poe’s Raven. We had a wonderful time.

During the Thanksgiving visit from my first child and her precious family, we have had many enjoyable experiences. Among those experiences, we built a campfire late yesterday afternoon, on which after dark I later roasted marshmallows with my grandsons.

Having a healthy (not necessarily good) sense of humor and having a history of teasing my own children (including my daughter, of course) during their childhoods, I had a mischievous thought as we waited for the campfire to burn to coals for roasting marshmallows. I told my son-in-law, as we watched his sons and my grandsons play in the yard, that it would be funny, if I wore my raven costume and emerged from the forest behind our home into the yard as the boys played. He told me that he would give me twenty dollars if I would do it. Needing only the encouragement, however, I went inside the house and put on the costume, while he and my daughter maneuvered my grandsons so that they would not see me run into the forest for this event. As I waited in the forest, he told my grandsons a story about a magical raven who would appear if they would call to him: “caw, caw, caw.” As my son-in-law told the story, I hid in the forest, just out of sight, behind some trees and bushes, dressed in a long black robe, wearing wings made of black feathers, a black beak, and a mask of black feathers.

Squatting behind the trees, gradually emerging from the forest, watching my grandsons’ reactions of surprise, wonder, and tense joy, I wondered about the relationships of the exaggerated stories about pagans to people dressed in black robes, fires in the night, and small children. I thought about how much mystery, beauty, joy, and wonder humans have lost because of the intolerance of various religions for those who discover the sacred in the natural world, but especially the intolerance and marginalization of divergent perspectives by Christianity itself. (I also briefly considered the potential proliferation of effects that might occur, if news of this minor mythic ritual reached the ears of those who already question my support for the pagan students on my campus!)

I can only offer gratitude again for the innocence and wonder of my grandsons, the sense of mystery that they carry, a comportment toward the world that invites all of us to explore the interconnectedness of all things: people, stones, sky, trees, ravens, fire, the sacred. This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for them and for my daughter and my son-in-law who gave us the gift of their presence, their mystery for several beautiful days.

Seventeen Down: Relativity (updated)

Today, John and I inadvertently celebrated Hannah's 17th birthday by paying a visit to the counselor she saw last summer. We walked in feeling frustrated, defeated, and desperate; we wanted a tip or a pat on the back or an understanding nod, because we don't get any of that when we talk to other adults in Hannah's life, particularly the ones in John's family. We feel like we're screaming from the roof tops that things aren't good, something is wrong, she needs help or a diagnosis of some kind or different medication or different schooling or SOMETHING, but everyone around us is deaf or oblivious.

We like this counselor because he gets right to the point. He told us a year ago when we first discussed the possibility of his seeing Hannah that he would not see a kid who was coming against her will. If she didn't want to talk to him after meeting him, he didn't want us wasting our money or time on bringing her in; nothing would be solved by that, anyway and the argument could be made that it would actually exacerbate certain issues. "You can't force someone to be motivated or productive, or to 'feel better,'" he told us. Hannah met with him a few times and claimed to enjoy the sessions, but, par for the course, when the responsibility was placed on her shoulders for letting us know if and when she wanted to return for further sessions, she did nothing. As the school year started and the same problems surfaced that have surfaced every school year for the past two or three years, we threw our hands up in exasperation and did the only thing left we could think of: called a professional.

He asked how she was doing in school and we immediately unloaded: "Not well. It's a total repeat of the year before. She was failing English within a month!"

"Does she care?"

[Blank stares.] "Uh. Huh?"

"Is she upset that she's failing? Does she want to fix it? Is she distraught and looking for ways to get out of the situation?"

"No."

"So you're upset about it."

"Um. Yeah? I mean, I see what you're saying - these are her choices, they'll be her consequences and all that. I know all that. The thing is, we don't really care about her grades in school. School is just one symptom of the larger problem."

"What's that?"

"She has no motivation to do anything in her life. It would be one thing if she were flunking a class here or there but she was really into her job or really into art or really into social clubs or volunteering or acting or music, or ANYTHING. But she's not. Nothing. She is interested in and motivated by nothing."

"Does she go out with friends?"

"Oh, yes."

"So she is motivated to do some things."

"Okay, but listen! Here's an example! When she was 15, we told her in order to take driver's ed. and get her driver's license when she turned 16, she had to keep her grades up. She still barely passed last year, and as a result still doesn't have her license!"

"So she doesn't care that much about the driver's license. I imagine she doesn't really need it. Her friends probably give her rides to where she needs to go, right?"

"Um. Yeeeeah."

"At 17, you can't make her be motivated to do well in school or do anything at all. At this age, she could flunk out and choose not even to get her G.E.D. But for some reason, she continues to go."

"Only because her friends are there and it gets her out of the house."

"So? Half the people in college are there for the social aspects. If she gets a degree secondarily, then great! It's better than the alternative. Have you tried telling her that? Saying, 'We're disappointed that you aren't making better choices about school because we know you're smart and could do much better, but hey! There are a lot of kids who just choose to drop out completely and not even bother to graduate. We're glad you're not doing that. Thanks for going to school.'"

"Isn't that kind of like saying, 'congratulations for breathing air'? She's expected to go to school. I don't see it as a choice."

"But it is her choice. You don't have control over her. Some part of her still wants to please you as her parents, which is why she meets very basic expectations. She doesn't have to. I see plenty of kids who don't. It's all relative. There are parents in here whose kid is a straight A student, but nobody likes her, she has no friends, and her parents want to know what to do about it. Sometimes I wish I could wheel and deal issues. Would the Johnsons be willing to take some bad grades in exchange for a social life? Would the Browns be willing to try no social skills in exchange for a few A's?"

"Okay, but it still seems like she has no aspirations, nothing that motivates her or makes her accountable to herself for her actions."

"For a lot of kids, rather than set expectations and then have to live up to them or listen to their parents say, 'You said you wanted to go to college! How do you expect to be able to go to college if you're failing in high school and not preparing?', they just become bottom dwellers, barely scraping by: no expectations, no failures. It doesn't mean they won't become productive individuals later on. It doesn't mean they won't find something that motivates them, and that's why we don't give up on our kids. You can be disappointed in her choices and you can explain the consequences when necessary and appropriate, but being angry and frustrated doesn't help you and doesn't change her behavior. I tell parents I see that they just have to let that go. What you have to ask yourself at this point is how much you can control. Her decisions are her own at this point. Grounding her or punishing her isn't going to do much, as you can see - it hasn't motivated her or changed her behaviors to this point. And eventually she'll have to be ungrounded. She has to have some life. You don't want her languishing at home all the time anyway. You have to find a way, as difficult as it is, to live life with her and enjoy being around her while simultaneously knowing that you don't like the choices she's making for herself. It can be very hard for parents to do. But that's part of not giving up on our kids. And it might mean praising her for doing things you consider to be 'expected'. Maybe it won't change her behaviors at all, maybe she'll act like she doesn't care about the acknowledgement. But it certainly won't hurt anything."

When he said the part about not giving up on our kids, I felt like he had exposed us under a huge spotlight in a room full of mediocre parents, exposed us for the ones who didn't belong in the room because we weren't even mediocre, we were sub-par, and the spotlight was pointing out the couple whose parenting license was being revoked. Revoked for conceding, throwing in the towel, buckling, relenting - barely being one step above abandonment or disavowal. Ouch, that spotlight burned. The top of my head is still a little singed. Had we given up on her? Have we reached a point where we have to thank her for being responsible enough to get up and go to school? Apparently. But as the counselor pointed out, it's all relative. We could be the parents whose child was just killed in Iraq, who wish their kid was home again with motivation problems and weight problems and flunking 11th grade problems, because then, back then, there was still a chance for something better. "Because there's always a chance, which is why we don't ever give up on our kids."

UPDATED: I should clarify that the counselor wasn't implying that we HAD given up on Hannah. Rather, he was talking to us as if all three of us were on the same page: "We collective decent parents never give up on our kids, right?" It made me feel guilty because I had to hesitate when I considered whether or not I found that statement to be true for us. Of course it is, because as many of you have already pointed out, we wouldn't have been there, and we wouldn't have the stress that we do over all of this, if we had reached a point where we had truly thrown in the towel. The doubt over it was uncomfortable and unsettling, but it was purely my own - not implied by the counselor (at least not directly or purposely).

And now I open the can of worms.

There's a topic that just won't die in the online community, one that in the past I've vowed not to touch. It rhymes with blommy boars. And I really hate the entire concept; it turns my stomach, mainly because I think there's no real argument being presented, just a conglomeration of stated and re-stated opinions about something that ultimately isn't going to change and doesn't really matter. It perpetuates stereotypes about women as whiny, emotional weaklings who can never be pleased, which is ironic, considering the underlying argument that some form of "woman-empowering feminism" is fueling the entire debate.

I should clarify that my understanding of feminism differs from that of most contemporary interpretations. I don't accept it as "power for women" any more than I would see equal rights for any minority as "power for minorities."* In other words, I think there is a difference between equality and power to the level that I think many past and present feminist activists have pushed the concept. The question of whether or not women truly have "equal rights" is a complex one, one I'm not educated enough to fully address. I can say that class culture plays a huge role in answering this question, but I think that makes a bigger statement about Western societal structure than "feminism" per se. Most arguments that women still have a struggle ahead of them to gain equality are steeped in middle and upper class cultural examples - corporate and educational opportunities, salary ranges, job performance expectations. And there are doubtless untold improvements that could be made in all of these areas - I don't dispute that at all. I simply don't see the ultimate goal of the feminist movement to be a flip flop of the power structure such that the masculine, patriarchal rule somehow has to "make up for" the centuries of mistakes made during human social development by accepting some type of "defeat" or surrendering to some science fiction notion of domineering female rule. Let's just make things right and move on - equally. That was the whole point originally, at least as I understand it.

Having said all that, I almost puked when Elizabeth Vargas reported that the U.S. is one of four countries world wide not to offer a national maternity leave program (and in many countries, also paternity or just more generic parental leave) during the 20/20 airing of her post-maternity leave return. People, the other three countries are Lesotho, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea. Just to give you a sense of scale in terms of resources and commitment to infant and child health, those countries have infant mortality rates between 50 and 90 infant deaths out of 1,000 births, as opposed to the U.S.'s rate of around six deaths out of 1,000 births (and actually, that infant mortality rate is among the worst of the "civilized" Western nations, but that's an entirely different post).

If we're going to have those things that rhyme with blommy boars, if we're going to spend our time debating something about motherhood, it should be over this issue, and it shouldn't be a debate between mothers, it should be a debate between citizens who are parents and the government which represents its citizens. For the moms who choose (or are financially obligated) to work (as are 71% of mothers in the U.S.), there should be absolutely no question over their ability to manage their lives both as employees and as people who happen to be mothers of children. A further point I would make here, one that is consistent with my stance on the feminist movement and its goals, one that is consistent with my ire surrounding the blommy boars, is this: the accommodations given to mothers who care for children should be extended to fathers as well. The biggest problem I've had with the blommy boars is that they place all credit, responsibility, and angst over child-rearing squarely on one parent's (mom's) shoulders, furthering a.) the notion that child-rearing is "woman's work," b.) the stereotype that fathers and husbands are marginal and sometimes even incompetent figures in their partners' and children's lives, and c.) the idea that the blommy boars have reason to exist.

In terms of parental roles, I would see the feminist movement as most successful when mothers and fathers are debating issues of maternity, paternity, and parental leave plans, flexible work schedules, safe and readily available day care options, and across-class accommodations to ensure that children born in the U.S. are born into a society where raising and educating them are among the understood top priorities, and not a side show, a burden to be dealt with and treated as a "women's issue." At that point, if they are truly concerned with the state of the children at the core of these arguments, the blommy boars will cease to exist. This is an issue concerning parents, not just mothers, not just women. When that is the general mentality, and the mentality is not that there is a relevant debate about whether or not parents should work (let's ask ourselves how realistic that argument is, anyway) then feminism will have succeeded.

*When John read this, he pointed out that people have different definitions of "power" - many see the absence of choice as powerlessness, meaning that with the success of the civil rights and feminist movements, formerly powerless individuals gained power. I think this is true. The way I'm defining power for my point here, though, is more that of a power structure. "Equality" between men and women or "equality" between majority and minority ethnicities (in the true sense of the word "equality"), then, would successfully remove the power structure in place, since all citizens, all humans would be on the same "level."

Point of Clarification

Certain friends and family members who read my posts have asked me how I really feel about life, the kids, our family, and my general day-to-day existence: are my funny, exaggerating stories about shrieks and misery really funny to me, or am I letting this time pass me by in a whirl of anger and frustration, setting myself up for a deathbed revelation that my bitchy, pessimistic outlook completely screwed up my life, and the lives of my kids?

I've realized that the friends and family members who ask me this all share a few significant personality traits. They are maternal, optimistic, socially gifted, and - this is pure conjecture on my part - were probably influenced primarily by a parent or parents who emphasized external, visible contentment and who discouraged external displays of life's "negative" emotions like disappointment, sadness, frustration, anxiety, anger, fear, or self-doubt. I love all of these people, and I'm glad they're in the world as examples of something I don't happen to be, but of something that is critical to any community: hope, optimism, care, concern, wonder, and generosity - all with no negativity attached even with a flimsy string of mini-cynicism or narcissism. The world desperately needs these people in the mix. I'm not only glad they're in the world; I'm glad they're in my life if only to remind me that variety in human community is essential to its growth and self-awareness.

I once attended a seminar or training class about something corporate-life-related, and the only useful tidbit I took from that seminar was a side note one of the speakers made about use of the word "but" in conversation. He said that "but" is an eraser. When someone says, "your hair is really cute but your sweater is hideous," the listener comes away with an insult to his/her clothing. More tragically, when someone says, "I love you but..." the "I love you" portion is deleted as far as the listener is concerned. The speaker presenting this piece suggested to replace the word "but" with the word "and" when at all possible. It needs to be "I love you AND I have to tell you something you might not like" as opposed to "I love you BUT [you're too negative] [you have spinach in your teeth] [I killed your hamster]." I've made a point never to say, "I love you, but dot dot dot" because I thought the speaker made a good point.

Given that fact, I'm saying this: I love these people, you who are concerned and curious about my "true" state of mind and being, AND I'm going to tell you something, something I view as much a significant point as you view the quest for happiness and contentment, and your quest to bring what you view as success in life - happiness - to your loved ones.

What I want to tell you is this: It's okay that I'm not expressing myself in this forum the same way you would prefer if it were your forum, with 100% sweet, reflective gratitude and 0% anger or frustration or guilt. It really, really is. There are people who identify as "pessimists" who actually are capable of loving their children, and successfully expressing that love to them. I've said before that I disagree with the notion that I'm a pessimist anyway, because I think "pessimism" implies an unwillingness to see good or have hope. I see good. I have hope. I'd argue that the only reason I'm capable of writing about very real challenges in a way that makes me laugh when I look back on it is precisely because I am very hopeful, in a broad sense of the word, which to me is the most hopeful kind of hope there is - broad hope.

The disappointment and frustration I feel about certain major issues in our lives is directly related to the expectations I place on myself and our family - expectations based in hope. This doesn't, believe it or not, take away from the love I have for my kids, or my ability to relish each distinct phase of their lives, even in the midst of the storms. It does require that I DEAL with the issues, though, and often that act of management - crisis management, issue management, behavior management, anger management - can be exhausting, as anyone who reads here over any time period will glean from my posts. Is this me time-wastingly "fretting" or "worrying" about the situation, as some of my well-meaning loved ones have suggested? Or is it simply what is required, action in place of fretting, action in place of worrying, action driven by the very hope-based expectations that a "pessimist" would shun, that a "worrier" would overshadow with, well, worry? I think you know my answer.

My answer is that on my death bed, my regrets won't consist of setting my expectations too high, or of taking measures to confront the challenges directly and in absence of denial or surrender to the storms. I'm not the type of person who sees life as something that "should be" a certain way; things are complicated, messy, unpredictable. Sure, I'd like it if there were more order and calm. And if there were, I would absolutely be writing about that, and this site wouldn't exist, because fringe life wouldn't be fringe life, it would be something entirely different. But things aren't calm and ordered, and likely they never will be. I write about my experience, and that may be different from your experience. My interpretation of the exact same experience is probably different from what yours would be. Optimists, that is okay. I still see my kids as pools of mysterious, fierce, gorgeous potential, even if I write about the violent waves on the surface more than the quiet stillness below. And what's more: I don't want to forget the violent waves on the surface, I don't want to leave that out of these records. Those waves are the complexity and the unpredictability that comprise life - our life. On my death bed, I want to have all of it. That's not regret. That is fullness, that is beauty. My kids are fiercely beautiful beings in a swirling vortex of complexity and confusion and chaos. Not every moment can be what I hope for, but I'll never stop making the attempt, and that might mean I write about hardship sometimes. The struggle is part of the hope, it is my act of hope.

Over-training

I just watched the Huggies commercial with the adorable happy baby wearing one red sock and giggling, crawling over to her mother, her clean, slender, smiling mother sitting on a vacuumed carpet in a well-lit, nicely furnished room. Commercials like this just make me feel like a frustrated and depressed failure. This wasn't the case when Bryce was a baby. When Bryce was a baby, all I ever thought about was what a miracle his every molecule, breath, movement was. I had genuine appreciation for every stage, every phase, every hair on his sweet-smelling head; as a result, I felt a subtle but compelling connection to parents of babies and children (even fake ones on Huggies commercials). Bryce was not an easy baby, don't get me wrong. Still, I never ceased to be amazed by his presence. Quinn's babyhood was a little different. There was more guilt, more fatigue, more frustration. Most of this was, ironically, related to issues stemming from Bryce's toddler behaviors and, well, Bryce being Bryce - but it affected, much to my never-ending maternal guilt, my experience of Quinn's babyhood.

I remember a fear I had after Bryce was born, that some day I might reach a point where I couldn't easily grasp the feeling I had throughout his early days, that subtle presence of some new connection I felt with the universe, the essence all around that told me daily about the mystery and deep miracle that is life. I was determined not to lose hold of this, but I have, slowly but surely, since we've moved from having one baby-toddler-kid to having two. I've lost it, maybe not completely, but I lose it for hours, days, sometimes weeks at a time. The peaceful quiet murmurs of awe have turned into chaotic, distracting screams, and I've been too weak to stay focused. The kinship I felt with other families or parents has given way to tempations to size myself up against them, or to point to them as more evidence for my sorry lot, for the immense challenges those early peaceful murmurs of mystery never warned me about. A 30-second diaper spot depicting a baby crawling across a clean carpet to a calm, happy mother just reminds me of all the times I haven't sat on the floor with my kids to laugh with them - for many reasons, one of which is that the floors in our house are covered with ground-up goldfish, abandoned toaster waffles, mismatched shoes, sharp toy pieces, I could go on; another of which is that any time that would be appropriate "floor play time" is typically spent addressing some or other major issue around here, including the fact that these days, Quinn is happy for 10 minutes out of each hour and spends the remaining 50 minutes whining, yelling, crying, maybe hitting, and also including the fact that we're currently in the process of re-evaluating Hannah's entire school and living situation in the recognition that neither we nor her current school are meeting her immense and enigmatic needs.

I realize it's just a commercial, and that the Huggies marketing department created it to be an idealistic scene, one that probably doesn't exist in any home anywhere. But the point is, at one time I could watch something like that without wanting to throw a heavy object across the room and shatter the TV screen. And that seems, well, a little off.

There are so many areas in my life where I feel like I put forth unusual amounts of effort and energy, in some assumed attempt to "succeed" or "improve" something about myself or my surroundings, only to find out that my efforts were all wrong, they weren't good enough somehow because HAHA! you're still failing! I was complaining about one minor example of this to the personal trainer at the gym this week. (To recap: I pay him a lot of money, and in turn he tortures me, and then I get to ask his advice on how to do a better job at being tortured.) As usual, my progress, while obvious and evident in areas of strength and balance, is not good enough for my perfectionist self, and I wondered aloud what it would take to get the results I want, results that I know are realistic and not at all out of the question. "I'm in this gym every single day! When I'm not working with you, I'm on a treadmill for 45 minutes to an hour. I write down everything I eat. I've increased my protein, I've increased my water, I've virtually eliminated caffeine, I make sure I'm getting the right number of calories, that I eat enough of the various foods I'm 'supposed' to eat. I've been doing this for several weeks."

"Wait. You're here every day?"

"Yes!"

"You're over-training! You can't tear down your muscles and not give them a chance to repair before coming back in here and tearing them down again. Your body just won't make any progress at all. You'll get stronger - slowly, and you'll lose fat - slowly, but you'll have less energy, you'll be sore, and you won't lose much more fat or much weight at all because you're not allowing yourself any recovery time."

"Uh. Hm. Heh. So, basically you're telling me I've been working too hard."

"Yes."

Working too hard. Working TOO hard! What is this craziness? Working too hard? I've been mulling it over ever since. (And today, in lieu of the gym, I'm writing this post.) This is the problem I see in our household right now. We're constantly torn down with something - Bryce's quirks, Quinn's challenges, Hannah's setbacks, our conflicting family schedules, ridiculous demands on our time and energy - and there's never any recovery time around here. I can't remember the last time we just relaxed or "hung out" - with or without the kids. We just don't do that. There is always something to do, always some big list of things we're behind on, always another interruption. I think I've lost my grasp on the ability to watch a diaper commercial without vomiting in disgust and resentment because I'm holding onto so many other things now, and I feel like there's not enough of my grasp to go around. We're only holding steady, rather than progressing. We survive, but we aren't doing much more than that. To get to a point where there's more than just survival or status quo here, we need recovery.

The problem is, it's a lot more complicated than just cutting out a few trips to the gym. And so, I determine once again that there's no place I can loosen my grip, and I guarantee continued dissatisfaction. Yeah, like I said: it's a problem.

Fair Game

First of all, as Popeye would say, Well, blow me down! All a girl has to do is go a little nuts and lock her kid outside and wave her arms frantically in the air to make people come out of the wood work (and maybe secretly consider calling the Department of Human Services). I mean, wow! So many of you have contacted me privately or commented on my last post that I'm now convinced a big portion of parents and caregivers with maybe even only "slightly challenging" kids (which unfortunately mine are not, and I'll get into that in a minute) don't talk or write about it. Some of you don't bring it up because your coping mechanisms require that you push the issues under the surface to survive. Others of you don't talk about it because you really believe you're alone, and more tragically, that you're alone because of some drastic mistake you've made as parents - or maybe just as people. Still others of you want to avoid what we so lovingly refer to as "trolls" (Kara and Arwen, I think you know what I'm talking about) who will pounce on any weakness you highlight about yourself, especially parenting weakness, and so you vow not to publish anything questionable, like say, the fact that you locked your kid in the back yard to keep from exploding. When I published a post quite literally while looking over the cliffs of insanity and heard from many of you back on the steady ground of reality calling to me, I learned that, while quirky and more challenging than "average," my kids certainly aren't unique. Quinn's torture methods are effective and commendable, especially if you happen to be recruiting for Al Quaeda, but he's not alone; there are other kids like him, with parents whose eyes are bulged in fear, rage, and desperation more hours than they readily admit. If you're one of them, don't ever think you're in a boat by yourself again. I certainly won't.

As for us, we're all still alive and no one has been beaten to a bloody pulp or even threatened with such. In fact, we took the kids to the fair on Sunday. The fair, people! The event Quinn has spent the past year asking about every night at bedtime, the event I underhandedly bribed him with in one of my attempts to convince him that he didn't need his paci. That fair. THE fair.

Despite the fact that Quinn woke up at 5:30 a.m. as he's been doing since we confiscated all the pacis last week, John was determined for the day to go well. After all, he'd been the one at a photo shoot on the receiving end of my desperate call from the soccer field the day before, powerless to do anything but tell me something I already knew: that the only option I had was to physically retrieve Quinn and confine him for Bryce's entire game; I had no one else with me, and I couldn't leave either child unattended. He'd also witnessed the carnage when he'd arrived home and found me handing out snacks and stepping over toys and laundry piles like a zombie, stopping every few steps to rock myself back and forth in the corner, then going back to doing whatever the kids demanded in an attempt to stop the madness, stop the madness, stop the madness. Sunday was a new day, he thought, and what better way to establish some healthy family relationships than to immerse ourselves in the deep fried kitsch of a state fair? Why, there are long lines to stand in! There is sub-par, over-priced, unhealthy food to buy! There are uninspected ferris wheels operated by hungover, jaded people to ride!

The kids did enjoy it, even though Bryce filed a complaint with the Department of Decent Parents because we didn't buy him a blow-up alien. The cotton candy, ice cream, pizza, and carnival rides meant nothing: WHAT ABOUT THAT ALIEN, YOU SELFISH PRICKS? Quinn was tall enough to ride the rides with Bryce this year, and he proved to me once again that he has no concept of either balance or fear. (I'm thinking that combination is going to be pretty dangerous. Also, it somewhat explains his penchant for parental torture.) We stayed long enough that by the time we rolled the double stroller up to the car to head home, we looked down and saw that Quinn had fallen asleep. The last time that happened, he wasn't yet eating solid foods. They both slept in the car all the way home. The last time THAT happened, the world didn't exist.

Yesterday John tried something wacky with Quinn: he praised every remotely correct or decent thing he did.

"Great job walking down the stairs and breathing at the same time, Quinn!"

"Wow, I'm so impressed by your manners. When you said, 'I want milk,' you didn't whine or throw any power tools at me!"

"Thanks for not ripping my hair out of my head when you woke up this morning, Quinn. WOW!"

John had told me he was going to try this, but I'd been skeptical, since Quinn is much smarter than any parenting technique we've ever tried. But when I got home from work last night, the kids were upstairs cleaning up their toys. At dinner, they ate what was on their plates and actually didn't demand something different. Quinn talked about his friends at school and Bryce told us about Columbus and how he asked the King and Queen of Spain for money to sail to the new world to find gold and spices. (Aside: During this conversation, I may or may not have rolled my eyes and made reference to the fact that we all know the names of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, but what the history books don't highlight is the slaughter of the Native Americans and the disease and pestilence that killed off most of the ones that weren't murdered outright. Bryce was too busy talking about gold and spices to hear me, which is probably good for a five-year-old, I'm thinking.) After dinner, Quinn asked to be excused, then created a game called "all of the kisses" which he pronounced "Ahvvalakisses" which involved him pretending to leave the room and then John telling him to come back for one more kiss, Quinn giggling uncontrollably and running back. I gave him a bath and he didn't scream at me about shampoo or water or toys. I put him to bed and he didn't protest or get up and run under his bed after yelling to get my attention.

Wha...?? That worked?

The hardest part about the last year has been the resistance John and I have given with all our might to admitting that Quinn is not "the easy one". We don't HAVE an easy one. We have two challenging kids. And they're not challenging in the same ways; Bryce has very specific needs that we spent three years deciphering, and in that time we became accustomed to the fact that he actually helps us decipher them because he's extremely articulate. Quinn has spent the past three years confounding us with what at first appeared to be an easy-going, content nature, but turned out to be more like a sleeping tasmanian devil. Had we been expecting it, I think we would have reacted more appropriately, and more quickly. But because it woke up in a lightning blaze of fury and swirls, we misunderstood. We grabbed the flying papers and made a mad dash for something solid to hold onto, we thought it was a passing storm and waited for the return of the familiar. As the wind picked up and our muscles started to shake with weakness and fatigue, we saw the mounting chaos and the debris flying around, but we couldn't let go, because what would happen? We'd be giving in to the madness of this unpredictable being, accepting that this is the new reality, the new familiar, adapting to a life of swimming through the twirling unpredictabilities and searching always for the eye and the calm of the storm, this storm, Quinn.

What has happened now, and what was clinched for me in the astounding aftermath of my last post, when many of you told me that we weren't alone or insane or unfit parents, is that we've made the transition from Waiting For The Storm To Pass to Letting Go. What it translates to is finally starting to see the blurry outlines of Quinn's Needs. It translates to a recognition that Quinn's Needs are different from Bryce's Needs, and I don't mean he likes different foods or will take longer to potty train, even though both of those things are true. I mean he needs US in different ways than Bryce ever did. This slapped us both in the face yesterday, when we met our son, the one who thrives on lots of praise and physical touch and emotional reinforcement. Our other son responds to all of this too, of course, like any kid does to some extent - but this new guy, Quinn - he lives and breathes it.

This morning at the gym, the trainer held a bar behind my back while I did lunges. If my front knee went too far forward, my back wouldn't be straight and even with the bar, which would tell me, much to my dismay, that I was doing it wrong. It would also cause searing jolts of red hot pain to emanate from my back knee. "OW! My knee!" My trainer knows my left knee gives me trouble and I think I was hoping he'd release me from the lunge prison, but he didn't say anything other than to tell me to keep my back against the bar. When I finally came close to approximating the correct posture and movement, he removed the bar and I finished my lunges. "How's your knee?" he asked me as I finished. "Wow, you know? When I do the lunges THE RIGHT WAY, it doesn't hurt my knee." I could tell it took all his strength not to roll his eyes as he said, "Imagine that."

I wonder if that's how our tasmanian devil feels as John and I slap our foreheads and scream DUH! after one single day of not holding so staunchly to the furniture and screaming as the debris swirls around us, maybe smoothing his fur as he whirls by us, always getting closer: Yeah, see how things work when you do them the right way? Imagine that.

World Pools, Utinions

Me: "Time to get out."

Bryce: "Mom! I can't see! The towel is in my way and I can't see the world pool!"

Me: "Stop yelling about it. There. You're dry. Now you can see the WHIRL pool."

Bryce: "Woorl pool?"

Me: "Yeah. Actually, we're really supposed to pronounce it wHHHirl pool."

Bryce: "W-hhh-irl! W-hhh-irl. Pool."

Me: "Haha! Yeah. Something like that."

Bryce: "Well, I pronounce it WORLD POOL. That's my utinion." [pronounced you-ten-yun]

Me: "........."

Bryce: "........."

Both: "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Utinion! Ahahahaha hoooo hooo weee hahaha hahaaaaaa!!!!"

The above happened after a night like all nights at our house these days, a night where my voice was incapable of anything but a tight, sharp knife-like sound barking out commands and demands and occasionally sighing heavily, harshly, quickly. In our laughter, my words echoed in my ears as painfully as I'd imagine an icicle would feel as it stabbed into my brain: Quinn SIT DOWN! You haven't been excused! Just eat your food, stop playing with it! Bryce, I told you to stay downstairs while I'm cleaning up the kitchen. Every time you go upstairs, you run and scream. Why can't you just stay down here and talk to me? Stop whining! Suddenly you want to go play because I'm asking for your help? You never want to play when I'm asking you to! I said five minutes, five minutes is over! It's bath time! SIGH.

In my "defense" -- if such a thing is possible -- I'm tired. Very tired. I get up way too early in some insanely ironic attempt to be healthy, I fight the traffic for 20 miles, the other hundreds of thousands of obedient middle class "career people" heading off to earn their highest possible scores on the surface-important performance reviews grading whatever the latest arbitrary expectations happen to be. I meet and/or exceed expectations. Yay for me. I keep good posture, I wear professional clothes which I pack and carry gingerly from my house to my car to the gym to the locker room before donning them and sitting in my ergonomically correct chair at my large desk and my double flat screens and my recently manufactured laptop staring at spreadsheets and considering "risks" and looking for anomalies and hoping against hope I'll find one just to create some excitement in my day, knowing that such excitement would mean loss, LOSS for the company, but GAIN for me and the ever-present expectations, will she be a good employee? Will she save us from hidden problems? Will she be worth the salary and benefits and resources and time and training? And then I fight the same 20 miles again with hundreds of thousands of good civilians heading home trying to be "balanced" and spend "family time" with their kids at night, eating dinner at the table, maybe by candlelight, making attempts at discussions and showing interest in everyone's day, presumably also involving good posture and meeting or exceeding the school's or the company's or the client's expectations -- we all fight to get to OUR SPACE first. And when I get home, inevitably someone is screaming, whining, or jumping. And because of my personality, because of my quirks, because of my nature, it just sounds like a broken record, and a loud one. It is shrill, it is blood-boiling pressure, but mostly it is fatigue in physical form - and guilt incarnate. I hear their voices yelling HI MOM NO QUINN GIVE ME THAT BRYCE and I pull at the icicle but I don't have the strength and it pokes, it pierces, and I lash out with my voice.

But sometimes one of my sons musters more strength with their puny undeveloped 35-pound bodies than I can with all the core-strengthening personal training I waste money on each week, and they melt the icicle effortlessly, using words like "world pool" or "utinion" or "abdivate" or, in Quinn's case, "poopy poop head" and even my tired, frustrated, tortured soul quirkiness can't hold up to it.

But the thing is, I need more melted icicles. I need them to melt before I pass them on like some sort of dysfunctional frozen torches to my sons. They shouldn't be responsible for melting them. I shouldn't be hearing myself as if I'm a separate party altogether, I shouldn't be watching myself like a pathetic character on a low-budget after school special fighting my guilt and alienating my children slowly, gradually, day by day. It feels criminal that my three-year-old would look at my face with genuine concern and slight fear after I remind him to keep his shoes off of the couch (which is already a trash heap anyway, why does it matter?) and ask, "are you happy, mom?" When I find myself with my entire family crouching around a tiny burrow full of squirming, furry baby rabbits or moles (we still don't know which) in our back yard and the first words out of my mouth, "you're too close, Bryce, GET BACK" ruin the moment and lead to my usually laid-back husband saying, "do you think you could be a little more h-a-r-s-h?" as my formerly passionately-interested-in-nature five-year-old slumps back into the house, alone, something is dead wrong.

I know this. I feel it. But I don't have the solution. When Bryce marched confidently back into the back yard in his rain boots to continue admiring the rabbit-mole-babies, he plopped down in front of me, unfazed, happy, excitedly watching the four newborn sniffing creatures with complete innocence. Maybe when the icicles melt, they truly evaporate. But I don't know. I truly don't. I don't know how to abdivate the appropriate utinion in this case. Maybe I should ask Bryce.

Feel the pain and know you're alive.

Right now, I hurt. My torture sessions are twice a week, and the trainer "makes" me come to the gym several other times a week for some extra special self-inflicted, machine-assisted misery. I keep doing it, though. In fact, I pay money for it. And I think I actually look forward to it. How sick that makes me, I don't know. How much that suggests my entire understanding of myself and my life is changing, I don't know either. The physical pain and the gym is just one soft bud on one small branch of something that has been pushing up from within for a long time, maybe forever. This bud hurts; other buds hurt more, but they're beautiful and they're growing into something, I think.

I was on the phone with my dad the other night. The poor guy calls us because he thinks maybe now, on this night, we will have become nice, normal people who can talk on the phone without any violent finger snapping at wild creatures running in blurry circles and screaming bloody murder, but alas, each time he is escorted back into reality by my tense, terse voice and the mayhem of crashing pans and stomping shoes in the background. Between Quinn's age-related challenges and the evening mental ward behavior we can't seem to curb no matter what we do, I was at the end of my rope when he called: "It's ALWAYS like this, you hear that in the background? It NEVER stops. It doesn't matter WHAT we do. They act like they want attention, but they GET attention, they get PLENTY of focused attention and structure and positive reinforcement and consistent discipline and all that CRAP! I have no idea what's WRONG with them. It's constant chaos around here. I can't stand it."

At first, he tried sympathizing with me, telling me he didn't understand why those crazy kids were pushing our buttons in such direct, blatant ways these days, saying it was probably a phase, we probably just needed to keep doing what we're doing and get through it. That just fueled my fire: "It's not a phase, they're just LIKE this anymore! We can't even leave them alone, they're like toddlers! If we leave them in a room for five minutes, they end up destroying something, fighting, or both. John just called me over and said that while I was talking to you about this and he was in his office (which is right next door to the bathroom), Quinn emptied the tube of toothpaste onto the bathroom counter, just because! I mean, COME ON! And I'm sure I don't even want to know how many boxes of crap Bryce has emptied all over his room in the past five minutes!"

He listened to my rant, which went on and on for long enough that when I was finished, the kids weren't yelling or stomping or smearing toothpaste on counter tops anymore. He said, "I know when you're dealing with all of that, it feels chaotic and it feels like it lasts forever and there's no end in sight. But from my perspective, I don't hear chaos. I hear fullness and life." I was standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at Quinn in his too-small pajamas and wet hair from the bath John had just given him, he was walking down two steps per stair and using the wall for balance. He got to the bottom step and wrapped his arms all the way around one of my legs, kissed it, and looked up at me.

I, in my haggardness and frustration and desperation and perceived failure, hurt. This new bud is exactly that, isn't it? Fullness and life. Catherine Newman said recently, "I know it's boring to say it, so obvious that it's almost silly, but the lesson of death is that we die — which is the same as saying that we're living now."

The ever-forming buds and the creaking, stretching branches, always pressing outward against me, stretch and push me in new ways, bring me to breathless, doubled-over sobs of make it stop, and then someone reminds me of this monumentally important truth that, oh yeah, I don't want it to stop.

Dead Horses

My first memory of realizing that there legitimately might be better things in store for me besides rolling my eyes in disgust and disappointment at my peers and their materialistic, self-centered antics was during my senior year in high school. For whatever reason, up until that year, I had avoided any academic challenges, thinking I wasn't smart enough and that I would fail if I took any "advanced" classes, AND THEN WHAT?! IF I FAILED A CLASS, WHAT THEN? WHAT, I ASK YOU?! Life would be over. End of story. Curtain falls.

My junior year English teacher was going to be teaching the advanced senior class, and I knew if I signed up for it, I'd get to take English class with her again. Everyone else, all of my narcissistic peers who lived for weekend sleepovers and trips to the mall and wore silver half hearts around their necks that either said "BE FRI" or "ST END," hated that teacher and thought I was insane for 1.) voluntarily signing up for a "hard" class and 2.) voluntarily returning to HER class. I loved her, though. She was witty and demanding and she kind of looked like she might hold secret Wiccan meetings in her basement. Nobody but me suspected that, and I don't know why I did, other than the fact that she had a stereotypically witch-like face, only a little prettier, and with a little more sparkle in her eyes.

Once my senior year started and I realized that the advanced classes got to read books ON THEIR OWN TIME, that they were given a lot more leeway in terms of paper topics, and that the structure of their paragraphs were under much less scrutiny than the content of their document, I was slapping my forehead in self-derision for having avoided these classes before. My junior year "major" paper was about orcas (aka "killer whales"). My senior year paper was a multi-media comparative essay using Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the screenplay to Pulp Fiction, and The Police's Wrapped Around Your Finger, using the theme of self-deification, a topic I invented because I had the sweet, sweet liberty to do so. As the year ended, Possible Secret Wiccan Teacher and I were talking about how much I'd enjoyed the class and she had one of her mischievous, mystical looks in her large, dark eyes and a wise, knowing grin when she said, "you know, some people's lives peak in high school, and then it's downhill after that, but yours will be different - you have a long way to go."

It hit me, when she said that, that all of the eye rolling I'd been doing might actually have the chance to stop. After all, the eye rolling was a self-defense mechanism designed to help keep me at arm's lengths from the peers I didn't understand, who didn't understand me. I could have gotten behind wearing a "BE FRI" necklace. I could have gotten behind spending 24 out of every 48 hours at the mall and eating warm pretzels with people who accepted and understood me, who wanted to be my friends. But those people, my peers, it had been my experience, never understood me. They thought I was odd, they chalked it up to nerdiness or dorkiness or dweebiness or whatever the acceptable phrase was at the time - then they found a way, usually a cruel one, to extricate me from their group, to remove the one who made them uncomfortable and who they just couldn't find a way to assimilate. I could act haughty and uninterested and then we'd all be happy, we'd all get to stay in our comfort zones. When Possible Secret Wiccan Teacher said those words out loud, told me that actually, this crap doesn't really matter, the best is yet to come, it was like being reminded of something I'd known a really long time ago, but had forgotten.

I went on to college and the work force and married life and adult interactions. Still, there are times where the arms length eye rolling instinct wants to kick in, to protect me from the pain and loneliness that comes from social rejection and outcast status. Sometimes we don't "fit in" even in our own families. That truth never changes. What changes is our awareness of the white hot sun rays of CHOICE in how we embrace that truth. Do we harden our protective shell and burrow into our cool, dark stagnation, or do we climb out risking burns and painful blisters on the off chance we'll find warmth and growth? The difference between my youthful peers and me was that I recognized the sun rays of choice because I had to. They didn't need to know such things existed, so comfortable and largely accommodating were their dank shelters - all of the BE FRIs and ST ENDs could fit inside any one of them. That "peak" my teacher mentioned occurred inside such places, and was more like a small hill than a mountain top. Those of us whose "peaks" are out in the sun and hard as hell to climb sometimes forget that the burning sensation from those white hot rays, that's part of the experience!, the blisters, they make you stronger!, the shelter was too small and stifling, and the pain, well - it is accompanied by so much more.

The War Rages On

Yesterday John was getting ready to leave for a wedding when Quinn woke up from his nap and asked if he could go to the pool. I cringed when I heard John say over the monitor, "you'll have to ask mom, because I'm leaving." I didn't want to have to take both kids by myself. Quinn requires so much extra attention, even if he's wearing a life jacket - he is very clingy and if I move more than two inches away from him or don't allow him to clutch some part of my swimsuit at all times, he screams and cries like I've just dumped him in the ocean and sped off in my getaway boat. It's endearing the first seven or eight times as I "save" him from being out of arm's reach for 15 seconds and he holds onto my neck and laughs with glee, but after that, as I try to deal with that AND respond to Bryce's constant requests for me to watch him jump in the pool or put his face under the surface without getting water in his nose, I get that tight feeling in my chest, my brow furrows, and I start to notice my tone of voice becoming more irritated with every response to either child. Knowing all of this was a possibility, I agreed to take them to the pool anyway. By the time we returned home an hour later, I was hissing at both of them about not walking away in a big public place without telling me where they're going, not running, obeying the pool rules that we've been over a million times, not throwing other people's goggles into the pool and then running away laughing, and threatening not to EVER take them back to the pool AGAIN (yeah, that's realistic).

As I've said before, once I enter the Frustration Realm, it's very difficult for me to come out of it. I draw my kids into it and by the end of the day we're all tense with each other, every interaction is a tacit argument or challenge. I feel out of control of the entire situation, and end up doing a lot of heavy sighing and guttural growling after everything I say: "I told you to stop fighting over those books! You can find a way to share or one of you can go upstairs! RRRR!" That's what has happened this weekend. Even though both kids almost always wake up happy, by the time they've been up for 20-30 minutes, they are either arguing, physically accosting one another (pushing, grabbing things out of each other's hands, etc.) or have joined forces in chaos by running around the house screaming at the top of their lungs. Usually, when I'm not in the Frustration Realm, I pull out my arsenal of Consistent Parenting Techniques and diffuse the situation. But this weekend, the pool experience threw me into the Frustration Realm, and when the usual bickering and chaos started, my chest tightened, my heart rate increased, my movements became more agitated and rough, and anger was all that came through in my voice, even if all I was doing was listing off breakfast choices or granting a request for milk. The kids took their napkins and waved them like flags, reaching over the table to each other, each intending to take the other one's loot, each one's arm threatening to send full cups and plates clamoring to the floor and littering the freshly mopped tile with greasy, moist bits of sausage and muffin. "SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW. YOUR NAPKINS ARE FOR WIPING YOUR MOUTHS AND HANDS, NOT FOR PLAYING WITH! STOP IT! RRRRR!!" I turned back to the stove where I was scrambling eggs and with a flourishing, but only mild bang of the spatula, emphasized my disdain for the whole scene. Bryce finished chewing a bite of muffin and said, "Mom, when you growl like that, does it mean you want to get rid of us?"

"Of course not, Bryce!! Why would you say that?"

"Because every time you growl, you say, 'I wish you guys would just act better!' and that means you want to get rid of us."

That deafening shatter you hear is the breaking of my evil, black heart.

After I pushed aside the instinct to stick my head in the oven, I pulled Bryce to me and apologized for the way I expressed my frustration, and said I would do my best to find a better way, to which he responded, "Yeah, I think that's a better idea, mom."

It's 10:00 on Sunday morning. The kids go to bed at 8:00 p.m. The way I see it, I have approximately 10 hours to salvage the day. The problem is that even if I do, I've only won the battle. The War on Frustration will begin anew tomorrow morning with an as yet unpredictable skirmish.

It comes at a price.

In Bryce's new favorite Super Friends episode, Superman and Wonder Woman shrink down to a microscopic size and go to the center of Aquaman's brain to apply the antidote that will return him from his state as a "prehistoric beast" (read: a shark with arms and legs) back to his usual svelte and confident Anglo-Saxon aquatic humanoid form. After a recent viewing of this episode, as he is wont to do, Bryce was playing out his favorite scene inside Aquaman's brain, and I smirked to John, "so rather than simply filling a syringe and giving Aquaman a shot, they decided to SHRINK Superman and Wonder Woman and send them into his brain?" He explained, "Well, they had to apply the antidote directly to the CENTER of his brain - that type of operation could have killed him!" I was still skeptical: "Huh. The center of his brain?" Bryce piped up, "Yeah, mom. That means the middle! You know, just like the sun is at the CENTER of the solar system. And just like the sidewalk at the pool is between the two pools."

Oh.

John and I never know what to say in times like this. We end up numb and silent, staring at each other, then looking around nervously and trying to seem natural. Uh, yeah. Good examples, Bryce. So, is it dinner time yet? How about those Blue's Clues? What we're thinking as we stammer all over ourselves is OHMYGOD HE'S ONLY FOUR! WHO TAUGHT HIM THAT ANYWAY? DON'T TELL THE FBI ABOUT HIM OR IT MIGHT END UP LIKE THAT TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE WHERE THEY KILL THE SMART KID TO KEEP HIM FROM OVERTURNING THE DICTATORSHIP.

The other day, the day Bryce was banished to the living room during Quinn's nap, he wanted to play Batman, and decided he should make a mask. I am decidedly uncreative and unartistic when it comes to anything I have to physically draw, cut, or glue. I got him some black construction paper and with my crude, pathetic skills, managed to cut just the FACE of the Batman mask out for him. I thought he'd be fine with that, but NO. NO, NO, NO! He needed a way to attach it to his face! I tried and failed to tape some other pieces of paper together to fashion a sort of hat to hold it on to his head, and then gave up and told him he was on his own - he could either use the face to play Batman while Quinn finished his nap and I did some work (the standing rule at missed nap times), or he could do something else. I heard him rummaging around for a while, and when I went to check on him, he was using John's expensive archival album tape to try to tape the mask to the side of his head. He had become desperate enough that he'd actually put tape over the eye holes, thinking he'd simply stick the mask to his eyelids. I tried not to laugh and praised his ingenuity, then told him we'd get some string later in the day to make it a real mask. He said no, he wanted to keep working on it. About 20 minutes later, he came into my room looking dejected, tired, and frustrated, and said, "That mask I made is useless! I tried to stick it on to my hair but it just kept falling off! And then I put it over my nose and it got a tear in it!" The more he talked about it, the more his eyes flashed and his hands flailed wildly in an effort to express his disgust with the whole experience.

When I told John about Bryce's "useless" comment later that night, he said, " That poor kid. He really is a tortured soul." And it's so true. We joke about it and spend most of the time (when he's not awake and transferring his angst onto us) actually laughing to ourselves about the amount of intensity exploding out of such a small, young being. He's frighteningly bright, articulate, and intensely challenging, but at his core I almost picture him as some sort of misunderstood political prisoner, constantly enduring harsh reprimands or the callous ignorance of the masses for beliefs and expressions he just knows are important enough to battle over because of the legacy they'll undoubtedly bestow. (Unfortunately for our complicated relationship, I am the "harsh reprimands" and the "callous ignorance of the masses." Bummer.)

When he's defining "center" in three different (accurate) contexts, we shake our heads in disbelief, giggle, and feel grateful that he has so much with which to work. But when he's unable to keep any semblance of control over the emotions that are too great for his small frame to adequately hold, or when he's beating himself up over an inability to create something "perfectly," or when his peers have no idea how to talk to him and his face falls in confusion and disappointment, we're reminded, again, that the frustration and challenge we feel is only a fraction of what he's experiencing. He has gifts, yes; but he pays dearly for them.

More about the trip: you only thought I was through with this subject.

At least it's a benevolent creepy.
Last week, as I sat on my grandmother's deck and visited with my brother, my dad, and various extended family members, John and Bryce came outside, Bryce yelling excitedly, "Mom, watch what I can do!!" He grabbed both of John's hands and proceeded to walk up John's legs, torso, and chest and then flip over, landing on his feet, still holding John's hands. My brother and I looked at each other half incredulous, half amused: the only time we'd EVER in our lives performed the Childhood Torso Climb Flip was at my grandmother's house, and then we'd subjected aunts and uncles to it more times than any human should ever have to endure the skin-pinching pain and bruises caused by 35-50 pound humans clad in rubber-soled tennis shoes using one's body as a launch pad for Childhood Torso Climb Flips. I assumed someone had clued Bryce and/or John into the apparent Childhood Torso Climb Flip requirement at my grandmother's house, so I asked both of them, "who told you about that?" to which John stared at me blankly and then said, "nobody told me - Bryce just walked up to me, grabbed my hands, and started climbing." No one really knew what to say, even though all of us were thinking, "weird!" until my dad made an alarming implication about the psychic awareness of my grandmother's house. We all took another swig of our respective drinks and changed the subject.

Later, when the kids' excitement over the dozen new toys my grandparents purchased for them had worn off to the point that they were doing things like playing the electric piano keyboard at its highest volume (and by "playing" I mean attacking the keys with brute force and evil laughter), John did the only thing any sane individual can do with two kids under age 5 in a town of 3,000 in 110-degree weather: took them to Wal-Mart and bought a Slip-n-Slide. Again, Slip-n-Slide use was only ever sanctioned at my grandparents' house - we never had a yard that allowed for such intense water madness - and I figured someone had mentioned the Old Days of Slip-n-Slide Joy to one of the kids or John, but no - more creepy (but fun) psychic leftovers from my childhood.

Manipulation is the new comedy.
Oh my, were the kids ever fond of all the attention from the great aunts and great uncles and great grandparents who thought Bryce and Quinn were, well...great, actually. The amazing thing about people who haven't been around young children in several years is that they just FORGET. They forget how annoying the tantrums can be. They forget how differently kids act in public, and how frustrating it is as the parent to watch a kid who you know is perfectly capable of answering a question coherently turn into a giggly, limp mass of pretend shyness simply because he knows his parents won't call him on it in front of everyone. They forget how lack of sleep makes all of that cuteness seem really not so cute at all. And all they see is the miracle of a healthy, beautiful child, perfect precisely because of the imperfections; all they hear is the sound of life's complex, sometimes loud, potential; all they feel is the sense of special worth that being genuinely and gently hugged by a child you've only just met will inevitably leave with a person, no matter how old.

It was precisely this set of perceptions that allowed me to laugh (rather than rip out my hair by the roots while wailing and gnashing my teeth) when, at dinner in a restaurant one night, Quinn pushed the envelope further than I knew he was capable by doing everything he could imagine to bring the table to tearful, breathless laughter. He started early in the evening, while everyone was attempting to peruse the menu, by pouring a harmless amount of salt and pepper on the table AND THEN LICKING.IT UP. TWICE. IN A ROW. Yes! This is hilarious! Just look at their disgusted, shocked faces, and their shoulders, how they shake while they try not to laugh! This, THIS is what I've been waiting for! Later, after his mandatory two bites of the rice and beans he'd so passionately demanded, he announced with glee that HE NEEDED TO POOP, MOM I NEED TO POOP AND IT'S IMPORTANT THAT THE ENTIRE RESTAURANT KNOW THIS! I got up to take him to the restroom and made the mistake of not holding his hand, a foolish, amateur move of which he took swift advantage by sprinting across the huge, compartmentalized restaurant, ultimately darting into a private, luckily empty, room - mere moments later, John wouldn't be so lucky and would end his meal as a broken man, chasing his three-year-old through a private banquet room while the hosting family reunion pointed and laughed: just look at that funny kid and his funny, funny dad! HAHAHA! But it was so truly hilarious to everyone with us, and since he didn't BREAK anything or KICK anyone or THROW any food at a stranger, then certainly this behavior shouldn't stop us from ordering dessert! We ordered him a scoop of ice cream, even though the kid has never in his life successfully consumed anything with a sweet flavor. While I stuffed myself on sopapillas, the rest of the adults distracted themselves with conversation while Quinn, suddenly aware that no one was laughing hysterically at him, stuck John's credit card into the top of his ice cream scoop at an angle, like a fancy wafer would be positioned, then waited patiently for someone to notice. And believe me, we did. I'm not sure if anyone has actually stopped talking about it since.