Eustress

Cliche thought of the moment: Everything changes so fast.


Seriously, though. You're going along, content to drop a complaint about boredom or fatigue every few days, whining here and there about the hum drum nature of your life, comfortable in your spoiled, western guilt over complaining about a life 90% of the world will never have the luxury of pretending to scoff at. And then all of a sudden, you look up and realize that all of those fake complaints are becoming null and void, sinking into oblivion under the weight of - what's this? - a lot of really good, exciting things happening all at once. It all happens so quickly and feels so unreal that you're completely in the thick of major life changes before you realize that your heart seems to be a lot more woodpecker-like than usual. You wonder, "Self, what is wrong? Everything is going right ALL AT THE SAME TIME!" You fight off paranoia and the temptation to seek out the inevitable tragedy sure to befall you as soon as the universe lulls you into a false sense of security regarding the recent and sudden set of unbelievably good and exciting things happening to you: "What will it be that finally ruins everything, self? A fire? A heart attack? A kidnapping? Cancer?" You talk to yourself like Annette Benning in American Beauty, but instead of "I will sell this house today" (which would be entirely appropriate), your mantra is, "I will not mentally sabotage myself with paranoia." But you can't help it. You've grown so accustomed to defending yourself against threatening changes, bad changes, changes requiring rapid response and slashing of resources, be they financial, emotional, logistical, that good changes don't compute. Your body and mind respond with the same fight-or-flight mechanism they've spent years perfecting.

Kid stories of the moment: Too numerous to recount, but I'll try.

Yesterday after Quinn's nap, he was incensed that John had dared to close the laptop and put away the mouse while tidying up in preparation for someone to look at our house. He remedied the situation by re-opening the laptop, finding the mouse, hooking it up to the laptop correctly, and resuming whatever game he had been playing on pbskids.org before being so rudely interrupted for a nap. I live with this not-quite-four-year-old kid, and yet I still find it patently unnatural that I'm telling a story about him 1.) playing an online game 2.) hooking everything back up correctly in his huffy, "the-world-burdens-me" frustration after his nap.


During dinner last night, Bryce informed me that the way he knew the grapes on his plate were clean was that he himself had washed them a day or two before: "They looked thilthy," he stated with his clear and simultaneously incorrect pronunciation of the word filthy, "so I decided to wash them." I beamed in pride at his attempt at maturity, and five minutes later when we told him to eat one single black-eyed pea, he gingerly, with his front teeth, bit off half of one, sloshed the nearby glass of water to his lips while his eyes filled with tears of disgust and near-nausea, choked dramatically, and then yelled, sputtering, with his arms flailing about his head in a final black-eyed pea-related decree, "I told you I do NOT like black-eyed peas. I will NEVER. Eat them! Again! They are disgusting and I might THROW UP."

Final thought of the day: Just a wafer thin mint.

John and I went to the Cheesecake Factory over the weekend to celebrate my birthday. Avocado eggrolls + cheesecake + wine = no more stress. In theory that sounds great, but it's really because your entire body's focus is on surviving the impending Monty Python explosion. Whatever works, though. Whatever works.

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.

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.

You don't find it, it finds you.

I am on a job interview at least 50 times a year and when you interview for the same position every time, you get pretty good at it. Most of the time I get the job, other times I don't. And every so often I get the job, but turn it down. And that's good.

During the interview, I am frequently asked how I got into photography, or how long I have it been doing it. There are two distinctively different answers to those questions, and both are true.

The first (long) version goes like this. I was working for a financial services company doing third party commercial loans. We loaned money for big long haul trucks, trailers, and heavy duty "yellow" equipment. It was a good job, for it's kind. The job was predictable, steady, decent pay, and had good benefits. Then one day a huge Mega-Mongo company paid an unbelievable amount of money for our company, just to get this certain piece of the pie that resided in the Pacific Rim where liberal usuary laws made loans with interest rates of 50% and up a very, very profitable operation. The Mega-Mongo company that bought us also had a conmmercial lending division so some of us at the branch were offered positions in the central streamlined operation and others weren't. If accepted, the new position would require a major move. The timing of this branch closing and offer to move to keep the job was ill-timed. Kristen was in her 8th month of pregnancy with Bryce. This move would require us to sell our house, transplant a newborn, one highschooler, and one jr highschooler, and Kristen would have to quit her job. We considered it, but decided against it as the benefits did not outweigh the drawbacks. Instead, I took a paltry severence package and the improbable but joint decision was made that I would stay home with the baby, and begin offering photography services.

And so the short answer of version one is that I tired of being a pawn and working for The Man. I was tired of downsizing, restructuring, and layoffs and decided to pursue a passion and dream and work for myself as a photographer.

The pursuit of photography was something that had long ago been buried, buried deep in the no man's land of my brain, the place where Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Fairies, and all the other fanciful and impractical dreams of youth are buried. The hole where mine was buried was dug by my father. At least he started the hole. With valuable and practical lessons he showed me how to dig this hole, and soon turned the shovel over to me where I willingly (how did this happen, this willingness?) finished the job. It wasn't a swift burial, it took a long time to dig the hole in just the right spot, deep enough and wide enough to completely swallow the dream, and cover it up so you could barely notice that anything was buried there at all.

The second (very long) version of the answer to the question how did you get into photography goes like this. During the summer between fifth and sixth grades I got my first job as a paper boy. I was responsisble for the delivery of the afternoon paper to 56 houses in my neighborhood. Once a month I would make the rounds and collect the monthly subscription fee from my customers, going door to door with my bank zipper bag and receipt book. I would then ride my bike to the designated spot to meet the route manager and pay my tab for the month. The remaining balance over what the papers cost me was mine to keep, my profit for the month. I made about $75 a month for 90 minutes of work each day. That's some serious cash for an 11-year-old kid.

I opened up a checking account and dutifully deposited the profits each month, watching my financial empire grow. I changed routes, getting more houses, hitting up the ones that didn't subscribe to take the afternoon paper, and making even more money each month. Now 12, my only means of transportaion was my bike. My one-speed route bike with the basket in front was adequate for delivering papers, but lacked the necessary speed for quick transport to friends' houses, the school playground, or the local convenience store (when a bottle of Dr. Pepper and a comic book was the only answer for a boring afternoon).

I decided that my first major purchase was going to be a Schwinn 10-speed bike. I told my parents of my decision and they agreed to let me spend the money. My mom took me to the bike store, where I looked over the selection of bikes. I finally found the one I wanted, and the salesman pulled it down from the rack. He asked me to hike my leg over the seat and straddle the center bar. I did so, but had to stand on my tippy toes, and even then the bar was pushing up on my package. He explained that because I could not clear the bar, for safety reasons he couldn't sell it to me. I was devastated. I ran out to the car and cried. Nothing my mom said on the way home made a difference, I was just crushed.

We got home and I jumped on my route bike and just started peddling. I wound up at a new shopping center about a mile away and was tooling around on the sidewalks when I stopped in front of a camera store. I walked in just to look aound. The owner asked me if I needed something, and I told him I was looking for a camera. I gazed into the display case and my eye stopped on a what can only be described as a thing of beauty: the top-of-the-line SLR Minolta SRT 102.

I asked to see the camera, and he brought it out of the display case and placed it on the rubber mat on the glass counter top. He gave me a quick rundown on how the camera worked and without any hesitation I told him I would take it. I wrote a check (can you picture it? A 12-year-old writing a check for $300 for a top-of-the-line camera. Uh, no ID, sorry, but you can call my mom) and zoomed home with my new possession.

My dad hit the roof when he learned of my purchase, but in the end I won out and was able to keep it. I carried it with me everywhere I went. I got books from the library on photography, and studied every piece of photography literature I could get my hands on. I would ride my bike to the camera store, hang out and ask thousands of questions about photography. I lived and breathed photography.

As time went on, I discovered the power that comes with carrying a camera. It was my passport to places I would never otherwise be allowed to enter. During high school I was accepted to the newspaper staff, because I had a camera. Hall pass? We don't need no stinking hall pass! As long as I had my camera with me, I was allowed to cruise the halls without interference. It got me to the sidelines of football games, backstage at concerts, early access to events. My camera and an "I'm here on assignment" got me where the action was!

During my junior year of high school, I planned on going to a famous photography school in California. I applied and was accepted, but the hammer came down and my dad refused to let me go. Instead, I was encouraged to pursue a more "valuable" and "practical" career in engineering. My parents agreed to foot the bill for my education, and off I went to the state university. But not for long. I didn't like the subject matter, and as a result I didn't do well. I left during the second year and decided to work for a while to figure out what I wanted to do all over again.

So the short answer to the second version is I have been taking pictures since I bought my first camera when I was 12 with paper route money.

During the decision-making process of what the hell are we going to do we're going to have a baby and I'm out of a job, a silent ground shift took place in the deep dream burial crevice of my mind, pushing the photography dream ever so slightly back to the surface, raising it just enough to the point of notice. When I first found it I looked at it and walked away, but kept coming back more and more frequently. Each time I returned to the burial place, it was further out of it's grave, looking better and better, as if this crossroads in our life were giving it energy, renewing it, feeding and nurturing it, until I had to bring it out to the open and speak of it. To me it was beautiful and scary (I can't imagine what it looked like to Kristen) but she agreed to let me try and I love her for that. If not for short legs and a corporate buyout and re-org, the dream would still be buried.

My psychosis: Good for something.

I want to write something. I'm compelled to type words onto this white screen and address all of you that have continued to suffer through what has surely been a depressing or at least worrisome set of posts to read. I want to say that we're okay, we're going to be okay, things are good, and oh by the way, listen to this hilariously humiliating thing our sons did, those crazy kids!

But, well... I got nothin'. This is our new routine, this ever-present tension that we fight off with forced smiles and deep breaths and reminders to each other not to kill anyone. There are better and calmer days, there are days with lots of tears, and there are days I black out with a thick sharpie on the mental history book: Error. No one needs to know about that. Move to next day. I think this is just where we are right now, this is the place we've come to. We're trying to leave this place, though. We're genuinely trying. I'm looking for the funny, but as Andie pointed out in a recent comment, I more often find myself screaming about the TREES in my way, all of these TREES, I can't see anything but TREES, where on god's green earth is the FOREST already?! So, the funny is kind of blocked out these days; I can't find it as easily as I'd like.

You can imagine how strange it must be, then, for me to learn that Bub and Pie nominated us for a ROFL award. That's right. An award honoring funny posts. Funny. On this site full of rage, exhaustion, and insanity. There is only one explanation here: I must have been unconscious at the time of the funny. The name of the nominated post? Dreamland.

So, okay. I can't FIND the funny, but sometimes it still finds me in my sleep. Thanks for the reminder, B&P.

Also, because I don't want you to leave every day believing our house is a place of pure and utter misery, two brief glimpses of the forest from recent days:

1.) Last night at dinner, Bryce told us there was a new student in his class at school. He rarely volunteers any information, preferring instead to watch his parents stammer all over themselves as they seek the correct combination of questions to elicit details he apparently finds mundane. We perked up immediately: Oh really? A new student? Is it a boy or girl? What's his or her name? Is he or she nice? He said, "Yeah, she's nice. And she's pretty, too." (Is it time for this? She's pretty?) "Oh, she's pretty, well, I'm glad to hear she's nice - did you play with her?" I asked. "Yeah, I did. And she runs fast, too. She's faster than me!" Mmhmm. Now I see the infatuation.

2.) This morning I was home when Quinn woke up. The child is delusional enough to be happy about this despite my constant shrieking and nagging, and he came down the stairs quietly grinning and giggling to see me. I made his breakfast and continued scrambling around the house acquiring the ridiculous amounts of food and water I lug to work with me as if work is an expedition across the Sahara. When I had a second to stop, I plopped an egg in a frying pan and sat down in the dining room to shovel it into my face before leaving for work. Quinn was in the kitchen at the breakfast table and sauntered over, holding his toaster waffle and vegetarian sausage-covered plate at a precarious angle, a determined look on his face. John told him to get back in his seat, not knowing what he was doing and suspecting foul play. "No, it's too awful in the kitchen, I'm too hot in there," Quinn replied absurdly. We looked at each other, confused. He rounded the corner and put his plate on the dining room table right next to mine, and quietly climbed into the chair next to me. Ah, the forest. It's nice in here with all those trees out of the way.

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.

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.

Trying Something New

Over the past year, our dinner routine (or lack thereof, maybe), has degenerated to such a level of mayhem that we can no longer even attempt to answer the phone or operate any noise-making electronics that would normally be used for entertainment purposes during dinner preparation. Yes, this has been our solution. If we just pretend that truck-horn volume telephone ring isn't piercing the thick cloud of tension and chaos FOUR, FIVE, SIX times in a row because Hannah's friends refuse to leave messages on the answering machine and opt to call back ad infinitum, we'll be able to concentrate more of our harried attention onto the kids and our oh-so-complicated meal preparation, usually involving one of two things: opening steamy plastic, noodle-filled packages from the local Thai place or throwing some frozen veggie burgers onto the skillet. If we refuse to turn on the television or radio and talk in soft voices between all of the hypocritically loud shrieks of STOP RUNNING! and I TOLD YOU IF YOU FOUGHT OVER THAT TOY I WAS GOING TO THROW IT AWAY, NOW BRING IT TO ME, HEY! COME BACK HERE! then maybe our sheer desire and need for the kids to be in our presence without demanding, directly or indirectly, that we stop what we're doing every three seconds to deal with their wild behavior will just seep right out of our migraine-ridden heads and into theirs. I imagine this transition to happen instantly, but in slow motion, where John and I are in the kitchen with wild, desperate eyes and clenched jaws, the kids are in the living room throwing things at each other and jumping from one piece of furniture to another, and then suddenly the earth stops spinning long enough for all of the intentions John and I have for dinner to be even mildly peaceful and enjoyable to drip like molasses from our now-relaxed heads, down our still statue arms until it combines into one blob-form and seeps over to the kids and up through their feet, which will be frozen in the air since they are always, always at least an inch or two off the ground. Then, after that gradual moment is over and the earth spins again, the kids land with a soft, quiet thud, John and I stir sauce and gather plates for the table, and the kids find a book or ask if they can put out the butter.

These are my fantasies. Such is my life. Other people fantasize about winning the lottery or meeting someone famous; I fantasize about getting through dinner without ever once wanting to yank my hair out by the roots or sell my children on the black market.

Since we've never ONCE achieved even one single part of that goal with our current pretend-we're-peaceful-and-maybe-we'll-become-peaceful tactics, we finally decided to try something new this week, something more practical. For one thing, because John is home with the kids during the afternoon, he had been attempting to start dinner before I got home. Of course, because of the late afternoon boredom / fatigue / mischief that sets in with our kids around 4:00 p.m. every day, by the time I would get home at 5:30, he'd already be in the throes of dealing with some completely ridiculous behavior, and dinner would still be a long way off. Or worse, he'd call me on my way home with a desperate Mayday! sound in his voice, and I'd end up picking dinner up on my way - it would be THAT BAD at home. We both had it stuck in our heads for months that it "just made sense" for him to start dinner. Clearly that was wrong, because hello! Dinnertime at our house: not making sense!

Now John keeps the kids occupied until I get home, and I start dinner while Bryce sits at the kitchen table and does his 15 minutes of homework or tells me about his day. Quinn usually wanders around, still slightly wild, but much more tolerable than what we were seeing before, since Bryce is occupied and not feeding off of Quinn's delirium. John will come in and out, here helping with dinner, there taking the kids outside to throw a ball or distract them from the idea that they need to destroy the inside of the house, specifically the kitchen and dining room, at that exact moment.

Not exactly molasses-dripping peaceful, but we're approaching sanity. (For now.)

Compression

Quinn loves to look at photo albums. Before John went digital 18 months ago, we had stacks of pictures piled up in closets and on counters, gathering dust waiting to be lovingly placed into scrapbooks and albums with captions, dates, and labels to tell future generations exactly how old Bryce was when he cut his first tooth, or how long it was from the time Quinn finally sat unassisted to the day he decided commando crawling was no longer the best mode of physical movement.

Alas, I am a crappy wife and mother. All of the prints that are actually in albums were placed there hurriedly by John, most of them over two years ago, before Quinn was old enough to be capable of successfully destroying something of value if left unsupervised for an activity such as photo album upkeep. The rest of the prints, including pictures of birthdays, milestones, and vacations are still sitting in dusty stacks in my closet. And this doesn't even begin to touch on the THOUSANDS of digital files we haven't even bothered to have printed yet. Behold my crappiness.

Despite his mother's shortcomings in family history preservation, Quinn could spend hours looking at one of the four complete photo albums we actually have. (FOUR. The crappiness, behold it.) They are out of order, there are no labels or captions, and some of them have bent or torn pages from ardent toddler viewing excitement, but one of his favorite activities is to lug one of the heavy bound albums from the low shelf in my closet, hoist it onto our bed like he's a mountain climber throwing his pack up over the peak, and climb up with a satisfied grunt to look at pictures from two years ago. The only reason he can tell which kid is him and which is Bryce is because he's memorized them. If he comes across a picture of Bryce as a two- or three-year-old that he's never studied very intently, he assumes it's a picture of himself: "There's me!" I always blush and roll my eyes at my crappiness and say, "Uh, no, that's Bryce. See, there you are. You're the one with...um...no teeth...sitting in the...er... high chair." Then I go wallow in my shame. (But I don't actually take any steps to remedy the situation - hence, the mounds of dusty pictures still un-albumed. I flaunt the crappiness!)

There are jillions of pictures of me as a child that my mom or dad lovingly labeled, dated, and pasted into dozens and dozens of now worn and yellowed albums. In almost every album, there is at least one picture of me looking at photo albums. Quinn apparently inherited this gene from me. And since I am usually in my room when he's on his photo viewing kicks, I almost always get sucked in, too.

Even with the limited number of albums, I'm always amazed at how I've already forgotten certain pictures, certain moments. Quinn will turn the page and I'll look down and see Bryce as an intensely curious 19-month-old eyeing his infant brother swaddled in a receiving blanket and I'll think, oh yeah! I remember that exact moment. I had BABIES. Who is this galumping kid next to me? He'll turn another page and I'll see two-year-old Bryce rolling his Little People bus gently over a completely relaxed and happy baby Quinn's stomach and knees, and I'll know I would have forgotten the day I took that picture if it weren't in this album. Then I always feel a little sad. Sad that I've forgotten, sad that I don't have a picture to remind me of every moment I wanted to capture but couldn't, sad that I haven't treasured those moments enough to have set aside the time to document them more thoroughly, sad that those days are over, as difficult as they sometimes were - because now we have new, different difficulties, sad that in three years I'll be looking at pictures (digital, most likely) of these times, right now, in the same melancholy way, sad that I'll never be satisfied. Then Quinn turns the page again, points a pudgy finger at a picture of Bryce, one that he loves, that he's asked me about many times before, and says, "there's baby Bryce, mom!" and beams up at me with all the exuberance of his adoration of these times. I don't have a picture of this, so I write it down. Crappiness be damned.

Five Years With A Leo

Dear Bryce,

I've struggled in writing this letter to you. Maybe that's because I've already written in so much detail about your unique qualities, quirks, talents, and passions. Maybe it's because you're old enough that if I were to say most of these things directly to you, I'd carefully consider the language surrounding each phrase, because you take everything so literally and so personally and so seriously. Recently some other bloggers have asked questions about how we'll write about our kids as they age to points where they can read our words and react to them. I've responded to several of those questions by saying that I write about my experience, and since you are a pivotal part of that experience, I will inevitably write about you. Don't take this to mean that I feel I have unlimited license in what I can disclose about you. I find I don't worry so much about this issue, because you are such an effective and direct communicator that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that once you reach an age where something about my writing bothers you, you will not hesitate to tell me in very clear, concise terms, and because I am trying my hardest to teach you that communication is the catalyst and the precursor for action and resolution, I will follow my own instruction, respectfully acknowledge your words, and act accordingly. There will never be a time that I simply won't write about our interactions, though: those are my experiences, and I would expect you, as you grow, to use yours in a way that feels equally fulfilling to you. I hope my example comes through to you over time, and doesn't just make you want to egg my car or send hate mail to my office. If so, I sincerely apologize; but until that point, I am writing this birthday letter to you, and will probably write volumes more about you, and to you.

Everything about your birth was intense. The pregnancy leading up to it had been deceptively simple and complication-free, which made the experience of hearing "his heart rate won't come back up" and "we don't know why it keeps dropping like this" that much more shocking and heart-wrenching. You see, before I was pregnant with you, I could never envision myself having a child. It wasn't that I didn't want a child - I did. I simply couldn't envision it the way I'd always been able to envision other aspects of my intentions for my adult life. Throughout the pregnancy, I tried to picture it, I read all about what to expect and I thought about you and how I knew this whole thing wasn't a dream because I could feel your feet and elbows poking around inside my huge belly. But still, even through all of those attempts, I was troubled by the fact that I simply couldn't imagine what you would look like, smell like, sound like, or feel like outside of my body. I couldn't imagine what daily life in our household would consist of with you, the new baby, the new family member, actually there, living with us. Leading up to your birth, I allowed other people's excitement and life experience to brush off my internal worry, and I focused on reading the baby books and preparing your nursery, tangible things whose existence and purpose I didn't have to work hard to imagine or question.

When I first saw you, I studied your face intently and was awed that you started out as a clump of cells indistinguishable from the other microscopic cells making up my form, and now here you were, despite my nine-month-long inability to fully believe you'd actually be born and have a face, and hands, and a voice -- a very CLEAR, LOUD voice. I spent every single day of the entire first year or so of your life being in sincere awe of you as a separate, real being. You were the template for us -- as your dad puts it (and as any new parents inevitably find), the standard by which all other kids were judged. Thus, we thought your penchant for screaming at nap times was normal, we thought all children refused to change ground surfaces when walking outside, we thought all toddlers gagged on any food with a texture more complex than stage 2 baby food, and we assumed when you could find landmarks from any part of the city, and could hold complex conversations and perform basic mathematical functions at age 2, that the world was going to be run by a frightening new breed of pre-schoolers within the next few years.

Luckily your pediatrician recognized your abilities and pointed us in the direction of your school. Last year at this time, I was fretting about our decision to send you there: would you feel socially overwhelmed? would the other kids accept you? should I put you in the younger class or the older class (you were right on the cusp)? what if we were wrong about how much you could handle? You thrived there; you learned, you handled everything that was thrown at you, and you simultaneously surprised me and confirmed what I'd known already - that your abilities and your quirks and your intensity aside, you are and always have been too strong not to thrive. All of my disbelief and fear during the pregnancy that you'd never even exist was just as irrelevant and and insignificant to your near-supernatural will to be, to be you, to be intensely, boldly you, as all of our doubt and worry about your ability to handle the challenge and complexity of school. So broad is the chasm between your being and some external belief in you, in fact, that even writing "the challenge and complexity of school" seems trite and inconsequential. Sure, there will be challenges, there will be hardship in your life, but our worry, angst, and doubt means nothing in relation to you. Your intensity, while I may tell you that it drives me insane at times, exists for a reason. When I step back from the difficulty with which that intensity often presents me, I see you surrounded by beautiful, powerful, blinding light. Is it your "soul"? Is it your "aura"? Is it my poor attempt at describing the indescribable? It is you - it is what clouded my vision of you before you were born. I couldn't have imagined you: you create who you are every day, and you've done so in profound ways from the minute you existed in any form - even before you were born you refused to let me dictate who you would be. You are a mystery and a miracle, you are intense and bright. You are my son. You are five years old today.

Happy Birthday, Bryce. I love you.

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.

In the end, no storm.

I'm crouched by a window holding on to Bryce, in a situation where I think I should be afraid, but am really only curious and slightly confused, like a primitive animal. As I look out the window, I realize we're upstairs, and there is a storm outside - a tornado. My mom is right next to me and says with less panic than I'd expect, "the storm is right over us, we're right in it! See?!" She points out the window to a helicopter, and Bryce and I both turn to look. We see the pilot mouthing the same sentence my mom just uttered, and we see a black swirling mass presumably around the house. I think of the scene in the movie Twister where the main characters end up in the eye of the storm, and I realize that's right where we are. Then I realize (again) that we are upstairs (the worst place to be in a tornado), and my mind and heart start racing, why are we upstairs, why did I not get us to our shelter, how long do we have, why is this not more terrifying? I wait for the tell-tale sound of the freight train, what I've been told I'll hear if I'm ever caught in a tornado, I hold on to Bryce, who I note is strangely, quietly calm and curious, I wonder how likely it is that we'll be swept up by the black swirl that I can see right outside the window, if we'll be torn apart in the process, if all of this will be the end. I wait, and I worry, but only mildly, the way Bryce is watching the spiraling mass.

Updated to add: The above is my description of a dream I had two nights ago (sorry if we alarmed anyone). I just thought the dream was very telling about how I view the many challenges with Bryce. As the title suggests, the dream ended with my realization that the storm never hit, despite all the signs that it would, despite all the knowledge that I should be more worried and afraid because of those signs. It's the ultimate truth, isn't it? That in the end, it's all okay.

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.

No matter where you go, there you are.

Last week we drove to West Texas to visit my grandmother for her 80th birthday. I haven't been to her house since childhood, and as cliche as it sounds, it looked tiny to me. The "long" hallway to the back bedroom was actually about three steps; the "huge" front room that used to house unimaginable mounds of Christmas presents and decorations was actually a little crowded even without all of the holiday paraphernalia; the back yard we'd spend hours in as kids shooting water guns and swinging on hammocks was actually about half the size of what I remembered. Still, though, there was so much about it all that felt familiar and unchanged - the smells in the house, the constant din of my grandfather's TV in the background, the voices, the phrases, the conversation, the food, my GOD, the food. What was most interesting to me about the trip was how profoundly comfortable the kids were - my kids, who thrive on routine and order and familiarity - in this new environment. When we walked in, they hugged my grandparents as if they'd known them all their lives, then immediately found the toys my grandmother had bought for them, which were in a guest room in a house they should have had no clue how to navigate. They conversed with everyone (basically) politely and made themselves at home. Unfortunately when my kids make themselves at home, their great level of comfort results in lots of yelling and running. But true to form, my grandmother was thrilled to have them there anyway. My grandfather's oscillating moods were met with the same calm, joking manner the whole family has learned to adopt with him, and the kids seemed to pick up on this as well. It was uncannily peaceful, and - despite the challenges of a long trip with young kids and the light of smallness that adulthood shines on childhood memories - very familiar.

During one of our hours-long driving treks this week, we stopped in a tiny town for John to take some pictures and the kids to terrorize as few living beings as possible with their insistence on exerting their life force upon every particle of matter with which they happened to come into contact during our drives (car door using one's foot? cotton of one's shirt using one's furious claw-like fingers in protest of something admittedly innocuous? mom's ear using one's uncannily superhuman screaming ability? too many choices.). While we were there, it was so quiet and still, except for the occasional truck whizzing by on the state highway, sometimes stopping at the town's lone (but apparently popular, judging by the number of cars consistently in the gravel parking lot) restaurant. John and the kids walked around the old prison and the courthouse while I sat on the courthouse steps and looked across the highway at the antique/junk store owner who sat on his porch and swatted flies. I wanted to think about how awful and stifling that existence would be, and how every fiber of my being would rail against it, but all I could think about was how very peacefully quiet it was. It wasn't the quiet of relief I notice after the kids are asleep, like, "thank god THAT's over now" or the quiet of fear that I notice in the split second after one of them has fallen and is waiting for the pain to register in his brain - both of which I experienced on this trip, by the way. It was just a quiet of still acceptance, one that said something to me about how no matter how much things change, they ultimately stay the same, regardless of space, time, and new elements.

Simple Truth

Last night after I put the kids to bed, I was folding one of the dozens of loads of laundry that I like to use in my guilt arsenal towards John on the weekends, when Bryce quietly peered around my bedroom door. And honestly, it took every last ounce of strength I had not to jump out of my skin when he did that, because, MAN! THAT KID IS SNEAKY. He must have inherited my CIA genes.

After I composed myself without letting on to him that he almost caused my pre-mature death by heart attack among a pile of John's clean white undershirts, I asked him what he needed and got up to head back upstairs with him. "I just really miss Daddy," he said. We walked up the stairs, and his voice started to crack the way only an adult voice cracks when that adult is trying to keep from crying in front of his/her peers: "I miss him so much that I'm about to cry." I forgot about it all for a second: this complicated blended family, the new job, the braces; I said, "because you just love your Dad so much?" He said, in his still cracking voice, "Yeah." "Oh," I said, "and you always have such a great time with Dad!" And he said, brightening, "Yeah. I do. I love BOTH of you so much. I like being with both of you. And I wish you could stay home instead of going to work all the time."

Gulp.

"But you have such a great time at home with Dad, right? So that's good."

"Well, sometimes I do. But I like being with you sometimes, too. And I wish you could just be at home every day."

"Me too. But I do get to spend lots of time with you on the weekends. And that's a lot of fun. And during the week, you get to hang out with Dad."

"Yeah." *yawning, pulling up the covers* "I love you both so much."

I'm not really sure who he wanted when he originally came downstairs, and I'm not sure he was, either. Normally I would analyze this to death, but I think in this case, it's very, very simple.

And I can only hope they both still see things so simply in another 15 years. God, I hope I don't screw them up by then.

Mornings like that do NOT suck.

This morning I was checking e-mail on my way out the door to work, and Bryce shuffled in, his soft cowlicks sticking out all over his head, clutching his blanket to his chest. He tentatively approached; out of the corner of my eye, I could see him at my elbow silently seeking permission to interrupt my seemingly important grown-up activity.

Like his mother, sometimes Bryce can be a tad...unpredictable in the morning. I've learned to let him start the dialogue; it just works better that way, and besides, the kid loves to talk, in case I haven't adequately conveyed that. It's not like we go more than two minutes without a conversation starting, despite the fact that I never start it. Sometimes the conversations are tense, because Bryce often wakes up too early and this occasionally results in an unexplainable and apparently inexpressable foul mood. This means that rather than, oh, I don't know...GOING BACK TO BED like a normal person, he feels the need to follow me around and groan like a sick animal. I'm not so much into that. This means that I respond with a complete lack of sympathy, and he is understandably insulted, which leads to more groaning. Mornings like that really SUCK.

But there are different kinds of mornings, too - mornings like the one we had today. As he stood next to me while I scanned my inbox, I waited with baited breath, pretending not to notice him. Was it going to be a groany day? Were we all going to have to walk on eggshells or constantly threaten "time outs" to keep the peace? He kept standing there. Tap tap tap, I started typing a response. Then he spoke up: "Mom, I just wanted to give you a hug and a kiss." And then he did.

Oh, okay. I guess that's cool with me. I guess I can do without the yelling and tantrums this morning. I mean, I'll miss them, and I'll expect them back tomorrow, but for today, a hug and a kiss are fine, I suppose.

So, apparently, all I had to do was ask.

Tonight after work, we had planned to have a picnic in the park with the kids. Fifteen minutes before I made it to my car to head home, the weather took our plans and crushed them under its cold, wet feet like an empty aluminum can. Dread filled my soul: the kids would have been pumped up for our outing, wound up tightly, all set to bounce and ricochet off the bright green plastic play equipment to their hearts' content, while, more importantly, John and I expended only enough energy to lift the Mikes' bottles to our lips. So what now? What diastrous combination of emotions and behaviors would I arrive home to find?

Not to worry; John thinks of everything. "We're going to have a picnic on the living room floor!" he said as I wearily surveyed the progressively more obnoxious behavior the kids were using to let us know how disappointed they were about the rain. Bryce kept climbing on our bed and trying to jump on it with his shoes on; Quinn kept running to the front door yelling, "I'm going to the park! I'm wearing a jacket!" despite the dozens of times we told him it was raining and we weren't going.

As I was putting clothes away and talking to John, Bryce was becoming more and more loud and demanding, so I tried focusing on him: "tell me about school today - what did you say about your wallaby in show and tell?" This didn't work to curb the behavior - he kept darting under covers, hanging on John's leg, and doing all manner of, well...annoying things. I finally said, "Bryce. You act like you're needing attention, but I'm trying to talk to you and give you what you need. That doesn't seem to be working, so I don't know what to do anymore. Rather than jumping and yelling and hanging off of us, why don't you use your words and tell me what it is you need?!"

He stopped and looked at us in a very matter-of-fact way and said, "I'm hungry." The kid ate two sandwiches, some graham crackers, and a bowl of pineapple, which, for those of you who aren't aware, is about one and a half sandwiches, some graham crackers, and a bowl of pineapple MORE than he normally eats.

Huh. It was so simple! If only I'd known before now, I could have saved myself years of anguish.

The cuteness is killing me...or maybe it's the sleep deprivation.

The kids were up by 5:40 this morning. Both of them. But for once, people, I'm not going to write about how taxing and desperately frustrating it is to feel like all you can physically do is roll over in bed when your kids are forcing you to be responsible and accept the fact that they're awake and there's nothing you can do about it. Weeee! Is it the fatigue weighing down my brain? Or is the following list of morning events overshadowing my instinctual desire to feel frustrated about it?

1.) I woke up to Quinn's voice over the monitor reciting lines from a movie where a huge, deep-voiced monster says in that slow motion, old fashioned damaged record kind of way, "Hhheeeyyy jjuunniioorr, aa lliittlle ffibb never hurt annnyyybboddy, rrrriiiggghhhttt?" followed by his attempt at a scary laugh: "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!"

2.) When I went to get him up (while chuckling), to keep him from waking Bryce, I had to sneak through Bryce's room, but when my socked, tip-toeing feet touched Bryce's thickly carpeted non-creaking floor, his super-sonic hearing woke him up. He followed me to Quinn's door: "Mom??" I steeled myself for the onslaught of demands and frustration that he usually throws at me when he wakes up too early, but instead, he gently hugged my leg and said, "I'm so sorry that I woke up crying last night. It's just that it was dark and I was scared." I remembered the 1:30 a.m. meltdown and my multiple trips to his room to convince him to stay in his bed, and my overt irritation with that. I pulled him to me and thanked him for his apology, told him I understood, and then headed to Quinn's room, hoping Bryce would go back to sleep.

3.) When I walked up to Quinn's crib to get him out, I whispered, "you have to be quiet becuase Bryce is sleeping, okay?" He was sitting in the middle of his crib, and he looked up at me with so much maturity and understanding oozing out of his little baby face and nodded his head at my request. The cuteness! Then I took him to the changing table to change his diaper, with him whispering at me the whole way across the room, "I have to be quiet? Bryce is sleeping? That's my tent on the floor?" When I placed him on the table, he did this hilarious thing he's been doing every time we change him, every time he watches TV, basically every time he's lying on his back: he crossed his hands behind his head, elbows out, like he was kicking back in a hammock with a beer! I can't adequately describe how cute it is to see his stubby, chubby toddler arms folded behind his head as he looks around with this, "so...got any chips?" expression.

4.) Bryce didn't go back to sleep, so I turned on all the lights and asked the kids if they wanted to stay upstairs and play for a while, thinking they would do what they normally do, and insist on following us around all morning shouting demands for trips to the fair and a million dollars, but no! They wanted to play in their rooms! More specifically, Quinn wanted to read all of his books, and Bryce wanted to play with one of the hundreds of rainbow-colored plastic toy sets stashed in his closet.

Sometimes even the ingredients for the worst case scenarios can't kill the cuteness.



Against all odds, they played quietly for 15 minutes. FIFTEEN MINUTES! Long enough for me to upload pictures and start writing this post. The utopian feel has left the house now (something to do with Bryce demanding that Quinn let him have more marbles, and Quinn screaming "GO AWAY!" and also a recent meltdown about not wanting to eat breakfast after demanding breakast, but who's keeping track?), but I made sure to document it as it was happening, you know, to prove to the world that I do more than yell at my kids -- at least when I'm sleep-deprived and drowning in cuteness, anyway. When I have energy and they're just doing normal, boring old kid stuff, then I'm a real slave-driver.