Everloving Mess

Sackload of Everloving Suck

2011-12-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

If there's a top ten list of reasons why I write, comic relief takes the top spot, we all know that. It's my personal balm to the soul, always with the hope that it rubs off on other souls that need it as much as or more than I do.

Unfortunately, a lot of what's been going on around me in my little corner of existence is just...well it's just not frickin funny. It has its moments, don't get me wrong, and I know I'll get to those eventually, because they really do just write themselves.

But overall, it's just much too much...and not funny.

A month or so ago, I was trick-or-treating with Mike and the kids and a passel of neighborhood urchins when my cell phone rang with a call that made for the weirdest, surrealest Halloween of my life. It was my mom, and I knew I had to take the call and not smash the phone on the pavement...as if smashing the phone would mean I wouldn't get the news I knew was coming, that her brother, my Uncle Dan, had died. (This, by the way, is the kind of uncle that you would rather NOT be your uncle, so that you could grow up and marry him one day. Ask any of his other nieces and they'll back me up.)

Anyway, we'd all gotten the 24-36 hour warning from the kind hospice people, but that doesn't take the wallop out of it one little bit. And then, scarcely a week later, with no time for anyone to catch a breath or find the earth under their feet again, we lost a second one. This time it was my cousin Kevin, who'd been in the care of yet another set of kind hospice people, and so came another load of gutwrenching heartbreak, once again not unexpected, and once again a full-out punch in the gut just the same.

People who live close enough had been making the rounds of one hospice to the other...because all of us who love one of them, also love the other. Both were young and vibrant men, but then cancer came in and did its hideous thing, leaving broken hearts in pieces all around. Countless hands to hold. Tears that never stop flowing because once you've calmed down over the one for a minute or two, your mind goes to the other. This is going to be a long haul.

I want to be able to explain it, the cords of connection interweaving all the players, all the events. It would take volumes and volumes. I don't know where to start. My mother is the oldest of eight. So it was like this...beginning in their late teens, my incredibly movie-star gorgeous grandparents couldn't keep their hands off each other, plus they're from Buffalo, and it gets plenty cold in those parts and what better way to keep warm...in those parts.

Fast forward six short decades and you need a score card to keep track of us all. I do not exaggerate...ok so you all know I do, but not in this case. I think the family crest reads "Horny and Fertile" in Latin, I'll have to doublecheck. I always pity the poor inlaws (also affectionately known as nonbloods) when they join this clan...the frenzied mental gymnastics they do as they try to keep up on who's who at the barbecue, the disorientation written all over their faces, it's kind of adorable. Pretty soon they smarten up and just have another beer. There's no quiz at the end of the night. Just a bonfire, massive amounts of laughter...and more beer.

Some people don't know their uncles, aunts, cousins, etc., very well I guess. In some families they're just relations people enjoy (or not) being cordial to (or not) at weddings and funerals and family reunions. It's not that way in my clan. I grew up living for the day we'd pack up the family truckster and go to them and get swallowed up in a sea of affection that smelled like coffee and cigarettes...and maybe a highball. To this day it still happens. My heart starts to skip around and my stomach swims with butterflies when we turn at Ilio DiPaolo's Restaurant (so we'll be on the right side of the street for parking), now just mere blocks away from the house on Madison Avenue, Blasdell, NY 14219, one square mile of heaven, just like the T-shirts say.

My grandfather still lives there, a spritely 82, but don't tell him I said "spritely" because he'll only deny it. My grandmother, Rosemary, is there too, harder to see but if you pay attention you'll know she's there, and for an extra bonus you may smell good tobacco that nobody appears to be smoking, or the fluid from a Zippo lighter that nobody appears to have lit, or a rose will bloom in the yard after the first frost has set in...seriously, pay attention, I don't make this stuff up.

But getting back to Halloween, my sweet, gorgeous, hilarious, beloved Uncle Dan died that afternoon, an event I like to call part of the biggest sackload of suck to ever hit my family. So I packed my things and headed west to be with my people. While I was there, I went to the place where the kind hospice people were still taking care of Kevin. I got to hold his hand, tell him how beautiful and loved he is, and look into his eyes so bright and alive they took my breath away. That was a privilege I won't ever forget. I can still feel the life that was filling that room, and I didn't even have to close my eyes to see how quietly crowded it was in there.

We want certain kinds of miracles when people are threatening to die, specifically, we want them to NOT die. My Uncle Dan should have lived to 100 at the very least. Sixty-three measly years, we've been gypped bigtime. He was too good to be true, but he WAS true, and we don't get enough of those on this planet for my money. Therefore, we should get to keep him, end of story.

And Kevin, don't even get me started. Forty-four years old, are you kidding me? Hell-raising wise ass, lovingest father of the best and funnest family ever, six amazing kids, the youngest a little 3-year old baby. All that, and my cousin Missy had to watch him sicken, waste away, and die, just like what had already happened to her mom, my godmother, my mother's baby sister Mary...just a few short years ago when SHE was just forty-four. You want the definition of NOT FAIR, I'll just send you a picture of my cousin Missy...who, by the way, has never faltered, just puts her head down and continues on like a warrior, taking care of the business of life and of love while a shit storm of nothing less than Biblical proportions rains down around her. If I hear myself complain about anything, I just think "Missy," then I shut my big fat everloving mouth.

So we didn't get the miracles we wanted for my uncle Dan and my cousin Kevin, not by a long shot. Instead we got a one-two punch right in the face and kick in the crotch. We feel abandoned, broken, empty, cheated. And we all hate it.

But...I don't know...you tell me if this counts as a miracle, because I really just don't know anymore. As I've walked amongst my tribe through all this hell on earth, I've felt something impossible in the midst of it all....

Joy.

A joy so huge and expansive I'm almost ashamed to admit it. But if this joy had no place in the thick of our sorrow, it apparently didn't get the memo, because it was there just the same and wouldn't be shown the door. It had hundreds of faces, this thing, this joy. One of them was Ellie's, she's my newborn baby cousin I got to meet for the first time, in a funeral home of all places. And as I cradled this newest friend in my arms, and she was gurgle-smiling up at me (and beyond me, too, I'm pretty sure) something drew my attention across the room where another face caught my eye.

It was my grandfather's face. Papa. Daniel. Resident patriarch, whom I'd just watched walk up to a casket to tenderly caress the hair of his first-born son, which just about forced all the air out of my lungs I can assure you. But Papa was seated now, and while I watched from across the room, baby Ellie in my arms, I saw something happen on his face that I couldn't..I couldn't fathom. I figured the stress had gotten to me and I was starting to hallucinate, no biggie. Because what I was seeing across the room was a face all aglow with...delight. And not just any kind of delight...it was a boy's delight, I swear to God. Just a few feet from that coffin I mentioned. He was being clapped on the back by some old-timer, a stranger to me, and then they were talking and laughing, heads close together like a couple of 9-year-old boys who'd just overturned a big boulder and were feasting their eyes on the dozens of squiggling critters underneath.

Turns out his tall stranger with his shock of white hair was a friend from Papa's youth, someone he'd probably never expected to see again, maybe would never even have thought of again...and then, as I shamelessly spied on them, awestruck and mesmerized and glued to the spot, they hugged each other like long lost friends who didn't care who was looking, their billion-watt smiles never fading.

I could barely catch my breath. It was like looking at the sun.

But you can't look at the sun for too long or you're in trouble, so luckily Ellie started making some noises. Hey, what happened, did you forget about me?

I looked her in the eyes and asked her, point blank, What the hell was that, Ellie? Truth!

She burbled some, clearly amused by the big dumb WTF look on my face. Beyond that, she wasn't talking.

But I could tell she was in on it.

Love Always

2011-08-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

To Calvin’s Angels (on the auspicious occasion of his graduation from at-home therapy this week...and kindergarten just breaths away...)

There's a word for someone who comes into your life, who comes into your home, right when your heart’s at its most broken, your mind all places at once, and nowhere.

You didn't see it coming, but you have this little guy, and at two and a half he's not speaking, and not pointing at things, and not looking most folks in the eye (except for mommy, the last one to notice, and don’t think for a second she won’t torture herself over that, time and again, for years upon end).

So this someone, she comes to the rescue (yours? his?), swoops into the house with her songs, with her puzzles, with bubbles, with toys...the awesomest, awesomest toys...

Elsewhere they say (through white coats and small minds and 15-minute appointment slots):

How discouraging, not making the progress we'd hoped. Well, I guess you could try these here drugs, or those ones, and assume it’s as good as it gets…Next…

But in my home it goes a different way, something more like:

Aha, ok, so I'll teach him like this, then like that…alright, now it’s time for this other way. (There’s always, ALWAYS another way, by the way.) We’ll all sit together, we’ll meet and brainstorm, and just see what he’ll do, where he’ll go, how he’ll learn.

So one day he spells his name (and your jaw hits the floor), and another day he knows the name of his town, and what month it is, and how old he is, and the days of the week, and he marches, and dances, and loves to play drums, and sings favorite songs.

One day he even comes right up to you, looks you straight in the eye and says, "I want waffles." (And you hold yourself back from toasting up every last waffle in the freezer for him…because somehow you have to make sure that he knows just how brilliant he is and how proud you are, unspeakably, unfathomably proud.)

Another day his big sister comes in for a hug, and instead of his usual push, he takes hold of her arms and wraps them around himself, grinning with glee. So that next she gets bolder and grabs hands for a game, and they spin and they squeal, and he’s looking right at her, and deep belly-laughing, and all you can do is sit back, watch, and breathe, eyes wet, face hurting from smiling.

So much of the world sees only the damage, and so many "friends" see only the damage. You see it there, written boldface in their eyes, so scary it is that it could have been them, so glad that it isn’t, so relieved they are that what’s happened to yours hasn’t happened to theirs.

But that's not what you read in the eyes of the one who's come into your life, who's come into your home. Her eyes hold a different story altogether, one that you recognize like some strange déjà vu, wonder why so familiar, then it hits you.

Her eyes look at him like your eyes look at him.

Melt-your-heart kind of tenderness shines out her eyes, just like you'd expect when she looks at her own, her own little love, waiting for her back home. She says with her eyes, and her smile, and her words,

What a mush, such a love, I could just eat him up! Here's my great Calvin tale of the day.

They each have their own private jokes with your boy, their own games, their own language, and you grow to love it, you love how this…this coven of enchantresses has entered your life to share this new world, to fathom its mysteries right there by your side.

It could be so lonely, scary as hell, unnavigable, chaos…but it’s not, not so much.

Not with such hands to hold on to.

Because little by little the glimmer that’s there, in and behind your little one's eyes, your little one's smile, grows brighter and brighter, and crisper, and lighter…until one day you realize, how dazzling!

Yes, there's a word for this one who comes into your life, who comes into your home, as little by little your heart begins stitching itself back together, your mind quiets down, the gifts this child brings coming sharper in focus, more known to you now.

Some call her a teacher. Of course that’s what she is. Me, I prefer angel. And family forever. And friend of my heart. The breath of fresh air that came through the front door, and the hope that blew right on through with her.

But whatever I call her, I’m grateful forever. All my love to you, ladies. Always.

Please Pass the Tylenol...

2011-07-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

Do you know what sciatica is? I'll tell you what sciatica is. This is the official medical definition, I can assure you:

"sciatica (n): condition that causes unceasing, unrelenting, never ending (yeah, I'm being repetitive, wanna make somethin of it?) intractable pain at the top of one of your ass cheeks, pain that ricochets randomly all around all points south of your ass cheek, pain so maddening that you find yourself fantasizing about committing the most violent crimes you can think of just because you've run out of other distractions."

That, my friends, is motherf-ing sciatica.

To the ladies who've squeezed fully-formed humans out through your angry, angry lady parts, remember how you started screaming when it got to be too much even though you swore you weren't going to be like those wusses on TLC's A Baby Story because you thought yourself so much more highly evolved than those losers? Remember the moment right before you gave in and started screaming? That very moment is where I've been all week, a week that has included an 8-hour road trip across the entire breadth of our great state of New York.

I've had it, people.

How'd it happen? I don't frickin know but I have a guess. We were visiting relatives in the Buffalo area, the kids and I. Husband wasn't in town yet, still working and following a day later. I was sleeping on an air mattress per usual. No, now don't go blaming the air mattress, I love air mattresses, I love all kinds of mattresses, and couches, and chaises, and carpets with nice cushy naps...and I can sleep like a drunken homeless person on any of them in complete and utter bliss. But this particular time something unusual happened. (Yeah, get comfortable, grab your coffee...I'll wait for you.)

It was the wee small hours of the morning, and the whole wide world was fast asleep...all except my sweet boy Calvin. He was up. He'd been sleeping on the bottom bunk of a bed right next to me. I'd pulled the air mattress right up next to him just to keep him close by. We've done this tons of times. Never even think about the top bunk, never use it for anything but stacking up some clothes, wasn't even sure how you were supposed to get up there. Calvin decided to find out. I'm starting to figure out how he does it. It must be that he watches me sleep, waits for rapid eye movement so he knows I'm pretty well under, then makes his move. Carpe diem!!! And this, my dear friends, is a photo re-enactments of how I was awakened that morning:

Imagine my surprise! How many of you have been ripped out of a dead sleep quite that way? And what to my wondering eyes did appear but Calvin "Superfly Snuka" Stroh-Simon, belly flopped on top of me, giggling ecstatically, smiling his glorious billion watt smile into my face, my groggy shocked face, as if to say, "Was that not AWESOME, Momma? Shall we do it again?"

The good news is that there's been no evidence of internal injuries to my person. The not-as-good news is that later that day my neck and shoulders started to feel like I'd been smartly rear-ended at a stoplight by a monster truck. And by the next morning, the ass pain commenced, that condition whose official fancy pants name I defined for you above.

It's not all bad, really. If I'm standing up perfectly straight or lying down perfectly flat, it doesn't bother me much. But I had a little setback yesterday because, well, I've done horrible things in this or some other lifetime and karma is karma. I was taking Grace to her first day of summer rec camp, pulled up to the curb in front of the school, no hurries no worries, summertime and the living is easy...but as I'm a little compromised with the ass pain thing, I must not be lifting my feet up high enough when I do things like step up onto a curb.

And so, I face-planted.

It felt very slow motion, like I could feel as each part of me hit the pavement within the split second it took for me to bite the dust. So weird. And the inner dialog went, "left hand, palm down...smarts but probably not broken...right knee...hmmmm that's going to leave a mark...right shoulder...owie, even bigger mark...NOT THE FACE NOT THE FACE!!!!!"

Know what the hardest thing about the fall was? THE CONCRETE! Hahahahahaha!!!!! No, I jest, the hardest thing was having to limp into the elementary school with my child, me looking like I'd come from the wrong end of a street rumble or maybe caught some shrapnel on my way in from the parking lot. Teenager counselors looking at me like I must be the mother who eats vodka jello shots and OxyContin for breakfast. "We have a first-aid kit, ma'am" says one of the vibrant, fresh-faced, excrutiatingly young and beautiful staff members. She was only trying to help. So I refrained from beating on her even the littlest bit. I know, my self control is awe-inspiring.

That little incident was yesterday, and I'm much better now. I hurt all over and I have the oozing scabbed face of a meth addict...but I've been able to sit here long enough to write you this post without having to throw a lamp across the room.

But I'm going to stand up now, we're running low on lamps.

And I could use a snack...there's always room for Jello.

Sleeping Dangerously

2011-05-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

I know he's not so much trying to kill me but...

Bad night sleep last night for Cal, which means for me too. But he mercifully drifted off into nappyland some time mid-morning, and he looked so comfy there on the couch that I decided to snuggle up with him, rather than just collapse where I stood.

I should tell you that I sleep very soundly. If someone is hurt or about to vomit, I snap upright like a dog when someone's blown one of those whistles that goes at a frequency only they can hear. Otherwise, so long as neither life nor limb is in jeopardy, forget it. Ask my husband, who wakes up if you look at him too hard (this got to be a fun game once I got the hang of it). He's threatened to steal my blood in the night so he can infuse himself whatever hormones I have that let me sleep like this.

Yes, it's a very nice ability to have, being able to sleep through armageddon and such (especially since I've heard it may be coming Saturday, everybody mark it down on your i-berry-droid-o-phones). But don't think I don't pay for it. Has it ever been said that no mother's nap goes unpunished? Or is that just how it looks from my neck of the woods?

Cal woke up first. That's why it got ugly. I don't know how long it was before I came to, but let's just say it was long enough. Have you ever seen footage of what bears do to a campsite? Or maybe there's been a time when a family of nearly-starved raccoons have visited your yard the night you put all your trash out for collection. Either scene, my friends, is a two-page glossy spread in Country Living compared to what happened in my home this morning.

It could have been worse. Because the lucky thing is, the boy decided to climb into the washing machine and turn it on. This is a potentially dangerous situation, particularly once agitation sets in, so my internal "somebody-may-need -a-bucket-or-an-ER-visit" siren went off so I could save the day. My first reaction: "What the...I didn't start a load of laundry yet today..." Second reaction, beeline between the couch and the laundry room leaving a cloud of dust like right after you hear the Road Runner go BEEP BEEP.

After the extraction of my 60-pound preschooler from the washer (not a high-efficiency machine, I might add) and my return to normal waking non-emergency consciousness, all I could do was stare, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, as I scanned the disaster area.

The kitchen was ground zero. We have a lock on the refrigerator. HAHAHAHAHA on us. The first thing I noticed was the broken eggs. Unfortunately we'd just bought an 18-pack of those (a little later I'd start finding bits of shell that made it into the livingroom). String cheese everywhere like it's been sprayed out of a can on Halloween. All his pull-up diapers, that he for some reason loves to play with, arranged all over the floor like stepping stones. Extra-large economy-sized can of coffee, almost full...do I even have to say it? Don't make me say it. Oh, there were also the red grapes he loves so much. Well, perhaps in homage to his dad's new career in wine sales, or his mom's love of classic I Love Lucy episodes...yes, there was stomping. Stomping.

But hey, I'm a glass-half-full kinda gal, y'know? (Even as we speak, I'm sitting here with a glass half full of something, if ya know what I mean). The upside is that the kitchen is cleaner than it's been since before I made Christmas cookies. You could eat off the floors for probably five more minutes, because I'm sure any potentially remaining salmonella bacteria from the raw eggs is history. I may have had to search high and low for a mop...and heavy-duty germ killing cleaning solutions...but dammit, I found em, and waged war on the whole everloving mess.

Because that's what I do.

But I may never sleep again.

The Peril...Oh the Peril!

2011-05-13T18:37:00.001-07:00

Ok, first grade? Seriously? Barely seven years old? Come on! I thought I had a little time before I had to deal with this.

There is a boy in Grace's class she calls her "boyfriend." She's crazy about the little...guy. I won't use his real name, let's just call him "Trollface," shall we? So, the story goes that during Rhombus Group (not sure what that means), Trollface made fun of Grace for working too slowly, and then called her "F-A-T." She spelled it out, not sure why, but maybe because Trollface's tone made it sound like a mean, hurtful word that shouldn't be uttered aloud, instead of just a plain old everyday adjective.

That's not even the worst part. Sorry, not even kidding. The worst part is the part that made her face crumple, which was when she told me that Trollface is treating another little girl like she's his girlfriend instead of Grace. (We'll call this other little girl "Skankette.")

I'll let this sink in while you take a moment to look at a few pictures.

I don't think I need to add anything. Ok, I will anyway. She's really so beautiful she makes your heart ache. It's not the pretty-little-girl package I'm talking about either, that's a slippery slope to navigate. What she's got, and what tends to come through in her photographs, is a light inside that shines out so that you can tell just looking at her picture that she's someone you want to be around. Yeah, I'm one of those mothers...but facts are facts and I'm just telling it like it is.

I found myself feeling relieved that she didn't get hung up on the F-A-T part. That she related it like it was just tangential--and to segue into telling me that another little boy (we'll call him "Lancelot") told the teacher what Trollface said. And when Trollface started whining over being tattled on, Lancelot reminded the group that "it's not tattling when someone is being a bully and saying something hurtful to another person." Three cheers and a loud "huzzah" for Lancelot, that's what I say.

First grade. I didn't even know what it was like to be called "F-A-T" until fifth grade when a boy (we'll call him "Doucheface") called me his "Fat Secretary" in front of the whole class, which broke out into thunderous laughter, applause, and all-around agreement. Through the hot humiliated rush that made my vision blur and constrict and my hearing get echoey, I remember people shouting out things like,"Yeah, she really IS fat!" and "Better stop getting that ice-cream in the lunchroom!" Isn't that just the sweetest thing? Adorable.

It appears I had become pre-pubescence chubby, something I hadn't noticed until that very moment...but from that moment on, for a very long time, I looked in the mirror and saw a hungry-hungry-hippo (with the biggest potamus you've ever seen), a thing unfit to share the planet with non-disgusting people unlike myself. And just to give you the abbreviated version of the ensuing Lifetime Movie that was my life, it was only a matter of time before I spiraled into the mother of all eating disorders that out-Karen-Carpentered Karen Carpenter. The only difference between us (I've even been told our singing voices are similar), was that she died. In the midst of my very own bulimia nightmare, she died. You might think I'd take it as a cautionary tale and a wake-up call, and I did. But it didn't matter, couldn't stop the insanity, all it meant was that I became more consciously terrified that every new day could easily be my last. Good times.

But somehow, I did NOT die. Imagine that! It's a fact that amazes and mystifies me to this very day. If the walls in Clara Dickson Hall, dorm room number 3517, and the Cornell University health center could talk, they'd have some pretty grim stories to tell. Dangling by a thread, various organs threatening to call it a day, all very dramatic. We'll blog more about that some other time, but suffice it to say that my non-therapy induced epiphany and recovery has been my own personal "nothing is impossible" story. And to be now walking around in a body that not only survived but has cooperated in ushering two of brightest lights on the planet...well, that's just the angels showing off. (Special thanks to that crew of mine...really can't say it enough...)

Ok, so enough about me, back to Grace's story. Yes, I felt some relief that being called fat didn't seem to faze her. But the other edge of the knife is what really seemed to really sting--how Trollface had chosen Skankette instead of her. To be his girlfriend. That and how she was being abused by the rest of Rhombus Group for working too slowly. That "hurry up" thing seems to be a theme in first grade, by the way--gotta move your asses kids, step up the tempo, time's a wastin. What I want to know is, where's the goddamn fire? Are they tracking down cancer cures and male pattern baldness remedies, or learning frickin "math facts" and "sight words"? Can somebody clear up for me why my seven-year-old child, kind and smart with nice manners, is stressed out at school because it takes her too long to write out her words and arithmetic problems...while at the same time it's emphasized that her printing should be neat? I was little Miss Brainiac in school, pre-k through my masters...but with this kind of pressure I would have needed a thermos full of vodka kool-ade just to get through till recess...which by the way my daughter sometimes misses, entirely or in part, because she needs to use recess time to finish her work.

Have I lost my everlovin' mind, or is there something amiss here?

Then on any given day she comes home from school, off the bus into my waiting arms, and proceeds to participate as we all turn cartwheels because her 5-year-old special-needs brother sat long enough at the table to eat an entire cookie and not try to escape to the couch so he could eat one half and bury the other. Or maybe he requested juice with words instead of throwing his cup at Mommy's head. Or did number 2 on the potty without getting it anywhere else. Maybe he even volunteered a hug, and really really meant it. And don't get me wrong, Grace applauds as loud as anyone else, she GETS why his triumphs are so meaningful, and she GETS that his rules are necessarily different from hers.

But still I have to hold her and wipe away her tears when he pushes her away one time too many as she's trying to connect with him, to play with him, to just be with him. And I don't even get to be the smart, wise old mother hubbard who says "there there" and explains all the whys and wherefores of this rejection. Y'think there's anything I can tell her she doesn't know already? Forget it. She knows. It just hurts, and makes her sad, so she cries.

Just like I do, sometimes.

But I won't leave you this way. Because y'all know how it goes. Sure, we're kind of blue and maudlin for a bit, then somebody does something like strip naked and pee against the windowpane (I won't tell you who, let your imagination take it from there), and before you know it we're all falling off the couch in hysterics, laughing til we can't breathe except to hiccup. And if Grace goes up to her brother, says "Hey Cal, gimmee a lipper," and puckers up, 9 times out of 10 he's all over it and all is right with the world.

And betcha there will come a day when the Trollfaces of the world will think twice before they hurt my baby girl's feelings and make her face do that crumply thing that makes me feel like I've just taken a stomach punch from Mike Tyson...because they'll have had a look at her "little" brother. Don't mess with The Calvinator, my friends. He'll tear you a new one.

I should know--I'm his trainer.

"C" is for Calvin, that's good enough for me!!!

2010-12-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of Advent 2010, and Calvin decided to mark the beginning of the season by giving me an early Christmas gift. I don't know how to present this to make it have the magical effect I want it to have, so I'll just go ahead and say it.

I found out today that my son knows how to spell his name.

My 4-year-old, who has autism and therefore doesn't have the easiest time getting out all that he knows and feels on the inside, has shown me, clear as day, that he can spell his God blessed name.

I'm still in wonderment, still processing this, but come along with me and I'll tell you how it went this morning.

At the end of his first 2-hour therapy session of the day, his teacher and I were debriefing as usual. But then she got kind of a "special" look in her eye, and it was like she was trying to find a way to tell me something, something really good, and wasn't sure how to put it out there. What she finally said was something like, "Has anybody pointed out that...I mean, it's really awesome...well, did you know Cal can spell his name?"

I kind of blinked at her like she'd asked me if I knew that Cal had learned how to split the atom.

She wondered aloud if he'd do it again. So I told her that while I totally take her word for it, I'd love to see it live and in person. I grabbed a pad and pen.

We sat down next to him on the couch where he'd retired with his trusty sippie cup. She started him off with the first letter, wrote it down, and said something like "Ok, Calvin, let's spell your name!"

"C!" he began, cheerfully.

Then, after a pause but unprompted, and with nothing but the first letter, "C," written down on the paper in front of him, he said...wait for it...

"A."

I started getting a little dizzy.

She wrote down the "A," then he said to us, all smiles, "L."

She wrote down the "L," and then he said, through a sip of juice and melt-your-heart grin, "V."

You see where this is going. And so on, with "I," and finally, "N."

I might add that he twinkled as he spelled his name. Because he did.

So...as his big sister, my big girl Grace, has become fond of saying, "What the...?"

Sure, I know the members of his wonder-team have all been working on the letters of his name. I know that we have some of those handy flashcards in his at-home classroom and on our bulletin board with his name printed on them. I know that we help him collect his other little cardboard thingee with his name on it when he gets to preschool. I know all this.

But holy shit, Calvin spelled his name!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Was I crying, you ask? I was too stunned, almost disoriented. His teacher left and I walked around in a literal daze for a while. Then I noticed my boy standing in front of the open refrigerator and trying to chew through the plastic wrapper on a piece of American cheese. Such a trooper. That snapped me out of it. I said to him, all apologetic, "So sorry baby, you really want that cheese, let me help you with that."

He giggled up at me and said through the giggle, "Yeah." A chortly little "Yeah," with undertones of "You silly Mommy, I love you so" written all over it, and then I was undone. Blubbering mess. And incidentally, I'm very lucky he didn't pick that moment to tell me that he would like a fully-loaded replica of Lightning McQueen for Christmas, because I would have sold all my superfluous organs on the spot, cleared out the garage, and put in a special order. Done deal.

When I'd pulled myself together and mopped myself up off the floor, I got to thinking those thoughts again--those thoughts that all of us who've gotten to know autism so intimately think day in and day out. Thoughts that go, "What else does he know...what else is locked up in there...what else...what else...what????

I mean, listen, I look into this beautiful boy's eyes every day, and every day I see brilliance shining back out at me. But it's not the kind of brilliance that can be marked on a score card or measured by a testing instrument or tabulated on a grid. It's a quality that has nothing to do with quantity. It's a language that sometimes sounds like unvisible pianos and violins...and tastes like your first M&Ms...and can smell like that time last summer I got caught in an out-of-the-blue rainstorm during a powerwalk. It takes on shapes like the snowflakes that were landing on my black coat one crystally morning over a decade ago when I was waiting for a train and was startled to see that they were shaped like...well, like snowflakes.

Know what I mean? I feel like you do.

And then, in the midst of all this mystery (which I pretend to be getting used to but you never do), he goes and does something like spell his name. With giggly glee, just like any time he finds a treasure like a hidden stash of toothbrushes to play with...or a fleshy belly to bury his face in...or someone who's willing to pick up his 50-plus pounds of everlovingness and spin him around like a planet.

I'm so bewildered.

But it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

He Had to See a Man About a Horse...

2010-06-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

One thing I should probably never do (but I do it all the time anyway) is let myself keep dozing once Calvin wakes up in the morning. Because when he's left to his own devices, lots of things can happen. You've all heard about some of it here, particularly the times he's used the contents of his diaper to decorate the house (Poop-casso!).

He's got lots of other interests too. Some days he climbs up into the bathroom sinks in order to get into the cabinets way up high. He thinks he needs a shave, apparently, because that's where the disposable razors are, as high up as we can get them. Or if the mood strikes him, he might empty out a tube of hair gel or a bottle of hand lotion, that's always a real nice treat to wake up to.

Sometimes he just makes off with all the toothbrushes he can find or takes a footbath in the toilet and we get off easy, but you can't count on it.

So the morning in question, my eyes snapped open and my 6th, 7th, and 8th senses told me that the boy was up and ready for action. Better haul ass.

"Cal! Cal!!!! CAL!!!!" Room to room I go, mentally steeling myself for what could have happened in those 2 or 3 minutes I let myself go unconscious knowing full well he was up and around...bad mommy of special needs child, bad bad BAD!!!

But when I arrived in the master bathroom, what to my wondering eyes should appear but...wait for it, wait for it...

My son, sitting on the toilet bowl, pajama pants and diaper off, on the verge of doing the very thing you'd want him to do on the potty, and only on the potty. I'll let you fill in the blanks.

This means so many things. It means he had the urge and recognized what it was all about. It means he went with purpose into the bathroom for something other than a search and destroy mission. It means he had the cognitive wherewithal to take off all the clothes that needed to come off, right down to the diaper. And, maybe best of all, he knew to look at me with a little self-satisfied grin that said something exactly like, "Yeah, cool huh? I knew you'd be SO diggin this."

My reaction was exactly what you'd expect. I sat down on the floor next to him and cried, while I praised him to the moon and back about what a brilliant, beautiful, gorgeous, shining light of a genius he is. Grace came wandering in by and by, curious about what all the ruckus was about, and she got right into the thick of the celebration like I've come to expect of her. "WOW, Calvin! Yer doin it! Yer such a good boy, look how yer learnin! Mommy's eyes are just wet cuz she's happy, right Mommy?"

Right as rain, baby girl.

This latest experience has me thinking (there I go, thinking again). I get to experience pure, unbridled, unfettered, unencumbered joy without leaving my bathroom. I am so not kidding. I only say that I am so not kidding in order to be perfectly clear because I know I can be a little sarcastic, and I'm becoming increasingly aware as I continue to grow up that sometimes sarcasm has no place. Dorothy said it well just before she clicked those fabulous shoes together three times:

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I don't have to look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with."

I used to think that was a little wimpy of her. Come on, Dot, live a little! Your own backyard? In brown-and-white Kansas, seriously?!?!? What if Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn thought that way? Or what if Alice had said, so it's a talking white rabbit, big deal, ho hum, I think I'll just stay here with my boring sister and make my daisy chains and let someone else jump down that hole after him. What if Frodo had never left the shire, fer Chrissakes?!?! Horrendous!

Now I don't quite see it that way. Who gets to say which experiences are worth having and which ones aren't? Who gets to pick whose exploits are valid and whose are meaningless?

There are all kinds of adventures out here in wild and crazy real life, and all kinds of triumph, and all kinds of joy.

Here's to all of them.

Get Thee Behind Me, Adolf...

2010-03-25T14:44:00.001-07:00

So go figure, according to a certified medical professional I've been visiting, the kind who has a prescription pad in his pocket and isn't afraid to use it, I'm in the midst of an episode of major depressive illness. How's that for a kick in the ass? Oh, and with anxiety, let's not forget the anxiety. As the good doctor put it, on a scale of 1 to 6, 1 being A-OK and 6 being "poised to swan dive off the Tappan Zee Bridge," I'm a 5.

I'll admit that this diagnosis wasn't a shock to me or I wouldn't have found my way into this amiable fellow's office. It all started months and months and months ago when I began waking up, every morning while it was still dark, let's say 3 or 4, to experience a full-out attack of what I've affectionately named "the ball of terror." He also goes by Adolf. (For those of you familiar with Ekhart Tolle's work, another term for this entity would be "the pain body," but for now, Adolf will do.) Adolf lives in my solar plexus, and when he's active he whirls there like a cyclone, but with offshoots that radiate through the rest of my body sending all my bits shaking and clenching, arms and legs, hands and feet.

There's really no defense against the ball of terror, but what my body does to cope when it hits is to curl up, fetal as fetal gets, and just ride it out until it's time to get the kids up for school. Not that Adolf is done with me at that point, he pulls back and whirls around in my center for a while, stays just enough out of the way for me to get Grace and Cal where they need to be, and then he really lets loose. He sort of regurgitates himself right up from the solar plexus and spews out in some pretty impressive histrionics where the whole body quakes on the floor and snot and tears fly in all directions and names of angels and saints are invoked and I call out for my mother. If it's a Tuesday or a Thursday when I have to get Cal to preschool by 9:30, I can have this fit while driving the car. Let me tell you, it is a HOOT! New motto: Mental health, not overrated.

Now as exciting and dramatic and Lifetime movie-worthy as that all sounds, the bizarre thing is that by, I don't know, maybe 2:00 p.m., I'm pretty good. There's a rhythm to this madness. And it's not even madness. I'm completely in charge of my faculties, and I'll tell you how I know. If all of a sudden in the middle of an Adolf attack one of Cal's therapists comes up the stairs to inform me that he's extracted a handful of poop from his diaper and wants to use it for fingerpaint, I can pull myself together like I've just been calmly filing my nails the whole time and deal with the matter, spit spot. Plus I hide it from my husband, who has enough on his plate. And Gracie, who it would scare the bejeezus out of. (Cal, he doesn't mind so much, he just burrows merrily into my belly button, business as usual.)

Isn't that nuts, though, the way I can squash it down when I feel I absolutely have to? And is Adolf not a wily and sneaky little bugger? Keeps me sane enough so I do NOT get a vacation in a nice quiet padded room somewhere (goddammit), but in enough agony that my daily life, at least from the predawn hours to around 2-3 in the afternoon, is a debilitating, exhausting suckfest. That's where I pay the piper for the times I fake it.

Even one of my old favorite things to do, shoving food in my face (I mean does anyone not love to do that?) does nothing for me. This blows. And yes, I've lost a bunch of weight as a result, which is not the 5-alarm-fire disaster that some people seem to think it is (i.e. my mother) because while not exactly a humongous girl to start with, I had a few extra pounds I didn't need so much. So I'm thin, I suppose, as a result of this recent adventure. Or so my clothing size suggests...I don't see it in the mirror, I just look like me, only a bummed-out version. In the second verse of "Need a little Christmas," Auntie Mame and company sing that they've "grown a little leaner, grown a little colder, grown a little sadder, grown a little older," and that they go on about how they need a little angel sitting on their shoulder (hear the rhyming?), and it all sounds incredibly Broadway cheery and hokey when they sing it, but I couldn't hear it during the holiday season without doubling over in pain.

Ok, so enough with the bad news, because here's the deal. I have a two-pronged strategy in place to climb my way out of this creepy little pit. Firstly, Dancing with the Stars has started up again, and I think I need add nothing more on that topic. Secondly, like I mentioned, I finally got around to visiting the nice man with the diplomas on his walls and the prescription pad.

Frickin medication. I fought it hard this go 'round. Because I've been at this show before. Post partum with Grace was a trip, took me a while to realize that lying down in the hospital shower in a curled up naked ball the day after childbirth and crying convulsively was more than just baby blues. So yeah, I have some predisposition to speak of. Got dragged kicking and screaming into a pharmaceutical solution back then...and of course it goes back farther...I was a high school and college student with one of those major cases of "amazing-that-I-lived-through-it" bulimia, which is just another way Adolf rears his ugly head.

Anyway, fast forward to today, and can I tell you how much I've had enough of this garbage? I've had enough of the drug companies and their dumbass commercials showing those sad sack people slinking around in brown oversize sweaters before they take the magic pill and then playing golf and picking flowers after. I'm sick of all of it. How many times does a reasonably sane person need someone with a prescription pad to pull her back from the abyss?

And before anybody gets mad at me for sounding anti-medication, let me settle that right off the bat. Brooke Shields is one of my personal heroes, and her courage in telling her story of post-partum hell and the utter necessity of medical intervention to deal with the real-life horrors of that experience was one of the ways I got through mine. She's been there, I've been there, countless others have been there. I am NOT, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be anti-medication. I am pro-doing whatever you know in your gut is right for you at the time, which might be one thing in 1987, another in 2004, and a whole 'nuther thing today. I just don't want to need the crap anymore, is that so wrong?

So I tried every trick I could pull out of my hat this time before I submitted. St. John's Wort, sunlight simulating lamps, exercise, vitamin this and that and the other. I had this almost ineffable feeling in my gut, that despite the pain, despite the struggle, my body would find a way, natural healing will take over, the body knows how to right itself. Like I've heard Christiane Northrup say, "Depression is not a Prozac deficiency." Just give it another week. Ok, how about another. You're probably almost there. And then there's always that niggling, needling, scary little point of rage ready to explode deep inside of me about how it's altogether possible that the very drug industry that's peddling the chemicals that I'm picking up at the CVS drive-thru to help me in my healing is the evil empire that's helped autism become so prevalent that you wonder how long it'll be before you can find a household without it. You know what Adolf thought of all these musings? He could not keep from holding his sides and laughing. Got 'er right where I want 'er.

Finally, one Saturday morning, during a routine phone chat (we call it coffee talk) with one of my "sisters" (who's really an aunt, but that's just a technicality), I lost it for the umpteenth time. Lost it so bad. Again. Can't tell you how many times she's heard the same song from me. And I'm sure most of you know how it is with your soul sisters and brothers, they can feel what's roiling around in your guts even when it's hundreds of miles away and on the phone. So this is how she gently tugged me back in off the ledge: She softly and pleadingly said to me, in so many words, that enough was enough...and that yes, it's hard to have a beautiful boy with autism...and then have enough left over for the beautiful girl without autism...not to mention maintaining any modicum of health in a marriage....and trying to make your part of the household income out of the home office so that you can do what you need to do for the beautiful boy...which has evolved into a financial nightmare of epic proportions that requires nothing short of a Frank Capra miracle to resolve (not that I don't believe that those happen every day, they do). So why don't you do the thing that could just possibly make you wake up in the morning and look at all of it in the face without Adolf tearing you a new one every single God-blessed day?

That did it. That conversation was several weeks ago and I'm slowly getting better. I'm not yet where I need to be, some days are bad, some are ok. But Adolf's visits have been fewer and further between, and when he does show up he doesn't get the better of me like he could before. He may just have to move out entirely and find someone else to torture. And omellettes taste good again. And I could do some damage on a plate of burritos at a really good Mexican restaurant, I'm almost sure.

I know what you're all thinking, don't hold back so much, Trace. Tell us how you really feel?

I figure, what the hell, Brooke Shields told it all and it hasn't done her one bit of harm, not to mention the untold thousands or more (myself included) that have received the indescribable comfort of knowing that they aren't alone. And that if she could heal, maybe the rest of us have a shot at it too. I mean really, she and Tom Cruise have even buried the hatchet.

Although I'm a little miffed he hasn't returned any of MY calls or texts. I'm sure he's just been very busy...

So happy spring, friends, to all of us. So it has been written, so it shall be done.

Can I get an amen?

My Best Friend's Mother

2010-02-25T05:50:00.000-08:00

My best friend's mother died this morning from pancreatic cancer. I want to rock her in my arms right now, my friend, my sister, but she's miles away where she needs to be, the family all loving each other with all their might, all of them beginning the gradual process of getting their legs back under them again in this changed world they now find themselves in.

Your best friend's mother is like your mother once removed...she's proudest of her own precious girl, and then, because her own precious girl adopted you to be her sister, she's second proudest of you. From our high school plays to our wedding days.

Speaking of which, at my first fitting for my wedding gown, my mom-once-removed was there in that big, glamorous dressing room with us, mothers and daughters and sisters, a gaggle of giggling girls, and she said to me as they were pulling the dress over my head, "You've always had such great legs, Trace." I'll never forget it. I've believed in the greatness of my legs since that day. Because when Carol said it, you knew it was the real deal, no bullshit. That's Carol.

This mother has given away lots of gifts in her life, to everyone who's ever known her...for me, the greatest is probably the ten-pound daughter she helped usher into the world of form. Sometimes it seems like she did this expressly for me. That's how it is with someone who makes your world a better place just by existing in it. And yes, ten pounds. If you know Lisa today you probably find it hard to believe she started out such a giant, she's such a petite little shortcake now that she's all grown up. What's not little about her is her heart or her soul or her spirit...that's what that ten-pound beginning portended. It's the size of this great heart and this great soul and this great spirit that's going to turn sadness to joy and tears into laughter again, it's an alchemy that's inevitable and closer than the air we breathe. Just like her mother will always be for her precious girl, as much today and tomorrow and forever as she's ever been, closer than the air we breathe.

I love you, Lis.

Brace Yourselves

2010-01-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

A few of my nearest and dearest have asked for a New Years blog from me...ME, the great procrastinator. Is it still officially "New Years" up until the last week of January? Well then, here you go.

Resolution number one, no more procrastinating. Just kidding, that was last year's and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

No, my real resolution (or at least one of them) is to do as Emily Dickinson says, to "tell all the truth, but tell it slant."

Read the whole poem and see for yourself what you think she means, but for me, it's a reminder urging me on to keep telling you all the absolute truth, but with just enough of my "slanted" sense of humor intact that we all laugh to keep from crying...or running screaming through the streets with handfuls of our own hair in our fists with a little scalp still clinging to the clumps, whatever...

Because whatever else you think of the story I'm about to tell you, you have to know that all of it is absolutely true because, as has been said elsewhere, more eloquently, you just can't make this shit up.

By now you probably know my philosophy, which basically states that with a little perspective, much of life's aggravation, of ever varying degrees, has the potential to end up funny as hell-- even the most gut-wrenching experiences (oh, just you wait). Kids keep you up all night? What's funnier than their strung-out mother, hair-on-end, pratfalling down the stairs over a few poorly placed playthings the morning after? Oh I was fine, and when I reviewed the play with my mind's eye it was hilarious, especially since I survived without the slightest sign of quadriplegia. Bank talks about wanting your house? Ha ha, joke's on them, wait'll they see the shape it's in, they'd rather repossess a smoking crater. Coffeemaker won't turn on? Ok, some things aren't funny, I shouldn't have even put that last one out there, cancel that coffeepot one please Universe, delete, delete...

At any rate, you get it, you have to have the right (i.e. sick) sense of humor. Because if you do, and you can squeeze even one small drop of comedy out, the experience must have been worth it...if not to you yourself, at least to the people you tell the story to and set them rolling on the floor. It might take a few weeks, which explains why there can be a pretty long space between my blog posts (and to the fans who've been complaining about the lapse, thanks for that kind compliment), but sooner or later, against all odds, you chuckle.

So here we are again. There's no way to set you up for this, so I'm just going to say it. We're going to talk about enemas. Oh come on, you've been here before, you know I'm not for the faint of heart. If you can't take it, you'd better go faint somewhere else...somewhere a little less real. And dig your heels in people, because you've seen how I roll, the discussion will not be...um...fleeting. (You get the pun, do you? Familiar with the brand, are you?)

First, the unfunny part, which we have to get through, like it or not, isn't that always the way? A few weeks ago we had a very hurtin little boy on our hands...again. I know I've mentioned before that one of the more miserable aspects of autism these days is that many of our kids on the spectrum have bowels that don't want to move. This is for for reasons no one has an adequate explanation for, especially in parts of the medical community that won't hear of the notion that any of our kids could possibly have been overly sensitive to and thereby damaged by an overly aggressive, greed-infected vaccine protocol. But long story short, at least for my Cal, there seems to be a motility issue at the heart of the matter when it comes to his GI tract. The movement of his whole system just isn't up to speed. His overall musculature is what the occupational therapists call "hypotonic" or "low tone," and that applies to the muscles that make up the digestive tract as well.

We try to be proactive about this, stay on top of it with diet, give him doctor-recommended stuff to take by mouth to help keep him going...but sometimes nothing seems to help, and in this particular case I have to admit (bad mother!) I lost track of how long it had been. So this one particular night came along where my poor baby was waddling around with a belly distended out to here, a decidedly NOT laughing Buddha, and I realized, to my horror, that the last time we'd had to clean up a BM was at my mother's for Christmas. It was now ten days later. This kid was backed up to his tonsils. Before we knew it, he was screaming bloody murder, belching with reflux, writhing around in pain, and could barely catch his breath.

Calvin's expressive language development is still in the works, but we get the most out of him when he's the most motivated to tell us something. Well, my boy wanted to tell us what he needed from us more than words can say, and there was language spewing out of him, fully-articulated sentences pleading for help, but so choked with pain and tears and gasping and throwing himself around in agony that I couldn't understand the words. Of course at that point I didn't need to.

We were about to get everybody into the car for a 9 p.m. trip to the ER when it occurred to either Mike or me to call our pediatrician first. This is a guy who picks up his cell phone after hours, a fact that we weren't altogether used to since he's been our kids' doctor for less than a year at this point. Glad we remembered, saved us a trip to the emergency room with a screaming kid, always a plus (and had we just merrily rolled along to the hospital, you'd probably never be hearing the story you're in the middle of, and that would be just sad). I told the doc the situation and that we were at a loss for what to do. He told us, in plain language, that with a kid THAT backed up, nothing "from above" was going to help at this point (i.e. nothing by mouth), but that we were going to have to clear him out "from below."

From below. Uh oh.

Well, we'd been down this road before, sort of--we'd had to make a trip to the ER several months earlier with the same issue and they'd sent us home with a pediatric Fleet enema. Nature had taken its course that time, the problem was a little less far gone, and we hadn't had to use it. Looks like our luck had run out, but at least no one had to race to the drugstore before closing time, or drive all the way to an all-night superstore to get our son some relief.

This might be old hat to some of you parents out there, but we'd managed to get our kids to age 5 and almost 4 before having to use this particular intervention. And we had no idea what we were doing. My dear mother is a registered nurse and never shied away from her good friend the enema (it's ok, I've had plenty of therapy since), and neither did her mother before her, but it hasn't been my bailiwick. I also had my mom's voice in my head warning that you "have to be careful not to perforate the rectum," and that only added to my terror. What if I perforate his rectum what if I perforate his rectum...drumming like the soundtrack of a horror movie in my inner ears.

(Short digression, I promise. My mother's voice is nothing like Dan Aykroyd's impersonation of Julia Child in that legendary Saturday Night Live skit where she tells us to "save the liver," but somehow that's what the perforated rectum warning sounds like in my head...don't know why that happens, sorry Mommy...)

Great, so now we knew what to do, the question was how to do it. (I've since discussed this incident with a friend who's also a mother and a physician, and her response was a matter-of-fact, "You just DO it." I don't know, that just sounds like an impenetrable Zen koan to me.) Well, Calvin tends to relax in the bathtub, and he was so riled up and hysterical that Mike and I couldn't hear ourselves or each other over the screaming, so we figured maybe that would be the place to start.

We get the tub filled, and we get the boy into the tub, and the boy then starts pulling at me like he wants me in the tub with him. I think, ok, maybe that'll help, I'll have a better angle or traction or whatever, so I start getting into the tub. Dear husband reminds me that I still have all my clothes on (it's really hard to think with all the screaming), so I do my best to remedy that while my suddenly very strong preschooler is yanking me headfirst into the water. Somehow, by the time I nearly face plant into the bathtub, I'm sufficiently undressed to be in a bathtub where I'm planning on administering an enema to my wriggling, screaming, highly uncomfortable three-year-old, or at least getting him into position so Mike can do it. (Interestingly enough, this is not the only story about me where nudity makes it funnier, and not for any of the reasons you'd think--that's another story for another blog, but it must be some universal truth...things are funnier when naked...not to mention slippery when wet.)

Ok, fine, so now I'm in. But then suddenly Calvin, with his newfound superpowers (low-tone musculature my naked ass) starts yanking his father into the tub with us too. This is getting a little ridiculous, no? This tub is barely made for one, and besides, Mike's got all his clothes on, so he does his best to remedy that, and I get my dripping-wet self OUT of the tub thinking, ok, Mike will hang on to the boy and I'll do the thing from outside the tub and it'll all work out in the end.

Let's pause here for a minute, because now that everybody in the bathroom taking part in this charming tableaux is naked I need to make the following announcement. From here on in, for the duration of this scene, the roles of Mike and Tracy will be played by Hugh Jackman and Beyonce Knowles. (Yeah that's right, he liked it so he put a ring on it. ) Calvin, however, will be played by himself because, constipated or not, let's face it, he's perfect.

Ok, back to the tub, who's in there again? Yes, Mike and Cal are in the tub, Cal is still upset but calming down, Mike distracts him, I descend like a falcon and do what needs to be done, Cal is too surprised to even protest too much...and I suddenly realize, wow, we did it! The triumphant part of the soundtrack swells, naked Hugh and Beyonce look at each other in relieved, breathless victory, tousled locks of hair playing gorgeously upon their gently sweating brows, and all that's left to do is wait...

It was less than a two-minute wait. And I'd really like to say that Beyonce whisked Cal out of the tub and onto the toilet in time when she saw the look on his face that said the eagle was about to land...but I'd be lying. And I'd like to say Hugh made it out of the tub in time to avoid being contaminated by a clump of doodoo the size of a beagle, but then I'd be lying again. And I'd also like to say that when my husband (still naked) was on his hands and knees on the bathroom floor trying to clean up the little landmines that were being left all over the place once we did get the boy out of the contaminated tub, that I was able to keep Cal from sidling up behind him and peeing on the soles of his father's feet...but that, dear friends, would also be a lie. (Mike says he's sure I was helping Cal aim, but who would do such a thing?).

I'd like to say I was making up even one tiny iota of any of this, instead of having lived it in its entirety, in this body, Beyonce's, or any other. But who would I be kidding?

All I can add is, hats off to Hugh and Beyonce for a display of seamlessly orchestrated teamwork the likes or probabilities of which were never even minutely hinted at in their wedding vows. Not even the tiniest warning. Frickin MacGyver, Batman, and James Bond combined couldn't have pulled this one off.

And the happy ending? That boy was clean as a whistle, inside and out. Slept like a rock, too, which hardly ever happens. Gracie too, remember Gracie? Never even budged during this whole hullaballoo, slept through it all, blissfully unaware (thank God, or she'd have splashed right in there with us, Mother of God, let's don't even think of it...). This quiet time, kiddies asleep, on a long winter's night gave Hugh and Beyonce some well-earned time together to...finish decontaminating the master bath. Hey, these things need to be done, even when you look like we do, at least when well-cast.

Seriously, have you ever? If you have, please let me know. Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.

Dear Abby Normal...

2009-12-16T06:33:00.000-08:00

I know, it's been a while since we've talked. Were you worried that I'd fallen off the edge of the blogoverse? Truth is, I had a great post almost ready for you back in the middle of November. Almost complete. And so funny you'd still be laughing if you'd read it. But it's gone, kaput, poof, disappeared.

I don't know what happened...last thing I remember, I was plunking merrily away here at the computer, did that barely conscious scan of the area to make sure there were no disturbances in the force (it's a thing I have to do at regular intervals even when I'm in the middle of writing a particularly scintillating paragraph), and noticed Calvin sitting placidly on the couch trying to open a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce. He's got an uncanny way of doing things like that in between my barely conscious scans of the area, which is why these scans are so vital to our survival here in my world, and which is also why I so often have to pluck him out of both upstairs bathroom sinks while I'm trying to help Grace get ready for school in the morning. He needs to have all the toothbrushes and climbs up there to get them, but I digress.

Back to the lost blog...so naturally I had to jump up from my writing to stop the boy from either chugging A1 Sauce straight from the bottle or using it to marinate the furniture. And when I got back to business...you know what's coming and I'm still sick over it. I thought I'd clicked "save" during the nanosecond before the adrenaline and visions of steak-sauced sofa cushions shot me out of my seat. But I hadn't. It'll be back again someday, just like Frosty the Snowman, or at least I hope so since I, for one, found myself utterly entertained by the topic being covered that day. But losing the whole thing has made me too bitter to go back and redo the whole thing and all that's left is to go forward for now and revisit "Take My Identity, Please..." when the nausea of losing it subsides. Stay tuned, though. Some of my hair-raising blather never gets old.

And so, we move on. It's a new day.

I almost hate to admit this to you all, but at this point we're too close to keep secrets. I've always silently wished I was normal. Stop laughing. In high school I had visions of making cheerleading because that would have felt so...normal. P.S. Instead of actually becoming a cheerleader, I thought about it too much, was entirely certain I wasn't normal enough to make the squad, so on try-out day I maintained that my knees hurt too much from practicing...and they did, but I should have gone for it. I bet I would make it if I tried out today. One of the endless gifts of having a forty-pound child with autism (and I say this with no sarcasm or cynicism, I know it's not always easy to tell with me): It's done wonders for my strength, flexibility, and stamina. Plus, between the aerobics and the constant underlying hum of anxiety I live with perpetually, I think I could even fit into my wedding dress again. Glass half-full, folks, take it from me.

Normal. I KNOW, so white bread, so vanilla...luckily, the normal thing never quite panned out for me. Better than two decades past cheerleading tryouts, I can say that my normal ship has sailed, and for the most part I'm grateful. Some of my best moments have been totally abnormal (and a few only borderline legal, but we won't go there). Aren't everybody's?

But I think maybe I speak for all us happy Abby Normals out there, who happen also to be parents, when I say that when it comes to our kids, we fall right back into that craving for white bread again. It must be projection. You watch these little people who, through a series of inexplicable miracles, you've ended up in charge of, you carry that achy memory of wanting to be just like everyone else, to fit in, and there you have it. Which brings me to this holiday season, 2009, watching my sweet little three-year-old navigate his first semester of preschool, the only autism-spectrum child in a classroom of "normals" or "neurotypicals" or whatever's the best way to say it (knowing full well as I say it that no child, no person, is really normal or typical, and to say so without qualifying it the way I am would be an insult to everybody).

But oh, how to explain it.

It doesn't really hit home until they start doing their little onstage pageants. All of them up there singing about those 10 little pumpkins or about how they're so thankful or about dashing through the snow (that last one is coming up for us tomorrow). Ok, so not all of them up there are singing. One little guy isn't singing or doing the hand gestures, and looks not entirely sure why the hell he has to stand up there and endure these shenanigans. Oh he's up there alright, always the trooper, with his beloved special teacher in charge of supporting him through moments like these at his side. I often I wonder if deep in there he knows he's humoring us.

Yeah, people, I'll stand up here, but here's the deal. I will NOT wear the stupid paper hat you made me participate in fashioning and I will NOT sing. I will sing in the car on the way home like always, will wear nothing on my head voluntarily other than my train engineer cap, and that's that, got me?

I sobbed, a heartbroken mess, all the way home from the Thanksgiving show, and I have to stop and wonder why. Whose needs aren't being met here? Whose experience is limited? Calvin stepped down off the stage, seemingly glad to be done with it but no worse for the wear, had some snacks, and it was on to the next thing...which for him was a little catnap during the car ride home, which left him refreshed for another two-hour session with another of his teacher angels. I could search his face forever for some sign of distress over being the strange little boy on the stage who can't or won't do what the other kids do, and I'd still be searching.

I start to realized how brainwashed I am, as if there's some standard of how all three-year-olds should be, and I have one that doesn't meet the standard so I get to play the role of the grief-stricken mother who doesn't get to watch her child jump through the same hoops all the other children do. And in the middle of feeling so sad about it all, I'll suddenly have a wriggling, snuggling boy in my lap, giggling into my face, eyes sparkling with his joy and belly laughter, and I'll come to myself and snap out of it. For a while. Because this kind of process happens a million times a day, on any day, not just on preschool pageant days.

Then a few days later, turkey barely digested, time to decorate for Christmas. Five-year-old Grace kept up a running commentary over every second of the process...oohed and aaahed over every ornament, every knicknack, wanted her hands all over everything. Calvin, well, he's not so much with the chit-chat. Although he did put on my silly headband with the huge reindeer antlers, which must have put him in mind of rabbit ears, because he adorably started to do a little jumpy thing and tell us "hop! hop!"

Then there was Cal's other main contribution to our decorating endeavors, which was to keep the tree from becoming too busy with ornaments. He took them down as fast as we put them up. But finally he settled down with one pilfered ornament that happened to be Elmo playing a Christmas drum. Pretty soon I noticed him sitting with it in his lap, playing it rhythmically, saying softly in accompanyment, "drum, drum, drum, drum" as he tapped.

I sat down next to him on the couch to hear his song, he melted into me like he always does, I breathed him in like I always do, my little one, who doesn't need language to express the deepest part of him or to be understood. None of us do, really. It's all just habit. The beat of your drum tells the story you think you're telling with your words.

Then He smiled at me, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

Happy holidays with ALL MY LOVE,
Tracy

Oh Yeah, "It" Happens

2009-11-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

Having a bloggable moment, and I'm hoping to find sanity and maybe even a sense of humor by the end of this post, because right now I'm a miserable bitch and out of my mind nuts, trying to recover from a combination of rage and remorse befitting a death-row inmate. I can only go up from here, or let's hope.

It came in two phases, and phase one wasn't so bad. Calvin and I were upstairs together, me putting away clean laundry, Cal puttering around with his trains. But by and by he wandered into the master bath and assumed the stance I know so well. He had to see a man about a horse if you know what I'm saying. And while his business still happens in a diaper, there's stuff he'd rather do behind closed doors. Of course I respect that (who wouldn't), so when he did his usual thing of shoving me gently enough out the bathroom door and closing it behind him, I said, ok, I give you five to ten minutes and then I'm coming in.

Because if you know anything about kids with autism, you know they display certain, let's just say tendencies when it comes to their sensory needs, and that can mean a terrible outcome when it comes to the contents of a diaper. Enough said. Really.

And another thing you know if you know anything about kids with autism is that many of them have bowel problems, from one end of the spectrum to the other--going all the time in torrents, going hardly ever until it's like passing the Hope Diamond. That's more than enough detail on that front, but I will tell you that Cal is on the Hope Diamond end of things, so I don't like to mess with him too much when he assumes the position. I think you're getting the picture that it's a tenuous balancing act.

Well, you know how balancing acts go, sometimes your way, sometimes not. Today was pretty much a not. Five to ten minutes was too long, and when I walked through the door I found my little Picasso making an intricate design on the stone tile floor from his Pampers pallette using two of my make-up applicators and my poor husband's toothbrush. An impressive everloving mess if ever I saw one.

But, dear readers, you would have been shocked and proud at the calm that came over me. I became Carol Brady, Donna Reed, and June frickin Cleaver rolled into one.

Oh baby boy, it's ok, we'll clean this all up, here we go, into the tub, I know you're a little cold, let's turn up the heat and get the warm water really going here, yes I know you want the toothbrush back but it's yucky, so sorry, I know, it's just not fair, Mommy's got you, little guy...

And on and on like that, I was so sweet I hope I didn't give him cavities, but that was really my vibe. Went with the flow, cleaned up the kid, cleaned up the floor, load of laundry going, all's well that ends well.

Yeah, you know I'm so not done.

And neither was the boy. And the part that really makes me want to just run screaming through the streets until the medics come to get me is that I KNEW IT. Again, I'll spare too much detail, but when you're cleaning them up sometimes you can tell by the state of things down there that there's more to come. I knew to be on the alert for round two, I knew it. Maybe it's a deep-seated psychological mechanism of self-sabotage for writing material. I don't know, I just do not know.

It was less than a half-hour before one of Cal's teachers was due to arrive. He was sparkling clean, merrily merrily merrily merrily chugging his trains along his awesome toy train table. There's my laptop across the room full of work to be done. I say to myself, self, why not get started, just do some easy stuff, print out those documents, double-spaced for editing, quick little task that you can do and still keep an eye on things round here.

I know, you're trying to figure out if that lingering naivete is endearing, or if it makes you want to slap me upside the head.

But here's the deal, people, the work has got to get done, and time (and time-management for that matter) never seem to be on my side. Here I am with a freelance gig in front of me, an opportunity to actually work for money that's appeared like an oasis in a desert of haven't-been-hired-to-do-squat. Sometimes that means steal a minute here, five minutes there...

So I'm sifting through files on the computer, I'm formatting text so that it's nice and readable, I print out a few documents, nice and easy...and then I saw it. In a microsecond, out of the corner of my eye. I saw the hand coming out of the diaper, saw it schmearing across the awesome train table, saw that his clothes and his fingernails were already beyond salvaging, just ten goddamn minutes out of the bathtub. And then, of course, the additional microsecond it took me to cross the room was another eternity where the damage just about quadrupled. It's amazing. He must use quantum mechanics.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. And shame on me is right. Because now the lovely combination Donna Reed, Mrs. Brady, and June Cleaver were in freefall, probably in a group suicide pact, and all that was left was...well whatever it was, it wasn't pretty. So enraged, so frustrated. So ridiculously angry at this child of mine, who does what he does and is what he is, and is perfect by the way (prejudiced though I may be, if you've met him you know it's true). And for what? For messing up my already Everloving Mess?

I don't even know what came out of my mouth, but I know the tone of it, some of it spoken, some of it just vibrating and crackling in loud thought, but all of it venomous and rancorous and ugly:

I can't believe this, how can it be happening, only minutes out of the tub are you SERIOUS, why, why, why!!!! How can you do this to me????? Does anybody wonder why this place is a disgusting cesspool of filth and I can't get anything done, I mean WHO can succeed at THIS?!?!? Who masters THIS?!?!? March march march to the bathroom, soap and water, nail brush, rougher than necessary, march march march, another diaper, another set of clean clothes. Lay him down on ANOTHER clean towel to do this all again, again, again, again, your teacher will be here in ten minutes, I have work to do, I have deadlines, I need to make money, can't you see that if I don't get this work done we'll have to give you and your sister to Brangelina to raise while your parents eke out their pitiful existence in a tent city for chrissakes?

Nice, right? And it was worse than that, I cleaned up the language so as not to alienate some of you forever. Mother of the year, here I come. Take away my June Cleaver/Carol Brady/Donna Reed loving cup once and for all and strip me of all accoutrement, I deserve it.

But in the midst of my half-aloud/half-silent tirade from hell, something happened that stopped me dead. He looked at me. You should have seen the way he looked at me.

Wait a second, what the hell is this? He never seems to even notice my moods gone all wrong, it's usually like I'm not even there. Grace's barometer can sense it from a neighboring state when I plummet, but Cal never notices, seems blissfully unaware of any passing storms, just goes on with whatever's on his agenda, like burrowing his head into my belly button or arranging all his train cars in lines along invisible meridians in our house. Right? So why's he looking at me like that?

Like what?

His bottom lip quivered, his eyes filled up, his whole mouth pulled into that shape that can only mean one thing, that his heart's been broken. He's never done that before, not in response to someone's mood, someone's affect...no that's not true, not never, but not since before...before it all went away somewhere, when was it? Eighteen months old? Right around the time Mike noticed with some concern that he seemed "sad" somehow, and my mother wanted to know why he doesn't speak, and some of my friends gently prodded about when I might be thinking about calling that Early Intervention number? Some time between when he laughed easily and often at Gracie in the carseat next to him, or chased her on all fours around the playroom, and then didn't seem to notice her any longer? Between when he'd follow us around the room with his eyes and then stopped bothering? I swear, he hasn't reacted like that emotionally since...since before.

So what's this, then? A good sign? Emerging because I've managed to cause such sadness to a three-year-old innocent, my own child, that even his autism can't keep it off his face?

(I know, sometimes it just isn't funny, is it?)

But does it mean something else? Does it mean that the autism is shrinking? Is there a shift taking place? And it took my abhorrent behavior, showing the maternal softness of Lady Macbeth, to bring it to light?

I don't know. All I know is he looked at me, and I came to myself. I lifted him off the towel, cradled his shirtless, diapered, hunk of soft preschooler body into mine, and apologized from my heart into his soft, soft hair. Then I thanked any and all invisible listeners that might be hovering around for the honor and privilege of being this exquisite boy's mother, and promised to never ever make him have to look at me that way again. Let it be a wicked, dried-up fourth-grade teacher that does that to him, like it was for me, but not the one he's recently learned to call Mommy, clear as a bell.

And I assured him that going forward he can feel free to take a dump wherever and however and with whatever frequency he wants, I'm up for the job.

But that maybe we could switch to fingerpaints when it comes to the artistic expression end of things. Just a suggestion, that's all.

Amen.

Comedy or Horror Flick...You Decide....

2009-10-24T10:30:00.001-07:00

So a while back, I turned 30...that's right 30...shut up, I said it was a while back. And I was all like, "Waah waah waah, I'm 30 and I have no husband and no kids and tick, tick, tick, woe is ME!" I know, I'm gagging too.

This is where a time machine would come in so handy so you could go back and slap the living crap out of your earlier self just to make your current self feel better in the present moment. It would be very satisfying.

First of all, a few weeks after that 30th birthday, my soon-to-be fiance took me to Cancun. Oh poor friggin me! And I have plenty of pictures from that trip, I was so smokin' hot the photos make me want to do myself. I'll bet even the dolphins we swam with were turned on, although they supposedly always make those noises. I think I had a different bikini for every day of the trip, and I rocked them all. Didn't think so at the time, but I was an idiot and now I know better.

Do we really need a "second of all"? No, but I'd hate to end this post here and deprive you all of knowing about "the thing" that happened to me the other day which made me want to run away and join the circus, but has the potential to be ever so humourous in the retelling. So you know you're going to hear about it and laugh at my expense and make the whole disgusting business worth something at least.

I was in my car, in the preschool parking lot, a few minutes early to pick up my little guy. Suddenly remembered that I forgot to put on lipstick. Without artificial lip color, I literally have no mouth. I'm pretty sure I lost a good 10 lbs once when Revlon discontinued my favorite Colorstay shade and I was at a loss for what to do about it.

Anyway, dug the lipstick out, glanced up into the visor mirror to apply and...wait a minute...what's this now? Oh, just a stray hair from somewhere...although from the size, how'd it get all the way up here from down...wait a minute, WHAT? Jesus H. Christ, it's attached. To my Madonna mole.

I remember when I saw the movie The Sixth Sense in the theater, no one had ruined the climax for me, and when it was revealed what was really happening to Bruce Willis, the whole goddamn thing had been so artfully done that I felt all the blood drain from my head and I was certain that if I hadn't been seated I would have dropped to the floor in a swoon.

Ok, well that was NOTHING compared to what happened to me in the car when I realized "the thing" was attached.

So I'm growing a beard, it is officially the beginning of the end.

Welcome to your four hundred and eighty somethingth month, Trace. Can't wait until tomorrow, good golly, maybe I'll need a pessary. And don't feel bad if you don't know what the hell that is, I only know because I was raised by a geriatric nurse who took care of mostly women with extremely ancient vaginas and uteruses (vaginae and uteri?) and loved to talk shop at the dinner table. How we all did NOT end up permanently rail thin is beyond me. So on that note, do yourself a favor and don't Google it right after a heavy meal.

But if you find out where to get one cheap, email me the details just in case. Tick tick tick.

The Road to Squalor, Paved with Good Intentions

2009-10-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

The awesome title of this post is shamelessly stolen from a brilliant friend of my heart, so I can't take credit for it. She wrote it in an email to me, and I had to steal it because it's PERFECT for what I need to talk to you about. I will, however, let her choose whether or not she wants to be associated with my bloggorhea by name.

Anyway, the title is just a doorway into a discussion I need to have with you about my filth. And when I say "discussion," I mean that I want some answers. There are so many of you out there (I've been in your homes and I know who you are and I know where you live) who keep your filth at bay so well that I find it very hard to like many of you. Oh like you I do, love you even, but that's just a testament to your redeeming qualities because, like I said, you make it hard.

To add insult to injury, many of you have children, at least as many as I have, and some of you have more--disgusting little filth-makers down to every everloving last one of them. And those of you without kids, you're not off the hook either, YOU tend to have DOGS!!! Come on! What, do you all have vacuum parts implanted into your limbs that pop out when you need them like goddamn Wolverine?!?!? (Can you get that done...does anybody know?) Sorry, but I find all this very difficult to take.

When I say that you "keep the filth at bay," what I really mean in most of your cases is that the interiors of your homes look like they could be photographed for any of those magazines out there that make me hate myself. You know the ones...they taunt people like me from the racks with titles like Better [than yours] Homes and Gardens, Good [luck] Housekeeping, and, one of my faves, Real [are you frickin serious?] Simple.

If it's the case that your houses only look that good because you've got company, that doesn't cut any ice with me. Because first of all...me? Company? Get serious, save it for the Queen. Moreover, when I know that YOU are coming over, I start the mission two days in advance so that when you finally do arrive I'm lucky if the place is in good enough shape that you'll feel safe letting your children open their mouths to eat a goldfish cracker here.

And by the way, while we're being all candid and open, I know you're talking about me behind my back about it too--betchya thought I wasn't wise to that but I soooo am. I am extremely extra-sensory in that regard, I hear your thoughts and they leave me enervated, flat on my back with a washcloth over my eyes for a minimum of 3 days while MORE filth builds up. Yeah, I hear you. Any of this sound familiar?

Eeeeeeew, how does she live like this?

When was the last time that bowl saw the business end of a toilet brush?

You call those things curtains? Are they MADE of cobweb?

Wonder if she even OWNS a vacuum cleaner.

Have they painted their walls since legwarmers were in style?

Maybe if we all chipped in and bought her a Swiffer Wet-Jet...

I know, I know, I KNOW! You think I don't see it?!?!?!? But people, we've been through this, haven't we? I'm what is known as an Everloving Mess. It's been well established, look it up. There's some little piece of DNA that needs to be in place in order to coordinate and put into practice all the skills that all you little Suzy Homemaker Domestic Goddesses make look so easy. Well, in my own personal cells that gene got a little frayed, that's all. Don't judge me because I'm a mutant, it's so not a good color on you.

The thing I really don't get is that according to the much-buzzed-about Law of Attraction, my circle of peeps should be veritably bursting at the edges with slobs like me. Yet somehow I've managed to summon into my locus of contact and concern and loving acquaintance a veritable gaggle of Donna Reeds and Martha Stewarts. How do you think this makes me feel? Like the Ugly Betty of playgroups and mom's clubs everywhere, that's what. Hope you're happy, bitches.

There's only one possible explanation that I can come up with to give meaning to this whole unfortunate set of circumstances, and I'm going to share it here, just try and stop me. Here it is. You may not agree, but, let's face it, you would be so utterly wrong.

You people need me. Yes, yes you do, you need me. And it's not just about feeling better about yourselves because I'm such a magnificent disaster area and you're such Neaty McNeatersons in comparison (although let's be honest, that's part of it). Here's how I'd like to think it maps out.

You come over, you notice a livingroom baseboard covered with a layer of encrusted grime and gore that obviously dates back to the Carter administration. You, in turn, go home and notice the 3 specs of dust (no doubt made of particles of rainbows, unicorns, and newborn baby hair) that have accumulated on your own livingroom baseboard since you left your premises a few hours before.

Now here's where the magic happens, the alchemy, the miracle, the namaste, the divinity in me saluting the divinity in you.

Instead of jumping up and removing the 3 specs immediately, something in you says to stay your hand against those impudent offenders, that approaching army of grime, just for a few short minutes, a blip on the radar screen of an eternity of cleanliness-next-to-godliness.

You hear me whispering in your ear...do it...lie down...nobody has to know. You feel a sinful pleasure sneak over you as you give in, you close your eyes against the specs, you feel a little bit dirty doing it and you don't care, you even like it a little. I see you there, letting your dark side take over. You let yourself fall back on your chaise lounge with the white upholstery, cucumber slices appearing out of the ether over your soon-to-be-unpuffy eyes, your blood pressure easing, your hormone levels balancing, your natural hair color holding back its insidious, unyielding return to your roots for maybe one day more.

Why?

All because I was there to give you a little perspective, people. There's your Real Simple for ya. And then, 5 minutes of nirvana complete, up you come and--where the hell are those Swiffers-- bango! Baseboard dust specs banished to oblivion forever. They'd increased to 9 in number now instead of just the 3, squared themselves while you were resting, the nasty little buggers. But still they're gone, and you've won, like you always do. Best of all, nobody knows what you did during those 5 delicious minutes of bliss, you naughty little slacker...it's our (dirty) little secret.

Just sit there for a minute and bask in your gratitude for the likes of me.

You're welcome.

Kicked in the Gut

2009-10-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

Oh friends, this thing that happened really sucked and I have a lot to say about it--and I mean a lot, I'm glad there's not a character limit on this Everloving blog. At any rate, if you'd just hang in there with me for a while on this one...grab a cup of whatever's your pleasure, put your feet up, get comfortable. Even hold my hand if you don't mind, there we go. And I thank you in advance for your Everloving indulgence.

The whole experience that inspires this post gave me a great idea for a T-shirt that says, "I'm very unstable, be careful how you speak to me." I'd only wear it in certain situations, like when I took Calvin to a developmental pediatrician the other day for a whopping 15-minute consultation during which my 3-year-old boy wandered around a stark, bare closet of an office with nothing to entertain him but the light switch and a telephone cord. Autism in the picture or no, how does this sound to you all as a setting to evaluate a child's development? Trust me, I'm just getting started.

I'll just cut to the chase to start us off here. During the course of those 15 minutes, the doctor told me, in his older uncle-ish, kind but blunt manner, that Cal clearly hadn't made the significant gains that we would have liked to have seen over the year since our initial meeting, especially considering the full-boat of services we've had in place since then, 25 hours a week for goshsakes, and congratulations to you mom for doing such a great job getting that going, too bad it's obviously not working. So now it's time to talk of "other rabbits I could pull out of my hat," says he, such as offering my son up as a lab rat and trying a few different drugs just to see what happens--maybe he'll gain some language, or maybe he'll gain 80 pounds before his next birthday, who knows until we try, right? Oh yeah, and the other option is to have a geneticist work us over, because once in a blue moon they find something treatable, but don't get your hopes up on that either.

Needless to say, I am wording some of this after my own fashion (not the quoted part, the quoted part he really said, word for word, about the rabbits up his, I mean in his hat), but honestly, that was the gist, the takeaway if you will. I wish I were exaggerating. A jam-packed 15 minutes, no? A few days later, I'm still scratching my head at how the doctor came to the conclusions he did, since our quarter-hour session consisted of he and I sitting across from each other at his desk having a chat, during which he never once even glanced in Calvin's general direction. Maybe his technique is to use his peripheral vision only. Maybe he likes to be subtle, and if there's one thing a child with autism really responds to, it's subtlety...um, yeah. Next maybe we'll throw in some sarcasm and just keep moving through the top 10 worst ways to communicate with kids with autism and just see how we do.

And if you're wondering why I didn't press on any of this while I was sitting there in that room for those 15 minutes, why I didn't put up my hand and say "Whoah whoah whoah, put the breaks on, doc old boy, haven't I just told you [I had] all about the skills we HAVE seen develop, all the gains we HAVE made, all the evidence of language comprehension that was never there before, how he responds to his name, his awesome eye contact, his newfound ability to attend, etc., etc., frigging etc.?" The only reason I can give you for my (uncharacteristic) muteness at that juncture is two-fold:

Part one. Shellshock, pure and simple. As in, the man's lips were moving and I was trying to process what he was saying in keeping with the situation and what I'd seen over the past year, and so much wasn't computing. And maybe I was afraid that if I had allowed it to compute and actually assimilated what he was telling me, my heart would have literally ripped itself in half in my chest. That would have been a catastrophe because so far as I know there was no cardiologist on the premises.

Part two. Well, once our 15 minutes were done, the next patient and his mom were being pushed into the 8-by-8 office space before Calvin, Grace (out of school with her cold), and I had been able to physically vacate it. Yes, honest to die, before I'd even begun getting my kids back into their coats the doctor had summoned the next victims in with the same gravelly sing-a-song thinggee he'd used on us, "Hey there [name of child], walk this way and make my day!" I stood there, gathering my children, their things, my things, my wits, having the weird deja-vu echo of hearing the little song he'd used on us 15 minutes prior, which I'd thought was cute in a corny kind of way the first time but now sounded like part of the sound track of a horror movie. And all the while I'm struggling to find any trace of oxygen left in the room as all of it had apparently been sucked out over the past 15 minutes and my lungs couldn't find any.

Our time was clearly up. And I needed to get into my car where I could let go and do the kind of sobfest you learn to do silently with your back to the kids whom you hope are not able to glimpse you in the rear view. Sure, several days later and with some time to reflect I can see a few, let's call them flaws in the good doctor's off-the-cuff, obtuse evaluation. But I'll tell you that in the 15-minute moment I'd just been through, I'd experienced my worst nightmare, or at least one of them, translated into an almost laughably amiable conversation across a desk. You're doing all you know how to do, but your baby isn't getting better. Accurate or not, justifiable or not, verifiable or not, this pronouncement came from one of the white-coated wizards we've been trained all our lives to trust like nobody's business. I'm convinced that it takes an all-out, knock-down, drag-out deprogramming procedure (or an autism diagnosis) to begin to unlearn this training, and I recommend we all take that course. As for me, I'm only at the beginning of this vital un-education. So I was undone. For a bit.

I decided to wait a minimum of 48 to 72 hours before even beginning to write about this incident because the passage of a little time makes it easier for me not to use language that would probably get this site flagged for inappropriate content by the blog CIA. I know full well that several of you reading this have caught my act live and know how, um, colorful I get when I'm exercised about something. Some of my girls (where're my girls at?) will remember a trip to Virginia Beach we took some time last century (we were SO all the single ladies...and I was SO rocking a Victoria's Secret bikini....). We asked directions from a guy working a toll booth and the guy was a grade-A tool about it. I mean what the F? You're a toll-taker near Virginia Beach, for crying out loud, are we the first aimless group of party girls who've asked you directions today? Then again, maybe that was the problem, maybe we pushed him over the edge and turned him into a douchebag...maybe he was a really nice guy early that morning and we wrecked him. Well, whatever, so I called him a name, or I should say that a name spewed out of me like I was Linda Blair with demons AND pms, that's the way it usually goes with me--the term Tourette's Syndrome has been bandied about in fun, but I don't think so, I just have a really bad potty mouth. I called him something that rhymes with sock-eating toll-taker, and I didn't say sock. Then we all started singing about the sock-eating toll-taker to the tune of Pat Benetar's memorable anthem, Heartbreaker. "You're a sock-eatin....toll-taker..." All of us in high hysterics, still don't know how we kept the van on the road, good times. Anyway, I have children now and if they talk like me I will truly have a coronary. Is incurable filthy language use hereditary? There's evidence, I've seen it. I remember the day I learned a term that rhymes with "clucking flock schuckers," delivered with magnificent gusto by my own excellent mother as she tried to hang those confounded curtains in the West Street apartment. Yeah, I should probably give my kids' teachers a heads-up.

And I might as well just go on and keep apologizing for what I do, what with all the digressions within digressions. I know this is the written equivalent of a set of Russian nesting dolls. And I'm sorry, it's how my mind works (and, on the upside, it's also why it can be pretty diverting to sit down for a coffee with me if you're cut from a certain cloth and have a high caffeine tolerance). There probably isn't much I can do about it short of invasive surgery. I read a book that called my condition adult ADD, or maybe that was the one about schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder or acute overcaffeination, I forget, but I strongly suspect that, whichever, it's somehow connected to one of my weird tendencies which makes me hardly ever remember to close a kitchen cabinet door. It's like, wait, don't shut that one yet, could be one more thing to shove in there!

But don't worry, I'll come back around to "it," the main idea, the thesis statement...something to do with a message on a T-shirt, a doctor visit a few days ago, you'll know when we get back there. But I have to put some context in place first. If you haven't grabbed that cup of something yet, this might be a good time.

We'd first met with this doctor a little over a year ago. I guess you could say it was right after all hell initially broke loose when a little group of people, also known as an early intervention (or EI) team, had come and gone from my home and shocked me back to my natural hair color by handing me a checklist that said something along the lines of "If you answer yes to any of these questions your kid probably has autism."

It's interesting, and somewhat surreal, how this first EI experience pans out when the evaluators suspect your child is "on the spectrum." Goes something like this: Since these people that come into your home are not medical doctors but "merely" speech pathologists, certified special education teachers, occupational therapists, etc., they are apparently under some strict guidelines that deny them the right, no matter how extensive their knowledge and experience and expertise, to express too much to parents about what they know about the children their careers are dedicated to helping with all their might. It's like some kind of gag order so far as I can tell. They're allowed to hint, to insinuate, to hand you a government-approved autism checklist, and, of course, recommend you seek out someone who makes a ton more money than they do--someone like a neurologist or psychiatrist or developmental pediatrician, who'll spend a minuscule fraction of the time with your child compared to the actual therapists who do the work to help them learn and progress.

So even though these "paraprofessionals" (as I've sometimes heard them called) are the ones that have the preponderance of one-one-one experience with kids like yours on their side, their opinion, to put it bluntly, doesn't mean squat on paper when it comes to a county official making a decision about how much government-subsidized help your child needs and/or deserves--help that's going to be delivered, ironically enough, by those very "paraprofessionals" whose opinion doesn't mean squat on paper when it comes to making a decision about how much help your child needs and/or deserves...it's like a mobius strip in your head, isn't it? Loop de loop de loop de loop.

You had to see naive little me when I set up the appointment for the EI people to come by. I'd thought we were going to end up with a little speech therapy for a few months to address my two-year-old's language delays. And I must say I took my time. I mean, our (former) regular pediatrician recommended we call the EI number and see about Cal's speech with about the same amount of urgency that came with her advice to give him a multivitamin with flouride and get him 10 to 12 hours of sleep a night. Not something that was going to send me breathlessly running to the phone to book my evaluation in order to secure life-altering intervention. He's a boy, he's the "second child," he's two and not talking yet, we'll get him some speech therapy through the county like a handful of my friends have done with their kids, he'll start talking up a blue streak just like his sister, and on we'll go, no biggie. Why would I think otherwise? What the hell would I know that his (former) pediatrician wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at during his check up?

Let's just say we all missed the mark. With 20/20 hindsight, I can tell you my son had autism written all over him. But a year and a half ago, I had no clue...and I'll say this for me, I'm a pretty well-read gal, especially in the parenting realm, and especially over the past 5 to 6 years. Autism shouldn't have gotten past me, not with the 1 out of 150 statistic (ok, so it's more). But it did get by me. And our (former) pediatrician. Wondering why? I've got some ideas, suspicious little me. We'll get to them, probably in another post. For now all I'll say is that if there's a movement afoot that's asking questions about whether or not you've helped cause it, maybe you aren't inclined to look too hard to find it. That's enough for now.

So the early intervention team comes in and does their thing, plays with your baby, asks you plenty of questions, fills out a lot of paperwork, talks to you very very carefully about this certain checklist they have, and then they leave. And there you stand, alone with your child, holding this checklist, this piece of paper that they've made way too many marks on, looking at the paper, blinking a few more times than you normally would so that maybe something will come into focus to make you understand what's just happened, and nothing does, so then you sift through your mental rolladex until you land on the card labelled "autism," which conjures up Dustin Hoffman's academy award winning performance in Rainman but not much else, and certainly nothing that even remotely resembles the two-year-old cherub over there at the train table that likes to snuggle you so, these people are clearly nuts, end scene.

Except it doesn't end scene, because they weren't nuts, they saw things that Cal's (former) regular pediatrician in all those 15-minute check-ups (age one, eighteen months, age two) didn't notice, but would have if she'd done a simple, simple screening instead of spending those precious few minutes scrolling through a list of questions on her laptop, which I am not making up, like "Are there any guns in the house? How about pets? Do you use smoke detectors? A carseat?" I like to call this the official "List of questions your pediatrician asks to determine whether you as a parent are brain dead." And I'm thinking, since they are so very pressed for time, they might think about reworking this bullshit just a little bit. I knew nothing about any existing autism screening, and if this pediatric group did they weren't telling. Nothing about a simple little test called the m-chat (Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers) that consists of a list of questions that parents can answer about their toddlers and score on their own. Something to raise a red flag, to give you a heads up, a fighting chance to set yourself on the right path when there's still time to make the most of those crucial early months and years when early intervention means everything.

But there was no such screening at our (former) pediatrician's office. And I knew nothing that would have made me think autism, nothing. Now I know a lot. I took that scary-assed checklist and matriculated into what one of the heroes of my life and sisters of my heart Jenny McCarthy calls the University of Google (and say anything less than complimentary to me about my Jenny, and risk seeing me erupt with fangs). I Googled myself senseless.

Once you've learned a few things that you can't unlearn, you either shove your head firmly up your ass and deny what's right in front of you, or you don't. I shoved mine up there for about a day or two, not too shabby. Then I got to work.

And how did we start the work? All we had to go on was what the EI team had insinuated with their checklist and well-placed hints, plus what I'd learned from U of G--but just from that, all signs pointed to the fact that in order to get the most important services for your child in the most advantageous amounts, you need a little something called a diagnosis. And who can write a diagnosis down on a prescription pad which then gives you the magical ability to apply for and receive these interventions (that are, by the way, delivered by the paraprofessionals who aren't supposed to know anything, you see how crazy we're talking here, do you not)?

DingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDing!

A developmental pediatrician!

Ok, so rewind to a little over a year ago, when we first visit Dr. Whatever (not really his name, we'll call him Dr. W. for short), and Dr. W., our sweet-seeming old uncle-type, talks to Mike and I at length about our son, observes him in the office setting, gives him a good once-over stripped down to his diaper (Cal, not Dr. W.), does some little tests like trying to get him to point to pictures in a book, name things, etc., you get the drift. After a good solid hour (apparently it's the first visit where you get your money's worth), we'd had what we'd come for. A diagnosis of PDD-NOS. That stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified. If you're the kind of person who likes their words to come together and actually mean something that makes sense to people who speak the common language, this diagnosis is not going to be your cup of tea. I hear you. It would make exactly the same amount of sense to call it "Pencil Sharpener Alexander the Great Doppelganger Disorder--Not Otherwise Specified" (or, of course, PSATGDD-NOS). And I think that has a nicer ring to it. But the point is, PDD-NOS is firmly situated on something called the Autism Spectrum--as an Autism Spectrum Disorder (or ASD, because if it can't be referred to by an acronym, it just ain't nuthin' but a thing).

So, off we went with our magical piece of paper with just the right acronym, not to mention Dr. W.'s prescription for the maximum number of hours of services and programs. You write that stuff down on a prescription pad, and look out. All this worked just like we hoped it would, for which I will be forever grateful to Dr. W., despite the severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) he was going to end up making me suffer a year or so into the future. Got us going on some programs with a group of women I refer to as "Calvin's Angels," and they are also known as his girlfriends and/or harem.

Calvin's Angels are made up of five special education teachers (members of something called an ABA team), our speech therapist, and our occupational therapist, all of whom have been ringing our doorbell, coming and going, all day long over the past year to the tune of 25 hours a week. I like to tell people that with seven strangers thrust into your life in this manner, you'd think at least one of them would be a dud, would make you cringe when you hear the doorbell at her appointed time...but no. It is completely unlikely but true that I wouldn't trade one of them, not one. The gains Cal has made with this team, gains our "specialist" didn't have time to assess during our quickie the other day, are too varied and wonderful to describe in any detail in a blog post, but if I had to be brief (not my strong suit, have you noticed?) I'd say that most of the skills so far have been in his ability to understand spoken language, his receptive skills. As for expressive language, saying meaningful things spontaneously, we have further to go. That goes for play and social skills too. And we know this.

But a year ago, if my boy knew his own name, he didn't let on. You could scream it at him two inches from his ear and he wouldn't seem to notice. You'd wonder if deafness was the real problem, except that a few notes of a theme song from one of his favorite TV shows would send him running from across the house, or possibly from the next county. He hears just fine. He just didn't understand that yelling "Calvin" at him meant he owed us any nevermind--a little detail that was particularly disconcerting when he was anywhere near a busy roadway, or any other potential danger that he could be running headlong into. Before awareness of autism became my daily reality, I would wonder why I was the only mom at playgroup who had to learn to drink her coffee at a dead sprint (it's why God invented the adult sippy top known as the "dome lid"). At any rate, responding to his name, that's just one little (huge) thing that's made a complete turnaround. He might try to climb into the fish tank a hundred times a day, but if I catch him first and call his name, he stops in his tracks, and reluctantly backs away. A year ago, Fronya and Nonya (our fish, don't ask, Grace named them) would have to put up with a roommate. Not anymore. For goshsakes, yesterday he dumped my box of a skillion Crayolas and I told him in my best "You're gonna get it" tone that he'd better clean those up. And he DID! Every one! A year ago that wouldn't have happened, and it wasn't just that he was figuratively flipping us the bird, he did not know what those words meant. He does now. He so does.

Body parts and actions and objects and names of his nearest and dearest, he knows these things now. How do we know? Through the activities, the play that the Angels do with him with cards and pictures and toys and puppets and exercises and whatever else we have in our bag of tricks. The evidence of what he knows, evidence not present a year ago, is right there in black and white in a blue binder, lovingly maintained in our kind-of finished basement where Cal has his schoolroom. Everything is recorded, every trial and every error.

Better yet, these days when he's feeling a little weepy and overtired, I'll often hear a whiny, high pitched "Mommeeeee," with all the angst and woe-is-me that would often make many of us mothers of three-year-olds want to poke out our ear drums at the end of along day...but not in this case, not this glorious whine...I didn't hear that whine a year ago, not even six months ago.
And when I sing out "I LOVE YOU, CAL," he tells me back, "Ah-luh-boo." And asking for a kiss brings a little puckered-up bow-shaped mouth to mine. Or an offer of a fat little cheek if that's more his mood. There's language and then there's language.

All of that and a thousand other gains, large and small...although between you and me and the lamp post, none of them are small. When I tried to explain a little of this to the doctor the other day, he gave me a sad little "poor you" smile and said something unintelligible about how service providers sometimes like to make parents feel better by talking about "receptive language" and telling them things are better than they are. What do you say to that in light of all we've gained? It would have taken more than 15 minutes...for me to stop cursing once I started.

For full disclosure, I should tell you that I wasn't supposed to have waited an entire year to follow up with Dr. W. He would have liked to have seen us within 3 months, and then 3 months after that, and so on. But how it goes sometimes is this one gets sick, then that one, then there's a snowstorm, the guy's only in the local office one day out of the month, do I cancel and ABA session or do we go to the doctor, and on and on, and before you know it, a year has gone by.

And it's not like we were sitting around doing nothing---you'll be relieved and probably not shocked, to know that we haven't had all our eggs in Dr. W.'s basket all this time, not by a longshot, there are a thousand other stories that'll sound like those of a thousand other parents who'll lasso the moon and more to find ways to help their babies, their families, themselves along this road. There are physicians that call themselves DAN! (Defeat Autism Now) doctors who treat biomedically and are never covered by insurance because the current healthcare system is too backward to approve of their methods (another day, another post). And there's been those 25 hours a week of therapy I've spoken about. And recently we added preschool to the mix. And I have that other child I've told you about, my glistening, glowing kindergartner named Gracie, who deserves her share of parental care and attention. What I'm getting at is, there are plenty of good reasons why it took us so long to follow up...probably not the least of which was my very strong vibe that Dr. W. had already been of all the use he'd ever be to us, and that was helping us to secure the services that would be so vital for Cal, and that have INDEED helped him to progress. I wonder, though, if Dr. W. was deep down a little irritated at us, and the whole mess of an appointment was his way of saying in a passive aggressive way, you don't show up for a whole year, what do you want me to tell you? That would make about as much sense as anything else at this point.

Anyway, it was what it was, and I got home, spent my requisite time writhing around on the kitchen floor soaking all the dish towels and basically condemning myself for falling so woefully short on taking care of the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy entrusted to my care by the powers-that-be, then I came back to reality and did what I should have done immediately. I got in touch with the angels, Calvin's posse, our team. Via email at first, I'm better that way, especially when I don't feel like sounding like I'm doing a scene from a Lifetime special, I get so tired of myself sometimes. Within a few shakes, my phone was ringing, my email inbox was hopping, they flooded me with the sweet relief of a reality-based response from people who've been collectively helping me take care of my son for 25 hours a week for the past 13 months. All of them overflowing with sorrow that I'd gone through such a wretched ordeal, offering to come with me next time for support (I should have thought of this), asking me questions, questions, questions...

"Did he get down on the floor with Cal?" No.

"Were there any toys in the room, a book he could open up and say 'Cal, point to the doggie'?" No.

"Did he try to engage him in any way even say hi? Cal always says hi back now." No.

"Did he ask him where's his nose?" No.

"His eye contact was nil last year and now it's awesome, didn't he notice?"

No no no no no. No attempt at eye contact, no "Hi Cal!" The only thing to play with in the room was the light switch, which Cal made great use of, plunging us into darkness every minute or so. The one interaction between doctor and patient during what I'm seeing more and more as a bizarre encounter was initiated by Calvin himself. Calvin, the one with the autism. When I begged my child one last time to please leave the light switch alone (plunging into complete inky blackness every few minutes was really the last thing I needed what with my nerves like sweet bells jangled out of tune enough already), he finally obliged me, left the light switch alone, walked right up to Dr. W., and started gently playing with the stethoscope around the doctor's neck. He looked our kind-seeming old-uncle type right in the eye as if to say, "Hey, doc, I like your cool thing there, can I play with it?" If this doesn't sound impressive to you, I'll just say that last year Calvin wouldn't have noticed Dr. W. or his stethoscope and given either of them the time of day if both doctor and instrument had simultaneously burst into flames.

I watched to see if Dr. W. would finally look at my boy, engage him at all...I mean, forget that he's supposed to be treating my son as a patient for a minute, the kid is super frickin CUTE, jeeze! Nothing. That alone should probably have provided all the perspective I needed, but I guess it was too late at that point, he'd already gotten me where it hurts.

But with a little time, a few days, I realize I know better. We may have miles to go before we sleep, but who doesn't? Many of our miles look like autism miles, yours probably look like other kinds. Look at the miles that we've covered already. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, silly Dr. W.

I don't know about you all, but I'm exhausted, and I think we all need to put this particularly upsetting little upset behind us. If there's a moral of this story, it's this: A doctor's office can be a dangerous place. At the very least, bring a friend. Bring a posse. Wear your miraculous medal bearing the likeness of the Archangel Michael, by all means. But never go there alone and unarmed.

We've Got a Lot of What It Takes to Get Along...

2009-10-03T07:59:00.001-07:00

The other day the kids and I were playing together on the floor, and before I even knew what I was saying, a question for my eldest popped out of my mouth:

"Grace, are we rich or poor?"

Without missing a beat or even wasting a nanosecond to look up from the task at hand of building Cinderella's castle out of megabloks, she answered me with one word.

"Rich," she said, in her most no-nonsense manner, but not without shooting me a quick look that said, "...and I would have thought that was obvious." I'm very grateful she didn't add, "...duh!" At least not out loud.

And that was all she had to say on the subject, because more important matters were pressing, such as why in the world I would ever put Cinderella's bed over there in the ballroom, was I crazy?

I had to look away when I realized I was crying again (oh what else is new). I mean, she was insulting my interior design skills! Kidding. This wasn't my usual everyday melodrama--it actually took me a few beats to recognize that I was weeping with, what was it, oh yes, relief. Relief, I remember you! Seems that my daughter's one-word, automatic, tossed-off-without-a-thought response to my weird, inappropriate, out-of-the-blue question had made one thing very obvious, and this was no little thing to apprehend.

She's still where she needs to be. At the ripe old age of five we haven't been able to drive the Truth out of her,

Calvin was playing along with us there on the floor, doing his part to make a great castle-- totally uninterested in the conversation, at least to the casual observer. I can't put the same types of questions to Calvin that I do to Gracie. If I do, he'll usually answer by doing something like pulling up my shirt, exposing skin around my Michelin Man section, and burrowing his head in there like Winnie the Pooh diving into a pot full of honey. It's especially great when he does this in public. I've finally given in and started doing Pilates--it's my only recourse at this point. Sometimes I'm sorry I didn't breastfeed him longer, he and I made a mutual decision to stop over a year ago when he was just two; but then again, were we still doing that I'd probably have more than my spare tire on display on a regular basis, and even a raging exhibitionist like myself has her limits.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is I can't interview Cal in quite the same way I do his sister about the state of his prosperity consciousness, at least not yet. But he has other ways of letting me know his take on the matter. In the morning, I know he's awake because I hear the belly laughs. I go in to get him, and he's usually sitting straight up in bed, blankets wrapped around him, looking like a flaxen-haired papoose, grinning at me with a wide-open mouth. When people talk about twinkling eyes, I know it usually sounds like just a dopey, corny, banal figure of speech--Christmas tree lights do that, not people's eyes. Except that Calvin's DO do that, sorry, you'll just have to take my word for it. Maybe it's the morning light. But at any rate, I go to greet him and get him started on his day, and we're usually behind schedule, let's hop to it, spit spot! Except that his plan, every single time, is to grab me around the neck with a vice grip as soon as I get close enough, pull me down into a full-out, roll-around snuggle, and continue to laugh and gurgle and chortle at me until he lets me know he's ready to move on to a dry diaper and breakfast time. A thousand hugs and kisses for Mommy before breakfast...that's one special needs child who knows my special needs.

This all somehow gives me the feeling that he's on the same page as his sister with his answer to the rich/poor question. Just a hunch, but I don't think he'd give off a more opulent vibe if he suddenly called for his pipe and called for his bowl and called for his fiddlers three.

So that's where they stand. And me? Well, I have a better sense of what my real work is than I did before I sat down to talk to you today. If I've managed not to wring this genius out of them, not to throw off their inner compass despite the hurricanes of fear that get kicked up into the air around them more often than I'd like, isn't that a miracle big enough to make you sure more are coming? Or even as good as here?

Can I have brains enough to let them take me where they are, take me there to stay?

Someone said it a long time ago. And a little child shall lead them.

Careful What You Wish For...

2009-09-30T06:23:00.000-07:00

When your first child enters kindergarten, it's all about new adventures and wondrous excitement. Ok no, no it isn't. Not if you're freakishly overattached to your 5-year-old and the very thought of sending her to hang out with strangers for eight full hours a day for the first time since you became anyone's mother gives you hives the size of grapefruits and makes things like McDonald's commercials where parents get to eat french fries with their preschoolers perpetually and eternally send you in search of a Zoloft pill the size of a Volkswagon to gnaw on even though you've forever sworn off all drugs that can't be obtained via the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru or a box with a spigot in your refrigerator. In that case, it's all about angst and loss and regret and the cruelly incessant speed-of-light flight of years like sand through a leaden sieve, as in one minute you're chewing your labor coach's arm off just to distract yourself from the most ridiculous white-hot pain you wouldn't wish on anyone (except maybe your impregnator) and inventing curse words in languages you never knew you knew, but then you blink and, bango, public school is stealing her away from you forever. (If this is getting to you at all, do yourself a favor and never ever ever listen to the Abba song from Mamma Mia entitled "Slipping Through My Fingers" unless you happen to be the proud owner of a that Volkswagon-sized Zoloft I mentioned. Then there's "Ribbons Undone," by Tori Amos...I'm just warning you...)

Oh I'm mostly kidding (she's lying). It's been almost four weeks now, and I'm totally fine (she's overstating), I can't even remember the last time (yeah she can) when I sank to my knees in a lake of my own bitter tears as the bus pulled away and all the other parents slowly moved away and avoided all eye contact. It's been ages (days)!

Alright, so you get my point, I've found the whole kindergarten thing a bit challenging, but I was well under way with the agony months ago when she graduated from preschool, got the head start, and now I'm pretty good. And this is how I know.

Grace is home today with a bad cold and I'm...well, people, it's totally cramping my style! (Hands over mouth in shock.) This is the deal, she started honking and coughing and sputtering last week, running a low-grade temp, and I did all the right stuff, took her to the doctor, not once but twice over the course of a few days just to make sure I was being neurotic enough, and was assured, not once but twice, no strep, no pneumonia, no ear infection, no flu. (Is this sounding familiar? Then this isn't your first visit to my parlor, is it? I so love you guys...) So even though she was still coughy and sputtery yesterday, I sent her to school, doctor said ok to go.

And then what happens? Around noon I'm picking up my boy from preschool and my cell phone rings. "Hello Mrs. Stroh-Simon, this is the school nurse, I have Grace here...do you know she has a fever?"

Ok, so that sounds suspiciously like the question the officer asks when he pulls you over. "Do you know how fast you were going?" or worse "Do you know why I stopped you?" or much worse "Have you had anything to drink today?" Was there a right answer? Of course there was, and I gave it up right away,

"Oh dear me, NO!"

And it was the truth, I really had no frickin idea she had a fever, and here's why. Any of you own one of those ear thermometers? Excuse me, tympanic membrane thermometers? I have owned several of varying costs. Well here's the deal, apparently you have to buy one that's hospital-grade and costs about as much as your car to get an accurate reading. I stick the thing in the same ear over and over again, usually my own so as not to wear out its welcome in the children's ears, and it gives me a range anywhere from 89.8 to 101.9 and back again, never the same reading twice. So what am I supposed to do, take an average? What about an old fashioned oral thermometer, you ask? It does not fly, the only thing I can figure is that my daughter thinks it's a lethal weapon and that holding it under her tongue is going to trigger the secret spring-loaded hypodermic spikes to pop out of it. (What I love most about children is the trust...) And then there's that tried-and-true, ever accurate way...let's just say that my kids have an amazing spider sense, the minute I walk into the room hiding one of those trusty little devices they immediately affix themselves to the ceiling like that jumpy cartoon cat, you all know the one I mean, claws into the plaster, couldn't get them down with a crowbar, believe me...

Anyway, so no, I didn't entirely know she had a fever. But now I know I'm a bad mommy and I'm going to get a reputation as one of those mothers who does crazy shit like send their kids to school with whooptheria or Martian death flu or teradactyl pox or whatever else is waiting to snatch them up prior to the invention of the life-saving vaccine that will eradicate these evils and make the world safe for pharmaceutical millionaires everywhere, AND WE WILL ALL THANK GOD THAT WE CAN FINALLY SLEEP AGAIN...don't get me started...nevermind, I'm already started...but that's another day, another blog post...

My point (and, like Ellen DeGeneres, hero of comic relief heroes, I do have one) is that I have to keep Grace home today, and, like I indicated several digressions ago, I'm like...hmmmm, this is a little bit of a pain in the ass. Here I am with Calvin safely ensconced either at preschool or with his many home-based service providers (aka miracle workers) several hours a day receiving the kind of teaching and stimulation that I can only give so much of before I spontaneously combust...all those hours a week to try and make a living, continue my unceasing efforts to keep the home base from becoming a smoking crater, and then there's the time for uninterrupted blogging. I mean people, that's not hard to get used to. I know! After all that fussin and weepin and hollerin, the puddle at the bus stop, the whole thing. Oh how the worm begins to turn!

I consider this shift to be very good news, meaning that I am not as far gone as I once suspected. Relatively.

Ok, I know, I hear you, I am so gone...see that little streak out there in the distance? That's me. Gone.

But I will be back, everybody's got to go back to school some time, come hell or whooptheria.

The Taj Econolodge

2009-09-28T07:07:00.000-07:00

Well, so much for my second post being "tomorrow," that would have been around 4 days ago. But as I sit here trying to compose my next offering, someone is yattering in my face a very long story about how Dora's going to save the Crystal Kingdom. At the same time she's telling me about Dora (because I sooooo want to know all about it, so so so badly), she's simultaneously erecting a makeshift ice-cream stand and needs me to make a purchase. She's a hard sell, that one.

And while all this is going on in Gracie's world, Calvin has somehow made his high chair walk a few feet away from the breakfast table over to me and my laptop and is yank yank yanking on my shirt sleeve, telling me, in very insistent tones, "I duck! Open!!!" (Good talking, Cal! Nice request!) Which means, of course, that he is in fact stuck (not a duck), and that I should please open the belt and release him from his incarceration even though he's eaten absolutely none of his breakfast. The child is living on diluted fruit juice, corn chips, and gluten-free pretzels, what am I going to do with him?!? (That's not a rhetorical question...anyone with children on the autism spectrum who are finding any success with their self-limiting eaters, feel free to PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!!!!!!!!)

Ok, anyway, that's just by way of telling you why "tomorrow's" post never came, and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with any images you might have conjured in your macabre imaginations of me passed out on the kitchen floor with a smile on my face and a half-empty jug of Tylenol-with-codeine in my hand. Nothing of the sort. Besides, I checked, that stuff's expired, could be dangerous, not messing with it.

So on to today's topic. It was going to be all about my history as an eating disordered maniac...and don't panic, I've still got the draft. But that subject is being tabled for now, because I have to tell you about our little family minitrip this past weekend.

Firstly, we shouldn't be taking any trips anywhere, because any trip at all, even a cute little (mini, wee, teensy) 200-mile road trip like the one we just took requires a little bit of cash. And at the risk of taunting the law of attraction into bankrupting me forever (oooh, I'm so scared, like I haven't stared that demon in the face before...ok, so I am totally scared, the sarcasm was fake...I find I just can't lie to you...), I'll say it, we ain't got a little bit of cash right now to be throwing wildly around on luxuries like a 2-night stay at an Econolodge in Ithaca, New York. And don't think I can't see you shaking your heads at my exhibiting the kind of wasteful, irresponsible extravagance that has already brought our nation's economy to its knees. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

But the thing is, it was a few months ago, when circumstances weren't looking so godawfully bleak and hopeless yet, that I'd been surfing the internet and found out that singer/songwriter Laurie Berkner would be performing at the State Theater in Ithaca, and that it would be a whopping 40 bucks to purchase tickets for Gracie and myself (15 for the kid, 25 for me). I should probably take a second to explain how Grace feels about Laurie Berkner...let's just say that I feel a certain way about an artist named Tori Amos, Goddess of my Life and Sister of my Heart, and that Grace seems to have a similar affinity for her Laurie as I do for my Tori. That said, I talked to the husband about it. Both he and I have an Ithaca history, Cornell for me, Ithaca College for him, and wouldn't it be nice to do a little weekend trip there, show the kids where we went to college, stay at a cheap motel, beautiful fall weekend, sure, why not, and a few clicks later I had two tickets in the orchestra section.

We settled on just Grace and I doing the concert because we're pretty sure that Calvin would have more fun hanging out with his dad and looking for a good old kegger in a good old college town. (KIDDING, I know he's only 3...although if his first complete sentence turns out to be "Daddy and I are looking for a kegger," I guess I only have myself to blame, what else is new.) Last time we tried to take Cal to a movie, the theater's sound system made him shake like jello on a trampoline and do everything in his power to claw his way over my body and out of the building. His first big show will come too, I'm thinking maybe Thomas or Diego, but for now it was girls to the concert, boys on their own. Plus, the theater is located on Ithaca Commons, which was also the site this past weekend for their awesome Apple Harvest Festival...not a bad weekend to bum around town.

[Just because I really feel like we're so close that I can't keep anything from you, I want to let you know that I just had to interrupt my posting to run across the room and save my son's life. Something in his mouth, no gum or chewing tobacco in the house that I'm aware of, God knows he won't eat anything this morning so I doubted it was food...turned out to be the rubber tire off a toy vehicle, just the right size to block a windpipe. As my pulse rate returns to normal and I type with one hand for the time it takes for feeling to return to the finger that I almost just lost to my 3-year-old's voracious maw, anyone out there with children on the autism spectrum who incessantly mouth everything they can get their hands on, LET ME KNOW HOW YOU'RE COPING WITH THIS!!!!!!!!]

Ok, so fast forward to the week before the trip. Money is scarce, and Grace has decided to come down with a whopper of a head cold, plenty of fever, a few trips to the doctor to assure me that she was strep-free, pneumonia-free, flu-free, just a mean old cold virus. I'd put off telling her about the Laurie Berkner concert until just about the day before take-off, but once she found out, every time I approached her with the thermometer to stick in her ear she'd look up at me in horror and cry out, pathetically, between coughs and honks and snot sputters, "Please let me go see Laurie Berkner even though I'm sick!" What's a mother to do? I repeat, no strep, no pneumonia, no flu...so of course, we loaded the car and off we went.

This was our first hotel experience with the kids. Well, as far as Grace was concerned, we weren't at no stinkin' Econolodge. It was the Waldorf.

"What's dat fing, Mommy?"

"That's an ice machine, honey, look, the ice comes out and you put it in a bucket to keep your soda cold."

"Wow!!!!!!!!"

Eyes wide with wonder and utter delight. And we went through the same ecstatic revelation for every little thing from the tiny soaps (they floated!) and shampoo bottles that we could even take home (GASP!), to the extra surprise pillow hiding in one of the dresser drawers, to the funky hair dryer with the magically retractable cord in the bathroom. I'll tell you, people, through my daughter's eyes, I've never stayed anywhere nicer. With Gracie by my side, the critics can write up however many stars they want, we know the real deal. And we hadn't even gotten to the concert yet.

But when we did, holy smokes. First of all, I somehow ended up with front-row-center seats. And that's just ridiculous. Sure I went online the second the pre-sale started, password in hand (rocketship!), but in my past experience that didn't necessarily mean you'd even get a seat, let alone end up in the front row. Remember when Tori Amos played the Hammerstein Ballroom? Yeah, well I do, pre-sale, schmee-sale, ended up going through a broker, landed in the back row, and I choose not to remember what I paid. Let's just say those tickets were not $40 for a pair. But I digress (who me?), sorry. Back to my story, I find our seats, shocked to be front-row-center, me with my cup of lobby coffee, Grace with her lobby juice box, the two of us sharing a chocolate-frosted donut...and all the time I'm thinking, great, this is where she thinks we'll always get to sit when we see a show.

So once we were sitting there a little while, my, how the excitement did build. I mean, come on, we were 2 feet from the stage! (And I must say I wasn't prepared for that area turning into a baby mosh pit, what the...) The set back-drop was a mural that incorporated images from lots of Laurie's songs (Look, that's the shady tree...there's the moon moon moon with the light switch....etc., etc....). And of course the instruments were right up there for all to see.

"Mommy," she whispered reverently, "Is that Laurie's...ti-gar?"

It was TOTALLY Laurie's ti-gar.

Wiggling back and forth in our seats, "I'm so excited, I'm so excited, she's gonna come out, she's gonna come out!"

And then she came out, and here's where without a visual, how can I tell you what it was like? Here goes. There was a light that came out of the face next to me, and if I could have found a way to somehow catch that in a bottle I'm sure it would easily power and warm all your homes all this winter. One of Laurie Berkner's songs goes,

I went out today and I saw the sun shine,
shining out its light,
yes I saw the sun shine,
I went out today and I saw the sun shine,
I'm just like the sun.

Holding hands with my girl while those opening strains rang out over us in the front row, Grace watching Laurie, me watching Grace, I felt just like the sun.

Worth every penny.

It's Really All About the Comedy..Really...

2009-09-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, it's my first blaaaggggghhhhh post! I chose today to finally start this because I've spent most of the morning having a spectacular nervous breakdown...not my nineteenth, I'd say more like nineteen thousandth. So nice to know that some things don't change, once an everloving mess, always an everloving mess. With that kind of a start to the day, the thing should pretty much write itself.

It's been a good one--the breakdown, I mean. And by "good" I mean that I was having fond thoughts toward the giant bottle of kids' Tylenol-with-codeine tucked up there in the cupboard. (Seriously, you should see the size of the bottle we got when our 2-year-old broke his arm, I think they misjudged his weight by a few hundred pounds or kilos, we used maybe a teaspoon out of this quart-size-looking thing the drugstore sent us home with...although now the patient is 3 years old, so it could be expired...see, it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, I think I heard somewhere that narcotics lose their potency when they get too old, which sounds like a metaphor I don't feel like developing, so I won't). But then, after the codeine thought I had a fleeting thought about how much I'm looking forward to Dancing with the Stars tonight, double elimination excitement, too much to live for on a Wednesday to think of quaffing a quart of codeine over a momentary meltdown.

So there I was, all over the floor, in the kitchen, sobbing and quaking, using loud verbiage (all of which probably made the neighbors think I was watching Sybil or The Exorcist, or maybe playing both simultaneously), shaking my fist at the heavens about what an over-the-hill, washed-up, used-up, waste-of-talent, hopeless piece of uselessness I've turned out to be. Really, it was great, you shoulda been here, skip the premiere of Grey's Anatomy and just hang out at my house.

My 3-year-old son, Calvin, caught the act live, but he has autism and tends not to notice when I'm out of sorts, not so you can tell anyway-- for example, today he just seemed to find the whole episode a delightful opportunity to get down on the floor with me and blissfully nuzzle his head into any part of my body he could expose skin on (per usual), cooing and giggling and chortling with glee, totally unfazed by conduct from his mother that would have been most appropriate for a mental patient on the ward that the medicine fairy forgot to visit. (Which one of us has the disability again?)

Anywho, why so glum, mum?

Well, firstly, there are a few days of every month that are turning out to be very dangerous for me, hormonally speaking. And if you're someone who thinks that's just a cop out and/or excuse that women use to explain away bad moods and behavior, you're entitled to your opinion, but you should honestly fold said opinion up until it's all sharp corners and go fuck yourself with it. (See what happened there? With the language and the overreacting? I think I make my point.)

But beyond the biochemistry, there's also the little matter of personal finance. Oh glorious failure, welcome back! I don't know what it is with me, honestly. I mean, if you ran into me at the Stop Rite, it's not like you'd be thinking to yourself "this woman couldn't make enough money to help adequately support herself and her family if she were Paris Hilton's dumpy older sister." I look ok, especially all cleaned up for grocery shopping. And if you ask anyone who's known me over the four decades I've been on this ride, many would tell you how "promising" I've always been.

Promising--that's how one of my grad school mentors, my favorite and my best, once introduced me to a bunch of her colleagues. "Please meet Tracy Stroh, one of our most promising candidates." I've never forgotten her words, not to mention others so much like them, from pre-K through the Ivy league, all those folks I've totally bamboozled with my promises of promisingness.

Maybe I should have asked them all what it was that I was actually promising, because I don't think I've ever gotten that part down. There's that devil in the details again. Which is what always seems to land me face down on the kitchen floor, over and over. It makes me think of a short story by Lorrie Moore, a story called "Willing," and the lines that go,

"She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, 'There you go.' She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush."

Now THERE'S an everloving mess after my own heart. Can you be separated at birth from a twin if she's in a piece of short fiction? Guess not. You get my meaning, though.

And so, here you have it, my first post. Not terrible for someone who started the day like I did. Because, in the spirit of "this too shall pass," and as someone said in Monty Python movie, with an British accent which makes it funnier, "I got better." I'm sitting here, healthy as a horse, typing away rapid fire, kids peacefully watching the Noggin channel where they appear to be learning Chinese phrases, all's right with the world--and I'm so sure that, sooner or later, something too funny not to make me a millionaire will spill out here. There, I said it. I am so sure!

How long is a blaaaaaaaghhhhhh post supposed to run? Do I keep on blaaaaaghing, or do I save some of these gems for tomorrow? Well, Gracie is now saying, "I really gotta tell you somefin," and Calvin is yanking me with all his 40 pounds of weight toward the source of his white-grape juice supply, which means my time at the keyboard is over for a while, I guess that decides it. (OK, let's be honest, that kind of thing has been going on the whole time I've been writing this, so excuse the inexcusable errors and/or awkwardnesses, it comes down to I either blog with the little darlings chastising me the whole way through or I don't blog at all.)

So tomorrow it is. And tomorrow will come, no codeine for me...although it would take a quart to make a dent in my caffeine exposure for the day, but we'll save that, my favorite, most beloved addiction, for another post.