KIDS

I hadn't meant to get into the kids thing so soon. This was supposed to be a blog about me, after all, but it's hard to find myself among all the extranea of my life and it's even harder to tease out which parts of my life are really mine and which fall more appropriately into the category of their lives. They don't like it when I talk about them. Kids are nothing if not hypocrites, and that's true from their conception right up to my grave. I kissed my life goodbye when Kelly was born in July of 1987, and if I'd had the slightest clue of how much I was about to sacrifice then I would have put a little more passion into it. Kelly as only a few days old when I saw the life I used to have vanish in front of my face and by then it was too late to mourn the life I was leaving behind. A quick peck on the cheek and I was running headlong into the storm, looking past the clouds for the rainbows.

I'm only just now coming to understand that while I looked for my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I left more than my old life behind in the storm. I lost myself, too.

That being said, I should launch into a bold statement affirming my own self and my own life separate from my childrens' lives, but every single time I try to do that one of them grabs me by the throat (it's always the same one, btw) and insists that I focus on them again. My oldest child, the problem child, is 22. She was born screaming so loudly somebody came from another room to shut the door, and she still hasn't shut up. She's been screaming at me over the phone for the last three years since she ran away from her college assignment mid-semester of sophomore year, without so much as a post card to her father and I to let us in on her "decision," leaving us stuck paying tuition so that she could fail all her classes and ruin any hope she had of getting into any other school, and then stuck with a whole lot of trouble after she allied herself with a self-described drug dealer and hitman for the Mexican Mafia who drained her bank account then stole her car, leaving her on a street corner in Indiana with ten cents in her pocket and the clothes on her back.

Thanks to the excellent (really!) social services in Ohio, especially as compared to Massachusetts, she was able to call somebody else to arrange for her to go to a domestic violence shelter where she ranted and raved and fought and swore at everybody, finally earning herself the label I'd been trying to pin on her since she was ten years old -- mentally ill.

Ironically, she resents me terribly for the testing I arranged (a simple evaluation at school - she wouldn't comply with anything else), the doctors I took her to see (she takes enormous pride in the ways she manipulated them so I looked like an incompetent parent), or the medications (1/2 teaspoon of liquid prozac...) that I "forced" her to take (I never once even watched her take it...). She's medicated now and she complains that it's expensive - but if she'd listened to me when I explained and explained and explained why those tests and those doctors and those medications were important instead of spending her energy and her intellect trying to prove that she didn't need them, then she might not even need the heavy duty stuff she's on now. and, furthermore, that she may have been eligible for SSI disability payments at age 18 which would have simplified her life in so many ways. If nothing else, she'd be eligible for medicaid instead of having to rely on her Walmart insurance policy, which doesn't cover mental health, and the thinning patience of Ohio's cash-strapped social services. But you can't tell her that - she doesn't even recognize the connection between the two things.

It wasn't just about the label, because she really did have something different, and it was something frighteningly familiar. I'd been fascinated by autism since I was an adolescent in the 70's when they first started talking about it. I think maybe I saw myself somewhere in that bubble or maybe I had a premonition that Kelly was coming into my life. I continued studying the condition when I was seeking my Masters degree at Wheelock (early childhood education, because I had always wanted to be a teacher. Always.) Today many of us recognize that children who can explain the composition of an atom at age two are not geniuses to be celebrated, but train wrecks waiting to happen. But nobody understood that 10 or 15 years ago and, as long as my kid wasn't causing any trouble at school or doing poorly in her classes, what did it matter that she had no friends or that her arms were sliced to ribbons? I knew what Aspergers Syndrome was years before it became the most sought after diagnosis in the A/B school district (where everybody is simultaneously gifted and in need of special services...) I made it easy for them - I told them what to look for and where to find it, but budgets are tight and one more kid in the SPED system might bring about the end of free coffee in the administration building, so they ignored what they could. Kelly was easy to ignore, at least for everybody but me. She would never let me ignore her and there was no end to her manipulations. I would forever be tangled in her web.

I've always found my labels comforting in a way. After growing up hearing everybody tell me what a disappointment/screw-up/stupid, lazy-assed, useless kid I was it was reassuring to discover that I was not really any of those things. Bi Polar Disorder, Sauvant syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive disorder,...music to my ears! There were names and reasons for things that were "wrong with me," and they didn't point to the very core of my being. My symptoms were not character flaws to be ridiculed and berated for. I was defective, but I came by it honestly. It was all wired into my brain at birth. Knowing that wouldn't change the way my family looked at me, but it might provide an extra layer of protection against their hurtful comments and insensitive behaviors. So it was never about the goddamned label when it came to Kelly, either. It was about finding out what was going on so we could get control of it before she left home. It was about her not having to wait until she was 40 to stop despising herself for being so inadequate. It was supposed to be about her understanding herself and learning to live in a world that has little patience for non-conformity.

And maybe, just a little bit, it was about redemption for me. Maybe I could finally feel just a little bit more worthy of being part of the Mommy pack. Maybe I could finally feel just a little bit more worthy of the space I took up on this planet. Is that so wrong?

This is a picture of my best dog, Hunter. He is, in as much as a dog can be such a thing, my soul-mate. I discovered him at a shelter 7 years ago while searching for a well-trained standard poodle. Needless to say, I was rather mentally ill at the time, mired in an acute depression which was further complicated by cognitive changes caused by multiple sclerosis -- changes of which I was unaware, but which made my life complicated and confusing. It was one of the lowest points of my life - my oldest daughter had become combative and mean, and I had begun to feel smothered by the demands of my children, my husband, and the big, unmanageable house we were living in. I was isolated and lonely - though I'd shunned the idea of a dog in the past suddenly I realized that I needed somebody to be happy to see me when I came home for a change. I needed a little bit of unconditional love, and where better to look than at a kennel? But my husband didn't want a dog - our lives were already chaotic enough. I already couldn't manage the house, the carpools, the endless and stultifying demands of motherhood. But there was a little bit of a spark inside of me, one that hadn't lit up many times in my life. I was going to put myself first and as I approached my 40th birthday it seemed only right that I didn't need anybody's permission to have a dog.

Wanting to respect my husband's wishes at least minimally, I pledged to get an older dog, one already trained and ready to be a family pet. I settled on a standard poodle. I don't remember why. And I stopped by the shelter two or three times a week just to check - maybe somebody would surrender a lovely standard poodle. I'd have to be there right away or someone else would take it.

I met lots of dogs. Most of them barked, or slobbered, or were too big, or too nippy, or just ugly. One leaped from the floor all the way up to the high ceilings in the shelter, requiring her run to have a sort of lid on it just to keep her in. I liked her, but knew that was not the kind of dog I needed.

I overlooked Hunter a few times, because he had a pink nose and I had something against pink-nosed dogs. I don't remember why. But I kept walking by his run and he'd look up at me with his sincere amber eyes as I walked past. He never barked. Finally I asked to visit with him. He was crazy. Nuts. He leaped and spun, eyes bulging, tongue out - so excited to be noticed, to be loved. I questioned, then I turned around and saw him lying calmly on the floor next to a trainer. She had stepped on his leash, giving him no choice but to lie down. He looked at me and I understood that he wanted to please. He just didn't know how. I started falling in love with that silly dog with the pink nose.

They tried to talk me out of it. Hunter was "mouthy," they said. I had kids at home. They brought out other dogs for me to see -- dogs that were "better" for my family, but they meant nothing to me. They climbed up on the seats, sniffed all around, never noticed me. I asked to see Hunter again. I practiced the trick of standing on his leash. I took him outside and walked him in the parking lot. He pulled and jerked at the leash, but once I got his attention I could ask him to sit and he would sit, clearly proud of the accomplishment. He wanted to learn and I wanted to teach him. I brought him back inside and they returned him to his run - he couldn't come home with me until the whole family had met him.

On my way out of the shelter that day I stopped one last time at Hunter's run, to tell him I'd be back. The other dogs were barking like crazy, but Hunter didn't bark. Instead he came up to the gate where I stood and sat down. He looked right up into my eyes and then he did the craziest thing I've ever seen a dog do. He sang to me. It was a prolonged whine, almost a yodel, with his head pitched upward. His song went on long enough for me to look around for a witness. I was seriously worried about my sanity. If I looked back would I see him dancing like Michigan J. Frog? Was I losing my mind, or was this dog really singing for me? I told him to wait for me - I'd be back.

It seems mandatory today to make note of the passing of this controversial, confusing, enigmatic, and utterly perplexing icon. His televised memorial service appeared to be a very moving affair from what I gleaned from the highlights shown on Dateline NBC. They glossed over the less positive questions that linger about his life, his finances, and his children. There was a lot of pomp and circumstance for somebody who was an entertainer, but it seemed appropriately larger than life in recognition of a man who was so much larger than life that sometimes he seemed almost extra-terrestrial. I don't think his passing will impact my life much, but at least it should put an end to the taunting and the off-color jokes. If I can think of the Michael Jackson I saw being interviewed while sitting in a tree, or the one dancing so amazingly on "Billy Jean," or the little boy singing "Ben" so beautifully I was certain he was a woman, then I'll be happy.

Other than that, nothing of any importance happened today and I just don't feel like going into a lengthy post about my dogs, or about eggs, or even about me. Those things will wait.

My life with a poem.

I have a long history with this lesser known Robert Frost poem, the name of which escapes me at this moment. I was in second grade when I first encountered it. My teacher had given us all an assignment to memorize a poem to present to the class. Now, I'm a teacher myself, so I know that what the teacher had in mind was something out of A Child's Garden of Verse, or a cereal ad, or Dr. Suess, but my mother's friend had recently "discovered" Robert Frost requiring my mother to go out and buy both of his books, hardcovers, and considering this is the woman who rinsed the plastic wrap from my school lunches so she could use it again the next day, that was a big deal. It was therefore decided that if that huge investment came to nothing else at least I could impress all the second grade staff at school by reciting a poem from it.

I don't know why that particular one caught my eye, but I liked the rhythm of those first few lines even if I didn't understand them a bit. But my mother had her eye on the one on the opposite page, something about a hoe at the end of a row and a tool turning into a weapon. I could probably recite it for you still, but what's the point? Plowshares for swords, subtle noises from Vietnam,... but it seemed pretty senseless to me at the time. I memorized both poems, recited the one my mother chose for me, but never let go of the second one.

"It is right there betwixt and between

the orchard bare and the orchard green"

How many times have those lines popped into my head across this curious life I've lived? Haven't I always felt that I was betwixt and between something else? Here, but not quite there. Good, but never that good. Past the beginning, never quite at the end. What amazes me is the many, many different interpretations the poem has taken on for me. Each time it has arisen, as if out of the dust, giving me words to ponder, a mantra to recite, always at a time of change or crisis. And like my faithful companion, Hunter, it always managed to lead me out of whatever place I was lost in. Only then would its meaning really speak to me, telling me where I was if nothing else. It took me many years to learn that all it takes is a road sign to remind me that I'm never really lost. I'm always somewhere.