Teddy, Four Years On

Four years ago today I would go into labor with Teddy. We knew many things about him already. We knew even that his name was Teddy. But the list of things I wish I could now tell myself that day is heartbreakingly long and breaks my heart.

I didn't know how much I would truly love him. I didn't know how much I was about to miss out on by wallowing in my sense of overwhelm about raising a child like him. I thought so much in terms of "a child like him" rather than just him. Four years on, I am haunted by knowing that I had everything back then. Everything. And I didn't see it. I didn't appreciate it. It would take me far too long before I did, and it would be only after I lost invaluable pieces of the gifts God had given me: moments that build relationships, that build our souls and our lives. 

I do remember that my deep sense of grief was only relieved when I cuddled his tiny body to me. Among all the harsh truths I know about myself then, knowing that this, at least, is also true gives me some comfort. Yet, I would too often trade that gift away in favor of "getting," as I saw it then, to do the things I would have been able to do if I hadn't had a seventh child, all the things my friends were able to do. As if somehow I was owed that. As if somehow coveting the lifestyles of others borne of their choices and circumstances was better than cradling my own gifts borne of mine.

Four years ago, I grieved what I thought I had lost. It is appropriate to grieve losses, and having a child with a significant disability does involve true and serious loss. But what I couldn't see was the gift inside of all of that, the gift of my little boy as he was--which thing (who he was) I also didn't know. My grief over what I had lost delayed me from coming to know what I had. And it caused me to lose out on so much that should have been mine and his and redounded the pain I started out with. I wish I could go back and just be. Be his mom, allow him to be my baby, the center of my world as all newborns should be. Resisting reality only exacerbates your pain as you are dragged along life's harsh surface and blinds you to those joys tucked underneath that can only be found when you sink down in full surrender to whatever your life is.   

The trouble is that I am doing it again, this resisting reality. I am on the ocean's surface fighting the waves, looking back at all I did wrong as if regret can change the past rather than root our pysches more deeply in that illusory and vanished place which visiting only tortures us. I know I must do what I always should have done and let go of whatever raft of what-ifs I am clinging to on the surface and dive under the mayhem of waves to whatever is in the calm below. I can even sense Alexandra of the future warning me to accept my life as it is today, with all the mistakes and regrets and heartbreaks, all the things I have irretrievably broken, because, even with all of the ugliness I myself have caused, I still really do have everything. 

Maybe it is contrary to human nature to be able to appreciate the fullness of our gifts in the moment of full possession of them. Maybe "time running out is a gift," without which our hearts would never grow to the point of breaking. Maybe we need the breaking just as much as the growing. Maybe it is the only way.  

Teddy, you have given me both. I think you always will. I love you.

   

 

Our Collective Depression

 When life was cancelled last spring, and I speak in general terms here bc I frankly was not paying much attention and cannot give precise dates, I did not care. Actually, I was relieved. Quarantine created an outer symmetry to my inner life. At the same time that I wanted to retreat and hide from reality, I was told to retreat and hide from reality. It was a relief to not have places to go, people to see, kids to shuttle, questions to answer, life to face. 

My inner life consisted of feeling that every major decision point of the last year had been catastrophically wrong and I wanted to simply disappear. We left our home in Houston, seeking to escape from what I could now see was straining at a gnat in order to now be faced with swallowing a camel. We were expecting a baby whose entrance into our lives would change everything, permanently. I knew enough to understand that we don't always rise to all our challenges. Some will just lay us low, and I had no energy for climbing.

In short, I was ok with the world being cancelled because I felt my world already had been. Or I wanted it to be. It was comforting to be told to do what I wanted to do anyway.

All of this is simply Depression. It is as if someone with depression was put in charge of making the rules. Of course, those making the rules for the rest of us have not been abiding them personally. But those of us who placidly obey at this point either have depression or Stockholm Syndrome. I count responding to our current scientific understanding of this virus as being less dangerous than seasonal flu to everyone that isn't elderly with "well, we don't know about the long-term affects yet," as a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Anything that people say at this point to justify current conditions that could not have been used last spring to justify the initial reaction is a variation on Stockholm Syndrome, aka the politicization of disease. 

Well, we should not be surprised. All our emotions can be weaponized against us. And every situation can be (and usually is) exploited on all kinds of levels, certainly politically. Thinking you are immune is the first warning sign.

But we need to recognize things for what they are. I am upset at myself for slinking under the call of my life, sleepwalking through my days, refusing to shoulder the work of involving myself in my own life. Living like that did not begin for me last spring. When we moved to Houston, I tried to cope with being new in a new city where I neither knew my way around nor had friends was to retreat deeper inside myself. I could do this comfortably by living in an awesome house. Before Texas, I had to get out each day and interact with the world bc staying cooped up at home was even more stressful and unhappy than leaving. Maybe if I had not been pregnant in 2014, maybe it hadn't been 100 degrees with 100 percent humidity when we arrived, maybe if I had all my kids in school, living friendless in a new place would not have feel so overwhelming to my instinct to connect within my community that I yielded to lying down. But I found it much easier to relax in my new beautiful home where my kids had plenty of space to stay out of melt-down zone than I did to venture forth and live. My need for connection was satiated by my podcasts and social media. It is not unlike how porn can satisfy the sexual needs for men, but since the replacement is so disordered, it leaves its users disordered, as well. Too satisfied to be driven to find the real thing, but not actually nourished. 

I wish I had not done that. Talk about turning blessings into curses. I know I am probably doing that again now: squandering the opportunities that pass by me, using one form of comfort to lull me into deeper discomfort. Too tired to live becomes a downward, self-perpetuating spiral, one we often don't even notice.

It is wrong to beat people down into being too tired to live, and that weariness is what sets in when humans are put into isolation. It is wrong to boil "living" down to a simple biological state. It is wrong to weaponize our instincts to be good neighbors, liked, respected, cooperators, against us to stifle dissent, questioning, and having basic freedom. We are all so close to ourselves we can't even see ourselves for what we are and how we operate. How we can be manipulated. 

It really does come down to: do we believe that the things we filled our lives with matter, or don't we? Do kids need friends? Do adults need companionship? Does education matter? What about livelihoods? Is the Eucharist the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ? Is there purpose in gathering in faith communities? Is there really life after this one? If everything is expendable in order to claw at avoiding an illness, then I do not see how we can say we do. For ten days, ok. For ten months, no. And here we are, no end in sight, even with a vaccine.  

How far the goalposts have moved. How different the justifications are today. How little people are even aware of either change. How little they care when it is pointed out. But depressed people tend not to care very much about things. So long as they are comfortable, or afraid.   

Porter starts 1st grade

Porter was the first of the kids to go back to school, and this first day was a first in a very real sense.  Though Porter has attended various part-day preschool programs starting at age 2, today he embarked on state-mandated and attendance-monitored full-day public education.  We did not do so very well last year with attending regularly, or punctually, but we have to pull it together since Texas does not tolerate any form of truancy. 

He was very excited to go.  Will, Andrew and I were able to walk him to his class and meet his teacher, who seemed very nice.  It was hard for me to say goodbye to my little buddy, the sweet companion and helper of the last several years, and I think it was a little bit scary for him, too.  But when he came home off the bus today, he was super happy to report that he had a great day and made two friends.  I think it will be a wonderful year for Porter.  I love that he spontaneously assumed this leaned-over pose, the same from back in 2013 on the first day of preschool.  The similarity is both cure and reassuring; Porter is not the kind of kid you hope will change much.  Cheerful, sensitive to the feelings of others, helpful, happy, spunky and super sweet, he is a joy and his life is joyful.  We love you, Pie-Guy!

Vignettes

Yesterday Porter gently kicked me out of the bathroom to attend to his urgent business. "Just go out there and wash your hands in the kitchen!" He directed me helpfully. 

It reminded me of the time last year, it was before Charlie was born bc porter and Claire were seated in the middle row, and Porter was trying to pass something to Claire across the aisle separating them. She was on his left but he was using his right arm to make the pass. They couldn't connect. "Put it in your other hand and try again," I encouraged. He complied and was mystified when the pass was successful. "Whoa! I didn't know this arm was so much wooonger!" 

I found the little birthday interview I did with him last year and couldn't believe how different he was. Just because they aren't keeping pace with the baby in the change department doesn't mean they aren't changing rapidly, too. 

Today is Sunday, my day of reflection. Church was wonderful and inspiring, even if I only caught sacrament bc Claire spiked a fever and had to be taken home. I think I'm still under the influence of a very powerful general conference weekend. I'm trying to remember what my life is really all about. It's easy to forget and devote most of my thoughts to paint color for my house. (Can I paint white in a north facing room????)

Brigham left for Boston. He seems to have terrible timing with these trips. Someone is always sick. At least he returns tomorrow night. 

I've been feeling very blessed living in Houston. I miss my family so much and so many people in our McLean community. But I feel like we are blessed to be here and to have found Western Academy and the friends we have made. 

In the words of a very special pig, come to life through a very special author, "I love everything."  My amazing bone is only an iPod and it doesn't love and it can't sing me to sleep but it'll play me a podcast and I'll take it. 

One Decade

One night 13 years ago I was studying for my Civil Procedure exam.  I had spent weeks memorizing all these intricate rules and exceptions and so and and so forth when suddenly, the night before the exam, it hit me like a thunderbolt from the blue:  the entire course was about how to file an action in civil court.  I knew so much about it, and yet I hadn't really understood anything because the whole point of it had eluded me.

I think I do that with life, all the time.  Andrew turned ten yesterday and I either need to plunge into some deep exploration of the changes I need to make in myself or I need some medication because I am feeling heartsick and desperate about it.  Have I been a good enough mom?  Did he have a happy childhood?  Did we fill those years with the right things, in the right way?  Did I waste it?

Since I was a kid myself, before ten, I have been unhealthily aware of time, and yet somehow a whole decade still got by me.  A little baby is now halfway through with growing up, and these last 8 years at home, two fewer than we have had together so far, will be marked by an increasing separation.  He will be peeling off of the foundation provided, by which I really mean to say, he will be peeling himself off of me.  I know how unhealthy that sounds.  But when your baby is born, adhesion is just basically the most accurate characterization of the relationship between mom and baby.  In Andrew's case that was especially true.  He could not remain asleep, even, if he were not resting right atop someone's chest.  He seemed to require that he burrow deeply into the embrace of another person.  I spent the first four to six months of his life with him connected to me.  At night, Brigham and I took turns snuggling him, his personal sleep-support system.  The kid didn't sleep independently until he was 2 and Will's birth ejected him into his own room.

And now that baby is ten.  He's gone through his phases:  dressing in costumes for his daywear, obsessions with certain movies (Cars), or toys (monster trucks and Lightning McQueen), or little tv shows (Scooby Doo).  Life with little tiny kids is so exhausting that we welcome the growing independence and the little changes, sometimes without registering that these changes are what the whole thing is about.  He wasn't born to be a baby or a little kid, he was born to be an adult and that's what he is going to be.  Soon.

I am reading To The Lighthouse right now, so that's another strike against mental health right there.  In it, the main character realizes that her children will never be as happy again as they are in their childhoods.  That is a sad thought, but I disagreed, based on my own life--which was characterized by a happy childhood.  I feel like being a young mom has been the most real period in my own life, and much of it my kids won't really even remember.  Already don't remember.  They are the center of my life but I am not to be the center of theirs, and they will only vaguely recall those early years when I was.  This is where the advice comes in to live your own life and not have your world revolve around your kids.  I can see the value in that counsel, for sure.  I am not prepared to say which is the best way, though.  Maybe, though, that is part of what it means to give wholly of yourself to your kids.  Not as a martyr.  That description feels demeaning to the holy sacrifices involved in parenting.  But rather in the way that Christ taught us to love one another and the way that He loved us, living each day of His life for us.  In a way that they will understand when they grow up and become parents, giving of themselves for their children.

Ok, at ten Andrew is a lot of fun and very companionable.  He is a diligent if disorganized student, a usually sweet and supportive brother--who yet also will earnestly admit to feelings of jealousy over perceived lack of attention, and very helpful.  Last month I somehow had all five kids in Costco at the dinner hour.  And Halloween costumes were up, as were Christmas toys.  Everything fell into pandemonium and it became necessary to heave Claire back into the cart and bolt out of there.  Charlie nearly toppled from my front pack in the effort, and Claire banged her flailing leg on the side of the cart.  She screamed and sobbed in pain and frustration and jealousy, since I was holding Charlie during her moment of need.  Andrew just casually swept over and scooped her out of the cart and into his arms, where she settled down.  I plan on doing a little interview with him and asking him some questions about himself and his goals for the future, but for right now I think that little anecdote summarizes Andrew right now. 

Day 2

This morning I walked Will to his second day of second grade.  I have been building up to this task for almost a year now, since we live so close, but today was the first day when the four small bodies obstructing this path and the eating reluctance that runs the clock out on it were all finally cleared.

We walked, we chatted, Charlie sat perfectly content (or perhaps overwhelmed into silence by the shock of leaving his property for the first time since returning to Texas), the cars whizzed by and we entered the school through the back by the track, the place we went for his Tiger Cub picnic a few weeks after Charlie was born.

I worry so little about Will these days.  Everything comes so easily to him, or maybe he so easily to it.  He's confident and happy, easy to please.  When I picked him up after violin practice yesterday, it had basically fallen off my radar that it had been his first day.  "Second grade is going to be fun!" he announced to me with a grin as we sweated our way to the parking lot, preempting a question I had forgotten to even ask.  I also tend to experience fewer feelings of nostalgia over his growing up than I do with the other kids--the side-effect of having an older brother to broach new vistas of childhood first and younger siblings whose transformations are more pronounced.

But today as he scampered confidently off in the direction of his new classroom, not a hesitation about where or how or with whom he would go, I was struck by the small shock of his growing independence.  He disappeared in the swarm of kids and a day that will be all his own.

I spent the rest of the day taking excessive footage of the four kids who spent the day at home.  

In With the New

Somehow another school year is upon us already, pressing its Type A face with its schedules and time tables and homework into our darkened windows where we are oversleeping.  Two days after arriving back in Houston from our East Coast Summer, I felt grateful that we were able to invade my parents' house for 6 weeks.  Every inconvenience associated with suitcase living and crowded beds was dwarfed by all the fun moments spent with family and friends, doing old, familiar Virginia things and having the opportunity to try out new ones (like taking a trip to NYC).  It is nice to be in our home again but I think we will be summer travelers from now on.

Will is the first to head back, with his first day tomorrow.  Andrew starts the following week and Porter the Tuesday after.  Will is excited to start 2nd grade and is not put out at all by the fact that his brothers get an extra week off.  He will begin his first season of flag football and his second year with the Fiddling Lions.  His goal is to get his name of the principal's list displayed in the school hallway.  We think the way to do this is straight As.  He got straight As last year but for some reason they don't include 1st graders.  His plan to help anyone feeling left out is to simply ask, "Want to play?"  I figured cementing a catch-phrase in their brains to reach out to others is better than long lectures on kindness.  At this stage, playing together is the cure-all.

Porter will start Kindergarten at Pines Presbyterian Preschool rather than joining Will at BHE.  It is a shorter day running from 9-1 and will give him more time to slow down and be little.  There will only be 10 other kids in the class and he will have two teachers.  He has become very fascinated with Will's violin and is eligible to enroll in the BHE violin program with Will, so, against my lazy inclinations, he will participate in that, too.  It will be a pain for me, but I am hoping that I am striking while the iron is hot musically.  I think it will be a wonderful year for him.  I am glad I figured out a way to win back that extra time that his April birthday steals, even if only for one year, since he will finish high school with all the other 2010 babies.  For this year, at least, we get to a few extra hours at home where he can play with Claire and make Charlie smile and be part of the at-home orbit.  

Andrew is officially old to me now.  I am cheating time in two ways here:  first, his late birthday puts him behind a school year (when I was his age I was entering 5th) and second, the sweet nature of his all-boys school keeps him that much more innocent.  But all my cheats notwithstanding, he is still over half-way on his years at home.  I feel like the word "years" is itself a form of deception.  It is not marking off a very long chunk of time, and if it weren't for the fact that it is how long it takes the planet to revolve around the sun, I would propose a different measure.

Andrew has agreed after much encouragement to participate in x-country.  He went running with me this summer and was far more capable of the four miles we did than I was.  I am no athlete, but I had a bit of endurance.  My dad was the same way, and it seems like Andrew is, too.  While I am a little nervous that he will hate the sport as applied in Houston in August, he seems proud to announce his anticipated participation so far.

He gave a talk in primary today.  The assigned subject was "Miracles."  I had totally forgotten until this morning, but we sat together and prepared it fairly easily.  I am trying to make everything formulaic for them so they can grasp how to go about things in their lives better.  I always felt so clueless and lost.  After he introduced himself and defined the term, he launched into two family stories illustrating the principle.  One was about George Q Cannon's mission to the Hawaii at age 18, where he experienced the gift of tongues and was blessed to taste as sweet a bitter root he had found disgusting.  The second was the story of my dad's conversion.  He made it sound like he had been raised in the Church but had resisted the Gospel, but the point still came across well.  His whole life he had been firmly atheist.  It is hilarious to think of non-believing little boy, but he really never believed in God or Heaven or life after death.  After my mom joined the church, the missionaries became a fixture in our home and he was eventually baptized.  I had always suspected that he had just joined to support my mom and us, and under the theory that there was no harm in living a Christian life even if the whole thing was silliness.  But when my friend was investigating the church during my high school years, he shared an experience he had had with the missionaries.  He said that during one discussion, the missionary turned to him and said, "Can you not feel the Spirit that is in this room right now?"  My dad could not reply because the Spirit was so strong that he was totally overcome.

That story stunned me.  Up until that point, I really believed my dad was a "no harm in going" kind of member.  I have always been grateful to know of this spiritual experience he had.  We need to know these things about one another.  Sometimes we need to borrow light to keep ours from snuffing out.  I realize that it sounds like just another conversion story, remarkable to the people involved, but not miraculous.  But to me, knowing my dad, knowing how logical his mind was and how skeptical (he once said he didn't really like reading the D&C bc he felt like it was just Joseph Smith telling people what to do), the fact that he felt the Holy Spirit testify of the Gospel in such a way that rendered him speechless, well that is a miracle.  I am grateful for the witness it has provided to me and that it can provide to my kids, who loved him so much.

Andrew did such a great job and I marveled out how much he had grown in the course of a year.  The most coherent part of last year's talk was when he, after mumbling some sentence fragments, crumbled up his sheet of paper and tried (and failed) to make a basket in the trashcan.  He was trying to be funny and funnel away his embarrassment back then, but what a difference from today.  One of his primary leaders asked if she could take a photo of the notes he brought up with him.  I asked him which part she seemed to be interested in and he replied, over his pearler bead project he was making for me, "Probably the end because that was the best part.  Mom."  I had written out the ending for him to read since he had trouble winding it back down.  We are as close to his leaving on his mission as we are to him calling out "Aaami, are you?" and hooking his little arm around my neck when we read books on the floor.

Wherever it is that the time goes, there are some pretty adorable little memories swirling around, too.  I wish I could visit.