2400

My 11-year old and I figured out a short time ago that there are approximately 2400 days left until June of her senior year. It might not be the day she graduates or moves out, but it was a good marker of how many days of her childhood we have left to spend together. And her "childhood" is certainly going to pass by long before then. It gave me pause to put a hard number to those days.

"2400" is now a mantra for my daily interactions with her, as I know it's so easy for me to focus on her exasperating habits or annoying shortcomings, especially since she has entered puberty and is approaching teen-dom. This numeric reminder now serves to help me put those annoyances into perspective. "2400" I think as she rolls her eyes at me when I ask her to pick her clothes up off the bathroom floor or unearth her desk and bed from the mound of random belongings piled on top of them. "2400" I think as she grumbles about bedtime or TV limits.

"2400" also serves as a gratitude counter, filling me with joy that I have that many more days still to enjoy her unique and funny and unpredictable presence. "2400" I think as she rushes blurting mid-sentence into the kitchen, her cockatiel perched on her shoulder, pointe shoes on her feet, as she answers my beckon to unload the dishwasher. "2400" I think as I watch her perform ballet and Celtic dance on stage, draw in her sketchbook, or ride her horse into a herd of cattle to separate out a steer with a blue ear tag. "2400" I think as we snuggle together and watch a gripping episode of "Agents of SHIELD" or "Dr. Who." "2400" I think as I tuck her in and read a chapter of Redwall aloud to her, grateful that she still appreciates and cherishes our bedtime routine.

Of course, 2400 is no guarantee, either. It could be 1400, or 400, or one. Tragedies befall even those who are cognizant of the clock ticking.

I remember snippets of song lyrics: "Life is just another terminal disease"..."Live just like you're dying"..."I want to live like there's no tomorrow." There is wisdom in those words, to be sure. But for me, "2400" has proven to be the most potent reenforcement of the idea they contain. And the sad thing is, I know that number is now in the 2300's, as we calculated this a few weeks back. My hope is that our good days will outweigh our bad, and that the days we spend enjoying each other's company will have the effect of multiplying those days. Sometimes I think the feeling we get of time passing too quickly is a result of time spent unsatisfactorily, that unhappy days seem to subtract more than their actual total from our allotment of time with our loved ones.

So here's to multiplying today by two...or three, or more!

Chaosing

slog (verb): to keep doing something even though it is difficult or boring : to work at something in a steady, determined way

September felt like one long chaotic slog.

"Slog" sounds like such a negative word; perhaps I can invent one that describes the intense activity level without being pejorative, as I truly enjoyed a lot of it. But "to keep doing something even though it is difficult" surely applies. How about "chaosing through September." I haven't seen "chaos" used as a verb before, but that seems like an oversight.

The transition from summer chaos to school year chaos included: helping my previously homeschooled daughter to hit the ground running in public school, where she is playing clarinet in band and singing in the choir (which meets before school two mornings a week); my husband and I stepping up big time as booster parents at our daughters' dance studio, including creating a float for the rodeo parade and an online registration/billing system for the studio; participating in the county fair as a 4-H parent and helping my daughter participate as a 4-H kid (including cleaning poop off a hen's feet with a toothbrush at 7:30 AM); adjusting to the extracurricular activities schedule (Celtic dance, ballet, and horse events for our oldest daughter; ballet/tap dance and therapy for our youngest daughter; play dates for both); starting Knowledge Bowl practice sessions at our house with my daughter's classmate; and catching up on weeks/months/years of deferred projects around home while the kids are at school.

I also traveled to Missoula to help a friend move her elderly mother out of the home she'd lived in for 47 years, and then helped her in her seamstress shop when she returned and was buried in bridesmaid dresses and wedding gowns. (I'm not sure how much help I was; sewing beadwork and ripping out seams on intricately layered formal gowns isn't my forte!)

Several people have asked me what I do now that the girls are both in school full time. I should have created a time-lapse video of September's activities to hand out in reply. It's just too hard to explain how "all that free time" hasn't really been all that free yet!

This morning I awoke at 3:53 AM and couldn't get back to sleep, I was so filled with careening emotions. I think I'd been dreaming about something upsetting. At one point I even snuggled up with my oldest daughter for a bit just to feel close. I miss our time together from our homeschooling days. I have some regrets about the decision, but I knew that was inevitable. I want to connect with her meaningfully in our limited time together, but it's so hard to find the time now. I rejoice in her happiness with her new friends, as she's a social butterfly who hadn't had much luck finding bosom buddies in the homeschool community. But it pains me when she describes the boredom and frustration she experiences because of the inanity of the school curriculum. It's exactly as I predicted. Social gain, academic loss. I'm trying to get her into the gifted/talented program, but I've been told "it's a process", and it sounds as if she'll be lucky to be admitted to it before the semester ends. Too bad, too, as they're focusing on writing this semester.

Even though home isn't her primary "school" anymore, we can still definitely make it the primary center of learning. I think I'll encourage us both to sign up for NaNoWriMo in November, and that can more than take the place of a G/T writing class. My husband is thinking of more interesting ways to teach her the science of electricity and magnetism that they are covering in an excruciatingly dull way at school, and that can happen as a fun weekend or evening activity. And who knows...we might end up doing hybrid homeschooling, as some families do: 3 Rs and science/social studies at home, band/choir/theatre/sports at school. She'd still have the advantage of seeing friends at school, but wouldn't have to be there for so many hours a day, and she could get a better quality education on her core subjects at home. I'm appalled at how low the school standards have gotten. The kids don't even get to know if they've gotten the correct answers in math! "Correct" is apparently now an oppressive white male patriarchal construct that has been rightfully purged from the curriculum. Gack!

October feels filled with promise. The days are back within my preferred temperature range, and I feel a surge of optimism during this, my favorite season of the year. It feels like a season of preparation, preparing for good things. Perhaps I can come up with a verb for October. "Optimizing" seems like a good candidate. It sure beats "slogging"!

The Tempest

I've been preserving Internet pages by not writing unnecessary blog posts for the past three months.

Well, that's the most creative excuse I can come up with. I have no good excuse except a general feeling that I couldn't "allow" myself to spend time writing a blog post when I had so many undone things on my to-do list. That, and a general feeling of malaise that colored everything blah. Who wants to write about blah?

Shortly after my last entry, my daughters performed in their dance studio's production of "Mary Poppins", and grandma and grandpa made the long trek north from Sparks, NV to see it. My 11-year old took time off from homeschooling the week they were here. When they left, she was balky and argumentative with me as I tried to wrap up the school year. She seemed to think she should be done with school for the year, even though her friends at public school still had a week of school to go.

Things escalated one day as I was requesting her to read aloud to me while we were driving her sister to her therapy appointment, with the goal of finishing the book she'd been reading to me for months (at ever increasing intervals, even though it was one she likes and had picked herself.) She was refusing to do it, and I ended up grabbing her book and hurling it out the window, saying, "You're right. We're done. You're fired." Six years of homeschooling, wrapped up in one impulsive gesture. It had been building to this point for the past year and a half, but it still came as a shock when it happened. (I did go back and retrieve the book, but not before it had been run over. The tread marks on it make a nice commentary. I might put it in a shadowbox display at some point, but for now, it's sitting in obscurity on a shelf.)

Over the next few days, we discussed (in calmer tones) how it just didn't seem like we were enjoying homeschooling anymore, and how it was generating a lot of friction between us. I told her I valued our relationship more than I valued homeschooling, and I thought she might benefit from having someone else as her teacher. She agreed, although she still was shocked that I'd "fired" her as my student. (She admitted she'd fired me in her head several times as well. I'm sure I deserved it, too!) We've even laughed about the tread marks on the book.

Even though we'd left the confines of the K12 curriculum utilized by the Idaho Virtual Academy that she'd been enrolled in for grades K-3 and I'd tried to venture into the less formal lands of project-based homeschooling and unit-based homeschooling in grades 4-5, it had proven difficult to achieve the focus and consistency necessary to complete even the modest goals we set. It seemed she was having an incredibly difficult time focusing on anything for any length of time, and abandoned projects cluttered her room and spread out all over the house and even into the yard. I felt her pain, as I'm a squirrel-brained Golden Retriever myself most days, but it was reaching a level of disorganized thinking and action that went way beyond simple immaturity. It was actually getting worse as she got older, not better!

More troubling, her frustrated outbursts any time she couldn't instantly master new material were becoming more frequent and intense. (It reminded me of me doing algebra homework in 8th grade.) She pushed away offers to help like they were offers of cyanide. She interrupted constantly, and argued even minor points as if her life depended on the outcome. There was no filter between her brain and her mouth...if she thought it, she blurted it. I was reactive, and we were engaged in yelling matches far too frequently. I felt like I'd become the mother of a belligerent 16-year old, and I despaired. If it's this bad at age 11, what on earth would 16 look like? And it finally occurred to me, with my husband's input, that our beloved, creative, impulsive, talented, moody, brilliantly inconsistent and inconsistently brilliant girl might actually have Attention Deficit Disorder...along with her mother. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. No wonder we had been struggling to make homeschooling work for so long!

One of my main summer goals (besides trying to relax and enjoy ourselves) was to have both of us evaluated for ADD, and to act on the (probable) diagnosis with medication and behavioral modifications so that she could start out her public school career being the best her she could be and I could perhaps become more the mother I want to be, leaving some of the anger and irritability and chaos behind. We'd already planned to have our youngest daughter evaluated, as after a year in kindergarten it was apparent that she had an incredibly difficult time remaining focused enough to accomplish any work, and her boundary issues from lack of impulse control have begun to affect her social life. A pediatric neurologist she'd seen for an EEG consult in June suggested strongly that we have her evaluated for ADHD, as well. My husband also suffers from ADD, according to online assessment tools, but he has more of an anxiety component. In other words, we're a whole family of squirrel brains, but all with unique issues resulting from the same condition. Since he's dealing with a host of other health issues, we decided not to pursue his diagnosis/treatment at this time.

It was not surprising to confirm through evaluations by the behavioral health specialist that both daughters and myself score very highly in the ADD/ADHD spectrum. All three of us began prescription medication. We've had almost two months now to assess their efficacy, and have had to change medication for both daughters due to unacceptable side effects, but the good news is that my oldest daughter has started to exhibit some amazing ability to maintain focus, and her irritable outbursts are far fewer and less volatile. We are waiting until school starts to try a different medication for my youngest daughter, as the first one affected her normally cheerful personality to a very noticeable degree. She became very oppositional and unhappy. When all three therapists commented on it on the same day,  it confirmed our conviction that it was time to change medication. As for me, I started on a very low dose, and have noticed a mild improvement in my ability to focus, but am going to see about increasing the dosage, as it's awfully subtle. I still struggle mightily to stay focused. (It has taken me four days to write this post.)

We went by the school yesterday to see the classroom lists that were posted at 3 PM. (Not like we were counting the days, hours, and minutes or anything!) My daughter didn't get the teacher we'd requested, but she did get placed in the same class with a friend. That was probably more important, as the teacher is still supposed to be a good, nice teacher, and my daughter was mostly worried about making friends. She's been cleaning her room (usually looks like a tornado hit it), and two days ago spent hours sitting at her desk working on her 4H recordbook...the desk that had been buried under a mound of randomly tossed items for months. She's been researching kid-friendly school lunches that she can pack. The medication definitely seems to be reaping obvious and intended benefits.

Now of course I'm second guessing myself and thinking, "Gee, maybe if she'd been on medication last June I wouldn't have fired her as my student, and I'd be homeschooling my girl next week instead of sending her off to public school. What have I done???" I can't deny that I'm experiencing a sense of loss, and have been trying to fill these last days of summer with lots of quality time together, cognizant that our time together is going to be a much more rare, precious commodity once September 3rd rolls around. We have a salon appointment together on Wednesday, the day before school starts, and I'd like to think of something fun to do afterwards.

But a part of me believes I also need this time to blossom, to have some time to pursue the goals and dreams that weren't possible in the confines of the homeschooling life I was leading, and that she will blossom with new friendships and learning to navigate in the world more independently. Hopefully part of the benefit for her will also be seeing her mom become the writer she'd always dreamed of becoming, of pursuing her dreams and achieving them. I don't want her to grow up with an image of me as her "woulda-shoulda-coulda" mom.

There's a tempest outside as I prepare to post this...wind bursts up to 70 mph, I'd estimate. It matches my inner turmoil about my sense of adequacy as a wife, mother, and human being at this point in my life. I can only hope that when this storm passes, the rains will come and the heavy smoke from raging wildfires that's filled our valley for the past several weeks will be cleansed from our skies and homes, and we'll be able to enjoy the beauty of summer's end instead of hiding out indoors. Hopefully my internal weather forecast will follow suit.

Jeepers, Peepers...

Insomnia strikes again, so here I am at 2:22 AM, all fired up and ready to post!

Today we took our batch of grade-school chicks from the brooder in the garage they've been inhabiting for the past several weeks and added them to the batch of jr. high chicks that were vacated from the same brooder a couple of weeks ago and put in an enclosure fashioned underneath our trampoline as a halfway house. We put them there so our flock of eight free-ranging hens could get to know them through the plastic webbing without being able to peck them to pieces.

It's a bit stressful, wondering if their eventual introduction to the main coop is going to result in avicide; established chicken flocks REALLY don't like newcomers. But there are 14 newcomers, and although five of them are bantams (1 Buff Brahma Bantam, 2 White Silkies---they look like the chicken equivalent of a French poodle---1 Silver Sebright, 1 Golden Sebright), the other nine are various breeds of laying hen (2 Silver-Laced Wyandottes, 1 Black Sex Link, 1 Red Sex Link, 3 Cuckoo Marans, a Buff Orpington, and a Light Brahma.) I sincerely hope the establishment of the pecking order doesn't involve any bloodshed, and that there will be safety in numbers for the newcomers.

The Cuckoo Marans are a French breed that resemble the black-and-white speckled Plymouth Barred Rocks, but they lay deep chocolate brown eggs. Although the spelling is slightly different, I love the idea of us cuckoo Marrans having Cuckoo Marans!

The bantams and Light Brahma we got based on their reputation for being good brooders, so that one or more of them can eventually raise up the next generation of feed store chicks. (While they're cute, the responsibility of doing it ourselves gets old.) Some of them might turn out to be roosters, as they only sell the bantams straight run. We will re-home any roosters, as we want to be good neighbors, and get some sleep ourselves. The robins are bad enough, starting to sing vociferously at 3:49 AM (not that I'm looking at the clock or anything)...I can't imagine listening to roosters joining the fray!

Tonight there was a thunderstorm, with quite a good deluge and some hail to boot. I put a covering over the 1/4 of the trampoline that was directly over their cardboard box shelters and feed, but when I checked on them after dark, the six youngest chicks that were spending their first night outside were bedded down in the grass next to the netting. I reached under the netting and grabbed five of them up and relocated them to their cardboard coop, but the last one scuttled into the center of the enclosure, out of my reach. I squoze through the gap between the netting and the trampoline mat and picked up the chick, which started squawking like it was about to be dinner, and plopped it unceremoniously in the cardboard coop with its compatriots. The only chick bright enough to have taken refuge in the box was the little Light Brahma. What can I say...they originated in India!

I guess I've  become somewhat blase about chickens since we first brought home chicks from the feed store two years ago. Those six girls were very well-documented in photos and videos. I've only taken a couple snapshots of these latest batches. (This year, we even raised seven chicks for my daughter's dance teacher!) I'll have to take some more photos now that they're all mostly feathered out, but here, for the record, is one of our peepers (Silver-Laced Wyandotte.) Good night!

In Gratitude

So I'm leaving the chiropractor this morning after waking up with a horrible case of Franken-neck (apparently my pillow attacked me while I slept), and a developmentally delayed woman gets up from her chair and offers to open the door for me. She expresses concern and wishes me well, and I am grateful.

I stop a few blocks up the street to call home and make sure we have some valerian in stock, as my muscles are spasming something fierce and I can barely force myself to turn my head to the right. I will make a detour to Wal-Mart if we're out. Hubby assures me that we have some.

I am in such pain I'm not sure I can drive 20 minutes home, so I go into Starbucks and get a drink to wash down some Advil and wait a little bit for it to take effect. I have an ice pack plastered to the side of my neck. Even when I had a bad case of rollercoaster neck from a day at Silverwood a few years ago, it was never this bad. I read the paper restlessly, but every few moments suck in my breath when I inadvertently tilt my head slightly in the wrong direction and set off another spasm.

I finally get up to leave, and am faced with what feels like the monumental task of pushing open the heavy glass door without setting my neck off again. I look hopefully at a couple of women standing outside nearby, thinking they might be about to enter, but they're just chatting. I shuffle the door open very gradually and ease myself outside, my neck listing like the Titanic, the ice pack balanced carefully on top of my shoulder.

One of the women notices me starting to move carefully towards my car, and says, "Are you OK?" I laugh and reply, "Is it that obvious?" She says she could tell I was in pain, and offers to take my keys and wallet and open my door for me. She suddenly realizes what she'd said and rushes to reassure me, "I'm not trying to rob you, I promise!" LOL! What a doll!

I grimace right then as another shooting pain flashes through my neck, and she asks me if I want her to pray for me. I say, "Sure! I'll take all the help I can get!" She reaches out and holds my hands, bows her head, then launches into the spontaneous prayer of a woman comfortable chatting with her Creator and asks for His blessings on me that I might get home safely and experience healing. Standing right there on the sidewalk in Clarkston, WA, a little before noon, I experienced the love of a complete stranger, dropping everything to try to help me out because she discerned I was in pain.

As I get in the car she tells me she was born with scoliosis and visits the same chiropractor I'd just seen. I notice the fingers of one of her hands are curled, possibly from mild cerebral palsy, and I surmise that she probably has experienced many health issues in her life. She would make a fabulous nurse. Maybe she is one. I ask her name, and she says it's Jamie. Her last name starts with an "M". She attends Crosspoint periodically. If any of you know her, you're friends with an angel!

Easter Surprises

Easter is all about being surprised. The empty tomb, new life, God's mysteries, life's mysteries.

This year, my husband and I attended the Easter Vigil service for the first time in years. We hired a sitter for the girls, as the hours-long service would extend late into the evening, and we were planning to bring them to the Easter Sunday service the next morning. I love the bonfire outside, the large Easter candle being lit at dusk and the sanctuary gradually filling with light as each parishioner enters with a small candle which has been lit from the master flame, the sanctuary soon aglow with hundreds of dancing lights. The priest intones the prelude to the Mass by candlelight, and as we traverse the scriptures from Genesis to the risen Christ, the lights come on and the choir bursts forth with the long withheld "Alleluia!" New members are baptized and confirmed, the light of Christ and the Holy Spirit glowing afresh in them.

As I observed the proceedings from my place in the choir, I recalled my husband's and my baptism and entry into the Church twelve years ago. Our years of infertility and miscarriage came to an abrupt end shortly thereafter, and our first daughter, who was conceived during the light-filled days following our baptisms, became our own Easter miracle when she was born the following January.

Our second daughter joined our family through adoption three and a half years ago. She brought her own unique light and spirit, a light that was nearly extinguished during her first year of life as a premature baby abandoned at a government hospital in Gulbarga, India. Fed watered-down formula that barely kept her alive, she actually developed marasmus--protein starvation, which results in severe muscle wasting--in the hospital. Three pounds at birth, she weighed only seven pounds at six months of age, and ten pounds at a year. She had by then been transferred to an orphanage in Bangalore that was sponsored by Holt International, where she received the nutrition and therapy to begin to thrive, but she had the developmental level of a two-month old. It was uncertain if she would ever walk or talk, and there were concerns that she would be profoundly mentally disabled.

Now six and a half years old, she is an exuberant force of nature, definitely walking and talking and most definitely NOT profoundly mentally disabled. She does, however, have lingering effects from her hard start in life, loosely defined as developmental delays accompanied by sensory processing disorder and attention deficit disorder. When she came home at age three and a half, she still had the Frankenstein walk of a toddler, and her fine motor skills lacked the refinement to confine her scribbles to the page or reliably steer her utensils to her mouth. Her vocabulary consisted of six words, a few signs, and lots of pointing and babbling. She has made steady progress with the help of physical, occupational, and speech therapists, and can now run around the playground with her kindergarten playmates and speak in mostly understandable short sentences. Yet there is a struggle to control her body and words, an intensity of effort that her classmates don't share. It is at times exhausting for her. Her brain is working so hard. And perhaps that's why it shorted out on Easter Sunday halfway through Mass.

Miss Wiggle-Worm was boinking from lap to lap during the homily, as is her custom. She was sitting on my lap facing me, and after a few minutes decided she wanted to move over to Papa's lap. She had only been there a short time when she suddenly got a distressed look on her face, then stiffened and arched backwards, her eyes simultaneously rolling up in her head. My husband said if she'd been lying on her stomach on the floor she would have been rocking back and forth like a rocking chair. He stood up and alerted me that something was wrong. I took one look and hurried over to our friend who is a nurse, and beckoned her to come. I don't know who first said the word "seizure"; I think it was me, as I'd seen them occur in children before. Our friend concurred, and suggested we take her down to the ER for followup. She was by now conscious again, but was acting groggy and a little irritable. I asked a friend to pack up our instruments and music and other items, then zipped down to the ER.

I have a lot to be thankful for this Easter, as the CT scan they performed showed no sign of a brain tumor as a causative factor. I knew a tumor was a possibility, and it was a relief to rule that out. One seizure does not a "seizure disorder" make, so we were told to follow up with an EEG and possibly an MRI, and were informed that medication wouldn't be considered unless she had a second seizure.

By the time we left the ER, the light was again dancing in our daughter's eyes. She wanted to dye Easter eggs when we got home, as I'd left the eggs and dye sitting out on the counter for when we returned from church. We enjoyed coloring the eggs together with her big sister, and I was grateful that we were enjoying this annual family tradition together so soon after the morning's medical drama. We decided to keep our plans to go to a friend's house for an early Easter dinner, but she grew groggy and fell asleep in the car on the way there. Although she awoke when we arrived, she was so tired she used my husband's folded up flannel shirt as a pillow at the dinner table and didn't eat anything. She fell asleep and slept for a couple of hours, then went to bed shortly after arriving home, logging an impressive 15 hours of sleep altogether. Her little brain was obviously tuckered out.

This Easter will always be memorable; it won't blur together with Easters before or after. I found more meaning in the messages of resurrection, light, and hope than I have on other Easter Sundays. And as I looked into my daughter's eyes as she clutched my husband's arm in the ER, I felt like the mystery of life was no mystery at all: Love as perfectly as you can, as long as you can. And while you do, the light of Easter will be impossible to extinguish.

Gold Dust, March 2013-March 2015 ~ RIP

Gold Dust, our sweet Buff Orpington hen, died yesterday. We had her in "hen hospice" in Aubrey's bedroom, near the brooder where a dozen 2-week old chicks are peeping away. She'd started going blind in one eye last year, but still was an awesome mama hen who successfully brooded and raised three new chicks we bought at the feed store (we don't have a rooster). This year she finally went completely blind, and even though we had her separated in a little "apartment coop" of her own so the other hens wouldn't harass her and she could find her food and water easily, she grew very thin and finally stopped eating and drinking altogether.

On Saturday we decided to bring her in the house and make her cozy in a little box filled with straw. We loved on her a little, and then put her near the brooder where she could get a little warmth from the heat lamp. When I checked on her late Sunday afternoon, I could see she was barely still breathing, and by the evening she had died.

I know a lot of people would have said "Stew pot!" as soon as she began going blind. But this was a hen who would jump up and settle down in our laps to be petted when we sat on chairs in the coop to watch "chicken TV". She faithfully raised our next generation of chickens for us, and her gentle disposition (Buff Orpingtons are known as the Golden Retrievers of the chicken world) made her a favorite.

Aubrey demonstrated compassion for an "imperfect" life form by caring for her blind chicken so diligently for so long, and I like the lesson that provided far more than the lesson of efficiency would have taught. She might become a pragmatic rancher one day, and not have the luxury of doting on a blind hen. But I'm glad she had the opportunity to express her compassion for Gold Dust, our perfect imperfect hen.

The Measure of Things

My kindergartner was given an award for "attitude" at the school's monthly Breakfast of Champions this morning. We were invited to come for breakfast and see her receive her award. Not being morning people, it was an effort to arrive by 8 AM with camera batteries charged and ready to go. But my husband, older daughter and I made the effort (older daughter had already spent time brushing and visiting with her horse, a real anomaly at that hour of the morning!)

The "breakfast" consisted of a bowl of some artificially-dyed sugary spheres and a fairly large freshly-baked cinnamon roll dripping with icing, a juice box of apple juice, and half an orange. Yikes! It was a diabetic's nightmare! The event was held in the gym, which sported posters with sentiments like "Seven days with no exercise makes one weak." But one could argue that such government-administered breakfasts makes one weak, not to mention obese! I felt sorry for the teachers who'd have to teach these sugared-up kids in the coming hours. (My daughter came home with us, as she attends afternoon kindergarten...something she found very confusing, to come to school and then leave without going to class.)

The award "ceremony" consisted of a group of about 6-9 kids from each grade level being called up all at once (many of their names unclear or mispronounced) and running a gauntlet of teachers/admins who had their hands out so the kids could run up the center and give "low 5's" on both sides as they ran through. They then went over and crowded around a teacher who distributed their certificates. It was an exercise in "mass acknowledgement"; no student really was in the spotlight for more than a second, and nothing personal was said about their achievement.

The kids had been selected for being "R.E.A.L. Knights" (the school's mascot is a knight, and R.E.A.L. stands for Respect, Effort, Attitude, and Leadership.) My daughter's certificate stated she was being acknowledged for her "attitude"...LOL! I acknowledge her attitude daily! My older daughter thought that was hysterical.  However, they didn't announce which attribute each child was being recognized for. To me, such minimal recognition wasn't worth the effort of the ceremony.

The award I would give my daughter is "perseverance." She has beaten the odds to survive and even be attending kindergarten, let alone being able to speak in intelligible (albeit difficult to understand) sentences and read from beginning readers and swing from the monkey bars and share hugs and do somersaults with her friends Marlee and Jorja. She has a 100-lb personality crammed into a 36-lb body. She is classified as developmentally disabled, intellectually impaired, and language impaired, as well as exhibiting clinical signs of sensory processing disorder and ADHD. Yet at age 3-1/2, at the hotel room in India after leaving the orphanage, she figured out all by herself how to launch iPhoto on my iPad, scroll through the thumbnails until she found a video, and play it. She also tested in the upper percentile of her kindergarten class for reading skills in the fall statewide assessment. She recently began singing parts of the Gloria from Mass ("You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us; for You alone are the Holy One; You alone are the Lord..."), yet she can't reliably tell us what she'd like to eat for dinner. She is an enigma, and won't fit neatly into measurable categories.

Most likely her "attitude" award was prompted by her indomitable spirit. Her name in Hindi means "bringer of joy", and strangers routinely comment on what a happy, joyful personality she has. And so even though this morning's awards ceremony left a lot to be desired, they did get one thing right. This girl has a winning attitude.

Hot Flash Inspired Insomnia Causes Woman to Post Blog Entry at 3 AM

My friend complained to me today about getting no sleep last night, and I shuddered, as I've had my bouts with insomnia. Well, I must have caught it from her, as I woke up tonight after being asleep for only an hour, hot as Hades, and couldn't get back to sleep. All I can think is that God gave us women hot flashes to keep us awake so we can get more done during our mid-life years. I was so tired today, I can't imagine any other reason why my body wanted to wake me up after only an hour's sleep.

My laptop balked today when I tried to download the pictures from our 9-day trip to California; apparently the 39,623 items already in iPhoto dating mainly from 2003 (hey, that's only 3,445 photos/videos per year, or 287 per month, or 9.4 per day) are hogging the hard drive and don't want to share. The deferred maintenance on photo management has now bitten me in the butt. I guess there are worse things than being a shutterbug. I try my best to cull the downloads as they happen so there aren't a lot of duplicates, blurry shots, etc., but nearly 10 "keepers" per day for 11-1/2 years has formed a ginormous photo glacier that's crushing the hard drive. I'll have to explore my technological options. (Reforming my trigger-happy ways is simply not up for discussion at this point.)

I suspect my predilection for photographing my family has its roots in an underdocumented childhood. As the youngest of six children, I have precisely ONE snapshot of me as an infant (lying on the couch at 2 months of age), in addition to the hospital newborn mugshot and a couple of studio portraits with my brother Richard when I'm about a year old. There is another series of studio portraits with Richard when I was 4 years old (about the time I entered permanent foster care), two snapshots with me at age 4, another few taken on the same day at about age 7, and two from when I won the school spelling bee in 4th grade. Then nothing until junior high, with maybe another dozen snapshots from 8th grade through my senior year in high school. Not counting school portraits, that's about 30 photos from birth to age 18, clustered at certain ages with gaps of several years scattered throughout.

My children will never wonder what they looked like at age two, or what they did on their birthdays, or what their childhood friends looked like. It's a gift I have to manage so it's not so unwieldly that they will never be able to slog through all of them. But it's my gift that says "I was there, honey. See? I saw you. You mattered, and you were never invisible to me."

By the way, Disneyland was better than anticipated after a 35-year hiatus, and it was fun sharing it with the girls. We rode Pirates of the Caribbean right off the bat, and for me everything after that was gravy. Oldest daughter talked me into riding the big rollercoaster with her at CA Adventure, the aptly named California Screamin'. I told her it's only because I loved her, and she owed me. (Shoulder massages and foot rubs were suggested.) It wasn't so bad, except the part at the beginning where it accellerates to about 60 mph in a few seconds and my eyeballs felt like they were being pushed into the back of my skull. I actually rode it with her again the next day; it was much more enjoyable than Space Mountain, which I'll never opt to ride again. Sailing into the stars in the darkness at the beginning was fun, but then it got much too lurchy. My 6-year old daughter had bug eyes at the end of that ride, and looked uncertain whether to cry or laugh, but I smiled big and told her she was "Awesome Possum" for riding it, and the look of uncertainty vanished and she smiled big back at me. She declared it "scary fun."

We shared the Disneyland experience with Grandma and Grandpa, who also hadn't been in about a quarter century. Together we enjoyed the ambiance of New Orleans Square and the paddleboat ride on the Mark Twain, and the good food at the French Market restaurant. Overall, we were blessed with short lines, good weather, and good health, apropos of the happiest place on earth.

Another highlight of our trip was spending three hours at Will Rogers State Beach with perfect beach weather...mid-70s with a light breeze. We had the beach to ourselves, with only the occasional jogger or cyclist passing by. We reveled in the sand and waves while pelicans were dive-bombing a school of fish just offshore and five sanderlings and a lone dowitcher scuttled in and out at the foamy water's edge. An abandoned sea lion pup languished on the rocks in the rip-rap jetty nearby. We were told that the marine mammal rescue had been notified of its presence. It was young and thin, and flopped about weakly at times, but mostly remained still. My daughter was thrilled to be able to see one up close, but I suspected it wouldn't last too long; the marine rescue had been contacted that morning, and when we left at 4 PM, they still hadn't shown up. Poor little pup.

We made 16 distinct social connections in 8-1/2 days (including two days at Disneyland and three different hotels), so it wasn't much of a "vacation", but it was nice to reconnect with so many friends and family members. We visited with my 88-year old mother and two brothers; had lunch with my 70-something foster mother; walked the beach with my foster sister whose husband had recently committed suicide; met another foster sister at the park with her husband and 6 of her 8 children and endured a hailstorm and captured a duck while we were there; showed my daughter my old stomping grounds, including my childhood home where I lived for 8 years and the elementary school I attended, the jr. high school where I met her father and asked him to the 9th grade dance (he was in 8th grade, so I had to be the one to ask), and the high school from which I graduated 35 years ago; met for lunch with my sister-in-law, who hadn't met my youngest and hadn't seen my 11-year old since she was two years old; saw my old therapist, who helped me get my head screwed on straight after 14 years in foster care, and showed off the family to him; had dinner with an old artist/poet/dancer/theatre friend and her husband; had breakfast with the Indian priest who baptised my husband and me 12 years ago,  our oldest daughter 11 years ago, and visited with our youngest daughter at her orphanage in India before we adopted her; visited our friends/godparents at their ranch with their 6 children and enjoyed a Friday Lenten supper and some musical interludes before taking off to rendezvous with our old church choir friends at their bi-weekly rehearsal, where we were feted with a potluck and wine and hours of making music together until nearly midnight.

We ended our string of social engagements at a park in Burbank near the airport the next morning, where we rendezvoused with my old teaching friend and her daughter and three grandsons. The boys are working child actors with parts in TV shows and major films like Frozen, The Lego Movie, and Wreck-It Ralph, but are still nice "normal" kids who had a lot of fun romping around with my two girls on the play structures.

Somewhere in there my husband also spent two long days at his business client's aerospace machine shop in Burbank, which the girls and I also got to briefly visit. 

Now we're home, and I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation! But we hit the ground running, and four days in, on top of the normal school/therapy/dance/piano/critters routine, we've set up a chick brooder in my daughter's bedroom and have 12 little chicks slowly morphing into hens (and probably a few roosters; we got five straight-run banties for us---two Buff Brahmas, two White Silkies, and one Silver Sebright---in addition to 7 pullets---Rhode Island Red, Amber White, White Leghorn, Ameracauna, and Silver-Laced Wyandotte---for our daughter's dance teacher); I've helped my daughter plant dozens of seedling pots for her "Garden Gal" vegetable/herb start business venture; and I've written the newsletter for the dance studio. The fun never stops! But it sure beats the alternative. I can't imagine ever being bored.

Time for another shot at sleep...

Survivors

I found out yesterday that my foster sister's husband committed suicide last week. I felt bad that it took five days for me to notice the reference on her Facebook post. He suffered from clinical OCD and depression, as well as some addictions, so it wasn't a complete and utter shock that he would take his own life. I suppose what was more shocking was that I found out via Facebook.

True, this is a foster sister with whom I lived for only a few weeks 31 years ago, and who I've only seen once in the past 10 years. But she is the sister who I followed home from school one day because she invited me to stay with her family when I was 16 years old and had no other viable options. She has a long history of reaching out to those in need. I am forever indebted to her for bringing me into the healing presence of her family.

Oh, sister, I'm so sad for your loss. You are an optimist, and always see the good and the potential in people who are riddled with problems. You were a blessing for Jim during the years you had together. I hope you are blessed with the peace of knowing that truth, and that you never suffer from survivor's guilt.

When my brother Richard committed suicide at age 21, I had no such sense of peace. I was 19, and utterly absorbed in launching my life. I was working and going to community college and preparing to transfer to UC Davis in the fall. I only learned later that he was upset about being fired from his job as a mechanic at U-Haul as a result of losing his driver's license because of outstanding traffic warrants. He was taking medications designed to treat what might have been emergent bipolar disorder, including SSRI anti-depressants. I knew he also had a habit of taking stimulants to stay awake and tranquilizers to help him sleep.

He called me about a month before he died, upset about our mother (who had a long history of mental illness, including probable bipolar disorder), and I told him to just blow her off, that she was a crazy b*@#ch and not to worry about what she said or thought. I was surprised  that he was still vulnerable to her erratic moods and rantings (although I was far from immune myself.) I remember now with no small amount of shame that I talked with enthusiasm about my grades and about applying to UC Davis; I was trying to make small talk, and was excited about finally moving away from southern California. But in retrospect, it probably seemed like gloating and made him feel even more like a failure. We were fairly estranged, and it should have been a signal when he called, reaching out to me out of the blue. I didn't recognize it as that; I was just happy to hear from him, and tried to share my excitement about life, about breaking away from my history as a foster child in Ventura County and leaving our biological mother behind.

When I found out he had overdosed on a mixture of alcohol and SSRI anti-depressants, I felt a sense of shock and dread. But it wasn't until he'd been on life support in the hospital for a week that I realized with sudden horror that he wasn't going to recover, as the doctors were saying there was no significant brainwave activity, that the small movements he was making were just reflexes, that there was so much damage to his brain that he wouldn't even be able to breathe on his own when they disconnected the respirator. They were correct; my mother agreed to have him taken off life support on the tenth day, without notifying me or any of my siblings. He died immediately, while I was at work. I had a premonition that he had died; perhaps it was his spirit saying goodbye in passing. I have never quite forgiven my mother for not allowing me the chance to say goodbye, despite her being mentally ill herself. It was such a selfish act on her part. But it was in utter keeping with the way she'd always treated me, which was as if I didn't really exist.

My grief after Richard's passing was tremendous and heartwrenching. I felt physically ill. I stumbled through life's requirements, got passing grades, was accepted to UC Davis, etc. But I heard a nagging voice in the back of my head saying, "If only you'd listened more closely to him, and responded with a plan to get together, to offer him real relationship, not just your vapid bragging about your academic plans, he might still be here." A drunk driver smashed into me in my VW bus a couple days after his funeral, with only the grace of God and a front-mounted spare keeping me from joining Richard in the afterlife. It was traumatic, but part of me felt like I deserved it and more.

My survivor's guilt plagued me for years; it only dissipated after many years of therapy gave me the perspective to see that there was little that I, as an immature, wounded young woman myself, could have done to save Richard. Still, I often revisit that phone call in my mind, wondering if I could have made a difference, or at least made plans to get together so that it wouldn't have been my last interaction with him. He scared me a little; I admit that part of me didn't want to be around him, as I didn't know what to do about his self-destructive behavior, and it bothered me. But I loved him, and I loved that he loved me. I thought that that was enough, at least for the time being. I guess I thought there would be time to develop our relationship later, but not then, not when I was so busy trying to invent myself.

In reading about suicide in the years that followed Richard's death, I came across the quote, "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." That powerful statement has resonated with me across the years, perhaps being one of the deciding factors dissuading me from following suit when life seemed particularly bleak and hopeless. And now it is my sister Katherine living with the permanence of the decision that her husband Jim made last week. Jim's sister has launched an online attack against Katherine, somehow blaming her for Jim's act. It is surreal, but some people deal with their pain in strange and inexplicable ways. Katherine's response has been so Katherine...patient and gentle and gracious. Would that we all be as blessed by our choice of response. For it is patience and gentleness and graciousness that are truly the permanent solutions to our temporary problems. 

Hope and Beauty and Mud

The robins are back!

I noticed my first robin this year about a week ago, when the rains had turned the earth to goo and the worms were wriggling to the surface, gasping for air. It was a bounteous feast for Mr. & Mrs. Redbreast, that's for sure!

I love how the robins appear every year at the height of winter gloom, bringing with them the hope of spring. Their cheerful, upright little forms decorate the drab lawns and fields with splashes of bright rusty breasts and yellow beaks, their black button eyes gazing about with keen intent. They hop across the grass, cock their heads, and plunge with deadly accuracy, yanking juicy morsels from the ground as easily as I select apples from a bin. 

If only I could learn to regularly find such treasures buried in the mud of my daily existence! I often exclaim that I feel like I'm running through mud, trying to get to the "real" stuff of life, but slowed down by the mundane and dreary landscape of household chores and the less scintillating responsibilities of motherhood.

My goal today is to think like a robin. There's got to be some yummy delight buried in this muck!

3...2...1...LAUNCH!

Houston, we've got blog liftoff!

I've considered blogging for years, and have kept an e-journal for many of those. It started as a pregnancy journal, and morphed into a journal of my daughter's developmental milestones, then at some point beyond her toddler years turned into the Family Journal. But a blog it ain't.

Inspired by a few extraordinary bloggers I encountered during our years-long adoption journey, and by the (private) blog of KH, my daughter's dance teacher/studio owner/creative genius/seamstress extraordinaire, I've decided to enter the blogosphere.

Brief bio: I'm a 52-year old homeschooling mom, married to my husband coming up on 30 years. I have a daughter I gave birth to 11 years ago and a 6-year old daughter we adopted from India 3 years ago. Yes, I'm a late bloomer. And that will be the predominant theme of my blog. 

My goals are to become a published author (initially children's literature, but I've got at least one adult novel or memoir in me as well) and to re-learn how to play the cello after a nearly 40-year hiatus. I was given one by my thoughtful husband for my birthday last November, so I don't have any excuses! And in December I submitted my first book, a picture book I co-wrote with my oldest daughter, to Victoria Rock, editor at Chronicle Books, for publication. I'm off to the races! 

But as usual, I've squeezed in launching this blog as the "one more thing" I've done this morning before rushing around to get the kids and myself ready, so it looks like it's going to be another fire at the clown academy. (My husband coined this term a couple of years ago to describe my daughter and I rushing out the door to our destination, yelling at each other to grab a forgotten item, rushing back in for another forgotten item, etc.) But I'm happy to be here, and will be back soon with more about the travails and trappings of life as a late bloomer.