And One for My Baby

So G engaged me in this long diatribey description of a Gumby episode on the way to CFF yesterday. As usual, he is sounding like a wikipedia entry (likely he memorized it). I asked him all kinds of questions right up to, "Well, how does it end?"

He sort of looked at me and said "I never watched the episode. I thought you watched this all the time when you were little.  Why don't you know?"

I struggle to reach this one. I'm literally stewing over it for hours after we've had the conversation. Out with hubby, who is trying to discern my quiet, into the city in the date car, looking for parking, then looking for sustenance (and finding it), then off to see King Crimson. Mulling, stewing, wracking my brains.  Finally, I figured it out (during the concert, because the concert jarred a lot of things loose....) that he was referring to a post on the family Facebook page. One of my sisters found a Gumby meme and tagged me, and so he appropriated this as a means to connect with me.

OH.  OH.  (and why on earth can't he just ask me these things directly?  Because he's G, and that's not the way his head and heart are wired)

SO, this am, over waffles and coffee, I asked him about what he was telling me yesterday, was the whole thing because of the FB post?

And his eyes lit up in the way they do when someone gets him. 

So I explained about the Gumby figure I had when I was about 3, how I carried it everywhere with me (like his Alfie) and lost it (like his Alfie) and the tantrums I threw over its disappearance were epic. He bore with Alfie's loss with infinitely more grace, but he asked after him forever after.  I didn't have a real great love for those shorts, but hey, do you want to know what I really liked?

And his eyes lit up.

And I told him I'd make him a list of all the things I liked/was obsessed with when I was young for him. 

And his eyes lit up even more, if possible. 

So I started a list and left it on the dining room table. I was obsessed at different times with lots of things, but I'm sure all the things I was obsessed with are finadable on YouTube. I might even take a picture and post it later. It's not an exhaustive list, but it gives a good idea of where my head was 40 something years ago. 

And my head is now where it always is, trying to find ways to connect to my baby, because he is the hardest thing in the world for me to find, and every time I think I've got him, he loses me again.

And my heart finds new ways to crack.

Birdology

I'm not ready to continue the other thought on bullying, mental health and all that good stuff, so I will concentrate for the moment on my bird.

I adopted a cockatiel earlier this year from a friend; his name is Nugget. I learned about him from a post, and something in his posture in the picture she posted moved me. He looked a little uncertain and a little lonely. I messaged her and made an appointment to meet him.

She was surprised that I didn't reach for him and try to make him perch on my hand the first meeting. I explained that he needed to get to know me first, and that we'd need a little time to get acquainted.

The second meeting I told her we'd take him over holiday break and see how it went. She was going away, and bird-sitting would give us an idea if we were a match for one another.

Nugget immediately became a member of our family. He'd hang out on my shoulder or on my foot if I were stretched out on the couch, just happy to be out and about and a part of the action. We decided pretty quickly, Nugget and I, that he was my bird and I was his hooman.

But all is never perfect.  Nugget poops wherever he goes, being a bird, and having full run of the downstairs made the boys a little batty. Nugget frequently mistakes younger son for me, and is forever stunned when G bats him off ("Whoops, wrong hooman.")  Elder smiles at him and watches him eat when he thinks no one is looking. Hubby calls him a little dinosaur.  He also wanted me to get Nugget's wings, beak, and nails clipped.

I finally got that done on Friday. The shrieks he let out while I waited in the next room convinced me that I need to do something differently next time. He didn't eat much the next couple days, sad about his diminished mobility and angry that I subjected him to strangers who did these things to him.

After an amiable evening last night, he hissed into my ear, then bit it.  Reminding me he's still mad, and that he's not going to forget it.

Which makes me think I need to learn how to do these things myself.  And I think I will.

I hope he's with me a long time. Elder calls him my security bird. He's not wrong.

Channeling Pat

Lately, when I look in the mirror, I see my aunt staring back at me.

My mom's older sister. I saw her a few times a year while I was growing up. She called me Babe.  She colored her hair and dressed iconically. Like my mom, she grew up poor and would eventually marry her childhood school sweetheart, who eventually became a doctor.

Like me, a bounder.

She encouraged my mom to allow me to take a scholarship to go to a private high school, and even today, mom calls me "elite", as if it were an insult, or as if it were meant to be. And that route allowed me to grow to adulthood, meet my soulmate, and live a life. Which is why, I guess, I am pretty good at creating opportunities that originally didn't exist in other people's schemes. I  grew up outside, and as an outsider, I see things differently. I spent a lot of time looking for validation in the wrong places, and I lived long enough to see that, and correct it.

When I talk to my own kids, I sometimes hear my mom, but lately I hear a lot of my aunt, too. She envied me my straight nose. Her commentary was peppered with vulgarities, and I wonder now if she felt like she could let her hair down with my mom and her family.   She always appeared to be 'on.'

At least when I saw her, which wasn't that often.

But I look in the mirror these days, and with my halo of chestnut, copper and silver wild and wavy hair, I could be her. And when I talk, I hear her.

She died 7 years ago. Her family didn't tell my family she died, and now no one is talking to one another. I showed up at her husband's sister's funeral and shocked him and four of my cousins who were in attendance. I didn't get to her funeral, so I got a do over. I wish I understood why her family excluded us. I wish I understood what our perceived fault was.

I wish someone would explain what happened.

All the good

Coming off a somewhat crazy busy weekend, for the first time in a long time I am not filled with dread.

For the longest time, the anticipation of anything I *had* to do, be it track practice, den meetings, PREP classes, and last year for the first time, hosting a band event, ratcheted up awful levels of stress and anxiety for me. And most of the time, anything I *had* to do went off without a hitch (maybe a hiccup, certainly not more than that), but the knowledge that I could do whatever needed doing was not enough to stave off the dread I felt in the days and hours leading up to (fill in the blank).

And when you consider all the *stuff* I used to do, I spent most of my life in this state.

So last weekend was THAT weekend, and I didn't have all the attendant baggage that came with it.

In fact, it ALL felt pretty good. Largely because I figured out what I'm good at, and that's what I'm doing. All that's required is that I literally just show up.

And after years of forcing things, this feels pretty good.

"I hope you get the help you need" Part 1

That's what a relative said to me a few months ago. And I've been chewing on that thought ever since.

I've been in therapy for four years. I recently lost the therapist who has been helping me work through decades of emotional wreckage. And that comment nicely frames it all up in a way few things could.

My boys are transition age now, meaning that they are at a point where we need to figure out what happens next, how they are going to become self-sufficient, how they are both going to be capable of gainful, full-time, competitive employment--the ultimate goal my two very different young men share. My primary job has been figuring out how to make that happen.

Our experience, our way to this particular moment, has been fraught with all kinds of challenges.  I was told, way, way back, when my boys were in preschool and early elementary, that they need to be included in general education. I didn't really grok WHY, I just pushed hard to make it happen.

What I learned was that the WHY was because of expectations. My 'behaviorally challenged' elder was that way first because of his difficulties in communicating in the spoken word, compounded by his sensory challenges, which were once legion. My Greek chorus, my support, my village, got behind me to help me figure this out. And eventually, elder was able to find his own words and language to get what he needed to be successful in the classroom.

But that was not without challenges--specifically, the bullying that began around third grade and culminated with adult-led isolation, exclusion with his fifth grade trip (documented here). That manifested in sixth through ninth grade as eating disorders among other "co-morbid conditions that go with autism."

We're still recovering from that damage.

Hubby and I didn't realize at the time, but we were already doing everything we could do to countermand the damage of the outside world for both kids. We've been a tight knit family, our core of four--we did everything together. And more importantly, the message we imparted to our boys was that they matter, they were not how other people treated them, and they were enough.  We provided a safe place, whether that place was home, or out in the world. They were with us, a part of us, and they were enough.

This is important, because I didn't realize I was giving my kids something I never had.

I was the outlier. The scape goat. The one everyone blamed everything on. And I eventually began to believe I deserved it. That I was as awful as they said I was. I didn't deserve love. I deserved whatever shit the universe had to dish out because, well, I deserved it.

And I believed it until I met the man who would become my husband. Who changed everything.

And between us, we created this awesome thing, where we were both greater as a team. The sum of us was something multiplied.

And we were able to impart this to our kids.

What a gift. But they will need this, because the world does not expect much of either of them. Or at least that's the message I've gotten in great and small ways over the years.

Elder now holds three jobs, attends community college and votech--this is the kid who was never expected to hold a job. We're trying to figure out younger's way forward. And he will surprise us all, because he always does in his own quiet way.

Mental health is a thing. Bullied people tend to either internalize their (ill) treatment or boil over into sometimes wildly socially inappropriate behavior. People are generally quick to assign blame to the bullied, that they a) somehow brought it upon themselves and b) deserve it.

Do you see a pattern?

And if the bullied stand up for themselves or (god forbid) treat their offenders as they have been treated, they are told that they are either over sensitive or need help.

That happened to me.

I'm still working my way through the decades that led to that moment.

I am hoping my boys will have less to work through.