Hiking Redux

 Had to drop elder off at work, and then needed to walk some things off (me and my big feelings). I found myself back at the park where I used to take the kids when they were small. Lots of memories here: Nic's class party in K, G looking up at a deer head on the wall and asking "What happened?" (to the rest of the deer). Numerous class trips through elementary school with both. Cub scouts--oh lordy, the campfires, the s'mores, the retired flags that came to their appropriate end. Dozens and dozens of trips of just us, up to the meadow to see "Dinkey," over to Creepy Pond and the spring house to count koi and turtles, over to the bird blind to see what was visiting the feeder, and of course over the Runaway Bridge to see if we saw any fish in the stream. 

Remembering how much easier it was to get the kids outside and sell them on a hike in the woods back in the day. 

Oh my.

Walking in the late fall sun, watching the colors, birds flying and feeding where they could find food, running into a guy who looked like Santa Claus, I thought I was clear of the big feelings until they caught up with me heading over to the pond. 

Thinking of the woman I took communion to today and wondering how I can help.

Still wondering how I can fix things I didn't break but feel responsible for.

Wrapping up my current sitch and looking forward.

The feelings are still too big but a little less daunting.

Deep breaths.

One step at a time. 

Angry Hiking

 So my guys tossed me out of the house. Maybe not so much a toss as a freeze.  In any case, the three of them cooked together and left me to my own devices. Elder and younger worked on one dish, elder soloed on another, and dad made another two, all for transport later to the feast.

In the meantime, out I went, pretty sure where I needed to go to shed some of my pent up....let's just call them BIG FEELINGS and leave it at that. I found myself at the head of Forbidden Drive and decided that was too peoply, so taking my walking sticks, I went the long way around the stables to a much quieter part of the trail.

AND...laid out everything in my head sotto voce while jabbing the terrain furiously with my walking stick as I went. It occurred to me that now I thoroughly understood every past-middle-age woman I've ever seen doing exactly the same thing out in the woods,  and really, it wasn't all that different from my hegiras into the woods post-dx with elder back in the day (minus the walking sticks--I didn't see the point of those at the time since it felt then that I was part mountain goat. But anyway.)

Then it got peoply. AND some of those people had dogs that were supposed to be on leads and weren't. Or, they didn't take up enough slack in their leads. Didn't matter. Just kept thrusting forward, jabbing the ground furiously as I went. An older man wearing shirt sleeves and a tie came out from behind a tree singing. It was such a totally random sight I nearly laughed out loud. 

I heard someone else talk about calories consumed and burned, and why does everyone make such a fuss over one day?

I heard someone else talk about horseback riding in Sonoma.

Conversations in other languages dopplered forward and back as I went along, furiously stabbing the ground as I went. (I was stabby.  This much is obvious.)

I was back at the car in just under 51 minutes, having hiked three miles.  And my head was more or less back on straight. I got home in time just to run back out to the store because my intrepid cooks were short on an ingredient. And so it went.

We enjoyed the evening with family, everyone happy to be there, making plans, remembering people, toasting all the things.  And we left with more food than we came with. 

It was a blast.

I think I need to do more hiking. Just a little less angry. 

Rein it all in

 So the last little while with younger has been awesome. I'm glad he's having a decent senior year. We're discovering that, among other things, he loves live theater. We took him to see Mandy Patinkin for his birthday two years ago (he brought a friend and they both loved it), and he was absolutely enthralled with Hamilton.

He's hooked. I see a trip to Broadway in his future. Or two. 

Elder will literally make me insane in the meantime. Weight is an unprecedented problem--unprecedented to the point where I need to take drastic action. Inaction means horrible consequences, not now, not next week, but at a time where he will beg me to fix all the things wrong with him and I will not be able to do a damn thing. 

Agency is a funny thing. I'm a little appalled at the choices, but assuming good choices means assuming all systems nominal, and....they are not. Because COVD. Because everyone's mental health took a hit, but the hit was harder here than with younger (who could literally give zero fucks, but that's just because he's him). I wanted to haul elder out of bed and scream at him this morning. Until, that is, I went into his room and saw him wrapped head to toe in his bedsheets, head tucked under pillow, partway in pillowcase.

My heart broke (again), and I tossed his comforter over his sleeping form and left the room. 

I listened to the birds, had my coffee and did the crossword puzzle. I willed myself to sit down and calm down. My fury, horror, shock and sadness will fix nothing. I'm not sure what to do. I can't ignore it. And realize that any fix will require my full engagement. It will also require him to decide that he needs to fix things, and without that commitment, nothing I do will make a damn bit of difference.

Agency. 

At what point does one deserve the right to destroy himself?  At what point do I pull the plug?  Is it even my plug to pull?

This kind of makes the sideshow going on in the background laughable. A certain FOO character is playing an obscure long game, in which the only winning move is to not play or engage. As if I have time, energy or inclination for whatever bullshit (and that's the only airtime THAT is getting).

Still doing the heavy lift of fixing myself. Had an incredibly fruitful session with R yesterday regarding 1985-1989. It's....a little amazing that things went on as long as they did. 

I feel as though if I can get a handle on all of this, it'll somehow help my elder problem. I think there is something there in that timeframe that will help me rein in my own visceral reactions to here and now and actually help elder figure out how to go forward from here, how to dig out.  Unfortunately, he is my match in mulishness, so I need to think of ways to appeal to his sense of self preservation (which appears to be all but absent).

It's all of a piece, and I am piecing it all together. 

But this is really, really hard.....

And Just Like That, It's Over...

 I have stuff going on with elder, but I will tackle that later, just want to get down a few lines about yesterday...

First off, Little Mister speaking his truth did have consequences, but they were all to the good. I'm not gonna bullet point or laundry list anything because the whole day was tiny treasures that awaited unwrapping. And any and all pain from Saturday was blown out the water with joys great and small that ran through the day. 

As you can imagine, discussion raged over younger's truth bomb, and we still haven't settled anything. This will be an ongoing conversation for a long time. 

(I'm getting balled up in the process of writing, so just gonna stop trying to make this perfect and say the things)

Last day. Truck loads, kids mill, parents set up a snack table with all the goodie bags for the kids and pass out pom-poms to all the folks who will be in the stands later. I anxiously wait for hubby, who is supposed to ride the bus with me.  He's dropping a salty (as ever) elder at work, who is saltier for having been inconvenienced by his brother's competition and he wanted to go, why didn't we tell him so he could ask for a day off?

(Because, N you have zero interest in band, it will be cold, you will be uncomfortable and will ask to leave as soon as you are done with the concession stand.  Hard no. Go work. You'll have a better time.)

Hubby arrives about 5 minutes before we push off.  G sees a friend's mom and stops to say hello and pet her dog. He's walking around in his Letterman's jacket for the first (and maybe last) time and jokes that he's dressed up like a bully. (Just about every villain, it seems, in just about every kid movie is wearing a Letterman jacket, he pointed out. But he's quick to note that he's just dressed this way, and not a bully.)

Bus is a chatter pretty much til we get to Hershey. When we're lining up for rest rooms, hubby jokes that I am large and in charge ("You are always running stuff," he said, somewhat awed, but probably really wondering why he didn't see this person in his house on the daily.  He does, but the difference is my own kids don't listen. But I digress.)

It's chilly, cloudy, and there's a wind. The front ensemble stop and group hug every so often, half in bonding and half to keep from freezing up too stiff to play. The other groups warm up. Everyone is all business the last hour and change leading up to stepping off. Everyone has a job, and each one is hard at work. 

The other chaperone, another senior mom, and I are dismissed from pit crew duty to watch from the stands.  And this is kinda cool--this is, after all, for better or for worse, their last show. We head off to the stands. Our small and mighty band has a small and mighty army of parents in the stands to support them. Hubby sets up his tripod and I get dispensation from the band president that he is officially our videographer, and he is recording for educational purposes. 

And miraculously, the wind tunnel that is the arena suddenly becomes still. Our band takes the field....and is just wonderful.  They play their best show. Today is a good day to have a best show.  They have all shown up for work and have done their jobs. 

The wind picked up again after they left the field.  They stop and get their group picture and I hold coats (chaperone and I left the stands immediately after they started breaking down for the next band). We run back to the buses so the color guard can get some clothes on and the winds can put their instruments away and hurry back in time for the college exhibition band.  

And G goes on retreat. For the first and last time. 

And when they finally call our school for second place, it's clear it's his first rodeo. He completed his salute a half step behind everyone else. But as the tallest one in the party, they hand him the large, heavy plaque they won for their place.  And they pick up two other awards for percussion and visuals.

They lost first place by .07 of a point. 

But they walked out knowing they killed it. Despite a tornado, despite subsequent displacement and schedule shuffling, they remained cheerful, hardworking, and underneath it all, tough as nails. 

Also?  They killed it. 

We needled Younger a little, asking if he was still bored.  He just grinned broadly and joined his bandmates at the concession and had some bad stadium fries that tasted awesome after a long day. And he led his band mates in a Miley Cyrus song or two on the way home on the bus. 

It's over now. But I'm glad it happened. 

The Wages of Speaking One's Truth

 When someone speaks their truth, you know that it's going to cause a lot of discomfort for everyone else. 

I had to tell younger not to apologize for making me cry yesterday.

You see where this is going. 

Writ large, inclusion in general ed had not had some of the desired outcomes for either kid. While it has yielded employment for both, we are struggling with completing elder's ultimate goal of competitive full time employment. My younger guy has engaged on a more challenging academic path than he would have had he not had the opportunities of access to the same education as his peers.

But.  Both bear the scars of the social piece: neither has attained the "one good friend." 

That bore out in a very public way yesterday. 

Final gathering for band. Senior speeches. G and the other "different" band member sat together with their folks, mostly because they weren't included with the larger bunch.  G didn't prepare a speech: he was going without a script, he told me meaningfully.

If you have read any of this blog to this point, you know how much capital I put into the script. 

So, G, goes dead center chronology-wise. The kids before talk about how band is boring, but they have all these friends, etc.  G goes up and says band is boring, and mom made him do it because he's not allowed to sit in front of screens all the time. 

You legit could have heard a pin drop. Even tone-deaf elder was quietly cringing in his seat.

Because G laid out there his truth;  he wasn't sitting with the other kids--he was sitting with his family. One could (and would) argue that this is his 'choice'; however, like any other group, this one has its own cliques, and he sits outside. 

And he was calling them on it. 

It will be interesting to see what repercussions there will be for G speaking his truth. Today is finals; today he is meant to go on retreat to receive whatever award his band receives, but I wonder now if that will happen, because he spoke his truth.

I broke down in tears.  He apologized for that.

I told him he should never apologize for speaking his truth. 

But he should recognize that his truth will have costs.

And he needs to learn that now. 

Ways forward

 I think I made some pretty important steps forward tonight. Particularly with my elder guy. 

I just hope it sticks. 

Taking the fork in the road

 I've spent a lot of time spinning wheels.  Wringing hands. Worrying. Fretting.  And anything involving making a decision? Forget it. I'd cover my eyes and blindly point because I didn't trust myself to make the right choice.

The gift of age is that you're able to look back and see what worked, and what didn't. The pointing didn't. Making a decision on a job based on a commute....didn't. Trusting the school administration to place your fifth grader in an appropriate classroom....didn't. Maintaining relationships that continually broke your heart...didn't.

Thus, it is easier to choose things that work, because the scars of the things that didn't although healed, are reminders that shit didn't work and DON'T DO THAT.

Fortunately, God is my copilot and has made it their business to nudge, prod, drop stuff in my lap because they have my faith, so delivery in packages big and small does not escape my notice. And the delivery of such goods ensures that I do the needful to get where I or my kids need to go. 

Another change is afoot, and I welcome it. Elder needs my attention, and I can give it.  He doesn't like this kind of attention, because it forces him forward.  He will get older, even if he digs his heels in and refuses to grow up. I had hoped I would be able to help him gain employment in one place, but now we are looking at something else. The goal is *a* full time job that may help him decide where he wants to go and how he wants to get there. 

My way forward could ostensibly broaden our world. It's an opportunity. Possibly for all of us. 

Praying as usual. As always. There will always be mistakes and lessons learned, but you always have to take that first step.

And hope God is there to toss you a parachute.

Kicking and screaming

 Hubby took younger to bowling yesterday morning, leaving me with wondering what to do with myself.  He had a point; we are coming to the end of band season and long days (until indoor percussion starts), and the other piece of what to do with elder--who is fighting his own demons, and depression is kicking his ass. 

Hubby is doing a stellar job in getting us organized, so I knew exactly where to find the learner's permit paperwork.  We've been sitting on this for well over a year for both kids, but we finally got the medical portion filled out for both of them, and it was time to execute before the validity expires.

Elder lumbered down stairs and took up his usual location in the man cave (all furniture in there has N-shaped indentation).  I gave him a little while of peace before telling him to get dressed.

"What's going on?" he asked.  It's the question he always asks whenever we ask him to do something or tell him he needs to do something NOW.

I didn't show those cards until we were in the car and moving. I never would have gotten him into the car if I told him we were going to the DMV.  He complained, sure, but he knew no amount of complaining was going to deter me, so we settled into a chat about work and work hours.  He needs to look for a full time job or figure out if he wants to transfer to a 4-year college after getting his associates.  He doesn't want to think about any of that right now, which is part of our problem. 

The DMV is busy, but not packed. I'm always amazed when I come here with N and the 'helpful' person who directs traffic is quick to tell me "You will need to come back."  This happened three times before, and the first time left me prepared for the subsequent times.  "OH NO," I said, pulling out passport, birth certificate, ss card and directing Nic to pull out his state ID, "You can't tell me that we don't have enough ID AND that I need two pieces of mail. This is LITERALLY all the ID we have."  (we were allowed to take a number, yay)

(An aside: it's pretty clear N has extra, and that if I weren't there, N would have turned around and come out to the car and told me "Not today, mom."  Which is part of the reason why I can't die.)

As we waited, I told N, "Look, we can do whatever you want after. You don't need to work til 6, so we have all afternoon."  He looked less harassed and happy to think about something he wanted to do. 

And I sat there reflecting that his life has gotten so, so small. Nineteen months ago, his trajectory was undeniable:  He had three part-time jobs, one of which was a competitive internship he won, he sat at the top of his class in his business program at the vo-tech and enjoyed a pretty full and independent life--including taking public transit and Lyft wherever he needed to go. 

Then, COVD shut it all down. 

Developmentally, we lost years.

If I type out what the present looks like, I'm probably going to cry. 

So making it to here, this point, in the DMV with my son on this Saturday morning, is a huge deal.

When our number is called, I go to the counter with him, because he has errors in his documentation that are literally as old as he is and have never been urgent enough to correct--or, in the grand scheme of things, we haven't gotten there because there were always more urgent pieces of red tape to attend to. And again, I talk, because I understand what needs to be said to get where we need to go. Both boys always attend what I say in these situations, which is why both of them are fairly good self advocates.  That they are both gifted mimics is something of a mixed blessing. 

I need to withdraw for N to do his knowledge test.  He hasn't recently been studying (I caught him short this morning), so he got about 3/4 of the way through before they stopped the test.  Which isn't bad, because that tells me with a little work, he can pass next time. But the important thing here is that we did the important legwork, and next time will be quicker. (and I could see that he had a lot of company on not passing that test this morning).

While disappointed, he was also a little relieved, and now we can do some things he liked to do. We walked over to a favorite store and picked up some Stock's pound cake; we made a couple stops to pick up some things G needed (at N's behest--he always thinks of his brother if it gets him something he wants). But, he is thoughtful, and I'm realizing that giving him space and getting him outside in the world even for a little while makes his shrunken world a little broader and lighter. 

Over lunch, we have a quiet chat about nothing and everything. He smiles at me across the table. I'm seeing a little of the old N. He's understanding the why; inertia is a horrible thing, and getting back into a groove is going to be a lot of work. 

I managed to get him walking 2 1/2 miles. The goal today is three. 

We will regain lost ground. I have some decisions to make about his brother, but his brother is better positioned to make and advocate for his own choices.  I'm here not so much to bend stuff to my will so much as to help them create their own wills and bend things to their own trajectories. 

It's a delicate dance. I'm so used to running and directing all the things with elder because I had to; younger, on the other hand, has been running his own show for years because he never needed me to tell him what he needed; he just needed to be shown how to ask. 

N being N needs to learn everything the hard way because he's my kid, and that's the way I learned everything I know. 

Hard way or no, he will get there. It's just a matter of not letting him throw up his hands and give up.

Anything he has ever wanted to do, though, he's always figured out a way to do it. 

Gonna be a looooooong night.....

 My existential angst is likely as bad as it's going to get. That's the good news.

The bad news is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, what was I thinking?

So once upon a time there was this mom, who had a little guy whom she knew right out of the box was different. She didn't know how or why, just the fact that he was going to need a lot more than your average baby.

She wasn't wrong. This baby needed to be physically connected to her at all times. He nursed to the point of throwing up. She ended up doing a lot of things she never thought she'd do because she desperately needed sleep and needed to think about how she was going to get through a day.

She learned why on a sunny August day--what her sweet little guy who struggled so much with literally everything had a name--autism.  She spent subsequent weeks walking the woods and wailing, always at carefully timed intervals because she couldn't show or share her grief.  She vowed no more kids.

Then God laughed. Number two was on his way.

More tears.  More scrambling. Getting services in place, questioning, second guessing, people telling her what they thought she was doing wrong (they all had lists), and lo and behold, there were now two, and the new one was quietly observant, almost as if he knew what was going on and why he was here.

His presence was a respite--a gift.

But, it wasn't long before he had his own set of differentials and they became obvious to the world.  So mom realized she had two fronts of a battle she never expected to be fighting, but here we are, let's get it done. 

But it wasn't a battle--it was a war. 

And the battles were pretty much endless.

Starting with general education. Maybe also ending there, I'm not sure, since this story is still being written. 

Anyway, the older guy.  So. I had the best of intentions--the goal was always competitive full time employment. But to get there, he needed to run the gauntlet of a society that doesn't take kindly to differences of any kind. He withstood all kinds of failures of the adults around him to help him navigate bullying, the adults who led by example that it was okay to mess with the autistic kid and then gaslight him by telling him and his mother that his classmates were only trying to "help" him.

Fuck you.

Anyway. Middle school and early high school are pretty much the same story until I call a meeting and tell the team "Look, he does NOT want to be alone at lunch. Please help him!" So they do, and they have a group of girls who look upon him as a project of sorts, so he has people to sit with. 

But these relationships do not extend outside of school. 

He wants to take the senior trip; he gets a couple jobs and pays his own way. His friends play "let's pretend N  isn't here. "  He laughs. But even four years later, the laughter is uncertain. It's easier to think that the joke was in fun and not personal. 

Still. He goes forward. He walks with his class. He goes to community college and votech. He gets a competitive internship. 

Then, COVD hits. His jobs shut down. So does his way forward.

We're trying to restart.  We're trying to stop the backslide and move forward again. But it's feeling pretty bleak right now. Even though he was invited to join Phi Beta Kappa, he doesn't feel worthy.  Graduation is in a month. Then what?

I fought hard, for a long time, expecting, perhaps wrongly, that we'd get him where he needs to go. 

Failure was never an option.

But.  What if that's all there is?

(We all know it will be my fault, because that's just the way it is.)

New World Waiting

 The marching band had a side gig yesterday: A Halloween parade.

Not just any Halloween parade, though--one that went through a neighborhood devastated by EF2 force winds two months ago today. And I honestly didn't recognize the neighborhood in which we had done some house hunting two decades ago.  And looking around, I can see that the residents still don't, either. 

Once crowned with a luxurious growth of deciduous trees, the entire neighborhood has been stripped bare. Condemned houses sit side by side with houses seemingly untouched. Climate change incarnate.  The randomness of the carnage is at best unnerving. 

The band marched down from the high school and mustered with a fire truck and a couple police vehicles. When they launched into the cadence, then Carry On, the closer from their show, people who weren't already outside with their kids came to their doors, phones in hand. Kids joined in the parade, in costume, as did the neighbors, old, young, dog walkers, or people who just wanted to be a part of the festivities. 

By the time the band hit the last stretch of their route, people had pulled up chairs to the street, watching and clapping. Children in costumes flanked both sides and trailed behind. 

It was a good day. 

But there is still a lot of recovery ahead for this community. And there are a lot of hands and hearts that are making the healing happen. 

Grateful.