Wednesday, July 30, 2008

"Everyone has a story..."

It's true, of course. We all do.

I'm sure that even the secretary for the assistant school district superintendent has one. Despite the school district's open enrollment policy, my request for in district transfer to keep Adia in the school that she has been attending for the past three years was denied. After our move, while we're still in the same school district, we are just a little bit outside the boundary line for that school which, without in district transfer approval of the district administration, would send her off to a new school in a few weeks. The secretary returned my call requesting an appointment to come in and talk to someone about this decision. When I reiterated that there were some extenuating circumstances in this case that I wanted to talk to the assistant superintendant about, she said, without breaking her verbal stride, "Everyone has a story..."

And maybe the secretary's story goes something like this: I just returned from vacation and my desk is piled with complaints and requests from disgruntled parents who don't want their baby to have to adjust to a change of school despite the two years' warning that have preceded this year’s redistricting. And maybe her story also includes just how much she wants to impress her new boss when he starts at the end of the week by clearing as many of these disgruntled families from the slate before he even sees the stack. Maybe, she thinks, if I just reiterate that denials of in district transfers are strictly numbers based decisions and that the requested school just does not have an open space these parents won't take it personally and will just move along with the flow like leaves in a log jam suddenly freed and carried downstream with the current. Maybe. Everyone has a story.

I, too, have one. My story. My family’s, my children’s, my daughter’s. Ours is a year of upheaval and chaos ending tragically in crisis. My husband – who was in the process of trying to divorce me and take custody of my children from me – was killed in a car accident rendering me an unexpectedly single parent, my children suddenly fatherless.
My oldest was already reeling from the rift in her forever family and the premature introduction of the new love of daddy’s life.
She was angry – at me, at him, at them – and with her various internal processing twists and turns only able to act it out in misbehavior and lengthy, loud, physical fits. Left with only her mother, she took the full force of her emotional upheaval out on me.

I was an ill equipped single parent at best. Coming straight off a war where I’d been fighting for my life and livelihood, I was dropped into a maze of a different, yet equally disorienting and confusing, variety. In the midst of legal meetings and financial consultations, living in a new-to-us condo and still not unpacked from a hurried move, I had both hands full with children who didn’t completely understand why their daddy wasn’t coming home. They didn’t want him to visit them from the spirit world. They wanted to spend the weekend at daddy’s house as planned.

My oldest didn’t want to tell her second grade classmates what had happened. She holds all her feelings deep within her and she keeps her true thoughts hidden away from her mother, maybe even from herself. She has been tested and shown to have slow processing ability. It’s just the way she’s wired. She relates to the world in her own atypical way – there isn’t a readily available name for it, no convenient label that then translates into a predictable series of defined treatment steps and medication doses which will render her an average child. So, I was surprised when her former first grade teacher told me that when she expressed her condolences, Adia put her cheek ever so gently against the teacher’s cheek and allowed herself to be hugged. The tiniest gesture, the hugest statement: “I am comfortable here. This is safe.”

Safe enough, even, to go kicking and screaming in her pajamas because she flat out refused to get dressed and ride cooperatively to school. Safe enough to jump with joy when the morning vitamin is “a lion, mom, for Lion Pride!” Safe enough to allow the pride she feels to be expressed aloud when she shows her grandparents and her aunt, in fact anyone who will sit down a moment and listen, the photobook of field trips and special events from her second grade year.

I guess it goes without saying , then, that changing her school – the only thing in her life that has not changed in the past year – would be a really bad idea.

So, that’s “my story” or part of it anyway. Everyone has one, yes. Every story reflects a life, reflects the personal and sometimes extremely painful experiences of a specific spirit, one individual for whom that “story” is more than just a story.

Monday, July 21, 2008

A prize surprise

Adia had a break-through at the pediatrician's office. Maybe it was theater camp coursing through her veins. Whatever the reason, she spoke to her pediatrician today and that is the first time in the three years she's been seeing him regularly that she has done that. She still wouldn't look him in the eye, shake his hand or give him five, but she did speak to him. In fact, her talking to him got louder as the time went on.

You might call it a small victory, but the doctor went out in the hall and in his booming voice told his colleague that Adia finally talked to him. While I was chatting with the other doctor, who we don't see often any more because of her part-time work schedule but who had been the girls' regular pediatrician when both were babies, Adia was invited as a reward to go into the doctor she'd spoken to's office and select a prize from the Treasure Chest.

She was gone a long time. She is meticulous and likes to inspect the many prize choices before making up her mind. I am sure that she fingered through the various treasures and examined the details of many pieces before making her choice.

She was shyly proud as she skipped down the hall to show me her bounty. "Oh, you found yourself a little lipstick, Adia," I said. She beamed and nodded, popping then replacing the cap on her new prized possesion. I finished up chatting and then we headed off to the restroom before leaving.

"Does your lipstick have a flavor?" I asked. Silence. "Does it smell good?" She shrugged. "Well, let me see it a minute," I said. She handed the tube to me. What I found when I plucked off the cap was not a lipstick at all, but a tube shaped eraser, a pink ringed white circle with a little heart in the center.

"Oh, this is cute, honey. It's an eraser," I said. My daughter looked at me, her face stricken, and her huge brown eyes crowned with a tear that held steady just above her lower lid. I put my hand on her shoulder, "Don't cry, honey. It's okay. Are you disappointed?" She shook her head sharply and said, "No, I'm not. I'm not."

For the rest of the day I just couldn't get that heart-broken look out of my mind. Sometimes mom is such a clunker. "It's okay." No, mom, it's not. She was proud of her lipstick. That was what she wanted.

I think we'll be making a trip to the drug store for some lipstick on the way home tomorrow.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Off to the movies

The girls and I went to see Wall-E the other day. This is not an accomplishment as I am sure that most children their ages were lined up on opening day. However, it felt like an accomplishment to me. Both of the girls are sensitive to sounds and they don't really like the overwhelming stereo booming of today's movie theaters. They are also highly tuned 'scarey-o-meters' and if anything seems remotely dark or even a little gray, they do not want to have anything to do with it. This is not a position that I argue with because I think it is good for them to fill their heads with ideas other than those of monsters out to destroy the world and the like.

So I was, in fact, quite surprised when I suggested that we spend an afternoon at the movies and they both agreed. The last one we saw was The Waterhorse at Christmas time, and while they enjoyed it, there were enough scary moments where the waterhorse's fate was uncertain that they had said, "No movies," for months. I hadn't even suggested anything until this one came along. And I figured Wall-E was a pretty safe bet.

For the most part I was right. But like all films, there's nothing to rave about unless there is some conflict, no matter how mild, and some level of peril for the protagonist. So when the little robot's fate appeared uncertain, I found myself holding the popcorn tub between my knees and both hands gripped on either side by a girl.

We were happy when all was well in the end. They went off to school and told all their mates about their movie time with mom and continued to parrot the two-toned "voice" of Eve, "Wall-e, Wall-e," with the accompanying increase in volume. I don't know when they might agree to venture with me again into the loud darkness and watch another adventure unfold. Until then, I'll hold onto my own memory of both their little hands gripping mine and smile.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Two hands, two eyes, two girls

Sometimes, two is just not enough and, at the same time, too many. Today case in point. Both girls had riding toys along at our adoption group picnic - Adia with her scooter and Malaika with her recently mastered bicycle. Adia is cautious, at times overly so, and I don't worry about her wandering off or taking risks on her scooter that she doesn't have the skill to manage. Malaika, on the other hand, will do anything and go anywhere that enters her mind. So, you can be assured that before she was allowed to don her helmet and take off, I laid out the boundaries to my little one: you can ride as far as the steep hill driveway but no farther, and under no circumstances are you to go up or down the steep hill. She nodded her understanding as she rode away after her sister's scooter.

I am sure there is a law of physics that states that when both hands and eyes of the responsible adult are occupied with a clean up (or loading or preparing or phone related) task, the children must find trouble, preferably of the injurious kind. I gave the girls a five minutes and we are going to leave warning while they were riding past the shelter. Both heads bobbed. I loaded the first aid kit onto the cooler and strapped it in then stuffed my empty aluminum cans into the recycling container. When I came out from behind shelter counter, I noticed Nadine sitting on the ground at the bottom of the steep hill with Malaika in her arms.
I called out, Did she crash? Nadine shook her head at me and mouthed, She's fine. Still, a mom has to check. When I reached them, Nadine said that Malaika had just been coming down the hill so fast that she lost control of her bike when she hit the grass. She's been riding a two wheeler for a total of three days, mind you. The riding part she has pretty well down, but steering and the finesse to navigate tricky situations are a little shaky.

I looked her over and found no real scraps or scratches, no bleeding or bruising. So, I told the girls to wait there while I went to the restroom and grabbed the cooler and we would head out. There was no line. I thought I moved through the necessities rather quickly. Yet, when I started down the path with cooler in tote, I saw Malaika's bicycle still laying in the grass but no child waiting. In fact, neither of them were there. I asked Maree, where is Malaika, and at the same moment saw her walking up the steep hill pushing a pink razor scooter. Who's scooter is that? I asked aloud. Maree said it was one of theirs. I started to call to Malaika to put the scooter down and come get her bike, but before I even opened my mouth and took in a breath, she flipped that scooter around to face down the hill, put one foot in the center of the riding platform and pushed off. Malaika! I called. No! Get off!

It was too late, or it was inevitable. She rode a foot or so before the scooter went one way and she went the other.

She came out unscathed but for her wounded pride.
We didn't even need the band-aids that we'd brought along. I'm sure she wished that she had shown me and proven that my precautions and limits were silly and overly protective. Instead, she had to abandon the scooter to the parent of its owner and accompany me on foot to the bottom of the hill to retrieve her bicycle. That, and the admonishment that if she wasn't going to follow the rules she wouldn't be allowed to bring or borrow riding toys in the future.

Deep snuffling sobs accompanied her as she pushed her bicycle up the hill to the car. Mommy, she sniffed, I need a tissue. We'll get one when we get to the car, I replied. Mommy, I need a hug. I know, Malaika, I said, and sqeezed her shoulder. I know.