Azadeh just had her triennial IEP meeting. For those not in the know, every year we have to have a meeting to create or update Azadeh's education plan, which includes things like, does she still need speech therapy and can she take breaks if she gets overwhelmed. Usually it's just a handful of people, but the three-year one is a biggie, and we had the principal, teacher, special ed teacher, speech teacher, occupational therapist, two people from the group that provides her aide, the school nurse, and the school psychologist. And they'd all done new observations or new testing. Whew!
I couldn't have been happier with the results of the meeting, to be honest.
First of all, it's really powerful to have a team of people like that who are working hard on Az's behalf, who seem to be concerned about what's best for her (not what's expedient), and who seem to genuinely like her.
Second, we are making real progress in a lot of areas.
For example, the speech therapist says that over the summer, somehow Az overcame her last actual speech-sound issue, the r sound. However, she still qualifies for speech therapy, so her new goal is to work on using tones that others will read as kinder, and to work on the volume of her voice (it tends to be loud, especially if she is feeling angry).
The people in charge of the instructional aide noted only that it's been working really well, and they're not planning on making any big changes, though they may try to give the aide a half hour lunch break with no coverage during a time of day that Az typically does well.
I learned from the teacher that although Azadeh does make her little noises a lot (her autistic stims are largely vocal, though she does have physical ones too), the group of kids in her class is so used to her that they don't seem distracted by it. This makes me really optimistic about middle school, since at least a handful of these students will move with her to 7th grade, meaning that she may be somewhat insulated by the peers who know her.
And most of her goals used to be "try not to get so angry when you shout out and aren't called on" or "don't escape off campus when you're upset" or "learn to take a break outside instead of stabbing a kid and calling him a jerk." Now, her goals are evolving to things like "raise your hand instead of calling out" and "keep your desk organized."
The group even noted that she had taken responsibility for some bad choices lately (which is ASTOUNDING).
Also, I never make a big deal out of this stuff to Azadeh and I try not to brag too much, but they did her academic testing again, and her language scores -- reading, verbal, etc. -- are just off-the-charts phenomenal. Like, the "grade level equivalent" was <17 .9="" ahead="" and="" beyond="" br="" college="" count="" does="" fingers.="" go="" grad="" hat="" like="" nbsp="" on="" psych="" read="" s="" school.="" school="" she="" textbooks="" that="" the="" was="" your="">
Anyway, there are days when her other mom and I lament that she's never going to live on her own, never going to hold a job, etc. And then there are days like yesterday when I get to daydream about her being an illustrator for botanical books or a park ranger, or something else that allows her the freedom and passion and creativity that is so central to her nature.
So yeah, yesterday was a good day.
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
Friday, October 05, 2018
How is Azadeh?
Pretty good, actually.
Not that we don't still have issues with... oh gee, cleanliness, mean tones, fighting over chores, getting ready for school on time, interrupting, abusing screen time limits, being thoughtless of others' feelings, begging for everything she sees, refusing to take responsibility for her actions... I just had to get that out of the way. Life around here can still be pretty stressful.
But overall, I feel like we're on a pretty good path. To wit:
She got invited to her 2nd birthday party in five months. Also her second birthday party in about 5 years. She has several friends at school. I attended the parties with her, and she did really well at getting along with people and playing cooperatively. (Until the end, and when I heard her voice raising, I decided it was time to go.)
She has had more good days at school than bad. Last year her teacher was nice, but young and new. This year her teacher is loving, and experienced and tough, which is a great combination for Az.
She is sticking with dance, and seems to enjoy the musical theatre class she's in. She joined the track team and has her first meet next Friday.
She has made positive choices on several occasions lately, like telling a kid today (when HE got mad at her and said something mean), "It's okay, it's okay. We're on the same team." She's also walked away from a couple of conflicts or people who were annoying her. [Full disclosure: she's made a couple real bad choices, too, but we used to have ZERO good ones, so this is still quite an important step.]
She's sleeping pretty well most of the time (knock wood). She sometimes wakes at 4am for the day, but it's far less often, and she's mostly getting to sleep around 9. (This is a tremendous improvement from about a year ago and all the time before that, ever.)
We haven't had a real rager of a temper tantrum in a while.
She very occasionally says something nice to one of us unprompted.
As I re-read this, I know that "no temper tantrums" and "sleeping mostly" and "more good days than bad" is not what "pretty good" would look like for a neurotypical kid. But I don't have one of those. I have a beautifully neurodivergent artistic weirdo, and I will take our version of "pretty good."
Not that we don't still have issues with... oh gee, cleanliness, mean tones, fighting over chores, getting ready for school on time, interrupting, abusing screen time limits, being thoughtless of others' feelings, begging for everything she sees, refusing to take responsibility for her actions... I just had to get that out of the way. Life around here can still be pretty stressful.
But overall, I feel like we're on a pretty good path. To wit:
She got invited to her 2nd birthday party in five months. Also her second birthday party in about 5 years. She has several friends at school. I attended the parties with her, and she did really well at getting along with people and playing cooperatively. (Until the end, and when I heard her voice raising, I decided it was time to go.)
She has had more good days at school than bad. Last year her teacher was nice, but young and new. This year her teacher is loving, and experienced and tough, which is a great combination for Az.
She is sticking with dance, and seems to enjoy the musical theatre class she's in. She joined the track team and has her first meet next Friday.
She has made positive choices on several occasions lately, like telling a kid today (when HE got mad at her and said something mean), "It's okay, it's okay. We're on the same team." She's also walked away from a couple of conflicts or people who were annoying her. [Full disclosure: she's made a couple real bad choices, too, but we used to have ZERO good ones, so this is still quite an important step.]
She's sleeping pretty well most of the time (knock wood). She sometimes wakes at 4am for the day, but it's far less often, and she's mostly getting to sleep around 9. (This is a tremendous improvement from about a year ago and all the time before that, ever.)
We haven't had a real rager of a temper tantrum in a while.
She very occasionally says something nice to one of us unprompted.
As I re-read this, I know that "no temper tantrums" and "sleeping mostly" and "more good days than bad" is not what "pretty good" would look like for a neurotypical kid. But I don't have one of those. I have a beautifully neurodivergent artistic weirdo, and I will take our version of "pretty good."
Monday, September 03, 2018
4 Years Old!
Lochlan is sweet, smart, funny, loving, empathetic, and an uncoordinated goofball. He loves music and asks for things all the time (mostly Harry Belafonte, but he also quite likes M.I.A. and Missy Elliot). He is genuinely thoughtful of us in a way that is sort of brand-new to us as parents. Like, a few weeks ago I complained of a headache, and about an hour later, he asked how my headache was! (Maybe this is normal, but his sister has never done it.)
He's obsessed with dinosaurs and watches every dino show there is on every streaming service. He can recognize at least 30 dinosaurs on sight (probably more, but it's hard to say), and usually tell you how he knows the difference between one and another that looks similar, like some detail of the toe claw.
He is not a big risk-taker in some ways. He won't even try riding the little bike I attached via trail-a-bike to mine. But at the same time he's very confident he's allowed to play out front by himself, or ride his balance bike to the end of the block (he's not).
He loves the hot tub we got a few months ago and asks to go in almost every night. We started singing "Hot Tubbing" to the tune of "Hot Blooded," and now he sings it too, stripping naked and yelling, "CHECK IT AND SEE."
He likes to make up new species of animals and pretend to be them (usually some sort of combination breed, like the frog-look-raccoon). Other times he'll tell me he's my "human baby" and wants to be held.
He's a little sensitive, especially to loud noises. He has flatly refused to allow anyone to sing him the Happy Birthday song.
He will try most foods, but he occasionally tells us he's a carnivore and doesn't eat vegetables. The other night I ordered only veggie pizza, and he was so mad at me he refused to eat pizza at all and stared at me wrathfully while shoving slices of ham in his face.
He has lately been telling us he's not a boy, but a girl, and Azadeh's little sister. This will either be a funny anecdote to tell someday, or the thing we look back and and go "OH" about. But he doesn't seem to mind wearing boy clothes, getting his hair cut short, etc. So we're letting it ride and using gender-neutral pronouns as much as possible. No more "you're such a sweet boy," but "you're such a sweet child."
He has his moments of crabbiness, but for the most part, he's an easygoing, sweet, mellow dude. We are so lucky to get to share our lives with him. Happy 4th birthday, Lochlan!
Motherhood P.S. -- You know all those people telling you "it goes so fast?" Sometimes it doesn't seem like it goes fast, but going through these pictures BLEW MY MIND. I was like, "didn't we take that stuffed whale to the river, like... a month ago? Are you telling me it's been almost a year?!?!" Look at his tiny face in that picture with the Christmas lights. That was in December, and he looks like a BABY compared to today! Oh, my heart!
Saturday, August 11, 2018
The worst features of my kid
I am hoping that when they debut My Older Kid 2.0, they will debug her in the following ways: First, she will notice that her words and actions are of her own doing and they sometimes have consequence for which she is responsible.
And second, she won't be so fucking selfish. Like, I was thinking of trying to run some role-play scenarios after The Toast, and then when The Quilt went down, I was definitely going to write this blog post, and then today was The Drums, and I am seriously wondering if she is under warranty.
The Toast is just one example of something she does regularly. In this case, it was with toast, which she likes. There were six slices on a plate. There are four of us. She evaluated the situation and immediately took three.
I mean... I was going to make more anyway. But read the room, kid! If there are a dozen cookies, make sure everyone gets one first before going back for seconds. If a piñata breaks, just double-check to make sure you aren't mowing down three-year-olds and taking all their candy. You will get yours, I guarantee it. You will get a fair share. Just calm the fuck down and make sure it at least looks like you care whether other people like toast, too.
The Quilt, though, really ticked me off. Background: when she was younger, she thrust a Pottery Barn catalog in my face (and Grandma's, and Boompah's) and said that this pink quilt was the epitome of all that was wonderful in the world and she'd probably die if she didn't get it. So, okay, whatever. Christmas was coming up, and she loved the quilt, so she got it.
In the meantime, I put away the old quilt of mine (from childhood) that was torn and worn and left it in the closet. She never asked for it, never played with it. I think she didn't even ever make a fort with it, and she emptied the damn linen closet to make forts.
So when I was pregnant with Lochlan, I thought, "Hey, won't that be sweet -- I'll get the blue quilt repaired and they'll both have their own quilt."
So I did. I had an old friend repair it (beautifully, I might add), and I put it on Lochlan's bed when he got his own room.
Well, now that she is a teenager (she has some tortured math and logic to make this work at age ten), she hates pink, and also her quilt is too small, and also it's itchy. It is, in fact, the worst quilt in the world, and I am a bad person for not replacing it THIS INSTANT. (Y'all, that is the short version.) And she drags out "You like Lochlan better than me" whenever she wants something (which kind of hits a nerve, because I kind of DO like him better. I love them the same, but he's easier to hang out with because he's chill and nice). So then comes her accusation that actually, she LOVED the blue quilt and ALWAYS wanted it, and I was clearly doing her a grave injustice and insult by giving this TREASURED HEIRLOOM that she has loved her WHOLE LIFE to some random kid.
"Dude," I said, "You never gave that quilt a second glance until someone else had it. You just want it because it's your brother's."
She denies this, but friends, I would stake my life on it. If, the week before I got that quilt out to send it to Kristin in Utah, I had asked Azadeh if she remembered it, she would not have. But once it was his, it had to be hers.
So I was definitely on the "how can I address this selfishness thing" train already.
Yesterday, I cleaned her room a little. I didn't throw anything (much) away, just rearranged. I talked to her about whether we could give her little-kid school desk to Lochlan and she agreed.
There's also a drum kit in there. Now, I got the drum kit for her the Christmas she was 3, I think. We had it in her room for about a year, she banged on it a handful of times, and then we put it in the garage, disassembled.
But Lochlan's kinda musical. He would sometimes use things for percussion, and one day when I was cleaning out the garage, I decided to bring the drums back in for him. Well, as soon as she saw them, she was like THOSEAREMINE! So I put them in her room instead, because it's true, they are hers.
That was at least six months ago. I showed her one or two beats, she practiced them for 2-3 minutes each, and that's been the end of it. The only time we hear the drums now is when some of her clutter falls on them.
So in the big room clean (which I did because she's been complaining about her room being too small), I moved her drums out to the living room while I decided what to do with them. Lochlan is fascinated! He's been hitting them with his hands, pencils, whatever he could find. He's using the foot pedal. He's got rhythm! So Ánt got him a pair of balsa wood chopsticks to play with on there. And him using them just set her off. Why were they out here? Those are hers! He can't touch them! Everything he touches gets gross! He's going to hurt them!
So we try to have this serious talk, and her point of view is something like this.
A: She doesn't use the kit because it is too small for her.
B: That is not a good reason to take it out of her room.
C: She doesn't practice because the drums are unacceptable.
D: She will be needing a new, adult-sized professional drum kit.
E: And Lochlan STILL can't play with hers.
And I'm like... maybe someone somewhere is willing to pay upwards of $1k to see if their kid, who has never practiced the drums before, will practice the drums in their house if they get the kid a much, much bigger set of drums. But that is not me.
I never had a sibling myself, so I don't really get the whole sibling rivalry thing. And I think if we were the kind of parents who routinely insisted that she give her stuff to the younger child, I could see getting put out. But we don't. In fact, more often than not, if Lochlan gets her stuff, it's because I asked her to choose some stuff to give to Goodwill and she doesn't really want it to leave the house, so she gives it to him.
Anyway, I can't put my finger on what it is about selfishness that really gets my goat, but it does. So seeing her ignore or reject things until Lochlan touches them pisses me right off.
About a month ago, I thought about writing down everything she asked for, like when we're in stores. Because "Ooh, can I have this? I NEEEEED it," is about her most commonly-used phrase. And I rejected the idea of doing it, because I knew I would find it both too demoralizing and too time-consuming. I don't want to use a trip to the local homeless shelter as some kind of moral-lesson-imparting tourism, but she is kind of slowly growing into a really reprehensible person. At this rate, in fifteen years she'll be running for office as a Republican.
And second, she won't be so fucking selfish. Like, I was thinking of trying to run some role-play scenarios after The Toast, and then when The Quilt went down, I was definitely going to write this blog post, and then today was The Drums, and I am seriously wondering if she is under warranty.
The Toast is just one example of something she does regularly. In this case, it was with toast, which she likes. There were six slices on a plate. There are four of us. She evaluated the situation and immediately took three.
I mean... I was going to make more anyway. But read the room, kid! If there are a dozen cookies, make sure everyone gets one first before going back for seconds. If a piñata breaks, just double-check to make sure you aren't mowing down three-year-olds and taking all their candy. You will get yours, I guarantee it. You will get a fair share. Just calm the fuck down and make sure it at least looks like you care whether other people like toast, too.
The Quilt, though, really ticked me off. Background: when she was younger, she thrust a Pottery Barn catalog in my face (and Grandma's, and Boompah's) and said that this pink quilt was the epitome of all that was wonderful in the world and she'd probably die if she didn't get it. So, okay, whatever. Christmas was coming up, and she loved the quilt, so she got it.
In the meantime, I put away the old quilt of mine (from childhood) that was torn and worn and left it in the closet. She never asked for it, never played with it. I think she didn't even ever make a fort with it, and she emptied the damn linen closet to make forts.
So when I was pregnant with Lochlan, I thought, "Hey, won't that be sweet -- I'll get the blue quilt repaired and they'll both have their own quilt."
So I did. I had an old friend repair it (beautifully, I might add), and I put it on Lochlan's bed when he got his own room.
Well, now that she is a teenager (she has some tortured math and logic to make this work at age ten), she hates pink, and also her quilt is too small, and also it's itchy. It is, in fact, the worst quilt in the world, and I am a bad person for not replacing it THIS INSTANT. (Y'all, that is the short version.) And she drags out "You like Lochlan better than me" whenever she wants something (which kind of hits a nerve, because I kind of DO like him better. I love them the same, but he's easier to hang out with because he's chill and nice). So then comes her accusation that actually, she LOVED the blue quilt and ALWAYS wanted it, and I was clearly doing her a grave injustice and insult by giving this TREASURED HEIRLOOM that she has loved her WHOLE LIFE to some random kid.
"Dude," I said, "You never gave that quilt a second glance until someone else had it. You just want it because it's your brother's."
She denies this, but friends, I would stake my life on it. If, the week before I got that quilt out to send it to Kristin in Utah, I had asked Azadeh if she remembered it, she would not have. But once it was his, it had to be hers.
So I was definitely on the "how can I address this selfishness thing" train already.
Yesterday, I cleaned her room a little. I didn't throw anything (much) away, just rearranged. I talked to her about whether we could give her little-kid school desk to Lochlan and she agreed.
There's also a drum kit in there. Now, I got the drum kit for her the Christmas she was 3, I think. We had it in her room for about a year, she banged on it a handful of times, and then we put it in the garage, disassembled.
But Lochlan's kinda musical. He would sometimes use things for percussion, and one day when I was cleaning out the garage, I decided to bring the drums back in for him. Well, as soon as she saw them, she was like THOSEAREMINE! So I put them in her room instead, because it's true, they are hers.
That was at least six months ago. I showed her one or two beats, she practiced them for 2-3 minutes each, and that's been the end of it. The only time we hear the drums now is when some of her clutter falls on them.
So in the big room clean (which I did because she's been complaining about her room being too small), I moved her drums out to the living room while I decided what to do with them. Lochlan is fascinated! He's been hitting them with his hands, pencils, whatever he could find. He's using the foot pedal. He's got rhythm! So Ánt got him a pair of balsa wood chopsticks to play with on there. And him using them just set her off. Why were they out here? Those are hers! He can't touch them! Everything he touches gets gross! He's going to hurt them!
So we try to have this serious talk, and her point of view is something like this.
A: She doesn't use the kit because it is too small for her.
B: That is not a good reason to take it out of her room.
C: She doesn't practice because the drums are unacceptable.
D: She will be needing a new, adult-sized professional drum kit.
E: And Lochlan STILL can't play with hers.
And I'm like... maybe someone somewhere is willing to pay upwards of $1k to see if their kid, who has never practiced the drums before, will practice the drums in their house if they get the kid a much, much bigger set of drums. But that is not me.
I never had a sibling myself, so I don't really get the whole sibling rivalry thing. And I think if we were the kind of parents who routinely insisted that she give her stuff to the younger child, I could see getting put out. But we don't. In fact, more often than not, if Lochlan gets her stuff, it's because I asked her to choose some stuff to give to Goodwill and she doesn't really want it to leave the house, so she gives it to him.
Anyway, I can't put my finger on what it is about selfishness that really gets my goat, but it does. So seeing her ignore or reject things until Lochlan touches them pisses me right off.
About a month ago, I thought about writing down everything she asked for, like when we're in stores. Because "Ooh, can I have this? I NEEEEED it," is about her most commonly-used phrase. And I rejected the idea of doing it, because I knew I would find it both too demoralizing and too time-consuming. I don't want to use a trip to the local homeless shelter as some kind of moral-lesson-imparting tourism, but she is kind of slowly growing into a really reprehensible person. At this rate, in fifteen years she'll be running for office as a Republican.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
My Ántonia
So, I mentioned sort of offhand in the last post that my Sweetie is a trans woman. And that's somewhat new, and I hadn't mentioned it before, so I probably owe an explainer.
Earlier this year, I asked if she might be trans -- not really expecting the answer to be yes, but sensing that something was wrong or off, and looking for some answer, no matter how apparently out of left field.
She did not, in fact, answer "yes." She answered "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???!!!!" about 17 times over the next several days.
And then after some time had passed, we had a Very Serious Talk.
Interlude: my Sweetie is an intelligent, eloquent, articulate, clear and concise speaker. Until it comes to saying things that might hurt someone's feelings. Behold the conversation we had in the tent last week.
Á: Is that your red light?
Me: What? No, I have my white light on. Hang on. I don't see a red light. Do you still see it?
Á: I mean... I meant... Are you using your red light on your headlamp?
Me: No. I'm using the white one.
Á: I know. It's really bright.
Me: OOOHHH! You want me to use the red light? Yeah, I got you. (The white light was too bright and had been bothering her, but she thought "Could you switch to your red light, please?" was too demanding and rude.)
So this is how we ended up having a conversation where we walked away, her thinking she had told me she was a trans woman and me thinking she had told me she didn't want to compete with other men anymore because toxic masculinity is bad. (It is possible I didn't want to hear her message.)
It took one more serious conversation for me to get it.
Most of the rest of this writing is going to focus on how good everything is and how all is well between us and what a not-big-deal it was, ultimately. But for the sake of honesty, it felt like a pretty big fucking deal for a couple days, and I lost some sleep over it. The scariest thought I remember having is, "Well, if anything would lead us to divorce, this would do it."
Also, this realization/revelation was causing HER a lot of anxiety and pain, so I sort of demanded that she go see a therapist to talk some of it through.
She did, and I don't think that was easy. And that sort of got the whole ball rolling -- she's seen medical doctors, etc. since, and is well on her path through transition. Although transition makes it sound like there's some end point where she'll be a woman in a way she is not now. That's not right. She's a woman already. But she will undergo some physical transformation and legal changes, and those may help the world see her as she is already.
Anyway, if you're wondering, YES OF COURSE it was an adjustment. Things I took for granted are changing. One day the dark hair on her arms was gone (shaved off). It seems like nothing, but I remember being really surprised by it.
But here come some of the positives: her therapy, which she has continued, has really helped her deal with her anxiety. I've even heard her coaching Azadeh on what to do with intrusive thoughts. She's more patient, more relaxed, more at ease in social settings. She smiles more (like, a LOT more). She even cuddles more.
She has shared her new name at work and with our friends and family. Although I was trepidatious at times, we have had overwhelmingly positive feedback.
Even the kids are pretty well adjusted to it. Instead of Papa, she's now Poppy. Lochlan saw us arrive at swim lessons and happily announced, "Poppy! My Poppy's here! I have two mommies!" Azadeh is even more consistent than we are sometimes at using the correct pronouns (although this was more noticeable even a few weeks ago -- she and I rarely slip anymore).
One of the phone calls she made was to her oldest sister (I sat in the room for moral support). To fill some time in what I think was a surprised silence, she started telling a long story about Leroy Jenkins.* But she also told her sister that she'd first realized she was a woman in 2016.
I heard that needle-scratching sound in my head. I thought my question -- the one to which she answered, "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???" -- was the catalyst, and that she hadn't realized or thought about it before. Later on, I asked her about it. No, the 2016 date was correct. But she went online and read about how incredibly many marriages are ended by the revelation, and had more or less decided to just be unhappy and hide it from me (and the world) forever. But, she went on, she had gotten to a pretty low place. She didn't think she could continue to live as a man, hiding her real self, but she also didn't think she could live as a woman. The implication was pretty clear to me, and I'm glad we were able to get past that.
Things won't always be easy. One of my biggest fears is that she will face violence or harassment in public, and that will probably never subside much. There are still things to learn to navigate, too. Last night I was reading some old blog posts with pictures of her with a shaved head and captioned "Zadie with her Daddy." When those Facebook memories come up, can I still share them, or will they make her feel bad?
But you know what? We are keeping the lines of communication open, having really hard and honest talks sometimes, and when I want to know that, I'll ask her.
A funny idea popped into my head today. A nerdy band I like called They Might Be Giants came out with a song many years ago called "Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas.)" It's upbeat and catchy. Then, after the science was updated, they wrote a jazzy new song, "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma. The sun's not simply made out of gas... Forget that song: we got it wrong."
In some ways, our recent changes feel like that. The sun is vitally important to us, right? No life on earth without it. This science is a groundbreaking revelation! The very sun is not what we thought it was! But also, the day before they figured it out, the sun rose and set, and the day after, it did, too.
Understanding that someone isn't what you (and they) mistakenly thought doesn't mean they changed. My Sweetie, my Ántonia, is still the generous, loving, supportive soul who has made me laugh until I lose my breath more than anyone else on earth. She's still the person who believes in me more than I do. She's still the loving parent of our two kids. I am glad to know more about her. I am wildly glad she is happier than ever before. I'm grateful we get to grow into the future together, and that I can know and love her real self.
*Essentially, Leeroy Jenkins is the story of someone who rushes headlong into something in a foolhardy way. I think she was expressing to her sister that she wasn't rushing into anything.
Earlier this year, I asked if she might be trans -- not really expecting the answer to be yes, but sensing that something was wrong or off, and looking for some answer, no matter how apparently out of left field.
She did not, in fact, answer "yes." She answered "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???!!!!" about 17 times over the next several days.
And then after some time had passed, we had a Very Serious Talk.
Interlude: my Sweetie is an intelligent, eloquent, articulate, clear and concise speaker. Until it comes to saying things that might hurt someone's feelings. Behold the conversation we had in the tent last week.
Á: Is that your red light?
Me: What? No, I have my white light on. Hang on.
Á: I mean... I meant... Are you using your red light on your headlamp?
Me: No. I'm using the white one.
Á: I know. It's really bright.
Me: OOOHHH! You want me to use the red light? Yeah, I got you. (The white light was too bright and had been bothering her, but she thought "Could you switch to your red light, please?" was too demanding and rude.)
So this is how we ended up having a conversation where we walked away, her thinking she had told me she was a trans woman and me thinking she had told me she didn't want to compete with other men anymore because toxic masculinity is bad. (It is possible I didn't want to hear her message.)
It took one more serious conversation for me to get it.
Most of the rest of this writing is going to focus on how good everything is and how all is well between us and what a not-big-deal it was, ultimately. But for the sake of honesty, it felt like a pretty big fucking deal for a couple days, and I lost some sleep over it. The scariest thought I remember having is, "Well, if anything would lead us to divorce, this would do it."
Also, this realization/revelation was causing HER a lot of anxiety and pain, so I sort of demanded that she go see a therapist to talk some of it through.
She did, and I don't think that was easy. And that sort of got the whole ball rolling -- she's seen medical doctors, etc. since, and is well on her path through transition. Although transition makes it sound like there's some end point where she'll be a woman in a way she is not now. That's not right. She's a woman already. But she will undergo some physical transformation and legal changes, and those may help the world see her as she is already.
Anyway, if you're wondering, YES OF COURSE it was an adjustment. Things I took for granted are changing. One day the dark hair on her arms was gone (shaved off). It seems like nothing, but I remember being really surprised by it.
But here come some of the positives: her therapy, which she has continued, has really helped her deal with her anxiety. I've even heard her coaching Azadeh on what to do with intrusive thoughts. She's more patient, more relaxed, more at ease in social settings. She smiles more (like, a LOT more). She even cuddles more.
She has shared her new name at work and with our friends and family. Although I was trepidatious at times, we have had overwhelmingly positive feedback.
Even the kids are pretty well adjusted to it. Instead of Papa, she's now Poppy. Lochlan saw us arrive at swim lessons and happily announced, "Poppy! My Poppy's here! I have two mommies!" Azadeh is even more consistent than we are sometimes at using the correct pronouns (although this was more noticeable even a few weeks ago -- she and I rarely slip anymore).
One of the phone calls she made was to her oldest sister (I sat in the room for moral support). To fill some time in what I think was a surprised silence, she started telling a long story about Leroy Jenkins.* But she also told her sister that she'd first realized she was a woman in 2016.
I heard that needle-scratching sound in my head. I thought my question -- the one to which she answered, "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???" -- was the catalyst, and that she hadn't realized or thought about it before. Later on, I asked her about it. No, the 2016 date was correct. But she went online and read about how incredibly many marriages are ended by the revelation, and had more or less decided to just be unhappy and hide it from me (and the world) forever. But, she went on, she had gotten to a pretty low place. She didn't think she could continue to live as a man, hiding her real self, but she also didn't think she could live as a woman. The implication was pretty clear to me, and I'm glad we were able to get past that.
Things won't always be easy. One of my biggest fears is that she will face violence or harassment in public, and that will probably never subside much. There are still things to learn to navigate, too. Last night I was reading some old blog posts with pictures of her with a shaved head and captioned "Zadie with her Daddy." When those Facebook memories come up, can I still share them, or will they make her feel bad?
But you know what? We are keeping the lines of communication open, having really hard and honest talks sometimes, and when I want to know that, I'll ask her.
A funny idea popped into my head today. A nerdy band I like called They Might Be Giants came out with a song many years ago called "Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas.)" It's upbeat and catchy. Then, after the science was updated, they wrote a jazzy new song, "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma. The sun's not simply made out of gas... Forget that song: we got it wrong."
In some ways, our recent changes feel like that. The sun is vitally important to us, right? No life on earth without it. This science is a groundbreaking revelation! The very sun is not what we thought it was! But also, the day before they figured it out, the sun rose and set, and the day after, it did, too.
Understanding that someone isn't what you (and they) mistakenly thought doesn't mean they changed. My Sweetie, my Ántonia, is still the generous, loving, supportive soul who has made me laugh until I lose my breath more than anyone else on earth. She's still the person who believes in me more than I do. She's still the loving parent of our two kids. I am glad to know more about her. I am wildly glad she is happier than ever before. I'm grateful we get to grow into the future together, and that I can know and love her real self.
*Essentially, Leeroy Jenkins is the story of someone who rushes headlong into something in a foolhardy way. I think she was expressing to her sister that she wasn't rushing into anything.
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Big family camping trip 2018!
Well, we missed it in 2017, but we managed to get together with the Oregon family for a big camp-stravaganza in the redwoods this week.
In case you missed it, we love going up to Oregon, but it is a VERY long drive to drag the kids on, pretty expensive, and involves a whole lot of finding restaurants that can accommodate 18 people and which everyone likes.
Camping is about half the drive, less than half the cost, and we just cook the food. It's great!
We drove up last Saturday, and everyone was already there (minus some of our nieces). We'd managed to get two sites right across from each other. The ones I'd found were right near the bathroom and ours backed up to a little ravine, which meant we didn't have quite as many neighboring sites as we sometimes do. Also, it was next to the path down to the river.
I won't bore you with every detail, but I'll share highlights. My older nephew brought Cards Against Humanity, so one of the nights he was there, we played that and laughed a LOT. Another night we played Exploding Kittens, which was a lot of fun until Azadeh cheated at the last second. (We're still working on sportsmanship.)
I had brought some wood carving tools, since Azadeh had recently expressed an interest in learning, and my brother-in-law Alan is a terrific talent at it. He spent hours and hours with her, teaching her the right way of doing things, and telling her stories while they worked side by side. She carved a lovely canoe, and I'm hoping she'll finish it here at home.
I love both my sisters-in-laws' cooking, so it was great fun to eat Maryam's spaghetti and Michelle's loobia polo and Persian egg dish. I also adore Maryam's pancakes -- I try to recreate them sometimes, but to no avail.
Maryam, her husband Alan, and her son Jacob had to leave Tuesday, which was sad, because I know we'd have had more fun with them if they could have stayed. But they went out of their way to make time after just returning from another long trip.
One of my favorite camping activities is just sitting around the fire at night telling stories. My brother in law is a great storyteller and has a vast catalog of favorites. My wife(*) just laughs until she cries!
The kids go half-wild: they get filthy, climb giant redwood stumps**... heck, Lochlan stripped off half his clothes on day 1 and went barefoot some of the rest of the time! But they also eat and sleep well. It's about the only time Azadeh can be reliably counted on to sleep all night long, and perhaps even sleep in in the morning. And with so many family members around, someone's always got an eye on them, so even on the brink of a ravine, I really wasn't too worried. Where's Lochlan? With Katie. Oh, ok.
We had big pots of coffee every morning, made fires even when we didn't need them, made breakfasts sort of communally (my brother in law is my morning homie -- we both get up and sneak around making coffee and starting fires), one of us making eggs or potatoes while the other fixes up bacon or toast.
Antonia, my wife, loves to play in the river, so she hightailed it down there on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday until she got really pretty sunburnt, and gave it a rest for the remainder of the trip. They take inner tubes down, or re-route the water by digging tunnels through the rocks or climbing up the steep bank and jumping in. I like to float down the (shallow) rapid, then let the eddy take me right back up. The water isn't ideal -- it's full of algae and frogspawn, and it's never very deep -- but it's a great way to spend a couple hours.
I made a couple side trips -- mostly to the closest town for ice, but also to Garberville to show my brothers-in-law and go to the toy store, to "Confusion Hill" to delight the kids, and to Miranda for ice cream (like, really good ice cream). We also checked out the visitors center and took one drive to Rockefeller Loop Trail to do a little adventure that earned us patches.
We did have one pretty serious bummer on Thursday. Samwise Gamgee, beloved dog of our Oregon family, passed away. He was 14, arthritic, and blind in one eye, so it was probably his time, but it was still pretty devastating. On the bright side, he went pretty quickly without much suffering in a beautiful place, a few days after getting a swim in the river (Katie carried him all the way there).
Now, I will be circumspect here: Katie, having checked on her phone, indicated that we may have broken approximately four laws. But let it suffice that we thought Sam would appreciate being laid to rest in the beautiful place we had all been enjoying. And one of our trips to Garberville involved the purchase of a shovel.
That night, we heard the freakiest sound. Sort of a whining/barking OH OH OH OH-OOOOH! Then more. One was close -- in the campground, certainly.
Sweetie and I looked at each other in the darkness from our sleeping bags and thought the same thing: coyotes. And that maybe they had found something fresh to scavenge. I have a vivid imagination, and I had CONCERNS.
Then in the morning, we heard more than usual crow activity, and I remembered that they, too, are scavengers. I was just... well, I was hoping that no one wanted to go say a last goodbye to Sam, lest there be a grisly discovery.
BUT! Thanks again to Katie and her ever-present phone, we found out it was the call of a "barred owl."
It had been a sad afternoon and a tense evening, but Friday we were back on track and enjoyed the day together.
Today we all packed up, said our reluctant and loving and tearful goodbyes (mostly Lochlan was tearful -- he thought he wouldn't see cousin Kellen again!), and headed home.
* Oh, hi! I told everyone I know on the Facebook, but I suppose I haven't mentioned here on Blogger that my partner of 15 years, frequently referred to here as "Sweetie," fairly recently discovered that she is a woman. She is transitioning, and it's all going pretty well, and we're still fine and in love and the kids are largely used to it (Lochlan proudly announced "I have two mommies" at swim class last week), and it probably deserves its own post, but there you have it. Sorry if it snuck up on you!
** Lochlan, upon learning that his sister had climbed a VERY large stump when she first visited the campground, insisted he was going up, too. And despite discouragement (she was 5 at the time, and he is 3), he did! He needed a few boosts and foot placements, but he sure enough got his ass up a HUGE redwood stump. Of course, he had to be emergency-rescued down by his cousin, but still -- a victory is a victory!
In case you missed it, we love going up to Oregon, but it is a VERY long drive to drag the kids on, pretty expensive, and involves a whole lot of finding restaurants that can accommodate 18 people and which everyone likes.
Camping is about half the drive, less than half the cost, and we just cook the food. It's great!
We drove up last Saturday, and everyone was already there (minus some of our nieces). We'd managed to get two sites right across from each other. The ones I'd found were right near the bathroom and ours backed up to a little ravine, which meant we didn't have quite as many neighboring sites as we sometimes do. Also, it was next to the path down to the river.
I won't bore you with every detail, but I'll share highlights. My older nephew brought Cards Against Humanity, so one of the nights he was there, we played that and laughed a LOT. Another night we played Exploding Kittens, which was a lot of fun until Azadeh cheated at the last second. (We're still working on sportsmanship.)
I had brought some wood carving tools, since Azadeh had recently expressed an interest in learning, and my brother-in-law Alan is a terrific talent at it. He spent hours and hours with her, teaching her the right way of doing things, and telling her stories while they worked side by side. She carved a lovely canoe, and I'm hoping she'll finish it here at home.
I love both my sisters-in-laws' cooking, so it was great fun to eat Maryam's spaghetti and Michelle's loobia polo and Persian egg dish. I also adore Maryam's pancakes -- I try to recreate them sometimes, but to no avail.
Maryam, her husband Alan, and her son Jacob had to leave Tuesday, which was sad, because I know we'd have had more fun with them if they could have stayed. But they went out of their way to make time after just returning from another long trip.
One of my favorite camping activities is just sitting around the fire at night telling stories. My brother in law is a great storyteller and has a vast catalog of favorites. My wife(*) just laughs until she cries!
The kids go half-wild: they get filthy, climb giant redwood stumps**... heck, Lochlan stripped off half his clothes on day 1 and went barefoot some of the rest of the time! But they also eat and sleep well. It's about the only time Azadeh can be reliably counted on to sleep all night long, and perhaps even sleep in in the morning. And with so many family members around, someone's always got an eye on them, so even on the brink of a ravine, I really wasn't too worried. Where's Lochlan? With Katie. Oh, ok.
We had big pots of coffee every morning, made fires even when we didn't need them, made breakfasts sort of communally (my brother in law is my morning homie -- we both get up and sneak around making coffee and starting fires), one of us making eggs or potatoes while the other fixes up bacon or toast.
Antonia, my wife, loves to play in the river, so she hightailed it down there on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday until she got really pretty sunburnt, and gave it a rest for the remainder of the trip. They take inner tubes down, or re-route the water by digging tunnels through the rocks or climbing up the steep bank and jumping in. I like to float down the (shallow) rapid, then let the eddy take me right back up. The water isn't ideal -- it's full of algae and frogspawn, and it's never very deep -- but it's a great way to spend a couple hours.
I made a couple side trips -- mostly to the closest town for ice, but also to Garberville to show my brothers-in-law and go to the toy store, to "Confusion Hill" to delight the kids, and to Miranda for ice cream (like, really good ice cream). We also checked out the visitors center and took one drive to Rockefeller Loop Trail to do a little adventure that earned us patches.
We did have one pretty serious bummer on Thursday. Samwise Gamgee, beloved dog of our Oregon family, passed away. He was 14, arthritic, and blind in one eye, so it was probably his time, but it was still pretty devastating. On the bright side, he went pretty quickly without much suffering in a beautiful place, a few days after getting a swim in the river (Katie carried him all the way there).
Now, I will be circumspect here: Katie, having checked on her phone, indicated that we may have broken approximately four laws. But let it suffice that we thought Sam would appreciate being laid to rest in the beautiful place we had all been enjoying. And one of our trips to Garberville involved the purchase of a shovel.
That night, we heard the freakiest sound. Sort of a whining/barking OH OH OH OH-OOOOH! Then more. One was close -- in the campground, certainly.
Sweetie and I looked at each other in the darkness from our sleeping bags and thought the same thing: coyotes. And that maybe they had found something fresh to scavenge. I have a vivid imagination, and I had CONCERNS.
Then in the morning, we heard more than usual crow activity, and I remembered that they, too, are scavengers. I was just... well, I was hoping that no one wanted to go say a last goodbye to Sam, lest there be a grisly discovery.
BUT! Thanks again to Katie and her ever-present phone, we found out it was the call of a "barred owl."
It had been a sad afternoon and a tense evening, but Friday we were back on track and enjoyed the day together.
Today we all packed up, said our reluctant and loving and tearful goodbyes (mostly Lochlan was tearful -- he thought he wouldn't see cousin Kellen again!), and headed home.
* Oh, hi! I told everyone I know on the Facebook, but I suppose I haven't mentioned here on Blogger that my partner of 15 years, frequently referred to here as "Sweetie," fairly recently discovered that she is a woman. She is transitioning, and it's all going pretty well, and we're still fine and in love and the kids are largely used to it (Lochlan proudly announced "I have two mommies" at swim class last week), and it probably deserves its own post, but there you have it. Sorry if it snuck up on you!
** Lochlan, upon learning that his sister had climbed a VERY large stump when she first visited the campground, insisted he was going up, too. And despite discouragement (she was 5 at the time, and he is 3), he did! He needed a few boosts and foot placements, but he sure enough got his ass up a HUGE redwood stump. Of course, he had to be emergency-rescued down by his cousin, but still -- a victory is a victory!
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
How's it going?
You know... fine.
Lochlan is 3, and the "fuck you threes" has never been a more apt description. So much of the time, he's just a sweet, darling, smiling, belly-laughing cuddler. But other times he just does his own thing, regardless of what you want, and if you stop him from doing the thing (running down the street naked, bashing a stained-glass lamp into the wall), he'll fight and yell and hit. There are lots of times when I just leave him in the car rather than trying to get him out for a short trip, because he doesn't like to get buckled in, so it becomes a huge, exhausting wrestling match. I won't be able to do it this summer, because even now it's 80 degrees out and I only do it if I find shade, roll the windows down, and I know it'll be less than 5 minutes. But it's just hella hard to find the energy to have that fight multiple times per day.
I'm all for respectful, child-centered parenting that allows kids to have authority over their own bodies and what happens to them, but if I let the boy CHOOSE whether to get buckled into the car, we would have to leave his sister at school, never get groceries again, and keep spare car batteries in the garage for every time he just wanders around the car interior turning on lights. Sometimes I can bribe him or tickle him into submission, but other times I just have to get him in there by force.
Anyway. He knows pretty much all his colors, shapes, and numbers. He still doesn't like to participate in preschool (or go, sometimes), but he knows more about dinosaurs than you, unless you are a legit paleontologist. He's a hummer and a singer and a maker-of-funny-noises and a nonsense babbler, and it's kind of loud around here sometimes.
As for me, I'm... also fine. I really am getting past my Grandma grief, although if you follow me on the Facebook, I'm still wearing her jewelry every day. I'm pretty busy at work, between papers to grade (so many papers), an event coming up, and the many things I'd like to do that are half-formed ideas I haven't followed up on. Almost every day I think about how I'd like to sit down and write something, and almost every day I'm so worn out after the kids' bedtime all I do is sit and read social media or watch Netflix. Ah well. Summer is almost here, and I'll get to relax some then.
My lovely Azadeh has her ups and downs. When I think of some of the downs we had in the past -- her threatening to run away, Sweetie and I breaking her door in the middle of the night during some intense sleep-and-behavior issues, the nights I spent Googling boarding schools because I wasn't sure I could continue to live with her -- I know that things are on a more even keel. That doesn't make them easy. We still live with someone who more or less constantly talks to us as though we are the serfs who have disappointed her. She shouts and snaps and insults and degrades and is kind of mean about most things most of the time. She doesn't (can't?) accept responsibility for anything she's done, ever. She could pick up a bat, swing it into a window, and then if you said, "what the heck!? You just broke a window!" she would answer, "Well, if YOU didn't want it broken, why do you even HAVE a bat in here? This stupid house has old, fragile windows because YOU didn't buy a nice house!" (This is not a conversation we've had, but it has the tenor of hundreds we have had.)
She is filthy to the point that it makes me uncomfortable, but she will not change her ways if bribed, reminded, helped, reasoned with... She wipes marinara sauce on her pants even if there is a napkin next to her. She leaves dirty clothes all over her bedroom floor, eats in bed, leaves wrappers wherever she unwraps things. I know at some point this is a parenting issue, too. I could and should just put my foot down and say, "No, this is fucking disgusting. You shall not do that." But any attempts to get her to, say, JUST pick up the dirty laundry can turn into a multi-hour, yelling, lying, argument, and I don't have the energy for it all the time.
On the bright side, she actually has a handful of friends she's been eating lunch with, she's talked on the phone twice to a friend, she has emailed another, and she even Face-timed a friend a couple times. She's been going to social skills clinic for a little over a year, so I think it's really making a difference. She even told me tonight that one of her friends is going to invite her to a birthday party, which will be her first birthday party invitation in about four years. That is, IF it comes through. I'm always nervous about some of these friendships. Like, she was SO excited to meet a friend at an accessory shop in the mall, so I said we could go at the designated time, but the friend never showed up.
School is sort of better overall. We haven't had to pick her up early much (sometimes, though). I haven't had a lot of talkings-to, although I was informed fairly somberly of the day she threatened to kill a staff member. Other, less-serious offenses are chatted up more breezily: "She had a good day and got all her points. We did have to ask her not to climb on the desks." "She had a good day and earned all her points. At lunch there was a little kerfuffle where she did kick one of her classmates, but she calmed down and got back on track." (No mention of the kick-ee's recovery.) "She missed her points by two after she threw a Kleenex box at the speech teacher, but other than that..."
One of the things I struggle with -- because I am a parent, not just because I am an autism parent -- is whether I'm doing the right thing for my kid. There's a debate in the autism world, and this doesn't do it justice, but to give you the Cliff's Notes version: some people want to make their autistic kids seem as "normal" (or neurotypical) as possible so they can sort of "pass" in the real world someday. Other people think asking them to hide who they are and not be what nature made them is profoundly cruel, and that what we ought to be advocating for is a world that accepts them as-is.
I've always been a practical person. In terms of effort and my ability to effect change, I think my effort is better spent trying to help my kid adjust to the world as-is than in trying to get the entire world to adjust to accept her. But I see the other view, too. I never wanted her to stop making her noises. I welcome her obsessions (her dad and I have been the ones to buy her the most books on poisonous plants, and I've been scouring the web for plant-identification walks). But especially in her case, so many of the ways her autism presents itself could be easily mistaken for... just being a dick. How am I going to educate all her future bosses that sometimes, apparent dickishness is actually autism, and should be accommodated? I really think I need to help her not be a dick instead.
So we continue the in-home therapy, and we continue social skills clinic, and we try to be patient and loving and give her space to be herself, and sometimes we drink on weeknights.
Re-reading this makes it seem kind of rough, but it's really not. A day might look like us showering and having some breakfast, and sometimes we have a rough morning, but 80% of the time, we get both kids dressed and fed and out the door on time (perhaps with the shoes thrown in after, or a bagel still in hand). Then in the afternoon, we have therapy or clinic or a late day at Grandma's, and there might be some chasing and fussing about the car seat, and somebody might shout (the shouting is pretty likely), but not ALL the time. There will also be some TV watching and maybe paper-plane folding or play-dough and maybe one of the kids will spend 20 minutes peeling a carrot for dinner, and over dinner we talk about our days. And Lochlan will run outside naked and have to be retrieved. And then maybe at bedtime L won't want to brush his teeth and A will take her toothbrush and wander around with it for ten minutes, delaying bedtime, but there are also stories and songs and Az and my relaxing "countdown." And since the sleep issues are (knock wood) mostly sorted, I have some quiet time here to write this all down. Or watch Netflix.
It is tiring. It is imperfect. It is also fun and sweet. When a close friend asks if I got to see the latest movie, I often say, "Well, I have an autistic tween and a toddler, so... I don't have a lot of free time." It's true, but it's obviously not the whole picture.
Lochlan is 3, and the "fuck you threes" has never been a more apt description. So much of the time, he's just a sweet, darling, smiling, belly-laughing cuddler. But other times he just does his own thing, regardless of what you want, and if you stop him from doing the thing (running down the street naked, bashing a stained-glass lamp into the wall), he'll fight and yell and hit. There are lots of times when I just leave him in the car rather than trying to get him out for a short trip, because he doesn't like to get buckled in, so it becomes a huge, exhausting wrestling match. I won't be able to do it this summer, because even now it's 80 degrees out and I only do it if I find shade, roll the windows down, and I know it'll be less than 5 minutes. But it's just hella hard to find the energy to have that fight multiple times per day.
I'm all for respectful, child-centered parenting that allows kids to have authority over their own bodies and what happens to them, but if I let the boy CHOOSE whether to get buckled into the car, we would have to leave his sister at school, never get groceries again, and keep spare car batteries in the garage for every time he just wanders around the car interior turning on lights. Sometimes I can bribe him or tickle him into submission, but other times I just have to get him in there by force.
Anyway. He knows pretty much all his colors, shapes, and numbers. He still doesn't like to participate in preschool (or go, sometimes), but he knows more about dinosaurs than you, unless you are a legit paleontologist. He's a hummer and a singer and a maker-of-funny-noises and a nonsense babbler, and it's kind of loud around here sometimes.
As for me, I'm... also fine. I really am getting past my Grandma grief, although if you follow me on the Facebook, I'm still wearing her jewelry every day. I'm pretty busy at work, between papers to grade (so many papers), an event coming up, and the many things I'd like to do that are half-formed ideas I haven't followed up on. Almost every day I think about how I'd like to sit down and write something, and almost every day I'm so worn out after the kids' bedtime all I do is sit and read social media or watch Netflix. Ah well. Summer is almost here, and I'll get to relax some then.
My lovely Azadeh has her ups and downs. When I think of some of the downs we had in the past -- her threatening to run away, Sweetie and I breaking her door in the middle of the night during some intense sleep-and-behavior issues, the nights I spent Googling boarding schools because I wasn't sure I could continue to live with her -- I know that things are on a more even keel. That doesn't make them easy. We still live with someone who more or less constantly talks to us as though we are the serfs who have disappointed her. She shouts and snaps and insults and degrades and is kind of mean about most things most of the time. She doesn't (can't?) accept responsibility for anything she's done, ever. She could pick up a bat, swing it into a window, and then if you said, "what the heck!? You just broke a window!" she would answer, "Well, if YOU didn't want it broken, why do you even HAVE a bat in here? This stupid house has old, fragile windows because YOU didn't buy a nice house!" (This is not a conversation we've had, but it has the tenor of hundreds we have had.)
She is filthy to the point that it makes me uncomfortable, but she will not change her ways if bribed, reminded, helped, reasoned with... She wipes marinara sauce on her pants even if there is a napkin next to her. She leaves dirty clothes all over her bedroom floor, eats in bed, leaves wrappers wherever she unwraps things. I know at some point this is a parenting issue, too. I could and should just put my foot down and say, "No, this is fucking disgusting. You shall not do that." But any attempts to get her to, say, JUST pick up the dirty laundry can turn into a multi-hour, yelling, lying, argument, and I don't have the energy for it all the time.
On the bright side, she actually has a handful of friends she's been eating lunch with, she's talked on the phone twice to a friend, she has emailed another, and she even Face-timed a friend a couple times. She's been going to social skills clinic for a little over a year, so I think it's really making a difference. She even told me tonight that one of her friends is going to invite her to a birthday party, which will be her first birthday party invitation in about four years. That is, IF it comes through. I'm always nervous about some of these friendships. Like, she was SO excited to meet a friend at an accessory shop in the mall, so I said we could go at the designated time, but the friend never showed up.
School is sort of better overall. We haven't had to pick her up early much (sometimes, though). I haven't had a lot of talkings-to, although I was informed fairly somberly of the day she threatened to kill a staff member. Other, less-serious offenses are chatted up more breezily: "She had a good day and got all her points. We did have to ask her not to climb on the desks." "She had a good day and earned all her points. At lunch there was a little kerfuffle where she did kick one of her classmates, but she calmed down and got back on track." (No mention of the kick-ee's recovery.) "She missed her points by two after she threw a Kleenex box at the speech teacher, but other than that..."
One of the things I struggle with -- because I am a parent, not just because I am an autism parent -- is whether I'm doing the right thing for my kid. There's a debate in the autism world, and this doesn't do it justice, but to give you the Cliff's Notes version: some people want to make their autistic kids seem as "normal" (or neurotypical) as possible so they can sort of "pass" in the real world someday. Other people think asking them to hide who they are and not be what nature made them is profoundly cruel, and that what we ought to be advocating for is a world that accepts them as-is.
I've always been a practical person. In terms of effort and my ability to effect change, I think my effort is better spent trying to help my kid adjust to the world as-is than in trying to get the entire world to adjust to accept her. But I see the other view, too. I never wanted her to stop making her noises. I welcome her obsessions (her dad and I have been the ones to buy her the most books on poisonous plants, and I've been scouring the web for plant-identification walks). But especially in her case, so many of the ways her autism presents itself could be easily mistaken for... just being a dick. How am I going to educate all her future bosses that sometimes, apparent dickishness is actually autism, and should be accommodated? I really think I need to help her not be a dick instead.
So we continue the in-home therapy, and we continue social skills clinic, and we try to be patient and loving and give her space to be herself, and sometimes we drink on weeknights.
Re-reading this makes it seem kind of rough, but it's really not. A day might look like us showering and having some breakfast, and sometimes we have a rough morning, but 80% of the time, we get both kids dressed and fed and out the door on time (perhaps with the shoes thrown in after, or a bagel still in hand). Then in the afternoon, we have therapy or clinic or a late day at Grandma's, and there might be some chasing and fussing about the car seat, and somebody might shout (the shouting is pretty likely), but not ALL the time. There will also be some TV watching and maybe paper-plane folding or play-dough and maybe one of the kids will spend 20 minutes peeling a carrot for dinner, and over dinner we talk about our days. And Lochlan will run outside naked and have to be retrieved. And then maybe at bedtime L won't want to brush his teeth and A will take her toothbrush and wander around with it for ten minutes, delaying bedtime, but there are also stories and songs and Az and my relaxing "countdown." And since the sleep issues are (knock wood) mostly sorted, I have some quiet time here to write this all down. Or watch Netflix.
It is tiring. It is imperfect. It is also fun and sweet. When a close friend asks if I got to see the latest movie, I often say, "Well, I have an autistic tween and a toddler, so... I don't have a lot of free time." It's true, but it's obviously not the whole picture.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Just pics
This is Azadeh being ALMOST as tall as Grandma.
Az got glasses. She hardly ever remembers to wear them, but...
Monday, April 16, 2018
A complicated woman
We are reading selected parts of The Odyssey in my freshmen year class. A new translation is out that I haven't read yet, but it's making waves (no pun intended, Poseidon!) for being the first translation by a woman, and instead of the previous, fancy versions, it's not only more straightforward, but contains a different perspective.
The new translation's first line has been banging around in my head: "Tell me about a complicated man."
The last post that I wrote here was important to me, but it was also ABOUT me. I shared it on Facebook as well, and my friends there were kind and supportive, and some of them said my grandma sounded like a wonderful person.
And she was. Asterisk.
But I also didn't actually describe her, and I've set myself that task today, because I don't want leave the impression that she was a be-aproned Nanna resting pies on the windowsill and crocheting afghans for the backs of countless couches. In many ways, that was my other grandma, and that's a story for another day.
My grandma Vida was a complicated woman.
I can sum up her early life thusly: I asked her once if she'd ever read "The Grapes of Wrath," and she answered, "no, but from what I have been told, that is our story." She was an Okie who came to California in the dust bowl. They were briefly migrant fruit-pickers, but they were bootstrap-grabbing strivers, too, and my great-grandpa helped lay all the roads around Chico, and my great-grandma was a doctor's assistant, and they ended up with a nice house and a nice life. Vida was an only child, and it sounds like she was probably a bit spoiled.
She became a cadet nurse during WWII, and it was then, though not in that capacity, that she met my grandfather. She was raised a Baptist, and Grandpa was a Catholic, so she had to promise to raise the kids Catholic as well.
In some ways, I don't know much about the years before the 70s. Dad can recall having a creditor at the front door and another on the phone. Most of the kids went to public school, but one of my uncles went to a private religious school. The photos of them from that time show a sharply dressed, handsome family. The boys were all attractive and athletic, and the girl is beautiful. My grandfather is dashing. My grandmother is stylish. I see myself in her. I see my cousins in my grandfather.
I only know bits and pieces. One brother stabs another with a fork over the last serving of a dish. Grandpa makes two of the boys fight. I don't know why. Dad gets in a horrific bike accident trying to jump a ramp on a bike loaded with newspapers. He still has dark shadows of gravel in his temple. Dad says my grandma was awful, but he's not a storyteller or a historian like my mom is. He prefers to let sleeping dogs lie.
My mom knew my dad from high school, but didn't get to know him, really, until she was living on her own and he was back from the Navy. Most of what I know comes from her. I love to listen to her stories and histories. As I got older, they got less sanitized, and I learned about the ways Grandma egged my grandfather to anger, or the ways she was selfish. I learned that pretty much every child, when they were ready (or not quite ready) to move out on their own had a raging fight with grandma, complete with yelling and slamming of doors. Then they were temporarily disowned.
This does not bother me. First of all, because by the time I came along, I never witnessed any of this. Second, because I love my grandmother, and I can excuse anything. In my mind, the story goes that she was so close to them, so dependent on them, that she couldn't let them leave in a healthy way and had to kick up a fuss to make it easier on herself. I have no idea if this is true. Maybe she was just a harridan. It doesn't matter to me, because she was never unkind to me.
~~~~~~~~
Interlude:
When we talk about intersectionality, one of the things we're talking about is how some groups are left out of the conversation. Here's an example: some feminists like to argue that women first worked outside the home and entered the workforce in the 70s. But the Black women who were enslaved, then who worked as domestic help hear that statement and wonder where their history is in that statement. They wonder if feminism is for them.
But others are left out, too. The Chinese women who ran laundries. Poor white women.
I don't know that "poor" is a good descriptor for my family on either side (as they owned their own homes, had cars, etc.), but both of my grandmothers worked, and my great-grandmother did, too.
~~~~~~~~~
Grandma was bossy, she was temperamental, and when she fixated on an idea, it had to be done. In the 70s, she ordered curtains for her home with alternating blue and green panels, then blue and green sofas and carpet as well. Her bedroom had a purple paisley carpet, and when she moved to another home a few years ago, she insisted that her kids bring that crazy Jefferson Airplane-looking carpet to her new home. They did.
Shit, two weeks before she died, she insisted that she get a haircut like my dad's (i.e. super-short) and she wouldn't stop nagging people until someone agreed to do it. Even then, she didn't wait, and cut it badly herself.
I can remember her getting mad at someone (one of her kids) and demanding that they all return the keys to her house. More than once.
If she didn't like something, she stuck her tongue out or waved her hand dismissively, or said "phooey."
She would tell you exactly what she thought about your choices, about someone else's choices, about the decades-old choice that she never understood. She would tell you about the grudge she held. She had strong opinions on food, music, media, celebrities... Much of what you liked could be responded to with a "Hmf" or a "Bah."
She kept junk food in the house at all times. In one cabinet in the kitchen were usually 4-6 packages of cookies -- Flaky Flix and Nilla Wafers and Ginger Snaps. In a blue jar by the door were Starburst. An outdoor fridge held several kinds of soda and juice.
I'm sure health-conscious parents like my mom were somewhat horrified, but there was never less junk food.
Grandma and Grandpa were the primary caregivers for five of my cousins. I stayed with my other grandma, and my older cousins were with their mom. By the time the youngest two came along, my grandparents were too tired and had to decline.
They were still little when my grandfather died and broke my heart. This isn't a grandpa story, but I mean this and nothing less -- the death of my grandfather changed the trajectory of my life.
Grandma was sad, like anyone would be. And she was lonely, too. She was a woman who had lived with her partner for 53 years and who had brought up two generations of noisy children. In my lifetime, especially in my early childhood, we spent Christmas eve there, but also many many weekend nights. The adults played pinochle and my cousins and I mostly turned over a table and pretended it was a boat. We visited. It was common for people to be there -- an auntie picking up the kids, an uncle stopping in after the work day. For a while, one aunt and uncle lived next door and another directly across the street. My dad lived and lives a few blocks further. When I was grown, sometimes I would drop by, too, and most of the time someone else was already there.
So without Grandpa, and with the adult kids moving away and the grandkids bigger.... Grandma complained a little, and then she went out and did her own shit. She volunteered with an organization that went to local schools and put sealants on the kids' teeth. She joined the Widowed Person's Association and went to their events. She served breakfasts at the Elks Lodge. She was totally trolling for dudes, too -- there is no need to gloss that over. She wanted a partner again. She missed having one. I think that is okay. I think her adult kids had an adjustment phase with that idea.
She had been interested in genealogy, even traveling with Grandpa to find more information to Pella, Iowa. She always had computers and was a very early adopter of new technology, even if she very rarely knew how to use it. I'm sure I was about twelve when I went over and she had the younger kids playing Reader Rabbit. She used it for her genealogy, too, and made many contacts that way.
She stayed busy and engaged with the world. One of her daily habits was reading the newspaper cover to cover and clipping things she found to be of interest. I remember once sitting at the table while she and my grandpa fixed a meal. I don't remember her cooking much, honestly. Usually she and Grandpa would work together, one washing lettuce, another slicing cucumber... Or Grandpa would scramble eggs while Grandma got hot cocoa on. Anyway, I was at the table and I remember Grandma saying, "when I die, you can bury me ass-up and stamp Democrat on one cheek and Union on the other." It surprised me a little, then, that she ended up living for a decade or so with a very conservative blowhard, but I shouldn't have been too surprised -- as I said, she wanted companionship. As for the blowhard himself, I am glad he's dead, and that's all there is to say at this juncture (it is NOT because of his politics).
She had difficult feelings on race, which is probably normal for white 90 year olds from Oklahoma. I don't think I ever heard her use the N-word, but she would sometimes ask if I had a lot of Black students (she whispered "Black," as if she thought she was saying something a little bit scandalous), and whether it was hard to teach under those conditions. But when I talked about the realities of the kids I worked with, I know she listened, too. And when the family diversified, if you will -- I and two cousins married people who were half-Thai, half-Persian, and all-Persian -- she was delighted with them and us and the grand babies. It was never an issue.
She was often difficult and contradictory. If you told her something she didn't like, she wouldn't politely decline. She'd say "No" in a serious tone, while glaring at you over her trifocals. She hated zucchini, and would say "bleh!" if you mentioned it. She said she didn't care for chocolate, but she loved cocoa and See's candy. She thought my mother made the best German chocolate cake, and even though I took her slices that I'd made, she would never agree that I made it as well as my mom. (I thought about tricking her and telling her the slice was Mom's but I didn't. Can't lie to Grandma.)
She was demanding. She wanted things done her way, on her timeline, even if it was kind of a terrible idea. I have seen my dad whip his hat off to mop his brow, pace back and forth in a short line, and mutter, "she wants the goddamn thing in the -- fine. Fuck it. Fine." She would not be reasoned with. If you would not do the thing for her, someone else would. In fact, she might well ask two or three people to complete the same task, and if you did it second and then found out you had wasted your time, too bad!
She had little use for tact. In a restaurant, a waitress might breezily ask, "Are you liking the pasta?" and Grandma would look her in the eye and say, "I'm not." Then go on to explain why. I don't know why, but it never embarrassed me. I might drop a little extra tip afterwards and apologize, but I thought she was funny. She was a truth-teller and a critic and someone who got her way, not someone who coddled your feelings. There is a lot to admire in that.
When I showed up on her doorstep, more often than not she would say, "HA! You little shit!" She would laugh a high, tinkling belly laugh. She would hug and kiss me. She would let me and my cousins, then all the great-grandchildren, measure ourselves against her diminutive height and say, "not yet! Almost!" Azadeh was still "not yet."
And to my eternal wonderment, even at 90 years old, she still got on the floor to play with the kids. She would say, "oof" and "oh fanny" when doing so, but she always did, picking through toys, books, and color crayons to entertain the little ones, asking, "what have we got here?"
Once near my birthday I came over and she motioned me to her room. She had picked out a sweatsuit for me with appliqué flowers up and down the leg and top. She looked at the sweatsuit, looked at me (having been raised myself to value others' feelings over strict truth-telling, I was hunting desperately for a way to say I liked it, or how comfortable it looked), pointed at it accusingly, and said, "No, right? That's what I thought. I'm sending it back."
She was so strong. A real force of nature. Everyone in the family gravitated around her, and she liked it that way. Her memories in me are so strong that it's almost unbelievable that she's gone. I can still hear her voice -- partly, perhaps, because I have been imitating it for years. Kara Ellen! she would call me.
And she could be mean. I don't know what conversations ever took place between her and my step-mom, but there was a rift there that was irreparable, and I am sure that Grandma had a lot to do with it. One of my cousins had a girl lie to him (maybe!) about a pregnancy when she was a teenager and my grandma STILL thinks she's a bitch (they are married now).
Other times, she could be wildly inclusive. My cousin (or cousin's wife, really) cried on the phone with me the other night about the way that Grandma had brought her into the family, telling my cousin not to screw things up with her. My best friend (Monkeygirl) says that Grandma became her grandma some twenty years ago.
But what I mostly love about Grandma, to be brutally honest and openly selfish, was that she loved the snot out of me. She made me feel good about myself because she just liked me for me, laughed at my jokes, was happy to see me, and would feed me cookies. She loved me as a kid, she loved me as a young adult finding myself, and she loved me in her last days. She loved my kids, she loved my husband. She loved the writing I showed her (and had some notes for me). I never felt judged, or if I was judged, I never felt unloved because of it. I never thought I'd disappointed her. When I told her I was getting divorced after my first marriage, I knew I'd made her sad for me, and that was hard. But she didn't think I was wrong. She thought I was great.
At the very end, her memory was fading. It slipped pretty steadily over the last year. She would tell the same story with the same inflection three or four times in a sitting. I got the family, most of us, together for a family portrait last summer, and when I brought her the pictures, she tapped several people and struggled for their names, which I'd never known her to do. She wanted me to buy a plant for my mom, and she couldn't remember the name. She started flipping through her daybook looking for it, but forgot what she was looking for and ended up reading me several interesting snippets instead. (On my next visit I surprised her: "What was the name of that rose you wanted me to get?" "Sheila's Perfume.")
We were talking quietly while I painted her nails, and she sat back to rest. "What happened between Azadeh and Lochlan?" I had told her this, but I told her again; "I lost one, Grandma." "Well," she said. It was a "well" with a period after it, encompassing how our lives go sometimes. Losses. Returns. The things that are hard, but you move past them. The good things that happen that balance them out.
My Grandma is gone. My Grandma loved me. Well.
The new translation's first line has been banging around in my head: "Tell me about a complicated man."
The last post that I wrote here was important to me, but it was also ABOUT me. I shared it on Facebook as well, and my friends there were kind and supportive, and some of them said my grandma sounded like a wonderful person.
And she was. Asterisk.
But I also didn't actually describe her, and I've set myself that task today, because I don't want leave the impression that she was a be-aproned Nanna resting pies on the windowsill and crocheting afghans for the backs of countless couches. In many ways, that was my other grandma, and that's a story for another day.
My grandma Vida was a complicated woman.
I can sum up her early life thusly: I asked her once if she'd ever read "The Grapes of Wrath," and she answered, "no, but from what I have been told, that is our story." She was an Okie who came to California in the dust bowl. They were briefly migrant fruit-pickers, but they were bootstrap-grabbing strivers, too, and my great-grandpa helped lay all the roads around Chico, and my great-grandma was a doctor's assistant, and they ended up with a nice house and a nice life. Vida was an only child, and it sounds like she was probably a bit spoiled.
She became a cadet nurse during WWII, and it was then, though not in that capacity, that she met my grandfather. She was raised a Baptist, and Grandpa was a Catholic, so she had to promise to raise the kids Catholic as well.
In some ways, I don't know much about the years before the 70s. Dad can recall having a creditor at the front door and another on the phone. Most of the kids went to public school, but one of my uncles went to a private religious school. The photos of them from that time show a sharply dressed, handsome family. The boys were all attractive and athletic, and the girl is beautiful. My grandfather is dashing. My grandmother is stylish. I see myself in her. I see my cousins in my grandfather.
I only know bits and pieces. One brother stabs another with a fork over the last serving of a dish. Grandpa makes two of the boys fight. I don't know why. Dad gets in a horrific bike accident trying to jump a ramp on a bike loaded with newspapers. He still has dark shadows of gravel in his temple. Dad says my grandma was awful, but he's not a storyteller or a historian like my mom is. He prefers to let sleeping dogs lie.
My mom knew my dad from high school, but didn't get to know him, really, until she was living on her own and he was back from the Navy. Most of what I know comes from her. I love to listen to her stories and histories. As I got older, they got less sanitized, and I learned about the ways Grandma egged my grandfather to anger, or the ways she was selfish. I learned that pretty much every child, when they were ready (or not quite ready) to move out on their own had a raging fight with grandma, complete with yelling and slamming of doors. Then they were temporarily disowned.
This does not bother me. First of all, because by the time I came along, I never witnessed any of this. Second, because I love my grandmother, and I can excuse anything. In my mind, the story goes that she was so close to them, so dependent on them, that she couldn't let them leave in a healthy way and had to kick up a fuss to make it easier on herself. I have no idea if this is true. Maybe she was just a harridan. It doesn't matter to me, because she was never unkind to me.
~~~~~~~~
Interlude:
When we talk about intersectionality, one of the things we're talking about is how some groups are left out of the conversation. Here's an example: some feminists like to argue that women first worked outside the home and entered the workforce in the 70s. But the Black women who were enslaved, then who worked as domestic help hear that statement and wonder where their history is in that statement. They wonder if feminism is for them.
But others are left out, too. The Chinese women who ran laundries. Poor white women.
I don't know that "poor" is a good descriptor for my family on either side (as they owned their own homes, had cars, etc.), but both of my grandmothers worked, and my great-grandmother did, too.
~~~~~~~~~
Grandma was bossy, she was temperamental, and when she fixated on an idea, it had to be done. In the 70s, she ordered curtains for her home with alternating blue and green panels, then blue and green sofas and carpet as well. Her bedroom had a purple paisley carpet, and when she moved to another home a few years ago, she insisted that her kids bring that crazy Jefferson Airplane-looking carpet to her new home. They did.
Shit, two weeks before she died, she insisted that she get a haircut like my dad's (i.e. super-short) and she wouldn't stop nagging people until someone agreed to do it. Even then, she didn't wait, and cut it badly herself.
I can remember her getting mad at someone (one of her kids) and demanding that they all return the keys to her house. More than once.
If she didn't like something, she stuck her tongue out or waved her hand dismissively, or said "phooey."
She would tell you exactly what she thought about your choices, about someone else's choices, about the decades-old choice that she never understood. She would tell you about the grudge she held. She had strong opinions on food, music, media, celebrities... Much of what you liked could be responded to with a "Hmf" or a "Bah."
She kept junk food in the house at all times. In one cabinet in the kitchen were usually 4-6 packages of cookies -- Flaky Flix and Nilla Wafers and Ginger Snaps. In a blue jar by the door were Starburst. An outdoor fridge held several kinds of soda and juice.
I'm sure health-conscious parents like my mom were somewhat horrified, but there was never less junk food.
Grandma and Grandpa were the primary caregivers for five of my cousins. I stayed with my other grandma, and my older cousins were with their mom. By the time the youngest two came along, my grandparents were too tired and had to decline.
They were still little when my grandfather died and broke my heart. This isn't a grandpa story, but I mean this and nothing less -- the death of my grandfather changed the trajectory of my life.
Grandma was sad, like anyone would be. And she was lonely, too. She was a woman who had lived with her partner for 53 years and who had brought up two generations of noisy children. In my lifetime, especially in my early childhood, we spent Christmas eve there, but also many many weekend nights. The adults played pinochle and my cousins and I mostly turned over a table and pretended it was a boat. We visited. It was common for people to be there -- an auntie picking up the kids, an uncle stopping in after the work day. For a while, one aunt and uncle lived next door and another directly across the street. My dad lived and lives a few blocks further. When I was grown, sometimes I would drop by, too, and most of the time someone else was already there.
So without Grandpa, and with the adult kids moving away and the grandkids bigger.... Grandma complained a little, and then she went out and did her own shit. She volunteered with an organization that went to local schools and put sealants on the kids' teeth. She joined the Widowed Person's Association and went to their events. She served breakfasts at the Elks Lodge. She was totally trolling for dudes, too -- there is no need to gloss that over. She wanted a partner again. She missed having one. I think that is okay. I think her adult kids had an adjustment phase with that idea.
She had been interested in genealogy, even traveling with Grandpa to find more information to Pella, Iowa. She always had computers and was a very early adopter of new technology, even if she very rarely knew how to use it. I'm sure I was about twelve when I went over and she had the younger kids playing Reader Rabbit. She used it for her genealogy, too, and made many contacts that way.
She stayed busy and engaged with the world. One of her daily habits was reading the newspaper cover to cover and clipping things she found to be of interest. I remember once sitting at the table while she and my grandpa fixed a meal. I don't remember her cooking much, honestly. Usually she and Grandpa would work together, one washing lettuce, another slicing cucumber... Or Grandpa would scramble eggs while Grandma got hot cocoa on. Anyway, I was at the table and I remember Grandma saying, "when I die, you can bury me ass-up and stamp Democrat on one cheek and Union on the other." It surprised me a little, then, that she ended up living for a decade or so with a very conservative blowhard, but I shouldn't have been too surprised -- as I said, she wanted companionship. As for the blowhard himself, I am glad he's dead, and that's all there is to say at this juncture (it is NOT because of his politics).
She had difficult feelings on race, which is probably normal for white 90 year olds from Oklahoma. I don't think I ever heard her use the N-word, but she would sometimes ask if I had a lot of Black students (she whispered "Black," as if she thought she was saying something a little bit scandalous), and whether it was hard to teach under those conditions. But when I talked about the realities of the kids I worked with, I know she listened, too. And when the family diversified, if you will -- I and two cousins married people who were half-Thai, half-Persian, and all-Persian -- she was delighted with them and us and the grand babies. It was never an issue.
She was often difficult and contradictory. If you told her something she didn't like, she wouldn't politely decline. She'd say "No" in a serious tone, while glaring at you over her trifocals. She hated zucchini, and would say "bleh!" if you mentioned it. She said she didn't care for chocolate, but she loved cocoa and See's candy. She thought my mother made the best German chocolate cake, and even though I took her slices that I'd made, she would never agree that I made it as well as my mom. (I thought about tricking her and telling her the slice was Mom's but I didn't. Can't lie to Grandma.)
She was demanding. She wanted things done her way, on her timeline, even if it was kind of a terrible idea. I have seen my dad whip his hat off to mop his brow, pace back and forth in a short line, and mutter, "she wants the goddamn thing in the -- fine. Fuck it. Fine." She would not be reasoned with. If you would not do the thing for her, someone else would. In fact, she might well ask two or three people to complete the same task, and if you did it second and then found out you had wasted your time, too bad!
She had little use for tact. In a restaurant, a waitress might breezily ask, "Are you liking the pasta?" and Grandma would look her in the eye and say, "I'm not." Then go on to explain why. I don't know why, but it never embarrassed me. I might drop a little extra tip afterwards and apologize, but I thought she was funny. She was a truth-teller and a critic and someone who got her way, not someone who coddled your feelings. There is a lot to admire in that.
When I showed up on her doorstep, more often than not she would say, "HA! You little shit!" She would laugh a high, tinkling belly laugh. She would hug and kiss me. She would let me and my cousins, then all the great-grandchildren, measure ourselves against her diminutive height and say, "not yet! Almost!" Azadeh was still "not yet."
And to my eternal wonderment, even at 90 years old, she still got on the floor to play with the kids. She would say, "oof" and "oh fanny" when doing so, but she always did, picking through toys, books, and color crayons to entertain the little ones, asking, "what have we got here?"
Once near my birthday I came over and she motioned me to her room. She had picked out a sweatsuit for me with appliqué flowers up and down the leg and top. She looked at the sweatsuit, looked at me (having been raised myself to value others' feelings over strict truth-telling, I was hunting desperately for a way to say I liked it, or how comfortable it looked), pointed at it accusingly, and said, "No, right? That's what I thought. I'm sending it back."
She was so strong. A real force of nature. Everyone in the family gravitated around her, and she liked it that way. Her memories in me are so strong that it's almost unbelievable that she's gone. I can still hear her voice -- partly, perhaps, because I have been imitating it for years. Kara Ellen! she would call me.
And she could be mean. I don't know what conversations ever took place between her and my step-mom, but there was a rift there that was irreparable, and I am sure that Grandma had a lot to do with it. One of my cousins had a girl lie to him (maybe!) about a pregnancy when she was a teenager and my grandma STILL thinks she's a bitch (they are married now).
Other times, she could be wildly inclusive. My cousin (or cousin's wife, really) cried on the phone with me the other night about the way that Grandma had brought her into the family, telling my cousin not to screw things up with her. My best friend (Monkeygirl) says that Grandma became her grandma some twenty years ago.
But what I mostly love about Grandma, to be brutally honest and openly selfish, was that she loved the snot out of me. She made me feel good about myself because she just liked me for me, laughed at my jokes, was happy to see me, and would feed me cookies. She loved me as a kid, she loved me as a young adult finding myself, and she loved me in her last days. She loved my kids, she loved my husband. She loved the writing I showed her (and had some notes for me). I never felt judged, or if I was judged, I never felt unloved because of it. I never thought I'd disappointed her. When I told her I was getting divorced after my first marriage, I knew I'd made her sad for me, and that was hard. But she didn't think I was wrong. She thought I was great.
At the very end, her memory was fading. It slipped pretty steadily over the last year. She would tell the same story with the same inflection three or four times in a sitting. I got the family, most of us, together for a family portrait last summer, and when I brought her the pictures, she tapped several people and struggled for their names, which I'd never known her to do. She wanted me to buy a plant for my mom, and she couldn't remember the name. She started flipping through her daybook looking for it, but forgot what she was looking for and ended up reading me several interesting snippets instead. (On my next visit I surprised her: "What was the name of that rose you wanted me to get?" "Sheila's Perfume.")
We were talking quietly while I painted her nails, and she sat back to rest. "What happened between Azadeh and Lochlan?" I had told her this, but I told her again; "I lost one, Grandma." "Well," she said. It was a "well" with a period after it, encompassing how our lives go sometimes. Losses. Returns. The things that are hard, but you move past them. The good things that happen that balance them out.
My Grandma is gone. My Grandma loved me. Well.
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
Granny.
I went and visited Granny with the kids a few days before Azadeh's birthday. She was happy to see them, offered Azadeh a globe, showed me the things that were meant to go to certain people. We talked about what she wanted for a funeral service and I took notes. I did a sink full of dishes again.
Sometimes I worry that I don't show love very well. I don't know that washing some dishes does it, or painting her nails. I would rather pull an opposite-Indiana-Jones and stuff my heart right into her through her ribcage to know she really felt it.
Calm down, it's a metaphor.
When we were gone to Oregon for Spring Break, she was transferred into a hospice facility. I worried she would die when I was gone. I told myself it didn't matter. I ached. She didn't die while we were gone. I felt guilty that the force of my will kept her alive when she was probably ready to go. I do not believe in mystical shit like the force of my will. Also I completely do. Also I was relieved.
I did not talk about my grandmother while we were in Oregon, even though my family there is so wonderful and sweet and caring and would have wrapped me in love. I did not want to cry there. I desperately wanted to tell them, to cry, to be wrapped in love.
I am not complaining, but my life with an autistic kid keeps me pretty scheduled-up. We have, at the moment, two days of in-home therapy and one at a clinic across town. I could not go see her Monday or Tuesday.
My dad came over Tuesday to take Azadeh to dance class, and I talked with him about going to see her. He thought it was pointless. To do what *I* needed to do, but if it was for her... well, he didn't think I would really be able to offer her any comfort.
I wanted to give her comfort. I wanted to have the comfort myself of seeing her one last time. I desperately did not want to see her near death. It felt important not to abandon her on her deathbed.
I went today. I got there at 3:30 with Lochlan, sat him in the chair at the foot of the bed that did not have a good view of her, as she looked something less than human. She was so yellow as to be almost orange. She had lost weight, and her dentures were out. She stared into the distance and breathed a rattling breath.
I pulled up a chair. I had brought the same color nail polish I'd painted her nails with last time. I had brought hand lotion. I noted the pretty flowers and the pictures of her grandkids around the room. I did not want to pull her hands from under her comforter. They seemed to belong there.
I put my hand under the comforter and held hers gently. I would like to tell you that she squeezed back. She did not. Her hand was very warm.
I sang her some songs -- Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, and Patsy Cline. Lochlan played with my phone and ignored us, but when I started "I Walk the Line," he stood up in the chair, watched her face, and sang along with me. I would like to say she inclined her head or fluttered her eyes in response. Perhaps there was a jerk of movement. I think not.
I cried a little, and it made Lochlan nervous. He said she wasn't feeling well and probably had the flu. I said she was going to die. He asked why. I told him a long story about plants, and how they are seeds, then plants, then they bear fruit, then winter comes and they start to lose their green, and their energy returns to nature. I said humans are like that, but over 90 years instead of a season.
I stood up so I could reach her over the bedrail, stroked her hair. I told her she had been a very good grandmother. I told her she had always been strong and brave, and she was doing something very strong and brave now.
I said to her the little rhyme she always said to me -- and I always say to my kids -- when she tucked me in at night: "I love you little, I love you big, I love you like a little pig."
I grabbed my purse to go, but Lochlan seemed to think it was vitally important that I say it again. So for a second time, I tucked her in to sleep with her own loving rhyme.
We left.
A few hours later, she died.
I am so happy, so relieved, so at peace with how she went -- quickly, with little pain, on her own terms and on her own timeline.
I am so lucky to have had her for 42 years. I am so glad that she was agile and healthy almost to the very end.
I am so grateful to have been loved so well, to know I was loved, to have her know that I loved her.
I am so sad and heartbroken and grief-stricken that I will never again get to spend time with her, hear her laugh, hear her cuss. I passed the ice cream fountain down the street from us tonight and mused that I will never again call her while we walk there, which I used to do in nice weather. I suspect I will experience a number of these surprising mini-griefs in the coming months.
I don't know what else to say. I have a lot more to say.
Tonight I tucked in the sweet boy I wasn't sure I'd have, but she helped me confront my bullshit excuses.
Then I tucked in the girl who, in the first days of her life, surprised us all by making a face that was unmistakably Granny Vida's face.
My dad is the fruit she bore. I am the fruit he bore. They are the fruit I bore. Someday all our energy will return to the earth. This is okay. It is also devastating.
Sometimes I worry that I don't show love very well. I don't know that washing some dishes does it, or painting her nails. I would rather pull an opposite-Indiana-Jones and stuff my heart right into her through her ribcage to know she really felt it.
Calm down, it's a metaphor.
When we were gone to Oregon for Spring Break, she was transferred into a hospice facility. I worried she would die when I was gone. I told myself it didn't matter. I ached. She didn't die while we were gone. I felt guilty that the force of my will kept her alive when she was probably ready to go. I do not believe in mystical shit like the force of my will. Also I completely do. Also I was relieved.
I did not talk about my grandmother while we were in Oregon, even though my family there is so wonderful and sweet and caring and would have wrapped me in love. I did not want to cry there. I desperately wanted to tell them, to cry, to be wrapped in love.
I am not complaining, but my life with an autistic kid keeps me pretty scheduled-up. We have, at the moment, two days of in-home therapy and one at a clinic across town. I could not go see her Monday or Tuesday.
My dad came over Tuesday to take Azadeh to dance class, and I talked with him about going to see her. He thought it was pointless. To do what *I* needed to do, but if it was for her... well, he didn't think I would really be able to offer her any comfort.
I wanted to give her comfort. I wanted to have the comfort myself of seeing her one last time. I desperately did not want to see her near death. It felt important not to abandon her on her deathbed.
I went today. I got there at 3:30 with Lochlan, sat him in the chair at the foot of the bed that did not have a good view of her, as she looked something less than human. She was so yellow as to be almost orange. She had lost weight, and her dentures were out. She stared into the distance and breathed a rattling breath.
I pulled up a chair. I had brought the same color nail polish I'd painted her nails with last time. I had brought hand lotion. I noted the pretty flowers and the pictures of her grandkids around the room. I did not want to pull her hands from under her comforter. They seemed to belong there.
I put my hand under the comforter and held hers gently. I would like to tell you that she squeezed back. She did not. Her hand was very warm.
I sang her some songs -- Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, and Patsy Cline. Lochlan played with my phone and ignored us, but when I started "I Walk the Line," he stood up in the chair, watched her face, and sang along with me. I would like to say she inclined her head or fluttered her eyes in response. Perhaps there was a jerk of movement. I think not.
I cried a little, and it made Lochlan nervous. He said she wasn't feeling well and probably had the flu. I said she was going to die. He asked why. I told him a long story about plants, and how they are seeds, then plants, then they bear fruit, then winter comes and they start to lose their green, and their energy returns to nature. I said humans are like that, but over 90 years instead of a season.
I stood up so I could reach her over the bedrail, stroked her hair. I told her she had been a very good grandmother. I told her she had always been strong and brave, and she was doing something very strong and brave now.
I said to her the little rhyme she always said to me -- and I always say to my kids -- when she tucked me in at night: "I love you little, I love you big, I love you like a little pig."
I grabbed my purse to go, but Lochlan seemed to think it was vitally important that I say it again. So for a second time, I tucked her in to sleep with her own loving rhyme.
We left.
A few hours later, she died.
I am so happy, so relieved, so at peace with how she went -- quickly, with little pain, on her own terms and on her own timeline.
I am so lucky to have had her for 42 years. I am so glad that she was agile and healthy almost to the very end.
I am so grateful to have been loved so well, to know I was loved, to have her know that I loved her.
I am so sad and heartbroken and grief-stricken that I will never again get to spend time with her, hear her laugh, hear her cuss. I passed the ice cream fountain down the street from us tonight and mused that I will never again call her while we walk there, which I used to do in nice weather. I suspect I will experience a number of these surprising mini-griefs in the coming months.
I don't know what else to say. I have a lot more to say.
Tonight I tucked in the sweet boy I wasn't sure I'd have, but she helped me confront my bullshit excuses.
Then I tucked in the girl who, in the first days of her life, surprised us all by making a face that was unmistakably Granny Vida's face.
My dad is the fruit she bore. I am the fruit he bore. They are the fruit I bore. Someday all our energy will return to the earth. This is okay. It is also devastating.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Twenty years
I'm probably going to have a few more posts about Grandma, so yeah.
Anyway, I talked to her on the phone yesterday, including about death. I try to be really straightforward with her, because I think she prefers it. So she was telling me how it was time, and reminded me that she's lived for twenty years without my grandfather. I hadn't thought of it that way. Can you imagine being in love with someone and married to them for over fifty years, and then having to be without them for twenty more? We talked about all the good things she's been able to experience in those twenty years, including the births of many of the great-grandchildren, and she emphasized how much she loved my kids, how nice it was to see them last weekend. But she believes she'll be reunited with my grandpa, her husband, after death. And I can imagine that it has felt like a pretty long wait.
Anyway, I talked to her on the phone yesterday, including about death. I try to be really straightforward with her, because I think she prefers it. So she was telling me how it was time, and reminded me that she's lived for twenty years without my grandfather. I hadn't thought of it that way. Can you imagine being in love with someone and married to them for over fifty years, and then having to be without them for twenty more? We talked about all the good things she's been able to experience in those twenty years, including the births of many of the great-grandchildren, and she emphasized how much she loved my kids, how nice it was to see them last weekend. But she believes she'll be reunited with my grandpa, her husband, after death. And I can imagine that it has felt like a pretty long wait.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Granny
Dear Dad: You might skip this one.
Getting this out of the way up front: my grandma is dying.
My other grandmother died last November. And although even thinking this probably makes me a shitty person, this one is the *good* grandma.
I mean, not good like jolly and baking pies and shit good.
Good like genuinely interested in my life and the lives of those close to me.
But she's not all sweet and lovey-dovey. She's prickly as fuck. Here is an example: I talked to her on the phone last night and she asked me to call my cousin and tell her -- and I quote! -- that she needed to bring over a new photo of the baby "or I will walk over there and kick the shit out of her."
I almost laughed myself silly once at a restaurant when a waiter came by, gestured to my grandma's plate (which had ONE bite of uneaten salad on it that had been sitting there for twenty minutes) and said, "I can take that for you." She almost stabbed him with the fork, saying, "No you will not!"
Most of the time when I show up on her doorstep she leans her head back so she can take me in (she's about 4'9") and says, "You little shit!" She calls Lochlan, whom she loves "to pieces," a little fart-blossom.
She is and has been inexplicable and moody and wholly tied to routine. She is vulgar and loving and strong and stubborn, and when she decides on something neither heaven nor hell can stop her. She is a freight train of single-mindedness. And she decided a long time ago that she wasn't living past 90. God himself could not change her mind now. I think this crazy old lady willed herself some liver cancer.
I am desperate for her to stay, and for one reason only. I LIKE her. Not even love. I love a lot of people, her included. But I just get a fucking kick out of her. I enjoy her company. She makes me laugh.
When I was little, one of my strongest memories, probably because it got repeated hundreds of times, was leaving my grandparents' house. They would stand on the porch in more or less any weather, and wave at you until you were out of sight.
Our phone conversations are laughably, historically, epically long, because she asks me about every member of my family and my best friend, and then she tells me about my aunts and uncles and cousins. Starting about twenty minutes before we hang up, she'll say, "Well, I don't know anything new. Do you?" But then she'll think of something new.
It is a compliment for her to call a child a "love." But if she calls them a "rascal," then you know that child has delighted her. She makes no bones about telling you who she is mad at. But she is also the first to remind you of all the good qualities of someone you are lucky to have.
She doesn't mind asking for favors. I think she relishes asking for favors. If you stop by to drop something up, she will heave herself out of a chair, start to waddle down the hall, gesture for you to come too, and say, "come in here a minute." And then you will have to fix her computer or set up her printer or find the right kind of day planner or something. And god forbid you say you will do it and then actually do it, because she has already asked six other people who are also on the case.
My grandpa died when I was 23, and I was crazy about him, too. He wasn't the same as her, but they complemented each other well. He could be passionate, too, but he was often gentle. Like her, he loved spending time with the grandchildren and would tell stories of their exploits, laughing.
They both love/d me so much. It is sure something to be loved like that.
When Grandpa was in the hospital, we all gathered around. Most of their children and me and my oldest cousin. We had wandered around the waiting room and cafeteria and his room, milling about as he lay in his hospital bed, unmoving and unshaven (I had never seen it!). But then we were called in for A Meeting in an unadorned and brightly lit room, and we were told of Our Options, and I am not exaggerating when I say that every head in that room WHIPPED to look at my grandma. Because it wasn't our decision. It wasn't even up for discussion. It fell on her. And she was ready. Facing the doctor, she held her head high and steady. "Buddy and I have been married for fifty-three years," she began. It ended with a decision to take him off life support.
At the funeral, the family sat in a little side room -- at a funeral home I can see from my front yard, oddly enough. A bagpiper played Amazing Grace, people said some beautiful and some true things, there was a chance to view the body that I passed on, and then we were leaving. There were deli trays at Grandma-and-Grandpa's -- no, now just Grandma's -- house. People filed out into the sunshine. But I was not leaving, because fuck that. If I left, it was over-over. It was real, and my chance to mourn publicly and be in a place where I could still JUST CRY was gone and I exit into a world where there was no more Grandpa. So fuck it -- I might as well have been welded to the bench. Grandma was the only one left with me, and she beckoned me with that same gesture she makes to have you follow her down the hall. I told her I wasn't ready, and she looked over her glasses at me and said, "come on."
What I'm saying is, she has taught me a lot about knowing when it is time to let go.
Fifteen or so years ago, when she first told me she would not live past 90, I tried to brush her off. She might be in great health! Who knows what the future holds!
Last year, when she was turning 90, she told me that she didn't want to live forever. I said I wanted just five more years, just so my kids would really have her memories cemented in their minds, as I did of her own mother.
When I found out this week that she has cancer and is uninterested in treating it, I knew what I had to do.
I went over to visit, and I painted her nails. We did not talk about her sickness, other than me asking if she was comfortable or in pain. As I sat on the floor in front of her, my eyes on the pink paint, I said, "Grandma, I told you I needed five more years out of you. But that was wrong, and I take it back. You can do whatever the hell you want." "Thank you," she said.
I don't know whether this is a weeks thing or a months thing. But I know one thing about my grandmother, and that is that she is as stubborn as a mule. She has decided not to live past 90, and she will not be doing so, god damnit.
I don't know anything new. Do you?
Getting this out of the way up front: my grandma is dying.
My other grandmother died last November. And although even thinking this probably makes me a shitty person, this one is the *good* grandma.
I mean, not good like jolly and baking pies and shit good.
Good like genuinely interested in my life and the lives of those close to me.
But she's not all sweet and lovey-dovey. She's prickly as fuck. Here is an example: I talked to her on the phone last night and she asked me to call my cousin and tell her -- and I quote! -- that she needed to bring over a new photo of the baby "or I will walk over there and kick the shit out of her."
I almost laughed myself silly once at a restaurant when a waiter came by, gestured to my grandma's plate (which had ONE bite of uneaten salad on it that had been sitting there for twenty minutes) and said, "I can take that for you." She almost stabbed him with the fork, saying, "No you will not!"
Most of the time when I show up on her doorstep she leans her head back so she can take me in (she's about 4'9") and says, "You little shit!" She calls Lochlan, whom she loves "to pieces," a little fart-blossom.
She is and has been inexplicable and moody and wholly tied to routine. She is vulgar and loving and strong and stubborn, and when she decides on something neither heaven nor hell can stop her. She is a freight train of single-mindedness. And she decided a long time ago that she wasn't living past 90. God himself could not change her mind now. I think this crazy old lady willed herself some liver cancer.
I am desperate for her to stay, and for one reason only. I LIKE her. Not even love. I love a lot of people, her included. But I just get a fucking kick out of her. I enjoy her company. She makes me laugh.
When I was little, one of my strongest memories, probably because it got repeated hundreds of times, was leaving my grandparents' house. They would stand on the porch in more or less any weather, and wave at you until you were out of sight.
Our phone conversations are laughably, historically, epically long, because she asks me about every member of my family and my best friend, and then she tells me about my aunts and uncles and cousins. Starting about twenty minutes before we hang up, she'll say, "Well, I don't know anything new. Do you?" But then she'll think of something new.
It is a compliment for her to call a child a "love." But if she calls them a "rascal," then you know that child has delighted her. She makes no bones about telling you who she is mad at. But she is also the first to remind you of all the good qualities of someone you are lucky to have.
She doesn't mind asking for favors. I think she relishes asking for favors. If you stop by to drop something up, she will heave herself out of a chair, start to waddle down the hall, gesture for you to come too, and say, "come in here a minute." And then you will have to fix her computer or set up her printer or find the right kind of day planner or something. And god forbid you say you will do it and then actually do it, because she has already asked six other people who are also on the case.
My grandpa died when I was 23, and I was crazy about him, too. He wasn't the same as her, but they complemented each other well. He could be passionate, too, but he was often gentle. Like her, he loved spending time with the grandchildren and would tell stories of their exploits, laughing.
They both love/d me so much. It is sure something to be loved like that.
When Grandpa was in the hospital, we all gathered around. Most of their children and me and my oldest cousin. We had wandered around the waiting room and cafeteria and his room, milling about as he lay in his hospital bed, unmoving and unshaven (I had never seen it!). But then we were called in for A Meeting in an unadorned and brightly lit room, and we were told of Our Options, and I am not exaggerating when I say that every head in that room WHIPPED to look at my grandma. Because it wasn't our decision. It wasn't even up for discussion. It fell on her. And she was ready. Facing the doctor, she held her head high and steady. "Buddy and I have been married for fifty-three years," she began. It ended with a decision to take him off life support.
At the funeral, the family sat in a little side room -- at a funeral home I can see from my front yard, oddly enough. A bagpiper played Amazing Grace, people said some beautiful and some true things, there was a chance to view the body that I passed on, and then we were leaving. There were deli trays at Grandma-and-Grandpa's -- no, now just Grandma's -- house. People filed out into the sunshine. But I was not leaving, because fuck that. If I left, it was over-over. It was real, and my chance to mourn publicly and be in a place where I could still JUST CRY was gone and I exit into a world where there was no more Grandpa. So fuck it -- I might as well have been welded to the bench. Grandma was the only one left with me, and she beckoned me with that same gesture she makes to have you follow her down the hall. I told her I wasn't ready, and she looked over her glasses at me and said, "come on."
What I'm saying is, she has taught me a lot about knowing when it is time to let go.
Fifteen or so years ago, when she first told me she would not live past 90, I tried to brush her off. She might be in great health! Who knows what the future holds!
Last year, when she was turning 90, she told me that she didn't want to live forever. I said I wanted just five more years, just so my kids would really have her memories cemented in their minds, as I did of her own mother.
When I found out this week that she has cancer and is uninterested in treating it, I knew what I had to do.
I went over to visit, and I painted her nails. We did not talk about her sickness, other than me asking if she was comfortable or in pain. As I sat on the floor in front of her, my eyes on the pink paint, I said, "Grandma, I told you I needed five more years out of you. But that was wrong, and I take it back. You can do whatever the hell you want." "Thank you," she said.
I don't know whether this is a weeks thing or a months thing. But I know one thing about my grandmother, and that is that she is as stubborn as a mule. She has decided not to live past 90, and she will not be doing so, god damnit.
I don't know anything new. Do you?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)