This Is 36

Ten years ago I was the perfect mom. I mean, not to be a Braggy Braggerton but I really had the parenting business buttoned up.

I was a twenty-five-year old stay-at-home mom doing just what I had always wanted. I had done my time in college and graduate school and now after five years of married life, I was getting down to business in the field of my dreams. I lived in a little World War II-era bungalow near Sugarhouse Park where Jeff worked out of his office in the basement and I spent my days caring for our darling one-year-old son.

Every morning I brisk-walked to the park with a group of my friends. We pushed our toddlers in jogging strollers while discussing baby milestones, post-pregnancy recovery, and adjusting to one income. I started a play group and a book club. I canned my own strawberry jam. I volunteered at the church cannery and got abnormally excited about creating a home food storage plan. I handmade our family's Christmas cards. I learned to piece a patchwork quilt and hand-quilted a small masterpiece for Henry. I cleaned my tiny house every Monday, took my child to the zoo every Wednesday, and visited story time at the library every Friday. I was the president of the Young Women's organization at church. I hiked nearby trails with my friend Angie, with my baby on my back. I took a thirty-minute power nap every afternoon while Henry slept.

It seemed every time I left the house with my precocious, curly, strawberry-blond son, friends and strangers alike complimented me on my adorable little boy.

I mean seriously. When it came to motherhood, I had nailed it.

A lot can happen in ten years.

We now live in a much bigger house and I drive a much bigger car. We have four sons instead of one. I no longer can jam or hand-stitch quilts or hand-craft cards. And I certainly do not take a nap every afternoon. But it's not just the trappings that have changed in my life.

Inwardly and outwardly, everything feels different.

With Jack's birth nine years ago, my family's trajectory changed in a big way. Beginning then, we entered the realm of different. We learned about developmental delay. We aligned ourselves with Early Intervention and a support group. We stopped going out in public much because of our second child's meltdowns. Everything became harder.

In recent months we learned that our third child also has special-needs, albeit in a very different manifestation than his big brother. This turn of events has not been easier than the last diagnosis because we have done it before. If anything, it feels more traumatic because we have done it before. And now there are two.

But with Charlie's diagnoses (he has four), my clan has become more of what we started to become when Jack joined the family. We are less apt to judge people who look or act differently. We are vastly more tolerant of messes because they are our constant companions, no matter how hard we try to eradicate them. We understand that "destruction of property" takes on a whole new meaning when special-needs children are around. We (meaning me) are way less smug. In fact, we (me) acknowledge that most of the time, we don't know what the heck we are doing. We've learned to say no when people ask us to do stuff because it usually takes us past the tipping point. We are kinder. We are more patient. We feel genuine empathy for someone else's hardship. We aren't anywhere near perfect. We don't even care about perfect. We think perfect should be drop-kicked down the street.

This isn't the family I envisioned as a newly-wed or even as a young know-it-all mom of one kid. But it's my family. And they are making me into somebody better.

Yellowstone: Oldest & Best

We took a family vacation last week to Yellowstone National Park. It is the first trip we have taken since half of our children have received complicated diagnoses. It's the first real family getaway in nine years.

And it was a success.

It was short and busy and super fun.

It felt like a giant victory.

I felt repeated inward amazement that we were camping and everybody was behaving themselves. We were driving long distances and people were generally pleasant. We were hiking to waterfalls and looking at geysers and spotting bison. We were not wiping poop off walls or stimming off electronics or tantruming about eating lunch. We were traveling, by gum, and enjoying ourselves!

It wasn't perfect. We discovered a few gems that we are salting away for the next vacation: Pringles, for instance (Jack demands we must bring oodles of them), and more gum (those sensory-seeking boys thrive on chewing it), along with the road trip car kits for the boys (place them in the car next time, and don't forget them at home). Nuggets of wisdom we gleaned from experience, each.

I learned that camping is no excuse for lousy cuisine, at least according to my sister, whose family we camped by. You've never eaten Tandoori chicken while camping? Well, then you've never camped with my sis. Greek yogurt parfaits with berries and almond granola, veggie-laden taco salads, and spaghetti with skillet-toasted garlic ciabatta rounded out their "roughing it" meals, which made our s'mores and cheddar brats look like amateur hour.

We found that Jack does not like any sustained uphill climbing, but he absolutely loves scampering and skipping along a downward slope. Charlie, it appears, has a way of finagling piggy-back rides from any familiar face during longer hikes. Henry, as we suspected all along, has an eagle eye for spotting wildlife and always enjoys a game of pick-up football, even in the wilderness.

My family went to Yellowstone every year when I was a child. I remember from my preschool years descending the hundreds of metal stairs on Uncle Tom's Trail along the sulfurous yellow canyon walls to stand in the roaring mist of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. The Biscuit Basin geyser boardwalk and the trail to Morning Glory pool are paths I can easily retrace in my mind, they are so familiar.

The last time we took our little brood on such a family vacation was when Henry was two and Jack a newborn. Then life intervened and the crap hit the fan, so to speak. It felt mildly revolutionary to be back after a nine-year hiatus during which time we could barley function at home, let alone in the woods. With hot pots. And buffalo. And many, many European and Asian tourists.

There was a strange and fabulous moment last week as we finished rounding a geyser basin and headed to get ice cream cones at the Hamilton Store across the way. A young man completely decked out in cold weather gear and photographic accoutrements barreled across a wooden bridge toward us. He didn't break his running stride when he saw us, but he called out to us, a group of complete strangers, that nearby Beehive geyser was about to erupt. "It's happening in ninety seconds!" he enthused. His excitement was airborne.

It vaguely reminded me of an experience as a teen during a trip over Dunraven Pass between Canyon and Roosevelt. We were driving around in the twilight hoping to see animals as they became more active at dusk. A group of cars had stopped in a pull-out overlooking a sweeping valley. My dad lowered his window and asked, "What do you see?" An exuberant young man replied without missing a beat, "Bears! In an hour!" as if the wildlife were waiting behind a curtain for the clock to tick to show time.

That animal-rich viewing drive is still known as Bears In An Hour to my people.

Yellowstone is glorious. I don't blame anyone for being freak-show excited about experiencing it.

When we climbed last week to Mystic Falls, picnicked at Nez Prez, and tramped along the Old Faithful geyser boardwalk, my psyche marveled at what we seemingly nonchalantly had achieved: we came back.

"This is happening," I thrilled. "We are actually doing this."

I almost wanted to scream it out to a pack of tourists at Grand Prismatic pool.

Pioneering Spirit

The youth from our church just returned from Trek, which is a reenactment of sorts of our Latter-day Saint pioneer ancestors who crossed the Great Plains of the United States in the mid-1800's. The pioneers were escaping religious persecution in Missouri and elsewhere, and made the long, harrowing journey on foot to the Salt Lake Valley where they could live and worship in peace. They faced hunger, cold, disease, wolves, and freezing rivers on their way west. Many died en route.

It has been entertaining to read the newly-updated Facebook and Instagram accounts of the teens in my neighborhood rejoicing over toilets, hot showers, and soft beds waiting for them at home. Many of them have posted about their awakening gratitude for the faith, fortitude, and courage of their ancestors. The pioneer clothing, the handcart-pulling, and the "roughing it" conditions are designed not just to help the youth appreciate modern creature comforts; the Trek experience affords participants an experience in examining their faith.

It gives people a change to don a dress, apron, and bonnet (or trousers, button-downs, and hats), pull a handcart across a dusty plain, push themselves physically, and evaluate if they would've had the faith sufficient to do this for months. For real. With no support crews driving into camp each day with hot meals and a fresh supply of drinking water.

It's a spiritual journey.

I didn't get to go with the youth on this Trek, but I did experience an enlightening and memorable pioneer trek when I was sixteen. This time, my contribution consisted of preparing beef stew and chocolate chip cookies to feed the weary Trekkers. I would've liked to participate with my young women class this week, but it wasn't meant to be, and it's okay. Here's why:

I am currently on a lengthy, dusty, rigorous pioneer journey of my own. I'm raising two children with autism, both who have other complicated diagnoses as well. I also have two typically-developing children with their own needs and challenges. It's a life-long journey. It's totally rugged. Sometimes I absolutely feel like I'm on a trail in the middle of the wilderness.

I don't have to deal with wolves, and cooking over a fire, and giving birth in a wagon on the trail. My challenges are in raising sons who have behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and communication issues. I clean up a lot of poop. I'm navigating my sons' healthcare and education. We do a lot of therapy. We work on overcoming the bigger stumbling blocks as we shepherd the boys toward greater functionality.

My journey is not harder or easier than my pioneer ancestors'. They are both strenuous. The common denominator for us is faith. None of us feels that we are on this trail alone.

I've been humming the hymn "Come, Come Ye Saints" all week. One phrase from the second verse has been an inspirational bit of manna to me.

"Gird up your loins," it says
"Fresh courage take.
Our God will never us forsake."

It's enough to shake you out of your reverie, pull you to your feet, and encourage you to keep on pioneering. That's what it does for me, anyway.

And then this bit of Old Testament wisdom from the book of Joshua was a balm on my trail-weary feet:

 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest." 

It's a rocky trail: vast and overwhelming in it's length and complexity. But knowing I'm not going it alone makes it better. Happier. Smoother.

Summer Fever

When the mom gets sick and it's summertime, this is what happens:

* The mom doesn't sleep at night because she can't breathe.

* The mom gets up early and hauls her zombie self into the car with Jacky to make the long drive to see the University psychiatrist who they've waited two months to see.

* The mom sounds like a honking, diseased buzzard throughout the doctor's appointment. Jacky is a peach the entire time.

* The mom tries to take a short nap later when the baby naps, but instead changes the five-year-old's poopy pants and oversees a mid-afternoon sensory bath for Jack.

* The mom incurs the wrath of the third child when she says she is too sick to jump on the trampoline with him.

* The mom takes her feverish self downstairs to repeatedly feed people and do the dishes. And keep the laundry from taking over the house.

* The mom whines about it to the dad, who is sympathetic, but who is also on call and has to work late.

* The biggest brother becomes the mom's hero when he entertains his younger brothers in the basement for a wonderfully long time.

* The mom, achy and chilled, bundles up for a ninety-degree day and remembers a June two years past when she was pregnant and sick with pneumonia. The mom is grateful that is not now.

Ten Things That Are True

I don't have enough free time or brain cells to construct a cohesive, essay-like post. Summer has come and is squatting here for the foreseeable future. But here is a random list of things people said, or did, or that are happening.

1) We all caught colds. Or the same cold, rather. Kids shouldn't be allowed to get sick in the summer, nor should the ones who spend their days taking care of them.

2) Because of the sinus stuffiness, Charlie told me his nose is full of hamboogers.

3) Henry quipped a funny, off-the-cuff remark to his friend wherein he compared the baby's glance to Medusa's. When I asked him how he knew about Medusa, he said, "Duh Mom. I've known about Greek mythology since like second grade."

4) Jack smashed together two tubs of yellow and red playdoh, which he then chewed up and spit out in various corners of the backyard. According to his behaviorist, kids like eating playdoh because it tastes salty. And it comes in bright, pretty colors. Whatever, Jack. Now there are red and yellow doh-blobs all around the lawn. Guess he favors the salty snacks.

5) Henry and a posse of neighborhood boys are spending their afternoons playing The Hunger Games in the pocket park. When I asked how this game works, he said, "It's like the movie." Except they don't have weapons and they all come home alive after playing, which I'm down with.

6) Books are my summertime lifeline. My recent reads are eclectic and all meet this requirement: suck me in. Also don't ask too much of my brain.

7) Jeff deserves a major award for sitting next to Jack during every sacrament meeting. I discovered this when I sat next to Jack instead on Sunday and learned through experience that Jack likes to pull the arm hairs of the person sitting next to him. Repeatedly. For quite some time. It's an intriguing sensory experience, don't you know.

8) Some days are just crap-tastic. I mean literally, they just are. And the three younger boys seem to be in cahoots about when these days will happen and when they will let the poo fly.

9) Eating my mom's homemade taquitos with cilantro bean & corn salsa on top on a Sunday evening al fresco: pretty much perfection. Especially when followed with homemade Skor ice cream.

10) Summer can be really good, and peaceful, and pleasant.. Except when it is really bad, and hard, and endless.

Banish the Banshee

It has been just slightly more than 24 hours since summer "break" began. The boys carried out their end-of-school-year tradition of shrieking like banshees and generally behaving like crazy people. I suppose this is a thing now----this manic transition from basically decent students to bloodthirsty hounds as we enter the summer months.

By 3:50 yesterday afternoon, I had that moment: the one where I considered driving them back to their sundry schools and dropping them off before I started sounding like a banshee myself, wailing and darkly foreshadowing somebody's doom.

It has gotten better since then. At 4:00 PM yesterday I cracked 20 eggs in a big red bowl and whipped up a batch of Texas-sized French toast with bacon, and calmed those mangy hounds. Dinner at 4:15? With breakfast foods? This is how we do it.

After all the wigging out subsided, two shopping runs were complete, and the three youngest fell asleep, I had a niggling recollection from the afternoon chaos. At one point as I barked out orders and angrily fought for a return to peace (the irony!), Charlie scowled at me and said, "You stop shouting."

Touché, little boy.

Later at the store, Henry asked me why I seemed so mad and impatient as he chose a new swimsuit.

Essentially, I was wrecking our outing in my own crazed summer adjustment period. And I'm the grown up.

So this morning as I cooked hash browns, administered meds, moved laundry, and supervised chores, I did a sanity-saving thing. I bagged the planned zoo outing that nobody except me seemed remotely interested in.

We went to Grandma's house instead where we ate sandwiches and Henry mowed. Baby toddled around Grandpa's garden and Jack pretended to give himself shots in the stomach with a toy syringe from a now-scattered play doctor's kit.

And I acknowledged that while it often feels like no one is listening to me, they're actually paying attention because, by default, I set the tone around here. Honestly speaking, the guys take their social cues from me.

So stop yelling mom, and enjoy summer so everyone else will too.

Hopping Fences & Bunnies

Charlie has a hankering these days for hopping the fence of our neighbors to the south.

He will jump the fence if the neighbors' four-year-old is bouncing on his trampoline and urging Chach to climb over and join him.

But he really doesn't need even that much coaxing. He'll hop that tall, solid wood privacy fence (obediently stained Monterey Grey in HOA compliance---we're lawful like that) at the drop of a hat.

Like on Mother's Day, for instance: the much-celebrated mom (me) couldn't find Chachi and went outside hollering his name. Not to worry! Charlie, wearing too-small tractor jammies and a pull-up, had hopped the fence and joined in the neighbors' lovely and dignified Mother's Day brunch on the patio.

The neighbor to the south is very kind and understanding, considering that on any given day, she may wake to find a pajama-clad, barefoot Charlie standing in her hallway, telling her that he got new feet.

Just last Sunday as we dressed and combed and shod the boys, we realized we hadn't seen Charlie for awhile. It won't take long to guess to whence he disappeared.

I looked out Charlie's little round south-facing bedroom window and saw him on the neighbors' patio, sitting by his four-year-old friend, enjoying a plate of French toast.

While at times he can be a ball of nerves, Charlie doesn't seem to mind the menagerie of pets in the neighbors' yard. Unless they unexpectedly leave their yard and venture into ours.

Then it's Armageddon.

Just last Saturday, we were aware that the four-year-old neighbor's bunny had escaped. All the neighbors were on the prowl for him.

Charlie was the first to notice the tiny black and white bunny in the driveway. Jeff figured this out when Charlie went ballistic, losing all his capacity for speech, as he spun wildly off into the stratosphere, like a screaming Sputnik.

My husband calmly and logically explained (he is an engineer, see) that the next several minutes of watching the bunny gently hop under our car felt exactly like that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table crouch warily, watching for the deadly cave monster.

"Is it behind the rabbit? Asks one.

"It IS the rabbit!" Warns another.

We all know what happens next. Even Charlie seemed to know, though he has yet to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Run away! Run Away! 

He stayed on our side of the fence this time, but only because crossing it would have meant running toward the bunny.

Summer Wicked This Way Comes

It's a long weekend, and it isn't over yet. Here are a few things which happened:

A) Jack and I rode a train together. It was a peaceful drive through a lovely canyon to get to the Day Out With Thomas event. It was the last train trip of the evening, and things were perfectly low-key. We were by far the oldest mom and son duo there.

Jack was a peach. Trains thrill him.

B) We went to a rodeo, where Henry explained all the comings and goings of a PRCA rodeo to his younger cousins, and where Jack danced gleefully in his seat. The wind blew like nobody's business.

A saddle bronc rider fell from his bucking horse and lay completely still for fifteen minutes in the dirt while paramedics strapped him to a board and drove him away. This is the trouble with rodeos: death and catastrophic injury lurk too closely. The announcer said the injured cowboy was moving his arms and talking, so I'm praying he simply got his bell rung and has now recovered.

Jack fell apart in a big loud way long before the barrel-racing and bull-riding commenced. We made a grand, noisy, early exit.

C) During church, we noticed that Jack's left ear had something in it. In hushed whispers during sacrament meeting we brainstormed what it could be. It looked like crumpled wads of paper. Then it resembled pea gravel. Next time we looked, it was gone. I worry he pushed whatever it was farther into his ear. Jeff thinks it fell out.

That blasted left ear: it's the gift that keeps on giving (giving crappy wads of fungus and infected pus, that is).

D) People have been asking me about my summer strategy. Will I focus on creating a super-structured daily framework for the boys? Will I employ yet more helpers? Will I have a core meltdown? (Please note, I am not referring to my core muscles; they melted down for good three pregnancies ago).

Want to know my summer strategy? This is it: survival and simplicity. Alliterative summer mottoes are good for the forgetful mommy brain.

Just keep it simple, and stay alive, baby. That is my M.O.

E) I had a chat with my friend Becky, who dreads summer "break" as only a mom of a kid with special needs can. She said that she used to be Super Fun Summer Mom Extraordinaire, but that the new limitations in her family have blown that out of the water. I said that I have a hard time comparing our über-restricted summer days with the fun summer schedules so many other families seem to experience. Most of the parents in the special needs Facebook group I follow feel guilt about focusing so much of their energy on their child with disabilities, while their other children get less of their attention.

It's a season so many people love for the weather and the freedom and the relaxation. For me, summer equates to exhaustion.

Tired doesn't necessarily have to mean bad. We will survive. We will pare down, relax, and just chill, (pronounces the mom, with some trepidation).

Simplicity, boys. Breathe it in and get used to it.

If nothing else, I'm going to teach the guys the meaning of the term siesta.

The Bus Stops Here

It is the debut of summertime this weekend. But my thoughts are pondering three months from now, when my three elementary school-aged children will attend three different schools: one just around the corner, one a few blocks to the east, and one in a neighboring town.

I am not doing this to complicate my life. It's too late for that, snort! This situation arises from the reality of my boys' vastly different needs.

Charlie has qualified for small-group kindergarten, which I think is the perfect fit for him to begin his school years successfully. Enduring the nightmare that was the school district's Early Childhood Assessment Center paid off in spades when their cumbersome testing resulted in a positive, happy, spot-on placement for Chachi.

Jack attends a small-group autism class at his dream boat of a special needs school not too far away. It's essentially perfect. I hope they let him stay there until he's 30.

This year will be the first wherein Henry will walk to his charter school a stone's throw from home, while his nine and five-year-old brothers will ride two different busses which will pluck them from our porch each morning, and hand-deliver them back home every afternoon.

The sum total of two different busses making two daily appearances at our home, five days a week, results in twenty weekly front-yard bus pick-ups/drop-offs. If you weren't aware that we aren't your typical family, this might be a substantial, yellow, diesel-fueled clue.

The whole situation makes me laugh. It's funny. It's us.

Once at a toddler music class, one of the other moms asked which school my kids attended. I explained that while my eldest went to one school, his younger brother had attended five different nearby schools from preschool to third grade, moving wherever the right special-needs placement happened to be.  A couple of the moms quipped that they would hate that. I was pregnant and miserable and simply didn't have the heart or the energy to cobble together a soapbox and explain that I am deeply grateful for the fabulously helpful resources available to a family like ours, where the kids aren't all formed from the same cookie cutter and can't conveniently attend the same neighborhood school. I ignored them and went back to swallowing the churning, nauseating bile while my three-year-old and I pounded on bongo drums.

I read a blog post recently by a special-needs mom---a kindred spirit. She simply titled it Disability is Inconvenient, which is the truest understatement ever. It isn't convenient to have three elementary-aged sons at three different schools. Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine's Day class parties are a logistical nightmare: they always seem to happen at precisely the same time! 

But here is the fabulous part: these educational options exist. They are in schools all around us. While they aren't always perfect, overall they are pretty great. They are helping me educate my children--my little bright, funny, unique, enigma people. And for this, I am thrilled. 

Future Me

There is a scene in the new Star Trek movie Into Darkness where ***SPOILER ALERT***this happens:

Spock speaks to an older version of himself, coolly played by Leonard Nimoy (obviously). I'm not Trekkie enough to explain how people can speak to themselves forty years in the future while still living, youthful and in the present, but it fascinated me.

Sign me up. I want to go to there.

I get that this is sci-fi. I know it isn't real. But I really wouldn't mind talking to myself thirty or forty years hence. 

I'd like to ask myself the following questions:

1. Do Child #2 and Child #3 ever fully potty train? And if so, is it very many light years from now?

2. What are the older years like? Are they any less strenuous? And will I make it there without suffering a complete mental breakdown of the mothership?

That's pretty much all I want to know. 

Plus, I wouldn't mind seeing what my elderly self looks like. Would it be shocking, or would I think myself a lovely sight, thick and saggy and wrinkled?

In the movie, Old Spock gives young Spock a few curt answers to questions about how he handles a person who is causing a life-threatening situation to everyone aboard the Enterprise. His words are just enough to give young Spock the courage to carry on.

I mean seriously, how great would that be---hearing from the horse's mouth, so to speak, about how your own life plays out? 

I'll just float this little notion in the stratosphere, just in case:  If Old Me somehow manages to bend the space/time continuum and shows up in the flesh, I'm ready with my questions and my willingness to suspend disbelief.