punchdrunkmom

In which nothing remarkable happens, which is by itself remarkable

I was woefully unprepared for Ryan to start school. Not because she’s my baby, but because I don’t have my act together. She was supposed to have crayons and a box of Kleenex and a bottle of glue, spare shoes, a change of clothes with her name on it. Some Benedryl. I, of course, did none of that because I didn’t read any of the paperwork until Sunday night at around eleven. Hell, I didn’t even charge the camera and had to record the occasion on my phone.

Ryan was ready, though. She gathered her supplies, including her Dora backpack (empty), two babies and a balloon that said, “Happy Birthday.”

You know. The essentials.

:::

Ryan and I entered her new school together, an airy, loft-y type place dedicated to eco-friendliness. Or whatever, I don’t know. They’ll keep her for four hours and feed her lunch, which is exactly what I was looking for in a school.

We learned the routine, hanging up her coat and taking off her shoes.

“Good-bye, honey,” I said.

She gave me a hug, and for a second I was worried she would refuse to let go. But she did, and soon she was lost in the crowd.

:::

I came back for her at noon. I heard music playing, and followed the sound to find all the kids dancing in the playroom. Ryan was holding a fake microphone and shaking a tambourine, dancing like a tiny Stevie Nicks.

“How’d she do?” I asked one of the teachers.

“She did fine,” the teacher replied. “She sat for circle time, she was confused at first by a ball game and then caught on quickly, she ate her whole lunch. She didn’t seem scared at all when you left.”

I waited for the rest of it, the “we couldn’t get her to” part, the sentence that I got when I took Kai to pre-school for the first time. And the second. And the third. And the fourth. And tumbling. And t-ball. And yoga. Mrs. Judy, we couldn’t get Kai to engage. Mrs. Judy, we couldn’t get Kai to put on his coat and shoes. Mrs. Judy, we couldn’t get Kai to nap/stand in line/eat his lunch/stop screaming.

But there was no rest of it. A neurotypical child went to pre-school. She did some stuff. Now was time to go home.

That was it.

I stood there like a dope for a few more minutes, not sure what to do with myself without a problem to solve, but finally realized that the only thing I had to do was gather up my perfectly normal daughter and go home.

:::

Later, when I picked Kai up from school for OT, I ran into his principal.

“How is it out there?” he asked me. “Is it warming up at all?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “It feels like spring.”

He knitted his eyebrows together. “Really? It was so cold this morning.”

I shrugged. “What can I tell you?” I replied. “The sun’s out. The air feels lighter.”

I hustled the kids out the door and into the car. Maybe it was kind of cold, I thought. I started the engine and looked at the temperature gauge.

It was 36 degrees.

The lightness I’d been feeling wasn’t the weather at all.

It was me.

 

Goliath, meet David

I received an e-mail yesterday from a man who has been helping me with my claims against our health insurance provider.

“After much research, cajoling, threatening and complaining [your insurance company] has come to the enlightened conclusion that policy limits for therapy do not apply to ASD claims. As such they have reprocessed your claims as detailed below and noted that this should not be a problem on a go forward basis. Thank you for your patience as we worked this through, I’m glad that we were able to produce a favorable result in spite of the extraordinarily slow process.”

I was stunned. We got it, the whole shooting match. Six months worth of twice-weekly speech and once-weekly OT from last year—thousands of dollars that those guys wrongly denied. It means coverage for this year, language camp over the summer. And coverage for next year. And the year after that.

The e-mail came in an encrypted format, and I e-mailed back before I opened it in case it was some kind of virus.

“Is this legit?” I asked.

“Open it,” was his only reply. I knew it was good news after that.

The man who sent the e-mail has been working on this with me for days and weeks and months. I never really thought we’d get a resolution, much less a check. He knows how angry I’ve been, how frustrated, how betrayed I felt, how I worry about being able to keep Kai in therapy.

I started an e-mail reply to him, but opted instead to pick up the phone. It was the first time we’d actually talked.

“Thank you,” I said.

He was pretty stoic about the whole thing. He said he was just glad it worked out.

I tried to make a few jokes, like how he must be so happy not to have to deal with my endless e-mails and questions anymore, but he deflected them, reminding me that it was highly likely we’d have to go after them again in the future.

I thanked him one more time. I told him how much it meant to me to have his help.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Without going into it," he said, "I’ve had a sick kid. This case maybe got to me a little.”

I didn’t know what I could say to that. I wanted to say I was sorry, and ask if his child was all right, but I heard the edge in his voice. He didn't want to talk about it. But I understood.

I understand.

There’s nothing that makes you feel more powerless than having a sick child.

And it’s nice to get the occasional chance to take some of that power back.

 

 

The Chapstick Bomber

At the airport on the way home, my earrings set off the metal detector, and when I set it off again, I was selected for random screening. The TSA agent carried my belongings over to a special area filled with other people who were being randomly screened, including a man in leg braces and a wheel chair. Someone’s crutches were lying on a metal table.

The agent swabbed my hands and placed the sample in some kind of machine, which turned red and emitted an alarm.

The agent called for back-up.

“We’re going to have to check all of your belongings, ma’am,” she said.

“What did you find on my hands?”

The agents went to work on my bag, my coat, my computer. “You tested positive for explosives.”

Whatever was on my hands was also all over my camera and cell phone from my trip to the museum.

“We’re going to have to give you a body search,” the agent said.

I was polite and agreeable, because what else are you going to do in the face of such an idiotic thing?

“You won’t find any explosives on me,” I said. But part of me actually got a little nervous. Could there be something in my bag that shouldn’t be there? And if so, what could that be? What if I continued to test positive for explosives? Would I go to jail? Would it be even remotely possible that somehow justice would be perverted and I would end up convicted of trying to blow up a plane?

The agents marched me, shoeless and in front of everyone else in line, into a closet-sized room to pat me down and swab me again. The agent informed me that she was going to search me, that she would be touching my groin, my butt, my chest, my armpits, my belly. She did all of those things, swabbing me for trace elements of whatever they’d found before.

She found my Chapstick in my jeans pocket and made me open it. When it failed to blow up in my face--because it was Chapsitck--she took it from me and placed it in the bin with the rest of my stuff. 

“What if those swabs come up positive again?” I asked.

The agent, who had actually been very polite and professional, gave me a long look, her eyebrows coming together.

“Then we’ll have to sit you down and figure out your story,” she said.

My story?

Just then, there was a knock on the door.

“All clear,” came a male voice. My swabs had passed inspection.

“You’re free to go,” the agent said. “Thank you for your patience.”

I collected my coat and my computer, my earrings and my hair clip, my shoes. 

And with as much dignity as I could muster, I shouldered my bag and walked to my gate.

:::

Next to me on the plane was a younger couple. Just before landing, the guy put his hand on his wife’s belly. She covered his hand with her own and moved it to a slightly different spot and looked at him. I assumed she was pregnant, and they were feeling the baby kick. That was me five years ago.

I noticed that the woman would periodically sit up, turn around, and punch the back of her seat.

"Have you been getting kicked all during the flight?" she asked, a note of impatience in her voice.

"No," I replied. "But someone's farting every five minutes."

She looked a little sheepish. "Close quarters," she said, punching her seat again.

There was a pair of little girls behind us.

"When you're a mom, you get used to things like that," I said.

She shook her head. "My kids will never do that," she replied. "I'll make sure of it."

I nodded. "Then you will be the first."

She gave her seat one more punch.

"Good luck," I said.

I dug my Chapstick out of my pocket and smiled to myself as I pulled off the cap. Nothing blows up in your face quite like having children. 

 

In which we go to San Diego, and make some decisions about the hereafter

I still haven’t unpacked from my trip. Literally, my suitcase is still zipped up. I’ve been going non-stop since my plane touched down, where I was greeted by three people who seemed very happy I was home. They did fine, though, and except for a minor emergency over the whereabouts of the iPad, it went off without a hitch.

San Diego was awesome, if slightly chilly. My sister and I took a ferry across a bay to Coronado, walking through tidy neighborhoods in the splashy California sunshine. We put our toes in the sand in front of the Del Coronoado hotel, which is apparently haunted.

It would have been cool if the ghost was reflected in our oversized shades. Alas, all you can see is my arm.

We had lunch and headed back to San Diego for a walk in the Gaslamp quarter, which is supposed to be cute and full of shops but is really neither. We enjoyed massages and we went out to dinner, where we split a bottle of champagne.

On Sunday, we went to brunch at a place called Hash House a Go Go.

A-Go-Go indeed.

We rounded out our stay with a trip to a museum in Balboa Park called the Museum of Man.

A docent confronted us at the entrance.

“Do you have a camera?” he asked, his expression stern.

Laurel and I both had cameras, and braced for some kind of lecture.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” he replied. “Take pictures of whatever you want.”

We laughed. The docent was a font of knowledge about, what else, the history of man, and gave us an overview of the museum. He used the word "carcass" several times.

“Our shrunken heads are real,” he said, with no preamble and no further explanation.

I loved him until it became apparent that he was going to follow us around the museum, where he kept popping up from behind exhibits to point out some feature or oddment. It began to feel like an episode of Portlandia, about the moment where something cool becomes completely over the top.

The Museum of Man's view of the future of man. Or the future as imagined by George Lucas. In the past. Never mind. It's too confusing. Do you like my new scarf?

One thing we learned at the Museum of Man, is that if you donate your body to science, a group of museum people might videotape themselves mummifying you according to the Egyptian tradition using poking instruments and lotus oil, placing your salted organs in canopic jars and your desiccated carcass behind glass for people to see, people who once thought that if you donated your body to science you could choose what science did to you. People who are now just thinking of going with cremation when the time comes.

 

 

Alone

I left both my children for the first time this last weekend for a pre-birthday trip to San Diego with my sister. I spent the lion’s share of the two days before I left outfitting Scott with everything he might need for the kids while I was gone, including popsicles and fruit and chicken nuggets and fake cheese sauce for fake macaroni and cheese. I left each family member with a lovely present with which to occupy their time in my absence: Kai got a race track, Ryan a play cash register complete with play credit cards, Scott a bottle of Tito’s Handmade Vodka.

:::

I left on Friday night in the middle of a storm, waiting for over a half hour on the El platform in the in the driving wind, snow swirling at my feet before the train showed up. I squeezed like a sardine on the train, swaying and bumping the other riders. I ran to security, unloaded my laptop and crossed my fingers my shampoo and my corkscrew would pass through without getting confiscated, which it did, because even TSA knows you can’t make a bomb out of French shampoo and a corkscrew.

And as harried as I felt shoving my feet back into my shoes, locating my my jacket and computer and phone, finding my suitcase and stowing my electronics, it was also aware of how easy it was, because I was alone.

Someone’s kid cried a few times on the flight. I have no idea why. It wasn’t my problem.

Because I was alone.

:::

My sister’s flight was rerouted through Spokane, where it was grounded because of some sort of hydraulic issue and she missed her connection. She was so upset that the pilot actually left the cockpit to console her.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

And of course, unless he was going to crawl under the plane with a wrench, the answer was “no.”

She was able to console herself at the bar at the Spokane airport, and was later treated to an overnight stay at a motel in Oakland, where she shared an elevator with a pimp who smelled distinctly of marijuana and had a mouth full of gold teeth, and she was extra-careful to lock her door.

So I spent my first night in California alone. And while I was sad not to have those hours to spend with my sister, I was in a plush room, a thousand miles away from anyone who needed me. I raided the mini-bar and stared out at the lights of an unfamiliar city.

A writing teacher asked me one time what my ideal vacation would be. It was an icebreaker exercise, one of those games where you ask someone a question on a card.

I thought about it for a second or two.

“I’d like to have all of my friends and family stay with me in a big villa in Hawaii,” I said. “For two weeks.”

As the teacher moved on to the next writing student, I was suddenly filled with doubt. I’d answered wrong. That wasn’t my ideal vacation at all.

I interrupted the other student.

“Wait!” I said, “I’d like to change my answer.”

My teacher looked at me. “No villa in Hawaii?” he asked.

Kai was two then. He had yet to sleep through the night.

“No, still a villa in Hawaii,” I said. “But for that first week, I’m alone.”

:::

I’m aware that I will miss my children when they don’t need me like they need me now, and I'll probably even miss getting up with them in the middle of the night or hauling them and all of their accoutrements through an airport security checkpoint or comforting them when they cry on a plane.

I’m aware that my sister is about to be married, and it’s going to be harder than it is even now to find time to spend with her.

But for now, knowing that she’d be there in a matter of hours, knowing that in two days I’d have diapers to change and dinners to cook and bruises to kiss and baths to administer and an IEP meeting to prep for and groceries to buy and floors to vacuum and toys to pick up and crayon drawings to scrub off walls, I laid down between crisp sheets, in a bed I didn’t have to make in the morning, and slept that night enveloped in the kind of profound silence I haven’t experienced in five years.

Alone.

 

 

And on the fifth day, she called a babysitter

And then Friday dawned, and everyone had slept through the night, like it was no big deal. Like it happens every day of our lives. I rolled out of bed around 8, and I was feeling pretty good. We toured a pre-school for Ryan, I went to the gym.  I fed the kids lunch.

And then the cavalry showed up in the form of a babysitter.

It is rare, indeed, that I have a babysitter just so I can get some air. I’m usually running to Target or the grocery store, or to a PTO meeting or some other obligation. And while it’s nice to go to Target alone, it’s not a break.

Friday, after a wretched week, I took a break. I decided to so some shopping, thinking about my upcoming trip to San Diego. I got a little overwhelmed at Nordstrom's, though, as fashion is having a strange moment of Peter Pan collars and shapeless satin floral shirts.

A sales girl intercepted me and I asked her for some help. I told her that I was looking for “going out tops,” which is mom-parlance for a black top that hides my belly. 

"I have just the thing," she exclaimed, making a beeline toward a rack full of brightly colored blouses. She extracted one and held it up, a shear, mint-green button-down number with long sleeves and a collar. I swear I saw that same blouse on the Nordstrom sales floor in 1987--all it was missing was the shoulder pads.

“This looks so cute on!” the girl said, holding up the horrible blouse.

I tried to be polite about it.

“What would I wear it with?” I asked her.

She pulled a calico-print lace bustier from another rack.

“This!” she chirped.

I threw up a little in my mouth.

I agreed to try on, though. I mean, you only get old when you stop trying new things, right?

Yeah. Close your eyes. Imagine a calico-print lace bustier under sheer mint green top. Imagine that you are not 17.

“How’s that bustier working out?” the sales girl asked.

“Just about how I thought it would,” I answered.

And no matter how ridiculous fashion is right now that the ‘80s are back, a decade notable for its gold-buttoned-shoulder-padded-excess, trying on clothes in the posh Nordstrom’s dressing room and not having anyone cry, or ask for water/popsicles/cereal/crackers/ice cream/Dora/ Diego/Olivia/strawberries/grapes/a butt wiping/an obscure orange Lego/macaroni and cheese/something that sounds like "rammas" that I cannot figure out for the life of me was Heaven. Heaven. 

I bought a pair of purple jeans, a flowy top with fluttery sleeves and some big sparkly sunglasses.

I was gone long enough to feel like my old self for a little while, long enough to miss the kids, long enough that by the time I walked in the door to shouts of "Wook, It's Mommy," I was glad to be back.

 

 

 

In which we join the Punchdrunk family on a vacation in Hell

Monday

Kai got up on Monday morning around 3 am. He was screaming for me, but Scott went in to check on him.

“Need white room,” he said, his phrase for our room, which is actually blue, but our sheets are white, hence it’s the white room.

Scott carried him in, and he nestled between us and fell asleep again.

I sent him to school the next morning. He was spacey, with dark circles under his eyes, but he made it most of the day. He crashed in the late afternoon, his speech therapist leading him back to the waiting room a half hour early.

“He’s not getting anything out of this,” she said. “He’s staring at the wall.”

Her decision to cut the session short was made when he sneezed.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

And he started to cry.

Tuesday

Up again at 3. This time, Scott slept through it, so I stumbled down the hallway to check on him.

Naively, I hoped that we could get him back to sleep with us like yesterday, so I unlocked his gate and led him by the hand to our bed. He didn’t sleep, though. Instead, he played with my hair by winding it around his fists and pulling. When he was done with that he managed to separate a few strands and pull them out individually. I was so tired that I fell asleep anyway, waking about thirty minutes later.

Kai was gone.

We keep his room gated so he can’t get out in the middle of the night and do something crazy, like start our car and try to drive to the toy store. Kai loose while the rest of us are unconscious is really, really bad.

I flew out of our room, calling his name.

“I’m upstairs,” he called.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Eating ice cream,” he replied, like it was the most natural thing in the world to eat ice cream at 4 in the morning in the dark. He was scooping it out of the carton with his hands. He’d stacked his tubs of toys on top of each other to reach the top shelf of the freezer.

I led him back downstairs in time to hear Ryan, and for one horrible hour we were all awake, lying in my bed, Kai pulling out single strands of my hair while Scott slept on.

Kai never did go back to sleep. I kept him home from school.

Wednesday

That night, I had the kids in bed by 6:30. Kai was so tired he was sloppy, and even his trantrum about bath time was weak.

I poured a glass of wine and assumed that the madness was over. Kai's been known to go a couple of nights without sleep, but he's usually back on track by the third day. I put the vaporizer in his room, hoping that would help him breathe better, cleaned up the house and watched Glee. We ate stir fried shrimp and broccoli for dinner and went to bed, hoping for a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, when:

“MOMMEEEE! NEED COLD WATER MOMMEEEEEEE!”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I’d slept for two hours. This would be my longest stretch of uninterrupted sleep for the next 48.

“MOMMEEE! NEED KIX IN SNACKTRAP! MOMMEEEE!”

Back upstairs. I prepared another dose of melatonin for him, knowing it was useless, but needing to try. I had to be at work in another couple of hours.

He was asleep when I left to teach my class. His room was trashed. The clothes from the dresser were scattered all over, the vaporizer was upended, the trundle bed soaking wet. He was wearing a red turtleneck and khaki pants (backwards).

I decided to let him sleep in, thinking he would finally find some peace and stay asleep until mid-morning, but he was up at 7:30.

Later that day, he picked up my camera from the kitchen counter and, seemingly for no reason, placed it in his glass of water. I don’t think he was even aware of what he did.

Thursday

He had to sleep on Wednesday night. I mean, what kid can function on like five hours of sleep a night? Wouldn’t sheer exhaustion finally just take over?

When I heard him (MOMMEEE! COLD WATER!) I groaned and looked at the clock. 1:25 am. I’d turned off my light at midnight.

He was burning with fever, a whopping 102.8, so I gave him some ibuprofen and some water and we turned on Nick Jr. I slipped in and out of consciousness as Kai’s fever came down enough for him to feel like jumping on the bed. At 4 am, Nick Jr went off the air and I led Kai back to his room.

“Try to get some sleep,” I whispered.

I stumbled back to my room, and no sooner did my head hit the pillow than Ryan started to cry and I heard from Kai’s room, “MOMMEEE! NEED POPSICLE!” He never fell back to sleep.

I ignored Ryan for a while. She wasn’t sick. She doesn’t have whatever Kai has that keeps him from sleeping. I was so tired I was nauseous. I willed her to go back to sleep, or to at least cry a little more softly so that I could.

When I finally could stand it no more, I went into her room.

Her leg was stuck in the bars of her crib.

Thursday morning

It’s 9:56 am. The dog needs to be walked, the breakfast dishes need to be put away. Ryan has cried approximately 463 times. She’s crying now. Kai peeled all the St. Jude address labels off their backing and attached them to the table and is currently looking for the glue. I don’t know why. Scott is in Indiana and won’t be home until late, long after the kids are in bed.

There is no longer any reason to think that tonight will be any different, and still seven hours until dinnertime. Kai’s sick, so we’re not going anywhere. I’m impatient with them today, even if I don’t want to be, my anger bubbling to the surface a little too quickly.

:::

I’m going to San Diego next weekend with my sister—no kids or husband. I’m hoping that I can get some sleep then. In fact, I may just sleep the whole time.

It will be nice, but it won’t be a miracle. The miracle will be if I decide to get on the plane to come home.