punchdrunkmom

In which we break out our Fun Hats for some deedly-deedly-doo

I do not know what is going on with Kai this week.

I’m not sure he’s said a word since Christmas.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. He asked Ryan if she was going to eat the rest of her chicken nuggets.

But really, he’s been staring off into space. Like a lot. A lot a lot.

When he’s not doing that, he’s saying things like, “Deedle-doodly-deddly-diddly-deedly-deedly-doo.”

I have diagnosed this as Too-Much-Christmas-itis. The symptoms include an influx of presents, a visit to the grandparents, a lack of routine, and zero exercise because it’s finally freezing frakking cold here in Chicago.

So the other day, we hauled the kids to Monkey Island for some much needed bouncy-climby-slide action.

Kai needs so much sensory input that he asked me for a dollar for a chair massage.

But what really made his day was this kick-ass hat he asked us to buy:

 

Yeah, like we didn’t think that that was worth five bucks, OMG.

He’s worn it nonstop since we bought it.

Last night, he asked me to help him make some modifications to it.

It is now called his Fun Hat.

I texted this picture to Scott, explaining that the black cone is the “snack area,” which he has filled with raisins.

“Looks like he’s added a hydration device,” Scott texted back, noting the straw.

“No,” I replied. “That’s for inflating balloons.”

Kai wore this contraption for several hours, until he got sick of trying to balance it on his head and offered it to me.

“You can have one raisin from the snack area,” he said.

I actually ate two, while Scott was trying to talk to me about some recent fraudulent credit card activity on our Visa.

But hey, I ask you. How do you make someone stealing your credit card at Christmastime and trying to gamble in New Mexico fun? Um hello, the Fun Hat. Duh.

A little later, we noticed a distinct lack of deedly-gibberish, and we discovered Kai passed out sitting upright in a chair:

You know there’s only one cure for Too-Much-Christmas-itis.

But he’s not going to school.

Instead, we’re taking our whole show on the road.

Strap on your Fun Hat and load up your snack area, the Punchdrunk family is headed to Hawaii.

This should screw him up but good.

Aloha, you guys.

In memoriam

I am just so sad. And so very stunned by what happened in Connecticut.

Isn’t this what we all fear the most? That something will happen to our children when we’re not there to protect them? That they’ll meet a monster?

It’s hard not to imagine your own reaction, or that child being yours. It’s been particularly visceral for me since I have a kindergartner—the same age as the children in that classroom.

My head’s been a swirl of thoughts, trying to find a way to articulate what I feel, to try to understand, but I can’t. I just can’t understand it. I don’t want to read any more about it or hear any more reports on the radio or on TV, because I don’t want to be any more heartbroken than I already am. On Saturday morning I made the mistake of reading an update online. The parents of the 20 dead children were gathered together, the article said, and they all wanted to know the same thing: Did my child know? Was he afraid?

I snapped my computer shut and stared into space for a long time.

Because it is unfathomable that the kids knew. 

:::

I wrote about going to a therapist not long after Kai was born, having realized, like really realized, that terrible things can happen to your children that are beyond your control. That’s what makes Connecticut so frightening—we have no control, no guarantees. Bad things happen to little children. They get sick. They meet monsters.  And whatever we do to protect them, it may never be enough. We don’t have any real control the minute they travel beyond the length of our arm.

It’s a terrifying thought.

I wondered this weekend about who had to notify those 20 mothers that their children were dead, and it got me thinking about a phone call of my own, the call I got from our school principal that a monster had hurt my son.

I know that the two don’t compare. Maybe if you multiply my grief and anger by 100, and then by a million, and then by infinity you might come close. And, as you may or may not recall, I was a disaster for a long time.

My friend Erin, the lawyer who went to court with me, said something that stuck with me over the last few months.

“When someone hurts one kid,” she said, deflecting my thanks for all she did to help me, “it hurts all kids. It hurts everyone.”

Never has that sentiment been more true. This hurts all of our kids, because they could be our own kids. A first grader in Connecticut, a kindergartner in Illinois—it could have happened to any one of us.

When Kai was hurt at school, the shining bright spot in all of it, what I held onto with both hands, is that there are far more good people out there than bad. Strangers stepped in to help Kai, parents I didn’t even know reached out to me to offer support. And in this circumstance, where we need so desperately for there to somehow be a bright spot, I think we can be heartened by our very horror and outrage and sorrow. That we are so devastated on behalf of those families binds us all together in compassion and kindness and empathy and love.

There are way, way more of us than there will ever be of him. Way more good, way more love, way more mercy.

I have to believe that because it gives me a micro-sliver of hope in what is otherwise the bleakest circumstance I can imagine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hug my two children and never, ever, ever let go.

 

 

In which I discover that he knows

I had a sitter last night because I wanted to go to this special holiday yoga class. Turns out the class is next week, not this week. So then I thought I’d find another yoga class to go to, but, as it happens, I hurt my shoulder. It’s either my rotator cuff or my lower trap or my rhomboid. Or something. I don’t know. It just hurts. So no yoga.

But why waste a perfectly good sitter, am I right?

Except I had to find something to do.

In the end, I did what I pretty much always do in this situation—hauled my computer to Starbucks, drank what ended up being a $30.44 latte and typed a story for you fine people.

:::

I was wondering if Kai was going to rebel on me when I left, as this is the third sitter we’ve had in as many days. I am currently flush with cash thanks to a check my dad sent me for Christmas, which I plan to use to pay various people to watch my children while I stare into space (worth every penny, btw).

Kai didn’t rebel, though. In fact, he was pretty chipper. He involved our babysitter right away in a Play-Mobil thing he was working on, but not before making a rather astute observation about her.

“You’re brown,” he said cheerily.

I froze.

“Yes, I am,” she replied.

The babysitter, Alyse, as you may or may not have gathered, is black.

I had that moment of awkwardness that you get when your kids say something, well, awkward. Like what do you say to that? But it wasn’t like he was wrong, and it wasn’t as though Kai was making an accusation. He was just stating fact. Alyse has brown skin.

He’s done this before, pointing out what makes someone different. I have a good friend whose high school-age son, Jonathon, was born without a right hand. His arm ends about halfway in between his elbow and where his wrist would be. Over the summer, I had Jonathon watch Kai once or twice. He showed Kai how to play Sonic on the PS3, which Kai thought was really, really, really cool.

“You have one long arm and one short arm,” Kai said to him one day. Again, not wrong. Again, not accusatory or teasing.

“That’s right, Kai,” Jonathon said.

I had that same cringe-y feeling, wondering if I should step in and say something, but there didn’t seem to be anything to say. Would it have made Jonathon self-conscious if I’d pointed out to Kai that it’s not polite to say something like that? And would Kai have even gotten it? And why shouldn’t we be more open and matter-of-fact about our differences?

Jonathon does have one arm that’s shorter than the other.

Alyse is black.

Alyse didn’t seem at all bothered by Kai’s forthrightness, and jumped into the fray with the kids.

“What’s your name?” Kai asked her.

“Alyse,” she said.

“I’m Kai,” he said.

“I know,” she said, mock-serious. She’s sat for us before.

At that moment, Ryan thought to enter the conversation, asking Alyse her name, which Alyse supplied.

“You’re different,” Kai said to Alyse, though she was distracted by Ryan and didn’t hear him.

Oh, but I did.

And I finally understood why people's differences matter so much to my son.

“I’m different, too,” he said.

Over the river and through the woods, to the vacant lot next to the bar we go

This year, for the first time, Kai gets Christmas.

He understands about trees and presents and Santa, and I’ve discovered the one totally useful thing that Santa does for parents—he gives us an easy out.

Kai: I want this racetrack/toy dinosaur/set of Ginsu knives.

Me: Well, you better ask Santa.

Kai: --

You guys, it’s awesome!

Another cool thing we've got going this year is that we were able to get a Christmas tree, something Scott and I haven’t done since Kai was born.

This is really the first time that I can (mostly) trust the kids not to climb on or otherwise molest the tree. Or the ornaments. Or the lights. I definitely can’t trust them to leave any presents alone, but we’re at least making progress. Besides, you can’t really trust me to leave a present alone, either, and I'm 40.

So over the weekend, we bundled up the kids and walked down the street, where they were selling Christmas trees in a vacant lot.

Ryan wore jammies and a princess dress and a hot pink fedora, and only wore a coat because we told her if she didn’t, we couldn’t go. She finally relented, but cried most of the way.

Kai thought it would be awesome if he wore his blue scary mask.

He was not wrong.

Plus, he happily called out, “Boo!” to the people we passed on the way, his holidays clearly beginning to run together.

:::

Kai chose a tree right away, and when I saw it, I was a little dismayed.

He’d chosen a long-needled tree that, on December 8, already looked slightly droopy. It cost $60.

I think that families are either long-needled tree families or short-needled tree families. My family was always the short-needled Frasier Fir kind of family. I’d never had a long-needled tree in my life. They seem more fragile. Messier, I guess, I don’t know. I’d just never had one before and it seemed foreign to me, like opening presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day.

“That’s a nice tree, Kai,” I said in a non-committal sort of way. I suggested we keep looking.

I pulled a Frasier out of the pile and stood it upright. It was perfect—full, robust enough to last until June. This one was $120.

“Which one?” I asked Scott. “Do you like a long-needled tree or one like this?”

Scott looked from one to the other.

“I have no idea,” he said.

I told him that Kai's was half as much money.

"Oh, that doesn't matter," Scott said. "I have no idea how much trees are even supposed to cost."

He looked thoughtfully from one to the other. “I kind of like Kai’s tree.”

I sighed. This has been the story of my life lately, my inability to get other people in my family to see how brilliant and impeccable my ideas are. For example, I bought Ryan some adorable (and expensive) outfits for Fall, which she eschews daily for either a flimsy, polyester Dora nightgown or a $10 ballerina Halloween costume. Or both.

And the thing is, everyone seems to think that this is terrific. "Aren't you just a pretty princess?" people ask her, at the grocery store, at pre-school, at the doctor's office, at Starbucks. She'll spin in an obliging circle for an admirer, sending her skirt twirling, the jewels in her plastic crown flashing, while a $50 dress with matching leggings ($20) and funky knee-socks ($10) collects dust in her closet.

Outnumbered, I put the Frasier back, and we bought Kai’s tree.

The guy who sold it to us had a chain saw, which Kai found very, very intriguing.

We laid it across the top of the stroller to carry it home. People out on the street all laughed rather merrily as they walked by us, and whether it was the giant tree on the stroller, or the mini-princess in the fedora, or the fact that Kai was still wearing his mask, I have no idea.

:::

The tree is tall and fairly symmetrical, but it is a little anemic through the middle and bottom branches. It's going to drop needles like crazy. But it does have a kind of endearing Charlie Brown quality to it.

And, in Kai's defense, I should tell you that it smells awesome.

It is, like everything else in my life, different than I expected.

But, I suppose that's what makes things all the more interesting, isn't it?

In which the boy rocks it pretty hard, as long as what he's asked to rock is in English

Okay, so like, when did you learn to multiply?

I learned in 3^rd grade. I remember this because I was caught cheating by my teacher, Mrs. Blake, on a multiplication drill. She would have us race to solve eight problems. Then we would turn our paper over and start again. Only I didn’t turn my paper over for the second race. Instead, I picked up where I left off during the last one.

“Done!” I would shout.

Then one day, she caught me. Mrs. Blake saw that I hadn’t turned my paper over. She didn’t say anything to the class about it, didn’t call me out or anything. She just stared at me for a long second, and then set down her chalk. The corners of her mouth turned down as she walked slowly toward her desk and sat down.

“There will be no more drills for a long time,” Mrs. Blake said sadly, though this didn’t make me sad at all.

What can I say? The pressure got to me.

Anyway, I learned to multiply in 3^rd grade.

I only bring it up because BAM! Look what I pulled out of the boy’s backpack:

That’s some bad-ass multiplication, yo.

I showed it to Scott and we were both rendered speechless.

I asked Kai’s teacher if it was standard for the kids to learn to multiply in kindergarten, because clearly, my son is a genius.

“A lot of them are ready, yes,” she said, which deflated me a little. “I was thinking of pulling out the division works, too.”

Division! I had a little moment of panic. At this rate, I won’t be able to help him with his homework beginning in fourth grade. I’m competent through geometry, and after that things get a little hazy.

Kai is good with numbers and spatial relations. But being good at that kind of thing and sitting down with a teacher and learning to multiply are two completely different things. And yet, here it was—proof that Kai absolutely belongs in a regular education classroom. Go me. And hope for the future. Go Kai.

As I was going through the rest of the stuff he’d brought home, I found a Spanish assignment:

All work and no play makes Kai something-something. Also, this is more in keeping with the usual backpack offerings.

You’d think he’d be better at Spanish, considering he watches enough Dora to yell at me in Spanish when he thinks I'm driving too slowly. "Mucho mas rapido!" he says. No matter that we're stuck in a traffic jam.

Perhaps if Dora was teaching it, he’d find it more engaging.

Or if it were Fortran.

Or Cobol.

I don’t really care if he learns Spanish and I didn’t really expect it to be meaningful for him. This is why I didn’t send him to the language enrichment school directly across the street from my house. Sure, it would be cool if Kai knew Mandarin, but honestly, we do almost three hours a week of speech therapy just so he can express himself in English.

I didn’t learn multiplication in Kindergarten, and I sure didn’t learn Spanish. I learned to paste things to other things.

And that was pretty much it.

So, as far as I’m concerned, we’re ahead way, way of the game.

Go figure.

Go Kai.

No friends were made during the writing of this post

So I put Ryan in gymnastics this fall. I did gymnasctics as a kid, though not well. But, like horses and tiaras, I thought it was something that a girl could really get into. Plus, I thought Ryan needed her own activity, captive as she is for Kai's speech and OT appointments.

On the first day, I talked for a while with a woman named Lynn, who has a daughter Ryan’s age, as well as a baby boy. We chatted it up before class started, talking about whatever you talk about with another mom you just met—baby puke and potty training and Target box wine.

Our friendship was not to be, however, because Lynn already had a friend, someone that she clearly knew outside of gymnastics class—a woman I'll call Betsy.

Betsy was not particularly friendly to me, but I didn’t notice right away because I was too busy trying to teach Ryan to do a forward somersault or chasing after her when she refused to join the group. This class was something called “Mom and Tot Gymnastics,” which means that I couldn't drop her off and then nap in the car for 45 minutes. Rather, I had to do all of the stuff with her, spotting her on the balance beam and guiding her through the obstacle course. 

Betsy's daughter and mine.

Anyway, on this one day, I showed Ryan how to do a handstand. I did this because Ryan hadn’t been paying attention in group, and because I actually show people how to do handstands professionally. This same day, I also went on the trampoline, because it’s fun. And, towards the end of class, I hopped up on one of the low balance beams and walked backwards. I don't really know why. Because it was there, I guess. I wasn’t putting a ton of thought into what I was doing, until I heard a voice behind me.

“Well,” Betsy said, the first words she spoke to me since class started. “Aren’t you just on every piece of equipment?”

The snark in her voice was obvious, and she smirked at me from under a raised eyebrow. And for a half second, I felt a little sheepish. What was I doing on the beam?

I shrugged and stepped down, and I guessed I wasn't going to try to climb the rope, something that I’d actually been contemplating just to see if I could do it. And for the next few weeks I stayed off the trampoline. I didn't really know why, or even why I would let something like Betsy's snide comment bother me.

What really threw me off guard is how unused I am to anyone's overt nastiness. I guess I'm surrounded by other people with special needs kids or the parents at Kai's school, or the girls in my spin class, people who are warm and supportive, and are happy to cheer each other on.

Of course, if anyone wants to judge me, they are certainly welcome to do so. Believe me, I offer up plenty of fodder. As I type this, I can tell you that I haven't showered in two days. My daughter wore a nightgown as a dress all day. I spend too much time on Facebook and let my kids watch too much TV. Judge away.

Usually, though, I am too busy racing from appointment to appointment to have time to feel self-conscious that Ryan refuses to wear a coat no matter how far below freezing it is, or that Kai has colored his entire face with blue magic marker.

Besides, we all know that the proper way to judge another mother is behind her back.

But hanging out with my neurotypical daughter, who generally does what she's supposed to even if she is wearing a tiara, I had a little time to notice that Betsy always seemed to wedge her back to me, talking to Lynn or to the instructor. She never spoke another word to me, or to my daughter, never even cracked a smile, never acknowledged me again in any way.

And it was clear that we were not, for reasons known only to Betsy, going to be friends.

:::

I signed Ryan up for the next session, and, because she’s now something called a Twinkle Star (OMG!), I'll drop her off and sit in the lobby instead of working directly with her. This makes me surprisingly sad. But this also meant that the last day of the current session was my last chance on the trampoline and so, Betsy be damned, I went on it several times.

As we were putting on shoes to go home, I overheard Betsy talking to Lynn, turning down an invitation to go to McDonald’s.

“We have speech therapy later this afternoon,” she said, in the same weary voice I recognized from my own life, the one that means you're different, that maybe your kid's different, that you're a little tired, that you drink too much Diet Coke and spend too much time in the car and wonder why you never have time to do laundry.

And I shook my head and almost laughed.

A snarky woman with a kid in speech therapy?

If she hadn’t dismissed me so fast, if perhaps we'd had some plastic cups and a box of Target wine, we probably could have been pretty good friends.