January 2008

The most simplistic interpretation of quantum physics (and that’s the only one I have) is that the behavior of sub-atomic particles changes as a result of being observed. I am living that now through this blog, and wonder about the value of the blog in general.

This world, for reasons of self-preservation, is frequently one of artifice. When I began blogging in 2004, my posts were raw and highly honest, personal, and a bit risky in terms of personal information about my mood disorder (MDD). As folks have begun reading the blog, I find my punches being pulled. I worry about getting a job someday. All that “stuff” that I live in my real life.

I require a place where punches are not pulled, and have seen value in letting others in. The value is not only for me, but to let others know that someone else feels something similar.

Right now, I am suffering from a deep depression, triggered by (or exacerbated by) a few events in the last 24 hours. I am left with the usual toolkit of cognitive and behavioral implements: Get off the chair, close the laptop, take a shower, finish the laundry, put on some makeup, go for a walk, tell yourself it’s just for today. These tools are hardest to access when the depression is at its height, which is this moment. I have not moved from this chair for a couple of hours, and am contemplating the energy it will take to do so. My body feels heavy, I feel tired and disconnected from my surroundings. I am deeply sad, lonely, disoriented, scared, hopeless. Adrift really.

This is depression. Yes, it’s real, and some of us live with it all our lives. Some of the most amazing people you know may suffer from this illness. Believe them. You can’t “snap out of it.” It runs its course like any other biochemical process in the body. I can feel when it’s with me, when I recede into the shadows once more. Spoken words become difficult to access, and the smallest efforts take cerebral involvement.

The overall sensation is of no refuge, drifting on the water while others are on land. I remember in NY feeling like I was walking underwater, but the folks walking by me were above water, breathing easily. The air between me and others feels viscous and impenetrable.

This too shall pass. For today, it’s darn real.

Blake and Trixie. 1/20/08.

Blake and me, eating pears. 1/20/08.

Envy. It’s the sixth of the seven deadly sins. I have a big issue with it, and it swallows me up at times more than any of the others.

Or, sure, I can eat a few too many cookies sometimes. And I’m no stranger to sloth and wrath, but, envy is the thing that keeps me back more than anything else.

We are all different, and my first sponsor always reminded me that you’d never want to trade your problems for someone else’s, but I find myself regularly doing just that. Here’s how it goes: As life goes on, I seem to rack up more and more regrets about what I should have done, should not have feared, should have “gone for,” should not have given in to. When I perceive someone else who had the willingness to do these things, and succeeded, or someone who is blessed innately with something I want, I want to turn away and pretend that they don’t exist. The other option is to fester, but turning away is the more frequent response. Turning away robs me of enjoying the following:

1) Childbirth stories. Infertility due to making a late choice to be a mother, and having had two abortions when I was younger and seriously, bleerily amoral, fills me with bitterness. This has nothing to do with my son, whom I love so deeply it’s not funny. Rather, it has to do with adoption’s ridiculous mountain of paperwork, long waits, invasive questions, interviews, financial reports, endless fees, being put under the microscope of social workers, the federal government, and foreign embassies. We have to do that when it seems at times that others can pop out kids without a thought, and with no accountability. I know why the system exists, but if birth parents had to go through this to keep the kids they’ve been rewarded for nothing more than having sex, they would use birth control for sure.

2) Financial security. The promises of AA say that “fear of financial insecurity will leave us.” To a certain extent, perspective on finances is gained through sobriety, but it’s very hard not to notice that many others in Charlottesville know a financial security I can only dream of. I’m jealous of people whose parents are still alive, and feed them money for the “extras” in life, like nice clothes and a down payment on a house. I find myself with a closet full of clothes that are from 2 to 12 years old, and can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.

3) Professional Musicians. This is a very dirty secret. I don’t listen to new music, and I’m a musician. I don’t because hearing someone recorded and on iTunes is to hear someone living a dream I never was able to make happen for myself. That’s a raw, raw pain, and it never seems to go away. I once ran into Dave Matthews at The Market at Mill Creek, and it was everything I could do to keep from slashing his tires. (I’m speaking metaphorically — please don’t notify Mr. Matthews! I’m sure he’s a fine person.)

4) Young women. My skin is sagging, I have age spots, I feel old and unattractive. Charlottesville is full of those well-scrubbed, well-heeled co-eds on the Downtown Mall in their sundresses. I just can’t stand it. I feel invisible as an older woman, like my best days are behind me — and I’m not even 50.

5) People with Good Careers that Make them Happy. These are just the worst, and this one is eating me up. My husband is in school to get a great career that will make him happy. He’s able to do that largely with my help (he also works to make money on the weekends). It’s so hard not to lump him in with the rest of those folks who chose the right careers at the right time and have accumulated credentials while I was busy envying everyone all these years.

My deep-seated envy is an awful symptom of my ongoing unhappiness, and I’m working towards maintaining mindfulness of it. But, I have to come clean about it. I’m embarrassed at how much energy I spend on judging, resenting, and avoiding people I envy. I think prayer may be the only answer to this one, but I have to be willing not to live that way anymore. I’m not sure I am, just yet. Envy is a very comfortable place to be, a well-worn spot on the sofa of my life that I’m not willing to surrender. I keep waiting for the event to take place that will get me off my butt, and open my heart to the world I so wish I felt a part of. But, not feeling a part of it yet, being able to join it feels harder and harder every day.

I’m an undergoing an education in elementary education. It’s not all bad, but it’s a lesson that you think I would have learned by now. You have to speak up, you have to advocate. I think that folks who regularly complain about government not doing things well perhaps do nothing to effectively advocate for their needs, save a gripe or two.

I am happy to report that the school has taken our requests about our son’s education very seriously. He is having some troubled times, but because we stay in contact with the teachers and assistant principal, our son has received some real serious focus. His current positive reinforcement plan is being re-examined, and other venues explored.

Where the advocacy comes in at this point is to make sure that testing takes place for an IEP if no significant, consistent improvement happens. Blake’s happiness in school last week has been replaced by anxiety this week. I am trying to get to the bottom of it on my end, but sometimes with children, anxiety can be so free-floating that it’s hard to discern what’s causing it. So we will continue to reinforce positive behaviors, and give him lots of love.

Here is a question that I do have, however: At what point does good old fashioned “my way or the highway” discipline become appropriate? When I get openly angry, and yell (against my better judgment), my son laughs. When my husband does it, Blake responds. Is this just the old stereotype of male authority, or is there something else afoot? Basically, I’m asking, coming from a very liberal, feminist point of view: is there something about male-ness that makes certain discipline techniques that our parents used work on boys, and maybe certain girls? Is there ever an argument for a bootcamp approach?

My parents techniques were always “my way or the highway.” But because my father was physically menacing, my response was one of (justified) mortal fear. I am so loathe to bring that out in Blake. But, is that kind of fear the type of line that folks have to cross over to move from friend to parent? It is something about which I search my soul on a daily basis.

My fundamentalist friends in Fredericksburg gave me the whole “spare the rod, spoil the child” line. I’m not talking about corporal punishment, however; violence begets violence, no question. But, when does fear play a legitimate role? In my adult life, I continue to try to slough off fear in deference to love. An example: I did not want to become a Christian until my love for Christ exceeded my fear of Hell, fictional though it may be (you don’t know for sure!). If fear is a bad motivator for faith (one would say, it’s the absence of faith), is it EVER a good motivator? If a child learns to behave out of fear, at what point in their life do they learn to behave for more positive reasons?

I really, really don’t know.

The most prominent RSS feed on my iGoogle page is the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s toy safety recall list. I’ve been subscribing to it since the big scares about lead paint hit the mainstream media this past year.

Since subscribing, I’ve noticed a pattern. Many of the items recalled are off-brand knockoffs sold at stores like Dollar Tree. I go to Dollar Tree, but to give my son (who is beyond the age of putting things in his mouth) a chance to get 5 new toys for five dollars. It’s an amusement to me, an option. I can go to Target, too, but the cheapest toys there are $2.95, and that gives him less bang for his buck.

My husband and I have an annual Christmas tradition that we’ve held since we first started dating. We have a $20 limit for Christmas. Our store of choice in Charlottesville is Rose’s at Pantops. On Christmas Eve, we go to Rose’s and get two shopping carts. Each of us shops around the store, trying to avoid bumping into each other, picking out ridiculous stuff like egg slicers, bad figurines, and (my personal favorite this year) a pair of socks with the phrase “Wild About Jesus” spelled out in a zebra print. We can get each other about 7 or 8 gifts this way, so our tree looks full on Christmas morning, and we can pool the money we would have spent on ourselves and spend it instead on Blake (hence, the trampoline).

Our forays into the deep, deep discount worlds of Dollar Store and Rose’s, on some level, feels voyeuristic. We are one of the few shoppers in these places who do not rely on these stores for the staples of life. I am talking about folks who are so poor they can’t afford Wal-Mart or Target, or have no access to the big box stores. These are folks for whom a trip to the store is not a diversion, but a lifeline. It makes me feel white, bourgeois, and undeserving, even of the $20 of what to us are silly trinkets that sit under our tree each year.

I wouldn’t think of buying baby things at these stores because of the questionable nature of their manufacture — choking and possible lead hazards abound in the baby things in these stores. But many folks here in Charlottesville have to resort to buying this stuff because they can’t afford to go elsewhere. I’m one of the lucky ones that can choose to buy a trusted name brand, and drive to the store that sells them. And, P.S., as lucky as I am I still feel resentful that I can’t afford the fancy kids clothing stores on the Downtown Mall. But for a portion of our population, Blake’s $3.99 Cherokee sweatpants from Target would be a step up.

This has probably been going on for years and years: Inferior, dangerous products being sold to the most vulnerable, and we don’t hear about it until a known brand, like Mattel or Fischer Price (a Mattel-owned brand), gets a recall. At those times, you’ll see the media start talking about what this is going to do to Chinese manufacturers, how the market will respond, how well the Mattel CEO responded to the crisis, etc. But, when I regularly read these CPSC recalls (they are mostly posted on Fridays, as is all bad news), I can’t help but feel that the media frenzy is so late in the game. This substandard stuff — for BABIES!!!! — is EVERYWHERE in these low-end, nearly invisible stores with their socially-invisible shoppers.

For those interested, the CPSC toy recall RSS feed is at:

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prerelchild.xml

All recalls are posted here:

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prerel.xml

I made some noise with the school about consistency with the SBIT plan (see this post). Lo and behold — all of a sudden my son is not being sent home or sent out of the classroom to the principal’s office. What changed?

I was told that sometimes kindergartners are different after the winter break. They return to the classroom, and now recognize it as familiar territory over which they have a variety of mastery. That could be part of it. The “token” plan of positive reinforcement could be working. That’s possible. Blake may have passed through a phase of anxiety and is now more relaxed. That’s possible.

Behavior, for all the disciplines that explore it, seems to evade scientific analysis on the anecdotal level. And from what I’m learning, parenting is not a predictable job. Adopting or giving birth, you really don’t know what to expect as the person unfolds. Blake’s unfolding is complex, not very linear, but there has definitely been some sort of a breakthrough. He is more verbal now, able to play with kids better. I don’t know if it is brain chemistry, his own courage, that new trampoline, or just growing up that seems to be working. But, my Blake seems happy, and I am happy for him.

The only thing I CAN say is that it all could change tomorrow. I am trying NOT to anticipate the worst, and simply drink in how wonderful he is when he is like this. He’s full of hugs, jokes, laughter, and love. If I could bottle these days, and drink from them when the road once again turns rocky, I would be the happiest Mommy alive. I’m already the luckiest.

When we took Blake home from the NICU, we said “We got the best one.” For all the bumps in the road, I still believe that in my heart. For now, we have some peace, and I thank God for my son’s newfound happiness.

My 21 adult years in New York City almost wiped out childhood memories made in a far less glamorous place. When I was 4, my family moved from Jersey City to Suffern NY, a suburb about 30 miles northwest of NYC. I lived there for 15 years, until I transferred to college in New York City. My parents sold the Suffern place in 1978 and retired to the Jersey Shore.

So, the truth is, for all my urban self-identification, I grew up in bare feet in the woods on a dead end street called Canterbury Lane. My first dog’s name was Horace. My porn name is therefore “Horace Canterbury,” which, as I understand it, is not terribly hot.

My mother HATED Suffern. She was a city girl, and she was 49 when she moved from her Jersey City home to Suffern. In 1963, when we moved there, Suffern was not even suburban. It was rural. The nearest store was Getchius Farmstand one mile away. It was a big deal to walk with my sisters, and a couple of kids, to the farmstand on a hot summer day. It was an even BIGGER deal to walk to the nearest real store, 3 miles away: a Carvel ice cream parlor, right next to an ancient and smelly Shop Rite supermarket. That was kind of it.

I opened Google Earth tonight and searched for my Suffern home. There it is in the image above. The swimming pool is still there — my father was so proud of it, and we all hated having to vacuum it and swim there just to please him. It was an icon of success to my father as was the “acre and a fifth” wooded land around the house. That was a big deal to a guy from immigrant parents.

My father and brothers also built the shed in the back, and the brick fireplace in the side back yard. I have lots of weird memories in that house. It’s full of some really painful flashbacks and hilarious nights of staying up late with my sisters in front of the TV. I look at the picture above and think of the piano in the family room where I ran in to play the second I came off the schoolbus until dinner time. There was my father’s nightly swim where he’d go upstairs afterwards, and chuck his wet bathingsuit and jockstrap out his bedroom window onto the backyard grass. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized my friends fathers didn’t do this.

I look at this house and remember nights of terror and violence when I was too scared to say anything for fear of setting something off, losing Mom or my father, or both. I look at this house and remember things that happened of which I still can’t speak, and about which I still pray for peace. It’s where we watched my mother pass out nightly, slackjawed in the recliner with any combination of a cigarette, drink, and dry roasted nuts in her hands. It’s where my father and mother held the annual Baccanalia called St. Patrick’s day party, and we watched grownups drink themselves silly and then listen to me play the piano, all panicky and trembling at the drunken laughter.

8 Canterbury Lane hosted the ugliest fears I’ve ever known side by side with laughter that ran from your head, to your heart, to your feet, to your soul, and lit it up like the Rockefellor Center Christmas tree.

When my mother came to get me at the end of my Sophomore year of college she told me they were selling the house. I was deeply sad. It was the only thing I knew as home. But once I moved to New York City the following fall, it was as though my life was rewritten. I have long detached myself from the power of this house, unconsciously trying to re-invent myself while perhaps reclaiming my mother’s desire to be a successful urbanite. I’ve tried to disown Rural/Suburban Suffern in a lot of ways.

But there that dumb “developer” house is, not just between my ears, but still here on Earth. Still there to be reckoned with, to be opened up like a book waiting to be written again, this time with a heart that has had time to heal, and memories that grow sweeter with age.