Pocket Lint

Last week, S and I took off for a few days of vacation WITHOUT KIDS in an effort to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our marriage.

All was successful.  The kids browned themselves in the sun despite SPF 50 and splashed in the lake with  cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.  A daily call to grandma proved the girls were happy and content. 

We too were happy and content on our own albeit a bit out of sorts.  It was just the two of us.  We didn’t quite no what to do with the decrease in persons at first. 

Of course, we adjusted quickly.  Our vacation was quiet and lazy.  We drove as far away from the city as possible with gas being over $4 a gallon.  My shoulders relaxed as the hills outside the car window started to gently roll.  Every where I looked I saw green.

S and I stayed up late watching movies in our pastel room at a B&B.  We ate fried green tomatoes one night and ran through a gentle rain storm another evening.  I bought rock candy for the kids and homemade jelly for the households partnering to take care of our children.  We stuffed ourselves with the breakfast portion of our B&B every morning and canoed down the town’s murky river one morning.

We took naps almost every afternoon and toured the home of the 18th President of the United States while I tried to get my Ukrainian husband to smile for a picture.

This was the best he could do:

It was nice to be on our own to do what we pleased for a few days.  There were no telephone calls, no dishes, not a laptop in sight.  Nobody cried if they didn’t get their way and there wasn’t a need to look at the kiddie menu at restaurants.

S and I started to remember one another.  We were pleased to realize we still enjoy each other’s company. 

At the end of the week we drove to Michigan to get our kids, slowly preparing ourselves to expand once again from two to five. 

Honestly, I was dreading it.

And then I saw the girls.  They were excited about our reunion.  Polly shrieked with laughter.  Elaina held me tightly and longer than usual.  Zoya recounted the tales of a few unfortunate mishaps in the week; she showed me where her neck was sore and the scrap on her toe.  

My heart quickened in their presence.

And I decided that five is a good number.

Often I get caught up in the world of disability.  Mounds of time is spent pondering what “could” happen to Polly.  I day dream about her future.  Will she be in a typical class room?  Will kids make fun of her?  Will her health continue to be good?  Will people see her, really see her?

I get enthralled with Polly’s latest tricks.  My brother-in-law suggested last week that we simply leave Polly alone.  Because I find that I want her to perform for people.  To show off what she knows, that she is able to learn, that she is more normal than people assume she is.  I want to show the world that Polly uses sign language easily, that she loves to laugh, that she absolutely digs a chocolate ice cream cone.  Just like the rest of us. 

I want others to see that I am OK with Down syndrome…more importantly, that I love my daughter more than life.

And then I am reminded that I have three daughters.  Somebody mentions Elaina or Zoya, I see an add with a child that looks like them… I take a moment and look one of them in the eye and see the spark that only they can give.

I have three children.  And my struggle now is to balance their lives, give everyone attention, see each child for who she is and help to nourish what is going on in her.

My sea legs in the world of Down syndrome have gotten a bit sturdier.  Now the challenge is balance.

For all of our sakes.

I was a tad emotional last week. 

Lately Polly’s school and therapy times have gone, well, badly.

It is a lot.  She is in preschool two mornings a week, for three hours.  And a new class means new therapists and teachers, new activities, new socialization.  After the first two weeks, the honeymoon is officially over.  Polly’s having a hard time being the new kid in town around there.  And so she cries, hard, for a long time.  The last few times I’ve picked her up, the therapist gives me a tight smile and a grimace, “she had a rough day today” she says quietly. 

Then when she gets home she has to eat and take a nap in order to be ready for her home therapy sessions later in the afternoon. 

I’ve been close to losing it.  I just don’t know what’s best for her, how to help her through this rough patch, how to discern if this new schedule is too much or something she simply needs to get used to.

And now I feel really bad for the customer service representative from a XYZ organization that caught my wrath the other day on the phone.  He called just after I dropped Polly off at class as I was driving down the street. 

“Hello.”

“Hello.  May I please speak with Gill-anne Elaine?”

“Yes.  This is Gillian.”

“Joanne?  Is Elaine there?”

“This is GILLIAN, the person you wish to speak with.”

“Oh, sorry, yes, Gillian, I am calling from XYZ…how are you today?”

And this is when it got ugly.

“I’m fine (said with emotion) but I am not going to blah blah blah blah and I would appreciate it if you people would stop calling me every couple of weeks.” 

Click.

Oh my. 

I have to say though, I felt better.

But now I feel bad for that poor guy who was just doing his job.

That day when I picked up Polly she had a sticker on her shirt for participating well in class and making good choices.

Maybe I should try yoga?

I have this memory.  I don’t know when it happened, although I know that our family was still living on the other side of Michigan, the Detroit side, so I had to be younger than seven.  It’s a fuzzy memory, more like a feeling.  When I think about it everything is kind of yellow and I can feel the hot sun on my face. 

My parents and my brother and sister and I were at an outdoor party, a barbecue, I think.  I had been running all over, gorging myself on watermelon.  My palms felt sticky, I was sweating, there were tons of people around.  I wore my bathing suit under a pair of shorts.  Every once in a while I would pass by a parent or a family friend and they would yell at me to slow down. 

It was a fun day.  There were lots of people and food.  Us kids were free to do what we pleased.  There was a swimming hole and laughter.

Some people must have been planning to spend the night.  Tents were up.  It was a party for the duration.

Half way through the day a woman caught my diminutive eye.  She sat at a picnic table.  There was something about her that was different than everyone else at the picnic and I got scared.  I remember my breath catching and a little tidal wave of fear beginning to brim in my stomach.  I looked away from her, afraid to look… wanting to look again. 

I found an empty tent.  Swimming was no longer appealing.  I didn’t want anything to eat.  The inside of the tent was cool, everything was a luminous blue as the sun pushed through the tent’s navy walls.  I hid inside.  I was afraid to see the woman again.   

Eventually my mom and dad found me.  They tried to get me to talk.  I was silent.  There was something terribly wrong and I was sure I was the only person who noticed it.  I refused to leave the tent. 

As a parent I can imagine how my folks felt.  They offered me soda and chips.  They tried to get me to come out of the tent and rejoin the party.  After a while, we left, no one in the family really knew why, except for me.

I was petrified.  I didn’t know that I simply had something new to learn and that it was OK to talk about it and ask questions.

Looking back, I can’t pin point what special needs that sweet woman had.  Of course, my mind’s eye now sees her with Down syndrome.

After Polly was born and we learned of her diagnosis, I received a lot of emails and phone calls.  Sometimes I was told I was blessed with Polly because of my ability to handle the situation.  “I can’t think of two people who could do better,” some have said to my husband and me.

Really, I think I had Polly in order to finally ask questions, to talk about it, to learn.

To come out of the tent.

My husband is a pastor.  There, I said it. 

For some reason, I’ve shyed away from this topic on my blog.  Don’t really know why.

Sometimes, I don’t want to be the wife of the pastor.  Sometimes I wish he were a tire salesman…for God.

I dropped my two older daughters off at day camp this morning.  They are part of Chicago’s six week park district program, 9-3, everyday, or I guess I should say as much as they want to go.  We’ve never done something like this before so we’ll see how it goes.

This morning after the girls’ hair was brushed to the side, after backpacks were stuffed with bathing suits and towels and water and sun screen, after Polly was dressed in oversized school t-shirt and buckled into her car seat, I looked back at my kids. 

Elaina was grinning ear to ear.  She was literally squealing, albeit under her breath.  She couldn’t wait to get to camp. 

Zoya was quiet.  She has not yet bought in to this whole day camp idea.  This morning before we left we stopped a moment to pray and she asked that we’d pray she’d make a friend.  One friend.

Elaina will eat up the day camp experience.  She is ready to make friends with every child there.  And I bet she does too.  Zoya will be happy to find one girl in her little group.  She will pointedly ask the little girl to be friends and then she will stick closely by this little ally through thick and thin; through the “getting to know you” time, when receiving her new t-shirt for the summer program, as she explores her first camp boxed lunch.

My kids’ relational capacities are significantly unique and completely different.   

And it makes me wonder.  What is my relational capacity?  What was my relational capacity before three children?  Before ten years of marriage?  Before 7 moves and six hours a week of therapy?

Honestly, I am not very good at friendship these days.  Of course I have friends.  I like the people at our church and I try to meet up with them here and there.  I have some great girlfriends from high school who still like me after sixteen years of friendship even though sometimes I don’t communicate with them for months. 

Some neighbors on our street have quietly moved over into the friendship category, not because of time spent together, but simply because I know I could ring their doorbell any time for a cup of sugar or call in the middle of the night if we need to take a kid to the emergency room.

But sometimes at night when S is gone and I am watching something on TV totally embarrassing to admit (like the Bachelorette, I know) a thought will pass through my mind, “boy, it would be nice to call someone right now, just to talk.”

I am not there right now in my life, though.  I am at my limit most days with therapy schedules and camp supplies, bills, cleaning, food, writing, there just isn’t much left for anything or really, anyone else. 

What about you?  How is your relational capacity?  Do you have a lot of friends?  One or two?  None?

Maybe I should invest more of myself in the people around me, people outside of my little nuclear family who are ready to be invested into.

Maybe tomorrow. 

We went to Lincoln Park Zoo with a friend and her kids a couple weeks ago.

The power of five children dragged us through the park, flinging us towards the monkeys and giraffes and ostrich, even to the pathetic camel whose hump had fallen to the side.  We were like giant magnets.

It was a hot day and I forgot sunscreen.  It looked like it could rain at any time.

And then I saw polar bears swimming.  Swimming.  They were graceful and joyful plunging their huge bodies all around the tank and cutting up into the air, effortlessly, for a quick breath or two.

I was mesmerized and I did not want to leave.  We stood watching the polar bears enjoy their swim.

It became clear to me that most of us lug our bodies around the lives we lead.  We are big and bulky.  And we are not graceful.  We try to find our niche, a place to feel good, but we are self-conscious, unsure.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be like a large white polar bear swimming in deep blue water?

I’d like that.

I wrote a post for Chicago Mom’s Blog about Zoya’s dance recital last weekend.

I am still feeling sheepish contributing there, like I’m the new girl that doesn’t have any friends yet.

Check it out here, if you’d like.

S took Polly to preschool this morning.  They will not return until 12:30pm.  There’s a dishwasher to unload, two loads of laundry to fold and put away, junk piled up on the dining room table and dust bunnies monsters roaming around our upstairs floor, scoffing at the notion of a dust pan and broom.

With three young children, these times are rare.  In fact, I will not have this again for a while as tomorrow is Zoya’s last day of Kindergarten.

Here I sit with my coffee. 

What would you do with three free hours?

If you are going to post that you would clean, I urge you to click away.  I am just not interested in hearing that this morning.