We Go With Him

Mother's Day Comes Once a Year / Motherhood Is Constant

 

I had just brought the two black bikes out to the driveway in preparation for a ride out to Jersey horse country where the bike trail is when a tan car stopped across the street. A woman, with hair past her waist and a long flowery skirt, stepped out. She was holding flowers and an envelope and she walked straight towards me and said, 'I want to give these to you.'

Perhaps I've become too wary and jaded after so many years of interfacing between strangers and Charlie (making curious noises / doing curious things / back-arching his way onto the sidewalk / etc.) -- and some years of teaching classes of street-smart, Jersey-and-NYC-raised students: I didn't say a deep 'thank you' immediately but something more like 'who are you?" only to learn that she is the neighbor whom Charlie and I often see, fleetingly, as we go down the sidewalk on our daily walks (runs). She works a lot in her garden and sometimes she and I had caught each other's eye and nodded and then I'd continued to hurry after Charlie.

Realizing all this in a flash, I thanked her profusely. And then some. She said words to the effect of, you're a great mother and since it's Mother's Day I want you to know that.

I asked her if she had any children and she said she doesn't, though her husband has two who are grown.

I said thank you again and that I couldn't thank her enough, and she went back to her car.

And I got the straps for the bike rack and fastened them to it and Charlie ran down from the porch and watched me, all attention.

 

Motherhood #fail #maybenot

To the best of our knowledge, Charlie did not sleep at all on Saturday night. He listened to music, paced in his room and the hallway and up and down the stairs and was standing over me asking if he could get his socks when I, after repeated attempts to coax him to lie down and sleep, opened my eyes at 6.30am.

Apparently all that sleep on Saturday was enough for two days for him.

It was as well that we got us off to an early start as rain fell for most of Sunday (a very good thing as it has been weeks since it rained in New Jersey) and pretty much straight through the afternoon and evening.

Charlie asked to go out to Jersey horse country. To no one's surprised, Charlie dozed off in the car but he was ready to get on his bike after Jim had unloaded them. It was misty but not (really) raining and Jim suggested he and Charlie wear their lycra skullcaps, which they had stopped wearing as of last Monday (when it was 90 degrees). Charlie was wary of the change from the change and then Jim realized that his helmet must be too tight with the cap on and a readjustment was in order.

 

They rode off and the rain came down, let up, came down harder.

Amid all this, and keeping an eye on my phone in case Jim wanted me to pick them up at an earlier point in the trail than the very end, I neglected to move Charlie's iPad. He likes to align it just so in the left-side back seat which is all very well except when it rains, as the window on that side is slightly out of line with the door frame. After we bought the car in October of 2009, Charlie had one ferocious behavior storm after another (it was a tougher than usual time of his life with lots of school strife) and struck his head repeatedly on the window. One very bad night, he broke the window.

He survived that (we survived it though I think of it every time we are in the car which is to say, every single day).

The car door was fixed but the window has ever since leaked and so it was, on Sunday afternoon, that I saw a pool of water on Charlie's iPad. I hastily wiped it up and hoped for the best and then Charlie and Jim, both quite soaked, appeared after a triumphant 16 miles, beaming and glad to get into the car as the temperature was in the 40s.

Charlie handed me his iPad, saying 'turn on.' I saw that the SIM car was missing which I knew it wasn't. The internet had worked the night before but the rain water soaking, and possibly some of the whacking Charlie had subjected the iPad to on his bedroom wall, had taken their toll.

He did not object to hearing that he'd have to wait till he was home for me to 'fix it.' He stood expectantly and patiently beside me at home as I tried to get the iPad to work. A slight smack on the iPad's side briefly restored the SIM card to its place but then the extent of the water damage was apparent as apps turned on and off with abandon.

We are lucky to have another iPad and I set to work turning it into the replica of Charlie's now waterlogged on. This took quite a while and he waited, looking at me intently and reaching for his iPad. 'Give,' he said when I tried to get his iPad to work.

At last, the other iPad was loaded with his music and photos. I offered it to him and was told 'give' as Charlie reached for his old one, which he looked at with eyes widening in distress while I said to myself, motherhood failure day. Charlie took his old iPad up to his room and plugged it in. I put the new one on the floor and left Charlie staring at his iPad, which was rapidly flashing through various apps.

After fifteen minutes, he was asleep. The apps on the old iPad are arranged in a certain way and I took both iPads downstairs. I plugged the old one into my computer and its data showed up, unaffected. I took screenshots of each screen of apps and then set about making each app screen on the second iPad look just like that on the older one. I put the refurbished iPad on Charlie's bed and plugged it in, and the still screen-flickering-through-app-on-app older one beside it.

Thumps on the ceiling meant Charlie had awoken. After a few minutes, I heard him say, 'tickle Mom.' As I entered his room, he said 'give' and held out what turned out to be his old iPad to me.

After a special treat of Vietnamese spring and summer rolls and noodles, Charlie was glad to be home all evening (we were too, as the rain kept pouring down). He fell asleep listening to K.D. Lang's Ingénue, a recent addition to the music on his iPad.

Always good to be exonerated from a little mother guilt. And yes, I have a Genius Bar appointment on Monday early afternoon.

 

Obvious Anxieties

 

I dreamed last night that we saw Charlie sitting beside a stream in the late morning, when he should have been in school: Had he somehow left? Had he run off the bus when the door was open and another child got on?

He's on one of his couple-of-day out-of-whack sleep cycles. Tuesday's past-midnight sleeptime was preferable to Monday's 2am!

(In the photo, he is biking of course after Jim, at the start of the new 14-mile-local route.)

 

The Reality of Motherhood

 

On your day off (which is already going to be shorter than usual as Charlie is getting home 2 hours early due to parent-teacher conferences), you rush your coughing child into the car to get to the pediatrician walk-in clinic before the line gets too long. You get there at 7.55 am and are 4th in line.

Happily, the wonderful nurse practitioner who Charlie usually sees is on duty! And your child is determined to have nothing more than the common cold. No antibiotics needed though the nurse, noting the bruise (and the acne) on Charlie's forehead -- the result, I said as nonchalantly as possible, of head-banging on the table and the wall the previous night after starting to cry in the car in the midst of a very runny nose and anxiety that Jim working late meant Jim going to Boston again -- I didn't explain all this to the nurse, but she understood the head-banging/physical discomfort due to symptoms Charlie doesn't put into words and said if need be she could prescribe him an antibiotic in the upcoming days.

Then you go home and offer Charlie a choice: 'stay home' or 'go to school.' 'Stay home,' says Charlie. 'Ok,' you say. You pull into the driveway, Charlie refuses to get out of the car. 'No home.' 'School?' 'School.'

You hastily fill both lunch boxes (you hadn't because you thought Charlie might be too sick to go to school), put them in his blue school bag, grab his green parka under the pile of coats, drive to school and notice how far traffic is backed up on the highway on what would be your route home.

You drop off Charlie who starts walking right towards his classroom.

You take an alternate route home during which the neurologist calls to say the doctor will be out of the country for weeks and can you reschedule? You get cut off. You leave a voice mail. You are glad you threw a piece of Chinese preserved ginger into your bag for the ride. The neurologist calls again; you find out that every day during Charlie's spring break is booked because every other child in New Jersey has the same spring break BUT you and your husband, due to teaching at Catholic institutions, have Good Friday off so, yes, April the 6th is great. You can even go early in the day instead of at the end of the day when everyone is more tired and slightly cranky and there is too much traffic on the NJ Turnpike.

You go home and make coffee and get to work for three hours.  

 

A Giant Among Us

 

The cold that Jim felt coming on as he stepped off the train in Boston has just gotten about out of me (well, I'm still coughing) -- Jim is better -- and Charlie is enduring.

He got himself through school after a night of coughing, and waking, and wanting a walk at 3am, and going back to bed and sleep, on Monday night. He made it through a highly unexpected and potentially deleterious event: Another child on his bus got, it seems, upset enough that the driver needed to drop her or him off first. So not only was Charlie on the bus home for a good hour and a half at least; the bus had thoroughly veered from its usual course.

After he was finally home, Charlie was peaceful and, coughs and all, enjoyed a bike ride. He wanted bedtime and sleep by just after 8pm. He has been coughing some but not as much as the previous night and I'm hopeful he can get some much-needed sleep after a few nights of disrupted (because of coughing, his own and ours/mine) sleep.

I do think Charlie is a giant among us and not only because, as the photo above makes quite clear, he is tall.

 

Judgment Call

 

At 11 pm on Friday night, Charlie asked for a walk.

Aware that you can have too much of a good thing (walks), and still mindful of the night before Jim left for Boston's midnight adventure, and of how Charlie had been trying to sleep for the past few hours and had had a certain nervous, frenetic energy apparent even as he was listening to music in his room and running around on the second floor -- we pointed out that it was late and time for sleep.

'Sleep,' said Charlie and with no particular ado proceeded to tuck himself in bed and to fall asleep in the next ten minutes.

I had had on my mind some Parents magazine article (read when Charlie was a toddler) about how right-before-bed exercise can rev a child up rather than down. I thought, too, of how often Charlie asks for something just for the sake of asking while (gasp) it is sometimes wiser to exercise a little parental judgement.

Even the perpetual motion boy needs a break.

 

Rearranging the Space

Charlie got himself up for the bus, only to fall asleep soon after getting to school. He asked for a bike ride, -1 degree Celsius weather and all. He didn't ask for a burrito. We did get him burgers at our local McDonalds, scene of an end-of-last-year difficult moment; Charlie only ate the actual burgers, leaving buns, paper wrappers, ketchup and fries in the bag he handed me.

Jim had made plans a few weeks ago to visit the Catholic Worker in Lower Manhattan Friday night. As we drove to the hospital on Thursday, he was making plans not to go. Charlie was quiet in the backseat and I said to Jim, he should still go, though leave open the flexible option of not doing so 'just in case.'

Friday night, we dropped Jim off at the train and Charlie, once home, went to eat some watermelon, then went up to his room, then back down for a walk. It was a quite frosty one, though in the still and the dark, the full moon now gone.

I gave him some Advil when we came back. I kept my language so minimal I didn't say more than ten words the whole evening, just communicated via gesture, handing Charlie this or that. He to bed and lay down on his stomach. He likes to sleep on his back (and has, since a baby) but that might not be so comfortable until the staples come out, the Monday after next. I pulled the sheets around him and went downstairs.

The first floor of our house has been transformed. After Charlie was asleep Thursday night, Jim and I started thinking of how to help Charlie through the latest OCD rut he has been in. My desk has been rather in the middle of the room as, after we moved back into our house, there was no other place for it. But the futon we used to have by the window is gone and Jim thought we could move my desk there and then the living and dining room would be one big wide open space.

I moved my desk right after Charlie was on the bus and, as you know happens when you move furniture, you start to move all sorts of things. Piles of books, files, another chair. I'm quite pleased by the new arrangement: I'm now right by a window and have much more natural light, plus I rather like being in a corner space.

Jim and I also talked about getting a nice big cushy chair for Charlie to use upstairs. He is not inclined to sit at a desk but I could see him plunking down in a chair by the windows that look out on our street, iPad in his lap.

Before 9.30pm, Charlie was asleep, on his side. Past midnight, he was coughing and stirring a bit: Needless to say, it's been a lot to process this week.

 

Permanence in Change

 

"Permanence in Change" is the English translation of "Dauer im Wechsel," a poem by the German Romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- and permanence in change is, I often think, the central issue that we, as Charlie's parents and sole caretakers, grapple with. How to provide Charlie with enough routine, order and regularity in his life, while still teaching him to function and be in a world of constant change?

A world in which we are all, Charlie included, getting older, with bodily and physical changes to match.

A world in which new and out-of-the-ordinary experiences and phenomena pop up frequently.

We have learned, through harsh experience, that letting things remain the same too much and too long for Charlie, and he seems to be knocking and banging himself about in a sort of OCD box -- that he does need change, though subjecting him to it can often seem far more painful than anything encountered before. Over the years (and especially in the past 2-3 years), we think (hope) we have gotten a better sense of knowing when it is time for a change-up.

For his part, Charlie seeks to manage his way through the changes, some of which may be so well-liked that they become the new routine.

But the initial encounter with change is always hard and often cause for fear: Because if things are different, who's to say that everything won't suddenly morph into something else?

Charlie was not entirely at ease on Monday, but managed as he might through a lot of unusualness: The full moon of the past few nights that seems to be affecting his sleep. The curiously warm temperatures on Saturday after the -3 Celsius days of a week ago. Another visit from reporters during which he attempted to wear a microphone -- what a sensory puzzle that must have been -- and became disconcerted as the evening drew on, as signaled by Charlie slamming the door of his bedroom loudly several times.

The reporters were accommodating and Charlie was all right and even smiling as, before going to bed, he watched a Barney show he has seen many times before while I took a little video, something I don't usually do and something I suddenly wanted to do, to catch a passing moment for a little longer.

 

Thoughts About Heroes

 

It was not intentional, but I showed a clip from Disney's Dumbo to my mythology class on Tuesday.

We have been studying the concept of a hero in ancient literature, Joseph Campbell's outline of the hero's journey, heroes and trickster figures (Ananzi the spider -- I still remember hearing a librarian read us a story about him when I was in perhaps the second grade -- and Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and hiding it in a hollow fennel bulb). I mentioned Hercules and somehow the Disney movie about that Greek hero came up and then we talked about him having great abilities that he most awkwardly and sometimes disastrously has no idea what to do with, but that he slowly learns to use, and that got us to Dumbo.

Should you ever have the chance to watch either cartoon, note how the words 'freak' and not 'normal' get thrown about.

Certainly, heroes in ancient literature aren't perfect, physically and otherwise. Oedipus, for instance: His name Οιδιπους actually means 'swollen foot' (he is lamed as a baby and then exposed in the wilderness). Unlike the protagonists of Disney cartoons who by and large overcome their weaknesses and difficulties, heroes in ancient literature often end up in even more difficult straits, with sometimes -- often --tragic fates.

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Charlie woke before 6am on Tuesday and waited easily for the bus with Jim as I'd gone to catch the train. The schoolday still saw its share of on and off crying. Charlie was somber getting off the bus and slow on a bike ride with Jim. Then he went straight to bed and slept from just before 7pm to 11.30pm.

The change to regular time has been another thing bedeviling Charlie and getting his sleep times very out of whack. His body clock is still on daylight savings time and the changes in the light have been unsettling, on top of all the other unsettledness. I've been noting more and more how sensitive and attuned Charlie is to changes in the light. On our evening walks, he moves confidently and easily; we have been thinking he has some night vision that enables him to see or at least sense more than most of us do or can.

 

Fall Together Now

Jim told me that, on Thursday, an acorn hit his bike helmet as he and Charlie were riding.

Obviously, always wear your bike helmet when autumn leaves, and acorns, fall. It's a rule that many a bike-riding boy Charlie's age, like the two he and I walked past later, fails to observe.

Falling acorns are also, of course, a sign that it is finally feeling like autumn around here. The forecast had been for rain but the wind was strong on Friday and Saturday was all blue skies and gorgeous sunshine. Charlie and Jim did 14 miles on the trail and then 6 more at home, and then Charlie got in 2 more miles on a nighttime run walk.

Many people had turned on their Halloween decorations. I don't know how much Charlie cares to notice them, but there were brightly lit (by electricity, not candles) pumpkins and several big blow-up skeletons and one Frankenstein who resembles Homer Simpson in green face paint more than Herman Munster. Charlie takes notice of what he wants and needs to take notice of (a certain half-circle of cement, whether or not the garage door of the house where Nemesis Dog lives is open).

Two of those bike-helmet-less boys rode in front of us ans. They sort of glance in the direction of Charlie who paid them no heed. As they rode off, I could one say words to the effect of 'Isn't it great Mom is out or we'd never be able to ride our bikes now."

I'm not sure if Charlie would rather be riding with them but as the mom, it was nice to be spending a Saturday evening with my boy.