Mothering

When your primary occupation for years and years has been mothering, and then when your child takes his life, you know people are judging your skill as a mother, and you know this because you did it yourself, before, with friends, speculated about why a child would take their own life, and always it came back to bad parenting. And as a mother whose primary occupation for years and years has been mothering, you feel defeated, and you act particularly upbeat out in public with your children, especially at their school, proving to the world over and over again that your son came from a good home with a loving mother. But you question yourself, your ability to mother, wondering if anything you do really makes a difference, exhausted by the most basic daily tasks, so that a simple trip to the dentist with your children feels like an accomplishment above and beyond what it should, because making the appointment, and getting everyone dressed and there on time requires monumental effort. 

"See, I am a good mother," you say to no one in particular, and to everyone who might think you're not.

Carpe Diem: Seize the Carp

I need a lot of downtime, whole days with nothing on the schedule.

I'm not the mother with a successful photography business raising five kids, two with special needs. I'm not the mom selling real estate while juggling the schedules of three boys in various sports. I'm not the mom who after hearing that her daughter had a lifelong intractable seizure disorder reacted by painting her home's interior. These are all women I know--real people!--but that's not how I operate.

It takes me a long time to react to new situations, to figure out where I'm going and what I'm doing. It took me three years to get used to the idea that I needed to register for summer sports in February. Who thinks about summer when you're just trying to stay warm in February? I was always the mom running to someone's house with a registration form and check in March.

I can handle only one event at a time. All my attention focuses on the band concert dress that needs to be hemmed before the band concert on Tuesday completely forgetting that another child needs an outfit for a choir concert on Thursday.

Have you ever seen the videos of people in boats traveling down a river while Jumping Asian Carp fly out of the water and whack them? That's me. That's how life feels. Make dinner, hem the dress, find the shoes, go to church, go to speech therapy, read the book, answer the e-mail, go to the play. Life keeps coming at me like those Asian Carp. I duck my head and bat them away one by one, but I need to stop often and crawl into the bottom of the boat to rest.

I don't have a type A personality. I don't even have a type B personality. I'm way down the alphabet at C, D or E.

None of this was helped by Mark dying. Now I see the carp coming, duck down and just hope no one notices I'm not even batting them away anymore. I celebrate the fact that I've managed to keep everyone in clean underwear for the last year. Seriously. Everything beyond that is gravy.

And what made me think about this today? John has needed to have his nails clipped for about a week. I beat myself up this morning as he was getting on the bus and I realized I had forgotten . . . again. Off he went to school with claws on his hands. But wait! I thought. His iPad is charged!

His teacher won't appreciate it, but today that was the carp I was able to knock down. I'm hunkered down in the bottom of the boat. All other carp are being ignored. 

Don't Confuse Dumb Luck with Skill

I spend a fair amount of time on facebook. OK, I spend way too much time on facebook. It's a nice distraction, and for now distraction is my friend. If you're a parent and have friends who are parents, you may have noticed the many links posted by your friends on facebook to articles and blog posts about parenting. Links to lists of things to do with and for your kids. Links to articles about ways to boost your child's self-esteem, or methods of positive discipline. There was even an article discussing the reasons why kids these days self-report depression more so than previous generations, with broad leaps to conclusions without proper consideration of all the variables, much of the blame being placed squarely on the shoulders of their parents.

I used to read these articles and blog posts and take it all to heart. I'd read the recommendations and evaluate my parenting, making mental notes about the things I needed to change. I'd pat myself on the back, taking full credit for my kids' successes. And worst of all, I'd look around at what I thought other parents were doing wrong and pass judgment on them. Self-righteous and judgmental.

Then an ugly disease called depression landed on my doorstep. Suddenly all the parenting advice in the world wasn't enough to combat a force beyond my control. For those of you who think what my son did was somehow due to my parenting, think again. For those of you who think you can ward off a chemical imbalance in the brain with positive discipline techniques, you can't. And for anyone who's been wondering what I did wrong and why my kid did what he did and yours didn't, stop.

I'm a stay-at-home mom. Nineteen years ago I was working as a CPA at a public accounting firm about to head out to a client's office when my water broke in the reception area of my office. That was my last day of full-time work outside the home. Staying home with my kids was important to me, so I put my professional life on hold to tend to my little people. Over the years I've read countless children's books, mated innumerable socks, applied band-aids, guided, comforted, listened, just like any other parent.

My husband read an article about the importance of family meal time and made it a priority to be home for dinner every night. And I made the dinner, from scratch, trying to keep it healthy, always including fresh vegetables and fruit. As my big kids got older, the conversation moved from just checking in, highs and lows, to lively discussions about current events, politics, movies, or the probability of a massive earthquake taking out all of California. (Some of my happiest family times include sitting at the table chatting with my older kids long after the little ones had finished eating and wandered away. What I wouldn't give to relive one of those nights with Mark!)

A friend of my oldest was over one summer day when they were about seven. When my daughter asked if they could watch TV, the friend said she wasn't allowed to watch TV in the summertime. This gave me an idea. Much to the dismay of my children, I implemented a TV-free summer policy. If you think this was easy, it was not.

All this to say, I took my role as a parent very seriously, which is why depression came as such a shock to me. I couldn't protect my son from the thoughts that plagued him. He was a happy, resilient kid, and then he wasn't. No amount of denying TV in favor of creative play, or engaging him at the dinner table, or implementing any of 100 different parenting techniques could overcome the chemical forces at work in his brain.

My experience as a parent, my skill, couldn't keep mental illness at bay.

Don't have a child with cancer? Dumb luck.
Don't have a child with autism? Dumb luck.
Don't have a child with food allergies? Dumb luck.
Don't have a child with a chronic disease? Dumb luck.
Don't have a child who suffers from depression? Dumb luck.
Don't have a child with Down syndrome? Your loss. (Seriously, I'm the lucky one here.  Just ask anyone with a child with Down syndrome.)

The best parenting won't prevent cancer. It won't prevent autism. It won't prevent allergies, or chronic disease. Or depression. So don't confuse dumb luck with skill. If your life is easy and your children healthy and happy, breathe a sigh of relief and know that you're very, very lucky.

As for me, it's summertime and the TV is on. My kids had chocolate chip cookies for lunch. I've quit reading parenting advice. And I won't be giving parenting advice either.

Oh wait, just one thing: please do your kids a favor and teach them to chew with their mouths closed. That's all, just teach your kids to chew with their mouths closed.

Three weeks

How can it be three weeks?

There are no answers.  He left no note, no explanation why that night was the one.  No idea what pushed him over the edge.  Things had been going well, or so it seemed.  In the end I’m left thinking I failed him as a parent.  He wasn’t comfortable coming to me with whatever it was that was torturing him.  It’s my job to make sure my kids are OK, that they’re safe.  I couldn’t protect him from himself.  I would have handcuffed myself to him if I had known I needed to.  I would have done most anything.  I want to reach back in time to the moment I last saw him alive.  I think about all the things I would have done and said.  And would it have helped?  Or would it just have put off the inevitable?  I’ll never know.  I only know that I feel like a failure.

Grief is a difficult process.  Grief layered with a sense of failure takes my breath away.

God wins

Two weeks ago today my 16 year old son took his own life.  Diagnosed with depression at the end of June and dead four months later.  We did everything we knew to do: started him on meds, took him to weekly sessions with a therapist, checked in with him regularly to see how he was doing, tried to respect his privacy, tried to let him know we loved him, prayed, prayed, prayed, worried ourselves sick.  In the end, it wasn’t enough.  I don’t understand depression.  I don’t understand how a well liked, good looking, academically successful, extracurricularly involved kid could believe whatever evil it was running around in his brain telling him he was stupid and worthless.  In the name of Jesus Christ I raise my fist against the evil that visited my house that night.  You are not welcome here.  And, besides, God wins in the end.  My boy is in the arms of his savior.  Go to hell.

Defeated

Live your dream!  Share your passion!  Do what you love and the money will follow!

Ever since I was a little girl, I've been telling stories.  My mom used to stick me in the way-back of the station wagon when we went on driving trips to tell my little sisters stories to keep them entertained.  I remember telling stories on the playground in grade school, and telling stories to my cousins when they visited from Washington, DC.  When I started delivering the evening paper at age 12, I spent my time walking from house to house telling myself stories in my head.  I remember dragging my feet on the way home and arriving well after dark because I was at a good spot in the story and didn't want to quit.  I started telling myself stories to fall asleep at night, just like reading a novel.  I had one multi-generational family saga that I started telling myself as a senior in high school and finished over a year later as a freshman in college.  I didn't write any of it down, and most of it was entertaining only to me, but for as long as I can remember, I've been telling stories.

I've thought about writing a novel for years and finally started working on something with some seriousness a couple years ago.  But I have six kids and little free time, so it's been slow going.  And I don't really know what I'm doing.  A friend recently registered for an intensive novel writing class.  It meets one night a week for 12 weeks--and it looks fabulous!  But I have six kids and little free time.  And no money.  So, no class for me. Boo hoo.

And I'm a Christian, but I really, really dislike most Christian fiction.  What I've read in the past is too simple minded with too-good-to-be-true characters and neat and tidy endings of perfectly answered prayer.  The book I'm working on deals with some pretty non-Christian behavior even though the characters call themselves Christians.  I love the idea of throwing things at characters and seeing how they react, and sometimes having them react badly, but does this glorify God?  And, as a Christian, isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing, glorifying God?  Some days I feel like I'm doing what God made me good at, and that in itself glorifies God, like the character in Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell, who said, "I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast.  And when I run I feel his pleasure."  When I write, when I'm in the zone, I feel like God and I are in synch, like he's smiling down on me.  But then I look at the inspirational things Christian authors are writing and I second guess myself.  And back and forth.  And around and around.  Big sigh.

In the end, writing is really just a time consuming hobby that won't ever result in monetary gain, and with my oldest heading to college next year, what I need right now is monetary gain.  I'm a CPA.  My last day of work was the day my water broke in the reception area of my firm's office the day my sweet, now college bound, baby was born.  I don't want to go back into public accounting--too many hours and too much work to reactivate my license.  I've been looking at part-time accounting jobs, but I really only have six hours a week to myself and I need more money than six hours a week will earn me.  "Hello!  My name is Ann.  I'd like to do your accounting.  I'm free 6 hours a week and I'd like to be paid $500 an hour so my daughter can go to college."  A couple weeks ago I decided I'd put my youngest in the afternoon child care program at school on the days she goes to preschool, but that same day a news story broke about a teacher in a nearby district accused of sexually molesting little girls.  Ugh.

And so my mind goes in circles rattling between what I want to do and what I should do,  what I want to do and what's best for my family.  And then I just shut down, completely defeated.  There's no perfect schedule.  There's no perfect job.  There's no free time.  There's no money.  I've been spending way too much time on facebook and very little time doing laundry and housework, or writing or looking for a job.  Doesn't that make sense when you have no time and no money, you do exactly the opposite of what you should do or what might actually make the situation better???  And the TV has been on too much lately: Dinosaur Train, Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Super Why, Word World, and on and on.  At least I'm not a drug addict and I don't beat my kids, I think to myself, because comparing yourself to the worst possible type of mother is the best you can do to make yourself feel better.

Stuck.  Defeated.  In a funk.

And I know that this too shall pass.  It always does.  Somehow it all turns out OK.

Just OK is OK

I used to be really uptight (yes, more uptight than I am now!).  My older kids lived under the tyranny of having to have things "just so."  After a few (or more) babies, and then when John was on chemo for three years, it was impossible to hold onto any kind of standard of cleanliness or neatness.  And then John had liquid diarrhea for months on end.  "There isn't poop on the floor?  Great!"


Today as I stood in the bathroom drying off my hands, I noticed teeth marks on the white faux wood blinds hanging in the window, many well formed, half moon impressions.  In the past I would have taken this as a personal insult.  I would have hunted down the guilty child (and I know exactly who that child is based on the height of the marks) and dragged them into the bathroom for a serious talking to.  But because there's been a considerable whittling down in the area of caring about such things, I just chuckled.

Don't get me wrong: I like my white faux wood blinds.  I still like having nice things.  And I will speak to the guilty child, but I know now that bite marks on my blinds aren't very important.

When my older kids were little, I'd hear other parents talk about the things their kids had done, and I'd marvel at their calm reactions.  How did they know what was important way back then?  Why didn't I figure this out a long time ago?

My house may be a mess, my nice things may not be so nice anymore, and I may have bite marks on the white faux wood blinds in my bathroom, but I'm a calmer, more loving mother who has been far happier with just OK than I ever was with just so.