Month: June 2018

Summer Breaks


It’s the week before graduation. Thing1 and the Big Guy are working together to disassemble a third-hand swing set that has become too tired and worn to allow even the cats to play on. The swing set arrived at the house when we did, when Thing1 was in first grade and Thing2 was on the way. This weekend, both boys are too big to use it, and watching the Big Guy and Thing1 work together as equals to take it apart and clean up the rest of the yard for next weekend is making my eyes sweaty.

Thing1’s on weekly Humira now. The levels still aren’t high enough to make a difference, and he’s using cannabis oil to handle the inflammation. I get to make the odd joke about being mom of the year for getting my kid to use pot (it’s not, it’s hemp), but it is working to a degree. He’s weaning off of Prednisone which isn’t working, still taking Lialda, which isn’t working and waiting for the next blood test to see if we’ll stick with Humira or move on to the next trial-and-error.

And he’s waiting for his life to begin.

Except a funny thing has happened in the last few weeks. In between the phone calls and the daily inquiries into his bowel movements, he’s managed to get to alumni dinners for this year’s grads. He’s helped plan and pull off a senior prank centered around screwing up a parking lot for a day. He’s scheduled a new student orientation day for college.

We don’t know if he’ll be going to college in the fall. We don’t know what his future holds. The reality is, however, even if he weren’t sick, we wouldn’t know that.

Next week his grandparents and aunt will come to see him graduate. We’ll have a small party at home with a burger bar, music and a slide show of the most embarrassing moments of his first 1.78 decades.

It’s been hot the last few days. We all laugh as we realize the snow tires just came off a week or two ago. It’s springing into summer, and, just as quickly, Thing1 will be into his ‘real’ life. He’ll take his Ulcerative Colitis with him. We’ll help him fight for as much as we can for as long as we can, but, in the long run, the bulk of the battle will be his.

Hopefully he’s heading into a long summer, but the nature of his disease is that he will see winter again. Some winters are easy. Others throw a Nor-easter at you every week until you think you’ll throw in the shovel and let the winter bury you. This winter, he learned how to dig.

Because he also learned that, for the people who can and will dig, the winter does end. It always ends.

A Cart, A Horse, and an Ass

If the best laid plans can be torn asunder, a half-assed one can really get turned upside down by the minorest of things. 

In this case, the minor thing was a 24 flu that turned into 72 hours. I’m fever-free for 24 hours now but still wobbly.  I’m up for early morning writing group and work at my favorite cafe, one concession I’ve made to my grand plan, and it’s not just rationalizing, it’s fitting.

A couple years ago I asked if they would be interested in selling any of my cartoon magnets.  The magnets had been selling like hotcakes with sweet, sweet maple syrup and.. but I digest.  The proprietress took a look at the selection and chose a few, omitting some of the diet-related cartoons that had been very popular elsewhere.

“They’re very funny, but we’re trying to foster a healthy relationship with food,” she explained pleasantly. I got it. Right toons, wrong place.  But the term healthy relationship also got into my craw. It’s come back to haunt each time I fall off or even break the wagon.

My brother-in-law has been on what most of us would call an extreme diet for the better part of twenty years. Realizing, just after he finished med school, that he’d put on more weight than was healthy, he disciplined himself to exclude sugar (except for fruits) and artificial ingredients from every aspect of his diet. When he visits, he brings his own food. He lost fifty pounds, kept it off as he saw our niece and nephew through adolescence, and our family has gone from bemused tolerance to grudging and now admiration at his discipline.

Ironically, his discipline has been bolstered by his own recognition of needing a healthy relationship with food. Knowing certain foods trigger bad behavior and vice-versa, early on in his redefined relationship, he negotiated a truce that involves an annual day of indulgence (a whole birthday cake once per year). 

I’m thinking about that as I look forward to a day of creativity and work and indulging in solid food that’s flavored by atmosphere and healthy behavior. There won’t be any drive-by burger looting, but there will be a flavorful salad prepared by people who really care about food and about the people they’re serving it to. And when my experiment ends, I’ll remember that its ultimate goal is to hit reset button, to renegotiate my relationship with food and, ultimately, life.

 

How to Raise a Parent


Thing2 is sitting across the couch from me right now tapping on an old laptop my parents bequeathed him when they upgraded theirs. He’s working on a project, talking through the lines as he taps and proving I know nothing about parenting.

I’ve worked in some sort of IT for the better part of the last 25 years. I’m the last person to tell a kid they shouldn’t play on a computer, but Thing1 got sucked into Minecraft in middle school, torpedoing his grades for over a year. It’s safe to say, the Big Guy and I are wary of Thing2 acquiring a tech addition.

Thing2 missed a fair amount of school this winter due to severe pain from inflamed lymph nodes. The pain intensified with each bout of flu or strep he contracted in the petrie dish of elementary school, and we were worried he would fall behind.

Most sick days he rested on the couch with an iPad or Harry Potter book while I worked on support tickets. I’d check during the day to make sure his latest YouTube obsession was PG-11, but for most of the day I let him take responsibility for his own amusement. They weren’t my finest parenting hours.

Thing1 got into video games about the same time, solely on the strength of his test scores, that he also got into a middle school accelerated program. He’d coasted through elementary school math, aptitude compensating for apathy. Except for mathy-science stuff, he needed serious prodding to stay on track.

When he started the more challenging program, I asked the program head how I could help him stay more organized. Her answer surprised me.

“I don’t want you to help him. He’ll learn to rise to expectations.”

So we took the hands-off approach. Bad report cards led to loss of privileges, but when he failed, he failed. When he did well, the success was his. That experience guided him like a river winnows out earth and rock to find the best route. It’s helped him learn to stand on his own two feet and, even if he stumbles, to keep trying.

I know telling the world that I let my kid spend two months playing on the iPad is inviting slings and arrows from parenting experts. Left to his own devices, however, Thing2 scurries from couch to boy-cave, moving laundry hampers and draping sheets over his top bunk to create a movie set between naps. The iPad was soon burgeoning with special effects app and ‘screen tests’. By the time he got back to school full time, he had written a script for a Star Wars fan video, complete with a mental cast list consisting of his classmates.

It’s almost Thing2’s turn to apply to that program, and, watching him create and rise to his own expectations, I’m pretty sure we’ll use the same approach. We’ll call it good parenting even though he’ll be doing most of the heavy lifting.