Practice Day 1: Animal and Son v Husband

Yesterday, Jack and I dropped the Boy off at the airport to go to Ski Camp before he leaves for his few months at wilderness therapy. The night before, Jack made pasta for dinner with bread sticks. I brought arugula from Pike Place Market. Jack made a lemon dressing for the salad.

"Arugula is the best word," said the Boy. It is and it is part of the best line from the otherwise indistinguishable movie, My Blue Heaven.

For his second to last home cooked meal for weeks, the Boy chose pasta, our default meal dinner during the week when we don't have energy to cook something else or go out to eat. I thought it was an exceptionally uninspired choice when we could have had steak or gone to Frank's for dinner. I suppose the Boy will miss the most what he eats the most.

After dinner, Jack and I went to Met Market and bought him a slice of tiramisu for dessert. "Tiramisu is the only dessert," the Boy has said before. The Boy was sluggish coming downstairs after dinner, too busy looking at his phone. When he did come down, he and I sat down while he has dessert, one bite at a time. When the last bite was left, he stuck his head down on the plate and covered his mouth over the chocolate, coffee and cream filled dessert. I laughed.

"I was planning to that for the whole time I was eating," he said, "but I wanted to wait until the piece was small enough to fit in my mouth."

I think this was his going away present to me, making me laugh.

When I went to say good-bye to him Saturday night before I left for the condo, his teased me.

"Don't cry."

"I am not crying."

"Yes you are."

I took off my glasses and showed him my face.

"This isn't me really going. I am just going to Ski Camp. Next week, you can cry. It will still be annoying, but it will be more appropriate."

The next day, the Boy drove to the airport. His father hates it when the Boy drives too fast, so he kept the needle at 55, even though he was passed by every car on the highway. At the airport, The Boy carried his equipment to the baggage check and dealt with the agent. It was hard to believe that this polite, independent and sensible kid could be so down that he sat around for months playing video games and watching Breaking Bad in his underwear and didn't get out of bed except to ski and go to Driver's Ed.

For the first time in nearly nineteen years, I have no kids. There was one vacation/work trip Jack and I took to Paris for five days when my parents watched the kids, and there were two summers where they were both at camp at the same time.

This is different. This is Day 1.

(Okay, that was dramatic. This Practice Day 1 because the Boy will be back in a week and then we ship him out. And it is not like he is leaving the solar system. He is only going to the moon.)

So far, I've walked the dog and watched the Seattle Fire Department's Heavy Rescue team climb up the old viaduct for I don't know what purpose. It was the first time I've seen a hook and ladder in action. When the Boy was a toddler, he had a giant Tonka hook and ladder from his grandmother. He loved that truck so much.

Not the hook and ladder, but the Boy with a different truck.

Anyway, Jack and I were talking last night after he read yesterday's blog post. Over the course of the past several months, I have felt Jack and I have been more adversaries than partners in getting the Boy into treatment. Jack seemed to think that I was relying on my friends too much for advice and suggestions, that I valued their opinions more that I valued his.

After he read the blog post, he had an insight that I didn't have myself.

"You were the only person who was going to guarantee that the Boy was going to get help. A teacher or counselor or grandparent wasn't going to advocate for him the way you would. If you didn't help him, no one else would."

The first rule of hiking in the wilderness is don't get between a momma bear and her cub. The same applies to moms in Northeast Seattle. I wasn't acting as a civilized, rational human being. I was reverting to instinct that goes so far back in my DNA that it links me back to the earliest mammals. (Interesting. I never noticed that the first five letters of mammals are "mamma.") In short, don't fuck with my kid or I'll tear you apart.

I might be a little bit more shrewd than ripping someone from limb to limb like a grizzly bear, but the idea is the same.

My friend Betty said to me years ago when her first son was born that she loved her kid more than her husband. I thought it was a crock: how could she love a newborn that couldn't speak and kept her awake for hours more than the sane, rational man she chose to marry? Now when I think about that, I think about the thousands of different loves there are in the world: the love for friends, the love we have for our parents, the love we have for places and pets.

The love for kids is something altogether different. It is a love to see them gone and out of the house exploring the world and kicking ass (like Claire-Adele), and then also a fierce protective love that kicks in when one of them in vulnerable or in danger.

That fierce protective love overrides everything. Love of husband, love of country, love of friends.

I took a women's mythology writing class where we learned about the direct and steady focus of Diana, the hunter, the single, unattached young warrior woman versus the diffuse focus of Demeter, mother of Persephone.

Like the mother grizzly, my attention is both diffuse and focused. All of my alarms are on high notice. I notice everything and I am single minded in getting my kid help.

And now I need to rest and recover, come back in and get ready for the next battle.

Mantra: Kid First, Self Second, and Oxygen

As the Boy has continued to struggle with his anxiety and depression, I have been reaching out to friends whose kids have had similar if not the same issues. Their advice:

"Take care of the Boy first and yourself second."

I know this comes as a great contrast to advice given to new (and probably all) parents: As flight attendants will tell you, put your oxygen mask on before you take care of someone else.

Interestingly, this has be explicit for parents because they might not otherwise do that. The instinct would be to take care of your kid first. Parents would hold their breath while they wrestled the mask over their squirming kid. (I think this policy is part because the airline does not want to deal with a passed out parent and a freaked out kid.)

If you are walking with your toddler and it starts to rain, you would zip your kid's coat first likely before you'd zip your own. Unlike the oxygen mask on the airplane, rain is not a matter of life or death. Being wet is a matter of discomfort. A mom can withstand an inordinate amount of discomfort. A toddler cannot.

Dealing with a kid with mental health issues can be a matter of life and death--for the kid, not the parent. In this case, it means putting the oxygen mask on the kid first and the parent withstands the discomfort.

The plan is for the Boy to leave in a little more than a week for wilderness therapy. As the time gets closer for him to leave on his journey of healing (I hope), I am starting to see a little bit of light. I have put myself second for the past several months, putting relationships with family and friends on the back burner while I tend to the Boy. Some of those relationships I have neglected. Others haven't been neglected but rather put in a holding pattern.

I am grateful for the patient support many have given me. My dad has listened to me rant and rave for months, as has my friends Ellen and Patty. I owe them all a tremendous debt of gratitude. I owe my co-workers the same. Ellen took three weeks off of work before she sent her daughter to wilderness therapy--she said it wasn't a great idea as all she did was fret at home. I looked forward to the distraction of work, but I can't say my game is 100%. I am lucky to have years of experience behind in a variety of environments that I can pull on to help me manage to get through with a decent amount of grace and composure. I am reading Bel Canto, a book about people in a hostage situation, and how these people manage to cope, a majority of them are extremely composed. There are things that we are trained to do in our lives, and putting forth a good public face when your life is complete shit is something white upper middle class Americans are very, very good at. Part of it is training and seeing your friends do it. Part of it is having a solid support network of people who can see behind the curtain when your life is falling part. The other part is sleeping on sheets with 700 thread count, eating nice restaurants when you don't have the bandwidth to cook and having the extra pocket money to buy fresh cut flowers just because.

This week, I was invited to a baseball game for work a few days the Boy is dropped off at wilderness therapy. And for the first time in a very long time, I have something to look forward to, even though it is small.

"After I get back from dropping the Boy off, I really could use a hot dog and expensive beer," I wrote in an email accepting the invitation. And it is true. I am hoping to get hammered. Maybe not literally, but metaphorically. I know I could get drunk if I wanted to, whereas now I am on edge, fearing a hangover or intoxication might make me less capable of caring for the Boy. I am looking forward to not have actively be involved in what the Boy is or isn't doing. Someone else is going to take care of him in ways that I can't.

Dropping him off at wilderness might be both the hardest and easiest thing I'll ever do as a parent (I hope.) Hard because it will be hard for the Boy; easy because I feel confident that he needs help and I am glad to get him back on the path to have a fruitful and meaningful life.

I am looking forward to breathing again while someone else puts the oxygen mask on the Boy.

Moon v Mars, and Bel Canto

Friday night, the education consultant who is helping us find a placement for the Boy gave us recommendations for wilderness programs.

Both choices seem fine and reasonable, but the idea is so foreign it feels like we are choosing between Mars and the Moon.

"The moon has no atmosphere and a dry climate with extremely cold temperatures. Mars also has no atmosphere and a dry climate with extremely cold temperatures. Mars has violent windstorms, but a lovely red color. The moon has no wind, but is a very bleak shade of gray. The moon is a few days travel, whereas the Mars is a few years."

Yeah.

How to choose between the two? This is so hard, or so easy? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe? If we can't tell them apart, is there really a difference? I am sure there is but how can I discern? Unless I see a major red flag in either program (which I don't), I'll trust the recommendation of the consultant, I suppose.

Right now, I am re-reading Bel Canto by Ann Patchett which I read years ago. It is a beautifully written story about an opera singer who gives a concert in the home of the Vice President of an unnamed South/Central American country for the president of a major Japanese electronics corporation. A group of insurgents take over the party and hold two hundred guests hostage.

This book seems peaceful and simple compared to the rest of my life.

Sure, this is a conceit for the author to throw together a bunch of not-so-random people together in a life or death situation. But that I find relaxation in a story about how a group of elites were taken over by a bunch terrorists?

I am looking forward to my life settling down sometime.

It's Quiet Downtown

For those who have not memorized every lyric from Hamilton, "It's Quiet Uptown" is the song after Alexander Hamilton's son, Philip, dies. While the Boy is very far from dead, I feel like I am going to lose him when I send him off to treatment. Unlike Alexander Hamilton's son, my son will return to me at some point.

I've been living downtown by myself for more than a week. It has been quite the change and the change has been quiet. Less than a year ago, I was living with a busy and bustling family of four and now I am not. There was a beautiful article in The New York Times written by a high school student about her kitchen table and how over time it went from serving five people to two, and then of course she leaves for college and her grandfather is left alone. #relatable

A year ago, I was part of a family of four and now I am adjusting the quiet of living alone. I had the dog with me for the first week of the separation--I at least had another heartbeat in my living space and something welcomed me home at the end of the day. This week, I decided to give Fox back to the Boy, so he would have a heartbeat in the house when he is home alone all day. He needs the dog more than I do.

I am getting used to the quiet and solitude. I am not a fan of television, but I have music going in the background to replace what used to have been conversation. I've been having dinner by myself more frequently than I ever have before. I haven't been making too many plans as I have been quiet about the separation. Again, I am focusing on making sure the Boy is all right before I start telling people about my own personal drama.

City life is treating me well, too. Based on my own personal experience, I find it easier to make small talk with people in the city than in the suburbs. Baristas are chatty. Dog walkers say hello to other dog walkers. People in my condo building say hello. My dad came to town this week to hang out with the Boy. My father is staying with me in the condo, so I have someone to talk to.

Still, the quiet will come again. This has been a hard adjustment for me, as I like to think aloud, and not having a sounding board is hard. But I am figuring it out.

Think v Feel, and "Love Keeps Company with Reason"

I was reading the a review of the movie Long Shot in The New Yorker by someone whose name I forgot and I'm too lazy to walk from the couch to the dining room table to pick up the article and figure out who wrote it to give them appropriate credit for this quote: "Love keeps company with reason."

The idea is that Charlize Theron character who is powerful, smart and beautiful, would never have a lasting relationship with the lovable Seth Rogan character who is not powerful, smart or beautiful. The writer of the review compared this movie to one of my all-time favorites, Roman Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. (Best cinematic kiss ever.) She is a European princess and he is an American journalist. It wasn't going to work. Today, Meghan Markle can marry a prince or a prince can marry Meghan Markle. Back in 1956, people followed rules.

I digress. "Love keeps company with reason," makes a decent amount of sense, but what happens when reason takes over and love gets squeezed out of the picture?

Jack and I separated a week ago. (Sorry Claire-Adele and everyone else who is learning about this via my blog). Recently, I made a big decision to change directions, to put a stop to something very toxic and re-evaluate my marriage. This, of course, involves me looking at my own bad habits and whatnot. After five days, Jack agreed we both needed a break. (The Boy said, "Your timing is highly inconvenient." Amazing. He could have hauled off and called me a bitch but no, he said something perfect. Who taught that kid English? Me?)

Previously, for months (years, probably) "love" was keeping company with "reason" in my love, but reason was running the show. "I can't leave because of my kids," was love keeping company with a different kind of love. "I can't leave because I'll eventually be broke," was reflecting the challenge of American marriages when a stay-at-home-mom's financial security becomes intertwined with her emotional life.

After years of thinking, "feeling" finally got to take center stage. And funny, Jack seems relieved too.

I am not sure how this is going to end. There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty about the future, but it feels okay for now.

WTF, Spotify?

Spotify knows I have a broken heart.

Or rather, Spotify's algorithm that tells them what songs I would like knows I am heartbroken. They also have a list of songs for Sad Days.

Oy.

I don't know why Ed Sheeran is popping up here. "The Ginger Muppet" the Boy calls him.

Three Little Words...Times Two

When people think of "three little words," the first three words that come to mind are "I love you." Some people might argue those are the three most important words in English. Sure, they could argue that. I heard a line a great country song "Humble and Kind" by Lori McKenna: "I love you ain't no pick-up line." Sometimes it is used as a pick-up line. Sometimes it is easy to say, like to your kids or your parents. Other times, it takes a while to build up to it.

But I think there are more important words that "I love you." When you are dating someone, "I love you" can get you in the room.

"You are right" and "I am sorry," on the other hand, will keep you in the room. Any time two humans exist for any period of time in the same space, they will likely scrape up against each other. "I am sorry" and "You are right" soften the blow, adding a buffer when the wrong things are said and done and we want to make amends.

"I am sorry" and "You are right" are all-purpose. They have more flexibility and can be used anywhere, with anyone, by anyone, to anyone for anything: Kids, parents, friends, co-workers, significant others. "I love you" tends to be reserved for close family members or people falling in love.

Relationship Labels

For my day job (outside of mom and blogger), I work in Information Management where I deal with relational databases that connect different pieces of data to each other. One of the things my group manages is relationships between organizations and people. We track how people are related to organizations, what are their roles. For example, a contact could be an Administrative Contact, a Technical Contact, a Finance Contact, or in a small organization, all three. We put the name of the relationship on the relationship label.

"The relationship label should be meaningful," said my manager today as he was explaining the concept to a new member of our team. "It needs to reflect the true nature of the relationship, of how they are connected."

My manager was talking about labels between data points, and this was something that I had heard before. Yet today when I heard it, I thought about the relationship labels everyone has in their own lives between the people they know. This past week, I've been thinking about relationship labels between people that we simply assign, but can mean so much more than the word: Mother. Father. Son. Daughter. Friend. Husband. Wife. Partner. Co-Worker. Boyfriend. Girlfriend. So simple and yet so complex.

We want to define who we are in relation to the people we know. What exactly is the connection between us? Good friend. Close Friend. Acquaintance. Peer. Colleague. Manager.

And do we feel the same way the other person thinks about us? With mothers and children, the relationship is not mutual or reciprocal. The Boy doesn't give me what I give him (food, shelter, lots of parenting advice, rides to places he needs to go), but he gives me something else -- I am the primary witness to his life, from the day he was born until now.

In some cases, there are more than one label: Piano teacher and friend. Aunt and confidant.

In other cases, things are fuzzy and undefined, or relationship is evolving from one label to another, or maybe some of the multiple labels are being peeled away, and other relationships new labels are added. For better or worse, this time of change is hard for everyone as uncertainty is not everyone's most favorite place to be.

And yet, when we look back at these times of relationship label changes, we can grow, for better worse. When we peel back and remove labels, it is a time to ponder why things changed, and determine if and how we can heal. When we add labels, that too is a time of growth. We are expanding our role in someone else's life.

New Shoes, New Wallet and the Taj Mahal; and His Story v Mine

The Boy hasn't been to school since January. He has spent days and days in bed, sleeping and looking at his phone or computer. He might get up on the weekends to ski, but that is about it. He is also taking Driver's Ed.

This is anxiety and depression.

We are seeking residential treatment for him, starting very soon we hope.

And I think he hopes so, too.

Since depression hit, the Boy has become nocturnal, sleeping til after noon and knocking around the house at night. One night, he got up and read the packet about the options for residential treatment. He got out a pen and annotated it. He signed all of the forms that said "Student Signature" and he checked off the states where he would consider moving: Colorado, Montana, Utah. Anyplace with mountains where he can ski.

Since we've started talking about treatment, the Boy got his haircut. I gave him money and he took the bus to the mall to shop on his own. He bought new tennis shoes and a new wallet.

This weekend, he has friends over. The boys bounced on the trampoline, walked to Burgermaster for lunch, and nearly finished the 5,923 piece Lego Taj Mahal that the Boy got for Christmas. In the past, it would take the Boy days--not weeks or months--to finish a Lego set of this size. His friends came over and they worked on it together. The last thing left is the dome.

I know this is his story to tell, but it is mine, too. I've watched him suffer for too long. He is one kind of pain, and I am in another watching him. Pain is a useful and confusing feeling at times. It can tells us to stop and rest and stay where we are, or it can motivate us to make a change. Depending on the situation, sometimes both can be right.

Fixing one pain can cause another. While I am happy to get him the help he needs, I will miss him. This is the bargain of being a parent, the price of being the primary witness to someone's life, the love and pain combined.

"Such an American"

I have a new manager at work. He used to be my former colleague he just moved here from Texas to assume the manager role. For the year and a half that I've known him, 98.5% of my interactions with him have been on the phone. The other 1.5% were when I visited him for a week in Austin. While it is nice to see him face-to-face, I am getting used to interacting with him in person. Before I would listen to the tone of his voice but now there are facial expressions and body language to interpret, which is taking up more of my bandwidth when I talk to him.

Last week, he was ranting at me about something (this was a justifiable rant, by the way) and I stopped listening to the his commotion as I was distracted by his hands. When he gets riled up, he talks with his hands.

"Huh," I thought to myself, ignoring what he was saying, "I never knew he talked with his hands so much." It was just an observation rather than a judgment. "That's interesting." Coming from an Italian family, talking with your hands is part of life. For thousands of years, Italians had different dialects and they added hand gestures so people from diverse parts of the country could better understand each other when they all gathered in Rome.

"I wonder if the same is true in India," I thought.

"Lauren," my new manager said, "You are being such an American!" With that, I snapped back to the words of the conversation. Such an American. Hmmm. Those words have been haunting me for a week, especially this morning.

Last fall, Jack and I went to the University Food Bank Auction where they sold tickets to a spring garden party where we would have the privilege of planting the rooftop summer garden that supports the Food Bank. In short, I gave the Food Bank a donation so I could plant their garden. What a bunch of fundraising geniuses! "I bet we can get the RWP* to donate money to have the opportunity to volunteer for us!" This is even better idea than the "Stuff White People Like" blog post about pick-your-own fruit.

"Such an American," came screaming through my heads as had paid for the privilege of planting onions and then tearing up cardboard scraps to add carbon to the compost bins.

* Rich White People

Why Not? v No! Why?

Recently, I've found a new lens through which people see the world. When faced with a choice or decision, I am more prone to optimistically ask "Why Not?"

I know some others more likely to need see it and say, "No! Why?" Why do different people have such different outlooks? It is some sort of evolutionary/cosmic balancing act where half of the people on the planet say "No! Why?" and the other half ask "Why Not?"

The "Why Not?"s got people on the moon. The "No! Why?" types prevented humankind from eating poisonous berries. Perhaps a decent balance is necessary.

There can be risks of being too much of one way. I like to think of the "No! Why?" people as being stubborn, obstinate and uncreative. "No! Why?" can also lead to inaction.

The "Why Not?"s can stray down the path of randomness and impulsiveness if unchecked.

What happens when the two types clash?

Nothing. Literally nothing. The two parties can be stuck at opposite sides and nothing gets done. There is no decision so the status quo stays. This is uncool.

Sometimes one viewpoint dominates another view. Like this...

Or this...

But other times, we can get lucky when the two work together and create a solid shared decision.

And sometimes, we have a little bit of each inside of ourselves, that helps to push us along.