Today, I further explored my social horizons. I was invited to a party at my friend's "cabin" on Vashon Island. When she saw my condo in April, she offered that we could trade weekends. I was like "Yeah sure okay..." thinking I'd need to see the cabin before I'd offer a trade.
Well, the "cabin" is really a "beach house" and it is magnificent. Like most of Seattle, the place isn't luxurious or overly posh, but is it very comfortable in an incredibly beautiful setting. If we were to trade, I'd be getting the better deal. Grace decorated the place with stuff from Craigslist. I thought Jack had mad skills for finding used furniture online. Grace is really good, too. (She's also good at finding used clothes. "Oh this cashmere sweater? Value Village." I don't know which Value Village she shops at but holy cow she finds great stuff.)
One of the cross country parents at the beach house bar-b-que asked about the Boy. I told the crowd he is in Wilderness Therapy for depression and anxiety. Since it is summer and since this was a party on the beach, not everyone heard right away. Grace thought was an emotional growth summer camp, not a proxy for the loony bin. Even still, it was good to be out and about.
Sitting with these families, I had a slight sense of dread for the fall. While all of these families are going to be sending their kids off to school, so will we, but not at all in the way I had expected this fall to go. In the summer, I can live in denial, and like Grace thought, sort of imagine that Wilderness is a fancy YMCA camp versus a Hail Mary pass to help the Boy's mental health. Already this summer, the Boy is missing summer cross country training. In the fall, we will miss the cross country meets and orchestra concerts. We will miss the college prep activities we marched through with Claire-Adele her junior year.
I have a good friend, Sarah, whose son has profound autism. Sarah has a hard time being around parents of typically developing kids because those kids milestones are the ones that are missing for her son, and that is a loss for her with its associated grief. I understand her perspective, but that doesn't mean it is easy to figure this all out. Intellectually, I know the Boy needs to be on this path. He knows, too, and because it is his path, he probably already has a great acceptance of what that means to him. He can only see what he is doing. I can also see what he's not doing.
But for me, I am still trying to sort it out. I've traded off the temporary empty nest-phase so I don't have to permanently have the boy living under my roof because he hasn't had sufficient or adequate mental health care.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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