A Mother's Musings and Mumblings

Friday. The day that the witchlets return to me from WF’s house. Thing 2 arrives hoarse but otherwise well. Her theory is that she may be allergic to the horse she’s been riding all week. Good guess so I pack her up and bring her home to give her the Dr. Mom treatment.

Well-hydrated child in no apparent distress. Voice is raspy but she denies sore throat. Lymphadenopathy present in the posterior cervical and sub-mandibular chains but non-tender and moble nodes all. Ear drums both slightly dull but no fluid noted. Nasal mucosa normal. Posterior oropharynx normal with no drainage or erythema. So prolly allergies.

Now, all first year med students and other students of Dr. Google – tell me what’s wrong with my approach. Yup. I didn’t look at a damn thing below the neck.

So as we’re wrapping this up, Thing 2 says “This doesn’t have anything to do with the bruise on my leg, does it?” I love immediate feedback on exams, don’t you? Too bad I’m an idiot.

Thing 2 drops her drawers and shows me the “bruise” on her leg. Kinda a bruise, kinda burst blood vessels. And no matter how I asked, she swore that she did NOT injure herself. “No, mom, that part of my leg never touched the horse.”

I decide to go with my first impression, call this allergies and ignore the bruise as something that happens to children who don’t quit moving.

Fast forward to this morning when Thing 2 is ready to head to the pool and I get a look at her arms. (Told you I was an idiot. Yup, even with the hint the size of a former Soviet Republic I still didn’t look her over head to toe.) She has the same bruise/blood vessel thing on her arms. Worse on one side than the other but still there on both.

Stepping out of her swimsuit and back into my office I instruct my child that no physician should ever ask you to completely strip. Except me. Now strip. She does and the ONLY spots I see are her arms and leg. Nothing anywhere else. No other findings. No abdominal pain or masses, no murmur, lungs are clear, adenopathy is stable. And most importantly, she’s acting fine. Perfectly normally. For Thing 2.

At this point Dr. Mom is asking herself: “WTF?”

I’ve asked this kid every way I can about injury and she denies anything – so bruising/purpura without trauma opens up a can of worms. I start to run through the list, ruling out most of the infectious things. Somewhere in the middle of my monologue, I see the scrape on her arm.

No trauma? Scrape? Back this train up.

WM: How did that happen?
T2: Getting out of the pool?
~pause~
T2: Doing 53 belly flops wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would it?
WM: Go to your room.

You know. It’s hard to generate an accurate differential diagnosis without a good history. I wonder if anyone has told Dr. Google that?

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately about the crisis of faith I’m having about my career. There’s something about watching a younger, less experienced man promoted over the top of you that can cause you to have a lot of questions. Even my shrink tells me this is a normal reaction.

Anyway, one conversation was with a woman in the field who is years ahead of me in her career. We shared stories (yes, I know things are getting better, but they still aren’t fair) and she told me that women like me are part of the problem.

She didn’t say that to be mean. Let me explain. She said that women like me make it look too easy. We have a great career, keep on top of developments in the field, continue our education, produce at work AND raise kids (in my case as a single mother). When the men in charge see this, of course they don’t feel compelled to reward all that hard work – it doesn’t look hard.

That conversation happened weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Mainly because as it becomes clear that I need to find a new job I’ve been having panic attacks. What’s out there? What will I end up doing? How is that going to impact my schedule with the kids? Will I like it? What will be the long-term impact on my career? See? My chest is getting tight now.

And despite this, nobody around me knows I’m feeling this way. Why should they? There’s nothing they could do to help and there’s no point in upsetting anyone. In short, I’m doing it again – I’m making this look easy.

This is where I could turn my blog post into a long character dissection about why and how it is that I am compelled to be so stoic about so many things. Don’t worry, I’ll save it for my shrink. The point for you, dearest reader, is to know that this is not easy, I AM in a state of panic and this will pass. I know how to put one foot in front of the other and I certainly have learned somewhere in the last 43 years how to land on my feet.

I’ve been seeing a lot of wildlife lately including some quite impressive up close and personal sightings of a fawn or two. It’s always the same – I unexpectedly come up on an unsuspecting creature who neither knows nor cares how interested I am in getting a closer look and at that moment I’m faced with a split-second decision on what to do next. If I keep going exactly as I had been, the encounter will be over as quickly as it began and yet any change in my course of action may draw attention and scare off the timid creature that I am so interested in.

That’s exactly the feeling that i had last night while tucking in Thing 2. She and I were chatting and she made some comment or another about the future. You know, the kind of innocent thing that Mommies and Little Girls talk about at bed time – how she’ll always be my baby even when she’s old enough to have her own babies. It was late, I was ambling along and reflexively came back with a comment about WF. Basically, I asked her if she had this conversation with him, too.

Those of you who do not know Thing 2, allow me to explain that this child is Drama incarnate. Nothing with her is small or insignificant. NOTHING. Her kindergarten teacher once said: “That’s our kid, everything is larger than life!” and that’s about the best summary I’ve heard.

So when Thing 2 very matter-of-factly came back with reply: “No. He’ll be dead too soon to ask him that. Unless they cure cancer he’ll be dead while I’m still a kid.” I froze. Literally. I was afraid to physically move for fear of shattering that moment.

I’d been laboring under the misconception that her silence on the subject meant that she hadn’t absorbed it or had and was just rejecting it. But she very clearly spelled out exactly what her understanding was with chilling accuracy. What is a Pagan Queen to do?

We chatted for a good bit after that. We talked about what she was feeling (a little sad) and how I was there if she wanted to talk about it (she doesn’t) and what kinds of questions she had. She’s the literal child of the two so it shouldn’t surprise me that he questions were very concrete: What happens to WF’s house when he dies? Where does that money go? Do I get to keep the things in my room at his house?

By the end of that I was feeling a bit bolder so we talked about losing my Grandpa when I was 15. I didn’t go into much detail, there’s stuff there that people my age struggle with when they lose a parent as adults that is just plain hard and I still don’t have the heart to warn her. I did tell her that I’d always be there for her and that we’d get through it because I’d always be her Mommy. And that brings us full circle on this conversation.

WF gets home in just over 48 hours. It will do Thing 2 good to have him back and it will do me good to be able to talk to him about some of this stuff and see if we can get on the same page. Because right now, I’m starting to feel like the deer in the headlights myself. I know this is coming and I’m powerless to stop it. I’m not sure what I can do to prepare myself or my girls for the trauma and I suspect that WF isn’t prepared to talk about that at all. I’m not sure I could if I were him.

But this week as I was trying to wrap my brain around how I would ever manage to get us through this, I turned on the radio and heard an ad for the local Hospice. WF isn’t ready for Hospice care at this point by any stretch of the imagination but I wonder if it wouldn’t be worth talking to the folks there who, sadly, have more experience with children in these circumstances than I do. A little information might just save us all from becoming road kill.

A friend of mine just got a puppy and is in the midst of the decision to crate or not to crate. This is a process that I’m unfamiliar with as I never really viewed it as a choice – dogs get crated. They learn that their crate is their den. My Old Man is nearly 11 and he still goes to his crate if a storm is coming. If he can’t get to his crate, he destroys the house trying to find a small enough space to simulate a crate.

All creatures need their places of comfort in times of crisis.

Iggy’s girls are with us this week and yesterday it was discovered that the youngest needed an item of clothing that she didn’t have with her. No worries, Thing 1 has just the item! Trouble is, it’s at WF’s house. No worries, I have the keys!

Thing 2 simultaneously levitated, announced “I’ll go” and was at the door with her shoes on. This would be less impressive it wasn’t already her bedtime and she’d been half asleep when I stood up. She was at the front door before I was and opened it so we could head off to WF’s house in search of a random article of her sister’s clothing.

The search was unsuccessful. I did find all three bottles of my missing sun block, both lost soccer bags, the swim bag with gear, a missing lunch box and two of my tote bags. Don’t worry, I left them all there. For now.

But when I was done and had given up the quest, I realized I’d lost something else at WF’s house. Thing 2. She was gone. Now I figured she’d get bored with the search so this wasn’t a huge shock. I walked back up to her bedroom and there she was.

Thing 2 was sitting on the floor in front of a pile of stuff next to her bed. She wasn’t doing anything – and that’s a big deal for this kid. I asked what was going on and she said: “Wasn’t dad nice? I didn’t clean my room so he put my stuff in piles near where it goes for me to go through.”

All creatures need their places of comfort in times of crisis.

Thing 2 and I went home, my home, and she got ready for bed. Even though it was after her bedtime, she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) go to sleep until I got upstairs. So I curled up in bed next to her and we chatted a bit about nothing in particular and fell asleep like that. Curled up with one another in her little twin bed. Two creatures seeking out a a place of comfort in a time of crisis.

Thing 1 is really gone now. She’s been in Norway for weeks but has been checking in by phone pretty much daily. But now she and WF are on a boat on their way to Svalbard. Look it up. It’s half way to the North Pole. Needless to say, I think the prospects of a phone call are pretty much nil until they get back to Oslo and are ready to board the plane home.

Thing 1 is loving the trip. Her vacation responder reads:

Hello, i am very sorry that i cannot reply to your messages seeing that i am in Norway, today i will be at the hotel and MIGHT be able to get access to the hotel computer but until then I cannot respond. Also the next 2 weeks I will be in Svalbard (look it up it is a really cool place.) and i will not have access to a computer, but i will reply as soon as i return…assuming i am not eaten by ice bears (they are so cute!!) well i shall try to respond a.s.a.p. bye bye (also look up the Besseggen, a hike i did, the ridge was really hard)
–
\~/   My NORWEGIAN glass looks half full to me!

She’s having a blast. But back home, not so much.

Thing 2 has developed several sudden, unexplained fears of things that go bump that cause her to turn to flypaper and cling to me. I’ve tried talking to her about why this might be the case, but she shuts down.

My best guess? She’s feeding off of me again. Because I’m stressed.

The original plan was for WF and Thing 1 to do some hiking by themselves for a week. That lasted a day. They had to scale back because the weather wasn’t cooperating and the hiking was longer and harder than they anticipated. This tells me a couple of things. First is that WF is being reasonable and not pushing too hard. This is a good thing. Second is that there is the potential for more trouble ahead. The temperature in Svalbard is going to be at least as cold as what they bailed out on so they have to face that weather eventually. But what about the hiking?

The last phone call was from the boat so Thing 1 had already met up with the group they’d be hiking with and had survived their first hike together. It was a short hike but with some fairly steep vertical and Thing 1 was the youngest member of the 15 person team by at least a decade. She hiked right up front with the leader – on purpose – to prove herself. That’s my girl! But when I asked where her father was I was informed that he was bringing up the rear.

He confirmed that, as well as informed me that he was using medication for motion sickness and had been paying attention to his medication. He’s been very good about my overt intrusions into his privacy recently regarding medical matters. In fact, he’s called me promptly every time he’s received his PSA results this year. He gets that checked every month. And yet, I haven’t heard a test result since summer started.

I know I’ve been traveling and that I tend toward “borrowing” trouble. But with my eldest above the Arctic Circle out of contact for over a week, it’s easy to think of things that might go wrong under the best of circumstances. And these are NOT the best of circumstances. Throw in a bit of uncertainty about who I’m most worried about and there’s plenty of trouble to borrow.

So if Thing 2 has random fears of things that go bump I guess I have to accept that she may have come by this naturally. I seem to share those fears.

Flypaper it is.

I’ve told this story before, generally when speaking to people about the trials and tribulations of co-parenting. Recent events have prompted a desire to tell it here in writing for all to see. Like all things that turn up on my blog, I don’t question why, I just write.

My parents didn’t have custody of me when I was growing up. I won’t get into the whys or hows (what if you held a custody hearing and no one showed up?) but my grandparents had custody while my parents each had visitation. Four days a month with no overnights.

By the time I was six, taking visitation was too burdensome for my Momster and she stopped showing up consistently. She’d drop by when it worked for her and leave me when there was something better to do. For the better part of a year the only time I had visitation with her is when she could take me to work with her (as a waitress at a truck stop) because it didn’t impact on her other plans. This post is not about her. I have other plans.

My Dad faithfully took his visitation. Every single week. Without fail. But as I grew up, things changed. I had friends, I had plans, I had a life. Stopping what I was doing every week to spend a day with my Dad was a drag and, like all tweens/teens, I didn’t want to do things that weren’t fun, interesting and of my own choosing. So I began to complain.

I was 12 at the time. My grandparents decided that 12 was old enough to make the choice of where I wanted to spend my time. My Dad decided that he didn’t want to force a kid to spend time with him if I didn’t want to. So at the mature age of 12, I got my weekends back.

When I was 15 I had the year from Hell. Seriously. I’m still hard pressed to think of other things that could have gone wrong that year. Among the highlights was finding myself essentially unwanted/unwelcome at Momster’s house after my Grandma had decided that she should raise me. Grandpa was dead. And where was my Dad? He’d moved out of town. Because I wasn’t spending time with him anyway so why would he stay?

When I was 21 my Dad died. Now, it’s never easy when a parent dies. My Grandpa died when I was 15 and I remember how hard that was. But the feeling that overwhelmed me when my Dad died was Guilt. Pure, unadulterated Guilt. Guilt for rejecting him. Guilt for choosing to watch stupid movies that I couldn’t even remember with friends I no longer saw rather than to spend the day with him. Guilt for telling him that of all the things in my life, sleeping in was more important than seeing him.

Another therapist sent her child to private school with the fees from that!

But what did I learn from all of this? One thing I learned is that teens/tweens are inherently selfish creatures. That’s just the developmental stage that they are in – their zone of proximal development. I also learned that this episode was as much a failure in parenting as it was a failure of my own – maybe more-so. The adults in my life, by virtue of being parents, had an obligation to teach me how to be a good person. They taught me not to lie or cheat or steal. Why couldn’t they also have taken the time to teach me (better) how to treat people?

It isn’t that my grandparents didn’t treat people well, just that they didn’t like my Dad. So they allowed me to treat him poorly. The result was I suffered – not just him.

This is a lesson I carry with me as I parent the Witchlets. I don’t allow them to beg me to skip family time at either house in favor of friends. I won’t allow them to incur that kind of Karmic debt. And yet I see it happen time and time again – other parents who think that their children know best where they want to spend their time. Parents who allow kids to make the decision to cut out their other parent. Because the so-called adult doesn’t value the other parent and doesn’t see why their child should either.

I’m sure there are plenty of therapists who need the income.