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Sunday, December 19th, 2010
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8:46 pm - Praying in the dark
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I have some ... damage ... when it comes to nighttime parenting.
When Paula was born all the books I read said I should just keep her with me and nurse her whenever she needed it through the night. This actually worked pretty well for us. For her first nine months or so, she happily nursed and I blissfully slumbered the nights away. Then I stopped being able to sleep through it.
By then I had some like-minded friends who encouraged me to keep giving Paula "what she needed" at night, that they had done the same and it had worked out great for them because their children were all ... something they found desirable. I can't really remember what that was.
So the next nine months were spent waking up every two hours at night as Paula continued happily nursing whenever she wished to. Finally Joel and I weaned her at the tail end of her 18th month. This experience in itself was hair-raising, what with all the screaming and my already fragile mental state.
For the following month Paula refused to sleep. Because she wouldn't take an artificial nipple, and the natural one was off limits, there was no sleep. Finally I got her to take a bottle of rice milk, and thus go to sleep.
See, everyone in my circle had told me that babies can't be expected to go to sleep without nursing. "We all have little rituals that help us get to sleep," they said, "why can't babies have theirs?" And, "Letting your baby cry at bedtime tells her she's not loved and cherished. How can she feel good about herself if maternal love is withdrawn?"
Yes, it was all about coddling her paper-thin psyche. The only talk I heard about helping babies "self soothe" was in the context of letting them "cry it out," in a dark room by themselves until they gave up and went to sleep. I had already been through enough crying with colicky, sensory segregated Paula, and I didn't have the heart to go that route.
Besides, the one time my own mother tried letting me cry it out at the age of seven months - because that was the advice in her circle at the time - I cried all night, ran a fever, had polio and was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. It's something of a cautionary tale in my family.
And here I am again with a baby, almost a toddler now, who likes to nurse all night. I'm not quite so worried about the fragility of his psyche, but I'm still rather averse to screaming. I need to help him learn some better sleep behaviors but seriously quail at the prospect of anything that's going to involve extended crying at bedtime. See, bedtime is when I want to enjoy and cuddle with my kids. I want to love and nurture, not give them opportunities to develop new coping skills.
I know - believe me - that a better-rested mommy is a pretty good trade-off for a few nights of discomfort while Diego adjusts to a better arrangement. And ... I can admit that my reluctance to set boundaries at bedtime (and in general) has been the cause of many contentious bedtimes (and other times) with Paula.
A friend who heard that I was having sleep issues with Diego recommended a book called, Sleep: The Secret of Problem-Free Nights, by Beatrice Hollyer and Lucy Smith. My friend swore by it, said after three nights on the program his son had slept 12 hours straight every night till now, and that it doesn't involve the "cry it out" method.
I got the book. Guess what? It's for parents of newborn babies. It's full of dire warnings for those parents who fail to establish healthy sleep patterns from the beginning and then have an active one-year-old who can't sleep. Thanks. I read through it and as it touched on all the ways parents can help their babies sleep well from an early age, I mentally stamped FAIL on the ledger of my last 12 months. I tend to take these things a little personally.
But something does have to be done, and I'm trying to man up and do it.
So today Joel and I set up a playpen in our room, next to our bed. We furnished it with some bedding and I placed Diego there, awake but with a tummy full of breast milk, for his nap.
Okay, bad example. He screamed his head off. I was right next to him, but he was a mess.
At bedtime I told Joel, "I can't do it again! Let's not ever do that ever again and we'll just settle for not sleeping."
But as I sat in the glider a little later, in the dark, nursing my almost-one-year-old and praying for guidance and courage, I knew we had to do that again. We need to make a change. And if we can get through the adjustment period, things will be better.
So I placed Diego in the playpen again, and reached in to pat his back. I patted and patted, and he cried, but not quite so desperately as earlier. I laid him down again and again, and for courage I prayed and prayed. I appealed to one of the saintly women in Baha'i history, Munírih Khánum, the wife of 'Abdu'l-Baha. She had six children, but her three boys all died in childhood. So I asked her, with all the love and pain she bore in life, to intercede on behalf of my little son. Please, I asked her, make it a little easier for him.
And it was. Not really even easy yet, but a little less difficult. He finally fell asleep on the sweatshirt I wore all day and spread in the playpen before laying him down once again. I wasn't even touching him when he went to sleep, just sitting near him on my bed.
This issue is a real weak point for me; I feel broken, a failure as a parent, because Paula still doesn't just go to sleep at night. I want so badly to do better with Diego, even though at times I feel I am clambering over a mountain of grief and disappointment in myself. This is why I pray, and pray, and pray. And when I pray, things do get better.
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| Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
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11:32 am - El Negro and Monica
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This morning while throwing a load of laundry into the wash this song popped into my head, El Negro, a merengue that was popular when I was living in Guatemala.
I started singing the familiar refrain and making Diego laugh as I danced among piles of sorted laundry with him on my back.
That song takes me back to when I lived in Quezaltenango, a small city in Guatemala, when I was 13 and 14 years old. I remember dancing at a wedding with a good-looking guy nicknamed "Negro," and everyone winking and nudging him as they sang along to the refrain that is ironically innocent, "Mami, Que sera lo que quiere el negro?" "What on earth could he want?" (Translating the lyric more accurately would have to go into all kinds of analysis of racial and sexual stereotypes that I'm just not going to touch right now, but are explained here).
That moment of dancing at a wedding and being the object of a few ribald jokes was a little embarrassing, but not terrible. I was having fun, didn't let the jokes get to me.
But when I first moved to Guatemala I was in a situation not so different from Paula's now. I entered a social group of kids who knew each other long before I got there and had little use for me. As a lower-middle-class Baha'i with an international family history, I was a religious and cultural anomaly at home in Western Colorado, so entering an Evangelical school where most of my fellow students came from very wealthy Catholic Guatemalan families, I could scarcely have been more different.
My classmates didn't know what to make of me, and all my attempts to make friends seemed to fall flat. One girl made it her personal mission to make my life miserable, and I had no idea why until much later. It was a simple misunderstanding, but I suffered for months as that queen bee spread rumors about me, incited the boys to make lewd innuendos to me, and made humiliating comments about anything I said in class.
I felt bereft. I missed my little group of friends in Colorado, where at least my cheap clothes and knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons were no liability. I cried a lot.
But over time I made friends with one girl in my class, Monica, and her family. She was funny, a bookworm like me, someone I could relate to. Monica and I amassed a wealth of inside jokes, like the nickname we gave to a handsome Mormon missionary with a cleft chin, Chimple. Chin dimple, geddit? Monica made my life so much more bearable; her friendship was just what I needed.
I didn't handle the trials of adolescence, changing schools, and culture shock particularly gracefully, but now I'm able to appreciate that clumsily or not, I got through them. I remember the music and good times, and I'm so grateful for my friendship with Monica, rekindled thanks to Facebook. She's still smart and funny, and still shares my off-beat way of living life.
Watching Paula go through her own change of schools and (more local) culture shock, I am impressed by the grace she shows. She gets up in the morning with a pretty good attitude, gets dressed and boards the bus with a smile on her face. She is trying to make it work at Kinzie, in spite of the cold shoulder she's getting from her classmates.
I checked with Paula's former school yesterday and they said she could go through the lottery and hope to get a 2nd grade spot for next year. So there's no chance of moving her sooner, and no guarantee she'll get in at all. This delay is probably a good thing. Who knows what the next few months will bring her at Kinzie? She will grow in strength of character, and she will become more compassionate towards other people's suffering. And I'm praying there's a Monica waiting to make her entrance into Paula's life.
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| Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
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12:38 pm - Just have to write
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I love those people who say they write, "because they have to." It's so cute and dramatic.
Today I am one of those people.
I am sad and angry about how things have gone for Paula at her new school, Kinzie. We switched her from Academy for Global Citizenship, the funky little charter school where she attended kindergarten, because she wanted to be with more deaf and hard-of-hearing kids.
At Kinzie she sometimes eats lunch with her d/hoh peers, and does have gym with them twice a week, art with them once a week. Kinzie offers everything an established deaf program can: interpreters for all occasions, Deaf adults on faculty and staff at the school, lots of people who sign, stomp, flash lights and otherwise know how to communicate with deaf people. The school even has a wonderful psychologist on staff who specializes in issues related to deafness and hearing loss.
But Kinzie is still rooted in Chicago's southwest side, where if you're not Catholic, not Mexican or Polish, not hearing and don't have blinders on, you just don't fit in. And Paula, my artist, my tall-tale-teller, my self-proclaimed Baha'i who wants to be a Muslim and a Catholic, my girl who stays up all night reading Persepolis and keeps a copy of Coal Miner's Daughter in the car; she doesn't fit in. My girl whose mother and grandparents have lived so many places, who took onigiri and sardines for lunch until the kids teased her too much about it, who loves to read and draw; this girl has found zero friends at Kinzie.
Let me correct that: Her interpreter, Mr. Danny, has become a friend. But that's hardly a social life for a six-year-old girl.
Paula has been stoic about the difficulties she's faced at Kinzie. When she's been teased, she's maintained that it's the teasers' problem, not hers. She has shrugged and said, "I just ignore them."
But yesterday she broke down. "Ashley came back from Mexico today," she cried. Ashley and her family took about two weeks instead of the four days everyone else had off. "I really wanted to be friends with her, but she said she doesn't want to be my friend." She sobbed into my sweater and I wrapped my arms around her. She had been waiting two weeks, hoping that this one girl would be her friend since no one else is, only to have her hopes dashed. It was all I could do not to cry with her.
I sent out messages to Paula's friends' parents, asking to set up play dates, that Paula needs to see her buddies. But my friend Tee messaged me back with her talent for hitting the nail on the head: "Have you thought about taking her back to AGC?"
These big decisions provoke big anxiety in me, and more than a little residual grief from changing schools so many times when I was a kid. Through the ups and downs since Paula started at Kinzie, I've held the line that we're going to stick it out, give things a chance to improve. Paula herself remembered how she missed her preschool when she started at AGC, but soon she adjusted and started to like it there. She made a few close friends, most of them a little different, like her. One has epilepsy and a host of food allergies, another comes from a bi-cultural and tri-lingual family. She fits in well with them.
So today I emailed her old caseworker at AGC to just ask if Paula could go back. The school has a waiting list a mile long, and enrollment is through a lottery. This is what in horse racing would be called a long shot. But boy, if she could go back ... It would be nice to have her happier, to feel like some of the many things I love about her are also appreciated by her friends and teachers at school.
Having acknowledged to myself that the Kinzie experiment is failing, the pain I've felt as Paula's classmates have teased and rejected my treasured child has all surfaced.
And I'm not in therapy anymore, so here I am, writing because I have to. Otherwise this whole thing just hurts too much. This morning I've been toying with the idea of just taking her out of school and keeping her home until another placement can be arranged, preferably at AGC. I've wondered if she'll finally get her wish to be homeschooled. Another fantasy has me writing a strongly worded letter to the teacher and administration asking them what kind of Lord of the Flies operation they're running over there.
I know her teacher can't make the kids befriend Paula, but she can create a more welcoming environment and promote positive interactions, cut down on the teasing. But ultimately the school culture at Kinzie and our family culture are just not a good match. Maybe if Paula stayed long enough she would be able to make it work. But I'm ready to explore other options.
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| Monday, August 23rd, 2010
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3:19 pm - Fat, sluggish, lazy
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Why do I do this?
I looked up the homeopathic remedy I'm taking. That's what the web site said: "patient is sluggish, fat and lazy."
Thanks a lot, jerk.
Last Friday I started working with a homeopath recommended to me by two of my closest women friends. One of them has been dealing with hormonal imbalance issues, respiratory problems and fatigue for over 20 years, and says she is feeling great with the treatment she's taking. The other has typically been quite healthy, but in the last year developed digestive problems that doctors couldn't figure out. She's back to her old self again after a month or so of homeopathic treatment, running with her dogs and cooking up vegetarian delights.
So after I came face to face with my depression and fatigue, I knew I had to do something, get help from some quarter. My options were to go back to my psychiatrist, start taking antidepressants again, go back to therapy and hope for something medical to help with the fatigue and my upward creeping weight.
Or I could seek out a holistic treatment. But any holistic treatment, since it wouldn't be covered by insurance, had to be about equivalent in cost to the multiple co-pays for doctors, therapy and prescriptions. Turns out homeopathy with this provider fit the bill, and may take only about 6 months.
If you're not familiar with homeopathy, it's a medical science that treats "like with like." So, for example, if you are jittery and can't sleep - as though you had too much coffee - the treatment is a very, very dilute solution of coffee. This actually calms you down! There's more to preparing it, but that's the basic idea.
Homeopathic practitioners spend a lot of time interviewing their patients so they can match the whole person to the right medicine. Homeopathy has a gajillion different remedies made from plants, minerals, heavy metals, what have you.
A couple of years ago Paula ate some berries and the next day was extremely lethargic and sleepy, not herself at all. I did some research to find out what she ate and found it was pokeweed, a plant in the genus Phytolacca.
I was familiar with this genus because of a homeopathic remedy made from it that is used for many breastfeeding problems. I had some on hand, gave her a dose and she perked right up. I took her to the ER to make sure all was fine, and she checked out completely.
So I have faith in the power of homeopathy to heal, and now I've started taking the remedy my new practitioner has prescribed. Nothing too spectacular has happened yet, but I'm hopeful. If nothing else, I'm here writing instead of napping with Diego, and it's only 3:30 and I've started dinner.
Take that, "fat, sluggish and lazy."
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| Saturday, August 14th, 2010
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10:07 am - Depressed
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I wasn't very happy with that last post. Something didn't really gel, and I think I know what was wrong.
As much as I have been trying to find some clever way to outthink it, I'm depressed again and I need to get help.
I saw my doctor on Thursday. Here's a tip I might be depressed: I started crying before the doctor walked in, kept crying throughout the consultation. She wrote me a referral to go back to my old psychiatrist.
But the truth is I don't want a band-aid, and I feel that's what anti-depression meds are. Potentially live-saving band-aids at times, but I want to explore something more holistic if possible.
Two friends of mine have been having a lot of success working with a Nashville based homeopath. I emailed her this morning to ask if she can take me on.
I don't know what will happen now, but I realize that no help can come until I recognize that I need it.
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| Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
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4:51 pm - Water and Fire
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This summer Paula, Joel and I got hooked on watching 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' an animated series set in a world where four nations, Fire, Water, Earth and Air, once lived in harmony until the Fire Nation went all colonize-y and tried to take over the other three. For a hundred years the Avatar, an individual with the ability to "bend," or magically control, all four elements, and civilization's one hope to restore balance, was M.I.A. The series begins with the Avatar's reappearance and quest to subdue the Fire Nation.
I've enjoyed this show a lot because it deals with the symbolism of the four elements well, has interesting characters and is surprisingly funny.
The conversations that arose with Paula were pretty interesting, too. I tried to explain how we all have fire, earth, air and water within us and how we "bend" them in different ways (and, as a friend commented to me, they can bend us, as well).
I began to meditate on these elements of life and their meanings to me. Water: emotional, spiritual, flowing. Earth: practical, waiting, consolidating. Air: thinking, perceiving, communicating. Fire: passionate, ambitious, transforming.
As I read one description of Water, it resonated deeply with me. "The chalice, the bowl and the crescent moon are symbols of the Principle WATER: they are representing the soul level, feelings, LOVE, emotional relations, conceiving, giving, receiving, devotion." Physically, in my creeping weight gain and slow metabolism, and in the yielding way that I've followed my path in life, I see a lot of Water. It flows along the easiest route, nourishing life and also drawing out toxins and carrying them away. The way water wears down rock reflects how I have persisted as a parent through the difficulties I faced with Paula.
And Water, of course, doesn't play well with Fire, the source of transformation, metabolism and dynamic personal action. In the past few years whenever Joel has asked me what I was passionate about, I didn't know what the answer was. I felt no passion at all.
Since Diego's birth I have regained my genuine enjoyment of parenting, and I can say now that my passion is parenting. But I know that my weight and my fatigue are both outward signs of my inner lack of Fire.
I began to pray for spiritual fire, using a Baha'i prayer titled, appropriately, the Fire Tablet. The prayer is a series of questions Baha'u'llah asks the Almighty:
"Indeed the hearts of the sincere are consumed in the fire of separation: Where is the gleaming of the light of Thy Countenance, O Beloved of the worlds? ... Anguish hath befallen all the peoples of the earth: Where are the ensigns of Thy gladness, O Joy of the worlds? ... Sore thirst hath overcome all men: Where is the river of Thy bounty, O Mercy of the worlds?"
And the answers:
"O Supreme Pen, We have heard Thy most sweet call in the eternal realm: Give Thou ear unto what the Tongue of Grandeur uttereth, O Wronged One of the worlds.
"Were it not for the cold, how would the heat of Thy words prevail, O Expounder of the worlds?
"Were it not for calamity, how would the sun of Thy patience shine, O Light of the worlds?
"Lament not because of the wicked. Thou wert created to bear and endure, O Patience of the worlds.
"How sweet was Thy dawning on the horizon of the Covenant among the stirrers of sedition, and Thy yearning after God, O Love of the worlds.
"By Thee the banner of independence was planted on the highest peaks, and the sea of bounty surged, O Rapture of the worlds.
"By Thine aloneness the Sun of Oneness shone, and by Thy banishment the land of Unity was adorned. Be patient, O Thou Exile of the worlds.
"We have made abasement the garment of glory, and affliction the adornment of Thy temple, O Pride of the worlds.
"Thou seest the hearts are filled with hate, and to overlook is Thine, O Thou Concealer of the sins of the worlds.
"When the swords flash, go forward! When the shafts fly, press onward! O Thou Sacrifice of the worlds.
"Dost Thou wail, or shall I wail? Rather shall I weep at the fewness of Thy champions, O Thou Who hast caused the wailing of the worlds."
These verses always put my heart right in my throat.
Baha'u'llah then responds: "Verily, I have heard Thy call, O All-Glorious Beloved; and now is the face of Baha (Glory) flaming with the heat of tribulation and with the fire of Thy shining word, and He hath risen up in faithfulness at the place of sacrifice, looking toward Thy pleasure, O Ordainer of the worlds."
I said this prayer morning and night for three days in a row. Those days I felt like I had a runaway train behind me; my house was clean, my shopping done, my meals elaborate; I romped with Paula and didn't nap with Diego. After those three days my fatigue did catch up with me a little.
Or maybe it was fear. I don't know for sure if I was first tired and then afraid of overdoing it, or the other way around.
I laid off saying the Fire Tablet so intensively. But I continue to seek ways to nourish that transformative spark, that burning desire within that I think will help me achieve greater balance in so many areas of my life.
I like who I am and I think I've done well in my watery way. I'm just looking for Fire, and willing to find out what happens when it bends me.
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| Monday, July 26th, 2010
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4:38 pm - Grampa Rogee and Grammy Dee
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My parents visited for ten days this month. My dad's project - he likes to have a project while he's here - was to cut blocks from some wood we had salvaged around the neighborhood. He cut and sanded this wood into wonderfully unique toys for Paula and Diego. Some of the blocks are regular cubes, wedges and rectangles, others are branch sections, all at standard lengths. He left some bark on the branch sections, sanded a little so it won't come off and choke the baby. It's beautiful. One of the trunks we salvaged is cedar, so the blocks have gorgeous reddish and brownish markings. I love getting on the floor with Paula to build what Joel and I jokingly refer to as wood-block henge, with Diego happily gnawing on a block nearby.
For Paula the beauty and magic of these lovingly handmade toys lies also in the memory of helping my father make them.
My father invited Paula to help him saw branches off a tree that had been dragged to the alley. She gushed later about cooperating with him and using a real saw. He asked for her input on shapes and lengths of the blocks and had her bring him branches to cut. Knowing my father there was also a safety lecture regarding the proper behavior around power tools.
My mom didn't get out to the back yard where all this was happening. She is walking more after replacing both knees and both hips in the last year and a half, but stairs continue to slow her down quite a bit. She does use a walker at times but we were all impressed with her progress. My mom was quite athletic when she was young and still applies an impressive persistence and willpower to regaining mobility that her four or five decades with rheumatoid arthritis have robbed from her.
But my mother's gifts as a grandparent lie mainly in her ability to sit with Paula and read a book, watch TV or just talk. Paula soaked up this focused attention from Grammy Dee, introducing her to the 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' series that we have gotten so hooked on, and listening to numerous bedtime - and anytime - books and stories.
Of course both Grammy Dee and Grampa Rogee loved getting to know Diego. He and I both loved having more arms to hold him.
At the beginning of their visit my mom casually commented that maybe they would start spending summers in Chicago now that they can have their own room when they're here. Before they arrived, we bought a queen-sized bed on craigslist for our guest bedroom (the room formerly known as the junk depot). By the end of their visit I told them I hoped they would consider coming to spend a month or more next summer. Having them here was that good.
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| Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
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3:16 pm - The hug I didn't get
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People say that Amma gives the greatest hugs. She is known as the Hugging Saint and people travel from far and wide to meet her and receive the blessing of her warm and loving embrace.
My friend Tricia is one of these people. A teacher, childbirth educator and doula, Tricia is a sharp, funny and irreverent woman with four beautiful children, three dogs and a wicked caffeine habit. When she told me she was going to spend three days this week at the gathering where Amma would be bestowing her hugs outside Chicago, I figured I would come see for myself how it was. Amma's maternal and compassionate spirituality resonates with me, and besides, I might like a good hug.
So I got up early yesterday morning, threw some snacks in a bag and the kids in their carseats and drove out to Lombard. When I got there Tricia was at a birth and her kids were at the pool with the sitter (you've got to respect a woman who has a sitter who will watch four kids, including a 7-month-old baby, away from their home). The sitter welcomed Paula to swim with the three older kids, and I headed down to the conference room to check out Amma.
Entering Amma's conference area at the hotel, I experienced my instinctive aversion to the exaltation of personalities. The photos of Amma at the center of altars adorned with flowers and candles made me uncomfortable. I have a hard time believing that anyone - with a very few highly notable exceptions - is intrinsically more (or less) important than anyone else, so this kind of elevation of one personage doesn't speak to me. But I wanted to remain open-minded and tried to set aside this feeling.
Soon after I entered the big ballroom and looked around at the many "Made in India" items for sale as fundraisers for Amma's extensive humanitarian projects, Amma arrived. Everyone got quiet. The screen next to the stage showed her entrance at the head of a procession and the impromptu hug she bestowed on someone.
A man with a deep, resonating voice came on the public address system and led a round of guided meditation, followed by chanting and a prayer to the Great Mother. I sat down on the floor and leaned against a wall, nursing Diego to sleep. I closed my eyes and tried to center myself and open my heart to the spiritual orientation that everyone there seemed to share.
When the meditation was over, I went looking for the person in charge of tokens. A token, I learned, is basically a ticket for a hug. I wasn't sure at first I wanted a hug, but after the meditation I figured I'd go get my token and see if I couldn't get hugged. The man handing out tokens asked if I had seen Amma this year, and I said no. Diego was asleep on my back and Paula was with her friends. I didn't think to ask if I needed tokens for them. The man handed me a one-by-one-inch square of yellow paper that had K2 printed on it. I wondered idly if my ticket, printed with the name of the most difficult peak to climb in the whole entire world, bore some kind of symbolism for my day.
The token man pointed out signs in the conference room that showed what letter they were on now: B2. I thought to myself, this is going to take all day.
I stood around for a while and even volunteered for a job as a shoe monitor, asking people as politely as I could to put on their shoes before entering the lobby of the hotel. According to Indian custom, most people were removing their shoes as they entered the Amma zone. The hotel didn't want one of them to slip on the polished lobby floor and pass from spiritual exaltation to vindictive litigation in the time it takes to break a tailbone.
The next couple of hours I spent in Tricia's room, hanging out with the kids, the sitter, and Tricia as she returned from the birth that wasn't yet imminent. Tricia, another friend and all the kids went down to the conference and I stayed in the room to give Diego another nap (and get one myself). When I was getting ready to go down to get my hug - K had come and gone - Tricia asked casually if I had gotten tickets for Paula and Diego. No, I answered, I didn't realize I needed them.
Tricia said I should just explain that nobody told me, that I'm new here, and see if they can make an exception.
Heh.
I did just that. I stood there with my two kids, more precious to me than anything, one on my back, one holding my hand, and explained that I wanted them with me when I got hugged. The line-keepers conferred. No, they told me, there would be no exception. They must have tokens. Our only option was to wait until everyone had been hugged and then find out if more tokens would be given out.
This annoyed me. I'm not a hothead, but when people seem to take a certain kind of pleasure in being in charge and saying no, it gets to me. I'm sure I have the same tendency under the right conditions. I decided it was time to go.
Once we got to the car I had explained to Paula what happened and she was disappointed at not being able to see Amma. She said she wanted to look peacefully into Amma's eyes, which made me want to cry and rant all over again. But I knew my ire was doing nobody any good. I took a few breaths and tried to calm myself.
I repeated the motto I've formulated in the last six months or so, "I don't need to know why, only what." It's my way of reminding myself that when things happen contrary to my wishes, the important thing is to simply accept what happened, and trust that the "why" makes sense even if I don't understand it. By the time we got home Paula and I had both let go of our misadventure with token K2 and were looking forward to the rest of our day.
This morning I lay in bed next to Diego as he slept and thought about Amma and her hugs. She is doing wonderful humanitarian work and encouraging people to turn towards spirituality instead of seeking fulfillment through empty material pursuits. I thought about what she must be putting into those hugs to make people feel so loved.
She must be tapping into the Source of Love, the great Universal Divine, the river of spirit that flows through all things. But I believe that for all her spiritual gifts she is still an ordinary person, not a Divine Messenger on the order of Krishna, Buddha, Abraham, Zoroaster, Moses, Christ, Mohammad, the Bab or Baha'u'llah. So the love she is giving must be available to each of us.
As Diego, my own little hugging saint, slept beside me, I closed my eyes and turned my attention inward. I sought that unending river of grace, spirit, love. And there it was! I felt it as an almost physical sensation flooding my body, happiness, connection. Gee, I thought to myself, I should really be doing this every day.
You don't have to be a saint or guru to give good hugs. You don't need an entourage or special clothing. All you need is to find that source of love within you, and let it run through you to others. This is the way to supercharge any hug. And I'm sure Amma would agree.
Tricia Fitzgerald
Amma
K2
Zoroaster
The Bab
Baha'u'llah
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| Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
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1:19 pm - La Terra Vita
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When Paula was a baby and I had started doing elimination communication with her, a local EC group formed. I ventured to one of the monthly meetings in Lincoln Park. Among the bare-bottomed babies, across a wood floor regularly wiped by cloth diapers, I met Lucie and the small, global and idealistic family she and her husband had barely started.
Lucie is French, though her mother is American, and her husband Art is Greek, though he grew up in South Africa. They met and married in England. Lucie and Art came to the U.S. from Britain late in Lucie's pregnancy with Mimi, around the time Paula was born. Mimi was born in that Lincoln Park apartment.
Lucie became a dear friend. We bonded over our high-need daughters and the limits of exhaustion we pushed on a daily basis. I still admire how Lucie's sunny attitude rarely faltered as she cared for Mimi, who woke crying every two hours, not quietly rooting like Paula did.
Joel was touring with his band at that time, and Lucie's conversation and good humor saw me through many lonely weekends.
On one of those weekends when Joel was out of town, Lucie and Mimi braved the 16-degree weather, taking two buses and a train to my house because the window of my minivan was smashed and I was scared to take Paula (so prone to colds and coughs) anywhere in the frigid weather. Lucie had an unconquerable air about her.
That spirit has served her well. Lucie and Art came to the U.S. to pursue their dream of becoming organic farmers. Soon after Mimi turned one, they left Chicago for Oregon, in search of land and the farm they would build.
It took them two years to find land they wanted to buy. They tested soil and water, and otherwise inspected with a fine-tooth-comb every possible property, and most were found wanting. Even the certified organic farms were often close to highways or conventional farms and significantly polluted by pesticides, herbicides and heavy metals. They wanted land that far exceeded the standards set for organic certification, so they kept on looking.
Finally they found the farm they would buy, now known as La Terra Vita in Scio, Oregon. It is a beautiful little place where they raise eggs, vegetables, milk, Mimi and now their 1-year-old son Antonio on land that is removed from main roads, has unpolluted water sources and has never been treated with persistent compounds like DDT. Lucie and Art work this farm with every daylight hour of every day of the year.
You can see Lucie's photos of La Terra Vita on the farm's web site: www.laterravita.com
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| Sunday, June 27th, 2010
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9:33 pm - Love thy neighbor
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When Paula was a high-strung baby whose sleep pattern had been completely disrupted by Daylight Saving Time and hot weather, I remember complaining to a friend about my noisy next-door neighbors, the Tapias, and their eight noisy children.
"I'm putting Paula down for a nap, they're yelling at each other. It's 11:00 at night and they're setting off firecrackers." Between the open windows of our house and their house, it felt like we were living on top of each other.
My friend replied by repeating something she had heard in church: that Jesus said "Love thy neighbor," not "love thy friend." We usually know a lot more about our neighbors, she said, which generally makes it a bigger challenge to love them.
I thought a lot about this comment and tried to have a better attitude. I think I had reached a level of determined neutrality by the following summer when Paula was just learning how to walk.
The Tapias put up a pool that summer and on every sunny day most of them could be found splashing playfully in it. Even their teenage daughter Sweetie, profoundly disabled by hydrocephalus, was carried out and gently laid on a special flotation device so she could enjoy the cool water and escape the stifling heat indoors.
This scene attracted Paula like a magnet. Every time we were in our back yard, she toddled over to the fence and stood there smiling at them. Of course they started smiling back. Once she had their attention she just lifted her arms up, ready to go over the fence to them.
Hilda, the mom, would lean on the fence to say hello, then started picking up Paula and carrying her around the back yard. Paula was in heaven. She didn't want to come back to our yard with its mowed grass, her educational toys and her biological mother. She wanted the pool, the broken toys abandoned in the dirt where grass grew before the boys destroyed it, the house full of children both native and adopted.
That summer Paula was getting evaluated by Early Intervention. Hilda had been through that with a number of her kids. She shared her knowledge about applying for Social Security and the Department of Specialized Care for Children, a source of aid for children with disabilities. And she knew more than anyone I had ever met what it means to love a child see it struggle against obstacles that are never going away. We became friends.
Over time our lives became more intertwined with the Tapias. Their four younger children began attending the same Catholic school where Paula went to pre-school. So we carpooled, an arrangement which made the kids dislike me for berating them about being late, and which made Paula late almost every day they had morning duty. It was a culture clash, but it didn't interfere with Hilda's and my friendship.
The kids came to see Paula as a pest because she threw regular tantrums in the car on the way home from school as they were all squashed together in the back seat. She always wanted to play with them, but they didn't love her non-stop chatter and general non-response to any request from them.
But Hilda watched Paula for me sometimes, or let her youngest, Angelica, come play here, which gave me a break. In spite of begging to have Angelica over all the time, Paula was inexcusably rude to her, and Angelica met this with a long-suffering stoicism that, once it broke down, did teach Paula something about being nicer to her friends.
One of the great ways that the Tapias befriended us was by sending over big plates of food every time they cooked out. Whenever there was a family gathering, they seldom failed to send one of the kids (sometimes at 9:30 at night, at the front door ringing the doorbell) with a tray that held steak almost black on the inside, tender and juicy within, grilled green onions, a big bowl of Hilda's delicious pinto beans, a skewer of prawns, a stack of hot tortillas, and a cup of their famous creamy green salsa. I think it was made from avocado, cilantro, sour cream, and some kind of really hot chile. Amazing.
Once when Paula was two years old she had pneumonia and Hilda sent over two or three of these big platters, which fed us until Paula had recovered.
For the last two years or so, the Tapias had been fighting foreclosure. After missing a few mortgage payments when the dad was out of work, they said their bank wouldn't deal with them to get back on schedule. Every time they called the bank had no record of their previous calls, and consistently refused to work with them.
Eventually Hilda told me they had taken their case before a judge to avoid foreclosure. She reported that the hearings they went to were going pretty well, that the judge was sympathetic to their situation - big family, two children in wheelchairs - and had even reprimanded the bank's agent for taking shortcuts on his paperwork. But we knew that some day they would have to leave.
The Tapias did manage to stay in their house for a long, long time, considering that they weren't paying on their mortgage anymore. They boxed everything up last summer and lived out of those boxes until this week, when the sheriff came to make them leave.
I didn't see it happen. My neighbor across the street sent me a text asking why there were cop cars in front of the Tapias' house; I saw the text an hour or so after the fact. I burst into tears.
The next day some men in a white contractor's van pulled up in front of the house and began removing everything inside. I called Hilda and she arrived in about five minutes, begging them to wait until the U-Haul got there.
They've now moved all of their things, and their multiple little yipping dogs, out of the house. When Coco is in our back yard, there's no chorus of high-pitched alarm from next door. When I go to the kitchen to get a drink of water in the middle of the night there's no light on in their kitchen window, no shirtless teenage boys drinking sodas and eating chips. Fourth of July is approaching and no one is setting off fireworks in the alley.
I do know the Tapias better than I know most of my friends. Few of the annoying or unconscious traits we keep from our friends failed to be revealed by our six years as neighbors. But with all their faults, and in spite of ours, they were good neighbors, and I do love them.
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| Thursday, June 24th, 2010
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10:24 am - Silence, or something like it
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Yesterday around six o'clock the sky turned dark gray and an artificial twilight descended on the Southwest Side of Chicago. The wind picked up and in a matter of minutes what looked like a solid sheet of water was drenching the world outside our windows.
That was the first blast. When the rain let up enough that we could see about a half block, sheets of water were flying sideways ahead of 70 mile-per-hour winds that rocked the minivan parked across the street.
Paula's friend Ella was visiting and we gathered at our big front window to watch the weather. The girls abandoned their tea party and both squeezed into the glider in their princess dress-up gowns. I held Diego on my hip and marveled at the sheer power of the storm.
As the lights began to brown out, I gathered candles, a lighter and flashlight. Even though the sun was up, there was no natural light to see by if the electricity went out. Five minutes after the candles were lit, the lights went out.
The girls stayed by the window, sharing the holding of Diego on their laps, eyes wide. Squeals burst out with every flash of lightning. I went to the kitchen to make popcorn on my trusty gas stove.
When Ella saw the popcorn she went from gleeful to ecstatic. "This is the best day of my whole life," she gushed.
I felt it, too. The storm, the power outage, the candles all gave me a feeling that we were floating in a different kind of time. Our home's many digital clocks were blank; Ella's mom had to wait out the weather to come and get her; bedtime would be approximate, not rigidly adhered to. Time seemed to hang, suspended, during that couple of hours.
The storm died down pretty quickly. Ella's mom came and got her, and Joel came home a bit later. The light outside was deep yellow, tornado weather. Large trees on nearby side streets were blocking traffic, but by the grace of God our street was clear and my neighbors out on the sidewalk reported all were safe.
Paula and Diego fell asleep easily in the dark, quiet house. Joel and I sat at the dining room table in the candlelight, drinking tea, cracking pistachios and enjoying some ginger-molasses cookies a friend dropped by earlier. We laughed over some of our favorite shared jokes from almost 16 years together.
When I felt tired, I moved to the big ottoman and laid down. We talked some more, the candlelight conducive to pleasant conversation. Joel and I smiled at each other as our talk trailed into silence. When I went to bed I didn't know what time it was.
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| Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
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6:33 am - Camp Sign
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Last night we went to the orientation meeting for Camp Sign, the day camp for deaf and hard-of-hearing children that Chicago Park District runs. When we arrived the only other people there were a 10-year-old boy and his mom.
Paula went over to a table full of board games and got one out to play with. The boy was on the other side of the room contemplating Twister.
A few more kids and their moms trickled in, including a pair of 11- and 12-year-old sisters, one deaf and the other hearing. Paula gravitated toward them and was soon seated next to them on the sofa, playing with the tic-tac-toe pieces, chattering her head off.
Yes, she was talking their ears off. With her voice. She wasn't signing at all. "Paula," I said, "She's deaf! You need to sign with her for her to understand you."
Both of the camp staff who were present are deaf adults. At one point Karla, the head counselor, was assuring me that she will help Paula learn to swim. Then she asked me, "Does Paula sign?"
I explained that Paula has spent the last year in a completely hearing environment. She can still understand the Pidgin Signed English Joel and I have continued to use with her. But she hasn't had to sign to anyone in a long while.
A little later Paula saw some paper cutouts on a table and asked me if she could have one. I pointed her at the camp director, Sarah. Sarah has bilateral cochlear implants; she can certainly understand Paula without sign, but after Paula spoke to her, she prompted her to sign her request.
Paula did so, and returned with a paper tulip. She heard me say that while she benefits from us signing to her, we don't need her to sign to us. "They can understand me," she piped up.
"When I'm with my hearing friends, I don't sign either," Sarah responded. "But when I'm with my deaf friends, we sign to each other." Paula smiled.
I laid in bed this morning thinking about this brief interaction, this little piece of guidance from a Deaf adult to a hard-of-hearing child. I also thought about stories I've heard about deaf children surmising that because there are no deaf adults that they know of, the deaf child might not live to adulthood.
Camp Sign will be like most other day camps. The kids will go swimming, do arts and crafts, have theme days and field trips. And they'll get something a little more enduring: a sense of normalcy about being deaf, that they will grow up, and some day maybe teach another deaf child how to swim.
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| Monday, June 21st, 2010
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10:18 am - As well as possible
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My hen Silver died yesterday. She was only two years old. I had suspected that she had something wrong with her crop because I detected a mass on her chest. But she seemed all right; as I juggled my needs and the needs of my children, I kept hoping that whatever it was would simply go away. The truth is I just didn't have the bandwidth to get Silver to the vet.
I often don't have the energy to do important things like this. My Chinese doctor calls it low chi. From a Western medical standpoint it's chronic fatigue. It's been a fact of life for me in varying degrees starting about ten years ago when I first sought treatment for, as I put it then, wanting to go to bed all the time.
Sometimes I have more energy, and my house is cleaner, my bills paid on time and my mood brighter. Other times, when my energy is in the "average" range for me, I can function decently as long as I get a nap. For the last couple of months I've been on the low end of that average range, but still appreciating the improvement over how I felt for the 13 months following Diego's conception.
All this is to say that I'm not always on top of the things I need to be on top of. I've posted here before about struggling with Coco, my high-energy dog. Caring for Coco is getting easier as she gets older and gradually more mellow. I've worked walking her into our routine most days and the whole family is better for it.
With Silver's death my husband is openly wondering if we should find a new home for our other three hens. They require little care, really, just daily feeding and watering, periodic cleaning of their coop, and of course collecting the eggs. Like any animal, though, they require occasional veterinary care and general health maintenance.
I really love having my chickens. I love that I don't have to buy eggs at the store, that whenever we run out of eggs we can go check and see if they've laid a new one in the last few hours. The reality of actual livestock in my yard brings me a lot of enjoyment.
Do I have what it takes to care for them, though? In the last months of my pregnancy, up until the time Joel broke his foot in March, Joel was doing all the routine animal care because I was too exhausted to do it. When Joel broke his foot and I resumed responsibility for everything that had to be done, I just pushed through my fatigue and got things done as well as possible until I had to spend about six days in bed recovering.
As well as possible. That's how well I do a lot of things here. Is that a humane way to care for my animals? I don't know. Do they deserve better than my children, whose care I qualify as "perfectly adequate"? I don't believe they deserve better, but at least roughly equivalent. Obviously Silver's care was not adequate, or else she would still be clucking around, scratching and pecking at the straw in the chicken run.
current mood:  sad
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| Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
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12:53 pm - IEP Update
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Our meeting to revise Paula's IEP took place Monday. Her academic performance is at or above grade level, but somehow a majority of the service providers agreed that she belongs in a different placement.
The itinerant teacher of the deaf talked about how Paula's body becomes tense when she is depending only on listening and lipreading for communication. Her body relaxes, this teacher said, when people sign to her.
I talked about Paula's repeated request for placement in a school with other deaf/hoh students. I also mentioned that the length of the school day, eight solid hours, has been very difficult for her.
They wrote things into her IEP like that she will be able to eat lunch with her hearing classmates in the general education classroom, OR with her deaf/hoh peers on any given day. She will have a full-time interpreter, including for school assemblies, field trips and after-school programs; if we want less interpreter time we can customize this once school starts.
Paula will ride the bus to school, with an interpreter on the bus. I think she's going to feel like a desert wanderer finally making it to the oasis where communication is available at all times.
She will get 20 minutes a day with the teacher of the deaf, she'll also have art class with her deaf/hh peers. The audiologist said that the people who are making the schedule at Kinzie are already putting the hearing and deaf 1st-graders in PE at the same time so Paula can have PE with her deaf AND hearing peers. Her placement at Kinzie isn't even official, and they're changing the schedule to accommodate her.
It's funny, but I get the distinct impression that these people care about Paula. For that I'm deeply grateful.
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| Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
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11:50 am - Truthfulness and TV
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I've started watching episodes of this procedural called Lie to Me, starring Tim Roth as Dr. Cal Lightman, an expert in detecting lies through what he calls "micro expressions" that betray a person's true feelings before conscious facial control takes over.
The show interests me for a couple of reasons. One, I like to think I am good at sensing when someone is lying, kind of like people who watch any of the Law & Order shows because think they would make great detectives. And two, I think of myself as a pretty truthful person. Baha'u'llah says "Truthfulness is the foundation of all virtues." So I put a lot of importance on being truthful. Being truthful to oneself and others is the keystone of personal growth.
So whether I'm actually any good at detecting other people's lies or not, the show has prompted me to examine more closely where I may be untruthful. Sometimes when I talk to Paula I conceal things - without lying outright - and I wonder if I might be more truthful while still balancing other considerations. That is to say that not everything that can be said truthfully is necessarily timely, tactful nor kind.
One puzzling contradiction in the show is how frequently the characters themselves lie, especially the main character. I keep wondering how they can know so much about lying and still not realize the deeper importance of truthfulness. But hey, I just started watching. Maybe there's a character arc where this plays out.
Check out this interview that explores the science behind the show.
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| Monday, June 7th, 2010
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12:23 pm - People stop and stare, it doesn't bother me ...
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I entered the mall by the food court and walked through the big aisle that divides the dining area's hundred tables. I was there to join Joel, Paula and my in-laws after they had attended Mass.
I soon noticed that people were looking at me. They didn't smile or say hello, as other parents sometimes do when I'm out with Diego and Paula. People looked at me with expressions that said, "You obviously don't belong here." I wondered if maybe it was because of my outfit.
Wrapped around my hips and legs sarong-style was a broad, bright orange silk scarf that covered me to my ankles. It was wonderfully comfortable on that hot afternoon, and I liked how it outlined my curvy lower body.
It's possible, though, that I overdid things with my choice of shirt. No, I wasn't sporting a flab-revealing halter, though that would have been seasonal. It was just a light, long-sleeved tunic in spring green. I like green and orange together, so although I realized the combination might be daringly bright, I was willing to try it out.
I was also wearing Diego in my black Maya Wrap ring sling.
Maybe it was just a little much for the good people out for a Sunday afternoon buffet-and-browse at the mall after church.
I notice this a lot lately, while I'm walking Paula to school or at the grocery store. People seem to look at me like they're not sure who or what I am, where I fit in.
Diego often rides in the sling or on my back, so he contributes to my overall look. On walks I like to wear him in the podaegi carrier, on my back, in the "strapless" tie where the straps go under my arms. It's dead comfortable, if you haven't tried this way of wearing a baby or toddler. My mom carried me this way when I was a baby in Africa, so naturally I love it.
Also, I am a big woman. I laughingly call myself a "traditionally built African woman," like one of my favorite literary heroines, Precious Ramostwe of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.
My wardrobe does need some updating. I can't bring myself to divulge the age of most of my trousers. And since you don't know how old they are, you won't be able to see that they're quite threadbare, right?
Although my fashionable sister has occasionally threatened to nominate me for What Not to Wear, I suspect that people look at me as though I don't quite fit in for one overarching reason: I don't quite fit in.
I'm a white American born in Africa who came of age in Latin America, a Baha'i on Chicago's heavily Catholic Southwest Side; a chicken-raising, composting, gardening, home-baking homemaker in the middle of a big city.
This has always been my story. I've always been a little (or a lot) different. I spent my teen years like most teenagers, lonely and miserable at least some of the time, but for most of my life I've found some common ground with the people around me, and stood on that to make friends. Most people turn out to be pleasingly odd once you get to know them anyway.
So it doesn't bother me for people to look at me this way. But next time I go to the mall, maybe I'll opt for something a little more conservative, a little less ... orange.
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| Friday, June 4th, 2010
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4:20 pm - Deaf progam smackdown: Kinzie vs. Ray
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Yesterday was the big day, the day we visited the two schools where Paula might go next year. Both are public schools with deaf programs, but as far as we were concerned, the similarity ended there.
Our day started at 10:00, in the main office at Kinzie elementary. The assistant principal in charge of the deaf program came to show us around. First she introduced us to the clerk who had greeted us.
"This is Barbara*. Her daughter is deaf and was a student here. If you have any questions she's a great person to ask." (*I have foolishly forgotten her name already.)
Barbara, a petite woman with a quiet manner, smiled warmly and came out from behind the desk. She signed to Paula, "How old are you? My daughter is deaf, too! She came to school here. Now she's grown up, 31 years old."
After a short exchange with her, we left on our tour. Down the hall we entered the self-contained special education classroom. The children sat at a semi-circular table facing their teacher; they were discussing amusement parks as something you do in the summer.
They were friendly, outgoing children who instantly commented on Paula's bright hearing aids and showed off their own glittery or boldly colored earmolds and aids. One of them fingerspelled everyone's name for me. None of them spoke English clearly, but with the exception of a little boy who has significant cognitive challenges, they all expressed their thoughts in sign with typical kindergarten exuberance.
When it was time for us to continue our tour, Paula asked to stay with them. We met up with her at the lunchroom where a lunchroom attendant, another parent of a deaf former student, was shepherding the playful children into line using sign and voice. They were headed to art class, so she accompanied them and a hard-of-hearing adult aide to the art room. The slightly eccentric-looking art teacher, like many of the general education teachers, is an educator of the deaf. When the program shrinks in a given year, the school shifts teachers of the deaf to general education positions to retain its talent.
As we left, a deaf woman who works at Kinzie stopped us to thank us for visiting and signed enthusiastically, "Paula should come here. Kinzie is the best school!"
After a light lunch at a Hyde Park bakery, my friend Julie gave us the tour of Ray school. She introduced us first to the computer teacher, who greeted us politely but said nothing to Paula. In the well-equipped library Paula spoke up and introduced herself to the librarian. We peeked into the homeroom where Paula would probably be mainstreamed there, and the children were sitting on a rug going over the rules of the game they were about to play. A boy stood up and gave an exceedingly clear synopsis.
We went to the office for our appointment with the case manager. The clerk picked up the phone to call her.
"You have someone here to see you. The name?"
I told her, "Martinez."
"The child's name?"
"Paula."
She said into the receiver, "Two o'clock?"
I shook my head and said, "One fifteen."
She asked me, "Who did you speak to?"
"The case manager." She turned back to the receiver, listening.
"She says you can go to her room."
Julie took us to the case manager's room and we walked in. The case manager was dressed casually and her blond hair is cut in a choppy style. She addressed Julie. "I'm teaching right now. They can't visit [the self-contained classroom] because they're busy right now. They can visit [the homeroom]."
I was amazed that she was not looking at us, nor had she greeted us. I stuck out my hand, "Hi, I'm Juliet. We spoke on the phone." She shook my hand and turned back to Julie.
"About your IEP meeting ... " She led Julie away. When they returned she cursorily directed us again to the mainstream homeroom. I felt completely dismissed.
We did go to the self-contained classroom and interrupted their instruction. The teacher was helpful and clearly very good at what she does. She talked to me about the needs of the different students and their oral instruction approach.
My friend's daughter was in the self-contained classroom when we got there. I was surprised to see how tired and almost haggard she looked. Usually when I see her outside of school she isn't wearing her cochlear implant processor, at home she also removes her hearing aid. In school yesterday her affect was labored; she greeted Paula heavily with a raised hand. I felt awful for her.
Paula didn't want to leave; she wanted to play with her friend. Even when we were at the car she was asking to go home with Julie so she could play after school.
As we drove away, Joel and I looked at each other. Neither of us could believe how opposite the two schools felt. Kinzie came across as warm, welcoming and wholeheartedly accepting of its deaf students. Our feeling at Ray was that the deaf students don't matter there.
But Paula, ever going her own way, insisted Ray was the place for her. She wanted to play with her friend. Joel and I questioned her a little, but we know that the more attention we give any particular stance, the more stubbornly she espouses it. We dropped it.
But after an hour's drive home in heavy traffic, Paula said, "My inner guidance is telling me that Kinzie is a good school for me. I want to go to Kinzie."
So we all agreed. Paula won't get the higher-level academics that Ray has to offer. She'll get the adequate academics available at Kinzie. And she'll be part of a school culture that treats deaf and hard-of-hearing students as normal and welcome.
Now to get the change written into her IEP.
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| Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
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10:41 am - Symbolic?
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Last night I dreamed I was lodged in a rickety old house, getting ready for a long trip. A lot of college-aged kids were there, too. Most of them were lounging around and enjoying their free time.
When I left to survey the route, I looked ahead at an immense, scorched, roadless desert. After slogging through sand dunes for what seemed like an age of unending high noon, I reached a cliff overlooking something I can only describe as badlands. Rocks, ravines and bare slopes covered every inch between me and my destination. At that moment a fleet of helicopters appeared to take me the rest of the way! I climbed aboard and they flew me to a beautiful city like something in the United Arab Emirates.
Then I realized I had to go back and bring everyone else.
I found out last night that no other first-grader at Kinzie's deaf program will be mainstreamed. Paula would be the only one. She would see deaf peers at lunch and in "specials," music, art, etc., but that's it.
There is no way to predict what else we'll find out tomorrow during our school visits. This just keeps being more interesting than I would like.
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| Sunday, May 30th, 2010
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12:57 pm - On sending Paula to church
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Joel just drove off in the minivan with Paula sobbing in her car seat. They're going to celebrate Roman Catholic Mass.
This is my least favorite part of being in an interfaith marriage.
You might think I dislike it because I don't want him taking Paula to Mass, or that I fear she'll decide that being a Baha'i isn't for her. You'd be wrong. Paula just really doesn't like going to mass.
The church my in-laws like to attend has its modern-looking sanctuary in the basement. It's like they put a big crucifix in the Brady family's living room (this apt description courtesy of Dan Savage). Because it's below ground level the sanctuary is dark. The music is somber. My in-laws sit mid-way back and there is nothing for Paula to look at but the backs of other parishioners. Mass is given in Spanish, a language Paula doesn't speak or understand; there are no visuals, no sign language interpreter, nothing for a child to do but sit and stare at the bald spot on the man in front of her.
Add Paula to this mix and you've got a recipe for disaster.
Paula gets bored at Mass and begins to fidget. Joel tells her to sit still. She plays with the kneeler. Joel begins to get angry. He threatens to take her outside if she doesn't behave. This sounds great to her! Joel has lost his temper with her almost every time they've gone to Mass and on at least one occasion she's been spanked.
What is my role in this debacle? I'm not Catholic, and as far as I'm concerned I have no jurisdiction when it comes to how Joel wants to share his Faith with his daughter. He certainly doesn't interfere with the Baha'i children's classes, Feasts, study circles, holy days and other events Paula and I regularly participate in.
Paula enjoys going to the Baha'i events. She proudly proclaims that she is a Baha'i and she follows Baha'u'llah. This morning she used this rationale in an attempt to avoid going to Catholic Mass.
I told her that as a Baha'i she is also a follower of Jesus, that worshiping God in Jesus' house is an act that pleases Baha'u'llah. I told her to show everyone there what it means to be a Baha'i child: reverent, respectful, full of love. I also suggested she take a small notebook in which to draw or write when she got bored so she wouldn't bother others.
Then, as Joel's tension level mounted as he tried to get out of the house (and running late), I helped Paula scrub the grease off her hands after she had been playing with some old bike parts in the yard while waiting for Daddy.
And then, when she went right back outside and started grabbing those same bike parts, intending to take them to church, I lost my temper. Lately we've been having this problem that when I say 'no' she continues doing exactly what she wants. That's what preceded the yelling. She started to cry. She said she didn't want to go, she wanted to stay with me.
I'm sure you can imagine this is great fun for Joel. When Paula says she's a Baha'i and not a Catholic, it cuts right to his heart. I don't know why he hasn't tried to involve Paula in more enjoyable and age-appropriate activities in his Faith, but he is trying to share it with her. I try to refrain from telling him what I think he should do; after all, he is a grown man and a wonderful father. He is certainly capable of deciding what is the best way to introduce Paula to the Catholic Church.
I wish Paula liked going to Mass. I want her to feel good about both of her religious backgrounds and choose what she chooses based on a spiritual inclination, not the emotional remains of bad experiences. At times like these I guess my best option is to accept that things are what they are. I can't make Paula or Joel do things differently or feel differently. This is their struggle together. Maybe while they're at Mass I should spend my time at home praying fervently - to Jesus, to Baha'u'llah, to God Almighty - for things to go well, for a change.
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| Friday, May 28th, 2010
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10:37 pm - The IEP process as a spiritual path
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Paula wants to leave her uber-cool current school, the Academy for Global Citizenship. She's ready to give up the fresh, organic meals, the organic vegetable garden, the schoolyard chickens, the international approach to learning, the community yoga at the end of the day, the friends she's made. She just wants to be at a school with other deaf and hard-of-hearing kids.
She's been telling me about this for the whole year. I was hoping she would get used to being the only hearing aid user at her school and stop asking to change.
I guarded closely the information that a nearby school has a Total Communication program for deaf students. Then last week I let it slip. I thought maybe she was over needing the company of other deaf kids.
Right. I forgot that needing lots of affection and exercise are not the only ways my daughter and my pit bull are alike. Tenacious, persistent, dogged ... These are words that have described her since she was a baby who, if denied access to "Aboo" as she called me in the early days, would cry till she threw up, then scream some more. Stamina; that's what my daughter has.
So when I mentioned that this school had deaf students, she took hold of that bone and hasn't let go. "I want to go to Kinzie. I'm going there next year," has become her mantra.
As an aside, a couple of winters ago Paula started ending each phone call with my parents, who live in Georgia, with the phrase, "I'll see you in April!" We all scratched our heads over this. There was no plan, and no money, to visit in April. And yet, when April rolled around, my parents did, too, for a week-long visit. Paula seemed to make it happen by sheer force of will, or amazing marketing savvy. One of the two.
So she started asking to go to Kinzie and Joel and I decided to talk it over. We wanted to also look at a school with a little better academics than Kinzie, and decided to also look at a school called Ray. We'll choose between those two after visiting them both Thursday.
This process has had an interesting effect on me. I spoke with the school psychologist for Kinzie. She had evaluated Paula for her IEP and I had been impressed with this woman's depth of knowledge and agility as a thinker. I learned a lot from listening to her at Paula's staffing. So when I heard she wanted to talk about this possible change, I eagerly called her.
She talked about the emotional effects of isolation and oral education programs on deaf adults she's known. She sparked my memory of being on the campus of the Illinois School for the Deaf. I felt so normal there; such a sense of belonging in a place where everyone signs, deaf and hearing adults capably execute their responsibilities and communicate easily. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, it was heavenly.
That heavenly feeling is a sensation in my body. In the instant that I recalled it, I felt a change happen. The heavily rational, left-brain way I've been parenting Paula shifted and an intuitive, extemporaneous, emotional mode nudged its way into the driver's seat. Woah.
Yes, I thought. I want Paula to be happy.
The rational part of me has insisted that few things in life are easy and Paula is better off learning to deal with the cold, uncaring hearing world now. Nobody out there is going to kowtow to her needs, so she'd best figure out how to meet them herself.
But this other part of me resists. Why does it have to be about what will happen "out there," when she's grown? What's wrong with her enjoying life now? Especially if she has told me exactly what she wants?
Somehow everything feels different now with Paula. I'm playing with her more and really enjoying it. When I send her to time out, I can feel that my motives are not mean, I'm just setting a boundary. I'm less focused on results; more on enjoying this moment.
And when the case worker at one of the schools dismissed my request to visit, saying, "She can't come here unless the placement office says she can. Call them. It depends on what's in her IEP," she awoke the lioness within.
"Nobody decides if the placement is right except ME! I am the parent and my daughter's advocate. If the IEP doesn't say what I think it should, I'll get it changed! First we decide what's best and the IEP follows, NOT the other way around!"
And this morning when the case worker at Paula's school gave me a similarly discouraging update about the placement office's position regarding Paula, I didn't cry, moan or lash out. I reached out to some of my girls: Tee, Jacqueline, Nilufar. I prayed. I got hugs, love and encouragement. I called the psychologist and audiologist to tell them I would need their backup. I fed the lioness all of that good energy. Because let me be clear: I don't care about the placement office or Chicago Public Schools' twisted interpretations of IDEA law. I'm going to find a way.
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