The Father Daughter Dance

I can see that it’s like he’s almost constantly being jabbed with a pin, in the side. Sometimes, he even winces, from some ghostly little ping or pang as if someone is stepping on his toes. This is my husband in reaction to my child. He acts that way every time HIS name is mentioned or she brushes by him without her usual acknowledgement of “Hi Pats” (my daughters nickname for my husband, whom she used to call ‘Pattums’, until it was shortened to ‘Pats’).

Our 13 year old daughter has a boyfriend. Or should I say she is ‘going out’ with someone. Wait…I’m told they are JUST friends (Jeez, Mom!)

Going where you ask? Well absolutely nowhere alone, of course. He lives 7 miles away. All highway. Thank you sweet baby Jesus. They are only 13 years old. But that doesn’t seem to be any consolation.

Let’s call him Rocco. After all, he is Italian, and has a very Italian sounding name. Which I think in some way adds to my husband’s discomfort, as he and Rocco have that in common. And I shouldn’t say that they go nowhere. They attend the same school. They attend school sporting events together. They roller skate on Friday nights. I usually give him a ride home from roller skating. Rocco is very polite. He actually opens the passenger side door to thank me after getting out of the back seat. Which my husband calls being ‘a kiss ass ’. I think it’s sweet. My husband insists that it is a tell tale sign that Rocco is a punk and that I must be going soft. I think Rocco breathing translates to my husband that Rocco is a punk. I am not sure anything would make him happy.

When I was pregnant with Lily, I went for my ultrasound alone to find out if she was a girl or a boy. My then, overly masculine husband, waited at home. What was the big deal? We had already had a son. Which I was extremely grateful for as it took the pressure off. It's not like I was producing an heir to a thrown or something. But my husband wanted a boy first. In fact, he wanted a boy second, too. I was embarrassed and slightly wounded by the emphasis on the boy thing. After all, what the hell was the matter with us chicks, anyway?

My husband claimed he was too rough around the edges for a girl. He thought he would flounder as the parent of a girl and that she would turn into some masculine, I am going to take you down, truck-driver-mouth wench with an overly hairy upper lip. And perhaps an overly hairy upper back as well. (My husband is a very hairy, half Italian, half Armenian wonder of a specimen). We had already agreed that some sort of electrolysis or hair removal would be on the docket for her sixteenth birthday, if we ever had a girl.

Well, she was a she. I was elated. And as I pulled into the driveway he was standing in front of the garage. We made eye contact and I saw him exhale. Deeply. He new just by looking at what I thought was my expressionless face.  

“You’ll be fine!” I said comforting him as he bent (way down) to hug me. I felt him collapse a little onto my shoulder. “Really babe, we should just be focusing on her health, don’t worry about it. You will be a great Dad to her.” He smiled and I could tell he was in the process of adjusting his thinking. Sink or swim. Ah, the joys of my ever evolving husband.

Today, to say “two peas in a pod” is an understatement. She and he are each others best buddy. There were times when I would sneak upstairs just to listen to them playing together when she was little. One day, I opened the door to put away laundry, and there he was, sitting on her bed, my 6’3” burly, mountain man husband, looking sheepish in a pink feathered boa with a jewel encrusted tiara on his head. She was standing in front of him trying to attach the second of two plastic, clip-on earrings, with purple bejeweled dangles. Something you don’t easily forget. It certainly made me fall in love with him all over again.

She was interested in all the same things he was. Fishing, hunting, trapping, sports. In fact, at the age of 4, she used to hang out with him in the garage as he skinned critters (according to him, an art form) to get the pelts ready for sale. My daughter loved it. They hung out and had conversation at times that almost made me jealous. Almost.

But now, it’s complicated. She picks up on the fact that he is leery of anyone who pays her any attention in the romantic department. The other day, at her basketball game, a mutual friend of both Lily and Rocco’s, Andrew, came up to me and my husband in the stands a few minutes before half time. Rocco was sitting at the other end of the bleachers with his friends.

“Hi Mrs. S, can you give Rocco a ride home today after the game.” (For some strange reason, he new best not to address this question to Mr. S)

My husband and I exchanged glances as if we both just tasted something awful.

“Why, yes Andrew, I can give Rocco a ride home today after the game. But Rocco will have to come over here and ask me himself.”

Our friends sitting around us in the bleachers chuckled. We waited. No Rocco.

So as half time ticked down, my husband waited impatiently for Rocco to come skulking over to ask us for a ride. I knew things were getting testy when my husband started tapping his foot on the step next to me. When Rocco didn’t show up, my husband stood up and shouted, as loud as he could:

“Hey Socco, (he had his own nickname for my daughter’s beloved) is there something YOU wanted to ask us?!”  Done, ironically, just as our daughter was entering the gym from the locker room to start the impending third quarter of her game.

Yeah, that went over well. There was laughter from the crowd and a couple of blushing teenagers. Something tells me the line had now officially been drawn in the sand. Get out the tighty whities and the shotgun, dear.

Not too long ago, we decided if you can’t beat ‘em, then join ‘em. And by joining I mean we took Lily and Rocco out to dinner and a movie. A double date so to speak. My husband can’t stand it when I call it that. Weirdly, it was decidedly NOT awkward. I thought it would be, but it wasn’t. And I am pretty sure my husband enjoyed it, too.

Now some may think that this is ridiculous. Why go out to dinner and a movie with your 13 year old daughter and her boyfriend (Mom, were just friends, FOR REAL!!) Well…I figure the more we accept things the way they are, the more likely it is that the lines of communication stay open. Surprisingly, the big guy is on board, still evolving.

We both realize that 13 years old is too young to be in a serious relationship, but by dismissing it, we are doing more harm, than good. All of us know that as of right now, Lily and Rocco are not able to ‘date’ without chaperones. It is understood and respected. We run this ship. Rocco is on board. Lily is on board. I am on board. My husband is standing on the shore, but as least he’s on the beach.

I remember being a little worried about the relationship between my husband and my daughter years ago. Some part of me thought, ‘what if he’s right?’…’what if he sucks as a Dad to her?’ ‘What if years down the road she is in therapy sobbing “My father never loved me!”

Today, I can’t believe it was ever a concern. She is independent, outspoken and shrewd, just like her Dad. And he has softened around the edges. He, who once told me if he had a daughter, he would most definitely screw it up, can’t picture his life without her. He can’t picture life without either of our kids. Isn’t it amazing what the love of a little girl, a child in general, can do?

Job well done, husband. May our daughter be blessed with a partner in life, if she so chooses, that knows when he has met his match, as you have.

Does Your Face Light Up?

As someone who considers herself a writer, (well, a blogger at least) when a unthinkable tragedy strikes, you would think that the desire to sit and hack away at the keyboard would stop me in my tracks. That some force would grab me, pluck me from where I stand and sit me in front of my lap top, no matter where I was or what I was doing, right after providing me with a nice hot cup of coffee/tall glass of wine.

Not now. Not this time.

When the news of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary reached me, I wanted nothing to do with writing. The sadness and fear that enveloped me, paralyzed my need to sincerely communicate with anyone except my children and my husband. I shut down, as I am sure many of us did. I became nothing but an emotional being, but in a warped kind of way. For the last few days I have soaked everything in, reluctantly. The media attention was and still  is mind boggling. And the words “this time of year” began to sting me like a punch in the face. Yeah, it’s Christmas, but any time of year that you lose a loved one, especially a child, is devastating. Why would the time of year matter? I grieved for the adults lost and the parents, not only of the victimized children, but for the children at Sandy Hook who survived, and my brain froze as hard as a glacier. My heart was the only thing working.

As the initial shock started to wain, I like everyone else, searched for answers. I really didn’t feel much like offering my opinion or speculating as to where to place blame. What did it matter? I kept searching for something else.

Round and round we went. Where can we place blame? The are so many choices.  Let’s see…

*Guns. Sure we can talk about guns for a long time. The truth is criminals will always be able to get guns, illegally. We, as a people, in our society as it is, have the right to defend ourselves. Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer, Min Yingjun used a knife, Hitler used a gas chamber. Crazy has no rationale. If they want to kill, they will.

*Diagnosis. Aspergers does not equal a mass murder. Neither does Autism. Neither does any other mental illness or mental handicap. Searching for a reason that someone kills can not be found in a medical coding book. If that is where you decide to conduct your search then you are going back in time instead of forward.

*Parenting. We are not all raised by perfect human beings. Far from it. Blaming a parent for an adult child on a killing spree does not solve the problem. Divorce doesn’t equal killing either, or else more than half of us would be dead.

*God. Or the lack of God. Why bring him into this. It’s not His fault. Divine intervention is not mandatory in massacres like these. Although I wish it was.

Do we really need this?  Does this really help? Does placing blame teach us anything? We should all be expected to take responsibility for our own actions despite our laundry list.

I am a fighter. I will fight with you on anything. I like to refer to it as debating. I am direct. It’s in my DNA. But I no longer want to be a fighter. It feels like spinning my big ol wheels in a big ol mud pit. I want to stop fighting and start fixing.

I so wanted to write something, anything, that would lend sense to it all. I wanted something eloquent that would untangle this mess and make things better. But then this happened. It dawned on me today while driving. In my search to sort it all out, my now thawed out mind and my beating heart kept going back to something. Something I heard a long time ago, 12 or so years ago, that changed the way I go about my daily life. Something said by a woman named Toni Morrison. It was this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jw0Fu8nhOc

Overly simple, maybe. Utopian, could be. But necessary, I believe so.

Does your face light up? Do your children, any child, get the benefit of you being happy to see them? Are you too critical? Are you wrapped up in so many of life little inconveniences that you can’t light up when you see someone you love. Even those that you see everyday? Do you light up when you see your spouse? Your Mom and Dad? Anyone else?

It may not be the solution to something as big as the Sandy Hook massacre, but what if it was to the future of our children. What if something so simple could be the answer? How would we know? I say let’s try it.

I look at the face of the killer and I see no light. Desolate, barren eyes. He almost looks like an alien on this planet. Void of light. Probably incredibly uncomfortable with the flash used to take his picture. I think he found a friend in darkness. It was all he had.

Light just might be the answer. The light of a child. I say we rejoice in it, provide blaring light to them and encourage it to spread. And maybe the rest, will just take care of itself.

"And God said, let there be light, and there was light"

Genesis1:3.

A Day in December

You hear about it, you read about it and instinctually you know about it, because you did it. People joke about it at parties, friends pat you on the back as they blow out their birthday candles and family members say things like: “Just you wait…”

Teenagers. You know it's going to happen but that doesn’t make it any easier to stomach and believe.

I know my mouth is moving, but the words that are coming out, are not what I really want to say. I feel like the Mom puppet. With big bulging eyes, dangling feet and some seriously noticeable frown lines. With someone’s arm up my ass.

“Sneak 2 bags of chips” comes out sounding more like “Did you pack any fruit in your lunch?” (Hey, at least I make them pack their own lunches)

“Wear just a t-shirt to school today, you’ll be fine” automatically edits to “Please don’t forget your jacket, it’s freezing out.”

“What ever I own, is yours for the taking whenever you need it” sounds as if I just yelled “Where the hell is my flat iron!”

As I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, being a teenager trapped in adult’s body, with all of the perspective of looking in the rear view mirror, sucks…big time. Especially when your kids are now...well, YOU.

As of this moment, I now have two teenaged children, and one of them is of the girl variety. And the switch just got flipped. Boys from the outside world have infiltrated the system. And I can tell you, I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. I hope we all come out intact. We are all in defensive mode. Even the dog. God. Help.Us.

I had a dream last night that my daughter had a rotating system of boys coming in and out of my house, all of whom insisted that I make them a home-cooked meal. The worst part was I actually did it, chained to the stove as she interviewed each one in the living room as my husband sat in the corner complaining about each of the boys’ responses to my daughter’s questions. Mocking them. She kept turning to her father, wide-eyed, saying “Dad, don’t you have work to do in your office?!”

I awoke with sweat on my brow, caused more from the company my daughter was keeping and only a smidge from the heat that was coming from the oven.

My almost 16 year old son is now in Driver’s Ed. I went to the mandatory parent meeting on Tuesday night.

1 in 28 will get in an accident. 1 in 100 will die.

I have never been so scared in all my life. Would it be bad to just tell him “No, sorry, you can’t get your driver’s license until you are out of college, besides I can drive you wherever it is you need to go.”  OR “What do you mean, dating?...well I am sure I can be very quiet in the front seat and keep my eyes closed the whole time.”

No. Yes. That would be bad.

Me taking an anti-anxiety medication of some kind at this point, something I have joked about since the day he was born, is becoming more and more of a reality. I can’t even drive with him in the car. I have now scared the crap out of him. He thinks he is a bad driver. He just might be. I am a basket case.

What is a basket case anyway? It’s the only word that comes to mind and fits perfectly without me really knowing what it is I am actually calling myself. Wait, I’m looking it up…

“the term 'basket case' was first used to reference a soldier who has lost both arms and legs and therefore needed to be carried in a basket.”

Wow. Well, I don’t qualify. And maybe I won’t use that term anymore to describe myself. But mentally and emotionally, I may, in fact, be seriously short on arms and legs.

Last night, my son and I had a conversation about what I will call “The Art of the Dodge”. “The Art of the Dodge” takes place when someone likes you, and you don’t like them in THAT kind of way. It's the act of 'dodging' part that is unacceptable to me. If you don’t like someone in that kind of way, then say it nicely, compassionately. Be careful of the other person’s feelings. Don't ignore them after they have made their feelings known to you. Apparently, the “Art of the Dodge” is alive and well in my son’s High School and is even an option on the curriculum freshmen year. Joking aside, we agreed that dodging is wimpy.

I was a wimp. Why would I expect for him not to be a wimp like me? The teenager in me says “Dude, run away! Don't talk to her! Don’t even look at her! ”, but unfortunately it comes out sounding like “Hunny, be honest and just tell her the truth. Just be careful of her feelings. Express how much you would like to stay friends. That you value her friendship.”

As soon as it came out, all I could think of was “Mom…you are SO lame.” With my own eye roll even. Whatevs.

A few nights ago, everything was eerily quiet at home. The house was empty. I couldn't even think of the last time that had happened. My husband was working, my daughter was at a distant basketball game, my son at play rehearsal. I sat on the couch and stared at the Christmas tree until the lights blurred together.  I have wanted this. To NOT be needed for long enough to just sit and BE.

Within minutes, I was bored. And lonely. And sorry.

In a few years there will be more of that. You see, I am on the flip side. Just far enough past temper tantrums, sticky fingerprints and t-ball games and inching closer to proms, last football games and moving boxes.

And it happens quickly. Fast enough that I can cry at the drop of a hat and need to be asked to be needed. Just needed. Pathetically, my teenaged self just cringed and shook her head.

Last night after a mother daughter exchange that ended in abruptly with me asserting “…because I asked you to!” as I ran out the door, I called my daughter from the road with regret in my heart and requested an ‘11 year old hug’ from her for when I returned. “What do you mean?” she said.  I could tell she had a smile on her face, even though she was slightly aggravated with me. “You know, remember the ones you used to sit on my lap to give me? You would wrap both of your arms around me and bury your head in my neck and you would squeeze me tight?”

I just loved the smell of her. To her it was a funny ‘squeeze Mom as I hard as I can hug’ but for me, I would take her in completely. Her fragrant hair on my shoulder. Her eyelashes on my cheek. My heart would bust wide open. I really needed one of those. And, later, when I got home, I got the 13 year old version. Almost the same exact hug. Except, now she pulls away first.

Good enough. I’ll take it.

‘The Light At The End Of The Tunnel’. ‘More Free Time’. ‘More Me Time’. ‘More Time For My Husband And Myself To Be A Couple Again’.All of these, titles to books I could have written by now, if I had the time and energy. They certainly would each be on the best seller list. Especially to the 'Mom of two toddlers' that also still lives inside of me.

But the truth is, now I just want more of them. More time with them. One more trip to Plimouth Plantation with my daughter’s first grade class or another go around as the “Team Mom” of my son’s football team. One more Christmas with homemade gifts, a picture frame, a nutcracker from wood shop, a paper ornament adorning the tree.

I can’t help but think of all of the sweet things that have come before now and all of the wonderful things that whiz by at lightening speed that once seemed in slow motion. I know there is so much more to come. How blessed I am to be a part of their lives.

I shut my keyboard. The warmth of my old winter coat protects me from the biting, forthcoming winter wind. I hurry off to an errand, fumble for my car keys, the lights all blur together again and the snow begins to fall from the sky.

For Some Reason, I Can't Find a Title For This One

**Names have been changed. Parental discretion is advised, major truck driver mouth to follow…

It’s been about 8 months since it happened, so I think I can talk about it now.

Parked at the pharmacy, waiting for my prescription to be filled to combat a raging sinus infection, my head back against the head rest in my car, I opened my eyes and looked down in response to my ring tone and picked up quickly as I noticed the call was coming from my daughter’s middle school. Isn’t it funny, the little pulse that goes through your body when you see your kids’ school is trying to contact you? Your mind always goes to places that it shouldn’t go. In like a millisecond, you catastrophize everything in the blink of an eye and then some thread of common sense kicks in enough for you to answer the phone in a normal voice instead of shrilling: “What’s wrong??!!” Except this time, something was wrong.

Me: “Hello?”

School Receptionist: “Hi, is this Lily’s mom?”

Me: “Yes.”

School Receptionist: “Hi, we were just calling to check and see why Lily is absent from school today?”

Me: “She’s not absent, she got on the bus this morning. She is there.” Done, believe it or not, in a calm, normal voice.

School Receptionist: “Well, she is marked absent.”

Me: “Well she shouldn’t be. As I just said, she got on the bus this morning.”

School Receptionist: silence

Me: Silence…it feels as if I have no voice, I can’t use it. It’s gone for a few seconds and then I muster: “Hello?…I just told you that she should be there, go find her…now.”

All of a sudden, every organ in my body started to ache and felt like they were being rung out with very strong hands.  I had never really been aware of exactly where my organs were inside of me. Because of this incident, I am now very aware of were my pancreas is.

School Receptionist: “Okay, please hold and I will check.” In a very nervous voice.

I hold. Yeah, I hold. I start to shake, cry and think all kinds of awful stuff. My baby…where is she? Where the hell is she? It feels like forever as I sit on hold. After what seems like a miserable eternity, the receptionist gets back on the phone.

School Receptionist: “I checked with the student teacher in Lily’s classroom and he confirmed that she is marked absent. But her class is outside at PE right now and they are checking to see if she is out there. I am going to place you back on hold, I will be back to you as soon as I get word.” She says reassuringly.

Me: “Somebody better fucking find her.”

School Receptionist: “What?”

Me: “You heard me.”

Hold music.

Me: Well, lets just say, everything hurt. My heart, my brain, my soul, my entire being. Fear became palpable, I could taste it. ‘Shaking’ does not even begin to describe the state of what my body was now doing. It took almost 3 minutes for the receptionsist to come back on the phone.

School Receptionist: “We have found her. She was marked absent by accident. She is on her way to the office so that you can speak to her.”

Me (yup, unfortunately, it’s my turn): “Who is the dumbass, mother fucker that fucked this up?” Heart pounding in my chest wildly.

School Receptionist: “I am so sorry, WE are so sorry. I can assure you this just doesn’t happen. We all feel terrible.”

Me: “It just did. Me too, I feel terrible, too. I have just been to the brink of mother insanity and fucking back, so I understand feeling fucking terrible. Is Lily there yet?”

School Receptionist: “I will put her on as soon as she gets here.”

Hold music.

Lily: “Hi Mom!”

Fake calm voice, turned on.

Me: “Hi baby! Well it looks like they thought you weren’t at school today, that’s why you are talking to me in the middle of gym class.”

Lily: “I know, crazy huh?!” she said giggling in the cutest way ever.

Me: “Crazy is right! (fake chuckle). Well, I am glad you are doing okay, my dear. You can go back to class now. Have a good day babe.”

Lily: “Ok, see you when I get home. Bye, Mom, love you.”

Me; “I love you, too. By Lil.”

I would say that was it, but this happened on the same day as Parent Teacher Conferences. Yup.

5:00 pm and I walk in to the classroom and both of Lily’s team teachers are finishing up with the parents before me. I decide to stroll through the hallway and check out all of the art work and projects and start recounting my choice of words earlier in the day, yet again, feeling 90% sure of myself and 10% embarrassed.

As Mr. Dwyer and Mrs. Vincent finish up and say goodbye, they wave me to come in and Mr. Dwyer sticks out his head to greet me and says in a very serious and somber tone “I am the mother fucker that wants to take responsibility for what happened today.”

We all laughed. I did, however, still kinda think he was a mother fucker, though.

I apologized for my choice in words and both of them hugged me and told me how warranted it all was and that they would have done and acted the same, if they were in my position. My. Dwyer explained that he had to be at an early morning meeting, and his student teacher took attendance that day. He had mistakenly marked Lily absent in place of another student. But, Mr. Dwyer wanted to claim responsibility, as it was his classroom. He is, literally, one of the best teachers either one of my kids have ever had.

It could have happened to anyone. People make mistakes. I make plenty. I assured him that he was forgiven, with a couple of choice recommendations about new student teachers taking attendance in the lead teacher’s absence. As in, don’t do it again.

But, nothing can ever match the sound of my child’s voice on the phone that day. The wave of, for lack of a better word, relief, was overwhelming.

My baby girl was there. Thank God.

I Thought I Would Let Today Pass Without Weighing In. But...Nope

I read a lot of opinion pieces. I love blogs and editorials. I believe in our freedom of speech, BIG TIME. The written word turns me on and off and around and inside out. I love to hear what goes through other peoples’ minds. I love to hear how other's deal with life. Everyday life, thoughts, sentences, opinions and just words in relation to our big spinning world, really intrigue me.

We all have opinions and beliefs that drive us. I am Pro Choice. I am a woman. To me, all skin colors and cultures are beautiful. I wholeheartedly believe that your pursuit of happiness means that you get to marry whomever you choose.

As a parent, I have tried to teach my children the value of hard work, taking responsibility for their actions and the importance of treating people kindly, compassionately and fairly.

As a woman, I have hopefully taught my daughter how much her voice matters.  I hope I have equally relayed to my son, how important women are. I have always wanted to paint a fair, accurate and loving picture to my kids. I feel that I have, and I will continue to do so.

What I can not do is allow the country I love to hemorrhage. Just as if it were a parent that I love and want to protect in a very primal way, as I watch the lifeblood gush out of it, I will grab the first cloth (yes, even an unsanitary one) to stop the bleeding.

It’s not about race, sex, special needs, gay marriage, abortions or anything else.

It’s about the bleeding. Bleeding that will eventually drain the life out of the country that I call mine and love to the core. Without the fiscal soundness of this institution that we call ‘home’, who you marry, what’s between your legs, and what choices you make are going to suffer greatly at the wheel of what I will choose to call ‘crippling debt and weakness’. Have you ever experienced that? It is a killer. A killer of love, marriage, childhood, and compassion (to name just a few).

If you think anything else about me because of the way that I choose to vote for our President, than you are making inappropriate excuses. Those that want to justify their own vote by calling me a bigot, a racist, a woman hater…than you don’t know me. And you have no right judging and assuming who I or WE are. It surprises me (I guess) that some extremists (and some, not so extreme) have resorted to name calling and hurling awful accusations, based on a presidential vote. How sad.

Really, really sad.

And please don’t tell me to ‘vote my conscience’. Blech. Really? If that were the case, I’d skip the voting booth and get drunk. Stinking drunk.

Those that choose to use hateful words to describe those that cast an opposing vote, are contradicting everything that this country was founded on. We are lucky and blessed to be citizens of a country that was founded on democracy.

Just in case anyone has forgotten, the definition of democracy is: “a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives.”

(Side note: I need a form of ID to cash my check at freaking Market Basket. Why shouldn’t I need to present one when I vote for our President?) I love digression.

When the results of today’s election are shared with all of us, INCESSANTLY, we must accept what we paid for, what we bought into, what we have earned. And live with it, with dignity and grace and class.

No matter how it goes today, whomever our President is for the next 4 years, if you don’t feel the need to support our democratic process, than perhaps you should go to a place where a democracy does not exist. Live in democraticlessness (not a word – made it up). I bet you miss us.

So, may God bless, you, me, our children, our military, our people and…for sure, God bless the President of the United States of America.

2012...OVER and OUT

I’ve never been so sick of anything in my life. I will elect to take on a month long flu, a canker sore and a yeast infection, all at the same time, just to have it over with.

Please, please election…BE OVER.

Let me get to the inside of that cramped, well constructed voters booth, with that beautiful red white and blue curtain sewn by somebody’s grandma, before I SCREAM.

Quickly…let me vote for the lesser of two evils, let me get to that crisp November day were I get to cast my vote AGAINST somebody instead of  FOR somebody.

The worst part for me, is not listening to the candidates, but the public reaction to them. We could go around and around forever. Our tongues falling out of our mouths, shriveled, dehydrated.

In a nutshell, they are both wrong. They both lie. It is Hollywood folks. Not real politics any more. Running for office used to be a pain in the ass, not a privilege for the wealthy.

Designer dresses, the ‘right tie’, prescreened questions, millions of dollars wasted on advertising. These are not campaigns. They are public and privately funded scripted documentaries of two men, with large, stroke thirsty egos, who have more money than the rest of us.

The casualities of these types of performances are visible in all of us. We slowly want to choke the life out of each other. We, as human beings, have become less and less tolerant of each others beliefs, feelings and needs because how on earth could someone not have the same views as our own?!

As a registered independent, I have to say, I hear the most shocking side of this coming from the Liberal community. Insinuating that someone is literally unintelligent, dumb, because they would check a Republican box is devastating to me. To hear someone say, if you vote a certain way, then you have no right reaping benefits from the opposing side is simply ridiculous. We ALL reap benefits from each political party. That is what we have here in America. It’s called a Democracy. The more that we exhibit less tolerance for the other side, the quicker we wind up in the shitter. So smarten up.

In addition, associating conservatism with racism or sexism, is dangerous. Not all people who chose to vote republican are old, white, intolerant men. If you think this, you are ignorant.  

On the other side, Conservatives need to advance their views on social topics and it’s time to really, really, truly separate church and state. It is unconstitutional to deny anyone the right to marry. Go ahead, argue it with me nicely. It is simply unconstitutional. I don’t care what your religious beliefs are. This is not church. Reactions and interpretations to religious beliefs are responsible for more of the hatred in this world than any other belief system. And please, please never tell me again that a single mother, two mothers, or two fathers can not raise a loving, intelligent, caring and responsible child into adulthood.

When I was a young mother, like a lot of young mothers, I became an at home sales representative. Pampered Chef, Bath and Body Works, Tastefully Simple, etc. became a monthly entry on my calendar for attending at home parties with my friends. As a representative selling home goods and wares, every year during the month of October, we would give away starter kits (normally it cost $99) to those who were interested in becoming at home sales reps like myself. We would have a serious increase in the amount of those joining us, because of the free starter kits, but those women would have the lowest success rate. That was because they had no monetary investment in their “business” so it was easy to walk away from. Sometimes a hand out is not the answer.

Our government has to stop the hand out. Welfare is great when it works. But when it is abused, it hurts everyone.

I have worked in the healthcare field now for over 15 years. I am still to this day astounded by the number of people who present proof of state or federal aid to pay for their visit after watching them park a luxury vehicle in the parking lot and walk in holding (with their perfectly manicured nails) a venti cup of Starbucks, the kids passing their time in the waiting room playing around with their very own iphones. You would think I would get used to it. But I don’t.

That is a broken system.

I have stood in line at the grocery store and at convenient stores and watched many patrons pay for alcohol and cigarettes with a card that our taxes pay for. Broken.

When you experience financial hard ship, what do you do? Keep spending? Bail out your friends? Send donations to other countries? No, you tighten your purse strings, stop eating out, shut off the cable, no more coffee at the drive through. If you don’t bother, than you can’t cry about it. And the last thing I as the person in financial hardship should expect, is for others to bail me out. Learning and working through hardship creates strength, innovation, perseverance. 

Those that are born into situations that are not on equal ground with the ‘rest of us’, deserve the tools to help succeed. Proactive tools, not just reactive tools. Help others to help themselves. Stop supplying and start teaching. Stop the act of teaching and learning  to rely on the supply (hmm, that rhymes).

For those of us fed up by all of the back and forth and not embedded in one party or the other that will probably never serve us to the fullest, get motivated. Change comes from within the soul of a person who is frustrated with their surroundings, do we really want to pigeon hole ourselves into only believing one set of principles or the other. How narrow minded. Make change happen, don’t just wish for it.

And more importantly, what about friendship? Does anyone out there really want to insult or hurt a friend because their views on politics are not in line with their own? There is a reason that many of us don’t like to talk politics and religion with our friends. Or even strangers. Don’t hurt the people who are your lifeblood over something so insignificant as a candidate for President. Instead of badmouthing, log off of your computer world and get out there and hold a sign for your favorite candidate, bake some cookies, or go for a long walk.

So come on November 6^th 2012, let’s get here and be done.

 Just in time for the world to end.

The Journey of Will...So Far.

**By no means does anything written in this blog insinuate that medication is a wrong choice for any child or adult. In fact, I have witnessed many amazing occasions where medications have worked wonders for people. I am not clinically trained in any medical field. I am just a Mom who will always be an advocate for my kids. The needs of every child are very individualized and vary from person to person. This is just one story.


"He was kicked out of preschool today." My husband looked up at me as he twirled his spaghetti on his fork, wide eyed. He scoped out my face for any indication of a smirk or any trace at all that I was joking with him and when he realized I was not kidding, said with half a laugh "What did he do?"

He knew about our son's preschool teacher's repeated concerns about how our son "Will" (I'll call him) was relating to the other kids around him. Mrs. Carpenter had pulled me aside at pick up on more than one occasion. "Will has trouble if he is not first. He has to be first in line. First to sit down in reading circle. First to get his snack. First for just about everything." I knew this already. The first day of preschool, he actually melted down right on the school black top because other children had beat him there and he would not be the first one in the classroom. I sat with him crying on my lap as he reduced himself to a small puddle. I soothed him and held him as the other parents and preschoolers stared at us as they filed in with the excitement and nervousness that is the first day of preschool. After what I felt was a suitable time, I told my son that it was time to get up, dry is eyes and get ready for school. He could not always be first. He was angry at this, but I explained that it was not possible to always be first. That he had to get used to second, third, fourth and last when it came to his peers.

This was an integrated preschool. Done by lottery. I loved the idea. My son would be going to school with a mixed classroom of children his age, some of whom were not 'mainstream'. Blindness, severe autism, cerebral palsy. I thought that this would be a great experience. I wanted him to know that everyone is different. Everyone has challenges and individual needs in their learning process and in life and I was hoping he would develop a keen sense of this. What I failed to recognize is that my son would indeed be special needs.

The day that I got the phone call that Will had to leave preschool and never come back, I had picked him up amidst a frenzy in the classroom. A boy, "Josh", that had had a meltdown and thrown a bin of Lego's all over the floor, was sitting off to the side, rocking back and forth and smacking his own head with the palm of his hand as his aide picked up all of the Lego's and put them back. I found out later that this was the fourth time in a 3 hour period that this had happened. At 3 1/2 years old, shortly after the second Lego incident with Josh flailing and throwing Lego's, my son had decided that he did not want to sit next to Josh in reading circle. He announced this out loud. In his little mind it was probably for self preservation for fear of being beamed off the head with a Lego or a fist. But this was unacceptable.Very hard to explain to a small child. I felt terrible for Josh.

Mrs. Carpenter called and regretfully informed me that Will was not welcome back. I asked her if she thought that maybe my Will, had special needs of his own due to his inability to understand some social queues. Her response will forever stay with me. "Probably, but we have reached the special needs quota in this classroom." I have never forgotten the tone in her voice. Very flat and cold.

A close friend of mine, who had twin boys the same age as Will, and who were also in the same preschool class, wrote me a letter a few days after Will was asked to leave preschool. Her and I had coffee every Friday and playgroup with a gaggle of kids and their Moms, but felt I needed a letter for some reason. It's basic message was that I needed to seek out direction from my pediatrician, because in her opinion (she is a nurse) Will may have ADHD and that my parenting style was not going to work on him. Our Friday coffee thing ended shortly thereafter.

I scheduled an appointment with my son's pediatrician, who I love and trust with every cell in my body. He and Will got along great. They joked and laughed at every appointment. They had this funny repore, Will giggling through any visit he had with Dr. O'Neil whether it be sick or well. I told Dr. O'Neil what had been going on and my concerns about some of the things that we had been noticing. I gave him the example of one day when Will asked me if he could see a box of 1000 toothpicks that was up in the cupboard, which he had asked about before. There were 4 different colors of toothpicks in the box, red, blue, green and yellow. Part of me wanted to say 'No' again, but this time, I was curious why he was so drawn to them. I joked internally that he secretly wanted to impale his sister with them while we all slept. Will responded with "Because I want to put them in order." I let him sit at the kitchen table while I prepared breakfast. I told him he could absolutely not stick them in himself, his sister, the dog, me or anything else and he giggled and said "Why would I do that?" For the next I-don't-know-how-many hours, Will sat with all the patience and precision in the world as he lined up, in a perfectly straight line, and by color, all of the toothpicks on the kitchen table.

Dr. O'Neil looked at me with all the care in his face that I needed and put my concerns to rest with this: "Lisa, he just marches to the beat of his own drummer, that's all."

In first grade, things kicked up again. Everyday that I went to pick up Will at the end of school, his lovely teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, would have appeared to me to run what I will call a 'mental marathon'. Hair disheveled from trying to pull it out, tired eyes, lacking in spirit. I knew that look was from Will. As she confirmed I was right, my concerns came back again that Will was floundering. "He can't focus, Lisa. He challenges me on everything. It's a long day." He was all I knew. My first child, my heart, my boy.

So, we decided to have him tested. And the short of it was, we found out that he fell on the Asperger's spectrum.

Following this news, I made an appointment with one of the top specialist in New England for Asperger's. We waited 3 months for the appointment. On the day of the appointment, we walked in, Dr. Specialist observed Will for 5 minutes, asked me some questions, and then in a heavy Austrian accent said "No, he does not have Asperger's Syndrome. He is a spirited child."

So, I grabbed onto all of the information on how to best raise a 'spirited child'. I read books, took parenting classes, asked a lot of questions. Some of it I believed, some I did not. I filtered through what felt best.

Side note: When Will was born in the mid to late 1990's, I worked for a pediatrician. I saw a huge influx of kids coming into the office with parental complaints about behavior issues. ADHD diagnoses were on the serious rise along with other hyperactivity disorders. Medication was regularly being prescribed. Through comments made by the doctor's and nurses' that I worked with, I devised that while many of the kids with the diagnosis were warranted, there was a large percentage of parents that wanted their children medicated despite the doctors urging that this was not necessary. ADHD had become a catch phrase that a kid with behavior issues or the inability to focus was tagged with. Some not suitably so. Some really did need it. Again, I am not a doctor. Just an observation.

In Elementary school Will was challenged. He had trouble reading. His spelling was horrific. Will's grandfather is dyslexic and I believe my husband went undiagnosed, so I knew what was coming. He was coded in Reading Comprehension and given an IEP (Individual Education Plan). He also was taken out of the classroom each day to meet with a specialist and a small group of his peers to help with his social interaction. At every IEP meeting that I had, every teacher, specialist, and counselor repeated their concerns over Will's inability to stay on task. In one meeting in particular, his reading specialist got angry at my refusal to seek out our options for medication for Will. I had the utmost respect for everyone that my son came in contact with. They were all incredible! She knew that she could push me on this topic and I was fine with her expressing her level of concern. I explained my position and feelings about Will to her like this. "He is all I know. I like his personality the way it is. Challenging does not equal a problem for me. I don't want to dull him. He is who he is. I will not medicate to make things easy. I think he can stay on task and focus if he is interested (toothpicks) in something. Will has to be taught through all of us how learn, that's all. Sorry if it's not easy guys."

He was not tortured, he was oblivious and having the time of his life. He really was. He was unfazed. As he grew older, his meltdowns had stopped and we noticed that things just kind of rolled off his back. He had learned to persevere, because my husband and I had taught him the value of that. He was enrolled as a student of Tae Kwon Do, and that had done wonders for him. We knew competitive sports were not a good idea for Will, but a sport that challenged the individual would be right up his alley. He would eventually earn a second degree black belt. So I knew Will could focus if he was interested.

In sixth grade, Will was taken off of his IEP. He is not an avid reader and never will be, but he can read well. He is a poor speller. He will struggle with foreign language, as it is hard for a him to understand words that he does not have in his arsenal already and how they relate to one another. Sometimes he is quirky. Awkward maybe. I notice that when I use sarcasm he somtimes really studies my face for a few extra seconds before he reacts.

On the other hand, he is an honors student. Today Will is a sophomore in high school with a busy schedule. A linebacker on the Junior Varsity Football Team. His coach pulled me a side recently and told me that Will has the biggest heart in a young person that he has ever seen. He's not the most skillful football player, but he is a team player. Will is an actor. He has been in 12 plays and can memorize a script or song in no time. By the time one of the plays opens, he knows everyone else's part, too. He hugs me almost everyday. I bug him like a mother does, and we dance with each other in the typical teenager and parent hoe down, but he is never disrespectful. Sometimes I think he is more mature than me. He is a leader and one hell of a salesman. I refuse to play Monopoly with him as he is vicious. If he acts like a know-it-all, I still put him in his place. The last time we had to ground him, was in 6th grade. He is sweet, caring and a great conversationalist. He has many friends, yet has no need for the typical clique safety net. He will go to a play that his fellow theater friends are in and sit in the theater by himself. He does not care what others think about him as he seems very comfortable with who he is.

Sometimes I wonder if Will would be a better, even more comfortable version of himself if he was medicated. Would things not have been such a struggle if we had tried it. I think part of him is the struggle. He learned to cope and adjust. We learned so much from taking a different path. I would assume any path would have been a learning experience. Will is exactly who he should be and I couldn't be prouder of him.