RealMental

The other night I got to craving a bean sandwich.

Ever had one? Spread two slices of soft white bread with some mayonnaise. Sprinkle one slice with salt. Open a can of baked beans and carefully spoon a layer of beans on the other slice. Depending on how dry you like your bean sandwich, you might want to press the spoon against the inside of the can to drain the beans a little along the way. Place the other slice of bread on top. Cold beans taste better.

A bean sandwich can be a little bendy, so the tidiest thing to do is to eat it over a plate to catch the spillage. The stress of maneuvering a sandwich that’s dropping its beany innards onto a paper towel while you shove it in your mouth can result in a wolfing down of the sandwich.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

When I was little, bean sandwiches were a treat, a welcome break from cheese sandwiches, leftover goulash, or beans and franks served with iceberg lettuce salad. In the summers there might be tomato sandwiches, or even sweet banana sandwiches, all with mayonnaise and salt, never cut in half.

So a few weeks ago, when I found myself craving a bean sandwich but lacking the ingredients, it dawned on me that those bean sandwiches that were such a treat were a creative, protein-rich solution to a severely limited grocery budget. We ate bean sandwiches because we were poor! And I loved them!

I called my mother to share my realization, and she got a proud chuckle out of knowing that it had taken me such a long time to figure her trick out. When I was a child, any difficulty I had from being poor had nothing to do with an awareness of money, and everything to do with my mother’s struggles with rage and despair, and my father’s loud absence.

Looking back as an adult, I have great compassion for what my mother went through, raising a sickly child alone on welfare.

Learned Helplessness is one of those light-bulb explanations many depressed people get from any garden-variety Cognitive Behavioral Therapist. It’s often accompanied by a new understanding of the misguidedness of living your life as if it were run by an External Locus of Control, and the realization that some of us were raised in families where Cluster B Personality Disorders thrived. The gist of Learned Helplessness is that if someone experiences a lack of control over painful events in their life, they sort of give up trying; even if they later have the ability to stop the painful events, they won’t try to change their circumstances. They give up.

If we’re lucky, these definitions spark synapse-firing epiphanies that free us from destructive ways of thinking about ourselves and our place in the world. If we’re extra lucky, our attempts to change our own behavior inspire any family member suffering from Cluster B disorders to reach for emotional health as well.

The sticky part is that, even with all of this Oprah-worthy self-awareness, undoing decades of self-destructive habits of thought is more than a little difficult.

It’s one thing to name your enemy; it’s another to destroy it.

Hope is a tricky thing. So is money.

I never really understood from a big-picture perspective how to get money. It was always just dribbling in here and there, randomly. When I was 8, I knew I could earn a dime for doing chores, or for helping my mother tidy the racks of clothes in the store she managed. At 13, I started babysitting and working odd jobs, sometimes without pay because I just wanted to be useful.

I remember helping my mother open many stores in malls as an adolescent. I was too young to be left alone overnight, and so I’d be taken out of school and off we’d go to a Holiday Inn adjacent to a mall somewhere in the middle of…oh…Tennessee. I’d spend my days either watching soap operas in the hotel or helping assemble four-ways and tee-stands with a rubber mallet in an unfinished store. We had usually brought a cooler of bologna sandwiches because room service was too expensive.

When it came to getting school clothes each year, my mother would bring trash bags of damaged clothes home. She was supposed to have taken them to Goodwill but she brought them home so I could go through them first and pick out my clothes. I was a freshman in high school wearing clothes from Dress Barn.

Naturally, when it came time for me to get a part-time job in high school, I worked in retail, since that was the only job I’d ever seen adults do (all of my mother’s friends were also in retail). I watched my mother run herself ragged and develop health issues from travelling and working long hours in retail. She always put herself last, and is still paying a heavy price for mortgaging her health.

I went to four different high schools, the last one requiring a move in the middle of my senior year, just when everyone was applying to college. Over the years, as I had bounced from school to school (12 total), I was labeled either as gifted or as in need of remedial instruction, depending on how far ahead or behind I was. By senior year, I had sort of given up on learning anything, and had developed an attitude of gaming the system, even going so far as to change an F on a report card to a B.

I was accustomed to taking diagnostic tests and talking to Guidance Counselors, and I passively went along with this latest one’s idea of applying to college, even though I had no clue how that worked—no one in my family had ever gone to a four-year college.

My best friend’s mother had gone to Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, and it was decided I’d apply there. I can’t remember the other schools I applied to, but I do remember what happened months later, when other students started to get acceptance letters. The Guidance Counselor and my mother both found it odd that we hadn’t heard from any of the colleges I had applied to. They also found it odd that none of the checks for the application fees had been cashed.

I had never mailed the applications.

Besides not feeling confident in completing the applications, I couldn’t really see the point. These colleges all cost thousands of dollars, and my mother was doing well enough at that point that the odds of me receiving needs-based aid were very slim. I knew my father wouldn’t help—he hadn’t called when I graduated high school. When I turned 18 there was no card from him, but he was so glad to be rid of his obligation that he sent the last $128 check for child support a month early.

A flurry of last-minute calls were made, and all of a sudden I was listening to a woman from Agnes Scott tell me over the phone that they would be happy to have me without an application, on account of my test scores and probably a good word or three from my friend’s mother. I knew this was a generous offer, but I couldn’t understand why everyone was ignoring the fact that we didn’t have the money.

So I became an assistant store manager in a mall. And then I went to a community college. And then I started therapy. And then I transferred to William and Mary. All baby steps toward believing there was a point to thinking positively. In college, I was fortunate to have some wonderful professors who were kind in light of my shyness, and who were supportive of my creative writing. One professor even let me turn in a 220-stanza poem in lieu of a term paper.

It still seemed to me that the only way to get money was to run yourself into the ground. I worked up to six jobs at a time to pay for my food and housing while my mother paid the $3,000 annual tuition.

In an attempt to further things along, I applied for a research grant administered by the college. As I sat in front of four professors, explaining my project goals, I quickly realized that I was supposed to have already researched my proposed subject thoroughly. They asked all sorts of questions, but of course that was why I was applying for the grant in the first place, so that I could drop my part-time jobs and find the answers. I was embarrassed, and there was a shift toward disinterest on my examiners’ part as they leaned back in their chairs.

After graduating with High Honors and watching my classmates move on to graduate school, I became a temporary office worker.

You can compare my relationship with money to my relationship with my creative goals, or even with love. I’m lucky to know what I want, and I’m lucky to have had the occasional mentor (not that I’ve ever had a love mentor, but you know what I mean). But I never seemed to be able to figure out how to get what I wanted. So I started wanting less. And less. I started telling myself to just make do with what I had. After all, who was I to think I was entitled to anything other than bean sandwiches. Besides, they’re delicious anyway. Right?

Fast-Forward an Undisclosed Number of Years

I just finished my first year in New York City. I heard someone say once that people don’t move to NYC to have it easy. The first day I started looking for a job was the day Lehman Brothers fell. I’ve had stuff stolen and I’ve laughed off an attempted mugging. I’ve had three apartments, two of which have flooded.

But I’ve had far more gifts and opportunities come my way than challenges. A family friend gave me several bags of nice clothes, I found a contract position at a television network, and I’ve started to publish articles as a freelance writer. I’m making friends, I have a good apartment, and I have a savings account. I even bought some clothes that were not from a thrift store.

Still, it’s proving hard to let go of some fear-based habits. Back in DC, I got by on as little as $11,000 a year as a teaching artist and playwright. In 2006 I lost 18 pounds in 3 weeks because I was depressed and couldn’t afford groceries. The depression’s been gone for more than two years, but I’m not so proud as to think that it will never circle back around.

I have a protective tendency to worst-case-scenario everything. It’s not that I expect something tragic to happen like, “She was happy for the first time in her life, too bad about that speeding bus.” It’s more that I try not to rely on anything, because I don’t expect things to last— work, friends, food, shelter.

Now, sure, it’s wise to understand the impermanence of things, that life is fluid and you can’t always be on an upward trajectory. And I know that the hard times I’ve been through have helped me to thrive my first year in New York. And I’m lucky to know that I can get by on bean sandwiches if I need to. But lately I’ve begun looking at my life as more than an exercise in endurance. I’m no longer bracing myself against something awful catching me off-guard.

I’ve started to see past my circumstances, to believe that I can try to change them. That’s not to say that with the attempt comes guaranteed success, but I see the point in trying. I’m unlearning helplessness. And I can see the steps I want to take toward turning my creative goals into reality.  

And yes, I have the especially good fortune to know that, if after trying, I don’t succeed, I’m perfectly content to console myself with a cold bean sandwich.

I want to thank Leah for letting me be a monthly contributor. We haven’t met in real life (yet), but we “met” years ago through our blogs, and we recently reconnected on Twitter. I also want to thank you for reading, and to thank those of you who leave comments. I think writing and reading are two of the most powerful and intimate ways people can share themselves.

The child I talk about in the third paragraph of the following post would have had her birthday a few days ago.  I recently lamented that I hadn’t done the right thing by Hoss in a timely manner, that maybe if I’d undergone testing and treatment and medication and such years before, maybe we wouldn’t have face an expulsion and a stay in the mental hospital.  Now I realize that I need to just be grateful that I was finally able to figure out something to do so I wouldn’t lose him for real.  Maybe he sometimes hates me, and maybe some other people don’t understand why I do the things I do to parent him (or my other offbeat offspring), but at least I  have the chance to try my best.

Lost (originally published April 8, 2009 on Mamakaren.com)

I lost Hoss in a parking lot once.  I put him in the van and came around to the other side door to connect Little Joe’s baby seat, and Hoss took that brief moment to climb out and run away.  For a moment, I froze.  I couldn’t run around to look for him without leaving my other children unprotected, but I couldn’t stay where I was.  Thankfully, I was coherant enough to be able to describe his build and looks and clothing to the passers-by who heard me screaming his name, and one of those kind hearted folks led him back to me before he had a chance to get hit by a car or wander back into Target or anything more worrisome.  I learned my lesson, and watched him more closely when we were out, and I vowed that I couldn’t think of how badly things couldn’t have been.

Hoss’ issues seem very similar to those exhibited by one of my cousins.  Jamie is an adult now, but during his teenage years, he hit depths that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  I suspect that the research that exist today, the studies that have come to light about bipolor disorder and ADHD and all those other “disorders” with the capital D’s, the information that wasn’t available a few decades ago about how a kids’ mind might be working when he’s not a typical kid, might have prevented some of the misunderstandings and hard times and issues that he faced.  The rift between him and his parents has long since mended, and we all know that the pain he caused himself and those he loves were not coming from any place of malice or bad intention (in fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a more deeply caring person than he is).  My Nanna told me years ago that she felt, in some ways, so much more strongly for Jamie than for some of the rest of us.  She described him as being a lost soul, and prayed that he’d find his way back, and I’m guessing that she now says some prayers of gratitude that he wasn’t lost forever.

I’ve seen today a huge series of tweets and blog posts and online bonding over a loss experienced by a woman I have never met, and do not even know in a cyber-sense, much less a real-life one.  I’d link to the information, but the traffic to her blog is so heavy right now that no links work.  In any case, I saw the Twitter posts, and figured out very quickly that this beautiful, precious 17-month old had succumbed to what I assume is RSV.  It seems to me as though it happened quickly, probably in a mind-blowingly surreal whirwind.

I’ve never read this mother’s blog, never followed her tweets, but seeing this gripped my heart in a way I can’t fully articulate.  The fog I lived in for those weeks last month, the fatigue and numbness I felt when I came back from visiting hours, and the bursts of tears I had when I let the numbness wear off, all of that is nothing.  Hoss is here.  He’s here and he’s breathing and he’s laughing.  And this woman’s baby girl is not.   For the rest of her life, she’s got an invisible wound that never quite goes away.  And she’s got support and prayers and life will go on for her, for her husband, for the rest of her family.  But she’s never going to regain what she lost.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasy,

No sudden rending of the veil of clay.

No angel visitant, no opening skies,

But take the dimness of my soul away!

-George Croly 1854

This section of a famous hymn came to me from a series of notes from my grandfather, the Reverend Jay Han Won during a very dark time in January of 2006.** One thought provoking, inspiring or sometimes silly piece of writing was meant to be read each day for a two week stretch.  That was for Tuesday, what I believe to have been day 6.  For some reason I have yet to decipher- under the author’s name and year he wrote in brackets “Join the crowd!”  I would probably have to go back to all the other notes and the accompanying letter to find some clue for this nota bene and even then I might strike out.

My grandfather was a very wise, funny and curious man with a rich and far-reaching history that I won’t go into.  He was also a clergyman so a lot of his writings to me were inclusive of references to god or contained biblical passages.  They were not always met with open arms and sometimes they were met with flat out bitterness.  However I decided some years ago that there are many, many worse things in the world than having someone love you so much on Earth that they hope to hang out with you when you are dead.  I could have done with less force but he (and therefore I) came from a long line of missionaries so what can you expect?

After my period of shall we say “great distress,” I packed his letters and notes from this time with a bunch of stuff that I figured was better sent to the pits of the basement or at least a deep cardboard box.  Shortly after he died almost two years ago I went looking for his writings in hopes of finding a little piece of him to hold.  I searched through the various quotes, poems, scriptures and limericks that he had sent and the one above was the one that caught my throat.  It had held such meaning for me at the time and could be applied to so many other difficult periods in my life.  I tucked it carefully, being sure not to bend or crease the paper (in spite of my grandfather’s penchant for folding anything pliable into miniscule sizes) and tucked it into my date book.

It got passed into the next date book without much thought at the end of the next year because I was feeling differently.  The dimness was not so dim.  My ache for my grandfather was the same so still I kept the page close. Eventually the road-weary paper with the lighthouse in the corner and the ubiquitous free-gift-for-donation declaration “From the desk of the Reverend Jay Han Won” made its way to a small journal given to me by a friend meant to spur on my writing.

These last few weeks, after many weeks of feeling vastly improved, I have been sinking and starting to question my successes.  Questioning my wellness is my late night game, saved for after the kids have gone to bed and my husband has fallen asleep so that I know he cannot answer my concerns.  I don’t want confirmation.

The Croly selection has a home again.  I am not looking for an “angel visitant,” I want rest for my mind and warmth for my heart.  I want the “dimness of my soul” to be taken from me if even for a moment.  (I need a moment to make a plan of action and reassure everyone who is reading this and deciding I am in deepest despair and hopelessness that I am merely dim in the soul- an odd sort of optimism but let us go with it) Like the verse from the hymn- I am only looking at the part not the whole hymn- I am not looking for a grand moment of mind-bending clarity and healing.  I don’t require a massive sign from god or a fissure in the Earth that swallows my enemies.  Don’t bother “rending” any clay on my behalf.  I want better than now, better than this, better than sadness and questioning of wellness. I want, I want, I want is no great thing to say but it is true that I want things like anybody else.  I try to face melancholy with small requests but most of all I want so desperately to feel confident in my movement, my brain and my heart.  And I think I would like a hefty dose of giggling and a trip to the salon to get my makes-me-happy-fun-hair-color restored.  A gal has to be honest, right?

My grandfather once told me that I should not waste my time praising him and extolling his virtues as a wise man.  In that directive he was proving his wisdom and foolishness simultaneously.  Too much praise is a waste and a wise person will likely know their strength regardless.  But he was foolish to tell his granddaughter that she should not extol his virtues when she so obviously was seeking them in herself.

In addition to his many years as a minister, he was a navy chaplain in World War II so I suppose this is a fitting time to be writing in reference to him.  He counseled and consoled the hearts of so many and he did so in a way that went beyond religion.  We had our religious disagreements but in my time of need he saw an opening and found a way to fill a hole.  He knew that there would be many a dark day and that each one would need to be faced with new courage and new heart.  And so he carefully prepared me that selection of pages, carefully labeled, carefully selected and carefully balanced with the serious, soulful and silly.  It needed no explanation or instruction.  I never read ahead.

On that 6^th day, that Tuesday in 2006 I read George Croly’s words as bestowed upon me by my grandfather.  That day and many days since then it has truly felt that a long gone, Irish writer and preacher that I know little to nothing about- George Croly and the great and Reverend Jay Han Won were in cahoots.  Working together to form the right words to soften the glare of morning sun, ease the pain of tentative steps, temper the words that overflow and pull from within the ones that don’t, and to bring a delicate, distant light to the dark of night, the dark of day and the ‘dimness of my soul.”

To George Croly- 1780-1860.

More so to my wise and witty grandfather- I know your name– 1919- 2008.

I am counting on you both to make sure those words stays with me long after the handwriting I can recognize a mile away fades, the paper falls prey to age and I hope- long after the light pours in to push away the dimness for good.

** I am using the Korean name he sometimes used as he was born in Seoul, lived there for 18 years and much family history is attached to the name and 125 year family presence in Korea. He is however American and his English name is much less intriguing. However, my modicum of anonymity and privacy of relatives prevails.

It turns out I am that patient.  The super irritating, crazy (okay relative term) one who calls her doctor and leaves a billion messages after hours when a four or five sentence message would do.  I just left my doctor THREE messages in a row.  I have to cancel my appointment for tomorrow because my daughter has spiked a fever and new symptoms only a week after recovering from piggy flu.  I had three appointments scheduled for tomorrow because it is the day my mother-in-law takes my daughter all day so I have the entire time my son is at school to get things done.  Now I have to keep my little one home and try to get her seen by her pediatrician.

After being sick (still am… stupid bronchitis) for the last few weeks tomorrow’s appointments have a particularly high importance.  Really- none of them should be missed but I had to pick one to be covered by my husband, one to take the kids with me to and one to skip.  Sadly, therapy, even after missing two weeks already, was the one that got kicked to the curb.  Awesome.  No really, after being cooped up and then tearing around trying to straighten out the kinks in our life leftover from having a sick household, I really wanted to miss the chance to talk to someone by myself who will listen to me and only me and will nod and agree and tell me that things really will be better.  Things really are better.  Who needs that?

So I called my doctor (who I adore) and tried to leave a normal message but ended up sounding like a raging psychopath with a grudge to contend with.  I mean I really sounded angry.  I am angry.  This sucks.  That is my great SAT vocabulary word to describe the situation.  So I left one pissy sounding message trying to explain why I had to cancel.  Then I got cut off.  Not unusual actually- my messages for her tend to be long and foolish but generally on the ridiculous, silly side of the couch, not the Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” side.  So I called back.  In my second message I tried to be more normal and gentle.  I told her what I needed, when to call, that I am not as angry as it seems but okay maybe I am super mad but come on now wouldn’t you be after all look at this isn’t this just my kind of luck isn’t this just my kind of life did I marry Murphy of Murphy’s Law?  Then I got cut off.

Of course I called back.  My two one-sided conversations (that will one day serve as evidence in either a commitment hearing or a dissertation on the devolution of modern language even among writers) simply were not enough.  How could I end on such a dour note?  How I could I let her think that I was the type of person who needs therapy?  Oh shit… Scratch the last one.  There isn’t a “type” of person who needs therapy and the only thing my messages were proving was that I need a verbal editor to follow me at all times.  And of course that I am a mite bit unhappy with the current disruption to my life.

THREE messages.  In a row.  I am fully expecting a call back suggesting that maybe I selected the wrong appointment to miss.

New message:

Hi Dr. Saved-My-Life! It’s Miriam X and I wanted to let you know that X (wee little sweetheart sicky girl) has spiked a new fever so regretfully I have to cancel our appointment.  Please call me when you get a moment so we can talk about prescription issues and scheduling.  Oh and I am totally not raging on the inside, stuffing all this down as far as I can in hopes of getting through another week so… no worries. Sorry for the inconvenience and have a super swell day!

It’s not unusual for a family of five to have five pill bottles of regular medication.  It’s just not generally all for the children. 

I never thought I’d be the person who was giving her children SSRIs and mood stablizers and stimulants.  But I’m thankful now that I did and, since the effects have been worth it. If turning to the pharmacological community gives me some family harmony, count me in.

As if I didn’t have enough times in my life when I want to take to my bed and stay there, isolated and cocooned in the dark, my family was blessed with the arrival of a probable case of the H1N1 flu last week.  Both kids had it but had few symptoms, mostly cranky and cooped up.  Me, I was bedridden from Thursday until when I woke up and went to a parent-teacher conference Tuesday morning finally fever free for a long stretch so no longer contagious according to CDC.  Basically five straight days in bed.  Most of those days I had no voice to boot.  Sweet.  I am still sick-ish and definitely bitter about the whole “I got the H1N1 flu” thing but some other things have happened.

I slept quite a bit.  I watched a lot of bad TV- thank god we ignore all the advice about keeping a TV out of the bedroom!  Also the flu gave me a chance to think about some unexpected things.  I had a lot of time to do nothing but stare at the walls and beg the world to inject Morphine into each individual joint but also to think about what I was missing by being in bed.  What was it that was getting neglected?  Who was I ignoring?  How could my kids have this same flu but not be dying like me!!?  How were my kids doing without me?

When I am tucked under covers and feeling miserable is the world just moving along without me, never noticing I’m gone, never stopping to check the gears for a weak cog like me?

I figured out a surprising amount of things while sweating and aching with piggy induced fevers.  As it happens when I am in bed or I imagine, even when I am just hiding from the mailman, I am not missing a lot.  Yes, there are places I could go and people I could see but- meh- whatever it is not really anything new.  Turns out though that other people were missing me.  There are aspects of the world that function better with me in it.  I may not have truly, deep down missed all the playground drop-off and pick-up interactions but when I saw those people I talk to on Tuesday I was happy and excited and they were happy to see me.  They were happy to listen to how much it had sucked to be so sick and how I was still a little shaky.  They had wondered where I was and asked around. They did what I would do if someone I knew went MIA. Huh.

What about my kiddaloos?  They were sick but still running laps around the apartment and making my head hurt.  They were being watchfully cared for by my husband, in whom I have been seeing new subtle tenderness that is much welcomed and was much needed while I was oinking away.   The kids were a little stir-crazy but all in all they were really happy to be playing with Daddy.  When they felt sick they were fine to be comforted by Daddy and when I got REALLY sick they were fine with staying away from me more.  Sure they missed me and wanted to play but they also were okay with just coming in when they could and hanging out in bed to color or watch a show about a baby chicken, robin and duck.  They are okay with whatever version of me is available, sick, or not.  Huh.

And the world- yes it does move along without me just fine.  It rained, it was sunny.  There was soccer practice, the physical therapist stayed open.  Stores didn’t close and god bless them, neither did Starbucks.  Just one latte delivered bedsides at a few key times make a big difference.  It will take the standard mothering equation of # of days sick x 1.5-2 (depending on severity and spread of illness) to get the house and such back in order but it isn’t anything new.  There wasn’t a drastic situation where there were no clothes, dishes, groceries or activities.  Thankfully.  So neglecting the house for a few days (okay close to a week) was/is okay.  Geez- I am sunshine and roses- this must be the fever because I am usually not so sunny but it is sincere and truthful so take it for what it is.  It is all I have got.  This is where I would insert a smiley face emoticon.  But I won’t.

So the moral is that the world keeps going when I am not around but that it doesn’t completely ignore the weakness or absence of this particular cog.  Huh.

I wonder how many times I have taken to my bed simply because  I was sure the world could not keep going- everything was ending.  Or because I felt like the world would keep going and leave me behind- flotsam and jetsam left to float aimlessly and without ownership.  How many times did I hide behind curtains and excuses because I was afraid my kids would notice that I wasn’t able to be “myself” with my friends or family or even the grocery store clerk?  And it took a stupid mutated flu virus to make me realize all this.  Well there was the fever, sweating, chills, cough, aching bones and sleep disruption too.  Oh wait- that was still the flu.  To make it clear- I hate the stupid, stupid flu- especially this one, but the hours in bed may have done a kind of good that I never would have expected.  Just don’t let the psychiatrists know… we could all end up with porcine prescriptions.

Now go wash your paws while you sing the alphabet twice.

Not to get all Blood, Sweat and Tears on ya with the title, but we all know that what goes up must come down, yeah?  Maybe I should go Harry Chapin instead- “all my life’s a circle, sun up and sundown.  The moon rolls through the nighttime ’til the daybreak comes around…”

When I was in middle school or so, we all passed around this book about a girl with bipolar disorder (or “manic depressive” or whatever they were calling it in the early 80s) called “Lisa, Bright and Dark.”  If memory serves me correctly, the chapters had black or white circles as headings, to indicate whether Lisa’s mood was going to be up or down.

Hoss doesn’t come with easy-to-spot headings.  Truth be told, I can’t say for sure he’s bipolar (the latest documentation said “mood disorder NOS”) but he’s certainly got some pretty clear up times and down times.   He’s not nearly so extreme at either end as he used to be (thank you, risperidone!) but his moods do swing a bit more broadly than most people’s do.  All of Hoss’ trusted adults (and he has a myriad- Hubby and myself and grandparents and his aunt and uncles on the home front, teachers and administrators and school psychologists and counselors and special educators and before/aftercare staff in the school building, a panel of mental health professionals…) have learned to recognize the subtle indications.  He gets a bit of a wrinkly forehead when darker moments start to emerge, and a tendency toward cocooning into his hoodie sweatshirt.   We give him his space then, and watch carefully from a comfortable distance.   The corner of his mouth hints at a smirk and starts most of his sentences with “hey, guess what…” when he’s about at risk of getting too hyped up.  Most days fall somewhere in the middle.  More days fall in the middle than they did a year ago, and certainly more than those scary weeks last spring, and for that I am more thankful than I know how to say.

Nights are harder to judge or react to.  Some nights (and mornings), he sleeps so soundly, so deeply, that no amount of the dog barking or bright lights or tickling him causes much of a twitch.  Other times, the dreams that he can’t articulate shake him to the core.  Sometimes I check on him before I turn in, and the bedsheets are twisted tighter than a pretzel from his tossing and turning.  I fix them as best I can, and tuck him back in as comfortably as I can manage.  I was watching the late news one night last week, when I heard a breathy, high pitched moan.  Before I could even move to investigate, Hoss had scurried down the hall and launched himself into my lap, face buried in my shoulder.  Talking made his tearless sobs and breathing more agitated, so I just held on.   He doesn’t always remember the dreams later on, and if he’s anything like his Mama, sometimes he won’t remember the dreams even in the moment.  

 I guess that’s all I can do when the nights get rough- hold on to Hoss and try to smooth things out.  Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what we have to do every day, too.