Life’s Like That

Green Bee

| Hope

Today is overcast. It’s maybe the second or third overcast day we’ve had this summer, and it’s a pleasant break from the heat here in the Portland, Oregon area. Besides being refreshing, an overcast day is perfect for capturing photos. I’m not an experienced photographer, but I have learned that much. The colors are vivid and details clearer than on a bright, sunny day.

So, with the kids playing peacefully with their new-to-us basketball hoop in the driveway (thanks to our neighbors’ decision to clean out the leftovers of their now-grown son’s childhood), I wandered across the yard to take a closer look at some bull thistles growing against the fence near our raspberries. They’re on the far side of the fence, in a neighbor’s hay field, making them near-impossible to uproot. But they are beautiful nonetheless, if I set aside mild concern for the wellbeing of our raspberries.

Bull Thistle
Bee on a thistle

I snapped a few photos with the camera, and was ready to move on to meander through the flower beds looking for photogenic subjects. As I turned to leave, a flash of brilliant color caught my eye. I leaned in for a closer look. It was an insect. Bee-shaped and bee-sized. Acting bee-like as well, burrowing down into the flower in search of nectar and pollen. But this bee was a vivid, iridescent green usually reserved for exotic tropical creatures and hummingbirds.

Of course, I aimed the camera. I got in two clicks before the bee darted off. Naturally, both shots were so blurry that the insect was indistinguishable. But now I’m on the hunt. I’m going to be stalking that thistle, waiting for that bee to return so I can capture it on camera.  I looked it up and learned that it’s a halictid bee, probably in the genus agapostemon. Here’s a beautiful specimen not, alas, photographed by me. I took it from the site CirrusImage.com, which has detailed information about insects and spiders.

Halictid Bee - Agapostemon splendens, from CirrusImage.com
Halictid Bee – Agapostemon splendens, from CirrusImage.com

Oh, and the peacefully-playing kids? That axiom “Silence is golden, unless you have a toddler…then silence is very, very suspicious” is one I have never managed to take to heart no matter how many times it’s proven to be true. Here’s what my quiet kids were doing while I was happily snapping photos:

Dust bath, anyone?
Dust bath, anyone?

When Medication Works Too Well

| Hope

There’s a fairly common thing that happens to people who take medication for mental health issues. When the medication is successful, you tend to start feeling like you don’t really have a problem. This especially happens if you share examples of how your particular problem affects you, and other people tell you bracingly, “Oh, that happens to me all the time! You’re fine!” It’s easy to start wondering if you’re overthinking this, if maybe you’re really okay after all.

This happened to me for the first time about a year and a half ago, a few months after moving to Oregon. Since I was no longer working as a teacher, my insurance had expired, and I was now using Aaron’s insurance. With the change in coverage, my copay for the medication I take for ADHD went from $20 to $60. Previously, I’d paid $40 per month for both my asthma inhaler and my ADHD meds; the new cost would be $100. Now, we’re not destitute by any means. But we do try to spend our money wisely and save where we can. It occurred to us that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t need the medication any longer since I didn’t need to maintain a classroom and manage a room full of children. I was only managing one child, a pregnancy, and a house. It would be okay, we reasoned, for me to exhibit ADHD symptoms in the safe environment of our home.

So I just stopped taking the medication. And at first, it wasn’t all that bad. I mean, it wasn’t great. A few days in, the dishes were piled up in the sink. Crumbs littered the floor. I drifted aimlessly, unable to remember what needed to be done for long enough to do it. I fed and dressed Niko and myself, but beyond that, I was in a fog. Several days after that, the trash was starting to smell when I forgot to take it out… and forgot… and forgot. Toys littered the floor, clothes lay in drifts in the bedrooms. The dishes covered the counter as well as the sink, and fruit flies moved in. Niko wore his pajamas all day, and I couldn’t think of a reason to change my own clothes. I wanted to go back onto medication, but the decision to stop taking it had coincided with my last available refill from my Alaskan doctor, and I hadn’t yet found a new provider. I couldn’t find the motivation or focus to search for a new one and make the necessary phone calls.

It got worse. About a week and a half after stopping the medication, the blackness moved in. Strattera is a medication used to treat ADHD, but since I started taking it about three or four years ago, I haven’t had a single episode of depression. (It’s worth noting that it was originally developed for depression, but test subjects found their ADHD symptoms improving instead.) Previously, I experienced it on a cycle of roughly a year from the start of one episode to the start of the next. It’s now been over five years since I’ve experienced depression (I didn’t experience it during my pregnancy with Niko or for the year and a half between his birth and the start of Strattera). I haven’t been sure that Strattera was what was keeping depression at bay — after all, that’s not what it’s marketed for — but whether or not it’s been responsible, it was about a week and a half after stopping my meds that things took a sharp turn for the worse.

It wasn’t a full-fledged episode of depression. It was just a shadow on the horizon. Just a looming cloud of black emptiness, hovering just close enough that I felt its threat. Just close enough to bring a flood of memories of the dark nothingness, the endless pit. And I completely panicked. I huddled on the couch, sobbing, my grasp on reality weakening. My son was being his ordinary self, directing a flood of happy chatter in my direction, unaware of my desperation. As I tried to cope with the waves of hopeless terror washing over me simultaneously with Niko’s needs, I was struck by a snarling, primal need to eliminate the source of irritation. I wanted him gone. Out of the picture. Permanently.

Bizarrely, it was that sudden attack of internal rage that horrified me enough to snap me briefly out of my panic attack. I pulled myself together, put Niko to bed for the night, and started texting my best friend, who lives in Alaska. I don’t remember what I said, but it was worrying enough to her that she called me seconds later (despite the fact that we almost never speak — 97% of our communication is through text). I picked up the phone up, but I couldn’t talk — I was crying too hard. Bless her heart, that girl calmed me down enough that I could tell her what had happened. She told me exactly what I needed to do — BREATHE. Tell Aaron what’s happening when you’re done talking to me, it’s ridiculous to try to protect him from your issues, he can’t support you if he doesn’t know. Find a doctor first thing tomorrow to refill your prescription, never mind the stupid money, it’s not like you’re poverty-stricken. Call me or Aaron right away if you think you’re going to hurt yourself or Niko, no matter what time it is. I love you. You’re going to be okay.

Obediently, I texted Aaron the general gist, then crawled into bed to sob myself to sleep. I woke up the next morning to my phone buzzing. Have you found a doctor yet? Oh. Right. Actually, I had a doctor, or a midwife group, to be exact. I called the office and explained what was happening. They immediately wrote a prescription and sent it to a pharmacy near their practice, where it waited for me free of charge until I could figure out how to get the new prescription costs to fit our budget — it turns out, thank God, that people move REALLY FAST to help when you mention a terrifying urge to hurt your child. Next time I saw my midwife group, I met with a social worker who gently questioned me about how I was doing, reminding me that I needed to find a general practitioner, since they specialized in births, not mental health.

And just like that, I was back on medication. The black cloud receded. The fog in my mind lifted. I cleaned the kitchen, dressed myself and Niko, and breathed a shaky sigh of relief. And then I started searching our insurance provider’s website for doctors.

Yes, sometimes medication works too well. We forget what it’s doing. We wonder if we really need it. And we forget how to cope without it. Strangely, I’m glad I had that experience, because it gives me a strong contrast between who I am unmedicated, and who I am with a bit of help. I don’t want to find myself in that place of utter desperation, ever again. And that’s why I will continue to take those nasty, gag-inducing pills every single night. I like who I am when I have medication to help me move toward my potential. I like having a fighting chance to think clearly, to focus on tasks, to remember to wash those dishes before they get crusty. I don’t like the fact that I need to take pills to keep me sane; I do appreciate being able to like myself and be myself.

So. Bottoms up. Down the hatch. Chug chug. Vive la médecine!

[Photo credit www.safemedicinedisposal.org]

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Birthday Electrician

| Hope

A month ago, I celebrated a birthday.

Well, actually, I spent my birthday cuddling my 15-month-old in bed while we both tried to recuperate from a miserable flu, while my husband wisely took our son out for a father-son outing so I could have a quiet house. By the time he got home, he was feeling the first symptoms of flu himself, but he still managed to finish assembling a creamy, light, espresso-and-rum-soaked  birthday tiramisu, which he’d started early that morning. He spent the following morning in bed while I was starting to feel a little more like myself, and then, with a superhuman effort, he made the delicious dinner he’d planned…and then relapsed from having worked too hard, too soon, and spent the next day resting too. We didn’t have a birthday date. We had a birthday week-of-recovery.

Birthday tiramisu.
Birthday tiramisu.

So the day itself wasn’t exactly sublime. But the effort (and the high levels of deliciousness) made me feel pretty special all the same. And despite the all-around misery, Aaron came through with a perfect gift. My birthday present this year was a bit less tangible than usual, but it was the best ever. Aaron hired an electrician to come to our house and install ceiling lights in our tiny attic room, the first step in turning the space into a craft room for me. In less than five hours, he’d fixed faulty wiring that the previous owners had rigged, placed the track lighting I’d chosen in just the right place, and put a bright flat light in a space that was once a window. It’s showing signs of the beautiful room it will become. But more than just an attractive room, it’s a promise. A promise that someday I’ll have a tiny space that is mine, where someday (when kids can be left alone for more than 30 seconds without disaster descending) I will be able to work quietly, alone, and not clean up my mess. It will be a space for ongoing projects, for never-finished projects, for someday once again grading papers. A space for writing and planning. My own spot. An unbelievable luxury.

This light will be covered with stained glass eventually.
A lighting track along the highest part of the attic.
I chose bronze lights to go with a very dark green paint and dark wood floors.

In the works, possibly to be completed by midsummer: Painted walls in two shades of green (neither of which is the one currently on the walls); wainscoting, which Aaron will build, on the lower half of the wall; a stained-glass window to place over the former window opening; and dark wood flooring. Eventually, storage cabinets and shelves, at waist height so they double as work surfaces.

Sometimes I shake my head in amazement at my good fortune, my blessing, to be married to a man who knows me well enough to know how important it is for me to have both time and space for quietness. Considering that our lives right now don’t allow for much of that, it’s not an easy thing to see — the importance of a quiet place. But he saw it, and acted on it.

I guess this post serves as a very public Thank You to my sweet and perceptive husband. I love you.

Classroom Nightmare

| Hope

So unfair. Nearly three-quarters of the way through my second year away from the classroom, what comes knocking in my brain? That’s right. A school nightmare. One of those horrible, chaos-filled, downward-spiral dreams, so hauntingly realistic that you have to test yourself upon waking, searching the dream for clues, to determine whether it may have actually happened. As a teacher, I had these every year, starting a few weeks before the first day of school, and recurring periodically throughout the year before major events. But having one mid-year when I’m not even teaching? The universe has it in for me.

I was writing the morning message on the chalkboard [clue #1: I’ve never taught in a classroom with a chalkboard — my classrooms have always had whiteboards] when a dour-faced woman with faded hair walked in and flicked on my lights — MY lights! — which I keep dimmed in the morning to preserve my serenity. “I’ve come to take over for an hour,” she said. “You’re wanted in a meeting.”

I gawked at her. Meeting? “Where is it?” I asked. She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just told to come to your classroom so you could go.”

“I see. Well, I’m sorry, I don’t have any notes for you, but of course the first ten minutes will just be –”

She interrupted with an impatient wave of her hand. “I know, I know, you start with the Dawnzer song.” She flipped the math workbook open to the last lesson on fractions. “Page 234? Is it on the smartboard?”

I was getting annoyed. “No,” I said. “We don’t sing the Dawnzer song. [That’s clue #2. I’ve been reading Ramona the Pest to Niko, and the Dawnzer song turns out to be “The Star-Spangled Banner.”] We just say the pledge. Then announcements. Then they can do this page independently. It’s review. And no, I don’t use that awful board.” [Clue #3: I LOVED having a smartboard. Loved it.] I flipped backward to the first lesson on fractions.

She lifted an incredulous eyebrow. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t you be doing Lesson 12?”

“I’m sure. Now, when they’re finished –”

The woman lifted her left wrist and looked pointedly at her watch.

I swallowed. “All right, I’d better go. Thanks for coming in.” As I turned to go, I realized that my students had all arrived without my seeing them. They all sat motionless, gazing solemnly at me. I hadn’t even had a chance to high-five or fist-bump each one at the door or tell them each good morning, yet there they were, waiting for me to leave. And instead of the cozy groups of five desks that they were supposed to have, all the desks were arranged in a grid, perfectly spaced. As I surveyed them, their faces all morphed into the sweet, round face of the Kid President. [Clue 4. I love Kid President, but 25 of him? A trifle creepy.] In unison, each one raised a hand and waggled his fingers. Buh-bye, now. As I turned away, I heard the substitute say, “Take out your math books and turn to page 274, lesson 12,” as she stood smugly in front of the lesson displayed on the smartboard. MY smartboard.

It occurs to me some sadly deprived people might not know who Kid President is. Below is a picture of him looking inspirational, along with an inspirational quote. He’s on Facebook. And YouTube. He’s really pretty amazing.

Anyway, to continue: I hurried down the hallway, clutching a pen and cradling a hungrily nursing Sofia in my arms. Wait — how did she get there? She hadn’t been there a minute ago. Bad enough that I hadn’t checked my emails one single time this year, now I arrive at a meeting, probably late (no one had bothered to say when it was supposed to start), with a nursing baby? Worse and worse. This was probably a meeting to fire me.

I turned a corner, descended the steep stairs, and beheld an alcove where the utility closet had been. [I’m sure you can guess that that is yet another clue. I’m going to stop counting now.] At a table sat a man that my dream self recognized as our special ed teacher, someone I’d never seen before in real life, but I knew immediately that I disliked him. Next to him was a couple that I recognized as the parents of the only fifth-grader in my second-grade class [huh???], and next to them was my principal, Heidi. They surveyed me coolly as I settled into an uncomfortably large chair, still nursing Sofia. I slid backward, my feet leaving the ground, feeling like I was disappearing into the chair.

The special ed teacher passed around a heavy stack of the IEP (individualized education plan) drafts. “Here we go,” he said. “It’s all digital, so I was going to make a slideshow of crucial changes, but then I realized that would make the meeting go too fast, so instead I printed it out so we can read the entire thing word for word.” And so the meeting began, with Sofia weighing me down so that I slid further and further into the chair until I couldn’t stretch forward enough to reach the paperwork being handed to me. No one seemed to notice or care that I was becoming invisible, and they didn’t hear my objections to the terms the special ed teacher used to describe the child: “weird,” “stupid,” “retarded,” “dumb,” “problem kid.” No one seemed fazed by his words, not even the parents. I felt rage bubbling up at the way this student — MY student — was being discussed, but the chair had nearly swallowed me, and I couldn’t even reach the edge to pull myself out.

Suddenly, there was a minor commotion at a nearby conference table surrounded by sleek black leather chairs. The table was in a separate room with tall windows looking out onto a city view. The meeting there was breaking up, and chatter and laughter poured out of the room as everyone left. “Quick!” our principal said. “The good table is free! Let’s move!” The members of our team scuttled across the hall and claimed office chairs, and I was left to wallow in the giant chair. With an enormous final effort involving a lot of leg-waving and flopping around, I levered myself up and set Sofia on the ground, where she morphed unexpectedly into a curly-pigtailed kindergartener. She stared at me for a long moment before turning and going down the hallway to her classroom. “Oh,” I said. “That was easy.”

I seated myself in a comfortable chair, flipped open the IEP packet, and opened my mouth to dazzle everyone with my insights about my student. And then the bell rang for the end of the day, and everyone jumped up and deserted the meeting. And then Sofia — the real Sofia — elbowed me in the throat, and it was time to get up.

I guess a teacher is a teacher is a teacher. You can spend two years at home with your own children, and you still care about your students from however many years ago. Still worry that somewhere, some student, maybe one of your own, is being treated unfairly. Still sometimes feel that the education process has more to do with being told what to do by invisible commanders than with what your students themselves need. And then there’s always the worry that your personal life is destroying your career, or vice versa.

Or, you, know, maybe I just had a miserable cold and was sleeping on too many pillows, with an equally miserable Sofia lying on my chest nursing at will all night, after spending far too long scanning Kid President’s Facebook page. Who knows?

Suzy, My Love

| Hope

Lately, the kids and  I have been going for an occasional walk down the road to the field in which Niko’s favorite cow, Suzy, lives. Of course, Suzy isn’t her name. That is to say, it easily could be, but as far as I know, the cow was nameless before we encountered her.

It was Christmas, and Aaron’s parents were here for a visit. We’d walked down that road for the first time that day. It’s a winding country road with no shoulder, and until that day I’d never walked it in the eight months we’d lived here. Despite the lack of paved shoulder space it turned out to be a pleasant walk. We walked about half a mile, until we ended up next to a pasture with three young heifers.

Niko started life as a city boy, and he’s been a bit unsure about cows, especially since last summer when a  startled young steer trampled a barbed wire fence and got stranded in our yard. Frightened by its unfamiliar environment, made anxious by its separation from its buddy on the other side of the fence, and in pain from a barbed-wire gash, the steer abandoned its formerly gentle nature and gave way to panic. It marauded about, lowering and shaking its head, pawing the ground,  trampling the grape vine, devouring the lettuce, and bellowing. Neighbors and the animal’s owners helped return it to its field, but after that Niko was a bit nervous about our bovine neighbors.

Separated friends.
Munching my overgrown lettuce.

But in this new field there was a small, pretty, brown-and-white cow with gentle eyes. Niko’s eyes widened as he looked at her. He stared long and hard. Then, with no precedent at all that I know of, he lifted his hands to his mouth and began to moo. To our astonishment, that little cow lifted her head, uttered a long moo in return, and walked directly to him.

“Moooooo!”
“Mooooo! I come to you!”
“You called?”

Of course, then he didn’t know what to do. Even a young heifer is pretty big next to a four-year-old, and despite his pleasure at her response, he was a bit intimidated. His grandma, Kay, tried to encourage him to stroke her nose through the fence, but the slime streaming from it was a bit of a deterrent. Still, love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, and despite Niko’s disgust, he clearly loved this cow. His eyes rested on her with adoration, and it took some convincing to get him to leave her when the time came to walk home. She was distraught as well, stretching her neck out and mooing as we walked away. “Goodbye, Suzy!” called Kay, and Niko echoed, “Bye, Suzy!”

Almost convinced to pet her nose. Not quite.
Almost convinced to pet her nose. Not quite.

Now, every time we drive by that field, Niko waves to Suzy, and each time we walk that way, she ambles over to greet us. Niko still avoids the slimy nose, but still gazes adoringly at her. And every time, we call, “Goodbye, Suzy!” as we leave.

It’s nice to have a friend, even of the bovine ilk.

An Introvert With ADHD

| Hope

I’ve long known that I’m an introvert: it’s not that I don’t like people, it’s just that I can’t manage too much time around others without needing to recharge. I do best when I know in advance that human interaction is on the horizon, so I can plan for it and mentally prepare myself. A scheduled playdate for the kids or a routine meeting at work is fine; an unexpected trip to the mall or the arrival of a substitute in my classroom with a summon to an unexpected meeting might throw me for a loop.

I don’t think I’m unique in this regard. An article I just read that reviewed a recent study on introverts said that anywhere from 30% to 50% of people are introverted, so my needs for Alone Time, advance warning before interactions, and a chance to quietly recharge after People Time are all pretty normal. What’s different about my own brand of introversion, though, is that it’s accompanied by ADHD. This means that, while most introverts are content and even happy to skirt the periphery of a crowd and observe others’ interactions, it’s easy for the swirling movement of the crowd and the noise and lights that all go along with social gatherings (or trips to the mall) to become overwhelming, causing me to become agitated, irritable, or withdrawn.

An article about introversion that I just read caught my attention because many of the characteristics as described in this particular case are dead-on for my own experience, right down to the need to avoid caffeine before important events and a dread of talking on the phone. The article’s author, Alena Hall, summed it up nicely:

Little cites the theory of extraversion by Hans Eysenck and research by William Revelle of Northwestern University, explaining that introverts and extraverts naturally differ when it comes to their alertness and responsiveness to a given environment. A substance or scene that overstimulates the central nervous system of an introvert (which doesn’t take much) might cause him or her to feel overwhelmed and exhausted, rather than excited and engaged.

Interesting, huh? (If you didn’t already click the link above, click here to read the article.)

Junco Jamboree

Image | | Hope

Well, that was exciting.

A sudden flurry of wings as I walked toward Sofia’s room caught my eyes. I looked up just in time to see the dark grey bird frantically rushing down the hallway. Aaron and I followed it into Sofia’s room, where it fluttered wildly about. Aaron went after it with his hat while I tried to take a picture, only to discover that my phone had no more room.

The bird dashed into Niko’s room, where it took refuge in the closet. As Aaron stalked it, it froze, and then made a run for the hallway, got confused, and headed back to Sofie’s room. This time I got ahead of Aaron, found it crouching behind the rocking chair, and then realized I had no camera. “Waitwaitwaitwait…” I called, rushing for the camera. But Aaron, singleminded, had already gathered it into his hat and was headed for the door. “Wait wait!” I begged. He paused briefly — just long enough for me to realize I was too close to focus with my long lens, which I’d been using earlier. I retreated down the porch, but the bird had already beaten a retreat to the vine maple. It perched there, beak gaping, where I finally managed to snap a couple of shots.

And that’s it. All that excitement, and all I have to show for it is one picture of Aaron lunging for the bird, and a couple of the bird sitting innocently outside on a branch.

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Camels and Traplines

Image | | Hope

Niko has a highly unsettling habit of reading my mind. You may believe it or not, but I’m perfectly serious. It happens most often when I’m engrossed in a book, fully immersed. He’ll come up to me and say something or ask a question directly related to what I’m reading — maybe ask me to tell him the meaning of an unusual word I’ve just read. Other times, he’ll chime in mid-verse on the song that’s bouncing around my head. It’s inexplicable, but it’s happened too frequently to discount.

Example 1: A few months ago, I was reading a novel that referred to a tavern called the Three Pigs. Niko interrupted my absorption of a vivid description of the disreputable tavern to ask, “Why were the three pigs so dirty?” (Yes, the tavern was described as being a bit of a pigsty.)

Example 2: I’m reading Carl Hiaason’s book Trapline. It’s set in the Florida Keys, which threw me a bit because I was halfway expecting a northern setting, with that title (in the north, a trapline is the area a trapper sets his traps to catch furbearing mammals, on land). I had just gotten to the part where the main character’s trapline got cut, his shrimp traps destroyed and buoys stolen, when I had to stop to make dinner. Niko called to me in the midst of my reflection on the differences between traplines in British Columbia and in Florida: “Look, Mommy, a trapline!” He had stretched a tape measure across the entrance to the kitchen, grinning proudly.

Then there was the night not long ago when I asked Niko at bedtime what happy thing he was going to think about while he fell asleep (our magic no-nightmares trick). “Riding a camel,” he said promptly. “Could we ride a camel after we wake up?” I explained that we weren’t likely to find a camel nearby. “Then could we go to a place where there are camels?” I laughed and said, “Who knows, maybe someday we will.” But it didn’t seem likely.

Having kissed my strange little son goodnight, I went out to the kitchen and picked up my phone. There I found a text from Aaron, off on a business trip. The text read: “Want to go to Abu Dhabi?” He wasn’t completely joking. His company was looking for consultants who might be willing to travel there for three months.

Abu Dhabi. Known for palm trees, beautiful skyscrapers, white sand… and…CAMELS. They have a camel beauty contest there. And I’m willing to bet that Aaron was doing a quick bout of Google searching on Abu Dhabi right about the time Niko, who has never before expressed the faintest interest in camels, asked, “Can I ride a camel?”

Unsettling, that child is.

[Just to clarify: We have no actual current plans to travel to Abu Dhabi. Aaron’s company is at the “seeing who’s interested” stage, and my guess is they’ll send over some single analyst with no family ties so they don’t have to pay for housing for an entire family. But it’s fun to fantasize, right?]

Ode To a Bathtub Spider

Image | | Hope

Your lovely, fragile legs
Your round, defenseless body
Zing a shot of terror
Through my jelly spine.

I shiver,
You scuttle.
I gasp,
You freeze.
Then scuttle
Again.

Who knows why
You descended
From your soft cobwebby pillows
Safe above my broom’s reach?

Why do you lurk
So ominously
So inscrutably
So terrifyingly
In my tub?

You are excluded
From my sacred assortment
Of things I may kill.

You pose no danger:
Neither to my body,
Nor my home,
Nor my food.
Upon death, your body will provide
No healing,
No shelter,
No nourishment.

But. The jelly
In my spine
Takes over.

Water on.
A brief swirl.
A pang of guilt,
Darkness passes through in my soul.
You are gone.
I bathe in peace.