In 2010…
I will listen more, and yell less
I will look for all the positive in my children, instead of drowning in the negative
I will be more present
I will read and learn as much as I can handle about Asperger’s
I will never back down
This evening, I am trying to come to terms with my desire for perfection at Christmastime.
Every year, I design the Christmas cards from scratch. Have them printed. Hand address the envelopes, write a Christmas letter with the hope that it will be at least entertaining for the amount of time it takes to read it. This year, I even took the photos for our card.
I bake, I shop furiously. We host a wine and cheese party, and often we also plan and execute a party for the softball team. This year, I also made vanilla extract, designed labels, tied on ribbon. I sewed gifts, and made pendants for special women in our lives. I made photo calendars.
And I’m freaking out. We’re headed to the cabin for Christmas, so I effectively hacked a good 5 days off my prep time. Another 2 days was shaved off at the beginning of the week when Holland started vomiting at random, inexplicable times. (Turns out she had an ear infection).
I haven’t wrapped a single present. Half of my cards are written and in envelopes, awaiting sealing and stamps, while the other half languishes at the printing place, where they were missed when Kyle picked up the rest of my printed goods today. I still have mountains of laundry to do. I haven’t made a packing list, or even brought the suitcases up from the basement.
Oh, and we leave tomorrow morning.
And so I’m trying to figure out how I can learn to just let things go. Be zen, realize that Christmas is not about these things, and just enjoy myself. I understand the spirit of the season, and I guess for me, a big part of that spirit is in reaching out to friends and family with our cards, about carefully selecting, making, wrapping gifts for our family. But the pressure can grow to be unbearable.
Ultimately, I know that I could wrap a bag of M & M’s and Noel and Holland would be content. In fact, I could give Holland absolutely nothing and she’d be none the wiser. But I would know, and it’s too much for me to ignore. But I worry about what they will remember of their mom when they are older – I hope that it’s of a mother who tried hard to make the season magical for them, not of a mother who was annoyed and frustrated for the entire month of December, save for Christmas day.
Do you ever feel sometimes like you’re just doing all the work it takes to get through each day? Like, you are not actually doing anything, yet you are so busy. Wake up, feed children, dress children, etc, until it’s time for bed and then up in the morning to start all over again?
That is how I feel lately.
There is nothing to update you on, not really. There is only the routine, the every day. Noel continues to struggle with epic meltdowns that include but are not limited to punching, kicking, throwing toys and slamming doors. Holland continues to nurse as much as every two hours over night, even though Thursday will make her 16 months old. I have Christmas shopping to do and business tasks to complete and mountains of laundry to wash, and that’s really not the most exciting reading.
The single thing that stands out for me over the last week is that we had our annual wine and cheese party with friends, and it was a much needed gulp of air, a break from the monotony. There really is nothing like an evening of adult conversation and lots and lots of saturated fat.
These last seven days? They’ve been alternately horrible and wonderful. Excellent and torture.
My mom arrived last Friday, late, for a visit. Within 24 hours things had exploded, between her and eye, with me calling my brother for emergency interventions, planning to have him put her in his car and drive away with her.
I don’t think I’ve made my mother proud. I think that I married too early, had a child too son, had another child sooner than that, even. That I didn’t make the choices she wanted me to make. Didn’t go to university. Graduated from high school in my early 20s, instead of at 17 like everyone else.
And following that thread, the one where I grew up and disappointed her, I had a son, and he has Asperger’s and I can’t find the ways to parent him in the right way. I am doing everything wrong. And my mother could not resist telling me that. Telling me that she felt we were messing it all up. Irreparably damaging our kids. Forcing Noel to poor behaviour.
“He doesn’t have Asperger’s. He just has two messed up parents.”
Sadly, Noel does have Asperger’s, and he just lucked out so much to get two messed up parents to go with it.
Anyways. So there are wounds there that will take time to heal. A lot of time. My mother didn’t leave with my brother on Saturday night, though. She stayed. And we struggled.
On Monday, we finally had our visit with our caseworker from FSCD, who assigned us funding for Triple P, as she feels Noel is maybe a bit young yet for more formal interventions, and 80 hours of respite care for the year.
I don’t know that I can adequately describe how good it feels, to make forward progress.
That night, I went to bed with a bit of a cough, and in the morning, the H1N1 Mac truck had hit me with full force. In the afternoon, Kyle took me to the assessment clinic (opened to keep us germy contagious people out of the ER), where my heart was racing at 139 beats per minute, my body dehydrated by fever. An IV lowered the heart rate, and a tonne of Gatorade and Tamiflu has been taking care of the rest.
My mom extended her stay by two days to take care of us while I was down for the count. Irony, no? On Saturday, she couldn’t wait to leave, was headed for the nearest hotel. On Wednesday, she was cancelling her flight and making sure I drank enough fluids.
See, I understand, that she loves me. I get that. I am a mother. I understand completely how seeing your child sick is alarming, especially with an illness that the media has touted as a merciless killer. And I want as much as she does, for me to be that ideal vision of parenting perfection. But more than that, I want her to accept this, and hold me. Hug me, tell me it IS hard (like so many of you do, here, which is wonderful), and that she will be here for us in whatever way she can. Tell me that it will be okay. That he will be okay. That we will be. Because often, I am not so sure.
Finally, we have shaken off the inertia and will begin some forward motion.
We have been assigned an FSCD caseworker. We have scheduled a meeting! Wheee!
The SLP at Noel’s school apparently observed him last week, but we’ve been playing phone tag so far.
I’ve signed us up to take part in a research study with the Sinneave Foundation that focuses on what it’s like parenting a child with ASD. The last few weeks my answer to that question would have been “hell” but surprisingly, even with Kyle out of town since Tuesday, my mind has changed, and now I can see a bit of the sun again, peeking out from behind my stormclouds.
Noel was a skeleton for Halloween. He loves for us to name the bones he has – skull, shin, ankle, spine. For the first time ever, I made his costume and I think it turned out rather nicely. Holland was a storebought Garden Gnome. I would share photos but I have a new computer and I can’t upload photos as the drive has not been mapped for me.
***
It’s funny what a difference 24 hours makes. Because where yesterday, before Holland awoke from her nap and interrupted me mid thought, I was feeling optimistic, today I am back, right back, into the claws of grief.
Current stage? Anger. Didn’t I go through this one already? Who knows.
Anyways. My mom arrives this evening to stay with us for a little one, and I am determined to help her have a good visit. Determined.
