Thanksgiving Re-Cap

My mini-meltdown ended after 45 minutes of sitting in the idling car listening to Macklemore’s The Heist cd on repeat. And angry blogging. Once I identified that I had felt disrespected, I was able to articulate it to my family, and things blew over. My problem is having a hard time identifying my emotions and switch right to raging bitch pissed, rather than calmly being able to articulate what’s really going on. Like I felt disrespected that I was the only one doing parenting duties and everyone else was acting 12, shouting at football games and barking orders.

The rest of our visit was relatively calm, though sleeping on a 167 year old double mattress with egg crate for ‘support’ was less than ideal. Especially with a squirrelly nursling who would pop up, even in the middle of the night, to assess his surroundings. On Friday night we took my dad out for his 60th birthday, and had some yummy Italian food that didn’t sit well with me, but at least we didn’t have any major arguments. And Potamus enjoyed feeding carrots to the horses was scared of the horses, but was obsessed with going out in the pasture with us anyway. Also, hearing him say “football” is adorable, though it sounds a hell of a lot more like ‘butt ball” which makes me laugh, every time.

We’re home now, and trying to recover from being out of my comfort zone for two days (and trying desperately not to think of the return trip in three weeks for ‘Christmas.’ Eek!).

60th birthday dinner for grandpa!

Me & Little Man

he’s really loving the horses (not)

stripes & grass

out for a brisk walk with grammy

feeding the horses some carrots

 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

My overly tired toddler, who whined for two plus hours on our “over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go,” journey had just fallen asleep. I spent thirty minutes nursing him with my practically empty weaning boobs. He was in that sweet sleep, where he kept reaching for me.

It lasted maybe twenty minutes, but thanks to the shitty acoustics and five non-toddler minded adults (plus Boof who should have fucking known better) the noise woke our sleeping boy and I couldn’t be more pissed. I feel so disrespected. I’m working my ass off to keep my toddler from having a full blown meltdown and they are too self centered to realize that shouting across the house rather than just walking to get whatever they need, is loud and unnecessary. I’m so tired of it, and the drinking hasn’t even started.

Everyone thinks I’m blowing things out of proportion, wondering why I’m so annoyed and that I should just chill out. I want to punch them all in the face. So instead I went for a drive. Now I’m sitting in my high school parking lot with waves of equally shitty memories from a time I was equally misunderstood and disrespected.

Fuck shitty holidays. Fuck pretending to be grateful.

Face Forward to Go Forward

I had used the line before, but it was different this time. I’m not sure why this client clung to me (metaphorically, of course), but sometimes that’s the nature of crisis-work. There becomes a trauma-bond that they feel when you come and see them in the most vulnerable state, and then six weeks later they are crushed when you tell them that they have changed, are stronger, and need to keep moving forward without you. It’s the nature of crisis work, nothing personal, I tell them up-front, but there were those clients who had lots of feelings when it came to that final goodbye.

And so, my Family-Advocate and I, sat in the moldy smelling family room, with her mom and dad and sister and long-time therapist, and we had a final family meeting. And the dad, overwhelming nervous about the prospect of this crisis happening again, asked “what do we do if it happens again. We don’t want to go back,” and I replied:

When you’re driving you look through the windshield. You need to glance in the rear-view mirror to see where you’ve come from, and what might be behind you, but if you stare in the rearview mirror you’ll crash. You have to keep your eyes focused on what’s ahead. The forward journey. Glance back, but keep moving forward.

There was a moment of hush in the room. It wasn’t anything magical, I’d said it a hundred times, and it’s something I believe in, but in that moment it hit the family in a spot that they needed. Even the therapist, who had been working with this young lady for years, and was a long-time therapy supervisor, was stunned. I might have blushed because half the time I think I’m fucking everything up and about 1 step away from being found a fraud.

+++++++++

I thought of this experience this morning, as I buckled Potamus into the car. We’re a month early, but we turned his car seat around to face forward. His legs had been scrunched for awhile now, and we thought it best. And he was Mr. Nonchalant about the whole thing, clearly based on the picture above. And as I drove I kept catching glimpses of him in the backseat and had to remind myself to keep my eyes on the road. I could state at his wild blonde hair and intense eyes forever. I could get stuck in the nostalgia of the first car trip with him, all 7lbs, bundled up so snugly as we drove home from the hospital. I know that nostalgia, sentiment, memories are good…really good…but I can’t live there, in the past. We move forward, driving off into the sunrise, and work, and daycare, and a new Holiday-Week, and it’s okay.

 

A sigh of relief and a little celebration

This summer, while I was struggling with being a stay at home mom, I wrote about the frustration of having a boyfriend-then-husband who has had several different careers. As we approach our fifth wedding anniversary (and 7.5 years of being together), he has had exactly three different careers. Recently my article, entitled I Think I’ve Had Three Husbands: Navigating Spousal Career Change, was featured over on Offbeat Home. And while I was in a really raw place at the time I wrote it, I look back and see how in just a few months everything can just feel so different.

I’m writing this before the next busy season, so I can remind myself of the little partnering sweet spot we’re in. Because, with the Mariner job over, football officiating over, we are currently parenting together many more nights a week. And today we got the great news that Boof passed the fourth, and final, part of the CPA exam. I couldn’t be more proud. While it wasn’t necessary to keep his job, for me it feels like he’s passed another really major hurdle. First he got into the program, after a traumatic exit from the world of teaching, and went to his old fallback plan of the world of business or accounting. He was accepted to a ten week certificate program with a great reputation and spent the summer going to classes. Our son was six months old. I was crisis counseling. And then, miraculously, after courting a bunch of big accounting firms that all fell through, he landed a great busy season internship that panned out to his job now. But there’s something so victorious about passing all of his exams on the first try. It feels like I can breathe a sigh of relief, that this career is going to last, for awhile at least, and we can get into a yearly rhythm rather than just a daily survival dog-paddle. 

So tonight I took Boof out to happy hour to celebrate. We toted Potamus along, to our favorite local brewery, and had a beer and some yummy food to celebrate his success. It doesn’t mean everything will be smooth sailing from now on, but it feels like we are in a really good place and I’m breathing a smallish sigh of relief. 

The Difficulty in Attunement- or- I suck at Boundaries

Apparently, I learned in therapy this week, that I really suck at boundaries. Don’t worry, my therapist didn’t actually say that, but the realization that I actually do suck at putting up boundaries, especially with family, was evident by the conversation I was having with her. Somewhere along the line I started to attune to the world around me. And in order to get my needs met, I began to change and shift and mold myself based on the signals I was reading.

Yes, I blame adoption.

But I know that it’s probably much more complicated than living with genetic strangers who didn’t have an “automatic” attunement or attachment to me (or I to them) like I’ve experienced with Potamus. And who knows if my natural attunement toward him is even real or just going to screw him up just as much.

But somewhere later along the line I obviously made an almost-conscious decision to be everything to everybody. And I really think that the things that set the ball in motion for my current angst was the decision to spend our honeymoon travelling to various family member’s houses for Christmas. I was still hemorrhaging from my vagina and I was doing the dishes, with Boof, while our son was passed around like a football. I had failed to set a good boundary. Sure I tried before he was born, but once I was in the moment, like many times, I’ve gritted my teeth and bore it until much time and reflection later I realized: I’m really freaking tired and annoyed.

Next week “the holidays” start. I love Thanksgiving. but imaging the drive over Snoqualmie Pass with my son and our dog in our Subaru to battle other Thanksgiving traffic to spend two days with my family seems exhausting. And yet I also feel obligated. It’s their year after all…we’ve put it off long enough. But Christmas only a month later I know that I am really stretching myself, again, and all I want to do is sleep.

See, we got married on December 20th. Where most people would just leave right away on their honeymoon, we spent three nights away, and then drove to Eastern Washington and then to Idaho on a family Christmas ‘road trip’ to spend the holidays with our respective families. Because we hadn’t ever spent a holiday with each set of our families, even while engaged, we though it’d be “fun” to do. And it was. I enjoyed the time, getting to really mesh with our new in-laws and also get to spend time with my family for my own lovely traditions.

But.

But.

As we’re closely approaching our fifth wedding anniversary, I look back and think how pivotal that decision was to our overall experience relating to our families. While it was fun, and it solidified our experience of the traditions, it also created a dynamic where we knew what it was like to not miss out…nobody had to give anything up…though, to be honest, the rushed dither from here to there and back across the state was exhausting. And it felt like in both places we were really only giving 80%. Instead of saying ‘this year it’s my family, 100%’ it was sorta like we were half-assing everything.

And then Potamus was born….on our anniversary. And now suddenly we’re in this dilemma of celebrating his birthday, our anniversary (my birthday a week before our anniversary) AND Christmas…with both families. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. I’m also exhausted remembering cooking “Christmas dinner” three days postpartum while my parents bickered over who had gotten more time holding the wee one.

So, tell me people, how do you put your and your immediate (children) family first and set boundaries with in-laws and extended family….especially when you also have the “I don’t want to miss out” mentality, too.

Drinking the Hater-ade? And Player for Life.

Five minutes before my yoga class I made the mistake of checking the WordPress icon on my phone showing that I had new comments. Always flattered, since my comments range from about 0-3 per blog, I clicked on it. Even more flattered, it was a pingback to a blog and I thought, “oh wow, someone is referencing me, how cool!” And then, as I was strolling in the door of the yoga studio, I clicked on the link referencing my blog and BLAMMO! I had just taken a shot of Hater-ade.

Ugh.

While my initial reaction was “thank God it’s not some child porno using my kiddo’s picture,” the fact that it was an article referencing how terrible working mothers are, was pretty awful. And I screamed internally, and got defensive, and tweeted the link out to my hubby and my “sister wife” and was glad I was entering the hot room, because MAN, I was seething that someone would dare say I shouldn’t have had a kid because I work.

I was really proud that I made it through the class. My anger fueled me, and I didn’t even let the fact that it was a new, male, teacher on the night it was supposed to be my favorite, female, teacher (who always sings at the end of class). Mostly because I couldn’t stop giggling that the teacher had a bunch of tattoos on his 40 year old body…most noticeably the Player For Life in Olde English script across his belly. I mean, really? How can that NOT be funny, unless you think it’s really really sad throwback and maybe, at some point, we should stop being players? Or maybe life IS a game, and he’s on to something wise. At any rate, yoga is feeling fucking fantastic and I was way less annoyed when I left the class.

I write this blog for myself. I know I’m a good mom, and my son is doing really well, and I’m doubtful that the fall of the empire is going to happen because he was in daycare as a toddler. He’s not “being raised by strangers,” and I shouldn’t have aborted him because I wanted to work. My husband isn’t weak because he was a “house husband” in the first year of Potamus’ life, and if I breathe and focus on my life, rather than the inconsequential blogging of an angryish newbie, then I’m better off.

How have YOU handled conflict or negative reactions to your blogs (either online or in real life)?

 

Coyote Mother. Trickster Mother.

The fog was low and thick as I rounded the bend toward Potamus’s daycare. It was early, traffic hadn’t taken us as long as I thought, and I wasn’t quite driving the 40mph speed limit, to try and savor the yellowing leaves that looked so pretty in the swirling fog. And then, up ahead, I see a lone coyote trotting across the road. He seemed casual about his journey, even stopping on the other side to stand still, looking around curiously. If I had slammed on my brakes I could have snapped a gorgeous profile shot of his steely eyes staring ahead. I wondered, did the woman standing at the bus stop notice him? She was quite close, less than a hundred yards, from this wild creature, but neither one seemed bothered by each other. And rather than risk an accident, I kept driving along, but that image has been playing about in my mind for over a week now.

Coyotes have played a role in my life since I was a little girl. Perhaps they are my spirit animal, though when I was really young they frightened me. Our backyard bordered undeveloped cemetary land, and I could hear ‘howls’ late into the night. Being young, I classified them as wolves, and nobody believed me that they existed, until one day my dad was jogging through the cemetary and came across one. The haunting howls frightened me, and I wove stories about coyotes (once I learned what they were) living under my bed and trying to snatch me away for their dinner. I remember sneaking out into the woods with my brother, when we were probably 12 and 10, and coming across a clearing that was filled with fur. Maybe it was the springtime shedding, but I felt that we had come across something magical, a coyote resting spot? A coyote barbershop? I never did see them, but they were there, just outside the campfire.

Historically, coyotes are used as trickster characters in stories. According to Wikipedia:

The coyote mythos can be categorized in many ways. In creation myths, Coyote appears as the Creator himself; but he may at the same time be the messenger, the culture hero, the trickster, the fool, the clown. He also has the ability of the transformer: in some stories he is a handsome young man; in others he is an animal; yet others present him as just a power, a sacred one.

Did you know that coyotes are the only animal that has adapted to life in all 48 continental US states? That they stretch all the way down to panama and up to Alaska. Did you know that it lives in urban areas like New York City, as well as rural areas like Big Sky Country? Where wolves have ‘failed to adapt’ to the encroachment of human territory, coyotes have thrived, survived, natural selection at its finest. With the culture surrounding mother-animal archetypes, like the famous Tiger Mother, it is surprising to me that nobody has talked about the Coyote Trickster Mother.

I have created something, and yet the creation has a mind of its own. I take many shapes depending on the situation: bedtime wrestling champion, ultimate sandwhich preparer, no-more-chocolate-chips-today enforcer. I can go from laughing, or ‘playing the fool,’ to the disciplinarian, and back again in the course of a few moments. I can adapt, to staying at home during the summer and working full time during the rest of the year. I am restless. I feel cagey and panicked when confined, and sometimes motherhood feels like smotherhood and I want to chew off my own leg, but I’m glad I don’t have 19 pups like a real coyote mother. I hold a sacred power inside, part human, part animal, that instinctual I-would-kill-for-my-offspring feelings. I can wear lipstick with my hair done and relate to fancy-pants business types. I can sport yoga pants and a sports bra with my sweaty yoginis. I drink wine or Miller lite. I laugh and joke and play the fool, and I could cut you if you get too close. I may blend into the crowd, unassuming, or stand out, on the side of a foggy road early in the morning. I am a coyote mother. A trickster mother.

Genetic Mirroring

Potamus with pigtails?

I am pre-occupied with looks, specifically the looks of my child in relation to my own and my husband’s. When Potamus was born, everyone was shocked by his blonde hair and blue eyes. At almost two his eyes have turned hazel, but he’s still blonde as the day he was born. But most people think that he looks like Boof, which is hard for me…and I think it all goes back to being adopted, and being raised in a family where my looks weren’t reflected back and nobody said “oh, she looks like great aunt millie.”

I think my son actually looks quite a bit like me. His personality is quite a bit like my own, with his little mischievous side, but his sweetness is reminiscent of stories I’ve heard about Boof as a child. Every once in awhile Potamus will give a look, make an expression, that makes me think of his dad, but for the most part, when I look at my sweet child I see myself as a baby looking back. So why am I so surprised or frustrated when people don’t notice the way he resembles me?

Discrimination at the college level

I am so angry I could spit, or fight. In fact, my eyebrow was raised practically the whole afternoon class and the smile on my face was really because my teeth were clenched and I was trying to keep from punching the librarian in the face. And then kicking her in the face when she was down on the ground. Because her treatment of my students was so overly-the-top rude that I cannot let it go and will be speaking to my supervisor about it on Monday.

My students were working on a collaborative assignment facilitated in a computer lab at the college library. When the librarian came in, she was tense already, which is something I’m unacustomed to. Normally all of the staff I’ve met on campus are quite friendly and don’t openly seem to treat my students with disdain. I have to remind myself that the stigma of being a “high school dropout,” or an “at risk youth,” is something these students fight daily. While often annoyed, I am fiercely protective of my students. They are beautiful individuals and should not be shamed or bullied because of some arbitrary rules.

So, the students had been broken up into their groups and were beginning to work on their assignments. One of my students got a phone call, and stood up, saying “hey dad I’m in class, I’m going to have to call you back.” We’ve all been there, right? The awkward phone call where you just have to get off real quick but if you don’t answer you know you’ll be in trouble, or the person will be worried, etc. The librarian FREAKED THE FUCK OUT though. Now, keep in mind, we were not in the middle of the library. We were in a private computer lab. Nor was she presenting. They were working independently. And she didn’t acknowledge that he had turned away from the group (in order to keep it quiet) and had said “dad I need to call you back.” She raised her voice and got in his face saying, “you need to get off the phone. NOW.” and then she repeated herself when he said, “it’s my dad. he’s dying of cancer and he’s in the hospital. I’m telling him I’ll call him back.” She clearly did not listen (or thought he was spinning a story?) and said again, almost shouting, “I SAID GET OFF THE PHONE.”

Incredibly rude.

What’s worse, is this student is on the Autism Spectrum. He has many accommodations, is freaking brilliant and works SO HARD to fit in socially and do “the right thing.” He is super polite and I know that he would never take a call if it weren’t an emergency. By this point (which all happened within 30 seconds), I was up and standing next to him. And she said to me, “they are not allowed cell phones in the library.” And I replied, since he had left the classroom after she directed him to, “he has autism. his dad is dying of cancer. I am aware of the cell phone rule, but he has accommodations that are allowed to him.”

I wanted to punch her. I’m surprised I kept my cool enough, because I was livid. I don’t care if there’s a cell phone rule or not, shouting at someone is NOT the way to handle it. Correcting a student’s behavior has a time and place, and I just know that if he wasn’t seen as an “at risk” student, he would NOT have been yelled at like that. No way. If he was 50, or 25, and talking quietly on his phone? Nope, nobody would yell at him.

And I also wonder.

Was it because he was black? Or because he’s 6’4?

Because I can’t imagine her yelling, in the same fashion, at one of my less intimidating physically white students. Or maybe she would, but even if my student wasn’t black, or on the autism spectrum, or have a dad dying from cancer. But it was rude. And I think it needs to be addressed.

As we walked out of the library, after the presentation, I took him aside and said:

“Hey dude, I just wanted to apologize for how she talked to you. I think it was inappropriate for her to address you that way, and I informed her that you were telling the truth. I sometimes think faculty here profile CEO students and how you were treated was not okay. Just know that I was angry about the situation, and angry on your behalf, because it really wasn’t okay.”

His response? Ever so sweet he said, “thank you Ms. Monk-Monk. I appreciate that. Have a good weekend.”

And he tipped his hat and lumbered off into the rain, all the while lugging his gigantic over sized backpack.

I think I’ve had three husbands: Navigating spousal career changes | Offbeat Home

Ya’ll, I’ve been published over on Offbeat Home! I think I’ve had three husbands: Navigating spousal career changes | Offbeat Home.

Head on over and give me some love?