You Were Always to Be More

The other day, while researching a project, I stubbled upon an old article I’d written about my youngest son (who happens to have Down Syndrome) and the blow to support for kids like him when those in roles of leadership, reveal themselves to be injured, sinful, and corruptible creatures (like we all are).   I thought of the words, “you must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect), and realized the reason we need to be better, is not because God will love us if we are, but that the world can’t see God’s love if we don’t.   One of the comments confirmed this thought with the words, “You must do more.”  

My first reaction was shall we say, less than enthusiastic.  “Lord what now? What was that more? How could there be more to do?”  But the comment resonated deep.  It was a reminder to me, that nothing happens without God’s consent, without God’s permission, and that He sometimes puts things and people in front of us, to help us see what we must confront.  The comment felt like a commission.  I am a mom of a son with special needs. He turned twelve yesterday.  We’ve begun discussing with his teachers what happens next, when he no longer looks like a child, when he isn’t a child, when he needs to live somewhere other than with us.  I thought about how he will need friends other than his family to provide the stuff of life that makes life something beyond the ordinary, the routine and the mundane.  He will need us to start on this hard list of things to do now, if they are to be there for him in the future. Hard things to face in ordinary time, harder in these days.

 “You must do more.” What was the more? My brain rattled off what I saw as being needs in my other children as they grappled with the trials of adulthood.  He would need hobbies. He would need meaningful work. He would need income. He would need a network of support to get him to the doctor or the dentist, or haircuts and to weekly mass. He would need friends.  He would need all these things to be not imposed upon his life but grown into/grafted into it.  His family would be part of this but could not be all or only.

Why did he need all of this more?  Because Covid-19 revealed what happens when he gets the more of company, of peers, of daily interactions and meaningful work.  He’d learned to make his bed, wash the dishes and fold towels. During this time of Covid-19, my son learned how to ride a bike without training wheels, how to pull up Disney on the television for a quick Muppet break in between Zooms, to set and test a shower and take it on his own, and to make his own sandwich –ketchup and Oscar Meyer bologna on white bread, cut into triangles. (I wouldn’t advise it, but he eats every crumb). Part of why he learned all of this, was the gift of extra time having no place to go in particular allowed. Part of why he learned this, was his siblings expected more of him than his mother. His mom would make him breakfast. It was a form of love and service and habit with no ill will intended, but he needed to master more skills. Here was the more.  His older brothers and sisters would say, “Make it yourself, like us.” And didn’t stress if he poured cinnamon toast crunch more full than I would have as long as he finished it.

One of them even taught him how to scoop it with a measuring cup to have better portions. He learned to pour the milk too, even when it’s full. (Though some of us hold our breath when he does the same way I do when a teen practicing driving gets too close to a mailbox).   They wanted him to be twelve, to be like them, more independent. It would make him better than he was, more perfect by letting him do things imperfectly. 

 Every step toward his independence came for me with a list of worries…would he remember each time to do what he needed to do?  Free will and freedom, growing up is hard to do, and I suspect, harder on this grown up.  The more was as much about taking on, as it was about surrendering, dying to the self that gave love through service that now was no longer required so that new service could be given.

“You must do more.”  Seemed like a motto to embrace in this time when all our enjoyments, education, work and ordinary efforts take extra effort.  Willing to do the more requires we both will to do and do so willingly.  When we’re sent from the mass, whether we’ve watched it on television or been in person, we’re sent, commissioned to do this very thing, the more.  We aren’t merely to receive passively, but to respond actively in our hearts and allow Christ to transform our lives.  We will go from being men who fish to fishers of men. We will go from being water to being the better vintage of wine. We will go from five loaves and two fishes to twelve baskets left over after feeding five thousand.  I thought about all the ways in which we sometimes get used to things we should not. Covid-19 taught this through big and little ways.  We shouldn’t have become used to long hours and not having dinner together whenever possible.  We shouldn’t have traded in time in commutes where we served work rather than our families.   The time home also showed me other ways we shouldn’t have, which Paul’s siblings corrected via natural intervention. 

Trisomy 21 means the child has a little extra, a little more.  His needs mean we need to do the little extra, the more his siblings have done with and for him, helped him to do more with and without them.   He could do more.  I should do more.  We should do more. Why? Because it has always been God’s will for all of us, for each of us, to be more than we planned, and do become more perfect even as we go about the business of living this life imperfectly.

 

Watching Them Grow Up

Today I hosted seventeeen fourteen year olds at a bowling party, and thought back because this is the class I've seen every year for nine years.   Having an October birthday girl, I've seen this class grow up and know, this is the last year I'll see some of these kids, because they'll scatter to the four corners after they graduate from Saint Martin's.  I have pictures of them from all their Halloween costumes because every year before this one, my daughter had a Halloween themed birthday party. 

She's like me, always wanting everyone to be there. She's better than me, she can get them to come.  I watched them bowl and eat and laugh and pose and play video games in the arcade.  They are fourteen, they are thirteen, they are at ease, they are in no hurry, and so time fliews by without their noticing.   They talk about high school and cartoons and donuts and homework. 

They dance for each other whenever anyone gets a gutterball or a strike.  There is more dancing than bowling going on.   If I'd brought a karyoke machine, we'd never knock over another pin.   I teach these same children in the next year, when they start over, but for now, they are the seasoned seniors of their school, with a casual confidence of being able to handle all of it.  They don't believe otherwise, or that otherwise would be possible. 

I'd wish for them to hold onto that breathless optimism forever, because it will serve them well.  They'd think me too serious and overthinking it, so I just take a few pictures and ask the class leader to round up everyone to sing Happy Birthday, which she does.   It's a good day, and I drive us home and fall asleep watching the Nationals in Game One against the Cardinals. No hitters are great, but not exciting baseball until you get to the later innings.  She opened her presents and disappeared up to her room. It was a good day, a good everything. 

Happy Birthday Rita and glad you got a big party my Pinkie Pie. 

The Biggest Disability

Every once in a while, I'm reminded of my son's disability, of the reality of Downs Syndrome.  Most days, he functions so well and so seamlessly in the family, it doesn't get considered.  He's their brother. He's our son.  We go about our day, breakfast, clean up, get dressed, make the list, organize the day.  The kids do their work books or play. We have lunch. The teen goes for a run.  The next teen plans her afternoon on the phone, the girls play a game and the boys pair off and I do whatever work didn't get done earlier.  Until recently, I spent a lot of time writing.

But my son is getting older.  He'll be seven in September, and with that growth, he's become independent, if not safe.  He knows what needs to be done to make a sandwich, to pour a drink, to go outside.  He cannot make himself a sandwich, pour a drink, or go outside without assistance.  But he does not know that.

When we go out to the park, I spend my time worrying about his running, and about how to keep up with him when he will get taller and faster as I get older.  He says "Hi" to everyone on the trail, and wants to go up to every dog.  I worry about him getting bit because he might be too rough with the dog.

While working in the kitchen, he pulled a cooler to me.  I had to tape it shut because he wanted to get in it. Clearing out the room of trash, he called me to come see his bed. He'd placed stuffed animals on it.  "Look." he said, and before I could compliment him on his project, he ran to his sister's room to yell into the fan, and I worried about the fan.

We signed him up for swimming lessons.  Within minutes, he'd escaped the instructor and jumped into deep water, requiring a rescue.  He now wears a life jacket for the lessons, but the lesson I keep learning is be afraid.  Be vigilant.  No matter what.   Because while Paul's independent, he's not safe.

Back when I was just a teacher, I had a student whose mother hovered.  I wish I could apologize to her.  I now understand her fear.  While a teacher, I preached independence, self sufficiency.  I didn't have to live with the random wrong or dangerous choices her son made every day in their home.  The school doesn't have a microwave or a toaster or a bathtub to worry about, and my classroom came with two assistants and multiple locked doors to prevent random running and a high fence around the grounds.

I still want him to become capable, so that he doesn't become safe at the cost of capacity to act, but it is hard. It would be easier to stop pushing him to become more capable, It would be easier to lock him in, lock everything up, and make the world padded for his protection, but only easier until he entered the unpadded world.

Both the mom and the teacher in me knows he needs to be able to act in the unsafe world.  So I took him today for a little run on a trail, his sister, him and me.  He loved it, except for the leaf he threw from the bridge that got caught in a spider's web.  It was supposed to fall into the creek. He felt vexed it didn't, so he threw another one.  That one floated past the web. But the original leaf remained suspended.  Watching the other leaf float down the stream, I noted the better leaf didn't make it to the water. It would have floated splendidly if it hadn't been caught by the sticky part of the web.   The web kept the leaf safe from getting wet, but also kept it from moving on, becoming a boat, and traveling further than it could go by itself with the dull summer breeze.

When we got home, I thought about how afraid I'd become for him, and how dangerous that fear was for him, even in some cases, more dangerous than what I sought to protect him from.  I would trap him as the spider, suspend him from growth while keeping him safe.  So I've written notes to myself on his IEP, because his objectives and goals of self sufficiency and capacity can only be reached if I make some goals and objectives to be met too.

Let him begin to float down the stream.

Rather Like Summer

I just looked at the calendar. It's August 5th! 

School starts in 20 days.  I feel robbed.  

We haven't been to the pool or the fair or the park enough to feel sated.  We haven't blown bubbles or read all 100 books or baked enough fresh berry cobblers or skipped enough rocks.  Fall is too noisy, cluttered, scheduled and demanding to loom only three weeks away.    Like a waterslide or a good book or a good movie, or the tide, it's all ebbing away far too quickly.   

Now I know each season has its charms, its delights that only come when they come like white nectarines and cherries, ice cream trucks and baseball.  But I'm not tired of them yet.  And neither are my children.   We still need to catch and release fireflies, eat fish we caught and go to a fair and ride on cheesy carnival cars that take us past things that don't scare us and things that do.  

And I know why I feel the breath of time so keenly on the back of my neck. 
My second child leaves for college.  I know she needs to fly.  For her, childhood feels stale. She does not know what more she wants or needs, only that she needs and wants more than this home, even with all its people can give her. 

But for me, I'm holding onto each moment, hoping somehow to coax out a few more minutes, a few more memories before we become mostly the past, the last of the syrup of childhood before she goes.   I know it is not the end, but it is the end of something.  Sigh.  I love and miss her and she hasn't left yet.  She's rather like summer and I wish the world still believed summer should be from Memorial Day to Labor Day. 

Boiled Water

Today, one of my teenagers was having a hard day.  One of THOSE sorts of days.  He also was making a late lunch of macaroni and cheese.  He'd set up a pot and started the water, but not before engaging in a bit of sniping at two different siblings, reducing both to tears and making his mother quite annoyed. 

Talking now seldom generates any response worth noting.  I've shown him scripture as a means of illustrating that this problem of needing to have a well trained tongue is something people have struggled with since the beginning.  I've tried separating him, giving back exactly what is given, (that fails majorly), and promises of major chores or punishment for continued backtalk and insults of his siblings.  Yet I know within him is a reverent soul, a generous soul, the first to give to the homeless, to buy a treat for his younger sister.  He's also the most prayerful I've ever seen serve mass, a man with great humor is growing within, he just is as of yet, not fully capable of regulating his thoughts, his words or his deeds.  He is disciplined, he is quiet, he is loud, he is silly, he is competitive, he is courageous, he is a loner who is lonely.  It is a delicate and difficult process, this raising a human being to become a man.  I know his many fine qualities and I know his faults and regrettably, sometimes in the course of parenting, he reveals mine.

After he stormed off insisting on the discussion staying only on the particular incident whereas I was seeking to get him to see a larger pattern, I noticed his pot was boiling over.  I added a dash of salt and then the pasta and set the timer and waited for him to return.   A fleeting prayer not to lose my temper caused me to visualize dashing all my frustrations and even seemingly righteous wrath at his callous responses to me and MY children at Christ's nailed feet.  I knew I was part of the problem, I wasn't quite yet ready to own it.  I too wanted to point to the particulars when Christ was pointing to the larger pattern. 

"Thanks for starting my lunch." he said. It was a teen version of an apology and I knew it. 
"You're welcome.  You know, sometimes, a little thing can cause something bigger to boil over.  It just takes the right amount of heat." 

He nodded.  "Are we talking about macaroni and cheese?"

"We could be.  But sometimes it takes a lot of heat and even boiling over to make something that is hard and impossible into something warm and softer." 

We talked about how bad moods are contagious, how they destroy this place, this family, how they prevent the family from being what it should be, a source of hope and health and warmth and comfort, as well as structure, discipline, guidance and patience.  Bad moods and insults tear down the place, the people that should be your source of hearth and home and love.  No one should have to be on guard in their own house against a barbed tongue or a wrathful spirit, not from a parent or a child, and being a teen or a parent of a teen is not an excuse.  I needed to become softer too. 

He nodded again as I handed him his lunch.  "I love you son."  "Sorry Mom."  and he sat down to eat.  

I can only become softer and warmer by being thrown in the hot water with a touch of salt. Mental note to keep pasta in the house until adolescence passes over, and maybe learn not to be so stubborn and stiff necked myself too. 

She Lapped Him

It's been coming for months.  Paul and Anna are deeply connected siblings. 

Two years apart, Paul has been her constant companion as she grew through milestones that every baby en route to toddlerhood does.  Crawling to walking, mush to solid food, talking in single words to sentences.  Paul has been her guide through the jungle of living in a large family, giving her access to bananas via a strategically moved chair and a bit of stealth, stashed sippy cups and teaching her that a band is ready to go within minutes if she opens up the kitchen cabinet. They both ride in car seats, sit in high chairs and aren't potty trained.  These common factors plus their mostly non verbal status made them perfect with each other.

But the same element of time that grew Anna into a perfect companion will grow her out of it, as she has begun speaking in sentences.  The very joy we feel at noticing her "firsts" is twinged with a reminder of someone else not having reached those developmental milestones. 

Last night we had lamb for a family dinner and she daintily put couscous on a fork to get every last grain.  Watching her ask for more and say "Thank you" when she did, we tried to prompt Paul to imitate her.  He gave us a few grunts which we hailed with equal enthusiasm as her full participation, but it aches to know, the tide is shifting, she will go on advancing at this swift pace, noticing and saying colors and animals and shapes, and he will move slowly, pointing at what she now names.  She will be the instigator for a time as they continue this friendship born of family and proximity and age.  She will lead him to discover the world more often, as she laps him. 

Because we have so many ages, I don't often get to marvel at the rush of time and transitions and changes as they happen, I only get to suddenly get slapped by a wave of recognition, a tide has come in or a tide has gone out, the beachhead has changed and I didn't notice until now.  

There is still a long stretch where they will be best friends, but the first whiff of when it won't be, is in the air.  I can't help but feel a bit of the loss, just as surely as when I see my 11 year old starting to peel off from her 7 year old fan who would do anything to stay in that orbit and the 16 year old starting to feel a bit shaky as the world before her looms and suddenly the house she's planned to fly away from for years seems a bit more comforting and desirable than she thought.   It is as if time is the moon and I get to watch this dance go on and on and on with the ocean trying to somehow stop moving and the sand remaining equally resolute in its stillness even as they both collide and mix and keep changing.   They want to grow up, they cannot stop, they fear the unstoppable nature of it.   

I just have to keep saying, "The next step is better. The next step is better."

Bikes

Sometimes I do the right thing.

Then I discover how sheltered I'd been by doing the less right thing.

Case in point? Bicycles.

We have enough two wheelers of varying sizes and shapes to start our own Tour De France without any of the posh designs, prestige or sponsors in our garage.

About a month ago, I fell into a fit of dutifulness and began schlepping said machines to the shop for spring tune ups. The cascade effect of getting two bikes fixed, six other children now howl miserably that their wheels need repairs. A whole Lent later, the last bike got its tires pumped, chains oiled and a new tube in the back wheel and is now ready for action.

Giving under 16s access to bikes is like giving keys to the car. It is freedom and they know it. They want it. They taste it. They intend to use and abuse it and you know full well, it will happen.

I now spend my entire life as a bicycle traffic controller. You are cleared to go to the bike stop and back. Negative, you must stay on the runway. You have your helmet on backwards. You may not travel as you have shown yourself unreliable about staying on schedule. You must have a partner. You have lost horn privileges for blasting that sucker in my ear.

The only thing worse than giving limited clearance to each child according to their bike skill/age level, competency and my confidence, is watching them go. I know I gave them permission. I also know if they're hurt, I gave them permission.

This is one of those no win scenarios that no parenting magazines talk about, where I get to fret because they are going and fret until they return. It is part of growing up. But for the record, as a parent, as much as we want our kids to grow up, it's painful the second time around watching it happen too.

Now I am handing out cell phones and keeping mine on me for calls from the wild as they explore a world without the benefit or protection of me. It is good to see siblings, brothers and sisters doing this together.

It still makes me a wreck. I know its stupid and I should be glad they're exercising, they're playing, they're doing real things. I still worry.

When they return, I still get to fret over different things, like getting them to park their bikes and stow their helmets, preferably not behind the van or where they can accidentally be run over by a UPS truck or anyone else who comes up our driveway and convincing them that dodging toddlers who are on tricycles and coloring with chalk is only less stressful to their mother than actually hitting the children on tricycles or who are coloring with chalk. That it would be best if they ceased biking once they come across any of the under 5 set.

But the other day, one of my daughters remarked on how some of the skates need repair and how much fun it would be for the 6 and 5 year old. Looking at the 9 bikes in the garage, one stroller and two wagons, I'm in no hurry. I may get the younger ones more chalk though...

Transitions

This morning, my oldest daughter started high school.  We took a picture and I looked at her, so brimming with confidence, enthusiasm, eagerness. I hope her face is the same when she comes home today.

She's been my right arm this summer, babysitting as needed, running into the store with a 20 for milk, bread and diapers, writing out the "To Do" list and occasionally putting in notes like, "It's summer secretary appreciation day, take Bonnie to Borders."  or "Milk Shakes."  I'm an easy boss and these hints always work.

As she enters into an unknown world I have to pause and hope that the next four years won't be as painful as I recall, and yet at the same time, I know that long pounding helped form strength.  I also know because I've watched my son mature from hard knocks more than hard assignments; and while I would have spared him much of the grief he has endured, I also know those experiences made him who he is today. 

I used to teach adolescents in high school and loved that odd mixture of immaturity, inexperience, fledgling adulthood type thinking.  So seeing my daughter flit between reading and drawing Manga comics and writing a critique of "Rebecca" made sense to me; as did her bright yellow pikachu lunch box and somber navy back pack.  She was trying both worlds out because as a 14 year old, you can. Watching a teen mature over the years is a bit like watching the tide come in on the beach as you build a castle.  The first time the waves reach your feet, it catches you by surprise.  But it's not unpleasant and so you get used to it.  Then suddenly, it surges well past your construction and while you knew this was coming, it still seems to have come too quickly.

She left this morning a note on the table for me with my list of things to do and she even remembered two things I'd forgotten.  I felt the saltwater run just past my ankle. So this afternoon, we're going out for milk shakes.