Fasten Your Seat Belts Mommies!

The laughter was loud and sliced through my ears, my entire being in fact.  The joviality was so out of place.  Didn't these people know that there was suffering going on right under their noses?  I instantly felt irritated with the crowded desk area in our local family court.  The bailiffs (there were many), the clerks, the secretaries, the lawyers stood in a cluster happily talking of Ipads and websites and new technology.  They were telling jokes and talking of plans for the weekend.  I tried to focus on something else, but I was the sole human in the front waiting room (ours was the last hearing before lunch).  Around the corner and behind me, my son sat with his father and his step mother waiting for the same hearing.  But focusing on them just made me more irritated with their united front, with the fact that I (who had raised this child for the majority of his life) was the one sitting alone, with the fact that I was at court for the second time in my parenting career.  ALL of  it was irritating, rage inducing, and just plain ol' exhausting.

However, incredulously, life went on around me.  I wondered did these people know something that I didn't know?  Didn't they have problems in their lives? Are they just as stunned when in the midst of suffering someone near them laughs?  Do they think that laughter out of place as well?

Mercifully, when they call our name, the bailiffs  the lawyers, the clerks and secretaries returned to professionalism.  Their faces reflected the somber feeling that one should have as a mother follows her child into a court room.fate unknown.  Sitting behind him tears streaming, hands wringing a shredded tissue was truly the lowest point of my parenting journey.  But as a parent whether of a troubled child or not, life is a roller coaster complete with all of the terrors and adrenaline pumping aspects that you'd expect.  And just like that roller coaster, staying at the lowest point doesn't last long and the hill climbing begins almost immediately.

Listening intently in the stark room I hear phrases like "doing better", and "volunteering for services not required."  I hear "I want help" and "Yes sir" from my child's mouth.  All of these utterances come as surprises because I am not privy to what goes on in my son's life. Seeing him is sporadic for reasons that are unknown to me and I don't allow myself to often ponder his absence because it is agonizing to my soul.  But it seemed, sitting in that brown paneled official room that possibly, something had shifted in that boy that I love with all the fierceness of a mother.  Could he be turning a corner?

Leaving the court room my son says a humble and shy goodbye to me.  The rarity of that exchange coupled with the positive reports to the judge made me feel like that roller coaster rider at the top of a steep hill.  I wanted to shoot my arms into the air and scream with glee as I am sure many parents symbolically do when things are good for their children or if something not good is getting better.  I am sure that most parents who reach the top of that metaphoric hill will relax their shoulders, will fill their lungs with oxygen; taking the deepest breath they have taken in a long time.  I am sure that when things are going smoothly for these parents' children they are able to unbuckle their seat belts after assuring themselves that the roller coaster ride has come to an end.  But I refuse to unbuckle the belt on my seat, and I often wonder if there are any other parents out there who experience the phenomenon that I experience.

Let me explain.  For me, perhaps for all moms of troubled children, hope is a dangerous emotion.    Today there is a bit of hope in my heart.  That beloved son of mine is making improvements. No calls from school for over a week, a kind and respectful attitude, even a dinner visit to satisfy his little sister's heart who was missing him something terribly.  And I wish, how I wish I could relax my shoulders.  How I long for that deep breath to fill my pinched lungs.  How I long to unbuckle the seat belt.  But I just can't.  As a mom of a troubled son, I am just not ready to trust that the ride is over.  If the anger, resentment, poor choices, entitlement and vindictiveness return I will need that safety harness.  How shameful I feel for doubting the staying power of this change.  How guilty a mom can feel for when the confidence she has in her child's ability to treat himself with kindness and pride and thoughtfulness is close to nil.

And yet, and yet a mother always hopes.  "Maybe this time it will be different."  That barely audible whisper tickles down in my ear and at the back of my mind making both the ear and the mind ache with a hope that is  truly unwanted.  Hope, you see is toxic to moms of troubled children.  Hope weakens the straps on that safety belt; the straps that steel us against the lows on the roller coaster that seem endless and cruel.  In a warped way good things, rationality and sane choices made and done by our troubled children are  fear inducing because it gives a mother (or maybe it is just me.  Is it just me?) It gives me permission to allow my guard to be let down ever so slightly.  I may let go of the bar in the front of the roller coaster's car just to give my fingers a rest from gripping so tightly, I could roll my neck to relieve it of the pain that comes from being shaken around those pesky loops.  And while preoccupied with my sore fingers and shaking off the pain in my neck, I wouldn't be prepared for the big and scary drop that may be just ahead around the corner.  And so this mom, this mom of a child who needs more help than she is capable of giving, will pull the strap tighter on the safety belt, will white knuckle the bar in front of her, will keep her shoulders up to her ears, because moms like me need to be vigilant, ever vigilant for the next drop on a roller coaster we never wanted to ride in the first place.

 

Problems Bring Gifts

Richard Bach once said that "Every problem has a gift for you in its hands."  A year ago, 6 months ago, 1 week ago I would have rolled my ever-luvin eyes at that quote.  I would have made some sort of disgusted grunt noise that came from way in the back of my throat.  I would pushed Richard with a scoot of my hand so that he could step aside and let me get to the solvin'....because that is all a problem was to me something to endure until it got fixed.

But then I experienced something that perhaps Richard Bach had at one time experienced as well; a problem that couldn't be solved, one that couldn't be fixed--at least not in anyway that would feel entirely satisfying.  Swimming in the mire of the in-between I was unable to reach either shore--the one where I stood before the levy broke and the one ahead of me that would provide me some sturdy foundation with which to stand upon again..  The exhaustion, the constant thinking, the anger, the sorrow, the bewilderment dangled from me like iron anchors and pulled me into the deep, dark abyss. I was drowning.

One night, while in full self-pitying mode, I decided to distract the running reel of "woe is me" by visiting Pinterest.  (If you don't know what that is...I will warn you that it is HIGHLY addictive, but please do visit.  Of course, visit AFTER you read today's post.)   While working on my "Quote" board (so very original...I know) I came across Richard's quote.  It stopped me in my tracks.  My immediate reaction was scoffing, eye rolling, throaty grunts, but then...but then....something made me stop.  Something made me read it again, and again, and then once more.  Something made me look at each word strung together like a strand of Christmas lights, and in a moment of illumination it occurred to me that perhaps--perhaps--I could begin to look within my current conundrum for the gift it might be offering me.

Starting the next morning, I began to live differently.  The problem didn't go away (it still hasn't), but what did go away was some of the anger, the helplessness, the groping-around-in-the-dark-for-a-path kind of blindness. It was replaced by a curiosity.  If this Bach fellow was right, then somewhere, somehow, some gift would reveal itself through the chaos, above the noise, around the walls built high. The search was in itself a  distraction from the wallowing, however, the gift didn't reveal itself right away.

As it turns out this gift, my problem's gift, had been here right from the beginning, but I was too overwhelmed with despair to recognize it, to greet it, to experience it.  I am thankful to Richard Bach and his wise words that I was able to open my heart's door to welcome it.   It finally became obvious to me in the midst of a compassionate "talking-to" by a long time friend.  She had come into my classroom to drop off a letter of recommendation that I had asked her to write and to inquire about my state of mind.  She heard--through the grapevine--of the things that had been heaped upon my family plate as of late.  I tearfully recalled details and answered her questions, and then after listening to each word, she showed her typical tenderheartedness and declared that she was sure that I'd feel better if I could just go on a well-needed vacation.  In the next breath, she mercifully offered her parents' condo in Florida for a place of respite.  I was stunned, silenced, humbled by her kindness and friendship, and it was then that my dilemma's gift dropped out of the sky and clunked me over the head.  My offering?  The realization that throughout this whole ordeal, I wasn't alone.

Problems have been plentiful these last few years.  That goes without saying, and I knew from experience that even the best people have a limit for the amount of times they listen, commiserate, dispense advice or prop up.  I mean there's a reason that nobody is Eeyore's BEST friend in those Winnie the Pooh stories.  So even before this latest round of rain, I had vowed to be more positive, to enjoy life in moments-moment by moment.  So when the bomb dropped here a few months ago, I was determined to speak very little of it except to perhaps a couple of my nearest, dearest and most trusted.  I would face the latest a solitary figure.

But despite my silence--despite my solitude--companionship, empathy, love came.  They came.   They came. I was not alone, in spite of the problem plague I had been living through.  I was not alone.

I was not alone when that friend took pity upon me and offered me an escape, but there were so many other times in which that gift played out over and over and over.  I was not alone when a friend in California was willing to "chat" with me for strung-together hours, even in the midst of studying for the Bar.  I was not alone when he offered several solutions to ease my worry and dread.  I was not alone when out of the blue I'd receive a motivational essay from a favorite website in an email from a woman hundreds of miles away who has become a kindred spirit.  I was not alone when strangers, STRANGERS! heard of my plight and offered me unnecessary benevolence.   I was not alone when a friend messaged "I'll be here when you are ready. Ok?"  Or the next day when a new message came from the same person simply stating, "Hope you are doing ok."  I was not alone, never alone, when the closest, most trusted and dear woman in my life hugged me close and whispered that we'd take on this problem together.  No matter what happened, I'd have her.  I was not alone.

 I was not alone.  I am not alone.  This problem, this mystifying mess, as difficult as it seems, as heavy as it is draped across my shoulders and across my back has offered to me a truly transcendent treasure: the gift of knowing that I am worthy of love no matter the situation, no matter my mistakes, no matter how many times I ask and even when I don't--there are people who will be there.  I am loved.  I am not alone.  And dear readers neither are you.  What are the problems that you are facing?   Please remember, no matter how complicated no matter how hopeless, that problem "holds a gift for you in it's hand."  Go on, do yourself a favor...Open it.