Following Elias

Approaching three months and...

Do I dare say it?

Here's to hoping writing the words won't jynx the outcome...

...but I think Olive is becoming a happier baby.

So much so, that we even brought her to our coed hockey game last night, where she hung out in the Blue Line, a bar that overlooks the two rinks, while we skated below, surprisingly beating a skilled team  8-4.

"Here's the proud parents," a guy said when we walked in the pub after our game. "You have a beautiful baby. She's made the rounds."

"Was she fussy?" I asked Cathy, our friend who played the game before ours and agreed to stay and watch her so we could play.

And her answer: No.

Now I don't know what it says about us that we don't mind our baby hanging out with hockey players in a bar at ten o'clock at night but...

She's crying less. Smiling more. And making everyone smile right back.

(That is everyone but Elias, who would rather grimace at his sister than grin at her, but I'm beginning to understand, thanks to your comments, that this is pretty darn normal. Whatever that means.)

Deep Breath Friday

A momentary truce between siblings, no crying, no squeezing...

and a Mama who is finally allowed to indulge in a piece of dark chocolate, or a cold beer, when the inevitable screaming crying teeth-grinding squeezing begins again.

Elias may not like his sister now--but some day he'll love her.

Happy Friday!

A long drive home

You cringe as you step on the brake, knowing the lack of motion will only intensify her cries. Come on green, you think, as you gently pump the gas pedal, hoping to somehow rock the car as you wait, anything to calm her a little, to quiet the persistent wails. You look in the rear view mirror but she's still too small to see.

"Sorry she's so loud," you tell your son, who sits across from her in the backseat. He looks down, puts his hands over his ears, and says nothing.

"She's crying because she's hungry," you say.

"She's crying because she's hungry," he repeats.

"Yep." You push the accelerator a little too quickly, eager for movement when the light turns green.

As you pass Roger's Park, the volume of her cry leaps to a high pitched scream, and you look back to see Elias reaching over, his hand in her car-seat, but blocked from your view.

"Elias what are you doing?" you ask as your heart speeds up with the car, "Get your hand out of her car seat! Elias get your hand out NOW!!!"

He doesn't respond so you reach back and grab his hand with yours, and continue to drive like this, your left hand on the wheel, your right arm strained backwards at the shoulder, your six-year-old's fingers locked in yours.

And you don't let go until you turn onto 20th, three blocks from home.

"Elias what were you doing to your sister?" you ask, as you squat in your driveway beside his car door.

No response.

"Were you trying to help your sister or hurt your sister?" You wait for him to reply.

And he looks towards you, his eyes roaming in your direction, an attempt at eye contact from a little boy whose brain can't control the movement of his eyes. "I was trying to help her stop crying."

Oh sweetie.

"How, by squeezing her?" you ask, as you've already seen the red marks on her face, the fingernail slice underneath her eye.

But he was trying to help her...

"Yeah," he says and looks away. He takes the string from his hat and puts it in his mouth.

"Elias, it is never OK to squeeze your sister's face." You put your hand on his chin, try to get him to look in your direction again, "You hurt her, do you understand, you hurt her."

He looks straight ahead, biting on the orange and blue string, showing no emotional response to your words.

And this is where you lose it.

For you understand his urge to squeeze Olive's face to shut her up, to "help her" stop crying, there's nothing more grating than incessant screams while strapped in a small vessel that is not under your control, he's chronologically six, but developmentally delayed, so he doesn't have the cognizance to know that this too shall pass-- I mean hell, you struggle at times to remember that the air won't always be charged with the sound of her cries--but you want him to react to her pain.

You want him to care that he hurt her; you've seen a two-year-old feel sorry for the tears he inflicted  and you want your son to do more than stare straight ahead and chew on his hat string.

You want to know he will be able to respond to the emotions of others.

You want him to be OK.

And by OK you don't mean fully-sighted or capable of walking with grace, you don't mean with the lungs of an athlete or the dexterity of a musician, you mean with the emotional intelligence to relate to others. To build relationships. To make friends. To fall in love.

And yes, he is only six. And not even six.

And the road ahead is long, it twists and it turns and no one knows where it goes but today you wish you could see where it leads, just a glimpse, just to know.

"But he's such a happy kid..."

"He's so sweet," the nurse said at Elias's last doctor visit. I smiled as I handed him his canes.

My sweet little Elias, where art thou?

Today during kindergarten he knocked over Dominic's tower and stole Jayna's toys, earning himself a time out.

When our new neighbors came over for brunch on Sunday he grabbed his wooden car out of two-year-old Owen's hands and later pushed him out of the way by the window. At the end of the visit he gave Owen what at first appeared to be a hug but was really more of a squeeze with a head lock.

"When are you going to leave?" he asked our guests.

And I want to say that his onset of aggressive behaviors is a direct result of the birth of his sister, that he's anxious and jealous and taking it out on other kids, and yet even before she arrived I worried about his treatment of Tonz, our pup. He seemed to be grimacing more, grinding his teeth and reaching out not to pet but to harm.

Whenever we try to discuss his actions, he shows little emotional connection to his behavior. No empathy.

And I hope beyond hope that this a new developmental stage, just delayed, and not another "disorder". 

And I realize how much I have relied on his easy-going temperament--but he's such a happy kid-- to buffer the disappointment of each new diagnosis. And I'm not quite ready to let go of this well-worn rope that held me up when nothing else could.

And even as I write this, I can hear the voices--he's going to be OK, this is normal, don't worry so much--and I wish I knew how to keep my mind from preparing for the worst, from diving into the darkest holes just to see if I can swim.

And yes, I still want to hear that he is going to be OK, that indeed he already is.

Just Because

Happy Friday Photos

A Snowy Morning Reflection

Sometimes being a parent means stretching thin the line between self and other, till the threads of who you are unravel and trail behind the person who rocks, feeds, holds, and comforts another. You barely remember what it felt like to wake in the mornings on your own time-clock, with only your individual needs to fulfill.

A late February snowfall covers the unfamiliar trees in my new backyard, fat flakes, relentless in their tragic beauty. Somewhere underneath the layers, up in the mountains, on the tundra, in the caves and hollows, Mama Grizzlies give birth to their cubs, where they wait out spring, entwined in the darkness, tongue to nipple, fur to fur, skin to skin.

This morning as I lay in bed nursing Olive, Elias asked, "Did you use to nurse me when I was a baby?"

"Yes, babe."

"Was I in your belly?"

"Mm-hmm," I responded, eyes still closed, not quite ready to rise to this ongoing conversation we've carried and nurtured and expanded since the arrival of his sister.

"What room was I born in?"

"The surgery room."

"Did I have to have surgery?" he asked, as he leaned over Olive and put his head on top of mine.

"Yes, as a baby you did." I said, awake now.

"Where did I have to have surgery?" he asked, cutting our conversation deeper, to questions I haven't yet answered.

"On your heart, your brain, and your eyes."

As I said this, I looked at his eyes that rarely look at mine, for a sign of comprehension, wondering if the next question would be "Why?"

Heart. Brain. Eyes.

Three different doorways to the soul.

And I may not attend an indoor church, or identify with a specific religion, but I still search for deeper meanings, for spiritual awakenings, and redemption.

When it comes time to answer Elias's brewing storm of why's--Why do I need canes? Why was I born early? Why can't I...--I'll try to give him different layers to wrap around his growing sense of self, so that he looks in the mirror and sees himself as whole.

In order to do this, I need to do the same. Embrace my own completeness, my own soul.

I will always be Elias and Olive's Mommy, and with this title comes a blurring of edges, a run-on sentence in which my subject leads to theirs, without semi-colons or periods, barely a comma rests between us as we breathe the same air, like Grizzlies entwined in their winter den, snowed-in till spring comes.

But spring will come. And little paws will grow wide.

And wander off to find their own blueberry bushes, their own salmon streams, their own honey-scented air to breathe.

He's obviously never met my son

I'm a little distracted by the Olympics. And well, you know, the new house, newborn thing.

But I just needed to say screw you to this guy.

Now back to the should-be Olympic sport of baby bouncing. 

breathing space

As we attempt to organize Elias's room he asks something about his closet door--I don't remember exactly what since he asks arbitrary questions all day long such as: Why are the fish in here? Is this our house? What color is red?--so I continue to unpack a box of books and say, "I don't know."

I don't know. My answer to so much these days.

He stands by his closet door, holding onto it for balance and says, "It's kinda freakin' me out."

The boy is a language sponge, soaking up expressions and squeezing them out, often dousing me awake.

I laugh and ask him, "Where did you learn to say that?" I picture one of Elias's kindergarten classmates saying it during recess and Elias laughing at the sound of the words before repeating it as he watches the kids run around the playground from his perch on the platform above the slide.

No response.

For all his words, he is often unable to follow the give and receive of a conversation, especially with questions that ask him to recall or project. Past and future events elude him as he turns, points, and asks: "What's that?"

Sometimes I love his present focus as it shifts me into a more sensory awareness of my immediate surroundings. This moment. This breath.

So on this Friday I guess I want to say happy everyday. Throw away the milestone charts, toss off expectations, forget about "what if" and "if when" and live today. I know its cliche' but maybe it is so because we need to be reminded again and again to be here now. I know I do.

Right here.

Now.

Even if this moment includes a colicky two-month-old baby.

For she won't be two months for long.

And Elias, oh Elias, there's nothing delayed, impaired or different about him if I drop my sense of time, my ideas of what is supposed to be, and just embrace the quirky impish boy before me, just hold him and sigh. For he is here. 

For now.

Ssshhhh!

Its past midnight. And I'm awake.

But.

No-one else in the house is.

No-one is crying. Or nursing.

At least not yet.

Why am I awake?

Because i just returned from a late-night hockey game and man oh man does it feel good to use my body for something besides procreating, gestating, incubating, birthing, recovering, feeding, or holding...

Damn.

She's up.