The Weight We Bear

I wanted to tell you about the bridge.

Not about me kicking a kitchen chair across the room, not about pulling Elias off Olive as she screamed, not about throwing him on the floor when he came at me claws raised, not about the marks he left on Olive's wrist and about the way she said: "Mom, I'm not hurt, I'm just scared."

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, we were getting ready to bring Olive to her Learn to Skate program at the Dimond Mall, my Mom called, before we could even get past hello, I heard Olive scream.

"I gotta go," I said, my words traveling from Alaska to Cape Cod before I hung up and threw the phone on the counter.

Elias's nails dug into Olive's wrist before he grabbed a blue plastic cup from her hands and ran it to the sink.

Turns out she was doing "a trick", turning the cup upside down with a paper-towel over the mouth and Elias thought the container was full. In his concrete world there is no reason for a cup to be upside down over a paper-towel.

My defense was down after weeks of relative calm in our household. Its been awhile since my son has raged.

And what set me over the edge was when I thought he'd settled, that he understood she had a right to her creative endeavors and that it was ok for her to dump an empty cup on a paper-towel, she reached for another square and he leapt from his seat and tackled her to the floor.

This is when I threw him off. And when he came after me claws raised.

"Olive go to our room!"

I pushed him away from me and he came at me again, hitting me in the chest, grabbing at my face and I pushed him down. And in that moment, I understood completely how a parent could hurt a kid. I wanted to retaliate.

So I kicked the chair.

"You can't do that!" he yelled.

"I dont want to do that! You can't hurt your sister! You can't try to hurt me!"

Elias stood up and sat on the bench, a sign he was calming down.

"Bud, I don't want to push you. I don't want to hurt you, but I will defend Olive and myself when you act like that." He looked at the floor, tears in his eyes. I could hear Olive crying in our room.

"I need you to breathe, just sit there and breathe, so I can check on your sister."

No-" I walked away before he could finish.

Olive and I snuggled on the recliner in my room. She looked right at my face--there is so much we communicate without words, our eyes able to reveal our feelings, so different than all my moment of mother and son.

"Mom, I'm not hurt I'm just scared."

"I know, Babe, me too."

"I was just doing a trick-"

"Olive, you weren't doing anything wrong. You can be creative. Its Ok. Your brother just sometimes has a hard time when things are used in different ways."

We talked for a bit more about what happened and what she can do when he gets like this. "I thought I could go to another house. Like Grace's?"

Grace lives two doors down, daughter of dear friends, she's known her since birth, "Yeah, there may be a time when I tell you to run to Grace's house."

She sits up: "Can I now?"

At this I know she's moved on from her brother's assault. "No, we have to get ready to go skate."

When we return to the kitchen and I try to talk with Elias about what happened I only get "I don't know" and "No I didn't" as responses. His lack of ownership for his actions and zero sense of remorse act like sandpaper on my heart, slowly rubbing away at my core.

And we still have to go to hockey, the three of us, as Nick flew to Washington for a conference, when all I want to do is close myself in the room and cry.

And so I do, cry that is, in the driver's seat on the way to the rink; and when we wait for the light at the corner of Northern Lights and the Seward Highway, I catch eyes with a young homeless man. I wonder what he thinks of me, this white woman silently sobbing as her two children sit in the back of our Honda Element. I look at him again and this time he looks away first. And then the light turns green.

I fake it through the rest of the day, giving the kids more screen time than I usually would in the afternoon, opening my first beer a little earlier than normal, and I've almost forgotten the ordeal by the time we all snuggle on the couch to read another Magic Tree House story.

But I need to write about it.

Because this too is what it means to be Elias's mom.

 

This and the bridge.

I doubted that my son would be able to construct one when I learned his class would be building them out of popscycle sticks. Since he struggles to work in groups due to his tendency to grab all the materials and crush works in progress, his T.A worked with him, gluing the sticks together as he made the design decisions.

You can imagine my surprise when I learned that on their field trip to UAA's engineering building, of all the bridges made by the 30 plus kids in his class, typical children without rap sheets of diagnoses, without enough labels to fill the board with hundreds of letters mixed together to spell all kinds of limiting words, Elias's bridge held the most weight for its size.

Elias won the contest.

First place.

And of course kids grumbled: But its not fair he had an adult helping him...

No, Ms. Karen stopped them, he made all the decisions, I was just his hands.

And I want to stand up on the rooftop and shout: Not fair, my ass, everything is harder for him, communication, movement, vision, emotions, breath, and yet look what he did, his god damn bridge won, it held 105 pounds before buckling--that's a lot of fuckin' weight to bear.

"Do you like my triple supports?" Elias asked me the night of the field trip, when we sat his bridge on the kitchen table and admired it.

"I do. Was that your idea?"

I hate that part of me still doesn't believe that Ms. Karen didn't design it for him, just like the kids in his class, I can also see him through a lens of incapable.

Elias takes a long time to answer, as he studies his bridge. "No, I heard Ms. Becker suggest it, so I thought I'd give it a try."

And this, the idea of him listening to his teacher, thrills me even more than if the idea came from his own head. I know he's intelligent, but listening and following directions, whew, those are some lofty goals.

My boy built a bridge in a class of typical kids and it boar the most weight.

No shit.

Of course it did.

 

Tonight, as I added toppings to frozen gluten-free pizza, Olive made dance coupons by cutting up the tag to her new witch hat, coloring the back and writing her name on each piece.

"Mom, when you get one of these you get to go in the other room and dance. Which one do you want?"

I chose a blue colored one and walked back towards the Notre Dame game I'd been watching.

"Mom, go in there," she pointed toward what we call the the romp room instead of the livingroom with the TV.

"Oh, I can dance and watch football," I said, shaking my hips as I leaned against the back of the couch, not really in the mood.

Olive went into the playroom where she blasted Free to Be You and Me and before I knew it, I was dancing around in circles with Olive, singing louder than I normally do:

Mommies are people, people with children
When mommies were little, they used to be girls
Like some of you, but then they grew...

Elias looked up from his ipad, from his latest explorations somewhere in Spokane Washington where his Dad flew, but instead of joining our circle as he often does he chose to return to the more predictable world of google maps. A world he can control, where out here in the real one, all we can do is respond, and hope we choose well.

Hope we bend instead of breaking when the weight multiplies, and that at the end of the day, even the hard ones, we find someway to express it.

Comments

[Vicki Beever]

Christy, your grief is palpable, and you have expressed it so eloquently that I sat silently for several minutes after I finished your post.

I hope you never doubt that you and Nick are doing a good - no - excellent! - job of bearing this "weight". No matter how many times it knocks you to the ground, you always manage to crawl out from under it, get back on your feet and continue on. That is the definition of excellency. Be proud of yourself. You deserve it. Vicki in Tennessee

[Kate]

Oh Christy. Reaching out across the distance from New Mexico to Alaska with a big virtual hug. I have been in that dark place. That's when I find myself listening to Coldplay The scientist: nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard. Oh take me back to the start. For me that's my go to hard parenting song. Wish I could be there to watch the kids while you go for a run or have a beer or cry in the shower or whatever helps you. I think you are brave and you're doing a great job in all your realms at home and at work. You are enough.

[Christy]

Vicki thank you so much and the image of you sitting silently after read this post touched my heart. Kate I'm pulling out Coldplay tonight if I need it. I'm happy to report Day two without Dad was better thanks in part to friends watching the kids for me in th morning so I could play soccer. I know me getting away and kicking a ball instead of a chair helped us all. Thank you both for your wonderful words of support!

[Kristen H]

Christy, I so appreciate your honesty and I think you handled everything SO WELL. When I think about parenting in the trenches and how it feels in the moment, your decisions make perfect sense (and kicking the chair got Elias' attention and got him out of his head: he commented on YOUR behavior). Thank you for sharing and know that your readers are keeping you and your lovely, challenging family (whose isn't?!?) in our thoughts. So glad day 2 was better! You all deserved that.

[Jen]

Long-time reader, first-time commenter. Just wanted to say that you write beautifully and I think you're doing a great job as a parent. I admire your strength in dealing with your children and I think you paint a realistic and emotionally compelling picture with your writing. I have three young children, one of whom has some medical issues, and I appreciate that you're so honest and down-to-earth. Thank you for sharing your story.

[Christy]

Kristen you saying that me kicking the chair helped him get out of his head has been hugely helpful, thank you, especially since I noticed the next day that I put a hole in the drywall. One more project...

Jen, thank you for reading and taking a moment to tell me why you enjoy my blog. It helps on those days when i wonder why I feel compelled to write, especially about the harder times, to know my words are reaching others.

We are all in this together even if we feel isolated at times.