Schoooooooool’s out, for, summer….schoooool’s out for-ever…..
Well, not quite. To stem the spread of COVID-19, many states are shutting down schools for the next three weeks. That leaves me with Blondie, Biff, and Bash every day while Bo goes to work (until they close that). I’ll need to teach online. They’ll need to do homework online. Everything will have to be done at home, period. No zoos, no museums, no libraries. Just us and our computers so long as the Internet holds. Maybe a park, too, if the day’s nice, which ain’t lookin’ too good this week.
In a word:
As a Wisconsinite who studied in Minnesota, I have no problem utilizing this phrase.
At least we managed to get a visit in at the library on Saturday before they closed today. Blondie’s got some novels on wolves, Bash gathered books on building robots with Legos, and Biff stuffed his arms with as many truck books as possible.
Don’t forget all my comic books downstairs, Bo texts me. We’ll make this work.
Not gonna lie–it’s hard to feel that all that positive right now. I’m sitting on my bed, staring out the window like I so often did during those bloody months of post-partum depression. All those people out there, the birds, the flowers. All right out there, yet another world away from what I feel in the moment. Sitting in this spot again, knowing I can’t take the kids anywhere…damn, but I can feel that depression lurking beneath my bed like a monster out of Calvin and Hobbes.
We’ll make this work.
Okay. We’ll make this work.
I know you’re out there, fellow parents, wondering how the hell you’re going to make this work, but you will because you must. We all must.
It won’t gel right away. I’ve already written today off with its lousy trips to the grocery store and dentist (“Where’s the pizza? We can’t make muffins without eggs! I want a toy EVERY DAY! I’m going to race through all the dentist chairs and spin them like crazy!”). But we can’t write off the next three weeks. Tomorrow morning I’m going to get the kids up a little while after their normal wake-up time, and at breakfast, we’re going to make a plan for reading time, creating time, play time, cleaning time, screen time, the lot. Schedules are vital for sanity around here, especially with twins who suffer from Sensory Processing Disorder. Biff especially thrives on the order he expects in his classroom, and now EVERYthing is in disarray. Bash doesn’t necessarily fear failure right now, but how will he react to online school work? And Blondie bummed because as of right now, her piano recital, her choir stuff, her play dates…all cancelled.
And then there’s me, who was so determined to finish her short fiction and share it this week, continue her Star Wars analysis.
We’ll make this work.
That starts with chucking the pessimism.
Let’em have their bears powered by fart rockets today with commercial breaks featuring poop pizzas. Tomorrow, we build the plan for a new normal. Tomorrow, we will make this better.
“But I don’t KNOW what to do, I don’t KNOW!” Bash sits between me and the occupational therapist, head in his hands. Tears run down his nose and splatter on “Glass Man,” the Unthinkable that blows a small problem way out of proportion. The space after I can defeat Glass Man by____ is blank.
Click here for more on the Unthinkables, a unique approach for kids to overcome behavioral/social issues.
“All I know is ask the teacher for help!”
The therapist and I trade looks. Bash was all fun and smiles for the initial physical activities, but now that we’re talking about tackling disruptive behaviors, he’s shrinking in his chair. The kid so fearless on the trapeze and crash pad is curled up and shaking, his glasses on the table streaked with dried tears.
Inside I ache, on the verge of crumbling just as he. His hands are too small to be holding his head like that. He shouldn’t feel the Fear like this so soon in life. This is the kind of Fear that crushes imagination, courage, hope.
I should know, carrying the burden as I do now. But not then. Back then I feared climbing a tree, sure, but not reading with my classmates. I may have feared taking my bike down that vertical drop of a gravel road to the park, but I never worried so much about my math that I threw away my test and hid in the school basement, only to find out later I had gotten every answer right.
I cannot solve this for him, I tell myself time and again as I stroke Bash’s back, doing my damndest to keep my outsides calm as the therapist tries to look into Bash’s face.
“But you did such a great job on Energy Hare-y!” she says, her voice just bubbly enough to be excited without patronizing. Her freckled face and ponytail give her the look of a high school baby-sitter, though her diplomas on the wall reflect a solid ten years of medical education. “You said you should take a break, and that’s just the thing to help a body get the wiggles out and find new focus.”
“This sounds an awful lot like Rock Brain,” I add, pointing to another Unthinkable. “He’s got you stuck real hard.”
Yup, there’s a whole Rogues Gallery of these guys.
Stuck is right. For every tough behavior—inability to sit still, outbursts over small problems, fleeing in fear of failure—Bash’s answer has been, “Ask the teacher for help.”
Sounds like the right thing to do, doesn’t it? Ask for help. I tell my students that every week. I’ve told Blondie, Bash, and Biff to do this when tackling something new and/or hard. Never be afraid to ask for help!
This is even truer when it comes to matters of mental health. Illnesses like depression and anxiety can isolate a person and make them feel incapable of connecting to another human being. I experienced this first-hand during my years of post-partum depression. Holding one baby boy while another slept, I’d stare out the bedroom window to see other people walking dogs, grilling food, swimming in pools. They were all neighbors, yet impossibly far away. The walls of the house seemed impenetrable. I felt like I was losing my sense of Self, of hope. I’d pray to get through the day, hour, minute without succumbing to the voices inside telling me how easy it was to just walk out of the house and not come back, to make the boys cry for a reason…
Though my sons’ birth cracked open the darkest pieces of me, they were also my inspiration to hammer those pieces to dust. Now Bash is facing his own darkness, one that tells him over and over that he is stupid, that he can’t do anything, that his teacher will be mad because he’s wrong, he’s wrong in everything, that he can’t do ___ because he’s never done it before so he’ll fail and everyone will laugh.
I want so badly to lift the Fear off his shoulders and carry them myself. I want to hold his hand and guide him to the right answers at the right time. I want to see him succeed…
But he will not succeed if I do everything for him.
Some battles must be fought alone. We can provide the tools, the support, the whatever-else-needed, but in the end, the fight is Bash’s and only Bash’s.
It’s not an easy truth for writers to face, either.
Fear looms over us with every submission and book review. For some of us, Fear grips us before we even put the story to the page. I don’t have the time to write well like real authors. I can’t afford to spend time on something that’ll fail. It will fail. No way anyone could like something I write.
It’s a Charlie Brown moment—we just can’t do anything right, not even what we love.
Better to run and hide our creative selves from the world than face the disapproval and derision sure to come.
The therapist gently tugs on Bash’s arm. “Let’s do another break, huh? How about riding the scooter down the ramp five times, and then we’ll try beating Glass Man?”
Bash slowly rolls off my lap. His body’s bent forward so low his hands practically touch the floor as he approaches the scooter. He flops belly first onto the scooter, his legs crooked up into the air. He grunts little grunts, his fingers tap little taps on the scooter, floor, ramp.
He pulls. Just a little. Pulls more. Just a little. Pulls the first two wheels onto the ramp. Just a little.
“Let me help you,” the therapist says, but Bash moves past her hands. Back toward her hands. Away from her hands again. The ramp’s only four feet, and Bash covers those first three feet a lot—up and down, side to side. Yet he does not give up. When he slaps the sticker at the top of the ramp with his palm, he gets there himself.
Bash and Hoppy almost gave me bunny ears for this pic, the goofs 🙂
It’s just a few seconds down the ramp and across the room. But it’s enough to crush the sadness and fill Bash with wild and happy giggles. He runs back to the worksheet, “I can breathe!” he says, and shows us how he can fill his tummy with air and blow out his fingers like birthday candles.
The therapist claps. “That’s great! Say, that’s the perfect way to beat Glass Man.”
Bash grins and hops over to his sheet. He writes BELLY BIRTHDAY BREATHS so big it covers the picture of Glass Man completely.
It’s another Charlie Brown moment, when one’s determination finally eclipses the Fear.
We find the breath in us to move forward across a land of glass and rock and discover we are not such fragile stuff at all. We are capable of incredible feats of imagination and bravery, for there is no greater Fear than the Fear we carry within. Only when we shirk that Fear can we share stories from the deepest, truest places, the kinds of places readers yearn to find.
So take up that kite, writers. You may get tangled, the kite may get torn, but there is always tomorrow and the promise of another chance to fly, and fly far.
Oh, I kid the kid. She’s been working very hard at school and on the piano. Considering she has a few days off coming up, though, I may very likely put her to work here. Mwa ha ha ha!
Even though this day’s not even half over, I just had to write now because I ticked a victory against anxiety this morning!
Hmm. Maybe I should call this the “Climbing Anxiety.”
Anyway.
We woke up to another messy snow, but thankfully Dane County’s trying to keep all the kids in school. Whew! This winter’s already given us twice as much snow as the 2017-2018 winter season, so it’s nice to know that the schools aren’t going to shut down just because yet another couple powdery inches have fallen. Bo left before dawn at 6am, and I worked on getting the kids up and ready for school.
6:30 news: There are reports of an accident near the intersection of the interstate and highway___
Me: OH MY GOD IT’S BO HE’S DEAD
Hang on, Jean.
He’s an extremely careful driver.
He just had the car in for a tune-up.
He’s been driving this route for years now. He knows how the truckers behave.
He’s driven through worse snow than this, too.
If you don’t hear from him in 2 hours, check his work.
For now, focus on the kids.
I simmered down. Got the kids ready. Kept drinking water and muttering to myself about what I wanted to accomplish today, what I should discuss with the teachers at the PT conferences tomorrow. Made sure the phone was nearby at all times, just in case.
I did NOT have a panic attack.
My chest hurt, yes, and I had to do lots of deep breathing, but I didn’t get dizzy or develop tunnel vision or have a racing heart.
Ten minutes to eight: Bo’s at work, safe and sound. Roads were fine for most of the way.
I said a prayer of thanks and saw the boys off to school. I got ready to text him a quick grocery list, especially keen for him to find a tea I saw recommended for handling anxiety.But then I saw a winter weather advisory on my phone: freezing rain was coming through the county today starting at midday and going on and off into the evening.
Bo would be driving in that.
He shouldn’t be stopping at a store, Jean.
But every time I drive in snow–
Shut that noise. You CAN get there and back before the freezing rain comes.
You’ve driven in way worse crap and lived to tell the tale.
You have to face this, Jean.
It’s now or never.
(Sorry, that BOW BOW noise did actually enter my head at the moment. Better than “Final Countdown,” I suppose.)
I get in the car. There’s coffee, water, bad radio, old Christian rock I discovered in a binder from…college?…smelly lip balm.
Okay.
I go it slow and steady towards the interstate. Few cars both going around me, because the hilly country roads are just too damn risky for fast passes. Whatever accident had occurred had already been cleared. I get onto the interstate without sliding.
And fifteen miles later, I’m off the interstate into the hipster town with the hoidy toidy grocery store.
I made it!
It took smearing balm all over the skin under my nose, lots of talking at the radio, and interrogating myself if I actually stole that music from the Christian book store where I worked twenty years ago or legitimately bought it, but I got there.
The hoidy toidy grocery didn’t have the tea I was hoping for, but they did have another from the article that was strongly recommended. I grabbed it, another container of @#^!&$$ almond milk, and some grapes to reward myself for making it this far. I graciously accepted compliments from the cashiers for my Harry Potter hat, and returned to the car.
Time to do it all again.
Me: I got this far. I can do it again.
Damn right you can. You’re halfway there!
(Okay, I openly admit this song only came to me while writing right now and it was too perfect not to use. Who knew Bon Jovi would provide the soundtrack of my day?)
Not one dizzy spell the whole drive home. The worst spell was actually just the last miles to town, where a semi decided to tail my ass on a road covered with windblown snow. But rather than freak out, my old-school driver-self took over, and I just kept it slow and avoided braking unless absolutely necessary.
And lo and behold, I’m home.
Driving’s always going to be a potential trigger for an attack. I accept that. But this morning I proved to myself that I CAN drive despite the weather and despite the fear.
That’s a win if I ever knew one.
Oh! Before I forget: for those of you who’ve read my novel, I’ve been asked to read an excerpt during my keynote. Any recommendations of a bit–ideally without too many cuss words?
Jean Lee's World 