Endings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnQ8N1KacJc&feature=player_embedded

So a long time ago, as the world watched the last episode of  Seinfeld and this poignant song played in the background, I knew in my bones my marriage was over.I haven't told anyone that before, until today. It took another three years for my knowledge to become reality. But that night, standing in my living room with my newborn, a 20 month old and a 3 year old and the neighbor who came to watch with me because my husband had gone to VT, in an emergency jaunt to return a table to his father, something inside me knew. That emergency jaunt was a huge sign, we, like most,  had watched most of Seinfeld together over the course of our life. Missing the last one, the one the world turned into, yeah something was over. "Another turning point a fork stuck in the road." "Something unpredictable but in the end was right."
" yada yada yada, & I mentioned the bisque"

This week, Thursday to be exact, another TV show ends, coinciding with another ending in my life. The kids and I were late to " The Office". My brother Sean mentioned it to me one year at Christmas, we watched an episode or two but it was mean. I was still getting over how mean Napoleon Dynamite was, I wasn't ready for Dwight & Jim & Michael. Then, on a vacation when the kids needed to get out of the sun in the middle of the day, we got hooked. We looked forward to our "Office" siesta each day. So much so that when we came home, we Netflixed all the past seasons and marathon watched them.

This was back when Netflix was on computers, and we hunkered down in my office to my 18 inch desk top to watch back to back episodes from the end of school Friday to late Saturday night. On these nights, when I see my children's faces for all of 20 minutes over dinner, these memories are sweet.

Their bodies squeezing into the love seat with me, fighting over who gets to sit next to me, "HA "very different from the four of us and two dogs fighting for inches on my king sized bed, and compressing their bodies so as not to brush up against me by accident.

So we watched. We pulled " Jim's" on each other, we cheered for Pam & Jim to get together, we laughed at Dwight's blind devotion to Michael, we were blown away by the writing and creativity, we cried when Michael left (OK that was just me, but they wondered if it would still be as good), we worried about the fate of Pam & Jim's relationship when Brian the camera man seemed interested and Jim was busy with his new company.We talked about what it takes to make relationships work, even make believe ones. It brought us together for one night a week for half and hour. Nick watches when Matt is not around, for hours on end. We have several board games, a few T-shirts, Dwight squishy heads and know what episode is coming before the openning credits play.

And this week, it's over.
 And Alex is leaving.
 Not this week, but since " The Office" is one of the only things that anchors him to this house, and AP exams are over, I'm thinking I may be seeing the back of his head more than anything else soon.
This Thursday, I will savor every moment of the last two hours of "The Office", and the four of  us hunkered together in the same 6X6 space. I am confident I will cry, and they will role their eyes. This is a TV show ending for them, and a turning point for us as a family.
And I can honestly say I had the time of my life.

Must have done something good

I've been sick, have basically not left my bed since Saturday at 6 pm. What started as a sore throat ended up kicking my butt with body aches, congestion, dizziness and just general bluk, blah and other details not needed to share.
I don't get sick, well rarely, and when I do, I do not stay in bed, But I cancelled ten clients on Monday, so that shows how badly I felt. I'm not writing this to complain, but to celebrate my boys,
As the curmogenly adolescent angst is a constant present in my home. It is very nice to experience what I hope is the men they are becoming.
Michael stopped on a dine every time I texted him with " let dogs out/ in" " Puffs please"  " I need an ice pack" Can you put socks on my feet" He never complained, he kept his distance, but was Johnny on the spot when I asked for something. Even tried to turn that sock thing into a tickling situation, which was not well timed.

Alex was up at Uconn checking out that possibility. Nick was at a sleep over but I texted him when I woke up Sunday morning and realized I could not get out of bed. He came home immediately to check on me then went back out to CVS to tell the pharmacist my symptoms and get their recommendations for my medications. He brought them back to me and sat with me all day, while I slept fitfully on and off. Whenever I woke up, he was sitting there next to me, when he didn't have his own life to take care of. Right up to 8 o'clock when he normally goes in to bed. He texted with Adele expressing concern over my lack of appetite, and the calvary arrived with more food and drink than i could eat in a week. Nick stopped by again last night before going out on a date to check on me again, and just hung out with me for 15 minutes.
Alex checked in and asked if there was anything he could do for me, and Jane held me accountable for going to the dr and gave me things I need to be doing.

So even during moments of yuck, bluk and grosseess. Life is good.

fight with laughter

I've been quiet, I know. Since 12/14 I have focused on the wounded coming into my practice, my family's recovery, my friends', my town and my own. I felt that I had nothing significant to add. The common voice of reasonable guns laws booms loudly, mental health needs and acts of kindness are prominent and that is true and rightfully placed in center stage.  Then Boston happened. And you know what, I am done. I am done allowing the sadness to win. The lesson of "look for the strawberries" solidified. In all things we must look for the good, we must stay focused on the uplifting we must stay connected.

And we have to find ways to laugh, reasons to laugh. So here are a few of the moments that living this life, riding in cars with these boys, have brought to me.

My youngest, my poky puppy, as I like to call him, has long existed on a different plain from the New England stress fast paced existence of myself and his brothers. I see this as a good thing for him. Although I have been known to threaten to glue his shoes to his feet since he can never find them from afternoon when he gets home from school til the next morning. And I do not understand the missing beats in time between a request and it's execution, where he seems frozen just considering what has been asked of him. Along with his mellow approach to involvement in life, is his mellow approach to personal hygiene. Not to the point of public acknowledgement, until now, but certainly an issue in the family. On a particular day when he decided to ignore my suggestion to shower, I beseech ed him, to at least put on some deodorant. That evening, while watching one of "our" shows, he told me he thought he was allergic to the deodorant, it had burned his pits for the first three periods of the day. I paused for a nanosecond to consider this possibility, then I was overcome with laughter. I shook, and could not speak, He started laughing to with contagion but didn't know what we were laughing at. When I was able to regain composure, I asked him to go look at what he put on, I was pretty sure it was the Icy/Hot roll on gel I had purchased for him at Christmas. It was.

Then there was the time I was picking up my poky puppy from an event down the road. We were gone no longer than 15 minutes. In that time his brothers decided to work together and rearrange his bedroom in it's entirety, and hide his most revered possessions in Easter eggs that they placed around the room. Their high jinx did not end there. I was an intended victim of the old, rubber band the spray nozzle at the kitchen sink prank, only it was facing #2 son when it went off, LOL!!! And the trusted, yet poorly executed plastic wrap over the toilet prank, he used blue painters tape to secure the weather resistant window plastic wrap to the toilet.(~ he couldn't find the plastic wrap) And finally his older brother walked into a wall of plastic wrap when going into his closet, not sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but it all had us all laughing and giddy with anticipation of the next prank. Until, until I found my missing make-up and cell phone charger in a bowl of jello on April 3rd.

So I leave you with this, find things to laugh about. Laughter is healing. Laughter is an anecdote. And when you don't see them, create them. Or I can send my boys over for some poorly executed stunts. That's be fun too.

Here & Now

I have not blogged since the events of 12/14/12. At times I have had thoughts but nothing coherent. I have had rants, but did not feel it would be a positive addition to anything. I have had grief and despair, but nothing you have not had yourself. Today I had a thought I think I can speak to.

In addition to the lives that were lost, we talk about the innocence that was lost. Children, adults, police, EMT's seeing things, hearing things no one should have to see and hear. Our collective hearts ache for them.
The changes in them, crawling back into the saftey of mom & dad's bed at night, fears, the erie quiet some have come to wear like a cloak. I have talked with countless people about the grey they feel, the numbness, being frozen, or the darkness of their despair. And now, children who never gave life a second thought worry.
Some worry "he" will come back, into their school, their home, their room. He is already in their heads & nightmares. When talking of stealing of innocence, I am struck with what he took was our "here & now".
While we wonder, fear and worry about what will happen in our schools, we are projecting to the future. When we can't get to sleep at night, and are tossing and turning we are having nightmares of the past and or worrying about the future.
In my posts on facebook in the days and weeks following the murders I started most with "Breathe". I knew I was holding my breath, I felt it was a safe assumption you were too. By forcing ourselves to breathe & count, we force ourselves to be in the Here & Now. We feel the air come in through our nose, feel our chest expand, hear the sound of our breathe, are counting in our head. All Here & Now. And in that moment we are not in fear, or memory, we are Here.
Here & Now is/are ( someone help me with that one) the only place happiness exists. The only place peace exists. Our children, going through their day absolutley LIVE in the Here & Now. And as they get older we admonish them for it " Don't you THINK about the consequences before you make that decision?" " Didn't you plan for your homework this weekend, when it was assigned on Friday?". Because,as adults, we strive to live in the here & now while planning for the future. It a tough skill.
But little kids LIVE there, and it's where they are supposed to be, completely absorbed in learning, listening, finger painting, kickball. We need to support them, and ourselves to get back to the Here & Now,
Joy is healing. Joy hangs out in the Here & Now. So does Laughter.
I am not always there. I am struggling, at times, to get back to my center as well. But if we follow the children, if we allow them to show us how to get back to Here & Now, we will all be better off.

Eyes Wide Open

My heart is broken. Dumb ass #1 &#2 decided to be adolescent cliches. I thought they were better than that. I was wrong. I go away once per year with a friend for some pre holiday elfin goodness up in New Hampshire. We shop the outlets, decorate her house for the Holiday, have Christmas music playing & wrap everything in sight. We've been doing it for several years now. So we plan it on a weekend they are with their dad. #1 was assigned to take care of our dogs. he will be 18 in ten weeks, I thought is was something he could handle.

What I did not count on was the phone call at 1:20 am that the police were at my house, which was filled with 17 or so teenagers, and looking for someone who had knocked over a mailbox. I wasn't sure if it was about my mailbox, or why the police did not care about 17 kids being in MY HOUSE without adult supervision. They knew I was in New Hampshire, I am told.

#2 devised a plan to be unsupervised and do all the things unsupervised adolescents do. He had worked this up for a while ahead of time.

#1Stopped the car for the mailbox tackler, and brought his array of friends to also do the things unsupervised adolescents do. They did this without knowledge of each other intent I am told, and as evidenced by #1 dropped #2 off where he had lied to his father he was staying.

The mailbox can be fixed, the holes punched in my in my wall in the basement will be fixed. No charges will be filed in the days before the college acceptance emails come in, so WHEW.

Then there is the level of betrayal that is harder to fix, and the utter denial on the part of the parents that is mind blowing. I called every parent  whose number I could find, whose child was at my house, Univited by me, and unknown by me. I informed them of what I was aware of about what adoelscent activities had taken place. The younger parent sect, most of them, responded appropriately, and I have gotten , what I am sure were hand shaking phone calls from most of the kids to apologize for disrespecting  me  and  my home.  I give them credit for that and hope it was a growing experience. What they do to and with their bodies is between them & their parents. I did have one woman demand that I have FACTS ( about an event I was not present at) before she asked her son about his participation. I understand, coincidentally, the flu that had him throwing up in her fridge helped her change her mind. That was not a fact, it's what I heard.

What frightened me MORE was the lack of response from the parents of DRIVING teens. " Oh no, not my son" was the response from more than one. I got a " we don't have that in my house." from one mom. to which I responded , "It didn't happen at your house!". I had a 45 minute conversation with parents ( Jane said it sounded like I was doing therapy) who wanted to understand why I was so upset and wanted to know where the kids had gotten the " stuff:" from. They felt better to let it go and assume teens will be teens. I told them I was not interested in attending any child's funeral or sentencing hearing, so I was not comfortable with their stated philosphy that no matter what we do they will find away around it ~so do nothing.
I am aware a teens' job is to find a way around it,  I also believe our job is to make the OBSTACLE COURSE AS DIFFICULT AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.  Then after much deliberation with each other,  they told me of a few incidents this summer, but the kids were told not to do it again, so they felt like they had handled it. I nearly lost it. Jane sid she didn't hear a single " Jimminy Crickets," my choice swear word, out of me all weekend and actually while we were wrapping present I actually told her to put something in the F"ing Christmas bag". Point being I was as close to loosing it as I have ever been. My brother even called me several times as I was making the five hour drive back to CT to make sure I was safe because I was so upset.

We are NOT helping each other by pretending our kids aren't making bad choices and endangering their futures. We are NOT being the villiage I want to be in when we laugh at teenage hijinx. You know what mom always said " It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, or killed, or raped, or pregnant"  I am not keeping this quiet to avoid embarrassment. I have nothing to be embarrassed about, neither do you, unless you gave your child what they brought to my house. That would be a different conversation, and one better had with police and your own therapist. The only way to keep them safe is to be open with them and each other about what is going on.

 As anyone who reads this knows, I do a lot with and for my kids, & their friends. I place a lot of value on the preventative activities. And it still happened.

My children are being dealt with, it will be a long, difficult road. Their father & I will be right beside them for a while making sure they relearn the steps they are supposed to be taking, and reinforcing why the ones the took were not in their best interest. ( Sound ominous doesn't it?) What concerns me are the kids who also made really bad choices who will be out this Friday and Saturday night, repeating the behaviors from last weekend because their parents do not want to admit what their kids are up to.

Their is big talk over this damn mailbox., even the parents were hyperfocussed on that.  Forgive me, I understand tackling a mailbox ( dumbass~ you know who you are & I know you read my posts) is a federal offense. Mailboxes can get fixed in no time compared to the potential ramifications of babies, or drunk driving or drug dependency ( these are not facts, just here say). WAKE UP FOLKS! I know my eyes are wide open now.

I am angry, mindblowingly dissappointed ,sad & feel betrayed. My kids are on radio silence ( so stop texting them)  & lockdown indefinately. Gone are the days of Mrs Roche's chocolate chip pancakes on a Saturday morning, and " Sure you can have them over". Gone are the bring a friend with you trips to Cape Cod, or NYC or anywhere for that matter. And that really makes me sad. I like these kids, but I am not taking on anymore liability than I have to.

Most of the parents I have spoken to end the call by saying " they are good kids". I am not sure if they are Sure they are, good kids make bad choices, it's what it's all about, I am in what my friend  wise older therapist friend Betsy calls the " homocidal stage" still. I trust it will pass, at some point. A broken heart has jagged edges and my kids will be feeling those edges for sometime to come.

Don't hate me cause I'm into Christmas

I've been getting flack, from all different places. Some people who know me well know Christmas is a month long celebration in my house. I wish I could completely explain why I am happier, smiling more, dancing around the house & singing for the whole month of December. I can't explain it, but it ain't broken & I am not going to fix it. A good many of my presents are wrapped thanks to the first snow storm of the season ruining an entire evening of clients, I wrapped all of Adele's gifts also, cause I was going through withdrawal. Nick and I spent the day putting up Christmas lights yesterday. He was awesome! Never a moment of frustration or swearing at the Christmas lights. Several trips to the store to add more lights to our collection, listening to Christmas carols all the way. I could not get my other two to come out and admire. They complained " it's not even Thanksgiving!"  Comments on facebook were the same. But lets break this down folks.

Thanksgiving for ( most) women: Up early cooking, cooking cooking, setting a pretty table, cooking, back ache, timing things to come out so most things will be warm, over eating, clearing the table, cooking dessert,  cooking some more , eating dessert then cleaning ~& lots of that. More back ache.

For guys ( most) _ football food~ it's all good.

Since I am the former gender, I prefer to skip this particular holiday and concentrate on the fun , excitement and good mood I enjoy for the rest of holiday season. Maybe if I loved to cook I might feel differently. I prefer singing, wrapping presents, thinking about what will make someone surprised and happy.

Christmas Letter 2012

Imagine the writing inside this lovely background

                For Stacey,

Twas the weeks before Christmas and all through Facebook

“Hey I didn’t get a letter?!” was the posting ,   what a hook!

So out to the computer I flew like a flash

Opened up Microsoft word, 2012 to rehash

Perhaps embarrassed by good fortune the author delayed,

Puerto Rico, Costa Rica & Cape Cod she had stayed

One trip was all women friends celebrating a big 4 Oh,

Although with 50 around the corner, wondering where we will again go

College trips with #1, pressure and tension,

“I feel stress whenever I see you!,” was his exclamation

Luckily that is over, accepted already,

Waiting on a few more .  Marketing for #2 coming in steady.

All three boys are in high school, and will finally be a team

Basketball for the winter, happy they seem.

Business is booming, and changes perhaps coming

As long as referrals keeps my electricity humming

Alex is slowly returning from teen cavedom, as Michael descends

Oh well, it was fun While it lasted, these parenting  trends

 After all, our children aren’t ours

We just pay for their lessons, medical bills & cars

Michael is now fencing, Alex & Nick work

Scorekeeping at basketball, responsibilities not to shirk

Not much planned for the New Year

College decisions to make

Watching him go, I know, my heart , it will break

New adventures for Alex, & for us left behind

I may be crying in next year’s letter, hope you don’t  mind.

With gratitude & appreciation for your friendship and fun

Hoping your holiday season is a wonderful one!

Merry Christmas!