Life ... On Its Own Terms

Mimi went down to the beach (to play one day)

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:05:00 +0000

(on our tenth day of vacation)

when Mimi went down to the beach (to play one day)

she searched the seas for mermen and mermaids

(I think she found a few) and

explored grottos and caves as big as her dreams;

she laughed at soaring things high overhead

and marveled at the water,

as wide and as clear as hope.

So, pray tell:

what would you find

in the sea?

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

-- e.e. cummings

Coming ashore

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:04:00 +0000

(on our eighth day of vacation)

We go down to the ocean as the sun tires,
bidding elaborate farewell
to sandcastles,
our day's work.

With dignified acceptance

of the way things must be,

they dissolve into the beckoning tide.

We sing and prance at the edge of the sea

as strangers (in their bridal best)

smile, and kiss, and greet

their tomorrows.

So wrong it's criminal: health.com and alcohol

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:43:00 +0000

I have a horse, and it is very high, and I get up on it regularly. But because this is not a very attractive sight, I generally ride my high horse in private.

But sometimes that ol' buckaroo just kicks its stable down. You know?

I first visited Health.com when a headline slid across my feeder: Alcohol May Protect the Brain During an Accident. Wouldn't you click on that, too?

Alcohol plays a role in 40% of fatal car accidents. Fully half of patients admitted to hospitals with brain injuries were drunk at the time they were injured. (These statistics are well known but no less unsettling.) This study notes that among patients admitted to hospitals with traumatic brain injuries, some have alcohol in their systems and some do not, and a smaller percentage of patients in the drinking group die than in the sober group. The article queries experts but does not argue why this might be.

And then there is, honest to God, a paragraph speculating whether or not it could prove beneficial to administer alcohol to patients who have just suffered a traumatic brain injury.

What's the point here? And from a website promoting Healthy Living/ Healthy Eating/ and Diet & Wellness?

Is Alcohol Actually Good for You? What's Right and Wrong with Drinking is no less cringe-inducing. Readers pose alcohol-related questions, such as "Can a glass a day keep the doctor -- and the pounds -- away?" (yes, if you are a 'well behaved' drinker) and "Does having a drink or two take a toll on my energy?" (no, as long as you're not drinking right before, say, rock climbing or running a marathon).

Then:

Will drinking too much make me age faster?
Lisa Concepcion Giassa, 36, of Bogota, N.J., goes out every other night during the week with the girls for a pitcher of margaritas or sangria, and downs two to three drinks per outing. On the weekends she gets a little more crazy. “For me,” she says, “it’s five drinks and three shots, with water in between.” She prides herself on being the one who can put it away and still have her wits about her. Lisa isn’t oblivious to the immediate dangers—like car accidents or simply falling down—but she’s more worried about premature aging and the risks of a disease like breast cancer or osteoporosis.
What the experts say
Alcohol by itself won’t make Lisa look old before her time. However, Rimm says, “Partiers tend to eat miscellaneous things at the bar (like greasy nachos, cheesy potato skins, and chicken wings) that aren’t great for them,” which can lead to that chunky, middle-age look. People who drink this way are also more likely than nondrinkers to smoke and to breathe in secondhand smoke in bars, which contributes to wrinkles and higher risks of heart disease and cancer. (Alcohol may also dehydrate you, and that’s never good for the skin.)

Oh, honey, no. The experts go on to warn Lisa about the dangers of osteoporosis and breast cancer. Seriously? Lisa's in danger of a lot more than that, and a hell of a lot sooner. If you don't want to point that out, health.com, then don't include her question. Have a little talk in private.

Next up? Alcohol Substitute to Deliver Buzz Without Booze. This, at least, gets only a blurb ("A look at what Health.com editors are reading today") and a link to a site telling us that scientists are working on a new (non-addictive, apparently) benzodiazepine that would foster the pleasant effects of alcohol without the nasty side effects and that could be switched off at the end of the night with a sober-up antidote pill. Oh, yes.

I am absolutely not saying that it's the job of the popular press to monitor our drinking behavior but I absolutely am saying that it is the responsibility of any press calling itself expert in health to be cognizant of its messages. Shame on you, health.com.

Right here where we are

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:33:00 +0000

Mimi meets the Atlantic, October 2007

We're in Florida, my home state, the place I love best in the world. How blessed we are to be here.

I used to do a number of things to keep track of the places I went, from collecting silly airport magnets to stabbing pins into an old National Geographic map that decorated every home I lived in for over a decade. One of my favorites was to stick my feet into any available water bigger than a puddle and think, "The Indian Ocean is much warmer than the Adriatic" while secretly congratulating myself on totting up one more exotic locale, one more stamp on my very full passport.

Maybe because I am lucky enough to have had those experiences I can appreciate, all the more, the soft sand of the only ocean I knew until I was well into my twenties. Because appreciate it I do.

I love it here. We love it here. I am not naive; no one who grew up in the land of hurricanes and shuttle disasters could be totally naive. Merciless dark clouds fouling the waters, creeping toward Florida's shores; unemployment lines stretching into wicked summer sun; inchoate storms swirling off the coast. We're aware. We're doing what we can.

I am also taking time to live in the moment, to practice what I preach, to sink toes into the still virgin sand, thanking Whomever brought it to me and me to it.

For in moments like these it is not necessary to entertain the Big Questions, the Who and the How and the Why. Moments like these require only my presence.

And I am here. Right here.

A day in your life: July 16, 2010

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:51:00 +0000

Greeting the morning with gusto

primping

a favorite used bookstore, upstairs

reading to the bookstore cat (yes, that's Sartre; Bartleby hangs in philosophy)

lunch al fresco

summer evening, whyever not?

"Her early leaf's a flower..."

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:48:00 +0000

Mimi cried this morning when she saw the dying amaryllis

and she asked me to

"make it stay little, like me."

If only I could do such things, my love,

if only I could.

Nature's first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-- Robert Frost

A visit from my inner jerk

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:03:00 +0000

It was only while talking to my sponsor yesterday that we figured out the real reason, we think, behind my over-cooked freak-out at the neurologist's office last Friday. Yes, he pushed drugs I don't want my daughter to take, pushed kind of hard, and yes, it landed close to home. And absolutely yes, abnormal EEGs make parents nervous and a lack of answers is frustrating. But there is more, as there always is.

I didn't like who I became in his office. It's annoying when someone else acts like an idiot but when it's you? It's mortifying. Especially when you notice it happening, see your inner jerk saddling up and riding out, and you realize that, for whatever reason, this time you cannot stop it. You're stuck watching yourself, perched on your own shoulder, cringing in embarrassment at your own self.

I'd gone in with as much information as I'd been able to gather, hoping to follow what he was saying as he explained the results and our options. After his second word, 'drugs,' my head spun and my vision clouded and I dropped back into the worst version of myself: the pompous professor.

I've done that here and there since I was 10 and thought I could drop a bully by calling him a "pusillanimous pipsqueak" in front of his bully buddies but instead of cringing at my mighty vocabulary, he laughed. And everyone else laughed. And then he knocked my books down.

Over the years I've occasionally heard, seen, and felt myself doing that same puffed-up posturing in response to a threat. It's not once worked well. Then simply stop it, you might say, excellent advice, I would reply, but oh, have I tried and I am about as successful at that as I am at stopping my hair from going gray.

I'm only marginally more successful at running for the door when I feel such a spell coming on. This time I at least managed to leave before I used a word I'd read but never heard and had him correct my pronunciation (yes, this has happened) or asked if there was anyone else in the office I could review the test results with (this, too, which is not necessarily obnoxious in theory but I sure made it so).

I really don't like myself in those moments, those "and you can call me doctor, doctor" moments of mine. (No, I haven't actually said that, but I have thought the thoughts.) It's a personality flaw that long pre-dates my addiction, but they thrive on each other's company. A response to extreme stress, a false bravado, a swagger designed to camouflage how badly my knees are shaking.

Sort of like the antics of a 10-year-old bully, with just about as much self-control.

And I'll say it again: No. Drugs. In. My. Daughter.

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 03:02:00 +0000

If you'd suggested to me before yesterday that I might one day find myself in an office, trying to get my daughter to take her feet off of her chair while volleying the suggestions of two doctors and a nurse that we treat Mimi with sleeping pills and tricyclic antidepressants and benzodiazepines, I would have laughed hysterically.

Then came yesterday.

But first came a day in her pediatrician's office a few months ago, when, following a really bad night, I stomped my foot (true) and said I wasn't leaving the building (also true) until we had some idea of how to go about figuring out her persistent sleep terrors.

Terrors are ultimately benign and look a hell of a lot scarier than they apparently are, but seriously, several times a week, in the middle of the night, your child might be ...

agitated but cannot be awakened or comforted
sitting up or running helplessly about, possibly screaming or talking wildly
appearing to not realize you are there even though his or her eyes are wide open and staring
mistaking objects or persons in the room for dangers

B.D. Schmidt, MD, Your Child's Health, Bantam Books

I've talked before about Mimi's sleep terrors, or pavor nocturnus, or partial arousals from non-REM sleep, or whatever -- really super scary disturbances. After I pitched a fit in her doctor's office, we saw an allergist, a rheumatologist, a therapist, a pulmonologist, an otolaryngologist, and a neurologist. I think that's everyone.

My sister, whose now-cancer-free teenager has been screened and scanned for everything as part of his cancer treatment, had warned us that when you poke around enough you're bound to find something, and we found a lot of little somethings. Enlarged tonsils. Convex eardrums. Allergies. Mild asthma. PTSD.

But no real answers to the terrors.

I've now lived the lesson so many have shared: when it's your child, the tension between thrusting her at every doctor who just might have an answer and gathering her in my arms and running for the hills is just about unbearable.

The one test result that caught our attention was her EEG, which wasn't quite right. So we took another look, and then a few more. Those kinds of tests are easy to say yes to because they are non-invasive. I take her in her favorite pajamas to the hospital, plug in her lullaby CD, tuck in her doll, she and I cozy up in the bed and she sleeps through the test. Works a charm.

But there is a blip in her EEG, in the lower left part of her brain, recurrent, always there. We've ruled out the big-bads, tumors and such; at least I think we have. It's terribly disturbing for a neurologist to say, "I don't know" and I have to bite back a rude retort: You're supposed to know. How can you not know? You're not allowed to not know. That's not how this works.

But there we have it. Like the far more common seizure disorders, she will likely age out of this. Like the far more common seizure disorders, there are no real answers, just mitigation of symptoms, at least for a young child.

Their recommendation remains firmly behind the medications: tricyclic antidepressants (been there) and benzodiazepines (done the hell out of that).

No.

One of the doctors looked through her chart and said, But you've immunized her. So you don't stand against medicines on principle.

No.

Do you want to think about it? Because we realize these terrors are very disturbing. We can help.

No.

So we left it there: we'll call if we want to pursue this any further. We have an idiopathic blip on an EEG and a manageable case of sleep disturbances. This is, in part, why I'm staying home, after all.

I am still shaking, the kind of bone-deep vibration that comes when I've been rattled to the core. The kind I definitely can't control and that makes my think my fillings are going to shake loose. This is just surreal, that one year post-rehab I'd be facing the very same drugs but this time they are circling the person who means the most to me.

Irony, perhaps; I choose to think of it like this: If I had no experience with these drugs, then I might have given them to her, following medical recommendations. And then what? But I do know, firmly know, the dangers of those drugs and I do say, firmly say, that those drugs are not going in her body. I can stand between her and this danger, and for that, at least, I am grateful.

A day in your life: July 7, 2010

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:33:00 +0000

"doing your letters" over breakfast

a quick trip to the mall

(and a reminder why I don't mind that we never go to the mall.)

(what is it with dressing room lighting, anyway?)

but there sure is something about a totally decadent treat,

a warm and chewy storebought pizza

...and once again we remember why it's off limits: decadent deliciousness but zero energy

(good thing you're not the designated driver)

swim lessons at our second home, the Y

painting at sunset (or, repurposing the clothesline for the afternoon)

Letter to my Daughter, June 2010

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Dear Mimi,

I'll get the unfun part over first. Your ophthalmologist told us your eyes are just not responding. The effort it takes for you to focus up close, say, on numbers or letters, is the same effort it takes me to cross my eyes and hold them there, and it's just as tiring. You may not learn to read until your eyes get better.

We'll keep doing our very best to ward off surgery, I promise you, although I have to admit that sometimes, when you don't want to wear your patch and you're rubbing your reddened and weary eyes, the quick-fix of surgery begins to seem just perhaps like a good thing. But not for more than a minute; I promise that, too.

We spent a scrumptious Father's Day on the beach with your 2-year-old cousin, your uncle (your dad's brother), and your aunt, 5 months pregnant with twins. We shared a laugh -- four years ago none of this was even a gleam and now kids are popping out everywhere. And what amazing kids you are. You and Sammy are just now discovering each other but I know, and I am grateful for this, that though you are an only child you and your cousins are as close as close can be.

It was one of those bluebird days, when the sun is out but it's not too hot and the food is good and smiles come naturally. A special day by all accounts.

This month you took the stage for the very first time. Your dance recital was such fun. Having been in or around about a million of them, I knew all of the things that could go wrong (and, of course, obsessed on those) but not a one of them happened.

You held your breath as you took your costume out of its bag, and you wore it with great care. You held your head so I could spray your hair stiff. You waited patiently in the green room. You separated easily enough (a few times breaking ranks to "whisper Daddy a secret" before the show started didn't count) and when it came time to perform, you lifted your chin and pointed your toe and gave every dance your very most. Everyone we shared the video with remarked on your amazing focus and concentration and that is true, you were in a zone, but much more importantly you smiled and laughed and clearly enjoyed your time in the spotlight.

This month you got a big-girl swing. It's slowed you down just a little bit, the transition up from the swing with the seatbelt, but you won't stay slowed for long (and when you pump your legs you have perfect form, so your days of insisting you don't know how to are numbered. But I'll always give you a push if you ask me to.)

Your dad put up your first swing as soon as you got home; you took to it immediately and swinging as high and as fast as possible remains your favorite thing to do. When you were buckled into the all-around sturdiness of your old swing, I'd give you a hearty shove and you would howl your distinctive laugh (we call it your whiskey laugh) throwing your head back so your hair caught the best of the breeze.

I always feel in moments like these that I can briefly glimpse you, all grown up, stepping up to a microphone or climbing a mountain or boarding an airplane bound for faraway lands, shoulders square and eyes glistening, straight and tall and ready for whatever adventure lies ahead.

Love,

Mama

I would not choose this, no, not at all...

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:48:00 +0000

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: make no mistake, this is not the life I would have chosen.

I was talking to my sister this morning and it was a happy-happy conversation and she casually mentioned a wine tour. It fit naturally, innocuously, between brunch on Saturday and church on Sunday, but it hit me right between the eyes. Wineries are at the top of the list of places I can't ever see myself going, places rife with a poisonous combination of pleasant memories and lethal threat.

But that's not the main thing about this life I am now leading, this life I would not choose. That's just the selfish part.

I would not choose to have my mother visit me in a psychiatric hospital.

I would not choose to disappear from my husband's life, tossing up my responsibilities like a kid hurtling the pages of his notebook as he catapults from school on the first day of summer vacation.

I would not choose to set free the rumors that are so painful precisely because they are true.

(and if you're thinking, right about now, that I did choose these things, that I acted and spoke and did things that led me here, surely, under my own steam, if you're thinking this then we do need to talk. Email me.)

I would not choose to contaminate -- perhaps fatally -- my career.

I would not choose to spend so much time away from my little daughter that her appearance startles me. Her dress, her shoes, her haircut -- all different from the last time I'd seen her, all shaped by people who are not me.

I would not choose to upset absolutely every single relationship in my life, from the deepest to the most banal to future relationships I haven't even formed yet.

I would not choose to be staring down another holiday weekend, thankful for a year's sobriety but knowing so many like me are are suffering, and that their families are suffering, because they are still so deep in the grip of addiction.

No.

I am grateful for so much, so very very much, and this is in no way diminished for me by knowing I did not choose this. In fact I often hold these thoughts secret, knowing they'd be painful to some who would think, understandably but incorrectly, that to acknowledge them challenges the gratitude, the moments of very real grace, the happiness I am finding here.

I am hopeful and confident and I can choose to focus on these things, this is a choice I value and it is there that I live.

Most of the time.

For it remains a truth that on those occasions when the past catches me unaware, when I look back with my new eyes to glimpse through a dirty glass the wreckage and the scars, in moments when my new legs wobble and my new heart pains and my damaged brain presents me with the enormity of it all, in those moments I am aware that I would not choose this, no, not at all.

The short, miserable life of Mimi's chore chart

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:29:00 +0000

I've read that Mimi is at the age to introduce the chore chart, to help her begin to internalize life's little habits, the building blocks of hygiene, nutrition, housekeeping. By five, the wisdom goes, she should be managing simple routines without nagging. This article sums up this approach well:

Incentives are one of the most effective ways to teach children responsibility because they allow children to associate such tasks with a concrete reward. A healthy treat or stickers are affordable and easy rewards. A chore chart can be used to help children see their accomplishments. -- Education.com/

I made a pretty little chart, with the recommended number of categories for her age, things like eating her vegetables and getting the placemats and napkins for the table and staying put after going to bed. I found some sparkly stickers and set her reward -- a much coveted Ariel doll -- on top of her dresser. We debuted her chore chart Saturday morning.

We shredded it Saturday night.

By 10 AM that day she'd dumped her toy bin and cleaned it up again four times, eaten half a bag of carrots, brushed her teeth seven times and was back in her pajamas, snuggled under the covers, waving her completed chore chart. A week's chores in three hours.

We spent the day explaining how it worked, that she got one sticker a day for each category. Our explanations could not breach the barrier of her preschooler logic:

"I'm ready for my Ariel doll now."

"Don't I get a sticker for every carrot?"

"I should get a sticker for every carrot."

"But why don't I get a sticker for every carrot?"

"How many stickers do I get if I eat your carrots, too?"

"I should get stickers for Teddy Grahams. I ate a lot of Teddy Grahams today. And that other day."

"I will wash my hands. IF I can get a sticker."

"I'm ready for my Ariel doll now."

"There. I brushed my teeth. Now?"

"Look at me. Look at me! LOOK at me! I even put my toothbrush away. NOW?"

"But I go potty all the time. I should get stickers for that. And two for wiping, remember? Why don't we do that anymore?"

"I don't want to go to the playground. I want to stay here and earn my Ariel doll."

"Can I nap with her in my bed? I won't play with her. I'll just dream about her."

"But how can I clean up my toys if you won't let me mess them up again?"

"What else can I do to earn my Ariel doll? Whatelse whatelse whatelse whatelse whatelse?"

"What if I just hold her a minute."

"I'm ready for my Ariel doll now, PLEASE."

Mistake number 1: we showed her the reward. I thought it would make it more concrete if she knew what she was working toward. Instead, it made her crazy.

Mistake number 2: we didn't anticipate ways her problem-solving skills could challenge our scheme. It hadn't occurred to me that it would occur to her to dump her toy bin over and over and over so she could clean it up over and over and over.

And she is guileless, I believe, not so much scheming as trying earnestly to understand how this system works so she can employ it to best advantage. She thinks she's an efficiency expert, a champion capitalist, why earn $1 when you can earn $100. Somewhere in there she's beginning to grasp the art of the con, of course, but she's not quite there yet.

Of course my mother laughed and my sister groaned and cooler heads prevailed, arguing that she should do chores not for rewards but because she, you know, lives here. Like these folks suggest.

I'm with them. And the chore chart? Forgotten already.

Tossed up with a genuine heart

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:16:00 +0000

I pray. A lot. Not the stations-of-the-cross kind of prayer or the "JAY-zus!"kind of prayer but a quiet version all my own, a moment of stillness I can breathe into no matter what storm is cycloning around me. In that little space I ask for help or I give thanks and often I do both.

I’m not completely clear on to whom or Whom I’m sending these thoughts but, in my belief, God will catch them as long as they’re tossed up with a genuine heart. And I’ve discovered that, these days, my heart feels much more genuine, more real and more me, but also more with-the-program, more participatory and less rebellious, than ever before.

For ever before I would have argued that those were irreconcilable differences, opposing poles, the rebel and the believer, and I was firmly in the outlaw camp. Some days, now, I think about this and wonder how this union works; other days I just accept it and go on and those are by far the more peaceful days.

When I go to church, and it’s growing more frequent now that Mimi can participate, I go to an Episcopalian cathedral. I know the rites and I love the incense and this time is always an oasis. Jon was raised Catholic and I was raised Episcopalian -- he strictly, parochial school and weekly confession, and me loosely, pageantry and liberal politics.

We've both seen our childhood churches rocked by scandals, which is a big part of his pulling away from organized religion. To me, scandal is painful but unsurprising: humans are running the show, after all, here on earth anyway, and people can muck up anything, trust me; throw in a little power and mayhem is a given.

When she was in my sister's care last summer Mimi picked up the habit of "passing hands," holding hands around the dinner table and belting out a rousing rendition of the Johnny Appleseed song: "Oh, the LORD is good to ME, and SO I thank the LORD!!! For GIVING me the THINGS I need! The SUN, the RAIN, and the AP-PLE-SEED! The LORD is GOOD to MEEEEEE!" which she always ends with “Hal - le – LU – jah! AHHH – MEN!”

Which I think is the perfect blend of it all: it’s Christian, it’s respectful (in a 3-year-old way), it’s rousing enough to touch the starchiest Southern Baptist.

Most of all, it’s hers and it’s thankful and it is, most definitely, tossed up with a genuine heart.

"Even asleep, she finds ways to torture me..."

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:19:00 +0000

...so said Jon at 2 AM, after spending 15 minutes doing that man-thing -- creeping through a dark house toward an odd sound of unknown origin, trying to be intimidating and surreptitious at the same time....

I'm sure he scared the bejeezus out of Mimi's red balloon, entertaining itself, dancing softly in and out of the slowly revolving ceiling fan.

Waldorf welcome

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:20:00 +0000

Yesterday Mimi and I spent the morning at a Mommy-and-me nature camp held at the Waldorf school we hope she'll attend this fall. My enthusiasm for this philosophy for her preschool year is captured in this quote from the founder of the Waldorf movement:

“If a child has been able in his play to give up his whole loving being

to the world around him,

he will be able, in the serious tasks of later life,

to devote himself with confidence and power to the service of the world.”

-- Rudolf Steiner

Working with the idea of the "whole loving being," early childhood is seen as a time of gentle awakening and imagination, so preschool and kindergarten classrooms limit electronics, plastic, and registered trademarks. Central goals are to help children understand where everything comes from, to feel close to the earth and accountable for its wellbeing, and to engage in the responsibilities and gifts of social living.

Jon calls it the Amish school. I just want to curl up in one of the soft-pink rooms and not come out for a long, long time. These pictures are not of Mimi's school, but they look exactly like her classroom will look:

Toys are made of wood, sheer curtains filter light, and crayons are made of beeswax. It's definitely more than we'll do at home, but we share the basic tenets: natural fabrics, gentle environments, home as safe haven.

There are large vegetable gardens that the children spend a portion of each day tending, and whenever possible they eat what they produce. Preschoolers learn to finger knit and families are asked to commit to an hour or less of TV a day. The school is private, but doesn't cost more than any other preschool, which is not free in our state as it is in some; I really hope we can afford it.

The campus is lovely in a handmade way, and so are the moms and kids we've met. Dressed in cotton and felted wool, munching on seaweed cakes, breastfeeding toddlers old enough to put on their own shoes: it is extreme, especially for these parts. Mimi fit in like a bowling ball in a game of croquet. These hay bales form the story circle; while the others sat and listened to stories she grabbed a stick to whack bugs.

This is the craft table. The paper cups hold soil and seeds and the tray is filled with potato halves to make the paintings spread out along the rest of the table. All the kinds of things I'd love to do with Mimi at home if, you know, I were the kind of mom who does crafts at home. I'm not, but I sure don't mind pitching in if someone else does the planning.

I even brought our cookie cutters to use to shape the potatoes. They hadn't been used on real cookies, ever, but they worked well on the potatoes.

The kids rescued this tortoise from the street in front of the school. The school is smack in the middle of the most urban part of our city, so I like to think that the tortoise knew what he was doing when he headed for their gates.

I knew I'd have one of two reactions: devotion or aversion. Facing something new, I either leap into the deepest end or run screaming, and then the pendulum swings to the exact opposite reaction before I can achieve anything like balance. Always I do this. Always. I'd been so enthusiastic about Waldorf that I wasn't surprised that I was a bit uncomfortable yesterday amidst all that crunchiness. But I saw Blackberries peeking out of handwoven shoulder bags and the school has a Facebook page, so they've found a balance and so can I.

Maybe we'll revive the art of oral storytelling

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:31:00 +0000

Yesterday we stopped by Mimi's old preschool for their end-of-the-day playground time so Mimi could play with her friends. I picked up a folder with some more of her work. I am finally spending more time with my daughter than professionals are, so for once nothing in her teacher's comments surprised me, from the strength of her social/emotional marks to the reminders to work with her on school readiness.

Mimi loves a good story, has memorized as many as any other kid her age; we read three books before nap and three before bed every single day. Although plots and pictures hold her in thrall, she's yet to show any interest whatsoever in letters or numbers, a state which is accidentally highlighted by the fact that her best friend Evan could read when he was 2.

So today I printed out an alphabet chart and over breakfast we started in:

"What's this letter?"

"A."

"What's this letter?"

"P."

"Actually, it's B, like ball or banana. See the picture?"

"Uh huh."

"And this letter?"

"P."

"It's C, like cat. See the picture of the cat?"
"Awwwwww, how cuuuuuute."

"And this letter?"

"There's a big one and a little one! It's a mommy and a baby!"

"Yes, a big one and a little one. Do you know what it's called?"
"Do you think that mommy lets the baby have a lollipop for pooping by herself?"
"I don't think letters do that. This letter is in your name. What do you think it is?"

"Do you think that mommy watches when her baby takes swim lessons?"

"Honey, let's try this letter. It looks like the shape your mouth makes when you say it. A circle. [O] Can you do that with your mouth? [O]?"

"I can see your teeth! Do you have more teeth or do I have more teeth?"

"And this letter is the same as the O, but it has a stick in it: Q."

"Oh, no! Does the stick hurt? Can we take it out?"

...and so it goes.

Over at CON

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:53:00 +0000

Today I am guest-posting at Crying Out Now, a website devoted to sharing stories of addiction and recovery, where I am a co-moderator. Stop by!

Not ready yet

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:16:00 +0000

I met a woman recently who knew I'd been to treatment, and who asked if we could meet for coffee and talk, she was considering treatment for herself.

Coffee day came and I invited her over instead, thinking it would be easier to talk without having to keep Mimi from opening all the sugar packets or knocking over the coffee urns. She agreed, we decided on 11:30 and I sliced cheese and washed grapes and set out crackers.

Phone calls, this delay and that, by 12:30 I'd asked her if we could reschedule for the next day, it was well into Mimi's nap time by then. Get her to bed, Crystal suggested, and I'll be there in an hour. Twenty minutes later, just into our second book, she rings the bell: "I thought for sure she'd be down by now."

You've guessed where this is going so I'll cut to the chase: yes, she was, and very.

I was surprised that I hadn't anticipated this but even more surprised at how uncomfortable I was. If being a drunk is supposed to qualify you in some way for dealing with other drunks, then I missed that training session. As ludicrous as it sounds, drunk people scare me. I wanted to overreact, take her keys, stage an intervention, and at the same time felt small and unable to help. I was looking at myself, and remorse fought mightily with the compassion that flooded my heart.

And the hardest thing to admit here? I was angry. When I went to the kitchen to make more tea, she went into Mimi's room and crawled into bed with her. Mimi was fine, barely woke up, never any danger, but I was upset. It was judgment, I know, and completely my own stuff: I was mad at the me who did the same things, the version of myself that is still very much a part of me, and of whom I am mortally afraid. The part of me who isn't capable of recognizing the preciousness of this life, the precariousness of my sobriety.

Mostly, I felt small, inadequate, unable to answer her questions: everything that others had said to help me felt hollow in my own throat. You have to make that decision, I answered when she asked if I thought she should go to treatment. Did you hear that woman at the meeting who has 42 years? she asked. I just can't imagine that. Can you? Not really, I said. I do it one day at a time. In the end, it seemed pretty clear that nothing either of us said would really stick, so I asked her to keep in touch and gave her some more contact info.

I was terribly conflicted, watching her drive away. She'd been here a couple of hours, had food and tea, wasn't weaving or stumbling but not clearheaded by any means. Even though the protocol on letting someone drive seems clear -- DON'T -- it doesn't feel that clear when it's a stranger on your doorstep. I am not proud that I let her go, from my own house, especially. It's not exaggerating to say that could have proved a life-or-death mistake.

Minutes after she left, I was on the phone with my sponsor, who pointed out that all I'd needed to know I could draw from Dating 101 (and it's why I'm sharing this experience here): meet in a neutral place until you know each other better. She hasn't called since, and I am unclear as to whether or not I should call her. More Dating 101, I guess, but it feels closer to service than mutual interest. On those grounds alone, I should call, and I will.

ballet d'action

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:40:00 +0000

(it's so refreshing to have an ordinary tale to tell today. Normalcy is underrated.) (I'll wait to talk about the family of skunks living under our house.)

prologue

bonne chance

pensive

maitresse de ballet

petite danseuse

denouement

coda

Monthly Record: (Eight and) Nine Months Post Rehab

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:38:00 +0000

Somehow I let two months squish into one. I've let lots of things squish into other things this month; as I transition to staying home with Mimi I discover just how handy it actually was to let someone else tell me where to go and when to be there. Managing my time on my own isn't going so very well; the other day we missed swimming lessons and the only thing on my agenda for the day was vacuuming.

So, yeah, it's strange. I know I USED to get myself places on time, finish projects on deadline, reliably show up when and where I said I would. When my drinking escalated all bets were off, but of course that was the point: vacationing from my own reality, the ultimate 'staycation': living on autopilot. Maybe all of the practice with "sorry, I forgot" and "you mean I didn't tell you...?" settled in a bit too deeply because I'm doing an awful lot of that now, but now I feel it, and I am truly embarrassed. It surprised me but it shouldn't; passive-aggressive is a knee-jerk reaction for me, an instinctive response. I've learned the tools I need to not do that, how to handle things in healthier ways and I can go whole weeks doing it right but then I hit a stress point, something startles me and I drop back like a turtle escaping into its shell. Next step? Get past that. Stop. StopStopStop.Just.Stop.

I'm hitting those awful annuals now. I spent last year's Mother's Day detoxing in a psych ward and preparing for a colonoscopy. Seriously. I could not -- would not -- make that up. I was nowhere near trying to figure out what was happening, how I got there; I was living breath to breath, trying to keep one foot on the earth to try and control the spinning.

Still there on Memorial Day, it was starting to hit me, the realization that I would probably physically survive to face whatever lay outside what by then felt like the only safe place on the planet. The sole photo I had of my daughter was wrinkled and misshapen and it was as close as I could get to her without losing my mind. My realities were like kerosene and a flame: the addict I was and the mom I was supposed to be, circling like a lion and a Christian in the colosseum. I didn't know which was which but I was certain it would be a fight to the death.

But here I am, one year sober. "You mean you've gone a whole year without a drink?" my mom said, although she's marched every single step of that way with me. My you-are-a-fraud voice, the one that's hollered loud and clear in my head since I was a four-year-old trying not to stumble off the stage in my mother's Junior League fashion show reminds me that I won't feel completely able to claim one year until the end of August, when I will have been out of treatment for a year, but yes it is true: I have not slurped, chugged, sipped, gulped, swigged, tossed back, or otherwise ingested an alcoholic beverage in over a year.

If you can identify, if you instinctively how huge that is, then you feel me. I kind of hope you don't, really, because that just might land you right in my little sober paradise, and it isn't always paradise. Of course it isn't always paradise anywhere, and that's an important lesson I've learned this month.

Change is in the air here. Job ending. Summer beginning. Will we paint rooms or just talk about painting them? Will the yard that dried up in my months-long absence last year once again boast some color? Will I get a rhythm down for Mimi and Jon and me that will run smoothly? I don't know. I DO know, at least, that I'm here and present for whatever does happen, no longer drifting off in my own private Idaho. I do know that if I do go anywhere or do anything it will be with my eyes open, my daughter beside me, and it will all start right here. Right now. In this moment, in this house, in this life, this life that I am finally, finally, finally awake enough to appreciate.

And not drowning but waving

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:27:00 +0000

Thank you to EVERYONE who wrote (and even called!) yesterday. I appreciated it so much and it is exactly why today is better.

Today, I'm dragging myself back to the moment, back to my little one, out of the warm wallow of self-pity. When Jon and I put down our boxing gloves and pick up our spades and dig, we realize there is so much more at play than just geography. We just happen to have a very convenient metaphor at hand. Power between us, definitely; issues with our families of origin, absolutely; clashing value systems regarding how to raise our daughter, yes, that too.

For me, it comes down to a huge vat of fear and insecurity. I don't know how to be a SAHM. I don't even know how to say it -- is it 'SAM or 'SAAHHM'? I have drawn a steady paycheck since I was 14 years old. Jon dissolved our joint bank account, wisely, when I was on a spending tear and constantly throwing it into arrears and we're not back to solvency yet. Not to mention that this is the first time I've agreed to do anything without first passing a test and writing a thesis on it and preliminary progress reports were not encouraging and I am just plain SCARED TO DEATH.

Should we have talked about this before we got married? Yes. [Note to the soon-to-be-married: DISCUSS THIS.] Do I fall into dangerous patterns, shriveling up if he's slightly perturbed? Yes. Are either of us eager to cause the other distress? Absolutely not. Do I have a resentment? Absolutely yes. Do I now know how to deal with this resentment? Yes, again, and it's time to realize that I have, in fact, taken a test and written a thesis on managing conflict in sobriety so I have no excuse for not facing it.

Sobriety doesn't promise a free ride. It promises a clear-headed ride, a better perspective on that ride, and tools to smooth out the bumps in the road. There have always been bumps for us, for whatever reason, they're real and they're there and I am afraid of them because addressing them that would require change. With my family back home, patterns and negotiations and boundaries and power differentials and wants and needs are well known. I was born to all of that there, and we've fine tuned it four decades. Jon and me, though, we are building from scratch.

And we are building. From scratch. I would like to argue that all marriages are works-in-progress, don't move into autopilot, not if they're growing and seeking and exploring new territories. New land must be tilled, new waters must be charted, the foundation may be the same but the furniture and the paint and the photos on the wall will change.

It's easy for me to lose sight of the profound metamorphosis our family is smack in the middle of. Parents. SAHM. Sober. Single income. We're lucky, I think, overall. We've had a smooth time of it, as a parenting team. We each interact a bit differently with Mimi and she with each of us, but we've found ourselves sliding into a complementary rhythm that works so well. That's what I need to remember, to cultivate, to nurture: how we, as parents, as a family, work so well.

I'm going to a meeting this morning, a mother's book study, a new environment but I already know it will be full of kindred spirits. For me, and also for Mimi. Kids who have been through all kinds of things and been granted a mom who gets up in the morning. Kids who know their moms will do what they say they will do, even if it's after 6 PM. Kids with dads who can trust their moms to drive the kids around. Kids like Mimi. Kids with sober moms. And that miracle? Can happen anywhere.

Just breathing

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:17:00 +0000

We had a fight last night, not one of those loud I-can-out-shout-you-dammit ones but the deadly kind, stone-cold and mean, that ended with us in separate rooms. The kind with words that lacerate and rub salt in the wounds.

Ours is an old wound, it has festered for our entire marriage. I want to live where we came from, it's about people for me, every photo our families send us of holidays, recitals, random Tuesdays spears me. Any event, back home, is sure to draw a score of friends, relatives, and neighbors; here, next Sunday, our daughter will perform in her first recital for only my husband and me. We are enough, he believes. He likes it here. When he graduated from college he headed west, pushed on until he got wet, staked a claim. He is a man of the west, born out of time; he should have been a cowboy or a frontiersman or an explorer. He loves and honors this part of the country like no one I've ever known.

Both of our points are sound. All of our arguments are valid (you can be an outdoorsman there; you will be depressed and anxious no matter where you live). And completely unresolvable. There is no compromise, neither one of us wants to live in Arkansas.

One of the insidious benefits of my drinking was the way it soothed the faultline of this conflict. I've always been a runner -- my mother likes to say I never enter a front door unless I know exactly where the back door is -- but I finally stopped running when I got to the bottom of a bottle. Lubricated, I wasn't angry; I was maudlin. I didn't shout. I wailed and sobbed until it just didn't matter any more. And of course, for anyone who tries halfheartedly, valium is as available as candy, so I was as numb as a boiled egg.

Today, here I am, unmedicated and sober and with absolutely no idea how to push on through my own uncharted territory. I have a list of tasks and obligations for the day and I will disappear into them. I will smile and be polite and tell everyone all is well and try to hide the tremors that rattle my bones.

"Mom! That girl just gave me a medicine!": a cautionary tale

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:27:00 +0000

Yesterday at the playground Mimi came running up to me, waving something in her hand. Distracted (more on that later), I smiled and sent her back to play. A few minutes later she came back, holding hands with another girl, introducing her friend as the one "with the medicine." "What did you do with the medicine?" I asked. "I ate it," she said.

I found the other mom who, like me, was distracted (more on that later) and together we tracked down the playground philanthropist, a 6-year-old with a pocketful of mini-SweeTarts.

Of course it was candy. Of course. The odds that it would turn out not to be are fairly astronomical, at noon at the gym's protected playground. Astronomical -- until they are not.

But, see, here's the thing: all three of us? The moms? The caregivers? Were talking on cell phones.

Of course I have my story: I recognized the number as my soon-to-be-former employer. Answering, expecting a pro-forma question from HR, I got a colleague who shared with me the workplace rumors and who right then and there asked me point-blank what was the damn situation and why was I leaving my job and did I get fired.

If this means anything, it's simply this: any call could be engaging. I know better than to answer the phone unless it's my husband or my mother, both of whom are messengers of any potential emergencies in my world, and to either of whom I could say, should the call be social, that I can't talk right now. I'm further embarrassed to admit that the judges squatting in my head routinely tsk-tsk at parents wandering the outskirts of parks with their phones in their ears while their kids holler for attention. So let's add hypocrisy to the list of misdemeanors.

Talking on the phone does one thing to me that chatting with other mothers or thumbing through a magazine do not do: it cuts my attention in half. I can chat, luuk up, read a paragraph about so-and-so, look up, stay there, where I am, present. On the phone, I usually have one hand stirring a pot on the stove, or folding laundry, or watering a plant, some taks that requires zero attention. But when I try to talk AND write, email, drive, or attend to anything else, it just doesn't work. For me.

Yesterday turned out fine. We were lucky, and I learned an important lesson. Two, actually. Chalk up another day lived on life's terms.

Letter to my Daughter, May 2010

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:46:00 +0000

Dear Mimi,

We took to the skies again, all three of us. We took our road show to all the grandparents (you have six, lucky girl). You stomped through the airports like you owned them, Princess suitcase clunking along behind you, and even when we got stuck for five hours in Minneapolis -- we shouldn't even have been in Minneapolis -- you held onto your remarkable good humor.

It was a joyful trip, blessedly smooth. Now that we're back, I hardly recognize the big girl I brought home with me. While you keep growing like summer ragweed -- 40" tall, now, and 35 pounds -- I'm just knocked down at your verbal leaps-and-bounds. These always coincide with a trip to Florida, a place where, unlike in our own small household, a steady chatter fills the soundtrack.

Complete sentences. Complicated syntax. Abstract ideas. Vocabulary words I never would have guessed you knew. Like "stupendous." Where did you learn that? And in exclaiming that the toy department at Target is "stupendous" I think you're using it correctly, too. So while I appreciate that your primary language is no longer "whine," I'm not completely sure I am ready for all of this.

I'm no longer Mommy, I'm Mom. You don't take a sleepies anymore; you take a nap. You've discovered that fuzzies are really slippers and that not everyone refers to their pets as "the doggers." Every so often, lately, I've caught you looking at me out of the corner of your eye, as if you suspect I'm making this stuff up as I go along. Which is pretty much exactly what I do.

And you're oh-so-close to connecting that stream of conversation that flows between us with those marks on pages. In desperation we finally hid your princess storybook so without its tractor beam, you've expanded your canon. I've never been more glad that we don't have regular television because if those princess movies could inspire the kind of loyalty they have in you, I'm sure we'd be in for every character who graced the screen.

As we move into summer, into our first season of all-day-every-day with just each other, I've been working on cementing our routines, reaching for some structure to guide us through this uncharted territory. As often as not I think you could lead this instead of me. You're now in a big-girl bed, cozy under your flip-flop lights, with one dog on the bed and one dog under it.... and then you shove Goodnight, Moon into my hands, twirl a lock of hair around one finger, stick your thumb in your mouth, and snuggle deep into your pink-and-blue bunkbed. You might be wearing your mermaid pajamas, or perhaps your cuddly puppies nightgown. We say goodnight to our loved ones, smiling at us from photos arrayed just over your bed. Lullabies play on the iPod and we dim the lights and your eyes sink to half mast and I think to myself, Thank you. Thank you, God, for one more day with my still-little, little girl.

Love,

Mama

SAHM Transition Progress Report: Day 6

itsownterms@gmail.com (Robin) — Sun, 30 May 2010 01:34:00 +0000

... and I am losing my ever-loving mind. HOW DO Y'ALL DO THIS? Seriously. There must be a secret. Laugh if you must but throw me a lifeline.

Please?

I've about decided that if I have to pick up ONE more crayon, put away ANOTHER pair of rogue shoes or find myself ONCE AGAIN chasing Legos, barrettes, little balls of dried-up Play-Doh, or doll clothes I will just fall out.

It's not the things I feared that are getting me, the endless sandwich making or story telling or puzzle-piece finding or face washing. Those things have a rhythm, a predictability, a manageability. It's all the millions of tiny catastrophes that happen whenever my eyes aren't right on her, and sometimes even when they are.

She's three. I get that. She's actually quite helpful, really, cheerfully re-assembling this or that pile when I ask her to do so. But isn't this an inefficient system? Doesn't it make a lot more sense to intervene before the dumping or smearing or filthifying takes place?

If only I could convince her of that. But right now the doll house is missing its front door, we've somehow gone through all of the juice cups (and she has 10), and I seem to have a spare Netflix envelope without a DVD.

Help?