Category: Growing a Daughter

Updates and stories about my daughter from China who came home with challenges described in letters—PDD-NOS (on the autism spectrum), ADHD and RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder). Her learning curve has been steep and therapy is a way of life. School and social interactions are a challenge. Making art is a way of life. So is a vivid imagination.

mistake

imagesRainy, damp, more March than April and my internet connection is very weak.    My desk is cluttered with unfiled detritus.  I’ve noticed that my couch, the uber comfortable nest of family life, is looking rather shabby.  Bought for another house with a bigger living room, it has always been a bit of an elephant in this living room.  Something to be slightly squeezed around especially when the clothes basket goes downstairs or a big box is delivered.  For a millisecond I wonder if the money that I just spent on airline tickets “should” have gone into some household item—Ach, the driveway!—but the cloud passes very, very quickly.

I bought airline tickets for Italy.

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ci vediamo dopo

IMG_3447One blog post and two days later, I have moved past “beginning to plan” and have three pages of references for an Italian adventure.  No, I haven’t booked flights yet.  It’s not time to book flights.  I am, however, in dreamy travel mode.  A heady time when everything is possible, every piece of art can be admired, every church walked through with hushed tones, every meal delicious. It is fun to indulge fully.  I haven’t found the dinosaur possibilities yet.  I will take travel books out of the library.  I take out a stack.  Later, I will buy one or two to carry, but first, I will abandon myself to the stack. Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 3

journeying

DSCN1887I know I’ve announced this before, at other noticeable stopping points, but once again—ta-da!—I am coming more into myself.

The self that I am coming into?

I am chatting up more wait staff and baristas— this morning at the Target Starbucks, I noticed that Oprah has a chai but not a coffee and we, the barista and I, bantered.

I notice that I am grumpy.  It’s not the grumpy part that is notable but the noticing.

I am feeling oppressed about falling behind, way behind, responding to email and I actually realized that all I have to do is to answer a bunch of emails to feel better.

A code appeared just today on the dashboard of my car and I noticed it and called the folks who service the car.  I remembered that it was not there yesterday and I acted in a timely manner.

I want to buy show tickets for next fall and see touring musicals.

There is also the travel thing.  In the last few years, I have insisted that I wanted to travel far and yet have not done it.  Yes, we did travel to Mexico last summer but I corralled Cheshire and another young friend to go with Julia and I. Cheshire is fluent in Spanish and so was an excellent buffer between me and any semblance of un-touristy Mexico.  We went to a rather touristy part of Mexico.  It was a beach vacation, not the exploration vacations that I most enjoy.  And so, Mexico almost doesn’t count as traveling far.

And now, today, and for this whole week, I’ve begun planning a trip to Italy. Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 4

process

IMG_3422

The warmth of the beginning of the week wanes into a more gradual spring-coming that demands a coat and suggests gloves without insisting.  Julia groans and inwardly I mirror her reaction.  We want spring.  During the weekend and again on Monday, I raked garden beds. I usually make myself rake the lawn in front of each bed and so I tend to drag my feet with the raking.  Not so this year.  I’m doing the beds, all the beds, first and then attend to the grass.  My reward, as if gardening needs any, was the first sighting of a clump of snow drops.  Not quite in bloom yet.  Tomorrow.  And Julia will be happy to see them.  We are aching for this spring; however, it is March and not really yet spring in Wisconsin.

In my neighbor’s side yard the daffodils are emerging.  They are some of the first daffs of the neighborhood.  The side yard is a microclimate — a small place that tends, because of protection or exposure to be slightly out of step with the land around it.  I wish for microclimates but I don’t really have any.  Still, I enjoy the early daffs and few tulips.  My plantings will come up eventually and it is so nice to see color even if it is not mine.

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a blue sponge

imagesI was going to write this very nice piece about mindful activity.  An practice that is only beginning to take root in my daily doings, but there is the kinda’ magical thing that is going on that I need to jot down about a blue sponge.

Back in the long ago, David and I were always on the look out for the perfect dish sponge.  David really loved washing dishes — very zen experience for him.  I didn’t like washing dishes but I do have this thing for good tools.  This was not a passionate search but a recurring, alway-short discussion surfacing whenever it came time to replace the tool we used to wash our dishes.  Over the years we tried many things. We rejected the wash clothes of my youth and the sponge on a hollow plastic stick that David’s Dad advocated.  Yes, the pleasure of washing dishes was, in this case, multigenerational.  We used plain manufactured sponges and the more natural ones.  I’ve never been clear on how sponges are made or their history.  We used scrubbies of different varieties and many sponge plus scrubbies.  Size and shape were always wrong, never comfortable in the hand—we cut some in half searching for perfection but that left us with something too small.  The sponge plus scrubby models were never pliable enough to get into the corners and crevices of cups and pots.  Forcing the issue would result in the untimely separation of the sponge from the scrubby.

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power & control

Sunday snow.  6-9 inches.   Why does it always look like more in my driveway?  Who measures and where do they do it?  I used the new-to-me snow blower twice for this snow.  It works well.  Much too loud.  It is almost three times as large as my old snow blower.  When we got the old one-the last gift that my mother gave me which is somewhat ironic-I chose a blower that I knew I could handle by myself.  David had already gotten his heart condition diagnosis and I was going to be responsible for snow removal in perpetuity.  I could lift the small blower and put it in the trunk of my car when it needed a tune up.  True it couldn’t handle any really deep snow but that was a trade off—going out to blow snow every few hours during heavy snows.

The new-to-me blower takes on more snow and cuts a wider swath than the old one but it is too heavy and too big for me.  Two months ago when I was shopping for something new, the very personable sales guy worked hard convincing me that this was the size that I should buy.  He was probably right in terms of efficiency of operation and cost effectiveness but I can’t move it around easily and after using it twice I have painful shoulders.  Today, I have really painful shoulders.  I guess I will either toughen up or, and much more likely, look for something smaller at the end of the winter.

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ice walking

IMG_3293A friend gifts herself on her birthday with novel experiences like hot air ballooning and power sailing. I am not as ambitious.  In previous years, I wished for perfect days on my birthday — wearing favorite clothes, sleeping late, no housework or homework, good food and culture.  My definition of perfect was pretty broad but these days my definition is still too restrictive to strive for.  And so, time to change.

I’ve started projects on natal days.  Some years I ‘finalize’ resolutions that I just couldn’t get right at the beginning of January.  For many years, I didn’t want to make a big deal about celebrating my birthday but without a partner, if any deal is going to be made, I can’t keep my friends in the dark.  And I am grateful for the rememberings — a few packages, morning coffee with, a phone call or two from, theater in evening and afterwards food so rich my tummy ached, and a big bouquet of Facebook wishes.

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ruts

Blue-Moon-ExpeditionShould it be surprising that as it has warmed up slightly in the last few days—from below zero to almost 20 above—the nano-catastrophes of the last week have found solutions?  Perhaps I am warm brained.

We are settling into the cold.  Flannel duvets on the beds, insulated shades  in colder rooms pulled up only on sunny days over 10 degrees, lined pants and silk long underwear are not merely fashion statements and neither of us runs out of the house without coat, hat and gloves.  Recently, I has a conversation about living in New York City with someone who felt that he would never move to the city because of the high cost of living.  I thought it was about priorities—cultural, education and business opportunities, etc.—but he still couldn’t see it.  Then I said that we choose to live in Wisconsin even though we are predictably miserable due to cold for at least three months, and many years almost six months, every year.  Home, family, job, beautiful and vibrant town, public schools, etc.—a good deal of priorities.

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notes

Screen Shot 2014-12-17 at 9.04.02 PMDecember weather —gray and wet, damp more than cold —does not inspire festivities.  Neither do the circumstances of our larger community — justice, kindness, compassion seem never-present.  Pondering the absence of fair minded people to think fairly about issues that we’ve all talked about since before I was born has quieted my typing fingers.  I have no unique perspective, I do not move in a large world, the issues that I am passionate about may touch peripherally on the challenges of the day, but I have so little to add.  And yet the racial, ethnic, religious and neuro-diversity of our community is something that I cannot absent myself from.  Do I do wrong to turn from the issues of the day in favor of my passions?

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 2

encores

IMG_2755It looks like Julia’s dancing ballerina dinosaurs will again be offered as part of a Paper Cloud Apparel fund raiser.  This time, they have asked if we have a local cause we would like to have proceeds going to.  I thought of the adaptive skating program that Julia is going to on Sunday afternoons.  Julia and a gaggle of other kids from very little to older teens work with volunteers in small groups and one on one to learn to skate.  The same folks offer an adaptive hockey team for older kids and adults and I know at least one person who is on the team.  Julia struggles a bit but she is willing to go each week and she is getting better little by little.

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