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.

ducks

There is the possibility of a longer description of our month coming soon, but this . . .  I’ve been saying for awhile now, weeks or month, I think, that Julia is in a good place these day.  Still unsatisfied with Bay Cove, but more willing to look beyond her current feelings, more accepting of small transitions, more able to regulate over small mishaps and much more comfortable in herself and her surroundings.  Not all the time, mind you, but more regularly.  And this, even though, we have/are weekend traveling 4 out of 5 weekends last and this month.

This weekend was our weekend home.  We vegged out a bit, watched British Bake Off, etc.,  We made a list of what Julia would not do and what she would/could do. Julia usually hates lists. On that list was using clay, something she has always been creative with but hasn’t touched in more than a year.  It has been almost two years since Julia stopped making art every day. For a while she was willing to do something once a week with her art mentor, but when her mentor became ill, Julia was not even willing to do that. Julia was a child who made some art every day. If anything, keeping her from sketching in text books, on binders, on homework, on programs, on any piece of paper was next to impossible. She she played with clayed, figured out sewing a stuffed cat character; Julia could do any art she put her mind to.

And I have stormed the heavens these last two years that her impulse to create would return, afraid that it would not. And carrying the very sad idea that I contributed to the dying of that impulse.

So, yesterday, after church, she went with someone who is spending some time with her, to Michael’s and they bought some sculpty.

And she made this:

And I was close to crying.  I am trying not to cheer or optimistically predict a return to art making.  No, not yet.  I’ll just take pictures and share.

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beginnings again

It is a beginning of September and my traditional time to return to what fuels my creativity and thus, my soul.  Cool weather, the first sight of the un-greening of leaves, and children back to school.  And a morning ritual that I have abandoned during a summer because who in their right mind can be disciplined during the hot, sun drenched days with a demanding offspring. But right now, the house is quiet, I am sitting at my desk and the only thing to do is to look for and return to how work happens. It is a return and it is always new.

I seem to have many loose threads that go together fine in my living them but don’t make for a cohesive blog post.  And I haven’t spent enough time writing this summer to keep them all going.

Baby Alfie is two weeks old. He has presented himself as a child who needs to be held to sleep which is tough on his parents during the night, but as the visiting grandma of the day to sit and hold a little baby who is happily sleeping in my arms is such delight.  He who I did not expect continues to surprise me. There is no doubt that I have loved my children and Wilbur, but I have never been drawn to infants.  This one has opened a new place for me.

And it is worth noting.

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more catch up

I have catching up to do and no way to gracefully ease into it.

First, the cat. Muta is still with us; however, it is hard to really know how he is doing. I was waiting for some definitive answer. Some diagnosis and prognosis, but I don’t think I am going to get either.  

For about a week after our weekend in the hospital, he was about 80% his old self.  He wasn’t that keen on going outside but he jumped on the couch and my bed and sprawled out when he napped during the day.  He was on an appetite enhancer.  He ate the canned food that I had.  I gave it to him in small amounts—about a quarter of a large can at a time. He willingly ate it.  I think it was not enough to really satisfy him but he stopped throwing up. I imagined he was getting use to being fed 4 times a day; however, over the last weekend he began to throw up again. At least, once a day. On Monday, I went to a vet. She did a follow up blood test to see where his liver and pancreas related numbers were. I haven’t heard from her yet. She also did a bit of hydration for him and gave him a shot of a nausea suppressant.  She said to continue with the steroid until she got the blood work back. 

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muta update

Muta is spending the night at the hospital.  All the tests have been inconclusive and  there is  no exact diagnosis yet. His liver and spleen are enlarged although it is not clear whether it is for the same reason. Right now, the vet thinks that it is either lymphoma or a cholangiohepatitis.  Lymphoma would mean palliative care; the hepatitis might be controlled with medication. The mass the docs felt in his abdomen and the reason that we went for the ultrasound was his enlarged liver.  

For the night, Muta will get hydrated, something to encourage his appetite, an antibiotic in case it is a hepatitis infection that can be treated and something else I’ve forgotten.

We will see how he is tomorrow.

It has been a rough weekend and I don’t really hold out much hope for an easy outcome; however, we’ve experienced a good deal of kindness at the animal hospitals for which I am grateful.  The vet, Dr. Greg Krane, from PetMedic (Cambridge) who took care of Muta yesterday, made sure that Muta’s test results were sent to the ER this morning.  There is one test we were still waiting for and even though Greg told us the result would probably not be returned until tomorrow, he called the lab this evening in case the results would finished at the very end of the work day. Greg also called me twice during the day to find out how Muta was doing.  He urged me to ask him any questions and gave me complete, unvarnished answers.  The vet and staff at the ER were also kind and patient with both myself and Julia.  It was a long and hard day for her but I am proud of her patience and willingness to be present the whole day.

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unexpected life

Begun on the 5th, finished on the 7th.

Sitting on my back porch, in some stillness. In my sight lines are some less than perfect pots of flowers and herbs that I’ve planted and babied in the blistering heat, a brilliant hydrangea in our back garden that is in full bloom, and the garden behind ours, long neglected yet still punctuated with blooming perennials that are too stubborn to recognize that they are no longer tended.

Yesterday was rather idyllic.  A summertime community picnic in Concord.  Hot dogs, Wilbur’s first, and hamburgers, sweet tea and strawberry shortcake.  And apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Firefighters set up a flat house with flames coming through windows and doors, all on hinges, and gave children the chance to aim a “real” fire hose and shoot water at the flames until the flames were defeated.  The line was too long for Wilbur to wait, for any of us to wait, but he loved watching other kids with the hose.  There was a playground with a sand pit for the pleasure of the littlest ones including Wilbur and his aunty Julia. There was a four piece band of what I thought of as old codgers playing blue grass and old rock standards.  Those codgers may have been younger than I am.  Best of all, we took a train to the picnic!  Wilbur’s current high interest topic is trains of all sorts and sizes, and so we met three stops on the transit line from Concord and took two little train rides to and from the picnic.  It was well worth it as everything about the train, especially moving, was fascinating to the little boy.  

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return

Happy Summer! (lots of this was written over the past 10 days)

Today’s longest day antics: A screening of flying lessons, the film by Sarah Waldron that Julia is in, late lunch with a friend, and horror movies tonight.

Yesterday, June 20, was our really longest day—up at 5 am to begin our ride to Jersey City for the Golden Door Film Festival, a stop at The Cloisters when we realized we were way too early to check into our hotel.  Loved The Cloisters. Hadn’t been there since before Cheshire was born. Finished the ride, found our hotel and some parking —Jersey City has not changed as much as I had imagined in the century since I was there —took naps, went to the opening night party for the festival, saw a bunch of very short and short films and fell into bed somewhere just before midnight.

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because it’s june, june, june, june . . .

I am a gardener.  

I’ve begun at least four memoir pieces with that sentence but honestly, I wondered if I would ever really feel like I was that declaration again.  At the blue Victorian that we moved to from Madison and in which we spent the Covid years, I cultivated a small vegetable patch that was shaded part of the day by the houses around it.  It is never a glorious garden but it gave us something to do that first summer of shut down and there were tomatoes and greens and peppers and a small pumpkin. 

Early on in my tenancy at our present house, I asked the landlord if I could garden.  The foundation planting was sparse and old. There must have been other shrubs and bushes at one time but what was left was four plants spread far apart and planted up close to the house.  

My landlord said I could do what I wanted to do and even volunteered a bit of help—his landscapers trimmed bushes that needed the trimming and even took the grass up when I decided on the shape of the front garden bed.  

I started planning the front bed while I was sick and unable to do much running around.  As I began the planning, I wondered if it made sense to invest in a garden that would take a few years to develop and cultivate in a rental house but I came to the idea that I have made three gardens, each in a house that I owned.  But that after planting and tending and loving those gardens, I sold the houses and left those gardens. And it wasn’t so much the beauty of the gardens that I was/am most attached to, it is the process of making a garden and making a garden in the front of this house that we live in would give me pleasure.  

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more letting go

I could ask how many times? How much more? Again?  Really?

A plastic box, book size, has been sitting on the kitchen floor for a few months.  I could use the excuse of a hard winter of feeling sick as an excuse for just leaving it there but it would be just that — an excuse. It was one of those boxes filled with what needed to be moved 18 months ago, what had some sentimental value, what did not find a home in the new house and what did not really warrant storing for another day. But to give it all away or to throw it all away felt sinful.

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back on the horse & adulting

After what feels likes way too long being homebound and cut off from social activities, I’m venturing to HILR today and my last two classes of the semester.  I would not even do this but I enjoyed the classes so much, the first three anyway, and want to catch up and also say good-bye for the summer.  I also have a rehearsal for a very short play that will be/should be part of next week’s Black Box presentation.  Yes, we are a bunch of old people doing plays for one another.  I’ve miss a solid two weeks of rehearsals and missing today would have consequences.  I know lines and been rehearsing with one other actor on zoom; however, the business of scenes is still lacking.  

And I am not completely better.  I am tired and rather weak. Especially my voice.

But willing to try.

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