all’s well . . .

All’s well . . . although I can’t be sure it will  end well.  For now, all’s well.  Small gratitudes are gratitudes all the same.

It has been a week since I heard from “downtown” — the school’s district’s office that is running the music experience in July.  I wrote an email to the woman I spoke to last week:

Dear B,

We spoke on the 13th about finding support for my daughter, J, so that she can participate in the summer music experience.  I wanted to check in with you to find out how that is coming along.  If you have difficulty finding an aide for her, I should be able to come up with a short list of people who would be interested in doing it.

Thanks for your help,

S

The response came quickly, about a half hour later:

Hi S.

Thank you for checking in on this.  I am working with our Human Resources Department to secure an SEA; they’ll use the list of applicants for summer school.  I sent an email this morning checking on the status and will let you know as soon as I can when we’ve secured an SEA for Julia.

Thanks very much, b

Later, I wrote back with the name of the person who has been her strings aide all year.  We — myself and the SEA — would love to have her spend the music experience with Julia but I don’t really expect that the PTB will take my suggestion.  Still, it is worth a try.  I am just so relieved that I didn’t have to put on battle gear.  I will send our communication notebook and ask whoever the SEA is to let me know how the class goes.  I would not be surprised if there are still some lumps along the road but the big barrier to Julia’s attendance has been removed.

Relief floods in.

Just before I picked Julia up from school, I talked to her principal.  He had called as I was headed to school and I was thankful that he initiated the calling.  On Friday, I sent him an email about the bullying and he responded during the weekend that he would explore the issues.

He talked to all the kids who were involved in some way.  Julia and her supporters told the same story, as did the fourth graders who were bully followers.  The perpetrator did not deny any of the behavior and did not come up with a good reason for it.  He is not a powerful or popular kid and Julia is not his only target.  It sounded like some of his targets are bigger than he is and the principal pointed out to this boy that it was really not in his best interest to push around bigger and stronger kids.  (One of my concerns is that Julia, for all her training to “walk away” or “report to an adult” may one day find the end of her rope and deck the bully.  She is fully capable of doing that.  We cannot forget that she used to fight for food and win.) The boy was told he did something wrong and that his parents were called.  At that point, the boy broke down and cried although I expect it was from the anticipation of parental correction and not from the realization of his wrongdoing.  The hope is that if his behavior changes the younger boys following him will back off.  I know that I wrote that I wanted to punch him out, I really don’t want to bring him down in any way.  Rather, I want  to get him to stop doing what he is doing.  He was also told that if news of continued bullying trickled down to the principal again, that being removed from the bus and suspension were apt descriptions of consequences.

I hope that this solves our bus bully problems for the semester.  I am however, stymied as to the reason this boy does what he does.  I know, I know the reasons in text-book phycology language but to see it played out is bewildering to me.  I was either raised right or raised much too timid but the urge to exert power over those with vulnerabilities never existed in me.  However, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I did attack one neighborhood boy when I was in fourth or fifth grade.

Tommy Sopko lived three doors down from our family and he was one of a bunch of brothers.  He was in my class at St. Thomas the Apostle elementary school and had terrorized me since my arrival there in third grade.  I don’t know if I had been told or it was instinctual but I knew that my stutter made me a prime target for what we called ‘teasing’ of any kind.  I got out of Tommy’s way, said nothing, never reported it, cried a few times at home and was told or ignore the ‘teasing.’  Tommy was a bully, to be sure.

One very rainy morning, I was walking to school with my brother who was 2 years behind me in school, when Tommy fell in behind us and started his socially acceptable banter, except this time he started making fun of my brother — over what, I don’t remember.  My brother, for any of his little brother faults, had no obvious target pinned on his back.  I distinctly remember being in a irritable mood — rain, sharing an umbrella, heavy book bag and who know what little brother complaints.  Tommy was on our heels, under the back of our umbrella, taunting, teasing, bullying, first me and then my brother.  At that moment, I had enough and I had a weapon.  I turned on him and started hitting him with the umbrella.  I remember his stunned face!  And then his running from us.  I do also remember the powerful feelings coursing through me.

One of his parents came over to our house that evening, complaining about my behavior.  I suspect that I must have left some mark with my umbrella.  I can’t imagine that he would have told his parents of being beat up by a girl otherwise.  I was asked why I beat up Tommy on the way to school and I think I stuttered out my reasons.  I have no idea what was said, but I did not apologize (timid but stubborn), I was not punished after they left and was not told to keep my umbrella to myself.

What I felt then was a self-righteous victory over an oppressor, but it was a feeling of power.  I wonder how it compares with our bully’s feeling.  Could telling Julia that she is stupid feel as good as beating up Tommy Sopko with an umbrella?

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

ah-ha

Yesterday, Julia rode the school bus home after a splendid day at a field trip — civil war reenactment camp.  I chaperoned and got to spend the day with kids and teachers and parents.  All rather blissful even including the canon firings which are extremely tough on Julia, but she watched the “soldiers” load the cannon with arms around me, one ear pressed to my chest and my hands firmly over her other ear.  The sound was still painful for her but she recovered . . . well, like a resilient kid, which is a description that could be called a miracle.

Then, on the school bus home there was more bullying.  It was not an isolated event.  Julia’s has gotten good at ignoring it and her allies — especially two boys from her class — are good at standing up for her; however, the behavior seems to be escalating.  The perpetrators laughed at Julia, called her names (stupid, I think) and said that she is never going to graduate. (An aside here — Some of the remembered damage done to Julia in China was being called ugly and stupid which she was told were the reasons that she was not sent to school with her bunk mate.)

At the bus stop, Julia got off with the two boys who are classmates.  The boys pointed the perpetrators out to me.  The kids they pointed out laughed and gave us all the finger.  I don’t know these bad kids (yes, to me at this instant these are evil, bad kids with NO redeeming qualities) although they do not seem to fear that I might report them.  When my sitter reported this same thing to me last Friday, I didn’t want to pursue it.  It is so close to the end of school and Julia doesn’t ride the bus home much.  I was going to let it slide.  Perhaps it would get better, perhaps it would go away if we all just ignored it, but perhaps it is time to ask for some consequences.

Julia  tells me that it isn’t so bad in the morning but in the afternoon (and she is only taking the bus home once or twice a week) they are really mean.  Julia would rather have me drive her to and from school.  Listening to one of Julia’s friends talk about the bad kids, I could see that he felt helpless to do anything to help Julia.

I struggle to be compassionate.  I want to punch out those kids!

And then today, I spent the day at the first of a two-day seminar given by members of PACE Place (http://www.paceplace.org).  They talked about what I’ve been talking about with out attachment therapist for years.  The relationship between attachment and autism.  Of course, I see the relationship because Julia was so deprived of relationship in China and to work on her neurological differences labeled as autism, we all had to address her lack of attachment, but these people talked about the inability to form age appropriate, healthy attachments in ALL people on the spectrum.  It is very exciting.  I think I sat nodding my head the entire day!

This team was also able to use workshop games with the group of 60 IDS employees (therapist, psychologists and other helping professionals) and parents as effectively as some of the best theater workshops I’ve been part of.  The day was one ah-ha moment after another — lots of learning physically through metaphor and reflection. I was only going to go to one day because I didn’t want to leave Julia with a sitter for two days, but what I am learning is worth the missed weekend for both of us and thank goodness, her sitter is free tomorrow.

Finally, close to the end of the day, I had my huge ah-ha moment.  I can’t connect the dots as to how I got there, but something was said that set off a chain of thoughts and I realized that Julia is learning to play her cello at the same rate as her peers (more or less) because somehow she started at the beginning of learning music at the same time as her peers.  This is the first time that she is starting from zero with the kids around her.  (Oy, I’m not being articulate here.  Damn.)  All the other things we taught her — English, numbers, reading, writing, APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR — her peers were getting lessons in all those things years and years before her.  No one gave her any of the basics — no one counted her toes, cheered her first steps, or ran to her crib when she cried.  No one read books to her, looked at her when they gave her a bottle or taught her the tools of sharing.  Or gave her enough to eat, for that matter.  Julia has been playing a game of catch up since I met her when she was five and a half.

But most of the kids in her class were not handed a violin or cello any sooner than she was.   She still needs to run to catch up with attention and focus even learning music, and she has not paid attention to music like most of her peers, but somehow she is not the same five and a half years behind in music that she was with almost everything else except for her art.

And so, what does this mean?  I am having trouble bringing the lines together in my head.  I don’t mean to overstate what I see.  She and I, and her aide in strings class and her cello teacher, work very, very hard to make cello possible.  But the fact remains that she is learning more like her typically developing peers than ever before.

I have struggled with the question of Julia’s ‘prognosis.’  Julia has not been considered high functioning but she is not just lower functioning.  No one has felt comfortable labeling her because her development has been so interestingly inconsistent and her gains so surprising. I am not the only one who has noticed the spark in her soul.  I still don’t know how to make up for, catch her up for those years with me that she missed, but through her cello we are experiencing her starting from a beginning and learning and staying abreast of the running herd.

Ah-ha.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 2

files

“It’s the heart that knows the path. The mind is just there to organize the steps.” ~  Jeff Brown

I am tired, sleepy tired.  Is it related to the scratchy throat that I’ve had the past few days?  I certainly have done nothing to exhaust myself — unfortunate that because I am in dire need of physical activity.  I promise myself to go out in to the garden and work but . . . yeah, but the weather.  Saving grace is signing up for the swim club this summer.  The pool has a daily water aerobics class that I am planning to take.  Last year, our first year at the pool, I learned about the class after I had scheduled Julia’s lessons, therapies, and appointments.  I could at best make it to the class three times a week.  “At best” meaning usually twice, sometimes once a week.  The class is written into my planning this year, so I expect to hit many more classes.  Three a week?

An email from one of my LEND mentors reminded me of the now of many endings.  My LEND experience that I stretched over four years is over.  So, is the two-year Quest experience.  My online classes are over on Friday, and my mother’s estate is a hair close to finally and completely closing after five years.  So, it should not have been any sort of surprise that I’ve been having transitional dreams — endless final exam and first night performances — and I’ve begun a very deep cleaning of my desk and file draws.

Seemingly spontaneously, I began culling, sorting and preparing Julia’s fifth grade papers and setting up summer and middle school files yesterday.  I thought I was just doing a few files, but as I was moving papers and files around I realized that I had not reconsidered my file organization since the first organization during the year after David died.  Four years later, there is stuff I don’t want, stuff to put in long time storage, stuff to rearrange and make useful, dear stuff that I have no need for but that I pause over and wonder when if ever I will part with it, and a file draw full of my mother’s estate matters that needs that same culling and sorting that Julia’s school work needed.  The life business files — bills, pensions, investments, taxes, medical records, papers related to things I own, etc. — have become awkward and need revision.  These were the papers that were split between David’s filings and my own four years ago.  I didn’t even want to combine them when I did it — still in the magical thinking phase.  I always meant to re-organize when I figured out what I needed, what I didn’t and how I needed what I needed.  Then life got busy again and it was easier to keep stuffing the existing files than to deal with reorganization.

So, wow.  It takes a long time to be organically ready to organize.  There had to be a whole other cycle of experiences before I could make sense of living day to day and keeping track of life’s necessities.  It feels like a long time, a long road.   I wish it could have been shorter, efficient, more streamlined but it has taken as long as it had to take.  I’ve heard/read the comment, “In god’s time” and thought that I understood what it meant, but now the understanding is deeper and wider. “God’s time” is all time and no time.  It is not the time we track it on clocks and calendars.  So, my heart continues to chart the path and this tonight tired mind catalogues and organizes and makes sure that the bills are paid.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

music camp

Today, someone from the school district called in answer to my email.  I enrolled Julia is a 2- week summer music experience/camp run by the district.  I had heard about the camp but hadn’t imagined that Julia could do it.  Her strings teacher, her music aide and her special ed teacher thought it was a wonderful idea, and buoyed by their enthusiasm, I did the online enrollment.

The rather cheery woman who called first made sure that I was enrolling a special ed student. Yes, I was.  She then explained that my daughter could only take the music camp if she had participated in the strings program in fifth grade.  Yes, she had.  The woman was silent for a moment.  Was she surprised about music and special ed? I am not sure.  Then went on to tell me that Julia’s IEP would not be implemented during summer enrichment programs because the programs could not afford services like PT and OT and Speech.  She said that Julia could not get all the services that she got during the school year and that they only offered “reasonable accommodation” for summer school.  I asked what the accommodation was and she put some words together that explained nothing.  Then she asked if I understood.

To back up some, I have been through this a few weeks ago about summer school.  There are “reasonable accommodations” for summer school but when it was explained to me it sounded like “reasonable accommodations” were absolutely no accommodations.  Well, perhaps a seat in the front of the room, although the summer school person was not sure about that.  I decided that summer school would not work for us — for fifth grade math, they planned to work on math facts and Julia has those down cold — and so did not push them on accommodation.

For music camp, however, I couldn’t let her off so easily.  Did I understand “reasonable accommodation”?  No.  Again, I stopped her.  “Can’t implement . . “ she started up again and I said that I wasn’t looking for her IEP services just support enough for Julia to participate.  In other words, she would need an aide.  “We don’t have money for an aide” and suggested that the needs of special ed students could ruin the program.  Guilt flooded my senses for a very quick moment.  For a split second, I saw the stampede of IEP carrying string players killing the MMSD summer music enrichment experience.

Yeah, right.

On reflection, I could have asked her just how many special ed students try to enroll in the camp each year?  In our school’s case, Julia is the only special ed student in strings this year at her school.  When I asked about strings last year for Julia, I was told that there was another special ed student at one time, and as it turned out, I knew the family.  So, that is two kids with IEPs in the strings class in four or five years at Randall.

Julia was also the only person who brought an aide to the Strings Festival at West High  during which all the kids who feed into West High School from fifth to eighth grade play together.  I think that there are just two of these concerts — east and west, although there may be one or two more.  Even if there were five concerts — one for each high school — at one special ed student a concert, there might potentially five special ed strings players who would want to join the camp and need some meaningful accommodation.  Even imagining that all five enrolled in the camp, it would not necessarily mean that the program would be burdened with paying for five aides or some other expensive accommodation.  In Julia’s case, she could easily share an aide with another student.  Any kid who made it through fifth grade strings and wanted to play in the summer would probably be motivated to be as independent as possible.

But back to our conversation — I said that I didn’t think — in a very hesitant voice — that they could offer this a camp to the entire district and not offer Julia support.  Wasn’t she protected by the IDEA?  At the mention of law, the conversation shifted.  The nice woman told me that she didn’t think they were required to offer anything in the summer but that instead of telling me that they “couldn’t” she “would check” — with whom she did not say — “and get back to” me.

I had caught her out.  I googled “summer school exception” and IDEA, and other terms to find some language and found nothing.  I called an old friend and she called an expert and sure enough there is language that was inserted in to the IDEA from Section 504 of the ADA that Julia should have an equal opportunity to participate in school sponsored activities.

So, now I wait to see if and when the very nice lady gets back to me.  I am hoping that the mere suggestion that I have some knowledge spurs the PTB to do the right thing, although I am armed and ready to move on and insist if it comes to that.  I grieve for the child who is denied this and other opportunities because their parents are not strong advocates.  Thank goodness, that Julia is not one of them.

And on another note — Spring thunder storms have begun and this is the first year that the first crack of thunder did not send Julia into my bed.  It was not fierce tonight, and I expect that really bad storms will wake her and speed her into my bed, but not tonight.  The trauma that so controlled her life is easing, or possibly it is safer in a Gryffindor bedroom than in my bedroom.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 2

trillium

IMG_2155And the trillium Fritillaria affinis are blooming.  (Thank you, http://myfoodandflowers.wordpress.com.  Not trillium but Fritillaria affinis.) Spring has taken its time.  Waking to bird song from the open window closest to my pillow before the sun.  Planting plans floods my consciousness.  My second thoughts are of neglected gardens and things planted in haste and without the followup care needed to establish them.  The beds in the back garden are weedy and overrun with a few perennials that hog space and push out everything else.  I’ve pulled and arranged, especially last fall and transplanted some things from the front garden that needed dividing.  Without real plans. The winter has not been kind and for moments yesterday I felt the sting of failure.  But gardens need tending and care and the emotions of the gardener are dug in like compost. Like soil enrichment, the consequences are visible a season in the future.  Or two.  And grieving has not been good for my garden. The gardens of my Indianapolis home were ambitious.  Now I remember them as such beauties but I worked very hard with a heart that pulled the beauty from the soil.  And those beds were not without withering and dying.  In Madison, since David’s death, gardens are afterthougths and responsibilities, more burdens than works of love.  I’ve worked on them and have not sat in their midst.  I have the time, if I wanted to take it, but not the will.  This is not a willing spirit and weak flesh.  Both are weak and it does show. But daffodils bob and wave and the trillium are blooming.  Spring renews and the work of the fall — bulb planting in the front garden and bed defining in the back garden — shapes my first thoughts this morning.  Is this the year to truly begin again. Third thoughts this morning are of planning a corner of the back garden.  This was an awful, ugly little part when we moved in but there is an old lilac, an overgrown forsythia and a few stones laid for a bench to sit on.  Here is where I will make my stand this spring.  A cleaning, a design, a planting, and faithful watering.  Some grass seed for the lawn that butts up to the edge and mulch to keep the weeds at bay. Such a simple plan.  Self consciously, I thrill to this sure sign of spring deep inside.  My perennial resilience is sending up shoots.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko Image 1

mother’s day

This was started yesterday when I had limited sleep and a curmudgeon-y view.  So, when I read Carrie Contey’s article about communicating mother’s day wants to family to have a satisfying mother’s day, http://t.e2ma.net/message/wv6x4/so6dmv, I grumbled.  I’ve had no trouble finishing up today, with sleep and a much brighter view.  Perhaps my inner curmudgeon just needs to escape and dance.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Hallmark holidays.  Mother’s Day was always the perfect opportunity to prove that I really was the less than adequate daughter and granddaughter.  No matter how hard I tried, and there was probably a good measure of passive aggressive behavior going on, cards were late, gifts never made it, and I always picked the wrong restaurants.  Then, there were the years when I was a florist and mother’s day was simply hell.  Although not everyone has a sweetheart to buy overpriced roses for on Valentines Day, everyone, everyone, everyone in the world has/had a mother, and the number of “children” in need of a gift on the celebratory day is overwhelming.  The beginning of those days were fun and sweet and endearing but by twilight, when the last customer of the day banged on the locked door, demanding the dozen yellow roses that had been sold out the day before, the glow of filial love was hard to be warmed by.

From the time I was pregnant with Cheshire until four years ago, David managed mother’s day activities.  In Indianapolis, where we lived for a long time and where mother’s day heralded garden planting season, my perfect celebration was to shop for annuals and tomato plants the day before or the morning of the day and then to spend as much time as I could outside putting a few hundred annuals into the ground.  David would cook and I think I might have had the choice of movie in the evening.  David and Cheshire would give me a card or cards and probably a small gift although I have to admit that although the vision of planting is vivid in my memory, the gifts I received are not.  Sorry, Cheshire, if you labored long and hard over something.  Some years we went out for brunch sharing the morning with Marcia and Matthew, but mostly I loved the warm May planting day.

No!  I take that back.  I do remember two hand made gifts from Cheshire, one a lovely purple pillow with lace trim that she sewed; however, remembering reminds me why —

Now, I simply hate mother’s day.

I’ve held back from this admission for a few years feeling that it is rather ungrateful to complain about not being celebrated.  After all, there were so many lovely, perfect celebrations and no one has an unqualified right to be celebrated.  However, the day just makes me unhappy and jealous and full of worry, and these are my reasons:

~ I don’t know what other single mothers do but these last four years have demonstrated that mother’s day is really wife/partner day.  It is the partner who is orchestrating — getting cards and gifts, making sure little fingers sign the cards, keeping secrets, cooking or making reservations, planning for festivities which may include naps or baths.  When there is no partner, who does this?

~ As a single mom of a kid who doesn’t yet get any part of the gift giving/card making/even wishing part of mother’s day, I am more than ambivalent about reminding Julia to make me something or to wish me a happy day.  Oy!  That necessity to remind and prompt brings on waves of self-pity and can induce worry — will she ever be aware enough to wish me happy mother’s day?

~ Cheshire is too far away.  During this time of the year, it has usually been a few months since I’ve seen her and so not having her here for mother’s day (and no, I don’t want a visit on Hallmark holidays) accentuates those missing and longing feelings.  It also brings on an embarrassing bout of jealousy.  Her very nice boyfriend has a very lovely family which include a mother, grandmother, aunts, etc., and it is with them that I imagine she will spend at least part of her day.  Really, I am not proud of these feelings, I don’t expect her to lock herself in her house and not celebrate his mother because her own is not near, neither do I expect her to keep any celebration to herself and not tell me.  It is all irrational!

~ There is no one to buy a card for.  Yes, I used to complain about buying cards, but everyone to whom I owed a card to is dead.  I’ve mused about celebrating my sister and friends who are wonderful mothers but I am much too mired in self-pity to take that on.  I also imagine, without any real knowledge, that those friends are all surrounded by orchestrating families.  Again, the self-pity is just embarrassing.

~ Finally, mother’s day reminds me that I never had a warm, loving mothering relationship.  I could never bring myself to buy overly affectionate cards — perhaps not at all overly affectionate for those who have good relationships — and then felt guilty that I could not bring myself to buy the cards that my mother wanted.  We were the cliche she and I — I never had to go out of my way to displease her.  My choices were never hers, and deep down, I don’t think she liked me very much.  Perhaps it was not personal. Which is sad but not terrible, but I still regret, just a bit, a very little bit, that I never figured out how to have a relationship with her.

So, that’s it.  I’m done.  With the inner curmudgeon tap dancing on a virtual table, I don’t feel half bad.  And I wonder what to plan to do on Sunday.

 

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 2

dukkha

I meant to go to bed early tonight.  Well, I did go to bed early, found a pleasant movie, watched most of it, started dozing off, turned it off and turned over to go to sleep.  And then, every worry in the world descended.  Or no specific worry.  Unspecific anxiety took over.  It has been coming on all day, starting this morning when I set aside time to write email queries about teaching meditation.  I managed to get off one email and then panic took over.  Tonight I decided that I am not ready to offer services and need time and some kind of practice.  The dukkha or suffering here is secondary.  I worry that I am anxious because I will never be ready to do anything!  A bit of hyperbole but in alignment with my feelings.

Living with this inside all day, growing and fermenting.  Finally tonight with this sleeplessness, it dawns on me that this is about transition and graduation.  I set a number of goals for myself this school year and I have met them.  And now what??  The “now what” is my fear that I will allow fear to overtake me and not DO anything.  That I will freeze in place or move sideways.  It is so very hard for me to rest in completion.  Rest and allow what is next to come to me.

Rest and allow does not come naturally.  And there is the planning of Julia’s summer and the transition to middle school to stress and worry over.  No, there is no reason to stress and worry.  I have support, good support, and some very good options, but there was no convincing myself today that worry was not the only way to deal with it.

I would like to write that after writing and sitting with this suffering that it has dissolved and I am at peace.  Well, not so easy but i am willing to be with it, willing to feel it and let it have its way for the time it needs to.  It is irrational and transitory.  It will move on.  i am much closer to observing without judgment on this one, not all the way there yet, but closer than ever before.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

time away

I feel the drag of not writing for what feels like a long time.  Checking now — and two weeks is as long as I can go.  Sometimes, like this time, I mean to catch up but don’t want to or cannot take the time, lose more time, lose momentum and refuse to write.  Until I cannot stand it any longer, and that is today.

I’ve had the odd feeling for a few days that I have been rehearsing living for quite a while and that I am now living.  It has to do with grieving — that sheer will of putting one foot in front of the other day after day no matter the reason, the need to survive for a child, for a reason unnamed, the confusion of why.  I did not realize that this was what I was doing.  Yes, the willful survival during the first year or so, but I imagined myself past that a long time ago.  Last week, I realized as I was making my bed that I no longer pull up the covers with the promise that I will live the day and be rewarded with a warm bed and the oblivion of sleep when I am tired.  It startled me that I did not need the promise of oblivion to begin and get through the day.  I did not even remember when and if I first made that promise to myself.

Julia report:

  • Last weekend’s RE class was long and boring, too much material and just many, many words without illustration and only one diversion — a “science” experiment, pouring different liquids into a cup to watch them turn colors and wipe away color.  It was an illustration of an closed and open mind.  Julia was quiet, sometimes preoccupied with picking fingers or her own thoughts, but not at all disruptive.  After class, I asked Julia what the class was about.  She was able to tell me about the science experiment and absolutely nothing else.  Words, without embellishment, just don’t work for her.  This is not a new observation but a good reminder as I get ready to talk to middle school teachers.
  • We are still riding the new big bike around the block whenever it is warm enough to do that.  I am still running behind her.  She is not yet secure enough to take on more.  However, balance is good and she is consistently braking with hand brakes and not jumping off the bike.  Getting started is not always easy.  I am hoping to have the patience to wait her out and run around the block until she is ready to go further.
  • At Gallery Night last Friday at Randall School, Julia sold the six pictures of birds that she drew for the event.  Julia has had a hard time letting go of her work to anyone.  Favorite teachers and therapists have asked for a picture that Julia has made and she has flatly refused.  So this felt like a big step.  Money helped.  She took her $6 (and we could have charged more) and spent it on what other kids made — a big yellow flower and a pen with a flower on one end.

Some friends have offered to buy pictures from Julia’s fairy dinosaur ballerinas series.  We made prints for teachers last year at the end of school.  I am wondering if I can interest her in making more pictures and also making prints and/or cards as a summer project.  We could sell to friends and if we did a healthy number have a booth at our church art fair which is in the fall.  I see a number of reasons to take on such a project.  My hesitation is Julia’s ownership of it.  For so much of the time, it is me or teachers or therapists who lead the way for Julia — setting up experiences, guiding her through them and then doing most of the reflection when the experience is over.  I admit that at time, I get tired of leading her.  Typical children are led as well — the decision to engage in suzuki lessons after a very little child expresses an interest is about leading.  It is more than a rare four year old, or 7 or 10 year old who wants to practice daily.  And I guess I am still on that typical child’s calendar.  By 13, I expect that the child will want what they are doing at least as much or better still more than the parent.  Not so with Julia and I hope that I am doing what is best when I devise and push projects and activities.

Last Friday, during Gallery Night an art teacher from another school in town did henna hand painting.  Julia and I both had our hand painted — hers in a lotus design, mine with a sunflower.  The flowers were lovely and I so enjoyed the decoration.  Mine is gently fading; Julia’s less so.  I have my hands in more water than she does.  This is the child who will one day get a tattoo.

I have joined the Forgiveness Challenge (http://journey.forgivenesschallenge.com), Desmond and Mpho Tutu’s 30-day, world wide online workshop.  I am on day 3.  Of course, there is much work to do.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

Seder

A day after an FUS Seder and a day before Easter Sunday and waist deep in spring break.

Julia and I went to the FUS seder yesterday.  There is a Haggadah written for Unitarians and there are a lot of cultural Jews who are Unitarians (lapsed Catholics also make up a decent part of congregations).  Previous to this time, we went twice in 2011 and 2012.  Both times, I was uncomfortable.  There were not many kids and Julia stuck out — her behavior was not out of control but she was not interested in  the readings, hated waiting to eat the food that was laid in plain sight, and was not really talking to people she did not know. None of this was out of the realm of normal behavior for her age group.  It was just that her behavior was in comparison to the adults who were there.  Perhaps it was as simple as my own comfort level.  I was not at home at FUS.  I was not sure I belonged at the Seder and did not want to explain that I was there because David was Jewish, I loved doing Seders with him, and I wasn’t ready to do it at home.  I think I left the first one red eyed and mute, it had been a very long night.

This year, finally, finally, it was different.  There is something about assuming home.  I signed us up for set up and we were there two hours before the festivities.  We set tables and put ceremonial foods out for each table.  I did whatever a very sweet older woman told me to do.  In our chatting, I found out that her husband had died 4.5 years ago and although she still did Seders at home, doing at at FUS for the big group – almost 50 — was very comforting to her.  I shared my experience and I did what I have always been good at.  I helped her serve — getting up before the end of the service to help her with the soup and getting the soup bowls on the tables before the soup got cold.

We sat with some people we know.  Not everyone at the table, but some old neighbors with whom it was wonderful to catch up with and a couple who usually go to Saturday service like we do.  Conversation was not always flowing but I could feel myself extending myself and adding to keeping our socializing going.  This is in sharp contrast to the last few years when I’ve felt myself a drain on social gatherings and a conversation stopper.  I am not totally comfortable in large gatherings or gatherings of near strangers but it is a relief to have whatever I’ve needed to engage in company once again.

Julia is also at home at FUS.  She helped at setup some but she also sat and read her latest adventure book — a birds with swords story — and talked to who ever passed or sat close to her.  Some people know her, and some are surprised by her, but I’ve stopped feeling the need to explain her all the time or to protect her or her listener from what is difficult to understand.  She is practicing.  People at FUS will help her or will move away.  And most will help.  Last night, a number of them told me how charming she is.  And I smile a very grateful thanks.

Once again, there were few children — a baby just one, and two little boys, 4 and 6 — and none to read the four questions or open the door for the prophet, Elijah.  Julia jumped up and ran to the door for the later, and was more than willing to read the four questions.  (In 2012, she could not do the reading) She didn’t love the whole ceremony but she was present for most of it.  She took in all of it.  She read along and out loud at the appropriate times and took a stab at singing the songs.

The Haggadah that we used omitted the story of the four kinds of children.  That is my favorite part because the message is about including all children in the reading of the Exodus story, the teaching of the next generation.  In the past I had thought of Julia as the child who did not even know how to ask any question, last night, she was almost the wise child, willing and eager to ask questions and to learning about her ancestors.

In a little while, we will pick up her new bike.  We ordered it last week, and I’ve already been to the store and asked for some adjustment to be made before we pick it up.  I am hoping.  Yes, I am hoping that she will love it and we will be biking all summer.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

hot lunch

Julia ordered hot lunch at school on Thursday.  She did it deliberately.  Before lunch time, she took her brought-from-home lunch out of the class lunch bin and put it in her locker.  When the class went down to lunch she got in line for hot lunch and took a hot plastic tray to her seat.  It was pizza and she was very pleased.  Her teacher and an aide caught the aberration too late and let her just eat.  Julia has been taking her lunch to school since kindergarten — for a long time she didn’t like the bread based lunches that were served, the food is not that good, and frankly, I don’t think she noticed that other kids were getting school lunches.

Her teacher fired off an email to report this behavior.

And so did Julia.  I mean she told me.  First thing off the school bus was . . . to back up, she came off the school bus excited to tell me something.  This is very rare.  I am usually prodding and scaffolding for a few words about the day.  She declared that she wanted to eat hot lunch at school.  I could almost hear, “like everyone else.”  At least, I think so.

I have a lot of questions about this.  I could theorize.  Is this an opening out and due to her visual therapy? Did she know that pizza was being served?  I don’t consider that this was impulsive behavior — seems pretty deliberate and planned to me.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0