saturday

You get up where you fall down. You don’t get up somewhere else. It’s where you fall down that you establish your practice.

—Ryokan Steve Weintraub, “Umbrella Man”

Facebook seems to be always full of links and games and quotes.  For me it is not as appealing as it was when it was friends posting about glories, worries, and mishaps.  And the stellar achievements of their offspring.  Still, every once in awhile, there is something that is undeniably attractive.

This.  Above.

First day of spring break, we sleep in — by an hour which is no where near enough for me — Julia is starving — had no interest in eating well yesterday when she was with friends while I went to the theater — I am feeling low to begin with — rain outside, wrestling with the bike decision for Julia, wanting to be outside, feeling uncomfortable with the online course assignment, and grumpy because I wanted to sleep in, really sleep in.  I get up to take my shower, ask Julia to get dressed.  Ask Julia to get dressed.  Ask Julia to get dressed.  She is in bed playing with her iPad.  She loses the iPad for the day.  Our standard deal — no listening, no iPad.

And I don’t expect to have any fun today.  I can see it all now.  This is precisely where I fall down.  The question is can I get up, really get up to begin again, not to add to the embers of anger and resentment and discontent that I am guarding inside.  Can I sit with this, sit without judgment and then move.

When days begin this way, Julia seems to push more buttons, be especially uninterested in pleasing me, drops things because she is not paying attention, and similar annoyances.

I move through the beginnings of the morning — meds, breakfast, schedule (I always write a schedule for Julia), and my list.  We so social study test studying and some cello before we leave for clinic.  And we sit for twenty minutes.  I sit with my grumpiness and by the end I can almost look at it without seeing it as just plain bad.

I get through my list while Julia is at therapy at clinic — return a drier, buy something for Cheshire, do the big good shopping at Woodman’s which is crazy on a Saturday. Go to the coffee shop, have some and order something else for Cheshire.  When Julia is finished we go to REI, order her bike and buy her summer sandals.  Gratitude rears its head when I find out she can still fit into a kids size Keens — the adult sizes are twice the price of kids.

We go to chufgrg rch, early, so we sit and work on a few math problems.  I co-teach and don’t really have much to say at all.  I am hardly a coach through the arts & crafts portion of class.  I decide no to the potluck, lonely today but not sure I can pull off friendly.  We go home and I cook.  I haven’t heard from my sitter for the evening.  I was scheduled to go to a party.  Sitter doesn’t show, texts last minute.  She is ok, i was worried about her.  I don’t mind staying home.

We watch Frozen, singing along with all the songs except for that cutting ice song.  Julia goes to bed and reads.  I work on easter eggs and watch Parenthood.  I’ve done nothing for my online course today, but it is the intimidation quotient is a good deal of what set my mood for today.

Sleep is late and blessed.

Somedays, making it through is the success.  It is all a practice.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

transitions

I am going on retreat this weekend.  My last scheduled retreat through Quest.  It took me signing up for a 2-year program and promising to go to all of the retreats (6 in all) in order to allow myself to take time for myself.  Now, I need to make sure I keep it up — like exercise, like practice, like anything out of my daily round, I can forget so easily how important self care is.

When I was part of a couple, it was not necessarily easier to remember to take care of myself, but there was  . . . I don’t know a word for it.  Couple-time.  Down time together.  We took time — as simple as a walk or a late night tea, sitting on the couch cuddling watching a movie.  There was self care and also care for the beloved and most of the time that was enough to fill me.  Perhaps that is another reason to couple.  I did not have to work at care.  I cared because I loved.

Now, it needs to be deliberate.  And so be it.

My sphere is small.  Sometimes smaller than I realize.  A friend called from England last night and my phone was turned off.  When Julia went to bed, I went to call back and discovered that I could not make an international call on my cell.  It struck me that my world had shrunk very small if, in the last four years, I had not even discovered that I could not make international calls.  Of course, now I remember that it was not a concern when I had a landline and then we used Skype all of the time when Cheshire was traveling.  But in truth, I have not thought about this is a long time.  The idea makes me claustrophobic.  How small I have made my box.  How insulated.  I understand the urge and the need for such diminutive size.  Healing, at least for me, is not done in a large forum.  Small feels very safe.  And after all of this change, change is still a challenge.  I find I must be vigilant to support it.  I proclaim and most of the time imagine that I have readied myself to accept and embrace change.  That it has become my way of life.  But however true that may be in some realms in others it is a true lie.

I have stopped using commas.  I have overused them for years and now . . . when?

Julia:  Very happy to have me away for a weekend and to spend the time with one of her beloved therapists.  I could wonder if this means good attachment or bad.  I both fear and embrace wholeheartedly her need for independence.  We are working through a trauma book with Marilyn (attachment/trauma therapist).  Julia has been drawing pictures of a “sad, mad, scared” brain and of a happy brain.   The pictures are quite amazing.  She captures feelings.  When we ask her to make these drawings, after reading a description, she happily trots to the table and begins work.  Yes, I think she thinks in pictures, and although I can talk about it and read about it, I really do not understand it.  I so definitely think in words.

Last weekend, I wrote down “rules” for solving simple math word problems.  The rules are illustrated — at least as well as I can do that.  We have been using the rules.  I had Julia do her paragraph writing for the week about the rules for problem solving.  Another way to get the rules into her brain.  I am not interested in any math work — which I imagine will always be a challenge for Julia — for its own sake.  No “two trains departing from opposite sides of the world going different speeds with some finite number of stops each and where do they meet.”  I want her to be able to go into an art store, order supplies, and know if she has sufficient cash to pay for them.

Julia broke her first easter egg. Her thumb went right through a shell she was working on.  It is inevitable to break a few eggs in the beginning.  Who knows how careful you must be with eggs until you break a few?!  She handled it very well — felt badly, didn’t really want to throw it away but didn’t want a smelly eggs around, and moved on.  There is evidence of her years of intensive therapy!

And my Curriculum Training Course with Mindfulschool.com began last evening with an online video introduction.  It is a big class — 40 on the call, at least three times that in the class.  I am excited to get going.  I can almost feel myself crossing a threshold.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko Aside 0

will and grit and persistence

I wrote this next thinking about a grieving friend at the beginning of the month.  These thoughts did not seem appropriate to send but I like them.  It is me writing to the me of three years ago.  It is the affirmation of that part of the struggle.  That part of the path.  And so —

Again, thinking of you.  Our season is finally changing — snow mounds shrinking and turning a uniform gray, people walking without huddled, squashed faces and birds singing with unbridled enthusiasm.  During the first years after David’s death, changes of season were are hard as holidays and family celebration days. I wrestled with the twin pulls of a past that I could not re-create and a future that looked awfully bleak.  The first fall I wanted to paste the leaves back onto the trees and paint them green.  I did not want David to miss the autumn.  The solace I found was in the center — putting rice into the cooker at the end of the day, running around the block holding on to the back of Julia’s bike as she learned to ride a two wheeler, reading about atypical development in children, walking the dog and shopping for food.  Searching for and then finding the quiet center.  This process of grieving is not passive.  True, some of it seems to require vast amounts of sleep that can be impossible to get.  So much requires will and grit and persistence.  It is work.

Even in the depths of despair there needs to be an ember of wanting some future that will not hurt so much.  To have any less is to lose the future to the past and not touch the present.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

fun

Julia got out of school at 10:45 and I was in a LEND workshop helping to facilitate for the day. One of our respite providers was able to stay with Julia until 2 and then dropped her off at Waisman. Julia hung out and on her iPad while I finished up my day.

It has been my habit to go home after a day like this and have a work night. Math, reading, cello, social studies and anything else that Julia needs to be working on. And a decent supper from scratch or the freezer. We do not take many days off.

And so, we took the rest of today off. We went to a 4:40 show of the Lego Movie and for the first time ever, I wished I was a 9 year old boy who was obsessed with Lego. The plot was nothing to speak of but it was fun and silly and had some really cool Lego effects — my favorite was the undulating Lego ocean. We had popcorn and stayed through the credits. When we got home, Julia dragged out her Legos and went to building — of course, what else? And I made some rice and scrambled eggs with rice. We watched another episode of Star Trek and Julia went to bed. I am looking for fun. Some undemanding, indulgent, un-useful fun.

It has been a long time since fun has been on the agenda. I don’t know if that is mainly because of the therapeutic life that we’ve led or grieving. Or some combination of the two. There is so much work to do but recently I remember weekend afternoon naps while Miazaki was on the tv, walks, just walks, toys all over the house and long conversations with a beer. I remember Julia laughing much more than she does now as a rule. And I can remember this without tears or depression or regret. I can hold the sadness and still wish I was a 9 year old boy. I realize that I’ve never had the discussion with anyone about balancing a therapeutic life with fun but perhaps I need to find someone to have that discussion with.

It is time for fun.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

miracles

I am in the midst of spring cleaning. It is a diversion. I would much rather be working on the garden but there is still some snow and where no snow, there is mud. And even if the mud dried enough to be tillable soil it is too cold to be kneeling in it.

So, I’ve decided to clean. I started on the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs because I usually start downstairs. Yesterday, I worked on the third bedroom, nominally designated Cheshire’s room, but she has never lived there. Her bedroom furniture lives there and some clothes. David took over that room when we moved in because there was not enough closet space in our room. Later he moved a desk for writing. Then a bookcase. When his medical paraphernalia out grew the bathroom medicine cabinet — by that time, I had long abandoned the medicine cabinet leaving only my tooth brush and paste behind — and the top of his dresser, the desk became mission control for pills and charts and monitoring equipment.

I had forgotten how much this was David’s room with Cheshire’s bed in it. All of David’s stuff has been long gone and the room stripped of everything but what belongs to Cheshire. I change the bedding when Cheshire or a guest comes and I lay out my clothes before travel on the bed, but the room could all but disappear and we would not miss it. There are lined and insulated shades on the windows to keep temperature stable when it is very cold or very hot. Yesterday, I spent more time in that room than I have ever spent.

As I moved furniture around to clean, I rearranged. It is a small room, so bed, dresser and vanity have a finite arrangement. When I put everything back against walls, it was probably the arrangement that I used when we first moved into the house. Something — dare I say Chi or spirit or something not of this world, perhaps something inside of me — was stirred up. It was as if there was something stored in this room, something that I could not let go of or something that was not ready to be released. I don’t usually have any emotional attachment to the act of cleaning. I only do it because something is dirty. I like a clean space but if someone else was to do it, I would feel no loss of process. As I cleaned yesterday, I gathered emotion. I was overcome with sadness. I felt an emptiness, a heaviness. I felt an anxiousness. If I could have, I would have opened windows although I don’t think that an open window would have dispelled the gloom. I did not remove myself from the sadness but it was dammed hard to be present to it.

Then, last night, I decided that the room needed to look like a guest room. It needed to be inviting, something that would not be so bad to do for Cheshire’s visits either. I wanted new bedding, the rearrangement of pictures and some retrieved from storage. It needed a rug, new shades and the vanity stool recovered. The room seemed to beg for a happy, bright green, something with stripes, flowers. Something of Mexico and the Caribbean. I began looking at rugs online and found a red rug for my living room. (My living room rug is old and worn, but I had not gotten to thinking about replacing it.) And I found some happy green rugs that would look good in the bedroom.

And then I had to stop myself and take a few very deep breaths. What was I doing? I was looking to bring color and movement and the visual joy into the house again. I don’t mean that I’ve lived with blinds drawn and grey drapes over furniture but everything, almost everything, had had a muted, soft, comforting feel. I have made it that way, left it that way until there was reason for change. There has been very little passionate Chi zipping around this house.

And now I am feeling that it should not be so. Let the shopping begin! Integration, change, healing. It happens when I least expect it. It happened cleaning. It recognized it by wanting to decorate, to shop — activities that I don’t associate with myself. It crept up on me when I I was not looking for it, when I was humming along with some tunes and windexing the mirror. All these happy, busy feelings which nicely coincide with the coming of spring — if and when that comes — may disappear tomorrow. May at the very least fade tomorrow. Still, I am grateful for yesterday and today. For the miracle effectuated by a spring cleaning.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

chemistry

Possibly a great sign of the new normal.  Possibly just loneliness.  Possibly the emerging spring.  When an email announced that Chemistry.com was having a free communication weekend, I checked it out.

Some background: Months after David died I sign up for that dating site.  I was in no way ready to date, let alone speak intelligently to someone I did not know, but I was curious what was out there.  Who was out there and who was using a dating website at my age.  I checked out men who were looking for women and also women who were looking for men.  What I discovered was pretty disheartening — The women all were looking way better than I was.  Nine months into grieving had done nothing for my face or body so there were no surprises there, but I was struck by the easy flirty profiles and great pictures.  The men . . . no one was incredibly appealing although to be fair that was more about my state of mind than anything else.  I expressed interest in a few of my “matches,” never heard from most.  I got a lot messages, etc., from men who were excluded from the site before I checked out their profiles.  Scam artist?  Sleazy guys?  I had no idea.  I did not re-up after my initial time and I’ve ignored any notice from the site until this weekend.

On Friday, I edited my profile a bit — it was a bit intense and I remembered those flirty profiles.  I will never be flirty and I still sound very serious.  I put in a few current pictures and “winked” at a few of the matches and set sail.  And so far, not so good.  Very few men are interested and most of them live in Chicago.  Most of them sound, well, frankly, weird.  I know the saying, you have to kiss a lot of frogs . . . but really.  There is the same proliferation of scam artists and/or sleazy guys.  And, I know that to some extent this is going to sound elitist but really, why would a conservative, christian, gas station attendant with a high school education and without any picture think I would find him interesting without some really intelligent or witty come on?

So, this was not a fruitful experiment and I will not be plunking down my credit card number in order to write a next chapter in my online dating saga.  I will probably never meet a guy online — I never did well at dances in high school or cocktail parties and bars later on.  But there was a time, granted it was a long, long time ago — when I had a healthy male infused social life.  I am feeling ready for that again.  I actually feel like I have the energy and desire to get to know someone, to ask a few questions and be interested.

I know, I am not 17, diet-starved, and stary-eyed.  I am  . . . well, old, a widow, and I have a 13 year old who may always live with me.  And I know the odds are NOT in my favor.  But ya’ know, I don’t really care.  I would like a partner. I know that I thrive on partnership and I’m not a bad partner myself.  I’ve never wanted to live alone and always wanted to share my life.

Listen up Universe.  Give me a little help here.  I’ll do my part but I am going to need some help.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

strings

I ran jogged around most of the block yesterday morning — .75 of the block to be exact.  I need to get my body moving and nothing that I have done before is appealing right now.  Perhaps yoga or more tai chi but spring is coming and I yearn — yearn is a bit too strong to put the impulse — to be moving outside.  Gardening is out of the question right now.  Mud, mud, mud.  And there is still little bits of snow all over the yard.  And I’ve never tried a run.  The fact that Cheshire and Lisa have done it and are trying to make a Thanksgiving run part of our holiday celebration make me curious.

Julia is performing in the Spring Strings Festival today.  She passed — could play the song by memory — three tunes.  That puts her at level 2.  There are a lot of fifth grade kids at level 2.  She probably worked harder than most of those kids to learn and memorize those tunes.  And she is the only kid out of hundreds who has an aide sitting next to her, but she is there and playing.  Watching the rehearsal yesterday afternoon, I almost burst into tears.  I am so proud of her.  So happy for her.  Of course, when I told her, she was polite and happy to be doing the concert, but it was no big deal to her.  And isn’t that wonderful too?

There is a new sadness in the collage.  I am so proud of Julia and her playing.  Especially proud because music was such an important part of our family when Cheshire was growing up.  The sadness comes from not having anyone to share this pride and happiness with.  No one who knows the day-to-day struggles and can bask in the sunshine of rewards.  I guess I’ve felt this before, since David died, but when I did it was mixed with so much grieving that the feeling did not stand out.  And there were so many more days of struggle than of triumph so the achievements were not quite there to stand out.  Living away from family during Cheshire’s growing up, there were never grandparents or aunt and uncles to enjoy successes, but just us and our friends were enough.  Today, I text Cheshire and post of Facebook and send an email to Julia’s teacher.  Right now,  I want to scream that that is not enough!

I sit drinking tea, my head aching from being so close to tears.  I am grateful for every “like” and comment on Facebook.  Cheshire will write and be happy for us, and Julia’s teacher will be thrilled.  Would I have felt this alone had I chosen to be a single mother?  Certainly, life would have been full of circumstances like today.  Of course, I might have dealt with this sorrow when baby first walked.

The other truly incredible things about yesterday’s rehearsal was that Julia saw lots of kids she knew from both school and church school.  She said hello to all of them and called them by name.  Her therapy and school teams have been working on greetings and having her recognize individual kids for this entire school year.  At the beginning of the year, she did not know the names of many of the kids in her class, and I don’t think that it mattered to her.  They were “the kids” or “guys” to her.  I think they were a blur of noise and movement in her consciousness.  In the Fall, she and I sat with the composite class pictures for her class and the class that is paired with hers.  We reviewed names almost every night for a few months.  She learned the names but I did not see much generalization for what seemed like a long time.  Recently, when she tells me the three things she did during the day, names of different kids have surfaced.  Her observations are not deep but she calls one or the other her friend or her best friend.  There are still many times when she does not “hear” greetings said to her, but last night she had something to offer to everyone that she knew.

And math word problems, of which we do three every night, are getting ever so slightly easier.

Julia is on a roll!

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

eggs, tarantulas, travel

I begin blog entries and get dead ended after a paragraph or two.  I’ve been writing letters and trying to complete a scholarship application for the online course that I want to take next.  Also, it is tax time.  I have my way of preparing and I usually get down to it at exactly this time of year.  How predictable is that?  I always imagine that I am getting started this year much later than last year, but looking at my prep documents from previous years . . . Yes, same process, same time.

Julia and I are making eggs in the evenings a few nights a week.  Julia finished her first egg and I cleaned off the wax.  She was satisfied with the result, not astonished, not disappointed.  She had already started a second egg and while that was in dye last night, a third.  She has no interest in looking at pictures — I’ve said this before.  I am so dependent on the traditional designs.  Julia has her own ideas.  I’ll post pictures soon.  I’ve made three eggs and ready to begin challenging myself.  I am not using any guiding elastics on the eggs to begin designs this year.  It is changing what I can and want to do.  Again, I’ll put up pictures. Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

more on meds vacation

More notes on Julia’s  meds vacation:  Saturday was day 3 without concerta.  Her IDS therapist noticed her constant movement and her need for more reminders to stay on task.  She also noticed that Julia was more social than usual and she had more eye contact.

I also noticed the constant movement — swing legs when she is sitting, tapping on the car window.  She has been able to do our usual school work this weekend, including rehearsing her Harry Potter presentation.  She continues to be more affectionate and considerate of me.  There is no question that she needs her meds but I want to talk to her doc about modification.

Julia is scratching her skin again.  Mostly at night, in her own bed but some also in school.  I am putting on ointments and creams.  I am bandaging where appropriate, but I’ve also told her that if she cannot change her behavior, that we will re-institute the consequence of leaving school when she cannot control herself.  Harsh but it worked last time.  Oh, if I knew a more positive way to do this!

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

grieving

Grieving: the state of the journey.  I am writing short emails of support to someone whose partner has died.  I find I care deeply, wanting to ease pain, wanting to stand beside.  Not expecting anything back but enormously grateful that I have something to give.  I read his sparse words and I remember how much everything hurt for me.  I remember how deeply I was cared for Lisa and Marcia and Mary and Amy.  I remember their care as some soft, warm, weightless fabric wrapping around me and holding me tight.  I knew that it was there and I could lean into it.  They carried my weighty pain and listened and listened and listened.  Their insistence on care . . . I wonder if they were ever in contact with each other . . . was almost orchestral.  I had nothing to give back to them for such a long time.  Now I am full of gratitude that I am filled enough to give to someone, even if it is not one of them.

My friend wrote that he missed his partner, “as you do your beloved David.” I paused on an in breath for a moment when I read that.  Miss David?  No, I do not miss David.  I do not miss him in the way of those first days and weeks and months.  I remember missing when he was alive and due home after work although the visceral memory of that takes on the character of a photograph.  I remember what it may have felt like but I can’t quite feel it any more.  I remember those first awful weeks and months of such active missing that I could almost believe, irrationally but somehow not impossibly, that he would satisfy my intensity by appearing.  I remember when missing was the dominant emotion–sometimes the only emotion–I had.  I remember being broken anew each day because he did not return and I was moving further away from him.

And that is exactly what time has done.  He did not appear and the time that has passed has driven me further from the intensity of actively missing someone who will never return.  At some point, missing implies return, at least for me.  Perhaps others can hold onto it longer than I.  For me, the time and the work that I have done reclaiming my life has driven the searing pain of missing to the deepest part of me, so deep that it has become the fossil rock which serves as foundation to the present.  The missing has sunk into my soul and is the warp and woof of the fabric of my being and the weave is tight.  Perhaps this is integration and it comes with some peace.  It does not replace the joy of long-time love nor the possibility of anticipated return but it sits close by.

Being a support, I can I hope for a better friend — strange how I was his partner’s friend more than his.  We were couples friends and there were times we divided along gender lines.  Even when that was not the case, I kept in touch with his partner.  She was my friend. Now, if I am to have a friend, it must be him.  How odd. I feel like I am walking through a door into some new dawn of relationships.  I think of some of the women that I have gotten to know since David died.  Some were already widows or single after separation, two have had husbands die since I met them.  We meet in coffee shops to talk and death is never far from the conversation, sometimes not mentioned but there.

These are relationships not based on death but where death is one of the things we have in common.  Like bad mothers or children in the same grade or gardening.  We have what we have in common to talk about as common as talk about nasturtiums and hollyhocks and signing up for summer camp.  When I reflect, it seems like this is a natural progression but I didn’t know I was getting to it so quickly.  I bumped into someone at the Honda Dealership where I was getting an oil change.  We did the MBSR class together last spring.  She had just returned from a bicycling vacation in the Philippines with her husband.  We talked of meditation and group sits and vacationing.  We don’t have death in common.  The topic did not sit between us.  I do look on her with a touch of envy.  I will never be where she is again.  I know too much.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0