An interesting exchange

It started with a link my SIL sent to the members of my family: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,164859_1.000.html It's an op-ed written to a military affairs news site, by a man who had served with John McCain in the Navy. The piece explains why he will not vote for McCain. The author is an activist in the group Veterans For Peace.

My father responded:

This opinion is one of many. Some pro and some con. The writer has every right to it. However, it does sound a little like one who is jealous of the successes. For example, the passage on how McCain is only one of thousands of heroes. Everyone has a right to join whatever group they choose. Veterans for Peace is an honest, if mistaken, organization. Freedom is not free. It is paid for by the blood of thousands of "heroes" . And if the payment is not made, freedom will be lost.

In general when my father makes these sort of cliched remarks I let them stand and pass. They seem indicative of a stance that the remark is only the tip of the iceberg. To tug at that thread threatens to pull up everything that's ever been dropped into the pond. For some reason this day I chose differently and sent this message to the group:

When you say that Veterans for Peace is 'mistaken' and then say 'Freedom is not free' it makes me wonder what you mean by 'mistaken'. Do they believe that freedom is free? Or do they believe that each of the lives of these heroes is precious and should be spent with only the greatest of care and grave consideration? Is digging a hole and then having to expend lives and treasure to repair the damage a responsible expenditure?


Our freedom is as much at risk from within as from external enemies. I've been troubled by the quiet ways that George Bush and Dick Cheney have increased executive power, and the way they've done it. It appears to me that their means and rationale have been dubious and don't pass the smell test. I'm curious about the people who say we're defending our Freedom and then in the next breath say we should surrender our civil liberties in the name of security. They don't seem to realize the internal contradiction.


The increased power the executive has taken to itself isn't limited to a Republican administration. I was just reading an article about how neither presidential candidate has clearly renounced the increased power Bush has taken for the presidency. Our constitution is based on checks and balances among the three branches of government. I think that people who say that the president should have the power to overrule the other branches of government are saying that our republic is functional only during good times. I think that reveals a lack of faith in our democratic system that has endured for 232 years, both in times of peace and times of war.


Just my .02

At this point he responded to me privately, opting out of the group discussion:

Hi Debora,

As I understand Veterans for Peace, they believe peace at any nearly price is desirable. I do not. They also believe they are better suited to decide when (and if) to fight. I do not. That is why we elect a president and a congress. If we don't like their decisions, then unelect them next time. They have much more information than anyone else about the threat to our country and to our liberties. There are things for which I would fight and die if necessary although I dislike war about as much as anyone. As for the loss of civil liberties from President Bush and Vice-President Chaney, I have not noticed that I have lost any. By what means have they accomplished this piracy of our rights? The Patriot Act? It seems to me that Congress passed that bill. The interception of communications from foreign suspected terrorists to someone inside this country? It seems to me that to allow terrorists to communica te with each other in order to plan our murder is stupid. With all the "curtailment" of civil liberties, there has been not one major terrorist act in this country since 9/11, and it has not been for lack of attempts. Let's give some credit to those in authority who are charged with protecting the civilian population for this record. I do not want a "dirty" bomb or nuclear device to be exploded in a city in this country so that I can say my civil rights are not infringed. I am willing to be searched in an airport to ensure no one carries weapons on board. I am willing to make similar concessions to ensure detection and interdiction of plans to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel, the Golden Gate Bridge, etc.

I am sorry if I am a dinosaur. This is the greatest country in the world. I do trust our government to a large extent, even those who are not conservative. I think they want the best for the country even though they have some misguided positions, according to me. Please forgive me for my out dated and perhaps short sighted thinking.

The biggest threat to our country is the exploding National Debt, now around $9.5 TRILLION. President Bush shares some responsibility for this, but the Congress is the main problem. They consitutionally are the organization that approves the budget and authorizes the spending. We can defeat the terrorists, but I wonder if we can defeat the congressman who wants to get reelected so badly that he promises a "Bridge to Nowhere", as most of them have.

I love you all

I thought about this for a couple days and wrote:

Hi, finally getting back to you.



I half wonder if the 9.5 trillion dollar debt in a backward way is GOOD for American security: a great deal of that debt is to China, and I can't see that it would be in their best interests to go to war with a nation that owes them that kind of money! Their best interest is to have us working away.



I think the main threat to civil liberties comes from the executive branch of the government accumulating power to itself. Under steps that the Bush administration has taken it can and has declared American citizens to be unlawful combatants and therefore can be held indefinitely without charge or access to a lawyer. No, it hasn't happened to many Americans, but you can see the potential for abuse.



Under the Material Witness Law immediately after 9-11 at least 70 men were taken into custody without charge or access to lawyers. Most were kept for over 2 months, one for 6, and another for a year. Many were never brought before a grand jury to testify or were asked for information about ties to terrorists. This was through the Justice Dept, an executive agency.



We have been informed that the FBI is found to have mis-used it's power to issue National Security Letters and has accessed information about people with no remote connection to terrorism. The Pentagon and CIA have their own versions of national security letters (although recipients have the right to refuse; recipients of the FBI NSL do not) The Pentagon and CIA are both much more involved in domestic intelligence than ever historically. We know that peaceful groups, such as Quakers have been monitored and their names entered into data bases. Again these are the actions of the executive branch.



We also know that over 700,000 people have found themselves mistakenly on 'do not fly' lists with little recourse and that Americans' bank data is being electronically surveilled.



Though we have not (yet) been personally affected by these actions (at least, not that we know of) and so might be inclined to dismiss them it matters very much to the people who have been. And what makes our country great is that it has enshrined in our Constitution basic human rights for individuals. All individuals are entitled to being treated according to the rule of law. So if an individual is deprived of his/her civil rights for arbitrary reasons and no just cause, we are all at risk--and from the government that has sworn to protect those rights.



America is a great country. However, this greatness is undermined by its government when it doesn't live up to the high standard set by our Constitution. It's not America that's been 'hated' around the world--America is still loved. It's when it fails to live up to its ideals that it draws criticism.



Love,
Debora

To which I received a rather terse reply: (the subject line was "sorry")

Hi,



I think you and I will have to agree to disagree on this subject. I don't know where you got your numbers, and I am not disputing them. I just have a hard time imagining the FBI or the Justice Department coming up on a completely innocent person on the street and saying "We are going to hold you for the next year, we are not going to give you access to legal council and you can't argue with us". Sorry, but if a guy like Padilla was detained for a time, he probably did something to cause it. At least we do agree that this is a great country.



Dad

I had kept some of the web pages open that I'd cited my statements from, and I considered sending him some sources. However, his email seems to be a pretty clear door-slam, no-more-discussion message.

There's an interesting division among conservatives. It seems there are some who want to 'conserve' the human rights (also known as 'freedoms' in this country) guaranteed by our Constitution. And there are conservatives who claim allegiance to "freedom" but they're really about loyalty and obedience to authority. I suppose they are the ones who don't see the internal contradiction between talking about 'fighting for our freedom' and in the next breath ridiculing someone who expresses concern about erosion of our civil liberties.

Peculiar Dry Period

The feeling of being scattered and not-quite-caught-up has persisted, and it's impacting my ability to write posts, and comment on other people's.

Maybe to break the logjam I'll post pictures of a desert (to mirror my inner state).

A synopsis of the trip:

We drove approx 1200 miles to Breckenridge, CO, for a family reunion. My father is the oldest of 3 kids, each born 7 years apart. My parents had two girls (one who died in 1988, and one yours truly) and twin sons. (I am the firstborn of the grandkids.) My father's younger sister had three daughters, (the oldest of whom is about 6 years younger than me) and their youngest brother never had children. He's about 9 years older than me.

Gary & I have 2 kids; my cousins have 5 sons and one daughter among them, one of my brothers has a daughter and a son, and my sister had had one daughter--the firstborn of the great-grandchildren of the grandparents my cousins and I share. So, 17 adults, 10 children, one house. One week, with some variation in duration to meet school and sports obligations.

It went quite well, all those personalities together. I was puzzled at how I seemed to naturally gravitate toward my aunt's family, much more than mine. There was just better chemistry there, and our conversation was spontaneous, very pleasurable (not forced, as with my parents and brothers), frequent, and frequently long.

We, Gary & our kids & I, left a day before the house needed to be vacated. Gary had ambitions to visit and re-visit some of the canyons and formations of southern Utah--we honeymooned there over 16 years ago.

First stop was Capitol Reef National Park, a very long, narrow, north-south oriented tract of land. In this portion of the trip I alone shot over 800 photos. Gary said it's a 'common mistake' with a digital camera. I suppose I epitomized that common mistake--everywhere I looked there was a picture. Obviously, this was shot while on the road.

There are petroglyphs here.

















Next day we drove through an aspen forest and then onto the most amazing of roads. It's hwy 12 toward the town of Escalante, and it's like driving on the spine between beautiful canyons. At places the drop-off below us on either side is hundreds of feet. To the west we're tracking the Calf Creek drainage on its way to the Escalante River (on it's way to the Colorado). I'm not sure what creek drainage is to the east. There's a little BLM campground, just 13 sites, and we were lucky enough to get one.





We had to ford Calf Creek to get to it.

Then we went for a hike upstream to find the falls. Scott didn't feel well, so Gary took him back to camp. Connor and I pressed on.

And on and ended up here:
As I arranged the photographs the obvious metaphor dawned on me.

Pressing on.

Leave of Absence/Exerpts

Back from the 12-day road trip/family reunion and still playing catch-up. Feeling scattered and unconsolidated. Way behind in my blog list, since I was only rarely able to get online while gone. I'll post a proper post soon, but wondered if in the meantime I could post another early 2006 diary entry:

01/26/06

I wrote some more about this in a message to Valerie, so I’ll put it here:


Answering the question you asked me, at the start of your message ("What do
you think you can do about it?') was a good focusing point for me. I think
what I'm doing right now about it is having a conversation with myself (sort
of like the more pleasurable, but still rather stressful conversation I was
having with myself about x). In this conversation I'm clarifying the
dimensions of the situation I'm feeling stuck in. And I'm trying to find
the stamina to keep myself focused on this dilemma, because I think
sometimes if you hold 2 seemingly intractable ideas next to each other, that
an unforeseen way might open, just from the tension of those ideas. Make
any sense? Here's what I've come up with so far: The nature of my
dilemma--In order to be happy in a relationship, I need to have a means with
which to restore intimacy when there's a breach. I need to be able to name
my feelings about the breach, and I need to be able to discuss the breach
with the other person involved. I believe I have the skills to be able to
pull off this kind of intimacy + PROCESS for restoring intimacy. (For I am
being realistic in assuming that as long as there is more than one person
there will be potential for conflict, since we each have a blind spot about
what the other person is thinking, feeling, and wanting.)

Anyway, to get back to the Basic Situation: In order to be happy in
relationship I need to be able to communicate wants, needs, and feelings and
have a partner who does it too, as something *functional*, to keep things
cleaned up between us so intimacy can flow.

This is all very difficult when the other half of the partnership has no
skills at all in the area of communicating. I suppose I would say that I
need to have a partner who is able to cooperate with me in using words to
heal breaches in connection.

I don't have this in Gary. And it's very likely that I never will. So I'm
married to a man who not only doesn't have these skills, but reacts with
hostility when I use them.

That's the crux of this situation. I need something in a relationship that
is totally out of his nature and inclination to provide.

So it's an affront to him whenever I, no matter how respectfully, (And no
matter how reasonable the issue is, ask something of him, or point out
something to him. He also is passive aggressive and frequently acts or
speaks with hostility to get back at me for something that he's mad about
(but not saying)--and something that's not even related to the current
circumstances.

The by-product of that dynamic is that very often in our day-to-day moments,
out of the blue he will behave with animosity. It's often very quick--I
just know that all of a sudden I'm feeling kind of crummy, or a little angry
myself. And it comes down to being a result of something loaded in a moment
that Gary and I just participated in together.

There are 2 requirements for peace in that moment: one is that Gary simply
do whatever is required of him in that moment without slipping in a *zing*.
(That is, not behave with animosity in the first place.) The other thing
required is for me to not react.

This part has been, I think, the focus of counselors and the advice from
helping books--that is, that the only thing I can change in a partnership is
me, so I should be the one to change. That means that somehow I would have
to not feel the sting that he intends, and therefore be unaffected, and so
not feel that anger/hurt that comes as a response to an act of hostility.

And, I'm not sure that I can do that.

I can't see myself as being completely unaffected emotionally by this stuff
when he is just plain rude or disrespectful. I can't see myself being able
to let it pass, either, without insistence that I be treated well.

Anyway, this is all a long way of saying that what I want and what he is
able to give in a relationship seem to be mutually exclusive. For whatever
reasons, he's not up to what it would take to heal things between us. And
he is not able to maintain well-ness in a relationship through communication
and self-disclosure.

That's what I mean by the stuck place, and I'm trying to think of it as a
kind of crucible to see what comes of holding these contradictions next to
each other.


I sent that a little while ago and feel a bit vulnerable. Like maybe there’s some sort of fatal flaw in the way I view my situation that’s obvious to everyone but me.

I think I have a realistic handle on why Gary and I don’t get along. And what I’ve laid out here isn’t even the only deeply divisive issue that we have. It’s a big one, though: the fact that we as a couple are unable to communicate using words and use it functionally on even a basic level as a tool to maintain connection as well as heal rifts.

He seems to take the fact of a conflict very personally, and hold it against me when I’m open about a situation where there’s potentially conflict. Many people believe that it’s a deep affront to them if someone admits they’re less than happy with them. They believe that the right thing to do is to just put up with something someone’s doing that is having a less than positive impact on them. And that therefore there’s an agreement that neither of you will ever say anything that bothers you. Gary seems to come from that place—which means that any time I ask that something be different, that he takes it as an insult. And yet he feels constrained against talking about it with me and instead holds it against me. So he’s got years of resentment against me because I’ve always been honest about my feelings, even if they aren’t complimentary to him.

A little later—back from getting Scott:

I think what was worrying me, was a sense that maybe what I wrote to Valerie is over-dramatizing my situation, or being histrionic or something. That’s what I feel vulnerable to, being taken that way. That someone out side of me might see it that I’ve created this big drama and the intractable situation is just me being dramatic.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm painfully aware that 2 and a half years have passed since then and I basically could be saying the very same things now. With some variation in the level of hostility nothing has changed. I suppose it's time to make preparations , serious ones, for leaving this marriage. Looking over my financial assets, getting a handle on investments and that sort of thing. The biggest question mark for me is Scott's emotional state which I have an intuition is fragile.

That said, the vacation was largely positive and I'd like to post a few pictures once I put together a real post.

Provo, Utah

Heading back to Portland. If we can endure it, we'll be there late tonight. If not, sometime tomorrow.

More later.

Uh...

Checked into a hotel tonight and came to visit my site, and saw that it makes no sense. I wondered if 'blogger' might have exercised its judgment and a little (deserved) censorship. Turns out in my efforts to euphemize I'd used this sign (<) in place of a certain (k). I guess I'd inadvertently used code and altered my text.

I hesitate to have the bad taste to clarify an obscenity, but it WAS an authentic sentiment, probably not the last time I'll have it (and certainly not the first). So I stand by it.

And I corrected the post below.

Road Trip

Today 5 driving hours.

I hate f#ck'n9 kids

10.5 driving hours tomorrow.

_________________________

Do I get to keep the Arte y Pico award?

Awwwwww, Gee

Lori has given me this award! It's called Arte y Pico. I looked for a translation in google and got these.


Here are the rules: (from the Arte y Pico site itself)

1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contrubutes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winning, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico"blog , so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) To show these rules.

The original site is in Spanish. I'm still new to blogging, so I'm sure I could figure out a way to translate it, but it's 11:00 at night and I'm leaving on a major driving trip to Colorado tomorrow, so I'm going to plead laziness and not try to do that tonight.

Of course I have to give this award to knitter Mrs. Spit, since it looks as if a great deal of the award site is devoted to knitting (some of it to crocheting...and I'm not sure how much due to my language limitations. Maybe it's a crocheting site...in which case is it an insult to give such an award to a knitter? Regardless, Mrs. Spit's site is a work of art from its web design to her stunning essays. Please go read her.)

And Doug is a natural, since his entire site is devoted to art. His photography and paintings are amazing.

Another knitter, artist and wordsmith is Maddy. I also recommend Mercurious, and Andrea.
Gee, I wish I could say something eloquent about the pleasure I get from reading their blogs, but my brain has just checked out. I really need to put it to bed.

Thanks, Lori. But you're my Cuz, you have to like me! (See you in a coupla days.)

Excerpts

From January 2006

1/12/06

Yow, that feeling is so strong, the feeling that time is slipping out of the hour glass. It makes me feel anxious to see anything but a huge swatch of untracked time ahead of me, and I start to feel anxious about its passing, almost immediately. Already it’s almost 1;30, a little over an hour before I go get Scott, and it feels so not-enough.

It occurs to me to tell the truth here—I mean, to summarize in writing what I see the truth of this situation as…to try and get it down into as bottom line, bedrock language as possible.

How I see my marriage to Gary, my relationship with his mother, my own family.

I guess start with me and Gary. I see us as not being very good partners for getting things done. And the bottomline issue underlying that, which makes it unrecoverable, is that we have no mechanism to talk about it. His default is to resent, and get back in passive aggressive ways later. What I need from him is for him to have the capacity to observe himself, take note in a moment that he’s upset about something, and say it respectfully. Not ACT it, in irritated disrespectful tone of voice, or eye-rolling…or in making a negative remark later, under his breath, as he’s passing me. Yes, it’s a hook, yes I suppose I’d be better not taking it—BUT WHO THE FUCK IS HE TO INTEND TO HOOK??? Doesn’t he have a responsibility as well, being the person who starts something? I think what I react to is the underlying discount, and dislike that would give him the permission to treat me that way. This is not the way one acts toward someone that is loved.

OK. So put us, in with those communication strictures, in a situation where we have to cooperate with each other, and communicate with each other—to have to use words to bridge a misunderstanding, to get understanding, and if necessary, healing. We can’t do it. Time and time again, from something as simple as getting ready for a camping trip, to child raising, if we cannot agree on something then we have no language to negotiate it. For me to even use words offends him. He feels harassed by them. He will do something negative, out of something that he’s mad at me about but hasn’t told me. I call him on it, and he tries to brush it off. He doesn’t acknowledge that he just did something hurtful, and often, unreasonable.

Here is a place where I can change my behavior. I can refuse to call him on it. Let it pass. Then the argument that comes from him stonewalling when I call him on it (and then stonewalling on THAT, layer upon layer) will not be born. It’s just that it seems SO WRONG that he do what he did that I’m not able to be silent.

So, basically we are a married couple with no tools at all for handling conflict. Well, I have tools, but I might as well not because I need him to have tools, too, for these conflicts to be able to be worked through healthily. But he goes to his default, each time. Clam up about something he’s angry about or wants a change about; show his anger in unrelated ways, later.

I was thinking about this in terms of Peter Kramer’s talking about “differentiation”. I was first thinking about what this means, his theory that couples seek someone who has a similar level of differentiation. I was thinking that that’s not true, in Gary’s and my case: I have the tools to communicate, work things through to resolution, and heal. Gary does not. In light of that I think that I have more differentiation than Gary. Then it occurs to me that the way I express my lack of differentiation is in being susceptible to the passive aggressive things Gary does and says. My being unable to let them pass.

I’ve got to think about that.

Another bottom line I see in our relationship is his capacity to deny that something is wrong. How terribly far he has to be pushed before he looks at his responsibility, before he takes action. And how he chooses inaction, consistently. Even when he says something like, “This year, I need to win back the boys’ respect and yours too (I’m not sure he said that)” he means it in the moment, but then puts it away. He accepts a tremendous amount of pain in his life-enormous losses (a viable sex life with me, respect of his children, love of his wife) by refusing to acknowledge that he’s in pain.

These two things, the inability to communicate and his unwillingness to face facts, are things I see as bedrock in our relationship and I’m thinking that it’s not possible to feel love in a relationship like that. Oh, you can do what my family does: You’re supposed to love your family. Therefore, you DO. That means that you don’t acknowledge the things that are painful between you. You don’t acknowledge when something isn’t working, because to give voice to that is to NOT love you. It is better to have the appearance of loving, the agreement of loving, then to have the underlying intimacy that love springs from. The trouble is, to get to the intimacy, people have to go through what they’ve been denying. It really is like the woman said in her book: “She couldn’t see. But she believed she could.”

And I know we can’t. But the willingness of my parents, and Gary, for that matter, to be able to face certain fears about themselves, and pain they’ve locked away…is very unlikely. So I have to love on THEIR terms: which is, don’t admit that there’s not really much intimacy basis for the love that is professed, don’t admit that things are wrong.

Perhaps Al anon really would be a good place for me.

My boys are suffering from living in a relationship like Gary’s and mine. Gary may want to do something about it, when he thinks about it or I bring it to his attention, but he doesn’t follow through. I can’t model a good back-and-forth-using-words-to-resolve-differences example when my partner in communication doesn’t have the tools. It’s like trying to dance with someone who absolutely can’t dance…but thinks he can.

Weekend Away

I spent the weekend at the beach, about 10 miles south of Newport, with a long-time friend I went to physical therapy school with.

There were 30 in our class. When we graduated I worked for a year in Long Beach in southern California. I lived in a household with 2 other women, 3 blocks from the beach. I had taken Serena's place; when she moved out I moved in.

The house didn't look quite this tricked out when I lived there in late 1978--1979. But it was a very happy time in my life.

I moved to Portland in late 1979. A few years later I was delighted when Serena moved up too, then with a husband and her 4 year old girl, and an infant daughter. When her husband finished medical school they moved out to the coast.

Serena is one of those people that I naturally gravitated toward. She is someone whose presence is restful, and I always feel inspired around her. In her presence ideas are catalyzed that nudge me toward the "getting warmer" feeling.

No matter how much time goes by this is the way it is with Serena.

I hadn't seen her in at least 12 years. And it was the same.

She'd had to leave to tend to her mother, so I arrived to a note and an unlocked door. I'm glad the house was empty, so I got to take in her surroundings. I think of her place as being an extension of herself--just her generosity of spirit overflowing and filling her house and then overflowing into her garden. The house was filled with light from the skylights, plants, and art. No matter where I looked my eye fell on something beautiful and intriguing. It was completely still, the quiet broken only by the scales of the wind chimes. I followed their sound to the back patio. I'd removed my shoes when I came in, but found a pair of thongs, so I put them on to walk the path that led through the many island beds she'd planted.

It was so beautiful I wanted to cry.

When she came home we walked on the beach. We talked for hours, awakening the next day to converse some more. Did I mention that I always feel enriched and replenished when we talk?

It was very hard to leave this space.

It is rare that I find it as replenishing to be in the company of another as I find in being alone.

Taking Mrs. Spit's "Vive Le Livre" challenge

(I was really tempted to put "Vive Le Liver" in my title)

(I'm neglecting my kids and packing for a beach trip to do this)

If you want to play, post on your blog, bold the books you've read, highlight the ones you loved or write a little about it.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I was spellbound in this world and cried when I finished, because it was done, when I was 14)

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible - (the New Testament, and a big bite of the old, but unlike Mrs. Spit, I couldn't make it past Numbers)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Liked it a lot when I read it, in high school; don't know if I would now.

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (understanding what a catch 22 was, and being able to see examples of it in life around me was very enlightening)

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -- I have read the whole thing. It got confusing. . .

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - On my list.

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - I don't know if I loved it, but it was powerful and profound.

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Not one of my favorites

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - On my list.

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez--I tried this book, and put it down. Mentioned it to a friend who said to get past the 1st hundred pages. I did, and it pulled me in. I suppose it took that long to 'speak' the language of magical realism.

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding --I can't bring myself to read this, even though a friend gave it to me last year. I just can't bear a story of boys turning to savagery.

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan--Loved it, wonderful book

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -

52 Dune - Frank Herbert--liked it a lot when I read it, about 30 years ago

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - This is a great book. An amazing tour behind the eyes of an autistic boy. Wow.

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - it was ok.

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (a book about the soaring human spirit. Hard to believe, given the subject matter; I guess that's why I'm so impressed with this author.)

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac--had to see what the fuss was about. Didn't love it.

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - Cause Celeb is also really good!

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - On my list.

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -


71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -


73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -

80 Possession - AS Byatt--tried, I just could not get into it.

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Great book

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom --I'm just not interested

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - I've read some of them.

90 The Faraway Tree Collection

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - It's about bunnies. Way too many bunnies for me.

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - I think Hamlet's a whiny jerk. I really hated this play.

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I don't think I'm as literary as Mrs. Spit. And I'm sadly lacking in classics.

Counterwill

In Scattered a psychological function was introduced that I'd not considered before. Mate´ used it to explain the frequent oppositionality of the ADD child. He quoted a child psychologist in calling it "counterwill". (Gordon Neufeld)

Although ADD children have often been characterized as having strong wills, counterwill is actually a hallmark of a very weak will, weak sense of self. It is a normal developmental function which especially asserts itself in toddler years and teenage years. It serves to protect a child's fragile will behind a scaffolding of 'nos'. It is the psyche's way of protecting a person's Self from being overrun by another. It serves until the person's will does develop into enough Self to freely make choices or refuse options. It is not a reflection of the child's moral character and it is a mistake to treat it as such.

Friday afternoon in Salem, having spent the night with my parents, I prepared to leave. The boys had slept in late and thus had a late breakfast and I was hoping to get away without having to take them out to eat.

Scott was hungry; wanted a hot dog. I resigned myself to feeding them first, even though it was only an hour's drive to get home. I packed up our stuff to load once we got back, then prepared to walk across the parking lot to the restaurant affiliated with the hotel.

Connor got to the elevator first. The hallway was choked with linen carts and cleaning supplies for the vacated rooms. One of the carts appeared to be waiting for the elevator we were going to take. Scott rushed up, but Connor pressed the button just before he could. So Scott pushed it, several times and a contest ensued. It was starting to get physical with pushing away of hands and public with "stop it!" and "you're fat!" and I lost patience with the whole thing and marched them back to the hotel room. I very sharply told them that I couldn't take them into public if they were going to be behaving that way and so we needed to just put our stuff in the car and leave. "Nice going, Scott" said Connor. I said, "You were as much a part of that as he was, Connor. You kept it going by participating, by continuing to press that button! It's just a button! You're older, why did you keep it going?"

Connor glared at me and said that I was part of the problem too. At the time I was inclined to dismiss it as immaturity. He has not yet connected that the reason I am angry with him is his behavior; he is merely angry that I am angry with his behavior.

It did blow over. The boys apologized to each other, and to me, and so we loaded up the car and then went to get something to eat.

Yesterday when I was writing my post and looking through the book, Scattered, for quotes I realized something. Just as I'd written that I'd spent my growing years in service to adjusting the environment to suit the adults around me (that is, modifying behavior of mine that made them anxious), I realized I had just done the same thing with my sons. When I gave them the "That's it!" tone and roughly handled them to steer them back to our room, I had been anxious. I was anxious at their fighting in a public hallway, in front of my parents. I was anxious that this interaction between them would lead to a chain reaction of other escalating interactions. I wasn't sure how to negotiate this in a congested hallway, and then managing in a small elevator with a cleaning cart. I was anxious that it would continue at the restaurant. And I wanted them to change their behavior to turn down the heat for me.

So much for a stable sense of Self inside. In that moment my sense of Self did depend upon their behavior in my environment. There was a way I felt that my sense of Self depended upon them behaving well.

I thought, but, isn't it legitimate to try to contain two boys reacting with hostility to each other? No one wants to listen to them, and listen to the mother remonstrate. Yes, this is reasonable. But was my flare of anger? If my sense of Self really had been stable and strong, I wouldn't have felt a need to save face by treating them punitively, also in public. I could have simply said calmly, "We can't have this in the restaurant. No one wants to listen to it. I guess we need to go back to the room and then leave directly for Portland without eating first."

I had blamed the boys for the ferocity of their contest to be the last to push the button. I thought it was stupid. I think that looking at it through the lens of counterwill helps me to see it differently, though. In the moment that Connor saw Scott heading for that elevator button his counterwill was activated and he was determined to deny Scott the satisfaction of pushing it first. Scott's counterwill flared and he was determined that Connor not have the satisfaction of denying him. Though it seemed stupid to an outside observer (me) to them it was extremely important. It became about Winning and Losing--each child determined that the other not see him as a loser and have bragging rights. Neither of them had enough Self to be able to peacefully surrender and live with the idea that someone thought they'd one-upped them.

And apparently, neither did I.

True Self

Maybe a year ago I had a dream of constructing some sort of flying vehicle. It was very beautiful, with a sort of bubble, like a helicopter cockpit where I sat. Its construction was finished, and I was receiving instruction in flying it. My instructor was not visible to me, but I heard her voice. I think I may have mastered the basics, of moving up and down and sideways. Now I was moving in a slightly more advanced realm. I was feeling how small subtle shifts affected my position, and how I could use those to gain skill. There was a feeling of a barrier that I was crossing, into, and out of, something. It was a boundary of sorts, and I was practicing negotiating it. I had an unease about whether or not I was trespassing, yet I felt that since I was not doing more than crossing the boundary, using it as a training tool, it was ok. I hoped that was true anyway.

Reading Scattered, by Gabor Mate´, I'm reminded of that dream.

He talks about the basic skill of self-regulation. The ability to maintain a stable inner environment despite fluctuations without. This is the foundation for being able to attend, and to learn. Perhaps self-soothing is another skill, which is even more basic than self-regulation. These are the first skills an infant learns, in the presence of an attuned adult. To learn this skill requires a caregiver who is self-regulated to the point where his/her self is stable despite stressors. This is not a person who is free of anxiety, but is able to tolerate his/her own anxiety.

In watching children operate, especially toddlers around desired objects, I've been sensitive to fluctuations of anxiety: the children's, and my own corresponding. Will my child get what his heart is so desiring right now? In the meantime I see the child who is in possession of the toy responding to the anxiety of the other children with anxiety of his own: will it be taken away? It's mine! The anxiety of the other children increases the desirability of the object many-fold. Some children can't tolerate the feeling: they cry, or they hit. Some children are able to relinquish their desire and move on. Others respond to distraction. Some absolutely can not.

The mother can soothe her child to the extent that she is able to maintain her calm center, her inner temperature despite the rising temperature outside. Adding to the heat are the thoughts: will my child get a turn with this toy? Look how many children are clamoring for it. My child wants it so much! Look how sad she is! What will the other moms do? How will they handle it? Are they judging my child for screaming? Are they judging me because he's screaming? What if he hits someone? I feel self-conscious responding when there are other parents around. Will this kid EVER give up the toy? Look at him hoard it. I HATE him! Look, I can see on the faces of the other moms that they're also concerned that THEIR child get a chance. How can I advocate for my child without being overbearing?

This was the kind of scenario I knew came with the parenting territory, knew was coming when I held my infant in my arms, and dreaded. Parenting-In-Public.

Fortunately, I found a group of moms who were able to hold their centers stable while negotiating these rough waters, and I learned from them. I also learned that children's heart's desires are often fickle, and even if they were heartbroken over something one moment, they were indifferent to it the next.

So the point is well taken that parents who can maintain a serene inner temperature when things are turbulent outside can best teach their children the same skill. This is the foundation of the child developing a stable Self, and the ability to regulate It.

From what Mate´writes it appears that this is essential for the child to develop the brain structures that will affect his ability to learn, to attend, to focus and direct that attention at will, in her future. These neural pathways are laid down in the presence of this safe, undisturbed-by-anxiety core. The agent is the attunement of the parent. These are the conditions that are required for optimum development of these structures.

The features of ADD, immaturity, hyperactivity, inattentiveness, are all normal stages of development that a child passes through. In the absence of the optimal conditions for development a normal stage becomes a state.

This resonates with an intuition I've had, that the tension between Gary and I has been counter-productive to the emotional well-being of our sons. I realize that considering this is flirting with a 'blame-the-parent' (particularly the mother) mentality. However, I do not read blame in Mate´'s writing. I don't feel defensive, because I've been feeling this is intuitively true all along. Perhaps also there is hope in Mate´'s message: development is not static. The human brain is always developing, well into old age.

As I read his description of a stable inner Self, and the skill of Self regulation, his analogy of the warm and cold blooded animals broke open a door and light shone in. There are adults in my life who are cold-blooded animals emotionally. It's not that they're cold people, it's that they require others around them to adjust the environment to their comfort level. Their sense of Self and their well-being are dependent on the conditions outside of them, and they can only tolerate a small level of fluctuation. And it seems perfectly natural to them to expect others around them to accommodate them.

My mother is one of these people. To a lesser extent, so is my father. Gary is, and to a much greater extent so is his mother. Their sense of Self is fragile, and vulnerable to collapse in the face of disagreement and disappointment. In fact, there's a way that my life has been in service to people like this, my objections felt like selfishness to me. I wonder if other people have had this experience?

Anyway, reading Scattered, I felt a place inside. Almost a physical place, It was like a space, perhaps a potential space that has always existed, but I didn't know was there. Now I feel a Presence inside there. Unconsciously, I've been breathing into It. I've found myself breathing into It in potential anxiety situations: driving on the freeway: will there be an opening when I need to take my exit?

And then I think of the dream. So perhaps this is my vehicle, my flying vehicle. I've been constructing It with Sharon, my mentor, and I'm learning how to fly. Learning the basics, and now ready to begin acquiring some skill.

Brief summer vacation for mom

Gary took the boys to see his dad up in Washington, at least 4 hour's drive away. They left Friday, so I've had a bit of a break. The boys will be getting a surfeit of grandparents. Thursday I drove them down to Salem, about an hour's drive. My parents were up from California, to see a friend's granddaughter get married. (It's always a treat for the boys to stay at a hotel, watch cable cartoons, and use the pool. They were happy to see their grandparents, too.) Wednesday Gary's mom comes over to watch them for a few hours.

So we had only been back in Portland a couple hours Friday before their dad came home from work to take them to Washington.

My version of walking miles to school barefoot through snow is lo-o-o-ong cross-country driving trips. Since my dad was in the Air Force we didn't live close to grandparents. So summer vacations usually meant driving hundreds of miles and several days to see them. We didn't have dvd players and Gameboys! We rode in the car for 8-10 hours, without complaining.

My boys have no tolerance for car rides. They can barely go an hour without moaning. I would not have wanted to be in the van with them driving up to Washington after an hour's travel under their belts already.

Next month we're driving to Breckenridge, Colorado, for a family reunion. Trouble brewing.

I'll probably relent and let my laptop become a movieola. Prop Its Preciousness up between the two armrests of the front seat so they can view from the back, and pray that it's not flung to the floor (a good deal of my soul is in here. Backed up, yes, but I'm not convinced the magic will work should I need it.)

I haven't actually used my version of walking miles through snow to shame them into silence (it wouldn't work anyway.). I haven't used it because they could rightfully point out to me that we didn't have to wear seatbelts in my day. It's true. My parents had a huge Chevy station wagon and we mainly rolled around with the dog in the cavernous back. Being confined by a seatbelt and in Scott's case, a booster seat definitely ratchets up the discomfort level.

Note to self: bring earplugs and curse van manufacturers for not making standard a silence window between the front seats and the back.

My dear friend from my home-health days came over Thursday to assist me in the dressing change for Connor's wounds. While relieved to have been able to leave them alone for several days, I was always aware that a Day of Reckoning when they'd have to be removed was coming. I called her to ask for her advice and any pointers (she's a Wound Queen). Fresh back from her vacation she offered to come over. I was so relieved to hand this off and get training from a Trained Professional.

I realized I'd mis-characterized Connor's wounds to myself when his friend's mother brought him home that Friday evening. I was approaching them from the frame of reference of a skinned knee. Even though intellectually I knew that road rash like this is the equivalent of a second degree burn, I still was thinking that overnight it would feel better. In some ways I think it served Connor well that I misjudged it. I think going to an emergency room would have meant (besides being transported again) several hour's wait, most likely un-medicated, and then an aggressive cleaning. I had figured that we could accomplish the cleaning over a wider stretch of time, which meant gentler, at home.

In other ways it didn't serve him well because I was too slow to recognize the nature of the pain he was going to feel so that I could be pro-active in medicating him.

I approached his injuries from the experience level of wounds 101, and by the time I got the Tegaderm on him I realized I was operating quite a bit over my head.

So it was a relief when Kate offered to come.

And I made sure he was medicated.

The verdict: he's healing beautifully. There's no infection. He tolerated the dressings removal very well. She showed me how to replace them, what to look for, and the best way of removing them. He was so relieved it didn't hurt he was just giddy.

It was good to re-establish contact with her, too. We used to work very closely together and I always admired her compassion, her amazing competence. Although I'm still just in the thinking-about-thinking-about returning to the job field phase, she's working in a place I've had some interest in, and I'd love to be her co-worker again.

Last night Conner said, "except for the [road] rash, I'm kind of glad this happened." His face was open, eyes wide.

He and Scott and I were playing a game. It's a dinosaur game, kind of like "Sorry", where the objective is to move dinosaur pieces from a starting place to "home". A variation is that the player rolls 3 die, one of them colored red. They move their pieces according to the white numbers; the red dice determines the moves of a "tyrannosaurus rex" piece that is moving about the board stalking pieces and threatening to take them to its lair. I was playing only after overcoming the deepest reluctance, as I had done the day before.

I looked at him. "What is it about this that makes you glad?"

He said, "The closeness that we've had. We've been doing things together and sharing things."

Oh holy god. How close I came to not playing. How unwillingly I did come. How lucky I am that I chose to overcome that unwillingness.

This speaks volumes to me. And synchronistically, I'm reading Scattered by Gabor Mate´. The theme is the role that emotional conditions play in the development of neuro-circuitry that underpins self-regulation: the ability to hold oneself steady in the face of anxiety, to tolerate one's own anxiety. Basic to being able to attend to that which one chooses.

I do believe that Scott is sensitive to emotional climates, in particular the one he's been raised in with an emotionally depleted mother and a disengaged father. Maybe this is the genesis of a brain that's altered by chronic anxiety, so that he is reactive to every fluctuation in the atmosphere around him.

I'm so surprised, because the context of Connor being hurt and immobilized for a few days seemed a predictable set-up for boredom and great frustration. And then secondary negativity. That he sees it so positively is an affirmation of what Mate´ says about the importance of the emotional climate for a child's development.

And it was purely by chance that I played with them. Wow.

I think I chose well to start with Scattered in my self-education in ADHD. It is indeed a path with Heart.

Poster child for Tegaderm

Well, after the ordeal of applying the membrane-type dressing, there has been blessed silence. I've not had to mess with his wounds; they're covered and protected. He didn't need medication at all, either prescription or over-the-counter yesterday. He had an interesting pain flare-up coincident with a temper flare-up (Gary telling him he couldn't buy a skateboard rail online) around bedtime and took a single ibuprofen. That was it.

The only problem we had was very minor concerning what we had been through: I'd applied the shoulder patch under field conditions (inexperience and yelling occurring inches from my head) and it was not the most neatly wrapped package. Some of the edges were stuck to themselves, and this allowed a gap in the seal through which wound-drainage and ointment could flow. I called the pharmacy for consultation and solved that problem by taping a piece of gauze at the bottom to capture the drainage and reinforce the seal.

So I don't have to think of the next question until Thursday or Friday: What's it going to be like when I have to remove it?

Feeling very old

Feeling very, very old. Wishing I could have a vodka with Aunt Becky. The inside of my head is still ringing and I'm reduced to listening to the echoes.

Hoo boy. The morning began with Connor asking for a bath and I was all-to-glad to comply, to keep the wounds clean. Well, he became increasingly uncomfortable and began to yell in pain and demand that I kill him. He had seemed to be doing so well that I'd not thought he'd need medication first. So I gave him half a hydrocodone and waited with him for the eternity before it took effect. He yelled nearly the entire time. It amazes me that he didn't wake my younger son, or that the neighbors didn't call Children's Services.

Twenty minutes after administering the medication the pain abruptly shut off. It was like turning off a faucet. He loved me again and could tolerate me rinsing his shoulder with lukewarm water. He asked me to read, and so I continued from The Freedom Writer's Diaries: (How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them) That's part of my bid to interest him more in reading, by appealing to his maturing sense of fairness and justice. I was so jangled by what we'd just been through together that I kept crying as I read the entries of these high school students.

But we were at peace for hours. I researched online, trying to find the best way to manage this and was a little confused between the traditional approach, and using the transparent dressings that you can leave on. For days.

I called the pediatrician's advice line and they called in a prescription for Silvadene ointment. They clearly advocated for the old school method. But that was going to mean needing to handle the wound twice a day, and clean it as well as covering it. I knew after the experience of the telfa pads sticking that this would be a tough sell. But I was still on the fence.

I went to the pharmacy, taking Scott. They had the Silvadene, but no dressings that were large enough to completely cover the shoulder wound. The pharmacist said the Beaverton Pharmacy might carry it. He was kind enough to call to see how late they were open. In the meantime I got a call from Connor saying his wounds were beginning to 'burn' again. I'd medicated him before leaving, so that was perplexing. Rather than go straight to the other pharmacy I went home where he seemed to feel better.

I made a decision to commit to the transparent dressing. Drove over to the other pharmacy and bought one large sheet for the shoulder, smaller for the elbow and hip. He called when I was nearly home and was clearly in distress again.

I really hope that the cause for pain was that the wound had begun to dry out. The reason I hope this is because that has now been addressed. But he was truly beside himself while it was being addressed. It made the morning look mild by comparison. I had to look online to find instructions for applying the Silvadene and tegaderm and he was shouting the entire time. He was louder and nearly hysterical for at least 15 minutes after I applied it. I broke down and medicated him again, even though it had only been 3 hours since the prior time. Scott and I had gotten a movie, "Airport: The Movie" and it was running. About the time of the bar scene where the women are fighting and one is flung down the length of the bar so her head hits the juke box and "Staying Alive" starts playing he noticed it.

Perhaps I should have had him watching it before applying the dressings. Or, what I REALLY should have done was checked my e-mail because my friend sent me some research that says that children can tolerate pain better while they're playing video games! I felt so helpless in my attempts to engage his mind to reduce his suffering even as he was in pain. He was frantic.

Anyway, the wounds are dressed, covered with appropriate healing ointment and a clear protective cover. I can leave it for the 3-5 days it's supposed to adhere. The wounds will stay moist, and with any luck what happened this afternoon will not be repeated.

I don't think either he or I could stand it.

And I really want to stop giving him the codeine. I feel vaguely like an unfit mother.

Today

Surprisingly we were able to sleep the night through last night. I protected his road rash with a dry dressing that promised on the package to not stick to the wound. I gave him a couple ibuprofen and a benadryl, and he rested pretty well.

This morning was a different story. He insisted the dressings had to come off, yet they did indeed stick to the wounds. Bit by bit with damp wash cloths I persuaded the tissue/dressing bond to release, and he wailed every step of the way. He was wishing he was dead, wanting me to put him to sleep, and threatening to sue the dressing company. He asked if we had a case, and was insistent that he was serious and wanted an answer. Then he was unhappy with the answer: "no". He roared at Scott to leave when he came in to use the toilet. In short, he was perfectly miserable and giving everyone a taste of how he felt.

In fact, he was beside himself for a while, where he was miserable in the tub and miserable out of it and miserable because he didn't have any options. I was looking at the crust that was beginning to form on his shoulder and thinking we were going to need to soften that and clean it some more and in his state that was impossible.

In the medicine chest are the leftover hydrocodone tablets from when we've had procedures. Those are a hedge against severe pain; we often take them on back country trips. It was my ace in the hole today. I split it in two and gave him half.

Half an hour later he was drowsing in the tub, euphoric that he wasn't hurting any more. Scott came in to tell him how sorry he was that he's hurting and Connor smiled beautifically and thanked him. He was apprehensive when I suggested submerging, but he took a deep breath and tried it. To his surprise it was quite bearable. I then told him we needed to rinse it with clean water. The shower last night wasn't very satisfactory so I got a water pitcher and gently poured water above the area so it flowed over it.

6 hours later we've returned to pain and crankiness. He's in the tub again, but submerging is out of the question. I'm uneasily eying the crust forming and thinking it's going to need attending to. He's demanding to know how long it's going to be before it stops hurting and before it heals. I went online and found an informative site about road rash complete with photographs. I till him 2--4 weeks and you'd think I was personally responsible. "I don't to wait 2-4 weeks!" I told him I don't think he's going to be feeling this bad for the entire 2-4 weeks and he wants to know how much longer he is going to be feeling this bad.

So, I was hoping that Gary meant it this time when he said he'd be home 'early', by 'mid-afternoon'. Well, I wasn't betting the farm, mainly because when he was first talking about this trip he was saying he was going to be home 'mid-DAY.' He's always injured when I greet his time projections with skepticism and no one is more surprised than him when he doesn't meet them (and no one is less surprised than me.). So I was irritated, but not surprised when, 2 hours after mid-afternoon he called from above Timberline Lodge to say he was late. Duh, he was late at 3:00. And now it was going to be at least another 2 hours before there was another adult in the house. And that was 3 hours ago.

Plans for tonight--another bath session with a dose of codeine-lite on board to debride some of that eschar, followed by bed. Hopefully he'll rest well and will be feeling better enough tomorrow that we can skip the narcotic. I'm not sure how we'll protect the wound tonight, though since there's no way he's going to accept another dressing.

Scott has diarrhea. He plugged up the downstairs toilet and missed the bowl when he peed. Gary is committed to taking a group rafting tomorrow. They bid on a river trip at the Trillium Auction in May. I'd planned on having a babysitter to give myself a break, but it's beginning to look like a not-good idea.

Sigh.

More thoughts on anxiety and self regulation

I finally opened a library book I've had lying around for weeks: Scattered, by Gabor Mate´ M.D. The subtitle is How ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER Originates and What You Can Do About It.

This is not my first encounter with this book. I read parts of it back when Scott was a baby, not because he was showing any symptoms of ADHD, but because I found the subject added to my understanding of how the brain and mind work. There is something about that I find deeply satisfying, and this book fed that craving. This was the book that gave me the concept of "Fish in the Sea."

Now I'm revisiting the book, and from a position of personal need. Scott has a diagnosis, and I need education. I need to take the approach of a path with heart. I think this doctor's perspective holds that promise.

"Like Fish in the Sea" is the title of a chapter in Part Five: The ADD Child and Healing. It opens with the quote: "Parents who are faced with the development of children must constantly live up to a challenge. They must develop with them." Eric Erikson, Childhood and Society

Yes.

Mate´ says: "self-regulation is the goal of development; the lack of it is the fundamental impairment in ADD. One way of describing self-regulation is to say that it is the ability to maintain the internal environment within a functional and safe range, regardless of external circumstance."

He uses cold-blooded and warm-blooded organisms as an analogy. The warm blooded animal can exist in a wide range of habitats because of its ability to self-regulate the temperature of its internal environment. The cold blooded animal is vulnerable to the fluctuations and extremes of the external environment...

{I once had a realization that parenting is characterized by being interrupted. If anyone ever asked me what advice I might have for new parents I was going to tell them to be prepared to be interrupted repeatedly for the next 18 years. Case in point: the phone rang as I wrote and I ignored it as usual. But it rang again, and since Connor was over at a friend's, I wondered if the call might be a rquest to spend the night or if it was time for me to pick him up. So I answered, and it was his friend. He said that Connor was 'injured.' I figured he'd gotten a bruise or two, the usual 'scars' he loves to display and brag over. But the friend's mother got on the phone, said he'd been going fast down a hill on his skateboard, got spooked when a car turned onto the street, tried to turn too quickly and was flung to the asphalt. Fortunately he was obeying me and wearing his helmet. She said he 'is pretty scratched up' in a tone that suggested an escalation over his usual war-wounds. Then I could hear him say, "It hurts" tearfully, which is extremely unusual for him. I said I'd come get him, but she offered to bring him home instead. I asked her to give him some ibuprofen.

20 minutes later he's here, with some pretty impressive road rash. The wounds all look superficial with the worst a gouge just above his hip, his right shoulder, and his right elbow beginning to swell. He's moving his elbow in all directions, and is using the arm to bear weight to relieve pressure on other sore areas so I don't think it's broken. I ran a bath, thinking that submerging him in water might be more humane than the trauma of using a washcloth on the abrasions. He tolerated that fairly well, except he couldn't stand dunking the shoulder. I tried letting him sit a while, to let the ibuprofen take more effect so he'd be better able to manage it. Applying gentle pressure with a washcloth gave him some relief so I tried having him submerge while applying pressure. He couldn't bear that either. I dredged up an old irrigation bottle and tried gently rinsing but that was too intense too. So I did what he could tolerate: kept re-wetting the washcloth with warm water and gently pressing it to the wound. I can still see the asphalt, the black stain, but the wound is very superficial, just the top layers. So I decided to content myself with less-than-pristine-clean, but watch it carefully. I might have him try to soak again a little later, and if he can do that maybe try standing under the shower. He's feeling much better and is nearly giddy from the relief of that. In fact, he's pretty darn grateful for my ministrations, which is nice. I'm hoping that a collateral benefit is a greater awareness of and respect for his limits.

Gary got to miss the excitement. He's up on Mt. Hood. It might be best that he wasn't here for this; he has a tendency to overreact.}

My original train of thought is completely derailed. Perhaps I'll return to the theme of self-regulation and homeostatic mechanisms and how they pertain to ADHD and the emotional climate of the home. I'll try another post in the future. Maybe I should wait until the kids are back in school, or until (oh joy) Gary takes them to visit his dad in Washington next weekend. (I wonder if he realizes I'm not going?)

1001

In checking out my site meter I just noticed that I've received my 1001st visit. Of course, that may not be strictly accurate, since some of these 'visits' were mine before I figured out how to block them, or when I've accessed the site through another computer.

But I'll call it 1001, while reserving an idea that the "real" 1001st post may be coming up any time now. Like the Antoine St. Exupery, looking up into the night skies to see how his Little Prince is doing, for now, every post will be the 1001st.

THIS 1001st post came from Cork Ireland. It came this morning, and the search terms were "excavator lessons". It appears they didn't linger, just took a glance around and then moved on.

My thousandth visit, came from someone I "know." Doug, take a bow!

Excerpts

What to do. My brain dulled by summer and the full-time surround of kids and kidsounds. I don't think even the book chicklet recommended can help me. She described my experience so accurately:

" Sometimes, you want to post about the things that mean the MOST to you, but you're just not sure how to put it out there in a way that makes it REALLY make sense, you know, in the way it does in your HEAD"

I flatter myself. She's more spot on when she talks about "your brain's just FRIED and you're having one of those "dumber than a rock" moments."

Call me Petra. And I flatter myself to think it's just a 'moment'.

BUT, I found the solution to having "That Man Was A Bastard" on my opening page for weeks.

I give you:

EXCERPTS

I have 38 years of intact diaries floating around. Surely that can be good filler material? Sort of like having a rock quarry in my back yard for building a road, should I need one.

So, for my first installment of excerpts, I offer Existential Angst, from August 1993 (I'd been married for 16 months, about to turn 37 in Oct. I wasn't even thinking about kids.). The therapist I'd been seeing for seven years, Sharon, and I had terminated our therapy relationship in January. That had been an unhappy experience for me.

Sometimes my terror is about how alone I really am. I don't really experience it as terror (like extreme fear for my survival), though I used to, I think, when I'd see The Abyss. Perhaps the abyss, which I've worked in lots of metaphores--in climbing, boating, in the story of my mom blaming me for the lost puppet and I circled a large hole in the field, looking for it there, in the bottom-of-the-well analogy--perhaps the "gapped rage" discussed in Earth Spell also symbolized this abuss (or the Abyss symbolizes the gapped rage.) Back when I was a teenager and aware enough to experience these feelings as an Abyss, come to think of it, was when I was very aware of how alone I was. I had a slew of very complicated feelings and found when I tried to explain them to someone else that the someone else would be hearing something that was different from my experience. It was frightening especially when I realized I couldn't even explain my feelings to myself in ways that matched what I was feeling. Then I would wonder if what I was saying was REALLY what it sounded like to other people and I was "just" denying it because it sounded bad. And then it would seem I "should" accept the other person's version of it because if I didn't it meant I was just making excuses. Then it seemed that the feelings I had around that (of terror that maybe it was RIGHT to accept these other's interpretation) were further proof that I should accept the other's view. It was a horrible bind.

Somehow, Sharon was able to interrupt that cycle, but there were times even with her where I felt she pressed her overlay onto what my feelings and experience meant. (This, even from the person that I was lucky enough to feel as close to perfectly understood as I've ever felt with another human being.)

So there is a way I can never be fully understood by Another, and in that sense I'm alone.

I've sought understanding through the route of explaining my interior experience perfectly enough to match it. I usually fall short, and despair. Its complicated sometimes when I try this with another person and I sense they have another interpretaton. That increases my discomfort, especially if I sense their interpretation may not be favorable to me or may involve a judgment.

(An added twist is that I wonder if my discomfort comes from "knowing" they are "right.") (Especially since I'm well aware that our defense mechanisms may keep us from being able to see ourselves objectively, even if its in our best interests to see ourselves as we are.)

So there is comfort to be found in thinking that light can be shed on some of these convoluted areas.