Expanding the Circle of Support

 At the last minute, Max switched from game development courses to two gen-ed requirements: interpersonal communication and health psychology, both online. They’re required for a 2-year degree in sport and exercise science.  Now he’s struggling through them. The college has not been helpful in providing tutors, so I’ve been putting in 2-3 hours a day, growing exhausted and resentful about my lost freedom. But I finally rounded up two college girls to take over four of the seven days a week, at $20 per hour. It’s worth it. The two young women are close to his age, and patient, and Max is happy to interact with someone other than his parents and his typical circle of friends.

A Minimalist Christmas

 12/25/20 

Our Christmas tree is small, with a few strings of red and white lights, and unique ornaments we’ve collected over the years. I call it “minimalist,” and I love it that way. I could’ve done without one altogether, but now I treasure the twinkling lights when dusk falls in late afternoon. I hope they bring some joy to people walking by.

There were only a few presents under the tree on Christmas Day. It seems no one in the extended family had the energy to buy and send gifts. I certainly didn’t. Max was disappointed by the lack of 20- and 50-dollar-bills tucked into greeting cards. No one’s feeling safe enough to be extravagant. But he was exceedingly grateful for the few things he got: a Patrick Mahomes jersey, a UVA sweatshirt, and $150.00 from me for PC components. 

I got F. a card game, a puzzle depicting 25 different donuts, and National Theater of London subscription for streaming plays. He got me earrings, which I like, and that was plenty—I actually discouraged him from trying to do more. I truly prefer minimal gift-giving, get easily overwhelmed by the demands of buying gifts for people who need nothing.

The Man He Is Meant To Be

12/15/20 

I have to give up trying to impose a shape on Max’s life—the shape that makes sense to me. He may not go to college at all. He may just get any old job, and rent a house with his friends, those who are just as aimless. His only passion right now is to build his own PC—some kind of set-up for streaming and pro-level gaming. A thousand-dollars-worth of equipment. This is the hardest thing, to let him make what seem to me colossal mistakes. The heartbreak he will have to endure, the threats to his self-esteem, the extra obstacles presented by ADHD and learning disabilities. I will have to trust in Max’s internal guidance system (intuition, Higher Power, Holy Spirit, whatever) and trust that the world—the craziest, scariest world I’ve seen in my lifetime--will respond kindly enough. I can only be patient with Max and myself as we fight it out–what is his to decide, what is mine? Where I cede ground, he steps up and grows, becoming the man he is meant to be. 

Where I cede ground, he steps up and grows, becoming the man he is meant to be.

I'm Not Gonna Lie ...

 I’ve stopped blogging because I’m depressed. I‘ve stopped believing that sometime within the next six months covid will be over.

I’ve cherished the hope that the election, with a Biden win, would lift the dark cloud hanging over our country—the cloud that spurned covid, and violence, and chaos, and contempt. But suddenly I realized that, even with Trump out, we will be facing months or years under the threat of a deadly virus.

Worse. I can’t get Max out of his room. He’s tethered to a bank of devices. He takes no initiative to look for a job or sign up for college classes or cook something or … anything except talk to and get together with friends. It drives me crazy. I have to goad and prod and schedule to make anything happen, and for the first time in his life, I resent this role. I’m disappointed in him. I’m afraid for him. I’m angry, I’m conflicted –should I pull back entirely, force him to act or stagnate on his own? Should I create some structure for both of us? Should I just have him check in with me once a week? No shoulds, I guess. What’s working, what’s not?

I can’t do it anymore—there’s just nothing left inside--and F. is just as baffled and confused as I am. I need help and support and relief for myself. I have set up a medication adjustment for Max, I’ve inquired about a vocational counselor for him. I’d like to sign up a driving instructor. Maybe, even, get him a life coach.

But I’m overwhelmed and scared. I’m furious at Trump and those who didn’t take the virus seriously in the beginning--and have put us all in danger, as the virus surges out of control.

I’m just tired. So terribly tired.

On My Own, Somewhere Else

My son is mad and stressed and lashing out at me.  He made a $125 down-payment on a Nintendo Switch to a seller on Make Me An Offer and then realized the seller had purged her account from the website along with any means of contacting her.  When I try to calm him, he gets furious.  He wants me to take over, figure out how to get his money back; when I refuse, he retorts: "Why did I waste my time talking to you?"   

This is not the son I'm used to.  His scorn hurts.  And it makes me damned mad.

Yesterday, I made a reservation for a small cabin at the ARC Retreat Center in central Minnesota.  I feel a visceral need to GET AWAY: from covid, from these four walls, from my teenager and husband and cat.  I need time and space and privacy to care for myself, to be whatever I am without concern for how I affect those around me.  

I also talked to my dearest friend by phone for more than an hour.  We vented our rage at covid and teens and Trump and husbands and mothers, and somehow ended up laughing our heads off.  I needed that, badly.  

I hesitated to set up the retreat, worried that I might be trading one kind of loneliness for another.  But as soon as I confirmed the reservation, I started a list of the food and books and art materials I would bring along--happy to dream of being on my own, somewhere else.

To Fail, to Begin Anew

A few weeks ago, I was so concerned about Max's depression that I lined up six potential therapists for him to choose from.  He picked out the one I wanted him to: Xoel Rodriguez, married with kids, Spanish-speaking, and a former tattoo artist.  I knew Max would think this was cool.  

I left a message at the clinic. But before they called back, Max had a friend over for the first time in months.  Not just any friend, but his best friend since childhood--Vernon--who had a habit of dropping off the grid for a year or two, then suddenly reappearing.  

The next day, Max's depression was gone.  He told the clinic he no longer needed their services.  I still thought counseling would've been helpful.  But Max said, "I already have a therapist: my friends."

A week later another friend spent the night: Genuine Jack.  A 6-foot-tall teddy-bear of a young man.  He pumped Sam's head full of the pros and cons of college and its costs and benefits--stuff I've been saying for months and Sam's been refusing to hear. 

Vernon teaches Max to be grateful for what he already has.  Jack teaches him to weigh practicalities.  All his friends have told him over and over to have more faith in himself.  Apparently, unbenownst to me, there was one night they talked him out of a wish to die.

Sick and Tired

I haven't posted in almost three weeks.  I'm mired in depression.  Too many losses all at once.

The latest stats for Covid in Minnesota show a daily infection rate higher than it's ever been before. We are now worse off than when we started the lockdown in March. I am furious at our national "leader" who has minimized this crisis, and at those who have followed his lead--young people who are selfish and believe themselves invincible, "mature" people who prefer to believe in their own prejudices rather than scientific facts.  I've never felt so strong an urge to simple leave--go anywhere where covid is not, where people and governments are behaving sanely and humanely.  I feel literally betrayed by our government and the prevailing culture of selfishness, greed, and racism.  

My PTSD is kicking up.  The same sense of betrayal I felt at the hands of my mother, who failed in her primal duty to protect and nurture me, and instead used me to meet her own emotional needs.  This is the ultimate abandonment--what psychologist Peter Walker calls the "abandonment depression," that white fog now swirling at the center of myself.  I sometimes think of it as the"failure to thrive."  I think of those un-nurtured Romanian babies, and those baby monkeys, motherless, who cling desperately to a metal form draped with a towel. Without a mother's attention, her physical touch, the babies grow listless, stop eating, and die. 

I've lost a beloved brother-in-law.  I've lost most of my own mothering role, having finally released Max to the direction of his own inner spirit.  I feel listless, directionless. Without the work of managing his life to anchor me, what is the point of me now?

I can tell myself that my role as a mother is to stand back and cheer him on, to point out his strengths and good choices and successes.  But it feels like so limited a role.  Some great chunk of myself has fallen away, and I'm left naked, weightless, ungrounded. 

I want to foster kittens, but can't, as Skippyjon just wouldn't tolerate having them in the house, and we really have nowhere to keep them separate from him.  I want to help little kids with reading, but how, when schools will be trying to keep kids and staff apart?  

This is hard. This is so hard.  And I'm sick of articles and spiritual gurus telling me what I should be "learning" from this disaster, how I should be "supporting my mental health."  I'm sick of our can-do culture, which offers no support for legitimate grief and fury.  I'm sick of doing it all myself, with a partner struggling with a new job, and little time to empathize with what I'm feeling.  I'm sick and tired, and for once, I'm going to let myself be where I am, for as long as it takes. 

.  

Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt

6/30/202

Max spends 90% of his time in his bedroom, in the dark, on some kind of media: Nintendo Switch, Google Pixel 3, a giant monitor. F. and I have been panicking over this, in general, but also because now he is truly depressed—lethargic, sad, angry—and we’ve never seen him like this before.

I’ve started making him lunch again; otherwise he just doesn’t eat until dinner time, except for unhealthy snacks like granola bars and pizza. I’m helping him study for the permit test, apply for a store clerk job at our food co-op, register for classes in the fall. My counselor tells me to stop helping, let him fail on his own. But that doesn’t seem right. He’s facing staggering losses. Plus, he recognizes that he is depressed and in need of help.

I had hoped Max would bypass the teenage angst, that he would sail from high school into college, his happy self, eager to do well, excited to try something new, full of dreams. But we humans aren’t built to endure severe and chronic uncertainty and threat. These things wear us down, physically and emotionally.

Letting Go of the Person I've Been

I have a photo: I’m sitting on the floor in a circle of moms and toddlers, with Max sitting on my lap. We’re singing a song about flowers. Max is wearing a headband sprouting 6-inch yellow petals. He looks dubious, not at all happy with the thing on his head. In those days Max relied on me for everything.

Parting was “such sweet sorrow”—I could hardly bear it, knowing he would think I was leaving forever. I loved that vulnerable part of him. Once when he had a fever, I lay on a hammock for hours, with him on top, stomach to stomach. If I tried to get up, he would wail.

One Son, One Story of Race in America

6/9/20 

I was grating a raw beet, and Max was slicing mushrooms.  We were making veggie burgers, from a New York Times recipe—a long and complicated list of ingredients no one without his own personal chef would have on hand.  The recipe’s supposed to take three and a half hours to complete, including two hours for chilling, but at the rate Max is going, we won’t be eating dinner until 9 pm.  Talk, talk, talk— does he need a pill to make him focus on what he’s doing? 

“No, I don’t need it,” he says.  “I can focus without it … “

I return to my beet.  Suddenly he blurts out: “Did you notice that all of the judges on MasterChef are white?  I think there’s only been one Latino.”  He’s practically memorized all 10 seasons of the show.  “And almost all of the winners are white, too.“  

I stop peeling.  So far he’s avoided the issue of race.  “Really?  Wow.  I bet that’s true.”   Then I pause.  “I wonder how many of the contestants are people of color?  Or how many even apply?”  I want to believe the proportions make sense, the judges themselves aren’t biased.  That blacks and Latinos simply don’t apply.  But then I wonder, “Why not?”  Does racism operate even before a child's dreams make themselves known?

Depressed in America

The Washington Post reported today that 1/3 of all Americans are experiencing depression and/or anxiety.  I'm right there with them.  I'm weepy and tired.  Too tired to do the "self-care" that is supposed to prevent plunging into despair.

Max refuses to participate in the virtual graduation ceremony that so falls so grievously short of what he needs: to spend time with his beloved friends in person.  He says he hates covid-19 and will not give in to it by accepting second best.  

I tell him he's cutting off his nose to spite his face.  "It's just the way I feel," he answers.

I hate covid too. 

A Graduation of Sorts

It’s Max’s birthday today.  He turns 19.  It shocks me.  This is way past “young teen” to “on the verge of adulthood.” The next birthday is 20, no longer a teenager at all.

It hurts me to think of him leaving, but I’m more or less resigned.  No, not really.  I’m relieved that Covid will keep him here a little longer, at least a year, maybe two.  Johnson and Wales is out of the question for fall.  Denver is still a hotspot, as are we here in the Twin Cities.  The culinary arts program at St. Paul Community College will have to do for now.  We try to make him feel better: “You don’t have to live at home: you can live with Wesley or Henry or Jack!”  But none of them have jobs.  How will this work?

No Easy Answers

5/21

Max seems angrier lately.  We all do.  But yesterday, late at night, he sat down on the couch across from me and asked me a question: “Do you think this will be over by August so I can hang out with my friends for my birthday?” For us, that involves waking up to eight giant teenage boys slumped across our living room.  That is his all-time favorite thing to do.

He tends to boast, present as cheerful and fearless even when he’s worried or upset. This time he sounded small.  His head was bent so he looked up at me through his eyelashes, as if he were pleading for something.

I was tired for to manufacture false optimism.  I sighed. “I don’t’ know.  We can hope for a vaccine, but I don’t think we’ll have one till next year.”

His eyes looked shiny, but crying is not an option for 18-year-old boys.

I couldn’t sleep that night.  Too hot, I thought, even with the windows open.  I finally gave up, gathered a few extra sheets, and went downstairs, grabbing another melatonin on the way to the den.  I picked up Mark’s latest novel, a Kate Atkinson mystery, hoping to read until I got sleepy.  But instead I found myself crying into a pillow. 

It was Joe’s death, I thought, flipping back and forth between two pictures:  Joe in bed, sick but alive, and Joe’s waxen body, suddenly emptied of him.  But then I thought of Max’s crushing disappointment.  And then the pandemic, the fact that Minnesota has not even reached its peak of cases.  And then all three.

Other parents are sending their kids off to college, off to work in summer camps, off to states halfway across the country.  I’m keeping Max here, at least for the fall.  I don’t believe the pandemic will be over by August.  I’m angry that colleges are acting as if everything is fine, as if they can force a dorm full of teens to stay away from each other.


I was a quick learner.  I still am.  I do things at speed: focus, don’t mess around, get things done.  But Max is languid and loves to chat.  It takes him 10 minutes to chop a carrot.  Plus, he has problems processing language.  He has trouble tracking the steps of a recipe, distinguishing a teaspoon from a tablespoon.  How will this work in the tense, frenetic pace of a restaurant kitchen?  (I’ve waitressed. I know how it goes.)

Everything in me wants to keep him here at home, to keep him safe from disappointment and failure and humiliation.

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard, tells a story from her childhood. Her teacher places a small branch dangling a cocoon in a mason jar, eager for children to witness the magical transition from pupa to adult moth, with a  typical wingspan of up to 6 inches.  When the moth emerges, it tries to flex its crumpled wet wings--but the jar is too small.  The wings dry, now permanently deformed.  When the teacher sets it free, it limps down the driveway, to its certain doom.
 
I don’t want to cripple my son.  But I also don’t want him to get violently sick or—honestly—to bring Covid home to us.  The bottom line is that I fear for his life, and for ours.  And there’s no magic reassurance to offer, no miracle cure.

Up in the Air: Who Am I Now?

--

Yesterday, Max presented his senior project, his last task before graduating from high school.  He had to do it over Zoom, to an audience of two teachers, three friends, my husband, and me.  He had switched topics late, from chiropractic to cooking—and his “deliverable” was a slide show of dishes he’d made for us, plus a 14-minute video demonstration of how to make pannacotta.  Zoom was glitchy.  The whole thing felt haphazard, rushed, uninspiring.  At some point Max started flinging his hands up over his head and leaning back out of the frame.  Then he would grab his head to crack his neck.  I wanted to burst out laughing, but his teachers’ faces were serious.

Max is trying on identities.  He’s poured through season after season of Master Chefs from around the world, memorizing the names of the winner and their favorite cuisines, the mannerisms of Gordon Ramsey and Joe and Graham Elliott.  He’s soaked up the lingo; consistency, plating, palate, flavor profile.  Adores flicking the knife blade back and forth (incorrectly) across the rasp to sharpen it.

It’s all surface, an experiment.  Yet he insists he want to go culinary school, become a three-Michelin-Star chef and open a restaurant—seemingly profound passions he’s never mentioned before.  But he expects us to foot the bill for Johnson and Wales—tuition $33 000 per year.  We had to lay down the law: we could only pay for two years.  After that he’d be on his own.

 

I’ve been goading him to consider cheaper, and closer, options.  He’s been digging in his heels.  The tension came to a head a few days ago, just around the time Joe died.  I found myself sobbing on the bedroom floor, exhausted.  Finally, I gave up.   Some tough sour husk I’d been clinging to fell away. The wish to control and protect.  To continue as Max’s manager, counselor, motivator, protector, fierce advocate—the role that’s consumed my mental and emotional energy for 18 years. 

--

In less than a year, I’ve lost my identity as a teacher. Watched my easy intimacy with Max grow strained.  Lost my familiar habits to Covid.  Lost a beloved family member to cancer.  Lost my most fundamental and fulfilling identity: mom.

 

After retiring, I felt unmoored: Who would I be now?  Now I feel pinned to the air, unable to reach the earth.

My Lost Beloveds

Joe died Tuesday night.  For two days I was crushed with grief.

Because of Covid, I can’t travel to Pennsylvania.  There won’t be a funeral anyway.  I’m left with questions it seems too early to ask: What were the exact circumstances of his death?  Was my sister by his side?  Did she discover him gone in the morning?  Was he conscious shortly before he died, or had he slipped into a coma hours or days before? Did he know he was going to die, or did he avoid knowing up to the end?

I want to ask my sister: how do you feel?  Overwhelmed with grief? Numb? Disoriented? 

I’m ashamed to admit it: I keep wondering if she feels relieved.  It wasn’t an easy marriage.  Yet they stayed together for over 40 years.  “She depends on me,” Joe told me just this past Christmas.  It was a kind of answer to a question he’d been asking himself.  It seemed to satisfy him.

I keep trying to imagine that infinitesimal moment between a room filled with Joe’s presence—then empty.  Where did he go?  Is he still himself?
 
It hurts be alone with my grief, 1300 miles away.  My side of the family isn’t good with virtual communication.  How do I connect with them?  I was gone for a decade here and there, but I want to belong. I want them to know that I, too, feel this loss profoundly.

Exhausted, Empty, Angry

Today I feel useless.  Exhausted, empty, angry, and dull.  I don't like what I'm writing.  I can't summon the will to sanitize doorknobs and light-switches (preferring a potentially fatal disease to housework, apparently). I'm furious at Max for playing computer games all day in his darkened bedroom, and hurt by his refusal to join my husband and me on a bike ride or hike. 

My husband says he'll talk to Max about whether the expensive culinary school Max has his heart set on is realistic. Whether any college will be open for face-to-face classes next fall.  But he doesn't.  He'll also agree to pick up after himself and sanitize surfaces--and won't.  It all falls to me. I let it, because after all, my husband is "working," and I'm not. 

Or am I?  My writing is work.  Parenting is a hell of a lot of emotional work.  And surviving a pandemic is pretty damn labor intensive too.

I need help from my beloveds. But maybe they feel as empty as I do, just as stunned--all our power to act thwarted.

College/Corona: What I Want to Say

We’re sitting at the dining room table in front of Max’s laptop, waiting for a video call from the admissions counselor at a culinary school in Denver.  Max is wearing shorts and a tennis shirt; I’m wearing a crumpled knit jacket over a T-shirt advertising a bluegrass festival held 10 years ago.  Suddenly it occurs to me that this may be an interview—should Max be wearing a coat and tie?  Too late. 

Suddenly I remember to ask Max: Is it okay if I ask questions?  Or do you want to do the talking? 

Yeah, you can ask questions, Max says. Most of mine have already been answered.   

I must’ve looked doubtful.  I mean from the last time we talked with her, he adds.

He’d had three questions:  Do you have a culinary arts program? How about a tennis team?  A gaming club?

That was the sum total of what he needed to know.

Meanwhile I was fretting about the sticker price: tuition is $33,000 a year.  Add another $13,000 for room and board.  So far the school has offered $16,000 in financial aid.  Not nearly enough.

Max doesn’t want to hear it. Anything’s possible, he tells me, looking pleased with himself.  Impossible has the word “possible” in it. 

Precisely at 1:00, Max dials the number and the admissions rep—Lisa—answers right away.  Max puts her on speaker.  Hi Max, she says cheerily, and they chatter on.  I begin to form a picture: southern twang (Texas or Oklahoma?), late 20s or early 30s, petite, slim, blond hair, business-casual dress, an open-face, and a stunning lack of self-doubt.  She probably married in her early twenties, had older teens of her own, and went to church every Sunday.

Finally it was my turn.  Here are the top three things I wanted to know:

• What are your contingency plans for COVID in the fall?  (Are you really going to pretend this will be over by then? Please stay closed.)
• Can he defer entrance for a year? (He’s delusional!  He thinks he’s going to be a famous chef and run a Michelin-star restaurant!)
• Can we get more money?  (I already know the answer is no.)

And then the lesser—but equally important—items:

• What is the primary instructional style?  (Are the chefs going to be mean, like Gordon Ramsay?)
• What’s the first-year retention rate? (Do the kids have nervous breakdowns under the strain?)
• How do they evaluate the students?  (Are there tests and quizzes?  I hope to God not, because Max hates reading, writing, memorizing—studying in general.)
• What’s the gender ratio? (Does the poor kid have a shot at a girlfriend?)
• Is the school in downtown Denver? (Is he going to get mugged?)

Corona: Locked Down and Grieving

Lockdown: 

What I feel today is not fear, but grief. Grief for the knowledge that this pandemic will not pass quickly. That life as I have known it is gone for who knows how long. That my son will not be able to finish his last semester of high school among his classmates, have a graduation ceremony and party, get his learners permit and license, see his girlfriend (at the tender beginnings of a relationship), take stupid risks with his beloved friends. That he is now exposed so young to the fact that the worst can happen. That living in the U.S. does not confer special exemption to tragedy.

My husband grieves by focusing on work. My son stays cheerful by believing it will all be over in a few weeks. I retreat to my lair upstairs, where I write, pouring out my feelings of loss, hoping that someone will answer back.

Happy to Be Himself (or, Letting Go a Little Bit More)

It was 39 degrees, sunny and warm for Minnesota in early March.  Max and I were meeting with the director of disability services at Augsburg University to discuss what the college could and couldn’t offer him.  Katy asked Max to share his understanding of his disability and what help he thought he would need. 

I had learned to hold back, having been burned once before at a high school IEP conference.  I’d jumped in right away with the questions I’d listed on a sheet of paper.  But Max interrupted: I’m leading this meeting, he said, glaring at me.

Now he talked about his ADHD, how he processed things more slowly than other kids, how reading was slow and hard and he did better with audio, how he used to be ashamed to ask for help but isn’t anymore, how he does better with tests if he can be in a room by himself … .  Katy sat back, her eyebrows raised: You know a lot more about what you need than most of the students who come in here. 

He was sitting up straight and looking her in the eye.  He spoke with a low, slow, drawl I only saw in meetings: However …, he was saying, and, Therefore …. . 

Parts of Self

A big chunk of me has slipped back into place unexpectedly.  I call it my nature girl.  Suddenly I’m appalled by fracking---especially in Pennsylvania.  And by the continents of discarded plastic, ghost ships cruising ominously across the ocean.  By the pellets of plastic lodged in the throats of seabirds and whales.  I don’t want to shout slogans or disrupt traffic or get arrested.  But I do want to write letters, post in my blog, watch what plastics I consume. 

This part of me went underground for the past 20 years.  It was the “biological imperative” that hijacked me, the compulsion to have a child. The cultural imperative for women.  But I wanted it, wanted to nurture another person into his or her genuine self: whole, authentic, happy.

Last night, Max’s face was bright with excitement over a new girl.  “She’s already beautiful,” he said. “If she puts on a little makeup, I won’t be able to look at anything else.”

Yet just the day before, he’d alarmed me and my husband and his teachers with a declaration of unhappiness and depression, completely uncharacteristic of him.