It’s not that I haven’t been inspired to write. Thoughts blossom in my mind, begging to be pressed onto a page. But sometimes I’m driving and sometimes I’m sleeping and sometimes I’m just lazy and sometimes I just Facebook instead.
There’s also another problem: I can’t write about parenting because my children are too old for me to write about them. Or at least for me to do so without potentially embarrassing them. Two of the three are adults, technically, and the other is close enough. Who wants the angst and struggles of their teenage years, their early twenties, blown up for the world to see? If I were the sort of person to drop to my knees and pray nightly, I’d thank God for staving off Internet popularity until I was well into my 20s. Regular film was bad enough.
So I won’t write about how I worry, about how telling the difference between “normal” teenage drama and “put your kid into psychiatric counseling” teenage drama is about as easy for me as – as what? My mind seeks a metaphor, but all suggestions fail. Who did I talk to today? One of my friends who assured me everything will be okay because, after all, look at what we did and we turned out all right? One of our family friends who appreciates coming home to happy animals and a clean house? “They’re great kids,” people say. And they are. Helpful and funny and morally outraged in the right direction. But sometimes I can’t tell the difference between raising teenagers and walking over red hot ploughshares.
(I see why people turn to religion in these times. When logic no longer applies, faith and prayer manifest as logical options.)
What else am I not writing about? Surfing. I’m pleased to find myself in the water again and lighter for being unburdened from chronicling said misadventures. Kaylee and I traveled to Santa Cruz so she could check out Cabrillo College. We braved the rocks and locals of Steamer Lane and fought through the kelp at Pleasure Point. The Lane’s offerings hit us at the knees, but at Pleasure Point I turned around after catching a wave to see K dropping down a face at least two feet over her head. I hollered and thumbsed up as if she were eight again and paddling into waves by herself.
Memories tied to moments and I hold fast to the rope.
1. You will fail them. They will emerge into this world limited only by their DNA and you will add to their problems by not being able to immediately and precisely rise to the challenge of meeting their needs with grace and foresight. You will yell. You will cry. You will swear. Exhaustion will override common sense. You will hear your mother’s voice scolding them and marvel that you are doing the same thing to your own children you hated having done to you. You will, one day, sympathize with your father’s decision to depart your family and start anew. Certainly you could do better given a second chance, too. You won’t know what to do, often, and will either freeze and do nothing, or do the wrong thing. The times you get it right will be taken for granted; your mistakes will live on through every holiday dinner, state-long road trip and 2 a.m. bout of insomnia.
2. They will make a liar of you. You will, as love floods your heart and makes your mouth run without thought, tell them you will always protect them. That you won’t let anything hurt them, ever. But you won’t be able to. Things, and people, will hurt them.
3. You will be inviting worry the likes of which you have never known. You will learn again and again how huge the world is in proportion to your small child, how much there is to fear. You will find yourself at the ER. You will find yourself at the ER. You will find yourself at the ER. You will lose track of how many times you find yourself at the ER. Strangers will honk at you as you space out at the intersection, wondering if your children will live up to their potential, pondering all the things you should have done differently. You will cry. You will fear bad things happening to them because bad things happen to children every single day. And just when you’ve achieved enough trust in the universe to believe they’ll be okay, one of them will get in a car wreck. Or diagnosed with an incurable disease. Or mugged. Or arrested. Or worse.
4. Money matters. Love matters more, but having the cash to provide enrichment/distraction through sports, music lessons, martial arts, etc., gives them, and you, an advantage. Being able to afford family vacations to interesting places enables you to bond over happy memory-making and, later, to whisk them away from the bad influences loitering around through the summertime. A lack of money leads to family stress, boredom, frustration at all the things you can’t provide – including, at times, birthday presents and steadily functioning utilities. The water will get shut off one Christmas. That story will never get any funnier with the retelling. If you don’t have money, you will need to be really, really good at managing it.
5. You will sacrifice sleep, food, dreams, a significant portion of your brain and most of your looks and still you will love them. Until they’re teenagers and then you might finally question what it is you’ve done with your life. But mostly, you’ll love them.
I don’t write too much about Nick’s diabetes any more because we’ve reached the point where writing about the diabetes is inextricably connected to writing about parenting a teenager – and writing about parenting a teenager isn’t cool because teenagers are not generally okay with having their family interactions served up as fodder for public discussion. It’s a shame, really, because parents of teenagers could certainly use the exchange of information, stories and ideas as much as the moms and dads of the under-five set. In fact, the struggles around breastfeeding, whether or not to put a toddler in time out, how to get your picky child to eat – well, all that just seems so quaint. Your three-year-old is having a tantrum? Yawn. At least the power dynamic is obvious and intact.
But having teenagers isn’t all bad. You can leave them at home, for example, and be relatively confident that they won’t stick a fork into the electrical outlet. This is very useful for those times when they make you so crazy you just need to get the hell out of the house and go for a long calming walk on the beach. Or a long calming drink at the bar. (And they will judge you, oh, how they will judge you!)
Now, let me make it absolutely clear that my children are smart, kind, sociable, helpful, resourceful young people – anyone who knows them will vouch, absolutely. One thing about my kids is they’ve all been super excellent people out in the world – they save their scorn for their parents only – hooray! Because that’s good. That’s exactly the sort of thing that, when you’re the parent of a teenager, gives you hope that you’re not: 1.) completely doomed; 2.) raising a sociopath; 3.) the stupidest mother that ever lived in the history of all the world, ever; 4.) all of the above.
The other thing about teenagers – and young adults, as my daughters are now – is that they are just brimming with youth. Vitality. Skin and bodies that gravity has yet to ravage. Hearts that have yet to harden. Chances that have yet to be taken. So no matter how well-kept you are, no matter how fit, how excellent your highlights and dedicated your regimen, the truth stares you in the face: you are no longer young, baby. And every day, they do their very best to accelerate your personal aging process.
“But you’re almost done!” people say. Usually the parents of younger children or childless people. I don’t know what they’re thinking, exactly – that the kid turns 18 and you’re suddenly unshackled? You get to clock out and go home? That because these people you’ve loved more than anything for a huge chunk of your life are now “adults” that your concern dials down to only middling? That your children being out in the world means you’ll never lie awake at 3 a.m. worrying about the choices they’ve made, are making? Well, wouldn’t that be nice?!
In all fairness, when they’re out of the house, it is a little easier. But it’s not easy.
Now I’m feeling a bit guilty for making the parenting thing sound so grim. (It is!) So here is something very fun, hooray!, about having teenagers: You can watch high quality shows and movies with them without regard to the sex/violence content. Yeah! Bonding over True Blood! You’ve been wanting to re-watch the entire Sopranos catalog anyway – here’s your chance!
Yep. See, not all bad.
Oh, and there is one thing worse than being the parent of a teenager: being one.
One night last week, I found myself setting the alarm for 12:30 a.m., then 1:30, then 2:30, then 3:30, then 5:30 a.m. Nick’s blood sugar hovered in the 300s despite my continued dosages of insulin, refusing to drop into normal range until that last 5:30 check. Why does this tend to happen throughout the night instead of the day? I don’t know. I was too tired to ask, “Why?” at the time. I am often too tired to ask, “Why?” these days; I just want to figure out, “How?” How can I resolve his blood sugar problems? Why something isn’t working is only as relevant as how knowing the answer will help me fix it. I am a carpenter these days, not a philosopher.
(I wish I was a carpenter – what a lovely, practical skill to have.)
The following day I was, of course, exhausted. Sometimes rallying to face all that needs to be done between 6 a.m. and midnight challenges me more than I’d like to admit. In my daydreams, I waltz through the mornings, salsa through lunchtime, samba across the evening and tango into the night.
(I wish I knew all those dances – what an exquisite way to live.)
Reality finds me more often stumbling, tripping over my words and slumping at my desk. I confess, I felt a little sorry for myself. Life felt too heavy. I hadn’t even had a drink and still I just wanted to lie down on the nearest floor and say, “OK, I give.” But as always, in my stupid, brilliant, complicated, straightforward life, the good happenings continue to twist around the bad, impossible to separate or ignore. So even as I spend another night awake at 3:30 a.m. because I needed to check Nick’s blood sugar, which was high, again, and because while checking him, he complained that his pump kept beeping because the battery was low, so I had to go find a spare battery in the truck, where I keep some emergency supplies, and throughout all this, my poor old dog lies on the floor without getting up because her legs went out yesterday and she’s not getting past it despite my hopes that she might just be really, really worn out from walking to the beach, and now I am likely going to have to make the call to have a vet come out and end her life because that would be the right thing to do if she can’t walk (right?) and I’m really not ready for that because she’s so sweet and I didn’t pet her enough or walk her enough and fuck, I was trying to get to the counting-my-blessings part of this.
Right, blessings. Despite all the above and other, less tragic, bad news, in the last week, I’ve walked out from my house four times to watch the sun, all fiery orange and ringed with red, settle into the blue-black ocean. Each time, the fact that I can walk from my house to this experience stuns me as much as the gold glittering from the horizon to the sand as the sun balances on the edge of the world.
I am awed. And in this same span of time, I’m hiked out from my house twice to surf and once to play Frisbee with Bobby and Nick on an afternoon so clear, windless and balmy I’d longed to transport everyone I loved to the water’s edge so they, too, could bask in the beauty. We winged the Frisbee around like we’ve done a hundred times and I could see our lives together stretch back, stitched together by perfect moments like these. I remembered a similar afternoon years ago – seven? eight? – with Nick zipping across the low-tide shallows on a skimboard as Sandy galloped alongside.
I still have a job I love, one that pays enough to cover the bills and a little more, keeps my family in health benefits. I have at least a half-dozen people I believe I can tell anything to and will still be loved, despite sometimes saying and doing stupid things. I had lunch with one of these fabulous people, last Tuesday, sitting outside at Café Nooner, eating my favorite sandwich in the sunshine. I took two others surfing in Crescent City yesterday, the only place on the entire North Coast that wasn’t sunny, where the wind stayed onshore despite predictions of off-, and they graced me by being not only good sports about the weather, but genuinely having fun. Even with all the fighting my family does, I never feel unloved. My body holds up. My husband finds me beautiful. His garden bursts with flowers and veggies, the backyard a testament to his devotion. The calendar attests to good times to come.
I worry about the dog, about Nick, about our daughters. Please let Sandy not suffer. Please let the children be happy and healthy and outlive me. I make my to-do lists each day, hopeful that if I get everything checked off, life will proceed in the best possible way. I never quite get there. Some nights remain particularly long, some days still bring bad news. In the midst of it all, however, some joy bubbles up. Good things happen. Exhausted as I may be, I can never completely despair.
It started when Chelsea turned 16 and people said how excited I must be for her to drive. We were in the thick of a challenging adolescence and at the time I worked at the Arcata Eye newspaper, which meant I saw every CHP collision report come through the fax machine. The knowledge that cars were death machines permeated my every work day. Facing the emotional wallop of raising an angry teenager left me raw and on edge nightly. The idea of my child behind the wheel was not exciting – it was horrifying. That so many people imagined otherwise made me realize how incomprehensible one person’s life can sometimes be to others. How even such a common experience as raising kids does not always translate to having something in common with other parents. That the greatest difference between having kids or not is the amount of fear that lives lodged in your brain, throat, heart, gut.
Of course, I tend to worry. Not everyone does. Some people are born with, or cultivate, this trust that God, the universe or some other benevolent force will “watch out” for their children. I assume they sleep well at night. I’ve considered turning to religion if it would help alleviate my insomnia.
Now that Kaylee’s 18 and graduated from high school, and Nick’s launching into his senior year, Bobby and I get a lot of, “Hey, you’re almost done!” Which I understand – and certainly, some things are easier. I am mostly confident that none of my children will stick keys into an electrical socket or choke on grapes if they’re not cut carefully into halves. I’m even mostly confident they’ll go off into the world and thrive. But this assumption that they’re grown and therefore I have less to worry about confuses me.
I do not feel less worried.
What I do feel is more helpless – my friend describes the shift as, “You spend all these years as their manager and then they fire you. The best you can hope for is to be hired as a consultant.” There’s an accompanying awareness that this is it. These years were the time I had to do things right and make up for things I did wrong. It’s too late to fix my parenting mistakes, which is so unfair because I finally have enough experience to raise children.
I would have lost my temper less, for example. So little sleep, so much stress, often translated into me snapping at the kids above and beyond what could have been called a “reasonable” amount. I don’t know where more sleep would’ve come from, but maybe I could have found ways to offset some of life’s seemingly relentless pressures.
Lack of money, for example. If I could redo things, this would be a big one. Not that I would’ve traded having jobs that allowed me to spend the most time with my kids, but I would have had a far better grasp on managing my money. I would have liked to be one of those people who managed to save a shocking amount of cash while working two waitressing jobs and never letting her kids go without. (I would still like to be one of those people who manages to save a shocking amount of cash.) You could’ve read about me in O magazine. I would’ve maintained a money tips website for several years, but decided to retire once all the kids were grown. Bobby and I would be planning our Costa Rican lifestyle about now.
(Note use of humor as a coping mechanism. I’m still trying to figure out the path connecting my daily actions to my dreams.)
The other, biggest, thing I’d fix is, I would’ve addressed and resolved the conflicts between Bobby and I sooner and more often. Becoming a mom, wife and adult simultaneously wasn’t easy; I was 20 when Chelsea was born, 21 when Bobby and I finally moved into the same place, 22 when we married. While I strongly reject all notions that only older, well-off women should have kids, I can’t deny being young and broke is inherently more challenging.
I was lucky – Bobby’s commitment to our family has never wavered – but being in love isn’t the same as being prepared. And I’m lousy at conflict, preferring to let things build up until something triggers a total freak out. I’d rather flee than fight. A lot of years were wasted in unnecessary unhappiness because I didn’t know how to fix what ailed us and was intimidated by the hard work and seeming impossibility of finding a solution. We still created many moments of joy with the children, but my dream of home always being a haven didn’t survive intact. I regret that. I know all families have their drama, but I wish I’d known how to spare mine from the amount of dysfunction I allowed to happen.
(This is the part where I note that if one compares dysfunction in families, we’re not too far off from the norm. I do not mean to imply otherwise. I’m only saying some things could’ve been better and I wish I’d been able and willing to make the changes then.)
Fortunately, none of the damage has been irreparable. Yet. But our children are always our children and with the pride and relief their independence brings comes whole new forms of heartache. The world may not be nice to them. In fact, I know it’s indifferent. Bad things happen all the time. But good stuff, too! I may not trust in the universe, but I muster faith that they’ll create their place in it. And hope the place they make brings them more happiness than sorrow.
I’m speaking in generalities now, which pains me as a writer even if some comfort is offered my mothering side.
Maybe I was wrong earlier. Maybe I’ll never have enough experience to have this raising kids thing figured out.
Having a family is the very opposite of independence – or so it seems. All that responsibility for the lives and happiness of others. The obligation to put one’s own needs and interests aside at times. Sacrifice. Complication.
And yet, having a family has freed me, too. Although having small people dependent on me introduced me to an awareness of my own mortality, I am nonetheless far braver by having children than I would be otherwise. Left to my own, my inherent shyness and habitual people-pleasing may have preempted standing up for myself. Instead, I have insisted upon information and action from doctors, nurses, teachers and other figures of authority – nobody is going to mess with my kids without me understanding what exactly is going on and why interference is necessary. I’m not a jerk! But I do defend the interests of my children far more aggressively than my own. Of course, what’s happened over the years is, because my own success in life helps determine my family’s, I have stepped up, risen higher, tried to set a good example of how to assert one’s rights. Also, to ask for help when necessary – sometimes being brave has meant acknowledging vulnerability and trusting others.
With surfing, having a family means I prefer to dawn patrol because leaving the house is easier before everyone else wakes up and slows me down. Or on bad days, stops me. I would definitely surf much more if I lacked the other people factor. Or maybe I wouldn’t surf at all. I didn’t start till I was 29. I wanted to forever, growing up in Southern California, loving the ocean. But I was too insecure. Learning anything was terrible, a horrible awkward stage, and I couldn’t stand the discordant guitar notes, the stumbling over dance steps – too worried about how I looked from the outside, I gave up improving myself from the inside.
Until I had children. They teach you quickly that: 1.) there are far worse things in life than looking stupid; 2.) life is short, so do what matters. Parenting is so hard that learning to do anything else would seem a cakewalk in comparison. Also, a woman needs something to do lest she wind up losing herself completely in motherhood. So I followed that childhood dream and took to the water.
Thanks to their dad, all the kids played Little League. As a child, I would have died. To be up there, in front of everyone, all those people waiting for you to hit the ball? Nightmare. Even worse than striking out would be having to get back up and try again after already establishing yourself as a failure – at least, that’s how the young me would’ve viewed the situation. Of course, the reality is, everyone strikes out or flies out or gets tagged out sometimes, and the getting-back-up-there is part of the game. Players learn to roll with the punches, to keep trying. I would think about that as I paddled for bigger waves, especially after a particularly brutal wipeout. If my 10-year-old could survive the scariest pitcher in the league, if my 9-year-old could cope with being thrown in to pitch unexpectedly, if my 14-year-old could get back up after a slide that left her bruised and bloody, if my own kids could do all these things again and again and again, while grinning and having a good time, then I sure as hell could shake off kooking out and give surfing another go.
And give them the gift of learning to surf while they’re young, even when it meant waiting for later in the day and less waves for me. To see them share in the joy of riding along a pretty blue wave face, all one with the world, is a whole’nother kind of stoke. I’ll take that one, too.
So, yeah, they’re anchors, for better and worse. But they inspire more than anything. And so when Kaylee joined Bobby, Nick and me in the water for the first time in a year, the sloppy, mushy waves didn’t impede my happiness one bit.
It’s not that it gets easier, sliding a fat needle under his skin, popping a lancet into his fingers at night and squeezing till the drop of blood grows large enough to measure. It just gets repetitious, and like anything, enough repetition will dull the senses. What is left to say? He holds still preparing for the set change, needs the house to quiet, everyone to keep from moving so he can focus on being ready for the pain. “Go,” he says and I push the tube-wrapped needle into his lower back at a slight angle.
Sometimes the movement is smooth, allowing me to quickly pull the needle back out, leaving the tubing in place. I secure it with adhesive and we’re done. Sometimes the needle catches, is too dull, I don’t know exactly. All I know is that sometimes it doesn’t go easily. He sucks in his breath. I wince, hating that it’s hurting him. That I’m hurting him.
At night, I tiptoe upstairs to check his blood sugar. I turn on the hall light, open his door, remove the meter and lancet device from his kit. The stupid lancet isn’t always sharp enough, which means I have to poke his finger repeatedly, hard and then pushing in hopes enough blood will come out. At midnight, I have little patience. At 3 a.m., I have none. I have to wake him for assistance. I am an inept vampire, unable to fulfill my simple task without help from my victim.
And after a bout of “good” numbers, we’re back to high high high. Is it because he’s not exercising enough? Because he’s growing? Because he’s not tracking his eating closely enough? Because he needs more insulin overall? I make suggestions. He rolls his eyes — he is a teenager, after all, and his mother is dumb and bothersome. But still, I keep talking. We can argue about whether or not his room should be cleaned, but this, his health and the possible long-term consequences of not combating the high blood sugars, this we must solve.
At least one concern has been put to rest for now: he’ll be able to keep getting medical care. That’s a significant relief in a world where reprieves from worry are hard to come by.
Yeah, 4:20 a.m. People keep recommending I take some pot tincture for my insomnia, but so far, I have failed to try that particular remedy. The other suggestions include melatonin and Ambien. The former helps on occasion; I have yet to try the latter. Any solution must be powerful enough to slow down the racing of my brain without impeding my ability to check Nick’s blood sugar and make necessary corrections – a tricky balance.
I woke at 3 a.m. into a state of worry, as if someone had yanked me out of bed and chucked me directly into a pit of fear. Despite all my white middle-class privilege, I still struggle to count my blessings in the wee hours, instead adding up all the ways in which I’ve failed or am about to fail or will probably fail in the future. Clearly my mind goes off the rails in these moments – if it stayed on the reality tracks, the list of successes achieved and obstacles overcome would not be so negligible. Instead, concerns reasonable and irrational twist together and tie my brain in knots. (Evidently affecting my ability to string together metaphors as well.)
I worry about my older daughter getting along 700 miles away. Moving into a neighborhood I’m not sure is safe enough. Having enough money to thrive instead of barely survive and all the tension that comes with living on the edge of financial ruin. Finding happiness. I worry about my younger daughter’s post-graduation life. Am I helpful enough, encouraging enough, as she prepares for the next chapter? Why haven’t I made more money, saved and scrimped to have more to offer her, offer all of them? She works so hard, has such talent. How can I help her choose the path that will reward her? I worry about my son, whose diabetes is, in some ways, the easiest problem to address. After all, we can test his blood sugar and follow clear directions to bring it down or raise it up. I wish I could test his ambition, be confident that the treatments his dad and I consider will have the desired results. I worry they don’t recognize how much they are loved, how good our family unit is despite the ever-present squabbling and difficult times. I worry they take for granted what they should value and value what we haven’t been able to provide. That all the years of baseball, softball, surfing and various camps attended on scholarship don’t add up enough to compensate for the bickering, the lack of travel, the nonexistence of college funds. That they will grow bitter. That they will think I’ve failed them. I worry I have failed them.
Last night I made a mistake that could’ve cost my son his life. He needed two shots of insulin, one the long-acting and one the short-acting. He’s on a pump most of the time, so shots have become a rarity, but that’s no excuse for the mistake I made. An excuse doesn’t exist — I don’t know what happened, how I messed up and gave him two shots of the Novolog instead of one Novolog and one Lantus. If I hadn’t realized my error almost immediately after, the heavy dose of short-acting insulin would have sent his blood sugar so low, so quickly, that we might not have been able to save him in time.
I think the insulin bottles were in the wrong boxes — perhaps moved around from taking extra supplies when we’ve traveled. I keep replaying it in my head. I shook out the bottle of Novolog, then pulled out the bottle of Lantus. Both bottles are clear, but the Novolog has an orange stripe and the Lantus a purple one. After sliding one needle into his arm and then the other, I returned to the fridge and realized I had both bottles of Novolog. My heart skipped as I made sense of what I’d just done. It wasn’t late. I wasn’t overly tired. All I can imagine is that I’d been distracted by all the million things I’m usually distracted by (work, dinner, bills, laundry, clutter, general worries) and that’s why I failed to notice what I thought was Lantus wasn’t.
To Nick’s credit, he remained calm. I dialed UCSF, filled in the answering service so they could page the doctor. While I waited for the call back, I poured Nick some orange juice, then some more orange juice. The amount of Novolog I fired into his body was enough insulin to cover 360 grams of carbs — the equivalent of 12 eight-ounce glasses of juice. Eighteen slices of bread. Three pints of Ben & Jerry’s. Way, way too many, in other words. I readied the glucagon, an emergency resource we’ve never had to use — I’ve dreaded the day I might have to save my son’s life by jabbing the fat needle into his muscle to prevent any insulin from taking effect. As we weighed options, the phone rang. The doctor. She talked me through what needed to happen, which, to my relief, did not include the glucagon — yet. The fact that his blood sugar had been high already helped, giving us more of a buffer zone than we would have had if he’d been in a “good” range.
But the next several hours were filled with finger pricks and more shots, granola with maple syrup and more orange juice. By 1:30 a.m., we finally hit the number we needed and could sleep without too much worry. Not that I could sleep. I had to hold it together because that’s what one has to do, but the fact that I could make such a potentially disastrous mistake had me in knots. I’m still shaking today.
Whenever I post something gloomy, I’m compelled to follow up with something cheerful. Maybe because I was raised to not be a bother on others and what’s more tiresome than burdening other people with your problems? Especially when so people are really suffering! (Not that I’m making anyone read these ridiculous posts!) Or maybe I need to bounce back from the sad to the happy because the taste of one makes me want the other, like when I eat something salty and immediately want something sweet. Or something sweet and want something savory. Chips make me want chocolate which makes me want cheese. (Maybe I just like to write and to eat.) (Maybe I have some kind of mental disorder.) (Maybe I use too many parenthetical asides.) (Do you think?)
Seven Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds by James Hamilton Paterson
The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan
waiting
The Autobiography of Mark Twain The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
read (2012)
If I Stay by Gayle Forman The New Republic by Lionel Shriver Without A Hero by T.C. Boyle Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper Peleponnesia by Tom Benedek Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen Great House by Nicole Krauss Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
