Rebeccalou: This Writer’s Life

December 6 — On Saturday morning a truck backs into the driveway of the house next door. I go upstairs and look out the window. A heavy-set man wearing a stocking cap and parka pulls a red wagon with wooden side protectors up the ramp, through thick snowfall, into the van from Cowboy Moving & Storage. The wagon belongs to Isabella, a 3-year-old whose parents aren’t sure they belong together. I lower the shade, wipe the tears from my face.

Isabella loves to feed the fish who spend summers in the ceramic pot in our front garden. A few weeks ago, while her mother and I talk, the child rearranges the smooth stones in the wooden bowl on our table. I was the first neighbor on the block to hold her after she was born. She and her parents and baby sister are still in Denver, just not next door. Things change but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

December 12 — “I want to adopt the kids.” Tony and I have finished a bowl of popcorn and gone to bed. He runs his fingers through my hair. “Tess and Pierce will be in my life forever. They have no relationship with Holly. I’m the mother they know, and they have become my children. I’d like to formalize things, to tighten the strings.”

“That’s very sweet.” There’s a pause. “Have you talked to them about the idea?”

No, I hadn’t, and ask him to talk to them first. If adoption is not what they want, I imagine them struggling through the conversation, afraid of disappointing, not knowing how to say no.

“Becky would like to adopt both of you.” The three of them are in the car, approaching home. Tony has them captive. He parks in the driveway. Pierce listens. Tess talks.

“But won’t Mommy’s feelings be hurt?” She’s crying. “I know we don’t have a relationship with her but what if, some day, what if she’s better and she wants to have a relationship with us? She won’t be able to because Becky will be our mother.”

She’s sobbing now. “Only I know she’ll never get better.” Her voice trails off. The car, with four locked doors, holds her grief. Father and brother sit with the pain, hers and theirs. A full minute passes.

“What about you?” Tony looks at Pierce. “How are you with the idea?”

The more wounded one meets his father’s eyes, shrugs his shoulders. “It’s not like we have a relationship with her now,” he says, then drops his gaze. Tony turns to Tess.

“How do you think Becky will feel if you say no?” He needs to close the circle.

“I know Becky loves me enough to forgive me. I don’t know if Mommy does.”

December 24 — I cook ribs and sauerkraut, a Christmas Eve tradition my mother started years ago. We attend a candlelight service at a presbyterian church, and come home to a fondue pot filled with melted dark, mint-flavored Ghirardelli chocolate. We poke carry-out chopsticks through marshmellows, fresh raspberries, strawberries and chunks of banana. One stick crosses another and sends a raspberry ricochetting across the room, splattering the red lamp shade with dripping chocolate. We each open one gift, then another, and finally see no point in waiting until morning. We open all of them.

Gourmet’s new cookbook, a cutting board from Williams-Sonoma, and a red Le Creuset pot tell the story: the family supports me as their cook. Tony hands me a little black box. When I’ve opened the earrings, he hands me another, slightly larger box containing the necklace.

“You’re the glue that holds this family together. Thanks for making Christmas special.”

I smile, wondering if he can read my mind. Sometimes I don’t want to be the glue. Sometimes I want nothing to stick—not one responsibility, not one expectation, from them or the tapes in my head or the society we live in. Some days I want to fly.

December 25 — I call my brother in Chicago. He tells me he just spent an hour on the phone with Peter Kinkade. Peter’s father, Doc Kinkade, delivered my brothers and me. He made house calls, stitched cut lips, nursed us through the measles and poison oak and mysterious viral infections. The Kinkade family lived next door. My brothers and I grew up with the five kids. Every year, on December 25th, Mary, the mother, would walk over with a loaf of her Christmas bread, dripping in icing, fresh from the oven.

“Peter’s wife, Annie, died last Saturday. Fifty-seven. From colon cancer.” This burst of sudden, unexpected loss slowly sinks in and connects with the death of our parents, the tragic death of Peter’s younger brother—Bryan’s best friend—almost 40 years ago, and the fragile Dr. Kinkade and his wife, now well into their 80’s.

This morning I read about impermanence. We all know we’re going to die. We know things are constantly changing but mostly we live like they aren’t. We detest uncertainty. We try our best to make life secure and safe. We prefer sleep-walking to the unpredictable state of groundlessness, afraid of what it may bring.

December 27 — Forty years ago, a sophomore in college, I am married in Grace Lutheran Church. Two 30-foot Christmas trees, covered in lights, and a few dozen poinsettias fill the sanctuary. I wear white velvet, with red roses woven through my long, straight, summer-blonde hair. At 19, I have no idea who I am, what I want or where I’m headed. I know myself only through the eyes of others. My parents are enthusiastic about the marriage. They regard him a super star. I only know how to make them happy. No one encourages us to wait. No one suggests we are too young, maybe not ready.

Who walks away from a natural leader, an athlete, a kind, great-looking, responsible eagle scout? Eleven years later, I break the perfect man’s heart and make my father cry. My brothers are confused and angry. My mother sees it coming. It is time to figure out who I am. About to turn 30, I intuit that there is work to be done. Things are changing and more change is on the way—the transformative kind I’m not brave enough to ask for—but sturdy wings have sprouted, wings more powerful than the guilt that lasts for years.

January 3 — If you believe Mary Oliver in her book Blue Pastures, I am not an artist. My writing does not come above all else. If it did, I imagine our children starving, the house imploding, and me, alone in a trailer court. A few weeks ago, in a private lesson, my yoga teacher asks me to name my top five values. Cooking does not make the list, nor do laundry or grocery shopping or chauffeuring teenagers. But connection is there—to spouse, children, family, friends—and right after connection—or was it before—comes freedom, followed by creativity. Is there room for all of them on the same list, in the same life?

On the third afternoon of the new year, I sit in a coffee shop at 12th and Clayton—one of my favorite places to write—and drink sweet, foamy chai from a fat cup. Thirty minutes and nothing but dribble. I resist the urge to pack up and leave. I make myself sit, willing fingers to move across keys…surely something deeper is just ahead. When the wave finally surfaces, I ride it till the end, knowing it won’t last, knowing it can’t. Two hours later I ride it home and up the stairs to my study. Tony makes dinner. I come down to eat and go back up, hanging on to the last ripple as the words find their way onto the shore.

Inscribed on a piece of folk art hanging in my study is a quote from Brian Andreas: Most people don’t know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don’t get too comfortable, she said. They know how easy it is to fall asleep and miss your life.

May the New Year bring you many blessings, and find you awake to life.

Even though I live with two of the furry creatures, I wouldn’t call myself a dog person. My husband makes over dogs the way love-sick males hang on beautiful women in a bar, but I’m more selective. I loved Rosie, our yellow lab, but god, that shedding. Sticky hair everywhere, including the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. The affection I harbored for our over-protective Rottweiler vanished the day he wouldn’t let my brother and one-year-old nephew into the living room, but I adore beyond all reasonable measure that same brother’s West Highland Terrier—one of the most entitled, spoiled and altogether delightful creatures I’ve ever known. So go figure.

On a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, a couple in their early 70’s pulled up in a black Escalade. They had come to meet Max, our cocker spaniel. We had decided Max needed a new home. One of Tony’s clients had given our phone number to the couple. I could tell these were dog people. The woman stood in the doorway, holding out her hand for Max to sniff. She laughed when the little dear made a bee-line for the wilting clematis at the end of the fence. “Ah, the male thing,” she said.

I sighed. Max could teach you a thing or two about the male thing, I thought, but kept my mouth shut. This was a sales call. Max probably ran out the front door because he felt unusually free and unencumbered at the moment, what with his wrap-around diaper off and out of sight. Diaper?

It hasn’t always been like this.

We acquired Max as a puppy eight years ago, Ali’s birthday present the summer she turned 14. I had had it up to here with the me-me-me attitude and thought a dog might move her a few degrees left of center of the universe. Max was a cute puppy, adorable really, a buff-colored cuddle-ball with a spiked tuft of hair at the crown. His favorite thing was to find an aluminum can on a walk and strut through the neighborhood, an empty Bud Light clenched between his teeth.

Things were fine until Tony and the kids moved in. “I’m not sleeping with a dog,” Tony announced, and relegated the two-year-old to nights in his crate. To complicate things, we brought a new puppy into our blended fold, a lovable black poodle with silver-tipped paws and muzzle. In a few short months, Max plummeted from top dog to underdog. His mistress was devoted to another man. The entire family loved the puppy and Max, try as he might, couldn’t garner the attention he knew he deserved.

So he bit Tess. She had been cuddling with him and apparently rubbed him wrong or touched him in a sensitive place or maybe he’d just had enough… It’s hard to know with Max. He snarled and bit, catching her lower lip. She quickly took responsibility, apologizing like a well-seasoned co-dependent, claiming she must have done something wrong, Max loved her too much to bite her.

“That’s it,” I said. “Max needs to go.”

I emailed the ex-boyfriend whose decision it had been to get a cocker spaniel in the first place, and who had reassured me that the suspicious-looking puppy farm was really an okay place to buy a dog. When we parted ways, he had vowed he would do anything, anytime, for Ali and me. All I had to do was ask.

“I need you to take Max,” I wrote. To think that a man who couldn’t commit to Friday night plans on a Thursday afternoon would agree to the responsibilities of a dog now sounds preposterous, but I was desperate. Yes, he’d like to help, he really would, but he didn’t lead the kind of life that would be good for a dog. Spare me.

The lip healed. Without a handy option short of dropping Max off at a shelter, we put the incident behind us and set about learning to tolerate the dog’s less than endearing ways—snatching food that isn’t his, barking at the air in the backyard, insisting on being underfoot in the kitchen, dashing out the front door in search of a trash can without its lid. We knew he wanted more from us, most especially from me, but I was maxed out. A daughter with special needs, a new husband, two more children, clients, and a puppy. Max knew he’d landed at the bottom of the heap. We all knew it. Sometimes we felt badly but mostly we—okay, I—wished he’d go away.

A male dog who feels threatened or ignored or simply unhappy has a weapon guaranteed to capture the attention of human beings who do not want to live like animals. When things didn’t go his way, Max walked over to the basket in the living room, or the blue chair, or the floor lamp, and lifted his leg. I guess it makes sense to a dog—pissing to show he’s pissed—but I was livid.

“Have you thought about a trainer?” suggested a friend. “Maybe one who’d come to the house?”

I hear things like that and think another phone call to make, another appointment to arrange, another person to interact with, somewhere else to spend money. Besides, I had my doubts. I had tried every technique known to the common pet owner. I rubbed Max’s nose in the urine. I flipped him on his back, stared into those brown eyes and made sure he looked away first. I lifted him by his collar and dragged his sorry ass outside. I yelled and screamed. In calmer moments, I reassured him that he didn’t need to pee in the house, that we loved him.

Apparently he detects insincerity. The marking didn’t subside. In fact, it heightened until the day I announced a second time, “I’ve had enough. Max has to go. I’m serious.”

The nail tech at Tony’s salon gave me a short list of people she thought could help. Linda loves her three dogs. She loves all dogs. She will do anything to ensure a dog’s well-being, short of taking Max off our hands. I explained the situation to the first woman on the list. “You need to train him,” she said, and jumped on her soapbox: there-are-no-bad-dogs-only-bad-dog-owners. I interrupted her tirade mid-sentence, thanked her, and hung up. I never did reach lady number two but the third one was helpful. She gave me the number for cocker rescue.

A man named Scott answered the phone. I took the psychological approach and shared Max’s story: poor dog demoted by new husband is irritated by rowdy children and threatened by new, very cute puppy. A chorus of dogs barked in the background. Scott was sympathetic. We talked for twenty minutes… I thought I had him. He asked me to email him the whole story and he’d see what he could do. So I spent another thirty minutes re-telling what I’d already told him, sent the missive, and waited.

A week later he replied, asking me to complete the attached form and return it to him. Once he received it, he’d call to arrange a home visit. Home visit? I roll my eyes and download the form… eight pages, double-sided. After 22 years of filling out paperwork for schools, government agencies and healthcare providers in order to obtain services for Ali, I detest paperwork. It makes me emotionally distraught. The quintessential over-achiever, I procrastinate with one lame excuse after another. So when I look at the stack this stranger has requested for a DOG, I know there’s no way, and toss the papers in the recycle bin. Besides, I was having issues. A few sets of fingerprints and a physical and the process would eerily resemble what I had gone through years before to adopt a child, only in reverse. Instead of inviting in, I was sending out. I couldn’t do it. The paperwork was a convenient cover.

A year passes. Max goes in and out of favor. “He’s like a bad boyfriend,” I tell Tony one night after another now-forgotten dog disaster. “Things go well for awhile, he’s all happy and content, and then one day you don’t give him what he thinks he deserves at that particular moment and he goes around the corner and lifts his leg. I’ve known guys like that.” Ask any woman. We all have.

So one morning Max walks in from the backyard, passes me in the kitchen and heads for the living room. Something clicks. “Max!” I yell, and follow him around the corner to find a fresh puddle by the leg of the blue chair. There is no screaming, kicking or hauling him outside. I simply stare in pity and disbelief. “You’ve just lost your last friend,” I tell him, and vow to remember the incident as long as it takes to re-home the blonde monster.

“Let me handle this,” Tony says that evening.

He breaks the news at dinner. “We’re going to find a new home for Max.”

“But he’s been good.” Pierce to the rescue, always the first to defend and excuse errant behavior. During his middle school years we reckon Pierce bonded with this defiant, equally lovable male who can’t seem to get his act together. Tony tells the kids about the blue chair—and reminds them of the stains on the maple floor, the snarling and biting, the food obsession, the barking over nothing.

“Max is stressing out our household. We all love him but he’s not a good pet. He’s driving us crazy.” The royal we. Nice try, Tony. Max is driving the adults crazy and everyone at the table knows it.

The kids listen in silence, their eyes fixated on empty plates until Tess pushes hers aside, folds her arms on the table, buries her head and starts to cry. She and her brother were long ago traded for booze and drugs by a mother too sick, too wounded and too foolish to know better. They’ve lived through the big hurt. They wear abandonment well until something or someone tugs a little too hard at the scar and the old, still fresh blood is free to flow.

“I’ll agree to one last thing,” I say. Tony shoots me a look. He can’t believe it. “The three of you go out right now and buy a diaper. We’ll try it for a week and then we’ll talk.” I wonder if I sound as heartbroken as I feel.

The kids breathe for the first time in ten minutes, push back their chairs and head for the car. Tony turns on his way out. “Why did you do that?”

“I can’t stand it when she cries.”

The three of them come home twenty minutes later with a faded blue denim wrap-around diaper, secured with velcro at the top of the dog’s back, a contraption I have come to call the Maxi-pad. There have been accidents, most of them the result of someone leaving the inside back door open and Max running out the pet door to pee, returning five minutes later, soaked and dripping. I’ve grown so accustomed to seeing that wide strip of denim around his midsection that yesterday, while I had the dogs on a walk, Max was watering the lamp post before I realized I hadn’t removed the pad.

“They’re not going to take Max,” I said to Tony after the couple left that afternoon.

“Why do you say that?”

“I watched the woman watch the kids, Max going back and forth as they took turns loving on him. I saw the look in her eyes. She’s going to think she’d be taking away the dog they adore and she won’t do it. She’s a mother.”

The woman’s name is Ellen. She left a voicemail that night. She would have taken the “sweet boy” home that afternoon but her husband has his mind on a bigger dog, probably another springer like the one that died. They’re meeting a few more dogs before making their decision. “Besides,” she said, “I think those kids of yours are going to have a hard time letting Max go. There’s a lot of love there. But we’ll be sure to call if we decide he’s the one.”

Nearly three weeks have passed without a word more from Ellen. The couple would have been perfect: older, calm, no children, plenty of time to make all over Max like dog people do. But instead, we have another opportunity to render the ego helpless, to practice gratitude, and let go. This time we’re letting go of stains and a dog underfoot with an insatiable appetite. Wish me luck with the diaper. Max appears to be ours for the long haul… Unless someone is interested in a very cute cocker spaniel?

Thanks to the Great Recession, my days are looking eerily like my mother’s did when I was a kid. While 14-year-old Tess spent her Saturday at a friend’s house watching back-to-back episodes of Gossip Girl, I cleaned her room in a fashion that would have made my mother proud. The vacuum cleaner and I unearthed a few hundred bobby pins, a couple of CD covers, two discarded paperbacks from last year’s reading list, and the odd sock. I cleared the closet floor of flip flops, character shoes, jazz shoes, ballet slippers, our daughter’s first pair of sexy heels, Birkenstocks, assorted flats, hiking boots, cowboy boots, and Uggs, and wrote “shoe bags” on a shopping list for The Container Store. I sorted clothes under the categories of keep, giveaway, and toss. I filled two trash bags with things you don’t even want to know about and scrubbed the stains on the carpet like a woman gone mad. The day was a labor of love and an exercise in spiritual practice: Stay present and pass no judgment.

Let’s talk laundry. We are a family of active adults and teenagers who begin the day in clean clothes, who practice yoga, take walks, ride bikes, play sports and, I’m happy to report (in reference to the adolescent male in the house), shower daily—all good things in my book. My mother used to say I changed clothes more often than most people change their minds, so maybe this is payback. When the kids and Tony were newcomers in our home, I got the occasional kick out of counting the number of loads I did on any given day. The intrigue wore thin a few thousand towels ago. Now, if I don’t hear the washer or dryer running, I figure something has gone haywire, like maybe the refrigerator has stopped working and the food is slowly rotting—that is if there’s anything left from the grocery run I did three days ago.

Which brings me to food. My family loves regular meals. I love regular meals. It’s just that supplying them on a daily basis gets old and tiresome and tedious. First there’s figuring out what to eat, then shopping, hauling bags, unloading bags, cooking, and cleaning up. I’m lucky in one regard: this group will eat whatever I set before them. When I opted for a scooter date with Tony instead of another trip to the grocery store last Sunday afternoon, the kids were thrilled with what I billed as a novelty…grilled cheese and roasted vegetables.

So what does all this domestic activity have to do with the Great Recession and my mother? In my family of origin—another family of five—I was one of the lucky benefactors of Mom’s cooking, cleaning and care taking. I took for granted the dinners served promptly at six, the home-baked cakes, cookies and banana bread, the washed and pressed clothes that magically appeared in my closet, and an orderly, lemon-scented, impeccably clean home. I also knew I didn’t want her life. No offense Mom, but mine was the generation of females who would have it all, starting with career. I had earned three college degrees by the time I turned 26, and never looked back. Okay, rarely looked back…until my mid-thirties when the baby urge hit in full force and the stresses of corporate life started to feel somehow not worth it. In the course of trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, I reinvented my professional self a half dozen times. And in the attempt to hold things together as a working mom, I sampled pretty much every support system that exists for employed women in modern America, from live-in nannies and carry-out dinners to standing Friday-night babysitters, summer camps and cleaning ladies. Until now.

In prolonged economic downturns like the one we’re in, the demand for copy writing dwindles to a slow drip. So I’m picking up the slack around the house. I’ve turned the home front into a bustling scene of getting to what I’ve put off, delegated to the spouse, assigned to the children, or ignored. This was not an intentional move. I have long held that men and women need to share domestic responsibilities, knowing that “sharing” often entails convincing the man to do something more than put his dirty underwear in the laundry basket. I scored big with Tony. A working single dad for seven years before we got together, he knows what it takes to keep the ship afloat. And during his 25 years of cutting and coloring the heads of females, he’s heard his share of lazy-husband and disengaged-father stories. So he gets it. Does he parent with the same intensity that I do, or obsessively wipe the kitchen counters until they gleam like stars in the night sky?

No.

But he parents effectively and loads the dishwasher without being asked. What really counts is that, with me working less, he has stepped it up and is working more. The kids and I see less of him, but the bills are paid.

Which makes him about perfect, although he directed a comment my way the other day that still has me questioning just who he thinks I am, and I quote, “You’re the most sensible person I know.” What happened to adventurous, or courageous? What about witty, clever and irresistible? Even smart would do, but SENSIBLE? My mother used the word to describe footwear. From choice of shoes, she inferred character—and meant it as a compliment. For the first thirty-seven years of my life, i.e. before Ali came along, I didn’t want anything to do with the word or the concept. Any psychologist worth her salt would have a heyday upon learning that during my years at Conde Nast, the woman who was raised under a canopy of “sensible” spent thousands of dollars on designer shoes, along with clothes, handbags and Donna Karan shimmering sheers in matching shades. A friend in Denver still teases me about the day I walked into the ad agency dressed in olive green from head to suede toe…but I digress. Fast forward twenty years and the man I sleep with has called me sensible. Apparently he’s forgotten I ride a scooter in city traffic and climb mountains in South America.

Does professional woman turned cook, cleaning lady and laundress make good sense? In this economy, probably. Thank god for the blog, and for you who read it. The writing makes me feel like I still have a real job, even though the pay is lousy. Would I rather be creating headlines than folding laundry? Most days, yes, although it’s harder to believe our planet is on the verge of imploding with warm cotton in my hands. And knowing my husband stands on his feet with his arms in the air for 12 hours, even I’m hard-pressed to insist it’s his turn to cook when he walks in the door. We have a system that happened all by itself: I cook, he loads the dishwasher, and I come around later to wipe the counters one last time.

By the way, I learned there’s a chance I’ll be working on a website for a client I haven’t heard from in a year. Maybe this Great Recession is finally receding. I better clean another closet while I still have the time, but first I’ll whip up a meat loaf.

I was raised with a conditioned distaste for the emotion that ranks among the most common on the planet. My dad yelled in anger exactly twice during my childhood, both lame attempts at expressing an emotion that made him squirm in his own skin. Mom simply announced one afternoon that there would be no anger in our home. End of story. I understand anger. I experience it from time to time, but witnessing its physical expression still feels like the rug has been pulled out from beneath my feet. It’s fair to say I come unglued from the inside out. 

So when our son started shouting obscenities at his father early one morning a few weeks ago, my fingers hardened around the cup of tea in my hands. I didn’t witness his foot blast through the wall, nor did I hear the plaster crumble. He took the stairs two at a time, glanced at his sister as he passed through the kitchen, slamming the door on his way out. I watched him cut through the wet grass as he headed toward the street, rolling onto his toes with every step. He was late for the bus. His head hung down. 

“We have another hole in the wall,” Tony announced a minute later. He looked about to explode.

Some kids practically raise themselves while others leave us going thunk in the night, perplexed, resentful, even scared. Where does his rage come from? What about the pattern of blaming others, the shouting, kicking and screaming? All from one of the sweetest males I know, tender really, with a natural propensity toward kindness. It doesn’t add up. It never has.

A few weeks ago I had a good start on a blog piece about this same boy and ultimate frisbee, the sport he has grown to love. He played for East High School this spring. He wore the white jersey and the black sweatshirt with pride and helped the team win the state championship. He was named Most Improved Player at the banquet, he and his ultimate girlfriend, Best Couple. 

Daily, from February to May, to others and to myself, I offered thanks for his participation. The sport transformed this unmotivated, disengaged teenager into a player. He came home from practice physically exhausted, hungry for dinner. His attitude was pleasant, you might even say cooperative. The grades didn’t improve but for the first time since he started high school, we had an inkling they might. He went to team dinners and played pick-up on the weekends. The mother of three teammates congratulated us on raising such “a fine young man,” the NICEST PERSON her daughters know (her caps, not mine).

He turns to me one night at dinner. “Becky, everyone dyes their hair red for state. Could we do the hair dying party here? It’s a tradition.” I swallow a mouthful of lettuce, feel my eyes expand. I picture permanent streaks of red dye on the bathroom walls, forever splotches on the hardwood floor. I imagine guys being guys—rowdy, loud, careless.

He reads my mind. “We’ll do the dying outside. I promise.”

Something inside me for which I have no explanation warms to the idea of the hair dying party. Tony is shaking his head no as I hear myself say yea, let’s do it. The boy flashes me a grin.

I set a platter of his favorite cookies and Outrageous Brownies on the table minutes before thirty athletes, mostly males, pile into our house. A mound of stinky shoes collects at the front door. It’s cold and rainy. An outdoor party is out of the question. They devour eight pizzas and the platter of sweets, wash them down with soda, then head to the pool table in the basement. Some hang on the main floor. In packs of threes and fours, with frayed bath towels draped over their shoulders, they wait for the dye to work its magic. One guy recruits Tony to give him a “professional look.” Most prefer to go it on their own. Fair-hairs turn mottled shades of red, brunettes pink, orange and peach. The next day I’m on the sidelines of the red-haired team, cheering the guys and the one gal who went eight for eight that weekend. I write a piece about pride and hope, about the value of community and being part of something bigger than yourself. I reflect on the upside of physical activity, the gift of structure, the grace of discipline.

A few days before the story is ready to publish, the season ends. He comes home to empty hours after school. No routine. Another transition that isn’t going well. Determined to be in charge, he rejects our suggestions about how to spend his time. Without exercise, the grumpy mood returns. He slumps in his chair at dinner, has little to say. He grows surly and one morning kicks his foot through the wall. There is no apology, no offer to compensate for damages. He feels entitled to his anger, his outbursts justified. The printer wouldn’t print his Spanish final. He was running late. His grade was on the line. It was his father’s fault. 

“Boys are just different.” Wise counsel from a friend, a mother of three sons and a daughter. “They don’t process the way girls do. They react—loud and physical.” 

I suppose there are lots of reasons why this boy does what he does. But I’m a mom who goes to the mother-child connection for explanation, not out of egocentricity so much as a hunch. I’ve been watching and living with him since he was eleven. I reckon I figure into the hole in the wall by default. He’s fond of me, respects me, maybe even loves me, but I’m second string, a replacement not of his choosing, a stand-in for the real thing. And even though he despises the choices the real mom has made, abhors the ruin of her life, the little boy under all that anger wishes things had been different. He’s starting to figure out that he’s powerless to change any of it. Even though Mom was nowhere near that wall a few weeks ago, the incident was triggered by a lack of control that inevitably points to her. Hence, the rage. And the swearing, and too much fear to admit his own vulnerability.

Listening to the birds at four in the morning, I’m caught in a dream of drunk adults, young boys, and chaos. An hour later Tony rolls over. 

“I don’t want our family to be about holes in the wall,” I tell him. “This unresolved anger makes me nuts. The boy is fighting demons the rest of us can’t even see, let alone destroy.” I admit exasperation. “None of what we do matters, not the trying and the loving, the caring, the patience, the tolerance, the humor. Things set him off and we’re back to square one, looking for new tactics and new strategies. It’s crazy making.” 

I’m angry.

“I know it’s hard,” says his father. He’s traveled this road before, with the mom. “I don’t know what to think.”  

That makes two of us. 

If you’ve seen The Soloist, you’ve watched a well-meaning journalist attempt to change the life of a homeless, schizophrenic musician, only to question his motives as his frustration deepens. Is he in it for the guy or for himself. Twenty years ago I honestly believed effective intervention could compensate for my daughter’s compromised brain. I knew she had cerebral palsy but I didn’t believe it, not for a long, long time. I thought I could—and needed—to fix her.

In the days that follow the hole in the wall, I search inside and sure enough, there I am: trying too hard, wanting to do right by the people I love, to make a difference, to excel, to prove I can be the mom he wanted but never had. I nod at the old friend, run my fingers through her hair, weep during a yoga class. The tears come in gratitude for all the ways she has served me, and in acknowledgement of this latest reminder that the time has come to surrender, and let her go.

It took me a good week to look into the eyes of the boy I call my son, and forgive him. I imagine him at four and at seven, imagine his confusion, his child-like angst as the world spins wildly out of control. My heart softens. I dig through the papers on my desk and find the list for the handyman. Under basement handrail I write plaster repair.

Several years ago I was working with a Jungian analyst in Chicago, a woman named Anne. I kept a dream journal whose entries served as the springboard for our time together. “Our waking hours are filled with neuroses,” Anne would explain. “They distort our perception of what’s really going on. We think we see things clearly, but we don’t. Dreams present images we can trust.”

The early 90’s were a time of paradigm shifts. I was just beginning to comprehend that Ali might never walk or talk. A divorce was imminent, and I felt the first stirrings of a significant change in how I earned a living. My conscious mind was on overload, capable of little more than putting one foot in front of the other. It was a good time to be looking at dreams.

Entry: October 1991: I am running hard, navigating around giant boulders that fall from the hillside, missing my body by inches. I dodge knives strewn on the pavement. Menacing gangs in black leather and chains sit on their motorcycles and harass me from the side of the road. I pick up the pace, feel my legs grow lighter and the muscles stronger. Like a warrior, I sense danger but feel invincible. I narrowly avoid cliffs and overhangs, circle around fire and wild dogs. I round a bend and the road clears of debris. The hills flatten and the stark gray landscape morphs into verdant green. My limbs relax. Tension falls from my shoulders. My breathing slows. The run for my life eases into a rhythmic loping.

“I’m never going to worry about you,” Anne says when I close the journal. “You will be fine.”

Seventeen years later, I’m not so sure. 

Entry: October 2008: I am the passenger in a car filled with candy wrappers, plastic water bottles, empty bags of chips, a scrunched ball cap and soiled t-shirt. I find grocery lists stowed in the side compartment and crumpled notes with names and phone numbers in the glove box. I hold the male driver responsible and, one by one, toss the items onto his side of the car. The trash gathers in piles around the pedals. I bury his feet. The scene changes to a house. The man has a flight to catch. He’s running late, and scrambles to pack a bag. The home is as cluttered as the car. Empty cereal bowls and glasses are stacked on the side tables. I step over dirty socks and wet towels, trip on an old guitar. I move through my home like a civilian negotiating a minefield after the soldiers leave. I can’t live like this, I tell the man. I walk in circles, paralyzed by the mess. Everywhere I look I see something that needs my attention. The phone rings. The line cracks; the caller comes in and out. She’s asking for my help. “I’d like to,” I tell her, “but I’m helping someone get ready for a trip.” The man stands at the door, smiling, his bag packed. I look around the room, furious that he is leaving, resenting that I have to stay.

Take away the conscious filters of all the things a woman is expected to do, all the ways she takes care of her family, her clients, her home, and the dream reveals its truth: I want the litter out of my life. I’ve had enough. I want to leave.

I am not afraid of being alone, I write in my journal. I am afraid of being suffocated. My candy wrappers and water bottles are the house that doesn’t stay clean, the copy writing deadlines, the trips to the grocery store, the cooking, the driving, the laundry, the commotion, the noise, the taking care of children, dogs and home. This is not about living with a man who doesn’t help. These demons are mine.

“You might as well pay attention to your dreams,” warns Anne from the leather chair in her Evanston office one Saturday morning. “In time, psyche will prevail. She will have her way. Maybe not now, but eventually, without regard for what society expects of you or what you expect of yourself. She cares only about her own well-being, which is her way of keeping you authentic. And she is relentless.”

Several months pass. It is spring. I follow Anne down the hall toward her office when she motions for me to step around the woman curled in a fetal position on the floor. The woman’s eyes are closed, her body still. I hear Anne tell her to knock if she needs anything. The woman grunts. Anne carefully closes the office door. “What happened?” I whisper, shocked at what I’ve just seen.

“She’s a prominent physician at Evanston hospital, married, with teenage children. This morning her ego said no, I’ve had enough, I can’t do this anymore. She managed to get in the car and drive herself here. I believe she will be fine. She’s very strong. But she needs to stop being everything to everybody. She takes care of her patients, her kids, her husband, everyone but herself. What you saw is psyche taking over. The woman’s ego has collapsed.”

And then, as an after thought, Anne adds, “Be careful. The two of you are a lot alike.” 

Driven to perfection, task-oriented, ambitious, wanting to give others what they expect, afraid of disappointing, wanting to make them happy, Anne was right. I am like the woman on the floor. During the dozen years I single parented my child with special needs, I hovered on the verge of collapse a handful of times. Grace spared me. 

I learn from paradox: Even though Ali consistently demands more than any other person or situation in my life, she also teaches the necessity of hanging on to what keeps me whole. She forces me to stay authentic. When she was young, I figured out that if I didn’t get my run in or read that book while she napped, if I didn’t take the backpacking or ski trip, a friend would find me hiding under the piano in my own home, whimpering gibberish, incapable of taking care of my child. Certain I could not survive that reality, I found ways to nourish myself. I created the time for activities that had nothing to do with Ali. I fed my soul. I have had to learn this lesson many times. Add two more children and the dream tells me I am learning it again.

The over-attentive self is inclined to push through fatigue and keep going, foolishly believing we have no choice. I know how to discount weariness and attempt to force energy from an exhausted body and spirit, leaving me with nothing to give the people I care about most. I sleep fitfully and dream of trashed cars and cluttered houses, dream metaphors for freedom and sanity, compromised. Anne’s warning bubbles up: psyche will prevail. I understand the woman on the floor. I don’t want her story to be mine. No one does. I get to work.

I make plans for a retreat in November with two writer pals. I send my husband to the store with the grocery list. I skip a neighborhood party. I decline a request for copy writing and celebrate silently when another project is put on hold. I reclaim my morning walk with the dogs. I practice forgiving myself for unanswered emails and unreturned phone calls, for going to my study to read rather than hanging out with the family. I spend a Saturday afternoon moving perennials in the garden. I go to 6 PM yoga; Tony and the kids eat take-out. I have a date with my husband on Friday night. 

Dreams present images we can trust. Thanks, Anne.

Every night at dinner, before the first bite goes into anyone’s mouth, each of us names something we’re thankful for. It’s our version of grace. We started the practice a few years ago. Unlike the idea that the one who drinks the last of the milk carries the empty carton to the milk box, this one stuck.

On a recent evening, Tess goes first.

“I’m thankful that ‘Spring Awakening’ is coming to Denver.” An 8th grade theatre major at Denver School of the Arts, Tess aspires to be a professional actress some day and if that doesn’t happen, a crime scene investigator, an orthodontist or a lawyer. In that order.

“I’m thankful for another hairdresser,” says Tony, “even though today was her first day and she won’t be back until the end of October.” With the addition of a very pregnant Erin, Tonto Salon is officially at capacity since Tony opened the business in July 2007. Hallelujah. One by one they come.

“I’m thankful I could go 25 miles an hour on my bike,” Pierce says, breaking into a grin. He and his dad rode home together after work, Pierce on the bike and Tony on the scooter. “I had no idea I could go that fast.” Son against father, side by side.

“I will be thankful when Wednesday is over,” Ali types.  She’s “nervous but mostly excited” about her arrangements for the Physically Handicapped Actors & Musical Artists League to do a performance at her alma mater next week. 

That leaves me. “I’m thankful for courage.”

From across the table, Tony cocks his head, waiting for more but the fifth and final voice signals the start of the meal. The kids know they are free to help themselves. Besides, we’re all starving.

I slice a chicken breast in half and cut the meat into bite-size cubes for Ali. “These could be the last of the summer,” I comment as the bowl of roasted green beans comes my way. No one nibbles on courage. 

We try a few topics before landing on Tess’s struggle with algebra and a first-year ex-bassoonist math teacher who’s passing out D’s and F’s like hall passes to the restroom. “We’re all failing,” says Tess. Tony and I listen to her explanation for why last week’s D has dropped to an F, trying to distill substance from the “likes” and “totally’s” in the lingo of a 13-year-old female in modern America.

What about courage?

It’s here, in the lives of the people who sit with me at the dinner table every night, who love my cooking, clean their plates and balk at nothing I put before them. 

Courage to admit her first failing grade, ever, to the people she most wants to please. Courage to deflect the sarcasm of a teacher she doesn’t like and protect her tender, strong-as-an-ox adolescent heart.

Courage to start a business and to work seven days a week for a year to get it on its feet. To create the space, hire the employees, find the hairdressers, keep his clients happy, do the paperwork, let some people go and welcome others. 

Courage to pedal as fast as he can, to hang in and not wimp out on the hill at Forest, heart pounding in his young man’s chest, showing his dad and proving to himself that he can power his muscles on the straightaway to go as fast as the motor in a 50 cc Kymco Sting.

Courage to talk with the principal of her former high school about a troop of actors with disabilities, some like hers. This talking happens on a sophisticated device with a digitized voice. Her brand of courage makes people sit up straight and abandon their excuses, forgive themselves their shortcomings and believe that so much more is possible.

And I who uttered the word? 

Writing takes courage. Sticking with it, creating the opening that allows the work to happen. Courage to get out of bed at 5:30 and sit with a cup of hot tea, notebook open, hand moving, ready to receive. And when nothing but dribble comes, courage to do it again the next day.

Courage: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.

Pass the last of those roasted green beans, please.