too good to be true

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Artist girl, on the bus, learning life lessons

This is my middle daughter. She has been an artist all of her life, thus she is named Artist Girl in my writings about her and family. She was never very taken with English in general, and writing in particular. So you can imagine my happy, happy surprise when I got the following email from her. Where have these strong writing bones been hiding, I asked her. You’ll see what I mean.

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The bus that I take home is pretty packed each night with people trying to head home. I listen to music to help center myself and just to distract myself from all the chatter and the noises the bus makes. I use this time to keep up with my social media and also just reading the news.

One day the seat by me was empty and then filled with this woman whom I never met. She told me hello and I nodded and smiled and went back to my quiet space. Her smile is so inviting and she had an aura about her that was so peaceful. She tapped my shoulder after a few minutes and introduced herself. Still to this day, I cannot remember her name. We always have to reintroduce ourselves. Anyway, she got my attention and she asked about college and wanting to seek higher education. She was wanting to go into nursing, but seemed discouraged about her age and going back. I looked at her and smiled. “You should do what you love.”

I kept encouraging her and letting her know how much that would encourage others to continue. She waived goodbye at her stop and said thank you for the words of encouragement.  We didn’t see each other for another month. I kept hoping I would see her.

Another month passes and I see her carrying a bag almost spilling out with her text books. The bus, once again, crowded. She found her way to the seat right next to me. It was a really nice surprise to see her. We both said our hello’s and we started to talk about all the classes she was taking and the homework she had to endure.

She would share information with me that she had learned, in the hopes to help her study for her tests. She was acing each test she was given, according to her. She shared her triumphs and her little slips. She was so proud of her GPA. I am so glad that I was able to be there for her and support her in this journey.

Once again, I did not see her on the bus for awhile, hoping she was still doing well. One night, we were on the bus together and she was talking to me about her finals that she was studying for. In the midst of this conversation. a man right across from me fell to the ground, having a seizure. She and I looked at each other and she started to give me instructions on how to help her. He came to after a little bit. We got him sitting up and the medics arrived at the scene shortly after the event. We just looked at each other in just shock. Just how amazing life can be at times and just how fate can really play a role.

I am so glad that I met and know her. She is an amazing woman. I hope to see her soon and just continue this friendship and seeing it flourish.

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Yeah, that’s my girl. I will never have her artistic ability or eye — I believe that came down from my father, having skipped me and perhaps my siblings — but I love that she got something of mine.

Filed under: Child approved, Family, Love, stuff I didn't ask for, too good to be true, while you weren't looking, writing, Artist Girl, bus, children, love, love letters, nursing school, Seattle, Sheila Hagar, Walla Walla, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

I’ve been a little naughty

This is what I wrote for the newspaper on Tuesday, and I didn’t let Camo Man read it until this morning. Then he got all red and said, “Oh, jeez…”

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A day when hearts are uncamouflaged

Dear Camo Man,

Happy first married Valentine’s Day, Honey. Not that we need excuses for romance … our days are filled with it.

I know this letter might make your co-workers roll their eyes — you appear to have a well-earned reputation as a bit of a pot stirrer and just as ready as the next guy to jump into the thick of things.

But I don’t think they know the man this letter is addressed to. I’m sorry for the ribbing you’ll take, but I did warn you on, what, our third date? I said, “You should know I write about the people in my life.”

You smiled and looked down (do you have any idea how my heart swells when you do that?) and said, “That’s not going to bother me.” I’ve taken you at your word, dear husband, and then some.

Let me start at that moment in each day we come into consciousness in the pre-dawn. We’re almost always within seconds of each other, our brains having already memorized the breathing pattern of the other. I love how you allow me to trace your profile with my finger or cuddle up to your back for another minute of warmth. Then when you turn and tell me I’m so beautiful in the morning? Yeah, that’s really good.

It’s like nectar to the hummingbird when you make our bed as your “good morning” to me. I love that, coming back into our room and finding the bed as neatly dressed as you.

You know how sometimes I come out to the kitchen and you have “Heaven” by Bryan Adams playing? That still makes me melt. We now have many songs together, but nothing can replace the first one we identified as “ours.” I like that we still go through spates of trading love song links back and forth like we’re fifth-graders passing notes … it was our first currency in this relationship and you’ve made me a wealthy woman.

I like how you make the coffee when I’ve forgotten to load the pot. Even when I tell you it looks like tea. And then we drink our first cup together on the double bench we bought just for that reason. Super corny and darned fun to cuddle on, especially when our teens gag as we kiss at dinner.

Then it’s time for you to leave and sometimes I follow you to the door. I like when you turn around and tell me to stand on the step above you then show me how it puts me at the perfect spot for that sweet smooch.

The one I feel down to my toes.

The fact that our days are spent in eager anticipation of being with each other again disgusts some people. Can’t be helped. We work miles apart and I swear I sometimes feel my cells leaning toward yours.

OK, those people are right, that IS disgusting, but there you have it.

Then come the treasured evenings. We nearly fall through the door, exhausted, with about a 20-second window before being bombarded by the kids. Usually you-know-who is tattling, another needs a talking to and one is just needy, period. It’s been a learning curve, but we’re on the cusp of figuring out how to respond to each as a team.

There is nothing more romantic, in my book, than a man teasing a sullen teen out of a bad mood or teaching him or her a new skill. And when you occasionally take the role of bad cop and let me play good cop, you’re rebuilding a soul worn down from single parenting.

That right there will excuse you from kitchen patrol for the evening, sir.

Finally — dogs crated, teens in their caves, adult kids phoned, last load of laundry in the dryer — we make it to the best time of day. That hallway might seem a mile long by then, but we’re back when we started. You’re pretty adorable when you put your legs on my side of the bed to warm it up as I’m washing off my makeup.

I love how we read for a bit, quilts pulled up, speaking aloud some snippet of our day suddenly recalled. And then … the lights go off and we talk and we talk. We marvel, nearly every night, at the series of events that put us together. Oh, and the near misses and “what ifs,” both of us so aware things pivoted on nothing more than a couple of phone calls and a game of bowling.

What if you had given up on me or I had never called again?

It’s painful to consider, and we can only be soothed by the happy reality.

You have my heart, Camo Man.

Love,

Mrs. Camo Man

Filed under: A new love, back to basics, Camo Man, Family, in large font, Love, too good to be true, Camo Man, Home Place, Sheila Hagar, Valentine's Day, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

Miss Kate: The ray among the rage

What I said in the newspaper last week:

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I spend a quite a bit of time parenting my daughter in a repressed rage.
I’m talking about Strong Hearted Girl, who lives with such a degree of mental illness that she’s been unable to live at home for nearly nine years now.
I’ve talked about her before, about a daughter who got the shortest end of the bio-stick from a prenatal situation that resulted in a birth defect. Prescription drugs and alcohol don’t mix, and just craters fetal brain tissue.
So we deal with that the best we can. I’ve kept the promise I made to myself and the state of Oregon on our official adoption day that Strong Hearted Girl would always have me for a mother. And my kid has never seen me as anything else, not since the day she was 2 and complained to her twin, “I don’t like this mommy.”
Poor kid, I was her fourth mother figure and making her take a nap to boot.
Here’s what you might not know about parenting a child who lives with mental illness AND within a state system of care — every single thing you try to do for your child is hard as hell. Getting into place the things you absolutely know will help him or her have a better life is like rolling a boulder uphill. Then securing it with more rocks before you can let go. In a frigid downpour on frozen ground. With one hand tied behind your back and no shoes on.
You think I’ve gone too far, but not true — it’s typically worse. And whatever school district wherever my girl lives at the moment often hovers at the top of the “hardest” list. Administrators ignore my requests to have bits of the work she’s done mailed to me, where the front of the fridge waits to display it. Paraprofessionals get frustrated in dealing with my kid and forget that all deserve equal education. Bus drivers evict her for a snarly attitude.
I attend every meeting I can by phone (and there are many) and send off thank-you emails, but the traction I gain is minimal. And before you know it, we’re off to a new placement in a new town and district.
But I’m not here to complain. I’m giving you background so you can understand how wonderful “Miss Kate” is.
Kate is Strong Hearted’s primary educator in a post-high school program on the west side of Oregon, where my girl tries to absorb life-skill lessons in a three-hour school day — it’s all she can handle and often that’s a stretch.
Kate called me up the minute she saw my daughter on her new-student roster in September, to remind me she had taught her at another school, in another placement. She remembered the little girl from back then and was excited to see her again. “This is going to be fun!”
Knowing Strong Hearted is low currency, however, in dealing with her severe behavioral challenges. Strong Hearted would be the first to second that. So our Kate had her work cut out for her, and usually that’s the last I see of an enthusiastic educator.
This time has been different. Let me share part of the letter I shot out this week to Kate’s bosses and the school board. I’ve tweaked the names, as needed for privacy:
... Miss Kate has been incredible — patient with my daughter yet setting clear boundaries. She has done a great deal of educating staff about my daughter’s birth defect in order to help everyone. Kate calls me on a regular basis, using her own cell phone minutes, and emails me with concerns, seeking advice, and wonderful progress notes about my kiddo. This never happens to me and other parents like me.
Even as a very involved mom, I have only occasionally been successful at making educators understand how important it is to my child’s well-being that I am looped in on things. I have a lot to offer in terms of what works and what does not, but still it has traditionally been difficult to be seen as part of the team, as I live 275 miles to the east.
Kate has seen me as a team member since Day 1. She does an amazing job of advocating for my child’s educational needs, and helps in other areas where she can, like being my eyes to know if my girl has decent clothes on her back or is bringing nutritious and appropriate snacks.
Kate is a hero to me, and your high school is one of the few things going right for my girl at the moment.
If I would have been more brave, I would have added, “Please let her do her job right. Give her enough funding and get out of her way.”
I have no agenda with this column other than to offer it as a love letter to all “special ed, resource room, alternate education, behavioral classroom” folks. What parents of these students go through is difficult. What education professionals do with our children is tough. And, really, there’s rarely a Hallmark movie ending to the school years we go through together, I don’t care what the media usually portrays.
But sometimes, apparently, there’s a Miss Kate, too.

Filed under: Child approved, everyone's kids, FASD, too good to be true, children, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Home Place, Milton-Freewater, Sheila Hagar, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

Malcolm Monkey Mouth

It’s nearly time for fireworks and ticker-tape parades —  Macalicious is turning 1 in a few weeks. His mother and all his grandmothers are beside themselves with birthday excitement. Lucky little bugger, being an only “grand” for several of us.

Today my daughter, MacMama, sent me a link for a “birthday shirt.” Which I had never considered buying a special shirt that is just for that golden moment, but I raised my kids before Etsy and Pinterest, so how was I to know?

The shirt has a large appliqued “1″ on the front, next to a sock monkey face. And that’s where this gets fun.

Before our boy was ever born, he had a built-in community. My daughter told us one and all that monkeys were off the table. No sleepers, no shirts, toys, nothing with a monkey was to come close to the Awaited One.

Do you have any idea how many baby boy outfits that took off the table? When Auntie Sue and I went shopping for the baby shower, monkeys practically grew out of the wall of every baby department.

Then, one day, it happened. MacMama discovered that packages of sleepers were darn reasonable at Costco. That option, however, offers no chance of selection. There it was, hiding behind the sleeper on the top — jammies with little grinning monkeys dancing on bananas, or something like that.

MacMama admitted defeat to Auntie Sue in a Facebook post. Game on, Auntie Sue responded. I believe she had the first sock monkey in a store cart in about 20 minutes.

When the MacFamily came to Walla Walla for a visit, Auntie Sue presented the young mister with his new toy.

That was that. From the minute — no, SECOND — on, Macadoodle was not without the soft primate between his gums. So much so that his parents have been forced to buy back ups so one can be sanitized in the wash, another lost in the car and the third in the mouth. So much so that Granny C, a musician by career, created “The Icky Stinky Monkey Song.” So much so that we call the tot “Monkey Mouth,” while delighting that he has fine-tuned just how far he can grin and keep Sock Monkey in place.

His mom and dad recently tried subbing in a fuzzy version of a Beanie Baby monkey. Silly parents. It never even made it through the teeth.

For Christmas, they acknowledged the inevitable and bought a sock monkey ornament for the tree.

I imagine there’s no hope for his birthday. We’ll be wading through a jungle of Sock Monkey paraphernalia. And when Malcolm looks back at the inevitable video, he’s ask MacMama why all the monkeys.

She’ll sigh and tell him, “Someday you’ll be a daddy and you’ll understand. Just don’t tell people ‘no monkeys’ or anything else.”

 

 

Filed under: back to basics, Family, Happy!, Love, Macalicious, My house, too good to be true, baby's first birthday, Home Place, Macalicious, Milton-Freewater, Sheila Hagar, Sock Monkey, Walla Walla, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

24 years ago

I’m beginning to write this post at 9:30 a.m., relaxed and comfy in my office chair. A far cry from 24 years ago at this time, when my body was trying to expel 10 pounds, 11 ounces of baby.
At home without drugs, which I am apt to remember every time this child needs any sort of reminding of HOW I SUFFERED TO BRING HER INTO THIS WORLD.
Two hours later the task was accomplished and we welcomed the little girl who came along as an unexpected surprise at just the right moment in our lives. A time we most desperately needed to be reminded of the sweetness of life and the promise of never being forsaken by God.
And Director/Artist Girl has continued to surprise me for two dozen years. Her brain did not develop speech at the appropriate milestone — her first real words did not come until age 3, when I was driving in the middle of Anchorage and singing, “I’ve got a joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart, …” Belting it out as I drive my toddler to her speech class, planning my Sunday school lesson in my head.
From the backseat came a tiny little “joy, joy, joy” that so shocked me, I had to pull off Northern Lights Boulevard and sob. I literally could not believe my ears, but there she was, my curly-haired cherub, her lips in a perfect “O” on “joy.” She could not have chosen a better word to start talking with.
It became obvious that her little mind had been way too busy growing creative wrinkles and crevices. From singing pitch-perfect to winning prizes for trombone playing, to comedic thespian timing to an incredible ability to express herself through many mediums of art.
It makes my head spin, frankly, all this talent from a human springing forth from me.
But I guess I knew Birthday Girl would throw me for a loop, the minute I saw the pink “+” where I expected to see the blue “-” sign. Which just went to show me who was really in charge.
Thank God.
Happiest, Artist Girl.

Filed under: back to basics, Child approved, Family, Happy!, My Man, too good to be true, Artist Girl, children, Home Place, Sheila Hagar, Walla Walla life, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin