Cracks and chains

I steer my CRV down the narrow lot of the park adjacent to her school, shooting for a spot on the cliff  overlooking the road below.  I used to back in, but I find I can dawdle enough afterwards that I don't have to worry about backing into a line of exiting cars.

A glance at the clock tells me it's 1:38pm.  I wait.  I have learned that walking in too early only means more endless minutes at the blue tables, trying to see my iPhone in the sunshine while W either crawls all over me in a personal space offending way OR walks on the tables OR jumps in filthy puddles OR tries to stick his hand down my shirt.  For most of the year, I actually put him in a stroller because his inability to function in public turned the everyday drudgery of this task into a nightmare.  Those days already seem long gone though.  His behavior still tries my patience, but at least I don't have to wheel that ridiculous stroller through the rough terrain and throngs of people.

The parking spot is due to him, too.  Put the car along the side of the aisle or back into one of the interior spots, and I will spend the next 30 minutes calming the fallout.  We seem to both agree on the cliff these days, thank God.

Around 1:42 I gather my phone and keys, pull W out of the car.  Depending on his mood, I may have to do a little convincing.  Sometimes a lot of convincing.  I have discovered that he likes to push the lock button on my driver's side door; it makes him feel useful.  We have also made a lot of progress on him holding my hand as we cross the parking lot.  Now he only refuses 1 in 5 times.

The trudge to the dreaded tables takes about 10 minutes.  Down a cracked, dog shit bombed sidewalk with hedges on one side, dusty cars on the other.  Under a filthy concrete gazebo.  Through the sandy park, and a high, chain link fence.  Past the grass-less kindergarten playground.  Finally through the entrance breezeway to the blue tables.  I took my sister on this walk once, and she remarked on the lack of trees. "This place is really depressing," she understated.

On my way to my spot, I pass the Hill Moms.  I dubbed them that because after school they like to sit, pack-like, on a grassy knoll at the park.  I have a spot over at the park, too.  I sit 15 feet to their right, and we ignore each other while our kids play together.  There was a time at the beginning of the year when I thought I might get to know these moms.  One of them actually saved W's life by pulling him out of a pool at a birthday party.  That was back when I understood less.

For most of the year I have endured the wait until V comes out, listening to pieces of the conversations around me, staring out into the bleak play yard or at my phone.  Sweating in the white sun reflecting off the concrete or shivering in the wind whipping through the tables.  Lately I often find my friend E waiting for me.  Sometimes we have time to talk, and sometimes not.  It am happy to see her.  I wish it made a difference in how I feel here.

Through those first agonizing months of tears, I thought I had to be something other than myself.  To put myself out there and really try to make friends.  I hoped things would turn around.  We would settle in; class parties and playdates and birthdays would follow, just like at her old school. Gradually I realized I am nothing other than myself.  I am slow to warm.  If I meet cold I am cold, too.  So, many times I decided for sure we were going to transfer out.  Back to the warm, bright place where V did Kindergarten.

I decided to take the hard way.  Not hard in a universal way, just hard in that a square peg doesn't fit into a round hole.  It always feels wrong here; these people are not my peeps.  I hate the rigid rules and the way they overwork the kids.  East Germany, I call it.  I'm not even scratching the surface.  I've given up trying to list off all the ways this place is a parched desert for me. It just is in every way.

But my compass is not me, it's her. V is content here, thriving. I can sit back and wait for things to change around me; when the time is right, the connections will probably creep out and grow.  In the meantime I accept things the way they are.  I sit in my spot at the blue tables, needing nothing except my two kids to walk to the car, hand in hand with me.  So we can get the hell out of here and back to our real life.

The Unfinished Christmas Letter

Some of my friends may have noticed that I did not send my annual Christmas letter this year. The truth is, I started one in mid-December, but never finished it. Then Christmas came and went. New Year's. My enthusiasm for finishing it has trickled off to nothing.

What stumped me was the need to recap my family's events. I couldn't bring myself to do it. There's nothing to say. Nothing I haven't covered already, to everyone this year. I thought of skirting around it, coming up with some clever distraction so no one noticed the lack of year summary, but I got busy and well, eh.

I still like my introductory paragraphs, and so I'm sticking them up here for the heck of it. Maybe next year I'll push through the family summary block and/or actually have something to recap. In the meantime here's all I got to this time around:

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Dear Friends and Family,

Every year, many of you tell me how much you look forward to/enjoy/(don't say anything about because you're embarassed for me) this letter. All those comments are so flattering to hear, and yet they generally trigger a vortex of inadequacy, in which I convince myself it was a fluke, and--really!--who sends Christmas letters anyway? What I was originally paradying hardly even exists anymore in this culture of photo card greetings. This year I toyed with skipping it, for varying reasons. One being that in a year filled with humbling personal growth for me, I didn't know how to recap it without shouting inappropriate things from the rooftops.

And, oh! This is a Facebook note! You noticed? The reasons for the new format are three-fold: 1) Most everyone I send the letter to is on Facebook these days anyway, 2) It's all greener and paper save-y, 3) I was anxious to eliminate the whole: Find the endcap of Christmas stationary at Target-->Stand there for 30 minutes trying to find enough matching envelopes/papers. Bemoan the fact that I have more than 25, yet less than 50 recipients, and so must add this year's blank excess letters to the slowly growing pile of What Do I Do With This? stuff that plaques my Western self-->Let supplies and letter hang over my head until approximately Dec. 27th-->With a churning stomach full of guilt and stress, knock something out. Plan to print and send by the next day.-->Wait at least 4 more days, then say "I'll do it this weekend". (Conveniently forget over the weekend.)-->Spend half a day just printing the darn things & yelling out "Saaaaaaam, help!?!?" at least 25x.-->While waiting for the next printer malfunction, indulge in fatalistic attitude and self-loathing-->Contemplate the suddenly anemic looking letters and envelopes and think, "should I have bought cards to go with these?" and "If only we were picture people".-->Fold letters and write hastily scrawled notes to my people. Give Sam a pile of his people, then get annoyed as his paltry pile takes him 3x as long as mine to complete. Bitterly note his complete lack of stress/guilt.-->Stamps! Shoot, I forgot stamps! Are flag ones okay?? Ugh, why. Why do details exist!??-->One year later, find dusty pile of Sam's letters in the laundry room that WERE NEVER SENT.

In short, old fashioned ways, schmold fashioned schmays. Facebook is blessing for those of us who have two left hands and freak out at the thought of doing things we're not good at, like sending letters through the mail.(f1) If you really feel like you want to read this on paper, feel free to print it out (anyone want a ream of various mis-matched Christmas stationary?). But I think that most of you will feel happy that you got this on time and didn't have to decipher my lousy handwriting or Sam's perfunctory personal notes.

But enough of my blathering, onto our exciting life, which I will now detail in quiz form:

Rives Family Christmas Letter Quiz (give yourself 1 point for each question)

Q) Did you go on a trip anywhere? A) 0 points.

Q) Did any of you experience a career change or new hobby? A) Nope.

.

.

.

.

.

(f1) Saying "snail mail" is so 2000s

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Annnnd, that's all she wrote. Shame on me, writer failure me. For shame.

(deep vortex of insecurity, welcome me in)

Driving My Dad

I had to drive my dad to Oceanside the other day, so I had a good 20 minutes to mull over why we marginalize old people.

I mean, obviously, they remind us of death. So, that's huge.

But not only are they pictures of what we never want to turn into, they don't smell very good. Not that my dad was ever the greatest smelling person. But I've visited nursing homes, and this smell was familiar. It's the smell of B.O., feces, and medicine.

Here are the 3 stages of bad smell proximity:

1. Oh! This is bad. Can't...breathe...

2. I'm handling it. I can do this!

3. This is just what air smells like.

Mostly I try to live above the "my dad" situation. I've gone through all the stages and now I sit comfortably in Acceptance. But really, like anything that makes you uncomfortable, I pass over him any time we have any contact. When I drop a kid off at my parents' house, it's, "Hi Dad! Bye Dad!" The misfiring synapses in his Parkinson's and dementia addled brain have barely processed my presence before I'm outta there.

As I reached over to buckle my Dad in, breathing in the stench of sick and decay, I couldn't do my breeze by thing. I had to face The Bad, at least for a moment. He can barely get his legs in the my CRV far enough so that I can close the car door. Despite having just taken his 4pm meds, his trembling fingers cannot manage a simple buckle in a latch. Something he's probably done thousands of times in the course of his 77 years is now an excruciating hurdle. I stood there for 2 whole minutes respecting his dignity before I stepped in. Pre-dementia Dad would never have let me help him.

On the silent drive I turned up Mumford & Sons because my Dad's love of folk instruments is one of the things he gave me. I am grateful for it; it's a purely good thing. I can trace my love of indie folk directly back to his endless playing of the classic hammer dulcimer cassette "Shakin' Down the Acorns." I thought he might like the banjos and the bluegrass notes on the live Mumford & Sons tracks I had on. Not that either of us said anything about the music. We didn't say anything. You can't easily have a conversation with him, as he is often nodding off or asks you to repeat yourself 1o times. Once you've done that, he doesn't get what you said anyway.

Maybe I should make the effort? But no, my coping mechanism is loud music and avoidance. So far it's working.