Indiscriminate Drivel

Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, NO FEAR

My 5 year old is scared of a lot of things.

Recently, at the mall, it was the escalator challenge.  Jadie is scared of escalators.  Really scared.  We’re trying to encourage her to face her fear without getting CPS called on us for forcing a terrified screaming child to ride the escalator when there are stairs right there.

My 3 year old is scared of nothing.  Nothing at all.

Raena, the little bitty one, and I are at the bottom waiting to see if Daddy will be successful in convincing Stubborn McStubbornpants to ride it.  Rae says “Jadie is scared of this.  I’m not scared of it.”

I said “You’re not scared of anything.  What about tigers?  Are you scared of tigers?” I ask

“No.” she says, very matter of factly.  “They will just sniff my legs.  I’m not scared of tigers.”

I was pretty impressed.  I turned it up a notch.

“Sharks?” I asked.  “What about sharks – are you scared of sharks?”

“No.  They will just sniff my legs.” she replies.

The visual is enough to crack me up.

“Mermaids?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m scared of mermaids.” she said.  “They will EAT me.”

Um.  Okay.

It occurs to me that in real life, I am often afraid of things I have no need to fear, and perhaps complacent about things I absolutely should not be complacent about.  I’ve decided to try to adopt the mindset of the three year old.

 

By |January 17th, 2012|Indiscriminate Drivel|Comments Off on Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, NO FEAR
Read More

Wife of Diabetic

Linda and Bill Xmas 2009 with girlsI hear him slip out of bed and I look at the clock.  1:41AM.  The same mysterious capability that would wake me when my babies were rustling in the other room even before they cried out works here too.  I’m attuned to these particular night sounds.  When he’s up like this, I am on guard.

It’s  the usual routine; first a trip into the bathroom where he tests his blood sugar level, then a trip downstairs.

Usually, he moves like a cat.  He can see in the dark and manages to navigate soundlessly through the bedroom and the house at large.

Me?  Just a trip to the bathroom in the dark becomes a scene from a Jerry Lewis movie.  If there is a Lego to be found in this house, I will step on it with my bare foot.  If there is a squeaky floorboard, I will manage to never miss it.  I will trip over any obstacle, no matter how inconsequential, left on the floor.

If he dies in this bedroom, there is a 50% chance it was his diabetes, but there is an equal chance I bludgeoned him with his own shoe after tripping over it.  “How. Many. Times. Have. I. Asked. You. ..”

But we’ll save the bludgeoning for another day.

Now it is a quarter to two in the morning and I lie in bed listening to him head downstairs for some juice or whatever he chooses to bring his blood glucose back to normal.  I wonder “Should I put my pajama pants on, just in case?”

See, my father-in-law lives here so when I have to run through the house at night to perform emergency life-saving procedures, I like to be dressed.  It was the diabetes that was to blame the time my father-in-law saw my boob before.  No repeatsies, ya know?

I hear him down there fixing something to eat or drink, and he’s not quiet as a cat this time – he’s banging things around, much louder than usual.  To me, this is one of the subtle clues.  That must mean lower-than-usual blood-sugar.  Wonder how low he was?  Should I get up?  Or do I wait for the CRASH-THUMP of his body hitting before I go running?  That’s how it usually goes.  Where did I put that emergency glucagon shot after our last trip?  Is it back where it belongs in the medicine cabinet?  Should I put my pants on?

Maybe we shouldn’t have put granite counters in the kitchen.

I mean, the kids are all old enough that I don’t worry so much about them and their precious noggins hitting – but my husband is a diabetic.

Laminate would have been less deadly.

I hope there’s not a thump.

I’m putting my pants on anyway, just in case.

Fortunately, I hear him coming back up the stairs and he climbs back into bed.

“You OK?” I ask.

“Yeah.  Just low.” he says.

Low is a word that carries a ton of meaning when you’re the wife of a diabetic.  I find myself asking him all the time whether he is low.  If he is sweating when I’m not even warm, I ask “Are you low?”  When he’s acting goofy about something, “Are you low?”  Sometimes diabetics are just goofy – it doesn’t always mean they’re low.  But I ask.

For awhile there, we were having lots of issues with these lows sneaking up on him, and I would ask a lot.  To him, the question started sounding like an accusation.  To me, I asked it as a sort of verbal warning bell.

Ding. Ding.  Diabetes, Round 8.

We are fortunate in that we rarely have marital spats that get the adrenaline pumping, but when we have, I’ve had to worry about his blood sugar.  Adrenaline will do funny things, and if he drops fast when emotions are already high, he gets aggressive, kind of like a mean drunk.    Fortunately, in 18 years there have only been a couple times where this situation has caused him to push things too far.  In the heat of the moment, I just think he’s an asshole but later I blame the disease.

We’ve had some doozies of run-ins with this opponent.

But tonight, he’s back in bed.  “Just a little low.” he says.  “Go back to sleep.” he says.

“I was lying here wondering if your head would hit the granite.” I say.

“You can’t get out of sex that easily.” he replies.

And this is how I know he’s not too low.  He’s not good at smart-assy jokes when he’s really low, so it’s a sign that he’s fine.  For now.

“Go back to sleep.” he says, but I can’t.  My head is swimming with these words you’re reading right now.  “I have to go downstairs and write.” I say.

“Why?” he asks.

“They need to know.  It’s hard being the wife of a diabetic.” I reply.

He laughs.  “I imagine it’s marginally less difficult than being the actual diabetic.”

He’s got a point there.  At least my support group gets cupcakes.

~~~~~~~~~~

If you’re so inclined, go donate to the American Diabetes Association and thank you.

By |March 29th, 2011|Indiscriminate Drivel, Married Life, Not even a little funny|9 Comments
Read More

Little Sally Walker

“You take her.”

“No, we have too many – you take her.”

“I picked last – it’s your turn.  You have to take her.”

My child turned and walked away without a word.

In the retelling, she tried to keep an air of bravado, but this child – she may act tough on the outside, but she has a creamy nougat center and I could tell that she was hurt by the exchange.

And now?  She tells me she doesn’t really like kickball anyway.

I’m pretty sure she wanted the powers of invisibility that day.

What happened today, I was a first hand witness to.

My two youngest wanted to sign up for the mini-cheer camp run by the high school cheerleaders.  Today was the big day.  I dropped them off at 8 AM and went to run a few errands.  I came back a couple hours later and sat on the bleachers watching the girls all learn how to cheer.  My two were divided into separate groups – kindergarten through second grade in one group, and then third through fifth grade in the other.

It was the group with the older girls that caught my interest.  I watched for a long time and couldn’t help but think that my child was deemed invisible out there.  I watched a half dozen high school cheerleaders being playful and friendly with the adorable little girls and not even one interacted with my daughter.

Oh, sure – she’s got some culpability here.  She might have been hanging back.  She might have been anxiously chewing on her nails.  But, see, that’s what you do when you’re too afraid to put yourself out there.  When just last week, two team captains fought over who had to take you on one of their teams.  When you’ve had experiences with other children where you were called fat and ugly to your face.  You tend to start pulling away.  You tend to not want to put yourself out there for fear of more rejection.

But she was there – she was present.  She was learning the cheers and trying to be a part of the group.

I watched as the high school girls instructed the group to form a circle because they were going to play a game.  I saw my daughter alone on one side of the circle while the other girls were clustered on the opposite side.  I heard the older girls tell the grade-schoolers to spread out and form a full circle.  I heard my daughter say “There’s plenty of room over here.” and indicate with her arms that she had space on both sides of her.  I watched how no one came over to fill those spaces until finally the high school girls did.

And then they played Little Sally Walker, a fun little game that girls often play.  There is a subset of girls who skip around the inner circle while a song is sung.  When the end of the verse arrives, the girls in the inner circle each stop in front of a girl of their choosing from the outer circle and do a little dance.  The girl from the outer circle who was chosen now gets a turn skipping around the inner circle, and so it continues.

There were many rounds of the song and many girls got their turns skipping around the inner circle, some got multiple turns.

But not all of them.  Some of them didn’t even get one.

Some of them were invisible.  Some waited for their turns while they chewed nervously on their fingernails.

Or, more accurately – one.  One girl waited anxiously for her turn while she chewed nervously on her fingernails.

My child.  She was invisible today and I sat on the bleachers swiping away the tears that kept forming without my permission.

I silently implored the high school girls to notice what was going on – to correct the situation.  No one did, and the game ended.

At the end of the camp session, each of the groups put on a little performance for the parents.  Cameras flashed and parents clapped wildly.  The high school girls were looking up at the clock with the realization that they had 10 minutes to fill before they could go to Taco Bell or wherever they were planning to go.

The decision was made to play Little Sally Walker again, because the girls love it so much.

Well, most of them.

This time, it was both groups of girls forming a huge circle.  There were at least a dozen girls skipping around the inner-circle.

If I were a religious person, I would have lifted my voice in prayer to whatever god I believed in and asked him to please, please let my child be picked once.  I don’t know much about prayer, but it seems such an inconsequential thing to pray for, right?  “Dear God, please make this pimple on my chin go away before prom.”  I don’t know.  Prayer seems to be for things like intensive-care-unit patients and lumps found on breasts and stuff.

But my prayer (sent up to whom, I don’t know) was just that my child get a turn in Little Sally Walker.

It didn’t seem like too much to ask, really.

Frankly, though, I am not a religious person and I don’t believe there is a higher power who could intercede on this hard road my little girl is traveling.  I believe that it is down to us human beings here on this earth to regulate ourselves.  I believed that the only way my child would get chosen for Little Sally Walker would be because someone noticed that she wasn’t invisible and realized that she may want to participate in the game.

One of the high school girls did just that – she stopped in front of Jadyn and did her little dance, thus choosing my baby girl to have a turn skipping around the inner circle.  From across the gym, I saw my daughter’s face light up.

I’m glad it happened.  I’m glad for Jadie that she was drawn in, even if it was just for a minute.  Maybe next time the cheerleaders are having a mini-cheer camp, my child will want to sign up again.  Maybe she’ll gather her courage and go back to the kickball field.  Maybe.

I am grateful to that girl for noticing my child.  It’s not enough, though – one person, one time, one minute.  It’s just not enough. I know that for Jadie to keep putting herself out there, she needs to have people include her and notice her and accept her.  She needs more of these experiences that light up her face – they have to outnumber the other kind, the kind that make her put up walls and pull away.

I don’t believe there is a god who will help us with this.  I believe it’s up to us – to you, to me, to your kids, to my kids, to teachers, to playground monitors, to camp counselors, to Girl Scout leaders and bus drivers and cheerleaders.

Will you accept the challenge?  Will you keep an eye out for the child hanging back biting her nails and notice her and choose her?  Will you look at and smile at the little boy in the wheelchair?  Will you teach your children to do the same?

Please?

For me?  For her?

By |February 5th, 2011|Indiscriminate Drivel, Not even a little funny|53 Comments
Read More