Dylan just turned 18; he is, officially, an adult.
Dylan has been waiting for this practically since he was born. He was mature in a way that other kids weren’t, even at a very young age. He had empathy for other people years before his classmates were empathetic. Even as a preschooler, he always asked profound, adult questions.
He often said, early in elementary school, “I just want to save the world.” Dylan’s teachers mostly overlooked his efforts, forcing him instead to sit and stare at the wall as “punishment” for being too bouncy. But when he was given an important task – say, passing out papers or drawing something for the bulletin board – Dylan took it ultra-seriously. The older he got, the more he wanted to help. By fifth grade, he started a fundraiser which, he hoped, would singlehandedly save the rainforest.
But Dylan wanted to do a lot. For example, he wanted to build monster trucks. “When I grow up, Mommy,” he’d say, “I’m going to make you a purple and green monster truck that you can drive every day.”
Another day, when he was maybe nine years old, Dylan stood outside with a very long piece of rope that he had managed to loop around a tree branch. I watched him standing there, staring into the tree, calculating. He was trying to figure out how to design a roller coaster. “When I grow up,” he’d say, “I’m going to make the whole yard into an amusement park!”
After he got into the gifted program, Dylan did independent projects and crafted amazing models. He gave speeches about conservation and was fascinated by the class fish. “When I grow up,” he’d say, “I’m going to build an aquarium and save all the animals in the Chesapeake Bay.”
Dylan often spoke like an adult. And he meant every word.
Then he decided not to apply for the gifted program in middle school. He also decided not to be part of the GT/LD classes that so suited his needs. “They’re like the troublemakers,” he said. “I don’t want to be one of the troublemakers.” He didn’t know that middle school would be full of trouble for him – especially boredom.
It didn’t get any better when he went to high school. Somewhere along the way, Dylan stopped trying to change the world. Instead he’d say, “I just can’t wait to be an adult. I just want to be done with school.”
And now he’s an adult. He’s a few months away from being “done” with school – unless you count the endless time he could spend at college. Fortunately, college is like an enormous gifted program, with the kinds of intellectual opportunities that he hasn’t seen since fifth grade. Also fortunately, Dylan has been accepted into some fine institutions.
But he’s scared. Dylan knows that studying and homework are not his forte. He doesn’t remember, like I do, his overwhelming and infectious enthusiasm for life when he was intellectually stimulated. He doesn’t remember the days when he wanted to read nonfiction books on every topic in the world, just to understand the world better. In fact, Dylan doesn’t even remember wanting to read.
He’s been crushed by a system that doesn’t excite smart people. He’s become apathetic about learning. Now he says, instead, “I don’t really want to grow up anymore. It’s too much work.”
It’s devastating, watching such a bright light flicker. But I believe with all my heart that, once he’s graduated from this oppression, he will thrive again.
Now that he’s an adult, Dylan has that choice.
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt grief before. When I was younger, and well into my adulthood, I covered up my grief with anything I could find: alcohol, cigarettes, food. Today, I have nothing external to squash the internal pain.
There are things happening around me. My children are growing up. My husband had a hip replacement and is on the mend. He’s driving again and gone back to work. I, too, have signed up to work – although I haven’t actually done any work yet.
But I wake up thinking about my dog, even in the middle of the night. I wake up and I wonder if she’s there with me, or if she’s running through the fields in heaven. I look for her all day. I see her; I hear her. I miss her.
Almost immediately, I started looking for another dog. I have loved dogs since I was a tiny girl, since I discovered that there were different breeds and different shapes and sizes. I have loved dogs since I first met a dog. So I started looking for another dog.
But none of the dogs online are right. None of the dogs at the shelter are right. They aren’t the dogs I want. I want my dog.
I don’t feel like I did when my friend, Pete, died. I adored Pete and I miss him terribly. I wish he would stop by and see me, like he used to do. Pete died almost ten years ago, and I think about him all the time. But as sad as I am about Pete, this is harder.
I feel like I’ve lost a limb. I feel like I’m trying to regrow an arm that has no chance of regrowth. I have to relearn how to do everything in my own home. She’s not here, and I am lost without her.
I wake up and I look for her. I envision her waddling down the steps in front of me, like she did every day. I wonder why her bed isn’t behind my chair, where it belongs. I keep thinking I should let her outside. I wonder why she’s not jumping into the car when I get in, why I can’t give her a treat before I leave. I forget that she’s gone, and then I remember, over and over and over again, every day.
This is a parenting blog. I am supposed to write about my kids. And things are happening with them, so I will try. I will make myself write; I will make myself be present, even when I feel – deep down in a profound way – that there is no reason for me to get out of bed in the morning.
I will be there for my kids, my husband, my work, my life. I will be there, and I will write about it.
But a bright light has gone out, and it is hard to find my way in the dark.
In spite of losing family members and friends over the years, I somehow believe I’ve never experienced true grief. Losing Xena has made life nearly impossible. And I don’t want to write about it.
But this morning, I woke up and made it all the way to the bathroom before I remembered that she wasn’t here. Before I realized that I was missing a limb. Before the tsunami of sadness hit again.
It is Christmas. The children are counting on a joyous Santa. But no one was counting on an empty stocking, hanging there as if it belonged.
I told myself that I was going to get a dog “for the children.” I’d grown up with a dog, and I wanted my kids to know that same joy.
After months of online browsing, we settled on a spaniel-shaped mutt from a rescue in a tiny Pennsylvania town. Xena was white with brown ears and completely scruffy, which is how we liked her. The day we got her, she jumped on the adoption paperwork – a direct leap onto the desk from the floor. Xena was always very excited.
The kids were four and seven when we got her, so they don’t remember life without her. Xena was with us for every adventure. We walked, camped, biked, ran, played on playgrounds, sledded down the big hill, and rode pedal boats together, even though Xena sometimes fell into the lake.
I told myself I got the dog “for the children.” But Xena declared me “Alpha” in mere minutes, and I bonded with her as strongly as I bonded with my other babies.
On our first walk with her, I let Xena off the leash in an empty park. She ran and ran, until I called her. She perked up at the sound of her new name, and ran right back to where I was standing. Eventually I realized that she not only came back whenever I called her, but she was always right by my side.
She woke when I woke in the morning, and followed me downstairs. She followed me around the kitchen, down the hallways, upstairs to the laundry room and back downstairs. Once she got stuck in my bedroom closet because she’d followed too closely. She slept at my feet while I was on the computer; she watched me watch television. Xena rode in the passenger seat in the minivan. She even followed me into the bathroom. If I didn’t shut any door completely, she pushed it with her nose and came right in.
For a few weeks after we got her, we couldn’t leave home without Xena tearing apart Ziploc bags from the kids’ board games. We scolded her until Xena determined – incorrectly – that she should never chew on anything while the family is out. We gave her bully sticks to chew while we were gone, thinking it would help. So for ten years, Xena would run to the door when we got home, carrying her untouched bully stick: “See? I didn’t eat anything while you were gone!”
Xena would go off-leash for nearly every walk. She used “the facilities” on command, and would run into the woods so that I didn’t have to clean up her mess. I’ve never met anyone so eager to please. We had a crate for her, which mostly sat unused under the foosball table. But sometimes Xena would put herself in there, if she did something she thought she wasn’t allowed to do. While I rarely saw her in there otherwise, the kids said she slept in her crate whenever I was gone, even when they were home. She was waiting for me.
Six weeks ago, Xena had a mass removed and fully recovered from her surgery. She was jumping and running again like a puppy, even at 12 years old. And then, quite suddenly, she was limping – a fluke, we thought. But the cancer was back, this time with a vengeance, and it killed her in four days. Xena died in my arms, surrounded by her family, which is the only place she ever wanted to be.
Today, I am consumed with pain; I am irrevocably broken. Every day, all day, Xena told me that I was the most wonderful person on the planet, and she asked for absolutely nothing in return. How can I survive in a world without Xena in it?
It started with my toothbrush.
After many years with my rechargeable electric toothbrush, it finally started to die. So I ordered a new toothbrush from Amazon. When the toothbrush arrived, it had a red light on it that wasn’t shown in the picture. So I called Amazon customer service.
“You can return it,” said the not-as-helpful-as-usual customer service rep.
“I need a toothbrush,” I said. “I just want to know what the red light does.”
“I don’t have that information,” said the rep. I hung up, no wiser, and gave up on figuring out why there was a red light on the toothbrush. Later, though, I looked at reviews from other buyers: Not as pictured; This isn’t the toothbrush I ordered; Cheap replica! they said.
I was a little concerned. But for a decade, I’d been buying everything I owned – from diapers and toys to food and electronics – on Amazon. So I just kept on buying.
But I noticed a disturbing trend. I ordered products that I’d ordered before, and they arrived looking … well, just not the same. Then I looked at reviews for the things I’d ordered – even things with thousands of positive reviews – and discovered that, in the past year or two, things weren’t as high quality as they’d been before.
And things weren’t showing up as advertised. I bought a therapy ball and an eye patch for my dad, who’d had eye surgery. But I never got the eye patch, even after repeated emails and calls. I bought dog food in pouches and some pouches had the “real” brand name, while other pouches looked like they’d been made on my home computer.
And buying replacement items, where I could compare quality, was even worse. I bought a shirt that I’d loved in blue, so I got it in purple – but it fell apart after only two washes. I bought a second pair of fleece shorts that I’d loved and they showed up with a huge hole on the seam. I re-bought a set of flashlights that had once felt sturdy and metallic in my hand, and now they felt light and flimsy.
My dog’s “bully bones” used to be thick and lasted for weeks; now they are thin and gone in mere minutes. I got a case of potato chips that were so stale, they were inedible – even though the expiration date said they were fine for another nine months!
Meanwhile, the prices have gone up. And customer service has gone down. Whereas I used to get representatives that would say, “You can send it back!” – now they say, “We can offer you a $5 gift card for your trouble.”
So I started looking at Amazon reviews with much more care. I filtered reviews by “Most Recent” rather than “Top Reviews” (which is the default).
And what I found is that many, many products are being negatively reviewed, especially in the past year – even products that were once infallible. Things are breaking or falling apart almost immediately after they’re received. Or they don’t work at all.
One woman compared the pillowcase she bought ten years ago to the one she re-bought this year – and you can see the difference in thickness in her simple photo.
My “genuine Canon” printer ink is not “genuine” anymore – but the refilled ink canisters are still being sold as genuine.
Amazon just isn’t okay anymore. Prices are up, and customer service is down. And quality is nonexistent.
So things have changed. I won’t buy anything on Amazon now unless I absolutely can’t get it anywhere else.
And I can get everything somewhere else.
In the midst of what feels like a severe case of writer’s block, I logged in today to just try writing a blog post. Without my knowledge or consent, the theme-building program that makes it easy for techno-phobes to write a blog – Word Press – has updated itself.
This means that I have logged in to a page that doesn’t make sense to me. The little boxes have disappeared and now I have a big, blank page. The blank page, of course, makes writing even more challenging.
So now I am just filling up the page with words – which, by the way, are now in a new, larger-but-more-serif-styled font. I am writing just to see what it looks like. And boxes pop up out of the blue as I write. The little symbols are gone, that helped me italicize words. The title box is gone. There are buttons on the side that might be helpful, but I don’t know what they mean.
I am sorry that readers will have to read this. But this is what I am doing with my life today.
So my dog had surgery. Then my husband had surgery. I am playing nurse (not my favorite role) and while it really isn’t that taxing, I do very little parenting these days.
The kids, in fact, are doing beautifully.
Meanwhile, the holidays are upon us. I am cramming in work (teaching) and daily duties, and preparing for two birthdays. I am supposed to be selling toys, but I haven’t even taken photos for the sales posts yet.
I have considered just dropping the blog, but I think that’s unfair to Shane who, for all rights and purposes, is now a true teenager.
But writing is not in my daily routine now. Thinking about parenting is constant. I just don’t have the regular revelations I used to have.
It helps that Dylan has been accepted to college and I can stop worrying so much about him. In fact, I am not worried much about either of them, because I am too busy worrying about daily life.
So while I am not really taking a break, I am apologizing to anyone who is here looking for wisdom – or even stories – about parenting. Hopefully I will acquire more wisdom and stories after the holidays.
After only 15 years, our mailbox broke and we had to replace it.
“I want a cool mailbox,” I said to Bill. “I’ve always wanted a cool mailbox.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “They’re all the same.”
“No, I want something different – like a mailbox that looks like a log cabin or a birdhouse or a truck,” I said. “I’ve always wanted a mailbox that looks like a truck!”
“Fine,” Bill said. “Figure out what you want and let me know.”
I went online and started searching. The “cool” mailboxes weren’t for sale. They were do-it-yourself projects and craft ideas that resembled mailboxes and were occasionally in use for actual mail. If I wanted to buy such a thing, it would cost me a few hundred dollars.
“Can I at least get a big mailbox?” I asked Bill. I was tired of the mailman crumpling our mail to fit it all in. Most of it was junk, but still.
“Sure,” Bill said.
“I want this jumbo mailbox,” I said. The jumbo mailbox was so big, it would hold mail for the entire block. For a month. But at least that mail wouldn’t be crumpled! It had to be ordered online (not available in stores) but it was only $25!
So we ordered our jumbo mailbox from Home Depot, and had it delivered to the store so that we could pick it up whenever Bill visited. Bill is a Home Depot nut, and he’s there every week whether he needs anything or not. Also, a jumbo mailbox requires substantial shipping costs.
Then we waited.
And waited, and waited, and waited.
Two weeks later, I still hadn’t gotten any emails about the mailbox’s arrival at the store.
I called the store. “It’s not here,” Home Depot said. “You have to call HomeDepot.com and find out what happened.”
I called HomeDepot.com. “It says here that it was delivered to the store,” HomeDepot.com said. “It was there before Thanksgiving.”
Oh no, I thought.
I called the store back. “HomeDepot.com says it’s there,” I said.
“It’s definitely not here,” the Home Depot guy said. “I’m in charge of online orders, and I don’t even remember your name!”
“Is it possible that it was accidentally moved to the shelf or something? It has to be somewhere.”
“No,” the guy said. “There’s no way. Tell you what. Why don’t you come into the store, give me your name, and then choose any mailbox we have. Cost doesn’t matter. We can do that for your trouble.”
“But we ordered a really big mailbox.”
“We have some big mailboxes out there,” he said.
“Can you let me know how big, exactly? The one we ordered was huge,” I said.
“Just give me a minute,” he said, walking to the shelves. “Okay, here’s one: jumbo mailbox, it says.”
“Does it give the measurements?” I asked, doubtful that it would be big enough to be “cool.”
I could hear the guy moving stuff around. “Let me see if it’s got the measurements –” he said. “Oh, here. Wait. Wait a minute. You know what?”
“What?”
“This is your mailbox.”
“What do you mean?”
“I turned it over to look at the measurements and there was your name, right on the box,” he said. “I mean this is literally your mailbox!”
“Oh great!” I said. “Can I come and get it now?”
“Sure,” the guy said. “We’re open till nine.”
And that’s how I got my somewhat cool, jumbo mailbox.
Which, quite honestly, is way too big. But I like it.
It finally happened.
For 12 years, I nagged him. Since kindergarten, I hovered. Through two elementary schools, one gifted program, a public middle school, a private middle school, and three years of high school, I begged him to finish his school work.
And now, in the first quarter of his senior year of high school, Dylan has finally gotten straight A’s. Well, almost. He got six A’s and one B. The “low” grade is in his AP class.
Dylan’s report card looks like I always knew it could look, if only he had turned in his work on time. He’s always had the intelligence; that was never in question. But between ADHD and teenager-hood, Dylan has gone down kicking and screaming every quarter – usually with B’s and some C’s.
This year, he has stepped up. He’s finally doing what I always knew he could do: he’s succeeding in school!
This makes me unbelievably proud.
And it’s a good thing he’s taking care of himself now, because Shane got four B’s and three A’s. Shane is missing four assignments and he failed two homework assignments just last week. He isn’t the least bit concerned that he had a solid A in English until the last week of the quarter, when he forgot to turn it in and ended up with a B. And today, he forgot his clothes for track practice.
Somehow, I am not as worried about Shane. Maybe it’s the ADHD, or maybe it’s Shane’s more laid-back attitude. Or maybe I am just too tired from 12 years of nagging to worry anymore.
Regardless, I am also less worried about Dylan. Even though senioritis is bound to kick in, I really believe he’s got this covered.
Finally.
Back when he was in middle school, Shane asked several times if we could watch home videos. We have a gazillion home videos, and I would love to see them.
But we can’t.
When Shane was born, we had a video camera that was the latest, greatest technology. I can’t even identify the format of the video tape. We used it for a few years and, when Shane was still a toddler, we got a new video camera.
The new video camera was even more technologically wonderful, and the video tapes were even smaller. We have dozens, if not hundreds, of those videos. They are all in a box and, while not all labeled or organized, they contain the bulk of the boys’ childhood videos.
Unfortunately, we can’t watch them. In fact, we can barely watch Shane’s infant videos, because it requires a complex set-up on a DVD/VCR combination, with the old video camera plugged in on the side. Only Bill knows how to do this, and he is never home. He’s tried to show me how to set it up, but I can never get it right.
For the past two years, my New Year’s resolution has been to get those videos changed to a DVD format, so that we could all enjoy them as a family.
Even if I have to take them all to Costco and PAY to have it done! I have mentally declared.
But it would cost hundreds of dollars to transfer them all, and I don’t have hundreds of dollars. And it would take weeks, maybe months, to transfer them at home, and I don’t have weeks or months.
So when Shane was in middle school, we didn’t watch very many home videos. And the ones we watched featured Shane as a baby.
This wasn’t exactly what he wanted to see. It was cute, sure, but he wanted to see how our family was, what we did, what the kids looked like as children.
Shane is now in high school. Dylan is about to graduate. And all of my videos are sitting in a box, waiting for me to “get around to” transferring them to a format we can watch.
I want to cry when I think about.
And I think about it every day.
