I keep expecting that I will feel better with time. Dogs die. It happens. Time will pass and I will feel better. I will feel happy about the time we spent together.
The other day, I was feeling so much better that I forgot, momentarily, that Xena wasn’t here. I looked around and said, out loud, “Where are you?” As if she might suddenly appear.
And then I did the unthinkable. I answered myself the way Xena would have answered.
I responded as if I were Xena, in that silly voice I’d used for ten years to “be” Xena, to represent her thoughts. It was the voice I used when the boys were little, when they needed to understand how a dog might feel if you pulled her tail. It was the voice I used when we were riding in the car, when she had her head hanging out the window, “showing” the boys what was out there while they giggled in the backseat.
It was the voice I used when Xena was excited – as she usually was – to express (and add to) “her” excitement. Eventually Xena learned that when I used that voice, it had something to do with her – and it always made her tail wag.
“Where are you?” I asked, moving “her” pillow on the couch, so she would have it where she wanted it, just as soon as she returned.
“I’m right here, Mama,” Xena said, out of my mouth, before I realized what I was doing. “I’m always right here.”
Because that’s what she would have said, if she’d been here. Because she was always right here. Right next to me. ALWAYS.
And now she’s not.
And then I broke down sobbing again. Because she’s not here. She can’t be here anymore. And she belongs here.
Today my baby turns 15.
When Shane was born, he cried so long and loud, he popped a little hole in his lung called a pneumothorax. They had to rush him to the NICU at the hospital and plonk a pacifier into his mouth so the little hole would heal. Conveniently, the birth had been so traumatic for both of us that I was allowed to stay in the hospital for three whole days, healing with him.
I remember the first time Shane heard my voice, how his eyes got huge like blue saucers. He knew me. He knew who I was. That simple fact made me ecstatic just to be alive.
When Shane was in preschool, he was sweet and quiet and content. But one day, the teacher pulled me aside after school. She explained that Shane had spent his recess with his head inside a giant dollhouse – the rest of his body didn’t fit. She couldn’t get him to come out of the dollhouse, so she thought we might want to talk to him and see if anything was wrong.
We talked to Shane and indeed, something was wrong. A little girl had told him he couldn’t go down the playhouse slide. Rather than standing up for himself and sliding, he stuck his head in the dollhouse. That very day, we started to spend more time with Shane, working on social skills and getting his needs met. I, especially, gave him as much positive encouragement as I could. Until that point, he’d seemed so content, we thought he didn’t need it.
When Shane was in kindergarten, his teacher noticed that he wasn’t looking at her during carpet time. He would yell out the answers to questions and always knew what was going on, but he sometimes sat on his head instead of “criss-cross applesauce.”
He’d sat on his head his whole life, I told the teacher. Even when he was a baby, he’d put his face on the floor and his diaper in the air. He seemed perfectly content, like he was soaking in the music of the world. The teacher thought we should have a meeting with the special ed team, just in case.
Thank God for that teacher. Shane had a vision processing disorder and couldn’t focus visually on anything. He spent two years in vision therapy, which allowed his vision to catch up with his other, exceptionally alert senses. Without vision therapy, Shane would never have been able to read.
When Shane was finally able to express himself, he discovered magic and became a performing magician. He loved acting classes and the science museum and writing stories and songs. He adored his few close friends and idolized his big brother. Shane was always interested in numbers and cared more about how many pages were in a book than what the story held.
He is sensitive and sweet, yet ultimately cool. He’s so laid back, sometimes you have to guess if he’s paying attention. But he soaks in everything around him, like a giant, happy sponge, and uses it to his advantage – often in increasingly humorous ways. Shane is incredibly funny.
Shane has been a delight in my life for the past 15 years. He’s made me realize that being slightly off-center is not just a good thing, but a wonderful and exceptional part of being real. Shane has made me appreciate the way I am, just by being who he is. And “who he is” is so incredibly special, I can’t even begin to put it into words.
Happy birthday, Shane. Thanks forever for being you.
After Dylan’s disastrous attempt at turning in his school work on his own, I emailed his teachers. My email went something like this:
In order to prepare Dylan for college, we are trying to allow him to complete and turn in his own assignments ON TIME, without any “encouragement” or “help” from us. If he doesn’t know how to turn in high school work on time, he will never be able to keep up with the work in college.
Dylan has assured me that he has turned in ALL of his missing work. We are just trying to determine if he’s actually turned in his work, or if he’s still completely unaware of which assignments are missing. We just want to know if there is any hope for a collegiate future.
His teachers’ responses were completely unexpected.
“He is still missing four assignments,” one teacher said. “A fifth one will be due today. He is usually aware of what he has not completed and turns it in as soon as he’s aware.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of this. Dylan is missing four or five assignments – but he’s turning it in quickly? According to what I was seeing online, Dylan was missing 15 assignments in this class. Maybe what I was seeing online wasn’t all that accurate.
A clue came from another teacher, who said, “Dylan is caught up on his work; I just need to grade it and put it in the grade book. He’s been very good this year about checking in with me without prompting and making up his work before I’ve even had a chance to ask him about it.”
Without prompting? Briefly I wondered if this teacher knew my son. But this is actually the second time he has had this teacher. I guess he’s improved tremendously since 10th grade!
The most telling response came from Dylan’s AP teacher – where he is doing college-level work and, apparently, doing it quite well.
“Dylan has turned in all of his late work,” his teacher said. “He has been verbally proving himself in class each day. The information is in there! I truly believe he will do well. He is so insightful and has so many brilliant moments in class that I believe he really is pulling it all together now.”
Dylan is pulling it all together. The disorganized, late, confused, frustrated son I’ve seen at home is pulling it all together at school! Insightful. Brilliant. THAT is the Dylan I know from childhood! He’s emerging!
We still have months to observe his behavior. We still have months of prayer. But we may have to pay for college after all!
Every day after school, the boys come home and go straight up to their respective rooms. They shut their doors and I don’t see them for hours.
Sometimes I whine during dinner. “Nobody talks to me anymore,” I say. Or, if I think about it, I ask if anyone will ever play a board game with me again. The kids will talk during dinner. Mostly they make fun of me for being … well, me. This is a great source of amusement for them.
So I drive the kids to school in the mornings. This, I think, is an opportunity for me to bond with my children, stay connected, find out what’s going on in their lives. I also throw out reminders about what they should think about, you know, during their day. The reminders are probably unnecessary and I can guarantee they are unappreciated.
Mostly, I just want to have a conversation – any conversation – with them. I want to know how they feel about things, what they’re thinking about, what songs they’re listening to with those earbuds shoved into their ears. So on some mornings, I try to talk about my feelings.
Like today: “I had a dream about Xena last night.”
No sound from the backseat.
“Well, I guess trying to talk about my feelings is getting the same results as saying nothing at all, so I guess I will just talk to myself,” I said.
Shane piped up. “I said, ‘uh.'”
I didn’t hear “uh.” But truthfully, that is about as much as I get from them these days.
I feel bad that I didn’t appreciate their incessant talking, singing, humming, and maniacal laughter when we drove to elementary school. I kept telling them to tone it down, be quieter, blah blah blah.
What I wouldn’t give, now, to relive the insanity of their childhood.
It is snowing. There’s at least a foot of snow on the ground.
It doesn’t snow much where I live, so snow is always a time for celebratory sled riding. It’s also a good time to stay indoors, and cuddle up with a nice book.
Since they were tiny, little boys, I’ve taken the boys out sledding – even on tiny, little hills. The thrill of rushing down that hill in the cold is like no other. Even when they were toddlers, we bundled up for 45 minutes and drove out to the nearest ten-foot drop. It took longer for us to get dressed than it did to ride down that “hill” a dozen times.
As the boys got older, we found the biggest hill in the area: an enormous, whale of a hill that takes almost a full minute to descend. The walk back up is always a chore, but it’s worth it – just to do it again and again.
Last year was the ultimate. The boys were both old enough to tackle the hill completely on their own – and for the first time, I was able to ride down the hill with my dog.
Xena loved sled riding – and I didn’t know it until last year. She loved being in my lap and flying down the hill. She loved running back up the hill. At the age of 10, she was an expert sledder. She sat very still until we came to a stop, even when we slid 300 yards. And when we finally got to the top of the hill afterward, Xena could hardly wait to get back on the sled again.
So the boys went sled riding without me this year.
This year, I couldn’t go. Instead, I wanted to cry all day. I wished I had tried to put her on a sled much sooner, so she could have had that fun with us every year. And this year, I didn’t feel like having any fun without her.
Maybe I made the wrong decision. Maybe I should have enjoyed the little time I have left with the kids instead of worrying about the time I don’t have with Xena.
Either way, the snow day came and went, and I am still without my dog.
Dylan spent most of Quarter 2 “on his own,” doing what he does best. Unfortunately for all of us, what he does best is not school work.
By the time I checked his grades more than halfway through the quarter, Dylan had so many E’s and Z’s for missing work, I briefly wondered if he had actually gone to school. He had more than a dozen missing assignments in his AP class, another ten or so in his math class, and he didn’t have anything turned in at all in his digital art class. He was even missing two assignments in English, which he’d kept current for the entire first quarter.
“Your dad and I have decided that we are not paying for college,” I said to Dylan one day. “Obviously, you can’t get your worked turned in at school. And college is school. So I hope you can understand that we are not going to be able to support you if you decide to go to college.”
“What do you mean?” Dylan asked, actually perplexed.
“I mean, we’re not giving you money for college. We’re not paying for you to go to college. We’re not giving you money. We’re not giving the college money. I mean, we’re not providing you with the deposit. This was your chance to show us you could do it, and you haven’t done anything at all.”
“I still have two weeks before the end of the quarter!” he wailed. “I can catch up! I got a 4.16 last quarter!”
“I don’t care about your GPA,” I told him. “We don’t need you to ‘catch up.’ We needed you to turn in your assignments on the days they were due. You didn’t do that, so we are not paying for college. Maybe you can afford community college, if you want a degree. But we’re not paying for you to keep doing what you’ve done all along. We just can’t afford it.”
I left the room.
About fifteen minutes later, Dylan found me folding laundry. “Question,” he said. “Is this like, the way it has to be no matter what? Or if I can show you that I can get everything in, is it possible that you can still help me with college?”
“I don’t know, Dylan,” I told him. “You haven’t been able to show us anything new in 12 years. If we’re going to change our minds about paying for college, we need to see some actual changes in your behavior. And right now, I’m not convinced that kind of change is possible. You’re waiting to hear from all of the colleges, which should be around March 1. I suppose if you get no missing assignments between now and then….”
“Well I can’t guarantee no missing assignments, I mean….”
“See, Dylan? It sounds like nothing is going to change,” I said. “In college, you need to have no missing assignments.”
“I will. I just haven’t been that motivated in high school. But I know I can get everything done on time,” he said.
“We’ll have to see some seriously noticeable improvement,” I said. “But I am not holding my breath. Your dad and I have waited years to see changes, and you’ve said all of this before. We just can’t afford to invest in someone who isn’t invested in himself.”
“Okay,” he said. “You will see.”
So far, I haven’t seen anything at all.
When I was first learning to understand Dylan’s screamingly strong personality, Kirk Martin’s program, Celebrate Calm, changed my life. I bought all of the CDs I could find, and heard Kirk Martin speak at least half a dozen times. I discovered that frustration and heartache are normal when raising a child like Dylan. Better yet, I learned (and re-learned) how to focus on Dylan’s strengths and encourage his successes.
I left each session with renewed hope for Dylan. But one question was constantly nagging, somewhere in the back of my brain. So one day, I asked Kirk Martin if he could answer it.
“What can I do for his little brother?”
Shane was in second grade. Whereas Dylan endlessly careened, Shane was laid back, quiet. “Children are all different,” Kirk Martin told me. “And not all children require the same types of parental guidance.”
Our house was chaotic. Even while practicing “calm” techniques, there was a lot of yelling. We didn’t do anything perfectly. Dylan and I argued for at least half a decade. Frustration levels still run high quite frequently.
Shane, though, sits on the sidelines. He is rarely involved, but he is almost always within earshot.
So a few years later, when Shane was 10, I asked a psychologist: “I spend so much time worrying about Dylan, arguing with Dylan, obsessing about how to help Dylan. And Shane is so laid back and quiet; I worry that he’s suppressing everything.”
After asking me a handful of questions about Shane’s behavior, the psychologist said, “It sounds like he’s handling his feelings in a pretty healthy way.”
Now, a few more years have passed. Life is less insane. Dylan has outgrown some of his rebellion; I’ve learned how to respond less explosively. But Shane is always nearby when the levee breaks.
Nowadays, Shane spends a lot of time in his room with the door closed. He wants only to eat junk, watch TV, and play video games. His room so messy, it’s almost uninhabitable.
Still, Shane does his homework; he gets good grades; he hangs out with his friends. He chats, texts and posts stuff, like every teen.
But I am worried about Shane. He hasn’t required the kind of parental guidance I’ve given Dylan for so long. In fact, he’s required almost no parental guidance whatsoever. And Shane still appears to be handling his feelings in a pretty healthy way.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what “healthy” looks like. I’ve handled almost nothing – my whole life – in a healthy way. And I wouldn’t recognize a normal, healthy teenager if one bit me in the face.
(Well, I suppose if one bit me in the face, it wouldn’t be a normal, healthy teenager. But that’s beside the point.)
I don’t know if Shane is okay. I’ve talked to Shane – about his room, for example, which looks like a hurricane just blew through. “I’m just lazy,” he said. But is that all there is to it?
Shane hoards things – and not in a compulsive, organized fashion. Is this a sign that something’s wrong, that he’s afraid to let go of his childhood? Or is this a sign that he’s a teenager?
He grunts at me now. He doesn’t hug me back. Shane is the kind of teenager I thought they made up for television shows and movies. He disappears even when he’s right in front of me.
I keep waiting for him to lash out, argue, self-destruct, or go into a rage. But Shane is still laid back and quiet. Maybe this is all perfectly okay.
How could I possibly know?
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.
