Rewriting History

Sometimes I like to go back and reread older posts on this blog.

Partially stemmed from my own narcissism and the sweet torture of reliving my grammatical errors and clumsy syntax (which I refuse to change now on principle), it comforts me to see how far we have come. I like remembering my babies as just that--puddles of chubby bubbly preciousness that smelled of milk and lavender baby lotion. The early years of my marriage to Michael. That fix of delicious nostalgia of days gone by.   

I didn’t get what I was looking for today, however.

What I got was a forced cheerfulness and nauseating cliches. I started this blog when Gabriel was 3 months old. Emerald was just shy of two years, Michael had just started working at Scoggin Dickey after a brief stint with the AT&T call center. And I was a young--very young--stay-at-home mother.

I remember that time, vividly. The pain, the heartache, the struggle. That image darkens the tone of the original posts, like a fanatically smiling joker about to lose his tentative grasp on sanity.

What bothers me is that I did not start writing Wearden Family News so that I could remember false joviality, a Norman Rockwell painting of our family growing up. I started this as a chronicle for my children written from the perspective of their loving, but still very human, mother. I don’t want my life to be summed up by extraneous exclamation points and excessive emoticons. That is not who I am.

There was a hard shift in tone around the time that Gabriel was diagnosed. Or at least, on the path to diagnosis. I was six months pregnant with Benjamin when Michael and I sat in that pediatric psychiatrist’s office, sweating through the church clothes I made us wear as an attempt at respectability. That moment, the surreal absurdity and overwhelming finality of it, was probably my breaking point. It had been a long time coming though.

This is a more accurate telling of that time.

Gabriel was a discontent baby. Well, that is not fair to say, really. He was a happy, smiley, quiet little guy...when he was in motion. In the swing, out in the stroller, riding around in the car he was bright-eyed and happy to be alive. Every other time, he had a general air of discomfort. At that age, it is always attributed to colic, a vague sort of nonanswer that satisfies no one. The weird thing though was that he didn’t really actually cry all that much. In fact, he didn’t make a ton of noise for any reason--he didn’t babble or gurgle, coo or giggle. On rare occasions, you could coax a deep throated chuckle out of him, a magical sound we cherished during the difficult days.

I got the distinct impression he didn’t care for me. Or at the very least, did not trust me. He wouldn’t look at me when I talked to him, instead fixating on the spinning blades of the fan or the flickering lights from passing cars outside. Whenever I was near him, he never stopped trying to move away from me. By far, he hated me holding him the most. I figured he was just an astute child; I am not what anyone would describe as “maternal” or “nurturing”.

We accommodated; if he wanted to be moving, we would keep him moving. We unconsciously shifted our lives in a perpetual motion to soothe the angst of a wakeful, wide-eyed newborn.

“What an alert baby! That is a sign of intelligence, you know.”

I suppose Gabriel is a genius then, because that child never slept if he could help it. And he had a surprising amount of control over the issue. From the moment he was born, his eyes were always open. As long as he was awake, he had to be tended; Michael took shifts as often as he could, but he had to work. That just left me.  

Emerald suffered from the stress as well. Daycare noted anxiety--she was pulling on her hair, wringing her hands. The classroom was overwhelming for her; her words reduced to incoherent babbling, and she was constantly on the edge of bursting into tears.

She was such an agreeable infant and toddler, eager to please, clever as they come. With the introduction of this unusual child in her life, Emerald’s outbursts and problem behaviors became more pronounced, her relaxed demeanor melting away. The strain was showing on her.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was showing signs of postpartum depression. Which is hardly surprising--there is an increased risk of PPD after c-sections, and I had been pregnant so soon after having Emerald that my body didn’t have time to replenish its stores. I was malnourished from months of vomiting and significant weight loss, my hormones were completely out of whack. I didn’t know how to recognize the symptoms for what they were, but I was emotionally precarious, to say the least.

Michael’s work schedule was unpredictable while he was selling cars. If he got a customer that came in late, he had to stay and see it through to the end, tacking hours onto the end of an already long day. I knew I was probably in trouble when he called me to tell me he would be late home, again….and I threw dinner out the window.

I was so angry over that twenty, maybe thirty minutes before he would get home. Because that was thirty more minutes I had to be alone with the children...and I didn’t know if I had it left in me.

While Pepper ate up what was supposed to have been our supper, I sat on the floor of the kitchen, my foot bouncing Gabriel’s seat in a rhythm I could not stop. Just sat there, staring ahead of me, seeing nothing. Emerald came and sat next to me on the rug. Didn’t say a word. We just all sat there, frozen in this moment, waiting for something to happen, anything to make it better.

I approached Michael a little while later about talking to a doctor, maybe see about getting on an antidepressant. The obvious relief written on every part of his face broke my heart and made me angry.

Before, I would have expected PPD to look a lot like the offensively titled “baby blues”. Some weepiness, fatigue, general malaise and depression. I mean, it’s right there in the name: Depression!

What I did not know is that it inflames so many emotions. The way the doctor explained it to me: everything you are feeling moves to your fingertips, and flies out before you have time to catch it. The way it manifested for me was mostly red-hot anger. Everything made me irrationally angry.

It didn’t help matters that we were struggling financially as well. Sure, we were doing much better than we had when Emerald was born. Then, Michael had worked as a computer teacher for an elementary school and was bringing home barely enough to keep us with a roof over our head. Scoggin-Dickey was kind, far kinder than a lot of commission-based careers we had heard of. They took care of you, as long as you were trying, even if you weren’t making sales. Still, every month we were stressed and worried and broke.

This...this is what our lives looked like back then. It wasn’t “Fun Day at the Park!!! :D” It was us walking in hundred-plus degree weather to metal playground equipment that was too hot to touch, let alone sit on. Everyone wanting to go home, except dreading even another second in the house. Wishing we had the money to split something from the ice cream truck, to make this trek out here worthwhile.

Starting home having accomplished nothing except killing a half hour and the last lingering remnants of our spirits.

When from the stroller, we hear the deepest, belly-shakingest chuckle...and everything was alright again.

--Andie