Life Skills

Summer is a long time to have the kids at the house.

For two months, I have to keep this pack of malcontents docile and entertained. There is so much pressure in summer—pressure to have fun, make memories, go to new places and do new things. I don’t want to go new places and do new things. Honestly, I just want to survive. We have so much already going on that we are in essence tied to the house.

My thought was: how do I make the most of this limited time I have with the kids so that they are engaged?

I have long advocated that kids learn important life skills before they leave home for college. Part of this was spurred on by watching the college episode of “Chopped”. While I was not expecting these four pre-adults to be masters in the kitchen, I was filled with abject horror while watching round after round of frankly inedible slop being served because of simple cooking errors. My own trial run at self-sufficiency had its own hiccups, a fact my parents gleefully relive as they remember the time I called for instructions on boiling an egg.

There are so many instances you run into as an adult that you feel poorly prepared for--things like applying for school loans or getting your first apartment, filling out applications, managing a household. These are unavoidably adult undertakings that can positively or negatively impact the success your first few years out of the house.

With this in mind, I decided to make this a summer of Home Camps that teach life skills.

There are few (unofficial) experts I have called in for reinforcements. My mother is doing a bi-weekly baking camp. Last week, she taught all the Abilene grandchildren that are old enough to be taught, a group of six ranging in age from 2 to 10, how to make homemade bread. The two smallest, Clara (3) and Maryn (2) were not able to grasp some of the deeper concepts but they were able to help mix and measure, pour and knead. They were all so proud of the product of their work, which engaged them for several hours and yielded four loaves of bread, a dozen rolls, and a braided loaf.

It was Mom’s week off so I used the time to teach my own how to make communion wafers so that we could discuss the significance of the unleavened bread. I believe it was only slightly sacrilegious that I allowed the children to mold them into cat shapes with the cookie cutters.

Next week Mom is coming to show them how to make apple butter and pumpkin butter, how to peel and slice and can. Maybe we will do crackers or rolls to spread the delicious product on; we will see.

My brother Jarrod has also contributed a higher skill: reading and signing a contract. He is going out of town and needed someone to care for his pets while he was away; he made Emerald apply and interview for the position, then drafted a simple contract for her to read over and sign, making sure to note that as she is not yet of age that her parents had to sign as well. I am hoping to engage him for a robotics course later in the summer as well.

Cousin Jessica, who is a talented artist, has (schedule allowing) agreed to come do an art camp one day with the kids, and Cousin Justin is going to teach horseback riding while we are in that area.

Most days lay more firmly in my domain, however, and so I have written down a list of skills that I would like to see them master and have crafted lessons around teaching them.

One that shouldn’t be a thing but you run into it more than you think you would: making a doctor’s appointment.

Telephone etiquette, overall, is an often overlooked but crucial, dying skill--how to listen without interrupting, polite tone, not nodding when someone asks you a question (seriously, why do they do that? Do they think they are on FaceTime?). Making and keeping appointments is important. Especially for September birthdays, you can’t call day-of or week-of and expect to get seen. You have to plan and schedule ahead, get your spot claimed early because a flood of students are going to be getting their well-checks and sports physicals.

My sister Amber works at the doctor’s office where our children are seen, so I called her and gave her a heads up. Then I coached Emerald through--looking up the number, listening to the automated system, speaking clearly and at an appropriate volume, saying please and thank you, answering all the questions. Afterwards, I showed her how to add it to the Google family calendar so that she could remember it in advance and we could all see it when making other appointments.

Another important skill: Cleaning.

It was kind of a revelation to me when I realized that my definition of clean and the children's’ was vastly different. Mine was “everything is picked up and put in its place”; theirs, “there is a clear walkway”. To them, it didn’t matter how much stuff was under the furniture or up against the walls or on top of surfaces, as long as you could walk through the room without stepping on things.

My mother had been pestering me to watch Diane from Denmark who cleans by a popular system called “Zoning”. Basically, you divide your house into six manageable areas. Each day, you clean in that one area and that one area only. On the seventh day, you rest!

Just kidding. There is no rest. There is only more mess.

On the seventh day, you clean the whole house. But the goal is 80% clean, 80% of the time, which means that on that final day you shouldn’t have too much mess accumulated.

We are trying the zoning system combined with another cleaning trend: the power hour. For one hour, and one hour only, you clean as hard as you can in that one area. After that hour is done, it doesn’t matter if you have anything left, you are finished. Michael particularly likes this because it sets a tangible end goal that isn’t “perfection”. Our zoning goals are:

Sunday: Yards
Monday: Bathrooms
Tuesday: Living Room/Playroom
Wednesday: Bedrooms
Thursday: Kitchen/Dining Room
Friday: Entryway/Hallway/Laundry Room
Saturday: Big Cleaning Day

I am not going to say much on that at the moment because we have only instituted it for a week so I cannot yet speak to its efficacy, but I will let you know more later on.

But during that time, I show the kids what you need to know--how to dust, avoid mixing chemicals or using too much, how to sweep and mop and load a dishwasher properly. It is somewhat slow going. My mind keeps saying “it would go so much faster if you did it…”. I have to keep reminding myself: if I don’t want to be the only one doing this forever, they have to learn it. With that spirit in mind, they are also helping do laundry, beginning to end.

Other life skills I have been working on teaching them:

Basic first aid and what to do in an emergency
Gardening and yard work
Grocery lists, meal planning, reading labels
Simple sewing
Letter writing, gift wrapping
Basic car care--how to wash a car, put in fuel, check fluid levels
Finance--how to make and stick to a budget, write a check, tithing

They are learning a lot and having fun doing it. We make a lot of time for entertainment-only pursuits, too. Days are very long in the summer so there is a lot of time to fit in everything, and we don’t have to have a lesson every day. Most days we wake up and eat breakfast, then go for a walk while it is still not too warm. Then we sit in the backyard and do devotional. They play while I do some writing or cleaning or working on whatever I have going at the moment; at the end, I have them come help clean as well--their power hour is only actually about thirty minutes because I have found you can get them to work really hard for about that long before they lose interest. Then there is lunch; afterwards, the younger kids go down for nap while Emerald and I have our bonding time. Afternoons we go our own way and do our own thing until Michael comes home and from there the day starts its steady downward slope toward bed.

It is important that I work as well to better myself, so to that end I am trying very hard to work on improving my temper and patience. Life gets so very frustrating and overwhelming when you feel like no matter how hard you try, you are falling behind. This diet can be discouraging--our choices feel so limited and prep time is outrageous. We eat five to six times a day: three major meals and two (to three) substantial snacks, and each time it requires nearly an hour of prep. I can’t make things in advance because Gabriel will find and steal them, like the homemade toasted almond granola bars I made for Sunday morning breakfast. He ate two dozen of them while we were sleeping. It was very frustrating.

Michael’s grandmother, Grannymom, gave me a lot of books that have actually helped with that. One of which Michael and I are reading together: “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff...and It Is All Small Stuff”. It gives practical and insightful advice like developing your compassion, allowing yourself to be bored, and practicing patience. Every day, I try and focus on attempting a new skill to soothe my ferocious temper and low tolerance for annoyance.

I think we are getting better. More and more of our day feels smoother, kinder. The kids’ bodies and minds and spirits are being fed, and it shows. They aren’t acting as desperate for attention, their attitudes toward one another are softening.

And I feel, just for a brief moment, like maybe...we can survive this summer.


--Andie
(Rare Post Script: If you have a skill you would like to teach at Home Camp, let me know!!)

Three Houses

This is a story of three houses.

To get a rental in this town, you have to be aggressive (which we are not) and willing to make a quick commitment (which we also are not) because things get snatched up so quickly.

Michael and I are more of the type that sit down, discuss, pray, go over budget, discuss, pray some more, and then!....the opportunity has passed us by.

Our current house was great because it got us here to Abilene, but it wasn’t intended for our family. Since we moved in, we have had another child, making an already too-small house even more cramped. There is no dishwasher so we have had to wash all the dishes by hand. There is a one car driveway that the landlord put in for us, but one of us always had to park on the street. And we are directly across from campus (specifically the stadium) meaning every single time there is any event whatsoever, there are cars clogging up our street and taking up our parking and making life generally more annoying.

After the unpleasant incident with the first rental house, we decided to make a few phone calls from signs we saw nearby. Of those, three emerged as possibilities:

A four-bedroom on the other side of Campus Court across Ambler

The house next door

And a dark horse contender on the other side of 10th.

We go and see the first one, which turned out to be too small. When we move, we know that it will likely be our home for quite a while because we tend to settle in. The bedrooms are smaller, more suited to the college students that typically rent properties like this. It has a small backyard and roses out front and a garage the current residents are using as a cool hang out area, but Michael and I know before we leave that it wasn’t the right fit for us.

The next day, we walk over to see the house next door.

A lot of our problems—proximity to campus, busy streets—would still have to be dealt with, but there was a two garage and additional parking. This house was beautiful and spacious, four large bedrooms, and an additional office off the master. The backyard had a covered patio that was topped with a super cool deck which meant we could host things. Not a ton of yard for the dog, but it also meant less mowing. Rent was higher but manageable for that much extra space. We would really be able to breathe.

The family that owned it could only offer it for a year though, as their youngest son would be taking over it in his junior year. If it hadn’t been for that stipulation, we might have said yes to it that day, but the idea of having to move again so soon stopped us.

Our hopes rested on this one last house.

The owner of the too-small first rental mentioned that he would have a four-bedroom available at the beginning of May, over on Scott Place. If we’d like to see it.

It was on a quiet street, near the end of a cul de sac. Little kids ran and played in neighboring yards, and it was quiet and peaceful and definitively suburban.

The very nice landlord met us at the door and let us look around. It was several hundred more square feet than our current house, with two living areas, two dining areas, a two car garage, and three bedrooms. He said he was going to get construction in there to convert the formal dining area into a fourth bedroom, but came down on the rent price when we said three bedrooms would be fine for now.

This home sparked my imagination. I could hear in my head my mother-in-law asking, “where would you put your Christmas tree?” Rhonda loves Christmas and that is usually her first question about a new place. I could see our stockings hung from the mantle over the (functional) fireplace, the tree decked out and lit up next to it.

The laundry room has a perfect area for the dog’s bed, and the covered back porch would be the best for Gabriel’s hammock swing. Ben and Emerald would be thrilled they still have pecans to collect and sell to my mother in the winter. The sprinkler system in the front would keep our grass so green and lovely.

And y’all. My closet.

There is more storage places everywhere, for stockpiling the girls’ diabetes supplies and Gabe’s incontinent supplies, for putting away all of these things that right now have no place. There are places I can put all my Christmas decorations.

There’s even a dishwasher!

There are still some considerations we have had to make. Currently, there is no washer and dryer, so we will have to get some. We have two living rooms to fill with furniture but in a parallel to our first apartment, we only have one recliner. We are on the lookout for new seating options. Neither of these things concern us too greatly because they are fixable problems.

I didn’t want to get my hopes up because I loved this house with its soft carpet for Tula to crawl around on and its charming wallpaper and the serenity that envelopes it from all sides.

Yesterday, Michael got the keys. Today we started moving in.

And I have not been able to stop grinning.

I got my house!

—Andie—

Mr Gables

Gabriel is the sunniest baby in the world--he is quick to smile, constantly cooing, giggling,
and seeking out companionship. His very first smile was for his Big Sister, Emerald,
because I sincerely doubt there is a single person in the world that adores him more than
she does. She is forever giving him kisses, loving on the baby with hugs and trying to
hold him, reading to him, sharing toy, and generally trying to make sure his life is as happy
as humanly possible.

He enjoys watching Baby Miracles, including Jonah and the Whale--its a video of kid's singing
church songs and classical music to the story of Jonah, as well as live videos of the things
Jonah would have seen while he was sinking (turtles, starfish, etc).

Mike likes to play a game with him called Tooty Airplane--since he is literally the gassiest baby there ever was, Michael flies him around the house increasing the speed every time he toots. Gabriel loves it--he thinks his daddy is so funny.

Unkind

Writing is how I emotionally work through what is happening in my life. The hope is that by unpacking some of this unpleasant day, I can calm my body and brain enough to sleep. I debated whether or not to identify them by name, but I decided against it--rising above and all that. I will be referring to them as Mrs. A and Mr. B.

It was a hard day today. Some are like that, I know. It felt like every part was a struggle.

Tuesday, there was a city bus stopped picking up passengers on my way home, so I turned down College Drive to pass it. It’s not a street I normally go on; it’s nice and quiet, near where Michael’s department has their supply shop. While I was driving, I saw a sign: “4 bedroom house for rent”.

Normally I avoid phone calls like the plague, doubly so those with strangers. There is this psych metaphor about spoons—you only have so many allotted spoons each day, and each activity takes a certain amount of spoons, which means you can only accomplish so many things in a day. You have to budget your emotional energy resources the same way you budget your finite money. Making a phone call, which seems innocuous, can be daunting because you have so little control over it. For me, it takes too many spoons.

But we need to get into a bigger place, so I figure it is worth a try. Probably going to be more than we can afford anyway. I call and leave a message on the listed phone number.

A little while later, I get a call back. It takes yet more spoons to accept an unexpected phone call from a stranger, but I answer. We visit about the house, size and price, what my family is needing. It is sounding fairly reasonable and she seems nice; she and I work out a time that afternoon for Michael and me to come see the house.

The woman’s husband takes us to see inside. Before we step foot in, Michael tells him that we have two older cats that are non negotiable. We are willing to pay deposits or work out conditions, but the cats come with us, so if they have a no-pets policy, this is not an option. Mr. B says that to get a family as renters, they might be willing to make an exception.

He shows us around the house and it is perfect. It is large and very nice, and comes furnished. All of our furniture is hand-me-downs, things we got free off of Craigslist and Facebook; it would be so nice to have things that aren’t falling apart. It’s a little more than we are spending at our current house, but it is twice as big, with four bedrooms. We are so excited because it has things we have been dreaming about—a dishwasher, a dedicated laundry room, counter space. This is a place we could be comfortable and happy in for a while.



At the end of the tour, Michael asks again about the pets. Mr. B wants to discuss it with his wife, but he thinks we can work something out—they like the idea of our family moving in. It is looking very positive.

We take an application, call our current landlord to ask if he will be a reference. Michael also speaks with a leader from our church whose financial advice we seek often and appreciate; he, too, agrees to be a reference, and says this sounds like a wise move for us. Both of our references are friends with the landlords, both people the couple respect. They have discussed the pet situation and we agree on an additional deposit, plus to pay for the carpet to be cleaned once a year. We are told to bring our application by in the morning and our deposit by the weekend, and we could have the house.

I tell Mom about it and the name of the couple we met with. Her eyes got wide—she knew this woman as they had attended church together in the past. Mom recommends I call Jarrod and talk before we sign any paperwork.

Wednesday morning, Emerald and Tula had doctors appointments with their endocrinologist. Tula had trouble sleeping so I was up a lot of the night before, not at my most mentally sharp. Emerald was moving slow, having to be told multiple times before she would accomplish a task, and it was frustrating me. We drop the application off with Mrs. A and hurry late to the appointment.

Tula was fussy from having not slept well and struggled throughout the double-length appointment. The doctor does not recommend a pump for her, which is disappointing but understandable. She is still in the honeymoon phase of her disease and it can fluctuate too much for a pump to be advisable.

It’s finally over, but we have to go get the girls’ hemoglobin a1c drawn. It’s a blood test they do every three months for their diabetes. Tula, who had finally fallen asleep on the car ride to the lab, was displeased by the needle in her arm. She was shaking all over and sobbing, calling for Daddy as her little arm bruised like a pear. We got through it. Emerald got dropped back off at school and I went home to have lunch with Michael.

Cartoonishly, annoyingly bad, while taking our frozen pizza lunch out of the oven, I drop it topping side down. It’s ruined. To the rescue, Michael ushers me to the car where we have a picnic lunch and listen to a podcast. It was actually lovely.

After I get the kids from school, Mom phones. Mrs. A had called her, which was odd—she was listed as emergency contact, not reference. Mrs. A had mentioned to Mom that she was going to “drop by” and visit with us about the cats because she had other interested parties. I am concerned because we might lose this house we both had liked so much.

I am out in the backyard pulling weeds to take my mind off what a horrible day it was when this woman I met literally met yesterday shows up unannounced and uninvited on my back porch. Emerald didn’t know any better and had let her in. I was so taken off-guard; she hadn’t called, had in no way implied she was coming over to my home, this place that she did not own. Our current landlord wouldn’t have sent her over without calling us; he always alerts us to visitors. Surely Michael wouldn’t have either.

This whole situation has taken spoons I didn’t have left.

This stranger says she has come to meet my cats. I say that they are rather shy and wouldn’t likely come out for people they don’t know, to which is promptly tells me to show her how we have them set up here. She talks and acts like she has a right to be here, like we had set an appointment for me to show her how we store the litter box and where we keep the cat food. Flustered, I show her.

She informs me then that she suddenly remembers that she has a severe cat allergy (which, had I known before, I likely would have discouraged her from entering the house as both cats are now actively rubbing against her legs) and they have other offers so we need to look for another house.

Unless, she leaves the question dangling, I might have the cats put down….?

The sheer amount of horror I felt at that question, I can scarcely describe. I know not everyone cares for cats, and there are quite a few that hate them. But these are my pets. I have raised them for over a decade—they are no kittens, but nor are they feeble and dying animals. They are sweet and gentle boys who spend the entirety of their day laying in warm spots and purring and fulfilling their sole purpose in life: to bring me joy.

And this horrid woman is standing in my bedroom suggesting that I have them killed because she, a stranger, doesn’t like them.


I usher her politely to the door as she continues her idiotic prattering, rattling off excuse after excuse why my nice family with perfect references and impeccable rent history is not a good fit for her rent house. With a mixture of fury and sadness, I shut the door on Mrs. A and text Michael to come home.

Michael calls Mrs. A who refuses to speak to him, just handing the phone promptly to Mr. B who said our landlord did not have kind things to say. Michael firmly but civilly tells him how disappointed we are in how this situation was handled, how they had gone back on their word to us after we agreed to their additional terms. Mr. B apologizes several times.

We contact our landlord who balks—he said they asked three questions.

Did we pay our rent on time?
Yes.

What about the pets?
I have them down as service animals.

Can they come take a look at the house we are in?
That would be up to Andie and Michael.

He talks with us for a while and then again with the couple, getting two different stories. He calls back to reiterate that we have been great tenants and that he said nothing to imply otherwise.

I am absolutely crushed. I feel like a fool. I should have told her it was presumptuous to show up at our house and to go away. I should have called her out on her rudeness.

Michael says the measure of our character is how we act when someone treats us unkindly. He wished them luck in all their future endeavors; I sent them a thank you card for their time. I also wrote this rather grumpy blog post, so I suppose Michael is made up of nicer stuff than I am.

They learned nothing from this, because they don’t see that they did anything wrong. I can’t change that. They have a right to do as they wish with their house. Had they politely called and said that they had reconsidered the cats and it was a no-go, we would have been disappointed but respected that. They could have told us they decided to go a different direction.

Instead, they ambushed me, pushed their way into my home while I was alone with my children. They lied, mislead, and told me to kill my cats, then let me know my family wasn’t good enough for their rent house.

Since she left, I have been cycling through emotions—disappointed, embarrassed, furious, depressed. I am so angry that she would think this was okay, that she had a right to act that way, and even more so that she likely thinks she did the right thing.

I know that God is gently tugging me back toward the path He has set for me; this was not a waypoint the Weardens needed. And I believe with all my heart that what He has planned is going to be so much more amazing than what we are leaving behind. I also recognize that this was a blessing, to see the sort of people these two were before we entered a legal rent agreement and were at their mercy. I shudder to think what liberties this woman would believe herself entitled to if we lived in a property she owned, if she would show this much presumption toward a perfect stranger.

In the end, I respect their right to do as they please with their house, and I understand that cats can be a threat to property in certain situations. Not every landlord wants to take on that responsibility.

I just wish they could have been a little kinder, that’s all.

--Andie

Medicated

I couldn’t think, couldn’t sing, couldn’t write.

It had stolen my ability to be Andie.

I have suffered from depression in one form or another for over ten years. First arriving on the scene as postpartum with the arrival of my strawberried Emerald, it took root in our difficult life circumstances, fed on my up-and-down hormones from four pregnancies, and flourished in autism and diabetes.


With tiny baby Emerald, I should have been suspicious when I told Michael, “I’ve read that some mothers don’t bond with their babies right away, so it’s okay if I don’t love it yet,” by his response:


“She’s already here; can you not call her ‘it’?”


From the thickets, it’s kind of hard to see though. Your body is telling you that you indeed feel this way so obviously you are supposed to feel this way—if it wasn’t a logical reaction, you wouldn’t be having it. It isn’t until you separate yourself through the lens of someone else’s perspective that you start to realize the script is all wrong—this isn’t how your story is supposed to play out.

The analogy that is most often referenced is getting glasses for the first time: you didn’t realize how blurry everything was until it came into focus.


After Benjamin was born, I was sitting at my general practitioner’s, Dr Andy, for my 25 year annual physical. It was my first appointment with him; I was referred by my obstetrician because they were golfing buddies. Michael wanted me to bring up my mood swings in response to an incident we had earlier in the week: We were running behind getting ready to go to church, so I got upset and kicked the high chair across the room. Which apparently was the wrong reaction.


As I sat there, feeling ridiculous because I had a couple of bad days and Dr Google over here was diagnosing me with depression, and the doctor is going to think I’m an idiot, why am I even here, this is stupid, stupid. Tears are in my eyes and my throat is sore because I am not going to cry again and make a fool of myself, and I’m just so, so angry and I don’t know why. I am absolutely furious, fuming, sitting there on the examination table all by myself and there is no reason.


This isn’t what depression was advertised as. You envision sadness, not anger. Thoughts of suicide. I didn’t want to kill myself. That would have taken way more energy than I had available, and I couldn’t see hurting myself. At night when I closed my eyes for the briefest moment, I would wish I wouldn’t wake up. I didn’t want to die, but living was so hard, and death sounded so...peaceful.

Dr Andy explained that depression wasn’t just sadness; it was all the emotions, right under the skin, ready to fly out before we could stop them.

He prescribed Celexa (citalopram) for depression, Elavil (amitriptyline) for anxiety.

The first week, I was euphoric. Not because the medicine had such a profound impact on me, but because I was so optimistic—we had identified the problem and there was a solution! I wasn’t a cold, hateful mother; it was a biological issue. The medicine was going to help, I could feel it in my bones.

The second and third week felt like I had been cruising down the highway going 80 miles per hour and someone had thrown the parking brake. Instead of my emotions feeling right under my skin, it felt like I carried them overflowing in my arms—in any given situation, I had to frantically sort through and figure out what exactly I was supposed to be feeling, experiencing every emotion at once in a confused and upsetting state.

After about a month and a half, everything evened out and we got on kind of a system. Weekdays, I’d put Gabe on the bus to PPCD, drop Emerald off at preschool, and go home to put baby Benjamin down for nap. While he was sleeping, I would take my two little “happy” pills and hope nobody needed me for an hour because I would be too dizzy to drive. I’d lay on the couch feeling like I was rolling somersaults; then it would pass and the rest of the day would be pleasantly tepid.

It felt like the colors had been scaled down on my life. I was no longer seeing red furious or blue sadness, but I wasn’t laughing and joyous either.

After hurting for so long, the mediocrity of okay days was paradise. 

I stayed on the two meds for a couple of years until I moved to Abilene and got a new doctor, one that reacted with horror when he saw the amount of serotonin-affecting medicine I was on. He had me drop the Elavil and cut my Celexa dose by half.

The new regimen lasted about a year. During that time, I slept whenever I could get away with it. I was a perfectly pleasant (for the most part) individual, perpetually living between nap times. What drew me up short, what made me question the medicine I was on, was when someone asked me what I did for fun and I realized:

I can’t name one thing I enjoy.

I’m a person of superlatives—I have a favorite in every category, just go on and ask me. But during that time, I couldn’t think of anything that brought me pleasure. It felt like I was doing things because I had done them before, things like watching cooking shows and reading, but there was no satisfaction, no emotional connection, just an automated response.

With depression, my chest ached remembering things I had once enjoyed, longing to recapture that experience. I’d get a plate of TGIF hot wings—my favorite, with the crispy outside and the buttery, spicy sauce—and will it to taste as good as I remembered, but it never did. I’d get dressed up and go out on dates but no matter how much I put on my “happy” costume, I couldn’t make my insides reflect out.

The treatment, the antidepressant, though...it felt like the candle inside me had been blown out.

If my favorite show was on, I wouldn’t look up once until the credits were rolling and realize I hadn’t heard a word. I would sit down my favorite meal and taste nothing before the food was gone.

My mind felt like a yawning, wind-filled cavern where placidity reigned supreme. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t sing. Couldn’t write.

Antidepressants had stolen my ability to be Andie. 

For a brief while, I switched to Wellbutrin to see if it was the specific med that was causing the issue, but it was an emotional cataclysm and I couldn’t finish the initial 6 week course. I talked to my doctor again, noting that my youngest child was then four years old, so the underlying issue—postpartum depression—had likely passed its course. I had ridden the wave of celexa through the last storm, but now it was time for the clouds to part and let us evaluate what was left to work with.

It was hard to wean me off because I was on such a low dose to begin with, but gradually I got to the point that my system was clearing out. There was a significant period of adjustment, a time in which Michael and my mother asked repeatedly if I thought this was a wise choice (with the heavy implication that they disagreed with this course of action). To ease the transition, I started going to counseling to learn coping mechanisms.

Three main strategies emerged successfully for me:

The first was my lists. I made a list of the minimum I was allowed to get done each day. Eat healthy, Drink Water, Do something enjoyable. If I accomplished nothing else that day, then I could say I tried to take care of myself, which was a start.

The second was taking time for myself. Twice a day—once before Michael left for work and the second after dinner—I would go for a run. It was 90 plus degree weather and I loved it because I could blast my heavy metal music and not talk to anyone or socialize with anyone for a half an hour or more. It was just me.


The last was my “Thought Vomit” journal.

My counselor had recommended a mindfulness program. He said thoughts are like leaves in the stream; we can watch them pass by; we acknowledge they are there, we hear them, and we let them pass. If we don’t hear the thoughts, they’ll just keep repeating until we do, so acknowledge them.

My homework every week was to write down what I was thinking for 15 minutes every day. Just write. It’s a different process to write than to speak or to think; it feels so much more actionable. I would find a spot, usually not long before bed, and I would write down everything I was thinking—every emotion I was feeling, every song I had stuck in my head, every complaint and every praise and everything, like a grand purge until there was nothing left.

Emptiness not like the one caused by Celexa, which felt like a desert with friends hiding where I could not see them, but an oasis where nothing was happening, no one was moving, and I could just be at peace.

I spent a year getting reacquainted with myself, remembering what brought me joy and satisfaction outside of being a wife and a mother. Lemonheads, Tim Burton movies, the dark and macabre, but also sunlight and dancing and Jude Deveraux. I liked things that were powerful evocators, things that demanded a reaction. Joy was something I had missed for so long and wanted to spend as much time in as possible, but I rediscovered things I did not like as well: loud noises, big crowds, being late, messes. It reminded me of what it took to take care of myself.

Toward the end of my pregnancy with Tula, the depression took hold again. I was snapping at the kids, taking four baths a day, just waiting. Waiting to feel better. Waiting for happiness to come back. Three weeks postpartum, having cried every day because of change in routine or unexpected events or delays, I started on a low dose of Zoloft (Setraline). I was dizzy at first, but then it just ran quietly in the background. It felt like it was gently nudging me away from the darker thoughts, away from spiraling into a panic attacks. It was a little platform that held my emotions up until I could take over again on my own.

Sometimes I felt weak or foolish for needing medicine, for not being able to handle it. I felt like I was supposed to be coping better.

When I was feeling kinder, I knew that just as Gabriel took medicine to control the symptoms of his autism and Emerald took insulin to manage her diabetes, I needed support, too. It wasn’t a matter of my ability, but a physiological disruption that had to be corrected. Taking action was coping. 

I still have bad days. Thursday was a bad day. Gabriel ruined my coffee, drank the back-up; Emerald and Benjamin would not stop fighting and I burned only dinner to complete inedibility. We were supposed to play a game as a family but my dour mood had soured it for everybody. That day, I didn’t cope so well. Spending that time learning how to care for myself, satiate my emotional needs, taught me though: it is okay to have a bad day, because tomorrow will be better.

I know how to make it better.

—Andie

The Price of Being Different

I hate spending money.

It is the possibility I am reluctant to part with. In my pocket, $20 could be a pack of diapers or a half a tank of gas or a couple of groceries. Once you spend it, all the possibility dissipates. Since I was little, I have preferred saving to preserve option to spending. Spending feels so final, so...decisive.


The topic of money is vulgar to me. Don’t like to talk about it, don’t like to think about it. Do not care for the fact that it is an unavoidable, definitively adult undertaking. It is kind of like toilet paper to me--everybody uses it, each in their own way, but please let’s not discuss the particulars, shall we?


Money is distasteful. On “Cutthroat Kitchen” when the contestants are first handed the cash, what do they always do? They raise it to their face and inhale that horrid smell. The smell of books, new or old, now that is intoxicating--it is the smell of adventure, prose, romance. The smell of money is sweat and butts and squandered potential.


So, if I dislike it so much, why talk about it?


It is one of the things people are most curious about. Probably because it is a borderline taboo subject--it would be impolite to inquire about someone else’s finances, in any scenario. We know the statistics though. Raising a child with special needs or chronic medical concerns is hair-raisingly expensive and we have three. I have panic attacks when confronted with it because need is where possibility and decision collide--inaction is rarely an option.


We have been incredibly blessed. At exactly the right time, the Lord has provided for us, through the kindness of others or an open door, talking to the right person at the right time that points us in the right direction. He has guided us through.


It is a substantial consideration on our part, whether I like it or not, a determining factor in a lot of our decisions. I figured I would offer you a glimpse of the inner workings here, some of the elements at play.


We are a single income family. I have been unable to work, largely due to Gabriel but also because of Benjamin and more recently, Tula. Daycare runs about $35 a day for a decent one, but in this town, the waiting lists are substantial for any reputable child care in town. It amounts to $500-$600 a month, or the bulk of anything I would be able to bring home. Jobs that have the same hours as school can be obtained, but I have to be available to pick up kids afterward or pay for after school care, which would deplete the rest of whatever I could earn. There are no after school programs that accept children with disabilities; there are no after school programs that can manage the girls’ diabetes.








If I could work, Emerald and Tula have to have doctor’s visits every three months; Gabriel has to have doctor’s visits every three months in Lubbock. Which accounts for at least three missed days of work--one to travel to Lubbock, one of the doctor’s appointment, one for the girls if I take them both at the same time--every three months. Those are specialists, they still have to see their regular pediatrician, and like any child they will get sick occasionally.


Gabriel’s school calls an average of two to three times a week for me to come up there. Children with autism often present with chronic gastrointestinal issues and Gabe is not exempt, so often he has had a bad poop and I have to bring him home to shower and return--sometimes it is a blowout, sometimes he gets into his diaper and smears it. Disgusting, but it is something we have to deal with. Other reasons they call are because he is agitated and not calming himself down, he is being aggressive, he is having issues with his clothes or shoes and needs me to deliver new ones, he is falling asleep and cannot keep himself awake, or because he is “just not acting like himself”. Between me and Michael, my hours off are quantifiably worth less than his, so I end up taking off again and again.


Let’s establish--that is just out of the ordinary stuff, not accounting for school trips or class parties and other parental involvement activities, most of which I am still unable to attend because siblings are not allowed (after all, I am of limited help when my arms and attention are full of baby).

We’ll do Diabetes first because I am holding Tula so it makes logical sense to me.


Insurance will cover 100 test strips--the little strips that we use to monitor the girls’ blood glucose levels--a month. Emerald has to test her sugar a minimum of four times a day, six on PE days, for a total of around 140 test strips used a month. Tula has to test her sugar around 6 times a day, for a total of 180. That is if we never get an error reading or they never have high or low blood sugar and never get sick--those all call for additional strips. The test strips we buy--the cheapest on the market--are $0.18 each, for about $40 out of pocket a month after insurance covers $60. Glucometer, the meter that reads the blood sugar, can vary. The ones we use at home the pharmacy actually gave us for free because insurance won’t cover those particular test strips (Glucocard). Insurance prefers the Tru Metrix test strips and meter, so we have two meters for each of the girls at home--one that uses the test strips insurance covers and one that uses the less expensive test strips we have to pay for out of pocket.


To complicate matters, Emerald actually has a THIRD glucometer at school--ReliOn Prime--that we provide test strips for. It is a cheap one, only costing $15 so it can be replaced as needs be.


Tula also has a third monitor, but that one is a combination Ketone and Glucose monitor that we only use for the former purpose. Whenever the girls’ blood sugar is over 300 or whenever they are getting sick, we have to check for ketones in their blood so they do not go back into ketoacidosis. Emerald has strips that you check her urine with; Tula has one that checks her blood. Neither of those are covered by insurance. Tula’s NovaMax Test Strips are around $2 a piece, but will last a few weeks because she doesn’t go high very often. Emerald’s are considerably cheaper at about $0.15 each, but she has to be tested more frequently. Combined, it is about $37 a month.


Lancets are cheap--we use them to poke fingers and toes to draw little bits of blood for testing blood sugar. They run about like $5 for a box, but insurance covers those and they last forever. Alcohol swabs run out quickly and are not covered, $2 for 100 for a total of $8 a month. We use those to clean before we prick or poke and wipe off the top of the insulin. Diabetes logbooks were $5 each and last the whole year. Emergency sugar supplies are like packets of sugar or honey that we have leftover if we eat out, but we could also put dum dums in there. Negligible stuff. Pen needles are the mini needles we put on insulin pens; they are $9 a box of 50 generic. We have to buy four of those a month--insurance covers $36, we cover $36.


Syringes, which we have to use for Teeny Tula’s half dosages, cost $30 (covered) a month.


Insulin gets tricky. Medicinal insulin has been around since the 1900s, so you’d think it would cost less. Generic will actually raise your insulin resistence, meaning you will need more and more over time. We invest in the better stuff. Both girls have Lantus Solostar pens, which are $280 a box. A box has six pens, each with 100 units of insulin. One box will last Emerald a little over two months. Tula has a vial of 100 units that costs $190; it will last her about a month.


Insulin is only good out of the fridge or open for a month so we have to toss it after that or it can jack with their sugars.








That is their long acting “basal” insulin. The also have bolus insulin--Emerald has Novalog Flexpens that are $600 for a box of six pens. Those will last us about a month because she has to take it more frequently, after each meal and for correction. Tula is on Humalog pen that is about $550, but because she eats so very little carbs and only gets the tiniest little doses, it will last her a while.


They both have to have the glucagon emergency kit in case they crash. Most families do not have to use it, but you always have to have it on hand and replace it once a year. It is sort of like an epipen. They are $300 apiece. Zofran is a medicine that will prevent them from vomitting when they are sick because it could cause them to crash which would be dangerous; we get a supply of that a year for $250.


So just for medicine and supplies, most of which is covered (thankfully) under our insurance, runs us about $24,000 a year for both girls. We are personally responsible for about $1500 of that, if insurance is playing nicely and there are no issues.


Emerald’s insurance lapsed last year so we had to pay for it out of pocket for a while; that was kind of killer. I thanked God every day that we were able to do that.


Visits to the endocrinologist happens for each of them every three months; we have no copay, but the visit would be around $120 because they do discounts if you pay up front. That adds up to $960 a year for both. Each time they go, they also have to run full blood work including a1c, totalling around $1000 or $8000 for the year. We meet with the registered dietitian at each visit ($100 an hour, times two for each girl, times four visits a year for a total of $800 a year). If there are no hospitalizations and we keep up with our routine office visits, that is just shy of $10,000 a year.


I don’t want to get into hospitalizations because YIKES and because I am sincerely hoping none of that happens. Normally, we will make an emergency room run once a year because we can’t get things under control and they need fluids or if we run out of insulin before insurance is willing to cover it again. Depending on what needs to be done, an ER visit will set us back about $1200. I also won’t go into things we are not currently doing, like special camps or insulin pumps or continuous glucose monitors because while I could look up the information on that, it would be meaningless--they do not currently affect us.


Whew. That was a bit of an odyssey. Catching my breath before I move on to Autism.


Alright, took a quick Facebook break and now I am back.


Autism Speaks estimates it takes around $60,000 a year to raise a child with autism; $90,000 if the individual also has an intellectual disability. That is roughly four times higher than the cost of raising a neurotypical child.

I did the math after a friend of friend asked me. All things considered, Gabriel costs $46,000 a year more than Benjamin. That is counting incontinent supplies, medication, specialists, therapists, personal care services. Breakdown is something like this:


-Personal Care Assistant: $1000/month ($12,000/year)


-Incontinent Supplies (diapers, wipes, changing pads): 200/month (2400/year)


-Medication (clonidine, risperidone, hydroxyzine): 450/month (5400/year)


-Therapy (speech, occupational, physical): $28,800/year*

*This one actually went down substantially because we cut back—insurance doesn’t cover Applied Behavior Analysis so we had to pay out of pocket for each session; got too costly and we had to quit. We also scaled back, dropped PT at home, decreased at PT/OT school so that he could have a little break. It was getting to be a lot.


-iPad maintenance and repair: $130/few times a year. Because it’s his communication device, we have kept it available, but that means it has had a few accidents. He ruins cases, takes it into the bath with him, leaves it outside, or gets mad and cracks the screen. Currently, he’s taking a short break from screens because he has annoyed us too greatly by being uncareful. It also covers new chargers.


-Specialists: $250/visit($1000/year) he see a developmental pediatrician, which we have to travel to Lubbock for, so tack on another $40 in gas.


There are other costs like locks for the fridge and pantry, bolts for the front door, back door, and our bedroom door. We get items to work with him between therapy—trampoline, swing set, weighted blanket, compression garments, sensory brushes, hammock, exercise ball, privacy pop, noise canceling headphones. Those vary in price from $10 to a few hundred. We were doing horse therapy for a while, but have taken a break. That was at no cost.


All of that adds up to...right under $50,000 annually for Gabe, before calculating for lost wages. As he gets older, the price will increase exponentially to include a nurse or residential living (though we hope he wants to stay with us), transportation, and other expenses.


I try not to think about all of this, but when it comes together…

Yuck. No wonder I don’t like thinking about money.


When I do think about it...it’s a tangible, definable way to express how God has cared for us. A lot of families of special kids go bankrupt trying to handle it all; though we rarely have excess, we always have what we need when we need it. I think that is such a beautiful thing. I am very thankful for it, because it once again opens my life up to possibility.





—Andie

Resolutions

I have three New Year’s resolutions for 2018.

For the last several years, I have had the same resolution: to read more than I did the previous year. Reading is such a joyful thing for me, is and has been a lifelong passion, but when life gets too busy and things start falling to the wayside, the first to be culled is often recreational fun. It shouldn’t be. What is life if it is not meant to be enjoyed? If there are no moments of spiritual fulfillment, things that satiate your soul, you are not living the best life that God intended for you.

Reading though. Man. It takes a lot of brainpower to sit and commit your focus and attention to a book.

I cannot speak for the father’s perspective because I myself have never been a father. As a mother though, I can give you some insight. The rocky hormonal teetertotter that your body goes through being pregnant and then not being pregnant and nursing and then not nursing, coupled with the sleeplessness from having a baby that seems to sleep exactly ten seconds every other week...every time you feel like you adjust, things go sideways again. It is a lot like having a headcold--that cottony feeling inside your head where your brains are supposed to be. I imagine it kind of like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz where you have a noggin stuffed full of shredded newspaper because thinking is like rifling through random words and phrases to figure out what you want to say.





After Benjamin, it took me about four years or so to feel like I had gotten a handle on it. Then I got pregnant with Tula and reset the clock.

Trying to focus on the words of a story while you can hear the kids in the other room (or more suspiciously, can’t) and your short-circuted mind is garbling out random snippets like a bad radio signal (would you like me to list every show Tom Sellack has ever been in, or can I offer you a single line selection of Selena’s “Bidi Bidi Bamba” on repeat for hours?) becomes onerous.

It is important to me, though, so I continue to try and power through. Even as little as a Verse of the Day app on my phone or a single news article, anything that connects me back to that little piece of Andie that says “hey, that’s right! I like reading!”

Young Adult books are easier to wade your way through because you don’t have to pay the strictest attention to follow every single word. Comic books are also a great medium because they have the image paired with fewer words and a managable length; $10 a month gets you unlimited access to digital copies of sixty years of Marvel comic books on your phone or tablet.

Over the years, I have found it easiest to combine my reading with interacting with the kids. My favorite author is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Columbian Nobel prize winning author from the 40’s-70’s or so. He writes in this beautiful magical realism style that I find so enchanting; the first time I read “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, it made such a profound impact on me. That is a hefty book though in terms of language, not exactly a summer beach read. I found if I read it out loud to my little kids while they are playing, it is easier for me to focus and follow along, and I get to share my story with them.




For a long time, I thought that it was mostly for my benefit; I couldn’t imagine they were getting a ton out of it because it would be too mature and over their head. While sitting one day, tiny toddling baby Gabriel brought the book I had been reading aloud and dropped it in my lap. His motions got more sedate, his vocalizations quieted, and he hovered expectantly in the vacinity. Maybe it was my wishful thinking, but it felt so deliberate that he was trying to engage me. I made it a point to read more often, for him and for Emerald and for me.

So my first resolution is to read more. Vague and obtainable because it is quantifiable without having a clear goal.

My second was to make progress toward eventually moving out of this house.

We moved here in the June 2014. We had made the decision less than six months before that we were going to relocate; I had come down at Spring Break with all three of the kids to look for a place for us to live. We stayed at Jarrod’s house for the week. Amber came to get us and drive us around to see what was available.

In the back seat, baby Benjamin was drooping off to sleep rather comically. It was like he could not keep his eyes open. We took that as a sign that we had been out too much and needed to head back to Jarrod’s for naptime. I took him to the guest room we were staying in to lay him down and found the recently emptied bottle of Gabriel’s nighttime medicine.

For those of you keeping count at home, this was the second time Benjamin had done this.

This is a medicine that was dissolved in a sugar syrup, so it tasted like yum. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea--when I was growing up, medicine tasted like black licorice and hate. But it was supposed to encourage Gabriel to more willingly take it because without it, he was not going to sleep at all.

The first time Ben drank it, he had climbed up on my kitchen counter and nabbed the bottle, knocking it back before I could stop him. The lid of the bottle after a few days didn’t fit on as securely as it did in the beginning because the syrup would crystalize around the rim, rendering the child safety cap less effective. I didn’t even consider that it was a possibility because there was no reason for him to seek it out, and I thought it was safe on top of the fridge and thus “out of his reach”.

After that first time, we took to locking the medicines in a lockbox with a key.

Once again, my arrogance that said that Benjamin would surely not be able to get into it AGAIN was foiled by a tiny sir’s determination for self-destruction.



So this was March 2014. I took Benny to the Emergency Room where they said he would have to be admitted into pediatric ICU. Michael won that day with one of those amazing husband moments--I called him and he asked if I wanted him to take off of work and drive up to help. Back then, he still worked for the car dealership so any time off was less selling time and less money we would have in the next paycheck. I told him yes, I very much needed him there...and right that moment, the door swung open and Michael was there, still on the phone with me. He had left three hours before because he had anticipated that I would need him.

That night, I stayed at Jarrod’s with Emerald and Gabriel because Gabe wouldn’t sleep without me there, and Michael stayed at the hospital with Benjamin. The next day, I had an appointment with the landlord of ACU’s rental properties to go look at some houses.

I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, depressed, worried. It was just a bad day. I had just come from visiting Ben in the hospital where they told us that Child Protective Services had been called to investigate us, find out if we were negligent or hurting him. We were going from house to house and I was trying to watch Emerald and Gabriel. It was a really hot day, so Gabe kept finding toilets in these rent houses to stick his head in, a fact that was disgusting and embarrassing. I knew that I had to pick a house that day because Michael’s job at the university was starting soon and we had to have a place to live.

In the end, we picked one literally for no other reason that the house number stood out to us--666. It was like a conversation piece. Few months later, we moved into this beautiful house on a quiet street that costs much more than we are comfortable paying for a rent house.

Granted, part of it is the city and the location. It is a college neighborhood in a college town; we knew this coming into it. And the proximity to campus was a big sell, not only because Michael would be able to walk back and forth to work if needs be, but because of the highly praised elementary our kids would go to.

It is my goal to get out of this too-small house and in to something more sustainable. I talked about that at length in a recent post. My resolution is to make some sort of progress. To that end, I have started carefully going through each room and donating things that we have outgrown or that has fallen into disuse. When we moved from Lubbock, we condensed our belongings by a third so we wouldn’t have quite so much to relocate, but stuff tends to accumulate over time. I am also trying to repair or replace what I can, and steadily clean and condense from room to room. I have so very little hope of finding something more affordable, but I can to be ready to move in God’s time.

Those are my first two resolutions. My final one?

To write more.

--Andie

Sure

Men are so much more sure about things.

At least that’s the way it seems to me. They know precisely what they think in any given situation, and it irks them that women often don’t.

The age-old example is: What do you want to do for dinner. If I ask Michael that, BAM! He immediately produces an answer. Statistically speaking, he has a 70% chance of saying “Tacos” or something taco related (Taco Bell, Taco bowls, etc), and 30% of saying “you know what sounds good? A big ol’ cheeseburger”. Word for word.

He isn’t going to be devastated if he doesn’t get that specific thing because he isn’t genuinely suggesting it most of the time. He would be happy if he got it, but he has a resigned knowledge that we are probably going to end up getting what sounds good to me. As the more picky eater with fewer options, it makes sense—Michael can eat just about anything and just about anywhere, so I have to figure out what I want.

This annoys him to no end, but I won’t know what I want until he says something I don’t.

You know how the conversation goes.
Andie: what do you want for dinner?
Michael: know what sounds good? A big ol cheeseburger.
Andie: ehhhhhh, I was thinking more like pasta.
Michael: then why didn’t you SAY THAT?!

I don’t know how I came to be broken this way. If I know what the other player’s lines are, why wouldn’t I just play the conversation out in my head, figure out what appeals to me, and then lead with that? “Michael, I was thinking pasta for dinner.” Cool.

I can’t explain it, but I just don’t work that way. I have to hear the conversation play out because even I don’t know where it will end.

This surety is not limited to meal times though. My brother Jarrod would state things so matter-of-factly when we were growing up that it compelled you to believe him whether he was right or just inventing an answer on the spot. Rhonda says Michael was the same way when he was a kid. They are so confident that you instinctively believe that they somehow just know.

It was like that when I asked Michael what we should name the babies, too. Like divine inspiration, an angel had told him “and you shall name him after the Scarlet Spider, and it wilt be righteous.”

I’m not saying they are always right. Jarrod was incorrect when we were kids—Mom had not lost her job, and we would not have to start eating dog food. Many other names could have suited Benjamin just as well (though I’m glad he is our little Ben). Maybe they feel pressure to always have the right answers that they couldn’t accept saying “honestly, I don’t know.” Or maybe they really do feel that amount of certainty about every declaration. I don’t know. Either way, it seems like they always know exactly what they mean to say.

That is how confident Michael was about me.

The first night in that coffee shop, he knew. Or at least he claimed he did. He saw in me a future, a connection, commitment, love. With me, he could picture forever.

We saw different things.

I saw a very cute guy, somebody I could see having fun with, going on some dates, maybe doing some smooching. Growing old together would have not even remotely have crossed my mind—it was about here and now, living the life that I had planned for myself.

It’s so interesting to me how complimentary our brains work together, and how they adapt overtime to keep in sync. When Michael is living moment-to-moment, I help him think ahead and spur him into action so we are moving toward that. When I am too impulsive, Michael helps ground me, redraw the parameters to make room for possibility. It is a ongoing push-and-pull so that we never stop moving forward. Someone is perpetually causing progress.

It is curious to me how our lives would look different if we did not have the foil we have provided one another.

When we were dating, Michael lived in apartment with his buddy AJ. They had an espresso machine and a milkshake machine, and it seemed like they were constantly running one or the other; that and triple cheeseburgers from Wendy’s were pretty much all he existed on. It’s a wonder he didn’t buzz into an alternate dimension from all the caffeine and sugar he consumed.

He also accepted that people just got sick after eating shrimp or eating dairy. To him, that was just how things went; he never questioned that maybe, perhaps, he was allergic and should perhaps avoid these foods. It was just the toll you paid.

Without me, I imagine Michael would be a lot more unhealthy as clean eating is not a high priority to him. He would almost certainly still be in Lubbock—he doesn’t relocate unless given little alternative. Overall I think he’d be alright. I’d like to imagine he’d be a little lonelier, but he wouldn’t have had trouble finding a nice girl and settling down. He’s undeniably a catch.

It’s harder to turn that critical eye to myself. If there was no Michael, what would my life be like?

I probably would have starved to death alone in my apartment, trying to decide what to have for dinner.

—Andie

Clarence

I was 25 when I first got my license.

When I turned 16, I had little motivation to drive. Growing up in a small town and with two older brothers, I felt I could safely and easily get to wherever I needed to go. Jarrod and Royce left to pursue higher education and still I resisted. The only real answer I could probably give is that I don’t care for being told what to do, but even less so doing something for the sole purpose of expectation. Just because getting their permit to drive was what teenagers did was no reason for me to feel obligated to join in. So I dug in my heels and obstinately refused to be dragged to the water OR to be made to drink.

In college, I largely relied on friends for rides or I simply walked. Even after I had kids, I got a long double stroller and I’d strap them in and hoof it wherever we needed to be. Within walking distance was the kids’ daycare, a church, a grocery store, my college, the library, and a park. What more could I possibly need that couldn’t wait until Michael was off?

I was content with my lack of ability, even as I was a considerable burr in everyone’s collective backside.

The catalyst for change was Benjafetus. While still comfortably contained within my womb, I could feasibly waddle my way around. Once he was out….man, I was gonna have to get a longer stroller.

Gabriel would soon be enrolled in the preschool program for children with disabilities across town, when little Ben was only five months old. Emerald would be starting pre-kindergarten. What was I going to do then?

For a long time, I decided to mull it over and continue walking.

Michael thought bribery would best suit the situation. At the time, he worked at Scoggin Dickey Chevy dealership. Someone had traded in a gold (my favorite color!!) Buick Century that wasn’t worth the gas in the tank. It was in fairly decent condition for its age, but had seen a lot of miles in that time. The general manager told Michael to drive it around for a bit, see how it suited us, so we never signed papers. It was a well-loved, plodding donkey of a car that made a loud pttttttthhhhbbbtt! whenever you came to a complete stop.

I loved her and christened her Krissy Bug.

In that car, Michael began to patiently teach his aged wife how to operate a motor vehicle. Using calming, gentle tones—as one would talk to a skittish horse or bomb-bedecked lunatic—he would coach me along back roads and around quiet suburbs.

“You’re going to want to use your blinker here...okay, that’s okay, you’ll get it next time.”

“So, that was good, you did good, but when we turn, all four wheels should stay touching the ground.”

“Alright, so you’re in the wrong lane, when you get a chance you’ll want to get over, just so we don’t get hit head on from a car coming the other direction.”

It was messy and inglorious and a painstakingly slow process, but gradually I began to improve. Krissy Bug was a sweet car, but we were not going to be able to fit three car seats in the back. On one of our after-church drives around the Scoggin Dickey parking lot, we spot it.

The color of a Christmas tree and sparkling clean, a 2002 Chevrolet Astro. He’s got grey interior, room for eight. You can tell someone had been taking good care of him. There’s no way he’s in our price range.

Michael asks around about him the next day. The Astro is not nearly as costly as we were anticipating! He is actually within our means. Our grungy little family was moving up in the world—with Michael’s temperamental Jeep, we would officially be a two car family!

It was determined that as the main transporter of the kids, I would get the more reliable and spacious van. The Jeep (named Icey) was a cantankerous old man better suited to Michael. He screamed in protest whenever the air conditioner was turned on, refused to pick up any radio station that was not NPR, and rattled with an abandon as though every ride were his last. Comparatively, the decade-old Astro was a gentleman of a car.

I named him Clarence after “It’s a Wonderful Life”. It was in him that I finally got my driver’s license, after failing the first time for running a stop sign. (I refuse to live in shame any longer! Well, some shame. Fair amount of shame.) Driving through to get coffee, I scraped his side, leaving a hot pink streak of paint. On the back windshield, we posted a Star Wars themed family—Michael represented by Darth Vader, me and Emerald as big and little Princess Leias, Gabriel as Luke Skywalker, and baby Benjamin as Yoda. (Tula would later be added as Ashoka.)

Clarence ran beautifully for a number of years, all the way up to us moving to Abilene. We had been here just three days when the big hailstorm of June 2014. That storm left visible damage all over the city—it had busted out a couple of the windows to our house and had left little divots all over Clarence’s body. We were lucky; others had their vehicles wrecked by the hail. The insurance company cut the dealership a check for the damage that paid off the last remaining balance, and we finally owned him free and clear.

He had some really weird habits, like frantically locking and unlocking the doors while I was driving. We would often have arguments about how much fuel he currently held, which he would grudgingly concede that I was generally right. One of his back doors didn’t feel like opening. Overall he was still a very good van.

Then he got what we called gremlins. Little problems that were inconsistent. He’d have trouble starting, so we’d call someone to take a look at it, where he’d roar to life like he didn’t have a care in the world. The gauges would act funky. His antifreeze was going somewhere because we were having to replace it more often than you’d think one would reasonably have to, but there were never puddles.

One day he breaks down. We can’t afford to fix him, so we leave him parked. For three months. Dad comes out to take a look, and we can’t find the stinkin key. So we have to buy a new ignition and Dad has to pull off the dash to change it out so we have a key that can turn on the car….

...and it turns out the freakin battery is just dead.

We get a new battery and it runs dead way quicker than a new battery ought, so we get him in to see a mechanic. An after-market burglar alarm that the original owner had installed was acting up, causing all the angst and gremlins. They rip it out, and Clarence is running better than ever.

The original key was located in Emerald’s desk months later because she is a lunatic kleptomaniac, and for a little while we have no trouble from Mr Clarence.

Many long and boring mechanical stories later, we have arrived at a crossroads:

Do we continue to sink money and repairs into our old and faithful friend, or do we take him to the farm upstate where he can chase chickens and we get a newer, more reliable mode of transportation?

Maybe I have already come to my decision, judging by this long Ode to Clarence.

—Andie

Summertime

Michael has long teased by calling me a hillbilly. I guess compared to him, the description is apt. He has a citified air about him, the comfort around crowds and culture, a keener awareness of political and world matters. Maybe that’s just been my idealized perception of him. Comparatively, with my firmly rural background, I am a virtual country bumpkin (fresh as frost out on the pumpkin).

No time makes me as aware of that distinction as summertime--the part of the year my siblings and I were let loose in the woods surrounding our home to roam barefoot and semi-feral until school came back in session.

It is hard to reconcile that former version of myself with the current. When did I become so domesticated? Was it simply a part of growing up, or did I abandon a piece of my country roots along the way? Is that such a bad thing?

Summer was (and is) my favorite season. I have a belief that we are conditioned to prefer the weather surrounding our birthdays because we spend all year looking forward to it as children. To April-born Michael, gray and foggy days are ideal; with my mid-June birth, the best weather is optimally over 100 degrees, golden and sunny.

My hometown was a suburb of a suburb of Dallas/Fort Worth, this moment on the map you pass through on the way to real cities. My siblings and I were part of the last generation to get to wander; I can't even imagine letting my little ones freely roam the neighborhood as I did at that age.

Royce, Jarrod, Amber, and I would ride bikes until Dad’s whistle would call us home for meals. After it rained, the creeks behind our house overflowed so we would go out with the Summers girls to catch crawdads. Wild green onion grew all over which we would harvest to present as bouquets to our mother, dirt still clinging to the small white bulbs.

When the sun went down, Amber and I would hunt for bullfrogs, gathering them in ten-gallon buckets to release en masse on our front porch, watching them hop away and disappear into the night. Fireflies we held in our hands, their little lights flickering a message to the swarm of their compatriots flittering around our head.

My grandparents--my dad’s mother and father--had a swimming pool with a deck around it and lived just a few minutes away. We spent a lot of time swimming over there, never-ending games of Marco Polo and making whirlpools that would carry you around on the current. I'd lay out on my Little Mermaid towel and let the sun warm me until I was too hot, then jump back in. Pawpaw grilled hot dogs, saying that he made them special just for me, and I'd smile and say they were my favorite, even though I didn't like hot dogs. Sometimes Grandma Pat would make a pallet for us in her room so we could rest, watching California Raisins or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoons.

Barbeques are pretty traditional for every southern kid I would imagine. Dad and his buddies would get together and get out the smokers to fill them with meat that slow cooked for hours. Standing around drinking cold sodas and beer fished out of galvanized tubs full of ice, they'd keep an eye on the meat; inside, the ladies made all manner of mayonnaise-based salads and beans while sipping on margaritas and telling the kids to get outside and play.

A lot of summers, before Dad got sick, we’d get up one morning while it was still dark outside and load up in the car to drive to Great Grandma Hill’s house. She lived in Littleton, Colorado, in the part that is Centennial now, so it would take twelve or so hours of straight driving. Dad has a weakness for hole-in-the-wall restaurants in dinky towns, places that made better stories than food. We’d break up the drive by staying in cheap motels occasionally, but Dad prefers to drive straight on through with as few breaks as possible, except for those little restaurants.

I can still remember Grandma’s house. Not everything, just bits and pieces. She loved butterflies, and collected dolls, including Little Miss No Name. We drank out of jam jars with cartoon characters on the side while she taught us how to play cribbage. If we were lucky, she'd make what we called cabbage rolls--German runzas filled with hamburger and cabbage that we couldn't get enough of.

Between summer visits, Grandma was my pen pal. I'd send her drawings and accounts of school, and she would tell me about her childhood and how the other members of the family were doing. Letters cost around 32 cents to send at that time, so I’d scrounge around to find enough loose change to leave in the mailbox. They don't let you do that now; you have to have a stamp. Maybe they didn't let you back then either, but our mailman always took it and the letter. When a bird built its nest in our mailbox, mom and dad started using a p.o. box and it became harder for me to maintain a correspondence.

Grandma started me on my ceramic cow collection. I loved cows when I was growing up, so she gave me the cows that held creamer for coffee which poured out through their mouth, beautiful handpainted ones with scenes on the side. I named them all and kept them for years, until they unfortunately got smashed during a move.

In Colorado, mom and dad would take us hiking in the mountains. Dad would carry me over the streams that I was too frightened to walk through. We used birthday money to buy fool’s gold at mountain gift shops, plotting how we would use it to buy a mansion for mom so she'd never have to work again. Drawstring bags of gum that looked like coal turned our mouths a most becoming shade of black.

Ten was a special birthday because then you were old enough to go to camp. We went with our church youth group to Camp Deer Run (where the deer run) in Winnesboro, Texas. That was one of my favorite places in the world, a place I felt an unparalleled closeness to God.

Summertime was always heavy on church activities. Summer Youth Series brought kids from congregations all over the metroplex to sing and worship together. Volunteer projects, lock-ins, devotionals, and outings outside of regular service kept our hearts and our minds in the right place and out of trouble.

In High School, summer always ended in band camp. For a while, they are all day--get there early in the morning and practice hard until dinner. The band director kept it fun by bringing orange juice and kolaches in the morning. Taco Bueno would sell us tacos four for a dollar for lunch, or she'd bring pizza. At the end of the long, hot day of practice, we’d put a movie on in the band hall and wind down before starting it all again the next day.

I've had all of this on my mind because Emerald has said, loudly, daily, and to anyone who will listen, how very much she hates summer. She misses school, misses her friends. She isn't learning anything. And (as Benjamin so succinctly put it), “two months!? But that's too much time with mommy!”

How could anyone hate this magical time of year? The time of going fishing and camping, boating out on the lake and sleeping under the stars. Of visiting family you rarely get to see and go on adventures in places unknown. Getting pickle slushes from the public swimming pool, attending vacation bible school, lounging in the sun, and reading a new pile of books from the library every week. This season was a celebration of enjoying yourself, a break from the stresses of school.

It's made me question if I just don't plan enough for the kids to do over the summer. We are somewhat tied to the house in an effort to miss as few therapy sessions as possible, as well as finances and having three difficult children (Benjamin is less difficult and more of the “grab and go” variety).

But she still gets a fair amount of trotting around. She goes to vbs and swim lessons, visiting family. We enroll her in activities and take her on as many vacations as we feel we can safely manage. We have a lot going on.

Which makes me wonder: was I appreciative enough at the time of what a good life I led? Did I thank my mother, or did I complain that it was too hot and I was bored? Were we begging our parents to take us to Disney World, pouting that we “never got to go anywhere fun”?

Was my mother as discouraged as I get, feeling like no matter how much we do, it's never enough?

I may not be able to fly the kids to Hawaii as they suggested, but I can take them fishing. Teach them how to tell the difference between a frog and a toad, and how to catch a firefly without squishing him. Make cabbage rolls for them and tell stories about their Great Great Grandma Hill that had this laugh that made you feel happy to your toes. We can make whirlpools and let the current carry us away, and eat hot dogs laying in the sun.

And, with any luck, they will look back on their summers when they're grown as fondly as I do mine.