Fresh and Blood

You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

-- "You Learn" Alanis Morisette

Yesterday Erik's teacher, Miss Jeannie, rushed up to me as I dropped him off at school. She told me that as the little bus came to a stop in front of the school Tuesday, it let out a sharp hiss. Erik quickly replicated the sound and blurted, "Air brakes!" Sure, my boy may have difficulty removing his own jacket or using a toilet, but he is more than familiar with the intricacies of conveyance braking systems.

I don't have a lot to report this afternoon. The world around me is still a dirty, grimy mess, but I have accomplished some early spring cleaning. I cleaned out the coat closet. I unscrewed the light fixtures from the master bathroom and washed them all in the kitchen sink. A friend called to report that his wallet was missing after a visit to our house, so I removed all of the couch cushions, plunged my arm into the bowels of the furniture, and vacuumed everything out almost violently with the long wand as if I was performing liposuction on our living room set. Instead of a stray wallet, I found a book, a hair comb, a DVD wrapper, and enough crumbs to reconstruct an entire pastry. I sorted and bagged unused and outgrown items from Erik's ridiculously roomy closet. I cleaned out his toy boxes. I spritzed the entire house with Febreeze. I dusted. I caught up on laundry. I even worked a little bit on some surplus medical reports that my partner sent my way and made a couple bucks.

I have continued to work out each day with my tiny, blonde personal trainer, who yells, "Faster! Run!" He works out along side of me intermittently until his attention span gives out and he gets bored. He then spins in circles until he collapses into a drunken, giggling heap. I have made avoiding his careening body part of my workouts and am getting a bit more graceful and agile myself in the process.

Erik continues to challenge us daily. He kicks. He hits. He growls. He tells me he doesn't want me to do the things for him that he enjoys just for the sake of telling me no. Yesterday as I shut his door after I struggled to get his diaper changed without getting a black eye and he told me to turn the music off that I know he loves during his nap, my heart ached. I went on with my day, though, and thought that today might be a little better if I tried harder to connect with him somehow. I think we both tried harder. Overall, we had a great morning at physical therapy with the horses and hanging around the house. I'm constantly changing my approach to the daily tasks that set him off. While this doesn't always guarantee success, it saves my feet and my feelings from being stomped upon.

It's nice to see that the sun is shining again. The wall of dreary clouds has dissipated, and the mountains are gleaming in the afternoon light again, at least for the moment. When I can see them, I always feel anchored somehow.

Slowly but surely I am feeling better.

Pendulum

I am having a bad day. Not just sort of bad. Really bad. The kind of day when my grief feels fresh, cutting me open from the inside as if I had not been feeling it until this very moment. The kind that leaves me so weak I have no desire to fight the forces of gravity and want to sag to the ground in a pathetic heap. The kind of grief you might see on the faces of the women in exotic countries wailing on the evening news after a devastating loss. When I am ready, I may write about it. I haven't had a day like this in a long time.

Today I came home from a failed attempt to attend church with my family and began frantically scrubbing the insides of my house like a crazy woman. I scrubbed and scrubbed with various sponges and cleansers, trying to wash the darkness I feel down the drain. The tree has been lit, and its 1800 white lights are sparkling. My pine-scented candle is casting a warm glow on my precious set of antique wise men. My toilet bowls are bleached. My floor is pristine.

In my quest to create the perfect holiday home for our son, I have come to the realization I was wrong. You see, it is ME who is in desperate need a safe haven from the outside world, at least at this point in time. Some place I can feel what I want to feel or, in this case, not feel anything at all until I'm ready.

I am progressively more and more uninterested in dealing with how I feel. When I write, I have to feel everything all over again, and, well, that simply sucks. There are times I simply don't want to feel anything painful or profound at all. Times when I want to plod along and do mundane household chores without a thought in my head at all. Thankfully, I can do that here.

Unfortunately, there is nothing left for me to scrub or straighten.

Aches, Pains, Teeth, & Gains

Don't tell me how to live my life
Don't tell me how to pray
Don't tell me how to sing my song
Don't tell me what to say

Cuz I believe that miracles
happen every day
I don't care what you say,
I'm gonna do it my way

-- "My Way," Los Lonely Boys

I have to make this short, as my job has given me a moderate case of tendinitis, the likes of which I have not experienced since my days of shoveling pizzas in and out of an oven at my job in high school. I will purchase a brace today. I haven't had to wear one since I started transcribing 10 years ago. Hopefully, with TLC it will improve slowly. I hope so, as I have a short story in my head to write for another contest in San Francisco (Thanks, mom!).

The transition meeting went well. We chose Erik's preschool class and met the new members of Team Erik. I loved all of them immediately, of course. I sometimes feel like we do not have much support in town, but if I sit down and think about it, we have what we need. These folks are highly qualified and caring. They did the appropriate amount of oohing and ahing over Erik's photo and seemed to be curious about his syndrome, asking if there were videos, etc. One had even worked with someone with WS. I stalled a very long time chatting after the meeting because Brian left early to take Erik to the dentist, and I didn't want to witness that. The exam was reportedly very rough and made Erik cry very hard, but his teeth looked so good that no coat of lacquer was required. Glory be!

I spent an hour in the grocery store during Erik's pool therapy yesterday. As soon as I put him in the pool with Ms. G., he said, "Buh-bye, mom!" I was free to go. I bought a new oxygen-filled dish detergent and apple-scented candle for Erik's bathroom. I love my time in the grocery store. If loving Mr. Clean is wrong, I just don't wanna be right.

Lastly, Erik's language skills are sharpening. For instance, I was pouring some lemonade into a glass when he walked by this week, and he said, "Yellow water." Later he was in his chair threatening to tilt his glass over instead of drinking its contents as he enjoys doing. When I tried to take it away from him like I usually do, he glared at me and said, "Let go, please."

It was a hard week, but it was good.