Yippeee, for once!

My daughter doesn’t have Cystic Fibrosis!

Now we just have to figure out why she is so darn tiny!!

Family meeting tonight – Agenda:  Taking Away Dads Car — OUCH!

The fun doesn’t stop!

yay.

Monday Monday (Photo credit: soonerpa)

I hesitate to write a lot when I am in a “bad space” mentally/emotionally.  I never want to be a complainer or a victim or seem as if I am looking for pity.  I am not writing for attention or to vent but, when 90% of your posts are depressing, I feel that my posts can bring people down or become, well, annoying.  In the past I explained my hope to use humor to not be such a life-sucker, but lately humor isn’t even possible for me!  So, I have not even written a word here.

I wonder how I keep my head above water in weeks like this one.  My husband pointed out to me that “at least we aren’t that family on the corner of X and Y that were evicted and have all of their stuff on the street corner.”  Yes, that would be bad.  But, at some level, I might prefer that because then at least I have some control — I could see why this happened and work on a solution. The grass is always slightly less dead on the other side of the fence?

To summarize my week and not go into lengthy complaints, I will overview my week in a short list:

1.  Last Thursday my daughter’s pediatrician referred me to get her tested for Cystic Fibrosis.  They are worried about her small size/lack of growth/respiratory problems.  This has thrown my world upside-down. Test is tomorrow…results by Friday, I hope. Hopefully not CF, but we still have to figure out what is going on.

2. My dad is very depressed.  Brother called Monday to have me call him to do a suicide assessment (not my brother’s words but I am therapist so that is my clinical, easy explanation).  He denied intention or a plan, but that doesn’t take away from the awfulness of this situation.

3.  Oh yeah, I am five months pregnant.  Which is an awesome thing!!  Just hate the stress I am feeling and worry about it’s effects on my baby.

I can’t make my daughter healthy and I can’t make my father happy.  I am in the trenches with them and doing the best I can.  I know life could be a lot worse. I am lucky to have a good job, and wonderful family and friends, and a roof over my head, and I am healthy.  Yay.

A Stranger in the Mirror

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Again, my Thursday group with my clients has gotten me thinking.  I was trying to come up with a good topic surrounding Groundhog Day.  In my brainstorming, my mind went from Punxsutawney Phil to the movie Groundhog Day and somehow landed on the movie The Bucket List.  The one movie really has nothing to do with the other, but my mind went there, so thus our topic: A Bucket List.

All of the clients completed the “assignment” with various levels of ease, as would be expected when faced with such a task.  What I didn’t expect was that I would struggle with it so much!  About 8 years ago I made a similar list, and it was long and interesting.  My list included such gems as participating in a protest, completing a triathalon, and learning to play the guitar.  My list today was SO lame in comparison.  I listed swimming with dolphins, visiting a couple of exotic places, and becoming debt free.   My first list had about 50 items. Today I struggled to come up with six.

One thing that I realized (from a positive perspective) is that what was important to me then is not so important to me now. My priorities have changed as they should when you become a parent.  But my other realization (my depressing perspective) was that I have very little that I am passionate about anymore!  I am boring!!  Being in a protest seems pointless; Learning to play the guitar would be nice, but seems time-consuming and impractical; A triathalon is downright out of the question!

I never wanted to be defined as “mom” and solely as “mom,” and I wanted to stay as far away from the ‘stereotypical monotonous surburban lifestyle with kids and loveless marriage’ as possible!   In yet another list I made (I think in college), I defined several things I never wanted to occur in my life.  The list included (and I am I not making this up):

1. Never call my husband “dad” and be called “mom” by him;
2. Never use the toilet in front of my husband;
3. Never garden;
4. Always share a bed with my husband;
5.  No fannie-packs;
6. No mini-vans….

I can’t remember the entire list, but you get the picture.   So, items one and two were broken years ago.  Three, I have softened on but really don’t see myself doing anytime soon, though I would be happy to garden if I had land, know-how and energy; Four is still holding strong.  Five will never be broken (really, fannie-packs people?). And six, well, lets just say I have been shopping!

Re-establishing my identity since my daughter was born has been really difficult for me.  I like being a mom, and I think I am pretty good at it.  But I still really want to have a ‘me’ outside of mom-ness. So the question is:  How do I re-figure out what I love and enjoy doing?  How do I feel some excitement in my life again?  I can’t necessarily make myself passionate about what I used to be passionate about, but I have to be able to be interested in something other than my daughter! Who am I? Perhaps I need to make another list!

How my father inadvertantly taught me to be a better caregiver.

Image by mikebaird via Flickr

Taking care of my dad has been a strange journey in trying to let go of the past and “doing the right thing.”  When I was in my 20′s and early 30′s, before my father was diagnosed with Alzheimers, I had the uncomfortable feeling that I needed to deal with past issues with my father before it was “too late.” Now it is too late, and I am stuck with the challenge of negotiating my dad’s care, parenting him, all the while fighting back the knee-jerk reaction that arises when “old wounds” are opened.

 

I had very good reasons NOT to address issues with my dad when he was healthy.  Basically, my sister had tried and had gotten shot down in a way that I was not willing to experience.  I have learned that my father is a stubborn, selfish man with little to no ability to self-reflect and be introspective.  Probably the very reason that I am now a therapist and make a living helping others with that challenging task.  I made a deliberate choice not to challenge him on my feelings about his selfishness and, therefore, his neglect of his children.

 

Not that I can’t empathize with my father in an abstract way.  I can examine his childhood with an alcoholic mother and philandering father who had extremely high expectations of him (that he did not live up to) and understand how he never learned to empathize and how he might shut himself off from self-responsibility.  On the other hand, I am a human who was raised by this person and the child me wants him to have put his children first and taken responsibility for his actions – at least at some point.  Not to say he wasn’t a good dad at times. He was, but there were many periods of my childhood, specifically my adolescence, when he was focusing solely on his needs while I struggled emotionally and financially.  The child in me doesn’t care about his depression, the neglect he must have experienced from his parents, etc.  I just want to have been taken care of in a way that can’t be done by a single mother with a full-time job and three kids. If there is one thing I have learned in my years as a therapist for adolescent girls- a teenage girl needs her dad.

 

So here I am in a position where I often have to sacrifice attending to my child and taking care of myself while I take care of his needs.  A sacrifice he did not always make for us.  I am glad I am introspective enough to know that this is the right thing to do and that I have to forgive my father – even without the apology.  But there are many times in this process that my dad’s self-centeredness arises, and I can’t do a thing about it.  I talk to him about his choices, I smile and soothe, I do for him what he couldn’t do for me.  Perhaps he is benefitting from what I learned from his neglect.

 

Help me find a lesson in this.

 

Natural Selection

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About a year ago, my dad’s wife left him and my siblings and I found ourselves smack dab in the middle of a sandwich.  As I mentioned before, we are part of the “sandwich generation.”  I really love a good sandwich, but the sandwich generation is a generation of people caught raising their young children and taking care of ailing, aging parents.

I have a 2-year old girl, my sister has a 4- and 6-year old, and my brother has 2-, 4-, and a 6-year old.  We are of a group of college-educated 30-somethings who chose to go on to higher education, delayed starting a family, and really enjoyed their 20′s.   The vast majority of our friends are in the same genre, and the vast majority of us are beginning to deal with aging and even dying parents.  I am just not sure this is the way it should be.

Any of you who are parents or have seen a close friend or relative become parents are aware of how really difficult parenting can be.  Being a parent is not for the faint of heart.  I believe it takes a strong constitution and an immense amount of patience to be a good parent.  I want to be a good parent.  And I know many of you know the challenges of taking care of an aging, ailing parent.  I want to be there for my dad.  But how do you succeed when you are, in effect, doing both at the same time?

My brother called me last night to share that my dad’s neighbor had called with concerns about a decline in his functioning (ie putting soup on his plate not in his bowl).  We were discussing getting the home health care in place as soon as possible all the while I can hear my daughter screaming through the monitor.  I had put her to bed about a half an hour earlier, but she is going through a stage of not wanting to sleep and instead screams her little head off.  Moms out there now how this noise pierces the heart and disrupts any ability to focus.  But, my brother needed to give me the information and make a plan to address my dad’s decline.  Sandwich time rears it’s very unattractive face!

Don’t worry, my daughter didn’t scream for long and my brother got heard (not that you were concerned about my brother).  But do you see how unnatural this is?  On a daily basis, I can’t possibly take care of my daughter (which I believe is my biological priority) and take care of my father’s health as well.  I believe the ”unnaturalness” of it all is evident in how little I want to deal with the everyday stress of meeting his needs.  This is my biology saying “no, no, no!”

If we retrace life and the directions it takes us, one could say the unnatural part was my parents not making their marriage work.  Had they stayed together, my mom would be doing this all – with our support, of course.  I could also say it was unnatural for his second wife to leave a husband who has Alzheimer’s (which it is, but I won’t go there because marriage is hard, and I doubt her staying would have been beneficial to him in the long run).  Really, my choice to get an advanced degree and wait until near the END of my childbearing years is probably one of the more unnatural aspects of this scenario.  I am 36 and, when I have my next child, I will be “Advanced Maternal Age” – which is abbreviated AMA also the abbreviation of Against Medical Advice – coincidence? Yes, I know it is a coincidence but for the sake of irony….  Our bodies were not meant to have kids so late in life.

Any way you look at it, it is not natural for people IN OUR CULTURE to be raising small children and be responsible for their father’s well-being.  This is the time in life when grandparents are supposed to be making the burden of parenting a little lighter on their kids – being spoiling, pampering, intrusive grandparents!

I say OUR CULTURE because in plenty of other places in the world families stay in one home, support each other throughout life, and are prepared to care for their elderly in the home.  I feel our country, or maybe just those in my socio-economic stratum, is moving/has moved in a backwards direction.  Philisophically, I believe in women’s rights (I wear my feminism badge proudly), and I believe in self-determination and education, but are any of us looking at how our choices are effecting the long-term viability of the human race?  Okay, I am getting deep here and maybe I am taking my load of stress and turning it into an existential crisis, but I truly believe that there is a more “natural” way of doing things and that we are busy fighting this in the name of progress.

I don’t want to be the loser in the natural selection process!

Can I have a side of humor with that?

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“You have to laugh at yourself because you’d cry your eyes out if you didn’t.” –Emily Saliers, Indigo Girls

Yep, I just quoted an Indigo Girl — I was quite a big fan in college and still love their music.  Besides, the quote has helped me through some hard times in that it gave me permission to laugh when maybe it wasn’t so appropriate.  Yes, I laugh at inappropriate times, and I am going to tell you ALL about it!  I am doing this with the hope that I can use more humor about awful things in future blogsand not have you all cringe in horror at my insensitivity.

Joking is a difficult thing because what you find funny others might not.  My family has used humor a lot in dealing with my father’s Alzheimer’s Disease and sometimes I feel guilty joking about things related to his disease, but I seriously do not know what else to do.  I refuse to feel pain every time my dad talks in riddles, thinks I am my sister, or tells me the same story for the fifth time.  Some of the humor is used with my dad and he can laugh off his confusion — I actually thinks he appreciates this.  BUT,  some is ”behind his back.” Joking behind his back may seem horrifically cruel but Alzheimers is a ridiculous disease and you find yourself in situations that there is no appropriate way to handle.  Humor helps me cope!

Lets give some examples, so you don’t all think I am a cruel monster. The first one was in front of my dad:

Brother enters room carrying presents and places them in front of tree.  Dad says, “Why are you so dressed up?”  (Brother is wearing jeans and a curdoroy button down with a t-shirt underneath-  kinda underdressed for Christmas if anything).  Brother answers, “I am in a pageant.”  Dad chuckles.  Me, “What’s your talent?”  My husband, “When is the swimsuit competition?”  We all laugh hysterically.  Not sure my dad gets the conversation, but the thought of my brother in a swimsuit competition is always good for a laugh.

Now for behind the back (deep breath – don’t judge):

I finish a conversation with a dad that makes no sense.  Go into kitchen with brother, sister, and brother-in-law.  I comment on how confused he seems right now.  I share that ‘sometimes I am in these conversations and my response might as well be “dog pizza tablecloth” (said in robotic way with similar robot dance) because I have no idea how to respond.’ Chuckles throughout the room.  So, that is not really THAT funny but you get the picture –  I can’t think of examples from weeks gone by so this will have to do.

And I don’t plan on discontinuing my use of humor.  Maybe it is rude, maybe it’s out of my own discomfort in knowing how to deal with it, and maybe I am avoiding dealing with pain.  I don’t know! What I do know is that humor is a valid way of dealing with pain and I like it and plan to continue to use it to my advantage. In fact, I will use it more in my blogs and if I offend anyone, feel free to let me know but I probably won’t apologize because an Indigo Girl told me I could laugh!

Tradition as My Guide.

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I may have mentioned before that I am a therapist?  One of the beautiful things about being a therapist is that I actually learn a lot from my clients.  I am given the powerful and sacred opportunity to sit with another human during their lightest and darkest hours.  My job allows me to learn about human nature and apply it to my own life.  Kind of a nice bonus, isn’t it? 

Today, in a group I ran, I brought the topic of “Traditions and Rituals” to the literal and figurative table.  If I bring a topic to a group, I am always inspired by the season and what better time of year than the holiday season to talk about traditions?  Plus, I am a true believer in tradition and ritual as an important way to honor the past, celebrate your family and friends, and connect to future generations.

As the importance of traditions were discussed, I had the opportunity to think about my own family traditions and, more specifically, how they have changed as our family has changed and grown.  As new members enter your family and older members depart, traditions must change to fit your new family system. This can happen with many aches and pains as you fight for the traditions that connect you solidly to your youth. My parent’s divorce was the first time I remember this happening and was particularly difficult because it was not in my control.  I had to go to my dad’s house now for a celebration and he wasn’t there on Christmas morning for the tradition of ushering us blindfolded by the tree and into the kitchen in order to make us eat breakfast before presents were opened.

Marriage was probably the most difficult transition because it meant less time with my family and their traditions and more time with another family whose traditions made me feel like I had just landed on a new planet and the natives were feeding me chocolate-covered worms (it was more like kielbasa and pierogies, but still…). Now I have my own daughter and, while things are again changing, my husband and I get to meld our traditions into a beautiful experience to give her on holidays and special occasions.

In a way, I feel like I have come full-circle and I am back to being that child again and experiencing the holidays in a way that feels good on my skin.  The feelings of exhilaration and suspense and excitement and even the calm, couch-filled let down of when it is all over – they are back!  As I asked my clients today to look at how they can re-create their own traditions that most have let go of long ago, I realized how lucky I am to have family and friends that have weathered the pains of change with me and have somehow managed to still fit nicely into my traditions and me into theirs.

Happy Holidays Friends!  May you feel the warmth of connection and the joy of being this holiday season!