Unfit Mother

Fish and House Guests

We’re moving on this morning. It has been a bittersweet reunion with Knoxville; sometimes you can’t go home. It is interesting how some of the things I liked about Portland when I moved there in 1994 was really part of a larger movement and not just about the west coast – the place I held as the great Mecca of all things cool and progressive. Some of those same things exist here and everywhere across the US. I still prefer the anonymitity I enjoy living in a city with many like-minded people, but there is also some loss of community in that. Still, it is easier to live in a city where I am one of many moms with tattoos and not someone upon which to cast sideways glances and who startles the other moms at the park. I was exhausted from swimming against the cultural current and was tired of being the “weirdo”. In Portland, I blend into the status quo.

I think what I have to resolve is that I am no longer a southerner. I am only sort of from the south anyway. My father is in the army and we moved around my whole life. Even as an adult I kept in the habit of storing things in boxes and moving every few years even if it was just to the apartment down the street. I still have a hard time putting holes in the wall to hang pictures because I can’t make any permanent changes. As a result, I’ve been looking for “home” my whole life. I remember crying inconsolably as a child and just wanting to go home.
But you are home, my mother would say.
Even I didn’t know what I meant at the time. I guess I just wanted things to be the same for a terminal designation of time.

Being here now feels a little like being the bastard child, the outsider, the Yankee-go-home. I never wanted to live in Tennessee when I put there in 7th grade. I was miserable, but it was the place I remained throughout the duration of Junior and High School (we didn’t call it “Middle School” back then). I even stayed in Tennessee for college until the first opportunity presented for escape. Once out of the south, being from the south provided an identity in the homongenous northwest where few people are natives. I banded with other ex-pats and settled into a niche. I always meant to make it to California, but when I went to work for the regional planning government as a graphic design intern, I fell deep in love with the well designed antics of Portland. And once I met my husband and gave birth to my children there, I went native.

Back in the south, my southern identity seems false. As I entered Kentucky I immediately re-affected my accent, but it was more like knowing a foreign language. There have even been a few times when I honestly could not understand what someone said to me because of their speech. And now here for the last several days, the novelty is wearing thin. Once again I feel displaced. I imagine grappling with this identity crisis is like integrating the various and sundry personas of someone with disassociative identity disorder.

My friends have been good to us and I can only offer the return in kindness for future travel. It is time to be on the road again. We mark our heading for a brief jaunt into Georgia and then to Nashville and Memphis. I have an old shoulder injury that is proving to be a real problem. I’ve had a torn rotator cuff for years and I think I have made it worse somehow with the repetitive motions of driving. It hurts like the Charles Dickens.

The Extra Pancake

She lies in the middle of the kitchen floor wearing a plush lined pink hoodie, flannel ducky pajamas and her perennial “cow boots” (no socks). It is 82 degrees outside. The nanny wants to move her to the couch. “Leave her if she’s comfortable”, I suggest gently. “There might be something about the floor that feels good.” We leave her on the cool tile to nap.

Tavi is always a little odd, but it is days like today when I come back to the uncomfortable consideration that this is autism.  We began private occupational therapy last Friday at the suggestion of the county’s limited resources. We will go every week until they deem differently, our insurance refuses payment and / or we run out of money. The latter might come first.

Every Wednesday, an MECD (Multnomah Education Service District) designated special ed teacher visits our home and offers suggestions like: use a visual schedule, give her a two step process such as First we eat breakfast, Then we go in the car and have her take turns with 10 second allowances. All these strategies have been successful in taming the tantrum monster that hurls her to the floor screaming in pitch registers that threaten our leaded glass windows. To say Tavi has difficulty with transitions is an understatement.

On most days I can take her behavior in stride. It has become our lives. But some days it is too much for everyone. Bea shifts her personality to the middle child syndrome, when technically she is not. My husband, who is not home often enough to have adjusted to our new routines, throws his hands in mock exasperation. Ivy stares at me, waiting to read my reaction and decide to cower away from angry mama or be soothed by compassionate mama. Yesterday I was angry mama.

With the turn in good weather, a mere fickle pause for Portland in May, I feel inspired to cook a grand meal on the grill. I slice the polenta, break the asparagus and season the chicken for skewers with peanut sauce. Everything is prepped and drenched in extra virgin olive oil. I install the new tank of propane in the cabinet and re-secure the childproof latch. But when I turn the knob and push in the safety-rubber ignition button, nothing happens.  Angry mama begins to curse. On closer inspection I notice the line has been cut. It’s choppy strands unfurling from the synthetic encasement like hot wires that could jump-start that cool car on Starskey and Hutch.

But this chrome heap of assembled parts does not start. It does not even sputter. Now angry mama is really pissed. Last weekend I was sure the reason the grill did not roar to life was because Tavi had left the gas on, hence the childproof lock now protecting the new propane tank. But now I realize she has sabotaged our meal by cutting the electrical line that carries spark to gas. I was also chagrined to realize this meant I had returned a full container of gas to Lowes, retail $20. I grit my teeth and spit profanity through my barred lips.

She cut.
What?
She cut.

Her twin tattles on her, confirming my suspicion. She, Tavi, was the culprit. Not some super species of wire splicing spider. I mutter more obscenity under my breath and begin dismantling the barely one-year-old grill to inspect the damage. I did not know where to begin. Even after perusing the manual, I could not figure out how to repair or replace the line. Tavi is our practicing engineer, always eager to deconstruct. It is this challenging trait as a child that I know will ensure her some success as an adult, but dealing with it in the midst of dinner preparations and an already altered daily routine at 5:30 pm is difficult to say the least.

On other days when I am feeling generous with my role as Tavi’s mama, I can take these quirks and habits in stride, choosing to see her antics as amusing anecdotes; be the other mama, the compassionate one who reassures her children with open arms. That mama would never storm out of the house, leaving charge to the father who just arrived and slam the front door. The compassionate mama smiles wryly when other parents encounter her child’s strange behavior and look quizzically, searching her face for answers.

And if I am in an especially indulgent mood, I may even offer explanations doused in humor as if I am also a third party coming on the scene. Dispensing commentary from the side of my mouth, I do not scoop her screaming into my arms and leave the scene embarrassed. Compassionate mama is above the personalization of her child’s lurid display of displaced emotions. I may casually ask the time and quip, “Hey kid are you all done now? Do you feel better about having to wait for a drink at the water fountain?”  All while I turn to the other parent and casually remark how these little things set her off.

And even other times I feel like I should preface any pending maneuvers with explanations. I fight this compulsion during Romp and Roll and Messy Art classes at the community center. But sometimes in my hesitation, as much as I long for consoling looks from strangers and musings behind my back about how strong I must be, I know enough to let Tavi challenge her diagnosis, whatever that might be. Instead of the explanations about sensory integration, I offer Tavi the benefit of experience without caution. I see them, when I have explained; their mouths caught in an “O” as they stop mid stoop and uncoil back to standing. With arms crossed they no longer engage my daughter; they turn and assist the other, normal children. But without explanation, the interaction continues and I am the one held in surprise.

And I am delighted that Tavi is not as limited as I think she might be without biting my tongue. She giggles in delight to a reward by Teacher Nancy of bubbles blown across her face as she jumps into a soft foam pool of plastic balls. I cannot limit her if I want to continue to challenge some diagnosis. That is what my husband was afraid of by having her assessed two months ago. But I might be the one holding her back.

When I can be the compassionate, Zen mama, I relish Tavi and think of our relationship as a teaching model. I would be the angry desperate mama if Tavi were my first child. Like most second time parents, it is only after the exasperating trials of my first pancake that I have relaxed. Finding amusement instead of danger lurking in the playground. And adding twins to the second experience has relaxed me even more. There are some situations I physically do not respond to because, by circumstance, I am forced to issue commands to keep one’s little fingers from the snarling jaws of dogs while I run across the the yard to catch the other one mid-fall from the top of the slide.

Last week, another mama bulged her eyes in fear as I nonchalantly watched Ivy swing her little sister in a two-foot arc by the arms. Her face pulled an expression questioning my cavalier consent. “I have another one if anything happens.”  I chuckled as I thumbed the child on my back.  My oldest might have endured my overly cautious pitfalls as a first-time parent, but Tavi is my spare, my extra pancake. I am more willing to let her be, let her surprise me and challenge what I perceive as her limitations.

Quirky

I have to admit it. As I lay in an execution pose, my arms strapped to a "T", mired in a groggy surgery haze, I met Tavi three minutes before her twin. One look at my newborn daughter and I thought: THAT is a mean baby. I had a difficult time bonding with her because she was so irritable. And after already digesting my dog-eared copy of the Sear’s Fussy Baby Book after the birth of my oldest child, Ivy, I fought that exasperated here-we-go-again feeling. It isn’t that Tavi is mean, she just seemed uncomfortable from the minute she was born. Granted, the kid was forcibly ripped from my sloughing womb by her ankles and then thrust naked beneath interrogation-grade lights and multiple probing, blue, latex hands in a frigid room. (And people wonder why they have alien abduction flashbacks – take a look at your birth experience!) But it seemed more than colic or a fussy disposition.

My little chubby cherub was always stoic, but cuddly and cute beyond a mother’s measure. And she shied from strangers and fretted and slept fitfully. By the time she was a year old, I started suspecting her differences were more than the explicable comparisons to her twin and older sisters. No one wants to think their child is not the most brilliant perfect Harvard-bound future doctor/ lawyer; it is hard to swallow the frightening possibility that something is amiss.

When Ivy was 9 months old and taking tentative steps, cruising along the furniture, threatening not to crawl, a well meaning relative warned that skipping the crawling stage was a sign of a horrible learning disability. This suggestion was offered as if I could force Ivy down on all fours and make her crawl. Like intervention would forgo a future diagnosis. But maybe intervention is the key to the allusive behavior I witness shrouded in Tavi’s tantrums.

Our doctor recommended the book, The Highly Sensitive Child , but it left me wanting more substantial conclusions, something more definitive. With a legacy of learning disabilities and social oddities, I became suspicious that the tomes of inherited eccentricies documented in my family mythology were in fact diagnosable and even treatable problems. I asked a good friend finishing her masters in child development for a recommendation about how to seek help. She referred me to the Multnomah Early Childhood Program (MECP). Apparently, every state has an early intervention program that services the same population as their public school system. I was astounded when after submitting a mere one page application, I had an appointment for an assessment less than a week later.

Last Tuesday, two women came to our home, scribbled volumes in their encrypted notebooks and “hmmm"-ed after all of my answers to their discerning questions. I was skeptical that they would see what I might be imagining. But Tavi preformed for them throwing not one, but three enormous tantrums for her captive audience. She ignored invitations to picture pointing exercises when distracted by a delicate wind-up toy whose operation she figured out within seconds of scrutinizing it's mechanics. These women nodded sympathetically and assured me I was not imaging things. I felt both vindicated and terrified.

“She’s quirky.”  They stated upon departure.
Is that an official diagnosis?
They left me on my front porch with empathetic smiles, my palm still warm from their consoling handshakes. I felt raw. One of the women called a couple of days later with little more information but an indication that we are facing a sensory integration disorder. The internet can be a hindrance and a blessing, arming me with too much unverified information and even more questions.

But I am not shouldering this confirmation with personal defensiveness. I am relieved in a way and more curious about the value this information will have on our family. Tavi will begin occupational therapy in the next couple of weeks. This journey has weighed heavily on my mind and distracted me from all other obligations. And as for leaving March an empty slot in my monthly archive, I apologize for my absence.