Gratitude list

I learned long ago that there is a huge silver lining to our challenging situation. Here is my gratitude list for this trip:

Modern Medicine: We originally came to Shriners (Philadelphia) for their progressive surgical techniques for scoliosis patients. We had two goals: keep Ben's spine flexible and let it grow. We were fortunate to be selected for their care, their expertise and their mission. Dr. Betz (who innovated these techniques) and Dr. Cahill who was Ben’s first surgeon in Philly started us out on a great road. We accomplished the second of our goals largely due to Dr. Cahill’s belief in and skill with these techniques. When we met Dr. Cho in Los Angeles last November we were immediately impressed with him and felt confident that moving Ben to his care would be a positive choice. His skill, confidence, and vibrant demeanor (ok, he’s got a great smile, a great sense of humor, is an excellent communicator, and a snappy dresser) convinced us to move to the LA hospital. Being closer to home both for the pre/post-op visits and for the surgeries has made a huge difference for us. So glad to be in the care of such excellent doctors!

The Kindness of Strangers: While I was planning for this trip I was trying to find a good place to stay while Ben was in the hospital. Near the hospital but in a safe neighborhood. Affordable. Comfortable. Homey, if possible. I kept coming up short. The hospital is in a not so great neighborhood and I couldn’t find a solution that felt like a good fit and was something we could afford. That was when my friends Barbara and Madeleine told me to talk to Paula, someone I know peripherally from my days in LA teaching music at Sholem, a secular Jewish community Sunday school, and who is a friend of theirs in Sebastopol. “Ask Paula,” they both said. “She still knows lots of people in LA.” So I did. Paula put out an email one Sunday to the Sholem community and by Monday I had a response from Susan and Marc Sazer inviting me to stay in their guest room in the Larchmont neighborhood of LA. We spoke and I accepted and…a friendship was born. I am BEYOND grateful for their openheartedness in taking me in. What I got from staying with them was not only a convenient and comfortable place to stay within 10 minutes easy drive to the hospital, but, a loving, warm, and beautiful home to return to every night with friends who wanted to know how I was doing and how Ben was doing. Their dog, Goldie, was my happy companion during the three days they were gone (setting their daughter up at Sonoma State for her freshman year, happy coincidence!), greeting me the way Corgis do, so delighted to usher me through the house to my little guest cottage in the back. Goldie made me smile and kept me company. Susan gave me hugs and a welcome ear to hear of the day’s ups and downs, and Marc uncorked some great wine and grilled up some tasty lamb chops on my last night with them. I deeply believe that what you put out into the universe comes back to you…and I told Susan that they are another link in our chain. (And who could argue with the lovely coincidence of another Susan and Mark/c?)

The Kindness (and tolerance) of Relatives: My gratitude list would not be complete without a full blown kiss and hug and thank you to my aunt and uncle, Adele and Sheldon Miller. They took us in (even a couple days earlier than expected) for over a week and tried to take care of our every need (though we sometimes said, “No, Me Do It!” like toddlers). They wanted nothing more than for us to be happy and healing in their quiet and luxurious home. We got nightly runs for frozen yogurt or pizza, daily runs to Sprouts or Costco. The most comfortable beds were ours for the asking. Wide screen tv. Wifi. We spread out in every bathroom and extra bedroom. And finally, yesterday we got to jump (or wade cautiously) into their sparkling blue swimming pool (Dr. Cho gave Ben the go-ahead for that Tuesday). We enjoyed their stories, love, hugs, and tasty dinners. Thank you thank you thank you, Sheldon and Adele.

Harry Miller: While we were in LA Harry held down the fort. This is not the first time he’s stayed home while we were in LA, but it was the longest time and he was alone for most of it. Not only did he take care of himself and the whole house and all of our critters, but he did it while starting a job at the Sixth Street Playhouse making props for Spamalot, getting hired to be assistant stage manager for that show, and starting a new semester of classes at Santa Rosa Junior College. We’re so grateful to you, Harry, for doing all that for our family, and so proud of you, too.

Toby Miller: Toby was away at camp until moments before Ben and I went to LA for his surgery. We saw Toby for a couple hours in between picking him up from the Camp Tawonga bus and dropping Ben and me at Oakland Airport. After that Toby, otherwise known as Mr. Flexible and Good Natured, went on a whirlwind tour of friends and family staying with: the Boss-Talmans in San Francisco, Cousin Joel in San Francisco, the Nixons in Cloverdale, the Grovers in Oakland, and finally Nana in Oakland. I heard from him every other day or so. He missed me (us) but he did just fine and from all reports he was a good guest and fun to be around. I’m so proud of him. It’s a wonderful life skill to be able to go with the flow and be polite and accommodating and accepting of other people when you’re under some amount of stress (worrying about your brother and missing your family) for an extended period. Proud of you, Tobe.

Friends: Many, many thanks to those folks mentioned above who went out of their way to care for Toby, get him to his next caretaker, feed, clothe and entertain him, and in many ways ease my mind so completely that I had no worries about my baby. That was such a gift. Thank you all so so much.

More loving friends: To the many friends who drove way out of their way to come take care of me, of Mark and me, and Ben with goodies, companionship, and distraction during our two plus weeks here in LA: THANK YOU. You made this period almost feel like a vacation, and I so appreciate that.

Today we head back into LA to visit my lil’ sis, Jenn, and then off to the airport to return home. Looking forward to seeing my honey back at our lovely little rinky-dink Santa Rosa Airport, and all my boys back at Three Boys Farm (and yes, that includes our two cats, two mini-donkeys, and our horse). So glad to be returning with a hale, healthy and TALL middle boy. It’s been quite the time.

The Importance of Digging

LEGO Bar Mitzvah boy made by Harry 

This piece has just been published in the HomeSchool association of California's monthly magazine. I thought I'd share it here, too...

When my oldest son, Harry, was in preschool (in the years before the idea of homeschooling was even a glimmer of an idea in our brains) we decided to keep him there for an extra year, to delay his entering kindergarten. We were not aiming to give him an academic edge, we just felt he needed another year of digging in the sandbox, another year of enjoying his passion.

Digging figured largely into his array of interests. Big diggers, shovels, sand, dirt. For years he collected information about all the large earthmovers. We had a sandbox, we went to the park and the beach. Dig dig dig. Holes and tunnels, moats, and waterways. When we moved to the country seven years later we lured him with images of acres of dirt to dig in and an old blue tractor he could learn to drive.

That passion for digging and machinery was closely linked to a love of Duplo, then Lego, trains, monster trucks, and…I’m sure none of this is particularly unfamiliar to you, right?

When building with Lego wasn’t enough (and by “building” I mean inventing new and amazing creations, not the ones from the instruction manuals, which were promptly lost and rarely built more than once; big Lego sets were for scoring huge quantities of cool pieces), Harry began to search the web for inspiration and found customized Lego. He learned to use a dremel and drilled miniscule holes into the sides and heads of mini-figs (little Lego people) into which he glued extra arms and horns. He bought and learned to use a sticker making machine to make new decals for the mini-fig faces and bodies as well. He ordered special parts and used them to create whole new categories of custom Lego pieces.

Recently, I was organizing some of our digital photo and video files and found “piles” of movies he’d made years ago with Lego stop-action animation, silly animated movies with action figures, and plain old silly kid comedies. I thought about the huge bins of foam swords and modified-Nerf guns cluttering every corner of our house. I thought about the three bins of “dress up” clothes we keep around for impromptu theatrical productions and the bin full of multicolored rolls of duck tape, mostly down to their last few feet. And then I thought about the wood scraps turned into boxes and frames, the PVC pipe turned into potato cannons and marshmallow shooters. Materials. Not only does Harry have a huge love for creating, he loves his supplies.

Many of Harry’s passions (one could call them obsessions) have an artsy-craftsy look. Beyond the Lego customization, he has delved into polymer clay, duck tape (he’s taught classes at the HSC conference several times and sold his duck tape rose pens at the MAKER faire once), chainmail, computer graphics, and PhotoShop. This kid is always coming up with a new hobby, a new outlet for all of his ideas, a new item to collect. At age 12 he reinvented one of our favorite games, River, Road and Rail (from Ravensburger), into a travel edition with magnetic board and pieces. He wrote an article about it which was published in MAKE magazine. Very cool for my budding inventor.

This passionate explosion of creativity has never looked orderly. After all, A.A. Milne said, “One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” His room is chaotic, paper scraps, ruined duck tape pieces, and foam litter the hall outside his room, the rug under the project table (I mean, the dining room table), and the deck. Some projects are completed, some not. Harry is an odd kind of perfectionist who, unlike me who spends untold hours trying to choose the exact right font for a poster, expects things to be perfect the very first go. His work sometimes lacks precision and fine detail. But he’s often already on to the next invention, the next solution to a puzzle, the next opus, too busy to worry about that.

There was a time when I wondered what would come from this. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that this love of materials and building and creating would be able to manifest anything worthwhile. For some reason I looked past his constant stream of creations and forgot my mantra “it’s the process not the product that counts.” As he moved deeper into his teen years, I kept worrying about college and careers. I fretted, “What does all this Lego mean?” When I stepped back I could appreciate that creative energy that surged through him, but up close my academic sheriff was clacking in my ear about what hard-core subjects was he mastering and why wasn’t he interested in chemistry and when would he buckle down and study math?

And then one day a few years back I had a realization. He and I sat at the kitchen table chatting about the previous two weeks and what’d he’d been working on. I had been away dealing with a family matter, and we are unschoolers, so his time was his own then as always. What had he done? He’d Steampunked a Nerf gun, he’d created some goggles for his Steampunk costume, he’d worked on his chainmail tunic, he’d made something in his dad’s workshop in the basement, something about a saw. My brain was going straight to “What will he do for a living?” when suddenly it hit me.

Harry in his Frogoggles and a bleached design shirt.

“How would you like to check out some backstage theatre classes at the JC?” I asked him. “I think you would love making props, costumes and sets. And I think they would love you!” (I’ve always felt that one of the down-sides to homeschooling was the lack of a marching band, but it suddenly hit me that there was also a serious lack of a theatre arts department and had he attended a brick and mortar high school he’d definitely be hanging out there backstage!) Three months later he walked into the Props class ready to build props for the upcoming shows. He came home saying, “I sat there in that class tonight and realized this is what I want to do with my life.” At age 16 he was the youngest in the class, but he already knew his way around the power tools (see above) and even helped show some of the other students how to use them.

Now, two years later he has taken props (three times), set design, lighting, and acting (as well as anthropology, 3D art, American Sign Language, and more). He was the assistant props designer for two shows last year, the spot(light) op(erator) for a show the year before. He gets glowing reports from his theatre arts professors and knows that ultimately this is what he wants to do with his life.

(Interestingly, that lack of attention to detail? That’s the right mindset when creating on-stage props. Who can tell that a line is wiggly or a drip of paint escaped the outline from 40 - 100 feet away?)

He’s still bubbling over with enthusiasm about all things crafty. And Lego still sits in large bins in his room. There are times we still hear him, at age 18, sift-sift-sifting through the multitudinous plastic pieces, a new building plan coursing through his brain. He has plans this fall to do an apprenticeship with a contractor who runs an intentional spiritual community in Hawaii. For two months he will be meditating, doing yoga and learning to build houses. (Did I neglect to mention that one of his passions is meditation, something he’s been practicing for the past seven years?) We never know where each new creative pursuit will lead, but at least now I finally thoroughly accept that it doesn’t matter, because he’s living in his passion.

textversation

It took 40 hours but Harry finally arrived in Buenos Aires last night just past midnight. He was greeted by his lovely and warm hosts, who apparently said, "Welcome home, Harry!" He sounded exhausted but quite happy when we talked to him last night at almost 2 am Argentina time.

Throughout his ordeal at Dulles International Airport he kept such a cool head, it was astounding. His plane took off 15 hours late and through it all he was riding the wave, just dealing with it like a pro.

Oh, and texting his mama.

I had a deja vu moment yesterday morning. He texted me at 6:45 am west coast time to tell me he was finally boarding the plane. We texted back and forth for a couple minutes and then he found out that they'd changed their minds, there was some mechanical difficulty and everyone needed to sit down. Though it was probably the hardest moment for Harry (he had stayed up all night long and was totally and completely exhausted), he sat down and waited. We texted back and forth on and off until he actually did board (at 11:45 am), buckled himself in and shut his phone off.

At that moment I realized it was just like a morning about a month (to the day) ago when Ben and I had texted back and forth for a few hours until the moment he was wheeled into surgery at Shriners Hospital. It felt so familiar, the light-hearted chit chat, the reassuring comments I would make, the palpable nervousness on their ends, but the good humor throughout it all, the fact that they both came to me, their mama, in this time of anxiety and anticipation because that was safe haven.

I love that. I love this technology. I say "bah" to all the folks out there who judge the texting generation as not being connected enough. I don't believe it. Those "textversations" are real and deep and would have felt awkward and irritating if we'd had them on the phone. Somehow the silences between comments don't add up the same way in a textversation as they do on the phone. I suspect if we only had the phone we wouldn't have talked for an hour and a half.

And you can't do the cute little emoticons if you're talking to someone, either. ;)

I also love my relationship with my boys. I love that they open up to me, want to be with me during those times, text me. Me! I love that we are so connected and I am their safe harbor. It's a wonderful role to have and it's really all about the relationship.

I urge you to read Harry's blog: Don't Laugh at Me, Argentina. He's quite amusing and has a strong voice. He's already devoted to filling us all in on the details of his life across the equator.

Today, on Father's Day, I am thinking of my father, of course, and feeling bittersweet about Harry's trip. It's a trip my father would have been so thrilled to observe. He would have read each of Harry's blog posts with a huge smile and a large and loud chuckle at the end. He loved good stories, especially about foreign ports, dashing young men (dancing tango?) with sexy young women. Harry's story would have fed him immeasurably. Today I am feeling the space my dad left behind this past year...and am still baffled by the fact that he won't be coming back. I really keep having this sense that he's just on a long vacation...out to sea in a way. But, I remind myself, he's gone...the final voyage, I suppose.

I won't be writing much in the next few weeks [we head off to a LARP campout tomorrow (until Thursday) and then send Toby off to Camp Tawonga on Sunday, Ben to Nana's house and Mark and I head to Rancho Pescadero for our 20th anniversary celebration week], so check on Harry at the link above and I'll catch you back up when I can.

red-eye night

Did I say momentous? Did I imply today would be a new beginning, his first solo flight?

No one knew what the universe had in store for Harry today, now did they?

I am exhausted, so I will make this short and to the point: Harry is stuck at Dulles Airport in DC, the entire United Airlines computer system having crashed around 7 pm tonight. For hours we texted and called back and forth trying to support him in dealing with this very unexpected situation. Finally, about 30 minutes ago he found out that his flight will be taking off tomorrow morning at 10 am, only 12 hours late.

Quite the adventure for my hatchling, no?

Waiting for his plane in SF...this one was on time and we were blissfully
unaware of the chaos soon to hit airports worldwide!

What is so amazing to me is that Harry has always been a person for whom changes in plans are very distressing. It's not that he's inflexible, just that he likes to know what's coming down the pike. Last minute changes throw him way off balance and cause spikes of fear and anxiety. He doesn't just get upset or grumpy, he goes sky high in his response. With Harry it's always ExTrEmEs. Never gray areas. He's either c a l m or he's on HIGH alert.

I knew that this trip would push the envelope on that because I would not be there to help him navigate. (I am often a buffer.) He'd have to ask for help, make his own plans, be responsible about schedules and waking up on time, and the like. He'd have to roll with the punches (as my master teacher, Polly McCall used to tell me). All of these things are challenging to him, but they're all a part of living in the world, so I looked forward to him having to figure them out.

But not quite like this. I never envisioned the universe saying, "You don't like last minute changes? You don't like not knowing what's coming next? Oh, do we have a situation for you!"

And yet. Harry is hanging out at Dulles, on his laptop, watching movies on Netflix, texting his friends, keeping us up to date on Facebook. He's got a blue blankie from United and an outlet to plug into. Rather than a red-eye flight to Buenos Aires, he's got a red-eye night in Washington DC. Tomorrow at 10 am, so they say, his flight will take off.

I pray it is uneventful.

Until then, I'm keeping him close to my heart.

tomorrow



photo courtesy of morguefile.com



Tomorrow will be a momentous day.

Tomorrow will be a life passage, a milestone.

Tomorrow your world will begin to grow in size, exponentially, immeasurably.

Tomorrow you'll wake up on one continent and journey to another.

Tomorrow you will really be on your own.

Tomorrow I'll wake you early: you'll be grumpy from a bad night's sleep.

Your expectation of it being so did not make this morning arrive more quickly, or come more gently.

I'll make you a cup of tea: you'll wimper a bit at me.
You'll shower and dress and look at me with soulful eyes.
Tomorrow we'll load up the van and pile in and drive the miles to the airport in the big city (stopping along the way in Chinatown to load you up with dim sum delights).
Tomorrow I'll walk you to the counter where you'll show your passport and deposit your luggage. Tomorrow, I imagine, you'll want to do it yourself.
You won't need me tomorrow as much as you feel you don't need me today.

Tomorrow your wings will fully come in.
Your feathers will fluff and you'll step to the edge of the nest.
You've taken some test flights, yes, but this time you'll step up to the rim and then push off.

You'll soar.
         
I will sit back and watch, feeling the mix, the familiar mix, of joy and sorrow, sorrow and joy.
Watching my hatchling take to the skies.

Every mother on the planet must do this one day.

My day is tomorrow as is yours.


Safe travels, Hatchling. I look forward to hearing about all that you've seen.