Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Steady As We Go

Hiiiiiiiiii! Hi Universe! Hi, and thank you sooooooo much for punching me in the face yesterday. YOU. ROCK.

A few things: Now is the time for us to start noticing changes in Penelope. Changes that have the potential to shape the rest of her educational needs, emotional development and social integration.

These things are known, have been known and have been playing a kind of demonic hide & seek for some time in my mind (I picture eight or nine little girls dressed in ragged night-gowns, hair in ratty strands, skin pale and nearly translucent, bouncing in freakish rhythms with arms akimbo and knees out at odd angles waiting to pounce through the cellar door one at a time. Scary. It's scary). Hot husband said something so smart about her yesterday, he said: "We can't not be prepared, we have to be ready for what's coming so we're not able to just live in the moment with her, we have to be ready". So, you know, we wait. We live and love and we wait. And me? I'm always kinda a leeeetle bit worried.

Well, one of those freaky little bitches popped out of the door.

And the kick to the gut was fairly awful. The shock knocked us down. We had no words.

I probably need to come up with a better metaphor for this, but grief is one tricky, nasty beast. It hangs on, man. And yesterday I cried (not easy with my post-op eyes, I assure you) and cried and worried with my lovely husband if we'd be able to save Penelope from a life of loneliness and struggles because of her increasing inability to control her impulses, to get along, to play nice, to fit in. Will she isolate everyone to the point of well, isolation?

Falling behind in school I can handle, I can get tutors (and math can kiss my ass, anyway). Falling behind in life is unbearable. That is a heartbreak I have no framework for. So guess what? We're going to build one.

Late in the day yesterday, looking across the kitchen at my achingly handsome man nod in agreement as I said that we're so lucky that we have each other, that this kind of thing tears families apart and demolishes relationships and that is not our destiny, goddamnit; that was some beautiful shit. And then when he said that we'll do it, we'll help her, she will be ok. We'll all be fucking great; that was even better.

Take that universe. TAKE THAT.


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Day 4 post-op. I'm still mostly on the couch, mostly drinking fluids & mostly feeling really, really lucky.

How acutely aware I have become of my good fortune these past several years! I don't want to be anyone or anywhere else (though, since I'm being all honest here, a big ole bag of money could present itself at any time; I wouldn't turn that shit down).

A few days ago I got plastic surgery. I elected to have a (very talented) doctor medicate me, numb me up and stick a laser into my eyes. I was talking the whole time, cracking jokes with the doc and his sicko surgical assist who both reminded me of my precious and demented co-workers. It was awesome.

For ever and ever I've hated my face; my eyes to be exact. Yes. HATED. I inherited huge under-eye fat pockets from my father and every year they grew and grew and grew and as far as I was concerned: They Took Over. They made me look like someone I wasn't. Made me look like I felt bad, tired, stressed, angry. And while some of those adjectives certainly apply to me from time to time, they are not WHO I AM every single minute of every single day of every single year.

I'm in therapy. I'm on anti-depressants. I've radically changed my diet. I drink tons of good, clean water and I'm a full-on grown up lady who's knocking on the door of her 43'rd birthday feeling like she deserves not just a metaphorical clean slate, but a fucking real deal ready for my close up clean slate.

So, I did it. I did it and I've been tingling with excitement and joy and gratefulness for the past 4 days. I know myself pretty well, and I know the feeling will last. That it will temper itself, spread out and take hold in all of my proximal and distal bits and get real good and comfy and hang out for a while.

I don't know that if I didn't have Lincoln and Penelope that I would be able to accept my life with this level of gusto and love. I don't know that I'd be able to feel this good and conscious of all that is right and truly amazing about my life. They saved me.

And last night, while my boy was soaking in the tub after an awesome play-date with kids from his school, an afternoon of raucous destructo-boy play at home, a nasty diaper change that showed me that a 4 year old can still shit up his back if he fucking feels like it and a horror show episode in the bathroom involving toilet paper and used tampons in some sort of Downton Abbey macabre tea party scene, I still felt lucky.


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Do you hear what I hear?

Remember the scene in Shrek when Donkey gets fairy dust sprinkled on him and he floats into the air and he yells "I can fly!" and the castle guard yells "He can talk!"? Well, that's pretty much what's been going on around here for the past few weeks. Yes weeks. I wanted to be sure.

It started one morning when sweet magic man and his genotype. phenotype twin sister, PJ
were leaving the house for the bus stop. PJ looked up the stairs from the landing to her dad and said "bye dad! love you!" And not missing a step, not a beat, Mr. Lincoln belts out: "bye dad! love you!".

Cue full on daddy love melt down. I was at work but I got the text and the phone call and the pride and shock and wonder my hot husband relayed was palpable.

When Link was a little, little baby, before we knew anything about his genetic anomalies, Chris was the first one to make him laugh. A glorious sound never before heard in nature and every single night after for weeks and weeks and weeks, as soon as Chris got home from work, I'd present him with the baby and say (my excitement flowing like electric shocks) "do it again! make him laugh!".

And so it has been with this talking thing. Every moment that I see him since the last time seeing him, I just sit and listen to him talk and look at his perfect face and mouth forming words and sentences:
"Mama! You back!" He yells when I get home from work.
"Mama? Are you?" When he can't find me.
"Me eat." When he's hungry.
"Pelpees bus." When PJ's comes first.
"Wake up, baby!" Trying to rouse the cat.

And then all the naming of all the things that have ever been invented:
"book, book, book, book..."
"light, light, light, light..."
"belly, belly, belly, belly.."

His proclivity to perseverate on the words he's saying is almost as if he's convincing himself that he's right; that he's making sure he has it correct in his fantastic brain. For now, it's adorable. Later, when it turns into:
"fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..."
"shit, shit, shit, shit..."
Probably not so adorable.

It's no secret that I have lamented his lack of verbal communication. That it is something that has made me so sad. That hearing his voice is a thing I have yearned for.

And now I have it! I got what I wanted AGAIN!