Something I heard last night on NPR has been with me for the last 12 hours or so. Paraphrasing here: "The world now means that sometimes we have to shut down a whole city, don't give a damn about the economic impact and just get the job done."

I get it and I'm ok with it. I was "stuck" in NYC after 9/11 and it made perfect, logical sense that Boston was locked down, too.

What I don't get and what I don't want is for it to sound like some horrific hardship that this is our new normal (I dread the news today, but I'm drawn to it just the same). What I do want is for the last 36 hours in Boston to come across as: "Yeah, bitches! We will close down a whole fucking city LIKE THAT, and we will rock the shit out of it and you can all suck it!"

I  know pretty much next to nothing about these types of operations; no inside workings of the FBI or law enforcement in general, but my gut is telling me that the responders and their commanders in Boston need to be hailed and lauded and studied for the next time.

There will be a next time. There's just so much hate and so much access to information and materials that can be used to kill people. Evolution isn't always positive.

Finding Focus

Lincoln was up at 6:30 this morning. My au pair starts at 7. This is what you would call a "First world, white lady" problem.

I have a lot of these. I need my roots dyed. I need tree work done on my property. I need interior design work done. I'm out of organic apples. I have to get more wine. I need to have three more appointments to finish work on a root canal. I don't have a pair of black, every day boots or a black purse.

I need to pay for my kid's day camp, my property taxes and the fee for my NEW au pair. Ruby's 13th birthday is coming up and I have to pay the deposits on all the reservations I made.

I've got to find new psychotherapists for my daughters because for varying reasons, the ones they have aren't effective.

I mean, am I fucking serious?

As I type on my macbook air, my kid playing with his ipad in the background, my other two kids lounging on the couch downstairs as they watch the flatscreen TV, am I really finding things to complain about?

Yup.

I know I am living a charmed life. My children are alive and here on earth with me. My husband loves me and thinks I am as amazing as I wish I was. We both have jobs. We have friends...

So why the stresses and worries? Why can't I materialize any number of the patients I take care of every single day who have NOTHING in moments like these. The women who are addicts, living on a wing and a prayer, who have no family, no support, bad teeth, terrible health, violent spouses/parents/friends? The ones who know they won't be taking their babies home. The ones who don't know where their next meal will come from when they leave the hospital.

Gratefulness is a gift that I think I have. But the trappings of the life I am living prevent me from truly realizing it as often as I should. Perspective is hard to have when you can't see farther than the back of your own head; when life is so filled with things to do, we can't refocus our vision on things outside of ourselves.

I try. I really do. But right now I have to fill out camp forms and finish my coffee (with half and half and agave syrup) and put Lincoln's ipad on the charger and, and, and, and...

My Cup Runneth Over (with wine, of course)

The great thing about life is that you never know when it's gonna whisk you off your feet and make sweet, sweet love to you.

I feel like I resist talking about the good stuff all the time because I don't want to come off as some fucking Pollyanna (which I am not). Sometimes I think that if I write down all the good, then I will lose my edge. Total bullshit, I know.

So. Anyway, the other night, after Penelope NAILED her opening performance as Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast, we were weaving and wading through the pretty incredible crowd in the lobby signing autographs, when she looks up at me and says: "Mama, this is the BEST day of my life!" She was holding one of my hands in her two tiny ones and her eyes were sparkling out of her skull. It was a parenting moment I wanted to bottle up and take secret whiffs out of for the rest of my days.

I'm not gonna lie, hot husband and I had serious, serious doubts that she was going to be able to do it, to follow through and get on the damn stage, remember her cues, her lines, not faint, not fidget, not cry, not run off (or freeze) in absolute panic. I had 10mg of Inderal ready if I thought she'd need it.  I feel like my two other children disappeared during the last weeks of rehearsal. All eyes, energies, tactical plans were keenly focused on Penelope and her opening night.

And, well, that's when that stud, the universe, came in all smoldering and ready for action and laid. Shit. Down.

That little girl soared, she was electric and gracious and PROUD. And her mama is still rolling in the post-coital bliss.

I've thought for a long time that as the guardians of special children, we need to exploit their gifts and in dong so, see their deficits fade.

This can be tricky territory out in the world of IEP's and transition meetings and appropriate settings.  For the most part, the world wants our kids "table ready" and not stimming and hooting and whizzing and whoooing and crying and yelling and swearing. They want them to have clean fingernails all the time and be toilet trained before they go to school and be really good at wiping their own butts. You think I don't want that shit? But, that's just not my reality all of the time. I mean, I get some of those things some of the time. So instead I focus on what my children are really, really good at all the time. It's amazing what that little paradigm shift will do for you.

Penelope is a mimic. An awe inspiring mimic. She copies popular culture to a "T". Her emotional range is very well suited for the stage and her loosey-goosey, tiny frame makes her a fascinating figure to watch. Helllooooo! ACTING. A.C.T.I.N.G. I am totally hitching my wagon to that little girl's star.

Fragile X can kiss my sweet ass this weekend. 

Trying it on

So, you know, it wasn't a tumor... it was what I thought it was (what my rational brain thought it was, that is).

And I know this is nuts and in no way am I being flippant, but it was kind of fun thinking it *was* a tumor. Fun because I don't act like that. I don't hang my insecurities out to dry. They're not emblazoned on my t-shirts and hats, not baked into my chocolate chip cookies. That shit is hidden way. Usually.

But the other day, the day when my tooth and jaw hurt so much I wanted to crawl under the desk and make a nice, loving home with the dust balls and paperclips and paper scraps, I voiced my pain: Literally.

I was afraid of the pain and I wasn't afraid to say so. The creepy-crawlies came out of my gray matter to play and I led them right to the amusement park and gave them free passes. I was worried and I said so. It hurt and I said so. And about halfway through my "feelings parade", I started to feel different. I started to feel good, like a person who can talk about her icky bits outside of her bedroom and her therapist's office (and the this website). I felt connected to the people around me in a way that was very, very different than I had experienced before.

Maybe the pain helped break down my defenses? I mean, that's got to be it, right? Anyway, whatever it was, it was AWESOME.

And by 9:30 the next morning, when my horrific cavity/nerve infection/tooth pain was *properly* diagnosed, I was ready to hear the news. And I was ready for novocaine and drills and news about root-canals and tooth reconstruction.

I'm not about to say that this new suit of mine totally fits. I don't think I've suddenly morphed into  a person who shares too much. But I do think there's been a shift. I think I'm beginning to see, that for me, it's OK to loosen the fuck up sometimes; to unbutton a few buttons. To be a little bit more human.

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.

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.

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!