17th birthday letter

Dear N,

This week you will have your 17th birthday and yet I can still remember so clearly setting you on the floor in your portable car seat the night that your dad and I brought you home from the hospital.

I remember thinking, "I don't know what in the fuck I'm doing."

And 17 years still later, I still don't know what in the fuck I'm doing. 

You change and I change and life changes around us. 

What hasn't changed is that I'm still winging it. 

You never really got to celebrate your 16th birthday because your birthday always comes in the thick of Girl Scout cookie booth season (late Feb-mid March). 

By the time that was ending last year, COVID had hit, and we were quarantining.

This was your cupcake when we finally got to celebrate with family. 

Your 16th birthday gift was to see Elton John in concert, which was canceled and is "supposed" to happen in spring 2022. 

We shall see. 

Your field hockey season was weird.

Your junior year of high school has been weird.

And on top of all that, we've dealt with Pa's cancer, surgeries, and treatment. 

I can't say this has been an especially easy year for our family.

I have been thinking a lot about being a mother to you as I'm also thinking about being a daughter to my own parents.

As I'm seeing you grow up, I'm seeing them grow old.

[I realize I'm talking about me at the moment which is SO NOT COOL in a birthday letter but bear with me.]

It occurred to me one day recently that having a child means subjecting that child to loss. 

Yes, I know, this is a DUH moment because life is all about loss and sadness but that is not at all what people think about when they find out they are having a wanted child. 

But a big loss/sadness is watching your parents become older, become different from the strong people they used to be. They are still themselves but smaller, weaker, more fatigued, more fragile. 

Having a child means subjecting that child to having to become an adult, and even though your dad and I had you and bought a house and have bank accounts and do grown-up stuff, we're still children as long as our parents are around. 

So in thinking about when you were born, I thought about how we made the decision (unknowingly) that you would suffer, be sad, experience loss. 

As I'm watching my parents get older, I'm looking at you and feeling thankful that I see my beautiful and funny and kind and a little-bit-weird daughter who helps balance out the sadness I feel in my own role as a daughter right now.

 

Today, when I sat chatting with Nana, she told me about her own mom getting older years and years ago. Grandma's eyes were so poor she had the thickest glasses the eye doctor could make plus a magnifying glass to read the paper. 

Nana told me that her mom said to her, "What if I go blind?"

And Nana said, "Well, I guess you'll just bump into stuff."

And I laughed.

Nana didn't say that to her mom really (those were her thoughts at the time), but it sounded like something I would say, and it occurred to me that, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for you, you come from at least 2 generations of women who are funny and have close relationships with their own moms. 

I hope that this 17th year is as happy as it can be given all the crap going on around us. 

Your life will not be always happy and joyous which is what every parent imagines their baby's life will be on the night they bring them home from the hospital. 

Every parent expects the world to crack wide open for their child and every parent experiences the harsh realization that this will not happen. 

Their child will be human; flawed and full of foibles. 

The world will not always or even often be kind. 

Your life will be happy and sad and frustrating and easy at all different times and in lots of different ways.  

I hope that throughout your life you are able to enjoy the happy and easy and sit with the sad and frustrating, knowing that all of these things will ebb and flow. 

I hope throughout your life you know I have always loved you. 

Momma

The cancer has returned

Dad has a new and seemingly fast-growing tumor very close to where his first tumor was. He will have another surgery in 2 weeks. 

At this point, none of us knows what else this entails. 

Will there be more chemo and radiation? We don't know.

Since the cancer came back so quickly, are there trials for immunotherapy that he could do? We don't know.

Has the cancer spread beyond just that tumor? We don't know.

When dad went through his first surgery in the late summer/early fall, I did two things.

First, I tried to find humor in suffering because there is humor to be found if only if that humor is absolute absurdity. 

Dad's incision cut through the entire right side of his face so when I would call to check up on him I'd ask how Blackbeard was doing. Dad could have easily been a stand-in for one of the pirates on the Jack Sparrow franchise. 

He'd had to have his top teeth removed for radiation so I got him a pair of wind-up teeth for Christmas. 

The second thing I did was I worried and stewed. 

While my antidepressant helps me from completing stopping eating when I am worried, I had little appetite or desire to eat. I fretted about whether the first PET scan would find cancer riddling his body, making further treatments pointless. 

I felt such relief when he showed no cancer beyond that one spot on his face. 

And now I recognize that me worrying or stewing made not one iota's difference. (Rationally, I know worrying never makes any difference.)

I can actuate zero change in any of this. 

For the moment, I'm finding myself feeling very "whatever" about the entire thing. And by "whatever" I don't mean that I don't care; I mean that me fretting or worrying will change absolutely nothing. 

I simply feel sad. It devastates me to know my dad is suffering. 

I also feel angry at my utter lack of control, at the unfairness for my dad and for thousands and millions of people who are facing such things. I am angry for the Rwandans who faced genocide and the Jews who were forced into camps and the Native Americans who were viciously slaughtered without any "control" over any of it. 

I am angry at the human condition. And while some might say this is anger at God, I don't believe in sugar-daddy God who I can turn to for miracles. I don't believe that God makes things happen or that God's ways are beyond our understanding. 

If I subscribe to that belief, I am forced to believe that this God is also sadistic. 

For my own sanity, it is better for me to believe that nature is cyclical and sometimes there is no reason beyond the simple fact that everything dies. It is here that I have to chuck Christian God out the window and adopt Buddhist impermanence.

(And here is where I can make a shitty joke that God did "open a window," through which I tossed him to make way for Buddhist thought.)

However, I do find myself angry at all the people who might think or say stupid things like "Things happen for a reason" and "Pain has a purpose" and "God never gives you more than you can handle."

Because these are unmitigated lies. 

Life regularly gives people more pain than they can handle; they survive because their only other option is to commit suicide.

It is beyond stupid to be angry at the mindset of other people because I know people adopt whatever mindset they need to help them cope just as I am adopting mindsets right now to help me cope. 

I am angry at my uselessness to effect anything that will make this go away. It is easier to put a name to my blame. 

So when I am able I am reminding myself to simply sit with my anger and my sadness and feel them in all their misery. 

It is fucking off-season, and I should not be dealing with sports shit

I learned a long time ago, both through teaching and being a mom, that I do not like lots of rules. And this isn't because I don't like rules. 

Rules are sometimes necessary. 

People don't always act in their own best interests, nor in the best interests of the society. 

I simply learned that the more rules you have, the more rules you have to police. 

For me, it made more sense to pick the 3 major things I would not tolerate and let that other shit go. 

Kids knew I wasn't going to nit-pick them to death; they also knew the hill on which I was willing to fight and die, and as a general rule, they didn't climb that hill with any regularity.

My kids have learned the same. 

So when I think back to the 2019 dress code kerfluffle, it may have seemed like I was anti-rule.

While I thought the dress code rules were too strict and did penalize girls and non-cis-gender students, what raised my hackles the most was the utter lack of consistency of the rules. The rule-enforcers were not consistent which was maddening for both students and parents who may have legitimately tried to follow the dress code but then said "fuck it" when the rules weren't actually enforced.

This week, I had to dig into the state high school athletics bylaws to see what the rules are about what coaches can do to and for players during off-season. 

Language was used by a certain person who was acting as a mouthpiece for the coach about these off-season activities being "mandatory." This person was more or less telling student athletes to change their winter work schedules in order to have team-building Zoom activities.

And I was pretty certain that if it is off-season, no one can tell any player what to do with his/her time. Not the coach; not the mouthpiece for the coach; not a principal; not a parent. 

It occurred to me to ask myself: "Am I playing both sides regarding rules?"

Do I use the rules when they help me/my kid and do I fight against them when they potentially harm me/my kid?

My first answer is yes.

And while that bothers me a little, I have never claimed to be anything other than acutely human.

But I needed to think more about it. 

Why would I seek to enforce a rule in one respect and fight against a rule in another respect?

Both involve parents and their children. 

Both involve something that can be a hassle to parents and their children. 

One rule was inconsistently enforced; the other rule was seemingly not being followed. 

I don't believe that life is fair--it is completely unfair that my life has been as privileged as it has been while other people's lives have not been. I don't expect fairness and honestly deserve a lot more unfairness in my life than I actually get. 

So I wonder if it was an equity thing regarding who may be penalized? 

The dress code rules penalized females and non cis-gender students. It penalized poorer students. It penalized students whose parents couldn't bring them clothes because they can't leave their jobs. 

The off-season thing would penalize kids who have made other plans in the off-season, like church or jobs or simply just enjoying a break. 

While this exercise in reflection was somewhat enjoyable for me because I like a good stew, it also peeved me to no end that I'm having to check the rules and have phone conversations to say things like, "That is against the rules." 

And about fucking sports, of all things. 

My first COVID shot

My COVID shot experience from yesterday:

I'm sharing this because I know some people are hesitant to get the shot.

I received my first shot yesterday at approximately 11:35 am because I am employed by the local school district.

No anaphylactic symptoms.

Within four hours, I did feel fatigue and body aches severe enough that I just went and laid in my bed. My body felt like I had the flu, but my head did not. (You know when you are really sick you get that brain fog where you just fall asleep and don't care if you die.)

Today I feel my normal 47-year-old aches and pains.

Since I spent a lot of time in my car yesterday waiting for the shot, I had plenty of time to think. 

Here are some of those thoughts:

I. I don't know what is in the vaccine

A lot of people say things like, "I don't know what is in the shot; I'm not putting that in my body."

That isn't an unacceptable reason, really. 

What is unacceptable is that I ate an english muffin with peanut butter, drank my coffee with flavored creamer, and took an antihistamine and my Lexapro yesterday morning before I went to get my shot, and I do not know what is in all those things that I put into my body.

I put toothpaste in my mouth; I don't know what is in that.

I rubbed deodorant on my armpits, and I have no clue what is in that canister.

The argument that you may have about not knowing what is in a vaccine falls apart when you realize that you don't know what is in ANY of the stuff you regularly put into or on your body.

II. Chemicals aren't natural

Chemicals are totally natural; most of them derive naturally in the earth (or in space).

Everything that is in the world came from the world (or space).

We often combine lots of natural things to make synthetic things. And here is where we go back to the foods, beverages, and medications I mentioned above, most of which are a combination of natural things and synthetic things that I happily and without any thought put into my body every day.

III. I'm not taking this vaccine to avoid sickness

I don't look at any vaccine as something that is 100 percent guaranteed. Nothing is 100 percent guaranteed.

I think of a vaccine as insurance. I hope I don't get sick, but if I do, I hope the vaccine keeps me from getting so sick that I end up hospitalized or dying.

That is the ultimate goal, especially with a virus that is so weird and new that doctors have no real idea why some old people get it and die and others get it and are fine. Why do some younger people get it and die? Why do some people get it and have extremely long-term complications?

They don't know.

So I'm not getting the COVID shot to avoid getting the sniffles or even achiness and fatigue and a big freaking headache.

I don't have car insurance because I may get a little $200 ding in my bumper; I get car insurance because if I get my car totaled, I've got more protection.

I insure my house not because I may get a small roof leak or I the plumbing may clog. I get it to have some protection should my house CATCH ON FIRE.

I have medical insurance not for the strep throat or the ingrown toenail. I have it for the unexpected appendicitis.

IV. Would you take the shot to go on vacation?

Someone I know who is a nurse in a nursing home said that she was hesitant to get the shot until she realized she would have to have it in order to go on a cruise this coming summer.

And when she realized it could jeopardize her vacation she knew that her "reasons" for not wanting the shot were bullshit.

I thought this was a great litmus test for whether a person really has legitimate concerns or bullshit concerns about a shot.

If you travel to certain parts of the world, you are supposed to get immunizations.

In 2022, N and I will hopefully be going to Ecuador as part of a school trip. These are the shots we'll need, and I will happily get them if it means I get to safely go visit another part of the world.

So.....

I didn't feel great last night, but I know it was my immune system having a response to the vaccine making it so that if I meet the COVID virus "in the wild" my body will have a memory of what it is and how to fight it. 

And I'm happy to do it if it helps me avoid hospitalization and helps keep other people whose are older, younger, weaker, stronger, whatever a little bit safer.