So last night was the awards banquet for Lacrosse at the high school. We all went, enjoyed a pot luck dinner, and then received a nice surprise when the head coach (who is also Bean’s SpEd teacher) made a little speech and presentation about him. I filmed it on my phone, but it’s garbled, so I transcribed it here, because it’s really cool.

This kid…he tried out for my other sport first. He came out, and kind of only lasted a day. He really didn’t like the [football] atmosphere, but I still had him in my class. He sat back in his corner, did his thing, had his backpack with rainbows and lights… I asked him once if he had anything other than tie-dye. Nope. So we talked and talked. And one day, he says, “Hey Coach!” —and that struck me, because he usually called me Mr. C—this day he said “Hey Coach. I’m looking to try a sport and I’m thinking about Lacrosse or Crew.” I told him “Well, Crew costs a lot, so why dont you try Lacrosse? It’s not like football, we’re a different group, more of a family.” He told me he didn’t know what he was doing, and I assured him that we’d teach him. So he comes out the first day of practice, and you can see him going a mile a minute, trying to figure this sport out.

So as this is all going on, lo and behold, he’s also our local celebrity—he decides to tweet at Lidl about some peanut butter [laughter & applause cheers start of Bean! Bean! and the coach invites him to the front] And so he does all this and becomes a celebrity. Everyone knows who he is, knows his name, he’s giving away peanut butter everywhere [garbled in cheers and more shouts of “Bean!”] and then I get this hair-brained idea, two weeks before I decided to do it, “Hey! Lets do our charity game for autism! Bean, lets do something for autism!” Alright cool! He picked out the tie-dye, he picked out the slogan, he picked out the logo—everything! (me, off camera, “he didn’t tell us any of that!”) So we decided that’s what we’re going to do. And that’s something that, in talking to your mom—don’t make her cry!—I learned that this is the first time you have truly felt like you were part of a team. This is a very special group, and these guys loved having you as part of their team. We loved seeing you get the peanut butter [garbled, lots of laughter, more shouts of BEAN!] 

So this was his first year, and I’d go out before the games and I would have to tell the refs “Hey, I have a kid on the spectrum, so be aware, he’s going to get upset and say some things really, really loud [laughter, “Bean!”]—so don’t worry about it, let him be. So then the refs started knowing him and asking who the kid is who always wears the tie-dyes? The refs all knew about Bean, and they were impressed to see how much you’d grown from the start of the season to the end. I have seen you grow tremendously. You can go out and say “hi” to people now! You can interact with people you have no clue about, and now you’re standing here in front of everyone! [applause and cheering and BEAN!] We’re proud of you, Bean!

Coach hands him an award and they all shake his hand. He’s smiling and wiggling back and forth. It was really a lovely moment, and a testament to the power of Special Ed teachers and the work they do. Thanks, Coach C.

I don’t think this is going to turn into a law school blog, but the truth is my writing has always been personally experiential. Narrative is what I do, and when the story of my life shifts, writing is how I process it. Everyone’s story is always shifting—that is literally life. Stasis is illusory. Change is constant.

I’m starting to gather the things I’m going to need this fall. Like any new endeavor, there’s a lot of contradictory advice for people starting law school. Understandably, most of it’s geared towards twenty-three year olds. I’m literally going to be double the age of the majority of my classmates. I’ve chosen a boutique law school with a reputation for non-traditional representation, so I’m not the oldest student ever… but I’m definitely an outlier on the curve. Jon thinks a concerning possibility is my classmates potentially turning to me as a supportive mother-figure, and that I need to watch for that sapping my time/energy, since it’s a role I am know well. It’s highly likely I’ll be the only one currently raising four teenagers while attending law school. Am I crazy? Hang out with me and see!

I’m reading a book on understanding legal terms and vocabulary, and I’m listening to Serial Season 3, about the day-to-day goings-on in one American justice department (highly recommended, even if you’re not interested in lawyer-ing). I’ve got myself a heavy-duty, not-pretty but highly-functional backpack. I’ve got a planner. I’ve got a schedule tentatively worked out with full knowledge it will likely require immediate, on-going revisions to accommodate my family’s needs and the demands school places on my time.

I have a mentor. I have several, as a matter of fact—I’m super lucky to have friends who are lawyers, who are not only cheering me on, but offering support and advice about structure, time management, and stress.

It’s possible my kids are more excited about this than I am. They have spent their lives watching me jump into situations where advocacy and knowledge was a necessary tool. They each seem to have an impression of me that is certainly more fierce than I feel. Maybe all kids think their mom is a hero? They’re prepared, they say, to have me be less accessible than I have been for years. There are two things I believe about going back to school: It will be both harder, and very different than last time.

It’s going to be harder because it’s law school, not my undergrad. Of course it’s going to be harder—the subject matter dictates that it’s necessarily harder. For some reason I cannot quite understand, I feel compelled to do something really hard, at a time in my life when I could just relax and do not much. As my kids grow up and head off to college, I cannot fathom wandering around the slowly emptying house, content with lunches and shopping. I have spent the majority of my life doing what is required under pressure and in crisis; reacting rather than being proactive. Yes, I have done good and accomplished things, but often I have done so out of necessity, rather than exerting influence in a chosen direction. This is different.

It’s also going to be different because I have a present, engaged and highly functional co-parent and partner. Last time, it was all me, all the time. My kids witnessed first-hand what it took for me to graduate cum laude in 3 years. We were also concurrently experiencing ongoing trauma and loss coupled with the pressing drive for me to solely support us. This time, they have a stable home, they are older and moving towards their own lives, they are somewhat independent in some areas, and—God wiling and the creek don’t rise—we most likely won’t have to choose between keeping the heat on and buying food. We’re incredibly fortunate.

In a nutshell, I think this is maybe why I am so compelled to reach forward, to do something difficult but potentially valuable, to contribute to more than just my tiny sphere.

Todays legal word:

Appellate: /əˈpelət/ adjective
1. (especially of a court) concerned with or dealing with applications for decisions to be reversed. Specifically : having the power to review the judgment of another tribunal.

It was 2005 when I started really writing. Prior to that, I would write longhand on yellow legal pads. That writing was more frustrating than cathartic as the words spilling out jammed and piled up in a lahar behind the damming slowness of my hand pulling pen across paper.

My children were babies still—Jeffrey was three years old, and Bean was one. Abby was yet unimagined. Not even the wildest fortune teller would have dared predict what was waiting, what choices would lay before me, what terrifyingly rapid rivers of agency, loss, sorrow, and change would need to be forged. There is mercy in not knowing.

Is it that way for everyone? Does anyone get the life they planned? I look around and I see people who seem to wrestle something that looks like control–but it also looks like it comes at a steep cost. David told me once that life simply is pain. We enter the world with pain, and every step of our lives, things must die for us to live–our food, our homes, our plans, each time we make a choice, one petal has to fall for another to bloom. We look away, because it’s almost too much to bear. But the truth remains. He meant it as a comfort, that we shouldn’t be afraid, that we can lean into it, as the kids say. I’m still trying to work that one out.

For almost two decades, the heavy matter at the center of my universe has been raising the children entrusted to me. Everything else radiated out in giant spiral arms from the gravitational pull of my personal galaxy, around which I built my entire adult life. Even in the midst of the dismantling years, the solo years, I was fortunate enough that I was able to maintain that core of stability around which all else revolved.

 This reality formed the core of my identity. (that’s big stuff)

Like the words that couldn’t flow freely onto the page because of my manuscript pen, I noticed a store of potential talents and desires quietly incubating and growing. I felt my need quietly rising to find an outlet as I’ve watched my children begin to build their own worlds, exert their will on their lives, and to forge ahead as their own competent people. It’s exactly perfect.

It’s also pain.

Because of course it is. Parenting is one of the things that if you do it successfully, you make yourself obsolete. Oh, of course my kids will still need me, but not in the same intense way. The boundaries of those relationships are fluid and we are moving from a parent/child dynamic towards an entirely different adult relationship.

This is why my starting law school this fall is such a big deal. I am willingly leaving the sphere I have so carefully protected and cultivated for most of my adult life. I am stepping back just a bit, and just a bit before I have to, in order to pursue something really big. I sought this out, studied, prepared, and pursued it—I am choosing this.

We made this decision as a family. Each of our kids has been involved in the process, and frankly, it’s been me who has been the most reluctant. Why? Because it’s change. It’s big. It’s scary. It’s allowing myself to trust that Jon and the teenagers have got this, and that they will function just fine without me at the center of the universe. It’s trusting that our family doing things differently will be okay, and that I will still have value, even as I let go of some of the boundaries that defined me for the last two decades. It’s imagining a future for myself that is wildly different than I ever considered before. It’s believing I am smart enough. It’s trusting that there is truth and beauty and value amid the pain of growth, as I gently set down one mantle to pick up another.

When I was agonizing over this decision, Jeffrey looked at me with a wry smile on his face, and said, “Mom? Stop it. We’ve got this. You’ve done a good job, and we’re ready.” He grinned bigger, “Besides, you’d kick my ass if I turned down an offer like you have. How is it any different for you?” He had me. Jon stood next to him, arms folded, nodding and smiling.

So. There it is. My own family holding up a mirror for me to see myself. They’re right. I’m sure it will be wilder, messier and, ultimately, better than anything I can imagine. It always is. Come along with me on a new ride?

I’m not yet prepared to sort thought the tangle of emotions that accompanied the shooting at my kids school last week while I was away (for the very first time ever!). I mean, the confluence of things happening all at once makes me think I should have bought a lottery ticket instead of taken a flight to Florida.

But Florida it was. And my, my, my…

Of course Florida is home to wonderful communities, indigenous people, and regular lives. One of the reasons I opted to join Jon—other than never having been to Florida and it being a 48-hour gig—was because a close friend lives there and I wanted to see her. She’s a regular person—a college professor, a mom, and a recent PhD. But that regular part of Florida? That part with real things? That’s not what I found in Orlando.

I’m sure there must be countless evocative think-pieces on the artificiality and sprawl nurtured and fed by the enormous monster that is the Mouse-centered tourist industry in central Florida. I maybe should have read them first, because folks…I was not prepared. Mile after flat mile of low-slung hotels in inoffensive pastel colors with Bahamian shutters surrounded by man-made lakes with a single fountain (mosquito abatement, I was told). I suspect it’s a different experience if one stays on the Mouse properties and is seeking the entire Experience. What I saw, instead, given that we were not there for that experiences, was stark tiers of privilege and class.

Orlando–at least the parts down near the parks, struck me as a perfect Potemkin Village. Nothing is real, it’s all artifice. Depending on your socio-economic status, you can buy the really pretty village where the curtain is meticulously cultivated and maintained, where you’re carefully protected and insulated from the reality behind the scenes. But man, does that come at a cost.  People who cannot afford that level of cultivation—most folks, I imagine—have to opt for whatever they can afford in an attempt to experience this fantasy, which will be on one of the outward radiating circles from the Mouse-eared epicenter.

Every restaurant was contrived. Every store was packed to the rafters with mouse-themed merchandise–licensed to be sure, but not the same as available inside the parks, because that would dilute the brand and violate the curtain. Outside this most privileged and expensive circle, there were the Plan B parks—some of which appeared to be very nice, but make no mistake, they orbit the center, not the other way around. Without the Mouse, even the nicest knock-offs wouldn’t be there. I won’t even touch the exploitive nature of parks that monetize sea mammals. Just watch Blackfish.

I think this is what happens when one moves from creating a -Land to a -World.

A Land is a nice place to visit and spend the afternoon. A World requires everything around it to sustain it. I’m not at all casting aspersions on the people who enjoy this, or who are employed and like their jobs. I’m simply noticing, as an outsider, what a strange feeling it is to be in a place that feels so completely unnatural.  As an aside, I am concerned at the caste system that seems to have sprung up in these parks—once up on a time, everyone paid to get in and everyone waited in line and everyone got to ride the same rides. Now, it appears wealth can buy access to shorter lines, earlier entry, more attractions, and a completely different park experience.

As someone who literally grew up in the -Land, I cannot imagine Mr. D sitting on his park bench waiting for his daughters and thinking what has happened to his dream was a good thing.

Anyway, Florida is weird. I saw an armadillo. I met a glorious white boxer puppy at the supermarket. We never did find any good food (but I know this was entirely because of where we were staying), but I did get to meet my friend for breakfast. I did get a two nights with my husband, which we spent hanging out in one of the several hot tubs at our pastel-painted bahamian-shuttered hotel.

And then we tried to get home.

(I know people are passionate in their love and defense of Disney, and if you love love love the parks and it’s your happy place, believe me, I understand. I just don’t experience the same feelings anymore, for a host of complex reasons—some of which I tried to share here—and that’s okay too!)

There’s a laundry list of things I need to write about, but it’s like when a kid has a giant cake they don’t quite know what to do with or where to attack it. And it’s not necessarily a delicious cake. It’s a cake made of parenting wins and fails, testing boundaries all over the place, travel chaos, the uncomfortable lack of control that becomes more and more apparent as life goes on, life-changing decisions, standing on the precipice of a new act, and maybe even some actual laundry. Sound like a cake you want? Like so much in life, what I want isn’t necessarily relevant. Open wide.

To quote Jeffrey from last night, as Jon and I were on the last leg of a nineteen-hour travel nightmare trying to get home, “I don’t want to be Mom anymore. It’s hard.”

So here are the things I am ruminating on, and which deserve more than a small blip, but I’m starting out with a blip so I can bookmark these thoughts while they coalesce into something more substantive (maybe?).

• Jeffrey had his senior portraits taken and graduates in less than a month. He’s been accepted into Utah State University. He’s seventeen now, and I am perplexed by the somehow constant and still fluid passage of time. It’s trite, but yesterday he was holding my hands and testing his little chubby feet in his first steps, and today he is 6’2″ and can easily pick me up with a giant laugh when I am annoying him while he gets his portrait taken. I haven’t quite figured out what to do with these things, and time doesn’t care about my fluidity, the constancy marches on.
• For the very first time, Jon and I decided to leave the kids overnight while I accompanied him on a short (<48 hours) business trip to Florida. That’s it’s own post, and I think I understand the “Florida man…” memes now. But…
• Within two hours of our departure, while we were still on the airplane, there was a shooting at my kids’ high school. Maybe you can imagine the full-body panic as I turned on my phone on the tarmac in Orlando and watched the horrifying notifications roll up my phone—but I hope you never, ever have to feel it. The next 48 hours are something I need to catalog, especially since I was suddenly stuck hundreds of miles from home and completely powerless. We’re all mostly powerless in so many ways, but nothing brings that home quite like not being able to get to your children. I have thoughts.
• Then, in a desperate attempt to actually GET home, what should have been a less-than two-hour flight turned into a nineteen (yes, 19!) hour ordeal that included mechanical failures on the runway, over-sold flights, a plane leaking water in my lap from the ceiling (I have video!), failed standby attempts, requisite lost baggage, and even lightning strikes. It became a nightmare-ish comedy in which I had an epiphany about the absurd tragedy of life and the lengths to which we go to make ourselves feel like we have some control (over anything) but really…we just don’t. Laughter and human connection is all we have. That’s it. But it also happens to be everything.
• I’ve accepted a spot in law school, and classes begin at the end of August. This is really happening. And, surprise surprise, I have thoughts.
• Add Sane Gun Laws and Gun Control to my list of things on my law-school agenda. I can tackle IDEA, disability law, SpEd, and the NRA, right??

So I plan on unpacking my overnight bag, taking a long, hot shower, picking up Jeff’s graduation announcements, and mailing the last batch of peanut butter (I know some of you are waiting still and I’m sorry I’m a week behind–The stores are sold out!)

I know some folks still read here, and I’m planing on moving back to more long-form writing. I’ve withdrawn some from some forms of media, and I realize I really need the catharsis and practice of writing in more than 200 characters, though I also appreciate the brevity and humor those constraints have helped cultivate.

Basically, I’m back babies.

(It said ‘bitches” but then I decided to be more well-behaved. But then I decided, “nah, f*ck it.” That might be my new motto.)