The Chronicles of Phillip Johnson, Part 1

~We Have A Problem, And His Name is Phillip Johnson~

Natalie drew this as the events unfolded

It's Friday night.  Our house is trashed.  I have been sick with the stomach flu for four days. The kids have spent four of the last five days home from school because of two vacation days and two snow days. I'm snuggled on the couch, eating oatmeal (hopefully it will stay with me!) watching old reruns of Good Times. A yell erupts from the basement. It sounds like Joe.

In a moment, Joe is at the top of the stairs, telling us the thing we really, really, really don't want to hear.  "I just saw something small and furry run by me in the basement!"

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no.

Frank springs into action. Frank hates all rodents with a firey hot passion that bubbles forth from the deepest, darkest center of his soul.

He laces up his shoes and grabs the broom, ready for battle, while the kids and I huddle on the couch. Natalie starts crying. She believes she will never see her roller blades again, as they are at the bottom of the stairs and none of us ever plan to enter the basement again.

Frank reports that he saw it too. After some (disgusting) google image searches, he determines that the creature is a vole, not a mouse.  This is good news, as voles don't really want to live in our house, because they eat things like flower bulbs and grass.  He must have found his way in by mistake.  Frank leaves to buy some mouse traps.

While he is gone, the kids and I take a tentative trip downstairs.  The kids want to retrieve their valuables.  I make them hit everything they want to bring upstairs with Sam's souvenir miniature baseball bat.  I also bring Violet, our two year old labradoodle.  I'm hoping she can find and kill the rodent.

I am nervous. Why do our kids have so many furry black toys? I keep randomly hitting chairs, walls, and toys with the baseball bat. I turn to Violet and tell her the only thing I can think that might make her understand the situation. "Violet!" I say, "There's a deer in the basement!  Go get it!  Get the deer!"  At this point the tension in my voice, along with the fact that I'm randomly whacking things with a bat while making ridiculous claims that there's a deer in the basement causes her to decide I've lost my marbles. She whimpers and lies down where she's standing. 



I have no idea what you want from me, Crazy Human Lady

Frank comes home, and sets four mousetraps.  He proceeds to check them several times over the next few hours.  Before we go to bed he rolls up a bath towel and uses a butter knife to shove it into the gap between the basement door and the kitchen floor.  Will a bath towel keep the vole from venturing out of the basement?  We choose to believe that it will.

Day 2: Our first thought upon waking is the vole. Frank goes down to check the traps. The traps are empty, but he comes face to face with the vole, who just stands there, staring at him.  He tries to kill it with a broom, but it escapes.

I call an exterminator.  He agrees that it sounds like a vole.  He's happy to come check out the situation.  I feel genuinely relieved.  He continues that he's happy to check it out...on Monday.  Today is Saturday.  On Sunday Frank leaves for a business trip and I am having a bunch of people over for a Tupperware party.

Natalie is huddled in the corner of the living room. She is afraid the vole is coming to get her. I decide this extreme fear is over the top and we need to do something about it.  I remember a friend telling me that she would name the snakes in her yard to try to feel less afraid of them.  I tell the kids that the vole needs a name.  Frank suggests Voley.  I suggest Victor Vole.  Natalie quietly but strongly states, "His name is Phillip Johnson."

Now we call him Phillip Johnson.

Will Violet ever understand what she is being asked to do? Will Natalie get over her fears? Will she ever use her roller blades again? Will I ever see the end of that episode of Good Times?  Some (or none) of these questions will be answered in the next installment of The Chronicles of Phillip Johnson.

Sick Day Thoughts

I'm sick this week. I have the stomach flu and have been feeling pretty awful for about four days. These four days just happen to coincide with the kids' mid-winter break and two snow days, so all four of the kids have been at home with me almost the entire time I've been feeling like this.

I have been very blessed to not get sick very often, so I didn't realize the emotions that would come up from this experience.

When I feel sick like this, and work to take care of my kids, I feel so much sympathy and empathy for what Sue went through.  It is HARD to take care of kids when you feel so terrible. She felt like this, or actually worse than this, for YEARS. How did she do that?  How on earth was she able to be a mother to her children at all during those years?  I'm in awe of my sister.

Today my heart is filled with so much gratitude that I am getting better, feeling stronger from this mild illness by the hour.  I'm so lucky to have a functioning immune system. I am so fortunate that I have the opportunity to raise my kids as a healthy person.

My Biggest Trigger

It makes me uncomfortable to talk about my struggles sometimes because it feels like I'm broadcasting my flaws and I want so badly to seem like I am doing okay.  When I thought about posting on this subject, I didn't want anyone to think that I have "emotional problems" which is sometimes how I feel when I deal with my biggest trigger. But then I thought about the person who may have just lost their loved one and stumbles upon my blog, I thought of that person and what he or she may be feeling, and I changed my mind.  I'll share it.  I'll share whatever I can to help someone who is in so much pain and wondering if they are losing their mind. 

Here's my biggest grief trigger: feeling like things are out of control in my life.

Not long into my grief journey, I read a book about what trauma does to the brain.  I can't remember the name of the book, or much else about it, but I do know that the main message I got from it. The book explained that when a person is traumatized, the brain takes kind of a "snapshot" of what all is happening at the time. It is a brain's mechanism for self preservation.

Let's imagine you just wandered out of your cave with your fellow cavewoman and she gets attacked by a lion. The brain takes this snapshot to remind you of important details like where you were, what you were wearing, what smells and sounds you experienced, to help you make sure you don't walk to the same place and do the same things and get eaten by a lion yourself.  The brain works overtime in these situations and says, "DANGER! REMEMBER ALL OF THIS SO IT DOES NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!"

It's the reason that some people might have a hard time wearing the same shirt they were wearing the day their mom died.  Or someone might not want to drive down that road where they were in an accident.  Or someone can't eat pudding anymore because they were eating pudding when they got the phone call that their husband had a heart attack and died.

At the time of Sue's death, my life felt like it was spiraling out of control in a lot of areas.  My husband had lost his job, our finances were a huge source of stress, and of course there was nothing I could do to save my sister's life.  When my brain took the snapshot on the day that Sue died, it wanted me to remember that I was feeling out of control in almost every area.  And because my brain is not perfect, it has made the connection that feeling out of control = somebody is going to die or is already dead.

So now that I know and understand all this, I should be able to figure out why I've locked myself in my bedroom, sobbing, during the second consecutive snow day, right?  No. You see, it's not just the snow day. First there was the furnace breaking down on Thursday, which meant I couldn't do anything I had planned to do because I had to drop everything to wait for someone to repair it.  Then on Friday Sam called home because he had a sore throat and I needed to drop everything and take care of him.  Then came a busy weekend, followed by a snow day a home with the kids, followed by another snow day with the kids.  There is now a pattern established in my mind that I cannot accomplish anything I would normally do. I put everything on hold for days to take care of the needs of everybody else.  I'm not complaining, this is my job and what I have chosen for my life, I'm just saying that when things spiral out of my control (or what feels like out of my control) I panic. And sometimes it takes me a long time to figure out why I feel so awful.

My brain is sounding alarms all over the place telling me that if I don't regain control, somebody is going to die.

There it is, my biggest trigger. I become panicked, sad, weepy, cranky, and fearful at these times. The best part is that I understand what is happening and why.  The worst part is that it doesn't seem to help much. I white-knuckle my way through these times and repeat to myself that a normal day is right on the horizon.

I'll make it though, but this is a difficult part of grief.

A Sue Memory: Extreme Sports

It was a hot summer day and we were on vacation.  I was barely an adult, so a trip with no parents in sight gave me a tingly sense of excitement and freedom.  As always, I felt privileged to be included with Sue and a group of friends. We were camping at Interlochen State Park in Northern Michigan and were on a day trip to see the Sleeping Bear Dunes.

There is one particular sand dune that anyone who has visited the area will remember.  It is the huge, beautiful one where the breathtaking view down to the clear blue Lake Michigan water looks so inviting.  It also displays a group of warning signs:

 "Warning: Steep Bluff!"

"Return Climb is extremely exhausting!"

and my personal favorite:
 

"Rescue costs are high, YOU pay the transportation!"

We stood at the top of the sand dune, surveying the sparkling beauty that lay before us, and as we did so a sisterly war commenced.

"You know we're going down there."

"No way. You can go, I'm not going."

"Come on."

"Did you see those signs? They have to bring in HELICOPTERS to rescue people here all the time!"

"You're being a wimp."

"I don't care if you think I'm a wimp."

"Haven't you seen that show, Extreme Sports? It would be like we're on that show! Don't you want to push yourself and experience something new and different? We can do this! It's not a problem! It will be so fun!"

"Arrrggghhhh! FINE"

I relented.  She could always make me relent.

The 5 minute dizzying run to the bottom of the dune was SO MUCH FUN!

Jumping into the cool, crisp water to wash off the sweat and sand felt FANTASTIC!

We laughed!  We frolicked! We splashed each other!

We looked up and said, "Holy shit, that's a long way up."

Even though it was a long way up, I did believe Sue when she said that the climb should only take us 15 minutes or so.  We just needed to get started. We each chose a small rock from the beach to take with us to the top, souvenirs of our super accomplishment. We started climbing. Each step up the 450 foot ascent would begin to propel us forward by about a foot, but once our feet were firmly planted into the sand and we transferred our weight onto the leading foot, the shifting sand would slide us down about 11.9 inches.  The dune is so steep that the only way to make the climb is to use hands and feet (and sometimes knees) to basically crawl all the way up.

We had been climbing for less than five minutes when we decided that holding a rock while trying to climb Mount Impossible was idiotic. Not wanting to lose our (getting more precious by the minute) souvenirs, and both of us finding ourselves pocket-less, we opted to store the rocks in our underwear. 

After a half hour of working at it, dripping with sweat and out of breath, we decided to stop and take a break. When we looked down to take in all of our hard won progress, it looked like we had not progressed more than 5 feet.  That's when I knew that this was going to take forever. And it was going to be horrible.

The climb, it was brutal.

 

At around the 45 minute mark, something in me snapped. Out of my mouth began to spew an unstoppable and foul string of profanity. In the midst of the excruciating ritual of step-slide-step-slide, I would yell to Sue that I couldn't believe she <expletive> got us into this <expletive> situation climbing this <expletive> mountain of <expletive> sand.

To each of my insane rantings, she would smile and yell the same response:  EXTREME SPORTS! 

That just made me more pissed at her.

It took us just under 90 minutes to complete the grueling trek to the top.  When we got there we were soaked in sweat, sunburnt, dehydrated, and still carrying rocks in our underwear.  I climbed up the last few steps and stood up just as Sue's friend Beth turned a video camera on me. 

"How does it feel to make it to the top?"

I answered with one finger.

And Sue came up behind me yelling, "EXTREME SPORTS!"

I Can Now Live Life as if I Am Normal

I had quite a blogging hiatus there, what with the holidays and all the accompanying commitments taking over my entire life from mid-November until early January. I had intended to put together a big post with pictures of the kids, the holidays, the fun and excitement, but my perfectionism is getting in the way. I've decided to scrap that whole idea for now and just catch you up on how things are for me at this moment.

A funny thing seems to have happened over the time since my birthday: I've developed the ability to live my life as if I am a normal person. I'm not sure if this is what I want to be doing, or if it is what I think I should be doing, or if it is just the natural progression of my current stage of grief.

I can go about my daily activities without crying in public. I can make conversation with strangers and friends and everyone who talks with me would not really be able to see my inner sadness. It might look to the outside world that I have "gotten over" the loss of my sister.

I can assure you, this is not true.

But I can also assure you that I am okay.

I am learning every day how to navigate my new life.  It is as if a heavy, gigantic box was placed in the middle of my house. When the box first arrived, it was all I could see. I bumped into it many times a day while going about my chores and activities. My focus was how to get rid of the box and how hard it was to get around with that box in the way. As time has gone on, though, the box has become such a normal part of my household that I have learned how to instinctively step around it. I'm finding that the box is just there.  I don't need to spend all of my energy trying to get rid of it, or talking about how inconvenient it is, I just live with the gigantic box now.

I am learning that it is possible to live a life that is both full of love, joy, and happiness while also carrying the deepest depths of sadness and grief in my heart. And the biggest surprise of all, is that it is a very good life, indeed.

These guys here? Will never be mistaken for normal

Maybe Something is Getting in?

I always tell people who don't have kids that one of the hardest parts of parenting for me is not having any sort of gauge to tell if I'm doing it right. I did well in school and I thrived on getting a grade for each completed task. However, with parenting some, or even most, of the work I'm putting into my kids is an investment that won't show dividends for years or decades. I never get graded on my tasks as a mom. It is so hard to put so much work in, and not see the results of that work.

Every once in awhile I catch a tiny glimpse that maybe some of what I say is getting into my kids' heads.

Today I am sitting on the couch while my daughter and her cousin play with play dough. They are playing some sort of  what I would have called "house" when I was a kid. There is a play dough mother, father, and children. My Natalie is playing the part of the mother. This set up is very telling as everything Natalie says sounds like words that have come out of my mouth.

Some of it makes me cringe, "I said to clean up all of this mess!" she says in an angry tone.  Yup, that's me.  "You didn't listen to me!  Get to your room, you're grounded!"  Guilty.

But she also says some pretty great things. Play Dough Mom says, "You need to be kind to your brother. In this family, we treat each other with respect."  Hey, that's me too. And I kid you not, at one point she said, "People are all different, we should celebrate those differences instead of trying to make everybody be the same. That would be so boring!"

There are certain sentiments that I repeat, and repeat, and repeat but never know if they are making an impression on the kids. Today I am thankful for this little moment when I can hear my daughter repeating some of the important lessons I've tried to instill in her. Sure, it's just a game with play dough, but I choose to believe that her ability to spout them off so easily means they are in her head, ready to come out and be applied in another year, or five, or forty.

Have I Mentioned that I'm Raising My Dad?

I don't know who reads this blog, or if anyone reads this blog, but I'm going to assume you never had the pleasure of meeting my Dad.  My Dad was a loving dad and a super Grandpa. He was a good cook, really smart (in fact, he'd be the first to tell you that), and (he believed) never, ever wrong. I also never met a person in my life who liked to argue as much as he did. My Dad would argue with me just to see me get annoyed and wouldn't stop until he had proven his point.  Often his point was not even something he remotely believed in or even cared about, He just felt like arguing that point of view that day. On another day you would find him fighting vehemently to convince me of the opposing view.

Dad holding himself?

If I mentioned, for instance, that I liked rutabagas, or yellow balloons, or downhill skiing, he would spend the next hour proving to me WITHOUT A DOUBT that rutabagas (or yellow balloons, or downhill skiing) were the MAIN PROBLEM with this society. My preference for rutabagas were HURTING THE ECONOMY and LEAVING PEOPLE HOMELESS. He would cite examples of why this was true, he would quote statistics, and he WOULD.NOT.STOP. until I finally said something like, "Okay, Dad, I see your point. I won't touch a rutabaga/yellow balloon/downhill ski, ever, ever in my life."

Then, satisfied, he'd hand me a can of Diet Rite and we'd watch The People's Court.

That's Dad in a nutshell.

My Dad passed away when Ben was one year old. They didn't really get a chance to know each other, but as the years go on I am beginning to suspect that Ben IS my Dad.

Since Dad so loved to prove things, allow me to attempt to prove my "Ben is Dad" theory.

Exhibit A: One day when Ben was in the bathtub, at about 3 years old, I saw a bunny outside the window.  I pulled Ben out of the bath so he could see.  "Look at that bunny!" I said.  Ben replied, "I don't like that bunny. If I had a gun I'd shoot that bunny, dead." then looked at my face to see what kind of expression he had just caused me to have. I was, of course, shocked. Ben loved bunnies! But what does Ben love more than bunnies?  Being controversial and contrary.  I'm completely convinced that if he had the verbal skills at that time, he would have given me a lecture on the evils of bunnies in our society.

Never believes you when you tell him what time it is.

Exhibit B: This is way more than just one incident, this is an entire category I'm going to call, "Ben knows and you don't".  This includes the time I was trying to teach him how to count to 5 when he was two years old and he spent the whole day arguing that I was wrong, the number 4 didn't exist. "You count to 5 like dis! One, two, free, FIVE!" All day he argued this.  All.day.  This also includes hundreds of inquiries about the time.  "What time is it?"  "8:00"  "NO!  It's 6:30!" And (my favorite, but not really) the "You don't know how to get where we're going" series.  In which Ben tells me randomly "You missed your turn!" (when I didn't) "You were supposed to turn LEFT!" (when I wasn't) and "This is the wrong road. You should be on a different road." (No).  Also: You're driving too fast, school is the other way, you should have stopped at that light, and many, many more.

Exhibit C: This is the last one I have time for today, but rest assured, there are many, many more. This happened yesterday. Ben came home with a behavior report from the bus driver. It says he is standing up on the bus and refusing to sit down. When I asked him about it the conversation went like this:  Me: Why aren't you listening on the bus? Him: I AM listening on the bus!  Me: The bus driver says you aren't. Him: The bus driver is lying. Me: No. The bus driver isn't lying. Him: Actually the bus driver has me confused with another kid because another kid was standing up on the bus. The bus driver is confused.  Me: The bus driver is not confused.  Now go to your room and think about this for awhile.

Looks sweet and innocent. Will relentlessly critique
 your driving skills

After an hour or so, just long enough that I seriously started to doubt whether this kid had a conscience, he came downstairs.  He told me he did stand up on the bus, and he just didn't want to sit down so he didn't. With tears glistening in his eyes, he said he was sorry for not listening. Also? I'm the best mommy in the whole, whole world and he loves me so, so, so much. Have I mentioned that my dad was also very charming?


Oh well, I was satisfied enough that if I had had one, I would have grabbed a Diet Rite for both of us and sat down with him to watch The People's Court.