the big move

He is gone, I’m sure. I’m really convinced that he might be someplace too hard to come back from. His eyes are empty, and look only straight ahead. They are looking right through whatever is right in front of him. I lean down and embrace him. I crouch and pull him on my knee. I repeat what the new teacher has just repeated twice herself. He stares through her forehead. I whisper, hoping a change in voice might help him to hear. “I bet you’ll be able to remember your new teacher’s name! It’s the same as mine” I say. He says nothing.

His thumb is rubbing back and forth back and forth in the middle of my hand. It is starting to get harder, it actually kind of hurts. I repeat my quiet whispers with a little tickle on his chin. I go further, “Tieran, what’s my name?” trying to help him understand this new woman has the same name. He continues the piercing gaze through her to the kids in the background, and says, “Heather.” My heart sinks. He never calls his biological mom by name. Usually, she is mommy, and I am mom. Or she is mommy heather. Honestly, she is not a common topic. But never just heather. And I have certainly never been called that. I say, “What?” and he repeats it, his voice like some strange cartoon character. It reminds me of that crazy monotone mouse (is it a mouse?) who wants to take over the world. It is totally devoid of emotion. It’s like he’s a robot. He continues to rub his little thumb back and forth. I say nothing of the mix-up, and just hug him tighter. I give him a second, and then say, “tieran, this is Sarah, your new teacher.”

The therapist has been trying to get me to leave tieran for a bit now, encouraging me to help him “integrate” into the new place quickly and painlessly. Painless for whom I wonder?

I eventually leave him in his catatonic state and go to the intake for the new residential treatment center. It was ridiculous. They grilled me on paperwork that I didn’t bring because they were supposed to get it from their evaluation center, where we already did this whole spiel a month ago. All the while they are asking me about which medications he took and when he started and stopped them, all I can think is, “is he gonna come back?” I am honestly more comfortable with my little tornado of a boy than this emotionless-monotone-frightened-to-the-point-of-frozen one. I am scared that this is the last straw. That he is now believing that internal working model of “if I’m bad enough, I just get kicked out…” I am desperate to go find him. Hours later, when I am released from the pointless and painful intake, I find him in the “castle” that he now lives in. He is already bouncing all over and having a hard time following directions. I help him unpack a few things and make his new bed. There is a jungle theme in his room. A cute mural that makes me devastated over the beautiful little room we prepared for him so long ago. The room that has been emptied out of everything but a mattress because of his destructiveness.

I am envious of this place. They have so many more people. So many folks to back them up, to tag out while “out-waiting” him, which is the basic prescription for attachment disorder. Give him the choice, and then wait him out. The problem I have is that they are good at their jobs, but their jobs aren’t enough. Their job doesn’t include tucking him in and hugging him several hundred times a day even when he doesn’t act like he wants it. The night before, he and I had one incredible hour together. This might sound ridiculous, but it has been ages since we’ve had an hour like that. He was scared to move. Scared that the reality of his past, his pain, his choices are actually meaning something. That we might mean it when we say that he has to start trying to do better. I think he realized it wasn’t up to us anymore. That it wasn’t just about controlling us, but that now others were determining his progress or lack thereof. That he is, in some ways, losing the battle for control. He was scared. He let me mother him. It had been so long.

He didn’t do it the way most four years old would. He said he didn’t need hugs, and then proceeded to spend the hour saying, “if I did such and such, would you have to give me hugs then?” and I said yup, I think so. So we went through, oh goodness, if you scratched your nose right now, I’m afraid I would have to give you three hugs and twelve kisses, and he would scowl. Then wait for me to turn my head slightly, and scratch his nose. I slathered him with as much love as I could muster, which is so much more than I ever though possible. All I can pray is that is enough to hold him. To hold him through the fear that looks like hyperactivity. To hold him through the misbehavior and aggression and lying and the big fight he feels he has to fight. Until the next time I can scoop him up and whisper in his ear that he is special and he is loved. I sort of experienced secondary catatonia after leaving him. He was back to talking and looking and taking it all in. but I am just as afraid all the time, as he was in those moments when his little body just checked out. What if this love isn’t enough to bring him back?

people like us

"I am humbled in this city. There seems to be an endless sea of people like us~Wakeful dreamers, I pass them on the sunlit streets. In our rooms filled with laughter We make hope from every small disaster" The Weepies

I haven't written for ages. I have hardly talked with my loved ones. I started to think there was no point in writing. Even talking. What is there to say? How can I express anything without feeling like it will be underestimated, misunderstood. It is so hard to feel like all you ever do is talk about huge heavy things, knowing others want to chat about the weather. And I heard this song the other night and found myself in this bizzare mixture of laughter and tears. I am humbled. There are so many like us. Wakeful dreamers. And I come back to the computer, and I think that even if some are in the middle of stretches of quiet, or even respite, while some are in the trenches, this is how it must be. What would it be like if we were all in one place or the other at the same time? And Lord knows I had a nice long stretch of quiet living. So my trench time happened to come quickly and hard and really rather lined up in a row. It just means I have to force myself to learn when to talk about the weather, and when to let loose and get to the nitty gritty, based on neccessity, not on whether or not the recepient is in the same boat. And so.... I release.

alone

I walked out the door yesterday and waltzed straight into Narnia. Complete with last year's fawn nibbling ivy in the snow just off my front porch. It wasn't until later that I thought perhaps I had seen Tieran. I saw him everywhere, actually. First in the stubborn little fawn that has been eating alone in my yard for the past three days-well into dark snowy nights- and soon after in a baby duck.

I pulled over at the little bench by the lake in our neighborhood to sip something warm and see if the lake was freezing. I was first laughing, and then fretting over a little duckling either too sick or stubborn or silly to join his family. (I say "his," though I suppose it could have been a girl. Since it was a Tieran-duck, though, we'll say "he." )Anyway, here is this tiny adorable little guy, in the middle of this rather big lake, just flailing around. I have seen many a duck fight and play and be silly there, so I was laughing at first. Then I noticed Mama duck. She was not laughing. She was sternly calling him from the bank. His siblings were quietly tucked away behind her, and throwing out an ocassional squawk. Pretty soon, both mama and baby were hysterical, I'm not kidding. She's waddling back and forth on the bank, and he's just splashing in circles. I'm thinking, is this too early for baby ducks? is it freezing? (my biology's not that great!)

Then I'm really concerned. I'm trying to see if he's hurt, if he's stuck on something, or if maybe she's in some kind of trouble. This goes on for a few moments, and she goes in. The obedient siblings hold their ground as mama goes off for the stray duckling. I can't tell what goes on when she gets there, due to the splashing. Eventually, she heads back to the bank, and he is quieter now. Still he stays in the middle of the lake. I have never seen an attachment-disordered duck, and maybe he was just messin around, but I'll tell you what, that mama was working hard. It was probably only a minute or two, and her persistence paid off. Little-wild-one worked his way back to the shore where they all settled into the grass quietly.

Sometime in between the morning fawn and the evening duckling, I met an interesting young girl out front our local library. She was sitting on the curb in the falling snow slathered in black, with no coat. I was bundled and prepared for igloo-life, and jokingly asked her where her hat/gloves/scarf/mittens and coat were. She just laughed and shrugged. I went to the door and dropped off my books, as the library was closed for the day due to weather. As I walked back, I asked her if she had a ride coming. She looked down at her feet. I couldn't help but stop, and ask again. She says, "sort of," and I take a seat next to her. She goes on to tell me that she had her mom drop her off at the library with the intention of walking to the bus stop and secretly meeting with an unaproved-of boyfriend. Alas, she realized there were no buses, boyfriends or libraries to speak of today. So she was waiting the 2.5 hours for her mom to pick her up, in front of a closed library in a dark snowy parking lot with a sort of embarrased stoicism, and no coat. I said I remembered the days of thinking mom-doesn't-know much, and told her some day she would reconsider. I asked her jokingly if that was why she didn't have a coat on either, and her eyes flashed with surprise. "you can tell that by looking?" she cried!

I was a stubborn child. Ask my mother. I'm sure there were times I left my coat home to prove a point. Or wandered off in the dark when it was too cold or too late. I guarentee you there were times I went someplace different than I said I was going, or met someone I wasn't supposed to. I maybe even splashed around like a lunatic while my mom squawked from the shore, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how this little 4 year old boy is in a strange place.... a month now... and not needing me.

Not only not needing me, but raging at the thought of me. He has hung up, or forced us to hang up on him nearly every night since Dec 12 when we left him there. He does not ask for us. He does not cry for us. He has no security blanket, no special animal. He does not read the runaway bunny or mama do you love me books I painstakingly copied into his scrapbook for him. He does not look through the pictures of our family and reminisce or wish for those better times. He does not need the lullabyes I sang and recorded to a c.d. for him. He did not cry for his first or second mommies, so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. He learned not to cry. He learned to kick and hit and spit and threaten instead. Which is about all he does now.

Though I should be glad for the break, it is mostly just wrecking me. When he yells that he hates me, I can't reach through the phone and scoop him up. I can't say, "oh hun, I'm sorry to hear you say that, cause I sure do love you!" I can't swim out and stop the flailing. I can splash out into the middle of that icy lake, but he won't follow me to safety. I can come to the other side of the fence and scold him for staying too late and too close to danger in the neighbor's snowy ivy-covered lawn, but he will just stay there for spite. I've less mother-power than the doe and the duck, I can't mother him. He won't let me. And I've no idea what else to do.