Are You Listening?

I had been sipping tea with honey all day, hoping my voice would hold out just long enough. I parked in the now familiar underground lot of the San Francisco JCC and rode the elevator to the second floor. I was nervous, but less than I was during that same ride just a few weeks prior.

It was our second and final rehearsal before show day.

I share a lot on this blog. I don't hold much back, wanting to share what it is really like to be a parent. To raise two children, one with special needs. To bridge the gap between typical and different, between my dreams of motherhood and my reality. I may spare you some of the gory details, or reserve some of my uglier moments for the therapist's office, but I don't find it difficult to be honest here.

There is something different about saying the words out loud.

There is no screen between my words and their recipients, no safety net of moderated comments, no understanding whether a typed "LOL" meant that the reader actually laughed out loud or was just being nice. My blog readers are mostly in the same boat, raising their own special needs children. (Or they are my family and friends and have to be nice to me.) But the audience? They could be anybody.

Saying the words, having them leave my heart and make their way directly to people's ears, people who may not have the slightest inkling what I'm talking about, adds something to them. It gives them life. More specifically, it gives them a face: mine. The feedback is instant and the experience is powerful.

Listening to other peoples' stories is even more powerful.

I've learned something listening to the essays that will be read on mother's day. My pain is not the only pain. The gap between dreams and reality exists for all moms. Our laughter comes from the same slightly dark (and often dusty) place. And while we may not experience the same failures and triumphs, we all have something to learn from each other's stories.

First, we need to listen.

Click here for more information or to buy tickets to the 2013 Listen To Your Mother San Francisco performance.

It's Not a Holiday Unless There Are Broken Dishes and a Trip to the Emergency Room

Mother's day started out pretty well. I didn't set any unrealistic expectations. I didn't ask for an elaborate brunch and I specifically requested that we NOT have breakfast in bed, which would have either meant eating alone, or ending up with spilled coffee and sharing all my food.

Jeff made a lovely breakfast for me, including eggs, bacon, and homemade hash browns. I drank my coffee. I opened a gift from Jeff (the new Pioneer Woman cookbook - yay!), and some cute things the kids made at school. Later that afternoon, I got to spend some time alone at my favorite local coffee place.

Around, four o'clock, I decided to take a nap. I so rarely do, and it seemed like a good way to finish up the afternoon. About five minutes into it, I heard a loud crash near Moe's room. I did not jump up. I thought, "Jeff has got this." Maybe 30 seconds later, there was a second crash and the unmistakeable sound of something breaking. I jumped out of bed.

I opened the door to find Moe standing in front of the linen closet. On the floor, there were not one, but two, dish packs, the ones that I use to store my china. Moe had climbed the closet shelves, reached the dishes, and pulled them down. They are heavy, of course, and simply crashed to the ground when he grabbed them.

Before

I opened the packs and saw that quite a bit was broken. My heart sank as I brought the two packs to the kitchen to survey the damage. He had pulled out a pack with soup bowls: every one was broken. Every. One. The other pack contained saucers. One saucer was intact, another had just one clean break and may be salvageable. Everything was completely shattered.

I was crushed. I didn't register for china when we got married; I asked my parents for these dishes. These dishes, that we used at every Passover seder, at every special occasion, just gone in an instant. These dishes, that I carefully packed and placed on a high shelf, that I specifically didn't put in storage when we put the house on the market so they would be safe, were now, at best, a future mosaic. Did I mention my parents carried these back from their honeymoon in the Virgin Islands?

Moe, by the way, was fine. The trip to the ER was unrelated, if you can believe it.

After?

I sobbed on the kitchen floor. I'm fighting back tears as I write this. My parents assured me that these dishes are just things, that they are unimportant. And they are right, of course. But it doesn't change the fact that something really special to me is gone, and that Moe, as much as I love him, is impulsive and destructive, and only getting more so. No matter how closely I watch him, he is fast. I'm afraid he's going to really hurt himself.

Which brings me to the next part of our story. Moe was finally in bed, and Jeff and I went to check on him. He had a dirty diaper, as he often does about an hour after he gets into bed. We changed him, which is an emotionally exhausting two person job that requires a complicated dance of hand restraint and dodging kicking legs. While Jeff was finishing up, I was fixing Moe's bed (another story I'll have to share another day). Somehow, Moe launched himself off the top of his dresser, and in an instant was on the floor. He was quiet for a second, and limp (though not unconscious). He was moaning. I, having just read a story about a little girl who was knocked to the ground, told Jeff, I'm calling 911.

Jeff insisted we wait a minute and see. Moe refused to walk. He had one eye closed, and was waving his arms around. He would not stand. Jeff brought him to the couch. He was crying and I thought his forehead was swelling. Jeff didn't want to spend the night at the ER, but I insisted he at least go to urgent care at our doctor's office. The wait time online said 30 minutes, so Jeff headed out. Unfortunately, they were closed when Jeff arrived. Oops.

He ended up taking Moe, who I could still hear moaning on the background, to the ER near the clinic. Moe was fine, and now I cannot even find a bump on his head. I think, in the end, he probably got the wind knocked out of him and got pretty scared but wasn't actually injured. I'm thankful, but once again come out like the over-protective mother. But with Moe, how can I tell?

Hope your mother's day was relaxing. Can I get a do-over?

Tray image courtesy of Pennello Lane.