Lies, Doubts, and Worrying

ON BEING A FIBBER
I am such a liar. I am not even trying to post on my blog every day this month. I have all kinds of reasons and excuses that wonderfully explain why I’ve been unable to meet such a goal: a faulty internet connection one night, surprise company for a few days, the power button I didn’t know about that disabled the soundproof window my internal editor was trapped behind.... I think there is another truth as to why I have already thrown in the dish rag. I think it is important for me to find. I want to understand why it is that writing is my best very friend and very worstest enemy. I’m tired of carrying around a fantasy that one day I’ll awake in a real author chrysalis, and then struggle rather effortlessly out into publishing flight-hood.


ON BEING A PESSIMIST
I am so ungrateful. I’m not even trying to enjoy the view outside my window, which could knock the socks off a centipede. We got loads of rain back here in the canyon, and the San Rafael foothills can be seen through the live oak’s branches, washed clean of all the dust and haze. The birds are going crazy in relief, because it was hotter than Kansas up here for a few weeks preceding the rain. Now the smell of sage and bay and growing things is intoxicating. Also, the tarantulas are coming out to mate again. I’ve already seen three of them this week. I like seeing them, even though they are a little creepy. I also like the family of tiny bats nesting in a corner of our carport overhang, and the adorable squeaking they make when we bother them in the daytime. My oldest niece is twelve now, and has a good command of subtle sarcastic humor. She noticed the bats one day, and the influx of cobwebs (spiders are working overtime to catch the first-rain insect hatches), and she said, “Wow, you guys decorate for Halloween early—nice decorations.”

Why can't I have child eyes like that, and see the wildness around me as decoration and celebration? why is gratefulness so far from me this week? How do I have patience with myself when my gut is rain soaked and fuzzy gray with a tarantula sized anxiety that can’t be walked away from?


ON BEING A WORRY-WART
Some of you will laugh in disbelief when I say this, but Caleb is failing Algebra. If you know my son, and the speed at which his brain stores mathematical information, you will understand my confusion over this situation, and how it adds to my general feeling of disillusionment and irritation. When my son was age 2 ½, he could play quietly for 45 minutes unsupervised, organizing matchbox cars or plastic toys into size, shape, and color categories. He could then spend another 1/2 hour making the categories more complex(i.e. alternating three trucks to every one motorcycle)... you get the picture. In fourth grade, when the kids in his class started leaving their hands in their laps and saying, “Just ask Caleb,” during every math lesson, we convinced his teacher to let him sit at the back of the classroom during math time, reviewing the fifth grade textbook. He aced all chapter tests of both grades that year, and has continued getting a perfect score on the yearly State math assessment since then. However, my son is considerably challenged by quick transitions and detailed organization of daily routines and tasks. Seventh grade has been a never-ending obstacle course for him, and a nail biting routine for Jason and I on the bleachers. It makes me a bit insane to not be able to “fix” the problem of roller coaster grades, and to watch such knowledge count for almost nothing on the educator’s success-o-rama scales. I am alternately inspirational speaker and Law Enforcement; rubbing his shoulders one minute then giving him the "You don’t even want to think about setting that pencil down” glare the next.
Perhaps the hardest part for me is not the Jekyll and Hyde act, but rather being forced to see the ways I too fail at succeeding at the things Caleb is worst at...planning ahead, sticking to the routine when more interesting things manifest themselves, shutting down the side-brain to similes, metaphors, and creative ponderings of the unseen mysteries of the universe when there is tedium to accomplish. I can relate to the rebellion that overtakes him. I wish the two of us could spend a week each month traveling the country and discussing great literature, providing fireside “talks” of poetry, essays, and theatrical reading entertainment, while raking in the dough. I wish I knew how to help myself fit in to this practical and pragmatic Western World we live in, so that I could give my son infallible coping skills. When I alternate between pity and punishment for his choices and behavior, I am not at my best. My best knows that he, (like all of us adults who made it to somewhat functional adulthood despite our teens)will find the clues he needs to adapt, and (hopefully) succeed in Algebra class. But in the meantime I ache for a thing that seems so reasonable yet so currently unachievable for a brilliantly unique kid like Caleb: a way for him to be true to himself, yet sail through the academic part of Seventh Grade.