hope
Propped Against The Meyerson Wall
Random thoughts from today’s half-marathon (a first for me, for Dallas and for the guy in front of us at the porta-potties).
Following the crowd can be a good strategy, unless you are looking for a parking place. After running 13.1 miles, it’s wicked difficult to get out of your truck and walk up your drive. Just because the main architectural feature of a Highland Park house is rustication, it doesn’t mean the occupants don’t have a sense of humor. Some of the Katy Trail bounces. Volunteers give out water and Powerade. Angels pass out strawberries. The best freebie wasn’t the finisher’s medal with the 13.1 time turner (needed that really badly about Mile 10), the Oreos (which I’m chewing in this picture), the mini-muffin, the orange, the water, the Powerade or the pretzels. It was the pre-moistened, Texas-size, super fresh, moist towel. There are still places in the city where you can sit on your steps on a Saturday morning, in your robe, drink your coffee and watch your granddaughter watch the world go by.
Just a Little Further
My first half-marathon. And on the Katy Trail. Runner Susan is packing orange-flavored sports beans.
Can’t wait.
Humbled
This is just about the nicest thing a peer has ever said about me … dunno whether it was Gayle Reaves, or Jeff Prince, or Peter Gorman, or another one of those tenacious journalists over at the Fort Worth Weekly who wrote this, but I’ve got tears in my eyes.
I’ve long respected and admired their work and have been jealous at times that alt-weeklies have more ink to accomplish what needs to be said. And the Weekly knows that when it comes to the Barnett Shale, A LOT more needs to be said.
But, as The Hollies sang on the radio on the way home from Arlington today (from yet another public hearing on the hydraulic fracturing frenzy) and as if just to me …
His Own Kind of Up
In training for my first half-marathon, as of this morning, I have run 193 miles. That’s about as far as Kent Couch flew in 2007, when he launched his lawn chair with helium balloons in his own version of “Up.”
And So It Begins
My friend, and fellow autism mom, Yolanda, calls it the business of empty nesting.
Michael moved into his first apartment this week. I let him shop the house for things he would need to stock the kitchen and outfit the rest of this space he’ll share with three other guys. He’s a junior at TCU, and each step taken is a further step from the nest. It’s exciting to watch, and a little bittersweet.
Paige is next. She will move into the dorm this week at the University of Iowa. Dorm life is not as nice there in Iowa City. I suspect by this time next year, she’ll be hunting down her first apartment, the way I did after my first year at North Texas.
Back then, in the dark ages, Bruce Hall didn’t have air conditioning. I wasn’t putting up with another year of that.
Sam sees these exoduses and knows he’s got to make his own moves. We’ve talked about it a lot in the past year. He doesn’t have a good enough job yet, but he’s getting there.
Last night, he emailed the folks at Marbridge in Austin. Another young man his age, Daniel, moved there after high school, got a good job at a local hospital, and just this past year, moved out of Marbridge village and into his first apartment. Sam knows that’s the kind of support he needs to make the transition.
We’re supposed to go tour soon.
And so the last fledging, not to be outdone by his brother and sister, starts stretching his wings.
Anesthesia and the Incredible Likeness of Your Being
I just brought Paige home from the dentist where she had all four of her wisdom teeth extracted. I’ve been through this enough — with Mark and the boys and myself — to know what to expect.
Paige, always thinking, rarely speaking, has yet to say a word, but we’re communicating. That includes her throwing a hand signal to make sure I didn’t forget about the construction detour on the way home. (I almost did.)
Michael, always questioning, came out of anesthesia with a 10-second loop of memory. He looked at me and asked, “Is it over? That wasn’t too bad. How do I look?” Before I could answer the second question, he came again. “Is it over? That wasn’t too bad. How do I look?” I squeezed his arm and tried to get to that second question again when he looked up at me the same way for the third time. “Is it over? That wasn’t too bad. How do I look?”
The nurse said, “That’s pretty common. He’ll get his memory back.”
Mark had a tougher time of it. Like most of his life, everything came with complications. When I’ve been under, all I do is sleep and puke. I have to purge before I can get on with my life. But when I do, it’s a brand new day.
Sam becomes his essential self, too. When he wakes up from anesthesia, his big brown eyes turn into holes of the universe, just like when he was a baby, and if you let yourself fall in, it’s love and terror all in one.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #115
Peggy: With all the traveling and time out of the house I’ve had, I’ve missed you.
Sam: Well, get used to it.
Love Letter to JK Rowling
My daughter and I have tickets to opening night of the final installment of Harry Potter Thursday. The kids have gone on opening night before; this will be a first for me. We’ll see part one and part two back to back. It seemed right to do it. Paige, my youngest, heads off to college this fall.
I don’t know how my kids would have grown up without being able to do it alongside Harry Potter. Ours is a happy house, overall, one that often looks like the Weasley’s burrow, although my clock doesn’t keep very good track of the kids and I must wash dishes myself.
But their world has become a dark and scary place more than once, and there were times it seemed only the wisdom in those pages got them through.
When love didn’t go as planned, there was Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermoine, to remind them that respect and friendship comes first.
After their father died suddenly — and they felt all alone knowing that no one else in their world knew what they knew — along came Luna, who reassured them that she sees the thestrals, too.
And when the mother-of-all-battles came home to burn the burrow and destroy the school, they recognized how to sort the world into the truly courageous and those who can only feign bravery.
I doubt, actually, I could have communicated to Sam what is needed to get through the next few years without those final chapters.
Thank you, J.K. Rowling, for being there for my kids when all I had left to offer was the wisdom of the best coming-of-age story ever told.
Working Title
So, yes, I’m working on another book. My longtime friend, Shahla Alai Rosales, an applied behavior analysis professor at the University of North Texas, and I are putting together a parenting book on decision-making.
We recognized that parents make decisions for their young children everyday. But parents of children with disabilities often make more decisions, and sometimes for the duration of their child’s entire life. We wanted to put together timeless information for parents, guiding their decisions so that they result in lifelong happiness and satisfaction for their child and their family.
I told my co-worker, Lowell Brown (with whom I’d also like to co-author a book on the Barnett Shale someday) the working title for our parenting book:
Between Now and Dreams: A Parent’s Guide for Every Decision You’ll Ever Make.
Lowell’s deadpan response, “You think that’s comprehensive enough?”
Absolutely, dude. And we’re going to pack it all in a skinny little book that you can carry around in your brief case or purse.
We’re going to change the world.
Getting By With A Little Help From Our Friends
After my public whine about DARS, a few friends reached out with unexpected and much appreciated offers. Sam seized on them both, forwarding a resume to one and securing an interview with another.
I accompanied him to the interview, in part because I wanted to see my old friend, but also because she asked that I be there.
My friend runs a company started by her late husband assembling circuit boards. I’m sure there is nothing in “What Color is Your Parachute” or any of the other how-to-get-a-job-books about bringing your mom along, but that’s how we roll.
Sam and my friend communicated just fine together. They are both straight shooters. She gave him a tour and checked his ability to do some of the fine motor work. Then she told him she would work around his Albertsons schedule for now. Very classy. If it doesn’t work out, there is an easy retreat for both of them.
But I have to say, at the end of the interview, when she asked about another task altogether — helping her link up some kind of time clock hardware to her current accounting software — I saw a huge spark in Sam’s eyes.