The Kid who O-D’d
20 Oct 2009 6 Comments
My son’s best friend ended up in the hospital last weekend. He’d taken some pill, he mumbled. And then he was falling down in class. Talking gibberish. Having hallucinations. Passing out. Soon his dad came and he was rushed away. Some pill. Nobody seemed to know what. My son was shaken. Rumors spread. His friend’s father, a police officer, came back to the school frightened and enraged. “Who gave my son a pill! Who did it?! What was it?” My husband, summoned by Simeon, was also there. Listening. Comforting. Asking questions. Nobody had answers. Or no one who had them gave them.
This is a good kid. I take him to school with my son almost every day. I know his dad. He calls me mom. And that morning, like every other morning he seemed just fine. I kept asking why. Why did he take it? What was he thinking? Didn’t he know better? What went wrong? What did my own son know? Lot’s of questions.
But an interesting thing happened. My husband had come by my job after leaving the school to give me the news. He was distraught. So was I. And as soon as I went back into the office I went looking for cookies. No big deal, right? I was upset. Frustrated. I needed a cookie. Because I wanted not to feel so bad. It was a couple of days later that it hit me — when I felt bad I went looking for something to take so that I would feel better. Just like my son’s friend. Sure mine was a cookie and legal. But whenever I look outside of myself for some THING to take to feel better I’m engaging in the same kind of activity. I know — it sounds like a stretch. But I’ve been thinking — the best way for me to teach positive choices in the face of stress, pain or difficulty, is to model positive ways of dealing with them. Positive actions, not negative ones. So, I’ve determined to pray when I feel stressed. To make a conscious effort to be still and say a prayer instead of reaching for something that doesn’t serve me. No this doesn’t solve the problem. But it’s a start. The best way to teach our children that there are positive ways to handle stress is to handle it positively ourselves.
My son’s friend was back in school this week. “How’s it going for him?” I asked Simeon. Any consequences from the administration? ” Sim said, “Mom, he’s not a pill popper! He hurt his shoulder in football practice and he was just looking for something to help it feel better.” “Oh,” I responded. “Well, what about the other kids?” “Well,” he said, “They all are calling him ‘the kid who O-D’d”
This is my prayer to deal positively with stress: “May we be filled with loving kindness. May we be well. May we be peaceful and at ease. May we be happy.” Thanks Ifetayo!
The picture is from Coca-Cola’s 2009 Black History Campaign
The Power of the Arts
15 Oct 2009 2 Comments
Simeon is in a play this weekend. It is “The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet.” Yes, just imagine that Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare got together for a few drinks and decided to collaborate! Simeon is Romeo and one of his best friends plays Juliet (“No, I’m not kissing Margaret!”) At any rate, it promises to be fun and I’m looking forward to attending. My son has had many challenges in school, but I love what happens when he moves into the theater. He has an amazing memory and can master the lines with ease. He has a wonderful sense of physicality and a great ear for tone and music. He is in his element on stage and the success he finds there bolsters him.
I work in the early childhood education business. Yesterday the owner of the company was “fit to be tied” because she’d read an article that said that many of the schools in our district were cutting out the music and art programs. These were the same schools that were putting ‘smart boards’ into the PreK classrooms at $8000 a pop. I understand that computer technology is important. I understand that there are a zillion learning programs that can be downloaded. But studies prove that a little person’s curiosity and ability to solve problems develops naturally through exposure to music and the arts and good old fashioned play.
I know this is true for my kids. The act of creativity IS the act of problem solving. A mind that can memorize the lines of a play or learn the fingering for a guitar or can understand the tones in a scale, can also figure out the dimensions of a building, or how to develop an interactive accounting program or how to motivate a classroom. Or how to take some new idea and make it into a reality. Am I sounding passionate here? I am.
My Baby Girl
08 Oct 2009 7 Comments
My baby girl turned 20 Sunday. Twenty years and 3 days ago, after laboring for hours in Ziggy’s motel, Sara entered our lives and made the whole world a different place. Ziggy’s motel was not the plan. Well, a lot of stuff wasn’t in the plan. I wanted my child to be brought into the world gently by a midwife. Ron and I were believers in traditional things and what, we thought, could be more traditional than a gently lit birthing center, a loving midwife, Ron singing as our child entered the world and me immediately bouncing back to a size 6 with a 26 inch waist. Yeah, that last part should have been a clue. Suffice to say — the best laid plans of mice, men, and idealistic pregnant people, oft-times go awry.
First there was the hurricane. Hurricane Hugo hit the South Carolina coast with a vengeance and we all, me 8 1/2 months pregnant, had to evacuate. While we were blest to return to a home still standing and a neighborhood with minimal damage, many weren’t so lucky and thousands were displaced. Then there was the labor that would not proceed. Though we rushed the 45 minutes to the birthing center as soon as the water broke, our baby stubbornly decided to hold on and labor trickled to a stand still.
And then — there was Ziggy’s. We didn’t want it to be Ziggy’s. The midwife told us to go to a nearby hotel so that we’d be close when labor started up again. But all the hotels and motels in the little town of Bamberg as well as neighboring ‘bergs’ were filled with displaced Hugo survivors. Ron and I wandered from place to place like characters in a nativity play, with Ron pleading over and over — “but my wife is pregnant and in labor!” But in the end, only Ziggy’s was available. It was available because nobody with ANY option would stay there. We wrapped ourselves up in our own stuff on top of the bed with the suspicious linens and counted contractions. The crickets and other critters rustling about the room on tiny dry little legs kept us unwelcome company. When daylight came and we’d returned to the birthing center it was determined that Sara was firmly butt first and someone would have to go in and get her.
So, finally, there was the emergency C-Section and my tiny 5 1/2 pound baby girl entered the world, looking around immediately with her bright, shiny eyes. I fell immediately irrevocably in love. And I still am. As I sat with my baby girl this past Sunday I was filled with so much pride at the woman she has become and tremendous faith in the woman she is becoming. I’d go to Ziggy’s for her again.
