Sitting Close for Comfort

Because he uses a wheelchair, Stross, now 21 years old, is often able to sit close: stage productions, political rallies, concerts, weddings. As companions on his life journey, we - Skye, Mark and I - get to sit close as well. Today we had front row seats at 22-year-old Tad's funeral. Not exactly front pew, but the first row of seats in his church's choir loft overflow. Our elevated position gave us an unobstructed view of all primary actors and action.

Stross was delighted. He took in everything, interpreting scenery and scenes as the morning moved forward. His commentary - eager, excited and childlike - conveyed the disconnect we experience daily. His life, interpreted through a prism of intellectual disability, is locked in time even as it moves forward. The joy we see through him, illuminated by a similarly faceted prism, is ensconced with fears for his future - our future.

Today we watched a family - a mom, a dad and a brother - begin to reshape their future. They said a penetrating goodbye to someone they admired deeply and loved fiercely. A boy who had grown to need a walker and then a wheelchair. A young man who had figured out a way to attend college, while enjoying every life-changing experience possible regardless of perceived limitations. A man who had recently begun making plans for what might come next.

But before next things could come, his heart - a kind and free-spirited life force that had helped him collect hundreds of friends - burst suddenly and swiftly; so today we joined his family in saying goodbye.

I have imagined what such a funeral might be like for us. As in, I have imagined such an event - for us. Today I watched it play out in a familiar way. Not identical. But familiar. Close to what I've envisioned should such a fate befall us, but not quite identical in many ways. Of course, my imaginings reform as life reshapes me, but the grief, the pain, the loss - those remain. The greatest, perhaps, is the loss.

I have been watching Skye, already feeling the pain of separation that his own move to college will bring just one year from now, and have recognized how grieving has begun. Our family is acquainted with loss - the type that infiltrates a day's most ordinary tasks. Because life insists on moving forward, goodbyes are part of each day. Still, my heart hurt for Skye as I heard Tad's brother, Cody, talk about an ordinary Friday night spent with his brother, doing the kind of things brothers love to do together. I hurt as I watched Skye recognize and vicariously experience deep loss.

I hurt for Mark too. Fathers should not have to feel this brand of helplessness. Tad's dad could not have helped his son when he most needed him. Mark knows what that means. He lost his innocence about suffering long ago. Mark has lived the type of frustrating and near-debilitating helplessness that Tad's dad might be facing now, only our son is still with us. For now.

That's the most pain-filled part. Not knowing if we will outlive him or if he will outlive us.

No. That's not it.

The most painful part - penetratingly painful - is not knowing which scenario would hurt the least. For him. For Skye. For us - Mark and me.

Goodbyes are difficult. But the not knowing - that may be the worst of all. We know such not-knowing well.

Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. - Romans 8:24-27 (NRSV)

I remain grateful for the opportunity to sit close in life. To see scenes play out that others choose to view at a distance. I am also grateful for my capacity to vicariously live experiences that enrich life in divine ways.

And as for the young man who sat next to me today - the boy in a man's body who was delighted to watch and see and ask questions and wonder - I plan to keep sitting close to him and his brother and his father for as long as humanly possible, sighing with groans too deep for words to express.

In Memory of Tad Clovis Venzke . . .

The Day Life Changed

Happy Birthday, Stross.
You have planned quite a celebration for the first day of your 21st year.
As promised, your life has been "a wild ride."
I look forward to the twists and turns yet to come.
These are the only words I have today. 
I love you so much it hurts.
Mom

Missing Me - May 4, 2011
Stross-Your Birthday is Nearly Here - April 30, 2010

Missing Me

Today – May 4 – has been rough. Meteorologically speaking, my emotional state has been cloudy with isolated showers. And my barometric pressure reading is unseasonably high, even for this typically predictable season of emotional upheaval.

It’s birthday season – the highly anticipated and energy charged time of year when my oldest son, Stross, counts down the days to the May 5 anniversary of his birth. His enthusiasm and joyful glee is contagious, yet not strong enough to fully dissipate my annual angst. And, as I said, this year my angst feels uncommonly uncomfortable.

Part of the reason might be that this year, May 5 marks the completion of my 20th year of a complicated odyssey known as motherhood. For someone who once declared she never wanted to become a mother, that’s a pretty big deal.

Be assured that I have no regrets about having become a mother. At 26 years of age, I entered its unique state of existence willingly, even if a bit wide-eyed. I was mature enough to understand the risks and to accept the possibility of consequences. However, that does not mean I understood the reality of potential consequences nor does it mean I was prepared for them. But that doesn’t really matter, does it? Motherhood happens.

Conception, gestation, labor, delivery, and then baby is born. Ready or not, here he comes, and it’s what he brings with him that sets the storms in motion.

Redefined relationships.

Refined finances.

Sidelined careers.

Clarified faith.

At least those are the circumstances that comprised the perfect storm that Stross’ life set in motion.

I am not complaining, justifying, or whining. It is simply the way it was and still is. It is how I do motherhood.

My rough emotional condition this year seems connected to a greater sense of loss than I normally experience around this date – the anniversary of the day my life inexplicably and undeniably changed forever.

Today, one three-word sentence has infused my thoughts: I miss me.

I shudder at how Dorian Gray it sounds. As if who I am today is some twisted outcome of a deal I made years ago.

I also shudder at how pathetic it sounds. As if I live a stunted version of life, trapped in a past I refuse to let go.

It is neither of those. It is something far simpler. I miss me. In fact, I really miss me today.

Ironically, I am missing a version of me I never had the chance to know. A happily married working mother with a beautiful baby boy whose future stretched effortlessly into unknown but exciting days, months and years.

I remember being a happily married woman. In fact, I still am one – going on 25 years now.

I remember being a working mother too. I am still one of those as well, even if in an unconventional way.

I also remember holding my beautiful baby boy with a future that stretched into unknown days. He’s 20 years old now.

It’s just the package deal wasn’t packaged as neatly as I had imagined it to be prior to May 5, 1991. It has not been effortless, and its exciting days have not been free of shadows about the future – specifically my oldest son’s future and how that impacts our family’s collective future.

On May 4, 1991, I still believed that I would retain a sense of freedom about my life’s choices after becoming a mother. I believed that self-sacrifice would be a choice rather than a daily life condition, and I believed that happily ever would be a reality that unfolded not a state of existence I had to strategize to assure.

Please understand.

I do not hate my life’s circumstances.

I do not resent my son. Dear God, no.

I also do not regret one day of my life that has occurred since May 5, 1991.

I simply miss me. The one that never got to be. I think I just want to know if I would have liked her. I hope so. Because I’m trying really hard to make her proud of the woman – make that the mother – that I have become.

Happy Birthday, Stross. You are beyond a blessing to me. The gift of your life is my personal threshold to all things divine. A sacred mystery.

And so I am left to wonder. About her. About me. About your future and our family’s future.

Yes, May 4 has been a rough day. But May 5 has now arrived; and you, my son, will soon arise and shine like no one else. I have a feeling my clouds will soon be lifting. I also have a feeling I will always miss me … well, her. And that’s o.k. Her elusive beauty keeps me company on nights like tonight, and she helps me be a better mother somehow.

So again, Happy 20th Birthday, my dear, Stross. I love you. Forever.
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Nebulous Nature of Life’s Pivotal Moments: Part 2

To read Part 1: Click here.

It was late in the spring of 2000, and I was angry. I didn’t know that I was angry though. Not until Mark uttered these words a second time: “Is that what you want?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond. His repeated question hung for a space of time that allowed me to live through the experiences that had gotten me to that particular moment – the way someone’s life flashes before them when threatened.

Did I feel threatened? Mark had – quite possibly – offered me exactly what I wanted and even needed. I had simply to respond: “yes” or “no.”

His question came after I blasted into the video editing bay where he was working on a project for Waldorf College in order to harangue him. It was a long diatribe. Something about the college (who happened to be his employer and our primary source of income) and how we had tied ourselves to a place that had announced a little more than a year earlier that it faced dire financial circumstances. I also included some fierce sounding accusations about how he spent an exorbitant amount of time at the college and that it didn’t seem to be appreciated. The entire episode was tinged with overtones that said I was tired of being the go-to person on certain matters related to our sons’ care.

Only seven years previous, we had chosen this life arrangement: Mark becoming our family’s primary breadwinner rather than me continuing in that role. Me becoming our children’s primary care provider, and our family living in a city with a population that represented 2 percent of our previous hometown.

Stross was 9 and Skye was 5 at the time. And, evidently, I was tired of being the home-based parent, because these incredibly revealing words tumbled accusingly from my mouth: “You know, I could have been the vice president of communications for some company somewhere by now.”

Silence.

Mark and I looked at one another, me unflinching as I – in private horror – wondered where my statement had come from; he unflinching as he gathered his thoughts and then offered a genuine and animated response that affirmed my anger.

“Is that what you want?” He asked, looking part relieved and part frustrated. “Is it? Because if it is, I’m game. Just say the word, and we are out of here. I’ll go to my office right now, type up a letter of resignation and start packing. You mean more to me than this place. A hell of a lot more. And if you’re not happy, I’m not either. So if it’s time for us to leave so you can do what you need to, let’s do it.”

His words were exactly what I needed to hear, but I couldn’t determine if they were what I wanted to hear. I said nothing. He continued even more pointedly.

“Is that what you want?”

There it was again, but this time my life flashed in a dizzy mess.

I did not want to say “yes” just because I was angry – and I could no longer deny that I was angry. In fact, I was something beyond angry. I was not living the kind of life I wanted to live. I had tried so hard not to become a victim of circumstance after Stross’ birth, but I had finally begun to acknowledge what I had lost. Stross’ dramatic needs now shaped mine. He was born with conditions regarded far outside the realm of normal. My life now reflected his realities. No, they were my realities. Non-normal realities. Whatever that meant.

I also could not say “yes” out of a selfish need to preserve an identity that fit about as well as my pre-pregnancy jeans. But I was scared. Mark knew it. He was scared too. He didn’t want to lose any more of me than what I’d already shelved.

I answered using the word that best matched my mood.

“No.”

“So you don’t want that?” Mark asked. “I know you are right. You could have been a vice president. I won’t hold you back.”

“I said ‘no.’”

“Then what is this about?”

“I don’t know.”

That was more than 10 years ago. And I did not know what it was about then. But I do know now.

Two roads had diverged in the woods that was my life. And looking down one as far as I could, I had not liked what I could not see beneath mounds of nettles and undergrowth. However, I could not take the other road either. Instead, I had hoped it would keep for another day.

Yet way leads to way, just as it did years before that moment when we decided to have a child. And then again when we decided to have Mark become a stay-at-home father, and yet again when we decided to move and switch roles, and still again when we decided to have a second child, and still once more when Stross became gravely ill and we thought about moving after he recovered as a way to manage our debt.

I have never been able to figure out a way back. I can only hope to keep moving toward new diverging paths that pose easier choices. And I learned long ago –simultaneous with Stross’s first breath – that it is futile to wonder where other paths might have led.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Can you hear me sighing? I sure hope so, for if you can, that will make all the difference.

Emotionally reflecting - Christina Calgaard-Maulsby

It’s been more than a week since I had lunch with Christina Calgaard-Maulsby, Waldorf College class of 2002, and her adorable son, Quentin. I still don’t know what I want to say to adequately express the dynamics of what I think and feel.

The relationships Mark and I forge with former students are as unique as the relationships we had with them during their time in our classrooms. We have found that the students are the ones who set the dynamics, as it should be. Yet life shapes those relationships as well.

A teacher cannot help being affected by watching the way a young man or woman deals with the chronic illness of a parent, the death of a parent or close friend, news that mom and dad are divorcing, news that mom or dad are moving or have lost a job, the sudden awareness that they might be an addict or anorexic or bulimic, the realization they are pregnant and life will never be the same, the realization they are gay and they simply cannot pretend one day more.

Then there are the times I witness life circumstances reflected through their eyes – like the year my Editing class surprised me with a card filled with personal notes of encouragement the day before we were to take Stross for an unplanned surgery. Or the time my PR Skills class joined with Mark’s Electronic Field Production class to give us a gift certificate for a classy date night because they wanted us to take more time for ourselves. Or when yet another year’s Editing class supported a classmate with a teenaged daughter and an elementary-aged daughter through her husband’s untimely death from prostate cancer.

I learn so much about life from those I am privileged to meet in my various classrooms.

But somehow, I think, Christina is in still another category – one of … see, this is where words fail me. Probably because her life has found a way to emotionally pierce mine. While her life choices and life events have not mirrored mine fully, they do reflect emotions of paths I’ve taken.

As a student, Christina drank in the knowledge and experiences I had to offer. She had a natural inclination for the field of public relations and marketing, and after she graduated, she never looked back. Not once. She had chosen her career path well and was enjoying every minute of what it allowed her to do and become.

After working as a college recruiter for a year, she became the marketing coordinator for a bank in southern Minnesota, coordinating all the internal and external marketing efforts for its 11 locations. Then she headed to Florida where she worked for an advertising agency before landing a job as the marketing officer for TIB Bank in Naples. Here she really got a taste of the corporate world, taking on all that comes with a bank buy-out.

Christina led the efforts necessary to merge the bank’s identities, crafting a plan that had customers from the bank that was being purchased able to talk directly to the president new organization if their questions were not adequately answered immediately by the customer service representative she had placed in each branch office. All this occurred the day the signs were changed and the announcement simultaneously made. She proudly told me they only lost two customers in the branch she was in that morning, and those individuals had planned to pull their money for other reasons anyway. In fact, the whole transition went smoothly and much of the success was credited to her. It was likely one of the reasons she was named as one of the 40 under 40 to watch in the local media then. (BTW: She’s only 30 now.) Also, she and her husband, Grant, served as mentors to children in the foster care system through the area’s Footsteps to the Future program. Christina even served on its board.

While all that is wonderful, it’s not so different from what other alumni have accomplished in other ways in the communities where they live and work. What has me connecting most to Christina these days is part of her motherhood story: Quentin was injured in the home of the woman she had chosen as Quentin’s care provider. Over our recent lunch I relived our horror as she shared her own. And while these matters are always horrific, Quentin’s ordeal is especially so. I will not go into the details here, as there is a child abuse court case pending. But I have blogged about it before, and you can find Christina’s story and links to news reports here.

I think the thing that has me most awestruck, is that I am watching Christina navigate a version of life so far removed from normal that the vast majority simply cannot comprehend its layered complexity. And she’s doing it beautifully.

I remember instinctively employing my organizational skills to take on my new version of life checklist by checklist; I see her doing something similar. It is how you merge two banks into one identity; it is how you merge your former way of life with a vastly different one. And note: That last feat is to merge “with” not “into” – there is a difference. For unlike a bank or a company, your identity is forever part of who you are – a child of God seeking to glorify the image of God no matter what you do, where you go or what happens to you.

Christina, you once gave me a book as a thank you for what you had learned from me in the classroom. I look forward to discovering along with you all the new things life has for us – you, Grant and Quentin; and me, Mark, Skye and Stross. I hope you find something of value in the book I have given you.

Blessings to you my, friend. Don’t ever hesitate to call me – ever.