The Mother Centurion: mother

Showing posts with label mother. Show all posts

Yes it is Friday but Don't Forget the Rest

Once in a while it hits me. We are all here only for so long and damnit, you better enjoy every minute of it. I think anyone who knows me would agree, I am a relatively happy, upbeat person. I rarely am as you say, down in the dumps, sullen, blue or long suffering. I believe my children are a big part of this and especially my youngest who has by far seen far too much "unhappiness" is his seven years.

I must remain light on my feet. I must be the one who "brings the party", the one who gives in to Top Ramen and cake for dinner, the one who reads just one more chapter of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the one who is the first to know exactly when Cars 2 and Zookeeper are in the theaters. My husband, is a great daddy. He is ultimately the party in the pool where I usually am off in the play area or swimming around while he initiates his own game of "wrecking ball" with the boys- a rather fantastic sport where he dons goggles and slinks under water waiting for the perfect moment to catapult forward toward both screaming boys, their legs splashing with explosive energy. He finds an ankle, a leg, an arm of a boy and drags him back where the wriggly victim is quickly consumed in belly farts and finished off with a toss in the air only to return for more. What fun.

I love every day. Every moment and just this week as one of the employees in my building sighed, "Just tell me when its Friday", I stopped him and said, "Now what about the rest? What about Tuesday at 1:26 p.m. and Thursday at 7:13 a.m. Remember, you don't know how many Fridays or Mondays or even Wednesdays you have left. Don't forget. Every day is Friday to me. They're all good."

He nodded and agreed I was right. Our youngest son has taught us that every day. Every day I line up his meds on the counter, one colored syringe after another. The injections we give him weekly are expedited with a combination of a tactical stealth approach by my husband while he holds him down and I prep the spot, quickly sinking the needle into his soft skin. This brief but traumatic event is followed up each time with much hugging and tears and "mommy is so sorry but we have to.."

And like today. We will drop our oldest; his sensitive, attentive older champion brother, off at day camp and then head to the Phoenix Children's Hospital for an echocardiogram. We need to check his heart. His blood pressure has been creeping up.

So enjoy your Friday, enjoy your days as they lay out ahead of you like balanced domino soldiers and appreciate every day you get. Be happy and above all love every damn minute of it.

This Writer's Struggle; Can I Even Call Myself a Writer

When I began exploring writing a memoir, typically in troubling fits and short lived starts, I reflected directly on authors who have inspired me and the “why” I want to write. I wanted to approach my writing in a genuine, honest and exploratory manner and at the same time I am at a loss on how to do it.

I read a lot. Much to the dismay of my friends in my writing group, I am typically reading an already published work I have stumbled across through reading of another and so on. I am left to provide the lame excuse that I have just not had the time to peruse the hundred or so pages of their hard work and that is shameful.

How does this time reading work into getting more of my non-fiction work of life as a mother and cop on paper? How do I parlay all of my street wise motherly teachings into my real world experience of having two boys, one with a chronic kidney disease? How will I work all of the parental indifference I have experienced on the streets of Phoenix and how they contradict absolutely everything I do for my children into a readable 220 pages of memoir?

That is my question. So, I hide. I escape. I read. I live through the submissions of others. I embrace their accomplishments of completed works, of getting thoughts – rambling through their heads at 140 mph - down on paper in some sensible sequence. I applaud you, Frank Conroy, Tom Grimes, Lucy Grealy, and Harry Crews. You are who I listen to; seek inspiration from as I crawl along at the off ramp on my way to work. My books, all on my shelf sitting in neatly packed rows; times new roman and paragraph, character and quote, call to me and flaunt what is possible when one finally taps into the magic of stringing words together. To make a scene a song, a sentence a memory and reach across gender, race and culture to pull the ties that bind even tighter. I continue to search for my path. Traversing the writer landscape to discover the one meant for me, to reach deep within and bring the words to the surface; much the way my children squeeze all of the good back into me at the end of a very grown up day.

So I continue to read, published works and yes, I most certainly will continue to dedicate reading time to my friends, we all deserve that. I still will find kinship and potential in holding that weathered book in my hand, a bookmark from my son holding my place in conversation and feather my fingers lightly across the yellow pages, just for support.

The Weight of a Life (final excerpt)

Thank you again to everyone who has read this short story. It is a living document and is constantly in revision. I do not believe any piece of writing is ever really finished until it is finally released from your white knuckle grasp and carted away only to be returned to you over and over in your sleep. It can always be better and as long as I am my own worst critic, I guess that is not so bad.

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In 2008, I made the easiest decision of my life, a contradictory decision to Margaret’s to see her children as a product of recklessness; I donated a kidney to my son. He was four years old. Although not a cure, it would lend to him valuable quality of life. I am not angry with Margaret or anyone in her position but I pity them for missing out on the soul enhancing love of being a mother. I am disappointed they allow their cycle to continue, and for not accepting help when it presents itself but instead seeking escapes. A mother like Margaret and the children she creates will never know the word “mommy”.

I knew somewhere a cop would come across a child like Margaret’s. A child with an absent mother and ask similar questions about their life since cops are routinely a bit curious about others. Like Margaret, her own mother’s parental neutrality, a result of the call to the bottle, an abusive husband or just plain too much responsibility, won her mother over and Margaret came in second in that race, maybe even third. She took to the streets to teach her everything about life, a belief that the world was contained within the four blocks surrounding her house. I knew somewhere another cop would make an effort on a slow night like tonight to learn about another child like Margaret’s, her belly swollen with an unknown future, a cycle that continues from parent to child. Somewhere in his questioning, he would ask, “Where’s your mother?” and I can, with certainty predict the answer; “Who knows”.

On the Mend... Weight of a Life (cont) and ARPKD

Went to work today only briefly. Believing I had meetings and that today was Thursday, I learned by 10:00 a.m. that I was in a fog. It must be the fact that I have not had much sleep and came down with a bit of a cold. I came home, crawled into some sweat pants and proceded to lay supine watching reruns of SNL. Never really dozed off but eventually pulled myself together, picked up the kids and got them to music class. Now catching up on homework and thought I would at least produce something today besides a lot of mucus. Thank you for reading! Here is the second to last post of Weight of a Life.... and as always, your friendship and comments are welcome. Like most bloggers, I anticipate each visit with the hopes of finding another follower.. (smile... shrug...)

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In 2001, I became a mother for the first time. We welcomed a son and I felt from the moment I reached for him I had known him all my life. I was born to have him. I envisioned the shape of his eyes, the puff of his hair, saw him in reflections and merely bided my time to take in his scent, his physical presence. I celebrated in his buttery softness, coveted the defenseless nature of him and was in awe of how his cry settled at the tone and pitch of my voice. I knew having him was testimony I had done good things.

A brief two years and four months later, we welcomed his younger brother. The size of my heart, the space of my soul grew effortlessly. We would go to any extreme to guide our lives to give them the best possible future. I knew what the opposite looked like. I knew ugliness and absence and what that does to a child, how it guides their future to unknown dead ends, misguided paths and dangerous drops leaving them to fill painful voids as an adult and in some cases, only to repeat the cycle. Much like Margaret, they are left struggling with life, searching to find beauty or hope with little promise for the future, a fact society as a whole bears little witness or connectivity to as some of the world’s inconveniences.

A life changing reality came for our youngest at the age of one month when he was diagnosed with a chronic recessive gene trait, Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease/Chronic Hepatic Fibrosis (ARPKD/CHF). Translation; his kidneys and liver would deny him a normal, healthy life. This angered both me and my husband in the early phases. On the day in question, I followed the pediatrician from corridor to office, carpet to tile struggling with his words, desperately hopeful he was not talking of my son. We landed down the hall, my feet suspended off the floor as I floated out of my body. Behind a closed door he explained his theory of why my son’s tummy was distended, why his belly button was not just an “outie” but the cause of some unknown growth or strange business going on within.

“I am going to send you to a specialist; a Nephrologist.”

Emergency ultrasounds would disclose massive cyst filled kidneys pushing up under his stomach and other organs. His liver was enlarged and his tiny ribcage struggled to hold it all inside.

The day we were told to go to the emergency room for dangerous low levels of sodium discovered during a prioritized blood draw, we grasped the reality square in the jaw. We announced to no particular entity but to ourselves as we paced the bathroom floor that the news was admittedly upsetting and removed us from the normalcy of parenting two boys. The predictability of skinned knees, flu like symptoms or even broken limbs, was replaced with words like portal hypertension, alkaline phosphates and organ failure. I had the sudden realization it was us who had been chosen to have these boys. I was looking at the face of parenting through ghosts of past blunders by others and I had the appreciation of our situation. I could think of no part of me that was not forever changed.

The Centurion and the Mother

Centurion: A commanding leader in the Roman Army guiding the foot soldiers in the battlefield.

This describes the mother. I am just begining my journey into the bloggosphere, so bare with me. I have no previous experience and am only capable of writing in fits and starts. I do however aspire to document in some form or other my experience in raising two wonderful boys, holding a household and a career oriented husband together all while working full time as a member of a very large police department. Thus the title.

I work in my personal and professional life as a champion of children; a police officer by day and a mother full time. I maintain the household in working order, with bills paid, dog fed, homework done, husband happy and suffer very few "casualties" as my former leaders many centuries ago. As Primus Pilus, I lead my foot soldiers and carry their burden into battle, guide them in the ways of the world and as a further challenge and at times very dibilitating, I manage a child with kidney disease. Yes, one of my two wonderful children was born with Autosomal Recessive Polycistic Kidney Disease/Chronic Hepatic Fibrosis (ARPKD/CHF).

My experience as a police officer has offered me one thing most mothers may not witness, an opportunity to see mothering at its best and worst. The headlines of parental indifference are easy to recognize and offer a bit of a pull into the seedy world of sub-culture we wish to disassociate. They are the children who have no champion.

If anything is gained from checking in with this blog it is to recognize and offer comment to your experiences as a Mother Centurion. You must recognize you are a leader to your children. You have a narrow window of opportunity to garner your child's respect. You will forever have their attention. Losing the respect of your children lends to them a confusing and at times risky period of poor choices. I have witnessed those choices in my career. I am not a parent expert, I claim no formal training in child psychology and can barely spell "psychology"... however I have street smarts and a dictionary. I have learned from my advanced and well deserved "40 something" age that over time, including 19 years with the police department, I probably know quite a bit more than the average mom on what makes or breaks a child in choosing the right path. I have mentored 3 wonderful children in my career and currently my husband and I battle the ups and downs with our youngest son's disease. I most honorably will inform you that almost 3 years ago, I donated a kidney to our son and gave to him what any mother should, quality of life.

Welcome. I will share with you some insight into a parent-life less traveled for most and learn from you as well.