Finding The Man Within . . .

It's more than a little unnerving living with a teenager on the verge of manhood.  And when I say 'more than a little unnerving' what I really mean is that there are days I think that one or both of us are not going to make it through these years with any bit of sanity left.  And those days far outnumber the normal, boring, sane days by a factor of about 15:1.

It can get downright funny.  For example, the day I discovered little dark hair man growth on his upper lip and burst into tears in the middle of SAM's.  Poor Tyler was begging me "don't do this in the middle of SAM's mom!" but that's where I discovered it so that's where I fell apart.  Or there was the day I had to try and figure out how to measure his inseam without embarrassing us both, all the while trying to explain what 'dressing left or right' meant as I struggled to keep a straight face.  And if I start making jokes about how much food he inhales, I won't stop for about an hour.  Seriously, how can he eat all that and still be so rail thin?  How can he consume a huge man-size meal and in the next breath tell me he's starving?

He is growing at the speed of light and he hasn't even hit his BIG growth spurt yet, that's at least a year or two away I think.  He looks me straight in the eye now when we stand together which for some reason totally freaks me out.  His feet are officially the size of Scotty's and I won't be surprised if next month I have to buy him an even larger size dress shoe for a wedding we will be attending. I refuse to buy the actual dress clothes until a week before we leave on our trip because I only want to have to buy them once.  I am totally not ready to have to yell at a child that towers over me.

But that's the thing, isn't it?  He won't really be a child.  He already is not truly a child.  He's become half a man while I was busy driving car pool and cutting coupons.  He looks at me and asks huge questions that I don't know how to answer because I am still figuring life out myself.  We have grown-up discussions about colleges, careers, politics, faith and autism. He cares for his brothers and helps me around the house and tries to 'parent' the little ones.  I sit here this morning, just 2 weeks away from the end of school with tears streaming down my face because in a couple months he starts high school.  It's the beginning of the end, so to speak.  There are only four, precious and startlingly short, more years left of serious parenting to do for this boy-man and me.  Oh, I know that there will still be parenting to do after he graduates and I know that I have already lost a modicum of influence over him, and even that will decrease very rapidly once he walks in those doors this August.  I get it, I really do.  I just hope I've done enough to this point and I hope I make the right choices with what little influence I have left over the next few, volatile years.

These are such challenging years.  I am constantly torn by my overwhelming love and emotion for my son and the need to smack his head into oblivion for the obnoxiousness that sometimes spews from his mouth.  Just a few weeks ago on our way to soccer practice I was completely worn out by the time I met my husband on the field with our 3 boys.  Scott took one look at me and asked what was wrong.  I said 'I'm just done' and glanced Tyler's way.  He was currently arguing with me about whether or not we were late because I had said 'I wish we had gotten here a couple minutes early, I don't like to be late' when we pulled up.  It didn't seem to matter to him that I wasn't actually arguing back.  Scott asked and so I said 'I'm just tired.  He disagrees with everything that comes out of my mouth whether or not if affects him or whether or not it's something to disagree about.  I could say the sky is blue and he would disagree with me today.'  Tyler caught the end of this exchange and said 'No I don't! I don't argue about everything!'....  'nough said.

The attitude sucks.  He knows absolutely everything and so, of course, we know nothing.  And the emotion .... oh. my. goodness.  What????  For some reason I thought boys weren't moody.  I look back at my years (literally years; my poor, poor mother!!!) of crying nightly to her about how no one liked me and how I was never going to have friends or a boyfriend and who knows what else and I think thank goodness I have boys! I cannot remember my brother being moody or crying or throwing fits.  Then again, my teenager angst lasted FOREVER and by the very definition of being an adolescent I was self-centered and had no clue what was happening with anyone else in the world except for ME.  I guess I just missed it, because evidently it happened.

The emotion is the scariest part.  I am so caught off guard by the outbursts and most of them are so self demeaning that I can't breathe.  Is that truly how he sees himself or are the hormones blinding him?  He takes things so seriously that when there is a problem he escalates to hysterics and the only way I can get him to calm down is to raise my voice to be heard and then I feel like a louse for yelling because he sees it as me yelling at him instead of me yelling to get his attention.  I hate hearing the words 'I'm so Stupid' when he is anything but; I despise phrases like 'I give up', 'I hate this' and  'I can't take it anymore'.

Recently at dinner he said something resembling 'No one likes me, I have no one that's really family' and it chilled me to the bone.  I got very still and very quiet and asked what he meant by that.  "THIS is your family.  THIS is who you are.  It's different, it's sometimes complicated, but you are a part of TWO families that love you more than you will ever know.  You are very, very blessed." And then he broke down crying because he knows that and he didn't mean that and then the stupid comments began again.  Oh boy.  This poor, torn up kid.

Where I see the emotion take hold the most is in physical projects that he works on.  He's always been a builder, a creator.  He has wanted to be some kind of design engineer since he was 9 and has only wavered in wondering what type of engineering he might want to do.  He looks at something solid in front of him and immediately tries to figure out how to make it better.  He has even redesigned some cheap plastic guns from the dollar store into ones that shoot projectiles and make noises and his brothers are in awe of what he can do.  And he's relentless.  If a project doesn't work, he keeps going back to the drawing board to improve it because he can't let it go.  Because he can't let it go, the emotion will get the best of him and he'll fall apart when something doesn't work.  And all I want him to do is take a break, let it go and calm down.  But he can't, because he's obsessed, but if I say he's obsessed then I get an earful.

Last night as his design 'adaptation' for the science class bottle rockets didn't work out and he began to lose it over the time he had wasted and how if he had just done the rubric like everyone else he'd be done, he got so upset that he almost passed out.  I think he just wasn't breathing properly because he was so angry, but it scared me.  I gave him some firm rules for finishing the project within an hour, calmed him down and then got down on the floor and looked straight into his eyes.  I said something like "You are going to design something amazing someday.  You are not stupid.  You are very, very smart.  You look at everything and want to make it better, do it smarter and design it greater.  That's a good thing.  But there are 10 days of school left, it's 8:30 and this thing has to fly tomorrow.  This is NOT the project that is going to be something different and amazing.  It's just a bottle rocket."  He calmed down, he finished.

This morning on the way to school he said it frustrates him that he builds things all the time and someone in his class made something very cool and he never does building projects.  I pointed out that none of them had flown yet so there was no way to know how cool the other kids project really was.  And then I asked him how many different light bulbs Edison designed before he found the one that worked.  Tyler laughed and told me he didn't have time to make 1000 rockets.  Not my point.  But I told him again "You are going to design something amazing someday. Someone is going to come to you with an idea that you are going to look at and just know that it can be done and it can be done better and you are going to design it.  You have it in you.  I can see it clear as day.  You have always had it in you.  We just have to find a way for you to let off steam when your projects have a setback. You never give up and that's a very, very good thing."  Was it enough?  That's an answer I won't have for many, many years.


I wonder sometimes if Edison's mother wanted to strangle young Tommy too.  The relentlessness, the obsessiveness are sometimes so frustrating.  I have an overwhelming urge to hide his hot glue gun for the summer so he can't use it on another project that will make me crazy, but then I feel terrible for the thought since said action would stifle his creativity.  The Robotics Magnet Tyler got accepted to for high school will help him refine how to take his ideas and mold them into reality.  I'll probably get over the fact that he is going to learn to weld and solder before he learns how to drive, just as long as he doesn't try to do it in my garage.

He is working on a project for Algebra that is also a contest for ideas on how to develop some land that the district owns in a way that is beneficial to the community.  Tyler came up with some great ideas but when he looked at Google Earth the area showed an existing parking lot and plans for a road that his teacher didn't include in their instructions.  So he took it upon himself to email the district for clarification on whether or not to include those details in his design plan.  He told me after the fact and read this amazingly mature email to me.  Then he launched into details for his nature preserve/reflection garden/dog park plan (It's a really big plot of land, and Mandy - it's right across the street from you).  Sometimes he'll wonder aloud if he really has what it takes to be an engineer or to design or invent anything and I wonder how he can't see what I can see - how every cell in his body is geared toward designing, inventing and improving, he just needs time and space to let those skills evolve.

What a beautiful mind he has, choosing Latin and Violin while trying to figure out what he wants to invent or design or create.  I wish he could see it, but then like all teenagers he feels alone, isolated, out of place and disconnected.  I hope I'm doing enough to ground him in reality while giving him space to test his wings.  I hope that when I cut off his rants with sometimes short, unkind words that he will forgive me someday and know that it was to help him calm and refocus.  And sometimes I just hope that he has a kid someday that is as much like him as he is like me.  I am getting repaid the headaches I gave my mother, he should be repaid as well. 

So, mom tells me that with boys there is drama and angst and emotion, but it's more short lived.  By the time you get through years 13-14 it's pretty much winding down.  That's good, right?  Except that what you are left with after that is post-puberty man-ness.  Not a half-man/half-child, but a young man.  Mom says by the time Matthew was 15 and we had a life/death scare for my dad while those two were on a trip, she never saw my brother as a child again.  Just a young man. Which means I don't really have 4 more years to try and help shape this kid into a decent human being-type man.  I have got about a year.  One year left to pour in as much motherly influence as possible for his moral fiber to soak up.  After that, I'll be dealing with a young man more interested in his own ideas than mine.

I think of Proverbs 22:6 often: "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."  That verse means different things to me all the time.  Sometimes I use it to remind myself that all this stuff I'm pouring into my kids will be the cream that rises when they are older (and all the adolescence and angst and rebellion is over).  Other times I focus on the 'should go' so that I remember it's not always about what I have done or even what I would choose, but about what God wants for my boys that should sway my decisions.  And still other times I focus on the 'he' in that verse.  Train a child in the way he should go.  It's about this unique child, loved by me and cherished by his Creator.  I have to figure out the best way to teach this child how to master his emotions and harness his skills and be the best man that he is capable of being.

There is work to be done.  Just one more year (or 4 or 8, however you choose to see it), which will race by as High School takes over our lives.  I have a long list of things to work on like finding a youth group he can connect with, helping him improve communication skills with loved ones and learning how to actually HEAR his alarm clock so I don't have to yell at him every morning to get out of bed. Urgh, and the kid still can't write or read cursive.    And that is just the tip of the ice berg. Oh my goodness.  We have so much to do!!!!

For years I've said that I am not raising three boys, I am raising three men.  I truly believe that, but the reality of the first man I'm raising staring me in the eye as an actual man is kind of terrifying.  Time is growing short and the man emerging from inside my little boy is becoming more evident every day.  Boy, I sure hope we don't kill each other before the work is done.

Bless you my friends.

Snapshot Anxiety Syndrome ...

I have a confession to make.  I have developed some fairly serious anxiety regarding parties and holidays and family gatherings over the last few years.  Scooter has such a hard time at parties anyway and then the inevitable happens ... someone wants to take a picture.  Oh boy.  My tummy starts hurting and I start to sweat a little.  Maybe it will be okay.  Maybe it won't.  Chances are there is going to be rudeness and possibly tears.

It's always the same thing - at some point during a party, someone is going to want to take a group picture and there's a very good chance that in doing so the whole party is going to go down the drain.  At least for me it is, because I am going to be the mother of the kid who is screaming and crying like he is being physically harmed because you dared to try and take his picture.  I am going to feel guilty that my kid ruined your picture and I am going to feel frustrated that I will have to try and explain to some relative we see once a year in a few short words why he's acting this way.  I am going to feel like you are talking about me behind my back because I must be doing EVERYTHING wrong and my kid must be SPOILED ROTTEN since he can't just sit there and smile like everyone else.

To be fair - he's better than he used to be.  We can get him to actually get in a group photo here and there, now and then these days.  But most likely, he won't smile or look directly at the camera.  He puts on his 'mask' which looks like a blank stare and a pout combined into one bland look that he wears in so many pictures. So now maybe I will just feel guilty that my kid ruined your picture because he won't look at the camera or smile.  And maybe you will be talking behind my back because he's just ungrateful about getting stockings or eggs with candy and money and couldn't he just smile and look like he kind of enjoys being here just once?

I like to believe (and therefore talk myself into the idea, constantly) that no one we love would actually believe this stuff about us or would say any of it, but I constantly fear and dread it and worry about what people really think I am doing with my kid.  It is very, very difficult to change the dialogue in my head when Scooter is having a bad moment.  Of course, the more comfortable he is, the better he is going to do.  So when we go to the 'BIG' family gatherings where he sees relatives once or twice a year or when we go to Wisconsin every other year - those situations, the ones you really want to commemorate with big group/family photos - those are the hardest.  They are also the most chaotic with absolutely no sense of routine or pattern that my munchkin can discern and interpret and flow with.  He's usually a mess. 

For example, two years ago we went to Scott's aunts house for a small-ish graduation party for her son.  Scooter had no memories of her house, had no idea who would be there or what he would encounter.  It didn't matter how much we explained to him or how well we tried to prepare him, the child would NOT go in.  He sat on the front porch and refused to enter the house.  Granted, I think that was the third party that weekend, but yeah.  Fun Stuff!  Scott stayed with him out front and his brother came out to help coax him in.  Eventually Scott got him through the door and the house (as quickly as humanly possible) and out to the back porch.  He calmed down, he ate some chips and had a drink, he played with some cousins.  By the time we left he was having a ball running around the backyard with brothers and cousins and you would never have known there was a problem.  Then again, no one asked to take his picture that day.

About a month later, we were in Wisconsin on vacation.  I prepared for that trip with Scooter in mind.  I spaced events, prepared a social story, gave him lots of down time and transition opportunities. He did so very well, slowly warming to cousins he didn't remember and friends that he didn't know.  After a long afternoon picnic with some of our favorite people, we were gathering in groups for pictures.  People wanted snapshots of me with my family - and I tried.  I knew he wouldn't want his picture taken so I gambled and didn't tell him that was what we were doing.  BIG mistake.  HUGE.  When someone said 'say cheese' and he figured out why we were all clustered together across from someone he didn't know .... holding a camera .... well, let's just say the screaming might have been heard a mile away.  Lesson learned - don't try to 'trick' your child with autism who needs time to prepare for EVERYTHING!!!!!

I get it, I feel bad.  I wish when the grandmothers tried to get ALL their grandkids into one picture, kind of looking at the camera and seeming generally happy to be there - I wish that this would work!  I want those pictures too!  And if my niece or nephew is making a face or crying or looking the other way - it doesn't bother me a bit.  I'm able to shake that off and say 'yep, that's okay, get what you can get' because I know there will be a hundred more pictures of those kids that come out well.  No big deal.  But when it's my munchkin, again, oh I hate that feeling.

Like I said - he's better.  He's very good these days with his immediate cousins.  We got a few gems like this at Christmas:

Of course - they were about to open presents a couple days early, so who wouldn't be happy, right?

And this weekend, we had a small egg hunt with the families in our cul de sac.  Sitting with the kids he plays with every day, his comfort level was at a very nice high and we captured a bunch of photos like this one:

Look at that smile!  See, he really does want to be there!

But, of course, it's still touch and go.  So, yesterday, when he was surrounded by cousins he sees once or twice a year and aunts and uncles he doesn't know well, it was tough.  The good news was that the party was at a home where he is quite comfortable.  And we were early, we've learned to just be early!  He does so much better if he's already out back playing as people arrive so he's not overwhelmed by walking into a large party in full swing.  And he played and played, perfectly.  Right up until we asked him to corral with all those cousins inside the house while eggs were hidden.  He wouldn't leave my side so I couldn't help.  And then we asked the kids to line up by age, just like always, but he couldn't do it and he couldn't do it very vocally.  I calmed him down, put him next to his brother and stood there with all the kids while the pictures were taken.

At least he was over the tears for the moment (they began again when we started the egg hunt).  He just put on his mask and let everyone snap away.  Becki made it in the picture too - but she was keeping a toddler in the line-up. Me, there I am, standing amongst all the kids making sure my 8 year old doesn't run away.  (Seriously, can they stop growing?  That group next to me are all 14 and on their last family egg hunt. And I am not even the tallest one in the group!)

I don't really know what went wrong.  I can only speculate and try to head off the problem the next time.  Before the hunt, I had taken the kids down a line of photos that Becki had displayed.  They were each of the 'group' photos of the kids at Easter over the last 8 years.  Oh my - they have all grown so much.  Scooter looked at each picture, asking me to point out where he was.  I thought maybe he would 'get it'.  We take the picture every year.  Every year we take the picture so we know who was here and we can see how you've grown.  Every year.  We take the picture.  And he tends to do better at the parties we do every year because he sort of knows the routine.  But no, not this time.

He had a small meltdown on Easter.  For us, it was small.  I'm sure it didn't look that way to others.  I don't really care anymore though.  I get so worried about making it work and trying to get him into and through parties and pictures that I can make myself crazy.  It's hard and if someone doesn't get that, it's okay.  I know they don't really get Scooter all the time either.  They see him in snapshots at occasional gatherings and they can't really know what's going on with this little boy that they love.  Those photos are not a very good sampling of what living with my baby every day is like.  And it's okay that this is all they see or know.  It's okay that they may look back and wonder why he never smiled.  They are only snapshots and they are not the full picture.  {On the flip side, people see him playing with his cousins outside and wondering if he really IS on spectrum.  Because lots of kids on spectrum can't do that.  They are all so different, and this is something he does very well, while pictures are something with which he struggles constantly. Everyone else's opinion of our diagnosis: A discussion for another day!}

Scooter will ham it up for me to take a picture, so it's not just the picture he has a problem with.  In recent years he's been able to vocalize that he doesn't like pictures to be taken by people he doesn't know, but I think there is more to it than that.  I think group photos and large gatherings put way too many faces in his field of vision and it's very hard for him to interpret even one, much less 10 or 15 at a time.  It's high stress for him and everything is unpredictable.  Unpredictable environments are hard work for him.

One of his older cousins was snapping photos yesterday too.  I saw a couple today on facebook and I wanted to share them with you.   This was after the hunt, after he calmed down and started to play again.

That's my munchkin.  That's the boy I live with most of the time.  And even that precious, happy face is just a snapshot.  It doesn't show our daily struggle with getting out of the car for school or the meltdowns we face when we are running late and I have to try to get him to do something out of order.  When you see these, you can't hear the sadness in his voice when he tells me 'Momma, I want to play soccer.  I just can't!' or the frustration in my own when I'm begging him to try putting a food in his mouth that isn't on one of his lists, PLEASE!!!!


We will keep going to parties and we will keep taking pictures. I'll keep getting a stomach ache worrying about it beforehand and sometimes I'll look like a bitch not very cooperative person when I call it quits and pull him out or even worse, don't make him pretend to try.

And someday when I look back at the years of photographic memories, I might wish he was in more of the group shots. Maybe I'll wish I had forced him to do more so that he could further develop that social skill.  Or maybe not.  Maybe I'll remember that it was more important to be his mom and not force him to do something that makes him so uncomfortable so that he could just have a happy Easter.  In the mean time, I'll just keep taking snapshots of him when I can get them and hope that more have a smile in them than the mask.

And I am learning to appreciate the mask as well.  I am learning to see it as his coping mechanism.  When there is too much chaos and too much to deal with, and someone (even his mom) wants to snap a picture, he puts on the mask and separates himself so he can manage.  Without a melt down and without stimming or chewing his shirt or anything else, he can just use the mask for a minute and make it through to the next thing.  Because the next thing is that he can't stand the smell of bread and every single person around him has a roll in their hand.  And someone may touch him before they wash their hands.  And that is a much harder thing to deal with at this party than my mom taking a picture of me looking rather dapper.

It kinda makes me wish that I had a mask of my own.  Anyway, next time we are gathered together friend, and my sweet boy doesn't want his picture taken and he yells 'NO' and it sounds kind of rude and then I don't step in and make him do it so that I look like either 'rude mom' or 'bad mom' ... now you know why.  And maybe you will just squeeze my hand so my tummy ache goes away and I know that you love us both anyway.

Thanks and God Bless...

Grief Steals a Voice . . .

My voice has been muted, silenced.  My voice has been gone, for months.

Once upon a time, it was a normal Friday in November.  I got up, got the kids to school and drove to work.  I talked to my parents on the phone while I settled into my desk and checked emails.  Then I got off the phone and got busy for the day.  Not even an hour later my dad called with news that set off events I still can't completely wrap my mind around.  One minute it was business as usual, the next found the world coming apart at the seams.

Grief is a powerful, living, moving and sinister thing.  It's also gentle, calming, healing and quiet.  Grief is a lot of things to a lot of people.  I've had my share.  I've mourned for family and friends that I still miss with heart aching clarity.  Some losses came so closely upon each other that at some point a few years ago I just stopped feeling the pain.  I shut it all out and closed down as much of myself as I could get away with for a very long time.  When the phone rang with more bad news, I would well up for a moment, cry for just a heartbeat and then push it all way, way down inside.  Then I'd fold another load of laundry.

Unfortunately, Grief can be put on hold but it can not be held at bay forever.  The only way to get through it is to feel it and if you avoid that it will seep into the crevices of your life and mess a lot of stuff up.  A whole lotta stuff, my friend.  Thanks to a very dear friend and counselor, I was given an opportunity a few years ago to go back and work through all that gunk.  It was not fun and it was definitely work.  Hard work.

I spent months working my way backwards through my losses.  Some of the ones that hurt the most were the most surprising, the ones that I thought weren't as close to me.  Some that I thought would be the hardest, were the simplest and just needed more tears. It wasn't just missing people and crying over their loss, there was a lot of anger there as well. And as I tore through layers of physical loss that I needed to grieve for, I found emotional and spiritual losses that I had glossed over as well: loss of innocence, loss of trust, hurt and anger over failed relationships and emotional abuse, even the loss of some life choices that were the result of making other beautiful ones, like being a mom to a baby by myself once upon a time.  It was all there and it was all raw and all of it was clogging up my ability to be a good wife and mother, sister, friend.

Through it all, I learned so much about myself, about my God and about the cycle of living and dying.  I learned how to communicate with my family better, how to set boundaries a little firmer, how to stop and feel what I needed to feel - even if it meant making my boys uncomfortable by sobbing all over them. I vowed to myself to let myself feel it all, even if it felt like I was going to fall apart and never be put back together, I had to feel.  And I learned that I had to use the tools God gave me, most specifically writing.  I wrote so many journal entries about hurt, anger, sadness and loss that I had to find a way to celebrate as well, that's why I started this blog.  I needed to write just as much about the things that brought me joy and laughter and even frustration over those things in life other than grief.

My family; my boys and my husband and my home - they are my life song.  They are my mission, my career, my life's work, my purpose.  They are what I was put here to do in this life.  And if they are my song, my melody, then the words I write are their accompaniment.  Whether anyone else ever reads them is not important.  Whether it's a journal entry about loss, a blog entry about how frustrating it is trying to keep a bathroom clean with all boys, or an email written to a friend, they are all a prayer to my creator.  The words are balm to my spirit, pleading to my maker, praise and thankfulness, shouting at injustice and laughter at the insanity of life.  You don't have to read them, but I have to write them.  They are my voice.

And then, one day in November, my voice was muted, silenced.  My voice was gone.

Grief is a powerful, living, moving and sinister thing.  It's also gentle, calming, healing and quiet.  I have felt it all this time around, there's no question.  I've had my share of losses, but this one has frayed my edges and cracked my center.  This one has melted through my family, down to my children who felt it more profoundly than ever before.  This one makes me want to scream at the Heavens "WHY???" and leaves me humbled at the vastness and mystery of the great design.

And I couldn't write.  Because I was already feeling way too much, so I couldn't do it.  I couldn't tap into those feelings even more.  I couldn't even journal, how was I supposed to write about birthday parties, and field trips, winning science fairs and how scary it is that we are facing high school in a few short months?  How could I explain to you how I barely made it through the day on Thanksgiving and turned into a total grump and wuss on New Years, but I found more peace and poignancy in Christmas?

I've begun at least a million times.  On paper, a keyboard, in my head - I sometimes know exactly what I want to say.  I want to recount for myself every moment I remember with her so I don't ever forget.  I want to try to reason through why I can't get over her toes - the toes I stroked while she was lying in that bed, perfectly painted and beautiful - and how trying to understand it means I postpone my pedicures as long as possible and then suck it up, walk through the door and pick yet another shade of purple for my own toes. I want to explain to you, or me, or someone how there's a big piece of sunshine missing from our lives that will never be filled.  I want to relive the last time she stood next to me in church, praising with me.  I want to tell you how scared I am to do VBS this year because she was such an integral part of my family's experience there that I don't know how I am going to do five whole days of it without her.  I need to figure out why just being at church these days is so hard, even though that's where so much of our support has come from - because she was there, everywhere! - and I still expect to see her there.

I've begun again and again, but I haven't been able to complete a thought, an idea.  It hasn't even been 5 months, but some days it feels like an eternity already since I saw her smile.  Other days it feels like just yesterday she was teasing Scotty about needing to dress to match me when we come to church and that flip flops were not cutting it.

There is joy and there is peace.  Some days are filled with lots and lots of laughter.  Some days are still filled with a flood of tears.  I don't expect that to change for a while. Every time we do something else without her for the first time, it reminds me that life moves on.  Sometimes that makes me very, very mad.  She was so very young and life should be moving on with her, not without.  But I also know that every step forward is also a step towards our eternal reunion.  With her.  With others. With Jesus.

I think lately I've put off writing because I was afraid I could never do her justice.  Or that I didn't have the right to miss her as much as others.  Stupid, insidious, useless thoughts.  And she'd be the first to tell me so, I think.  It's easy to deify those that are taken from us suddenly and too soon, and I try very hard not to do that.  However, I do think God always knew He was taking Veronica from us early on so he packed a whole lot into that sweet little frame.  Yes, she was silly and sassy and stubborn, but she also carried a faith and wisdom beyond her years which has taught me quite a bit.  She would simply say 'Believe' and to 'float on'.

When I mentioned that I was struggling with how to start to a new friend, she said I should just say why I was struggling.  So here it is - I'm hurting and sad and I can no longer separate the sad writing from the happy writing because it's all tied up together in who I am now as a woman and as a mom.  So if you are going to travel along with me you are probably going to get a good dose of all of it, either here or in email or on facebook or in person.  My joy at Scooter's wonderful transition to his new school is completely entwined with the bittersweet memories of Veronica sitting with him week after week in Kids Town on Sunday mornings.  My awe at Tyler's growth and maturity and his next venture is tempered by missing how he and Veronica used to tease each other.  I can't even think too much about her and Riley as a baby without getting all choked up.

I just miss her.  It's not every moment, but it colors most moments. 

I sure miss that smile.  I think I always will.

My voice has been muted, silenced.  My voice has been gone, for months.

But it's coming back.  It's time to start writing again, to use my voice.  It's the accompaniment of my life song.  You don't have to read it, but I have to write it.

Thanks and God Bless