Awesome Guy

Valentine's Day

 Brendan and I stepped out of the cab and onto the sidewalk in front of Fanelli's Cafe on Prince Street.  We looked up at the tired neon sign and smiled.  Ten years before, we had a date at the very same restaurant, the date that would bring us together for good.  That is why we are here on this day, on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2000.  My belly is swollen with our second baby.  Today is the due date, but there is no sign of arrival, and so we go on with our lives and celebrate Valentine's day.  We joke with the wait staff about my going into labor on their watch and order some towels and hot water.  I order some spicy food.  Toward the end of dinner, I begin to feel some small contractions, but they are too small to warrant any real action.  The next morning, however, Declan arrived.

Three years later, our beautiful boy, trialing cocktails of medications, enduring parades of therapists marching in and out of our home, recovering from the surgery that would change his life, did not yet know what a holiday was.  We tried, but the world was just still too distracting and demanding for him to know what a birthday present was and why he would want to open it.  It took everything in his sister Tova's being to not open the present for him, show him what's inside, and demonstrate why the gift merited such attention.  This year, at five years old, she tried a different approach. 

One morning, after dropping her off in the yard at PS 234, her kindergarten teacher, Shanon, pulled me aside and told me that she had something to show me.  I followed the class up the stairs to their classroom, and as the kids followed their morning routine, Shanon brought to me a piece of Tova's writing.  It was called Valentine's Day.  "You have to read this," she said, and left me at one of the tiny tables to read.  The story began by introducing a little girl that wanted to find the perfect Valentine for her little brother.  I loved how it mirrored her life, but was distant enough for it to feel safe for her to put on paper. The little girl searched and searched, and in the end, chose to give her brother a box.  For fear of sounding too proud a parent, I must say, I was dying to turn the page.  What was going to be in the box? What can this stack of crookedly stapled pieces of 8 1/2 x 11 white paper scratched with lopsided hearts and letters tell me about my little girl and how she was feeling during these difficult times?

I turned the page and read the words slowly, relishing this moment like a first kiss, knowing it was the only first I would get with this treasure.  "I decided," she wrote, my impatient eyes wondering down to the bottom of the page for a clue in her picture.  It was a drawing of a little boy sitting with a box in his lap, lid in his hand, and thousands of multi-colored hearts flowing out of the box and swirling above his head.  "I decided to give him the gift of understanding Valentine's Day."

It's Going to Be Okay

 You wake up the morning of the PPT meeting.  The one that you have jumped through a thousand hoops to get to.  You have read and reread every document that offers an opinion on your child.  You've made lists.  Oh, you have made lists.  Of what he can do.  Of what he can't do.  Of what you've done and what you need to do next.  If your google list could be accessed it would tell a story of the dark and frightening thoughts, the attempts at diagnosis, the search for answers, the thirst for connection, the hope, the action, the dismay.  In your head the committee convenes and reconvenes to prepare for the gathering at the school, and no one can seem to agree.  The stormy winds keep sweeping each idea, each initiative up and around in circles, and teases the part of you that believes you have any control over what will happen.  "You catch more flies with honey."  "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."  You look for the balance, the one between compassion and brute force.  You go, you swear to yourself that you will remain calm and for God's sake, you will not fall apart at the seams when it's over.  You listen, you talk, you try to follow, you try to make them understand.  You leave, you replay the scene over and over in your head.  You go home and you crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head.  You use the silence to process it all.  Are you making all the right decisions? Are you supporting him as best as you possibly can? Are you missing anything? Is it the right decision? The wrong decision?

Parents, remember this one, very important, very helpful notion: You are doing the best you can with what you know right now.