We are in Chicago but did not see Sue on Friday.  We wound up leaving later than I had planned and then arriving in Chicago close to the same time that Marcia and her crew arrived.  Julia and I had lunch at a great fast food Chinese - Wow Bao -- and then headed off to the art museum with Marcia and Leah.  Julia enjoyed the museum and also was quite willing to put Sue on hold until Sunday.  what she did have a bit of trouble with was another day of her period.  I don’t really think that her discomfort and unease is any greater than a typical kiddo but Julia has no shame about announcing it.  Again, we are with friends and her complaints fall on receptive ears.   I allowed Julia to pick out a souvenir at the art institute.  She picked a sketch book with lovely blank pages.  I don’t sketch like she does but I find blank books with love paper hard to resist.

I just posted lost of pictures in “photos.”  Weeks and weeks worth and a few from yesterday.  

Sometime last night Julia began her first period.  This morning there was blood in her panties which she discovered in the bathroom.  We have been talking about menstruation and maturing since last spring on and off.  We have two body books and last spring her science teacher taught a human body chapter.  Julia has listened.  She was not scared, just a bit surprised.  She took it mostly in stride as I explained using pads -- the reality, not just in theory.  She was not crazy about bleeding all day, and she complained some about it but only at home to me and to one of her therapists who was as even and unfazed about it all as I am.  Julia told me tonight that she wanted it to be over which actually is pretty age appropriate.

She seems to understand what she has been told but there is so much of her that is so much younger than a 12 year old with her first period.  Some of the juxtaposition makes my head spin.  I know that this too, Julia’s emerging womanhood, will fold into her/our lives, but once again the terrain is not familiar.  Julia took a bath tonight.  She is almost able to take care of her newly cut hair herself, and as usual she asked to play with her bath toys.  Then she got out of the tub and I supervised her putting on of a clean pad.

Had this not happened today, my lead story would have been that Julia had a play date today -- her first in years.  She has gone to friends’ houses when I have gone and played, and this was also a friend of mine with a daughter in Julia’s class.  But this was a specific invitation for Julia.  I wanted her to do it so much that I canceled a therapy session -- I can’t imagine doing that for most kids, but it was as important as the session.  

Playing Julia has her flaws -- she is slightly better at conversation and friendship than she was last year, but she is usually more interested in the task or the game or the activity than the person.  It was ok today, and I hope that this child will want to come to our house.  

And ya’ know, I seem to grow only more and more protective of her.  I understand the impulse but at times, I need to let go a bit and let her be herself.

Tomorrow, Chicago and T-rex Sue.

Sunday: There.  Here, I mean.  Perhaps a redesign to draw me here and get me typing.  Perhaps something closer to Spicy Dragons is what I need -- the impetus from the outside.  First morning of spring break.  I guess it started yesterday, really, but we had early morning clinic for Julia and were running all day.  This morning, laying in bed, Julia on her iPad playing a spider game and me on the laptop, feels a good deal more like a break.  

Tuesday: Here we are in bed again.  After 8.  How long will it be before she is checking her facebook and email but for now she is playing a game on her iPad.  We are now really into vacation mode.  At least, as much as we can with daily therapy.  That therapy, the intensity of which will all end at the end of June.  I’ll write more about my mixed bag of feelings about the changing field of therapy, but for now it is the reason to stick close to home this vacation and leaving big blocks of time with very little to do, only leaving town for a weekend in Chicago with dear Indy friends -- T-rex Sue here we come.

Passover has begun and some Facebook friends post about cooking and gatherings and kids and Manischewitz wine.  I can’t summon up the energy to make a seder happen and I haven’t cultivated some friendship in the right way as to get an invitation to one.  And I miss the ritual.  Undoubtedly, I would cry during some part of a Haggadah reading, most assuredly, after a few glasses of wine.  I would take us to our FUS seder but it is on Friday night and we will be in Chicago with Marcia and Meredith and kids.  And it is not like David and I celebrated every year.  We had years of not doing anything caught up in busy lives or transitions to new places, but it was a ritual we always came back to and one which brought so many lovely people to our homes.  We cooked, we wrote, we read, we encouraged Cheshire to read stories or perform music.  We sat around folding tables or the old dining room table that was a hand me down from Marcia.  

I could go on and write more and more, but the basic idea is down.  Here was a lovely tradition that David brought to our family that I embraced and loved.  And two and a half years after his death, I have not made peace with it.  I have not decided to take it on or leave it go.  Julia and I light to Chanukah candles and I’ve decided to continue that tradition.  It is easy and private.  Passover is much more social, involving a bigger family and much more energy.  If I could go to some aunt’s house, or some cousin, I would be there and that too would be easy at least until I made a firm decision to keep it in my life, in our lives.  

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ~ Haruki Murakami 

Every so often, I feel like I am the new person creeping out of the storm.  And then there is another thunder clap, another shower, another threatening cloud.  It is taking full responsibility for everything.  It is having to make all decisions without intimate counsel.  It is learning to be my own person, body and soul.  I continue to struggle, learning with each encounter, how to be alone.  And I question whether I need to master this situation, this circumstance, this state of being -- aloneness -- before I can move on to whatever awaits.

I have not been writing -- not here, not privately.  On one hand, I don’t miss it at all, and I look at this blog as a drag of serious ideas devoid of family pictures and any sense of humor.  On the other hand, I hunger to move my fingers over the keys and make sense of the monkey mind that I use for thinking.  And which is sad and serious so much of the time.  

It is still winter -- yes, spring in name, but the landscape is still snow, sometimes white, sometimes dirty, but snow.  Now and again there seems to grow a fringe of matted down brown grass and I looked at patches of this anticipating the coming of more, but in the last week, each time the earth appeared, it was quickly covered by more snow.

And so, I’ve stopped anticipating.

Sometimes change comes from the inside.  I am a strong believer that this is the way that change “should” come.  But sometimes . . . . 

Perhaps and maybe. . . . 

If I am joyful.  Silly.  Happy.  All on the outside.

Over time, it will seep deep inside.  

And this is the most appropriate thought I can conjure up for the beginning of spring break!

It was rather a small miracle to wake up on Tuesday morning without pain.  The flu was almost over!  I still carried a small and constant headache and a queazy stomach but that was nothing compared to the total body ache of the days before.  I am still a bit tired, that extraordinary tired of being sick, but definitely on the mend.  

And it was fortunate to awaken without pain because the snow was beginning and over the next 24 hours, we were gifted with another multitude of inches that also seems to be more on my sidewalk that what they report on the news.  Still, no matter the tally, our lawns and gardens are landscaped in higher and higher white mounds.  If there is any whisper of spring, it is that a day after the snow stopped the shoveled sidewalks are clear to the pavement, proof positive that it was warm enough yesterday to get rid of the bits of snow and ice left behind by blowers and shovels.  

I hear that we spring the clocks forward this weekend.  I haven’t checked and wonder if it is true.  We are still so far from spring.  

Over the last week at school, Julia’s class has been writing about their families.  Julia brought home her notebook with the writing a few days ago and we read what she wrote together.  I am pretty sure that she had a lot of help because the composition was too smooth to all come from Julia, but her ideas were there.  I sent the notebook back to school without copying the paragraphs and now I wish that I had.  From what I remember, we are all tall, Cheshire and I are pretty and we both cook very well.  Our house smells like baking cookies and Cheshire really likes hanging out with Julia and make gingerbread houses with her.  Julia wrote about Daddy being tall and handsome and smiling all the time.  She said that he like to “write a lot” and we all liked music and reading.  She closed by saying that hers was the best family in the world. None of this is untrue but it is such a lovely, sweet romantic version of life.  I am pleased that she has it.  

After we read the essay together, Julia was quiet.  Then she said to me, “Mom, when Daddy died, you and Cheshire were together all day.  And I was alone.”  I was stunned that she was thinking about that, remembered any part of that day,  I told her that she was with Cathy.  And she said she remember but that she was not with us.  Then, I realized that my memory of the day was that we had shielded her from any knowledge of what was going on until later in the day when Cheshire and I came home from the hospital and I told Julia what had happened.  I have never thought to explain that day to her, didn’t imagine that she remembered any part of it.  And I am not sure that her memory is what she was feeling that day -- there must have been some pretty heavy sad atmosphere in the house even though she had not been told that David had died -- or whether she has thought about that day since then and realized that she was not with us.  Either way, it is far beyond what I thought her capable of.

Julia studied for a test for the first time this week.  It was for science -- magnets, circuits, and a bit of electricity.  There was a review sheet sent home and we went over it a few times.  I review it with her and her therapists did as well.  We all read it over and quizzed Julia on parts of it but it was all very light and quick.  I talked to her special ed teacher today and she said that when she gave Julia the test, it seemed like she had studied and she knew most of the material.  How cool is that!

In attachment therapy today, we were working on a hard page in her trauma workbook, a page about being put in a dark place and left alone when her behavior was bad at the orphanage.  It was a short paragraph, one sentence, and she took it to draw.  The picture of an almost naked little child with a volcano’s worth of anger pouring out of her behind a shut red door was startling and poignant.  After she brought the picture back to us, Marilyn pushed her to talk about the place.  Julia became icy clear as she talked about her feelings and what happened to her.  Clearly this was something that happened often and when she was an older kid at the orphanage.  One thing she said was the they made her take off her clothes when she put her inside the dark place which probably was a closet but what she could only describe as small and dark.  She told us that was why she would not sleep in the dark and that shadows scared her a lot.  During part of the talking, Julia was silent and was clearly not with us, either immersed in the past or disassociating.  She has not done this in a long time.  When she was finished talking, we tapped about fear and anger and sadness.  She was able to feel safe and sure that those things would not happen again to her.  When it was all over, Julia drew a picture of a baryonyx dinosaur holding a fish to eat.

Yesterday, I walked to one of my Waisman mentors, Barb, about what I was going to do next year.  So far, nothing has easily presented itself.  I moaned and groaned about that fact and that I don’t know what to look for.  After talking to another mentor a few weeks ago, I was encouraged not to look beyond what was possible in LEND -- a fit your dream into our box, at least for now.  I have thought about just leaving Waisman and pursuing some experiences in the community, maybe engaging in the contemplative practice community or at FUS, but after entertaining the idea for a short time, I come back again and again to feeling sure I should be doing something at Waisman.  Early this morning, when I first woke up, before the alarm, I felt a peace come over me.  Feeling sure that some opportunity will come forward -- not that I can sit back and wait but that I have no reason to stress about it.  I also realized that I will really miss the Resource Center at the end of this semester.  I am truly enjoying the work there and feeling useful.

Long doc appointment with Julia this morning.  Finally, an appointment with an orthopedic specialist.  After x-rays and physical exam.  Julia’s turn in when she walks is due to a twisted thigh bone and low muscle tone which is consistent with her PDD diagnosis.   We will do some physical therapy but there will probably not be much change.  Getting her involved with physical activity is the best thing for low muscle tone.  

I am too tired today to figure out what we will do.

Speech therapy today - testing her on W questions.  She did “better”, translated that as more appropriate than she did 2 years ago, but the progress is small and slow.  We will focus more on “when” which is most helpful because that gets to time, calendars, days, seasons, months, years, etc.  She needs memory to work on this.  Her memory is so selective.  Is this a “muscle” to be strengthened?

Being sick, I sleep between appointments, put some of the soup I made yesterday into a pot for our supper, and watch a movie with Julia before her therapist comes over.  Drinking water and tea.  Trying hard not to demand anything of myself.  Even thought.  This is a time when I could plunge into the depths of despair for no other reason but that I don’t feel like doing anything today.  

Listening to Pema Choldron lecturing on “The places that scare you.”  Feeling I could sink into some other place.  Wondering if that is only today, which it might be.  

Ok, enough!  I need a nap.

Since the end of last week, I've been incredibly tired.  I was doing my regular round plus some snow blowing/shoveling, but by the end of the day, I had trouble lasting through dinner and putting Julia to bed.  Thursday and Friday night, I turned out the light for her and closed my eyes as well.  It was beginning to worry me as it reminded me of the early days of grieving.  Then last night, as we were reading our Little House book, I realized that my legs ached.  Before the lights went out my back hurt and my head ached.  I was getting sick.  I've escaped all winter so I really cannot complain although I hate being sick.

I limped through the day.  We did a quick grocery shopping before our first therapist came over and during therapy, I made a very large pot of my favorite chicken soup.  I spent a second afternoon working on taxes, having finished the gathering of material for estate taxes on Friday.  Mine are not done.  Mostly I think due to how slow I was moving today.  Then we watched Totoro, ate soup and jello (Julia wanted to buy jello when she shopped and she and Hillary made it in the early afternoon). We cleaned up and headed upstairs.

We read, watched a nature show and Julia was willing to go to sleep.  A might early but I did as much as I could for as long as I could.

I feel wretched.  I probably will not go into the Resource Center tomorrow -- no one needs my germs -- but Julia has a orthopedic appointment tomorrow morning and speech therapy in the afternoon.  I will go to those if I can.

I hope this doesn't last long, but ya' know, it is only the flu.  Or something else.  No one has died.  Is that too absurd to write?  My body is hurting, my eyes burn, but my heart is pretty much intact.

And I am grateful for small things.