An alternate good to God's good

I just revisited Brideshead Revisited (the BBC version with Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier--original novel by Evelyn Waugh, adaptation by John Mortimer). To me this mini-series (I still need to read the Evelyn Waugh book) is a devastating meditation on religion--and a gem of television drama. The first time I saw this series my much younger self was overwhelmed by the last episode.. The Laurence Olivier character accepts last rights (his last act in lifeis to cross himself) though he has been estranged from the church, living in sin for some twenty-five years. As a result of this episode, the Julia character (daughter) pushes away the Jeremy Irons character--because of the gulf opened up by religion and belief versus skepticism. Finishing the series tonight, I was no less moved by this episode. Found myself in tears.

Julia (Diana Quick) rejects Charles (Jeremy Irons) because she is terrified that marrying him will mean embracing an alternate good to God’s good. The good that Catholicism signifies in this series haunts me. The mother is sweet, loving, lethal. All of the children are damaged by her love and by the church.

I’m not sure the alternate good must exclude God (though I have little talent for belief myself). But a god that wins out must be on the side of life. A line from the last episode, from the nurse about the Lord Laurence Olivier character. Says the nurse. He resists dying. Not because of a zest for life but because of a fear of death. I do not want this to be an appropriate epitaph for my end, and for my life.

True colors

So Bevin pulled out the stops her first night. She spent a good deal of the time being oh so charming. Smiling, eating well, hanging out with the girls for the evening, playing with the toys. The other girls want to mother Bevin, treat her like a little sister. So they were being excited, welcoming, etc.

Everything seems to have gone well until after Bevin’s shower, Lizelle gave Bevin her shower first, so that she had time after she was finished when Lizelle was busy. The time just after Bevin has had a bath or shower and changed her clothes is the point at which she seems particularly vulnerable to one of her puffing/anxiety attacks. And she put on quite a show, apparently. While Lizelle was in the bathroom downstairs, Bevin went into the bathroom upstairs and cleared off all of the surfaces, in her most violent manner, breaking some knick knacks in the process. Then she ran into the bedroom of one of the girls upstairs and cleared off all of her surfaces (thought I don’t think she broke anything there). She also tried to raid the refrigerator. When Bevin’s new roommate, Jill (a very sweet autistic woman) started to scold Bevin, tell her not to do that, Bevin actually managed a full sentence: “J (for Jill) shut up!”

At that point Lizelle arrived, finally got Bevin to settle down by sitting with her stroking her hair, cuddling with her--such good instincts. And then the good Bevin kicked back in, started smiling and babbling about Mommie. . . . . . .

I went over there mid-day today to talk to Lizelle. Luckily she was fine about what happened, felt like she had an idea of what to expect, how to handle this. Clearly, it’s probably best to leave Bevin’s shower until last. That way she’s more likely to stay in hang-out mode with the other girls. Lizelle will set it up so she can spend time with Bevin and help her through her vulnerable period after her shower. We talked about other possibilities (including, I’m getting Bevin her own TV for private Barney viewing when nothing else will do).

I was glad to hear that Bevin’s fit was outdone by Jill at her arrival, and even one of the girls, Ginna. Jill had managed to break windows and pieces of furniture. Now she’s mostly a lamb. So despite Lizelle’s quiet way (and she’s actually smaller than Bevin), I’m thinking that she may well be equal to Bevin.

Bev moves in

I took her clothes over earlier in the day. I took her over at about 4:00 and stayed until 7:00 or so. Bevin liked the place, liked the girls. Was happy, pleasant, pretty charming. Ate a good meal. I joined in. Took lots of pictures. Hung out with the girls. Bevin is taller than the care giver. Which means that Bevin can’t be consistently aggressive and stay there.

I’m hoping the good atmosphere, the fact that she will be busy, and that things will be happening between the girls. (All of the girls are much higher functioning than Bev, inclined to be protective and friendly.) These facts on the ground will, I hope, keep her well behaved and engaged. She is well behaved at Sarah’s, interestingly enough has more problem with me. I think because of the one to one time.The fact that I’m quiet, not that interesting. And that Bevin must make some decisions on her own to keep her life interesting around me (something she’s not that good at) rather than going with the flow. . . . . . . .

I hope so. This is a very sweet, loving place. I’ve done my part. I long to have Bevin do well here. It’s up to her. Which is the scary part. I’ve done what I can to charm, prove she has a supportive and loving family, buried folks in pictures of cute families and stories of Bevin as charmer. . . . . .

The Castle

Okay. It’s not that bad!! But over the past couple of months I’ve often wondered whether I am on the outskirts. The logic of the world I’ve confronted trying to find a place for Bevin has often left me mystified.

The immediate incident that has sent me along this path of contemplation:

I found a good day program for Bevin. Her soon-to-be roommate at the group home she will move to on Monday goes to the same program. The roommate travels to the day program with a transportation service called Hope Link--three days a week. Bevin will be going to the same program five days a week. So it seems that it should be a no brainer to have Bevin travel on the same bus, the Hope-Link bus, too. But. . . . . . The rules have changed. The center in Bellevue (this center is in Issaquah) is a few miles closer. Hopelink will only take her there. (Though they will compensate me for the cost to have her use a different service, that won’t be available for 4 to six weeks). No matter that the trip to Issaquah takes 10 minutes along i_90 and the trip to Bellevue takes 30-45 minutes along the 405/520 corridor (hell holes of the Seattle area commute).

(Though there is footnote to this narrative. The director at the Issaquah program talked Hope Link into taking Bevin to the program until June--by which time I should have the other program, subsidized by Hope Link, available.)

I’m sure there is a logic that I am missing.

Certainly getting to the point I could actually call real people who run group homes and day programs was rather indirect. Like going through a series of entries, with a warrant for entry (paperwork that made it through the system):
        1.        I couldn’t apply for services until Bevin was living in Washington. That meant that I filled out the paperwork and waited until I was told that once I apply she would qualify. (This took a couple of weeks.)
        2.        Once I had Bevin in Washington, I called. Then they put her paperwork into the system. After 10-14 days, I was assigned a DDD (Developmental Disabilities Division) caseworker.
        3.        In the meantime, I went to the Social Security Administration, assured them that Bevin had moved to Washington, had me assigned as her SSI Payee--and was told to wait for the paperwork to go through (and her SSI to begin coming to me)
        4.        I called the DDD caseworker; we played phone tag and then she finally got back to me and made an appointment--in approximately a week to ten days.
        5.        This was the “intake” caseworker. She did the intake discussion (the short one, less than an hour). Then she warranted that I could go on to the next step.
        6.        We waited until another week until Bev’s SSI information went into the system (another week). Then she assigned me the caseworker of the next level.
        7.        So I called him, played phone tag, finally made an appointment--for 7-10 days hence.
        8.        He came to our house and did the “long” interview--this one took two hours. Then he had enough information to present Bevin’s case to the group family home crowd.
        9.        So a week later he gave me the names of family homes. He also gave me the names of some day programs.
        10.        So then I made the calls and made the appointments to meet the family home directors. (Another week.)
        11.        Then I went to visit the homes, identified two that might be possibilities.
        12.        Then we had to have all the paperwork sent to them (took another few days).
        13.        And finally I identified a home--waited the best part of another week until I was accepted.
        14.        And so at this point we begin talking about the day program, the group home.
        15.        But my caseworker knows nothing about how things are paid for, what my next steps are.
        16.        You guessed it!! I have yet another case worker. The family home caseworker. He is the one who seems to hold the secret information on how things are paid for, what I need to do next.
        17.        So now I’m playing phone tag with him. I’m hoping this doesn’t take too long.
        18.        At least Bevin is supposed to move into her home next Monday. . . . . .

And I’m exhausted. . . . . . .

Found a home

Bevin is going to move into the home that is closest to Sarah’s house. It will be easy for her to include Bev in more spur of the moment kinds of things with her kids. It will be easy access for me off the easiest freeway here. So the location couldn’t be better.

The girls there are all higher functioning than Bev--more language, some of them even read and have jobs. . . . . I’m hoping this will be good for Bevin. It will mean more is going on. I just hope she behaves and fits in. It would be sad if she couldn’t.

Today we’ve been shopping for a bed. I will probably have her move in by the end of next week. That way, I’ll be able to get a sense before I have to go back to work about whether the placement will work. I’ll still have a little time if somehow it doesn’t.

Wish Bevin luck!

Visiting

I spent today visiting two homes where Bevin might live. I liked both women who manage the two homes. One exists. And the other is a new home; it doesn’t exist yet. I vote for the one that exists. But I realize that I am “auditioning” Bev, and I’m not sure she’ll get the part. Maybe in either home. My first choice. A home that exists. The girls are all much more accomplished than my Bev. They talked to me. One even asked me about my job. Bev would be the least accomplished of the group. She liked the place. She met her potential roommate--an autistic girl who is apparently more accomplished than she presents. Bevin liked her. She remembered her name. And when we left, she said, “bye ja (read Jill).” Not sure they’ll choose Bev.

The other home is a theory. A nice theory. I liked the woman. She has other homes and she is smart, in touch. I would assent to Bev living there. But I didn’t see the home as a living entity. It's assemgling. I liked the vibes in my number 1. I could see that organism.

Stay tuned. Maybe neither will want Bev. . . . . Who could imagine that?

Mommy and Me

Bevin can be weirdly wonderous. This is her masterpiece: she pronounces the consonant sound “M” for two words only, Mommy and Me. For all other words, “M” becomes “W.” Hence Milk is “Wa.” Water is “Wa.” Matt is “Wa.” Mike is “Wa.” Mommy is Mommy. Me is Me.

Even Freud would smile.

I’ve spent six weeks now with Bevin--pretty much full time (with the general exception of one overnight with her sister and family per week). It struck me recently, that this devoted one on one has not happened for the two of us since Bevin was a very small, nursing baby. Even then, I left her with her father, I left her with babysitters, and I left her with her siblings. By the time she was three, I was leaving her at a day care center--lots of kids and people. So despite the way Bevin’s language (admittedly limited and perhaps as a result more eloquent) focuses on the isolated dyad of Mommy and Me, our life hasn’t. Which makes the past six weeks all the more instructive.

I came to this experiment with hope. I would detox my daughter--love her, feed her, walk, ride, sleep. And we would arrive at the sweet, wild child I have in my heart, I remember from her babyhood, toddlerhood. . . . . Mommy and Me. The cure.

Ah those twisted family plots. This is partly true. Bevin is happy. She loves me, she cuddles, we have great times together. We love to drive, we love to walk. I’ve discovered that Bev is great in coffee shops and bars--any place where her focus can be on a good drink (for her a soda, or in Bevin speak, “pa” or “poppie.”) But I am now also confronting those epic narratives about mothers and daughters, Mommy and Me. One on one can be more challenging than one in a group. Especially for Bevin, who doesn’t have a great deal of commitment, goal oriented behavior. It’s easier for her to encounter me, love me, fight with me, disobey me, than it is to work herself up to such battle in a group.

Sometimes Bevin seems out of time, out of place. A world to her own. And then I push a bit deeper and I find a truth about the most common place things we do. Mommy and Me. Continuity. Disconnect. Love. Fight. Me. Other. It’s how we come to who we are. Bevin is so very human. And that means, oh so complicated, frustrating, frightening, intriguing, wonderful.

A Bevin whisperer

I want to be one. This is now my goal.

Bevin can be scary when she cycles out of control. Not often. But often enough to require attention. She dips down into a well of anxiety and discontent. She runs about the house. She flushes toilets--again, again, again, again, again, again. . . . .. She begins puffing, spitting (not sure how to describe this very weird behavior). If you impede her progress in running about the house (and flushing toilets, and puffing) , she is way pissed. Throws things, big things (a toy microwave, a lamp, a vase, anything at hand . . . .). And she is aggressive. That means she hits--me, if she can.

What to do? I love Bevin. I find her charming. Even at her worst I’m scared, but intrigued, interested, engaged. I’ve always thought of Bevin as my wild child. So I forgive her beyond what I can sustain for others.

The basic task: to control her behavior to the point that others will find her as charming, intriguing, lovely, as I do. And treat her the way they would any charming, intriguing, lovely, young woman. I find myself returning to two memories that are weirdly parallel, in synch. Which makes me pay attention.

Number ONE: Last fall, my husband and I visited my son and his wife. And I learned about how to be a dog whisperer. My son’s wife (SW) had rescued an enthusiastic, badly behaved black lab from certain death. Maggie. Smelly, loving, on the edge. SW was clear on these basic principles. Here’s what I remember:
--You (person, homo sapien) must establish yourself as alpha dog.
--Establish boundaries. (For Maggie, she can go into the kitchen, the family room, the hall, the stairs, but not the living room, the computer room, or the kid’s room.)
--Reward good behavior. (For a dog, lots of pets, loves, food.)
--Make bad behavior less than pleasant. (For a dog, this means a choke chain.)
--Ignore neutral behavior.
--Do everything you can to help your dog succeed. This means lots of exercise. Letting your dog outside when she’s about to lose it.
And Maggie was making progress. She lapsed from time to time. But for the most part she didn’t come into the living room and she didn’t come into our bedroom.

Number TWO: Bevin’s first school was CBTU in Salt Lake City--the Children’s Behavior Therapy Unit(at Douglas school on 13th East). Bevin began attending at the age of three. Most of the children were autistic (Bevin never had enough “points” to be autistic, or autistic like, but she this school definitely made a difference in Bevin’s life.) This school rescued badly behaved, developmentally disabled children. Taught them to behave in a way that brought them closer to what the world expects. You attend. You don’t bite, hit, fight. . . . . You comply. This is what Bevin learned, to attend, to fit in. And this was important. The rules of the therapy unit:
--You win. Don’t engage a struggle if you aren’t willing to take it to the end.
--Establish boundaries. The developmentally disabled child (DDC) will behave as specified. Look at me, listen, smile. . . . .
--Reward good behavior.
--Make bad behavior less than pleasant--boring, a dead end. (For A DDC that means isolation, repetition, boredom. For Bevin, that sometimes meant a blindfold, not looking at her, repetition, a timeout corner, a hold to quiet her in publoic.)
--Do everything you can to help your DDC succeed. For Bevin, this means, lots of driving, walks, trips into public places where there are lots of interesting people. . . . . .

Since bringing Bevin to Seattle, I’ve been rummaging in my grab bag for tools that will help the two of us succeed. And I’ve gone back to this twinning structure--the dog whisperer, behavior therapy. Bad behavior is annoying. How to extinguish the behavior? With a a very basic creature--she just won’t listen to reason. She has no reason.

And so? I want to be a Bevin whisperer. She needs to succeed, to be lovable. And that success depends on me--the alpha dog. And she’ll be happier if we succeed. Certainly I’ll be happier if we succeed.

Food

I recently listened to Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” (I was driving up the Oregon/Washington coast, a beautiful landscape, which was somehow appropriate.) At times this book is overwrought. But overall, the book dipped down into my own history with food.

I grew up on a farm. My parents had an amazing garden. We lived off the garden in the summer, canned the abundance, and lived off that in the winter. I remember killing chickens. I remember knowing the calf you ate during the winter. My grandfather had chickens. I know about feisty, nasty Banty roosters. And I have gathered eggs.

And I have a personal rivulet into hippy dreams of utopia, imagining we might live in a happy group and grow foods. In the seventies, I gardened, made food from scratch (bread from wheat, and ricotta and cottage cheese from milk). In other words, I have a pretty good sense of where “real” food comes from. I had an aesthetic that said natural is good and so on. I have gardened, frozen foods, canned foods. . . . . .

Fast forward. In the middle years I’ve bought food, tried to keep my life engaged with something real, not always successfully. I can never resist potato chips. I go through this pass down memory lane to establish why I would respond to Pollan’s book.

A guilty pleasure and a continuing link to my more basic connection with food: i buy cookbooks. I love the idea of great food. Though I don’t always get around to cooking that great food. I understand the difference between food as at least a craft, often an art. And I have a sense of food that diminishes. of food that somehow taps into what is basic, beautiful, important.

So here are my current rules about food:

1. At the very least try avoid processed food. Eat food that looks like food. Vegetables, meat, lentils, bread, grain. You should know the history of a good before you eat it--grow it, raise it and kill it, harvest or gather the food from a living being.
2. Organic is expensive, easily bamboozles, but overall still gains something. Compost instead of chemical, no pesticides. You can still have processed, horrific food. But even then, you’ve probably helped the environment. I’d still go for recognized food over processed food. (Though I do love potato chips.)
3. You can grow your own and buy from local vendors. At least then, you have some sense of where your food comes from. I love farmers markets and have my favorite in Sacramento, and in Seattle (mostly the U-distict). If you can’t grow it, know who did.
4. Pollan’s book gave me some tools for making additional distinctions. That is what I admire about the book (despite it’s limits). Grass fed versus corn fed. That was a useful distinction. I also loved his descriptions of the genre of idyllic food, encouraged a skeptical way to read the brochures, the cartons on the food. That was one of the most useful contributions of his book--encouraging me to bring my lit crit background to food collateral. These skills have informed my decisions about what I bought this past weekend. Be skeptical. Natural.

Bottom line. I’m back to thinking about my childhood experiences (when I knew where food came from and what it cost) and back to my idyllic dreams of young adulthood (close to nature, what I think of as my earth mother phase). In those moments, i was thinking about food with a history I could describe. The farm is sometimes cruel, but at least it is open to view. Food probably should take time. What is more basic?

Lesson learned

Bevin and I drove to Missoula last night. Spent today meandering through Montana to idaho Falls, where we’re spending the night. Sunny day. Huge skies. A decent audiobook. Bev happy. A great day.

I’m trying to keep Bev up a little later. So when we arrived here tonight, we went for a walk, ate dinner, went for a walk, and went to a lounge for a drink. Bev had a diet coke, I had a pinot. ( I do realize that the coke probably works against the going-to-sleep-early plan, but this was my best choice.)

Downside: Idaho has not yet happened upon no smoking laws. Having decided, that 30 minutes of dense second-hand smoke wouldn’t kill us, we persevered.

Lo and behold! Lesson learned. Bevin is a great success in bars. A bar plays to all of her strengths. She loves to sip a drink. You don’t have to eat in bars. (Bev is a messy eater.) She loves to watch people. She loves to flirt. And bars are noisy. (Bev, happy can be weirdly noisy to the uninitiated.)

Not sure what the future is here. But definitely an enjoyable evening with my daughter.

Idaho elegy

Last July I took a road trip to Idaho to attend the funeral of a cousin. He was a contemporary of my brother, ten years older than me. I have become accustomed to the deaths of our elders. My grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, they are now all dead. There are few of my relatives still living in southeastern idaho where I grew up. As a child, all of my relatives, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins lived there. Today i received a call from my sister, and my cousin Peggy has died. My cousin Bruce was someone I knew by reputation,, someone close to my siblings. Peggy has a place of prominence in my early memories.

In the most vivid of these memories I am 7 or 8 years old--a 2nd or 3rd grader, I suspect. She was 6 or 7 years older than me. She was my glamorous cousin, who doted on cute little red-headed Susie. Her mother had pretensions beyond us country folk. Her house had china figurines, beautiful pictures, a furnace, a picture window, and wall-to-wall carpet. And Peggy had store-bought clothes. Most of mine were sewn by my mother. I would stay over at my cousin Peggy’s house. She would comb my hair and dress me up. And I would go home with some of those glamorous store-bought hand-me downs. By the time I’m nearing my teenage years, I no longer have many memories of Peggy. I suspect she became too old to be bothered with this little cousin.

The irony is that this glamorous cousin is the one who lived her adult life in southeastern Idaho. She married a farmer and stayed there while the rest of us grew up, went to college, and moved away.

I saw Peggy in July when I went to my other cousin’s funeral. At this point, she probably didn’t know she was sick. She has spent the time since then battling cancer. She called my sister a few months back to tell her about her cancer and let her know that she was hoping to have one of the last couple of burial plots in the cemetery where my grandparents were buried. That was where my cousin Bruce, who spent his adult life in Manatoba, Canada, was buried. It seems fitting that Peggy, one of the only cousins from my mother’s family who stayed in Idaho, should have these plots.

I’m going to drive to idaho again, this time with Bevin. To say good-bye. To my cousin, again to my childhood. I did this last summer. It’s a very odd feeling to go back there. Especially to say good-bye to those who are nearer and nearer to being my contemporaries. But it’s also to look for myself, where I came from, who I am. It’s always hard for me to know exactly how I happened when I go back to my childhood haunts.

Twisted family plots

Almost a decade ago, I was asked to judge a Mormon fiction contest. Slogging through some very terrible novels, I came upon a mystery with a family plot--I can’t remember the details of the book, but I’m sure it was about a mother or a father, a daughter or son, murdering or sleeping with a family member. And the setting was Victorian England (I was working on a ph.d. in nineteenth century British fiction). I voted for this book, and that year the book won. The Mormon author of note for the Association of Mormon Letters, Anne Perry.

A Mormon author unlike the others. I discovered that she was already a best-selling novelist, and a Mormon convert. Talking to a friend, I learned that Anne Perry also was one of the girls depicted in the troubling movie “Heavenly Creatures”--the friend who helped the daughter murder her parents. (The movie was also an intro to Kate Winslet, actress, and Peter Jackson, director). Anne Perry the pseudonym she took when she came out of prison.

Since then I’ve mostly read the Monk series of detective fiction. The policeman whose memory has been lost. The nurse from the Crimean war, Hester. The two eventually marry. Always, those twisted family plots.

I took the opportunity in Menlo Park to go to a reading by Anne Perry. Heard her talk about a regular writing schedule and teaching Sunday school.

I won’tjudge this woman’s fiction. I just read it with continued fascination. I would like to be as spunky, brave, outspoken as Hester. Right now I’m listening to a Pitt mystery--Charlotte and her husband. She’s also spunky, brave, outspoken. And her husband, like Monk, is an outsider, odd, but a good man and underneath a kind and sensitive husband, lover. Also a good policemant, who can always use his wife’s help. Who wouldn’t want such a man.

Still I continue to be fascinated by those plots, given this complicated history. The current book--two baby bodies unearthed in a public garden square. Abortion, murder, sex. Anne Perry at her best. My beloved Mormon author.

Reading out loud

I am an audiobook addict.

I love being read to. I love going word by word through a book, listening, paying attention. Doing the different voices.This is the closest I come to meditation. In blessed moments, listening to a book takes me out of myself, stops the restless play of my mind.

I’m not so good at reading out loud to myself. I’ve been experimenting with this over the past week. Reading Hardy poems out loud. And today, I may have been lucky. The rain drove Bevin and me back to our rooms earlier than I planned. I wanted to read, so I read out loud to her.

We’ve had a good afternoon. Only the charming Bevin this afternoon. Perhaps we have found something new to share, riding, walking, reading. I hope so.

Detox

I’m trying to ween Bev from the anti-depressant. I want to figure out what her baseline is. I just haven’t had enough continuing time with her over the past five years to know what makes sense. I took her to a doctor last week, and he agreed this makes sense.

So for this week, I’m halving her perscription--1/2 tablet, rather than 1 tablet each night. For the past couple of days, she’s been mostly half and half. I’m trying not to reward “bad” behavior. That means, when she’s really out of control, I’m trying to find a safe, time-out place for her to calm down. I don’t want to take her driving or take her walking (both things she really enjoys) when she acts out. I’m harkening back to early training. Bore the nasty behavor. Find a quiet, dark, boring place where she can stay until she finds her calmer, more charming sense. I’ve created a place like that in my house.

For the detox phase, I’m cheating a bit. I’ve been taking her driving. Though I let her in the car only when she’s got herself more or less together. Yesterday, we did a ride to Concrete and then to one of the islands and on the ferry. Now I’m spending two days on the Olympic Penninsula at Rialto Beach--one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, I think. I’ve found a great little place to stay here on a river about 5 miles or so from the beach. I want her to have it easy not going psycho while we detox. I believe in contributing to her success. So far we’ve done pretty goo. Though she did spend a little time in the closet here tonight (bored finally) until she decided the bed sounded better. She’s now bored, sleepy, in bed. . . . . . . .

Two weeks at 1/2 says the doctor, and then take her off for a couple of weeks. We’ll see where that leaves her and whether I have the patience.

I like the happy Bevin better than the psycho Bevin. . . . .

Sleepless in Salt Lake City

I was concerned back in January after talking to one of Bevin’s caretakers in Salt Lake City. She told me that Bevin had been having trouble sleeping. She got up in the night and wandered through the home, slamming doors, stashing things in closets. One night she had even managed to go outside and set off the alarm. I had always thought of Bevin as a girl with an infinite capacity to sleep, so this development surprised me, alarmed me. To me it was a sign of Bevin’s underlying anxiety. And also probably related to the fact that she was always in a group situation, really didn’t have down time. The caretaker told me that she had never seen her in “veg” mode--resting with a blanket over her head. This is often what Bev does when she’s in group situations and gets overwhelmed. That made me think that she really didn’t have a chance to be in quiet places or alone where she was living. I wondered whether her increasing anxiety, that had to be the cause of her sleeplessness, was related to this.

I heard from Pam, her stepmom, that East Side had put Bevin on something to help her sleep. When I picked her up in Salt Lake City last week, I was given a bottle of her “sleeping” medication. I decided to give her the pills--until I figured out more about what is going on with her. I can’t remember whether I gave her the medication the first night, but I know that I did the other evenings until Saturday night. I decided not to give her the pill but gave her a Benadryl instead. I only had four or five pills left, so I thought I would just stop giving them to her and see whether she could sleep without them.

Bevin’s behavior can be alarming when she has what I think of as an anxiety fit. For some reason, sometimes related to something that has happened but often pretty mysterious as to origin. her emotions run out of control. She begins running around, slamming doors, throwing things off surfaces, flushing the toilet, and making a peculiar “puffing” face. It’s amazing how quickly she can move and how little she responds to any verbal cautions. When she was smaller, she could be restrained when she acted out. But now that she’s older, that’s harder to do. Often I take her walking or driving in the car to help her calm down. Because that’s what needs to happen, she has to somehow get out of the rage of anxiety and back to quieter, calmer place. Bevin’s “normal” self is cheerful and rather cooperative.

Over the past six months or so when I’ve spent time with Bevin, her anxiety fits have been the exception rather than the rule. Occasionally they happen when she is getting ready for bed. She is most vulnerable to losing her cool at times of transition or at those moments of chaos that happen from time to time in a group or family situation.

Bevin woke up last Sunday morning, after her night without the “sleep” medication in a vulnerable mood. She lost her calm by the time she got out of the bathtub--usually a relaxing experience for her. I had a difficult time getting clothes on her. I let her go out and get in the car without getting shoes on her. I was just glad she wasn’t naked. We drove around for a little while, and then I brought her back and gave her breakfast. But I could tell she was still anxious. So I spent the day driving. We drove from 10:00 or so until 5:00. She is always pretty calm when we drive. She loves to drive, and I do too. So we’re a great pair. We drove to Whitbey Island via La conner, took the ferry to Port Townsend, drove back via the Tacoma Narrows. I could tell when we got back she was still on the edge. And she lost it when I tried to get her ready for bed. She started running around, pretty much naked, and I couldn’t calm her down. I also wasn’t inclined to go driving again. I knew that I had to get her calmed down in the house. I herded her downstairs where there were fewer things to throw and clear from surfaces. I finally cleared out the bathroom and blocked the door until she sat down. Finally she let me sing to her, rug her back, and finally put her nightgown on. Eventually I coaxed her into bed.

I had given her the “sleeping” pill before I tried to get her ready for bed, beginning to wonder whether the behavior was related to not taking the pill.

She woke up the next morning a different person. She was cheerful, funny, cooperative. And remained so for the whole day. We drove a little, but mostly we worked around the house, went for a walk. And she watched Barney, an old favorite from childhood, on the TV. I gave her the pill again last night, and she’s been Bevin the charmer all day again today.

Obviously I also began researching her “sleeping” medicine--trazodone. It turns out that it’s an anti-depressant, in particular used for anxiety and prescribed some times for sleep problems. It is one of the drugs that has been noted as problematic in teens--causing sometimes thoughts of suicide etc. Obviously taking her off the medicine quickly is a problem at this point. I’m left wondering about next steps here. Maybe this is just the thing to help her manage anxiety. But I also wonder how much of the anxiety is biological and how much contextual. I’m thinking that I somehow need to get to ground zero with Bevin, to figure out where she is, before I can begin making good decisions about her future. I can’t imagine putting her into another group situation until I have a sense of just what her emotional, physical situation is.

I did refill the medicine and found a doctor to see her this Friday. I want to begin working on a plan to figure out who and how Bevin is at this point in her life. That has to be the first step here.

Will she also be sleepless in Seattle? Or can she find her way to a calmer self? I just don’t know.

An inappropriate friendship?

I’ve been going through Bevin’s discharge paper. Interested to learn just a little bit more about her “inappropriate” friendship with a girl at her group home. Bevin has always been one to form friendships--her ability to do that has often left me meditating on the nature of friendship. But that’s another story.

Here’s what was “inappropriate” about her relationship with her most recent friend--according to her discharge papers. They were cuddling and, I take it, touching each other. Though who knows what that means. Given the structure of their lives, I suspect that it was mostly cuddling, holding--a head on a shoulder. . . . .

Now Bevin doesn’t have any ability to contemplate her life. So I’ve been thinking about what she knows about friendship, love. I’m not sure of the total range of her patterns for friendship, love. That’s how she lives her life--according to patterns. And my concern about this has a good deal to do with why I am bringing her to Seattle. I don’t know, can’t know, that much about the details of her life in Utah, the patterns of her existence there.

Here’s what i do when we’re together, my pattern of interaction. I cuddle with her. I hold her in my arms. I stroke her back, her hair, her hands. And I have this strong sense of how she takes to this touching. She opens herself. I know she hasn’t had much of such physical comfort in the pattern of her life. A person should have this. The luxury of touch from one who loves you.

I’ve often worried about her sexual vulnerability. To those men/boys in her environment who don’t understand, but could still hurt her. To those who do understand, and would still hurt her.

I hadn’t thought about a friendship such as the one i read between the lines in her discharge papers. How would she know this was “inappropriate”? Was it? In the world she was in, where did she find the touch that she longs for. How do we decide what “should” be?

I find myself with more sympathy, than judgment.

Home

Bevin and I arrived in Seattle this afternoon. Settling in. . . . . . .

The adventure begins

Friday was my last day at work until May 21. I leave tomorrow to drive to Utah. I'll pick Bevin up at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Burn her bridges.

And then the adventure begins. I am so looking forward to bringing Bevin to Seattle.

My eddy in the global economy

Recently I’ve been attending to my own eddy into the global economy. I was given the job at my work of “mentoring” a new doc team in India, charged with supporting and documenting Adobe products that are being engineered there. Unfortunately we didn’t have a stellar beginning. Too late. Every decision tactical--and a bit late at that. Never quite got ahead of the curve. . .

For the past week (and this continues next week), we’re hosting our new writing manager (pretty much “all” of the doc team in India) from Bangalore. Welcome to Adobe, our group, corporate America.

I just did a google search on Bangalore. I’ve been hearing all week from Guru of the virtues of Bangalore. He’s definitely a home boy. Grew up there. Proud. Silicon Valley of India. Educaton. English spoken in the home (an important point for a writer writing in English for an American audience. Interestingly, he couldn’t tell me the population of Bangalore. The internet tells me it’s somewhere between 5 and 6 million--a pretty big city by American standards. Certainly he finds our mild 50 degrees of the past week cold. He did let me know that my love of driving would be difficult to maintain in India.

I’ve been putting off making a judgment about Guru. He arrived in the middest--never a comfortable moment. A minor crisis on his first day. Perhaps his name is a harbinger?

It’s an interesting puzzle to put together a picture of a person conjured up from a time zone discrepancy of 13.5 hours. I’ve learned that folks in Bangalore work late. That means that if I’m on e-mail by 7 in the morning, I have perhaps 30 minutes of real-time e-mail with my colleagues in India. If I send an e-mail at 7:00 a.m., they’re answering my message at 8:30 p.m. These global conversations demand patience. I send a message in the morning. I get my answer (if my friends in India are attentive) 24 hours later. In this world of instant messaging, an abberration, a frustration, a chance to contemplate.

I have been working with two folks in India--I realized with chagrin today that I’m not even sure both work in Bangalore. Does one work in Noida? A female project manager who knows almost nothing about writing. But she’s clearly competent, proactive, fearless. She is always pressing at the edges, moving folks forward, forging into a space with a meeting, a suggestion, an action item. Since she knows nothing about docs, I’m as often dismayed by what i face when i fire up my e-mail in the morning as I cheer. But I do cheer. She is smart, active, accessible, flexible. No matter how often I have to pull her back, press her in another direction, I find her a pleasure to work with.

And then there’s Guru. After a week, I’m left cautious in my estimation of his prospects in the company, and a bit sad. I like him. He’s clearly accomplished in the world he inhabitants. I’ve learned that competent tech writers are far scarcer in India than engineers (and pretty much all competent tech writers, and even more editors, aspire to management). He has some six years of experience with such tech companies as HP. I do believe, after a week in discussion with him, that he is well informed, competent in his sphere. But I fear he is too accommodating, too deferential, too cautious to succeed in the situation he’s in.

And I’m left contemplating questions I can’t answer. How much of this is Guru? Why do I respond to Bhavna, despite her innocence of my profession? Why do I worry about him? How much of this is cultural? How much of this has to do with gender? How much is simply transactional, tactical?

I’m far too tired this Friday night to answer this question. But these are clearly questions that are in the center of my work life going forward. Do I have the tools to do a good job here? I am an Idaho girl after all? How did I end up here on this frontier? Never knew this is what I was preparing for. . . .

The aging of ordinary

I just finished reading a blog posted by someone I knew at a distance during my college years. This person went on to become a professor, the professor of my son, and in the end his friend. He now blogs at the same site as Nathan. Jim posted a fine blog on the ordinary.

Here’s a passage from the post that arrested my attention:


                Much about the ordinary world has changed in my life time, though I am not yet sixty. I was born in rural Missouri, and when I was born rural telephone systems were mostly party-lines, phones were hand-cranked, electricity was a relatively new arrival (within 30 years, and often much less), and for many people water pumped by hand and out house toilets were ordinary. Before my children were all born, that had all changed. The order of the world in rural Missouri was very different than it had been. And, as an expatriate of Missouri, I have changed even more than has my birthplace. Today I seldom think about what it takes to get water, and I use my Trio for phone calls, e-mail, and my calendar, wishing at the same time that I’d perhaps waited and bought an IPhone. Though I come from a long line of people who did what they called “honest work,” day-laboring, small-scale farming, blacksmithing, and machine work, I make my living as a bourgeois professor of philosophy.
                Nevertheless, though the ordinary is common, customary, and usual, it is also not something to be ignored. Indeed, we ought to celebrate that things such as vaccination, full supermarkets, city sewage systems, treatments for cancer and epilepsy, public transportation, private cars, mobile phones, cable television, literacy and education are all now ordinary, and all deserve our praise. Our lives are what they are because so much has become ordinary, and we ought to labor and pray that what is ordinary for us becomes ordinary for many more. We live longer and more comfortably because of many extraordinary things that have become ordinary. We know more and have access to more because of other extraordinary things turned ordinary. What was outside of the ordinary has become part of it and is no longer much noticed or noted.

Reading this, I’m left contemplating aging. I remember a childhood ordinary very similar to Jim’s. Setting aside the whole Mormon thing--rural Missouri in the 50s was much like rural Idaho. Jim is describing my experience too. I grew up in a rural town of 350 inhabitants, six miles from the big city of 3000 (doctor, bank, grocery store, library, drug store, Penney’s). If anything, my adult life has pushed to the edge of the new ordinary even more aggressively than Jim’s. I work for a software company, live in a large city. It’s part of my job to play with, and document, changing technology-- Web 2.0, tag clouds, social bookmarks, blogs, flickr, podcasts, WIKIs, and so on. I have a cell phone, a laptop, an IPOD, a Trio is one click away. . .

Over time, this is what I came to resist about growing older: getting frozen at some moment in time, losing vulnerability to the unknown and to change. I knew what middle-aged women looked like and did with their time as I grew up. Once you married and joined the group: you had shorter hair and had it done at Marion’s on the edge of town. You left behind young clothes, young things. Whenever I’ve started to feel stuck, frozen, in my life. I’ve tended to make what I’ve come to think of as a “leap”--and started a new version of my life. I never became the young married woman my mother raised me to be.

In the language of Jim’s post today, a series of ordinaries have been my life. I still resist getting frozen in time. But I do find that I increasingly survey the past with indulgence, fondness, sometimes a sense of loss and regret. I’m thinking more and more that I want to approach life as I’ve always, through this life of change, approached my books. Books are the one continuing thread of continuity in my life. Reading, especially novels, narratives, stories. I have expanded my sense of books. I now listen to as many books (I love my iPOD), perhaps more, than I read with my eyes (which like everything else age).

I’ve always collected books. I keep them around after I’ve read them. I buy more than I’ll every read, keep them on my shelves, hopefully look forward to reading them some day. Love living in their company.

I’ve been contemplating the changes I want to make to my house. And I’ve decided that I’ll build book cases, in the study, in the basement, maybe even in the bedroom. I love to collect. Look back as well as forward. I love the old ordinary, the aging ordinary. I don’t want to lose it. But I hope that I’ll always be open to something new. Looking for a way to build just a few more shelves. Though I do reserve the right to throw some things out.