A Season of Discontent

28 Feb

IMG_0465February 2012 was my first month as a civilian wife. From the day I got married till that February, almost eight years in total, I was a military wife. I adapted. I constantly heard the motto “Flexibility is the key to Air Power” and fitted it to my domestic environment. Flexibility is the key to life as a military family. Bloom where you’re planted.

Changing jobs, moving, saying good-bye, frustration over the fact that the window coverings from the last house NEVER fit the windows at the new house. These are all absolutes in the life of a military wife.

Civilian life, the way I pictured it in my head, would have its own set of absolutes. You find a good home, a good school district, a good church and stay put. Staying put was at the top of my set of absolutes about civilian life.

When I posted the first pictures of our home in the Bay Area last March, I got lots of comments from my military friends about how envious they were. We were civilians now and could stay put in our “forever” home. So, I know I’m not the only person who equates civilian life with staying put. To celebrate our new staying-put-ed-ness a friend of mine even gave me a stamp with our new address on it.

But by the time I got that address stamp, in August of last year, I was already filled with discontent. It didn’t even take six months of civilian life for my husband and I to realize that this home wasn’t our forever home. In the short-term everything was great. This house worked for us for now, but looking at the future the house and the schools didn’t look good. And after trying every Catholic church within a 25 minute drive of our house I still didn’t feel like I’d found a spiritual community.

My heart hurt that we hadn’t gotten it just right. This was supposed to be our time to stay put and all I wanted to do was go. I felt stuck and discontent.

And every time I sat down to write all I could think to write about was how stuck and discontent I felt. But I couldn’t write those words. I couldn’t say it. I felt ungrateful. Because a year ago this was better than I hoped for. My husband switched careers, we moved, we changed health plans and we’d come out better than okay. How could I complain about where we landed?

And since I couldn’t write it down, that discontent, I couldn’t write anything.

I retreated and tried to understand if my wanting for a different community was a problem with the community or a problem with me. Was the grass always greener on the other side or was our Bay Area jigsaw puzzle really missing a piece necessary for our happiness? Was I feeling envy or manifest destiny?

Before I’d really made up my mind, an opportunity came up. A chance to move to the foothills of Sacramento, back to where I’m from. So much closer to family. So much closer to friends. Back to a place where I feel home, with all the good words that attach to that word, like peace and room to breathe.

My discontentment turned into me holding my breath. And yet I still didn’t feel free to write. The one thing I wanted to write about was this opportunity, but I couldn’t. I was afraid to jinx it. So we waited and waited and waited throughout the holiday season, hoping we’d maneuvered ourselves just the right way for opportunity to fall into our laps.

And it did.

It fell right into our laps.

Less than a year after buying this house and feeling that we might finally be ready to put down roots into a house, we won’t own this house anymore. 51 weeks is all the time I’ll be able to say that this house was our home.

And I’m content with that.

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DJ at karate, or thoughts about honesty

14 Jan

karate badges

In August my oldest son, DJ, started taking karate sessions twice a week. Recently he moved from the pee-wee class to a beginner class.

His first night in beginner class he was the youngest by at least two years. He was also at least a good foot shorter than the other participants. The average age of the kids in the class, including his sparring partner, had to be around ten.

DJ, though, showed no recongition that he’s younger or smaller than the other kids in the class. He went for every move in every activity with whole-hearted enthusiasm.

On that first night, his instructor who told the class to jump as high as they could. Many of the kids, tired and ready for a break, barely moved their feet off the ground.

So he told the class to touch the ceiling with their next jump.

DJ immediately, and full of true concern, his hand raised in the hair, pops out with, “But, sir, I can’t touch the ceiling.” So, yeah, there’s another difference between six and ten year olds – my newly minted six year old still takes all instructions literally.

I was sitting on the bench in the back of the studio, listening to the other students and parents giggling at DJ’s comment. I felt embarassed for my boy who had become the butt of a joke because he doesn’t recognize hyperbole when he hears it.

But then something else happened, something I hadn’t expected. The Master Instructor stopped the class and presented DJ with a special badge for his uniform.

It reads, “HONESTY.”

DJ was honest. He recognized his limitation and admitted it without reservation.

Later that night DJ was also presented with a badge that reads “COMMITMENT.” He’s decided to take the journey to becoming a black belt. The badge represents his decision to make mastery of a martial art one of the goals of his young life. It’s an important decision. It’ll require a lot of hard work and dedication. The instructors made a big show of the presentation of the commitment badge.

But it was the honesty badge that I kept thinking about on the drive home after class that night.

Honesty is such an important skill to master. True honestly, like DJ showed, involves being able to recognize the “no” in life and accept it, without hiding from it. Dishonesty isn’t just the lies we say, it’s in the emptiness of the words we don’t say. That void is a dangerous illusion of self other than we actually are. DJ’s honest words, his strong mind, refused to allow that he was something other than he was.

Sure, it’s not a big deal when you’re six and asked to touch a ceiling. But one day it will be. One day it’ll be the friend who assumes he’s okay with the racist remark or the boss who assumes he’ll do more than his share of the work. There’s so many temptations in adult life to allow the assumptions of others to dictate who you are, so many ways you can easily become dishonest with yourself about who you are and what you’re capable of.

I hope he’ll keep that honesty badge close to his heart.

I hope that I keep it close to my own.

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Review: Empty Promises by Pete Wilson

2 Oct

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received an electronic copy of this book for free from BookSneeze in return for writing a review on my blog; however, my opinion is my own and not for sale. Now on with the fun …

Empty Promises. Pete Wilson’s book unpacks that phrase, illuminating the false idols in our modern life (achievement, beauty, and power to name a few). We so easily fall into the trap of believing the lie that having more money or more beauty will make us feel complete. Wilson points the reader back to God, reminding us that no goal, dream, or idea on this earth will ever fill the God-sized longing in our soul.  

I originally saw this book in a picture of a stack of books that one of my favorite bloggers was planning to read during the summer. The bright cover caught my eye. I even pinned the stack on Pinterest hoping I might get around to reading some of Lisa-Jo’s recommendations at some later date. And then a couple of weeks later, as I was browsing BookSneeze, there it was, the same bright cover. Kismet. I immediately pounced on the chance to read it – even though I had to borrow/steal my husband’s Kindle to do so, not having one of my own at the time.

I was totally on board with this book from beginning to end. Wilson’s conversational, sermon style felt like he and I were in a coffee shop somewhere discussing the problems and temptations that trip us all up from time to time. His list of false idols (each one gets its own chapter) includes all the modern traps and temptations of the times we live in and he thoroughly delves into each. Wilson gives helpful advice to overcoming each idol, not just pointing out the flaw, but how to address it. There’s also good Scripture and resource integration throughout the book.

This book came to me at the right time. I’ve worried a lot during our transition from military to civilian family about the increased presence of materialism in our lives. We’ve lived on military bases for the last four years, which are pretty much devoid of the blatant advertising and expensive stores bombarding me at every turn in the Bay Area. I wouldn’t say that the desire for more money or more stuff has been a problem, more that I was hyper-aware that it would be easier for it to be a temptation in the civilian world. Wilson’s writing did a great job of shoring up my defenses and helping me to feel reassured about how to go about combating the pull of empty promises.

My only warning about this book is that it’s definitely more of a Christian level 200 book, not meant for non or new Christians. It’s geared towards Wilson’s crowd (Wilson is a pastor of a large non-denominational church in Nashville, Tennessee) and assumes the reader knows the terms and basics of Christianity. However, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I can’t see many outside of Wilson’s target audience being interested in its subject matter.

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The Seasons Change

1 Oct

I’ve turned thirty.

It’s fall.

The seasons change.

Time passes.

And as time goes by, the look and feel of everything changes. A house, a tree, a family.

There’s a longing in it. A grief that the happy times don’t continue on indefinitely. That nothing in this world continues on indefinitely.

When I was younger, I didn’t feel that longing. To understand that time passes because you’ve felt it pass, you’ve seen parts of you drift and change and sway and steady, is to feel longing.

In this world some would teach you to despise that longing, to hide from it like any other grief.

I hear people say “30 is the new 20.”

“Every woman can be a cougar.”

“Ignore the numbers.”

“I’m celebrating my 15th time of turning 30.”

And I think how sad.

How sad that the world has taught us that this longing for what is sweet and lovely should keep suspended, wishing we were young, wishing we were single, wishing our life never changed.

I don’t want to say carpe diem. Because as the mother of young children there are some moments in time that just suck and I want them to leave, I don’t want to seize them any more than I want to be seized by them.

But time is something to be treasured, not grasped. To hold lightly and let it slide and move.

The seasons change. God created a world to help us see that time is fleeting.

Age, in a person where time has been treasured, where purpose and intention and love have ruled, is truly a blessing. The hard choices have created a better long game than I ever imagined when I cried and labored and prayed for daybreak. And maybe that’s part of why I’m content with thirty, when I see so many fighting the passage of time, grasping at the past. Because my twenties were full, but not always full of happy, sweet things. They’ve been full with struggle and failure and change too.

All of it together, the sweet and the struggle, has shaped this thirty years.

Thirty is a badge on my heart like the badges on my Girl Scout sash when I was little. A badge of merit and pain well mourned and lessons learned and love relished and dreams for the future and my middle age.

I realized right before I turned thirty that in the months following my fortieth birthday my boys will turn sixteen and thirteen. Turning thirty was like a hat tip from God that the seasons will keep changing.  To find my way to grow and bloom in every season. I have these next ten years to cherish the childhood of my boys. To read The Cat In The Hat and Treasure Island. To jump on the trampoline and lick the batter off the mixer paddles. To teach my boys how to be men.

And also to prepare for the next change in the seasons. To let these boys slide and change and grow and bloom like the time and the love they embody.

photo by: Mal B
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Being honest about giving away our dog.

27 Jul

I don’t know if it’s a Freudian slip, but over the last two weeks whenever I’ve sat down to write this post the title I kept thinking of was “Getting Rid of Our Dog” instead of “Giving Away.”

And that’s not how I thought that I thought about Daisy Mae, our pug we adopted in January of last year.

She’s cute. She’s SO easy going. She’s totally housebroken and easily learned our household routine. Her snores are totally adorable. She was a good fit for our family.

When we got Daisy Mae we knew that DJ was allergic to animal dander, but he showed no external reaction when he was around dogs, no hives, no sneezing, no rashes, so we figured he’d be fine. We thought with his food allergies and eczema under control we could loosen up a little.

But then DJ’s allergy blood test results came back. And my thoughts about DJ and a dog in the same house changed. His blood test showed a dog dander number that was through the roof. In terms of numbers it’s now his worst allergy. And his overall allergy level is up too.

I didn’t even need to speak to the allergist to know that he was going to recommend giving away our dog. Those numbers were so elevated they spoke for themselves, yelling at me from the computer screen that DJ’s internal struggle with immunogloblin E and histamines rages on.

There really was no choice. Here’s this thing his body, even if it’s just internally, is having a huge reaction to. No matter what that thing is, my job as a mom is to eliminate it from DJ’s life.

So, let’s say that without pronouns: my job as a mom is to eliminate Daisy Mae from DJ’s life.

Less than a week after DJ’s blood test, Daisy Mae was no longer our pug. Extended family decided to take her. And almost immediately the coughing that I thought was just a part of DJ’s baseline asthma stopped. Actually, I want to be really specific about this. I want to prove that we did the right thing here. The day that I deep cleaned, trying to rid our house of as much dog dander as I could, DJ’s breathing was awful. The next day he cleared up. And he hasn’t needed any asthma medication since then.

So, we did the right thing. Obviously he was having a reaction to our dog, but I just didn’t see it for what it was. There are just too many things that can cause similar symptoms.

 Backtracking a little bit chronologically … Telling DJ we were giving away our dog was hard. For the second time in one week I knew I was going to make DJ cry. First was the blood draw, and now we had to tell him that we were giving away Daisy Mae.

We decided not to tell DJ the whole truth about why Daisy Mae was leaving. I’m afraid to tell him that his allergy is the reason why we gave away our dog. I’m afraid that he’ll hear us say, “You’re allergic to Daisy Mae,” but what he’ll understand is, “There’s something bad about you that forced us to get rid of our dog.”

He’s five. I don’t know that he possesses the mental and cognitive skills to understand a complex situation like this.

So, we told him that this family member needed Daisy Mae more than us.

For a week or so after those initial tears when it was time to say good-bye, he didn’t say anything about it. But the next week, this week, DJ has asked me twenty questions a day about Daisy Mae.

This morning he finally asked me a question that begged for the truth: If we gave Daisy Mae away because someone needed her more than us … when are we going to get another dog?

I took a long sip of coffee while I thought about that and said simply, “We aren’t going to get another dog. Maybe a turtle, but not another dog.”

But I don’t think that’s going to be the end of it. DJ’s got the questioning glint in his eye and nothing I’ve said so far has made it dissipate. I think as parent-team we might need to have another discussion about this tonight, just Jesse and me. I’m wondering if my push to omit the truth with DJ isn’t causing him more harm than good. I’m wondering if DJ’s just too smart and curious for the path I wanted him to go down.

Because at some point we’re going to have to tell him. I mean, we can’t hide it from him forever that he’s allergic to dogs.

I thought I was hiding the truth from him to make it easier for him. But I think it could very well be that I, myself, didn’t want to spend any more time with the reality of the situation. I didn’t want to be the bad guy. I didn’t want to talk about allergies any more.

I think the reality could be that DJ has a much great desire and capacity for the truth than I gave him credit for.

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Making my child cry or the ghosts of blood draws past.

18 Jul

In the last week or so I’ve made DJ cry, twice. Like, there’s no way around it cry. It’s going to be painful. We just have to get through it with as much bravery and grace as we can muster.

This is a part of DJ’s life with allergies, eczema, and asthma that is hard for me to handle as a mother.

And I’m not even against pain in childhood. I think making a mistake and living with the consequences is a very natural punishment that alters behavior more quickly that a hovering, nagging Momma. You don’t want to wear your jacket when it’s chilly outside. Fine, you’ll be cold and uncomfortable after a couple of minutes, but you won’t refuse your jacket again.

I’m okay with childhood discomfort.

But the pain caused by DJ’s allergic disease is nothing like childhood discomfort because my boy has no choice. He didn’t make a mistake and he doesn’t deserve any punishment, but he still has to live with the consequences of his disease every day. And Jesse and I, we face the agony of parents who can’t take away the disease or the pain it inflicts.

Sometimes I even help cause the pain.

About a week ago DJ had his first appointment with his new allergist. I knew a blood draw would happen at the end of the visit. It’s been two years since his last round of extensive allergy testing and we’re in a new healthcare system. There’s just no way that DJ was going to walk out of the clinic that day with all the blood he came in with.

I tried to prepare him. I told him before we even left the house that they were going to need his blood to find out how he’s doing on the inside. I encouraged him to bring a toy that made him feel brave (for the record, he chose a Rescue Bot). At the advice of the allergist’s medical assistant, I took DJ two buildings away to the pediatric laboratory where they would have an easier time finding his little veins.

But it ended like every blood draw before it, with me pinning my squirming, sobbing son to my chest while the phlebotomist takes the blood needed to run his allergy panel. Because when a child gets a blood draw, a parent is required to hold them in her lap.

It’s agony. Burning, gut-churning, sickening. Holding your child while they plead to be spared, begging you to not allow anyone to hurt them.

Last week was no exception. In fact, I don’t know what’s worse, the words he pleads with now, or the screams he pleaded with when he was younger. While he cried with words now I experienced an odd case of déjà vu, hearing simultaneously all the cries from the blood draws before, like the ghosts of blood draws past.

This is his seventh allergy panel in five years. Each time it feels like they wring every ounce of blood out of his body to get what they need to run the tests. The average is six vials of blood. To put that in perspective, I just had a routine blood draw for cholesterol and blood cell count and they took a vial and a half of my blood. And I’m about three times bigger than DJ right now at age five. When he was really little they would take as much blood as they safely could in one day, then come back the next day and take more blood from his other arm. So even though he’s had seven allergy panels, it’s been a lot more needles than that.

The blood draw I can’t forget, the one that really haunts me, happened when he was thirteen months old. He’d been ill, he was tiny, he was dehydrated, and he was a hard stick. But we’d traveled all the way from North Dakota to Denver for this blood draw and treatment. And he couldn’t get any treatment for anything until the allergy panel had been run.

We needed his blood. And no one could get it. Five different nurses tried. They tried while DJ screamed. And screamed. And screamed. They’d even put a numbing agent on his arm. They brought in a Child Life Specialist to distract and entertain him. My mother-in-law, who hates blood, stood over him the entire time, trying to get his attention. Over the course of two days they tried whenever they thought it was proper and humane and had barely gotten enough to run the basics.

He never stopped screaming. Until finally while they were trying once again to get his blood on the second day and he passed out. He had screamed for so long and so hard that his infant instinct to override his body when he experienced too much stimulation kicked in and he went to sleep.

The nurses asked if I would let them keep going. And I said, “Yes,” and silently added, “By all means, get his blood now while he’s asleep and protected from the pain and the fear.”

And they did. After it was over, I cradled my son, stood up from the examination table and nearly fell over. My muscles revolted and I realized I hadn’t taken a deep breath or relaxed a muscle the entire time we’d been in that room. I had pinned my son to my chest and held him tight for over thirty minutes while they dug with needles into his body.

I put my son through this torture, holding him down while he suffers. We roll up our sleeves and get it done. It’s a necessary evil, as much as I hate the phrase.

And I pray that we’re not too haunted by the ghosts of blood draws past.

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What’s the term for “fear of meeting a new doctor”?

9 Jul

DJ’s got an appointment with an allergist in about an hour.

There are a million things I could be doing around this house while I’m waiting to take him. Laundry to get folded, dishes to get rinsed, phone calls to make, paperwork to fill out …

But what am I doing?

Going over the binder full of DJ’s medical tests, re-reading the note with all my questions, writing this, and in general, freaking out so much that I’m jittery and my stomach is tight.

I fear that first meeting with a doctor so much. Any doctor. DJ’s seen so many doctors over the last five years. Emergency room doctors, dermatologists, pediatricians, allergists, family care doctors, urgent care doctors, filling in for the normal pediatrician doctors. We need something from them, otherwise we wouldn’t be there. They hold my son’s health and comfort in hands.

They have so much control. And unfortunately, we’ve run into a few that have let that power go to their heads. A pediatrician who refused to refer DJ’s care to an allergist, convinced she could treat his allergic disease herself. Another pediatrician that tried to diagnosis him with cystic fibrosis after his second lung infection in three months, completely disregarding that he has asthma and extremely reactive lungs (That means that if the smallest thing irritates his lungs they become inflamed. He’s actually had a special test for that.).

I really should write down the details sometime. Do a week of blog posts about the worst doctors we’ve come across in the last five years.

But in the meantime, every time we get ready to meet a new doctor, I worry. I’m dependent on the judgement of someone who I’ll have less than five minutes to make an impression on.

So I prepare. I’ve got a binder with all of DJ’s medical tests. They’re neatly arranged. All his allergy tests and blood work are in chronological order. There’s a separate page with the results of his methacholine challenge (that’s the test to irritate his lungs). A separate page with the disc of his chest x-rays.

I’m over-prepared too. There’s a section with pictures of DJ’s skin during the horrible eczema flares from when he was an infant. I can barely look at those pictures where his skin is oozing and crusted. It makes my skin itch just to think about it. Seriously, just writing that sentence makes the skin on my neck itch. But I’ve found that scary, awful pictures of my son’s skin make a big impression on a doctor who’s super busy, seeing a new patient every fifteen minutes, and I’m here with a five year old who can’t communicate the severity of his symptoms, asking for the moon.

And many times I don’t need it. I meet a friendly doctor who’s more than capable to handling DJ’s needs. I get all worked up and then I meet a smiling doctor who grants my every wish and has a great conversation with me about the latest in non-steroidal prescription skin treatments for atopic dermatitis.

But those times when it’s gone wrong. And those moments when my baby has needed help that we couldn’t get him. They stay with me. I relive them in these minutes while I wait to see if DJ’s needs will be fulfilled or if I’ll have to fight to get what he deserves.

Every minute drags. I feel every second pounding away in my heart. I have such a fear of that unknown doctor we’ll meet so soon.

photo by: Earls37a
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You get what you pay for with military healthcare (which is very little).

25 Jun

Because of DJ’s allergies, eczema and asthma we’ve been through a lot of the ins and outs of getting proper healthcare. We’ve gone through more twists and turns than the typical family that doesn’t require specialized treatment and urgent care visits. One day, maybe soon, I’ll take the time to write down all the ways military healthcare failed us.

But the point is that they failed us.

I always felt like something was wrong. If I told Jesse once, I told him a million times, “It shouldn’t be this hard to get DJ what he needs.”

But at the same time I had no proof. I had lots of evidence that individuals had failed our son and lots of suspicions that it was the system that was broken, not just these individuals. But I had no evidence that military healthcare was failing our son, not even anecdotal evidence.

So, to a certain extent, I’ve just never invested much time thinking about the hows and whys of Tricare’s failings. For one, my husband was in the military, so complaining about the only healthcare we had seemed like biting the hand that fed us, focusing my energy on a problem for which I had no solution. But the other is the strong don’t-be-a-whiner mindset within the military community. Whiners get ostracized. And in a world where work and play hugely, if not totally, overlap, getting ostracized in your social life can get you ostracized at work.

For example, when I had the opportunity to speak with Deborah Mullen, the spouse of the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, someone in base leadership advised me that I should only share compliments and encouraging stories about the base we lived at. He advised me that sharing problems or negative stories would only make our base “look like whiners.” Even if she pointedly asked me what I didn’t like about the base or base leadership I should find a neutral answer and not complain.

This “shut up and be grateful” attitude extends to every facet of military life, including healthcare. And I’m just as guilty as the next military spouse of feeding into the mentality that we should just be grateful.

Tricare Prime, the healthcare program that most active duty members and their families participate in, requires no co-pays for any medical visit with your designated physician or necessary care from specialists. This means that for DJ’s two week stint at National Jewish Health in Denver (we lived in Minot, North Dakota at the time), we paid nothing. And I mean nothing. We didn’t pay for air fare or meals or taxis or hotels. We didn’t pay a single dime in co-pays for his overnight in-patient stay complete with heavily regulated narcotics and constant nurse surveillance. Or for his emergency two hour stay in triage when he went into anaphylactic shock.

I’ve told that story thousands of times, bragging that our insurance was so incredible that they picked up all the cost. I’ve told civilian friends that my husband couldn’t leave the military even if he wanted to because we couldn’t afford DJ’s medical bills under a civilian insurance plan. And it’s a one-sided story, at best. At the worst it’s a dishonest one.

Because, sure, once we got to National Jewish we paid nothing. But my husband and I paid dearly in tears, grief, and struggle for a year while DJ suffered daily in acute pain before DJ received his “free” treatment.

Today I finally got my anecdotal evidence that when you pay nothing you get less. Less patient care, less innovation, less time.

Today my sons had their first well-child check-ups through our civilian healthcare. I paid $40, a $20 co-pay for each of them to see their pediatrician. But in less than an hour both boys had full physicals, DJ had vision and hearing tests done, they both had necessary immunizations, required medical paperwork for the school was filled out, and we had an overview conversation with the pediatrician about DJ’s major medical issues.

In order to get both boys well-child check-ups and immunizations at our last base military clinic, which had been recognized as the best military medical clinic in the region two years running, I estimate it would have taken three hours. It would have been at least a thirty minute wait before we would have seen the pediatrician at all. And immunizations are in a different department, where the wait process starts all over again. I would have had to pick up the paperwork later … probably about three business days later (and I won’t mention the number of times they’ve just lost the paperwork completely and we’ve had to start all over again). I don’t know that the military clinic even had the capabilities to check hearing and vision because they never offered.

But here’s the kicker.

Our civilian pediatrician is going to read DJ’s entire medical record, which is about three inches thick, before coming up with a plan of action for his specialized care.

Want to guess how many military pediatricians did that in four years?

None.

A couple looked up his last blood test electronically, but most, even as he got older and his record got thicker, just listened to me tell them what I wanted and gave it to me. And I preferred this. If they stalled to have time to put in a referral or do more research, I resisted or refused. Because I knew more time could easily mean that DJ’s needs would get lost in the shuffle. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. The patient person in military healthcare gets nothing, just like their co-pay.

The recap, the hindsight 20-20 lesson after today’s visit, is with Tricare in order to get any care at all I had to spent about triple the time and be the aggressive leader of my son’s medical team.

Now I’m paying $20 per visit, but I’d be willing to bet $20 more that DJ’s medical needs are managed by a physician instead of his mom. Like so many things in life, you get what you pay for.

photo by: 401K 2012
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“Hugs”

7 Jun

DJ and Rob play really nicely together.

Well, they play really nicely considering that they’re three years apart and in very different developmental stages.

Mostly that means that they tolerate each other really well and DJ has pretty much always treated his little brother with a lot of love and little jealousy.

But one thing they don’t do well is hug.

For some reason, I have no clue why, Rob doesn’t like it when his older brother comes into his bubble for a hug. Never has. I’ll encourage DJ to give Rob a hug and invariably Rob grunts discontentedly and pushes DJ away.

So, it’s rare to see DJ in Rob’s bubble for reasons of affection. If DJ is in Rob’s bubble it’s so they can share a toy or throw stuffed animals at each other.

It’s an area of secret mommy discontent. Not a big one, just a little one. I want them to hug!!!! I’ve even spent some time thinking about it, trying to figure out why Rob refuses to be hugged by DJ and never initiates a hug with him. I mean, I know they’re boys, and we’re not a very touchy-feely bunch to begin with, but I feel like if they don’t hug each other now they’re going to grow up thinking that farting near each other is the only appropriate sign of affection.

 

But lately that seems to be changing.

Over the weekend it was too quiet in the living room. So, of course, I went to check on them, expecting to find them using books from my English degree as stepping stones or something.

Instead they were doing this:

They were cuddled up on the couch together, with all their lovies, watching a cartoon.

So not only were they sharing personal space in an affectionate way, but they were sharing their lovies. (Sorry there’s not a better picture, but I only got one before I spoiled the moment with my picture taking.)

I was one happy Momma seeing the two of them on the couch together. It was all the reassurance I needed that there is an affectionate connection between the two of them … just rarely seen.

It wasn’t a hug, but it was a cuddle and after almost two and a half years of little brotherly love I took what they gave each other for what it was and moved on. I told my secret mommy discontent to freak out about something else.

 

Last night Rob was giving Jesse and I hugs. He walked up to us with his arms wide open, said “hugs,” and collapsed his arms around our legs while burying his face in our thighs. This is typical. He gives us hugs all the time, just not DJ. (In fact, he gives me hugs almost every day after I change his diaper. I love it. It’s a non-verbal “Thanks for cleaning my butt, Mom.”)

But then he turned around, saw DJ and walked over to him and said “hugs.” DJ just stood there, dumbfounded, looking up at Jesse and I like “For real? Did he just burst the affection bubble all on his own?” before he put his arms around his little brother.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen them voluntarily hug each other and have it not end in violence. They hugged, parted, and then …

Then Rob took his big brother’s hand and they walked, hand in hand, into the living room.

And I cried, big fat happy Momma tears.

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Review: Heaven in Her Arms by Catherine Hickem

5 Jun

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book for free from BookSneeze in return for writing a review on my blog; however, my opinion is my own and not for sale. Now on with the fun …

I was really excited to read this book. It’s an intimate look at Mary, the Mother of God, and learning from her example how to be better mothers and women. The author, Catherine Hickem, is a longtime licensed psychotherapist who has spent most of her career helping women.

First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. I’m Catholic. From reading the basic information about the book I assumed Hickem was Protestant, and I was right. So, it’s just kind of a given that we’re going to disagree about some things when it comes to Mary. I accepted that before I even opened the book and went into it ready to not be fussy about it.

Hickem does acknowledge very early in the book that Catholics overall do a much better job at recognizing Mary’s importance than Protestants and most of her commentary stays away from matters of doctrine; she’s much more interested in how we can learn to be better mothers and women from Mary’s example.

And, for me, she succeeds in that goal. The book is broken up into short chapters relating Mary’s story chronologically and then reflecting on how we, as mothers and women, can develop the same traits. There are lots of little nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned throughout the book, especially about mothering our children. Hickem’s writing really shines when it comes to parenting advice. You can tell this is an area that she feels passionate about. 

My favorite piece of advice – take the time to reflect and pray. Families where the mom takes daily time to reflect are better able to handle crisis situations, sometimes before they become major stressors. But there’s lots more in these pages. Good reminders of things that I already know and do, and a couple of light bulb moments.

Something that really spoke to me that I had never considered before was that Mary raised a son who would have been seen by those around him as “different” or “peculiar.” There are many times with DJ’s allergies that I feel like the odd mom out in the room; DJ’s different than their kids so I’m different too. I hadn’t considered that Mary understands this, that Mary lived this on a much larger scale than I do. I find it very reassuring.

My biggest criticism would probably be that the ending chapters are a little clunky. (The author information and acknowledgements come before two chapters of meatier stuff, including a useful study guide.) However, overall, there’s a lot of inspiration to be gained from reading this encouraging book for women with children of all ages.

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