Feeling A Child's Pain

The dream woke me with a start. I don't often dream and rarely are my dreams so symbolic of events occurring in my life. Usually they are odd and their meaning unclear. This dream was different. It was startling and didn't help to alleviate my already heavy heart.

I was cradling my newborn baby girl. Under a little tuft of reddish hair, the features below were the features of a child with Downs Syndrome. I touched her cheek and felt surprise at the heat. My baby needed to go to a doctor. As is often the case in dreams, there was a strangeness to my physical surroundings. The landscape I walked on my way to the doctor was desert-like, void of grass, trees or shrubs, mostly brown. The doctor's office was a table set in the middle of these strange, barren surroundings.

I sat on a chair awaiting the doctor's arrival and realized I couldn't remember the last time I'd fed my baby. In that moment, I felt such deep distress at my neglect and feared my milk may have dried up. I unbuttoned my shirt, closed my eyes and pulled my daughter close. She clasped on and greedily sucked. Milk surged and I felt intense relief to be nourishing her.

The doctor examined my baby and I headed home, back through the dreary landscape. On the walk I wiped a smudge of dirt from my daughter's forehead and realized, my baby was several weeks old, and I had never bathed her. When I arrived at our house, Craig opened the door and with tears flowing and feeling absolute anguish and guilt, I handed her to him and asked him, "Why haven't we bathed our baby?" Then I woke up.

My cheeks were damp with tears. The dream left me unsettled, yet I knew exactly why it had come to me. This dream had everything to do with my not being able to make things okay for a grown child. Everything to do with not being able to heal heartache, to heal a child's innermost demons. Everything to do with looking back and wondering whether past decisions may have harmed this child more than helped. Decisions that may have inhibited this child from being able to cope in a grown up world, to resolve grief in a healthy manner.

No one tells you that once you have a child you feel their pain as intensely as they do. I sometimes think you feel it more. When your child is hurt, you hurt. When your child is betrayed, you feel betrayed. When your child is afflicted with their own compulsions and torments, you feel tormented.

When I say I feel his pain, I mean I really physically and emotionally feel his pain. Just as I felt the pain of my other children when life threw them curve balls, when their hearts were broken, when friends betrayed and goals seemed unattainable. I feel the weight heavily on my chest. I feel it in the rolling of my stomach. I feel it in my waking hours and in my dream state.

Raising my children was a gift. One that seemed relatively simple in the early years. I conceived them easily. I bore them easily. I parented with an ease that came naturally. That is, until years later, when I realized what worked for two wasn't necessarily the best for my third. The same expectations, rules, guidelines and instruction weren't as easily accepted by this child of mine. This child who makes his own life more difficult by the choices he makes. So... for years now, alternating with happiness, there has been grief and pain and frustration and love- always love.

And, now this child has had his heart broken and I can't do anything to ease the pain. I can't do anything but listen, comfort, offer steps that will move him forward and help him see that this too shall pass. That in life there are simply walks we must make alone and he is on one of these walks.

In the end, all we really want is for our children to be happy. When they're happy, we're happy. I saw this in my mother and in all the wonderful moms I know who would take the pain from their child if they could. No one ever tells you it will be this hard. They tell you about the joy. The joy that makes all the pain worth it.

So while I carry this weight, I know it will pass. It will pass when my child forges ahead and is happy again.

VSL

What Else?

Life has thrown us some serious curve balls in the past couple of years. I'm now nine months out of work and looking daily. It takes a toll on you. Your life is up in the air, resulting in an underlying anxiety you can't quite shake. Headlines, unemployment rates and job loss stories intrude daily, reeking havoc on your attempts to keep yourself calm and focused. In today's world you're lucky to get an interview and even luckier if you land the job. Fact is... there just aren't enough to go around.

So, while you struggle to live on a diminished income and hope that next interview is your lucky break, you just don't want to even contemplate that it could get worse. But, of course it can. And, for Craig and I, it did. My husband's employer announced last week they will close the facility he works in- late summer. We are fortunate we have some months to prepare but seriously, this is scary. Both out of work? That's not good... scary, scary stuff.

Best case scenario: Craig wraps things up with his current employer, gets his severance pay and lands a job that starts soon after ( with no lapse in health insurance coverage). In the meantime, I find employment, get settled into the position and life goes on, slightly battered but hopeful for the future.

Worst case scenario: Neither of us find employment. This goes on too long and we lose everything.

Craig and I are now in the same boat as millions of Americans. According to today's paper there are 15,000,000 of us chasing 3,000,000 jobs. Making matters worse, Craig and I are too young to retire and reaching the age less inticing to potential employers. It's strange to think your age may make a difference in your employment status. Anyone in their 50's knows you don't feel old. I know I am wiser, savvier and way, way more awesome than in my younger days.
I'd like to say I really don't think the worse will happen but after having lived through the loss of a young family member, I now KNOW the worse can and does happen. You don't feel safe after such a life-altering tragedy. The worst is happening all around this nation of ours. And, while, I'm not exactly a glass half full kind of gal, I would also ascertain I'm not a doomsdayer either. I guess somewhere in between optimism and pessimism is this uneasy feeling that life as we know it really could change.

My sister reminds me that one thing we have going for us is family. No matter what happens, none of us will ever be without food and shelter. We're covered. Family would always be there. I know this, and it's comforting, but I don't really don't want to put family charity to the test.

Despite these troubling times, it is intriguing to find myself so increasingly grateful for what I do have. Like many Americans, I've always wanted more. But when life interferes and material things become tenuous, you just want to hold on to what you've got, making you realize their worth.

Not long ago, Craig and I were considering moving to a final home, one that we've dreamed about for a long time. Now, the house I live in seems so precious to me. This house and the things in this house. All the little worse for wear, not worth anything substantial. But it's my stuff. Stuff I value and don't want to lose. No more yearning for the house with character, the car, the big screen TV, the fabulous trip, furnishings, clothing, etc. I just want to keep what I have. I just want to stay afloat and happily adjust to the idea that what we have is enough... more than enough.

My parents never lived rich. A minister and a teacher don't have the means to do so but they saved and invested their money wisely and by all appearances are living a pretty fine retirement. I wonder if my generation will be able to do the same? Will my generation survive the losses in retirement accounts, crippling job loss, a failing social security system? Will our homes be paid off? Will our debt be paid off? Will we be able to live out our retirement years visiting grand kids, traveling, pursuing leisure activities we'd put off during our working life? Or, will we work until we die?

Pessimistic contemplation, I know. But those questions are there, lurking right under the surface, poking up their nasty little heads pretty much all the time. And, while I don't often lay voice to these demons, I know many Americans are wondering the same things.

As we move through these next few months, my goals are to stay optimistic, hang out with family A LOT, be prepared for the worst and remain grateful for all I have.

One day at time. That's my motto. Most days this works just fine.

VSL