One more bit of magic gone

Yesterday, Kiddo announced to me that Thomas the Tank Engine is not a real engine; he's just a story somebody made up. So much for our yearly pilgrimage to Day Out with Thomas, and seeing Kiddo's eyes light up at the sight of the life-sized blue engine. So much for the Island of Sodor, where the engines are alive, and where engines and people work, play, argue, act childishly, get over themselves, and make up, all as a matter of course. So much for James, Percy, Gordon, and Edward.

All that magic gone in just one puff of logic.

Jessica come home.

This is Jessica:

She may look like a happy meal toy, but . . . this is no ordinary toy. This is my son's daughter.

Kiddo never, ever got so attached to a toy as he did to this one. When he was at that age where most kids glom onto one toy and cherish it above all things, we tried to find that one special toy for him to love. We was just not interested. Then, last summer, Jessica came into our lives via the library reading club. She arrived in a paper-plate-and-tin-foil space ship, a week or so before the Vacation from Hell. And she stole our hearts.

Connal adores his Jessica. He takes her every where. She sits on his desk during lessons and on the table at diner time. She rides in his pocket to hockey practice and Sunday school. He takes her to Cub scouts and Museums, and he holds her up so she can see things. He bought her a dog and made her a bed out of a mushroom box. We video taped Jessica putting her first ornament on the Christmas tree. The first thing he says every morning is, "Where's Jessica?"

Where, indeed?

Today, she slipped out of Ted's pocket. He told Kiddo to let him carry Jessica, to keep her safe. We didn't realize until we got home.

Tomorrow, of course, we will return to the restaurant and the forest preserve where we went today. Ted already called off work. We will search every inch of where we went today.

For now, there is nothing to do. The restaurant is closed, the forest is dark. Ted is pacing around, guilt-ridden and sad. He is feeling the pain of having betrayed his son's trust. For me, I am in tears and working on a very large glass of wine. I have a toy that I loved that much. I know how I would have felt to think my Leo was lost and alone somewhere, perhaps never to be found. Kiddo wandered off to mess with the new train layout. He is being very quiet.

For now, I will say a special prayer tonight and keep my fingers crossed.

Jessica, please come home.

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Edited to add:

Just as I was about to post this, Ted had a flash of inspiration and searched Kiddo's coat pockets. All of a sudden I heard him say, "Oh my God!" Guess what he found.

Kiddo raced up the stairs when we called him, gave the found Jessica a big hug, and whisked her off to play trains with him. Ted collapsed into a chair. I am completely speechless. Wow. Just, wow.

In with the new

January is always a weird time for me. I don't really make resolutions, as such. But with the days growing longer and sunnier, I begin feeling more hopeful. I start thinking I may have some chance of reversing the complete muddle I have made of my life in the past year. And I get to thinking about what I did well and what I want to improve upon.

This process usually takes the whole month of January. First I have to recover form the holidays, which can take some time. Then I have to go back to work and get back in the swing of it. Then I have to re-engage my poor brain and start actually thinking again (ouch!).

All in all, 2007 was pretty good. Financially, it was a bit dicey, but we learned from that and have things better under control now. Otherwise, I did some amazing things. I turned big corners with my husband and my mother. I took my son out of school and brought him home where he belongs. We passed the first full year in our new house. I lost 20 pounds. and here are the things I want to better in 2008:

*I want to resume my workout program and also include PE in our school subjects. And Yes, I do consider Pole dancing a fit activity for PE, thank you.

*I made big progress on my kitchen this week. Now if only I can keep the trend going through the rest of the house.

* I really need to take better care of my hair and skin if I want to keep dancing for 5 more years. (Every year I say 5 more years. I've been saying it for 4 years already.) I also need to get serious about losing those last 15 or so pounds.

* I am working on changing up my work schedule so I have more time for school, and changing our school schedule so we can do more of the things we love.

*I am going to start saving money at the beginning of the week, instead of waiting until the end to see if there is any thing left over.


That is enough change for now. I'll let you know how it goes.

A sad and beautiful post on another blog

I have been weirdly busy lately. You might have seen on my Twitter that I had Car Drama, a Cold, a Kitchen Issue, some Homeschool Issues, and so on. I have started 3 or 4 entries lately, but not had time to finish any on them. But I did find this on The Organizing Junkie. It caught my eye because the floor of this room looks exactly like my son's room would look if he were into pirates instead of trains. Maybe I'm still a little bit sick, but this almost made me cry.

At any rate, I just subscribed to this girl's blog. I hope she writes more like this.

What are you doing after work?

That's one of my favoirtie things guys ask me. I know they are secretly wishing I would say, "Nothing more important that going over to your place . . . ."

Well. Today was supposed to be my "early" night. I was scheduled to get off at 8. At 7:40, a good friend and former extremely good regular customer dropped in to see me. Why do people like that always show up at the end of the shift? Where are they at 4:15, when there is nobody in the bar and I am dying for someone to talk to? Well, anyway, I had to sit and chat for a few minutes and then had to have a chat in the dressing room, too, and so didn't get out until almost 8:30.

Then I had errands to run. Yep. I do some of my best errand running after work. First I dropped by the discount liquor store to stock up on wine. Then I ran down to the grocery store to grab some groceries. I don't know that store well, ands the self-checkout thingie was freaked out by my reusable grocery bags, so that took almost 2 hours. Then I ran through a drive-through for coffee and a rather lousy facsimile of dinner (diet resumes Monday--I swear!) and dropped off what little remained of my earnings at the bank. Then when I finally got home at almost midnight (did I mention the snow all over the roads on the way home?) I found my house looked like an explosion in a Goodwill shop. SO I cleaned my kitchen, ran the dishwasher, left a message for the dishwasher repair guy, put away my groceries, and started a loaf of bread. Took out the compost and the trash. Fed the critters.

After that I took a break and read some of my friends' blogs.

Then I did 2 loads of laundry, folded some backed-up laundry that had been waiting for me to take care of it, hauled some stuff down to the freezer, and put a deep-cleansing oil treatment on my face. It is now 4:12 a.m. The only reason I am here at the computer is because I need to kill a little time and let the oil soak in before I go take a shower.

I have only been back to work 2 days, and I already remember why I needed a vacation!

More conforntation and boundaries

At first I was just going to make a scathing reply to this comment, but I have decided instead to give this a full treatment and the attention I think it deserves.

Anonymous said...

If you even suspect anything will happen with your son, he should never be alone with her.

No guilt over her feelings will ever outweigh your guilt over him being abused and suffering from it.

Better he live with limited exposure to her than a lifetime of the memory of what someone who was supposed to love him did. And that his mom 'let it happen'.

...This comment has annoyed me for the better part of a week. In the first place, I dislike anonymous comments like this on principle. It seems cowardly and/or paranoid that you can't even leave a screen name by which to identify yourself.

Besides that, thank you, whomever you are, for the additional load of guilt and shame. I really needed another reminder that no matter what I do, someone is going to get hurt. I had almost forgotten that.

In the black-and-white world we envision when we first get into therapy/discover or face our abuse/join Incest Survivors Anonymous or SNAP, it is very easy to say what you said. In fact, I said it, frequently and repeatedly, about my own mother. I screamed and cried and raged: How could she let me be abused? It is so easy to paint every abuser as a horned demon. We imagine our parents as omnipotent and able, if not willing, to protect us completely. We believe that insulating a child is the same thing as good parenting. And we lose perspective, imagining that every inappropriate gesture or look is the same as a violent rape.

Now I find myself in the position of a parent AND of a daughter. And nothing is clear like that anymore. In the first place, I do not believe my mother is actually doing anything to my son, in the way you imagine she is. What she is doing is subtle manipulation which is undermining me as a parent. She is putting him in a position where he has to divide his loyalties, and making me out to be the asshole.

Now it would be so nice if I could just sit her down and say, "Look, Mom, the things you are saying to my son are inappropriate. They are messing with him and as a side effect, are making my life hell." Her actions are childish and self-serving, but I really believe she can no more control them than she can control her own breathing. She is aware of very little, either internally or in world around her, and would probably not even know what I was talking about. My worst fear is that, telling her what effect her manipulative ways are having would simply confirm to her that she is doing it right. I am not really sure what her game is, except that it is about controlling me, and using my son to do it.

So it seems like it would be a no-brainer to simply cut all contact. No so. In the first place, my son loves his grandma. He does not seem at all uncomfortable in her presence, even with issues like bathing. He also has quite a few friends through her, grown-up friends who I think are good for him. I hesitate to disrupt relationships that are so important to him. And I certainly do not want to over-react, as my own mother did, and cut him off from so many good things in life, simply because of my own fears.

My mother, for all her faults, is not a demon. She is a sad and pathetic old woman, who has had more than her share of sorrow and misery in life, and is dealing with it the best she knows how. She could no more have protected me from my abusers (including her own father) than she could have protected me from a pride of hungry lions. I no longer have a need to punish her for what happened to me. I am not afraid of her and do not need to hide myself or my son from her.

What I am attempting to do is to exercise strength through kindness. I am seeking to help my son grow into a kind, loving, tolerant, and understanding person. It's not like he will never meet another demanding, manipulative person; I wish him to learn by example how to set boundaries with love. I believe it is the right thing to do, to honor and care for a woman who honestly did her best for me, even though her best was not all that great.

I am trying to figure out the best way to both protect my son and encourage both of them to form the best relationship they can manage.