Mom in the Mirror

Stitch by stitch

This has been a long week filled with firsts:

• I drove for the first time since my surgery.
• I spent a half-day at work for the first time in almost eight months.
• Colter got straight A's and made "principal's list" for the first time in his academic career.

These were some challenging days that reminded me why closets have doors and people have skin. Life is messy. And fragile.

Our old bodies, older dreams, and oldest emotions gather dust; our good intentions no longer fit, yet still pile up in the closets of our minds and our bedrooms. We need ways to let go -- of who we were, what we wanted, what was.

We need to knit.

I spent some time this week with a woman who taught me to knit differently than I remember my grandmother doing decades ago.

As my new teacher showed me how to handle the needles and yarn, I felt so stupid and so wise, doing nothing and everything at the same time. With each movement, I learned when to tighten my hold and when to release it; I learned to trust the pattern to emerge, row by row; I learned that bold threads, soothing textures, and warm women can create a community of faith and patience.

With my wooden needles, I felt myself knitting together a new life, stitch by stitch.

What faith is

I feel like I've been falling.

Sometimes it's a slow fall, and I can almost feel the bungee cord pulling me back up to the bridge that carries me across days filled with pain, disappointment and frustration.

Sometimes it's a fast fall, and all I feel is my rapidly-beating heart, racing out of my body on some flight plan it hasn't filed with my head.

Most times it's somewhere in between, a medium fall that disorients, confuses and confounds me so I lose track of where I am.

I am afraid I will never stop falling. Or maybe I'm afraid of what will happen if I do stop falling. Where will my fall end? Where will I end up?

I'm a veteran of the trust wars. I've battled for years against trusting myself, trusting other people, trusting God. And that's why faith has been my safety net. Faith doesn't require trust. It just requires itself; it requires faith.

Faith that no matter how hard or fast I fall, I will always be caught.

Lightning strikes for the first time

Early Saturday morning, the phone rang. Colter's friend was inviting him to the Tampa Bay Lightning game that night. The crowd, the fights, the noise, the smells, the strangers, my baby. How could I say yes? The excitement, the freedom, the junk food, the thrill of victory, the new experience. How could I say no?

For 10 years I've been holding on to my son, protecting him. But this weekend I knew the time had come to start trusting he could begin protecting himself.

We left the decision up to Colter. Because he's never been to a hockey game, we described for him what it might be like in the arena: very loud, very bright, very sticky. We told him if he went it'd be with his dad's cell phone and asked him what he'd do if he got separated from his friend and his friend's father. He thought for a moment, then said he'd call his friend's father, whose number is programmed into the phone. His smart solution confirmed my confidence in him.

I called only once early in the evening to see how things were going, then he called twice to tell me about the score and the foam finger he bought. When he got home late that night, he woke me up to kiss me and then told Gary it was the best night of his life.

It may have been our finest moment as parents.

Colter needs to start living more independently, and I've got to start letting go. I will struggle with when and how to hold on loosely and let go safely, how to help him recognize risk and manage it. I will help him ask questions rather than assume I know all the answers.

Because it will be the choices he makes that determines who he is, not the choices we make for him.

Someone's growing up, and I'm pretty sure it's me.

Inspiration wherever I can find it

I'm a bit of a quotation collector. I find inspiration wherever I can, from my favorite cards to church marquees, I'm not picky about the source.

This week, I found inspiration in McDreamy and McCann.

In a TV Guide interview, Patrick Dempsey said: "I don't need to know where I'm going, I just need to know where I'm coming from." He was talking about acting on "Grey's Anatomy" without knowing future plot twists, but who among us has the script for the rest of our lives?

Before I had surgery in July, I put together a collection of healing quotes to keep near me during my hospital stay. While I was recovering, I saw a TV commercial for some medication and was moved and motivated by the song playing in the background. I've since learned the song was "I Will Be," sung by Lila McCann:

I will be here
I will be strong
I'll face my fears when the night is long
And still go on
I will be brave
I will be bold
Follow my faith to a higher road
And I'm not there yet
But I will be

I will be.

For great quotations about writing, see "And I Quote" by Chip Scanlan, a friend and Poynter colleague. He includes this collection of his favorites.

What inspires you?

That's just life sneaking up on you

How did my days get so full? It seems like only yesterday I was in bed watching TV and recovering, venturing out to get my hair cut or buy books (wait, that was yesterday), and suddenly here's what's coming next month:

• My sister is visiting (I can't wait!)
• Gary is going to travel for the first time since I got sick (I'm excited for him, but I'll have to be Colter's chaffeur for two days and I haven't yet started driving again!)
• I'm returning to work (I'm excited for me!)

Then in November, Gary is going to travel after I'm back at work (still excited, but now worried about rushing around too much between my job and Colter's school). And after I get through that, we fly to Chicago for Thanksgiving. I can't wait to see my family, I just can't imagine that I'm capable of all this activity.

I keep telling myself to take it one breath at a time and then I will be ready when each moment arrives. Or, if I'm not, I can adjust accordingly.

But change is hard. And I wanna live easy.

Day 3: Withdrawal

For the third day in a row, I'm taking no morphine so I can slowly get weaned off the heavy narcotics and return to work at the end of next month.

As a result, I'm finding life a little rough around the edges. Part of it is the pain I feel between the time one of the short-acting pain relievers wears off and the next one takes effect. Part of it is other stress.

Recovery is slow, but sure. The best therapy so far: At Colter's student-led school conference yesterday, in front of his peers, he pulled me and Gary into a family hug and said, "I love you." For that and his excellent academic work he got dinner in the TV room while we watched the season premiere of "Gilmore Girls." This week, I liked "Studio 60" better. It surprised me more. And in entertainment, surprises are good.

May you merit many years

I learned earlier this week that "May you merit many years" is the traditional New Year's greeting of the Calcutta Jewish community. It says so much more to me this year than L'Shanah Tovah (which means "Happy New Year") or even "May you be inscribed and sealed in the book of life for a good year." Although, just to be clear, I definitely want to be inscribed in the book of life for a good year.

I also learned that in many Jewish homes, the traditional apples and honey are accompanied on Rosh Hashanah by a pomegranate, so "its many seeds can symbolize our hope that each of us will do many good deeds and enjoy many blessings in the coming year."

However you celebrate the holiday, if you do, I wish you and your families peace, good health and every happiness.

Tween tales

The end began when we discovered the children's menu at Outback is for kids under 10 years old. Then, we went to Joe's Crab Shack last week and even though their children's menu is for kids ages 12 and younger, Colter ordered off the regular menu and ate an entire plate of steamed snow crab clusters. He's become a very expensive date.

But just to remind us that he's still a kid, he called Gary into the room the other night to kill a mosquito for him. Of course, shortly after, I did the same thing and I'm supposed to be a grownup. Who's your family's bug killer?

Scary setbacks

It could have been cracking crablegs for Colter, it could have been walking in the heat to the Renaissance festival, but most likely it was sitting down in the grass (then getting up) that set my lower back into spasms which kept me in bed from Friday night until this morning.

The thing is, even though I knew it was my back, I felt terrified that it was really my liver, complications from the surgery, the beginning of the end. Again. Granted, I'm prone to catastrophic thinking. And the increased medication only depressed me further, even though it helped relax my muscles and heal them. Nevertheless, there was no rationalizing away the terror that surrounded me and the blame I carried (I was feeling so well I got arrogant, careless, stupid).

Not coincidentally, Colter's behavior began to deteriorate Saturday when he spent hours off and on screaming because we didn't have Chef Boyardee cheese ravioli or Popeye's biscuits and then screaming again Tuesday when Gary wouldn't go to Smokey Bones to get him a cheeseburger.

In my head, I know we can help him manage his behavior better  -- especially after a session by phone yesterday with his psychologist that reminded us of the bottom line on setting and enforcing limits: Gary needs to soften up and I need to toughen up. It helped that Colter came home very happy from school yesterday and so it was easier for him to be on his best behavior all night.

And I know there's no reason to believe I'm slipping down the kind of downhill decline I've seen others face after a difficult illness.

But in my heart, I'm still so afraid. And the slightest setback is enough to unlock the bad dreams and monsters that haunt me. The fact is: the future is uncertain -- Colter's, mine, our family's. And there's nothing scarier to me than that.

The afterschool snack

In case this secret hasn't yet been revealed: I'm not the cook in our family. Gary is the chef and worth his weight in coriander. He always has been and always will be, because the food I'm capable of serving is barely edible and the dishes he creates would make us millionaires if he ever wanted to open a restaurant.

So, although Colter has become accustomed to afternoon snacks like cheese quesadillas or grilled tuna sandwiches, he doesn't generally require haute cuisine at 4 p.m. Theoretically, I'm capable of feeding him this one mini-meal. Except that until this month, I've never been home to provide it.

Now that I am, giving him a plate of carrots with Ranch dressing brings me more satisfaction than I ever would have thought possible.

I'll miss many things about being home when I return to work in the next month or so, and the afternoon snack will definitely make the list.