You cannot, it’s been pointed out more than once lately, “shrink” your own wife. I don’t think that’s what I do; in any case, I’ve never practiced clinical psychology so technically… I think it would be more accurate to say I’m a general pain in the ass, and go overboard trying to figure her out because I don’t want to repeat past mistakes. I don’t want to make assumptions and be wrong enough to make things worse. I do it anyway, and for that I will grab hold of the stereotype and blame gender.
My impulse is to fix things, even when I clearly understand I can’t. I want to understand how things and people work. To that end I drive my family a little bit nuts and they’re usually tolerant of it. Char knows me well enough to distract me with something else to contemplate when I’m getting on her nerves, but like she said, at three in the morning combining my tendency to over analyze with her current sensitivities (and I’m the first to admit she has every reason to be overly sensitive these days, with or without my marital cooperation) those two things aren’t a good combination.
I keep trying to put myself in her shoes: in pain, stepping back from daily routine, having to rely in someone else for help with everyday tasks, dependent on others for transportation and having to give up teaching TKD; she’s doing it without much complaint, she hides the pain from the kids, and truthfully I don’t think I could do it all. I’d be whining and more temperamental, and I’m certain my sense of self would take a giant nose dive.
I wish we could go back and start that conversation over, at a time when we’re both awake and thinking straight, but trust me, I get that I added to her list of things she has to deal with.
Here’s one of the wonderful things about my wife: while I’m still chewing on things, she’s over it and has moved onto something else. She forgives my stupid shit long before I can stop worrying about it. Considering the sheer amount of stupid shit I drop at her feet, that’s an amazing thing.
Another thing about my wife: she has no problems issuing ultimatums. Most of the time it’s for my own stubborn benefit and in spite of whatever misgivings I have, she’s almost always right in the things she puts her foot down over.
In that I don’t think I’m much different than our kids. I do and say some of the most monumentally stupid things, but at least they have age as an excuse. She balances me, and I learned a long time ago that if she gets to that point, it really is in my best interests to do what she says.
Resistance is futile. It gets me out of the doghouse early, anyway.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
I could be, and probably should be, absolutely furious that Ian not only wrote but actually hit submit on that post, but I’m not. As soon as I read it I understood why he wrote it, and I mostly (not completely) understand why he posted it. He’s obsessively private about things that most people have no problem sharing (don’t ask him where he lives or what he used to do for a living, because his hackles go up and he’s instantly suspicious why you want to know), but he’s also very open about whatever happens to be brewing in his brain. In this relationship he is the more emotionally charged and he chews on everything. While he’s chewing, he writes. He has volumes of journals stored in a box in the closet, and doesn’t care if I read them.
When he’s not writing he wants to dissect everything. He has to know why I feel what I feel, and he has this need to understand everything. Sometimes, I just want to get angry with him or hurt without having to explain it or figure it out, and this just happened to be one of those times. The truth is, yesterday morning we both said a lot of hurtful things to each other, far more than he wrote about. We both own apologies. He’ll take the blame for it, but I started it. What I don’t want to do is endlessly dissect it.
For the record we did talk it out last night and we both agree this isn’t really about sex so much as it is about sheer frustration. Maybe a little about sex. I think his post made it seem like a much bigger problem than it really is. I’m a little over sensitive right now and taking things the wrong way, and he’s trying too hard to figure me out. At three in the morning, those aren’t good combinations.
When he’s not writing he wants to dissect everything. He has to know why I feel what I feel, and he has this need to understand everything. Sometimes, I just want to get angry with him or hurt without having to explain it or figure it out, and this just happened to be one of those times. The truth is, yesterday morning we both said a lot of hurtful things to each other, far more than he wrote about. We both own apologies. He’ll take the blame for it, but I started it. What I don’t want to do is endlessly dissect it.
For the record we did talk it out last night and we both agree this isn’t really about sex so much as it is about sheer frustration. Maybe a little about sex. I think his post made it seem like a much bigger problem than it really is. I’m a little over sensitive right now and taking things the wrong way, and he’s trying too hard to figure me out. At three in the morning, those aren’t good combinations.
Monday, August 10, 2009
It’s after 4 am and I’m wide awake again. I had actually been asleep (since we decided that I would quit my job, I’ve been sleeping almost like a normal person) but Char woke me at 2:45 with the completely from-left-field-question, Have you ever considered adopting another baby?
After we adopted Kevin we discussed this at length. When we first got married I was positive I wanted a houseful of kids; if you asked me how many, my standard answer was “10” and it wasn’t as much of an exaggeration as it may have sounded. I wanted a big family and Char was not opposed to the idea; we had intended on having more kids.
Rachel’s birth was problematic, and during Char’s pregnancy we learned that she should not have gotten pregnant again after Alex was born. She had a bilateral uterus, and while she had managed the pregnancy with our first, a second child was not in her best interests; her doctor failed to mention this gem to us, and we went about life with assumptions of several pregnancies as easy as the first had been.
Rachel was due in March. In January Char was admitted to the hospital with the intention of long-term monitoring and keeping her pregnant as long as possible. On January 25th, her uterus basically split, and Rachel was born in an emergency c-section. Everything came together that day as if it was pre-ordained; I was in the room with Char, her doctor was less than 100 feet away at the nurses’ station, and she was in an OR in just minutes. If I had not been right there and her doctor had not been right at hand, chances are I would have lost them both nearly 13 years ago.
The disappointment I expected both of us to feel never surfaced. We had a 17 month old son and a beautiful newborn daughter, and neither of us cared that we were not going to have a houseful. We did not consider adoption seriously after that, because we had adjusted our notions of the ideal family and considered ourselves to already have that.
Somewhere around July the next year, Char’s father called with the surprising news that her cousin, her 13 year old cousin, was pregnant. This followed a scare from my niece, who at barely 16 needed someplace to live because for a few overwhelming weeks she thought she was pregnant, and my sister threw her out (my sister ranks right up there with my brother.) We began talking about adoption then, because Erin did not think that at 16 she had any business being a mother; when she realized she was not pregnant, just unfortunate, we stopped talking about it until the call from Brad.
Char’s cousin did not want to bring a child into her particular circumstances and she knew she was not mature enough; she would have had support from her mother, and we would have provided financial support if that’s what she needed, but the environment was less than ideal, and she wanted us to adopt the baby. She knew Char was married to “that guy” and had escaped their neighborhood, and she didn’t want to give up the baby to a total stranger.
Before we even knew of his existence, everyone else had decided that we were unquestionably Kevin’s parents. It didn’t require much discussion on our parts. When she got off the phone with her father and relayed to me what he’d called about, we both looked at each other and what we saw reflected back at one another was I hope to God you want this because I want it more than anything. Call it providence or serendipity, or whatever it might be, but it felt like something that was supposed to happen.
While we prepared for his birth, enduring all the legalities of adopting him and transitioning Rachel from the nursery into her own big-girl room, we began to discuss again the possibility of having the large family we had originally wanted. It seemed likely that we would be able to adopt one or two more, if we were patient and if we threw all of our resources at it. And the day Kevin was born, when we saw him for the first time and it felt every bit as much like seeing Alex and Rachel for the first time, we both decided that we wanted two more if possible.
Then Rachel hit the terrible twos in spectacular style, and one day we looked at each other and admitted, we can’t do this that many times. Alex had been stubborn at two; Rachel was a pint sized tornado spinning through our lives with a temper that matched her ability to scream, and she was, to be honest, so hard to handle that there were days we weren’t sure how we’d managed to get from morning to night without putting fists through walls in frustration.
We had three kids; that, we decided then, was enough. We knew that eventually Rachel would outgrow the terrible twos and that Kevin might be as easy to deal with as Alex had been, but we didn’t want to deal with another tempestuous, and often aggressively physical demonstrative toddler.
We also knew what was coming: the teenage years.
So my reaction when Char woke me up with the question about whether or not I had considered adopting again was Hell no. I love my kids, my daughter is one of the grand highlights of my life and I treasure every day with her, but from 2-4 she convinced me that the three kids we have is enough (she knows this; she takes pride in hearing stories about throwing applesauce at a bus boy in a restaurant and about the time she had a full blown, screaming, body flopping, arms and legs flailing meltdown at a church luncheon, where upon a frustrated priest seethed Shut her the fuck up.) It’s funny now, because she’s grown into a smart, funny, kind, and generous person who rarely raises her voice, even when her brothers are picking on her.
But Hell no was my reaction an hour and a half ago when asked if I ever considered adopting again. And I wanted to know why she woke me up to ask something she already knew the answer to. I suspected it had much to do with pain medication clouding her brain and lowering her inhibitions enough to bring up something she possibly really wanted, but no; she thought that by distracting me when I was mentaly fuzzy I might be more willing to give consideration to something she felt was a more pressing matter.
To quote a friend, file this under TMI. The easily offended and embarrassed won’t want to read any further. This is as personal as I’m ever apt to be.
Go here instead. It is more amusing than anything I have to say from this point on. The train wreck that follows is not amusing; it is mostly self indulgent personal catharsis and I think the only two people who would care about it anyway are the only two who have read through this already too-long post anyway. If you want the rest, you’ll need to click through.
If you do you’ll walk away thinking two things about me: I am an idiot, and I am a fucking moron. You'll be right.
After we adopted Kevin we discussed this at length. When we first got married I was positive I wanted a houseful of kids; if you asked me how many, my standard answer was “10” and it wasn’t as much of an exaggeration as it may have sounded. I wanted a big family and Char was not opposed to the idea; we had intended on having more kids.
Rachel’s birth was problematic, and during Char’s pregnancy we learned that she should not have gotten pregnant again after Alex was born. She had a bilateral uterus, and while she had managed the pregnancy with our first, a second child was not in her best interests; her doctor failed to mention this gem to us, and we went about life with assumptions of several pregnancies as easy as the first had been.
Rachel was due in March. In January Char was admitted to the hospital with the intention of long-term monitoring and keeping her pregnant as long as possible. On January 25th, her uterus basically split, and Rachel was born in an emergency c-section. Everything came together that day as if it was pre-ordained; I was in the room with Char, her doctor was less than 100 feet away at the nurses’ station, and she was in an OR in just minutes. If I had not been right there and her doctor had not been right at hand, chances are I would have lost them both nearly 13 years ago.
The disappointment I expected both of us to feel never surfaced. We had a 17 month old son and a beautiful newborn daughter, and neither of us cared that we were not going to have a houseful. We did not consider adoption seriously after that, because we had adjusted our notions of the ideal family and considered ourselves to already have that.
Somewhere around July the next year, Char’s father called with the surprising news that her cousin, her 13 year old cousin, was pregnant. This followed a scare from my niece, who at barely 16 needed someplace to live because for a few overwhelming weeks she thought she was pregnant, and my sister threw her out (my sister ranks right up there with my brother.) We began talking about adoption then, because Erin did not think that at 16 she had any business being a mother; when she realized she was not pregnant, just unfortunate, we stopped talking about it until the call from Brad.
Char’s cousin did not want to bring a child into her particular circumstances and she knew she was not mature enough; she would have had support from her mother, and we would have provided financial support if that’s what she needed, but the environment was less than ideal, and she wanted us to adopt the baby. She knew Char was married to “that guy” and had escaped their neighborhood, and she didn’t want to give up the baby to a total stranger.
Before we even knew of his existence, everyone else had decided that we were unquestionably Kevin’s parents. It didn’t require much discussion on our parts. When she got off the phone with her father and relayed to me what he’d called about, we both looked at each other and what we saw reflected back at one another was I hope to God you want this because I want it more than anything. Call it providence or serendipity, or whatever it might be, but it felt like something that was supposed to happen.
While we prepared for his birth, enduring all the legalities of adopting him and transitioning Rachel from the nursery into her own big-girl room, we began to discuss again the possibility of having the large family we had originally wanted. It seemed likely that we would be able to adopt one or two more, if we were patient and if we threw all of our resources at it. And the day Kevin was born, when we saw him for the first time and it felt every bit as much like seeing Alex and Rachel for the first time, we both decided that we wanted two more if possible.
Then Rachel hit the terrible twos in spectacular style, and one day we looked at each other and admitted, we can’t do this that many times. Alex had been stubborn at two; Rachel was a pint sized tornado spinning through our lives with a temper that matched her ability to scream, and she was, to be honest, so hard to handle that there were days we weren’t sure how we’d managed to get from morning to night without putting fists through walls in frustration.
We had three kids; that, we decided then, was enough. We knew that eventually Rachel would outgrow the terrible twos and that Kevin might be as easy to deal with as Alex had been, but we didn’t want to deal with another tempestuous, and often aggressively physical demonstrative toddler.
We also knew what was coming: the teenage years.
So my reaction when Char woke me up with the question about whether or not I had considered adopting again was Hell no. I love my kids, my daughter is one of the grand highlights of my life and I treasure every day with her, but from 2-4 she convinced me that the three kids we have is enough (she knows this; she takes pride in hearing stories about throwing applesauce at a bus boy in a restaurant and about the time she had a full blown, screaming, body flopping, arms and legs flailing meltdown at a church luncheon, where upon a frustrated priest seethed Shut her the fuck up.) It’s funny now, because she’s grown into a smart, funny, kind, and generous person who rarely raises her voice, even when her brothers are picking on her.
But Hell no was my reaction an hour and a half ago when asked if I ever considered adopting again. And I wanted to know why she woke me up to ask something she already knew the answer to. I suspected it had much to do with pain medication clouding her brain and lowering her inhibitions enough to bring up something she possibly really wanted, but no; she thought that by distracting me when I was mentaly fuzzy I might be more willing to give consideration to something she felt was a more pressing matter.
To quote a friend, file this under TMI. The easily offended and embarrassed won’t want to read any further. This is as personal as I’m ever apt to be.
Go here instead. It is more amusing than anything I have to say from this point on. The train wreck that follows is not amusing; it is mostly self indulgent personal catharsis and I think the only two people who would care about it anyway are the only two who have read through this already too-long post anyway. If you want the rest, you’ll need to click through.
If you do you’ll walk away thinking two things about me: I am an idiot, and I am a fucking moron. You'll be right.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
I tend to forget sometimes that people in my life know other people in my life; complicating that is that some of the people in my life forget that they know other people who used to be in my life and that those other people might be lurking online and reading their blogs, and hence will eventually find mine.
Is that convoluted, or not?
I’ve known Thumper since seventh grade; as a result, she’s known my ex-wife as long as I have, and they used to email occasionally. As it tends to happen sometimes, their communications waned and eventually stopped, and Thump didn’t think much about it. Kathy, however, continued to read her blog.
Thump mentioned my blog, Kathy followed the link, and as a consequence learned that I sometimes think of her as being batshit crazy. She emailed Thump, Thump emailed me, I emailed Kathy; it could have been a rerun of eighth grade when we passed notes back and forth via other friends, stopping just short of the cliché of Do you like me? Check yes or no although it might be reasonable to assume that notes these days would substitute the word hate for the word like.
I may have mentioned that I do not hate my ex-wife. I may not have mentioned that there were a few times post-divorce, and after I married Char, that she opened her home to us when we needed a place to stay while visiting my parents (to remove some of the creepiness, she stayed elsewhere, but was very generous in letting us crash there, down the street from my parents’.) She and Char even went to lunch together and without me while we were there. After I moved my parents here, however, we had fewer reasons to communicate, and eventually got to where we rarely heard from each other.
When Kathy contacted Thump it was only to ask if Char was doing as well as we were implying; it was not to complain about anything I have said about her, although she would be within her rights to take umbrage over the fact that I did refer to her as batshit crazy. I cringed when she mentioned it, because it was not exactly fair; she might have been a bit crazy but she was never crazy, not in the stereotypical, malicious, I-hate-your-sorry-ass way.
She has retained her sense of humor over the years and does not take offense. Still, I apologize for it; she doesn’t deserve to be presumed as a vindictive and partly insane ex. Our marriage was what it was and ended when it was supposed to. We’re both happier where we are now than where we were twenty years ago. Leaving me was not an act of insanity on her part; it’s only the timing of telling me she had filed for divorce that has compelled me to describe her as crazy.
So to be fair, I am publicly apologizing for telling the world that my ex is bat shit crazy. She’s not, and it was wrong of me to say she is.
Is that convoluted, or not?
I’ve known Thumper since seventh grade; as a result, she’s known my ex-wife as long as I have, and they used to email occasionally. As it tends to happen sometimes, their communications waned and eventually stopped, and Thump didn’t think much about it. Kathy, however, continued to read her blog.
Thump mentioned my blog, Kathy followed the link, and as a consequence learned that I sometimes think of her as being batshit crazy. She emailed Thump, Thump emailed me, I emailed Kathy; it could have been a rerun of eighth grade when we passed notes back and forth via other friends, stopping just short of the cliché of Do you like me? Check yes or no although it might be reasonable to assume that notes these days would substitute the word hate for the word like.
I may have mentioned that I do not hate my ex-wife. I may not have mentioned that there were a few times post-divorce, and after I married Char, that she opened her home to us when we needed a place to stay while visiting my parents (to remove some of the creepiness, she stayed elsewhere, but was very generous in letting us crash there, down the street from my parents’.) She and Char even went to lunch together and without me while we were there. After I moved my parents here, however, we had fewer reasons to communicate, and eventually got to where we rarely heard from each other.
When Kathy contacted Thump it was only to ask if Char was doing as well as we were implying; it was not to complain about anything I have said about her, although she would be within her rights to take umbrage over the fact that I did refer to her as batshit crazy. I cringed when she mentioned it, because it was not exactly fair; she might have been a bit crazy but she was never crazy, not in the stereotypical, malicious, I-hate-your-sorry-ass way.
She has retained her sense of humor over the years and does not take offense. Still, I apologize for it; she doesn’t deserve to be presumed as a vindictive and partly insane ex. Our marriage was what it was and ended when it was supposed to. We’re both happier where we are now than where we were twenty years ago. Leaving me was not an act of insanity on her part; it’s only the timing of telling me she had filed for divorce that has compelled me to describe her as crazy.
So to be fair, I am publicly apologizing for telling the world that my ex is bat shit crazy. She’s not, and it was wrong of me to say she is.
Nine or ten years ago I had a whim to put a pool in the backyard. The whim was fueled by an evening spent playing pool and drinking beer with my father and father in law, and I determined (around beer #6, I think) that not only would we have a pool, but I would do all the work myself. I had no idea what that might entail, but I was determined, and actually painted off the area where this pool would go, and started to dig a hole.
Two and a half feet down, with an area roughly four feet by four feet dug out, I changed my mind and made a wood form for the hole, filled it with sand, and created a play area for the kids.
I was reminded of this at eight o’clock this morning by a grumpy, “If you’d actually finished the pool, I could stay home and sleep in, and I wouldn’t have to go with you in order to swim.” I didn’t earn any points by pointing out that she’s not swimming, she’s walking, and had I created the pool I envisioned it would have been too deep for her to manage that.
Even with the cast on her arm, she can still flip me off.
Honestly, I had not expected her to want to go to the dojang this morning. I only had one class to teach and Alex intended to skip his in order to stay home with her; she had other ideas and fully intended to work out during Alex’s class. She waited in the office during my class, and when I was done we hit the pool.
No Speedos were involved.
She doesn’t fully understand why she froze in the pool yesterday; Alex was walking along beside her and they were talking about the start of school next week, and how last year when she dropped the kids off on the first day she mortified Kevin by kissing him goodbye where he friends could see. The notion that on the day of the accident she could have had any or all of them in the car with her hit her hard, and she froze. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t tell Alex to just give her a few minutes and it would be all right. She was barely aware that he had gotten out of the water and couldn’t tell me how long he had waited to go get me(just a few seconds; he knew instantly that something was wrong) or how long it took for me to get there (less than thirty, I think). The only thing she knows for sure is that thought pricked at her for just a moment, and it was as painful as any of the physical pain she’s endured lately.
She’s just now starting to recover pieces of memory from the accident; she can recall the squeal of the other driver’s brakes, and she can distinctly remember the thought “God, no.” But in spite of not remembering everything, she grasps what the outcome would have been had any of the kids been in the car. She should not have survived; anyone else in the car would not have. And just the notion is tearing her up inside. It was enough to stop her in her tracks in the pool yesterday, and enough to make breathing a concentrated effort.
Today, however, we walked the pool for an hour and a half, and she was fine. When Alex’s class was over he joined us in the pool for half an hour of lap swimming. Afterwards Dack drove Rachel and Kevin to meet us for lunch, and we were able to discuss with them some of what their mother might go through, and what to do if the same thing happens again (get Dad or Grandpa, because one of them is always going to be close at hand for the foreseeable future.)
This afternoon I sat in the living room working on the dojang budget and she was in the kitchen with the kids, helping them bake cookies. There was a lot of laughter coming from all of them, and other than the fact that there are actual cookies in the house right now and I might even get one, it was a slice of ordinary. It could have been any other pre-accident Saturday afternoon.
Except, it’s not. That other shoe is starting to fall and it’s like we’re watching it in slow motion, hoping that it lands gently. I’d catch if it I could.
Two and a half feet down, with an area roughly four feet by four feet dug out, I changed my mind and made a wood form for the hole, filled it with sand, and created a play area for the kids.
I was reminded of this at eight o’clock this morning by a grumpy, “If you’d actually finished the pool, I could stay home and sleep in, and I wouldn’t have to go with you in order to swim.” I didn’t earn any points by pointing out that she’s not swimming, she’s walking, and had I created the pool I envisioned it would have been too deep for her to manage that.
Even with the cast on her arm, she can still flip me off.
Honestly, I had not expected her to want to go to the dojang this morning. I only had one class to teach and Alex intended to skip his in order to stay home with her; she had other ideas and fully intended to work out during Alex’s class. She waited in the office during my class, and when I was done we hit the pool.
No Speedos were involved.
She doesn’t fully understand why she froze in the pool yesterday; Alex was walking along beside her and they were talking about the start of school next week, and how last year when she dropped the kids off on the first day she mortified Kevin by kissing him goodbye where he friends could see. The notion that on the day of the accident she could have had any or all of them in the car with her hit her hard, and she froze. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t tell Alex to just give her a few minutes and it would be all right. She was barely aware that he had gotten out of the water and couldn’t tell me how long he had waited to go get me(just a few seconds; he knew instantly that something was wrong) or how long it took for me to get there (less than thirty, I think). The only thing she knows for sure is that thought pricked at her for just a moment, and it was as painful as any of the physical pain she’s endured lately.
She’s just now starting to recover pieces of memory from the accident; she can recall the squeal of the other driver’s brakes, and she can distinctly remember the thought “God, no.” But in spite of not remembering everything, she grasps what the outcome would have been had any of the kids been in the car. She should not have survived; anyone else in the car would not have. And just the notion is tearing her up inside. It was enough to stop her in her tracks in the pool yesterday, and enough to make breathing a concentrated effort.
Today, however, we walked the pool for an hour and a half, and she was fine. When Alex’s class was over he joined us in the pool for half an hour of lap swimming. Afterwards Dack drove Rachel and Kevin to meet us for lunch, and we were able to discuss with them some of what their mother might go through, and what to do if the same thing happens again (get Dad or Grandpa, because one of them is always going to be close at hand for the foreseeable future.)
This afternoon I sat in the living room working on the dojang budget and she was in the kitchen with the kids, helping them bake cookies. There was a lot of laughter coming from all of them, and other than the fact that there are actual cookies in the house right now and I might even get one, it was a slice of ordinary. It could have been any other pre-accident Saturday afternoon.
Except, it’s not. That other shoe is starting to fall and it’s like we’re watching it in slow motion, hoping that it lands gently. I’d catch if it I could.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop; it didn’t seem likely that Char would get through the entire process of healing without some emotional wounds erupting. Physically, she’s done very well, and on the surface anyone looking at her would assume that emotionally and psychologically she was healing just as quickly.
Physical trauma is easier to recover from; you let your body do the things for which it is designed, you rest when you need to and push through the pain when appropriate, and eventually it will heal as much as it is capable of healing. The mind is trickier. The wounds inflicted upon the psyche are often so deep that they’re almost invisible, and it can take a long time for them to surface.
I did not realistically expect that there would be no emotional fallout from the accident and I have been trying to keep a close watch (without being overbearing) on her moods, things that frighten her and things that startle her. The first indication that those ghosts were beginning to filter through came a few days ago, when we approached a busy intersection and a car approaching from our right did not slow until the last possible moment. We were already moving; she saw the other car out of the corner of her eye and flinched hard, and as soon as I’d driven through the intersection she asked me to pull over.
Had any of the kids been with us, she would likely have sucked it up, but they were at home; I pulled over to give her time to regroup and the only thing I could possibly do in that situation was to hold her until she was ready to push on. A few minutes and a few deep breaths later, and she said she was fine.
Today I was on the dojang’s main training floor working on self defense tactics with a small group of students when Alex barreled through the door in soaking wet shorts. He didn’t have to say anything because I knew he had been helping his mother in the pool and he is keenly aware of the rules regarding appropriate dress outside the locker room and the pool area; that he had run in half dressed and wet was enough to push me off the floor and towards the pool, leaving Alex to deal with getting TK to finish the class.
She was still in the pool, rooted in place halfway down the lane she’d been walking in. She couldn’t take another step and felt like she was choking on her own breath. It wasn’t quite a full blown panic attack, but it was viscerally paralyzing. I know enough to understand that this might be the only level of emotional backlash that she’ll suffer, but also enough to understand that this could be the tip of the PTS iceberg.
My gut reaction is gender-typical: fix it. Do anything to make it better, even though I know I can’t. At this stage all I can do is ask her what she needs from me, and do it, even if it means jumping into the pool in a TKD uniform.
Physical trauma is easier to recover from; you let your body do the things for which it is designed, you rest when you need to and push through the pain when appropriate, and eventually it will heal as much as it is capable of healing. The mind is trickier. The wounds inflicted upon the psyche are often so deep that they’re almost invisible, and it can take a long time for them to surface.
I did not realistically expect that there would be no emotional fallout from the accident and I have been trying to keep a close watch (without being overbearing) on her moods, things that frighten her and things that startle her. The first indication that those ghosts were beginning to filter through came a few days ago, when we approached a busy intersection and a car approaching from our right did not slow until the last possible moment. We were already moving; she saw the other car out of the corner of her eye and flinched hard, and as soon as I’d driven through the intersection she asked me to pull over.
Had any of the kids been with us, she would likely have sucked it up, but they were at home; I pulled over to give her time to regroup and the only thing I could possibly do in that situation was to hold her until she was ready to push on. A few minutes and a few deep breaths later, and she said she was fine.
Today I was on the dojang’s main training floor working on self defense tactics with a small group of students when Alex barreled through the door in soaking wet shorts. He didn’t have to say anything because I knew he had been helping his mother in the pool and he is keenly aware of the rules regarding appropriate dress outside the locker room and the pool area; that he had run in half dressed and wet was enough to push me off the floor and towards the pool, leaving Alex to deal with getting TK to finish the class.
She was still in the pool, rooted in place halfway down the lane she’d been walking in. She couldn’t take another step and felt like she was choking on her own breath. It wasn’t quite a full blown panic attack, but it was viscerally paralyzing. I know enough to understand that this might be the only level of emotional backlash that she’ll suffer, but also enough to understand that this could be the tip of the PTS iceberg.
My gut reaction is gender-typical: fix it. Do anything to make it better, even though I know I can’t. At this stage all I can do is ask her what she needs from me, and do it, even if it means jumping into the pool in a TKD uniform.
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