I just had the best vacation! It involved a lot of driving that mercifully went very smoothly. Every single day I was gone I was able to visit with wonderful friends. Some friendships were formed in the crucible of parenthood. Somehow it is more incredible to me that these children are young men and women than the fact that my own children are. My friends are doing our part to bury the Mommy Wars - we have all made different decisions about how to raise our kids and we respect each other’s paths as right and good. And we can be honest about our doubts about raising teens and the troubles that entails as we were when we were uncertain about toddler temper tantrums and daycare and nap time. It is important to have friends you can be honest with. I did some very Maryland/DC activities while I was there - a visit to Great Falls (wow the Potomac was raging!) and played tourist at the Supreme Court and the LIbrary of Congress. I know that you can’t go back to places and times you’ve lived but I think I might find myself moving forward to a new life in Maryland. It has ocean, mountains, cities. Ample communities in the shadow of our capitol that need doctors. I’m familiar with the politics, the terrain, the culture. There is a good bit of time between now and when I need to make my What’s Next plans, but Maryland is definitely an option.
***************
Three years ago today I was making a mad dash across the country in what turned out to be a futile effort to be at a dear friend’s deathbed. He sickened and died very quickly but was held close and sung home by the very same people I would have at my side when my time comes. Wicca is a relatively new religion and we are learning and creating rituals for ourselves. With Keith’s passing, we hit on something old and familiar. Many have taken up the commitment to build our end of life traditions and customs as a result. Though I missed the end of his life, I was able to be part of the next steps of preparation of his remains. Death is a Mystery but dying is a human act that should be discussed, anticipated and witnessed. Know what you want at the end of your life. Talk to your loved ones about it. Don’t leave them with the burden of uncertainty during that painful time. I still feel waves of grief from the loss of Keith. But I don’t ever wonder if we did the right thing, in the decisions of his last days, in how we sang him Away or in how we dealt with his possessions afterward.
***************
Sometimes the surreality of my life hits me at the must mundane moments. Today it was while I was gloving up for surgery. I’m almost 45, I have teens about to turn 15 and 17. I’m a 2nd year resident. I do surgery. I’m an effing doctor.
When my son (the almost 15yo) was in 2nd grade we decided that what he needed was to be in 3rd grade. It took some doing but it worked and he went from being old for his grade to being young for his grade and has been just fine with that ever since. But one of the things I remember thinking, calculating, considering, when he was in SECOND GRADE (he was 8) was that if everything went my way, he’d graduate from high school the same year I finished my residency if he moved up a grade. I have been doing this for a long long time.
***************
Did you ever listen to the NPR show Car Talk? Two of the funniest, smartest guys on a radio show. They used to have all sorts of people call with problems with their cars they KNEW were caused by a certain event that correlated with the onset of the problems. They were pretty unabashed about telling people when they thought, in their expert opinion, the 2 events were actually not related at all. They could be pretty funny about it.
Humans are trend makers. We look for patterns, in the stars, in chicken entrails, in our lives. People in medicine are no exception. There are all sorts of superstitions about saying that things have been “quiet” on the floor and people often label each other as Black or White clouds, leading to doom or peace. Our patients do the same thing. Very often someone will associate getting their tubes tied or some other event with other problems in their lives. And no one else knows your body like YOU know your body. But as someone who knows BODIES in general better than the average person, I often don’t agree with their assessments of cause and effect. I have learned not wish co-workers a “quiet shift”, instead I say “smooth” and mean quiet in my head. And if you insist that while we are taking out your uterus, we need to get your tubes too because of an association between your tubal and your skin rash, I’m not going to try to dissuade you of that notion. Respect the patterns, people. Otherwise it’s all just chaos.
***************
My kids are home! They are jet lagged and a bit feral but they are coming back into house manners quite well. I hope they will re-learn the skill of putting themselves to bed. They are loving the dog, fixing meals and today they helped me assemble a futon frame. Actually, I would say that I helped them. I read the instructions and they did the work. The worked well together after their summer of construction/handyman work with their dad. I wish I had an ongoing need for home improvement tasks so they could continue to work together. And tonight they are celebrating their accomplishment by playing GTA, sitting on the futon together.
***************
I was going to comment on a friend's FaceBook post but didn't want to get off topic of her own adventures with a ketogenic diet. Ketogenic diets sound frighteningly complicated. Likely complicated enough to trigger my eating disorder but *maybe* going gangbusters on it would just re-direct all that dysfunctional eating into something that was less unhealthy (and a good bit more creative) than just eating fewer and fewer calories each day.
I spent 4 months not eating sugar (well no desserts or sweets, but not monitoring hidden sugars in foods, which are myriad). I think that most of that time I struggled against the urges of my eating disorder. I had this overpowering drive to add more rules, change my exercise habits, set goals and critique my body in such self-hateful ways. I fell off the wagon for a vacation, and I don’t regret it. And though I am making some subtle efforts to reduce my bad food choices again, I am wary of making declarative statements about my eating. I’m pretty annoyed with the weight I’ve gained in the last 18-24 months, but I am leaning more toward buying clothes that fit instead of trying to lose the weight.
I hate that I’m so limited in my food management options. I really walk a narrow, potentially dangerous space between disregarding all limits (and therefore gaining even more weight, which would put me closer to a health-debilitating BMI) and imposing disordered eating upon myself. I wish I didn’t have this particular mental hiccup. And I want a pony.
***************
Yesterday I worked 11 hours then came home and made dinner - pork chops, couscous & peas. I cook, you clean up - house rules. I don’t care if it gets done right after dinner but it has to get done. This morning when I walked into the kitchen at 0530 to go to work the dinner pans & dishes were still there. I woke up both kids and put them to work. To their credit, they got right up and did it. To my credit, I did not harp on them or lecture about it. I have a penchant for lecturing.
I also put tracking and blocking apps on my kids' phones this week. They are pretty pissed but I don't really care. I know that their shiny new iphone 8+s are going to be a major distraction when school starts and I'm not going to be around to tell them to get off the games and videos. They are going to have to learn to manage their tech, yes, but expecting 2 teens with ADHD and very little parental oversight/micromanaging to just figure it out is not reasonable. I hope that these tools will ultimately be useful. Their dad has concerns about taking the learning away from them and I appreciate and respect that opinion. I may be hindering them. But I also don't want them to have to learn from mistakes that involve failing classes and harming the trajectory of the next 5-10 years of their life because they have the whole of the internet at their fingertips without limits. My goal is to make it a conversation and learning experience.
