…and I never saw her. She writes things like this about parenting her second child, who was so very different from the first:
My point here is this: it’s expensive to have a mental disorder. Two years later this doctor was the acting therapist of a brain-damaged student that I had in my classroom and when she walked in with her power suit and pearls I leaned over to a co-worker to claim, “See those pearls? Aren’t they beautiful?” I had a fake smile on my face and dropped it to continue, “Yeah. I bought them. They should be mine.“
Guilt comes in funny shapes and sizes. Not only did I feel bad that I didn’t claim that it was MY child in the sandbox pushing kids out of the way and knocking them down, but now I was jealous that I didn’t even own a pair of pearls.
and this:
I never believed in those harnesses parents put on their children until Mason came along and then I realized it would be the thing that would save his life. He ran out in the street without looking. He was impulsive with everything and fiddled with everything with his hands and got hurt a lot because of it. He never quite learned to stop moving and chugging along because he was in his own world and it never seemed to slow down long enough for any significant eye contact to take place between us.
For over a year I’ve been writing about parenting an ADHD kid, yet I never managed to really touch the truth like she does about how desperate I felt some days, about how I wanted more than anything to love this child of mine who couldn’t stand still, couldn’t keep from jabbering all the time, who made me look like the worst parent on the planet. He didn’t tie his shoes till he was ten but he could read by age 4. The hole in our bathroom wall that his brother made out of frustration with him is still there, even after the plastering I gave it a few years back. Flashes of genius mixed with a healthy dose of desperation.
Just go read Mocha Momma’s story. It’ll feel like your own. Maybe I haven’t quite finished my ADHD story after all, but the current chapter is much better than the beginning suggested it would be. I remember the exasperation, but now it’s tempered by an overlay of hot jazz and small victories. He smiles at me when he comes in the door, makes eye contact and has a conversation. He’s emerged as a leader at school, playing the Pied Piper and putting together a drumline we were sure was dead. On his own.
Even though she was hiding in my life and writing the early chapters better than me, I’m liking the ones that Sticks is writing himself and glad to give the pen to him. I’m happy to just capture the moments with my camera.
