Autobiographical Challenge: Days 17 & 18

Teaching

I love teaching. But I don't have a lot of pictures that I feel Ok putting on-line. If the pictures are recent I don't want to use them, and as a special Education teacher, I don't want any that might label a particular child as being part of my Special Education Program. This is from a year that was difficult in many ways. I had two toddlers, and my Dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in April of 1996 and Died on Feb. 1, 1997. Also the schools were overcrowded and the principal had decided that making my classroom open up and also have Mrs. Horn's kindergarten in the room with us, was a great idea. It was loud and rowdy with always some student throwing objects or having explosive temper tantrums, and it was hard to communicate effectively while the room was filled with children needing attention. My principal was frustrated that I took a week off three times during that year to fly to Wyoming to my parents home, and when he decided to combine the rooms, he gave two other teachers substitutes to come into my classroom and sort my supplies to make room for the new room, without telling me until I had started class that day, when he brought them in and told them to do whatever they needed in the cupboards. He also made sure to transfer me to a middle school Severely Emotionally Disturbed Classroom when I came back the following year after 10 years in preschool. And he sent multiple copies of every memo about my desk being disorganized or my lesson plans incomplete or . . . on and on.

Needless to say, I couldn't stand that man, but fortunately I haven't seen him for years. As always, the good part of teaching was the time spent with kids, and in spite of the way we were thrown together, Mrs. Horn and I had many good months with this group of children and our assistants. We did a lot of art and field trips and having themselves immersed in a room of "Regular Children" stressed my kids but also stretched them.

I think I never quite recovered from this year. I took the next year off to stay home with my boys and then my husband took the year after that off. then I quit being a full time teacher and have substituted ever since, although subbing and writing has been wonderful and allowed me to spend a lot of time being Mom, as the boys were growing up, I know financially we would be in a much more secure place if I hadn't stopped teaching full time. I don't regret the choice I made, but I regret making it out of exhaustion and harassment instead of out of confidence and a plan.

April 1994

Because I had gone through menopause at 20, like my mother did when she had me at 24, I knew I couldn't get pregnant, but 10 years after we got Married, we managed to adopt a 14 hour old baby boy. When the adoption agency called to ask if we would be interested in a newborn, we said Yes, but when is the birth Mother due, and they said

Two Weeks Ago.

So then we had our son and it was instant love, and every moment revolved round how lucky and happy we were. And six months flew past, and we were to finalize the adoption in front of a judge but first we needed a physical for the baby to prove that he was thriving in our care. The Dr. asked how I was doing and I mentioned that I was afraid I might have breast cancer because they HURT!!!

"No," he reassured me, "breast cancer usually doesn't hurt. Go pee in a cup."

Then "Think Positive" and 18 days after my son's birthday, his baby brother was born. Look at this picture. I love it because it clearly shows, what we tend to miss. It shows how fast a baby changes between birth and 1 year old.

The day I went to the Dr. (17 days after my oldest turned 1) complaining of back pain, and figuring with 6 weeks to go I might be needing bed rest, the oldest son also had a fever and was demanding being held even more. instead of bed rest, I ended up in an ambulance to a hospital 127 miles away and my 1 year old was at the daycare Grandmas home. I was sick with HELLP syndrome but din't realize how deadly it could be, Even when I was waking up from the emergency C-section all I could think of was my feverish, 1 year old 127 miles away from me and his Daddy. I came out of the general anesthesia sobbing, "I want my Baby!"

Not surprising in a woman who has a newborn in the NICU but when the Dr. and nurses tried to reassure me, "Your baby is doing great. He's on oxygen and in an incubator and in the nursery."

I just screamed, with tears pouring down, "Not That Baby You Idiots! I want MY baby!"

the next day my husband drove the 250 miles round trip to bring back the toddler and I still hadn't been allowed to leave my recovery room to see my newborn. When the 1 year old and my husband came in, the boy took one look at his Mom, and had totally been missing me too. He sobbed "Mommy" and flew across the floor, climbed up the bed, threw his arms around my neck, kissed my cheek

and then, the only time in his life
delivered a punishment for having abandoned him.

He turned his head and bit my shoulder hard enough I still have the scar - then hugged me like he'd never let go

There was however never sibling rivalry, he was a proud, loving helpful big brother from the first moment they met.

Autobiographical Challenge: Days 9 & 10

In the 60’s and 70’s in a little canyon that leads out of Cody, Wyoming on the way up to Yellowstone Park, in the triple digit heat of a Rocky Mountain high Desert summer there would be an old man selling Buffalo skulls and Moose paddles and Antelope pronghorns and deer and Elk Antlers off the back of a black “Ford International” truck.  The longhorns were not an all the time offering but pronghorns were and so were at least one curving set of Mountain sheep horns on a skull.

Yes, I know, two different kinds of trucks but it was a Ford cab and an International pick-up box so it said one on the front and the other on the tailgate.

The old man was Lawrence Slack, my Mom’s Dad. He was born there in 1898. The younger man was my Dad and he didn’t really stay out by the truck, he worked for the sawmill at that time. But he was there the day the photo was taken and so was the dog I loved, out hairy “Perp”

My first job was helping my grandpa as an adolescent. I’d saw the deer horns off the skull and scoop out the brains and salt down deer and antelope hides and pull quills from porcupine corpses and skin foxes and bobcats that my grandpa bought from hunters and trappers. I’d stretch beaver skins and pickle jackrabbit skins in formaldehyde and stretch them over a fiberglass head with cardboard in their ears, and screw in small, forked deer horns and glue in glass eyeballs to create the mythical jackalope. It was fun and interesting and it took me through the winter months, but the summer was when I got paid, as we’d sit by the road, and I’d wave in the tourists and convince them they needed the horns for a memento of their Wyoming visit.

Many years later, I got my first teaching job and one of the older, macho male teachers was trying to upset me many times. One day he explained in detail how he was setting of over a three day weekend to kill Bambi. I must admit, don’t hunt, but I took great pleasure in going into the anatomical detail of dissecting the animals that I had done as a child, and he never again tried to, “Get my goat” with one upmanship over who could eat lunch while discussing blood and brains.

It was hot by the road and the truck had no air conditioning or even shade so every summer day of my life mom and grandma went to dairy queen and brought grandpa a milkshake or sundae. Once I was out there with him, that was the high point of the day, I had a hot fudge sundae, or a crème de menthe sundae and left experimenting with other flavors for someone else.

So as I mentioned previously, when I was born, my Mom was 24 and was told that she couldn’t have any more children as she had gone into a very early menopause.  So when I was almost 5 we adopted a 6 month boy and thought the family was complete.  Then when I was 11 my Mom started getting sick and being treated for an ulcer and before we knew it, the Dr. was telling her, “You know that ulcer? Well, It has a heartbeat.”

My parents thought they were dreadfully old to be expecting an impossible miracle, and my Dad joked about now he would be wobbling around with a walker to play catch in the back yard with this one. Mom was “ancient” at 36 and Dad was 40.

The real shock came when the new baby had the same ABO incompatibility I did, but didn’t need a blood transfusion because a newer treatment using light therapy had been developed. Still, the baby boy, born weeks late, with dried skin and scratches from his long fingernails and almost no amniotic fluid, was airlifted to a hospital 100 miles away and my parents sobbed at the sight of the empty crib waiting at home.  Then the diagnosis of being a “Mongoloid idiot” came. It was fought against mentally as mom and dad kept looking for reasons it was a mistake and then the blame came, if only they had not taken ulcer medication, or if they had insisted on the complete blood transfusion.  Education relieved some of the guilt and misunderstandings but not all of them because it was a time when most people with Down’s Syndrome were immediately institutionalized and my parents refusal to do so was met by argument from the professionals, “He will never sit up, or recognize you.  You are being unfair to your other children. He won’t live past 25 and he’ll only ever be a burden.”

Of course none of the predictions were right, and at 39 Lance is still a joy to Mom and Brett and I. But there were a lot of tears and adjustment of dreams and I remember my Grandma saying, “Look at that poor sweet baby, He’s going to have a hard row to hoe.”  Maybe we all have that, and maybe the difficulty only deepens the appreciation of the joy.   I know that as Lance Grew, and learned at a different, but steady pace, he proved to have great gifts. He was socially gifted and developed more friends and extended family far beyond what out family had before.

I was 12 when he was born, and Brett was 8, and from that moment on, our family really was complete.

Autobiographical Challenge: Day 5 and 6

When I was a child I lived in the desert, the high mountain desert of Wyoming, and spent summers at 10,000 feet in snow and tundra. But somehow, I wanted to grow up and be a dolphin. At first I went through a phase of being very angry that my parents had not named me flipper, then when I talked the two of them, who were both so afraid of water that they held on to the towel rack all the way through their bath, into signing me up for swim lessons, I spent hours swimming underwater, pretending to be the mermaid I knew I would grow up to be. And that was years before Disney showed me there could be redheaded mermaids. Ariel came to the big screen the year I started teaching and I took my first class to the theater to see her.

From there I decided that what I needed to become was a dolphin trainer, working with my beloved animals at Marine Land or sea World.  I know that there has been a lot of negativity toward the idea of the marine mammals being trained and kept captive. I am sure that some of those complaints are justified but I firmly believe that humans only save what they care about, and only care about what they know. I don’t think there would be people making films like Blackfish, or Free Willie, or doing things to try to ban the slaughter in the wild of those incredible creatures, if there had not been a place where children like I was, could press out hands to the glass and see the dolphin making eye contact or see the killer whale begging us to play.

So we have learned, and need to change as we grow, but that does not mean we could have ever gotten to the point of caring without the zoos and Aquariums which turned the animals real in the minds of those of us who care, not just about animals in general but about the death of one specific Orca named Keiko and the happiness of a sealion named Red and the friendship of Flipper.

No, I didn't grow up to be a dolphin or a Mermaid or even a dolphin trainer, but I teach children every bit as funny as Flipper and I live by the Sea, and more than once I stood eye to eye with Keiko and shared a glimpse of similar souls

this picture, for my brothers birthday back on August 27 Is the one that made me decide to spend this month with old stories and old family pictures.

My parents were sure that they could never conceive another child after I was born, and then one day asked me what I thought of the idea of a baby in the family. I thought having a little sister would be wonderful and told them so. I hadn't known that the reason I had been having a babysitter once a week was because they were attending pre adopt meetings. At that time adoptions were very secretive things and babies were placed far from their family of birth. So we had to drive nine hours to pick up the six month old baby boy. My brother was adopted when he was 6 months old and I was almost 5. I remember driving clear across the state with my parents to pick up my new brother. Actually I was convinced it would be a girl, and when the social worker heard me ask where the girl was, she pulled out his picture and showed me, and said, "I guess we have to find another home for this boy then" and I remember screaming at her as I stared at the photo, "Don't you dare give my brother away."

 I gave up the idea of a sister as soon as I saw his picture and fell in love.

The worst part for me was that my Dad’s big sister came to see the baby and decided that a new baby and my long hair were too much work for my mom, and gave me a pixie cut. I hated it and soon started school where I became known as Pixie-Dixie but wasn't allowed to grow out my hair for a few years.

I did love having a baby brother. But we hadn't had him long before he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and children were not allowed in as visitors. I wasn't happy that they took my baby away, and even angrier when mom bought him a stuffed panda. I cried and begged and got her to give it to me. So then she bought another, this one in powder blue and pink to take to him in the hospital. My panda still gives me a twinge of guilt - even knowing that sibling rivalry is common and knowing that little girl was missing her brother and being the center of her parents attention - I still cringe about trying to steal the toy from a sick baby.

When we first brought him home, he became hysterical at night. The social worker only told us it was because he had been used to sleeping in a crib with two other babies. I was never sure if that meant he had been a triplet or merely that there were a lit of babies in his pre adopt foster home

Now 46 years later, and the mom of an adopted boy myself - I can say adoption is a wonderful way to build a family.