Tag: women’s read

The Terrorist Within

by jcafesin, posted in children, moms, parenting, parents

Strong winds shake the plane and rain sheets off the wings and streaks down the small windows as we sit on the runway waiting to take off. The 737 engines ramp to a high pitch roar. My three year old daughter sitting next to me suddenly grabs my hand as our plane accelerates, faster and faster down the runway, throwing us back in our seats.

The plane rocks with the storms powerful crosswinds as it lifts from the ground. My daughter stares at me wide-eyed and her face drains of color. Two seconds in the air and the plane drops ten feet. A quick collective gasp ripples through the cabin. My daughter is now china white and statue still.

I squeeze her hand in both of mine and tell her everything is fine and try to believe it. The plane pitches and tosses as it climbs through the clouds. Moments feel like hours as my mind plays out crash scenarios, and quiets only after the captain comes on announcing we’ve reached our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet with the promise of a smoother flight ahead.

Sunlight blazes through the windows. Above the clouds in the boundless blue our plane steadies. The collective sigh is almost audible.

Calm warms me just as my daughter announces she’s going to be sick, leans forward and throws up. Rancid chunks of egg and pancake from the morning’s breakfast soak her shirt. I stroke her head and back with one hand while frantically searching for a barf bag in the mesh pouch on the back of the seat in front of me. Two Sky Magazines and an Emergency Procedures brochure, but that’s it.

My daughter cries, ashamed, and tries to hold back throwing up more but I encourage her to let it out, though I’m helpless to contain it. Bile covered clumps drip from the armrest, her lap, and her seat to the floor. My husband sits across the aisle and I ask him to go get a stewardess and a bag of some sort. He unbuckles his seat belt and makes his way down the narrow aisle to the attendants putting snacks and drinks onto a metal serving cart.

Moments later my husband is back with five sheets of paper towel. No bag of any kind, and no stewardess. Apparently when he alerted them of our situation they told him he could find paper towels in the bathrooms.

I unbuckle my seat belt and stand, take the sheets and start cleaning the mess. Five small squares of thin brown paper isn’t going to do it, so I ask my husband to go get more, and again request he summon assistance. He comes back with another handful of paper towels. Alone.

My ire rises. I leave my husband the task of caring for and cleaning up our daughter. The plane rides level and smooth as I make my way down the aisle toward the back of the plane where a steward and stewardess on either side of the metal cart are passing out snacks. I inform them of my situation and ask for their help, or at least a bag of some sort. Both curtly assure me they’ll get to me when they can and tell me to return to my seat, as ‘federal law’ says passengers can not be standing when the fasten seat belt sign is still on. As I turn back up the aisle to go back to my seat a little bell rings and the seat belt sign goes off.

It takes quite some time to strip and clean my daughter. I dress her in the only shirt I have available- the over-shirt I’m wearing. I feel cold (and naked) in only my sheer camisole. I clean the seat, the armrest, and am on my knees for another 10 minutes cleaning the smelly mess off the floor. My ire grows to anger when the cart stops at our row and the stewardess asks me if I want chips or cheese and crackers. I want to spit at her. Again I ask her for a bag and indicate the pile of soaked paper towels I’ve collected on the floor. She pulls a small plastic bag from a cabinet in the metal cart and hands it to me without comment. I glare at her as she moves on.

My husband fills the bag with the smelly, messy towels to capacity. Appeals for additional bags are ignored and eventually I go to the kitchenette and get them myself. The stewardess refuses to dispose of our waste and tells me where to throw it away myself. I have to get up to ask for water, for some crackers to settle my daughter’s stomach, for blankets, and then I’m told to search the overhead compartments to see if there are any left. At no point during the five and a half hour flight does anyone respond to our request for assistance light, nor inquire as to my daughter’s welfare though I’d reported her ill.

The plane finally lands and we all shuffle out. The crew stands by the curved doorway with smiles and standard quips. The captain is young, good-looking, smiles broadly at me and nods. Three stewardesses and the steward stand together. They smile at me, then down at my daughter asleep in my arms. Both women thank us for flying with them, then their eyes drift to my husband behind me and their smiles remain as they repeat the phrase to him.

I manage to refrain from flipping them off as I hustle my child off the plane.

I’m halfway up the collapsible corridor when I ask my husband to take our daughter and wait for me at the top of the gangway. Before he can question me I turn away and head back toward the plane. There are just a few passengers still exiting and I make my way around them until I’m standing in front of the cabin crew.

I tell them my name, that I was on their flight, and that my daughter threw up shortly after take-off. Then I ask why, after repeated requests, they did not offer any assistance. They look at each other, then at me, and then the captain speaks. If I have a complaint, he instructs, I should write a letter to American Airlines.

I just want an answer to my question, I insist.

His eyes narrow, his handsome smile evaporates. He tells me under the Homeland Security Act if I don’t exit the aircraft immediately he’s going to call airport security. I stare at him. He’s serious. I’m too scared to laugh. I glare at the attendants one last time, shake my head and leave the plane.

My recent flight experience is typical of late. I hear complaint on complaint about the growing lack of service, and often the down right rudeness of most major airlines these day. Consumer advocacy groups are forming against them. Even if these groups manage to push through legislation defining acceptable conduct for airlines to adhere to, the problem, systemic to our society today, runs deeper than that.

We can’t legislate people to care.

Recognizing and responding to each others needs is a personal choice. It is also a global imperative for humanity’s survival.

Extremists from the outside are not all we should fear.

Indifference among us is the terrorist within.

The Power of Love

by jcafesin, posted in children, Kids, parenting, parents, raising kids

My son’s guitar teacher was freaking out the other day over the impending arrival of his first child. Beyond a healthy birth, he was consumed with anxiety over the care and feeding of an infant, all the way up through guiding his child through their teen years. As a parent of two tweens, I shared with him the secret of parenting, what makes the sacrifice not only tolerable but wildly enjoyable, and he calmed, and smiled, allowed his excitement to peek through.

It’s never talked about—that intense, profoundly magnificent feeling a parent gets to embrace the moment their child is born, and forever forward. It’s expected we love our kids, and therefore taken for granted, which is a shame, because the intensity of that feeling is so spectacular and unique.

I’d listen to my contemporaries talk about their children before I had kids. They spoke of the long nights with crying, colic infants, “the terrible two’s,” “the f***ing four’s,” surviving the teen years. Sometimes, they’d comment their Kylie had made Honor role, or that Jordan had just got first chair for his violin, and their entire countenance would light up. But those moments were rare compared to the complaints.

Like most women, I simply assumed I’d have children. I planned to have two kids in my early to mid-30s after I’d established my career and proven my own greatness. But it wasn’t until I was almost 40 that I became pregnant with my son, my first baby to survive after six miscarriages.

Nine and a half months of pregnancy, connected to the infant growing inside, and everyday was fraught with wonder, and fear. Five days of labor, and the moment I held my son for the first time, minutes after delivery, his tiny warm body on mine, a tsunami of humbling awe so overwhelmingly powerful swept through me it literally took my breath away. And as I kissed his downy head, his hands, each finger, I realized the joyful contentment, the sense of energized completeness, that electric connection I felt to him, for him— was love.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the intensity of love that could be attained until having children. I’ve been lucky and had loving parents, a few dear friends, the love I now feel for my husband, passionate and true. But it doesn’t touch the intensity of the love I feel for my kids. Virtually every time I am with my children, snuggle with them, kiss them goodnight, or just see them across a room, I feel that all encompassing love fill me up and consume me with tenderness, compassion and humility. Now 9 and 12, and they still take my breath away. Every day.

People who never have children, or don’t devote their life to raising them— as with adoption— will never know this level of love. In their lifetime, they will never understand the feeling that we call ‘love’ can be this intense. I’ve heard many of my contemporaries say with conviction that they’ve never wanted, and will never have kids, with rationalizations like “I’m just selfish, I guess.” But the truth is they’re only robbing themselves.

Life’s greatest gift is our ability to feel. We all experience pain and sorrow, happiness and joy to varying degrees. The unspoken gift of parenting is getting to feel the fulfillment and richness of that intense love integrated into every aspect of our lives, motivating us to be positive examples, and challenging us to consider others, and the future beyond ourselves.

The price of living with this intensity of love is the amorphic fear of losing it, which is why parents worry so much. Through the tantrums and the tears, the joy and the fears in sharing life with kids, the ultimate reward in parenting is the privilege of loving our children.

Parental ADHD

by jcafesin, posted in ADHD, Family, family life, moms, parenting, parents

My husband’s sister has two children. Her oldest, 15, was diagnosed with ADD when he was 9, and has been on Ritalin since. He’s failing out of the private high school he attends in Manhattan. He lies, cheats, and steals when it suits him. He is volatile (way beyond normal teenage angst), and often violent with his mom and sister.

Her daughter, 11, also has trouble in her private school. According to her mother, she too has learning disabilities. She has very few friends, and is often cutting and cruel. She also lies constantly to get what she wants, and does whatever she wants regardless of opposition from authority.

The three of them live on the 10th floor of a posh apartment complex, in a huge flat overlooking the Hudson River in Battery Park. The Statue of Liberty, holding the torch of truth stands boldly in the bay and can be seen from almost every room of their home. My sister-in-law and her ex-husband are very successful in their careers. She broke the glass ceiling only a few years out of graduate school and is now a top executive at the New York Stock Exchange. He is an architect. His style is distinct, and sought after, and can be seen all around Manhattan. Since both claim to be busy professionals, the maid of the month raises their kids during the long work week.

Every time we get together they virtually drop off their kids to my care. Dad, before and after the divorce, has always been a marginal part of the scene, off to work, or squash, or rollerblading along the waterfront. Mom stays with us, but she’s not really with us. She’s on her phone texting her secretary, or chatting it up with some high powered executive about market trends, or on her laptop writing reports. She goes out for a two hour run, or off to the store for diet soda. The entire time we’re together she has little to no contact with her children.

My sister also has kids, a boy and a girl, a couple of years apart. During their formative years she was a stay-at-home mom…sort of. Her husband, a successful real estate broker who used his limited free time for cycling, skiing, rock climbing, provided his family a McMansion with all the trimmings in a desirable suburb north of L.A. He hired a live-in maid to clean house and handle the mundane aspects of child care so my sister could pursue her many muses. And pursue them she did. She played tennis several hours a day. She went out with friends; shopped, and shopped; redecorated her house every year. She took classes in cooking, massage, religion, exercise, went to music camps back east for the summers, and left the kids with grandparents, or the revolving housekeepers. She was one of those soccer moms who sat in the stands and gossiped, or read People or Jane, or was on her phone every other minute, attending the game but not really there.

Unable to manage her son’s disruptive behavior, my sister took him for counseling when he was 10. He was diagnosed with ADHD. He took Ritalin from 12 until he was 20. Now 27, he smokes pot every day, pays his rent and bills with poker winnings and a small stipend from an inheritance trust fund, has not gone to college and has little prospects for the future. Her daughter, 24, is still only a junior after six years in college. She’s had few friends over the years, even fewer dates, and only recently her first [very] short term relationship. She lives on the money her parents provide without a clue how to make it on her own.

These two sets of kids struggle in life because their parents consistently catered to their own needs over those of their children. In doing so, they abandoned their kids to their own device, and left them to strangers, relatives, and society at large to raise them. Restrictions on behavior came from teachers, religious leaders and caretakers as commands—discipline imposed without love. Their parents didn’t bother to invest the staggering amount of time and thought required to help their kids decipher feelings, or examine abstractions like morality or values, or why they are important, or impart to them the seemingly endless list of rules we all must follow to get along.

The other day I was at the neighborhood pool watching my kids swim and play. All went well until a well-known rowdy kid arrived with his mom. She stood with her back to the pool and chatted on about her job, the upcoming hundred mile extreme run she was training 20 miles a day for, and the third Bruce Springsteen concert she and her husband had been to that week. She did not notice her nine year old son shoving kids into the pool, holding them underwater, pouncing, splashing and causing general havoc. Most everyone agrees her son, and six year old daughter, have severe ‘discipline’ problems. Though their mom labeled them ‘passionate,’ she admitted she was seriously considering her colleague’s suggestion to have her kids examined for ADHD.

Even Wikipedia can not state without dispute what ADHD actually is, though a wide cross section of sources seem to agree it’s a ‘behavioral disorder.’ Symptoms include Hyperactivity—like working all day, everyday, never putting your cell phone or laptop away; Inattention, the lack of ability to focus for an extended period of time—like creating multiple distractions such as tennis, classes and vacations for your entertainment instead of following through with any one thing. Impulsiveness is also an indicator, like going to see Bruce multiple nights in a row instead of doing the responsible thing and being at home with your kids.

Though they possess all the symptoms, these parents have never been diagnosed or even suspected of having ADHD, even though most have had at least some experience with therapy. Their kids did not inherit their lack of focus. The Attention Deficit Disorder they ostensibly suffer from by and large comes from parental neglect, adults who haven’t figured out that once they produce children, most of their own priorities must become secondary to the needs of their kids.

Rich or not, working—having to, or not—parenting is about paying attention, being attentive and present, being there when you’re with your kids. Certainly, rules need to be continually taught and enforced, but also discussed at length, not handed down as edicts from on high. Kids need detailed explanations, reasons to partake in our code of ethics, and out of desire, not disdain. Society is not sustainable filled with resentful children who grow into parents that never mature beyond self-interest. Children can not raise themselves above solipsism without example from those who have.