The Po Show

Happy Birthday Daddy

Today my dad would have been 80 years old. His name was Harry Hideo Iwamoto, born Hideo, but he came to be known as Harry. He was the Harry who grew Harry's Berries.

He was born in Tamana, in Kumamoto Prefecture, in Kyushu, Japan. It's the southern-most island in Japan, and the people there are renowned for being particularly stubborn. He certainly was. He was the 5th child out of 8, the first of his siblings to be born in Japan after his family returned from California. My grandfather had made a ton of money farming in America, went back to Japan with his wife and children, built a fine house that my father was born in, and became a bigshot in the village. So my dad was born into what passed for privilege at that time.

He was a naughty little boy, always getting into trouble. He was told by his father never to set foot in the kitchen, that if he wanted something he was to ask his mother or sisters. He loved catching cicadas in the summer and he didn't particularly like school.

He was smart though, and wanted to be a doctor. While he was in high school, however, Japan ramped up its ongoing militaristic endeavors (how's that for a euphemism?) and officially entered WWII. His two older brothers went off to war. When he was 17, he tried to run away and join the army too, planning to lie about his age, but my grandfather went after him and hauled him back home. He finished high school in 1945, before the war ended, and left for medical school. But then his father contacted him, saying that his older brother was dead (the oldest had already been killed), so could he please come home. He was now the eldest son, the new heir to the family name. He went home, the atomic bombs were dropped (Nagasaki was just a prefecture away), and the war ended.

There was no food, so he started farming his father's land. He told the story of how at one time they literally had nothing to eat but a few bags of sugar, which they mixed in a glass of water, drank down, and went back to work. Things improved some in the next few years, and his friends were hanging around nearby villages trying to meet girls. They tried to get him to come along, but he said, no, he was going to marry the girl next door. And he did. She was his cousin (in these villages everyone was related, but they were REALLY related, as their mothers were first cousins), and she had grown up in America.

My parents lived in my grandfather's house, which they were to inherit in time, and had three children. My father farmed, and became active in local politics. He loved to talk, loved to impress people. He was courted by older politicians and encouraged to run for local office.

Then in 1957 he went to the United States as part of a "young farmer" program, to learn about American farming techniques. He was impressed, but even more impressed when they were taken to see an American elementary school. It was so open, so different from the propagandistic education he'd received in wartime Japan. You have to remember that post-war Japan was in pretty crappy shape still, and he believed his children would have a much better chance if they grew up in America. Also, he was very tempted to go into politics, and he feared he would cost his family more than they could afford by doing so (being a politician in Japan means spending a huge amount of money on gifts for constituents and other expenses).

My mother still had dual citizenship, so through her the family could emigrate. At that time, immigrants from Asia were still highly restricted (they were completely banned from 1882-1949), so it was only because my mother was a US citizen that they could move here. My father's father was beyond upset that his eldest son was leaving the country, as he was supposed to be the heir to the family name. In fact, my father had already changed his last name (that is a whole other story that would need its own post) to that of my maternal grandfather, which had been enough of an upheaval. But my dad was determined to take his family to America, so they boarded a boat in 1958, bound for Los Angeles.

My maternal grandparents had already moved back to California after the war, and my grandfather was gardening. My dad started gardening with him, speaking no English whatsoever. In time he and my mom opened a nursery, selling plants to other gardeners. They moved out of my grandparents' house and into the house that was my first home.

He decided that he wanted to farm, and that he wanted to farm strawberries. He didn't actually know anything about growing strawberries, but he packed up the family (I was a year old at the time) and moved us all to Oxnard, where people grew strawberries. He started with a small piece of rented land, looked in the trash of other growers to see what kind of fertilizer they used, and he grew berries. After a few years, he was hired by American Foods, a big shipping conglomerate, to oversee their strawberry production. But he was always meant to be his own boss, and he eventually went back to private growing.

He was wildly successful at times, devastatingly unsuccessful at others. That's the gamble of farming, when you are at the mercy of the weather and market prices. On his 80 acres, millions of dollars of seed and equipment and other supplies were at stake. I still can't stand the sound of rain, because it makes me flash back to watching my dad chain smoke all night long during spring rainstorms, listening to the sound of his berries wash away.

He had a particularly bad couple of years in the early '90s, that resulted in an avalanche of debt. He lost the lease on his land, and had to move to a very small new farm. It was terribly depressing for him. But he looked to the future, and hoped to build up his acreage again.

In 1993, I was working on my Master's thesis at the University of Hawaii. I was doing an oral history of my mother's life. I came home to Oxnard for 3 weeks and intensively interviewed both of my parents, as well as other family members. My dad looked thinner, and was very tired. But it was incredible to hear his stories of his life; I learned so many things about him that I had never known.

Two weeks after I got back to Hawaii, I got a call from my mom. My dad had pancreatic cancer, very advanced, and they were operating the next day. The surgery to remove his pancreas was successful, but he was going to be in the hospital for awhile. The next day, I got a call again that he was not doing well, and that I should come home. They could not stop his internal bleeding from the surgery and his blood pressure kept falling dangerously low. There were no late afternoon or evening flights to CA, so I went standby on an early morning flight. My father in law picked me up at LAX and we went straight to the hospital. When we got there, my brother in law was outside to meet us in the parking lot, and he told us that my dad had died 30 minutes before.

He was only 66. His father had lived to be 84, and his mother had lived to be 95. Everyone lived long in his family, except for him. The causes of death listed on his certificate were pancreatic cancer and cirrhosis of the liver. He had made it through the surgery, but his blood could not clot because his liver had been fucked up by years of heavy drinking. I tell people that my dad died of pancreatic cancer, but it was really booze that killed him.

He's been gone for too many years now, and we all miss him. On the Harry's Berries boxes (that go all around the country, to some of the finest restaurants; I once saw the box sitting behind Wolfgang Puck on one of his cooking shows), it says "In loving memory of Grandpa Harry, May 29, 1927-August 8, 1993. Thanks!" He would have totally loved that.

Philadelphia Freedom

Dang, I've had Elton John in my head for a week :p. All because I decided that we really needed to go somewhere for Memorial Day weekend, since we have gone NOWHERE on the east coast in the 4 years we've lived here, and we might be (hope to be!) leaving soon.

So it was narrowed down to Philly or D.C., but I couldn't quite handle the thought of a 4+ hour drive for a weekend trip, so Hotwire came to the rescue. We love Hotwire, which allows us to stay in ritzy hotels we could never otherwise afford. The Hyatt at Penn's Landing was just lovely and Tessa was all ready to move in. I'm serious. She wanted to move there, except she expected us to go home first and get all her stuff. Sigh, that girl has some high expectations for life.

So we saw the cradle of America, on Memorial Day weekend, which seemed sort of fitting. I did have to explain to the kids why people were putting up mock headstones for soldiers killed in Iraq, on the lawn in front of the Independence Center. And Tessa totally shocked me when she was looking at the Battleship New Jersey and said, "That's a battleship? For wars?" OMG, when did she learn what a war is??

We went light on the historical sites, since neither kid would have been too into it, but we did have to see the Liberty Bell. I figured that that would be one iconic sight that they would recognize and remember. And Matthew understood what Independence Hall was, since he knows what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are, vaguely. And he knows who Ben Franklin was, so it was cool for him to see all the references to that venerable gentleman.

We stuck to the kid-friendly venues, with the Franklin Institute being the biggest hit (as I suspected it would be). Again, I was struck how Matthew was so not into the biological science stuff that I love (he didn't even want to walk through the Giant Heart! Tessa and I went, and it was killer cool!), but he could have stayed all day in the Electricity and Newton's Loft sections. He is so intrigued by physics, and his grasp of concepts just blows me away.

Nothing terrible happened, which made it a successful trip :D. And both kids, at several points, told us how much fun they were having, so that made it a perfect trip. It's amazing how my own expectations of what makes for a good vacation have been revamped, how my own desires have become completely subsumed. And it's okay. Ross would ask me, "What would you like to do?" or "What would you like to eat?" and it just seemed BIZARRE to me that I could even entertain my own personal preferences. What I want is for my kids to be happy while they're on vacation.

And today is Memorial Day. We celebrated in the traditional way, with a barbeque with friends. Though that's not the way my family always celebrated this day. We always went to the cemetary to visit our dead folks. So in my mind I'm visiting my dad and my grandparents, and my cousins, and my aunts and uncles who died before I was born, all together at Forest Lawn Hollywood. I can see their markers, there on the hillside above Warner Brothers' Studios. My dad is buried under a crepe myrtle, that was a little tree 13 years ago, but is bigger now. The space for my mom's grave is next to his. My grandparents are further down the lawn, on a slope, past Bette Davis' grave.

Memorial Day is about memory, and respect, and holding those who have passed in our hearts. They are there.

No Words

It's every mother's worst nightmare, what Dawn is going through. And it sounds so trite of me to say that.

But what can you say? What can you say *to* a woman whose baby girl is dying? Everyone keeps repeating the same old phrases: "I'm praying for you." "I'm so sorry." "My heart is breaking for you." "Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help." "My thoughts are with you."

This is a woman I know from a closed forum, of which I'm a member. We originally were all on a big forum for people who are more or less addicted to Gymboree (I was there checking out what people were excited about with regard to Gymboree, for ebay selling purposes). Then there were the usual cyber-splits and this is one of the groups that resulted from various shake-outs. Now it's not really about Gymboree anymore, and more just a bunch of cyber friends.

Her baby girl was born back in September, and was healthy and happy. She slept well, ate well, developed beautifully. Then around four months, she stopped sleeping well, stopped eating well, and stopped growing. The parents were a bit concerned, but as everyone knows, babies develop at different rates. At five months, she was fussy all the time, and started to lose developmental progress (stopped swatting at toys, didn't put her hands together). And she was still losing weight. The ped couldn't find anything wrong. At her six month well baby, he was concerned enough to send them to specialists, who did an MRI. Everything was clear. They started doing blood tests and slews of other tests. They started to suspect some type of lysosomal storage defect, many of which can be taken care of with vitamins or other fairly simple therapies.

Everyone kept reassuring the mom that everything would be fine. She tried to remain optimistic. I mean, how many babies really end up having a truly serious illness? Surely some specialist would be able to help them. We live in an age in which we expect that there will be a pill, a therapy, a surgery, something medical that will improve, if not eradicate, any physical problem.

But that's not always true. The final diagnosis was a rare, degenerative genetic disorder that impairs the development of myelin around nerve fibers, leading to severe motor and cognitive impairment. There is no cure. Babies with this disorder generally die before they are two. The family was told that a bone marrow transplant would hurt more than the possibility that it would help. The doctors put in a feeding tube and have sent them home.

So what do you do, once home? You think you should cherish the time with your baby that you have left, but how do you do that? When adults know they are going to die, they try to wrap up their affairs, they travel, they try to make peace with themselves and others. This baby doesn't know what is happening to her, just that a lot of things hurt now, and that people are sad around her. She doesn't want to go to Paris or buy a sports car. Her parents can't make her feel better by taking her to Disneyland. They have no idea how many days or weeks or months are left.

And they have a two year old little boy, who was thrilled to be a big brother. How do explain all this to HIM? How can you make a two year old understand why everyone is crying, and why Mommy and Daddy and Kinney keep having to leave for days on end. How do you say to your little boy that you have to spend all your time with the baby, because she's not going to be around much longer?

Humans just don't have the capacity, I think, to find words for any of this. And looking in from the outside, I'm trying to find words, narrative and internal, but it's just more helplessness. For the parents of this little girl, words are the last things to worry about.

Living in the Moment

Thanks, Richie, for the reminder in your comment on my last post, that we all work for the moment, the good moment, and that's all we really have.

Actually though, my first inclination upon reading that was to mentally whine, "But I don't WAAAAANT just a moment! I want it all good, I want it to STAY good, I don't WAAAAAAAANT to have to keep fighting every other moment for the next moment to be good!" Is that too much to fucking ask?????

I guess it is. And I guess the comforting part of this is that the BAD moments, they pass too. And the next one can be good. Yesterday Matthew came home with his behavioral chart, and he'd gotten a perfect score, all points awarded. A great day. This behavioral chart is really a major challenge, and in a good way. It's elements are:

Matthew will:

1. Work out problems with others without losing control
2. Show good effort in classwork, including difficult assignments
3. Worry about himself, not what others are doing
4. Stand and walk in line as asked
5. Use strategies to help negotiate changes in routine

This represents some huge goals for him. From the time he was in daycare, our foremost goal for him was "Don't hit anybody," and everything else was secondary. That's still true to a certain extent, but this chart forces him to examine all his actions throughout the day. Or that's the hope anyway, to get him to think and take a moment before swinging and tantruming.

Rich, IEP = Individual Educational Program, and it's the plan worked out each year for special education kids by the school district and the parents. Each is individual to the kid (hence the name :)) and it codifies the educational goals (including socio-emotional goals) that the kid is supposed to work toward in the coming school year. For those of us with special needs kids, it basically comes down to what services the school district is going to give our kid to try and bring them up to "appropriate" standards. Matthew currently receives Occupational Therapy, Counseling (with the school psychologist, which includes a social skills group), the services of a Special Education Teacher (who is in his classroom for part of every day, since he is in an inclusion class that is composed of both special ed and "regular" kids), pull out instruction (for reading and writing, though they're dropping the reading because he's at grade level, which is great), and he gets a one to one aide.

The one to one aide is the major element. He's had one since kindergarten, and it's the one service I feel makes or breaks his school success. He needs someone there to help him navigate the day: to keep him on track during classwork, to facilitate his interactions with the other kids, to take him outside and let him walk around when he starts to lose it. And to help defuse him, to watch for his triggers, to see when he's starting to lose it and to help him deal BEFORE he blows and reaches the point of no return. Because MAN, dealing with him now that he's 9 and almost 5 feet tall is a lot harder than dealing with him when he was 2.

They more or less don't offer full-day one to one aides here in NY. They don't give them very willingly period, and in some school districts it's next to impossible to get them. This is pretty standard, since what service could be more expensive than hiring a human just for one kid? So Matthew has his aide 3 hours a day. And he really needs her. Almost every single time he's had a major incident, it was when his aide wasn't there.

So anyway, that's why I was so incredibly pissed when we received his IEP and "Teaching Assistant 1:1" was not listed under his services. Yesterday I got in touch with our case manager, who is the school psychologist, to complain. She had the Chairperson of the Special Education Board call me, and she assured me that he was going to have his aide. They listed it under "Notations" as "Enhanced Staffing, 3 hours per day" to give them wiggle room (basically, if Matthew didn't need the aide at the moment, she could then help out other kids, which happens anyway; I've seen it). I told her I still wanted it codified. She said it wasn't necessary.

I finally laid it out on the table that look, we might be moving and I WANTED it explicitly written down that Matthew was to have a one to one aide, so that the next school district we went to would have to give him one. She said, okay, in the event we're moving, they'd be happy to rewrite the IEP before we left.

I hung up the phone, not really having done much, but feeling like SuperMom nonetheless. I hadn't backed down, I had stated what I wanted for my kid, and I'd (sort of) gotten it.

Now that's a good moment.

Leap of Faith

One of the truly bummer things about being agnostic is having no one to ask for help when you need it.

I knew a lovely older lady when I worked at McLean Hospital, outside Boston, who was a very devout Catholic. She had clearly needed her faith, having been widowed early, with two young sons to provide for. But she took her prayers to what I considered extraordinary lengths. She told me once about how she was shopping for a sari, which she needed to wear to a wedding of some Indian friends, and she prayed to God that she could find one. She found one she loved, and again prayed to the Lord, that it would be within her budget. The sari ended up being on sale, so she could buy it, and she offered thanks. I thought, wow, that is some serious micromanaging by God, to involve Himself in shopping.

So who do I ask for help now? I had to pick Matthew up in the office today, because he'd hit a kid with his lunchbox and had a really rough day in general. He was calm by the time I got there, sitting at desk in the office, reading a book about Harriet Tubman. What do I do? Who can tell me what to do about my child, who doesn't know why he suddenly pushed a girl walking past his desk. Individual therapy, group therapy, psychiatric analysis, atypical antipsychotic. This is what we're doing, and what else do we do? It's times like this I really think faith would be comforting.

We got our copy of his IEP in the mail today, and they LEFT OUT the provision for his one to one aide. The ONE thing he absolutely must have, the one service that I am absolutely not willing to have them take away. So now I have to bitch and moan to them that they left it out. I do not need this. But it has to be officially codified, not slipped in under "additional provisions" that "enhanced staffing" would be provided. We NEED an aide to be in his IEP, listed explicitly, so when we take his IEP to whatever new school district we end up in, they have to, by law, give him an aide.

Which brings me to another shitty thing that happened today, that Ross told me that I have to prepare for the possibility that we may have to move in the middle of the next school year. He said that of course it would be better to move in the summer, but if he doesn't find a job in CA by then we would have to be back here for the next school year. I have been operating under the assumption that the kids and I were not coming back to NY when we leave on July 2, but I guess that was an inappropriate leap of faith. Silly me.

People keep telling me that they are praying for me, praying that everything works out for us and we can move back to CA, where we need to be. I'm uncomfortable with this, but I always thank the person. I'm more comfortable with other expressions of faith, of wishful thinking, when people tell me that they're keeping their fingers (and all other appendages) crossed for us.

As my sister so eloquently said recently, we may not be religious, but we are superstitious.

Stumbling Along

I really wish that we all came with an instruction manual. This trial-and-error, this "keep trying everything and then try it all again," it gets really freaking old.

I certainly could use one in dealing with my own corporeal and mental mess, but it's the kids who are just so unfathomable at times. It starts when they're babies, and they cry (in Matthew's case, 24/7, unless he was attached to a boob), and you try to find what works to make them stop. You walk, you jiggle, you pat, you change, you sing, you shut up, you feed, you go for a drive, you stop driving anywhere not absolutely necessary, you try simethicone drops and camomile tablets, you despair. Then you think you found the thing that makes them stop crying, but it turns out to have been a fluke, and it doesn't work again. So you start all over again.

We've spent Matthew's whole life trying to figure out how to help him, make his life easier, help him navigate the world more successfully. After a million different strategies and behavioral plans and things that seem to work, and then don't, we've moved on to psychopharmacology. And took a wrong turn again, since Ritalin and Zoloft definitely didn't work for him, and might have actually made things worse. So now we've moved on to Seroquel, and I'm wondering where we go from here if that doesn't seem to help.

I was reminded today of what has been my mantra, ALL these years with Matthew: progress, not perfection. I've never expected things to be perfect, just better. And I try to accept that often that progress is a two-steps-forward, one-step-back type of progress, curving rather than linear. But the road is also curved, and it's impossible to see what's ahead, and sometimes I lose my resolve.

If you make mistakes in your own life, that's bad, but you can regroup and try to carry on. But somehow, it's just SO much worse to make mistakes in your child's life, when he has to live with the consequences. Sometimes, the road gets bumpy, and the light is dim, and I don't know where we're going.

Happy to be a Mother Day

It sort of astonishes me when I hear childless people question whether they should have children or not. While I absolutely believe that people who don't want children should not have them, just the question itself is unfathomable for me, personally. I understand all their reservations, all their excuses for why they don't know if parenthood is for them.

"I'm too selfish." "I'm too busy." We don't have enough money right now." "We move around too much." "I'm too fucked up."

But what I've come to understand is that having kids can be the answer, not the question. Of course people don't always step up when they become parents, sometimes to tragic proportions, but I would never have guessed how being a mother would make me SO much better a human being.

Thinking about the welfare, happiness, and everyday needs of these small people has brought out qualities in me that I never would have thought possible. They make me unselfish. They make me persevere. They make me open my heart. They make me DE-fucked up. I have to be the grown-up, the one with unconditional love, the one who does not hold grudges, the one who stops and thinks. The one who forgives. The one who smiles and opens her arms and holds you tight, even when things seem hopelessly bleak. The one who can bring the sunshine back.

I always say, no one can love you like your babies love you. No MAN could ever love you like your babies do, even a man who loves you truly and has given you his heart. The joy that infuses me as I feel that love, it's like nothing in the world. It's what heaven must be made of.

My five year old made me several cards :), one of which says "Dear Mom, I love you. Because you make me happy. Love, Tessa." And I know I do, make her happy. It's my job, and I'm gratified to know I've done it well. She made me a paper good luck charm, put it in a box, and made her own wrapping paper and paper bow to decorate it. She wanted me to be happy too. She drew a picture of the two of us holding hands, that says "My mom is special because she is beautiful. I love you."

My nine year old made me a card, a crepe paper flower, and a beaded bracelet. The bracelet was a real accomplishment, because with his fine motor delays, I'm sure the tiny beads were hard to manage. I commented that it was a beautiful bracelet, and he replied, "Yes, it took a long time to make." Wanting to please me, he really stretched his thresholds of patience, and that's a testament to how much he loves me.

This is what Mother's Day is to me, homemade examples of the fruits of my life's work, my works in progress. We moms often complain that we're unappreciated, underappreciated, don't get positive feedback like we did when we got paid cash money for our jobs. We get frustrated and sad and wonder what our lives are all about, what the sacrifices of our sanity and our self-esteem have all been for.

I look at my paper treasures, and my beaded bracelet, and I know.

The Other Stuff

I keep posting only about the bad stuff, the heartbreaking stuff. But there's good stuff these days too, that can still make me laugh and still make me smile.

Tessa is too amazing, too funny. She drives me NUTS with her drama much of the time, but she is just so breathtaking. She keeps making these books, pieces of blank paper stapled together, with elaborate pictures and headings and titles like "Bugs are Cool" and "The Amazing Outside!" Exclamation point hers. For National Poetry Week, they had Poem in Your Pocket Day, during which each kid was supposed to choose a poem and bring it to school in his/her pocket. Tessa wanted to write her own poem, which was entitled "My Favorite Things." It was a hoot. And yes, there were exclamation points. The last line was "And for the big finish, Hearts!"

She says the funniest things, like when I told her I liked the picture she drew for me (she draws pictures of hearts and flowers with "I Love You Mommy" all over them, like every single day), she said, "I'm glad you feel that way, because I worked really hard on it." She's never even seen American Idol, but when Matthew got a Happy Meal microphone from McD's, she drew a very detailed picture of herself onstage singing, with groups of kids in the audience cheering her on, saying "Amazing!" and "Yea!" and "Cool!"

Matthew has a lot of good things going on too, like how he's voraciously reading. This is the kid who thought he couldn't read at the beginning of this school year, and now he's reading about physics and astronomy. And Pippi Longstockings :). He's totally into the life of Albert Einstein and he's really trying to understand the theory of relativity. He has a better intuitive grasp of physics than I do (but that's not saying much). Not surprising. He could already add and subtract in his head WAY better than I can. He navigates the web like a pro, looking for Pokemon websites. He isn't into the cards at all; he's all about the video games and how to make use of the best strategies. Did you know there's a Wikipedia-like site just for Pokemon? He found it himself, and studies it like he's researching his dissertation.

And me, I'm walking again, for the first time in years. I've been put off a bit by all the pollen in the air, which makes me wheeze and I have to cut my walks short, but after three weeks, my ass is actually a better approximation of what it used to be. This was a big project, Project Take Back My Body, and I'm determined to stem the tide of middle-age spread.

Oh, and I got carded buying beer in the grocery store the other day :D. Almost 41 years old, and I got carded! The girl handed me back my ID and said, "You don't look that old!" Ha, so I guess that despite the fact that I feel about a hundred and twelve, I apparently look under 21. That's good stuff.

The Future, in Hindsight

My little boy is falling apart, emotionally and physically. He's just a mess, and I'm a mess watching him. I plod along, trying to act like everything is normal, and deal with the bombshells as they strike, and keep doing all the things I'm supposed to do to find him help, to find ways to make this better.

But I look at his pictures, of when he was a baby and a toddler, this sweet, open-faced, beautiful boy. The baby that kissed all the other babies, who laughed so exuberantly, who squealed with delight. My brilliant baby who said "Mama" at five months and who knew his letters at 18 months.

How could I have known then, what was in store for us? I couldn't have, I know, but I look at his pictures from that time and think "Oh my god, we had no idea. We had no idea what things were going to be like." No idea how much pain this little boy would suffer, how hard life would be for him.

It's like when you're driving on the freeway, and you see the traffic bottled up on the other side, practically at a standstill. You keep driving, and you reach the point just before the traffic over there starts to slow down. They haven't hit the jam yet; those drivers don't know yet that they are headed into a major problem. They are still cruising along at 65, blithely unaware that everything is going to grind to a halt soon. You think, "Wow, they have no idea what they're in for."

It's like that.

Mysteries

The brain is seriously hard to figure.

So my brother survived a big old explosion in his brain, and he's slowly having to relearn things, like how to walk, and how to feed himself, and a whole month of his life is absolutely missing from his memory. What's going on in his brain?

Matthew is deep in the middle of a "phase" (god I hope it's just a phase, and not the new normal), in which he is losing emotional and physical control of himself literally at the drop of a hat. Or a tap on a table leg, which is what his classmate at school was doing, which made Matthew lose it and poke her in the chest with his pencil. He's had a couple dozen "incidents" at school, of varying severity, since Feb. In some he's hit or pushed at kids. Yesterday he lost it in chess club (a weekly lunchtime activity he's been doing for two years and LOVES) and threw his lunchbox repeatedly, including at the very very expensive interactive whiteboard (thankfully the teacher caught it). He then walked across the room and swung his arm repeatedly, hitting a girl sitting at the table. When told to stop by the teacher, he ran out and walked down the hall hitting and kicking the walls.

What is UP? I'm utterly baffled. He didn't hit anyone in the entire 2nd grade. He didn't hit anyone for the first 6 months of 3rd grade. Why the sudden onset of this physical aggression? After being incredibly tolerant and gentle with Tessa her entire life (he had NEVER hit her, even when he was 4, 5, and 6 years old and hitting a lot of other kids), he's pushed and grabbed her a few times in the last couple of weeks. On Sunday he hit her on the shoulder. I swear, what is UP? When I was talking to him on Sunday about his behavior, he got increasingly angry, and finally he pushed at me with both hands. Oh. My. God. He hasn't laid hands on me since he was 2 years old. WHAT IS UP?

In the interest of trying to figure out what is up, we are seeking out lots of assistance. He is seeing his therapist once a week, who is a fabulous cognitive behaviorist. We are having a new assessment done with a child psychiatrist who specializes in autism spectrum kids. I met with her yesterday and spent and hour and half chronicling Matthew's life and all the difficulties we've had.

She's great, and I'm very happy that we're finally in the hands of someone who knows what the hell she's doing (even if it is costing 500 non-insured dollars). But as I think about all I told her all about Matthew, about his development and where he is today, I realize, it's not a pattern, it's a mystery. What goes on in his handsome, brilliant head is a mystery. We can understand bits and pieces, we can catch glimpses of what makes him tick, but the majority of what's going on in his brain remains opaque. To himself as well, which really makes it difficult. He can't say why he so abruptly lashes out, why he can't calm himself down, why everything is so overwhelming. Not just because of a lack of language for what he is feeling, but because he really doesn't know.

So we continue trying to figure out what is up, but despite every encouraging development, I find myself utterly mystified.