The Po Show

Cupcakes

Today I brought in cupcakes to celebrate Tessa's birthday at school. Her "real" birthday isn't until the 27th, but that is after school ends, so we celebrated a little early. She's fortunate to have a summer birthday only slightly into summer.

There were goody bags for all her friends, and Tinkerbell and Transformer plates and napkins. There was fruit punch, and a pink crayon-shaped candle for her cupcake. There were two dozen cupcakes, half of them chocolate brownie, half vanilla cake, all with chocolate frosting.

We made these cupcakes yesterday, after coming home from Matthew's social skills group at the hospital. After he had had the worst meltdown I have ever witnessed, and I've seen plenty of meltdowns in my time. It was horrible, truly horrible, as in I was filled with absolute horror. It was like watching my child possessed by demons. You know how during the Middle Ages, they burned people at the stake because they thought they were possessed by the devil? My poor baby would have been toast.

He pulled his hair as hard as he could. He gouged at his eyes with his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered and SCREAMED louder than I would ever have imagined possible. I suppose it was fortunate that this happened at a psychiatric outpatient center of a hospital, in front of people who are more or less used to it. His therapist tried to talk him down, but it was far too late, so we worked on getting him to leave. He was in full oppositional mode, though, and wouldn't move. She warned him a few times that she would have to call the security guards to come help us, actually had the phone in her hand to call, when he regained a moment of clarity and said "Okay" and walked out of the building.

Then he spent the next 20 minutes on the stairs down to the parking lot, still in full on freak out. At one point Tessa got close to him and he motioned like he was going to push her down the stairs. I jumped in and told him that that was the ONE thing I could not allow him to do, that he could NOT hurt anyone. "Then I'll hurt myself!," he shouted. Tears leaked out of my eyes (I'd been doing REALLY well up till then, keeping outwardly calm though I was dying inside). I asked him what he thought that would accomplish. He wilted and said, "I don't know" and then cried and cried.

Finally I got him to the car, still kicking and screeching. We got home and he headed straight to the computer. I left him there, thinking that I should do something, say something to him, but he needed space.

And I needed to make cupcakes. I'd promised Tessa we'd make them when Matthew was done with his group. I felt like my heart had been ripped out, but I stood in the kitchen with my little girl and cracked eggs and melted butter and mixed batter. We filled the paper cups and watched them bake. She was so thrilled with her birthday cupcakes, and I was glad to be able to give this to her, some piece of happiness to make up for having to watch, terrified, as her big brother utterly lost all control.