The Po Show

Tessa at 7

My baby girl turned 7 years old today. I spent the minutes before her "birth time" reading her birth story, which I posted here two years ago on her birthday (after a lovely guardian angel found it for me! :)). She was born at 9:16AM, and she was ready to open her presents before that time, this morning.

A couple of days ago, she handed me a diagram of how she wanted her candles arranged on her cake. They were color coded, and there were two pictures, one of how the candles should be arranged if the cake was round or oval, and another picture that showed how they should be if the cake was square or rectangular. She blows me away.

She is the most remarkable child. Brilliant, self-assured, born to navigate the world. Her latest report card was filled with 4s (meaning above grade level), with all 4s for effort. She makes friends everywhere she goes, from toddlers to big kids. She still plays with imaginary friends, pantomiming elaborate dances and processions with them, devising intricate games for them to play. She still has her lovely, squeezable cheeks.

She is funny and fun and sweet and amazing. She can be a terror, too, but her heart is always golden. She tells me she loves me ("So, SO much! I love you so, SO much!") a million times a day. Her Mother's Day poem to me was entitled "Food Court:"

I get McDonald's
Mom gets Chinese
We get COOKIES!!
You're the best mom in the whole world.


I hope seven will be lucky for her. I'm more than lucky to have her.

Goodbye, Matthew's School

Today was my kids' last day of school. Tessa will be back next year, so she said goodbye to her friends and the ladies in the office, knowing she will see them again in the fall. Matthew will not be back.

It should have been more of a farewell, somehow. Some people did hug him good-bye, like the school psychologist who loves him so dearly, but there wasn't much time. I had to rush the kids home, feed them a quick lunch, and rush us back in the car to drop off Tessa at a birthday party, 45 minutes early. Matthew and I needed to be at the school that houses the autism program, to meet with the teachers. I was told we should go through with this visit, even though there is no room for Matthew in the program. It went pretty well, and it's a truly wonderful class. It would be great for Matthew, but it's full. That's part of the beauty of the class: there are only 8 kids, with two full-time aides (one of whom is a licensed teacher). Four of the kids are continuing from last year. Three are moving up from the younger grades, from a similar class in the program. That left one spot for new intakes, and they actually accepted two, though that put them over their official limit. So the likelihood of a spot opening up for Matthew is very, very slim. Why they included this program in our intake, when it was probably already full, is beyond me.

So the last day of school was sort of weird, filled with uncertainty rather than closure. That is so unfortunate, after the terribly hard year Matthew has had. His report card came back with no marks for this last grading period, except for science, because he just did so little work that his teacher felt he couldn't give him marks.

For the first two years we lived here, every time we drove by the school (which was often, since it's only a half mile from our house and on the way to the downtown area), Tessa would say, "Hi, Matthew's school!" When she entered kindergarten, she still said it, even though it was also her school at that point.

It's not Matthew's school anymore. He doesn't have a school, and it feels like he's been cast adrift.

Make it STOP!!!!

Do you ever get that screaming inside your head, and you think, Hmmm, is it inside, or did it wander outside of my head? And then you realize, no, it's still inside, but maybe, not for long...

I made a really fatal error, I see now. I had really assumed (all together now: and you know what happens when you ASSUME!) that once we got the school district to agree to Matthew's out of district transfer, it was going to be all smooth sailing. We'd just have to wait for the county BOCES to get his file, and they'd place him in the gifted special ed. program I've been talking about incessantly. I just figured that since *I* thought it was made for him, and his inclusion teacher and our school psych. went there and thought it was imminently appropriate for him, that that would be that.

All the waiting has been nerve-wracking, and I've had to do way more pushing along the way than I should have. But I still figured that it would all work out. The director of the gifted special ed. program assured me that they had spaces available, and she said that even if they determined that that wasn't the best program for him that they had to offer, an appropriate one could be found. She said that by the time we got to the intake, it would be pretty much decided already, that they're almost never wrong about which program a child belongs in, based on examination of his/her file. Well, we ended up with three psychologists at our intake, because they *couldn't* make that determination based on Matthew's file.

Still, I was so relieved when I finally got ahold of the psychologist with the autism program yesterday, who is supposed to be our intake contact. He said that they ruled out both the therapeutic support program (because those kids would eat Matthew alive) and the gifted special ed. (because they are not equipped to deal with behavioral issues like Matthew's), so they were recommending the high-functioning autism program. Which I was thrilled about, mostly because it wasn't the therapeutic program. Really, though, it sounded like it would be a great place for Matthew.

I was very glad to have gotten that call, when I went to pick Matthew up at school and found that he was outside with the school psych. and wouldn't come back in the building. During gym a kid had (accidentally?) hit Matthew in the head with a ball, and then another girl had (definitely accidentally) bumped him while she was running bases past him. He had been outside for an hour and wouldn't come in. So out of my mouth popped the news that they had decided what school Matthew would go to next year, the really cool school that has a pool (wow, that really rhymes). He immediately calmed down, and went in to get his things. Normally I would not have said anything to him till all the details were hammered out, but it just happened.

So what happened today really sucks. I got another call from the psychologist attached to the autism program, late this afternoon, saying that he found out that Matthew is officially on the waiting list, since they don't have any open spots for next year. He said it was "unprecedented" for the program to fill up. Is that, or is that not, just our fucking luck all throughout this whole process? So we are without a placement, here in the last week of school, two weeks before we are leaving for CA for the summer.

I've spent the rest of the afternoon firing off emails to people, desperate cries for help, and I got ahold of the admissions person at one of the private schools that had never gotten back to us earlier. I didn't pursue it too diligently before, since I had been so sure he was going to end up in a county program. And all the time, I just felt like screaming, like running out into the street screaming, like drinking my weight in vodka and hibernating for a couple of years.

Ross (who is in DC for work and won't be back till tomorrow night) says, of course he'll go to school SOMEWHERE next year. The school district, for all their neglect of us throughout this whole process, does have a legal obligation to put him in school. But every day that he doesn't know what will be happening to him next year, where he will go to school, what it will be like, is another day of extreme, crushing anxiety for Matthew.

And for me.

Down on the Farm

I went on Tessa's last field trip of the year today. We went to Muscoot Farms, this cute little farm that pretends it's circa 1900 or something, which is run by the county Parks Dept. There were animals and rows of crops and a blacksmith's shop with farm implements, etc. There were horses and sheep with lambies and chickens with adolescent chicks and a sow with a teen-aged pig and donkeys and turkeys and an incredibly sweet cow named Pineapple who was waiting to be milked.

I almost didn't go on the trip, even though I signed up weeks ago. There was a chance that someone from the county was going to call today to tell us which program they have recommended for Matthew, and the remote chance that we would be told that we could visit that class today. After all the waiting, all the anxiety, all the, yes, calling, we're finally going to figure out where he will go to school next year. So I wasn't sure I wanted to be half an hour away, just in case they called.

But I figured, that wasn't fair to Tessa. She gets so short-changed, so much of the time. She has to tag along to Matthew's weekly therapy sessions, to his trips to the psychiatrist. She constantly has her schedule dictated by what Matthew will and will not do. She has to endure his tantrums, tiptoe around his potential anger, has to hear her classmates say, "I heard your brother screaming in the office today." It's hard enough being the little sister, but it is really hard being Matthew's little sister, much of the time.

So I drove myself (feeling badly that I had to say that I might have to leave any moment) rather than carpooling with the other parents. I checked my cell phone constantly. I kept calling home and checking to see if anyone left a message. And no one called, so it was just as well that I didn't skip the field trip. So sigh, more calling in store on Monday.

Tessa didn't know that mentally I wasn't entirely present. She held my hand, and sat next to me on the hay ride, and was happy. So that was very, very good.

Hellllloooooo?????

So you'd think that after almost 20 years of marriage, almost 24 years of being together, my husband would acknowledge that I am phone phobic. This is not a new development.

So him exasperatedly telling me to keep hounding people to get the psychologist who is attached to the county program to schedule Matthew's intakes, when I don't have anybody's email addresses, telling me, "Just keep calling. Call back every single day. Call someone and keep asking till you find someone who has his email address. If that doesn't work call Dr. Soandso again and see if she can push them again" is like saying to me, "Here's a sharp stick. Poke yourself in the eye with it. Poke yourself in the eye every single day. Stand on the corner and ask the next person who walks by to poke you in the eye. Keep walking around till you find a man in a red hat, then ask him to poke you in the eye. Go find the person you want to alienate the least in the world and ask her to poke you in the eye."

I mean, come ON. I have TRIED. And no, I can't ask, "Can YOU call?" because that sets up the whole "You're sitting on your ass at home all day while I'm killing myself 13 hours a day" scowl, accompanied by spitting, "Fine! I'll find sometime to call" at me like nails. Which I actually sort of agree with, so that makes it worse.

I just wish I wasn't so freaked out by picking up the stupid telephone.

The Reason We're Here

Happy Father's Day.

We spent ours eating at Bubby's in Brooklyn, then walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. The kids staged a revolt on the other side and clamored for a subway ride in lieu of walking back across. Once back on the Brooklyn side, we got caught in a massive downpour, huddled under an awning for several minutes, then walked back to the car. Tessa shuffled her feet through the streams of water and had a lovely time (her right foot suddenly didn't hurt anymore, despite being excruciating on the walk over the bridge).

We came home and Tessa put on a Flower Festival for us, with handmade paper masks for herself and her Lil Kinz bunny, Minny. They did a song and dance number, and then Ross and I had to throw the paper flowers that Tessa had made for us, for that express purpose. It was hilariously adorable. (I thought the highlight was her "public announcements," made into a plastic microphone, that warned us that taking pictures during the performance was not allowed.)

As we were discussing what to have for Father's Day dinner, Ross remarked that we should incorporate the kids into the decision, since, as he said, "They're why we're here."

And they are. Not why we're here in this house, or this town, or this state, but why we're at this place in our lives. They changed everything, and they made us what we are today.

They made Ross into the father he is today, a lot more patient a human being, a lot more out of his own head and present in the now. He wasn't even in the *room* when Matthew was conceived (but instead was out in the waiting room while his "washed" sperm was splooshed through my cervix), but he has been with them, every step of the way, as Daddy, now Dad.

Happy Father's Day, to my favorite dad.

Final Field Tripping

I went with Matthew on his last field trip as a student of Post Road School today (it's still up in the air which school he will go to next year, which is driving us all crazy!). We went on a 2 hour boat trip up the Hudson River to West Point, which was really interesting. They've been studying Colonial New York all year, and have studied a lot about points along the river that relate to that period, so it was a great way to tie it all together.

We got to tour the fort up at West Point, which dates back to the Revolutionary War (this was special, since after 9/11 they stopped letting people into the fort, but some of the teachers were able to work some contacts so that we were allowed in). Then we went to the Military Museum, which is very large and houses tons of items from every American war. Matthew was really interested in the exhibits on atomic weaponry, including the shell of a "Fat Man" atomic bomb. It was all sort of weird for me, since I'm a committed pacifist, but I'm also a historian, so seeing display after display of weaponry was interesting as well as sort of disturbing. Plus, Nagasaki is not that far from where my family lived during the war, so all the atomic bomb stuff was rather chilling. It was really fun discussing it all with Matthew, from a historical perspective, though.

It was pretty bittersweet for me that this was Matthew's last field trip before he leaves his school. He had some serious rough spots during the trip, though it ended up being okay. I realized that I have been sad and relieved at the same time, over the years, that I haven't been able to go on a lot of his school trips. Until last year, I always had Tessa, so I wasn't able to go during the day. It's SO difficult to deal with Matthew when he's out of his routine and having to deal with kids that he doesn't get along with (he was incredibly upset that the boy in his class who has bothered him all year was in our group when we got to West Point, and a girl who has tormented him for years really made him mad when she stuck her tongue out at him while we were walking back to the bus. His teacher and aide dealt with it well, though, and I was able to take him off by ourselves at the museum, which helped calm him down).

It was interesting for me, also, to see how "typical" 10 year olds act. Matthew is so atypical, so I haven't really seen much of the world of his peers. It was very interesting, to say the least. So much interpersonal drama and funny behavior; it was kind of nice to experience.

It won't be his last field trip ever, but it was his last trip during this period of time, his "mainstream" time, a time of pretending, a time that was so very hard for him. I hope with all my heart that by his next field trip, things will be so much better.

It's Going Around

Apparently I'm not the only one losing my mind around here.

So yesterday I finally emailed the director of the county gifted special ed. program we're trying to get Matthew into, to nudge her a little into nudging the psychologist who was supposedly supposed to call us to set up an intake appointment.

She emailed me back in the afternoon, saying that she had just seen him, and he apologized for the delay, but he had been sick all last week. Then she said that she had heard that he had spoken to me yesterday and would be setting up the intake in a few days.

Normally I would go, for a split second, "DID I speak to him today???" since my personal sanity is always in question, but that didn't happen, because I am focussed on this and I KNEW that I had not.

So now I'm wondering who this guy talked to, the parent of another boy named Matthew? Or was he just out of it in general?

In related news, one of the private schools reviewed Matthew's file and determined that their program was not appropriate for him. That's fine, as I did think that that school was more geared toward lower-functioning kids. The other schools haven't reviewed his file yet. And some of those are more structured for kids with severe behavioral issues than kids with learning disabilities, schools that are attached to day treatment hospital programs. It's not that I'm necessarily saying that Matthew doesn't need a therapeutic program, but I really think that if he's in the right learning environment, it will go SO far toward dealing with his behavioral issues.

So I really hope Dr. Confused Psychologist calls us up soon.

American=White

I have the tendency to believe that the only people who read my blog are my same five friends who always read my blog (hi Same Five Friends! Thank you for continuing to read, and your comments mean more to me than I can say! :)). So it always comes as a great surprise when someone else leaves me a comment (my NIECE left me a comment the other day, which was a real surprise!). I assume that my friends know me and know where I'm coming from, so I don't have to explain certain things in my posts, like my post yesterday, but now I'd like to explain where I'm coming from, for anybody out there in the blogsphere who doesn't know me personally (hi Sonetto and anyone else who has been kind enough to read here! I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read my ramblings and ravings! :)).

I am an American of Japanese descent. I am a first generation American on my father's side, and a second generation American on my mother's side (slightly complicated by the fact that my mother was kibei, meaning she was born in America but her family moved back to Japan). I used to joke that I am ni-hansei, meaning two and a half generation.

I am married to a man of Dutch descent. He's a purebred, with both sides of his family directly originating in the Netherlands (or Holland, depending on who you talk to). I don't say that I'm married to a Dutch man, though, because that makes people think he's an immigrant himself. So I say that I'm married to a white guy. I don't say Caucasian, because I firmly believe that that refers only to people from Caucasus, so unless you're Armenian or Georgian (from the Republic of Georgia, not the place in the US where Atlanta is) or Azerbaijani or Southern Russian, you're not Caucasian. I also don't use Anglo, because that means English.

And what my post yesterday was all about was the equation above, in the subject title to this post. For many, many people, American means white (or black, sometimes). I've been living with this conception my whole life.

In 1974, my sister married a white guy. It was less common in those days than it is now, and thus notable to many. I would have elementary school friends come over and see my sister's family picture on the piano and they would remark, "Oh, your sister married an American." This struck me as somehow incorrect, but I would just say yes.

In high school, I dated white guys. And people were constantly remarking to me how I seemed to only like "Americans" and why didn't I ever date Japanese guys? Um, because the guys I liked happened to be white guys.

Ross and I were married in 1988 (yes folks, it's a month and a half away from our 20th anniversary!). We moved to Japan after college to teach English. And I truly got to see this equation from a cross-cultural perspective. The Japanese Japanese could NOT accept the concept of Japanese American. American meant white, and a face like mine, that looked like theirs, just did not compute in conjunction with the label "American." It extended further too, as I found when I met the German teacher at my new school. When I told him I was American, he said, "Funny, you don't look like you come from the States."

Ross and I went to grad school at the University of Hawaii from 1991-93. He majored in Asian Studies and I majored in American Studies. When people would hear that, they would titter and say, "Oh, how funny! You're studying each other!" Yes, that would have been hiLARious, if I'd been Asian, rather than American.

All my life, I've been told how well I speak English, I've been asked where I come from (I say, "L.A." and the questioner gets that half-embarrassed, half-annoyed look of "You KNOW what I MEANT!" and says, "No, where are you REALLY from?"), I've been asked if I'm Chinese (this happens ALL the time, and I still don't quite get it).

And it extends to the next generation. Matthew gets called "Chinese" by kids all the time at school, which makes him crazy. He tells them he's not, but they fling it at him like an epithet, which is not only weird, but sad. Why should calling someone Chinese be like an insult?

I'll tell you what's behind it, though. What this all boils down to, and what American=white truly means, is hearing a constant message of "You are foreign. Different. Not one of us." It is stripping away identity. No one EVER asks a white person in America, "Are you English?" Certainly people of European descent in America identify with their heritage, and certainly in years past Irish Americans or Italian Americans or other groups encountered significant discrimination from "real Americans," but assimilation and acceptance occurred for European Americans in a way that it just has not happened, more than a century of immigration later, for Asians and Hispanics. I'm not talking about recent immigrants who speak accented English. If he had been blindfolded, would have Stan the Man have been able to tell which customer was "American" and which was not?

So for those who complain about the PC police and who wish that all of us hypenated Americans would just get over it, please recognize that we HAVE TO keep emphasizing the American in our designation, because it is far, far from assumed.

Wow, It's Been Awhile

It's been awhile since I've encountered THIS situation.

I was at Costco, ordering new lenses for my sunglasses (I lost them in the bathroom at the zoo in D.C., and when I got them back there was a big scratch across one lense). The guy helping me in the optometry section (I swear, it really said on his name tag "Stan the Man" with no last name!) looked at my name on my membership card and SAID, "Oh, you married an American!"

I smiled good-naturedly and replied, "I'm an American too!"

He got that slightly embarrassed "You know what I meant!" look that people get when I call them on this and said, "Oh, you know, you, you, you..."

"I married a white guy," I helpfully supplied.

Then he said, "He's not Jewish, though, is he?"

Really hoping that this was an "in group" thing, and that Stan the Man was a Jew himself, I replied, "No." To which he replied, "Oh, good!" ?????

Then he decided to prolong this embarrassment, and said, "You know the show Dancing with the Stars?" I admitted that I did.

"You know Kristi Yamaguchi was on that show. She's Japanese, you know, you know, a Japanese AMERICAN. I didn't know this, but she has two kids, and you know, she married, as you said, a white guy too. You know, an American."

I stated that I did not know that, and waited for the conversation to die a timely death.

Really, isn't it 2008? Am I STILL having this "American" conversation with people? Admittedly, Stan was about 60, but come ON.

Dog on a Shock Pad

You'd think that karma would send me a little breathing room, now that the big hurdle of getting Matthew's transfer has been jumped, and the school year is winding down. (I'm STILL waiting for interviews with the schools to be scheduled, and yes, they did receive Matthew's packet, and yes, the packet did get reviewed. A caseworker will be calling me soon!, so they say.) We'd hoped that once he knew that he didn't have to go back to his school, he'd relax a bit. I told him that he had to show his appreciation for how much all his teachers had worked to help get him his transfer, by actually trying to do some work in class.

Has NOT happened. There have been several days in the last couple of weeks (more than 75%) in which he's gotten angry in class and refused to do any classwork. He can't explain to me why, other than he just can't concentrate on schoolwork. He's doing his homework fine, though I do often have to sit next to him and repeat, "Okay, next question!" after every single question to keep him on task.

Today I went out for about an hour and returned home to several voicemail messages. It seems that Matthew got very angry when asked to put his book away and get out his homework, and he jumped up and ran out of the classroom. They had to call an all-building alert, and his teacher finally found him in the gym. The school nurse got called in, and she told me (when I returned her message) that his teacher and the assistant principal had had to restrain his arms because he was flailing them around and hitting himself. They let him go, and he tried to bite the assistant principal on the arm. The nurse managed to get him redirected by telling him she had to take his blood pressure, and he eventually calmed down. He went and sat in her office and had a little conversation with another kid up there.

I talked to the school psychologist, who wants to work with me and Matthew's therapist to try and get a plan in place to get through the rest of the school year (just over three weeks now). His psychiatrist upped his risperidone again yesterday. I was going to go to Costco this afternoon, but decided that I couldn't risk being 20 minutes away, just in case.

They used to do these experiments with dogs, where they placed them on a shock pad and gave them random shocks. The dogs turned into cowering, paralyzed messes, never knowing when the next jolt was going to come, unable to do a thing. That's pretty much how I have felt for the last year and a half, never knowing when the next phone call was going to come, never knowing when I'll come home to the blinking light on the answering machine.