MY AVG Child

(Originally posted on Tales From the Crib on Saturday Jan 14, 2006.  Noe was 4 yrs old, Asher 2 yrs old).

Asher Victoriano Guzman. It was only AFTER we named our second son that friends poked fun of his initials. I was a little annoyed that I had unwittingly condemned my son to a life of being 5’8/ a C student/ in middle management. Let’s be honest here, everyone thinks their kids are destined for greatness and way too much of our self-worth as parents is tied into how our kids turn out.

Six months after Asher’s birth, my older son, Noe (then 2 ½), was diagnosed with mild autism. Average suddenly sounded really wonderful. 

Noe doesn’t do anything within the mean. His language skills are severely delayed. He just turned three and is barely starting to say words and understand simple directions. His social skills and some of his fine motor skills are also delayed. 

On the other hand, Noe possesses an amazing aptitude for visual and spatial relationships. He puts together 100 piece jigsaw puzzles in minutes and can find his way home from just about anywhere (it’s like having my own little GPS with legs!). Noe continues to bring me a tremendous amount of joy, but his jagged development is maddening and often stressful. Despite the progress he has made through various therapies since his diagnosis, I stay up many a late night worrying about his future.

As much as I love Noe, I have come to appreciate my AVG son and every developmental milestone he passes not early, not late, but right on time.

Lessons from Tia Nanny

(Originally posted on Tales From the Crib blog on Monday, October 6, 2008.) 

We don't really call her Tia Nanny. She is "Abuela" to the boys and "Tia" to Ed and I. She is Ed's aunt, a woman who lived in his house in East LA growing up and is very much a mother to him. She is an immigrant, the first in her family to arrive in the US. She is a US citizen. She is a fervent orthodox Christian, no longer Catholic. She is the best cook you could ever imagine....her kitchen is a studio and she is the artist. And for the summer, she was our nanny.

Before I get too far, I want to say that we were very appreciative of Tia Nanny's help this summer. She took extremely good care of the boys, allowing Ed and I to work in good conscience. I directed a summer enrichment academy and could not have managed without her. We really needed to make a chunk of extra income this year, between our oldest son's autism therapy expenses and a car that will need to be replaced sooner than later. My job and her service provided this for our family.

A lot went down this summer, a lot I am still processing here in October. There were some funny moments. The fresh mint that kept appearing in Tia Nanny's morning tea and the eventual realization that she was pilfering from the neighbor's garden. The day I left for work admiring my blooming hydrangea and then came home to see it pruned back to a nub.The short haircuts that she insisted the boys wear so they could resemble Barack Obama. 

There were some less funny moments. The petty fights she had with our neighbors, relationships that we are still working to mend. The expensive tickets we purchased for her and Ed to spend an evening at a flaminco performance, only for her to change her mind about going at the very last second, putting us in a lurch. And the various cultural barriers that often felt like mountains that I just didn't have the energy to climb.

While our goals for the summer were to get ahead financially and for our boys to know their abuela, Tia Nanny seemed determined to turn me into a traditional Mexican housewife.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a mediocre housewife and I am fine with that fact. I have no Martha Stewart aspirations. My house is generally clean and organized, at least at the end of the day. I usually fix quick meals for dinner, but once a week or so I'll spend a couple of hours preparing a nice dinner. I don't bake bread, but I would like to give it a try someday. Same with sewing something besides curtains. I could always do better, but I don't exactly need a housekeeping intervention.  When I'm working full time, Ed does a good share of the housework as well.

Each day after I returned from work, Tia Nanny was waiting for me at the top of our staircase...motioning for me to come see her. She always had a criticism to share, complete with visual aides and a teaching lesson on how to do it the right way. You folded the laundry wrong (but it's folded).This ironing is NO GOOD (why do I need to iron the boys play clothes?).This food is NO GOOD for the boys to eat (well, it's somewhat nutritious and they'll eat it). Why you only buy the tiny bags of rice? (cause that's all they had at the store).


My reaction to her lessons depended greatly on my mood. Some days I was amused and made furious mental notes so I wouldn't forget to share the high comedy of her daily rant with Ed. Some days I just endured....waiting out the lecture until I could be free to spend some time with my boys, both of whom I had missed so much during the day. Some days I wanted to yell at her and tell her to leave and that we didn't need her help after all. But I never did. Out of respect for Ed, and also because we really did need her help.

One day after work I returned to the aroma of flautas and rice on the stove. We never expected Tia Nanny to cook our meals, but it was always a treat when she did. She showed me how to fry up the flautas (something I had done a million times, but I indulged her). She told me that she was going to her room to rest, but to be sure to heat up the rice on the stove (NOT the microwave, the microwave NO GOOD!) and to serve Ed freshly fried flautas when he returned home from work. And not to eat my own food until he was served.

By the time Ed returned from work, it was much later. The boys were fed and I was playing with them out front, trying to squeeze out just a little more fun from the summer evening.  Ed went into the house and heated up his own meal. We thought nothing of it. Like most couples of our generation, Ed and I operate under rules of pragmatics rather than tradition. We do what needs to be done and we don't pay much attention to traditional gender roles.

Returning from work that next day, Tia Nanny met me at the top of the stairs unusually agitated. Que paso? I asked. You didn't serve his dinner last night did you? No, I replied and tried to explain that I was watching the boys out front when he returned home. Apparently, last night had been my Good Housewife 101 final exam and I got a big fat F.

It makes me very sad that you do not take care of my son, Tia Nanny whimpered, dangerously close to tears. That he returns home from work each day and has to heat up his own food...it hurts my heart.

I was upset, but not because I had disappointed her with my lack of good housewifery. It is just not in me to be that wife. I was deeply saddened that she felt my husband was not cared for in our marriage. That she had lived with us for the entire summer, but had failed see the ways that we take care of each other. The affectionate hugs, the long walks and late night talks, the general positivity that runs through our marriage, even when things are hard. That she couldn't see how we cared for each other so deeply, now that was hard to take.

It's a cultural thing. That's a sentence I mutter often to myself when I am with Ed's family. Love in Ed's parent's home is expressed in a clean house, a fridge crammed with food, a dinner feast served every evening and freshly laundered  clothes in your drawers. It is a lovely and important way to show that you care for your family, but it will never be my own chosen signature of love.

I wanted to tell Tia Nanny all of this, everything in my heart. But my Spanish just wasn't going to make it there. So I looked straight into her eyes and said, "Lo siento, Tia." And I meant it, I was sorry.

fifteen years

The other night I crawled into bed after a long day.  Ed was fast asleep on his side of our bed.  I was annoyed at him about something (honestly, I don't even remember what it was now).  I looked over at him with my dagger eyes expressing my thoughts.  Things I'd have said to him if he were awake, but staying perfectly silent.  In a start, he awoke.  Still groggy, "Did you say something? Are we ok?"

This morning (Super Bowl Sunday), 6am:  Both of us stay perfectly still and silent for the other, not realizing we are both awake.  I can feel the stress of the coming work day radiating off of him.  I want to make it better for him.  The only thing I can think to do is stay still so he will be rested for his day.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the bed,  Ed wants to get up, but knows how easily I wake and wants me to sleep.  So we lay together but separate as silent statues.

Is this what almost fifteen years together with someone looks like?

Can I tell you a little story about my boys?

Noé and Asher, Powell Butte.   Nov 2014

Noé has never seemed outwardly connected to his brother.  Despite Asher's constant outpouring of love and affection, Noé ignores him, only interacting with him when we prompt him to do so.  Asher has learned to accept that this is the way it is with Noé.  It doesn't upset him anymore.   And Asher continues to try and engage with his brother and help out.  This kid has played more games of Candyland and Hi-Ho Cherry-O than any typically-developing ten year old should have to endure.

Asher has hit a rough patch at school.  He is bored with his schoolwork, a little disengaged, and is getting more self-conscious around his peers.  He says that his bright spots at school right now are his after-school pottery class, PE, and lunch and recess with his little group of dude friends who mutually obsess over Minecraft, Harry Potter, and the Seahawks.

Yesterday, Noe's teacher cornered me in the school yard after school ended to share this story.

After winter break, Noe's class switched lunch periods to the same one Asher has with his class.   Noé buys his lunch every day (I've never been able to get him to eat sack lunches).  After he went through the hot lunch line, he spotted Asher in the cafeteria and immediately went over and sat next to him.  Panic ensued for a moment when Noe's teacher couldn't locate Noé, but an IA quickly discovered him.  She asked Asher if it was ok if Noé ate lunch with him and his friends.  She said Asher looked up at her, surrounded by a swarm of 4th grade boys in Seahawks jerseys and said, "Of course it is! He's my brother!"  Then she asked Noé if he wanted to stay with Asher and he nodded his head yes in his way that means, "don't even think about making me do something different than this thing right here." They've been eating lunch together every day since.

These are the stories that I carefully gift wrap and store in the back of my mind in order to pull out, unwrap, and admire, during the hard days.  Of which there are many.

Saluting Your Sister Ship

I'll never know, and neither will you of the life you don't choose.  We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours.  It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us.  There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.

~Cheryl Strayed, via tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar

This was written in the context of an advice column to a man trying to decide if he should become a father.  It might be one of the most beautiful, profound things I have read in awhile.  We all have ghost ships.  Some of my own have included having more children, having a more robust career, my constant obsession with moving back to my hometown.  Instead of living in regret of the choices we don't make, it is such a powerful visual to salute those sailing ships from the shore.  Wish them well.  Know they were virtuous, formidable alternatives, but they no longer belong to us.  And treat them as such.

Pablo's Papa

After living in three big cities and having family in two others, we don't have a lot of annual holiday traditions.  We do the "city holiday stuff" in whatever city we're celebrating in that particular year, we bake cookies, we hang stockings, and we read our Christmas books.

Our beloved Christmas books follow us to wherever we will be for Christmas and we look forward to reading them throughout the holiday season.  Here are a few of our favorites:

Olive the Other Reindeer
Polar Express
Snowmen at Night
N is for Navidad
The Nutcracker
The Best Christmas Pagaent Ever
The Legend of the Poinsettia

Our favorite of all, however, is probably Pablo's Christmas, a story about a boy in rural Mexico who has to care for his family while his father travels to the United States in search of work.  Pablo has to do many of the chores left by his father's absence,  including scary ones like fighting off coyotes from the chicken coop.  As Christmas approaches, there is no word from his father and his young sisters fear that a "magical queen" has tricked their father into falling in love with her and staying in the United States.  Pablo sets out to make Christmas special for his mom and young sisters, despite their lack of food and money.  He cuts a Christmas tree and carves dolls for gifts.  On Christmas Eve his father triumphantly returns, bringing the family back needed money and a few gifts as well.

We've talked a lot about that book over the years.  Why Pablo's father would leave his family to work in the US.  What kind of work Pablo's father likely had to do when he arrived here. Why their own Abuelos made the same decision to travel to the US for work many years ago.  How that courageous decision changed our entire family's life for the better.

The boys see men working around the city every day.  Men who resemble their abuelo and their papi.  They work in the peripheries of the city.  These men do construction, they dig ditches, work in the back of restaurants, they spend anxious mornings in Home Depot parking lots, hoping the day will bring work.  Their hands are dry and callused and their eyes tired. 

Thanks to the story of Pablo's Christmas, the boys look at these men working around them and see Pablo's Papa.  They see loving husbands and doting fathers forced to work far away from their families.  They wonder if these men miss the food, the language, the predictable customs of their hometowns.  They hope that there is a happy homecoming with their families awaiting these men very soon.  Perhaps on Christmas Eve.  

not fit for a family blog notes

(This is about a year old but I forgot to publish it….)

the "f" word

Asher whispered to me on the way to piano last week.  My friend at school said "f-u-c-h" is a bad word.  First, it drove me insane that it was misspelled and had to correct it.  Then I said, "Yes.  it is a very bad word. one of the worst."  REALLY? said Asher totally shocked.  Worse than the S-H-U-T word (shut up).

the finger

Awhile back, Asher came home from school and said a friend (perhaps the same one as above? Who is this kid?) said it was bad to stick out your middle finger to someone.  I said, yes it is and don't do it.  he asked what it meant.  I said it means "go away" in a very mean way.  I was proud of my explanation without having to get into more details.

Fast forward a Thursday afternoon that always has us running to catch the bus to UW for Noe's speech therapy.  There is a short window of time between when I get the kids from school and when we need to catch the bus.  We almost always end up running up a Seattle hill, book bags and therapy bag in tow, in order to catch the bus.  That day was no different, except the bus pulled away as we got to the bus stop.  I couldn't believe the bus driver wouldn't open the door for us (he had closed it, but hadn't pulled away. I know they can't stop once they pull away) so I flipped him the bird in frustration.   Most of my bird flipping was contained to my NYC living days, but once awhile, in an extremely frustrating situation, it makes an appearance.  As soon as I did it, I heard Asher shout out, "Yeah, GO AWAY!"

larceny

We were walking University Ave trying to find something for a school project after Noe's therapy appt at UW.  I looked down to see Noe was eating a bag of Swedish Fish.  I didn't buy him any Swedish Fish.  He had taken the five finger discount at one of our stops.