Love

At The End Of The Day….

Jaycee Kemp1 Comment

I was in a research study recently involving blogging, deciding upon content, deciding upon platform, media, etc. It truly was an interesting experience–I guess no one ever directly asked me to tell my story in such a way before. While they interviewed over a dozen already, many of which where “mom bloggers”, I was the only one interviewed who addressed experiences as a family living with disability.

Their takeaway they volunteered to share with me? Their experience with other parent bloggers did not include the same judicious protection of content/overcontemplation of concern regarding the forms of dignity I discussed, nor did it involve the level of scrutiny that dug as deep as our level can go. And yes, they do blame their kids for tough days or recognize the universal struggles in a laughable or relatable way and are rewarded for that relatablity on social media. No one else struggled in that balance the way we do.

In our world, there is a fine line which moves it’s position depending on who you are talking to. We have a job as family caregivers of disability to be relatable advocates who set the bar for how we and our kids are perceived by the rest of the world. And unfortunately, I do believe it can be at the expense of self care or which ultimately affects they way we cope within our family systems for the benefit of our charge. We are held to a much higher standard out there in cyberworld under much more challenging circumstances than other parents. I forgot about this piece I wrote a few years ago, but it was on a day I had a similar epiphany at the end of a long, hot summer. Sometimes, I want to say funny things about being a mom too. And yep…sometimes I am selfish.

Running through Water

bunny hillThere are some days that my heart breaks selfishly a bit.

Days like today.

As A2 gets older there really are no more play dates. While kids are generally kind, there are limits to their patience. It’s hard to figure out how to play with another kid who wants to stand at the bottom of the water slide flapping rather than going down. His peers are now preteens and the adults that are close by interpreting for him, ensuring safety and cuing socially reciprocal behavior are going to inhibit his peers age appropriate wing stretching.

Today, as I sat entering in my second hour in direct sun making sure my guy didn’t keep going past the “do not pass” sign at the base of the water slide, I couldn’t help but notice the world around us. I had nothing else to do but try to clear my mind of things…

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If You Met Us At The Border

Jaycee KempLeave a comment
adult affection baby casual
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

If You Met Us at the Border

OR

5 Random Reasons It Is Hard to Share Lately

1. I have 84 drafts sitting in my queue in my blog.

Yes, you read that correctly. 84 unedited pieces of work. 84 separate ideas.

If you read my writing, you know I have 3 styles: 1. Poetry 2. Educational/How To/Advocacy 3. Creative Non-Fiction. Sometimes I struggle thinking I cannot “find my voice” in my writing, but I do believe I have. It is all 3 of those voices, just like most of us have in real life. It is the topic that tends to remain consistent–it is about the intense, over -the-top love I have for my child and the intense, over-the-top worry I have for him not because of who he is…but because of the world he lives in…even with, or in spite of me, his extra-human mom who sometimes needs silence, sleep, pre-children normalcy and sometimes just moments where I stare off into the void.

2. “Children do well if they can” –Ross Greene PhD (As a reminder…children grow into adults. Adults who do well if they can. Adults generally have greater levels of understanding as to how to access the “doing well” part depending on the function of their needs and the values they were raised with. Values which may be different than mine.

3. My children have a level of privilege and comfort that even to many, many standards in the US is considered luxury. We are still working class, but we were born into the jackpot of privilege for no other reason than chance. My parents are not college educated and I grew up in a single parent household for much of my single digit years. My father came to the US essentially as a refugee as a child. He came with a small handful of family because the rest were dead or missing. My husband grew up in a small town where his mom was the primary bread winner as a teacher. But we both have above average IQs, were loved, physically and environmentally safe and were raised to know we were supposed to go to college and have jobs. And the people around us were raised to just look at us and think the same thing.

4. My son is significantly disabled. Given he is 13 now, it is fair to say at this point that he will likely not live independently, drive a car, read, earn a full-time fair wage. To be clear, this is not “lack of hope”, this is reality based on his cognitive functioning and the environment which will only marginally accept him. We live in the top public schools in the state (actually, in the nation too). He plays basketball, baseball, bowling and golf in special needs leagues. He has access to medical specialists around the state to monitor his progress and needs. I fully believe he is alive and thriving because of access to local, state and federal funding for services/supplies that would be far out of reach for us as a working class family–and yet, still far less than he needs or deserves.

5. All of the above makes it very, very difficult for me to share about the present and future realities for my child who has needs and who always will have needs and dependency. In a time where regardless of politics, policy, law or any other justification posing as morality….please, please remember that this child at the border’s mother might have at one point had the opportunity to write the same 4 seemingly random ideas.

If nothing else…if desperate families from other countries can be made an example and sacrificed and divided, allowing the children to be made the pascal lambs for the “sake of the rest of us”, please don’t take for granted how our own use of resources for our children might be viewed in the same way in the near future. We also ultimately won’t fit the bigger picture.

What lengths would you go to for your own child? What risks might you take? Where would you go for them?

#autism #disability #love #parenting #HumanRights #WhatIfItWereYourChild #KeepFamiliesTogether

#ToTheEndsOfTheEarth #children #vulnerable #writer #blog

Sometimes We Cry

Jaycee Kemp1 Comment

I cried twice today in public.

Once for me and once for him.

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I cried within 3 minutes of arrival, but with dry eyes and a smile on my matte face. My diaper bag disguised as a monogrammed symbol of excess rather than a symbol of unanswered questions about wipes and formula and a change of clothes for my adolescent. No one can see what is happening behind my eyes, especially if I cannot see the pity behind theirs.

I cried twice today because sometimes the race to suppress overactive tear ducts in a maelstrom of circumstance and emotion is an unfair competition of tortoise and hare. Sometimes I try too hard and one too many drops pools before one accidentally pushes its way past the checkpoint and spills down a cheek. It is quickly wiped away.

I cried twice today as I held up a wall, socially grinning and making silent deals with God to make no one talk to me. Us moms, we were all in the same place to help, but I was not on the list of volunteers, I figured it out and showed up anyway. Even the words I needed to hear would be a sucker punch to the throat and I would then choke on false pretense that transcends somewhere poetic. I don’t know where transcendence lies exactly–there are so many reasons those tears might seem to be faulty to everyone else. So I hold them in as long as I can and my tongue is held hostage, leaving me still alone.

I cry and sometimes my child sees it happen and sometimes he does not. It doesn’t matter because he knows my humanness anyway, just like he would if his genetic dice were rolled differently. Today he did not see those drops of glistening emotion and I am no less embarrassed, no less ashamed, no less human for it either.  And neither is he.

My child is an enigma leaving us to figure out what HIS autism means, what HIS cognitive deficits mean, what HIS communication disorder means. I am tasked to teach my child how to move through this world happily, safely. Though we live in similar space as everyone else, he traverses along some alternate dimension often invisible to all the other children so I don’t really know how to do that.  And because of that, sometimes, I cry.

My child’s joy is palpable and my heart levitates outside of my body watching him experience it. He can display the weight of his world, but then laugh at the same time if presented with the right silly face. I am never sure which emotion is primary for him but my own worldview tells me joy prevails because I could never do that. And because of that, sometimes I cry.

My boy wants to be part of the world but sometimes stands motionless with shifty eyes because he knows exactly the problem, which he perceives is him. While I perceive a world that does not know what to do with him. I am certain I am the only one who reinforces that. He worries. He should be worried, because I don’t always know what to do with him either. And sometimes another child sees his light from across the room and without fanfare, crosses over, takes his hand and leads him to the dance floor to be part of the world. And because of that, sometimes I cry.

My boy buoyantly hoots and flaps and has a cognitive itch that somehow seems to be reached by repeating my name over and over and over in the space that should be the calm of our home. Diligent years he sacrificed to learn that what few words he might have are meaningful and understood because we have a limited time to teach the world otherwise. I taught him those things by making sure he always had a response. And in those times caught in an endless loop, he gets one from me, but it might be birthed breech–cord wrapped around its neck-choking and feral and blue in my fallibility. And because of that, sometimes I cry.

I worry one day my boy will read my words and will be hurt or angry or curious or furious and he will demand an explanation and he will walk out of my life because to him these were not words of awareness or advocacy or change. They were the words of HIS life. But that bittersweet day will be the day I will breathe easy with a newly missing piece who can navigate this world alone if he has to. I worry too my boy will be a man…still without the ability for any of that. And in my end, all the sacrificial words spoken on his behalf and judged were not enough to change the world around him leaving him alone.  And because of that, sometimes I cry.

These are the words of OUR life. He and I are both doing the parts we think we are supposed to do no matter how imperfectly executed. Because he is my best boy. Because I am only his mom.

And sometimes We cry.

Sometimes We Smile (or Sometimes We Cry:Part 2)

9/11. And Then Life Went On.

Jaycee KempLeave a comment
(originally posted 9/11/16)
And life went on. But never the same.

Originally posted 9/11/16)

About a week or so  before I turned 32 I realized exactly how selfish I was and just how little impact I had but at the time I kept that to myself.   For many years I thought it possible I could one day be a leader. However, my cherubic cheeks,  diminutive size, my damaged ego strength and my faulty frontal lobe betrayed me every single time.  I was a cartoon character. An adult who looked and seemed like a child in every way.  Even while playing grown up in my power suits and single karat ring, the truth was I worked in state funded nursing facilities selling hopes of a dignified death to desperate families.  And they believed me because there was a level I understood vulnerability and how to soothe it as only a broken lady-child can.

On this particular September morning I whipped into the parking lot just like I did every morning at about 8:45am. It gave me just enough time to  put my mascara on in my rear view mirror and dash across the street to the nursing home to get to my daily 9:00am.  As I dabbed the black goo onto my lower lashes, the goofy morning team people were on that local station and broke in to Foo Fighters to let everyone know that some bone head flew their plane too low to clear one of the Twin Towers in Manahattan and crashed right into it.  I shook my head and sighed as I twisted the brush back into its cocoon of gel and wondered if ANY adults knew what they were doing.  It was a beautiful day in the Midwest, though I am biased to any September day regardless of the conditions.  There is something about the promise of autumn as the slow and beautiful evolution into winter that is tangible visually, by smell, by temperature–such a visceral descent on all the senses toward the bleak and desolate blanket of cold and slush. Or perhaps I just appreciate when all good things must come to an end. As the radio duo blathered on, my assumption was that the plane was a small, single engine private jet that clipped the side of the building because the pilot couldn’t find a Starbucks before takeoff. It was worth being late to my meeting to see how this one was going to turn out, so I pulled out my makeup bag to put on the rest of my face.

At just after 9:00am, as I was thinking about cutting the engine, one of the DJs interrupted the other and there was an awkward silence for just a moment…just long enough that it caught my attention and I did not turn off my engine.

“Another plane just hit the 2nd tower.  I don’t understand what’s happening.”  And neither did I.  And neither did the rest of America. 

I sat in my car and for the next 20 minutes listened intently to verbal chaos.

I walked through the day room where there were two TVs on different stations but both were playing the same footage over and over.  There was no single engine private plane losing the edge of a wing. There was a commercial jet filled with regular people, that tore into the middle of the North Tower and immediately turned to smoke.  People on a Tuesday morning, many of which who were also on their way to their next morning meeting. Though there was still no explanation, if you stood long enough to watch all 17 minutes of footage there were certain things you knew you could probably rule out.

“Becky….Becky…can you turn this crap off and put on my shows?”  Poor Pearl. She said my name with such certainty and yet my name is not Becky and there were no shows to put on this morning.  My heart leaped and sank at the same time as Pearl’s spindly fingers wrapped around my hand.  Her wedding bands spun lopsided on her thin ring finger and the diamond dug into my palm.  She would never contemplate what just happened and likely 10 minutes from now would not even remember sitting and watching the thousands of sacrificed souls who would forever change history in our country.  I wondered if this is what dementia must be like.  I stood there watching this tragedy unfold in footage so telling, so horrifying that even after it was over, it wasn’t over as the smoke poured out of each building as if they were chimneys. Papers and ashes fluttered and floated to the ground like the first snow while bodies surreal while airborne sank as if tied to anchors at the bottom of the sea.  Footage of chaotic and confused armies of identical living dead covered in head to toe gray soot were wandering trying to find a foxhole that did not exist.  Camera crews live filmed authoritative sounding officers  standing in the lobby and strategizing their plan.  Community servants looking for leadership while nodding heads with axes raised and probably breathing the same sigh of hope I was that there were people who knew what they were doing and there would be an end of the day soon.  But then came the first BANG. loud enough that it was audible on the crappy 20 inch TV.  The workers stopped talking and looked around.

And then there it was again BANG.  And again.  I remember none of them moved or spoke a word but they looked to each other silently, uncomfortably.  It was that pause that made me know exactly what was falling to the ground over and over outside of those lobby windows.

They went back to talking about how to safely evacuate the higher floors with less authority and I was overcome with that same stillness.  And just when I had reconciled the first image of the planes crashing and exploding as the least shocking, it was shown again. Those of us who were not afflicted with dementia or a failing memory felt like we were seeing it again for the first time because now it couldn’t be confused with a bad action film that needed to be changed over to the Price is Right.  Now we had an idea of what came after as those recordings from ground zero became reality and unfurled into the collapse of the towers rather than a cut to the harried phone dispatcher who is also try to keep concerned citizens out of the red faced fire chief’s office.

And then life went on.

I had a meeting the very next day with a former employer who wanted to me to come back to them and pay my tuition for graduate school which started the following week.  I spoke nothing of 9/11 again.  An old colleague was sitting at her desk and I waved to her smiling.  She and her husband were important political figures in my city and I can only imagine what went through her mind as I bounced away seemingly oblivious to our hearts in our throats. I didn’t even ask about her son who lived right across the Hudson River.  But see…that was the thing.  I thought no one knew how to act because I didn’t.  It still was far enough away that we could all go on like normalish.  I was aware enough to know other parts of the world were much more quietly dealing with genocides and bombings and terror every single day. To assume that American lives are so much more valuable as compared to the rest of the world made me feel conflicted and I wasn’t sure what to do with that even though no one was comparing.  I was newly married, had a new job on the horizon and was two years out from a new future and I didn’t want to think about what it meant to have an invisible enemy who could turn my vacation flight into an act of war.

And that is what I told myself.

And then life went on.  And eventually it did for everyone else too.

Life wondering exactly how a loved one died or if maybe they would show up some day.  Life fearful of invisible people who ‘hate freedom’ and creating terrorists out of neighbors and seatmates in our minds.  Life of conspiracy theories about government far beyond just the tinfoil hat people. Life of knowing just how good people can be to one another.  Life of knowing just how horrible people can be to one another.  And life went on.

 

 

I See You. Happy Mother’s Day

Jaycee KempLeave a comment

 

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Who gets to be a mother?  There is no one way to become a mother.  There is no one way to be a mother.

For the ones who get to hear “Happy Mother’s Day!” and the ones who no longer do.

The Mothers who wake this morning to a day like any other, cleaning messes, refereeing scuffles, and bedding down cherub faced urchins who cannot read a calendar yet.

The Mothers who rise up in their beds this morning to be greeted by tiny sticky fingers holding a tray of homemade cards, burned toast and cereal with too much milk.

The Mothers who must work today away from their babies to make sure there is food on the table.

The Mothers who sit in their homes holding folded flags and photographs, cardless and without bouquets and understanding the kind of sacrifice most cannot comprehend.

The Mothers who wake this morning to their nests being full for the day and swell with pride and calm inhabiting space next to them in their church pews for this one Sunday.

The Mothers who have been up since 3 am bouncing colicky infants on their hip and have lost track of days to remember it is even their special day.

The Mothers who may never hear the words “I love you”, but instead know that scripted lines from Barney mean the same thing.

To the Mothers who are surrounded by children and grandchildren…nieces and nephews, whose faces are those of strangers and quietly asking where their own mothers are.

To the Mothers who wear their hearts and heavenly babies in lockets around their necks.

To the Mothers whose gardens held no water.

To the Mothers who were called by their first names, “aunt” or met their children well into adulthood.

To the Mothers who lock themselves in the bathroom from time to time in tears wondering if they can keep mothering.

To the Mothers who prayed, and saved and traveled the globe to find their children and brought them home.

To the Mothers wondering if this will be their last Mothers Day with their children.  To the Mothers wondering if this will be the last mother’s Day with their own mothers.

To the Mothers who promised they would upset the lineage of abuse or addiction for their own children, and they did.

To all the Mothers who asked for their children’s forgiveness.  To the Mothers whose children did.

For all the Mothers. I see you all.  Happy Mother’s Day from one imperfect mother to the whole village.

 

 

Now I lay me down to sleep….

Jaycee Kemp4 Comments

cherub-retouched-2

4:17am

My beautiful boy wandered into my room tonight.  His curly hair tousled around his cherub cheeks, pajama bottoms twisted in a spiral around his hips from tossing and turning…he marches in quickly as if he had somewhere important to be and then suddenly stops at the foot of my bed with purpose.  He rubs his dazed eyes all the while smiling that big Cheshire Cat grin of his. “Hug”, he says as he makes that long trip to the other side of my California king.   I can’t say I hate it when that happens.  He is warm and cuddly and doesn’t thrash and kick like he used to when he was little.  To the best of my knowledge, A2 has never slept a full night in his life and no one can tell me why.   As he gets older, he seems no worse for the wear for it either.  The stretches between night time explorations have become longer and my husband and I have become a tag team settling into separate sleeping arrangements at night over the years to ensure at least one of us wakes to the new day refreshed.   He tells me “scootch magooch” as he encroaches on the sliver of bed where I sleep and drifts off as swiftly as he made his declaration of his sleep intentions.

The thing is, my husband and I never wake up fully refreshed.  There are Things That Keep Me Up at Night. Who will hug him when we are gone?  Who else will find his sweet smile so endearing even at 3:00am?  We try to be optimistic about his future.  A2 will likely never be able to live independently, but dammit, we bought him a house and we rent it out to people today so in 15 years he will have a place to live….maybe even with 24 hour support staff and 2 or 3 other guys who are sweet spirited sports and music fans like he is.  We live in an expensive school district despite struggling to afford it to make sure he has the best education and connections for his future.   Though we are socially isolated as a family because such is the nature of autism, I remain involved with my religious congregation so he is never alone. SOMEONE will always know and recognize him.  I advocate and I write and I stay present in the disability community so he will always have that community too when it comes time for some else to step in as a guardian when I can no longer do it. A touchpoint for that kind stranger to get guidance or direction. We save the best we can.   We plan for the best possible services and outcomes to give him a meaningful life worth living. We are uncertain what services  will help house him, feed him, care for him.  We can’t be sure that there will be vocational training or health insurance or social security disability payments. All of which is unnerving when you know there will be no one to love him or snuggle with him or wipe away tears.  So we plan as best we can knowing surely, there will be some kind of services for him.

But tonight there is no sleep because now I am not so sure.  I know in the morning light I will look at everyone with a suspicious eye and wonder who around me willingly voted for another reason to keep me up at night. Half the population wanted political change and they got it and whether the overt intentions were there or not, they were willing to make children like my child the sacrificial lamb.  My child will always be dependent on others to be his voice, to protect him….his rights, his body, his dignity . My child and others like him often have no option but to live in poverty and have no political influence as adults.  I am terrified for him because no matter how much we plan, no matter how much we go without today, if it is acceptable for the leader of our country to marginalize him, make fun of him, call him the R word what does that say for the people around us who brush that off and traded my baby in for not voting for the vague “yeah, but she’s worse”?   What happens when it is a decided that my “standard retard” is a drain on the system making everyone elses’ life more difficult?  There will be a supreme court in place likely for the rest of his life who will err on the side of believing that as a universal truth.

The only politics I ever talk about in my writing is my belief that most people are good but misinformed. Perhaps not in my lifetime, but certainly in his, I believed that it was possible to change the world around him enough that true inclusion and a dignified life were possible and through that, the need for the work of disability advocacy would dwindle.  Perhaps I truly believed all that because I see the innocence in his eyes.  He is a pure soul who has helped me see good first and maybe I can spread that message for him.

So, forgive me if you were one of the people who so desperately wanted political change if I seem a little distant from you.  While I am hopeful that my fears are akin to “they’re taking all our guns from us!” it’s a bit harder for me not to be devisive when we are talking about my baby.  But don’t worry….A2 won’t judge you.  He is forgiving and will love you anyway.

Allergies and Autism and Sensory Overload, Oh My! How to Make Halloween Inclusive

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Halloween is right around the corner…here’s some of my top tips and tricks to make Halloween fun and to hand off to any of the indignant PTO moms who have forgotten that ALL kids want to have a good time…..

Running through Water

halloween

Though Halloween parties have turned into “Harvest Parties” at school, the anticipation and sentiment of Halloween is still timeless. As a parent I find myself still caught up in Halloween and creating spooky Pinterest fails and contemplating what candy I can pilfer from my child’s treat bag without him noticing. Some costumes are so realistically scary that I am not certain that my red meat consumption hasn’t finally caught up with me and am opening my door to the actual Grim Reaper himself. There is a revolving door of Elsas and Ninja Turtles who could just very likely just be the same child over and over again capitalizing on those homes who everyone knows passes out full sized candy bars.

A couple of years ago I was coordinating a party for my child’s 4th grade classroom. 20% of that classroom had food allergies. I gently reminded parents that the goal…

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Autism’s Lost Text Message

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One night as I was plugging in my son’s iPad, I noticed he got a text.  Many parents lose sleep over whether or not to invade their preadolescent’s privacy by looking at personal messages, but not me.  My child at 11 years old is completely illiterate and he had never gotten a text before.

I glanced around as if nervously waiting to get busted for reading it, but the truth was my stomach was in butterflies out of joy and excitement.

Hi A2.  This is Ryder

Are you in bed?????

If you aren’t what time do you go to bed???

Maybe I have been wrong!  Maybe school has been helping him truly cultivate and explore friendships after all! Real ones!  A2’s class picture was on the refrigerator and I ran to it to ask him which one was Ryder. I recognized several of the boys in his class but didn’t know anyone named Ryder. Unfortunately, my son has a severe language disorder called Childhood Apraxia of Speech in addition to Autism so I had no way of knowing for certain which one Ryder was because A2 enthusiastically would answer “yeh!” to every child I pointed to.

Could he be a child from the resource room?   I could not know that either because  the school will not tell me the names of any of the children in that room due to “privacy”.  The kids with whom he spends the majority of the day.  The kids who also probably never get or send texts or receive invites to play. The kids who can’t just ask each other and then come home and tell their moms.

My husband and I were feeling almost hypervigilant over where we would know this child from since the area code was from a city we lived in many years ago.  A2’s real name is an unusual one, so clearly this is meant for him.

How did he get A2’s number since A2 doesn’t even know it?  Does this child comprehend that A2 can’t read? Could this be an adult?  A teacher?  A predator?!

My joy was quickly turning to irrationality as my husband texted back to give this Ryder person a piece of our mind!

As it turns out, Ryder was trying to get in touch with A2.  Just not MY A2. 

Ryder was in 6th grade and had just moved and had met a new friend at his new school (not ours) that day, exchanged numbers and did what every 12 year old does when making new friends.

A2 was contacted by a ghost. An illusion of a promise of the world to come.

The coincidence lacked the sparkle of serendipity and sent a gut punch that made the butterflies swirling in my tummy fly out of my mouth and away into the sky out of reach.  One three lined text of 19 words, 57 characters, 6 question marks and 2 happy face emojis sent me into a 10 minute emotional tailspin ending in a disappointment.

While my reaction may seem dramatic and my sweet boy was oblivious, man alive, I know he would have LOVED for that text to be his if he knew. You see, that would mean someone wanted to tell him that they got a new skin in Minecraft, or ask him if he wanted to ride bikes to the park or see if he’s allowed to see that Jason Bourne movie. It would mean that someone might be sneaking him a You Tube video he isn’t allowed to watch at home or asking him if he thought the new girl was cute.

It would mean that someone was thinking of him right at that very moment. It would mean he had value to people other than me and his dad.  It would mean he was growing up.

Before this whole parent thing came along and made me loopy with worry, I used to help families move their loved ones into nursing homes. One particular instance, I helped take inventory of a man’s belongings and I asked him to give me his wallet so I could start a resident account for him to keep his $10 bill safe. He refused and his wife asked to speak privately with me in the hall.

“I know he has no need for money here, but is there any way you can make an exception to let him keep it with him?”

I’m certain I did not handle the situation with sensitivity or understanding because she replied, ” We were never wealthy people but he was proud of the fact he always put food on the table or could hand his sons money when they needed something. That money in his pocket makes him feel like a man. And that, child, is all he has left to feel like one.”.

I let him keep the money and have contemplated since then what the last material thing I would hold on to would be and why.

I just didn’t realize that it would come earlier in life and be a random text message that was not meant for my child.

These things.  These little things that give us a perceived sense of value–that we anchor to other things and make them into something more.  Ultimately, the text itself was probably meaningless to A2.  He however does very much care about all those things that receiving a text implies.

Having a way to communicate with the world makes you a part of it and a rolling digital scroll of blue and white messages are like the receipt to prove it nowadays.  My friend’s daughter left her phone at home while she was at overnight camp and powered up when she returned home to 1022 unread text messages. I never did ask if she read them all.

I do know that A2 will never experience the betrayal that can come with adolescent friendships and are exacerbated by text messages.  No girlfriend break up text.  No secret texts between friends who are standing right there with him, exploiting his trust.  No anxiety over the three dots or “read” receipt.

No.  None of that.

While I am disappointed that Ryder misdialed and reached out to the wrong A2, just for a moment I thought about grounding A2 from his device because he knows he shouldn’t be texting so late.

9/11. And Then Life Went On.

Jaycee Kemp1 Comment

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About a week before my 32nd birthday, I realized exactly how selfish I was and just how little impact I made in the world and at the time I kept that to myself. In my youth, I thought it was possible I could one day be a leader, however my cherubic cheeks, diminutive size, damaged ego strength and my faulty frontal lobe betrayed me.  I was a cartoon character. An adult who looked and seemed like a child in every way.  Even while playing grown up in my power suits and wedding ring, the truth was I worked in management in state funded nursing facilities selling hopes of a dignified death to desperate families.  They believed me because there was a level I understood vulnerability and how to soothe it as only a broken lady-child can.

On this particular September morning I whipped into the parking lot of the Skatetown roller rink just like I did every morning at about 8:45am. It gave me just enough time to  put my mascara on in my rear view mirror and dash across the street to the nursing home to get to my daily 9:00am.  As I dabbed my lower lashes, the goofy morning team people on a local radio station, broke in to Foo Fighters to let everyone know that some bone head flew their plane too low to clear one of the Twin Towers in Manahattan and crashed right into it.  I shook my head and sighed as I twisted the brush back into its cocoon of gel and wondered if ANY adults knew what they were doing.  It was a beautiful day in the Midwest, though I am biased to any September day regardless of the conditions.  There is something about the promise of autumn as the slow and beautiful evolution into winter that is tangible visually, by smell, by temperature–such a visceral descent on all the senses toward the bleak and desolate blanket of cold and slush. Or perhaps I just appreciate when all good things must come to an end. As the radio duo blathered on, my assumption was that the plane was a small, single engine private jet that clipped the side of the building because the pilot couldn’t find a Starbucks before takeoff. It was worth being late to my meeting to see how this one was going to turn out, so I pulled out my makeup bag to put on the rest of my face.

At just after 9:00am, as I was thinking about cutting the engine and heading into the building, one of the DJs interrupted the other and there was an awkward silence for just a moment…just long enough that it caught my attention and I did not turn off my engine.  “Another plane just hit the 2nd tower.  I don’t understand what’s happening.”  And neither did I.  And neither did the rest of America.  I sat in my car for the next 20 minutes and listened intently to verbal chaos.  Once I realized no one knew anything, I dashed inside to the tail end of a the daily meeting I typically took over and attempted to lead out of frustration for lack of accountability.

“Did you guys hear about the Twin Towers?”  I asked breathlessly setting my purse on the table in front of me. Of course, they hadn’t. They were mostly grown ups and had been at work since 8:30am, like I should have been.  “Some sort of accident. It’s probably satellite or something messing with air traffic control.”  I of course had no idea, but I was credible enough that people were concerned.

I walked back through the day room where there were two TVs on different stations but both were playing the same footage over and over.  There was no single engine private plane losing the edge of a wing. There was a commercial jet filled with people. Regular people, that tore into the middle of the North Tower and immediately turned to smoke.  People on a Tuesday morning, many of which who were also on their way to their next morning meeting. Though there was still no explanation, if you stood long enough to watch all 17 minutes of footage there were certain things you knew you could probably rule out.

“Becky! Becky…can you turn this crap off and put on my shows?”

Poor Pearl. She said my name with such certainty and yet my name is not Becky and there were no shows to put on this morning.  My heart leaped and sank at the same time as Pearl’s spindly fingers wrapped around my hand.  Her wedding bands spun lopsided on her thin ring finger and the diamond dug into my palm.  She would never contemplate what just happened and likely 10 minutes from now would not even remember sitting and watching the thousands of sacrificed souls who would forever change history in our country.  I wondered if this is what dementia must be like.  I stood there watching this tragedy unfold in footage so telling, so horrifying that even after it was over, it wasn’t over as the smoke poured out of each building as if they were chimneys. Papers and ashes fluttered and floated to the ground like the first snow while bodies surreal while airborne sank as if tied to anchors at the bottom of the sea.  Footage of chaotic and confused armies of identical living dead covered in head to toe gray soot were wandering trying to find a foxhole that did not exist.  Camera crews live filmed authoritative sounding officers  standing in the lobby and strategizing their plan.  Community servants looking for leadership while nodding heads, axes raised and probably breathing the same sigh of hope I was that there were people who knew what they were doing and there would be an end of the day soon.

But then came the first BANG!! Loud enough that it was audible on the crappy 20 inch TV.  The workers stopped talking and looked around.  There it was again.  BANG.  And again.  I remember none of them moved or spoke a word but they looked to each other silently, uncomfortably.  It was that pause that made me know exactly what was falling to the ground over and over outside of those lobby windows.  They went back to talking about how to safely evacuate the higher floors with less authority and I was overcome with that same stillness. Just when I had reconciled the first image of the planes crashing and exploding as the least shocking, it was shown again. Those of us who were not afflicted with dementia or a failing memory felt like we were seeing it again for the first time because now it couldn’t be confused with a bad action film that needed to be changed over to the Price is Right.  Now we had an idea of what came after as those recordings from ground zero became reality and unfurled into the collapse of the towers rather than a cut to the harried phone dispatcher who is also try to keep concerned citizens out of the red faced fire chief’s office.

And then life went on.

I had a meeting the very next day with a former employer who charmed me back with a lucrative deal.  I spoke nothing of 9/11 again.  An old colleague was sitting at her desk and I waved to her smiling and telling her of my soon to be new-old life and how I looked forward to seeing her regularly soon.  She and her husband were political figures in my city and I can only imagine what went through her mind as I bounced away seemingly oblivious to our hearts in our throats. I didn’t even ask about her son who lived right across the Hudson River.

But see…that was the thing.  I thought no one knew how to act because I didn’t.

It still was far enough away that we could all go on like normalish.  I was politically aware enough to know other parts of the world were much more quietly dealing with genocides and bombings and terror every single day. To assume that American lives are so virtuous and valuable as a price above rubies as compared to the rest of the world made me feel conflicted and I wasn’t sure what to do with that even though no one was comparing.  I was newly married, had a new job on the horizon and was two years out from a new future and I didn’t want to think about what it meant to have an invisible enemy who could turn my vacation flight into an act of war.

And that is what I told myself. And then life went on.  And eventually it did for everyone else too.

Life wondering exactly how a loved one died or if maybe they would show up some day.  Life fearful of invisible people who ‘hate freedom’ and creating terrorists out of neighbors and seatmates in our minds.  Life of conspiracy theories about government far beyond just the tinfoil hat people. Life of knowing just how good people can be to one another.  Life of knowing just how horrible people can be to one another.  And life went on.

The Mending Wall

Jaycee KempLeave a comment

IMG_6047These wildflowers grow on a narrow strip of grass between someone’s property up against a century old stone wall and a city sidewalk near my home. There is a handwritten sign on a stake stating simply PLEASE DO NOT MOW OR SPRAY WILDFLOWERS. THANK YOU. While seeing them in full bloom one might wonder why someone would do that even when instructed to.

Today we were shaken again to our core. Today we were reminded again that nothing should be taken for granted. I am angry that again I feel afraid for my children when they leave the comforts of home.  I am conflicted because A2 is sick and at a time I should be saddened for 50 families and frightened at the fact that laws continue to exist that allow for permits for individuals to decide the fate of 50 people in one rain shower of shots. People who were given the right to exist with equal love are gone and we are all reminded there is still an opposing view.  But A2 is the kind of sick that makes his father talk in circles and makes me stone faced and logical. The kind of sick that sinks our instinctual fears as parents until the wind kicks up again and fills our sails to let us know it’s smooth waters soon. I can’t fear all things at the same time.

So I can stop to show you these flowers I saw today. And you can stop to see them. And we can all appreciate that someone stepped up to make sure that they bloomed to their full beauty for all of us. Please see them. Just for this moment. ‪#‎onepulse‬