It is hardly ever -- as in almost never -- that I make a new dish which is not a dessert and both children receive it with enthusiasm. One might gleefully review the dish and the other will say, "Well, I ate it because I'd rather not starve." Or they both will express concerns about some strain of flavoring/texture and offer advice on its next execution. But this, this they loved.

You could make it, too.
Beautiful people are all, yk, What is up with Garçon? And I make a grimacing mouth noise and say I don't care. Which is really the key, the not caring. I was talking to a beautiful gal on a ship-to-shore call a week or so ago and she posited that she often wondered if she could "do it all again" with her kids, she wondered about what she might change. I said, "I would send my children right into the arms of a professional caregiver and have a wonderful job. Good-bye! Take what you can, give nothing back!"
More or less.
I was not thinking in the front part of my brain about her wonderful job and hired assists when I said that, and then she laughed and said she'd thought about homeschooling and staying home. I told her that was nonsense.
But I thought more about the question, since the time we talked, and I think that what I do think is that if I could do it all over, I would focus less on the long-term with him -- because what in the bloody fuck do I care if he has meth teeth? We have insurance! Never brush! -- and more on just having a pleasant day every day. Which was of course unthinkable when he digs his heels in about everything, but now I don't give a fuck what he does with his days. Demands are as goes: chore chart; positive fucking attitude.
It's funny because people often react as OMGHZ, chore chart! Abusive, horrible, Cinderella! Perhaps they are boiling their children in brat juice.
The children's chore chart is just:
- make bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, wash up after breakfast.
- fold household laundry (dishtowels, napkins, etc, which I have laundered) and put away.
- practice musical instruments.
- tidy up playroom and/or bedroom for a quick 15-minute pickup. go around the house and find yr belongings you have left laying around in common areas and put them away.
- Help wash up after lunch and dinner.
- Shower, brush teeth, wipe down the sink, tub and mirror after yr ablutions. Go to bed.
Three times each week they are called upon to do their own laundry, one of those days weekly involves changing the sheets on their bed. Once a week, I ask them to together climb around on the kitchen floor, each with a brush, and scrub it clean. Our kitchen has less than 100 square feet of flooring, so whatever.
Maybe it seems like a lot, but they are here all day, with time, oodles of time. So, it is all self-care, toward the mastery of which all children should be applying themselves, but especially those who are in their own home all the livelong day.
Anyhow, so as long as that is all taken care of by the end of each day, and no one hits me or thrown anything at me, or destroys my house, I'm fine with it. He is free to play with string or whatever other analog pursuits he enjoys. Whatever. He can read and write better than most adults writing commentary on the internets; he can solve for x. Good. His long-term is not my problem, because his adulthood is not my concern. It has been relaxing and removed the endless tension under which we all labored from the house. Things have been remote for all that time, but it beats bared teeth on both sides.
A few weeks ago, in the used bookstore, I saw a copy of the David Kiersey book about the Myers-Briggs/Jung temperament sorting. I paused and remembered how we came across the book in high school, all of us testing and temperament-sorting, in our junior year, memorizing each others' types, chiding or lauding one another for being so SJ or rather NT, or whichever.
Mari and I differ by one letter (J/P), the qualifying of information endemic to each causing a lot of confusion in our newlywed years. The book -- picked up at the library because I spotted it and remembered it being a gas -- cleared that up quickly + permanently, to our great delight.
After all that positive memory, I realized that maybe some of the issue with or son was one of native temperament this book could illuminate. I mean, I am tired of him, but leave no stone unturned. I administered the sorter thingy, during which time he surprised both of us with his immense capacity to be self-reflective. Um, excuse me: All of this child's letters are backwards from ours. Who sent this changeling to us?
But that in no way explains everything and in the way that we leave no stone unturned, we took him for a new evaluation by a group of pediatricians he had never seen in this capacity. Yk, the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory of Pediatrics, over the river. I mean, you know, he has been evaluated long before this, at children's hospitals, with no outcome other than purple-faced people outraged that a child stonewalled them (I understand) or a different sort of pert appreciation of his sly refusals combined with his great appeal (am familiar with that, too). Not to mention all the aborted therapies, which may or may not be his fault but in any case mystify me because what kind of social skills group expels a child for acting like Helen Keller? I mean, did you want to only rehabilitate the easy children? Unprofessional. Like that stupid twat we wasted our money on this summer. But OMG, listen to this. Crazy in a new dimension.
We took him in for a regular, old, boilerplate psych evaluation. It was billed as a Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation. In August -- after everything with the running away, etc, the stupid twat, etc, destroying, there was a lot going on -- I made the appointment. November was the first date, don't you know? (Whatever.) In the meantime, I crafted my new I Don't Give A Fuck method of childrearing (this child). It has been peaceful here. There has been talking. Most of the time, expectations are met after one reminder, instead of 17.
We showed up, prepared for our 4-6 hour exertions, everyone mostly sunny, fine. We filled out our parent questionnaires, had lunch with Garçon, sent him back, met with one of the purviewers and our completed forms. We gave her a little history, way back to preschool, but mostly told her our concerns boiled down to [this], and the rest you know. (Or don't, if you are a hideous, lumpen jackal of a voyeur.)
Things were winding down and Mari & I were sitting with Fille in the waiting area, wondering what we would do about dinner, when we were called back for the day's closure with the entire evaluating team.
"We absolutely agree with your concern and we think that he needs to be taken in to a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation and possibly an admission. You need to do it now," is what the lead psychologist told us.
Ok, so you already know (unless you are a hideous, lumpen jackal with her hands in her panties right now) that I wanted that to happen. That during the summer I called around to hospitals to find out who could admit him. He can keep it together pretty fine for a 4-6 hour evaluation: he is a lovely child when you want nothing from him, but I thought that over time, things -- the kind of behaviors about which I raise my hands heavenward -- would become clearer to professionals.
So, that part was fine with me, like, Thank God we could try for some answers. But what was weird -- and it was Mari that intercepted this -- was the way she was so urgent -- You have to do it now. Do it today. Go here. DO not stop at home, do not collect belongings nor $200. Now.
Mari asked, "Did he threaten one of you?" She said no. So I asked what was it that came up in the eval that created such a immediate concern. She was vague in her response. You know, concerning things made her concerned. And also, things beyond her ken, more in the field of psychiatry.
I kind of shrugged, yk, because OK. Mari had some more questions about remanding his son to an inpatient psychiatric facility and then I asked questions, most of which were procedural and about the facility.
I specifically asked if they would have a bed. Those words actually came out of my mouth. "You want us to go here, but will they do the intake evaluation even if they do not have a bed, because if we are going right there, I want to be sure this is where we should go."
Go, go now. Go.
Whatever. We weren't doing anything anyhow. You know, except eating dinner and planning for a long weekend of Nutcracker shenanigans. So we went. It was actually quite near our house, on the other end of the world from the Children's Hospital. We were nervous, but OK. I feel better about committing my child while I am not super-fucking pissed-off at him, because this way it is a hospitalization, not an imprisonment; assistance, not exile. While we waited for the valet to take our car, I texted Mrs Israeli to let her know.
The hospital to which we were told to go, go now -- even after we expressed mild procedural concerns -- go, go now-- even after Mari expressed a wanting to know of a vague idea of some kind of hint about the DSM, some shred of information that might bear us aloft on this trip , even after I checked & double-checked that we did not need any paperwork from the one hospital to go to the next -- go, go now-- OMG, DO YOU KNOW THAT A. THE FACILITY DOES NOT PERFORM PEDIATRIC INTAKE EVALUATIONS and B. DOES NOT HAVE A BED FOR THIS CHILD IN THEIR PEDES WARD, EVEN IF THEY DID??????
And the admissions director was super-great, even as he was stupefied by who sent us here and why the hell without calling to make sure there was a bed and what the hell because anyone that answered the phone would have told anyone who called to make sure we could get in there that they do not do pediatric intake?
He asked us to wait, mostly so that he could figure out how & where to straighten this psychologist out, and also because why not? He was most perturbed by the fact that we had no idea what her findings were that sent us to him. I offered -- in an uncharacteristically diplomatic way -- that it seemed reasonable to me that she did not want to make a psychiatric diagnosis, as she was not a psychiatrist. Mr Admissions Director scoffed. I shrugged. He took the appropriate numbers from us to investigate and invited us to sit in the reception area.
I spent the next few minutes asking Garçon how things went at the other hospital, during the eval. He said he did some puzzles, did some math, nothing happened. I took out the Parent Fact Sheet she gave us while she was telling us about the urgency of remanding him tonight. I asked him if he said he was going to hurt himself, or any one, any of us? He said he had not. I asked him if he said anything delusional or talked about wanting to die or feeling dead? He said he had not. I gave him the Parent Fact Sheet, entitled, In A Crisis, with the homicidal/suicidal, delusional, depressed/anxious bullet points, and I said, "Honey, did you say anything that would make them think any of these things?"
He was like Beaver Cleaver. "No, Mom. Why would I say those things?"
Time went on, the sun set, finally Mari was on the phone with the psychologist. She was telling him about how she has just -- since she got his beleaguered voice-mail message -- made arrangements (fool me twice, shame on Tallahassee) for us to go to a different facility, four towns over. I saw what he was writing and said nothing. He asked me, cupping the phone, if I had any questions for her. I asked him if she told him what it was that had her so spun up about him. He frowned & shrugged. "Not really," is what he said.
I vowed to get an answer from her & held out my hand. He said later he knew it was on when I stepped outside. I asked her why on Earth we were there, when they can not service us, because of all the reasons they could not, when I specifically asked her questions, the accurate answers to which would have prevented this waste of my time. She told me -- same as she had Mari -- that since Mari called her she made arrangements with this intake person at another psych facility, and I cut her off.
"You need to tell me why it is you think he should be admitted and you need to be specific, because I am not driving all over tri-state, based on your vague concerns. I gave you the courtesy earlier and now I am wasting my time, and you blew it."
I swear to God, sometime in the next two minutes, the words "Seeing as he is not at this time in crisis" came out of her mouth.
What did you just say?
I mean, really? Since we have been home, I asked Mari, did I hallucinate the part where she told us we had to go right away? To have him evaluated right away? He said, waving the Parent Fact Sheet at me, "It says In A Crisis right at the top of this!"
Man. I swear to God. I should have been motherfucking Black Mamba.
"You are telling me he is not in a crisis, which is something we already knew, because we live with him, but knowing that, especially, we took you at yr word and believed that something dark was revealed which was truly awful and now I am out here, wasting my time, and we are all tired and my daughter is dancing in the goddamn Nutcracker in two weeks and Thanksgiving is in a few days and we should all be in bed and you think this is going to help our family thrive? Are you serious?"
She tried to turn it around on the facility to which she sent us, and told me that she could not believe that they could not accommodate us. I was so mad, it was like, yk, Incompetent Boob, please meet PMS.
"They do not even have pediatric intake eval here. Even if we'd had a psych eval done in your office before we set out -- they do not have a bed in their facility at this moment. They are full. And we are not having a crisis!"
I mean, it was like she prescribed prime rib and then sent us to an ice-cream parlor. What the hell? Then she started with a lot of bluster about this other facility and their policies and blur blur and mercifully, because God is so good, Mr Admissions Director came out to smoke a cigarette. And I said, "Would you like to talk to him, Dr?" and she said, "Yes, because I had information from -- " and I cut her off.
"Don't tell it to me, because I don't care about it. Shhh, good-bye."
Then I gave him the phone. They sorted it out, procedurally, and we are going to have Thanksgiving and The Nutcracker and then rendezvous with the psychiatric hospital. We are going to do it civilized, with a packed bag and things to take, and pick some time where we can come visit a lot. Garçon has never even spent one night away from us. And then we will see.
There is so much more, but honestly, we still have telephones in this world.
Remember back when I wrote that every fucking time we collide with one of these "experts" fucking it up, it is a galvanizing shot in our collective arm? Yes. So that is good. People are prowling around the house, feeling a little quiet glimmer of camaraderie. Good God.
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