A Day in the life of me

I had just gotten played. By a sixteen-year-old. 

“What do you mean he’s failing all his classes?” Then I remembered I was at work and it was a small office. Even at the best of times I have a loud voice. “Wait. Let me go outside.” Behind our building is a small yard enclosed by a chain link fence. I paced, probably resembling a bear in a cage. An angry bear in a cage. 

“You didn’t check the online school app?” asked his caseworker. Whatever her name was. Mrs. Burnett. The caseworkers tend to blend over the years. Although I remember the teachers’ names their faces fade. There have been two many IEP meetings and I’m too anxious at them anyway. I imagine I’m being judged. They look to me for answers I don’t have. That’s because the only one who really knows is Alex. And I’m not sure even he knows them. 

“I didn’t,” I probably growled this. Mama bear wasn’t happy except this time it was with her own offspring. I’m glad it was slow today at work. I’m sure Ms. Burnett wasn’t happy she had called me. I could picture her holding the phone away from her ear. “He told me his grades were his responsibility and therefore he’d keep track of them.” I had to give Alex credit for deviousness. He managed to sound mature, like he was taking responsibility when all this time what he really wanted was for me to get off his damned back. It had worked. 

“So, you agreed with him that they were his responsibility.” She was polite. My mother would not be. She would say you actually believed him? 

“Yep. I was stupid,” I would tell her. Meanwhile I’m listening to this caseworker and wondering why I was this stupid. I’m remembering. He is eight years old and told me the wind had blown the homework out of his backpack. Even though it was completely zipped up. Turns out in was in a ditch in a nearby park. He never admitted he had tossed them there but I’m not stupid. Another time he was about the same age and asked me to sign a blank piece of paper. I kept asking why. He insisted. I said “never sign blank papers. It’s a bad practice.” Turns out he had a note I had to sign saying he was failing math. He, I assumed, hoped I’d sign a blank piece of paper and not ask questions. 

“Well I don’t blame you. They are. But he’s sleeping in class again. And not doing his work. So we want to know if you have any suggestions for him.” 

“Throttle him.” I said. “I won’t tell if you don’t.” 

 Apparently, this is an unacceptable practice at the high school though because while she laughed, she did say she would be unable to do that. Pity. In truth I was frustrated. I was beyond that. I was thoroughly sick of the subject, sick to the bone. This issue had been an ongoing issue since first grade. Alex was a terrible student. I should have a dollar for every time I reminded myself that Einstein had been a terrible student. Darwin as well. So was my father and now he had a master’s in education. He and Alex are very much alike. I tried not to think about the fact so did my coworker, who had done time in prison on a felony charge. If I thought about that too much it would do my blood pressure no good. Alex has his labels. Speech apraxia. ADHD. Anxiety. Deviousness. And he might have a new one tonight-Soon to be dead. 

“Do you think he’s not understanding the subject matter and needs tutoring?” I asked her. I was still pacing. Perhaps Alex isn’t the only one with anxiety and ADHD. It was a nice sunny day outside as I recall. It wasn’t raining. Thank goodness. Outside was the only place I could have privacy. We have rooms in our office, but the soundproofing doesn’t exist. Fortunately, my boss is understanding. Or afraid. I’m not sure which. Once during an argument over-I forget what, but it had to do with the quality of my work-he had told me “I know you’re worried about Alex.” I had promptly told him something about minding his own business. That might have gotten me fired except we’ve known each other a long time. 

“We know he can do the work,” said Mrs. Burnett. “And sometimes he does appear to be sleeping but he isn’t because he does answer questions. He’s also not completing his tests.” 

“Let him fail.” I heard dead silence. Teachers don’t like hearing that but in my mind this was what it was going to come to. I didn’t know what else to do. I had pushed him for eleven years. I wanted him to be eighteen for only one reason. When he turns eighteen his IEP and his teachers become his problem. I love him. I’m worried. It’s probably his anxiety. I know all too well what anxiety does. I flunked out of nursing school from it alone. Anxiety shuts down the mind. It’s an intrusive voice bringing viruses like those in a hard drive. I know all this myself because I used to hear them in high school. Then in a hospital setting I believe I behaved like a crazy person. I don’t know of course but I couldn’t do the simplest task. Nor did I know what was wrong, not in 1985. So I know what anxiety does. But if I have to keep on him much longer, they’ll have to increase my blood pressure medication. “I’m serious. Maybe he had to fail to learn a lesson. If that’s what it takes so be it. After all, in a year and a half he’ll be in college. Better he learns now.” 

“We don’t want to see him fail.” I think the problem is they can’t afford to see him fail. The schools must keep up their state grades. The teachers want to keep their test scores up too. But she said more. “He’s a smart kid. He’s funny. And insightful. He can do this. We all know it.” 

I managed to find an answer from somewhere. A plan. They wanted one so I gave it to them. “He’s in counseling for his anxiety but we’ve cut back the sessions. We can increase them again. Also, I’ll take him in to see the pediatrician. She can perhaps recommend something.” I didn’t want to put him back on ADHD medication. Nor did I not want to if it would help him. It wasn’t ADHD I thought was the problem. It was his anxiety I thought. I know what that’s like, the panic attacks. It can cause ADHD like behavior. I was caught between realizing he might have a problem and still wanting to kill him. Mainly I wanted to kill him because if he did have a problem, he could have told me. This isn’t much of a solution but it satisfied the school. We’d look for answers. If Alex knows them, he certainly isn’t telling them to me. 

Oh yeah, a voice inside me said, you had panic attacks in college and told no one. Because you thought something was seriously wrong with you. You vomited from the anxiety and couldn’t eat.  And you wouldn’t tell anyone if you needed help now. 

Whatever, I told myself. Shut up. I went back inside my office. 

“Are you all right?” my boss, John, asked me. “Do we need to call the men with the butterfly nets?” In his own way he’s telling me he’s concerned. 

“I’m fine,” I tell him. You may be posting my bail but otherwise I’m fine. “Just my son not doing his schoolwork again.” 

“It’s his responsibility now,” John said. “Not yours.” 

Tell the school that, I thought. “You’re absolutely right. It is HIS responsibility.” 

My next task was to do some actual work relating to my chosen field of prosthetics/orthotics.  I had a letter to write to a miserable insurance company. This one I’m sure was hiring the kind of people so cruel even the IRS didn’t want them. God bless the man but Obamacare had made the insurance companies even worse. They were denying a claim. We had made a patient of ours a custom back brace. She had scoliosis and compression fractures so she was in a lot of pain. This was no easy task to make a custom back brace. At least not for her. She had to be wrapped in plaster bandage to get a mold of her torso. Then we seal it and fill it with plaster. Then we pull flexible plastic around the mold to make the brace. So they denied a sixty-year-old woman with a severe back deformity a custom-made brace we made so she could get some relief from pain, walk around her community, and have a life. She had told me there was nothing more they could do for her and this brace really did help her. Not that the insurance company cared. I don’t agree with acts of violence but so help me I could see how people are driven to it. Since I’m a calm civilized person and a mother I contented myself with swearing, hoping there was a hell for such people as these insurance company adjustors, and wrote a formal letter. I explained politely the reasoning why she needed the brace, that the doctor had ordered it, that an off the shelf one had been tried unsuccessfully and that it was medically necessary. Let’s hope they can read, I thought. Sometimes I doubted they could. 

At home I stood in the doorway of my house and shouted “Alex! We need to-“ I stopped. He was sitting at the table, working on the laptop. He said, “I know.” 

“You know? What do you know?” 

“What you’re going to say.” He looked in my direction, but not at me. He’s taller than I am now and very thin. Blue eyes and dirty blond hair that needs to be cut. It doesn’t grow down. Instead it curls and grows outward and upward into an afro. Eighties rock star, that’s him. 

Flashback. He’s three years old and we’re going to a testing facility in South Florida. It was through the school system, to see what services he needed. I don’t know how he felt but I was glad. I was too relieved to be afraid because you see knowing the worse truth is better than not knowing anything. Because when you don’t know anything you figure the worse. At least I do. For six months I had watched him become more and more withdrawn. I had cried in the shower, my favorite place to do this. I had asked my husband for answers he didn’t have either. I had prayed. I had taken him to a pediatrician who said “he’ll grow out of it.” And I had thought “you’re an idiot.” I had gotten a second opinion. We had tried speech therapy. It hadn’t worked. Now I wasn’t sure what to do.  If he wanted to do what I asked him he would. If he didn’t, he’d fall on the floor and lie there. He didn’t speak. He didn’t dress himself and he wouldn’t toilet train. He didn’t interact with anyone else but me. Now, today we were going to find out why. We would find out if my sister in law was right about his having autism. I went alone. I was married then. My husband probably had to work. I think he had just started his new job. 

Now here I am arguing with him as if he was any other teenager. I probably should feel grateful. There are mothers that would probably give their right arm to be me. 

I’ll be grateful later. When he graduates. Right now I’m too upset to do that. 

“Your caseworker must have talked to you,” I said. 

“That bitch,” he said. “She’s always interfering.” 

I dropped my keys in the bowl on my china cabinet. “Alex. She’s just doing her job. If you want her off your back you need to do yours.” 

“I am.” he said. 

“Alex. I don’t know what you’re thinking but she cares. She said you were a decent kid, smart. What do you think? It’s not like she calls me for her health. She calls me at work because she thinks you’re worth her time.” He says nothing. “Look, last year even though you were failing algebra your teacher wrote you a damned letter of recommendation. No one would do any of this if they thought you were a lost cause.” I walked over to him and saw he was picking at his fingers again. Around his cuticles the skin was irritated and red. Anxiety. I don’t do that. Instead I rub my fingers across my mouth and my lip. Something about this comforts me. He has my problem and with it will come another. Denial and hiding away. For me in books, for him in video games. 

“I’m taking the controllers,” I told him. Nothing from him. “I’m taking them. I think you’re becoming game addicted. Did you make yourself lunch today?” 

He looked away. “I forgot.” 

So he has not eaten at all today. He came home to play video games. “They’re going in my car along with the cords to the PS4. When your grades are better you can have them back.” 

“Good,” he said. I don’t know if he’s sincere or humoring me. Sometimes he’ll push me, telling me my punishment isn’t good enough. That’s when I tell him he’s a fool, that he’s digging his own grave. But this time I think he’s sincere. 

“We’re also going to see the pediatrician.” I don’t want to do that. I am afraid she’ll want to put him on ADHD meds. I often fear they are a crutch and God help me everyone will tell me I’m wrong but so be it. On the other hand if they’ll help him, I don’t want to say no either. I’m caught. One is the road to wellness. The other is the road to hell and I can’t tell which is which. Whatever. I’m exhausted and need help now. I can’t even ask his father. I could but he won’t answer. “We’re going to at least see what she recommends. We don’t have to do it but we’re going to hear what she has to say.” 

“Okay,” he says quietly and tells me he is doing his homework. 

I can’t ask his father. The man walked out on the boys the Sunday after thanksgiving a couple of years ago. He went for a walk once dark night and never came home. It turned out later he had a heart attack and collapsed on the sidewalk. Alex and Mark had gone to bed, hoping I think, that something really wasn’t wrong. None so blind. And I can’t blame them. Now Mark is in college and I hope opening up to his girlfriend. It certainly isn’t to me. He’s closed up. Not always, but he doesn’t talk about his feelings. I hope he does to someone. 

Flashback. The kids’ uncle gave them the news and took them to a diner. When I came Mark remained sitting looking shell shocked. Alex got up, came over to me and simply put his head on his shoulder. He said nothing to me just did that. It was a silent cry for comfort that I hope I gave. There wasn’t much I could offer. I just gave him a hug. There was nothing that could be said. 

Alex is in scouts. Tonight he will get a new rank. Star rank. One more rank before Eagle. His scoutmaster comes up to me. “He’s come such a long way.” 

“Yes.” I said.  

“He would barely talk,” James said. “I really didn’t think he’d make it this far. He’s come a long way,” he said again. 

I smiled. “He has.” I said. We congratulate Alex and I head home. I’m thinking.  

“You can’t run ahead filling all the pot holes for him,” This was my mother. “He’ll never learn that way anyhow.” 

“No but if he needs help, he should get it,” I told her. 

“That’s not the same as filling potholes,” she said. 

He’s come a long way. And I smile because I know it’s true.