Hearty

The often elusive, but always sought after concept:  Happiness. Websters says that Happiness is defined as a :  a state of well-being and contentment :  joy. b   :   a pleasurable or satisfying experience . That seems so incredibly oversimplified.   Is that even a good definition?   Yes, my boys love semantics, but let’s face it – so do I.   So…. I don’t think of ‘happiness’ as a state of ‘contentment’.  I might actually argue that happiness and contentment are at odds with each other.  Where happiness says ‘this is awesome’ contentment says ‘this will do’.  Then there is ‘joy’, which seems to be better suited to ‘elation’ than ‘happiness’, and ‘pleasurable’ seems to imply something physical, not emotional.  So I am struggling with the idea of happiness these days.  Oh, did I give you the wrong idea?  It isn’t a lack of happiness that has me questioning the concept, and delving into this random existentialist conversation about an intangible ideal, it is the opposite:  I’m happy.  Gabe...

I didn’t cry when my boys started kindergarten.   Not when Gabe did, not when Nick did, and even last week when I dropped Matthew off for his first day – with the knowledge that it was going to be a struggle – no tears. But when I put Gabe on the short bus this morning, I couldn’t help it.   Tears just started pouring down my face as they pulled away with my 4 th grader.   Today I cried with the acceptance that my son is not only different and has special needs, but he always will.  Another part of the grieving process, I suppose, as each time I accept something else, another something seems to be lost.   It might sound confusing, right?  That I haven't accepted that Gabe would always have special needs, but the reality is that we all start off with the idea that we are going to 'therapy' our kids to the point of mainstreaming.  Or at least I did...but each year I get closer to the realization it isn't going to happen.  Today, I actually got it. ...

This is going down in history as one of the most emotionally exhausting weeks of my life.   The only thing I can come up with off the top of my head that immediately trumps it is the week Gabe was in the Inpatient Psychiatric Hospital.   So, yeah, this has been a long week. Let’s start last Friday, where I sat through a three hour meeting going over the results from the 15 or so assessments that Gabriel had through the school district over the summer.   No ‘shocking’ news, nothing we weren’t actually aware of, but let me tell you that watching page, after page, after PAGE of testing results showing him at the LESS than first percentile in virtually everything (he scored 1.5 – 2.0 deviations below average on EVERY.THING.) is a version of heart wrenching insanity that encompasses your very being.   Add sitting there with the (soon-to-be) ex-husband, and the feeling is like submerging yourself in a bathtub of cold water right before dropping the hairdryer in.   Electrifyingly terrible. An...