Liam’s Forever Family Day... and some make-up time

This month we celebrated Liam’s Forever Family Day: the day he became a Malcolm with the promise of forever. Earlier this month, I started writing a few notes about the person he is at nearly five years old. There’s so much material; here are some highlights.

While in Maine over Labor Day, Liam grabbed an ice cube in the kitchen and started walking down the hall, only to return to the kitchen in seconds… doing the universal sign for choking. I grabbed him from behind and did the Heimlich maneuver. Out popped the melting cube. The last time I did this for him, pebbles came out. I was shaking and he was crying, “Did it nearly die me, Mom?” (He knows I don’t like the word “kill”; the avoidance of the word is wreaking havoc on his grammar.) A couple days after this, and after discussing the Heimlich maneuver, the choking incident came up again. I asked if he remembered what I did. “Yes, the Heimlich remover.” Four days later, a little piece of cereal got caught in the wrong place while I was eating. Still coughing, I bent over next to Liam to help him with something. He gently placed his hand on my sternum and turned his brown eyes up to me. “Are you choking, Mom? I will help you.”

There is a void in writing for Liam’s fourth birthday during the winter months, unrelated to me being too tired to write with a bald head. We were in the midst of a “how-do-we-change-this-behavior” quandary. His, not mine. Desperate, I heard “positive reinforcement chart” murmured somewhere and went to work. I made the most intricate chart: gold stars for kind words, for kind actions, and for being helpful. I wrote all these things out in detail – although Liam had a great grasp on ABC’s, words like “action” and “being” weren’t in his reading repertoire yet. In retrospect, this should have been a working document for me in preparing an effective positive reinforcement chart. I hadn’t read up on this parenting trick, so after doling out gold stars for a couple days, I hit a brick wall. Gold stars meant nothing. The negative behavior was still there. One evening I was in overload and facing a tantrum at the dinner table. I grabbed the positive-reinforcement chart off the wall and ripped it in half in front of Liam. “Mom, you ripped Liam’s chart up!” cried Will. “My gold stars!!!” screamed Liam. Wait a minute, he actually cared about them?? Now, feeling like a real goof and seeing my mom-gold-stars shoot away, I promised to make him another one. Searing mad, Liam slowly declared with a snarl through clenched teeth, “I don’t need a chart.” Well, that’s good because I’m crap at effectively implementing gold star bribery – especially with that rip-it-in-half thing.

In Liam’s mind, his fourth summer as a Malcolm will forever be marked by his mother’s crazy act of removing the Nintendo DS and the Wii from the Malcolm household. The state of his being changed from a tyrant demanding more time on the DS and monopolizing conversations with the various levels Mario can go, to coloring with his brother nearly every morning this summer. (Yes, they were drawing Mario levels, but nonetheless…) This was bittersweet because these electronics created a new bond between the boys. They strategized together; they passed the gadgets back and forth, handing them off knowing when the other had greater skill at a particular level; they were problem-solving together by advancing through Mario levels. Unfortunately,outside of this wonderful new partnership, their desperate need for and total engrossment with these electronics games resulted in their disappearance. The elimination rocked the Malcolm house, shaking all three boys to the core. There will be a time and a place for them. But here and now is neither. Last spring, one of Liam’s school friends confirmed Mario’s offensiveness: “Addy gets grumpy when I draw Mario and talk about it at school. I’ll just draw it at home.” Addy’s voice outranks Mom’s, and I’m glad she spoke up.

Bakugans became the new thing last summer and while the “battle brawls” get intense, they are generally kept to the toys, not to one another or to other people (aka: the parents). If Liam is sitting quietly in a ball on the floor, you tap his head, say “Bakugan stand,” and he’ll pop up into the shape of a Bakugan. One problem with Bakugans: recent local studies have shown that Bakugans tend to turn-off ears. We have discovered that ears work much better when the Bakugans are transported in a Bakugan basket upstairs and returned after teeth are brushed, faces are washed, and pj’s are on. Put a Bakugan in the palm of your hand and you’ll forget everything else you were supposed to be doing. They remind me of what it feels like to hold a Slinky: you just gotta play with it.

Malcolm laughter and ingenuity would be decibels lower had the Malcolm trio not become a family of four with Liam. Despite all the attempts to “steer me crazy” and aside from being called a “foolish old woman” this week, he is a charmer. (I am now in search of the book that phrase is from…) We always know where Liam stands: a trait that will serve him well at 25 years old and one that we have the privilege of honing today.

:)

Linda

Embracing Pink?

I have red hair. Light pink has never been my color of choice. And now we are approaching October the month of light pink – National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Last year my chemo start date landed right in the middle of this awareness month. Finishing my treatment in April, I was ready to gallop away from breast cancer. And, between bodily remnants of the last year and knowing other women being diagnosed monthly, that’s impossible.

Remembering how strong and formidable women helped pull me to the other side of this, I’m not far enough away from it to be as confident and strong as they have been for me. Some days I feel like a cow, branded with a pink ribbon and being forced up a pink ramp into a pink livestock trailer going somewhere I don’t want to be. However, I’ve been very candid about the experiences of the last year and, believing that there is a greater good at work, I’m working to find sure footing in the aftermath. As much as the rest of my history has shaped my future, so will this.

After moving into our first home together in 1991, I was alone in the house one early fall Friday night and found a huge spider in the entryway. With bumps that looked like grapes on its back, it was so unusual I decided to put it in a jar and show it to Bill when he got home from softball. Then I decided I didn’t want to scare the thing silly running around in a little jar but rather just get the bug spray out. Like a horror film scene unfolding, a hundred baby spiders fell off the big spider’s back and started to scuttle away. I wanted to flee the house. Instead I went on-line to study spiders, which is when I learned that a female wolf spider carries her babies on her back for up to 40 days, AFTER carrying them on her abdomen for two or three weeks in an egg sac, which she holds up to keep from dragging on the ground, while she continues to hunt. This woman, I mean, this spider is amazing. Whenever and wherever I see a wolf spider carrying an egg sac, I give her wide berth. I spout these facts to the boys when we see a wolf spider outside. I protect her.

Knowledge. I pledge this month to investigate pink awareness and to share my findings – what I’ve learned through a little research and through my own experience.

To embrace pink? I can’t wait until the end of the month when the words on my calendar above the month change from “National Breast Cancer Awareness Month” to “National Adoption Month.”

Outside of writing about pink-related topics in October, I embrace the stunning colors in the trees, blooming mums, purple kale, and orange pumpkins. As for light pink and the brilliant shades of October… Well, quite frankly, they clash.

Staying strong,
Linda

Short request

Dear God,

It’s Linda. Today remind me that my short temper and headache have nothing to do with the environments I move through nor the people that cross my path, but rather is totally attributed to the night sweats at 3 a.m., which are attributed to my skipping the pharmacy run to pick-up my anti-hot flash/night sweat medicine.

So when my personal GPS is going in the back seat – Liam: At the end of the road turn right. From the middle of the road turn left. Am I driving you crazy, Mom? Am I steering you crazy, Mom? (giggle) Am I giving you a headache, Mom? – please lash my tongue and remind me that the headache is from lack of sleep, from skipping an errand. Definitely not from the cute GPS droid.

Pull the sides of my mouth upward… pull my feet one step in front of the other… get me to and through bedtime.

Thanks…
Linda

P.S. Thanks to for the chair that dumped me while working in the school office today. Slow motion falling so very ungracefully then laughing hysterically in front of people I hardly know was good medicine for the day.

Not such a good day, huh?

The pitter patter of summer started like any other normal summer. Let’s see how much we can put into one day. If there’s white space on the calendar, I have time to do it. So let’s do it. Yes, I can do it. And I, and we, did it. Living fast – it’s how I’ve always thought of our life as a family. Something always going. But that something-always-going… by mid-summer it was making me tired and frenzied.

One day in late July, I had to make a side trip to Walgreens with Will and Liam to pick up a case of water. I was keyed up, juggling details in my head. And in my head right now is a brain affected by age, mom ADD, and chemo residue. It makes for a rather jumbled place most days. From the car to the checkout counter: “Hold my hand, we’re in a parking lot”… “I need to see you in the store”… “We have candy at home”… “Those are all glass jars – please don’t run your hand against them!” … “Don’t lie on the floor”… “Don’t walk in front of people, if they don’t see you…” Throughout this mom-chatter, I was drifting through what happened in the morning hours, vaguely aware of the present, and forecasting events for the coming afternoon, evening, and following days.

At the check-out counter, the young man cashiering said, “How are you doing today?” And I did the very audible Mom-grumble-grunt-groan. To which he returned, “Oh… not such a good day, huh?” He hadn’t started scanning. He was standing there looking at me with big, clear, blue eyes. They held firm, waiting for my response.

Sometimes, strangers aren’t so strange. I needed a swift kick. Lacking legs for boots and short of sending an apparition of Christ, God certainly did feel nearby in those calm baby blues. Am I nuts? I’m in a store with my children, lifting a case of water, handing over money – all without pain and without white gloves and without Purell, and I’m WITH my two gorgeous sons. What the hell could possibly be wrong with this most beautiful day?

Backtracking, I looked at him, shook my head to reorganize the marbles, and said, “You know, there is nothing wrong with today; it’s really a good day… Actually, it’s a great day.” In a kind of nonchalant surfer-dude way, he nodded in agreement.

Linda

Re-growing a Limb

Happy September. Happy fall. Happy routine. Good-bye chaos. Good-bye over-whelming freedom.

Mid-June I decided to dedicate this summer to making up for family time lost last summer. We grilled out and sat on the deck to eat until late evening; bedtime be damned as we made s’mores at 9 or 10 p.m. We went to Iowa, to Maine, to Missouri, to Arkansas. We drove and hiked up mountains. We went to the beach. We dropped a quilt under a tree for picnics many a day. On every adventure, big or small, I had writing ideas flitting through my head, but every time I felt an urge to write, I submerged it, trying to just quickly record an idea for a story to be written later. By the end of August I realized that not writing was like chopping off a limb.

But in June it seemed logical. Figure out what exactly I wanted to do with the writing. Take a break and pick it up when the boys were back in school. When routine returned. It’s here and I’m back: sitting in Panera (yes, the same one that I had to crawl out from underneath a locked bathroom stall door a couple years ago), glasses off, curls on, and computer plugged in. It feels good to be back. Like a starfish with a missing leg, I’m confident that re-growth will start soon.

:)

Linda

What is this?

June 16, 2009. Nearly 43 years old, I got the “You-have-breast-cancer” look from a radiologist. By mid-August I was diagnosed with Stage IIa Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, estrogen and progesterone receptive, HER2 negative. Thankfully, these were my breast surgeon’s words immediately following the diagnosis: “It’s treatable; it’s curable.”

The smallish mass in my left breast had a little satellite floating nearby and the cancer had gone to one lymph node. With medical information changing daily, I was failing miserably at keeping family and friends updated via email, so I started putting “updates” on a private website created through Lotsahelpinghands.

And this fall, those updates are evolving into a public blog: www.stayingstrong-linda.blogspot.com – a story in and of itself.

“Linda Malcolm Real Time” is a glimpse of life moving on after that year hiccup. After the biopsies, three surgeries, chemo and radiation – and now cancer-free. And with a couple months away from writing, plunged knee-deep in “research” with my family this summer, I feel many a story bubbling in my head – about rodents (yes, again…), summer nights outside, baling hay, eating lobster, and living as a breast cancer survivor.

Staying strong and moving on,

Linda