Category: Family and Friends

Beth Grows Up

The site lost something when the kids got older. When kids get into trouble as an infant, it’s much more amusing than when they’re a teen. Plus, somewhere in between they learn how to read, become aware of the world around them, and don’t find it amusing when they lose control of their own narrative.

I’m making an exception with this post because it’s really about me – and that’s not my ego talking. I’ve been ego impaired since a tragic incident early in my childhood.

Something hit me the other day.

F—! It hit me again! Agh! Damn it! Stop that!

Beth is graduating from High School this year.

I’ve know this for a long time… like some people know they’ll have kids one day. After your first is born (and sometime between the grand entrance and your first all-nighter on the first night home) it hits you. Your life is never going to be the same.

I can’t help but wonder if the same is true when they leave home (the first time). They’re born and BANG – you have a child. Twenty odd years of experience and conditioning, of taking care of yourself and worrying over your own life, (milage will vary) all of it is thrown out the window. Then they leave and BANG – you have a child out in the world. Eighteen years of experience and conditioning, of being responsible for the care and safety of a person in progress, much of it becomes obsolete. I wonder if you can really prepare for either one, or if they both sneak up and shatter your worldview in an instant.

It didn’t hit me when Beth started her senior year, took her SATs, or even when she got her first college acceptance letter. I knew there was no way in this lifetime any of us could pay for it – that or I was in some serious denial. It hit me when she got her second. It hit me again when she scheduled a tour of the campus, and once more when she left for it this morning with Cheryl.

Holy shit. She really is going to go.

Don’t worry about her. She’s gonna be fine. I’m the one you should worry about. One day soon she’s going to leave for college.

For better or worse, I’ll finally know what it’s like to have a child out in the world.

My loss will be your gain.

You’re welcome.

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I try

Hi, my name is John and I haven’t posted anything of substance in a year or more.

I have a good thing not going here, so why start now? This is a couch and you are my therapist – so be warned.

After a few false starts, we’re really moving. Cheryl starts a new job in Orlando on Friday, we’re moving much of our furniture after Christmas (to the guest wing of my sister and brother-in-law’s house), and the kids start at their new schools when they reopen after the holiday break. As of a week ago, I have no idea what I’m doing – other than staying behind until I can find a job in Orlando. I have some ideas about what I may be doing (hopefully a transferring within my department), but much feels uncertain and depression doesn’t help. I feel deep depression waiting around the corner like a would-be mugger, waiting to beat the shit out of me and steal everything I have. This may sound odd at first, but it feels like an ego trip gone VERY wrong. Mixed with uncertainty, it feels like the mental health equivalent of booze and narcotics.

Putting all of that aside for a moment, let me tell you I am extremely proud of Cheryl and I know I’m very lucky. Not only is she the love of my life, my partner in life, and my very best friend, but she put our family on her back and carried us through a tough seven years while dealing with a few of her own problems…

… and this is where I lose folks who’ve never dealt with severe depression: I’m trying to be supportive.

Trying? you may ask. You either ARE supportive, or you are NOT. There is no TRY.

Thank you, Yoda.

If you’ve been depressed, read anything about depression, or have a shred of common sense, you know (on some level) depression is an internal struggle. There’s a reason I referred to it as an ego trip of sorts. Depression turns your thoughts inward and self-destructive. At its worst, it can take self-absorption to dangerous lows. Self pity, helplessness, self loathing, despair… I could go on and on – but I won’t – for your sake.

My aim is not to make YOU depressed. I want you to understand. Short of that (which isn’t realistic anyway), I’d like you to know where I am when I say I’m trying. Every day takes some effort. Sometimes it feels harder to get out of bed when I’m depressed than when chemotherapy was trying to kill cancer before it killed me. I constantly fight my mind’s (mostly) unconscious push to think the worst, overlook the positive, and focus on the negative. I struggle against a desire to isolate myself all day at work by seeking people out. I make my own signs of self worth by putting smiles on other people’s faces (or trying anyway). Then I come home and try to do at least as much for the ones who mean the most to me: my family. This still takes a toll – I’m often physically and emotionally exhausted. But it’s better than the alternative: the isolated, lonely, and hopeless downward spiral of profound depression.

So I’m trying to be supportive. I’m trying to see opportunity in change. I love Cheryl and I know I’m lucky we found each other, but I wish I didn’t have to try to be the kind of person I wish I was – that I know she deserves.

However, just wishing something were true rarely makes it so.

So I try.

All the best

I’ve come out of the bunker (of my mind’s own making) to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all have many reasons to be thankful and they require little effort to recall. I hope you feel lucky for what you have rather than wistful for what you don’t. I hope the love of family and friends are close and plenty.

Be well, my friends, and have a happy Thanksgiving!

To all my friends and family…

Thank you all for the birthday greetings. I enjoyed hearing from you all, especially considering my long absences from Facebook, Twitter, and my poor, neglected blog.

I wanted to let you know two things: it warmed my heart to hear from all of you, and my absence does not represent bad times at the Kauffman household.

I’ve been devoting a lot of time to rehabilitating my neck, strengthening and stretching the muscles above the waist. It feels constant, but it’s only several times a day – a few hours a day.

Adam is struggling a bit, socially, with the transition to third grade, and his first teacher who wouldn’t fit the warm, cuddly mold of Kindergarten. I’ve been trying to spend more time with him after school, either just talking about “stuff,” or finding common interests.

Plus, I’ve spent A LOT more time in my car since the office move. However, I’ve just learned our modest (to put it kindly) bus system (improbably) has a direct line from my neighborhood to my office – an hour or more away at rush hour. If my neck can handle the bumps, stops/starts, and jostling of the bus, I may be doing A LOT of Facebooking in the future ;-)

But enough with the excuses. Let me just say thanks one more time.

You all are the best.

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What’s so special about today?

Today is Monday, July 15th, 2013.

Our first born child, a little girl we named Elizabeth Ann, was born on Tuesday, July 15th, 1997.

Maybe you’re not a math person… and that’s ok. Not everyone is, so I’ll do it for you (eventually).

Caveat: my knowing has nothing to do with math and everything to do with said little girl (who’s not so little anymore) asking the following question every 1.25 hours for the last 6.5 months: “Can you believe I’m going to be sixteen years old this year?!?”

Not that I’ve been counting.

You may recall my tale of the head of child psychiatrics at the local children’s hospital diagnosing Beth with Aspergers (or high functioning autism), after a somewhat difficult childhood. You may recall the years of various diagnoses and treatments leading up to it. You may recall the birth defect which led to surgery to remove it and a damaged kidney that it caused.

This is not to say Beth’s childhood was worse than many others’. But it’s hard to consider yourself lucky when your child is suffering.

I’m happy to say Beth is a smart, confident, and independent thinking sixteen year old young adult today.

She may never know the depth of my pride, though not for a lack of trying. Some things are hard to express. Some things are hard to understand until you’ve stood in their shoes.

Happy Birthday kid!

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There’s something about nineteen

It’s not just today, but it is today in particular.

This is the point in this post where I start making a little sense.

I was nineteen years old when I started dating my wife. To be clear, we weren’t married at the time. Unless a third party arranges a marriage, folks don’t typically date their spouse. The husband and wife part came later for me and mine. Folks often hear this and say, “Awh! You guys were high school sweethearts! That is SOOOOO sweet!” Then I say to myself, not out loud “I don’t know how old you were in school, but I didn’t turn eighteen until after I graduated. I was month into my sophomore year at UF when I turned nineteen.”

Out loud, I reply, “well… not so much. We met in high school and I was sweet on her, but she was dating another guy behind my back, and turned me down when I got up the nerve to ask her out to prom. She didn’t see the light until after graduation.”

I believe I said I’d start making a little more sense. You’ll note I didn’t say anything about being interesting let alone entertaining.

You might ask yourself, “why do I bring this up now?” I might reply, “because I think it’s significant so hold your horses!”

I’m not too old, relative to just about every significant person in my life not named Adam, Beth, Conner, or Eric. We had a good thing going, alphabetically, until Eric came along. However, nineteen seems like something I read about a long time ago. And that’s how long Cheryl has been my person. I knew before we started dating that I wanted to spend a long time with her, and we’ve lived our lives that way since then – not long after I turned 19 years old.

Today is special to me for another reason, but they’re closely related. It’s our nineteenth wedding anniversary. I’m not sure many other folks think of 19 as a milestone, but I’m not most other folks. Every day is significant, but I’m a nostalgic fella. My memories are an interconnected web of thoughts, experiences, and emotions. My mind rarely stops at just one.

So there you have it: nineteen.

Happy anniversary Cheryl!

When questions get harder

Beth wanted advice on a homework assignment for a writing class she’s taking at college this semester. Her professor wants the class to come up with two topics for a possible upcoming assignment: write a persuasive essay taking a side of an issue relevant today.

I thought to myself, “yeah sure, possible. Like it’s possible I might take another breath before the end of the semester.”

So far, so good?

Here’s where the fun began. He gave a couple examples, one of which was: “climate change is a liberal myth perpetuated by a liberal media.” Beth explained she wanted to turn her professor’s example around and argue the opposite for one of her topics.

Ho-boy! Where do I begin?

First of all, I tried to stay calm – a feat made easier by a muscle relaxer taken an hour earlier to calm down some neck pain. I didn’t want to say something like, “Man, it sounds like your professor is a f…ing idiot.” She’s smart enough to come to this conclusion herself. Plus, I didn’t want to encourage an adversarial relationship with someone responsible for giving her a grade. I went that route my freshman year at UF and it didn’t turn out well.

I’m trying to cut down on my swearing. So lets just say, I had English teacher whose head was stuck pretty far up someplace that’s usually inaccessible to one’s own head.

It was one of the few times I got less than an A in a class at UF, and I started the semester a seventeen year old, know-it-all teenager. She’s a fifteen year old, know-it-all teenager, who hasn’t graduated from high school yet, and an average of four years younger than the rest of the class. I feared she might not fare as well.

My next thought was, should I give the guy some slack? Maybe he was playing the role of provocateur to get some neurons firing, rather than being an ideologue trying to push an ill-informed worldview ON MY DAUGHTER!

Finally, I tried to find a middle path. She knows how I feel on the subject, as we’ve discussed it many times. I told her I was proud of her desire to take up the cause, but this wasn’t the right place. Plus, I didn’t think it served a possible purpose of the exercise: to write a reasoned essay defending a position on an issue that might not be familiar (now), or one she might not even hold. Giving the guy the benefit of doubt, I thought it could turn out to be a good exercise in critical thought.

Plus, I thought merely taking his example and turning it around lacked creativity. There are LOTS of problems in the world worthy of a little persuasion.

I’ll tell you one thing. It makes me yearn for her early years when the questions were easy, like explaining redshift.

The astronomical phenomenon, in case you were wondering.

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Someone’s birthday

I’m hoping you’ll read this one, even If you ignore most of my posts.

Tomorrow is Cheryl’s birthday. She’s not going to get what she deserves because it’s impossible to quantify. She’s not going to get what she’s worth because everything is beyond my means.

Instead, she’s going to get up and do what she does every Friday: wake up, take the kids to school, go to work, come home for a short nap, wake up, go to job number two, and work security at the hospital until the sun rises on another day – when she’ll do much of it again. She’ll do it without complaint. She’ll do it for me and her other kids.

So do this for me.

I take that back.

Do this for her. Show Cheryl a little love tomorrow on her birthday. It’s not everything but it’s something and that isn’t nothing.

And if this post comes across as off the charts corny you’ll do it anyway, right?

The stone! Give me the stone!

The set-up:
My boy Adam and I were driving home after a haircut this weekend. We were listening to the radio but only one of us was paying close attention.

The conversation:
“I wish I had my notepad.”

Why do you say that Adam?

“Because I want to write something down.”

That’s my boy!

“What?”

Nothing. What do you want to write down?

“That commercial that was just on…”

Commercial?

“Yeah. Something Stone.. learning languages?”

Rosetta Stone?

“That’s it. Rosetta Stone.”

Why do you want Rosetta Stone?

As my mind turns:
He’s been taking Spanish in school, so I was impressed he was interested enough to learn it on his own time. **I think it’s great he wants to learn other languages, and I’d like to encourage him somehow. However, we’re not in a position to trade a few months of the family’s room and board for The Rosetta Stone Experience.

Meanwhile, back in the real world:
“I’ve been having trouble learning French.”

A popular caffeinated beverage burns through my sinuses…
French?

“Yeah, why?”

I don’t know… how long have you been learning French?

He pauses for about fifteen seconds – ’twas very dramatic…
“I guess since Kindergarten.”

He hasn’t really, but he has been exposed to it by his grandparents.

Later that same day I got a call from my sister (who had been looking at lists and was out Christmas shopping), asking if Beth still wanted to learn Italian.

Italian? I’ll say this: whatever Rosetta Stone is spending on marketing , I’ll bet it’s worth it.

**Please note: I’m not really complaining. To borrow some humor from a GEICO commercial… my kids’ interest in learning and languages in particular makes me happier than a slinky on an escalator. The mock outrage here is simply an attempt at humor when I’m feeling humorless. I’m trying to kickstart a good mood.