It’s long after the school day. Dinner dishes have been cleared away. Sun has set and I should be bringing the little one upstairs to bathe and get into bed. Instead, he’s running around, wild and overtired. The dog circles the kitchen island, certain it’s past her dinner time, but confused by not finding her food laid out. I pull over a chair beside H’s, at his desk, and enter the login password.
“I’m not doing it! I’m done!” he flails his arms and dismisses my suggestion to sit down beside me. “I can’t write a poem!”
His student teacher’s last day is tomorrow and she requested that he overlook the unfinished poetry journal entries, each an example of a different literary technique, but still complete his final poem for a grade. I was determined that he would finish. He’s had so much more capacity for thinking concepts through the past few days. I hope that it’s the medication he started just over a week ago, but I’m cautious to be too hopeful. I don’t want to be disappointed with yet another attempt at getting through to him, failing.
“Just sit down beside me for a minute. I’ll do the typing. Tell me about something that you’re interested in. What about hockey again?” I suggest.
He shakes his head, no.
“What about a favourite food?”
“I am NOT writing a poem about food!” he dismisses, as the lamest suggestion ever.
“What about scootering? Something you like to watch on TV? A place you like to go? A certain time of year?”
“No, no, no, NO!” he remarks, as he turns to stand up from his ball chair and leave.
“What about your new running shoes? You love a new pair of shoes. Maybe explain why?” I dare to half-smile as he lowers back onto his chair, taking the bait.
“I’m listening,” he waits for me to get him hooked.
“Well, what about a new pair of shoes do you like? What do they feel like?”
“They make me happy,” he shrugs.
“Happy as what?” I ask.
“I don’t know, as if I won a million legos!” he says, throwing his hands in the air, as if it’s obvious to both of us why that wouldn’t work.
“Great! What about them makes you feel that way?” I encourage him.
“When they’re brand new they make me feel really tall?” he offers, still surprised that I accepted his previous response.
“How much taller?” I ask him to specify, excited that he is participating in the to and fro.
“I dunno, seven feet taller!”
“Great! Now what about these new ones do you love so much?” I press, holding the sneakers we had bought that afternoon.
“The graphics!” he says without hesitation. Black vector graphics graffitied across a bright white background, primed to colour in if one so chooses.
“Okay, what’s the technique we used when you made your Malcolm Subban poem yesterday?” I prompt, hoping I don’t have to give too much away, as language work is usually like drawing blood from a stone.
“The same letter one? A literation?” he asks with a mix of doubt and exasperation.
“Yes! Alliteration! Okay, what is a G-word to describe the graphics?” I ask, relieved that he agreed, knowing this was the simplest one to start with for H.
“Great?” he offers.
“Okay, Great Graphics Give you, what?” I ask, opening up thesaurus.com. “Bounce? Swagger? Confidence? Let’s see if anything has a good G-word synonym.” We both lean forward to scan the lists. The computer screen glows brightly, reflecting off our faces.
“Gumption!” I declare and we read the definition aloud together. “Okay, Great Graphics Give me Gumption,” I read as I type. “Ooh, what’s a word that starts with G for taking a look?”
“Glare?” he proposes.
“Hmm, Glaring Great Graphics?” I read back, and we both shake our heads in disapproval and consult the thesaurus again.
“Glimpses?” I read, and we both smile and nod. “Okay, what are the other literary devices you learned about? We review the slide-deck and decide on onomatopoeia, ignoring the racket A is making as he charges through the room, his pants on backwards and his faced smeared with the remnants of some sort of food.
“C! Can you take him upstairs and read him books or something? Come on! We’re nearly finished here! I need him to finish that orange juice as well, it has his sleep medicine. There are smarties to offer as incentives for reaching each line I’ve marked on his cup,” I ask with exasperation, and with far more volume than my patience level. Mum appears from around the corner. I hadn’t known she was sitting there.
“I’ll help her with A,” she mumbles as she shuffles over to follow them up the stairs, obviously exhausted herself.
I turn back to H, thankful I haven’t lost his attention.
“So what do you do when you’re wearing the shoes? What do you play? Describe your actions,” I prompt again, my excitement to actually be nearing the finish of a detailed language assignment – at NIGHT – without arguing or yelling or explosions or tears. I’m getting ahead of myself. Don’t jinx it Natalie.
“Basketball? I dunno, bounce? Shoot? Make a basket?” he answers.
“Okay, Bounce, bounce, bounce,” I emphasize the word, making its sound with my voice and it’s action with my hands as I pretend to shoot (as poorly hypothetically, as I would have in actuality); cocking my ear to ask for the sound effect from H.
He smiles and rolls his eyes in slight amusement at how that shot totally wouldn’t have made it into the hoop. “SWOOSH!” he rewards me anyway.
“Yes! Okay, what else do you play with your running shoes in the driveway?”
“Hockey,” he says with an obvious tone, and gesture of his hand. He bounces a little on his ball chair, his shoulders relaxed but not slumped.
Is he actually enjoying this? I wonder.
“So tell me, what does the ball do, especially wearing kick-ass new shoes?”
He laughs. “It’s a slap shot, so it slams the glass and shatters it!” he grins at me to say, well if I get to make it up, I’ll tell it like I want!
We break it down into words that work for onomatopoeia again, and we read it over. I suggest a concluding line with “Sick shoes send –”
“NO WAY! I am NOT saying sick!” he scoffs at me with dramatic arms for emphasis.
“Certain?” I suggest. “It’s a different letter but it has the same sound?” I replace in type, with a chuckle.
He nods his approval and has a little shiver, his cheeks pinker than usual; both a telltale sign he’s tired.
“Shiver!” I remark and add the next word to the alliteration.
“Certain shoes send shivers down my _______?” I ask and he leans over and types in SPINE himself, reclaiming the mouse as well, as he positions himself to record his poem. He sits tall and is beaming at the screen. He pauses to add the photo I took of him wearing the shoes when he tried them on at the store. His cheeks flush a little more, but this time with shyness, as he cautions me to stay quiet and he hits record with his mouse and cursor.
Confidence pours out of him and pride coats each word, as he projects them with inflection and enunciates each action word; making them come to life. He looks at me and allows me to mom-gush over his focus and determination, his ownership of both topic and theme, and his patience, to see the assignment through.
He clicks TURN IN, and closes the tab, logging out of his computer – leaving me with the mundane tasks like pushing in his chair and drawer trolley, under his desk, and returning my chair to our dining table. We walk towards the stairs and I manage to get a shoulder hug and kiss of his cheek too. Am I dreaming? Do I dare hope I can have my sweet boy an entire day and that he can complete – and enjoy – work for a subject he loathed, not a month before? I squeeze him a little tighter, as if it might confirm that I’m still awake.
RESET
“I’m going down to play!” H yells at his dad.
It’s the next night, after another really great day, albeit longer than he’s used to.
H’s day had started casually, as he had had some free time before a virtual assessment he was taking for a private school we are considering, which was a full hour that consumed all of his energy and focus. Yet he had managed to fit in social studies and being called on without warning to read his biography assignment’s poem, and created a comic strip storyboard in art class. He was fading but he stayed the course, eager to see their student teacher’s reaction to the slideshow of thank you messages the class had prepared secretly. They were presenting to her that afternoon, before her return to Teacher’s College. Then, when I didn’t think it would be possible for him to stay for another minute, she opened up a KumoSpace lounge for them all to hang out together and chat. He had fun bumping into classmates, bringing their audio into his hearing range; their voices projecting from the computer’s speakers.
Afterwards though, came the crash.
Although not as big as we were accustomed too, I was a little bummed out that the glow of the productive week was fading. By dinner time we hadn’t started the prep and decided on take out, so while M went to pick it up, I insisted H get out on his scooter and make a lap or two of our block. He needed the fresh air, and although daylight was fading, our western view out the window still had the filtered blue remains of the sun that had just descended below the roofline. He fought me for a moment with a few foot stomps and shoves of the barstools; a name call or two, thrown at me without much enthusiasm. Then he conceded when I pointed out the lack of physical activity he had had today, and how that meant very little accumulated screen time banked for the evening. C and A joined him and I sat here, finally alone, at the dining table, attempting to write, for what seemed like the twentieth time this week.
It lasted eight minutes.
They came bursting in the front door, panting from their race. Not half an hour later and the noise level was deafening. Name calling had started. The siblings were fighting – their shouting and nitpicking, pointlessly raising the volume tenfold. We had decided to divide up, in an attempt to enjoy the Thai food M had brought in. First, retrieving one of the bags, after it was tossed across the room by our tiniest dictator, in his refusal to take part in the nightly food consumption routine (an increasingly common phenomenon, as he mimics the outbursts of his fraternal idol). Mum had taken her tray up to her main floor. The kids sat at the kitchen counter and fought over what to put on tv. M and I sat silently across from one another at the dining table, willing the circus behind us to fade away, even if momentarily. Once we had made it through dinner, I took A up to get ready for bed.
We were almost there.
“You’re not. You’ve used your allowable game/screen time. You need to do something else – read, build, play,” M suggests evenly, yet with assertion.
“No! No! No!” H spits out with scorn. “Shit-head,” he utters in disgust.
“I know you want to play some more. You were having fun with – “
“Shut up.”
“I get that you’re angry –”
“DICK!”
I cringe at the newest word he screamed at his dad, as I lay beside our sleeping three-year-old and listen to the one-sided screaming taking place below us. I’m thankful that’s not one of which he was in earshot; his vocabulary already far too colourful for any three-year-old.
I should go down and intervene.
I arrive downstairs to find them in the family room.
“Make C airplay the game she’s playing on her iPad!” H orders his dad.
“No, I’ve said you have no screen time left; that’s just you needing to continue watching a game on another screen. It’s the same thing.”
“Maybe it’s time to head upstairs H. You still need to shower,” I interject.
“Shut up,” he shrugs, “shit-head. Pee-hole.”
“Don’t talk to you mother that way!” M interrupts, as I shoot him a look that we both know means lay off. H is so dysregulated at this point, the insults are involuntary reflexes. We’re taught to address the emotion, validate. To ignore the words themselves, letting them dissipate with his heightened emotion, after all, they’re tics he can’t control at this point.
We leave him be and go about our own tasks.
H joins us mere moments later, with a squeeze of my waist, as he hugs me and utters his murmured apology. Calm washes over his face and he laughs at something C has just said to their dad, joining in on the joke. I call him over to the counter and he takes the pill I offer across to him, following with a swig of water and a grin of pride.
“Daddy, did you see that? I swallowed my pill just with a drink of water; just by putting it on my tongue and swallowing!” he announces, suddenly our ten-year-old boy again.
It’s only the second day since the new skill was honed, replacing the twenty minute dance of desperate pleas and differing tactics, that had earmarked this point of the evening for the eight days since he started taking the medication. It had seemed to be having a positive effect this week, I acknowledge, with remorse for the seeming end that he was experiencing today.
“Okay honey, goodnight,” I reach over for a kiss and a hug, before he walks off and upstairs.
Who will we have tomorrow morning? We have a family birthday lawn visit and I know from experience that it will not be relaxed. H’s severe social anxiety usually means more of these outbursts. . . and his dad’s own anxiety in the presence of his family – a dead ringer for disconnected husband and co-parent – undoubtedly means more work for me. I really hope sleep is in the cards for tonight.
Shoes
By H
New shoes make me as happy as I would be if I won a million legos.
When they’re brand new, they make me feel about seven feet taller.
Glimpses of great graphics give me gumption.
Bounce, bounce, bounce, swoosh. I make the basket!
Slam. Crack. Shatter. I slap shot the glass.
Certain shoes send shivers down my spine.
