Lost tooth #3

We lost a tooth his week!

And, as usual, it was not just an event, but a Happening!

The tooth has been lose for nearly a week, he has been telling me daily about it, showing me the great wiggliness periodically through out each day.  And every day he has asked me for a pair of tweezers...
"What do you need tweezers for, hon?"
"To grab my tooth. It needs to come out."
"Hmmm, I am not sure that is the best way to get it out."
(voice escalating, body tightening, meltdown starting) "But it HAS to come out!!!!"

So I would get a pair of tweezers and "try" to get a hold of it, but it didn't come out.

"Sweetheart, it will come out when it is ready.  If it still hurts when I pull it is not ready to come out yet. Just wait."

And he would (as long as I had tried to pull it).

The sensory piece of dealing with the lose tooth is clearly overwhelming, and this is our third!  He has not eaten as much this week, he has been chewing more this week - constantly with a ball of a drinking straw (our redirection of choice) moving around his mouth.  All the shirts this week have had a faint blood stain on the collar from chewing & pulling.  Clearly if he is asking daily, it is bothering him.  And, ultimately he did pretty well.  He really DID practice some patience (in context for him).

And sure enough, when I needed to take him to a friend for the day (while I worked), she suggested that he eat an apple (which is a damn good idea, I might add, and I feel rather like a dufus for not suggesting it myself), and within half an hour I get a text that the tooth was out.  He was, of course, prepared for this event since we had sent a snack sized ziploc bag in his pocket to bring it home in if it came out.  He put the bag in his back pack to come home, just like he should.  With all that angst, all went perfectly.

And you think the story ends there... (picture my smirk)

But, no, alas, in true Big Dragon Mama style, the story gets complicated from there...

I went to pick them up, and I riffled through the backpack, checking for all our belongings, while talking of course, so I halfway went through the list, we had our workbooks, and our chewing straws, and the toys we brought, so we left. 

We went to Kmart, because I still wanted to see about acquisitioning a prize from the tooth fairy.  Our tooth fairy refrains from money usually since the first tooth brought forward a strange truth.  When he lost his first tooth, I was apprehensive, because I had NOT front loaded thoroughly, I had NOT had (or taken) the time to talk about tooth fairy or no tooth fairy, or dentist or ANYTHING.  He just came home from school with a tooth in a bag.  Soooo, knowing there would be some Asperger's sensitivities here about procedure, I asked...
"I see you have lost your tooth.  What is supposed to happen to it?"
"Oh, you put it under your pillow.'
"Why would you do that?"
"That is where the Tooth Fairy finds it, Mom" (duh)
"Hmm, and then what? Does it stay there?"
"No, Mom!  She comes and gets it."
"And is that it?"
"No, Mom!  she leaves you money."
HERE COMES MY ERROR:
"Oh, how much money does she leave?"
"Fifteen dollars and fifteen cents."
MENTAL NOTE:  WTF!!!!!!!!! - I waited a few moments to catch my breath. How the HELL was I gonna get out of this?!  We all know that the level of detail is not to be argued with an Aspie - I would have to find $15.15 that night! Time for a NEW tactic...
"Umm, does she only leave money?"
"Oh no, sometimes she leaves prizes."
"Oh, that is nice." [THANK GOD]
So we went to Kmart to get a prize.  And I found a Lego moon rover on clearance, so I snuck it in (he was VERY distracted by the Star Wars sticker book).  I had told him he couldn't have Legos yet (til he learns to put away). So I hoped it would be cool and throw him off track. And we went home.

But when we got there and emptied the backpack, we did NOT find the tooth.  I called the sitter/ friend. Do you see it? No, I saw him put it in his pocket. I checked his pants, did it fall out in your couch?  No, I am checking the couch now, but I do not see it.  Has any of your family run across it today? No, we have not seen it.  Just leave him a note from the tooth fairy saying that if he finds it later mom will keep it as a souvenir.  Ok, we will do something.

I put the kids in the bath and went about tooth-fairy-ing.  I wrote a note with my left hand:
Dear Son,
I know you lost a tooth today, and that you cannot find it.  I will send my fairy helpers to go look for it, but here is a prize anyhow for all the hard work you did to lose that tooth. Good Job! Great Patience!
Love, The Tooth Fairy
I wrapped the note around the Legos and put it under the pillow - on his bed.

After the shower, he got in my bed.  I asked him what he was going to do about the tooth fairy.  He said he didn't know, so I suggested he write her a note.

AND HE DID!!!! Here's the AWESOME PART!!!: my fine-motor reluctant Aspie, who argues with me for half an hour to complete 7 words on a workbook page WROTE THE TOOTH FAIRY A NOTE!!!!!!  His sister gave him a Strawberry Shortcake pad and pen, and he commenced to wrote a note:
Dear T.F.
I lost my tooth.  Will you please look for it. Sincerely yours. F. M. T. Y.
He did write ON THE LINES and hyphenated when he ran out of room and had to go to the next line!! He did ask me to write "sincerely", and he told me FMTY means "from me, to you".  AND HE DREW A HEART AT THE END OF THE NOTE!!!!  

I am SOOOOOOOOOO PROUD!

He put the note in my bed. But, honey, this is not your bed, how will the tooth fairy find the note? She will look and see that I am over here. But honey, what if she thinks it's my tooth? She won't. I think you should try to put the note under the pillow in your bed [where I have already hidden the blagnabbit gift! Go find it!]  3 times he started for that room, for that bed, but he stopped himself every time and argued with me further that the note needed to be in my bed.  I got up to go to the bathroom and heard him in his room, heard something drop.  I come out of the bathroom to find the Lego and note separated and just laying in the hall.  He was so intent on not letting his note be under the pillow on that bed that he did not acknowledge what was under there, he just wanted it out.
"Honey, what is this paper? I don't want to slip on it"
"I don't know." reading... "it is a note, from the Tooth Fairy!"
"Well, what does it say?"
"I don't know. I can't read it" [remember the left hand writing?]
I read it out loud. He looks at the floor dazed.
"Did it actually have a prize with it?"
"Oh, yes! It is right here on the floor."
He picks it up, I take his precious note, put it on my shelf and sit with him.
"Where is my note?"
"From the Tooth Fairy?"
"No!, the one I wrote"
"Oh, I saved it."
"NO!, it HAS to be under a pillow"
So it went under my pillow.  And he opened his Very First Lego and put it together according to the directions. GREAT - more finger skills!

We went to bed.  He woke up the next morning and his sister asked to see his prize. He proudly showed his Lego, and re-read her the note. And said, "Yes, Fairy Helpers..."

This would be an excellent end to the story, but there is one corollary:
The friend/ sitter told me yesterday that she found the tooth, because he had come into her dream and paced the place in her house where it was and kept saying, "my tooth".  When she woke up it was exactly where he had showed her in the dream.  She calls it "dream walking".  I asked him much later in the evening if he had visited her in his sleep and helped her find the tooth [which she gave to me, but I did not tell him], and he said, "no, it was Fairy Helpers"...

On Heroes

I have had a moment - an insight in the past few weeks... an occasion where words just ran out of my mouth before I even thought them and then I recognized them as True...

Things have been kinda eventful here lately.. the biggest being the common comedy of errors that leads to well-over-stressed-ness.  Here's the "for instance":

Let's start with degenerating health of a beloved family member, maybe my husband's mother, my children's grandmother.  Let's add that a specific event occurs, like say a stroke.  Let's throw in the complication that my husband's phone does not actually ring, so his family does not get a hold of him for over 24 hours after the event occurs.  Let's further postulate that my husband is somewhat Asperger's himself and cannot go to check on her at the drop of a hat, his mind MUST wait for a weekend to go through the process. Now let's throw in that we think he should make that visit by himself because we are not sure how to help our Asperger's son cope with the changes to be found at that household because we are not sure what the changes actually are, so the children will stay home with me while he goes to visit.

All of this sounds complicated enough, but let's not stop there...

What if after his departure a large storm rolled through and we lost power, for like 3-5 days?  You know, the kind that means no water for days on end, and ALL the food in the fridge & freezer is garbage... naturally I would not want him to feel like I or the kids was stealing time form his needed presence with an ailing mother and siblings who may need him.  I would want to solve the problem to spare him the necessity of running home...

So I acquisition a generator, and find friends to keep food, and take showers at work...

Because my head says:

I don't need a damn hero.

And I didn't.   I DID take care of the major problems. We were not hungry or dirty, just highly inconvenienced.

And I realized that THAT is what pissed me off - I do NOT need some hero to run in and assume my incompetence, to swoop over and patronize me with unsolicited help, to create a situation in which I am forced to repay with admiration.  THAT is what pissed me off about my husband YEARS ago...

11 years ago, to be exact.  September 11, 2001.  I worked in a small Catholic school on Capitol Hill, in Washington DC.  My husband worked on the other side of the city, in the more "uptown" side closer to Virginia, WHERE WE LIVED.  I found out hours afterward what happened, I assumed that he would just go home, get himself safe, and I would stay and take care of my students with out having to worry about him.  Surely THAT is what any logical person would have done.. but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  My husband decided to walk across the damn city, immediately past the Washington Monument, the White House, the Capitol - 3 OBVIOUS TARGETS - and came to "get" me.  The damn man came for me!  He saddled me with the burden, the guilt, of HIS potential death/ injury in his effort to love me while I had a class full of kids to worry about! I was MAD!!

And now I understand why.. 'cuz I didn't for a long time.  I felt VERY small for a long time, like I was unworthy of his sacrifice to endanger himself, like I was ungrateful for his bravery, like what made total sense to me was just idiocy...

But that's it.  I am NOT an idiot.  
I do not NEED a damn hero.

So I thought  - WHY do I not need a damn hero?

Because women who wait around for heroes are women who are waiting around to be victims.

As soon as I heard my self say it to a friend I KNEW it to be True.  It was a conversation immediately following the "hypothetical" situation described at opening here, a conversation about why I do NOT want my daughter to think she is a Disney Princess and has to wait around for some Prince to come solve her universe, why she needs to not be focused on who her "boyfriend" is at 5 years old...  because women who are sitting around waiting for Princes, perceive themselves as being incapable of meeting their own needs.  And as soon an some schmuck shows up and pretends to be the Prince, she will walk away with him just because she is supposed to - NOT because she wants to.  A woman who is waiting for a hero already walks into a relationship expecting to be outdone, to be a lesser rather than an equal - after all who could match a Hero?

umm,... another hero?  I am my OWN hero... a MATCH for what ever hero walks in my path, an equal, capable of solving problems, of fixing things, of saving the damn day, thank you very much.  I will share in the glory, but I will NOT grovel.  It is one thing to acknowledge genuine assistance, another to just wait, not even making the attempt.

I was relaying all this great insight to my mother last month, as we were driving, of course, so the kids heard from the backseat. (I was somewhat less emphatic with my language.)  And my Asperger's son says:

But mom, don't you want a hero?  Don't you want someone to catch you?

Well, yes, of course.  Who does NOT want to be caught and cushioned.  But that is NOT how the real world works, especially for moms.  Kids, husbands, they are all just looking for a soft place to fall, for a big bosom to hide in and feel cozy.  Where do moms get that?  Who was there to "catch" me when my body pushed the watermelon out the lemon sized hole?  Who was there to "catch" me when my infant quit breathing? Who was there to "catch" me when poop and pee and rotten milk stunk up my carpets and hair?  Who was there to "catch" me as I watched my toddler lose the ability to speak?  Who was there to "catch" me when he later got the Horrific Rash and couldn't eat or walk?  Who went to the IEP meetings, and doctor appointments, and SEAC meetings, and spoke with the advocates, and the weekly therapy?  Who is "catching" me when I look ahead and know that the appointments and advocacy and teaching will never stop?

I caught me!!!!  I fell down, sure, and at different times different friends and family have helped me carry my load, and they still do, and they always will.  That's what makes them friends and family.  But they don't "fix " the problems, or "make it all better".

A REAL hero is the person who gets back up after they fall down, not the person waiting for the hand up.

I'll always take a hand up, but I am NOT gonna sit around and wait for it.  I am my OWN hero, I will find solutions.  I will get back up, no matter how many times I fall down.  I will look for new routes to avoid holes I have fallen in before.  I will offer help to those round me when I can, and accept it in return.  But I will NOT sit around and WAIT for anyone or anything to just step in and redefine my reality so it "fits" into their story better.

I will not be a victim to someone else's timeline or personal politics. I will not step forward every day assuming I am not powerful enough to match everybody else's heroics.  

I will be happy to co-author the world that I meet - but I will not sit meekly by while anyone else waltzes in and rewrites my part.  There is only ONE playwright - and HE creates ALL of us in His image, ALL of us with God-like powers, and EACH of us to our own script.  

I expect each of my children to be Heroes.  I expect every person I meet to be a Hero.  Because I am too.