8/52

When my third son came along, I was confident he was the one who would let me finally just sit back and enjoy the ride of being a mother to three crazy boys without constant vigilance and worry. And when it comes down to it, that’s really kind of one of my biggest goals in life -- right behind “raise good people.”  I really just want to enjoy the ride.

By that time, between my first two boys, I had experienced what I thought was a pretty generous variety of kid issues, worries, and developmental timetables. Late-talker, early talker, early walker, late walker, not eating, colic, asthma, rsv, stitches, ear tubes, dislocated elbows, fevers, colds, that freaky five-day fever I was totally sure was something life-threatening but turned out to just be one of those viruses every kid gets eventually... the list goes on and on. The point is, I had learned a LOT in six-and-a-half years and two kids.  At least, I thought I had. I figured whatever a third child could throw at me, I had probably seen it before and could handle it without even breaking stride.

Looking back, I probably should have realized I was in for a special kind of fun when number three decided to come into the world looking not face-up, not face-down, but face-sideways -- nature’s brilliant foreshadowing of a child who was going to do a LOT of things on his own terms.  

It actually WAS all going quite well in the beginning and I was progressing steadily toward my goal of being that chilled-out mom of three boys in the mental snapshot I had created for myself.

In the span of a year, I hadn’t rushed the new one to the pediatrician for any hangnails.  I didn’t check on him during naps to make sure he was still breathing (often). I didn’t rush to his side when he’d fall or bump his head. I let him try all kinds of things on his own that I never would have let the other ones do at that age. I forgot to write the exact dates of some of his milestones in the baby book or that they happened at all.  I regularly forgot how many months old he was and sometimes had to double check whether I’d even remembered to put him in the car with us.

(Perhaps, with that last one, this is a good time to mention that someone overlooked my nomination for 2010 Mom of the Year?)

One thing I was particularly proud of myself for though was not freaking out when he didn’t start talking on schedule.

“Oh, he’s on his own timetable!” I would tell people. “ I’ve had one of these before. He’ll talk when he’s ready!”

I did well playing it cool, that is, until he reached the age when my first-born son (my late-talker) had said his first words, which were all, of course, painstakingly documented in his baby book complete with date, time and context.

I polled every mom I knew. “Do you think I should call early intervention? He should be saying things by now, right?” Though the most non-alarmist among my mom friends would insist he was probably fine, others would encourage me to call, softening it with things like “He’s a boy and he’s a third child... that’s probably all it is. I’m sure he’s FINE... but maybe you should look into it anyway. You know, just in case!”

Forget actual words, my son was 15 months old at that point and hadn’t babbled so much as mama or dada, or really any other syllable consistently. No matter what books or websites I consulted,  and trust me, it was a lot, I couldn’t find a single one that would tell me it was some variant on “normal”. Not that it mattered anyway because I knew in my heart it wasn’t.

On any given day, he was either completely quiet or whining and screaming out of frustration.  As each month passed with no new sounds or words, the worry began to creep in. I was in new territory, wandering aimlessly without  map or plan -- only a dog-eared copy of “What to Expect :The Toddler Years” that I wasn't finding particularly helpful.

Finally, I broke down and made the phone call to Infants and Toddlers. I can admit now that it took a LOT for me to get to that point. It took coming to terms with the fact that, even the third time around,  I didn’t have all the answers, that I needed help, and that, third time around or not, I was “first-time-worried” all over again.

I don’t remember much about that initial call except thinking the voice on the other end sounded very kind and patient even though I know I probably sounded like a bit of a handful.  After that phone call and some standard paperwork, they were going to come evaluate my son to decide if he qualified for their services.

The women who came to my house were all business from the get-go, grilling me about my pregnancy, my son’s birth, my concerns, what he did and didn’t do. They started throwing around words to each other like "delay" and "expressive language" and "tongue movements". They asked me a flurry of questions like "Does he lick an ice cream cone?" And I couldn't, for the life of me, remember if he could lick an ice cream cone or, for that matter, if he had even HAD an ice cream cone.

They scribbled notes about him on official looking multi-colored triplicate forms and asked him to say and do things that he couldn’t even come close to doing. Their concern was obvious and it didn’t take them long to conclude he was definitely speech-delayed.

Something about all the cold, technical terms being thrown around so casually, particularly the word “delay”, triggered some sort of instinctive and primal mama bear mode in me and I vividly remember mentally shutting down and just wanting them to get out of my house as quickly as possible.

They wanted me to sign off on starting services that day, but I said no, that I wanted to give it a couple months, work with him myself, and see if he progressed. I could tell this wasn’t really the answer they wanted, but they left me with their phone numbers, some tips, and a promise that whenever we were ready, we could call and get things started.

I assumed I would ever see them again, which, in hindsight, was probably a dumb assumption because you can’t go 500 feet in our town without running into someone you know.

Sure enough, one of the evaluators who had come to our house surfaced at my middle son’s preschool one afternoon a month later. She immediately spotted us despite my best efforts to will myself to be invisible. Better yet, she remembered our names and asked me how my son was doing. I had no choice but answer truthfully that he had LITERALLY done exactly nothing new since last we had spoken.  “I’ll give you guys a call soon!” I promised as we high-tailed it out the door. I really did have every intention of calling. Just not that day...

My phone rang later that afternoon, thwarting my efforts at further procrastination. “Since when are government agencies this efficient?” I thought to myself as I picked it up. The same friendly voice I had spoken to the month before said she would send some people back out to get my signature on the paperwork to start services and then they’d send an early intervention teacher who would start working with my son.

Throughout this whole process, I had never once really known quite what to expect. It was becoming the running theme and continued to be true three weeks later when our doorbell rang.

I opened the door and that’s when Cindy stepped into our lives, like our very own Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins wore Under Armour and carried a Vera Bradley tote instead of a carpet bag.

My son sized her up skeptically from a distance at first while she introduced herself and asked me some questions. He cried a little and climbed up into my lap. Then he watched intently as she pulled a shape sorter from her bottomless bag, balanced a star shape on top of her head and dramatically achoo-ed it off onto the floor.  

He was instantly enchanted.

After a few more achoos, he jumped down from my lap and scampered across the room to get a matching star shape from his toy house across the room, brought it back and did the sign for “please” to ask to her sneeze THAT off of her head too.  I'm fairly sure this is the universal toddler sign for friendship.

That’s the first time Ms. Cindy won.

You see, she warned me she ALWAYS wins. And, as Jonathan and I would quickly learn, she wasn’t kidding.

It wasn’t all fun and games though. The next few months were fraught with battles. Cindy came every other Monday for a little while, and then every Monday; and after the first couple visits, my son decided he didn’t exactly appreciate her winning streak. She didn’t let him get away with anything. She always pushed him to his breaking point in an effort to get him to do just a little more, to sit a little bit longer, to make more of an effort to make sounds and to try to communicate with us. There were many days where all three of us were red-faced and sweating, Cindy and I from trying to contain Jonathan to make him work and Jonathan from fighting to escape.

I began to absolutely dread Mondays. It was hard to watch my child become so frustrated and even harder to see him be pushed to the point of becoming upset. He would scream, cry, and arch his back to escape from his highchair.

She made subtle suggestions that maybe there was something bigger going on than just a speech delay, pointing out how it was a struggle to get him make eye contact, how he would get stuck on certain actions and activities, and host of other random things, most of which I never would have noticed on my own or if I had, I might not have given a second thought to. I knew enough to know what these concerns pointed to and together, they formed a picture of my youngest son that I didn’t recognize,  one I didn’t want to see or worse, be true. I remember telling her over and over again that I was worried she was only seeing him at his worst and would argue that he was different for me.  

I knew deep down though that most everything she was saying was true. Add to that, my son still wasn’t talking and nothing I knew how to do was changing anything. And if it was hard to admit I needed help with him, it was even harder to admit something might actually be wrong.

It would be months before I stopped trying to prove to myself and to his teacher that was nothing wrong other than a speech delay, and started to realize and accept that maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t; but that fighting the work she was doing with him wasn’t going to help any of us.

And the work Cindy did was not just with my son. She challenged me too -- to play differently, actively, attentively, and creatively. I learned SO many ways I had never thought of to use the toys we had to encourage everything from eye contact to motor skills to language. I learned how to engage him in productive games and activities that helped him practice all the things we were working toward.

It became a true team effort and we started seeing results with his speech. First sounds. Then single words. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, full sentences.  He went from throwing himself on the floor and screaming when Cindy would visit, to running to the door to greet her with hugs and asking her what she had in her toy bag that day.

Our family dynamics changed for the better too. Things were less stressful, he became more manageable, less frustrated, more present with us and interested in my husband and in me and in his two brothers.

Fast forward to a year and a half after we started this journey, and we have a completely different child than the one we started with.  He has some quirks and some social weaknesses, and he can certainly be challenging at times. More than likely, there is something bigger at work that we'll eventually get answers for... but I no longer worry there is something terribly wrong. He’s a happy, funny, social, ridiculously talkative almost-three-year-old. When I think back to 15 months ago when I really wondered if he would ever talk, it’s absolutely astonishing to me how far he has come.

The third time around, I thought I knew it all,  but what I learned is that sometimes the most valuable knowledge you can have as a mom is knowing when you need help and following your instincts. I know I am SO thankful I asked for help and I’m even more thankful that help was there in the form of “our” Ms. Cindy.

When I start to get concerned my son isn't progressing or we hit a particularly challenging phase and I start to worry myself in circles about all the possibilities of what could be wrong, Cindy reminds me time and time again, “I KNOW early intervention works.”

And I can tell you... it really does. My son is proof.

This morning, he asked me to come to his room to play with him, something he didn’t do even as recently as a month ago. We played “bear bed”, a game he invented where he puts all of his stuffed animals to bed and reads them stories, all the while narrating the whole bedtime routine.  While we played, I soaked in the comforting normalcy of it all.

My words of wisdom to the next family who opens their door to find Ms. Cindy standing there? Brace yourself. She really does ALWAYS win.

But in the end, the truth is that we ALL won --  my son, for obvious reasons, our family, and me, because, a big part of what I learned from watching his amazing teacher play with him and laugh with him is how to really just enjoy the ride... even with no map,  some bumps in the road, and absolutely no idea where we are going to end up.

7/52

I watch as the teacher hands my toddler a puzzle piece shaped like a guitar, and obediently, he places it in the guitar-shaped hole. She picks it back up and this time, pretends to strum it. He squeals with glee at this because she has inadvertently hit upon his absolute favorite thing in the world these days. He takes the piece from her and strums away happily. She lets him do this for a minute or two and then shows him a bucket to drop the puzzle pieces into. He cooperates for a couple rounds of this then goes back to pretend strumming.

“See? That’s called perseveration.”, she says matter-of-factly, turning toward me.  “He wants to keep going back to the same activity. You can let him do things for awhile, but when he it reaches the point where his play non-productive, you need to redirect him.”

“He does REALLY like playing guitars these days,” I reply, a bit taken aback by the term “non-productive” play, which, frankly, sounds as absurd as “jumbo shrimp” to me.

“Yes, but did you see how I couldn’t get him to engage in another activity?" she asks.

I nod, my mind wandering now as she continues her work with Jonathan.  I realize I am feeling sad for my baby who is probably confused as to why this lady I let into the house to play with him isn’t letting him strum his guitar anymore after showing him how to do it in the first place.

At the same time though, worry is creeping in and I am remembering another toddler I knew who concentrated on one thing at a time for FAR longer than this one ever did … and still does.

The two are brothers.

When my oldest son, Ben, was just a little more than a year old, I casually mentioned a few concerns to our pediatrician, but, as good a doctor as he was, he was about as non-alarmist as they come. (I nicknamed him “Dr. It’s-just-a-flesh-wound”) I remember him waving his hand at me dismissively and saying it was nothing. I wanted to believe him, so I didn’t bring it up again.

In many ways, my first-born was kind of extraordinary. He stood on his own, without holding on to anything, when he was six months old. He walked just two months later and took off running two months after that, the shortest little thing on two feet you ever saw.

He knew all his letters, shapes and colors before he was two.  He could recognize a piece of music after hearing just a couple of notes. I have to admit, my husband and I kind of thought we either had a genius on our hands or that we, as complete rookies, were pretty much rocking the parenting thing.

There was another side to the story though.

Like his baby brother, he was a late talker -- probably close to two before he really picked up words.

When he did learn words, he would say them over and over again. “Light” was one of his first ones and I started dreading walking by any light switches because if he wasn’t allowed to stand there and flick them on and off for 20-25 minutes at a stretch, he would scream.

“Whoa Whoa” was another, his word for the “round and round” motion a fan makes. I had to explain to friends we had just met that the reason he really wanted so desperately to get into their backyard was so that he could stare at the fan inside their heat pump. There was a period when he was two years old where he would seek out heat pumps everywhere we went. His favorite part of a zoo trip at that age was finding a giant, industrial sized one near the lion exhibit.

Everyone thought it was funny and quirky.  We even encouraged it, making him a book of fans and lights cut out from catalogs. He slept with it at night.

It wasn’t *just *the obsessions. He also seemed to be ultra sensitive to his surroundings from the time he was just a few months old.  Restaurants were notoriously a nightmare scenario for us. It seemed he just couldn’t handle any situation that was overly loud, crowded or echo-y and would just cry uncontrollably. My husband and I got used to one of us having to take him outside while the other got food boxed up and paid the bill.  

We stopped eating out for awhile.

We didn’t even realize this behavior wasn't normal until we had a second child. Simon could happily sit through dinner at a restaurant or could tolerate a walk through a Yankee candle store or a visit to an indoor pool, all places that made my first son at the same age completely lose control.

Those specific quirks eventually faded, but gave way to others. For instance, there were a few months when he was three where he wouldn’t wear shorts or short sleeves because he didn’t like the way his arms and legs felt uncovered. I have pictures of him playing on a beach in south Florida with sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt on. He wore that outfit the entire trip.

The obsessions continued and do to this day. Periods of time throughout his eight years have come to be defined by whatever he is into at the time. Keys, violins, volcanoes, clocks, space, bugs, fish, cars, Star Wars, math, sharks, maps, flags, money, football... the list goes on and on.

During these phases, he rarely talks about anything else and will often start talking about the topic as soon as his head leaves his pillow in the morning. Often, an unrelated question from someone will be greeted with a random fact about whatever he is into. For instance,  I may ask, “Ben, would you like syrup on your pancakes?”  and get “Did you know that the whale shark is two and a half school buses long?” as a reply. Eventually I will get an answer to my syrup question, but not before learning three more facts about sharks.

Every year at school conference time,  I ask his teacher if I should be concerned -- I’ve asked about the obsessions, about his one-track-mind, about his fear of fingerpaint in preschool, about how he fidgets and gets distracted, how he can't carry on a real conversation. 

Year after year, one teacher after another assured me he was fine, progressing, participating, intelligent, a pleasure to have in class and well-liked by his peers... all the things you want to hear from teachers.

I was starting to feel like a paranoid, crazy mother,  I decided to try to quiet the voice inside that was telling me something was different about Ben because, after all, teachers were trained to spot problems, not me. They’ve seen every issue there is including, of course, the one that was always lurking in the back of my mind and the word every mother these days fears.... autism.

Teachers know it when they see it and they didn’t see it in Ben.  I should have been relieved.

I managed to push it out my my mind for most of first grade. His teacher that year had no complaints about him, he was thriving academically. He seemed to have friends.

Second grade was a different story, I received an email on the second day of school from his teacher informing me that Ben seemed to have trouble sitting still, tapped his fingers and his pencil constantly and was distracted. I immediately lashed out. The second day of school? Really? How could she even know him yet? Why couldn’t she let him stand and work like his first grade teacher had? Or gently remind him not to tap his pencil?

The emails came fast and furious the whole first half of the year… poor organization, his desk is a mess, can’t find his supplies, didn’t finish his classwork, didn’t follow directions, illegible handwriting, had to miss playtime to redo the assignment... every time the teacher’s name appeared in my Yahoo inbox, I internally cringed as i clicked on it.

I feared she was a Ritalin-happy teacher who couldn’t handle little boys and that Ben was just one in a long string of students she wanted to quickly and cleanly slap an ADHD label on. And THAT, for sure, I was having none of.

When I went in for the conference, I was prepared for a fight.  Instead, I found myself sitting in a child-sized chair at 8:30 in the morning, across from the teacher who very calmly told me Ben was one of the smartest children in her class and one of her best readers. She continued, “He has an astounding vocabulary”...  “an amazing mind for mathematics!” The glowing compliments just kept coming. I was confused... why was I here again? What about the 27 emails complaining about how distracted and unorganized he was all the time?

“He’s easily distracted and I think he would really benefit from a checklist to remind him to stay on task.” she informed me.

I breathed a sigh of relief and thought, “Wait, that’s it?” Of course, I agreed to the checklist.

But deep down, I knew that wasn’t it.

Second grade was also the year I discovered Ben didn’t understand friendships. He would call other children friends and then I would witness them making fun of him directly to his face. Ben would be completely oblivious. Few things are more heartbreaking to witness. We had one of these “friends” over for a playdate once and the mean things I overheard him say to my son brought tears to my eyes. It became clear to me that there was some kind of social disconnect going on.

He may have been excelling academically, but socially he was floundering...  

My mind stops wandering and I redirect my attention to Jonathan's speech session. The teacher has been doing an artfully choreographed tap dance for the last several weeks hinting that maybe he’s more than just a late talker.  I’ve had enough of the dance.

“Be honest with me…” I hesitate for a moment before I continue. “What’s going on here? What else should I be worried about?” I brace myself for her response.

“Well....” I can tell she is mentally sifting through what she is and is not allowed to say to me. Stupid lawsuit-fearing world we live in. I wish she could just level with me and be done with it.

“There are a few red flags for some things... we’d have to bring in a psychologist to make any kind of diagnosis though.” she replies.  

This is when I decide to tell her. 

I take a deep breath before I begin. I've become used to people telling me my worries are unfounded, but somehow I can tell THIS is someone who might actually hear what I'm saying and give me the answer I have needed to hear, but simultaneously don't want to hear.

“You should know, he’s a lot like my oldest son.” Then, I tell her about Ben. I tell her everything. The fans, the lights, the screaming fits, the obsessions, the friends. She listens, REALLY listens, and offers the occasional careful comment. She also suggests I schedule a consultation with our pediatrician.

It’s surreal to find yourself in the pediatrician’s office without a child in tow. But that’s exactly where I was one evening two weeks later. Since we had switched to this doctor a couple years prior, I had been vaguely hinting at my concern (so Ben wouldn’t catch on) at the well-child appointments. He had encouraged me to schedule a time to come in on my own a few months prior, so my visit came as no surprise.

As he flipped through Ben’s records, I scanned his office. My gaze fell upon family photos lined up on the windowsill. There were pictures of his granddaughters. Smiling, beautiful babies who probably talked right on schedule and didn't freak out in restaurants.

My eyes continued around the room which was so very different from the sterile-feeling, spartan exam rooms where I had sat with my children so many times. It was homey and comfortable. Mounds of papers covered every inch of desk space and on one wall, a shelf was full of thick, important-looking medical books, more family photos, and various knickknacks, probably gifts from patients over the years. I found myself wondering what things he had discussed here with other worried parents today. Did my silly thoughts about my 8-year-old’s social skills seem trivial in comparison?

One look at the sincere concern in his eyes told me they didn’t. 

I fiddled anxiously with my keys and my cell phone, unsure of where to start exactly.
He leaned back in his chair, pen in hand and encouraged me to start from the beginning. So, in the span of about a half hour, I covered almost eight years of worries as he listened intently and took notes.  He asked lots of questions. I cried as I struggled to answer some of them.

“What part makes you tearful?” he asked. I suddenly felt like he was more therapist than pediatrician. “Are you worried about what the tests might show us about Ben?” he continued.

“No. It’s not that.”

I took a deep breath. “I really don’t care what label they put on him. It’s not going to change who he is. And we LOVE the way he learns. He’s so curious and smart and so fun. Every one of his phases is an adventure for all of us because we learn along with him. I just... “

The tears started again.  “I want him to have friends. I want people to understand him and right now, there aren’t many other kids that do.”

The doctor shared his thoughts about everything I had told him and then scribbled down a name and number to call to set up testing for my son. A huge weight instantly lifted. I was actually relieved that he didn’t say it was NOTHING.

FINALLY. 

FINALLY someone had actually heard me.

There isn't an end to this story yet. The testing isn’t until next month and I don’t even really know what to expect as far as what we are dealing with because there are actually lots of possibilities, including, of course, the “A” word.

All I know is, because of genetics, it’s pretty safe to say that whatever is going on with Ben is probably at least part of what is going on with his little brother.  Basically, this means my oldest and youngest sons may very well a lot have more in common than just their poker straight blonde hair and impish grins.

I may not know the outcome, but I do know it will be a happy one no matter what. They are still my babies. They may use their brains in a different way than other children, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are smart and sweet and adorable to a fault.  

And, the world better look out. 

Why?

Because as far as I know, every person who has ever changed this world for the better is someone who was able to see it a little differently than most.

6/52...

I was seven years old when I first had the thought that I was fat.

SEVEN.

I was a silly incident, really. My second grade teacher offhandedly told me to suck in my belly so she could get past the row of desks. I went home that night and cried and cried to my mother that my teacher said I was fat. I’m fairly sure that poor, unsuspecting teacher who didn’t even mean anything by her comment was the recipient of some mother-bear wrath the following day.

Around the same time, for whatever reason, the kids in the neighborhood all decided I was fat too and felt the need to remind me of this constantly. I believed them and truly thought I was obese from about second grade to sixth grade. Looking back, it’s really kind of a wonder I didn’t end up with an eating disorder.

I look back at photos of myself from those days and, while I was certainly not THIN, I was by no means overweight. Actually, what really kills me now is that, when I look at the old pictures of myself, I can plainly see I had an athletic build. My mother probably tried to tell me this then and I’m sure I didn’t listen because all I could hear were the voices of my friends.

When I was 12, I started taking gymnastics and discovered I was pretty good at it, especially for someone who started six years later than all the other girls in the class. The gymnastics teacher told my parents I was built to be a gymnast and offered me a spot at a training camp one summer. (life mistake #1,343, by the way, was refusing to do this, but that is another story altogether)

The era during which I did gymnastics was the first time I think I ever really began to have any positive feelings about my body. I can actually say I started to like the way I looked and respect what my body was capable of.

Then, just when things were going well, along came puberty, which was my own personal living nightmare. Really. I think I was the only girl I knew who was NOT thrilled about the idea of growing boobs and wearing a bra. Despite my unhappiness about it and determination it would not happen to me, they grew anyway, and I spent the next three years wearing baggy shirts to hide them.

When I think of all the time I wasted back then being dissatisfied with my body, I want, more than anything, to go back in time and reassure my younger self, “Really! You are okay! And also? All these undernourished skinny girls you think you want to look like? Most of them aren’t going to look like that twenty years from now. Wait until you see them on Facebook when they’re 35 and have had two kids! Girlfriend, stop worrying, put on some cute clothes and just go run and jump and flip and climb and try to be kind to yourself. Also, try not to fall victim to the hairsprayed bangs phase. You'll thank me later."

I look back now in disgust when I consider that children the age my oldest son is right now were able to have such a profound effect on how I would see myself for the next twenty years of my life. I also wonder, somewhat fearfully, what other children are saying to my kids right now that is going to negatively shape their thoughts and opinions about themselves forever.

Today, at 35, having been pregnant and given birth three times, I can say I have a new respect for my (now REALLY ridiculously imperfect) body. I still don’t love it as much as I should; but even I have to admit that successfully growing three entirely brand new people from two cells is a pretty amazing accomplishment, nevermind the physical changes that I watched my body go through to produce, house and nourish an entire other person for nine months at a stretch.

Pregnancy was immersion therapy for me, in a way. There was a feeling of total liberation to be a helpless bystander in all of that -- completely at the mercy of my body and the hormones and the process in general. Really, what else could I do but stand back and marvel at it all while simultaneously being just a bit horrified at the lack of control I had over the situation and feeling slightly like one of those sponges you throw in water that grows to 20 times its size overnight.

Even now though, having experienced that and being completely amazed and in awe at all of it, I’m ashamed to admit it’s *still* nearly impossible for me to look at my body and see beyond my physical imperfections. In the mirror, I can only see what’s wrong, not what’s right.

My stomach has never been flat EVER and those three babies pretty much sealed the deal that it never will be, no matter how many crunches I do. Ironically, my backside is *completely* flat, something for which I routinely curse my mother’s genes. My upper arms are disproportionate and look like they belong on someone three times my size or on a body builder (I blame mom for this too); and don’t even get me started on the stretch marks on my hips and boobs from the shock my body underwent during my pregnancies when I gained a pound a week for the first 23 weeks every. single. time.

I am slowly trying making peace with the things I can't change and trying to be kinder and gentler to myself. When I am somewhat successful at this, I am able see all these things for what I know they are -- badges of honor, reminders of a life’s journey and milestones, and family traits passed down. Together, I know they are a part of what make me uniquely me and they tell my story.

Other days? I just can’t drown out the voices of those kids from my childhood.

I used to think this was just me. As I have gotten older, however, I’ve started to realize just how consistent certain parts of the human experience are. Now I think... no, I don’t think, I KNOW... everyone around me has these voices in their head too -- voice that berate and belittle them, that tell them they too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, not enough this, not enough that, just plain NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I find myself wondering now what I said to other kids years ago that they carry with them to this day.

My eight-year-old son just in the last year has become increasingly self-conscious that he is small for his age, something he never even used to notice. Then, one day, he started coming home from school telling me his classmates told him he was the size of a kindergartner. This year, they tell him he is too small to play well on a team at recess. One child feels the need to remind him on an almost daily basis that he is the smallest child in the class. It breaks my heart because he never thought twice about his size until other people pointed it out.

We do our best to remind him of all the things he is good at despite his size. We have shown him athletes who have excelled even though they are small. Our words seem to make him feel better now, but I wonder how long that will be true?

I wish more than anything I could protect my children from people who would set out convince them they are not good enough, but I know that’s impossible. At some point, the opinions of their peers will hold more value than the opinions of their mom. It would be nice if they could grow up always feeling that they are perfect just as they are; but there will always be someone in their world who will tell them they are not.

I can only hope that they reach a point in their lives where they have the confidence to unapologetically be who they are and to be proud of the way they are made, the whole package, imperfections and all. Then again, I’m certainly not there yet myself and I don't even feel like I'm close. So maybe it's all just part of a journey that takes an entire lifetime to complete.

Which reminds me, my grandmother called me the other day to wish me a happy birthday. "35" she said, mulling my age over. She sighed. "I wish I were 35 again, but could still know everything I know now."

That made me wonder what my 84-year-old self would tell my 35-year-old self. I imagine it would sound something like, "Stop being so self-conscious. Not everyone in the Safeway is staring at your shirt the baby got food all over this morning. I promise. Your stomach is not as gross and unworthy of sunlight as you think it is. Don't be so hard on yourself. Put on some cute clothes, and go run, jump, climb and flip with the kids while they aren't embarrassed to be seen with you. Oh and don't buy into the skinny jeans fad. You'll thank me later."

My 84-year-old self is wise. I should probably listen to her.

5/52

When I was in the first grade, my teacher had all of us draw pictures of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Mine showed a stick figure me sitting at a big yellow desk with a piece of paper and a pen, a work in progress in front of me. At the bottom, I wrote, in my best six-year-old handwriting, “When I am grown, I will be a poet.” I also drew a giant trashcan, for even at six, I must have known there would be a lot of really bad first drafts.

I have always loved to write. I wrote poems and stories from the time I was very small and wrote and published a class newspaper with my first computer when I was in third grade.

Even so, my childhood aspirations were all over the map for awhile. In no particular order, I wanted to be: an archaeologist, a chemist, an astronomer, a newspaper editor, a radio announcer, a lemonade stand entrepreneur, a pediatrician, a gymnast, a psychologist, and, my personal favorite, the next teen pop singing sensation.

I was convinced I would be completely and totally awesome at anything on that list too because my parents told me so and everyone knows parents don’t lie!

It wasn’t until one day in ninth grade English class that I really started my journey back to the aspirations of my six-year-old self. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to be listening to a discussion about Great Expectations, but as usual, I was daydreaming instead. My apologies to Mr. Charles Dickens. I just never found him very interesting.

My gaze wandered, and eventually stopped on an assignment the teacher had written on the board for her Journalism class. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I DO remember thinking, “I could do that!”

Perhaps realizing a singing career was not going to happen for me, I dumped choir for journalism the following year. I was instantly enamoured with the class and three days in, I made my mind up that by my senior year, I would be the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper.

I adored my teacher, a strict, very hard-to-please woman who was actually very kind, but also well-known for loud tirades when students were disrespectful or did sloppy work. She scared us all just a little; but her high standards are what drove me -- I was determined to win her over.

I will never forget when, one afternoon, toward the end of the school day when all the other students were talking and laughing in the few minutes before the bell rang, she pulled her chair up next to my desk and said quietly, “Erin, you are interesting. SO quiet.... but SUCH a talented writer.” She punctuated her comment with a smile. I don’t remember what my reply was, but I’m quite sure my face went from zero to crimson in half a second. Inside, I was beaming from ear to ear.

Two years later, I actually *did* succeed in becoming the co-editor-in-chief or our school paper, but only because my good friend Reggie, who was actually selected for the job, wanted someone by his side who knew how to work the computer layout program.

Just to give you an idea of what I was up against,you need to know that Reggie was one of THOSE people -- the kind you can't NOT like who was a star at everything he tried in life. After high school, he went on to Northwestern University’s Medell School of Journalism and has since worked for three or four different tv stations, including CNN as an on-air reporter. Yes. I think that sums it up nicely. I was happy just to ride his coat tails that last year of high school.

As for me? After high school, I actually started out at a college that didn’t even offer journalism as a major. That’s what I got for choosing a college based on the pretty pictures in the brochure. After the money ran out, I transferred to a better (read: CHEAPER) school with a well-known mass communications program.

My first official journalism class was Newswriting.

I will never forget Dr. Kim. He was an older professor, probably 70 or so, and reminded me a bit of Yoda, but without the calm, zen, Jedi side. He yelled for most of the three-hour class every week in a thick Korean accent, standing over us while we wrote headlines and leads flailing his arms and pointing and saying we needed to work faster and use less words. I am a stronger person for having survived that experience, but after that, I was pretty sure I did NOT want to be a news writer.

My last journalism class I ever took was Feature Writing, which is to say, human interest-type stuff. It was much more my speed, in fact, I got As on every assignment and my work was always being read to the class. I did so well that the professor, who was a columnist for a local paper, told me I should definitely pursue a career as a feature writer. I didn’t have the heart (or the guts) to tell him the only reason my stories were so good is because they were completely fabricated -- every last one of them down to the last quotation mark. because I absolutely HATED interviewing people.

It seems interviewing is, well, a bit of a necessary skill if you are planning on being a journalist of any kind.

I decided journalism was probably not for me after all.

I started taking advertising classes, which appealed to my creative side and didn’t require asking questions of perfect strangers. Having grown up around the advertising business (my father has been a jingle writer as long as I have been alive), I knew my way around and I turned out to be pretty good at coming up with slogans and taglines and clever campaign ideas for fake businesses. I even had a professor call me into her office for the sole purpose of telling me she thought I should consider being an advertising account executive. I laughed because I honestly used to choose my college classes based on which professors had reputations for assigning the least amount of oral presentations. Besides, who wants to be an account executive? All the fun jobs in advertising are in the creative department! (I blame television and movies for this misconception, by the way. "Crazy People", I'm looking at you!)

And me? I was funny! I was creative! I kept toys on my desk! I had studied and memorized the entire history of every influential ad campaign EVER. Clearly, I was BORN to work in advertising.

Right after college ended, the ink still wet on my diploma, I started an internship at a small agency near my home. I wrote one radio ad for a local car dealership that they thought was funny and that actually got produced -- also I knew how to spell and correctly use semicolons and the head copywriter needed an assistant. I was hired.

The first thing I did was bring in my Mr. Potato Head and Barrel of Monkeys to keep at my desk because you know, that’s what creative types do -- that, and spend their days playing ping pong and thinking outside of the box.

The disillusionment spiral began.

The reality was that I spent my days proofreading ads for home builders and packages for pretzels. I learned I am really a quite BAD proofreader, despite being able to spell and my fearlessness of semicolons.

The writing I got to do was rarely interesting or fun. I quickly learned that our clients, which at that time were an assortment of car dealers, home builders and hospitals, preferred their advertising firmly INSIDE the box.

The days were long and slow, the office politics relentless. And again, I was a REALLY bad proofreader, something which was constantly getting me into trouble. The things I most enjoyed about my job were not part of my actual job at all -- answering the phones when the receptionist went to lunch, archiving old radio spots and talking to my coworkers.

On particularly bad days, when I felt as if my soul was suffocating, I would rip everything off of the bulletin board over my desk and replace it all with a single quote, a favorite of mine to this day:

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.”
-Bessie Stanley

This quote is basically my life philosophy and you, dear reader, having just learned that about me, have now probably ascertained in three seconds what it took me five years to learn -- that I had made most definitely made a huge mistake in my career choice.

In saying this, I don’t mean to imply there was anything inherently wrong with the company, or my job, or the advertising industry, just that it was a particularly bad fit for ME. I needed to feel like I was doing something positive, fixing something, helping people, just generally putting GOOD out into the world, and I wasn’t doing any of that, unless of course, you find yourself particularly moved by some wonderfully descriptive copy about the flavor and crunch of a particular brand of pretzels.

Mercifully, my ill-chosen career was temporary because my husband and I planned that I would stay home with our children. As soon as I got pregnant with our first child, the countdown began.

After the baby was born and I settled into my new career as a stay-at-home mom, the biggest adjustment was the lack of opportunity for adult conversation during the day. Other than that, I can honestly say I have never missed my job.

I don’t consider the years I spent there time wasted though. because if I had chosen the “right” career path, and who knows what that would have been, it would have made it a hundred million times harder to quit and not look back when I had my babies. So in one respect the wrong career was, for me, the right one after all. I don’t really have any regrets.

My true job right now, first and foremost, is being a mother. And this suits me well. There are three little people on whose lives I can make the biggest impact there is. The work is hard, SO ridiculously hard... and the hours are long, but the rewards are plentiful. I’m happy and fulfilled just knowing three lives “breathe easier” because I am here.

I am also a writer. My six-year-old self knew it. The paths I took never strayed far from it. I forgot it for awhile when writing became a job I dreaded going to every day; but it’s a part of me I can’t deny. I AM a writer. I have ALWAYS been a writer. I WILL always be a writer.

I don’t need it to make a difference in the lives of thousands or millions or even hundreds.

As a mother, if I can raise my three little people to be good, kind, and productive members of society, then I have put good out into the world and I have done my job.

As a writer, if I can touch even just a handful of people with what I have to say, than I’ve done what I am supposed to do.

For me at least, THIS is the meaning of success.