ADD pride

I have Attention Deficit Disorder.

It is who I am. It is what defines me as a person. It is how God created me, and he surely wants me to embrace and love myself, so I embrace and love this part of myself. I am blessed with ADD. ADD is beautiful. Can I change? Why would I want to?

People often ask how those who are blessed with ADD “cope” in society. I admit that it is, at times, difficult, but that’s because the public mindset is against us. People see it as a disorder, something broken about us. Well, that’s all wrong, of course. It’s just the way we happen to see the world, and is as valid as any other viewpoint.

But here’s the problem. We’ve been discriminated against. We comprise roughly 3-5% of the population, and I think it’s time our voice was heard. If we group together, galvanize behind our cause, we can change society, force people to accept, tolerate, appreciate us.

We have to push for change. We have to get some of these oppressive societal rules altered to accommodate our different but perfectly legitimate worldview. Here is what I’d like to see happen:

1) Late fees must be made completely illegal. If I cannot remember to pay my bills on time, or if you choose to live an ADD lifestyle and you choose not to remember, we should not be penalized for it.

2) Legislation must be passed that allows me to start my appointments any time of day I remember to show up. The rescheduling of my dentist’s appointment because I am more than fifteen minutes late is closed-minded and oppressive to my lifestyle choice.

3) The atrocity of drugging people with an ADD lifestyle to “help” them “behave” in schools and at work must be seen for what it is-the oppression of people’s God-given rights. If schools and society value creativity and imagination as much as they say they do, then why are there bells and worksheets and rules that stifle them?

4) Employers must not be allowed to fire people because of “poor performance” related to showing up late, missing meetings, daydreaming or following a great idea instead of following instructions. People with ADD (or ADD lifestyle) should not be required to identify themselves to employers because of potential discrimination issues.

5) The military must be made to accommodate our people. This business of rigid schedules, high expectations, and punishment for aberrations, is cruel and discriminatory. If a soldier chooses to stay up the whole night reading a captivating novel, he should not be forced to attend training the next day. His choices should be respected. Many beautiful, creative things could happen that would seriously help the military out if they would magnify the strengths of their ADD troops instead of trying to train them out of them.

I know we can create a better world for ourselves and our children. But the public attitude toward us must be changed. Terms like “grow up”, “act your age”, “be responsible”, “pay attention”, and “stop fidgeting” are offensive and outdated. We must bring about a new climate of tolerance and respect for all people, regardless of race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or attention level. It has always been our right to live the way we choose. Now society needs to catch up.

I watch with great interest the struggles of those who fight for same-sex marriage rights. I am pulling for them, because their fight is our fight. If they win, if they can push through laws that make society recognize, uphold, and defend their rights, we’re next!

adult bookstore

You know those “adult” bookstores you see advertised all up and down the highways all across the country? I’ve never actually been in one, but I’ve decided that they’re probably an allegory for adulthood itself.

You always pass by them and wonder what’s in there, because they’re all covered with pictures of seductive eyes and pursed lips, and words like “adult toys!” and “naughty fun!” and so on. But when you get inside, I bet it’s really full of books about paying bills on time, and doing household chores, and taking the kids to the doctor, and income taxes. And sure, there’s a little corner bookshelf (dolled up with cheap-looking tinsel and blinking lights) full of all that stuff you thought the place was filled with. But 95% of the store is that other. And you know that you’d go in there and stand there in total disillusionment and at the same time be compelled to say, “Yep. I guess this IS an “adult bookstore.”

That's my insight for today. So if you’re ever driving by one of those places and are tempted to stop by and find out what “adult” is all about…just keep on driving. You already know what’s in there.

keep out of reach

If I were a cartoonist, here’s the cartoon I would draw: I am standing in the middle of my kitchen, holding a small plastic bottle. All the bottom cabinets are empty, their contents around my feet on the floor. On top of the fridge, on top of the cabinets, and on hooks hung way up close to the ceiling is stuffed everything I own in the world. Teetering on the edge of one counter, reaching for the piled-up stuff on the fridge, is a mischievous toddler. But here’s the punch line-in big letters, on the bottle in my hand, is written, “KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.”

Riiiight.

Oh, wait. I could just take a picture of real life. Is there, on all the earth, such a place as “out of reach of children”? Keys, for instance. I have a three-year-old with a key fetish. The hooks on the wall where I hang my purses are easy pickings for a guy with chair-pushing abilities. So I hung a little row of hooks in my kitchen as high as I could reach. (Any higher, and I’d be pushing a chair.) So he pushes a chair, gets a broom, and fishes with it until he lifts the keys off the hook. Then, of course, he can go unlock the car and play with all the power mirrors and seat adjustments. On a good day, I get in the car after him and find all my settings messed up. On a hot day, I find him in there with his curls dripping with sweat and his cheeks scarlet-pink. So the key hiding goes on. On top of the fridge, no good, on top of the cabinets, mostly good. Except that everything else in the house is also up there.

Like the broom. I came home after an evening of hauling kids to lessons to find that my husband had cleaned the whole kitchen. Except the floor. “Where on earth is the broom?” he asked. I pointed upward. It was right above his head on top of the cabinets. “Oh,” he said, defeated, “I didn’t look up.” We buy a new bottle of baby soap about once a week, because we haven’t found a place where they can’t find it and pour it out all over the bathroom floor. One of these weeks we’ll get smart and buy trial size.

I’m not sure if it’s “just boys” or “just” my kids, or if all parents are actually reeling in disbelief at the disorder their children can create, but I do know that this particular set of kids can climb and/or destroy anything. A particularly nasty item in the “out of reach” joke is the number of “childproofing” products available to help you. So you naively purchase cabinet locks, and diligently install them, and carefully line up your toxic (and expensive) cleaning products in the new safe place you’ve created. Turn your back, satisfied with a job well done, and in five minutes you’ll be on the phone to Poison Control. (I actually considered keeping San Diego Poison Control on speed dial when I moved to Georgia, since they wouldn’t find me when they finally decided I’d called them one too many times and came for my kids.)

Maybe we should just build a shelf about a foot down from the ceiling all the way around every room in the house, and shove it full of everything that should be out of reach. Then we’ll remove all climb-able furniture from anywhere near the walls, remove all long, fishing-type items from the house, take away anything that they can throw to bounce things down…..

So I look at all that stuff up there, and shrug, and hand the Tylenol bottle over to the toddler. It makes a good rattle, and whoever made their childproof lids actually did a pretty decent job. At least now I know he has it. And right there in his chubby little hands, that’s as close as it’ll ever get to being “out of reach of children”.

life is a highway

This statement is truer than I ever believed. Life lessons I’ve learned from our recent 10-day, cross-country odyssey:

-Just because someone is yelling your name in your ear as loudly as he can does not mean you won’t hit a deer.

-Be sure of your driving ability before you go above 9000 feet in early October. Whether or not you can believe it, the temperature is below freezing up there. Pulling off the side of the road to change drivers isn’t very helpful when the sides of the road are slush-ice puddles. Angry words don’t help you get the car out of slush-ice puddles.

-Sometimes it will be a sunny, dry day. You’ll be able to see for miles up the highway, watch the scenery, sing road songs with the family, and feel invincible. More often, it will be nighttime. You’ll be the only one awake, visibility will be limited to the front edge of your headlights’ range, and there will be nothing but the monotonous sound of the tires and the endless oncoming road to keep you company. Sometimes when you’re desperately tired, fighting to keep your eyes open and your tires on the road, you can ask the other driver to trade places with you so you can nap. Sometimes he is exhausted too, and you have to go on alone.

-Some facts are indisputable. You cannot argue with a 5-year-old who needs to use the bathroom 10 minutes after her last stop. Well, I suppose you can, but if you don’t stop, and she’s right, I’m not cleaning up after her.

-Quality family time is like pomegranate juice. Encased in a whole bitter peel and lots of useless seeds’ worth of quantity time is the lovely red juice of joyous family memories. Spend all that time bickering, and you may eventually find yourselves standing in awe together looking out over Yellowstone Lake.

-The sign that says “Dense Fog Ahead” is no guarantee that, once you get into the dense fog, you won’t come across another sign that says, “Bridges May Be Icy”. Nor are both of those guarantees that you won’t come across another sign that says “High Winds Possible.” Keep your eyes on the white lines and hang on. The fog does end eventually. When it does, how much more grateful you’ll feel for simple night driving.

-Some parts of this earth were not meant for women. (Or girls.) On long stretches of Wyoming highway there are endless miles of bathroomlessness, restaurantlessness, and hotellessness. If you wanted to shoot yourself something to eat, sleep on the ground, and use all the open country as your “facilities”, Wyoming would welcome you. Otherwise, hold it, stay awake, eat granola bars and move on.

-There’s a point when all the novelty and fun of being on a road trip has worn off. You’re saddle-sore, worn out from trying to sleep straight up in your chair, weary of fried food and ketchup. Suddenly the place you were trying to get away from becomes the only place you want to be. Lots of lessons can be gathered on the long highway between here and there. But the really great thing about a road trip-and life-is that at the very end of the road is home.

too happy

“I’m too…happy,” a friend told me when I asked her if she’d written anything lately. “It’s hard to write when you have, happy husband, happy children, happy life…” I thought about her and her lack of writing-inducing angst this morning.

As the sun came up over the tall trees that form the rim of my world, I was walking back up the gravel driveway toward the house. It needs a new roof, I thought. The chickens need water, I thought. The kids’ll be up soon, I thought. Many things that need tending. Every day a day’s worth of the kind of work that makes lives run, builds the framework of memories.

Breathe in, breathe out. Wake up, go to sleep. Make meals, clean up. Wash clothes, wear them, wash them again. Nothing new, nothing earth-shattering. I’m with her. What’s to write about?

Only this:

-In my corner of Georgia summer has melted into fall. The air is cold at dawn and dusk, turning to crisp in between. All the outdoor projects that have waited through the blistering, steamy months are suddenly possible. I put lovely new paint on all my shutters one breezy afternoon this week.

-Today I sat on the edge of one of the garden boxes and planted the fall garden. (Don’t do as I have done, I’m very late.) Cabbage, kohlrabi, bok choi, brussels sprouts, turnips, radishes, lettuce. My toddler sang and shoveled soil out of the boxes onto the ground, and it was a lovely garden day. All we had to pay for this beautiful moment was four packs of seeds dumped on the kitchen floor and cabinets painted white with latex paint and a broom.

-I took some of those nasty boards from the dining room floor and sawed, sanded, screwed, painted them up into two picket-fence headboards for Katie’s room. Got them all in there, went to get the bed frames I had in the garage, and found that they’re not the kind of bed frames that have feet. So…now I have two pretty fences sitting against the wall in that room there and the kids are scratching their heads about their crazy mother.

So that’s it. Nothing particular is going on, but life as usual. Which all by itself is a blessing. I promise to let you all know when I have a moment’s worth of angst worth philosophizing over. But for now, it’s good, in its way, to be too happy to write.

baseball

A page torn out of the autumns of my childhood might show a picture something like this:

My mother and father have spread out a blanket on the hill overlooking the Little League field and the playground. All the other parents are sitting in the bleachers behind the field, but mine have nine children to watch, and most of them are swarming over the playground equipment.

We spent many, many evenings there. Most of us didn’t care about the ball game, content rather to swing as high as we could, play on the big rocks, and, when we thought our mother wasn’t looking, wade out into the cold Little Tennessee River. We always kept one eye on the game, though, watching for the two teams to make two lines and pass each other, hitting hands, repeating “good game, good game, good game.” That was our cue to come running from all corners of the park. That was time to go home.

During the rare times I would sit on the blanket and try to pick out one of my brothers on the ball field, I discovered something interesting about the two of them. One played baseball like it was the best, last thing he would ever do. He slid into bases, dove for the ball, lived and died with the score. The other was a dreamer. He’d stand, usually with his back to the game, in the far outfield, swinging his mitt, kicking the dirt, watching the sunset or a butterfly. Balls would roll by him, the game would go on around him, and he was in a world completely apart from all of it. He knew someone would tell him when the game was over.

Time, of course, went on, and Little League was left behind in the scrapbook of childhood. I think I can honestly say that I haven’t thought about those baseball games once in the years that separate me from them now. So it was rather a strange feeling to find myself standing this past Saturday, between the ball field and the playground, watching my own son play. How odd, I thought, to have walked back into this scene so precisely the way I left it. It was in a different town, a different state, but everything had been preserved exactly. The air smelled like honesuckle and sunscreen. The parents had the same expressions of concern when their sons were up to bat, and patience when they weren’t. There was the playground equipment, the children playing, and I turned toward the ball field to pick out my son.

There was his number, far in the outfield. I watched as he put one foot over the other, spun around, and stared away over the fields. I saw him kick the dirt, swing his mitt, start singing himself a song. It would seem that he will be that type of player, I thought.

It all reminded me so exactly of meeting back up with a relative that you realize (uncomfortably) that you hadn’t known was even still alive, but whose life has continued unchanged since you last met. It reminded me of an island I used to know in the river near my home, that never changed although the water always rushed around it.

The game ended, and the players lined up. Two teams of little boys marched past each other, hitting hands, muttering “good game, good game…”, and I knew it was time to go home. I shook my head at the strangeness, at the familiarity of it all. In its own special corner, untouchable by time or change, baseball lives on.

gotta get this off my chest

They say that 85% of women in the US are wearing the wrong size bra. Shocking. The other 15% must either work at or for Victoria’s Secret. So, assuming for just a moment that you are part of the 85% of American women who create this vast underprivileged class, let’s try and figure out, shall we, why this might be so.

You suddenly decide you need a new bra, for whatever reason. (Probably because yours suddenly became, or was always actually, the wrong size.) So in shame at your ignorance and self-neglect, you hang your head, get one of your girlfriends, and go on over to Victoria’s Secret to get yourself into the privileged class who wears the coveted Right Size. But wait! Be careful which of your friends you choose to take with you. The moment you walk into the store, a chipper (correctly-fitted) saleslady will come right over and slap her measuring tape right around both of you. And then, with a “you’ve just won the lottery” tone of voice, she’ll proclaim to each of you your perfect bra size. If you happen to be a relatively flat-in-the-front sister, and your friend happens to be on the buxom side, this pronouncement is sure to produce in both of you a vague sense of embarrassment that will make you both blush and turn away to pretend to be browsing around the merchandise. The merchandise almost always happens to be purple and black lace teddies, being found looking at which is sure to have the effect of increasing your confusion.

So you take the saleslady’s advice. Trying to find the blandest, whitest, most boring bra possible amid the strapless, backless, leopard-print ocean is an adventure all by itself. You finally find one that fits, go back and get another couple, glance at the price tag, and put back all but two. Then you go and collect your friend and the two of you check out, unable to meet each other’s eyes and hoping you won’t see each other for a few weeks.

Then you get your hard-won bras home. And because the punishment you endured simply procuring the bras wasn’t enough, the pink lettering on the bubble-gum pink satin tag reads, passive-aggressively enough, “Hand Wash. Drip Dry.” So sure, you can throw them in the family wash with the kids’ socks, but they won’t be responsible for the consequences.

So you do it anyway, and in a matter of months you’ve got a lumpy mess of a bra, are embarrassed going out in public, and are considering buying bras again. Sigh. You can’t take that friend, you’re just now starting to talk to each other again. So you try to buy bras online. Sure. They’ll come straight to the door in a lovely unmarked box. But you’ll have to go to the website to get them. At a time when your children aren’t standing around, because they will gape and point and you’ll sigh and weigh the cost of a smooth new bra against the psychological damage you’ve done to them, and leave bra shopping for another time. Because although YOU just came for a simple piece of sturdy underwear, all the come-eat-me women on those websites seem to have other ideas for you. (On second thought, those bras really don’t fit those women at all.)

So you’ve picked out the blah bra you want to purchase, but you’ve got to tell the website what size you are. So you take their cryptic instructions and go in the bathroom and try to wiggle yourself into the right position to get the right measurements while holding the door shut and shouting at the children who are banging on the door, “Really, dinner’s in just a few minutes, guys…” And you do not consider asking your husband for help in measuring yourself for a bra because he’s sure to completely miss the point.

Eventually, late at night, you do get all the right sizes in the right slots on the website and you’re sitting there with your credit card out and your husband saunters through and happens to see that you are buying something online. “SIXTY DOLLARS!?!” he shouts, his eyes bugging out, one hand grasping at his hair. “Why do you need a bra that costs SIXTY DOLLARS?”

So you put your credit card back and figure, well, I’m going to Wal-Mart this week for groceries, I’ll just get one while I’m there…

But you have to take all your children with you, and as soon as you’re crowded in that tiny dressing room, they will have forgotten that over the short little wall is another woman dressing, and over the next wall, another, and they can all hear everything you’re saying. You’ll remember the last time you went shopping for bathing suits and as soon as you took off your pants your toddler said, at the top of his lungs, “OH MOMMA, you have a BEAUTIFUL BACKSIDE!” And you’ll hold your breath and hope they hold theirs.

You try one on…it’s the wrong size, and you think you’ll go get another one, when one of them gets that thoughtful look on his face and winds up and shouts, “Momma! If you are a white woman and you wear white bras, do women who are BROWN have to wear BROWN BRAS?!?”

At which point, you throw the wrong-sized bra in your cart and leave the store as quickly as possible, vowing never to buy a bra again no matter what happens as long as you live. So I guess I can understand why you'd go along wearing the wrong size for so long. Because actually, given what a new bra costs, the old one fits just fine.