A lot

Today, Jake heard from his top choice school. On our drive to the shuttle, he told me he wouldn’t be checking his email until very late. Why? Because his friend Jack was coming over and he didn’t want him to feel bad.

Jack - a totally smart and sweet kid - is struggling in school and has yet to get a college application submitted. He’s drowning in long term projects and time management. Hearing Jacob tell me that he was going to wait made me teary. He is such an amazing kid who thinks about these things and is willing to just wait a little more after months of waiting to hear his own fateful news for the sake of his friend’s feelings. How lucky Belac is, especially in the absence of friends, to have a brother as kind as Jake.

So much happening between Belac’s struggles and negotiations with the school, Jake and his work and the waiting on notifications, the construction on our street and negotiating a driveway with our new neighbors, my sister’s beautiful baby - a premie, who is in need of delicate care... the death of her twin, whose funeral I didn’t understand I was leading until I showed up at gravesite with a book of Catholic blessings and procedures, to now work amping up with lots of students and new plans for the summer. So much good, so much hard... I am in a better place now that we may have an option for Belac, but it’s just a lot.

plans

Soon heading off to school and dropping in for a few minutes with the grade head. He’s a good guy and I feel transparency is important. Especially as we come down to the last week of school before winter break and possibly Belac’s last day of school. My message is simple: If we can get him into another school for January, we will move him. If not, we will step up on the tutoring and barrel on.

I am trying to be very frank about Belac’s challenges with the new school without scaring them away. It is one on one teaching and very individualized. It’s like home schooling, but with multiple teachers and not me. There is time to meet Belac where he is and go at his pace. The keeping up and catching up has been unsustainable these months and caused just so much stress for all of us. Please accept him.

We will pay through the nose for doing this, with our money sunk for the year at school 1 and now half a year at school 2. But what’s the purpose of earning big bucks if you have the opportunity to save your kid from drowning? Plus, I am going to ask school 1 if they’d consider the second semester tuition a charitable donation to help us move on for Belac.

A few weeks ago, a friend quoted Bob Simon from his NPR interview a while back. “He’s not the son I imagined I would have when I pictured myself as a father, but I have come to know that he is the son I was supposed to father.”  Reading this gave me pause. These past months have just been so, so hard; reframing my own situation in this way has given me comfort. Hopefully, he’s right.

Rusty

It’s been 2 years since I’ve been here. It took me an hour to find out how to get into this account. I didn’t remember the name of the blog or the email address I used to begin it. And now I am a bit shocked to be here, and scared to go beyond the first page of 3 most recent posts. I see a challah, my old but new kitchen in Sunny Patch, and a tooth on the very laptop, sitting next to me that died just yesterday. Why am I here?

Because my son is struggling and I am again in despair about how to help him.... I have sort of been losing my mind.... Because my other son is about to fly the coup and I just want to remember things. All of it. I am relieved the blog is still here, but really? My last post was about a stupid rug...? But I guess that is part of the story of my survival. Observing and making the most all things big, small and mundane.

My laptop is dead. Noteworthy because it contains scans of Belac’s old psycho educational testing I needed to send today. We are in DC. Everyone has stretched and bloomed here but my sweet, anxious, and struggling Belac. I am at odds with his school, pissed at his teachers, and just so sad at how there is such lack of understanding and compassion when it comes to my kid. The good news is I think I found another school for him, however because nothing is ever easy and because I refuse to take my laptop dying as a sign, I am off to get those goddamn files any way that I can.