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However you define happiness, sometimes kids--even the most cherished of them--impinge on it.
They pick up every minor but unpleasant viral illness listed in the PDR, and generously share them all with you. Occasionally they share the major ones with you, too. Oh--and head lice. We wouldn't want to leave that lousiest of contagions off the list, would we?
They (the kids, not the lice--although now I think of it, lice, too) make engaging in certain intimacies with your partner, well...challenging. And speaking of Kiddus Interruptus, could someone please explain the uncanny timing of a child in need of parenting in the very wee hours of the night?
Small dudes. You are harshing my mellow.
I'll just wrap up my catalogue of insults and injuries by adding that kids are expensive and messy--and they ask a lot of questions when you’re trying to write, sleep, talk on the phone, or watch TV.
In spite of all that, I love my kids passionately and madly and fiercely. If you have kids, I'll bet you feel the same way about yours. If you're like me you would not go back to being childless, even if a fairy godmother dropped by with a magic wand and a big sack of thousand dollar bills, kindly offering to take the kids off your hands and leave the sack of bills in their place.
No thanks! I'll take the store-brand mac’n’cheese--the ORANGE store brand mac’n’cheese--and the kids. You keep the dough.
All parents have felt the inconvenience, the frustration, the irritation that comes, now and then, of parenting kids. If you deny it, I suspect you are deluded. Or a liar. Or a superhero?! In which case I’d like to get a selfie of you and me, side by side, so I can back up the name-dropping I am going to engage in later.
Atomic Mouse Comic Issue 6
Lemme know, I'm here all night.
But in all seriousness, disability parents have extra. Extra noise. Extra stress and mess. Fiercer spousal battles. Deeper despair. Nastier judgment from people who feel entitled to judge what they only think understand.
(Not extra dough, however. Man, that lack of coin can harsh your mellow even more than the ol’ Kiddus Interruptus. Take it from one who knows.)
And parents of kids whose disabilities include mental health disorders must carry the added burden of stigma and bear the weight of ambiguity on top of the rest. People are easily spooked, and willing to be cruel if cruelty enables them to establish distance from the things they are afraid of, or don't understand. As far as ambiguity goes, “meaning” is half the time absent and the other half overdetermined, when you're dealing with maladies of the psyche. No one can tell you exactly what will be, and when, and why.
There are no promises in the world of mental illness, not even probabilities--only possibilities. No doctor or therapist or clinician of any kind can really give you a prognosis, or tell you how a medication will work on your kid. Not if they're being honest with you. So the child you love is probably also a source of unalloyed, ongoing stress.
Benjy is lucky. Lucky to have parents who were willing to plow everything we had into the process of making him well. Lars and I are lucky we've somehow bucked the trend. As it turns out, the stress of living the way we have lived for the past decade and more, breaks marriages and families more often than it binds them.
I guess if you can survive the loneliness, the mean but (sometimes) well-intentioned comments and baleful stares--fueled, in part, by uninformed analyses from public figures each time a young man goes ballistic with a semi-automatic weapon--plus the fear, the helplessness, and the grief, you might make it. Lars and I did it by communicating. That’s it. We talked to each other when we needed to--and we said “I’m sorry,” each and every time we behaved badly.
But were we happy? I don’t know. Are you? This might help us find out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqDUmYVQxOI
Until recently, with Ben’s breathtaking improvement (a story for another day), quiet joy, fulfilment, the ability to just BE--those were fleeting things in our lives: rare, occasional, not really meant for the likes of us. Now, suddenly--FINALLY--Lars and I are gingerly experimenting with contentment.
And Benjy and Saskia, too.
I would say that things are looking up, but hey--I wasn't born yesterday. I’ll simply confess that I've found contentment in new and unexpected places--on the saggy cushions of my old, butterscotch sofa, for example, a sleepy, idle dog beside me. Just scratching his belly and resting diligently, storing my energy and my bulldog-fight, because you never know when what's going right is going to blow up in your face, and blast you back to that place you'd rather not revisit.
Readers, do you think mental illness and contentment can co-exist in a person or a family? Please share your stories!
