Worst field trip sponsor ever

So, I’m a mom. Two conglomerations of matter and soul took root within me, and I grew lives where lives hadn’t previously existed.

(The above sentiment will be the most beautiful part of this post. It’s all downhill from here.)

I sort of thought that since I had CREATED and GROWN LIVES, this process, by virtue of what it is, would automatically impart to me a new skill set, a sacred wisdom: the gift of knowing how to be good with kids. Not just mine; other people’s, too.

As it turns out: nope.

First, a series of disclaimers:

DISCLAIMER 1: It's not that I don't like kids. I really do. They're fantastic, and funny, and I believe they are the very fabric of our society. But, let's face it: You can really, really like something and not be good at it. For example, after years of denying it, I will admit to you all that I love to dance. Does that mean I'm good at it? Oh, heavens no. Though the ardent whispers of my sometimes-weekend lover Captain Morgan tries to convince me otherwise.

DISCLAIMER 2: If you leave your kids in my care, I'm not going to ruin them. Just don't expect them to be writing home about my awesomeness. Expect more something to the effect of: "Um, Evie's mom is kind of weird. She kept trying to tell me about women's revolutions and was singing something that she called Hamilton."

DISCLAIMER 3: Age matters. I'm good with babies and toddlers, because I'm not above a long game of peek-a-boo or a rollicking ten verses of Where Is Thumbkin. I speak the language of the very young, and they usually like me okay, because I smile a lot and am kind of a goober. And teens, they're fine too. There's around an 85% chance that they're going to be into Harry Potter (or other nerdy fandom), sports, shopping, music, or theater, and I can work with any of those variables.

But that 6-12 year old age? Man, those kids throw me for a loop. They're like sharks: they fascinate me and I'd spend all day watching them behind glass, but do I wanna get in a tank with one and see what happens? No sir. I do not.

DISCLAIMER 4: I have two kids in the baffling 6-12 year old age range, yet I make every effort to be what is, in my understanding, a Good Mom.

And it is because of this last bit that I sometimes, despite my obvious shortcomings in the realm of all things kid, occasionally volunteer for stuff at my kids' school. Isn't that what Good Moms do? That being said, I can’t shake the feeling that when I show up for these things the people in charge are all like "Oh no. Not her." If this is indeed the internal monologue of teachers and other parents I've volunteered with, I wouldn't blame them. I deserve it, you guys. I’m terrible. Honestly. I’m the worst parent sponsor on Earth. 

Allow me to demonstrate: Last week, I volunteered to go with my kids’ school to their annual “Ride the Waves” event, which is a field trip to one of the indoor YMCA pools. I’ve gone every year, so this was my fourth time. When my kids were little, I was a Cool Mom at this event. My kids wanted to play with me, and then their friends did too, and I figured out what to do because the kids were so engaging. This year, when I rolled in, Evie acknowledged me with a wave and a grin but was too busy with her own clique to pay me much mind. As for Jonah, he looked over at me once and then his eyes slid away, like I was a stranger. I realized that my Cool Mom days were a thing of the past.

So, mostly I sat on the ledge dangling my feet in the water, staring awkwardly around at this pool full of kids, wondering what it was that I was supposed to do.

Another mom stood near one edge of the pool, tossing rings in for the kids to dive in and retrieve, a game that a bunch of kids were clearly really into. It seemed like she knew what she was doing. I wondered: is there a game I should be playing with the kids? I had no idea what kind of game or activity would be fun for them. Pool charades? Would You Rather? Maybe a quick round of Settlers of Catan, poolside?  I chose to sit back and quietly observe.

At one point a tiny girl, shivering and crying, made her way around my post. Since I was in my swimsuit and a lot of the sponsors weren’t, I thought I should take it upon myself to help her out. I held her hand and walked around the pool with her, and she temporarily calmed down. But then she started crying again. I squatted down so that we were at eye level, because I’ve heard that’s a thing you’re supposed to do with kids. And I said, “My name is Allison. What’s your name?”

Trying to talk to her? That was my first mistake. She lurched away from me and started crying harder. I went for a distraction route. I asked her favorite color. I asked about her family. I asked, did she have any brothers or sisters? She said she had a sister. I said, “What’s your sister’s name?”

And she said, “I DON’T KNOW!!!” Then she started crying so hard that a teacher had to come manually remove her from the pool.

I thought that went pretty well.

I spent the rest of the time lurking around my third grade daughter. My behavior was probably only moderately creepy. I felt like a kid on the fringe: wanting to join in, but waiting for the cool kids to welcome me to the inner sanctum. Turns out that third graders aren’t super jazzed about awkward 34-year old psychologists who like talking about universal health care and the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel.

And yet, there was one golden opportunity, a time I could have stepped up and been a grown-up. A few kids caused some commotion by climbing OVER the pool rope, instead of going UNDER it, which was AGAINST THE RULES. However, during this event I’d been spacing out and thinking about fried fish and peanut butter cups in ice cream and also wondering what it would have been like to have lived in New Jersey in the 1970s. By the time I realized there was commotion, the teachers, fully dressed, from the side of the pool, had taken care of the scene that had unfolded literally five feet in front of me, in the middle of the pool. #winning

Other school volunteering that I’ve done went about as well as Ride the Waves did. I helped out at a classroom Thanksgiving party when Evie was in Kindergarten. I, per usual, didn’t know what to do with the kids, so I just let them stick foam stickers all over my face. It made them laugh, and that was a step up from my usual performance.

And then we all got in trouble with the teacher and the other sponsors, because apparently that wasn’t what we were supposed to do with the stickers. *shrugs*

Another time, we were hosting a sleepover for Evie at our house, and during the half-hour that my husband ran out to the store to get ice cream, the girls started bickering at each other. They split off into tiny-but-brutal feminine gangs, the Bloods raging up in the piano room while the Crips staged a hostile take-over of the downstairs TV room. One lone soldier stood by the door and said she wanted to go home.

I was paralyzed. What do you do when a group of 7-year olds that’s supposed to be cohesive and BFFs-4-Life all of the sudden goes full on gang war? I stood in the kitchen, wide eyed, watching it all go down, and thought, “Oh no.” And that was as far as my thinking went. It stalled out on “ohhhh nooooo” and looped.

So I didn’t do anything. I stood there and watched as the Bloods yelled and the Crips taunted. The lone soldier at the door glared at me, accusatorily. My husband came home, took one look at the scene, and immediately engaged them all in some kind of fun joint activity that mended fences and prevented drive bys. Jeb knows how terrible I am with kids. Dude’s got a fricking degree in education, taught for 8 years in public schools, and also worked with elementary-aged kids as a teacher-naturalist for several summers. He’s got a leg up on this whole “I know how to talk to kids” thing. (When I said to him, as I was brainstorming for this post, “Man, I’m really awkward with kids,” he said, “Yeah, I’ve seen.”)

I think that probably even if I did have all the right kinds of education, mixing with kids still wouldn’t be a strength of mine. Hell, even when I was a kid I sucked at talking to other kids. I didn’t even realize this about myself until I saw video evidence of me on a day of preschool. My peers are running amok, parading around in dress-up clothes, smashing playdough between their hands, giggling, laughing, skipping, dancing. I’m sitting crosslegged on the floor next to the teacher, a very serious, doleful expression on my face, no doubt engaging her in a conversation about the Chernobyl disaster or Ronald Reagan’s diplomatic progress with Gorbachev.

Yet somehow, between the field trips and class parties, I always forget my deficits. Enough time goes by between volunteering events that I get myself to thinking, “This won’t be so bad!” and “You can totally do this!” It’s like how a woman can forget the pain of childbirth, only to be rudely awakened when it’s upon her again. (Or so I've heard. I don't actually know. My kids came out the sunroof, thank you very much.) Or, like that time at the age of 21 I decided I was a master roller skater and should totally go to a rink, even though I hadn’t skated for 13 years and had been absolutely awful at it in my childhood. In case it’s not obvious how this excellent choice panned out: Immediately upon entering the rink on skates, I fell and hit my head. I cried for a long time. Mostly because my head hurt, but also because I was really embarrassed, but also because I was drunk.  

Pre-skate optimism

Post-skate realism (and pain)

It seems that optimism comes for me in the stretches between life events. Optimism, with a splash of denial, and a misplaced confidence chaser.  Maybe adding a stiff shot of realism to the optimism cocktail could help, the next time I think about school volunteering. Maybe I could volunteer for a task better suited to my strengths….like, maybe I could organize the library. Or just read the library. I don’t know.

There's this part of me that wants to be more of a kid person. This is the Pollyanna part of me that thinks that maybe, if I take the right class or read the right book or observe the right people, I could become Kid Competent. The other part of me-- the louder part, the bigger part, the part that talks like Doctor Phil-- is pretty sure that it's time to settle up with reality. I’m 34 years old, I’ve got two kids of my own, I have seven nephews and a niece (all of whom I’ve had ample opportunities to practice with), a PhD IN EFFING TALKING TO PEOPLE, and I’ve still got nothing.

Chances are, when it comes to me and kids: this is as good as it’s gonna get.

Change isn't linear, and that sucks

Sometimes I feel like a broken record in my work as a therapist. I end up saying the same things, over and over again, day in and day out. Don’t get me wrong: I say a lot of weird and different stuff every day, too. My head is honestly just too chaotic-- any number of different words and pictures and songs and feelings and ideas and shit are flying around up in there at any given moment-- to be all that repetitive.

Yet, some interventions are so “Allison-style” that I end up using them with most of my clients—hence the broken-record feeling I've got going on. I’m big on self-compassion, so I end up saying “Would you talk like that to your best friend if she was going through what you’re going through?” I'm hip on self-awareness and values as in-roads to making lasting change, so I hear myself saying, “I think it would be helpful if we spend some time identifying the things you deeply care about, the things you want to build your life around.”  And, I'm pragmatic. I accept that people are inherently messy, and so is change. Thus, the  “progress isn’t linear” talk, which is one that I have with almost every client.

Here’s what sets the scene for the “progress isn’t linear” shtick: after a couple of sessions, a client comes in saying he's feeling better. He's probably feeling lighter, freer, because he has someone to talk to now. Maybe he's also experimented with a coping skill or two that he's learned in session. This relief lasts for a few days, or maybe a few weeks, sometimes even months. Yet, inevitably, the client falters, and that relief slips through his fingers. He has a bad day. If he struggles with alcoholism, he's picked up a bottle. If he struggles with depression, he's struggled to get out of bed. If he has post-traumatic stress, he's had a series of disturbing flashbacks. And he'd thought that these behaviors or symptoms were gone, that he'd kicked them. He comes in, head hanging, and tells me that he’s failed. He’s “back at square one.” He is demoralized and dejected and questioning if he really can change, if he really can heal. Sometimes he wants to quit trying.

And I, though I feel empathy for my client, am unfazed by his revelations. I know that this is how it goes. I’ve seen this happen so many times, in fact, that I would argue until I’m blue in the face that progress simply isn’t linear. And that sucks, because we so want progress to be linear. We want to see ourselves on a steady road to recovery, to see improvement every day.

We want progress to look like this:

But what progress really looks like is usually this:

Or even this:

I'm not entirely sure what this means. I'm pretty sure the line might
even suggest that going back in time was involved. The point is:
Progress is messy. Just go with it. 

In other words, progress can be a real bitch.

I tell clients about this. I draw these pictures. I attempt to normalize their setbacks. Usually, I can get clients to jump on this bandwagon with me. They are able to see how yes, they are human and yes, change is hard, and no, this return to old behavior does not necessarily mean they are at square one. It means they are on square 34 but had a bump in the road.

So, I hang my hat on getting my clients to buy this, so that they will go easy on themselves, and so that they keep their hope alive. And not just because I believe it's good for them, but because I actually believe it. Which all makes me very embarrassed to admit that I CAN'T EVEN DRINK MY OWN MEDICINE. Why is it so hard?  I wonder why, when I have a bad day, it is damn-near impossible to see this as normal, human, to be expected?

You know, being a therapist is nothing if it isn’t being the world’s biggest hypocrite, on a daily basis.

I’ve had a couple of challenging days lately with my journey out of depression (click here to read more about that), which caught me off guard—because things had been going so great! For the past couple of months, I’ve been riding waves of positivity. I have a new nephew to love on. My cousins and I had an epic Harry Potter Trivia night, and I was victorious! (eat it, Noah! And you’ll get me next time, Kevin. BTW, I have the best ever cousins). I BOUGHT TICKETS TO HAMILTON: THE MUSICAL (Chicago), which is a total bucket list thing for me. I’m writing more than I ever have, and better yet, I’m having meaningful conversations with friends (and even strangers!) about what I’ve written. I’ve played volleyball and baked brownies and sang Happy Birthday and chatted around firepits and taken long walks and sang on a stage and giggled with my friends and snuggled with my kiddos and did sun salutations daily. These experiences are giving me fuel, are helping me to heal. My energy level is good, my productivity at work and at home has improved immensely.   I feel smiley, a lot, and have possibly already laughed more this year than I did in 2016 altogether. Hope is winning the battle over fear and self-deprecation.

But even given all of that, I’m apparently not immune to bad days. Sometimes unwelcome stressful events go ahead and let themselves in and knock me over. If I were a football team, this would be a rebuilding year for me. So the quarterback gets hit a lot. His O line is injured, and slow. My playcalling is still all wonky, and sometimes, Bo Pelini shows up and starts railing on everyone.

Though more resilient than I would have been six months ago, going through The Depression of 2016 has left me more vulnerable, still, than I’d like. Some days it’s still hard to adjust my sails when the wind blows. Some days, I still want to crawl into my bed, cover up with the quilt that my great-grandma sewed from scraps of her clothing, and hide from everyone, everything. Some days, I hate on myself, really hate on myself, with the heat of a thousand suns, or I doubt myself with such fury that there’s not a lot of me left at the end of it.

Fortunately, these days, or stretches of days, have been few and far between. But they do happen.

And I’m going to falter again, no matter how hard I rail against that possibility. Not every day can I possibly go skipping into the sunset, in search of my ponies and rainbows. Tomorrow will not necessarily be “better” than today. I don’t get that guarantee, and neither do you. Sure, we can hope for it. We can even work for it (and we should!)—we can use good coping skills, and talk to ourselves kindly, and practice sound self-care and do everything “right”—and still, we get no guarantees.

Because change isn’t fucking linear, you guys. I so wish it was, but it’s not.

The good news is this: If you, like me, have faltered lately, you’re not alone. All this means is that you’re “normal.” You’re human. This is happening to all of us, all the time, but we’re mostly too ashamed to talk about it. This isn’t square one. This is a bump in the road. Maybe tomorrow will be kinder, maybe it won’t—but some tomorrow will be kinder, if you keep working at whatever your battle is. I promise.

Maybe if I say these things enough times, to you all, to my clients, and to myself, I'll start to apply them more readily to my life, too. :) It would seem that perhaps being a broken record does have its advantages.

Pray For My Accountant

2/9/2017

Today started as many others do. A few clients in the morning. An uninspired Healthy Choice meal for lunch. A little witty repartee with Megan, my across-the-hall fellow psychologist and valued friend. We were talking about how many hats Megan bought for her son this year, which is a subject that we cover a lot, because I think she buys too many hats and I tend to bring up the same subjects over and over. I bet she gets sick of that. So anyway, it was business as usual until she said, "I've gotta work on my taxes today."

I gulped.“Your taxes. Does that mean…Tom’s coming?”

“Yeah, Tom’s coming.”

Tom’s coming. Two words. Infinite fear.

Tom is our accountant.

Please let it be known that my fear has very little to do with Tom himself. Tom is a lovely man.  He is smart, patient, and tactful. He helps me to make good financial choices. In fact, I think if everyone could have Tom in their lives, they’d probably be a lot better off.

So no, it’s not Tom per sé that gives me pause. It’s the stuff I find myself having to say to Tom. Like, “Oops, I totally forgot to send you that mileage number again,” or “Can you explain how SIMPLE IRAs work, one more time?” (I’d already asked like 9 times), or “Wait, was I supposed to mail a check for that last week?”

“Ah, shit,” I said, trying to figure out how I was going to not look like an idiot in front of Tom. Again. And this time was bound to be especially bad, because I’d been harboring a secret.

You see, I didn’t get into psychology to be a businesswoman. I really didn’t. In my ten years of higher education, I didn’t take one—not even one!— course in business. Every lick of business knowledge I have is from way back in the day, when I took Accounting I and II in high school. 

So what did I do, immediately upon graduating with my PhD? Open a business. YOLO.

That’s where Tom comes in. He’s a powerhouse of financial knowledge. Incredibly helpful? YES. A bit intimidating? Also yes.

So, I’m usually nervous when Tom comes to visit, and nerves make me more clunky than I already am.  My mouth runs ahead of my brain, and I'm pretty sure I make a lot of weird, strained faces. Also, I’m inherently socially awkward, namely because I SUCK at socially acceptable small talk. Which I didn’t even realize about myself until I learned about some of the most common American social scripts in a multicultural communication class in undergrad and realized I was DOING THEM ALL WRONG. For example, when an American says “How are you?”, in passing,  it is meant to be a greeting, not a legitimate question. You are supposed to reply, “Fine, thanks. How are you?”

You guys, this info blew my mind. I’d always thought that when people asked how I was, my job was to be honest and forthcoming, you know, like “Actually, terrible, because I’ve got cramps and my TV show didn’t record last night and I’m also feeling really insecure about this conversation that I had with a friend this morning.”

But at least now I understand why so many folks in undergrad stopped asking how I was when I saw them in the hall.

Anyway.

Before I’d even had a chance to formulate a plan for disclosing my shameful secret to Tom, the office door bell rang.

“Is that him?” I mouthed to Megan, standing in the threshold of my doorway, out of the line of sight of the waiting room and hallway.

Megan nodded.

I took a deep breath and stepped out of my doorway, and there, just ten feet away from me, was Tom. I smiled my most winning smile.

“Tom! Hi!”

“Hello there!” His tone was friendly, but I caught the way he froze, just a little.

Imagine this from his perspective: you go to a client’s office, and on your way down the hall to her door, another of your clients, NOT the one you were supposed to be meeting with, comes popping out of nowhere, smiling hugely, saying your name like she knew you were coming. Creepy, amiright?

“I was going to email you today," I said. It was almost the truth. 

“Oh, were you? I was starting to think you were avoiding me!”

I knew he was joking but SHIT did I feel called out. Dude saw right through me.

I eased into my confession. Started with a positive. “I put some money into my retirement account!”

He smiled. “Okay, that’s good!” He looked at me expectantly...probably because I was blocking his way into Megan’s office. 

I did that smile that’s not really a smile, but more of a baring of teeth. I guess it’s a grimace? It looks like this:

“Okay, so another thing. I’m a little behind on my Quickbooks for the year.” 

Tom, because he is a lovely man, once spent well over an hour in my office teaching me how to use Quickbooks. For a few years I’d been able to use it on my own with relative proficiency. Then 2016 happened. (Author’s Note: If you’re new to me, or to the blog: 2016 was not my best year. Read this if you want to know why.)

He furrowed his brow, just a little. “All right, like how far behind are we talking?”

“Ummm…pretty behind.”

“When’s the last time you updated it?”

“December.”

“Oh, that’s not bad. You can get that caught up.”

“No…like last December. December 2015.” More teeth baring.

“Ookkay.” He narrowed his eyes. Not unkindly, just kind of a “what in the hell should we do with this?” kind of face. It felt like the time I drove my dad’s pickup into a snowdrift in the country and got it stuck. Just like back then, I’d done a bad thing, and there was nothing to do but come clean.

Tom was nowhere near as pissed as my dad had been the night of the truck in the snowdrift. Tom didn’t say “Fuck” even one time.

Yet despite Tom's total lack of criticism, my need to please rushed forth and started pushing nonsense out of my mouth. “I’ve got all of my bank statements! I could go through and get it all caught up really quick! Should I? I can! I definitely can. Yep. But, I mean…does it make more sense for me to do it, or for me to just have you do it, at this point?”

He paused, considering this. “I think it’s probably best if you just get me the statements, and I’ll do it. It’ll save time for you, anyway.”

Later that day, Tom and I came up with a system that will work better for me for the upcoming tax year-- which includes not trying to do my own Quickbooks from now on. This will cost me a little more in terms of what I pay him, but will be worth the savings of time and guilt.

Before he left, he flipped through the bank statements I'd managed to find for him. “What’s this Capital One deposit?”

“Distribution. That’s just a regular deposit into a savings account.” Ah, the thrill of competence!

“And how about this $22.30 at Super Saver?”

I squirmed. “Umm….pretty sure that was office supplies and postage.” And Tom, if you’re reading this, it was definitely also two large bags of Hershey’s Kisses, which I DO hand out to clients on the regular. Total business expense.

I started to get nervous thinking about Tom going through all of my bank statements. Tom was now going to know every time I went out to eat. He’s going to know every cent that I spent on every book, every training, EVERY BAG OF CHOCOLATE. When you really get down to it, your accountant is like a benevolent Big Brother—not the genetic type, the Orwellian type. So you’d better damn-well have someone you trust. Thank goodness I trust Tom.

Trust aside, I was still jittery thinking about the Big Brothery aspects and also still feeling sort of like a daughter having just admitted some grave error to her father.

So I started rambling on about all kinds of weird shit, I don’t even know what, but I do know that it got worse and worse as it went along, culminating in me comparing Tom to a priest who had just absolved me of all of my financial sins, literally crossing myself, and saying “I’m not even Catholic, but I guess I’m Catholic today.”

Yep. That happened. My Protestant ass crossed myself in front of my accountant and pretended that he was a priest. (WTF?)

To be fair, he did give me permission to throw all of my guilt away. I mean, was crossing myself after that situation really so wrong? (Hint: Yes.)

After assigning me three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers (not really), Tom left, and I have to imagine he was relieved. Ultimately, I was also relieved, but not because of his absence, but rather, because I’d “come clean” and it really wasn’t all that big of a deal. All of the meetings with Tom are like that: we hold our breath, we talk about the financial truths of the situation at hand, he tells us what to do in that calm, no-nonsense way that he does, and then we all move on with our lives. Sometimes we do what he says. Sometimes we don’t. But even when we fail he helps us figure out what the next best step is.

Best accountant ever.

Lucky Megan: she got to hear the entire "I'm Catholic today" shitshow go down. Given the proximity between her door and mine, she Very Often sees me making an ass of myself.

And, lucky me, Megan thinks I’m “cute awkward.” I want to believe her, but somehow her sentiment smacks of that way that parents think the weird things their kids do are cute. But I guess that’d make me Megan’s kid in this scenario, and that doesn’t really work because we’re not like that, and plus if I was her kid she’d start bringing me all of these hats and dear god, please don’t let her buy any more hats.

Cute awkward, actual awkward, whatever I am--I’ve accepted it’s how I’ll always be. Even with my accountant. Especially with my accountant. If you think about it, say a prayer for Tom tonight. When it comes to our office, he needs all the help he can get. And it’s tax season, y’all. 

***
UPDATE: TOM READ AND APPROVED OF THIS POST (see the comments below). I FEEL LIKE I HAVE WON AT LIFE. Quickbooks be damned.