Esme

I have not been posting as often as I would like. I am still writing, just not posting. I think somewhere along the line I went from posting my thoughts as they occurred to me, even on my handheld, to waiting until I could get to a computer and sit and think and edit. The problem with that of course is that I have some five or six--or more--posts in various stages of completion that need to be posted. So I am going to try to just write. Anyway...

I am starting a new job. Yay! I am quite excited about the job and very grateful, especially with the current state of employment and economic troubles. Though I am excited, I am also a bit nervous. I have yet to meet my boss or see where I will be working, and little things like that can be unnerving to me. It isn't that I'm concerned about the work environment--I've spoken to my boss on the phone and emailed with her, and she is very nice. It is just that the unknown can be unnerving. At least to me. And I start the job next week. So here is where it gets a little more challenging: I start work on Monday; Sekai's birthday is Friday. I had planned to more or less shut down. But that was before I had a job. (I have a job. A really good job. Did I mention that? Yay!)

I was speaking with my mother this morning about whether to contact my boss in advance to ensure that I can take off on Friday (the hiring/contracting agent has said that she doesn't think that I will be a problem), and just talking about my questions. She asked, I answered, I asked, she answered, and then she said we could talk more later, and then she left for work. Minutes later, she came back in and said, "It's ok to be nervous. A lot of people are nervous about starting a new job, and that's ok. It's ok to be nervous about this." She didn't add, "but you'll be fine", or "just calm down", or any of those platitudes that can feel like salt in a wound to someone who is working through something. Suddenly, I just felt so much better. I felt heard. I felt validated. Isn't that what we all want?

For obvious reasons, I started to think about the times that Sekai had expressed his emotions, and the times that I wish now I had responded differently. I know, I know, the coulda, woulda, shouldas can be dangerous territory; I try not to park in that neighborhood often. This time, though, I suddenly had a good memory, a reminder of a time when I was able to respond swiftly to Sekai's needs and meet them well.

Sekai used a powerchair for mobility. When we first moved into our new apartment, he did circles in his room. When I asked him why, he responded, "because I can". Indeed, in all of his 11 years away from our home, he had never been able to move himself in his own bedroom. His foster family didn't allow him to bring his manual chair beyond the threshold of their house, and the powerchair was always kept at school during the school year, and put in storage over the summer vacation. Sekai could access our entire home in his powerchair. At the time, though, we were dependent on the school to transport his powerchair to school. The physical therapist had someone pick up the chair, and he had to ride to school in his manual chair, and then be transferred once he arrived at school. This had been the arrangement at his foster home for years. Without transportation in place during those first early weeks, however, we would be unable to get his powerchair back home for the weekends. Sekai was vexed about being without his mobility, and spoke quite a bit about this, talking about having his freedom taken away again. That week, I spent hours online, searching for a ramp van. Previously, my mom, Sekai, and I had gone to dealers to look, but they are quite expensive, and working within the system to get the assistance Sekai was entitled to for covering the cost of the van would likely take a long, long time. (And yes, of course they reminded me that his foster family had never bought a ramp van, as if this was an indictment of me, or that I was somehow being frivolous by wanting to provide my son with his mobility and freedom. Sigh.) So I spent that week online. That Saturday, we went to visit a man who was selling his ramp van because he had been approved for an upgrade. The van showed some wear-and-tear, including the giant scrape on the side of the van that resulted when the handgears stopped working (the reason for getting the upgrade), but since I don't require adaptive equipment to drive, and the ramp worked just fine, the van was good for us. We agreed to buy it. That Monday, the seller and his friend delivered the van to us at our local service station. The service station did the inspection, and I then rushed to the motor vehicle administration office. We were on the road, with valid tags, that is, tags that were real, that said the van belonged to us. Like Sekai's feelings. They were real. They belonged to him. Like our feelings. They are real. They belong to us. How wonderful it was to be able to basically say to him, I recognize that your feelings are real, they belong to you, that they express a need, and I can commit to meeting that need.

I call my vehicle Big Red (I've had her since before Sekai came home), so it seemed fitting that the van should also have a color-based name. Big Green didn't really have a ring to it. So we called her Esme, short for Esmeralda. I said she was Sekai's van. Sekai corrected me, "No mom, she's our van." When I pointed out that I bought it for him, he still continued, "Esme belongs to both of us. We're a family." And he was right.



PS-Our dear friends own the van now, and they have renamed her, bestowing a name that is an amalgamation of my name and Sekai's.