Hannah: Our Barometer

January. Ack. December's full, shorter days close into the frozen, lifeless days of January. How's that for a peppy intro? For the past several years January's lifelessness has drifted into my soul and I feel like I need an ice pick to remove it.

WELL then! This past week I tried to find something funny in this darkness about which to post. I've tried to find the humor in Hannah's behavior, but her behavior hasn't been very humorous.

Hannah is our family barometer: if any pressure rises, she measures it and provides a fairly accurate reading. Between my moody mental state, Carl's late working hours and the flu bug my family passed amongst itself, Hannah's had plenty of pressure to gauge. On top of that, she had physical therapy AND occupational therapy last Tuesday. She communicated this pressure in several ways.

One example: she cried out in the night several times per night, saying things like, "No, Tatie! 'top! AAaaahh! (No Katie! Stop! AAaaahh!) after which we could hear the bed bang bang bang against the wall as she rolled back and forth to calm herself. At school she spaced out, refusing to pay attention or complete her work. Her teacher placed a cardboard cubicle around her, but even that wasn't completely successful. Hannah's speech therapist wrote (in a communication journal we keep): "Hannah did not try today--she left sounds out and would just stare at me" and "She has trouble following through...3 steps forward and 2 steps back." She also added, "I understand the frustration. My son has done the same." Thank goodness the speech therapist shares her own humanity with me.

Another "thank goodness:" I have finally figured out that when Hannah's teachers and therapists share these things with me, they are not attacking me or implying I'm a bad mom. Yet I still feel as if I have somehow failed. This feeling of failure combined with sleep-deprived nights and the other pressures mentioned above has left me feeling like I'm in a downward spiral that I'm powerless to stop. However, I know logically that the powerlessness feeling is false, a lie. I know that just as January will pass, so will this current set of circumstances. Right now that's all I've got--the hope that this will end: mere survival and not authentic living. I'm going to do the best I can with that for now and believe that better days are just around the corner.

Sorry this post is a bit depressing. The coming week promises to be better. My niece and nephew are staying with me while their mom and dad take a much-deserved trip to Vegas. I hope to post some of the humorous antics here. That's my best anti-depressant: looking for the funny stuff and focusing on it hard enough to be able to convey it in writing.