10 Days — Dec. 19-28

Ten days ago, Dec. 19, we had snow. Two inches shy of two feet fell from the sky, papering our house and streets in an unprecedented downpour – for December at least – of frozen, granular ice.

Nine days ago, Emma and I shoveled a path for the car. Two neighborhood girls came over and helped us clear the driveway while Kate started making her Christmas presents in every possible room of the house. As the night ended, we plodded to a hotel near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, knowing that Jill would not make it from New York as we had planned due to the weather.

Eight days ago, at 5 a.m., we boarded a flight for Orlando and the land of the Mouse. The girls bickered. Kate twitched while Emma made her version of snark angels. It was colder than I anticipated, but we braved Magic Mountain.

Seven days ago, Jill made it! Forty minutes before the girls went on stage for Frosty Follies — the 22-minute holiday revue that is the only reason we were at Disney the week of Christmas — she arrived at the hotel, exhausted from an all-night trip of planes, trains and taxicabs. Later, we had drinks in the bar and shook our heads in amazement at the year almost behind us. I couldn’t sleep as I worked on the first draft of this entry, but the words weren’t there.

Six days ago, on three hours sleep, I left Orlando for New York. There, Ben was obsessing about “Billy Elliot,” wondering if he would have a chance to do that show, too. Ten minutes before curtain, he was on; I ran five blocks and saw my Little Boy on stage for the third time. He was terrific.

Five days ago, on Christmas Eve, I started writing this again, trying to find a way to meld the various emotions of seeing my girls on stage in Florida and my son on Broadway. But I couldn’t put the words on paper. After Ben’s matinee, we headed home on the train for Christmas in Virginia. The phone rang; it was Jill. Kate was in distress. They went to the hospital ER. We got off the train and cabbed to Springfield to meet them; Ben performed in the room while Emma laughed hysterically.

Four days ago, at the start of Christmas Day, we arrived at home with Kate. The diagnosis was a panic attack, but a neurologist now needs to be called ASAP. The ER doctor started off defensive, then realized what he — and we — faced. The kids slept until almost 8, when it was time to open presents. All the kids were extremely grateful for their gifts, a first I think, and it was a very nice and quiet day. Ben, grateful to be home, called it the “best Christmas ever.”

Three days ago, I drove to Ellicott City to drop off Ben, who had to be in New York for a matinee and rode back with members of the “Ragtime” cast. An article in the New York Times noted that Internet rumors were surrounding the show, but it looked like “Ragtime” would survive through January. Traffic was a bear, but I managed to get home and work some on the house, addressing long-awaited issues on the to-do list. Then Emma and I picked up Nicholas to head to New York, where we picked up Ben that night. I fell into bed.

Two days ago, it was Kate’s 13th birthday, and she celebrated with a low-key shopping excursion with her mom and a friend. Meanwhile, Ben and Emma bickered as all good married couples — and opposite sex twins — do. After lunch, I stood in the TKTS line for 45 minutes, only to be told at the gate that “Next to Normal” had sold out. Sadness turned to euphoria when I won the lottery and Nicholas and Emma got in to see the story of a bipolar housewife and the effect that the illness has on her family. Meanwhile, vendors stood at TKTS with “Ragtime” fliers in hand, getting few takers.

Yesterday, Dec. 28, we went our separate ways. Nicholas met up with some of his friends from school. Ben, Emma, and I arranged to go to Mars 2112, a bizarre little “Chuck E. Cheese Goes to Outer Space” restaurant on 51st Street, with a girl from “South Pacific” and her mom. It was a nice day.

Then, a series of omens — a picture frame broken, problems with Ben’s camera. Jill was returning to New York with Kate, which made Emma nervous. I was heading back to Virginia to work before the New Year’s holiday, but a few minutes after dropping Ben off, he called. I thought it was to tell me to have a good trip, or perhaps to apologize for the camera incident.

“We’re closing,” he sobbed, “on Jan. 3.”

Life Amid the Holidays, Vol. 2

In my 20s, a car pulled out in front of me on Christmas Eve, totaling the first new vehicle I ever had. Then my second car, a used battleship that would not/could not be destroyed, was stolen the next holiday season.

A few months later, I got married, picking a safe, middle-of-the-year month — May —  to avoid any potential mishaps. Within two years, my first child — Nicholas — was born (of course) in December, tying the fate of my parenting skill (or lack thereof) to the emotion-laden holiday season.

Two years later, during my parents’ Christmas visit to North Carolina, my dad and I went to see two movies on the same day. Movies were one way my father and I bonded, and it didn’t hurt that I managed to escape what was an increasingly untenable situation at home.

On the way back to Reidsville from Greensboro, I asked him: “Why, given everything you’ve been through, are you and mom still together? How have you made it work?”

He paused for a long time, then said, “When I look at your mother, I see the same person I fell in love with. Of course, she has changed, physically, and so have I, but I still see the same person.”

For me, there was — and is — no simpler definition of love.

I could not say the same, and within a month, I had left the marriage. I wanted the chance to be like my dad.

Within two years, I had divorced, remarried, changed jobs, and bought a house. As Christmas 1996 approached, Jill and I were ready to mark the birth of our first child, Katharine. She was born two days after Christmas.

Little did we know that before the next Christmas we would have two more children. Ben and Emma were born Dec. 11, 1997, giving us three kids who are the same age for 16 days each year and four children born in a single month.

Christmas had moved from a season of endings to a season of beginnings — albeit one that has us running around constantly and trying to hold on to our remaining shreds of sanity.

But the spectre of loss has continued to loom.

Last weekend, I looked around the table at a birthday celebration for Ben and Emma in New York. Earlier, Ben had performed for the second time in “Ragtime,” and we went to a restaurant with family and friends to share some cake and have a late dinner.

My mom was there, as was Nicholas (thanks to my mother’s generosity in paying for his plane ticket). Emma and Kate watched Ben perform for the first time, and we had dear friends and family also in the audience.

As we lit the cake, I looked around and thought briefly of the people who weren’t there — my dad, Jill’s mom, Fran and Bill — and would have given anything to join us. Just as I had done at Thanksgiving (also a dinner in New York), I thought of the holidays we shared as a family, how the chaos of growing up amid illness had given way to the chaos of raising our own children.

And, despite my need (and ability at times) to cling to the holiday humbug that looms over my past, I realized how truly lucky I am.

Life Amid the Holidays, Vol. 1

At some point every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, my inner cynic starts thinking: Maybe Scrooge had a point.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is about the holidays that bring out my inner churl, but it is hard to escape a simple fact: Every year for more than a decade, starting at age 8, I spent part of the holiday season visiting relatives in the hospital, waiting and wondering when the dreaded shoe was going to drop like an anvil on a member of my immediate family.

And after that lucky streak, I upped the ante by becoming Charlie Brown in my own Christmas special.

My father’s illness covered my tween years; my grandfather’s my early teens. After my grandfather died nine days before Christmas in 1981, the pattern became more erratic, even if the result didn’t. One year it was my dad’s gallbladder operation, the next it was my uncle having a car radiator explode in his face just before Thanksgiving.

(If there’s one thing I can safely say about my uncle, it’s that his failure to differentiate between a warm engine and a hot toddy made him the winner in the “Most Unique Reason to Spend the Holiday in a Hospital” category. And that was the year we won the medical triple crown, with my mother separating her shoulder and my dad having knee surgery. But again, I digress…)

Remarkably, as they did throughout their married lives, Mom and Dad managed.

As my mother recently noted, I had a thing for things; as a parent, I have found this is an affliction many children have. This presented an ongoing management challenge for my parents, who scraped pennies together to make ends meet against our wishes for the next big thing, which ultimately would be pushed aside in pursuit of the next-next big thing. (After all, my birthday is in mid-January...)

Looking back, I now see how hard it must have been. To my mom’s everlasting credit, she worked tirelessly to ensure that my sister and I had a nice holiday season, even if that meant excavating me from my traditional sleeping spot under the tree late on Christmas Eve, or putting our dog Frisky’s paw on a rubber stamp pad so the “reindeer” could sign Santa’s thank you note for the milk and cookies.

They did this while somehow putting food on the table, paying the bills on time, and getting us what we wanted (within reason), even if that meant they had to recycle bows and wrapping paper from year to year and event to event. It also meant that the largest Christmas present always came in "the bag," which was then folded and put away until the next year.

I didn't realize then how small blessings, built up over time, could turn into large ones. One of those blessings came from my second set of “parents” — Fran and Bill, the childless neighbors from across the street who “adopted” us as theirs. Having them always made the holidays a little easier.

As the years passed and the hospital visits mounted, however, I found myself approaching mid-November waiting for the other shoe to drop. My deeply jaded side wanted to conduct an office pool under the title of “Which member of Glenn’s family will be subjected to the holiday drama trauma this year?” (Double points if it was anyone but my father.)

My (italics added for emphasis) bad luck almost became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bah humbug, indeed…

A Birth-day Memory

Sometimes, when we pick up around the house, my wife wonders aloud if the air duct is clean. Depending on her mood, she may even try to climb onto something to make sure the dust is gone.

On that day 12 years ago, she stared at it every few minutes, waiting for me to whisper in her ear. “Focus, focus,” I said. “Breathe. Breathe. Keep your focus. You’re doing good. There you go.”

For hours we continued this routine, a process that began with an “Oh-my-God-that’s-intense” pain that woke her up around 1:30 a.m. on a cool Thursday morning.

We arrived at the hospital around 5:15, and within an hour our room was filled with rhythmic, tribal sounds that came from the heart monitor’s tinny speaker. Drugs were administered to make her labor more regular, and the staring at the air duct began.

Because twins presented a higher risk, more personnel and equipment were required than for a single delivery. We got the “good room,” twice as large as the others, to accommodate the extras.

A ward full of nurses, some of whom we vaguely remembered from our daughter’s birth less than a year before, walked in and out. Three stayed with us on an irregular basis through their shift, talking about their families, what to eat for lunch — typical everyday-type things for everyone but the two of us. For them, it’s their job; they had five deliveries in 24 hours. We had other things on our minds.

The rolling wave became more intense, and my wife requested drugs. A woman who would not come near an aspirin when she was pregnant the first time had become the poster child for epidurals.

The next two hours were surreal, even for those not under the influence.

Jill’s parents sat in a corner. Two health occupations students from a local high school observed while standing near a sink. The nurses continued their chatter while checking the vital signs. I jotted down notes on the hospital stationary. Jill read a newspaper between contractions, which with the epidural brought pressure but no pain. If not for the tribal rhythms of the heart monitors, it would be difficult to know she was in labor.

The girl’s heart rate fell, dropping from the normal range — 140 to 160 — to 60. After 2 minutes, the nurses huddled. The doctor was called. Jill’s parents were asked to leave.

The heart rate came back up; the doctor said our daughter was on the umbilical cord in some way. Since the rate was back to normal, it did not appear that a C-section would be necessary.

The routine resumed. Jill continued to make progress, and the nurses rotated in and out as they left for lunch. Then the pressure intensified, and the time was near.

Jill started to push, and push, and push. The baby girl’s heart rate leaped, then fell. My wife developed a fever. The baby was in distress —life-threatening distress.

The C-section was ordered. I was told to put on scrubs, but I had to wait outside. If complications developed, I couldn’t be with my wife.

In 63 seconds, our bustling room was empty. All the equipment, the people, even my wife’s bed, was in the OR. I stood alone and waited. Seconds seemed like days.

Finally, the anesthesiologist came in and got me, and I joined my wife in the operating room.

At 2:34 p.m., Emma was born, the cord wrapped around her neck. The doctors worked on her quickly and she was fine, even though she narrowly escaped permanent brain damage because of the oxygen deprivation.

At 2:35, Benjamin followed, announcing his presence as only a baby can do. We should have known then that he was a singer.

Thirteen hours of labor. Nine hours at the hospital. Two new babies. One big scare.

A memory of 12 years ago today.

A Song For You

Remember how I said that irony is not dead? Let me prove it to you.

Today, I should sing “Happy Birthday” to my oldest son, except that the best present I could give him is not singing at all.

“Dad, please… I mean, really, I’m not being rude … but I’d rather hear the cats.”

Yep, I have a voice that stands out in a crowd — for all the wrong reasons. My solution is to be the Milli Vanilli/Britney Spears/Janet Jackson of the “Happy Birthday” set. (Except that you wouldn’t want to see me dance, either.)

• Irony No. 1: Rhythm, tone, and pitch — three things I want more than almost anything — are nowhere to be found. And three of my four children, plus Jill, have beautiful voices.
• Irony No. 2: I love music. 
• Irony No. 3: Over the past three years, both sons have been in productions of, yes, “A Christmas Carol.”

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s December (although retailers would have you believe that the month started just before Halloween). It’s a month built for music, from carols to hymns to show tunes to “Happy Birthdays” and everything in between. And over the next 18 days, the height of the singing season, all four of my kids have birthdays.

Now there is irony, topped only by the fact that for 16 days, from this Friday through Dec. 27, I will have three 12-year-olds.

So as we kick off birthday month and continue through the holiday season, the best gift I can give to my children it to remain vocally silent. As the DJ says, this one goes out to Nicholas, Emma, Ben, and Katharine — by request.

“Overture. Purple lights. This is it. The height of heights. And oh what heights we’ll hit… On with the show this is it.”

The Bipolar Parenting Challenge

I should have seen it coming.

I should have seen her face change when we mentioned the twins’ birthday. I should have seen the black cloud that parked over her head.

After dinner, I should have tried another approach when helping her with homework. A few minutes after that, I should have taken the time, counted to 10, and not been so quick to respond in a firm voice that — under so-called “normal” circumstances — any parent would use.

I should have, but I didn’t.

And everyone paid for it — most of all Katharine.

Having a bipolar child with a triple A membership (anxiety, ADHD, and adolescence) is one of the most difficult challenges I face as a parent. Day to day, hour to hour, sometimes minute to minute, we never know which person will show up.

Is it the sweet, vulnerable child overwhelmed by the faulty wiring in her brain? The ditzy, funny, engaging 12-year-old girl who can’t stop talking? The child who watches the clock almost obsessively to ensure that you get her to school on time, yet can’t tell you what day it is?

Is it the little girl who can’t stand to see an animal stuck outside in the rain, or the enraged, angry, out-of-control person who locks herself in the bathroom, curls up in a ball, and screams at the top of her lungs for 30 minutes? Or is it, not so simply, all of the above?

The last question is the best answer I have.

••••••

The above paragraphs were written about 2:30 a.m. yesterday, several hours after Kate’s most recent outburst.  Sadly, this has taken on a familiar pattern — struggle, mania, struggle, confrontation, emotional spark (or acetylene torch, depending on your point of view), outburst, regret, sadness, and finally, fitful sleep.

The collateral damage from these incidents forces everyone to reflect on what has just happened. Could anything have been done to stop it? Or were we just delaying the inevitable?

Afterward, I never can sleep. I have to process what just happened and my role in it. And if I’m being honest, truly honest, I don’t always come out looking so great.

As much as I care about and love my children, I’m far from perfect at parenting. Sometimes, especially in the heat of the moment, I have difficulty in separating the child and the illness, which we have dubbed “It.”

Think about it this way: If parenting a child is difficult, then parenting a mental illness is impossible. Add them together and see the result.

Over the past 13 years, I have written about Kate more than any of my children; for more essays on this, go here and here. In part it’s because raising a bipolar child is such rich material, filled with opportunities to try to explain the complexities to those who want the debate distilled in more than simplistic overtones. For a journalist, it's a great story.

But it’s also a way to process and sift through the conflicting emotions I feel as the parent of a child who, at times, is quite literally “out of control.” Writing about Kate and our family’s internal struggles in confronting “It” has been a great source of comfort over time. Writing and reflection also help me process feelings that, left suppressed, likely would damage our long-term ability to have a relationship.

It’s definitely your traditional father-daughter dynamic, albeit one on anabolic steroids. Often it feels like I’m standing on quicksand with her. I can only imagine how she feels.

We are blessed, however, by the fact that Kate is so open about her feelings, her fears, and her anger. We also are blessed that she has numerous gifts and talents. And we are blessed by the fact that she truly wants to help, that she doesn’t mind if we share our struggles with this with the world.

Amid the joys, ironies, and hardships that we and others face in this holiday season of uncertainty, those are blessings I’m glad I can count on.

How does it feel? — Part 2

At this point in our story, Nicholas, Katharine, and Emma have been relegated — not necessarily because they chose to be — to supporting players in Ben’s reality show. And like all siblings, especially ones that share similar interests in performing, they alternate between supportive and one of the following:

a.     Jealous as hell.

b.     Proud but not willing to show it.

c.      Both A and B.

Between mid-October and the night before Thanksgiving, Ben did not see his sisters due to “Ragtime” rehearsals. Because Nicholas lives in North Carolina, we had not seen him in three months. That prompts remarks such as:

“Dad, I never thought I’d say this,” Kate said to me the other night, “but I actually miss Ben.”

“Dad,” Ben said a couple of days later, “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m looking forward to seeing Kate.”

First time I think they’ve agreed on anything.

The two I feel worst for in this scenario are Emma and Nicholas. Being twins, this is the first time Emma and Ben have been apart in their lives for an extended period. It also means Kate and Emma have to be together far more than any sisters do/should.

Ben and Emma are the old married couple in the family. They bicker, bitch, and laugh at each other daily. Emma and Kate manage two of the three, but laugh usually is not one of them.

It’s also been tough for Emma because, until this year, she always was in school and dance with both Kate and Ben. Now Kate is in a different school because she’s in 7th grade and Ben is in school in New York. Emma is truly on her own for the first time.

She’s done very well given the circumstances, and despite the fact that she is our most methodical, black and white child, she’s managed to adapt quite nicely to everything. Flexibility, however, is still foreign to her; after all, this is the child who would, given the opportunity, alphabetize the people she mentions in her nightly prayers.

I’ve written about Nicholas already (see “The Oldest” entry below), but I do understand how difficult it is for him. Ben’s dreams are Nicholas’ dreams, too. And Nicholas’ brother is living his dream. Because of the divorce and the distance, we are not able to give Nicholas the same day-to-day time and attention we give the others. It’s a hard reality that once he turns 18 and lawyers are no longer standing on the periphery, we hope to rectify someday. He deserves it…