November 11: My Son's Anger, Jennifer Reeser, "Compass Rose"

Jennifer Reeser has a poem about devotion to a child.  The impulse every parent feels to surround his/her baby with all that's good.  Warmth and blankets and sunlight.  Pumpkin seeds and lullabies.  It sort of breaks my heart:

Compass Rose

by:  Jennifer Reeser

I’d buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.

I have an oval pin, though -- glossy lacquer
hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came,
with fine, deft roses on a background blacker
perhaps, than history’s collective shame.

I’ve done my best to compass you with roses:
the tablecloth, the walls, the pillowcase,
the western side-yard only dusk discloses
briefly, in Climbing Blaze and Queen Anne’s lace.

May they suffice for peace when you discover
your love is not enough to turn the earth.
I dream I saw a handful of them hover
against my pane the morning of your birth.


I find myself in a difficult position right now.  My son is having some problems.  He has ADHD and has been on medication for it since the first grade.  Recently, he's been having outbursts at home and school.  Violent, angry outbursts.  At parent teach conferences this week, his teacher said that his anger is "scary" sometimes. 

My wife and I took him to the pediatrician for a flu shot yesterday, and we talked about his anger.  The pediatrician wrote a prescription for an additional medication.  The only problem is that it might really change his personality.  Make him tired all the time.  Sedated.  There's no way to know how it will work for him until we try it.

I don't want to make him take another medication, even though I know he needs it.  When he has one of his anger episodes, there's no controlling him.  He needs help.  But I also don't want to lose my smart little guy.  The one who got up early this morning because he misses me when I'm at work.  The one who stands in front of the TV and does a "butt dance" after his bath, shaking his rear in an eight-year-old version of a twerk.  The one who says grace before he eats a Milky Way. 

Saint Marty is saying a few prayers for his son tonight, that he won't ever forget to shake his behind when the mood hits him.

October 22: Pumpkins, Flu Shots, New Cartoon

I just got back from a doctor's appointment with my daughter.  She got a flu shot, and the pediatrician and I had to pin her down to get the needle in her arm.  Much crying a gnashing of teeth ensued.  It was not a good scene.  I felt so bad that I took her to Shopko and bought her a new pair of shoes to go with her Halloween costume.  It's been an expensive morning.

Pretty soon, I have to drive my daughter to her dance class, and then we're going pumpkin shopping.  Last year, I made the mistake of buying and carving our pumpkins a couple of weeks before All Hallows Eve.  By trick-or-treating day, both of our jack-o-lanterns looked like residents of a nursing home.  Plus, they gave off an odor that could have come from the grave.  It was not pleasant.  Kids avoided our house because of our zombie squashes.  I guess the little ghosts and SpongeBobs were afraid the pumpkins might roll off our front porch and eat their brains.  We had a lot of leftover Milky Ways and Twixes on November 1.

Tonight, I have to attend a wedding reception for my wife's cousin who got married in Vegas last May.  I know, I know.  It's a little late, but her cousin was about seven months pregnant at the time and in no mood to party when she said, "I do."  Hence the festivities tonight.  We're going to go, get some cake, maybe a cup of punch (or something stronger, if it's available), and then leave.  It's wonderful having a young child to use as an excuse to bug out early from family get-togethers.

Saint Marty has a new confession for you today.  He hopes you enjoy it.

Confessions of Saint Marty