Tag: guardianship

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We Interrupt This Column …

Today’s column was almost called on account of “Yeah!” 

The shouts of triumph – yes, plural – came from Missy. The source? A book full of Star Wars illustrations, every single one of which required her to wave me over so I could share the latest discovery. 

“Look!” 

A tough-looking Wookiee. Han Solo with a blaster. An alien with a baby face. (“Baby!”) Every few seconds brought a new image, a new cheer, a new requirement to get away from that keyboard and come SEE. 

“Yeah!!” 

If you know Missy, this won’t surprise you. Her physical and developmental disabilities can make many things challenging for her, but enthusiasm has never been one of them. When she’s in the mood, just about anything can get her supercharged: a classic car, a cool-looking pair of shoes, even an opportunity to wash the dishes.

“Yeah!!!” 

Now, this could be a column about how great that kind of joy over simple things is. It’s a good thing to remember and I’ve written that piece before. But this time, I want to flip the direction. 

You see, those moments don’t follow a schedule. Not one that fits neatly on a calendar alongside “take notes for half thought-out column” and other such things. It means interruptions. Backtracking. Maybe even frustration as you try to recover a lost bit of focus. 

But that doesn’t matter. 

When you’re a parent – or at least in the position of one – and you get summoned into the latest enthusiasm … you share it. Right then. Right there. Period.

To them, this is the most important thing in the world right now. And being invited to join that is a privilege.

OK, yes, obviously there are limits. Sometimes it’s good to learn to wait. Some dangerous enthusiasms need to be headed off. And yes, sometimes you legitimately can’t interrupt a task . (“I have to keep my eyes on the road right now, sweetie, but I’ll look when we get to this stop sign, ok?”) But by and large, the rule holds.

Don’t squash the joy. Don’t diminish the moment. Never teach the person you love that something else is more important than they are. 

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad rule of thumb in general. 

Missy’s in a quieter mode now, perusing a magazine as she watches the world through the bay window. But the next moment will come. And when it does, we’ll be there. 

After all, it’s a moment to share love. 

And that’s always something to shout about. 

“Yeah!!!!” 

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The Next Chapter

These days, Labor Day weekend feels a little novel. If the novel were written by George R.R. Martin, anyway.

Maybe I should explain.

This is the time of year when I usually spend a lot of time looking forward and looking back. The looking forward is one that I share with millions of Americans as I try to stare into a crystal ball and put together two viable fantasy football teams. It’s an exercise in trying to predict greatness, injury, and whether you can scramble to the fridge for another Dr Pepper before the next Draft Day round pops up on your computer screen.

The looking back? That involves Missy. As I’ve sometimes mentioned here, September is when my wife Heather and I have to put together our annual guardian’s report on Missy, combing through receipts, bank statements and memories by the score. It’s time-consuming but oddly rewarding as well as we reaffirm another wonderful year together.

It’s a well-worn routine. In any other year, it’d be utter reflex.

Any other year isn’t 2020.

This is the year when football prognostication means guessing whether there’ll be a full season at all – not exactly a guarantee when the team stats may include points against, yards allowed and positivity rate.

It’s the year when most of Missy’s usual activities and expectations were turned upside down. No bowling. No softball. No hugs with her favorite band (Face) after a great show – kind of hard when you’re crowding the monitor for a livestream performance.

In many ways, life has become month-to-month, if not week-to-week. Grand plans for the future? These days, if we can figure out what’s available at the grocery store, we’re probably doing well.

It’s a little like living in a Paul Simon song: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

Even more, it’s like living in a novel.

Not reading one. Writing one.

Readers, after all, have the benefit of knowing how much of the book is left before major plot points have to be resolved. (Assuming the absence of a sequel, anyway.) They can cheat, skip ahead, look up a review on Amazon.

Writers don’t necessarily have that luxury. Oh, some laboriously outline everything – and still get surprised. Others go in with a starting point, a destination, and a loose idea of how to get there, discovering the path as they go. The reader is almost guaranteed to be surprised by the next chapter because … well, so was the writer.

As E.L. Doctorow put it (and many others have quoted), it’s like driving at night. All you can see is what’s in front of your headlights. But you can make the entire trip that way.

That’s our life at the best of times. 2020 just made it obvious.

The good news is, some truly epic journeys have been made that way.

It’s how J.R.R. Tolkien picked his way across the landscape of the Lord of the Rings, discovering each new bend as he came to it.

It’s how Stephen King walked every step of “The Green Mile,” staying just barely ahead of his readers as he wrote each new installment.

And it’s how we’ve survived crisis after crisis, both as individuals and as a nation.

That’s not saying foresight and planning are useless. When you hit a crisis, your preparation shows, as anyone knows who’s ever plunged the depths of a blizzard-bound grocery store in search of milk and bread. But however well we’ve trained our reflexes, we’re still living life at one second per second. We can only see so far ahead. And we may be wrong about that.

But as long as we’re staying aware – of ourselves, of the moment, of each other – we have a chance of building a story worth remembering.

Maybe we’ll even get a decent quarterback out of it.

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Staying Awake

The last song had been played. The last story had been read. The sheets were turned back, the favorite purse at hand. Bedtime, right?

“NO.”

“Missy, we talked about this. It’s getting late.”

“NO.”

“Look, it’s softball season. Athletes need their rest, right?”

“NO.”

“Sweetie, you at least need to stay in the bedroom, OK?”

I know some of you right now are nodding at this, like members of a club who have just heard the secret knock. Yes, that periodic ritual of parenthood and guardianship, the Bedtime Battle, was well under way. Like many wars, the tactics had become familiar and the ground well-studied, even if the motive for the conflict had been long forgotten.

“Look, we can leave part of the door open, all right? Is it ok if I close half of it tonight?”

Reluctant nod.

Since Missy’s disability makes it hard for her to communicate, it can take a while to pick through the possible causes when this happens. Sometimes it might be a nightmare. Sometimes it’s just a little soreness from the day’s activity, with some ibuprofen working wonders. Sometimes, all you can do is chalk it up to a disturbance in the Force and do the best you can.

This time, a late-night grocery trip might have been to blame – a time when Missy had woken up while I was still out. It would explain the worry when I started to get out of sight of her door, anyway.

Sigh.

You know, sleeping on a hallway floor can get kind of comfortable after a while?

***

There are a lot of “dad duties” that never make it on the official list.

We all know the stereotypes, right? Good at fixing things. Handy at yard work. Grill master. Voice of discipline when necessary. Ready and enable to initiate others into the mysteries of professional sports fandom.

It’s been shown in sitcoms, plastered on Father’s Day cards, wedged into the back of our minds. And, yeah, some folks do fit the classic resume. (As a kid, I believed – with some justice – that my Dad could fix anything.)

But many of us don’t. And the funny thing is, those aren’t even the core competencies.

It’s not about being manly. It’s about being there.

It’s the shared struggle over math homework at 10 p.m. (Thanks, Dad.)

It’s the off-key middle school choir concerts attended, or the grade-school baseball games where bat and ball have only a passing acquaintance with each other.

It’s the times when you sit on the phone for two minutes waiting for the other caller to say “Hello?”

It’s time together wherever it has to be found – a story, a movie, a puzzle, a game. It’s taking temperatures, and holding hands. And yeah, sometimes it’s outright arguments and struggles to understand.

But if you’re there, however you can be … if you care, and can share it … if you’re awake to the needs and responsibilities involved …  then you’re doing it right, even if you can’t tell a monkey wrench from Curious George.

Thing is, these aren’t just dad duties. They’re mom duties, or cousin duties, or guardian duties, or whoever has the ability to step into that space and be the person that’s needed. Whoever has found themselves in that wonderful and terrifying role of “parent,” even if they don’t share a single strand of DNA.

If you’re there – if you care – if you’re building and not breaking, helping and not harming – then you’re doing it right. And bless you for it.

Take a breath. Rest easy.

And if you’re resting on the hall carpet,  the right pillow makes a world of difference.

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Labor of Love

For some people, Labor Day means the end of summer. Or the start of fantasy football. Or maybe even, heaven forbid, a chance to think about labor unions.

For me, it means turning into a financial archaeologist. If Indiana Jones traded in his fedora and bullwhip for a stack of bank statements and credit card balances, he’d be having a typical Rochat September – not to mention a very strange weekend at the box office.

Of course, for Dr. Jones, all that’s at stake is something like the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail. You know, the little things. For “Colorado” Rochat and the Kingdom of the Fiscal Skill, it’s all about the treasure known as Missy.

Regular readers will remember Melissa “Missy” Hargett as a regular star of these columns. For the unfamiliar, Missy is my disabled aunt-in-law, who’s my age physically but often much younger in mind and spirit. My wife Heather and I have looked after her for five years, every day learning more about this woman of few words and much love: her passion for hearing the Harry Potter stories, her eagerness to hustle plates into and out of the dishwasher, her conviction that every stereo speaker in the world should be cranked up to “11.”

It’s been an adventure in a different sort of parenting, and a delightful one. But it also means we get to take an annual Missy Exam of sorts, a guardian’s report that each year goes into how Missy is doing and how her resources are being used.

Most of it is pretty straightforward, of course. But it does take time, especially the “archaeology” as we double-check, review and summarize the year’s expenses. Calling it tedious is like saying Peyton Manning was a little inaccurate last year.

And yet, every year, it’s oddly heartwarming as well.

Every year, the numbers start to become memories.

A restaurant receipt? There she is at Mike O’Shay’s on a Saturday, grinning her 100-watt smile as the staff welcomes her to “her” table.

A run to the grocery store for cold medicine? There we are on the couch together watching Star Wars, as Missy kicks her blanket-covered legs in excitement at the final scenes.

Colored pencils and craft supplies? A hundred art projects lie behind those entries, charged into with abandon and glue sticks.

Piece by piece, the mundane becomes magical.

That’s probably true for most of us, now that I think about it. Everything around us has the potential to evoke a memory. We touch a thousand things and more every day, and each touch leaves an impression.

Computer experts used those principles to build the World Wide Web, where each link and association draws you deeper in. But parents have known this longer than programmers. They know how much can be woken up with just an old report card and a stray stuffed animal, how many things can be released by a crayon-scratched paper in the bottom of a drawer.

And if we leave that many impressions in an object, how many more do we leave on people?

Lives touch lives, and change them piece by piece. We can teach patience or exasperation, kindness or frustration, with the smallest of gestures. It ripples, and feeds back, and reinforces. I know Missy has shaped both of us, with her careful pace and open appreciation (or undisguised disdain) for everything she’s experienced. I know we’ve shaped her, too, and that in both cases, the sculpting is still going on.

It’s an adventure. And it’s still an exciting one.

You might even say, in our own way, that we’re keeping up with the Joneses.

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Single Source

Thanks to Missy, I think I need to update my resume.

For those of you who joined us late (Hi there!), Missy the Great and Wonderful is my wife’s young, developmentally disabled aunt. We’ve been her guardians for almost a year and a half now, a time that’s been something of a learning experience for all three of us.

And one of the things I’ve learned is that I have many more job titles than I used to.

You see, against the advice of most Wall Street analysts, Missy tends to single-source her essential services. Which is how come my professional credentials now include:

  • Holder of the Pills. Applicant must possess hypnotic power in at least one hand, capable of making ibuprofen seem wonderful and compelling despite the strongest of wills (read:ornery stubbornness).
  • Monitor of the Teeth. Must provide sufficient energy and entertainment to induce the successful and even gleeful application of toothpaste, resorting if necessary to sound effects, foreign accents and play-by-play descriptions. (“And she’s opening with the double-handed technique, a strong start to the evening …”)
  • Opening and Closing Bell. Must be able to rally a determined (read: tired and ornery) young lady upstairs to bed, despite the seductive inducements of Legos, photographs, or a really hot guy on “Dancing With The Stars.” Duties will also include the occasional morning extraction from bed of said young lady, when the usual service provider (Hi, honey!) has submitted an unsuccessful bid.
  • Evening Narrator. Duties shall include the selection and presentation of reading materials prior to final “lights-out.” Wide range of volumes accepted, with prior successes including The Hobbit, The Great Brain, the complete Harry Potter series, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Please note that the job may include occasional overtime along with “on-call” weekend duties.

Now granted, some positions such as Shoe Assistant are still open to a competitive market. And there’s been the occasional outsourcing, as occurred with the job of Morning Chauffeur. But it still amuses me when something on the list arises and I hear Heather tell me “Honey, can you get her to …”

It’s a little like having a superpower, or being the Jedi Knight of bedtime. (“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope of getting her to sleep at a decent hour.”) But where does it come from?

I’m sure every parent’s seen the same thing. Heck, I can remember doing some of the same things with my own parents, with a child’s logic that would boggle the mind. Such as, say, the time I insisted that Grandma had to put on my Band-Aid because she worked at a hospital.

OK, it was changing sheets and cleaning up. But that’s almost a nurse, right?

The funny thing is, I don’t think we ever completely give it up when we get older. There’s some people who remain the go-to’s, some sources we trust beyond all reason, some things even now that we’d still come to Mom to before Dad.

I’m not even sure the reasons of childhood change. Perceived expertise? Familiarity? Lack of familiarity? Possession of a tall frame and a deep voice? (Heck, that last one explains several of our former presidents.)

Logical or not, it can create some powerful bonds. And when that trust is well-placed, some beautiful ones.

Ask Heather. Curator of the Missy Hargett Art Gallery. Brewer of Tea and Maker of Snacks. Igniter of Laughter Through Embarrassing Songs.

And also bearer of the shortest title of all, one granted by Missy herself.

“Mom.”

Now that’s one heck of a performance review.