Kids are the same everywhere

Tags

being yourself, change, exchange student, express feelings, friends, friendship, inspire, relationship, security, South America

My boy in Ecuador posted his first real disappointment of his exchange trip recently and our hearts go out to him. One of the other exchange students, a boy from Norway, and Andrew’s friend already, left the program and went back home. It was clear from the pictures posted and the activities that they shared that they had become fast friends. Andrew had already even told us he wanted to go to Norway next summer rather than come home in order to visit this friend and work on the family’s fishing boat! But the young man left due to a family emergency back in Norway leaving our guy very sorry to see him go. He said in his post that after going to the house to say goodbye he returned to his own family and just went to his room and cried.

I know because I did it when I was fourteen, that it is hard to suddenly be out of your element and in someone elses world, adrift. Our boy is doing great at making friends and going to school and adjusting to the cultural changes, but a large part of his success is in having comrades, that is other kids going through precisely the same kind of separation from family, and the immersion in the new culture. It is hard so they encourage each other through it. We see that with the Taiwanese girl staying with us, that she is so animated and happy after spending a day with the other inbound exchange students. They lift each other up. The absence of Andrew’s friend is a real loss for him and we wish him a new friend soon.

When kids do things that scare you to death

Tags

being yourself, control, exchange student, express feelings, fear, inspire, mother, parents, play, pole vaulting, security, skateboarding, South America, trust, words

Okay, we keep getting scary blog posts from our kid in Ecuador, and I am telling myself it is okay. No need to talk me off the ledge, or anything, because I know that words are quite powerful and that’s all this is, words.

Words have the power to convey so much if you let them. Love. Fear. Mistrust. Doubt. Words are big.

So, he’s not sure he wants to pole-vault because the taxi ride to the far away city where the coaches are is notoriously fraught with knife-point hold-ups. Yeah, that’s a real stumbling block. The death threats en route to your sporting event. It is a leap of faith for me to imagine that my kid is mature enough to manage this, but really I trust he is in good hands with the people watching over him. I am imagining that the words he uses are loaded and that he, as usual, gauges his actions to keep himself safe. After all, he is deciding not to use the knifepoint hold-up taxi service, and what great judgment that shows!

He has shown me since he was little that he too does not want to injure himself. This is the notion that has kept me sane. I can see that he is on my side of this thing, equally invested in preserving his own life, and that it is not entirely up to me to point out life’s hazards, even though he sees them and measures them where others would leave them be. When he used to skateboard down the street using his hands instead of his feet, I could see how controlled he was about his movements, even as his head wobbled inches from the ground as he traveled downhill at breakneck speed. And truly he rarely got hurt.

That’s how I keep calm when I read the blog, realizing that he has a track record of preserving his own life thus eliminating the need for me to do it for him, not to mention the thrill he must get using powerful words such as “knifepoint” and “hold-up”. Looking the other way is quite useful too.

In answering his frightening blog posts I offer to him some equally powerful and scary words myself: “We are looking forward to next summer when you move back home.”

My boy is the one who rode his tricycle down the deck stairs

Tags

being yourself, control, exchange student, express feelings, fear, goals, inspire, joy, natural talent, parents, play, pole vaulting, South America, trust, writing

Okay, below is the kind of thing I read on my son’s blog periodically as he experiences the cultural exchange in Ecuador. Provided he lives to look back on these kinds of thrilling events he surely will see that he has learned some things along the way. But really, as a parent, I must train myself to look at this through new eyes. He is eighteen and typically he’d be in college by now and I would know nothing of his foolish escapades. Also, it helps that he has conditioned me since he was born to look the other way when he tries to injure/kill himself since so far he has failed to do either despite being quite daring and fearless. So, take note while your kids are little, if they have the “T” factor, I believe it is called, that inspires them to take risks greater than those you and I might take, it might be a good time to wallow in the delight of being able to personally inform them of the danger, unlike when they will be off to college or other such places tasting the world on their own. In other words, it is when they are young and scaring you to death that it is best to teach them how to protect themselves. We steered this son towards daring yet controlled feats like performing live on stage, and sports like pole-vaulting, to help channel his wild energy.

Here’s Andrew’s blog post for yesterday, and really, I woke up today still thinking about it:

A really big sport in Ambato is downhill. Its literally just taking a mountain bike with shocks and riding down the side of a mountain. There are paths but they look like this ——___——- and the bike wheel fits in the ___. So there is no room for the pedals. And it is extremely hard to break because youre riding on very fine dirt. Mateo and David brought me to try it. You have to pay someone with a pick up truck to drive you to the top of the mountain. From there we started the descent. It started off easy, not very steep and only a few random holes in the ground that I had to jump over while speeding down a hill. But the next part was terrible. I fell head over the handlebars 4 times. I almost rode off the side of the mountain. I had to jump off the bike because the breaks werent working. Towards the end, I was riding and passed a cow tied to a tree. I didnt think anything of it because it Ecuador, but I then found myself in danger. A dog, almost definately rabid, jumped out of nowhere and ran at me barking. It got very close but then was pulled back by the rope by which it was tied to another tree. It was freaking out. Then when I tried to run away more dogs, without leashes, came running, barking, at me. I had to bark at them and wave my arms while I walked backwards up the hill. It turns out I had taken a wrong turn into someones farm/hut/land(?). I got to the bottom of the mountain bleeding,
bruised, sore, dirty, and almost rabid.

The good thing about this post for me it that Andrew is still Andrew and clearly is having a good time exploring what it is to be on his own. Thankfully he spent his childhood teaching me what to expect and I am hardened against the horror of this scene. Or maybe it was my own childhood that took away my fears of getting hurt. To read a story from my childhood called, “You Could Get Electrocuted Doing That”, go to “You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen”.

Some joy to balance the pain

Tags

being yourself, change, control, dehydration, dreams coming true, Ecuador, exchange student, express feelings, fear, friends, goals, inspire, joy, letting go, mother-in-law, parents, play, security, South America, trust, weather

I am feeling a little of the balance of life today. We buried my aunt’s ashes last weekend, and we buried my mother-in-law a few weeks before that, but now, today I am feeling the joy of seeing my son stand happily in exactly the right place. He went missing for a few days, at least at our end here in America, and with warnings of a tsunami on the western coast of South America, and his failure to respond to emails and texts or to post anything to his blog or Facebook, we felt a little alarmed. Where did our kid who contacts us three times a day one way or another go?

When we finally connected on day four he said he’d been off to the coast at a three-day language camp for foreigners intending to study in Ecuador for the year, and there was no WiFi, and by the way, I am busy now and I’ve got to go. According to his blog posts thereafter he’d been terribly sick with symptoms of dehydration as well as had tons of fun meeting people and playing hard.

We will learn to fully let go through experiences like this one I hope. This one is helpful because it seems apparent that we have guided him to just where he needs to be. Or so it seems right now. He is out in the wide world having thrilling experiences. He’s happy, he’s taking care of himself and surviving despite himself. He’s meeting people and learning and growing and finding his place in the world. We could not be happier for him.

So being told he is alive and well, and in his usual way, quite busy having a good time so let me go already, was all we needed to hear in order to be able to rest comfortably in the idea that maybe we have led him to his adulthood ready to go.

Nagging my kids sounds like a military drone

Tags

exchange student, fear, joy, listening, mother, parents, relationship, South America

I tried not to bug a lot about setting up a blog before he left, but I did mention it several times as a good way to stay in touch and to let us know how he is doing. My son dismissed me and said he’d keep a log or a journal or a blog or something, but leave me alone about it, Mom. So I did, fearing he’d be his usual procrastinating self and leave it to the last day of his year-long stay with a host family in South America. I quietly left him alone resigning myself to the idea that he might not let me know the details of his stay there, and that that would be his prerogative. After all, he is a cranky teenager. My job is to get him there and point him in the direction of getting the most out of his fantastic opportunity. I told him that directly, that I was trying to help him get the most out of his fantastic opportunity and not just bugging him.

Today, nearly 48 hours after waving goodbye at the Philadelphia airport I see he has posted a lengthy description of his experience so far. It is filled with all the details I need to know that he is fine: he attended a family dinner with what he called ‘thousands’ of people, that a little boy helped him learn to play a card game at the party, that he gave gifts to his hosts, that he is unpacked and relaxed, that he is traveling to a lagoon tomorrow, that he is comfortable and content and that he knows to put the difficult-to-use possessive apostrophe on a word correctly! Yeah, he apparently got many educations under our care and is using them!!

Nagging is not useful for much. I fight it because it tends to be mindless, and droning, and negative. I had a serious conversation once about why a blog would be great, then I brought it up again, but when he told me alright already I was reminded that this is his experience, not mine. Whether my kid won’t stop hitting his sister, or won’t pick up his clothes or won’t create a blog, somehow the message that we care gets through, and I feel that because we have shown respect in others ways he shows respect back by listening, even when it seems like he isn’t.

Here’s the link to his blog if you want to look: andrewinecuador.tumblr.com

The good-enough parents sigh their sighs of relief

Tags

broken arm, dreams coming true, express feelings, family counselor, fear, gap year, goals, inspire, joy, parents, security, South America, travel alone, trust

It was music to my ears, after a long day of waiting while my son traveled alone, to hear him say over the phone at about midnight last night, “I’m in Quito, Mom.” It’s a huge sigh of relief not just for his safe arrival, and for having gotten all the planning right over the past year including getting him set up to return to a college he has already accepted admission to, but for having gotten him to adulthood in good shape at last.

He’s been such a handful of kid ever since he got here. The difficulties, none truly too tough to manage, have grown with him starting with his need to remain in the hospital a few days after he was born prematurely. It was concerning but doctors helped us feel secure in his future. At ten he was scaring us with his hand standing skateboard tricks and his shopping-cart-down-the-driveway past time, either of which would have caused me to hold my breath even it he hadn’t just had surgery for a broken elbow, followed by your basic broken arm. I learned to look the other way because 99% of the time it all worked out fine. At fifteen he was so involved with a girl and had surrounded himself with folks we didn’t feel that good about that we staged an intervention. Our family counselor assured us we would come out the other side okay and we did. We worried about so many things over the years, these and more abstract things like whether he’d learn to manage his money, and whether he was courteous when we weren’t around.

Now he’s off on a gap year in South America, successfully on the ground at least, and I know it is time to welcome another wave of scary new experiences, but this time we are resting confident in the groundwork we’ve laid to help him be a responsible almost-adult. He’s in the charge and care of his host family, now, so we sigh our sighs of relief, knowing that 99% of the time things work out fine.

I am not afraid, mostly.

Tags

being yourself, boulders, concussion, dreams coming true, express feelings, fear, first baby, friends, Heads Up Hotdogs, joy, love, risk taking, softball, South America, subway doors, trust, wild animals

Fear. I try not to let it rule me.

I set my 21-year old son on the train today, headed back to his life in NYC after he spent time on vacation with us. I have no idea what he gets into there because what I see is what I see. He is happy in his work, in his academics, his social life and his personal projects. And we are the ones he called (just after the girlfriend) to report exciting developments with his new game-in-the-making Heads Up Hotdogs http://emmettbutler.com/headsup/. So what is there to fear in that? As I watched him disappear onto the train I marveled at the time gone since I literally held him in my arms and walked him around the house, my shiny first baby, a miracle in my life, now telling stories of having his foot caught in subway doors in a dark and grimy underground, miles from here.

My other boy wants to play in the rushing waters and rocks at St. Peter’s village today, with friends. Smart friends, like himself he tells me, ones who will be careful in this notoriously dangerous place lined with boulders and slippery outcroppings. I want to say no, it is too dangerous for you, my risk-taking, bull-in-a-china-shop boy. But my husband and I recall the world I grew up in, filled with physical dangers on an estate of thousands of unsupervised acres with lakes and streams, and even wild animals, for Pete’s sake. What opportunity to get into trouble my brothers, not to mention my sisters and I, had there. So I told my boy my fears and said it was okay, and asked him to come home in one piece because I love him. And anyway, in five weeks I wave goodbye for a year while he goes to South America without us. Letting go must start early. For him it was when he walked at eight months, and now, I am almost all the way there.

Maybe because she still cannot drive and we know where she is most of the time, my fears for my girl today are slim. She got hit in the head with a softball last year and sat out many games with a concussion. Yesterday I smiled to myself at how this season she likes wearing a face and mouth guard.

Yeah, I am afraid. But the thing I am most afraid of, is stifling my kids as they lead their lives, just because I know it is dangerous.