49 and 364 days

So, I don't know what 50 will be like.  I know that my sister found out she had cancer at 50, and that sucked.  I know that some people sail through 50 like its forty and others. . . don't.  So I will just speak to 49 and 364 days of life.

49 and 364 days

On this day
the sun shines
the mountains stand majestic
my dog and I hike 3 miles
in the most beautiful place in the world
Tai Tam Country Park.
I walk 15,750 steps.

On this day
my homeroom sings Happy Birthday,
my students work together in groups to
discern the meaning of Carver's "Cathedral"
and come to know that enlightenment
can come in the smallest gestures
a hand on a hand drawing a cathedral.

On this day
I didn't weigh in because I didn't want to
but I'm pretty sure I'm at 78 kg
which is my biggest weight
and I'm not happy
but I'm also committed to changing the situation
starting Tomorrow!
Well, probably the day after tomorrow.
The Universe is helping me learn something new -
Adam as vegan, Biggest Loser, Master Chef and Primal.

On this day
I have a cold that I've been fighting a few days
I had Meet the Teacher Night until 8:40 PM
and I'm writing this at 9:45 PM
so I would call that a LONG DAY
yet it was a good one too.

On this day
thanks to Eckhart Tolle and Christianity
I know I am both Human and Being
and that the Being Part is the Real part
and the part that matters and lives on.
And I know that life is not the opposite of death
but birth is. Because life has no end.

On this day
I have committed to the "Year of Brenda",
a year in which I reset for the next 50 years
my mind, body, and spirit.
I've chosen the motto "Big risk.  Big reward."

On this day
I am me.

The Noose: Adam in Crisis

"Mom, I have something to tell you that you're not gonna like," said my 14-year old.  We had just gotten into a taxi after a therapy session with his psychologist.

I stopped playing Candy Crush and gave Adam my attention.  "Yes?"

"A few weeks ago, when I was really feeling low, I attempted suicide.  At least I consider it an attempt.  At the time I was very desperate because nothing clear was happening with transitioning.  We weren't yet seeing a doctor for testosterone and everything seemed to be at a standstill."

I hadn't seen that coming.  Yet I wasn't exactly surprised either.  Right now, though, I had a healthy child in a good frame of mind sitting next to me in the cab, so the panic or dread that one might expect when hearing the words "suicide attempt" did not pass over me.  I stayed calm and asked a few questions.  When exactly?  Where exactly?  How exactly?  What stopped you, exactly?  Why didn't you tell me earlier? What could I have done differently?  What would you have done differently knowing what you know now?

Each question was answered in turn.  Some weeks back.  At the playground wall platform.  With a homemade noose.   I realized my choice would make my family and friends unhappy and my dad mad.   Fear.  Talk to me, really talk and ask questions when I am noticeably down.  Bring back the bedtime talks.  I would tell myself that things are going to get better.

For me this is a warning.  I knew my kid had been battling depression before, had been doing better, and then seemed to be entering a new slump.  But I didn't realize that that slump was so low as to result in suicidal thoughts and an attempt.  So, even with my eyes open, with the family seeking specialists to help, such a thing could still occur.

These weeks leading to summer break could be very different right now if the attempt had been carried out more completely.  A death would mean a funeral and loss beyond comprehension, sorrow and grief, and debilitation.  A failed attempt may still have resulted in massive brain damage from air loss and damage to the neck/trachea etc.  We could be in a hospital right now at the bedside of an unresponsive child on a very long recovery with no guarantee of a full recovery.

Such alternative futures don't compare to the current peace and joy I am experiencing as the school year unfolds and as we look forward to a trip to Paris as a family.  So, I remain positive but vigilant. Mental illness is not to be taken lightly.

Name changes

I was born Brenda Lynn Guetzke.  Then I married and became Brenda Lynn Brayko.

Alec was born Alec David Levi Foster.  When his adoption was finalized he became Alec David Levi Brayko.

Adam was born Anna Ivanovna Ovchinnikova.  When the adoption was finalized the name changed to Anna Mikayla Brayko.  When he transitioned from female to male he chose Adam Ivan Brayko Mitchel as a name.  It has yet to be finalized.

Our dog Rigby was named Bill originally.  But we renamed him Rigby Moon Brayko.

Our cat came as Jigs.  We changed it to Jigs Chuseok Brayko.

Brent was born Brenton Scott Brayko.  He is still Brenton Scott Brayko but he goes by Brent.

Visitors from abroad: Sein

Sein was a senior in high school when I met her.  She was an international student from Korea, one of about twelve that year at the private school I was teaching at in Green Bay.  Her English was spot on and her smile radiant.  She had a big heart and lovely straight black hair and exquisite make up. Unfortunately, she was also very unhappy.

It seemed her home placement was with a woman who boarded several students at her home but did little else for them.  She didn't cook for them or arrange for transportation to school events, even though she lived way out in the country.  Without a driver's license, Sein was stuck for her senior year in this isolated home, unable to engage in typical teenage life.  As I learned of Sein's story, it became clear that she needed a new placement.  Why not us?

It wasn't long before we were converting our den into an extra bedroom.  We covered the glass doors with sheets.  Sein turned the couch into a bed and hung her Korean flag on the wall.  My husband and I agreed that we didn't need to demand much rent, but would she baby sit our six and four year olds on weekends?  Sein happily agreed and so began our only experience housing an international student.

Sein wasn't a very good babysitter, but she was fun to have around.  She taught me a few words in Korean (anyung) and how to count (il -ee -sam - sah - oh).  She shoveled snow in high heels.  She taught us how to make rice and forced us to buy a rice cooker - best thing ever!  She made Korean eggs and Korean BBQ - American style.  She had us on a quest for the hottest food we could find! Even the nearest Korean restaurant wasn't Korean enough for her.  She complained about the price of healthcare in the US and the price of prescription drugs.  She took amazing photos of our family with her Nikon camera.  So much of what Sein taught us only would come into clearer view when we would move to Korea ourselves a few years later and have the privilege of being taught how to use the subway system in Seoul by Sein herself!

The most unexpected aspect of providing a home for Sein was that she was in the middle of getting her driver's license and needed "road time".   Now, I didn't know about this when she arrived at our home.  It just so happened that one day a driver's ed car showed up in our driveway to pick her up for a lesson.  After a few hours, the instructor returned with a report on what Sein should be working on. "She needed to work on backing up and parallel parking," he said to me expectantly.  It was only at that point that I realized that he expected I would be the one to help her learn the art of driving.  "You want ME to take her out in MY car?" I asked, stunned.  In MY new Prius?  He had to be mad!  She was from another country, for goodness, sake.  What was the law about getting into car accidents in such a case?  Would my insurance cover an accident of a foreign driver without a license?  This was not good.

We proceeded, nonetheless.  Pretty soon I was sitting in the passenger seat of my Prius and Sein drove around the small neighborhoods and eventually onto the highway.  After a few months I was waving to her and wishing her luck as she drove my car for the driving test.  She failed.  Perhaps she was too cautious.

I remember an incident when she was practicing.  She was approaching a 4-way stop sign.  She stopped well behind the sign - entirely according to the book.  Unfortunately, the female driver behind us was NOT impressed with he slow stop so far back.  As it is usual to slide to almost the middle of the intersection before checking for other cars, driving by the book flew in the face of the woman's expectations.  Boy, did she get pissed.  Poor Sein kept saying, "I'm just doing what I'm supposed to, right?"  "Yes and no," I explained as the woman zoomed past us swearing loudly out her window and honking.

Rat Tail

I picked up the rat by the tail and tossed it into the cage, shut the cage door and thought, "Crap!  Did I just pick up a rat?"

Let me back up.  It's not that I often have opportunities to pick up rats.  And, no, I wasn't in a New York alley or anything.  I was actually in a science classroom in a small Wisconsin town named Monroe.  The bell had already dismissed students for the day and I had ventured from the English wing to the science wing in hopes of catching up on the day with my friend Jacque.

For some reason she had just gotten a small shipment of live rats.  I sauntered in with the usual hello. As I made my way across to her desk, I noticed a rat climbing on the OUTSIDE of the cage.  Now, I'd never actually held a rat before, but I had been around the rat lab with my college roommate several times.  Somehow my brain was working subconsciously and putting a bunch of things together. 1) A rat climbing on the outside of a cage is not the norm. 2) Someone needs to put the rat into the cage. 3) I recalled Wendy demonstrating that if you pick one up by the tail it can't bite you. 4) I had multiple experiences with mice and mouse traps and holding pet snakes, why not do this?

So, before I knew it, I walked over to the cage, picked the white rat with the pink tail up by his tail, tossed him into the cage and shut the door all while still talking to Jacque about the school day.

It wasn't until the action was complete that both she and I reacted, "Holy shit!  What just happened? What did you do?"  We laughed and laughed.  All was safe and sound.  Small heroics in a high school science lab.

Making a Boy

When we discovered that we had trouble with fertility, we launched a full-scale endeavor to conceive through the magic of modern medicine.  For twelve months Brent and I waited anxiously for "the stick" to indicate that I was ovulating.  We would then call our places of employment, take a half-day off, hop in the car at 5:30 AM and drive the two hours to Milwaukee for the 30 - 60 minute doctor's visit. First we'd grab breakfast at the coffee shop at the hospital, talk about normal everyday things as well as our hopes for a family, and then head up to proceed with the IUI (intrauterine insemination).  This was not easy on either one of us but it was physically painful for me and included a long, thin tube which would be inserted through the vagina and cervix and directly into the uterus to deposit its payload of sperm.  The procedure itself didn't take long, but I would stay reclined for an additional twenty minutes in the hopes that the little guys would have an easier time swimming to find their mark. We would then drive the two hours back to our community and return to work for the rest of the day like everything was normal.

Unfortunately, my body somehow interprets sperm as enemy and kills them all.  100%.  So, no baby making that way.

After a year of this routine and further testing to verify the hopelessness of making a child ourselves, we turned toward adoption as our preferred option to have a family.  Part of that journey included filling out a questionnaire from Russia about the kind of child we wanted to be matched with.  We chose "healthy toddler girl."  In part this was because we already had an infant son.  What could be better than one boy and one girl, right?

Fast forward to 2015.  Our teenage daughter tells us she feels she should be a boy, that "something's missing."  For a year she sees therapists, dresses and takes on the mannerisms of a boy, and takes on a male name and insists on male pronouns.  She is a "he" in mind and presentation but not in body. This is where modern medicine comes in to play again.  We find and endocrinologist who works with transgender people to administer hormones aligned with their gender identity - in this case testosterone.  Monthly, I take my child to the doctor to have him injected with a substance which will slowly - over a year's time - turn him into a boy.

And then I see the irony.  I wasn't able to make a baby from scratch.  I thought I had control over gender through adoption.  And while I'm not a biological mother to any child, now I'm making a boy! Without our support, this girl would remain a girl, but we are helping her become a boy.  The long year-long "pokes" sixteen years ago produced nothing at all.  But this year of shots will produce a boy, and I will have been instrumental in making that happen.  It's all quite contrived and crazy; but it is the life we are leading.  Thank you, modern medicine!

Chopped

I learned much about life my four summers as a worker in the garde manger section of a kitchen at a Jewish Country Club.  One of the things I learned was how stupid rich people could be.  Okay, I know that sounds very judgmental, but at the time I was a poor college student working for wealthy Jewish families with strange behaviors and requests.

Let me clarify.  As an employee in the garde manger I worked with cold food from 7 AM until sometimes 11 PM six days a week.  Four of us prepared the salad bar, crudite displays and fruit displays, prepped lobster halves, extracted crab meat, made salad dressings from scratch, and prepared individual identical salads for parties of up to 200 people.

While all this was going on we would be periodically interrupted by a frantic waiter holding a huge plate piled beautifully with fixins' from the salad bar, dressing included, with the command to "chop this salad, please."  The command was really coming from a rich patron in the dining room who for some reason believed sending a salad back to the kitchen to be "chopped" was a good idea.

"Please, let me interrupt my de-gutting 30 lobsters to chop your salad, ma'am" I would think as I slopped the whole plateful onto a wet cutting board.  Taking my "big knife" I would chop away until the salad was one half-digested melange of color and ingredients.  I would then transfer the whole mess onto the same plate and hand it back to the waiter.

Sometimes the very same plate would come back a second time, with "It's not good enough" as the tag line.  Resisting the urge to spit in the salad or place it into the blender, my fellow compatriots and I would give knowing glances before chopping the hell out of the plate ingredients and sloughing it back onto the plate again.  Rich people!  I would think.  What idiots.

Another report from a waiter had me chuckling one day.  Mitch, one of my best friends who also worked at TOCC the same summers, came back to the kitchen to tell me that a patron had believed that our crown cut melons were cut by a machine.  A machine!  "No," he had told the lady, "our kitchen staff cut the melons so they look like crowns."  "You're kidding!" she breathed.  Rich people!

Another day I was working in the main dining room opening oysters at the oyster bar.  I tried to stay silent and invisible.  But at one point two patrons were speaking about something and searching for a word.  "Onomatopoeia," I interjected.  "Why, yes!" said the smartly dressed middle-aged man glancing at me with a bit of shock.  "I am a college English major," I thought to myself.

I learned that just because you're rich doesn't mean you know everything.  And just because you're not rich doesn't mean you're ignorant.