Sheila Quirke

February 13, 2015

First Kisses

There are only so many first kisses that a long term married person enjoys in their life. I got one a few weeks ago. I had been waiting for it, anticipating what it might be like. Often, the anticipation of a thing can make the actual thing feel less than your hopes had built it into. This was not the case for the first kiss my youngest son gifted me. It was sweet and a wee bit messy, liquid. It was joyful and intentional.

When Mary Tyler Baby was just a few months old I remember Googling something along the lines of, “When do babies start to kiss?” Most of the guidelines left a broad window for baby’s first kiss, anywhere from seven to seventeen months. On the mothering boards, lots of broads were bragging about their overachieving three month olds who were already planting wet ones on them. Pffft.

I waited patiently. I waited impatiently. I was finally rewarded. My heart burst into a thousand pieces.

I don’t write about adoption much. There are a lot of reasons for that, but mostly because when I am writing about something that extends beyond my own experience, I think long and hard about how my words might impact the other people in my life, including my son and his Birth Mother. But more than that is the reality that our adoption has just been so much more complicated than I could ever have imagined. There is not much to say about that specifically, other than I am learning how to put mothering first, before all other concerns and needs that come with adoption. My son needs that and I need that.

So, blah. Blergh. Aarrrggghhh. Adoption. For better or worse, getting that first kiss felt somehow like a mothering badge of honor for me. I was worthy of my baby’s kiss. There was no taking that kiss for granted, I’ll tell you that. Such a sweet and simple gesture from a baby that somehow heals me, validates me, reassures me. I am his mother, I am his Mom. No matter how complicated adoption can be, that is our truth.

So three cheers for first kisses. Three cheers for motherhood. Three cheers for creating a safe space to mother. Three cheers for understanding that some relationships ebb and flow. Three cheers for messy, liquid, juicy kisses from a loving baby boy.

Hip hip hooray!

Happy Valentine’s Day, good folks!

February 10, 2015

Vaccinations and Fear

So much of our parenting these days is influenced by fear. There are warning labels everywhere — on our bouncy seats, our cribs, our toys, serving as a constant reminder of the dangers our children face just getting through their days. It is exhausting, this fear.

As a measles outbreak takes hold in America, every mom blogger and politician has been weighing in on the news. Honestly, I don’t often think of vaccines outside the doctor’s office and have purposefully stayed out of the vaccine fray here on Mary Tyler Mom, but I found myself worried last week, thinking of my own baby. He is a newly minted 17 month old and while listening to the radio I was reminded that the vaccine for the measles, the MMR, is generally administered in two doses. The first, at ages 12-15 months, and the second, at ages 4-6 years.

There I was in the car, listening to this report, which was a follow-up to a news story about a daycare in a local suburb that had five cases of measles in young babies suspected. Huh. Surely, my boys were both vaccinated, right? I mean, I play on Team Vaccine and as the mother to a child who was immunocompromised, I didn’t mess around with the stuff.

My kids have been vaccinated on schedule, with confidence. This has been something my husband and I have been in full agreement on, both for the safety and well being of our own children, but also for our neighbor’s children, the children in the park, the children we still occasionally come in contact with through our time in Cancerville who are unable to be vaccinated themselves. Solidly Team Vaccine here.

But still, I was worried enough to call our pediatrician’s office to confirm. The baby was due for another well visit at 18 months, but that was four weeks away. With confirmed cases of measles close to home, I wanted the reassurance that we were as prepared as possible, that both my boys had the protection we feel is needed for them.

Sadly, I got the news that my youngest had not, in fact, received his scheduled MMR vaccine at 15 months. His 15 month “well baby” visit turned into a “sick baby” visit because the flu was making the rounds at our house that week. Mary Tyler Baby was sniffly and a little wheezy, prompting the doc to refrain from the scheduled shot. I was told to reschedule when the flu and colds had cleared (mind you, it was me with the flu, not the kiddos — they had gotten their flu vaccines earlier in the season, thank goodness; I had not) . I had completely forgotten. December and January, because of the decline in my Dad’s health, were nothing but a steady stream of hospital visits and worry.

Dammit. I went ahead and made the appointment to get the MMR, which happens to be this morning, grateful I had caught the mistake.

This is when the fear set in. Because of all the measles talk in the media right now, I have been paying greater attention. It’s been hard not to, as measles talk is everywhere right now. I have posted a few articles I have read on my personal Facebook wall and have been genuinely curious to better understand what is behind the anti-vaccine movement. How does a dreaded disease that was effectively eradicated on U.S. soil return? Why do people willfully disregard the science, the community obligation? I was honestly curious.

I watched the CNN interview with the doctor in Arizona refer to his children as “pure” and state without hesitation that were his unvaccinated children to contract measles and pass the disease on to an immunucompromised child and should that child die as a result, he would feel no regret, “People die,” he said with his challenging eyes looking right at the camera.

I have read as friends and acquaintances have described the terrible and horrible symptoms in their children that they fully attribute to vaccines.

I have seen more than a few articles posted about how autism is better than measles, autism is worse than measles, and on and on and on.

Today, in less than two hours, me and the baby will be sitting in a doctor’s office, getting the scheduled MMR vaccine and I am worried. I am worried by vaccinating my son I might be harming him. I am worried that I will walk in the office with a happy, smiley baby who will leave that office gravely different — unresponsive, listless, untethered, missing his anchor. I am worried that my baby will be that one in a million baby I keep hearing about that might have a terrible, horrible adverse reaction to the vaccine.

That worry makes me angry.

I am tired of parenting in a culture of fear. Exhausted by it, actually. Having lost a daughter to cancer, I know fear intimately and tingles of it turn into waves within moments. Thank you, PTSD.

I don’t know what the answer is. I wish I did. I do know I will be at that pediatrician’s office at 9:45 for the vaccination. I will hold my baby and comfort him as he will surely cry in response to being stuck with a needle. I will pick him up, and dress him back in his clothes and coat. I will hold him and whisper to him that everything will be okay. I will hope that it is true, that everything will be okay. I will remember that vaccines are about the greater good, a personal and community obligation. I will take a deep breath and trust in the science. I will curse the fear that runs rampant at every turn. I will turn off the radio and shut down the screens. I will kiss my sweet, sweet baby. And I will wait for signs that all is well, the smile, the joy, the laughter, all intact.

February 6, 2015

Aging Parents: The Letting Go

This is the second in an occasional series I will be working on called, Aging Parents. This is where my head and heart are at right now, as my family works to help my Dad cope with his own aging.

There will come a time, if we live long enough, that we will have to let something we love go. This letting go is a heartbreaking part of life, our reward for achieving old age. It sucks and it’s hard and there is no getting out of it. Oh, Life, you are a cruel mistress.

As my family works to help my Dad transition homes, from his super cool bachelor pad condo in the South Loop with a stellar view of Chicago’s skyline, to a decidedly less cool assisted living unit with a view of the adjacent cemetery (no, I am not joking), decisions will need to be made. What to keep, what to move, what to trash, etc. It’s a ruthless task, the letting go.

For nine years I worked as a social worker in a swanky retirement community. If my daughter had not been diagnosed with cancer, I am fairly confident that I would still be there. I loved my work, I loved the community where I worked, I loved being around older adults. My time was spent helping them and their families cope with the losses associated with aging. I was always very busy.

The stakes are high in old age, so very much that can be lost. For some, the loss is gradual and prolonged. For others, the losses are like what you see out your car window speeding down an expressway — they happen so fast, you barely even recognize them. Zing!, there goes your spouse of 56 years; Whiz!, you blink and your memory declines; Zoom!, vacate your home immediately. This can leave a lot of older adults and their families with a sense of whiplash.

So much of aging is about letting go. The lucky ones manage to find grace, gently releasing their grasp on the things and people that are most beloved to them. Many others, the unlucky ones, struggle with it. Faced with loss, they grasp tighter, white knuckling the life they had, but no longer do. It will break your heart six ways to Sunday.

The painting above hangs in my dining room. It is oil, gorgeous and arresting. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. I was young when it was purchased, just around 30 or so. Buying art felt extravagant and grown up. It was done by a woman named Jackie Sullivan, who happened to live in the retirement community where I worked. Jackie was a well known artist in Chicago’s North Shore.

Because of her own aging, Jackie was closing her studio. She was losing her vision and would no longer be working in oils or able to keep a studio. She told me this all matter of factly, as I looked through her canvasses that she had stacked against the walls of her apartment, for sale. I wanted all of them, I had money for one. Here this older woman was selling me her art, but also teaching me a lesson about letting go.

For most of her career Jackie had worked in oil on large canvasses. That is a pretty particular way to create art. With her diminishing eye sight, oil was now out of the question for her. Instead, she told me, she would be switching to water colors — a medium that did not require separate studio space, so she could do it right there at the retirement community.

I didn’t realize it at the time, I was young and in the stage of life that is all about acquiring, but fifteen years later, today, I thought about Jackie Sullivan and her grace, her letting go, at what had to have been a horribly painful time for her. This concept of “letting go” has been on my mind a lot these past few months.

In the coming days and weeks, I will watch and support my Dad as he continues his own process of letting go. It is a very solitary thing, the letting go. You can have an army of help at your disposal, but ultimately, it’s just you and the things you are losing — your health, your memory, your identity, your posh view, your independence, your books, your kitchen, your freedom, your dignity, your husband, your wife, your car, your doctor, your keys, even.

Things big and small fall through your fingers, things concrete and abstract, all gone, poof. We tell the older people in our lives that it will be okay. That’s not always the truth. The letting go hurts.

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