On the first day of homeschooling, I set up an area on the dining room table for Thorin and me to sit. I thought we could look at the curriculum then do a couple pages of math. I was chipper and prepared. I should have also noticed it looked a lot like school.
“Yay, homeschooling!” I said calling to Thorin.
He came in the room wearing underpants and his Thor cape.
“Go get clothes on, please,” I said enthusiastically.
“No, tanks.”
“Please, go get clothes on,” I repeated with somewhat less enthusiasm.
“No,” Thorin said as he sat down.
Why did I think he had to wear clothes that morning? I decided because he couldn’t call the shots. Look at everything I was doing for him! Where was that coming from?
Without thinking I said, “You have to have clothes on!” I didn’t sound like a coworker; I sounded like a dictator.
Thorin ended up staying in his room all day in his underpants and cape. I cried into a pillow in the bedroom. I couldn’t understand what was happening.
I told Ward when he got home. He reassured me that it would get better.
The next morning, Thorin came out naked.
“Okay, go get clothes on, now!”
“No, no, no!”
Yuck, I didn’t want him sitting on anything.
“Yes!”
“Funny! No!”
“I’ll show you funny! Get in your room!”
“Good!” he said and went stomping off.
The next day was the same. Between the crying and yelling, which now both of us were doing, I was exhausted. I wondered if we had made a colossal mistake, so I called my mom. When I told her about Thorin’s nudity, she revealed a surprising bit of family history.
“Your father was a closet nudist. He said it made him feel free. I made him carry a dish cloth around the house.”
“What?”
“Your father liked nothing better than being buck naked.”
“Okay, please stop.”
“Maybe this isn’t going to work,” she said.
It was one thing for me to think that, but I didn’t want to hear that from someone else, especially my mom.
Pleading I told her, “Please don’t say that.”
“It doesn’t sound good, Kari,” she said definitively.
I didn’t want to say something I would regret. “Okay, I have to go.”
It was 9:45 A.M., and I was still in my pajamas. He’d beaten me. I hoped I wouldn’t be running around naked the next day. I decided we had to get out of the house. Think, Kari! Where could we go? It took another cup of coffee to jog my memory of something Kathy had said: “Thorin’s interests should direct what you learn.” It was as if I had been visited by the hologram of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
I walked into Thorin’s room and found him dressed in pajamas.
“Did you know there’s a monster museum in town?”
He looked at me suspiciously. “Yeah?”
“No, really. It’s called the International Cryptozoology Museum, which basically means monsters.”
“Yesith!”
“They have a rule: everyone wears clothes.”
“Sure!”
When we walked into the museum, it was indeed filled with monsters. A replica of Big Foot was just inside the doorway. An attractive woman who looked to be in her thirties with black hair, made-up eyes, and tattoos came over to us.
“Hello! Welcome! I’m Jenny, and that’s my husband, Loren. We run the museum!”
“Hi! We’re homeschoolers!”
“We love homeschoolers!”
“Wow!” I exclaimed.
“Wow!” Jenny added.
Even Thorin joined the exclamation party. “Wow!”
Jenny was born to be an educator. She exuded enthusiasm in everything she shared with us about the exhibits. Among three packed rooms, we saw hair from an Abominable Snowman, Yeti scat, and a doll made to look like a Sasquatch baby. Thorin was entranced with the museum and Jenny.
“I’m so glad we came here!” I said.
“I’m glad, too! You’re both so lucky getting to learn together all day. If we had a child, I would homeschool.”
I forgot there were people who wanted to be home with their children all day. I had never been that person. As Thorin was looking at the Minnesota Ice Man, Jenny came up to me with a T-shirt from their gift store.
“Can I give this to Thorin?”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I wanted to make sure it was okay first. I love how excited he is to learn.”
“Of course! We were supposed to come here today!”
“I know!”
As we left, I got another idea. The front part of the building was the Green Hand Bookshop.
“Thorin you want to go into this bookstore? They have the coolest stuff. Maybe you could find a book you like.”
“Sure!”
We found the children’s section. Thorin was pulling out books right and left. He found one on Frankenstein and went off to sit in an overstuffed chair for further examination. I found a small book with the title A Ghost Named Fred. Thorin loved ghost stories. I was surprised to see it was by Nathaniel Benchley. It was an “I Can Read Book” from 1968. I hadn’t flipped through any of the pages but I loved it.
“Thorin! Look at this one! A Ghost Named Fred! It’s by Nathaniel Benchley! He wrote the Off Islanders! His son wrote Jaws!”
Waving me off, he said, “No.”
“Bubba loves Nathaniel Benchley!”
“Let’s see,” he said skeptically.
We sat together on the chair going from page to page.
“Yes?”
“Yesith. This, too?” he said holding up the Frankenstein book.
“Yes!”
I couldn’t wait to tell Ward and my mom about the day. I rode that high all the way until the next morning when Thorin came to the dining room, naked, and informed me, “No school!”
The next morning as I lay in bed thinking about my day, I felt tears. When I heard Thorin’s voice from the other room, I started crying. I then counted how many hours before I could go back to bed. I called my mom.
“Can I bring him there?”
“For how long?”
“I’ll come back before he turns ten.”
I needed help. I emailed Kathy, the cofounder of HOME, when I got back to our place.
Thorin says no to everything. [I decide not to divulge the nudity.] It is day five of refusing and arguing, and I hit a wall. I want this to work. I think he is exercising his independence. And I want to send him to military school today. That is sort of a joke. Ha, ha. I am hoping I am not the worst homeschooling mother ever. Help! Thank you, Kari
Seventeen minutes later—I couldn’t help staring at the clock—I received a response from Kathy.
Hi Kari, How old is Thorin? I would suggest that you give me a call, so that we can talk this through. It could be a number of things. I would be happy to help!
We scheduled a call for that afternoon.
“What do you think the problem is, Kari?”
Shades of The Pee Whisperer emerged.
“Me.”
“I’m glad you see it that way.”
I filled her in on the details, including how I had always worked outside the home before beginning to homeschool.
“Oh! You two are experiencing a huge life transition. I wouldn’t focus on curriculum right now.”
“What do I do with him all day?”
“Cuddling on the couch and reading is always fun.”
Cuddle on the couch? I don’t know how much of that I did before. And, he’d have to wear clothes for me to entertain that idea.
“Okay,” I said as I wrote it down. “What else?”
“How about cooking?”
“Huh, well, I don’t cook. Ward cooks.”
“Oh, my. Thorin needs to learn how to cook. Don’t you want him to be capable and independent?”
&
nbsp; She was right! And, I don’t think she was talking just about a kid with Down syndrome.
“I guess we could learn together?” I offered, feigning enthusiasm.
“There you go! That would be good for both of you,” Kathy responded with actual enthusiasm.
“Okay, I can do that,” my voice sounded more confident. “Anything else?” I almost sounded cheery.
“How about cleaning together? You do know all this is learning, right?”
“Okay! I like that!” I succeeded in actual enthusiasm.
“Focus on what Thorin likes. The monster museum was a good idea.”
I thought to myself as Kathy kept talking, Thank you, Obi-Wan!
Kathy also suggested once we started using curriculum to not make it like school. She reminded me, “Thorin hated school. You don’t have to sit at the table. Learning happens everywhere.”
The next morning, I asked, “Do you want to bake a cake?”
“Yesith!”
“Okay, get dressed; we’re going to the store!”
I bought cake pans, cake mix, and ready-made frosting. I didn’t see any reason to make it from scratch. Mixing anything in a bowl was going to be a challenge for me. Thorin picked out blue frosting with sprinkles. We listened to Johnny Cash and made a two-layer cake. It was delicious.
Being a stay-at-home parent who homeschooled was never being off-duty. It was a full-time job with overtime! It took energy, ingenuity, and creativity to be with a child all day long. I regretted every judgmental thought I’d ever had about a stay-at-home parent. Kathy was right: This was a huge transition for both of us. I was learning as much as Thorin, and most of it was on the fly. Thorin was still out of sorts and cranky. He was processing a horrible year of school and testing the limits with me. This was all going to take time. It would not be a smooth transition; there would be bumps and starts and do-overs. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense we butted heads.
One particularly crabby morning, I took Thorin out to lunch at 10:30. I hoped being outside the house would limit our bickering. Thorin, on the other hand, must have seen the public venue as a more effective way to get under my skin. He munched away on his grilled cheese, stopping only to say in a really loud voice every so often, “Hi, Bad Mommy!”
What a jerk! I sat with my head down, perusing a local weekly newspaper. I was reading the listings, looking for anything to take him to. The moment he said “Hi! Bad Mommy!” for the seventh time, a tear dropped from my eye onto the words “Does your child like make-believe?” It was an ad for a theater class starting that afternoon at the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine.
“Thorin we’re taking the rest to go.”
“No, not!”
“Would you like to go to a theater class?”
He stopped mid-bite. “Yeah!”
I called the museum, and there was still room for him in the class. I asked to speak to the teacher.
“Hello, this is Jamie!”
“I’m calling about the theater class starting today. Um . . . my son has Down syndrome,” I sounded tentative.
“Okay,” she answered, like she heard this all the time.
“Is that a problem?” Good grief! I’d been brainwashed by years of schooling!
She laughed, “No, of course not!”
“He has a hard time talking or being understood.” It felt like I was trying to talk her out of taking him.
She responded quickly, “We have students whose first language isn’t English.”
“Okay, see you later!”
When we arrived at the museum, Jamie was at the front desk to greet kids for the class. Thorin stood with them, away from me. A few minutes later, I watched Thorin follow Jamie and the other children upstairs.
I said to the woman at the front desk, “Can I wait here?”
“You can but you don’t have to.”
What should I do? Thorin just went off with a stranger and no aide.
“I better stay.”
The woman smiled at me. “Sure. That’s fine.”
An hour and half later, Thorin appeared. He was so excited; he seemed ready to levitate. “How was it?”
“Great, Mom!”
When I talked to Ward that night, he told me that I did a good job. He also gave Thorin and me aprons he had bought.
Thorin and I started having breakfast with Bubba a couple times a week. One morning at our favorite diner, I noticed Thorin’s attention was drawn away from his pancakes to the table behind us. First, he was smiling then he wasn’t. He was frowning. I looked and saw three guys, about eighteen years old, who were taking turns looking at Thorin and laughing. The boys weren’t trying to engage a cute kid in the next booth; they were literally pointing and laughing at a boy with Down syndrome. They were talking low enough that I couldn’t hear what caused the outbursts of laughter. Thorin put his head down. I put my arm around his shoulder.
“I’ve got this. Don’t worry.”
I stared at the two facing me until one of them pulled his eyes away from Thorin and saw me. My expression? Imagine Heath Ledger as the Joker. That’s when it hit him: Holy shit, that lady is going to kick my ass! He blanched and looked down at his plate. I couldn’t hear what he said to the others, but their behavior stopped abruptly. They didn’t look at our table once after I gave them the evil eye.
I turned to Thorin and said, “They’re jerks. Don’t mind them, okay?”
He nodded and went back to eating. My mom asked what happened. I quietly told her.
“What assholes!” she said.
We finished eating and decided to go to the park a couple blocks away. My mom and I sat on one of the benches, talking while Thorin played. About ten minutes later, those same guys showed up at the park. When they saw us, they moved behind a large area of bushes to pass around a Hacky Sack rather than play out in the field directly behind us.
I’m a believer in signs, and this was an opportunity to explain why their behavior was wrong. It was also something I could have never done at Thorin’s school—at least not without getting permission and talking it to death beforehand with three staff people. So, I walked over to them. The guy who I had engaged with my menacing stare saw me and immediately looked down at the ground.
“Hey, I noticed all of you staring at my son in the restaurant earlier.”
One of them said with a sneer, “What are you talking about?”
“You were all staring at my son and . . .”
Before I finished, one of them walked toward me with his chest out, chin up, and arms stretched out.
“We don’t know what you are talking about, okay?” he said as the other two laughed.
Seriously? How did I get here? I’m a middle-aged woman being threatened by jerks who made fun of my son. I walked away confused and disgusted.
When I got back to the bench my mom said, “You have to be careful. I was worried one of them was going to hurt you!”
“I don’t want to be careful anymore.”
At the next theater class, I dropped Thorin off and left the building like all the other parents did. As I was leaving, I asked the receptionist, who I now knew to be Molly, “You have my number, right?
“I do!”
“Are there any other exits?”
“Just that one,” she said, pointing to the front door.
“What if Thorin got away?”
“We haven’t lost anyone yet. Try not to worry.”
She was right. I didn’t have to worry there. Nothing bad had happened. Besides, Thorin liked being independent. He didn’t need an Ed Tech to assist him, and there was a whole new world to explore. But, I needed to trust him.
On the way home, I asked Thorin what other classes he wanted to take.
“Ballet,” he replied.
“Really? I didn’t know that!”
“Love ballet.”
I knew he was interested but not to the degree he would want to take a class. We had watched a documentary on ballet, which Thorin ha
d watched more than once by himself. Also he loved The Nutcracker. I found Spotlight Dance and Performing Arts Center through a friend of mine whose daughters danced. I called Heather, the director, and explained to her Thorin had asked to take ballet and he had Down syndrome.
“Okay, I see a couple potential issues.”
Here it comes, I thought. What will be the problem?
“Uh, huh,” I cautiously replied.
“We don’t have just ballet for his age group, so it would be ballet, jazz, and tap. Also, he’s going to be the only boy in the class.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s fine! Thank you!” The world outside of school was so much easier to navigate. No one seemed to care if Thorin had Down syndrome. He was welcome. He was included. He wasn’t a problem.
At the final theater class, the children performed for their parents and anyone else they invited. Ward took time off from work so we could both be there. Bubba wanted to go, but between her walker and the amount of walking, it would have been too much for her. When we walked in, Thorin was in his costume and makeup, sitting in the audience. Jamie walked over.
“Thorin said he doesn’t want to perform today.”
Ward turned toward Thorin. “No, Buddy?”
“No, Dad.”
I asked, “Are you sure, Honey?”
“Sure.”
I’d learned my lesson when it came to pressuring and simply said, “Okay.”
The three of us sat together during the performance. His teacher, Jamie, reminded everyone there was a new class starting the next month.
“Thorin do want to do that?” I asked.
“Yesith!”
I talked to Jamie on the way out. I told her Thorin wanted to be in the next class.
“Great! Sometimes it’s about the journey,” she offered.
During the months leading up to leaving public school, Thorin had become a different child. He had frequent insomnia. He had crying jags and angry outbursts. He suffered regression on all levels: wetting the bed; things he once did were difficult again; and not wanting to read at home. He stopped taking photographs. And, he stopped growing. Thorin had stayed the same height for nine months.
Not Always Happy Page 22
