It was a quiet week. Amy started day camp with one of her BFFs. Camp was supposed to include daily swimming but then the lifeguards who had been hired didn’t show up. We have been told swimming will happen this coming week so our fingers are crossed. Sarah doesn’t have camp at the moment so had some times with Anna, some times with me, and some times with Grandpa. When she and I had time together one day we went for a long walk to a library in search of sticker that she had gotten the previous day at the library with Anna. She loved the sticker so much she kept peeling it off her shirt and resticking it, which of course used up all the stickiness. She began the same process with the replacement sticker so Anna used clear packing tape to convert it into a pin that Sarah could wear. They also made a placemat out of construction paper and tape to match the sticker, which is an LGBTQ+ Pride heart on a striped background.
Sarah got her fourth Covid vaccine and had her annual audiology checkup. We also all went to the dentist, with Grandpa helping with transportation so Amy didn’t have to leave camp early. So we had our share of appointments. This coming Wednesday Amy starts Schroth therapy for scoliosis. It’s a specialized physical therapy that she will do at the Children’s Hospital. I will have to pick her up early from camp for that, so from the time I leave home to get her till I drop her off before heading straight to my office for my usual Wednesday evening client, it will probably take about 3 hours. We will do this therapy for 18 or 20 weeks if my memory is correct. I’m increasingly aware of how much time I have spent over the years taking care of appointments. It’s no small thing. Because even a very short appointment still probably takes an hour between leaving our house and returning and that would be something as short as just getting a vaccine. Holy heck! Whenever I have a form to complete that asks what my job is I always include “mom” in my list. Making and taking a person to an appointment is of course just a tiny part of it, but still. I think I don’t always give it the respect it is due when I think about my days and how I spend them. Extremely belatedly, thank you to my own parents and step-parents for taking me to all of my appointments over all of the years.
My current mission is to get Sarah to have some form of physical activity multiple days a week. Whenever we have figured out something in the past that she loves, such as biking on Zwift with her bike stationary while she pedaled and watched her virtual self, eventually that interest wains. I don’t have any specific interest of hers that I’m following now. It’s more that I try to think of someplace we could walk or that she could scooter to that appeals to her. Friday night we went to Walgreens to get her an electric toothbrush as the dentist had recommended. She scootered and I walked. We had a pleasant excursion and as we went to leave the store, the heavens opened and it poured. Luckily after a few minutes it was only sprinkling and we could go home. The moment in the store doorway watching the water moving sideways in the sky reminded me of when Sarah was very little and we went to the library without checking the weather first. When we were there the heavens really opened and it poured and poured and poured. We waited under cover until I realized the storm was not going to let up anytime soon and the streets were already flooding. So pushing Sarah’s stroller, and sometimes carrying it with her in it, we made our way home. I waded through puddles spanning entire intersections and got completely drenched. Sarah had some protection from the stroller cover, but was still wet through. That was quite an adventure. I’m ok that our time at Walgreens wasn’t so exciting. Sarah heard me talking to a friend and saying how the heavens had opened and she now loves that phrase.
Carl came home on the red-eye Friday night, arriving Saturday morning, and is now catching up on much needed sleep. Amy is away with her BFF and family for the weekend. Yesterday the practitioner who has been helping me and the girls worked with Sarah and me again. In working on movements that will help my walking comfort, he coached me through various movements involved in throwing. I feel like it is the first time I can remember in ages of throwing being an easy experience that wasn’t fraught with self-consciousness, worry, and a bit of prayer. I know in my middle and high school years I played softball and would play catch with my dad. I wasn’t great, but I did enjoy it most of the time - except when I got super nervous about games. And my throwing often had a weird hitch that I felt in my shoulder. I never understood how to move differently. Anyway, it was a wonderful experience to realize I can actually throw a ball. With either arm! It’s not magic and it’s not prayer. I just needed this kind of direction to get past the awkward and uncomfortable things I did with my arm and to actually connect my legs through to my arms.
It’s exciting to learn from someone who knows so much and looks at things differently than I yet have, but it’s also humbling and a bit overwhelming. I wrestle with feeling like I should stop what I’ve been doing with massage and Alexander and learn this different approach, but then I want to stick my head in the sand and hide. So I’m in frequent dialogue with myself to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just because there are new things I want to learn doesn’t invalidate what I have been doing. Still, that’s the feeling sometimes when it all feels like a huge paradigm shift.
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