I've been immersed in these challenges this week.
I have had the considerable good fortune at my school social work job to have landed in a sizable, windowed office each year...despite moves between different buildings. I haven't asked, the dice just rolled that way. I don't typically do well with dark and dank so this has been a great gift for 23 years. This year, due to shifts throughout my building, several of us on the clinical staff were moved into closets, really.
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| This, of course, not quite accurate. I'm not that young. |
Such wisdom to know what I can change and what I cannot was apparently hiding under the sofa later in the week when Cesare announced that he wanted to quit school (read: the one, single class he is taking at the community college). He said he couldn't keep up with the content the professor was presenting. This is a profound moment, I thought to myself. I can choose to get out of the way and let my young adult son choose his own path, set his course and live his autonomy. Or, I could wrap him up in my expectations, tightly...so he can't breath. Wisdom sliding farther under the sofa into the land of dust bunnies, I of course chose the latter. "But what will become of you? What do you mean the class is too hard? Are you trying your best?? Have you met with the professor? What are you going to do with your life? You're too smart to fold folders at the factory for the rest of your life."
My son is wise and sensitive but not experienced enough to know that the panic in my voice and the fear in my eyes were all of my own making. I think I scared him and, to his credit, made him angry. We tabled the discussion until the next day. I coaxed wisdom out from where it was lallygagging-about with some warm cookies and insisted it provide a little perspective. I thought about Cesare's IQ testing and what I know well to be his strengths and deficits. The WISC IV does not measure intelligence... a common misnomer. It measures performance, or how one's abilities are expressed. Throughout the course of Cesare's epilepsy, from age 6 to now almost 18, his measured IQ has dropped some 30 points. His verbal comprehension, his working memory (short term memory) and his perceptual (non verbal) reasoning fall in the average to low average range. What has plummeted is his processing speed. Purdue University explains this nicely:
"As an analogy, one can think of the thinking brain like the front entrance to a Victorian style home. There is a porch, front door, a foyer and, of
course, the rest of the house. Guests (information) knock at the door and "stand on the porch"(i.e., teacher
presents concepts). The host (i.e., the brain) lets the "guest" come into the foyer (i.e., brain perceives the
information and registers that it is there). The host helps the guests take off coat and boots (i.e., the brain
organizes and clarifies the information for storage), and brings them into the house (i.e. encodes the information
into longer term memory). If the host takes too long to perform "host tasks" and get the guests into the living
room, some guests may become impatient and leave (i.e., some information is not encoded)."
Asking Cesare to sift through information and produce a response is laborious for him (i.e, "What do you want for lunch?") But, spontaneous wit? When younger he was sitting on dad's lap outside watching a spider approach a fly in it's web. "Look dad, dinner and a show".
Though I know this about Cesare I easily, shamefully, forget. So, when we sat down to figure this out the next day, I pulled out his WISC scores and explained them to him. I explained that his very low processing speed means that when his Biology professor is lecturing in front of the room it might seem like trying to catch blowing leaves. We both got teary. So much lost in my wonderful son, so much is gone. He called the college the next morning and dropped the class. And it's alright with me. We'll take it one day at a time.
I faced one more challenge of wisdom and patience before the week's end. I have a small private psychotherapy practice. A year ago I relocated to more comfortable office space in a lovely old Victorian house, owned and operated as a community mental health practice for more than twenty five years by a brilliant family therapist. I confess I do not know Mae well. I do know her sterling reputation and I know she is dying. She doesn't come into the building often anymore. In the year I have been renting there, I've spoken to her only a handful of times. My colleague, who occupies full time hours in the offices, sees Mae regularly. Mae has yelled at, challenged and humiliated my colleague in front of clients making demands about light bulbs, moved furniture and mismatched decor. My colleague, also a kind and gifted soul, warned me last night when I arrived for clients that Mae was in the building and on a tear.
Beautful Mae, a diminishing 70 pounds or so, launched a litany of complaints in my direction chiefly about my Ikea chair. It is ugly and offends the other furniture in the room. To drive the point home, Mae insisted my chair was "spitting" at the loveseat.
As if, literally, rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, after a brief recoil I could see this for what it was. Mae is losing control of her life, it is only the little things now that she can change. It took me a moment, but I could see that I was the one that needed to have the wisdom to know the difference.
Having control is a seductive notion. It offers the illusion of safety. We think if we hold tight enough and manipulate deftly enough everything will be OK. Sometimes I think we're all just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. And rearrange we shall. And a coat of yellow paint can make all the difference in the world.
Terrific essay on this theme, Amy,
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