Eliot's Summer Olympics
Eliot hates to dive. The sensation of being upside down with his skull hitting the water first is more than the guy can take. But he loves to jump from the diving board. He drops his skinny arms to his sides and jumps straight as a pencil.
Eliot has a tendency to be drawn to the things he was once most afraid of. It’s human nature, and swimming is no exception. I have been teaching him to swim since he was three. I started teaching him to side-breathe early on, but there was a lot of coordination involved. To keep him from lifting his head, I taught him to roll over on his back to take a breath, but he panicked, folded his body, and sank.
The summer he was twelve it all came together. He kept his head down and the side-breathing arm lifted out of the water for the first time. When he held his hand in a fist as he has a tendency to do, I told him to “high-five” the water and he did. He started swimming back and forth across the pool and not listening to anything I had to say.
Then we went to Huntington Lake. In past summers when he was being a pain, we’d throw his bathing suit on and toss him in the lake. But the summer he was twelve he took matters into his own hands. Every morning he jumped in the water and swam back and forth from the dock to a boulder a few yards out, and every afternoon he swam across Line Creek Cove.
Although water skills were critical, the real reason I taught him to swim and ride a bike was to give him the same coping mechanisms I used; starting the day with a run or a swim numbed me to the stress. Being connected to the outdoors was important too, but so was the link of mind, body, and spirit. It was easy for a child with motor difficulties to slip into his own world and operate more from the brain than the body.
We still had to medicate him, though (or as Blue called it, zap him) much as we wished we didn’t. One night at Huntington we accidentally double dosed him; I zapped him after Blue already had. It was actually a blood pressure medication, and on a conscious level I worried I’d killed him. On a more subliminal level I knew I hadn’t, and rather than rousing him from our beds on the deck and driving hours to the nearest hospital, I sat in the car and tried to reach his pediatrician on the cell phone. But I didn't have the night number and kept getting voicemail. I cried when Blue climbed in the car.
“He’s going to be okay,” Blue said. “He’s strong.” I knew he was right, but I kept trying to reach someone. I couldn’t find a working number for the doctor in Big Creek, and called our hospital in Santa Cruz, only to be told they would not give medical advice over the phone. 911 said the same. I left a tearful message for my sister-in-law Connie who was a nurse. She told me later she was glad I left a second, more coherent message, as the first was unintelligible. Good thing my limit was two margaritas or it really would have been unintelligible.
She also told me to call Poison Control next time. We’d had that number taped to the wall when our children were small and eating “berries” they found in the backyard, but over the years we'd forgotten about it.
Blue and I left a voicemail for the pediatrician, turned off the phone, and went to bed, agreeing to check on Eliot each time we got up to use the bathroom. Every time I stood over him in the moonlight he was breathing. When he got up to use the bathroom with Blue, I was relieved and slept in earnest.
In the morning the pediatrician’s assistant relayed a message from Dr. Griger that Eliot would be "a little dizzy" and not to resume medicating him until the following morning. It was hard to wake him, and he stayed in bed longer than usual, but once he was up he was full of piss and vinegar.
He wound up that night. The only good thing about it was that he eventually calmed down without his meds. This helped quell my fears about drug dependency, not just Eliot’s but ours as the parents who medicated him in an effort to cope.
He ended up helping me do the dishes. He even gripped the dish brush, instead of holding it with two fingers to keep his hands from getting soapy.
“You don’t have to like him, only love him,” I told Carly, quoting my friend Elizabeth, when she expressed her frustration about her brother.
“I don’t love him either,” she said. I could see how she felt so I didn’t argue.
There was a brief revival when we climbed into bed that night and Eliot sang at the top of his lungs. But we ignored him, the best tactic whenever possible, and the singing died out after a while. What he sang, over and over, was
“We like our cheese,
we like our cheese,”
and
“We like our friends,
we like our friends…”
Then he brought in his bedtime companion Curious George. “Background singing, George,” he commanded, and the voice went falsetto,
“We like our cheese,
we like our cheese…”
Blue and I lay in our sleeping bags in the moonlight, agreeing it was pretty good bedtime music.
The summer he was twelve it all came together. He kept his head down and the side-breathing arm lifted out of the water for the first time. When he held his hand in a fist as he has a tendency to do, I told him to “high-five” the water and he did. He started swimming back and forth across the pool and not listening to anything I had to say.
Then we went to Huntington Lake. In past summers when he was being a pain, we’d throw his bathing suit on and toss him in the lake. But the summer he was twelve he took matters into his own hands. Every morning he jumped in the water and swam back and forth from the dock to a boulder a few yards out, and every afternoon he swam across Line Creek Cove.
Although water skills were critical, the real reason I taught him to swim and ride a bike was to give him the same coping mechanisms I used; starting the day with a run or a swim numbed me to the stress. Being connected to the outdoors was important too, but so was the link of mind, body, and spirit. It was easy for a child with motor difficulties to slip into his own world and operate more from the brain than the body.
We still had to medicate him, though (or as Blue called it, zap him) much as we wished we didn’t. One night at Huntington we accidentally double dosed him; I zapped him after Blue already had. It was actually a blood pressure medication, and on a conscious level I worried I’d killed him. On a more subliminal level I knew I hadn’t, and rather than rousing him from our beds on the deck and driving hours to the nearest hospital, I sat in the car and tried to reach his pediatrician on the cell phone. But I didn't have the night number and kept getting voicemail. I cried when Blue climbed in the car.
“He’s going to be okay,” Blue said. “He’s strong.” I knew he was right, but I kept trying to reach someone. I couldn’t find a working number for the doctor in Big Creek, and called our hospital in Santa Cruz, only to be told they would not give medical advice over the phone. 911 said the same. I left a tearful message for my sister-in-law Connie who was a nurse. She told me later she was glad I left a second, more coherent message, as the first was unintelligible. Good thing my limit was two margaritas or it really would have been unintelligible.
She also told me to call Poison Control next time. We’d had that number taped to the wall when our children were small and eating “berries” they found in the backyard, but over the years we'd forgotten about it.
Blue and I left a voicemail for the pediatrician, turned off the phone, and went to bed, agreeing to check on Eliot each time we got up to use the bathroom. Every time I stood over him in the moonlight he was breathing. When he got up to use the bathroom with Blue, I was relieved and slept in earnest.
In the morning the pediatrician’s assistant relayed a message from Dr. Griger that Eliot would be "a little dizzy" and not to resume medicating him until the following morning. It was hard to wake him, and he stayed in bed longer than usual, but once he was up he was full of piss and vinegar.
He wound up that night. The only good thing about it was that he eventually calmed down without his meds. This helped quell my fears about drug dependency, not just Eliot’s but ours as the parents who medicated him in an effort to cope.
He ended up helping me do the dishes. He even gripped the dish brush, instead of holding it with two fingers to keep his hands from getting soapy.
“You don’t have to like him, only love him,” I told Carly, quoting my friend Elizabeth, when she expressed her frustration about her brother.
“I don’t love him either,” she said. I could see how she felt so I didn’t argue.
There was a brief revival when we climbed into bed that night and Eliot sang at the top of his lungs. But we ignored him, the best tactic whenever possible, and the singing died out after a while. What he sang, over and over, was
“We like our cheese,
we like our cheese,”
and
“We like our friends,
we like our friends…”
Then he brought in his bedtime companion Curious George. “Background singing, George,” he commanded, and the voice went falsetto,
“We like our cheese,
we like our cheese…”
Blue and I lay in our sleeping bags in the moonlight, agreeing it was pretty good bedtime music.
posted by Victoria Tatum at 10:19 AM
3 Comments:
Gabriel Constans wrote:
Thanks Tory,
Nice story. No matter how bad the singing, it must have seemed wonderful, considering the fears you had just gone through thinking about the alternative!
All the best,
Gabriel
Nancy Monroe wrote:
When you send notice of a new blog, if I can, I drop everything I'm working on to read the new story -- I love reading them. It gives me a different perspective of Eliot and Carly than the side I always see. And I guess knowing Huntington Lake so well, I get the added benefit of visualizing your so-often mentioned spot.
Nana Montgomery wrote:
Good story, you had me on the edge of my seat... I'm glad that it was all ok
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