Chicago Moms Blog

Behind Barbed Wire

I stood in line with all the others, waiting for my turn to go inside the building. Reaching into the pocket of my jeans, I fingered the brass disc with the number 43 on it.  I was visitor number forty-three that morning.  A young woman stood in front of me, holding a sniffling toddler on her hip while she juggled a clear bag filled with diapers and baby food with her other hand.  Another son clung to her leg, crying and begging to be held.  With a sigh, the mom put the toddler down and picked up the crying child. In an instant, the other one began to cry.

My eyes drifted to the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the perimeter of the corrections facility.  This wasn't the first time I had gone inside a prison.  Years ago, I provided advocacy and counseling services to a deaf woman who was convicted of murdering her baby.  Once a month, I would go through the usual pat downs and security procedures at the women's prison and settle in for a two-hour session.

This time, the visit was personal. I was heading inside to visit a friend that I hadn't seen in twenty five years.  Ron and I were friends in high school.  We met on the swimming team and swam endless laps after school.  In the hallways, we passed each other notes that we wrote instead of paying attention in our classes.  The notes turned into letters when Ron joined the Navy and went off to sea.  He shared stories of his travels and sent post cards from various stops around the world.

Facing a Career Crossroads

The information came pretty much out of the blue: my company informed me that they were moving my position to their headquarters in Florida. They wanted to know if I was going to move with it.

And oh, by the way, I had twenty-four hours to decide.

The news stunned the heck out of me-- I didn't see it coming. There I was, humming along in my new position that was given to me just a few months ago.  I was a Sales Manager covering two states when my company asked me to take over nationwide coverage for our Voice Carry Over (VCO) customers. I jumped into that, loving every minute of connecting with new customers from all over and showing them new ways that they could use our company's videophones to make phone calls.  I spent hours connecting and finding new customers via the internet using social media tools. Slowly but surely, our customer base was growing with this segment. I was happy--I was in my niche, doing exactly what I loved to do.

Deaf on the Field

Lee Woodruff has a neat way of describing her daughter who is hard of hearing:  a child with a different ability.

I was thinking of this recently as I watched my youngest kiddo on the football field during a huddle. I could see that he was straining to lipread what was being said by the team leader.  As they broke up and settled into position, his teammate quickly said something to him and he scooted further down the line.  The players moved at the snap of the ball and I watched as my youngest was pummeled back by a player much bigger than him.  My kiddo suddenly turned and let the bigger player slide past him.  He took off running and I watched in amazement as he dove and wrapped his arms around a player's legs.  The quarterback slammed into the ground-- the ball still in his hands.

This was the kid who wanted to quit football after the first week of practice.  He came home after the second practice and basically had a meltdown.

"It's too hard.  I don't understand what to do," he said. "The big kids keep knocking me down!"

Letting Go of my Teenager

This is it.

This is the day that I'm half dreading, half celebrating.

My 16-year-old son is on his way home from school.  No doubt his heart is beating with excitement as he waits in anticipation of this rite of passage that will take place this afternoon.  He's been practicing for almost a year now.  To me, it feels like just mere weeks. We've allowed him to slip behind the wheel of our car and van, teaching him how to navigate through traffic and saving him more than once from the collision of metal upon metal in a near-miss.

He has completed the required number of hours of driving practice and our vehicles have survived without a scratch on them. He has driven from Michigan to Chicago on the expressway in heavy traffic. The state says he's ready for the piece of plastic that will enable him to drive without a parent in the car.

The problem is... I'm not ready.

Hoping For Many More Birthdays

Cancer reared its ugly head this summer.  In June, my 84-year-old father was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus.  His first clue came during a Christmas dinner of beef tenderlion--Dad had some trouble enjoying one of his favorite dinners after noticing that he had some trouble swallowing.  He just figured maybe he should have cut the meat down a bit and didn't give it much thought.

By Memorial Day weekend, he could no longer ignore the symptoms.  He was having serious trouble swallowing food and his appetite was gone.  During a casual conversation, he finally mentioned it to a few of us.  I was blunt with my response, because the first thing that came to my mind was that dreaded "C" word.

"Yeah, I know, I'm thinking the same thing," was his reply.  He put up no argument at the idea that it was time to head to the doctor and get it checked out.

Embracing my Deaf Self

It is eleven o'clock at night and my house is filled with the sound of eight teenagers sitting around my family room chatting and laughing.  Some of them are signing, some of them are animatedly talking.  Some of them are deaf, some are hard of hearing and two of them have hearing in the normal range. Three of them are mine and all three have hearing aids perched in their ears.  My youngest sports colorful earmolds with red, white and blue swirls. I've got a pair of blue earmolds with sparkles shining out from under my dark hair.

As I watch the kids talk excitedly about some silly photo on Facebook, I'm thinking back to my own teen years. My summers as a teen were spent hiding the fact that I couldn't hear.  As soon as the school year ended in the late spring, my lone hearing aid was placed on a ledge and never touched until the first day of school in the fall. I spent my summers with a great group of friends, many who knew just what to do to make communication happen between us. I depended a lot on my lipreading skills to piece together conversations.  It was the casual group gatherings that had me bluffing my way through conversations because it was next to impossible to lipread the many lips that were speaking at the same time.

Then there was the stigma of being different, of standing out. I tried hard not to stand out, instead trying everything I could to blend in and be "one of them."

The Big C

"The tumor is cancer," wrote my brother via a text message.

I was in Vegas for an 8-day stint with my company and I learned that the tumor that was recently found was indeed cancer. I was hoping that the large mass in his esophagus was benign and that it could be removed with surgery, but my brother’s text proved that the "C" word was back, this time in a much scarier state.

This wasn’t the first cancer battle for my dad. A few years back, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. For some reason back then, the diagnosis didn’t shake me. I felt confident that he would be fine after treatment and he was. He opted to have radium pellets inserted and the tiny bullets did the job.

Messy Houses

This morning I woke up, looked around, and went back to bed.  

My life has officially spung out of control.  Every single room in the house is a mess.

It started 16 years ago when the first child was born. I was much more organized back then.  Each night, I picked up the toys, kept on top of the laundry and took leisurely strolls around the neighborhood with the baby.  The hubby took care of the lawn and painted the trim on the house.  Life was bliss.

Baby number two came into the picture two years later.  We had sold our little ranch and purchased a ranch with a basement.  Life settled into a routine with a toddler and a baby.  The toys were still picked up at night and I even organized them into the bins and toy box.  Life was blissful as the hubby laid down sod in our new backyard and I planted flowers in pots.

Twenty three months later, my youngest child was born at home.  I had a four-year-old, a two-year-old and a new baby.  The hubby cleaned up the toys at night and the oldest kiddo helped by putting them away in the toy box.  There were some days and nights that we simply collapsed exhausted on the couch with the toys strewn about us.  Life was blissfully chaotic.

Uncertain Times: Children and Recession

"I just got laid off," a friend of mine announced last week.  That kind of news has been a common refrain among my friends and family members over the last sixth months and it seems like each month brings a couple more announcements. All around me I see that more and more families are finding themselves in the position of having to cut drastically back to keep a roof over their heads and make it through month to month. It has hit the deaf and hard of hearing community hard-- because it becomes quite difficult to find another job during a recession. Many of our deaf and hard of hearing friends are struggling in jobs that are on the lower end of the pay scale.  Employers are less likely to consider people with disabilities for employment when they have fewer jobs to go around.  During a recession, when companies are cutting back, employers are hard pressed to find funds to accommodate employees with disabilities.

Life is Too Short to Pout All the Time

Many years ago, I began writing for a website that produced product reviews and I had to come up with a personal tagline or quote to reflect something about me.   Mine was simply:  “Life is too short to pout all the time.”  That line came to me years ago, when my kids were four- and two-years old, and my youngest had just been born.   

As you can imagine, life back then with a four-year old, two-year old and a crying baby included days where the kids would pout and whine.   After juggling everyone’s needs, keeping track of who was fed and who needed to be fed, refereeing two fighting toddlers, all this on top of attempting to keep the house in some semblance of order--by the end of the day, I was pouting myself.  As soon as the hubby arrived home from work, I whined and unloaded on him.  Then one day, after a particularly trying day with the three kids, I said to them, “Come on, guys, life is too short to pout all the time.”  We took off for the kitchen and made brownies together.  Soon we were all happily chomping away on warm brownies.