The goat birthday and other bedtime tales

The first time India asked for the goat story, I misheard her. I thought she said "boat story," and said I didn't have a boat story.

"The goat story! When you had birthday cake and candles and a purple bathing suit and a goat!"

Naturally, the most important elements of my Goat Birthday.

Which was actually just a plain old birthday until my little Dutch friend Petra brought me a baby goat as a present. 

Nick started this Story In the Dark business, and he is great at spinning yarns, and the kids love it. But he rarely puts them to bed, and so it's kind of a big treat for them. It's not that I don't like telling stories, but some nights I just want to read a couple books and be done.

For a while Jordan was requesting Lego Jordan stories, in which Lego Jordan and Lego India and another friend or two would walk through a door in the back of Jordan's closet, down a long rainbow Lego hallway, and into the kingdom of the Lego Giant. Where they would immediately proceed to eat Lego ice cream, Lego donuts, and Lego pizza.

I will tell you that it gets as tiresome repeating Lego before every word out loud as it does typing or reading it. "So then Jordan..." "No, Mama! Lego Jordan!"

Right.

Anyway, this stopped with a change in our bedtime ritual. For a while I'd give them a bath and get them in jammies, and then I'd leave India in her room screaming bloody murder while I told Jordan a story and then kissed him goodnight and then went to put down my rage queen.

Putting her to sleep is a lot more involved and drawn out than with my boy. My son can be hard to get to the jammies point, but once he is calm and listening to a story, he's headed to sleep. You put him in bed and kiss him goodnight and that's it.

India, on the other hand.

So there was this period of time where if you didn't let her scream for a bit before putting her to bed, you'd spend like 54 hours trying to do so. But if I left her to shriek her displeasure for a bit, she'd be ready to settle in.

Now we read books in her room and sometimes she walks into Jordan's room with me, and sometimes she yells in her room, but it is brief.

And then we focus on her.

She needs water. I'm prepared. Here. I'm handing it to you. She needs socks. No, not those socks. She wants to do it. Hmm, which socks should she choose? She finally picks the damn socks. Oh! She forgot Softly Giraffe downstairs!

(I bought a backup giraffe, exactly the same, but she wasn't fooled. For a while backup giraffe was the less preferred giraffe, and it was still a crisis if we couldn't find Softly Giraffe. So we have Softly Giraffe and Spicy Giraffe.)

ANYway, we get all of this bullshit out of the way and then she wants a story in the dark.

Which is how the goat story got back into circulation. Because I am old and I am tired.

Now I regularly tell my children my birthday stories.

There is always cake, and it is purple, because that was my favorite color for years. These things go over well. There is usually swimming, because that is true and also a popular detail. I also have to list the snacks we had at the pool.

If it's India, there is my purple bathing suit, a detail she loves as she has one as well. But I don't mention that it was a velveteen bikini and basically my favorite item of clothing for years, because then India will have to have one and our lives will be tragic if it doesn't happen.

Sometimes there is the goat, and sometimes it is the Wizard of Oz birthday, when my dad got a reel-to-reel movie projector and the movie from the Marines. And then, when the Wicked Witch's green face was large on the screen, BOOM! Thunder and lightening! The power went out, because it was monsoon season. And everyone screamed!

"You were scared, Mama?"

(Hell, yeah!)

"Only a little. Because my mama and daddy ran around and lit candles and then we at MORE CAKE AND LOLLYPOPS by candlelight!"

"Ohhhh!" Nods of approval.

When I say I can't think of a story, sometimes Jordan says, "Well...did you maybe have any other birthdays ever? Like with cake and candles?"

Yeah, yeah, I probably did.

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb. And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them.

I know a lot of you have already seen this, but I also know that we are not all connected on Facebook, and so I wanted to put it on the blog to share.

This Is My Brave asked each of us to make an a short video introducing ourselves. I was first on the schedule, and here I am.

This was really scary to do, and I feel proud of it.

It's insecurity-provoking to share your own words, but then when you're sharing your heart words and  saying them out loud into a camera where everyone can see your regular eye rolls and the funny little faces you make, and hear your high little voice, well, that's a whole nother level of yikes.

And yet I think it's extremely important to talk, talk, talk until we are blue in the face about how mental illness is just plain old normal.

Eventually, if we talk enough, if enough people come forth and share their stories, mental illnesses will move into the realm of common everyday boring illnesses like high cholesterol and allergies. They'll be so prosaic that we'll talk about them on the bus and share contact info for doctors and swap medication stories.

Because they are that common.

Once this happens, people will not feel ashamed to seek the care they need. They will no longer go without help because they're too afraid to admit that they need it.

I said it in the video and I will say it again forever until it is no longer true. I believe that the shame associated with mental illness kills people. And I believe talking breaks the stigma.

Also, sorry for only being a semi-reasonable wife, Nick.

The kind of naked I do not like to be so could you please help?

I have the honor of being part of the 2015 This Is My Brave cast.

What does this mean?

It means that a group of us will each be sharing a 5-minute story of our own experiences with mental illness. It means standing up on stage in front of an audience of strangers and speaking from our hearts and lives on a topic that is still highly stigmatized. It means talking to break the stigma.

I'm proud of my audition piece. Crafting it was extremely difficult, and I learned a tremendous amount about myself in doing so. It was surprisingly healing.

And now, now I need a 2-4 sentence bio.

I'm comfortable telling stories about what's in my heart. I'm very not comfortable defining who I am. I mean, who am I? In 2-4 sentences?

Honestly, getting physically naked makes me more comfortable than getting this kind of naked in public.

But I can't just submit a naked picture of myself. I mean, one, that would be weird. Particularly in the boot. Two, I'm certain it would get me kicked off the cast. So I need a brief bio.

I asked for help on Facebook, and a number of friends very kindly did so. I took their suggestions, removed the extremely complimentary adjectives (oh, thank you, friends!) and the references to merkins, penii, my House of Cards extra-ness and the like (thank you again, friends!), and crafted this:

Lisa Jordan is a writer, wife, daughter, and mother to two young kids. Lisa documents her life journey on her blog, Lemon Gloria, sharing her stories of marriage, depression, suicide, motherhood, and life’s stranger moments and everyday pleasures with equal gravity and humor. She is working on a book about growing up with suicide.

What do you think?

I need to know by tomorrow. But preferably right now, like, this minute.

Thank you.

I was on the outside when you said you said you needed me...

Last week Jordan told me that when they have recess in the gym, nobody plays with him.

I always ask if they were outside at recess, because this winter has been cold and snowy and they've had a lot of inside days. Some days they watch videos, and some days they run around in the gym. The latter is by far my preference. They already sit too much.

So on this particular day last week he said they ran around in the gym and I so asked who he had played with.

And he said, "Nobody. Nobody wants to play with me. Why doesn't anyone want to play with me, Mama?"

He looked so sad, with his sweet little face turned up to me, asking for an answer. It hurt my heart.

I doubt the veracity of it, because Jordan has friends, and plenty of kids say hi and bye to him when we're in the lobby of the school. And there's one little girl in particular in his class who just loves him. She has a developmental delay, and she seems utterly guileless. She sees him and beams and gets so close to him that she's practically standing on his feet. They are pals.

When we hang out after school, he has friends to play with. And if his friends aren't there, he sometimes joins in with other kids.

But he is also very much in his head. He will go off by himself on the playground and keep himself entertained digging snow or climbing or some such.

Anyway, what he said was that all the other kids were playing with other kids and nobody ever picks him for anything.

I got it. Oh, I got it.

Whether it's real or not, he feels it. So it's real to him.

I spent most of my life feeling like I was outside. I was standing on the edge looking in, even though I was there, and I was participating. I was hanging out with friends at school, I was in plays, I was a cheerleader. I was in a sorority, I was at the parties, I was drinking, I was laughing, I was dancing.

But to me, I wasn't really inside, not the way everyone else was.

Even in high school, where there weren't cliques. Where nobody was ever excluded, and nobody was in or out.

I felt this way well into my 30s. I don't know precisely when it stopped, but at some point I realized that I wasn't actually different from everyone else. Or anyway, from the everyone elses that I chose to hang out with.

I picked them for a reason. And they chose me right back, the whole me.

So now I can look back and believe that I wasn't really on the outside looking in; I was inside. Hell, there wasn't an inside and an outside. We were all in it together.

I was just too scared and insecure to recognize it.

And so my boy, oh my boy. He's so much like me in ways that infuriate me.

I strive not to do the things my father did when my shyness and insecurity frustrated him. I try to see my son and accept him as his own whole person, and not get annoyed when he asks me to talk to another kid for him, to ask them if he can share toys or have a turn.

I know what Jordan does, because it's what I did for so long.

He waits for people to come to him. I can picture him in the gym, waiting for other people to pick him. Scared to walk over and ask if they'll play, in case they say no. Terrified of rejection. Feeling like he doesn't really belong. Not really.

Why isn't he like Nick, who is the opposite, and acts like he belongs everywhere he goes?

Even if he has nothing overly interesting to say, he'll walk up to a stranger at a party and say it to them. And they'll respond. And suddenly they'll be having a conversation about umbrellas.

Here I must of course add that I do hang on his every word and the bulk of them are riveting. It's the rare instance I'm spotlighting.

But back to Jordan.

I tell him that people like him, that he has friends. I give names of people I know like him. I gently suggest that maybe, in the gym, maybe he could walk over to another kid and ask them if they want to play.

He says they're all busy playing with others.

I know how he feels. I know his little heart. I've lived his fears.

And it makes me want to scoop him up, to wrap him in Langston Hughes's blue-cloud cloth, away from the too-rough fingers of the world.

Boot is the new black

You know how you learn a new word or hear of something for the first time and then suddenly you see this word or thing 54 times in the next few days?

I have seen so many booted people lately. Every third person on the street is wearing a boot.

OK, I exaggerate. But there are a lot!

It's like suddenly I became hyper-aware of boots, and lo, there they already were, all around me.

Nick has stopped wearing his, even though he hasn't yet gone back to the doctor. Our doctor.

And I can understand it. The boot is a hassle. Not just clomping around in it, but finding a shoe that matches it in height. It makes your hips and back hurt to be off-balance like that. Most importantly, his achilles is no longer achillin' him. (No, I will never let that go.)

Now, on the one hand I was thinking maybe he should wait until the doctor deems him healed. But on the other, I was relieved.

The other day we walked over to our friends' house together. They live about six or seven blocks away. Not far, but far enough when you're booting.

We were both in our respective boots, when we saw people walking towards us on the sidewalk, I put a little distance between us and pretended Nick and I didn't know each other.

I'm not proud of this fact, but it's true. (Also, Nick didn't know I was doing this. Until now.)

Anyway, I figured that if anyone looked at our boots and laughed at us, I'd go ahead and be all, "What? We met at a boot support group!"