SOUR THE MILK

     Well, the van is still in the same condition! I was supposed to bring it to the Nissan dealership for repair on Friday, but spaced out, and when I tried to make an appointment there, they told me that nothing is available until next week! 

     I saw it already in my mind's eye, what will happen if the engine mount, which is cracked, will, finally, give way: an unspeakably ugly sound of the mount breaking and the engine falling, the car stalling in the middle of driving and flipping over or spinning out of control... Yeah, that's enough imagining!

     Instead of repairing my car on Friday, I puttered around the house in the morning, made some phone calls and went to see Mr. P. in the afternoon. Roberta wanted to go with me, but since I now go to appointments with Mr. P. to his house, and she can't seat in the living room with us during the session or in the kitchen (that would be difficult for an eighty one year old woman), I brought her to Starbucks, got her a cup of java and a pastry, made sure her Kindle worked and left her there. What?! She was the one who wanted to get out of the house!

     It's a little bit of an odd arrangement that Mr. P. has now. He borrowed a house from an old lady, who lives in an old folks' home. The place is nice enough; it came together with a resident cat

                                  

and about forty porcelain angels standing on a large coffee table and in the corners of the room. 

 

You can see the cat under the table, where she spends time
 keeping an eye on Mr. P.'s clients and snorting and
sneezing to clear up her sinuses. 

                             

                                                     

        

                                                 

We had a very productive session. Mr. P. starts it every time by asking: "What was the highest point of your week? - and - "What was the lowest point?"

I told him about Hanah leaving and a struggle I had with her and Sonny to help around the house. Mr. P. is of an opinion that, once someone becomes older, they must have responsibilities to carry their own weight. He says: "Sonny is not your child anymore! He is an adult. What will happen if, God forbid, you and Taka die? Will Sonny be ready for life? He is not your child anymore: he is your grown up son! Don't infantilize him by giving in to his bad behavior!"

We practiced, how I can talk to Sonny or Hanah (or Taka, for that matter), to be real in my relationship with them, because - that is the point of having a family, isn't it?

We also devised a plan to, what Mr. P. calls, "sour the milk". For now, Sonny has a charmed life. There are, of course, his dad's rants that can continue for hours. Mr. P. said something very frightening: stress from being a subject of emotional abuse (and that's what Taka's relationship with Sonny amounts to) can deplete hormones necessary for a person's mental health and push Sonny into mental sickness! So, the objective must be to help Sonny build a better life by inducing him to take responsibility at home or find a job, to feel more prepared to meet his dad's attacks and the demands of life.

What do I mean by saying that he has a charmed life, then? He hides away in his room, sleeping or watching videos and anime on laptop the whole day, if he doesn't go to school or I or his dad don't threaten him enough. He eats and lives here for free, gets free rides from me anywhere he wants to go. It's amazing that, this ease can bring him into ruin! 

Mr. P. talked about the natural law of cause and effect. Paying consequences for one's lazy or irresponsible behavior is just as natural as a glass falling off the table under the influence of gravity. We can catch the glass, of course, thus interrupting the natural consequence, which is similar to someone, like parents, hovering over and jumping in when a kid is in trouble as the result of his/her being irresponsible. That means that, we, the codependent adorers, pay those consequences! We pay their late fees, tuition, rent; we pay by picking up the pieces of their lives and putting them back together at the expense of our own or a family's welfare. 

Sour the milk, then!

How? 

Mr. P. suggested that I impose rent on Sonny's room. Let's say: $500.00 a month. What? You have no money? You can pay by working around the house or doing anything that needs to be done, like running errands, for example. You don't want to do that? Then you need to find a job! 

I began to nod to what Mr. P. was saying right in the beginning of session. I agree with everything! Now, how do I make myself follow that advice?

It will be hard. Not only do I have a habit of charging in to help my kids, whether they deserve it or not. I also rely on Sonny a lot for help, because of my health situation. What if he decides to leave home? 

Whatever! He has a life to begin, and staying under this roof without doing anything constructive only damages him. His dad treats him with derision, and that will already leave a scar on his psyche!

     

MORE WOUNDS...

Hanah was leaving! She spent a couple of days packing her staff that was strewn around our living room. I think, Chickie felt something, because he began meeting us at the door every time we came home and meow piteously, demanding to see that Hanah, his human, was still here. 

On the day of Hanah's departure, I picked Reina from her class, and we went to have a last lunch together. I, finally, decided to go to the restaurant where Mary's husband works as a chef. She told me, where it was, and I thought that it would be easy to find the place. I should've known better! 

We drove around and round that area for about an hour! Five bucks (I crossed a Toll bridge) and a quarter of a tank of fuel later, right after we decided to just go to another Japanese restaurant, I stumbled upon the place by accident!

Mary's husband was off that day.  We ordered our food.                                                 

                                   

It was fine, but not worth all the trouble it took to get there!

The freeway was packed on the way to Oakland. We were lucky that we left early. The Greyhound station was also packed.

We read books; Hanah and Sonny horsed around.

Soon it was time to get in line to await the coming bus.

                        

One more picture, and Hanah went.

When we got home, Chickie was there to greet us. "Where is she?!" - his meows were getting desperate. "You took her away, and she disappeared again!"

Poor cat, he is getting tired of Hanah leaving him behind!

Dad told me many times of how, when they went to Copenhagen to meet my sister for the first time in five years, mom couldn't stop herself from repeating, once they got off the plane: "Where is my dorrah (daughter), where is my dorrah?!!" I laughed at her then, but now I am not laughing anymore: "Where is my dorrah?!!"

WOUNDS

Quickly, before I have to go again, I want to show you how we spent the last two days with Hanah in the house.
   

See this little spot on Sonny's hand? That is all that's left of a puncture wound which he received while trying to squish trash in the garbage can. He didn't know, there was glass there!

He washed and put iodine on it, but a few hours later began to complain about pain. For the last week we watched The Grey's Anatomy, and now, of course, all of the stories from those series about a simple wound turning septic and killing a patient, came to mind. 

I tried to keep a cool head and said that, Sonny should take some pain medicine and wait for a while instead of rushing to the hospital to spend at least a few hours moping in the ER. Hanah, my drama-queen, insisted that, he has to go to the ER and get sutures. Taka vacillated between our two points of view, but the gist of his thinking was: "I can just drop Sonny off at the ER and pick him up later!"

I wanted to argue further, but

  1. If anything bad did happen, I didn't want to be the reason for it;

2. If Sonny had to go to the ER, I was not going to just leave him there alone or even with Hanah, like Taka suggested!

3. Life was bigger than my point of view. My children and the relationship with them matter to me more. I could relinquish control and take Sonny to the hospital.

We walked into the the Emergency Room at 10 pm and left it at about 12. Not bad at all! The doctor declared that Sonny didn't need any sutures (mother is always right!). My kid felt quite sorry for himself, especially, after all the horror stories he saw in The Grey's Anatomy, but it soon became apparent that, everything will turn out to be OK. 

Sonny got his wound scrubbed, went to have an x-ray and took his discharge paper to a window in the wall. 

The man there said: "It'll be $100.00. How do you want to pay for it?" I saw apoplexy on my second-born's face. He didn't think that a little visit to ER will cost him any money! Even though I wanted to torture him some more, I stepped in with my wallet. 

Mother is always right!

I'd better take a break here: this story took longer than I thought. 

To Be Continued!

LOTS OF DRIVING, WHILE I STILL CAN DO IT

My day in pictures. 
     As I was barreling down the freeway yesterday, my car started to shake. Even when I reduced speed to 40 miles an hour, the shaking persisted. After checking tire pressure at the gas station (I tried to enlist some men's help with that, but none of them were willing to help me. I guess, if I was a svelte blonde, they'd be falling over themselves to figure out my car's problem. They'd probably, be willing to pay for new tires, - if I was a svelte blonde!).

     A visit to a car repair shop revealed that my tires have had it! They've taken enough punishment from the bumpy pavements, wrong alignment and Sonny riding the brake, and now they were bald and had bulges in them. In other words, they were about to blow up. It was so lucky that, I didn't go to Muir Woods with my family yesterday, and as the result of that, they drove in Honda. Just imagine: winding roads, high speed (Taka driving), then - BAM!~!!! At the least, it would take them half a day to tow the van and change tires in some tiny town. I don't even want to think, what else could've happened...
     So, today we went to my old tire store. Roberta jumped on the chance to get out of the house, and assured me that she would be able to wait in the store and wait for me, as I go to an appointment with Mr. P.

                                                         

                                                                             Here is Roberta, playing Solitaire on her Kindle on old
                                                               chairs at Big O Tires.
 

Do you know, how much tires cost these days? $700.00! Ouch! If you think, I could've paid less somewhere else, please leave me a comment! After I agreed to pay $700.00 (ouch!), the guy told me that my brakes were paper-thin and the engine mount broken. Why do I have a feeling that, they must've seen me coming?!
I made it to Mr. P.'s appointment with 5 minutes to spare. Roberta waited in the car, since there was no time to drive her to a cafe, as we planned in the morning.
We talked, mostly, about the kids. Mr. P. gave me advice on how to discipline them. An interesting thing is, by disciplining them, I also can discipline myself!
He brought up Hebrews 12, an epistle written by Paul, especially, some verses:
"Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh who have corrected us and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in  subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?.. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed."
Paul, in other words, talks about the necessity for discipline, most of all by our Heavenly Father, and how that will make us whole.
As we talked, a beige Persian cat, Precious, made her way snorting and sneezing to us over the canary yellow carpet. She suffers from constant nasal congestion, and limps too. She dotes on MR. P., and he jokes that she is his girlfriend.

Here she looks like a hairy blob; Hanah even thought that it was a photo of a sloth, because Precious refused to lift her pretty flat face for the picture.

 

JOON: THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

     Sonny, Reina and Hanah didn't feel like talking about what happened, although Joon, at the very edge of Sonny's conscience, was thinking of it non-stop. What could have induced that feeling of bliss and brought all those wonderful feelings to the surface? Why did it stop so suddenly, right after the IPod switched off? He didn't think that ePo could be responsible: the experience was too beautiful to originate in her disturbed mind. 

     Yet, Hanah was the first one to be affected by strange emissions from her IPod. Was it possible that, someone was trying to neutralize ePo's influence on her?

     The next couple of days Hanah got pretty annoyed by Sonny often and suddenly   walking in on her! 

     Nothing happened for a while, then,                      at the end of the week, the family decided to go to Muir Woods National Monument to look at and show Reina, their guest from Japan, the redwood sequoias. 

     They drove for about an hour, when the car began to shake uncontrollably. Even when Taka, the dad, slowed down, the shaking was still there. They pulled off the freeway. It was a desolate stretch, with nothing there except gray sand and rocks. Taka looked at the tires: they looked terrible: huge bubbles appeared on them, threatening to burst any moment and send the family careening across the busy road.

     They had to wait for a towing truck. Hanah, Sonny and Reina went exploring into the woods next to the freeway. 

     Joon loved the smell of the pines. Even though they were right next to civilization with it's crowds and polluted, toxic air, inside the trees the fresh air immediately invigorated him. He searched for Hanah, then saw her shoulder behind the redwood sapling. She sat there quietly, staring into her IPod. The same blissful expression began to steal onto her face. Joon wanted to shake her and break the spell, but a temptation to feel once again those wonderful things like he felt in the house, was too strong.

     Joon came to, looking at Taka standing over him: "What's the matter with you and Hanah? Are those tears on your cheeks? Didn't you hear me call? It's a good thing that Reina found you! Could you go and keep an eye on the tow truck driver? I just want to take a short walk with the girls while the car is being worked on." 

     The tow truck driver was working on changing the tires. All Joon could see of him was his bent back, but his senses in that lonely place were tingling with the anticipation of danger, so he looked at the driver closer.

     One thing for sure: the driver was very tense. He kept dropping his tools and bumped his head on the car when he heard Joon emerge from the trees. He didn't turn to look at him, though, and Joon thought that it was very strange. He felt like he was being watched, but the driver's back was toward him. Then he saw an eye on the part of the man's face where there usually are only sideburns! 

     It was a monster, but what kind? Joon walked to the other side of the car, trying to see the thing better. As he stood, peering over the car's top at the driver's cap, he suddenly felt a steel grip on his ankles and was somehow pulled off his feet under the car! 

     With his superhuman strength Joon pushed the car away and was able to come up on his feet in front of his assailant. He just glimpsed dirty, distorted features and four eyes under matted hair on the monster's face, when the creature attacked. He was impossibly strong and quick, and Joon, still under the influence of the IPOD's spell, had trouble defending himself.

     Desperate to get the upper hand, Joon fought with all his might. The monster grabbed him and they went down together, rolling on the ground. Joon knew that, if he fails, Sonny's family will die. He grasped at everything that he could find on the ground near them and beat at the attacker with that, but the attacker's head was made of metal, it seemed, because even hit by a stone, he hardly flinched. 

     Joon's hand closed on something. It was Reina's water bottle. he smashed it on the creature's head. The lid fell off and the liquid poured over the thing's eyes. The monster roared, rolled off Joon and began to writhe on the ground, scratching at his face. Whatever was in the bottle, already burned through his scull and into his brain. Soon he lay quiet, but Joon saw that he was still alive. 

     Taka and the girls walked out of the forest at that moment. 

     - "I can't believe, he is asleep on the job! Probably came here drunk. It would never have happened in Japan!" 

     Taka talked, but Joon hardly heard him. He looked at Reina, then pointed at her water bottle. 

     - "What did you have in it?"

     - "Gatorade..."

To Be Continued