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When my son’s probation officer called back, he said that he had also had trouble getting appropriate responses from any of the state agencies that would normally take responsibility for providing some support…

… Oh. I didn’t realize you were reading. I was just talking about my son. Well, you saw what and whom I was talking about. I am a bit embarrassed now that you know about the probation officer, all this mess.

But really, you don’t know. It seems that in years past, my son would have been called a Stubborn Child. Now he is simply a Child In Need of Services, but he still had to go to court for it. The school asked the truant officer for our town to file a CHINS, so we had our day in juvenile court.

Now, to explain a little, “CHINS” really does stand for “Child In Need of Services.” It is a somewhat euphemistic idea created in 1973 when people decided that the “Stubborn Child Law” was not quite appropriate. Indeed. The Stubborn Child Law goes back to olden days, really olden days:

“If a man have a stubborn or rebellious son, of sufficient years and understanding (viz.) sixteen years of age, which will not obey the voice of his Father, or the voice of his Mother, and that when they have chastened him will not harken unto them: then shall his Father and Mother being his natural parents, lay hold on him and bring him to the Magistrates assembled in Court and testify unto them, that their son is stubborn and rebellious and will not obey their voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son shall be put to death” (Statutes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1646).

Drastic? I’ll say. The law as it evolved included children younger than sixteen, but to be fair, none of them was put to death. Still a little scary. The CHINS, unlike the Stubborn Child Law, does not apply to children over the age of sixteen, nor does it recommend death, but it is still a court thing. It is sometimes filed by parents in a last-ditch effort to keep an out-of-control kid safe. I always thought of the kids who were staying out all night, bringing home dangerous friends, doing drugs… Truancy fits in there. And the idea, I believe, in changing the Stubborn Child Law was to address the causes of the behavior and get kids help. But when someone has identified that children need services, is the Department of Youth Services—DYS is another name for the juvenile correction…er, kiddy jail… system—really the right place to go to ask for help?

Our little foray into lawlessness began after my son’s hospital stay. In November of last year, just a few days before Thanksgiving, my son told his therapist that he thought life was worthless. So, after nine grueling hours in the middle of a busy emergency room on a Friday night, my son began his two-week stay in the hospital’s locked “child development” area, a.k.a., pediatric psych ward.

I suppose the stay was intended to help him–it should have–but in the end my son came home with new medication that did not end up making anything better, the knowledge that his new psychiatrist never even cared enough to return phone calls while my son was in the hospital (we stopped seeing him soon after), no more support services, and a new-found feeling of failure at real life that seemed to take over. Even as counselors, and school staff, and I expressed dismay at the inattention, appropriate agencies that were geared to give my son that post-hospital help simply pointed fingers at one another, saying it was not their territory. His therapist took another job, and my son was not reassigned to a new clinician throughout the holidays, perhaps the hardest time of year for him. This negligence is not what I understand is supposed to happen, but it did, and the hospital itself did not exactly provide much guidance in the ways of what to do once my son was back at home and in the community.

What the hospital did provide, to the school if not to me, was an indication that my son would probably be tardy fairly often. There were no suggestions for how he should get to school if he missed the bus, or how I should work on those days, or how I should even manage to maintain our lives, but the hospital did tell the school that it would remain difficult for him to get up in the mornings. They did not say my son should not go to school, but after a while that is what started to happen, especially when he was faced with the notion of his classmates noticing him walking into school late.

No positive reinforcement seemed stronger than the pull to stay in bed. The oft recommended “get out of bed NOW, or else…” strategy was a total flop, resulting only in my own exhaustion and a lot of angry exchanges. The most draconian consequences I could conjure up would not push my son out of bed on those days, and on top of it, those consequences seemed uselessly cruel. After one call from the truant officer, who asked to talk to my son and then told him to get to school, or he’d take him to court, I drove the car stoically to the school, let my son out at the door, and promptly broke down in tears. My son was not budging from his bed after twelve or more hours of sleep. He was cranky when he was awake, and for all intents and purposes, no one who could really offer the level of support he needed really seemed to give a damn.

The school was just being a school, and actually, a very nice one. At a meeting, they shocked me by recommending an out-of-district placement—something that rarely happens in the land of special education without a fight. I was not sure–did we need to go to this step? The school also informed me that they would be filing the CHINS. Sure enough, the following Monday, an appointment notice arrived in the mail from the juvenile court. A friend offered her research results: I could lose my parental rights! (Amazing what you can find on the internet.) I went without sleep that week, even as I tried to stay calm. The Friday court date arrived.

The juvenile court is not far from my house—I must have driven past it hundreds of times. The complex it is in houses another agency that no one ever wants to need: the Department of Transitional Assistance (welfare). Nestled in around a pond, the property used to be dotted with Victorian cottages for vacationers, a boat dock nearby. These days, there is a dump across the street. The building itself is nondescript: a strip mall of human tragedy.

Fortunately, my son’s probation officer was pleasant–the school had called ahead to tell him that my son was a “good kid”. He kept the whole affair informal. I did not lose my parental rights; on the contrary, he asked me what I wanted for my son. He also had the words that have motivated my son to go to school on the worst of days: “Go to school. It’s the law. If you break that law, you have to go before the judge, and you don’t want that. You don’t want to go before the judge: he doesn’t have a heart.” Extreme words, perhaps exaggerated, too–surely some judges have hearts–but I think the probation officer wanted to help my son. It’s nice to know sometimes that somebody cares.

So, we remain, still in limbo, still waiting for the next step, the next school, the right place. We have no answers, and even a probation officer cannot get state agencies to respond. But then, why should they respond to our family when our hardships are not so visibly clear? In the headlines just yesterday, a state agency ignores the obvious: a seven-year-old boy tells a caseworker that his mother’s boyfriend has burned him, and the caseworker ignores it…

Or perhaps the caseworker did not ignore the red flag. Perhaps she (it nearly always seems to be a she) went home every night wondering why she makes the suggestions that go ignored higher up. Perhaps she wonders why she bothers going into work everyday when budgets do not allow the things that would really help, much less prevention, when caseloads are overwhelming, when the next one always looks worse. Perhaps she burned out months ago, and is holding on to her own sanity for dear life.

Why does a family with a bipolar kid on the edge deserve any better treatment?

There are many reasons why we all deserve better treatment.

For one, pointing to a problem and then walking away is tantamount to saying that the problem is not that important—or worse, that it is not a problem. Victims become at greater risk with the attention; walking away is setting them up for blame… and more abuse, or worse. Families trying to help children with mental illnesses already suffer from systemic abuse, calls for help unanswered, blame transferred to parents. Children with behavioral challenges, quiet or disorderly, go without services, ignored, made outsiders—outlaws—as they become indoctrinated into a system that hardens them and makes them expect less from life, less from us, and less from themselves.

Do we mean to push people out, by deeming them dangerous? I was astounded in the court building at the number of posted reminders of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Yes, we were to remember that we deserve access, equal access, to the court, regardless of our disabilities. But one question came up continually.

“the continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous, and costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity” (Americans With Disabilities Act, 1990, Title 42, Ch. 26, Sec 12101(a)).

We may be guaranteed access, but what if we do not belong in court to begin with? What if the crimes we are charged with are not crimes? What if crime itself is determined within a system of bias?

It is estimated that sixteen percent of the nation’s inmates have an identified mental illness. There are certainly people among those sixteen percent who are undeniably dangerous, but I wonder if prison prepares them for any future, acknowledges their illness, or if it just keeps them out of our view, still dangerous–dangerous mostly to themselves. That day, sitting in court with a kid—a smart, sensitive kid—whose depression shut him in, literally attached him to his bed, I could not help wondering how many others started their careers in the criminal justice system just like this.

We all deserve better.

My son has a rather extreme case of needle phobia. Fortunately, his pediatrician is a patient man who also has a sort of cheerleader spirit about him when it comes to uncomfortable medical care.

So, at age ten, when my son had his finger pricked to check iron levels, the doctor went to fetch “the good nurse” (it probably could have been any of them), and came back to hold my son’s hand. Two years later, that tactic was not enough to get through the tetanus shot. It had also been several weeks since the doctor had ordered blood work that might yield clues about the fatigue that has made it nearly impossible for my son to get to school in the morning… “Why don’t we do both in one visit,” the doctor said. So we did.

Now, this took a special appointment, two attractive nurses, a juice box and a bribe to accomplish, but we did get through it, and as my son’s color came back into his face, we drove to Moody Street so that I could make good on my end of the deal: I was taking him to the Construction Site.

The Construction Site was as near to paradise as any store could be for a kid like my son—or my brother, for that matter. I had discovered it entirely by chance looking for more parts to a system of toys that my brother had, in fact, given to my son for his birthday. I googled “Capsela,” and found somewhere with a good selection. When I began to place my order, though, I noticed that the store was in Massachusetts. We were new to the state at the time, so I did not realize that Waltham was fairly close to where I lived. I was up for an adventure, and got out the map to find it.

The moment I walked in, I was surrounded by a wondrous world of Gemütlichkeit. I remembered Munich: the orange tile rooftops, the beautiful Volksbad, friendly, healthy-looking people, and the mechanical things that seem to run the whole show. Sure, the Glockenspiel is a tourist thing, but it is wonderful, and the city seemed like a real-life version of Gepetto’s workshop. The Construction Site brought it all back to me, and added a “Hooked on German Kitsch” style music selection to complete the sentiment. I was hooked.

I also realized that I absolutely had to take my son there. My son has always been good at building things. He used to draw plans of machines that he saw in movies (the chicken pie machine from “Chicken Run” comes to mind), and then made prototypes from blocks, Lincoln Logs, Legos, or whatever else he could find. The detail he put into these endeavors always stunned me. When we lived in Vermont, we spent hours in Willey’s General Store hardware department in Greensboro, rummaging through dryer venting materials, light switches, tubing… At home, broken toasters, radios, clocks, all found their way into my son’s room for investigation, if not repair. Vacuuming his room was never a quiet affair.

So, of course, he loved the Construction Site, and of course, we went there often. Or we used to.

For all the wonders of the store, it also had the sorts of toys that ate through birthday money fairly quickly. Time was a factor, too… and computers that let you build neat things and draw. Actually, a good portion of time went to playing with the toys my son had bought there years ago–not to buying new toys. Other interests came into play, too, new challenges, and I realized when we drove up to the store that we had not been there in almost a year.

So, I was surprised to find the “For Lease” sign in the window, and a much smaller inventory, boxes stacked in corners, Bionicles 25% off.

The Construction Site is not moving; it is going out of business.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Maybe everyone is busy and can find Legos online or at Target. Maybe those European imports simply cost too much as the dollar drops. Maybe there are fewer dollars floating around for toys in general. My family certainly feels that. I know it’s selfish, but I hoped that people who had money to spend were still spending it there, so that we could have our moments to dream, to window shop, to see the beautiful toys, and sometimes to take something special home.

The wind in Wyoming is of a fearsome sort. Even fifty miles south, in a calmer Colorado, I recall being blown on my bicycle like Miss Gulch peddling furiously in vain through the tornado. Bewitching wind. One day, one of my students arrived for tutoring extraordinarily late, his hair standing up nearly straight, skin pale, his forehead marked by a few new scratches and bruises. He had been blown over his handlebars in a gust. Bully wind.

I have to admit to a certain witchiness in response to winds, as well. I can never feel quite comfortable in the gusts, constantly turning to shade my eyes from the street sand blowing around. Driving across the high plains, it took me months before I gave up my habit of pulling over to verify the danger: a flat tire, or an awful and expensive engine problem. No, it was the sheer might of the wind that the 4-Runner was battling out there, nothing more. And yet, what a formidable force it was, making snow drifts more frightening than snow, blowing tumbleweeds like bowling balls down the interstate with unparalleled power. I don’t know how the antelope could stand it.

This wind must be what makes the land formations of this western state so dramatically lonely. It is likely also the reason that the state remained comparably unpopulated by the paradise seekers (including me) who flocked to meteorologically calmer areas of the west in the 1990s.

I have no idea what Wyoming is like now. A glance at a Cheyenne-related website points out attempts at tourism that I do not remember when I lived out west: large, painted cowboy boots deposited here and there (like the horses in Saratoga, New York), dramatizations of gunfights, a trolley tour. Casper seems to have grown, too. My main memory of that town is the gigantic Lou Taubert western department store, a retro-style diner, and the dollar movie theater. There was also a steakhouse a bit out of town, at the top of a hill. Before the recommended filet and baked potato arrived, they used to bring out salad and a dressing caddy with a selection of French, Italian, lo-fat Italian, blue cheese. (I can hardly imagine that it is still the same, given the present listing of a nearby Outback Steakhouse, not to mention something called “Delices de France.”) I believe the place I was remembering still put parsley on the plates. Once, the Barracuda stopped running on the way back to town from dinner there. We managed to push the car to the edge of the second hill, and then got it to start on the way back down to town, leaving it with someone to repair the next morning. It was not windy that particular evening.

But I digress.

I wonder about my general dislike for wind. I cringe, shielding myself, shuddering, going inside, finding my comfort and my comfort zone… Is it the wind itself that is so unpleasant, or what I fear may blow in with it?

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle said,

“Habits are pleasant; for as soon as a thing has become habitual, it is virtually natural; habit is a thing not unlike nature; what happens often is akin to what happens always, natural events happening always, habitual events often.”

Aristotle is long-winded, but I do like my habits, most of them: my evening bath, my morning coffee. He continues:

“Again, that is pleasant which is not forced on us; for force is unnatural, and that is why what is compulsory, painful, and it has been rightly said
‘All that is done on compulsion is bitterness unto the soul’.“

Well, true enough, there, too. This is the wind, forcing me to be cold, like it or not… like someone telling me I have no hot water or electricity when I really want my bath or coffee. But Aristotle (I said he was long-winded) goes on:

“So all acts of concentration, strong effort, and strain are necessarily painful; they all involve compulsion and force, unless we are accustomed to them, in which case it is custom that makes them pleasant.”

All those things that are at first unpleasant may become pleasant when they become habits. Things like flossing and exercise, I suppose, fit what he is talking about here, though I rather like going out on my bicycle… but not in the wind.

The only problem is that “pleasant” so often becomes dull. Apparently, this was a problem that Aristotle recognized a few paragraphs later, when he noted that

“Change in all things is sweet.”

Surprises are sweet, and we expect to delight in those. In some ways, less welcomed disruptions can end sweetly, too.

I once saw an episode of The Twilight Zone where a criminal is shot and dies. In his afterlife, the criminal meets an angel who grants him everything he wants. Life is easy. This is all great for a while, but in the end, the criminal begs the angel to send him to Hell, where he certainly was meant to go.

Too bad: the perfect world is Hell.

I find myself wanting to stretch now, wanting to change, wanting to grow. I say this with some hesitation. Do I really want to invite more chaos? There is plenty of that here, and there has been for quite some time. What is changing, though, is the way I perceive it all, the way I perceive the challenges and the changes.

I have always been a sucker for soft summer breezes. Spring is coming, and I find myself wanting to feel the sun and the softness. Ah, how those breezes beckon, but in their seductive gentility, they often wreak more havoc than the blustery ruckus that I expect to bring the unknown.

The wind may blow things off a bit; it may, in fact, clean the air… But somehow wind has not yet blown us away.

Anyone who knows me will tell you: it takes a lot to make me speechless.

No, I am not the type to take over meetings and blabber on. Still, I do enjoy my friends, and can talk for hours with them. So it is for writing. It just does not feel like a normal day to me without writing a word somewhere.

Oh… I have been writing, and talking, and thinking. In assorted Word documents cluttering my writing folder, I find tidbits left dangling, never reprinted on the electronic pages here. Conversations began, wandered. Less blocked than confounded, my words looked for meanings that did not suit them. But now, they seek again to grasp onto a moment.

Somewhere there has been the stirring of new things. They are beginning to make sense to me, and the ground beneath my feet seems at last to have stopped moving. In the next several days, I may become less abstract and say something about shifting terrain, what landscapes look like now.

If the ground has quieted, though, for the last two nights, the wind chimes near my back door have barely stopped singing. The wind blows hard, but warmer now, warmer for March, for a promised spring.

That can only be good.