The Consequences of Heroic Acts

Three weeks ago, I wrote about my grandson, Donovan. Let's face it, I was boasting about him, in the way that grandparents are wont to do. My mother used to say that if you boast today, you will cry tomorrow. But three weeks had passed, and I hadn't yet. Another old wife's tale.

Three weeks ago, another grandmother's beloved grandson was released from prison, after serving time, reportedly, for assault. He is in his late twenties, stands a couple of inches taller than Donovan and, evidently, spent most of his time while incarcerated working out in the prison gym. Where Donovan has lingering baby fat, this other grandson has muscles upon muscles. He has more than six-pack abs - he sports a full case of them. His arms start at his neck, just below his earlobes, with upper arms as big around as my thighs. Yes, that big!

Three days ago, my grandson and the other grandmother's beautiful boy crossed paths. This chance meeting didn't turn out well for either grandson. My grandson was knocked to the ground and injured by the other grandson, who was arrested for his assault on Donovan.

Donovan saw one of his neighbors pull into the apartment building parking lot. From out of nowhere, it seemed to him, another woman and two men ran up to his neighbor's car, whereupon the unknown woman reached into the neighbor's car and began beating her. Donovan ran over to the car and placed himself between his neighbor and the attacker. He held his hands up, palms open and facing the attacker, to block her blows, giving his neighbor time to exit her car from the passenger side.

Donovan pleaded with the attacker to just walk away, that what she was doing wasn't going to solve anything, and would only bring trouble to her if she continued. The other grandson began shoving Donovan in his chest, trying to push him out of the way. Donovan turned toward the attacker and said she needed to leave, that because she didn't live in the building, she was trespassing and could be arrested for it.

That's when the other grandson sucker-punched Donovan, who has never hit anyone in his entire life - blind-sided him, knocking him unconscious. This man, a street-fighter wise in the ways of bullying and beating others, hit Donovan so hard that the inside of his upper lip, along the jaw teeth, was split almost to the outer skin. He bloodied Donovan's nose and mouth so severely that Donovan lost enough blood to become anemic. Either the man's fingernail, or perhaps a ring he was wearing, gouged a piece of D's lip away, and he needed stitches to close the gash.

My grandson had to visit the hospital twice for his injuries, but he is going to be okay. His bruises and wounds will heal before long. The other grandson is back in county prison, for violating his parole agreement (no fighting), while he awaits trial on charges stemming from his assault on Donovan. The prognosis for him is not as good as it is for Donovan.

I've written about this for a couple of reasons. First, to say how proud I am of Donovan for doing a brave, selfless thing in coming to the aid of friend and neighbor when she was unable to defend herself. I also am proud of him because he was putting into action the lessons his mother and I (and others) have tried to teach him about not giving in to his anger in confrontations - to walk away, which he was trying to pass on to the attacker. His actions, his obvious grasp of the non-violent solution to conflict, tells me he is maturing, and growing toward independence. He is adapting to the world and learning how to live among - to navigate around, to cope with - the rest of us complicated, not always well-behaved, human beings.

Mostly (as always and no matter what this says about me), I've written for myself, to help me understand the incomprehensible. I write to release the extreme anger and murderous rage I feel toward that other grandmother's beloved grandson for hurting my gentle-spirited, kinder-than-God grandson, greatest gift I will ever receive - our beloved Donovan.

This is me, walking away.

Passages

The picture of the little boy, above, is of my grandson, Donovan. I took the photo when he was four years old. This was seven years before we learned he was autistic. Donovan had been misdiagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder at age seven, and prescribed medications which made some of his symptoms worse, including causing him to have suicidal thoughts at age eight. He is an Aspie, as some folks now refer to people with Asperger's Syndrome. Donovan is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, which means he has a greater chance of being "mainstreamed" than youngsters on the more profoundly autistic end of the scale. Like most Aspies, he has a high IQ and absorbs information like a sponge. Also like most children within the autism spectrum, his social skills and emotional maturity lag behind his intelligence and physical development. Consequently, he is now a 6'4" tall, highly intelligent, high-school junior – turning eighteen today (Sunday, 10-10-10) – who sometimes sounds like a boy of twelve, or fourteen. On really bad days, he's more like a child of nine or ten, but those days are fewer and farther between than they were last year and the year before that.

He is maturing, physically, more rapidly than his mother would like to see. He used to be too small for his age, and was started on growth hormones two years ago. At that time, he was a little shorter than I am (I'm 5'6", and shrinking, height-wise). He now towers above me, and his mother, his father, both biological grandfathers, most of the kids at his high school – and the teachers, as well! What's alarming is that the growth plates on his bones have not hardened yet, which means he's still growing. He'd be great at basketball, I think, but his coordination hasn't caught up with his height yet.

He had a girlfriend this spring, but the romance faltered: neither one of them is ready, yet, for such a relationship. Donovan is a kind-hearted young man, generous in spirit, protective of kids smaller and younger than he, probably because he was bullied so when he was younger and small.

He wants to get his driver's license, but he has what seems like the human version of fainting-goat disorder. Sometimes, when he's under a high level of stress, he passes out. Not what you'd want in a driver sharing the road with you. Until the cause of the fainting can be determined, and either cured or medicated, he won't be issued a license.

Donovan faces multiple challenges on his road to adulthood, many of which will be with him for the rest of his life. He's a good kid with a good brain and loads of potential. He will adapt to life among the rest of us (which may or may not be such a good thing), and will make his mark in this world. He is dearly loved and has the support of more than just his family, so I believe he will do well.

The body of the boy in the first image has grown and is now that of a young man, but the eyes that look at me when we're talking haven't changed a bit. They belong to the same four-year-old who thought the universe was a place of wonderment, magic and boundless joy, who thought his Nanny was his best friend.

I will be, for as long as I live – and maybe beyond that.

Happy birthday, my beloved Boo-Boo!

Remembering

I didn't watch the late night news the night John Lennon died, and was told the next day at work by a friend who came in to the post office to get her mail.


I was a Beatles fan from the first time I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand," in the late fall/early winter of 1963. The Beatles' music and the hysteria that followed their explosive popularity helped take my mind off the assassination of Kennedy, one of my heroes. All through my remaining teen years and into my early twenties, John, Paul, Ringo and George - their music, I mean - was a part of my life. I didn't know how much of an influence they were until John was murdered. Oh, sure, I thought (for about 10 minutes) the world would end when the Beatles broke up in 1970, but it didn't, of course.


While I didn't think Lennon's murder would bring about an end to "life as we know it," I did grieve his death, which surprised the heck out of me at the time. A few weeks later, in talking with some friends about the murder, I realized I was mourning the loss of an icon of my youth, perhaps my youth itself. Google's logo today was a remembrance of Lennon, and it made me feel nostalgic for his voice...and a time when my life was less complicated, though not easier.


There are so many songs from Lennon's Beatles years and his post-Beatles career that I hold dear ("Woman," for instance), but I chose these two songs because "Stand by Me" is one of my all-time favorite R&B songs from my teens (by Ben E. King, covered by many others, including Lennon), and "Oh, My Love" is a rocking love song, with a gentle rhythm that I really like.

Abashment Deserved

Well!  I found out who made the mistake that cost me my PHEAA grant, the fidgit!

Uh...that would be me.

I entered the wrong information on my application back in May, which I discovered when I went over my application worksheet last night to see if there was room/evidence for me to file for an appeal. 

Boy, do I feel stupid?  The answer to that would be a resounding "Yes!"  Thank goodness I was on my best behavior when I went in to the financial aid office yesterday morning, or my face would be even redder than it is right now.

There's a Bathroom on the Right.

Way back when – “Back in the day,” as my grandson is fond of saying, when talking about my youth – one of my favorite bands was CCR, Creedence Clearwater Revival. Still is, come to think of it. One day, somewhere in the early ‘70s, I was happily singing along to one of their tunes, when my first ex started laughing at me, something he liked to do upon occasion.

“What did you just say?” he asked, between chortles.

“What do you mean?”

“Just now, when you were singing. What did you think they were saying?”

“I don’t know. It sounded like ‘don’t go out tonight, there’s bound to be a fight. There’s a bathroom on the right.’  Why? What did you hear?”

Between snorts and guffaws, he asked me if I thought what I was singing made any sense.

“Well, no, but then a lot of the songs don’t make sense. What’s so funny?!”

He started singing the chorus. “Don't go around tonight. Well, it's bound to take your life, there's a bad moon on the rise.”

Forever after, whenever I heard the song, I joined in at the chorus, singing my version. (Turns out, there were thousands of us who thought the singers were giving directions to the head.) It has remained one of my favorite examples of miscommunications.

Today, five weeks into my new career as a college student, I received notices, via email from the state and snail-mail from the college, that one of my grants is being rescinded, because I am enrolled in a program that does not meet the requirements for getting a grant from PHEAA. This means I have lost funding for this semester and next. It means I owe the college nearly a thousand dollars more, if I plan to stay enrolled through the end of this semester, and another thousand for the spring semester. This will be on top of the Stafford loan I made to pay the shortfall from the Pell and the PHEAA grants, to cover the tuition balance and the cost of books.

I am flabbergasted. When I applied for admission to HACC in May, I told my advisors what courses I intended to take. When I went to the financial aid office, I repeated my plans, and asked for help with obtaining grants, if any were available for the courses I intended to take. When I applied for grants through FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and PHEAA (Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency), I clearly stated which college I wanted to attend and the program I intended to enter.

Was I singing the wrong lyrics again, or were all these other people hearing/reading the wrong words? I don’t understand how the grant from PHEAA could have been made in the first place, since the program (which I spelled out for them in all my applications) was not eligible.

This is not the blog I wanted to write tonight. I planned to write about my first month at college, how it has turned out that I really like the accounting class (which I thought I’d hate) and that I’m having a blast in the computer class learning how all the software I have works. I love learning new things. I like the challenge to my brain and the stimulation of being in a school setting again. I wanted to tell you all the fun stuff.

Tomorrow (Thursday) morning, I’ll visit the financial aid office and say “WTF?!”, or words to that effect, only more polite and socially acceptable words to that effect. (You don’t suppose PHEAA is in cahoots with OVR, do you?) Tonight, I’m too bummed out to do much of anything. I’m feeling queasy, from the disappointment, I’m sure.

Damned good thing there’s a bathroom on the right!

(Thursday afternoon follow-up: Nothing I could do about PHEAA; those funds are lost.  However, I'm still enrolled because I was able to increase the student loan to make up the difference for this and the next semesters.  If I change from the diploma program to the associate degree program, PHEAA funds would become available.  Have to think about that some more, for it means a longer period of study [60 credit hours as opposed to 20 credits for the diploma], but an associate's degree might serve me better in the work place.  Something to consider.)


(The guy on the left, full beard, looks a good bit like my first ex, John.)

School Dazed

My Lop-sided Mom-Haircut, September 1954

I don't remember much about first grade, beyond the new box of chubby crayons, eight in a box, and the huge yellow pencil.  Oh, and recess (of course), and the name tag on butcher's twine that I wore around my neck.  All first graders wore them, which made us easy targets for the second-graders (who only lost theirs just three months earlier) to point at us, laughing about the tags. 

The photo above is from second grade, which I remember much better.  The dress, with the lace-trimmed collar that would not lie flat because my mother had starched the daylights out of it, was plaid, in shades of brown and cream and orange.  Mama picked it out for me, and a green one just like it, only with a peter-pan collar.  My preference was a red dress with little bouquets scattered all over, trimmed with white piqué collar and piping on the sleeves.  But my heart's true desire was the pink party dress of sheer rayon, with tons of ruffles, and puffed sleeves with dark pink bows.  We went home with the sensible cotton day dresses in brown and green.  She did let me have the red plaid book satchel with the bright red plastic handle, though; perhaps as compensation for having to leave the party dress behind. 

I remember the dark brown mary-janes that buckled on the outside edge, and the anklets with lace around the cuffs.  I was so afraid Mama was going to buy those awful brown and white saddle-oxfords, or the lace-up ones like I had in first grade, which never stayed tied, causing me to trip more times than I can  remember. 

By second grade, the love of school that began the year before had grown into a passion, if one can have such a thing at age seven.  When the weather changed toward fall, I could hardly wait for the first day and marked the calendar in anticipation almost as strong as when awaiting my birthday.  I loved reading and spelling more than I did arithmetic.  We were divided into reading groups named for birds, based on our skill levels.  My group, the cardinals, were the top group, and our numbers grew during the year as other kids learned to read better.  My teacher gave me a compliment one afternoon, telling me that I read very well, with inflection and good phrasing.  When I got home that afternoon, I told Mama that Teacher said I could read with infection.  (My mother loved to tell that story.)

What prompted these memories was my search for a book bag this evening, in preparation for my first day at college tomorrow.  There are two or three of them somewhere in the house, maybe the attic, but my favorite is one Ex-B received a few years ago as a promotion through his company.  It's constructed of tough nylon canvas, black with Microsoft's MSN logo stitched in white next to the rainbow-colored butterfly.  I think it was meant for his laptop, but he gave it to me for my camera and lenses.  I haven't bought my books yet, but I have put in it (so far) two wire-bound notebooks, my fountain pen with extra cartridges, a couple of pencils and trusty Staedtler sharpener, a spare rescue inhaler, about 50 paper clips, two clean handkerchiefs, my wallet with ID and lunch money, house keys, car keys, cell phone and my second pair of cheater reading glasses.  Plus, all my hopes that I will do well and not be the oldest kid in class.  Oh, yeah...an apple.

No crayons, though.

New Day, New Life

Back in May, I posted about my divorce, and in the comments, BB wrote "...one worry about such a divorce is which version of you will emerge at the other end." 

At the time, I wasn't convinced I would emerge, let alone have any idea who I would be, if I did.  Like millions of other people around the world, I was facing some serious financial problems, and was more concerned with just surviving than who I was going to be.

Then there was the blow to my pride in registering for the food bank, and the nightmarish mess with the OVR.  On the heels of that, my poor old car decided it couldn't go another inch and started acting up.  It needed repairs (close to $800) to pass inspection by the end of this month, and I was broke - beyond broke.  I was busted.

I had had all I could stand.  Like Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) in the movie, Network, I was as mad as hell.  I felt something inside start to crack.  The image that came to mind was a crow egg cracking open, with a new chick pecking its way to the outside.  That's where the line in my poem, I Am, came from.

A new Crow is emerging.  I'm getting my bearings, stretching my wings and deciding in which direction I want to fly.

I've written to our governor about my experiences with OVR; not for my sake, because I am finished with them, but in hopes someone in his office (I doubt Rendell will ever see the letter) will look into what's happening at the OVR.  Perhaps the next person who seeks help through them will receive better treatment than I have.

I applied for (and was granted) a student loan to pay the remainder of my tuition and books.  Didn't want to go further into debt, but I need this training and diploma to help me find more (or better) employment.  I also did not want to quit the job I have in order to have OVR pay for anything!  I start classes this coming Tuesday.

Since I have no savings, and only a part-time job which doesn't even cover all the necessities, and have been turned down for other part-time work more times than I care to count, in desperation I applied for a home-equity line of credit to pay off the one credit card I have (27.5% APR!) and get my car repaired.  I expected to be denied the loan, despite the fact there is no mortgage on the house, nor any liens - plus taxes and insurance are current.  Imagine my surprise (stunned surprise, actually) when the loan went through!  The payment each month for this loan is far less than what I was paying to the credit card company, so that the income I do have will go farther.  Plus, I learned yesterday that I will be getting a small raise.  (The historical society took a hard hit three years ago when the market and world economy dropped into this deep recession.  There were no salary increases for those years.)

I was beginning to see light at the end of that dark tunnel.  The eggshell cracked a bit wider.

Last week, I decided to cut my hair.  Big deal, you might be thinking, but it was a big deal.  I started letting my hair grow out four years ago, the spring before all the darkness came upon my spirit.  (Thought I would grow up to be a long-haired biker granny - HA!) 

The details surrounding my fraudulent marriage knocked me down, hard, and I stopped caring about everything.  When the eggshell started cracking, when I got mad and started taking control of my life again, I realized I didn't want this mane of hair, either.  I pulled it into a ponytail, went to my hairdresser and told her to cut it all off.  I kept fifteen inches of it in the ponytail.

"What are you going to do with it," she asked me.

I told her it was a souvenir, a reminder of what I had survived over the last four years. 

"Cutting this off," I said, "is cutting my ties to that time.  I'm letting go of the past, putting it behind me."

When I grew quiet, she asked if I was okay.

Told her I was, but that I didn't realize that was why I got my hair cut until I actually said it out loud.

The shell cracked open all the way.  The new Crow is out.  Don't have all the answers yet, but they will come in time. 

They will come.