Trauma for the Kids

I don't tend to write a lot about what my kids are going through in life - I tend to use my private journal for pondering those thoughts but today, I want to capture how something that impacted me has really impacted the kids as well, specifically Alex.

I left work yesterday so I could be home when the kids got home from UNI for Christmas break. I had bad news to tell them - that their grandma, and my Favorite Mother-in-Law, was in surgery at UIHC. We had made the decision to not tell them about this because they had finals Monday - Thursday and we wanted them to concentrate on their academics. It was a decision we made about a month ago and pretty much each day, either I or Karen pondered whether it was the right decision. We struggled with the idea of 'hiding' information from the kids and whether we, as kids, would want to know what was happening and, if we did know and we were in their shoes, with finals, would we be able to concentrate on our studying and test prep or would we be sucked into worrying and fretting about the surgery. Ultimately, we feel we made the right choice but I just wanted to document it wasn't an easy choice.

Fast forward to yesterday and I am home when the kids get home. Megan noticed that both cars were in the garage - Karen & my father-in-law had taken his car to UIHC & I had taken the 2005 GMC Canyon to work so that meant both the 2016 Chevy Equinox & the 2007 Ford F-150 were in the garage. She immediately questioned why we were both home. I said, "I need to talk to you both." There was a panic in Megan's voice as she told Alex to get inside because "Dad has to talk to us." When Alex came in to the kitchen, he had kind of a pale look on his face - I could tell he knew something was wrong because there I was, at home at 1:45ish PM, when I am usually at work.

I can't remember each and every word I said to them as I told them about the surgery. It was very difficult to tell them. I would never wish having to tell your children what I told mine on anyone.


Eventually, we had Megan's car unloaded and were in route, in the 2005 GMC Canyon, to UIHC. It was my job to drop them off at UIHC because I had to go back to work for a meeting about my disaster recovery documentation with my manager's manager and other Senior Directors in my department. The meeting I needed to attend is an important meeting. It is scheduled to be once a month, but it had been canceled the last 3 months (September, October, & November) so with the December meeting not cancelled, I felt it was critically important for me to be present to provide an update because - make no mistake - it's my meeting to report to upper management on a monthly basis about how my work has been progressing. I have never really had a monthly status meeting with senior leadership at any other time in my career as a technical writer. I fully realize how valuable it is to have their collective ear.

I wrote all of the above to set up the following revelation: why Alex thought I was home when they got home. He thought it was because I had been laid off from work. I know that being told the Unnamed Hellhole in southern Iowa and I were going to part ways in April 2011 and then that being told Pearson had eliminated my position in January 2016 wasn't easy for me. Call me selfish, but until Alex told me that was his first thought, I never realized that what had happened to me had made a very strong impression upon him.

As for how my Favorite Mother-in-Law is doing, she made it through her surgery. She seemed in good spirits when I talked to her in her hospital room, which was shortly before I drove my father-in-law & the kids home. Karen was going to stay with her at UIHC while the rest of Karen's family was going to be returning to Dubuque or Blue Grass. Only my brother-in-law Mark from Cedar Falls stayed at our house, mainly because they are doing renovations to their house in Cedar Falls and the workers come early (7 AM) so he knew he would get more sleep at my house than if he drove 1.5 hours back to Cedar Falls and then was awakened to the workers at 7 AM. We didn't get back to my house until after 11 PM.

And yet, there I was, leaving the house at 6:10 AM today. I told the kids I didn't care who did what, but the dishwasher needed to be emptied and the clean clothes in the laundry room needed to be put away - most of them are either mine or Karen's but since I was sleeping in our bed, I couldn't really put them on our bed and not expect a mess in the morning. It felt funny (to me) to tell my two college student children that they had tasks they have done for many years assigned to them. It was why I think coming home was a cause of trauma for the kids - being assigned chores by their parent when they are in college.