It rained hard the other day. We needed it. The earth felt scorched, and not just metaphorically. I waited for the rain to subside and headed out with my new recycled woven plastic rainbow-colored tote (an early birthday gift from my daughter) to buy some provisions. First stop was a local food shop where I intended to get some bread and maybe a side or two to add to the main course salad I had planned for dinner. Then it was off to the health food store to see what they had by way of fresh organic fruit. As expected, everything fit in my new tote, though perhaps it was a sign that having filled it on the counter, the tote promptly tipped over onto the floor, where most items fell out, though none was crushed or otherwise damaged.
Such an ordinary thing, this brief outing to the store. Which is why it was so upsetting to return to an apartment turned inside out by my middle child's "episode" of aggression. In a fit of some kind of anger/frustration, he'd pushed his sister, hit his brother, and had to be restrained. He refused his emergency pill. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he fixated on his father having slammed the oven door, and on having hit his sister. His father had not, in fact, slammed the oven door; he'd shut it after removing a tray of cookies. Noah kept insisting that his sister apologize for hitting him, which she admitted to doing, in self-defense. Begrudgingly, she offered up a "sorry," which I had hoped would get Noah to stop perseverating. "Did she apologize?" he kept asking me. "Yes, she did Noah. She said sorry to you." Then he tried to calm things in his go-to way, which is to approach his sister and insistently tell her, "But I love you." It sounds strange. It's a weird kind of combination plea/declaration. She often resents it, and I'm not sure I can blame her. How can she believe that her brother loves her when he talks so often of hitting her and sometimes turns that talk to action?
My husband has wondered aloud more than once lately if our having reduced one of Noah's very long term meds by half is what's driving this behavior. It's impossible to tell. We're all cooped up, in much less space than when we lived in a house. Noah's schedule has gone from a mix of engaging outside activities to nothing, and it's been like that for months. We are all bored, confined, and losing our minds just a little bit. His mind was always more complicated and in some ways he has more to lose than the rest of us. It's this toxic brew of all of us thrown together, trying to muddle along, be kind to each other, be together in a healthy, loving way, and at the same time give each other space in a place in which space--physical and psychic--is at a premium.
Nothing about this is comforting, and god knows I don't have a magic answer. This week, I'm just grateful that my daughter has a job to go to, that my husband can take Noah with him to work, and that I can luxuriate on the days when the apartment is emptiest in having this temporary island of tranquility all to myself. I'll need to hold to that for when the door opens and everyone returns. What storms might brew then is anyone's guess...
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