Sunday, March 17, 2013

Big rig gig

Instead of writing this post, I've been making stew, emptying old condiments from the fridge, watching cartoons with the boys. A new blizzard has arrived, so perhaps the pressure change drove me to the household things.  Or perhaps it's just good ol' procrastination.

I feel like this life I'm in is a journey on a long gravel road in a country with no maps.

Some parts are smoother than others.  Some are muddy, sloggy, and rutted.  There's often no good vista or clearing to tell me where we are or what's coming next.  Not a lot of faces of people I know.  There's only the onward, the forward, the road.

When I was a girl, one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up was a long-range truck driver.  The open road, the big rigs, the time to myself . . . called to me.

Primo has just graduated from his mental health/social skills program, which he started in October of last year.  The first few months were very hard; he pushes people to their limits of tolerance, so see whether and how much he can trust them.  He pushed almost too hard, sometimes physically, in those first months.  He was nearly kicked out of the program on a number of occasions.  But the therapy staff there saw something in him, the same something Hero and I see.  There is potential for greatness in this boy who sometimes would sooner throw a punch than acquiesce to a simple imperative that's not of his own choosing.

We struggled through it together.  Sometimes I'd have to take him home early, because he wasn't able to get into the groove of the day.  The police were called a couple of times, when he'd hurt others.  It could be scary, knowing Primo had hard work to do on his inner Self, and that he might not up to the day's challenges.  He was pushed to learn about his own emotions and triggers, to understand the way the rest of the world would expect him to respond, and how to respond appropriately even when he didn't feel like he could.

But it was a safe place for him to be, this program was.  The staff of therapists was strong and usually unflappable, except when praising the kids for good work.  They covered the details of almost every day with me.  They cared and persevered, when many adults would choose to give up on Primo, or recommend some other program or even an institution of one kind or another.

He ended up with a couple of friends (!!) in the group who actually looked up to him, a graduation celebration, and gave a gift to the program's other kids.  It was an ending that suited his journey.

So now we're in the rig again, away from the support of that group, and I'm wondering what comes next.  I'm trying to remain calm.  I'm nervous, though.  There isn't a lot of solitude on this road.