Just some samples…you guess which is a surprise and which is not a surprise.

• Gage asked to go to his old play therapist.
• Gage got in trouble at school.
• He told us something and we didn’t believe him. Then we changed our minds and did.
• Quinnlin got great compliments from her teachers about her handwriting.
• Someone said something stupid to me about raising sick kids.
• I got in a fight with Julian.
• I am terribly unorganized with transplant paperwork.
• Just got a $20,000 $50,000 bill from the hospital for our portion of Quinn’s transplant. Gulp. I think it’s a mistake. FINALLY filed for her Medicare to kick in (she’s automattically eligeble for benefits for 3 years from transplant). Yeah, $50,000+ in medical bills will do that to you.
• There is nothing that motivates Gage to do well in school.
• A very special teacher we know is going to tutor Gage.
• I ordered a hair care product off of an infomercial to hopefully help with Quinnlin’s rather easily tangled hair.
• Jay Leno is being a jerk. Conan is getting royally screwed.
• I did not win the lottery last week as I had hoped.
• Quinnlin told the person drawing her labs last week to “go get someone else to do it” and I was proud.
• My house is a wreck and I am leaving town Friday, which means when I get back into town on Sunday late it will be an even bigger wreck.
• I’m working on a creative project that I really love. It’s more thrilling than it should be.
• Tonight I visited a little one who just got a transplant last week and I cried on the way home thinking about my own kidney challenged kids.

I know there is more to add to this list but it’s too late.

Gage ended up going to the hospital last night for “inside chest pains” that he’d never experienced. We thought it might be indigestion and were hoping to let it pass at home, but Gage was nearly hysterical, begging to go to the hospital.

Gage (almost) never asks to go to the hospital and so, in my part of the relationship between advocate and child/patient, I have to hear him and react when his health is involved. And especially when he is in pain, crying regarding an unknown source.

Even though he was crying, holding his chest in pain, I probably would have waited a bit to take him. But he asked. And that was the deal breaker.

Turns out he has a pulled sternum muscle and he was very wired it being midnight and so Julian has to get on to him about his behavior. Typical Gage, he walked in the house saying he was faking it because that was his way of getting back at Julian. There was only one flaw in that statement: he would have never asked to go to the hospital. His way of not wanting to deal with being human enough to feel pain – which is the greater issue/problem.

Someone emailed me during the ordeal (thanks to twitter and FB) to see if I was okay and I said yes. The answer was yes because this is just part of it. And by “it” I mean raising these kids, and their issues, oh crap, their issues. If we freaked out every single time there was a “crisis” we would not be able make it through each day intact.

Note to parents with kids with failing kidneys: Do not continue reading if you are not having a strong parental day (Really, leave this site now). And go visit or Awkward Family Photos or Go Fug Yourself.

It’s no secret that Quinn was nearing dialysis before her transplant evaluation. Her kidney function leveled down at a steady pace slowly for a couple of years and then over the period of 4 months dropped at an alarming rate. If I had to guess, she would have probably had a catheter placed within a month that she had her transplant. If I, and a very few people involved in her care (doc local, doc out of towner, one coordinator and one case manager) hadn’t pushed for a preemptive transplant, she would likely be on dialysis until we could arrange testing (3 months for 1 person at a time) and surgery.

The same people had all seen firsthand the effects of quickly failing kidneys of a 7 year old child. We’d all (except for our case manager) witnessed Gage’s decline and I assume we all shared some silent guilt that he got that bad – without dialysis he would have died in a matter of weeks – before transplant evaluation, because by the time we got in for that he had very little function. His body was being poisoned from the inside out. He was in terrible shape.

I’m astounded (still) that some people in the health care field don’t think much about a child having to go on dialysis while waiting for a kidney, even when there are willing donors, and in some cases, like ours, multiple willing, potential donors. Some even have the power to change things, but don’t. It’s a sign they’ve lost touch with the impact on the child and the family. I know that dialysis kept my son alive and I am grateful for that option or he would have died. Don’t misunderstand that fact. I have gratefulness everyday for a machine that kept my son alive until Jody could donate her kidney to him.

But living on dialysis, while it is living, isn’t much of a life. What is life like for a child on hemodialysis (preformed at the hospital) 3 days a week?

For some kids, like teenagers, it begins at somewhere around 5:00am. They drive themselves or a friend or family member brings them to arrive at the hospital by 6:15am. Dialysis takes roughly 3 hours, a little more for some, depending on several factors. They come to the early shift usually so they can get to school around 9:30 or 10 and have a semi-normal school day. Unless they are so sick they can’t attend school and they are home schooled or served by their county’s homebound program, which is 5 hours a week of instruction. Many times they are too tired to participate in activities. So sometimes social activities are limited. Some kids, who have little family around them and their parent/caregiver, are driven to and from dialysis by strangers in cabs or on vans.

Kids who come in for the 10 or 10:30 shift are often little bitty ones – the under age 5 group. They don’t have school schedules to contend with so that is the schedule that is given – the middle of the typical dialysis day. There is rarely a choice of a time slot because machines are limited and help 3 kids per day of dialysis per machine. Kids in elementary, like Gage, come in around 2:15 which means they leave school early. For people like us, who are lucky to live near the hospital it’s easy, Gage missed the last 1-2 hours of school. Now, they want you be be there at 2:15 to be ready to get on the machine (takes 15-25 min) around 2:30 because the machine is going to run 3 hours (at least) so that is already pushing you to 5:40pm. But wait! If the machine you are supposed to be on still has a kid on it, you wait. Remember there are 2 other kids on the machine during the day. If they or their driver run late or if there is a complication with their health that slows things down, then well, you don’t get back in the area for prep until later and then 15 minutes for set up so you are pushing 3 or 3:30. Which means you aren’t off the machine until 6:30, or later. You are at the mercy of the time you can get on the machine.

What is being on the machine like for a kid? Well, if you are a teenager on the early shift, you sleep, or you listen to music and do homework, you read or you text, or you watch TV (each chair has a TV with DVD). If you are a little bitty one, you are in a metal crib, your parent or caregiver stands next to you to distract you from wanting to get out of the metal cage you are in. If you are a kid in elementary school or middle school you do your homework, watch TV, play video games. That is unless you feel nauseous enough to vomit for up to the 3 hours. You might feel fine, tired, drained or you might have a massive headache. It all depends on the rate they are running blood out of your body, cleaning it and putting it back into your body, which varies for each child.

That process can mess with your body and each body is different. So you spend a lot of time watching the docs and nurses fine-tuning the settings for the best dialysis arrangement. Except when they need to adjust it, which is more than it is not. They weigh you at the beginning and end of each session and record it. They record the settings on the machines. You are also hooked up to an automatic BP cuff for intervals of blood pressure checks. You come to hate The Cuff. If you are little and can’t be reasoned with to wear it and keep your arm still for the time you are on the machine that the cuff is monitoring your blood pressure, you come cry at sight of The Cuff.

If you are a lucky kid you won’t get an infection at your catheter site or an infection that starts there and moves to your blood. You can’t get the site wet so there are no showers, no swimming and a sterile environment even for something as simple as a bandage replacement – that means masks and gloves for anyone near the site uncovered or with an open edge on the bandage. Catheters have tubes that are hanging out of the body and well, accidents happen when you are a kid. Gage’s unfortunate accident was something as simple as a game of tag at school. Another child accidentally pulled the catheter and it moved just enough to create concern of it coming out (which would create tons of blood loss) with a simple tug of a shirt removal or hug and it had to be replaced. Many kids suffer infections, catheter replacements and hospital stays during their course of dialysis. In fact, all the kids I know from dialysis have.

If you are the parent you are kind of in the way. The nurses are up a lot going from kid to kid because they are recording numbers from the machine, the machine is beeping and they have to make it stop, and the BP machine is beeping and then there are the chairs for the guests. They don’t make them comfortable, you know. It sends a message that they don’t really want you back there. Unless you have a baby and it’s awake and crying to be let out of the metal crib. Then you have to be there standing (remember, it’s like a cage, and it’s high up, so there aren’t really any chairs that high, so if you have a little bitty one, then you are standing most of the time). If you have a little bitty one, you are praying they nap.

Part of our hospital’s routine was to provide a meal when the child leaves. So we order off a sheet and by the time we leave  the food is there, but that’s okay because you can’t eat on dialysis and the kids I’ve seen are pretty hungry. So for as long as you are on dialysis, at least three meals a week are served on cardboard trays, on your way out the door. Carried by the child if they can hold it and in Gage’s case, his backpack and Sally, Ugly Orange Kitty. Often times you just want to get home because your kid is cranky from not having had a break (unless you call the drive from school to the hospital a “break”) so it doesn’t take much persuading for your kid to agree to eat in the car. Off of the cardboard tray they’ve carried themselves. In the back seat of your car as you drive, usually in the dark, on the way home (not too long before bedtime actually). Unless you have to drop off or pick up a prescription.

You are getting off during traffic if you are on the last shift. Most kid’s dialysis centers are in Children’s Hopsitals in cities, so often times the commute time is made harder because of traffic in the city. But most of the time, your child is eating, so they are distracted, unless they aren’t feeling well and they are throwing up into one of those kidney shaped (HAHAHAHA really) vomit holders and you are leaning over handing them napkins and towels. Sometimes they have a headache so bad they aren’t talking.

So what does your child miss?

Everything connected with time. Time to build friendships and more importantly to learn how to build friendships if you are a kid Gage’s age. For a baby, you miss critical time to develop your little body and brain. You don’t hit milestones on time. For important pre and teen years, puberty is messed up. For all kids, growth is an issue, so your body is smaller than your peers. You don’t really have time see your friends because of dialysis and all your appointments. Probably some tutoring to try to stay ahead (or just catch up) educationally if you are school-aged. Therapy appointments if you are an itty bitty one. You are on a restricted diet so going to parties and out to eat becomes an issue (if you want to stay healthy, but if you are a teenager…it’s hard not to eat what your friends are and it’s a constant struggle within yourself.). Many of these issues mess with your self-esteem too, by the way. Not for all kids, but for kids like Gage, who were probably going to have issues anyway this just compounds the problems.

School is a challenge. Not for all kids I’m sure, but a lot. It could be from having to have so much time out of school or it could be because you can’t concentrate when you are in kidney failure, as one teenager told me was her issue. I’ve never forgotten the conversation as a teenager explained she would raise her hand in class and by the time she was called on she would forget what she was going to say.

Dialysis. It kept Gage alive and I would help him through all of that and more to survive it. But still. There’s an impact.

Obviously, as the caregiver, if you try to work and care for a kid on dialysis, it’s hard. Because you either have to work for yourself or you have to have a hellofan understanding boss. You can’t make money usually (I couldn’t figure out the perfect way, except for being able to send some emails) when you are at dialysis with your kid, which you desperately need to pay for life and for the self-employed,  insurance premiums, but what can you do. You hope that government assistance helps you enough. There’s the costs associated with being at the hospital. Parking, food (as a parent you skip lunch on dialysis days to get other things done during that precious time), and gas for transportation. Then there’s the dinner thing. At least three days a week if you are on the late shift like we were you don’t get to eat dinner together as a family (Gage usually went to bed close to when we got home). Siblings also miss out on your time if you are the caregiver parent. And what if you are single? You have to depend on family or great friends to care for your other children while you are out with your kid on dialysis. Because sick kids are first priority. Siblings are 2nd tier for the time being and they have to cope with that fact.

If you are married or a couple with a child on dialysis? You talk a lot about kidney failure and about what happened on dialysis. In a case like ours we were constantly talking about where we were in the donor testing process either for us or our (finally approved) non-related donor, Jody. That doesn’t leave much room for romance, you know? Because nothing says romance like cleaning up throw up or talking about what else your kid has missed during his time out for dialysis. Or talking about how you cope with the emotional effects of having a sick kid. Each day you play catch up.

Time for yourself as the caregiver? It’s great when you can steal a few moments for a movie, a hobby, a phone call. Even a bath or pedicure. But that doesn’t happen very often. And it’s made harder because when you are the caregiver it’s hard to let other people go with the child because no one knows them like you. For the few (literally few) times that someone took Gage (out of 78 times he had dialysis treatment) I worried about him, or it felt like I had to cover nearly every aspect of the visit and the potential mishaps they could encounter. It just felt easier going myself. If I wasn’t there, I worried constantly of what could be going wrong and how only I would know the exact way to help Gage cope (I know this isn’t the most rational thing, but you know what, I was his primary medical caregiver and that’s how I felt.).

If you are like me the one constant thing you think about is how to make your kid feel normal. But really, that’s impossible to do, even if you are as creative as me. There’s no way to make this feel normal. But you have to act like it’s normal or your head will explode.

The other constant things you think about are your financial stability, your kid’s education, their development, your job, your other child/ren, when will your kid get a kidney, your relationships and what you are ignoring in them and just about everything else because it all feels so out of control.

It is excruciating to watch your child go through dialysis. Heartbreaking to watch your child suffer the domino toppling impact of a progressive disease and poor health. It changes the very nature of the interaction of a family. Of a parent and child, a sibling with her brother, a husband and wife and their supporting loved ones. It changes everything that should have been, including the child they should have been.

So when people make decisions that prolong the process, donor centers have long testing times and the systems in place fight against a family for their kid to get a kidney, what they are really saying is….just put the kid on dialysis.

These pictures are from Gage’s first dialysis session on Friday, September 22, 2006.

Scared boy, worried parents.

All trying to hold themselves together and make this feel normal. Short session of dialysis for this first day with a regular session starting the following Monday and another 77 times.

On the way down to the beach for vacation Quinn, WHO IS EIGHT, says:

“I wish I could go to the beach by myself for some ALONE time.”

——-

Gage informed me that he and his cousin say goodbye by farting at each other.

Charming.

——-

Quinn has to have her labs drawn on vacation – she is not thrilled – as you might imagine. So imagine her delight when the first stick only let small amount of blood trickle. A 30 minute reprieve (Quinn’s choice) until she was ready (we rarely have the luxury to wait it out to give her time) and this conversation transpired during the 2nd stick:

Quinn, addressing the lab tech: “You aren’t very good at this.”

Me: “Honey, it’s not her fault, sometimes that just happens with our veins.”

Quinn, screaming, OH THE DRAMA: “Then it’s my vien’s fart!!!!”

Me: “Your vein farts?”

Quinn: “HAHAHAHAHAHA…I said FART.”

Me: “I think you are missing your UL sound!”

Quinn: “I thought it in my head!”

——-

Gage, on Christmas morning, looking in his stocking and squealing with delight: “I got goober!”

Me: “Did you say you were a goober?”

Gage: “I GOT GOOBER.”

Me: “Is that like you got game?”

Gage: “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

——-

Gage wanted to be taken into a store in a restaurant/bar but they needed to be accompanied by a parent. So Julian said, “If you would listen….”

Gage: “What do you mean?”

Julian: “Come on, you know, when you do stuff. If you can name 3 times that you haven’t listened to me, I’ll take you in there.”

Gage: “Can you give me a hint.”

Okay, maybe you have to live with Gage to understand this one…but Gage rarely listens on the first ask and most times the 3rd ask. Or if you tell him to stop something he will get it in a couple of times, just so you know he’s defiant. Yeah, he’s fun like that.

——-

Julian: “Wow, do you have the heat on?”

Gage: “Huh, WHAT? Who got PEED ON?”

Great things about our family time (for the record)at the beach include…

- Some 20+ times of playing at the beach. Not all were successful trips, but the majority were. Gage was, for nearly every trip, a nice brother to Quinn. He played with her, helped her and generally acted normal.

- Biking. The kids biked a lot. Gage had a walkie talked and it was nice to let him go 3 blocks away all the while him talking on it to let us know he was okay. It was even kinda responsible, which is surprising, since you know, Gage and the word RESPONSIBLE aren’t usually in the same sentence.

- Little work.

- We did nearly everything together and let the kids lead what they wanted to do. It was pretty carefree and unlike their lives most of the time.

- We laughed a lot.

- We celebrated Christmas and NY pretty low key and low stress, which was new and fantastic.

- We spent less money than we do in one week here during the summer.

- We saw Gage smile more in a two week period than we can remember in other two week periods.

- We took a real break from school stuff. We took the pressure off of them for a couple of weeks. We kept up a little with reading and a lot with coins, but it wasn’t stressful because it wasn’t a lot.

- We saw dolphins close up.

- Oh, the sea shells. Including a day trip on a boat to an island with mounds and mounds of shells.

- Seeing Gage, on his own, pick up trash on the island, the beach and around the grounds of the house. See? He’s not all hardhearted.

- Reduced doctor visits. Always a plus.

- Fresh seafood – caught that day fresh. Gage still ate only PB&J (like 8 sandwiches a day) but Quinn tried a lot which was fun. She was sad though (and cried in the restaurant) when she realized she can never each raw oysters anymore.

- Quinn so badly wanted to find sand dollars and we only found a few broken pieces one night and then our trip to Sand Dollar Island got canceled because of the waves and she was sad, so on NYE I placed two perfectly perfect sand dollars (@ 1.99 each) in front of her while we were searching with a flashlight. Oh man, were those squeals delightfully heard up and down the beach. She ran to Julian to show him and YELLED  “I can’t believe we found them! And we were just minding our own business!”

- The kids are both healthy (physically) and we were together.

- The kids have never stayed up to see midnight (I know! Bad parents!) so we thought it would be special if they did for NYE at the beach. Fireworks at 10, then again at midnight. Very, very exciting to see their excitement.

It was a virtual love fest for two weeks. It was a different vacation because we didn’t get anytime away as a couple like we normally do when we vacation with other people, but the trade off was worth it.

Goodbye, our beach, how we’ll miss you.

We’ll miss sleeping late and beach walks.

And bike rides and dogs on the beach.

Shell searching and assessment.

We’ll miss the time with no doctors appointments and homework.

We’ll miss the waves and the sand.

And sand forts.

We’ll miss low tide and high tide.

It was a healing trip and a restful trip.

It was a mandatory-after-the-year-we-had trip.

As much as it is possible, we enjoyed the time off from our lives.

We enjoyed your sunrises and sunsets.

And talking about what the colors they made would taste like.

We enmbraced the smiles you brought us.

We’ll see you again.

There are many things that I loved about 2009 and many things that are not so great. I will not miss 2009. I’m happy for 2010 to be here and for new beginnings for our family. And while I am looking forward to 2010, looking back is good, and then I’m kissing 2009 goodbye. While 2009 was hard on me and my family personally, this year brought new life to my girl and brought the glimmer of hope for living again for my son. For those two things alone I’m grateful in spades.

1. Kids are resilient to a point. They can hold their literal selves together for a period of time that they have to, but then they can, and often do, completely fall apart.

2. Mental health issues for children are extremely hard to navigate as a parent. Especially when many in health care have a hands-off attitude. If you can’t find services on your own by sheer will or luck, you won’t find services.

3. Helping your 2nd child through a kidney transplant seems like it should be easier. In theory.

4. A sense of humor is still helpful through stressful times. It also helps that your husband is intuitive with diet cokes and your need for time alone.

5. There may be nothing that prepares you for the reality that your child wants to die or wants to kill themselves. Sadly, you can get used to the idea that they want to die. If you didn’t, you’d be crying in fetal position in a corner of your house.

6. Your faith in the basic goodness that lives in people can be restored. By kidney donation, support and love from people close to you and people you don’t know. Sometimes, the basic belief in the good, it is all that gets you through from one day to the next.

7. Naps are essential.

8. People come and go out of your life. Don’t fight it when they are going and welcome it when they come.

9. Never underestimate the power of down time with your family and the healing that is needed.

10. Never, ever underestimate the power of yourself to help end your child’s suffering. Sometimes it helps to remind people that everyone who can help should want the best for them, just like you.

11. Creating time for yourself (in whatever form that pleases you) is harder than it looks, but sweeter when it’s achieved.

There’s something healing about the beach, we all feel it. Even though it’s cold and we’re not exactly in swimsuits soaking up the sun, but we are soaking up time with each other. Except for a few hours to write (ALONE) and a trip to the grocery store (and to search for shoes for Gage), and taking Quinn for labs in another town, we’ve been together.

Yes, there’s been issues with Gage’s behavior, because his ODD and OCD never leave us, but all in all we’re doing fine. None of us are stressed and we’re letting the kids and the flow of the day lead us. Yesterday a few hours on the beach with an afternoon of legos and a tea party followed by work on a puzzle (oh, and Julian biked the kids to a bar with walkie talkies, long story) is an example of our day.

Gage has only talked about dying young once when I referred to future beach trips. He’s only talked about killing himself once but I think it was to try to get a reaction from me (which he didn’t), because the difference in his demeanor from past suicide talk was noticeable. It didn’t have his same desperation.

For the most part Gage and Quinn are getting along even though we are in close quarters (800 sq feet?) and they are sharing a room. Gage has even been helpful to Quinn, which Quinn has enjoyed beyond belief, so starved for her brother’s attention.

Coming here wasn’t only a good idea, it was a requirement for the collective mental health of our family. There is something about watching the waves hit the beach and something about watching the kids run at the edge of the water that seems so healing and natural. Not like medication and life-saving surgeries or IEP meetings and behavior plans, which go against the natural essence of the waves that allow us actually forget all that mess for whole minutes at a time.

I know I am not articulating myself very well but that’s what happens when you are flustered by the sparkling yet cold water staring right at you. Julian and Gage just left for a bike ride and I’m about to take my girl on the beach for some shell searching.

So I must go for now to the healing beach.

The trip to the little white house on the beach.

Healing has come.

Surprised by the depth of how much the beach was needed.

To learn to become a regular family again.

Peace.

Or peach, as I accidentally type each time I type peace.

We are spending the next several days together as a family of four. Limited work schedule this week and no work next (we’re typically closed during that time) and so we are having a lot of bonding time. Bonding time for a family that has been pushed and pulled to the max during the last year and we are grateful to have this time together away from home.

Monday we were all on the (cold) beach looking for shells and the kids were in and out of the (cold) water and the sun was shining and I was just so grateful. It was all that I had envisioned this time together would be. I’m so grateful their borrowed kidneys are working and that we have this time with them.

I’m so grateful they are alive.

We’d been functioning as a family with a mission over the last year, but it was a hard, hard year. Our (fight) goal was to bypass dialysis for Quinnlin and hold Gage together in the emotional sense.

It was a hard, hard year, indeed. I will not miss 2009.

We were essentially in a heightened state of something over nearly everything this year and it affected us all in different ways. As parents, we moved together as partners with a shared common goal, but I can’t say we’ve been all that connected directly. Mostly because it is nearly impossible to steal away a great amount of time as a couple when you have kids with special needs – and we’re good at that usually – but even for us it was hard in 2009. It is also difficult because your thoughts are somewhere else…like how to pay for the insurance premium next month, or who you have to badger next to get things moving for a transplant, or how to keep your child from wanting to kill himself to in fact, keeping him from actually killing himself.

That doesn’t leave a lot of time to be a couple. The way that counts that we were were a couple in 2009 were common goals that centered around the kids. Each to do what we had to in order to keep our kids alive, off dialysis, new kidneys safe, them educated, and decently happy. I can’t say we do all of that flawlessly, but we do it together, each trying to be sensitive to the other person’s need to do it their way (I’m not so good at this).

The kids get all we can give them but they don’t see a great amount of it directly. Sometimes it is not enough. Sometimes we don’t play the amount of games we want to, we don’t arrange enough play dates, sometimes we don’t linger and read books as much as we want to, sometimes we don’t go out and about for activities, and we’re perhaps more inclined to have down time in pjs than we should. The kids sometimes get short-changed because they have special needs because we are a lot of times, special needs only focused.

That’s  a roundabout way to say we all needed some down time to reconnect. We are making big plans for 1/2 day trips that include looking for shells, visiting historic cemeteries, biking, hiking. We’re working on a 500 piece puzzle, making gourmet candy jewelry each day, and letting the kids lead if we get out of our pjs or not (as was the case yesterday when I took Quinn to another town for labs in her pjs and decided that was a good way to spend her day). So far we’ve gotten up early to watch the sunrise (kids’ choice, dang) and we’re watching the sunset each night talking about what flavors match the colors we all see.

I hope, for me personally, that this helps me reset my start button. So that each day I am not in a state of panic regarding the kids’ care and needs. The end of the year is a good time for that. Maybe we will also reset our family start button as well and remember how to function as a family not in crisis.

Quinnlin didn’t know I was watching her when I caught her dancing.

After I snapped it, she turned to me and said, “This is my BEST DAY EVER.” And later we laughed and laughed at the sand in her hair, about how cold Daddy was and about how we could walk barefoot in December.Tears hitting my face watching her dance in the cold water, so grateful to our kidney donors Jody and Cheryl for the chance to be here with my children.

The Santa Secret

My son learned the truth about Santa when he was in Kindergarten. For you die-hard Santa supporters this probably sounds like sacrilege. You’re not alone: the other moms in my moms group were appalled that I’d destroyed the magic of Christmas for my innocent child. But in my own defense [and believe me, I have been defensive about this], I didn’t actually tell him that his dad and I were the ones filling his stocking on Christmas Eve; he kind of figured it out himself. Ok, with a little help from me.

He has always been precocious and thoughtful, and it occurred to him one Christmas that flying reindeer and time travel required an explanation. He wasn’t the type of kid to be appeased with, “It’s just Christmas magic.” And my more specific “special reindeer food” was as unsatisfactory to him as it was to me. He wanted to know how, and I’ll admit my lame answers raised more questions than they answered. I just wasn’t into fostering the notion of Santa, knowing that one day I’d have to confess. Further, Christmas to me isn’t so much about the chubby red fellow as it is a celebration of the birth of Christ. So building up the image of Santa wasn’t all that important to me. Finally, if someone was going to get credit for all that store-bought joy on Christmas morning, it was going to be me.

Flash-forward seven years: My moms group friends all have 11- and 12-year-olds, most of whom still believe that Santa is the person who surreptitiously slips goodies into their stockings on Christmas Eve. A couple of these kids are now in middle school and are being ridiculed by other kids who know better. And those same moms who wrung their hands at my early indiscretion are now wringing their hands about their own predicament: how they will now — after years of earnest prevarication — explain to their trusting children that mom and dad weren’t quite on the up-and-up all those years.

I don’t envy my friends their upcoming conversation. This is the age when we’re also talking to our kids about puberty and other sometimes-uncomfortable topics. So adding this to the mix will probably be painful for parent and kid alike.

I plan to follow-up with my friends who successfully manage to enlightened their tweens without destroying their faith in their parents and everything else they believed to be true because my young daughter isn’t as questioning as her older brother, and I fully expect to find myself in their position in a few years.

By Lori Thiel

I was out of town then in town, now out and well, the blog got moved the back burner because well, I guess I needed a break, then my friend Lori – a real writer – gave me a post about Santa and it is spectacular, just like her, so I thought to myself, “How awesome, I can put off posting another day!”

So thanks Lori…I’m going to hit you up again. Maybe this week.