Once upon a time, before I became a hedgepig, I was known as "Mouse." And when Caitlin was born, she was the Baby Mouse for quite a while (and also known as Caitie-Bug). Then she was Mouse Paws for quite a while after that, and I still sometimes call her that, although it makes her all squealy and embarassed--maybe appropriate for a mouse, at that. Anyway, our first Christmas with Caitlin, we changed the words of a familiar Christmas song, and around the Hedgerow, this is still how we sing it:

We wish you a Merry Chris-mouse,
We wish you a Merry Chris-mouse,
We wish you a Merry Chris-mouse,
And a Happy New Bug!

And I do hope that anybody who visits this site had a Merry Chris-mouse, and that your New Bug will be a peaceful and joyful one.

This is the first assignment for my Leadership Class. We were supposed to write about a "scene or memory" which "should evoke a time when you saw something or did something which revealed to you your own need to act better or act differently or seek more learning." I don't know if this is quite what they were looking for, but this is what I came up with:

My initial response to this assignment was a certain mental paralysis. I searched my mind and could find no incident, no moment, no sudden revelation of a need to "act better or act differently or seek more learning" as the assignment said.

There are a couple of different reasons for the lack of such "moments" in my life. I tend to analyze everything to death; I reach decisions after long "chewing over" of factors in my mind, rather than by sudden inspiration. Nor am I much given to thinking about needing to act better or act differently--I am doing the best that I can and have been for a while.

I did finally bring to mind a few times in the last few years when I arrived at abrupt decisions that it was time to make a change, and I took action to make those changes happen. Those decisions and subsequent actions have a lot to do with where I am today--both physically and emotionally.

One of the most dramatic decisions was the decision to leave my husband, who was mentally ill with what I now believe was manic depression. I agonized over that decision; it was something I never wanted to do or thought I would do. But it was necessary; I do believe that--I have to. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't believe it; he killed himself nine days after I left.

Many people think that John killed himself because I left him. In truth, I left him because he was in the state of mind that led him to kill himself (though I didn't realize that he was suicidal). He was terribly depressed and had been for some time. When he wasn't depressed, he was angry, and his anger had a frighteningly hysterical edge to it. He would scream and throw things, and while he was never physically abusive towards the children or me I had to wonder if he was going to become so. Living with him became like living in a war zone. I did what I thought was best and safest for me and especially for our three children, who were ages 8, 6, and 3 at the time. I left.

That was all pretty dramatic (and traumatic) at the time, but I moved right from that situation to a very similar one, from depending on one man to depending on another man, emotionally if not financially. We moved in with a man who had proposed marriage to me; he lived in a three-bedroom duplex with his oldest son and another man (and three cats). I think they were pretty comfortable there, but four more people moving in made it a pretty tight fit. I believed in him, though; believed in us, that we would find another, larger house and blend our families in some harmonious way and live happily ever after. He talked a good game, but the follow-through turned out to be poor. In fact, it turned out to be non-existent.

We lasted just about eighteen months. The situation had deteriorated; we were all turning on each other like over-crowded rats. Tempers frayed. The kids were at each other's throats. The Man and I were barely speaking to each other. His son and I all but came to blows, not just once but repeatedly. Moving to a bigger house had become a distant dream; marriage was definitely unlikely. Moving the children and myself was sounding like a real possibility, but it was the dream that pushed me over the edge.

The Man was working nights, coming home, putting in ear plugs, and going to sleep, leaving me to deal with the kids in the morning, both mine and his. It was in the mornings when his son and I usually had our worst fights, and he never heard them--including the abusive language his son was using--because he had the earplugs in and was out like a light. His son was not quite ten at the time, just a few months younger than my daughter. One night I had a dream that the boy and I were in the midst of one of our regularly scheduled morning fights. In the dream, he picked up a pair of scissors and threatened me with them, and I picked up an even bigger pair and threatened him in turn. When I woke up, I knew that it was time to move out, or that dream could become a frightening reality.

Shortly thereafter, our landlady asked if I knew anyone who might want to move into the recently vacated other half of our duplex. "Yes," I said, "me." As soon as possible, we made the move. I did have to ask for some help from my dad--for deposit money, and also for help acquiring a bed. (Not to be unnecessarily gruesome, the bed that John and I had shared had not survived his death.)

The Man and I had determined to remain a couple, and in fact the change in living conditions resulted in an immediate improvement in our relationship, which resulted, unexpectedly, in the birth of my youngest child not quite a year later. The relationship, I am sorry to say, did not last.

In many ways, this was an even more dramatic change in circumstances for me than leaving my husband had been. I was on my own, pretty much for the first time in my life. I had gone from home to college to marriage to not-quite-marriage, and there had always been somebody else there to lean on. Now, not only was there no one to lean on, I had three (eventually four) little people leaning on me. I was suddenly the "grown-up," the one in charge. I was, in fact, the leader! I was used to being the Second in Command.

It has been (though it sounds trite) a real learning experience. I have learned that life really does go on. I have learned that being a single parent stinks, but that I can do it; that I can be responsible for everybody and everything. I have never been and am not now an organized person, but pretty much everything that needs to be done gets done. I have learned to be self reliant, and even so that I am not entirely alone in the world; my parents, especially my dad, have been very good about helping out along the way. (He was very helpful when I made the next dramatic decision, to get the heck out of Bremerton and the nasty neighborhood we were in; he was instrumental in moving us to our present location.) I have learned that I have reserves of strength and patience that I never dreamed of. And I have learned to be my own person again, and that, much as I love my children, there might be life beyond motherhood someday.

I find the thought of that exciting, the possibilities for the future endless.

September is not a good month around the Hedgerow. It was in September 1996 that I left my husband (who was in a downward spiral due to manic depression) and it was still September nine days later when he killed himself. Oddly enough, in doing genealogy, I discovered that my great-great-grandmother also killed herself in September, and on the same day: the 18th. (To make that even weirder, her birthday was the same day as my daughter's: January 2nd.) September is the month of my father's birth, which is a good thing; but two days after his birthday in 1967, his mother died (which really has to take some of the fun out of it). September is also the month that school starts in our neck of the woods, and that is not usually a joyous time for the piglets. (Mama feels differently about it, of course!)

All of that is pretty awful (except the birthday thing); but September of 2001 really guaranteed that we view the whole month with distaste, especially Caitlin. Monday September 10, 2001, Caitlin got on the school bus to find girls in tears and the whole bus abuzz with bad news: a classmate of theirs had been killed over the weekend, in an accident involving an All-Terrain Vehicle. Caitlin called me from school, distraught. I wouldn't let her come home, but I did talk to her for quite a while. It affected her in a whole different way than her father's death, for reasons I am not entirely clear on. Losing John tops my list of Bad Shit That Has Happened In My Life, but losing Evan tops Caitlin's list by far.

So Caitlin was already pretty upset; September was the worst month in the year as far as she was concerned. Then on the morning of September 11 she got on the bus and somebody told her World War Three had started. And I don't think I need to say anything about that because everything that needs to be said has been said; September 11th is burned like a great black slash across the American soul.

So nobody around here was looking forward to September this year. Besides our own personal sorrows of the month, I knew that the whole country would be taking note of the September 11 anniversary, with accompanying media frenzy, of course.

I was expecting the worst from the media, and for the most part I avoided the TV that day. Newspapers are harder to avoid, since I deliver the local paper; and I read The Seattle Times on a near daily basis. There wasn't anything outstanding about the local rag; some pictures of people wiping their eyes at a memorial service here in town, as far as I remember. The Times, on the other hand...showed a touch of class.

Blank space in a newspaper is kinda like silence on the radio: it generally isn't done. So my first look at the Seattle Times last Wednesday surprised me; there was more blank space on the front page than filled space, even when all I could see was above the fold. There was a simplified version of the paper's nameplate; the date was centered right under the nameplate instead of in its usual place to the side. In the middle of the area above the fold was a small watercolour illustration of the World Trade Center towers. Immediately under that, in fairly large type, it said "In remembrance" and under that in much smaller type "of September 11, 2001, a moment of silence." The only other thing on the whole front page was a note in small type at the bottom of the page:"The news of today can be found starting on Page A3." It really was the newspaper equivalent of a moment of silence. I was impressed. Turning the page answered any questions about why the news of the day began on page A3--page A2 was filled with the names of "The Lives Lost" and it was _filled_, and in very tiny print, too.

It really displayed a touch of class that, quite frankly, I have come to _not_ expect from a newspaper. It didn't really make September any better--but it didn't make it any worse, either. And sometimes that's almost as good.