It amazes me how alike and yet how different my monkeys are. They are both undeniably my daughters in so very many ways. Personality-wise, there is almost nothing of their father in them. Trust me, that’s not a bad thing.

Both are strong and feisty in their own right. Lilest is my rebel, bold and proud of who she is and will defend herself and her sister in less than a heartbeat. Eldest monkey is equally proud of who she is, will womp an army if they even look at her sister cross-eyed, but will not stand up for herself. Both willing to bend, to change, to break for no one. Yet one remains silent when faced with someone who feels it is okay to diminish her feelings or bully her. She will merely stand silent and take it. I used to think she had inherited the trait from me. I will take a lot of shit from people before I finally say I’ve had enough and snap. Mess with someone I love though and it’s on like Donkey Kong. And over before you know it.

Yesterday, I realized I was wrong.

Eldest came home from school Monday and told me one of her classmates (I’m gonna refer to him as Eddie, cuz I swear he’s the bastard son of Eddie Haskel) pushed her at recess. Huge step for her. I asked to her tell me what happened. Turns out Eddie kept telling her to kiss another male classmate (Eldest’s BFF actually) and she refused to. So the little shit pushed her. Each time she said no to giving BFF a smooch, Eddie would push her down. When I asked her what she did, she replied “I just kept getting up.” When I asked her why she didn’t go get one of the teachers at recess, she said she didn’t want to be a “tattle tale.” Grrr… the guidance counselor had talked to them last week about “tattle tales.” One of the guidelines to when you should tell was only if someone was getting hurt. In Eldest’s head, she wasn’t physically hurt from the push, therefore she shouldn’t tell. Good job guidance counselor.

So we had a chat. I explained right off the bat that NO ONE has the right to hurt or to push her. That just because the push wasn’t physically hurting her, it still hurt her feelings and her feelings were even more important than her body to some extent. A scraped knee heals quicker sometimes.

We formulated a plan.

First push- she points at him and in the biggest voice she has says “NO! Eddie that is NOT OKAY! You do NOT have the right to push me!” Even if he stops, she tells her teacher what happened.

Second push- she goes to get a teacher.

If he tries to push her or stop her in any way from getting a teacher, I told her to push his ass back. That’s right. This is a point I would end up fighting with her teacher on. My point, bottom line- my children will know that if ANYONE tries to physically restrain them from getting help, they have the RIGHT to physically defend themselves. Period. Cuz one day it may not be lil Eddie. It may be someone bigger and far more dangerous. So, yeah, kick his lil ass monkey.

Tuesday she comes home. And yup, Eddie pushed her again. She stuck her finger out and she stated her case. Then he pushed her again. Then she forgot what number two was. So, we went over it again. I also made it clear that while I wanted her to address this with her teacher and would giver her the opportunity to do so, that I as going to step in if it happened again. On the way to school Wednesday, we went through the steps again. This time at recess she forgot all of them. So, yesterday morning I stepped in.

And then it hit me. It wasn’t that Eldest had inherited this trait from me. She had LEARNED it from me. It was all my fault.

This week there has been a situation going on in my life that has echoed some things that have happened to me in the past. Wednesday night I had made the realization that I was allowing myself to react to them in a similar way as I had and it bothered me. I had made a plan to change that. While writing Eldest’s teacher, the realization beat me over the head that some of her earliest memories of me are what has caused her to be the way she is right now.

While Eldest monkey was only two and a half when I finally got the courage to end my marriage, she was a very smart two and a half. And she remembers it quite clearly. In fact, no one is allowed to use the word stupid around me because of that. You see I say my ex was an asshole of epic proportions. What I have yet to mention is that he was a huge bully and incredibly abusive. One of his favorite things to do was invent new ways to call me stupid. “What did you eat a big fucking bowl of stupid for breakfast?” Despite that fact that I worked full time and did literally everything around the house, “useless bitch” was one of his favorite pet names. He couldn’t even wake up for work on his own, I was his “alarm clock” and he was a mean man in the morning. If he was late, it was my fault. Everything was my fault. I will spare you all the gory details.

He was constantly yelling and screaming at me and in my defensive mode, I kept thinking “don’t fight back.” At the time, in my head, I didn’t want the girls to see us fighting. I thought if I just stood there and took it, it would end quicker. And it chipped away at me day by day. Little by little I began to lose who I was. Something I’d swore I’d never do. Then one day Eldest came into the kitchen and says “Mommy, what’s that noise?” I say “It’s daddy, he’s home and outside snowblowing the driveway.” She FREAKED. Eldest became hysterical and yelled “I DON’T WANT DADDY TO BE HOME!! I HATE IT WHEN HE’S HOME MOMMY!!” And that was it. It took a couple more weeks for me to formulate a safe “escape plan” and get him out of the house.
But in my attempt to shield them from giant, ugly and potentially very frightening , violent fights, I had taught Eldest that it was okay to take that. It was okay to allow someone to treat her that way. To bully her. To not stand up for herself.

And you have no idea how much it hurts to know I have done that.

So, I have a brand new plan. It is up to me to lead by example. To be the change. To end the cycle. To stand up for myself. To acknowledge when people are treating me in a way I do not deserve and to vocalize it and back it up with actions. To cut ties with those that feel it is okay to bully me. To diminish my feelings. Or use me as an ego boost when no one else is paying them attention. Those that are used to getting away with things because I allow them to.

One of our Monkey Family Rules is “If you’re having a bad day, you can still turn it around. You can take a deep breath, a step back and yell ‘FLIP IT!’ And start it over and do it right.”

I am using my “FLIP IT!”

They say in every career in health care you experience one major event. Something so messed up that it stretches way out of the norm. Of course, I like to throw off statistics. I have had a couple of them already. Each one, while Hell at the time, taught me so much. There is indeed a lesson in everything in life. The most recent of these taught me a couple of things. It cemented my belief that treating your staff with respect and nurturing a true team environment will allow you to accomplish anything. It reminded me that even when people make incredibly poor decisions (and are too dimwitted to hide the evidence of it), they can still rise above it and turn themselves around. It proved to me that there are people in this world that really do care about others more than they care about a paycheck. It showed me that the Milwaukee Police Department (specifically District 7) seriously leaves A LOT to be desired. And finally, you have not truly lived until you’ve had a one-legged schizophrenic over your shoulder at 3:30 in the morning.

I was running a 42 bed assisted living facility for those with chronic mental illness. Illness to the point where no one else would take them. When I first started I had a social worker I’d known for years be like “this place will take anyone.” At first I was offended. But, then I decided, damn right we will. EVERYONE deserves a home. We had 36 residents that made up quite the motley crew. But it worked. Damn well at that. The building was an old ass nursing home in a neighborhood most call a “ghetto.” The staff were just as diverse in personalities as the residents. When I began there, those that survived the lunatic bitch that ran the place before were emotionally beat. She was beyond hard on them and you could tell. Morale sucked, but they toughed it out because they loved the Hell outtta those residents. The owners hated the building, the residents and everything to do with it. We were the bastard stepchild. Like flaming red hair, missing digits, cross-eyed, had Tourrettes with a lisp kind of stepchild in their eyes. Not only were we the complete underdogs, but combine the owners’ refusal to put any kind of money in the place, the aforementioned crazy boss and yeah social workers, doctors and even State pretty much hated us when I got there. But, WE worked our asses to change all of that.

And one night we proved every naysayer wrong. There’s not much I love to do more than prove people like that wrong.

It was roughly 3:00am on February 12, 2007 when my work cell rang. Calls at that time of night weren’t all that rare, but this one was way different.

Third shifter: “Umm..I think we’ve got a pipe burst up in the smoke room.”
Me: ”You think?!?”
Them: ”Yeah, there’s some water leaking down into the 1st floor living room.”
Me: ”Hmm….some??”
Them: ”Yeah, that’s what I said. Some.”
Me: “Like how much some?”
Them: “Like dripping some.”
Me: “Ok. Well, keep the residents out of the smoke room and I’ll get a plumber out there right away.”
Them: “Ok”

So, I call around until I find a plumber that can go out in the middle of the night and send them on their merry way over there. I call the staff back to let them know help is on the way. “Cool. Thanks.”

Roughly two minutes later (3:12am) my phone rings again.

“Hi, this is JT from the Milwaukee Fire Department. We’re going to need to shut the power off and you’re going to need to start getting these people out of here miss.”
Me: “WHAAAAAAAA?????”
“Miss, this building is flooding.”
(insert stream of cussing that would rival the dad in The Christmas Story)

It took me approximately 14 minutes to get dressed and haul the 12.9 miles to get to the building.

On my way, I called my boss in Chicago who told me she would “rally” the other buildings’ Administrators and have them grab their facilities’ vans (my facility wasn’t good enough for one) to come help. I then spent the rest of the ride on the phone with my building talking them through what to do. It was all of 12 degrees out that night, snow everywhere, ice lurking. When I pulled up to my building, my heart swelled sooo much with pride. EVERY staff person I had showed up. Most in their pajamas.

I will never forget walking into that building, a place we all called our second home. Water was halfway to my knees and raining down from the ceiling. The only light came from flashing emergency lights. One of my staff described it later as what she pictured the stairwells of the twin towers to be like that fateful day. I’m not sure that I would describe it as such, but the images will never leave me.

We immediately divided the residents up by medical needs. The ones with the most would go to our facility that had a nurse on staff. All charts, medications, treatments and cigarettes (trust me, they lived for smoke time) were grabbed, bagged by resident and ready to go. We assigned residents to each staff per vehicles (who could get in a car vs. needed a van) and started loading.

All of this was done before a single Administrator from another facility showed up.

Through every step of this, all of the residents (you know the ones “too crazy” to “belong” anywhere else) remained perfectly calm. Well, except for Mr. M. when he started some drama over not riding with me. But, he was a bit of comic relief “ If I can’t ride with baby girl, y’all can just leave my ass here to die!” So, I loaded him in his assigned car and gave him a smooch on the cheek. Rumor has it he cussed the whole way to his evacuation spot when he figured out it wasn’t my car.

As I sat worked on loading residents and walkers and wheelchairs and charts (oh my!) I kept noticing police car after police car just drive right on by. The officers would look, but just keep going. I admit after I got my one legged friend in my van and saw the sixth squad car roll by, I was pissed. They ended up stopped at the light right by our facility. Yeah, I admit it was unprofessional, but I couldn’t help it. I yelled “What do you think we’re going on a fucking field trip?” No response from him.

By the time the sun started rising, every resident and all of their necessities were safely relocated to their temporary home. I made the rounds visiting them and my staff that went with them to care for them and it was the only disheartening part of the whole experience. The staff at our “sister” facilities were rude to our residents and our staff. They were completely put out by us invading their space. Which I can honestly understand in some aspects. But knowing what they have been through and knowing the staff that understood them best was there to meet their needs, wouldn’t you have some ounce of compassion?? Had the tables been turned, I know we would have welcomed the newcomers with open arms and made sure they knew they were welcomed.

The company felt no need to move the residents from their evacuation areas. “They can just double up with the residents there for a bit, they’ll be fine.” They were far from fine. They were miserable. Tossed in a new location was hard enough. Yanked from their regular routines was beyond hazardous to triggering behaviors they fought to control. Most importantly, they had bonded with each other and the staff in a manner where we really were a family. One that truly put the fun in dysfunctional. And, we were they only family most of them had. So, I pulled out the big guns. I went through the HFS 83 State codes we were governed by and pulled out every single potential violation we could be sited for. The company HATED me. I was proud. By the end of the day, our entire facility, med cart and all, was moved into our own floor of a hotel.

It took the restoration company an entire month to repair all the damage that had been done and bring the building back up to code. It proved to be one of the longest months of my life. I worked literally every single day. The smell of mold will forever bring back a nauseating feeling. I also know much more about abatement and dealing with contractors than I ever thought I would.

During this whole time, the initial conversation I had that night with third shift bugged me incessantly. Coupled with the fact that the two who were on duty that night were magically transformed into amazing employees, picking up shifts they never would have before and actually charting in a manner they never had and yeah, something stunk in Denmark. Yet, neither would spill. I had investigated to the point where I knew, without a doubt, that they could not have prevented what occurred in any way. There was no way I would tell them that though. But “some” water versus a veritable waterfall weighed on me.

Then one day I was cleaning at the facility, getting it ready for our family to come home, and I just happened to check the DVD player in the first floor living room. The very living room that lay directly under the smoke room. I could have smacked myself for not thinking to do so earlier. In it was a bootleg copy of Hustle and Flow. Oh the irony.

I’ve gotten a lot closer lately to someone in my life. We’re bonded by the understanding of similar relationship types. There are so many other awesome things in common, but emotional understanding is a unique one. Just knowing that someone knows what you are going through or have gone through sometimes makes all the difference. Especially when one is male, the other female.

We were checking in with each other for the day and the ole emotional roller coaster came up. You know the one. One minute they love you and it feels amazing, the next they tell you how replaceable you are or just appear to completely bail. Yup, those.

And then I remembered. I remembered a time when the mention of a roller coaster brought a ridiculously huge smile to my face, instead of a sinking feeling in my stomach. The bad “this is gonna hurt” kind of sinking feeling that is, not the “look mom no hands” kind. Anyway, you know what I mean. Some of my way early blog posts touch a little bit about a time when I ran a group home for Autistic children in California. In many ways that home, that time, will always feel like home to me.

One of the oldest residents, J, was 16 and had Asperger’s. He was obsessed with weather and all his emotions were given as a weather report. “How was school today J?” “Sunny in the morning turning cloudy and windy shortly after lunch.” In his eyes, I was one of the coolest people ever because I had seen a tornado “live.” When he started to fly off the handle, me telling him of the times I would stand at the end of the driveway watching the tornado come then running in the house and down into the basement for safety, would calm him down.

Being the 2nd oldest in the house and having the least communication impairment was hard on J. Even harder was the fact that his parents were complete fuck ups. What saved them from epic level was the fact they finally had the sense to put him in the group home. Though, I suspect Social Services had more to do with it than they did. Every couple of months I would get a call they were visiting and J needed me. Standing there looking at them, knowing where every scar came from, emotional and physical on J’s body SUCKED. What made it even worse was knowing all he wanted was for them to love him, to accept him and he was met with cold expressions. It was the only time J actually wanted to be touched. Just my hand on his arm. Like I was anchoring the tornado. Or I was standing there watching it with him and my hand would tell him when to run to the basement for safety. Or maybe my hand was the basement. There were so many times as they sat there coldly uttering some sort of resemblance of idle chit chat that in my head I would literally picture screaming at them. Telling them everything I thought of them. It went against everything in me to not actually do it. But, I knew if I did, they wouldn’t come back. While not coming back may be a really good thing for J, it wasn’t my decision to make for him and I guess the sappy me still had hope.

We had a routine. They would leave, J would go directly to his room. I would give him some time while I charted the visit, then go check on him before he left. See what the weather report was. After one of these visits, I walked in and my eyes locked on the posters of roller coasters he had next to all his meteorology ones. J’s second favorite thing was roller coasters. But, J had never actually been on one. When I got in my car that day, it occurred to me that we lived maybe 15 minutes from Great America. So, I took a detour on my way home. After an hour with the manager of the place and the low price of $100, J and I became season pass holders. And J had his own “front of the line pass.” The next morning I walked into the home, told J to get dressed that I had a surprise for him and our new ritual began.

From that weekend on, every Saturday morning, J and I had a date. We’d get there right when Great America opened and ride all the roller coasters he wanted to. You could pack a lot in when you got to walk to the front of the line every time. Watching him close his eyes and just scream and let it all out was well it was its own lil roller coaster of emotion. Proud he was letting it all out. Relieved I’d found a way for him to do so. Happy because he would walk around that park with the biggest grin on his face. Yet, still so sad that it wasn’t just a kid having fun getting that rush from rides, but therapy. I’d wished so much it could just be fun for him. When J had enough, he would stop, look at me and say “I’m done Lolli, let’s go home.” (Lolli was what one of his house brothers called me because he couldn’t say “Natali.” J thought it fit me pretty good.) Like every good date, well great date in this case, the ending is key. Each time I pulled up to the house to drop him off, I got a hug. You’d have to know J to know how much it means. To me, it meant the world.

One of my favorite movies is Parenthood. There is a scene where the sweet, yet senile, lil ole grandma talks about a date. On a roller coaster. She compares it to the merry go round and life. Like life, some people prefer the merry go rounds, they are safe, they are predictable. But roller coasters, though they are scary, offer so much more. Me, I’ll forever take the roller coasters.

And thanks to wise advice from my wonderful new friend, I will always remember to raise my arms at the top of the hill.

You can watch my favorite clip of Parenthood here.