2022, Family, Farming Update, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Figuring It Out

59 Comments

Today’s farm update comes from Ben

I mentioned last week daughter is a teenager. Well, she’s 27. Going on 14. She’s got Down Syndrome and about a year ago she hit adolescence. Hard. Like flipping a switch, hard. Our county social worker said most of his clients hit adolescence about this age. It was a relief just hearing this behavior was normal and not just our kid. We try not to think how her stages seem to last twice as long, so what are we in for… I’m afraid boys will be next.

Trying to get her to bed one night and it’s not going well. As we talk, she says “I’m trying to be an adult; I’m trying to figure it out.”  I laughed and hugged her.  “Oh honey. That’s what being an adult is; trying to figure it out.” 
 
WHEN DID YOU FIGURE IT OUT? OR HAVE YOU? 
WHAT MAKES YOU AN ADULT?

59 thoughts on “Figuring It Out”

  1. I stayed 16 until I was 22, and 22 until I was 33. Now, at 71, I have still not “figured it out”, but feel that I owe apologies to a lot of folks to whom I made proclamations and demonstrations about the ABSOLUTE TRUTH that I believed I had arrived at so often along the way.
    Sorry folks. I was just muddlin’ through without realizing it.

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    2. One of the insights I’ve gained as I’ve aged is that the more I know, the more I realize how little I know. At 79 I’m a few years ahead of you on that trail, Abukso, and so far, the ABSOLUTE TRUTH has eluded me. In fact, it seems further away than it did at sixteen. Go figure.

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  2. What makes you an adult is when you finally accept responsibility for your life! Figuring it out is probably a life long trial (or trail)! But one thing one I got right was picking an occupation (nursing) that always gave me a way to support.myself and my offspring.

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  4. Nope, haven’t figured anything out. The more I think I know, the more confusing life gets. You work really hard for decades and pay off a mortgage, which is when your credit score goes down. Why? It makes no sense. Also, people who have had similar upbringing, education, and life experiences think very differently from each other. What happened? Why is it so hard to see things the same way? I’ll never figure it out. When I do, it will be too late.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Ben, I think for the next 6weeks your post title should be “Knee Report.” The challenging part of the PT is teaching the new knee how to bend. The PT who rehabbed my knee kept scrupulous records of how far the knee would bend, and it was a big day when it met the goal (that was something like 110-130 degree bend). Right now as you hobble along on a stiff knee that feels nearly impossible.

    Sometime this week an adolescent memory of learning to drive when I knew everything, popped up after I sent my favorite cousin a Christmas Card. By the time I was 15 years old, my age at this incident, mother and I were already embroiled in a life-long power struggle. In one of my initial forays in the drivers seat, mom was sitting shotgun. My aunt and cousin were in the back seat because I was to drive the car to my cousin’s dorm 8 blocks away.

    Mind you, there was no instruction before this trip and I had never turned a car around a corner. Sadly, had mom tried to do this with me in a safe, unoccupied parking lot, I probably would have been shocked because she simply expected me to know things like this. I drove slowly over to Marlys’ dorm, then felt confident to speed up as we neared the dorm. As I turned the corner into the driveway, Mom told me to slow down, which I thought was just stupid. I was doing just fine at my new speed. Of course, I over shot the driveway going way too fast, slammed on the brakes, coming within an inch or so of a telephone pole. They all screamed. My aunt in the back seat very wisely recruited her husband, the local driver’s ed instructor, to take over my driving lessons from my mother, AND she always loved my headstrong self anyway. My cousin has always been a favorite person. She was so kind to me when I was a child. She has never mentioned this incident.

    There is mercy in this world. I learned to drive and be far more cautious, and to understand that even though “I know everything” haha, other people drive in impaired conditions and may endanger me despite my caution. And many people live this way in and out of their automobiles.

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    1. I found this song and singer this week, although she has been around a long time. It has nothing to do with our topic today, but it would have fit into the Late Great Morning Show repertoire.

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    2. Well, my knee update is going very well. Much better than I expected. Even in the hospital, the PT said he didn’t think I’d need the walker more than about a week. Not that I should go far without it, but wouldn’t be depending on it. And that’s kind of where I’m at. I can still bend the knee roughly 90° from straight to sitting. And I will use the cane if I’m just moving a short distance.And I’m tapering off the pain meds.
      So other than some swelling, some nice purple colors spreading, the 37 staples, and the stiffness of the muscles, the joint itself feels wonderful!

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  7. Cool, Ben, that your daughter can articulate what she’s up to.

    Yep, I thought there would be some point at which I was confident and knew what to do in any situation. Ha! In a lot of cases, you just have to step up to the plate and take a swing – don’t know ahead of time if it will be a bunt or a home run.

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    1. Renee I appreciate how you phrase that. From day one, our social workers were very good about saying we should have very high expectations for her.
      It’s very interesting to me how much I feel like I can identify with all the moods she’s having. Of course we all went through it, maybe we just don’t all remember it. But I do feel like I really get it. And it’s very interesting to listen to her have all her conversations with her conscience out loud. She will argue both sides. Kelly says she enjoys knowing what she’s thinking. I think there was a lot of things I thought about my parents that I would rather not hear, haha!

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  9. I don’t know what “it” is that adults are presumed to have figured out but that perspective seems adolescent in itself and an expectation that could only come from someone who hadn’t observed many adults very closely.

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  11. Here is adulthood :A group of older guys were watching the Vikings in the community room, all in Vikings jerseys. I could see the game was over. By their demeanor I thought maybe the Vikings had lost, not just completed the biggest comeback in NFL history.

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  13. So it is South Dakota State against North Dakota State for the FCS Championship. Jackrabbit v Bison.
    It is too bad that the decision will be made in Texas.

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  14. Sandy’s memory care is failing her because so many adults are not adults. An on-call nurse who cannot be reached. A manager who does not reply. Aides who come in and sit, or take Sandy and others out to the eating area in their nightgowns and bare feet and leave piles of wet dirty clothes in their rooms when they are supposed to be washing them. Meanwhile one aide drives in on bad roads early in the morning from New Prague and another fron Fairmont while two others cannot drive a mile on plowed streets. One stays after to call those who did not show up after she is done demanding they come in and another who drove twenty miles takes charge of the ones who were forced to come in to do their jobs. These are all young women of 19-21 who are taking on the adult roles while the older adults are failing theirs. I am still with Sandy since 8 to make sure things happen but did not really have to be because she has had the good ones all day, but they warn me about tomorrow. This is happening in nursing homes all across Minneosta.

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    2. I cannot like that post. I’m saddened for your experience. My Dad was in nursing home/ hospice in Ohio for nearly two years until his death. I respected and loved all those who cared for him. It seems our family were beneficiaries of an extraordinary team. I don’t suggest this as a bribe but one of my sisters sent a lunch weekly to the staff. I sent sweet treats. Are you able to identify any individual who does well? If so, thank them. Just my opinion

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      2. There have been many, many who are gone, to some degree because they have not been treated well. 6 are left who are excellent. But I do not know who takes care of her 11-7. I have given them some sweet treats but they clearly do not want that. They get their noon meals there. Right now they have to bring in new. They have cut back management and none are ever on site.

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    3. It is not only nursing homes. There are many patients in hospital beds that are ready to be moved to rehab facilities, but the rehab facilities are understaffed and can’t take them. Patients in ER can’t get beds and wait in hallways. Health care workers at every level are dealing with unprecedented burdens and stress levels, and more of them leave every day. Still, when there are immigrants who would jump at the chance to come to the U.S. to work, they are turned away. They would, after all, be taking jobs away from Americans.

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      1. This is a lasting gift of President 45 and the Xenophobia he used to manipulate, as well as Congress’ inability to address the Immigration mess.

        It is so aggravating.

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  16. So many things I have not figured out, mostly in the social realm. I think I matured early in several areas, such as work and responsibility, as do lots of farm children. Living on a family-sustaining farm especialy taught those things. Bet Ben learned them too. But because I lived in a very isolate place until I went to school, weak on the social skills.
    I think I have figured out a few major things I should have done differently. I bet a few others might say that, too.

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    1. I agree with you Clyde. When I was younger and looking for jobs, dad used to tell me, just tell them you’re a farm kid and they’ll hire you because they know it means you’re responsible. It worked back then. I’m not sure it would work anymore as there’s too much disconnect between people and farms.

      Adulthood is sort of forced on some people as they care for parents or siblings. Others slide into it sideways, and some never figure it out.

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  17. You will go through your life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained everything important to other kids. They said, “Look, you’re human, you’re going to feel isolated and afraid a lot of the time, have bad self-esteem, and feel uniquely ruined, but here is the magic phrase that will take this feeling away. It will be like a feather that will lift you out of that fear and self-consciousness every single time, all through your life.” And then they told the children who were there that day the magic phrase that everyone else in the world knows about and uses when feeling blue, which only you don’t know, because you were home sick the day the grown-ups told the children the way the whole world works.
    But there was not such a day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise you grow up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others so no one will know that you weren’t there the day the instructions were passed out.

    – Anne Lamott

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  18. Wessex, my grand daughter will be going to Frisco (Dallas) in two weeks as part of the band. She did not make it to the game. Roads were wicked.

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  19. I’m not sure “it” can be figured out. I left school my junior year and found an apartment in Northfield and got a job out at Country Kitchen. When I paid my first month’s rent on my own, without having to call my folks for assistance, I felt very proud. I actually had a little party and made a cake decorated like the check that I sent to my landlord. I count my the beginning of my adulthood as that week.

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  20. I think one of my adulthood threshold moments was when my roommates and I faced the back end of the turkey we had bought, for our first Thanksgiving out on our own. This would have been 1971, in our 3rd floor San Francisco apartment near the Golden Gate and the Presidio. Boy that was a sobering moment! No seasoned adults to ask how to do this thing, and I doubt if Turkey Confidential was up and running yet on MPR…

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