The Rainbow Room

 

Noel Warrior

The vile sensation of warm vomit oozing from the strands of your hair down to your chin all while you strain to hold up an aggressive kicking oversized toddler. Working with children requires a level of patience that you must acquire when dealing with these small humans. More specifically, being a children’s church leader, you must have a brave face when walking into the Rainbow Hall every Sunday morning. That one morning a week you must stay strong for three hours and be prepared for whatever nonsense comes your way. The many types of conflicts you face as a children’s teacher at a church can range from possible gun threats, to low wages, to overwork. The main types you face are the overbearing parents, the children with bad behavior, poor wages, the workload that leaks onto off days, and just overall trying to keep everyone happy.

There is a fine line between protective parents and overbearing parents. Protective parents know the dangers of leaving their child with a stranger, but also know that they have a choice and take precautions before they leave their children in the hands of childcare providers to ensure the safest environment for their kids. Overbearing parents do the same, except they tell us how to change diapers, organize our lesson plans, and what games they think would engage the children even more. We, the certified childcare teachers, get scorned by first-time parents about the time it takes to remove the defecated, warm, and weighted diapers off the children to change them into clean diapers, and even the time-blocks we change their diapers because little Jerry doesn’t want to miss movie time so he can wait till after, they would try to explain. The countless poopy diapers I changed on a day's work averaged more than how many any of those parents had changed.

Not only are they overly critical, but they overstep their boundaries, which makes it an unsafe environment for other kids. The lack of trust that they give us teachers, even though they had a choice to give us custody of their children, can lead to parents taking drastic measures to ensure their child’s safety. One drastic measure a parent took was leaving a loaded rifle in their toddler’s backpack for them to be able to protect themselves. The backpack was in my room, the Green room, and we heard a lockdown procedure happen. I gathered all the kids in a corner and tried to keep my cool, but I was only fifteen at the time and I did what any person would do, panic. The doors of the room unlocked, and the head pastor busted through the door and went through little Johnny’s backpack, and there in the middle sack was the rifle, loaded, and ready to use. Johnny’s father quickly burst through the room to plead his case for safety and was supposedly heard out by the other church leaders. He wasn’t removed from the church, more so the situation was swept under the rug, and he was ensured of his child’s safety, even though no previous threat to Johnny’s safety was indicated and he himself created the unsafe environment.

The next type of issue we teachers face in general are the bad seeds. And I’m not talking about kids behaving poorly, because that is what defines a normal kid. I’m specifying the mean kids. The kids who are more intelligent than other kids, and use that intelligence as an advantage over younger kids, to manipulate them into giving them toys they want or snacks they like. Those kids constantly act poorly, but that isn’t the worst part of it. The issue is when the parents come to pick them up and see little Sammy in the timeout corner and advocate for their bad-behavior children. Mr. and Mrs. Walker wouldn’t believe that Sammy somehow managed to take a toy soldier from a younger kid, chuck the toy across the room, give another kid a scratch on the forehead, and then swipe an uppercut jab to another kid because they got goldfish and she got animal crackers, but she is a bad seed. But somehow Sammy’s parents have been in this situation with her outbursts so much they’ve grown accustomed to defending her, and so they are skilled in pleading her case. They believe I’m wrong, and they think maybe if the younger kid let her have the toy, the kid wasn’t standing in the falling path of the toy soldier, and if she got goldfish then none of these atrocities would've happened.

Preparing the bible lesson every Sunday requires a whole day run-through and previously scheduled daily preparations. The time consumption of being a children's-teacher at church requires us to build a lesson plan that educates the children academically, using one core subject per Sunday (Math, English, Science, or History) while also using a bible verse or story to teach the children each Sunday. Our goals are to create a day that is interactive and fun for the kids, but it’s nearly impossible to create a whole schedule without the preparation leaking into your off days. Assuming that someone is going to wake up at 5 am each Sunday, rather than working on the schedule the whole Saturday, disregards one of the central of the problems of the human race, procrastination. Being a teacher in general comes with the knowledge that you will be overworked and not given enough rest time.

Not only do children’s teachers, especially in the line of religious work, deal with mental strains, but we are expected to go above what is expected of us while being paid a poor wage. I remember when I was first hired I was told the children learning about the Bible and watching them grow into great people makes the pay even better.

I asked, “Pastor, what is my pay wage in numbers?”

He responded, “$7 an hour is where you will start with.”

Okay well, I’m being paid $7 an hour for a bit then I will get paid more the longer I work here, I thought. Well, it was two and a half years later and I still was getting paid my initial wage. Although I loved working with kids, you work to get paid. And getting paid allows you to afford that new PINK shirt you want to buy, or even Ramen noodles to get you by during the week. I was privileged enough to not be living off this pay wage, but my 20-year-old coworker had no choice to, while managing her other job at Starbucks, and going to college. All because the first job she had was working at the Church she grew up with, and she didn’t have the heart to tell her they couldn’t raise her pay wage, so in turn she had to bend her back to make ends meet.

While being a children’s teacher comes with its technical struggles, there are also mental strains that both the children and the workers endure. The children struggle with separation from their parents each Sunday. There was one time a girl latched onto her dad’s leg and he couldn’t get her off until he tickled her off. We had to comfort her, assure her that her dad is coming back, then get her to have fun that day. While working on the children’s happiness, we also try to help each other as a team feel a lot better about all the stress we endure from this line of work. Sometimes we get each other coffee from Starbucks, or pizza from Little Caesars, if someone is swamped with a lesson with the kids, we will take on another task to help them. Even though this causes more strain, it helps in a way to let us know someone hears us and acknowledges our significance.

Little Blips

 

Hope Roseberry

Tuff and Colt run from room to room in varying degrees of dress screeching at the top of their lungs like tornado sirens. A toy of some sort, probably their toy steering wheel because I can hear Mickey Mouse say “roadster racers,” crashes into a kitchen cupboard, causing Gunner to fuss in his bassinet next to my workstation.

My spirited and sometimes annoying boys are my whole world. Tuff, he’s the oldest with vibrant hazel eyes just like his daddy, are in stark contrast to his bleach blonde hair. He is also usually the ringleader for all the mayhem. Colt is my middle son. He is a bit of a butter ball that wears his heart on his sleeve and is always more than willing to follow along in all of Tuff’s adventures. Then there is Gunner, weighing in at a solid 8 pounds 10 ounces with skin as soft as a peach and a cry that can rival a mountain lion.    

I have a mantra of sorts that I repeat to myself repeatedly all day long. “Hold it together. Just until bedtime" Pleading with myself to not lose my sanity every five minutes. Clothes, toys and blankets cover almost every available surface. The kind of mess where you look around wondering where you should even start to try and clean it up. I swear I am raising farm animals both outside and inside my home. If I didn’t love them wholeheartedly, I would throw every toy away no matter how much it upset them, but I have loved them since before their first breath was ever even drawn, which only adds more confusion to the raging battle of emotions that are on a constant loop in my mind.

It’s not logical, the way your mind goes to war with itself causing mass amounts of anger, sadness, and confusion with no real direction. Having one child dependent on you is hard enough. Having three children needing you every waking moment of the day, while trying to work a full-time job based out of your living room, is complete mental and physical exhaustion. There’s no escape, no break. Working from home with two toddlers and a newborn is the mother’s edition of Dante’s inferno. Too much of my horror, I am living it in 3-D every single day.

“Please stop.” I meant to say it with caring authority, but my voice comes out more of an exhausted whisper and the boys play on. My home has become a thousand and some square feet of isolation, mixed with chaos in the matter of a month. Thanks to the COVID pandemic I now work from home with a my four-year-old and two-year-old that are constantly running amok, and of course, I cannot forget Gunner, our newest little addition to this crazy family. My work email chimes repeatedly with incoming health insurance claims and updates that need processing. There is always something that needs done whether it be work or child related. Too often than not they need done at the exact same time.

Gunner is fussing in earnest now wanting to be held and fed, always wanting to be held and fed it seems. Picking him up I get him settled in a football carrying hold as the plump brunette nurse had called it. All I know is it’s the only way he will latch, and I must sit ramrod straight the whole time. My skin is sticky from drooled milk, and my hair at this point is doing its best impression of a bird's nest.

The cacophony of noises matches a construction zone, I feel and look like a dumpster, and what on earth is that smell? The light from my computer screen burns my tired eyes making me squint to read the page. Everything is blurring together into one giant mess of stimulation. Everything feels jumbled up, like a soda bottle that has been shaken to the point that you can feel the pressure from the outside. Stimulation overload only leads to one of two things. Either you eventually explode, or you shut down. Every loud noise, every cry, the smell of ammonia emanating from the diaper bin surrounds me. Every nerve ending is on fire with undesired stimulation. Threading my fingers through my hair I begin to pull at the messy strands. But it does not stop it all from crashing down on me and I cannot take another solitary second of this madness.

“Would you all just shut up for once!” I shrieked to the point all I hear is the shallow rapid sound of my own breathing. For a second I feel like I purged a small amount of all that stimulation that has been needling me.

Then for just a moment there was complete, tangible silence. However just like before it doesn’t last long. Gunner begins to wail; Tuff and Colt dash off down the hall to their bedrooms without so much as making eye contact with me. In that moment realization dawns on me. I screamed at my children. The three greatest gifts this world has to offer, and I just released all my pent-up anger out on them.

Peering down at Gunner’s tear stricken face my heart stumbles over itself. Scooping him up I make my way down the hall to Tuff’s room all the while making shushing sounds at Gunner to try and calm him down. When I reach Tuff's room, I find them sitting on his bed in complete shock. Sinking onto the bed with them I begin to sob. “Mommy is sorry” I whisper to them repeatedly. I am not exactly sorry that I yelled, ashamed maybe, feeling broken. Little arms wrap around me, “It otay mommy.” And the tears fall faster.

It wasn’t until later that night after the boys had been tucked into bed and Hunter had finally gotten home from work that I allowed myself to process the events of the day. Laying in the dark confines of my room I allowed myself to admit the truth that I had desperately tried to hide. Postpartum depression has been eating away at me a little more each day. I want badly to be able to pull myself together. To keep everything together but that is not happening, has not been happening. Where there should have been laughter and patience, there was only anger and fatigue. Tears leak out of the corners of my eyes as I think about the way my boys looked at me today. It took seeing three confused and hurt faces for me to realize that I have been slipping for a while now and unless I do something, I will only continue to morph into someone I do not want to be. Someone I will not recognize.

The soft yellow sun is streaming through my bedroom window warming my face and pulling me from a long night's sleep. I can hear the clank of dishes and little boy squeals of laughter coming from the kitchen. “Mommy wuv pantates Daddy!” Tuff exclaims in that way that usually only parents can decipher what is being said. A smile starts to pull at the corner of my lips. Because in this moment I can begin to feel the pieces of myself start to come back together. Surely laughter cannot be too far behind. It took reaching my breaking point to realize that even though there are lists of things to be done and little people that rely on me, if I do not put myself first at least sometimes I will be no good to anyone. I also realized I cannot hold our little world up all by myself.

After about a month of antidepressants and relinquishing some responsibilities to my husband, I began to notice changes. Small blips here and there of my old self shining through. Until eventually those blips became days. 

The Unseen

 

LeAnn Cramer

If I had known that this elevator ride would be the end of all I had known, I would have taken the stairs. Then again, that would have left Troy upstairs in the hallway, unable to navigate into the elevator in his wheelchair. So, I ensured he was safely ensconced in the elevator headed to the main floor from the second.

Why were these appointments necessary? Do they understand how overwhelming leaving the house is? What did we gain by coming, I wondered.

Troy’s diagnosis of Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis continued to devastate our dream of traveling once the kids were out of school. One blow after another, one loss after another. Sweat rolled down my back as I breathed in the stale air of the elevator, my shoulders tight and stooped from the invisible weight of responsibility. I ached at the thought of the laundry needing to be washed and putting Troy to bed before I could sleep. My lower back is persistent in shouting its displeasure at the repeated lifting of a body heavier than my own.

“At least I can get prescriptions filled before we leave,” I said to Troy as we waited to arrive on the first floor. His hair is defiant today, refusing all efforts to tame it. ALS has made him unfamiliar to me, his face is slack, and he has lost the perpetual tan he always wore. We do not spend time outside anymore.

The elevator ground to a halt, jolting me off balance, and the door opens to the sound of busy chatter. Inhaling the cooler air, I detected a faint hint of urine; Troy’s catheter bag needed to be drained. As we entered the lobby, I can see that the line at the pharmacy is considerable. It will be difficult to navigate the large wheelchair through the line, so I give him the option of waiting near the entrance-holding my breath and praying he would agree.

Nothing is easy in our lives, even the smallest of tasks become impossible when you have not slept longer than four hours at a stretch for the last two years and a 380-pound wheelchair is your constant accessory. He agrees to wait, so I position him where he can see me, out of the path of the swishing automatic doors with his back against the wall. Being unable to move terrifies him; I do my best to allay those fears.

I enter the pharmacy, eighth in line to pick up. Hushed voices describe dosage changes and side effects. I am oblivious, focused only on the quiet minutes that I am alone to pretend that my life is normal. In these few minutes, my time is my own. My turn arrives, and I pick up the medications that help him to sleep. If he sleeps, I get to sleep. It feels selfish to obsess about sleep when his loss is greater, but I indulge for a moment. I do not remember what it feels like to not be weary in every cell of my body.

Returning to the lobby, I can see Troy’s eyes are bright with tears. He needed me and could not get my attention; his voice had been ravaged by the disease. His body is trembling, and I can hear the tapping of the metal footpad of his wheelchair on the ceramic tile. The tremors become more pronounced when he is agitated, and the tapping becomes an agitated staccato.

I kneel before him, maintaining eye contact to let him know that I have returned and will fix whatever has upset him. His inability to speak does not stop us from communicating, we have created a process of our own. I recite the alphabet, and he looks at my right hand when I land on the correct letter. It is not fast, but we arrive at enough letters strung together for me to guess that he was upset at the woman staffing the check-in counter. Sitting exhaustedly in the corner of the lobby, the tremors that plague him had become insistent. The tapping on the tile had caught the notice of a woman waiting at the counter. Did she not turn to see that it was a young gentleman in a wheelchair? I will never know, but the polyester-clad brunette behind the counter felt it necessary to address her concerns.

“Would you knock that off?!” she demanded. The lobby was crowded, and her voice was at the elevated level required for my husband to hear her distinctly.

Overwhelming grief flooded over me, for the beautiful soul whose body was robbed of all dignity and control. Grief that he had not been recognized as someone bravely struggling to survive. Grief for his embarrassment, for the blatant disregard for him as a person. Those women had only seen the unsightliness. The drool at the corner of his mouth, and the now permanent tilt of his head to the left. The tapping on the tile raced faster, the more stressed he became. Society looks just over the left shoulder of those who are too uncomfortable to look at, refusing to acknowledge their right as a human to be treated with respect. Social niceties become unnecessary; those are reserved for those who are deemed deserving.

I have seen it myself frequently, within the community of persons with disabilities. No one sees the beauty; they look away. And it hit me with the force of a train that we had become the “unseen.”

Troy could see on my face that the grief I was experiencing was rapidly becoming outrage at the injustice and callousness of the insult. “Car,” he spells. He has been humiliated enough and has no desire to be here when I address this. Fair enough.

We made the slow trek to the car, fighting to squeeze between our blue wheelchair-accessible van and the silver Audi parked too closely beside it. Of course, there was never enough room to position his chair so that he could be safely lifted. Slowly lifting and pivoting his uncooperative body, I get him settled in the van and started it so that he could enjoy the respite from the August heat.

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

I did not wait in line; my infuriation would not allow that. Aggressively I crowded in and stared at the middle-aged woman behind her counter. Her floral polyester blouse was appropriately buttoned up and her slacks were perfectly coordinated; she was the picture of a consummate professional. She did not recognize that I was with the “nuisance in the corner” but she could feel my rage and turned to me with an attitude of superiority; ready to address my complaint.

“How could you?” I all but shouted. “Could you not see that he was disabled?” She finally made the connection.  

“It is my job to ensure that patients are comfortable and satisfied with our customer service.

The noise was annoying her, and I took steps to correct that.,” she stated unequivocally.

“Annoying HER??? I shouted. “That man sitting in the corner got the news at age forty that he would not live to see his children married or his grandchildren born. He would never play softball again, dance with me to our favorite song, or hug his mom. You can see that by looking at him, but you were concerned that SHE was annoyed?” Patients in the lobby slowed their progression, curious about the acid tone of my voice.

I could see that she had not stopped to think before she responded to the complaint nor taken the time to understand the situation. Her eyes would not meet mine, and there was defensiveness in her posture. My voice dropped to an agonized whisper. “This is a medical facility, the one place where we should be safe. And where people should understand that an illness or disability does not make you less. Your complete lack of respect for my husband’s dignity, your willingness to humiliate him in a crowded lobby, and your lack of empathy is completely unacceptable to me.,” I say as I turned and walked through the automatic glass doors.

I could see her look of shock in the reflection of the glass door, her face a mask of mortification. I did not care, I hoped she hurt in the same way she had hurt us. There was a time that this degree of callousness would have appalled me, but that time was long gone.

I returned to my worried husband and taking his limp hand in mine, I laid my head on his shoulder and cried with him.

We spoke with her supervisor, and received a perfunctory apology letter, but none of that mattered. We had crossed over to the other side in the shadows where people that society pretends not to see reside. There is no coming back from that.