12:15

For many years, we would make our annual, holiday pilgrimage to Colorado and mid way, stop in Santa Fe, NM to live it up for one or two nights of hot tubbing with the kids, tapas, and, of course, red wine. We would stay at this nifty old-world Inn, tourist around and then ride west until meeting up with family. We relished visiting the churches, taking in the surrounding architecture and learning about the complex history of this deeply sacred space. Santa Fe was simultaneously beautiful and violent, sacred and tumultuous, native and colonized and we appreciated the juxtaposition. This place changed for us when my younger son was five. Our much anticipated holiday turned upside down, inside out and backwards and revealed a part of myself of which I am not proud.

Sensory Processing Disorder can do that to just about anyone: turn them upside down and inside out. Reveal parts of you that you didn’t think existed. Not only does it affect your child in ways that they can’t understand, it causes you to respond in ways you never dreamed. Planning a trip to a restaurant for a simple meal? Well, better be prepared! If the menu doesn’t contain the handful of select items preferred by your kiddo, you may be headed for a meltdown. And, if you manage to avoid one avalanche of emotions over the food then there may be another on the horizon if your child gets hungry or if they get cold or hot but didn’t dress appropriately because of a certain smell or feeling or…you get the idea.

Ah, I’m now guessing you’re probably thinking that you wouldn’t give your son or daughter a choice or make requests. You’d lay down the law and they would abide. Well, in our world, that choice doesn’t lead to much success and, trust me, we’ve tried the hard-line approach and it corrupts our interactions to the point where every exchange becomes a punitive one and there are many reasons why. Our child has a neurological disorder called Sensory Processing Integration Dysfunction or “SPD” and back on that trip to New Mexico we were just coming to understand our young son and all the ways in which he takes in the world and that it was as complex as the place surrounding us.

It was our second day in town and I don’t remember all the details but I do recall eating a wonderful tamale lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant (food like my grandmothers), and then heading out to Santa Fe Plaza where it was cold and brisk. Parents were drinking coffee and watching their kids run around and play in the grassy square. We cherished these moments of relative freedom when we could let our shoulders down, just sip our beverage and not have to be so “ON” with our son. Just breathe for a minute. One second felt like a break from the never-ending Tilt a Whirl.

Santa Fe Square was a much appreciated oasis of relative safety; trees were too tall to climb and the ground was grassy albeit cold and hard and we believed we could enjoy our caffeine in peace. And when our kiddo spotted one lazy pigeon and began chasing him around, it seemed a harmless diversion. The pigeon couldn’t eat him or run him over. Everything’s good! But when one boy and then another and then a small group of children formed and began imitating our son’s behavior of maniacally stalking the birds into a corner of the square, and then madly whooping and flapping to scare them into taking flight, we thought it teetering but not quite falling into bad behavior. To us, they were like a merry band of players, Peter Pan’s Lost Boys, Tom Sawyer’s motley crew, and we didn’t question the screeching and terrorizing as long as we got our ten minutes of peace. The kids were having fun and making a game out of it and, honestly, we were thrilled to see our boy engaged. Friends and a very loud and raucous game of chasing pigeons=harmless. According to us.

What we didn’t notice was the long line of street vendor’s staring at all of the kids but, in particular, our son, who was leading the charge and definitely the Pied Piper of Hamelin. What we didn’t truly see was the thirty or so folks all taking in our son’s questionable behavior and it just didn’t register until the pigeon- terrorizing game had ended and we wandered over to the small army of artisans all selling their well-made crafts and jewelry in front of the historic Palace of Governors and began investigating their wares.

A little bit of background information, and I promise it relates, sensory processing occurs when the brain receives and organizes sensory information extracted from external sources such as light, sound, smells or the way something feels as well as internal body signals such as balance, muscle response and even hunger. Individuals with SPD process this intake of information differently and often have bigger or smaller reactions than what is considered “typical.” They may also need to get sensory stimulus from engaging and touching pretty much everything!

Here’s an interesting statistic: studies have suggested that one in sixteen individuals has issues related to sensory processing. Each and every one of us lives on this spectrum to some degree. An individual with fluid and exemplary sensory processing might be a person who stays calm under pressure, is even tempered, eats well, laughs often and doesn’t get their internal or external feathers ruffled much. There are no examples in my family to pull from on that point (sorry!) but for the sake of examples, I’ll throw Barack Obama out there and, politics aside, he’s one cool-headed chap. He has endured some crushing external stimulus and yet keeps his proverbial feathers intact!

At the other end of the spectrum, you might have a person who is terrified of a leaf blower, refuses rice because of the texture, won’t enter a department store because of the “smells” and casts off a winter jacket even when it’s 32 degrees outside because the texture of the material “hurts.” This person would need a great deal of support in order to manage everyday experiences. If the SPD spectrum were a clock, our son would be about 12:15.

So, back to New Mexico where we were casually walking along the vertical line of vendors, stopping to ask questions and then moving on. Our son would squat down like young kids do to look at and examine the items. He was exploring the trinkets that were spread before each vendor and then rise and race to another with me in hot pursuit. I would catch up and then he would tug and pull until I would free him to investigate on his own. We were monitoring closely and, in our eyes, although touching pretty much everything and wearing me out, this was our “normal” so I didn’t see anything particularly wrong.

At some point mid-way on our journey, however, we stopped to look at one pair of earrings and decided to make a purchase. I announced that we would take the items and when the vendor said that he would not sell them to us, I just thought that perhaps I couldn’t hear through my giant, wooly hat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. How much?” I asked again but still nothing and then when the manager of the whole place came over and got involved. I was really confused. “I’m sorry I thought you said that you couldn’t sell us the jewelry? “Yep, you heard right” the merchant shared. I looked up at the manager for help. She couldn’t just refuse to sell us the earrings, could she? What had we done? I felt a great wave of anger come over me as I noticed that not just one but every vendor was staring at us in solidarity and it occurred to me that they actually might agree with this insane person. They too would refuse to sell to us.

I looked around the space and took in the moment and it occurred to me as I noted that everyone’s eyes were on my son; sizing him up and judging, that it was him. Perhaps his touching, handling, tugging on me, and my seemingly laissez-faire style of child rearing had offended. I could feel the parental shame pouring over me. Like the moment in kindergarten when I wet my pants onstage in The Nutcracker or when my cousin heard an 8th grade boy call me a slut and then told my dad. The situations may change but the shame was the same. And now other tourists were scooching past the mini-scene attempting to barter and take in the merchandise and were welcomed with eager smiles and a sharing of goods. I was humiliated.

It was in this state that I pulled my son back from the blanket of merchandise spread out on the ground and that’s when things got worse. In an effort to save both of us from more ridicule, I made the moment even more attention- grabbing by yanking him back a little too abruptly. So now I looked neglectful and abusive on top of incompentent and it was at that point, my partner arrived on the scene. The manager sized him up and said, “You should look after your son better. He’s wild and disrespectful in the way he touches everything. This is our art and your son could break something.” The merchant nodded her head as she shared this verdict in full view of the square and within earshot of all the other folks milling. I looked at my partner. What was the big deal here? Then I realized that they had been watching us from the time we were in the grassy square in front of them. That area was like a giant stage and these folks were lined up in single file as if the front row of an audience at a giant farce. They had been watching.

It finally sunk in and this profound realization compounded with my total embarrassment made me deeply sad but rather than just take my sad self out of there, I went full mama bear on all of them. Yep, I did. I felt both my parenting and offspring on full display for them to judge. And not knowing or understanding any of the “why’s” for my son’s behavior, I was ready to defend with the only thing that had saved me from many moments of shame-words. I used them like a sharpened samurai sword when I needed to and boy was I ready. I actually think I said in an embarrassingly loud voice “How dare you?” and “This is the worst customer service ever!” and “I’m calling the Better Business Bureau!” and we did. Right there. We yelled and then huffed into a corner where we let loose a slew of complaints against the Indigenous people of Santa Fe. And when I write “we” I mean “me.” Full transparency, I pushed my partner into making the complaint. In this confrontation, he was flight while I was definitely fight and at the intersectionality of my fragile motherhood and political correctness, political correctness was lost and I may have become a “Karen” in New Mexico before it was even a thing.

It’s true, we’ve all heard it, “When under stress we regress” and I certainly did. My son’s undiagnosed Sensory Processing Integration Dysfunction was an unknown trigger that catapulted me into behavior that is both deeply embarrassing and revealing. Over time, I’ve reviewed other instances in my life when I’ve launched into entitled histrionics and then justified these tantrums: parking tickets, unpaid bills, my place in line. On the spectrum of “Karen’s” my behavior is not the most offensive but it definitely registers. Maybe a 12:15?

Does this make me the devil? Am I the worst person alive? No, I don’t think so but upon reflection I was, essentially, in someone else’s house and while there, behaved like a rude guest. My middle-class parenting values are quite different from those of the Mescalero Apache Tribe, the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, or the Navajo Nation. To me, chasing pigeons and tactile exploration isn’t an affront but to those folks, perhaps!

Even without the SPD, I encourage curiosity and individualism probably to a fault and those values might not be the highest priority in a more collectivist society. Some might even find my indulgence promoting “wild” behavior in my children. Who knows? Whatever their viewpoint, the Indigenous people of Santa Fe deserve to have one. Indeed, I should have followed their rules in that space for if not there, where? I should have made room for another point of view, another way of being. Similarly, my child’s onus is one and the same. He must now navigate his world with a growing sense of “other,” and meet it with appreciation, respect and flexibility.

That day in Santa Fe was not my proudest moment and hopefully today, after the diagnosis and much growth on both our parts, my son and I continue to evolve together as we navigate our own human continuum. It occurs to me that we are both on a spectrum of sorts. He is riding the wild pony of SPD and I’m navigating my own spectrum of motherhood, privilege and cultural identity. We are taking each day, living in each moment and maybe one day returning to Santa Fe a little bit better. Always getting better…